Arrest Made In Phylicia Barnes Murder Case And Sister’s Ex-Boyfriend In Custody As Suspect Someone’s locked up now for the murder of Phylicia Barnes: For nearly a decade, Michael Maurice Johnson dated the half-sister of Phylicia Barnes. He went along on family trips, and played basketball with their brother. He was like family, and considered Phylicia a “little sister,” relatives say. He was also the last person to see the girl alive in late December 2010. Now Baltimore prosecutors have charged him in the murder of the promising North Carolina teenager, whose nude body was found floating in the Susquehanna River one year ago this month. In announcing the charge Thursday, authorities said very little about the case against Johnson, 28. He faces one count of first-degree murder, and officials declined to say how or where Phylicia was killed. Johnson was arrested late Wednesday outside his apartment after police said he tried to run from officers. “This was an enormous collaborative effort by all agencies involved,” Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein said at a news conference, where he was flanked by city police and state troopers. “We hope it provides some measure of closure for the family.” Johnson, who does not appear to have a criminal record, had been repeatedly questioned since Phylicia’s disappearance, but defense attorney Russell Neverdon said Johnson continues to deny any involvement. Neverdon briefly met with his client Thursday at the Baltimore City Detention Center. “He told me, ‘I’m innocent. I didn’t do anything wrong. I will fight this to the very end,’” Neverdon said. After 16 months of investigating, prosecutors obtained the grand jury indictment two days after the former lead detective in Baltimore, Daniel Nicholson IV, was suspended amid allegations that he conducted a rogue investigation to search for his own daughter. The teen went missing from Baltimore County last Friday and was later found unharmed. Neverdon, during a news conference in his lower Charles Village office, said he believes that police expedited their case because of the troubles Nicholson faces, and that the single-count indictment shows their case remains circumstantial. “Police had Mr. Johnson in their sights from the first day,” Neverdon said, noting that his client met four times with homicide detectives and submitted a DNA sample for testing. Johnson’s relatives were questioned and his car was searched, the lawyer said. “The police made good on their promise,” Neverdon said. “They told him during one meeting that it was only a matter of time before they got him.” Bernstein said Thursday that the allegations against Nicholson — whose squad attended the news conference without him — are a “completely separate matter” and will “absolutely not” impact the case against Johnson. “If I thought for a moment that the alleged activity impacted the case, we wouldn’t have brought it,” Bernstein said. Phylicia, an honor student who was set to graduate early from high school, vanished on Dec. 28, 2010, from the Reisterstown Road apartment of her half-sister Deena, while visiting from Monroe, N.C. Deena has said she met Phylicia about 10 years ago at a family reunion in Baltimore, and they reconnected about three years ago on Facebook. Phylicia visited Baltimore several times, and hoped to attend Towson University. Police have described the apartment as a “college house” that wasn’t always secured and said that up to a dozen people were in and out of it over the holidays. Phylicia’s mother, Janice Sallis-Mustafa, has accused the half-sister of condoning alcohol use and allowing men to come and go at the apartment. Baltimore Sun More On Bossip! Cheese So Hard… That Isht Cray! We’ve Never Seen Yeezy Look So Happy In His Life Bad Girls Club Season 8 Reunion First Clips: First Time Audience Member Scrap At Reunion [Video] The OMG Girls Speak To Bossip Exclusively About Their Career Family And Boys Peace, My Brother: A List Of The 10 LEAST Violent States In America
