Trump rates his presidency ‘A+’: ‘Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?’
President Trump rated his performance in the White House an “A+” on Sunday.
He offered this assessment during a wide-ranging interview on “Fox News Sunday.” Chris Wallace had asked Trump where he ranks himself among great U.S. presidents.
“Where do you rank yourself in the pantheon of great presidents? There’s Lincoln and Washington. There’s FDR and Reagan. Do you make the top 10?” Wallace asked.
“I think I’m doing a great job. We have the best economy we’ve ever had. We’re doing really well. We would’ve been in a war with North Korea if, let’s say, that administration continued forward,” Trump said referring to his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“So where do you rank yourself?” Wallace asked.
“I would give myself, I would — look, I hate to do it, but I will do it — I would give myself an A+. Is that enough? Can I go higher than that?” Trump replied.
Trump said that had he been “more modified, more moderate,” he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half of what he has in the past two years. He added it’s important for the president to have “a certain ability to fight back.”
He expressed pride in the Republican Party’s ability to keep the Senate in the midterm elections, and suggested that losing the GOP majority in the House of Representatives doesn’t reflect on his presidency.
“I have people that won’t vote unless I’m on the ballot, OK? And I wasn’t on the ballot,” Trump said.
The current economic boom is overshadowed at times by Trump’s endless controversies. Although the health of the economy relies on far more than a president’s actions, Trump and Obama have both claimed credit for the strong economic recovery, and both contributed to its success.
Whether the topic is politics, business or entertainment, it is not uncommon for Trump to give himself superlative marks or exaggerate his accomplishments. The president told the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward last September that no other president in U.S. history has done as well as he has.
“Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you,” he said. “So that’s … and that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years.”
Based on polling, the American public does not appear to agree with Trump’s rating of his job performance. Gallup reports that his most recent job approval rating is just 38 percent, while the historical average for U.S. presidents from 1938 to 2018 is 53 percent.
In his 1987 memoir “The Art of the Deal,” co-written by Tony Schwartz, Trump attributed a large part of his success to playing to people’s fantasies, and said that “a little hyperbole never hurts.”
“People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole,” Trump wrote. “It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion.”
Article via FOXNews
Mel B details attempted suicide with 200 painkillers in new book excerpt
In December 2014, during the live “X Factor” shows, Mel B tried to take her own life by downing 200 painkillers. She blacked out and woke up covered in bruises.
It echoed a previous attempt on her own life aged 14 when she was growing up in Leeds.
She was replaced for the Saturday semi but bravely appeared for the Sunday live final in a dress which showed off her injuries. At the time she blamed a stomach ulcer.
Here, in an exclusive extract from new autobiography Brutally Honest, Mel explains what really happened over those few dramatic days.
—
Here I am, 39 years of age, staring in a mirror in the en-suite bathroom of my rented house in Kensington, London, holding an open bottle of aspirin from the stash I’ve stockpiled over the years, putting one pill after another into my mouth.
As each pill goes into my mouth, I ask myself: “Are you sure?” And I take another one. Ten, 20, 50, 100. “Are you sure?”
It’s Thursday night. 11 December 2014. I’ve come back from dinner with my husband Stephen. Tomorrow I’m going to “The X Factor.”
It will be the red-carpet launch for the final weekend. I’ll be wearing a beautiful dress, my hair and make-up will be perfect. But if you want the absolute truth, I don’t care about any of it. My life is a mess and I want out.
One hundred and 20. “Are you sure?” 150. “Are you sure?”
Behind the glitter of fame, I felt emotionally battered, estranged from my family.
I felt ugly and detested by the very man who once promised to love and protect me, my husband and manager Stephen.
A man who after ten years of marriage now had a library of sex tapes that could — as we both well knew — ruin my career and destroy my family.
I wrote frantic, disjointed notes for Phoenix, my eldest daughter, my soulmate — the girl who is little sister, friend and daughter to me.
