By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 02/06/2012 

The Voice coach Blake Shelton says he expects a country singer will make it all the way to the end during the show’s second season.
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“I’m most excited about this Season 2 of The Voice because they’re some country singers this year that are really good. We had a few last year but we didn’t end up with a country singer in the final four,” Shelton told People.

“I know anything can happen, but I really believe in my heart that one of several country singers that we have on our show this year have a shot at winning the whole thing.”

The Voice crowned Javier Colon, a pop and soul singer from Stratford, CT, its first-season champion during the reality singing competition’s June finale. 

In addition to Colon, who was mentored by coach Adam Levine throughout the season, the other three finalists of his season were Dia Frampton, Beverly McClellan and Vicci Martinez. Frampton was an indie singer mentored by Shelton, McClellan was a pop singer who worked with fellow coach Christina Aguilera and Martinez was a soul and blues singer under the leadership of coach Cee Lo Green.

The Voice’s second season premiered immediately following the Super Bowl on Sunday and will begin airing in its regular Mondays 8PM ET/PT time period tonight. The show will feature six weeks of the “battle” rounds, in which the coaches will have two of their own team members face off vocally and then decide which singer will advance and which one will be eliminated from the competition. 

Once the “battle” rounds have concluded, The Voice will switch to live performance shows featuring the remaining 24 contestants. Home viewers will vote to save their favorite talent, leaving the coach to decide who they want to save and who will not move on.

In the end, each musician coach will have one star artist left ready to compete against the other teams’ finalists to win the grand prize of a recording contract and be named “The Voice.”

(Photo credit NBC)

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By Michael David Smith – Lead Blogger

Fabricio Werdum turned in a very impressive performance to beat Roy Nelson by unanimous decision at UFC 143. Werdum’s striking was outstanding, and his knees were lethal.

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Feb 5, 2012 – Fabricio Werdum dominated Roy “Big Country” Nelson for 15 minutes in a heavyweight battle at UFC 143 on Saturday night in Las Vegas. Although Nelson was game, Werdum was simply too much for him. Werdum was favored, but the biggest surprise in the fight was how easily Werdum won the stand-up battle: His muay Thai striking looked tremendous.

All three of the judges scored it 30-27 for Werdum.

“I know Roy Nelson is a very tough guy,” Werdum said afterward. “Just wait until the next fight.”

Early in the first round they went to the ground and Werdum got Nelson’s back, and it looked like Werdum might win by quick submission. But Nelson did a good job of getting free and getting back to his feet. Unfortunately for Nelson, from there Werdum turned Nelson’s nose into a bloody mess with some huge knees to the face from a Thai clinch. Nelson deserves credit for just making it out of the first, but it was a round Werdum won handily.

In the second round Nelson did better, landing some overhand rights and starting to feel himself standing up, although Werdum also connected with more knees and kicks and probably did enough to win a closer second round.

At the start of the third Nelson actually attempted a standing guillotine choke, but it was clear that Werdum wasn’t going to tap, and once he broke free of that he continued to control the fight standing up.

It was Werdum’s first fight in the UFC since he lost to Junior dos Santos in October of 2008, and it was a very impressive performance. He showed that he’s one of the top heavyweights in the world.

Read More: ufc 143 results, ufc 143 results, Fabricio Werdum (MMA), Roy Nelson (MMA), UFC 143: Diaz vs. Condit

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Read More: Josh Hamilton (LF – TEX), Texas Rangers

Press conferences that follow some sort of breaking controversy are rarely interesting. They’re usually a promotional vehicle for a carefully prepared statement written by people who get paid a lot of money to write carefully prepared statements. That’s the template, usually.

Josh Hamilton sat in front of a lot of cameras and just talked. I suppose it wasn’t that risky — it’s not like Hamilton was going to start swearing and threatening people. It was a prepared statement, in that Hamilton presumably had a great idea of what he was or wasn’t going to say. But it was riskier than we might think. It wasn’t what we should expect from the next professional athlete who gets caught up in something controversial.

I suppose if it’s time to be cynical, there’s a chance the press conference will kick off a spate of articles expressing admiration for Hamilton’s forthrightness. Then there will be the backlash to those articles. Then there will be the backlash to the backlash. The Internet.

But it’s hard not to appreciate the trust that the Rangers had in Josh Hamilton, encouraging him to address the media in this way. Hamilton talked about how he can be sneaky and deceptive when he’s drinking. He admitted that “90 percent of the time, I’m fine,” acknowledging how tough that other 10 percent can be. This press conference wasn’t filled with boilerplate “I know this is wrong” comments, at least not in moments like that. There was humanity in a situation that could have been handled with a pablum-filled press release.

You will judge for yourself what happened Monday, and how Hamilton handled the aftermath. I think we can agree that it was handled in a unique way that we probably won’t see again for a while.

