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“Entourage” began its eighth and final season with a bang Sunday night. Creator/writer Doug Ellin has established a web of compelling new story lines.
Vince is getting out of rehab for his substance-abuse addiction. Johnny Drama is freaking out and sweeping the house of all traces of drugs, even Advil, and steering Vince (Adrian Grenier) clear of Tic-Tacs. Drama wants to throw Vince a sober-only party to welcome him home. “Do you know any sober people?” he asks the guys.
Ari is freaked because Vince wants to direct his own feel-good movie, which Ari belittles as a Lifetime cable knockoff. Drama warns the guys not to disillusion Vince even though, clearly, nobody is pleased at the prospect.
As ever, Ari is still dumping on Eric, Drama and Turtle. When Vince, who is easing back to civilization, asks the guys what’s new, Ari cuts him off by muttering that nothing is new with them. In the best line of the episode, Ari (Jeremy Piven) snarls: “They’ve been frozen like Ted Williams!”
Ari is desperate to reconcile with his beloved Mrs. Ari, following their traumatic split at the end of last season. But she stuns him when she says: “I’ve been seeing someone.” He storms out of her house.
Meanwhile, Sloan hates Eric (Kevin Connolly) and their wedding plans are in tatters. She even returns his $30,000 engagement ring — through the U.S. mail, no less.
At least, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) is wearing his beloved New York Yankees cap, so all is right in the world.
E gets no relief anywhere. He is perturbed that Vince called all the guys, but not him, to pick him up when he gets out of rehab. Eric and his business partner Scott at the agency have picked up right where they left off last year. Scott is irritating Eric by trying to win over Vince, E’s best friend and his meal ticket.
The high points center on Johnny Drama, whether he is chewing out the guys or a thoroughly sober Billy Walsh. Drama is insecure that his new co-star on the animated television show “Johnny Bananas” is upstaging him. Kevin Dillon, who plays Drama, can do more with a grimace than most TV actors can do with a page full of dialogue.
kristin cavallari"Thx to all my amazing friends for making my engagement party a blast last night!" she wrote.
People reported that the break-up came as a shock to Cavallari, who had planned to move to Chicago for the upcoming football season.
An Allegheny County Court’s Common Pleas Judge has denied the request to stop the expansion of Blush strip club on Thursday; the club is located nearby Pittsburgh’s Public School and Cultural trust. The residents, Public School Administration and Cultural Centre Administration appealed against the decision of Zoning Board of Adjustment to allow the club to expand its business building.
The residents of Ninth Street and Pen Avenue and ration of the Public School and Cultural Trust argued that the strip club is a kind of adult entertainment club, which will perform stripteases, erotic and exotic dances especially at night times, ultimately it will be functioning as night bar. These kinds of foul and filthy performances will be adverse to residents of this area, particularly students and children futures will be spoiled if it is allowed to expand its business here.
So the resident representatives and agencies of the Public School and Cultural Centre appealed to Allegheny County Court t against the Zoning Board of Adjustment approval to Blush Strip club expansion two weeks ago. The final hearing on the appeals was slated on Thursday in Allegheny County’s Common Pleas Court.
The Common Pleas Court Judge, Joseph M James has taken the appeals on yesterday for hearing, and finally announced that the appeal is pending in this court and asked the Blush club to expand its club at the corner of the Ninth Street and Pen Avenue vacant buildings at present. However the Judge warned the owner of the club Albert Bortz, you can go ahead with new building on your own risks, if the appeals by the Public School, Cultural Trust upheld in future by the court, The expansion of the strip club will be dismantled.
Mr. Kamin, Lawyer of Club, said “Adult entertainment club has been functioning here since 1961, but no dishonest event has been complained against us so far. But we are disappointed by the appeals and the decision by the court to expand our business in an vacant building in a corner. We are not going to occupy the 100,000 square feet to construct new building but only 3000 square feet.”
