Tonight on “Dancing With the Stars” — Cher is in the audience! Tom Bergeron and Brooke Burke Charvet don’t say that, though it must true because Cher tweeted last week that she would be on the show if her son, Chaz Bono, didn’t get eliminated. Chaz is still here and even though we don’t know much about Cher, we don’t think she would lie about something like that. Read full article > >

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‘Dancing With the Stars’: Songs from the movies, and a visit from Cher

Speaking at an event hosted by a prominent gay advocacy group, President Obama on Saturday night chastised the his GOP presidential rivals for failing to speak up when some members of the audience at a debate last month booed a gay soldier. Read full article > >

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Obama blasts GOP candidates for failing to defend gay soldier

Said Aghil Baaghil, a brand marketing strategy consultant, launched his book tour, The Power of Belonging in the United States. The Power of Belonging is about the union between the brand and the audience. Most companies fail to understand the consumers so the book explains strategically how to build brands by industry, categories and how products should fulfill the brand desire.

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Marketing Guru, Said Aghil Baaghil, Launches his Global Book Tour

NEW YORK — Singer Demi Lovato thanked her fans at a concert for supporting her after she entered rehab last year and encouraged young girls to seek help if they are dealing with similar problems. “A year ago today … I was not in a good place,” the 19-year-old said at her concert Saturday night. “I needed help and I want anybody in this audience to know that if you’re struggling with one of the issues that I dealt with or a different issue, that you can get help, that you can recover and it’s possible if you just tell someone.” Read full article > >

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Demi Lovato, who entered rehab last year, encourages young girls with problems to seek help

What would a civil rights meeting have been without the audience singing “We Shall Overcome.” Read full article > >

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Music of the Movement: We Shall Overcome

VIRGINIA BEACH — Jamie Radtke may not yet be well-known to most Virginians, but she was in her element at one event last week. “I’m especially glad to be in a roomful of terrorists ,” Radtke said at a chapter meeting of the Hampton Roads Tea Party, drawing knowing laughter. “And hobbits!” yelled an audience member, a reference to the Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) complaining about the demands of the “tea party hobbits.” Later, Radtke sarcastically told the audience: “You, single-handedly, caused the ‘tea party downgrade.’ ” Read full article > >

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Tea-party candidate Radtke tries to gain traction in Senate race

Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” begins with a couple of tribunes — Roman politicos — heckling the rabble. That opening thrusts the audience headlong into a debate it doesn’t know anything about. So here’s how “Julius Caesar” will begin in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production that starts this week with the Scene 2 soothsayer warning that Caesar is in danger (“Beware the Ides”), and with a processional demonstrating that Caesar is a hit with the public. Only then will the tribunes utter the tragedy’s opening lines. Read full article > >

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For modern Shakespeare, directors’ adaptations may be kindest cuts of all

30 Rock star and comedian Tracy Morgan apologized Friday for crossing the line with a string of homophobic jokes in a June 3 stand-up show in Nashville that incensed more than a few people in the audience. Prompting Morgan’s rant to go viral, an…

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Tracy Morgan: Sorry for Anti-Gay Standup

Some of “Purge” is so disturbing that when Finnish playwright and novelist Sofi Oksanen read from it at the PEN festival in New York last year, she chose a love scene rather than risk a sleepless night for her audience. The play, and the novel that came a year later, are set during the occupations of Estonia by Soviets, Nazis and again Soviets, the last ending with the fall of communism in 1991. The operatic plotline most fundamentally concerns sisters Aliide and Ingel, and Ingel’s 7-year-old daughter, Linda, who endured sexual terror at the hands of rural communist thugs in a town hall basement and was left mute with shock. The story begins years later, when Linda’s daughter Zara, a sex-trafficking victim from Russia, shows up unexpectedly at Aliide’s rundown farmhouse in backwoods Estonia. The play unfolds through flashbacks. Read full article > >

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Scena Theatre imports ‘Purge’ by the ‘Gothic Finn,’ Sofi Oksanen