Only five American Idol finalists remain – but 10 will soon be coming to a city near you. The Fox series has announced its full slate of summer tour stops, as Skylar Laine , Phillips Phillips and the remaining contestants will be joined by the five most recently eliminated singers, starting in Detroit on July 6. Skylar Laine -“Tattoos on This Town” Who are you most excited to see in person? Ponder that question as you plan when you’ll go see the Idols in tour. Dates/locations are listed below. Jul 06 – Detroit, MI at Joe Louis Arena Jul 07 – Rosemont, IL at Allstate Arena Jul 09 – Minneapolis, MN at Target Center Jul 11 – St. Louis, MO at Scottrade Center Jul 12 – Kansas City, MO at Sprint Center Jul 14 – Broomfield, CO at 1STBANK Center Jul 16 – West Valley City, UT at Maverik Center Jul 18 – Seattle, WA at Key Arena at Seattle Center Jul 19 – Portland, OR at Rose Garden Jul 21 – Sacramento, CA at Power Balance Pavilion Jul 22 – San Jose, CA at HP Pavilion at San Jose Jul 23 – Los Angeles, CA at Nokia Theatre L.A. LIVE Jul 25 – Ontario, CA at Citizens Business Bank Arena Jul 26 – San Diego, CA at Valley View Casino Center Jul 27 – Glendale, AZ at Jobing.com Arena Jul 29 – Dallas, TX at American Airlines Center Jul 30 – Lafayette, LA at Cajundome Jul 31 – Jackson, MS at Mississippi Coliseum Aug 02 – Orlando, FL at Amway Center Aug 03 – Sunrise, FL at BankAtlantic Center Aug 05 – Duluth, GA at Arena at Gwinnett Center Aug 06 – N. Charleston, SC at North Charleston Coliseum Aug 08 – Washington, DC at Verizon Center Aug 09 – Baltimore, MD at 1st Mariner Arena Aug 11 – Columbus, OH at Schottenstein Center Aug 12 – Nashville, TN at Bridgestone Arena Aug 14 – Pittsburgh, PA at Consol Energy Center Aug 15 – Rochester, NY at Blue Cross Arena Aug 16 – Toronto, ON at Air Canada Centre Aug 18 – Manchester, NH at Verizon Wireless Arena Aug 19 – Worcester, MA at DCU Center Aug 21 – Philadelphia, PA at Wells Fargo Center Aug 22 – Long Island, NY at Nassau Coliseum Aug 25 – Portland, ME at Cumberland County Civic Center Aug 26 – Providence, RI at Dunkin Donuts Center Aug 28 – Newark, NJ at Prudential Center Aug 30 – Albany, NY at Times Union Center Sept 01 – Bridgeport, CT at Webster Bank Arena at Harbor Yard Sept 02 – Uncasville, CT at Mohegan Sun Arena Sept 04 – Syracuse, NY at War Memorial at OnCenter Sept 06 – Wilkes Barre, PA at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza Sept 07 – Atlantic City, NJ at Boardwalk Hall Sept 08 – Reading, PA at Sovereign Center Sept 10 – Cincinnati, OH at US Bank Arena Sept 11 – Milwaukee, WI at Bradley Center
Just when you think you might have had enough of James Franco , along comes Francophrenia to either whet your appetite for more of the actor-director’s avant-garde pursuits — or officially turn you off to them forever. I might be overdramatizing a bit, but not by much, judging by the walkouts sporadically punctuating the experimental doc/pseudo-soap opera’s recent North American premiere at Tribeca. And with the skies pissing cold rain on Manhattan that evening, you really had to want to leave Franco’s tongue-in-cheek exploration of identity as cast through the prism of his infamous guest stint on General Hospital , reshaped into a sort of leering emo-psychodrama by co-director and editor Ian Olds. Not that Franco didn’t anticipate this. “I’m sure there’ll be different kinds of reactions to it,” he said before the screening, introducing the film with Olds. “But I’m just very glad it’s here at Tribeca. It’s my third film here (after Good Time Max [2007] and Saturday Night [2010]); we love the Tribeca Film Festival. We kind of knew that this film would be not…” Franco paused. “We’ve had mixed reactions. We sort of enjoy that now. I’m sure some of you will be very into it and some won’t. It does take a little bit of… engagement , that’s all. Otherwise, it’s very, very fun.” That’s fair. Francophrenia doesn’t take much of anything seriously, least of all the spectacle around the June 2010 GH episode that brought Franco’s eponymous, homicidal artist to a massive outdoor installation filmed at L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. There, the killer continued his torment of Port Charles’s finest before — spoiler alert? — a protracted gun battle and, finally, his fatal, tuxedoed tumble from the roof. (The sequence provides the film’s subtitle, Don’t Kill Me, I Know Where the Baby Is .) Fans and casual observers alike had both privately and publicly reckoned with the performance-art nature of Franco’s character to that point; “Who is this guy playing, if anybody?” we asked ourselves, to the extent we cared at all. And in 2010, with the then-32-year-old actor at the seeming height of his creative (and, uh, academic) powers — and well before co-hosting the 2011 Oscars in another performance-art torpedo to his A-list celebrity goodwill — we did care a bit. Which, as Francophrenia