Actress Julianne Moore will play former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin in HBO’s adaptation of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin‘s book, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jay Roach will direct and Danny Strong will write the script. Here’s more from TVNewser: “HBO optioned Game Change last January. No word yet on who will play the other TV news personalities mentioned in the book.”
Anybody wish they picked Saturday Night Live veteran Tina Fey? Heilemann and Halperin interviewed more than 300 people to write Game Change (2010). The book had three parts: part one covered the Democratic primaries, part two looked at the Republican primaries, and part three examined the race between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Carlos Slim: Forbes Rich List

It’s that time of year again, Forbes has put out its list of the world’s richest! This year, Forbes list is bigger than ever with 1,210 billionaires and over $4.o trillion.

Moscow leads the list with the most billionaires but the American’s, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, remain list leaders. Although the Microsoft man and American investor didn’t make it to number one, one of America’s neighbors did.
He was always appearing on the Forbes rich list but his earnings shot up even more recently due to the rise in the Mexican stock market. Forbes stated that Slim also merged his telecom company with Latin America’s largest wireless carriers making even bigger earnings. Slim has other successful holdings including shares in Saks and New York Times among others.
The Mexican billionaire won’t have all the wealth to himself. Although he’s a widow, he has six children to share it with.
Behind him is Bill Gates of Microsoft with $56 billion. In third, Warren Buffet with $50 billion. In Fourth, Bernard Arnault with $41 billion. In Fifth, Larry Ellison with $39.5 billion.

Paul McDonald picks up a Ryan Adams tune

 

Being the alt.country guy that he is, Paul McDonald idolizes Ryan Adams. He says Adams is the kind of artist he wants to be more like. He's chosen Come Pick Me Up, from Adams' great album Heartbreaker, and recorded the studio version with Don Was. "You've just got to nail this chorus," Jimmy Iovine tells him. "It's about the intensity." Iovine thinks Paul is the kind of voice Idol has needed for a long time.

Paul's got a cool new jacket, black with red trim. Vocally, it's not so cool, though: Frankly, he sounds like Macy Gray but not as strong. And the dance he does when he hits the chorus will makes lots of people think of Taylor Hicks.
Paul's also got to do some fancy footwork with the lyrics: "Mess" me up. "Lose" all my friends. And some other line I didn't catch.
"I love the character and the rasp in your voice," says Steven, but he warns him to watch the pitch next time.
"You're just so unique, there's just something about you," Jennifer says. She noticed that the audience dug him and hopes the TV viewers get him.
"What I love about you is ... the character of who you are," says Randy, who makes sure people know that he knows who Ryan Adams is, dropping the name of Adams' old band, Whiskeytown.
In other words, they want to like him so much they can't admit to themselves that it was awful.
Ryan asks Paul about his dance. "You have to practice really hard to do it," Paul says, then tries to get Ryan to join him.

Dustin Zito Photos: Real World Las Vegas 2011 Star Gay Porn Past

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'The Real World Las Vegas' Season 25 Premiere Recap

 

'The Real World' has chosen to mark its 25th season in the sinningest of cities -- Las Vegas.

Nearly a decade after the first go-round in Sin City, though, the latest 'Real World' installment doesn't really seem all that scandalous.

Sure, the cast is young, tan, beautiful, reality-TV savvy and, most of all, drunk. But in a post-'Jersey Shore' world, is that enough anymore?

The cast is predictably diverse, chock full of small-town girls, country bumpkins and street-smart PYTs. Honestly, this first episode seems specifically designed to air clips of the castmates making bold statements like "I will not go to a strip club" and " I don't want to hook up with my roommates" simply to foreshadow the fact that those things will inevitably happen at some point during the season.

The house, as always, looks like the most glorious Ikea showroom ever, only with working fixtures and a puzzlingly large amount of aquariums.

First impressions-wise, the roommates don't seem terribly interesting.

  Naomi was introduced as the requisite hardened city girl, but she seems relatively sweet and quiet during this episode and in the scenes from the rest of the season. At the very least, she seems like a good ally for Nany (or, conversely, an enabler rooting for Nany to cheat on her boyfriend).

  Speaking of Nany, the drop-dead gorgeous community college student is pretty much the spitting image of Daniella Alonso, amIrite? She has a boyfriend of six years, so the logical question is how long until she cheats with Adam?

  Adam was shot and spent three years in juvy. He is a bad boy, yet insists on telling girls that he's shy and has no game while slyly admitting in the confessional that he usually has seven girlfriends at a time.

After the first roommate night out, Adam told Nany that it was the first time he picked up a girl from a bar. Coincidentally, last night was the first night I wasted three hours watching meaningless reality television instead of doing something intellectually stimulating like reading a book. Oh wait, NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS ARE EVEN REMOTELY TRUE.

  Dustin seems like the aw shucks country boy of the group, yet is hiding a secret from his roommates -- he is straight, but has done gay porn. Ronnie-style, he insisted he didn't want to date a roommate yet ended up hooking up with Heather in what appears to be a by-the-books showmance. Of course this happened.

