If you do, he’ll likely tell you all about how they are a sudden release of energy from deep within the earth, and how they’re caused by plate tectonics. Then, if your experience is anything like ours, the topic of plate tectonics will send him on a Pangea tangent, and he’ll tell you about how the continents are all drifting back together at incredibly slow speeds, and they’re all gonna collide one day causing brand new mountain ranges to pop up all along former coast lines. Oh, also he’ll say something about praying you’re not alive when that time comes.

He even used a laser pointer and a colour-coded slide show. A real pill, we tell ya.

One writer didn’t know earthquakes were the secret passion of Kelly Osbourne’s newest flame. We’re not sure what boyfriend’s name is, and we really can’t be bothered to check. Let’s just call him Big Gay Bruce. Anyway – one author recently said something about Big Gay Bruce not knowing how an earthquake happens.

This, apparently, led to a slap-happy assault on the author by Osbourne herself – with hands flying everywhere! Except not in the plural!

Imagine for a second what it would be like to have Kelly Osbourne’s beefy little hands touch your face. We think such an encounter would leave you smeared in potato chip grease, and we dearly hope it never happen to us. Our border-line complexion simply couldn’t take it.

Zoe Griffin, a writer for The Mirror, is probably still wiping the shiny palm print from her red swollen cheek. She was Osbourne-slapped because she’d written something or other about Kelly’s current boyfriend being confused on the creation of earthquakes. We’ll let her tell Griffin own story:

“…That’s when she spotted me, plonked herself right next to me on a sofa, so close I had to lean away. She began ear-bashing me about two lines in my column when I wrote her model boyfriend [Big Gay Bruce] had to ask friends how an earthquake was caused. It was at that point Kelly shouted loudly in my ear: “I have an issue with you. My boyfriend knows what an earthquake is and everyone has been laughing at him and he’s upset.

“…That’s when I felt a hard slap to my right cheekbone. I put my hand to my face while my friends looked on aghast. I was in a state of shock. Not for long, though. Soon Kelly came rampaging back over with a female friend jabbing a finger in the air, telling me that I’d have to watch my back if I shared my story with readers of this column.”

Watch her back, no doubt, because if she didn’t Ozzy would swoop down from a belfry to eat her throat – and what a drag that would be. Plus, if he got caught eating some woman’s bloody neck he’d totally go to prison – and then what would happen to all the goths whose musical taste has never advanced out of the seventies? They’d all have to go back to Jethro Tull – which would be really good for all the crap we’re trying to sell on eBay.

We’ve got six copies of ‘Thick As A Brick’ in mint condition and available at rock bottom prices. Cheaper than anything the Osbourne’s were selling anyway.

Mention this article and we’ll throw in a can opener.

Unfortunately, the incident happened in America and not in the UK where so far the most exciting thing to do for viewers is count how many times Luke mentions the £100k cheque.

We’re always told that things don’t go truly mental until the series kicks off, gets into its stride and sees housemates go quite mental. Sadly the UK version is halfway through and still as exciting as pouring vinegar over your own open wounds.

Consequently we’re switching to America for some entertainment. Quite literally we’re thanking God for turning the equally boring show into something worth watching. Fear not, we’ve got a video of it as well, after the jump.

Was that exciting or what?

Honestly, we’re going to constantly play that video whenever the UK version gets dangerously boring. Actually we may have to that right now. Rex is taking about his restaurants, Lisa’s blabbing on that she possesses gypsy powers, Darnell is inappropriately swearing and Kat is singing. Absolutely no change at all there then.

But if you were wishing for some Big Brother housemates to perish in a pit of rubble you’d be disappointed. The earthquake that measured 5.4 on the richter scale only lasted around fifteen seconds – not enough to make a Hollywood disaster movie on the events, but surely enough to make someone traumatised for life.

It wasn’t just reality show morons that were affected by God’s mighty decision to shift the earth, with stony-faced Judge Judy also feeling the true power of the space magician himself.

How Hollywood copes with all these earthquakes we don’t know, but it does make us wish that the UK had some sort of natural disasters to spice things up. Boring football matches would be made a lot more interesting if comets were hurtling towards the pitch.

Or what about making the banker from Deal Or No Deal a bit harder? It would make the contestants less thrilled, to say the least, if they knew there was the chance of picking a box with no money, instead offering a chance at death via a one-on-one gladiatorial conflict. It would certainly ramp up the pressure, that’s for certain.

God, if you are reading hecklerspray as you normally do, can you send a plague of flesh eating termites to the UK Big Brother house? Now that’ll make decent television.

(Yes, we’re quite aware that’s two stories covering one earthquake, but come on! Footage of these reactions is priceless!)

Footage has leaked, don’t you know, which allows each of us to watch Judy yell at the earthquake, tell it it’s an idiot, and after it refused to calm down – order her bailiff to escort it out to the lobby where it would have to wait until a verdict was reached.

