Ozzy + WWE = WTF?!?!

I need a question answered. This one has been bugging me for years, if not decades. I have posed the question on a number of occasions and have never received an adequate answer, so if you fall into this category I would appreciate a thorough and appropriate response. The question is this: even knowing that wrestling is 100% scripted and fake, the outcomes are pre-ordained and the moves are rehearsed, how can you derive any pleasure from watching it? I’ve asked the question several times and the typical response is, “Dude, it’s just awesome.” Some people will say, “Those guys are some pretty serious athletes.” And I don’t dispute their athleticism, because a guy’s got to have some serious dexterity to launch 300 pounds of meat into the air and land on 250 pounds of meat without crushing the smaller meat’s windpipe. But after seeing that feat of murder-avoidance carried out every week, don’t you get bored? Especially considering that it’s such a small portion of the show, taking a backseat to the exaggerated, beefed up melodrama and phony controversy. I mean, when I was 12 I thought wrestling was pretty cool, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that Mean Gene was prodding the thick-necks to stay on script and that at no point did it appear that fists were making contact to faces. And it was about that time I gave up on wrestling for the cold realism and drama of GI Joe. And the whole ridiculous kabuki theater nature of wrestling comes into stark reality when they bring on celebrity guests that “inadvertently” get caught up in an altercation in the ring. Like when Seth Green wrestled with Triple H and John Cena. I don’t care who’s helping him out, that dude should have ended up looking like Bishop at the end of Aliens. I only bring this up now, in the Backstage Blog, because on the slate for upcoming episodes of WWE Raw are Ozzy, Bob Barker, Shaq, and Cedric the Entertainer. Shaq is the only one that makes even a modicum of sense because I’m pretty sure you could take a wrecking ball to the side of that dude’s head and it wouldn’t have an effect. Cedric? Bob Barker? Ozzy, for crapsake? I’ve seen Ozzy locked in an epic battle to the death with a slice of warm cheddar and come up on the losing end. I swear if Ozzy starts flailing up against the knee of the Undertaker or something and somehow miraculously wins, that’s got to be the point at which the planet gives up on wrestling, right? Anyone? 

Courtney Causes Me To Invoke Shenanigans

Well, as of now, Courtney Love and her daughter Francis Bean are off Twitter. They have cancelled their accounts never to darken your Twitter window ever again. And while most people say “good riddance” I’m calling shenanigans! Now, don’t get me wrong. I think the farther you can keep Courtney from a keyboard the better. The woman should be tried for keyboard rights violations for the way she tortures the keys with her rambling rants of narcissism. Plus cutting down on the number of venues for her fame-whoring is never a bad thing. So Courtney’s self-imposed exile from Twitter is just fine by me. But Francis Bean? At first that didn’t make much sense and then I read what she wrote that allegedly caused her to flee, and that’s when it came to me: shenanigans. Here’s how the whole thing started. Apparently Courtney Love was at Paris’ Fashion Week and she brought Francis Bean along. There they saw Ali Lohan, Lindsey’s little sister, getting the VIP treatment. (I’m assuming that VIP stands for Very Intoxicated Pumpkin because that’s about the only phrase that could match Ali Lohan with the anagram VIP.) Upon seeing this, Francis Bean took to the Twitter to lay into Lohan. Now briefly remind yourself of the rambling screeds and incoherent word jumbles that Francis’ mother has posted to her various sites in the past. Now, this is what Francis wrote to Ali Lohan.    

“(You’re) not entitled to anything simply because your sister has a recognizable name. Your idea of fame isn’t fame. It’s infamy. You want to be famous? Work your ass off and make decisions that could potentially catapult your career into a lasting one. You lack the talent, social understanding and credibility to be anything other than infamous. It will be the formality of fame that puts you on the covers of tabloids, while the public idly watches you (plummet) into the murky abyss shared with the likes of Spencer Pratt and Jon Gosselin who, I’m sure, will steal your money whilst there.”

It was not long after this that both Courtney and Francis’ accounts were deleted. People are speculating that the backlash from the Lohan fans drove them from Twitter, which is silly because any actual fans of the Lohans are so stupid that they think you access the internet by shouting into sewer grates. And even if there were such thing as an Ali Lohan fan, they would have heard that rant and immediately become a Francis Bean fan because that was about as concise and well-worded of a description of Ali Lohan’s place in the halls of celebrity as could be written by a PHD of internet snark, let alone a 16-year-old girl who’s legal guardian is Courtney Love. But that’s why my shinana-senses are tingling. That’s because I think Courtney yanked both accounts so that no one would think to do a side-by-side comparison of the insipid blather that Courtney poops out on her Twitter and the insightful, interesting and amusing barbs that Francis posted up on hers. Courtney is just conceited enough to not want to compete with her daughter. So it is my theory that it wasn’t the Lohans, but Courtney’s own jealousy that deleted those accounts.

