New Gnarl's Barkley "Going On" Video

Shia Labeouf On Cover Of "GQ" Magazine (June 08')

He's so cute. =]



THE (HOT-DOG-VENDING, KNIFE-FIGHTING, BREAK-DANCING, SPIELBERG-WOOING) ADVENTURES OF YOUNG SHIA LABEOUF

Shia LaBeouf, who in a couple of huge weekends last year transformed from a likably quick-witted teen actor best known for his work on the Disney Channel into a likably quick-witted 21-year-old action hero and franchise star, jumps into the back of his new Ford F-150 and reaches for his rifle. This isn’t a movie set. It has taken us exactly thirty-six minutes to get from first hello to here, a gun-club parking lot thirty miles north of Los Angeles, and that’s a real shotgun he’s hefting. It seems like a good idea, for many reasons, to watch his every move. Which is how I spot the rest of the equipment scattered around his flatbed.

“Dude, why do you have five toilet seats?”

LaBeouf sets down his gun and launches into one of his trademark bursts of high-metabolic enthusiasm: “Me and my friends, as an art project, we decided, you know: What canvas has not been really, like, messed with? So we started this toilet-seat collection.”

Apparently, while other twentysomething Hollywood types busy themselves with checking in to and out of rehab, LaBeouf and his entourage—the same gang of friends he’s had since his boyhood in Echo Park, a largely working-class Latino neighborhood that’s home to Dodger Stadium—spend their weekends whittling toilet seats and spray-painting them with sayings like "pooperazzi" and "high end for your rear end."

Sport shooting hadn’t been my idea, nor was it some studio scheme to show the tough side of the boy in the blockbuster. LaBeouf insisted on it: He’s taken up the pursuit recently, and as we wait for a ride from the parking lot up to the range, he explains the appeal. “Believe it or not, it’s a good date,” he says. “I bring girls up here sometimes; it’s kind of—it’s very invigorating for them.”

LaBeouf owns just one gun, but he practically lusts over the collection owned by his Hollywood—and sport-shooting—mentor, Steven Spielberg. “He has the most ridiculous collection,” LaBeouf says. “He’s got a gun for every movie he’s made. He buys old Perazzi guns, Italian—beautiful, beautiful guns—and gets them engraved. It takes like a year. He’s got the Jaws gun; he’s got E.T. He let me shoot with the Jurassic Park gun. He just got his Saving Private Ryan back from the engraver’s.”

It couldn’t have been easy for Spielberg to hand over a $60,000 collector’s-edition Perazzi—the same make Vice President Cheney was using when he mistook a friend’s face for a quail—to a young actor. But then again, why not? The man who invented blockbusters has been handing him everything else lately. It started two years ago, when the director D. J. Caruso sent LaBeouf’s Disturbia audition tape over to DreamWorks to get Spielberg’s approval to cast him. Spielberg immediately okayed LaBeouf for the film—but he must have also seen something more, because LaBeouf was quickly signed up to play the lead in Transformers and this month’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It was a huge gamble on a relative unknown, but Spielberg wasn’t worried. “When I first saw Shia, I was amazed at how someone so young could be so unselfconscious,” he says. “In a sense, it’s not always what an actor says that impresses me. It’s how they listen. He seems closer to audiences in his ability to be himself.”

Over the course of their collaborations (which continue this fall with Caruso’s Eagle Eye and next summer’s Transformers 2), Spielberg and LaBeouf have grown close.

“One time Steven told me to come to his house ready to go skeet shooting,” says LaBeouf. “I get there and stick my head in to ask if he’s ready—and this is classic Spielberg—he says, ‘Nope, Shia. I’m trapped!’ ” LaBeouf then starts playing both parts—concerned protégé and faraway mentor:

“You’re trapped? Steven, what are you talking about?”

“I’m trapped back here. Follow my voice.”

“Where are you?”

“Over here… Here… Here!”

