Eight Items or Less: The Downtown Yearbook, the Death of the Polaroid and the Re-Birth of Gowanus

1. The UK's Tesco supermarket chain is changing the wording of their quick-checkout lane signs from "10 items or less" to "up to 10 items." The new wording evades the "linguistic dispute" about whether the phrase should use "fewer" instead of "less." Guess what? We're not changing!

2. For years we've heard people kicking around the idea of a downtown yearbook featuring an annual rundown of the cutest and cleverest. Well, somebody finally did it and there's a release party tonight (Sept. 4) from 8 to 11 p.m. at 255 Elizabeth Street, for the "2008 NYC Downtown Yearbook: The Young and the Banging." The publishers promise more cities with LA up next.

3. New York artist Lynnette Astaire will be doing a live adaptation of one of her works entitled "Polaroid Funeral" -- to mourn the end of production of the iconic film -- during the 4th Annual Art Parade on Saturday (Sept. 6). The parade starts at 4 p.m. and runs down West Broadway. The afterparty is at Santo's from 7 to 10.

4. In another sign that rap music is slipping in popularity, the hard rock group Slipknot's new album, All Hope is Gone, debuts at #1 on the Billboard top albums chart this week, beating out the Game's latest "LAX." The rappers's last two albums debuted at number one.

5. Gowanus rocks! The Yard brought everybody out to this scenic Brooklyn "neighborhood" over the summer and now two new venues are about to open there. Watch for the Bell House opening on Sept. 18 and Littlefield later in the fall.

6. In case you were wondering: The song featured in the hilarious AT&T "Techno Twins" ad is "Money Shot" by Yannis Kamarinos.