Joe Perry Sleeps With Non-Fans

And in another little bit of relatives-of-famous-people news, apparently Billie Perry isn’t much of an Aerosmith fan, which wouldn’t be such a big deal except she’s married to the guitarist. Joe Perry’s wife recently Twittered that she doesn’t care for Aerosmith’s albums, which is probably why she’s never listened to one all the way through. She wrote, “I am not a fan of AEROSMITH’s music without the live performance behind it. Honestly I have never listened to one CD all the way through. I listen in the studio when they record. I’ve never put an AERO CD on my player. I did order a few songs from iTunes, but have not listened.”

Gene Simmons Has All The Sympathy Of An Uzi

Let it be known that Gene Simmons is a total hard-ass. Consummate huckster and perpetual promoter, Gene Simmons is known primarily as a product pitchman who deals in garish kitsch with his band’s name emblazoned on it and in a distant second as the guy who plays bass on a bunch of over-simple tunes apparently written by the penis of a 14-year-old boy. The guy is generally a joke as far as his persona is concerned. He’s Droopy Dog in a novelty Halloween witch wig and kabuki make-up spitting fire and stage blood. But his business nature is not reserved only for band-stamped condoms but also for the members of the band itself. On this current tour the only two original members on stage are Gene and Paul Stanley. When asked how he felt about Ace Freely and Peter Criss no longer being in the band he addressed the question with all the sentiment of a well honed samurai sword. Gene says, they “belonged in the band, and later on they did not.”  Gene explained that after a point, Ace and Peter should be at home so they could “save their lives and try to turn their lives around.”  Simmons added that Kiss is not “a babysitting service…and if anybody catches anything in your bloodstream, you should be thrown out on your ass.  Your medals should be stripped, you’re gone.” 

Romance Tips From Ozzy

And all you guys out there looking to impress your lady, it’s time for a lesson in class from Ozzy Osbourne. There’s a reason why metalheads have a reputation for being excessively classy, elegant to a fault, severely sophisticated. It’s because they’ve been taking lessons from Ozzy for years. When you see a guy in a trucker hat standing on his front step in his boxer shorts scratching his nuts and cat calling ladies walking by, you know that he’s an Ozzy fan. And Ozzy’s latest suggestion to romance your lady is flowers. From a cemetery. But Ozzy doesn’t recommend techniques he hasn’t tried himself. Yes, apparently back in the good old days when he chased a couple of fistfuls of Quaaludes with a barrel of Jameson’s every morning just to remember how to find reverse on his Jaguar, Ozzy brought Sharon home bouquet of cemetery flowers. And he would have got away with it too if he hadn’t neglected to remove the attached card that read, “In Loving Memory of Mary.” He said: “It was late and I went into a graveyard and nicked some flowers off a freshly-dug grave. Then I forgot to take the card off. That went down like a pair of knickers. ‘Oh thank you for the flowers… you f***er.’ ”

He says he’s not on the booze or drugs anymore but he is still addicted, only now it’s to working out. Ozzy says, “Now I exercise like a maniac. I’m addicted to it. I do about an hour and a half and 500 sit-ups every day. I really need that endorphin rush.”

It’s a follow-up Friday, or at least it would be if it weren’t Thursday. Regardless, the blog is full of updates of stories I’ve already done, which is fun because people love continuing stories like Caddyshack 2 and Jaws 3D and The Son of the Mask and Blues Brothers 2000 and Batman and Robin! The Backstage Blog will be like all those rolled into one! So before you come to your senses and change the station, let the updates begin!

Please Keep Your Penis In Your Pants At Concerts

First up, a brief reminder to you gentlemen in the audience tonight to please refrain from spraying urine all over the concert-goers in the row in front of you. Thanks. That should have been the announcement made previous to the Boston Kiss concert because one guy thought that it might not be such a big deal if he whip it out and hose down the lady standing in front of him. This story is an update because it was about two months ago that I did a story where the same thing happened at a Metallica concert, also in Boston. To my knowledge the Kiss guy was different from the Metallica guy because the Metallica guy was a Boston cop. The one thing the two had in common was they were both completely wrecked. And that is the really shocking part. That someone would be such a cliché, such a cosmic joke of a human being that they’d drink to such excess and black out part of the show, vomit, act like a super-sized a-hole, start fights or, as in this case, douse some unsuspecting house wife with a few gallons of recycled PBR. But that’s what happened. Apparently a woman was just basking in the geriatric glow of Kiss, enjoying Gene Simmons’ patented Cialis pill bottle solo when suddenly she experienced “a warm feeling on the back of her leg.” She spun around only to discover the man standing behind her was in the throws of voiding his bladder. Security was called over, the guy was hauled off and cops later charged him with open and gross lewdness and disorderly conduct. Cops also noted in the “Well Duh” box supplied on the police report that the man was visibly intoxicated, slurring his speech and reeked to high heaven of tub gin and butt. So again, guys, quit drinking yourself into a blackout at concerts and, more importantly, quit peeing on people. K? Thanks.  

