we interrupt this program for...

another special announcement breaking into cillian murphy week.

actually, it's not an emergency, just a test, really. if this were a real emergency, hopefully you'd be looking elsewhere for survival tips.

the interruption is just to remind you that, yes, it is cillian murphy week this week, but everyday is u2 day. and just cause those little bastards are on vacation doesn't mean we are.

although, actually i am going on a mini work-play trip next week in san diego. i'm hoping san diego will be fun and relaxing. and maybe a little crazy.


peace.

cillian murphy week, day 2: red eye

so red eye is a movie out now by wes craven. it's not a horror flick, it's more of a thriller you could say. it is actually pretty forgettable except for one thing: cillian. he is a bad dude in this flick. a killer. an assassin. he is not nice. at all.

it has been brought to my attention that this film could ruin cillian's chance at a good career in the u.s. cause he may get type-cast as the freaky dude with scary eyes. but come on, wouldn't we all be so blessed if this were to be true?

who wants cillian to use those blues to make boring romance movies? we wouldn't want pierce brosnan out of a job, would we? no, cillian has the fallen angel duality thing going on, and we like it! why else would we be having cillian murphy week?

so here's the movie review: red eye is sort of an average thriller. it's popcorn entertainment, really. it's not too long, not too scary (like, you won't cry afterwards or anything). it's not too violent, either, just PG-13. the best part is that it is not sappy. we don't like sappy. at all.

plus, rachel mcadams (wedding crashers) is in it, and she's cool. she also puts a beating on cillian with a field hockey stick, which is obviously the best part of the flick.

this movie overall is a pretty average B-, but cillian's in it, so you should see it.

ben taylor resembles something cool

we have to interrupt cillian murphy week for a special announcement we just got from ben taylor. his new album is coming out next tuesday, but starting today, he's putting out a mini-ep with 3 new songs on itunes. the full-length cd is called another run around the sun and it has 10 songs. the itunes ep includes 3 songs, including nothing i can do, love, and you must've fallen.

we love ben and not just cause he is james taylor's son. ben has a unique style you might describe as acoustic funk. he's a hip-hop folkie, yo. he'll be on good morning america next thursday, september 8, so check him out.

it looks like he might get over that little hump into actual popularity. i hope so, cause we can never have enough actual singer-song-writers making music. for some reason, he is not really catching on in such a big way, which is hard to understand. i mean, he's a good looking dude, whch let's face it, kind of is important for young performers in this shallow little society we exist in. but he also sings really, really well, with a pretty unique cadence, and his band is killer. and it's not like he is mr. i'm too cool for school. he did a sexy peta ad. he went on american dreams trying to get all noticed and stuff. and he even did one of those pepsi concerts on network tv.

right now you might be thinking that cause he did all that marketing stuff he maybe is not so cool after all. but you know, he definitely resembles something cool. doesn't he?

cillian murphy week starts now

it's kinda, sorta, like shark week, except it's not. it's cillian murphy week. and it's only here. (not on discovery channel.)

so maybe you are thinking, um hello, this is not that similar to shark week. but it is. only there's no sharks. there's just cillian.

okay. cillian's in a few movies out now: red eye and batman begins. he's also in one coming soon: breakfast on pluto. there are also several hidden cillian gems you can rent: intermission and 28 days later, for starters. cillian-centric reviews of these movies will, of course, be a part of cillian murphy week.

in case the whole shark week thing is still confusing you, good. just know this: you pronounce his name like the beer.

this is cillian. he's not a shark. he'll be with you all week.

unofficially good

my friend sean went to see the stones on friday at rentschler field in hartford. he said it was good and i quote, "they turned the sound up loud. they played a lot of good songs." this is as detailed a review as we can offer. it's coming from a guy who claims the last concert he went to—the allman brothers—sucked. but he only said that because he can't remember what happened at it.

anyway, the stones' encore was also good, he said, but he can't remember what songs they played.

