jimblr.com

Last night pretty much confirmed it for me — people are missing the good old days. Nostalgia was up in the building like a muhfugga… Hands down my favorite performance was Al Green’s (including the tribute which featured — WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN IN MY LIFE??? — Maxwell)
I loved John Legend’s presentation and Jill Scott (what did you think of her HAIRCUT?) Anthony Hamilton, Maxwell and Al Green himself. Marvin Sapp also did an extraordinary job but I don’t know how many gospel folks I have in here that were checkin for him so I’m gonna focus a little more on the pop/r&b musc. Al Green being the old school legend that he is fit right in with all the nostalgia going on up in the Shrine last night.
My second favorite performance was Alicia Keys reminiscin’ alongside SWV, En Vogue and TLC
Alicia Keys “Teenage Love Affair” “Weak” “Hold On”
Easily one of the best performances of the night — After a bunch of so-so performances it was good to see Ne-Yo put on a good show. Definitely more of a dance performance (altho he definitely got on mic a bit) Ne-Yo’s dancers slayed Usher’s (Keyshia’s dance? isn’t even worth mentioning in the same sentence) but you gotta admit that somebody was channeling a lil Michael Jackson “Smooth Criminal” right?
Chris Brown “With You” “Take You Down”
Again, this performance really was more about the dance and props definitely go to Ciara for showing the ladies how dancing is meant to be done. The “Take You Down” performance was a little steamy so if you have children I hope their eyes were covered — that was definitely a don’t try this one at home kids!
Things I was not feeling — Keyshia Cole singing, looking back at her dancers to make sure she was on beat and having Frankie (Man Down!) and Neffie (tuck your chi chi’s in girl) commentate and T-Pain bringing out Rick Ross with no shirt on…

blogs.sohh.com

The 60-year-old singer-songwriter took the stage as his 11-piece “Band of Legends” kicked into the Temptations’ 1965 hit “It’s Growing,” briefly throwing in a few dance moves to the amusement of the mostly middle-age crowd.
This led directly into the “sha na nas” of another cover, the Silhouettes’ classic “Get a Job.” The first two songs will be on Mr. Taylor’s upcoming album of covers due in the fall.
The song selection wasn’t the only thing that brought the crowd back to another era; the stage — adorned with red curtains, bright multicolored lights and platforms in front of each musician listing his or her name — resembled something out of the big-band era of the 1940s.
The first of Mr. Taylor’s hits came with the third song, “Country Road,” from his famed 1970 album, “Sweet Baby James.” A breakdown between Mr. Taylor and legendary drummer Steve Gadd added an energetic twist to the folk staple and got the crowd on its feet.
“It could’ve came from the hills right around here somewhere,” Mr. Taylor said, referring to the brief instrumental bluegrass song that was led by fiddle player Andrea Zonn. “That was ‘Whiskey Before Breakfast.’ ”
Mr. Taylor’s variations of songs by Jimmy Webb and George Jones were followed by a mellow take of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” the opening of “Oklahoma!”
The “Band of Legends” also included former “Saturday Night Live” and Blues Brothers saxophonist “Blue” Lou Marini and classically trained pianist Larry Goldings.
Near the end of the first set, Mr. Taylor held up a large sign displaying the set list to a video camera, and even teased the crowd with a separate one featuring the second-set list.
Ominous evening skies with hints of rain held off for the first set before a brief downpour in the 20-minute intermission.

thetimes-tribune.com

If you’re a producer, there are certain things you can safely budget into your film - a picnic scene, a nifty helicopter shot, perhaps, Bruce Willis’ singing - knowing that you’re not going to break the bank. If at any point, your script says something like “enter THE KING, in infinite splendour, accompanied by DEAFENING FANFARE”, you might want to start worrying.
Not only is the costumes department going to have to be on quarter-rations to stump up the cash for all the bling, but you’re going to put the down-payment on a flagship actor with authority stamped across their forehead. (Or you could just CGI everything in, like this week’s Mongol.)
5) There is also a fine line of monarchical cameos: a chance for the high-calibre thesp of the day to blaze in, grab the paycheque and split while the divine mandate’s good. Sean Connery shows how it’s done, as Richard I (9mins 09secs), at the end of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
Thanks to everyone who fearlessly turned themselves inside-out for last week’s look at the body on film. Here are our freaky bits:
1) Superbly produced, genuinely “genuinely disturbing” and funny, Chris Cunningham’s Rubber Johnny peers dimly at the eerie biological perversions of a secret midnight raver.
2) Brian Dennehy’s bodily woes somehow get projected onto the Roman cityscape, thanks to “Mr Corporeality”, Peter Greenaway, in 1987’s The Belly of an Architect.
3) Surprisingly, Almodóvar’s name was touted repeatedly as a flesh-fixated auteur to rival David Cronenberg - and in a more celebratory vein. Apparently the gist of this advert from 1980’s Pepi, Luci, Bom is the young lady is wearing special underwear that reacts to farts by creating perfume (maybe Pedro’s oeuvre has to be reappraised in the light of Benny Hill)…
4) Fatal Attraction meets American Pie meets Cronenberg meets Charles Burn’s Black Hole: there was quite a lot of excited (under-skirt) chatter about new sex-horror flick Teeth.

