Madonna offers relationship tips on ‘Marriage Ref’

(AP)  Madonna doesn’t think a wife should withhold sex from a sloppy husband.

But she believes a wife should dispose of her late husband’s prosthetic leg to spare the feelings of the wife’s current mate.

This was some of Madonna’s relationship advice on NBC’s “The Marriage Ref,” where she joined actor-comedians Larry David and Ricky Gervais as a guest panelist on Thursday’s edition.

The show invites its panel of “experts” to help analyze real-life disputes between married couples, mostly for laughs. Host Tom Papa, aka The Marriage Ref, makes the final call.

In one case, Mindy Goldman was offering sexual favors to Alan, her husband of 28 years, if he would clean up their messy basement.

A good idea? “I think it’s weird that she wants him to be clean so that they can be dirty,” cracked Madonna.

Gervais wondered, “Could they combine the sex with the housework?”

Then Susan and David Harper, married for three years, were seen in their house squabbling over possessions left over from their past relationships. Susan wanted her husband to get rid of the sofa where David and his ex-wife might have had hanky-panky, while David complained about Susan hanging on to the ashes and prosthetic leg of Don, her late husband.

Madonna’s swift solution: “He gets rid of the couch, she gets rid of the leg.”

“This is easily the most uncomfortable hour I’ve ever spent in my life,” sighed Larry David in the midst of the debate.

“Why?” Madonna retorted. “Because you’re sitting next to a woman who’s standing up to you?”

“The Marriage Ref,” which premiered last week, has Jerry Seinfeld as a creator and producer.

‘Big Mike’ draws tears, cheers on ‘American Idol’

(AP) Michael “Big Mike” Lynche made Kara DioGuardi cry and turned the rest of the “American Idol” judges giddy with a moving performance of “This Woman’s Work.”

Lynche, a mountain of a guy who lives up to his nickname, performed last among the eight male semifinalists Wednesday and emerged as the star of the Fox TV show.

“You come out with an incredibly difficult song to sing, and you 100 percent nailed it,” said Simon Cowell. “Not just the best performance of the night, it was the best performance of all these live shows so far.”

The eight female semifinalists performed Tuesday, with the top six vote-getters from the men’s and women’s groups to be announced Thursday.

Lynche, 26, of Astoria, N.Y., moved impressively from a quiet falsetto start to a booming finale, but it was as much the story behind the song as his range that touched DioGuardi. Lynche’s wife had a baby girl while he was in Los Angeles making the cut for “Idol.”

“It’s amazing. You were amazing,” DioGuardi said. “It’s your life right now, it’s your respect for your wife, what you’ve gone through. … It brought me to tears.”

The other contestants, who may have been glad they didn’t have to follow Lynche, picked up a mixture of praise and criticism.

Andrew Garcia, 24, Moreno Valley, Calif., had the roughest night, with his performance of “Genie in a Bottle” deemed pitchy by Jackson and dismissed by Cowell as “a little bit desperate.”

Casey James, 27, of Fort Worth, Texas, did better with “You’ll Think of Me,” which Ellen DeGeneres and Cowell said sounded “great” but struck Jackson as a safe choice.

Tim Urban scored with his version of “Hallelujah,” which is becoming an “American Idol” standard.

DeGeneres, noting she has been critical of the 20-year-old from Duncanville, Texas, jumped on the stage to give him a congratulatory hug and called his rendition “fantastic.”

“Todrick’s back!” was Jackson’s response to Todrick Hall’s performance of “Somebody to Love,” while Cowell said it was a mixed performance but may have saved Hall, 24, of Arlington, Texas, from elimination.

Alex Lambert’s version of “Trouble” drew mostly favorable critiques, including a highly creative offering from DeGeneres.

“You’re becoming a mushy banana. You’re ripening so fast,” she said. Translation: The 19-year-old from North Richland Hills, Texas, is getting better and better.

Aaron Kelley, with “I’m Already There,” showed he has the “makings of a great,” Jackson said, and Cowell lauded his emotional delivery – while dismissing DioGuardi’s contention the song about a man away from his family was too old for the 16-year-old from Sonestown, Pa.

