Converse already went ahead and co-opted the image of sacred counterculture icons like Hunter Thompson and Sid Vicious for their new ad campaign, "All Your Dead Heroes Are Our Marketing Tools." Now they've decided to go for the gusto: they're producing a limited edition series of Kurt Cobain Converse. It's all approved by the estate of the tragic Nirvana front man—i.e. Courtney Love—but um, really? "I feel stupid, and contagious," indeed. Pics of the lyrics-encrusted shoes [via Ad Age/ The Daily Swarm] after the jump.

No wonder Courtney Love is handing out sobriety advice right and left these days: her daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, seems to have come out OK, even though her dad killed himself and her mom is Courtney Love. Frances is already 15, and she just got a photo spread in a big magazine, and it's not for getting arrested somewhere! Apparently she has a cool grandmother in Washington who doesn't destroy her chances of ever being normal by saying things like, "she's a gay man trapped in a woman's body," as Courtney Love just told People. One guess as to which side of the family the grandmother is from. [Harper's Bazaar]

"'I did not fuck you,' was how Courtney Love responded when told by her Seattle attorneys that she owed them up to $340,000 plus interest. That was the balance due on legal fees attorney Katherine Hendricks and O.Yale Lewis say Love incurred in a 2002 lawsuit against former members of her late husband's band, Nirvana, from which she ultimately earned at least $9 million. But the troubled rocker and widow of Kurt Cobain has now agreed to settle the attorneys' tab for an undisclosed amount, according to King County Superior Court records." [Seattle Weekly]

Doc Martens fires firm behind Cobain ads. [Daily Swarm]

The image above comes from a Doc Martens campaign designed to "communicate that Dr. Martens boots are 'made to last,' and we discovered that these idolized musicians wore them." (Other icons include Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, and Sid Vicious.) Before you get all up in arms about commodifying a sainted figure who spoke for his generation as a means to move footwear, you should note that the ad is, at least, tastefully done. I mean, he still has his whole head.

In tomorrow's Times Book Review, 2005's it-novelist Ben Kunkel reviews Everett True's Nirvana: The Biography. Though there's no doubting Kunkel's competence in the relevant literature — apparently, Heavier than Heaven is "badly marred" by the influence of she-devil Courtney Love and Come as You Are "scants [the band members'] backgrounds" — one wonders if Kurt Cobain is really the super-sensitive misunderstood wünderkind in question here:

It's been a while since we last checked up on the Wall Street Journal's Pursuits section, which back then was likely the most immanently compelling nugget of weekend media this side of The Mclaughlin Group. We're happy to report that nothing's much changed; just like its predecessors, this week's edition is an intoxicating Borgesian compendium of curiosities and improbabilities, each designed to tickle the heart strings of those mythic goblins who have a surplus of capital and a shortage of good sense. And so we learn this weekend that filtered tap water's become the hot new fine-dining beverage of choice, while this year's Lollapalooza is offering lakeside cabanas starting at $32,000 for more refined would-be moshers: That splish-splashing you hear is Kurt Cobain turning in a grave filled with a few hundred discarded liters of Pellegrino, but, no matter, what's past is past.