I have nothing against, Katharine McPhee. She is pretty, talented, and very charming. Here is the thing, she is also very dull on screen.

She simply doesn’t pop, there’s no fire, no passion, no thing. She is just as pretty and talented as that sweet girl who goes to your church, or lives in your neighborhood that a really sweet voice.

For a show that advertises in the commercial , Debra Messing saying “she just glows”, it just doesn’t seem like any of the face time Katharine is given adds up to anything more than ‘average’ to ‘okay’. Where is this supposed glow? Does Katharine McPhee make you feel like you can soar when you hear her sing like Christina Aguilera, or Jennifer Hudson? Are her dance moves so astounding that you simply cannot take your eyes off her?

No, that is not gonna happen, sorry guys, but they should have casted someone with more punch, who had that factor “X”, that undeniable thing that easily shows the audience watching there is no question your a star and stand apart from all others.

Maybe once the show premieres I will change my mind, and if I do I will own up to it. But I predict a painfully short run of Smash, unless they immediately switch lead actresses. Just my opinion, but something about her just isn’t gonna sell.  The tag line “Stars aren’t born, their made ” would be a pretty honest way to describe this mess.

Watch the full pilot episode for Smash and tell me what you think?

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Tamron is like the Halle Berry of news anchors. Everyone wants to ‘do’ her, so I am stunned she would go for a guy who is clearly old enough to be her dad! I am also hearing that Lawrence used to date hottie Kerry Washington??? Man, this old white dude has some kind of swagger to get these beautiful, younger black women! Do your thang Lawerence!

According to the NY Post

MSNBC anchors Lawrence O’Donnell and Tamron Hall have a romance spicing up off set. The single “Last Word” host, 60, has been quietly dating the pretty midday anchor and rising star at the network for months.

The duo have kept their relationship low-profile in the studio but have been spotted canoodling at downtown haunts. O’Donnell, a “West Wing” producer who has a daughter with ex-wife Kathryn Harrold, was linked to actress Kerry Washingtonin 2008. MSNBC declined to comment.

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I am not too sure if this should become a trend. Especiall when your only 11 years old. But Willow has some major guts to take this move and in my opinion, she is killing it! You go girl !  Here is the fully story from Huff Post.

Willow Smith may be known for whipping her hair back and forth, but it looks like she’s going to have to find a new signature catch phrase.

The singer, daughter of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, debuted a new, short look on her WhoSay page via Twitter Thursday. In fact, it looks like Smith ditched her hair altogether and is now sporting a shaved head, similar to her dad and brother Jaden’s new looks.

Smith gave no explanation or reason as to why she decided to switch up her look, but she’s certainly in good company.

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So who is he planning to bring in to replace them? If rumours are to be believed, he is eyeing up Beyonce and Mariah Carey to be on the judging panel for season two. He’ll do anything to encourage people to look away from Cheeky Bingo or their Android, long enough to boost the ratings, I suppose.

The Chicago Sun-Times have claimed that Simon is convinced big name stars are the key to gaining the much hyped X Factor some momentum. It seemed to work for American Idol. Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez have made the show entertaining again after all, and the show did out perform his latest project.

You can’t deny his logic though. Miss Knowles does have huge appeal and influence. Not to mention both she and Jay Z have expressed interest in the UK version of X Factor in the past. Beyonce performed with one of the finalists, Alexandra Burke (who later became the winner) in 2008. You could easily argue that she helped tip the votes in her favour.

Considering she has not long given birth, will she want to spend her time as a mentor on the X Factor, when she could be spending it with her new born Blue Ivy Carter? Then again she is a workaholic and I don’t believe for a moment that she will become a full-time stay at home Mom.

I guess we’ll see how this one plays out, but my guess is, she won’t do it.

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The roughly 800-word letter, which has resurfaced via various blogs, websites, Twitter and Facebook, is a response to a missive from Colonel P.H. Anderson, Jourdan’s former master back in Big Spring, Tennessee. Apparently, Col. Anderson had written Jourdan asking him to come on back to the big house to work.

