To top off the cheesiness, the show is hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro (right), a.k.a. Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." It's quite sad, really, to see him host-I half expect him to break into that Tom Jones routine he used to do on "Fresh Prince." And yet despite all that, I still keep watching the show and singing along. Crazy... I'm crazy for feeling so blue...

AENEAS WAS WRONG

Advertisement

Speaking of late Saturday night entertainment, Entertainment Weekly this week features Dido as the "breakout" star to watch, even though "Thank You"-the song sampled on Eminem's latest single "Stan"-has been around for about two years. Apparently not many people were listening to the Sliding Doors soundtrack or were fans of Faithless (her brother's band), and only noticed her when she performed with Eminem on "Saturday Night Live." It's strange how celebrity works. One day you're nobody, the next day Eminem samples you. I wonder why Labi Siffre, (whose "I Got The" was sampled on "My Name Is") isn't famous yet, though. I guess part of it is he doesn't look like this (right).

What's creepy, though, is I got the EW issue on Friday, the newsstand release date, and then I popped into Tower Records on Saturday and the quote from the magazine was already on a sticker on the Dido album. Either they're really efficient, or the quote was released in advance. Conspiracy theory time!

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

Continuing from last week's list of musical annoyances, people have been putting up songs on the Internet claiming to be tracks from advance copies of upcoming albums. On Napster now, you can find songs claiming to be from the upcoming U2 album All That You Can't Leave Behind or from Fatboy Slim's Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars, but a quick listen shows them to be nothing but songs by random groups trying to get more people to listen to their own work. Which only goes to show, you really should buy the albums.

On the other hand, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks though that maybe the bands or the recording companies themselves might be releasing these songs to convince people that Napster is a useless tool...