Yes, it's another chance to see Castle and Beckett hooking up onscreen, without them actually hooking up (oh, those smart "Castle" writers!), but if Castle's private eye guy is really the cream in Beckett's femme fatale character's coffee as she says, why is he kissing another woman?

Check out our fun first look at this stylishly cinematic episode.

Athletes and celebrities had different strategies as they prepared to play in the sixth annual DirectTV Celebrity Beach Bowl. The event teams up stars with former and current professional athletes for a flag football game on the sand.

Assistant coach Neil Patrick Harris admitted he didn't know much about the game, so he was going to rely on his teammates to make the calls.

"I really am not competitive at all. I quite frankly don't know what is going to happen or what we are playing," the actor said with a smile. "I know it is football of some sort, but it might be flag football, touch, two-handed touch. I don't know."

Lucky for him, legend Joe Montana was on his team.

"I hate to lose," Montana said ahead of the game. "I am not very good at losing. You try to go into this as it's going to be a fun game, but as soon as you get involved ... if they score, you go, `OK.' You have got to at least keep it competitive. I can't just go through the motions. I want to win."

Sparks arrived with her dad, Phillippi Sparks, a former New York Giant. The former "American Idol" champ says she wasn't expecting intense action.

"I know it is not tackle. They are just grabbing the flag, but who knows, we could get tripped up and stuff, so I am glad there is sand," she said. "I am nervous about it getting in my eyes if I fall but other than that, it is going to be a lot of fun. I am excited. "

As for the other big game in Indianapolis, Sanders said he would not pick the New England Patriots or the New York Giants to win on Sunday.

"I am a former player. I am not rooting for anybody. I just want a good quality game. I just want the fans to be entertained for three and a half hours. I want Madonna to come out and do the doggone thing like she can do it," he said of her halftime performance.

Other big names at the event included Peyton Manning, Chace Crawford, Cam Newton, Terrell Owens and David Arquette, who said he's been having a great time in Indianapolis.

"What I really like about Super Bowl in general is that it introduces you to another city," he said. "Indianapolis is a beautiful city a lot of people might not know about or have not visited. To come here and to meet the people and see the city, that is my favorite part actually."

___

Online: www.directtv.com

___

Alicia Quarles is the AP's Global Entertainment and Lifestyles Editor. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciaquarles

Tebow said he wouldn't rule out a potential future run for office during an interview with Dave Feherty -- host of the Golf Channel's "Feherty Live" -- that's set to air 10 p.m. Saturday.

"I don't know -- it could be something in my future," Tebow said, according to Politico. "If it's something I care about, possibly."

Though Tebow has sparked controversy over his strong religious views, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates have worked to associate themselves with the famous quarterback. Texas governor Rick Perry -- who dropped out of the GOP primary race ahead of the South Carolina primary -- even once compared himself to the athlete during a debate, saying "I hope I am the Tim Tebow of the Iowa caucuses."

Despite the fact that several GOP hopefuls have reached out to the NFL star hoping to win his backing, Tebow has yet to endorse a presidential candidate.

Griffin O'Neal had faced up to four years in state prison at his sentencing Friday.

O'Neal pleaded guilty to two felony charges of driving under the influence and possession of a firearm by a felon. He was on probation for a 2007 when the crash occurred in August. Prosecutors say he tested positive for several drugs at the time.

O'Neal missed his sentencing hearing last month. His lawyer Heather Boxeth has said O'Neal relapsed by drinking alcohol after five years of sobriety and was in rehab.

Paul hit at his GOP rivals for meeting with the billionaire real estate mogul in 2011, the State Column reports. Mitt Romney, who met with Trump in late September but denied media access to the encounter, received Trump's endorsement Feb. 2, just days ahead of the 2012 Nevada Caucuses.

In an interview with Fox 13 News, Paul downplayed the value of Trump's endorsement, saying he "can't imagine why anybody talks about him."

"I don't think he has that much credibility," Paul said. "I never went up to see him. I don't understand why people pay any attention to him."

This isn't the first time Paul has jabbed Trump. He released an earlier statement asking "why anyone would care" about Trump's endorsement of Romney.

Paul also refused to participate in a Trump-moderated debate in early December, calling it "wildly inappropriate." Trump's debate appearance was eventually canceled.

Trump caused confusion this week when reports initially surfaced that he would endorse Newt Gingrich in the Republican presidential race. Trump's eventual endorsement of Romney carried an element of surprise considering Trump's history of bashing Romney.

Earlier in the week, some criticized the supermodel and wife of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady after an email she reportedly sent to friends and family encouraging them to pray for her husband's success in the Super Bowl game against the New York Giants was leaked.

"I found that very endearing," Lutz said about the email. "Very sweet to have a wife do that for her husband and give that positive energy. I think we all need that in the world. To listen to the news broadcasters ... be negative towards that, I think it is really (bad)."

The die-hard football fan, who just attended the Pro Bowl, kicked off Super Bowl weekend by attending a Friday night party hosted by Audi. Lutz, who has been to Super Bowl weekend before, said he wants the Patriots to win Sunday.

"They have a great team. Solid team," he said. "I fell in love with Tom Brady. Met him once. Really great guy and they have a really solid team. Even if Tom isn't playing, their team is solid."

The actor may be known for his rock solid body, but says it dwarfs in comparison to the NFL players.

"All of these guys are definitely big guys," Lutz said with a smile. "I feel small. It is a weird feeling because in Hollywood you work with actors who are small. I love sports. I love football."

Other attendees at the Audi party included director Spike Lee, football great Jim Brown, Sherri Shepherd of ABC's "The View," and "Glee" star Matthew Morrison.

Morrison said he's rooting for a Giants win: "I lived in New York for 13 years." He also said he was enjoying the energy in the city: "They're real die-hard football fans here."

Audi wasn't the only party in Indianapolis on Friday night. There were several celebrity soirees, including one thrown by Playboy, where Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers hung out in the VIP area as lingerie-clad acrobats dangled from ropes from the ceiling.

___

Online:

Kellan Lutz: www.kellanlutz.com/index.html

___

AP Music Editor Nekesa Mumbi Moody contributed to this report.

__

Alicia Quarles is the AP's Global Entertainment and Lifestyles editor. Follow her on Twitter (at)aliciaquarles

 

But then, at my daughter's confirmation when she turned 16, the rabbi delivered a sermon railing against Madonna, her wantonness, the terrible influence she was having on teenage girls, instructing them to be Material Girls instead of Girl Scouts, exhorting them to be "Like a Virgin," instead of a real virgin. The language in her songs he couldn't bring himself repeat neither in nor out of temple. And her clothes! "Madonna," the rabbi said, "was promoting cleavage on the bima," meaning that the girls who followed her fashion wore low-cut dresses when they gave their bat mitzvah speeches.

Like the teens themselves, just tell me that I "shouldn't" listen to or watch something and I have to. I just do!

When my daughter wasn't home, I began to surreptitiously watch music videos on MTV, and everything my rabbi said was confirmed for me when I saw Madonna in a scanty black leather costume, a studded iron collar clamped around her neck as she writhed in chains while singing a sultry song. But the more Madonna videos I watched, the more astonished I was with her talent. No matter what color she dyed her hair: black, blonde, brown, however short or long she wore it, she was an iconic beauty that I was sure would be emblazoned on the world's consciousness forever like Marilyn Monroe or Marlene Dietrich. She has a slide trombone voice that can move you in any register. She can sound throaty, nasal, or clipped and tinny as a plucked electric guitar string. Her voice throbs through audiences, working them up to a frenzy. And she can deliver her lyrics with the passion of a Holy Roller speaking in tongues, yet you can understand each word and carry the song away with you.

Although I had to hand it to her as an entertainer, like my rabbi, I didn't want my daughter to dance like Madonna whose choreographer might have used the Kama Sutra for inspiration. I didn't want my daughter flipping through the pages of Madonna's Sex book where Madonna looked like a Richard Lindner painting -- hard-edged, veering on the abstract, but aggressively and assertively erotic. But would I tell my daughter not to listen to Madonna? Absolutely not, unless I wanted her to be Madonna's greatest fan.

Hedging, I asked her, "So, what do you think of Madonna?"

"I like Guns N' Roses better," she said.

Phew, I thought.

And then, two years later when my daughter was on break from college, we were in the Museum of Modern Art looking at a show of Cindy Sherman's photographs of herself as different characters such as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, Sophia Loren in Two Women, challenging the traditional role of artist and model and how women were viewed in society, I started to think of all those Madonna videos I'd watched, how she'd entered a character so completely and left indelible images in a viewer's mind. Who could forget her lying in the coffin in "Like a Prayer" or dancing before a backdrop of burning crosses? Who could forget her in the man-tailored suit and short, combed-back, short hair singing, "Express Yourself"? At the end of the exhibit, I read on a placard that Madonna had sponsored Cindy Sherman's show. I stopped, live in my tracks, and reread it. I asked one of the docents about it. She told me that Madonna had not only backed Cindy Sherman's show, but that she was a great supporter of other women artists.

I began to chat Madonna up to my daughter. "Did you hear that?" I said. "Madonna is not only bringing herself forward, but all her sisters, too. She's a real feminist!"

My daughter, who had lived through the consciousness-raising groups I held in my basement, yawned a jaw-clicking yawn. Sure, she yawned. She was never forced to wear a panty girdle or go to a commuter college because "girls should always live at home before they're married." My daughter kayaked rapids, climbed mountains, and went off to college where her dorm bathroom was coed. How liberated can you get?

I dropped the subject. But I never dropped my admiration or interest in Madonna. She continues to inspire me. She has never stopped touring or innovating or broadening her interests. She's constantly breaking new ground. She is a philanthropist, raising awareness of the orphans in Malawi. She's published children's books and launched a clothing line with her daughter and who knows what she'll do next? Whenever I fall into the trap of I'm too old to do this ore that, I think of her still going strong in a youth culture, and I'm renewed.

I'm now confirmed in my belief that Madonna is a great example for my daughter and all our daughters. And to think I have my rabbi to thank for this revelation!

In an elegant suite at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, pop music's grande dame prepares to field overenthusiastic questions about her directorial feature debut, "W.E.," from a group of journalists representing her most devoted (and, undoubtedly, most discerning) audience: the gay male community.

As for the lady herself, she is not just surprisingly petite but stunningly, even disarmingly, beautiful. Dressed in a figure-hugging, deep indigo sheath dress, with her hair in loose, strawberry-blonde curls, Madonna knows she can work this crowd the Ciccone way: with a solid dose of old-fashioned sass.

"Let's start with levity," she teases, a point emphasized with a smile, a subtle wink no doubt implied.

As she gears up for yet another cultural assault, Madonna is once again proving herself not just as a woman of many talents, but also a consummate multi-tasker. Not only will February bring about the release of "W.E.," but she's also got a new album, "MDNA," and a highly anticipated, certain-to-be-spectacular Super Bowl XLVI halftime performance in her 2012 pipeline; she's also hinted at, though not yet confirmed, a forthcoming concert tour. It's exactly the type of all-encompassing creative blitz her fans haven't witnessed since her "Blond Ambition" and "Erotica" years, another new era she herself describes as "busy."

Today, however, Madonna's first order of business is her new film, which she not only directed but also co-wrote with Alek Keshishian, the director of her 1991 concert documentary "Truth or Dare." She has already had to endure ample scrutiny of "W.E.," which tells the true-life story of Wallis Simpson (a sublime Andrea Riseborough), the American divorcee for whom England's King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy) abdicated the throne in 1936, as seen through the eyes of Wally (Abbie Cornish), an unhappy trophy wife living in Manhattan, circa 1998.

Many film critics have likened the film's parallel narrative to both "Julie & Julia" and "The Hours," but during an early screening, I kept thinking about "Desperately Seeking Susan," the 1985 cult favorite in which Madonna herself starred as a downtown vagabond idolized by Rosanna Arquette's bored suburbanite through a newspaper's personal columns. To be fair, "W.E." certainly has more grandiose aspirations than the comedic "Susan" -- in this case, to establish Simpson, whom Madonna feels was "dealt with in a very unfair way in the history books," as a figure worthy not just of praise, but also of serving as a "spiritual guide" for a contemporary woman.

The results are both visually stunning and well acted, if frequently uneven; our director's heart seems more invested in the historical story, which is considerably more intriguing and better executed in its specifics, than the modern one. Still, Madonna insists a straightforward biopic of Simpson was never her intention.

"I don't think it's possible to tell the story of one person, from beginning to end, in two hours," she explains. "It was important for me that I establish that, as much research that I did and close as I tried to stay to the truth, it is a point of view."

Watching the film, it is easy to see why Madonna would sympathize with Simpson, who remains as politically divisive a figure in Britain as Eva Peron was in Argentina during her heyday. Aside from a mutual flair for chic fashion and elaborate hairstyles, how exactly does Simpson compare to the Argentine first lady, whom Madonna portrayed to great acclaim in 1996's "Evita"?

"I think people have a tendency to feel intimidated by the strength of these women," Madonna says. "A lot of people who write history books, and humanity in general, have a tendency to diminish women or undermine their accomplishments...or their intelligence." And is the Queen of Pop drawing from her own experience in that assessment? "Well, sure," she adds with a laugh. "Strong women are held under a microscope and they're judged and measured in a different way. It's just the law of the universe, it seems, right now."

As for the Super Bowl, Madonna remains tantalizingly tight-lipped, other than to exclaim her fatigue throughout the preparation process-- "It's all too much! I'm late for everything right now!" -- but those who fear the famed provocateur has softened as her record-breaking career enters its fourth decade would no doubt be appeased by her "unconventional" approach to parenting. "I realize to a certain extent my children are raised with privilege," she said of her four children (Lourdes, 15; Rocco, 11; David, 6, and Mercy, 5). "Now my children come to me to they often want to do things because everybody else does them. And I say to them, 'That's just the worst reason I've ever heard for doing something.' And I encourage them to question things, to take responsibility for their behavior, to think outside the box, [as] they will have a different set of challenges."

Exactly how successful "W.E." will be remains to be seen, but Madonna seems aware her shaky Hollywood track record means critics will be more than prepared to scorch it. She acknowledges this point several weeks later at the film's New York red carpet premiere: "Maybe it seems unusual that I would choose to make a film. But it's important to note that I think of myself as a storyteller. When I write songs, I tell stories; when I put on shows and I perform onstage, I'm telling a story...and with this film, I've told a story."

And as long as she keeps telling them, we'll likely keep listening.

Can't wait for Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show? Enjoy HuffPost Gay Voices' picks for her best live performances below:

According to Just Jared, Woodley not only attended the event but was honored for "bringing an emotional complexity to a character rarely seen at her age" in the Academy Award nominated film.

The acclaimed actress glowed in her peers' positive words, sporting a navy leather minidress.

Check out Shainlene's flawless red carpet look below:

Madonna
Photo: Martin Fraser/ Getty Images

On Sunday night, Madonna will join an exclusive club that includes the likes of Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Diana Ross and, uh, Up With People when she performs at halftime of Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis.

Yes, you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger stage than the big game — last year's Super Bowl was watched by some 111 million Americans — which is why the producers of the halftime festivities always recruit the biggest stars to perform (except for 1999, when Big Bad Voodoo Daddy inexplicably found their way into the proceedings). And Madonna most certainly fits that bill, which is why, while we're not quite sure what she'll bring to the Super Bowl stage — aside from her promise that it'll be "the greatest show on earth" — we're reasonably confident that it'll be a performance folks will be talking about on Monday. And probably Tuesday too.

Of course, if Madge wants to secure her spot among the all-time greatest Super Bowl halftime performances, well, she'll definitely have to deliver the goods. Over the years, some of the most prodigious talents have gotten lost in all of the ephemera that comes with a Super Bowl slot (lasers, explosions, confetti, marching bands, will.i.am), but still others have risen to the challenge, delivering performances that have thrilled, chilled and even made us forget about the game itself. Here's a look at our favorite Super Bowl halftime performances.

Check out photos of past Super Bowl halftime shows!

Diana Ross, Super Bowl XXX: The dynamic Diana stole the show in 1996 with a classy, brassy performance that featured nearly as many of her biggest hits as it did costume changes. Her voice was in prime form, powerful enough to outshine a full gospel choir, an army of tuxedo-clad dancers and, of course, end-zone pyrotechnics. But it was her exit — lifted from the stage via helicopter, while blowing kisses as the chorus of "Take Me Higher" blasted through the stadium — that truly put this one over the top.

Prince, Super Bowl XLI: Not even a near-constant downpour could dampen this 2007 performance from the Purple One, who stalked across a custom "symbol" stage (while wearing a kerchief tied around his head), wailed on approximately 46 guitar solos, begged the audience to "take my picture," out-watted the famed FAMU marching band, covered the Foo Fighters and even managed to freak out network censors by casting a lengthy (and quite phallic) shadow from behind a piece of fabric. So, you know, it was just your average Prince show. Oh, and then he did "Purple Rain" in the rain. Meta.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Super Bowl XLIII: They opened with Springsteen leaning on Clarence Clemons (a nod to the cover of 1975's Born to Run), begged the viewing audience to "put down the chicken fingers," and then absolutely, positively destroyed the stage in Tampa with a set that featured classics like "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," "Born to Run" and "Glory Days." And then Springsteen finished things off by shouting, "I'm going to Disneyland!"As several fans have come to say, this wasn't a halftime performance, it was a football game played around a Springsteen concert. As an added bonus, this is also the performance that gave us the now-immortal meme.

Michael Jackson, Super Bowl XXVII: It started with the late, great King of Pop magically leaping from the Rose Bowl scoreboards to his stage on the 50-yard line, featured a staggering 3,000 dancers, some killer choreography (the Moonwalk!) and a career-spanning medley of Jackson's hits (everything from "Billie Jean" to "Black or White"). And as if MJ's performance wasn't testament to his superstardom, how about the 90-second ovation he received before ever singing a word? It was almost enough to make one young writer forget the Bills were on their way to losing a third-straight Super Bowl. Almost.

U2, Super Bowl XXXVI: If there is another band on the planet more capable of seizing the moment than U2, well, we'd like to meet them. In this case, that meant performing at the first Super Bowl since the 9/11 attacks, before an audience of millions still reeling and recovering. And, in typical form, Bono and company didn't shrink from the spotlight. Though there were more than a few highlights, their solemn, spiritual performance of "Where the Streets Have No Name" — which saw the names of all the victims of 9/11 projected behind them — was not only the most memorable of the night, it's without a doubt the most memorable (and chill-inducing) in Super Bowl history. And then, to top it all off, Bono pulled back his jacket to reveal an American flag. Game over.

What songs do you want Madonna to perform during the halftime show? Leave your comments on our Facebook page!

• Madonna

The resourceful and aggressive paparazzi have managed to track down her estranged husband Ashton Kutcher, her ex-husband Bruce Willis and her daughter Rumer Willis, but have yet to get that elusive shot of Moore.

Huffington Post Business compared three key assets -- real estate, endorsements and salary -- to determine a winner. (Hint: It's the three-time Super Bowl champ with the supermodel wife. But as they might be saying in New York, who's counting?)

Our super disclaimer: Reported figures do vary, and endorsement estimates do not include hidden incentives and player performance bonuses. Other real estate transactions may have occurred without being publicized. This isn't science; it's the Super Bowl.

Longtime family friend Suzanne Mados said Gazzara died Friday in Manhattan. Mados, who owned the Wyndham Hotel, where celebrities such as Peter Falk and Martin Sheen stayed, said he died after being placed in hospice care for cancer. She and her husband helped marry Gazzara and his wife, German-born Elke Krivat, at their hotel.

Gazzara was a proponent of method acting, in which the performer attempts to take on the thoughts and emotions of the character he's playing, and it helped him achieve stardom early in his career with two stirring Broadway performances.

In 1955, he originated the role of Brick Pollitt, the disturbed alcoholic son and failed football star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He left the show after only seven months to take on an equally challenging role, Johnny Pope, the drug addict in "A Hatful of Rain." It earned him his first of three Tony Award nominations.

In 1965, he moved on to TV stardom in "Run for Your Life," a drama about a workaholic lawyer who, diagnosed with a terminal illness, quits his job and embarks on a globe-trotting attempt to squeeze a lifetime of adventures into the one or two years he has left. He was twice nominated for Emmys during the show's three-year run.

Gazzara made his movie debut in 1957 in "The Strange One," Calder Willingham's bitter drama about brutality at a Southern military school. He had previously played the lead role of the psychopathic cadet, Jocko de Paris, on Broadway in Willingham's stage version of the story, "End of Man."

He followed that film with "Anatomy of a Murder," in which he played a man on trial for murdering a tavern keeper who had been accused of raping his wife.

After "Run for Your Life" ended in 1968, Gazzara spent the rest of his career alternating between movies and the stage, although rarely with the critical acclaim he had enjoyed during his early years.

In the 1970s, he teamed with his friend director John Cassavetes for three films, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night." In another Cassavetes film, he appeared with Falk, and the two became friends (it was Cassavetes who introduced them to the Wyndham Hotel, according to a 1982 article in New York magazine).

Gena Rowlands appeared with Gazzara in "Opening Night," which also starred Cassavetes. Cassavetes and Rowlands were married; he died in 1989. Falk died last year.

"It breaks my heart to have this era come to an end. Ben meant so much to all of us. To our families. To John. To Peter. To have them gone now is devastating to me," she said in a statement.

She said her prayers and thoughts went out to "all his loyal and wonderful fans throughout the world."

Rita Moreno, who played Gazzara's wife in the 2000 film "Blue Moon," said, "He was a wonderful man, and I so enjoyed working with him. I wish I could have had the pleasure more often."

Other Gazzara films included "The Bridge at Remagen," "The Young Doctors," "They All Laughed," "The Thomas Crown Affair," "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium," "The Spanish Prisoner," "Stag" and "Road House." He also made several films in Italy.

He appeared on Broadway in revivals of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Awake and Sing!" "Strange Interlude" and several other plays.

Gazzara began acting in television in 1952 with roles on the series "Danger" and "Kraft Television Theater." Before landing "Run for Your Life," he played a police detective in the series "Arrest and Trial," which lasted two seasons.

Born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York on Aug. 28, 1930, he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a cold-water flat with a bathtub in the kitchen. His parents were immigrants from Sicily who met and married in New York, and his first language was Italian. Although he was baptized under his birth name, his parents always called him Ben or Benny.

As a child he became fascinated with movies, and after giving his first performance, in a Boys Club play, he knew he had found his life's work.

"I disliked high school," he once said, "and after two years of it I left without telling anyone at home."

Instead he spent his days in movie theaters.

He entered Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop in 1948. Eighteen months later he auditioned for the Actors Studio run by Lee Strasberg and was accepted.

The school was a beehive of activity in those days, turning out such followers of method acting as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Barbara Bel Geddes, Shelly Winters, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Rod Steiger and Julie Harris.

"There's a lot of voodoo about the Actors Studio," Gazzara told The Associated Press in 1966. "In the best sense it was a place for professionals to stay in touch with their craft, where newcomers and professionals mingled, to grow, to try parts they would never get in the professional theater and to even fall on their face."

Gazzara's first two marriages, to actresses Louise Erikson and Janice Rule, ended in divorce.

While filming "Inchon" in Korea in 1981, he met Krivat. They married the following year, and the union endured.

"Elke saved my life," Gazzara said in 1999. "When I met her, I was drinking too much, fooling around too much, killing myself. She put romance and hope back in my life."

