New releases by Bin Laden and Britney.

The titan of terrorism and the princess of pop are back and it has been a while. After wisely waiting till after Elvis Presley’s 30th anniversary these two big names are making a quest to hit the headlines again.

While Britney’s time off from the music industry has been documented every sticky step of the way, Binny has opted for a more quiet approach spending time at his luxury cave complex in the mountainous Pakistan Afghan border region. No messy divorces for Mr Laden the biggest controversy of the last few years was to become the face in an advertising campaign for a range of all terrain dialysis machines. A move that some of his fans labeled as a sell out. But with that behind him he his back, like Miss Spears, to doing what they do best.

You have to change and evolve to keep the audience interested these days and like Britney, Bin laden’s stylists have gone for a new look. The coloured and shorter beard makes him look younger. Rumour has it that Britney’s team was also considering a beard till they found out Bin laden had beat them to it.
Britney will kick off her come back with a performance at the MTV awards. Bin Laden was lined up to present ‘Best Video filmed in a cave, but opted instead to be guest speaker at the launch of the 2007 model AK47.

There is one big difference between Britney and Binny of course and that is the length of their respective releases. Britney’s ‘Gimme More’ comes in at the standard 3 to 4 minutes while Bin Laden has gone for an epic 30 minutes. Time will tell whether this was a wise move when success depends on the buy in from those short attention spanned Gen Xers.
In the end the audience will decide whether Britney and Bin reclaim their status at the top of the popular people pile or slip down into the slope into Hasbeenville. Hopefully not matter how fierce the professional rivalry between them they can still take time out to visit each other’s tour buses, share a Mojito and non-alcoholic pina colada and talk about what a loser that Kevin Federline is.

Living the flashdance dream

My sister is like the Jennifer Beals of Christchurch. No, she isn’t trying to get into dance school, and she doesn’t have leg warmers and her boyfriend isn’t an American with a Porsche, he’s a pom with a Subaru. BUT, she is doing a welding course.

Welding is a great skill to have. I would love to learn to weld at night school like her but my current night school class in drinking beer and sitting on my arse doesn’t finish till 2018.

When the apocalypse happens people with skills like welding, fishing, building, first aid and skinning dogs are going to be the valuable members of society. People like me, ‘writers’ will be kicked out of the small fortified villages that spring up along with the car salesmen, parking wardens, Venetian blind installers and IT experts will be forced to wander the ‘dead zone’ where, against all odds, some of us will survive and form an unlikely alliance then hundreds of years later our mutant offspring will attack the fortified villages looking for food and some kind of obscure metal ore or oil that will have become the most coveted thing on the planet……

But back to sis. So yeah welding. I guess the family will be getting welded picture frames and welded nameplates and chunky welded jewelry for birthdays and xmas for a few years. That’s cool, there’s always some sucker on the net that will buy that junk. The other weird link with Flashdance I wanted to mention ties back to the 6 degrees story I wrote a while back. The guy in the film who was Jennifer Beal’s boyfriend and drove the Porsche was the dad of my brother’s flat mate back in the mid 90’s. Freaky eh. So in closing I just wanna say Take your passion and make it happen.’

Bono’s mate Pop Corn.

I call him corn man because he is a little man made of corn. I spied him on a packet of chips in the pantry about 1 oclock in the morning. Inanimate objects with arms and legs tend to catch my attention in the early hours of the morning. Seems odd that the corn people would let an old corn cob like his represent them. I mean he’s got a cane. He’s not Corn, he’s Pop Corn. Couldn’t they have gone for a younger more healthy guy. And the other disturbing thing is he isn’t wearing any pants. I understand that with pants on you wouldn’t see his corn but this guy in on a product kids buy. My daughter has them in her lunch. Is that really appropriate? I think corn man might have got the gig because he is mates with Bono from U2. Couldn’t help noticing he is wearing Bono’s jacket from U2’s Live Aid gig in 85 and Bono’s hat from his Joshua Tree era. With connections like that no wonder the corn chip people signed him. Sweet.