Free Headline news: November 2008

After all the moving in and the fallings out, the first proposal and the post-engagement lull, Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag eloped last Thursday in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Now that they've made it official, what will their marriage mean for the show that has chronicled their relationship over the past four seasons?

Will the next season of "The Hills" feature footage captured during Speidi's wedding ceremony? What have Heidi and Spencer been up to since they tied the knot? To find out, we reached out to executive producer Liz Gateley.

While she couldn't tell us everything, she did say that the couple's married life will figure prominently on the series' upcoming fifth season, and that cameras are still down in Mexico, documenting the couple's honeymoon. There's still no word on when new episodes of "The Hills" will be ready for air, however.

"MTV is currently filming Heidi and Spencer in Mexico, as we were expecting to capture them on vacation," Gateley told MTV News. "Fans will be able to see the exclusive footage from the ceremony in an upcoming episode, and we will continue to follow the newlyweds' relationship as it plays out in real life."

While most fans of the show seemed to question the wisdom of the marriage, and their family appeared shocked by the elopement, some celebrities and fellow "Hills" stars congratulated the couple on Tuesday.

"They obviously adore each other and are very committed to one another," Audrina Patridge told People. "I do think it's very romantic that they eloped."

Related Photos

The Hills (Season 4) | Spencer & Heidi

Did Ex-Danity Kane Member Aubrey O'Day Pose For <i>Playboy</i>?

Posted: 26 Nov 2008 07:01 AM PST

TMZ reports that celeb photographer Markus Klinko shot the singer for a spread in the magazine on Tuesday.
By James Montgomery

Aubrey O'Day
Photo: Chris Gordon/ WireImage

It's not as if you didn't see this coming, what with her recent eye-popping photo spread in Complex magazine and her very public ousting from Danity Kane last month. It appears that Aubrey O'Day has posed for Playboy.

Citing its "spies," TMZ reported that O'Day spent Tuesday in a Manhattan photo studio shooting a spread for the magazine with celebrity photographer Markus Klinko, who has snapped portraits of Mariah Carey and Pamela Anderson, and shot the cover of Beyoncé's 2003 album Dangerously in Love. According to TMZ, O'Day's Playboy shoot may feature several lion cubs.

A spokesperson for Playboy told MTV News that the magazine could not confirm or comment on the photo shoot. Attempts to contact a rep for O'Day were unsuccessful by press time.

Danity Kane fans were torn when O'Day and D. Woods were booted from the group by mastermind Sean "Diddy" Combs during the live season-three finale of "Making the Band 4." Some agreed with Diddy that O'Day's self-promotion was distracting from the group, while others declared her their favorite member.

In the days following O'Day's dismissal, remaining DK members Dawn Richard and Shannon Bex both gave interviews. While Bex played nice, Richard didn't, singling out O'Day's Complex shoot and her risque image as the reasons she was kicked out of the group.

"We had just did a signing with Dollhouse Teen, which is for 13-, 14-year-old young girls," Richard told UsMagazine.com. "So, we can't do that one day and then the next day do an obnoxious cover. ... [Diddy] wants the fans, and he says he can't do that if we continue to go in the direction that we were going."

Related Artists

Danity Kane

Spencer Pratt Breaks Silence About Wedding To Heidi Montag

Posted: 25 Nov 2008 11:13 PM PST

Pratt also says marriage legalities will be taken care of when couple returns to the U.S.
By Jocelyn Vena

Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag
Photo: Jeff Lipsky

Spencer Pratt is opening up about his wedding to longtime gal pal and fellow Hills star Heidi Montag. "We had a beautiful ceremony here at One & Only Palmilla officiated by a minister and photographed by the hotel photographer," he told UsMagazine.com and The Associated Press in a statement. "We've never been happier."

The wedding, which took place in Mexico, has had some in the media questioning the legality of their nuptials. But the groom insisted those will be taken care of in time: "Like other elopements that happen outside the country, we'll take care of the legal details when we get home."

Meanwhile, Neal Hersh, a Beverly Hills attorney, said that the marriage is legitimate if the couple took the necessary steps. "People can get married anywhere," he told the AP.

