Remember the good old days of music news, with heavy metal himbos getting tossed in the clink for drinkin', roughhousin', heroin-in', and, uh, vehicular manslaughterin'? Well, welcome to a more liberated age: Today's news is awash in reports of female pop stars engaging in their own questionable decisions and un-ladylike bizness (and most surprisingly, there's not a Winehouse among them). So with apologies to The Soup, let's talk about chicks, man.
– Britney Spears failed to appear at yet another hearing in her ongoing custody battle with ex Kevin Federline despite admonitions from attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan, saying, "You can't phone this one in." [Insert your own VMA-related joke here.] Among those expected to testify today are emergency technicians who attended to Spears on the night of her Jan. 3 breakdown, although so far the only released detail from the proceedings is this artist's rendering of Federline, shown moments before he addressed the court with a hail of flaming arrows:
– R&B; superstar Mary J. Blige has been named (along with 50 Cent, Timbaland, and—WTF?—Tyler Perry) by the Times Union of Albany as one of several celebrities who allegedly ordered steroids and other "performance enhancing" drugs through an online Orlando pharmacy. Blige also apparently had at least one shipment mailed to her under the name "Marlo Stanfield," a.k.a. the stoic drug kingpin on The Wire, which shows she at least knows how to have fun with prescription fraud. (Can't say the same for Fiddy, who chose "Michael Jordan." What are you, 8 years old?)
– Just in case you were wondering, Courtney Love has finalized her dream cast for the upcoming Heavier Than Heaven, the Kurt Cobain biopic she's "helping" put together by issuing public statements like these every other day and ensuring no lingering Nirvana fans will ever go near it. Love has already made noise about Ryan Gosling playing her late husband, but who could possibly do justice to the mixture of "young, beautiful, and fabulous" that (The Mirror and certain other enabling yesmen are pretending) describes Love herself? Why, Scarlett Johansson, of course! According to a "close friend," the contract to ScarJo has already gone out, and Love is making plans to "be on set all the time giving Scarlett and Ryan advice on what it was like being one part of the most notorious couples since Sid and Nancy." And you were worried this might turn exploitive!
– Notoriously cranky flier Björk was at it again this weekend, attacking a New Zealand photographer and ripping his shirt in half after he ignored her request not to take any photos. Apparently he's the one paparazzo on Earth who never saw this:
Everybody got that? If you see Björk at an airport (or hell, any of these women, really), LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE.