New Zealand Dunedin Announces Squad for Test

New Zealand Dunedin Announces Squad for Test: New Zealand have picked a 13-man squad to face Pakistan in the first Test at Dunedin which begins on the 24th of this month. The New Zealand team is bolstered with the re-entry of Shane Bond who gets to play Test Cricket after a gap of two years!

The hosts are unlucky to miss one of their key players in Jesse Ryder who is still recovering from an abductor strain which he picked up during his stint in the IPL. Ryder’s place has gone to Peter Fulton who has a mediocre average of under 25.00 and just a fifty in the 8 Tests so far in his career. It could be a toss up between Fulton and Tim McIntosh in the end. McIntosh is fresh from a century against Pakistanis at Queensland which could give him the nod ahead of Fulton.

Apart from Bond, medium pacer Daryl Tuffey makes a comeback in the Test team after similar adventures in the rebel Indian Cricket League. Most likely Tuffey could sit out with New Zealand already having Chris Martin and Iain O’Brien in the ranks to partner with Bond.

New Zealand Squad for first Test at Dunedin : Daniel Vettori (Captain), Tim McIntosh, Daniel Flynn, Ross Taylor, Peter Fulton, Martin Guptill, Grant Elliott, Brendon McCullum (wk), Iain O’Brien, Shane Bond, Jeetan Patel, Daryl Tuffey, Chris Martin

Tim Floyd

Tim Floyd: Here’s a story , a group of women are fighting in a casino in Southern California. The hair is washed, furniture is being moved; extensions are pulled. The security is not in sight?
Who you gonna call? Tim Floyd! (If you yell it, it almost sounds like you’re saying “Ghostbusters.” Try it.)

Yes, directly from the “I wonder what he is doing these days” file comes Bulls and former USC coach Tim Floyd, who resigned amid a fight at the Morongo Casino last week. Fortunately, someone had a camera phone:

And there it is! That is definitely Tim Floyd. And the skill that is definitely more to managing Floyd never displayed as coach of the Bulls, which saw a 49-190 record in four seasons. It is also a more ethical behavior than Floyd showed in his recent work at USC, where he resigned amid an ongoing recruitment scandal.

For his trouble, Floyd almost gets a chair to the back of the head. This disaster is avoided, the females are different calmed, and Floyd goes back to what he was doing at the casino in Southern California in the first place: presumably, the game the fans’ season ticket money away. Enjoy of it, Tim. At least one day, you deserve it.

The Replacements

I know I recently said that Pere Ubu sound like the Midwest – all post-industrial, bent-out-of-shape weirdness – but the very heart and soul of Midwestern rock n’ roll was, and still is The Replacements.  Why?  Because unlike the Jersey boys and girls that Springsteen sang about who just wanted to get the fuck out and start new lives, Paul Westerberg wrote anthems for the throngs of bored but not too lazy to go anywhere kids from the Rust Belt: the dairy towns of Wisconson, the burnt out Detroit suburbs, and of course his home state where many are born but few ever leave, Minnesota.
In October of 1985, to celebrate the release of the album Tim – the one that would surely make them the biggest band in the universe – The ‘Mats took their hometown of Minneapolis by storm with a five night stand at the 7th Street Entry.  A second after some random crowd member yells out “more amphetamines” like beer-soaked tigers sprung from their cage, Westerberg and Co. absolutely rip the venue apart for a set nearly two times the length of the album they were releasing.

Giving a listen to this show, one grasps that The Replacements might have been on the cusp of becoming the group of guys that made it, one hit away from forever cementing their reputation as the great American band.  But something went wrong, and like many of the greats they came up just short in their own time only to influence an entire generation after their demise.  But on this autumn night in October, from the originals to the covers (Alice Cooper’s classic “Eighteen” makes an appearance here), there was no band that could match The Replacements in the entire world.  I’d be hard pressed to find anyone that could even today, but as things go it was just never meant to be.
Source: imposemagazine.com

Amy Brenneman Leaving Private Practice

Amy Brenneman is a mother of two who thinks her body isn’t picture perfect but still finds the courage to bare it all in front of millions of viewers. That’s why Dove has chosen her as a spokeswoman, following Sara Ramirez, who represented the company after dancing in her underwear on Grey’s Anatomy. TV Guide was on-set as Brenneman kicked off the Dove ad contest that asks real women to showcase their talent. She spoke about beauty, body image and why the cast of Private Practice will never have viewing parties.
TV Guide: So how did you get involved with Dove’s ad campaign?
Amy Brenneman: I’d had different things come my way and nothing had appealed to me. I take representing a company or a product seriously and I was aware of this campaign; I’d seen these beautiful, realistic-looking women, and I remember thinking, “Wow! You just don’t see that.” So I knew that this campaign was real and they were putting their money where their mouth is.

