Search Results for: The Maine

JC Chasez candidly describes his new single as being “about your girlfriend getting knocked up by another man.” So just what inspired him and the song’s producer, Justin Timberlake, to write “Until Yesterday” ? “It’s not autobiographical,” Chasez promptly noted. “We just wanted to push the limits. It just seems like everybody has heard a breakup song a hundred times or a thousand times. And they’ve heard, ‘I don’t like you anymore’ a thousand times, or ‘You make me sick, you used me, blah blah blah.’ So we thought we’d pepper it with some drama and it made it an… Read more »

If it looks for a Duff, and repeatedly tries to contact a Duff…it just might be a stalker. An 18-year-old Russian immigrant arrested for threatening Hilary Duff was sentenced Friday to 117 days in Los Angeles County jail and five years probations after pleading no contest to a felony stalking charge. Police picked up Maksim Myaskovskiy in November after a private investigator from the security firm Duff uses for protection said that the teenager had threatened to kill the starlet at an industry event. The accused originally pleaded innocent but he remained in custody, unable to come up with $1… Read more »

LOS ANGELES – Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris resents that MTV and other cable music channels built multibillion-dollar businesses around videos given away by record companies anxious to promote their artists. So when he saw his own grandson watching 50 Cent’s “In Da Club” video on Yahoo, it got him asking: “How much are we getting paid for that?” The answer – nothing – led Morris to pull all of Universal’s videos from the giant Web portal until it agreed to a licensing deal in 2005. He wrangled similar arrangements from Time Warner Inc.’s AOL and other Internet portals… Read more »

The meeting between two of the most improbable cultural icons of the 1970s lasted all of 30 minutes, but it has fascinated the nation for years. A photo of a cloaked and bejeweled Elvis Presley solemnly shaking hands with a grim-faced President Nixon remains the No. 1 requested document from the National Archives, nearly four decades after the secret meeting took place on Dec. 21, 1970. Now, on what would be the King’s 72nd birthday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Birthplace is giving the curious public a good, long look at the relics of the coming together of The… Read more »

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments – including an angioplasty – in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles. Ford was an accidental president, Nixon’s… Read more »

One sunny afternoon not long ago, Dick Copaken sat in a booth at Daniel, one of those hushed, exclusive restaurants on Manhattan’s Upper East Side where the waiters glide spectrally fro table to table. He was wearing a starched button-down shirt and a blue blazer. Every strand of his thinning hair was in place, and he spoke calmly and slowly, his large pink Charlie Brow head bobbing along evenly as he did. Copaken spent many years as a partner at the white-shoe Washington, D.C., firm Covington & Burling, and he has a lawyer’s gravitas. One of his bes friends calls… Read more »

New York – Radio’s playlist liberation movement hatched in late 2001 at a birthday party in Winnipeg, Manitoba. A radio was blasting when Howard Kroeger, director of operations and programing for CHUM Broadcasting’s Winnipeg stations, arrived at his friend’s 40th-birthday bash. It was a competitor’s classic rock station, and Kroeger used the occasion to conduct an informal focus group among the partygoers, most in their mid- to late 30s. Whenever Boston, the Cars, Meatloaf, Supertramp or some other ’70s staple came on, it got an overwhelming thumbs-up from the Molson-enhanced crowd. But there was a noticeable lack of enthusiasm when… Read more »

Ever since that fateful February day when Blink-182 announced they were going on an indefinite hiatus, fans of the band have been clamoring to know just what the future holds for their beloved Mark, Tom and Travis. For the most part the guys have remained silent, aside from a few vaguely worded statements from drummer-turned-reality-TV-star Travis Barker. So MTV News sat down with singer/bassist Mark Hoppus, and while he claimed the group’s current hiatus had been planned for some time, he also made it sound like Blink fans shouldn’t hold their breath for a reunion. “We’ve always planned to have… Read more »

Los Angeles – Maybe Mario Vazquez suspected the “American Idol” judges would be in a foul mood this week. On Tuesday night’s show, Randy Jackson managed to be as dismissive as Simon Cowell, who remained true to form. And even Paula Abdul – yes, sweetie pie Paula – turned a bit sour. “That was very safe and boring,” she said of Carrie Underwood’s performance of “When Will I Be Loved,” inflicting serious wounds, or at least paper cuts. Jackson employed a scalpel. “That definitely sounded like I was in a bad hotel,” he said of Anthony Fedorov’s “Breaking Up is… Read more »

“SYNERGY AND OTHER LIES” would be a good first reading assignment for Sir Howard Stringer, Sony’s new chief executive, to be followed by “The Synergy Myth.” Then Sir Howard should recognize that the Sony he inherits is constitutionally incapable of making one (electronics) plus one (entertainment) equal three. Both books were written by Harold Geneen, the number cruncher who directed International Telephone and Telegraph during its heyday in the 1960’s. He engineered 350 mergers and acquisitions, which brought such names as Hartford, Avis, Sheraton and Madison Square Garden under one roof. Mr. Geneen, however, harbored no illusions that ITT’s individual… Read more »