Selena Gomez goes deep on The Weeknd plus R Kelly’s concert problems
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Ever since they started dating a few months back, both Selena Gomez and The Weeknd have kept their relationship pretty private. However, in her recent interview with InStyle magazine, Selena gave readers a bit more insight into how she feels about her famous beau.
InStyle enlisted the “Fetish” singer to star on the cover of their September issue. Inside the magazine, Selena is featured in a spread, as well as an exclusive interview, in which she talks candidly about her 90-day hiatus from the spotlight (at the end of 2016) and her new relationship.
In talking about her break from Hollywood, Selena explained, “I went away for 90 days, and it was the best thing that I ever could’ve done. I had no phone, nothing, and I was scared. But it was amazing, and I learned a lot.” You may remember, Selena checked herself into a rehab facility where she was treated for exhaustion, as well as issues surrounding her mental and emotional health. The songstress went on to add, “I was in the countryside and never did my hair; I took part in equine therapy, which is so beautiful. And it was hard, obviously. But I knew what my heart was saying, and I thought ‘OK, I think this has helped me become stronger for other people.’”
When asked about her relatively new relationship, Selena admitted that she sees The Weeknd not only as her love, but also as her best friend. The former Disney star elaborated, “I don’t depend on one area of my life to make me happy. It’s really important for me to love and nourish my friends and family and to make sure that I never get influenced by a guy. I’ve wanted to be in a strong headspace for years, and I really wasn’t. Before, I was so young and easily influenced, and I’d feel insecure. You want someone to add to your life, not to complete you, if that makes sense. I’m lucky because he’s more of a best friend than anything else.”
Officials in a Georgia county want an upcoming concert by R. Kelly canceled after a media report accusing the singer of mental and physical abuse against young women.
The Fulton County Board of Commissioners sent a letter this week to Live Nation asking the entertainment company to cancel Kelly’s Aug. 25 concert. Live Nation contracts with the county to plan and promote events at the county-owned amphitheater just outside Atlanta.
Messages seeking reaction from Live Nation to the letter weren’t immediately returned Friday afternoon.
Commission Chairman John Eaves told reporters Friday that he was troubled by a BuzzFeed News report last month, which quoted parents and several women alleging that Kelly forms relationships with young women interested in the music industry and then mentally and physically abuses them.
An attorney for Kelly told BuzzFeed that he denies the allegations.
Eaves said board members decided to ask the concert promoter to cancel the event after hearing from “many” county residents who objected to holding it the public-owned site.
“They object to their tax dollars providing a stage for an entertainer who is repeatedly in a swirl of controversy surrounding the sexual exploitation of women and underage girls,” Eaves said.
Eaves said even though Kelly hasn’t been charged with or convicted of any crimes related to the media report, he felt comfortable speaking out “on a moral basis.” But he acknowledged that Live Nation is contracted to book and promote concerts on the county’s behalf and has the final say about whether the event will go on. He said county officials aren’t considering any legal action.
Local activists who also spoke at Friday’s news conference said they will protest outside the concert if Live Nation doesn’t cancel. They argued that letting the event go on uninterrupted sends a message that sexual exploitation won’t be punished.
Well…I can’t say this latest split comes as much of a surprise…
On Thursday, Real Housewives of New York star Luann de Lesseps announced that she was getting a divorce from her husband, Tom D’Agostino. After just eight short months of marriage, the reality star took to her Twitter page to share the news with fans and followers. Luann posted, “It’s with great sadness that Tom & I agreed to divorce. We care for each other very much, hope you respect our privacy during this sad time!”
Luann de Lesseps, Twitter post:
It's with great sadness that Tom & I agreed to divorce. We care for each other very much, hope you respect our privacy during this sad time!
— Luann de Lesseps (@CountessLuann) August 3, 2017
Unfortunately for Bravo, the reunion show for Real Housewives of New York was shot before Luann and Tom decided to split. Media outlet TMZ reports that while Luann acknowledges the ups and downs of her marriage during the reality special, there is no mention of an official divorce during the reunion.
While it is nonetheless sad, a lot of fans and friends of Luann were not expecting her relationship with Tom to last. Unfortunately, their relationship was very rocky from the start. Not only had Tom been involved with two of the other Housewives (Ramona and Sonja) before dating – and subsequently, marrying – Luann, but he was also spotted making out with another woman the night before his and Luann’s engagement party.