he did say that the coolest part was the stage, which as you may have heard, includes a moving trolley like system that brings the band from one end of the stadium to the other for a few songs. the back wall of the stage is also supposedly massive and has spots where people can sit on seats raised up above the wall of the stage.

maroon 5 opened the show, and apparently, they were lame.

peace.

you can dance if you want to

suffered thru the mtv vma's last night. wow. awful. brutal. ghetto. it dawned on me afterwards that being 14 or 15 may have helped, but alas, it was too late and i was way too old.

interesting to see diddy sing and dance. he can not really do either one. at all. which makes his success in life all the more impressive somehow. kind of like how the guys in green day can't actually play lead guitar on their own tracks, as proven again last night with a stand-in musician in their performance. maybe they won all the awards cause they are all political and stuff.

really, though, poor coldplay. their appearance was just unfortunate. everyone on the show was pimping and they showed up with their straight ahead performance, and it just did not seem like they needed to be there. chris did do a run into the stands, but it just seemed all wrong. note to coldplay: when your performance is buried in the middle of a show, you ain't the biggest band in the world. at least we got that settled.

r. kelly did a whole theatrical performance of a man and his gay lover and a wife and the other man. trapped in the closet. it was the definition of whack, yo. the worst was that he lip synched the whole thing and his voice did not match up with the sound at all.

the killers went way over the top, with a performance poolside. but not really over the top, compared to the shit like r. kelly and diddy were doing.

there is a little part of killers singer brandon flowers that intrigues me. not the person. just a portion of the theatrical persona that is reminiscent of somebody from a long, long time ago. it'll pass. for sure.

peace

hello, hello

mystery person returns in a first person transcript:

pppplp--plplppp00000000000000000000000000upjkj ddddddddddd

llllllf

relax your eyeballs

so mystery interview starts now:

scatter o light: how old are you?
mystery person: this many.

sol: what did you eat for dinner?
mp: a hot dog and a bread with the hole in it. and cheese and with ketchup.

sol: was it good?
mp: um-hmm.

sol: do you think it might be your bedtime soon?
mp: no.

sol: who's your favorite guitar player?
mp: um, bono's friend, the, um, his friend that's the guy.

sol: what's the meaning of life?
mp: i have a water buffalo and a cow in my backpack.

that's it for now.

peace.

follows in the trail...

wow, interesting amount of spam this site is suddenly receiving. not really too psyched about that, ya know? this morning's post is probably less likely to generate spam.

if you check out the rolling stone website, you can stream the new herbie hancock album, which has a joss stone cover of u2's when love comes to town. usually u2 covers suck. not sure what i think of her version yet. that song's not a big favorite of mine in the first place, really.

more interestingly: the upcoming hanson album has a live version of the blondie boys/now men covering u2's in a little while. last summer bono decided to announce that hanson's mmmmbop is one of the best songs ever. so the cosmic connection definitely exists. either that or taylor hanson just digs in a little while, which is cool, cause brandon flowers of the killers thinks it's u2's masterpiece himself. and as you may have heard bono mention 5 million times, it was a song joey ramone loved and apparently joey was listening to in a little while when he passed from this life.

also, my blog is named after a lyric in the song, in case that escaped you. lyrically, for me it is the best love song bono has ever written. it is soulful and personal, with some desperation added in for good measure. slow down my beating heart. a man dreams one day to fly. a man takes a rocket ship into the skies. he lives on a star that's dying in the night. and follows in the trail, the scatter of light...

an audience recorded version of hanson performing in a little while made the rounds online a few months back and it pretty much kicked ass. bono sings it in a wasted gravelly voice but the hanson dudes sing it with real pure vocals, so it is an odd change to the feeling of the song. anyway, as you can tell, i can't wait to hear hanson's version all polished up. cause i am a giant dork.

peace.

weaving a web

so lance armstrong was on charlie rose a few weeks ago telling everyone bono was his hero. seriously lance, go away. get away. whatever. please find another hero.