Lady Gaga kept the audience waiting for 15 minutes at Radio 1′s Big Weekend in Carlisle

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VIDEO: Gaga keeps fans waiting … and waiting

INDIANAPOLIS — If the members of the Indiana Republican Party had their way, Mitch Daniels would have announced his presidential bid Thursday night. When the state’s governor got on stage, most of the audience stood up and waved signs that said “Run Mitch Run.” He spoke of the 2012 speculation, but only to tamp it down — and string it along at the same time. “No great announcements or pronouncements, though some insisted on expecting some,” Daniels said. “I’m not saying I won’t do it,” he added before saying, as he has before, that he really wanted to retire from the public eye. Read full article > >

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Mitch Daniels’s wife, Cheri, is in the spotlight

INDIANAPOLIS — If the members of the Indiana Republican Party had their way, Mitch Daniels would have announced his presidential bid Thursday night. When the state’s governor got on stage, most of the audience stood up and waved signs that said “Run Mitch Run.” He spoke of the 2012 speculation, but only to tamp it down — and string it along at the same time. “No great announcements or pronouncements, though some insisted on expecting some,” Daniels said. “I’m not saying I won’t do it,” he added before saying, as he has before, that he really wanted to retire from the public eye. Read full article > >

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Mitch Daniels’s wife, Cheri, is in the spotlight

Whether a town hall meeting will degenerate into a shouting match depends on the makeup of the audience. Neither side leaves that to chance.

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When Meeting a Congressman, Leave Nothing to Chance

