The improbable winner of the annual Eurovision song contest for 2006 is a Finnish "melodic hard rock" band call Lordi. The band members dress in gruesome masked-costumes that make them look like a cartoon gang of brawny, deformed Goths who accidentally stepped off of the set of a Rob Zombie movie.

Lordi's winning song entry was a heavy, hooky tune called "Hard Rock Hallelujah." (Anthemic metal, anyone? ) Initial reaction from the Finns to news of Lordi's win suggested that the northern European nation was as embarassed as it was shocked.

According to the band's Web site, Lordi will spend most of this summer touring Finland and Germany. The group has a new CD set for release in the U.K. on June 6 (yes, that's right, on the satanic 6/6/6. Coincidence? Or marketing savvy?), so there will likely be some appearances in Britain as well.

In a BBC interview, Lordi frontman Mr. Lordi explained that the band's influences include Freddie Kruger, the Incredible Hulk and Monster from the Muppet Show .

We're suckers for Japanese canned coffee. Every time one of the big Nippon beverage makers launches a new brand of sugar-dosed latte in a can, we've got to try it. And this is especially so when that new brand comes with an unusual screw-top aluminum can design that looks like it was dreamed up by an architect. The new Café Sepia from Ito-En is just the sort of stuff that works us into a frenzied, drooling El Nino of caffeine-jonesing desire. Even Cornelius, the official (living) cat-mascot of Air Massive, was intrigued by this latest beverage to emerge from Tokyo (as the picture above documents). But neither an eye-catching design nor a nuanced product name can make a can of coffee taste great. We're sad to report that Café Sepia tasted weak. It was too watery and diluted than we like. In fact, it lacked the coffee punch of even most established major brands of Japanese can coffee. (Personally, the Boss brand is our gold standard in this East Asian drinks sub-genre.) Café Sepia didn't taste "bad," mind you. It was actually pleasant to the tongue. But we expect more -- much more -- from anything that a drinks maker dares call coffee.

From the Global Graphica "Street Art" file ... this week there are a couple of images of fresh work from the Brooklyn, New York artist Swoon. This paste-up was caught on Mercer Street in NoHo, in downtown Manhattan. (Photo courtesy Global Graphica / Ivan Corsa Photo).

It's been quiet here on the Massive site the past week or two as we've been on hiatus, taking a short vacation before getting super busy with a big move to a new downtown space in New York City. We apologize to our regular readers for the lack of posts during this time.

We moved the Massive HQ back into the heart of the Lower East Side, and into our favorite part of the neighborhood, which, depending on with whom you speak, is sometimes also referred to as "Northeast Chinatown," "LoLIta," "LoHo" or "Bel-Del" (for Below Delancey Street). It's a fascinating part of NYC, one with tons of history, culture, bars, restaurants and music venues, as well as tons of diverse characters. It's a place where the living remnants of Manhattan's historic Jewish immigrant neighborhood of the Lower East Side rubs up against the newer bustle of Fujinanese Chinatown on one side and an old Puerto Rican barrio of "Losaida" on the other side farther to the north and east.

A few doors down from Massive HQ, in a now empty and decrepit tenement building, is where Lou Reed used to live back in his Velvet Underground days. Down the street you can find the best caipirinhas outside of Brazil. Around the corner, you can find the best fried dumplings outside of China. And a few blocks away you can drink the best espresso in Manhattan and eat the finest almond croissants outside of France. We fucking love it.

Now that we're done unpacking and have settled in, we thought we'd share some images of the new Air Massive nabe below.