It was going to be up to her to get my other little girls, Angel and Madison, to Leeds where they could all live with my mum.
In my head, in that moment, it was that simple.
Two hundred. “Now what’s going to happen, Melanie? STOP!” As soon as I’d swallowed that last pill, I knew I didn’t want to go anywhere. “Melanie! What the f— are you doing? Get a grip!”
Suicide was not the answer. I had to make my life count. I had to get to a hospital. I had to get those pills out of my stomach before anything happened.
My head was spinning. All I thought was that I needed to get out of the room but for some reason, the door was jammed.
I can’t clearly remember what happened next but I remember throwing myself at the door, crashing my full weight against it.
Those bruises on my face and shoulder everyone saw at “The X Factor” final three days later — most of them were caused by those moments trapped in that doorway.
I can’t remember the pain but I can still remember the fear, panic and absolute confusion in my head.
Then everything started to go black and I collapsed to my knees. I could feel the life in me starting to drain away.
And then nothing, silence. I lay semi-conscious on the bathroom floor and, with tears streaming down my face, drifting in and out of consciousness, waited to die.
I remember getting to the hospital and calling Simon Cowell. I remember he didn’t sound horrified, just calm, like he knew that’s what I needed from him.
I must have lost consciousness again. When I woke up, I was surrounded by doctors and nurses.
“Mom. What the hell?” Phoenix was standing by my bed. Furious, shaking, full of rage. Of all the memories from all those hours, it is the one that still floors me. “Why, Mum? Why? Why?” It was the saddest moment of my life. All I ever want is for her to know how sorry I am, how lost I was and how I’ll never, ever abandon her again.
Looking at my daughter — distraught, devastated, angry — was the moment I knew the fightback had to start.
The situation with “The X Factor” was quickly sorted because it had to be — the semi-finals were going to be shown live in two days’ time.
Tulisa Contostavlos would cover for me on Saturday night and be on standby for the Sunday final.
Despite all the drugs I was being given, I was wired. The doctors kept telling me that I was in the High Dependency Unit and was seriously ill. I needed to get well.
If you think I was surrounded by friends, relatives, other concerned celebrities and flowers, you would be wrong. Thanks to my relationship with Stephen, I was pretty much on my own apart from my security, my hairdresser and Simon my publicist.
Every one of the Spice Girls tried to contact me. I couldn’t speak to them. I wasn’t ready, and I was too ashamed. My family also managed to track me down, but they were the last people I wanted to see.
I remained trapped behind a wall of guilt, shame and worthlessness. I’d been hit in the past, but bruises fade.
My doctor looked at me as if I was completely crazy when I mentioned in the very early hours of Sunday morning that I would be on “The X Factor” later that day.
“That is not happening, Melanie,” he said.
“I don’t think you realise how serious your condition is. You are in intensive care. There is serious damage to your liver and kidneys.”
As my doctor walked out of the room, I texted my stylist: “Send me pix of all the dresses you’ve got me for the final tonight.”
I had bruises round my eyes, my cheek was swollen, and I had massive dark welts on my arms from the constant stabbing at my weak, narrow veins with the IV drips.
“I’ve got three perfect dresses with sleeves,” said my stylist, nervously eyeing the welts and purple marks on my arms which were clearly showing through thick body foundation. “No,” I said. “I’ve picked the dress already. No sleeves.”
Read more via FOX
Kanye West donates $150,000 for security guard killed by officer in suburban Chicago
Rapper Kanye West donated $150,000 to a memorial fundraising site for a security guard shot by an officer near his hometown Chicago.
How he was killed
Outrage following the killing
Article via CNN
Cardi B Shares the Heartbreaking Reason She’s ‘Scared’ to Post Photos of Baby Kulture (Exclusive)
Cardi B is a protective mama bear!
On Wednesday night, the 26-year-old rapper opened up to ET’s Katie Krause at the launch of her Fashion Nova X Cardi B line at Boulevard3 in Los Angeles about motherhood and her continued reservations on sharing photos of her 4-month-old daughter, Kulture, with the world.
