Pop Stop

Once again, for its cover last week Next Magazine snapped some saucy pictures of two popular and beautiful young actors rounding first base in a car with insufficiently tinted windows. Nothing too scandalous there, except the guy involved, Xu Shaoyang (許紹洋) wasn't the boyfriend of the girl he was taking for a ride, Lin Weijun (林韋君). Her actual boyfriend, at least until the magazine rolled off the press, was the pop singer Lin Youwei (林佑威). With obvious shadenfreude, the magazine busted Weijun doing what it called "the splits between two beds," a term it coined a while ago for just such occasions.

Since the incriminating July 24 issue came out, the gossip news over the past week has been dominated by the tearful saga of the two Lin's public breakup. Press conferences were held, in Youwei's case to angrily announce the couple's breakup, henceforth, and in Weijun's to squeeze out a few tears for the cameras and express her remorse. A weird twist to the story came when Weijun thanked Shaoyang for being a "real man" -- for admitting to the affair from the first day it was exposed, while her agent tacked on a nasty rebuke to Youwei's outrage by calling him a "chauvinist" for blowing up over the issue and "not wanting to communicate" with Weijun. Youwei may feel comforted to know that sympathy from his die-hard fans helped propel his new album to Tower Records' number four spot.

All the fireworks sparked by the Lin-Lin-Xu love triangle story provided some timely cover for the other potential scandal of the week also broken by Next involving TV show presenter Momoko Tao (陶晶瑩), better known as Taozi (陶子), and actress/singer Lan Xinmei (藍心湄). The two showed up at a pool-side major rager in Kaohsiung two weekends ago where, according to the report, people were, surprise surprise, high on a whole alphabet of drugs. Because there was no proof that the two stars had partaken of anything illicit, the report opted instead to adopt the magazine's typical sanctimonious tone to express its disappointment that these two respected public figures would associate with such a sketchy crowd. None of the mud stuck, but the row will be enough to make Taozi feel more than a bit awkward as a presenter at tomorrow's Golden Melody Awards ceremony.

Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) defied physics this week when her improbable comeback made over the past six months from the edge of the post-stardom black hole was confirmed by her claiming the highest sales in Taiwan for the first half of 2003 on the g-music pop chart.

Also hanging onto celebrity status by her painted nail extensions is A-mei (阿妹), who, no longer content to be the cute girl next door, has recast herself as an unharnessed vixen for her latest album Courage (勇敢). In an exclusive event, Hinet customers will be able to enjoy A-mei gyrating in mesh tops and hot pants in a special live web-cast set for 8pm on Aug. 8. Now that's killer content! No, but for real, it's a concert just like Madonna's online concert at Brixton Academy. And A-mei really knows how to rock a live show, so it should be pretty good viewing if the notoriously lumbering Hinet can work out the technical kinks. Check http://www.hinet.net/Amei for information.

On the other side of the strait, China's gossip rags and our local edition of the Minsheng Daily speculated on a budding romance between actress/singer Zhao Wei (趙薇) and "new good man" (新好男人) actor Jiang Wen (姜文). Zhao's had a tough time in the past year since she was physically attacked onstage at a concert by a seething nationalist for wearing a dress with a Japanese flag pattern. The association with Jiang, 13 years her senior, should help turn people's attention away from the furor she caused with her dress.