Etheridge Back on Track
Rocker returns with hits package, MTV special and ABC sitcom in the works
Officially cancer-free for the first time since she was diagnosed last fall, Melissa Etheridge has plunged back into her career -- with a greatest-hits album including four new songs; a sitcom she's developing for ABC; a new breast-cancer charity single; and an appearance at a UCLA biology class for an MTV special.
"I'm feeling great -- wonderful and just fine," says Etheridge. "My energy is back."
Etheridge's greatest-hits collection, The Road Less Traveled, debuted at Number Fourteen on the Billboard charts last week. The seventeen-song retrospective includes smash hits ("Come to My Window," "Bring Me Some Water") and four new recordings: her Grammy duet with Joss Stone on "Piece of My Heart," from earlier this year; a raucous cover of Tom Petty's "Refugee"; and her own "This Is Not Goodbye" and the hard-rocking breast-cancer-awareness anthem "I Run for Life" (which is also available on iTunes, with the proceeds going to breast-cancer-research charities).
"My writing comes from what I feel and know and think and dream, and cancer is now a part of that," she says. "I have a new perspective and focus on life -- so all that's going to come into my music."
Earlier this month, for MTVU's Stand-In, Etheridge showed up unannounced at a UCLA cancer-biology class to answer questions about being diagnosed with breast cancer and overcoming it with chemotherapy so painful that it hurt her ears to listen to music. "I've been a rock star since you were very young, but I've never encountered anything as powerful as cancer," she said during her hour with the class. "At this point, shoot -- everyone's asked me everything," she tells Rolling Stone magazine. "It's good for me to process this with people."
In 2006, Etheridge hopes to release an album of new material -- she has a notebook full of songs -- and possibly tour during the summer. She's also developing an ABC sitcom with That '70s Show producer Linda Wallem that could debut next spring. "It's just a blue-girl-in-a-red-state sort of story," Etheridge says. The show, which she'll star in, is about what the singer's life might be like had she stayed in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas, and worked as a music teacher.
Her practical reason for the TV show is to have a stable gig (with summers off for touring) so she can stay home most of the year with her family. But there's another reason: "I figure I really have to balance out the Hilary Duffs and the Lindsay Lohans," she says. "They came over and played in my field. I have to play in theirs."
'Fantastic' Sequel Gets 2007 Release Date
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com)- It'll be mutants battling robots for July 4th supremacy in 2007.
Marvel and 20th Century Fox have taken out ads in the industry trade papers announcing that "Fantastic Four II" (or "Fantastic 2") will premiere on July 4, 2007. Even two years out, though, that date is already getting crowded. During the summer, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Hasbro, Inc. laid their claim to the weekend for Michael Bay's "Transformers" feature.
Stars Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis and Ioan Gruffudd are apparently under contract to reprise their roles from the summer hit that has taken in over $321 million worldwide. The film's domestic take has been over $150 million, a strong total for a film that was largely critically savages.
While promoting her September release "Into the Blue," Alba discussed her hopes for the future of her Sue Storm character and Gruffudd's Reed Richards.
"Married -- I think they need to get married," she said. "I know what the first 20 minutes are gonna be, of the movie. It's really cool. They're getting married. Maybe I'm giving away too much, but yeah."
For anything beyond that, though, fans may just need to wait.
Apple Faces Suit Over iPod Nano
Apple Computer Inc. faces a lawsuit that alleges the company knew its nano portable music player was defective but still decided to press on with the product's release last month.
The lawsuit depends on a judge to decide whether it can be grouped with other complaints to win class action status. Sales of iPods account for almost a third of Apple's sales.
The credit card-sized nano, which replaced the best-selling iPod mini and is smaller than the traditional iPod, met with rave reviews. But users quickly started grumbling on Internet message boards that the device's screen scratches too easily.
The lawsuit, filed in San Jose, Calif., last week, claims that the nano scratches "excessively during normal usage." It alleges that though Apple knew the nano had design problems, it released the product and led consumers to believe it was durable -- forcing them to shoulder the cost of replacing defective music players.
The complaint blames the nano's defectiveness on the film of plastic resin that covers it to protect it from damage. Previous versions of the iPod were coated with thicker and stronger resin, the suit says.
