It has literally been years since we’ve done a new edition of “Board to Death,” the column in which we make fun of people on internet message boards, because we’re nice people like that. But last night Ozzy Osbourne’s intern made this announcement on the Ozzfest Facebook page…

…and while I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would care in light of the fact that there’s still The Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival featuring the Jagermeister Mobile Stage, Vans Warped Tour, The Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar Tour, Summer Slaughter, Slaughter Survivors, Slaughter Slaughter, The All Stars Tour, The Cool Tour (actually I don’t think that one is coming back but still), The Old People Doing Glam for the Sake of Nostalgia Tour, The Hellmann’s Dijon Mustard Extreme Grindcore Festival, and eighteen thousand other Ozzfests that aren’t called Ozzfest. But some people do care, and those people left inadvertently hilarious messages under this announcement.

I’m not gonna do screencaps for all of these, nor am I going to identify everyone by their full name, because it’s been seven whole days since someone last threatened to sue us and I’d like to see if we can make it as far as ten days. But obviously it would be very easy for you to just go to the aforementioned Facebook page and see who I’m talking about.

And on that note, here are some of my favorite comments…

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It’s true! I thought the Osbourne clan had simply been approached by some talented young filmmaker who was interested in doing an honest, no-holds-barred documentary on Ozzy’s life and, through sheer coincidence, just happened to share the same last name as the famous vocalist. But as it turns out, the resulting film, God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (which recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival), might — and I emphasize the word “might,” because I don’t think it’s fair to call this one just yet — but it just might be an act of nepotism.

But the younger Osbourne is apparently aware of the pratfalls of sticking too close to his clan — and so now Metal Injection tells me that Jack is working on his follow-up to God Bless…, a project which will finally distance him accusations that he owes all his success to his celebrity father: a horror film entitled Black Sabbath, which, Osbourne’s producer Marc Weingarten assures fans, will feature some of the band’s music, but is “not about the band.”

I’m really glad to see Jack striking out on his own, distancing himself from his family, and trying to make it on his own merits. People have been giving this guy shit about his last name for too long. I’m sure making a horror movie that just happens to have the same name as the band that made his father famous will finally shut up people and get them to judge Jack based solely on his own talents. Good for him!

-AR

When word reached Lady Gaga last year that she’d been described by Ozzy Osbourne as ”very clever, very interesting,” “wacky,” and in possession of a likable zaniness, the pop singer expressed her joy by calling herself Black Sabbath’s biggest fan “in the world.” Um, yeah that’s a patent and insulting falsehood, but shit, no worries cuz flattery from an icon like Ozzy might lead to excited overstatement in response. Shit, I’d be fuckin’ pumped if Bill Ward and I liked the same cereal. So yeah.

And really it’d even be spazworthy for most if similar praise came from somebody like Monster Magnet maestro Dave Wyndorf, as it did for Lady Gaga on MetalSucks back in November. Though hmm I doubt she was similarly flattered by an aged metal drummer fop’s invite to a groping, which occured this weekend when the Iron Maiden tour shared a venue with Lady Gaga’s in Tampa, Florida. A few days before that, McBrain told an about-to-be totally nauseated interviewer:

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American Idol week 13

Wed The final eight perform famous movie songs. Gosh thrilling concept, guys.

Thur Live results + lots of fast-forwarding

Misery Index Shut up shut up shut up all of you!

Tyler-o-meter “I am fucked up right now!”

Hey friends! This week, let’s check out the Idol Remains mailbag! The first comment comes from the nice person who does my boss:

Hi Anso, It’s me Metalgf. I am Vince [Neilstein]’s girlfriend and a fan of Idol. I also saw Idol taped live earlier this year, as you may recall. I am just a mess over the results. Pia [the pageant singer] was so much better than so many other Losers on this show. I HATE James Durbin and Paul [McDonald] is fine but not Idol material, Laura [the winner] is a snooze factory and Haley [Reinhart] is nothing to write home about. Stefano [Dimples] is just a pretty face. Pia and Jacob [Down With Jesus] and maybe Casey Beardo have real talent. But MOSTLY PIA. She was the best. I think I will stop watching the show now. I am just so disappointed and it’s just ridiculous. I obviously, as usual, do not agree with America at large. Our tastes differ more than I ever imagined.

Hi Metalgf, it’s me Anso. I am Vince’s um “silent admirer” and not a fan of Idol. You’re so right that it seems like Pia and Jacob are talented. But do you agree that it’s natural for many viewers to decline any further full-tilt caterwauling from these two? I mean, taken as a whole, the performances of each resemble that movie Titanic if it consisted only of the big finale on a loop until the viewer must stop watching. And now, people are starting to stand up and file out on Pia and, god willing, pitch-weak Jacob too. I guess it’s not about who’s best. That’s why Steve Vai isn’t the world’s most popular guitarist. Superhugz! Thanks for reading!

