In a series of angry posts on her Twitter account, rocker Courtney Love announced her intention on Thursday to sue the video game company Activision for including an avatar of her late husband, Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain, in Guitar Hero 5, calling the use of Cobain as a playable character “vile” and “necrophilia.” “FOR THE RECORD I DID NOT APPROVE KURTS AVATAR FOR GUYITARHERO5,” Love wrote in one post. “I think Kurt would despise this game alone let alone this avatar.” In a separate post, Love announced, “WE are going to sue the s— out of ACtivision we being the Trust the Estate the LLC the various LLCs Cobain Enterprises.” Directly addressing gamers who want to play Guitar Hero 5, she wrote, “YOU for dismissing me as a LOON, go f—ing play guitar hero commit necrophilai KNOW you are raping me and my family mother in law child.” In a statement to Wired.com, an Activision representative rebuffed Love’s breach-of-contract charges: “Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero 5.”
UPDATE: Love’s lawyer, Keith A. Fink, has released the following statement:
“Ms. Cobain is extremely upset about Activision’s use of Mr. Cobain’s likeness to sing the songs of others in its Guitar Hero game. Activision was granted permission by Kurt’s trust solely to use his name and likeness. Activision was not given an unbridled right to use Mr. Cobain’s name and likeness. Kurt’s songs have a special and unique meaning to his fans and his image and legacy are very important to Ms. Cobain. The agreement Activision has with the trust doesn’t allow them to use his likeness in ways that denigrate his image. We would hope Activision would do the right thing on its own and prohibit game users from using Kurt’s image to sing others songs and if they don’t we expect the trust to take appropriate action to protect Mr. Cobain’s image.”
ALSO: Nirvana members Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic weigh in
Ellen DeGeneres will serve as the fourth judge on American Idol in season 9, Fox announced this afternoon. The talk show host/comedian will sit on the judges’ panel with Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Kara DioGuardia after the auditions, effectively replacing Paula Abdul. DeGeneres revealed the news today to studio audience members while taping an installment of Ellen that will air tomorrow; she also reassured them she is keeping her day job. “This is so exciting for me,” DeGeneres told the audience. “We’ve been dealing with this for the last couple of weeks and I’ve been dying to tell everyone. It’s just been so hard to keep it a secret and we just finally got the okay and I’m so excited. It is going to be so much fun. I don’t know how it happened myself but I have not missed one episode of that show. I’ve watched every single thing. I love everything about it and I love music, as you know. Hopefully I’m the people’s point of view because I’m just like you…I’m not looking at it in a critical way from the producer’s mind. I’m looking at it as a person who is going to buy the music and is going to relate to that person. So I’m hopefully going to be that voice of what we’re all doing at home.” 
