Boy George, with a sunburn and blistered fingers, ended his court-ordered community service -- sweeping the streets for New York City's Department of Sanitation.
Though the experience got off to a bumpy start -- he yelled at the media hounding him on his first day on the job last Monday -- the former Culture Club frontman had only good things to say about his bosses when he finished his five-day stint Friday.
"They treated us with kindness, and they treated us with respect," he said, adding that he was considering a concert to benefit the city's street cleaners.
The 45-year-old singer, born George O'Dowd, was ordered to work for the department after pleading guilty in March to falsely reporting a burglary at his lower Manhattan apartment. Responding officers found cocaine instead.
After five days pushing a broom, Boy George said it was time for a taste of the good life.
"I'm going to go off and have a glass of champagne," he said.
Justin Timberlake also talked trash last week, although he later backtracked from criticism of American Idol winner Taylor Hicks after telling Fashion Rocks magazine that the 29-year-old soul singer "can't carry a tune in a bucket."
"I have a strange relationship with that show," Timberlake tells the magazine in an interview. "I despise it, and yet I'm completely fascinated."
"The guy who won -- people think he looks so normal, and he's so sweet, and he's so earnest, but he can't carry a tune in a bucket. Do you realize how much pressure it is to put on somebody all of a sudden?"
Timberlake, a member of boy band 'N Sync who is now pursuing a solo career, also said: "If he has any skeletons whatsoever; if, God forbid, he's gay, and all these people in Mississippi who voted for him are like, `Oh, my God, I voted for a queer!' It's just too much pressure."
A representative for Hicks' record label, RCA, declined to comment. Ken Sunshine, Timberlake's representative, said the 25-year-old singer's comments "were taken completely out of context."
"He has tremendous affection for Taylor Hicks' success," Sunshine said. "He would never say anything that personal about somebody he's never met. He only wishes him the best."
Timberlake's second solo album, FutureSex/LoveSounds, is set for release Sept. 12.
Sexyback, his first single from the CD, began playing on US radio outlets last month.
"I wanted (the album) to look to like a time when everything was really sexy," he says. "Maybe everybody was coked up, but who cares? It was hot. It was all about sex."
Meanwhile, singer and songwriter Barry Manilow has canceled three Las Vegas shows due to a worsening hip injury and will undergo surgery soon after a scheduled television performance later this month.
"My intent was to continue to do the show that I love at the Las Vegas Hilton right up until the surgery. Unfortunately, my body has decided otherwise," Manilow said in a statement released last week.
Manilow, 63, announced about two weeks ago that he would undergo arthroscopic surgery for torn cartilage in both hips following his run of Manilow: Music and Passion at the Las Vegas Hilton hotel and his performance on Aug. 27 at the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, which are US television's top honors.
However, at his Las Vegas show last week, he told the audience his pain had worsened, and he was foregoing three remaining shows on the advice of friends and doctors. He will perform at the Emmys, then have outpatient surgery and a undergo an eight-week recovery and rehabilitation.
Since rising to stardom in the 1970s with hits like Mandy and I Write the Songs, Manilow's records have sold more 65 million copies worldwide. He has written hundreds of songs and won many awards.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50