TV Guide: Your body is seemingly perfect; how do you feel watching so-called real women on TV?
Brenneman: Thank you for that, but it’s really not. Things happened after my second child. [Laughs] That’s all I’m going to say about that. I have my own vulnerabilities — I mean, I know I’m healthy and I look nice in clothes and all that, so I’m not going to put myself down, but I think we all know that moment of authenticity, whether it’s seeing an actress who shows a wrinkle or two… it’s sort of this jolt of, “Wow, she is brave.”

TV Guide: Do you think Hollywood has lost sight of real beauty? Does it put unnecessary pressure on actors and actresses?
Brenneman: I think because everybody’s so interested in the 18-to-34 demographic, suddenly these 50-year-olds think they have to look like 18-year-olds. So yeah, it can be a little wacky, but I also think that Hollywood really loves honest energy that springs out. Like Jonah Hill; he was in a movie that my husband [director Brad Silberling] did and he’s just totally unique. And that great Knocked Up crew — they’re not perfect-looking guys, but you just love them. So I think that when there’s this authentic connection with the audience, you can still get that through.

TV Guide: I watched an episode of Private Practice last night that you were nude in. How does it feel to know that so many people are watching you?
Brenneman: Umm… I feel OK. I mean, I sort of make it a practice not to think about the millions of people who might be seeing it. I’ve gotten nude onstage and that was weirder, because you’re actually in a space with a thousand people watching, so in a strange way, even though obviously a TV show reaches more people, you can still go into denial about it, which I tend to do.

TV Guide: I looked at you and thought, you did not have two kids.
Brenneman: I gained 45 pounds each time. I had to make a person.

TV Guide: And how are your kids?
Brenneman: They’re great. I have a 6-year-old daughter who is beautiful, so I think about this stuff all the time. Dove did this worldwide massive survey and they learned that only two percent of women could use the word “beautiful” to describe themselves. That just broke my heart.

TV Guide: How do you teach your daughter to know she’s beautiful?
Brenneman: You know, I’m lucky. I feel like my daughter is a bit like me and a bit like my mom — we just didn’t think about it that much. I was saying this to my mom the other day: “You did a really good job with me in terms of all this vanity stuff, because I knew that I was beautiful enough, I wasn’t embarrassed when I walked into a room or anything, but it’s not the most interesting thing about me.” And I think my daughter kind of has that, because she’s this devastating combination of tomboyish and beautiful, but she doesn’t think about it. One of the keys is to think about it just enough and then let it go.

TV Guide: Are you spending more time together as a family now that the strike isn’t allowing you to work?
Brenneman: Yeah, I get to see the kids a lot more. I gave birth to my daughter after my second year of Judging Amy so she’s used to [my work]. My son I’ve been around a lot more and he’s handled it OK, but in a way I think it’s nice to have this time to get grounded before I go off to work again.

TV Guide: I think the last time TV Guide spoke to you, everyone was hoping Private Practice would be a success, but now it is a bona fide hit. How does it feel?
Brenneman: Great. A relief. When a movie’s a hit it’s like, “What does that mean?” With TV it’s like, “Now we can actually do the show.”

TV Guide: So Tim Daly has calmed down? He seemed most freaked out about the pre-hype.
Brenneman: He’s our little freaky Tim. He gets all upset, that Tim. [Laughs] So you mean he was upset before?

TV Guide: Yeah, when everyone was telling him it would be a hit, he was like, “Shut up, it’s not even on TV!”
Brenneman: Isn’t that funny? I kind of assumed it would be [a success]. When I was offered it in March, I thought long and hard — not that I wasn’t attracted to the project — but I thought, I did a show for six years and this could likely be that kind of thing.

TV Guide: Speaking of Private Practice, Violet and Cooper are having a typical, messy Grey’s Anatomy-like romance. Do you think they’re going to find each other?
Brenneman: Oh, I think they always find each other. I think they are each other’s family; how that is expressed in the sexual realm will be a long and winding road. I think they’re both very unique sexually. We certainly know that Cooper is and we’re starting to talk about what Violet’s deal is. And I think that’s truly what I love about Shonda [Rhimes]‘ writing. Just because you might be soul mates in one area, does that mean soul mates in another? What is a full life? I mean, I think Violet still feels Alan is the one. I do. And here’s this amazing man standing right in front of her. But Cooper’s funny, too. He has split off his sexuality in a pretty decisive way. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think that they are never not intimate, so even when they are pretending to be in a huff, they’re each other’s best friends. That’s what’s so poignant about it.

