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.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50