Calvin Harris Gushes About Taylor Swift Relationship TIMENewsfeedcelebrityListen to Calvin Harris Totally Gush About His Girlfriend Taylor SwiftKevin MazurBMA2015/WireImage/Getty ImagesTaylor Swift (L) and Calvin Harris at the 2015 Billboard Music Awards in las Vegas on May 17, 2015."She"s genuinely an incredible cook, and human being"
Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris are goin strong, and in a recent interview with Kiss FM UK, Harris had nothing but super positive things to say about their relationship.
Its going absolutely fantastic, the 31-year-old Scottish musician said. Though of course the paparazzi and general media frenzy surrounding the relationship is tough, he said it could be a lot worse and Id still be, like, insanely happy with her so Im good with it.
Swift and Harris are both extremely busy with their music careers, but he assures us all that theyre still totally making it work.
Shes on a world tour and Im based here [in Los Angeles], Harris said. I guess the luxury is we can both travel very easily. I think thats a reason that it works so, so well. Its really not hard to see each other on a really regular basis.
Finally, Harris gushed about how generally amazing Tay is. Its not even a case of ticking all the boxes. Its like, theres boxes I didnt know existed which she ticks. Its really ridiculous. But yeah she does an incredible BBQ. And shes genuinely an incredible cook, and human being.
Gawker Takes Down Story About Conde Nast CFO After Intense Backlash
Gawker has come under fire for unscrupulously outing a Conde Nast execand arguably abetting a blackmail plot. But theyve been similarly harassing James Franco for years.
On Thursday evening, the media website Gawker ran a clickbait scoop about an executive at a major magazine company who had enlisted the services of a gay p**n star/escort, arranging to pay him $2,500 for a weekend tryst. The john was married to a woman with two young children, and his brother once served as a senior official within the Obama administration.
Once the prostitute caught wind of the johns powerful ties, he proceeded to blackmail the CFO by threatening to expose the arrangement unless he helped the escort with a housing discrimination case against a former landlordone that hed allegedly brought to the attention of his local politician, presidential candidate Ted Cruz (R-TX). Gawker, as is its wont, published all the text messages between the twoeffectively outing and shaming the execwhile protecting the identity of the blackmailer, who turned out to be a complete nutjob.
The media then began (rightfully) policing Gawker for the despicable post, which only seemed to embolden its editor-in-chief, Max Read, who tweeted out a defense of the piece:
The problems with the story, as laid out astutely by The Intercepts Glenn Greenwald, were that the man was not a public official, the post did not serve the public interest, and that Gawker may have even abetted a blackmail plot by serving as a bargaining chip. The post was taken down Friday evening at the behest of Gawkers management board, and Gawker founder Nick Denton later released a mea culpa, claiming hes experienced what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.
Perhaps the vilest thing about the piece is how laced with homophobia it was, as its main, hateful mission seemed to be outing a man, as if being gay was something to be ashamed of in 2015, mere weeks after the Supreme Court legalized same-s*x marriage in all fifty states.
But Gawker Media has long harbored a creepy obsession with outing closeted men. Back in 2007, one of its first controversial stories involved its sister site Valleywag publishing a piece outing Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel in a post titled, Peter Thiel is totally h**o, people. In the comment section of the piece, Denton wrote that he was confused why Thiel would keep his personal life a secret from journalists as if he was entitled to this information from a non-public figure. And then there was the unfortunate outing of Fox News anchor Shepard Smith in 2013, a nasty gay fright piece that was eviscerated in a column by the late, great New York Times media critic David Carr.
But no one has been on the receiving end of more harassment by Gawker than Oscar-nominated actor James Franco.
Yeah, and then they got a little pissy because I said it was homophobic, and yeah it is, said Franco.