Lee Dewyze, 23, of Mount Prospect, Ill., showed “there’s a star bubbling there” with his version of “Fireflies,” said DioGuardi, while Cowell said he was better than the performance but had a “great chance” of making the top 12.

If not, DeGeneres could set him up on a date as a consolation prize: She’s heard from several people with crushes on him, she said.

Pink Floyd wins battle with EMI over online sales

By JILL LAWLESS | LONDON (AP) — In a victory for the concept album, Britain’s High Court on Thursday ordered record company EMI Group Ltd. to stop selling downloads of Pink Floyd tracks individually rather than as part of the band’s original records.

The prog-rock group sued the music label, saying its contract prohibited selling the tracks “unbundled” from their original album setting.

Pink Floyd lawyer Robert Howe said the band was known for producing “seamless” pieces of music on albums like “Dark Side of the Moon,” “The Division Bell” and “The Wall,” and wanted to retain artistic control.

EMI claimed the clause in the band’s contract – negotiated a decade ago, before the advent of iTunes and other online retailers – applied only to physical albums, not Internet sales.

Judge Andrew Morritt backed the band, saying the contract protected “the artistic integrity of the albums.”

He ruled that EMI is “not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd’s consent.”

The judge ordered EMI to pay the band’s legal costs and said he would rule later on how much the company must pay in damages.

The judge also ruled on a second issue, the level of royalties paid to the band. That section of the judgment was made in private after EMI argued the information was covered by commercial confidentiality.

A spokesman for EMI said the company was considering its response to the ruling.

The band’s spokesman said Pink Floyd had no comment.

Pink Floyd signed with EMI in 1967 and became one of its most lucrative acts, with its back catalog outsold only by The Beatles.

Online sales make up an increasing portion of music companies’ profits, and are a growing area of dispute.

The surviving members of The Beatles have yet to agree a deal to allow their music to be sold online.

Hard-rock band AC/DC also has withheld its music from iTunes, saying the group is not interested in selling individual tracks.

Leibovitz can keep portfolio under new debt deal

(AP) Annie Leibovitz, the photographer who mismanaged her fortune so badly that she faced losing legal rights to some of pop culture’s most enduring images, has reached a long-term agreement with a private investment firm to help manage her debt and market her vast portfolio, both sides said Tuesday.

Leibovitz, 60, will rannetain total control of her multimillion-dollar portfolio under the deal she signed with Colony Capital LLC of Santa Monica, Calif., on Monday, said Richard Nanula, a principal with the firm.

Under the agreement, Colony will become the photographer’s sole creditor and help market her archive of such provocative images as a nude John Lennon cuddling with a clothed Yoko Ono hours before his death, as well as a nude and very pregnant Demi Moore.

Leibovitz obtained an extension last year to repay a $24 million loan to a Manhattan firm, Art Capital Group, in a financial dispute that had threatened her rights to those images and others.

The specific terms of the new deal were not disclosed, but Nanula said “it pays off all the Art Capital loan. … It cleans up the rest of her balance sheet.”

The Colony loan also contains more than $20 million of real estate collateral, Nanula added – Leibovitz’s three Manhattan town houses. The Art Capital loan was repaid Monday, he said.

Art Capital confirmed the repayment and said in a statement that it “is pleased to announce that its loan to Annie Leibovitz has been satisfied. We are encouraged by the results of this complex transaction and wish Ms. Leibovitz the best in all of her future endeavors.”

“It’s long-term in nature,” Nanula said of the partnership with Leibovitz. “Our interest is in helping her be successful and to be her financial partner.”

“Colony is a dedicated and creative team,” Leibovitz said in a statement. “We will be working on new projects, and I will have the support and freedom necessary for nurturing my work and preserving my archive.”

“Colony Capital, LLC has formed a new partnership with Annie Leibovitz, one of world’s greatest portrait photographers,” the firm said in a statement. “We are delighted to be able to do that here by partnering with Ms. Leibovitz in a business relationship that allows her to continue to flourish as an artist while together we seek opportunities to enhance the value of the magnificent body of work she has created over the past 40 years.”

Those opportunities, Nanula said, could involve traveling exhibitions of Leibovitz’s works, books and fine-art copies of her photographs.

