Hicks: Martin Short accepts Kathie Lee Gifford’s apology

Martin Short is a class act.

A day after "Today" show host Kathie Lee Gifford asked Short how his wife was doing -- even though she died two years ago -- in an interview that went viral before the next sentence was out of Gifford's mouth, the actor publicly accepted the "Today" show host's apology.

"I think that it's live television and people make mistakes and there's no ill will intended," Short told E! News. "And I think it's nice to aspire to be that way."

It also would be nice to at least take a gander at someone's background before interviewing them.

Gifford apologized on air Wednesday and also tweeted: "I send my sincerest apologies to @MartinShort and his family. He handled situation

w/enormous grace and kindness and I'm so grateful."

Follow Tony Hicks at www.facebook.com/BayAreaNewsGroup.TonyHicks and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/insertfoot

Dominic Monaghan – Dominic Monaghan Maintains Matthew Fox ‘Beats Women’

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Michael Jackson’s Eerie ‘I Can’t Sleep’ Letter Pulled From Auction

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To Read The Full Article, Click Here: http://www.contactmusic.com/news/michael-jacksons-eerie-i-cant-sleep-letter-pulled-from-auction_1336225

Kentucky actor seen in ‘Hatfields & McCoys’

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky actor has had some TV time this week with a role in the "Hatfields McCoys" miniseries on the History Channel.

Boyd Holbrook of Prestonsburg had the role of William "Cap" Hatfield, the youngest son of Hatfield patriarch Devil Anse Hatfield, who was portrayed by Kevin Costner.

The 30-year-old Holbrook told The Courier-Journal (http://cjky.it/KsSzdZ ) he enjoyed working with Costner and Bill Paxton, who played the role of Randall McCoy. He says the actors were helpful and served as mentors while they spent time on the set.

Holbrook now splits his time between Los Angeles and New York but says he tries to make it back to Kentucky a couple of times a year, most recently for his sister's wedding a couple of weeks ago.

Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Anne Hathaway all smiles as she steps out wearing a sling on her arm after …

Ouch!

Anne Hathaway didn’t let a recent injury stop her from enjoying the warm weather in New York on Wednesday.

The 29-year-old actress, who's been sporting a short buzzed 'do from her role in "Les Miserables,” was all smiles as she stepped out in Brooklyn to meet a friend for lunch while wearing a sling on her right arm.

So what happened?

“She had a minor accident over the weekend and injured her wrist,” Hathaway’s rep tells the Daily News, adding that the injury is “nothing serious.”

Jessica Simpson Debuts Baby Maxwell On Cover Of People

Jessica Simpson is showing off her newborn daughter, Maxwell Drew, for the first time on the cover of this week's People magazine.

"Everyone meet the prettiest lil lady in the world, Maxwell Drew Johnson," Simpson tweeted Wednesday morning (May 30), linking her followers to the People story.

Simpson gave birth on May 1 via cesarean section and tells the magazine that her "life has completely changed" since she and fiancé Eric Johnson welcomed their 9-pound, 13-ounce bundle of joy.

"From how I sleep to what I think about, Maxwell has definitely taken over everything," Simpson said. "We stare at her all the time. We can't get enough!"

The singer/actress/entrepreneur, whose Jessica Simpson Collection is the most successful celebrity fashion line ever, now says that nursing her daughter is her "full-on job," though apparently it beats the alternative.

"It's the worst if I have to pump and give Eric a bottle to give her," Simpson said. "I miss holding her and having that closeness."

The magazine reports that baby Maxwell inherited her mother's eyes and the calm demeanor of Johnson, a former tight end for the San Francisco 49ers and later the New Orleans Saints who is currently a free agent. Simpson admits that recovering from surgery while caring for her new baby hasn't been easy, but she is thankful for all the support she's received.

"We are so grateful for all of the love, support and prayers," the star said. "This has been the greatest experience of our lives!"

An appreciation: Doc Watson, flatpicker, song stylist, messenger

You can spot his picking style by its grace: It’s as though his loss of eyesight had not only sharpened his hearing, but filled with light the conduit that connected his brain to his fingertips. What he imagined, he played.

But, then, it was instilled in him at birth. Music was the heirloom that Watson, born Arthel Lane Watson in 1923, inherited from his father, named General Watson, himself a banjo player who taught his son a love and enthusiasm for stringed instruments. General was so fixed on his son’s talent that, after he was confident of the younger Watson's skills,

To Read The Full Article, Click Here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2012/05/doc-watson-.html

Guitar picking master Doc Watson dies in NC at 89

You could hear the mountains of North Carolina in Doc Watson's music. The rush of a mountain stream, the steady creak of a mule in leather harness plowing rows in topsoil and the echoes of ancient sounds made by a vanishing people were an intrinsic part of the folk musician's powerful, homespun sound.