An earthquake is a phenomena much more powerful than anything else in nature. Hurricanes just blow things around – yeah, that’s impressive. Monsoons can only splash you with things like water, and…um…water. This doesn’t impress us.

An earthquake though – those things can tear through mountains with nothing but, bare hands, Aerosmith’s greatest hits and a bottle of delicious Jolt cola, which is available in a 16 pack for the unheard of low-price of $11.99 for a limited time only at participating Sam’s Clubs.

Yes, earthquakes truly are mother nature’s most furious beast. This may confuse those who thought that title belonged to Judge Judy. We were confused about all that too – until we saw the video footage of Judy coming face to face with an earthquake on the set of her show.

The National Ledger describes the scene:

“Judge Judy rules with an iron fist and at times it might seem like an earthquake is coming down when she delivers a no nonsense ruling, especially if you are on the losing end of a Judge Judy ruling.  But when the Los Angeles earthquake hit on Tuesday the cameras (as always) were rolling in the courtroom as the earth was rolling and jumping form the California quake….One of those tapes is now online and it shows our favorite television judge a bit shook up as she rules on a case between a man and a woman.”

In the end she found the earthquake guilty, and ordered it to pay the plaintiff $320 plus court costs.

Don’t worry about earthquake though – it comes from money. See for yourself.

The Dalai Lama and Robert Smith both have their own websites, both find an umbrella necessary during monsoon season, both say “let’s go to bed” when they’re sleepy, and both of them are distancing themselves from Sharon Stone.

So, the Sharon Stone thing might be true for the Dalai Lama, but we’d wager Robert Smith would do the same, given the chance.

We’d all do the same, given the chance.

The Dalai Lama is a wise leader, both politically and spiritually, and being the reincarnation of Buddhist masters comes with great responsibility, and right now that responsibility is to stop messing around and finally de-skankify Buddhism.

We’ve all seen it coming, really. After associating with Hollywood in even the mildest degree, there can’t help but be a nasty skanky build-up in one’s religion. So, the Dalai Lama is going for the jugular and starting with the mother of all skanks: Sharon Stone.

You already know, but just to fill in our mother who doesn’t get to read hecklerspray as often as most mothers do, the whole Sharon Stone brouhaha derives from when last month at the Cannes Film Festival, when Sharon Stone took it upon herself to declare that the earthquake in China that killed 70,000 people may be karmic punishment for their treatment of Tibet. In the same interview, Sharon Stone had also squawked that the Dalai Lama and her are grand old friends.

But the Dalai Lama? Yeah, he’s not so sure about all that jazz. At a recent press conference in Sydney, the Dalai Lama seemed to delicately distance himself from his supposed BFF. He said:

“…yes, I’ve met that lady. Of course from a Buddhist viewpoint, every event is karma. Tragedy in Tibet, tragedy in Burma (Myanmar), tragedy in China, all this is karmic … but her particular sort of comment — that I don’t know.”

Our special Dalai Lama translation correspondence course tells us that the Dalai Lama’s statement in pseudo-street terms means, “get away from me, you psycho beast, and take your backasswards nonsense ideas with you”.

Maybe being banned from China and having the Dalai Lama back away from Sharon Stone slowly, cautiously, like a man dipped in steak juice backing away from a deranged panther, is karma’s way of punishing Sharon Stone for, um, well everything, actually. We’ll let you choose which reason is your particular favorite.

]]> http://www.hecklerspray.com/dali-lama-distances-himself-from-sharon-stone-world-desperately-envious/200814703.php/feed 6 http://www.hecklerspray.com/sharon-stone-uninvited-from-chinese-festival-for-some-reason/200814551.php http://www.hecklerspray.com/sharon-stone-uninvited-from-chinese-festival-for-some-reason/200814551.php#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:00:49 +0000 Stuart Heritage http://www.hecklerspray.com/?p=14551 That Sharon Stone, eh? You can’t take her anywhere – primarily because she’ll start jabbering on like a tit about how the Chinese earthquake was karma.

One place you especially can’t take Sharon Stone is this year’s Shanghai Film Festival. Following her remarks that the recent Chine earthquake might have been some sort of cosmic payback for its occupation of Tibet, Sharon Stone’s invitation to the festival has been revoked.

Undeterred, Sharon Stone has decided to hold her own Sharon Stone Film Festival in her basement, and everyone’s invited – except for the Chinese, people who look a bit Chinesey, people who know all the words to Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto and anyone who doesn’t want to watch Catwoman, Sliver, Basic Instinct 2 and Police Academy 4 on a never-ending loop. She probably shouldn’t buy too many nibbles.