He adopted Krivat's daughter, Danja, as his own. She recalled on Friday that he was a "complex soul" and that his role as a father to her and his own daughter was challenging.

"I adored Ben, and so did his daughter," she said. "But we both had difficulty with him ... I think the difficulty lay in his complexity of being an actor and those layers that you have, that you bring with you."

Besides Danja, Gazzara is survived by his wife, daughter Elizabeth and a brother.

___

Former Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

From lingerie bowls and puppy bowls to marathons of "Ab Fab" and "Law & Order" and new episodes of compelling dramas, we rounded up 18 other things worth watching on the NFL's biggest day of the year.

And we're not going to tell you what to do, but it's worth noting that all of these viewing experiences, like most, can be greatly enhanced with some Super Bowl snacks. Skip the game, keep the chips and dips and enjoy!

Longtime family friend Suzanne Mados said Gazzara died Friday in Manhattan. Mados, who owned the Wyndham Hotel, where celebrities such as Peter Falk and Martin Sheen stayed, said he died after being placed in hospice care for cancer. She and her husband helped marry Gazzara and his wife, German-born Elke Krivat, at their hotel.

Gazzara was a proponent of method acting, in which the performer attempts to take on the thoughts and emotions of the character he's playing, and it helped him achieve stardom early in his career with two stirring Broadway performances.

In 1955, he originated the role of Brick Pollitt, the disturbed alcoholic son and failed football star in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." He left the show after only seven months to take on an equally challenging role, Johnny Pope, the drug addict in "A Hatful of Rain." It earned him his first of three Tony Award nominations.

In 1965, he moved on to TV stardom in "Run for Your Life," a drama about a workaholic lawyer who, diagnosed with a terminal illness, quits his job and embarks on a globe-trotting attempt to squeeze a lifetime of adventures into the one or two years he has left. He was twice nominated for Emmys during the show's three-year run.

Gazzara made his movie debut in 1957 in "The Strange One," Calder Willingham's bitter drama about brutality at a Southern military school. He had previously played the lead role of the psychopathic cadet, Jocko de Paris, on Broadway in Willingham's stage version of the story, "End of Man."

He followed that film with "Anatomy of a Murder," in which he played a man on trial for murdering a tavern keeper who had been accused of raping his wife.

After "Run for Your Life" ended in 1968, Gazzara spent the rest of his career alternating between movies and the stage, although rarely with the critical acclaim he had enjoyed during his early years.

In the 1970s, he teamed with his friend director John Cassavetes for three films, "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" and "Opening Night." In another Cassavetes film, he appeared with Falk, and the two became friends (it was Cassavetes who introduced them to the Wyndham Hotel, according to a 1982 article in New York magazine.)

Gena Rowlands appeared with Gazzara in "Opening Night," which also starred Cassavetes. Cassavetes and Rowlands were married; he died in 1989. Falk died last year.

"It breaks my heart to have this era come to an end. Ben meant so much to all of us. To our families. To John. To Peter. To have them gone now is devastating to me," she said in a statement.

She said her prayers and thoughts went out to "all his loyal and wonderful fans throughout the world."

Rita Moreno, who played Gazzara's wife in the 2000 film "Blue Moon," said, "He was a wonderful man, and I so enjoyed working with him. I wish I could have had the pleasure more often."

Other Gazzara films included "The Bridge at Remagen," "The Young Doctors," "They All Laughed," "The Thomas Crown Affair," "If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium," "The Spanish Prisoner," "Stag" and "Road House." He also made several films in Italy.

He appeared on Broadway in revivals of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "Awake and Sing!" "Strange Interlude" and several other plays.

Gazzara began acting in television in 1952 with roles on the series "Danger" and "Kraft Television Theater." Before landing "Run for Your Life," he played a police detective in the series "Arrest and Trial," which lasted two seasons.

Born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York on Aug. 28, 1930, he grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in a cold-water flat with a bathtub in the kitchen. His parents were immigrants from Sicily who met and married in New York, and his first language was Italian. Although he was baptized under his birth name, his parents always called him Ben or Benny.

As a child he became fascinated with movies, and after giving his first performance, in a Boys Club play, he knew he had found his life's work.

"I disliked high school," he once said, "and after two years of it I left without telling anyone at home."

Instead he spent his days in movie theaters.

He entered Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop in 1948. Eighteen months later he auditioned for the Actors Studio run by Lee Strasberg and was accepted.

The school was a beehive of activity in those days, turning out such followers of method acting as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Barbara Bel Geddes, Shelly Winters, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Rod Steiger and Julie Harris.

"There's a lot of voodoo about the Actors Studio," Gazzara told The Associated Press in 1966. "In the best sense it was a place for professionals to stay in touch with their craft, where newcomers and professionals mingled, to grow, to try parts they would never get in the professional theater and to even fall on their face."

Gazzara's first two marriages, to actresses Louise Erikson and Janice Rule, ended in divorce.

While filming "Inchon" in Korea in 1981, he met Krivat. They married the following year, and the union endured.

"Elke saved my life," Gazzara said in 1999. "When I met her, I was drinking too much, fooling around too much, killing myself. She put romance and hope back in my life."

He adopted Krivat's daughter, Danja, as his own. She recalled on Friday that he was a "complex soul" and that his role as a father to her and his own daughter was challenging.

"I adored Ben, and so did his daughter," she said. "But we both had difficulty with him ... I think the difficulty lay in his complexity of being an actor and those layers that you have, that you bring with you."

Besides Danja, Gazzara is survived by his wife, daughter Elizabeth and a brother.

___

Former Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

In the fall of 2000, I remember speaking with Glamour, about how I wouldn't even consider voting for a candidate who didn't support reproductive rights -- including a woman's right to choose.

It's hard to believe that in 2012 birth control is being threatened, and that there are candidates who think the U.S. Supreme Court victory from 1965, giving married couples the right to use birth control, should be overturned.

And there are some candidates supporting "personhood" policies that could make birth control illegal for all women.

We all know that birth control is essential to women's health. And access to affordable birth control is essential to keeping women healthy.

Let me tell you the story of Courtney E., from Chicago, Ill.

Diagnosed at the age of 17, Courtney suffers from endometriosis -- a health disorder that can cause damage to a woman's reproductive organs. During her college years and in graduate school, she relied on Planned Parenthood to provide her with the low-cost birth control needed to control the damage. Without Planned Parenthood, she wouldn't have been able to afford the medications that kept her healthy enough to become the mother she is today.

There are many other women out there like Courtney -- women who need access to affordable birth control.

So when politicians talk about eliminating Title X, the nation's family planning program, they are talking about taking away affordable birth control from than five million women and men in this country.

And when they say they want to repeal the Affordable Care Act -- they are talking about taking away one of the most significant advances for women's health in a generation -- birth control without co-pays.

So, this year, in this election, I am committing to watching even more vigilantly. And making sure my friends, family, everyone understands what's at stake. I truly can't imagine a more important election for us to make our voices heard. I hope you'll join me.

For more from Julianne Moore make sure to follow her on twitter @_Juliannemoore.

This piece originally appeared on the Women Are Watching blog.

"They hadn't been getting along for some time," she said. "I was like, 'Just get a divorce. Save yourselves.'"

Hendricks, who married "(500) Days of Summer" actor Geoffrey Arend in October 2009, tells the magazine that her parents' divorce may have changed the way she views marriage.

"I believe very much in marriage and in working hard for it," she told the magazine. "My husband's parents are still together and I really like that. But I wouldn't have wanted my parents to stay together if they weren't happy."

Hendricks and Arend were introduced by Hendricks' "Mad Men" co-star, Vincent Kartheiser, in 2007. The actress, who has three film projects in the works this year, told People magazine in September 2011 that she and Arend aren't planning to have kids just yet.

]]> http://www.mixmasterthrowdown.com/wordpress/2012/02/christina-hendricks-told-her-parents-to-just-get-a-divorce/feed/ 0 http://www.mixmasterthrowdown.com/wordpress/2012/02/kim-kardashians-divorce-coming-to-a-tv-near-you/ http://www.mixmasterthrowdown.com/wordpress/2012/02/kim-kardashians-divorce-coming-to-a-tv-near-you/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:25:15 +0000 Mixmaster Throwdown http://www.mixmasterthrowdown.com/wordpress/?guid=eea7e629eb8ef53a8f762cbcee82340d It's no surprise that Kim Kardashian's divorce may soon be coming to a TV near you.

Hollywood Life reported Friday that, should Kardashian's divorce from Kris Humphries land in court, the proceedings could be televised because California has an "open policy" on popular cases.

If Kardashian wished to keep the proceedings private, she could either reach a financial settlement with Humphries outside of court or accept his request for an annulment. Doing the latter would likely lead to unwanted exposure, celebrity divorce lawyer Raoul Felder told the Huffington Post in November 2011.

"An annulment is based on fraud... it requires corroboration, witnesses to back it up," Felder said. "The average person with a 60-day marriage would be talking with their lawyer about an annulment. But there is a lot of exposure involved in it and I just don't think they want that. I think in this case it would hurt them; it's easier to get divorced."

Kardashian filed to divorce Humphries just 72 days after their August nuptials. Despite reports that Humphries planned to sign the divorce docs, he instead filed for an annulment on the basis of fraud.

Under California law, Humphries would need to prove "deception regarding a significant matter that led to the marriage or the partnership and continued until the breakup" in order for his annulment request to be fulfilled.

Hollywood Life suggests that Humphries' team may be planning to use footage from "Kourtney & Kim Take New York" as evidence of fraud, which they believe was "developed with the theme of divorce, without without Kris being made aware of it," a source told the website.

Indeed, Kardashian's discontent with her marriage played out all season on the show. In the Jan. 29 season finale, she tearfully breaks down about her ill-fated relationship after refusing to allow Humphries to move his things to her Los Angeles home.

Could the televised proceedings be anything like SNL's viral sketch, "Kim's Fairytale Divorce"? We sure hope so.

WATCH:

Who the hell are these so-called normal people? It's really ridiculous when you think about it. There is no such thing as normal. Normal people to one person are complete oddities to someone else. But for some reason, human beings have this subconscious fear of what they don't know, don't understand, or deep down are themselves. So we make fun. We verbally jab at people to make ourselves feel better. What other reason would kids have for tormenting other kids for being gay? I hated every time I was picked on, but in hindsight, it made me who I am today. It gave me a thicker skin. It still hurts when someone says something today, and if anyone tells you it doesn't, that person is a complete liar. Nevertheless, now I feel I'm able to cope with it better.

From my earliest memory, I knew I was different from most. I just didn't know what it was that made me different. My mother used to say that aliens had brought me to Earth to test her. If those aliens were cross-dressers with a passion for pop divas, she might be right. I wasn't the easiest child. Yes, even then, I was ready to have my diva status. I was also painfully shy. So my mother spoke for me, a lot. Even to this day, I catch her doing it. She thought she was protecting me, but she was really covering me with a security blanket and then throwing me to the wolves. I was totally ill-prepared for the type of mental abuse I would receive on a daily basis. It is abuse. Mental abuse can be just as damaging as physical abuse, just without the visible scars. All the taunts and jeers just told me that I wasn't good enough, that I wasn't worthy, that I was nobody. I got it from school, and then I would return home, where my father would either ignore me or scream at me because I hadn't put the cap on the milk jug or some other miniscule thing.

I had friends, I had my mother, and I had my sister (when she was younger, at least; popular teenage girls and older gay brothers do not always mix well), but still there were so many times I felt utterly alone. Invisible. I just wanted someone to notice me or care about me. I just wanted validation. Validation, I've learned, is what most people want. We want someone to validate us. We seek it all the time, through our relationships, our jobs, our children. We just want someone to say that we are important and we are valued. We just want simple validation. I wanted it so bad at one point in my life that I tried to take my own life to get it. It was the ultimate cry for help. I needed someone so desperately to love me and make me feel whole. The reality of it was that there were already so many people around me who did, but I couldn't see it through my pain. I couldn't see the love around me because I had no love in my heart for myself. I believed I was this horrible person because everyone had made fun of me. I let them take control of my life even when they weren't in it any longer. I was so damaged that I couldn't see that all I really needed was myself. I needed the love from myself.

Fag. Homo. Queer. To that I say, "Yes I am!" I am all those things that they said I was. I am effeminate. I do like other men. I do walk with a swish. I am proud to be a gay man. I am proud to be who I am, and who I always was deep inside the shell of that scared little boy. I wear those names as badges of honor now. I know that those were the words spoken by ignorant children who were raised by ignorant parents. I know that ignorance is the major downfall of the human race. Maya Angelou says, "When you know better, you do better." I know better, and I am doing better. It is through sharing our life experiences that we all begin to realize that we are not so different from each other. We all just want to be loved.

CLICK FOR PHOTO

Entertainment blog "Wet Paint" reports that Guadagnino received the tattoo some time last year but that he said he was not allowed to talk about it until Season 5.

On a Hollywood TV clip, Guadagnino even refuses to answer a question about whether or not the tattoo hurt.

Wet Paint points out that the saying has roots in the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous 12-step program, where the second and third steps both touch on the meaning of the phrase, according to 12step.com.

According to the website:

The real power in the "let go" set up is abandoning this phony idea that we control or are responsible for the world beyond our own small interactions. Trusting God, or our higher power, to handle all the extraneous junk allows us to focus on what we need to focus on - improving our own lives and working the steps.

However, the phrase also has spiritual and practical meaning.

In a lecture, the International Pathwork Foundation, a non-profit organization, explains the phrase by emphasizing that people should let go of "fears, distrust, misconception, and suspicion."

To "let God" from the center of your being, from your heart, from your innermost self where God speaks if you wish to listen -- that is truly the ultimate aim. Before this highest, most blissful and secure state can exist, obstacles and dualistic confusions must always be removed.

So is Guadagnino trying to get in touch with his spiritual side? Is he going through the 12 Step program? Or does the phrase have a different meaning when emblazoned across one's chest?

Either way, the "Jersey Shore" cast member isn't the only reality star who's expressing interest in faith.

Kim Kardashian recently attended a church service in California and tweeted she was interested in starting a Bible study group with her friends, the Christian Post reports.

And "Teen Mom 2" star Leah Messer fired back at critics, who called her out for cheating on her now ex-husband Corey Simms, by tweeting with the hashtag "#GodsMyJUDGE," according to Babble.

Shortly after suffering a miscarriage, Messer also Tweeted how proud she was of her twins, with the message: "I literally have THE BEST two little girls in the whole world! God couldn't have gave me anymore of a blessing!!"

So rather than battering and frying the wings, Fieri showed the ladies how to create a brine using water, Canola oil, honey and a multitude of seasonings. He had them drop everything into a zip-lock bag and shake it up. He then shared a grilling tip, marking the wings on the grill, then moving them to indirect heat so the fat wouldn't drip into the flames and cause the chicken to burn.

Fieri also suggested creating different sauces to cater to various heat preferences. They ranged from a sweeter rub to sprinkle on the wings while they were still on the grill to a fiery sauce made with sriracha, soy sauce and garlic chili sambal that nearly made Julie Chen sneeze. Fieri even shared his signature sauce, which he uses at his restaurant, Tex Wasabi. Without giving away the recipe, he simply said, "We use jalapenos, garlic, hot sauce and butter."

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

When he moved to Los Angeles in 1975 to take over the kitchen at a French restaurant named Ma Maison, giving French traditional a modern California spin, it did not take long for Hollywood's elite to give the bistro a lot of buzz. Then, in '82, he opened Spago in BevHills, now synonymous with California cuisine. But it wasn't until 1983, with Chinois on Main, in Santa Monica, that he delved into Asian cuisine, pioneering what became the "fusion" food phenomenon.

The rest is modern day culinary history. Today, a plethora of ventures falls under the Puck corporate umbrella: restaurants, a catering business and bistro franchises, plus books, TV shows and even a line of cookware. In all, industry experts estimate that his epicurean empire brings in about $350 million in annual revenue.

With his most recent openings this past fall behind him -- Wolfgang Puck at the Hotel Bel-Air in Beverly Hills, his 20th fine dining restaurant, and CUT at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, the third in his steakhouse chain, the Austrian sat still, if only briefly, last month with me in the al fresco section of his flagship Spago to access which way the east-west winds are blowing at Puck Inc.

What was your introduction to the East's style of cooking?

Interestingly, I only remember a few cheap Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in Paris. But in L.A. in the late '70s, on my Sundays off I used to go down to the tiny Asian section and sample foods from Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Thai Town and Koreatown. I loved tasting what to me were new spices and trying to figure out their methods of cooking.

When I opened Spago, I put tuna sashimi on the menu. In '82 you never saw that in restaurants serving American or European food. Or course I had to make it reflect both East and West. So instead of just soy sauce I made a little salad: tuna with avocado, Maui onions, and a sprinkle of caviar on top. My vinaigrette was soy sauce, lime juice, olive oil and little chili flakes. That was my very first foray into combining Asian, Californian and French.

Spago was so successful when it opened. Why did you depart from that formula and open Chinois on Main, which some say was the first American fusion of Eastern and Western cuisine?

First of all, I don't buy into all these something-slash-Asian phrases -- Pan Asian, Cal Asian, Pan Pacific. As soon as it's named, it becomes a "trend" that everyone can jump on and imitate, rather than innovate. It's not as simple as adding ginger and soy sauce -- and voila, Asian fusion.

We opened the second Spago in Tokyo and the more I went there, the more I became influenced by the simplicity of the East. When a restaurant space became open in Santa Monica, the lucrative thing would have been to open another Spago, but I always followed my palate, not my pocketbook. Though chinois actually comes from the French adjective for Chinese, I did not intent this to be a Chinese restaurant in the same way most people thought then -- spring rolls, chow mien, spare ribs, shrimp with lobster sauce.

People didn't understand it at first -- they called it French Chinese. Of course I got negative responses from traditional American Chinese restaurant owners -- "How dare you cook Chinese food -- you're not even Chinese." But I believe authenticity is about evolution, not repeating your grandmother's recipe. Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors -- it's how you combine them that sets you apart.

You were among the chefs who helped popularize the phenomenon we now call "celebrity chef," along with all the cooking and reality chef TV shows that have followed. Do you regret being at the forefront of that?

The title of celebrity chef is sort of bogus. Do we have celebrity shoemakers, celebrity butchers? The good news about showcasing chefs and the TV shows is they've attracted a lot more smart kids to the profession than 30 years ago. On the down side, though, these young chefs all say they want their own restaurant and their own TV show. Very few say "I want to have the best restaurant in town." Yet all this exposure has made people think and talk more about food. That makes diners more sophisticated, more discerning, which in turn challenges chefs to stay on top of their game.

Some would say it's counter-intuitive to open an upscale steak joint in Singapore, where almost 50 percent of the population is Buddhist and Taoist, vegetarians by religious decree. What were you thinking?

It's a myth that generally Asians are more vegetarians. The Japanese are the kings of red meat, but it's expensive. The Chinese and Vietnamese love their pork. Many Indians, especially the Muslims, can't live without their lamb. But, for example, the Chinese can't get good steak so they fry it in cornstarch to make it more tender. But once they discover the taste of great beef, they're sold.

Another important difference: our steaks are cooked over charcoal and wood. A broiler doesn't do anything to enhance the taste. Quite the contrary.

The other hurdle is a matter of education; the Chinese are just learning the art of fine European dining traditions. They like all the food at once in the center of the table, so they can pick from plates with their chopsticks. I've watched when we'd send out the first course, a salad, and they'd ask the waiter, "This is it? Where's the rest?"

What has been the biggest obstacle for you to overcome personally on the road to success?

My shyness, without a doubt. Maybe it was because my mother was shy. I know when my father would yell criticism at me from the sidelines of the soccer field I wanted to just disappear. In my old school pictures I'm never looking into the camera. Even when I was 27 I was the shyest guy. The first cable TV cooking show I was on -- I still couldn't look into the camera.

I rarely went into the dining room to say hello to guests. I would go see only people I knew. Unfortunately, those people happened to be famous, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Wilder, Orson Well, and Gene Kelly, my tennis partner. So I got the reputation for being snobby; people would write letters: "Oh, he goes over to Arnold and Orson, but I'm not important enough?"

Here I was in the hospitality business and people perceived me as being inhospitable. I got the message fast. Now I make it a point every night to go to every table and greet them. People love it. I think it's not so much about meeting the "celebrity chef" as it is about making a personal connection between what's on their plate and a real live human being who was responsible for it. And, by the way, it breeds loyalty. Wouldn't it be great if airline pilots came around and greeted every passenger? I bet it would result in more frequent fliers.

What can we look for next coming out from under your chef's hat?

I am definitely moving more toward simplicity. When I was 27 if I didn't put 15 things in one dish I wasn't happy. It had to be as many as possible and I was so proud of myself. Now I am the opposite. I put in a couple of four things and let the flavors and textures be the stars. Today I'm more into gastronomy, which is literally the art and appreciation of preparing and eating good food. It's as much for the eyes as for the mouth.

That's why I have been drawn back to the Japanese style. So we're completely redoing the Spago menu and its décor this winter, with much more Japanese influence. They are the purest, most aesthetic and most spiritual about their food and the presentation. They'll place an edible flower just so perfectly off center on the plate. They start with the best produce they can find. This is just like my philosophy, which I always put this way: "We buy the best ingredients and then we try not to f--- them up."

Perry Garfinkel, who writes frequently about Asia, is the author of "Buddha or Bust" (http://www.perrygarfinkel.com).

When he moved to Los Angeles in 1975 to take over the kitchen at a French restaurant named Ma Maison, giving French traditional a modern California spin, it did not take long for Hollywood's elite to give the bistro a lot of buzz. Then, in '82, he opened Spago in BevHills, now synonymous with California cuisine. But it wasn't until 1983, with Chinois on Main, in Santa Monica, that he delved into Asian cuisine, pioneering what became the "fusion" food phenomenon.

The rest is modern day culinary history. Today, a plethora of ventures falls under the Puck corporate umbrella: restaurants, a catering business and bistro franchises, plus books, TV shows and even a line of cookware. In all, industry experts estimate that his epicurean empire brings in about $350 million in annual revenue.

With his most recent openings this past fall behind him -- Wolfgang Puck at the Hotel Bel-Air in Beverly Hills, his 20th fine dining restaurant, and CUT at the Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore, the third in his steakhouse chain, the Austrian sat still, if only briefly, last month with me in the al fresco section of his flagship Spago to access which way the east-west winds are blowing at Puck Inc.

What was your introduction to the East's style of cooking?

Interestingly, I only remember a few cheap Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants in Paris. But in L.A. in the late '70s, on my Sundays off I used to go down to the tiny Asian section and sample foods from Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Thai Town and Koreatown. I loved tasting what to me were new spices and trying to figure out their methods of cooking.

When I opened Spago, I put tuna sashimi on the menu. In '82 you never saw that in restaurants serving American or European food. Or course I had to make it reflect both East and West. So instead of just soy sauce I made a little salad: tuna with avocado, Maui onions, and a sprinkle of caviar on top. My vinaigrette was soy sauce, lime juice, olive oil and little chili flakes. That was my very first foray into combining Asian, Californian and French.

Spago was so successful when it opened. Why did you depart from that formula and open Chinois on Main, which some say was the first American fusion of Eastern and Western cuisine?

