President Obama Signs Puerto Rico Emergency Declaration

The President today declared an emergency exists in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and ordered federal aid to supplement commonwealth and local response efforts in the area struck by Hurricane Irene beginning on August 21, 2011, and continuing.

The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.  Emergency protective measures, limited to direct federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent federal funding. 

W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security, named Justo Hernández as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal recovery operations in the affected area. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION MEDIA SHOULD CONTACT:  FEMA NEWS DESK AT (202) 646-3272 OR FEMA-NEWS-DESK@DHS.GOV

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/08/22/president-obama-signs-puerto-rico-emergency-declaration

Brooke Burns
Busy Philipps
Cameron Diaz
Cameron Richardson
Camilla Belle

Glasser ? Treasury Of We (Delorean Remix)

I love Glasser, and I love Delorean. This remix is so distincly Delorean that it hurts, complete with big buildup into big beat drop. It brings me back to my fond memories in Barcelona last month, where I was fortunate enough to see the band live on their home turf along with about a hundred of my closest Spanish hipster friends.

Glasser – Treasury Of We (Delorean Remix)
[via]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/dailybeatz/~3/f0BiIdMXkc8/

Ashley Tisdale
Asia Argento
Aubrey ODay
Audrina Patridge
Autumn Reeser

File:Myusericon.jpg

uploaded "[[File:Myusericon.jpg]]"

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Bali Rodriguez
Bar Refaeli
Beyoncé
Bianca Kajlich
Bijou Phillips

Coverage of Gérard’s little pee illustrates, again, how celebrity culture undermines journalism

Did you raise your eyebrows at the amount of space in print, and time on air, granted to Gérard Depardieu’s peeing-on-a-plane escapade? Or did it strike you as entirely unremarkable that it got the coverage it did?

Tom McGurk, writing in Ireland’s Sunday Business Post, viewed it as a further example of the declining standards of journalism. He asked:

“Is there not something about the sheer utter pointlessness of the whole episode that debases all of us who read about it? Should we not hate ourselves for tamely playing along with the banality of the process?”

He understood the editorial reasoning: Depardieu is famous and that’s justification enough. But McGurk wants us to step back to consider the absurdity of an overweening interest in such matters.

“The presumptions and arrogance of celebrity culture are curiously interesting because they so totally take us all for granted. They invite us to suspend our better judgement and play along with the game.

They never for a moment worry that we might think that the emperor has no clothes and we might be offended by the sheer banality of what they present us with.

Neither do the celebs themselves ever consider that people publicly conducting love affairs with themselves is utterly tedious to listen to or watch.

What is rarely understood about the whole business of celebrity culture is that it’s a massive cottage industry from which large numbers earn a very good living.

At the centre are the celebs and in concentric circles around them are the agents, the journalists, the newspaper and magazine owners, the advertisers and the merchandisers.

It is mutual self-interest subtly disguised as journalism.”

He isn’t the first to wonder at it and, sadly, he won’t be the last. But good for Tom for reminding us once more how nonsensical it is to continue in this vein. He concluded with more rhetorical questions:

“Are we so sure that so many people want their intelligence insulted with banality and mediocrity?

So we get the earth-shattering exclusive that a French actor was caught peeing in a bottle on a commercial flight.

Now that all the standards have been lowered, the flood tide of junk seems to be unstoppable. Is it that our cultural horizons have been so skewed that the lowest common denominator has now become the meridian?”

Source: Sunday Business Post

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2011/aug/23/celebrity-newspapers

Avril Lavigne
Bali Rodriguez
Bar Refaeli
Beyoncé
Bianca Kajlich

Kristin Hersh: ‘I hate music’

In the space of a year, Kristin Hersh landed a record deal, attempted suicide, was diagnosed as schizophrenic, and gave birth. The Throwing Muses star talks about her memoir

At the age of 16 Kristin Hersh was knocked off her bike, sustained a double concussion and started hearing music no one else could hear. This music blew in from the great beyond and bent her to its will. So Hersh formed a band, Throwing Muses, and sang songs in a trance, her head swaying, her gaze cast eerily out over the crowd. It was hard to tell whether the music was a response to her demons, a symptom of demons or ? worst of all ? the demon itself.

For devotees, this only made the Muses seem all the more exciting. The fact that Hersh was wonky, disturbed and in the grip of dark forces was taken as proof of authenticity and exoticism; as central to her appeal as those tremendous riptide vocals or her deft way with a guitar. But the singer saw it differently, and now recoils from those early albums. “My response when people tell me they listen to Throwing Muses is ‘why?’,” she says. “Whatever would you do that for? It’s so ratty. So unappealing, so unattractive. I didn’t like being there and I had to be there. Why would you show up?”