Lesson number one of being a celebrity is that tit-tape is your friend. Lesson number two, though, is that you should probably avoid gloating about a natural disaster that’s hit another country and caused thousands of deaths. And if you do, you should probably avoid doing it right after it’s happened. And if you do that, you should probably avoid doing it directly into the camera of a news crew that come from the affected country.

Sharon Stone probably forgot about that particular lesson when she told a Chinese entertainment channel that the recent Chinese earthquake was karma for its continued occupation of Tibet. She must have skipped straight to lesson number three: that adorable little puppy dogs are cute.

But, whatever made her blurt out such a lot of uneducated nonsense, it seems as if Sharon Stone’s career in China might be well and truly over. Despite releasing a sincere-sounding apology for her comments, Christian Dior has dropped Sharon Stone from its Chinese ads and all Sharon Stone movies have been banned from China’s largest cinema chain.

And that’s not all, because now Sharon Stone has been told that she’s no longer invited to this year’s Shanghai Film Festival. The Associated Press reports:

The backlash in China against Sharon Stone continued Wednesday as the Shanghai International Film Festival said the American actress was not welcome at this year’s event. Stone, who walked the red carpet in Shanghai last year, will not be invited back soon, Shanghai International Film Festival spokeswoman Tang Bing said Wednesday. The Hollywood actress previously impressed festival organizers with her charity work and her appearance last year, and her comments came as a surprise, Tang said.

It’s a shame that Sharon Stone’s invitation to the festival has been revoked, because it means she’ll miss out on some of the most up-to-the-minute movies in China – movies like Sharon Stone Is A Twat, I Hate Sharon Stone, Why Won’t Sharon Stone Shut Up and the potential blockbuster Ancient Vagina Lady Makes No Sense.

Still, this Chinese anti-Stone sentiment won’t last forever, especially if Sharon works hard to improve her image in the country by helping with the earthquake relief effort. Time is the greatest healer after all. Well, time and knowing when it’s not an appropriate time to blather on about your kindergarten-level grasp of spirituality, but this is Sharon Stone we’re talking about, so let’s not ask too much of her.

This doesn’t happen often, so make the most of it. After saying that the recent Chinese earthquake, which has killed 70,000 people and left another five million homeless, was the result of bad karma for the country’s mistreatment of Tibet, Sharon Stone has managed to finally issue an apology.

Sharon Stone says she’s so sorry for offending the Chinese people with her thoughtless remarks that she’s going to devote herself to helping those affected by the earthquake however she can. Does anyone else get the feeling this is going to end with a patronising feature-length documentary entitled Damage Limitation: Sharon Stone Cries At Some Chinese People And Insincerely Refers To Them As ‘Incredible Little People’? Just us?

History shows that Sharon Stone doesn’t have the best grasp of things. If Catwoman and Basic Instinct 2 weren’t clear enough signs of this, then perhaps the time she called Germans “naughty” and “nasty” will do. Still not convinced? OK, Sharon Stone may have had sex with Christian Slater. Yeah, we thought that’d do it. We’re all on the same page now.

So, given that she’s a pretty dreadful judge of, well, everything, it wasn’t really a surprise when Sharon Stone called the Chinese earthquake ‘karma’ for not giving independence to Tibet. A week after it happened. To a Chinese TV crew. On camera. Just because it’s so staggeringly ill-judged, here’s what Sharon Stone said again:

“I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that the bad things happen to you?”

Retribution – or is that karma? – was swift. The largest chain of cinemas in China instantly banned all Sharon Stone movies from being shown, while it’s also been reported that Christian Dior is removing Stone from all its advertisements in the country, and Louis Vuitton is considering doing the same.

So, with so much furious criticism thundering around her, Sharon Stone has done the inevitable and released a statement apologising for possessing roughly as much basic intelligence as an infant. We’re paraphrasing – here’s what Sharon Stone actually said:

“Due to my inappropriate words and acts during the interview, I feel deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people. I am willing to take part in the relief work of China’s earthquake, and wholly devote myself to helping affected Chinese people.”

And, lest you doubt, this is the most heartfelt and sincere apology a celebrity can give – the apology that can only come when a number of huge companies threaten to stop paying you endorsement deals because you’ve fucked off an emerging superpower. Sharon Stone has never meant anything more than this apology in her entire life, we’re sure.

And perhaps this experience will help Sharon Stone as a person, too. For starters it might mean that her level of interest in any causes extends to more that ‘Tibet good, China bad’, but it might also bleed into her decisions as an actress as well, as evidenced by the way we’re fairly certain that her next movie will be a dramatisation of the earthquake starring Sharon Stone in some racially-insensitive Chinese make-up.

But only if it’s written so that Sharon Stone stops the earthquake from happening by giving freedom to Tibet and then gets worshipped as a god by all the citizens of Earth, naturally. All movies need a hero.