First of all, I don't buy into all these something-slash-Asian phrases -- Pan Asian, Cal Asian, Pan Pacific. As soon as it's named, it becomes a "trend" that everyone can jump on and imitate, rather than innovate. It's not as simple as adding ginger and soy sauce -- and voila, Asian fusion.

We opened the second Spago in Tokyo and the more I went there, the more I became influenced by the simplicity of the East. When a restaurant space became open in Santa Monica, the lucrative thing would have been to open another Spago, but I always followed my palate, not my pocketbook. Though chinois actually comes from the French adjective for Chinese, I did not intent this to be a Chinese restaurant in the same way most people thought then -- spring rolls, chow mien, spare ribs, shrimp with lobster sauce.

People didn't understand it at first -- they called it French Chinese. Of course I got negative responses from traditional American Chinese restaurant owners -- "How dare you cook Chinese food -- you're not even Chinese." But I believe authenticity is about evolution, not repeating your grandmother's recipe. Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors -- it's how you combine them that sets you apart.

You were among the chefs who helped popularize the phenomenon we now call "celebrity chef," along with all the cooking and reality chef TV shows that have followed. Do you regret being at the forefront of that?

The title of celebrity chef is sort of bogus. Do we have celebrity shoemakers, celebrity butchers? The good news about showcasing chefs and the TV shows is they've attracted a lot more smart kids to the profession than 30 years ago. On the down side, though, these young chefs all say they want their own restaurant and their own TV show. Very few say "I want to have the best restaurant in town." Yet all this exposure has made people think and talk more about food. That makes diners more sophisticated, more discerning, which in turn challenges chefs to stay on top of their game.

Some would say it's counter-intuitive to open an upscale steak joint in Singapore, where almost 50 percent of the population is Buddhist and Taoist, vegetarians by religious decree. What were you thinking?

It's a myth that generally Asians are more vegetarians. The Japanese are the kings of red meat, but it's expensive. The Chinese and Vietnamese love their pork. Many Indians, especially the Muslims, can't live without their lamb. But, for example, the Chinese can't get good steak so they fry it in cornstarch to make it more tender. But once they discover the taste of great beef, they're sold.

Another important difference: our steaks are cooked over charcoal and wood. A broiler doesn't do anything to enhance the taste. Quite the contrary.

The other hurdle is a matter of education; the Chinese are just learning the art of fine European dining traditions. They like all the food at once in the center of the table, so they can pick from plates with their chopsticks. I've watched when we'd send out the first course, a salad, and they'd ask the waiter, "This is it? Where's the rest?"

What has been the biggest obstacle for you to overcome personally on the road to success?

My shyness, without a doubt. Maybe it was because my mother was shy. I know when my father would yell criticism at me from the sidelines of the soccer field I wanted to just disappear. In my old school pictures I'm never looking into the camera. Even when I was 27 I was the shyest guy. The first cable TV cooking show I was on -- I still couldn't look into the camera.

I rarely went into the dining room to say hello to guests. I would go see only people I knew. Unfortunately, those people happened to be famous, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Billy Wilder, Orson Well, and Gene Kelly, my tennis partner. So I got the reputation for being snobby; people would write letters: "Oh, he goes over to Arnold and Orson, but I'm not important enough?"

Here I was in the hospitality business and people perceived me as being inhospitable. I got the message fast. Now I make it a point every night to go to every table and greet them. People love it. I think it's not so much about meeting the "celebrity chef" as it is about making a personal connection between what's on their plate and a real live human being who was responsible for it. And, by the way, it breeds loyalty. Wouldn't it be great if airline pilots came around and greeted every passenger? I bet it would result in more frequent fliers.

What can we look for next coming out from under your chef's hat?

I am definitely moving more toward simplicity. When I was 27 if I didn't put 15 things in one dish I wasn't happy. It had to be as many as possible and I was so proud of myself. Now I am the opposite. I put in a couple of four things and let the flavors and textures be the stars. Today I'm more into gastronomy, which is literally the art and appreciation of preparing and eating good food. It's as much for the eyes as for the mouth.

That's why I have been drawn back to the Japanese style. So we're completely redoing the Spago menu and its décor this winter, with much more Japanese influence. They are the purest, most aesthetic and most spiritual about their food and the presentation. They'll place an edible flower just so perfectly off center on the plate. They start with the best produce they can find. This is just like my philosophy, which I always put this way: "We buy the best ingredients and then we try not to f--- them up."

Perry Garfinkel, who writes frequently about Asia, is the author of "Buddha or Bust" (http://www.perrygarfinkel.com).

The Duchess of Cambridge visited Action on Addiction in Wiltshire to meet with recovering addicts, the Mirror reported. It's one of the charities she chose to champion this year.

The treatment center does research, prevention, treatment, education and support to help free people of addiction.

The Guardian reported that Jacquie Johnston-Lynch, head of the organization said she's grateful for the recognition:

"We're excited that a member of the royal family has put their name to a charity dealing with addiction, which often come bottom of the heap. She intends to be a hands-on patron and we are really grateful."

Kate is using the time to get to know the staff and find out more about what the organization does.

When the Duchess of Cambridge chose her charities to support this year, she did her own research, according to People.

Besides Action on Addiction, Kate chose to support a children's hospice, an art therapy center, a portrait gallery and the Cub Scouts.

St James Palace said that Kate choose charities that reflect her "personal interests in the arts, the promotion of outdoor activity, and supporting people who are in need of all ages, especially young children," the Associated Press reported.

It's been noted that Kate's dedication to charity and her choices mirror those of Princess Diana, Prince William's mother. Diana supported organizations that helped AIDS patients and removed land mines from conflict zones, according to the AP.

The Duchess of Cambridge visited Action on Addiction in Wiltshire to meet with recovering addicts, the Mirror reported. It's one of the charities she chose to champion this year.

The treatment center does research, prevention, treatment, education and support to help free people of addiction.

The Guardian reported that Jacquie Johnston-Lynch, head of the organization said she's grateful for the recognition:

"We're excited that a member of the royal family has put their name to a charity dealing with addiction, which often come bottom of the heap. She intends to be a hands-on patron and we are really grateful."

Kate is using the time to get to know the staff and find out more about what the organization does.

When the Duchess of Cambridge chose her charities to support this year, she did her own research, according to People.

Besides Action on Addiction, Kate chose to support a children's hospice, an art therapy center, a portrait gallery and the Cub Scouts.

St James Palace said that Kate choose charities that reflect her "personal interests in the arts, the promotion of outdoor activity, and supporting people who are in need of all ages, especially young children," the Associated Press reported.

It's been noted that Kate's dedication to charity and her choices mirror those of Princess Diana, Prince William's mother. Diana supported organizations that helped AIDS patients and removed land mines from conflict zones, according to the AP.

Rumors that the reality TV queen has been secretly dating New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, began popping up online this morning.

The rumors seem to originate from a website called starberryicecream.com that alleges the two started seeing each other when Kim began filming the first season of her show "Kourtney & Kim Take New York," in 2010. According to the site's source, now that Kim is back on the market she's gone back to dating Sanchez.

Kim indirectly denied the rumors when she wrote on Twitter:

dating rumors are always fun when u don't even know the people your supposedly linked to! Who makes this stuff up!

— Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian) February 3, 2012

Since she split with New Jersey Nets foward Kris Humphries at the end of October, Kim has also been linked to ultra-Christian football player Tim Tebow. Various reports claim the 31-year-old has a "huge crush" on the quarterback for the Denver Broncos and has been making advances, trying to make him her new man.

The reports are totally unsubstantiated, but even John Legend got in on the decidedly fun rumor, warning Tebow not to fall victim to Kim's wiles. On ESPN's "First Take" Legend performed a Tebow-inspired version of his 2004 tune "Ordinary People," now renamed "Extra-Ordinary Tebow." In the song, Legend sings, "Deny Kim K advances, and TV ballroom dances. Though it's not a fantasy, because you all do is win."

Check out Kim's romantic history and all of her exes:

In an episode where anything was possible (Meredith wearing pink! Addison pregnant!), the only thing scoffed at more than George O'Malley (a.k.a. "007" license to kill) was "crazy" Izzie, their old pal who lost her job for sleeping with a patient and stealing a heart for him. Sound familiar?

When I visited the "Grey's Anatomy" set recently while they filmed their upcoming "Private Practice" crossover, Ellen Pompeo was very frank about who, if anyone, she'd welcome back to the show with open arms. And even with Katherine Heigl's constant media pleas lately to return to the show, her name never came up.

If you could have any one character back on the show, alive or dead, who would you like to return?
"Well, I have to say, I do love Kate Burton. She's a tremendous actress, and any minute I get to work with her is fun. I love having Kate. I was so sad when our relationship on the show ended -- when she died and I couldn't have her anymore -- because I thought that was such an interesting dynamic, and it's so fun to play. So I was glad to have a second crack at that."

Yes, it could be that Pompeo name-dropped the one woman who did come back for that very special episode -- Kate Burton as Meredith's mom Ellis Grey -- because it was fresh on her brain. Or it could be that the cast of "Grey's" is sending Heigl a message: You had your chance. Thanks, but no thanks.

What do you think: Should they let Heigl return to wrap up Izzie's story once and for all?

In an episode where anything was possible (Meredith wearing pink! Addison pregnant!), the only thing scoffed at more than George O'Malley (a.k.a. "007" license to kill) was "crazy" Izzie, their old pal who lost her job for sleeping with a patient and stealing a heart for him. Sound familiar?

When I visited the "Grey's Anatomy" set recently while they filmed their upcoming "Private Practice" crossover, Ellen Pompeo was very frank about who, if anyone, she'd welcome back to the show with open arms. And even with Katherine Heigl's constant media pleas lately to return to the show, her name never came up.

If you could have any one character back on the show, alive or dead, who would you like to return?

Well, I have to say, I do love Kate Burton. She's a tremendous actress, and any minute I get to work with her is fun. I love having Kate. I was so sad when our relationship on the show ended -- when she died and I couldn't have her anymore -- because I thought that was such an interesting dynamic, and it's so fun to play. So I was glad to have a second crack at that.

Yes, it could be that Pompeo name-dropped the one woman who did come back for that very special episode -- Kate Burton as Meredith's mom Ellis Grey -- because it was fresh on her brain. Or it could be that the cast of "Grey's" is sending Heigl a message: You had your chance. Thanks, but no thanks.

What do you think: Should they let Heigl return to wrap up Izzie's story once and for all?

What makes this show's ninth season the best one I've ever seen has nothing to do with who's competing and everything to do with the clever use of recent guest stars Charlize Theron and Paul Reubens (in character as Pee Wee Herman). Am I seriously hinging "The Best Season Ever" on only two episodes? Yeah, I am -- why? Because they were THAT fucking good.

Crazy-good actress Theron appeared a couple weeks ago to plug her latest film Snow White and the Huntsman. In the spirit of Theron's role as the Evil Queen, the cheftestant's were given the challenge of using their imagination to come up with a meal fit for her character -- and the results were incredible. I don't think I've ever seen chefs on Top Chef come up with such cool dishes -- so while I may knock them for not being dramatic enough, damn these bitches can cook!

Possibly the chillest girl on the show, Grayson Schmitz, delivered an amazing meal with black chicken done up to look like it was slaughtered directly on the plate -- the egg yolk baby and clawed chicken foot were beautifully frightening finishing touches and an awesome surprise coming from a girl who's walked the line of playing it safe.

As much as I can't stand Chris Jones (his hair just bothers me -- it's like the exact same haircut that all the budding metalheads would sport in high school because they wanted long hair but their parents wouldn't let them, and when he puts it up in a scrunchie I want to punch him in his face) his Poisoned Apple dessert was utter insanity.

But it was frontrunner Paul Qui, who's consistently taken risks and delivered exceptional food, who took the grand prize home with this incredible delivery of foie gras with bacon, pumpernickel, pickled cherries, and beets. While I hated his use of foie gras (it's SO cruel and disgustingl if you don't know how foie gras is made, watch this, then never eat it again), I thought his presentation was like nothing I'd ever seen come out of this show before. The win was his the second he put that down in front of the judges.

After the Theron episode, I thought there was nothing that could top it -- then Top Chef totally threw me for a loop when they had one of my heroes, Paul Reubens, appear this week in character as Pee Wee Herman.

Seeing as Top Chef is in Texas this season, it's only right they'd do something Alamo-related -- and how can anyone think of the Alamo (at least anyone born after 1975) without thinking of Reuben's iconic character travelling there in Pee Wee's Big Adventure in search of his beloved bicycle?

So there he is -- riding into the kitchen and straight into my heart -- to take part in the most exciting and fun elimination Top Chef has ever offered. After having each of the chef's make him pancakes for the Quickfire (and telling every one of them they had made the best pancakes he'd ever tasted) Padma and Pee Wee tell the chefs they're going on a Big Adventure of their very own. Back at their house Pee Wee's left them each a brand new red bicycle which they'll need to trek across town. After a stop at the farmer's market, each chef has to find a different restaurant which will let them prepare their meal, and then they have to get the food to Pee Wee and the other judges waiting back at the Alamo.

Watching these guys scramble to find ingredients and a place that would let them use their kitchen was so much fun -- Ed even had to make breakfast for one of the guests at the Bed & Breakfast he'd chosen to cook in -- and in the end they all made some really great food given the challenges they overcame in the limited time they had.

I heard that when this episode was shot a lot of fans showed up at the Alamo to see Reubens -- and every one of them left with nothing but glowing things to say about the star -- he was gracious, funny, kind, and stayed there for hours signing every single autograph and shaking every person's hand. I've always felt that's how stars are supposed to act, and it's why I adore Reubens so much -- he doesn't nearly get the accolades he should, and if you're not watching this season or at the very least trying to find reruns of these two episodes, Top Chef: Texas isn't getting the attention it deserves either.

What makes this show's ninth season the best one I've ever seen has nothing to do with who's competing and everything to do with the clever use of recent guest stars Charlize Theron and Paul Reubens (in character as Pee Wee Herman). Am I seriously hinging "The Best Season Ever" on only two episodes? Yeah, I am -- why? Because they were THAT fucking good.

Crazy-good actress Theron appeared a couple weeks ago to plug her latest film Snow White and the Huntsman. In the spirit of Theron's role as the Evil Queen, the cheftestant's were given the challenge of using their imagination to come up with a meal fit for her character -- and the results were incredible. I don't think I've ever seen chefs on Top Chef come up with such cool dishes -- so while I may knock them for not being dramatic enough, damn these bitches can cook!

Possibly the chillest girl on the show, Grayson Schmitz, delivered an amazing meal with black chicken done up to look like it was slaughtered directly on the plate -- the egg yolk baby and clawed chicken foot were beautifully frightening finishing touches and an awesome surprise coming from a girl who's walked the line of playing it safe.

As much as I can't stand Chris Jones (his hair just bothers me -- it's like the exact same haircut that all the budding metalheads would sport in high school because they wanted long hair but their parents wouldn't let them, and when he puts it up in a scrunchie I want to punch him in his face) his Poisoned Apple dessert was utter insanity.

But it was frontrunner Paul Qui, who's consistently taken risks and delivered exceptional food, who took the grand prize home with this incredible delivery of foie gras with bacon, pumpernickel, pickled cherries, and beets. While I hated his use of foie gras (it's SO cruel and disgustingl if you don't know how foie gras is made, watch this, then never eat it again), I thought his presentation was like nothing I'd ever seen come out of this show before. The win was his the second he put that down in front of the judges.

After the Theron episode, I thought there was nothing that could top it -- then Top Chef totally threw me for a loop when they had one of my heroes, Paul Reubens, appear this week in character as Pee Wee Herman.

Seeing as Top Chef is in Texas this season, it's only right they'd do something Alamo-related -- and how can anyone think of the Alamo (at least anyone born after 1975) without thinking of Reuben's iconic character travelling there in Pee Wee's Big Adventure in search of his beloved bicycle?

So there he is -- riding into the kitchen and straight into my heart -- to take part in the most exciting and fun elimination Top Chef has ever offered. After having each of the chef's make him pancakes for the Quickfire (and telling every one of them they had made the best pancakes he'd ever tasted) Padma and Pee Wee tell the chefs they're going on a Big Adventure of their very own. Back at their house Pee Wee's left them each a brand new red bicycle which they'll need to trek across town. After a stop at the farmer's market, each chef has to find a different restaurant which will let them prepare their meal, and then they have to get the food to Pee Wee and the other judges waiting back at the Alamo.

Watching these guys scramble to find ingredients and a place that would let them use their kitchen was so much fun -- Ed even had to make breakfast for one of the guests at the Bed & Breakfast he'd chosen to cook in -- and in the end they all made some really great food given the challenges they overcame in the limited time they had.

I heard that when this episode was shot a lot of fans showed up at the Alamo to see Reubens -- and every one of them left with nothing but glowing things to say about the star -- he was gracious, funny, kind, and stayed there for hours signing every single autograph and shaking every person's hand. I've always felt that's how stars are supposed to act, and it's why I adore Reubens so much -- he doesn't nearly get the accolades he should, and if you're not watching this season or at the very least trying to find reruns of these two episodes, Top Chef: Texas isn't getting the attention it deserves either.

He first hit the small screen as Elmo in 1985 -- although he'd been known by the name Baby Monster for over a decade before. Besides his most steady gig on "Sesame Street," Elmo has also been a guest on a number of talk shows including "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," "Martha Stewart Living," "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" and "The View." As for start power, over the years, Elmo has performed alongside everyone from The Goo Goo Dolls to Katy Perry and India Arie.

In honor of another fantastic Elmo-filled year, here are 7 of of his best "Sesame Street" appearances. Let us know which are your favorites in the comments!

He first hit the small screen as Elmo in 1985 -- although he'd been known by the name Baby Monster for over a decade before. Besides his most steady gig on "Sesame Street," Elmo has also been a guest on a number of talk shows including "The Rosie O'Donnell Show," "Martha Stewart Living," "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" and "The View." As for start power, over the years, Elmo has performed alongside everyone from The Goo Goo Dolls to Katy Perry and India Arie.

In honor of another fantastic Elmo-filled year, here are 7 of of his best "Sesame Street" appearances. Let us know which are your favorites in the comments!

"The intention is to pay tribute to Freddie and the band by singing some f*****g great songs," Lambert told the Daily Star. It's to keep the music alive for the fans and give it an energy that Freddie would have been proud of."

While he's looking forward to teaming up with 64-year-old guitarist Brian May and 62-year-old drummer Roger Taylor, Lambert insists he'll be honoring Mercury's memory.

"There's no intention in my mind of replacing Freddie. That's impossible," Lambert said of Mercury, who died in 1991.

While this may come as a surprise to die-hard Queen fans, Taylor had spoken highly of Lambert back in December.

"He has grown into a really great performer with an astonishing voice with a range that's great," the drummer told Billboard. "There's nothing signed just yet but we're talking about live dates. It could be very exciting."

Spinner notes that this is not the first time someone has taken Mercury's place in the band -- Paul Rodgers did a five year stint with the band that ended in 2009 (the band went by the name of Queen + Paul Rodgers). Guitarist Brian May even flirted with the idea of Lady Gaga joining the famed rock group.

What do you think about Lambert joining Queen?

"The intention is to pay tribute to Freddie and the band by singing some f*****g great songs," Lambert told the Daily Star. It's to keep the music alive for the fans and give it an energy that Freddie would have been proud of."

While he's looking forward to teaming up with 64-year-old guitarist Brian May and 62-year-old drummer Roger Taylor, Lambert insists he'll be honoring Mercury's memory.

"There's no intention in my mind of replacing Freddie. That's impossible," Lambert said of Mercury, who died in 1991.

While this may come as a surprise to die-hard Queen fans, Taylor had spoken highly of Lambert back in December.

"He has grown into a really great performer with an astonishing voice with a range that's great," the drummer told Billboard. "There's nothing signed just yet but we're talking about live dates. It could be very exciting."

Spinner notes that this is not the first time someone has taken Mercury's place in the band -- Paul Rodgers did a five year stint with the band that ended in 2009 (the band went by the name of Queen + Paul Rodgers). Guitarist Brian May even flirted with the idea of Lady Gaga joining the famed rock group.

What do you think about Lambert joining Queen?

The NFL's biggest showdown of the year -- the Super Bowl XLVI -- is set for Sunday night, and the New England Patriots will take on the New York Giants in a rematch of sorts to the 2004 Super Bowl.

We've already figured out who are some of the biggest Giants and Patriots celebrity fans, but there are many other NFL teams out there with a fair share of stars rooting for them each season.

George Clooney and Nick Lachey are both Cinncinatti Bengals fans, while Brad Pitt has been spotted at a New Orleans Saints game or two, with son Maddox looking stylish a black and gold jersey.

Pennsylvania native Will Smith is a Philadelphia Eagles fan and rapper Snoop Dogg can be seen rocking a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey every now and then.

Jennifer Lopez and soon-to-be ex-husband Marc Anthony have a stake in the Dolphins, so that explains their Miami loyalty -- though we're not sure how that will shake out once their divorce is finalized.

Well, the Giants may be in for a tough fight come Sunday night, but at least they have Snooki on their side!

Check out photos of some celebrity football fans below:

The NFL's biggest showdown of the year -- the Super Bowl XLVI -- is set for Sunday night, and the New England Patriots will take on the New York Giants in a rematch of sorts to the 2004 Super Bowl.

We've already figured out who are some of the biggest Giants and Patriots celebrity fans, but there are many other NFL teams out there with a fair share of stars rooting for them each season.

George Clooney and Nick Lachey are both Cinncinatti Bengals fans, while Brad Pitt has been spotted at a New Orleans Saints game or two, with son Maddox looking stylish a black and gold jersey.

Pennsylvania native Will Smith is a Philadelphia Eagles fan and rapper Snoop Dogg can be seen rocking a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey every now and then.

Jennifer Lopez and soon-to-be ex-husband Marc Anthony have a stake in the Dolphins, so that explains their Miami loyalty -- though we're not sure how that will shake out once their divorce is finalized.

Well, the Giants may be in for a tough fight come Sunday night, but at least they have Snooki on their side!

Check out photos of some celebrity football fans below:

The soccer superstar, who modeled Armani briefs and now has his own range of underwear debuting at H&M, has never resorted to ahem, enhancing anything. The LA Galaxy player told Britain’s Daily Mirror that he has never had to stuff his underwear while posing for the provocative ads.

"I've never had to for any of the photo shoots I've done because hopefully, I don't need to. Well, let's just say I've been told I don't need any help in that department. I think I'm pretty OK!"

Beckham also admitted that he used to regularly stroll around his house in the buff, but that has changed since the birth of his fourth child and first daughter, Harper, six months ago.

"My naked days are over. I definitely walk around the house in my underwear. But not naked. With the boys it's not a problem because they're naked all the time but with a little girl now, it is different."

Millions of Americans will get the opportunity to judge for themselves when a 30-second commercial featuring the famous footballer clad in his undies airs this Sunday during the most important advertising evening of the year - the Super Bowl.

But he confesses that his sons, Brooklyn, 12, Romeo, 9, and six-year-old Cruz aren’t too keen on having the commercial air.

"The boys are pretty embarrassed about it," he told the Daily Mirror. "They're kids so they said, 'Oh my God Daddy, not again. That's really good, but everyone's going to see you in your pants (underwear)'."

Click over to the Mirror to read more about Becks (and what kind of sleepwear he says Victoria prefers on him!).

