No these two musical magic men didn't throw down at Tuesday's number-one party for "Long Hot Summer," but they did reveal that they weren't exactly instant pals. Keith didn't elaborate, but said, "We had an issue with each other, but that Richard was so gracious, he asked him to try writing together again."

"Long Hot Summer" reached number-one in October, but the celebration was postponed until Keith could recover from vocal chord surgery. We have more medical news concerning KU but first check out this performance from KU,Richard Marx and two contest winners who won the opportunity to sing on stage at the number 1 party.. Pretty cool..

 

So onto the NEW medical issue for Keith Urban and it doesn't affect the voice, it's a real pain in the neck, no seriously
Keith Urban shot a special video thanking his fans for their support while he recovered from vocal surgery. While his voice is in fine form, his neck may be in trouble. Keith found he had to over-exaggerate facial expressions in order to get his unspoken point across. He tells us, "To nod lightly is not enough, you have to be effusive...after two weeks, I was in the shower and I was like, 'My neck is so sore.'"
Keith's first post-surgery public performance is February 3rd at the Grand Ole Opry.

Here is Keith's thank you video to fans. Don't know about you but I think the voice sounds just fine!





 

A mayoral election in Italy will be decided by the poles, and not the polls -- because the two main candidates are planning a pole-dancing contest as part of the campaign.

Amandha Fox and Luana Borgia, both of whom have worked in the adult film industry, are vying to be mayor of the town of Taranto. While the pair faces other opposition, they're the only ones to accept the offer to reveal their positions in public.
Ms. Fox says she's happy to take part, noting, "I want voters to see the real me."



Here's Ms. Borgia                                                    
 


And Here's Ms. Fox
 

Here's what I look like after getting my Bieber cut on:

An Australian man who robbed a cop while butt naked pled not guilty and pinned the blame on someone else -- the stranger who was possessing his body at the time.

Paul Thompson allegedly threatened an off-duty police officer with a knife and stole his bag at a shopping mall before trying to swim to freedom. Officers in a police boat apprehended Thompson and brought him ashore after subduing him with pepper spray.

When arraigned the next day, he said he should be set free because someone else had decided to joy ride in his body and was programming him to do things against his will. He's currently on psychiatric hold.

My question to you. If he was "butt-naked" where exactly would he conceal the knife?

A California crook found he had a little too much on his plate when he tried to make a clean getaway from a bank robbery -- only to be traced by his vanity license plates.

Robert Alm pointed a gun at a teller and fled on foot with a little over three grand in cash. Witnesses saw him run around the corner and climb into a white Ford Expedition with the personalized plate ALM DUDE. When cops ran the plates, they tracked Alm down at his home and arrested him without incident.

Next time, we bet he takes the bus.

I bet this DA of the day gets audited

A Florida man tried to dodge his federal tax payment by claiming a big-time change of address -- to "the kingdom of heaven."

Russell Gentile wasn't claiming to be dead, simply saying he actually lived behind the pearly gates, which absolved him from paying taxes to a mere earth government. He sent the IRS a nasty letter saying they had acted beyond their jurisdiction by pursuing him and said he'd "been as polite and patient as [he] could be."

A judge heard the heaven story and essentially told him to go to hell -- setting a court hearing for Valentine's Day.

 Etta James' performance of the enduring classic "At Last" was the embodiment of refined soul: Angelic-sounding strings harkened the arrival of her passionate yet measured vocals as she sang tenderly about a love finally realized after a long and patient wait.

In real life, little about James was as genteel as that song. The platinum blonde's first hit was a saucy R&B number about sex, and she was known as a hell-raiser who had tempestuous relationships with her family, her men and the music industry. Then she spent years battling a drug addiction that she admitted sapped away at her great talents.

The 73-year-old died on Friday at Riverside Community Hospital, with her husband and sons at her side, De Leon said.

"It's a tremendous loss for her fans around the world," he said. "She'll be missed. A great American singer. Her music defied category."