In Edinburgh it’s cold and rainy, a November day three months early. Hersh is at the book festival to discuss her memoir Paradoxical Undressing. The book, culled from her old diaries, covers a pivotal year in the mid-1980s. In one giddying 12-month spell we see her get lost in music, attempt suicide, land a record deal, bag a diagnosis of schizophrenia (later downgraded to bipolar disorder), go on and off lithium and give birth to a son. Against the odds, it’s a jaunty ride. In recounting the tale, Hersh made the decision to leave out “bad people” and avert her eyes when the going got too rough. She looks back not in anger but “with sweetness”.

The songs are held at arm’s length, as if they qualify as bad people, too. They arrive out of nowhere and then turn “evil”, coloured by her bouts with depression, or warped by the Rhode Island squat where she crashes. They come threaded with references to suicide, dead rabbits, blow jobs and infanticide. I have the sense that she’s still unwilling to claim them as her own. “Well, I don’t take credit, but I don’t take blame either,” she explains. “There’s a lot of shame attached. I’ve had people who I love crying because of what those songs made me say.” She shrugs. “But basically I didn’t have a choice.”

From an outside vantage point, her life looks different now. Hersh has just turned 45. In person, she is warm, smart and funny, spilling over with merriment. In the mid-1990s she met and married Billy O’Connell, a former music executive who now serves as her manager. The pair went on to have three sons together to add to the now adult Dylan, whose birth brings Hersh’s memoir to a close. She still writes and records and, praise be, her recent work is as rich and enthralling as those poisonous valentines of old. So all’s well that ends well. Hersh came through a nightmare, pulled herself together and went on to better things.

Except that when I ask how she finally made peace with the music, the singer gently sets me straight. The fact is, she hasn’t. “It’s exactly the same,” she says. “It’s an entity that walks in the room. I now think of it as a gift as well as a curse. But it probably would have been better if I lived without it.”

There’s a line in the book, spoken by Hersh’s stepsister and Throwing Muses bandmate Tanya Donelly. Kristin, she says, doesn’t even like music.

Hersh grins. “Yeah, I hate music. Everyone knows that about me. Even my kids hate music. When they’re watching a kids’ show on TV, as soon as a song comes on, the TV is muted.” She reconsiders. “Maybe hate is the wrong word. We can’t bear it. The intensity of good music is too much to bear. And bad music is so offensive that that’s also too much to bear. I’m in heaven when it’s good, but that doesn’t happen very often. And anyway, you don’t want to be crying over the breakfast table. I don’t want that life.”

She is wary of the romantic notion of a link between great art and mental illness. Maybe, she concedes, in certain circumstances. But in the end the sums don’t add up. “The disease is far more dangerous than the music is valuable.”

She mentions her friend, the US singer Vic Chesnutt, who sang songs of love and loss and who died from an overdose two Christmases ago. “The fact that it killed Vic, it’s not worth it for me,” she says. “I think he’d have been a better man without music. And, even if not, he’d be here. He was more precious to me than he was to himself. And I know that I play that role for people too. My husband has begged me to stop. I’ve tried and it doesn’t work. Vic didn’t even want to. I want to.”

For a few years she turned her back on songwriting, blotted out the noise and attempted to focus on other things. Except that the conversion didn’t take, and the entity would not be denied. Music kicked down the door and stepped in to reclaim its bride. For the time being, it seems, they’re stuck with each other.

Does she ever wonder what would have happened if she’d never fallen off that bike? If she’d never heard those sounds in her head, never sung songs like Delicate Cutters or Hate My Way? Once, she says, she longed to go into scientific research, into academia. “Without music I’d probably have gone on to be the scientist I wanted to be,” she says. “I’d be like me but without this weird ethereal edge. I mean, I love the Earth. I want to be on the Earth. The fact that we’re here, the fact that we’re atoms held together: that’s beauty and meaning enough. But that extra bump on the head was a bit too intense for me.”

A pause. “That’s why Billy wants me to stop. Because every time I write a song, or every time I hear a song that’s real, it triggers a suicidal urge. And it’s not subtle. It says, ‘Do the math, this is right, you’ve got to go.’ Every single time. And he thinks it isn’t right that a mother of children has to fight a suicidal urge that is that attractive. That combination of beauty and death ? it’s inappropriate.”

Is the urge as strong as it was in her teens? “I think it’s a little stronger,” she says.