“Chicago” Joe Angio and his wife Anna did everything by the book to secure their slice of the American Dream. They earned college degrees, started a small business, bought a house and pair of cars, paid their taxes and credit-card bills on time. But when the economy tanked, so did the dream. Between two jobs they could barely pay their mortgage, reaching a point where they had to choose which creditor to shortchange at the end of the month in order to keep the lights on. With foreclosure no longer a matter of if, but of when, the couple looked on the Internet for the ideal place to lay low, spend less and experiment with solar power to “get more for our buck out of our environment.” They bought a used RV and went off the grid. Way off.

Slab City, their home for the past three months, is a squatters’ camp deep in the badlands of California’s poorest county, where the road ends and the sun reigns, about 190 miles southeast of Los Angeles and hour’s drive from the Mexican border. The vast state-owned property gets its name from the concrete slabs spread out across the desert floor, the last remnants of a World War II–era military base. In the decades since it was decommissioned, dropouts and fugitives of all stripes have swelled its winter population to close to a thousand, though no one’s really counting. These days, their numbers are growing thanks to a modest influx of recession refugees like the Angios, attracted by do-it-yourself, rent-free living beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law. And while the complexion of the Slabs, as the place is locally known, may be changing in some ways, the same old rule applies: respect your neighbor, or stay the hell away.

“It’s pretty much as close to the Old West as you’re gonna get. Most of us don’t own guns or none of that garbage, but if we have problems, we take care of [them],” says Ray, 56, a former drug addict turned born-again Christian who has traversed the country six times with a giant wooden cross on his back. Katie Ray, 30, a perennial visitor from Oakland, Calif., calls the place a “postapocalyptic vacation zone.” (PHOTOS: After Foreclosure: A Photographer’s Requiem for the American Home)

Although Slabbers tend to defy easy characterization, de facto neighborhoods (“Poverty Flats,” “Lows”) and tribes have emerged. There are Year-Rounders who brave the 120°F summer inferno, and Snowbirds who land from as far as Canada with their souped-up RVs and pensions, soul-searching Gypsy Kids who arrive by train with little more than the ragged clothes on their back, Spaz Kids and their electro-psychedelic outdoor parties, and Scrappers who risk life and limb to collect shrapnel from the gunnery range that flanks the camp, where Navy SEAL teams train year-round (and where rumor has it they prepared for the Osama bin Laden raid). That’s to say nothing of the rowdy bikers who pass through, or the meth-addled loners on the outer edges inclined to greet a trespasser with a gunshot. If the Burning Man festival were a permanent settlement instead of a weeklong escape — remixed with a hard dose of reality — this might be it.

“The Last Free Place in America” lives up to its nickname. Want to hang out nude in thermal mud baths or skateboard stoned in the bowl of an Olympic-size pool? Go for it. In the mood to construct outlandish pieces of art with scrap metal, dig an SUV-size trench for no particular reason or play 18 holes of golf on a grassless course to the sound of bombs in the distance? This is the place. Yet despite the anything-goes reputation, those who stick around the Slabs long enough insist they are made to feel welcome, provided they have the right attitude. Free meals and entertainment are on offer, capped by Saturday-night concerts at the Range, a clapboard venue that showcases live acts of varying quality. This bohemian aspect was featured in the 2007 film Into the Wild, rare mainstream attention that drew a surge of newcomers to Slab City.

One of them is Sandra “Sandi” Andrews, 61, a nomadic mother of eight without a retirement plan. Her daughter saw the film and figured it was her mom’s kind of place. She was right. “When I first got here, I thought this is a whole new planet, there’s no place like it,” she exclaims. Initial concerns about her safety as a woman alone did not last long. Three years on, she’s surrounded by friends and lives on less than $100 a month, supplementing her Social Security check with paintings she sells to tourists that stop by her studio, a converted school bus. Among her neighbors are two widows in their 90s and an 89-year-old who jokes that she’d die as soon as she set foot in a retirement home. “We’ve all chosen and like Slab City,” Andrews says, “so the caring and sharing is always there.” (MORE: The Tale of a Lost Mortgage)

Well, it depends on whom you ask too. “Builder Bill” Ammon, 63, a year-round resident who manages the Range, says that when he moved from San Diego to the Slabs back in 1999, the community was more tight-knit. “In those days, you could be poor and be separate from the engine of the world and still be all right,” he says, fondly recalling how most everyone talked to one another on their CB radios and exchanged services and goods at regular swap meets to support themselves. “People had skills to offer.” These days, he grumbles, a new generation of youngsters is turning up ill equipped for the sobering demands of life off the grid, looking for handouts. No one is left to go hungry, he notes. But if they don’t adapt, they are given the cold shoulder, which may help explain the rise in petty theft at the camp. “A kind of segregation has developed here” between young and old, he says.