James' spirit could not be contained — perhaps that's what made her so magnetic in music; it is surely what made her so dynamic as one of R&B, blues and rock 'n' roll's underrated legends.

"The bad girls ... had the look that I liked," she wrote in her 1995 autobiography, "Rage to Survive." ''I wanted to be rare, I wanted to be noticed, I wanted to be exotic as a Cotton Club chorus girl, and I wanted to be obvious as the most flamboyant hooker on the street. I just wanted to be."

"It's a tremendous loss for her fans around the world," he said. "She'll be missed. A great American singer. Her music defied category."

Despite the reputation she cultivated, she would always be remembered best for "At Last." The jazz-inflected rendition wasn't the original, but it would become the most famous and the song that would define her as a legendary singer. Over the decades, brides used it as their song down the aisle and car companies to hawk their wares, and it filtered from one generation to the next through its inclusion in movies like "American Pie." Perhaps most famously,President Obama and the first lady danced to a version at his inauguration ball.

The tender, sweet song belied the turmoil in her personal life. James — born Jamesette Hawkins — was born in Los Angeles to a mother whom she described as a scam artist, a substance abuser and a fleeting presence during her youth. She never knew her father, although she was told and had believed, that he was the famous billiards player Minnesota Fats. He neither confirmed nor denied it: when they met, he simply told her: "I don't remember everything. I wish I did, but I don't."

She was raised by Lula and Jesse Rogers, who owned the rooming house where her mother once lived in. The pair brought up James in the Christian faith, and as a young girl, her voice stood out in the church choir. James landed the solos in the choir and became so well known, she said that Hollywood stars would come to see her perform.

But she wouldn't stay a gospel singer for long. Rhythm and blues lured her away from the church, and she found herself drawn to the grittiness of the music.

"My mother always wanted me to be a jazz singer, but I always wanted to be raunchy," she recalled in her book.

She was doing just that when bandleader Johnny Otis found her singing on San Francisco street corners with some girlfriends in the early 1950s.

"At the time, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had a hit with 'Work With Me, Annie,' and we decided to do an answer. We didn't think we would get in show business, we were just running around making up answers to songs," James told The Associated Press in 1987.

And so they replied with the song, "Roll With Me, Henry."

When Otis heard it, he told James to get her mother's permission to accompany him to Los Angeles to make a recording. Instead, the 15-year-old singer forged her mother's name on a note claiming she was 18.

"At that time, you weren't allowed to say 'roll' because it was considered vulgar. So when Georgia Gibbs did her version, she renamed it 'Dance With Me, Henry' and it went to No. 1 on the pop charts," the singer recalled. The Gibbs song was one of several in the early rock era when white singers got hits by covering songs by black artists, often with sanitized lyrics.

After her 1955 debut, James toured with Otis' revue, sometimes earning only $10 a night. In 1959, she signed with Chicago's legendary Chess label, began cranking out the hits and going on tours with performers such as Bobby Vinton, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers.

"We would travel on four buses to all the big auditoriums. And we had a lot of fun," she recalled in 1987.

James recorded a string of hits in the late 1950s and '60s including "Trust In Me," ''Something's Got a Hold On Me," ''Sunday Kind of Love," ''All I Could Do Was Cry," and of course, "At Last."

"(Chess Records founder) Leonard Chess was the most aware of anyone. He went up and down the halls of Chess announcing, 'Etta's crossed over! Etta's crossed over!' I still didn't know exactly what that meant, except that maybe more white people were listening to me. The Chess brothers kept saying how I was their first soul singer, that I was taking their label out of the old Delta blues, out of rock and into the modern era. Soul was the new direction," she wrote in her autobiography. "But in my mind, I was singing old style, not new."

In 1967, she cut one of the most highly regarded soul albums of all time, "Tell Mama," an earthy fusion of rock and gospel music featuring blistering horn arrangements, funky rhythms and a churchy chorus. A song from the album, "Security," was a top 40 single in 1968.