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Zakk Wylde appeared on American Idol last night, accompanying contestant James Turbin on a cover of Sammy Hagar’s “Heavy Metal,” ’cause, I dunno, I guess he felt like he had too much cred left.

We’re not going to try and give you any actual detailed analysis of this blessed event, though, because, well… that’s why we have ”Idol Remains,” Anso DF’s stupefyingly entertaining weekly re-cap of the show! Anso suffers so we don’t have to… and, besides, his writing is far more enjoyable than the program itself. Just check out these rave reviews!

“‘Idol Remains’ make me sad I’m not actually on the show anymore :( :( :(”
-Paula Abdul

“‘Idol Remains’ is so good it, it makes me wish I could actually sing!”
-Phil LaBonte

“Where am I? Who’s talking? Hello? Is there anyone there?”
-Ozzy Osbourne

So what are you waiting for? Catch up on all of Anso’s “Idol Remains” here. His latest installment will run tomorrow afternoon!!!

“Honestly, I’m not thinking about how to be relevant when writing and recording new songs.”
-Ozzy Osbourne

-AR

UPDATE: BOOO! Apparently these were part of an art project, and not a real advertising campaign. If the people who run the Smithsonian were smart, they’d purchase these. Anyways, thanks to Jonathan Delarosa for bringing the truth to light.

I saw these new posters for the Smithsonian on Badass Digest, and they amused me enough that I thought they were worth sharing. I don’t particularly have anything to say about them — I just think they’re a clever way to try and express that history is cool, which it is, despite how fucking boring your teachers were/are.

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After listening to Psycho’s female blowtorch, Penny Torture, and Ava Inferi’s haunting distaff elemental, Carmen Susana Simões, I realized it’s time we just chill and admit that women are all-around better at this metal-singing thing.

Is this mad exaggeration? It feels like that when I’m away from an MPEG player, but then I listen to those two radically different bands, to Psycho’s primal-scream old school death or Ava Inferi’s doomed-out, gothy whatsit, and it feels I’m not over-reaching, I’m underselling.

And it’s not just two superior releases (Ava Inferi’s Onyx and Psycho’s Pain Addict Pigs). It’s just become impossible to ignore the fact that females are not only doing equal or better work in the same genre jobs as male counterparts, they’re also making metal records that go places no male on Earth — none, nada, zip-ol-lina — could go. That 2011’s best metal so far — Subrosa’s No Help for the Mighty Ones — is an almost all-femme effort of relentless pan-genre awesomeness only adds arsenic and new lace to my argumentative cake.

All of which may have the reader thinking, “You do realize, you silly person, that you’ve just written off the work of one half the human race.”

To which I say, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m pimping a little irony here, since that’s business as usual with women and the metal press. But irony aside, please bear with me.”

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Not you after today

In the past few years, my group of friends has come to include a bunch of fancy-pants musicians-for-hire. They get majorly paid for backing gigs and session work cuz they execute on their instruments with nuclear precision. And it’s great hanging out with them for their big shot habits of picking up every check and throwing exquisite summer parties. You want that — we all do. But maybe you don’t have the time to, say, top your class at Juilliard or grind out a degree from Berklee. Hey, even if you did, you’d just as soon end up posting internet clips of yourself blasting through BTBAM runs and Hammerfall solos unless you move to West Hollywood and starve for two years. Meh.

Well, here’s good news! You can still get chicks horny and sound good enough for Youtube and hold up to passing scrutiny and possibly even land a gig in a million-selling metal band! Unlike violin, for example, guitar isn’t that hard to fake provided you master picking fast and good pitch on bends. To play Steve Vai, you’d have to match his regimen of 23 daily practice hours; for the following face-melters — ear-friendly, multi-leveled solos every one — all that’s required is like 23 total minutes. Let’s call it the Hammett Workout. Not everybody is “Under A Glass Moon” material, but just approximate these imprecise, jabby solos and I swear you’ll look cool! Check it:

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Andy McCoy, one of the founding members of Hanoi Rocks, wrote a book. In 2008. [Our own Corey Mitchell reviewed it in 2010. - Ed.] I read it pretty recently as it came to me with a bunch of Christmas/Hannukah/New Year’s loot. My family doesn’t celebrate anything, so we basically give each other presents because the year is over. Yeah, I don’t know. We put up a tree, too.