“One day, soon,” she assures ET of posting photos. “I’m scared of sharing her to the world. There are too many mean people out there.”
Cardi admits that the temptation is strong because of how in love she is with her little one.
“Sometimes I do want to show people how beautiful and how precious she is. She’s so precious,” she says. “There’s a lot of people that have crazy minds, you know. I want to protect her! She’s my little buggy.”
One person Cardi doesn’t have to worry about is her husband, Offset, who is a great dad to Kulture already.
“He is changing diapers, but I’ve been seeing Offset being a dad,” she explains. “He already has three kids, so I already fell in love with the way that he was a dad already. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I can have a little one with this guy.’ He’s really good.”
Despite the Migos rapper’s skills in the daddy department, Cardi thinks Kulture is more of a mama’s girl.
“I think she’s more me. I think she loves me a little bit more, but I think she’s just loyal to whoever gives her the milk,” she teases.
So will Cardi and Offset be adding to their sweet family?
“I want two more,” she admits. “It could always be a hit or miss, but I don’t want nothing right now.”
This isn’t the first time Cardi has gotten candid about keeping baby Kulture out of the spotlight. Last month, she told her fans that she had turned down a seven-figure deal for the first photos of baby Kulture.
Article via ETonline
LaMelo Ball REACTS As Derrick Rose CUSSES OUT Lonzo Ball!
Video via The Fumble
Filmmakers documented a historic Aretha Franklin concert. Nearly 50 years later, the public will get to see it.
“Amazing Grace,” an Aretha Franklin concert film regarded as one of the great lost treasures of both the documentary and music worlds, will finally see the light of day, according to its longtime producer and overseer.
Producer Alan Elliott and the Franklin estate struck a deal to end a three-year dispute and enable the movie to be shown at festivals and sold to distributors, Elliott told The Washington Post.
Elliott said the deal was struck with Sabrina Owens, Franklin’s niece and the executor of her estate. The film will now have its premiere next week at DOC NYC, a popular documentary gathering in New York, and will be shown to distributors for potential release without any apparent legal hurdles.
“We’re excited to finally bring the movie to the public and expose this legacy project — this is the premier document of American popular music that’s ever been filmed,” Elliott said in an interview.
“Amazing Grace” has been seen by scholars as a historic document to which the public has long been prevented access. The movie chronicles a landmark performance the soul great gave of the eponymous double album at a Los Angeles church in 1972. It was originally shot by the Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack. But it remained in the vault for decades, first for technical reasons — technology did not allow the audio and video to sync properly — and then for financial reasons, with not enough money to complete it.
According to Elliott, Pollack had asked him on his deathbed in 2008 to finish the movie, which Elliott did for the following seven years. The former producer, who now is a college professor, also called it “a really interesting tableaux we formed out of shrapnel.”
But Franklin opposed the release and went so far as to get an injunction stopping the movie from premiering at the Telluride Film Festival in 2015 on the eve of its premiere. The Toronto International Film Festival subsequently pulled the film because of the injunction as well. Franklin’s objections at the time were unclear.
A distribution deal with Lionsgate was later mooted after Franklin decided not to sign the papers, and the film was stuck in limbo.
After her death in August, The Post reported a deal could be more likely, though the possibility was complicated by the fact that Franklin left no will.
Endeavor, the Hollywood agency, has been selling rights to the movie, which could garner a significant distribution deal in the absence of any legal hurdle. An Endeavor executive did not respond to a request for comment. A representative for the Franklin estate did not respond to a request for comment.
Thom Powers, the Toronto doc programmer who also runs DOC NYC, told The Post he thought the movie was “one of the great lost treasures of documentary film.”
“A lot of us have been following this project for many years and waiting for the day when it would come to light,” he said. “About the biggest thriller I could imagine as a film-festival programmer is to be able to host this and bring it before an audience.” The screening will take place with a conversation between Elliott and the cultural critic Nelson George.