In a tone that could be described either as “impressively measured” or “the deadest of deadpan comedy,” the former slave, in the most genteel manner, basically tells the old slave master to kiss his rear end. He laments his being shot at by Col. Anderson when he fled slavery, the mistreatment of his children and that there “was never pay-day for the Negroes any more than for the horses and cows.”

Below is Jourdan’s letter in full, as it appears on lettersofnote.com. To take a look at what appears to be a scan of the original letter, which appeared in an August 22, 1865 edition of the New York Daily Tribune, click here. As Letters Of Note points out, the newspaper account makes clear that the letter was dictated.

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams’s Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.

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The rapper and marijuana enthusiast appeared to grant his endorsement to GOP candidate Paul on his Facebook page late Monday, posting a picture of Paul with the headline “Smoke Weed Everyday” (pictured). Snoop Dogg — born Calvin Broadus — included the message “Because I said so” with his post.

Broadus — whose most recent marijuana-related arrest occurred earlier this month, at the Texas border town of Sierra Blanca — is presumably drawn to Paul due to the libertarian-leaning candidate’s stance on drugs. Paul, an advocate of smaller federal government, was a co-sponsor of the States’ Rights to Medical Marijuana Act, and supports the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008.

It’s unclear whether Broadus was aware of Paul’s reported history of signing his name to racially-charged newsletters in the 1990s. (Though Paul’s name appears on several pamphlets containing racial rhetoric, he told CNN in December that he was unaware of the controversial passages at the time of their publication, stating, “I’ve never read that stuff. I’ve never read — I came — was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written.)

Though Paul’s chances of grabbing up the GOP nomination appear to be distant, the Texas congressman does appear to be developing quite the stable of musician endorsements — late last year, country singer Kelly Clarkson caught criticism after singing Paul’s praises.

“I love Ron Paul. I liked him a lot during the last Republican nomination and no one gave him a chance,” Clarkson said in a tweet. “If he wins the nomination for the Republican party in 2012 he’s got my vote. Too bad he probably won’t.”

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The only thing that could possibly upstage the fun, flirty and ultra sexy lingerie and swimsuits from Etam’s Spring/Summer 2012 fashion show would be a hefty dose of diva!

And indeed there was.

On Monday night style icon and actress Grace Jones was joined by the legendary Chaka Khan, Sister Sledge and Gloria Gaynor in Paris where the ladies turned the Etam Spring/Summer 2012 runway show into a modern day Studio 54.

The 1970′s disco queens belted out the songs that made them stars, as models ripped the runway in hot pink afros and intimates that left little to the imagination. And if that wasn’t wild enough–some models carried snakes around their shoulders like pashminas and strutted out with technicolored poodles.

It’s to be expected that models working a lingerie show are in tip-top shape, but can someone please tell us how Grace Jones, who is 63-years-old, can still rock the heck out of a leotard? Her body defies logic and biology. You go girl!

To close out the show, Sister Sledge was joined onstage by the rest of the 70′s songstresses to perform their mega hit “We Are Family.”

Check out all the groovy moments in the slideshow below…

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Terrell Owens has always been an island of sorts. His brash personality and self-absorption routinely alienated his teammates during an NFL career that teetered between terrific and toxic, leaving him to fend for himself.

Now, at 38 and out of football, he’s lonelier than ever, and running out of money. In a GQ profile, Owens comes across as wounded, broke and desperate. When people text him to ask where he is, he replies back: “I’m in hell.”

But is it his own fault? That’s the perennial debate on T.O., who had a heartbreaking childhood but continually pointed fingers at everyone but himself once he became an adult.

In the GQ story by Nancy Hass, Owens blames the media for not giving him a chance to rehab his injury, blames agent Drew Rosenhaus for not protecting him from a bad business arrangement, and — perhaps most surprisingly — blames a former team captain for his issues with former Philadelphia teammate Donovan McNabb.

