Guesswork

A couple of articles about music downloading caught my eye last week. The first was the news that the Songwriters Association of Canada wants somebody - the government, I guess - to tack an additional five bucks a month onto our Internet fees to help pay songwriters and artists for illegally downloaded music. I can […]

A cranky blogger at the Guardian has labelled Bob Dylan ” the biggest sellout the world has ever seen” for his recent shilling of the Cadillac Escalade. The ads feature Bob driving through the desert while mumbling an awkward pitch for the eco-disaster that is the Escalade (14 mpg city!) and his own satellite […]

In a three-way battle royal of limelight hogs, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are begging Britney Spears to hand her dogs over to her ex, bestubbled opportunist Kevin Federline.
Now I’m a dog lover myself (although a little peevish this morning because Rupert crapped on the carpet for no good […]

If you want to reflect on both the prescience and the profound injustice of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame observation, look no further than Chris Crocker. He’s the hypersensitive 19-year-old who got 8 million hits on YouTube with his weepy shrieking defense of fellow Southern eccentric Britney Spears.
Now based on this vid, his […]

Does anyone else see a resemblance here?
After all, if aliens did want to take over the planet, it would make sense to start with the celebrities.
The way I see it, after their attempts to make William Hung famous failed, the Grays replaced then Posh Spice with one of their own. David Beckham is probably […]

The iPhone is finally on the street, and even though it didn’t turn up riding on a cloud with an honour guard of trumpet-blowing cherubs, it still got more hype than any chunk of plastic and silicon, however sleek and sexy, should reasonably expect. Still, even if it’s not a category killer like the iPod […]

To date I’ve tried to steer clear of Paris Hilton except for brief ironic references, figuring that either admiration or outrage would only validate her inexplicable celebrity. However, a New York Post story finally managed to get under my skin sufficiently that I could hold my peace no longer.
According to the Post, NBC […]

Celebrity news aggregator and professonal nuisance Perez Hilton is probably cursing his own singular lack of creativity. Less than a week after being threatened with a $150,000 lawsuit for stealing his glitter queen logo from NailPro magazine, he has apparently removed the offending campiness from his web site and slunk […]

Queen Victoria was easily the most famous person on the planet for much of the 19th century, and for good reason - she ruled more of it that anyone else before or since. However, since her death in 1901 and the subsequent 50 year dignified implosion of the British Empire, her celebrity […]

The Canyon News reports that 17 contestants on the NBC “reality” show Average Joe are suing the network, claiming they didn’t get what was coming to them for their roles.
For those of you who didn’t watch, Average Joe was the show that pitted superhot hardbodied hunks against supposedly average guys for the love of […]

How did I miss this story for 2 days? The ashes of dead Star Trek alumnus James “Scotty” Doohan, which were recently fired into space along with a bunch of less famous remains, have apparently crash landed in a mountainous area of New Mexico.
Doohan died two years ago at the age of 85 […]

So who do you reckon is the most influential person in the world? George W. Bush? Hu Jintao? Maybe Bill Gates? Nope. According to a Time magazine online poll, it’s Korean pop singer Rain (real name Jung Ji-hoon) who scored more than 470,000 votes out of 2.5 million cast. If you’ve never heard of […]

Rapper/pornographer/entrepreneur Snoop Dogg has been barred from visting Australia by authorities who cited “character” as the reason. While the rapper recently received 5 years probation in the US after pleading no contest to drug and gun charges, officials said that only visitors who’ve actually served time are normally welcome in this former […]

Turns out that Sheryl Crow was only kidding with her widely publicized blog suggestion that toilet paper use be limited to one square per, um, sitting, in order to help conserve forests. I wonder what kind of trouble a cop would have to get into to be assigned enforcement duty for a law […]

Advertising Age reports that the bloom may be off the rose for the booming celebrity news industry, noting that several high profile gossip vehicles are showing signs of faltering popularity after years of dizzying growth.
Of course, it’s not that the public has actually lost interest in the race and gender of Brangelinas’ latest […]

Most people manage to go their entire lives without ever having to repudiate a story like this.

A short screenplay that I wrote is going to be featured at the Wildsound Monthly Screenplay Festival on Wednesday April 25. Every month they pick 3 or 4 short screenplays from however many they receive and have actors read them, with a Canadian film or TV luminary as moderator. I’ve been to it […]

Renaissance man Kevin Federline, who’s already tried his hand at everything from being Britney’s backup dancer to being Britney’s ex-husband, has found new worlds to conquer. The bestubbled alimoniast has launched Search With Kevin, a branded search engine powered by Yahoo, hubris, and K-Fed’s dubious celebrity.
The idea, like most ideas, was not conceived […]

Anna Nicole Smith was the perfect famous person; a template for modern celebrity. It doesn’t matter that she displayed little aptitude for traditional star-making talents like acting, or singing, or managing a corporation or a country - she had an unerring instinct for providing exactly what the gossip machine needed.
Some of […]

From MTV news, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne have announced that this years’ Ozzfest will be free to fans, implying that corporate sponsorship will have to be more ubiquitous than ever to keep the tour buses gassed up and the Jagermeister flowing.
I’m not going to complain about the commercialization of rock and roll again. […]