asserts in its long, deconstructing takes of hair sessions, set-roaming and other behind-the-scenes banality, was really kind of foolish of us. But in daring to sniff at the inviolable absurdity of fame, the spirit of actor/director Franco’s enterprise equivocates. Is his grinning mask while signing autographs and taking photos with fans just garden-variety, all-in-a-day’s-work magnanimity? Or is it a vulgar showcase for Franco’s cynicism, his “art” shielding him from the plebes? Who’s taking the piss here? It’s not as open a question as it seems, especially as drops of whispery voice-over (written by Olds and Paul Felten) trickle into the sound design before flooding it with equal parts self-aggrandizement and self-effacement. On the one hand, Franco can’t trust the GH director, has to find his way “back to the world,” and asks, “What am I doing here?” as he glowers over the scene, reassuring himself with Marxist polymath Guy Debord’s observation that “Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle.” But Olds and Felten leaven all the high-minded paranoia with riffs on Franco’s mythology: “I went to graduate school for a reason, people,” he reminds the viewer at one point — when he’s not, say, craving a cookie or calling his producer Vince Jolivette a “prophet of lies and false consciousness.” Mostly, though, Franco — the character hovering somewhere between the real man and the GH hyperparody — is constantly undermined by the camera itself and even a torrent of gossip promulgated by the icons on the sign outside the men’s bathroom. They chirp about how high and/or pretentious Franco is, deflating his airier platitudes with such brusque dismissals as, “Transcendent my ass!” Conceptually, anyhow, Francophrenia is nothing if not inspired — half-Malick, half- Mystery Science Theater 3000 , a postmodern meltdown superimposed on one of TV’s longest-running melodramas. “It’s easy to see the film as a kind of a gimmick if it’s just riffing on all this culture surrounding James’s celebrity,” Olds said following Sunday’s Tribeca premiere. “It’s a lot of fun to do, but there’s something that interested…” He paused. “The idea is: How can you sort of bend the documentary footage so it serves this artificial narrative, but at the same time, how can you reframe the documentary footage so you can see it with new life? So you can say, ‘What they hell are they doing here? What is all this energy going into? What are they building?’ In a sense, the clearest thing I could think about is that in some ways, it’s maybe like a deranged portrait of the labor behind the spectacle.” But here’s the thing: Franco and Olds have been here before. Francophrenia perhaps works most interestingly as a companion piece to their previous collaboration Saturday Night , another backstage opus also framing what Olds on Sunday called “this sort of mundane human labor.” In that case, it was an all-access glimpse at what goes into producing one episode of Saturday Night Live : the pitch meetings, the grueling all-nighters, the set designs and musical arrangements, the ruthless slashing of material and the general stresses that accompany creating in Studio 8H. Yet where Saturday Night glimpsed those phenomena with a kind of meandering introspection, Francophrenia sends them up with abandon. It’s as though one show is good enough for Franco’s guileless intellect, while the other can only withstand a lengthy frisk before the actor sends it on its way. A viewer Sunday asked Franco about his intentions here, hinting at the double standard that you could just as easily apply to his recent work as Very Serious Artists like Allen Ginsberg ( Howl ) and Hart Crane ( The Broken Tower ). “I really enjoyed working with those people,” he said of the GH crew. “Some of the people I worked with have sadly been fired from General Hospital ; daytime is having a hard time right now. But they’ve gone on to other shows, and I’m going to work with them. Part of my initial impulse to go on General Hospital before this project was even conceived of was to try and examine and break down this kind of hierarchy people have in their minds about levels of entertainment — that movies are better than soaps, or that kind of thing. So I just wanted to insert myself there and experience it and see what it was all about, and I found that there are many things you can do in daytime that movies can’t do, and I really loved it. “I think maybe what you’re