Arguably the most iconic piece of pop culture has gone under the hammer. Michael Jackson’s white bejewelled glove, the first to be sold in the world since the artist’s passing in June this year, was sold Sunday afternoon at our salerooms in Melbourne.

After a bidding war between collectors in Australia and the US, the glove was finally knocked down to Warwick Stone, on behalf of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, for $57,600 (IBP).

Giles Moon, National Head of Collectables at Bonhams & Goodman was thrilled with the result: “Due to the huge amount of interest we received prior to the auction, we were

A teen, from Michael Jackson's home state, has created a website for Michael Jackson fans to put their name on a tribute smart car. They will also have a flower with their name on it, delivered to the Michael Jackson memorial, once each year, forever.

Logansport, IN (PRWEB) -- 18 year-old, Eric Calisto, has created a website that allows Michael Jackson fans to put their name, business, or website on a Michael Jackson tribute smart car. Fans will also have a personalized flower, delivered to the Michael Jackson memorial, once each year, forever.

Calisto's site, http://ultimateMJtribute.com, allows users to pay for this ultimate Michael Jackson tribute via PayPal. The cost is only $100. Calisto says the idea came to him after reading fans' reactions to the devastating news of Michael's death on

By Larry London
VOA NEWS-Washington, D.C.
You might find it surprising that one of music's brightest new stars once found it hard to fit in. Taylor Swift says growing up in Pennsylvania was not easy since no one wanted to be her friend. Only after her family moved to Nashville, Tennessee, was she able to be herself. She is on her first headlining tour to promote her second CD, Fearless.


Taylor Swift is promoting her second CD, Fearless
Swift sold more records in 2008 than any other music performer. Selling 7 million albums is a career accomplishment very few artists can claim. Taylor achieved this milestone in only two years. She has written or co-written all of her songs, and now at age 19 is headlining one of the biggest concert tours of the year.

"It just makes me so happy. It makes me so happy to be out there knowing that every single person in the audience, you know, bought a ticket with my name on it."

When she was 14, Taylor's family moved from Pennsylvania to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, so she could be closer to the country music industry. She was signed to a publishing deal with Sony/ATV, making her one of the youngest writers they ever hired.


Taylor says her experience of not fitting in at school helped fuel her music career
"I would write every single day after school. It was a job, you know. I was … I was a paid to be songwriter when I was 14."

Taylor's family videos were put to good use when she recorded "The Best Day," a song dedicated to her mother.

"My mom is very logical and very practical. She is always like, 'Do not, do not get too far ahead of yourself', you know, and, 'One step at a time,' and my dad is just going nuts [very excited] out here, like, handing out guitar picks. 'Hey I am Taylor's dad!,' 'Hey, good to meet you!', 'Hey, here is a guitar pick!'"

"I never would have wanted to leave Pennsylvania and move to Nashville had I been invited to all of the parties. In a way, you look back and you are like, 'Thanks guys!'"

Though seemingly wise beyond her years in terms of the music industry, Taylor struggles with the same issues as any other teenager.


Taylor warns future boyfriends that they might turn up in one of her hit songs
Themes of unrequited love are prevalent in her songs. Because so much of her life is in her songs, she has advice for future boyfriends.

"The only thing that inspires me to where I can write so many songs about it is love. The beginnings of love, when it is all the butterflies [nervousness] and magic and stuff, and then the end of it, where you feel like you cannot get out of bed in the morning. That is what I love writing songs about.

"It is not like guys do not know what they are getting into. I have been very open and honest about it my entire career since I was 16 years old. It is like I write songs about real people. If we date, you are going to end up being a character. You can choose whether you are going to be a good character or a bad character. Choose wisely."

Choosing wisely also applies to role models. The headlines are

(inan.info)-By Mike O'Sullivan
Los Angeles

Some of the finest performers in Hollywood are character actors, who are often seen on screen but are hardly household names to audiences. William Sanderson, who plays a sheriff in the series True Blood on the HBO cable network, is one of those actors.

He is a native of Memphis, Tennessee, says he is often cast in Westerns as an outlaw or derelict because of his southern accent. He finds himself playing the kind of unkempt characters he jokingly calls "prairie scum."

He was the quirky E. B. Farnum in the series Deadwood. The award-winning show, set in the historical Western town of Deadwood, South Dakota, mixed fact and fiction with offbeat humor and raw language. Sanderson played a neurotic, obsequious and greedy character, a hotel owner who became the town's mayor.

Sanderson often gets small roles but sometimes plays memorable characters. One of the best-known was the toymaker and genetic designer J. F. Sebastian in the 1982 science fiction classic Blade Runner.

