Category: people

Asked about the beloved Cinderella pop star in an interview, the prickly opera veteran snarled, “Let’s get off that subject. Move on. … You insult me by even wanting to bring it into this conversation. I’m not interested.”

“Praised for the feather-soft precision of his touch, Jones was equally adept at unleashing the piano’s full, orchestral gamut of sounds. Rhythmic lift and propulsive swing were inherent to his playing…. And his deep understanding of harmony was the foundation for a skilled mastery of the diverse material in the Great American Songbook.”

The sex columnist’s husband and 12-year-old son, DJ, seemed to be taking the performance in stride. “And then, during a reenacted visit from the adoption counselor, a dildo fell out of the couch. DJ flung his head back, covered his eyes, and groaned. Savage leaned over and insisted loudly, slowly: ‘That. Did. Not. Happen.'”

“The home of a Swedish artist whose 2007 drawing of the Prophet Muhammad offended Muslims has been subjected to a suspected arson attack after another incident in which he enraged Muslims.”

Racism played a big part in Ellington’s career. “What was he thinking? What did he feel about–what did he contribute to–the mire of American race relations during the last century?”

He was “known for impaling things, flattening things and putting things on top of other things – resulting in works of public art made all the more striking by the fact that the things in question were often full-size automobiles.”

“A publishing deal for [Irish author Bree O’Mara’s] second novel, Nigel Watson Superhero … would have been her most significant career break. It should have been signed last month, but she missed the London Book Fair because of the flight ban after the volcanic ash cloud hit, and had to postpone her trip.”

She began her showgirl career before her 14th birthday and kept going, along with her sisters, until the offers dried up with the onset of the Depression. “Eight decades after her initial bout of fame, she again found an audience … when she appeared with four other graying Ziegfeld veterans” in the first of a dozen annual theatre benefits.

“Yet while Downey emerged from his struggles with addiction much as he entered them – wry, charming, good-looking – Rourke returned from his longer odyssey of booze, boxing, reconstructive surgery, and God knows what else as a kind of magnificent wreckage, an epic cautionary tale.”