It took Watson decades to make a name for himself outside the world of Deep Gap, N.C. Once he did, he ignited the imaginations of countless guitar players who learned the possibilities of the instrument from the humble picker who never quite went out of style. From the folk revival of the 1960s to the Americana movement of the 21st century, Watson remained a constant source of inspiration and a treasured touchstone before his death Tuesday at age 89.

Blind from the age of 1, Watson was left to listen to the world around him and it was as if he heard things differently from others. Though he knew how to play the banjo and harmonica from an early age, he came to favor the guitar. His flat-picking style helped translate the fiddle- and mandolin-dominated music of his forebears for an audience of younger listeners who were open to the tales that had echoed off the mountains for generations, and to the new lead role for the guitar.

"Overall, Doc will be remembered as one of America's greatest folk musicians. I would say he's one of America's greatest musicians," said David Holt, a longtime friend and collaborator who compared Watson to Lead Belly, Bill Monroe, Muddy Waters and Earl Scruggs.

Like those pioneering players, Watson took a regional sound and made it into something larger, a piece of American culture that reverberates for decades after the notes are first played.

"He had a great way of presenting traditional songs and making them accessible to a modern audience," Holt said. "Not just accessible, but truly engaging."

Watson died at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, where he was hospitalized recently after falling at his home in Deep Gap, 100 miles northwest of Charlotte. He underwent abdominal surgery while in the hospital and had been in critical condition for several days.

Touched and toughened by tragedy several times in life, Watson had proven his mettle repeatedly. Singer Ricky Skaggs called Watson "an old ancient warrior."

"He prepared all of us to carry this on," Skaggs said. "He knew he wouldn't last forever. He did his best to carry the old mountain sounds to this generation."

Watson's simple, unadorned voice conveyed an unexpected amount of emotion, but it was his guitar playing that always amazed — and intimidated. Countless guitarists have tried to emulate Watson's renditions of songs such as "Tennessee Stud," ''Shady Grove" and "Deep River Blues."

Mandolin player Sam Bush remembers feeling that way when he first sat down next to "the godfather of all flatpickers" in 1974.

"But Doc puts you at ease about that kind of stuff," Bush said. "I never met a more generous kind of musician. He is more about the musical communication than showing off with hot licks. ... He seems to always know what notes to play. They're always the perfect notes. He helped me learn the space between the notes is as valuable as the ones you play."

Arthel "Doc" Watson was born March 3, 1923, and lost his eyesight when he developed an eye infection that was worsened by a congenital vascular disorder, according to a website for Merlefest, the annual musical gathering named for his late son Merle.

He came from a musical family. His father was active in the church choir and played banjo and his mother sang secular and religious songs, according to a statement from Folklore Productions, his management company since 1964.

Watson learned a few guitar chords while attending the North Carolina Morehead School for the Blind in Raleigh, and his father helped him buy a Stella guitar for $12.

"My real interest in music was the old 78 records and the sound of the music," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the website. "I loved it and began to realize that one of the main sounds on those old records I loved was the guitar."

The wavy-haired Watson got his musical start in 1953, playing electric lead guitar in a country-and-western swing band. His road to fame began in 1960 when Ralph Rinzler, a musician who also managed Bill Monroe, discovered Watson in North Carolina. That led Watson to the Newport Folk Festival in 1963 and his first recording contract a year later. He went on to record 60 albums, and wowed fans ranging from '60s hippies to those who loved traditional country and folk music.

Seven of his albums won Grammy awards; his eighth Grammy was a lifetime achievement award in 2004. He also received the National Medal of the Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Guitarist Pete Huttlinger of Nashville, Tenn., said Watson made every song his own, regardless of its age.

"He's one of those lucky guys," said Huttlinger, who studied Watson's methods when he first picked up a guitar. "When he plays something, he puts his stamp on it — it's Doc Watson."

Merle began recording and touring with him in 1964. But Merle Watson died at age 36 in a 1985 tractor accident, sending his father into deep grief and making him consider retirement. Instead, he kept playing and started Merlefest, an annual musical event in Wilkesboro, N.C., that raises money for a community college there and celebrates "traditional plus" music.

"When Merle and I started out we called our music 'traditional plus,' meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian region plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play," Doc Watson is quoted as saying on the festival's website. "Since the beginning, the people of the college and I have agreed that the music of MerleFest is 'traditional plus.'"

