CELEBS FLOCK TO MIAMI FOR VICTORIA SECRET SHOW November 18, 2008
Terrence Howard, Lenny Kravitz and Sean “Diddy” Combs were among the celebs who flew down to Miami’s South Beach on Saturday for the annual Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
The trio all scored front row seats to the runway extravaganza, which took place this year at the Fontainebleau Resort with a musical performance by Usher.
Other famous faces in the audience included Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Martha Stewart and John Stamos – all in the front row – and Aubrey O’Day, who sat in Row 5, according to E! Online.
“At the official after party at LIV, Diddy, Terrence Howard and the VS models had their own VIP area on the stage, while all other stars in attendance had to settle for tables on the dance floor stocked with bottles of Belvedere,” E! Online reported.
“Heidi Klum opted to avoid the packed club, instead heading to Blade with hubby Seal. The lovey dovey duo held hands and sipped champagne as they hung with Usher and Lenny Kravitz. And although A-Rod skipped the VS show, he made a late night appearance at Blade.”
Among the VS Angels strutting the runway were Heidi Klum, Alessandria Ambrosia, Miranda Kerr and Karolina Kurkova. The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show airs Dec. 3 on CBS.
‘Miracle’ in Bahamas; Prince still witnessing for Jehovah; Sacramento Kings get reality show November 18, 2008
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Spike Lee’s “Miracle at St. Anna” will close the fifth edition of the Bahamas Film Festival in Nassau on Dec. 11, reports Variety. Aaron Woodley’s “Tennessee” starring Mariah Carey will also screen at this year’s event. Sean Connery is scheduled to present Laurence Fishburne with the career achievement award.
*Prince is still knocking on the doors of strangers to spread the word of Jehovah’s Witnesses. His Royal Badness tells this week’s New Yorker that since he joined the Christian denomination two years ago, he’s started leaving his gated community in Los Angeles to proselytize around the neighborhood. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re totally cool about it,” says Prince. The singer adds that he sees his conversion as more of “a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’”
*Mark Burnett Productions and production company Maloof Television are teaming to produce a new reality series following NBA team the Sacramento Kings. “Rebuilding the Kingdom,” according to the Hollywood Reporter, will follow the franchise as it undergoes an overhaul to regain some winning traction. The production will follow the players and coaches, and the unique challenges in running an NBA team.
SEAL’S SAM COOKE COVER INSPIRED BY OBAMA November 18, 2008
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British singer Seal says he was inspired to record the Sam Cooke hit “A Change Is Gonna Come” by the mood of optimism gripping America leading up to Barack Obama’s historic presidential election.
He told Billboard, “The initial inspiration came from what I perceived to be a collective consciousness of people, not only in America but around the world, saying, ‘Look, the whole place is in turmoil, the economy’s in the toilet, people are reckless, frustrated and irresponsible’. And I think the collective got together realizing there’s something that needed to change.”
Meanwhile, Seal is firing back at Vanity Fair, claiming the magazine misquoted him by writing he would leave America with his wife, Heidi Klum, and their children if John McCain was elected President.
He tells “Access Hollywood,” “What I did say (was), the country has gone through perhaps the worst eight years during the current administration, since I have been living here the past 20 years.
“I said, ‘It’s OK for us, if a country gets too bad, too polarized, if it gets too divisive, we have options. We can always go somewhere.
“But we don’t have those options any more because we have three very beautiful, very healthy American children. And this is their country. And my wife has just become a U.S. citizen. And neither of us are about to up and take them (kids) from this country.”
Watch Seal perform ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’:
EBONY SCORES FIRST POST-ELECTION OBAMA SITDOWN November 18, 2008
Barack Obama decided to give his first interview as President-elect to Ebony magazine, one of the oldest black-owned publications in the United States and based in his hometown of Chicago.
The interview took place Thursday, Nov. 13, and will appear in Ebony’s January 2009 issue, the magazine said in a statement.
The article includes Obama’s thoughts on the historic election, the international reaction to it and his hope to capitalize on the enthusiasm of millions of supporters.
“I’m very humbled by the fact that I stand on the shoulders of all the people who made these incredible contributions to lift this country up,” Obama was quoted as saying in the interview.
Meanwhile, Obama’s second post-election interview, which aired Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” was watched by 25 million people and gave the CBS news program its highest overnight ratings in 10 years.
