COURTNEY LOVE and AVRIL LAVIGNE both have laryngitis this week. Explain that, Richard Dawkins.PETE DOHERTY has been released from prison, and he claims to have stayed clean during his internment. Judging from post-release photographs, I’m guessing he means “clean” in the drugs sense. But, hey, congratulations are due: the boy looks significantly pinker than usual, and now he can finally slap a two-digit number on his “__ days since I’ve been arrested with a needle hanging out of my eyeball” sign.
In other classy-Brit news: sensual irritant AMY WINEHOUSE recently spent the night in jail for getting effed up, slapping a dude in the face, and head-butting a woman who tried to call her a cab. Whenever I try to picture her in my head, I just see a brunette version of Andy Capp’s wife.
Wow, another free NINE INCH NAILS album. Sort of like a couch on the sidewalk: sure, it’s free, but it probably stinks, and what the hell would I do with it? Still, I dig the dude’s sentiment. “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years,” said TRENT REZNOR on the official NIN Web site. “This one’s on me.” There are plenty of musicians with twice the money who’d never consider something like that.
R. KELLY’s lawyers have requested that a “gag order” be maintained during the singer’s child-porn trial. Kinky! The proceedings finally got under way this past Friday, six years after the indictment, despite his defense team’s motion for a further postponement. It’s delightful how the lighting speed of our judicial system has let the dude release at least three #1 albums (and an absurdly intricate R&B opera) between the time he videotaped himself peeing on a teenager (allegedly!) and the actual trial.
These allegations are the pinnacle of a long career of teen-boning rumors that include an alleged illegal marriage to 15-year-old singer AALIYAH. (And to think, we used to run guys out of the industry on a rail for minor indiscretions like marrying their 13-year-old cousins.) If convicted, Kelly will be trapped in something not unlike a closet for up to 15 years.
That sly dog NICK CANNON, it’s reported, managed to marry Mariah Carey without a pre-nup. I’ll offer him a tentative high-five on the assumption that it’s some kind of crazy scheme, but I won’t offer him a low one on the flipside until he pulls the trigger on the deal and walks out with half her shit.
Some new OASIS songs have leaked on-line. If you’d be so kind as to suspend your disbelief for a moment, I’ll entertain the premise that you might give a shit. Two are mediocre and undifferentiated Noel-sung ballads, but “Nothin’ on Me” is a little baffling. There’s not enough of a tune that it can legally be called a song, so I’m guessing it must have some kind of industrial application. Like, maybe it neutralizes cat-urine odor, or boosts cellphone reception in tunnels.
In a clash of two of the most irrelevant show-biz vestiges in the world, P-DIDDY has been honored with a star on the HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME.
The British government is once again fronting on SNOOP DOGG. His initial visa ban was thrown out by a judge, so now the UK Border Agency is making a second bid to get Snoop barred from entering the country. Which adds additional evidence to my longstanding theory that the UK is run by bloods.
A BON JOVI stadium show in Florida was delayed for hours because of a bomb threat. Just a bit of harmless mischief, like the way I used to call up punk clubs and terrify them with Bon Jovi threats.
In an amusing Coachella mishap, ROGER WATERS’s huge, inflatable ego broke free of its moorings and floated into the stratosphere.
It’s really cute to see all the press hysteria over whether MILEY CYRUS’s bare back will destroy her career. What exactly is it about the modern history of pop music that leads us to believe that sexualized Disney teenagers can’t sell? Follow-up question: whoa, did you guys know she’s Billy Ray’s daughter, or am I the only person in the world who didn’t put two and two together till just now?
Well, if we’re no longer able to trust Miley as a role model for our youth, what about PERRY FARRELL of Jane’s Addiction? Sure, he wrote a song about shoplifting and fronted a band called Porno for Pyros, but now he’s throwing all his wholesomeness into a new endeavor: Kidzapalooza, which will feature kid-friendly music, temporary tattoos, rock-and-roll hairstyling, and plenty of Gen-X parents standing around going, “What the fuck has happened to us?”