No one would disagree that the Wild West element has its darker side. Hang around the evening campfires a while and strange stories pour out: disappearances, mysterious drownings in the mud baths, the man who showed up in camp with his finger apparently bitten off, claiming he’d been attacked by a cannibal. The border patrol keeps a visible presence, searching for illegal immigrants that ply the region. When there’s serious trouble, though, firemen must drive over from Niland, a derelict town five miles to the west that boasts the closest grocery store and post office. In 40-plus years on the job, Michael Aleksick, 63, the recently retired fire marshal, says he’s been repeatedly shot at, stabbed and gotten in too many fistfights to remember, often with people he knows. Crime has worsened. “The crystal-meth influence,” he says, “has been huge.”

“There’s the good, bad and the ugly,” says “Shotgun” Vince Neill, 38, a newcomer who got his nickname partly for stopping a man from stealing a friend’s solar panels with a blast of rock salt. He first visited the Slabs as a boy and returned this winter with his wife and six children in tow after he lost his audiovisual business and their home in Northern California. Sometimes he worries about his family’s safety, but Neill reckons that Slab City’s problems are proportionate to any normal city in the country. And he has no regrets about bringing his kids (ages 2 to 18). In this case, math and English lessons are rounded out with training on catching scorpions and rattlesnakes. “They’re much happier learning in the great outdoors; it’s the best school,” he says. Still, Slab City is more of a parking spot than a long-term solution: come summer, the family will head to Los Angeles so he can look for full-time work. (VIDEO: The New Poor of Fresno)

Others, like “Radio” Mike Depraida, 60, keep choosing to return. The native New Yorker was living the fast life as a consultant and photographer but grew weary of the hectic pace and an apartment building where he didn’t know his neighbors. A chance visit with friends three years ago got him hooked on the Slabs, and he’s since become the perpetually tan guy in a polo shirt who operates a radio station and greets travelers with a gin and tonic at his makeshift tiki bar. The freedom and mix of people keep him coming back, a dearth of single women notwithstanding. “Why are these some of the most intelligent people I’ve met in my life?” he asks aloud. “I came to the conclusion that if you’re smart enough to get out of the rat race, well, then, you’re pretty damn bright.”

Chicago Joe and Anna are proof positive. They ended up parking their trailer in East Jesus, a renegade open-air art space with Mad Max accents. The view outside their window features a half-buried coach bus and, beyond that, a giant mammoth made of tires; their neighbors include an ex-chef, a documentary filmmaker and a wandering magician cum tattoo artist. What started as an adventure has settled into a routine filled with solar projects and other odd jobs that will keep them busy and fit. Joe’s already lost 80 lb. “People back home still think we’re crazy for doing what we’ve done,” he says. “It’s not for everyone, but this lifestyle has grown on us, tremendously.” The couple swear their relationship has also improved because they no longer fight about money. It’s not hard to understand why: their living expenses have dropped from about $4,000 to $200 a month. Less than their electricity bill when they owned a house.

MORE: 5 Events that Really Mattered for Housing in 2011 and Beyond

MORE: The Rise of American Tent Cities

View this article on Time.com

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Singer Leslie Carter, the 25-year-old sister of recording artists Nick and Aaron Carter, has died in upstate New York, her family said.

“Access Hollywood” confirmed her Tuesday death but said no details regarding the cause were immediately available.

Best known as a cast member with her siblings in the reality series “House of Carters” and leader of the band The Other Half, Leslie Carter also recorded the song “Like Wow!” for the 2001 “Shrek” movie soundtrack.

She was married and the mother of an infant daughter at the time of her death.

“Our family is grieving right now and it’s a private matter. We are deeply saddened for the loss of our beloved sister, daughter, and granddaughter, Leslie Carter,” the Carter family said in a statement issued to “Access Hollywood” Tuesday night. “We request the utmost privacy during this difficult time.”

Nick Carter is a member of the Backstreet Boys. Aaron Carter is a solo artist and actor.

Copyright 2012 United Press International, Inc. (UPI). Any repr

Don Cornelius, circa 1973, Los Angeles.

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Don Cornelius, circa 1973, Los Angeles.

The significance of Don Cornelius to American culture — and to the American culture business — is told nowhere more eloquently than in one brief exchange between Cornelius and singer James Brown, a story that Cornelius himself recalls in VH-1′s excellent 2010 documentary Soul Train: The Hippest Trip in America.

It was the Godfather of Soul’s first appearance on Cornelius’ then-nascent syndicated TV show — designed to do for soul music and black audiences what American Bandstand had long done for pop music and mainstream audiences. Brown marveled at the professionalism of the production, the flawlessness of its execution.

He turned to Cornelius and asked, “Who’s backing you on this, man?”

“It’s just me, James,” Cornelius answered.

