Well it's been a very long day for me and I'm quite tired. Resident Evil and a new Linkin Park CD come out next week. The Linkin Park album will mostly consist of remixes though. But being that their mixes are just really damn good I'm sure they can only make their stuff better. Check it out.

Caught that new Pink music video today too... Wow she looks HOT with black hair. She's gotten a little bit of chub since she did Lady Marmalad with all those other chicks... at that point she was THE hottest woman in that video. Her appearance at the Mtv Movie awards last year was smokin'

Well there's quite a bit of news and I'm needing to finish up and sleep. Let's go news hunting.

J.Lo single again
Credit Yahoo News

Actress-singer Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce on Thursday from her dancer husband Cris Judd, citing irreconcilable differences after less than a year of marriage.

The divorce papers were filed in Los Angeles Superior Court the day after Lopez celebrated her 32nd birthday. Lawyers said the pair had also reached a financial settlement agreement. Details were not disclosed.

"Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd have announced they have resolved all issues arising out of their marriage. The resolution was extremely amicable...The two will remain friends," a statement issued by their lawyers said.

The couple, who met while working on Lopez's music video "Love Don't Cost a Thing," married in September last year and separated on June 2, according to the court papers.

Lopez had turned to Judd after splitting with her long-time boyfriend, rap impresario Sean "P.Diddy" Combs, during his much publicized trial in New York on weapons and bribery charges. Combs was later acquitted.

Judd was the second husband of the Latina diva, whose music and movie career took off last year with both the hit film "The Wedding Planner" and her chart-topping album "J.Lo." Her first marriage, to Ojani Noa, ended in divorce in 1998 after about a year.

Reports at the time of their separation said Lopez and Judd were still friendly but were no longer living together.

But the actress, regarded as one of Hollywood's sexiest celebrities, has recently been linked by tabloid media reports to actor Ben Affleck, her co-star in her next movie "Gigli."

According to one report, Affleck took Lopez out for a birthday lunch in Manhattan on Wednesday and presented her with a diamond bracelet.

Bronx-born Lopez has two more movies lined up this year and is also recording her next album, her publicist said. In the past two years she has also launched her own clothing line and opened a Cuban restaurant in Pasadena, near Los Angeles, hiring her first ex-husband Ojani Noa to run it.

Wait... listen... shhh... listen... that's the sound of a couple of million men sighing in relief and joy. Jenny-Lo is available again and we'll look for Puffy to jump on that again. Though I've heard that her and actor Ben Affleck have been hitting it off quite well. She doesn't drink and Benji, being a recovering alcoholic, is seeking the companionship of one such as her.

BTW what's with the recent surge of hotties getting divorced? First it was Angelina and now it's JLo the world is becoming a happier place. I hear Pam Anderson is single again too. Kid Rock wants some fresh meat. Too bad she has Hep-C and too bad she only goes for dudes who look like trailer trash.

Scott Weiland has some happy news
Credit Mtv News

Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland and his wife, Mary, welcomed a daughter, Lucy Olivia, in Los Angeles on Saturday morning, according to the band's management.

Lil' Lucy, who weighed in at 7 lbs. 14 oz., is the couple's second child. Her big brother, Noah Mercer, was born in November 2000.

Weiland will have time to play family man this summer before STP head into the studio to record their follow-up to Shangri-La Dee Da. The band has been racking up songs for the effort over the past year.

Stone Temple Pilots will appear at the San Diego Street Scene on September 6 and at the Harley Davidson Open Road Tour in Fontana, California, the following day. The three-day Fontana event will also feature a performance by the surviving members of the Doors, who plan to enlist Weiland to contribute vocals on their upcoming reunion album. The Cult's Ian Astbury and Creed's Scott Stapp are also expected to lend their voices to the project.

Wow, the fact that Scott Weiland is still alives surprises the hell out of me. I thought he was charged with Battery of his wife a few months back... waitaminute that was LESS than 9 months back I know for sure. So... he beat her up while she was pregnant? That's nuts. Well I don't know if he actually beat her up but I remember he was arrested a few months back.

Ogg Vorbis support GROWING
Credit CNet News

RealNetworks, the most recent corporate convert to open-source religion, has pledged to embrace streaming media's open-source stalwart in a move that could threaten the popular MP3 format.
RealNetworks said Wednesday that it would support the Xiph.org Foundation's Ogg Vorbis format and audio codec, or compression formula, in its own open-source offering, the Helix DNA client, and that the RealOne Player and the Helix Universal Server would play and serve Ogg Vorbis.

That means that people could play Ogg Vorbis content through the widely distributed RealPlayer without having to download special Ogg Vorbis software, a potentially big win for the now-obscure technology.

RealNetworks claims 285 million unique registered users of the RealOne Player and RealPlayer.

"The ability to use RealNetworks technology to get our format into the hands of the masses presents a lot of potential," Xiph President Emmett Plant said in a statement. "Even more important, the fact that RealNetworks is making an investment in open source outside of their corporate walls is a good sign for the future of Helix."

Xiph released Ogg Vorbis 1.0 last week.

Open-source advocates hailed the news, saying it benefited not only the format itself, but the progress of open-source software into the mainstream.

That could come at a cost to other popular technologies encumbered by intellectual property claims.