IS PAULA LEAVING ‘IDOL’ FOR OTHER PROJECTS? November 18, 2008
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According to a report by OK! Magazine, Paula Abdul is about to “transition” out of her involvement with Fox’s “American Idol” to begin working on several new TV projects.
“She knows that every season could be her last. Now she’s got a new secret venture that she’s really excited about,” OK! quoted a source as saying.
She is currently filming “Paula Abdul’s RAH Cheerleading Bowl,” a competition program that will air New Year’s Day on MTV.
In other Abdul news, a rep for the entertainer is denying reports of her being so shaken by last week’s suicide of obsessed fan Paula Goodspeed outside of her Beverly Hills home that she now considers her house “haunted.”
The New York Post quoted a friend of the “Idol” judge who said she refuses to return to the home, even after hiring “healers” to cleanse the house of ghosts.
“[Paula Goodspeed] was a deranged stalker who sent her death threats. Paula instructed guards to keep Goodspeed away from her at all costs,” said the source. “She refuses to stay at home because she fears that the spirit of Goodspeed is haunting her house. She feels like this is the absolute worst omen, a really bad curse . . . Paula is suffering. It is well known that she is emotionally fragile.”
A rep for Abdul, however, said the whole story is false: “There’s no validity to this. She’s been home since the incident happened. There’s no issue with spirits. Paula is shocked and saddened by what transpired. Her heart and prayers go out to the Goodspeed family.”
Meanwhile, the Goodspeed family is now claiming that her treatment by the “American Idol” judges ultimately caused her to kill herself.
Charles McIntyre tells Starmagazine.com that his sister was crushed after Abdul panned her performance at the 2005 audition. He also said judge Simon Cowell was out of line to criticize his sister’s braces.
Paula Goodspeed’s niece tells the New York Daily News her aunt was neither suicidal nor a stalker. The niece says Goodspeed even told her that she and Abdul once had coffee together at a Starbucks.
“Not an ounce of truth to this,” said Abdul’s publicist. “Paula met her only at Idol.”
Goodspeed changed her name from Sandra to Paula 16 years ago, says her cousin. She headed to Hollywood from her home state of Maine five years ago to pursue a career in show business but had no success. According to her brother, Goodspeed was planning to give up her Hollywood dreams and return to Maine this week.
SPIKE LEE’S LA RIOTS FILM ON HORIZON November 18, 2008
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Spike Lee may be close to filming his movie about the 1992 Los Angeles riots with producer Brian Grazer, who tells ComingSoon.net that it might hit theaters before their sequel to “Inside Man.”
Grazer, the founder of Imagine Entertainment with filmmaker/partner Ron Howard, said the L.A. riots film would be a “360 degree view of what that is, an autopsy of how a riot works.”
Like Spike, Grazer has been trying to get the project made for a long time.
“‘Cause I grew up in Los Angeles, and I was six or seven miles from this riot,” said Grazer. “It was a fascination. It was threatening and a fascination, both. I’ve always wanted to make a war movie, I haven’t done that. The visuals of that would be interesting and this is a way of doing a war movie in a modern environment and one that I know really well.”
OUTKAST TO TRIPLE UP ON 2009 OUTPUT November 18, 2008
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Rap duo Outkast, whose last album “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” was released to critical acclaim in September 2003, will have a new full-length album on the streets sometime before the end of 2009.
Speaking to MTV News, group member Big Boi said he’s planning on releasing his second solo record, “Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son Of Chico Dusty,” either in January or February, with Andre 3000 releasing his solo effort soon after. The pair will then begin recording the Outkast project for release later in the year.
Big Boi said: “Me and ‘Dre were on the conference call [recently]. He’s working on his album; my album is done. We’re gonna wait until the top of the year–January or February–to put it out. Then Dre is gonna come hit y’all, and [then] we’re gonna do the Outkast album.”
He added: “So y’all gonna get three records from the ‘Kast next year.”
EX-PORN STAR VAMPS IN ‘SOUL MEN’ November 18, 2008
Old school adult film legend Vanessa Del Rio put a hurting on Bernie Mac while filming their hilarious sex scene for the wild, grown-up comedy Soul Men.
Fit and fierce at age 56, Del Rio retains all the fire that made her an X-rated superstar back in the pre-video, Boogie Nights era of porn (when dudes still watched “skin flicks” in movie theaters).
Soul Men co-star Samuel L. Jackson remembers Bernie pulling him aside on the set.