The soccer superstar, who modeled Armani briefs and now has his own range of underwear debuting at H&M, has never resorted to ahem, enhancing anything. The LA Galaxy player told Britain’s Daily Mirror that he has never had to stuff his underwear while posing for the provocative ads.

"I've never had to for any of the photo shoots I've done because hopefully, I don't need to. Well, let's just say I've been told I don't need any help in that department. I think I'm pretty OK!"

Beckham also admitted that he used to regularly stroll around his house in the buff, but that has changed since the birth of his fourth child and first daughter, Harper, six months ago.

"My naked days are over. I definitely walk around the house in my underwear. But not naked. With the boys it's not a problem because they're naked all the time but with a little girl now, it is different."

Millions of Americans will get the opportunity to judge for themselves when a 30-second commercial featuring the famous footballer clad in his undies airs this Sunday during the most important advertising evening of the year - the Super Bowl.

But he confesses that his sons, Brooklyn, 12, Romeo, 9, and six-year-old Cruz aren’t too keen on having the commercial air.

"The boys are pretty embarrassed about it," he told the Daily Mirror. "They're kids so they said, 'Oh my God Daddy, not again. That's really good, but everyone's going to see you in your pants (underwear)'."

Click over to the Mirror to read more about Becks (and what kind of sleepwear he says Victoria prefers on him!).

You know, so-called role models living their lives like open wounds to accumulate column inches, so they can then get some ghost-writer to spread those inches over several "autobiographies" to cash in on their infidelity, drug abuse, life of crime and personal tragedy. You can't help but think many should have called a doctor before they called a publicist.

I've always been fascinated by the subject of fame. Probably because I've never really understood it. Or rather, I've never really understood why people would put fame above all else. And it seems to be getting worse. A recent university survey asked a sample of ten-year-olds what they wanted to be when they grew up. They answered "famous." Just famous.

I guess I always wanted to be eminent. That's the old word for fame, by the way. Being known for something. Being known for being good at something. Maybe even the best at something. "Fame" used to be fused with "respect" in some ways. That's what distinguished it from infamy. But not any more.

I never tried to be famous. I was never shy and I never minded being the center of attention, but not at any cost. I didn't want to be the center of attention for being the loud drunk at a party (the Golden Globes doesn't count) or the bloke fighting over the pool table, or the kid who would eat slugs for a dare.

I was willing to be the center of attention in a small group of friends for saying something funny. Even interesting. I wanted to be the funniest person in the room, not the most famous. I never knew I was honing a skill that would eventually transcend sociability to become a lucrative career. In fact, I never really thought about even having a career.

I used to be the laziest, least ambitious person I knew. Well, lazy in terms of work. Career success, if you will. I had artistic ambition, I guess, but being a working-class Brit I believed it was better to never try than to try, and run the risk of failing. Americans are brought up to believe they can be the president of the United States. British kids are told, "Don't be stupid. It won't happen for you."

I suppose I was cursed with some early success. I was smart. The smartest kid in my class. Then the smartest kid in the next class and so on. I actually used to pride myself on the fact that I didn't have to even try to pass exams. This is my greatest regret. It's a disgusting attitude and potentially a waste of a life. Writing and directing The Office was the first thing I ever tried my hardest at. The reward was revelatory.

At 40 I was addicted. Not to success. I was addicted to trying my hardest. That's the reward in itself. It's what life's about. The struggle. It's the only way you can be proud. You can't be proud of luck.

Born clever? So what? What are you going to do with it? Your best, I hope, and no less.

I started late, sure. But it really is never too late. Now I seize the day. And I love that day much, much more. I'm a workaholic. But as Winston Churchill said, "If you find a job you really love, you'll never work again." Well, I feel like I'm working, but that's the bit I like. I'm not proud of earning a million times what a nurse earns. I can only be proud of working as hard. And even then I feel guilty about loving the hard work. My only hope is that nurses love their work too.

Then I'm just paid too much. That's another reason why I try my hardest now. It's the least I can do. Sometimes I think I'm doing too much. (Sometimes critics think I'm doing too much.) But I can't help it. I'm an addict. I'll tell you more about that in my third autobiography.

You know, so-called role models living their lives like open wounds to accumulate column inches, so they can then get some ghost-writer to spread those inches over several "autobiographies" to cash in on their infidelity, drug abuse, life of crime and personal tragedy. You can't help but think many should have called a doctor before they called a publicist.

I've always been fascinated by the subject of fame. Probably because I've never really understood it. Or rather, I've never really understood why people would put fame above all else. And it seems to be getting worse. A recent university survey asked a sample of ten-year-olds what they wanted to be when they grew up. They answered "famous." Just famous.

I guess I always wanted to be eminent. That's the old word for fame, by the way. Being known for something. Being known for being good at something. Maybe even the best at something. "Fame" used to be fused with "respect" in some ways. That's what distinguished it from infamy. But not any more.

I never tried to be famous. I was never shy and I never minded being the center of attention, but not at any cost. I didn't want to be the center of attention for being the loud drunk at a party (the Golden Globes doesn't count) or the bloke fighting over the pool table, or the kid who would eat slugs for a dare.

I was willing to be the center of attention in a small group of friends for saying something funny. Even interesting. I wanted to be the funniest person in the room, not the most famous. I never knew I was honing a skill that would eventually transcend sociability to become a lucrative career. In fact, I never really thought about even having a career.

I used to be the laziest, least ambitious person I knew. Well, lazy in terms of work. Career success, if you will. I had artistic ambition, I guess, but being a working-class Brit I believed it was better to never try than to try, and run the risk of failing. Americans are brought up to believe they can be the president of the United States. British kids are told, "Don't be stupid. It won't happen for you."

I suppose I was cursed with some early success. I was smart. The smartest kid in my class. Then the smartest kid in the next class and so on. I actually used to pride myself on the fact that I didn't have to even try to pass exams. This is my greatest regret. It's a disgusting attitude and potentially a waste of a life. Writing and directing The Office was the first thing I ever tried my hardest at. The reward was revelatory.

At 40 I was addicted. Not to success. I was addicted to trying my hardest. That's the reward in itself. It's what life's about. The struggle. It's the only way you can be proud. You can't be proud of luck.

Born clever? So what? What are you going to do with it? Your best, I hope, and no less.

I started late, sure. But it really is never too late. Now I seize the day. And I love that day much, much more. I'm a workaholic. But as Winston Churchill said, "If you find a job you really love, you'll never work again." Well, I feel like I'm working, but that's the bit I like. I'm not proud of earning a million times what a nurse earns. I can only be proud of working as hard. And even then I feel guilty about loving the hard work. My only hope is that nurses love their work too.

Then I'm just paid too much. That's another reason why I try my hardest now. It's the least I can do. Sometimes I think I'm doing too much. (Sometimes critics think I'm doing too much.) But I can't help it. I'm an addict. I'll tell you more about that in my third autobiography.

The Aerosmith frontman and "American Idol" judge endured plenty of jabs after his rendition of the anthem at the AFC Championship game last month, but Tyler says he doesn't understand what all the fuss was about.

"I don't know. As I said before, I put emphasis on, `In the land of the free' and I went up," Tyler explained. "Oddly enough I hit the note so I don't know what they are talking about. I emphasized `free' which was for freedom. It was well thought out prior to. I wasn't messing with American tradition."

Enduring negative criticism at that football game did not stop Tyler from enjoying pre-Super Bowl festivities with Carrie Underwood. The duo is in Indianapolis for CMT's "Crossroads," which brings acts from different genres together to perform. It's not the first time the two have sung together: They performed a duet at the Academy of Country Music Awards last year.

"I just love to sing and I love her stuff. A good friend of mine writes songs with her. When I heard `Undo It,' I said, `What is that?' That is an Aerosmith song, right? I am going to finish recording that with you. He said, `No, I wrote that with Carrie, it is coming out in a week,'" he said. "I met her and it was all over after that, once I looked into her eyes. She opened her mouth and sang and she is that good. I loved singing with her."

The two rehearsed Thursday evening in North Greenfield, just outside of Indianapolis, ahead of their scheduled Saturday show (it will air the same night on the network). The former "Idol" champ says she enjoys working with the lively Tyler because he "makes everybody all warm and fuzzy."

While Tyler, closely connected to Boston for years, made clear he was rooting for the New England Patriots in Sunday's game against the New York Giants, Underwood demurred when asked to name her pick. In her house, she says hockey is the main focus, since husband Mike Fisher is a professional hockey player in Nashville.

"He is Canadian so I have had to switch his focus from so much hockey to a little football because we watch a lot of hockey," she said. "I love watching him and I love watching the Predators."

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In "Lilyhammer," Van Zandt plays a character named Frank the Fixer, a New York mobster who rats on his boss and flees to Norway. "He was passed over, he was supposed to be the boss, and they put this other guy in who gets jealous and tries to kill him. And because everybody loves him, he's shocked by someone trying to kill him and overreacts. So instead of moving to Nevada or Arizona, he goes to Norway," Van Zandt explained.

When Rosanna Scotto asked him about a possible "Sopranos" movie, Van Zandt said he didn't think it was likely to happen, despite the series' ambiguous ending that seemed to leave that door open. "I don't think so. Half the cast is dead," he joked, before reminding the hosts that Silvio is "still breathing" after getting shot in the Bada Bing parking lot. "Just in case the movie does happen, Silvio will be there, but nah, it doesn't look likely, it really doesn't," he said.

"Sopranos" fans may just have to get their mafia drama fix from "Lilyhammer" instead.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

He told BBC radio on Friday that he feels better than he has in a decade.

The 62-year-old had suffered from severe weight loss in recent months and has been hospitalized for stomach and colon problems that forced him to curtail public appearances.

He has not specified the exact nature of his illness but told the BBC he had a growth on his colon that was removed.

The singer says his doctors have been amazed by his recovery.

Gibb and his brothers scored many top hits during the disco era.

The 19-year-old, who has become an activist for gay rights in recent months, has penned a piece for Glamour magazine that explains why she decided to tattoo the cause to her body.

Cyrus writes that the idea of not being able to marry the person you love more than anything in the world makes her "feel sick to her stomach." She explained that when she first shared a photo of her new tattoo on her Twitter page and wrote, "All LOVE is equal," she was mocked and inundated with comments asking: "What happened to you? You used to be a Christian girl!'"

Miley responded with grace to her critics writing, "If you were a true Christian you would have your facts straight. Christianity is about love." The debate resulted in threats and hate mail and eventually led her to asking everyone to just "lay off."

Miley explains in Glamour, "I believe every American should be allowed the same rights and civil liberties. Without legalized same-sex marriage, most of the time you cannot share the same health benefits, you are not considered next of kin and you are not granted the same securities as a heterosexual couple. How is this different than having someone sit in the back of the bus because of their skin color?"

While some might have chided her for the tattoo, many others were impressed with Cyrus, especially when she called out Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne on Twitter for donating money to anti-gay rights politician Rick Santorum's campaign.

"I was shocked and disappointed that a company with such diversity would exclude such a large group of people," she writes in the magazine. "I can no longer bring myself to shop there."

Miley, who also posed for the NOH8 campaign, notes that her even her father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who is "as Southern and straight as they come," loves her gay friends and supports same-sex marriage, adding, "If my father can do it, anyone can."

Cyrus was recently blasted by the Culture and Media Institute over private photos of the pop star goofing around, posing with a penis-shaped cake. They were infuriated, claiming she's "become the epitome of the anti-role model for young girls."

It's true Cyrus has had her fair share of trivial scandals ranging from sexy photos to her alleged affinity for marijuana, but it's also clear that she's matured into a young woman who is passionate about equal rights for all people -- which makes it hard to deny her status as a positive role model.

"Yes, I've been told, thank you for reminding me," Madonna said. "I am playing in the game. I am going to be the quarterback ... for the Giants. Aren't they playing?"

It's going to be a busy February for Madonna with the releases of her new album and her directorial debut with the film "W.E.," which centers on the controversial relationship between Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne for love.

And although Madonna doesn't expect the reigning Queen of England to have a personal response to her film, she said she does hope everyone at the palace enjoys it.

Check this sneak peek at Madonna's halftime show sets:

The former co-stars and real-life best friends put on their dancing shoes and showed off some killer moves to Beyonce's "Run The World (Girls)" in a new video posted on Tisdale's YouTube page this week.

However, when they're not dancing, the actresses are hitting the red carpet. Tisdale stepped out to support Hudgens at the Hollywood premiere of her new flick, "Journey 2: The Mysterious Island" on Feb. 2.

But who was the lucky guy on Hudgens' arm at the event? Her new boyfriend, Austin Butler. We're used to see these two flaunting their relationship courtside at Lakers games, but it looks like this couple is taking things to the next level.

We bet Butler's a fan of his girlfriend's smooth moves, but are you? Let us know below!

Check out some photos from the "Journey 2" premiere below:

One-note orecchiette with shellfish recalled the flaccid pasta commonly doled out along Long Island’s Jericho Turnpike — or at 35,000 feet. Unspeakably fatty veal osso bucco was $38. In a review the other day, I criticized the same dish at new Caffe Storico, where it cost only $28. Come back, Caffe Storico! All’s forgiven.

Zimmer rejected MTV's request for a film permit on Tuesday, citing "public safety and quality of life concerns for Hoboken residents." In her latest statement, she invited Snooki and JWoww to visit the city, "just not with a film crew." Banned from Hoboken, Jersey City and the Pennsylvania town of Jersey Shore are rumored to be possible alternate locations for the spinoff MTV describes as a look at how the ladies "deal with life and love when the vacation is over."

The war of words is the latest salvo in an ongoing feud the "Jersey Shore" has been having with Jersey politicians. NJ Governor Chris Christie has been an outspoken "Jersey Shore" critic on the grounds that it paints an unflattering picture of the state. In September, he vetoed a $420,000 tax credit the show was due to receive as part of the New Jersey Development Authority.

Moving away from their Garden State political issues, JWoww and Snooki took on a few more serious topics on "Wendy Williams." Sporting New York Giants jerseys, the reality stars showed their Super Bowl support for the tri-state team, and Snooki "proved" the pregnancy rumors false by drinking the beer Williams offered her.

In other hard-hitting "Jersey Shore" news, on Thursday night's episode Snooki peed on the dancefloor at Karma.

Sure, you know Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone has three kids, two marriages, and a boatload of films and albums under her belt. But did you know she's also inspired authors and even penned a few books of her own? Just in time for her Super Bowl XLVI performance in Indianapolis, here's a roundup of Madge-centric books that might alter your opinion of the Material Girl's oeuvre—and private life.

Read more at Bookish

Photo agency X17online reports that Kutcher, 33, swung by his estranged wife's Benedict Canyon residence at around 4:30p.m. Wednesday and posted photos of the slick black Lexus that Kutcher was allegedly driving as proof. Kutcher swung by just hours after ex-husband Bruce Willis, who reportedly encouraged Moore to get help pre-hospitalization, was also photographed driving up to Moore's estate.

It is reported that Moore is currently undergoing "spiritual counseling." Like her, Kutcher sought advice on how to handle the incident from a Beverly Hills Kabbalah Center upon returning to the U.S., RadarOnline claims.

Moore was rushed into the hospital on Jan. 23 after suffering from convulsions brought on after the actress had "smoked something," according to the 911 phone call that was later released.

Check out some photos of Demi Moore below.

Krasinski described the first time he met Blunt: "[She was] incredibly intimidating. I was scared out of my mind to even go up and say 'Hi' to her," he said.

When he did muster up the courage to asked her out, "The Office" star chose an usual location for their first date: the gun range.

"I think that I was so sure that I would never end up with her because she'd be like 'This is ridiculous, I can have anyone, not you,'" he told host Conan O'Brien. "I was like, 'I'm going to blow it right away and then that way you don't feel bad.'"

Krasinski and Blunt began dating in November 2008 and announced their engagement in August 2009. The couple married in a private ceremony in Italy in July 2010.

The "American Idol" runner-up appears as both an angelic boy-next-door and a sinister, liquor-swilling dark horse in the clip for the song, which debuted in mid-December and is the first cut off his sophomore effort, "Trespassing."

"The song is basically saying, 'I'm kind of a screw up, I do stupid things and continue to put my foot in my mouth, but be patient with me because I need you around -- you're the only person that gets me,'" Lambert told the Hollywood Reporter. "You're the only person I feel comfortable with. You almost know me better than I know myself.' It's kind of an apology and kind of a plea. It's very honest."

"Trespassing," which is due for release March 20, isn't the only thing on Lambert's agenda. As MTV is reporting, he's also hitting the road this summer alongside the remaining members of Queen for a string of European performances, including one at Knebworth in England, where the band played their final show with original frontman Freddie Mercury in 1986, just five years before his death.

"There's no intention in my mind of replacing Freddie," Lambert told the Daily Star. "That's impossible. The intention is to pay tribute to Freddie and the band by singing some f*****g great songs. It's to keep the music alive for the fans and give it an energy that Freddie would have been proud of."

Queen guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor previously joined Lambert on MTV's European Music Awards, where they performed several of the band's classic hits, including "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions."

In other Lambert news, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) recently announced it had worked with Yahoo to remove anti-gay user comments from an interview with the pop star that the website had posted. Among some of the derogatory comments that had allegedly been posted: "It would make my day if someone was to do to [Lambert] what those men did to Matthew Shepard," and "This is why a concentration camp is needed for homosexuals."

"The River" (two-hour premiere Tues., Feb. 7, 9 p.m. EST on ABC, and on CTV in Canada) -- created by "Paranormal Activity" director Oren Peli and Michael R. Perry and executive produced by Steven Spielberg -- follows a group of people on an Amazonian search to find Dr. Emmet Cole (Bruce Greenwood), a nature-loving TV host who stumbled upon something magical during his explorations ... and then never returned home. His wife Tess (Leslie Hope) and son Lincoln (Joe Anderson) set out to find him, along with some very resourceful friends, including Lena (Eloise Mumford) and producer Clark (Paul Blackthorne), whose team is capturing it all. (Get ready for some serious shaky camera action.) But they quickly come up against some paranormal forces that can't be explained, and that obviously don't want them snooping around.

With a new mystery unfolding each week of its initial eight-episode run, "The River" promises plenty of ghosts, freaky forces of nature and things that go bump in the night. I caught up with Greenwood, Hope, Mumford and Anderson to hear more about their adventures, both onscreen and off, including having to shoot in an abandoned mental hospital for children.

Plus, when I asked if everyone dies on "The River," their answer says it all!

Michelle Obama's Ancestors: The Great Migration (part 2)

Among the half million African Americans who moved to Chicago during the Great Migration were a number of Michelle's relatives, and they hailed from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and the southern part of Illinois. In fact, of all the southern states, only Florida, Arkansas and Texas did not hold a piece of her family's past.

In a sense, the Great Migration could also be considered a "great mixing," and Michelle's ancestry includes as much diversity as anyone's. With the exception of individuals of recent African or Caribbean origin, most African Americans have deep roots in America extending back several centuries. Enslaved Africans were brought to America as early as the 1620s and almost all were here by 1825, so family trees typically reach back 200-400 years on this continent. In spite of this, by the time the Great Migration began, there were still pockets of what might be termed African homogeneity in the South.

It's a harsh reality that some slave traders and owners had regional preferences. For instance, many in South Carolina and Georgia preferred slaves from the rice-growing region of West Africa (roughly the coastal area stretching from Senegal down to Liberia) because they were regarded as being better suited to the climate and work, as well as more resistant to malaria. As a result, it was possible for the majority of slaves associated with a particular plantation or locality to have roots that would, if we had the means to follow the trail, trace mostly back to present-day Sierre Leone, for example (DNA testing now provides at least some prospects in this regard.). When the descendants of these somewhat insular communities joined the steady stream of traffic heading north, it was inevitable that they would meet, mingle and marry people from other states who sported different backgrounds -- and that's before factoring in the white and Native ancestry many also carried. Consequently, the Great Migration produced a considerable mixing of everything from traditions to gene pools.

Michelle is very much a legacy of both the Great Migration and the inherent mixing that accompanied it. In fact, it's almost as if an unseen force reached down with impressive regularity -- at the rate of a branch of her family tree per decade -- to scoop up another eventual ancestor from the South to bring to Chicago. It also happened to be a ladies-first situation with her future grandmothers' families leading the way.

The parents and half dozen older siblings of LaVaughn Delores Johnson, Michelle's paternal grandmother, were the Chicago pioneers, arriving in the first decade of the twentieth century and bringing with them a mélange of Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee roots. Her mother's family had resided in Illinois (though not Chicago) since the 1860s, while her father spent his early days in Louisiana and Mississippi. Second on the scene was her maternal grandmother, Rebecca Jumper. Virginia-born, but taken to North Carolina as an infant, Rebecca was sent North in the 1910s to be raised by an aunt and uncle.

Next up was maternal grandfather Purnell Shields who came from Birmingham, Alabama with his mother, sister and step-father in the 1920s. His mother Annie was the only great-grandparent Michelle would actually know, and Michelle and her family would eventually live in the second floor apartment of the home owned by Robbie Lee, Purnell's sister. Though this family came from Alabama, their heritage extended back through Georgia and ultimately to South Carolina and Virginia. Bringing up the rear of this decade-by-decade migration was Fraser Robinson, the grandfather whose surname would become Michelle's maiden name. Born and raised in South Carolina, Fraser made his appearance in Chicago in the early 1930s. Last to arrive, he was also the only one to return to the place of his birth, retiring to his hometown after 40 years of cold winters.

The merging of these assorted branches came about through the marriages of LaVaughn to Fraser and Rebecca to Purnell -- and of their children, Fraser III and Marian, some decades later -- but each limb of Michelle's family tree arrived in Chicago with its own past and created a bit of history there before Michelle was born. What follows is a brief introduction to the cast of ancestors who would unknowingly bequeath not only their DNA, but also a combination of their habits, beliefs, aptitudes and hopes to a future First Lady.

(to be continued)

Daniel Radcliffe in "Woman in Black"
Photo: CBS Films

Daniel Radcliffe makes his post-Potter debut in the new adaptation of Susan Hill's ghost story, "The Woman in Black." It's an old-fashioned horror movie that has earned mild praise from the critics, but a warmer welcome for its star and his prospects of an adult acting character.

We've rounded up a sampling of what the critics are saying about Daniel Radcliffe and "The Woman in Black," which opened Friday (February 3). Check out it below.

The Story
"Anchoring the drama is Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), a sad-faced solicitor still grieving for his wife who died in childbirth four years earlier. Their son Joseph (Misha Handley) is wise beyond his few years and draws pictures of his dad looking mournful. The gloominess deepens when Kipps' boss threatens to fire him if he doesn't excel at an assignment. The job is to sort out the papers of a recently deceased old lady." — Claudia Puig, USA Today

The Star
"Radcliffe, for his part, carries off the role of Arthur with reasonable aplomb. If the 22-year-old actor seems a little young to be playing a solicitor and single father whose wife died in childbirth four years earlier, his performance is sturdy and self-sufficient enough, at least, to banish thoughts of Hermione and Hogwarts. He's all grown-up." — Michael O'Sullivan, The Washington Post

The Kids?
" 'No Country for Young Kids' would be just as suitable a title for 'The Woman in Black,' a hoot of an old-fashioned British horror film in which being under 10 years old is not a good thing." — Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter

The Scares
"Schooled in the art of the quiet boo, [Director James] Watkins fills the film with squeaking doors and floorboards, pools of black, long silences and an assortment of moldering toys. Less gore is more here, and what a relief. 'The Woman in Black' isn't especially scary, but it keeps you on edge, and without the usual vivisectionist imagery." — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

The House
"The house is a masterpiece of production design, crumbling, forlorn, filled with the faded and jumbled Victorian possessions of doomed lifetimes. It has a unique feature audiences will not fail to remark upon: its own sound-effects crew. At every frightening moment, and there are many, the soundtrack paralyzes us with blasts of cacophonous noise. You wouldn't want to be in the theater next to this movie in a multiplex." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The Final Word
"The work Radcliffe does here is primarily reactive. It's also quite good. I'd say he's on his way as a post-Potter entity, and 'The Woman in Black' deserves a stateside audience. I only wish Watkins had done without the 'WHUUNNNGGGG!!!!' sound effects whenever somebody or something suddenly appears in frame, further racking the nerves of our ectoplasmically beset hero." — Michael Phillips, The Chicago Tribune

Are you planning on seeing "The Woman in Black" this weekend? Let us know in the comments!

