It's from the BBC, and yet somewhat NSFW. You gotta click through to see it, though.

On Page Six today:

"ON April 23 we reported that the fiancée of Gregg "Opie" Hughes, one half of the Opie and Anthony radio show, was involved in an X-rated sex video with MTV star Bam Margera. We reported that Hughes was taking legal action against a disgruntled ex-employee of the radio duo who had acquired the rights to the video. We have since learned that this information, supplied by Steppin' Out's Chaunce Hayden, was entirely incorrect. There is no sex tape. Further, Hughes' fiancée has never met the MTV star. The Post sincerely regrets the error."

A newspaper admitting when it gets a story totally wrong? A newspaper called the New York Post? Signs and wonders.

Today on his blog he made fun of himself and his dumb hair, and now it's "news." I say good, because not only is he making a sly commentary on our society's pathetic and shallow celebrity-worship, but every minute he spends doing stuff like this is a minute he's not in a recording studio or onstage. Blog, John Mayer, blog!

I'm not sure who's talking to Margera here (Erock?), but apparently he called into the O&A show this morning and said the same thing.

P.S. The audio of Bam's O&A call is here. He offers to match the $100,000 reward Opie put out for any evidence of the tape!

P.P.S. Chaunce Hayden, the guy who originally published the story that Page Six picked up, now admits that he hasn't actually seen the tape. Whoops!

Page Six says:

The sex-mad "Opie & Anthony" radio show is facing its own carnal comeuppance. Gregg "Opie" Hughes is said to be livid over an X-rated romp starring his stunning blond fiancée, known by her first name, Lindsay, and MTV wildman Bam Margera. A disgruntled ex-employee of the radio duo recently acquired rights to the video from Margera and it's soon to be released on a pay-for-play Web site, reports Steppin' Out's Chaunce Hayden. "They're doing the nasty - and I mean nasty," Hayden says.

Hughes denies the allegation, promises legal action, and offers $100,000 in cash to anybody who can give him proof of the tape:

They don't name the ex-employee behind the allegation, but I'm willing to bet he talks about Tom Brady a lot, has a big hog, and combs his hair with a buzzsaw. Bwah ha ha, dude, dude.

Toho Co., makers of all those great, terrible Godzilla movies, are suing Subway for their most recent commercial:

The Toho dudes say the monster and the setting are ripping off their intellectual property or whatever. They need to get in line, because I'm suing Subway for ripping off the hand gestures I use to promote my Big Jim's Penis Enhancing Cream. "It used to be this many inches, but now it's this long..."

Catchy jingle, though!

A Russian tabloid that published a story claiming that President Vladimir Putin had left his wife to marry a 24-year-old former Olympic gymnast suspended operations on Friday, sparking fresh criticism about withering press freedoms in Russia.

"We proved that Russia is not a democracy," Igor Dudinsky, first deputy editor of Moskovsky Korrespondent, which ran the story earlier this month, said Sunday.

At Defamer: Debunking the Marilyn Monroe 'Sex Tape' Hoax

Like I said. What, this Keya Morgan guy has got this film of her, but he can't show you the proof because he sold it to some millionaire? Who chooses to remain conveniently anonymous? Out of respect for Monroe, which is why Morgan's going all over the place blabbing about it? Right.

That dummy's just trying to promote a Monroe documentary he's working on. He also claims to have dated Renee Zellwegger and Mariah Carey. Wackjob. Defamer's got the whole story. And I do mean the whole story. It's more like a magazine article than the usual Defamer post.

Good thing this Morgan dipshit waited a couple of weeks, or nobody would have believed it in the first place.

The NY Post is claiming a new film has surfaced of Marilyn Monroe blowing a guy before she was famous:

An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel -- 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man -- was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase.

The footage appears to have been shot in the 1950s. When it came to light in the mid-'60s, then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had his agents spend two weeks futilely trying to prove that Monroe's sex partner was either John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy, according to declassified agency documents and interviews, Morgan said.

