Pop Stop

Little known, if not long forgotten, veteran singers Yu Guan-hua (于冠華) and Fang Wen-lin (方文琳) returned to the gossip pages last week when their divorce was made official. Like all men guilty of playing away from home, Yu has been condemned as a horrible husband after he engaged in extramarital flings, whereas Fang took on the role of super mom and former-wife by asking the press to refrain from being too harsh on her ex.

The media trailed the ex-couple for days, trying to squeeze the last drops of juice out of the story. Yet another example of newspapers squandering their human resources on stories about self-important celebrities that nobody really gives a damn about.

As for the Mando-pop scene, Jolin Tsai's (蔡依林) new album Dancing Diva (舞孃) got off to a shaky start. Struck down with gastroenteritis, the Mando-pop queen broke off her album-release press conference last week for a trip to the hospital, but she dutifully returned to finish her performance, which included demanding yoga positions and acrobatic moves.

The problems continued when the truck that had been converted into a mobile stage for Tsai's shows got stuck in traffic in Taipei during the weekend and was fined three times for violating traffic restrictions that ban large vehicles from the streets of the capital in the daytime.

The fine is unlikely to trouble Tsai's record company Capitol as it spent NT$3 million for the conversion, not to mention NT$35 million on producing Tsai's new album.

Ever since local femme fatale Lily Tien (田麗) took a swipe at actress Suzanne Hsiao (蕭淑慎) last year, criticizing the latter's wardrobe malfunction at the Golden Bell Awards (金鐘獎) and lambasting her side-dish sized breasts, while claiming hers are the real deal, the two stars have been on a hostile terms.

Last Friday, Hsiao invited the saucy Tien on to her new TV variety show Men, Women Do Not Care (男女別管) for a big reconcil-iation to boost viewer ratings.

Alas, the poignant memory of the cat fight was still too vivid for both parties. All out war was declared when Tien openly aired her contempt for Hsiao and the hostess returned fire. So it seems that the two women's battle over who has the more classy breasts will continue.

Contrary to the vanity of his female counterparts, Jerry Yan (言承旭) of boyband F4 now leads a more meaningful life. He was spotted spending NT$140,000 on English-language books at Eslite's Dunnan branch last weekend and has recently started taking English conversation courses.

According to celebrity insiders, Yan wants to counter the humil-iation he suffered during an interview on the CNN program Talk Asia last month in which he was left embarrassingly mute and baffled while the other three band members talked fluently in English with host Lorraine Hahn.

As the old saying goes: no pain, no gain.

Entertainment talk-show host Mickey Huang (黃子佼) is down in the dumps lately. Depicted by local media as a lascivious middle-aged man for trying to steal Selina of girlband S.H.E away from her rumored sweetheart, singer and TV host Luo Zhi-xiang (羅志祥), Huang is said to have curried favor with her family by co-hosting a TV show with her father.

A disheartened Huang wrote a 3,000-word letter on his official Web site countering the malevolent accusation in mind-boggling detail. In an attempt to keep the fact-stretching press at arm's length, Huang changed his phone number and vowed never again to divulge details about his private life.