Culture Pop

TMZ reported today that Ireland's High Court Justice Peter Kelly has announced that entertainer Prince owes almost $3 million to concert promoters for failing to perform a Dublin show in 2008. Kelly says a settlement was reached in February, but Prince has yet to pay up.

An agent who worked with Prince told the court that when he told Prince about the problem, the singer responded, "Tell the cat to chill. We will work something out," according to TMZ.

IrishCentral readers got a little up in arms a couple of weeks ago when I commented on Kristen Stewart's seeming lack of Hollywood-worthy stage presence at the Academy Awards. I think it's exactly this genuine, anti-starlet teenage energy that's going to serve her well in her critically lauded portrayal of Irish-American rock star Joan Jett in The Runaways, released April 9 and co-starring Dakota Fanning.

Joan Jett was born Joan Marie Larkin (Anglicized from the Gaelic O'Lorcain) in a suburb of Philadelphia, and the upcoming film is a coming-of-age biopic chronicling Jett and her bandmates' rise to fame as a history-making all-girl underage rock band.

I'm excited to see Stewart break out of her Twilight persona and stand on her own, rather than as part of the K-Stew/R-Patz phenomenon. Jett (pictured with Stewart, left) was impressed with her performance, as were numerous critics.

Lindsay Lohan is suing online stock trading company E*TRADE to the tune of a hundred million because of a commercial spot about (what else?) babies who are diversifying their portfolios, cheating on their baby girlfriends, and dealing with milkaholism. Trouble.

I watched the Academy Awards last night with my grandparents and their friends, and a large part of the conversation was nostalgic: the spotlight was on aged and aging stars, and the young 'talent' in line to replace them seemed, well, lacking.

I know Kristen Stewart's only nineteen, and I'm sure she's a lovely girl. But I was surprised to find a dearth of snarky blogs or mentions at all today in regards to her stage presence, which I found frankly appalling. When she took the stage with Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner to introduce a montage of horror films (it's unclear to me what, if anything, the Twilight franchise has to do with classics like Psycho and Frankenstein), I thought she looked less like a confident, spotlight-ready star than an awkward kid forced to give a class presentation.

Last Thursday, our own Niall O'Dowd gave me a very serious journalistic assignment. He'd heard that the Jersey Shore's reigning king, "The Situation," was making his first New York appearance at McFadden's, and Niall wanted me to go and cover the story. "No, seriously," he said, "You write very well about lowbrow culture."

Gee, thanks, Niall.

When I was small, I remember having sleepovers at my best friend Sophie's house on New Year's Eve and sometimes on the last nights of other months. I remember being woken up with her mother saying "rabbit rabbit," which, if you said it first before opening your mouth to say anything else on the first day of each new month, would bring you good luck for the next thirty days. It's one of the superstitions I've carried into adulthood, one of the rituals that I enjoy keeping.

For those of us raised in secular households, these rituals can sometimes feel few and far between. The religious basis of my youth was mysterious and scattered. While my father was raised in a large Italian Catholic family and later converted to Christianity, he kept his faith mostly to himself, while my mother took me sometimes to Unitarian church but stressed the feeling of community more than the belief in anything in particular. I went to a Quaker elementary school but didn't feel spiritually touched by the difficulty of keeping silent during Meeting for Worship. When we visited my grandparents in New York, I was overwhelmed by the majesty of 5th Avenue Presbyterian Church, but the context of the sermons often escaped me. I was raised by my mother to understand how religion can be misused to hurt and oppress people, including, largely, women, but I also saw how my father was deeply comforted by it. I spent a long time ignoring this complex and haphazard personal history, but as I get older I feel drawn back into it, wanting to make sense of what I believe and why.