The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'celebrity'

2012/5/7

The record collection of another legendary British DJ been made available for fans to peruse online; this time, it's that of effervescent radio and TV personality Fearne Cotton, a collection with over seven records:

‘There’ll be information about all the records, including whether or not Fearne rated the album,’ explained a spokesman. ‘Cotton famously employed a meticulous 5-star rating system for her music, and every item in the collection was awarded the full 5 stars. Albums are accompanied by Fearne’s additional superlatives such as ‘mega’, ‘massive’, ‘most awesomest ever’, ‘cool’ and ‘really, really cool’.’
The virtual museum includes such rare curiosities as a first pressing of Mis-Teeq’s 2004 hit ‘Scandalous’, a Foo Fighters greatest hits compilation, and some stuff by The Kooks. It’s not all obscurities though, as the trend-setting DJ also found room for plenty of U2 and Coldplay.

(via xrrf) celebrity humour media music 0

2009/6/28

A new book reveals how well-meaning but clueless celebrities adopting worthy causes just make things worse:

Her contemptuously funny deconstruction of Sharon Stone's knee-jerk me-me-me! posturings on world affairs reveal the Basic Instinct star as not so much an idiot savant as just an idiot. She recounts Stone's attendance at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum (!) where she grandstanded during a speech about malaria, offering $10,000 to buy mosquito nets for infected countries. By the end of the session, Shaz had browbeaten fellow delegates to pledge $1 million for the cause.... This all sounds dandy, but a year later, only $250,000 was given, so UNICEF had to come up with $750,000 - money that had to be diverted from other projects. Then there's the tricky detail that many of these nets are accepted by dirt-poor governments who sell them on the black market.

(via trayce) celebrity culture media stupidity 0

2008/8/4

Some concerned parties have started a new campaign: they are collecting pledges to donate to campaigns against AIDS, TB and malaria in the developing world, as soon as rock'n'roll businessman and public face of charity Bono retires from public life:

The RED campaign has managed to spend $40 million more on marketing that it has raised from RED product sales, while sending consumers a dangerous message. Read more
Many involved in the global fight against AIDS worry that RED will make it harder to raise funds, and that the oversimplified & disempowered image of Africa that Bono perpetuates, as exemplified in these incredibly condescending lyrics from the Band Aid Xmas song Bono helped create, obscures and undermines the assets African nations must focus on to defeat AIDS and poverty.
The grassroots leaders of the global fight against AIDS didn’t ask for Bono to be their frontman. Its time for Bono to step down. We’ll all pledge donations to the Global Fund, but no pledges are collected until Bono retires from public life.
So far, US$770 has been pledged.

(via xrrf) africa aids bono celebrity charity hypocrisy 0

2008/2/1

The Independent lists the musical pasts of various public figures:

Silvio Berlusconi: Politician

The Italian media magnate and former prime minister paid his way through university by singing and playing the piano on cruise ships. He has been known throughout his colourful political career for his habit of breaking into song unexpectedly.

A C Grayling: Philosopher

Grayling, a professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London, and the author of a biography of William Hazlitt and other books, was once part of the expat rock scene in Northern Rhodesia – now Zambia – where he was born in 1949.

He says: "From the ages of 14 to 16, I was in a group called the Rebels – three guitars and a drummer. I started as the bass guitarist but then it turned out that not only could I not sing well, I couldn't sing at all and play the bass guitar, so I graduated to the rhythm guitar. I wore a pair of black, plastic-sided, high-heeled 'Beatle' boots that were two sizes too small. I thought I was the bee's knees."

The article mentions a number of other famous people who had played music in their pasts (such as comedian Ricky Gervais, who was a new-romantic sensation (though only in the Philippines), Jamie Oliver's third-division Britpop career, and Tony Blair's infamous student rock-band past. One notable example not mentioned, though, is US Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan's former career as a calypso singer.

a.c. grayling celebrity louis farrakhan music silvio berlusconi 0

2007/5/23

The most recent Lonely Planet travel guide to Britain has a rather scathing assessment of British culture today:

The Lonely Planet guide noted that more people vote in television talent shows than in elections, saying this was "a symptom of Britain's ever-growing obsession with fame and celebrity".
Britons are fascinated with famous people "even though their 'celebrity' status is based on little more than the ability to sing a jolly tune, look good in tight trousers or kick a ball in the right direction," it noted.
On the food front, the guide asserted that Britons eat more junk food and ready meals than all other European countries put together
Also singled out were alcohol and antisocial behaviour.