Because of a dispute between Elliott and the Pollack estate, the director’s name was taken off the film. It will premiere without a director.
“Amazing Grace” had earlier been qualified for the 2018 Oscars — essentially, a token week-long release in a theater to enable academy members to nominate it for the year’s biggest prize. The move was somewhat unusual for a film without a distributor. (Distributors like to formulate Oscar plans themselves.) Though the film is most likely a candidate for the documentary Oscar, Elliott said he would like to make a push for top categories, including best picture. “We want to dare the academy to honor Aretha,” he said.
The film does not have a publicist or other rudiments of Hollywood’s Oscar-industrial complex. That is by design, Elliott said, who noted he’d prefer a more homespun campaign.
Elliott had told The Post in August that “Ms. Franklin said ‘I love the film.’ Unfortunately for all of us, she passed before we could share that love. ‘Amazing Grace’ is a testament to the timelessness of Ms. Franklin’s devotion to music and God. Her artistry, her genius and her spirit are present in every note and every frame of the film. We look forward to sharing the film with the world soon.”
The development is likely to be welcomed by fans and scholars. “Amazing Grace,” which this reporter saw in 2015, contains an intimacy rare for a movie about an icon and also showcases its subject’s incipient talent, all taking place in a church. Franklin performs such gospel standards as Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy” and gives a religious spin to pop hits like Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend.”
At the time of her death, the music publication Billboard extolled the performance it documents as central to the history of American music.
“For all the historic moments that she helped soundtrack and elevate over the span of decades, it was the pair of concerts delivered at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles in 1972 that rank as her finest hours,” the magazine said of the L.A. shows.
“For 11 full minutes she lives in a state of grace, as she sings to the Lord, for the Lord,” the magazine said, “letting his light and his love fill her body and soul, and then sending it pouring out into the microphone placed inches from her face and into the ears of the people sat rapt before her in the pews, and those listening months later at home or in their car, for all eternity.”
Article via WashingtonPost
Principal: Students who spelled out racial slur admit they planned it
GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. – Several Brookwood High School students involved in spelling out a racial slur during a marching band performance at halftime of a weekend football game have admitted to planning the whole thing, according to the school district.
According to a letter to parents and students from Brookwood High School Principal William Bo Ford Jr., the investigation into the Friday night incident found that three seniors planned and executed the stunt.
Ford said a fourth student, who carried one of the letters spelling out the racial slur, appears to have agreed to go along with it “at the last minute.”
“In our interviews, the students — two of whom are African American, one of whom is Asian, and one of whom is Hispanic — indicated that this was intended as a joke, one that they thought would be funny,” Ford said in the letter. “However, they acknowledged that they knew this racist term was not acceptable.”
Ford said two more students weren’t involved in the planning and execution, but gave “false information to school officials.”
All six of these students will receive discipline consequences commensurate with their involvement in this incident,” Ford said in the letter.
Read the entire letter below:
I am following up to you on my communication from over the weekend regarding the situation that occurred during our band’s halftime show on Friday night. As promised, we started an investigation into this matter, and I wanted to share with you our current findings and the steps we are taking with the students who were involved. After extensive interviews with many students, we have determined that three seniors intentionally planned and executed the use of the sousaphone covers to spell out a completely unacceptable, racist term. The fourth student, a junior, who carried one of the letters spelling out the word, appears to have gone along with the plan at the last minute. However, all four of the students knew what was going to happen and knew what they were spelling out during the halftime show. In our interviews, the students– two of whom are African American, one of whom is Asian, and one of whom is Hispanic – indicated that this was intended as a joke, one that they thought would be funny. However, they acknowledged that they knew this racist term was not acceptable. We have identified two other students who do not appear to be involved in the planning and execution but did provide false information to school officials. All six of these students will receive discipline consequences commensurate with their involvement in this incident.
I am hurt and disappointed in these students and their actions that have stunned our community. As you all know, this is not who we are. Brookwood is proud to be an inclusive and accepting school community. This is a teachable moment for all of us, and students need to be aware that their actions and words have consequences.
We are wrapping up our investigation; however, in an effort to be transparent and responsive to our community, I felt it was important to share our findings with you as quickly as possible. I have heard from many of you since my first communication, and, unfortunately, I have not been able to get back with all of you. As you would expect, our first priority was to conduct a thorough and fair investigation into this matter. That said, I appreciate your patience and support and will be reaching out to those who have contacted me. It is also important for us to unite in support of our program and student and staff leaders of our award-winning band. I have faith in our students and community that we will rise together and become stronger in this challenging time. I hope that our program, school, and community will not be judged based on the unfortunate decisions and actions of a few developing teenagers. As always, thank you for your support of our students and school.
© 2018 Cox Media Group
Article via WSB-TV
Pamela Anderson blasts the #MeToo movement, says feminism can ‘go too far’
Pamela Anderson sat down for a lengthy interview with Australia’s “60 Minutes” Sunday, offering some controversial comments about the #MeToo movement and the negative impact she perceives it having on men.
The former “Baywatch” star derided the current wave of feminism and called it a “bore.”
“I think this feminism can go too far,” Anderson told journalist Liam Bartlett. “I’m a feminist, but I think that this third wave of feminism is a bore.”
She continued: “I think it paralyzes men, I think this #MeToo movement is a bit too much for me. I’m sorry, I’ll probably get killed for saying that.”
Stars who have criticized the #MeToo movement in the past haven’t fared well. “The Big Bang Theory” star Mayim Bialik apologized after being accused of victim-blaming when she spoke about the movement, and French actress Catherine Deneuve caught serious backlash for similar comments made about its effect on men.
Anderson, however, was undeterred by the possibility of being labeled anti-#MeToo and doubled down on her controversial comments, going as far as to suggest that those who encountered the likes of Harvey Weinstein boiled down to a lack of common sense.
“My mother taught me don’t go to a hotel with a stranger. If someone opens the door in a bathrobe and it’s supposed to be a business meeting, maybe I should go with somebody else,” the 51-year-old says in the clip below. “I think some things are just common sense. Or, if you go in… get the job. I’m Canadian, I’m going to speak my mind. I’m sorry, I’m not politically correct.”
The animal rights advocate also discussed her image as a sex symbol and noted that it opened doors to her activism.
“I’d rather be a sex symbol than a… not a sex symbol. That’s a compliment, isn’t it?” she said. “Every girl wants to be sexy. Every girl wants to be, you know, as beautiful or pretty as they can be. I never thought of myself as beautiful. I always thought of myself as kinda cute, a little funny and maybe I’ve improved with age.”
Article via FoxNews
Roy Hargrove Grammy-Winning Jazz Trumpeter Dies At 49
Roy Hargrove, an incisive trumpeter who embodied the brightest promise of his jazz generation, both as a young steward of the bebop tradition and a savvy bridge to hip-hop and R&B, died on Friday night in New York City. He was 49.
The cause was cardiac arrest, according to his longtime manager, Larry Clothier. Hargrove had been admitted to the hospital for reasons related to kidney function.
A briskly assertive soloist with a tone that could evoke either burnished steel or a soft, golden glow, Hargrove was a galvanizing presence in jazz over the last 30 years. Dapper and slight of build, he exuded a sly, sparkling charisma onstage, whether he was holding court at a late-night jam session or performing in the grandest concert hall. His capacity for combustion and bravura was equaled by his commitment to lyricism, especially when finessing a ballad on flugelhorn.
Hargrove is also known for his vital presence in the turn-of-the-century movement known as neo-soul. He made crucial contributions to Voodoo, the epochal album by D’Angelo, released in 2000. He appeared the same year on Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate, and later formed his own hybrid project, The RH Factor, with the aim of furthering the dialogue between modern jazz, hip-hop and R&B. But Hargrove always maintained his foothold in the mainstream jazz tradition; he saw his forays into other forms of black music as an extension of, rather than any departure from, that tradition.
He first emerged in the late 1980s, at a cultural moment when his precocity and poise amounted to a form of currency in jazz. His first album, Diamond in the Rough, was released on the Novus imprint of RCA in 1990. Soon afterward, he went on tour with a package called Jazz Futures, featuring a peer group of other young torchbearers, including alto saxophonist Antonio Hart and bassist Christian McBride.
Hargrove was also quick to earn the coveted approval of his elders — not only alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, who provided some of his first experience in a recording studio, but also tenor saxophone titan Sonny Rollins, who featured him on a tune called “Young Roy” in 1991 (and also at his 80th birthday concert in 2010).
As he achieved his own wealth of experience, Hargrove was generous as a mentor himself. Among the younger musicians who responded to his death on social media was fellow trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who wrote on Twitter: “I don’t think I would be alive if I hadn’t met him when I did. I am extremely grateful I got to tell him as a grown man to his face.”
Roy Anthony Hargrove was born on Oct. 16, 1969, in Waco, Texas, to Roy Allan and Jacklyn Hargrove. He grew up in Dallas, where he attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, an arts magnet that also produced Erykah Badu and Norah Jones.
The first jazz musician who made a substantial impression on him was David “Fathead” Newman, a tenor saxophonist best known for his long tenure with Ray Charles; he was a Dallas-area native, and Hargrove heard him at a junior high assembly. Then in 1987, Wynton Marsalis heard a teenaged Hargrove in a clinic at Booker T. Washington and was so impressed that he invited the young trumpeter to sit in on his gig that week in Fort Worth.
Roy Hargrove, an incisive trumpeter who embodied the brightest promise of his jazz generation, both as a young steward of the bebop tradition and a savvy bridge to hip-hop and R&B, died on Friday night in New York City. He was 49.
The cause was cardiac arrest, according to his longtime manager, Larry Clothier. Hargrove had been admitted to the hospital for reasons related to kidney function.
A briskly assertive soloist with a tone that could evoke either burnished steel or a soft, golden glow, Hargrove was a galvanizing presence in jazz over the last 30 years. Dapper and slight of build, he exuded a sly, sparkling charisma onstage, whether he was holding court at a late-night jam session or performing in the grandest concert hall. His capacity for combustion and bravura was equaled by his commitment to lyricism, especially when finessing a ballad on flugelhorn.
Hargrove is also known for his vital presence in the turn-of-the-century movement known as neo-soul. He made crucial contributions to Voodoo, the epochal album by D’Angelo, released in 2000. He appeared the same year on Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate, and later formed his own hybrid project, The RH Factor, with the aim of furthering the dialogue between modern jazz, hip-hop and R&B. But Hargrove always maintained his foothold in the mainstream jazz tradition; he saw his forays into other forms of black music as an extension of, rather than any departure from, that tradition.
He first emerged in the late 1980s, at a cultural moment when his precocity and poise amounted to a form of currency in jazz. His first album, Diamond in the Rough, was released on the Novus imprint of RCA in 1990. Soon afterward, he went on tour with a package called Jazz Futures, featuring a peer group of other young torchbearers, including alto saxophonist Antonio Hart and bassist Christian McBride.
Hargrove was also quick to earn the coveted approval of his elders — not only alto saxophonist Bobby Watson, who provided some of his first experience in a recording studio, but also tenor saxophone titan Sonny Rollins, who featured him on a tune called “Young Roy” in 1991 (and also at his 80th birthday concert in 2010).
As he achieved his own wealth of experience, Hargrove was generous as a mentor himself. Among the younger musicians who responded to his death on social media was fellow trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, who wrote on Twitter: “I don’t think I would be alive if I hadn’t met him when I did. I am extremely grateful I got to tell him as a grown man to his face.”