Since there is no divorce talk from Luann during the reunion show, here’s hoping she pays a visit to Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live to spill some of the details about her and Tom’s sudden decision to part ways.
A liberal advocacy group that targeted Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly for advertiser boycotts in the past now has its sights set on Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.
Media Matters for America said Friday it will begin asking Hannity’s advertisers to shun him and will ask thousands of its members to also contact companies. The group is setting up a stophannity.com website and plans to hire a plane to carry an anti-Hannity banner in the New York area.
His Fox show “really has moved beyond just being a conservative viewpoint to state-aligned disinformation and propaganda,” said Angelo Carusone, Media Matters president. “If we don’t do it now, Hannity will only get worse.”
Fox had no immediate comment on the effort Friday. Hannity, a survivor in a tumultuous year at Fox and President Donald Trump’s most prominent media supporter, called one similar effort against him a “kill shot” designed to get him fired.
In the spring, Media Matters published a list of Hannity’s advertisers, and while it stopped short of advocating a boycott, groups like the Democratic Coalition Against Trump did. Only a handful of advertisers responded. Conservatives launched a campaign against MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, which met with a similar lack of success.
Hannity’s opponents were energized by a lawsuit filed this week alleging Fox fabricated quotes to back up a story suggesting a Democratic National Committee staff member killed last summer may have been involved in a leak of WikiLeaks documents. Fox retracted the story in May. Hannity was a proponent of the theory, although he didn’t mention it when it came back in the news this week.
Hannity’s suggestion this week that special counsel Robert Mueller may have broken laws regarding conflicts of interest, and the frequent appearance of Trump’s lawyer on his program, proved the tipping point in launching the new effort, Carusone said.
“Ultimately, we were forced into this position,” he said.
With the initial effort against him in the spring, Hannity told the Huffington Post that “nobody tells me what to say on my show. They never have and they never will.”
“There’s nothing that I did, nothing that I said, except they don’t like my positions politically,” he said. “They’ll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that’s what this is. This is a kill shot.”
Beck’s Fox News Channel show was slowly choked by advertiser defections. The campaign against O’Reilly moved swiftly before his ouster in April, but that was primarily due to publicity about harassment charges against him, rather than his political viewpoint.
Hannity has no such personal scandal attached to him, so even Carusone acknowledges that he’s got his work cut out for him.
“It’s going to be a much bigger lift,” he said. “It’s going to take more time and research.”
The music video for the No. 1 hit song “Despacito” has a new record – it’s become the most popular clip on YouTube of all-time with more than three billion views.
YouTube announced Friday that Luis Fonsi’s ubiquitous song with Daddy Yankee has surpassed previous record holder “See You Again,” the song by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth from the “Furious 7” soundtrack.
“Despacito” became an international smash hit this year, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The record-breaking video does not include the popular remix with Justin Bieber; that version has been viewed more than 464 million times.
“Despacito” is on track to become the first video to reach three billion views on YouTube. The video is also the most “liked” video on YouTube.
Two murals showing an oversized President Donald Trump have appeared on Israel’s West Bank separation barrier, just yards from where the elusive artist Banksy decorated a hotel earlier this year.
The new drawings popped up on the edge of Bethlehem, the Palestinian city where the barrier largely consists of a wall of towering slabs of concrete.
In one scene, Trump is shown hugging and kissing a real Israeli army watchtower built into the wall, as his left arm reaches around the tower. Little pink hearts flutter from Trump’s mouth.
In another drawing, Trump is depicted wearing a Jewish skullcap and placing a hand a wall – a scene taken from the U.S. president’s May visit to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray. A cartoon “thought bubble” next to him says, “I’m going to build you a brother,” a possible reference to Trump’s plans to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
The murals were signed “lushsux” – a signature that according to a 2016 report by the Australian newspaper “The Age” has been used in the past by a Melbourne street artist. The artist was among those who participated in a Banksy show in Britain in 2015, the report said.
A Twitter account in the name “lushsux” published the mural of Trump with his hand on a wall on Monday. The second mural was seen by an Associated Press cameraman for the first time Friday.