Of course, a lot of Brits would agree wholeheartedly; they've been going on about how rubbish things are in Britain (or at least England) for hundreds of years now, and turned it into a national pastime; the horribleness of life in Britain and of its inhabitants (the viewers and their friends excluded, of course) has become a staple of TV shows from Little Britain to Monkey Dust, not to mention the subject of numerous songs. Still, it's one thing to knowingly say "yes, our country's a bit rubbish" and another to see a bunch of foreigners slagging it off in a travel guide.

On the upside, the Lonely Planet praised Britain's multicultural society, with particular reference to curries. Being Australian, of course, they couldn't be expected to praise their warm, foamy beer.

celebrity culture decline junk food lonely planet uk 0

2006/11/16

Exonerated non-murdering celebrity O.J. Simpson takes time out from his relentless pursuit of his wife's killers to film an interview for Fox TV confessing how he would have done it—had he done it, and to release a book titled If I Did It, describing his hypothetical murder of his wife in "chilling detail". Indicentally, both the book and the interview are being released through News Corporation.

Another hypothetical situation: if somebody murdered your beloved life partner and tried to frame you for it, and you, a grieving, innocent party, were only exonerated after a long court case under the harsh glare of the unsympathetic media, how much would Rupert Murdoch have to offer you to put your name to a fictionalised confession of how you would have murdered the one you loved, and how desperate would you have to be to take it?

celebrity exploitation murdoch trash 0

2006/9/21

The Times has more details about the recent Banksy exhibition in LA, detailing the meticulous planning that went into it, and the businesslike canny behind it and the various recent stunts that primed the publicity pump for it:

Despite its studiously rough-and-ready aesthetic, last Thursday's party was the climax of an operation almost six months in its planning and preparation. Kari Johnson, Tai's handler, was first approached "a few months ago" to see if her entertainment elephant might be available as an exhibit.
First, a few weeks ago, his team distributed 500 defaced copies of the new Paris Hilton CD in 42 music stores around the UK -- a prank that made headlines. Then, the Friday before last, Banksy dressed a blow-up doll in the orange jumpsuit and black hood of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner. He deflated it, stuffed it into a backpack and went for a day out at Disneyland. Inside, he sat on a bench and quickly unpacked, inflated his unwanted installation with a pump, and fixed it on some fencing facing a blind corner on the Rocky Mountain Railroad rollercoaster ride. By the time Disney's in-house security team spotted Donald and Mickey's uninvited new friend, Banksy was long gone, but a cohort remained to record the reaction for the exhibition.
According to the article, the planning has paid off in spades, with the exhibition taking an estimated US$4.5m, and doing what many British artists have tried and failed to—breaking America. The question remains of how much of his carefully preserved underground anti-establishment cool Banksy will keep now that most people have heard of his work by reading in celebrity gossip tabloids that Keanu and Brangelina bought pieces at an exclusive VIP premiere; and, indeed, how long he can remain both an outlaw street artist and a canny businessman selling to the establishment. (Surely it won't be long until local councils start suing Banksy Plc. or whatever his business entity is called for street-cleaning costs, if nothing else.)

