Congratulations to gossip blogger Perez Hilton, whom Forbes has named as the biggest star on the web for the third year running.
Perez, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, beat luminaries such as the Twitter founders, causing some unfamiliar with his work to query whether he deserves the top spot. Perhaps he does. Just as some are joking that, as an aggressive, foul-mouthed cheat, John Terry is the perfect embodiment of English
values, so it is tempting to think of Perez as the man for whom the Internet was made.
The Web has come into its own as a means of gambling, disseminating porn, and seeing whether Paris Hilton was wearing knickers last night; and though its founding fathers couldn’t have predicted their baby would turn out like this, it’s amazing how even an unpromising child can blossom. Britney Spears was the most searched name on the Internet for the fourth year running in 2009, and if you like your up-skirt shots of her augmented with the words “unfit mother,” Perez was the place to go.
For those unfamiliar with his shtick, that’s about the size of it, and in its early years this would have been characterized as its charm. Even Spears used to wear T-shirts advertising the site. It had the flavor of a cheeky outsider pressing his nose against the window of a Hollywood party that was taking itself rather too seriously, panting a while, then writing rude words in the condensation its breath left behind.
It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact point at which Perez passed through that window, but passed through it he most certainly has. He appears in music videos and on celebrity reality shows. He co-hosted the MTV Europe music awards, and has been touting himself as a candidate to fill Simon Cowell’s soon-to-be vacated chair on American Idol.
In joining the throng of those he mocks, Perez Hilton has completed the transformation from blogger to satirical character. That he presents TV gigs in the manner of someone who has just won a competition to do so must be part of his appeal. The Internet’s biggest star is a man who would trample over his grandmother to get inside the tent he was pissing into minutes before.
Meanwhile, former 1970s teen idol Leif Garrett has been charged with felony possession of heroin after his arrest in a Los Angeles subway station.
The 48-year-old singer and actor was charged on Friday and is free on bond. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 24.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore says deputies confronted Garrett at the downtown Metro Red Line station on Monday. They say he admitted having black tar heroin in his shoe.
Garrett was also arrested for heroin possession at an LA subway station
in 2006.
A phone message left for publicist Barbara Papageorge was not immediately returned, and it was not clear if Garrett had an attorney.
Garrett had a handful of hit songs and was a constant cover boy on teen magazines in the 1970s.
In Hong Kong, police said on Friday they had released a feng shui master suspected of forgery in his failed claim on the estate of late billionaire Nina Wang (龔如心), once Asia’s richest woman.
Tony Chan (陳振聰), 50, Wang’s former lover and spiritual adviser, spent more than a day in custody before his release early Friday on bail of US$640,000, a police spokesman said.
Chan, who has not been charged, must report back to the police in the middle of next month while the investigation continues, the spokesman added.
“A man surnamed Chan, aged 50, was arrested for forgery and was allowed to get police bail of five million Hong Kong dollars today,” the spokesman said.
On Tuesday, a Hong Kong court rejected Chan’s bid to inherit Wang’s estimated US$13 billion property empire, ruling he had forged the eccentric tycoon’s signature on a
2006 will.
Police arrested Chan on Wednesday evening following a search of his luxury home in Hong Kong’s upmarket Peak district.
The sensational case gripped the former British colony and generated blanket media coverage, with Chan often cast as a charlatan who duped the pigtailed billionaire by promising to find her kidnapped husband and cure her cancer.
Famous for her outlandish dress and thrifty nature, Wang died in 2007 at the age of 69.
Wang’s husband Teddy, whose body has never been found, was abducted in 1990 and declared legally dead in 1999.
If one asks Taiwanese why house prices are so high or why the nation is so built up or why certain policies cannot be carried out, one common answer is that “Taiwan is too small.” This is actually true, though not in the way people think. The National Property Administration (NPA), responsible for tracking and managing the government’s real estate assets, maintains statistics on how much land the government owns. As of the end of last year, land for official use constituted 293,655 hectares, for public use 1,732,513 hectares, for non-public use 216,972 hectares and for state enterprises 34 hectares, yielding
The small platform at Duoliang Train Station in Taitung County’s Taimali Township (太麻里) served villagers from 1992 to 2006, but was eventually shut down due to lack of use. Just 10 years later, the abandoned train station had become widely known as the most beautiful station in Taiwan, and visitors were so frequent that the village had to start restricting traffic. Nowadays, Duoliang Village (多良) is known as a bit of a tourist trap, with a mandatory, albeit modest, admission fee of NT$10 giving access to a crowded lane of vendors with a mediocre view of the ocean and the trains
Traditionally, indigenous people in Taiwan’s mountains practice swidden cultivation, or “slash and burn” agriculture, a practice common in human history. According to a 2016 research article in the International Journal of Environmental Sustainability, among the Atayal people, this began with a search for suitable forested slopeland. The trees are burnt for fertilizer and the land cleared of stones. The stones and wood are then piled up to make fences, while both dead and standing trees are retained on the plot. The fences are used to grow climbing crops like squash and beans. The plot itself supports farming for three years.
For many people, Bilingual Nation 2030 begins and ends in the classroom. Since the policy was launched in 2018, the debate has centered on students, teachers and the pressure placed on schools. Yet the policy was never solely about English education. The government’s official plan also calls for bilingualization in Taiwan’s government services, laws and regulations, and living environment. The goal is to make Taiwan more inclusive and accessible to international enterprises and talent and better prepared for global economic and trade conditions. After eight years, that grand vision is due for a pulse check. RULES THAT CAN BE READ For Harper Chen (陳虹宇), an adviser
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