Stephen Wiltshire spoke his first words, ‘pencil’ and ‘paper’ at five years old. At the age of eight, the late British Prime Minister Edward Heath commissioned Wiltshire to draw the Salisbury Cathedral. At 11 years old Wiltshire drew a perfect, intensely detailed picture of the London cityscape after a single helicopter ride. Perhaps it is not surprising that Wiltshire was diagnosed with autism, when he was three years old.
Franklin’s nephew Vaughn, niece Cristal, granddaughter Victorie and grandson Jordan delivered comments, musical tributes and readings for their family’s beloved matriarch.
Jordan choked back tears as he honored his grandmother.
“Dear Grandma, I love you. I know in my heart that you’re happy now and that’s all that I care about,” he said. “Thank you for loving me. Thank you for believing in me as much as you did.”
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ANGELA WEISS via Getty Images
Aretha Franklin’s grandchildren Jordan and Victorie Franklin embrace.
Music mogul Russell Simmons said in a statement Thursday that he was stepping down from the entertainment and clothing companies he founded after another sexual harassment allegation against him.
Writer Jenny Lumet said in a Hollywood Reporter column published Thursday that Simmons sexually violated her in 1991. In her detailed account, Lumet said Simmons offered her a ride home from a New York City restaurant, but took her to his apartment instead.
“Alone in the elevator, you pressed me into the corner with your body, your hands and your mouth,” she wrote.
Lumet said Simmons then had sex with her without her consent.
After his election, Donald Trump quickly settled a series of business disputes — but just days before his inauguration, the president-elect’s company is still waging a legal battle against a Florida shop owner over an unpaid bill.
The matter could have been settled for what amounts to pocket change for a billionaire, but the Trump Organization decided to take its chances in court.
Now Trump stands to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. And if he wins, it could force a small businessman — one of hundreds who say they were stiffed by Trump over the years — possibly into bankruptcy.
That businessman, Juan Carlos Enriquez, owner of The Paint Spot, won the first round of the legal skirmish last summer when a judge found a lien he slapped on the Trump National Doral golf resort was valid.
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Then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump drives himself around the golf course on March 6, 2016, in Doral, Florida. Luis M. Alvarez / AP
I’m Spartacus!” – “I’m Spartacus!” – “I’M SPARTACUS!” Every film buff knows that moment, every panel-show comedian riffs on it. A mob of defeated slave rebels in the pre-Christian Roman empire is told their wretched lives will be spared, but only if their ringleader, Spartacus (Kirk Douglas), comes out and gives himself up to be executed.Just as he is about to sacrifice himself, one slave, Antoninus (Tony Curtis) jumps up and claims to be Spartacus, then another, and another, then all of them, a magnificent display of solidarity, while the man himself allows a tear to fall in closeup.
This variant on the Christian myth – in the face of crucifixion, Spartacus’s disciples do not deny him – is a pointed political fiction. In real life, Spartacus was killed on the battlefield. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted author who had to work under aliases and found no solidarity in Hollywood. Yet Douglas himself, as the film’s producer, stood up for Trumbo. He put Trumbo’s real name in the credits, and ended the McCarthy-ite hysteria.
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Kirk Douglas. Photograph: Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
John Glenn, a war hero who became the first American to orbit the Earth and later served four terms in the U.S. Senate, has died in his home state of Ohio. He was 95.
Glenn’s death was announced Thursday by officials at Ohio State University, where he was being treated at James Cancer Hospital. Glenn had experienced a number of health problems in recent years, including a stroke he suffered two years ago after having had heart valve replacement surgery.
“We are saddened by the loss of Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. A true American hero,” NASA said. “Godspeed, John Glenn. Ad astra [to the stars].”
The author Tom Wolfe wrote that Glenn, once a small-town American, became “the last true national hero America has ever made.”
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John Glenn worked as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7, 1998. REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock
Back in 2001, when Alicia Keys first burst onto the scene, few would have likely been able to predict she’d be the one to drop the most woke political track of 2016. But here we are, in the midst of one of the most trying election cycles in history, with Keys ready to wage a “Holy War” to get our society to face its most uncomfortable internal contradictions.
“If war is holy, and sex is obscene,” Keys sings in the opening lines of her new acoustic ballad, “We’ve got it twisted in this lucid dream.”
The song, which dropped Friday, only gets deeper and darker from there. It offers yet another stunning look at the creative breadth Keys is looking represent on her coming album Here.
Khoudia Diop is proof that every shade of black is absolutely stunning and perhaps hers leads the pack. Her supple melanin skin is popping like no one’s business
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Khoudia Diop
The skin could be described as one the darkest shade of black if not the darkest on the skin of any person of color and it’s flawless.
Nine years ago, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon set the standard for what folk music should sound like with For Emma, Forever Ago. Friday, he will break it.
That’s when Bon Iver’s mysterious third album, 22, A Million drops via Jagjaguwar following five years of relative silence. As previews of tracks “22 (OVER S??N)” and “10 d E A T h b R E a s T ? ?” have already shown, fans looking for lead singer Vernon’s wind-like falsetto singing about ripe countrysides and winter’s intimacy will find themselves disappointed and confused.
Where Bon Iver’s past two records have evoked a man content in his Thoreau-like reclusiveness, 22, A Million seems like a portrait of a man after the isolation has driven him mad. Instead of familiar places or pet names, the tracklist features obscure symbols and numbers scattered alongside art that’s proved irresistible for Illuminati pop culture conspiracy theorists. Snippets of pitched dialogue punctuate the uneasy ambience the songs stir up with warped, lo-fi drums and stacks of heavily processed synths and saxophones. It sounds like Bon Iver fed through a wood chipper and sewn together on a back alley operating table.
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