Johnny Rotten

John Lydon, a.k.a. Sex Pistols leader Johnny Rotten, is adapting his 1994 autobiography, "Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs," for the big screen, according to England's NME magazine.

We have Janet, they have Johnny.... When Sex Pistol John Lydon described an audience of up to 12 million people with a double obscenity on live British television Tuesday night, it merited only 98 complaints. Lydon made the exclamation as he was trying to get voted off ITV's popular "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!'" and added that he wanted to be voted off by the viewers so he could "go trucking in the country."

A hand is extended in friendly greeting, accompanied by a warm smile and a cheery "Hello." This is the story of Johnny Rotten? Well, that was the story of a recent interview outside Virgin Records' Beverly Hills headquarters. The English singer who a decade ago set out with the Sex Pistols to topple the very structure of the rock industry has become the thorough rock professional.

To the dismay of aging punk fans, a British television company announced Monday that former Sex Pistols singer and angry punk icon Johnny Rotten -- now known by his real name, John Lydon -- has agreed to appear in the reality show "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" "If it has come to this for the prince of punk, then mediocrity really does get us all in the end," wrote Lee Randall in The Scotsman newspaper. "I'm a Celebrity," which begins its third run Jan.

After so many years as pop music's inveterate heaper of scorn, John Lydon is still carrying on in a way that is both admirable and pathetic. When he first appeared with the Sex Pistols in 1976 as Johnny Rotten, proclaiming himself an anarchist and antichrist, Lydon's furious sound and lacerating rhetoric had an immediate focus and an attainable purpose: the wreckage of a sedate and complacent pop equilibrium.

To the dismay of aging punk fans, a British television company announced Monday that former Sex Pistols singer and angry punk icon Johnny Rotten -- now known by his real name, John Lydon -- has agreed to appear in the reality show "I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here!" "If it has come to this for the prince of punk, then mediocrity really does get us all in the end," wrote Lee Randall in The Scotsman newspaper. "I'm a Celebrity," which begins its third run Jan.

"Generation X." Chrysalis. Before he moved to America and became a solo star, Billy Idol was a partner with Tony James (of Sigue Sigue Sputnik fame) in this controversial late-'70s British band--controversial because it came up during the punk era but mixed its spunky energy with a bright, almost mainstream pop-rock sensibility that offended punk purists.

Forget Pergonal, Pregnyl, Profasi HP and in vitro fertilization, a trip to the "Odditorium" could be just the thing to get the reproductive juices flowing. Two fertility statues credited with inducing hundreds of pregnancies in those who have rubbed them are making a second swing through the Southland beginning today at Ripley's Believe It Or Not! in Buena Park. Of course, there's no way to be certain that a pregnancy was totem-induced. But Ripley's has testimonials.

Johnny Rotten? More like Johnny Cotton . There's no doubt that rock 'n' roll could use a good shot of anarchy these days, but if Public Image Limited's concert Thursday at the Universal Amphitheatre was anything to go by, we won't be getting it from John Lydon.

John Lydon, a.k.a. Sex Pistols leader Johnny Rotten, is adapting his 1994 autobiography, "Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs," for the big screen, according to England's NME magazine.

Who would you want to see in the role of Johnny Rotten in a movie about his life? Justin Timberlake? That's the suggestion of Mr. Rotten himself. He's joking, of course. But John Lydon, who has been unsatisfied with portrayals of him in such films as "Sid and Nancy," is giving the matter serious thought these days.

Johnny Rotten isn't happy. For one thing, the air conditioning isn't working in his trailer backstage at the Inland Invasion punk festival, and the 101-degree heat, even at 7 p.m., hangs over the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in Devore like an extra layer of skin. The trailer lights must also be on the blink--unless Rotten just doesn't notice that it's almost dark as he sits and wonders what he's even doing here, singing with the Sex Pistols at their first U.S. gig in six years.

So there I was at the Viper Room basking in the afterglow of an Otep performance when promoter Dayle Gloria says to me, "Go meet Johnny Rotten." Without missing a beat, I sauntered up to the thin white kook and told him I read his book and was saddened he couldn't see the good that punk hath wrought. He told me, "Get ooover it. I did." I looked him square in the eye and said, "Bollocks, Johnny!" Well, that lit up his face like a fire-starter on Fourth of July.

Forget Pergonal, Pregnyl, Profasi HP and in vitro fertilization, a trip to the "Odditorium" could be just the thing to get the reproductive juices flowing. Two fertility statues credited with inducing hundreds of pregnancies in those who have rubbed them are making a second swing through the Southland beginning today at Ripley's Believe It Or Not! in Buena Park. Of course, there's no way to be certain that a pregnancy was totem-induced. But Ripley's has testimonials.

You might wonder which would be more dangerous: giving Johnny Rotten a tank, or giving the ex-Sex Pistol punk prelate a TV show? With the premiere of "Rotten Television" on Sunday, VH1 gives him both. Mr. Rotten (nee John Lydon) uses the tank to blow up a bunch of rock memorabilia in one of three main segments in the half-hour, the first of seven "specials" planned to run during 2000. And, in kind, he uses the show itself to blow up any hypocrisy in his sweeping sights.

Johnny Rotten isn't happy. For one thing, the air conditioning isn't working in his trailer backstage at the Inland Invasion punk festival, and the 101-degree heat, even at 7 p.m., hangs over the Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in Devore like an extra layer of skin. The trailer lights must also be on the blink--unless Rotten just doesn't notice that it's almost dark as he sits and wonders what he's even doing here, singing with the Sex Pistols at their first U.S. gig in six years.

So there I was at the Viper Room basking in the afterglow of an Otep performance when promoter Dayle Gloria says to me, "Go meet Johnny Rotten." Without missing a beat, I sauntered up to the thin white kook and told him I read his book and was saddened he couldn't see the good that punk hath wrought. He told me, "Get ooover it. I did." I looked him square in the eye and said, "Bollocks, Johnny!" Well, that lit up his face like a fire-starter on Fourth of July.

The couple in their 20s yelped excitedly when they entered the Red Rocks Amphitheatre shortly after 9 p.m. Wednesday and learned that the Sex Pistols hadn't gone on stage yet. "That's great," the man said after handing their tickets to an attendant. "We thought we were going to be late." Not so fast. In a very real way, the couple--and the rest of the 9,000 fans at Red Rocks for the opening show on the Pistols' U.S. reunion tour--were late. By about 18 years.

Seeing a slightly disheveled David Thewlis sauntering through a somber room full of assorted levels of pricelessness in the L.A. County Museum of Art, it's hard not to flinch just a little bit, even though you know better. Thewlis' retinue assures all comers that this Londoner is the gentlest of actorly souls. But his two most prominent performances so far, both as vicious, violence-prone street-dwellers--first, playing a likely sociopath in Mike Leigh's film "Naked," and, this week, a pedophile on the public-TV series "Prime Suspect"--have seemed almost too frighteningly good not to be true.