The piece ends with a description of Banksy, whom the author met at a party:

Back at that party in June, what I found most telling about observing Banksy was not his appearance (dark hair, lightly bearded, nice trainers -- more I shall not say) but his behaviour. There were dodgems at this rather opulent do, and you couldn't get Banksy off them. While my girlfriend, son and I waited in the queue we watched as Banksy stayed resolutely in his ride until three five-minute changeovers had passed. Each time they did, he revved up afresh, electrically zooming with as much speed as possible into his fellow drivers. With each juddering impact, he grinned -- and then accelerated away at speed.

art banksy celebrity disneyland 1

2006/9/17

Photos from Banksy's recent exhibition in LA, or actually from a separate VIP preview. It looks like it was a great event, with the stencil pieces, sculptures, the ornate sitting room full of "remixed" paintings refusing to stay in their frames, and, of course, the elephant. They had an elephant, painted pink, wandering around the warehouse and being metaphorical. While the elephant's handlers (a company which specialises in leasing elephants, under carefully controlled conditions, for events) stated that the elephant was not in the least way harmed, animal rights groups were not satisfied with that explanation, some seeing the very stunt as an affront to the dignity of animals:

The political statement by the artist made no impression on Dyer: 'If this man is an artist, then why couldn't he build one out of papier-mache?' Les Schobert, a former L.A. Zoo curator who is a prominent voice in the animal rights movement, said the exhibit 'degrades the elephant. Here we have an endangered species. And we're taking it and moving it into a warehouse and painting it. It's a mockery. There's no reason. This isn't a religious ceremony in India.'
And the BBC has a piece about Banksy, claiming to authoritatively identify the pseudonymous artist:
His real name is Robert Banks, a 32-year-old from Bristol, that cultural melting-pot of a port where graffiti art has a long heritage.
He has no formal art education but learned his craft designing bootleg rock memorabilia. Before that, he'd started spraying graffiti when he was an unhappy 14-year-old schoolboy.
And a Guardian piece here, including the claim that the Paris Hilton CD was done in collaboration with LA-based mash-up artist Danger Mouse.

(via Boing Boing) art banksy celebrity danger mouse paris hilton 0

2006/8/11

The debut album from Paris Hilton, icon of our times and/or unjustifiable waste of oxygen, is out, and the Graun's Alexis Petridis is having a hard time restraining his glee:

"I know music," she reassured the Sunday Times children's section. "I hear it every single day." While this obviously gives Hilton a massive advantage over those who have never heard any music and thus believe it to be a variety of cheese, there remains the nagging suspicion that this might not represent sufficient qualification for a career as a singer, in much the same way as knowing what a child is does not fully equip you for a career as a consultant paediatrician.
Understandably, those behind Hilton's debut album have left little to chance, employing a vast team of crack producers and songwriters. Some decisions regarding membership of said team seem a little baffling - when Hilton's record label decided a reggae track "would be a really good fit", they naturally called songwriter Shep Solomon, famed for mashing up Kingston dancehalls with militant Rastafarian collective S Club 7 and ragga's Queen of Slackness Natalie Imbruglia - but you can't argue with its hit-making pedigree.
But as Turn It Up cranks into life, you realise why Hilton felt it necessary to confirm to the Sunday Times that she knew what music was. She sings like a woman who has heard of something called singing, can't be sure of exactly what it might entail, but is fairly certain you do something a bit like this. She sounds both distracted and bored stiff, as if making an album is keeping her from the more serious business of standing around a nightclub in a pair of really enormous sunglasses.
On Stars Are Blind, the combination of tinny cod-reggae and your-call-is-being-held-in-a-queue vocal technique results in something so plasticky, it's perversely enjoyable. Elsewhere, Hilton's audible lack of interest torpedoes her own chances. Someone has encouraged her to make erotically charged squeals of affirmation and panting noises, with deleterious results. "Yah! Uh-huh-huh! Yah!" she huffs, like a Sloane Ranger having an asthma attack.
From its description, the album sounds predictably bad; the natural product of an "artist" who epitomises content-free, vacuous celebrity. It'll be interesting to see how it will be received. Will it sink without a trace, with entire boxes of excess stock ending up in landfills? Will it, come December 2009, end up on lists of least essential albums of the decade? Or will it rise above obscurity? Will it be adopted ironically as a bulldada classic, a sort of musical equivalent of Showgirls, or will the poptimist tendency, always eager to repudiate rockism and indie snobbery, embrace its sugar-slick production values and professional songwriting in a completely unironic sense?

