CASTRIES, St. Lucia (AP) – Wyclef Jean has a new project – a benefit concert to promote peace in his troubled home country of Haiti.
The Grammy-winning singer said the Dec. 5 event would be a fund-raiser for efforts to stabilize the Caribbean country, but he didn’t provide details. Jean said he hoped 2 million people would attend, no small feat in a nation of 8 million.
“I was in Haiti three weeks ago, and I was hanging out on the block of the ghettos, in the baddest parts of town with no security,” he told reporters in St. Lucia while on tour to promote his first album in Creole, Haiti’s language.
“All that stuff you see on the news recently, with the guns and things, I didn’t see none of that,” he said.
Jean said he hoped some good would come out of Haiti’s recent upheaval.
“Every time after you have an uprising … there is always hope that something better will happen,” the 31-year-old said.
His new album, “Creole 101 (Welcome to Haiti),” tells the story of a Haitian boy who immigrates to America and grows up in New York. Jean said he drew from his own experiences and those of other Haitian refugees in America.
Jean, whose hits include “Gone ‘Til November, also said he was ready for a reunification of the Fugees, the hip-hop group that made him famous.
“The Fugees is the one thing all of us have that will go No. 1, not just in America, but in the whole world,” he said. “So, anytime they’re ready, I’m ready. All they gotta do is come see me.”
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Tennis anyone?
Elton John and Billie Jean King will play a celebrity doubles match to open the 12th annual World Team Tennis All-Star Smash Hits to benefit the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the National AIDs Fund. The Oct. 11 event will be held at the Bren Center at the University of California, Irvine.
The event also will include an exhibition match by Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick.
Several other top men and women pros also will compete in men’s doubles, women’s singles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles. The players will form two teams, one captained by John and the other by King.
Organizers expect to raise more than $1 million.
Two years ago, the Smash Hits event was held in Philadelphia, where Agassi defeated Pete Sampras.
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Strip tease
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Kiefer Sutherland stunned a group of small-town New Zealand women with an impromptu strip routine at a club in the North Island community of Raetihi.
Sutherland slipped out of his socks and whipped off his shirt, waving it above his head to the tune of the Tom Jones’ hit “You Can Leave Your Hat On” at Raetihi’s Cosmopolitan Club, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.
The women were watching Men of Steel – a male revue act – and Sutherland was drinking at an adjoining bar before deciding to join the act, the newspaper said. The 37-year-old actor, star of television’s action-thriller “24,” was then ushered off the stage.
The incident occurred last Thursday but wasn’t reported until Wednesday.
“Kiefer had a hell of a night,” club President Danny Mills told The Associated Press. “He had an enjoyable evening and so did everyone that was here.”
Mills added: “He’s coming back in August, mate, and as far as we’re concerned we want him back in here.”
Sutherland is in New Zealand filming “River Queen,” which tells the story of an Irish immigrant during the 18th-century wars between indigenous Maori and colonial settlers.
His movies include “Taking Lives,” “Flatliners,” “Young Guns” and “Stand by Me.”
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Park named in honor of shortstop
UNION, N.J. (AP) – Holy Cow! Former New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto had a park named for him, but the baseball fields were missing!
Instead of three baseball fields, there is a soccer field, a gazebo with a replica of the Yankee Stadium facade and some oversized bats and balls at Phil Rizzuto Park.
No trace remains of the former home to the Elmora Youth Baseball League in the 1970s and ‘80s.
With the area’s growing Latino population, it was practical for the soccer field to replace baseball diamonds at the site, said Angel Estrada, chairman of the county freeholder board.
“We have the soccer field because it’s what our kids need today,” he said Wednesday.
Rizzuto, the Hall of Famer and 40-year Yankees broadcaster, has lived about two miles away in Hillside for the past 50 years. The 85-year-old Rizzuto said he often came to the park before it officially opened.
“I’ve been over here so many times with my wife, just sitting,” said Rizzuto, who played on Yankee teams that won nine AL pennants and seven World Series titles in his 13 seasons.
