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Maria Bello Jennifer Gareis Ashlee Simpson Donna Feldman Jodi Lyn OKeefe
Monday, January 31, 2011
Ashley Tisdale & Aly Michalka's Canadian Workday
Back to work up north of the border, Ashley Tisdale and Aly Michalka were hard at work on the set of "Hellcats" in Vancouver, Canada on Monday (January 31).
The lovely ladies dutifully took their turns in front of the cameras, with Miss Michalka being joined by fellow co-star Gail O'Grady during the filming session.
Meanwhile, fans can look forward to catching Ashley, Aly and the gang in an all-new episode of "Hellcats" tomorrow night (February 1) at 9/8c on The CW.
Titled "Worried Baby Blues," a synopsis of the action-packed installment via the show's website tells: "In an effort to raise funds for sectionals, the Hellcats shoot a sexy calendar and throw a launch party with the band 3OH!3. Wanda (Gail O'Grady) convinces Savannah (Ashley Tisdale) to tell her mother, Layne (guest star Teryl Rothery), about Charlotte (guest star Emma Lahanna). Unfortunately, Savannah ends up taking the heat after Layne blames Savannah for being a bad influence. Meanwhile, Marti (Aly Michalka) decides to break into Bill Marsh's (guest star Aaron Douglas) office in hopes of finding evidence that could clear Travis' (guest star Ben Cotton) name. However, she's surprised to find Alice (Heather Hemmens) already there with a different motive. Vanessa (Sharon Leal) wonders if she still has feelings for Red (Jeff Hephner). Ashley Tisdale sings with musical guest 3OH!3."
Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/hellcats/ashley-tisdale-aly-michalkas-canadian-workday-468821
T.A.T.u. Amber Valletta Paris Hilton Victoria Pratt Shakara Ledard
50 great moments in jazz: Keith Jarrett's The K�ln Concert
This record-breaking album still gets a chilly reception from jazz fans. But the inspiration behind its inception lives on
Thirty-six years ago, Keith Jarrett, the now 65-year-old pianist and composer from Allentown, Pennsylvania, crossed a chasm usually unbridgeable for either jazz or classical performers ? and this virtuoso happens to be both.
Jarrett's message from the keyboard took off from the small enclave of an informed and dedicated minority audience, and reached the huge worldwide constituency of listeners. His albums would turn up in the collections of people who would otherwise cross the street to avoid buying a jazz record. From the mid-70s on, his concerts began to resemble religious rituals, attended by flocks of devotees for whom his music had a meditative, spiritual and transformative power. And all this stemmed from the recording of a single album ? conceived as a live concert by a sleep-deprived Jarrett on a faulty grand piano ? made in K�ln, Germany, on 24 January 1975. Sales of The K�ln Concert, on Munich's fledgling new-music label, ECM, broke records of all kinds. It remains the bestselling solo album in jazz, and the bestselling solo piano album in any genre.
From the glistening, patiently developed opening melody, through sustained passages of roaring riffs and folksy, country-song exuberance, the pianist is utterly inside his ongoing vision of the performance's developing shape ? a fusion of the freshness of an improvisation with the symmetries of a composition that's central to the album's communicative power. Harmonically and melodically, it wasn't a particularly "jazzy" record by the piano-jazz standards of that time, which might also have eased its progress across the sectarian divides of jazz, pop or classical tastes. There had been, however, an earlier clue to the possibilities of this journey into the largely uncharted waters of improvised solo-piano performance. The great pianist Bill Evans, one of the young Jarrett's jazz models and an artist similarly steeped in classical music, had recorded the meditative solo improvisation Peace Piece 16 years before, and built it around a simple two-chord vamp in which the harmonies stretched increasingly abstractly as the performance progressed. Much of Jarrett's playing on The K�ln Concert similarly developed around repeating hook-like motifs, instead of unfolding over song-structure chord sequences as most bop-based jazz solos did.
Jarrett's improvisation was also hypnotically rhythmic, bordering on mantra-like. He was unafraid to locate a compelling idea and stick with it, building intensity on a single rhythmic notion in a manner that still sounds urgently contemporary. A pop-like deployment of repetition, and a reassuringly anchored sense of tonal consistency ? the latter occasioned by the pianist's hugging of the acceptable middle-register of an otherwise tinny piano he had almost cancelled the gig to avoid ? contributed to the music's astonishingly organic feel.