"The fact that the user will almost automatically get Ogg on their desktop means that there is a patent-free and royalty-free audio format that everyone can play on every computer," said Bruce Perens, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative. "This means that MP3 may become a little less popular over the long term because there are patent issues on MP3."

While MP3 has become enormously popular thanks to its small file size and good quality, it remains subject to royalties paid to the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics and other members of the MPEG Consortium, which control the format.

RealNetworks and Xiph plan to release Ogg Vorbis plug-ins for the RealOne Player and the Helix Universal Server. The plug-ins will be small pieces of code that let the RealOne Player play back Ogg content.

RealNetworks gave no timeline for the plug-ins. The work with Xiph is just starting, with both development and certification that needs to be done, the company said.

Wow even though Real is a bit on the crappy side I'm really glad that support for Ogg is steadily growing! Nothing beats a FREE format, I hope all these portable music player companies implement Ogg to the systems soon. It is the best sounding file format I've ever heard. Beats the hell out of wma at the same exact bitrates. 64kbps sounds just like any standard 128-156kbps encoded mp3.

"Barbie Girl" is a Parody
Credit Mtv News

Saying that "the parties are advised to chill," a federal appeals court judge declined on Wednesday to reinstate Mattel's 1997 suit against MCA Records over Aqua's pop hit "Barbie Girl," which the toy company had claimed was both trademark infringement and defamation.

"If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong," wrote Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge Alex Kozinski, in his upholding of a lower court ruling that threw out Mattel's suit as well as MCA's countersuit for defamation.

Mattel had originally claimed that "Barbie Girl" sullied their iconic doll's image with sexual innuendo. In the song, the female vocalist refers to herself as a "blonde bimbo girl" and sings, "I'm a Barbie girl, in my Barbie world/ Life in plastic, it's fantastic/ You can brush my hair, undress me everywhere." A male singer, whom she calls Ken, exhorts her during the bridge to "go party." The toymaker also said the song confused listeners into thinking the company backed it.

The ruling deemed the song a parody and protected under free speech.

"The problem arises when trademarks transcend their identifying purpose," Kozinski wrote for the three-judge panel. "Some trademarks enter our public discourse and become an integral part of our vocabulary. How else do you say that something's 'the Rolls Royce of its class'? What else is a quick fix, but a Band-Aid? Does the average consumer know to ask for aspirin as 'acetyl salicylic acid'? ... Once imbued with such expressive value, the trademark becomes a word in our language and assumes a role outside the bounds of trademark law."

Further, the judge ruled, the lyrics confirm that the use of the trademark is designed to convey a message about the song and not to identify the product's producer. "If we see a painting titled 'Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup,' we're unlikely to believe that Campbell's has branched into the art business," Kozinski wrote. "Nor, upon hearing Janis Joplin croon 'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz?,' would we suspect that she and the carmaker had entered into a joint venture."

MCA had defended the song as "social commentary" and had stickered Aqua's album Aquarium with a disclaimer that noted the song was not "created or approved" by the maker of Barbie dolls.

"This decision reiterates the power of free speech," MCA President Jay Boberg said in a statement. "This ruling ... affirms our artists' rights to express themselves freely. For that reason, MCA was committed to defending this litigation to the furthest extent necessary to ensure our artists' freedoms."

A Mattel spokesperson was not available for comment.

Good song... that lead singer; Lene Grawford Nystrom, is one little hottie! The things I'd like to do to... er for her.

That's it for the music world here's some other news you might like to know about.

Romeo and Juliet: The Horror Flick
Credit Movie Poop Shoot

Scott Speedman, best known for his role on the television series FELICITY, will star opposite Kate Beckinsale in the action film UNDERWORLD for first-time feature film director Len Wiseman.

UNDERWORLD is described as a modern-day ROMEO AND JULIET story set in the world of vampires and werewolves, in which one lover is a vampire and the other a werewolf. The project, set against the ravages of an ancient and bloody war between vampires and werewolves, will see Beckinsale play the lead role of vampire Selene, an elegant warrior with the strength of 10 men. Although her main goal is to kill werewolves, she ends up falling in love with one by the name of Michael (Speedman), whose goal is to end the war. (Story courtesy of THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)

Yeah that's the only story I'm posting here today. Give you guys a break from reading all this crap anyway.

BUT I do have some cool stuff for ya. My Buds over at www.bloody-disgusting.com have two, count them TWO exclusive interviews with Bruce Cambell of Evil Dead fame and Gordon Lewis who discusses his newest flick Blood Feast 2 which sets the newest record for goriest movie EVER! Links to the Chicago Horror convention as well. Check'em out!

Alright I'm done till Sunday, more than likely I will finish the Nomad 3 review rather than write another Geek Column though. Goodnight.

Joe

Sounds like all those Vampire: the Masquerade people will be lining up like Star Wars addicts for that one. I suppose Tom Cruise made it cool to be a bloodsucker, and Wesley Snipes made it cool to kill em ??

ahhh im happy j-lo is single, now i can try and holla at her.

Glad to hear Ogg Vorbis is FINALLY receiving some attention as a great format and like Mr. Joe here I would like to see it implemented in digital players and really replace mp3 a little down the road.

c'mon barbie,let's go party!

speaking of vampires, i finally saw blade 2 yesterday, it was a cool movie, lots of violence and the plot sucked, just what a vampire action movies needs