Nash earns all-star nod
NEW YORK (CP) - Canadian Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns was one of seven reserves named Thursday night to the Western Conference team that will play in the NBA All-Star Game on Feb. 18 in Las Vegas.
The Victoria born player, who will be making his fifth all-star appearance, is averaging 19.6 points and 12 assists per game through 43 games, while shooting 49.6 per cent from three-point range and 87.6 per cent from the free-throw line. Phoenix faced San Antonio at home later Friday.
One bad night may have overshadowed all the good Carmelo Anthony has done this season.
The NBA's leading scorer was not among the seven reserves announced.
Denver teammate Allen Iverson was chosen, extending his streak of consecutive all-star appearances to eight. He started the last seven games, while playing for Philadelphia. Anthony, who is averaging 31.3 points, but missed 15 games, while suspended for his role in the brawl at Madison Square Garden, was the most obvious omission.
Earlier Thursday, Anthony said that he hoped his suspension wouldn't prevent him from earning his first all-star spot.
"I hope no one holds that over my head over anything," he said. "Things happen. One incident like that is held over one person's head, life ain't fair."
"I did my punishment. I could've easily kept my name out there by appealing it and doing other stuff about it, but I just did my 15 games suspension and hopefully put that behind us."
Nash, Amare Stoudemire and Shawn Marion were all chosen from the Phoenix Suns, the league's highest scoring team. Suns coach Mike D'Antoni will lead the West.
"It will be great to be able to go with our coaches and teammates," said Nash, the two-time NBA MVP. "It will be great to have them there and have them be recognized, too."
Stoudemire, averaging 18.6 points and 8.9 rebounds, made it after sitting out most of last season because of knee surgery.
"It was a goal of mine," he said. "I told you guys that before the season started, back in training camp, that I was planning on making it. So I was really striving for it."
"The past two years have been tough for me and it's definitely paid off. There may be people who doubt you, but you can never doubt yourself."
Dirk Nowitzki was the only player picked from the Dallas Mavericks, who have the league's best record. The Mavericks had been hoping Josh Howard would be selected as well.
"I think Dallas having the best record and only one guy, I thought that was surprising," D'Antoni said.
Detroit and New Jersey had multiple reserves picked for the Feb. 18 game. Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton, who both made their first appearances last season, are going back for Detroit, while Jason Kidd and former Toronto Raptor Vince Carter will represent the Nets in the game at University of Nevada-Las Vegas' Thomas & Mack Center.
"I'm happy that Rip made it, too, because he's having a career year," Billups said. "If I only made it, a piece of me would've been disappointed. I've always felt like we're a package deal."
Indiana's Jermaine O'Neal and first-timers Dwight Howard of Orlando and Caron Butler of Washington round out the East reserves.
The seven reserves were voted on by the head coaches in their respective conferences. Coaches couldn't vote for their own players, and had to select two forwards, two guards, a centre and two players regardless of their position.
The remainder of the West reserves were San Antonio guard Tony Parker and Utah forward Carlos Boozer.
The starters were announced last Thursday.
Toronto Raptors forward Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, Dwyane Wade and Gilbert Arenas were picked in the East. Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady and Kobe Bryant were voted in by fans to start for the West.
Anthony still has a chance to play in Las Vegas. NBA commissioner David Stern will choose a replacement for Yao, who is still recovering from a broken bone under his knee, and Boozer also could be unavailable because of a hairline fracture in his left leg.
He's expected to miss a few weeks, but said Thursday he hopes to return in time for all-star weekend. He doesn't know when he would need to resume running for that to happen.
"Hopefully if everything works out, it will be right on time," he said. "I'll put it like that."
Anthony and Josh Howard are the most likely replacement choices, but could face competition for those spots from Seattle's Ray Allen, Portland's Zach Randolph, the Clippers' Elton Brand and another Denver player, Marcus Camby.
Stern said that he expected to make his decision in the next few days, and that when doing so he wouldn't consider the suspension he gave Anthony for the punch the Denver star hit the Knicks' Mardy Collins with on Dec. 16.
D'Antoni will lead the West squad, because Dallas coach Avery Johnson is ineligible after coaching last season. The same three Suns were chosen as reserves to the 2005 game.
"I'm sure they'll be out there at some time, but I haven't thought about it," D'Antoni said. "I'm thinking about San Antonio and Utah and everyone else in between."
Washington's Eddie Jordan is close to clinching the East coaching spot, largely because of the play of Butler. The forward is averaging 20.6 points and 8.0 rebounds, both career highs.
"Coach Jordan gave me more and more freedom and I really thought I had a chance," Butler said. "I dedicated my time last summer and look what came out of it. I couldn't be happier with this, but I know there is still work to be done."
Toronto forwards Andrea Bargnani and Jorge Garbajosa will take part in the rookie challenge on Feb. 16.
Ryder CD a love letter to Canada
TORONTO - "Whoa," Serena Ryder exclaims, with the phone to her ear. The thin drumming of her tour van's engine whistling in the background, as her driver overtakes a truck somewhere between Winnipeg and Regina, "driving in the prairies is really quite interesting," she continues. "It's windy out here and we kind of lost control for a minute. Where were we?"
Two albums into her burgeoning folk-rock career, the 23-year-old singer-songwriter, is turning back the clock, uncovering a slate of Canadian musical gems for her recently released major-label debut, "If Your Memory Serves You Well."
Her soulful whisper broods through the Band's "This Wheel's On Fire" and her piano-led version of Paul Anka's "It Doesn't Matter Anymore." And her beautifully plaintive take on Bonnie Dobson's "(Take Me For A Walk In The) Morning Dew" builds on Lanois-like atmospherics that give way to a Wainwright-y blast of popera on her plucky rendering of "Boo Hoo," a campy 1937 number co-written by Guy Lombardo's brother Carmen.
Sounding like a less emotionally ground-down version of Fiona Apple, the Millbrook, Ont., native also glides through Leonard Cohen's "Sisters Of Mercy," Percy Faith's "My Heart Cries For You" and Sylvia Tyson's "You Were On My Mind."
"I love Canada," says Ryder, on day two of a cross-country tour that continues throughout the month. "Since I was seven-years-old, I've been singing other people's songs, so it was an easy decision for me to embrace my influences and embrace where I come from.
"I thought it was a beautiful project to do, so I did it."
Recorded in Toronto and Vancouver the album got a bit of a kick-start from veteran music publisher Frank Davies, who founded the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, hot on the heels of Ryder's 2004 indie debut, "Unlikely Emergency," which was released with some help from Hawksley Workman.
"I really wanted to hear material that I'd never heard before, and Frank has that well of information where he's able to find all these rare Canadian songs," she says. "We started with over 500 songs, but how I chose which ones to cover was by listening to myself singing them.
"Seeing how the song fit vocally, seeing if I could put myself in those shoes and seeing if I could really believe in what I was singing? The songs I was able to do all those things with, popped out right away and ended up being the ones I picked."
But "If Your Memory Serves..." isn't strictly a spin through some classic Canadian covers; Ryder also drops three originals, one of which was co-written with Randy Bachman, at the end of the 15-song set.
"I've been writing a lot," she informs proudly, "but I'm not quite sure what the next record will sound like 'cause I'm constantly changing my mind about what my ideas of what I want to do or what I want to sound like is going to be.
"Usually when I record a record it's a snapshot of a certain time. It's a snapshot of a moment in my life."
The mostly all-covers album, usually reserved to fill an artist's schedule when they've stumbled into a case of late-career writer's block, clocking in early for the songstress, Ryder says she's happy to be interpreting a slate of other people's material to listeners across the country.
"I don't even think of my own songs as my own songs," she admits. "I think of music as belonging to everybody. That's what art is. It's a universal language that doesn't belong to any one person."
