Attention Scribe: watch out son, they'll be after you next.
"AMERICAN IDOL judge SIMON COWELL
has urged the British Government to outlaw hooded tops, in a bid to prevent gangs of youths congregating on street corners intimidating passers-by.
"Ban hoodies," says Cowell. "These are white kids trying to be gangsters and it's pathetic. It is becoming a sign of intent. It's gang clothing. It hides their faces so they feel more confident." Hooded jumpers were recently banned in several British shopping centres, with owners claiming wearers were anti-social and more likely to commit crime." from
Contact Music"The Bluewater complex in Kent won praise for the ban from Prime Minister Tony Blair last month - and the Deiniol shopping centre in Bangor (Wales) also claims it led the way in the ban after having trouble identifying youths on CCTV."
LinkIndia Knight, writing in the
UK's Sunday Times on this issue, suggests that "Hoodies say different things in different places. In Australia and New Zealand they say that the wearer — the hoodee — is either a surfer or a skateboarder or both and therefore smiley, benign, probably a bit stoned in a friendly, dolphin-loving sort of way."
Unfortunately, Knight is mistaken on the smiley, benign part (okay, so she's kidding round a bit) - last night there was a story on the TV evening news about a local shopping mall in NZ banning hoodies and baseball caps, for security reasons, and to stop other shoppers feeling intimidated. See, shoplifters frequently wear hoodies with the hood pulled up, which makes identifying them on security cameras difficult, as the hood obscures their face. There were soundbites from shoppers, mall staff, and hoodie wearers, both for and against.
Hoodies and baseball caps are of course the fashion domain of hiphop fans, and as hiphop becomes more and more popular in this country, so does its fashion. Hence, now it seems that if you are a young male teen who loves his hiphop and dress in the hiphop fashion, then you must be a potential criminal. Bummer, huh?
And what does our most famous hood-wearer think of all this? Scribe has been in the UK recently trying to break that market. Wonder if being offside with Tony Blair will help his cool status at all.
Check Google News for the latest -
ban hoodies.
And now for some light relief...
Tom Cruise: the Jung and the restless."Psychiatry is a pseudo science," said Cruise. "She [Brooke Shields] doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt. "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do," he added. Via
BBC News.From
Chicago Sun-Times ...Tom Cruise; movie star or pod person?
The "auditioning" of girlfriends: Before he settled on Holmes, Cruise reportedly ran through a wish list of potential significant others, including Jennifer Garner, Kate Bosworth, Lindsay Lohan and Jessica Alba. And Scarlett Johansson supposedly "ran for her life" when Cruise tried to interrogate her at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood.
As Rick Ross of
CultNews.com told MSNBC's Jeannette Walls: "Is this Tom Cruise's version of a first date? It's becoming increasingly difficult to make distinctions between his personal, professional and religious life. Tom Cruise and Scientology seem intent on recruiting a hot young star. Apparently, Scarlett Johansson flunked her test, but Katie Holmes passed."
Cruise also lost his cool at a War of The Worlds press conference when a reporter asked him if "the fact that the aliens in the film have been on Earth for a million years waiting for the invasion resonated with him due to Scientology’s belief in aliens." More
here.
