A costume designer is suing Melanie Griffith for allegedly refusing to pay nearly US$26,000 for dressing the actress and her daughters for this year's Golden Globes Awards and reneging on a promise to mention his name on the red carpet.
In the suit filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Niklas Palm claimed he designed dresses for Griffith and her daughters Dakota Johnson and Stella Banderas to wear to the January event.
He said he submitted a US$25,960 bill on Jan. 16, and Griffith was overdue in making any payments. Palm also claimed that Griffith and her daughters backed out of their promise to mention his name to reporters.
Griffith promised ``that he will receive publicity that money could not buy, then conveniently forget his name when reporters on the red carpet specifically asked [her] who designed her beautiful gown -- taking credit for the gown herself,'' the lawsuit said.
Popular music needs more cowbells. Or so believes a Toronto record producer who has put together an entire album devoted to the former herding instrument, once a percussion pariah, but now hip again.
James Greenspan said had seen a spoof of New York rock band Blue Oyster Cult's recording of its 1976 hit Don't Fear the Reaper, laden with the hollow clank of cowbells on an American TV comedy show last year.
In the Saturday Night Live skit, which was originally broadcast in 2000, actor Christopher Walken portrayed music producer Bruce Dickinson who felt the Blue Oyster Cult track needed "more cowbell."
"I gotta have more cowbell, baby!" he tells skeptic bandmates, led by actor Will Ferrell, who wrote the satire.
Later, Greenspan noticed local radio stations were playing a lot of old songs with cowbells in them at the request of listeners who had also presumably seen the skit, he said.
And so, he decided the world was ready for more.
"There is this whole cowbell movement. It's become part of everyone's vernacular. When people want more of something, they say, `More cowbell!' or when they got excited, they say, `More cowbell!'" he said.
Now that a copyright-infringement claim against his publisher has been dismissed, Dan Brown can get on with his private life -- or at least, try to.
Brown, best-selling author of The Da Vinci Code, is working to put up a wrought iron fence around his home to keep out uninvited guests. It would sit atop a 60cm-high stone wall and rise up no more than 1.8m, according to a letter his attorney presented to Rye selectmen recently.
``It sits right out there,'' Police Chief Alan Gould said of Brown's home. ``It's a pretty open area.''
Parkinson's disease has diminished his voice and slowed his body, but Muhammad Ali still exercises regularly in a gym at his home, punching a heavy bag and sometimes sparring playfully in a boxing ring, his wife says.
He has not driven a car in 15 years and ``he's no longer the type to pick up the phone and call friends the way he used to, but we converse,'' his wife, Lonnie, said in an interview in the March-April issue of Neurology Now.
``Don't get me wrong, it's not like he's sitting there espousing rhetoric, but his words still carry impact, they're still very important,'' she told the magazine.
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