Watson never let his blindness hold him back musically or at home. He rose from playing for tips to starring at Carnegie Hall.

And he was just as proficient at home. Joe Newberry, a musician and spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, remembered once when his wife called the Watson home. Rosa Lee Watson, Watson's wife since 1947, said her husband was on the roof, replacing shingles. His daughter Nancy Watson said her father built the family's utility shed.

It's that same kind of self-sufficiency that once led him to refuse his government disability check.

"He basically started making enough money performing — couple of hundred dollars a week," Holt said. "So he went to the services for the blind and said he was making enough money to support his family and they should take what they were giving him and give it to somebody who needed it more."

In 2011, a life-size statue of Watson was dedicated in Boone, N.C. At Watson's request the inscription read, "Just One of the People," echoing a statement he'd once made to Holt about how he'd like to be remembered.

"Just as a good ol' down-to-earth boy that didn't think he was perfect and that loved music," Watson said. "And I'd like to leave quite a few friends behind and I hope I will. Other than that, I don't want nobody putting me on a pedestal when I leave here. I'm just one of the people ... just me."

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Online:

http://www.merlefest.org/

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Get the latest country music news at www.twitter.com/AP_Country.

Contact Entertainment Writer Chris Talbott at www.twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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Associated Press writers Martha Waggoner and Tom Foreman Jr. contributed to this report from Raleigh, N.C.

Albright, Dylan among recipients of Presidential Medal of Freedom

Three recipients were honored posthumously -- Jan Karski, the former Polish officer who escaped Nazi imprisonment and provided firsthand accounts to the Western Allies of atrocities he witnessed in Warsaw; Gordon Hirabayashi, who defied the forced relocation and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts.

A 13th winner, former Israeli President Shimon Peres, will receive his medal at a White House dinner later this year, Obama said.

"What sets these men and women apart is the incredible impact they have had on so many people, not in short and blinding bursts,

To Read The Full Article, Click Here: http://articles.cnn.com/2012-05-29/us/us_medal-of-freedom_1_presidential-medal-highest-civilian-honor-president-barack-obama?_s=PM:US

Allow Justin Bieber’s Fans to Explain This Weekend’s Paparrazo Scuffle and …

While some of you spent your Memorial Day Weekend leaking controversial footage and photographs of Madonna's upcoming tour, Justin Bieber attempted to see a movie with his girlfriend Selena Gomez. Only, as some of you may have heard, the Sunday afternoon outing in Calabasas, California ended with a reportedly physical altercation with a paparazzi photographer. The results were unflattering photos of the 18-year-old star glaring at his opponent while he sullenly replaces a tennis shoe and Selena retrieves his lost Lakers hat. Now a police investigation for possible misdemeanor battery has been launched, and detectives are searching for witnesses to verify the photographer's semi-embarrassing claims that the petit star struck him and injured him enough to warrant hospital treatment. Little do detectives know, they need only look as far as the closest Justin Bieber Facebook fan page to find out what happened. If they did so, they would quickly realize that the “Baby, Baby” singer's only real crime is being a fiercely protective (and adorable!) boyfriend.

Team Beliebers: Justin is a good boyfriend, by doing that, because the pap made fun of his leaked song at first then said some unpleasent things to Selena. and the pap got into Justin's personal space and Selena's. so Justin ran chasing the pap that is why one of the pic he wasnt wearing a shoe. and people think that he is a bad person now I mean come on people he is a human being and he is just being a good boyfriend. so stop freaking out. I mean really he is as normal as you and me.

Marianne A. Bou Mosleh: But this pap didn't say anything about Selena , Justin was taking a walk alone on the road without Moshe Or Kenny ( his bodyguards) and the pap started shooting many pictures , so JB gets mad from him and he started fighting this is the official story ..

Tina Vilhelm: Yes but he was just protecting his gf and I completely support him in everything he does also he just like hit them a little not a lot

Chloe Day: justin would never do that he is a down to earth person his mum brought him up to love and fight for what he believes in not beat up a guy for no reason xx

Chelsea Walker: No a lawyer guy came up to the pap and said he would make a lot of money if he made a scene and called an ambulance. poor Justin xxx

Skylar Edwards: maybe they need to give justin a brake!!!! They need to leave him alone

In other news, there is still no word on whether Gloria Allred has approached the allegedly Bieber-bullied paparazzo—nor, more curiously, which movie Bieber and Selena were attempting to see in the first place. The cash lining of his zippered knee pockets suggest he was planning on spending at least $25 on Men in Black III.