the buzz log

The upside of technology: the return of the zingy one-liner.

Lily Allen, the Brit singer whose boozy, woozy path was getting a lot of press until Amy Winehouse out-boozed and out-woozed her, is back. She's got a new album and she's luring lots of online attention (searches are up more than 600% in the past 7 days). But her Twitter-wars with online blogger Perez Hilton might just be the thing to restore her to her former catty glory.

Apparently the twosome have had cyberspace arguments before, but they were going at it fast and furious via Twitter on President's Day. Of course, since the microblogging blast only allows 140-character ripostes, the two had to be very succinct. To wit: Calling Hilton a "bitter lonely old queen" and a "little parasite." Youch. The (cleaned-up) response: If he were going to be a messed-up Brit, he'd "rather be Amy Winehouse — whose [sic] got talent." (Lightning-speed retorts don't allow for punctuation.)

Hilton says the sass was out of love (at least, from him). This hasn't been the only rant in techno-haiku: In January, Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore fumed about neighbors doing construction work at 7 a.m.

Celebs have been on the Twitter-wagon for a while: The San Francisco Chronicle notes savvy and largely well-behaved luminaries include Erykah Badu (who "tweeted" about her labor), Shaquille O'Neal and, um, William Shatner.

But the chance to sign up and follow rancourous exchanges could give a new oomph to the microblogging site, which right now has 4.4 million users. (By the way, one study describes American Twitterites as "predominantly young [31], poor, blog-centric, social-network-happy urbanites.") Maybe feisty rivalries could encourage modern gems that could've dripped from the pen of Oscar Wilde or the lips of Groucho Marx.

Some people are already pursuing the idea of microblogs as a way to resuscitate literary wit, although maybe with a somewhat different approach than starlets vs. gossipmongers: a Twitter adaptation of "Taming of the Shrew." Oh, best beware the sting.