What with their recent live appearance at the UK Download festival, LIMP BIZKIT's reunion is now in full swing. Notwithstanding that their festival appearance was most notable for FRED DURST's getting pantsed, the music press seems to be letting his unwarranted triumphance go unchecked, without allowing equal time for opposing viewpoints. "This isn't a reunion, this is a comeback," quibbled the red-hatted irrelephant in a BBC interview. Okay, if he wants to split hairs over the most appropriate terminology, let's call it an aggressive relapse after a period of remission. In better news: he also said that this would be a "more explosive version" of Bizkit, and since he's medically incapable of abstraction, I would suggest that the first few rows bring tarps, the way they would at a Gallagher show, to avoid being showered with Limp Gibletz.
While we're on the subject of Gallagher: his son LIAM now has a clothing line. Liam's big launch product: a knockoff of those gross green parkas he's been wearing for decades. This is a shining example of Oasis's capacity for inventive thinking — given the opportunity to design clothing, Liam went into mental hyperdrive and looked down at his own torso. NME reports that he'll have a line of furniture, as well. Expect plenty of chair-shaped green parkas.
Liam's not the only one in the clothing-design biz. MIKE DIRNT of GREEN DAY has teamed up with a company called Macbeth to produce a signature line of vegan shoes. Listen, people: if you're destitute enough to eat a fucking shoe, it's probably time to stop worrying about whether it has meat in it.
Beset by trolls, TRENT REZNOR has quit Twitter in a huff. Still in a quittin' mood, he made the following announcement after his Bonnaroo performance: "It just dawned on me that this is our last show ever in the United States. Don't be sad. I'll keep going. But I think I'm going to lose my [goldurned] mind if I keep doing this, and I have to stop." Good move, Trent — simplifying your lifestyle is a great way to beat the midlife blues.
And, speaking of Twitter-trolling: a friend recently posted this tweet to a discussion on the Iran situation: Shots overheard in outlying Iran city/town of Tehran //tinyurl.com/depb8a #iranelection #tehran #mousavi-danger. The link leads to a horrifying photograph of a man performing an unusual act on his own backmost anatomy. Some 200,000 persons clicked the link. Others took up the trolling, and now more than a million people have been disgustingly fooled. A tasteless, indefensible prank, to be sure, but what elevates it to the level of art is that the dude's Twitter-account name is "hoobastank_band."
As if a story about the EAGLES and CHRISTINA AGUILERA starting up their own 24-hour radio stations weren't exciting enough, we get the bonus radness of this quote from a brazen corporate asshole: "Is it going to make a lot of money? No. It's more of a marketing tool. But what is recorded music? It's mostly a marketing tool, right?" I'm gonna assume these are not rhetorical questions, because anyone familiar with the concept of recorded music would understand the folly of an entirely Eagles-based format.
The MySpace news feed kicked out a pretty sick rhyme the other day: "SHANIA TWAIN: I've been inspired by my pain."
The video of BRET MICHAELS getting conked in the noggin by a Looney Tunes–style falling object at the Tony Awards has given me such pleasure over the past few weeks that I'm beginning to experience some spiritual discomfort. On the one hand, I know it's wrong to laugh at an injury to another human being, especially in slow motion. On the other, the existence of Bret Michaels proves that there is no moral order to the universe.
Michaels, who suffered facial injuries and great loss of dignity from the mishap, was only a split-second dodge away from having his head crushed like a watermelon in another fucking Gallagher joke.
DAVID THORPE | dthorpe@thephoenix.com