TV Guide: And do we have any idea what Pete and Addison are going to be up to?
Brenneman: They’re messed up. What I like is that, in the “naked” episode, Pete comes to me at the end. It’s becoming clear that Pete has tons of issues, and Violet and he have never been involved, nor do I think they will be, but his real intimacy is with her. It’s like even without knowing it, you unconsciously give a part of yourself to somebody, and that was such a moving moment to me, when he explains to me… I mean, he can’t explain to Addison, so he explains to his friend.

TV Guide: Are you as curious about the backstory of these people as the viewers?
Brenneman: Yeah.

TV Guide: Do you ask questions?
Brenneman: Yeah.

TV Guide: Does Shonda answer?
Brenneman: No. [Laughs] She does and she doesn’t. I kind of know this from producing a TV show, that it’s evolving — and it should be evolving, because you never know when a guest star comes in who plays somebody’s cousin and it’s like, “Oh, my god, that person’s great” and suddenly that’s a major [character]. I think all of us have working models of our past that we can play with. It doesn’t bother me. Tim it drives crazy. He’s like, “Did I love my ex-wife? I don’t get it!” I’m like, “Whatever. Flirt with Addison.” [Laughs]

TV Guide: Do you guys have viewing parties?
Brenneman: Everybody has such a different relationship to watching the show, and Paul Adelstein literally rolls — writhes — on the floor in agony. We watched the pilot together and I’m like, “Do you hate it?” and he’s like [Brenneman pretends to be in pain], “Nooo…. ” It’s like, “OK, you have your own process.” Everybody’s got their own way of dealing with looking at themselves. Which brings us back to beauty and self-esteem issues.

TV Guide: Before I forget, there was talk of a Judging Amy movie. What happened to that?
Brenneman: Judging Amy all along was this funky and not entirely good coproduction between 20th Century Fox and CBS Productions, and there were a lot of turf wars. So I was in labor with [son] Bodhi and they canceled my show and then before I actually had the child, I got on the phone to [CBS'] Nina Tassler and I said, “You know what, we didn’t know it was going to end, is there any way we could do a movie of it?” And she said, “That sounds really great” and I went off to new-motherhood land and they couldn’t decide who was going to fund it and the deal kind of fell apart.

TV Guide: So fans should let go?
Brenneman: The one thing you don’t have to let go of is that the official DVD set still hasn’t come out. We’ve never had a DVD launch, which is insane, because there are 138 hours of television, so if people wanted to write in and yell at CBS about that, that could actually agitate.
Source: key-jed.com

Alan Thicke

Alan Thicke (born Alan Willis Jeffery; March 1, 1947) is a Canadian actor, songwriter, and game and talk show host. He is best known for his role as Jason Seaver, the patriarch on the ABC television series Growing Pains.

Background and personal life

Thicke was born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, the son of Joan, a nurse, and William Jeffrey, a stockbroker. His mother later married Brian Thicke, a physician. He graduated from Elliot Lake Secondary School in 1965, and was elected the homecoming king. He went on to attend the University of Western Ontario, where he joined the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Alan is an avid hockey and softball fan/player.

Thicke has been married three times. His first marriage to Days of our Lives actress Gloria Loring, from 1970 to 1983, bore him two sons, Brennan and Robin Thicke. His second marriage was to the Miss World 1990 pageant winner, Gina Tolleson, from 1992 to 1999, and produced a third son, Carter Willam. He has been married to Tanya Callau since 2005.

His son Robin is a platinum album-selling musician, and his son Brennan was a voice actor for cartoons when he was younger.

Game shows

Thicke hosted a Canadian game show on CFCF-TV in Montreal called First Impressions in the late 1970s and the prime time celebrity game show Animal Crack-Ups in the late 1980s. In 1997, he hosted a television version of the board game Pictionary. In the early 2000s, he hosted the All New 3’s a Crowd on the Game Show Network.

Talk shows

Norman Lear hired Thicke to produce and head the writing staff of Fernwood 2-Night, a tongue-in-cheek talk show based on characters from Lear’s earlier show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Thicke was also the host of his own popular talk show in Canada during the early 1980s, called the The Alan Thicke Show. The show at one point spawned a prime time spin-off titled Prime Cuts, which consisted of edited highlights from the talk show.

Based on the success of his talk show, Thicke was signed to do an American late night talk show Thicke of the Night.

