MGF Presents The Saturday Swindle Sheet #133

Columns

Welcome back to The Saturday Swindle Sheet.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American readers. That said, if you went out shopping on Friday, you are the scourge of society. Hopefully the doorbuster sale item that you were trying to buy was sold out. Am I just pissed because I didn’t get a 52-inch HDTV for $474? Possibly.

It’s been a decent news week, with the American Music Awards on Tuesday (check out the roundtable and recap) and the long awaited and (in my opinion) waaaay over-hyped Jay-Z album, Kingdom Come, also being released on Tuesday. Come on Hov, you f*cking name drop My Chemical Romance and MySpace on your new album. These things aren’t even supposed to happen in Bizarro World.

Let’s get right to it…

BLURBS OF THE WEEK

In support of his new album, Kingdom Come, Jay-Z took on the daunting task last Saturday of playing seven 30-minute concerts across the country in under 24 hours. He started out around 6 a.m., in Atlanta, with subsequent stops in Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, before ending up in Las Vegas at around 4 a.m. the next morning. Everything went relatively smoothly, and although the schedule originally dictated a 6 a.m.-3 a.m. timeframe, the rapper and his posse did complete the circuit in under 24 hours, as planned. At the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, an unidentified man reportedly jumped onstage soon after the beginning of Jay-Z’s set, shouting obscenities and yelling something about “Project Blowed”, but was quickly tackled by security and escorted out of the venue. Yep, and that’s what Mike Eagle’s been up to lately.

In other Jay-Z news, he and members of the shitty pop-punk band Fall Out Boy have confirmed that he makes a cameo on their upcoming album, Infinity on High. Unfortunately, not making a cameo on the album is Brian McKnight, who I’m still hoping will kick Pete Wentz in the balls sometime in the next three months. It doesn’t even have to be in public, so long as it happens.

Britney Spears has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against scandal rag Us Weekly after they were the ones to “break” the story about a supposed sex tape, a story that snowballed last week into what was billed as an extortion plot by Spears’ deadbeat estranged husband Kevin Federline. According to Federline—who was originally reported as the one who not only threatened to make the tape public, but also leaked part of it online (a rumor that I dispelled here)—as stated through his attorney on Tuesday, there is no sex tape, and there never was one. It turns out that although Federline is a scumbag, an untalented hack, a weasel, a moocher, a coattail rider, and an all-around useless waste of skin, he is no extortionist. He is, however, according to his attorney, “glad to have been mentioned in the news again.”

The organizers of now massive Indio, Calif.-based Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival have announced that not only will the aforementioned festival run a third day next year (April 27-29), but it will also be followed by a similar country/folk music festival the following weekend (May 5-6). Already confirmed for the four-stage festival are Willie Nelson, George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams, Sugarland, Nickel Creek, Ricky Skaggs, Earl Scruggs, Bela Fleck, Garrison Keillor, and Anal Cunt. Okay, okay… maybe not Earl Scruggs.

Blur/Gorillaz mastermind Damon Albarn recently told reporters that he has enlisted the help of Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam for a feature-length Gorillaz film, the production of which is currently underway. That should be fantastic.


Even if the upcoming Terry Gilliam-produced Gorillaz feature-length film is just 90 minutes of Gorillaz characters being repeatedly squashed by giant feet (as shown above in an artist’s rendition), it’ll still be better than Idlewild.

Hilary Duff recently told reporters, “I love The Faint. If they would do a song for me, I would blow a fuse.” Yeah, so would I, but I don’t think it would be for the same reason. Jesus Christ, Hilary, get the f*ck over yourself.

EPMD, Ghostface Killah, and Pharoahe Monch have been all been added to the bill for this year’s Rock the Bells festival. The tour, which will kick off Nov. 21 in Washington, and wrap up Dec. 22 in Anaheim, will also feature Redman, Raekwon, Supernatural, and Smif N Wessun.

Jazz vocalist Anita O’Day died in her sleep early Thursday morning in Los Angeles, from complications due to a case of pneumonia. She was 87. Grammy-nominated blues musician Robert Lockwood Jr. died on Tuesday in Cleveland, of respiratory failure. He was 91.

THE MOST RIDICULOUS ITEM OF THE WEEK

As part of their annual Libby Awards presentation, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has announced that AFI is the winner of the Best Vegetarian Band award, while Trent Reznor won the Best New Fur Foe award, and Rise Against won the Best Animal Rights Song of 2006 award for their track, “Ready to Fall”. In conjunction with PETA’s Libby Awards, I would like to present the organization with The Saturday Swindle Sheet‘s first annual Dead And Soon-To-Be Delicious Pig On A Grill Award for its boorish efforts to try and alter the English language in the interest of furthering its own agenda.1


Congratulations, PETA! As the winner of the first annual Dead And Soon-To-Be Delicious Pig On A Grill Award, we’ll be sending a delicious dead pig and a bucket of succulent Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce to each of your affiliated offices. All you have to do is grill it up and you’ll be ready to partake in the dead pig goodness! Fret not, it’ll be nothing compared to the 10,000 cats and dogs that you’ve killed over the past decade!

Cheers
-JF2k6!

ENDNOTES

1 Wedge, Dave. “PETA goes wild—wants dictionary to jump through hoops”, The Boston Herald, June 23, 2006. While we’re proposing changing dictionary definitions to reflect personal opinions, why not change the definition of “pig” to “tasty when covered in barbecue sauce”?