‘It’s heartbreaking for my kids’

Away from the concerts and book readings, the Hersh family leads a life in motion. They have a habit of moving every year or so, rattling around the US in search of new scenery, fresh terrain. She insists that she has loved everywhere she lives, and that it’s enchanting to not know how the lightswitch works. “But it’s heartbreaking for kids. My youngest, especially, is not enamoured of it. I said to him, ‘We have to keep moving or the adventure will end.’ He said, ‘Yeah. When will the adventure end?’” She giggles. “So I do try to settle down. But after a few days you notice that the view’s not changing.”

Interview over, we prepare to adjourn to the room next door. Hersh has agreed to a quick vox-pop with the Guardian’s video producer, and it’s time for her closeup. I tell her that I’m torn, because I love her music. But if the music is the problem ? and assuming she’s physically able to let it go ? then she’s probably done enough. Hersh nods and says that’s what Billy says, too: that she’s done enough and should quit while she’s ahead. Halfway to the camera, apropos of nothing, she turns back with a question. “But what if we die?” she says. “What if we die and there’s music everywhere?” And she laughs at what a great cosmic joke that would be.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/aug/22/kristin-hersh-memoir-interview-edinburgh

Beyoncé
Bianca Kajlich
Bijou Phillips
Blake Lively
Blu Cantrell

How one photograph can turn a musician into a rock star

From Sinatra to Dylan, the camera has helped to cement the public mythology of some of our greatest artists

From Johnny Cash “flipping the bird” at Jim Marshall’s camera during a soundcheck in San Quentin prison to Robert Mapplethorpe’s portrait of an androgynous Patti Smith in white shirt and braces on the cover of Horses, and the late Amy Winehouse posing provocatively in bed on her wedding day, photography has often spoken louder than words when it comes to enshrining a performer in the public eye.

Over the past 15 years, Proud Galleries in London have carved out a niche as purveyors of classic music photography prints. To celebrate, Proud Chelsea is showing a greatest hits exhibition entitled 20th Century Icons. The show provides ample illustration of photography’s power to help construct, perpetuate ? and occasionally puncture ? the image of the rock star as demigod.

Three photographs stand out: Terry O’Neill’s arresting image of an imperious Frank Sinatra and his bodyguards strolling along a boardwalk in Miami in 1968; Elliott Landy’s portrait of a bucolic Bob Dylan at home in Woodstock in 1969; Ethan Russell’s picture of Keith Richards posing beside an airport customs sign proclaiming a drug-free America in 1972.

In their separate ways, each photo raises questions about fame: about the presence that certain performers have, even offstage, and their willingness to play up to, or subvert, their own status.

O’Neill’s fly-on-the-wall shot of Sinatra looks like a film still, an out-take from a gangster movie or an Oceans Eleven-style caper. In fact, it is a snapshot of Sinatra, his bodyguards and his body double (wearing an identical suit) arriving on the set of a crime film called Lady in Cement, in which Sinatra starred as private investigator Tony Rome.

The photograph’s power resides in its ability to capture Sinatra’s presence: the Sopranos-style minders, the look of admiration from the seated man on the left, the way the singer ? and his double ? both stare hard at the camera, neither offended nor surprised by it. (O’Neill had been introduced to Sinatra by Ava Gardner and was granted unprecedented access to the star.) It dramatises the darker side of Sinatra, a performer whose business interests were allegedly mixed up with the mafia for most of his career, and whose shadier connections were constantly monitored by the FBI.

While O’Neill’s snatched shot plays with the conflicting versions of Sinatra the star and Sinatra the gangster, Ethan Russell found Keith Richards a willing collaborator in his portrait of the artist as a rock’n'roll outlaw. The photographer travelled with the Rolling Stones for part of their infamously dissolute 1972 tour. Russell was, as he later put it, “watching from the sidelines when I noticed the sign. I called Keith over and took two quick snaps. The customs officer threatened to confiscate the film, so I retired quickly. I knew what I had got.”

What he got was one of the first of many shots that shored up Richards’s image as a self-styled rebel, a man who not only lived outside the law but flaunted it. Alongside Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of an elegantly wasted Richards unconscious in his dressing room, this image was key in the myth-making of Richards ? a process the rock star was all too complicit in.

Consider, then, Elliott Landy’s downhome portrait of Bob Dylan, which was used for the back cover of Dylan’s 1969 Nashville Skyline album. It is the antithesis of the Sinatra and Richards photographs: it presents a grinning, bearded Dylan who has embraced a brief period of blissful domesticity, a man attempting to escape the weight of his own mythology.