Her professional success, however, was balanced against personal demons, namely a drug addiction.

"I was trying to be cool," she told the AP in 1995, explaining what had led her to try heroin.

"I hung out in Harlem and saw Miles Davis and all the jazz cats," she continued. "At one time, my heavy role models were all druggies. Billie Holiday sang so groovy. Is that because she's on drugs? It was in my mind as a young person. I probably thought I was a young Billie Holiday, doing whatever came with that."

She was addicted to the drug for years, beginning in 1960, and it led to a harrowing existence that included time behind bars. It sapped her singing abilities and her money, eventually, almost destroying her career.

It would take her at least two decades to beat her drug problem. Her husband, Artis Mills, even went to prison for years, taking full responsibility for drugs during an arrest even though James was culpable.

"My management was suffering. My career was in the toilet. People tried to help, but I was hell-bent on getting high," she wrote of her drug habit in 1980.

She finally quit the habit and managed herself for a while, calling up small clubs and asking them, "Have you ever heard of Etta James?" in order to get gigs. Eventually, she got regular bookings — even drawing Elizabeth Taylor as an audience member. In 1984, she was tapped to sing the national anthem at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and her career got the resurgent boost it needed, though she fought addiction again when she got hooked on painkillers in the late 1980s.

Drug addiction wasn't her only problem. She struggled with her weight, and often performed from a wheelchair as she got older and heavier. In the early 2000s, she had weight-loss surgery and shed some 200 pounds.

James performed well into her senior years, and it was "At Last" that kept bringing her the biggest ovations. The song was a perennial that never aged, and on Jan. 20, 2009, as crowds celebrated that — at last — an African-American had become president of the United States, the song played as the first couple danced.

But it was superstar Beyonce who serenaded the Obamas, not the legendary singer. Beyonce had portrayed James in "Cadillac Records," a big-screen retelling of Chess Records' heyday, and had started to claim "At Last" as her own.

An audio clip surfaced of James at a concert shortly after the inauguration, saying she couldn't stand the younger singer and that Beyonce had "no business singing my song." But she told the New York Daily News later that she was joking, even though she had been hurt that she did not get the chance to participate in the inauguration.

James did get her accolades over the years. She was inducted into the Rock Hall in 1993, captured a Grammy in 2003 for best contemporary blues album for "Let's Roll," one in 2004 for best traditional blues album for "Blues to the Bone" and one for best jazz vocal performance for 1994's "Mystery Lady: Songs of Billie Holiday." She was also awarded a special Grammy in 2003 for lifetime achievement and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Her health went into decline, however, and by 2011, she was being cared for at home by a personal doctor.

She suffered from dementia, kidney problems and leukemia. Her husband and her two sons fought over control of her $1 million estate, though a deal was later struck keeping Mills as the conservator and capping the singer's expenses at $350,000. In December 2011, her physician announced that her leukemia was terminal, and asked for prayers for the singer.

In October 2011, it was announced that James was retiring from recording, and a final studio recording, "The Dreamer," was released, featuring the singer taking on classic songs, from Bobby "Blue" Bland's "Dreamer" to Guns N' Roses "Welcome To the Jungle" — still rocking, and a fitting end to her storied career.

Listen and enjoy the singer's signature song "At Last" - -

 

Mark “Say Hello to Your Mother for Me” Wahlberg might play a rogue vigilante in his new movie Contraband, but his recent boasts in Men’s Journal about how he would have handled the hijackers during September 11th is over the line, according to one widow of the attacks.

“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did,” the actor and Entourage creator told journalist Erik Hedegaard in a profile for the February issue called Mark Wahlberg Handles His Business. “There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’”

Deena Burnett-Bailey, whose husband Thomas Burnett died after rushing the cockpit of Flight 93 after it was overtaken, isn’t so sure circumstances would have turned out any differently just because Marky Mark was there.