"Rather than admit the design flaw when consumers began to express widespread complaints ... Apple concealed the defect and advised class members that they would need to purchase additional equipment to prevent the screen from scratching excessively," the complaint says.
Apple admitted in late September that some iPod nano screens cracked too easily, but blamed that separate issue on vendor quality problems and said it had occured in less than one-tenth of 1% of the nanos sold at that point.
The plaintiff named in the California lawsuit, Jason Tomczak, bought a nano in September. He said it quickly became so scratched he could not view the screen. Apple replaced that device because of a battery problem, but the complaint claims the replacement nano also became so scratched that Tomczak decided to return it.
Because Tomczak and other complainants were required to pay a $25 fee to return the nano, the proposed class action suit seeks the return of those fees along with the device's original cost and several other forms of damages.
The suit, filed by law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, says Apple has "failed to remedy the problem in any meaningful way" and claims Apple deleted postings on its Web site that relate to the scratching problem.
A spokesperson for Apple, whose main offices are in Cupertino, Calif., could not be reached for comment.
'Titanic' rises again in 'ultimate' 3-disc set
When the special edition of Titanic arrives in stores Tuesday, movie fans will finally be able to pick up the definitive DVD version of Hollywood's biggest-grossing movie.
Director James Cameron says he's so pleased with the three-disc set ($30) that he won't go back for another round, something that has become standard practice.
Noting that his blockbuster Terminator 2 already has come out on DVD in four different incarnations, including an "ultimate edition," Cameron says: "Our intention here was to jump through all those intermediate iterations and get right to the ultimate version and tell people, point blank, this is it. This is the ultimate disc."
The film is notable not only for its $600 million gross but also for its controversy. The Titanic budget spiraled out of control to reach $200 million. And midway through production, 20th Century Fox sold half the rights to Paramount.
Cameron now concedes that even he had misgivings about whether the film would turn a profit. "It was a chick flick set in 1912, it was three hours long, and everybody dies in the end — how could it possibly be successful?" he says with a laugh.
"I don't think anybody really believed in its upside potential, myself included."
When Titanic finally hit theaters the weekend before Christmas 1997, a ho-hum opening almost led to panic in the boardrooms of both studios. But the film didn't taper off; it steadily chugged its way into the record books. It was No. 1 on the box-office charts for an astounding 15 weeks.
"That's something that simply doesn't happen anymore," says Robert Dowling of The Hollywood Reporter. Today's movies, he says, typically take in one-third of their gross the first weekend and rarely remain No. 1 for more than a week.
The controversy over the film's production probably helped, Dowling says.
"If you remember the amount of press that movie got, about people losing their jobs and how much money it was costing, that's going to stir up interest."
Titanic also was able to stay on top for so long because of repeat viewers. "What makes a movie work," Dowling says, "is it resonates with where the world is at the time, and every once in a while everything just hits the right note. And Titanic was such a movie. People felt good when they saw it, told everyone else to see it, and then if they really liked it, saw it again."
Cameron has his own theories: "There was this kind of pre-millennial angst in the air, and the film keyed to that sense of impending disaster and how important it is to live life well. The lesson of Titanic is you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or even tonight.
"People used to mock us and say, 'Well, we know how it ends.' And we said, 'Yes, you also know how your own life will end — with death.' It's just a question of what you do in the meantime."
