Posts from January, 2007

It seems Jared Leto doesn't like it when people diss his band, 30 Seconds to Mars. This was a bitter lesson Elijah Wood learned when the two got into a hobbit-sized scuffle in October at the MTVU Woodie Awards. 

This titbit of recycled drama was needlessly resurrected when Wood, who is obviously mature enough to let things go, recently detailed the spat in a recent interview for Jane magazine (where he no doubt also reveals his secrets to flawless, timeless skin). We're all sure to see some quick resolution now that it's been brought out into the open, because that worked so well for Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump.  

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Last week saw just about every dusty old band in the history of the universe get back together even though nobody has expressed an interest in them for longer than anyone cares to remember - yes James and Crowded House, we mean you.

So it's a breath of fresh air to know that there's one reforming band out there that still matters - yes The Stooges, we mean you. The three albums that The Stooges released in the late 1960s and early 1970s ripped a hole in music so large that its never quite been repaired - and now The Stooges are back just to make it a bit bigger again. Like the last 33 years never happened, Iggy Pop has recruited The Stooges for The Weirdness, a Steve Albini-produced album that'll be seeing the light of day In March.

That's too long to wait, so it's just as well The Stooges have discovered MySpace and splashed a new track, My Idea Of Fun, all over it. My Idea Of Fun is classic Stooges - Iggy Pop's red-raw livewire yell has never sounded better than when backed by Ron and Scott Asheton's planet-shredding primitive thump and roar - and, if nothing more, it answers the question of what Iggy Pop's idea of fun is ("My idea of fun" he informs us "is killing everyone"). My Idea Of Fun by The Stooges is exactly what you need on a Monday morning - loud, stroppy and more exciting than anything you can think of. Bring on The Weirdness.

Listen To My Idea Of Fun by The Stooges now  

That's the end of Celebrity Big Brother 2007, then - and after being bullied, insulted and squawked at relentlessly at monumental volume about Oxo by a fat-mouthed pikey, Shilpa Shetty has finally emerged as the Celebrity Big Brother victor.

Winning Celebrity Big Brother must surely rank as one of the greatest achievements of Shilpa Shetty's life, after all the being a superstar millionaire Bollywood actress with fleets of servants and adoring fans shadowing her every step, obviously. And, as winner of Celebrity Big Brother, Shilpa Shetty has a number of responsibilities to uphold. Just like Celebrity Big Brother-winning Chantelle before her, Shilpa Shetty is now required to have a shotgun marriage to some useless indie singer, ghostwrite a book that nobody but idiots read and hawk a tired catchphrase around chavvy nightclubs at 2am for £200 a pop. That Shilpa Shetty sure is a lucky girl.

Oh, and Shilpa said that Jade's not a racist, too. That's that one cleared up, then. 

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This series of Dancing On Ice is really hotting up, although sadly not enough for the ice rink to melt and drown all the competitors - and newsreader Phil Gayle is the latest to get the Dancing On Ice shove, primarily because nobody knows who he is.

Many events conspired against Phil Gayle on Saturday's Dancing On Ice. First was his height - Phil Gayle is over six feet tall and it's a scientific fact that only people legally classed as dwarfs can ice skate properly - and second was the fact that Phil Gayle couldn't act gracefully if you held a gun to his head. As a benchmark by which to judge Phil Gayle's bad skating, he was knocked out of Dancing On Ice after a skate-off with Ulrika Jonsson, who is universally disliked and keeps falling over all the time. Poor Phil Gayle - we'd miss you if we even had the slightest beginnings of a clue about who you are.

But who's going to win Dancing On Ice this year? Here's part one of this week's Dancing On Ice betting odds to win - for Kay Burley, Stephen Gately, Ulrika Jonsson, Emily Symons and Lee Sharpe - with betting odds coming from Paddy Power…

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A snippet review of the week. Folded for the up, Creased for the down.