blogs.guardian.co.uk

Meet Nikki. She’s a Siberian husky who is 22 years old. That’s 154 in dog years! But she still acts like a puppy. Do you think your dog has exceeded the life expectancy for its breed? How did you manage to keep your pet fit and healthy for so long? E-mail Joanna Poncavage or call 610-820-6754 with the poop on your pet, and feel free to e-mail her photos too!
What do you miss from the good ol’ days? Tell us about the things you miss doing or seeing, places you used to love to go and favorite toys or other possessions you wish would come back. E-mail Mariella Savidge or call 610-778-2253 with your contact info by 5 p.m. on July 4. Feel free to e-mail photos as well if you have them!

mcall.com

LOS ANGELES (KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO) — A year after last summer’s catastrophic Lake Tahoe wildfire, investigators continue to search for the person or persons who caused it. El Dorado County District Attorney’s office investigator Bill Dillard says authorities are studying a “person of interest” but lack enough evidence to make an arrest.
Tomorrow will mark the one-year anniversary of the fire, which destroyed 254 homes, caused $140 million in property damage and scorched nearly 5 square miles.
Investigators think the fire started with stray embers from an illegal campfire at a popular party spot near South Lake Tahoe.
KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO is Southern California’s must trusted and honored news radio station serving all of Southern California: Los Angeles / Orange County / Ventura County / Riverside County / San Bernardino County / San Diego County. 50,000 watt clear signal. CBS News. Traffic & Weather Together on the Fives. Money / business news, sports, weather and special features. Streaming live online and offering News On Demand with free podcast downloads. Listen on-air, online and available in HD Radio. See video webisodes of Money 101 Online with Bob McCormick, Cookin’ Up a New Kitchen with Melinda Lee. Special KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO reports. Food News with Melinda Lee. Think responsibly. Know means know.www.knx1070.com.

knx1070.com

Editor’s note: Jeff Coy, of Shippensburg, Pa., left an 11-term career in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to fulfill an appointment on the newly created Pennsylvania Gaming Board in 2004. Since then, the board has overseen the development and opening of the state’s first seven slots facilities. A total of 14 licenses went up for grabs through the Pennsylvania Race Horse Development and Gaming Act, otherwise known as Act 71 of 2004.
Herald-Mail reporter Jennifer Fitch recently sat down with Coy and Doug Harbach, a Chambersburg, Pa., resident and communications director for the Pennsylvania Gaming Board. The pair addressed several issues, including table games, casino locations and the penalties recently imposed on many fraternal, veterans and social clubs in Franklin County.
Property tax relief
Coy: Now, property tax rebates are starting to flow and people are getting them. More are going to senior citizens and people who are on fixed incomes who are senior citizens.
Eventually they’ll make their way down to other folks and they’ll be getting rebates on their school property taxes. The sooner we get the other casinos up and running - so we get to the total of 14, seven at racetracks and seven not at racetracks - these property tax rebates will certainly increase.
I think property tax relief is going to go up. To talk about jobs for a minute, what we’ve been able to determine so far is that more than 6,500 persons, 95 percent of them Pennsylvania residents, are now employed in the new positions created by the casino industry. That’s a pretty significant amount, and we expect to see some additional facilities come online and that figure will swell to about 15,000 jobs statewide. In addition, with the construction of the casinos, about 24,000 construction jobs are going to be included. These are big jobs that are very, very (good) jobs with carpenters, roofers, masons, electricians, jointers and everything that’s involved in construction. Most of these places are built pretty good, too. They’re not built with plywood.

herald-mail.com

Sure, if you looked very, very hard Friday afternoon, you could find people like Laurie Szwast, who lives in the city and loves both the White Sox and the Cubs.
To prove it, she pinned together a baseball cap from each team and clapped the White Cubs hat on her head.
But for the most part — even with the distracting story lines of having both of the city’s teams playing great baseball — White Sox and Cubs fans’ mutual hatred is alive and well.
“Sox fans are all crybabies,” barked Wrigleyville T-shirt vendor Rick Callow, before Friday’s opening game in the Crosstown Showdown. “I’ll never become a Sox fan. Never. I don’t care if they win 22 championships.”
A few feet away, another vendor’s popular T-shirt featured a hand, middle finger pointing straight up, with the caption: “Hey Cubs fans, this one’s for you.”
Sox fan Nat Sager, respectfully dressed in a plain black T-shirt, went to the game with four of his buddies, all Cubs fans. His reward? A beer sloshed over his head.
He’s pretty certain that just because the Cubs have the best record in baseball, it doesn’t make their fans any more civil.
“Absolutely not,” Sager said. “If anything, it gives them more confidence and makes them more obnoxious.”
A few feet from where Sager and his friends were sitting, Sox fan Steve Parker, 23, was caught in the middle of a swarm of Cubs fans, including his buddy Chris Burhans, 25.
“All I know is, we have a championship in 2005 and they have one in 1908,” Parker said, as the Sox held on to a 3-1 lead in the game. “I’m pretty sure we’re the better team.”
Throughout the game, there was plenty of jawing and shoving back and forth between Parker and his Cubs buddies.