The new graffiti is just a few meters (yards) from “The Walled Off Hotel,” a Palestinian-run guest house that opened earlier this year and sarcastically bills itself as having the “worst view in the world.”
The nine-room hotel was decorated with Banksy’s trademark political murals, including one in “Banksy’s Room” that shows a masked Palestinian and a helmeted Israeli soldier in a pillow fight.
Israel began building the barrier a decade ago, at the height of an armed Palestinian uprising, saying the divider is needed to keep suicide bombers and gunmen from entering Israel. Palestinians say the barrier, which slices off about 10 percent of the West Bank, amounts to a land grab.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in 1967. Several U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian attempts to negotiate the terms of a Palestinian state on these lands have failed.
Trump said early on in his term that he would try to broker a deal, but has not offered a way forward.
You probably think you know everything there is to know about Kim Kardashian and her siblings.
But there is a little-known prequel — the twisted story of her parents Robert and Kris’ tempestuous marriage, which was marked by rampant philandering and scandal. Author Jerry Oppenheimer’s book “The Kardashians: An American Drama” (St. Martin’s Press, out Sept. 19) reveals patriarch Robert’s infatuation with Elvis Presley’s ex-wife Priscilla, Kris’ repeated infidelity and Robert’s confession to his pastor that Khloé Kardashian wasn’t his biological daughter.
Here are the highlights from the book:
Forever immortalized as the stand-by-his-man supporter of pal O.J. Simpson, Robert Kardashian rose to notoriety when he served as a legal consultant on the “dream team” that won the athlete a not-guilty verdict in his infamous 1995 murder trial. Robert, a born-again Christian of Armenian descent, was born in 1944 to a wealthy Los Angeles family; he would later distance himself from the clan’s corrupt meatpacking empire. Despite standing a mere 5-foot-8 and being stricken with a thick white hairline streak in his otherwise jet-black mane, he was considered one of Beverly Hills’ most eligible bachelors in the 1970s.
Born in 1955, Kristen “Kris” Houghton came from “redneck” roots and was raised in San Diego by her tough-as-nails maternal grandmother after her alcoholic father left when she was 7. By 12th grade, Kris wasn’t dreaming about prom or college, but looking for a man — a rich one. High-school pal Joan Zimmerman thought Kris’ mom, Mary Jo, was “kind of pimping her out” when the 17-year-old started a relationship with golf pro Cesar Sanudo, who was more than 10 years her senior. That ended when Kris met Robert — who thought the teenager looked like a young Natalie Wood, despite a necklace that read “OH, S – – T” — at a horse-racing track and cheated on her boyfriend with him.
As Jack Spradlin, a friend of Sanudo’s, said: “[Kris] saw a far better financial opportunity with Kardashian than with Cesar.”
Still, Robert thought Kris was too young for things to be serious and soon dumped her for Priscilla Presley. He may have been besotted with the famous ex-wife of Elvis, but she only went out with Robert because “she had no one else to go out with,” according to a cousin.
A worldly and “kinky” Presley groomed Robert, telling him how to dress and what kind of car to drive. The relationship, however, would never escape the specter of her famous ex. Robert “complained to a friend that while he was making love to Priscilla, she would get incoherent phone calls from [her ex-husband] Elvis ‘and she would put the receiver on the pillow between them and let him listen,’ ” Oppenheimer writes.
Robert aimed to turn Priscilla into “the perfect Armenian housewife.”
“Priscilla once tried to make dinner for Robert because he kept asking her,” said Joni Migdal, his friend since childhood. “She cooked asparagus, and she made this, and she made that . . . She went out of her way to make it perfect for him, and he hated it.”
Priscilla was insulted. Soon, she told Robert: “I’m not going to marry anyone until Elvis dies.”
He wasn’t lonely for long. A heartsick Kris, by then an American Airlines flight attendant, had been destroyed by Robert’s relationship with glam Priscilla and readily took him back, moving into his Beverly Hills manse right away. He was a lawyer and entrepreneur who made a killing with one of his investments, driving both a Rolls-Royce and a Mercedes; she was scraping by and had nothing to her name. Still, her fancy beau refused to give her money for anything, including much-needed new tires for her old Mazda.