“Does Mark Wahlberg have a pilot’s license?” the widow asked TMZ. “Then I think hindsight is 20/20 and it’s insignificant to say what you would have done if you weren’t there. “

“The plan for Flight 93 was foiled by heroes. For him to speculate that his presence on board could have stopped everything is silly and disrespectful. Sounds like someone is grandstanding.”


Check out this clip of SNL alum Andy Samberg doing his best impersonation of Wahlberg.. Gotta say this is spot on.

 


And if the muscle and bad acting didn't squash the terrorist attacks... Maybe his "mad-rapping skills" would do the trick.

The Khloe Kardashian paternity saga has taken a bizarre turn with the news that OJ Simpson may be her father.

According to the Daily Mail, this wild new claim comes courtesy of the National Enquirer, in which a close friend of Simpson claims that the former ‘Naked Gun’ star had revealed that Khloe was his love child.

Simpson is currently serving a 33-year jail term for kidnapping and armed robbery.

“OJ told me Khloe's his child,” said the source.

“It was the big secret that no one in the two families would discuss.

“And Robert admitted he and Kris were not having sex at the time Khloe was conceived.”

According to this source, Simpson and Khloe’s mom Kris Jenner were intimate on numerous occasions around the time Khloe was conceived. The source also pointed out the strong similarities between Khloe and Simpsons 26-year-old daughter Sydney.

Simpson was a friend of the family and the late Robert Kardashian helped him go free after he was charged with the double murder of his wife Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1995. Simpson was an usher at Robert’s wedding to Kris in 1978.

Another source who spoke to the National Enquirer claims that Simpson regularly boasted about his sexual conquests, which included the wives of some of his friends.

“OJ bragged about his sex life and many female conquests, which he said included some of his best friends ' wives’,” said the source.

“He used to tell us way back – even before he and Nicole got divorced – that he had a love child with the wife of a wealthy family.

“But at the time of Khloe's birth, it would have been devastating for the news to come out that America's biggest sports hero had fathered a love child.

“OJ's career as a product spokesman – which earned him well over $10 million – could have ended.

“And he always worried that his children would find out some day and become very angry with him.”

A spokesperson for the Kardashians has dismissed the claim as “ridiculous and laughable”.

Last week, two of Robert Kardashian’s ex-wives revealed that the late legal eagle had told them that Khloe was not his biological daughter.

A Pennsylvania man is probably feeling a little bit under the weather after being arrested on charges of attempted assault with a deadly ... disease.

Fred Parker walked into an internet cafe and gambling parlor and began rubbing himself against the walls and gaming machines. When asked what the heck he was up to, he informed them that he had a drug-resistant staph infection and demanded money or else he'd start infecting employees.

The cashier refused, and Parker left, but was arrested later that day -- prompting a police spokesperson to say, "It's our first case of robbery by threat of an infectious disease."

A South Carolina man's future is in hock because he made the decision to hock a loogey at a police officer -- a crime that netted him a 10-year jail sentence.
The cop came to Bobby Mathis' home after a report of a domestic disturbance last year. When the officer tried to question him, Mathis became belligerent and let his liquid missile fly -- nailing the deputy in the face. In South Carolina, that counts as a felony known as "transferring bodily fluids."

Mathis had racked up previous convictions for disorderly conduct and inhaling hydrocarbons.

In a message posted to his website, Blake said, "I appreciate your understanding during this difficult time and thank you all for your prayers. Your support means the world to me. I love you guys."

Upcoming dates on Blake's Well Lit and Amplified Tour have been rescheduled

If you'd like to send a message to Blake click HERE  or HERE

Here is the performance from the 2011 ACA's....

A woman in New Zealand thinks there are no ifs, ands or butts about her get rich quick scheme -- which involves selling a piece of her own butt to the highest bidder.