alexis petridis celebrity paris hilton 0

2006/6/14

Charlie "TV Go Home" Brooker rips into Sandi Thom, the bland, suspiciously manufactured-looking "grass-roots Internet sensation" who sings some inane load of bollocks about wishing she was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair or something:

All I hear is that telltale, indefinable something that immediately marks it out as something that's bypassed the soul completely: consumable noise for people who don't like music but know listening to it is "the done thing" - like mutant imposters mimicking the behaviour of humans. I can't relate. It doesn't go. I'm being alienated by the replicants.
There's a word for this sort of thing. It's not "art", it's "content".
Sometimes I can ALMOST see where content is coming from. Take Angels by Robbie Williams. It's a massively popular piece of content, beloved by millions. If I strain really hard, I can just about make out some genuine emotion. Just a speck or two - but enough to make its huge success at least vaguely explicable. Compared with anything that has any semblance of balls whatsoever, Angels is a bowl of cold mud - but next to most content, it's a towering emotional epic. It almost makes you feel something. No wonder it's become the official theme tune for thick people's funerals.
Brooker then goes on:
As luck would have it, while typing this article, I've just heard I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (With Bollocks in My Mouth) on the radio, and the real braintwister is the lyric, in which she yearns for a time "when accountants didn't have control and the media couldn't buy your soul". It's a boneheaded plea for authenticity, sung in the most Tupperware tones imaginable: a fake paean to a pre-fake era. It's giving me vertigo.
Which sounds like the totality of the Sandi Thom phenomenon (the song, the soullessly plastic paean to authenticity, the backstory with its transparent contrivedness) could almost be a work of conceptual art in itself. Perhaps it was created by Bill Drummond or some other prankster (much like the Pete Doherty sideshow is said by some to have been; I have heard rumours that the glamorous rock'n'roll nihilist was originally a small-town Buddy Holly impersonator who had been discovered and manufactured into the New Sid Vicious for a prank/art project).

Of course, the problem with creating a work of art such as the manufacture of a transparently, cynically plastic "authentic" pop star is that it is difficult if not impossible to distinguish it from the way a big part of the recording industry normally operates, guided by nothing more self-aware than the cold, insectile logic of marketing and demographic modelling. If some neo-Situationist prankster manufactures a perfectly plastic pop star, indistinguishable from the normal products of the entertainment machine, is it still art?

(via xrrf) authenticity celebrity charlie brooker culture robbie williams sandi thom 3

2005/12/9

A group of Republican Party activists in California, disenchanted with Arnold Schwarzenegger for being too left-wing, are planning to recruit Mel Gibson to run for Governor:

"He's shown himself to be both fiscally and socially conservative," said Mr Spence, "and the success of The Passion of the Christ shows that he has the ability to reach out to people".
Should they succeed, it raises the bizarre prospect of Californian voters being faced with a choice between Warren Beatty and Mel Gibson for governor.
Did California pass a law requiring Governors to be celebrities or something?

arnold schwarzenegger california celebrity mel gibson politics usa 0

2005/9/22

If you think you've had a bad week, spare a thought for Kate Moss. 48 hours ago, she was a supermodel; now, her career is over (three sponsors have dumped her like a hot potato; most recently, Burberry dropped her from their campaign, presumably to keep the evil of cocaine from being associated with the wholesome chav/townie culture), and now it looks like she stands to be prosecuted (after all, there is photographic evidence of her committing a crime, and not prosecuting her would send the message that celebrities are above the law, or at least above the drug laws), and possibly lose custody of her daughter. And now that the party's over, Pete Doherty is apparently no longer interested; I wonder if he helped himself to a few valuables on the way out the door.

Of course, the argument for not treating Moss leniently is that celebrities, being role models, should be held to a more exacting standard of conduct, and those who fall from this standard should be made examples of to deter impressionable youths from following in their errors. Of course, the current scheme, which depends wholly on tabloid newspapers sneaking in to studios to take surreptitious photographs, is somewhat patchy and inadequate. I modestly propose a better solution: random drug testing of celebrities.