World-changing creativity from our five favorite speakers at South Africa’s premier design event A conference promising “a better world through creativity,” South Africa’s Design Indaba summit fills three days with blue-sky thinking on design as an agent of change. The well-organized event, followed by a thriving design expo , this year also featured a performance by the Watoto Children’s Choir , celebrating the 80th birthday of design mainstay Massimo Vignelli , who sagely reminded the crowd, “If you do good work, you get good work in return.” While Vignelli’s wisdom neatly sums it up, the conference explored more deeply how design improves life, that questions lead to better design, the ways that passion yields success, and collaboration’s potential to open up new ideas and approaches. While all the speakers intelligently presented their views on creativity, below are the five who made the overall biggest impact. Maarten Baas Following a retrospective speech by design impresario Alberto Alessi and closing out day two of the conference, award-winning young designer Maarten Baas ‘ passionate take on design left the audience many bon mots to consider—”the most beautiful things in life are unexplainable (like love).” Baas started his talk with images of trees in nature, showing the intrinsic elegance of the world. But because our “brains take over common sense,” we end up with “Superman design,” the shiny and overly-styled work that’s dominated recent years. Baas’ highly-regarded Clay Furniture series (above)—each piece sculpted by hand and with tables that can have five legs—embodies this modern-earthy approach. His aesthetic, like many contemporary designers, fuels those pundits determined to define him as either a fine artist or a designer, a conundrum he compares to a tomato. “Is it a fruit or a vegetable?” Baas asks, then answering his own question, explains it is both. Though bewildered by the categorizations, he understands the media’s fascination with his hybrid process. After debuting his Smoke collection (above) he felt people wondered “who is this guy from Holland with his blow torch?” Explaining the paradoxical leap his work requires, Baas commented on his limited edition series for Established & Sons, stating “the sales were even more limited than the edition.” Karin Fong Concerned with “making transitions and connections,” Karin Fong designs the “in between space” that bridges reality and fantasy in her film work. As one of the founding members of Imaginary Forces , Fong specializes in creating title sequences for movies and television. The pragmatic creative sees each project as a puzzle, where she must combine the legal information (the credits) with an imaginative opening sequence to ease the audience into the story. “Dead Man on Campus” (above)—which Fong says was a challenge in and of itself as a comedy about suicide—cleverly substituted information on a college exam with the film’s credits. Fong explains that when creating these compact stories within a larger picture she “knows it’s right when it can’t go in front of any other story or production.” For the HBO show “Boardwalk Empire,” Fong said their first thought was to make an opening concerned with prohibition and the time period during in which the narrative takes place. Realizing that the focus of the series was the character Nucky—no matter who dies or what changes during the show, he always comes back—they redesigned what has become a widely-lauded introduction around him. Hat-Trick For a design duo that “likes to keep busy” London-based Hat-Trick seems to have an immense amount of fun doing it. Founded ten years ago by Jim Sutherland and Gareth Howat, Hat-Trick works with a wide range of clients, creating projects of various scale—from postage stamps to campaigns. Aptly named Hat-Trick, the small firm applies a clever sensibility, at once playful and diligent, to their work. When commissioned by U.K. commercial property developer Land Securities to create a temporary billboard at residential building Piccadilly Lights, Hat-Trick designed a giant switch that people could physically turn on and off with copy reading “Piccadilly Lights: owned, managed and illuminated by Land Securities.” An underlying message from their presentation is they don’t see their craft as work, instead they treat each endeavor as an exciting challenge to flex their creative muscle. For instance, on a recent holiday Sutherland decided he “needed more practice with typography” and gave his hand at designing a deck of playing cards. The resulting set not only cleverly toys with words and images, but reflects the subtle humor of their designs. Robert Wong Touching on Baas’ down-to-earth approach, Google Labs ‘ creative director Robert Wong started his talk with the fact that he is the exact opposite, even offering an equation for artistic success. S! + Em = Cr means “surprise plus empathy equals creativity.” From “don’t be evil” to “do epic shit!”, Wong’s motivational-speaker pitch kept it moving, sprinkling bits of valuable advice among personal anecdotes. Life-affirming statements like, “the best search results don’t really show up on web pages, they show up in people’s lives,” lent his talk an optimism that the former accountant balanced with practical tactics. One of the key factors they keep in mind at Google, he explained, is knowing “our products are only as good as our browser.” Tapping into the conference’s theme, Wong posited that while no one really knows what a “better world” looks like, if people galvanize their talents we are sure to see a more innovative future. Michael Wolff Dressed in bright blue Crocs, veteran designer and consultant Michael Wolff opened up the conference with a review of his 46 years in the business. Unsurprisingly, he had an endless flow of scholarly soundbites to compliment his works, which typically include a witty animal in the design. Wolff himself explains he would be a seagull, flying high, having fun and soaring around to scoop up his next meal. The metaphor led to his first bit of advice, “humor is an important part of building relationships.” Co-founder of the now-massive brand strategy firm Wolff Olins , Wolff is no stranger to creative thinking. His process is to detach the brain from what it already understands—like an engine pulling apart from the train—and begin in the “I don’t know position.” He also warned the audience about hanging on to an idea, saying “Having an idea is a block to having more. If you have an idea, just throw it away. You think you’ll never have another one but you will.” Wolff explains “sometimes you just have to leave things alone.” Tasked by Lyle’s Golden Syrup to redesign their packaging, Wolff didn’t change a thing. For Shell, he simply bumped up the colors and removed the name—an act that speaks volumes about progress and how our relentless pursuit of it might best play out in coming years.

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Design Indaba 2011: The Conference

There’s nothing like sitting backstage, anxiously waiting for this year’s winners—especially when none disappointed when it came to juicy answers. While many have been complaining that the Oscars were a complete bore, those of us backstage don’t share that sentiment because we got lots of controversial, interesting tidbits from the winners. We start with the lovely Melissa Leo, who woke up the audience when she dropped a colorful f-bomb, crowning herself as the first Oscar winner to use the term during a speech. She entered the room with a huge smile and was quick to hit the mic with an apology. “I apologize…I really don’t mean to offend, and [that was] probably a very inappropriate place to use that particular word.” In case you missed the speech… Read More Read Comments

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The Oscars Backstage: The Drama You Didn’t Hear About