Webs of intrigue

10. Some people reckon that celebrities are overpaid but, personally, we’re at a loss to understand how the likes of Adam Sandler can get by on a measly $100,000 a gig.
Spare a thought too for Ani DiFranco ($25,000), Basement Jaxx ($10,000), Beck ($75,000), Green Day ($50,000), Jurassic 5 ($25,000), Morrissey ($50,000) and Huey Lewis & The News ($100,000) who are going to have to get day-jobs if things don’t pick up. You can find out who else is asking for what at www.clearchannelcollegeentertainment.com

9. If it’s bovine Robert Smith doppelgangers you’re after, look no further than www.stupidanimals.co.uk

8. Fascinating CIN fact: The Smurfs are called The Puffis in Italy. Fascinating CIN fact #2: The blue troll-like critters have been given a makeover and now include Gameboy Smurf, Laptop Smurf, Techno Smurf and Hip Hop Smurf who doubtless shows off his gunshot wounds, uses his gigs to flog trainers and boasts about how many people he got addicted to crack cocaine as a teenage drug dealer. Read all about it at www.bluebuddies.com

7. We’d hate you to think we’re a bunch of sick deviant pervs, but CIN is rather taken with a new product that was unveiled at the latest Fetish Retinue in New York.
Retailing for an extremely reasonable $800, the vacuum-powered Sucky Bed “sucks every inch of your helpless body while you breathe through a tube. Add a little lube for a new sensation. Comes with a canvas carrying bag.” Order yours from www.baroness.com/LatexRubber/bizarre/suckybed.htm

6. Our next click of the mouse takes us to www.mrbongo.uh-hosting.co.uk/garathgates, home of indefinite article hotshots The Stammerers. Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Albert Arkwright, Porky The Pig, Max Headroom and a certain Pop Idol, their lip-syncing of The Who’s ‘My Generation’ (“Why don’t you all f-f-f-f-ade away”) is cruelly gigglesome.

5. Dodgy haircuts, bad teeth, pot bellies, crimpolene shirts…they’re all to be marveled at on www.nyheter.nu/kultur, a gallery of ’70s Swedish popsters who desperately wanted to be Abba but, well, looked shit.

4. Asked in our Witnness special whether he’s come across an odder band than his own happy clappy mob, Polyphonic Spree mainman Tim DeLaughter said, yup, The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.
We were sceptical until we paid a visit to www.trachtenburg.homestead.com and feasted our ears on the Mom, Pop and 9-year-old daughter combo. Odd? The Trachtenburgs are completely barking!
“Like many bands, the Players started in a garage – a garage sale, actually, in 2000,” explains an Entertainment Weekly clipping. “Looking to spice up their folk gigs, Jason and his wife Tina bought a projector for $5 and a set of slides labeled ‘Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959’ for 25c. Jason wrote a loopy song to follow the slides and started performing it at the end of his set, with Tina in charge of pictures and daughter Rachel on harmonica.”

3. Never mind all this “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” baloney, Neil Armstrong’s reaction to being the first man on the moon was altogether more forthright. Whether this really is the unedited NASA film from the triumphant Apollo 11 mission is highly questionable, but Jesus H. Christ in a chicken basket, it’s funny. Check it out at www.blogjam.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/neil_armstrong

2. Someone who definitely won’t be receiving a Christmas card from any member of the Presley clan is the willy waving Extreme Elvis.
Explaining how his XXX-rated tribute to The King came about, the Californian says: “I was at The Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. I was dressed in a white Elvis jumpsuit that I’d been wearing constantly. It had Hershey stains on the backside. I was wearing Elvis sunglasses. My hair was matted and my face was unshaven. I was eating psychedelic mushrooms. My girlfriend and I were fighting constantly and had already broken up twice in two days.
“I got hammered and affected this drawl – half Elvis, half me. Then I more or less acted as a pied piper for a half-dozen other folks. We made a small parade through the desert collecting people as we went. Once we arrived at this camp called Bianca’s Smut Shack, I sodomised my friend Bill with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in plain view of everyone. It was the start of something. And the end of something else. My relationship with my girlfriend!”
Read the whole story at www.extremeelvis.com

1. Now that Saddam is dead/in exile/running a greengrocer’s in Borrisoleigh, it strikes Caught In The Net that we need a new megalomaniac leader to demonsise. So, it’s “hello” then to the President, Prime Minister, Chairman of the Upper House, Chairman of the Council of Elders, President of the Humanitarian Association, Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces, Chairman of the National Security Council and Head of Civil Defence in Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov.
Since coming to power in 1992, the 61-year-old has had 812 gold statues of himself put up around the country, the most spectacular being the 12-metre revolving image atop a 23-metre high tower in the capital, Ashgabat.
He’s also commisioned a 300 square foot carpet bearing his likeness, turned his mother into a deity, renamed days of the week after his family, re-written the country’s school curriculum and twice awarded the $100,000 ‘Hero of Turkmenistan’ prize to…Saparmurat Niyazov. You can find out more at http://archive.tol.cz/transitions/oct98/saparmur.html