The film by director Ridley Scott starred Harrison Ford and Daryl Hannah. It concerned a future world where humans felt threatened by the clones they had created. Sanderson says it was a high point in more than 100 film and television roles. "I played a lot of renegades, you can imagine, with this accent, or derelicts, but after Blade Runner, because I played a genetic engineer with two hours of makeup, I began to also get what they call 'more sympathetic parts'. It would have been nice to be a romantic lead. But since I will not win any

By Mary Morningstar
Washington

One month before a child custody trial was to begin, Britney Spears' ex-husband Kevin Federline has been granted sole custody of their two sons, 2-year-old Sean Preston and 1-year-old Jayden James. Federline's attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan told E! News, "The case has been settled. The court still has to approve it." "Nobody could have anticipated the terms of events that

(inan.info)-VOA News-By Ted Landphair
Washington, DC

There are three worlds on most American college campuses: The logical World of Science, where students and professors in white laboratory coats lose themselves in that which can be carefully observed and proved. And the dreamy World of the Humanities such as poetry and art, in which anything that can be imagined seems possible.

The third campus world, where these rationalists and free thinkers find common ground, is the local bar or pizzeria.

On most campuses, there aren't too many Leonardo Da Vincis: renaissance people or polymaths – people with broad interests across disciplines. But colleges are trying to create more
On most campuses, there aren't too many Leonardo Da Vincis: renaissance people or polymaths – people with broad interests across disciplines. But colleges are trying to create more
Most liberal-arts students are forced to take a science course or two – and engineer types must endure English lit – in order to meet requirements for a degree. But equations and formulas confound most creative souls. And having to write a composition terrifies the lab-coat crowd. Not a lot of learning goes on.

So these days, many colleges are striving to bridge the alien worlds of science and the arts in a more meaningful way. There's the New Humanities Initiative at Binghamton University in New York state, for instance. It is described as a two-way street between the two worlds – a street where logic and imagination can merge rather than collide.

An example used for study at Binghamton is the wolf – an animal whose genetics and behavior can be scientifically tracked, but which is

(inan.info)-voanews-Actor, producer and Academy Award-winning director Sydney Pollack has died at the age of 73.

Agent Leslee Dart said Pollack died Monday of cancer while surrounded by family at his home in the city of Pacific Palisades, California. He was diagnosed with cancer about nine months ago.

Pollack won Academy Awards for best director and best picture for the 1985 film Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The film won five other Academy Awards.

He was born in 1934 in Lafayette, in

(inan.info)-ASCI NEWS-Marriott (-1%), Hyatt (+1%) and Hilton (+3%) are tied at the top of the industry at 78.
Budget hotels such as Choice Hotels (Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, and Econo Lodge) and
Best Western are at the other end of the scale, scoring 71 and 70 respectively. These
results underscore something that is more common than not: the strong impact of quality
and the relatively weak effect of price on satisfaction.

The hotel industry ties an all-time high after improving 6% to 75. Much of the

(inan.info)-Washington, DC -- In an effort to deepen and broaden cultural understanding, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), in partnership with the U.S. Department of State and Arts Midwest, today announced a second international component of the NEA's national reading program The Big Read. Four U.S. organizations will receive grants ranging from $10,000-$20,000 to present Big Read projects focusing on The Thief and the Dogs by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz. The selected organizations are Columbia University in the City of New York (New York, NY), Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College (Miami, FL), Huntsville-Madison County Public Library (Huntsville, AL), and the South Dakota Humanities Council/South Dakota Center for the Book (Brookings, SD).

"Cultural exchange needs to play a more important role in international relations," said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, "And there is no better way to understand another nation than to read one of its great books. The NEA is delighted to join with the State Department in The Big Read Egypt/U.S. and to introduce one of Egypt's and the

(inan.info)-FANS NAME KENNY CHESNEY ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
LAS VEGAS (May 18, 2008) – Winners have been announced for the 43rd ANNUAL
ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS, a star-studded ceremony broadcast LIVE tonight on
the CBS Television Network from MGM GRAND in Las Vegas. More than a half million fans voted in
the Entertainer of the Year category, and they named Kenny Chesney for the evening’s biggest honor—
his fourth consecutive win.
This was the first year in the Academy of Country Music history that fans chose the winner of that
category. Chesney is one of only four artists to win this honor three or more consecutive times, joining
Alabama (who has won five consecutively), Garth Brooks (has won four consecutively) and Hank
Williams Jr. (has one 3 consecutively).
Brad Paisley won Top Male Vocalist and