cause we saw you riding your bike with W on the little texas ranch. and we saw you on TV with larry king last night trying to explain how everyone in france is out to get you, cause you are the big bad american. it's funny because nobody in america really cares if lance used a little epo.

lance tried to make it seem complicated, but really, it is pretty simple. the french say lance takes epo. what epo does is give you more red blood cells, which gives you more oxygen, which makes you better at endurance sports. lance admits he took epo in 1997 to recover from cancer. then he goes on to say, but i would never dope on the tour. i never doped. i don't dope. why would i harm my body after recovering from cancer? and variations on that.

the thing is, epo is not technically a harmful drug, it is a red blood cell booster. and in 1999, epo could not be detected in tests. now it can be and the french lab with lance's blood tests from 1999 have just tested his old samples and found some epo. lance is trying to say the tests are irrelevant because they are being done on samples from 6 whole years ago, but in reality, the same aged blood is used in criminal courts to get murderers released from prison, so the testing can't be that fucking lousy. technology is not as ass-backwards as some texans might have you believe.

lance is in the best position possible for an american athlete because the people accusing him of lying are french. i mean, we all know french people are liars. they didn't even really invent french fries—did you know that? liars!

but actually, the lab found that 15 other riders' 1999 samples also just tested positive for epo, including some frenchie boys. so pretending the french are out to get just him is pretty lame and farfetched.

lance's new argument should just be—everyone was doing it so it was an even field. i mean, he's still the best. the strongest. the toughest. nobody would question that. i mean, he's from texas, ain't he?

reading is fun and mental

okay, i just couldn't leave the patrick mccabe reference at one post. here's a little more about him. he's 50, and he was born in county monaghan. his books are about messed up people in traditional lives, and he uses ireland and all its screwed up issues as a backdrop.

i was trying to think of how to describe mccabe and especially his novel the butcher boy. i found some british critics who did it better. so here you go:

"Patrick McCabe’s leading protagonists all have certain things in common. They are all extraordinary people in very ordinary places – socially unacceptable, or at the very least marginalised. They are psychopaths and murderers and kidnappers and the like. But they are also engaging, often sympathetic (in the rather odd, sinister way that a psychopathic murderous kidnapper can be sympathetic) and very funny. For all their actions might shock and repel us, they’re surprisingly good company.

The award-winning The Butcher Boy (1992), McCabe’s most remarkable book to date, is a case in point. It tells the story of Francie Brady, a lively schoolboy in small-town Ireland (his home the home of so many McCabe characters). He is quick-witted and appealing; and this marvellous lad leads us merrily through the course of the novel, and we watch as he slowly approaches the brutal acts of the last pages (acts perpetrated by our young friend Francie himself), and we find ourselves quite suddenly face to face with the horrific violence with which all McCabe’s novels are tainted. Not for nothing did one critic describe him as 'a sort of high priest of rural Irish dementia'. Francie Brady’s voice is one of the most virtuosic pieces of first-person narrative-writing in many years; it is the power of this voice, its energy, its distinctiveness and irresistible charm, that drives the narrative along with such vigour. It shifts from the sharpest humour to the darkest horror, back and forth – terribly realistic and totally compelling throughout. A reader is left confused, dazzled and breathless. It’s astonishing."

stardust & spiders from dublin

my favorite part of the vertigo tour this year has been the return of the glam rock persona. i can't remember which show, but at one concert in the u.s., a girl bought this faux feather boa at target before the show and she ended up getting near the front and yer man ended up wearing the boa. after that he just randomly started strutting around in a boa occasionally in ensuing shows.

i had totally forgotten about this movie coming out next fall, but when i noticed a link to it (i googled cillian murphy, what can i say)—a little tiny lightbulb inside my brain started glowing. a man who both inspires and puts bono to shame with his own preposterous theatrics is gavin friday, who happens to have a part as a glam rock star in irish director neil jordan's upcoming movie breakfast on pluto. the film is based on the book written by patrick mccabe, who also wrote the butcher boy, a crazy, dark, and murderously sublime novel that everyone should read. breakfast on pluto stars cillian murphy (yes!) and liam neeson.

please note gavin's kitty cat whiskers in this photo.

right now gavin is working with quincy jones and 50 cent on the music for the new 50 cent biopic directed by another irish film maker, jim sheridan. before you know it, the sartorial tastes of the northside will be taking over the world. if that doesn't scare you....it should.

peace.

that good, huh?

did you see some chick almost killed herself falling out of the stands at fenway during the stones concert?

i saw that and was trying to think of some ironic twist to put on it about the show being so good or so bad that she jumped. but i'm actually pretty pre-occupied right now trying to stay awake and not bang my head into my keyboard. no time for blogging when an article for your real job is already a week late and still not written.

but you know, just for the record, i will take a moment to make it clear that personally i would not jump for this:



but for this, um, yeah, you know i probably would:



peace.

my mom is cooler than your mom

so spa weekend has come and gone. it officially ended (for me) at 3:45 this morning when i got out of bed to head back to nyc. spa weekend is really a euphemism for "go to mom's house at the beach and get taken care of and have her pay for your spa treatments."

at 3:45 this morning, my mom woke up and asked me if i wanted her to make me coffee! who does that? my mom, that's who. (i declined, i swear, and she fell back asleep. on the couch, no less.)

my mom rules. it's not just the coffee thing. i mean, last night she was arguing with us, telling us she owned neil young's "everybody knows this is nowhere" on vinyl. really, does your mom argue with you about things like that? on saturday, mom announced that she is now a rabid u2 fan. come on, you know your mom does not say things like that. does she?

plus, she has an FOB living down the street from her. does your mom?

do you know this unicorn?

this is siouxsie. she is lost and scared and she has no friends. we found her at captain kid's. she sold herself to us for $6.

she likes playing in the grass, roaming freely without her saddle and singing punk rock. her hooves are pink and her saddle is gold. also, she has wings, a pink tail, and a horn growing out of her forehead.



i don't think she's all about spa weekend, so if you can help us find siouxsie's peeps, please let us know.

peace.

karate chop

spa weekend is in full effect. the beach had some fog on it today, but the surfers were out there in a mega pack anyway.



we have some foot treatments going on today.





this morning i had a man masseuse. he had some interesting moves, including a nice miss piggy karate chop on the back thing going on. his in between the toes massage was a bit much, but you know what they (we?) say—what happens at spa weekend, stays at spa weekend.

peace.

oh yeah

do you know what starts in 24 hours?

let me give you a hint:

knock-knock. who's there? spa weekend, yo!

we'll post a report from the frontline this weekend.

insane in the city

sometimes when you walk down the street in nyc it is hard to tell if the person next to you is crazy or just talking on a very tiny cell phone. sometimes i’m not sure if i’m crazy, either, cause when i have too much to drink i often sing a little too loud with my ipod on. even when i’m sober and walking down the street with music on, i’m sure i look pretty odd doing little skips across the street or throwing my arms up above my head at my favorite parts of certain songs.

yesterday I was walking home from the train and i guess my brother passed by in a car. he said he called me and i just kept going. you looked like you were in another world, you were listening to your ipod, and probably daydreaming about bono, is what he told me.

what? as if. i really doubt that's what i was thinking about. but i mean, it's possible, i guess..…

diddy-yo

so i saw that puffy told katie couric yesterday that from here on in, he is now to be known simply as diddy. apparently his fans were confused and did not know if they should be calling him puff or p.diddy, or what. being the man that the puffster is, he's helping 'em all out by changing his name. again.

he is so loving his existence in that age 3-5 classical narcissism thing. it's awesome.

apparently there was even a contest to help re-name him. i was not aware of it or i would have submitted some alternate monikers, like the didd or diddyo. maybe even, d'idiot.

but diddy it is. so there you have it. peace.

two warm beers

mcsorley's is one of the more colorful places in nyc. whether you are irish or not, you have to check it out if you've never been.