Under this scheme, anyone who is a celebrity (defined by making more than a number of media appearances in a certain period) would be subject to random drug tests, much as athletes are. The tests would be administered by a new agency, which would be called something like the Celebrity Drug Authority or the Public Conduct Authority or somesuch. Testing positive for drug use, or failure to show up for testing, would result in disqualification from a number of professions, including top-tier fashion modelling, acting in films over a certain budget or performing in venues over a certain size; additionally, any recordings by those disqualified would be struck off commercial-radio playlists, and the press would be prohibited from giving publicity to them (so now, if the NME editors ran another piece on Pete Doherty, Dionysiac Genius of Rock, they could be prosecuted for contempt of court). Which sounds harsh, but it may be the only way to protect impressionable youth. Won't someone think of the children?

a modest proposal celebrity drugs kate moss pete doherty society 7

2005/6/2

If you're pop royalty in need of medical treatment, your celebrity can buy you a lot; such as, for example, a hospital ward to yourself:

Reports today suggested elderly heart patients at the Cabrini Hospital were moved from their beds to vacate an entire ward for [Kylie Minogue].
The night before Minogue arrived, patients were moved from their beds to give her a wing to herself with a security guard at the end of the corridor, the report said. Visitors to the hospital were made to enter through the intensive care unit, escorted by a nurse each time.
"Several people were severely inconvenienced. I was very surprised that eight beds were given to one patient with a non-cardiac condition."
"One of the (security) chaps that had a British accent said to me, 'You can't go there', and I said, 'Yes I can, I've visited my mother here for a week, I'm certainly going to see her tonight. "These guys escorted me back like a criminal.''

celebrity health kylie minogue privilege 0

2005/4/11

The transformation of Australian politics into a reality TV show gathers pace. Licking their wounds after their catastrophic electoral defeat, Labor have decided that one way to bolster their electoral chances next time around is to run more football personalities as candidates. In particular, they've got an eye on running Eddie McGuire in a Melbourne seat, and a few other high-profile footballers (and they must be high profile if I recognise their names) also being considered. There's nothing to instill respect in the meaningfulness of the democratic process like running footballers as celebrity candidates. Then again, who needs respect for democracy when you've got compulsory voting?

Reports that the Tories are in talks with Sam Newman, and that the Greens have recruited Ella Hooper of Killing Heidi and Tyrone Noonan of george to help them bust the major-party preference blockade, have not been confirmed.

(via The Fix) australia celebrity politics 12

2005/1/22

Kinky Friedman, arguably the world's most famous Jewish cowboy detective novelist and author of songs like Get Your Biscuits In The Oven And Your Buns Into Bed and They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus No More, has announced that he will follow in the footsteps of Jesse Ventura and run for Governor of Texas.

Friedman is the latest representative of an American trend known to detractors as anti-politics and to the more charitable (including me) as narrative politics. The former argue that voters are demonstrating their contempt for democracy by choosing jokes; the latter that, for an electorate increasingly shaped by the grammar of movies and television, the most attractive candidate will be the one whose bid most closely resembles a Hollywood pitch. This makes non-politicians attractive because their very improbability becomes their compelling storyline.

Of course, the powers that be are cluing into this trend and running politically naïve but photogenic celebrity candidates whose platforms consist of vague motherhood statements about being against bad things and for good things, knowing that the real decisions the voters don't want to worry their pretty heads over will be delegated to faceless administrators and, some would say, unelected representatives of vested interests who will benefit from them; thus the causal chain between the popular election of politicians and the appointment of decision-makers is broken. (According to investigative journalist Greg Palast, one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's first actions as Governor of California was to basically let the managers of Enron off the hook for screwing Californians with rigged electricity prices.) Americans, however, seem to be eating it up; enough so that now there's a campaign to amend the Constitution to allow foreign-born Schwarzenegger to run for President in 2008.

Of course, which is not to say that the Kinkster is necessarily the pawn of powerful interests. Given his lack of a serious platform (or, for that matter, of his spouting of comfortingly "sincere" homilies), he's probably more like the American Screaming Lord Sutch than anything else.

arnold schwarzenegger celebrity cowboy enron jewish kinky friedman politics screaming lord sutch texas usa 0

2004/5/25

Teenagers in Britain are obsessively going to tanning salons in a quest to look like heroes/success symbols like "Posh and Becks".

