Article Archive for November 2006
Elton John. National institution, right? This is a role Elton John gained by shouting at his servants while wearing tennis shorts, inventing James Blunt, being somewhat wiggy and being the angriest millionaire alive - but for singing?
Not really. Elton John had a new album out recently, called The Captain And The Kid. Chances are you've not heard a single note of music from it, though, because it has approximately sold no copies whatsoever. And this angers Elton John greatly. In Elton John's head, it should be songs from The Captain And The Kid that people remember Elton John for and not that song about the baby lion or the song about Billy Elliot being electrocuted. And - to let people know just how angry he is that nobody's bought his new album - Elton John launched into a full-on pottymouth extravaganza at a recent concert, spitting out 15 "fuck"s in a minute, some of which were directed at his record label, who he asked to fire him. Records show that this was the angriest Elton John had been since three minutes before the concert when a hand towel he was using wasn't quite as fluffy as he'd have liked.
On Saturday X Factor had an Abba theme - you know, like every single rubbish office party you've ever been to has had an Abba theme - to see which singer was best at doing rubbish over-familiar songs that people only like ironically.
People on shows like X Factor always make time to point out just how difficult it is to sing an Abba song, but really they're talking through their arses - we've spent way way way too many dreary evenings in horrible pubs listening to gangs of screeching women shriek Dancing Queen like it was the most hilariously original idea in the history of modern thought to disprove that notion. Although maybe we're wrong - Saturday's X Factor contained more out and out dreadfulness than in any of the previous episodes, as we're about to find out.
Here are the X Factor betting odds for Ray Quinn and Eton Road...
Neil Patrick Harris - despite popular roles in Harold & Kumar and How I Met Your Mother - has always tried hard to shake off his image as That Doogie Howser Kid, and now he has - Neil Patrick Harris is henceforth That Gay Doogie Howser Kid.
After a spectacularly botched round of statements came out last week that left everyone chronically unsure of whether Neil Patrick Harris was gay, straight or merely in possession of one of the most furiously inept publicists you could ever wish for, Neil Patrick Harris has decided to finally tell the truth; Neil Patrick Harris has openly admitted that he's gay. Although he's still not as gay as How I Met Your Mother because, dude, that show is gay.
Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, myths, ancient artifacts, religion, strange facts or just the plain unexplainable.
The Mayan's prophetic abilities are still held quite high in some circles. They made a calendar depicting the end of the world as we know it as occurring on December 21, 2012 - a date which an awful lot of people are holding them to. But calendars weren't their only supernatural forte - they also possessed crystal skulls they believed to be from a time when humanity inhabited 12 different planets.
Fantastic magical powers have been attributed to the skulls, and some claim even Hewlett-Packard testing has backed up their mystical strangeness.
Angelina Jolie has been in India for quite some time now, and while she's been indulging in some of her interests like making films and being chased by photographers, Angelina Jolie hadn't done the thing most people thought she would.
It was always going to be a matter of time until Angelina Jolie realised that India was big and hot and full of desperately poor people and then decided to go and take a bit of a look around. Over the weekend Angelina Jolie toured a refugee camp in New Delhi as part of her role as a United Nations ambassador to see the conditions that refugees from Afghanistan and Burma live in on a day to day basis, and also to totally call dibs on all of the refugees children just in case Madonna got there first and started adopting them up before Angelina had a chance to work out which one looked the saddest.
One of the more unlikely aspects of the nasty divorce between Paul McCartney and Heather Mills is the claim that Paul McCartney used to abuse his first wife Linda - and not just by singing Mull Of Kintyre to her now and again, either.
Sort of half backing up these claims possibly a bit were the existence of Linda McCartney's audio diary tapes - tapes where Linda McCartney alternated between thinking up delicious things to do with parsnips and apparently crying her eyes out about all the horrible stuff that Paul McCartney made her do, like sing on Helen Wheels or something. In fact nobody knows exactly what is contained within the Linda McCartney tapes and now they probably never will - Paul McCartney has reportedly bought the tapes for £200,000 during a secret meeting in a London branch of Eat. Which sounds like a lot of money, but Paul McCartney was in Eat, where a smoothie, a prepacked sandwich and some slices of apple in a little plastic bag cost about six times that amount.
Who'd have thought that the sight of two men - one of whom had previously shown a bag of his faeces to a dinner guest - wrestling naked in a hotel convention hall would be so popular at the US weekend box office?
Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan is the number one movie at the US weekend box office this week, a feat made all the more impressive since the average money that each cinema took from screenings of Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan was around as much as the rest of the US weekend box office top ten combined. Not bad for a movie that's basically about how dumb some Americans are.
In Madonna's head, chances are the fearless way she went to Malawi for three seconds, did a bit of a dance in front of some kids and brought one back to England should be congratulated, or at least rewarded with some kind of sparkly crown.
That hasn't really happened, though - in reality the majority of people think that the way a faddish career-minded middle-aged celebrity like Madonna, who spends a great deal of time jet-setting around the world, jumping on the faddish bandwagon for adopting African babies with seemingly scant regard for international adoption laws probably could have been a bit more though through. Madonna, though, is determined to put this whole kerfuffle about the adoption of David Banda to bed. And it seems to be working; by blaming the media for the public reaction to her adoption again in another interview again, Madonna has ensured that most people are so sick of hearing about Madonna and adoption and Malawi and David Banda that they'd rather go outside and try to un-jam their lawnmower with their genitalia than think about it any more.
