Canadian teen pop star Justin Bieber may be just 16 years old, but he’s already an old hand at promoting his music and image and handling the attentions of swarms of teenage girls.
Famously launched on video-sharing Web site YouTube and signed to a record deal at age 14, he now travels the world promoting his latest album My World 2.0 and preparing for his upcoming tour.
In public he is often mobbed, but despite sometimes dangerous situations, he says fame doesn’t get to him.
“I definitely like girls so that’s a bonus to have girls all the time,” he said. “I just have fun with it, I am a teenager and everything’s just been a blast.”
His high-pitched voice, stylish clothes and distinctively blown-forward hair have led to hysterical mob scenes, including an incident in Sydney in April when his mother was knocked over.
“My fans, sometimes they overreact but, you know, it’s hard for them in the moment to always act right,” he said.
Bieber’s latest album debuted in March at the top of the US Billboard 200 chart, selling over 283,000 in its first week, making him the youngest solo male act to top the chart since Stevie Wonder in 1963.
His first album, My World has sold 1,370,000 copies, and the follow-up My World 2.0 has sold 1,155,000.
His constant engagement with young fans through social networking, touring, promotion and TV appearances — from Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards to The Oprah Winfrey Show — has been key to his rise.
“The reason Justin has been so successful is because he keeps his fans consistently engaged both through new media like Twitter and through traditional promotional channels,” said Billboard.com associate editor Monica Herrera.
“Outside of maybe Lady Gaga, you’d be hard pressed to find another artist working as tirelessly as he is right now,” she added.
The timing might be a bit off for tourists hoping to waste away in Margaritaville. But that doesn’t bother Jimmy Buffett.
The singer — whose tunes are as much a part of life in this beach town as fried grouper sandwiches, Land Shark beer and the US Navy’s Blue Angels — is planning to open a 162-room Margaritaville Hotel in a week.
As tar balls came ashore Saturday from an oil plume shooting out of the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, Buffett said he had no plans to delay the opening.
“This will pass,” he said as walked along the city’s beachfront and fishing pier with Florida Governor Charlie Crist.
Curious beachgoers mobbed the duo in a frenzy rarely seen on the normally laidback beach, snapping cell phone pictures and laughing as Crist and Buffett spent about an hour doing interviews and talking.
Buffett told fans he often went to Pensacola Beach while growing up nearby in Alabama. He said his favorite memories are of sunsets in the fall. He joked that he also enjoys the sunrises — but usually sleeps through them.
Buffet said the community will get through the crisis by pulling together. He wants people in the area to know that he’s there for them as the oil encroaches on their leisure and livelihoods.
If Buffett’s good for anything, it’s “helping people forget their troubles for a couple of hours,” the Cheeseburger in Paradise singer said.
Buffett’s US$50 million hotel sits on the Gulf near the main section of Pensacola Beach. Hundreds of applicants lined up outside this week for a job fair even as television trucks filled a nearby parking lot to report on the oil slick’s arrival.
The hotel sits on land where Hurricane Ivan destroyed a previous hotel in 2004.
Attorneys for Charlie Sheen have approached a Colorado nonprofit theater about having the actor do public service work as part of a plea deal in his domestic violence case, the theater’s artistic director said Friday.
Sheen’s duties, if the deal is approved, would include teaching a class and helping with Theatre Aspen’s three summer shows, Paige Price said.
“I certainly think he has the career credentials,” she said.
“And he could possibly teach a class or do question-and-answer sessions. If this could benefit the Theatre Aspen’s actors or students, I would certainly be amenable to it.”
Pitkin County Chief Deputy District Attorney Arnold Mordkin said earlier this week that prosecutors have reached an agreement with Sheen over menacing, criminal mischief and assault charges stemming from an argument with his wife on Christmas Day at an Aspen home.
A police officer’s arrest affidavit quoted Brooke Mueller Sheen as saying the actor pinned her on a bed while holding a knife to her throat and making a threat.
Sheen, the star of the hit CBS comedy show Two and a Half Men, has said he didn’t threaten or hit his wife. But he told police that he broke two pairs of her eyeglasses in front of her.
Mordkin said Friday that he expected a judge to approve the deal Monday. But he said he couldn’t provide details on the agreement, other than to confirm there have been discussions about having Sheen do “useful public service” with the theater.
It’s unknown whether Sheen would serve jail time as part of the deal.
Sheen’s agent, Stan Rosenfield, said he couldn’t comment on a proposed deal “out of respect to the court until the judge rules.”
Mordkin said Sheen is being treated like any other Aspen resident charged with the same crime.
“He’s really not getting anything different than the average person under similar circumstances would receive,” he said.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from morning to night. Boop and Pan, both goats, are romantically involved. Dumpling the hedgehog enjoys a belly rub from time to time. The list goes on. Xiong nurtures her brood from her 8,000 square meter farm in Chiang Dao, a mountainous district in northern Thailand’s