Category: Defies a category!

Keith Richards: ‘I snorted my father’
LONDON – Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time, but this may top them all. In comments published Tuesday, the 63-year-old Rolling Stones guitarist said he had snorted his father’s ashes mixed with cocaine.
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” Richards was quoted as saying by British music magazine NME.
“He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared,” he said. “… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
Richards’ father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.
Richards, one of rock’s legendary wild men, told the magazine that his survival was the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him.
“I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it’s a way of life,” he was quoted as saying.
“I’ve no pretensions about immortality,” he added. “I’m the same as everyone … just kind of lucky.
“I was No. 1 on the `who’s likely to die’ list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list,” Richards said.

Prince’s halftime imagery questioned
NEW YORK – In the sensitive post-wardrobe malfunction world, some are questioning whether a guitar was just a guitar during Prince’s Super Bowl halftime show.
Prince’s acclaimed performance included a guitar solo during the “Purple Rain” segment of his medley in which his shadow was projected onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the 48-year-old rock star let rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the singer’s symbol) had phallic connotations for some.
A number of bloggers have decried “Malfunction!” ó including Sam Anderson at New York magazine’s Daily Intelligencer. Daily News television critic David Bianculli called it “a rude-looking shadow show” that “looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed.”
CBS spokesman Dana McClintock said Tuesday that the network has received “very few” complaints on Prince’s performance. CBS last aired the Super Bowl in 2004 when Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s “wardrobe malfunction” sparked criticism and a subsequent crackdown on broadcast decency from the Federal Communications Commission.
But this time, it was the NFL that produced the halftime show (MTV had in 2004). Spokesman Greg Aiello said the league has received no complaints.
“We respect other opinions, but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to make a controversy of his performance,” Aiello said. “It’s a guitar.”
The majority of the reaction to Prince’s performance has been laudatory, including positive reviews from The Associated Press, the New York Times and USA Today ó all of which noted the lack of controversy in this year’s halftime show. AP Entertainment Writer Douglas J. Rowe wrote: “He delivered one of the best Super Bowl halftime shows ó ever.”
For decades, the electric guitar, by nature, has been considered phallic. From Jimi Hendrix’s sensual 6-string swagger to Eddie Van Halen’s masturbatory soloing, the guitar has often been thought an extension of a male player’s sexuality.
Was Prince’s pose phallic?
“The short answer is, of course it is,” says Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards, who points out that on Prince’s “Purple Rain” tour in the mid `80s, he performed with a guitar that would ejaculate, squirting water out of its end during the climax of “Let’s Go Crazy.”
“All that said, it didn’t seem like a sniggering little puppet show,” adds Edwards. “I think it was one of those things because a guitar at waist level does look like an enormous phallus.”
By enlarging his shadow, it’s possible Prince intended to accentuate this aspect of his solo, but it’s just as likely it was accidental. (You can find videos of the halftime show at YouTube.com.) A message left with Prince’s publicist Tuesday wasn’t returned.
The late-night shows have taken notice. On CBS’s “The Late Late Show” on Sunday night, host Craig Ferguson said of Prince: “He was obviously very happy to be there, wasn’t he?”
Stephen Colbert reacted with mock outrage on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” Monday night: “They knew that they were dealing with a lustful, pansexual rock ‘n’ roll deviant,” said Colbert, who joked that the sheet hid (not enhanced) Prince’s “demonic guitar phallus.”
In recent years, Prince has scaled down his performances, which were once renown for their gymnastics. His mini-concert at the Colts-Bears game in Miami included parts of “Purple Rain,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Baby I’m a Star,” Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” the Foo Fighter’s “Best of You” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.”
The Minnesota native has attracted controversy before. Tipper Gore launched a campaign to place a warning sticker on his 1984 album “Purple Rain” because of the lyrics to the song “Darling Nikki.” Though his musical style has been expansive, he’s best known for funky, sexually charged songs like “I Wanna Be Your Lover” and “Get Off.”
Prince’s previously most talked-about performance came at the 1991 MTV Video Music Awards, where he donned yellow, butt-baring pants, (a stunt later spoofed by Howard Stern). Always eccentric, he famously changed his name to The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, then to simply a symbol and finally back to Prince. He also became a Jehovah’s Witness in the mid-`90s.
But Prince’s halftime performance, though celebrated, came in a much different cultural environment, where even the fleeting outline of a man and his guitar could, for some, suggest shaded depravity.
“If people want to be hypersensitive, they can be hypersensitive,” says Rolling Stone’s Edwards. “Those trombones are phallic, too. What are you going to do?”