Dylan had summoned the affable Landy to his house, the fabled Byrdcliffe residence in the woodlands of upstate New York. Though relatively relaxed, Dylan was uncomfortable being photographed, and Landy had to work hard over a few days to put him at ease. It was Dylan, Landy later wrote, who suggested the angle of the shot ? “What about taking one from down there?” ? and Dylan who produced the hat. “Do you think I should wear this?” he asked, smiling as he visualised himself in this silly-looking traditional hat.

The end result presented a man who was a world away from the strung-out singer on the cover of Blonde on Blonde (1966) and a more humble, upfront version of the mysterious Dylan on the cover of his previous album John Wesley Harding (1967).

The Nashville Skyline portrait cemented Dylan’s new image as a family man in retreat from fame and from his own legend. He looks relaxed and approachable, although the shot was as staged and self-serving in its way as Russell’s portrait of the “outlaw” Richards. In a year when America was in the grip of social turbulence and unrest, when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated, and when Richard Nixon first came into office, Dylan repositioned himself as a seemingly unconcerned, low-key, country-style balladeer.

In exploding one myth, Dylan erected another. The Frank Sinatra and Keith Richards portraits may be more directly self-mythologising, but Landy’s portrait of Dylan speaks, in its deceptively quiet way, about the same process: the power of a single image to articulate ? and condense ? the mythology that great artists often construct around themselves in order to survive ? or, in Dylan’s case, to hide behind for a while so that they can reinvent themselves once more.

Now see this

Signs of a Struggle: Photography in the Wake of Postmodernism at London’s V&A is a small retrospective group show that looks at the influence and impact of postmodernism on photography. It includes work by Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince and Jeff Wall, as well as more recent images by Clare Strand and Anne Hardy. A taster for the V&A’s imminent blockbuster, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970 ? 1990 which opens on 24 September.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/aug/23/20th-century-icons-photography-rock

Avril Lavigne
Bali Rodriguez
Bar Refaeli
Beyoncé
Bianca Kajlich

Freezepop:Do You Like My Wang

Redirected page to Freezepop:Do You Like My Wang?

Source: http://lyrics.wikia.com/index.php?title=Freezepop:Do_You_Like_My_Wang&diff=9836763&oldid=prev

Ana Ivanovi
Ana Paula Lemes
Ananda Lewis
Angela Marcello
Angelina Jolie

Remarks by Vice President Biden in a Meeting with Chairman Wu

The Great Hall of the People
Beijing, China

3:34 P.M. (Local)
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  Mr. Vice President, on behalf of the National People’s Congress of China, a very warm welcome.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  It’s a delight to be here.
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  And what a delightful thing to see you again in Beijing.  We had a very good conversation back in September 2009 when I visited the United States, and you were very kind to show me your office.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Mr. Chairman, this is much nicer than my office.  (Laughter.)  
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  Well, I remember I said to you back then that your office was exquisite but not very big. 
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  That's right.  You said that very diplomatically.  (Laughter.)
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  But you said with a great sense of humor that this office is the closest to the President’s office.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  That's right.
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  And that shows its importance.  And your visit is a very important one.  Foreign Minister Yang just told me that you had very good discussions with Vice President Xi.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Yes.
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  You had a deep discussion about issues of mutual interest, and tomorrow you will have meetings with the President and the Premier.  I’m sure that your visit will give new impetus to our bilateral relationship.  We will further promote the steady and sustainable growth of China-U.S. ties.
 
Now, it’s been 10 years since your last visit to China.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Too long.
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  Well, many changes have taken place here.  I’m happy to learn that besides Beijing, you’re also going to Chengdu.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Yes.
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  And you will have more opportunities to engage with the young people, and also opportunities to see the post-earthquake reconstruction there.
 
While the city of Dujiangyan has a culture and civilization of over 2,000 years, I’m sure that trip will help you gain a deeper understanding about China.  I sincerely wish you a very happy stay in China.  And you will leave this country with a very fond memory.  Once again, very warm welcome.
 
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Well, it’s a delight to be here, Mr. Chairman.  As I told you when you were in my office, when I was a chairman, I had a much bigger office.  (Laughter.)  I used to have an important job when I was chairman of the Foreign  Relations Committee.  I had a big office, and a large staff, and then I became Vice President.  (Laughter.)
 
There’s an old joke told by a former Vice President.  He said, I once had two brothers, one went to sea and the other became Vice President.  I never heard from either again. 
 
But unfortunately, your colleagues are hearing from me again and again and again and again.  I beg their indulgence.  We sat together all morning.  The Ambassador has been very gracious, as has the Minister, so I hope they don't mind listening again.
 