LaBeouf kept following the calls until he got to the director’s office. And there was the master himself: shoes off, socks on, dressed in shooting gear, but sitting behind a computer, stuck on the fifteenth level of a first-person shooter called BioShock.

“This is like months to get to this level, and he can’t get past this one little mysterious spider god, and he’s losing his mind. He’s like, ‘I can’t do it, Shia! I can’t do it.’ ”

LaBeouf, who got into acting at age 12 partly because he wanted to make enough money to buy himself a Sega Genesis, had found himself a soul mate.

And Spielberg, for his part, had clearly settled on a new favorite on-screen avatar.

*****

ever since his first starring role, as Stanley Yelnats in the 2003 sleeper hit Holes, directors have been calling LaBeouf the Next Tom Hanks. Part of this is standard Hollywood hype—that’s what you say when your star is more funny than handsome. But there is something to the comparison: Both actors win over audiences not through Shakespearean talent or leading-man looks but with a kind of appealing smart-assness—a mix of wit and ease and confidence that may be even more important to big box-office results than good looks or character acting. Caruso says the first time he saw LaBeouf read, he felt like he was watching a young John Cusack. “He wasn’t attractive,” he says. “But the more time you spent with him, he became attractive. It happens with his wit, intuition, and timing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, everything he does just happens naturally.”

LaBeouf says that his role models are the “stand and deliver” types, guys like Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, who don’t feel the need to “change it up every time or come up with the mannerism that makes each character different. You just feel the performance, and you care immensely, because it’s coming from an honest place.” He can be very modest about his looks and talent, but it’s clear he has a canny sense of his place in the business. “The [Ryan] Goslings of the world are incredible to watch,” he says. “But they make character pieces. It’s not that I’m not interested in making those, it’s just that I really enjoy watching movies like the ones I’m making, where there’s a lot happening—big-ensemble, orchestral types of movies and not just a solo act.”

Part of this easygoing showmanship comes from LaBeouf’s teenage years in Echo Park, where despite being nearly the only white kid for miles, he blended in. He picked up freestyle rapping. He was, he says, “a major dozens player” at a mostly black school. Just so he could hang out with his friends, he learned how to breakdance. “It was sort of your greeting card,” he says. “Like, yeah, I’m white, but I have soul.”

The rest derives from what you might call family tradition: Shia’s forebears include a long line of counterculture roughnecks and artistes manqués. His maternal grandfather—from whom Shia takes his name—was a comedian and Mafia barber on New York’s Lower East Side, and his dad’s parents were a Cajun Green Beret who drank himself to death and a beatnik lesbian who hung out with Ginsberg. This star-crossed tradition continued with his parents: Mom, a Jewish Earth Mama who sold handmade jewelry at local fairs; Dad, a Willie Nelson look-alike who was also a Vietnam vet, convicted felon, and commedia dell’arte clown. Pop was the sort who grew pot along the Santa Monica Freeway and thought of karate as a great way to meet the ladies.

Shia proved to be exactly the sort of natural-born hustler that this oddball family needed. While he was still a toddler, the LaBeoufs started something called the Snow Cone Family Circus, whose business plan was based on the notion that their Latin neighbors in Echo Park really dug hot dogs and clowns. All three LaBeoufs would dress in greasepaint and motley and run around the park improvising slapstick routines, trying to get some of the riches of the late Reagan era to trickle down their way.

When LaBeouf was 9 or so, his father disappeared for a few years, an interlude during which Shia fashioned an open-mike stand-up act at local nightclubs, swearing and talking about his first erection. His mom also enrolled him in the Big Brother program, and he got paired with a stuntman, who took him to film sets. “I didn’t know anything about being humble then,” he says. “I told the stunt guys, ‘I’m going to be a big star.’ And they all laughed at me.” At 11 he picked an agent’s phone number out of the Yellow Pages and told her all about the phenomenal Shia LaBeouf. (“He’s big in England.”) The woman, Teresa Dahlquist (his agent to this day), knew it was bullshit but signed him up anyway: She paid for his rent and his head shots and eventually landed him on the Disney Channel for a show called Even Stevens.

