MGF Presents The SMonday Swindle Sheet #144

Columns

Welcome back to The SMonday Swindle Sheet.

Anyone who was surprised when Anna Nicole bought the farm this past week is as idiotic as the people who were surprised when Prince positioned his guitar to look like a giant schlong during the Super Bowl half-time show. The only thing to be surprised about is that she lived as long as she did.

One of my old college buddies, Lon Strickland, has some words on the topic…

Are you f*cking kidding me? With all the shit going on right now, this is the major news of the day. A fat fame hungry gold digging sloppy mess drops dead from a drug overdose, and that’s major news? CNN covered that story all day on Friday. ALL FUCKING DAY! What about… I don’t know, the WAR? If you ask me, it was a perfect distraction from a story full of holes and false truths; Astronaut Lisa Nowak’s 900 mile trek across country to murder a romantic rival? Hu? I have this gut feeling that this story is complete bullshit. I found this article, which is probably also complete bullshit, involving Nowak and an ‘anomalous object’ grazing our Earth’s atmosphere??? What?

Never mind all that. Let’s reflect on one of our country’s greatest contributors to society; Anna Nicole Smith, a champion of sorts. Oh no, not Anna Nicole Smith! Noooooooooooo! Take me instead, God! Take me instead! I say make her a saint! Put that bitch in the Bible! FAAART!

Agreed. Yes, she was hot tamales back in 1994, but back then the Democratic Republic of Congo was known as Zaïre, so suffice to say, it was a completely different world back then. Go visit Lon’s site, ShitMovies.net.

BLURBS OF THE WEEK

MGF’s Next Big Thing, Daniel Kozuh, covered the Grammys on Sunday, and you can read the report, right here. Find out who the big winners were, which legends performed (and which didn’t) and see who the big corporate shills for the night were.

Ozzy Osbourne kicked off an OzzFest press conference at the Concert Industry Consortium, in Los Angeles last Tuesday, by spray-painting the word “FREE” across a concert poster, thereby announcing that the popular hard rock festival would be free of charge for the first time in its 12-year history. “It’s business as usual, except it’s free. We want to encourage new music and new talent … Ozzy’s been touring 30… 35 years, and he’s done very well, and it’s time to give something back,” the singer’s wife, Sharon Osbourne, told reporters, adding that participating bands would still be selling merchandise. Ozzy then interrupted his wife, saying that actually meant that the concert posters would be free, and not the concert itself. But it was already too late. Way to go, Sharon Osbourne, once again you’ve screwed everything up for everyone.

Fresh out of rehab, country singer Keith Urban has kicked off his comeback tour by suing Keith D. Urban, of Wayne, N.J., who is a painter and owner of KeithUrban.com (the singer was forced to buy KeithUrban.net instead), accusing him of violating federal trademark laws. In the lawsuit, filed on Friday in a U.S. District Court in Nashville, Tenn., Urban (the singer) claims that the home page on Urban’s (the painter’s) site reads “You have reached the site of Keith Urban. To those who don’t know, oil painting is one of my hobbies,” which misleads readers into believing that the singer is linked to the site. While Urban reportedly isn’t seeking any money in the suit, he wants the ownership of the KeithUrban.com address, and wants a statement on the site specifying that the painter is not him and has no relation to him.


If I were Keith Urban the singer, I wouldn’t want people thinking that I painted this, either. Of course, if you get suckered into buying a painting showing Al and Peggy Bundy with the United States Capitol, thinking that Australian singer Keith Urban painted it, you deserve to be fooled, and then beaten to death with your computer monitor.

After exchanging words like a mug with fellow rapper Cam’ron on New York’s Hot 97 late last month, 50 Cent continued to beat the dead horse last week when he distributed a video clip of “Funeral Music”, a new Cam’ron diss track, on YouTube and DJ Kay Slay‘s MySpace page. The video, which contains copious amounts of money, guns and loose women, features 50 Cent ripping on Cam’ron and the Diplomats: making fun of Cam getting shot only once and being a puss n[edited for sensitivity in re Mathan Erhardt v. Ryan T. Murphy and Mitch Michaels (2003)], making fun of his rhyme style and even saying that Cam should be demoted below Juelz Santana and Jim Jones in the Diplomats hierarchy. Well… snap! At the end of the clip, in an addendum that we are not able to show due to an ongoing legal battle, 50 Cent proceeded to diss Snickers candy bars by dressing up like Rip Taylor and making out with Paul Oakenfold and not insisting on justifying his heterosexuality by ripping out his chest hair. Take that, Snickers!

R. Kelly was rushed to a Miami-area hospital last Sunday after complaining of pains in his abdomen, and was diagnosed shortly thereafter with appendicitis. The R&B singer, who is currently on trial for child-pornography charges, was in town for the Super Bowl, and had to miss the game (which, as far as I’m concerned, never happened), as his appendix was removed the next day. Late last week, he was still recovering in the hospital, and was actually unable to attend a scheduled hearing on Wednesday, though the hearing proceeded as planned without him. When asked when he would be able to travel back to Chicago, Kelly told reporters for The SMonday Swindle Sheet, in an EXCLUSIVE interview, that he would be OK by the weekend, and was planning on having the surgeons save his appendix for him, as he planned to urinate on it once he got back home.

