Portishead and Smoke City

   
Artist: Portishead and Smoke City

   Genre(s): 
Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 Rare Remixes

   Year:    
Tracks: 15

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Alec Baldwin - Baldwin Moans At Media

Scenes from Mexico City show its human heart and soul in new book

"First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century"

David Lida (Riverhead Books)

Mexico City is a sprawling, throbbing stew of 20 million people, but David Lida, in his new book, cuts through the chaos with an array of verbal snapshots that aim to paint the city's soul.

"First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century" is his gritty, nostalgic ode to the city he calls home: a quick-read collection of short essays and vignettes on life, work and love in one of the world's biggest capitals.

Focusing more on psychology than scenery, Lida tells tales he has gathered across social circles over 18 years, crossing barriers that many of the city's class-conscious citizens rarely transcend.

He talks to artists, prostitutes, cops and corporate managers; to socialites, street vendors and cantina singers. He tells of a manic taxi driver who works an eight-day shift on a diet of onions, and of a solvent-sniffing waif who has lived since age 10 on the streets with her brothers and a spotted dog.

Lida's approach is often amusing: He cites Nobel Prize-winning Octavio Paz to deconstruct lucha libre, Mexico's circuslike form of pro wrestling, and systematically analyzes gossip items in the city's trashiest tabloid by theme, treating them a lot like high art.

He paints a city of contrasts: rich and poor, camp and conservative, sin and redemption, ingenuity and fatalism. And some stereotypes are busted - crime in the city is not as rampant as it was a decade ago, he shows. But others are unfortunately perpetuated - Mexico City mothers are "often meddlesome and guilty of emotional blackmail," while "male adultery is nearly universal," he writes.

Lida, who first moved to Mexico City in 1990 to work as a freelance journalist and magazine editor, is best when he sticks to the microcosm, recounting his characters' surprisingly frank confessions or literally listing the colourful contents of the chaos he encounters on the streets: "A toothless lady sucking on a mango pit. A blind man with dark glasses and a cane, leading a single-file parade of three other blind men rickshaw taxi drivers an old man stealthily filling a plastic bottle from the fount of holy water," he writes, describing a mosaic of scenes.

"First Stop in the New World" does not dig deep into the city's history, economy or politics, and the premise behind its title - that Mexico City is the world's original megacity and, for better or worse, a model for urban growth - is only briefly explored.

Instead, Lida addresses a broad range of the city's most universal problems - crime, corruption, pollution, poverty, sprawl - largely through the eyes of the citizens most affected. The result is a fundamentally human collection of stories and reflections, a reminder that any city is about its people, their constant clash and coexistence.

The book, Lida writes, is meant to read as "a love letter" to the many resigned, resilient, forgotten and ingenious people of Mexico City that he has come to know. That is exactly what it is.

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Mario Lopez - Lopez And Smirnoff Split

MARIO LOPEZ has split from his DANCING WITH THE STARS partner and real life girlfriend KARINA SMIRNOFF.

The pair hooked up when they were contestants on the show last year (07), and they moved in together soon after.

But their romance has failed to last the distance - despite Smirnoff insisting just a month ago that they were "still going strong".

Smirnoff revealed the news of the split to the New York Post's Pop Wrap blog, saying, "He's a great guy, I think the world of him, he's is wonderful man, he's a great aspect of the entertainment industry but we're both concentrating on our own careers right now. I wouldn't be a good girlfriend to anyone, I'm so busy."

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Robin Spielberg

   
Artist: Robin Spielberg

   Genre(s): 
New Age
   Jazz
   

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Discography:


   
 Vanilla Sweet-Talks

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 12


   
 Dreaming of Summer

   Year: 2000   
Tracks: 12


   
 Beautiful Dreamer

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 14


   
 In The Heart Of Winter

   Year: 1998   
Tracks: 9


   
 Heal Of The Hand

   Year: 1998   
Tracks: 11


   
 In the Arms of the Wind

   Year: 1997   
Tracks: 12


   
 Songs Of The Spirit

   Year: 1996   
Tracks: 12


   
 Unchained Melodies

   Year: 1995   
Tracks: 14

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Born into a melodic house, Robin Spielberg began piano lessons at the age of heptad; she besides played organ and violin while a baby. She attended Michigan State University and New York University, working extensively in each school's field department. After gradation, Spielberg began playing professionally, ofttimes at hotels in the New York area. That caper of course grew into a vehicle for her original compositions and later, a recording calling. She has released Heal of the Hand, Heart of the Holidays, Unshackled Melodies and In the Heart of Winter; Songs of the Spirit appeared in 1996.

Jessica Alba Marries Partner

Jessica Alba has announced that she married her partner of four years, Cash Warren, on Monday (May 19).The couple, who are expecting their first child together, were married in a private ceremony according to her spokesman Brad Cafarelli.Alba and Warren met while filming the first 'Fantastic Four' movie and have started a website together called www.ibeatyou.com, where players can issue challenges via videos.Photo courtesy of the Weinstein Company.