“Kids who live in apartment houses, they don’t have any back yard,” he said. “Here, they can come out all they want. Now they have a place to play.”
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On Golden Pond revival
NEW YORK (AP) – James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll will star in a revival of “On Golden Pond,” the play by Ernest Thompson that later became an Academy Award-winning movie starring Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn.
The production will open Oct. 2 at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater in Washington. Preview performances begin Sept. 28 for a run through Oct. 17, it was announced Wednesday. There’s no word yet on whether the revival will transfer to Broadway.
Jones, who won Tony Awards for his performances in “The Great White Hope” and “Fences,” will play a retired professor returning for one last time with his wife (Carroll) to their lakeside cottage in Maine.
Fonda and Hepburn both won Oscars for their performances in the 1981 movie. The original stage production, which played both on and off-Broadway, starred Tom Aldredge and Frances Sternhagen.
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Charges dropped against MTV
SAN DIEGO (AP) – No charges will be filed in the case of a woman who claimed she was raped on the set of MTV’s “The Real World,” the San Diego County district attorney’s office said.
A 22-year-old woman, who was not a cast or crew member on the popular reality show, told police in November 2003 she believed she was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance of a cast member.
The woman told police she blacked out after accepting a drink from the man at a downtown San Diego nightclub. She woke up fully clothed in the guest bedroom of “The Real World” house in San Diego’s Point Loma neighborhood.
San Diego police seized footage taped for the show, along with bedding, towels and couch cushions. No arrests were made.
Paul Levikow, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said Wednesday there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.
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On the Net:
http://www.mtv.com/onair/realworld/season14/
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Sculpture to honor Newhart
NEW YORK (AP) – Bob Newhart’s role as psychologist Bob Hartley on “The Bob Newhart Show” will be commemorated by cable network TV Land and the city of Chicago with a life-size statue.
The bronze sculpture will be unveiled Tuesday at 430 N. Michigan Ave., in front of the office building seen in the opening credits of the popular ‘70s show, TV Land announced recently.
It’s the latest in a series of statues sponsored by TV Land, which airs reruns of the classic sitcom.
There also are statues of Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) and his son, Opie (Ron Howard), of “The Andy Griffith Show” in Raleigh, N.C.; Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason) of “The Honeymooners” at New York’s Port Authority bus terminal; and Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) of the “Mary Tyler Moore” show in Minneapolis.
“The Bob Newhart Show,” also starring Suzanne Pleshette, ran from 1972-78.
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Berry back as Catwoman
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Halle Berry was a bit rattled the first time she saw the slinky black leather suit her character wears in “Catwoman.”
“Wow. Who’s going to wear that? Oh, me. Got it. Hmm. OK. It was pretty daunting, you know?” Berry, 35, said in an interview last week with The Associated Press to promote “Catwoman,” which opens Friday. “A little daunting, but the movie is a visual spectacle, and I had to wear the suit, I had to fit into it and really try to become lean and sinewy and very catlike.”
The revealing outfit, which shows off much of her torso, was added incentive to keep in shape for the eight months of production, Berry said.
“I thought because it was cut out, you got to see more of the muscles and sort of the spine and the sinewiness of a cat, so in my mind, it made sense,” Berry said. “I think that helped sell the cat movements a little bit more than if I was completely restricted by fabric all over.”
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Lauren to be honored with stamp
KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) – He made his name with designer jeans. Now Ralph Lauren is getting his own postage stamp in Jamaica.
The Caribbean island is honoring the American fashion mogul with a commemorative stamp in recognition of his contributions to the country’s tourism industry.
Lauren is a shareholder of the exclusive Round Hill resort in the seaside town of Montego Bay and is active in several Jamaican charities.
The stamps will be available in September in Jamaica and at authorized vendors worldwide at a cost of $6 per sheet, Postmaster General Blossom O’Meally-Nelson said Tuesday.