As a working minor, Shia required adult supervision on-set; he hired his father (who had reappeared), and the two commuted back and forth to the lot on a Harley. “Disney wouldn’t pay for my room and board, so me and my pop stayed in this $60-a-night hotel, called the Motel Vista, for three years,” LaBeouf says. The setup was, in part, a scheme to help his father stay clean. They went to his AA meetings together, played cards, and slept in the same room. “That’s where me and my dad became best friends,” he says. LaBeouf pitched this unusual arrangement to Disney, who bought the rights to the story, but the project (Rent-A-Dad) has never moved out of development—perhaps because the material may not be best suited to the family-oriented studio. “Wild shit happens in a motel when you live there,” he says. “I remember my dad would get in fights with a pimp who had his prostitute next door. And he was trying to taser the guy because he wouldn’t pay one of his prostitutes. My dad was a hothead back then, a biker guy.”

Despite (or because of) all the hardships of his boyhood and his parents’ divorce, today LaBeouf is incredibly tight with his mother and father. His dad still bunks with him during the winters (he summers in a tepee in Montana); he bought his mom a house a ten-minute drive from his own. “They don’t work,” he says. “I take care of them, and they get to create art for the rest of their days.” And ultimately he’s grateful, crediting his casual intimacy with the camera to his sometimes rocky upbringing: “It always felt safer working. I never get in trouble. Like, from the early days, when my parents were selling hot dogs: Once we were in clown makeup, they couldn’t fight. Every time that makeup would come on, you knew that you were going to have a good time, because they had to sell these hot dogs, and nobody wants to buy a hot dog from the fighting clowns.”

*****

somewhere between the first and the second shooting stations, LaBeouf interrupts himself to mention, wistfully, how many of his favorite actors maintain an air of mystery.

“So what parts of your life are you keeping to yourself?” I ask, playing along. “Usually you seem so, you know, uncensored.”

He thinks for a minute and then looks up with a eureka! grin. “I used to shit on myself until I was 12 years old. I didn’t stop until I got a job.”

“Are you serious?”

“I promise you. We could call my mother right now. You got your cell phone?”

LaBeouf puts her on speaker:

“Hello, Ma?

“Yes, honey?”

“Hey, Ma, you’ll never believe what I’m talking about right now.”

“Where are you at?”

“Well, I’m at the range, but I’m talking to Kevin, and we were deciding how to be the most uncensored. Like, what’s the one thing I never told nobody? And I was telling him how I used to shit on myself. You remember that, Ma?”

“You shared that secret, huh?”

“Tell him what I did with the boxers, Ma.”

“Well, I don’t know. The times you did it, Shia, you thought you were going to get away with it. But you’d always get busted. The boxers would fall down on my head from the towel rack, or I’d find them under the bed.”

“Ma, Ma, tell him about the karate class at the YMCA.”

“Oh yeah. Karate class was very sweet, because you were all strong in your karate suit, and then all of a sudden a little brown ball would fall out of your clothes on the floor.”

“Ma, Ma, you remember when I was doing those kicking exercises in the gi [karate uniform]? You remember what happened with the kick that I did? My last kick in karate class?”

“What? The piece that flew?”

“Yeah, the piece that flew and hit the wall. Remember that piece?”

“You guys have a good day.”

“I love you. Bye, Ma.”

*****

Labeouf has filled out lately. The skinny mop-top teenager who appeared in last summer’s hits is gone; this summer, with his fanny pack full of shotgun shells and his chin full of truck-stop scruff, he looks like the new guy the contractor sent in to rough up some drywall. When LaBeouf shoulders his shotgun, it’s impossible not to notice a badass knot of forearm muscles—the kind you don’t pick up at the gym. “Well, I’m like fifteen, twenty pounds lighter than I was doing Indy 4,” he says when I ask about his new bulk. “I’ve never worked so hard for anything in my life, prepwise. I did four months of sword fighting and bike training. And I spent insane amounts of time on the switchblade.”