WITH her fabulous bikini body, shiny hair and new mum glow, Patsy Palmer has changed so much since playing downtrodden EastEnders character Bianca Jackson.
Gone are the dowdy clothes, scraped-back hairstyle and the anguished expression that came with her character’s famous catchphrase “Rickaaaay!”
Since the birth of her fourth baby, Bertie, just seven months ago, she is happier and healthier than ever.
Most women pushing 40 would dread the thought of slipping into their swimwear after having four children.
But, looking fabulous in a Liz Hurley bikini, Patsy confesses she’s now completely at ease with her new “womanly curves” and size 12 body – even though she can’t get back into her old jeans yet.
“I’m not bothered,” she says. “In fact I love being pregnant because you’re creating a little miracle.
“I’m not one of those stars who wanted to snap back to a size zero in a couple of weeks. I can’t stand the pressure it puts on women to lose weight after birth.
“I’m a mum and a real woman, and you have to accept that after having kids your body will change and never quite be the same. I’m much curvier than I was.
“My hips are wider, my boobs are bigger and I still can’t fit into some of my old clothes. Even my feet have changed! But I like the shape I am and I’m proud of my body. As you get older it’s nice to have some curves. It’s natural and womanly.
“I just wish more women would celebrate the amazing things that happen to their bodies and not feel so much pressure to snap back to a size six.
SKINNY
“Most women who look in the mirror and don’t look stick-thin think it’s wrong. But thin is not necessarily healthy.
“I used to be naturally skinny as a kid. Now I’m wearing a size 12-14, my stomach’s a little loose and I’ve got stretch marks. But so what? I’m not worried because I look at what I’ve got – four wonderful children – and it doesn’t really matter.”
Patsy, speaking during a sunshine break with her children and cab driver husband Richard Merkell at the exclusive La Manga Club resort in Murcia, Spain, adds: “I put on over two-and-a-half stone during my pregnancy and I’ve lost about one- and-a-half stone. But I’m not stressing about it and I’m not desperate to lose more weight.
“When you have a baby it’s about you, your baby and your family, not about getting your jeans back on!
“Many new mothers feel like they are competing with celebrities to see how quickly they can lose weight after having a baby and put unrealistic pressure on themselves. But that’s rubbish.
“It takes a good year and sometimes longer for your body, bones and muscles to recover. That’s normal.
“It’s crazy what some women do to get thin. In fact, I find it quite disturbing. When I had my other kids I snapped back into shape without any effort at all but I admit this time it’s been more difficult.
“I’m older and I had another caesarean birth, my third, so I’m catching up with Posh and all this takes its toll on your body.”
Patsy shot to fame in 1993 as fiery EastEnder Bianca – whose henpecked hubby Ricky Butcher (Sid Owen) often felt the sharp end of her tongue.
Patsy battled drink and drug problems during her time on the soap and knows how lucky she is to be fit and healthy. “I’m just grateful that I feel so good – especially after what I’ve put my body through over the years,” she reflects. “I’m a different person now. I’ve found what I was looking for: peace, inner happiness and a wonderful husband and family.”
The actress, who also has three other children Charley, 19 (from a previous relationship), Fenton, 11, and 10-year-old Emilia, has stepped up her fitness routine, fitting walking and training sessions on her Power Plate in between feeds and nappies.
She says: “I’m currently following a healthy eating plan called Dr Khan’s Lifestyle Programme, which consists of lots of fruit salads, vegetables, fish and meat.
“I still don’t deprive myself. If I fancy something I will have it but I don’t stuff my face and I think twice before eating too many doughnuts.”
Patsy admits juggling family life with looking good isn’t always easy: “Yeah, it’s hard to feel sexy and glam during the first six months, when dirty nappies are piling up and you haven’t had a good night’s sleep.
“You feel saggy and fat, especially when you can’t get into your old clothes. But a spray tan and some Spanx body shaping tights always work wonders for me. They are my lifesavers.”
macbook airLater this week, Apple will officially launch their new MacBook Air line. We previously detailedthat these new MacBook Airs will include Thunderbolt ports, i5 and i7 processor options, and a design with little to no changes from the current models. Now, thanks to our source Mr. X, we have all the specifications of the brand-new MacBook Air line.
11.6 inch models:
13.3 inch models:
These specifications put the unreliable reports of 4GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage as standard (across the line) options to rest. OS X Lion launches tomorrow, so it is possible that these new ultraportables will, too, but that is unconfirmed. Apple will also release a new Mac mini, as we just revealed, later this week.
harry potter and the deathly hallows part 2 reviewsOver the course of 10 years, eight films and £4billion taken at the box office, JK Rowling’s characters have become part of our lives.
So as the most successful film franchise in history reached the end of the road, we weren’t just at the screening to watch a movie, but also to say goodbye to some dear friends.
After a quick recap of the events in Part 1, we rejoin the young wizard (Daniel Radcliffe) and pals Hermione and Ron (Emma Watson and Rupert Grint) who are still holed up in their seaside hideout. These are desperate times with Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) having found the Elder Wand, one of the three Deathly Hallows which will make him all-powerful.
With Hogwarts now run by the wicked Severus Snape (Alan Rickman), all that stands in Voldemort’s way are the three pals who must find the Horcruxes that contain parts of his soul which could destroy him.
If the last film was a touch heavy on dialogue, the follow-up eschews the chat in favour of action set-pieces, making it perhaps the most exciting instalment of all.
From a daring attempt to raid a goblin bank containing the vault of Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) to a dragon ride over London and Harry’s showdown with Voldemort, the thrills never let up.
And while David Yates (directing his fourth Potter film) replicates the lurking menace of Part 1, this is a movie brimming with emotion, particularly a surprise revelation about Snape.
Niggles? Well, it’s only the cheap-looking 3D that fails to impress, adding to the growing suspicion that this once-hailed technology has become a cynical ploy to raise ticket prices.
Not that I heard anyone complaining. As the screen faded to black, there was an eruption of applause and more than a few tears.
So long, Harry. It’s been magic.
roger clemensProsecutors said Wednesday needles and cotton balls Roger Clemens' former trainer says he used to inject the star pitcher tested positive for Clemens' DNA and anabolic steroids — evidence defense attorneys said was faked.
Assistant U.S. attorney Steven Durham revealed the results during opening arguments in Clemens' trial on charges of lying to Congress about using performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens' attorney Rusty Hardin responded he won't dispute the needles contain Clemens' DNA and steroids, but accused the trainer Brian McNamee of "mixing" it up.
"He manufactured this stuff," Hardin told jurors. "Roger Clemens' only crime was having the poor judgment to stay connected with Brian McNamee."
Hardin said steroids would have been so "incredibly inconsistent with his career and beliefs that there's no way he would have done it."
Clemens has said the only things McNamee ever injected him with were the common local anesthetic lidocaine for his joints and vitamin B-12 to ward off flu viruses and stay healthy.
But, Durham said neither substance was found on the needles or cotton swabbed with his blood.
Hardin told the jury the government is "horribly wrong" in charging his client with perjury, false statements and obstruction of Congress.
Clad in a dark suit, Clemens watched silently from the defense table with a clenched jaw.
"There was a rush to judgment on Roger that has made it impossible for him to be fairly heard until he got here," Hardin said in the federal courthouse just a couple blocks from the congressional hearing room where he testified three years ago.
Hardin showed the jury an enlarged photo of the country with all the sites where federal agents investigated the case.
"They still didn't find anything to connect him with steroids except Brian McNamee," Hardin said.
Durham, however, said about 45 witnesses, including several of Clemens' former teammates, will help make the case Clemens used banned substances.
For More Detail: http://www.deseretnews.com
Absent from the endless discussions about how to improve baseball's All-Star game was the one that would solve all the problems immediately.
End it.
