The Great Pumpkin is a big fan of professional wrestling. He talks about it on Twitter, stages elaborate stunts with luchadors at performances in Mexico, and recently released a God-awful 12-minute film about lady wrestlers as the music video for “Owata.” So, friends, is it any wonder that Billy Corgan has taken his obsession a step further and launched his own pro wrestling company? Dubbed Resistance Pro and intended to harken back to the, er, sport’s “glory days,” it will debut November 25th at the Excalibur Club in Chicago. Corgan will serve as the company’s “creative director” — meaning that he’ll come up with the story lines. We find this very promising, and strongly suggest that he include narratives inspired by his Twitter battles with Courtney Love, his obsession with the music industry’s downfall, and the government conspiracy that brought us swine flu. If there’s one thing Billy Corgan has going for him, it’s an active imagination. [via NME]
In case you hadn’t noticed, Billy Corgan is a pretty cosmic guy. He’s always name-dropping God in his Twitter feed, and in 2009 he founded a website called Everything from Here to There (which apparently doesn’t exist anymore) “to discuss openly and without fear concepts of Mind-Body-Soul integration.” So is it any wonder that the Great Pumpkin is writing what he calls a “spiritual memoir”?
“I’ve decided to write this on my own, which is complete insanity,” Corgan told Rolling Stone. ”I try to spend about an hour a day on the book, which is the time I would usually put towards music writing. So that means I have to find that hour, because I won’t give up that music writing time. It’s a journey, for sure.” Yup, it’s hard out there for a rock star. The book, titled God Is Everywhere, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2012. [via NME]
“I didn’t realize that you wrote such bloody awful poetry,” sang Morrissey in 1987. And indeed, the history of musicians with poetic aspirations is a long and patchy one. This year has already seen the publication of a couple of collections of poetry by famous musicians – we recently got hold of a copy of System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian’s book Glaring Through Oblivion, and Tom Waits has just published a collaboration with photographer Michael O’Brien called Hard Ground. Writing lyrics is a very different skill to writing effective poems, and the two disciplines rarely coincide. With this in mind, here’s a look at the best and the worst of musicians in poetry – starting with five whose work really should have stayed in their notebooks.
Billy Corgan may be known by modern-day tweens as a borderline weirdo who dates the likes of Jessica Simpson, maintains an inter-spiritual website, and does stuff on Twitter (but, hey, what sentient being doesn’t do that, from a tween’s point of view?), yet back in the ’90s, Corgan was renowned for making great music as the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins — a band that is currently in the process of releasing an 11-EP magnum opus called Teargarden by Kaleidyscope. Today is Corgan’s 44th birthday, and to both celebrate and educate we bring you 44 facts about his life.
Twitter may be less than four years old, but we’re pretty sure it’s the fastest-growing medium for celebrity scandals. In the past, a star might have had to express his dumb thoughts through a publicist or be caught without underpants by a pervy paparazzo. These days, celebrities (and their followers) have the tools for global embarrassment at their fingertips — and boy, are they using them.
The past few weeks have brought a raft of new Twitter debacles, from Chris Brown’s homophobic rant to Justin Bieber fans’ attack on Selena Gomez to the news that Courtney Love’s tweets have finally resulted in a lawsuit. Read on to see where those items land on our list of the top ten celebrity Twitter scandals.
In these times of Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, we tend to assume that everyone has abandoned LiveJournal — the community-oriented blogging platform that peaked about a decade ago, pre-dating even Friendster and MySpace by several years. Strangely, it was Facebook and The Social Network, which includes scenes of Mark Zuckerberg trashing an ex-girlfriend on his LJ, that got us thinking about the site again.
Acquired by blogging giant Six Apart in 2005, it was sold less than three years later to a Russian corporation, where the company now focuses its efforts. (Even the country’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, has his own LJ.) But that doesn’t mean it’s lost all U.S. relevance yet. In fact, some notable cultural figures continue to maintain their LJ presence. Check out who’s still there — a list that includes ’90s alternative stars, cult writers, and current emo sensations — after the jump.
1. The judges for the Guggenheim‘s YouTube contest have just been announced and will include Animal Collective, Darren Aronofsky, and Takashi Murakami. [via Vulture]
2. Someone robbed a Chase bank on Long Island Wednesday while wearing a Darth Vader costume. [via Daily Intel]
3. So this is kind of amazing: 4,000 years later, scientists have discovered that Stonehenge has a wooden “twin.” [via The Independent]
4. Billy Corgan blacked out and then wiped out during a performance of “Bullet [With Butterfly Wings]” in Tampa on Wednesday night. [via EW]
5. MTV received GLAAD‘s first ever “excellent” rating thanks to the fact that 42 percent of its original programming included content “reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual, and transgender people.” [via Vulture]
1. The New York Times has issued a correction for Lynn Hirschberg’s M.I.A. profile, admitting that certain quotes were presented out of order. [via The Daily Swarm]
2. The New Yorker‘s “20 under 40″ list of fiction writers is out; it’s chock full of thirtysomethings, and the youngest person included is Téa Obreht, 24. [via The Awl]
3. The Smashing Pumpkins will go on a tour of smaller venues this summer, playing what Billy Corgan calls, “a balance of classics, a few obscure ones, and new material.” [via Spin]
4. Apple has applied for a patent for a solar-powered iPhone. (Side note: Have you downloaded Flavorpill’s free iPhone app yet?) [via Inhabitat]
5. Listen to Dirty Projectors cover Bob Dylan’s “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.” [via Vulture]
Here at Flavorpill, we love an elegant infographic. We are also kind of obsessed with ’90s alt-rock, to an altogether unhealthy extent. So, when it came out that Courtney Love has copped to sleeping with not only Gavin Rossdale but also Kate Moss, we went into nostalgia overdrive, reminiscing about who dated or hooked up with who 15 years ago. In the spirit of all things grunge, we opted for a chart we’re calling a “lo-fi infographic” (due to our lamentable lack of artistic ability). While Love is no slouch in the liaison department, we’d also like to draw your attention to Winona Ryder, who has slept with enough guitar gods to fill a mixtape. Click here for a larger version.
What a tangled web they weave. After over fifteen years of on-again, off-again, romantic, platonic, and catastrophic relationship strife between Billy Corgan and Courtney Love, Corgan exploded earlier today on his Twitter feed, spewing pure vitriol in Love’s direction. In a quickfire series of tweets that started approximately two hours ago, Corgan fired shots at Love’s artistic ability, her facilities as a parent and decent human being, and musical credibility without him or Kurt Cobain to latch onto. It’s pretty vicious, and surprising after a month-long silence following Love’s attempts to reconcile after Corgan blasted Love as an “abyss” in a self-congratulatory Rolling Stone interview. Follow the twisted tale and tell us: whose side are you on?