“She needs to learn the value of a dollar,” Robert told Migdal. Ironically, this would backfire on Robert after he married Kris in 1978. Once they shared bank accounts, she would rebel against his prior constraints by becoming monstrously extravagant. When she dropped three grand on a single belt, her husband was apoplectic: “Can you f – – king believe that? Who needs a belt for $3,000?”
Where he failed to mold Priscilla into the perfect submissive housewife, Robert was determined to succeed with young Kris. Friends told Oppenheimer about how he was “totally turned on” by the 1975 movie “The Stepford Wives.”
“[It] was the model for Robert’s marriage to Kris,” said Migdal. According to another friend, “He had a fantasy about being able to dominate women.” As a way of grooming his high-school-educated bride, Robert gave her self-help audiotapes to teach her how to throw a party and decorate for the holidays.
“Kris would say, ‘Oh God, I have to finish these tapes before the week is out because we’re going to talk about them,’ ” recalled friend Larry Kraines.
Robert, who had adorned his car with a fish insignia to show his born-again status, kept copies of the Bible on his nightstand, on his desk and on his person at all times.
While Kris attended church with her husband, Robert’s pastor, Kenn Gulliksen, harbored doubts about her sincerity: “I just sensed that Kris saw in Bob a kind of gold mine. Robert was a very generous man, and that was . . . good for Kris.”
After daughters Kourtney and Kim were born (in 1979 and 1980, respectively), the family moved into a 7,000-square-foot estate in Beverly Hills’ most “prestigious” section, complete with tennis courts and a duck-shaped swimming pool. Kris’ audiotape lessons had paid off, and the home became “party central.”
They often hung out with Robert’s friend, O.J. Simpson. Sometimes, Simpson would have Kris call a very young girl — “possibly still in high school” — whom he was seeing, in case her parents answered. Then she would hand him the phone.
It seemed the family was flourishing. Robert had sold one of his businesses, the trade publication Radio & Records, “for a bundle.” But with the 1984 arrival of their third child, Khloé, the couple couldn’t ignore an elephant in the room: They hadn’t had sex during the time she had to have been conceived.
Gulliksen recalled that “it was my strong impression from him that [Robert] loved Khloé very much, but he said it in a way that implied that ‘She’s not my blood daughter.’ ”
He was unwilling to take a DNA test to confirm it, and told Migdal that “whoever her father is . . . she is my child.” Years later, his two subsequent wives — Jan Ashley and Ellen Pierson — attested that Robert claimed that Khloé wasn’t his biological daughter.
Soon, Kris’ affairs would be more out in the open. Despite all the blessings — and bling — of a charmed Beverly Hills life, she became “bored and rebellious.” After getting a new pair of breasts, she reportedly decided she wanted freedom.
“Kris would tell Robert, ‘I need to go out. I need to have fun,’ ” Migdal said. “[She] was coming home at two and three in the morning drunk, and she would tell Robert, ‘I have four kids and I have not lived life.’ ” (Son Rob was born in 1987.)
Kris began seeing a soccer player, Todd Waterman, introducing him as her boyfriend at parties and paying his bills with Robert’s money. Waterman recalled that a young Khloé would go with them on dates: “She’d be in the back seat of the car.” Once, after Kris told her husband that Waterman was her tennis instructor, the two played on the Kardashian court while Robert watched.
But soon enough, Robert caught Waterman and Kris “three different times,” she said, including at the other man’s apartment and on a restaurant date. Upon finding them together in Waterman’s car one time, Robert jumped out of his Mercedes with a golf club in hand. “He took a swing and whacked the back of my car,” said Waterman. Kris told him to “keep driving — [Robert] might have a gun in the car.”
Another time, as Simpson stood by, Robert phoned Waterman and yelled: “You just f – – ked Snow White! Do you know what you’ve done to this entire universe, you asshole? Now you . . have to deal with me.”
The Kardashians finally divorced in 1991. Months later, Kris married Olympian Bruce Jenner, her “best lover.”
Jenner — who decades later would transition to being a woman named Caitlyn — had already wed twice before. After his first wife, Chrystie Crownover, left him, he stayed for a while at the Playboy Mansion.