This Morgan douche claimed he found the son of a "confidential FBI informant" who still had the flick stowed away in a safe deposit box, and he brokered the sale to a "wealthy New York businessman who wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried." So in other words, this movie has been sitting around for over 50 years, he's one of the only people who's ever seen it, and he has no proof. And he's talking to the Post. Sounds fishy to me, no pun intended. I'll believe it when I see it.

No, that's not a typo. Remember Knut, the cute little polar bear cub in the Berlin Zoo? This lil' fella?

Awwww! Well, he's not so cute a year later. In fact, one of his keepers says Knut is totally knuts:

Markus Roebke said Berlin Zoo's celebrity animal was obsessed with the limelight and howled with rage when denied an audience.

"Knut must go and the sooner the better," he said, insisting that the bear should be sent to an animal park where he received less attention...

"He actually cries out or whimpers if he sees that there is not a spectator outside his enclosure ready to ooh and aah at him..."

Mr. Roebke is not the only observer to question Knut's sanity. In January, a prominent animal conservationist branded him "an animal psychopath".

Aren't bears pretty psycho to begin with? I mean, they're bears. And what's so bad about crying and whimpering when nobody's looking at him? Mariah Carey does the same thing and we just throw more money at her.

LEAVE KNUT ALONE!!!!

Hugh Jackman is going to "write" a comic book called Nowhere Man. It'll be from Virgin Comics, a name which has always seemed redundant. And then he's hoping to turn it into a movie. How about just making the movie and skipping the step where there's a comic that's no fun to read?

Has it ever worked out when a famous person has tried to write a comic book? Will Smith's wife did one. Nicolas Cage and his son. That guy on Heroes who got his brain sucked out by Sylar. It's not enough to be famous, they've got to horn in on nerd territory. Go away.

No, your cholesterol test didn't come back. The Department of Justice just approved the XM/Sirius merger.

Good luck, bros. Sirius has spent so much money on Howard Stern, will they keep Opie & Anthony around even with highbrow content like this?

Ugh. Happy 30th, fatbody.

I Hooked Up With Charlie Sheen, Says Hooker In New York Governor Row

He died yesterday at 52 after a long battle with leukemia. You might not know who he was, but he wrote and drew the '80s comic book The Rocketeer, which was set in LA in the '30s and was inspired by old movie serials like Rocketman and Commando Cody. It was made into a so-so movie in 1991:

Billy Campbell looked just like the character in the comic, Cliff Secord, but for whatever reason they just weren't able to capture the fun of it. It wasn't the same without Stevens' beautiful art. Jennifer Connelly played Secord's girlfriend, who in the comic was named Betty and looked exactly like Bettie Page. They changed the movie version's name to Jenny for some reason.

Mark Evanier has a thoughtful obit, and he explains what Stevens did after the disappointment of the movie:

Most of what Dave did after that fell into the general category of "glamour art," including portfolios and private commissions. Many of these were illustrations of Bettie Page who, though once thought deceased, turned out to be alive and living not all that far from Dave. They met and Dave became her friend and, though he was not wealthy, benefactor. Deciding that too many others had callously exploited her likeness, Dave voluntarily aided Ms. Page financially and even took to helping her in neighborly ways. One time, he told me — and without the slightest hint of resentment — "It's amazing. After years of fantasizing about this woman, I'm now driving her to cash her Social Security checks."

What a nice guy. That is amazing, especially if you've ever seen one of Stevens' depictions of her in her younger days. Did I mention that Betty from The Rocketeer looked exactly like Bettie Page? I mean exactly. See for yourself (NSFW):

P.S. Movie Poop Shoot did a nice overview of the comic, with lots of great screencaps of Stevens' art. It's a shame that this stuff is out of print.

Wrap up extended reading.

No matter what you think of this woman, making a "Baby On Board" joke about somebody who just had either a miscarriage or an abortion... I'm a pretty sick guy, but I'd wait at least a week to break out that one.

I was just checking TMZ to see if Britney's still alive, and they have the most interesting picture of her dad. It got me to wondering...

Now the question is: Can he change her back?

