There are a few websites that mean well, but their domain names read funny.
Take Therapist.com, for example. It can easily be misread as The Rapist.
Here are some of the funniest, most inappropriate-sounding domain names from around the web.
Last year, Pen Island sold you only the best pens. It seems the site owner realized the domain was frequently read as PenisLand. Now it's fittingly a porn site.
You should use whorepresents.com to find a celebrity's agent, not to buy gifts.
If you don't like your body, it's not worth visiting dollarsexchange.com. It used to be a site for people looking to trade American money. Now the site no longer exists.
A BBC Radio 4 presenter was so overcome by emotion that he fell silent on air for more than ten seconds today after hearing a moving poem by the girlfriend of a French photographer killed in Syria.
Paddy O’Connell struggled to compose himself following a reading of a love letter from Emilie Blachere to Remi Ochlik, who died alongside Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin in the besieged city of Homs last year.
After the end of the poem, which was read by Miss Blachere herself, the airwaves were plunged into silence for about 12 seconds before the presenter regained enough composure to speak again.
His voice was choked with emotion as he gave the weather forecast and read the closing credits of Broadcasting House, Radio 4’s popular Sunday morning news programme.
Mr O’Connell, 46, introduced the poem as a “love letter” written for the first anniversary of 28-year-old Mr Ochlik’s death in Syria on February 22 last year.
It takes the form of a list of everything Miss Blachere, a reporter for Paris Match magazine, loved about the talented young photographer, who had previously worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
She lovingly describes Mr Ochlik’s “timid smile” and “almost feminine delicacy” as she recalls the many happy days they spent together.
In the most moving section of the poem, Miss Blachere says: “I loved to hear you tell me how everything was going to be alright when I was depressed. If only I could hear you tell me that today.
“I loved it so much how on February 10, a Friday, the last time we saw each other, you told me that I made you happy.
“I could go on. I would have loved to spend my life adding to this list.”
She continues: “We were prepared for everything, except for the worst. Ochlik, I don’t know how I can go on without you.
“In Rome, you told me, ‘love is a weakness’. You were wrong. Today I feel strong.”
The poem ends by quoting ‘Singin’ in the Rain’, the title song from one of Mr Ochlik’s favourite films.
In the slightly abridged version of the love letter broadcast on Radio 4, Miss Blachere concluded: “My angel, take care of yourself. Take care of us.”
After his lengthy pause following the reading of the poem, Mr O’Connell said: “Our thanks to Emilie Blachere. The weather: cloudy across the entire UK, sunny spells are possible almost anywhere.”
Broadcasting House is available to listen to, in full, on the BBC iPlayer .
Buckingham Palace has told reporters that the Queen of England has been taken to hospital as a precaution after a stomach bug.
The 86-year-old Queen is reportedly suffering from gastroenteritis, the BBC reports, and has been taken to King Edward VII Hospital in London.
It is the first time in 10 years that the Queen has been hospitalized. All official engagements for the next week have been cancelled, a rarity for a Queen who rarely fails to meet her obligations, Sky News reports.
The Queen's bout of gastroenteritis was confirmed by Palace officials earlier this weekend, and had led to speculation she would have to cancel engagements, especially an upcoming royal trip to Italy.
Gastroenteritis is more commonly referred to as the stomach flu, though it has no link to the influenza virus. Symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration. The UK has recently seen a large-scale outbreak of one strain of Gastroenteritis known as the norovirus.
The T-Mobile girl is one of the most recognizable brand spokespeople out there right now. She gives Progressive's Flo a run for her money.
Famous for her pink dress and then bad girl biker makeover, few people know what the real T-Mobile girl is like.
Her name is Carly Foulkes, and the graphic novel-reading, video-game playing, 24-year-old Alanis Morissette fan isn't your typical model/actress.
Since she took over for Catherine Zeta-Jones as the T-Mobile spokesperson in 2010, Americans have gotten to know her as the feminine side of the technology world. But did you know that she doesn't even have a Facebook account?
The province? Again, according to her Twitter, "Your moms house."
Foulkes was born to British parents who raised her in Toronto. She spent her summers in the UK.
She's only 24.
Foulkes first donned the T-Mobile dress when she was only 22 years old.
Born on August 4, 1988, Foulkes is proudly a Leo. According to an interview with My Daily, she was distressed when false rumors spread last year that the astrological calendar had shifted.
Exactly a year ago, Jason Russell was a nobody. Not a nobody, precisely, but just ordinary. Normal. He was a healthy father of two, living in San Diego, and was happy and fulfilled in his work as a director for Invisible Children, a non-profit organisation he'd helped found.
And then, on 5 March, he released Kony2012, a 30-minute film that explained why the world needed to catch and bring to justice Joseph Kony, a central African warlord, who, over the previous 26 years, had abducted 30,000 children and turned them into soldiers and sex slaves. Russell directed and starred in the film, and within hours it was on its way to becoming what was then the most viral video of all time. It took a day to hit a million views; six days to reach 100 million.
Every news outlet on the planet, it seemed, wanted an interview with him. Every news website in the world carried a story on him. Every blogger had an opinion on him. More than a million people left a comment about it on Youtube. On Facebook, 11 million people clicked on "share".
His doctors never agreed on a definitive diagnosis but he was sectioned in a psychiatric hospital suffering from what may have been a schizophrenic manic episode brought on by post-traumatic stress. It was nearly two months before he went home to his family. He is still on "mood-stabilising" medication.
Kony2012 was both ubiquitous and, for all sorts of reasons, extraordinary: it wasn't a two-minute video of a cat falling into a toilet or a baby laughing. It was about an obscure region far away and the importance of pursuing international justice. And Jason Russell.
And this was probably one of the more moderate views. A year on, the Abercrombie & Fitch version of Jesus Christ is looking tanned and healthy in his office in San Diego, but he eyes me with a certain wariness. Last autumn, he went on Oprah Winfrey's show and NBC's Today show and spoke about what happened to him, but not in this detail, at this length.
"On the one hand, there was Bono saying Jason Russell deserves an Oscar, and Oprah wants to fill stadiums for me, and Ryan Seacrest wants me on American Idol," he says. "And on the other, there were people saying, 'These people think they're white saviours trying to save Africa', and 'the money goes to corrupt places', and 'there is a special place in hell for you'.
"They were so polar opposite. So extreme. And in my head, I wanted to reconcile them and I just couldn't."
For a week, he did interview after interview and it was only when he was in the office of a crisis management agency in New York, days in, he says, that he first realised the true force of the backlash. "My head was spinning with all this stuff we needed to do in the future. And Ben [Keesey, Invisible Children's CEO], was saying: 'No, Jason. We've got to work out what to do about the negative press.'