reading is because the soap opera is our subject,” Franco continued. “We’re using it as material to examine certain things. But I don’t think the project was ever to make fun of soap operas. It’s just using it like they use me and my image as material to examine certain ideas.” He later elaborated on the ultimate spirit of the project, citing the evaluation of James Franco’s identity by those other than James Franco as his reason for handing the 40-plus hours of GH footage off to Olds. “All along the way, it’s been about turning myself over to these different entities and letting them do what they will with my image,” Franco said. “I look at the film and I see the slicked-back hair and you’ve got all the shots where I’m looking crazy. And that’s exactly how it needs to be! It’s slightly embarrassing. It can’t ever be something where I’m trying to look cool or make you like James Franco or something. It needed to have somebody else manipulating the material and not me, since that’s one of the subjects of the movie.” Again, though: Do we care? I mean, Joaquin Phoenix has demonstrated how much more cynical this could all be, so Franco has at least a little further to go before his whims fall in a forest with nobody around to hear. But to paraphrase Paul Sunday’s admonition in There Will Be Blood , I would like it better if Franco didn’t think I was stupid — or at least if the variation of Franco that appears in Francophrenia didn’t think I was stupid, or that the protean puppeteer above it all didn’t think we can’t spot the hypocrisy calling out from earlier acts of this same show. It’s certainly a show worth watching, an adventure too funny, too playful, too thought-provoking to write off for its cheap shots and rectitude. Still, I hope the curtain comes down soon — and that its mastermind has better ideas ahead. Francophrenia screens again at Tribeca this Saturday, April 28, at noon. Read all of Movieline’s Tribeca 2012 coverage here . Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter . [Photo credits: Doug Chamberlain / Tribeca Film Festival ]
Emily Maynard debuts as The Bachelorette May 14, and we’re starting to piece together the coming season of the long-running ABC guilty pleasure. The Bachelorette spoilers revealed thus far show that the men competing from Emily mostly range in age from 25-35, and are Caucasian. Shocker! She’ll meet a teacher, a gym owner, a model, a bunch of of executives, a big-name race car driver (seriously) and a Jef with one “f” (also seriously). Emily Maynard , 25, won Brad Womack’s season of The Bachelor, but that didn’t work out. She bested Ashley Hebert, the previous Bachelorette star. As he did then, Reality Steve has been digging like a madman for spoilers on the upcoming season for those of us who can’t wait until the summer. What has he found out through his mysterious unnamed sources? Quite a bit, and his track record would suggest it’s more than a little accurate. Come along as we reveal the men who will vie for the North Carolina native’s heart – and the final four who are left standing! Who are the lucky fellas? Follow the jump and let’s get this party started! Here’s a roster of the men Emily meets on the season premiere May 14: Ryan Bowers , 31, Evans, Ga., gym owner. Jef Holm , 27, St. George, Utah, CEO of People Water. Doug Clerget , 33, Tacoma, Wash., vice president at Kidder Matthews.
President Barack Obama appeared on NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon early this morning, taking part in the show’s running bit called “slow jamming the news.” If you haven’t seen it, the segment’s name speaks for itself. In front of a live college audience at the University of North Carolina, Obama talked about student loans while Fallon’s house band the Roots jammed on a slow, sensual R&B beat, making the topic seem sexier than you ever thought possible: Obama on Jimmy Fallon With the rhythmic tunes accompanying him, Obama said, “What we said is simple: Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people.” Fallon then added (in his best Barry White voice), “Awww, yeah. You should listen to the president. Or as I like to call him, the Preezy of the United Steezy.” “Things are heating up inside Congress’ chambers behind those closed doors.” We don’t even know what that means, but the “POTUS with the most-est” needs to bring the Roots with him and deliver campaign speeches this way more often. Mitt Romney wouldn’t stand a chance.