As we discussed in my office, Mr. Chairman, you know I now and have since my first visit in 1979 with Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, I’m of the view that this is a central, critical relationship — China and the United States.  I hope this doesn’t sound chauvinistic to other countries, but our mutual success will benefit the whole world.  As the two largest economies in the world, at the moment when the world economic circumstance is uneasy, I think we hold the key together to not only our own prosperity, but to generating growth and jobs worldwide.  And that's the overwhelming reason I’ve come, to talk about jobs and growth; and the — as was phrased this morning, the reordering of our economies — yours and ours.
 
So I’m anxious to talk to you, and I appreciate your hospitality. 
 
CHAIRMAN WU:  Well, thank you for your warm remarks.
 
END
3:41 P.M. (Local)

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/08/18/remarks-vice-president-biden-meeting-chairman-wu

Anna Friel
Anna Kournikova
Anna Paquin
AnnaLynne McCord
Anne Marie Kortright

Tinariwen ? Tassili: Exclusive album stream

Your chance to hear the Tuareg group’s fifth studio album and let us know what you think

Tinariwen fans might be feeling a little spoiled at the moment. First we gave you an exclusive video of the band recording in Algeria, then we joined the Tuareg group in New York for this terrific Observer feature, and then we gave you the chance to download an entire live album.

Now we’re following all that up by letting you listen exclusively to their new album Tassili ? which is described by their former manager as an attempt to “nail down the simple acoustic sound and poetry of ishumar adventurers sitting around a campfire, sharing cigarettes, stories, songs and a guitar. This had always been the context in which Tinariwen’s music was heard before they picked up electric guitars, added bass and percussion and went global.”

You can play it using the widget above, kindly supplied to us by free music streaming service We7.com. Do let us know what you think about the band’s return to their core sound in the comments section below …

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/aug/22/tinariwen-tassili-album-stream

AnnaLynne McCord
Anne Marie Kortright
April Scott
Arielle Kebbel
Ashanti

Shara Nelson: a rare talent who needs help not condemnation

Mental illness is so often mistaken for genius in pop ? unless the sufferer is female, when the world queues to condemn

A friend of mine recently posted a Facebook link to a 90s documentary on former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read’s stalker, the intimidating and clearly quite unwell Blue Tulip Rose Read. “The Pete Tong story reminded me of this,” he quipped. Unaware of the “Pete Tong story” I Googled his name and read, with my heart sinking into my stomach, that he had put a restraining order on singer Shara Nelson.

My band Saint Etienne worked with Nelson on several records after she left Massive Attack. She was very gentle, quite private, and incredibly talented ? give her a backing track and she could ad-lib a fully formed song, and a great one at that, inside 10 minutes. I’ve never met anyone else who could do that. We wrote a song called One Goodbye in Ten together that I’m really proud of, and she sang on our Tiger Bay album. She even came to my wedding. Also, of course, she wrote (not only sang) the lyrics and melody on Unfinished Sympathy, arguably the greatest single of the 90s.

Something, presumably, has gone terribly wrong in her life in the past few years, but nowhere have I read that she is to receive any help ? just a 12-month community order. Mental illness is still more likely to be the butt of jokes than something to invoke compassion or understanding. Aside from my friend’s light treatment of the story, the Big Shot blog has suggested throwing Nelson and Tongy into a Big Brother house with Charlie Sheen. Unfinished sympathy indeed.

With male pop stars, odd behaviour is encouraged. Look at Syd Barrett, lost to the real world, with his barely-there solo albums regarded by rock critics as cosmic insights into the acid-soaked mind. Or Sky Saxon, a legend by dint of freaked-out anecdotes that crush the meagre number of decent Seeds songs.

The same rules don’t seem to apply to women; when Mariah Carey started crying on TV or Britney Spears shaved her head, people tutted and frowned. As an out-of-condition, lethargic and clearly unwell Britney debuted her new single Gimme More live on TV in 2007, the BBC’s David Willis declared it would “go down in the history books as being one of the worst to grace the MTV awards”. There was no sympathy; suddenly it was open season. The New York Times dismissed Gimme More as “almost nothing but slithery come-ons and defiant invitations to nightclub decadence”. Does that sound like such a bad thing? Sick woman, soft target.

The media likes its safely kookie ladies ? Björk, Bat for Lashes, Kate Bush ? but confronted with real strangeness, it gets a bit Witchfinder General. Let’s hope that Pete Tong can now get some peace and quiet in his life, and that Shara Nelson receives the help she needs to get herself back on track and her voice back on the radio.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/aug/23/shara-nelson

Ashley Scott
Ashley Tappin
Ashley Tisdale
Asia Argento
Aubrey ODay