"And it was only then that I realised what was happening, when I opened up my laptop and the first article I read was all these terrible things. 'Jason Russell … white saviour complex…military intervention … dubious finances … blond … yadda yadda yadda!' And suddenly it was, wham, and I was right back in junior high."
Russell's parents founded a national organisation called Christian Youth Theatre, and he spent his childhood as "the tin man, Mr Toad, Peter Pan". He loved musical theatre and his best friend was a girl, Danica, whom he met aged seven and went on to marry. And for all these reasons, he found himself bullied at school. "You think you're an adult and you're past such things and it turns out you're not. You can be taken back there in an instant."
In 2003, at the age of 24, after graduating in film school at USC in Los Angeles, he travelled with two friends to Uganda to find a subject to make a film about. In the town of Gulu they discovered thousands of children who spent every night sleeping en masse in the streets because of their fear of being abducted and drafted into Kony's Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Their response was to form a charity called Invisible Children, for whom he has worked ever since, with the aim of trying to bring Kony to justice.
Nothing in Jason Russell's life had prepared him for the sharp end of the internet. "I'm a 'glass half full or overflowing' kind of person," he says at one point in our interview. "I've never been depressed. They thought it might be bipolar but my wife and my mom were like, 'That's just not you.' I don't get down."
He'd never experienced any form of mental illness. Or at least, he hadn't until the world wide web turned its hell dogs upon him. Could anyone have withstood the pressure that Russell was under? "My doctors say there are very few people who have been that unknown, and then that famous and who are then ripped to shreds."
When I ask him if he's processed what happened to him, and what effect it's had on his life, he says: "I don't know if I have processed it. I still … there are days when I think, 'That was a total failure.' That it was the worst thing that could have happened. That I let everybody down. And there are others when I think we did what we wanted to do. We set out to make Joseph Kony known. And now he is. So I can't… But the problem is that my breakdown put such a blanket of fear and distrust and shame over everything. That's something I deal with every day."
Or as Vice magazine reported it: "Those who live by slick viral videos can die by them too." A few days previously it had cautioned its readers not to give money to Invisible Children, because of its "dubious finances" and "exaggerated claims", adding that it was "staffed by douchebags".
If Russell had had a heart attack, a coronary brought on by extreme stress, it might well be a different story. Heart-attack victims receive sympathy. People who rip their clothes off in the street don't, though attacking your own body is every bit as much of a symptom as chest pain. It's a measure of the stigma and acute misunderstanding that still afflicts sufferers of mental illness that his breakdown was, for many, some sort of vindication. They thought he was a douchebag. And this seemed to prove it.
"It was just so public," says Russell. "The visual of the video is so compelling. It's so obvious that I'm not OK. And I'm so naked. And it's just very, very public. The joke we always had, even before this happened, is that the internet is forever. If you put your crotch on there, it's for ever. And now this is out there for ever and my kids are going to have to deal with it at high school.
"The thing that sucks the most is that it gives people an excuse not to do anything. People are like, 'Didn't that film-maker take all the money and then go crazy naked in the street?'"
Russell didn't embezzle any money. Invisible Children has five years' worth of audited accounts and received four out of four stars for its financial health from Charity Navigator, a non-profit watchdog. "It spends upwards of 80% of its budget on its programmes and services," says Charity Navigator, "outperforming most charities in our database in terms of how it allocates its expenses."
It notes that some people "mistakenly" concluded from its data that it "did not complete an annual audit. That is not true."
Too late. It's just one of the fallouts of becoming a mega-trending Twitter hashtag.
When I visited Invisible Children's San Diego office last week, there were 60 staff members and 35 fresh-faced interns answering phones and plugged into computers in a cool, calm space. A year ago, says Chris Carver, the chief operations officer, it was another story.
"We had one PR person, Monica, who was an intern, a volunteer. She estimated there were never less than 4,000 emails in her inbox. In any one second, our website had 37,000 unique users. And we were taking hundreds of thousands of dollars of orders in our shop for the Kony2012 kits."
These were the "action kits" that viewers of the video were urged to buy to raise awareness of Kony.
"Even though we knew we might never have this opportunity again, we had to shut it off. We had two people in our fulfilment department, and they could ramp up to maybe 100 orders a day. And we literally had hundreds of thousands of them."
The kit included a red T-shirt with the words Kony2012 on it, but incredibly, "we maxed out," says Carver. What do you mean, I ask. "We sourced every single red T-shirt in the entire US. There were no more to buy."
The website had been stress-tested to cope with an Oprah appearance a year or so previously, but it crashed. The phone system crashed. "The only way we could communicate with the outside world was a Tumblr site so all the stuff about our financials, our five years of audited accounts, the detail of our programmes, the 11 schools we have built, the thousands of scholarships we have paid for, the early warning radio system we have built, none of that was up there.
"People wanted answers, they needed context. We had nine years' worth of it. We just couldn't get it to them."
You can stress test a website. You can't stress test a person. There's footage in a film Invisible Children released last autumn of Russell shortly before his breakdown. It's late at night. He's just got in from New York and he's visibly upset. "There's never been a war like this online ever," he says in the footage. "This is what they do to you. My anxiety … my fear is that it's all in my head."
"I wanted it," he says later in the footage. "I just didn't know what it would feel like." And he starts to cry.
The details of what happened next are pretty terrifying.
"I hadn't slept," he tells me. "My mind was racing. I tried to relax and calm down. They said, 'Take two days off', so we [his family] went to Palm Springs. But we went to the pool and people recognised us and wanted to take photographs so we went and shut ourselves in the hotel room, closed all the windows and the doors, and just felt we were under attack.
"The next day was a bit better, we went out to see a movie, The Lorax, a Dr Seuss film. And I thought it was talking directly to me. I thought it was all about me. The character is wearing a stripy top like the one [his son] Gavin is wearing in the film and I was like, 'That's so weird!' And the character is trying to protect these trees, and I thought it was me, and the trees were Rwandans."
Back at home, Danica had realised something was very wrong and had surreptitiously started to research symptoms on the internet.
"But I called up this friend, Bobby, and he came round and I said to him that I wanted him to line up all the books on my shelf and make sense of them chronologically so that we could determine the future of humanity. That's where my brain was. I thought we'd analyse the books and we'd come up with the answer of what the world needs to do next. I thought I'm the one who's going to help put it all together.
"And then it was shortly after that I heard the voice." The voice told him that he had to get to New York in 12 hours or Joseph Kony would win. "And it said everyone who had tried to bring peace to the world has had to pass this test."
And then he took off his clothes and ran out in to the street. He can only remember "slivers" of what happened next. The horror on his mother's face when he was handcuffed and led away – Danica had rushed out of the house with the children and called his parents. He was taken to hospital. "But I thought the staff wanted to kill me. I was convinced. They kept trying to give me drugs and I refused to take them. It got to the point where I was running around in my underwear kicking in doors. I had eight people holding me down. They eventually tied my arms and legs down to this bed and injected me. It was incredibly traumatising. I was convinced I was going to die."
He's so open about all this. "My publicist and the team, they say, 'Don't use words like schizophrenic, you'll get labelled for life.' But I'm like, 'I can only be myself. I might as well get it out there.'" At the height of the criticism, he was accused of running a cult, of embezzling funds, of running a covert evangelical mission. He was a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a racist war-mongering blowhard suffering from what one Twitter commentator called part of the "white saviour industrial complex".
Yet what's most apparent on meeting Russell is an almost complete lack of guile. He spills his guts for hours and then right at the end, he says: "You're not going to turn this round and make this all about my spirituality and the fact that I'm a Christian, are you?" At the height of the maelstrom, he took a call from a journalist and spoke to him for an hour and a half between 4 and 5.30am. "And then he wrote this awful 'exposé' for the Atlanticabout how we were an evangelical cult. I'm incredibly open, it's just who I am, but I'm not sure I could handle being hurt and vulnerable like that again."
And yet he has invited me into the office (after six months' worth of emails, it's true), and shows me things that if I was a different sort of journalist I could so easily manipulate and exploit. There is an artlessness and innocence about him, still, even after everything that has happened.
One of the most striking moments in Kony2012 is footage from the 2003 trip to Uganda, when Russell and his two friends discovered thousands of children sleeping in the streets out of fear of being abducted and turned into child soldiers or sex slaves.
"And this has been going on for how long?" says one of them. "If this happened for even one night in America, it would be on the cover of Newsweek magazine!" You can feel their self-absorbed, righteous teenage outrage at suddenly realising that the world is fundamentally unjust and unfair, and it's this sense of outrage that somehow they have managed to keep hold of and harness.
There are all sorts of interesting technical and other explanations to why and how Kony2012 went viral, but it's perhaps not a coincidence that its popularity was propelled by teenagers. Teenage logic and outrage, in the very best sense, is at the heart of everything they do.
"We believe it's what pushes the needle forward," says Jedidiah Jenkins, Invisible Children's in-house attorney and director of ideology. "We know how the world works but we are saying, it's not OK. We practise 'intentional naiveté'."
It's so not OK that when Jacob, a Ugandan boy, describes in Kony2012 how he saw his brother being macheted by the LRA, Jason's voice can be heard telling him that he promises him he will try to do everything he can to help.
"It's the third film we'd put Jacob in," says Russell. "And we'd never included the bit about the promise before. It's so presumptuous. 'We're going to help you! We're going to try and stop him!' But we included it then because that is what we had been trying to do for nine years." They have. Most people would have quietly dropped it and gone back to their lives at some point. They didn't.
They thought that it would be enough to make the film and show the world what was happening, but it wasn't. So they went on the road and showed it to schools, and have been doing that ever since – 14,000 of them across the United States. Kony2012 wasn't just a video with slick visuals and a pop video aesthetic. There was almost a decade of direct face-to-face engagement behind it. And it was in places where they already had a network of supporters in place that the film first went viral. An overnight success just nine years in the making.
"There's nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come," says Russell's voiceover at the start of Kony2012. Whatever you think of Russell, Invisible Children, or the rights and wrong of the kind of advocacy work they do, it's hard to deny the arresting brilliance of the video's opening sequence – even if you hated it, and many people did. Over a spinning planet, and spectral music, Russell explains that there "are more people on Facebook than there were on the planet 200 years ago".
Humanity's greatest desire is to connect, he says and "this connection is going to change the world". The video is a social media "experiment" to see if they can make Kony famous. And thereby show that, in this globalised world, nobody can escape the long arm of international justice.
Or, as a writer in Vice put it: "It reminded me of a manipulative technology advert of the Kings of Leon video where they party with black families. I mean, watch the first four seconds of this again. It's pompous twaddle with no relevance to fucking anything."
In what, depending on your view is either genius storytelling, or vomit-inducing self-indulgence, Russell has footage of his own son, Gavin, being born ("everybody on the planet starts this way"). And then has Gavin, now aged five, and ridiculously, photogenically cute, hearing about what Joseph Kony does to young boys not much older than him.
Russell is a southern Californian born and bred. He "dudes", he "mans", even at the height of his mental disintegration, he still sounded like an off-duty surfer. "It's just so… gnarly," he tells the team in the footage from that time. For a certain kind of website, the kind whose stock-in trade is snark, he was cannon fodder.
What was some blond Californian dude think he was doing telling the world about a central African warlord? A couple of days in, ridiculous photos of him surfaced: one of him and his team posing with guns. A video of them dancing that would make even the cast of Glee blush.
And yet, going to southern California to meet Jason Russell, it's possibly this that impresses itself on me most of all. The sun is shining, the Pacific ocean is sparkling, there is fine artisanal fair-trade organic coffee to drink just steps away, and yet all these fresh-faced shiny people are spending their days worrying about a conflict so far removed from their own lives that it seems farcical. Or at the very least heroic. They not only care, they have achieved what is supposed to be impossible: they have made other people, ordinary Americans, care.
Not only that, the University of California is carrying out a survey on a sample of the thousands of teenagers who have supported Invisible Children and has found that their engagement spreads to other issues and other parts of their lives. They are more likely to care about social issues, generally.
And yet seven months ago, while I was researching another story about central Africa – the tale of David Simpson, the Briton charged with a massacre that was actually carried out by Kony's forces – I spoke to the leading experts in the region. And, having read the coverage of Kony2012, the debate about Invisible Children's methods, the criticism of their simplistic approach, what surprised me was how the development professionals working closest to the ground in central Africa were full of praise for what they'd achieved.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, for example, from Human Rights Watch, said that they'd been "astounded" by the popularity of the video. "Whatever one thought of it, it massively, massively raised awareness of Kony. And awareness is step one in pushing for policy change. We found so much more interest from a whole range of policymakers. I've been working in central Africa for 13 years. I've been documenting LRA atrocities since 2006 and Human Rights Watch has been doing it since the late 1990s. There have been peaks and troughs but we have never seen the kind of interest that Kony2012 created.
"It was very very exciting. There has been so much engagement from the UN. They've passed resolutions. The US was the audience for the video and they've said they will keep their field advisers here, which was by no means clear before. The time limit has been lifted.
"There's still a long way to go but the criticism of the video, which was so scathing and vitriolic and which focused on Invisible Children, has just completely missed the point. Kony is still out there but the implementation of UN strategy is the thing that will make a difference. And it achieved that."
And then there was Mark Galloway of International Broadcasting Trust, which published a report on the impact of Kony2012 and held a symposium on it, and whose conclusion was "that the way in which charities communicate has to change in the wake of it". It was, he said, a "game changer", "for all of us to hear about it from our kids. That's how I heard about it, from my teenage son, 48 hours in. I was like, 'How come you have heard about a Kony video and I haven't and it's my job? And I haven't ever heard you talk about Africa before.'
"They reached young people in a way no charity has been able to do before. They connected to people's stories. It wasn't snazzy or trendy. It was just good old-fashioned story-telling."
You would never know any of this, however, from trawling the web. Before his breakdown, Russell says he was just inundated by "noise, chaotic, non-stop, constant noise". And it's all still out there. A Canadian girl of Ugandan descent uploaded a video film of her response to Kony2012 in which she says she told her parents about Joseph Kony and they said: "He's been dead for years!"
"It's had 6 million views and what? Maybe 3 million believed it," says Jason Russell with a look of pain on his face. "That lie permeated and it's still alive today and people on their campus or whatever are like, 'He's dead, he died so long ago.' And everyone in the room goes, 'I didn't know that!' The democratisation of information is both liberating and beautiful and also totally horrifying because it can be built on lies and there's nothing you can do to stop them.
"This is a generation raised on an Instagram and a tweet. That's your news. That's your actual news."
There is a frightening lesson at the heart of the story of what happened in Kony2012. It wasn't that there was a plurality of stories out there. There was a multiverse of stories out there. There were so many stories, so many rumours, so many repeated untruths, so many unchecked facts and retweeted opinions, and half-baked half-lies, that the story, let alone the truth, never had a chance.
In the brave new world of viral media, and socially mediated information, authoritative news sources are just another voice fighting to be heard. And half the time, even their stories were simply web-based trawls. It's like dredge fishing. You scoop all the crap up in one big net, including the bottom feeders and the plankton.
And then it's gone. In a puff of smoke. Look at Google Trends' graph that shows the distribution of searches for the word "Kony" and it goes from zero to 100 in a day, and now it's back down to one again. Jason Russell's breakdown stopped it dead in its tracks. The news moved on. Nobody cared what the truth was any more. This article is one of very few attempts to revisit the story.
"Young people are still convinced that we steal money," says Invisible Children's Jenkins. "They don't feel the white man's burden issue. Or the international intervention issue. They think they got scammed. That's out there now, for ever. It's just so weird to spend your life doing what you believe is worthwhile work and everyone in the world is out there trying to find dirt to make you look like a criminal."
Before Kony2012, Jason Russell says, "I was under the impression that I could will people's opinions to the truth and to what was right. I thought if we did a good enough job, said the right thing, made the right video, did the right interview, people would understand the truth."
And was it a hard lesson to learn that the world simply doesn't work like that?
"It's what made me manic," he says simply.
There are theses to be written on Kony2012. History will parse its meaning and effect. Which is a fancy way of saying time will tell. Perhaps. In his office, with its quotes from Steve Jobs on the walls, and his old scrapbooks and journals on the shelves, and its framed Time magazine with "Hunting Joseph Kony" on the cover, Jason Russell still veers between overconfidence and a sense of abject failure.
On the one hand, they succeeded: Kony really is pretty famous now. On the other hand, he's still out there. What do you say when people say you've failed, I ask him.
"We have failed. And we should feel like a failure until we get him. We've rebuilt schools and funded scholarships and inspired kids here but our number one goal has not been achieved and it is achievable. It's only one man. He now has only 200 fighters, three commanders. We have put a man on the moon. We can do this.
"We want to see him on trial. To prove that whoever you are, wherever you are, you can't get away with it. And this is what we are authentically trying to do. People think, 'Oh they want fame. They want money.' And it's sad that that's the way the world works. But come and meet us. We are not the villains you paint us on your trollblogs. We are genuinely trying to stop a madman from slaughtering children. That's it. That's the whole point of everything.
It's quite astonishing how many film, music and interactive events the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, manages to pack into nine days.
Last year the music section of the event – created in 1987 with the aim of fostering new ideas and bringing creative types together – featured more than 2,000 acts, including headliners Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z.
And with the likes of Wavves, Nick Cave and Major Lazer at this year's event, from 8-17 March, Austin remains a vital destination for music fans.
Yet the festival can be overwhelming for the first-time visitor.
While industry professionals lap up new developments across the music, film and technology sectors, the sheer number of shows, events and lectures can be intimidating to the casual tourist looking to have fun in the "live music capital of the world".
And high prices for tickets, or "badges", as advertised on the SXSW website, can be a deterrent. Once you've stumped up the money to get to Texas in the first place, who can stomach another $1,000 for a platinum badge giving access to all the music, film and interactive events?
Even more moderate ticket options, such as a music-only badge, cost around $600. So why do throngs of music lovers return every year?
What's been something of a secret to Austinites for years, but which others are now discovering, is that it's possible to enjoy SXSW without paying a dollar.
You can eat, get drunk and see thousands of great bands for free. I didn't quite believe this until I attended my first SXSW Unofficial Showcase last year.
Arriving in Austin ticketless and with low expectations, I asked around for the best places to go. On the advice of an Austinite friend, I went to The Parish (214 East 6th Street, theparishaustin.com), where National Public Radio (NPR) was hosting a free "unofficial" party on the first day of Music week. I arrived early and, to my surprise, was greeted at the door with a tequila shot, two beer tokens and a taco.
I washed down my complimentary lunch with the beers and was promptly tapped on the shoulder by a couple of bubbly PR staff, who proceeded to offer me as much rum as I could handle.
Hazy after a couple of shots, I was then targeted by another rep, who convinced me to try some of the local ale – just as The Magnetic Fields began to soundtrack my childlike delight at the free pleasures on offer.
A few more free drinks later, I vaguely remember stumbling out of The Parish, naively raving to my friend – an SXSW veteran – about the free booze and food, and the high calibre of musical acts. It was then she let me in on the secret: "Just stick to all the unofficial parties and screw paying for tickets – hardly anyone in Austin does." And so my week of complimentary hedonism began.
I continued to consume free beverages, acquired a surprising number of sunglasses, ate a lot of tacos and, most importantly, managed to catch a lot of great bands including SBTRKT, The War On Drugs, Beach House and Deerhoof among many others. Held in the daytime hours of SXSW Music week, the free unofficial parties have, in recent years, become as popular as the ticketed evening events.
This is partly because big money companies use the shows to promote products. Brands such as Converse, Miller, Spotify and hundreds of others attempt to throw the best parties and – inevitably – give away lots of free stuff. Admittedly, this has led to the festival becoming increasingly corporate, and for some it has certainly lost a degree of its indie credibility.
But there is no denying the appeal of these corporate-sponsored shows. In the past three years, some of the unofficial parties have even featured headliners such as Jack White and Kanye West. Last year A$AP Rocky showed up to entertain at the small-scale events, held in various nooks and crannies in the city.
So, given that none of these parties is actually advertised on the official SXSW website, how do you find them? Social media is the answer.
Tweets and posts begin pinging back and forth in the weeks leading up to most of the free shows, generating a buzz on influential music blogs such as do152.com. Websites such as showlistaustin.com and Facebook groups such as Unofficial SXSW Guide and the SXSWPartyList focus on listing the unofficial events.
Quite often you have to RSVP to the parties online, which means the companies will add you to their mailing lists in return for providing complimentary entertainment for the day. If that sounds too much like hard work, pay $40 (which, let's be honest, you'll probably make back in about an hour's worth of free drinking) and rsvpster.com will get you entry into almost all the free parties, and provide a spreadsheet detailing who is playing, who is sponsoring and any rumours of secret performances.
With the unofficial parties becoming increasingly popular and, in some cases, overblown, one may think they could begin to pose a threat to official ticket sales. But the music, film and interactive elements of SXSW have such a reputation with industry professionals that these tickets will always be bought by bigwigs.
It is also inevitable that some of the bigger headliners (such as Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen last year) will simply refuse to play the daytime shows and keep themselves under wraps for the ticketed events.
But still, for the music fan on a budget or a first-timer weary of pricey festival badges, it is definitely worth heading to Austin and signing up for the unofficial parties. Free music? Free beer? Free tacos? And it's usually sunny too? You can count on my RSVP.
• Festival details atsxsw.com. Flights from London to Austin over festival dates from £540 at kayak.co.uk. For advice on accommodation use ourAustin city guide
After supposedly realizing the error of her ways, Cuoco erased the tweet, and Dish is saying that CBS made her do it.
"It’s disappointing that CBS — once the exemplar of editorial independence and innovation — continues to use its heavy hand to hold back progress from consumers,” said Dish CEO and president Joe Clayton in a statement.“Clearly, with this kind of response, consumers have a true interest in the types of innovations the DISH Hopper offers. It’s a shame that CBS, despite its legacy, feels it needs to thwart this kind of consumer demand.”
But CBS says it didn't do it.
“Once again, Joe Clayton demonstrates his dubious gift for hyperbole and hucksterism," a statement reads. "No demands were made, but it’s clear that Dish’s culture of fabrication is alive and well.”
Although even if official demands weren't made, we're sure Cuoco got the message that she didn't want to offend the network that put her on the map.
Steven Spielberg is adapting a screenplay for a miniseries about the life of Napoleon, originally written by Stanley Kubrick in 1961 but ultimately abandoned in the '70s because of budget and production challenges. Spielberg and Kubrick were collaborators on 2001's AI: Artificial Intelligence, conceived by Kubrick in the 1970s and later written and directed by Spielberg.
China launches a screenwriting competition for U.S. writers. The Chinese government on Monday announced an international scriptwriting contest targeting American writers, for which finalists will be flown to China to discuss having their stories set there made into films.
Joan Rivers on Jennifer Lawrence: “Having Jack Nicholson hit on you, getting a Jewish agent and getting your own drug dealer. She’s arrived.”
Mary-Kate Olsen -- wearing a gold band on her ring finger -- and Olivier Sarkozy pack on the PDA during Sunday's New York Knicks basketball game at Madison Square Garden.
The first week of March is off to a slow start for the box office.
"Jack the Giant Slayer" had little competition from this week's other new releases, "21 and Over" and "The Last Exorcism Part II." However, the film fell very short of expectations.
Nearly $30 million for "Jack" doesn't sound like a terrible box-office opening until you realize the production budget cost nearly $200 million.
So far, the film isn't faring much better overseas, only earning roughly $14 million.
Both "21 and Over" and "The Last Exorcism II" were expected to earn more than double given last year's results on similar films "Project X" and "The Last Exorcism Part II."
Last week's new films, "Snitch" and "Dark Skies" have faded at theaters, and "Silver Linings Playbook" remains the only Oscar-nominated film left in the top ten after awards season.
Out of the top ten this week include Summit's twist on the regular zombie tale, "Warm Bodies," and Mara Rooney's "Side Effects."
Meanwhile, Warner Bros.' attempt at the next "Twilight" series, "Beautiful Creatures," tumbled ten spots at theaters in its third week. The film adaptation of the book series has earned $32.3 million worldwide of its estimated $60 million budget.
Here are this week's winners and losers in Hollywood:
10. Keri Russell's "Dark Skies" barely manages to hold on in week two earning $3.6 million. The thriller only cost an estimated $3.5 million to produce and has already earned $13.5 million.
9. "A Good Day to Die Hard" falls a fast four spots with $4.5 million after three weeks. Despite a lowly $59.6 million intake at home, the film is making nearly triple that overseas, bringing the film's worldwide total to $221.1 million.
8. After Jennifer Lawrence's Best Actress win at the Oscars, "Silver Linings Playbook" still remains in the top ten earning $5.9 million. The film has earned $175.6 million worldwide since its release 16 weeks ago. "SLP" cost an estimated $21 million to make.
7. Nicholas Sparks' latest film "Safe Haven" drops another three spots in week three earning $6.3 million. The film is currently tracking slightly ahead of Sparks' last two adaptations, "The Lucky One" and "The Last Song."
6. As the only cartoon out, The Weinstein Company's "Escape from Planet Earth" brings in another $6.7 million. The film, which cost an estimated $40 million to produce, has earned a paltry $43 million in three weeks.
5. The Rock's action thriller, "Snitch," falls three spots earning $7.7 million. In two weeks, the film has earned $24.4 million.
4. "The Last Exorcism Part II" earned $8 million opening weekend. In 2010, Lionsgate put out "The Last Exorcism" on a small $1.8 million budget and received a huge $20.4 million upon its debut in theaters. The sequel's estimated budget was only set at $5 million.
3. Despite a low budget estimated at $13 million, "21 and Over" only earns $9 million opening weekend. Last year's surprise hit "Project X" opened to $21 million the same weekend in March before descending quickly from the box office top ten. The first big weekend for "X" was most likely because it looked like another "SuperBad"—teens at an outrageous party. Having seen last year's "X," audiences most likely knew what was in store with this film.
2. "Identity Thief" continues to ride out near the top earning $9.7 million. The poorly critiqued film has now grossed $108.4 million.
1. With little competition, "Jack the Giant Slayer" wins the weekend with $28 million. The film will need to do well overseas if it wants to come anywhere close to its estimated $195 million budget.
Celebrity Apprentice is set to premiere its sixth season today, which means it’s time to get ready for more over-the-top arguments and cutthroat competition — all for a good cause.
The primary goal of the popular show is to win the ultimate prize of is a huge sum for charity.
However, some may argue that the contestants could benefit more from raising money for their personal benefit. Half of this season’s contestants have struggled with financial problems in the past, including the loss of a home.
So which contestants stopped paying their mortgage loans at some point and faced foreclosure?
Celebrity Apprentice Season Six Premieres Today
Fans of Celebrity Apprentice are excited about the premiere of the latest installment of the show. Season six is unique because it is featuring contestants and winners from previous seasons in an “all-star” format.
As with previous seasons, Celebrity Apprentice contestants in season six will be competing for the charity of their choice. The winning apprentice is guaranteed a $250,000 bonus check for that charity. Season six’s 14 contestants (and their charities) include:
Trace Adkins: Country singer (American Red Cross)
Stephen Balwin: Actor (Carolyn M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund)
Gary Busey: Actor (Busey Foundation for Children’s Kawasaki Disease)
Dennis Rodman: Former NBA player (Make a Wish Foundation)
Dee Snider: Rock singer (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS)
The show’s participants were chosen to return for their bigger-than-life personalities (and likely their ability to cause a bit of drama). But it’s great that they also have the opportunity to potential give money to an important charity as well.
Celebrity Apprentice Contestants Who Have Suffered Financial Troubles
Among the Celebrity Apprentice contestants who have been chosen to return this season, several have suffered financial hardships, particularly when it comes to foreclosure. For one reason or another, this group of celebrities had a hard time keeping up with their mortgage loan or other obligations when it mattered most.
1. Stephen Baldwin
Stephen Baldwin is well known for being one of the Baldwin brothers along with Alec, Daniel and William. Early in his career, he made a number of guest appearances on hit TV shows like Kate and Allie and Family Ties. But as the years wore on, his appearances took a turn down reality road, resulting in him making appearances on Celebrity Mole Hawaii and Celebrity Mole Yucatan.
In 2008, he was featured in the first installment of Celebrity Apprentice and was fired in week 11. His career hardships hit his bank account hard and by 2009, he was forced to declare bankruptcy, citing millions in debt. He also suffered the foreclosure of the three-story Victorian home after defaulting on the $824,488.36 owed.
Lil Jon is known for his huge persona and “crunk,” “dirty south” rap music, which became largely popular nationwide in the late 90s and early 2000s. Taking his turn in the world of reality in 2011, Lil Jon became a fourth season contestant of Celebrity Apprentice. He made it quite far in the contest, eliminated after task number 12.
Prior to participating in the show, however, Lil Jon was not so lucky. In 2008, the IRS filed a lien against his home, stating that he owed the government $638,937 in unpaid taxes. He also faced foreclosure on his $1.9 million mansion in South Carolina, largely due to unpaid taxes.
Ironically, the same year, Lil Jon was ranked at number 13 by Forbes in its “Richest Rappers” list for bringing in $11 million that year.
When the U.S. version of the hit show Deal or No Deal premiered in late 2005, all eyes were on models of the show, including Claudia Jordan who had the coveted position of holding case number one. But this was not her first modeling gig. In the years 2001 to 2003, Jordan was one of Barkers Beauties on The Price is Right.
In 2009, she appeared on the second installment of Celebrity Apprentice, but was fired in task number four. Unfortunately, her short stint on the show mirrored the short amount of time she stayed in her condo before facing foreclosure. In 2004, she purchased the condo, located in a suburb of Los Angeles. There were a number of rumors circulating regarding why she was unable to keep up with payments, but the only solid fact was that her condo was to be sold at auction in L.A. in January 2012.
When you hear the name La Toya Jackson, you automatically think of the unbelievably famous Jackson family, headed by the late, great Michael Jackson. While each family member fought for his or her own identity, only baby sis Janet seemed to pave her own lane to greatness.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that others like La Toya haven’t been in the spotlight, too. Over the years, La Toya was known attempting a solo music career, posing for Playboy and having on-again, off-again strife with her family members. In 2007, she entered the world of reality TV by participating in Armed and Famous, Celebrity Big Brother, and in 2011 the fourth season of Celebrity Apprentice where she was fired during task number 10.
Prior to the show, however, she struggled financially and suffered the foreclosure of the condo she purchased in 1996. She defaulted on the 1,856 square-foot unit at Regency Towers after failing to pay $750,000. Some said she’d had problems paying for the condo for years and was ultimately forced to move after a number of liens were placed against the property.
5. Gary Busey
Gary Busey has been in show business for over four decades, getting his start as a drummer in the 60s. After about 10 years in music, he made the transition to film, starring in The Buddy Holly Story, Silver Bullet and Lethal Weapon over the next few decades.
It wasn’t until 2003 that he entered the world of reality TV, starring in the comedy/documentary I’m With Busey on Comedy Central. In 2008, he joined the second season of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and in 2011, he joined Lil Jon and La Toya Jackson in the fourth installment of Celebrity Apprentice, being fired after task number seven.
Unlike other contestants on this list, Busey has not suffered a foreclosure, but he has had major financial troubles. He filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012, reporting less than $50,000 in assets and between $500,000 and $1 million in debts. Busey was not shy about the financial mistakes he’d made, noting that unfortunate choices and associations played a role in the bankruptcy.
When you imagine Dennis Rodman, you probably think of a few things: His stellar NBA career as a Detroit Piston and Chicago Bull, as well as his unique lifestyle off the court.
The former basketball pro has made headlines over the years — some not so great — but that hasn’t stopped this over-the-top personality from going strong. Like others on the list, Rodman has spent a fair share of time in the world of reality. He joined the cast of Celebrity Mole in 2004 and later the Celebrity Championship Wrestling tournament (both of which he won).
In 2009, he appeared on the second installment of Celebrity Apprentice where he was fired after task number five. Following his appearance on the show, Rodman appeared in court for failure to pay $860,000 in spousal and child support. By the end of 2012, he was order to pay $500,000 to his ex-wife and sentenced to informal probation with the threat of jail time if he failed to pay.
Image: OPENSports.com
Honorable Mention: Donald Trump
While most wouldn’t associate the show’s host and “boss” Donald Trump with financial troubles, he surprised the world when one of his properties faced foreclosure a few years ago. His $200 million Trump International Hotel & Tower defaulted on a $139 million loan and was sold at a foreclosure auction to Corus Construction Ventures, LLC in 2012.
Hopefully, the sixth installment of Celebrity Apprentice will give the contestants who have struggled financially a new outlook on money management. Vying for a major cash reward to donate to charity is a great reason to buckle down and take the prospect of financial responsibility very seriously.
Actor Brendan Fraser isn't raking in as much dough as he was in 1999 when he starred in "The Mummy."
After a 2007 divorce and massive professional expenses to agents, managers, etc., Fraser is currently behind on his monthly bills and owes $87,320.01, according to TMZ.
"Fraser filed docs in Connecticut recently as part of an ongoing battle with his ex-wife to lower his alimony payments, which currently sit at $50,000/month," reports TMZ. "According to Fraser, he makes about $205,704.04/month, but $112,803.25 goes to professional expenses, leaving him with $92,900.79."
According to the docs, Fraser makes an additional $25,800.28 from interest, but his expenses still outweigh his earnings.
Here's where Fraser's monthly earnings are going, according to docs obtained by TMZ:
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have taken Paris by storm after landing this weekend to attend Paris Fashion Week.
The couple hobnobbed with Nicole Richie and Jessica Alba while Paul McCartney came out to support his designer-daughter, Stella McCartney.
See who sat front row at the designer shows and which starlet posed on a motorcycle in front of the Eiffel Tower.
Kim Kardashian touched down in Paris wearing this white avante-garde Thierry Mugler suit. "Airport look" she captioned this photo posted to her Instagram account.
Kim and Kanye's first stop was the Givenchy show, where they arrived hand-in-hand wearing matching black and white suits.
Kimye giggled together throughout the runway show.
In Sunday night's episode of HBO's "Girls," Allison Williams' character, Marnie, reveals she wants to become a singer.
As it turns out, Williams — the daughter of NBC news anchor Brian Williams — happens to actually have a very good voice and it's what got her hired on the show in the first place.
In October 2012, Williams performed and recorded (in a single take) a twist on the "Mad Men" instrumental theme song set to the lyrics from "Nature Boy" and posted it to YouTube.
Luckily for Williams — then a Yale graduate just starting her career as an actress in Los Angeles — "Girls" Executive producer Judd Apatow is a huge fan of "Mad Men" and was responsible for one of the over 900K hits the video has accrued on YouTube.
"I thought she would be the perfect counterpoint to Lena," Apatow told the L.A. Times in a recent feature on the actress. "A girl who seems to have it all figured out who is classically beautiful and wound a little tight."
However, "Girls" creator Lena Dunham wasn't as easily convinced.
"I thought 'gorgeous voice, great hair, what else is new in Hollywood,'" Dunham wrote via email to the newspaper. "I had to meet Allison to understand just how cheeky and intelligent that video really was, and just why Judd felt so strongly about her."
Watch the video that finally convinced Dunham and Apatow to cast Williams in "Girls" below:
Just two short years ago, Williams was posting numerous videos of herself acting and singing on YouTube to gain exposure.
"It's the new way of getting seen," Williams explained to the Times. "And I didn't want to not be ready when I could finally try out for the bigger stuff."
Williams' parents made her graduate from college before she was allowed to pursue acting. So during her summer breaks, she worked as Tina Fey's assistant and was a production assistant on Robert Altman's last movie, "A Prairie Home Companion."
"I wanted to learn the technical side of lighting and sound because, again, I wasn't allowed to start acting until I graduated college," she continued. "I wanted to know the drill. I wanted the first time I went on-set to act to be totally stressless, except for the acting."
In the meantime, she joined Yale's improv group, Just Add Water, and got her screen time by appearing in Web shorts.
In January 2010, Williams recorded this slower, ironic version of Ke$ha's song "Tik Tok," which currently has over 6.6 million hits on YouTube.
Watch below:
Williams also wrote and starred in a series of FunnyorDie videos, in which she played Kate Middleton.
Lucky for Williams, turns out she was right — web videos really are "the new way of getting seen." Even if you're Brian Williams' daughter.
Polish actress Oliwia Dabrowska played the girl with the red coat in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed film "Schindler's List."
She was the only color image in the black-and-white film that shows the horrors of the Holocaust. Dabrowska is shown once at the beginning of the film, and her red coat appears later among the bodies of Holocaust victims.
Debrowska, now 24, watched the 1993 film when she was 11 and was "horrified," she told U.K.'s The Guardian.
"It was too horrible. I could not understand much, but I was sure that I didn't want to watch ever again in my life."
She also said she "really regretted" not paying attention to the director's suggestion that she "grow up into the film," and not watch it until she was older.
However, Dabrowska said that when she watched the film again at age 18 she was proud to be involved.
She acts in her spare time and is pursuing a college degree in publishing.
In 2014, both Jay Leno and David Letterman's contracts expire with their respective late-night talk shows at NBC and CBS.
But, for once, the current discussion isn't about the rivalry between the two longtime late-night hosts.
Instead, The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that NBC is planning gently to push out 62-year-old TV vet Leno in order to make way for the network's younger, hipper host Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon has been successful in the 12:35 a.m. time slot with"Late Night" and the network feels the 38-year-old has a better chance at competing with ABC's 45-year-old Jimmy Kimmel for a younger audience.
While Leno rules the ratings in the late night game— as he has for the past two decades — "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" garners the coveted age 18-49 demo in the 11:35 p.m. time slot.
"NBC has to think about what to do because ABC made the smart decision to move Kimmel when they did," a source close to the situation tells Business Insider. "Kimmel’s numbers in the demo have been much stronger than anyone would have initially predicted and every day he is on at 11:35 is another day that NBC will be playing catch-up when Leno leaves (whenever that actually may be)."
NBC denied The Hollywood Reporter's claims and a Leno rep said "We do not speculate on rumor," but the trade claims:
"Two high-level industry sources tell The Hollywood Reporterthat NBC is moving toward a May announcement that the 2013-14 television season will be the last for Lenoas host of the long-running late-night show. Sources expect the network to move Jimmy Fallon from his'Late Night' spot into the coveted 11:35 p.m. time slot with a soft launch during the summer of 2014 before a formal fall kickoff."
E! Online confirmed the report with their own TV sources, writing: "The Peacock network is planning to announce Jay Leno's retirement from 'The Tonight Show' some time in the next year."
Reps for NBC and "The Tonight Show" didn't respond to our request for comment.
Media critics across the country have been weighing in on the possible shake-up:
"A gimlet-eyed look at the facts suggests there’s much to be gained in trading Leno for Jimmy Fallon sooner than later— and surprisingly little to lose. Like Fallon — and unlike Leno — Kimmel has a footprint that goes well beyond his television audience, with a knack for producing videos that go viral on YouTube ... And Kimmel’s Q scores are better than either NBC host’s ... Could we be looking at the new king of late night?" —Writes Forbes' Jeff Bercovici.
“Leno is so yesterday. He can still draw overall ratings, but you can't sell overall ratings the way you can sell 18 to 49 or even 25 to 54 while Fallon has buzz, edge, and young viewers.” — David Zurawik, media critic for The Baltimore Sun, told The Daily Beast.
“Here we go again,” added Zurawik. “How much worse can NBC treat this guy before he goes away? They gave Leno’s time period away, then gave it back. Last year they cut his staff and his salary. NBC’s relationship with Leno is practically one of S&M.”
“Fallon has proven a surprisingly hip and more appealing successor than Conan O'Brien and seems better suited for direct competition with Jimmy Kimmel for young viewers." —Eric Deggans, TV columnist for the Tampa Bay Times.
"Despite speculation that Dave might be eyeing retirement, I’m told that Letterman wants to keep doing the 'Late Show' for as long as CBS will have him. And Leno, whose idea of vacation is working the stand-up circuit, clearly wants to keep walking onto that Burbank stage until he’s carried off on a stretcher ... The overriding question: Does NBC again want to replace the guy who keeps the 'Tonight Show' on top with a hipper guy who might keep the show on top?"— Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast.
The rumblings of a late-night shake-up bring back memories of 2010 when NBC announced that Leno had signed on for five more years, after which the network's 12:35 p.m. time slot host Conan O'Brien would succeed him.
If you recall, that experiment failed miserably and Leno ended up keeping his 11:35 p.m. time slot while Conan was kicked to TBS, with a $32 million parting gift.
During a William Morris Endeavor Agency pre-Oscar party at the home of co-CEO Ari Emanuel, we asked Conan O'Brien for his thoughts on the future of late night TV:
"I think in ten years, every citizen in the United States will have a late night television show. That's the way it's going. It's YouTube. If there are 320 million citizens in the U.S., in ten years there will be 310 million late night talk shows. And they're all going to be excellent. Half of them better than me."
As for which late-night hosts should be competing in the coveted 11:35 p.m. time slot, O'Brien tells us, "When it comes to these things, I just think about Buddhism."
The body builder-turned-actor-turned-politician will now serve as executive editor of Muscle & Fitness and Flex magazines, American Media Inc. announced.
“It was in these magazines that I found the spark that inspired me to start lifting weights, and eventually move to America and realize my dreams, and I’m proud to return as executive editor,” said Schwarzenegger in a statement.
“Bodybuilding has always been part of my life," he added. "I know Muscle & Fitness and Flex will continue to motivate others - as it did me - to lift weights and lead a healthy lifestyle, promote the sport of bodybuilding, and, as Joe used to say in every issue, 'exceed themselves.'"
But shortly after winning his gubernatorial election, he resigned amid criticism that there would be a conflict of interest given the publications’ dependence on advertising for dietary supplements and the governor’s role in regulating the industry.
But now — the former body building champ who has appeared on the magazines’ covers more than 60 times — is back.
I am an actress who has bared her breasts in films to satisfy the requirement of the role I was asked to do -- lucky to do, for in my case, those films were significant in my career. I didn't like doing it. I didn't ask if I could do them topless. I did what was asked of me for the part I was playing. Mostly asked by men.
I know many may snicker at the now-aging, adult, almost grandma-like woman I am today, looking back and decrying my youthful exploitation, and say it's hard for me to cry foul when my body was my stock and trade.
But, Curtis writes, that is no excuse to overshadow the prestigious film awards with a crass song about body parts.
I was offended last week. As an Academy member, as the child of former Academy members and as a woman, I expected more from the best that the movie business has to offer. The Oscars are about honoring art and artists. It is not supposed to be a cheesy vaudeville show...
What we will be talking about is Seth's lack of class and a 14-year-old boy's derogatory word for one of the most beautiful, motherly and literally nurturing parts of the female form.
To promote the crime thriller "Dead Man Down," ad agency Thinkmodo decided to stage a (fake) murder in an elevator and video people's reactions as the doors open.
In the elevator experiment, it turns out that humanity repeatedly screams and/or runs away. Often, though, have-a-go heroes jump into the lift and begin bashing the perp.
Whether he meant to or not, CBS CEO Les Moonves, who also oversees Showtime, confirmed season 8 will be the last season of "Dexter."Speaking to analysts at a Wall Street conference Monday in Palm Beach, Fla., Moonves said "We have Ray Donovan coming on with Liev Schreiber, which comes on with Dexter's last season starting in June and then we have Masters of Sex." Ina save face, the network says there is "nothing confirmed."
The History Channel scored huge ratings with "The Bible" and "The Vikings."“The Bible,” a five-week, 10-hour epic whose exec producers include Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, averaged 13.1 million viewers for its premiere -- making it the most-watched entertainment program on cable since the net’s own “Hatfields & McCoys.”
According to the Independent, Bieber was due on stage at 8.30pm but did not arrive until 10.30pm, forcing many fans to leave the concert early in a bid to catch the last train home at 12.15pm.
When I visited Invisible Children's San Diego office last week, there were 60 staff members and 35 fresh-faced interns answering phones and plugged into computers in a cool, calm space. A year ago, says Chris Carver, the chief operations officer, it was another story.
He's so open about all this. "My publicist and the team, they say, 'Don't use words like schizophrenic, you'll get labelled for life.' But I'm like, 'I can only be myself. I might as well get it out there.'" At the height of the criticism, he was accused of running a cult, of embezzling funds, of running a covert evangelical mission. He was a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a racist war-mongering blowhard suffering from what one Twitter commentator called part of the "white saviour industrial complex".
"It’s disappointing that CBS — once the exemplar of editorial independence and innovation — continues to use its heavy hand to hold back progress from consumers,” said 
Celebrity Apprentice is set to premiere its sixth season today, which means it’s time to get ready for more over-the-top arguments and cutthroat competition — all for a good cause.
Stephen Baldwin is well known for being one of the Baldwin brothers along with Alec, Daniel and William. Early in his career, he made a number of guest appearances on hit TV shows like Kate and Allie and Family Ties. But as the years wore on, his appearances took a turn down reality road, resulting in him making appearances on Celebrity Mole Hawaii and Celebrity Mole Yucatan.
Lil Jon is known for his huge persona and “crunk,” “dirty south” rap music, which became largely popular nationwide in the late 90s and early 2000s. Taking his turn in the world of reality in 2011, Lil Jon became a fourth season contestant of Celebrity Apprentice. He made it quite far in the contest, eliminated after task number 12.
When the U.S. version of the hit show Deal or No Deal premiered in late 2005, all eyes were on models of the show, including Claudia Jordan who had the coveted position of holding case number one. But this was not her first modeling gig. In the years 2001 to 2003, Jordan was one of Barkers Beauties on The Price is Right.
Gary Busey has been in show business for over four decades, getting his start as a drummer in the 60s. After about 10 years in music, he made the transition to film, starring in The Buddy Holly Story, Silver Bullet and Lethal Weapon over the next few decades.
When you imagine Dennis Rodman, you probably think of a few things: His stellar NBA career as a Detroit Piston and Chicago Bull, as well as his unique lifestyle off the court.
In Sunday night's episode of 
Polish actress Oliwia Dabrowska played the girl with the red coat in Steven Spielberg's acclaimed film 
The rumblings of a late-night shake-up bring back 
Jamie Lee Curtis was so offended by Seth MacFarlane's 