Bloc Party are currently searching for a replacement drummer after Matt Tong was forced out of commission after an ongoing respiratory ailment caused one of his lungs collapse while the band was touring the U.S. While that tour is completed, they are preparing for a U.K. tour, and will need to find another drummer in order to keep from canceling those dates.

In other Bloc Party related news, they will be one of the many acts to perform at this year’s South by Southwest music festival, scheduled for March 14-18 in Austin, Texas. Other confirmed performers include The Stooges (who will be releasing The Weirdness—their first album in over 30 years—on March 20), Mastodon, Against Me!, Jello Biafra, Andrew Bird, Cracker, Kings of Leon, Aesop Rock, El-P, Evidence and DJ Babu of Dilated Peoples, Amy Winehouse, The Detroit Cobras, Les Claypool and Electric Apricot, The Mooney Suzuki, Peaches, Rjd2 and The Faint. For a more complete list, visit the festival’s Web site, right here. InsidePulse.com will once again be sending ace reporter JJ Botter to Austin for the event, and since Aaron Cameron no longer works here, there shouldn’t be any more problems.

The phallic Guitar Silhouette Incident notwithstanding, The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince But Currently Known Once Again As Just Prince also covered the Foo Fighters‘ “Best of You” during the Super Bowl half-time show last Sunday. While members of the band were just as surprised (and “thrilled”) by the performance—which also included versions of “All Along the Watchtower” and “Proud Mary”—as fans were, they’re still not sure whether it was done because Prince liked the song, or because he’s still a little salty about the Foo Fighters covering “Darling Nikki” for an Australian import in 2003 (he had sent the band a message through Entertainment Weekly, saying, “write your own songs”). If the latter is the case, and Prince wanted to reciprocate by covering one of the Foo Fighters’ songs, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made the intended impression on the band. Mathan Erhardt, on the other hand, is certain the song was done as a secret code to subliminally make people become Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s a good theory Math, but actually, it’s a lot more simple than that… he did cover “All Along the Watchtower”… WATCHTOWER?!?! I don’t think I need to explain this any further. You heard it here first.


Was Prince (inset) making a reference to the popular Jehovah’s Witnesses magazine during his Super Bowl halftime performance? Or, an even more chilling question: Does anyone else notice that that guy on the cover looks exactly like FDR?

EMI Group PLC announced this week that it is looking into selling its digital catalog without MP3 protection on the files, after having received positive feedback from fans after offering copy-protection-free music files from a few of its artists. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that EMI has requested that music retailers submit proposals letting the label know what size advance payments it would offer in exchange for being able to sell the unprotected music files. Normally, the RIAA would be all over this, but they’ve currently got their main contingent busy with breaking the legs of 11-year-old McKenzie Davis and half of his class at Valley View Middle School in Edina, Minn., for illegal sharing of the new Fall Out Boy album. Fucking Fall Out Boy…

(+44) bassist/singer Mark Hoppus made a post on his MySpace page last week saying that the band’s drummer and Hoppus’ blink-182 bandmate Travis Barker would not be returning to tour with the band anytime soon, and he’s still recovering after breaking his arm late last year. While none of the major media outlets are reporting as such, “breaking his arm,” is actually journalism code for “contracting a nasty case of herpes from Paris Hilton.” You heard it here first.

A report publicized last Thursday by the Cuyahoga County coroner’s office specified the cause of R&B singer Gerald Levert‘s death, which was ruled as a cocktail of prescription and over-the-counter meds. According to the autopsy, drugs found in Levert’s bloodstream included Vicodin, Percodet, Darvocet, Xanax and two over-the-counter antihistamines. Eric S. is said to be extremely proud.

After approaching Blue Note Records exec Eli Wolf, telling him, “Yo, man. You want a real Al Green record? Come see me,” Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of The Roots has been tapped to produce Green’s new album.

Rapper Jadakiss was indicted on Thursday in a New York state court in Manhattan, on charges of weapons and drug possession, after local police found an unregistered firearm and undisclosed amount of marijuana in his vehicle last October. If convicted, the rapper could face up to seven years in prison. In other rapper-in-jail related news, The SMonday Swindle Sheet was able to speak with unsigned rapper Freemont Wilson, an inmate at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Ill., last Friday in an EXCLUSIVE interview, where he commented on the Jadakiss situation. “Jada is dope,” Wilson told reporters. “I rapped over this one beat that I made that sampled the Cheers theme. Then I stabbed some guy because he told me that it was actually ‘Only the Good Die Young’ by Billy Joel.”

Cheers
-JF2k7!