Owens earned around $80 million during his NFL career, but has found himself in deep financial trouble, despite never spending lavishly. In the February edition of GQ, Owens admits to trusting the wrong people, who in turn cost him a lot of his fortune.

“It’s not a matter of having lived too large — he was never the type to stockpile Ferraris or build himself a compound; the flashiest car he ever drove was a Mercedes, and while he indeed racked up a few homes that cost as much as $4 million, the only crib he classifies as even mildly sick by pro-ball standards was the one he bought in Atlanta to live in during the Philly off-season.

The problem, he says, is that he’s by nature too trusting, loyal to a fault, despite everyone’s carping that he’s selfish. It’s the sad old stereotypical song of the up-from-nothing black athlete: He let other people take care of things.”

Owens said financial advisers recommended by Rosenhaus lost much of his money in highly leveraged ventures, then houses and apartments he thought he could rent out in a worst case scenario became dead weight in a housing market collapse (none of the properties is particularly excessive, but total a yearly mortgage of about $750,000), and $2 million was lost in an Alabama entertainment complex investment. That venture turned out to be illegal, and also claimed former Redskins running back Clinton Portis as a victim.

“I hate myself for letting this happen,” Owens told GQ. “I believed that they had my back when they said, ‘You take care of the football, and we’ll do the rest.’ And in the end, they just basically stole from me.”

Owens has also found himself friendless, thanks to a growing sense of distrust thanks to his many unfortunate dealings.

He never had many friends — teammates never called him to party, he says, wrongly assuming that he was “too big” to socialize — and now, “I don’t have no friends. I don’t want no friends. That’s how I feel.”

And on top of that, he’s battling in court with four women to whom he pays a total of $44,600 a month in child support for his four children, ages 5 to 12.

“If there’s anything I’m sorry about, it’s getting involved with all that.” He never actually dated any of the women, he says. One was a one-night stand, the others “repeat offenders.” Owens, who has never been married, concedes he is “not a very good judge of character.” Still, he “never suspected they were the types to do what they done in the past year.”

When money became tighter, Owens had to reduce the amount he paid to each of the women, and three of them sued him. A warrant was issued for his arrest when he didn’t show up for a court date with the mother of his oldest child, Tariq. Beyond that, the relationship he’s maintained with the mothers and his children is tenuous, at best.

Now he is in court with all four women, whom he lumps together like one big bloodsucking blob. None of them are being fair, he says: “They know I’m not working; they know the deal.” Although he never established regular visitation with any of the children through the courts, he says he sees the eldest three as much as he can when their mothers allow it. So bitter is his relationship with the mother of the youngest child, a son, that he has never met the boy.

As for McNabb, Owens stands by his decision not to mend fences with the former Eagles quarterback, whom Owens characterized as “tired” following the Eagles’ 24-21 loss to New England in Super Bowl XXXIX in 2005.

When given an apology written by the team’s media relations staff, Owens claims to have handed Eagles’ captain Jeremiah Trotter the mea culpa moments before he was to deliver it to reporters.

Owens tells GQ Trotter read through the statement and arrived at the portion regarding McNabb, who threw for 357 yards, but was picked off three times. Owens claims Trotter ripped off the bottom portion of the page and told Owens he didn’t owe McNabb a thing.

“This is the team leader we’re talking about,” Owens tells GQ. “He told me not to do it.”

Trotter calls Owens’ account inaccurate, telling the magazine he was the one insisting Owens apologize.

Once again, T.O. stands alone.

Owens’ career is defined as much by its theatrics than for its statistical body of work. His playing days ended last spring after his one-year, $2 million contract was not renewed by the Cincinnati, where Owens and Chad Ochocinco collectively proved to be more style than substance.

Owens has clearly moved on.

Some decisions, he admits, may have been handled differently now. But at this point of his life, he’s not willing to look back.

“To say I regret anything would be a slap to my grandmother’s face,” Owens says, referring to the woman who raised him.

He concedes his only mistake in calling McNabb out was one of timing, admitting “I might not have said or done things at exactly the right moment.”

