Anderson Cooper has a recurring puff piece segment on his CNN show "Anderson Cooper 360" where he briefly takes aim at surreal news items. This time, he targeted the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan for posing with his cats on the cover of PAWS Chicago Magazine (the magazine for the no-kill animal shelter PAWS Chicago). He also showed a clip of that furniture store advertisement he did with his pro-wrestling company.

After saying that Siamese Dream was "a bit derivative of My Bloody Valentine", Cooper took issue with "cool" alternative rock stars of the 1990s doing "uncool" things like posing with cats or shilling for furniture stores. He said:

“So perhaps Billy Corgan is I don’t know, off his alternative rocker, but I think maybe there’s more to this. Maybe he’s being ironic, or maybe when the cool rock stars start doing less rock starry things, it kind of makes us face our own mortality. See I want R.E.M. to stay just the way I know and love them, I don’t want 'Everybody Hurts' to suddenly be used in an Excedrin commercial. I don’t ever want to see a product called Eddie Vedder’s Prune Jam. I want to see neither Stephen Malkmus nor Thom Yorke on the cover of AARP Magazine.”

Naturally, Corgan didn't take the segment quietly.

It's also worth noting that Corgan isn't just posing with cats and selling furniture these days—the new Pumpkins album Monuments to an Elegy is out December 9.

He also has his own tea shop where he sometimes hosts hours-long experimental ambient music performances. Read Paul Thompson's report from one of those.

Watch Cooper's segment here: