Welcome back to The SMonday Swindle Sheet.
This edition is the very first since I’ve begun working nights, and booyyy… is it f*cking with my sleep. I usually go in around 9:30pm, and I leave around 8am or so, depending on how much work still needs to get done. Plus, a lot of the people that I’m working with now are real f*cking pieces of work. Basically, these are the people that don’t come out during the day because they can’t handle interaction with normal society. And I am in charge of 30 of them. The only upside is that I get three days off now instead of four, and I have Saturday, Sunday and Monday off. Ergo, I can still get this column done on time (relatively speaking). In the meantime, I still have to figure out how I’m going to keep up with The Wednesday Review Roundup, as well as a CD review that I promised Murtz I would try to do this week sometime. Fuck sleep, I guess…
OPENING SHOT…
BLURBS OF THE WEEK
Rapper/producer TIMBALAND recently told reporters that he’s strongly considering retiring from music because he’s just too damn good. “I don’t need to do anything for money. I’m just glad to have a job. But music is boring right now. I’m too innovative for the world. I’ve been doing it so long, I’m about to throw in the towel. I’m about to de-crown myself and pass it over to one of the up-and-coming producers under me. They won’t be able to be me—there’s only one Timbaland—but there’s a certain sound that I try to teach.” Oh, shut up right now. “Too innovative for the world”? Oh yeah, so innovative that you rehashed the same song twice on your crappy new album (read my review of said crappy album right here)?
ROD STEWART cut his leg open on Thursday night, at a rain-soaked concert in Manchester, England. While he had to concert an event the next day in London, he was able to attend the weekend’s Concert for Diana. The singer had been making his entrance onto the stage at the Manchester show when he slipped and caught the edge of a metal stair. Though he would later receive ten stitches for the injury, he was able to make it through the majority of his planned set, though, according to close friends, he still will not stop whining about it.
50 CENT blamed his having to lip-sync a song Tuesday night at the BET Awards (as reported in last week’s Most Ridiculous Item of the Week) on the fact that he had collided with a trapeze performer (essentially a stage prop) that night as he was getting onto the stage to perform, and it caused him to lose focus and have to lip-sync the song. “Everything doesn’t quite happen the way you practice it,” the rapper explained during a subsequent appearance on BET’s 106 & Park. “You see, I was hit by the aerialist and I was wibbly-wobbling coming down [to the stage]. Twenty five feet in the air, man, you fall… can’t nobody help me with that, you know what I mean? Then by the time you get down, you try and regroup to fight… the music starts, we four bars into the song, you know. I just wasn’t concentrating.” Bullshit. If Rod Stewart can slice his leg open and perform an entire set… in the rain immediately afterwards, your useless sack-of-shit should be able to get through one f*cking song. Just admit that you got lazy and wanted to rest on your laurels, and then please promptly f*ck off.
MORRISSEY, whom Mexicans love, had to cut a concert short in Boston last Tuesday, as he was suffering from a throat infection. He managed to get through seven songs, but was unable to continue and had to end the show early. After seeing a doctor shortly thereafter, he was ordered not to sing for three days, and had to cancel shows in Northampton, Mass., and Philadelphia as a result. Luckily, though, he was able to perform at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, which is good, because New York has a lot more Mexicans than Northampton and Philadelphia combined.
In other throat-malady-related news, THE USED have been forced to cancel this summer’s appearances on the Warped Tour after singer Bert McCracken developed a node on his vocal cords, requiring him to undergo throat surgery this month. Doctors are expecting McCracken to make a full recovery, and have reportedly told him that he’ll be able to sing in about five weeks, to which he replied, “Great, because I never could before!” HA!
News Headline: Vince Neil launches tequila
I also usually end up launching it, usually at the end of the night.
Rapper/actress EVE pled guilty to charges of driving under the influence of alcohol on Thursday, after having totaled her car in Los Angeles back in April. The plea bargain, which was entered by her attorney in a Los Angeles County Superior Court (she was not present for the hearing), requires her to pay a $1400 fine and wear an blood-monitoring ankle bracelet for 45 days. She also has to enroll in an alcohol education and stay the f*ck away from Vince Neil.