Other famous figures honored with their own Jamaican stamp include Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and Bob Marley.
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No nudes here
NEW YORK (AP) – Readers looking for nude models in compromising positions won’t see them in Abercrombie & Fitch’s new magazine. Instead, they’ll find actors and other “rising stars.”
Michelle Trachtenberg (television’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”), Tyler Hoechlin (“Road to Perdition”) and Poppy Montgomery (“Without a Trace”) are among those who sport a new line of Abercrombie & Fitch garb – Ezra Fitch – within the magazine’s pages.
The magazine only goes as far as a handful of shirtless men and kissy opposite-sex couples.
“This is a more creative direction,” Abercrombie & Fitch spokesman Tom Lennox told The Associated Press recently.
Andreas Wilson, who played an abused boy in the 2003 film “Evil,” which was nominated for a foreign language Oscar, is one of the bare-chested guys. What’s he modeling? The company’s signature cologne, according to the photo caption.
“What these 27 rising stars share is an unbridled, all-consuming passion,” wrote Ezra Fitch in an editor’s letter. Over 100 years ago, his grandfather, Ezra Fitch, became co-owner with David Abercrombie of the company that still bears their names.
Many of the jeans-clad models share genes with Hollywood stars. The magazine features Sissy Spacek’s daughter Schuyler Fisk, Dean Martin’s grandson Alexander Martin, Robert Redford’s daughter Amy Redford and Anjelica Huston’s niece and nephew Laura and Jack Huston.
The magazine, available at Abercrombie & Fitch stores nationwide ($2.50), also includes photos of a mechanic, twin snow-boarding brothers and surfer Trent Garrett, who was bitten by a shark two years ago in Haiti.
The Ezra Fitch line, which includes leather jackets, cashmere sweaters, jeans and denim jackets, will be available in A&F stores in the fall.
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On the Net:
http://www.abercrombie.com
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Andy Dick finds romance
NEW YORK (AP) – Although Andy Dick is searching for a guy or gal Friday on his new MTV reality show, “The Assistant,” the 38-year-old actor-comedian may have found romance.
Dick, co-star of the ‘90s sitcom “NewsRadio,” said during Howard Stern’s radio show Monday he’s dating one of the female contestants.
“They’ve gone out on a couple of times post-show,” Dick’s publicist, Nicole Chabot, told The Associated Press Wednesday.
According to Stern’s official Web site, after “The Assistant” wrapped, Dick “gave everyone his cell phone number and some of the girls called him to hang out. Now he’s seeing one of the girls from the show, but he’s not ready to settle down with just one girl.”
In “The Assistant,” Dick picks from 12 young people hoping to make it in the entertainment industry after they compete in menial tasks. The winner will receive a new wardrobe, car and an entry-level Hollywood gig.
MTV declined Wednesday to comment about Dick’s personal life.
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On the Net:
http://www.mtv.com/
http://www.howardstern.com/
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To host. perchance to streak
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Will Ferrell is going back to his old college – but will it include a naked run through downtown like in his comedy “Old School”?
Probably not.
Ferrell, a graduate of the University of Southern California, has agreed to host the 75th-anniversary gala for its School of Cinema-Television, Dean Elizabeth Daley announced Wednesday.
“As one of today’s most gifted comedic talents, Will certainly is going to make this evening the perfect diamond jubilee party,” Daley said.
The celebration, planned for Sept. 26, will be produced by Steven Spielberg, who is not an alumni, and “A Beautiful Mind” producer Brian Grazer, who is a USC graduate. About 1,200 guests are expected to attend.
Ferrell, of television’s “Saturday Night Live” and the films “Elf” and “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy,” is one of the school’s high-profile graduates.
Filmmakers from USC’s school of entertainment include: Ron Howard (“A Beautiful Mind”), Bryan Singer (“X-Men”), John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”), Robert Zemeckis (“Who Framed Roger Rabbit”), George Lucas (“Star Wars”) and producer Laura Ziskin (“Spider-Man 2.”)
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