Thom York Speaks In Opposites. Bizarro Shakes His Head Approvingly

Update 2, turns out Radiohead may not be done releasing full albums after all. Last week Thom York said “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. I mean, it’s just become a real drag. We’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.” Well, apparently what Thom meant to say was, “Hey everybody! We’re going to hit the studio this winter to record a brand new full length album. LOL!” But since Thom didn’t make himself clear, guitarist Ed O’Brein had to clear that up with Britain’s New Music Express.

Metallica Are In A Giving Mood. Sort Of.

And it appears that Metallica has finally come to the conclusion that taking care of their fans will only increase their fan base, something that everyone on the planet with a computer in 2000 could have told them already. They really seem to be getting into this whole giving away music for free thing, or at least relatively free and relatively given away. If you have an iPhone you can get the new Metallica app that creates a streaming interface to your LiveMetallica account meaning that any show you have downloaded from the site will automatically stream to your iPhone. Along with that, audio from their latest concert will always be streaming for free. So if they play a kickass show in Kerbleckistan, the audio will be up the next day and streaming for free to your iPhone until their next show. Of course streaming means you don’t get to keep it or play it from anything but the Metallica website, but baby steps.

Remember, It’s Not Axl’s Fault. That’s The Important Part

A quick update on the whole GNR copyright infringement case. I told you yesterday how Axl is being accused of lifting whole sections from two of ambient synth-gazer Ulrich Schnauss’ songs. I even provided audio clips to prove that GNR fully sampled the songs, apparently without approval. Well, today we hear that Axl has finally done the honorable thing in this situation. He blamed someone else. GNR’s manager said in a statement, “The band believed when the record came out and still believes that there are no unauthorized samples on the track. The snippets of ‘ambient noise’ in question were provided by a member of the album’s production team who has assured us that these few seconds of sound were obtained legitimately. Artists these days can’t read the minds of those they collaborate with and therefore are unfortunately vulnerable to claims like this one. While the band resents the implication that they would ever use another artist’s work improperly and are assessing possible counterclaims, they are confident this situation will be satisfactorily resolved.”

Which one has to assume means, “We’re going to add another million dollars to the price tag of this record by paying off some sad-sack, synthesizer noodling Kraut because there’s no way the crap I just said flies in a court of law.”

Temple Of The Dog Reunion (Screw You LA)

It’s been talked about for decades now and it has yet to happen. I think if a poll were to be taken by the rest of the country, 98% would be in favor of it. And it would have nothing but a positive influence on the rest of the world. So the question is why, oh why, hasn’t Los Angeles broken off and fallen into the ocean? Hell, Sony bought time on every network in the country to show you exactly how great it would be with clips from their new movie 2012. When they showed that trailer in the theater before Harry Potter a few months ago people became so excited by the prospect of Los Angeles exploding before cracking off and slipping into the Pacific that theater goers started having spontaneous fits of orgasmic pleasure. Parents complained because there were children in the theater at the time, but when the cops showed up to remove the writhing, spasming masses, they glimpsed LA in its final throws on screen and they too were rendered ecstatically immobile. I only bring this up because… eff LA, that’s why. I’m sick of them getting cool stuff all the time. And why? Because some movie people tried to escape being taxed by moving to the desert and erected a jungle of strip malls for 12 million maniacs to shoot each other in? There’s no other good reason for it! You know who likes LA? No one. Even the people living there would prefer that the Earth do them a favor and swallow them whole. Yet it has yet to happen, which is why once again LA got to witness something that just about any music loving city in the world would kill to see: an on-stage Chris Cornell/Pearl Jam reunion. Cornell came out to tear some faces with a live performance of “Hunger Strike” proving once and for all that if he really wanted to still shred, he could because his voice hasn’t slipped at all since ‘91. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Jerry Cantrell joined Pearl Jam on stage LATER THAT NIGHT to solo on “Alive” while Mike McCready skipped around on stage throwing handfuls of guitar picks at the first five rows.