The reporter, Peter Grossman, who interviewed the Us Weekly, told the AP, "Heidi and Spencer are two people in love who had a beautiful wedding ceremony to celebrate that. The pictures and words in our issue this week bear that out."

Of course, MTV News announced exclusively earlier on Wednesday that the couple's wedding will be featured in the next season of "The Hills."

Montag's family and fans have been quite vocal about their wedding, addressing their concerns for not being a part of the ceremony. Her sister, Holly, told MTV, "[Our mom] didn't know, either, what was going on, and we were frantically calling [Heidi]. Everybody's pretty upset."

Meanwhile their dad told People.com, "I would be upset if she got married and didn't invite me! Then we just have to have another wedding here!"

The couple's friends — and even reality-TV alum Shanna Moakler — are also opening up about the wedding. Whitney Port, whose "Hills" spin-off "The City" is set to premiere next year, told "Extra," "I just heard it like everyone else yesterday. Congratulations to them. I think it's great if that's what they're ready to do. Good for them."

Alfamega Gives His Side Of The Scuffle Between T.I.'s And Shawty Lo's Camps At Dirty Awards

Posted: 25 Nov 2008 10:49 PM PST

'We came in there feeling good," MC says about his camp's behavior.
By Shaheem Reid

Alfamega getting arrested at the 2008 Dirty Awards in Atlanta Monday
Photo: Ben Rose/WireImage.com

The Alfamega talking to MTV News early Wednesday morning (November 26) sounded a lot different from the Alfamega that looked wild-eyed and crazed in the pictures of the fracas that took place Monday night at the 2008 Dirty Awards. In the pictures, Mega was not backing down from police even after being hit with pepper spray. The only way to subdue the hulking MC from Bankhead, Georgia, was for a group of authorities to lay him face-down on the ground and put him in handcuffs.

Mega woke up Tuesday in his own bed, thankful not to be in jail. Hours after his altercation with Shawty Lo's D4L camp, the artist from T.I.'s Grand Hustle label was remorseful about the situation.

"First, I would like to give an apology to Steve Hazelwood and the whole Radio One [crew] and all the fans that came to see a good show," he said. "That's my part: I can only apologize for me and Grand Hustle."

Alfa said he read Shawty Lo's account of the incident on MTVNews.com and — to put it mildly — disagreed.

"God's honest truth, for real, we came in there feeling good," Mega said about his camp's demeanor at the Dirty Awards. "If you [look] at the beginning of the videotapes, it will show we didn't come on no hostility. When the disrespect started coming, we was eating it, then it got blatantly out of hand. That's when it all happened."

Shawty Lo claims while he was performing his set, Alfa, Big Kuntry and some other of T.I.'s clique came near to the front of the stage and started staring him down. Lo said he had no choice but to perform his T.I. dis record, "Don't I."

Mega disagreed: He said he and the crew were near the front of the stage all night.

"When anybody was performing, we was up, moving around," Alfa insisted. "We was rocking to Lo. He was doing his thing. Now when the dis song happened, I was like, 'What is dude doing?' "

Shortly after "Don't I" started, somebody from the crowd threw a chair at Lo and company. Mega said it wasn't him and he actually didn't see the chair being thrown.

"When I looked up, I seen the dude onstage with a chair in his hand," Alfa remembered. "Then I noticed it, somebody with us, a female, she was holding her face. Then I ran towards them. My attempt was to not fight, but to go up there and say, 'Somebody with you hit this girl.' By that time they had my man Kuntry in cuffs."

The melee that ensued briefly ended the show, and members of the Grand Hustle clique and Shawty Lo's D4L factions were escorted outside to cool down. Strangely enough, both parties were let back in and told to go back to their corners.

Later in the show, T.I. took the stage to accept an award and began performing "Ain't I" with Yung L.A. The record didn't last too long because Mega and D4L got into it again.

"It escalated, dawg," Alfa said, then implied that Lo is envious of T.I.'s success. "I think [Lo] feels like he ain't getting his just due. I can understand, but God will give you blessings, and your blessings might not as be as big as the next man. Be thankful for what you got.

