Top

Smells Like Teen Spirit

March 9, 2012 by · Comments Off on Smells Like Teen Spirit 

Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nearly 100 years after the Italian shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo founded his eponymous label, his immediate family continues to walk in his footsteps. Following Ferragamo’s death in 1960, his widow Wanda, along with their six children, took over the running of the business and built it into a luxury purveyor of bags, silk accessories, watches, eyewear and ready-to-wear collections.

His second eldest child, Giovanna Gentile Ferragamo, visited the UAE last week to launch the label’s new fragrance, Signorina, and revealed the secret to the family’s enduring success.

“We joined one by one over the years and were lucky enough to be appointed to different departments and sectors of the company,” she says. “So there wasn’t really any overlapping of any kind and we would always come together to make major decisions. I feel very lucky, as it was one of the best experiences anyone could have had. The fabulous team of my brothers, sisters and mother working together in fantastic harmony allowed us to achieve so many fantastic goals over the years.”

Having created the house’s pret-a-porter line for women back in the 1960s, Giovanna is now the brand’s vice president and is determined the company, now part-owned by shareholders, will continue to move with the times – hence the birth of a new signature fragrance whose name means “girl” in Italian.

“You have to move as fast as the world moves,” she says. “We’re attentive to what the trends are and times are changing. Needs are now different to what they were. Two members of the young Ferragamo generation have also been with the company for a few years now and they seem to be doing very well and are taking things in the same direction we started.”

Signorina has Ferragamo’s trademark sophistication, but the notes of currant and pink pepper melded with jasmine, rose and peony come together to make an unmistakably youthful scent.

Accompanying Ferragamo to Dubai, having just rolled out the fragrance in Moscow, was the company’s chief executive of fragrances, Luciano Bertinelli, who says the perfume is almost good enough to eat.

“It’s a floral, fruity fragrance with one very specific characteristic – we added some panna cotta,” he says. “It gives it a really unique, sweet flavour – adding gourmand or special food products to fragrances is a new trend you’ll find especially in the US at the moment.”

Bertinelli is keen to attract the next generation of Ferragamo fans with the scent, a demographic he gauges to be between 18 and 35 years of age and describes as young ladies who are “chic and elegant” without being “fashion victims”. Seeming to capture the spirit of this new endeavour is the top model Bianca Balti who, dressed in a peach-pleated summer dress, fronts the campaign and stars in a vignette directed by Sonia Sieff.

She’s young, beautiful and Italian to the core, just like the iconic Ferragamo “Vara” bow that reassuringly sits atop the Signorina perfume bottle.

The romantic, soft-focused advertising presents a dream lifestyle seemingly accessible for women who can purchase everything Balti is wearing, right down to her Ferragamo shoes, which, along with handbags, happen to be part of the bestselling line for the brand in the Middle East region.

Famous People Who Died Too Soon: Kurt Cobain

March 9, 2012 by · Comments Off on Famous People Who Died Too Soon: Kurt Cobain 

Famous People Who Died Too Soon: Kurt Cobain, Kurt Donald Cobain (February 20, 1967 – c. April 5, 1994) was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana.

Cobain formed Nirvana with Krist Novoselic in Aberdeen, Washington in 1985 and established it as part of the Seattle music scene, having its debut album Bleach released on the independent record label Sub Pop in 1989.

After signing with major label DGC Records, the band found breakthrough success with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” from its second album Nevermind (1991). Following the success of Nevermind, Nirvana was labeled “the flagship band” of Generation X, and Cobain hailed as “the spokesman of a generation”.

Cobain, however, was often uncomfortable and frustrated, believing his message and artistic vision to have been misinterpreted by the public, with his personal issues often subject to media attention. He challenged Nirvana’s audience with its final studio album In Utero (1993).

During the last years of his life, Cobain struggled with heroin addiction, illness and depression. He also had difficulty coping with his fame and public image, and the professional and lifelong personal pressures surrounding himself and his wife, musician Courtney Love. On April 8, 1994, Cobain was found dead at his home in Seattle, the victim of what was officially ruled a suicide by a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head.

The circumstances of his death have become a topic of public fascination and debate. Since their debut, Nirvana, with Cobain as a songwriter, has sold over 25 million albums in the US alone, and over 50 million worldwide.

Kurt Cobain Cause Of Death

March 9, 2012 by · Comments Off on Kurt Cobain Cause Of Death 

Kurt Cobain Cause Of Death, It was a Friday, April 8th, 1994, and after a long week at work I was sitting down to watch some TV and opened the TV Guide. I had listened intently to the tragic news all day about Kurt, and was really surprised when I sat down and saw the information shown in the photo below. I showed it to my girlfriend and she agreed we should keep it.

On the day the body of Kurt Cobain was found, this was the TV guide from the Madison, Wisconsin daily papers weekly TV guide (photos below). This was a nationally syndicated show in its first season, airing this particular episode for its first time ever and so it was the same for virtually every city in the United States that night. I saw this and was so struck by how odd it was that I saved the entire TV guide for 4 years, which was when I first heard that Kurt may have been murdered. I located the TV guide and took pictures of it. I first published this on my website in April, 1997.