‘Screech’ sells shirts to keep his house
MILWAUKEE – More than a bell is needed to save Dustin Diamond this time around. Diamond, best known as geeky Screech Powers on the 1989-1993 teen comedy series “Saved by the Bell,” is selling T-shirts with his photo on them to try to raise $250,000 so he doesn’t lose his gray two-story house under a foreclosure order.
“If the public didn’t care, I as an entertainer wouldn’t have been a success,” he said.
Diamond, 29, is trying to sell nearly 30,000 shirts ó at $15 or $20 (autographed) each ó to supplement the income he makes as a standup comic so he doesn’t have to move from his Port Washington home, about 25 miles north of Milwaukee.
The T-shirt has a photo of Diamond holding a sign that says, “Save My House.” The back of the shirt reads, “I paid $15.00 to save Screeech’s house.” The third “e” was added to get around copyright laws, he said.
He’s selling the shirts on his Web site http://www.getdshirts.com/.
The foreclosure order was filed last month in Ozaukee County Circuit Court.
Diamond appeared on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show Tuesday to plead his case. “I’m doing great with my comedy, but this is definitely a low point,” he said. “Real life comes in and affects you.”
Diamond doesn’t have a listed phone number, and e-mails to the address on his Web site and at an alternative address were not immediately returned Thursday.

John Lennon asks for peace, says pay TV seance
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Peace … The Message is Peace.”
That’s what the producers of a pay-television seance to contact John Lennon claimed the former Beatle said when communicating with them from beyond the grave.
The show aired on Monday on pay-TV service In Demand and was organized by the producers of a failed 2003 attempt to channel the late Princess Diana’s spirit, a show that earned scathing reviews but was estimated to have grossed close to $8 million.
People who paid $9.95 to watch the pay-per-view Lennon special from 9 p.m. (0100 GMT) to 10:30 p.m. (0230 GMT) saw audio crew members, a psychic and an expert in paranormal activity claim that the late Beatle’s spirit made contact with them through what is described as an Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP).
The EVP was discovered during a taping of a seance at La Fortuna restaurant in New York, which Lennon frequented.
The show’s organizers said psychic Joe Power’s voice feed went dead for a few seconds and the message was found on it when the tape of the voice feed was played back.
EVP is based on a belief that spirit voices communicate through radio and TV broadcast signals.
On the television show, filming at La Fortuna suddenly stopped and a narrator said something odd has happened. Show participants said that a mysterious voice can be heard on Power’s voice feed.
The producers called in “EVP specialist” Sandra Belanger to examine the voice and she proclaims it Lennon’s.
Producer Paul Sharratt, who heads Starcast Productions and calls himself a skeptic, said hearing the voice has made him a believer.
The program was made without the knowledge or consent of Lennon’s estate or his widow Yoko Ono, who declined comment.
Ono’s long-time friend and spokesman Elliot Mintz has called the entire exercise “tacky, exploitative and far removed” from Lennon’s way of life. “A pay-per-view seance was never his style,” said Mintz.
Lennon was assassinated by a deranged fan in New York 25 years ago.