NEW CD RELEASES FOR OCTOBER 25, 2005
Aerosmith Rockin' the Joint - Live from the Hard Rock (Columbia)
Agents of the Sun Monarchs of a Fallen Society (mixed by 311's Chad Sexton) (DCide)
Anthony B Confused Times (Penitentiary)
Antony & the Johnsons You Are My Sister EP (Secretly Canadian)
Arsis A Diamond for Disease (Willowtip)
The Bacon Brothers White Knuckles (Forosoco)
Rim Banna The Mirrors of My Soul (Valley)
Jeff Bates Good People (RCA)
Berlin 4Play (covers of David Bowie, Prince, Marilyn Manson and more; plus two new originals) (MRI/49 North)
Jay Bezel Diplomats Present: The Philadelphia Beast (w/Juelz Santana, Jae Millz, Freeway and more) (Sure Shot)
Bigg Milt Power 2 the People (Thump)
Black Furies Death Trip Saturday Night (Gearhead)
The Blazers 17 Jewels (Little Dog/Fontana)
Bliss Quiet Letters (guest Sophie Barker of Zero 7) (Quango)
Rick Braun Yours Truly (ARTizen)
Breakestra Hit the Floor (guest members of Jurassic 5 and People Under the Stairs) (Ubiquity)
Sarah Brightman Love Changes Everything: The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection Vol. 2 (includes five previously unreleased recordings) (Decca)
Marc Broussard Bootleg to Benefit the Victims of Hurricane Katrina (Island)
Buckethead Enter the Chicken (w/System of a Down's Serj Tanakian, Saul Williams and members of Death by Stereo and Bad Acid Trip; on Tanakian's label) (Serjical Strike)
Vashti Bunyan Lookaftering (first album in 30 years; w/Devendra Banhart and members of Vetiver) (DiCristina Staircase)
Taylor Ho Bynum and SpiderMonkey Strings Other Stories (Three Suites) (482 Music)
C-BO West Side Ryders 2 (w/E40, Too Short and more) (West Coast Mafia)
Capleton The People Dem (Penitentiary/Rude Boy)
Cargo Cult Belize City Boil Up (Numero Group)
Caroline Where's My Love (Secretly Canadian)
Alain Caron 5 (BHM)
Craig Chaquico Holiday (Higher Octave)
Charivari A Trip to the Holiday Lounge (Rounder)
Children of Bodom Are You Dead Yet? (Spinefarm)
Margaret Cho Assassin (Nettwerk)
Cisco 7740 Valmont St. (Little Dog/Fontana)
Stephen Clair Under the Bed (Valley)
Cobra Killer & Kapajkos Das Mandolinenorchester (Monika)
Crimson Spectre/Uwharria Crimson Spectre/Uwharria (split CD) (Magic Bullet)
The Cumberlands Civil War Songbook Album (A Bluegrass Tribute) - Songs of Battle, Honor, Pride, Loved Ones & Home Sick Blues (Rural Rhythm)
Moot Davis Moot Davis (Little Dog/Fontana)
A Day in Black and White Notes (Level-Plane)
The Dead Science Frost Giant (Absolutely Kosher)
Dirty Faces Super American (Secretly Canadian)
Dr. Israel Presents Dreadtone Int'l - Patterns of War (ROIR)
The Drift Noumena (Secretly Canadian)
The Earlies These Were (includes early singles and EPs; released in 2004 in the UK) (Secretly Canadian)
Enter the Haggis Casualties of Retail (United for Opportunity)
Ricki Erik Born to Rock (Fontana/Universal)
Faith Evans A Faithful Christmas (Capitol)
The Fiery Furnaces Rehearsing My Choir (Rough Trade)
The Five Boroughs Doo Wop Under the Palms (Collectables)
Paula Frazer Leave the Sad Things Behind (w/members of American Music Club, Kronos Quartet, Court and Spark and more) (Birdman)
David Garfield Giving Back (Creatchy)
Goblin Cock Bagged and Boarded (Absolutely Kosher)
Delta Goodrem Born to Try (DualDisc) (Columbia)
Great Big Sea The Hard and the Easy (CD/DVD combo) (Rounder)
Joel Harrison Harrison on Harrison (covers of George Harrison songs) (HighNote)
Marcos Hernandez C About Me (TVT)
Scott Holt Revelator (Rockview)
Hoods The King Is Dead (Eulogy)
I Am Ghost We Are Always Searching EP (Epitaph)
Icarus Witch Capture the Magic (guest members of Dokken and Fates Warning) (Magick)
Idaho The Lone Gunman (Idaho Music)
Il Divo Ancora (Columbia)
Frankie J. The One (DualDisc) (Columbia)
Jan Jelinek Kosmischer Pitch (~scape)
Jin Emcee's Propaganda (Draft/Crafty Plugz Entertainment)
Colin John Acousticland Lady (Rockview)
Calvin Johnson Before the Dream Faded... (K Records)
LAL Warm Belly High Power (Public Transit)
The Lappetites Before the Libretto (Quecksilber)
LaSalle Expedition Songs (Thick)
Rita Lee (ex-Os Mutantes) Bossa'n Beatles (bossa nova versions of Beatles tunes) (Delanuca Records/Ghordo Music)
The LeeVees Hanukkah Rocks (Reprise)
The Living Blue Fire Blood Water (Minty Fresh)
Jacques Loussier Mozart: Piano Concertos, No. 20 in D Minor and No. 23 in A Major (Telarc)
Luciano Call on Jah (Penitentiary/Rude Boy)
Mat Maneri Pentagon (Thirsty Ear)
Mary Mary Mary Mary (Columbia)
MDD Modern Day David (Promise Communication)
The Mean Reds Together at Last, and This Is Our Wedding (Record Collection)
Meat Beat Manifesto Off Centre (w/live tracks and previously unreleased material) (Thirsty Ear)
Mezklah SpiderMonkey (Escuchalo)
Bette Midler Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook (DualDisc) (Columbia)
Mikoto Mikoto EP (Level-Plane)
Milemarker Ominosity (produced by Steve Albini) (Eyeball)
The Mistletoe Orchestra Yuletide Follies (Empire)
Niacin Organik (w/cover of Frank Zappa's "King Kong," plus bonus track) (Magna Carta)
Joe Nichols III (Universal South)
Nicotine Session (Asian Man)
Tony Orlando & Dawn A Christmas Reunion (first new album in 28 years; holiday standards plus three new originals) (E2 Entertainment)
Paleo Misery, Missouri (Future Farmer)
Rebecca Pidgeon Tough on Crime (guests Billy Preston and Steely Dan's Walter Becker) (The LAB)
Pinetop Seven The Night's Bloom (Secretly Canadian)
Public Announcement When the Smoke Clears (Boss Fontana)
Pull My Finger Jingle Smells (Oglio)
Queenadreena The Butcher and the Butterfly (One Little Indian)
Quio Like Oooh (AGF Producktion)
Colin Raye Twenty Years and Change (Aspiron)
Reef the Lost Cause Feast or Famine (guests Sean Price, DJ Mighty Mi and members of JuJu Mob) (Good Hands/Eastern Conference)
Renee Heartfelt Death of the Ghost (Textbook Music)
Report Suspicious Activity (w/ex-Jawbox's J. Robbins) Report Suspicious Activity (ICE #224) (Alternative Tentacles)
Rogue Wave Descended Like Vultures (Sub Pop)
Sadat X (of Brand Nubian) Experience & Education (w/Diamond D, DJ Spinna, Heltah Skeltah and more) (Female Fun)
The Satelliters The Satelliters EP (Dionysus)
Sharissa Every Beat of My Heart (guests R. Kelly, Wyclef Jean, the Game and more) (Virgin)
Lisa Shaw Lisa Shaw (Naked Music)
Silver Sunshine A Small Pocket of Pure Spirit EP (Secretly Canadian)
The Skygreen Leopards Jehovah Surrender EP (Secretly Canadian)
Slum Village Slum Village (w/bonus DVD) (Barak)
Solea (ex-Samiam members) Solea (Textbook Music)
Spanish Harlem Orchestra featuring Rubén Blades Across 110th Street (Universal)
Spyritual Wall of Soul (Kitty Yo)
St. Christopher The Art of Dreaming (AERIA)
Stereocell Into Tomorrow (Rockview)
Marty Stuart & the Fabulous Superlatives Badlands (Superlatone/Universal South)
Taken Between Two Unseens (CD/DVD combo; includes live performance) (Goodfellow)
Tall Dwarfs Weeville (Cloud)
They Might Be Giants Here Come the ABCs (CD/DVD combo) (Walt Disney)
Toots Thielemans Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Verve)
tok tok tok about... (BHM)
Towers of London Blood, Sweat and Towers (TVT)
Pat Travers and Carmine Appice Bazooka
True Love Wings (Not Lame)
Tom Vek We Have Sound (StarTime International)
Vida aka Electric Cowboys Prisoners of the Honky Tonk (South Central)
Vorpal An Incomplete Guide to (Cock Rock Disco)
Waldteufel Waltzes (holiday album) (Milan)
Watchmaker Erased from the Memory of Man (Willowtip)
Young Lyfe Real Lyfe (Empire)
VA A Christmas Carol - Mr. Pickwick's Christmas (Deutsche Grammophon)
VA A Country West of Nashville (w/BJ Thomas, Mike Stinson and more) (Little Dog/Fontana)
VA Aloha Margaritaville: Hawaiian Tribute to Jimmy Buffet (CMH)
VA An All Star Tribute to Cher (w/Tiffany, Lisa Loeb, Sheila E. and more) (All Starz)
VA Broken Bones and Power Chords Vol. 1: New York's Finest (new punk compilation) (Crosscheck)
VA Electronic Tribute to Depeche Mode (Vitamin)
VA Feng Shui Harmony (Sunswept)
VA Imaginational Anthem (compilation of solo acoustic guitar instrumentals from 1965-2005; ICE #224) (Near Mint)
VA Impulsive! - Revolutionary Jazz Reworked (Impulse)
VA Live 8 at Eden: Africa Calling (Rhino)
VA Michael Rütten Presents: Soulsearching - The Compost Radio Show (compilation of soul, jazz, funk, electronica and hiphop) (Compost)
VA Pickin' on Brad Paisley Volume 2 (CMH)
VA Pickin' on Def Leppard: A Bluegrass Tribute (CMH)
VA Sah Presents: Supporting Radical Habits (w/Kottonmouth Kings, Slightly Stoopid and more; w/bonus DVD) (Suburban Noize)
VA Smooth Sax Tribute to Norah Jones (Tribute Sounds)
VA Smooth Sax Tribute to the Temptations' Greatest Hits (Tribute Sounds)
VA Songs from the Neighborhood: The Music of Mr. Rogers (w/Donna Summer, Roberta Flack, Amy Grant, Ricky Skaggs and more) (Memory Lane Syndication)
VA The String Quartet Tribute to System of a Down's Mezmerize (Vitamin)
VA This Bird Has Flown - A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul (w/Ben Harper, the Donnas, Sufjan Stevens, Cowboy Junkies, Low and more) (Razor & Tie)
OST Prime (Varèse Sarabande)
OST Saw II (w/exclusive remixes of Marilyn Manson, Queens of the Stone Age and more) (Treadstone)
OST Stay (score by Asche and Spencer) (Varèse Sarabande)
OST The Bee Season (score by Peter Nashel; w/original song by Ivy) (Nettwerk)
OST The Fog (score by Graeme Revell) (Varèse Sarabande)
OST The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (Milan)
OST Where the Truth Lies (score by Mychael Danna) (Varèse Sarabande)
DVD The BellRays @ the Barfly (Music Video Distributors)
DVD Blues Company Keepin' the Blues Alive (Music Video Distributors)
DVD Body Count Live (2004 Los Angeles show w/interviews and behind-the-scenes footage) (escapi/49 North)
DVD Cook, Dixon & Young Volume One (RCA)
DVD Keak da Sneak Copium (w/bonus CD) (Sumday)
DVD Mint Condition Live (Image)
DVD Mötley Crüe Carnival of Sins (two DVDs; live performance from current reunion tour w/bonus features) (Clear Channel/Ventura Entertainment)
DVD Mr. Capone-e A Soldier's Story (two DVDs) (Thump)
DVD The Notorious B.I.G. Bigga Than Life (unauthorized documentary) (Fieldstone Entertainment)
DVD Tupac Shakur Words Never Die (unauthorized documentary w/interviews, live performance and more) (Fieldstone Entertainment)
DVD Trick Daddy Thug Holiday Uncut (performances and behind-the-scenes footage; guests Ludacris, Big Boi, Lil Jon and more) (Music Video Distributors)
DVD VA Slip N Slide Presents: The Dirty South Raw & Uncut (documentary w/2 Live Crew, Goodie Mob, 69 Boyz and more) (Music Video Distributors)
Fogerty Back on Fantasy Records After Spar
NEW YORK - John Fogerty is back on Fantasy Records. Most music fans would gloss over such a small detail, but for years that simple statement was about as realistic as Neil Armstrong flying back to the moon.
When the California-based record label was sold last year, it ended one of the most famously contentious artist-management relationships in music, freeing the former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman to return to the company that distributed his most famous work.
Their first project together, "The Long Road Home: The Ultimate John Fogerty-Creedence Collection," is a 25-song disc that pulls together his old band's hits with Fogerty's solo material, up to the anti- Iraq war song "Deja Vu (All Over Again)." (It's being released Nov. 1.)
"There's no way to overstate how cool this is," said Fogerty.
In an almost impossibly productive period (1968-71) Creedence churned out concise, often socially conscious rock hits like "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," "Down on the Corner," "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "Green River." That burst of work alone earned Creedence induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Fogerty wrote and sang them all.
Yet Fogerty, now 60, spent years without performing those songs because of bitterness over his feud with former Fantasy owner Saul Zaentz dating to Creedence's messy breakup in the early 1970s.
Their bickering kept generations of lawyers fed. Fogerty spent years as a recluse, and his 1985 comeback album contained thinly disguised contempt in "Mr. Greed" and "Vanz Kant Danz" (renamed from "Zanz Can't Dance" after, of course, a lawsuit).
Zaentz unsuccessfully sued Fogerty, claiming the songwriter had plagiarized himself because the comeback hit "The Old Man Down the Road" sounded too much like Creedence's "Run Through the Jungle."
The fight became heartbreakingly personal when Fogerty's older brother Tom, also a former Creedence member, took Zaentz's side. The brothers were estranged at Tom's death in 1990.
The years of court time had taken such a toll that Adam Sweeting, a writer for The Guardian, wrote about Fogerty in 2000 that "it remains to be seen whether he will be remembered for his music or his lawsuits."
That's why seeing Fogerty's name willingly associated with a Fantasy product is so startling.
After the Concord Music Group, partly owned by legendary TV producer Norman Lear, bought Fantasy, Fogerty asked for a meeting with the new leadership. He came away feeling they respected him and his music. It also didn't hurt that Concord restored Fogerty's rights to royalties, which he had signed away decades ago to escape Fantasy.
They asked for Fogerty's opinion on decisions about how his old music would be used, which had never happened since his split with Zaentz.
"It's turned out to be, for me, a very, very happy, wonderful time in my life and career," he said. "Even a year ago I could not have envisioned this. The most happy thing is that I am reconnected with the music I made on Fantasy Records all those years ago, that I had basically been cut off from financially and emotionally for a long, long time."
He has also recorded a DVD that will be released sometime next year, and hopes to make new music for Fantasy soon after.
Most of Creedence's biggest hits appear in their original form on "The Long Road Home," but he replaces a handful of older songs with live versions recorded recently.
"Keep On Chooglin'" was replaced because Fogerty feels it is a substantially different song now than when he wrote it. He went with the live version of "Fortunate Son" because it's "a white-hot dose of energy," he said.
The toughest call was the live version of "Hey Tonight," which is primarily different because he did all the background vocals himself in the original version.
His current good feelings don't extend to Stu Cook and Doug Clifford, Creedence's other surviving members, whom Fogerty also sued for performing under the banner of Creedence Clearwater Revisited.
He compared them to a rattlesnake.
"They bit me very badly in the same way that the old folks at Fantasy did," he said. "That hasn't changed, so I will continue to give them a very wide berth."
Former In-Law: Janet Jackson Has Daughter
NEW YORK - Janet Jackson and James DeBarge, who were briefly married in 1984, had a daughter together, DeBarge's brother Young DeBarge has claimed on a radio program.
Young DeBarge said the child, named Renee and now 18, has been living with Rebbie Jackson, Janet's oldest sister. His comments lent support to reports that have circulated for years claiming Janet has a "secret" daughter.
Jackson's publicist didn't immediately return a call from The Associated Press on Monday. The singer and James DeBarge were married for less than three months when she was just 18. The marriage was annulled a year later.
"James and the Jackson family kept everything real close, real tight," Young DeBarge said Friday on New York radio station WQHT, known as Hot 97. "They weren't very revealing about what the relationship was about."
"No one really knew how it was working out until things kind of surfaced," he said.
He added, "There's no telling what (Janet Jackson) is telling her."
DeBarge said Renee "is a wonderful singer."
Jackson, 39, secretly married Rene Elizondo Jr. in 1991. They separated in 1999. She is now dating Jermaine Dupri.
Young DeBarge, 28, said he has recently finished an album.
Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dies at 92
DETROIT - Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday evening. She was 92.
Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years.
Mrs. Parks was 42 when she committed an act of defiance in 1955 that was to change the course of American history and earn her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
At that time, Jim Crow laws in place since the post-Civil War Reconstruction required separation of the races in buses, restaurants and public accommodations throughout the South, while legally sanctioned racial discrimination kept blacks out of many jobs and neighborhoods in the North.
The Montgomery, Ala., seamstress, an active member of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was riding on a city bus Dec. 1, 1955, when a white man demanded her seat.
Mrs. Parks refused, despite rules requiring blacks to yield their seats to whites. Two black Montgomery women had been arrested earlier that year on the same charge, but Mrs. Parks was jailed. She also was fined $14.
Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said he felt a personal tie to the civil rights icon: "She stood up by sitting down. I'm only standing here because of her."
U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., lauded Mrs. Parks' mettle.
"I truly believe that there's a little bit of Rosa Parks in all Americans who have the courage to say enough is enough and stand up for what they believe in," Rangel said. "She did such a small thing, but it was so courageous for her as a humble person to do."
Speaking in 1992, Mrs. Parks said history too often maintains "that my feet were hurting and I didn't know why I refused to stand up when they told me. But the real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."
Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by a then little-known Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who later earned the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
"At the time I was arrested I had no idea it would turn into this," Mrs. Parks said 30 years later. "It was just a day like any other day. The only thing that made it significant was that the masses of the people joined in."
The Montgomery bus boycott, which came one year after the Supreme Court's landmark declaration that separate schools for blacks and whites were "inherently unequal," marked the start of the modern civil rights movement.
The movement culminated in the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in public accommodations.
After taking her public stand for civil rights, Mrs. Parks had trouble finding work in Alabama. Amid threats and harassment, she and her husband Raymond moved to Detroit in 1957. She worked as an aide in the Detroit office of Democratic U.S. Rep. John Conyers from 1965 until retiring in 1988. Raymond Parks died in 1977.
Mrs. Parks became a revered figure in Detroit, where a street and middle school were named for her and a papier-mache likeness of her was featured in the city's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Mrs. Parks said upon retiring from her job with Conyers that she wanted to devote more time to the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development. The institute, incorporated in 1987, is devoted to developing leadership among Detroit's young people and initiating them into the struggle for civil rights.
"Rosa Parks: My Story" was published in February 1992. In 1994 she brought out "Quiet Strength: The Faith, the Hope and the Heart of a Woman Who Changed a Nation," and in 1996 a collection of letters called "Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth."
She was among the civil rights leaders who addressed the Million Man March in October 1995.
In 1996, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to civilians making outstanding contributions to American life. In 1999, she was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the nation's highest civilian honor.
Mrs. Parks received dozens of other awards, ranging from induction into the Alabama Academy of Honor to an NAACP Image Award for her 1999 appearance on CBS' "Touched by an Angel."
The Rosa Parks Library and Museum opened in November 2000 in Montgomery. The museum features a 1955-era bus and a video that recreates the conversation that preceded Parks' arrest.
"Are you going to stand up?" the bus driver asked.
"No," Parks answered.
"Well, by God, I'm going to have you arrested," the driver said.
"You may do that," Parks responded.
Mrs. Parks' later years were not without difficult moments.
In 1994, Mrs. Parks' home was invaded by a 28-year-old man who beat her and took $53. She was treated at a hospital and released. The man, Joseph Skipper, pleaded guilty, blaming the crime on his drug problem.
The Parks Institute struggled financially since its inception. The charity's principal activity — the annual Pathways to Freedom bus tour taking students to the sites of key events in the civil rights movement — routinely cost more money than the institute could raise.
Mrs. Parks lost a 1999 lawsuit that sought to prevent the hip-hop duo OutKast from using her name as the title of a Grammy-nominated song. In 2000, she threatened legal action against an Oklahoma man who planned to auction Internet domain name rights to http://www.rosaparks.com.
After losing the OutKast lawsuit, Reed, her attorney, said Mrs. Parks "has once again suffered the pains of exploitation." A later suit against OutKast's record company was settled out of court.
She was born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Ala. Family illness interrupted her high school education, but after she married Raymond Parks in 1932, he encouraged her and she earned a diploma in 1934. He also inspired her to become involved in the NAACP.