Check out everything we've got on "The Woman in Black."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• MTV Rough Cut: Daniel Radcliffe

The Black Keys
Photo: MTV News

Long before the Black Keys scored a series of radio hits, won a grip of Grammys or even sold out Madison Square Garden (in 15 minutes), they were best known around their hometown of Akron, Ohio, as either the worst landscaping team in history or the best brunch band on the planet. It sort of depended on the day of the week.

"When we first started the band, I was working in a restaurant, cooking, and we were mowing lawns, and occasionally we would play music at a brunch at a restaurant or something," drummer Patrick Carney laughed. "[And when we were] actually mowing lawns, most of them were residential property that was not very nice, so it was basically like mowing dirt fields filled up with 40-ounce bottles."

"You didn't even have to show up," frontman Dan Auerbach added.

And more often than not, they didn't ("We kind of got fired," Carney deadpanned), especially since they were usually logging miles in their van, playing gigs wherever they could find them. This routine basically continued unabated for nearly a decade, until the Keys broke through to the big time with 2010's Brothers album. And with the follow-up success of last year's El Camino, they've cemented their status as one of the biggest bands in rock, which all but guarantees they won't be playing brunch gigs again anytime soon.

"I was playing locally, around town, these gigs where you would just play guitar and you were just background music [at brunches]," Auerbach said. "You'd play for like three or four hours, just playing old songs and stuff like that. It was really good practice. And so I got Pat in on some of those, and they were always really awful, but they paid good. You could make anything from $150 to $300, just for practicing in front of people."

On Monday, the Keys will continue to roll with the world premiere of their "Gold on the Ceiling" video on MTV at 7:54 p.m., with a 30-minute interview to follow on MTV.com. The clip very much pays homage to the band's blue-collar roots, mostly by capturing them doing what they do best: playing live. It's a skill they honed by hammering out miles in that van, which is why all this talk about their past is oddly fitting; for a band that's accomplished so much, the Black Keys have truly never forgotten where they came from. Or how hard they worked to get to this point.

"That's how we started. I think people find that interesting about us, because it's not an overnight success. ... It's taken us 10 years to get to where we are, and it was a lot of hard work," Auerbach said. "I don't really know how we did it sometimes, you know? Because it was kind of crazy. We would drive for 12 hours to get paid 50 bucks, then drive back. It was just stupid sometimes."

"The first time we played New York, it was September 2002, and it was a big deal for us," Carney said. "So we drive eight-and-a-half hours from Akron to New York, open for an awful ska band in Brooklyn ... and we got 50 bucks. And drove straight back to Akron. It wasn't even enough money for gas."

But hey, at least it beat the brunch circuit.

Catch the world premiere of the Black Keys' "Gold on the Ceiling" video Monday (February 6) at 7:54 p.m. on MTV with an exclusive 30-minute interview to follow on MTV.com.

• The Black Keys Are Coming To 'MTV First'

• The Black Keys

The 27-year-old singer was transformed into a glamourous version of the mythical sea creature in a new ad for ghd's Air hairdryer, shot by renowned photographer David LaChapelle.

Although she's currently sporting some bright blue locks, we have to say we love the cotton candy-colored tresses she rocked both in this ad and last fall.

Katy is no stranger to both wacky and glamourous looks and she loved the concept behind the shoot.

"David LaChapelle made the set amazing," she told Marie Claire. "It was fun -- I got to have purple hair which foreshadowed the real purple hair I had last fall. It's as if Lisa Frank had done 'The Little Mermaid'." The singer did admit she's "such a fan of Disney movies," and is considering keeping the mermaid costume as an option for next Halloween.

Katy shot the ad back in July and she definitely had a ton of fun dressing up. At the time, "planking" was all the rage and the pop star tweeted a photo of herself, in full costume, pulling off the Internet meme of the moment. She tweeted, "PROPER planking FTW! #itswhatArielwoulddo."

Of course, Katy is not the only one who has donned a fish tail. Lady Gaga also transformed herself into a mermaid in her "You and I" video. Gaga also caused a bit of a stir at her Sydney performance last July, when she turned up on stage as a mermaid in a wheelchair. The singer suffered backlash for the wheelchair stunt -- both from disabled groups and from the legendary Bette Middler, who wanted credit where credit was due.

Middler took to Twitter after Gaga's performance, writing, "I'm not sure @ladygaga knows that I've performed my mermaid in a wheelchair for millions of people -- and many of them are still alive."

The devine Ms. M added,"Dear @ladygaga if you think a mermaid in a wheelchair seems familiar-it's because it is! You can see it on youtube 24/7-with ME performing it ... I've been doing singing mermaid in a wheelchair since 1980 -- You can keep the meat dress and the firecracker t*ts -- mermaid's mine."

So who makes the best mermaid? Katy, Gaga, or Bette?

PHOTO:

Jack White
Photo: WireImage

Jack White, Beck and Bon Iver top the lineup for the 2012 Sasquatch! Music Festival, once again set for Memorial Day weekend (May 25 to 28) at the Gorge Amphitheatre in Washington state.

Joining them on the bill is a virtual who's who of top indie talent, including the Shins, Beirut, Girl Talk, Feist, St. Vincent, Silversun Pickups, Metric, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Spiritualized, Tune-Yards, Kurt Vile (and many, many more). The Roots, Childish Gambino, Shabazz Palaces and AraabMuzik chip in for hip-hop, and Nick Kroll, Todd Barry and Rob Delaney will provide the comedy.

For the full Sasquatch! lineup, check out the official site. Four-day passes — which include camping and parking — go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. PT through the same site.

The 'Quatch headlining slot is Jack White's first confirmed gig since announcing earlier this week he was going solo with the premiere of a brand-new song, "Love Interruption," and an upcoming album, Blunderbuss. Not to be outdone, White's fellow headliner Beck will be making his first high-profile appearance in nearly three years at the fest. (Beck made his return to the stage with a handful of intimate gigs — including Neil Young's annual Bridge School benefit shows — toward the end of last year).

As for Bon Iver, well, by the time he takes the Sasquatch! stage, he may do so with an armload of Grammy Awards. So, you know, it's all rather compelling, to say the very least.

In 2011, Sasquatch! celebrated its 10th anniversary with a bill that featured heavies the Foo Fighters, Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse, along with the Flaming Lips, Bright Eyes, the Decemberists and more.

What do you think of this year's Sasquatch! lineup? Tell us in the comments!

• Jack White
• Bon Iver

Rupert Grint, Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson
Photo: WireImage

For the chill-seekers and Daniel Radcliffe fans out there, "The Woman in Black" is likely the must-see movie this weekend. The story revolves around young lawyer Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe), who stumbles upon a dark and mysterious phenomenon gripping a small town in England.

In celebration of the release of "Black," Radcliffe's first big post-"Harry Potter" movie (in which there isn't a wand or wizard in sight), we thought it would be a good time to check in with the rest of the Hogwarts alumni and look at their upcoming projects.

Daniel Radcliffe

 Radcliffe's next film role is poet Allen Ginsberg in the independent film "Kill Your Darlings," which is about how Ginsberg and fellow Beat Generation icons Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr first met. The likable superstar told MTV News recently that he hopes his 2012 is all "about film, film, film," with a possible return to the stage in a couple years.

Emma Watson

 Watson has been a busy bee since wrapping "Deathly Hallows, Part 2." She can currently be seen in awards-season darling "My Week With Marilyn." Next up is her first turn as an American in the anticipated big-screen adaptation of Stephen Chbosky's coming-of-age novel "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." Earlier this week it was reported that Watson is in talks to team up with "Potter" director David Yates for a new drama called "Your Voice in My Head." 



Rupert Grint

 Grint has managed to appear in a few films throughout his years with "Potter," but his first role since the series ended is in the anti-war film "Into the White," formerly known as "Comrade." After that you can listen for his voice in the animated "Postman Pat: The Movie - You Know You're the One." Then he's hoping to star in the biopic "Eddie the Eagle," based on Eddie Edwards, the first British native to represent the country in Olympic ski jumping.

Tom Felton

 Following his role in the 2011 blockbuster "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," two-time Best Villain winner Tom Felton will appear in the ghostly thriller "Apparition," opposite Ashley Greene and "Captain America" star Sebastian Stan.

Felton just wrapped shooting on upcoming TV series "Labryinth," and he also has golf drama "From the Rough" with Taraji P. Henson in the can awaiting a release date.

Bonnie Wright

 The lovely titian-tressed actress recently wrapped production on "The Philosophers," a fantasy thriller set at an international school in Jakarta that features fellow "Potter" castmate Freddie Stroma. Wright will follow up "Philosophers" with a role in the "Sweat - London" segment of the ensemble piece "Geography of the Hapless Heart."



Matthew Lewis

 When he's not posing for smoldery photos, the suddenly grown-up and stylish Lewis is busy making careful choices for his post-"Potter" career. He just wrapped filming on a major BBC TV project called "The Syndicate" and will start work on a new film, "Wasteland," from writer-director Rowan Athale, at the end of February. 



Freddie Stroma

 Although he didn't have tons of screen time as wannabe Lothario Cormac McLaggen, Stroma has a lot cooking career-wise. In case you missed him in the made-for-TV movie "A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song" opposite Lucy Hale, don't fret: The onetime aspiring neurosurgeon will be on the big screen in "Pitch Perfect," the Elizabeth Banks-produced comedy about college a cappella competitions, and he'll follow that with "The Philosophers."

Check out everything we've got on "The Woman in Black."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

• MTV Rough Cut: Daniel Radcliffe

She will be stretching herself to play Kim Kardashian, after also playing herself -- in Marshall's daydream -- on "How I Met Your Mother."

On the Feb. 7 episode, titled "Tree of Strife," Kardashian is on book signing tour, and she conveniently happens to stop in Denver. Mike's (Allen) daughter Mandy (Molly Ephraim), who happens to be obsessed with the Kardashians, gets so excited to meet her idol that she causes quite a scene at the book store and ends up getting dragged away by security.

In ET's exclusive video, Kardashian called the opportunity one she "couldn't pass up," joking that if she couldn't pull off this performance, she "[has] some issues."

The "Kourtney and Kim Take New York" reality star will not only try out her newly-found acting chops on "Last Man Standing," but she recently signed on for a multi-episode arc on Lifetime's "Drop Dead Diva."

Kardashian will play Nikki, Fred's (Ben Feldman) new love interest who partners with his ex Stacy (April Bowlby) in a new business venture, reports The Hollywood Reporter. She will make her first appearance in the Season 4 premiere, which is slated to air in summer.

Click through the gallery below to see where we would kast the rest of the Kadashians.

Madonna in her "Give Me All Your Luvin' " music video
Photo: Interscope

"Fans can make you famous, a contract can make you rich, the press can make you a superstar, but only luv can make you a player."

And with that message, Madonna's funky, fun and surreal (and almost cartoony) "Give Me All Your Luvin' " video kicks off.

To view five key moments from the "Give Me All Your Luvin' " video, click here.

With appearances from Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., masked cheerleaders, beefy football players and old-school Madonna references a-plenty, the Megaforce-directed clip is fun and light-hearted, much like the bouncy pop anthem itself.

The clip opens with Nicki and M.I.A. done up in cheerleader costumes chanting Madge's name. It then cuts to Madonna, clad in a trench coat and sunglasses, kicking down the door of her suburban home, pushing along a baby stroller.

From there, the video takes many unusual turns: football players tackling street signs, Madonna abandoning her baby carriage to hang out with her cheerleader crew, shots of her done up in black lingerie and a giant cross (the first of many looks that reference the many looks Madonna has worn over the years) dancing in front of a brick wall.

Sparks fall from the sky as she runs around the streets near her house, her football players protecting her with some giant umbrellas — creating an eye-catching visual. As she makes her way through town (which does little to not look like a movie set), they continue to be by her side and the video begins to play tricks on the viewers' eyes. They help her walk across a world turned sideways. It appears that they may have taken cues from her "Material Girl" video.

Madonna looks like she's having an incredibly fun time throughout the visual — smiling and shimmying her way through this fictional, hyper-fantasy world. Watching the clip, one may wonder what doesn't happen in the video. Madonna, in a possible homage to her "Dick Tracy" days, gets shot at with old-school guns! She climbs up a giant pile of football players! She plays with a baby doll! (Yes, that happens!)

As the song approaches its breakdown, Madonna fans everywhere will certainly begin to stand out hard.

Carried by her football players into a new setup (some kind of club-like setting), Madonna becomes the "Like a Virgin" version of herself. Dressed in white lace, a curly bob and lots of diamonds, she clearly is paying homage to that infamous era. Her two rapper pals are also dressed in similar looks as they spit their rhymes over the Martin Solveig-produced track. There are also a few other Madonna refs in there: In addition to rolling around on her little stage (you know, like she did at the VMAs back in 1984), there are two girls kissing (she's also done that at the VMAs) and a bunch of Smirnoff vodka bottles (she recently partnered up with the alcohol brand).

From there, Madonna stage-dives into layers upon layers of football players' hands and, at the end of it, gets caught by two of the players. The always-fierce Queen of Pop wraps up the video with a dance routine with all the characters along the way. When one of her masked cheerleaders bats the head off one of her football players, she catches the helmet and proudly displays it, surrounded by sparklers.

The video ends with Madonna tossing her baby doll to the side as one final message flashes across the screen: "Touchdown!"

"Give Me" is the lead single off her March album release, MDNA.

What do you think of Madonna's "Give Me all Your Luvin' " video? Leave your comment below!

• Five Key Moments In Madonna's 'Give Me All Your Luvin' Music Video

• Madonna

To learn now that the Susan G. Komen Foundation has decided to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood for the provision of the very breast exams that they have advocated for years as the singular best way to detect and cure breast cancer in earliest stages, is at the very least cruel and heart-wrenching. This decision smells, looks and sounds like a political agenda is at hand, and to that, I cannot be a party.

Over the past five years, Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide have provided more than four million clinical breast exams, as well as more than 70,000 mammogram referrals. Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide nearly 750,000 breast cancer screenings annually, offering risk assessments, breast exams, breast health information and education, and diagnostic and surgical referrals.

When I recorded "Power of Ribbons," I intended all royalties to go directly to the fight against breast cancer, expecting that the Susan G. Komen Foundation would direct those monies wisely. Today, in rededicating this song to the support of breast cancer, I am re-directing all royalties from the downloading of "Power of Ribbons" directly to Planned Parenthood in support of their breast health programs.

I applaud Mayor Michael Bloomberg for announcing that he will personally make up the $250,000 that will be withheld from the NY chapter of Planned Parenthood. Bravo to you, sir!

Please continue to download "Power of Ribbons." Together, one download at a time, we will not only keep breast health away from politics, but we will show the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Planned Parenthood and women everywhere the real power of ribbons!

Mike "The Situation" on Thursday's episode of "Jersey Shore"

It's episode five! Of season five! And here are my top five "Jersey Shore" moments!

5. New Jersey Ink
Vinny's back in the house, and the Situation seems to be inspired by his new tattoo.

As Sitch confusingly explains — for what seems like an eternity — how he plans to get "loyalty" and "betrayal" tats on his forearms, Ronnie stares at the camera blankly. Ron, you took the words right out of my mouth.

4. The Situation's Situation
The Situation got a little ... paranoid ... and decided to get to the bottom of all the drama in the house. His method? Ranting at the girls while wearing no pants.

"Why is everybody always focusing on Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike?" he yells.

I don't know, maybe because you're running around screaming with your di-- hanging out?!?

3. Deena Gets Zapped!
After Deena is electrocuted by her hair dryer, she proceeds to ask Sammi if electrocution makes you brain crazy.

So that's her excuse? But at the very least, this shock inspired Deena and Sammi to re-examine their stance on capital punishment ... except not really.

2. Warm Beer + Snooki's Face
Speaking of questionable American traditions, Snooki began rehearsals for her daring one-woman vaudeville act! As the gang plays a game of Warm Beer — is that a thing? — Ron covers Snooki's face with soot like she's in blackface. Woof.

I had no idea Snooki was such a Ted Danson fan!

1. Pee-mix!
Snooki pees at a club, on the porch and at a bar — and discusses her urinary tract infection. You know what that means — time for a "Jersey Shore" Peeeemix!

Don't miss "Jersey Shore" every Thursday at 10 p.m. ET on MTV. For continuing "Shore" coverage, be sure to check in with MTV's Remote Control blog.

• Jersey Shore High 5 Recaps!
• Jersey Shore (Season 5) | Ep. 5 | Nothing But Nice
• Jersey Shore (Season 5) | Ep. 5 | Hook-Up

2 Chainz
Photo: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images

Def Jam wasn't the only label courting 2 Chainz. Before he signed to the rap powerhouse, the Atlanta MC was arguably the most sought-after unsigned talent in the game, so it's no surprise that he was in high demand. Still, if Lil Wayne had had his way, 2 Chainz would've linked up with his Young Money record label.

"I was one of the first people invited to Young Money, before the album. Wayne asked me," Chainz said when he appeared on Wednesday's "RapFix Live."

The two spitters have history. Weezy appeared with 2 Chainz (then known as Tity Boi) on "Duffle Bag Boy," the 2007 single with his group Playaz Circle. Two years later, Dos spent significant time on the road with Tunechi during his I Am Still Music Tour. At the time, however, 2 Chainz chose to remain loyal to Playaz Circle and honor his deal with Ludacris' Disturbing Tha Peace record label. Ultimately, he didn't want to seem like he was hopping from label to label, though he maintains that he and Wayne have a true friendship.

"From the outside looking in, I hate to see people look like they clique hopping," Chainz said. "But when you just look at an artist that went from here to this subsidiary, to this subsidiary — for me I felt like I'm smart enough to sign 2 Chainz slash Def Jam like I did."

Instead of signing to another artist, with Def Jam the "Spend It" MC was able to become his own boss and partner his new label T.R.U. with the deep-rooted record company. As soon as he signed, Chainz sent Wayne a text thanking him for being a true friend. "Lil Wayne is one of the realest dudes in the game as far as opening up doors for people to eat and trickling down to their families," he said. "He's one of the most unselfish, talented people that I've been around."

Did 2 Chainz make the right decision, or should he have signed with Young Money? Tell us your opinion in the comments.

• 2 Chainz Signs In To 'RapFix Live'

• 2 Chainz
• Lil Wayne

Brought to you by YouTube user BlindFilmCritic, the same person behind the "No Strings Attached"/"Friends With Benefits" trailer mash, this new Aniston/Heigl movie comparison leaves no rom-com trope unturned. Let's run down the checklist from the clip:

• Two of America's sweethearts (Aniston and Heigl)
• Two hunky co-stars (Butler and Jason O'Mara)
• Same sexual tension
• Same witty characters (Jeff Garlin and Sherri Shepherd)
• Same handcuff gag
• Same girl power (both Heigl and Aniston firing weapons)

If this kind of sounds up your alley, then check out the mashup above -- or "One for the Money," in theaters now.

[via BlendFilmCritic and /Film]

Miley Cyrus treated her 4.6 million Twitter followers to a blast from the past on Feb. 2, posting a vintage snapshot of her whole family.

From the look of her father Billy Ray's mullet, (and the fact that Miley looks about four years old) we're going to guess this photo was taken sometime in the mid-1990s. Miley tweeted, "Awkward family photos. Look @billraycyrus always giving face!"

Awkward family photos. Look @billyraycyrus always giving face! twitter.com/MileyCyrus/sta…

— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) February 3, 2012

Wow, times have changed! Check out a more recent photo of the entire Cyrus family below:

Lady Gaga (file)
Photo: John Shearer/ WireImage

Mother Monster is readying her next tour, the Born This Way Ball.

Lady Gaga took to Twitter to let her fans know that on Tuesday, she will unleash images of the stage design for the tour, which is set to launch later this year. She added that she was brewing up a number of other tour-related projects and wrote, "putting the set list together!"

Over the last few weeks, Gaga has been tweeting frequently about the upcoming outing, noting that she's been in meetings with her Haus and watching old Monster Ball Tour videos that "made us cry. We love u, can't wait for the next one."

Haus member and BTW producer Fernando Garibay shared with MTV News in December that the show will be reflective of the 2011 album. "This album was the most personal [because of] the amount of detail that went into this record, the amount of passion [and] emotion from her and the team," he said. "Every song was a story towards the Born This Way theme. We're excited now, putting that into the tour and expressing that on a live performance level.

"You can imagine what happened on the Monster Ball, so use your imagination," he said. "That's what's going to happen, exaggerated." Until Gaga does hit the road, she revealed what she'll be doing come this Sunday. "Looking forward to seeing the Superbowl! The halftime show will be wonderful, I'm sure," she tweeted. "An excuse to drink beer+watch boys in tights. #yes."

Madonna is slated to take the stage during the Super Bowl halftime show. She recently made headlines when she called Gaga's song "Born This Way" "reductive," subsequently complimenting her "rawness."

• MTV First: Lady Gaga

• A Day In The Life Of Lady Gaga

• Lady Gaga

No question, I have a lot to be thankful for. It's been a mind blowing year for my show Pretty Little Liars. Fans have made it a huge hit on ABC Family. Our fans are amazing -- full of creativity, passion and IDEAS. We see it every day on our website and through social media. That's why when the network approached me about the "Bright Students, Big Ideas" campaign on DonorsChoose.org I had to be a part of it.

The campaign puts education in students' hands, and gives them a way to get the projects they care about funded. For those of you who aren't familiar with DonorsChoose.org, it's pretty incredible. Visitors to their site have helped fund -- largely through micro-donations of $5, $15 and $20 -- more than 200,000 teacher projects that served over 5 million students throughout the U.S., mostly in poverty stricken areas. The beauty of it is how simple, yet powerful it can be. For example, they've supplied copies of To Kill a Mockingbird to an 8th grade class in the Bronx, microscopes to a 7th grade science experiment in Detroit, and a field trip for a Baltimore history class to visit the Supreme Court in session, among many, many others.

Now, for the first time ever, public school students in grades 9-12 will be able to submit their own project for funding with the help of a teacher. ABC Family will fund the first 50 percent of all qualifying projects, leaving it to donors like you and me to provide the remainder. How cool is that?