Courtney & Nirvana: Smells Like a Sellout
Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”–coming soon to a soap ad near you?
So far Courtney Love is ruling that out, but chances are we’ll be hearing more of the seminal grunge band’s music in unexpected places now that Kurt Cobain’s cash-strapped widow has agreed to sell off a 25 percent stake in the Nirvana song catalog in a deal valued at $50 million, per Rolling Stone.
On the other end of the deal is Larry Mestel, the former COO of Virgin Records and current head of Primary Wave Music Publishing.
To preemptively squelch backlash from fans worried about the over-commercialization of a decidedly anticorporate band, Love sought to assure the Nirvana faithful that the music won’t simply be licensed to the highest bidder.
“We’re going to remain very tasteful, and we’re going to [retain] the spirit of Nirvana and take Nirvana places it’s never been before,” Love told the magazine.
“I took on a strategic partner, Larry Mestel, to help me comanage the estate because it was overwhelming,” Love said. “The affairs of Nirvana are so massive and so huge, and they’ve all fallen on my lap.
“I own almost all of [the publishing]…and it proved to be too much for me. I needed a partner to take Kurt Cobain’s songs and bring them into the future and into the next generation. And this guy’s the guy to do it,” she said.
Following her husband’s 1994 suicide, Love became the primary benefactor of Cobain’s estate, which included ownership rights of more than 98 percent of Nirvana’s song catalog. The other two former members, Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic, own the remainder–slightly less than 2 percent split between them. The new deal does not affect their portion.
Mestel, too, is quick to quell rumors that he’s just another suit out to profit on Cobain’s legacy.
“My goal is to keep the music very true to who the songwriter was and what his passions and tastes would be and to work through Courtney to figure out exactly the best way to go about exposing his music to a new youth culture to a new generation,” Mestel said.
He also told Rolling Stone that he was thrilled to have been able to buy into the Nirvana catalog and become, with his three-year-old company, a part of music history.
“The appeal to me is that [Cobain was] one of the most important songwriters of his time,” Mestel said. “Kurt was an incredible songwriter, and Courtney is an exceptionally talented person herself. So I felt the combination of Courtney’s creativity and the things I can add can really help in creating more value for these copyrights.”
Novoselic and Grohl, long-time adversaries of Love, have yet to comment on the new deal. But we’re guessing they’re none too pleased.
When rumors first swirled that Love was looking to unload a stake in the lucrative catalog, it was expected that the duo may have first dibs, but, based on their troubled history with Love, it’s doubtful they were ever offered the chance.
In 2001, Love filed suit against Grohl and Novoselic in an attempt to gain sole custody of the Nirvana songbook, calling the duo merely “sidemen” in the band, which she equated as a one-man show–the man of course being her late husband. The same year, Grohl and Novoselic struck back, filing their own suit alleging Love was using Cobain’s music to “further her own career goals,” calling her a “greedy prima donna” with a “waning recording and acting career.”
Love also filed suit against Grohl and Novoselic and Nirvana’s label, Universal Music Group, to block the release of a Nirvana box set, The Heart-Shaped Box. The suit was eventually settled and the album released.
In an interview with Blender magazine last year, Love claimed that “$40 million has been stolen from me and Frances by a fiduciary institution.” In July, she blamed former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl for her financial woes, telling Spin magazine that Grohl had been “taking money from my child for years.”
Aside from the wrangling over Nirvana, Love’s once considerable fortune has been sapped by lawsuits, liens and numerous drug-related charges. In January, a mortgage company took possession of a Seattle-area house owned by Love (and the former residence of Cobain’s sister), after the singer-actress failed to make payments. Last August, a Manhattan financial firm moved to foreclose on her pricey New York condo, claiming she had not made a mortgage payment in months.
But things are looking up. Aside from the Mestel deal, Love was given a good report card in February by a Los Angeles judge in her last remaining drug case. For her part, Love told the judge she had put her “very gnarly drug problem” behind her.
She’s also resuming her own music career. Love is in the studio recording a follow-up to her 2004 solo album, America’s Sweetheart. Linda Perry, Moby and Billy Corgan are pitching in, with the latter joining Love for a track called, aptly enough, “How Dirty Girls Get Clean.”