Looking back in 1988, Mrs. Parks said she worried that black young people took legal equality for granted.
Older blacks, she said "have tried to shield young people from what we have suffered. And in so doing, we seem to have a more complacent attitude.
"We must double and redouble our efforts to try to say to our youth, to try to give them an inspiration, an incentive and the will to study our heritage and to know what it means to be black in America today."
At a celebration in her honor that same year, she said: "I am leaving this legacy to all of you ... to bring peace, justice, equality, love and a fulfillment of what our lives should be. Without vision, the people will perish, and without courage and inspiration, dreams will die — the dream of freedom and peace."
TIL DEATH DO US PART
"Lost" fans are getting ready for a second funeral.
The show has promised to kill off another regular character in just two weeks.
The drama, about a group of plane crash survivors trying to stay alive on a mysterious and extremely dangerous island, has become a whole new kind of TV show where characters that viewers become attached to are killed off at will.
Die-hard "Lost" fans, a group who have become almost as devoted to the show as Trekkies are to "Star Trek," pore over each episode looking for clues about what's to come and post their findings on the Internet.
This week, the buzz is over a mysterious — but authoritative sounding — message that that has popped up on several popular "Lost" fan sites in the last few days
"This person is intentionally killed, although the reason will not be known to us immediately," the anonymous post says.
"This is not a 'Lost' murder mystery though, it's more of a 'Why'd they do it?'
"The person who dies is a crash survivor. The person who kills them will not be revealed until the [final] November sweeps week episode (of course).
"The network will dangle this information for a while to build anticipation. (Another "who shot JR" moment.)
The full time-line is: Death in Episode 6 . . . Then episode 7 which is mostly told in flashback. . . but ends with a teaser . . .
"Then Episode 8 which reveals who the killer is," it says. "Look for [the killer] to deceive everybody except for a select few."
The death episode is set to air November 9.
Last season ended with the death of Boone, a beloved young rich kid played by Ian Somerhalder. Now with another character on the chopping block, water cooler talk about the show is nearing a fever pitch.
Some fans of "Lost" take the show so seriously, they go to extraordinary lengths trying to find clues as to what may happen next.
In some extreme cases, they've been known to run scenes backwards frame by frame, like Beatles fans did in the 1960s, searching for hints.
The results of their efforts this week seem to indicate that Maggie Grace, who plays snobby Shannon Rutherford — Boone's half-sister — is the likely victim.
Among the various reports fans have circulated this season is that an actress on the show found out over the summer that her character was going to be killed. The actress made a fuss and asked producers to do get rid of her early in the season so she could find a new job while the "Lost" is still one of the biggest show's on TV.
A storyline focusing on Shannon's back story is expected to air in early November — which has helped fuel speculation that she is doomed.
Another possibility, say fans, is Sun Kwon, the tragic debutante played by popular Korean actress, Yoon-jin Kim.
Officials at Touchstone, the studio that produces "Lost," declined to comment.
"Goodfellas" tops greatest movies list
LONDON (Reuters) - Mobsters in the 1990 film "Goodfellas" have beaten a fear of heights in "Vertigo" and the great white shark of "Jaws" to help the Martin Scorsese film clench the mantle of greatest movie of all time in a survey of UK film experts.
Goodfellas, which featured Ray Liotta, Robert de Niro and an Oscar winning supporting role from Joe Pesci, topped the list of 100 movies in a survey of film critics by Total Film.
"Goodfellas has everything, in terms of its technical brilliance, its huge influence on modern film-making and its spikiness and rewatchability," Total Film features editor Jamie Graham told Reuters.
Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 classic "Vertigo" took second place, while third went to Steven Spielberg's 1975 classic "Jaws," the tale of a coastal town terrorised by a great white shark.
Goodfellas, which was based on the story of real-life mobster Henry Hill, also beat Citizen Kane, the 1941 Orson Welles film that tops many critics lists but which finished in sixth position in the Total Film poll.
The 10 ten films in the list included two made in the last decade, the 1999 film "Fight Club," starring Brad Pitt, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy directed by Peter Jackson.
Fight Club took fourth position ahead of other classics such as "Tokyo Story" and "Taxi Driver."
"By no means were we trying to be perverse, but we were setting out to make a list that was a bit more modern," Graham said.