it is right near where i work, but i barely ever go. why? it smells like vomit and piss and the beer is not even cold. plus, you can only choose from two beers: dark or light, and both come to you warm. even worse, you can't get one mug of said beer at a time, they only serve in twos. another minus: up until 1969 this bar did not even allow women to be served.

so why the hell should you go here? to get drunk, yo!

seriously, it is a place you need to visit at least once. it is the oldest still-standing bar in nyc, established in 1854. the bar served alcohol during the prohibition, never even pretending for a second that it didn't. it was designed as a replica of an old-school irish pub, and it has not changed much in 150 years. there's even sawdust on the floor.

i had a long day today, and it ended with two warm beers. it coulda been worse.

lost boys

i watched a movie last night called the lost boys of sudan. it is a documentary about sudanese refugees in america.

if you are having a bad day, watch it. your day won't seem quite so bad.

the boys in this movie were dinkas whose families had been murdered by islamic militants. these boys fled to kenya on foot. some of them were as young as four years old when they went on this march, and the stragglers were eaten by lions on the way.

they lived in refugee camps for years and then some got asylum from the u.s

so these lost boys get on a plane and fly to america expecting some kind of heaven. they get dropped off in places like nebraska, kansas and north dakota. they don't even know how to work an oven. after living in huts their whole lives, they are scared to go to the upstairs of their apartment because the roof might cave in.

the boys are smart and ambitious, but their options for success are limited. the boys are disappointed with race relations in america, and are at times even resentful of black americans. the fundamentalist christians who show up at various points along the way are also an interesting addition to the plot. the boys come from a spiritual background, but christianity in america seems godless in this film.

the message of the movie is that there is no heaven on earth actually. heartbreaking, but also honest.

i'm wide awake

i have been reading this book called the awakening. it is by kate chopin. it is pretty short, but i have just been reading it on and off, so i haven't gotten to the end yet. it's not really a plot-line kind of book, but the theme is interesting. it's about a person awakening to the fact that everyone in life is following some beaten old path that she has no interest in walking down.

my cousin really likes the book, too.

it is one of those books that every now and then a line jumps off the page and says something in a way you wish you had thought of saying it. i was reading it last night on the plane ride home from salt lake city, and i got to this part where the main character decides she is going to be an artist. she has this very urbane friend who explains you can't just be an artist. and edna, the main character, asks her why.

so her friend mademoiselle reisz replies "i do not know you well enough to say. i do not know your talent or temperament. to be an artist includes much; one must possess many gifts--absolute gifts--which have not been acquired by one's own effort. and moreover, to succeed, the artist must possess the courageous soul."

"what do you mean by the courageous soul?"

"courageous, ma foi! the brave soul. the soul that dares and defies."

that's a cool description, in my opinion.

by the way, it is so hot here and i can't think of the words to describe how steamy it is, so here's a few pics that do the absolute intensity of this heat justice. peace.

we all need a nap

it's saturday. day 3.5 of the outdoor retailer trade show, and everyone is just toast. last night we travelled like really poor rock stars. we had an RV take a few of us from the trade show to a minor league ballpark where we had free beer and food.

we were running around playing softball. they had an announcer and the pro scoreboard lit up.

later, we went to shaggy's and saw roger clyne and the peacemakers. then we went somewhere else, i'm not sure where, and saw sam bush. roger clyne is a rocker who is very popular in the southwest and he had a bunch of groupies here in SLC, too. someone compared him to bruce springsteen, but he is kinda like a cowboy bon jovi or almost charlie sextonish. to me. definitely talented, just not my style really.

sam bush plays blue grass. he has won grammys and stuff. super good stuff and the climber boys and girls here were all going nuts like it was a dead show. these climber guys were wearing camisole tops. it was funny.

anyway, this photo sums up how everybody feels today. peace.

an old lady's drink

yesterday was pretty much a success. i met with some people i actually like. and at the trade show i'm here for, i scored a nice long sleeve shirt, sunglasses and snowboard goggles.

