Archive for December, 2000

Apologies for reproducing this in full, but it’s worth it. Every Wednesday morning the Popbitch newsletter announces itself at my inbox, containing all sorts of salacious and libellous rumours relating to our favourite pop stars. This morning a one-off mail arrived, detailing the most idiotic, imbecilic acts or quotations of 2000. First up, straight in a number 10…..

10) Billie
When asked this year which was the worst of the seven deadly sins, Billie’s response was: “I think murder, that’s deadly isn’t it?”

9) A seven-year-old Britney fan
A seven-year-old boy from Tasmania, Australia, pulled out all of his teeth with pliers. The reason? He wanted the tooth fairy to come and leave him enough money to buy a Britney Spears CD.

8) Puff Daddy
Puffy this year claimed to be part Irish: “My name is Sean Coombs,” he said, “so there’s definitely an Irish connection there.” Eejit.

7) Rene from Aqua
Rene got a bit concerned when he lost his video camera while on tour. Probably because the camera contained extensive close-up footage he’d shot of his penis while taking a piss.

6) Cat Stevens
This year, Cat released an Islamic children’s album. He called it “A is for Allah”

5) Steve Strange
The 80s new romantic legend suffered a slight fall from grace when he was caught shoplifting a Teletubby in Wales.

4) Mel C
This was Mel’s summary of pop music: “Kids are getting ripped off by people who are not talented and can’t cut it live” There was also an incident where Mel reportedly asked Robbie Williams to come out of the Met Bar so they could be photographed together: “Just think what a great picture it would make,” she said. “I’m the queen of pop and you’re the king of pop.”

3) Marc Anthony’s father-in-law
The Latino singer has this tale to tell about his wife’s dad: “Recently his dog jumped over the fence and when my father-in-law went to get him back he found that he had the neighbour’s rabbit in his mouth. My father-in-law took the rabbit and washed it and cleaned it up and put in back in its cage with its ears propped up. A bit later on, he heard screams and went running to see what was wrong. The neighbour told him that the rabbit had died a few days ago and he had buried it and now it had somehow got back in the cage.

2) David Beckham
Not content with calling his rottweillers Snoop and Puffy, Beckham tattooed a huge crucifix on his back and posed for loads of ludicrous photos. Discussing his Esquire shoot, black paper New Nation claimed he was paying tribute to Tupac. “Beckham posed with his head bowed to copy Tupac’s stance on the back of his album Me Against The World. The crucifix and gothic lettering are also Tupac trademarks.” Writer Russel Stevens also claimed that naming Brooklyn was a reference to Tupac rival Biggie Smalls: “That name will always be associated with Notorious BIG – it was his birthplace. It’s like the East Coast-West Coast rivalry is being fought out on Beckham’s back.”

1) Geri Halliwell
After a dental appointment, Geri tried to settle the bill by writing a cheque out to “the dentist”

Of course, none of this could possibly be true. Could it?

Sign up to popbitch at their site. It should be compulsory.

I always use Google for searching the web, but this response just baffled me:

Your search – "claire swire" – did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

• Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
• Try different keywords.
• Try more general keywords.

I find this very hard to swallow (*groan*), as the poor girl is obviously a legend. Luckily I’ve discovered Swire resource. As I said, poor girl.

Metafilter has just re-surfaced after having been offline for the best part of three days. Judging by the reaction, I’m not alone in having found it difficult to cope. My favourite quote:

Dear God. I was stuck at work for 2 whole days, and I had to do, like… work! Viva la metafilter.

Well said, Justin Hankins, whoever you are.

I will stand firm. I shall not buckle or break. I will not be beaten. I will not stop. On the other hand, this can’t possibly go on forever. Random Walks have borrowed my blogjam blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about borrowed blogs borrowing my blog from wherever I left it in the first place. If anyone can figure out where this will end up, please let me know.

Kirsty MacColl RIP
I was never a huge fan of Kirsty McColl’s music, but I adored her voice, as she made singing sound more effortless than anyone else in popular music. I once said to Miles Hunt (during his dark days as singer for Vent), that the only Wonderstuff song I had any time for was Welcome To The Cheap Seats, and only because of Kirsty’s vocal contribution. I’m sure he didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.

Bim Sherman RIP
This was a real shock – apparently Bim Sherman died of cancer over a month ago, and I’ve only just found out. It speaks volumes for the state of the British music press that more of a fuss wasn’t made, but then again, I don’t read the inkies (sorry, inkie) any more, so I may have missed out. Many years ago I worked in a second hand record shop, and Bim would come in once per week with a stack of his own records to sell, plus those of other artists on On-U-Sound. We originally we gave him pretty good prices, but eventually the store began to overflow with Bim’s unwanted stock, and we had to lower the amount of money we were paying him. He never complained, just took what we were offering and wandered out to the street. I’ve still got some of his albums at home, and will listen to some when I get home.

