Gossip

THE LOHAN TAPES

Photographs courtesy of AP/EPA

It�s been a tumultuous time recently for teen star Lindsay Lohan. First, Hilary Duff�s been verbally slapping her playground rival on a new album. According to website The Scoop, �Hilary thinks that Lindsay has been directing negativity at her for too long.� So Duff � or her songwriter � wrote the lyrics �You�re queen of superficiality/ Keep your lies out of my reality.� As if that wasn�t enough, Lohan�s dad � who has agreed to enter a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre � has blasted his daughter�s friends, calling them parasites, according to the World Entertainment News Network. Michael Lohan, who asserts that he doesn�t have a drinking problem, claims he has �tapes� of Lindsay and her parasitical friends. What sort of tapes, we can only imagine, although the non-drinking non-loony says he plans to release them soon. Check your local pirate plazas for details.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...

Been watching the final series of Friends on UBC recently? If so, you�ll have wasted a small but significant portion of your life watching annoying thirty-somethings doing stupid and unentertaining things � but you know that already. What you may not know is that David Schwimmer, who plays nerdy and irritating Ross, has girlfriend troubles. Basically, he can�t get one, according to Star Magazine. In fact the 37-year-old multi-millionaire has resorted to calling friends of his ex-girlfriend Gina Lee and asking them for dates. According to Star Magazine, Lee is quoted as saying, �He�s not a bad person, and he has every right to ask out anyone he wants. I�m not trying to chastise him because he�s not a bad person, it�s just kind of pathetic.� Apparently, Lee is happy in her current relationship with guitarist Scott Meola, and despite Schwimmer�s wealth, she won�t go back to him. See? Money really can�t buy you love

SAME OLD BRAND NEW ME

Everyone knows that Jennifer Lopez is a veritable intellectual heavyweight well-known for her verbosity, so it was with some surprise that Student Weekly learned of remarks the talented talker made recently. Take a look at the following remarks attributed to Lopez on the Internet Movie Database: �I feel like I�m a new person now. I feel like I�m in a different place � a totally different place. It feels like... I was a different person (before). I did all this stuff and it was all great and I had a great time doing it, but I learned a lot. I made some mistakes and I learned from them � I hope. Now I�m taking a new approach. I feel like I�m starting over. It�s a whole new phase and it�s a new me and I think you�re gonna see that in the choices I make, in the work I do and the things I�m doing.� So she�s taking a break from acting and singing (and talking)?

BLONDE AMBITION

Maybe it�s something in the stars, but gossip queen No. 3 Paris Hilton has also had a miserable time recently (that�s if it�s possible to have a miserable time when you�re worth about a trillion baht). According to the World Entertainment News Network, the memory-challenged heiress has been trying to shed her dumb blonde image and make it as a �real� star (for �real� think Britney Spears) what with all her recent exposure, literal or otherwise. However, when Hilton appeared on stage in a Florida nightclub, she was booed off-stage for lip-synching her aptly titled song �Screwed.� Audience members were also treated to a rendition of David Bowie�s �Fame,� causing many of them to leave. Clearly they didn�t see the irony of watching a young girl famous for being rich lip-synching to a song written about the lavish fame-based lifestyle that turns talent into tripe.

YOU CAN BE OZZY

Never a couple to shy away from any sort of publicity limelight, Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, fresh from cancer rehab, quad-bike accidents and offspring-related drug concerns, have decided to create their own reality TV show. Battle for Ozzfest is its title and this should be a sneaky giveaway as to the content. In the show, greasy rockers (presumably in Metallica T-shirts and playing V-shaped guitars) will battle it out singing lyrics about hell, demons and the end of the world. The winners will win a spot at the Ozzfest 2005 heavy metal tour, where they will be joined by hoary old rockers also singing about hell, demons and the end of the world.

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Vocabulary

tumultuous (adj): involving a lot of change and confusion and/or violence
rival (n): a person, company, or thing that competes with another in sport, business, etc.
negativity (n): a tendency to consider only the bad side of something/somebody
rehabilitation (n): the act of helping someone recover from something, usually addiction
parasite (n): a person who always relies on or benefits from other people and gives nothing back
nerdy (adj): behaving like a nerd (a person who is boring, stupid and not fashionable)
chastise (v): to criticise somebody for doing something wrong
veritable (adj): word used to emphasise that somebody/something can be compared to somebody/something else that is more exciting, more impressive, etc.
verbosity (n): the ability to be able to speak well
trillion (number): one million million
heiress (n): a female person who has the legal right to receive somebody�s property, money or title when that person dies
rendition (n): the performance of something, especially a song or piece of music
irony (n): the amusing or strange aspect of a situation that is very different from what you expect; a situation like this
tripe (n): something that is nonsense or not of good quality
rehab (n): common abbreviated form of the word rehabilitation
offspring (n): a child of a particular person or couple
hoary (adj): very old and well known and therefore no longer interesting