Seth Stevenson at Slate looks at this year's Super Bowl commercials. His verdict is the same as mine: Mostly they sucked. His big question is the same as mine: WTF was this S?

Wow, they got Chris Kattan? The strike must be holding up production on Corky Romano 2.

Is this Best Buy manager any more of a douche than the likes of Harvey Levin of TMZ and, er, VH1, both one of many media companies making a huge amount of money off the death of Heath Ledger?

Frankly, I have no problem with people making money any way they want, as long as they didn't steal it or defraud anyone. But it's a bit much for someone who's paid to generate ad revenue to get all high and mighty right now.

There is a red-hot grill reserved in Hell for Harvey Levin.

DAY 1
I am alive, but there is no writing for television and motion pictures. I stumble about my apartment — a stranger in a strange land. Gathering my wits, I take stock of my meager supplies: four original episodes of House, a handful of fresh 30 Rocks, and two Heroes, which I fear have gone bad. I cannot survive long — panic sets in.

DAY 2
Using three coat hangers and an old T-shirt, I construct a crude device to collect potable water. I then realize that fresh drinking water will not be an issue during a Writers' Strike. I go to the refrigerator and fetch a Pomegranate Lychee Green Tea. It is my first triumph over the elements and I rejoice...

I've actually been reading. Books. Please, just give these TV writers what they want!!

(thx, Jerry over at Amy Alkon's)

And if you've ever seen the size of Denton's head, you know they're in trouble! Gawker and Defamer are among the few places that haven't been taking down the amazingly crazy Tom Cruise videos ("If you're in a car accident and there aren't any Scientologists around, nobody can save you") as soon as somebody puts them up. So now some Scientology lawyer has asked him to take down the videos for copyright infringement, and here was Gawker Media's reply:

So, to date, Nick Denton has given me three things to be thankful for: 1) That I don't work for him, 2) That he's not my employer, and 3) That he's standing up to these creepy, underhanded cult thugs. Well done, Nick. On all three.

TMZ has a live video feed of the doors to the courthouse where K-Fed's lawyer is trying to get him full custody of his kids. Which just got a little easier, now that Britney has been wheeled out of her own home on a gurney and placed under psychiatric evaluation at Cedars-Sinai. And I'm talking about it. And you're reading about it. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find an American flag to salute.

Well, let's just say that Simon Cowell having motion sickness and a cough is one of the more thrilling headlines of the week.

A: When the top story is that Donald Trump didn't do something nice.

This Brit bitch looooves to complain about how "the media" is always commenting on her body. Her strategy for avoiding such unpleasant remarks? Posing almost topless on the cover of another magazine. And they say actresses are stupid!

Lately I can't get enough of reading about the Kindle, the new e-book reader from Amazon.com that looks like a heating tile on the Battlestar Galactica and holds 200 books. Which I thought was pretty exciting technology, until I learned that not only have the Japanese been reading books on portable devices for years, but they're actually using them to write books:

In Japan, half of the top ten selling works of fiction in the first six months of 2007 were composed on mobile phones...

One book, Koizora (Love Sky), about a high-school girl who is bullied, gang-raped, and becomes pregnant, has sold more than 1.2 million copies since being released.

Oh, those Japanese and their gang-rape. Lovable scamps! Anyhow, if you're writing a book on your damn phone, your thumbs must look like Popeye's forearms. Maybe it's easier since they use those little pictures for letters? Like, you put together a picture of a tree and a picture of a river and it's a whole sentence or something. That must speed things up.

For their part, Amazon has set up something called Digital Text Platform. You can upload whatever text you want, charge whatever you want for it, and they'll put it up on their Kindle store. If anybody's dumb enough to buy it, Amazon gives you 35%. Hmmm... Any requests, suckers?

In Which We Smoke Weed With Snoop Dogg: A One-Act

Hey, what if there's a porn strike? I'm gonna need some bigger envelopes!