Stallone getting back in ring for sixth ‘Rocky’
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Sylvester Stallone is signing on to reprise his role as boxer Rocky Balboa in the sixth installment of the long-running film series, which he wrote and will direct.
The film, titled “Rocky Balboa,” will be co-produced and co-financed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia Pictures and Revolution Studios and will be distributed by Columbia Pictures.
Stallone has been trying to make a sixth movie for years and has been reworking a script. The latest version, which sources said is similar to the tone and grit of the first two movies, persuaded the studios to negotiate a deal.
“In many ways, the screenplay really took me back to the original ‘Rocky,”‘ Revolution Studios founder Joe Roth said in a statement. “As a past champion, Rocky Balboa is once again a regular guy who has to find himself and deal with real life. This film brings Rocky’s story full circle.”
In the new installment, Rocky, lonely and retired in Philadelphia, comes out of retirement, intending to fight a few low-profile local fights. He’s approached to fight a match with reigning heavyweight champ Mason “The Line” Dixon, and soon his comeback ignites a media firestorm.
“‘Rocky Balboa’ is about everybody who feels they want to participate in the race of life, rather than be a bystander,” Stallone said in a statement. “You’re never too old to climb a mountain, if that’s your desire.”
Shooting is scheduled to begin in December in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Stallone received Academy Award nominations for starring in and writing “Rocky,” and the 1976 MGM film won an Oscar for best picture, best director (John G. Avildsen) and best editing (Richard Halsey, Scott Conrad). The movie grossed $117.3 million at the domestic boxoffice, making Stallone a film star and creating one of cinema’s most famous characters.
It also launched one of the most successful film series of all time. 1979’s “Rocky II” grossed $85 million, and 1982’s “Rocky III,” which featured Mr. T, grossed $120.2 million. “Rocky IV,” with Dolph Lundgren, made $125.4 million after its 1985 release. By the decade’s close, however, audiences seemed to have tired of the character. “Rocky V,” released in 1990, made only $40 million.
“Rocky Balboa” is the first film to be green-lit by MGM since it was acquired by Sony Corp.

UNICEF Snuffs Smurfs
It’s just another smurfy day in Smurf Village. The perpertually perky blue beings frolic around the fire, holding hands and singing that “tra-la-la-la-la-la” tune as bluebirds flutter by and rabbits hop around.
A regular Smurftopia.
But then the bombs come.
Hundreds of them raining down from warplanes in the sky, wiping out the mushroom-shaped abodes. Amid the fiery explosions, Smurfette is killed. Papa Smurf disappears. As the smoke clears, only an orphaned Baby Smurf remains, sobbing among the corpses.
No, this is not some pipe dream of Gargamel. The Smurfocide was instead perpetuated by the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.
UNICEF’s Belgian office is using the Smurfs as the centerpiece of a new fundraising initiative to shock viewers into donating money to help children in war-torn regions. The agency also hopes to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Burundi.
“The idea of using familiar, reassuring childhood icons in a decidedly dangerous context was intended to bring home to the public the horrendous nature of this theft of children’s rights,” says UNICEF’s Gaelle Buasson.
“We could have shown real-live images of children wounded in Iraq, Palestine or other places. But we refused this option because they would not respect the dignity and rights of the depicted children…So we decided to use ‘fictive’ cartoon images.”
Dubbed the first adults-only version of The Smurfs, UNICEF’s 30-second ‘toon ends with the tagline: “Don’t let war affect the lives of children.”
After coming up with the idea for the Smurfogeddon, UNICEF obtained permission to create the short from IMPS, which took over control of the critters after the death of their creator, the Belgian cartoonist Peyo. The clip was previewed on Belgian TV last week during evening newscasts.
According to London’s Daily Telegraph, the spot evoked mixed emotions from viewers–including shock from children who accidentally caught the spot.
But the clip received a thumbs up from the official Smurf fan club. “I think it will wake up some people. It is so un-Smurf-like, it might get people to think,” a spokesman told the Telegraph.
Julie Lamoureux, account director for Publicis, the ad agency that created the campaign, says the original concept included even more graphic imagery of weapons of mass Smurfstruction.
“We wanted something that was real war–Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head–but they said no,” she told the Telegraph.
The clip will begin airing regularly next week in Belgium, but only after 9 p.m., and run through April. UNICEF says response has been so strong that the short could soon be seen in Europe, Latin America and Australia with the stipulations that it must air after 7 p.m. local time, it can only be aired with information explaining the clip, and it cannot be put on the Internet. There are no current plans to broadcast the clip in the U.S.
For Stateside fans, and those who prefer their Smurfs intact, a 3-D, CGI-animated Smurfs feature film will bow in theaters in 2008. The extravaganza from Paramount’s Nickelodeon Movies will be the first in a planned trilogy.

