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UMass Boston's independent, student-run newspaper

The Mass Media

The Mass Media

The Mass Media

A Shot of Arts

Ozz fest Tickets are Free! Sharon Osbourne, former reality TV star and wife of rocker Ozzy Osbourne, has announced that tickets for this summer’s Ozzfest will be offered free of charge.  The cost will be underwritten by donations from various sponsors.  Ozzy did not make the announcement himself as years of hard partying has made him a muttering pile of flesh.     Naked Sundays At The Aguliera House Christina Aguliera revealed in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres that she and record executive hubby, Jordan Bratman, have an interesting way of keeping the spice in their relationship.  Apparently they have what they call Naked Sundays.  They stay at home doing things around the house (cooking included) sans clothing.  If only “things around the house” included anonymous sex with strangers. The Symbol Currently Known As Phallic     The decency of Prince’s Super Bowl halftime show has been called into question.  During the show a silhouette of him holding a guitar was projected onto a fluttering sheet and critics have cried that it looks too phallic.  Apparently a man playing a guitar looks like a 4 foot penis.  Plausible, unfortunately not.    Madonna Makes Prince Harry Cry Britain’s Royal Spare, Prince Harry, went out drinking with Madonna spending more than two hours with the Queen of Pop and her husband Guy Ritchie at Mayfair’s Mahiki club. They discussed the couple’s adoption of an African baby last October over €100-a-pop champagne Treasure Chest cocktails.  The 21-year-old prince reportedly had tears in his eyes as the conversation turned to orphans Harry has befriended in Africa. Steve Jobs and iTunes Say “Open Sesame!” Apple’s iTunes store announced it would open the store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world’s major record labels abandoned its current anti-piracy technology.  Steve Jobs cited the recording labels’ anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes can’t be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod.  They also prevent the iPod from playing music bought from many other online stores.  If not for the safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system which would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft’s Zune. What Will They Censor Next? U.S. and British officials denied burying videotaped details of a “friendly fire” incident from 2003 in which U.S. pilots are heard weeping after mistakenly killing a British soldier in Iraq.  “I’m going to be sick,” one pilot in an A-10 attack jet can be heard saying when he realizes he has opened fire on a friendly convoy. “We’re in jail, dude.”  Another pilot is later heard weeping: “I’m dead.”  Washington had given the video to British authorities but refused to allow it to be shown to the investigating coroner, saying it might contain “security secrets.” Lose That Troublesome Lust for Your Own Gender in Just Three Weeks! The disgraced Evangelical minister Rev. Ted Haggard, who had an extramarital affair with a male prostitute, now claims that after three weeks of intensive counseling he has “discovered” he “is completely heterosexual.”   A minister who oversaw the counseling says it was, “the acting-out situations where [those gay] things took place. It wasn’t a constant thing.”   The temporariness of Ted’s inclinations is great news for those who think they might be gay on days when they don’t have sex with people of the same gender; they’re now free.  Also, gay people with lousy love lives can now claim that they are straight most of the time. Anna Nicole Smith Dies at 39 No more wrangling over whether she married that old dude just for his money.  (Either way, we figure she earned it.)  No more vapid reality TV shows.  No more fighting over the identity of the father of her baby.  No more of that patented runway leer, the one that says “been there done that, and way more than once.”  The death of Anna Nicole is.. well not quite as big as Princess Di’s death or Marilyn Monroe’s death, but the modern entertainment media has lost a real star, or at least a whole lot of entertaining fodder.  Goodbye, Guess Jeans girl.