Jarrett's desire to make a solo-piano album had led to his earlier departure from Columbia Records, and to his relationship with the compatible Manfred Eicher of ECM (with whom he was travelling around Europe, jammed into a Renault 5, on the tour that included K�ln), a visionary producer who heard new music in the same eclectic way. Though he was only 29 at the time of The K�ln Concert, Jarrett had already had a brief flirtation with electronics in Miles Davis's fusion band (declaring afterwards that he wouldn't touch a plugged keyboard again) and rich regular-jazz and early-fusion experiences in the popular bands of saxophonist Charles Lloyd and drummer Art Blakey. He had also made some compositionally distinctive and now highly regarded postbop recordings of his own, in the legendary early-70s "American quartet" with saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Paul Motian. But K�ln was Jarrett's moment, and a turning point for the immensely influential ECM label too, which the album helped to bankroll for years to come.
The K�ln Concert isn't universally admired by jazz listeners. Some find it close to easy listening in its repetition of catchy melody, or a irreconcilable split from the jazz tradition in its avoidance of many of the genre's familiar materials. But Jarrett's remarkable output in the years since, his interpretations of classical works, reinvention of the Bill Evans-inspired conversational trio, engagement with everything from symphony orchestras to cathedral organs, and through it all an enduring popularity that sells out the world's great concert halls months in advance, testify to his creativity and eloquence.
In 2006, he released a similarly unpremeditated solo-piano concert from Carnegie Hall that ran to 90 minutes and five encores. When I discussed it with him for the Guardian, Jarrett said: "My glasses were falling off, my pants were twisted up, I was sweating, crouching, standing up, sitting down, and I was thinking 'nothing can stop me now'." He also said he'd had the same feeling ? of total trust in his imagination ? on The K�ln Concert more than 30 years before.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/jan/31/50-great-moments-jazz-keith-jarrett
April Scott Mia Kirshner Elisabeth Röhm Lily Allen Emmanuelle Chriqui
Underwater Mortgages and You
Homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages are a drain on the economy because high mortgage payments reduce their demand for other goods and services. So how do we fix this? Mike Konczal reviews a couple of proposals to help out distressed homeowners and doesn't like them:
These two plans sound like really complicated programs, large-enough in scale to be inefficient. Which is a waste, since we already have this great system for writing down and managing burdensome debt, and it’s this marvelous thing called our bankruptcy laws. Sadly there’s a defect in it that prevents bankruptcy courts from writing down single-family principle residence mortgage....[But] we could easily pass a streamlined, modified version of bankruptcy just for this crisis.
I think bankruptcy "cramdown" is a good idea, but there's a problem with it: lots of homeowners who are stuck with mortgages they can't afford — mortgages that, in aggregate, are a massive drag on the economy — nonetheless aren't in such desperate straits that they can declare bankruptcy. In addition, there are others who could, but don't want to. Bankruptcy is a big deal, after all.
So I'm a little more sympathetic toward those broader plans than Mike is, because they might help a broader swath of homeowners and get the economy moving more quickly. Unfortunately, as much as people hate bailing out banks, they hate bailing out their profligate neighbors even more. I think we can safely expect nothing to happen on this front, and that means the economy will continue to underperform and unemployment will stay high. Thanks, tea partiers!
Source: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/01/underwater-mortgages-and-you
Ali Campoverdi Giuliana DePandi Pamela Anderson Amber Arbucci Christina Aguilera
Ex-Apprentice unites British press - in loathing
Alex Epstein emailed more than 700 people to offer his services, revealing all their email addresses in the process. They were not happy
Lost in Showbiz has noted before that these are tough times for the media, and tough times breed enmity. No more the boozy fraternity of old Fleet Street: in the fight for the attention of a dwindling readership, it's every man for himself and no palling around with the opposition.
It takes a rare commodity to unite Britain's journalists, but thankfully just such a commodity has revealed himself: former Apprentice contestant Alex Epstein, who earlier this week sent an email variously offering his services as a TV reviewer, a "creative business PR/marketing agony uncle" and "a critic on all things, business-related or wider".
