Back in the good old days, musicians only hallucinated about being attacked by giant crustaceans and the like -- but in these post-modern times, tunesmiths are actually having to face up to the creepy crawly creatures in courts of law. Just ask Mystikal, who's been hauled in front of a Louisiana judge for allegedly borrowing a few riffs from a talking crawfish -- whose inventor claims the rapper used several of the oversized shrimp's catch phrases in his 2000 hit "Shake Ya Ass." Steve Winn -- no relation to the Paisley Underground veteran -- is suing Mystikal for upwards of a million dollars, while the rapper's attorneys insist that the phrases in question (such as "You gotta suck da head on dem der crawfish!") are in common use throughout the Bayou state. Since we haven't seen a good man-versus-crustacean battle since Lobster Man From Mars, we're waiting with baited breath (and drawn butter) . . .

We can think of plenty of good reasons to go on pressing for world peace, but, every once in a while, we hear a bit of news that makes us think that the apocalypse might not be such a bad alternative after all. Take, for instance, rapidly aging pop diva Kylie Minogue's insistence that she intends to ride her recent return to relevance for the long term -- even going so far as to promise Britain's Sunday People that she'll continue to wear her trademark hot pants well past her seventieth birthday. While unpleasant visions of a scantily clad Queen Mum keep going through our heads, we can comfort ourselves with the notion that we still have four or five good years left before Kylie delivers said "treats" . . .

Having equipped ourselves with the fiercest attack cats in captivity, we always felt we'd be free to say whatever we liked about, say, the members of Mudvayne -- fearing only a shoddy application of Carnauba wax from the bassist when those fifteen minutes are up. But recent events in the Congo have led us to consider beefing up our security options. A music critic in the town of Kinshasa found his home attacked by a group of more than 100 teenagers, who trashed everything in sight to express their objection to hearing popular local musician Werrasson characterized as "too arrogant." Critic Fatty Djo-K, who was not injured in the rampage, has yet to offer an opinion about the stylings of Fred Durst . . .

The New York Post reports that Bon Jovi drummer Tico Torres is doing his best to redress the problem of unemployment among Venezuelan immigrants in New York by offering a highly paid executive job to his twenty-four-year-old wife -- despite the fact that she's never worked a day in her life. Torres, who had initially retained respected fashion industry professional Cinzia Spaletti to launch his Rock Star Baby line of kids' threads, summarily dismissed the designer despite the company's hefty profits. Spaletti claims that Torres became verbally abusive and threatened to shut the company down entirely -- but the matter is now in the hands of lawyers, who're generally about three inches further up the baby-to-adult evolutionary scale than musicians in middle-aged crisis.

DAVID SPRAGUE
(March 29, 2002)