Everyone involved with the production of Indy 4 is contractually obliged to maintain a press blackout regarding the movie’s plot points, but ever since he was cast, rumors have persisted that LaBeouf’s character, Mutt Williams, is the long-lost son of Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen’s character in Raiders of the Lost Ark). When I ask LaBeouf about the nature of the relationship between his character—who looks like a classic greaser in the trailer, complete with the white T-shirt and black leather coat—and Indy, all he says is that it’s very Red River, which is a rather subtle hint. In that movie, the young Montgomery Clift plays a character named Matt who, at the end of a difficult cattle drive, comes to blows with his adoptive father, played by John Wayne.

After casting, Spielberg gave LaBeouf a handful of DVDs—Red River and other troubled-youth classics such as Blackboard Jungle, The Wild One, and Rebel Without a Cause—and told him, simply, “Go find Mutt.” The script mentioned a switchblade; LaBeouf showed up flipping the thing like a street tough. “It was just a prop,” he says. “But the more I played with it, the better I got and the more it would wind up in the movie.” He did the whole Transformers press tour with a switchblade in his pocket. “It was like my Tetris. I remember walking into the Letterman show with my switchblade in my pocket. So the security guy with the wand says, ‘What do you got in there?’ And I pull out my switchblade and say, ‘I’m doing a movie right now. I’m practicing.’ And the guy says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ So I did Letterman with a switchblade in my pocket. In case he started getting on me, I’d have something to say.”

On LaBeouf’s first day on the Indy 4 set, Spielberg felt the need to test him with a shooting schedule of heavy action around the Yale campus, with the young Mutt on a vintage Harley Softail and Harrison Ford right behind him, hanging on to his waist. LaBeouf thought they were just doing a few easy maneuvers until he saw two big trucks backing toward them. For his welcome-to-the-club moment, he had to drive his Harley at thirty miles an hour straight into a five-foot space between the trucks as Ford argued with one of the drivers and the passage got smaller and smaller. When only inches remained between his handlebars and the two trucks, he was supposed to come to a jolting stop and let the trucks smash together. “As they collide in front of me, I stop my bike and cruise around the other side of the thing and jet off. This is my first shot.”

That kind of willingness to dive right in earned LaBeouf the respect of another stand-and-deliver icon. “He was unafraid, unabashed,” says Ford. “And so straightforward to work with. There was never what I suppose you could call ‘acting shit.’ We never took time out to correct ‘acting.’ For me he’s the best sort of actor to work with.” Spielberg goes further: “Shia has the appetite and natural ability to play a myriad of characters. I’m not sure what he cannot do.”

*****

As we walk from station to station, LaBeouf smokes Parliaments. He calls it his one vice—not because he thinks he doesn’t have more but because it’s the one he uses to help him ward off others that he’s seen firsthand. Back in the ’90s, when his dad went missing for a couple of key years, the elder LaBeouf spent some time shaking a heroin habit in a VA hospital. The son doesn’t need rehab to know what it’s like to stare down addiction.

Even so, LaBeouf does seem to have inherited a wee delinquent streak. At 19, after a neighbor in his Studio City apartment complex insulted his mother and rear-ended her car, he got a knife, brought a friend for backup, and went to the guy’s apartment, where he wound up getting jumped by the guy and six of his friends. Last November he repeatedly mouthed off to a security guard in a Chicago Walgreens and got himself arrested for trespassing. (The charge was later dropped.) This spring he added to his criminal history an arrest for smoking in Burbank. “They had just implemented a law that you couldn’t smoke anywhere in Burbank,” he says. “And I didn’t hear about this law, because I was shooting. The guy gives me a ticket. Then the court date came up two days after I had gotten back from shooting, and I just forgot about it. The news went everywhere, like I was on a crime spree. And it killed me. It broke my heart, because I really try not to be that"