"What happened with me — Tip had nothing to do with that," Alfa added, now going into what led to the night's second incident. "It just happened. They was performing the song, I was like, 'Let's have fun.' I start dancing. I'm feeling good. That's my boy, Yung L.A., he made it. I get on top of the table, Shawty gets on the table. Shawty fakes like he's gonna throw a drink on me. By then I stepped down."

Now this is where the show's organizers may have wished they'd come up with a different seating plan: Mega's and Lo's tables were just a few feet away from each other, so close that Mega said his feet didn't have to touch the ground to reach his foe.

"I could have made a move. I could have jumped from one table to the next," Mega recalled. "It really wasn't that far apart, probably about four or five feet. It was close enough that the drink in his hand could have splashed on me. I stepped down from the table, somebody said to something to me. I seen three or four more dudes like they gonna do me bodily harm. My first reaction — me being who I am, I am a funny dude, but hey, I can wake up — was to smack the dude. I didn't punch him, I smacked him. I swung on the other dudes, they started swinging. Grand Hustle didn't have nothing to do with that situation. It was on Alfamega."

From the looks of the pictures and video footage circulating on the Net, it was on and poppin' after that. The awards ended and Mega found himself being pepper-sprayed and in handcuffs.

"I saw the pictures," he said. "People think I was bleeding from the head, but that was the pepper spray. I have no bruises on me. I'm good."

Good, not great. Before hanging up, Mega once again apologized for his actions.

"I embarrassed, y'all," he said. "Certain people were subjected to the pepper spray. By them trying to spray me, that lingering fumes got other people. I'm embarrassed by the whole situation."

Fittingly enough, Mega's new single is going to be called "Warrior." His album, I Am Alfamega, comes out on January 13.

Related Photos

T.I and Shawty Lo Camps Fight Photos

Posted: 26 Nov 2008 12:17 AM PST

Drew had faced felony charges.
By Gil Kaufman

Megan Meier
Photo: Tom Gannam/AP

Lori Drew, the mother at the center of a cyberbullying case linked to the suicide of a 13-year-old girl, was convicted in Los Angeles of three misdemeanor counts of accessing a computer without authorization on Wednesday (November 26). The jury in Los Angeles federal court declined to convict Drew on more serious felony charges of accessing a computer without authorization to inflict emotional distress, according to an Associated Press report.

Prosecutors said Drew, 49, violated the terms of service of MySpace by working with her daughter and a business assistant to create a fictitious profile of a teenage boy on the site, which they then were alleged to have used to harass 13-year-old Megan Meier.

The young girl, a former friend of Drew's daughter, hanged herself in 2006 after behind rejected by the fictitious boy, "Josh Evans," who wrote that the world would be better without her. The Missouri mother was originally charged with one count of conspiracy in addition to the three computer-related counts, but the AP reported that the jurors — after deliberating for just over one day — could not reach a verdict on the conspiracy matter.

Wired reported that the Drew case was the first federal cyberbullying case to be brought to trial under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The magazine's Web site reported that Meier's mother shook her head silently from the gallery as the verdict was read. The case was based on the novel argument that violating MySpace's terms of service agreement to harm someone else was the legal equivalent of computer hacking; Drew faced a maximum of five years in prison for each charge.

Drew faces up to a year in prison for the misdemeanor convictions, but will most likely not serve jail time.

Jury Convicts Hosea Thomas Of Murdering T.I.'s Friend Philant Johnson

Posted: 26 Nov 2008 01:35 AM PST

Testimony from Thomas' brother helped convict him.
By Gil Kaufman

Philant Johnson and T.I.
Photo: Ray Tamarra/Getty Images

It took a Cincinnati jury less than a day to render a guilty verdict on Wednesday (November 26) in the murder trial of Hosea Thomas. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the jury convicted Thomas on all 11 counts he faced in the 2006 shooting death of rapper T.I.'s boyhood friend and assistant, Philant Johnson, 26, including murder, five counts of felonious assault and illegally having a gun after a felony conviction.

Thomas will be sentenced on December 23 and faces a minimum of 20 years in the case, which hinged on the devastating testimony of the defendant's brother, who was driving the car Thomas was traveling in on the night prosecutors said he opened fire on T.I.'s entourage.

Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Seth Tieger told the jury in closing arguments on Tuesday that Thomas became irate when he was denied access to the VIP room at the Club Ritz in Cincinnati on a night T.I. and Yung Joc were appearing at an afterparty there following a performance across town. Tieger said Thomas was angered that the area he was used to hanging out in was roped off for the rapper and that his anger was further fueled by a scuffle that broke out and resulted in Thomas, 35, being hit in the head with a liquor bottle. Tieger said those incidents were Thomas' motive for opening fire on the van carrying T.I. and his entourage, resulting in Johnson's death and injuries to three others.

Though Thomas' lawyer, Charles Isaly, asked jurors to scrutinize some of the witnesses who testified against his client, saying that they were promised more lenient sentences in exchange for their testimony in the absence of DNA or physical evidence, ultimately the eyewitness testimony proved damaging to Isaly's case.

T.I. testified on Friday, calmly relaying the events that transpired the night of the shooting and telling jurors that he was sure the shots fired were intended for him, not his friends and entourage. Isaly produced a surprise witness on the final day of the trial: Thomas' girlfriend, Kim Sweeten, came forward to say she was with Thomas when he left the club, so he couldn't have been the shooter. But according to the newspaper, Tieger poked holes in her story.

"So you just happened to be the one who can exonerate him? Lucky for him you are here," Tieger said. Sweeten replied, "No, it's not lucky for him because he didn't do it. God works in mysterious ways." But Tieger then countered with a tape of Thomas' statement to police in which he never mentioned leaving the club with Sweeten on the night of May 3, 2006.

Prosecutors said that after the incident at the club, T.I.'s entourage left, and Thomas and his older brother, Padron Thomas, jumped into their Jeep Grand Cherokee and gave chase, with Padron at the wheel and the brothers' friend, 17-year-old Mose Patrick Brown, in the backseat. The Jeep pulled alongside T.I.'s van at one point, and Hosea began firing, Tieger said.

Brown testified last week that he saw Hosea Thomas fire the shots and that he was scared, but that the Thomas brothers paid him $800 to stay quiet about the incident. He eventually broke that promise and went to police with his story after becoming so distraught that he considered committing suicide. Padron Thomas also agreed to testify against his brother in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Related Artists

T.I.

Mariah, Madonna And Me: The Top 10 Turkeys Of 2008, In <i>Bigger Than The Sound</i>

Posted: 25 Nov 2008 11:16 PM PST

In celebration of Thanksgiving, we reflect on the biggest disappointments of the year.
By James Montgomery

Photo: Warner Bros. / Getty Images

If there's been one unifying theme to 2008, it's that there really are no sure things. No one — not even his label — expected to sell a million copies of Tha Carter III in a week. Everyone suspected Usher's Here I Stand would be a massive blockbuster. As you probably know by now, only one of those statements actually proved to be true.

So, in celebration of Thanksgiving, and to the year that was (or, more specifically, wasn't), I've written a list of the year's 10 biggest turkeys. These are albums and artists that disappointed commercially, critically or — more often than not — both. Misfires. Miscalculations. Missteps from the usually surefooted. In the following weeks, I'll also be writing my annual Best Songs and Albums of 2008 lists, but I figured I'd get the ugly stuff out of the way first.

Oh, and a special note — this isn't a list of actual turkeys. Because then this one would totally come in at #1. Anyway, if you're angered by what's below, feel free to drop me a line at BTTS@MTVStaff.com ... and now, let's talk turkey (wow, sorry).

10. Simple Plan
Raise your hand if you're aware they released an album this year. Well, they did ... a self-titled stinker on which they attempted to reinvent themselves as a serious-minded rock outfit with broken dreams and heavy hearts (you know, despite a back catalog that includes albums called No Pads, No Helmets ... Just Balls and Still Not Getting Any ... ). The buzz was bad on this one from the very beginning, as frontman Pierre Bouvier touted several "very synthy, very beat-oriented" songs they were working on with Timbaland protégé Nate "Danjahandz" Hills. Then the album's release date got pushed back from December to February, and finally, to add insult to injury, when SP premiered the (unintentionally hilarious) album cover, fan reaction was so negative that they were forced to scrap the idea and just go with a simple black-and-white job. Not surprisingly, the album stiffed, debuting at #14 on the Billboard charts, then dropping quickly into oblivion.