And the reason she chose to cover strictly Canadians?
"That's all I really know," she says. "That's where I come from. So I figured this was the best place to start."
Here are the dates for Serena Ryder's current Canadian tour:
February 1, Victoria, BC - The Central Bar and Grill
February 3, Tofino, BC - Tofino Legion
February 4, Vancouver, BC - The Media Club
February 6, Kimberley, BC - Bean Tree Cafe
February 7, Lethbridge, AB - Tongue 'N' Groove
February 8, Red Deer, AB - Elks Hall
February 9, Edmonton, AB - Sidetrack Cafe
February 10, Saskatoon, SK - Amigo's Cafe
February 22, Hamilton, ON - Casbah
February 24, Toronto, ON - Mod Club
February 26, Ottawa, ON - Barrymores
February 28, Whitehorse, YT - Atco Place
March 1, Whitehorse, YT - Atco Place
CBS Picks Up Another 'Big Brother'
CBS has ordered up an eighth season of its reality franchise "Big Brother" for this summer.
The strangers-in-a-box series has aired every summer since 2000 when it premiered within weeks of the launch of CBS' other venerable unscripted contest, "Survivor."
Julie Chen will return for another round of bare-shouldered hosting and Allison Grodner and Rich Meehan will remain on board as executive producers. Arnold Shapiro, another long-time executive producer, will serve as a creative consultant.
Last summer "Big Brother: All-Stars" welcomed back an assortment of favorites and saw Mike "Boogie" Malin top the other 19 all-stars to win the $500,000 top prize.
For its eighth installment, "Big Brother" will go back to its regular, unknown contestants who will, once again, share a house bedecked in cameras for three months, voting people out every week.
Dave's 25 Years of Bringing the Funny
David Letterman is planning to ring in his 25th anniversary in late-night comedy Thursday night with an old favorite—and no, we don't mean Larry "Bud" Melman.
Bill Murray, Letterman's first visitor when he debuted as host of NBC's Late Night on Feb. 1, 1982, and again the inaugural guest on Letterman's CBS Late Show on Aug. 30, 1993, is slated to appear once again on a milestone episode.
Also on hand to help celebrate the occasion: NBA superstar LeBron James of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The 59-year-old host, showing no ill effects from 2000 bypass surgery, signed a contract extension last month that will keep him on the air through 2010, a year longer than longtime adversary Jay Leno, who announced plans to pass the Tonight Show baton to Conan O'Brien in 2009.
That would put Letterman within spitting distance of the mark set by his mentor, Johnny Carson, who hosted The Tonight Show for 30 years until his retirement in 1993. Letterman famously coveted Carson's desk, but when NBC went with Jay Leno, Letterman moved a few blocks from 30 Rockefeller to set up shop at the Ed Sullivan Theater, where he's been ever since.
Despite regularly ranking behind Leno in the ratings, Letterman's show has proven more critically adored, winning 14 Emmys in 89 nominations.
Safe to say it's produced a lot of Top Ten lists—3,325 to be precise, emanating from such far-flung Home Offices as Tahlequah, Okalahoma, and Wahoo, Nebraska.
Thursday's show will look back at a quarter-century of Stupid Pet Tricks (there have been 110 segments total), Stupid Human Tricks (73), gag suits (ranging from the Suit of Velcro to the Suit of Alka-Seltzer to the Suit of Suet) and too many Paul Shaffer gags to count.
But with 4,506 broadcasts, 14,772 guest appearances (led by Regis Philbin's 71) and 3,417 musical performances (topped by Warren Zevon's 26 visits, including a poignant interview shortly before the "Werewolves of London" rocker's death), Letterman and his team have plenty of material to choose from for the retrospective.