R Kelly Jury Includes Victim Of Sex Offences

The jury selection for the child pornography trial of R&B singer R Kelly finished last week, with the panel including a Baptist preacher's wife, a young woman who said she was once r-ped, and a business executive who said during jury selection he had believed Kelly was guilty.Prosecutors and defense attorneys accused each other of trying to stack the panel along racial lines throughout selection. Eight jurors are white and four are black.Cook County prosecutor Shauna Boliker has warned jurors this week that they would have to watch a videotape depicting an "underage child performing sex acts that you have never seen before"."A child doesn't choose to be violated and placed on a videotape, a videotape that will live on forever – long after this child becomes an adult," Boliker told jurors, as opening statements got under way in the singer's long-delayed trial.Kelly, 41, is accused of videotaping himself having sex with an underage girl, who prosecutors maintain was as young as 13 when the tape was made between January 1 1998, and November 1 2000.However, Kelly denies that he is the man on the tape, and the woman that prosecutors say was a minor at the time of the taping – she’s now 23 – denies that she is the girl in the footage.Defense attorneys may also contend the girl, whoever she was, wasn't a minor at all. The defense is led by Ed Genson, who is highly sought by defendants for his persuasive powers with jurorsThe trial has been delayed repeatedly since the tape was mailed to the Chicago Sun-Times in 2002. The newspaper turned it over to authorities, and Kelly was indicted later that year.Shauna Boliker, who is expected to take the lead for the prosecution, gave birth to her third child last year, which was one of the reasons for the delays in the trial so far. Among others were a case of appendicitis for Kelly and the judge's fall from a ladder.Boliker has prosecuted several high-profile cases, including that of a Catholic priest who pleaded guilty last year to abusing five boys.Despite intense media attention, Judge Vincent Gaughan has vowed not to let the trial sink into a “celebrity circus”, and has demanded the respect of reporters. He even held up a plastic bag during a hearing on Friday (May 16), saying it held pieces of chewed gum he had collected under the rows where they sat during jury selection.  "Don't stick gum on the benches," he said. "Actually, it's a crime." NEXT: Jessica Alba Marries PartnerPhoto courtesy of Jive.

Grey's Anatomy star battles skin cancer

'Grey's Anatomy' star Eric Dane, has revealed to OK! magazine that he has been diagnosed with skin cancer. 
The 35-year-old actor, who plays Dr Mark Sloan in the hit show, became concerned after noticing an unusual patch of skin above his lips and immediately sought medical treatment.
He told the magazine: "I went to my dermatologist. He said it was malignant tissue caused by sun damage."
Doctors treated the growth by freezing it off with liquid nitrogen and Dane admitted it was a traumatic procedure.
He added: "My skin is very sensitive and my lip was traumatised by the procedure I had to go through. I didn't eat very well for a couple of weeks and lost a bunch of weight."
Despite dropping over 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) during his ordeal, the actor has insisted he is on the road to recovery.

Ramonetures

   
Artist: Ramonetures

   Genre(s): 
Rock: Punk-Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 Ramonetures

   Year: 1999   
Tracks: 16

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Created by guitarist Mel Bergman, the Ramonetures are hard to delineate in simple-minded price. Essentially an instrumental surf band, the Ramonetures separate themselves from the pack by specializing in "re-imagining" established bands work as, advantageously, instrumental surf rock. On their first release, they -- hence the list of the band -- "surfed up" the Ramones, and on the second, they make over the legendary Los Angeles punk pioneers X. While the first Ramonetures was a strictly in-house function, the minute freeing, Johny Walk Don't Run Paulene, features X guitarist Billy Zoom and drummer D.J. Bonebrake.

The Willowz

   
Artist: The Willowz

   Genre(s): 
Pop
   Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 Talk in Circles

   Year: 2005   
Tracks: 20


   
 The Willowz

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 9

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Ashlee Simpson - Ashlee Simpson And Pete Wentz Married In Us

Ikuko Kawai

   
Artist: Ikuko Kawai

   Genre(s): 
New Age
   Classical
   

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Discography:


   
 Aurora

   Year: 2004   
Tracks: 12


   
 The Red Violin

   Year: 2003   
Tracks: 10


   
 Instinct

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 11


   
 Inst?nct

   Year: 2002   
Tracks: 11


   
 Violin Muse

   Year:    
Tracks: 10

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Little Man Tate

   
Artist: Little Man Tate

   Genre(s): 
Indie
   Rock
   

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Discography:


   
 About What You Know

   Year: 2007   
Tracks: 11


   
 Man I Hate Your Band

   Year: 2006   
Tracks: 12

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Inexplicably taking their appoint from a saccharine 1991 flick nigh a baby portent leading Jodie Foster, Little Man Tate is a scrappy indie careen band from Sheffield, England. Like their Yorkshire compatriots the Arctic Monkeys, Little Man Tate offers a veddy veddy British ingest on guitar pop. But where the Arctic Monkeys' inspiration lies principally in the Television Personalities (so much so that in 2006 a rumor flew about the Internet that the TVPs' Daniel Treacy was in fact the band's privy ballad maker) and their brand of fractured post-punk, Little Man Tate shares more in common with Blur, the Dentists, and other devotees of the Kinks' blend of tricky tunes and playful lyrics about daily British animation. Singer and rhythm method guitar player Jon Windle, lead guitar player Edward "Maz" Marriot, bassist Ben Surtees, and drummer Dan Fields earlier formed under the list Carousel Moon in 2003, briefly exit through and through the name calling the Moon and Lazy Eye ahead settling on Little Man Tate in 2005. Little Man Tate released their debut single, "The Agent," in March 2006 on their own Yellow Van label. After a irregular self-released single, "What? What You Got," hit the take down reaches of the U.K. Top 40 graph in May of that year, Little Man Tate gestural to V2 Records. V2 released trey more than singles -- "Theater Party at Boothy's," "World, I Hate Your Band," and "Aphrodisiac in Latin" -- with increasing chart success each time, earlier Little Man Tate's debut record album, About What You Know, was released in February 2007.