In a transparent attempt to destroy the legacy his son spent more than a decade carefully building, the estranged father of Ol' Dirty Bastard has gone on the record saying the former Russell Jones wasn't all that dirty after all. William Jones tells the New York Post that the young Dirty Bastard wasn't a rough-and-tumble product of Brooklyn's projects but grew up in a perfectly nice, middle-class home and was actually (and we hate to speak of the dead this way) a good student in high school. The next thing you know, dad will really cross the line and say -- perish the thought -- that his offspring was of legitimate birth . . .
Having created one of the biggest environmental hazards in decades by making Swept Away, Madonna and Guy Ritchie are now trying to pay down that karmic debt -- not by insisting that all outstanding prints of said film be rendered into compost, but by undoing some of the damage done by another disaster. According to London's Daily Telegraph, the couple is helping to clean up the site of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown in the Ukraine -- an effort that largely consists of chanting the word "Chernobyl" while waggling their hands toward the east in a Kabbalistic frenzy. We're not sure how much radiation that'll actually eliminate, but we'd imagine a decent-quality recording would outstrip the Material Girl's last few albums in terms of sonics . . .
Since we've always been strongly supportive of the notion that people should write what they know, we're eagerly looking forward to Gene Simmons' upcoming book, in which he'll go into great detail about the history of people prostituting themselves. The Kiss-master, who's found more different ways to sell himself than a brothel full of working girls, writes on his Web site that he's "fascinated by the idea that men are willing to pay for it." When reading that sentence, we can't help but replace the "it" with "another Kiss album," but we'll stop digressing -- and restate our interest in seeing what Mr. Simmons has to say about the world's oldest profession, given that he was probably around at its original inception . . .
Just when we were starting to think that everyone had lost sight of the concept of value for money, we got some encouraging news from our pals over in Limeyland. The Brits in question -- in a mind-meld of sorts -- joined together to determine the relative worth of a performance by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman. It turns out that the ivory-tinkler in question merits a salary of roughly twenty-six cents per hour -- which is exactly what he received from passersby while playing in a public square in Yorkshire. Those with a soft spot for Wakeman would probably protest that he donned a disguise for the gig, which was being filmed for a documentary on street buskers, but we'd imagine any given member of, say, Atomic Rooster could generate at least a buck in the same amount of time.
