Since he made his debut over a year ago, John Legend has become more confident on stage -- not in his singing, but his sex appeal.
``Now I'll take my top shirt off and have a tank top on at the show, so I'm definitely playing the sex angle up a little bit,'' the Grammy winner said in a recent interview.
Legend's newfound desire to show a little skin comes after he decided to dedicate himself to working out. Though he was hardly out of shape when his Get Lifted album debuted in December 2004, he wasn't that comfortable showing off his frame in concert. Then he hit the gym and that all changed.
``I wasn't trying to get skinny, I was trying to get in shape, which is a different thing. I was trying to build muscle in a lean way and just feel more fit and feel more sexy,'' he said.
And now his fans will get the benefit, as he's more likely to showcase his abs, toned arms and pecs. ``I have a lot of female fans, I've gotta give them what they want,'' he said with a smile.
Willie Nelson warmed up for a concert by playing a long free gig for soldiers wounded in Iraq. For the second straight year, Nelson squeezed in a show at Brooke Army Medical Center last Friday, while he and his band were in San Antonio to play at the city's annual rodeo.
``I have a lot of respect for the military,'' said Nelson, 72, an Air Force veteran. ``I like to show them that I support them every chance I get. ... We get as much out of it as [the soldiers].''
A year ago, the singer wore out his voice singing 11 songs at the Army hospital and had to cancel his performance at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. Hundreds of patients, family members and hospital staff clapped and cheered as Nelson walked into the hospital's atrium.
Sargent 1st Class Alan Hornaday, wounded in a suicide car bombing in Baghdad in 2004, had a front-row seat for the concert.
``This is really cool, him being able to come out and visit soldiers and entertain them,'' said Hornaday, a National Guardsman from Fordyce, Arkansas, who also saw Nelson here last year. ``It picks everybody's spirits up. ... It means a lot.''
Except for Broadway musicals and a few select appearances, Toni Braxton hasn't done many live performances in the past decade. But that's about to change. The R&B diva is embarking on her first tour in 10 years to support her latest album, Libra. The tour will kick off March 10 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and end July 3 in Houston at the Essence Music Festival.
``I'm thrilled to be going out on the road again,'' Braxton said. ``I can't wait to bring not only the hits that people know and love but to share the new music from Libra with the audience.''
Superstar Madonna has been treated for a hernia but is now "absolutely fine," her spokeswoman said. The singer, who performed at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles last week, re-appeared in public last Thursday night when she accepted a Brit record industry statuette in London as Best International Female Artist of the year.
An appeals court last week refused to reinstate an order granting Michael Jackson sole custody of his two children with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. California's Second District Court of Appeals said that while Rowe signed away her parental rights in 2001 to the 47-year-old performer's two oldest children, Michael Jr. and Paris, it found that the judge in that case did not properly handle the proceedings.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and