He stressed that any commercialization of her work would be decided by Leibovitz and that Colony would be her financial partner in any such venture.

Leibovitz’s portfolio is estimated to contain more than 100,000 images and 1 million negatives.

“It’s one of the most valuable and unexploited” photo archives, Nanula said.

The deal between Colony and Leibovitz was first reported in the Financial Times on Tuesday.

Colony Capital is a global firm that focuses primarily on real estate-related assets, securities and operating companies. Last year, it purchased a loan with a face value of $23.5 million on Michael Jackson’s Neverland in California, giving it the rights to the late singer’s nearly 3,000-acre property.

In the course of her 40-year career, Leibovitz’s lens has captured such famous faces as Queen Elizabeth II and Bruce Springsteen, many for the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue and Rolling Stone.

In 2008, Leibovitz put up as collateral the three town houses, an upstate New York property and the copyright to her images to secure the Art Capital loan to repay debt that the firm said stemmed from mortgage obligations, tax liens and unpaid bills.

Art Capital, an independent provider of financing for the art world, agreed at the time it extended the repayment on the loan to sell back the rights to her works.

Lil Wayne begins year jail term in NYC gun case

(AP) After saying goodbye on concert stages and online video streams, Lil Wayne had nothing to add as he was sentenced Monday to a year in jail for having a loaded gun on his tour bus.

The Grammy Award-winning rapper delivered only a brief bow to fans and supporters as he was led out of a courtroom in handcuffs to start serving his sentence.

With that, Lil Wayne headed off to face his punishment in a case that had shadowed him as he became one of music’s most prolific and profitable figures in recent years. Arrested in July 2007, he pleaded guilty in October to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He admitted he had the loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun on his bus.

His lawyer, Stacey Richman, said the rapper was resolute as he was taken away.

“He knew what he had to do, and he’s doing it,” she said.

Lil Wayne will serve his sentence in the Rikers Island jail complex. Richman said she expected he would be held in protective custody, but the city Correction Department said it was still deciding on that. Protective custody is given to inmates who, for a variety of reasons including notoriety, require separation from the general prison population.

The 27-year-old rap star could be released in about eight months with good behavior.

Lil Wayne, born Dwayne Carter, is going behind bars with his career in full throttle. His “Tha Carter III” was the best-selling album of 2008 and won a Grammy for best rap album. His latest album, “Rebirth,” was released last month.

He made a point of leaving fans with fanfare, from a “farewell tour” in recent months to a series of videos on the Web site Ustream on Sunday.

“Law is mind without reason … I’ll return,” he wrote on his Twitter account Monday morning.

Dozens of fans jockeyed with photographers waiting on the courthouse steps Monday afternoon, cheering as Lil Wayne, fellow rapper Birdman and others arrived. Shouts of “Oh, man” and “Keep your head up, Weezy!” – a nickname he often uses – erupted in the courtroom as he was sentenced.

Although Lil Wayne had agreed to go to jail, a number of roadblocks kept him from starting his sentence in recent weeks.

First, his sentencing was postponed in February so he could undergo surgery on his bejeweled teeth. Then, a fire shut down Manhattan’s main criminal courthouse while he was on his way there last week.

He told Rolling Stone for a story last month that he planned to keep working while behind bars.

“I’ll be still rapping in there, have a gang of raps ready when I come back home,” he said.

As for listening to music, inmates are allowed to buy AM/FM radios at the jail commissary.

Paris Review names Lorin Stein as its new editor

(AP) The Paris Review will soon have a new editor: Lorin Stein, who has worked with such authors as Denis Johnson, Jonathan Franzen and Richard Price.

The 37-year-old Stein will take over in April from Philip Gourevitch, who announced last fall he would step down after five years. Stein is currently an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

The Paris Review was founded in 1953 and was run for decades by George Plimpton, who died in 2003. The magazine announced Stein’s appointment Friday.

It has published early work by Jack Kerouac and Philip Roth, among others. It is famous for its literary interviews.

(This version CORRECTS Stein’s first name in short headline to Lorin, instead of Loren.)

Shakira honored at UN labor agency

(AP)  Shakira has received a medal from the U.N. labor agency for her work to help impoverished children.

