Posts from May, 2007

Anyone who has ever listened to even a millisecond of Justin Timberlake music knows that Justin Timberlake is the undisputed king of pube-haired blippy R&B music, and now it's time for Timberland to share the wealth with his own record label.

Tennman Records is the name of the record label that Justin Timberlake has started with Interscope, and it's hoped that the soon-to-be unveiled Tennman Records roster will be a beacon for the world's most talented artists who make Justin Timberlake-produced blippy R&B songs containing enough gaps in the middle for Justin Timberlake to do his girly squealing guest-vocal shtick in and don't mind that Justin Timberlake hogs every one of their music videos like some kind of squeaky-voiced, pube-haired attention whore all the time. 

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Richard Herring used to be best-known for being half of Lee & Herring, the student-friendly Fist Of Fun comedy double act that used to be on TV - but now Richard Herring is mostly famous for having a blog that Alan McGee doesn't think as good as hecklerspray.

Well, OK, his not-as-good-as-hecklerspray Warming Up blog is partly why Richard Herring is famous - he's also a touring stand-up comedian, Edinburgh Festival staple and the writer of You Can Choose Your Friends, a prime-time one-off ITV drama to be broadcast next Thursday. People may say that makes Richard Herring better than hecklerspray, but we would like to remind him that we won a blog award and he didn't. His blog isn't even as good as the blog by The Sessions, a band who we haven't heard of either. Despite this, we literally couldn't like the man more.

We caught up with Richard Herring to chat about You Can Choose Your Friends, the Cumberland Pencil Museum and the crushing shame that comes with being beaten at awards by hecklerspray… 

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It's been a long time coming, but finally a coroner has made an appearance at the Phil Spector murder trial - good news for everyone except Phil Spector, since the coroner seems to think that Phil Spector might actually be a murderer.

Over the course of events in court yesterday, coroner Louis Pena pulled apart everything from the crime scene - from Lana Clarkson's bruised tongue to her mental state before she died - challenging the defence's claim that Lana Clarkson committed suicide. This is a huge turning point in the trial, and Phil Spector needs to react quickly. Just as he altered his appearance to look less threatening when the trial began by wearing a cute blonde lesbian wig, now maybe Phil Spector needs to continue down this road by turning up to court tomorrow in a pink frilly dress, ringlets and disarmingly oversized lollipop. Try focusing on important coroner evidence when faced with that.

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Only in Holland can one stand in a windmill next to several policemen dressed as monsters & clowns, and watch a one-legged prostitute in a wooden clog feed her 11-month-old John-baby a de-crusted cocaine sandwich, free of all legal repercussion and woe. Seriously - we actually saw that once.

Well, we didn't see it so much as we drew a picture of it in a grade-school art class. Our teacher changed after that, as did our curriculum. Nonetheless, Holland is a different country. Not only does the Hollish language sound silly & trite, but the whole country likes really strange entertainment too.

In America to entice viewers, television gives out civilised prizes like millions of dollars, love, & several greasy humpings from Flavor Flav. In Holland that's all old hat. That's why their game show prizes are things like - the ability to not die, the power to keep living, & not having to be killed by your poor medical condition because you handled yourself well in the physical challenge.

Basically, there's three contestants with failing kidneys & a terminally ill prize-holder. You can figure it out from there.

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It's every woman's right that, after they've shaved off their hair and proclaimed themselves to be the Antichrist in rehab, they can go on a voyage of self-exploration - but sometimes it helps if they do it on the internet where everyone can see.

This is something that Britney Spears is discovering for herself at the moment. In an attempt to convince her remaining fans that she isn't just a baldy single-mother nutter with a fame-hungry minge, Britney Spears has taken to the internet once again in a post that reveals her innermost feelings to those that love her unconditionally, and also all the press that'll republish it and make Britney more famous again. And what are Britney Spears' innermost feelings? We're not sure, since it's basically 883 words of garbled cod-spiritual guff, but the gist of Britney's internet outpouring seems to be "blah blah blah blah media blah blah rehab blah blah blah rock bottom blah blah blessed blah blah blah victim. Love, Britney."

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The problem with most computer characters is that they're so bloody solid all the time. Imagine how much more fun Tomb Raider would be if Lara Croft could turn herself inside out and fight dinosaurs with her spleen, for example.

While the makers of Tomb Raider have bizarrely failed to return our calls, at least we can make do with Gumboy to fulfill our sick little fantasies. In Gumboy you're a boy made out of gum who has to do all sorts of crazy shit despite having gumlike properties - Gumboy can bend, stretch, roll, float, change shape and change size at will. The makers of Gumboy claim that it's unlike any game you've ever played, and until Sega take our Sonic: The Playdoh Years pitch seriously, they could be right.

Order Gumboy Now

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As Mike Tyson has proved, being the heavyweight champion of the world is a sweet job - not only do you get paid millions of quid to work for an hour a year but you get to threaten to rape every female journalist who tries to interview you.

