plus 4, Thursday's Highlights: Brennan and Booth investigate the death of an ... - Los Angeles Times

Thursday's Highlights: Brennan and Booth investigate the death of an ... - Los Angeles Times
Christina Aguilera Talks Music and Comeback to Marie Claire - Softpedia
Carrie Underwood May Be the Mother on 'How I Met' - AceShowbiz
The Help Desk - Las Vegas Weekly
Modern parenting: Bad is the new good - Regina Leader-Post

Thursday's Highlights: Brennan and Booth investigate the death of an ... - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 07 Jan 2010 12:04 AM PST

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Christina Aguilera Talks Music and Comeback to Marie Claire - Softpedia

Posted: 07 Jan 2010 12:04 AM PST

After taking some time out to be a doting wife and loving mother, former wild child Christina Aguilera is back again in the media for other things than her personal life. The singer, once dubbed The Voice for obvious reasons, has a new album coming out in March this year and, as such, she already started promoting it via magazine interviews.

Christina Aguilera is the cover girl of the latest issue of Marie Claire magazine. In the interview accompanying the spread, the singer talks about issues that have been much debated in the past, though never so directly as now, like her growing up in the spotlight, maturing from a manufactured pop star into a talented artist with a voice of her own, and how motherhood has influenced her sound and style.

"In this crazy business, it's so easy to build up a lot of walls and a lot of bitterness. And it's just no way to be…" Christina says of having to grow up in the glaring eye of the media. However, once her journey from teen to woman was completed, this has also translated into a more mature sound, the singer says. "[I can now use softer tones] that maybe I've been afraid to do in the past, to allow myself to go to a place of 'less singing.' I'm more vulnerable and more strong at the same time," the singer explains.

Looking back on the albums she released in the past, Aguilera feels no regrets. She knows now that she had to start somewhere so that she could move up on her own, which is why she can now smile at the thought she was once Britney Spears' rival. "I had a really hard time being light before. I'd get a little weird about it being too cliché. My first record was very clichéd pop – what everyone else wanted. [My second album 'Stripped'] inspired by a lot of pain. [My third, 'Back to Basics,'] still had some sort of relation to my past. [My new album] is just about the future – my son in my life, motivating me to want to play and have fun," she says.

"Bionic," Aguilera's fourth studio material, is out in March, as also noted above. The singer started work on it back in 2009, though she rarely spoke about it with the papers. According to ongoing reports, the first single off the album will be a hip-hop-heavy track called "Glam" produced by Tricky Stewart.

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Carrie Underwood May Be the Mother on 'How I Met' - AceShowbiz

Posted: 06 Jan 2010 10:16 PM PST

She is tapped to guest star as one of numerous women in Ted's life, playing a pharmaceutical rep named Tiffany.

Carrie Underwood joins the run of becoming the possible Mother on "How I Met Your Mother". The Grammy-winning singer will make her first acting gig on the CBS show in an episode scheduled to air in March as one of Ted's love interest.

"What makes her intriguing is the fact that she's a pharmaceutical rep, or Pharma Girl, which according to Barney has replaced nurses and stewardesses to become the Official New Profession of Hot Chicks," creators of the show were quoted as saying. Carrie's character will be named Tiffany.

Carrie Underwood is not the only singer who joins the show as Ted's lovers. Britney Spears played the role as receptionist Abby who eventually fell for Barney and Mandy Moore also appeared as Amy in the third season opener.

Producers of the show have said that this upcoming 100th episode airing on January 11 will be "the closest Ted's ever come" to discovering who the Mother is. Stacy Keibler and Rachel Bilson guest star in the episode which is wrapped in a musical format.

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The Help Desk - Las Vegas Weekly

Posted: 06 Jan 2010 11:57 PM PST

The Help Desk

Las Vegas Weekly Staff

Thu, Jan 7, 2010 (midnight)

Palms owner George Maloof allegedly offers Lady Gaga multimillion-dollar deal to perform a series of shows there. He thinks she may even appeal to the older crowd—you know, fans of Britney Spears.

Las Vegas' Ashley Sampson, the woman who broke Tiger Woods' affair with Rachel Uchitel, calls Uchitel a "celebrity whore." Which is way worse than, say, a media whore.

Shady Lady brothel to advertise male prostitutes as "the boyfriend experience." So, basically, the guys will watch television all day, forget your birthday and complain you spend too much money?

Man robs bank using "suspicious package." Interestingly, "suspicious package" is also one of the options available in "the boyfriend experience."

Las Vegas Valley Water District raises its rates. Great. Now watered-down drinks are gonna be more expensive.