Today in Entertainment History
On Sept. 28, 1958, Dore Records released “To Know Him Is To Love Him” by the Teddy Bears.
√Ø In 1968, Janis Joplin’s manager announced Joplin would leave Big Brother and the Holding Company in November after fulfilling current obligations. Joplin said she and the band “weren’t growing together anymore.”
√Ø In 1975, 40,000 people got to see Jefferson Starship and Jerry Garcia and Friends perform for free in San Francisco. “Jerry Garcia and Friends” ended up being the Grateful Dead, who had not performed together in more than a year.
ï In 1988, singer John Denver offered the Soviet Union $10 million dollars to put him on the Soyuz space shuttle.
ï In 1991, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis died of pneumonia, respiratory failure and a stroke. He was 65.
√Ø Also in 1991, Garth Brooks became the first country artist to have an album debut at number one on the album charts, with “Ropin’ The Wind.”
ï In 1995, Bobby Brown was caught in gunfire outside a Boston bar. Brown was unhurt, but his brother-in-law-to-be was killed.
Today’s birthdays:
√Ø Actor William Windom (“Murder, She Wrote”) is 82.
ï Actor Arnold Stang is 81.
ï Blues singer Koko Taylor is 77.
ï Actress Brigitte Bardot is 71.
ï Singer Ben E. King is 67.
√Ø Actor Joel Higgins (“Silver Spoons”) is 62.
ï Actor Jeffrey Jones is 59.
ï Writer-director-actor John Sayles is 55.
√Ø Actress Sylvia Kristel (“Emmanuelle,” “Private Lessons”) is 53.
ï Actress-comedian Janeane Garofalo is 41.
ï Country singer Matt King is 39.
ï Actress Mira Sorvino is 38.
ï TV personality Moon Zappa is 38.
ï Singer Sean Levert of Levert is 37.
ï Actress Naomi Watts is 37.
ï Country singer Mandy Barnett is 30.
ï Actress Hilary Duff is 18.
ï Actress Skye McCole Bartusiak is 13.

Mulroney says he’s tops, Trudeau’s not
Brian Mulroney says he was the greatest prime minister — after John A. MacDonald.
However, the former prime minister says Pierre Trudeau’s contribution “was not to build Canada but to destroy it.”
Of Lucien Bouchard, he says, “I have never known a more vulgar expression of betrayal and deceit.”
The comments come in a soon-to-be-published book by Peter C. Newman. The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Confessions of a Prime Minister draws on 98 interviews with Mulroney. Excerpts are printed Monday in the Globe and Mail.
FROM THE CBC ARCHIVES: From Cheers to Jeers: The Mulroney Years
“By the time history is done looking at this, and you look at my achievements as opposed to others, certainly no one will be in Sir John A.’s league — but my nose will be a little ahead of most in terms of achievements,” Newman quotes Mulroney as saying.
According to the Globe, Mulroney gave Newman access to documents, and to family and colleagues as long as Newman agreed not to publish the material while Mulroney was still in office.
Mulroney served as prime minister from Sept. 1984 to June 1993. After he left office, his Progressive Conservative party was trounced by Jean Chr√àtien’s Liberals.
Lucien Bouchard was a friend and political ally to Mulroney. But Bouchard quit Mulroney’s federal cabinet in 1990 in a dispute over the doomed Meech Lake constitutional accord. Bouchard went on to lead the Bloc Qu√àb√àcois.

THEY’RE OUT THERE
Tom Cruise telling a German newspaper that “of course” he believes in aliens. “Are you really so arrogant as to believe we are alone in this universe?” Cruise said in the interview. “No, there are many things out there, we just don’t know.” Cruise’s alien-themed War of the Worlds opens today.