in utah, the liquor laws are whack. if you go out to drink you have to buy a membership and they take down all this personal info about you. just in case. in case of what? not sure.

i have had a few weird outings here over the years, like the time i tried to make a bunch of ladies drink irish car bombs. here in utah you can't get more than one drink at once, so it was pretty tough drinking guinness out of wine glasses with little tumblers full of whiskey and baileys.

at some cool places, they allow you to order a sidecar. this means if you order, like, a vodka and seven up, since they only are allowed to put a tiny shot of vodka in there, you ask for a sidecar and they give you another shot of vodka on the side. then after you drink some of your cocktail, you pour the rest of the liquor in for an almost normal drinking experience. makes sense, right? not to tom.

he went to the bar and i said, tom, make sure you order a sidecar. he goes, a sidecar? and i go, yeah, make sure you get a sidecar.

so he orders a sidecar. just a sidecar.

i guess a sidecar is also the name of an actual drink, and not exactly the type he was looking for. he came back with a martini glass full of a yellow fruity liquor. there was even sugar on the rim of the glass. frank sinatra would not be impressed by this girly drink, i can tell ya that.

so tom looks at me like it's my fault. he's like, i'm not an old lady! what's this? why did you tell me to order this?

it was funny.

on the road again

so we're in salt lake city today. last night at the airport there were literally hundreds of people crowded around outside the gates when we got off the plane. emily said, wow, what's going on-who are all these people? i said, we're in utah, it's just somebody's family here waiting for them.

we also saw mark eaton at the airport getting into a courtesy van. he is about 7-foot, 3-inches tall i would guess. he used to be on the jazz. he totally looks like moonraker. he used to have red hair, but now it is gray. big, big boy.

hopefully something fun will happen while we're here so i can post it. i heard jackie joyner kersee might be here at some booth talking about socks. it seems unlikely, but so does much of my life......

'til then - peace.

political semantics

so i got a letter in my mailbox from andy spano yesterday. he is a county executive here in westchester.

the letter was addressed to residents of my town letting us know a few facts about the county's homeless policy. you see, a homeless man murdered someone here last month. he had been brought into our town on a bus from a shelter a few miles away. every day the bus takes people from the shelter and drops them off in the town and then brings them back to the shelter (if they want to go back) at the end of the day.

andy spano's letter was intended to clarify this policy. he says that the county is not bussing people INTO town everyday. he says the county is in fact bussing homeless people OUT of the town every night.

how 'bout them semantics.

i hope his next letter will detail the things the county is doing for people once they are in the shelter. job counseling, mental health care and substance abuse treatment programs might be a better use of our tax money than a bus service to the galleria.

i'm ready for the laughing gas

i was singing zoo station all day today in my head. i think it got in my head cause they are releasing non-toxic gas in nyc this week just to see where it floats.

now if that ain't cool!

anyway, apparently the real zoo station is about to close. zoo station is a railway station in west berlin. there's all kinds of metaphorical levels to the song itself, and i'm almost about to explain 'em, but only a dork would actually do something like that. so i think i'm gonna just go to bed instead....

the kids are alright

rumor today is that arcade fire will open three shows in canada on the 3rd leg of the vertigo tour. this = sweet.

i was just saying to my sister that u2 should get arcade fire to open for them in the u.s. but i wasn't sure if arcade fire thought they were too cool or something. thankfully they aren't concerned with cool.

actually, judging by the fact that arcade fire are also slated to play fashion week in nyc with duran duran, billy idol and gwen stefani, i'm wondering why i ever thought they thought they were cool to begin with.

funny ha ha

so a man walks into a dentist's office and says "i think i'm a moth."

the dentist says "i think you need to see a psychiatrist."

the man says "i know, but your light was on."

a boy named dave

so this guy here is named dave. it's his birthday today. legend has it he is really from the future, and was sent back in time in order to change the world. the part of the story we know for sure to be true is that like st. patrick, dave was stolen from wales and delivered to ireland.

many lives have been altered because of this.

i met this guy in seattle. it was kind of like real life on a cloud. i think i said to him "i love you." i touched his right shoulder and i remember touching it really lightly, and he had a leather jacket on and i was thinking, this shoulder is so delicate and so i didn't touch it too hard. and then i think i said "thanks."

he signed his name for me. then he glanced up at me silently. he just gave me this solemn nod, and a small smile. then he walked off. busy with this whole rearranging the molecular structure of the universe thing, i guess.

in my place

so what to say about coldplay? i give them points for:

1. coordinated all-black outfits.