P.S. "Ellen DeNotGenerous, you showed no guts/But Jay Leno, you're our homie, thanks for the donuts"

This strike is having a knock-on effect on what passes for news these days. I'd love someone to develop a game where a headline is read and you have to guess if it was a pre-strike or post-strike "story". For example: Kid Rock Says He 'Definitely' Wants to Cut His Hair.

Hulk Hogan's wife is divorcing him, and he didn't find out until a reporter for the St. Petersburg Times told him over the phone while he was driving:

"I'm kind of shocked," he said. "You caught me off-guard. My wife has been in California for about three weeks. ... Holy smokes. Wow, you just knocked the bottom out of me. ... I just pulled over to the side of the road for five minutes to find out what was going on here."

Holy smokes is right. Damn, brother! Are they trying to get another Hogan in a car wreck?

Well, it looks like the ol' Hulkster is gonna be doing a lot of cooking for himself these days:

How many can you name?

(thx, PopSugar)

(More pics at Franklin Avenue.)

P.S. Turns out, that sign was held by Kathy Griffin. So I can no longer say she's never done anything I've enjoyed!

If there's one thing everybody can agree on about the WGA strike, it's that the picket-line chants are awful:

Hey hey! Ho ho! Management can't write the show!

What do we want?
Contracts!
When do we want it?
Now!

Etc. Not too inspiring, huh? For a group that makes more money than a planetful of schoolteachers, you'd think they'd put a little more effort into it. If any of you WGA guys are reading this, feel free to use any of these:

That's alright, that's okay, writing's boring anyway!

2, 4, 6, 8, how do we retaliate? No scribble, no, no, no scribble!

How funky is your monkey? How loose is your goose? They'll give us what we want if we fail to produce!

We got pencils, yes we do! Let's stay home and have a brew!

You know what? I think I got my old union chants mixed up with my old cheerleading cheers. Whatever. Hey, you know why bloggers never go on strike? Because who would notice. Waak-waaaaaaak.

According to the National Enquirer, which released the tape of Duane Chapman saying very rude things about African-Americans, the beleaguered bounty hunter has been known to refer to Asians as "flangeheads." Wha-huh? I know it's fun to pile on the guy, but do we really need to condemn him for coming up with silly new racial insults? At least he's showing a little creativity. Like if he referred to my people as "blarney bitches" instead of "micks" or "alcoholics," I'd be like, "Well, at least I haven't heard it a zillion times before. Good one, Dog. Now could you please stop macing me?"

The Writer's Guild of America has been threatening to strike starting at midnight tonight, possibly imperiling production on the nation's unwatchable feature films and boring, crappy TV shows. But great news! They're probably pushing back the deadline! Yay.

Why do movies and TV shows need writers anyway? Just have the actors show up on the set and say whatever comes to mind. Actors are smart. If they weren't all so good-looking, they'd have gone into different lines of work and we'd have jetpacks and a cure for cancer by now. Writers. [shakes head disgustedly]

The Seattle Times has a story up that basically reiterates what we already know about the whole mess. The one piece of new information is that the accuser, not the Seattle police, got the FBI on the case. Sounds like a jurisdictional nightmare. I mean, the guy owns an island.

Does something seem off about the whole thing? After the Duke "rape" case, I'm trying really hard not to jump to any conclusions. Just because something seems plausible and fits your preconceptions, that doesn't necessarily mean it happened. And the way the law is set up, the accuser can say whatever she wants anonymously, and it's his face that gets splashed all over the place.

P.S. Remember that $2 million the FBI seized from his warehouse/museum? Never happened.

Kind of a big deal around this time last year? "Is nice"? "Sexytime, I want to make romance inside of you"? One of the unsuspecting people he completely humiliated, the etiquette coach, is suing him and 20th Century Fox for "commercial misappropriation, fraud, unjust enrichment, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress." How rude!

I'm not sure if this woman from his HBO show is the same one, but she might as well be:

It just keeps getting worse and worse for David Copperfield. If this keeps up, his cellmate is gonna make something disappear.

He cancelled a tour of Southeast Asia because of his current legal troubles, and now the promoters are suing him. (It is a well-known fact that lawyers are immune to the power of magic.) Well, you know what? I choose to remember the good times...

