Poor old Rambo. Not only is he a full-time hero at 61 years old, but he received death threats while in action in the highly volatile Thai-Burmese border.

Sylvester Stallone has been telling reporters that on the set of his latest franchise-revival, he was met with some animosity from the locals, which is hardly surprising given that he was filming a multi-million-dollar movie in an area of extreme instability.

It sounds like one of those surreal situations in which the line between movie and reality become blurred.

Stallone said, “It’s the most brutal regime in the world and the most secretive. It has an oppressive regime that keeps all riches for themselves. Everyone is forced into drugs or prostitution or slavery. People are escaping all the time from Burma, coming over with gaping, maggot-infested wounds, their ears being cut off. You saw a lot of suffering, a lot of malnutrition. We were on the Salween River and we were told to get out because we were going to be shot.”

It’s interesting that Stallone hasn’t had anything to say about the protests going on in Myanmar. You’d have thought that the actor standing up now and doing his bit would be great publicity for the forthcoming Rambo movie.

What’s surprising is that he’s so surprised that the situation in Myanmar is like that. You’d have thought Rambo would be clued up on these things.

Techno’ tags: Thailand, Burma, Rambo

Another sad death this week as I learned that Luciano Pavarotti has died of cancer at the age of 71. The Italia ‘90 tune is a great, early-childhood memory for me.

I turned on my TV today for the first time in about three weeks. I flicked through a few channels and somehow found my way to Fox News, where a groundbreaking documentary about Diana, Princess of Wales, was being butchered by Geraldo.

“Ten years on, why do people still care?” mused Geraldo. I really couldn’t tell you. I don’t know how people reacted to Princess Diana’s death in Thailand, but in the UK it was as if somebody had dropped a nuclear bomb in the middle of London. I woke up one morning and turned on my television – all the TV stations were covering the same thing. At first I thought somebody important was getting married because they were replaying clips of Diana’s marriage to Prince Charles.

I asked my mum where my usual Sunday-morning shows were and she told me that Princess Diana had died. I shrugged and turned on the radio. The whole country was in mourning! To this day it still bewilders me just how much Diana’s death affected people, not just in Britain, but around the world.

While Diana did a lot of high-profile charity work, which is commendable in its own way, so did Mother Teresa, whose death a week after Diana’s was practically eclipsed. Fox News won’t touch a story about the life and times of Mother Teresa because there is nothing in it that can be sensationalized.

In the case of Diana, there are pundits and old friends and people who saw her in Tesco a few times testifying that she was murdered in a conspiracy plot thrown together by the Palace, MI5 or any number of other groups. Fox News is too liberal with its references to people not wanting Diana to marry a Muslim. I don’t believe Diana would be killed for this reason and it’s silly to dwell on this matter.

Would you believe that some people actually made a case for Diana to be made a saint after her death? For the love of God – why? Next Friday will be 10 years to the day after Diana’s death. Can’t we lay this one to rest without making it into an X-File?

Techno’ tags: Princess Diana

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Save the chickens! Paris Hilton will deliver them from evil! Those crazy folks from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have written to Paris Hilton asking her to become the new face for chickens’ rights. Apparently Paris’ time behind bars is comparable to that of chickens spending their time in coops. I guess there are some similarities.

Now that Paris Hilton has found God she will need an army to lead, and that army may as well be a bunch of chickens. She will require a group of devotees on a similar intellectual plane.

“KFC – that’s not hot!” is the planned slogan for Paris Hilton’s chicken campaign.

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