Misleading Headlines in Brief

By DAVID THORPE

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Allegations have surfaced that several musical —types—including Mary J. Blige, 50 Cent and —Timbaland—have been shooting up human growth hormone (HGH). Perhaps this explains 50's rage problem, and why he looked so much like a finely polished burl slab on the cover of The Massacre. Perhaps it explains why Timbaland has been spotted in photos sporting huge, greasy pythons rippling from beneath his tank top. Maybe it explains why Mary J. Blige's new record is called Growing Pains.

Panic At The Disco (notice the lack of an exclamation point) have now dropped the exclamation point (did you, as I instructed, dutifully apprehend the lack of an exclamation point?). Great, fellas, I hereby grant you all honorary doctorates in the English language from the University of Who-Gives-a-Fuck.

What is it about Kate Bush that makes us want to take our shoes off and throw them in the lake?

Some weird, expensive baby mama drama for DMX: the woman who became pregnant as a result of allegedly raping the rapper (yeah, you heard me) won a lawsuit against him for $1.5 million. Apparently, sometime during the course of accusing the woman of raping him in his sleep (when his "dick be out"), DMX may have made a false or defamatory statement. I'll be damned if I can find it. Aware of his own ridiculousness, he didn't bother showing up in court.

High School Musical star and probable cyborg Zac Efron—whose steely, dead eyes stare at us from the cover of every teeny-bopper magazine in the checkout line—recently had his "'appendix removed"' (read "'computer brain recalibrated') after a bout of "'appendicitis"' (read "'time 'travel").

Dr. Dre, famous for giving us eargasms with his mellow accent, is set to give us permanent hearing-damagegasms with a new line of bass-heavy headphones. A robust selection of Dre electronics for your home and auto shall follow.

Rumors that EMI is about to cut thousands of jobs have put a mighty case of the fantods in some of the label's biggest acts. Robbie Williams, Coldplay and the recently reformed The Verve are threatening to withhold their albums until they can get some straight answers about what the hell's going on. Label head Guy Hands (awesome name, by the way) "seeks to reassure disgruntled acts" (actual quote from the UK's Marketing Week) in announcing plans to bolster earnings by letting brands sponsor artists. As in: Kylie Minogue, brought to you by Roto-Rooter. Yeah, Mr. Hands, that sounds like something artists will love.

Worst-case scenario, though: we have to temporarily do without new records from Coldplay, Robbie Williams and The Verve. Oh, dearie me, whatever shall we do?

BBC DJ Andy Kershaw has been thrown in jail for breaking a restraining order. I wasted my time reading the story after mistaking him for Nik Kershaw, and then I sat for quite some time and worriedly pondered why a story about Nik Kershaw might have interested me. I mean, this goes beyond even an "Am I gay?" sort of question. There's something fundamentally wrong with me.

In November, I reported that Morrissey is set to release a career-spanning "'Best Of"' album. The tracklist has now been released, and it seems that 11 of the 15 songs on the set are from the last five years. Wow, Morrissey sure did get way, way better in the last five years than he was in the previous 15 years of his solo career, right? That's what we all keep saying, right?

I've often mentioned NME's hilarious penchant for hyperbolic or misleading headlines. Example: remember how I told you that Panic At The Disco had dropped the "!"? Actual NME headline: "Panic! At The Disco are no more." Today, an NME.com story titled "Legendary Singer Dies" caught my eye. Clearly they mean for me to investigate the article and find out which legendary singer has died, but I'm not going to face the disappointment of learning that it's in fact nobody legendary at all. Instead, I'm going to draw my own conclusion: Elton John is dead.