2. self-effacing british charm

3. politics without preachiness

4. manic piano bench-abusing passion

we loved it. this is a freaking phenomenal band. when they play "in my place" during the encore, the emotional liftoff is just about as pure as it gets. don't compare them to anyone but themselves and you won't be disappointed.

all the colors came out

we're going to see coldplay tonight. the lighting in particular should be cool.

hopefully it cools down during the day at some point because being outside this week has been like existing inside of a pizza oven.

speaking of hot, don't tell chris martin, but apparently someone thinks pink is the new black.

both sides now

so i guess a couple of days ago some dude ran through my backyard and jumped our back fence. a cop was chasing him cause he had allegedly shoplifted from a store down the street. my landlord was sitting in the backyard when all this occurred.

they eventually caught the dude on the other side of the train tracks. funny thing is, i thought i lived on the other side of the tracks. apparently both sides have an other side.

a month or so ago a man on the other side from my side of the tracks stabbed a woman to death in a parking garage.

i live in the suburbs, by the way, and it'll cost you $650,000 to buy a starter house here. on either side of the tracks.

everything i wish i didn't know

so, do you think this vertigo m&m connection could possibly be a coincidence? as if.

i always knew the little green ones were the coolest.

the sincerest form of flattery

i am really excited to see coldplay this saturday. chris martin does this thing when he comes on-stage where he jumps really high and tucks his legs under him. that is something that bono is incapable of doing, so i am looking forward to this.

recently the photographer kevin westenberg put some beautiful shots on his site of coldplay and their favorite band. very cool stuff.

the doors you open...

the other night in copenhagen u2 played part of metallica's "enter sandman." this is cool.

lars ulrich, who is metallica's drummer, has apparently joined boozy-smelling sean penn in following u2 around scandinavia. wonders never cease.

in copenhagen, bono gave a shout out from the stage to torben ulrich. torben is lars' dad. he is a former davis cup tennis star for denmark who played on the pro tour in the 60s, and reached the quarters at wimbledon and the u.s. open in doubles.

torben is really whack. he has willie nelson braids, and is a writer and a painter. this explains why yer man thinks torben is cool. added bonus: john mcenroe also really likes torben. these are a few of torben's paintings from a collection called "parents and children."

you go girl

i am well-known in my office as an anti celebrity gossip nazi. it's mostly i just hate how magazines love to break up people's relationships. when celebrities do dumb shit, of course i make fun of them. but tearing people apart just cause you can is not cool, yo! sometimes they ask for it, i know. but sometimes you look at the 100th nick and jessica cover and just go, like, who really cares about this crap?

so the thing is, isn't it nice and refreshing when jennifer aniston finally just blurts something out on her own without the tabloids drumming it up? something nice and bitchy?

the september issue of vanity fair hits the stands friday. Apparently in this VF article, jen says this about Brad's new blond hairdo: "Billy Idol called - he wants his look back."

jerks are funny

i think terrell owens and liam gallagher should have a quote-off. cause i know they cannot be serious with the stuff that comes out of their mouths.

even funnier than what they say is how mad people get after they say it. that's why they crack me up. cause there is no way they are not kidding.

sports illustrated has some great T.O quotes online today. i like this one.

"At the end of the day, I don't have to worry about what people think of me, whether they hate me or not. People hated on Jesus. They threw stones at him and tried to kill him, so how can I complain or worry about what people think?"