Already 128 student-generated projects have been fully funded, which means that 34,484 students across the country have been impacted by this campaign. The projects are truly inspiring -- everything from kick-starting a student-run computer repair center, to providing a printer to students in juvenile jail so that they can display their art, to teen books for after school book clubs, cooking supplies for student chefs and recycling programs for our future environmentalists! And, I'm not the only one inspired by these high school student projects, teachers across the U.S. are saying that these are some the best projects they've seen! Also, thanks to Bright Students, Big Ideas! students are getting involved with DonorsChoose.org and are looking through projects and making donations to help their peers -- it's so exciting!  Seriously, check out the projects, you will be inspired too!

These high school students have great ideas -- they just need the funding and the tools to make them happen! Donorschoose.org is designed to make a little go a really long way, so give what you can. A donation in any amount makes a big difference.  And if you're a student and you have an idea for a project at your school, definitely work with a teacher to get it submitted! I'm personally really excited to see what you come up with!

The radio giant announced plans Friday to premiere the 53-year-old pop star's new single "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and its music video across Clear Channel radio stations, electronic billboards and online venues. Clear Channel, which owns 850 stations nationwide, estimated the promotional campaign would reach more than 150 million people around the world.

Beginning on Friday morning, "Give Me All Your Luvin'" is scheduled to premiere simultaneously across 95 radio stations and on more than 1,600 digital billboards in the United States, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, Belgium, Finland and the United Kingdom, as well as on demand at iHeartRadio.com, Clear Channel's customized online radio service.

"This first-of-its-kind multimedia premiere with Madonna demonstrates the unequalled scope and strength of the entire Clear Channel platform – a range and depth that enables us to work with the most talented and creative artists in the world to develop truly groundbreaking promotional opportunities," said Bob Pittman, CEO of Clear Channel, in a statement.

The Material Girl push is the latest multimedia endeavor from Clear Channel, which organized a two-day concert in Las Vegas last year that featured the likes of Jay-Z and Lady Gaga and announced last month that it was taking a minority stake in the production company of "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest, who produces E!'s "Keeping Up with the Kardashians."

Madonna is expected to perform "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and three other tunes at her Super Bowl halftime performance Sunday in Indianapolis. Her new album "MDNA" is set to be released in March.

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The British Grammy-winner is kicking off the fourth season of live performance show, "Live from the Artists Den," premiering Fri., Feb. 3 at 10 p.m. EST on PBS.

During the premiere, Adele will perform several of her hits, including "Rolling in the Deep," "Someone Like You," "Chasing Pavements," and "Turning Tables," in addition to a cover of Aretha Franklin's "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."

The singing sensation, who is set to make a comeback at this year's Grammy Awards, also sat down for an interview during her show’s taping at Santa Monica Bay’s Woman’s Club -- just weeks after her critically acclaimed album, "21," dropped.

"I like to try and distance myself from my songs, and I'm finding it quite impossible to do with this record," says Adele in The Huffington Post's exclusive first look of her episode. "And I'm not sure if it's because the record is a lot more successful than our relationship was. I'm a bit bitter about that in a way, but in a really profound way because it's really amazing. Every time I sing the song, something else comes out, a little bit more of me hates myself or a little bit more of me is devastated."

Watch The Huffington Post's exclusive first look at Adele's episode of "Live from the Artists Den" above, where she reveals her song-writing process and explains how she deals with having a record that was more successful than the relationship it was inspired by.

Even though neither of us have the patience to actually sit down and watch the game anymore, we do love all the game-day food--the kind that isn't time sensitive. As Lucinda says, "Really, in what other sporting event does three game minutes turn into thirty real-life ones?"

For both of us, the kitchen is the perfect place to be during the game--and not because the guys in our homes can't cook (they can, and they do). We just prefer being there. Invariably, Lucinda's menu plan starts with a chili discussion, and the rest spins out from there. Chicken wings, nachos -- all logical follow-up ideas are the inevitable next step. But why do we always want the same thing? Lucinda thinks that it's mostly the guy-driven palate running this show, for one thing. Big flavors -- savory, salty, spicy -- at risk of sounding 'sexist' -- are what excite the guys who watch the guys who play the other guys while the announcing guys tell us what is happening with the guys. Like it or lump it -- it's a guy thing.

Now, before you female football fans write us any heated letters, please know that we do understand. If football is your thing -- more power to you. If cooking for football players or fans is your thing -- good for you. It's a great day to celebrate and it's all about having fun. So, whoever's doing the cooking, just make sure you've got Lucinda's following five football food rules figured out. (Trust us - we've been married to football fanatics for a while now.)

1. Can it be handheld?
2. Is it easily made ahead of time?
3. Does it get better with time ('game minutes' time)?
4. Are you planning to make enough (guys tend to bring other guys)

And perhaps most important:

5. Does it taste better with beer?

So, here are some recipes for game grub sure to please the football viewers, innocent bystanders or anyone else who -- like us -- may well be found in the kitchen relishing a good ole 'bowl of red.'

Kim Shaw and Jordan Carlos in "I Just Want My Pants Back"
Photo: MTV

MTV's new show "I Just Want My Pants Back" immediately sets up a premise: Don't lose your pants to a hot girl after a steamy one-night stand.

Of course, those pants go on to act as a metaphor about a group of twentysomethings who live, love and party in Brooklyn. For the rest of the series, it seems, Jason (Peter Vack's character) is just trying to find that perfect girl, the perfect job and his lost set of trousers.

In fact, all the characters seem to be trying to nail down that special something, whatever it is. And, if you think that what you've seen so far is saucy, from what the "Pants Back" cast tells us, things are about to get a lot hotter.

"I'm most excited about the foursome episode," Jordan Carlos recently told MTV News.

Elisabeth Hower, who plays his on-screen lady love, added, "Me, personally, I also really like the bachelorette episode... it's coming up really soon."

While it seems there's a lot of loving for the characters on MTV's latest scripted series, Sunkrish Bala says that it's when his character, Bobby, finally sees some action that stands out as a stand-out episode. "Actually my favorite episode is the season finale, but we can't talk about that yet," he said. "My second favorite is when I get a girl, man. You never see me with a girl. Everyone else is hooking up left and right."

But, the group consensus does seem to be that lots of fun and crazy times will go down during a very special episode centered on a blackout, set to air later this season.

Kim Shaw, who plays the sassy Tina, revealed a bit more about what fans will see. "There's an episode where we live through a blackout and it's probably my favorite," she said. "It's so much fun. It's one of the first times you get to see [Tina and Jason] not getting along."

"I Just Want My Pants Back" airs Thursdays after "Jersey Shore." Stick with MTV's Remote Control blog for more coverage of the show.

• I Just Want My Pants Back | Ep. 1 | 'Pilot'

The Canadian rap boy wonder makes an appearance at the end, where he shows his appreciation for Chaos' dancing.

Over on Drake's October's Very Own group blog, users are encouraged to submit videos of themselves dancing to the track.

It's a big day for Drake for another reason as well. The rapper's duet with Nicki Minaj, "Make Me Proud," is No. 1 on the Billboard Rap Songs chart, and by RapRadar's count, that's his 11th chart topping single, which puts him ahead of Puff Daddy / P. Diddy / Puff / Diddy as the winningest rapper.

It should be noted, however, that six of those tracks are ones Drake was featured on. Watch the video and catch the full list of chart toppers at the end of this post.

Drake's No. 1 Billboard Rap Hits, via RapRadar:

Drake - Best I Ever Had
Forever (Eminem, Kanye West, Lil Wayne & Drake)
Say Something (Timbaland Feat. Drake)
Drake - Over
Drake - Fancy (Feat. T.I. & Swizz Beatz)
Right Above It (Lil Wayne Feat. Drake)
Aston Martin Music (Rick Ross Feat. Chrisette Michele & Drake)
Moment 4 Life (Nicki Minaj Feat. Drake)
I'm On One (DJ Khaled Feat. Drake, Rick Ross and Lil Wayne)
Drake - Headlines
Drake - Make Me Proud (Feat. Nicki Minaj)

The good news is you get your husband back. For the last six months, men, young and old, have been watching football games like they have a stake in the team or might be called on to "suit up" and get in there at any moment!

Since August, from their "owner's box" easy chairs they have put their feet up and were handed a bowl of chips and salsa. This helped get their spine angle set for college games in September. The next few months of three college games on Saturday and seemingly endless NFL games on Sunday are a blur for everyone but the wives and girlfriends whose only "fantasy football" was that the real one would end. And yes, they also sat through your Mondays and Thursdays, which always confused them. Women have to be thinking "Hey! I thought we only negotiated for Sunday."

But alas now, Bang, it's all over. From coast to coast, football-loving males literally don't know what to do with themselves on weekend afternoons. They grab their remotes and aimlessly click from one channel to another, watching some NBA games, baseball spring training, perhaps a few minutes of hockey, even a second or two of women's figure skating in the hopes that they add a cheer. Yet nothing seems to satisfy their inner ache to stare at a bunch of grown men in helmets colliding violently into one another.

Long ago, I went through my own bouts of PFDS, wandering the house like a ghost, my hands shaking from anxiety. I used to play football in college, for heaven's sakes. The end of the season was, for me, like a small death.

But I have now come out of the other side, and I have to tell you guys, instead of suffering from post-partum Super Bowl sadness, you have a perfect opportunity to improve your life and make yourself happier in ways that might even surprise you. So here goes:

1. Pay Attention to That Woman Who is in Your House.
Let's say you only spent three hours a week watching football this past season. From September through January, that adds up to 48 hours -- two full days. Not bad, you're thinking. What's two days a month in return for the infinite joys of football? Well, throw in some golf on the weekends, maybe a few nights out with the guys -- whatever male bonding thing you like to do -- and add a few more football games, and you easily will have run up at least a week being completely on your own. To put it another way, you will have spent a week not being with the woman in your life.
Granted, your partner might be the type who says she loves having her weekend afternoons to herself or she's the type who sits through games with you, cheering on your team. But even then, she might occasionally think, "I wish he'd sometimes pay attention to me the way he pays attention to his football games." She might go so far as to suspect, deep down, that she isn't as loved or as appreciated as much as she should be.

So, on the first weekend after the Super Bowl, why don't you spend the hours you normally would spend watching football doing something to make your "football widow" feel special? I don't care if Valentine's Day is just around the corner. On the weekend of February 12th, take your partner to a movie that she wants to see or do something with her that you know she likes to do even if it makes you crazy, like antiquing. Then, for all those Sundays she's fixed you halftime snacks, make her dinner -- or take her to dinner. Give her a thank-you card for putting up with you for another season. And on another afternoon, take her for a massage, a manicure and a pedicure at your neighborhood day spa.

As I often tell my male guests who come on my shows and who don't seem to have a clue about female life, "When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Get the message? This is the time to make sure Momma's happy.

2. And Then Pay Attention to Those Kids Who Live With You.
It's one thing to watch a football game with your kids, but it's another thing entirely to do something with them in which they are the sole focus of your attention. And I'm not suggesting you have a quick catch-up talk one Saturday afternoon with your children or that you take them through a fast food restaurant for lunch. Why don't you use one of those three-hour blocks you had spent on a football game and use it to take your children on an adventure. It could be something new, like a trip to a museum that none of you have been to before -- or a day trip out-of-town. But make it something. Trust me, even if they roll their eyes and say, "Oh, Dad," they won't forget it.

3. Do Some Chores.
Don't laugh. A lot of you have been putting off all the stuff that needs to get done around the house, thinking you'll get to it when your weekends are free. And, of course, now that your weekends are free, you still don't want to do anything. Deep down, you could very well be thinking your job is to work during the week and bring home the bacon, and that your weekends should be time to relax, except to take out the trash and mow the lawn. Sorry, but it's up to you to get that broken gutter fixed. For one thing, you'll definitely feel better about yourself at least having gotten something done, no matter how minor.

4. Get Out of Your Comfort Zone.
Are you one of these guys who tell people that you watch football because you love the thrill of competition? Or that you like watching the way players overcome seemingly impossible challenges and accomplish heroic feats?

Okay, I'm not saying you should go out and try something superhuman to get over your post-Super Bowl malaise. But please let me state the obvious: there's nothing easier, and more comfortable, than sitting on your couch staring at a TV. So what about coming up with some project that pushes you outside your usual boundaries for three hours each weekend? Something that makes you take a chance? It could be as simple as sticking to a fitness program. I know a guy who started volunteering for a nonprofit charity instead of languishing in his PFDS when his Saturday college football afternoons came to an end. No, he didn't change the world. He didn't get his name in lights like an NFL star. But in his own way, he made a difference.

You can too. And who knows? By the time August rolls around again, you might surprise yourself and realize that you don't have the desire to watch as much football as you once had.

Alright, I'll admit, that's a ridiculous suggestion. But maybe you'll want to do something more with yourself than watch three games in a row? Would that be all that bad? And on a side note, how come they don't add a football to figure skating?

Adam Lambert
Photo: Getty/ Jason LaVeris

Adam Lambert has never shied away from expressing his love of Freddie Mercury, the late, great theatrical lead singer of classic rock band Queen. And ever since he was joined by the original members of the British group during his finale performance on "American Idol" in 2009, speculation has swirled that Lambert could step into Mercury's bedazzled boots and serve as the group's new vocalist in homage to his hero.

Lambert reportedly told the British tabloid, Daily Star, that he will, in fact, hit the road this summer with original members guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor to play a string of dates, including one at Knebworth in England, where Queen played their final show with Mercury in 1986, five years before he died.

"The intention is to pay tribute to Freddie and the band by singing some f---ing great songs," he said. "It's to keep the music alive for the fans and give it an energy that Freddie would have been proud of." Lambert is set to release his second solo album, Trespassing, on March 20. The first single, "Better Than I Know Myself,"
 dropped in late December.

But it was his performance in November with May and Taylor at the MTV Europe Awards that revived rumors that he might step into Mercury's formidable lead slot. Now that the dream gig appears to be reality, Lambert is trying to manage expectations while paying due respect to glam rock icon Mercury.

"After the EMAs, I heard faint little slithers of a backlash from people saying: 'You can't replace Freddie Mercury.' But I already knew that," he said. "There's no intention in my mind of replacing Freddie. That's impossible. The way I'm choosing to view it is that it's a great honour and one I'm in no way going to shirk ... Being asked to front Queen is the best thing that can possibly happen."

At press time spokespeople for Queen and Lambert could not be reached to confirm the report.

• Adam Lambert
• Queen

"Before Watchmen" comic
Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

After "Watchmen," comic book fans were left under the impression that there would be no more stories featuring Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl and the rest of their morally ambiguous crime-fighting pals. But that was before "Before Watchmen."

The announcement of new "Watchmen" comic books rocked the fan community to its core, and we're dealing with the fallout in this week's round of "Talk Nerdy" madness. Watch the episode below, and keep reading for further nerdiness!

Who Watches "Before Watchmen"?
Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' most popular characters are returning to the paneled page, but Moore and Gibbons are nowhere to be found. Instead, DC Comics has hired a crew consisting of Darwyn Cooke, Brian Azzarello, J. Michael Straczynski and others to spearhead "Before Watchmen," a series of seven different comic book titles (each containing no fewer than four issues) debuting later this year. It's a controversial decision to return to what many consider to be sacred material, sure, but in the eyes of the Nerds, it's also a no-brainer: How do you turn down buckets filled with million-dollar bills, after all? Get their take on the news, plus some insight from MTV Geek's very own Valerie Gallaher.

Spidey Misses "The Avengers"
Elsewhere in the superhero space, rumors involving a possible Spider-Man cameo in "The Avengers" were officially shot down this week during a Twitter Q&A with director Joss Whedon. "There is no Spider-Man cameo," he declared. "But the Avengers do turn off the dark." Even with a fork in the rumors, the Nerdy crew couldn't help but wonder about the possibilities of Spidey yukking it up with Earth's Mightiest Heroes. See if they were for or against a visit from your friendly neighborhood web-head in your weekly dose of Nerdy.

Potter Wears "Black," Heroes Get Chronicled
It continues to be an eventful year at the box office, with not one but two extremely geek-friendly movies hitting theaters this weekend. We're talking, of course, about the Daniel Radcliffe-starring "Woman in Black" and the found-footage superhero film "Chronicle" from young director Josh Trank. But there's another movie in the mix that one of our hosts wholeheartedly endorses, a decision so controversial, so outrageous, that his very Nerdy membership is now very much in jeopardy. Intrigued? Watch the episode to see more!

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• Talk Nerdy

This time, he plans to explore the coming of middle age, too. Feig talked about the new series he hopes to do on comedian Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast last week.

The neighbors' insurance companies filed the suit this week in a Manhattan court. The suit says the "My Cousin Vinny" actress' "negligence" caused a September 2010 leak that left more than $128,000 in damage at the building in Manhattan's Greenwich (GREN'-ich) Village.

Waters says in an email the case is a standard insurance claim completely out of his hands. The "Hairspray" director says there's no animosity between him and Tomei.

The insurers' lawyer and representatives for the Academy Award-winning actress haven't responded to messages left Thursday seeking comment.

"You've got these awards and there's going to be one winner and four losers, but the four losers made great films," Pitt told The Guardian. "A subtle point of 'Moneyball' is that we're a string of successes and failures. Odds are I won't have another year like this for a while."

Pitt may know the ins and outs of the business now, but he's the first to admit he knew next to nothing about baseball before playing the general manager of the Oakland A's.

"I'm amazed they let me do this movie," Pitt told Sports Illustrated. "Baseball and I didn't get along that well. I wrestled one year [in high school]. I dove one year. Everything but baseball."

Statistics aside, Pitt's year is looking good -- he's starring in "Voyage Of Time," "Cogan's Trade" and "World War Z," all slated for 2012 release dates.

Fore more on Pitt, head over to The Guardian.

Comparing the two pioneers, Rock acknowledged Cosby as "the greatest." He said that Cosby's work was of such a high caliber that no one ever attempts to copy it. Whereas, Pryor, on the other hand, "as great as Richard is, I do a little Richard, Eddie [Murphy] does a little Richard ... "

Explaining what makes Cosby's material so great, Rock said that none of it "is predicated on a reference point. Each joke is so f***ing good that it withstands the reference. Almost all of them would work today. ... And you can't say that about any other comedian."

Get more comedic insights on "Inside Comedy, Thursdays at 11 p.m. EST on Showtime.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

But just because she wasn't dining with a significant other doesn't mean Kardashian wasn't dressed to impress. The stunner stepped out in a skintight neutral bandage dress and sky-high heels.

Although Thursday wasn't a date night for Kardashian, she's still partaking in her fair share of romance rumors. The reality TV darling is reportedly getting cozy with NFL star Mark Sanchez. But this rumored romance wouldn't be the first time Kardashian may be showing the NFL some love. She previously dated Miles Austin and Reggie Bush.

Rumors aside, how does Kim stack up in our battle of the celebrity legs? You decide. Vote below!

Sofia Vergara is not one of them. Even when she's got makeup smeared all over her face or is screaming like a crazy person at the top of her lungs, the "Modern Family" star knows it's no use -- she may as well flaunt what she's got.

So when Sofia stepped out for some sushi on Thursday night, she chose the following outfit: a skintight black tank top, black leather pants and red stiletto heels.

Of course once the paparazzi flashbulbs began, that tank top became totally sheer.

The Colombian star took it in stride, unsurprisingly, as the occasional sheer wardrobe malfunction is nothing new -- the star had a more embarrassing reveal in a pair of too-sheer leggings back in December.

As they say: when you've got it, flaunt it.

Check out Sofia's unconventional dinner date outfit below... and click to see what other accomplishments this talented star has had.

PHOTO:

Hotel General Manager Gary Budge says audiences are declining, and the Oak Room will be turned into a lounge for Marriott Reward Elite guests.

The hotel closed on Jan. 1 for renovations and will reopen in the spring.

The Oak Room, a New York landmark as the site of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, became a nightclub for the first time in 1939. It was silenced during World War II, and didn't have live music again regularly until 1980.

Stars like Harry Connick, Jr., Diana Krall and Michael Feinstein got their start at the Oak Room.

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Information from: The Wall Street Journal, http://www.wsj.com

Leslie Carter and Nick Carter
Photo: Chad Buchanan/Getty Images

Though the results of a toxicology test could take several more weeks, an incident report on thedeath of Leslie Carter
 reveals that the sister of Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was under the influence of several prescription drugs at the time of her death.

According to ABC News, details from the report compiled by officials who responded to the 911 call from Leslie Carter's family reveal that three drugs were found near her body: one to treat symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, a muscle relaxant and an anxiety disorder medication.

Leslie's stepmother, Ginger Carter, told authorities that the one-time singer had a "long history of mental illness and was on medication for her depression" and that she seemed depressed on the morning of January 30. In addition, she fell down in the shower on that morning, after which Ginger helped Leslie lie down in a bed and checked in on her periodically. Later that day, Ginger realized that Leslie, 25, was not breathing and Robert Carter, Leslie's father, tried to perform CPR on her before they called 911.

The incident report also claimed that Ginger Carter appeared to be under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol when authorities responded, exhibiting "slurred speech, pinpoint pupils, glassy eyes and [she] kept falling asleep." Ginger told officials that she had taken "five to six" pills for depression, which was more than her usual dose, "because of Leslie passing away."

In the wake of his sister's death, Nick Carter had promised to keep working and on Thursday night he was back on stage at New York's Irving Plaza for a solo show. In his first public appearance since Leslie's death, Carter put on his standard high-energy show, including original songs from his recent album, covers of U2's "With or Without You" and Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy."

E! Online reported that he also took it down a notch when he pulled out an acoustic guitar and spoke for the first time in public about his Leslie. "I never thought I'd ever have to, but I'd like to dedicate this song to my sister," he said with a hitch in his voice. He then performed his song "Falling Down," his eyes welling up with tears as he sang.

• Nick Carter
• Leslie Carter

Leslie Carter and Nick Carter
Photo: Chad Buchanan/Getty Images

Though the results of a toxicology test could take several more weeks, an incident report on the death of Leslie Carter
 reveals that the sister of Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter was under the influence of several prescription drugs at the time of her death.

According to ABC News, details from the report compiled by officials who responded to the 911 call from Leslie Carter's family reveal that three drugs were found near her body: one to treat symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, a muscle relaxant and an anxiety disorder medication.

Leslie's stepmother, Ginger Carter, told authorities that the onetime singer had a "long history of mental illness and was on medication for her depression" and that she seemed depressed on the morning of January 30. In addition, she fell down in the shower on that morning, after which Ginger helped Leslie lie down in a bed and checked in on her periodically. Later that day, Ginger realized that Leslie, 25, was not breathing and Robert Carter, Leslie's father, tried to perform CPR on her before they called 911.

The incident report also claimed that Ginger Carter appeared to be under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol when authorities responded, exhibiting "slurred speech, pinpoint pupils, glassy eyes and [she] kept falling asleep." Ginger told officials that she had taken "five to six" pills for depression, which was more than her usual dose, "because of Leslie passing away."

In the wake of his sister's death, Nick Carter had promised to keep working and on Thursday night he was back on stage at New York's Irving Plaza for a solo show. In his first public appearance since Leslie's death, Carter put on his standard high-energy show, including original songs from his recent album and covers of U2's "With or Without You" and Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy."

E! Online reported that he also took it down a notch when he pulled out an acoustic guitar and spoke for the first time in public about his Leslie. "I never thought I'd ever have to, but I'd like to dedicate this song to my sister," he said with a hitch in his voice. He then performed his song "Falling Down," his eyes welling up with tears as he sang.