Tina Beznec is organizing an auction that will allow perfect strangers to choose a design, which she'll have tattooed somewhere on her posterior for posterity. Nearly 200,000 people have taken a look at her website, and while some have merely left cracks, bidders have taken the price up to nearly $10,000.

We hope the winner doesn't pick a design that will make her the butt of friends' jokes.

An Iowa crook who tried to rip off a pharmacy's stash of painkillers for recreational use ended up needing them for their intended use -- after the druggist smacked him around something fierce.

Pharmacist Bill Shipley was not in a giving mood when Donald White rushed in, armed with a box cutter, and demanded a stash of hydrocodone pills. Shipley punched out the thug and, with the help of a retired cop who happened to be on the scene, held him for police.

He says he doesn't buy advice to avoid confronting crooks, noting, "A lot of people tell you, 'Don't fight back, give them what they want, just get them out of the store.' I disagree. Don't let them take advantage of you if you think you can get the upper hand."


 

Ford will recall 286,000 Ford Escape SUVs made for the 2001 and 2002 model years. It will also recall nearly 253,000 Ford Freestar and Mercury Monterey minivans for 2004 and 2005 model years, Ford spokesman Dan Pierce said on Wednesday.

Most of the affected vehicles are in the United States.

The Escape recall follows a similar action in 2007 to fix a flaw in the antilock brake system, according to a Ford filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

But some SUVs may not have been completely inspected or received a proper fix, Ford said in Wednesday's filing.

Some of those SUVs were outfitted with a faulty brake master cylinder reservoir cap that could leak brake fluid. That could cause an electrical short in the antilock brake system leading to smoking or fire.

"There are reports of property damage as a result of fire beyond vehicle-only damage," Ford said in its report. There have been no reports of injuries due to the problem.

The defective part was built from October 1999 to July 2002 in a factory that is now closed. In some cases, parts shortages could delay the necessary repair.

"While the potential for fire is low, it is recommended that a customer park their vehicle outdoors away from structures until this recall repair is performed," Pierce told Reuters in an email.

In a separate recall, Ford told U.S. safety regulators that it would recall the Ford and Mercury minivans due to a defective torque converter. Ford discontinued the Mercury brand in 2010.

If the converter malfunctions, the vehicle could lose "motive" power, or the ability to move forward and reverse, without warning.

When a vehicle loses motive power, it can still be steered and stopped because the engine continues to run, Ford said. But the condition increases the risk of a crash.
 

A car-jacker in Coos-Bay Oregon tossed a woman out of her car and drove off -- only to wreck the vehicle after stopping to buy gas.

The unidentified man sped off in the Honda Civic after yanking the driver from behind the wheel. He stopped a few miles away because the fuel gauge was nearly on "E" -- but while he had the cash to pay for the gas, he was so nervous that the attendant called cops anyway.

When they arrived, he tried to flee, but only got about 30 feet before wrapping the car around a light pole and surrendering.

A routine traffic stop in Florida turned into a high-speed chase after the dopey driver decided to make a run for it -- in order to smoke all the crack he had in his possession before pulling over.

Gainesville cops wanted to issue Kenneth Stine a citation for driving with a burned-out headlight, but he decided to burn rubber, saying that he'd just purchased some crack cocaine and didn't want to see it go to waste after an arrest.

He was charged with fleeing and attempting to elude, possession of drug paraphernalia and violating his probation from a 2010 drug case. I guess this would be a case of "waste not, want not..."

An Iowa man was hauled in by cops after he went ape and robbed a convenience store, then assaulted one of the officers with a stuffed monkey that was part of the heist.

Preston James Phipps was causing a ruckus behind the store's counter, which prompted the clerk to phone police -- who arrived as he was leaving the premises with two stuffed animals. The deputies say Phipps was calm at first, but quickly flipped out, hitting one of them in the face with one of the fluffy toys.

A store employee said that when she asked him what he was doing behind the counter, Phipps replied, "Don't you worry about it. I'm going back to prison anyway."

