Jon Stewart will be taking a break this summer from The Daily Show grind. In a surprise move, the host announced today that he is taking an 12-week break from the Comedy Central smash in order to make his directorial debut. He will go behind the camera for Rosewater , an adaptation of the book “Then They Came For Me: A Family’s Story Of Love, Captivity And Survival.” In Stewart’s absence, British correspondent John Oliver will sit in for eight weeks of new episodes. The film, meanwhile, will be based on Maziar Bahari’s nightmare of leaving London in June 2009 to cover Iran’s presidential elections. Leaving an expecting fiancee behind, the BBC journalist thought he would staying for a week – and instead spent the next 118 days in an Iran prison, brutally interrogated by a man he knew only by one thing: he smelled like Rosewater. Not exactly funny material for the comedian. But most definitely an important work.
J.R. Martinez’s victory tour brought him to Anderson this week. There, he talked about his experience in Iraq as well as winning Dancing With the Stars , and being included in People magazine’s Sexiest Men Alive issue. “After 33 surgeries, I better be!” Martinez joked, referring to the burn treatments and skin graft operations he’s endured since being badly hurt in Iraq. Since 2003, his life story has been one of triumph over adversity. J.R. Martinez on Anderson Martinez began counseling other wounded veterans, then working as a motivational speaker all across the country before landing a role on All My Children . Now, he’s one of 2011’s big breakout stars, winning DWTS , being honored by the Defense Department , Grand Marshaling the Rose Parade and so forth. Martinez said he embraces the opportunities he has, with his newfound fame, to be an advocate for veterans, and says he will always serve our country. “You can take away my camouflage, you can take away my M16, which is my weapon, but I look at it now… my new weapons are my words and my new uniform is my scars,” he explained. “I’m going to continue to serve in a bigger way.” “I feel this is going to be needed with the talks of pulling our guys out of Iraq and Afghanistan and bringing them home … it’s important for me to be that voice.” After driving over a landmine, he spent the next “two and a half years in and out of the hospital” undergoing the never-ending procedures to restore his person, adding details about the journey of self-discovery he embarked on in his recovery. “It was a tough road at 19 years old, to look at your body and your face, and say, ‘What am I going to do about this now? How am I going to move forward?’” he said. “Thinking you’re completely alone and no one in the world understands or can relate to you, but luckily, I was able to see a side that I can use my second chance at life as an opportunity to help people with their first chance at life.” It’s not often you look at a celebrity and see a true hero among us, but J.R. may be that person. We wish him the best in all of his continuing endeavors.
It was four days, “the longest of my life,” Blake says, until the 28-year-old dentist was reunited with his on-screen love interest, Holly Durst, 28. They spent the next two-and-a-half months on the phone, meeting secretly and texting. “Good thing I have an unlimited plan because I would have gone broke,” he tells us exclusively. “Falling for her was so natural. I never wanted alone time or to stop talking. That#39;s when I knew this was different. We#39;ve talked about being married about half
Singer learned a valuable lesson when he ‘borrowed’ a friend’s video game. By Sterling Wong Jeremih on ‘When I Was 17’ Photo: MTV News College, as we all know, is a time of crazy experiences, and R&B singer Jeremih definitely had his share of zany antics. On this week’s “When I Was 17,” Jeremih shares his obsession with “Grand Theft Auto” and the trouble it caused him. “When I was 17, ‘Grand Theft Auto’ was one of the biggest games out, and I didn’t have it,” the singer recalls on the latest episode, premiering Saturday at 11 a.m. on MTV. However, one of the guys on the floor of his dorm did have the game, but he refused to lend it to Jeremih. Desperate, he hatched a plan. “This one night, I actually went to his room. I knocked and he was asleep. I saw the game and I opened his PlayStation, and bang, I got the game and tried to tiptoe out.” Jeremih then spent the next hour and a half happily playing his beloved game, but the fun was short-lived: The guy’s roommate showed up at his door asking for the game back. “He was like, ‘Man, I know you’re in there! Give me my game!’ ” Jeremih recalls. “I didn’t say anything. I acted like I wasn’t in there.” Perhaps Jeremih thought his troubles would go away in the morning, but he thought wrong. When he woke up and tried to get out of his dorm room, he realized he couldn’t. His door had been glued shut. “I’m like, ‘Yo, what’s going on?’ So this whole time I’m beating on my door for hours, and I literally heard people walking past laughing, like, ‘Why is this dude knocking to get out of his dorm?’ ” Jeremih shares. And this is where the story gets crazier: “I didn’t have another choice, so I looked at the window. I was on the third floor, and luckily there was nothing but bushes, so I put on four coats, and that’s it. If I’m going, I’m going. I jumped out and landed right on the bushes.” “When I Was 17” — this week featuring Jeremih, Shay Mitchell and Ashley Fink — airs on Saturday at 11 a.m. ET/PT on MTV. Related Videos Check Out A Preview Of ‘When I Was 17’