And by "a way with" I mean "a very creepy scientific method for procuring." TMZ says:

During his show, David goes into the audience and chooses women to come on stage. We're told that if David likes a girl, he'll use code words with assistants like "mama" and "secrecy." The assistants mark the women on a map of the inside of the Hollywood Theater at MGM Grand. After the show, the women are brought backstage -- and that's where the profiling begins.

The women are told that David may use them in his show when he comes to their hometown. They are then photographed with a digital camera, asked questions like, "What is your favorite men's cologne?" and "Where do you like to vacation?"

That's why the FBI raided his warehouse, to see if this woman accusing him of rape is in any of those photographs. Also, Copperfield owns some islands in the Bahamas, which is where the woman says the rape happened. I have no idea whether she's telling the truth or not, but does he really need to go to all that trouble to get laid? Couldn't he just say, "I own some islands in the Bahamas"?

A woman in Seattle has made the accusation. That's why the FBI raided his warehouse yesterday; they're involved because it allegedly happened in the Bahamas and she didn't report it until she got back to the U.S. Damn, man. I was hoping they were investigating him for something fun. It's kind of tough to make jokes about a rape that actually happened, allegedly.

The other night, the FBI raided a Las Vegas warehouse he owns:

A Las Vegas warehouse operated by Copperfield was raided by 12 agents Wednesday night, TV station KLAS reports. A computer hard drive, digital camera system, and nearly $2 million in cash were seized, the station reports.

"The only thing we're confirming right now is that there was some investigative activity in the Las Vegas area yesterday connected with a Seattle-area case, both of which are pending," said Robbie Burroughs, spokeswoman for the Seattle division of the FBI.

Copperfield calls the warehouse the "International Museum & Library of the Conjuring Arts." Why wouldn't he?

Jonny Fairplay's felony battery case against Danny Bonaduce has been rejected by the LA County DA. I'm no legal expert, but I'm pretty sure this means it's totally legal to knock out the rest of his teeth. Pipe wrench? Cricket bat? Sock fulla nickels? Decisions, decisions...

Katherine Heigl has a makeup secret she'll confess – she loves using beauty products.

Strongest opening paragraph ever. I smell Pulitzer!

What could’ve been the proverbial nail in the coffin is now floating around on TMZ.com instead. I don’t think we can just download that and bring it into court, but that’s for the D.A. to decide.

Las Vegas PD lieutenant Clint Nichols, on the sale of that OJ tape to TMZ. Me, I'm just amused that the New York Times is forced to write about celebrity gossip blogs - and keeps getting scooped by them.

But usually!

Sharing a rare cogent thought, she says:

Tabloids don't sell movies or help anyone's career. If that were true, every Lindsay Lohan movie would open to 80 million dollars.

Just in case you think she might actually be growing a brain, I suggest you check this out...

• Pimblepumble kills Draffendar.
• It turns out the whole time, Blithersnatch was Harry's gurblenurble.
• The Nimbledy Guild is disbanded after Lord Frappington falls into the Gulch of Snuppish.
• Harry is not in fact a Findle, but rather half-Squigglian on his mother's side.
• I have never read one of those stupid books and never will.

(Actual spoilers here, if you give a shibbledibble.)

I wasn't surprised to learn that a magazine had made an already thin, beautiful celebrity look even thinner and more flawless with the power of photo editing, but I was sort of surprised to see what a good job they did. I can usually spot a Photoshop cover a mile off, like this Cosmo shot of Julia Stiles where they didn't even bother to make it look a LITTLE bit like that might be her actual body they'd pasted the head on.

But yes, this did make me angry - angry that I can't afford to employ my own Photoshop artist. The telethon starts tomorrow.

The story goes like this: At some point, whichever scumbucket she was getting naked with on that particular day took some pictures, allegedly. And she kept them on her laptop, supposedly. And then somebody "hacked" them. Allegedosedly. Now she's "worried" about the nudie shots showing up for all us creeps on the Internet. Well, too late! Check it out:

Wrap up extended reading.

