Phil Spector attempts to claim a shooting death was a suicide

Music producer Phil Spector

during a court appearance in Los Angeles.

Legendary music producer Phil Spector -- the architect of the Sixties' "Wall Of Sound" on such singles as the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" is currently free on $1 million dollars bail for shooting and killing actress Lana Clarkson wherein there is also a wrongful death civil suit filed by Lana's mother.

Court papers reveal that Spector's defense attorneys are currently arguing that Spector was suffering "withdrawal symptoms" from prescription drugs when he told police he had shot and killed a woman at his mansion in 2003, that in fact she had committed suicide. Superior Court Judge Larry P. Fidler ruled in May 2005 that he would allow testimony from 4 women who said Spector had threatened them with guns. Spector's trial begins in January, 2006.

Lana Clarkson
(Born 4-5-62 | Died 2-3-03)

Lana Clarkson’s early television appearances read like a pop culture checklist: “CHiPs,” “Happy Days,” “The Love Boat,” ”Hill Street Blues,” “Laverne and Shirley,” and “Fantasy Island.” Lana had a recurring part on “Fantasy Island” as one of the girls that placed leis over the heads of each show's featured guests. Her later work on television included guest spots on “Who's the Boss,” “Night Court,” “Wings,” “Knight Rider,” “The Jefferson's,” “Three's Company,” “The A-Team,” “Riptide,” “Silk Stockings,” “Black Scorpion,” and many other popular shows. Lana also found success working on television commercials, with a client list that included Mercedes Benz, Nike, Anheiser Busch, Playtex Bras, KMART, and Mattel.

While the cat is away the mice will mess around with your money

Leonard Cohen in September of 2004 to mark his 70th birthday,
released the above album, "Dear Heather"
(Part of the album may be heard on his site)

Leonard Cohen, best known for songs such as Bird on a Wire and Suzanne, filed another lawsuit Tuesday, October 11, 2005 against his former business manager of 17 years Kelley Lynch alleging she now refuses to return some of his personal items. The singer sued Lynch on August 15, 2005 for defrauding him of at least $5 million. The complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks damages for alleged breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, common law fraud, professional negligence and other claims against Kelley Lynch. Tax lawyer Richard Westin was also named as a defendant for allegedly mismanaging Cohen's retirement funds.

The fraud allegedly started while Cohen was taking time away from his career to focus on his spiritual life at the Mount Baldy Zen Center in Los Angeles.
While Cohen was not recording or touring, Lynch allegedly started to pay herself a greater portion of the artist's royalties. She also allegedly introduced Cohen to Westin, who is accused of helping Lynch to orchestrate the sale of Cohen's music publishing and artist royalties.

"Cohen believed that he had hired Westin and [his firm] to protect his retirement savings, but, in fact, they burdened the sale with transactions costs in excess of $4 million and they devised unnecessarily complex corporate structures that allowed Lynch to steal over $5 million for her own benefit without Cohen's knowledge or consent," the suit states.

I can't believe Olivia Newton-John is 57....

Olivia Newton John was born in Cambridge, England in 1948, the youngest child of a Professor and her German born mother Irene who was the daughter of 1954 Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Born. Olivia definitely comes from a family providing her with both beauty and brains!

Olivia Newton-John appeared opposite John Travolta in the 1978 movie Grease. She is best known for songs such as I Honestly Love You and Physical. She released a 2-disc dvd collection of her music-video hits last week and a new album, Stronger Than Before is due to debut in Hallmark Gold Crown stores. A portion of the album sales will benefit research for breast cancer, which Newton-John overcame following her own diagnosis in 1992. Her concert tour in the US was launched in October.

However, her 48 year old camera-man "boyfriend" Patrick Kim McDermott continues to be missing. McDermott left on what was to be an overnight fishing trip on June 30, 2005 from Southern California's San Pedro harbor but 5 days later was a no-show at a family event. His backpack being found on the fishing boat and his car found in a parking lot near the harbor. A Missing-Persons report was filled July 11, 2005.

The US Coast Guard and LA Police Dept both issued press releases in early August 2005 asking for the public's help in finding the Van Nuys, California resident. But neither Press Releases mentioned Olivia Newton-John's name and the matter received little not until the UK's News of the World reported last weekend that the "missing McDermott" was "Olivia Newton-John's McDermott".

Making her first public comments since Mr McDermott, 48, failed to return from an overnight fishing trip on the charter boat off California, she told breakfast television in the US: "Patrick has a young son, so we still hold out hope he will come back."

Although there have been reports that their relationship had broken down before his disappearance, the singer said: "I love him very much. As you can imagine, it's an incredibly difficult thing to go through. It's very hard to talk about this, as it's a very painful topic and it's still an investigation."