  Heather is from a town near my hometown in South Jersey, so I can't tell if I am predisposed to love or hate her. She seems nice, so I'm going to go with "love" until further notice.

  Leroy is kind of intimidating. He has a really deep voice, and personally I find it really difficult to look into the eyes of a person with abs that chiseled. He appears to love the ladies, and the ladies appear to love him back. They at least seem pleased with the opportunity to do laundry on his stomach.

Side note: He is a trash man in real life! That is the best, most un-glamorous job ever.

  Finally, we have Michael. Michael, Michael, Michael. He's the innocent Christian of the season, who only lost his virginity a few months ago and tries to woo trashy chicks he brings back from the club with prayer. I can't decide whether he's adorable or creepily naieve. I'm leaning toward adorable, but I can't help but feel a little secondhand embarrassment watching him try to keep up with the cool kids he's rooming with.

The premiere episode antics might've been shocking at one point in time, but seeing attractive people party and bring randoms home to their sweet-ass suite is old hat by now. Plus, you really know what you're getting into when you realize that these are the types of people who wear their sunglasses at night. Also, Leroy and Adam both participated in (separate) three-way kisses. Is that still a thing? I guess only on MTV reality shows.

However, Dustin's "I want you to make mistakes so you can learn from them" speech to Michael was the most oddly convincing argument for sin that I've ever heard. Sign me up!

But, really, I already watch one show about twentysomethings hooking up in nightclubs and then hooking up later in hot tubs. Do I really need another? 'Real World Las Vegas' round two is at least better than the snooze-fest of 'DC,' but they've got to throw some sort of plot device in the mix to keep me tuning in.
 

RMU to Take on Long Island Tonight in NEC Championship

It might be spring break at Robert Morris University, but that hasn’t cooled the anticipation for tonight’s Northeast Confernce Championship game in Brookville, NY. The Colonials will take on Long Island University at 7 p.m. The winner will get a bid to the NCAA March Madness tournament.

Fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

RMU junior Justin Downs broadcasts the RMU Gameday Exclusive show on the university’s athletic department website. For fans, he said, a season’s worth of excitement has built up for tonight's game.

“Game in and game out, students are packing the stands for the basketball games,” he said. “The school might be on break, but there’s still a sense of nervousness echoing throughout the campus, hoping the team pulls out a victory.”

RMU won the past two NEC tournaments and went on to play on college basketball’s biggest stage, March Madness, in both 2009 and 2010. The team hasn’t yet cracked the winning column -- a formidable task considering it entered the tournament as the No. 14 and 15 seeds, respectively.

“It’s funny, but it almost seems to be taken for granted by the student body that the basketball team is going to win [the NEC Championship],” Downs said “There aren’t a lot of students on campus who’ve experienced anything less than an NCAA tournament game. That’s kind of surprising.”

RMU senior Beau Pappaterra, the team’s equipment manager, said recent success in the post-season only increases fans' expectations of the Colonials.

“There was definitely a bit of a drop off [in excitement] during the middle of the season, when we hit a rough patch,” he said. “There are lofty expectations when it comes to the basketball program and the team wasn’t living up to them. Now they are.”

The team went through a number of transitions this season.  Andrew Toole took over as head coach after the departure of  Mike Rice last year, and star point guard Karon Abraham sat out for a portion of the season with an MCL injury. Still, Downs said, the team managed to thrive.

“To me, the turning point was when Karon [Abraham] went down,” he said. “For whatever reason, the team started to gel together better and started to show signs of what made them successful in the past.”

For a university with about 4,000 undergraduates, the Colonials success is especially meaningful, Downs said.

“It’s exciting to see your school’s name when you’re filling out your tournament polls,” Downs said. “Especially at a small school like Robert Morris, to be in the national spotlight is something all the students take pride in, something they can tell their friends about.”

For some students, it's just fun to be a part of RMU's success, said senior Jarrod Shrupp.

“They shuttled students to the NCAA tournament game last season in Providence, and it was a blast,” Shrupp said. “The trip was long and the team lost, but the experience was something we’ll always remember. You don’t get too many opportunities like that, especially at a place like Robert Morris, so you really appreciate those moments.  I would love to do that again.”

Sara Evans Rejuvenates Her Career

 

Sara Evans is living proof that life is filled with unforeseen circumstances that can derail the best plans and intentions. Fortunately, her upbeat demeanor these days offers ample evidence that it's not impossible to overcome those obstacles and embrace the future.

Having gone through a bitter divorce that fueled the national tabloids, Evans married former University of Alabama quarterback Jay Barker in 2008 and moved from the Nashville area to Birmingham, Ala., where they reside with their blended family of seven children. Barker hosts a radio sports show in Birmingham and is a frequent contributor to ESPN.

