It will be romantic, they swear.

From Noisecreep:

“Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, along with ‘The Late Show With David Letterman’ announcer Alan Kalter, have teamed up with CBS and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital to create the CBS Cares Colonoscopy Sweepstakes. One lucky person will win a colonoscopy, along with a trip to New York City, including airfare, hotel and $500 spending cash.”

I know that colonoscopies are a really important aspect of modern healthcare and I don’t mean to make light of something so serious, but… I mean, come ON. This HAS to be the weirdest contest in the history of ever, right? Like, can you imagine winning this contest and being on the plane, and making friendly chit-chat with the person in the seat next to you?

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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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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

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]

I didn’t see The Sorcerer’s Apprentice because I love myself too much, but I did read the script (I guess I should say “script”) before it went into production. I don’t know if it made it into the final film or not, but there was a subplot in which the hero (played in the movie by Jay Baruchel) builds these conductors (“conductors” like machines, not like a dude with a baton) that can basically play music with lightning. They barely explained the science of it in the script, and I kinda assumed it was a bullshit Hollywood thing…

…but I guess I was wrong, ’cause reader Hetal Bhatt sent us the below video of a group called ArcAttack that uses similar conductors to play “Iron Man” with lightning. And they did it on America’s Got Talent, which features Mrs. Iron Man herself, Sharon Osbourne, as a judge. Sure, these dudes dress like idiots and are clearly nerds, but, I mean, come on — they play music with lightning! Of COURSE they’re nerds!!!

Note to Tool: please incorporate lightning music into your next tour. Thanks.

-AR

In Hollywood, it’s important to be a good collaborator. By that I mean you often have to plaster on a smile at the conference table, while behind the scenes you’re part of a mass bitchfight for credit and payout. But it’s not always a simple tit-for-tat. Sure, you want your due (and paycheck), but sometimes it harms the product to have your ugly, worthless name in the credits. (Actually, those are the exact words used to rob me of producer points on Hot Tub Time Machine. Eat shit and die, Cusack.)

Conversely, it sometimes harms you to be attached nominally to a shameful shitfest like, say, Vince Neil’s autobiography. When I signed on to the project, it seemed like a piece of cake (I’d already written most of it anyway) and a good way to compete with awesome MS contributor Corey Mitchell (who even now is at work on Phil Anselmo’s forthcoming tome). But once the memoirs were set to go to print, it hit me: Vince Neil? This is a career-killer! What will the Suckalos think? Panic!! So, per my management, my contributions to Tequila, Turds, and Tattered Tank Tops (working title) were re-written and my name removed from the cover. (I also agreed to be compensated in Vicodin.)

The good news is that, judging from new excerpts, Vince’s team found a way to retain all the Anso-style vitriol and reckless name-calling. So my rep stays clean, but the metal community still profits from all the harsh, hidden truths of Motleydom. We all win! Here’s Neil (and me) on Nikki Sixx:

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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

Inspired by Ozzy Osbourne’s recent declaration that Bruce Dickinson “needs a fuckin’ psychiatrist,” this week we decided to ask our writers:

WITH WHOM DO YOU SIDE IN THE NEWLY RE-HEATED OSBOURNES VS. DICKINSON FEUD?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

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In case you somehow don’t remember, Iron Maiden were one of the mainstage headliners at Ozzfest in 2005 (which I think was pretty much the last really good year for Ozzfest), and while I’ve never quite understood how it all started, there was some kind of beef between the Maiden/Ozzy camps — more specifically, between Maiden and Sharon Osbourne. And on Maiden’s last night of the tour, someone fucked with their power and some people pelted them with eggs and engaged in all other manner of pranks, and Sharon actually called Bruce Dickinson “a prick” on-stage in front of thousands of metal fans. (You can read all about that little incident here, or enjoy video of Sharon’s speech above.)

And that was really the last we heard about it… until now. I don’t recall Ozzy himself ever commenting on the incident before, he recently did during an interview with The Quietus:

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Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie used to be friends and occasional tour mates, united by shared history of starting successful solo careers after first fronting successful bands, a tenuous connection to horror movies and all things Evil, and their mainstream appeal to meatheads everywhere.

But now 50% of Ozzy’s band consists of ex-members of Zombie’s band — that would be bassist Blasko and drummer Tommy Clufetos — and because Rob wanted to make my day, he got catty about Ozzy poaching his members in a recent interview. The video is above (the smack talk starts around the 54 second mark), but here’s a transcription of what he said:

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Here’s something interesting I just read on Blabbermouth. This is Ozzy Osbourne talking about the decision to remove Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake’s tracks from the 2002  reissues of Blizzard of Ozz and Diary of a Madman and have them replaced with new recordings by Robert Trujillo and Mike Bordin:

Ozzy told The Pulse of Radio he was against the idea of replacing the original tracks when he found out about it. “Believe me, it wasn’t my doing,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t know that was being done, ’cause Sharon was fighting all the legal things that were going down at the time. I said, ‘What did you do that for?’ And she said, ‘The only way I could stop everything was if it went to that level.’ And I said, ‘You know what, whatever the circumstances were, I want the original thing back.’ I mean, I wouldn’t have done that.”

It’s pretty funny to see Ozzy place all the blame on his wife, although it isn’t hard to imagine that he’s telling the truth. Still, this is why you have to pay attention to what your handlers are doing. If he was against it, how did it ever get so far as to have the re-recordings done without his knowledge? Why not just cancel the reissues? Maybe if your brain was functioning properly, dude, it never would have gone down that way.

In any case, the original, proper recordings of those classic albums are getting another reissue sometime this year. I can already tell you that they will be both be better than Scream.

-AR

So Ozzy Osbourne’s memoir, I Am Ozzy, may soon get the big screen treatment, and with that news, of course, comes the inevitable casting speculations. Robert Downey, Jr.’s name has already been bandied about by people who will have absolutely no say in the casting process; now the latest rumor to spread across the interwebs like an STD is that Colin Farrell’s name has been thrown into the hat. From Cinematical:

According to IrishCentral.com, Paramount and MTV Films’ execs have revealed that the notorious Irish actor would be their top choice to play the hard-partying wild man of heavy metal. One source offered up the following justification, “Colin drinks, he smokes, he womanizes. He’s just a sleeve tattoo away from being a real rock star.”

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Our friend Amy Sciarretto from Noisecreep reports that Birmingham City University (in England, not Alabama) is naming an award after everyone’s favorite heavy metal grandpa: the Ozzy Osbourne Development Award “will be bestowed upon the student that makes the most significant progress on their degree in the Media and Communication/Music Industry degree.” I assume that the Osbourne family donated a nice chunk of change to get the award named after him, but this doesn’t really make that much sense to me. For one thing, I don’t know if Ozzy has really shown any musical development in, oh, the last hundred years or so, and as much as I admire a lot of his past work, you’ll never convince me that the bulk of the credit doesn’t lie with his collaborators – especially given that the dude doesn’t actually play an instrument. And beyond that, fuck has Ozzy got to do with media and communication? If we’re talking about his work with various reality shows and what have you, well, then, shouldn’t the award be named after Sharon, since we have her to thank for Ozzy’s wonderful non-music endeavors.

But whatever. This piece of news got me thinking: what other awards could we name after heavy metal musicians? And so, after the jump, my suggestions for new university kudos monikered in honor of various other members of the heavy metal community.

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Bram Teitelman at Metal Insider wrote a really interesting piece this morning, in which he wonders if Ozzfest is “burying the lead.” In case you’re not familiar with that journalism term, it’s basically when a company or publicist or whomever releases bad news at a time when they hope the fewest possible number of people will see it – e.g., sending out a press release announcing lower-than-expected quarterly earnings on a Friday night, when folks tend to be enjoying their weekends and not watching the news.

So with rumors abounding that the 2010 “comeback” edition of Ozzfest will have a less-than-stellar line-up, and practically every band Ozzfest could possibly want already booked on one of the many competing big summer package tour (Mayhem, American Carnage, Carnival of Madness, Summer Slaughter, The Cool Tour, etc.), Bram wonders if Ozzy, Sharon and company aren’t using that very trick for this evening’s tour announcement:

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The Osbournes wasn’t just a hit; it was a genuine pop-culture phenomenon. Suddenly my grandmother knew who The Osbournes were. There’s little doubt that it made Ozzy, Sharon and the gang a whole lot richer, too, ’cause suddenly they were all celebrities who could milk their various whatevers for money.

Unfortunately, the family’s follow-up, a variety show called Osbournes: Reloaded was canceled after a single episode aired. Bmouth says that there were an additional five in the can, but, nope, the ratings on the debut were so bad that Fox opted to just cut their losses and not even try to make some of the production costs back.

So, of course, some rocket scientist in Hollywood is gonna give the family – or at least a portion of it – another chance, with a show called Osbourne Family Values. The series will not feature bands from the Family Values tours but, rather, will be about Sharon and Kelly as they “talk to mothers and daughters who are having problems,” according to the post-menopausal Osbourne.

