I wasn’t even gonna report on this because, at this point, it’s barely news – I mean, we’ve known for awhile now that Gus G. from Firewind is Ozzy’s new guitarist. But so many of you e-mailed us this morning that I guess I have to write about this.

Randall Amps has jumped the gun somewhat by announcing that, yes, Gus G. is Ozzy’s new guitar player, and, yes, he will make his debut with Ozzy tomorrow at Blizzcon. Here are some random, uncollected thoughts:

• I have no clue why Ozzy is still sitting on making an official announcement. Everyone already knows that Zakk is out and Gus is in. Unveiling Gus as a “surprise” at the performance strikes me as a bad idea; for one thing, Gus deserves more. For another thing, at portion of the audience won’t even know who the hell Gus is, and now there’s the risk of incurring the wrath of drunken Zakk fans. Plus, Ozzy let Zakk know he was fired via a public interview. Wouldn’t that be a great way to announce the addition of Gus to the band, too?
• Randall clearly want to make the most of their endorsement deal with Gus, so it’s hard to blame them for jumping the gun.

And… that’s really all I have to say about that. The performance will be broadcast live over Direct TV, which we do not have here at the Mansion (the Rosenberg Wing has Time Warner; the Neilstein Wing has no television of any kind, so as not to corrupt Sensei Vince’s spiritual balance with crap like Who Wants to Fuck a Midget?). But that’s no matter; if the performance is gonna be on television, it will be all over the internet within hours, which means we should have video for you come Monday morning. And then we can all make needless judgements on Gus’ performance. Hoo-ray!

-AR