The Onion AV Club looks at 12 Famous Living Recluses, like J.D. Salinger, Steve Ditko, and Sly Stone. If you're famous and you don't like talking to anybody, you're a "recluse." If you're not famous and you don't like talking to anybody, you're a "loser." Or a "Treacher." But I repeat myself.

J.K. Rowling says she cried when she finished the 7th and final Harry Potter book. Okay. I haven't read any of those things because I'm not a 12-year-old boy or a 47-year-old woman, but is anybody else skeptical that this is the last Harry Potter book? Isn't Rowling worth more than the Queen of England? (And not just in terms of her contribution to society.) Once you're on a gravy train like that, can you really stay off it forever? I'm asking because I don't know. If I had that kind of money I'd be dead within a year.

She pulled Criss Angel's wife out of a hat! Diaz has been dating Angel, apparently, and it turns out he's been married for 5 years but has been keeping it secret to maintain his, what, bad-boy image? Euccchhh. So now his wife has broken the silence and wants to make his bank account disappear. Sorry, I don't have any good magic jokes or any sort of interest in Criss Angel today (or any other day).

Somebody made the following edit to his Wikipedia entry:

"Chris Benoit was replaced by [[Johnny Nitro]] for the ECW Championship match at Vengeance, as Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy."

Big deal, right? Except this edit was made over 12 hours before the cops found the bodies. [shudder] I don't know what's more disturbing, the idea that somebody knew about this before the cops did, or just the whole culture of Wikipedia.

Finally we know why:

Hours after a beaming Paris Hilton was freed from three weeks in jail, the sheriff criticized for briefly putting her under house arrest said on Tuesday he allowed her out because he feared for her life.

While stopping short of saying Hilton had been in danger of harming herself, Sheriff Lee Baca raised the issue of suicide in explaining why he released her to home detention -- a move that was swiftly overruled by a judge after a public uproar over whether she was given special treatment.

"I think we all in this room know something about suicide," Baca, who runs the Los Angeles County jail system, told a hearing called by the five-member county Board of Supervisors.

"As the sheriff of this county, I'm not going to let any inmate die in our jails," he said.

Yeah, you murderers! I gotta say, though, she looks better coming out of jail than she did going in. She looks like an actual human and not some kind of synthetic media-creature.

Yep, she's out. But that doesn't mean we have to pay attention to her, right? Us Weekly has a total Parasite blackout for its next issue. Editor Janice Min:

When it came down to it, the staff and I felt what I believe a lot of people in America are feeling. Which is just enormous Paris fatigue. I don't think we even mention the city of Paris.

Which is all fine and to be lauded, of course, but doesn't it defeat the object when your blackout itself becomes such big news? I think Janice Min, who just happens to be in contract negotiations with Jann Wenner right now, is smart enough to know that.

The sheriff and the judge are battling it out over who gets to tell who what to do. I hope every single "news" outlet keeps covering it like it's World War IV, so I can jump out of this window. (For some reason there's an old window frame down here in the basement.)

P.S. Yikes, I'm already way behind on this, ain't I? Sorry, everybody.

Paris Hilton may have smiled her way through Sarah Silverman’s raunchy monologue at the MTV Movie Awards where the show's host poked fun at Hilton's stint in jail, but she wasn't laughing backstage.

Hilton, 26, who turned herself in to serve her sentence only hours after the ceremony ended, was overheard fuming, "She's a f--king bitch. I hate her."

It's a bitch-eat-bitch world, bitch.

Today she's interviewing notoriously publicity-shy author Cormac McCarthy. I read The Road recently (TOTALLY BECAUSE OPRAH RECOMMENDED IT), and he's a fantastic writer. There's something to be said for old guys having kids, because his young son was the inspiration for the book.

Speaking of reading books, that's what I'm doing now to Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. I'm no book reviewer, but the first 3 pages were so dizzying that I had to stop for a minute. He does such an amazing job of setting you down inside this fully realized world he's created... Did I mention I'm not a book reviewer? I also had to stop after 3 pages because it took me 4 hours to get that far (I'm dumb).