In other rap-related news, XZIBIT stormed off the set of Australian television show Rove last week, after he was slated to perform, but was angry when it was revealed that he had to perform a duet with Canadian singer MICHAEL BUBLE, something that he had not known about previous to appearing at the Melbourne studio. While he was already upset by the situation, the straw that apparently broke the camel’s back was a snarky comment by a production crew member, which resulted in the rapper accusing Rove of being “racist”. Hey, I’d be pissed off if I had to duet with Michael Buble, too. Eh, maybe I’d do it… I need the money. In any event, Ol’ XZ later found himself having to clarify to people who thought he was calling host Rove McManus racist, when he was actually referring to the show, specifically the production crew thereof. See why setting things in italics is so important? He later had to perform some further damage control by reprimanding some overzealous fans who were flooding the Rove Web site with flame mails, saying that emoticons are for lame losers. Ooh… Tom D’Errico is not going to be happy about that.
News Headline: Lil Wayne to host online talent show
In a related story, Stevie Wonder will teach behind-the-wheel driver’s education this summer for students of Saginaw High School in Saginaw, Mich.
After a long, rather shameless publicity buildup, ’90s pop group SPICE GIRLS finally announced last Thursday that they would indeed be reuniting for an 11-date world tour next winter, which would be the first time the original lineup has appeared together since GERI HALLIWELL left in 2001. In the interest of journalistic integrity, here‘s a NOT WORK SAFE, low-quality scan of a collage of various naked photos of Geri Halliwell, featuring both pre- and post-breast implant shots.
LILY ALLEN was arrested on Thursday on allegations of assault, stemming from an incident back in March in which she punched and kicked a few paprazzi outside of a London nightclub. According to a witness, Allen “went berserk”, even going so far as to roundhouse kick one photographer. After being arrested and questioned by police at a West End precinct, Allen was fingerprinted and had to undergo DNA sampling and a mug shot. She was released on bail shortly thereafter, as she luckily was smart enough to resist roundhouse kicking the police officer who took the mug shot.
News Headline: Steven Tyler follows a strict beauty regime
It was a slow news day.
Undercover Christ-rockers RELIENT K had to cancel an appearance at the Cornerstone Festival in Bushnell, Illinois, on Thursday after their tour bus and trailer burst into flames while they were driving from Pennsylvania to Illinois. While most of their equipment was ruined, none of the 12 band and crew members were injured. In a statement issued to fans, the band said: “We’re happy to take our health and well-being over some torched guitars and charred MacBook Pros any day.” Fuck, the MacBook Pros are probably what started the damn fire in the first place.
After garnering positive feedback from the mixtape track “Us Placers” earlier this year, the trio of KANYE WEST, LUPE FIASCO and PHARRELL WILLIAMS are apparently intending to record and release more tracks as the “supergroup” (unofficially referred to as Child Rebel Soldier), with an upcoming album as a possibility. “It’s a little project that me, Kanye, and Skateboard P sat down and was like, ‘Yo let’s do a group.'” Fiasco told reporters. “‘Us Placers’ was the first record we came out with. Now we sitting down deciding if we really going to go hard or not, but we working on some surprises. It depends what it sounds like. We gotta make some more records. Everybody is mad busy, Kanye is doing his record, Pharrell’s in the studio, I’m working on my record, so we gonna wait til everything settles down some.” Kanye West, in the meantime, told reporters for The SMonday Swindle Sheet, in an EXCLUSIVE interview, “Yeah, it’s basically the three of us as a group. We’re calling it a supergroup because I’m in it. Okay, I’m calling it a supergroup because I’m in it.” … In other Black-Jesus-related news, he will be a guest editor for the August/September edition of Complex magazine, for which he already writes a column. Little does Complex magazine know, The SMonday Swindle Sheet has beaten them to the punch a tapper Kanye West as a guest editor for THIS VERY COLUMN. Yes, folks, Kanye West is the greatest man to have ever lived. Even better than Abraham Lincoln. You heard it here first.
Two stadium workers were killed at the Vicente Calderón soccer stadium in Madrid, on Friday, after falling from a scaffold while taking down pieces of the stage from a ROLLING STONES concert that had taken place the preceding night. According to police, the scaffold had collapsed under the weight of three men, who all fell about 30 feet onto a fourth man. Two of the men that had fallen sustained fatal injuries. Luckily, the Rolling Stones were still in town and were able to help reanimate the dead men by using the same groundbreaking, top-secret machine that’s kept KEITH RICHARDS alive all these years. Too soon? Sorry. To the families of the dead men, if they happen to read this, if you pay for me to come out to Spain (preferably in the Barcelona or Córdoba areas) you can kick my ass. If you pay for my hotel you can kick me in the balls, and if you pay for my drinks, I won’t even wear a cup.
Cheers
-JF2k7!