Folded:           

• The View (we may as well give them a pat on the head. They are quite good)
• Re-runs of The Rockford Files (never understood one episode, but it’s great fun. Lots of location shooting, too. Must have cost a bundle in its day)
• Meccano (harder to build than a stable housing market. Frustrating and repetitive - suits the wet weather like a dream. Who cares if the box says 5+?)
• Sod budgeting (no-one has any money at this time of year. Why should you be any different?)
• Half price page-a-day calendars in Borders (pick up a brilliant Worst Case Scenario one for less than a fiver)  

Creased:                  

• Mika (ironically dated for someone so, well, ironic)
• Re-runs of Quincy (sadly the best part of this whole show is the opening credits. Look at Quince there… is that a body he’s examining? Perhaps discovering a vital clue to exonerate a disabled murder suspect? No, he’s just checking out some hot girl in her bikini. Oh, Quince, you are a lad!)                       
• ‘Green’ Tesco (one step, two step, take over the world)
• Sophie Ellis Bextor’s tattoo (clearly visible in her new video and it just does not suit her. At all)
• All those calendar shops you see empty around Christmas time (yes, they have now gone bust. Keep your eyes peeled for a Subway)

In some ungodly cock-up, the UK seems to be the last country on Earth to have the new Cornelius album released on its shores. While we're forced to wait one more poxy month for that, is there anything vaguely similar to fill the time?

Well, colourformoney by Drone seems to have been doing the trick for us. Released on Monday, colourformoney by Drone is just about as much folksy lo-fi skittering laptop braindance as you can fit on a CD. Containing tracks that shawshank into your brain and just drift around for hours, pushing everything else to one side, we're sure that we'd be listening to colourformoney by Drone a lot more if only some of it didn't plain unsettle us so much.

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For a film that nobody we've ever met has expressed the slightest desire to ever go and see, The Queen is doing rather well at the moment, pulling in awards and Oscar nominations like nobody's business - but it's a little bit too rude for some ears.

Apparently versions of The Queen that are being shown on various airlines around the world have been edited so as not to offend sensitive passengers. What has been edited out of The Queen? The scene where a topless Queen Elizabeth II is seen suckling her corgis on her breast while dancing to Bitch Ass Niggaz by Goon Squad? The scene where, after a trainee footman brings her the wrong sort of egg for breakfast, the Queen chides him by saying "Devonshire, you really are a fucking wanker sometimes"? The scene where the Queen blasts a passenger jet out of the sky with a bazooka, turns to the camera and says "You're next, flighty" while running her finger across her throat? No. It was God. The airline edited all mention of the word "God" out of The Queen. 

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Don’t worry, the usual musicfest that is our MySpace Trawl is technically here for you today. But it's not like our typical one where we just talk about a band - today you get a two-for-one special! A gig review and a more traditional trawl.

Now usually when you get a two-for-one special, say, in a supermarket, it's usually because some dimwitted shelf-stacker dropped a crate of biscuits on the floor and they have to be sold off as quickly as possible. But this two-for-one special came about as quite conveniently, since the targets of the Trawl - Rebels Of The Flesh - happened to be playing a gig last night. So using our super-intelligence, we decided to combine the Trawl and a gig review together! Genius or what?

Anyone?

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This has been quite a week for tired old bands getting back together hasn't it? In the last few days everyone from Rage Against The Machine to, um, James has decided to get back together, sing the hits and then roll around in a filthy pile of cash. 

But none of these recently-reformed bands can hold a torch to the latest group of crotchety bastards who think they can re-live their glory years even though they're actually older than the sun and only had one song that anybody knows anyway. It's Van Halen! Who, er, never really split up in the first place but it's still technically a Van Halen reunion because they're reforming with their original singer David Lee Roth! For approximately the billionth time! Scientists have warned Van Halen fans to postpone buying any reunion concert tickets, though, because a complex mathematical algorithm based on past performances has shown that this Van Halen/David Lee Roth reunion is only due to last for about 32 seconds.

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hecklerspray prefers the association of fat people. Seriously, they're usually nice, they bounce when they laugh, and they readily accepted us when we became one them three hours into Halloween '04.

Tyra Banks though, well she might hate those flabby
twinkie-chompers, and she is definitely mad that the dumb internet
keeps trying to lump her in with them. Banks, after all, is a former
supermodel with a very skinny talk show. Portly pictures of the
day-time host walking on some cellulite-friendly Australian beach have
been electronically passed around the rotund globe like a bucket full
of, uh, like a bucket full of candy.

It's diet candy though.

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