Not everyone is cut out to do phone sales. That's the lesson learned by two Florida men, who ended up behind bars after calling a guy and trying to peddle an I-Phone and I-Pad -- which they'd stolen from him two days earlier.

Devonte Suckie and the appropriately-named Zachary Swindle held up Hank Yan at gunpoint, snagging the devices and $500 in cash. After finding his number in the phone, they rang him up and offered to sell the stuff back at a good price.

It was an offer Yan couldn't refuse -- although he decided to bring some uniformed friends in to help him carry the merchandise, and haul the two crooks off to jail.

Minhee Cho posted an image of the receipt on Twitter, which called her "lady chinky eyes."

"Hey @ PapaJohns just FYI my name isn't 'lady chinky eyes,'" Cho tweeted.

The image went viral, and many tweeted complaints to Papa John's, such as "Your employees are your brand."

Papa John's replied to many complaints via Twitter, noting that the employee was being fired.

"We are very upset by recent receipt issue in New York & sincerely apologize to our customer. Franchise employee involved is being terminated," Papa John's tweeted.

This isn't the first time a restaurant has come under fire over employees using racial or ethnic slurs on receipts.

Last month, a cashier at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in Irvine, Calif., was fired after allegedly mocking Asian-American customers, ABC News Los Angeles station KABC-TV reported.

The cashier reportedly used "Ching" and "Chong" in the customer identification line on the receipts.

Photos of those receipts have also gone viral online.

In a written statement, a representative for the fast-food chain told KABC that "the individual clearly violated our operating standards."

"The matter was addressed and discussed immediately with the guests on the spot; and a confirmation was provided that the employee was immediately dismissed for the individual behavior," the statement said.

An animal-rights group is looking to decorate Illinois highways with a series of moo-ving tributes -- to cows who were killed in the line of duty.

PETA is asking the state's Department of Transportation to place memorial markers at sites where cattle being transported to slaughter festivities were killed in truck accidents. A PETA spokesperson says the group wants to call attention to the suffering endured by cows in the meat industry.

A government rep says that taxpayers shouldn't have a cow over paying for the markers, which are unlikely to be approved.

A spokeswoman for Renner, 40, who also played the lead in Oscar-winning Iraq war movie "The Hurt Locker", denied media reports that the actor was hurt in the bloody incident in the Thai resort of Phuket early on Wednesday.

"Jeremy Renner was indeed in a bar in Phuket Thailand as a vicious attack on a patron took place but was not injured or involved. He exited as the fight took place," Renner's publicist said in a statement.

Renner, who co-stars with Tom Cruise in "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol", is currently working in the Philippines on "The Bourne Legacy" -- the latest in the Bourne action movie franchise, the publicist said.

The Phuket Gazette said on Thursday that six staff at the pub were arrested and charged with attempted murder of the general manager of a local resort hotel.

Manager Vorasit Issara was stabbed in the stomach and slashed in the neck with an ax, Phuket police told local reporters.

Tim Tebow: SUPERHERO???

One of the biggest stories of the 2011 NFL season was the rise of Tim Tebow.

The Denver Broncos quarterback took over a struggling team and led them into the playoffs while winning the praise and love of some people, and the criticism and detestation of others.

All of which contributed to the phenomenon known as Tebowmania.

Fans of Tebow have put the label of "hero" on their quarterback for his late game heroics.

Now even Marvel Comics, which knows a thing about superheroes, has jumped on the Tebow bandwagon.

Marvel and ESPN have teamed up to create three pieces of art depicting the mighty Tim Tebow. The art will appear this weekend in ESPN and NFL programming.

A Wisconsin man really tested the patience of a local auto dealership by saying he wanted to take a car out for a spin -- and high-tailing it 80 miles to his home in Milwaukee.

