As this is my first column with the Phoenix, I should probably explain that this is not the same DAVID THORPE who recently resigned from a different local newspaper where he wrote a beloved weekly column very, very much like this one. The other David Thorpe, as far as you know, was a different person with a completely unrelated and extremely similar column.
For reasons that are not readily apparent at press time, SCARLETT JOHANSSON is planning to release an album of TOM WAITS covers. The album features contributions from DAVID BOWIE and YEAH YEAH YEAHS guitarist NICK ZINNER. Waits himself is not directly involved but has heard several of the songs. “I’ve heard he’s very pleased,” said Johansson, though she did not say with what. Johansson’s representatives did not immediately respond to this journalist’s request to “slap her breasts around.”
The surviving members of the REPLACEMENTS have concocted deluxe reissues of their first few releases, which are due out on Rhino records in the coming months. No doubt buyworthy. The surviving members of the WHO have begun preliminary mental preparations for a new studio album, their first in over two percent of a millennium. The surviving members of the Stone Temple Pilots — unfortunately, all of them — are reuniting for the upcoming Rock the Range festival. MATT SORUM, drummer of SCOTT WEILAND’s other band, recently dissed the prospect in an interview: “I don’t think the world’s fucking biding their time waiting for Stone Temple Pilots to reform.” Eat your words, Sorum. Everyone bode the shit out of their time, and now we’ve nearly run out.
Weiland, meanwhile, was recently back in rehab for the who-caresth time.
In a disturbing case of art imitating music criticism, GANG OF FOUR have described the sound of their forthcoming reunion album as — get this — angular.
PETA, which recently withdrew their criticism of BRITNEY SPEARS’s fur wardrobe after it realized that she’s probably too crazy to realize what she is or isn’t wearing (true story), sent a letter to Spears’s parents this week that blamed her recent wackiness on meat and dairy consumption. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” replied the universe through its chosen representative (me).
In other leave-Britney-alone news: her name has been stricken from the lyrics of the MONTY PYTHON musical SPAMALOT and replaced with a reference to POSH SPICE. “We don’t laugh at sad people,” explained Python ERIC IDLE. The omission was probably triggered by Spears’s recent death (still pending as of press time).
My TV satellite dish was out last Sunday, so here’s my GRAMMY coverage: I assume I would have heard if they hadn’t happened, so let’s say they did. Case closed.
Rapper the GAME has been sentenced to two months in jail for waving a gun around, which is in itself unremarkable, but check this out: he was sentenced by a judge named FRED WAPNER (son of Joseph). In 2000, fellow West Coast rapper SNOOP DOGG’s album Tha Last Meal featured a g-funk version of the People’s Court themesong in a skit called “Game Court.” Did you just freak out a little bit, or what? Elsewhere, rapper JUVENILE was arrested for marijuana possession. No word as to whether he’ll be tried as an adult.
LENNY KRAVITZ was hospitalized in Miami with something not quite bad enough to get my hopes up. It appears he’s suffered from “respiratory problems” for a few months. If they’re referring to the sucking, it’s been a lot longer than that.
Alleged pop star LILY ALLEN recently taped the first of probably very few episodes of her BBC talk show, Lily Allen and Friends. The taping was fraught with misfortune: a third of the audience is reported to have walked out bored, Ms. Allen seemed to have difficulty reading her cue cards, and the program’s guest was CUBA GOODING
JR. — who is, both in films and on talk shows, a walking apology for the inability to cast/book anyone more interesting.
Allen, in a blog post, quickly denied the reports that audience members had left because the show was awful, explaining that they had to catch their trains. One presumes that she gleaned this information from the way so many of them sheepishly shrugged and tapped their watches as they backed toward the exits in droves. Allen also wrote: “I was shitting it but I’m really happy with the results.” Being unfamiliar with the expression, I elect to take her statement literally.