Real Story features a 13-year-old girl from Liverpool, identified as a blackspot for tanorexics, who has been visiting tanning parlours up to five times a week for the past year. Hayley Barrow, whose grandmother has skin cancer, explained: "If I haven't been on one [a sunbed] for one day I feel white, I feel transparent."

(Interesting that she mentions feeling "white" as a negative consequence of not tanning enough; I wonder whether there is a racial-aspirational dimension to this; with black groups and artists dominating the charts in recent years and (if the BBC's quizzes are to be believed) British kids speaking fluent US Hip-Hop Ebonics amongst themselves, whether having heavily tanned skin makes today's kids feel more "ghetto" or at one with their adopted culture. Judging by young Hayley's photo (she looks more like a white actor from a less politically-correct decade in blackface than a suntanned celebrity), it doesn't seem too far-fetched.)

"They call it the Posh and Becks syndrome," said Andy Carr, organiser of the Elite Teens disco. They want the tans, they want the clothes, they want the money."

affluenza blackness celebrity chavs hip-hop tanorexia uk whiteness wiggers 0

2004/5/16

Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, those two purveyors of feelgood fare, now have a daughter, and her name is... Apple. Is there some kind of law that says that celebrities must give their children ridiculous names? Chances are, her school years will be a misery, unless her parents send her to schools exclusively for celebrity spawn. (I'm sure the Church of Scientology and other similarly charitable organisations run such schools in Hollywood, Notting Hill and other such places, so that all the Apples and Moon Units and Jets and Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lilies don't get the crap bullied out of them by more conventionally-named classmates.)

celebrity names society stupidity 2

2004/3/30

Via Substitute, another piece about high-definition TV (HDTV), and in particular, about how the resolution is so good that it brings out every wrinkle, blemish and imperfection on celebrities' faces. I've also heard it claimed that the spread of HDTV will drive the development and adoption of new make-up technologies (ultra-fine nanomaterial cosmetics sprayed on with high-precision airbrushes or what have you), to allow those celebrities to keep looking perfect under the HDTV camera's harsh scrutiny.

Though, when one thinks about it, this sounds suspicious. Is HDTV really more detailed than the 35mm film that is shown in multiplexes? This is unlikely; when film is digitised for processing, each frame measures something like 3,000 pixels across; if HDTV exceeds this, a consumer HDTV set would have a higher resolution than the best computer monitor on the market (and this includes those used by graphic professionals). Not to mention that HDTV production would depend on digital video cameras at the very bleeding edge of the technology.

I suspect that the various stories about HDTV being so good that it shows you every pore on a celebrity's previously perfect-looking face is a sneaky piece of viral marketing, designed by some agency to spread buzz about this expensive new technology. It's a well-crafted piece, tapping into fascination with celebrities and the desire to see them brought down to earth and stripped of their seemingly superhuman perfection. And HDTV is going to need a lot of help in getting off the ground (and recouping investment); with passive TV viewership declining as more people seek out more interactive technologies, the number of people ready to invest in HDTV (which is, essentially, the same deal as regular TV, only with better image quality) off the bat isn't great.

celebrity hdtv marketing memes tech viral marketing 3

2003/10/22

A future history of the fall of the United States, which descends into authentic fascism under the influence of reality television, celebrity politics and news/entertainment programming. (via MeFi)

celebrity fascism reality tv usa 3

2003/8/8

Silicone-enhanced pop puppet Britney Spears may soon have her own TV talk show. Funny, that; some time ago I speculated that, in 2015 or so, "Britney" would be the highest-rating talk show in America. Jennifer Lopez is also planning one, which sounds like it could well be Ali G without the irony.

britney spears celebrity jennifer lopez tv wiggers 3

2003/8/1

Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read is a true modern renaissance man. Underworld hitman, author (of criminalogues and childrens' stories), the subject of a popular film, and now the latest sensation in the art world, with his first art exhibition almost selling out in two days. The style of his artwork has been described as "primitive pop".