It all began for me the day Kurt was found and I saw the TV Guide, and that same night with 5 o’clock news reports that it was a confirmed suicide, suggesting a serious rush to judgment. Kurt’s daughter only has one parent left, and it is important that she know for certain that her mother was not involved if in fact she was not. It will be terrible for their daughter to grow up with any doubts about her only surviving parent, but it is terrible for a young girl to grow up believing her Dad bailed out on her if in fact he did not. You can blame Courtney Love’s bizarre behavior in recent years on her guilty conscience, but also consider it could be out of extreme grief and devastation over being accused of killing her husband and the father of their child. Being falsely accused is a painful thing. It has been widely reported and confirmed that Courtney Love’s own step dad believes she was involved in Kurt’s death, which causes everyone to wonder a little. But I have met some crazy parents in my life.

Kurt Cobain was an amazing artist and deserves that all of the truth be brought out once and for all. A lot of people saw Kurt Cobain and may have perceived him as somewhat of a Pied Piper of youth leading them towards drug use, heroin in particular. If Courtney Love is completely innocent, she should be spearheading the re-opening of the case, for their daughter if nothing else. Kurt Cobain was extremely important to millions of people. An investigation needs to be done, for the sake of Frances Bean Cobain, for Courtney Love, for the families of the 68 people who committed suicide after Kurt was found dead, and for the literally millions of fans of this amazing artist. In the relatively near future I will attempt to consolidate all of the sites which have a petition to re-open Kurt’s case into a single site with some corporate sponsorship or something to insure that it stays up, is the only list being done and that it is presented every year until it is done.

Below you can find a collection of information, photos and videos.
Also make sure to visit the Kurt Cobain Store for books, movies, music and more.

I don’t believe any DNA evidence was collected from the scene, which was bulldozed a short time later, after Kurt was cremated also, taking the body and the scene out of the investigative picture. Below are photos of Kurt in the greenhouse.

Where is the blood in these photos? Most head wounds bleed excessively. This is not crime scene photos by the police – these are independent photographs by reporters and individuals. No cleanup occurred prior to these photos. But in neither of the two angles above do I see a single drop of blood.

Would a huge amount of heroin slow blood flow that much, or had Kurt already overdosed and was on the verge of death when someone pulled the trigger for him. Or was he literally dead already when the trigger was pulled? These questions still bother me. Courtney had just gone through an overdose type situation with Kurt exactly a month earlier in Europe, photo below:

Apparently a small amount of blood was located to the left of Kurt’s head, as depicted in Tom Grant’s sketch of the scene.

Here is a question: If someone had 3 times a lethal dose of heroin in their body, and they were shot shortly thereafter, would they tend to bleed less as a result of reduced heart rate? If so, would a difference in blood amount be contingent upon how much time elapsed from the introduction of the drug into the body? In other words, if Kurt was on the verge of death or just deceased at the time he was shot, would there be less blood flow than there would be from a man conscious of his actions and their implications, with his heart racing a mile a minute knowing he was about to depart this world?

Update – I’ve come to find out that “dead men don’t bleed!” If the heart is not beating, a body won’t bleed. In Kurt’s case, as you can see above, there is little or no blood visible in these photos. So, what about a person with a huge dose of heroin in them and a reduced heart rate that results. Do they bleed significantly less? Not sure. I have a video I will not post here of a man committing suicide at a press conference. It is so gruesome I could barely watch it. He puts the gun in his mouth and fires upward into the brain. I would guess that in less than 30 seconds several pints of blood have flowed from this mans wound. Where is the blood in the photo above – if you saw this video of this other person committing suicide, you would never imagine it possible that Kurt did not bleed extensively, MUCH more than what is shown in the photos above.

Below is the note found near Kurt Cobain’s body. Notice the extreme difference in the handwriting between the first 3/4’s of the letter and the last 3 to 4 lines. It is so obviously different from the majority of the letter. Some suggest that the difference was due to a large dose of heroin being administered or taken during the course of writing the note, but the dose in Kurt was many times more than a lethal dose and most believe he would have been completely incapacitated immediately after the injection, and thus unable to continue writing and certainly unable to complete a letter and then handle a firearm.

Here is the translation of the note in pain text:

Actual hand writing by Kurt at time Smells Like Teen Spirit was written:

Handwriting sheet found in Courtney Love’s backpack the week Kurt was found:

I would like to see an extremely detailed analysis of the note above for sure. Which if any letter are in the note as shown above and in Kurt’s suicide note.

ELDON “EL DUCE” HOKE

Singer of an L.A. punk band called “The Mentors”. Claims Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt in December 1993. Hoke was administered a polygraph test by Dr. Edward Gelb, who one of the country’s leading polygraph experts. Hoke passed with 99.7% certainty that he was telling the truth. Found dead on April 19, 1997 after friends say he went for a walk with someone they’ve never seen before.

Bottom