Criss Angel makes the word "faggot" appear in his show Believe. And our 2010 List Of Things That Don't Surprise Us At All is getting started super early!

300,000 visit Las Vegas for New Year's Eve festivities. They were from all different walks of life, but they agreed on one thing: Criss Angel has some major issues, man.

The Black Eyed Peas' apl.de.ap spotted coming out of a Las Vegas club with strippers. Details are sketchy on whether he got that boom boom boom or that boom boom pow.

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Modern parenting: Bad is the new good - Regina Leader-Post

Posted: 06 Jan 2010 11:28 PM PST

Reality trainwreck Kate Gosselin was minding her own sordid affairs this week when she was called out and smacked down by none other than Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. Octomom.

"She needs to stop being so judgmental and stop pulling at straws for attention," snapped Suleman, the mother of octuplets (oh, and six other kids).

Gosselin, also a mother of multiples and the star of Jon & Kate Plus 8, evidently set Suleman off by suggesting to Dr. Phil that raising 14 children would be difficult -- "particularly without a husband to help with parenting."

Mothers are always judging other mothers. Stay-at-homes judge off-to-works -- and the other way around. Helicopter moms judge slackers. Nursing women judge bottlefeeders. We all judge Britney Spears.

The latest cagematch in the Mommy Wars? Good vs. Bad.

Ayelet Waldman defines the first group on the cover of her new book: "The Good Mother remembers to serve fruit at breakfast, is always cheerful and never yells, manages not to project her own neuroses and inadequacies onto her children, is an active and beloved community volunteer; she remembers to make playdates, her children's clothes fit, she does art projects with them and enjoys all their games. And she is never too tired for sex."

Waldman is not one of those moms, as she reveals in Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace. The book is one in an armload of parenting confessionals to acknowledge that along with sunshine and roses comes boredom and disappointment and anxiety. The so-called "momoirs" include Mommies Who Drink, Confessions of a Slacker Mom and It Sucked and then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown and a Much Needed Margarita.

Between book releases, there are mommyblogs and message boards and Twitterfeeds. And always, bad parents make for good TV.

Waldman earned a seat on Oprah after confessing in the pages of the New York Times that she loves her husband more than she loves her kids. "They cross-examined me," she says. "And New York City's elite Bad Mother SWAT team, the warrior shrews of UrbanBaby.com, sank their pointy little incisors into my metaphorical ankles."

Lenore Skenazy is another mom who made the rounds from MSNBC to FoxNews to the set of the Today Show. "Here's a badge of honour," she boasts. "The ladies on The View devoted a whole segment to agreeing -- perhaps for the first time on anything -- about what a terrible, crazy, horrible, heartless and fill-in-the-disapproving-adjective-here mother I was."

Her transgression? She allowed her nine-year-old son to take the subway on his own. In New York City. (To paraphrase the mothers of other fourth-graders, "You let him WHAT?")

Almost as quick as morning-show hosts could say "America's Worst Mom," Skenazy had a six-figure advance to write Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry. "It all turned out fine," she writes. "One subway ride, one bus ride and one hour or so later, my son was back home, proud as a peacock."

So maybe less mothering is actually more.

"The newest wave of mothers is saying no to prenatal Beethoven appreciation classes, homework tutors in kindergarten, or moving to a town near their child's college campus so the darling can more easily have home-cooked meals," Lisa Belkin wrote in last Sunday's New York Times. "Over coffee and out in cyberspace they are gleefully labelling themselves 'bad mommies,' pouring out their doubts, their dissatisfaction and their dysfunction."

Bad is the new black.

Perhaps that's why the Twittermoms want to know: "Are you bad enough to be shameful?" Maybe it even explains TrueMomConfessions.com, the "judgment-free zone" where women reveal their "mommy misdemeanours." Exhibit A: "When people notice the improvement in my son's behaviour, I tell them it's because I cut red dye and refined sugar out of his diet. Actually, it's because I started seeing a therapist and stopped yelling at him so much, but how do I explain that?" You don't explain, you boast -- especially if you want a taste of that trendy bad-mom cred.

Critics point out that all this high-tech navel-gazing is a luxury and preoccupation of the few. Most parents are too busy to think, never mind blog.

Truth be told, some have found it's not all that great to be not so great. Waldman herself argues that when examined too closely, the self-flogging and conscious rebellion of bad moms rings false. "As happy as I am to crown myself Queen of the Maternal Damned, part of me still believes that my children would be better off with June Cleaver," she confesses.

That said, June probably had bad-mothering secrets of her own. That Beaver sure seemed to find his way into a heap of mischief.

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