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20 Photos of Celebrities Exercising Their Right to Vote

By Judy Berman on

Last week — just like us! — celebrities were weathering Hurricane Sandy. Today, they’re doing something else all regular Americans are (or should be) doing: voting. And since we now live in a “pics or it didn’t happen” culture, everyone from Beyoncé to Tim Gunn to Zooey Deschanel is photographing the process. After the jump, we round up Election Day’s best pictures of famous people in the voting booth, filling out their absentee ballots, and decking themselves out in red, white, and blue for the occasion. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. “There will never be a reunion … as I will never do anything with an as*hole like Will Smith. He is still an egomaniac and has not grown up. This constant reunion thing will never ever happen in my lifetime unless there is an apology, which he doesn’t know the word.” — Janet Hubert,… Read More

Celebrity

See Morrissey, Joan Jett on PETA's New Famous Vegetarian Stamps

By Judy Berman on

Say what you will about the controversial animal rights activists at PETA, but we’re excited that they’ve finally found a way to promote vegetarianism without exploiting women and spreading misinformation. Yes, although we don’t generally endorse their tactics, we’re fairly charmed by the set of stamps they’ve teamed up with the USPS to produce, featuring such famous vegetarians as Morrissey, Joan Jett, Gandhi, Natalie Portman, Leonardo da Vinci, Russell Simmons, and Paul McCartney. Score a sheet for yourself — or the vegan stamp collector/snail mail enthusiast on your holiday shopping list — at PETA’s website. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Billie Joe Armstrong would like for “that kid in Twilight,” aka Robert Pattinson, to star in the upcoming film adaptation of Green Day’s Broadway musical, American Idiot. “He’s a good actor,” he told Perez Hilton. “There’s still more to come with that kid.” Right. We’re sure that his rabid teenage girl fan-base has nothing… Read More

Art

Pic of the Day: Mayor Bloomberg at 69

By Paul Laster on

After cutting the ribbon at the newly-expanded Brooklyn Brewery yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg celebrated his 69th birthday by lending his support to the RUSH Philanthropic Arts Foundation, a non-profit organization co-founded by Russell Simmons that assists arts education in New York City’s public schools. In appreciation for the mayor’s support and the… Read More

Television

The Top 10 Quotes from Courtney Love’s Reality Show Pitch

By Judy Berman on

Courtney Love wants to be the next Diddy — at least, that’s what she wants today. Our very favorite rock ‘n roll mess showed up on Running Russell Simmons to pitch the mogul on a reality show. Called Rock Chicks, it would be C-Love’s very own Making the Band, a competition that has her whipping a gaggle of ladies into shape to become the next big all-girl rock band. And, despite its mastermind’s inability to maintain focus, Simmons is pretty into the idea.

You most certainly need to watch the clip below, which finds Love singing Patti Smith’s “Rock N Roll Nigger” to Simmons, praising herself as a role model, and talking about her elaborate mood boards. If you don’t have the stomach for that, just read through our recap of the 10 best quotes from her Rock Show pitch. … Read More

Music

Social Media Sites as Hip-Hop Artists

By Caroline Stanley on

Yesterday Russell Simmons wrote a piece for the Huffington Post entitled “Social Media Is the New Hip-Hop.” A sampling: “Social media is the rock and roll of the sixties, the hip-hop of the 80′s, the radical new equalizer, giving parity to new voices and leveling the access to culture, politics, and social justice.” While he lays on the Facebook love a little thick, it’s definitely worth a read. Inspired by the concept, we ask our hilarious writer friend Christopher R. Weingarten (whose 33 1⁄3 book on Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, is on shelves now), to reimagine some of hip-hop’s biggest names as social media sites. Click through to see what he came up with, and be sure to buy his book, dammit! … Read More

Art

Exclusive Preview: The Black List Project at the Brooklyn Museum

By Caroline Stanley on

This morning we hit the press preview for The Black List Project: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell, an exhibition of photographs of prominent African Americans (Serena Williams, Chris Rock, Colin Powell, Toni Morrison, Russell Simmons, Al Sharpton, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sean Combs, and many other A-listers from politics, the arts, sports, religion, and business) which opens tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum.

You might have caught their HBO documentary Blacklist: Volume 1 when it aired back in August; if you didn’t, you can DVR it tomorrow night at 5 p.m. EST.

While we’ll be posting a video interview with Mitchell (a noted film critic whose show The Treatment has aired on KCRW since 1996) later, after the jump check out a review of the exhibit from Laval Bryant, a cashier for visitor services at the museum. … Read More

Art

Movie References Make It Hard to Take a Hip-Hop Mogul Seriously

By Caroline Stanley on

“Hillary is like a 21st Century Rocky. She refuses to stop being a public servant. She is tough and is not a quitter. Hillary is not only resilient, but also she is insightful and creative. It would be a mistake to overlook her again.” – taken from Russell Simmons’s official statement on the Global… Read More