Fat dancers anonymous

Bloody nora – Take That are reforming! Only, they’re not really. ITV is doing a retrospective on the band this December, and all five of them will take part. By which we mean ITV are broadcasting an extended advert for a re-released Take That hits CD this Christmas.

Forget your ipods, your wifi and your psp – THIS is what the cutting-edge of technology should be about.

It’s official: “Tyra Banks has natural breasts; there are no implants”. The former supermodel was groped by a doctor on her talk show this week just to prove it. In a previous programme, she showed the audience pictures of herself before and after they were airbrushed. But wait… aren’t talk shows supposed to be about the guests?

While Tyra gets her ladybuns fondled on live TV, fellow supermodel Helena Christensen works out some althogether darker fetishes in her new photography portfolio.

INXS have chosen a new lead singer in the grand finalé of their not-really-very-widely-seen reality show competition effort. The band insisted they wanted someone new and fresh – not a Michael Hutchence impersonator. But in the end the singer they chose bears an uncanny vocal resemblance to the original frontman. He’s not a bad choice – the song he wrote with INXS in the course of the competition was actually pretty catchy – but you can’t help thinking he’d be better off playing with kids his own age.

…And with that, we’re off to Bordeaux for a week. We’ll bring you back some cheap plonk and a beret.

Bob Dylan again?

Q: Why, when I set my ipod to ‘shuffle’, do the songs not play at random? I seem to hear the same artists over and over again.
A: It’s because the songs are playing at random.

Damn you maths! You have foiled me again.

It’s all explained at Wired News.

Forgive us father…

Madonna has revealed the artwork for her new album – but which of these two is the real thing?

(Thanks to popjustice for making us laugh)
(Click on either image to enlarge it)

Forgive us father…

Madonna has revealed the artwork for her new album – but which of these two is the real thing?

(Thanks to popjustice for making us laugh)
(Click on either image to enlarge it)

What’s in the box?

An enthusiastic Ebayer is auctioning off a box containing ‘at least one prop from the TV series Friends.

What could it be? Joey’s poreclain dog? Phoebe’s guitar? Or… erm, the box that Chandler hid inside during “The One With Chandler In A Box”?

You’ll only find out if you win: 4 days left to go!

Shock news! Mutya Sugababe eats Coco Pops and a full English breakfast in the morning. How does she manage to squeeze into those hotpants?

Mogblog is illegally generously offering a download of the new Franz Ferdinand album weeks before it’s released. You’ll need to get bittorrent for it to work, though.

Speaking of Franz Ferdinand, why is there suddenly a trend for song lyrics about kinky bumsex?

The Franz allude to it in their new single: ‘Do you wanna go where I never let you before?’

Now Rachel Stevens (Rachel Stevens!) is at it, too. Her next record, “I Said Never Again” boasts:

It’s two weeks later
I feel such a traitor
Oh, I let you in my back door

We never pictured Rachel as being into that sort of thing. After all, she stormed off TV last week after being asked to play a game of “Creamy Muck Muck”.

It’s still the best song title of the year, and the video is just as magnificent: “I need some fine wine and you, you need to be nicer”, is streaming from the Cardigans website. Nina dresses up and plays femme fatale á la Jean Harlow, while something odd goes on with a dog. What’s with all the dead people in bondage gear, though?

So, Kate Moss – a pencil-thin supermodel with a junkie boyfriend takes cocaine? They’ll be trying to tell us Jordan is a vacuous, publicity-hungry, plasticated media whore next.

What’s that? Oh…

Revolutionary or ridiculous?

What the…?! That’s really the only response to Nintendo’s new controller. Well, that or: “Wait a minute, that’s a remote control. How do you play the games?”

Well, the main controller is motion sensitive. Tilt it, and your movement will be replicated on-screen. It’s got the usual array of buttons on the face, and a trigger at the back. The analogue stick, called a “nunchuck” is an add-on, which should provide mouse-style movement for shooting games.

Unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show yesterday, its got to be a massive risk for Nintendo. The company famously wants to expand gaming beyond the traditional geeky boundaries — see the stylus-controlled DS for proof. But will non-gamers be seduced by the new controller simply because it looks familiar? And will current gaming freaks give up the stunning graphics (but questionable gameplay) of the new Xbox and Playstation in favour of something new?

Certainly, peripherals like Eyetoy and Donkey Konga show that you can persuade gamers and non-gamers to get together and play if you offer them something new and innovative. Imagine using this controller as a virtual golf-club, or a conductor’s baton. That’s the sort of thing that can get the entire family to gather round the TV, making Nintendo’s “Revolution” a lifestyle purchase, rather than a boy’s toy.

Ultimately, however, Nintendo will live or die by this console. They’ve already lost their predominant place in the games market to Sony and Microsoft. If no-one buys into the concepts behind the Revolution it could spell disaster for the company. Luckily, gaming magazines who’ve had the chance to try out the new console seem to love it. The much-respected Edge has already branded the controller “one of the most streamlined, classic and neatly designed… seen so far in videogaming.”

Consider my Xbox pre-order cancelled.

Had I ever pre-ordered one.

And I didn’t.

Nintendo official site

Edge online

Crime, genetalia, urine

Criminals are getting wise to forensic science, thanks to dramas like CSI.

Car thieves in Manchester, for example, have taken to dumping cigarette butts in stolen cars before they abandon them. “Suddenly the police have 20 potential people in the car,” according to an expert interviewed in New Scientist.

So far, none of the thugs have hired Quentin Tarantino to direct a special blood-soaked, expletive-filled, happy slap – but surely it’s only a matter of time.

An unreleased song / out-take from Fight Club has been leaked onto the net. The duet, performed by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, is an ode to Helena Bonham Carter entitled “The Penis Song”.

“Condi? I need to make pee-pee” – George Bush passes notes to his classmates at the UN.

Got Wood?

Everyone’s favourite hobbit, Elijah Wood, is so studly and hetero that he loves people to call him gay. He even “likes to surf the Web and look at doctored photos that put him in compromising positions with men,” he tells MSNBC. Which doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a gay person would do at all.

Wood even lets slip that his favourite website is called “Elijah Wood Is Very, Very Gay”.

All of which kind of makes this picture of his gurning face poking out of a giant balsa-wood vagina all the more disturbing.

Or desperate to make a point… You decide.

Bits and pieces

Season three publicity photos for The O.C. cast have just been posted over at Justjared.com. As expected, everyone looks suitably airbrushed and hot. Except, that is, for poor old Sandy Cohen, who appears to have Bell’s Palsy.

PLAY WITH RADIOHEAD!!! screams the NME. On closer inspection, it turns out you can attend a ‘drum workshop’ with Phil Selway for the grand sum of £15.

The workshop will consist of a five minute lecture entitled “What to do when your band replaces you with a randomly generated series of clicks and bleeps”, followed by the video for My Iron Lung.

Guaranteed to keep you entertained for a whole minute:
Porn Star or Pop Star

After seven years, Natalie Imbruglia is touring again in the autumn. Bizarrely, there are only two dates – Norwich on October 31st and Shepherd’s Bush on November 21st. Perhaps someone lost the rest of the itinerary in Natalie’s lank, greasy hair (L’oreal evidently don’t think she’s worth it any more).

Anyway, we saw her last gig at the Camden Forum in 1998, and it was superb – particularly the 15 minute acoustic set, stuffed with songs that have never been released. So we can recommend this one, too. She clearly needs to get out of the house more.

File under “Utter Bollocks”: An Indonesian airliner landed in a deserted airport after a passenger’s mobile disrupted the navigation system, says The Jakarta Post. Because Air traffic control wouldn’t have been concerned when the plane deviated from its flight plan, and the control tower staff in deserted airports can be so friendly.

Oh yeah, and Britney had a baby.

Tacky marriage special

We do not endorse Jordan, Hello Magazine, Peter André or slaggy chip shop weddings in any way. However, there is one burning question that needs to be asked: How big is the toilet roll Jordan’s hiding underneath her dress?