But a missed court date is nothing compared with the story Shia tells about the craziest thing he’s done to get into a role. For A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a film based on the director Dito Montiel’s memoirs of his rough boyhood in mid-’80s Queens, Montiel sent LaBeouf and his costars, Channing Tatum and Peter Tambakis, to New York with one direction: Go be friends. “We knew what Dito wanted,” he says. “And we were walking around the Upper East Side in this rebel mind-set, trying to be like street kids.

“Channing was supposed to be the head honcho in the movie, so he goes, ‘All right, you see that bookstore? Somebody throw a rock. Let’s break in and steal a Spider-Man bookmark.’ And Peter and me look at each other like, ‘Dude, what? Are you fucking kidding me?’ ”

Tatum, however, was devoted to his craft. (“He’s like, ‘Really? Okay, fine. Fuck.’ ”) He kicked the plate-glass window, and the security system kicked in at the same time that the sirens started wailing in the background. “He grabs the bookmarks and jets,” says LaBeouf. “So now you got these little actor kids running down the street in New York, freaking out.” (A rep for Tatum would only say that Shia’s version of the story was “inaccurate.”)

“Meanwhile, we’re staying in Sting’s apartment. He’s producing the movie—we couldn’t take the shit back to Sting’s apartment. So I huddle in some trash cans under one of those stairwells that go below street level. Channing’s under a car. Peter’s down the street in another trash can. Cop cars are flying by, and there’s private-security cars that roam for hours. I’m getting text messages from Channing: Don’t get up. Stay right there. This is the first week knowing each other. We bonded.”

The only thing they haven’t cleaned up in New York: roving gangs of Method actors.

This sort of preparation would be impossible for LaBeouf today. He’s too well-known: Somebody’d have a camera phone, and their little scene-study group would be up on TMZ by lunch hour. He already has paparazzi on the corner near his house and is working out his coping strategies. “I figure I could make a little sports contest. Like, if I beat you at this push-up contest, maybe you’ll leave me alone today. I don’t know. It might be douchey, I guess.”

His principal strategy for maintaining his sanity is to stick with his old friends. L.A. is his hometown, and, he notes, the paparazzi “don’t hang out in Echo Park.” He and his buddies spend a lot of time just goo?ng around: “We go to comedy clubs, hang out in people’s houses, and watch games. We’re sports fanatics. Occasionally—I think occasionally—for a friend’s birthday, we’ll go to a strip club. It’s not like we’re terrorizing the town, you know?”

His friends are also vigilant on his behalf, cutting him no slack, for instance, when a rumor began that he’d started seeing Rihanna. “My friends were like, ‘Are you serious, bro? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Why didn’t you tell me about that?’ I was like, ‘I really don’t know her like that.’ For weeks they were singing that ‘Umbrella’ song everywhere I walked. And those are my people.” For reasons like these, he claims to be putting romance low on his to-do list for now.

Even set romances?

“Oh, I’ve been in love with every woman I’ve ever worked with,” he admits. By this point, we’re sitting on a bench outside the gun club having another smoke. As he sees my mind racing through the list of costars—Megan Fox, Sarah Roemer, Michelle Monaghan—he repeats the assertion for emphasis. “But some aren’t available. And then there’s the three-month attention span that actors have, you know? I don’t know if it’s mutual, but I really don’t care. They have to kiss me when ‘action’ gets called, anyway, so I’ll get what I want.”

And then he lets loose a big, bulletproof laugh—young, infectious, beyond prosecution, just as much sinner as saint—the kind that might make you wonder: Who wouldn’t buy a hot dog from this kid?

New PS3 Ad (NSFW)

I really don't understand what they're trying to say with this...