The 33-year-old Colombian pop star has worked as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. Her Barefoot foundation provides nutrition to more than 6,000 children in Colombia, and she is member of the ALAS foundation that advocates for children across Latin America.

At a small ceremony Wednesday in Geneva, U.N. labor chief Juan Somavia called Shakira a “true ambassador for children and young people, for quality education and social justice.”

Shakira said in a statement Thursday that social, economic and environmental policies must focus on children and their education.

Shakira also spoke last month with President Barack Obama about U.S. policy on children.

Judges give male semifinalists praise on American Idol

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It was a man’s world on “American Idol.”

The Fox singing contest’s judges were more impressed with the performances from the remaining 10 male semifinalists after their doddering semifinal debut last week. Michael Lynche, the burly 26-year-old personal trainer and new father from Astoria, N.Y., soulfully started Tuesday’s episode with the James Brown ballad “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.”

In a last-minute switch, the 10 male semifinalists performed Tuesday instead of the 10 female semifinalists because 24-year-old dreadlocked singer Crystal Bowersox from Toledo, Ohio, was hospitalized and unable to take the stage. Bowersox, who also plays the guitar and harmonica, is expected to perform with the other women on Wednesday’s show.

“Crystal, if you’re watching, we hope you feel better very, very soon,” said host Ryan Seacrest.

The semifinalists’ performance order wasn’t the only “Idol” adjustment. The judges slipped into a new seating and critiquing order. Ellen DeGeneres moved down between Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi while Simon Cowell went back to getting the last word after last week’s wonky rotating evaluation system, which only seemed to befuddle the panel.

Among those who moved up in class: 21-year-old college student John Park of Evanston, Ill., with John Mayer’s “Gravity,” 19-year-old high school student Alex Lambert of North Richland Hills, Texas, with John Legend’s “Everybody Knows” and 20-year-old college student Tim Urban of Duncanville, Texas, with Matt Nathanson’s “Come On Get Higher.”

“After last week, I was just coming up here to perform,” said Urban.

The judges were less jazzed with Jermaine Sellers of Joliet, Ill. The 27-year-old gospel singer, who copped to still wearing one-piece pajamas, shot back at the judges. The panel unanimously agreed they didn’t appreciate what was going on with his rendition of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” so Sellers asked them what they’d like him to perform next week.

“I’m not sure you’re going to be here next week,” retorted Cowell.

Lee Dewyze, the 23-year-old paint sales clerk from Mount Prospect, Ill., and Andrew Garcia, the 24-year-old musician from Moreno Valley, Calif., ditched their guitars to mixed results. Dewyze admitted he was nervous singing Hinder’s “Lips of an Angel” with just a microphone stand. Garcia faltered crooning James Morrison’s “You Give Me Something” from a stool.

“I like when you surprise us, and we need another big surprise from you right now,” DioGuardi demanded of Garcia.

The 10 female semifinalists are scheduled to perform Wednesday. The two male and two female semifinalists with the fewest viewer votes are slated to be sent home Thursday, leaving 16 contestants in the competition. Thursday’s episode will also feature bespectacled eighth season finalist Danny Gokey performing his single, “My Best Days Are Ahead of Me.”

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Fox is a unit of News Corp.

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On the Net:

http://www.americanidol.com/

Who to follow in McAllen on Twitter

Twitter is an internet phenomenon worthy of your time. Its a great place to keep up with the day to day going ons of your favorite Celebrity or Television show. If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of whats going on in your hometown, (in our case, McAllen, Texas) Then we will show you how. First of all, Follow Friday is a great way to find new and interesting people on Twitter to follow. The easiest way to find Follow Friday suggestions is to search Twitter for either #FF or #FollowFriday this will give you search result of all the people that are using those hashtags.

The downside of this is that they might not all be relevant to you. To try and make Follow Friday a little more relevant to Valleyites I have compiled some list of people using Twitter in various valley cities.

To make it even easier I did so using a service called TweemML, which allows you to create a list, publish it and then users can simply follow everyone on the list with one click. If you are already following someone on the list it simply skips over them for you – no duplicates.

If you enjoyed this Article, please send me feedback below, or follow me on Twitter at: @elitistczar or for all of Fox XRIO 2′ s headlines follow @foxrio2.

• McAllen (Part 1)
• McAllen (Part 2)
• McAllen (Part 3)

Hello again to Jay Leno, back as ‘Tonight’ host

NEW YORK (AP) — A lot of things in the world have changed since May. But not Jay Leno hosting “The Tonight Show.”

Oh, sure, there was that awkward nine-month lapse between his farewell then and his return on Monday, a stretch when Leno left, flopped in prime time, then accepted the assignment from NBC to push out his flagging “Tonight Show” successor, Conan O’Brien.

NBC and Leno’s fans can relax: Judging from his first night back, it’s the same old Jay with pretty much his same old “Tonight Show.”

He started the show by spoofing the conclusion of “The Wizard of Oz,” where Dorothy awakens to find all those crazy goings-on were only a dream.

Jay, seen in sepia tones in what was meant to be a Kansas farmhouse, said, “I went away to the strangest place! It was wonderful, but some of it wasn’t so nice.”

In fact, Leno had gone away from the nation’s TV screens for less than a month when he returned Monday to his old haunt in late night.

“It’s good to be home,” he told his audience as he began his first “Tonight Show” monologue since last spring. “I’m Jay Leno, your host. At least, for a while.”

Leno was reclaiming his old job at NBC’s “Tonight Show” just nine months after giving it up to O’Brien, and only 19 days after NBC pulled the plug on Leno’s prime-time misadventure.

“We were off for the last couple of weeks,” Leno cracked during his monologue. “Kind of like the Russians at the Olympics. What happened to them?”

Leno noted that one of his guests was an American gold medalist, skier Lindsey Vonn.

“Did you see her?” Leno marveled. “When it comes to going downhill, nobody is faster. OK, except NBC.”

As he zinged his own network, along with former vice president Dick Cheney, Toyota and Tiger Woods, Leno signaled the resumption of the late-night war between him and his longtime CBS rival David Letterman, who had gained the ratings upper hand during O’Brien’s brief, unhappy claim on “The Tonight Show.”

Leno’s other welcome-back guests included Jamie Foxx and singer-songwriter Brad Paisley.

And in a pre-taped piece, Leno knocked on front doors asking unwitting residents if he could come in and try their desks (he had notably eschewed any desk for “The Jay Leno Show”). Then, back in the studio, he unveiled his own stylish new desk.

NBC is praying that Leno will comfortably settle in behind that new desk on the not-particularly-new “Tonight Show,” where he ruled late night (and beat Letterman) for much of 17 years.

But already handicappers were weighing whether Leno can regain his momentum.

So were some viewers.

Dorothy Elayan, 50, of Louisville, Ky., and her daughter, Jena, 19, who were visiting Southern California, were waiting to enter the NBC studio in Burbank for Monday’s taping. Both said they preferred Leno over O’Brien.

“I didn’t like Conan. I didn’t like his sense of humor,” Jena Elayan said.

Her mother said she had remained a fan of Leno in prime time.

“I would like him earlier because I go to bed earlier. I was that one little person still watching,” she said, referring to his disappointing prime-time ratings.

Also in line was Natalie Hanks, 19, of San Clemente, Calif., who said she found O’Brien funnier than Leno but added, “I wish there was room for both.”

She said Leno might face resistance from O’Brien’s fans.

“I’ve seen a lot of people on Facebook rallying around Conan. I think younger people” will boycott “Tonight” with Leno, Hanks said.

Meanwhile, theories have abounded concerning the next step for O’Brien, currently the odd man out, who is widely seen as having been victimized by Leno and by NBC’s ham-handed shake up that led to his departure. The most popular scenario places him on the Fox network, butting heads nightly with Letterman and Leno.

Now with NBC’s much-watched blanket coverage of the Winter Olympics just a memory, the stumbling, oft-ridiculed network desperately needs something new to brag about. A successful trip back to the future with Leno hosting “Tonight” might qualify – and could actually happen.

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Eds: Solvej Schou in Burbank, Calif., for The AP contributed to this report.

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NBC is owned by The General Electric Co.

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On the Net:

NBC: http://www.nbc.com