“He was like, ‘Man, she ’bout to kill me!’ I said, ‘What?’ ‘She’s jumping up and down and she’s just like buck wild over there!’”
Del Rio bursts out laughing when she’s told that story. If she frightened Mac with her unbridled freakiness she didn’t realize it. What she remembers most about her day on the Soul Men set is that Bernie Mac was a kind and considerate gentleman who spoke lovingly about his family and kept her laughing continuously.
“He was talking about his kids and about his dog and he just came across as such a wonderful, warm person,” Del Rio remembers. “We laughed a lot (and) I think laughter is very sexy!”
Her playful attitude toward sex defined Vanessa Del Rio’s onscreen persona back in the 1970s and early ’80s. She was renowned for having zero inhibitions on camera and for really enjoying her work. Samuel L. Jackson dug Del Rio’s movies when he was in college because “she was the first porn star who acted like she really enjoyed sex!” Del Rio takes that as a huge compliment.
“We were truly having a good time because we were expressing ourselves,” she says. “It was the ’70s sexual revolution. There was a lot of freedom then, a lot of free thinking .Back then (pornography) was something you did to have fun and to rebel.”
Del Rio retired from hardcore work in 1986 but she never fully abandoned the adult entertainment industry. Today she thrives on the Internet, personally managing a web site (www.vanessadelrio.com) where she performs naughty cam shows and hawks sexy merchandise including her memoir, a racy coffee table book with the deliberately ironic title, 50 Years of Slightly Slutty Behavior.
“That title is me being sort of tongue in cheek and coy … But by today’s standards I was just slightly slutty!” the pioneer pornista laughs.
Three decades after storming the adult movie scene, Vanessa Del Rio is in Energizer bunny mode and she isn’t even thinking about slowing down — ever.
“I always said that when it’s my turn to go into a retirement home just give me my drugs, put me in a wheelchair and point me towards the men!” Del Rio declares with a saucy laugh.
HATE CRIMES IN U.S. SPIKE AFTER OBAMA WIN November 18, 2008
From California to Maine, reports of hate crimes have increased dramatically since the Nov. 4 election of Barack Obama, the nation’s first African American president.
Cross burnings, schoolchildren chanting “Assassinate Obama,” black figures hung from nooses and racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars are among the “hundreds” of incidents that have been documented by police in the past two weeks.
The alleged crimes also include vandalism, vague threats and at least one physical attack, according to the Associated Press. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students as well as second-graders.
One incident took place in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the election: “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” That night, someone trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs, and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front door, said Millner, who is black.
Black high school student Barbara Tyler of Marietta, Ga., said she heard hateful Obama comments from white students, and that teachers cut off discussion about Obama’s victory. Tyler spoke at a press conference by the Georgia chapter of the NAACP calling for a town hall meeting to address complaints from across the state about hostility and resentment.
Another student, from a Covington middle school, said he was suspended for wearing an Obama shirt to school Nov. 5 after the principal told students not to wear political paraphernalia. The student’s mother, Eshe Riviears, said the principal told her: “Whether you like it or not, we’re in the South, and there are a lot of people who are not happy with this decision.”
Other incidents include:
• Four North Carolina State University students admitted writing anti-Obama comments in a tunnel designated for free speech expression, including one that said: “Let’s shoot that (N-word) in the head.” Obama has received more threats than any other president-elect, authorities say.
• At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. “Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count,” the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written “Let’s hope someone wins.”
• Racist graffiti was found in places including New York’s Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and “Go Back To Africa” were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.
• Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted “assassinate Obama,” a district official said.
• University of Alabama professor Marsha L. Houston said a poster of the Obama family was ripped off her office door. A replacement poster was defaced with a death threat and a racial slur. “It seems the election brought the racist rats out of the woodwork,” Houston said.
• Black figures were hanged by nooses from trees on Mount Desert Island, Maine, the Bangor Daily News reported. The president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas said a rope found hanging from a campus tree was apparently an abandoned swing and not a noose.
• Crosses were burned in yards of Obama supporters in Hardwick, N.J., and Apolacan Township, Pa.
• A black teenager in New York City said he was attacked with a bat on election night by four white men who shouted ‘Obama.’
• In the Pittsburgh suburb of Forest Hills, a black man said he found a note with a racial slur on his car windshield, saying “now that you voted for Obama, just watch out for your house.”
