Every day a multitude of stars wanders through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with our intrepid correspondents. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.
There's something about a star in an airport that is always sort of appealing. Perhaps it's the one true thing that equalizes celebs with everybody else, because even if an actor or musician is booked in first class, that person still has to pass through security and wait by the gate until boarding. And as Rihanna showed the world yesterday, she has the same philosophy as a lot of people when it comes to flight attire, erring on the side of comfortable and casual. The singer made her way through the security checkpoint at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York yesterday, dressed in an giant gray zip hoodie and comfortable-looking jeans. It's a far cry from her usual fashion-forward outlook (and miles from the get-ups in her new video "Wait Your Turn (The Wait is Ova)"), but it's refreshing to know that she doesn't feel the need to go over-the-top all the time, especially when the unpleasantness of air travel is involved.
Rihanna wasn't the only jet-setter yesterday, as Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz made his way through Tegel Airport in Berlin, Germany, on his way to the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards, and Carrie Underwood found herself in New York performing on "Good Morning America." Click here for these pictures plus the entire "Spotted!" archive, which features nearly 400 candid shots of stars like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Adam Lambert, Justin Timberlake, the Jonas Brothers, Katy Perry and Mariah Carey!
We already know that the members of Cobra Starship are down with party buses, but yesterday the group got a bit of a rock and roll upgrade. In order to get to a show at Indiana University, the band took its first ever trip on a private jet. Frontman Gabe Saporta narrated the experience via his Twitter and included a handful of photos from the trip.
"A Cobra first! Private jet motherf---ers!" Saporta tweeted last night. "We're on our way to play a free show w/Girl Talk @ Indiana University." That show, a charity event to benefit a local shelter for battered women and sponsored by Victoria's Secret, goes down tonight on the school's campus. Indiana competed against five other institutions during the summer to win a visit from Cobra Starship and mashup DJ Girl Talk.
In the meantime, Saporta was excited about the jet. He posted a total of three photos of the plane, and he even attached this caption to the photo above: "You know, I'd really love to continue talking about this conversation, but I got a private jet to catch." Friend and occasional multimedia rival Pete Wentz also weighed in on the band's trip. "I can't imagine how awesome you woulda been back in the heyday of rock music selling," the Fall Out Boy bassist wrote on Twitter.
Through it all, Saporta enjoyed the experience and was slightly amazed at the reaction it got from his bandmates and crew members. "I love how every member of Cobra & our crew tweeted about rollin' in a private jet," he wrote. "I guess we're not that jaded, huh fellas?"
"My number never got out, but here's the catch: that shirt was professionally printed at some T-shirt place, and of course, someone at the T-shirt factory leaked an image of my shirt on the Internet. So I would get, like, 20 calls a day, kids pranking me, singing me songs, whatever. I thought it was funny for a while, and I thought that if I neither confirmed nor denied it, it would go eventually away. Guess what? I was wrong. I was dead wrong."
-Cobra Starship frontman Gabe Saporta, on the fallout of Pete Wentz printing his phone number on a T-shirt and wearing it to the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Saporta got so many calls that he had to change his phone number. "I canceled my old phone number, got a new number, and I made sure that my new phone number has '666' in it, that way no one will mess with me ever," he said. And he wasn't kidding: He got his revenge on Wentz at last week's Los Premios MTV awards in Los Angeles, where he revealed Wentz's e-mail address during the show. Wentz now knows the pain of information overload, as his account was bombarded with messages.
A few months ago, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz talked to MTV News correspondent James Montgomery about wanting to play a reunion show on Sealand, a decommissioned oil rig in the middle of the ocean that acts as a sovereign nation for His Royal Highness Prince Regent Michael. That led to an actual response from Prince Michael, who wrote to Montgomery about his excitement over the idea. After that, we never got an update. But luckily, MTV News' Jocelyn Vena caught up with Wentz at the introduction event for the Dow Live Earth Run for Water Campaign and asked him about the latest exchange between his band and His Royal Highness.
"We got an e-mail back," Wentz said. "He's not on Sealand right now. He's on the beaches in France basking in the sun and was open to the possibility of [a show]. That's the one concert that Fall Out Boy could possibly play this year."
Wentz's enthusiasm for Sealand hasn't waned at all — in fact, he's quite interested in getting in on the same sort of deal himself. "Some people call it absurd, but I think it's actually brilliant. The guy has passports, his own currency, he fires flares if the royal navy gets too close. I want my own island powered by electric eels, Brando style. It's going to be crazy there. You don't even know."
Since "Sealand" is already taken, what would Wentz call his own island? "The Island of Awesome," he said. "It would just be rad. We would just have fun all the time."
By Nick Neofitidis
It's Monday morning. You have managed to hit snooze about 10 times and now figure it's time to get a move on. First stop: The shower. Then you brush your teeth, and maybe a quick glass of water before you head out. Sounds pretty standard, right? Now imagine that before you do any of that, you need to walk nearly four miles carrying a giant can so that you can collect some clean water. In many countries, that's exactly what women and children have to do in order to accomplish everyday tasks we take for granted.
It's scary to think about, but one in eight people in the world don't have access to safe, clean drinking water. Communities in Africa, Latin America and Asia suffer 1.8 million deaths every year from water-associated diseases. Even worse, almost 5,000 children each day lose their lives due to inadequate water infrastructure. The hard truth is simple: Water scarcity is an issue affecting countries, communities and families all over the world.
That's why today was a great step forward. With the help of celebrities like Pete Wentz and Jessica Biel, Live Earth (with the help of the Dow Chemical Company) have come up with the "Dow Live Earth Run for Water Campaign."
The event took place at Chelsea Piers here in New York, and presented the initiative that will take place on April 18th, 2010. On that day, a series of walks and runs will take place in cities around the world, including Buenos Aires, Chicago, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Milan, New York and Melbourne. (Want to see if your city is involved? Check out this site for more updates.)
The day's events will also feature live musical performances and water education activities, with the hope that the events will ignite a massive global movement to help solve this oft-forgotten epidemic.
Every day a multitude of stars wanders through the halls of MTV News to talk about their latest projects and goof around with staff members. But sometimes we catch stars elsewhere, and that's why we put together Spotted!, a daily compendium of stars in the wild.
Whitney Houston's comeback continued this morning, when she performed in New York City's Central Park on "Good Morning America." Houston sang four songs at the mini-concert, including two tracks from her just-released new album I Look to You as well as the past hits "My Love Is Your Love" and "I'm Every Woman." The 44-year-old diva told co-host Diane Sawyer that what got her through the tough times in her life was "My faith and the love and support of my family which I do have. The support of my friends in the good, bad and indifferent times." She also said that the "You" in her album's title referred to her devoted fans (which got a big pop from the crowd).
Houston wasn't the only performer on the promo tip, as Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz turned up in Los Angeles to sign copies of the new comic book "Fall Out Toy Works," and "Entourage" star Jeremy Piven showed up to talk to David Letterman about mercury poisoning and his latest film "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard." Click here for these photos plus over 200 more shots of Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Kanye West and the casts of "New Moon" and "Gossip Girl."
Last week, I received an e-mail from royalty ... and not of the Nigerian Prince variety.
No, this e-mail came from His Royal Highness Prince Regent Michael, the heir to the throne of Sealand, a sovereign sorta-nation located six miles off the southeast coast of England, on a seafort abandoned by the British navy after World War II. There was no accompanying fanfare in his note, nothing official or monarchical, or even remotely formal about the email — and no, he wasn't asking for $50 million, either. Basically, he wanted to talk to me about Fall Out Boy.
See, this was a few days after I had written a story about FOB wanting to play a comeback show on Sealand. (As long as, according to Pete Wentz, "passports, safe entry and a lot of Sealand bucks are guaranteed.") And needless to say, Prince Michael was interested in making it happen.
You can read his full e-mail (sent from the royal iPhone, no less) after the jump Read more...
London's Royal Opera House, which dates back to the 1600s (though it has been rebuilt a handful of times because of disastrous fires), has announced that it will host a staging of the first opera written entirely on Twitter. But the writing of the piece isn't being handled by a particular author (or the dudes from Coheed and Cambria). Rather, it's being written by whoever feels like they want to contribute to it. A special Twitter feed has been set up that allows anybody online to contribute lines of dialogue and plot points in 140 character bursts. So far, the story has advanced into the second act, though it's fairly inexplicable (which doesn't bother the curators — in fact, the curators are hoping that Twitter encourages non-linear stories).
Since the contributions can come from anywhere, there's no reason why some of the music world's biggest Twitter fanatics shouldn't participate. In fact, some of them could simply repurpose their existing tweets and turn them into pieces of arias. Wouldn't "Awake and different. I got surprises today. Or else I'm just still sleepy," which came from Pete Wentz's Twitter, sound heavenly coming out of Placido Domingo's throat? How about something from the endlessly excellent Drake's Knee, like "Pull a chicken off the scene/ Easy, just one look/ I run radio, Twitter, TV screens/ and I do it on one foot"? Or Miley Cyrus' "Gave a hug to Rob Pattinson today. Ok girls I get it now. So cute. Sorry 'Robby' bout all my bashing in my past"? Or what about one of John Mayer's latest dispatches, "So glad that's over. I think I'm going to have pink Trivial Pursuit pieces in my stool tomorrow"? (Okay, maybe that one can get left on the cutting room floor.)
So feel free to head over to @youropera to drop in your contribution to the project (the Royal Opera Company is also keeping tabs on the line-by-line developments here). And while you're at it, encourage your favorite musician on Twitter to drop in a line or two. Here's hoping that Lil Wayne's Twitter comes back soon enough to make a contribution.
"Absolutely, we're gonna be there. We're like Jack [Nicholson] at the Oscars. We're always at the VMAs. Plus, the last time the VMAs were in New York was when I met my wife [Ashlee Simpson], so I've got great memories."
-Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz on his band's plans for this year's Video Music Awards. The group's "I Don't Care" is up for Best Rock Video, though Wentz is skeptical of the band's chances at victory. "Any one of those bands — besides us — could win that award." This is the fifth consecutive year that Fall Out Boy have been nominated for a Moonman, and they have four in their possession already.
Pete Wentz is getting into the cereal business. This seems rather odd, considering I have witnessed firsthand the fact that Wentz is not exactly a breakfast person, as he usually does not wake up until noon.
Still, I suppose one could eat cereal at any time of the day, which might explain why he's launched Clandestine Crunch, an enterprise that combines two of his passions: breakfast cereal and ultra-limited-edition designer T-shirts.
There are three different shirt/cereal combos available, each featuring a character lovingly lifted from the General Mills roster: Barely Awake, a sleepy-eyed vaguely emo-ish bear (basically, Wentz himself); Choco-Bot, a cocoa-powered cyborg; and Space Monkey, a monkey from, uh, outer space.
The shirts cost $30 a pop, and are limited to just 267 pieces. Each comes packaged in a Clandestine Crunch cereal box (complete with puzzles and games on the back). If you're a completist, feel free to order all three shirts, because Wentz is promising to throw in a free Clandestine cereal bowl, a move that is both thoughtful and enticing. There's also a Barely Awake dog tag (if you're into that sort of thing) and a Clandestine Crunch logo T-shirt (which does not come packaged in a cereal box). And if you buy anything from the line, Wentz will throw in a free MP3 of the Clandestine Crunch theme song, as recorded by the brain trust at hip-hop comedy site ItsTheReal.com.
It's all another example of Pete Wentz's deliciously brilliant brand of enterprise, so we've got to give him props — even if the dude hasn't had an actual breakfast since sometime around 2002.