Anyway, I kind of dropped the ball on Andy, and that’s kind of a recurring thing these days, because every once in a while I get caught up on that “having a life thing.” I did finally read it, though, and I quite enjoyed it. To an extent. Now, I love books. Reading = fun times for me. I usually have three or four books I’m juggling and one of them is almost always a music biography. But Sherriff McCoy; Outlaw Legend of Hanoi Rocks goes on the pile of band books that really could’ve used a good edit.

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Round Two of Heavy Metal Blunders brings us, who else? Vince Neil! Yes, the official MS Mansion punching monkey got shipped off to the can last week. At this point, I don’t really care. But I did get a chuckle out of his girlfriend, Alicia Jacobs, who was concerned for her bank account, err… boyfriend. Jacobs claimed Neil was “not eating much other than peanut butter, Doritos and stuff like that. He had a baloney sandwich one day. It’s not optimal conditions.” I wonder what Razzle thinks about dem apples?

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Back in December 2008, Ozzy Osbourne’s manager-wife Sharon hosted the reunion special of VH1′s Rock of Love Charm School and was being her usual unjustifiably smug self. But then RoL girl/giga-fox Megan Hauserman (above left) took the stage and had the nerve to return-volley each of Sharon’s old lady sour-grapes insults — culminating in a fist-pumpingly astute observation that Sharon’s only claim to fame is shepherding a sad drug casualty to creatively dubious solo success — at which point Sharon “doused Hauserman with her drink,” “punch[ed] and grabb[ed] her by the hair and refus[ed] to let go,” and “scratch[ed] her.” Three months later, Hauserman formally filed suit against Sharon for battery, negligence, and infliction of emotional distress.

The case was finally headed for court today — nearly two years after the filing — but then the parties reached a settlement Monday. It seems that part of the deal is non-disclosure of its terms, but two separate big-shot legal professionals I know each kinda conjectured to me that Sharon’s strategy likely was to wait for Hauserman to initiate settlement for a smaller amount in advance of the court date. But Hauserman doesn’t need quick cash ‘cuz she’s marrying a rich Italian hunk (as all babes should do), nor does it seem that Shosbourne holds any career leverage over her (or over anybody except for her kids, her manicurists, and Ozzy’s fleet of increasingly off-brand sidemen). So no dice. The concept of punitive damages is to ensure that even the very rich are held responsible for their wrongdoings; as such, it’s possible that Hauserman was awarded a sum large enough to be able to move me into a house opposite Osbourne’s from which I could moon, curse, and otherwise taunt Sharon on a daily basis. ‘Cuz fuck her.

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In 1968, Gary Moore (above, top left) was just 16 years old when he joined future Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott in the Dublin blues-rock quartet Skid Row*. So, Moore was a charter member of the Society of Overachieving Teen Guitarists that would later include Steve Vai (19, Frank Zappa), Zakk Wylde (19, Ozzy Osbourne), and Devin Townsend (19, Steve Vai). Pretty elite company.

After a pair of short stints in Thin Lizzy, Moore again reunited with Lynott in 1979 for the band’s seminal Black Rose: A Rock Legend (see Axl Rose’s Black Rose-themed tattoo here, upper left). More than twenty solo albums followed, including 2008’s Bad For You Baby.

British tabloid The Sun reports that Moore, 58, was discovered unresponsive by medical staff in a Spain hotel suite where there were “definite signs of alcohol.” The Sun also quotes a source at the hotel who has stated that Moore “seemed fine when he left [the hotel bar] around 11 pm.” A post mortem has been scheduled.

After the jump, check out the MetalSucks round up of tributes to Moore by members of Obituary, Opeth, Black Flag, Testament, Black Sabbath, and mo(o)re.

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As promised, last night’s Super Bowl saw the debut of a Best Buy commercial starring Justin Bieber and our favorite sexagenarian celebrity slut, Ozzy Osbourne (whose last product endorsement commercial was released less than a month ago). And the commercial actually turned out to be kinda funny. Not because of the lame jokes about how Ozzy doesn’t understand technology or how Bieber looks like a girl (although I appreciate the acknowledgement that Ozzy has no idea who Bieber is), but, rather, because of the simple but true implication that the Biebers of the world will soon usurp the Ozzys of the world as Lords of Whoring.

“Ozzy’s in the background!” a crew member complains from off-camera, making explicit that which we were all already thinking anyway; even though he’s a sad, dithering old man, the Ozz Man refuses to leave the set, not because he actually has anything to contribute, but because, goddamnit, he’s got crap to hock!

