The Reluctant Whore

Week #21 in Review

ps. This week's review is a bit shorter than usual as I was in Vienna, Austria from Thursday the 24th to Sunday the 27th covering the Life Ball for DNA Magazine. As a result, the information below does not include information from Friday 25th of May. Reluctant Whore is back on track starting Tuesday, May 29.

Britney Spears continued her assault on culture and the United States in general by continuing to appear in public and charge fans money to see her perform. Appearing at several events in Florida at a mercifully reduced ticket price of 35 dollars, many Floridian audience members were astounded and thrilled by how great they felt she was on stage for each of her 15 minute sets, one of which included a major sound system malfunction which left her having to face the back wall. Madonna’s brother, Christopher Ciccone, who was at Britney’s Miami concert, was quoted as saying, however, that his sister would never be seen on stage “looking like that”.

Rosie O’Donnell and Elizabeth Hasselbeck got into one of the biggest and most aggressive verbal arguments that have occurred on The View between them since Rosie began on the show in September of 2006. The fight prompted news media across the US to call in the talking heads to discuss the cultural implications of the fight. The tragic last moments of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez that were caught on film were posted online and, weeks after it was predicted on Reluctant Whore, the New York Post published a rumour that Candy Spelling may be getting her own advice column. The Post announced this after Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis wrote a public letter back to Candy Spelling via TMZ.com putting her in her place after she offered him some somewhat harsh yet unsolicited advice about how to personally handle his current legal woes. This was the third letter she has written to a celebrity with her perspective, the first two being to Larry Birkhead, then to Paris Hilton.

American Idol reject and temporary American zeitgeist Sanjaya Malakar made a film in which he claimed to be a 25 year old Industrial Design student from the Rhode Island School of Design named Bill Vellner who had invented the character of Sanjaya as a component of his school work. It was later revealed to be a hoax produced by Will Ferrell’s website, www.funnyordie.com .

With her jail time drawing ever closer, Paris Hilton attempted to clean up her party girl image by being photographed dressed more or less like a nun, carrying a copy of the Bible and a book called “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and Anna Nicole Smith’s half sister, Donna Hogan was interviewed in relation to her book about Anna entitled, Train Wreck, during which she suggested that she too wants to pose for Playboy and she is planning on getting breast implants to do so.

With Britney Spears in the midst of actual emotional turmoil, the heavily constructed anti-establishment persona that is Avril Lavigne was feeling out shone in the edgy pop tartlet stakes and so she picked a public fight with Hillary and Haley Duff as they’re more or less the same type of product as Britney but they’re still keeping it professionally perky.

409 people were reported to have clicked on an online ad that promised to provide them with free computer viruses, an Indonesian fisherman caught a fish that was believed to have died out 80 million years ago and a woman in Tajikistan attempted to ship 17 kilograms of heroin to Russia by hiding it inside a fridge and shipping it there by DHL (she was caught).

A woman in India, upon seeing just how dark the skin of her intended fiancé was, declared she would not marry him on the day of their wedding and in response, he starved himself outside her door until she gave in and married him and a statue of Bhimsen in Nepal started sweating which, if history is anything to go by, spells major misfortune for humanity everywhere.

Giant African rats became a major problem in Florida and local wildlife officials were mobilizing to lay down poison to kill them, scientists produced a study that revealed dolphins off the coast of Wales make noises that contain a specifically Welsh intonation about them and the same cultural variation was found to be true with dolphins all over the world.

Catholics in Croatia are now able to e mail their prayers to St Anthony in a new initiative set up by the local church, a chastity belt and wedding dress were found amongst other items left at the Iberian airport and were later auctioned off, an American tourist went for a walk completely naked in a German town causing many of the locals to complain and a female hammer head shark in Nebraska reproduced with no evidence of male involvement. Despite the biological rarity of such an event, scientists noted that this phenomenon is not entirely uncommon among a wide range of animals.

“It’s all over the place,” Dr. Schuett of Georgia State University said.