The repugnant hit pieces began around 2008, as Franco was mid-transition from wandering himbo to serious actor, with standout performances in the stoner comedy Pineapple Express and as the gay lover to Sean Penns Harvey Milk in Milk. Historically, there has been a troubling tendency by the movie-going public and tabloid media to question an actors sexuality once hes convincingly played a gay character onscreen. Gawker, however, took it one step further: they accused Franco of being a gay rapist.
On August 18, 2008, the New York Post ran a gossip blind item that read: Which hunk in a summer movie is a violent, closeted homosexual? The heartthrob snuck into his ex"s apartment a few months ago and raped him so violently, the ex ended up in the hospital - and the actor paid him $500,000 to keep his mouth shut.
Back before Dentons change of heart," Gawker had a tendency to blindly speculate about gossip blind itemswhich, for all we know, could be completely made up. But they took particular interest in this one, with then-Gawker writer Richard Lawson penning a follow-up post guessing that the gay rapist might be either Will Smith, Christian Bale, or James Franco, based purely (or rather, impurely) on Internet rumors.
And then there"s the compelling case ofJames Franco, Lawson wrote. Basically the rumor is that Franco dated the guy about two years ago, and still had a key to his house. Guy goes to an Oscars party, comes back and Franco is waiting for him and then awfulness goes down. He"s rumored to have been abusive towards an old girlfriend, also an actor, some five years ago. This makes me sad because James Franco is dreamy and oh if he were gay we"d surely be married next spring, but if he"s a raper then I don"t want anything to do with him and he should be in jail.
Days later, Lawson penned a follow-up post titled:
All it did was tally up commenters feelings, who voted that among the three baseless candidates, Franco was their choice as likeliest perp. Again, this is all a guessing game, and all of these pieces still live online. The following month, Lawson wrote another Gawker post titled:
The piece was pegged to Francos role as Penns characters gay lover in Milkand a subsequent interview with Out magazineand, based on no evidence whatsoever, the Gawker article insinuated that Franco was a gay rapist, mentioning the ominous rumor that he once raped his gay lover. It also questioned Francos sexuality based on his playing two gay roles in films.
Lawson, who penned all of the aforementioned Franco posts, took to Twitter last night to admit that his posts accusing Franco of being a gay rapist were baseless and that he wrote them on the orders of his boss (hes since deleted the tweet), essentially admitting that hed made them up:
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Lawson said, I deeply regret those posts. Though they don"t really have any upside, maybe they can at least serve as a warning for younger writers now to use far better judgment than I did back then. Franco could not be reached for comment.
Things were left dormant until, in 2013, Gawkers then-staff writer (and now editor-in-chief) Max Read wrote a post with the headline, James Franco Is Gay, and embedding an Instagram post Franco issued of him and a man gallivanting about New York City and kissing with the tongue-in-cheek caption, #JamesFrancoTV in love????? #gawker.com #gay. This was clearly Franco trolling Gawker, yet they ran a definitive clickbait-y headline proclaiming him gay, without including so much as a question mark.
Franco was, presumably, responding to the years of harassment hed received about his sexuality by Gawker, including a recent post by writer Rich Juzwiak two weeks earlier following his Comedy Central Celebrity Roast titled, James Francos Friends and Roasters Agree That He Is Very, Very Gay. And Juzwiak, who months later would pen a post with the clickbait headline, James Franco Bares a*s to Gay Menwhich solely consisted of Franco flashing his behind for charity at a Broadway Bares event that ended up raising $1.3 million for the fight against AIDSwould later whine about being disinvited from a Franco afterparty.
Gawker escalated their Franco witch-hunt with a post on August 6, 2014, that read, James Franco Is Living With a Man. The post, penned by J.K. Trotter, suggested that Franco was in a gay relationship with his frequent co-star Scott Haze solely based on a line in a recent New York Times profile of Franco where Oscar-nominated actor shared that he and Haze lived in the same place.
Franco responded to the Gawker itemwhich still lives onlinewith posts on his Instagram and Facebook pages accusing Gawker of always getting the cutting edge, homophobic scoop!
