Order by multiple columns from 2 tables - mysql

Question

I want to make merge 2 tables, and then do ORDER BY, first to order them by top column, so that products with value 1 in top show up first in record set.
Afterwards, I want to order them by premium column, so that products with value 1 go right after top products.
After that, I want the rest of products to order by pub_date from table items, and products with value 1 in column highlighted should not be shown directly bellow top and premium items.
Since original tables are full of unnecessary info, here's the stripped down versions:
Table `items`:
+-------+------------+--------+
| pk_id | pub_date | author |
+-------+------------+--------+
| 1 | 2013-06-11 | John |
| 2 | 2013-06-12 | Mike |
| 3 | 2013-06-25 | Seth |
| 4 | 2013-06-11 | Drew |
| 5 | 2013-06-13 | Joe |
+-------+------------+--------+
Table `paid_items`:
+-------+-----+---------+-------------+--------+
| fk_id | top | premium | highlighted | active |
+-------+-----+---------+-------------+--------+
| 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
+-------+-----+---------+-------------+--------+
EDIT:
Here's the pseudo (or whatever) of what I want to accomplish:
PRODUCTS_LIST>
PRODUCTS WITH TOP VALUE
PRODUCTS WITH PREMIUM VALUE
PRODUCTS ORDERED BY PUB_DATE>
PRODUCT WITH NO HIGHLIGHTED VALUE
PRODUCT WITH NO HIGHLIGHTED VALUE
PRODUCT WITH HIGHLIGHTED VALUE
PRODUCT WITH NO HIGHLIGHTED VALUE
PRODUCT WITH HIGHLIGHTED VALUE
...
A striped down version of how the recordset should look like, focus is on highlighted column:
mysql> select pk_id, highlighted from items left join paid_items on items.pk_id
= paid_items.fk_id order by pub_date desc;
+-------+-------------+
| pk_id | highlighted |
+-------+-------------+
| 3 | 1 |
| 5 | 1 |
| 2 | 0 |
| 1 | NULL |
| 4 | 0 |
+-------+-------------+

Answer 1

Simple select would be:-
SELECT *
FROM items a
LEFT OUTER JOIN paid_items b
ON a.pk_id = b.fk_id
ORDER BY b.top, b.premium, a.pub_date
but I presume you know that already.
However I am unsure what you mean by products with value 1 in column highlighted should not be shown directly bellow top and premium items . Do you want these excluded, or displayed at the bottom of the list. Could you put some example output in your question?