Advertising Agency: TBWA\Wien, Vienna, Austria
Creative Directors: Gerd Turetschek, Robert Wohlgemuth
Copywriter: Gerd Turetschek
Art Director: Jan Christ
Account Supervisor: Barbara Lung
Photographer: Gerhard Merzeder
Graphic Designer: Andreas Schwitter

Kat DeLuna Performing On Regis & Kelly

Wow, that was very Beyonce-ish. I love the song and I love her voice but I didn't like the performance and not because she performed it bad, but because the live band sucked. Ehh.

Maroon 5 Featuring Rihanna "If I Never See Your Face Again" Video

<3 the song. <3 Maroon 5. <3 Rihanna. <3 it!

MTV Announces "Real World: Brooklyn"

In an inevitable, perhaps even overdue collision of reality and lifestyle, this morning MTV announced it has green-lighted the 21st season of The Real World. It will be filmed in Brooklyn, the reigning home turf of post-teen drama, and broadcast in 13 one-hour episodes in early 2009. No word yet regarding in which neighborhood the attention-seeking hopefuls will reside and manufacture identity-based conflict. We are hoping for the corner of Smith and Carroll but will also settle for Bedford and North Sixth. We would also like to see The Real World: East New York, where things start getting really real, and surely City Councilman Charles Barron of that neighborhood would assist with locations. God speed, young funny-haired applicants. [x]

So how many times have they had a NY version of the Real World? This will be the third time, right? Don't matter. I've loved both NY seasons and me being from the city, I can't wait to see the one. Hey, who knows, I might even go out to the casting call.

"Reaper" Picked Up For Second Season

The CW has picked up cult-favorite supernatural drama "Reaper" for a second season.

"Reaper" will return for 13 episodes midseason and will likely be paired with "Supernatural" on Thursday nights after "Smallville" concludes its run.

The network made the decision Monday, going down to the wire on picking up the series before the CW's upfront presentation to advertisers the next day.

"Reaper" has a devoted fanbase, but has struggled in the ratings. Most recently the show averaged about a 1.0 rating among adults 18 to 49. The show initially impressed critics with its strong pilot directed by Kevin Smith ("Clerks"), then seemed to creatively stumble. Recent episodes, however, have fans saying the show is back on track with a more serialized storyline and sharper wit.

The network's executives are uniformly fond of the show, yet the Nielsens made a pickup a tough call. Anxious fans even launched a campaign to save the series by sending socks to the network (playing off one character's name). [x]

Yay! This made my day. I'm a huge fan of the show and think they would've been insane to cancel it. I mean, yeah the show might not attract the same amount of teenage girls Gossip Girl does, but Reaper has attracted about the same number (sometimes even more) of viewers overall that Gossip Girl attracts, without all the promo and advertising. The show is very funny, the acting is good and it's finally starting to pick up it's pace. I can't wait to see what direction they take the show in next season!

Behind The Scenes Of Michelle William's "Break The Dawn" Video

The video is scheduled to premiere on the 15th.

Aaliyah On The Cover Of "Fader" Magazine

Before Aaliyah’s life was cut short in 2001, the Grammy-nominated artist sold millions of records worldwide—collaborating with producers and artists including Missy Elliott and Timbaland. Although Aaliyah was only in the spotlight for a short time, she had a major impact on these artists personally, and many others professionally including Mark Ronson, Ciara, Method Man, Beth Ditto, and Kid Sister. These artists and more were all interviewed, offering their take on how Aaliyah’s impact has transcended over the years, long after her death.

“It only took Aaliyah a few albums to make an indelible mark on the world of pop music, but today her influence can be felt across numerous genres,” said Chris Richards, Executive Editor of The FADER. “This issue not only tracks that influence, but also offers a more personal glimpse into the life of a true pop visionary.”

Missy Elliott
“We was gonna save the world. We was gonna change music every chance we got. We was gonna always be family. Forever.”