The 47-year-old man didn't bother waiting for a salesman to get into the passenger's seat before driving off in the 12-year-old Nissan, but didn't seem to understand why cops showed up at his house to check on the whereabouts of the vehicle. He told them that his plan was to drive the car home to get the money to pay for it, then return the next day.

"You don't just take [a car] on a 15-minute test drive, I wanted to test out the vehicle so I drove it home to give it a full once-over"....   Sure ya did buddy.. Now follow these nice officers into this small enclosed space. They want you to see how you'll be spending the next few days.... Dummy.

A North Dakota man showed he has a nose for trouble when he got arrested for trying to get high by sniffing aerosol -- twice in one day.

Cops didn't have to work all that hard to track down Darrell Parisien, since he was busted at a shopping mall parking lot shortly after noon last Saturday, then after being fingerprinted and released, went to the same spot for another huff-fest about eight hours later.

Parisien was arrested in August for the same offense after witnesses reported he passed out while driving, nearly hit pedestrians, struck a curb and drove into a ditch.

She may enjoy flaunting her bikini body for all of the tabloid world to see, but LeAnn Rimes has one body part that she’d rather keep off limits.

“Please stop discussing my ovaries,” the Twitter-happy singer wrote Monday, referring to Internet speculation that she is pregnant with Eddie Cibrian’s baby.

The singer, 29, said she has “never even tried,” to have a child, and therefore felt uncomfortable about the circulating rumors.

“It takes some couples a long time to conceive and some never can,” she wrote to the two Twitter followers who had questioned if she was pregnant.

“I just think its crazy that people make articles out of nonsense, so when it comes to me and all the speculation I have to laugh,” she continued.

Rimes and Cibrian, 39, wed last April after having an affair together while both were married to other people.

Cibrian has two sons, Mason and Jake, with ex-wife Brandi Glanville.

“Eddie has always encouraged me to look at us as a family, and a part of our family are the two beautiful boys that we share with their mother and hopefully one day another wonderful man,” she

wrote on her blog in September.

“Society will always consider me a stepmom ... but in our house, in our family, we remove the ‘step.’ We really are all simply family.”


Justin Timberlake & Jessica Biel engaged

He liked it so he went and put a ring on it.

Justin Timberlake proposed to longtime girlfriend Jessica Biel while in Jackson, Wyo. over the holidays.

"Justin knows how much she loves snowboarding and the mountains, so it was the perfect place," a source told the magazine of the year-end proposal.

Insiders said Timberlake, 30, has "never been happier" than he is now with Biel, 29.

"He knew it was the right time to propose."

The hot Hollywood couple have been dating since 2007, though they did break up for three months at the beginning of the year.

But "when they reunited, they had a conversation about taking the next step," a source said of their relationship.

In June, Timberlake addressed questions about his then-ex Biel by acknowledging her as "the single-handedly most significant person in my life.

"In my 30 years, she is the most special person, O.K.? ...I don’t want to say much more, because I have to protect things that are dear to me — for instance, her."

The pair were first spotted together at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.


 

A North Carolina man tried to change his life by using a counterfeit one-million-dollar bill to buy about $400 in merchandise from his local Wal-Mart -- but ended up in jail when the cashier saw through the scam.

Michael Anthony Fuller made the bill himself, but didn't do enough research to find out that there's never been a million-dollar bill -- and that the largest note in circulation is the 100.

At the checkout, he insisted his money was good, and demanded the 999 grand in change, but only got a few ounces of silver slipped on his wrists -- in the form of a pair of handcuffs.

A Florida man who was busted as part of a cock-fighting ring three years ago lost a game of chicken with authorities when he was arrested picking up a live rooster at the post office last week.

Danny Pham pleaded ignorance, saying he was only transporting the bird for a friend. In the earlier bust, he insisted he didn't know there was a cockfight at his home, despite the fact that there were more than 80 roosters caged up in his backyard.

Since he'd been banned from possessing any animals, Pham was arrested for violating his probation.