• Nick Carter
• Leslie Carter

Like many third-party candidates, she's seeking to use the platform of a presidential campaign to draw attention to issues dear to her heart. So what, exactly, are Barr's pet issues and political beliefs?

Barr used the language of the Occupy Wall Street movement during her announcement on Thursday, calling on the 99% of Americans to help power her cause. She's long been identified as a populist figure; her sitcom "Roseanne," which ran from 1988 to 1997, offered a refreshingly realistic look at working-class life at a time when TV shows like "Dallas" and "Dynasty" were peddling high-end glamour. Barr is now developing a new sitcom at NBC called "Downwardly Mobile," set in a mobile home community.

On Twitter, Barr followed up her announcement by laying out some of her immediate policy priorities: forgive all student loans, homeowner debt and credit card debt by "kicking out" the Federal Reserve; institute single-payer healthcare within 100 days of her inauguration; pursue those she calls "financial terrorists"; reconfigure American diets, shifting away from animal protein and toward protein from nuts (she owns a large macadamia nut farm in Hawaii); and fight for gay rights.

Barr has also long been in favor of legalizing marijuana, and has said in the past that she'd abolish all taxes.

Although Verlin knows how to approach and handle snakes, not everyone in his circle does. That became clear on a recent hunting trip with his friend and his friend's son.

One rule of loading captured snakes into a box is that "when you put a snake in the box make sure the snake is always back in the box when you shut the lid."

Forgetting that golden rule, Verlin's buddy's son reached down to shut the lid and was bitten by a snake. Fortunately, although it hurt -- "I felt little-bitty tiny teeth" -- the snake was not venomous so the boy was not in serious danger.

Follow the fangs on "Snake Man Of Appalachia," Thursdays at 9 p.m. EST on Animal Planet.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Cymphonique Miller
Photo: MTV News

Nickelodeon is getting ready to rock. On Saturday, the network will premiere its new show "How to Rock," starring rising teen star Cymphonique Miller. Miller is a familiar face at Nickelodeon, having guest starred on "True Jackson, VP" and "Big Time Rush," but this time she takes on the role as leading lady on the show, which is based on the book "How to Rock Braces and Glasses" by Meg Haston.

Miller plays high school student Kasey Simon (think Rachel McAdams' character in "Mean Girls"), leader of the Perfs, the most popular girls in school. But Miller's character quickly finds herself kicked out of the "cool crowd" after she gets braces and glasses.

But Kasey won't let the "make-under" get her down. She becomes friends with a new group of students and winds up as the lead singer of their new band, Gravity 5.

"[It's] almost kind of like a battle of the bands, and the Perfs are sort of like the mean girls." Miller recently told MTV News. "It's like the Perfs are always planning some certain way to stop Gravity 5. You can see lots of crazy physical comedy and crazy stunts in the show, 'cause every week we do something totally silly and outrageous."

Miller, who sings and co-wrote the show's theme song, "Only You Can Be You," is no stranger to the spotlight; her brother is actor/rapper Romeo, and her dad is hip-hop mogul Master P. Yet, that doesn't mean it was easy for Miller to persuade her dad to let her star in "How to Rock." She said he didn't want her to be involved in "this crazy business" until he realized how passionate she was about it. So he gave her his approval, on the condition that she keeps up her grades.

"We put education first in our family, and Romeo is like my inspiration because he was not only doing film and everything, but he also went to college, he went to USC," Miller said.

"They're always just constantly telling me to not get into this business for the wrong reasons like fame or money or else you will never be happy, so just do it because you love it." It seems like Miller certainly is loving what she is doing on "How to Rock" and hopes fans can relate to the show's positive message.

"I hope that fans and the viewers can just take from the show is to find friends who love you for who you are, because it's all about friendship with this show," Miller said. "What they should learn is that at the end of the day, there's nothing more important than being yourself."

"How to Rock" premieres Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET on Nickelodeon.

Are you excited for "How to Rock"? Let us know in the comments.

Much like Congress rethought its decision after the outpouring of public anger over the anti-piracy SOPA and PIPA (Personal Information Protection Act) acts, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation had a change of heart on Friday (February 3) after intense criticism for its decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood initiatives.

Komen, the organization behind the popular pink-ribbon campaign, announced on Tuesday that it would stop funding breast cancer prevention, screening and education at Planned Parenthood health centers — a decision Planned Parenthood claimed was in response to pressure from pro-life groups. Over the past five years, PP centers with Komen program funding have provided nearly 170,000 clinical breast exams out of the more than 4 million exams performed nationwide at PP health centers, as well as more than 6,400 mammogram referrals out of 70,000 total referrals, according to PP.

Following the firestorm of controversy over the decision, the founder and CEO of the nation's largest breast-cancer advocacy group said on Friday that the group would work to change the criteria that sparked the outcry.

"We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants," Nancy G. Brinker said in a statement. "We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives."

Brinker went further, acknowledging that the original decision to pull funding was done for "political reasons, or specifically to penalize Planned Parenthood." In the wake of the public furor, Komen's director of community health programs resigned in protest over the decision. In addition, 26 U.S. senators had signed a letter this week asking Komen to reconsider its withdrawal decision.

One of the leading artistic voices of dissent over the initial Komen withdrawal from Planned Parenthood were the Decemberists. The band had worked with Komen since the band's keyboardist, Jenny Conlee, had revealed her breast cancer diagnosis. When news broke on Tuesday that Komen had pulled funding for breast cancer examinations at PP, the Decemberists redirected the funds from their "Team Jenny" T-shirt to PP.

On their website, they explained, "The Decemberists are deeply troubled by Komen for the Cure's recent decision to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, a vital resource in the battle against breast cancer. Providing cancer screenings to low income women is integral to the prevention and defeat of breast cancer and it is unconscionable that Komen should politicize this very important issue by bowing to the fear campaign being waged against PP by the right."

On Friday, the band added an update to their initial posting, writing, "The Decemberists are pleased that Komen for the Cure reversed their decision."

M.I.A., Madonna and Nicki Minaj in "Give Me All Your Luvin' "
Photo: Interscope

After fans heard that Madonna had enlisted Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. for her single and video for "Give Me All Your Luvin'," it really felt like anything could happen with those three equally eccentric and visual artists all joining forces. What they ended up creating was an eye-catching clip full of masked cheerleaders, hot football players and lacy outfits (designed by Norma Kamali) that every fan of Madge's "Like a Virgin" era will go crazy over.

The video feels distinctly Madonna — she is the star, after all — but Nicki's and M.I.A.'s presences are felt between the cheerleader chant and their equally funky verses.

"[It was] quite intense but we had a lot of fun. ... It's like shooting three presidents or something like that," Clement Gallet, from video-directing team the Megaforce, told MTV News about the shoot. "I think everybody's a bit stressed. We had time to speak to discuss the idea, to do the fittings. So you have time to meet the people first. I think we maybe thought it would be harder to have these three famous women on set, and I think everything went quite well."

While the trio's collaboration made headlines, so did a kiss Nicki tweeted about that she shared with Madonna on the New York set back in December.

"That's funny, 'cause that's something we didn't really see," he added. "Basically, it was Nicki Minaj's birthday on the shoot, but we were — as always, as the directors — stressed about the next scene and whatever happens, that when the birthday cake arrived, we were already prepping the next scene and we didn't see what happened. And we learned about it on Twitter. So basically, we cannot tell you about the scene," he joked.

Do you wish Nicki and Madonna's kiss had made it into the video? Let us know in the comments!

• Five Key Moments In Madonna's 'Give Me All Your Luvin' Music Video

• Madonna
• Nicki Minaj
• M.I.A.

Josh Hutcherson and Jennifer Lawrence
Photo: MTV News

The influx of "Hunger Games" goods continues! Slowly but surely, as we approach the film's March 23 release date, we're seeing more teaser trailers and getting to know the talented castmembers.

Stars Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson recently revealed to MTV News the details surrounding their first meeting and that infamous "chemistry read." We're now following up with more from that interview, wherein Lawrence and Hutcherson address the magnitude of their roles and avoiding Internet gossip.

When asked if either star spent time reading the "Hunger Games" chatter online, both agreed that it's better to avoid it as much as possible.

"I got a Facebook, like, three days ago. I don't do the Internets," Hutcherson joked. "I had friends tell me what people were saying online; I just personally don't go on there that much."

The castmates-turned-real-life friends also discussed the pressure and hype surrounding the film and whether they carried that with them on set.

"I, for one, felt it at the beginning, and then when we showed up on set, it was just making a movie, putting it aside," Lawrence said.

"It was crazy. It had so much buildup for something I've done so many times before," Hutcherson added. "Every other time it's been, 'Oh, another movie.' This time, it had so much going on before the production even started. I felt it but don't feel like it affected me that much."

Speaking to which scenes they were most excited to shoot, Hutcherson again called out the cave scene, while Lawrence joked that she never knew what they were filming.

"I was excited for the cave scene the most, for me at least, because it's the most character-driven part of the story where you really saw Katniss and Peeta's relationship take a big turn and come to fruition, if you will," he said.

"Whoa. 'Fruition.' I didn't know what scenes we were doing until the day I showed up," Lawrence joked. "But there were a couple of scenes where I'd read the call sheet and go, 'Oh, that's going to be a fun scene.' "

Head to NextMovie for a chance to win a "Hunger Games" prize pack, including two tickets to the premiere!

Check out everything we've got on "The Hunger Games."

For young Hollywood news, fashion and "Twilight" updates around the clock, visit HollywoodCrush.MTV.com.

• MTV Rough Cut: Jennifer Lawrence And Josh Hutcherson

Madonna at the 1984 MTV Video Music Awards
Photo: Getty Images

America will be the first audience for the Queen of Pop in over two years when Madonna takes the stage at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis as the halftime act for Super Bowl XLVI. If her history with MTV is any indicator, she's likely to blow the roof off the joint.

Madonna is known for her over-the-top live performances and will most assuredly have her game face on with the world watching this Sunday. Not that she ever slacks in the live performance department: Her most recent tour, Sticky & Sweet, was the highest-grossing tour ever by a solo artist and the fourth-biggest tour of all time. From Live Aid in 1985 to Live 8, 20 years later, she's headlined some of the biggest musical events of the past quarter century.

Check out photos of Madonna's iconic MTV performances!

Some of her best and most-iconic performances, though, have taken place on MTV. Her relationship with the channel has been a symbiotic one: We gave her a nice big platform early in her career and she ran with it, writhing onstage to "Like a Virgin" at the 1984 Video Music Awards, earning heaps of press for herself and our first big show while helping to establish the VMAs as the performance event they are today. She's since thanked us by returning again and again to tear up the stage with some of her biggest hits.

As we gear up for Madonna's big gig at the Super Bowl, we take a look back with a countdown of her biggest and best MTV performances.

5. "Hung Up," 2005 MTV EMAs Less than three months after a fall from a horse broke her collarbone, hand and three ribs, Madonna opened the 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards with a performance of the lead single from her Grammy-winning Confessions on a Dance Floor. Wearing a purple leotard and matching leather boots, Madonna emerged from a massive disco ball looking and sounding as strong as ever to perform the Stuart Price co-produced track, which went on to become her 36th top 10 hit in America and topped the charts in 41 countries. Madonna's dancing and energy here proved what we've long suspected — that she is a real-life "X-Men" character with superhuman regeneration powers. How else do you explain the then-47-year-old's ability to put on a show-stopping performance after a fall that would have sidelined far-younger performers for much longer?

4. "Like a Virgin/Hollywood," 2003 VMAs
Yeah, you knew it was coming. It was the kiss heard 'round the world. The performance opened as a tribute to Madonna's iconic 1984 VMA take on "Like a Virgin" (more on that below) with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera trading vocals before segueing into a performance of "Hollywood" from American Life. The audience rose to its feet as Her Madgesty descended from atop a wedding cake, dressed in a feminized tuxedo, to dance, sing and, yes, smooch, Spears and Aguilera. The kiss caused a firestorm of controversy and remains one of the biggest pop-culture moments of the past decade.

3. "Like a Virgin," 1984 VMAs
There she was: Then an up-and-coming singer with a few hits ("Holiday," "Lucky Star") under her trademark "Boy Toy" belt, wearing a wedding gown and shimmying her way down a wedding cake at the first-ever MTV Video Music Awards. It remains arguably one of the most landmark live musical performances in history and was a fitting national introduction to Madonna. Oh, and her famous roll-on-the-floor dance move, you know the one — M rolling around onstage with her dress up over her head — well, Madonna didn't mean for that to happen. As she told Jay Leno earlier this week, she lost her shoe as she was descending the wedding cake set piece and, in an effort to dive for it without being obvious, she rolled across the stage. After she came offstage, her then-manager Freddy DeMann told her that she'd gone too far and her career was over. What do you think about that now, Freddy?

2. "Express Yourself," 1989 VMAs
It might not be as iconic as her VMA debut or as controversial as "The Kiss," but Madonna's simple, full-voiced performance of "Express Yourself" at the 1989 VMAs is one of her best and serves as a roundup of everything we loved about '80s Madonna (that hair, those baggy pants!) and a preview of what was to come in the '90s. Unlike many of her performances, this take on "Express Yourself" feels very stripped down — just Madonna, two backup singers (longtime touring collaborators Niki Haris and Donna DeLory) and a light-up staircase. The choreography and staging largely foreshadowed how Madge tackled her tune as the opening number for her legendary 1990 Blonde Ambition World Tour, but late in the performance, she gives the audience their first taste of voguing months before "Vogue" actually hit radio in 1990. We also get a pre-cone-bra look at Madonna in a Jean Paul Gaultier bustier, a look she would rock well into the new decade. Perhaps best of all, as she walks offstage knowing she just nailed it, we get a glimpse of that signature Madonna confidence when the pop superstar high-fives Haris and DeLory and simply proclaims "Yeah!" as she disappears offstage.

1. "Vogue," 1990 VMAs
A year later, Madonna returned to the Video Music Awards to present what could be the most-influential pop performance in the awards' history. With the stage ornately decorated to resemble an 18th century French parlor and her dancers in period grab, Madonna took the stage dressed, massive powdered wig and all, like Marie Antoinette to launch a full-on performance-art spectacle set to her #1 hit "Vogue." Backed by her Blonde Ambition dancers as well as Haris and DeLory, Madonna lip-synched and fan-danced her way through the elaborate, sexy and innovative act with so much superstar swagger that it practically radiated from the TV. And 21 years later, you can see the impact of this performance — and more broadly, this period of Madonna's career — everywhere, from Lady Gaga's VMA performance of "Paparazzi" in 2009 to just about every tour any female pop star has launched since. Madonna didn't just give her peers license to put on theatrical concerts and over-the-top TV performances, she made it a pop necessity.

Share your predictions about Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show in the comments below!

• Madonna's Top MTV Performances
• MTV Rough Cut: Madonna

• Madonna

So, did Heigl's character Izzie make an appearance on last night's alternate reality episode, "If/Then?"

Kind of. It was all a dream as Meredith nodded off and experienced a different kind of life. One in which she was engaged to Alex.

Sitting in the hospital cafeteria she and the other doctors were gossiping about their "loner" co-worker Cristina and the fallout from her affair with Dr. Burke. Meredith had heard that Cristina was such a bunny-boiler that a scared Dr. Burke even had to leave the state.

And that's when Izzie came up. "I always say never mess with the crazy chicks," laughed Alex. "She's probably going to go full-on Izzie one day and shoot up the hospital!"

When Jackson asked who Izzie was, the claws really came out.

Appparently the alternate Izzie was nuts. Not only was she sleeping with her patient, but she went and stole a heart from the transplant list for him. Luckily Meredith caught her and had her fired. Then she shot up the hospital (Heigl quit before that real Season 6 episode).

The drama continues on "Grey's Anatomy" Thursday nights at 9 p.m. EST on ABC.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

John Krasinksi and Drew Barrymore in "Big Miracle"
Photo: Universal Pictures

If you're looking for a feel-good film to see this weekend, look no further than "Big Miracle," the story of the real-life rescue of three gray whales trapped in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1988. Incredibly, the effort became an international issue that involved a rare collaboration between the United States and the Soviet Union and garnered worldwide media attention.

MTV News recently caught up with the three stars of the film, Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski and Kristen Bell, who explained the multi-generational appeal and importance of the story and the cause presented in the film.

"The whales have Twitter accounts," Krasinski joked when asked how the film might specifically appeal to MTV viewers. "So, streamlined information, done deal. Don't ask us, ask them. They'll talk all about it," he said with a smile. "It's a big movie that deals with participation, and with the election coming up and all these different things, and everybody is divided over this, that and the other, and everybody is angry about something. It's one of those moments where you get to say, 'I could just step in and lend my voice to something.' And it really helps, it makes you feel important and special that you're doing something. This movie sort of focuses on that completely, about how when you get a bunch of people together you can kind of do anything."

Barrymore added that the film's setting in the late '80s provides for a unique look back at our media and political cultures at the time.

"It's an interesting look back at how if things were a little different maybe we wouldn't exactly be where we are. But, it's not in a patronizing way, it's in a really interesting way," she said. "And it's amazing historically, like, you know, environmentally and politically. But, I think it's very true to what's going on now, that if people work together, whether it's protesting via Twitter for an important movement to change their country or to do something wonderful and important like saving whales. It's working together, so I think actually in 1987 when this takes place and what's going on right now today, they definitely have a connection."

Kristen Bell also focused on the warm, fuzzy aspects of the film, particularly how its positive message compares to the continually multiplying "train wreck" elements involved in other films and TV.

"I think it's a very positive story as opposed to many of the unendingly interesting train wrecks that are put on television or in films these days, which believe me, I'm not poo-pooing, but there's something very inspiring about a story where a bunch of different people come together for a common goal and actually accomplish it," Bell explained. "It's very, very inspiring, I think. And often times, news headlines or things that are written about in blogs, you know, reality television, it's not as inspiring as you want it to be, at least not for me. And it actually happened. It's historical, so you'll get smarter watching it. You'll also be inspired, so you'll be happier. What's the downfall? See the movie!"

Are you planning on seeing "Big Miracle"? Leave your comment below.

The owners had said the dog died giving birth, so Daniel warned his staff that it would contain "fully developed, fully grown babies." As he cut into the cadaver, the amount of gagging, grimacing and "ewwwws" from Dixie and Joseph suggested that they may want to consider taking a different career path.

Something was amiss, however, and as a confused Daniel asked "Is this the right dog?" Joseph -- "I'm gonna puke!" -- had to flee outside to get some fresh air.

Daniel and Dixie examined the Yorkie thoroughly and they realized that it couldn't have died giving birth because it wasn't pregnant. However, Dixie did spot an odd-looking tumor on its intestine. Is that what killed the precious pet?

"I'm not a vet yet," said Dixie, "But I'm pretty sure this dog died of cancer."

"American Stuffers" airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. EST on Animal.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Suze Orman, appearing as herself, wasn't too impressed with Kenneth when he laid out his diabolical plan to get his coworkers to miss him. So she gave him some of that tough love she's known for, as well as some sound financial advice. While she couldn't get out of him how old he is -- "Don't worry about it," he responded to that question -- she did learn that he pays 110% of his earnings to his church in tithes, and that he doesn't even know how much he makes.

Orman's advice was that Kenneth needs to quit the page program and get a real job if he wants to hang out with rich people like Jenna and Tracy. And so, Kenneth decides to do just that. And while Liz didn't appear to have much faith in his abilities or skills in any other area of the company, Jack saw immediately that he was a white male with a full head of hair. What more does one need to make it?

Find out Kenneth's next chapter as "30 Rock" continues Thursdays at 8 p.m. EST on NBC.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Rick Ross
Photo: MTV News

God Forgives, I Don't may be the name of Rick Ross' upcoming LP, but the Bawse isn't as coldhearted as his album title may suggest. When it comes to former Maybach Music affiliate Pill, Rozay wishes the Atlanta MC all the best.

"I'm a real dude and I'm a real boss and once you rep the MMG flag, I'll never step on your feet; I'mma give you a pass anyway," Ross told MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway of Pill while at French Montana's "Shot Caller" remix video shoot in Miami on Sunday.

In December, P-I-Double L took to Twitter to vent about his label situation with Warner Music Group, blaming WMG for his lack of radio and television support. Because of his prominent appearance on Maybach Music's Self Made Vol. 1 compilation, many believed that Pill was signed to Ross' label, but in an exclusive interview with MTV News in January, Pill revealed that he was never technically signed to Rozay and that his deal went strictly through MMG's parent company, Warner.

"Pill's situation was a special situation because he was already signed to Warner before I did my label deal at Warner. So when I did do my deal, it was a business opportunity that was presented where Pill could run with the team for a year," Ross confirmed. "I took that opportunity. That year ran its course and it was pretty much up to Warner what decisions they wanted to make with Pill as an artist after that point. I think they made it."

Pill told MTV News in January that he was working on getting a release from Warner and made it clear that he had no problems with anyone in MMG personally — though he did say that he and Ross didn't speak very often. "I ain't got nothing against none of them, nobody. It's just the situation don't work," Pill said matter-of-factly. "It's cool with us, I don't got nothing against Ross either. It's just I don't talk to him."

Some believed that Pill's outspokenness would anger the Boss, but Rozay didn't take any of it to heart. "He made sure he reached out to me and called me and clarified," Ross said. "He expressed that in no way was he disrespecting the team or the brand, because it's a great opportunity and a great look."

As far as why the "Trap Goin' Ham" rapper's situation didn't work out, Ross thought the young MC just needed a hit record and a little luck to build his momentum. He used the success of MMG's Meek Mill and Wale to exemplify his point. "Certain things happen for certain people at certain times and none of us could really predict that," he explained. "I couldn't predict that Meek Mill would bring 'Ima Boss' to me or we couldn't predict that Wale would bring 'That Way.' "

Even though Pill and WMG are now going their separate ways, Ross is looking forward to seeing his former Maybach affiliate rack up a win. "Hopefully, in the future he'll bring him a hit record, and get him some paper and do his thing," he said. "I wish him much success."

What do you hope to see from Pill in the future? Leave your comments below!

• Rick Ross

Put on the spot by host Craig Ferguson, Radcliffe told the "Late Late Show" (Weeknights, 12:37 a.m. EST on CBS) that he'd also like to have children.

Lots of children. "I'd like a small army," he joked. When Ferguson advised him to have his children young, Radcliffe said that's what he's planning, but "in a few years' time."

Undeterred, Ferguson pushed Radcliffe until he turned to the audience and quipped, "I'll try! Anyone fancy it?" From the sound of it, quite a few women in the audience did fancy it, but they were out of luck.

Moving onto doing nude scenes in films, Ferguson had forgotten that Radcliffe has already stripped off, albeit on stage, for his role in the London revival of Peter Schaffer's "Equus" in 2007.

He was only 17 at the time, which Ferguson thought seemed young -- possibly even illegal -- to appear nude in public.

"Well, it was in England," Radcliffe said by way of explanation. Because the age of consent there is 16, it's apparently totally legal for a 17 year-old to appear on stage nude. "If you're stupid enough, yeah" joked Radcliffe.

"Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson" airs Weeknights at 12:37 a.m. EST on CBS.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Christina Milian
Photo: MTV News

In addition to a brand-new crop of talent and potential future stars, NBC's hit singing competition "The Voice" has added a familiar face to its cast for season two: new social media correspondent Christina Milian.

When MTV News caught up with the singer/actress recently, she explained how she got the gig and how excited she is for the show to premiere on Super Bowl Sunday.

