That’s because Red Hot Chili Peppers have announced that they’re splitting up. We know, we were distraught too – what were the Red Hot Chili Peppers if not The Beatles of bad funk-rock that all sounds identical?

But, hey, relax – it’s only a temporary split! According to Red Hot Chili Peppers singer Anthony Kiedis, the group is disbanding for ‘a minimum of one year’ so that they can focus on other things for a while. So, although there won’t be a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album any time soon, at least you’ll be able to console yourself with the upcoming Flea Makes A Directionless Bim-Bom-Bim-Bom Noise Up And Down The Neck Of His Bass For More Than A Day 32-CD solo boxset.

It’s been almost exactly two years since Red Hot Chili Peppers released their last album, entitled Stadium Lampshadium – and that means that if you’re a die-hard Red Hot Chili Peppers fan it’s been almost exactly one year, 11 months, two weeks and four days since you got about three tracks into it, realised that it contained nothing but shallow retreads of other stuff they’ve already done before and promptly forgot that it even existed.

But don’t you be expecting a new Red Hot Chili Peppers album any time soon – there won’t be one soon. There might not even be one ever. Red Hot Chili Peppers are on a trial separation, you see, because playing two hours of music a night to tens of thousands of adoring fans like you’ve dreamed of doing ever since you were a little boy can make you sooo tired. According to The Mirror:

California-referencing rock-funk veterans Red Hot Singer Chili Peppers have announced they are disbanding for the next 12 months after becoming exhausted with their hectic schedule. Frontman Anthony Kiedis told US rock mag Rolling Stone: “We didn’t really stop until the tour ended last year. We were all emotionally and mentally zapped at the end of that run. The discussion was, ‘Let’s not do anything Red Hot Chili Peppers-related for a minimum of one year, and just live and breathe and eat and learn new things.’”

Wow, yes, OK, we take it back – if you haven’t even had time to eat or even to perform your body’s basic automatic respiratory function since 1999 like you’re claiming, Red Hot Chili Peppers, then by all means take a break. Take as long as you need! You’ve earnt it! Heck, take forever off if you need to! No, really. Take forever off. We insist.

As Kiedis says, though, this will be an important year for the various members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers because they’re all going to try new things. Kiedis is going to raise a son, the drummer has joined a jazz band, John Frusciante is working on solo stuff and Flea is going to try not to burn any more houses down.

However, there’s always the chance that, after their year off, the various Red Hot Chili Peppers will have got used to living at home in comfort and they’ll decide to make the split permanent.

And you know what that means – it means that there’ll be a TV show called Californication but no band performing a song called Californication. In other words, it means that Duchovny has won! That’s terrible! We don’t know which scenario is worse – a world where the Red Hot Chili Peppers still exist or a world where Duchovny gets to ramp up his cloying smugness a couple of notches. We lose either way. It’s just like being a child with two abusive parents. Um, we’d imagine.

Read more:

Rockers Red Hot Chili Peppers split – for at least a year – Mirror

That's because Flea, the man responsible for all of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' interminable bass solos, is the highest-profile victim of the wildfires that swept through Malibu this weekend. According to Flea himself, his $4.8 million Malibu mansion has been "burnt to a crisp." It's a tragic situation for Flea to be in, because not only was he forced to witness the total destruction of his house, but he's now also been forced into emergency accommodation in the form of the other $10 million mansion he also owns in Malibu. We sense the next Red Hot Chili Peppers album might be quite heavy on the bass-led ballads about how crap it is to only have one multi-million dollar Malibu mansion instead of two, you know.

As we speak the Red Hot Chili Peppers are busy suing Showtime because they have an album called Californication and Showtime has a show called Californication. Nobody knows which way the lawsuit will go yet, but we're assuming that Mother Nature wants Showtime to win, because she's just burnt down Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers' house down. Personally if we were Mother Nature we'd have also set fire to David Duchovny's house as well, partly out of a sense of fairness and partly because we'd want to scare him into never making any more episodes of that rubbish TV show ever again, but we just don't have that power.