With her personal life on stable ground, the big challenge now is relaunching her career after a self-imposed hiatus of five years. She's doing that with a hit single, the aptly-titled "A Little Bit Stronger," and a new album, Stronger. A greatest hits album came in 2007, but Stronger is her first collection of all-new music since the platinum-selling Real Fine Place arrived in 2005. She hadn't planned to go so long without releasing a new album.

"Never," she told CMT during a recent interview in Nashville. "I never thought that would be the case. I just have to say that sometimes life takes over, and you have to switch around your priorities. And I definitely did. We had a hit song on the greatest hits album, and then I married Jay. And then moving to Birmingham and changing managers, there was just a whole period of time when I had to put family first."

That realization came in October 2006 after Evans gained new fans as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. The immense popularity of the TV series only magnified the media's interest when she announced she was leaving the competition because of the breakup of her 13-year marriage to businessman-turned-politician Craig Schelske. As the weeks progressed, Evans' national profile increased even more after the media gained possession of court documents in which Evans and Schelske made a series of personal allegations against one another.

Despite the adverse publicity surrounding the divorce, Evans says she has no regrets about being a contestant on the TV series.

"Dancing With the Stars helped my career a ton," she said. "I had millions and millions of people that knew about me that didn't know about me before. It made me a household name. Everybody knew. Not that any of the drama that happened on there was good, but because that happened during that time, everybody knows who I am now. Being on a show that has so many viewers was just so awesome for country music, in general."

When it came time to begin work on her new album, Evans enlisted the services of Nathan Chapman to help her produce four tracks.

"I loved the success he was having with Taylor Swift," she said. "I thought that music just sounded very fresh. ... He came to Birmingham. I went to lunch with him. We instantly clicked, and we had this great chemistry. He started coming down with my brother [Matt Evans, a songwriter and associate producer of several tracks on Stronger], and we began writing."

When time constraints prevented Chapman from co-producing the entire album, Evans turned to veteran producer Tony Brown to fill in the gaps.

"Tony used to call me in to sing harmony with Vince [Gill] quite a bit," she said. "I've known him forever, but he was always contractually obligated elsewhere. In the middle of making this album, I changed management, so everything shut down for a good bit -- six months or so -- and Nathan had to go on to his other projects that he was committed to. He just couldn't work it out in his schedule to finish the record. We both hated that. But at the same time, I knew Tony Brown would be perfect."

One of the tracks, "Wildfire," was produced by Marti Frederiksen. Best known for his work with Aerosmith, he co-wrote Carrie Underwood's "Undo It" and "Mama's Song" and has also worked with Sheryl Crow and Faith Hill. He co-wrote "Wildfire" in Los Angeles with Evans, her brother and former American Idol judge Kara DioGuardi.

"I asked them to take it back and demo it," Evans said. "He took it back in his studio and played every instrument on the demo and sent it back to us. It was Kara's voice. I said, 'I love this demo so much, I don't think we need to change a thing.' So I took her voice off and put mine on ... and called it a day."

One of the most chilling songs on the album is "What That Drink Cost Me," a statement about the far-reaching effects of alcoholism, written by Chapman, Evans and her brother.

"That song was just a gift from God," she said. "There was no personal experience. It was just me and Matt and Nathan trying to think of something to write about. I think our inspiration was 'He Stopped Loving Her Today.' We just decided to write a sad country song about drinking, and that's what came out. ... My manager thinks that song could be a total game-changer for my career. It would have to be released at the right time."

Although country radio is often reluctant to play singles that deal with such serious subjects, she says her record label, RCA, isn't steering clear of the song.

"They're not opposed to it being a single," she said. "It all depends on where I am. We need two or three big hits -- and then that."

To score those two or three big hits from the new album, Evans acknowledges she's having to work a lot harder because of her time away from the spotlight.

"I've worked my ass off," she said. "I've been working since Sept. 1, promoting this single and doing every single thing that's asked of me by my label, by the radio stations. I've done every free show, every guitar pull. And I didn't take that lightly. I knew it was what I would have to do."

Not that she's complaining.

"It's been humbling for me," she said. "But anything that's worth having is worth working for. I'm a very hard worker. I grew up on a farm. I know the value of hard work. There have been moments from Sept. 1 until now where I've been like, 'I cannot go another day. I'm exhausted.' My limit is three days away from my kids. I won't go more than three days away from them. But I've told myself, 'This is just for a time. It's just me getting back. I won't have to do this for every single.' And I'm doing it for my family, for our future, so that's a good feeling."

Asked about the greatest life lesson she's learned during the past few years, Evans said, "You know, the only thing that matters is what is really going on -- not what the perception is, not what the rumor is but what is really going on. People are always gonna talk, and they're always gonna speculate, and they're always gonna gossip. And that happens whether you're a celebrity or not.

"The only thing that matters is the truth. If somebody has a perception of me that's false, I cannot do anything about that. I mean, I want to be a good example, and I want people to know where I stand and all that, but I can't make everybody like me. So all that matters is what's the truth behind our walls and with our family -- with me and Jay and the kids."