Sadly missed, both.

Spam. I get lots of it, most of the completely useless variety. You know the type of thing…”Send this email on to ten friends, and within three weeks you’ll be a millionaire, driving a Ferrari and be snorting various Class A substances from between Kylie Minogue’s thighs. Honest.” etc etc and so on. Today I received a circular and, just for a change, it’s actually worth passing on. So here it is.

You may have seen that yesterday that after a seven year parliamentary fight, at last, Stonewall have won an equal age of consent for gays. The speaker of the House of Commons signed the necessary document yesterday and the bill gained Royal Assent last night. As we have come to expect from our good friend Baroness Young (not) she has started a website called www.ageofconsent.org.uk in which she asks you to vote on the issue of age of consent. The idea of course is that at some early stage she will use the statistics from this survey in the public domain, provided of course it is to her advantage. Lets scupper her plans. Please, please go on to this site and register your vote – VOTE NO. The questions are carefully worded to push you to vote yes. Also as importantly please do take time to forward this e-mail on to all your supportive friends and ask them to do the same thing.

And once you’ve done that, you might like to write to the company who designed the site, requesting that the personal details you were obliged to submit regarding your postcode and sexual orientation be deleted from their database: NTK have more details.

I got an email today from Dave Roozendaal, who does much the same job as I do at our Dutch office. He’s about to unleash his own weblog on a bewildered and cowering world, but is unlikely to get it finished before Christmas (the endless parties, the weekends in rehab, delivering all those presents etc etc). Still keen to find himself a voice so that his end-of-year thoughts are devoured feverishly by an online community of millions, he’s taken the rather foolish step of sending me his Top 10 2000 records, which is normally the sort of request I’d ignore completely, but in this case I’ll make an exception. His taste is actually pretty good (we’ll not mention the inclusion of the Goldfrapp album) and, in keeping with the blogjam tradition, the list is assembled in a completely random manner. (Wow, just four days old, and we already have a ‘tradition’).

• Radiohead – Kid A
• PJ Harvey – Stories Form the City, Stories From the Sea
• Goldfrapp – Felt Mountain
• Queens Of The Stone Age – R
• Paradox – The Musician As an Outsider
• Landslide – Drum + Bossa
• LoSoul – Belong
• De La Soul – Art Official Intelligence
• Mike Ladd – Welcome To the Afterfuture
• Etienne de Cr?cy – Tempovision

Wanna contribute? All Top 10’s gratefully received, maybe even published. By the way, Dave also runs Fluff Girl Wax, a quite splendid record label. Check ’em out.

Compiling end-of-year lists can be a thorny issue. Tom at NYPLM is annoyed with the feisty DJ Martian, who claims that people who don’t announce their top tens for all and sundry are afraid to put their online reputations at risk. Tom responds by declaring that “most people present theirs with only the barest smidgen of commentary and the impression is they’re doing it out of mistaken duty or simply to show off.” The truth for me lies somewhere between the two, having a) yet to develop an online reputation, and b) realised that showing off in this forum is rediculous because c) I’ve yet to develop an online reputation.

So, I’ve compiled a list of my favourite albums of 2000, assembled without care and in no particular order, which may, at the very least, give an insight into my personality. Or offer clues as to why I don’t have a girlfriend.

• Queens Of The Stone Age – R
• The Flying Dewaele Bothers – The Best Of Hank The DJ
• Chris Morris – Blue Jam
• Daniel Johnston – Rejected Unknown
• Gonzales – Gonzales Uber Alles
• Evolution Control Committee – Double The Phat And Still Tasteless
• The Delgados – Great Eastern
• Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker
• Johnny Cash – American III: Solitary Man
• The Jayhawks – Smile

Hell, if you’re that interested, look ’em up. Whaddya think the Internet is for?

Now you’re going to have to understand this, as I’m pretty new to the game. I do a music weblog at my dayjob, but it’s written in a company “voice” , whearas these pages will be filled with my own ramblings and thoughts. So, if I get over-excited initially and scream every time a new URL crops up in my referral reports, you’ll have to forgive me, at least until the novelty wears off. Today, however, Momblog’s Sister, which is the sister site of borrowed blogs as far as I can tell, borrowed my blogjam blog about Random Walks borrowing my blog about… Oh fuck it – see below.