Headline/press release/correction trifecta: Britney NOT playing lesbian killer stripper

“Britney Rep: Singer Not Playing Killer Lesbian Stripper In Film”

A rep for Brit denied the reports, telling Access Hollywood, “Though she definitely intends to explore acting roles down the road, right now she’s concentrating on recording her next album.”

Somewhat of a surprise, since it wasn’t just the London scandal-sheet tabs that reported it: so did the Daily Telegraph, a respectable broadsheet, and even the LA Times. (None were sourced, of course.)

(Via, via.)

Press release of the day: Extreme syrupsploitation

World’s First Extreme Relaxation Beverage is Premiere Sponsor at 3rd Annual Tastemakers DJ/Music Conference & OZONE Awards

drank™ is Official Beverage of Artist Panel Discussion at Largest Music Event in Southern Rap History

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--drank™, (IBGH.PK) the world’s first extreme relaxation beverage, is participating in the Tastemakers DJ/Music Conference & OZONE Awards in Houston, Texas, August 8-11, 2008. Now in its third year, the conference is one of the hip hop music industry’s foremost annual events.

As part of the 4-day conference, drank is the title sponsor of the popular Artist Panel discussion on Sunday, August 10 from 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. cst, which in the past, has drawn record crowds eager to learn the secrets of success from some of hip hop’s most notable and up and coming stars. Panelists slated to participate in this year’s Artists Panel include Slim Thug, Webbie, Killer Mike, Shawty Lo, Rick Ross, Bun B, Flo Rida and others. During the panel discussion, hip hop royalty will be sipping the grape-flavored, carbonated relaxation beverage while sharing their stories...

drank will have a full-court presence during the Artist Panel discussion. Peter Bianchi, drank creator and CEO of Innovative Beverage Group of Houston will introduce the Artists Panel along with famed DJ TJ Chapman. drank models stationed around the Ballroom of the Americas will help guests “slow their roll” with continuous servings of the light purple drink, and the Artist Panel participants will keep their cool with this new beverage that has already received widespread media attention.

So it’s a light purple drink called “drank” that will “slow your roll,” and it’s being marketed heavily in the Houston rap scene. Hmm, I wonder what sizzurp drug craze they’re exploiting? Have they considered making Pimp C a posthumous mascot?

Apparently they needed to ramp up their marketing from two months ago, when it was called “extreme relaxation” in a press release but on the can was labeled merely an “anti-energy drink.” Because who would really associate that with getting high and rapping really slow?

‘Bullet & Brain’!

Headline hall of fame: ‘Britney’ + ‘lesbian’ + ‘stripper’ + ‘killer’ + ‘Tarantino’

‘Britney Spears to play lesbian killer in Quentin Tarantino film’

And the dek: “Britney Spears is being lined up to play a killer lesbian stripper in the [sic] Quentin Tarantino’s next movie, it has been reported.”

It’s a remake of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, which means that Russ Meyer also could have — and really should have — made it in the headline somewhere.

Fallen teen-pop virgin princess, undone by fast living and bad motherhood, stars in Tarantino version of one of the kinkiest sexpolitation flicks ever made. Pretty brilliant move for both Brit and Quentin, I’d say, although I’m sure that somewhere out there are some very disappointed boob fetishists.

‘Thank God she only had two!’

‘...Their thoughts can kill!’

Bragging rights: ‘Best Music Writing 2008’

I’m thrilled to report that an article of mine will be included in the 2008 edition of Da Capo’s Best Music Writing anthology, which will be out in September. Nelson George was the guest editor, and he chose my profile of Stargate, the Norwegian production duo behind hits by Beyoncé, Rihanna and others.

I’m in very good company. Here’s the full table of contents:

• CARL WILSON * The Trouble With Indie Rock: It’s Not Just Race, It’s Class * Slate
• BILL WASIK * Annuals * Oxford American
• CLIVE THOMPSON * Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog * The New York Times
• JEFF WEISS * Soulja Boy: Cranking the Chain * LA Weekly
• DANYEL SMITH * Keyshia Cole: Hell’s Angel * Vibe
• NOAH BERLATSKY * Underrated Overground * Chicago Reader
• SOLVEJ SCHOU * First Person: Auditioning for this Season’s ‘American Idol’ * Associated Press
• BEN SISARIO * Wizards in the Studio, Anonymous on the Street * The New York Times
• BRANDON PERKINS * Wu-Tang: Widdling Down Infinity: Can a Bunch of old, dirty bastards save hip-hop for a third time or will the math just collapse upon itself? * URB
• JONATHAN CUNNINGHAM * Freaks Come Out at Night: Grandmaster Dee Cuts a Wide Swath on the Comeback Trail * Broward-Palm Beach New Times
• NADIA PFLAUM * Pay 2 Play: Hip-hop Hustlers are making Off with Kansas City Rappers’ Hard-Earned Cash * The Kansas City Pitch
• ANN POWERS * It’s Time to Kick this Addiction * Los Angeles Times
• NIKE D’ANDREA * Bad Habits: NunZilla’s Punk-rock Catechism Will Leave you Praying for More * Phoenix New Times
• J. BENNETT * Dimmu Borgir * Decibel Magazine
• ERIC PAPE * “We Sing Everything. We have Nothing Else” * Spin
• ANDY TENNILLE * Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings * Harp
• MARKE B * Gayest. Music. Ever.: The Death of Circuit, Energy 92.7, and the New Queer Dance Floor Diaspora * San Francisco Bay Guardian
• PHIL SUTCLIFFE * Pete Seeger * MOJO
• JEFF SHARLET * The People’s Singer: the Embattled Lee Hays * Oxford American
• LARRY BLUMENFELD * Band on the Run in New Orleans * Salon
• DAVID KAMP * Sly Stone’s Higher Power * Vanity Fair
• MATT ROGERS * Beast from the East: Mandrill’s Musical brew is Equal Parts Brooklyn and Motherland * Wax Poetics
• OLIVER WANG * Boogaloo Nights * The Nation
• SAM KASHNER * Fever Pitch: When Travolta Did Disco; the Making of Saturday Night Fever * Movies Rock
• SEAN NELSON * Dead Man Talking: “Kurt Cobain: About a Son” * The Stranger
• JODY ROSEN * A Pirate Looks at Sixty: Jimmy Buffett’s Mid-Life Crises * Slate
• ALAN LIGHT * The Notorious BIG * Blender
• ALEX ROSS * Apparition in the Woods * The New Yorker
• GARY GIDDINS * Back to Bossa: Rosa Passos and Fifty Years of Bossa Nova. * The New Yorker
• DAVID MARGOLICK * The Day Louis Armstrong Made Noise * The New York Times
• CRAVEN ROCK * On Lynyrd Skynyrd and the White Trash Thing * Around the Bend * Ten Years * Eaves of Ass #6
• TOM EWING * The History Book on the Shelf: ABBA * Pitchfork Media

The series has been coming out annually since 2000, and always includes as an appendix a list of “other notable essays” that are often just as good. This year Idolator has put together a handy four-part index of links to those articles.

‘Panik in Manhattan’?

Also appreciated ...

... in the industrial design galleries at MoMA: vintage posters.

Not wild about wartime slave labor, though.

(Via.)

‘Groucho-Shiva’

Finally made it to “Dalí: Painting and Film” at MoMA over the weekend. An interesting and well designed show, and a real feast for any Surrealism fan. But must, must remember never to go to MoMA on a Saturday afternoon. It felt like an airport, and Dalí in particular was the most crowded show I’ve been to since Leonardo at the Met five years ago. At least this time people didn’t go over each piece with a magnifying glass, but the cattle pen that was the opening room (with Un chien andalou) almost sent me home.

The biggest reason I’m glad I stayed is this:

Dalí was apparently a huge Marx Brothers fan, with a particular admiration for Harpo. (Dalí once sent him a harp strung with barbed wire; Harpo sent back a photo of bandaged hands.) Dalí proposed a script for a Marx Brothers movie, called “Giraffes on Horseback Salad”; Groucho rejected it. But at some point he drew a number of pictures of the Marxes, including the above “Groucho-Shiva” from 1937.

Unfortunately that image, which is credited to the collection of “James and Lee Marx,” is not reproduced in the exhibition catalog, nor on any poster or postcard or anything else that I could see. I would love to know more about it.

The show also features Dalí’s collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (he did the dream sequence in Spellbound) and even Walt Disney, with whom he worked on an aborted cartoon called “Destino,” which is shown in posthumously completed form, and it’s amazing. Also worth seeing are Dalí’s insane portraits of Hollywood bigshots like Jack Warner.

Bragging rights

Thank you, Brooklyn Vegan, for referring to two of my recent stories in four consecutive blog items.

BV also has information about the Bell House, a significant new venue under construction in Brooklyn, which was unfortunately omitted from my piece on Thursday.

‘Japan was fucking confusing, and I was confusing too’

Ladies and gentlemen, voters of Japan: Yuya Uchida, singer of the Flower Travellin’ Band, Ventures collaborator, co-writer of what was perhaps the first Japanese film “conceived in a jail cell,” and onetime candidate for governor of Tokyo.

(Thanks to Hiro.)