“Celebrity Rehab” star Dr. Drew Pinsky says he’s throwing in the towel on the controversial show. There’s no doubt that it was exploitative, despite his best intentions, but Pinsky says he’s tired of taking all the heat” for every death, especially when loss of life unfortunately goes with the territory. CBS News reports that after Mindy McCready died by suicide in February — the fifth person on the show to die — Pinksy said he’d had enough of the attacks.
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Former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is the latest celeb to file a restraining order against a nutty fan. TMZ reports that a woman who claims to have been in a relationship with the dude for more than three years has not taken the news that he’s dating singer Patty Griffin very well. “Your betrayal with another woman still stabs my mind,” she allegedly said in a message to him. “I’m telling you that rotten crotch is ruining you.”
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A group calling itself The Syrian Electronic Army hacked into the Twitter account of E! Online and confirmed what we have always known: Justin Bieber is gay (OK, just kidding).
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Decadent Finnish rocker Ville Valo has never gone in for self-analysis. Always moving so fast with his Goth-metal outfit HIM, he barely has noticed the nearly two decades flying by since its formation.
But for the band’s melodic new CD “Tears on Tape,” he was forced to stop and take serious stock, because a nerve-damaging hand injury sidelined his drummer Gas, and the group, for more than eight months.
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Singapore, a prosperous outpost in the sweltering heart of Southeast Asia, is growing up.
For years, this tiny island off the southern tip of Malaysia has been something of an anomaly for travelers. Westerners typically view it as a “safe” introduction to the region. Streets are spotless, crime is low, English is a second language and the street-food scene is humming.
It’s also a fascinating mix of strict laws, a highly educated populace and opulence to rival any city in the West.
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Sam Beam, like Alexander, can survey his kingdom and weep for lack of further worlds to conquer. At this point in his career, under the sobriquet of Iron and Wine, the folk singer has mastered every art form he’s attempted. He’s directed short films and videos, written screenplays, painted or designed almost every album cover in his catalog, and – while he was first setting his Rimbaud-evocative poetry to music over a decade ago – taught film and cinematography classes at a Florida university. He plans to helm a feature-length movie in the near future.
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Unlike their predecessors Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash, the Avett Brothers of North Carolina don’t write songs about characters in faraway places. Seth and Scott Avett stick to songs about themselves.
There’s little third-person storytelling, and everything is true.
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The Palace Hotel has been in the news lately because of its decision to remove the iconic Maxfield Parish mural “The Pied Piper” from the wall behind the bar that bears the painting’s name. But due to public outcry, the painting — which is valued at several million dollars — will soon return to its traditional place. Long before Parish was commissioned to create “The Pied Piper,” the bar was home to the man who wrote the book on bartending — literally. William T.
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By:
Molly Gore
05/02/13 7:05 PM
Months ago, my sister called me from the back of a cab, distraught, in frantic flight from a wildly uncomfortable date at Supper Club. As my introduction to the place, it wasn’t promising. Nor was the website, a slideshow with the clubby and surreal look you might get if David Lynch were let loose to direct an ad for Virgin America. Scared and curious, I reserved a bed (yes, a bed) at “Food Worship,” last month’s dinner party that guaranteed, if nothing else, lots of blasphemy and sequins.
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Narratively flawed but admirably ambitious and occasionally splendid, “At Any Price” details trouble in the heartland. Established indie writer-director Ramin Bahrani delivers some uncharacteristically phony melodrama in this most commercial film he’s made to date. But his trademark human shades and social textures prevail, and the result is a gripping look at the cutthroat world of modern farmers.
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