You’ve already heard roughly seven seconds of this one on loop over at their website,… Read more » Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : gorilla vs. bear Discovery Date : 24/04/2012 00:06 Number of articles : 2
Sup North Carolina? Yer gettin’ ready to vote on Amendment 1, which bans gay marriage (which is already banned) in addition to straight and gay civil unions and domestic partnerships? Sounds like a fun amendment! Good job, you guys, way to stick it to … well, your 200,000 straight citizens who are in domestic partnerships Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Wonkette Discovery Date : 24/04/2012 00:06 Number of articles : 3
The rogue state of North Korea is making headlines again for issuing threats, but this time of a more specific nature than their typical over-the-top, vague rhetoric. North Korea’s military interrupted state TV Monday with a special report, vowing to reduce areas of neighboring South Korea “to ashes” in less than four minutes. The threat comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, the recent ascension of Kim Jong Un to the dictatorship and the North’s latest failed missile test . North Korea Issues New, Specific Threats According to the AP, the scary statement from North Korea was unusual in promising something soon and in describing specific locations and periods of time. The North Korean military threatened to “reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes … (or) in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.” Yeah. Real normal. South Korean officials responded, urging North Korea to end the threats. “We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said, according to the Associated Press. The South Korean leader added, “We express deep concern that the North’s threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions.” The April 13 launch of what the United States called a “disguised ballistic missile test” disintegrated just minutes after its launch, humiliating North Korea. South Korean officials say new satellite images show that North Korea has been digging a tunnel in what appears to be preparation for a third atomic test. For months the North has castigated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the conservative administration for insulting their leadership and criticizing a new cruise, nuclear-armed missile capable of striking anywhere in the south. Meanwhile, in a meeting Sunday with a North Korean delegation in Beijing, China’s senior official on foreign policy praised the leadership shown by Kim Jong Un. How far he pushes the envelope remains to be seen, but he’s clearly put the world on notice that like his father Kim Jong Il, he’s not afraid of posturing.
Gone are the days of callouses and carpenter pants. Today, men are rocking skinny jeans and moccasins as they treat themselves to spa days, having no shame in getting waxed, tweezed, manicured and/or exposed to other meticulous grooming techniques. This ongoing — and slightly horrifying — “manscaping” trend is spreading throughout America and beyond, and Morgan Spurlock (along with executive producers Ben Silverman, Will Arnett and Jason Bateman) captured it all in their world premiere Tribeca documentary, Mansome . The film highlights everything from elite beardsmen (yes, it’s a sport) to wrestlers’ full-body shaving, but mostly focuses on candid interviews with some familiar Hollywood men. Movieline caught up with director Spurlock at the film’s premiere over the weekend, chatting about everything from the ongoing “manocolypse” to the Oscar-nominee’s top five manscaping tips. When you think of the manscaping trend, who comes to mind in Hollywood? Zach Galifianakis! That’s why we called him first. How much grooming does he do? None — that’s why he was perfect. You think of someone like a David Beckham, you know; you think of somebody like that. We immediately thought of Scott Ian from Anthrax because he’s been shaving around that crazy beard his whole life, and he’s one of the first people I called. You think of like these kind of perfect-looking actors and actresses, many of which wouldn’t talk to us, simply because they didn’t want to get into it. In reference to some of those guys, do you think that kind of seal look is good for anyone? Well, it seems to be good for Seal, I don’t know — it seems to work out! I feel like if you’re going to commit yourself, like really going for it, then you might as well go for it. I’m not quite that guy. I wasn’t even talking about Seal the musician — I was talking about a seal, like the body slickness of a fully-waxed man… Oh, like when they