But not everyone wants to go the Tyson way - if Reverend & The Makers were the heavyweight champions of the word they'd write a cheeky little indie disco song about 'leccy bills' sung in a sort of Arctic Monkeysish accent. No, wait, Reverend & The Makers have already written that song - and called it Heavyweight Champion Of The World - and released it and everything, and they're not even close to being heavyweight champions of the world. If you ask us, Reverend & The Makers need to walk it like they talk it and jump into the ring with Ruslan Chagaev before they start making proclamations like that.

Oh, and Reverend & The Makers are playing Fopp in Tottenham Court Road on Saturday, but you need to get a wristband from the shop at midday or else you can't go.

Watch the Reverend & The Makers Heavyweight Champion Of The World video now 

When Lily Allen got into a fight with the stupid one from Girls Aloud, it changed her outlook for the better; now Lily Allen is a little slower to slag off other celebrities on her blog - except for Lindsay Lohan, obviously, but that goes without saying.

Following Lindsay Lohan's potentially drug-fuelled car crash arrest this weekend, Lily Allen has decided to show her support to the troubled actress with a fine dedication on her MySpace blog. Or at least she would have done, but Lindsay Lohan got Lily Allen thrown off her table in an LA nightclub once, so instead Lily Allen has decided to cackle a bit and mention karma a lot. But Lily Allen should know that karma is a dangerous thing to evoke, especially when you've done terrible things yourself - like, say, recording a godawful Kaiser Chiefs cover on a Mark Ronson album.

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Sometimes advertisements can be genuinely surreal.

Take the new Cravendale milk campaign, for example - a series of sketches featuring a footballer, a pirate and a cow getting into all sorts of downright baffling scrapes. Still, at least everyone knows what milk actually does. Imagine a campaign that told you virtually nothing about the product.

Just take a look at HeadOn.

American readers may think we're being a little slow on the uptake here (yeah, yeah, but we bet that Cravendale reference had you stumped, didn't it? And if we even so much as uttered "Charley says never talk to strangers," betcha you wouldn't have a pissing clue what we were waffling about).

HeadOn, you see, has developed a cult following for being the most vague and annoying commerical on US television. Just check out the number of spoofs on YouTube - but not before you've treated yourself to the brief and frankly Orwellian original.

Basically, we reckon - through evaluation of the product graphic - that HeadOn is some sort of marvellous headache-soothing stick-thing. Why are we left guessing? Because all that we're eerily instructed to do is "apply directly to the forehead."

Over and over again.

Christ. For all we know HeadOn could be a tagging system put into implementation by the New World Order. Which - while admittedly quite unsettling - still wouldn't be as painful as those nasty tattoo barcodes, would it?

This is the day that literally everyone on the entire planet has been trying their penis in a knot about - the eighth season of Big Brother starts tonight, so get ready to relentlessly tut and sneer about a TV show that you actually secretly quite like.

OK, so perhaps 'like' is the wrong word. After all, nobody really watches Big Brother because they like it, do they? People watch Big Brother because they either a) get weirdly hooked on the sight of an intensely-edited show about arseholes being arseholes, b) feel the need to watch a live feed of arseholes sleeping to make themselves feel less lonely or c) enjoy pointlessly texting things like 'NaDiA Iz A sLaG' to premium rate television shows. But anyway, like it or not the new series of Big Brother starts tonight - so expect the usual insightful commentary from us about the new housemates tomorrow morning. But here's a set of new Big Brother betting odds to tide you over in the meantime.

So here are the Big Brother betting odds for Big Brother to get axed before the end of the series, with help from Paddy Power…

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Who can honestly look themselves in the eye and, hand on heart, say that at some point in their lives they haven't seriously considered spending thousands of dollars on a bulletproof vest that Michael Jackson wore at his absolute most paranoid?

Nobody, you're right. That's why a collection of stuff belonging to Michael Jackson is expected to fetch millions of dollars when it goes on sale at auction tomorrow. Costumes, documents, disembodied plastic alien heads and thousands of other items belonging to Michael Jackson will be available to the public in what's being billed as the largest sale of Jackson family memorabilia ever. The auction is by no means perfect, however, since the three items that all Michael Jackson fans want to own aren't on sale - and we're sure you don't need telling that those items are the picture of the last supper where Michael Jackson is Christ and Einstein and Abraham Lincoln are his disciples, a six-pack of Jesus Juice and a voucher for 30 minutes of non-stop molesting. That last one isn't on sale because Michael Jackson was found not guilty of it - but that isn't to say that you wouldn't buy the voucher if it existed, you weird pervert.

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Remember The OC, that show that everyone watched for a bit until it got so hopelessly awful nobody even noticed when it got axed? Well, the skinny girl who used to be in The OC fell over and went to hospital this weekend, but she's better now.

Mischa Barton, as the skinny girl who used to be in The OC preposterously demands to be called, was 'rushed' to hospital over the weekend after she 'collapsed' when a few 'cocktails' she 'enjoyed' at a barbecue reacted with the 'antibiotics' she was taking for 'bronchitis' and made her 'collapse' and receive all kinds of 'medical' 'treatment' until Mischa Barton 'started' 'to' 'feel' 'better' 'again'.

None of those words actually require their inverted commas, by the way, but we have to try and make this news look interesting somehow.

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