He offered a brief resume of his achievements on The Apprentice, which seemed a trifle supererogatory. Surely no one has forgotten the man who managed to distinguish himself in the eyes of the marketing manager who wrote about The Apprentice for this newspaper as "an arrogant twonk", "a halfwit with a startling lack of self-awareness", and "an incompetent knobber who knows nothing about marketing". It also included a link to his website, much of which is devoted to hymning his former employers, the intriguingly named Masternaut, in the manner of a needy, drunken and increasingly irksome acquaintance whose conversation revolves around the attributes of the partner who recently left them for someone who perhaps seemed less of an incompetent knobber.
He sent the email to more than 700 people: not merely the business press and the broadsheets, but wedding publications, web developers, the specialist food press ? who could perhaps benefit from his unique vision regarding pies ? and the specialist dance music magazine Mixmag. He also cc'd rather than bcc'd them, thus revealing all the recipients' email addresses to everyone else. One recipient, a Derek Lock of Frommers, responded, "We're a travel company, perhaps you'd like to leave the country." "You're a total shambles," offered the Daily Mail's Showbiz editor. Her counterpart on the Express agreed.
Lost in Showbiz is at a loss to understand the angry and sarcastic tone many recipients adopted and says: come on, hacks! Can't you see what a happy day this is? Old enmities put aside! Political differences swept away at the click of a button! We've found something we all agree on! We've come together! Right now! Over an incompetent knobber!
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/jan/20/ex-apprentice-star-unites-press
Vanessa Simmons Chyler Leigh Julie Berry Lori Heuring Nicole Scherzinger
Gladys Horton obituary
Lead singer for the Marvelettes on hits including Please Mr Postman, Motown's first No 1
For many young pop fans at the beginning of the 1960s, the voice of Gladys Horton represented their introduction to Motown music. Horton, who has died aged 65, was the 15-year-old lead singer of the Marvelettes when they recorded Please Mr Postman at their first session for Berry Gordy Jr's fledgling group of labels. The combination of her raw, girlish urgency and an extraordinarily catchy song gave the ambitious company the first of the many No 1 hits it would accumulate over the next decade.
The Marvelettes' overnight success briefly put the teenaged schoolfriends from a Detroit suburb at the top of Motown's highly competitive pecking order, and Horton went on to sing on further hits by the group, such as Playboy, Beechwood 4-5789, He's a Good Guy (Yes He Is) and Too Many Fish in the Sea. The lead vocals on their later hits, such as Don't Mess With Bill, The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game and When You're Young and in Love, were taken by Wanda Young, another member of the group, with a smoother, more intimate delivery.
Greater success might have been theirs, but for the fateful decision to reject a song written expressly for them by Lamont Dozier and the brothers Eddie and Brian Holland, who had formed themselves into one of Gordy's young in-house teams of composers and producers. At the founder's suggestion, Where Did Our Love Go was then submitted to the Supremes, who had yet to make an impact on the charts. After the breathy delivery of Diana Ross, Gordy's personal protege, made it a worldwide smash at the beginning of 1964, no more would the Marvelettes be able to see themselves as Motown's No 1 female vocal group.
Horton was born in Gainesville, Florida, orphaned before her first birthday and brought up in foster care in Inkster, a dormitory suburb for black workers at Detroit's Ford factories. It was while singing in the Inkster high school choir that she and four friends ? Katherine Anderson, Georgia Dobbins, Wyanetta (Juanita) Cowart and Georgeanna Tillman ? decided to form a group, inspired by the Chantels and the Shirelles and calling themselves the Marvels. At Horton's behest they entered a school talent contest; although they did not win, one of their teachers was so impressed that she secured them an audition at Motown and drove them in her car to the company's headquarters on West Grand Boulevard, later to be known as Hitsville USA.
When they were invited to come back with an original song, Dobbins remembered that a young pianist in Inkster, William Garrett, had been working on something that might do. They returned to Motown with Please Mr Postman, which was polished up by three company writers ? Brian Holland, Robert Bateman and Freddie Gorman, the last-named adding expert knowledge to the lyric from his day-job delivering mail. The singers were quickly invited to record it with Motown's cadre of ace studio musicians, including the great drummer Benny Benjamin, who concocted the infectious beat that supported Horton's heartfelt cry of "D-liver D-letter D-sooner D-better!"