But Bieber nails it on the first take. He’s the guy who’s gonna be trying to sell you shit for the next however many years, until he’s finally out of touch himself, or the sun dies, whichever comes first. Someone thought to toss in the “Bieber looks like a girl” gag to make sure that the Zakk Wylde chapter of Mensa doesn’t get too offended — “Huh huh, yeah, Bieber’s a fag, huh huh!” — but the subtext of the ad isn’t even subtle.

-AR

The once-great Zakk Wylde and has recorded a new version of “Iron Man” with William Shatner, the Canadian sex symbol and star of National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1. Wylde had nothing to do with the creation of the original “Iron Man,” of course, but he does know Ozzy Osbourne, so it’s appropriate. It’s a real thing.

ANYWAY, in-the-studio footage of this blessed event has now surfaced (above). You get to hear Wylde do lots of guitar squeals, but that’s about as uncommon as taking a breath, so it’s not really the good part of this video. No no no no no no no. The good part of this video comes around the :58 second mark, when Shatner tries to direct Wylde’s performance thusly:

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The once-great Zakk Wylde and has recorded a new version of “Iron Man” with William Shatner, the Canadian sex symbol and star of National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1. Wylde had nothing to do with the creation of the original “Iron Man,” of course, but he does know Ozzy Osbourne, so it’s appropriate. It’s a real thing.

ANYWAY, in-the-studio footage of this blessed event has now surfaced (above). You get to hear Wylde do lots of guitar squeals, but that’s about as uncommon as taking a breath, so it’s not really the good part of this video. No no no no no no no. The good part of this video comes around the :58 second mark, when Shatner tries to direct Wylde’s performance thusly:

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So, hey, remember how Ozzy Osbourne just made that Best Buy commercial with Justin Bieber, which will be airing on the Super Bowl this coming Sunday?

Well, here’s an interview the Ozz Man gave in December… in other words, just weeks before he filmed the commercial.

Now, once the offer came in for him to be given (presumably) millions of dollars to appear in a commercial with Bieber, do you think he did any research? Or do you think he just took the money and smiled pretty for the cameras?

-AR

Thanks: Etienne Alexandre

So Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber apparently have shot a Super Bowl commercial for Best Buy together, because Bieber’s fans are eleven years old and don’t care about artistic credibility, and Ozzy’s fans are, emotionally speaking, roughly the same age, and also don’t care about street cred at this point. Most, if not all, of you will probably see the ad when it airs next weekend, and even if you don’t, I’m sure it will pop up online shortly thereafter. But in the meantime, the UK’s Daily Mail has some behind-the-scenes pics, like this nightmare inducer:

Remember the good ol’ days, when Ozzy literally would have bitten this little fucker’s head off for fun? Now it’s like he and Sharon are competing to see who can wear the most eye make-up. Someday some nitwit will probably get Kelly Osbourne knocked up, and the kid won’t be able to tell which one is its grandmother and which one is its grandfather, and they’ll have to show it this picture and be like, “Your grandmother is the one not wearing matching Tron suits with the kid who grew up to become a massive drug addict.”

-AR

[via Metal Insider]

Well here’s a pair of tweets from William Shatner — yes, that William Shatner — which will most certainly catch you off-guard:

I don’t even know what to say about this. I’m not offended because at this point I really don’t care what Zakk Wylde does, but I am kinda worried about the guy. I don’t know if he’s really hard up for money or is a just a huge fan of the Esperanto classic Incubus or what, but… I know that this is no less ridiculous than something Ozzy would do, but I think that Ozzy was about ten years older than Zakk when he started embarrassing himself this badly. So I guess I’m just saying that Zakk should slow his roll, y’know? He’s got years and years left yet to convince us that No More Tears was a fluke.

-AR

[via Metal Underground]

Until this morning, I’d never heard of Jogger, the not-at-all-metal outfit that features Night Court star John Larroquette’s son, Jonathan Larroquette; and while I do enjoy some moodier electronica (e.g., Amon Tobin), I’m not sure that their music is for me.

But GODDAMN if the group’s video for “Nephicide” isn’t the best music video I’ve seen in what feels like FOR-EV-ER. Directed by Matthew Robinson, the clip probably had one-one-millionth of the budget that Ozzy’s latest did, and yet it shows a million times more ingenuity and wit. This is the kind of music video that makes almost all other music videos look bad, the kind that shows that just a little bit of thought goes a long way. Seriously, this video fucking rules.

Of course, Jogger aren’t the first non-metal band to have great fun at black metal’s expense: y’all saw that one Goldfrapp video last year, right?

-AR

Thanks to both |Tch0rT| and J.X.XIII for the tip!