9. The Pussycat Dolls
A brief recap of the past 12 months in PCD Land: Lead singer Nicole Scherzinger spends the first half of the year promoting a solo album that never sees the light of day. Carmit Bachar (a.k.a. "the scary one") leaves the group in March to start a solo career. She is never heard from again. In September, PCD release Doll Domination, an album so full of Scherzinger retreads, touch-ups and water damage that it should've come with a complimentary Carfax report. Their label spends the remainder of the year hastily flinging singles from the album against the wall, hoping one will stick. Ultimately, none do, and to date, Doll Domination has sold less that 167,000 copies in the U.S. Scherzinger would finally admit that "some" of the songs on the PCD album were, in fact, intended for her failed solo album, which she promises will be out in 2009 as a companion piece to Domination. You have been warned.

8. Weezer
There is a very good chance Rivers Cuomo has gone insane. That's about the only way to describe what happened to Weezer in 2008. From the inexplicable cover of their Red Album (on which Cuomo looks like a nerdier version of Bruno Kirby in "City Slickers") to the inexplicable video for "Troublemaker" (in which Cuomo dresses like a Cholo and rocks a neck tattoo), it's been an annus terribilis for the rockers, who now resemble their sweater-clad glory days in name only. Barely. All those transgressions would've been forgiven, however, if Red were any good — sadly, it's not. And die-hard Weezer fans seem to agree with me. Not only have I not been able to find one person who will give the album any more than "eh, it's better than Maladroit," but it' sold only 375,000 copies to date ... a far cry from 2005's Make Believe, which moved more than 1.2 million units.

7. Jessica Simpson
Simpson kicked off 2008 by cursing the Cowboys and ended it being cursed by them. In January, she drew the ire of many a 'Boys fan when she and boyfriend Tony Romo (who just so happens to also be the Cowboys' starting QB) took a trip to Mexico while the team was supposedly preparing for an upcoming playoff game against the New York Giants. The Cowboys lost, and many — including players and members of the media — mentioned the trip as the reason Romo looked less-than-sharp in the game. In July, she decided that a country-music makeover was just what she needed to revive her stalled career, and she premiered her first single, "Come on Over," on her Web site. That same month, she made an appearance at the Country Thunder USA festival in Wisconsin, where she was booed off the stage. One concertgoer summed it up best, telling "Access Hollywood": "Just because she's dating Tony Romo, it doesn't make her country. ... She doesn't fit in with country, and I'll have to drink a lot of beer to sit through her concert."

6. Usher
Sure, his Here I Stand album debuted at #1 and eventually went platinum, but it didn't go nine times platinum like its predecessor, the massive Confessions, did. Couple that with the lack of follow-up singles, the messy "you're fired, just kidding, you're rehired!" game he played with mom-ager Jonnetta Patton and the bizarre tirade he launched into during a May 28 appearance on "TRL," in which he ripped into fans and shattered the unintentional-comedy scale by shouting, "My wife is not 40 years old!" into the camera, and 2008 was one to forget for Ush. And let's not even get into his harebrained attempt to re-establish himself as a sex symbol with his ladies-only One Night Stand Tour — which, as it turned out, anyone could attend, though many probably didn't want to.

5. Danity Kane
Diddy's girls did plenty right in 2008: Their sophomore album, Welcome to the Dollhouse, debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts in March, and the single "Damaged" made a splash both on the Hot 100 and as a digital download. But in October, things started to go really wrong. First, Aubrey O'Day — who had spent much of the past few months boasting about her breasts and posing for demure photo shoots like this one — was kicked out of the group by Diddy. He booted O'Day's BFF, D. Woods, too. Diddy has insisted that DK will continue on as a trio, which means the group now consists of three girls who could casually be described as "the plain one, the (other) blond one and the one who dates the guy in Day26."