Antonia “Toya” Carter set Twitter ablaze recently when she tweeted this: “It breaks my heart to see kids under 18 Gay.” She later deleted the message, but it was too late. Plenty of personalities, including Necole Bitchie, had retweeted Toya’s controversial opinion. She continued, “I didn’t mean any disrespect by that…sorry if I offended anybody. I saw an 8yr old kid and passed a comment. But who am I to judge??” And also wrote, “I have lots of gay friends that I luv dearly but they are all older…that was my 1st time seeing a Kid that young.” She spent the next hour apologizing to followers and defending herself saying, “1 thing about me is I’m women enough to admit when I’m wrong..I was being very judgmental and that was a very ignorant statement. #sorryguys.” She also wrote, “People just love to keep Negativity Going….I’m not a negative person but I am human. We all do and say things sometimes without thinking. Toya Carter Discusses Reality Show & New Business Ventures [EXCLUSIVE] Toya Scores Own Spin-Off Show, Confirms “Tiny & Toya” Cancellation Lil Wayne Celebrates Daughter’s Birthday In Atlanta With Toya, Nivea, Baby & More [PHOTOS]
Residents of the Kaz Mountains (pictured) in Turkey are worried about the impact of gold mining. Photo: B@ni / Creative Commons . With few legal or political avenues open to fight what they say is illegal and environmentally damaging mining, four Mongolian activists took drastic action earlier this fall: They opened fire with hunting rifles on gold-mining equipment owned by two foreign firms, China’s Puraam and Canada’s Centerra Gold…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Image courtesy of Griffon The French furniture company Griffon was established in 1848 and spent the next century making conventional products for churches and private homes. But in the 1960s, Griffon turned to creating furniture for an increasingly urban population, as the French moved out of the countryside into cities, and into smaller homes. Today, the company is still doing it, and offers an impressive catalog of folding beds, from the simple to the majestic. Folding a bed into your furniture never looked so good…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Please come forward in support of America and our First Amendment by donating to the Cordoba Initiative, the non-profit organization proposing an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan. Let's show the world that the majority of Americans are committed to defending a right to religious freedom for all. It only takes $1 to answer Michael Moore's “call to help” and raise the money required to out bid Donald Trump. If we band together it will be impossible to ignore our outrage at this unacceptable display of corporate power undermining our inalienable rights as Americans. added by: shirebay
War correspondent Michael Ware worked for CNN from 2006 until April of this year, during which time he became known for covering the hellscape of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with brutal honesty and an keen analytical sense that often cut against the standard talking points. He's since been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and today the Brisbane Times is reporting on an event that might have contributed to that — an alleged 2007 war crime that CNN refused to air. Kate Dennehy, who reports that Ware is “set to reveal” the details, describes the incident: Mr Ware tells of the alleged incident he says he witnessed and filmed in 2007 when working for US news giant CNN, but claims the network decided the footage was too graphic to go to air. He alleges that a teenager in a remote Iraqi village run by the militant Islamist group, al-Qaeda was carrying a weapon to protect himself. “(The boy) approached the house we were in and the (US) soldiers who were watching our backs, one of them put a bullet right in the back of his head. Unfortunately it didn't kill him,” he tells Australian Story. “We all spent the next 20 minutes listening to his tortured breath as he died.” Ware goes on to describe his mental state during that time, in which he realized that he was “more concerned with the composition” of his photo than he was with intervening in some way. “I indeed had been indifferent as the soldiers around me whose indifference I was attempting to capture,” Ware says. In 2008, Ware gave an interview with Men's Journal's Greg Veis, that hinted at his mental anguish. “I am not the same fucking person,” he tells me. “I am not the same person. I don't know how to come home.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/21/michael-ware-former-cnn-w_n_733030.html added by: CaptSutter
For years, Megan Hauserman was considered all that was wrong with reality TV. The busty blonde provided nothing of substance to the world. She just got naked a lot and was rewarded with appearances on Beauty and the Geek , Rock of Love 2 , I Love Money and Rock of Love Girls: Charm School . She was eventually given her own dating show, Megan Wants a Millionaire , and says it was a “dream come true.” But this turned into a nightmare in August 2009, when a recently-booted contestant named Ryan Jenkins was found to have killed his ex-girlfriend (Jasmine Fiore) and himself. In a gruesome scene, Fiore’s mutilated body was found stuffed into a suitcase. The police spent the next eight days trying to locate Jenkins before finding him dead in a hotel room. During this week, Hauserman was panicked beyond belief. “I was terrified he was going to come looking for me,” she tells People in a new interview . “I never left my apartment… I try not to think too much about all this. But it’s hard not to. This was such close call. Jasmine and I could have been interchangeable.” Hauserman’s show was taken off the air and there are no plans to feature it again on VH1. Megan may need to get an actual job and network executives may need to look at themselves in the mirror. When you put such complete and utter crap on the air, you can’t be shocked when you attract such shady individuals.