suntimes.com

The nutty sheriff’s latest target: Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. And us, of course.
Over a year ago, local music zine Rift Magazine announced that it would cease printing. It was a familiar story: the publication couldn’t afford to pay printing costs, but hinted that they might attempt something online. The magazine hobbled on a bit longer on the internet before fizzling out all together. But then, last week, something unfamiliar happened. The magazine resurfaced.
Rather than rely only on freelance writers to contribute to the magazine, Rift is trying something unusual (and, in the grand scheme of things, quite brilliant). In addition to assigned stories, the zine is pulling out the best reviews and interviews from local blogs and syndicating them in print. There’s an Hojas Rojas review from Perfect Porridge, a Cloud Cult review from Reveille, a Sam Keenan review from HowWasTheShow.com, and essays from local art blogs sprinkled in with the magazine’s regular content. It’s as if Rift is the hard copy of editor Rich Horton’s blog reader, highlighting the best articles he has found online, and it creates a sense of community and coherence unlike any other local music publication.
Issue #24 of Rift Magazine was being printed and distributed over the last week. Copies are available at most local record stores, coffee shops, art galleries and music venues, and readers can also peruse the new issue online.

blogs.citypages.com

PHILADELPHIA: The four-mile stretch of Broad Street, from City Hall to the sports complex, is a poor man's “Canyon of Heroes,” where downtown office buildings give way to stout South Philly storefronts and row houses.
It's a stretch of blacktop that is hallowed ground for fans of the Phillies, Flyers, 76ers and Eagles, where Philadelphians gather to celebrate their sports heroes and championships — at least they used to.
Twenty-five years have passed since fans last crowded the sidewalks along the thoroughfare and celebrated a title, a silver anniversary of futility made all the more painful by Boston, where the Celtics just gave their city its sixth pro championship in seven years.
How are Philly fans to cope?
Their heroes of the past encourage them to appreciate the near-successes, the joy of being in contention, the anticipation of a championship season, the fun of the game. And they counsel patience, up to a point.
“It is such a delicate thing,” said Billy Cunningham, a member of the Sixers' 1967 title team and coach of the 1983 champions. “If you go back to the early '80s everybody was doing well. … Things are cyclical.”
The 1982-83 76ers were the last of Philly's pro teams to win a title, with Moses Malone, Julius Erving and Maurice Cheeks leading a sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the finals.
After finals flameouts in 1980 and '82, that title ignited the kind of excitement only Philly fans can display. They lined Broad Street three, four and five deep, and punctuated their daylong salute with a wild celebration inside Veterans Stadium.
“It stays with you,” Cunningham said. “It's one of those things you'll never forget.”
Who could have known that sun-splashed parade on June 2, 1983, would be the city's last chance to celebrate, especially after a run of four championships (Flyers 1974-75, and Phillies 1980) in 10 years, a period some call the golden era of Philly sports?

iht.com

The Edmonton Eskimos didn’t take half their team to Calgary last week.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders aren’t bringing half their team here tonight.
The new players don’t have enough game exposure to make the team with their play in front of fans and other people’s players, and the veterans don’t have enough game time to really get ready against players in other uniforms.
Any chance of convincing yourself that tonight’s game might manage to be meaningful in any way, shape or form went out the window when the league scheduled it.
Why would the two teams playing the opening game of the season against each other in Regina next week be forced to play against each other in the final preseason game?
They’ll both be going out of their way to show each other nothing - and Eskimos’ head coach Danny Maciocia admits it.
So why bother even playing these things in public? Why not meet in Red Deer for one and Lloydminster for the other? Why inflict this on the fans?
It’s not like in hockey. Fans don’t go to a preseason football game trying to pick the team themselves.
Eskimos fans just want to know who made the team before they invest any interest in any of the players. Name the team and then they get into it. Really get into it.
But is it my imagination, or is there getting to be less and less to a CFL preseason game every year?
Maybe, said Maciocia. But that doesn’t make it a bad thing.
“A few years ago Ottawa played Montreal in Montreal when Don Matthews was coaching the Alouettes, and out of 60 snaps Matthews blitzed them 50 times,” said the coach.
Now, he said, coaches get on the phone before the games and make deals.

edmontonsun.com