It was Gordy who prompted the change of name to the Marvelettes. By the time the record was released, less than a month later, Dobbins had already left the group, to be replaced by Young. Nothing, however, could hinder the runaway success of Please Mr Postman, which surpassed such previous Motown hits as the Miracles' Shop Around, Barrett Strong's Money and Mary Wells's Bye Bye Baby by crossing over from the R&B charts to win acceptance from the young white pop audience, thus doing more than any of its predecessors to lay the foundations for Motown's subsequent adoption of a wonderfully self-confident slogan: "The Sound of Young America." (Please Mr Postman would also prove to be an outstandingly valuable copyright for Gordy's publishing company when the Beatles included their version on their second album in 1963, and again in 1975 when the Carpenters recorded a version that took it back to the top of the charts.)
One of Gordy's sisters, Esther Edwards, had successfully applied to become the legal guardian of the parentless Horton. Since only one of the group had graduated from school, she also agreed to supervise the continuation of the girls' schooling while they were on tour. In preparation for their public debut, the Marvelettes were put through a rudimentary version of the grooming for which Motown later became famous. Coiffed, begowned, choreographed and rehearsed, they were sent out to perform at such venues as the Apollo in Harlem and the Howard Theatre in Washington DC with the other members of the company's travelling revue.
By the time they decided that Where Did Our Love Go was not the song for them, they were down to the trio of Horton, Young and Anderson, and were being rivalled in the company's affections by Martha and the Vandellas. But the sudden ascent of the Supremes, and the attention lavished by Gordy on his favourite star, cast all other female members of the Motown roster into the shadows, a fate which became the cause of lasting bitterness.
The Marvelettes also found it difficult to shake a conviction that being from Inkster, 35 miles from inner-city Detroit, they were seen as country bumpkins. Although they continued to have hits, particularly when Smokey Robinson wrote and produced a string of singles, neither Horton nor Young was able to establish the sort of individual identity that Gordy created for Ross.
Horton left the group in 1967 when she became pregnant with the first of three children of a marriage that was later dissolved. She was replaced by Ann Bogan, but after Gordy gradually moved the Motown operation to Los Angeles at the start of the 1970s, leaving many of the company's stalwarts stranded in Detroit, the Marvelettes called it a day. When Horton attempted to reunite the group in the 1980s, she discovered that their name had been sold by Motown to a New York businessman, Larry Marshak, who specialised in putting together ersatz groups to exploit existing reputations and was swift to protect his rights.
Unable to interest the other members in a resumption of activities, she sometimes performed as "Gladys Horton of the Marvelettes", accompanied by two younger singers. Not until Mary Wilson of the Supremes and other artists fought a successful legal action in 2006 was the right to the full use of the names of such groups restored to their original members.
Horton moved to southern California in the 1970s. Like most of Motown's second tier of artists, the Marvelettes had helped make the label rich without enjoying the rewards that might have been expected when Gordy persuaded them, barely out of school and at the dawn of their careers, to sign a personal management contract as well as a recording deal with his company. "A lot of acts were new," Horton said. "They were young and they were inexperienced. It was easy to take advantage of them."
She retired from performing in 2009. Following a lengthy period of declining health, she suffered a stroke last year and was admitted to a nursing home, where she died. She is survived by two of her three sons, Vaughn and Samuel, and by two grandchildren.
? Gladys Catherine Horton, singer, born 30 May 1945; died 26 January 2011
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/30/gladys-horton-obituary
Charlies Angels Rose Byrne Willa Ford Desiree Dymond Teri Polo
Blue to represent UK in Eurovision song contest
Former manager of noughties boyband claims their selection is like 'Lewis Hamilton entering a go-kart race'
Britain's hopes for Eurovision 2011 will be pinned on a boyband from 2001. Blue will represent the UK in the annual kitschfest, performing I Can at the song contest in D�sseldorf, Germany.
"Blue are the perfect choice," said Katie Taylor, the BBC's head of entertainment and events. "We're enormously pleased to have found an act that not only meets but exceeds all the criteria for a great entry."
Blue formed in 2001, enjoying huge hits with their first three albums. Although the band split in 2005, they re-formed in 2009 and have reportedly recorded a new LP. In the lead-up to the Eurovision final on 14 May, the BBC will air a one-hour documentary showing Blue preparing for the contest.