"I'm heavily involved on Twitter, have always been involved with my Internet fanbase and find that that's the best way to connect with the fans," Milian told us during a photo shoot for Hydrogen magazine. "I guess the people at NBC had their eye on me and they paid attention to it. I got a call one day and met up with everyone at NBC and the folks from 'The Voice,' and next thing you know, a week later, I'm signing a contract and the following week I'm working."

Milian had nothing but praise for her "Voice" castmates and the experience working on the show thus far.

"It's been fabulous. I've had fun working with the cast already," she said. "Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Cee Lo, Carson Daly — it's an awesome super team they have, and from day one, they treated me like family."

The "Dip It Low" singer said she loves that the show is about music and chasing your dreams and that she's enjoyed watching the coaches take time to work with and help their contestants.

"This show is about music, it's about talent, and it's about this passion and this dream of becoming a star," Milian said. "Still to this day, every day that I wake up, I have that same dream, so to be involved with the show, [it's amazing] to watch what they incorporate and how the coaches act as advisers and mentors to the artists and really truthfully help them and push them and want them to be the best so they can win.

"There have been so many moments where I've thought, 'That's me on that stage! I remember that time,' " she added of enjoying watching the contestants. "Or you see their family sitting on the side of the stage crying or excited or jumping up and down, just so happy for them to even be there, I've felt that before, so I'm kind of living through them all over again."

Will you check out season two of "The Voice" when it returns Sunday? Let us know in the comments!

Check out everything we've got on "The Voice."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• Christina Milian

Christina Milian
Photo: MTV News

In addition to a brand-new crop of talent and potential future stars, NBC's hit singing competition "The Voice" has added a familiar face to its cast for season two: new social media correspondent Christina Milian.

When MTV News caught up with the singer/actress recently, she explained how she got the gig and how excited she is for the show to premiere on Super Bowl Sunday.

"I'm heavily involved on Twitter, have always been involved with my Internet fanbase and find that that's the best way to connect with the fans," Milian told us during a photo shoot for Hydrogen magazine. "I guess the people at NBC had their eye on me and they paid attention to it. I got a call one day and met up with everyone at NBC and the folks from 'The Voice,' and next thing you know, a week later, I'm signing a contract and the following week I'm working."

Milian had nothing but praise for her "Voice" castmates and the experience working on the show thus far.

"It's been fabulous. I've had fun working with the cast already," she said. "Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Cee Lo, Carson Daly — it's an awesome super team they have, and from day one, they treated me like family."

The "Dip It Low" singer said she loves that the show is about music and chasing your dreams and that she's enjoyed watching the coaches take time to work with and help their contestants.

"This show is about music, it's about talent, and it's about this passion and this dream of becoming a star," Milian said. "Still to this day, every day that I wake up, I have that same dream, so to be involved with the show, [it's amazing] to watch what they incorporate and how the coaches act as advisers and mentors to the artists and really truthfully help them and push them and want them to be the best so they can win.

"There have been so many moments where I've thought, 'That's me on that stage! I remember that time,' " she added of enjoying watching the contestants. "Or you see their family sitting on the side of the stage crying or excited or jumping up and down, just so happy for them to even be there, I've felt that before, so I'm kind of living through them all over again."

Will you check out season two of "The Voice" when it returns Sunday? Let us know in the comments!

Check out everything we've got on "The Voice."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• Christina Milian

Christina Milian
Photo: MTV News

In addition to a brand-new crop of talent and potential future stars, NBC's hit singing competition "The Voice" has added a familiar face to its cast for season two: new social media correspondent Christina Milian.

When MTV News caught up with the singer/actress recently, she explained how she got the gig and how excited she is for the show to premiere on Super Bowl Sunday.

"I'm heavily involved on Twitter, have always been involved with my Internet fanbase and find that that's the best way to connect with the fans," Milian told us during a photo shoot for Hydrogen magazine. "I guess the people at NBC had their eye on me and they paid attention to it. I got a call one day and met up with everyone at NBC and the folks from 'The Voice,' and next thing you know, a week later, I'm signing a contract and the following week I'm working."

Milian had nothing but praise for her "Voice" castmates and the experience working on the show thus far.

"It's been fabulous. I've had fun working with the cast already," she said. "Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Cee Lo, Carson Daly — it's an awesome super team they have, and from day one, they treated me like family."

The "Dip It Low" singer said she loves that the show is about music and chasing your dreams and that she's enjoyed watching the coaches take time to work with and help their contestants.

"This show is about music, it's about talent, and it's about this passion and this dream of becoming a star," Milian said. "Still to this day, every day that I wake up, I have that same dream, so to be involved with the show, [it's amazing] to watch what they incorporate and how the coaches act as advisers and mentors to the artists and really truthfully help them and push them and want them to be the best so they can win.

"There have been so many moments where I've thought, 'That's me on that stage! I remember that time,' " she added of enjoying watching the contestants. "Or you see their family sitting on the side of the stage crying or excited or jumping up and down, just so happy for them to even be there, I've felt that before, so I'm kind of living through them all over again."

Will you check out season two of "The Voice" when it returns Sunday? Let us know in the comments!

Check out everything we've got on "The Voice."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• Christina Milian

Madonna in her "Give Me All Your Luvin' " music video
Photo: Interscope

Madonna dropped her "Give Me All Your Luvin' " video on Friday morning (February 3), and the eye-popping clip featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. has fans even more excited for the Queen of Pop's halftime performance at Sunday's Super Bowl.

In the video, Madonna hits the streets flanked by Minaj, M.I.A. and a very protective football team for a tongue-in-cheek walk down memory lane. In scene after scene, the pop icon references her musical past. We combed through the cheeky clip for some of the best winks at Her Madgesty's numerous reinventions. Here are our top five:

1. Madonna Passes the Pom-Poms to Nicki, M.I.A.
Some of the most famous images of pre-fame Madonna are of the Michigan native in her high school cheerleading uniform, so it seems fitting that in "Your Luvin', " there's what seems to be a symbolic passing of the pom-poms to Minaj and M.I.A. The video opens with Minaj and M.I.A. flying high at the top of a cheerleading formation on a suburban street, just the way Madonna Louise Ciccone might have as a cheerleader at Rochester Adams High School.

2. Getting a Lift — "Material Girl"-Style
Not only does the uniformed football team guarding Madonna offer up umbrellas to shield her from raining sparks and throw down their letterman jackets to give her a makeshift red carpet to walk on, but the boys give the singer a lift in a move that feels straight out of her "Material Girl" video — but with a twist. As they help her to keep steady, viewers soon realize she's walking down the side of a building!

3. Dodging a "Dick Tracy" Gangster
As the pop queen parades down an alleyway, an old-school car pulls up alongside her, and then someone rolls down a window and opens fire. The mysterious villain employs a weapon that looks just like the vintage Colt M1921 Thompson submachine guns used by the baddies in Madonna's hit flick "Dick Tracy." Luckily, the ever-vigilant team guarding her leaps in front of the fire.

4. Kissing Cheerleaders ... That Seems Familiar
Madonna's never been shy about admitting she's kissed (many) girls — and liked it. But we think this little lingering look at two masked cheerleaders smooching is probably a direct reference to Madonna's infamous lip lock with Britney Spears at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. (For the record, that legendary moment made our list of Madonna's top five best MTV performances ever!)

5. Nicki and Madonna Have Blond Ambition
Madonna climbs over a pile of football players and straight into a dream sequence that's a smorgasbord of references to Madonna's past. When she emerges from the huddle, gone are her long, flowing locks and black leather ensemble, and in their place is a short white lace dress and curly platinum-blond wig that recalls her Blond Ambition/"Vogue" era. The nod to her "Like a Virgin" years is underscored the second the camera cuts to Minaj, who sports a wedding dress that (minus a few ruffles) looks like it came straight from Madonna's 1984 VMA performance. And while Minaj isn't wearing Madonna's famed "boy toy" belt, she does make a reference to it, rapping, "You can be my boy toy."

Are you luvin' Madonna's new video? Share your reviews on our Facebook page!

• Five Key Moments In Madonna's 'Give Me All Your Luvin' Music Video

• Madonna

When the therapist asked him if he understood why Trina was so upset, he was completely self-aware. "In the middle of the night, she had a gut feeling that I was doing something that I shouldn't be doing," he said. "So I gave her my phone."

It turns out that gut feeling was accurate, as he'd been text messaging with other women, "flirting" as he described it. "I took the bait and I shouldn't have," he said.

But it was the final straw for Trina. Gabe had a long history of looking outside the marriage, and who knows how much further he might have taken the bait had she not had that gut feeling. Who knows what other bait he's been taking that she doesn't know about because she didn't have such an easy way to catch him.

For now, the solution is apparently to sleep in separate rooms. So while immediate divorce may be off the table, things are in dire shape in that relationship.

Catch "Braxton Family Values" every Thursday at 9 p.m. EST on WE.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Mac Miller
Photo: MTV News

Yes, the world knows Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller, but Pittsburgh has a wealth of hip-hop talent. With the Steel City's two breakout stars already accounted for, MTV News took a trip to the 'Burgh to see who's got next.

"A lot of people are talented. There are just a million talented people out there," Miller told MTV News when he took us on a tour through his hometown in December.

Acts like Boaz, Chevy Woods, B White and Mayo of the 58's, Jabari X and Varsity Squad have been repping Pittsburgh locally for some time now, and while Mac supports all the city's homegrown talent, if he had to pick one act to break out nationwide, it would be the Come Up, a.k.a. the duo of Vinny Radio and Franchise.

"I brought them on tour and I plan on bringing them out on tour, so if it's up to me, they're gonna be the next people that come out the 'Burgh," Miller said. "But there's definitely a lot more people who could; it's not just Vinny and Fran."

Mac Miller introduces Pittsburgh's hottest producers.

The Come Up exist as a part of a larger hip-hop collective called the 58's, along with rappers B White and Mayo. That union exemplifies the type of unity that exists in Pittsburgh's rap scene.

"It's a small city ... so pretty much we've all been familiar with each other for a long time," Franchise said. "Everybody in this city who's pretty much doing it legit, we've all been trying to get it and put the city on."

Taylor Gang's Chevy Woods echoed a similar sentiment. "Everybody's hardworking, and it's not like a big music scene out there, so when you got somethin', you just go with it," he said. "Everybody sees the light that shines on [Wiz Khalifa] and Mac [Miller] and now it's trickling down to everybody else."

Wiz Khalifa motivates Pittsburgh's up-and-coming artists.

There is a pretty diverse group of rap characters that come out of Pittsburgh. Wiz is a hitmaker who dedicates a lot of his catalog to partying and getting high, while Mac embodies a youthful spirit. Boaz is street, and female MC Kellee Maize spits sociopolitical bars. "To be honest, I do think Boaz is right there on the cusp. I think I'm maybe close to the cusp too," Maize said, laughing.

"I just bring that underground feel," Boaz said, describing his deeply rooted street sound. "I embrace the culture of that poverty line that I'm speaking about."

For years, Time Bomb has been an epicenter for Pittsburgh hip-hop. More than just a clothing store, Time Bomb has become a place for local 'Burgh MCs to congregate and sling their mixtapes to hungry fans. The shop's owner, Brick, has seen many young artists walk through his doors, including Miller and Khalifa. When it comes to the future of Pittsburgh hip-hop, Brick is a wide-eyed optimist.

"I think Mac and Wiz opened the door, but there's gonna be an army of producers, an army of rappers, and they're gonna be all different. People know: Pittsburgh, it is what it is, it's a hardworking town," he said. "I can name 100 people, because I want everyone to make it from here, you understand? This is Pittsburgh."

Who do you believe will be the next rap act to emerge from Pittsburgh? Tell us in the comments!

Take a look back at MTV News' Back to the 'Burgh with Mac Miller and see how we spotlighted the city's vibrant hip-hop scene.

• Back To The 'Burgh With Mac Miller And Wiz Khalifa

• Mac Miller

In 2010 Harrelson was part of the "Rest of the World" team playing England in a pro-celebrity match for British charity Soccer Aid.

Although he's an avid cyclist and generally super-fit guy, Harrelson said he's a pretty bad soccer player, so when his team was involved in a celebrity-only penalty shoot-out at the end, he was the last person they wanted to take a penalty kick.

However, after all the good players on his team -- including Michael Sheen (Wales), Mike Myers (Canada), Simon Baker (Australia) and Gordon Ramsay (Scotland) -- had taken penalties, the score was still tied at six. So Harrelson was put on the spot in the "sudden death" round of the shoot-out.

Luckily for the team Harrelson was able to use some of his actorly mind tricks to psych-out the opposing team's goalkeeper, English television presenter Jamie Theakston. He had already saved four penalties, so was on a high.

Harrelson used his acting skills to make Theakston think he was aiming in one direction but actually shot in the oppposite direction. By the time the confused goalie realized which way the ball was headed it was already in the back of the net.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Madonna directing "W.E."
Photo: The Weinstein Co.

In addition to her heavily hyped performance at Super Bowl XLVI this weekend, Madonna has been busy writing and directing her second movie, "W.E.," which follows the real-life love story of American divorcée Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII during the '30s, as well as a parallel story of a fictional American woman set in 1998 who became obsessed with Simpson's story.

The film has received some early awards-season love, including a Golden Globe win for Best Original Song and another Globe nomination for Best Original Score, but judging by its 17 percent fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, the magic of the romance seems to have been lost on critics. Read on as we sift through the "W.E." reviews:

The Parallel Storytelling
"Madonna and co-screenwriter Alek Keshishian try to fuse the threads of two very different tales, set several eras apart, to provide elucidation on the nature of love. But there's not much illumination to be had. There is, however, plenty of pretentious folderol. Clothes, jewelry and expensive trinkets are fraught with superficial symbolism. The more intriguing of the two stories centers on the 1930s romance and marriage of chic American divorcée Wallis Simpson and Great Britain's King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne to marry her. (The title stands for Wallis and Edward.) ... Jumping forward to 1998, the second story is about Wally Winthrop (Abbie Cornish) and her fascination with Simpson. Married to a self-absorbed and abusive psychiatrist, Wally roams New York City in a state of gloomy reverie. She forges an unlikely bond with Evgeni (Oscar Isaac), a guard at Sotheby's, where she goes often to look at the royal paraphernalia about to be auctioned. The disparate strands of the two stories never make much sense the way they're braided together. Presumably, the more Wally learns about the sacrifices Wallis made, the more she is emboldened to follow her heart and leave her own unhappy marriage. Yet what she uncovers about the Duke and Duchess is not always pretty." — Claudia Puig, USA Today

Madonna as Writer/Director
"The upshot is that instead of a film about a love that conquered a king and nearly undid a kingdom, Madonna has come up with a female friendship movie, which would be fine if she weren't busy trying to prove her art-film bona fides. At her entertainer best, Madonna distilled ideas and emotions into solid pop gold, transmitting a worldview through songs, music videos and her shape-shifter persona. The movies, by contrast, have largely defeated her both as an actress and as a director. As a mystical female friendship movie, 'W.E.' has its pull, but it never coheres, shredded by its editing and its pretensions, like Mrs. Simpson dancing to the Sex Pistols with a woman in African tribal regalia because, I'm guessing, Madonna likes the way Sofia Coppola used New Order's music in 'Marie Antoinette.' " — Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

The Chick-Flick Factor
" 'W.E.' (which interlocks with 'The King's Speech' — Bertie pops up in a couple of scenes here just as David appeared in that one) is very much a woman's picture. The men, except the Sotheby's security guard, mainly serve as obstacles or targets. That viewpoint is daring and kind of refreshing; a recent study noted that some two-thirds of the dialogue in Hollywood movies is spoken by men (in my experience, that is a reversal of reality). In the Wallis portions, Madonna presents a frank, unashamed defense of gold-digging, though she does unconvincing penance for this in the Wally story, in which the bride proves lonely and bored in her Upper East Side castle. After more than 40 years of feminism, the gold-digging subtext remains as central to female fantasy as it is in Jane Austen novels, and it's implicit in most of those rom-coms in which, just by sheer coincidence, true love happens with the owner of a chain of bookstores, or the millionaire a gal meets while working the streets. If the woman virtuously chooses love over money, she gets the lucre anyway." — Kyle Smith, The New York Post

The Final Word, Pro-Con Style
"If anyone, Madonna certainly understands the crazy pull of celebrity obsession, and it's an intriguingly romantic premise she presents, interweaving Wally's story with the Duchess', often triggered by the modern woman's handling of certain artifacts belonging to the late, almost-Queen of England, who even begins to appear to her in hallucinations, to offer world-weary advice and/or disapproval. The director tells the Duchess' story with surprising verve, historical accuracy and style, a huge improvement over the nastily cartoonish way the couple was represented in the overrated 'The King's Speech' last year. There are a few clichéd missteps, as when Edward's mother, Queen Mary (Judy Parfitt), clucks, 'This is a pretty kettle of fish!' over her son's scandal, but, for the most part, the historical sequences have a thrilling élan, aided by the crack photography, art direction and especially Arianne Phillips' superbly accurate costume design for this most chic of fashion eras. Taking a cue, perhaps, from Sofia Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette,' Madonna has also effectively interpolated modern pop-rock music along with the usual Deco cocktail standards of the era." — David Noh, FilmJournal.com

"You can't call 'W.E.' a total disaster; it's too pretty, too nonsensical and finally too insignificant for that. Rather, it's a heavily decorated and overly complicated exercise in female narcissism, which in its plotless meandering fashion seeks to draw a mystical connection between an unhappy Manhattan wife and Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough), the Baltimore socialite who married King Edward VIII. Riseborough gives a richly enjoyable performance as the prickly, strange and not especially beautiful American who pulled a king and emperor from his throne, and some of the 1930s scenes are pretty fun, after the fashion of outtakes from 'The King's Speech' turned into music videos or haute couture shoots. Madonna and co-writer Alek Keshishian (who directed 'Truth or Dare' way back in 1991) go right at the historical reputation of Wallis and Edward as Nazi sympathizers, and to the extent that 'W.E.' is an attempt to rehabilitate them at least it has a clear agenda." — Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com

Check out everything we've got on "W.E."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

• MTV Rough Cut: Madonna

• Madonna

After Hoboken NJ denied their request to film there, citing such grandiose reasons as "protecting public safety and quality of life concerns," the girls have received an invitation from Jersey Shore, PA. Amusingly, Jersey Shore, PA borough manager Gretchen Speicher said, "We'd like to know what the show's going to be about, will it be shot inside or outside... I would like to know because I've never seen ['Jersey Shore']."

But while all that is being ironed out, the girls played Cohen's "Plead the Fifth" game. Not surprisingly, when asked which castmember had changed the most, and for the worse, after becoming famous, Farley said, "Mike 'The Situation.' [Sorrentin0]." Fans of the show can tell that the other castmates have been very hard on Sorrentino this season, with very little apology.

Snooki and JWoww can be seen on "Jersey Shore," Thursday nights at 10 p.m. EST on MTV. Andy Cohen and "Watch What Happens: Live" are on weeknights at 11 p.m. EST on Bravo.

TV Replay scours the vast television landscape to find the most interesting, amusing, and, on a good day, amazing moments, and delivers them right to your browser.

Madonna
Photo: Daniel Mihailescu/ AFP/ Getty Images

Not to get all general here, but when you get down to it, there are really only two types of people in the world: those who care about the Super Bowl and those who don't.

The former will need absolutely zero incentive to tune into this Sunday's retribution-stoked Super Bowl XLVI, which pits the New England Patriots against the New York Giants in a rematch of one of the most epic Supes of all time, XLII, which saw — wait, if you're going to watch, you already know what happened in that first championship tilt (David Tyree, Plax Burress on the slant-and-go, 18-1, etc.), and suffice it to say, you're salivating with anticipation over the next chapter in this rivalry.

For the latter, well, that last paragraph probably makes about as much sense as the fact that the New York Giants actually play their home games in New Jersey, and, as such, there's no way you're going to waste your Sunday watching what amounts to 240 minutes of commercials intermittently broken up by the occasional football play (unless you're anxiously awaiting the premiere of "The Voice," that is). But, really, you should reconsider that stance — mainly because of prop bets.

For the uninitiated, props (short for "propositions") are bets placed on the occurrence — or non-occurrence — of events during a game that have little-to-no actual impact on the outcome of that game. Stuff like "Which color Gatorade will the winning team dump on its head coach" or "Number of times (insert name of famous athlete's girlfriend) will be shown during the TV telecast." They are supremely silly, not to mention incredibly suicidal, wagers, and not surprisingly — given that it's the biggest football game of the year — Las Vegas oddsmakers work overtime churning them out during the Super Bowl.

Shoot, more often than not, most of those Super Bowl props have absolutely nothing to do with the game itself. There are not only odds on the length of Kelly Clarkson's national anthem performance, but what kind of outfit she'll be wearing while singing it. Which means that, whether you know who BenJarvus Green-Ellis is or not, there are still plenty of reasons to tune in to Sunday's big game.

So in the hopes of inspiring you non-fans to watch, we've reached out to the online oddsmakers at to get their lines on some of the most outrageous Super Bowl prop bets. And in case you're wondering: Yes, there's a science to these kinds of things.

"I sat down and watched six to seven videos of Kelly Clarkson singing the anthem at past sporting events, timing all of them," Bovada head oddsmaker Pat Morrow told MTV News. "Once that was done, I took some things into consideration: that she will be indoors, [that] it is the Super Bowl and people have tendency to take a little longer, and came up with 1 minute, 34 seconds. And I think we are bang-on, because we have had it up over a week and have taken a lot on both sides and have not had to move the number."

See! So, without further ado, are some of our favorite music-centric prop bets. Oh, and we realize some of the numbers may confuse you, so just consider this: If you were to place $100 on a 2/1 bet, and win, you'd walk away with $200 (plus your $100 back). Conversely, that $100 on a 1/2 bet would net you just $50. If you were to bet $100 on a +200 line, it means you'd take home $200 in profit (plus your initial $100). A line of -200 means you'd need to bet $200 just to win $100 (the more probable the outcome, the more you have to put up to turn a profit; Vegas wasn't built on winners, after all). Oh, and an over/under bet is simply a wager on whether an event will go over or under the stated time. Confused? Of course you are. After all, prop bets aren't supposed to be about logic, they're supposed to be about insanity. So let's take a look at the lines!

How long will it take Kelly Clarkson to sing the National Anthem?
Over/under: 1 minute, 34 seconds.

What will Kelly Clarkson wear to sing the national anthem?
» Super Bowl XLVI or official NFL shirt: 2/1
» Patriots jersey or shirt: 12/1
» Colts jersey or shirt: 12/1
» Giants jersey or shirt: 15/1
» Anything else: 1/3

Will Kelly Clarkson forget or omit at least one word of the national anthem?
» Yes: 5/2

Will Kelly Clarkson's bare belly be showing when she sings the national anthem?
» Yes: 3/1

What color will Madonna's hair be when she begins the Super Bowl halftime show?
» Blonde: -400
» Any other color: +250

Will Madonna wear an NFL jersey or shirt at any point during the Super Bowl halftime show?
» Yes: +250
» No: -400

Will Madonna wear a hat at any point during the Super Bowl halftime show?
» Yes: +150
» No: -200

What will Madonna be using to start the Super Bowl halftime show?
» Headset: -200
» Handheld microphone: +150

Share your own crazy prop-bet ideas in the comments!