''He has a number of styles. He has a Nolanesque-(Ned) Kelly - it's been sexualised, so she's a Mrs Kelly,'' Mr Chapman said. ''They're all very bright and colourful.''

The exhibition is open until the 9th, at Dante's Upstairs in Fitzroy.

art celebrity chopper read 3

2003/5/3

Julie Burchill turns her guns on Madonna's latest album and image-change.

And this is the nub of my argument, the glitch in the seamless, shameless Madonna machine that just won't go away: for all her talk of discipline and dedication, has there ever been a professional singer, with two decades behind her, whose voice has shown not just no improvement, but a decline? Wouldn't the reputed four hours a day spent putting her ankles behind her head be better used practising her scales? And how much disrespect does this show to those who buy her records? Considering how little effort Madonna has put into the very thing she became famous for, her fabled knack for "reinvention" starts to look less like the clever cherry on the cake and more like desperate smoke-and-mirror decoys from her total lack of talent.

celebrity julie burchill madonna music 1

2003/3/18

The latest aspiring pop starlet in London is Osama bin Laden's niece. Waffa bin Laden, 26, has been described as a "Natalie Imbruglia lookalike" and has been working with producer Nellee Hooper. She is a US lawyer by training. (via Rocknerd)

Simon Cowell, the Pop Idol judged renowned for his put-downs said: 'There's only one worse surname you could have to launch a pop career - and that's Hitler.'

Actually, didn't one of Mussolini's granddaughters have some sort of celebrity career a while ago?

celebrity osama bin laden pop 0

2002/5/24

The Issues that Matter: The Vatican, the world's oldest multinational corporation, has issued a media statement criticising celebrities for wearing jeweled crucifixes. Then again, mentioning celebrities by name is good for publicity, and right now, any publicity not connected to child sex scandals is good news for them.

catholic celebrity 2

2002/5/22

In today's Onion: Pope forgives molested children for their misdeeds:

"The pope has shown great love and compassion, much as Jesus did when he ministered to tax collectors and whores," said Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. "Despite all they have done to jeopardize the careers of so many priests--to say nothing of imperiling the priests' immortal souls--the church embraces these underaged seducers and tempters with open arms. The pope's words and actions prove that the church is willing to put an end to the suffering and let the healing begin."

also, Handlers Desperate To Prevent Tara Reid Political Awakening:

"There was a lot of concern when she was cast in Dr. T And The Women ," Braterman said. "[Director Robert] Altman is known for his subversive, countercultural views, and [co-star] Richard Gere is a passionate advocate for Tibetan independence. It was a dangerous situation to put her in, but by keeping Tara's trailer far away from Richard's and by frequently pulling her off the set for premieres, press junkets, and racy pictorials for Stuff magazine and Maxim, we managed to shield her from any potential indoctrination."
"It is just so unfair," Pressly said. "Because of her control-freak handlers, Tara will never learn of the joys and rewards of political awareness. Since my own awakening last year, I feel so much more full of knowledge and awareness, and I think celebrities should use their fame to educate the public about important issues. Like, for example, did you know that women in Pakistine have to be buried alive with their dead husbands, whether they want to or not? That is so wrong."

catholic celebrity humour paedophilia religion satire tara reid the onion 0

2002/4/22

Former Swingin' Sixties it-girl and veteran actress Julie Christie (still venerated by '60s fetishists, and the subject of a song by Spearmint) has revealed that she suffers from autobiographical amnesia, a rare condition which strips away short- and long-term memory. Which may mean that her subjective experience of her glory days is now less than that of her fans.

1960s amnesia celebrity irony julie christie memory neurology 0

2001/12/30

According to media curmudgeon Julie Burchill, two figures dominated 2001: Osama Bin Laden and Kylie Minogue.

2001 celebrity julie burchill kylie minogue osama bin laden 0

This will be the comment popup.
Post a reply
Display name:

Your comment:


Please enter the text in the image above here: