Last night in the UK, a televised attempt to contact the spirit of Michael Jackson was transmitted to TVs. And people actually watched it! Popjustice’s Peter Robinson called it “the worst thing I have ever seen… [yet] strangely arousing”; another blogger noted that whatever Jackson was saying wasn’t too important—the cosmos-crossing communication was stopped midway through one of his utterances “because Eddie Murphy and Beverly Hills Cop III is on at 11pm.” So was it totally useless? Well, not 100%! MORE »
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The nimbus of his fame
The Michael Jackson Séance: A Whole New World (Of Ways To Fill TV Airtime)
The nimbus of his fame
The Michael Jackson Séance: A Live-TV Experiment That Will No Doubt Be As Revelatory As “The Mystery Of Al Capone’s Vault”
So much for this being it: Tomorrow night, the British cable channel Sky 1 will broadcast a séance in which psychic Derek Acorah attempts to contact Michael Jackson from the great beyond. The interdimensional chat, which will apparently be held “on an island… in a secret location familiar to Jackson” for the purposes of extra paranormal gobbledygook clogging up the transmissions, will be broadcast live. Acorah is a TV pro, hosting TV shows and embarking on tours in the UK, so I’m sure that something will happen during the telecast even if nothing really does, you know? After the jump, the Vaseline-smeared promo for the telefestivities. MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
I Can’t Wait For Lil Wayne To Create A Whole Mixtape About The Cake Created In His Likeness
Possible title: I Can’t Eat My Face. (Click for a larger image.) MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
Bono: Ain’t That American
You may have forgotten that U2 frontman Bono was a very occasional guest columnist for The New York Times—after all, it’s been nine months since his Gray Lady debut, and the missive published in yesterday’s Week In Review section was only his fourth under this arrangement. It’s about Barack Obama’s recently bestowed Nobel Peace Prize! And it opens with a reference to Bono getting in hot water with the FCC earlier this decade. MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
Apparently Today Is “Pop Stars’ Hair Is For Sale” Day
What the hell: “SINGED strands of Michael Jackson’s hair that were burned a Pepsi advert are coming up for sale…. The hair was preserved after the accident in 1984 by [the ad's executive producer Ralph] Cohen and the 12 strands are clearly singed.” Add these preseved tresses—expected to fetch about £1,000 at auction—to the locks from Elvis Presley and Pete Wentz that are up for sale, and you’ve officially got a trend. Although this entrant is more macabre than the other two. And it comes with its own account of how the hairs landed in the previous owner’s possession! MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
Kanye West Is The Best Self-Promoter / Celebrity Theorist Of All Time
Let’s say you’re an international music superstar who’s been suffering through a run of bad press recently, and you’re about to go back into the spotlight with a big, splashy arena run. How best to a) promote your tour, b) send out a message that being a celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and c) retain your artistic integrity? How about a 30-second shot of your (female) tourmate’s torso, which is nude but for a strategically placed hand or two? After all, if there’s one thing that can eradicate the ADD nature of modern humans’ brains, it’s the promise of nipple! The slightly NSFW clip after the jump. MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
Well, this is some sort of nadir: “Kermit the Frog: I’m Not Dating Lady Gaga.” Yes, that’s an actual headline topping a story that someone was paid to write, and someone else was paid to edit, and etc., etc. “He fesses up about his date with Lady Gaga (who called him, not vice versa) and his relationship with a certain pig, dispenses advice to Kanye West and hints at why you haven’t seen him and Fozzie Bear out on the town together, in this special Q & A with PEOPLE.com.” I mean, I love the Muppets too, but all this just makes me miss two things: Standards and Jim Henson. Sigh. [People] MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
50 Cent Tries To Play The Part Of “The Sensitive One”
The Kanye West/Taylor Swift/Beyonce kerfuffle from Sunday night’s Video Music Awards is theratening to take over the entire work week, with the outspoken MC yesterday calling the blonde country singer to apologize after she appeared on the morning yakfest The View and people still looking for the damn thing on YouTube. (All this post-publicity, it should be said, isn’t really helping dampen my cynicism about the whole thing.) Who better to bring up the rear on a big old manufactured media event than 50 “Curtis Jackson” Cent, who in flusher times two years ago tried to hold his own against Kanye sales-wise and failed—and who yesterday appeared on Canadian music channel MuchMusic to defend Swift’s honor? MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
Kanye West: Back To Reality?
Six-ish hours later, and I’m still unsure if the Kanye West/Taylor Swift brouhaha at tonight’s Video Music Awards was a work or a shoot. That is, whether it was the result of a genuine outpouring of emotion on Kanye West’s part, or just a way for the VMAs to sneak up behind the rest of the cable lineup and command the television-watching nation’s attention—no small feat on the night of competing entertainments like regular-season football, the True Blood finale, the US Open women’s final, etc., etc. (Apologies for my continued breaking into wrestling terminology for this, but it really fits: You have one performer who has a history of raising hell and another who has what’s likely the sweetest, most innocent persona in all of Radio City Music Hall; Performer A interrupts a triumphant moment for Performer B, causing strife; audience reactions that inevitably result in “buzz” for your various media properties ensue.) MORE »
The nimbus of his fame
If you spent some time recently thinking about how awesome it would be to have Diff’rent Strokes star/cautionary tale about celebrity Gary Coleman appear on a noise album, and you have a few bucks sitting around waiting to be spent—well, today’s your lucky day, as a composer is currently taking donations that will be put toward compensating him for the use of his voice and likeness in “an abstract music project.” The total’s only at $20 now! [The Point via John Masters] MORE »