The following day, Trotter double-down on his baseless Franco outing with a post titled, A Short History of James Franco and Scott Haze Playing Gay, which once again insinuated that Franco was in a gay relationship with Haze based merely on the closeness of their relationshipthe fact that theyd been friends for a decade, and spent a lot of time together. This post also still lives online.
About a month after the two accusatory Gawker posts, I sat down with Franco and Haze at the Venice Film Festival, where they were on hand to promote their film adaptation of the Faulkner classic The Sound and the Fury. During our interview, I asked them about the Gawker posts alleging that they were a gay couple.
Oh G*d, replied Haze, shifting in his seat and showing signs of frustration.
Yeah, and then they got a little pissy because I said it was homophobic, and yeah it is, added Franco. And then they said, Oh, well a gay guy wrote it! I dont care if the press is gay or straight. When did you have to face criticism for having a roommate? I dont understand that!
He pauses. And there were like eight people living in that house, so to make a story about thatI dont care, but it just shows how petty Gawker is. Its ridiculous.
Towards the end of our interview, I jokingly asked them when they were going to hook up on a new project again in the future, and they both started cracking up.
Hey, no comment! said Haze, bowled over in his seat. Franco patted him on the back and, barely containing his laughter, added, Here in Venice? Pretty d**n romantic!
At least he hasnt lost his sense of humor about it, though it stands to reason that given Gawkers constant stream of harassment, Franco has a pretty strong case.
Get to know a PGA TOUR Pro: Brandt Snedeker and Keegan Bradley
This week: Barbasol Championship, Thursday through Sunday, RTJ Trail Grand National, Opelika, Alabama.
In the field: Olympias Andres Gonzales, Gig Harbors Kyle Stanley and University Places Andrew Putnam.
First-round scores: Gonzales shot a 2-under-par 69, Stanley had a 1-under 70, and Putnam shot an even-par 71.
Positions: Gonzales is tied for 25th, Stanley is tied for 47th and Putnam is tied for 71st all trailing leader Sam Saunders (64).
Recap: Except for one hole, Gonzales got off to a solid start. He birdied No. 3 (21-foot putt) to go to 4 under, but he dumped his tee shot at the par-3 fifth hole into a greenside pond, leading to a double bogey. Stanley made five birdies but also had a double bogey at No. 2, where he hit his tee shot so far right that he had to play backward to the fairway. He did make two birdie putts of 15 feet or longer. Putnam bogeyed the 12th hole to drop to 2 over, but he rallied with birdies at Nos. 13 (two-putt from 35 feet) and 17 (15-foot putt) to post his first opening round of par or better since the Memorial Tournament in early June.
Tee times Friday: Gonzales at 5:55 a.m. (PDT) off the first tee, Putnam at 6:39 a.m. off the 10th tee and Stanley at 11:06 a.m. off the first tee.
Stephen Curry Wins Best Male Athlete at 2015 ESPYs Awards - ESPN - HD
Game on! Athletes and stars alike were all smiles at U.C.L.A."s Pauley Pavilion on Thursday for the Kids" Choice Sports Awards. Hosted by Super Bowl champ Russell Wilson, the second annual event celebrates the biggest moments in sports. "I"m pumped! It"s something new for me obviously but I"m really excited about it. It"s such an honor," Ciara"s man told E! News ahead of the show.
And since this is a Nickelodeon show, there is plenty of green slime to go around during the event. Check out celebs like Mo"ne Davis, Nick Young, Stephen Curry, and more while their red carpet outfits are still slime-free!
Amber Heard - Jimmy Fallon Interview - June 22, 2015 (CNN) -
Johnny Depp"s pet dogs dodged the threat of being put down by Australian authorities earlier this year, but his wife, actress Amber Heard, is now facing criminal charges over the canine controversy.
The couple found themselves in hot water in May after officials accused them of bringing their two Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, into Australia on a private flight without the necessary permits, breaching the country"s strict biosecurity laws.
Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce blasted the alleged act of doggie deception at the time, saying, "Mr. Depp needs to take his dogs back to California, or we"re going to have to euthanize them."
Depp, who was in Australia to film the latest "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie, acted quickly to get Pistol and Boo out of the country.
But that wasn"t enough to satisfy Australian authorities.
Maximum sentence of 10 years in prison
Prosecutors this week issued a summons for Heard, 29, to appear at a magistrates court in the state of Queensland on September 7.
She faces two charges of illegal import of animals and one charge of knowingly producing a false or misleading document, Australia"s Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions said in a statement Thursday.
The illegal import of animals carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of 102,000 Australian dollars ($75,000); the false document charge has a maximum penalty of a year in prison and a fine of 10,200 Australian dollars ($7,500).
Depp not charged
Depp, 52, has not been charged over the incident, the prosecutors said.
Heard starred with Depp in the 2011 movie "The Rum Diary." More recently, she appears in "Magic Mike XXL."
Since the dog fiasco in May, Depp appears to have worked on making a more positive impression in the Australian media, visiting a children"s hospital last week dressed in the costume of his "Pirates of the Caribbean" character, Capt. Jack Sparrow.
Four members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame walked onto the field of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati arm-in-arm on Tuesday night, introduced as baseball"s greatest living players, and half of them hail from Alabama.
Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax and Willie Mayswere revealed before the All-Star Game as the top four in an online poll that opened in April to select baseball"s greatest living players.
Barry Bonds, Rickey Henderson, Pedro Martinez and Tom Seaver also were on the ballot, and fans could cast write-in votes, too.
Aaron is a native of Mobile who spent 23 years in the big leagues, all but two seasons with the Braves in Milwaukee and Atlanta. Mays is a native of Fairfield who spent 22 years in the big leagues, all but two seasons with the Giants in New York and San Francisco.
Aaron was selected for 25 All-Star Games, more than any other player and one more than Mays. Mays was in the starting lineup for more All-Star Games than any other player with 18 -- one more than Aaron.
Aaron played in 3,298 games. In 12,364 at-bats, he had 3,771 hits for a .305 batting average. Aaron scored 2,174 runs and knocked in 2,297, which is the all-time record. He had 624 doubles, 98 triples, 755 home runs, 240 stolen bases, 1,402 walks and 1,383 strikeouts. Aaron"s on-base average was .374 and his slugging percentage was .555.
Mays played in 2,992 games. In 10,881 at-bats, he had 3,283 hits for a .302 batting average. Mays scored 2,062 runs and knocked in 1,903. He had 523 doubles, 140 triples, 660 home runs, 338 stolen bases, 1,464 walks and 1,526 strikeouts. Mays" on-base average was .384 and his slugging percentage was .557.
The catcher for the Big Red Machine, Bench was a 14-time All-Star for Cincinnati and won the National League MVP Award twice, including becoming the youngest winner of the award in 1970.
A Dodgers" left-hander, Koufax won the National League Cy Young Award three times, the World Series MVP Award twice and the NL MVP Award once in his final four seasons before arm issues ended his career at age 30.
Koufax threw out the ceremonial first pitch for the All-Star Game to Bench.
In an AL.com poll to pick baseball"s greatest living player, Mays finished in the top spot, followed by Aaron, Pete Rose and Cal Ripken Jr.
RELATED:AN MLB ALL-STAR TEAM WITH AN ALABAMA PLAYER AT EVERY POSITION
Venetia Phair was an English 11 in 1930 when she named Pluto. The 2008 documentary explores the planets naming and documents Phair as she sees Pluto for the first time through a telescope, 77 years after naming it. (Courtesy of Father Films)
The morning of March 14, 1930, was a fairly ordinary one in the Oxford home of 11-year-old Venetia Burney. The schoolgirl was eating breakfast in the dining room while her grandfather, Falconer Madan, paged throughthatdays edition of the Times of London.