Mark Ronson
“If it wasn’t for Aaliyah being the face and voice of [Missy Elliott and Timbaland’s] sound they might have never got to where they did. They were presenting their sort of brilliant but challenging breakthrough music through this beautiful young girl who could sing it perfectly.”

Kidada Jones
“I think about her all the time…Anytime she’s brought up or her music comes on the radio, it’s sweet, but it definitely sounds like she found a niche before it was here. If you listen to her music it’s so relevant today, but we had it so long ago.”

Damon Dash
“She was already a fashion icon, she was getting into movies, she had already planted that seed. If she was alive today she would be so relevant. I see little bits of her everywhere I look, in a lot of artists.”

Busy, busy, busy!

Sorry folks, I've been extremely busy. Busy as in, 10 page paper due one day, 15 page paper due the following day, three final exams the next and two presentations the next day. I've been stressed the fuck out, you have don't even understand. But the semester is finally over this week and that means I'll be school-free and have more and more time to spend on my blog. Yay! =] Stay tuned folks, new layout coming soon.

Happy Mother's day to all the moms out there, who've worked their asses off to raise their children. I <3 you moms! =]

Cherish's New Video "Amnesia"

I like it! I like the song and the video. It sort of reminds me of N'SYNC's Gone.

Men: 10 Signs You're Too Needy

Below are ten signs that you are being needy. Remember you are trying to attract women, not turn them off. So if you suffer from any of these signs of neediness, you need to immediately stop those actions.

1. You just walked a woman to her door at the end of a date. Instead of kissing her, you ask her if she had a good time. Women are attracted to confident men. They don't want to have to tell you that they had a good time on a date... they want you to be secure enough in yourself to assume that they had a good time.

2. You called a woman last night and she has not yet called you back, so you either email her or call her again to ask her if she received your message. If you want to push her away, this is one of the best ways to get her to quickly run away from you.

3. You start texting a woman you just began dating five or six times a day. You are over-texting her. You don't need to check in every two hours. That's a sign of neediness and clingy behavior that turns women off.

4. You miss a call on your cell phone from a phone number that you don't recognize. You call the woman you're dating, and to whom you talked just two hours before, and ask, "Did you just call me?" This kind of behavior is going to push and scare her away.

5. You agree with everything the woman you're dating says. Women are not looking for a man who agrees with everything they say. Women want a man who challenges them and from whom they can learn. When a man agrees with everything a woman says, he is telling her that he'll do anything to have a relationship (which is another sign of being needy).

6. The woman you're dating is out for the evening with her friends. She promised to call you when she got home. It's getting late and you haven't heard from her. You just can't resist and you call her cell phone several times until she answers it. This is a sign of being needy and insecure. She's out with her friends... not out with another guy. Let her have some personal space and she'll respect you more.

7. You are too available. If you have plans with a friend, keep those plans even if the woman you're dating asks you to do something that night. Women don't want men who are like a 7-Eleven -- convenient and ready 24/7.

8. You try to please a woman all the time. I'm all about men doing nice things for women, but she has to earn it. Some men will let a woman walk all over them, and then continue to be a sponge and allow it over and over again. Stand up for yourself and she'll respect you more. Letting a woman walk all over you is a clear sign to her that you're needy.

9. Don't be afraid to challenge a woman. If you don't agree with something a woman says, don't just sit there and agree with her thinking it's what she wants. Women are looking for someone who is going to stimulate their mind... not bore them. Women are not turned on by men they can completely control.

10. Be the man! Have a plan and stick with it. Women like men who plan out evenings of fun. Don't always ask a woman what she wants to do. Listen to what she likes when you're having conversations with her, then come up with a fun plan that you will already know she'll like.

A needy man will do whatever a woman wants. A man of action will create plans for what they will do. Being a man of action will lead her to find you a lot more attractive in the long run.

Women are attracted to men who are confident and real. Women want to feel like you need them... but only after you already have your own life, your own ambitions, and your own goals.

