Category: People

Britney Spears To Take A Six Month Break
Pop princess Britney Spears, the one with the sweet ass, is taking a six month break, but her publicist on Thursday denied rumors that the 20 year-old singing sensation was so exhausted and broken-hearted that she was “running home to mom.”
“She is taking six months off. She has been working for four years straight and she is taking a break. The girl works harder than anyone in the business and she is taking a break,” publicist Lisa Kasteler told Reuters.
Spears’ decision came just days after a controversial end to her world tour. She was booed by fans after cutting short her final show in Mexico City because of a torrential rain storm, and made an obscene gesture to paparazzi photographers besieging her car.
The star, who has made three hit albums and a movie since rocketing to fame in 1998, is also said to be devastated over her breakup in March with childhood sweetheart and ‘NSYNC singer Justin Timberlake. The breakup of the two-year romance was blamed on conflicting schedules.
Recent tabloid newspaper reports have said that an exhausted Spears was planning to pack in the music business for two years and move back to her home state of Louisiana to live with her mother.
Kasteler however said Spears “is fine, she’s happy. It has nothing to do with the things that have been reported.
“She is going to read scripts during the six months. She is going to travel, write music and hang out with her family and friends who she hasn’t been able to spend any real time with for a long time. It is that simple. There is no drama here,” she said.
“I have no idea where she is going to be. She’s going to go to Louisiana. That is her home. It’s not her running home to mom. She plans to travel and I’m sure she’ll be spending time in L.A and in New York. She has friends everywhere,” Kasteler said.
Spears has been working virtually nonstop since she burst onto the scene as a cute teen with the 1998 hit “Baby one more time” and rose to become a worldwide pop idol known for her bare navel and her famous claim that she was still a virgin.
Her first film, the teen road movie “Crossroads” was released in February, and in June Spears signed a deal with stock car racing organization NASCAR to star in a feature film next year about the sport.
Spears apologized to fans in Mexico City over the cancellation of the show after less than five songs and said the audience would get a full refund.
But the cancellation came only a few days after she was caught by cameras extending her middle finger at photographers, in an insulting gesture seen as having sullied her image as a wholesome southern girl.

Demi Moore Says ‘Halo’ to Picture
Demi Moore has ended months of flirtation with the “Charlie’s Angels” sequel by agreeing to take a small role in the project, a decision that marks the end of a five-year sabbatical from studio films.
She will play a former, now “fallen” angel working on the other side of the law in “Charlie’s Angels 2: Halo,” which is scheduled for release next June via Columbia Pictures.
As with the hit 2000 original, McG will direct Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz.
After a series of flops such as “The Scarlet Letter” and “Striptease,” Moore spent the late 1990s raising her three daughters in her own private Idaho, the hamlet of Hailey.
At her zenith, she commanded $12 million a picture. She was last in theaters with the barely noticed Paramount Classics drama “Passion of Mind.”

Rolling Stone Richards: Jagger Knighthood ‘Paltry’
As the Rolling Stones prepare to launch a North American tour, guitarist Keith Richards can barely contain his scorn for lifelong buddy Mick Jagger’s recent knighthood.
“It’s a paltry honor,” Richards said in U.S. music monthly Blender’s September issue, due out on Aug. 13.
Richards, who co-founded the Rolling Stones with Jagger in 1962, said the singer should have held out for a lordship. Instead, he has been thrown into “the same bin” as Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John, Richards noted.
Jagger received his knighthood in Queen Elizabeth’s annual birthday honors list in June. Along with McCartney and John, he was accorded the relatively lowly rank of knight bachelor.
Richards, whose fondness for hard living makes him an unlikely candidate for any royal honor, said he would not bow to social etiquette and call his sidekick Sir Mick.
“You can call him what you like; we have other names for him,” he said.
The Rolling Stones are currently in Toronto rehearsing for a tour that begins on Sept. 3 in Boston.

JACK AND HIS CHICK
Devout Los Angeles Lakers fan Jack Nicholson paying tribute Wednesday to longtime Lakers sportscaster Chick Hearn, who died Monday at age 85. “Nothing has ever galvanized Los Angeles–other than an earthquake–the way Chick does,” Nicholson told L.A.’s KCAL-TV. “We knew that Laker heart of Laker blue was like a lump in his throat for his entire career, and we loved him for it.”

PAY UP, COMRADE
Russian space agency officials saying they might scrap plans to include ‘N Sync popster Lance Bass in their October space flight if he doesn’t come up with the reported $20 million by the payment deadlines, Reuters reports.

Jennifer Aniston Walks in Her Sleep
If something goes bump in the night at the home of Hollywood hunk Brad Pitt, he need not worry. It’s probably just his wife, Jennifer Aniston.
The 33-year-old “Friends” star revealed in an upcoming issue of Us Weekly magazine released on Thursday that she is a lifelong sleepwalker.
In one recent somnambulant episode, Aniston walked out of the couple’s home and was awakened only when their home’s security alarm went off.
“The alarm scared the s— out of me,” she told Us Weekly. “I woke up, and I was out by the pool equipment in the back.”
She said Pitt, 38, was “terrified because he heard the alarm, and I’m not there — it was just awful.”
Aniston, currently starring in “The Good Girl,” said it was not the first time she has walked out of the house sound asleep.
As a child, she recalled, “I would walk into the living room, and (my mom) would have a conversation with me, and I would not have known it,” she told the magazine.

Oasis Members Hurt in Taxi Crash
Three members of the British rock band Oasis are recovering after being hurt in a car crash.
The musicians were in a taxi Tuesday afternoon when it was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle in downtown Indianapolis.
Noel Gallagher, Andy Bell and Jay Darlington were taken by ambulance to a hospital, where they were treated for shock, cuts and bruises, according to a statement issued early Wednesday by concert promoter Clear Channel Entertainment.
Gallagher, who was sitting in the front of the taxi, suffered heavy facial bruises and seat belt cuts. Darlington, a keyboard player, injured a hand and was to return to the hospital for further treatment on Wednesday.
Doctors have ordered the musicians to rest for two days to let medication take effect, the statement said.
The band was scheduled to play Wednesday evening at the Murat Theatre, but that concert has been postponed. Fans were advised to keep their tickets until the show can be rescheduled, the statement said.
Oasis became wildly popular in the mid-1990s. Their 1995 album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. and became the second-best selling album in British history.

Get Well Soon, Hawk!
Rockin’ Ronnie Hawkins has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

IT’S A SAD DAY
Actor Matthew Thomas Robinson Jr., best known as the original Gordon on Sesame Street and a writer and coproducer of The Cosby Show, died in his sleep in Los Angeles after a 20-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. Robinson was also the father of actress Holly Robinson Peete.

Braodcasting Great Chick Hearn Has Died

Chick Hearn, the longtime voice of the L.A. Lakers, has died at the age of 85.