4. Panic at the Disco
Really, these guys deserved better. And believe me, they'll get it when I write my "Best Albums of 2008" column in a few weeks. But for right now, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the colossal tanking of their Pretty. Odd. album, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard albums chart back in April but quickly disappeared from the public consciousness within a few months. Of course, all the warning signs were there: the writing sessions in a cabin, the subsequent scrapping of everything from those sessions, the dropping of the exclamation point from their name. But in the end, Panic fell victim to the same trap that befalls many a rock act with: A) a young fanbase, and B) something to prove — they changed the formula up too much, overshot just about everyone and are now crashing back to Earth. This is not to say ambition is a bad thing (it isn't) or that Pretty. Odd. isn't good (it is), but I'd be willing to bet that in five years, it'll also serve as the prime example of what happens to up-and-coming bands who get a little too big for their britches.

3. Madonna
As if the cover of Madge's Hard Candy album wasn't terrifying enough, consider the sentiment contained within that album: Here is Madonna, one of the 20th century's greatest icons, reduced to chasing trends and looking (and sounding) for the very first time like a 50-year-old mother of three. A blatant attempt to cash in on the "urban" market (check the collabos with Timbaland and Pharrell!), Candy doesn't have a single moment that doesn't recall a better one by Gwen Stefani, Nelly Furtado or even — gasp! — Britney, which made me feel rather sad for Maddy. On top of that, Candy hasn't exactly burned up the charts, selling selling just over 670K here in the U.S. Of course, all that sympathy was quickly lost when she decided to name her tour "Sticky & Sweet," wore an unending stream of Wonka-esque top hats and began taking ham-fisted potshots at politicians from the stage. And then, to top things off, she divorced her husband and (allegedly) started dating New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, which sort of makes me wonder whether she's actually a terrible person. Had she started dating Kevin Youkilis, I would not even consider this.

2. Mariah Carey
It's difficult to think of an album that flopped harder in 2008 than Carey's E=MC², which, given the fact that it's currently the sixth-best-selling album of the year, is saying something about just how impossibly high the expectations were. The long-in-the-works follow-up to her career-reviving The Emancipation of Mimi, it debuted at #1 and has sold nearly 1.2 million copies to date. But the fact remains that no one seems particularly excited about it — especially not Carey, who promoted it with a ho-hum interview on "Oprah" and a downright bizarre video for the first single "Touch My Body," which featured "30 Rock" actor Jack McBrayer wailing on a fake guitar, wearing a Viking helmet and parading around with a unicorn. As a follow-up, she married actor Nick Cannon and basically disappeared from public life. Neither of the three subsequent singles from the album did much of anything, and to date, E=MC² has sold less than one-fifth of what Emancipation did. Oh, and her big year was topped off with the announcement that her much-discussed film "Tennessee" will not open in December but rather, in February. Always a good sign.

1. Me
Why? Well, here's a list of my 2008 highlights: Took countless potshots at Britney Spears. Insisted that her career was over despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Proposed that Soulja Boy Tell'em is a 21st-century Marcel Duchamp. Insulted a massive portion of Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus fans with a sappy column in late September. Royally pissed off tons of cougars when I suggested that David Cook was "the reason the rest of the world hates us." Offended Diddy on an episode of "FNMTV," then rather than standing up for myself, wrote a passive-aggressive column about it the following week. Drafted Brian Westbook over Adrian Peterson in not one, but two fantasy-football leagues. Spent two-thirds of the year telling anyone who would listen how much I disliked Panic at the Disco's Pretty. Odd. album, only to discover that it's actually pretty great. Made borderline racially insensitive comments in a story I wrote about Lollapalooza (prediction #6 if you aren't sure). Killed a man. Actually liked Coldplay's Viva la Vida album. Killed another man. Bought a car even though I don't really need one, thereby making my carbon footprint a carbon bootprint. Actually liked the Killers' Day & Age album. Actually really like Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy.

Questions? Concerns? Hit me up at BTTS@MTVStaff.com.

Related Artists

Minggu, 30 November 2008

Sabtu, 29 November 2008

Jumat, 28 November 2008

Kamis, 27 November 2008

Arsip Blog