Theme song composer

Thicke had a successful career as a TV theme song composer. He often collaborated with his wife Gloria Loring on these projects, which included the themes to the popular sitcoms Diff’rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. He also wrote a number of TV game show themes, including The Wizard of Odds (for which he also sang the vocal introduction), The Joker’s Wild, Celebrity Sweepstakes, The Diamond Head Game, Blank Check, Whew! and the original theme to Wheel of Fortune.

TV and movie appearances

Apart from Growing Pains, Thicke also appeared on the American television series Hope & Gloria, which lasted 35 episodes. In 2004, Thicke hosted the Miss Universe Canada pageant. In April 2006, he hosted Celebrity Cooking Showdown on NBC, in which celebrities were teamed with famous chefs in a cooking competition.

In August 2006 and 2007, Thicke made a few appearances as talk show host Rich Ginger on The Bold and the Beautiful.[2] Thicke also had a cameo appearance in the 2007 movie Alpha Dog as the father of the lead character’s girlfriend.

In 2008 Thicke appeared in a major supporting role as Jim Jarlewski in the television series adaptation of Douglas Coupland’s jPod. That year, he also had a cameo appearance in the How I Met Your Mother episode Sandcastles in the Sand as the dad in Robin’s second “Robin Sparkles” music video. He also appears on a website made specifically for the show, canadiansexacts.org.

In February 2009, Thicke made a guest appearance on adult swim’s Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job. In the same month, he made a guest appearance on the web series Star-ving.

Thicke had a role in the 2009 film The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, starring Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, Ed Helms, Ken Jeong, and James Brolin. On July 10, 2009, Thicke appeared on the 1000th episode of Attack Of The Show, and sang a song with Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn, at the end kissing Munn.
Source: wikipedia.org

Why People Are Searching For Kevin Jonas Dead, Nick Jonas Dead

I am amazed why people are searching for something as wayward as Nick Jonas dead? This is the craziest things that I have witnessed in recent days. Nicholas Jonas is a talented singer, dancer, songwriter, actor, and performer. At the tender age of eleven he has already starred in four Broadway shows, numerous commercials, and a variety of recorded works.
He is a passionate performer. His vocal ability has been compared to a young Stevie Wonder and Donny Osmond. He wrote many of the songs he performs in concert.

His Broadway credits include performing in the role of Gavroche in Les Miserables. He was the last person to play the role of Gavroche in the Tony Award winning production. He also starred as Chip in Beauty and the Beast, Little Jake in Annie Get Your Gun with Reba McEntire and Crystal Bernard, and Tiny Tim and the Young Scrooge in A Christmas Carol ? the Musical at Madison Square Garden.

His vocal and performing abilities have been highlighted in Broadway showcases, including yearly Easter Bonnets, Gypsy of the Year Events, outdoor performances, and a special Broadway Christmas recording, which included a song he wrote with his father. He is currently starring in the Papermill Playhouse version of The Sound of Music.

Sixteen year old Nicholas Jerry “Nick” Jonas is best known as one of the Jonas Brothers, a pop-rock band he formed with his brothers Joe and Kevin. The Jonas Brothers originally started with a solo singing career for Nick, but when his brothers Kevin and Joe sang backup for him, the record producer liked their sound and signed all three of them. He currently stars in the Disney channel original series JONAS as Nick Lucas, alongside his brothers.
In the meantime the young actor and singer has said that he wants to be the President of United States. “I’ve always had this dream of becoming president one day” he said when asked about his recent trip to white house and went on to add, it was “very cool” and “such an honor” to visit the White House earlier this year.

The three Jonas Brothers had made trip to Washington DC to see daughters of President Obama. Later Nick Jonas met Obama in June as part of his diabetes efforts.
Source: Khabrein.info

Anquan Boldin

Bad news for the Cardinals, Anquan Boldin’s hamstring injury might be enough to keep him out of the playoff game against the Carolina Panthers.

This injury could be devasting to the Cardinals as Boldin gives that balance to the Arizona offense that opponents find so challenging to defend. With weapons like Edgerrin James and Tim Hightower in the backfield and Larry Fitzgerald keeping the defense from double teaming both Boldin and Fitzgerald, Kurt Warner has a lot of options to play with, but if Boldin sits the Panthers could force the Cardinals to run the football by locking down Fitzgerald with two defenders at all times.

If the Cardinals are forced to create a running game they will be in trouble. Not saying that Hightower and James aren’t great backs, but they haven’t really a force out of the backfield except for Hightower in goal line situations.

Boldin missed practice on Wednesday because tightness in the hamstring and says he doesn’t plan on putting it to the test until game time against the Panthers.

Although not having Boldin doesn’t exactly mean that the Panthers will have their way with the Arizona offense with Boldin in the lineup the Cardinals are a huge threat to make big plays at any given moment.