We went to see "Brick," the much-talked about new film from director Rian Johnson. The movie received much acclaim at this year's Sundance Film Festival, but when we first saw the trailer about a month ago, we were a little put off. After learning about the premise for the film, however, we went in to theater with high expectations. The idea behind "Brick" is a Dashiell Hammet-style murder mystery with all the pulpy film noir attributes of a Sam Spade detective drama, a la "The Big Sleep" or "Maltese Falcon." Except that rather than the glamour-hoods of foggy-night 1940's West Los Angeles or San Francisco, the setting is a sequence of sleepy, suburban track homes, strip smalls and a high school in San Clemente California. And rather than cynical middle-aged adults on the make or mark, the main characters are high school kids. Johnson has taken the smart, rapid-fire hip-slang patter of those film noir classics and injected it into his script big time. "Brick" is a remarkable film. At its weakest, it makes you gape at the absurdity of a bunch of high school kids playing it so beyond cool when their lives have barely begun. At its best the movie awes you with its mystery and sharp storytelling. "Brick" works in no small part because it has pulled off the trick of turning a mundane world into one filled with drama, style, intrigue and danger and doing so in a compelling way.

Rating: Air Massive rating is 4 stars out 5

This week from the Global Graphica street art and graf file ... new images of graf by "Goal" in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. Plus more great images of street art and graf from Ivan and crew on the Global Graphica Web site. (Above photo courtesy Ivan Corsa / Global Graphica).

In addition to the Razzie Award she won for her poor acting in the 2005 movie "House of Wax," Paris Hilton has won another demeaning award. This time its the "Ugly Award" that is given as part of the annual "Good, Bad and Ugly Awards" for women in advertising. Paris was awarded the dishonor for the infamous Carl's Jr. "Spicy Paris" television commercial she did last year. In 2005, she was given the same award for a series of Guess Jeans ads in which she appeared half naked. Two years in a row -- not bad, Paris. We think that maybe it's time for Paris to hijack the whole awards meme itself and start her own annual version of the Oscars for what's "hot" and what's "not hot." The hotel heiress could call it the Paris Awards (you heard it here first) and turn it into a yearly cable-television event and webcast. (And, hey, maybe we could produce it.) Naturally, Hilton would be the chief MC of the ceremony, but there could be guest presenters, too. The awards themselves would be diamond-encrusted statuettes of herself. MTV, are you listening?

We've been catching up on the the video, film and design work of Mike Mills lately. The director of the acclaimed recent indie film "Thumbsucker" once worked as a graphic designer, creating album art for Beck and Pulp, to name just two examples. Mills has also directed television commercials for the likes of Adidas and Nike, as well as music videos. We were aware that he designed the abum art for Air's now classic "Moon Safari" CD in the late 1990's. What we didn't know was that he was also the directer of one of our favorite videos by Air, the clip to "Kelly Watch the Stars," which you can watch in the embedded YouTube player above (or visit here). Ping pong players have never looked as sexy as they did in this video.

We had high hopes for "The Interpreter." We had briefly even considered plopping down $10.50 at the local cineplex to see the flick when it came out in theaters last year. We're glad we waited for the DVD instead. "The Interpreter" is a political suspense-mystery about an interpreter at the United Nations who overhears a conversation regarding a plot to assassinate an African dictator during his upcoming speech to the General Assembly. The movie is a well-intentioned and well-made, but it is also a way too self-important and ultimately flawed film. Its stars -- Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn -- are actors we usually love to watch on screen. But in spite of strong, solid performances in "The Interpreter," both Penn and Kidman's acting seems to fall short at times due to weaknesses either in the script, story, direction or editing. Kidman, as usual, is a beauty on the screen even when she's wearing reading glasses and has blood splattered on her delicate features, as is the case following a scene in which a bus is bombed seconds after she's alighted from the vehicle. The audience is supposed to sympathize with her, but her character is so maddening and takes herself so seriously in an annoying, self-absorbed way that it's difficult to care about her character or her politcal cause. Then there are the plot holes, the melodramatic tropes and the familiar absurdities in the way New York-living is depicted. (In the movie, Kidman lives on East 10th Street in the East Village and drives around town on a moped, which she keeps parked and chained on the sidewalk in front of her brownstone apartment. Uh, that moped would have been stolen, vandalized or stripped within days on the street. And who needs to ride around the Village on a Vespa when almost everything you could need is a few blocks away, including the subway?)

Air Massive rating: 2.5 stars out of 5