But fate lay on page 14: astoryabout a newly discovered planet found at the far reaches of the solar system.
Madan read the story aloud to his precocious granddaughter, whohad studied the planets in school byarranginglumps of clay in the university park to model the distances between celestial objects. Young Venetia also had a penchant for classical mythology (all the major celestial objects in our solar system are named for Greek and Roman gods), so when Madan speculated about the new planets name, she had a suggestion up her sleeve.
We all wondered, she recalled in the documentary Naming Pluto. And then I said, Why not call it Pluto? And the whole thing stemmed from that.
Venetiasgrandfather, the retired head of the historic Bodleian Library at Oxford University, passed the idea along to an astronomer friend of his, who responded, I think PLUTO excellent!! according to the New York Times. (Theres nothing like a new planet to get dignified British professors to use excessive punctuation and all-caps.)
The astronomer telegraphed his colleagues at the Arizona observatory that discovered the new planet, and they voted unanimously in favor of the name. Pluto, the solar systems ninth planet, was born.
We all know what happened 75 years later: New astronomy discoveries and a debate about the true definition of a planet resulted in Pluto being stripped of its title.
Pluto may no longer be a planet. It may be small and obscure. Butit is the ultimate underdog, capable ofcaptivating us with its hapless charm despite distance and darkness and years of scientists slowly chipping away atits status. And its champions, like 11-year-old Venetia, come from the unlikeliest of places. They include a scientificoutcast and a penniless farm boy, along with the thousands of ordinary astronomy lovers who cheered when NASAsNew Horizons spacecraft whizzed pastTuesday morning,sending backthe best image yet of everyones favorite planet-that-isnt.
There it was, all rocky brown and beige. And in its lower hemisphere was an almost-perfect heart. How could ours not melt?
[After a wait, spacecraft confirms that it survived its close pass of Pluto]
It was a long way from the very first photograph of Pluto, taken by Percival Lowell almost exactly 100 years earlier. Lowell was a turn-of-the-century American astronomer infamous for speculating that aliens had built canals on Mars.
Somewhat outcastfrom the space community for his admittedly zany notion, Lowell dedicated the remainder of his life to yet another thankless task: the search for Planet X, anelusive rocky body at the very outer reaches of our solar system. Using a primitive camera and borrowed telescope, he spent more than a decade diligently photographing the night sky, hoping to findevidence of a planet whose existence had been theorized since the 1840s but never proved.
In the spring of 1915, Lowells camerafinally caught what it had been searching for: two faint images of a small sphereof space rock more than 3 billion miles from the Sun. But for reasons we many never know maybe Lowell never saw the images, maybe he did and didnt recognize their significance Lowell never realizedthat hed finally found the ninth planet.Lowell died a year later, and those first photographs faded into obscurity.
Lowellsdeath in 1916 left a gap in the ninth planetsearch effort, one that remained mostly empty until 1929, when a 23-year-old namedClyde Tombaugh arrived at the Flagstaff, Ariz.,observatory Lowell founded.
Annette and Alden Tombaugh, the children of Clyde Tombaugh, remember their father and his discovery of Pluto. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)
Tombaugh was the son of farmersfrom Kansas, and his dreams of going to college were dashed when a hailstorm destroyed his familys crops, according to a biographyon the Academy of Achievement Web site. Undaunted, he taught himself trigonometry and geometry and began building his own telescopes. The sketches of planets he drew with his homemade equipment were so impressive that, when he sent them to the observatoryin Flagstaff, astronomers there invited him to come work for them.
I was rather unnerved by it all, everybody were strangers, 1,000 miles from home, and not enough money in my wallet for a return ticket home,Tombaugh wrote of his first day there, according to the Kansas Historical Society.