Lawyer: Hilton Well After Night in Jail

Takes a minute to get the flow of it, but once you get the idea it's easier to follow. Watch it now, before it gets taken down by the very people they're trying to instruct:

David Hyde Pierce (Frasier's brother) is... gay.

I was starting to think it was just me, but there really isn't any good celebrity news today, is there?

Somebody's selling "Lindsay Lohan Mercedes Car Crash Scene Wreck Parts" on eBay. This current bid is $14,800. According to the seller:

This is not a joke. It's just Hollywood Memorabilia for those who are interested in such things. Given that Lindsay's car accident was a one vehicle incident, there is no doubt that these fragments were from her vehicle.

What more proof do you need?

More on the Doc Martens thing from the Daily Swarm:

Airwair Ltd., the creators of Dr. Martens famous footwear, has fired its advertising agency, Saatchi and Saatchi London, in the midst of an ongoing uproar over a poster campaign featuring the images of deceased musicians wearing their shoes in heaven.

David Suddens, CEO of Dr. Martens' parent company AirWair Ltd., told The Daily Swarm in a phone interview that the posters were never intended to see the light of day. "We said no. It was creative that was put to us, but we didn't like it. It doesn't represent the company at all."

Huh? I don't know much about the advertising business ("much" = "anything"), but doesn't the company paying for the ads usually have a say in whether they're shown to the public?

Kurt Cobain shouldn't have been used in a shoe advert, footwear manufacturer Dr. Martens has admitted.

The company has apologised to Kurt's widow Courtney Love - who was outraged by the image of Kurt wearing black Dr. Martens boots, draped in an angelic robe and sitting on a cloud - and admitted they made a "mistake".

Dr. Martens CEO David Suddens said: "We do think that it is offensive. We made a mistake. My message to Courtney Love is - this is something we shouldn't have been doing.

"Dr. Martens is very sorry for any offence that has been caused by the publication of images showing dead rock icons wearing Dr. Martens boots."

Via Monsters and Critics, which should be called Monsters and Pop-Ups. Now let's hear an apology from her plastic surgeon! See, because she's ugly.

This morning Howard Stern admitted he's contemplated suicide: "I've had a gun in my mouth twice." And that was back when he had listeners! He should really be put under observation somewhere.

Magician Criss Angel plans to hang in a cube encased in concrete and suspended 40 feet above the ground near Times Square next month in a stunt that will test his Houdini-like ability to escape.

If he doesn't make it out within 24 hours, the cube will come crashing to the ground...

"If you're not scared of death, what is there to fear?" Angel told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Embarrassing yourself? Just kidding, he's immune to that.

* A group of well-intentioned translators in Poland are looking at two years in jail for creating free subtitles for some movies. Insert your own Polish joke here.

* A bunch of Raiders of the Lost Ark fans so loved the movie that they painstakingly re-created it, shot for shot, back in 1981. Techdirt lists all the legal hassles and prison sentences the fans would probably have if they tried to do that today.

* MPAA chief Dan Glickman claims that Spider-Man 3 has been such a big hit because of anti-camcording efforts. As Mike Masnick points out, this argument is laughably false.

For the type of fans who go out to see such a movie on opening weekend, the download isn't a substitute. If anything, it's a complement. Just like when the last Star Wars film came out, fans download the movie, but still want to enjoy the experience of seeing it in the theater with a huge group of other fans. Plus, of course, basic logic should tell you that the camcording crackdown had nothing to do with the large opening. Whoever was doing the camcording couldn't have done it until the movie opened anyway. On top of that, as soon as one decent camcorded version made it to the net (as at least a few did), then it's infinitely available and it doesn't really matter if the industry stopped every other camcording attempt. However, this is the MPAA we're talking about, and if they can't get their math right, I guess it's no surprise that their logic skills are weak as well.

Now that's hot!

I would like to apologize for the preceding pedophilia joke. Pedophilia is a very serious matter, and nobody should ever joke about it, ever ever ever. Please don't get me fired, I'm so sorry!