The moment a man starts getting too clingy, a woman will run for the hills. This is exactly like how you will pull back from a woman who becomes clingy and needy.

I stole this off a message board =]. And while a lot of these don't apply to me (for obvious reasons), I agree with a lot of these *signs.* Mind you, this is more geared towards the beginning of a relationship; when you first start talking to somebody. I mean, you best believe that if I've been with my man for 5 months or so, he's going to be getting a call from me all the time and he's going to know how I really feel. None of the "this looks clingy" bullshit. It is what it is.

Vin Diesel Endorses Dominican President

Vin Diesel has stopped chasing bad guys long enough to endorse the president of the Dominican Republic for re-election.

Diesel appears in a Dominican campaign commercial urging a vote for his friend, President Leonel Fernandez. The endorsement first aired Wednesday on local TV stations and is paired with movie clips that show Diesel running, driving and surviving a bomb explosion.

The 40-year-old actor says he visits the Dominican Republic about once a year and owns a home on the country's eastern coast.

About 5.7 million of the Dominican Republic's 9 million people are registered to vote in the May 16 general elections. Fernandez is running against construction magnate Miguel Vargas Maldonado. [x]

The commercial is sooo cheesy. It looks like Vin was just paid to say all that for the sake of having a celebrity in the commercial. That being said, I am from the Dominican Republic and I've seen Vin over there a handful of times and I know he lives in the country. As far as Fernandez is concerned, he's the best president the Dominican Republic has had in a while and I don't think Miguel Vargas is going to do shit for the country. Leonel is going to win this one without a doubt in my mind.

Beyoncé Returns to Recording Studio

Beyoncé, who married Jay-Z nearly a month ago in New York City, returned to the studio this week to record new material, PEOPLE has learned.

The newlywed, 26, is working in N.Y.C. with production duo Chris "Tricky" Stewart and Kuk Harrell. "She's a professional," Tricky tells PEOPLE. "She loves what she does and works her [butt] off. Right now she's basically doing three to four songs a day and that's unheard of."

Tricky, who worked with Rihanna and Jay-Z on "Umbrella" and Mariah Carey on "Touch My Body,” said the newly-minted husband hasn't visited the studio, but don't count out a collaboration between the newlyweds.

"It’s always a possibility," Tricky said of a future Beyoncé and Jay-Z musical pairing. "They worked together before, so it may be just a matter of getting the right record."

So has Tricky, a newlywed himself, offered any marital advice to Beyoncé? "No, we haven't talked about it at all, but I will probably ask her for advice at some point!" [x]

I can't wait to hear some new Beyonce. I've loved all her albums thus far, though I think she can do better. Based on the producers she's working with this time around, I can tell she's trying to take her music to another level, to another sound. While her music will probably always be mainstream, as long as it's hot and different, I'm good. =]

Chris Brown Covers "Ebony" Magazine (June 08')

I see Chris Brown is trying to sex it up a little bit. I can't put my finger on it, but this picture, that pose... reminds me of somebody. Usher? Hm.

Mariah Carey On Cover Of "Vibe" Magazine (June 08')

She looks good. Doesn't look the issue has anything worth reading though.

Mariah Carey's "Bye Bye" Video

Maroon 5 Featuring Rihanna "If I Never See Your Face Again"

Maroon 5's next single. They recently shot the video, so expect it to be out later this month.

"Dark Night" Official Trailer

I can't wait to see this movie. I'm so glad Kate Holmes isn't a part of this film. Damn, R.I.P. Heath Ledger. =[

The movie hits theaters July 18th.

Pics From Usher's "Moving Mountains" Video

Beyonce Makes An Apperance At The Garden

She is so fierce with it. That was the most random appearance ever. This was at Madison Square Garden this past weekend, during Jay and Mary's "Heart Of The City" tour.

Check out some HQ videos of her "appearance" here:

Part 1
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/jay-z/1882475090?icid=acvsv2

Part 2
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/jay-z/4272726157