Brian May News

Queen guitarist Brian May has had with it with a crazy little thing called MySpace. As for the late Freddie Mercury: He was here, he was queer and Zanzibar still can't get used to it.

May took to the Web last week, blasting the teen-friendly networking destination and its patrons after a surge of fake MySpace pages claiming to be May's official handiwork popped up on the site.

And by surge, we mean three.

"Right now I'm feeling more and more powerless, and depressed about the way the Internet is going," May posted on his real Website last Thursday. "It seems nothing is protectable anymore. The Internet seems to have made it easy for any git to pretend he is someone else.

"There are now three Bogus MySpace 'blogs' pretending to be written by me...and I'm a peaceful person, but, frankly, I feel like going over there and applying a fist or two," he wrote.

"Just so you know, folks, once and for all, there IS NO Brian May page on MYSPACE...NOR WILL THERE EVER BE ONE...I am completely disgusted that the organizers of this site exert no sense of responsibility to check that people are who they say they are."

But while May takes umbrage with online profile hijckers, followers of his deceased band mate Mercury have their own battle to contend with.

A planned beach party set to take place in the "Bohemian Rhapsody" singer's hometown of Zanzibar, Tanzania, Saturday in honor of the 60th anniversary of his birthday is drawing protests from a local Muslim leader, who claims that any connection linking the flamboyant rocker's lifestyle to the primarily Islamic island would be shameful.

"Associating Mercury with Zanzibar degrades our island as a place of Islam," the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation said in a letter to the government's culture ministry. The group also issued a request to the nation's media that they not report on the scheduled festivities or broadcast the date of Mercury's birthday, which was Sept. 5, 1946, for those keeping track at home.

Still, the Mercury restaurant, the waterfront site of the planned party named for the gay singer who died of complications of AIDS in 1991, will go ahead with the celebration.

"Our main idea is to promote tourism and Freddie Mercury was from Zanzibar. It's part of our history," restaurant manager Simai Mohammed told the Associated Press. "We are all Muslims and it's not our intention to offend any religion."

It would be a feat not to.

The Tanzanian government's position on homosexuality is one of the most repressive and intolerant in the world. Just two years ago, the parliament passed legislation to impose a prison sentence of 25 years for anyone convicted of gay acts, the same punishment as for a convicted murderer.

But, to paraphrase the Mercury tune, the show will go on.