Take That Do Simon Cowell's Private NYE Gig

Both the Daily Mail and the Sun published these classy pics of Take That‚ sans Robbie Williams (who was allegedly in L.A. with his wife for "a family get-together") performing a 35-minute set at Simon Cowell's New Year's Eve party in Barbados.

The That apparently didn't get paid anything for their crooning services, but were given an all-expenses-paid week in the island nation with their families. Plus, added bonus—Howard Donald stripped off his shirt for the paparazzi.

Reportedly both Rihanna and Sinitta were among the 350 partygoers—and if she knew what was good for her, RiRi would have taken off her wig and bowed down to Sinitta, because we know who the real star is there.

Sigh. Only seven-and-a-half months till I see these fuckers live in Milan.

So, There's This Rumor That Shayne Ward May Be Dropped By Simon Cowell :(

I'd take this with a grain of salt, as the original source is apparently News Of The World, but Digital Spy published info and quotes yesterday hinting that if Shayne Ward's next single—apparently the title track from his third album Obsession—doesn't perform well, he'll get the axe from Simon Cowell's SyCo roster.

Well, at least I'm taking it with a grain of salt. Then again, if Shayne isn't bogged down with silly things like recording music, maybe he can spend more time doing photo shoots like the one above (for the December issue of UK Cosmopolitan).

Anyway, says "a source":

"Shayne is finished at SyCo. Simon has tried his best to turn him into a star but it simply hasn't worked. He gave Shayne one more chance after ending his working relationship with Louis but his music hasn't connected with the public.

"The chances of him being a popstar again are incredibly low. It's a huge personal blow to Shayne. For a long time people thought he'd become the next Robbie Williams. But the music industry is ruthless and he is costing the company a lot of money at the moment."

"Shayne is also quite arrogant about his music [and] isn't the easiest person to work with. He will be quietly let go next year and the focus will turn to the new crop of X Factor contestants."

Strange. Shayne hardly comes across as arrogant or difficult to work with. In fact, at times he seemed to be very publicly bending over backwards (and, sadly, not the other way around) to get this album out there.

That said, Obsession peaked at #15 on the UK chart, while first single "Gotta Be Somebody" squeaked in at #12. Time will tell—but wouldn't you much rather watch Shayne Ward singing at you than Matt Cardle?

Maybe it's all stemming from comments Shayne supposedly made about recent X Factor contestants One Direction lip sycing? I will say this, though—I ordered Obsession from Amazon UK four weeks ago, and the damn thing never arrived. Bad omen?

Simon Cowell, 2nd time around.

I've decided to keep trying to do a caricature a day for a while, so here's my second attempt at Simon. ( I think it's better than the first one!) He looks a bit young, likeness OK...

Despite some delays getting going this morning, today was pretty productive. The painting on the competition entry is progressing well. My night scene had a major hiccup but I managed to salvage it. (I'd planned on playing with texture on the background but the paint was absorbing too quickly for me to play with it.) And I even managed the caricature.

Crazy Conspiracy Theories

So my latest video has been circulating around the web faster than any of my others. It's been on the front pages of WhatReallyHappened.com, 911blogger.com, and WeAreChange.org. It has more than 4,000 views and 140 ratings and at its peak it was #18 in the top rated (this week) in the entertainment category in the UK. #19 was a commercial featuring Cheryl Cole and #20 was a BBC Doctor Who promo... ironic considering the music video makes references to both Cheryl Cole and Doctor Who. The video has also been uploaded to LiveLeak.com and has recieved some ignorant comments. No debunkers have joined the party on YouTube yet ... although some disinformation trolls have... "It was the jesuits!"

[/self indulgence]

That's probably the last 9/11 video I'm gonna make. Since I'm aiming to work in the field of video production, it would be nice if I can show potential employers something other than just "conspiracy theory" videos I have made (Not that I won't show them at least one of those!). So I've been hanging out with my best friend discussing ideas for my next masterpiece as well as speculating whether or not Simon Cowell is an evil New World Order operative or just a useful idiot and whether or not Miley Cyrus is a victim of trauma-based mind control (Ahhh the interesting conversations of conspiracy theorists! - It was like we were in a truther version of some Kevin Smith movie ... Hmm ... Now there's an idea!)

I've given up debating CIT. Craig Ranke has now admitted that they renamed the name of this blog to "911duh-bunkers". And when I school them on the scientific method they just tell me to address their "evidence". It looks like the only way to debunk them is to interview the witnesses ourselves.

I've just listened to the debate between Dylan and Pat and I got rather annoyed when Pat and the host were crticizing the purity of the dust samples and the chain of custody etc. and Pat was talking about how the samples weren't kept in sealed bags or whatever. The thing is, Steven Jones wouldn't even need to be doing this if the officials had done so. You can criticize his work all you want but its still better than anything the government has done. Organisations like USGS and RJ Lee etc probably do have professionally collected sealed samples, so why can't we have open access to study them? Will we find red chips in them? We know USGS were covering up the existance of Molybdenum rich spherules so who knows what else they are covering up. Besides, the whole issue is irrelevent anyway. Because it's not as if these highly engineered thermitic red chips are easy to make or get a hold of. By questioning the chain of custody you are effectively accusing the scientists and the citizens of conspiring to fake evidence by manufacturing high-tech energetic nanocomposites that only a handful of labs in the world can even make and adding them to samples! That sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory to me! And yet you find the idea of the government tampering with evidence ridiculous! Someone get Pat a tin foil hat!

Drawing in ink!

Today's entry is not the best quality and lacks polish but it is one I have drawn straight in ink with no preliminary pencil sketching. I've managed to get a likeness first time. I'm also getting a bit braver with the caricaturing and exaggerating features.

Not had much time to draw so far today but I'm hoping to rectify the situation later on. Spent some time exploring how to incorporate "screentones" onto pictures. I think I've got the basics so you may see some in my future efforts. Watch this space.