Seriously. Would anyone other than Bud Selig notice? Or care? And just imagine if the idea gets traction across the sports spectrum. If the pro leagues really want to do something for fans, other than pick their pockets, keep the breaks in midseason and have the players perform community service — e.g., stage sports clinics in their hometowns.
For one thing, they might be better attended than the All-Star game. Almost a fifth of the players named to baseball's two squads had already voted no with their feet, electing to park them somewhere besides Phoenix on Tuesday night, rendering the National League's 5-1 win an even more meaningless exercise than usual. And the problem wasn't just a lack of quantity, but quality.
Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter might be the face of baseball, but his body was already in R&R mode. He sneaked off to Florida with girlfriend Minka Kelly, enraging all those commentators who exhausted their store of superlatives praising him over the weekend, the TV executives at FOX who spent hours dreaming up all those promotional tie-ins, and who knows how many of the 4 million who penciled Jeter into the AL starting lineup.
brian wilson
RussiaHappy 450th birthday to Russia's national symbol, St Basil's Cathedral in Red Square – and it's a good time to step back and consider what a fantastically, psychedelically bizarre symbol it is. That's not a cathedral, it's a fairytale palace made of sweets! It's a stage set for The Nutcracker!
It was particularly hilarious during the cold war. There was Khrushchev or Brezhnev gazing on sternly from a Kremlin balcony at the synchronised marching and Soviet military hardware scrolling past below, but the whole deadly solemn communist pomp was undercut by that garish chunk of Disneyland architecture sitting in the corner, screaming "yoo hoo!". St Basil's was like a clown's nose on the face of the evil empire.
No wonder Stalin wanted to destroy it. He succeeded with other Moscowchurches, such as the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was rebuilt in 1990, but his order to demolish St Basil's was fortunately thwarted by a conservation architect named Pyotr Baranovsky. According to the legend, Baranovsky sent Stalin a telegram saying he would rather kill himself. He got five years in the gulag for his troubles. St Basil's also offended Napoleon's architectural sensibilities a century earlier. Having stabled his horses in it, he then tried to dynamite it on his way out of Russia, but rain put out the fuses.
Was it St Basil's symbolic power that led to its persecution, or simply its comedy aesthetics? Even without the garish candy colour scheme (it was originally white), it's an odd-looking pile-up of onion domes, polygonal towers, blank arches and sharp spires and extremes of architectural vocabulary. Little is known about its architect, Postnik Yakovlev. Perhaps he was a children's entertainer whom Ivan the Terrible enlisted in a rare moment of levity. Ivan's predecessor, Ivan III, had imported an Italian Renaissance architect, Aristotele Fioravanti, to design his Cathedral of the Dormition at the Kremlin (not that it really shows), but historians have scrabbled around to find a precedent for St Basil's.
Despite appearances, St Basil's is actually pretty orderly, especially if you look at it on plan. It is one central church surrounded by a symmetrical star of eight chapels, four major and four minor, aligned to the points of the compass. What ruins the order is the irregular shape of the central church, and the addition of a ninth chapel, built for St Basil himself – a holy fool who apparently wore no clothes and championed the poor. Ivan the Terrible allegedly carried his coffin.
It is a religious building, after all. It is said to have been inspired by Jerusalem, both the abstract and the literal. Perhaps it was a sort of optical illusion of "the kingdom of heaven", the post-apocalypse New Jerusalem described in the Book of Revelation as well as an approximation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem,according to travellers' accounts. Either that, or someone put something in the architect's unleavened bread.
The Christian significance is all but lost today. St Basil's is now a building that belongs inside snow globes, on T-shirts, commemorative plates, and in Hollywood spy movies as a quick signifier of "Moscow". Perhaps its garishness fits better with today's oligarch-stuffed, ostentatious Russia than it has done with previous eras. Could it have influenced the likes of Gaudi, or even Gehry? Whichever way you look at it, take a good look at it: St Basil's is the craziest national monument around.