seal it all in? No, that’s not for me. What was the most exciting part about working with this group of men? Had you ever worked with them before? I had never worked with Will or Jason; I’d never worked with any of the guys in the film. I had met a lot of them and had said that I’d love to work with them sometime. When we called Zach for the film, he jumped at the chance. He said “Absolutely — come meet me at my place in North Carolina!” And he was great. I’ve been such a fan of Judd Apatow for so long, and Paul Rudd, so to have those guys to come in was great. And the characters that we follow in the film — Jack Passion, Shawn Daivari, Ricky [Manchanda] — to have these guys open their lives to us, to let us kind of follow them through these like manscaping rituals, you gotta be a brave guy; you gotta be really courageous to kind of open yourself up like that. I think we had really cool, courageous guys who realized that we were going to make a fun, funny film. Why do you think now was the right time to make this movie? You know, we’re in the midst of a manocolypse! We gotta help figure out what we need to do to help define masculinity today! What do you think are the top five things in the manscaping world? Well, there’s a lot of waxing; a lot of hairy guys waxing is a big one. Grooming is also a big one — making sure you shave your face or cut your hair. There’s a lot of guys with big caterpillar eyebrows… Peter Gallagher? Peter Gallagher may want to take a little something to the middle of that; it’s okay to do that these days. You don’t want to have the unibrow — not so en vogue anymore. I think you don’t want to have a bunch of grimey fingernails; I don’t ever want to see a guy with big, dirty fingernails. Unless you’re like a coal miner or you’re digging a ditch somewhere and that’s your job — like “I dig ditches” or “I dig mud all day! That’s what I do.” — you can’t just go around all day with scrub in there. Do you think women are more attracted to men that manscape? I think that what attracts you initially is how you look. I think ultimately you are attracted to someone at first because of “X,” no matter what it is; there’s something about those pheromones that they’re sending out, and you want them, for whatever reason that is. And then you start to understand who they are and what they’re about, and you continue to stay attracted to them once you peel back the layers. But I do think that we are a judgmental society, and you want to be attracted to them first. But then once you start to talk to them, then you realize, “Wow, you are a completely terrible, shallow person. I don’t want to be around you anymore.” And then you realize that what really matters is all the stuff that’s in here. [Points to head] All the pretty people that I’ve gone out with aren’t the pretty people that I’ve stayed with; I’ve usually stayed with people that have much more to offer from the inside. Is that the advice that you’re going to give to your son? I’m going to tell my son, “Marry the most ugly woman that you can — she’s going to be the best to you of all time.” Read all of Movieline’s Tribeca 2012 coverage here . Alyse Whitney is a New York-based writer, currently with TVLine.com . Her work has been featured in Bon Appétit and a handful of other publications, and you can also find her on Twitter . [Top photo: WireImage]
Man Snatches Mic From News Reporter And Screams “I’m That N__ga!” On Live TV SMH. A North Carolina man is facing assault charges for bum rushing a news reporter on live TV, grabbing her microphone and shouting the n-word into the camera. WMBF-TV reporter Ashley Taylor was giving a live report about crime rates in Myrtle Beach on Wednesday when Justin Moore, 20, of Charlotte, rushed in front of the camera, snatched her microphone and shouted, “I’m that n—–!” The broadcast quickly ended, and Moore, was arrested just a few moments later, WMBF reported. Moore was charged with third degree assault and battery, and released from jail Thursday afternoon on $1,400 bond. Taylor was not hurt and returned to work on Thursday, the station said. In a follow up report, Taylor said the incident taught her to be better aware of her surroundings and the importance of victim’s advocates. Source More On Bossip! Dirty Dog Diaries: MORE Women Come Forward Telling Royce That Her New Boo-Thang Dezmon Briscoe Been Tryna Chop Them Down Too! Single And Ready To Mingle: The 10 Best Cities To Meet New People And Get Freaky! Cheaper To Chop Her: Men (And Women) That Got Caught Trying To Pay For That Poon Ain’t That A B–?! Dirty Dogs That Faced Bad Karma For Their Dirty Dog Ways