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So apparently Ozzfest is coming back this summer, and is coming back as a traveling tour again (as opposed to the one-off fest it was in 2008). And that’s all well and good, only… who’s gonna be on the bill?

Mayhem, which is basically Ozzfest 2.0, has already scooped up a lot of big-name bands for the summer, including many who have played multiple past Ozzfests – namely Korn, Rob Zombie, Lamb of God, Atreyu, Shadows Fall and Hatebreed, the latter of whom I think have been on something like 90% of all Ozzfests ever.

Add to that other Ozzfest alum like Chimaira, In This Moment and Norma Jean, and some bands the kids today all seem to like, such as Winds of Plague and They Who Shall Not Be Named, and, well, that’s a whole bunch of potential mainstage and second stage draws right there.

Then there’s the mini-fests like Summer Slaughter. I can’t tell you which bands we already know are booked for some of these tours without betraying a lot of people’s confidence, but I can tell you that some great bands are now no longer available for Ozzfest.

And, oh yeah, Megadeth, Slayer, and Testament are now doing their American Carnage tour in the summer, so they’re out.

So who’s left? After the jump, I’m going to play my favorite game: it’s called “over-think about something incredibly unimportant.”

Before we proceed, it’s worth noting that I’m going to try and be semi-realistic when moving forward with some barely-educated guesses about who’ll be playing Ozzfest. If a band already has summer tour dates booked, I’m going to assume they’re not avail, although I acknowledge that they could cancel those dates in favor of playing for a bigger crowd. And I’m not even going to bother with bands like Pig Destroyer, Sigh, and Salome – bands that will play Ozzfest right around the time Joey Belladonna’s solo band plays four sold-out headlining shows at Giants Stadium. Also, obviously not all of these bands are gonna end up on the bill – these are just bands I think could end up there.

And so, without further bullshit…

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Ozzy Osbourne gets plenty of crap around here at the Mansion – much of it deserved, some not so much. Regardless of the punching bag the Ozz-man has become over the last decade, there is no denying he is the epitome of a metal legend.

He’s also one funny motherfucker!

Now it’s time to learn even more about the Prince of Darkness from his own garbled mouth in his first autobiography, I Am Ozzy, which hits U.S. shelves today. The book was released in the U.K. in 2009.

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The last few Ozzy tours have basically been a joke. Even if the guy had any moves left in his repetoire that weren’t just the frog stomp, yelling “GO FUCKING CRAZY!”, or spraying the audience down with a hose, and even if his voice wasn’t shot – Ozzy is an old man, and not in particularly great shape. It seems like he cancels at least one outta every four or five gigs, which I don’t think is entirely his fault – the dude is, by metal standards, as old as dirt, and Team Sharon schedules his dates really close together, as though Ozzy were a man half his age, and he just can’t handle it. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have attended Ozzfest the past few years only to find that Ozzy wasn’t even playing. It’s how namesake festival, for cryin’ out loud, and the dude can’t get it together to put on a show. If he really had retired following the “No More Tours” trek back in ’92 Ozzy might still be standing on a pedestal in our mind’s eye; instead he’s just another aging rock god pissing and shitting all over his legacy.

But The Metal Den is reporting that the Ozzman “plans to set out… on a massive 18 month world tour cycle” following the release of his upcoming album, the infuriatingly titled Trend Chasa Soul Sucka. And why not, I guess? It seems like old sentimentalists and curious young ‘uns alike are still willing to pay exorbitant ticket fees to see him play the classics. And if by some miracle Gus G. helps turn this into the first good Ozzy album since Steve Clark was alive, then a decent single would only propel ticket sales.

But don’t be sad if you buy your ticket and Ozzy doesn’t show up – ’cause we warned you. Just try not to buy that ticket through Ticket Bastard, so that when you get your refund, you don’t forfeit all the stupid fees.

-AR

First, let’s just talk about how we arrived at this place we currently find ourselves:

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”The most beautiful words in the English language aren’t ‘I love you’ but ‘It’s benign.’ ”
-Deconstructing Harry

The Osbournes: Reloaded variety show got cancelled after like half an episode, Sharon literally can’t give away tickets to Ozzfest anymore, and the only times the singer makes headlines anymore are when he’s suing someone or getting a new guitarist. Why the fucking fuck would anyone want to get into the Ozzy business right now?

Ask MTV. According to Dan Rodriguez at Metal Insider, their famed reality show, The Osbournes, is coming back, “this time focusing mostly on Kelly and her bizarre, 19 year-old, Powder-esque shithead of a fiancee.”

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