(AP Photo/CNN, Rose M. Prouser)
(October 08, 2005)

Roseanne Barr, left, listens as John Goodman makes a point during CNN's "Larry King Live" show in Los Angeles on Friday. Cast members from their one-time sitcom "Roseanne" reunited on the air for the first time since the series ended in 1994 to discuss the show and the DVD release of its first season.

Esquire choses Jessica Biel 'sexiest woman'

Jessica Biel, 'Esquire's Sexiest Woman"

A 14 year old Boulder, Colorado girl landed and worked in a 5 year role as Mary Camden, the innocent preacher's daughter on WB's 7th Heaven between 1999-2001. However, the innocent little preacher's daughter was posing topless for the March 2000 issue of Gear Magazine. "Fresh" is a word now used by Esquire magazine to describe Jessica Biel and a word that doesn't seem appropriate.

"It seemed like it would be great to try to come up with somebody who was on everyone's radar screen, but who was also fresh," said Esquire editor David Granger.

Jessica Biel plays a supporting role in the upcoming "Elizabethtown" and also appeared in a number of movies including The Rules of Attraction, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Cellular, and Blade: Trinity.

The Platte River, a natural prairie river

The historic Platte River of the Oregon and Mormon Trail fame
isn’t living up to its description as “A mile wide and an inch deep.”

The only evidence of surface water in the Platte River

near Grand Island, Nebraska are a few very small pools of water.

Looking Southwest from the Nebraska Highway 34 bridge, near Grand Island, Nebraska

The Platte River is one of the most significant river systems in the watershed of the Missouri as it drains a large portion of the central Great Plains in Nebraska and the eastern Rocky Mountains in Colorado and Wyoming. The central Platte river valley surrounding Grand Island, Nebraska is a crucial stopover for migratory water birds, such as the Sandhill Crane and the endangered Whooping Crane.

The Platte River Assessments for Endangered and Threatened Species further states that deterioration and loss of habitat in the central Platte is contributing to the continuing drop in numbers of piping plovers and interior least terns. Almost no piping plovers live along the central Platte anymore.. Although the population of interior least terns on the central Platte River continues to decline, the birds are nesting on the lower Platte River.

On the eastern side of the state, the Platte picks up water from the Loup and Elkhorn rivers. But even so, a dry Platte in Grand Island means there's less water available downstream for municipal well fields, such as Lincoln's. Grand Island has a well field on an island in the Platte. When the river goes dry, Bishop said, the well field relies on groundwater storage, which is not a problem for the excellent Grand Island field. But the greater, long-term concern is that nitrates in groundwater north of the river will migrate toward the well field, he said. "There's no immediate or even short-term danger there," Bishop said. But "it creates a situation that you need to keep your eye on long term." Siekman, the extension agent for Merrick County, said the Platte is important because it recharges the groundwater supplies. Irrigators in his county use groundwater and rely on the Platte to replace it. A dry Platte today is not a problem, he said, "provided we get the recharge in the winter and spring." It's not a major problem for fish and wildlife today either, said Mark Czaplewski, staff biologist with the Central Platte Natural Resources District. "Even though a dry Platte is hard on some species ... this is a prairie river," he said. "Most of the fish just move downstream and come back. But fish kills do occur. "They are living in a pretty tough environment here on the Great Plains," Czaplewski said, "and have adapted to that over thousands of years." The long-term effect on fish and wildlife habitat could be significant, said Sharon Whitmore, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. But scientists just know yet what those effects might be, she said. The drought symptomized by the dry Platte is cyclical, said climatologist Dutcher, and it won't change overnight. "It took four or five years to get to this point," he said. And it will probably take several years of above-normal snowmelt in Colorado and Wyoming and rain for water supplies to return to normal, he said. Or, at least, what is now normal for a man-managed river system.

Tyra Banks Confronts porn star Tyra Banxxx

Tyra Banks

Thursday, October 6th on the Tyra Banks Show:

The woman who has been making TYRA BANKS' life a misery will come face-to-face with the supermodel on her TV chat show.

Adult film star TYRA BANXXX stunned the model/TV star when she appeared on the front cover of porn industry magazine Xtreme, dressed up to look like the real Tyra. .

She says, "For a second I was like, 'Did they put my head on someone else's body?' I thought that it really did look like me. "The first thing that went through my head... It wasn't anger, it was more of a curiosity, and an empathy like, 'Where does this girl come from... And what led her to this?'" Banxxx has agreed to retire her name, insisting she never intended to offend her heroine. She tells the real Tyra, "Growing up, everyone always said I should be a model and everyone said I looked like you... You're an inspiration to me."

Tyra Banxxx
By way of thanks for letting the name go without legal action, Banks has offered to help her doppelganger escape the adult film world and find employment in another field.

Tyra confronts adult film star Tyra Banxxx about using her name, and offers to help the young woman change her life.