To this day, Owens remains confident bordering on cocksure, convinced — even with a medically repaired ACL — that he is capable of the jaw-dropping playmaking ability of his youth. It’s not his talent that keeps teams from calling, he insists, but instead a reputation cast onto him by the reporters he often held hostage.

“I think people change, but the media, they never allowed me to change,” Owens says. “They never allowed me to be a better person.”

Described in the GQ piece as a “caged cat” living in a spacious 1,800-square foot Los Angeles apartment, Owens remains on an island. He claims to be broke despite making at least $80 million during his playing days.

He says he’s never been diagnosed as clinically depressed but he’s been “real down.”

“I don’t have no friends — I don’t want no friends,” Owens says. “That’s how I feel.”

 

source

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It’s a girl for Beyonce and Jay-Z!

After years of pregnancy rumors and months of due date whisperings, Beyonce has finally given birth to a baby girl. E! Online reports that multiple sources have confirmed that the couple welcomed their first child Saturday night.

As for the name? E! claims new daddy Jay is telling friends it’s Blue Ivy Carter, but other outlets say it’s Ivy Blue Carter. (UPDATE: Friend Gwyneth Paltrow tweeted Sunday morning that the baby is named Blue Ivy Carter.)

Reps for the couple haven’t given the official word on their bundle of joy, but whatever her name, this little girl already has some famous friends sending their love to her.

Rihanna tweeted, “Welcome to the world princess Carter! Love Aunty Rih.” Friend Russell Simmons also offered his congratulations, tweeting, “congrats to my good friends Beyonce and Jay-Z.”

According to New York Daily News, the superstar booked the fourth floor of the hospital for $1.3 million to make sure that her baby’s entrance into the world was nothing short of fiercely glamorous.

Speculation that Queen B’s due date was nearing was intensified right before New Year’s Eve, as Beyonce’s mother Tina, sister Solange and her family arrived in New York — no doubt to welcome their newest family member.

It was even reported that Beyonce and Jay-Z welcomed a baby girl named Tiana-May Carter before the end of the year, but the rumors were put to rest after a still-pregnant Beyonce was spotted at dinner with Jay-Z on New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn.

Those who were eagerly anticipating the birth of Beyonce’s offspring pegged her due date to late December based on a DVD she released earlier this year, telling fans that she was six months pregnant. “Hello! It’s September 23rd … Right now I’m actually shooting the video for ‘Countdown’ and I’m six months pregnant, pretending that my stomach is flat in body suits,” she said in her “Live at Roseland” DVD, according to the UK’s Daily Mail.

This is the first child for the couple who married in April 2008, uniting two of the biggest names in hip hop. Although B’s baby will not be able to comprehend the magnitude of her parents’ fame for some time, this sure is one lucky tot.

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An American concert promoter claims he and his son were abducted at gunpoint in Angola … all because rapper Nas failed to show up for a heavily promoted New Year’s Eve concert.

A rep for AllGood Entertainment CEO Patrick Allocco tells TMZ … Patrick and his son were snatched by hired goons working for a local “concert impresario” named Henrique “Riquhino” Miguel … who anted up big bucks for the NYE show.

Allocco’s people claim Nas and opening act Jemiah Jai were paid $315k to perform two shows … but failed to board their flights in the U.S. in time to make it on stage in Angola.

According to Allocco’s team … Miguel was PISSED … and didn’t want Allocco to leave the country without resolving the whole money issue … so he sent his people to take them into custody at gunpoint.

Allocco’s people claim Patrick and his son were handed over to local authorities, where they were detained and interrogated for nearly seven hours.

The local U.S. Embassy finally stepped in and got them sprung.

A rep for the U.S. Embassy confirms … Patrick and his son are now “in residence” at a local hotel while the two sides try to resolve the money situation.

Allocco’s people gave up this statement from him … “The hope is that Nas and Jemiah Jai will return all of the monies that were wired to them immediately so that our ransom may be paid and our safe return to the United States may be facilitated.”

Calls to Nas and Jai have not been returned.

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