Upon his arrivalTombaugh was put to work on Lowells old task searching for the elusive trans-Neptunian object. Though the technology was slightly better, the technique for seeking out a distant planet hadnt changed much.Tombaugh spent hours in an unheated dome, snapping photos of the sky, then examined the exposuresto determine whether any of the pinpricks of lightin them seemed to move over the course of days. Objects thatremained stationary were stars, the logic went. But if it moved it might be a planet.
After nearly a year of searching, he found it a tiny speck that crept across several of his photos. Thats it! he recalledexclaiming. Tombaugh and his colleagues spent more than a week studying the moving speck and confirming its validity, then announced their finding to the world on March 13, 1930. It would have beenLowells 75th birthday.
The discovery transformedTombaugh froman anonymous researcher into an international astronomy sensation. He was offered a scholarship to the University of Kansas, became a military researcher and astronomy professor, and is credited with discovering several new asteroids and hundreds of stars. An ounce of hisashes, saved after he died in 1997, wason board New Horizonswhen it launched in 2006.
[For children of Plutos discoverer, New Horizons is a personal triumph]
Thousands of miles across the Atlantic, the news of the discovery reached young Venetia Burney. She thought that Pluto, the Roman G*d of the underworld, was a fitting namesake for the darkest and most distant planet.The Lowell astronomers seemed to agree they voted unanimously in favor of the name, which had the added bonus of beginning with the same letters as Percival Lowells initials.
When the news went public, according to a 2006 interview with theBBC, Burneys grandfather rewarded her with a five-pound note.
In the interview, Burney is modest about her stroke of genius she came up with Pluto mostly because the other major names from classical mythology had already been taken, she said. But she is indignant on one point: She did not name the planet for Pluto the dog, a Disney character thatdebuted in the same year.
It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the planet, rather than the other way round. So, one is vindicated, she said.
Burney, who became Venetia Phair after she was married, went on to become a schoolteacher and minor astronomy celebrity an asteroid has been named for her, as hasa dust-measuring instrumenton board New Horizons. She died in 2009, three years after the spacecraft launched and six years beforeit would reach the planet she named.
NASA"s New Horizons mission plans to collect more information on the planetary identity of Pluto. (NASA)
[Why the July 14 Pluto flyby will be a spectacular event for all of us]
Itsimprobable christening by a British schoolgirl was in some ways the highpoint for Pluto.After spending nearly a century trying to find the elusive planet, astronomers spent most of the next 85 years challenging its significance. Estimates of Plutos size wererepeatedly revised downward throughout the 20th century. The discovery of its largest moon, Charon, in the 1970s, allowed them to nail down the planets massatjust a tiny fraction of Earths.
In the 1990s, astronomers began identifying other large, rocky objects in Plutos general neighborhood, which we now know asthe Kuiper Belt. Scientists began debating whether Pluto ought to be reclassified from ninth planet to king of the Kuiper Belt in the words of Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, who in 2000 left Pluto out of the New York museumsplanetary display.
The death knell for Pluto as a planet came in 2005, when astronomers discovered the space object Eris even farther from the sun than Pluto and seemingly even larger. Appropriately named for the Greek goddess of chaos and strife, Eris sparked an uproaramong astronomers. Either scientists had found a 10thplanet, or they had to reconsider what the term planet really meant.
The International Astronomical Union went with the latter option, deciding in 2006 to classify both Pluto and Eris as dwarf planets. The rationale was that Pluto wasnt massive enough to clear the neighborhood around its orbit (meaning that there are no other objects of comparable sizein its orbit except those that are under its gravitational influence, such as satellites).
It was crushing news for the average Pluto enthusiast. But many of the people who study Pluto say that the affable, unflappable, not-quite-planet is no worse off for its redesignation.
Pluto is the granddaddy of the most populated region in the solar system, with the most to tell us about our history, Hal Levison, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute who advocated for revising the planet classification criteria, told Slate last year. It must not mind.
The demotionmay even haveworked in its favor.
Its interesting, isnt it, that as they come to demote Pluto, so the interest in it seems to have grown?Venetia Burney commented tothe BBCin 2006.
