William Levy hit the American television screens on "Dancing With the Stars" and has been the talk of blog circuits every since then. Watching him dance was just an added bonus to the smokin hot telenovela actor. Even though Dancing is over, you don't have to worry as William can be seen melting even more hearts as he will be starring on VH1's Single Ladies as Raquel's (Denise Vasi) love interest. Levy will play her former love interest, Antonio, meeting up again at the stables. He even has a horse named Diablo. Once they meet up again, sparks instantly fly. The second season of Single Ladies premieres next week.
Kourtney Kadashian and her guys son, Mason and boyfriend Scott Disick, were seen on a family outing yesterday in Malibu. Even though Kourt is nine months pregnant, that hasn't slowed her down from going out and about and even carrying Mason, resting him on her bump. Kourtney has said that it has been a challenge dressing her ever growing bump and she is excited about having a baby girl! She doesn't have that much time to go!
On last night's episode of "Don't Be Tardy For The Wedding", Kim decided to body paint her fiance's Kroy Biermann'sAtlanta Falcon's Jersey topless as a pre-wedding gift. Her nipples were covered by pasties then painted over. Kim declared she was sexy and she would just say cheese! The show comes on Bravo Network and is leading up to thier 11/11/11 wedding date.
Since Kim has been with Kanye, there has been a certain style and grace that seems to have taken place. She has not dressed in her normal body hugging dresses, but have opted for more classic ensembles that outline her shape, but give her a more demure, modern, grown woman sophistication. She wore a yellow canary gown to the Cinema against Aids event at the Hotel du Cap. The tone she set was an homage to 40's dress and she added red lips and curls to match.
Will Smith stopped by BET's 106 & Park and talked about Men In Black 3, but it was something else he said that had fans excited. Will announced that he and MartinLawrence are teaming up to do Bad Boys 3. Will told hosts Rosci & Terrence J."I talked to Martin about that a couple of weeks ago,” he said. “Martin is into it and we got a couple of screenplays and the story's gotta be right." Will will play a significant role in the development of the screenplay.
Many people have been raving about the comeback of D'Angelo and the June GQ 2012 interview. GQ has released more outakes of the interview that didn't make the cut. With all the noise that this interview is making, we can't wait to see D back on the stage! Read some of the excerpts.
On how the "fame cycle" of the music business set D'Angelo back:
The guitarist Charlie Hunter, who played on the Voodoo album, says he blames not the "Untitled" video as much as what he calls the broader "fame cycle" of the music business. "There's so much money behind it now that there's very little room for humanity, for specialness," he says. "Who was more human than Aretha Franklin back in the day? You know, a real person who had a real message and whose weight went up and down and who was dealing with stuff." Today, he laments, too much music—and too many popular artists—"are just stamped at the same place in China that they make really cheap plastic toys. If you're someone like D'Angelo—just a music nerd, you know—who's a thinking individual and has some introspection and likes to have real interactions with human beings that aren't based on whether someone better has come into the room, then it's really the wrong place for you to be."
On Peter Edge, the former A & R man at J Records who is now the CEO of RCA Records, D'Angelo's label:
"He never gave up on me, man," D says. "And I love him for it."
Edge says it's a bet he had to make. "He can do his James Brown-influenced funk man thing. There are elements of Hendrix. And B.B. King. And obviously Prince. But he's never predictable. It's not like suddenly there's gonna be three other D'Angelos, and we're going to be like, 'Oh, well, we could have invested in these three guys.' He's worth investing in because there's nobody like him."
On what it was like for D to perform in Stockholm in January, his first concert in more than a decade:
"It was scary," D will tell me later, reflecting on playing the guitar in public for the first time. "I would feel comfortable when I was by myself, but actually getting onstage and playing was a different thing. My friend Raphael Saadiq was like, 'Yo, man, you've just got to jump in. Start swimming. Just jump in the pool, you know?' It was good advice. I was nervous up until the point where we started playing and singing, and then it just felt—it felt cool."
On Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's role in D's career:
D asked Questlove to help him come up with the playlist for the European tour, just as D had asked for his help on his upcoming album. Like anything D-related, that took a lot of time (Questlove calls D'Angelo's painstaking process "beautifully frustrating"). Since the Roots drummer has a day job now (he's the bandleader on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon), most of the work on the album has had to be done between the hours of 2:30 a.m. and 6 a.m. After one seven-week stretch of pre-dawn sessions and little sleep, an exhausted Questlove contracted coxsackie virus. He wouldn't hesitate, he says, to do it again.
On D's upcoming third album:
Despite assurances that it's 97-percent done, D hasn't locked his third. Not yet. In Europe, he unveiled several songs he thinks will be on it. In addition to "Ain't That Easy" and the irresistible dance number, "Sugar Daddy," there is a song Questlove compares to Herbie Hancock called "The Charade." "Crawling through a systematic maze to demise," it begins, and D sings the line with a seething fury. When I catch a reference to "the deceiver," I can't help but think: this song—twisted, almost atonal, multi-layered—is about that forked-tongued devil, Fame.
D says I'm wrong. "It's about the disenfranchised," he says. "It's telling the powers that be, 'This is why we are justified in our stance.' There's another song on the album called 'A Thousand Deaths' that is the flip side of the coin. 'A Thousand Deaths' is just a fucking war cry. You know what I mean? The beheadings have commenced." It occurs to me that the Nat Turner Rebellion of 1831, in which slaves rose up and killed more than 50 white people, the only sustained slave rebellion in the South's history, took place in D's home state of Virginia. "Ain't no justice/It's just us/Ash to ashes/Dust to dust," D sang so insistently on Voodoo. I am beginning to get what he means.
I ask someone who has a closely-guarded copy to let me hear "1000 Deaths." It is dark, dense and mysterious and makes the most of D's newfound prowess on the guitar. The lead vocal is so distorted—like the moans and groans of a Negro spiritual—that D could almost be speaking in tongues. The song is compelling, maybe even profound, but it is the opposite of catchy. That's just fine with D. He tells me art, not commerce, is his fuel.
New questions are being raised about just how close of a relationship George Zimmerman had with the Sanford Police. Huffingtonpost reports:
Neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman had a relationship with members of the police department in Sanford, Fla., long before he shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin to death in February, newly released information suggests.
During a community forum on Jan. 8, 2011, more than a year before Martin was killed, Zimmerman, then a criminal justice student, told city officials he had ridden along with Sanford police officers on patrol. Zimmerman blasted Sanford police as lazy and criticized outgoing Police Chief Brian Tooley, who was forced from office in a scandal involving the son of an officer caught on tape beating a homeless black man.
“I would just like to state that the law is written in black and white, it can not be enforced by those who are in the thin blue line,” Zimmerman told an audience that included newly elected Mayor Jeff Triplett, according to an audio recording published by the Miami Herald. Zimmerman said he saw firsthand how bad Sanford police could be during his ride-alongs.
“What I saw was disgusting,” Zimmerman said, “The officer showed me his favorite hiding spots for taking naps, explained to me that he doesn’t carry a long gun in his vehicle because, in his words, ‘anything that requires a long gun requires a lot of paperwork, and you’re going to find me as far away from it.’” Zimmerman continued: “He took two lunch breaks and attended a going away party for one of his fellow officers.”
Zimmerman found himself at the center of another Sanford police scandal a year later. Relatives of Martin, the 17-year-old who was killed while visiting his father in a gated Sanford housing development, and a chorus of supporters across the country have accused Sanford police of biased and sloppy police work. Zimmerman initially was freed by police after saying he shot Martin in self defense. A prosecutor specially assigned to the case, working with state investigators, later charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder. He is free on bail awaiting trial.
A police station video taken three days after the shooting, released by the State Attorney’s Office with a trove of other evidence, shows Zimmerman walking unescorted through the police station. That suggests a “cozy” and “comfortable” relationship with the police, said Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Martin’s family.
“This video of Zimmerman just walking through the police department so casually underscores that people in that department have a familiarity with him,” Crump told HuffPost. “It means that he had a relationship with the Sanford police department. And it’s just unusual that all along they would say they didn’t. But he went on several ride-alongs with them and he was comfortable enough to walk unescorted through their department.”
Zimmerman had longed to be a law enforcement officer and lobbied local law enforcement officials for a job. He was a student at nearby Seminole County Community College, where former Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee, who stepped down amid the Martin scandal, was a professor and ran the police academy.
According to the Herald report, city records show that in March 2010, Zimmerman’s application to ride along with the police was approved despite a background check revealing a criminal history that included resisting arrest and assault on a police officer. (The charges were later dropped.) Zimmerman wrote on the application that he hoped the ride-along would “solidify my interest in a career in law enforcement.”
"We do not have specific dates Mr. Zimmerman may have ridden or with whom he rode, if in fact he ever did ride" with Sanford police, Capt. Robert O'Connor said in a statement. Interim Police Chief Richard Myers said it would be “inappropriate” to draw conclusions from Zimmerman’s 2010 speech before the city council.
“As a police chief, I embrace the notion that transparency helps build public trust, but in this case, the need to preserve the sanctity of a criminal prosecution, for both the prosecutor and the defense, requires us to eschew making any comments that could taint the process,” Myers said in a statement.
Meagan Good talked to Life & Styleabout her impending nuptials to Sony Exec Devon Franklin. Meagan said they will not "get down" until their wedding night. She told Life & Style :
Think Like a Man star Meagan Good, 30, is eager to marry her fiancé, preacher-movie producer DeVon Franklin.
“Our wedding night will be the first time we’re actually together,” Meagan Good, who also stars in Showtime’s risqué series Californication, confides to Life & Style.
How did she know DeVon was the one? “Because he was willing to be celibate with me for a year,” she says. “He loves God, more than I love God, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong [with him].”
And their wedding planning is already set in motion.
“We found the venue, which I’m really excited about, and it’s going to be in Malibu,” Meagan, who met her fiancé while making Jumping the Broom in 2011, tells Life & Style. “I know I want to go for a bayou-themed kind of Spanish mosque, a very enchanted-y Twilight feel.”
