Goodbye yellow brick road, hello hip hop.
Elton John tells Rolling Stone magazine that he wants to record a hip-hop album with Grammy-winning producer Dr. Dre.
"I want to work with Pharrell, Timbaland, Snoop, Kanye, Eminem and just see what happens," the Rocket Man says in the Sept. 7 issue. "It may be a disaster, it could be fantastic, but you don't know until you try."
The 59-year-old says he is a fan of Blackstreet's No Diggity and Tupac Shakur's California Love.
"I want to bring my songs and melodies to hip-hop beats," John says. "I love these beats, but I have no idea how to get them."
Sir John performed Eminem's song Stan with the rapper during the 2001 Grammy awards.
His new album, The Captain and the Kid, is due in September.
Another star who seems to have lost touch with reality, Tom Cruise, has a new award from Australia to add to his collection -- for being the most sexist celebrity.
About 400 of Australia's most powerful women gathered in the New South Wales state parliament late Thursday to decide on the winners of the 14th annual Ernie Awards which are handed out for the worst derogatory public statements.
The awards were named after a trade union leader called Ernie whose union members included sheep shearers. He once famously said: "Women aren't welcome in the shearing sheds. They're only after the sex."
The Ernies have an international flavor -- and Cruise was awarded the 2006 Celebrity Ernie.
Dumped by Paramount Pictures for his erratic behavior, the kooky star won for a comment he made about his pregnant partner Katie Holmes: "I've got Katie tucked away so no one will get to us until my child is born."
The political award went to Bill Heffernan, a member of Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government in a hotly contested field.
Heffernan chastised opposition Labor MP Julia Gillard for being single and childless. "Anyone who chooses to deliberately remain barren ... they've got no idea what life's about," Heffernan said.
But the Golden Ernie for 2006 went to cruise liner company P&O for an advertising campaign that included postcards featuring bikini-clad women and the caption: "Seamen wanted."
The company has subsequently apologized for the campaign.
Another celebrity diaster in the making is Kevin Federline, who has been trying his hand at signing and acting.
The 28-year-old dancer who married singer Britney Spears will be shuffling over to the small screen where he will appear in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation this fall, People magazine reported.
Although Federline and Spears ventured into TV with their reality show Chaotic, which aired on UPN last year, this will be his first venture into acting.
Britney's boy started filming this week in Los Angeles. He will play a menacing, arrogant teen who harasses investigators Nick Stokes (George Eads) and Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) on a job.
The episode is tentatively scheduled to air in October.
Mr. Britney Spears recently performed at the Teen Choice Awards where he rapped one of the songs on his upcoming album Playing with Fire.
Introduced by his wife, who was dressed in a cleavage-baring mini-dress despite her late pregnancy, K-Fed stalked about the stage with attitude.
"Don't hate because I'm a superstar! And I'm married to a superstar! Nothin' come between us no matter who you are!" he declared, as dancers pop-locked as his side.
It was the most anticipated performance of the night -- and the most ridiculed. The next morning, videos of it were splashed on Web sites like YouTube.com and various blogs, accompanied by catty comments mocking both Federline and his wife.
If the Web world isn't exactly accepting of Federline's rap-star ambitions, the hip-hopsters are even less so.
Elliot Wilson, editor in chief of XXL magazine, called it a "YouTube disaster" -- something to be laughed off in hip-hop circles.
"I just think we ignore him," Wilson said. "He's a joke, basically."
Dec. 16 to Dec. 22 Growing up in the 1930s, Huang Lin Yu-feng (黃林玉鳳) often used the “fragrance machine” at Ximen Market (西門市場) so that she could go shopping while smelling nice. The contraption, about the size of a photo booth, sprayed perfume for a coin or two and was one of the trendy bazaar’s cutting-edge features. Known today as the Red House (西門紅樓), the market also boasted the coldest fridges, and offered delivery service late into the night during peak summer hours. The most fashionable goods from Japan, Europe and the US were found here, and it buzzed with activity
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, speaking at the Reagan Defense Forum last week, said the US is confident it can defeat the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Pacific, though its advantage is shrinking. Paparo warned that the PRC might launch a “war of necessity” even if it thinks it could not win, a wise observation. As I write, the PRC is carrying out naval and air exercises off its coast that are aimed at Taiwan and other nations threatened by PRC expansionism. A local defense official said that China’s military activity on Monday formed two “walls” east
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
The world has been getting hotter for decades but a sudden and extraordinary surge in heat has sent the climate deeper into uncharted territory — and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Over the past two years, temperature records have been repeatedly shattered by a streak so persistent and puzzling it has tested the best-available scientific predictions about how the climate functions. Scientists are unanimous that burning fossil fuels has largely driven long-term global warming, and that natural climate variability can also influence temperatures one year to the next. But they are still debating what might have contributed to this
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