So it's just Flea who got hit by the latest wildfires to hit California this weekend, causing 15,000 people to evacuate their properties and thought to be started by either arson or a fallen power line. One of Flea's two Malibu mansions has been completely gutted by the fire – the one that was apparently on sale for $4.8 million, and was described by estate agents Pritchett-Rapf & Associates as being:

"Set in a botanical paradise, this private 2.4 acre compound also features a newly refinished pool and spa, private alcoves and pathways throughout the grounds."

Something tells us that Flea probably won't get the asking price for the mansion any more, unless millionaires exist who are equally enthusiastic about hopelessly generic middle of the road self-indulgent old man white boy funk-rock and smouldering piles of ash, which we can't really see happening. Nobody likes white boy funk-rock that much, surely.

But let's not mock Flea too much, because losing your house in a wildfire must be an indescribably traumatic thing to go through for anyone, and that includes slightly annoying members of bands we don't like all that much.

So instead, let's treat Flea's misfortune as a lesson here – what with all the violent displays of uncontrollable fire and the possibility of either being smacked in the face with Britney Spears' vagina or being ethnically insulted by Mel Gibson, we're going to strike Malibu off our list of holiday destinations for next year. That just leaves Kabul, which is probably better because we're really worried about the vagina thing happening.

Read more:

Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist, Loses Home In Malibu Fire – Los Angeles Times 

But that's not the case, no siree. The Red Hot Chili Peppers hate the David Duchovny show Californication because it shares its name with one of their singles and albums, although we forget which one. And so furious are the Red Hot Chili Peppers over the apparent theft of the Californication title that they're suing Showtime for it. That's bad news for Showtime, but we can understand why the Red Hot Chili Peppers did it – after all, if TV shows start stealing their names then it ultimately weakens their brand of drearily insipid identikit bass-solo loving white rich-boy MOR funk-rock that only people's dads really like if they're honest.

We feel for David Duchovny, we really do – The X-Files finished long ago, and yet the poor man is still typecast as a sort of alieny space boffin. Not even writing, directing and starring in a terrible film where Robin Williams plays an amusing disabled man could make the public see David Duchovny as a man who writes, directs and stars in terrible films where Robin Williams plays amusing disabled men instead of Fox Mulder.

So David Duchovny must have been thrilled when Californication was pitched to him – he'd get to play a failed novelist in boob-heavy faux-aspirational lifestyle comedy-drama that's so cloyingly self-satisfied that watching it is like wading through an ocean of congealed sperm on the planet Smug. Californication is the show that will stop David Duchovny being typecast because it's also the show that will stop David Duchovny getting cast.

Sadly, though, Californication is also the title of an eight-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers album as well as being the title of one of the band's key singles – the one that they've endlessly rehashed for all of their subsequent singles. And, as anyone who knows anything about the Red Hot Chili Peppers knows, they don't like to be messed around with unless the messer wants a strongly-worded Fleamail entry written about them.

But for Californication to call itself Californication when it knew that there was a Red Hot Chili Peppers album called Californication is too much for even Fleamail to cope with. This, the Red Hot Chili Peppers have decided, is an issue that needs to be  solved with a lawsuit. That's why the band is suing Californication's broadcaster Showtime for unfair competition, dilution of the value of the name and unjust enrichment, and lead singer Anthony Kiedis said in a statement that:

"Californication is the signature CD, video and song of the band's career, and for some TV show to come along and steal our identity is not right."

However, the man who created the TV show Californication says that the Red Hot Chili Peppers didn't invent the term at all, and that it was used in an issue of Time magazine in 1972 to describe the plight of Oregon and Colorado locals worried about California's apparently haphazard expansion.

So who'll win this almighty battle between Californication and the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Personally we're not sure that a lawsuit is enough to sort this mess out – which is why we propose that the Red Hot Chili Peppers and everyone involved in producing Californication are packed into CERN's Large Hadron Collider and blasted into each other at the speed of light. There wouldn't be a traditional winner as such, but we'd still quite like to see it.