"[Blue] will have to win," said Daniel Glatman, Blue's former manager, in an interview with Press Association. "Anything less and their reputation will be in tatters. It is the equivalent of Lewis Hamilton entering a go-kart race ? he will be the strong favourite but there is also the possibility he could lose. So why risk it? ... [It's] reckless insanity."
For last year's Eurovision in Oslo, Norway, the UK was represented by Josh Dubovie, who sang That Sounds Good to Me. Unfortunately, it didn't sound good to anybody else. Dubovie and his Pete Waterman-penned song finished last, with just 10 points. The winner was Germany's Lena Meyer-Landrut with Satellite.
The UK last won Eurovision in 1997 with Love Shine a Light by Katrina and the Waves.
? This article has been amended. The original claimed that last year's Eurovision song contest was held in Moscow. This has been changed.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/31/blue-uk-eurovision-song-contest
Aubrey ODay Drew Barrymore Marley Shelton Thalía Brooke Burke
Choosing The People Over His Post
by Chris Bodenner Issandr El Amrani catches up with a charismatic character: The man on the front page of today's al-Masri al-Youm is a national hero. He's an army officer who decided to join the protestors (he hadn't been part...
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/andrewsullivan/rApM/~3/J4kJsSk_CLg/click.phdo
Taylor Swift Milla Jovovich Maggie Grace Luján Fernández Charli Baltimore
Readout of the meeting of the National Security Advisor with the Delegation from the Economic Community of West African States
Release Time:
For Immediate Release
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon welcomed a delegation from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to the White House today to discuss the ongoing crisis in Cote d’Ivoire. The ECOWAS Delegation was led by President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, accompanied by Ambassador James Victor Gbeho, President of the ECOWAS Commission, Odein H. Ajumogobia, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria, and Abdel-Fatau M. Musah, the Director for External Relations of the ECOWAS Commission, as well as the Ambassadors from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, and two ministers from Sierra Leone.
Mr. Donilon expressed appreciation for the opportunity to meet with the members of the delegation, and to hear their analysis of the situation and proposed way forward in Cote D’Ivoire. Mr. Donilon expressed strong support for the efforts of ECOWAS to facilitate a peaceful transition of power in Cote D’Ivoire. Mr. Donilon and the ECOWAS delegation reaffirmed their shared commitment to see that the winner of the recent elections, Alassane Ouattara, takes his rightful role as President of Cote D’Ivoire, and their shared resolve to see former President Laurent Gbagbo cede power. They also discussed the importance of maintaining international unity on this point, as previously endorsed by the African Union, ECOWAS, and the UN Security Council. Mr. Donilon and the ECOWAS delegation agreed to continue our close coordination going forward.
Lacey Chabert Amber Brkich Gretha Cavazzoni Marla Sokoloff Jennifer Love Hewitt
Five privacy protection Firefox add-ons for Data Privacy Day
If you're reading Download Squad, you already know all of these classics. Kudos to you! Now go ahead and let your less computer-savvy coworkers or family members read this list, and make sure they install at least one of these if they use Firefox at all.
- HTTPS Everywhere is an add-on by the beardies over at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). It forces Firefox to communicate using HTTPS (secure HTTP) with a number of major websites, such as Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, PayPal and others.
- Ghostery focuses on those corporations and institutions bent on tracking your movements around the Web (or on their own websites). It detects when you're being tracked by Google Analytics, Facebook and over 400 other ad networks, and provides an easy way to block those tracking mechanisms while leaving all other JavaScript functionality intact.
- Web of Trust provides a clear "traffic light" indication showing which sites you can trust with your credit card details, and which sites you should be leery of. The ratings are user-generated, and you don't have to access the actual website in question to view them - they show up right on the search results page when you use Google, Yahoo!, Bing and even Wikipedia.
- NoScript is somewhat similar to Ghostery mentioned above, in that it also blocks JavaScript. But it's a more extreme solution: Rather than just block trackers, it implements a "white list", blocking all JavaScript except for scripts running on domains you trust. One of its many advantages is that it protects against cross-site scripting attacks.
- BetterPrivacy protects you against a different kind of cookie - one that you can't flush just by clearing your browser history. These cookies are called Local Storage Objects, or Flash cookies, and are put on your computer using the Flash plug-in. BetterPrivacy scrubs these cookies off your system every time your exit your browser.
[Image credit: dcJohn]
Five privacy protection Firefox add-ons for Data Privacy Day originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 28 Jan 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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