In keeping with the spirit, here are our nominations for the Top Ten Moments in Lettermania:
- Bill Murray doing jumping jacks while singing Olivia Newton-John's hit "Physical" on the premiere episode of Late Night
- Any visit by Andy Kaufman, particularly the 1982 segment in which the comic appears to fight with pro wrestler Jerry Lawler
- Sandra Bernhard's finger getting bitten by a chimp wearing the "Late Night Monkey Cam"
- Bruce Springsteen turning up as the surprise musical guest on his last NBC show
- Launching watermelons and household appliances off the roof of the Ed Sullivan Theater and watching the destruction
- His frequent haranguing of his employers, most notably poking fun at CBS honcho Les Moonves for meeting with Fidel Castro in 2001
- Two moments with Cher, one segment in which he arranged a memorable reunion with ex-hubby Sonny Bono and the two sang "I Got You Babe," and the other, a not so pleasant visit in which she calls Letterman an epithet on the air
- Drew Barrymore flashing her breasts at him on his birthday and/or Courtney Love flashing him in, what we think was a bid to upstage Barrymore
- The heartfelt and emotional Late Show just six days after 9/11, the first late-night comedy program to return following the attacks, which featured an uncharacteristically serious monologue
- Letterman interviewing Janet Jackson about her "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl, beginning with the immortal query, "So how's Tito?"
Prince headlines Super halftime show
MIAMI - Prince barely spoke, and still stole the show. It was billed as a news conference about the Super Bowl entertainment lineup, featuring pregame performers Cirque du Soleil, national anthem singer Billy Joel and Prince, the halftime-show headliner.
Typically, these events have been question-and-answer sessions.
Then again, there's little that's typical about Prince, the enigmatic six-time Grammy winner who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and was best-known for racy lyrics and gyrations before toning his act down considerably in recent years.
"We are not taking questions at the end," NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told a room packed with reporters and photographers, trying to give fair warning about a minute before Prince arrived, "but we think the trade-off will be pretty good."
The trade-off was a 10-minute concert with Prince and his 10-person entourage using that as their taste of what's coming at halftime on Sunday night.
His jacket, shirt, pants and shoes were orange — surprising since he is, after all, known as "The Purple One." Shielded from view moments before taking the stage, Prince came out, took a deep breath, grabbed his guitar and sauntered to the microphone.
"Thank you," he said, after finishing the quick set. "See you at the Super Bowl. Peace."
Then he was gone.
"I think he's brilliant," Joel said. "He's one of the most talented people in the industry today."
A six-time Grammy winner, Joel will become the first two-time performer of the national anthem in Super Bowl history. He also sang it before the 1989 game in Miami.
Sunday's game entertainment opens with Cirque du Soleil — touted as "a high-energy extravaganza of music, dance, gymnastics and circus arts" — pairing with well-known Miami artist, Romero Britto, for a pregame show. Grammy winner Louie Vega will provide an original musical score for the show.
Some Cirque performers were present. They were dressed as football referees and sat atop eight-foot flamingo puppets who pranced around the room.
Final Harry Potter book due out in July
LONDON - "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the last of seven installments of the boy wizard's adventures, will be published July 21, author J.K. Rowling said Thursday.
Rowling announced the publication date on her Web site.
Bloomsbury, her British publisher, said it would publish a children's hardback edition, an adult hardback, a special gift edition and an audio book on the same day.
Scholastic Children's Books, the U.S. publisher, said it would offer a hardback edition at a suggested retail price of $34.99, a deluxe edition at $65.00 and a reinforced library edition at $39.99.
Bloomsbury noted that this year is the 10th anniversary of the publication of the first "Harry Potter" book in the phenomenally successful series.
The "Potter" books have sold 325 million copies worldwide and been translated into 64 languages, Bloomsbury said.
The last book, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," sold 2,009,574 copies in Britain on the first day of its release, Bloomsbury said.
The Potter franchise is so important to the company's earnings that it announced the publication to the London Stock Exchange.
Bloomsbury shares were up 2.2 percent to $4.40 after the announcement.