Roy Anthony Hargrove was born on Oct. 16, 1969, in Waco, Texas, to Roy Allan and Jacklyn Hargrove. He grew up in Dallas, where he attended Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, an arts magnet that also produced Erykah Badu and Norah Jones.
The first jazz musician who made a substantial impression on him was David “Fathead” Newman, a tenor saxophonist best known for his long tenure with Ray Charles; he was a Dallas-area native, and Hargrove heard him at a junior high assembly. Then in 1987, Wynton Marsalis heard a teenaged Hargrove in a clinic at Booker T. Washington and was so impressed that he invited the young trumpeter to sit in on his gig that week in Fort Worth.
Hargrove attended the Berklee College of Music on scholarship for 18 months, before transferring to the New School in New York. In jazz’s close-knit musician community, the meteoric force of his arrival was comparable only to that of Marsalis’ about a decade earlier.
Hargrove was a two-time Grammy winner, in two illustrative categories: best jazz instrumental album in 2003 for Directions in Music, featuring a post-bop supergroup with pianist Herbie Hancock and saxophonist Michael Brecker; and best Latin jazz performance in 1998 for Habana, a groundbreaking Afro-Cuban project recorded in Havana.
Early in his New York experience, in 1992, Hargrove and a business partner, Dale Fitzgerald, signed a lease on a loft in Lower Manhattan with the intention of finding a place for practicing and rehearsals. Three years later, Hargrove and Fitzgerald partnered with Lezlie Harrison to convert it into a nonprofit performance space, The Jazz Gallery. Though it moved to a new location in 2013, The Jazz Gallery continues to be an integral hub for the music. Hargrove continued to play there, just as he never stopped being a late-night fixture at Smalls.
He is survived by his wife, singer and producer Aida Brandes; a daughter from a previous relationship, Kamala Hargrove; his mother, Jacklyn Hargrove; and his younger brother, Brian Hargrove.
Along with his quintet — a sterling hard-bop unit that released an album called Earfood in 2008, and was recorded at The Village Vanguard in 2011 by WBGO and NPR Music — Hargrove intermittently led a big band. He often stood in for one of his many trumpet totems in the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band. And he continued to sit in and pop up as a special guest; he’s prominently featured on an album released last year by singer and pianist Johnny O’Neal.
For a number of years, Hargrove struggled with substance abuse and its attendant problems. In 2014, he pleaded guilty to cocaine possession in Manhattan criminal court and was sentenced to two days of community service.
But those close to Hargrove say he had recently made great strides with any issues of dependency. “Whatever it was for a lot of years, it was radically, drastically curtailed over the last year or two,” attests Clothier. “He was playing great; he really had himself back together. This last run we did in Europe, it was as good as I heard him play in the last 10 years.”
Hargrove had been scheduled to perform on Saturday, Nov. 3, in a jazz vespers service at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., as part of the TD James Moody Jazz Festival
Via NPR NEWS
Just try to be offended by the new Starbucks holiday cups
Starbucks seems to be awfully cautious about this year’s holiday cups, which debut annually after Halloween. The company has released new holiday cup lines since 1997, and this year’s four new cups appear to wholly embrace the “season”—whatever that completely inoffensive “season” is—with a lineup of red-striped; green argyle; red-and-white sweaterish pattern; and holly-and-berries cups. Nondenominational, seasonal, neutral. We get it.
It’s quite a pendulum swing back from the plain red cups of 2015, or the festive, multicultural mural motif of last year (inspiring our all-time favorite Takeout headline from Jen Sabella: “Pry this lesbian Starbucks cup from my cold, dyke hands”). For 2018, Starbucks appears to be striving for a lukewarm medium: more festive than the sacrilegiously plain (according to some) red ones, but no hints toward multiculturalism as on last year’s cup. Argyle patterns and coffee cherries are about as non-controversial as you can get.
No matter what, though, we’re sure that somehow these cups will inspire some sort of backlash to kick off the season. It’s becoming as much an annual tradition as watching Elf every year.
Article via TheTakeout