Kanye West, with a crown of thorns atop his head, poses as Jesus Christ on the cover of the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone. He is also pictured posing as Muhammad Ali.
``In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts,'' he says. ``You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?''
West also says his hit song Gold Digger was the best song last year and that it should have been nominated for the Grammy's best rap song category: ``That's a gimme Grammy.''
PHOTOS: AP AND AFP
Nevertheless, the 27-year-old is nominated for eight awards, including album of the year for his sophomore album, Late Registration. The Grammys will be presented Feb. 8.
West has always been forthright in saying what he feels, most famously when he said, ``George Bush doesn't care about black people'' during a telethon for Hurricane Katrina victims.
"If I was more complacent and I let things slide, my life would be easier, but you all wouldn't be as entertained,'' he says. ``My misery is your pleasure.''
The strangest tangent of the Rolling Stone story, however, is when West says he's addicted to pornography. He remembers first seeing his father's Playboy magazine when he was five years old. ``Right then,'' West says, laughing, ``it was like, `Houston, we have a problem.'''
A wealthy Austrian playboy who keeps the Viennese in suspense each winter over his date to the lavish annual Opera Ball says he's taking former Baywatch star Carmen Electra this year.
Vienna businessman Richard Lugner confirmed Tuesday that Electra would be his guest to the exclusive Feb. 23 ball, the most prestigious event on Vienna's society calendar.
Lugner invites a celebrity every year and his past ball dates have included another ex-Baywatch star, Pamela Anderson, as well as actress Andie MacDowell, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, singer-actress-model Grace Jones and the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson.
Tickets to the annual ball cost about US$265 and typically sell out months in advance. With extras such as gowns and tuxedos, flowers, limousines, high-end champagne and lavish dinners, the night typically runs to US$1,225 or more.
Victor Willis, the original policeman in the 1970s disco band the Village People, skipped a court hearing where he was due to be sentenced on drug and gun charges and now faces more than three years in prison, prosecutors said. Willis, 54, had been scheduled to surrender Tuesday after four months on the run but he failed to show up for the hearing in San Mateo County Superior Court, prosecutors said. It was his second no-show.
He was facing a maximum of 16 months in state prison after pleading no contest to charges he had cocaine and a loaded handgun when he was arrested in Daly City in July. Prosecutors said he was on probation for another cocaine conviction at the time.
Hawaiian crooner Don Ho has returned to the stage, less than two months after undergoing a stem-cell procedure in Thailand to strengthen his heart.
The 75-year-old Ho sang for 90 minutes before a sellout crowd last weekend of 300 people at the Ohana Waikiki Beachcomber Hotel.
It was his first performance since November.
On Dec. 6, Ho underwent a new treatment that hasn't been approved in the US. It involves multiplying stem cells taken from his blood and injecting them into his heart in hopes of strengthening it.
Wearing white pants, a blue velvet shirt and a white ginger lei, Ho sat behind an organ and kicked off a 10-song show with, Night Life, followed by his signature tune Tiny Bubbles.
Joe Correa, a rancher who went to the show with his wife and some friends, said Ho was ``sharp as a tack ... It was great to see him do what he does,'' Correa said.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
A sultry sea mist blankets New Taipei City as I pedal from Tamsui District (淡水) up the coast. This might not be ideal beach weather but it’s fine weather for riding –– the cloud cover sheltering arms and legs from the scourge of the subtropical sun. The dedicated bikeway that connects downtown Taipei with the west coast of New Taipei City ends just past Fisherman’s Wharf (漁人碼頭) so I’m not the only cyclist jostling for space among the SUVs and scooters on National Highway No. 2. Many Lycra-clad enthusiasts are racing north on stealthy Giants and Meridas, rounding “the crown coast”
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she