“Bruce became like one of the Bunnies,” said a longtime mansion regular. “One night he’s boogieing in a tux with the girls at a dress-up party, and the next night he’d be like one of the girls and all dressed up — makeup, hosiery, high heels, the whole nine yards. I thought he was just being funny, like when Milton Berle used to come on TV in drag.”
He may have been one of the most famous athletes of the 1970s, but by the early ’90s Jenner “had little money . . . and was living in a dumpy little house.” When he moved in with Kris, Jenner brought along his parents.
“Simply put,” Oppenheimer writes, “[Kris] was ‘very pissed off,’ according to friends.”
She would, apparently, get over it, however, with the two going on to have daughters Kendall (in 1995) and Kylie (in 1997) and star together in the reality-TV series “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”
Robert, meanwhile, was about to become a household name. After bosom buddy Simpson was arrested in 1994 for the murders of his ex-wife, Nicole, and her friend Ron Goldman, Robert chose to steadfastly support him, showing up to court nearly every day as a member of the athlete’s legal “dream team.” He wrote a letter to Kris and his kids in 1995, once the trial was in full swing: “I truly believe in O.J.’s innocence, and unless they find him guilty, I will continue to support him . . . Please be understanding.”
Kris, who had been one of Nicole’s closest friends, was “furious” with her ex’s defense of O.J. (Years later, Kourtney would get into the University of Arizona with an essay titled “My Parents Were on Opposite Sides of the O.J. Simpson Trial.”)
Elsewhere in Robert’s life, reactions were mixed. Some friends and colleagues deserted him. “No one ever turned their back on someone like they did on Robert over the O.J. thing,” recalled Migdal. People would spit on him while he was in his convertible.
On the other hand, he often got “celebrity treatment” because of the public fascination with the televised trial, snagging the best tables at Beverly Hills restaurants. Roger Moore sought him out to chat. Actor Rod Steiger sent wine to his table. Robert hoped that Al Pacino or Robert De Niro would play him in a future O.J. movie. (Little did he know he would instead end up with David “Ross from ‘Friends’ ” Schwimmer.)
The fallout from the trial took a toll on the entire Kardashian family. But the kids were moving on with their lives — and the apples didn’t fall far from the tree. By 2000, Kim was a bride at age 19.
Robert was “upset” when Kim wed her first husband, Damon Thomas, who is African-American. According to an Oppenheimer source, Robert said: “I know these black guys, and I know they love white pussy. O.J. always brags about how much he and those guys get. The problem is my kids are liberal, maybe too liberal, and I have no one to blame but myself because I introduced them to Uncle O.J.”
In 2003, Robert was diagnosed with esophageal cancer; when he died some eight weeks later, he reportedly weighed 80 pounds. Before he passed, Priscilla Presley called to tell him she loved him.
“It brought tears to his eyes,” Oppenheimer writes.
Years later, after Robert’s kids became world-famous, his widow Ellen Pierson — who was said to have frozen out his closest friends — sold off excerpts of what was allegedly his diary, in which he wrote about Kris and Waterman’s sleeping together in his bed and leaving their kids unattended while she “screwed all night.” It detailed Kris’ allegedly abusive nature, describing her as pulling Kourtney’s hair and twisting her arms, also claiming that “scared and nervous” Kim had also been beaten by their mother.
Kris sued Pierson in 2013 on the basis of copyright infringement, claiming that Robert’s kids owned the copyrights for his diaries. Pierson filed legal papers for defamation, emotional distress and civil conspiracy to defame, claiming the Kardashians only filed their lawsuit for use as a plot point for their TV show.
The copyright claim was settled in 2014, when Pierson returned the diaries to the Kardashians, who also collected $84,000.
Robert’s friend Kraines insists the late man would be as “proud as punch” of his girls today. “Would Robert have liked Kim’s sex tape, and all that horses – – t? Probably not. But would he have liked the fact that they have made a tremendous amount of money? Definitely!”
As for Kris, who divorced Jenner in 2015, sources say that she wants to follow in the footsteps of another reality-TV star.
The now-divorced mom of six has told people she wants to run for political office — on a platform of advocacy for single moms — saying she and Donald Trump have the same kind of DNA. “If Mr. Weird Hair can do it, so can I,” she’s reportedly said.
According to a “credible source”: “She has so much confidence that talking about the presidency one day isn’t out of the question for her.”
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