Brown, nonplused, acted as if Cornelius didn’t understand the question. He asked it two more times, and Cornelius answered twice again: “It’s just me, James.”

That the man who wrote the song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” and who recorded the soundtrack to the Black Power movement could scarcely comprehend that a black man like Cornelius both owned and helmed this kind of enterprise without white patronage is a testament to the magnitude and the improbability of Cornelius’ achievements.

With Soul Train, which made its debut on one Chicago TV station in 1970 and spread quickly to dozens of American markets, Cornelius created the first black-owned nationally syndicated TV franchise. As such, Cornelius was the television analogue to black record business entrepreneurs like Berry Gordy and the precursor to future black TV mogul Bob Johnson, who founded the Black Entertainment Television cable channel in 1980.

Cornelius insisted on as much black presence behind the cameras as he induced in front of them, and he was one of the first black moguls to expand his brand beyond its origins: producing records (Cornelius was the executive producer behind the bubblegum-soul group Shalamar) and, eventually, award shows.

Cornelius’ cultural impact, however, went beyond the confines of black business achievement. Soul Train became a Saturday morning staple for Americans of all colors and creeds (after Cornelius stared down a ham-handed copycat attempt by American Bandstand’s Dick Clark called Soul Unlimited). The “Soul Train line,” a regular feature of the show, popularized new dances and grew to become a real-life American tradition at weddings, celebrations and, yes, bar mitzvahs.

Don Cornelius proved a truism about America and race that so few people, even today, understand: Black culture, expressed in undiluted form and unapologetically, will by virtue become accepted by the American mainstream. It’s something that future rap moguls like Russell Simmons and Jay-Z understood instinctively. So it’s a tragic irony that Soul Train’s decline came with the dawn of the hip-hop era. Even though Cornelius shared so much spiritually with hip-hop’s entrepreneurs, he was not personally able to appreciate the new genre and make his franchise relevant to the hip-hop generation.

With a sonorous intonation and an ever-expanding natural hairdo, Cornelius was resplendently himself, and thus inspired much parody. But it’s heartening to know that America is beginning to see the man as more than an Afro and a deep voice. Last year, the set and memorabilia of Soul Train landed at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African-American History and Culture.

Cornelius’ reported suicide, alas, tells us something about the nature of American success. All the man’s equity, affluence and well-deserved public acclaim were not, in the end, of enough comfort to salve his private pain — a struggle with illness, a nasty divorce.

To the people who make up the community that Cornelius created, the man is nearly a saint. We can see it now: the double line of dancers forming just beyond the pearly gates, awaiting the ingress of soul’s earthly impresario.

By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 01/31/2012 

Ben Flajnik has admitted he didn’t take into consideration how his other bachelorettes would feel about his decision to skinny-dip with Courtney Robertson during Monday night’s episode of The Bachelor.
“I will admit that at the time I wasn’t thinking of the other women and how it would make them feel, and I’m sorry for that, but I can’t blame Courtney for going out of her way to spend more time with me — that’s why we are all here,” The Bachelor star wrote on his People blog.

“I try to focus on all these relationships singularly. It’s odd to date more than one woman and in order to do so, you have to try to treat each one individually. If I were in Puerto Rico with a beautiful woman I was dating and she wanted to skinny dip, I would be a fool to decline. I treated this situation the same way.”

While Flajnik wanted to spice things up with Robertson and take their relationship to the next level, he chose to no longer pursue connections with bachelorettes Jennifer Fritsch and Elyse Myers. However, the reality TV star said sending Fritsch home was extremely difficult.

“Saying goodbye to Jennifer at the rose ceremony was excruciating. We had such a fantastic date in Park City [last week], but as my relationships with the other women were taking off, I knew in my heart that I wasn’t going to end up with her,” Flajnik explained.

“More than anyone else here, I didn’t want Jennifer to invest any more of her feelings in me. She is so incredibly kind, and wears her heart on her sleeve, that I didn’t want to risk her investing any more emotion in our relationship when I knew it wouldn’t be forever. I will always remember Jennifer  and the sweet time we shared together.”

Flajnik’s decision to eliminate Myers during their one-on-one date was apparently much less heart-wrenching for The Bachelor star, as he came to the conclusion the bachelorette was more into finding love than she was really into him.

“I feel Elyse is looking for a husband, but not necessarily me as that husband. I really tried to keep an open mind on my date with Elyse. I think she is a beautiful woman and I love that she risked a lot for the chance of finding love. I respect that type of commitment, but I also had to listen to my heart. I wish I had explained myself better to her on the beach,” Flajnik said.

“It’s hard enough as the Bachelor to know what a woman’s true intention is, and to hear her talk about ‘not wanting to be single’ made me doubt if I’m really what she’s looking for. I think she is more in love with the idea of being in love and I knew we weren’t headed to that place and I didn’t want to lead her on. Elyse is a great woman, and I really want her to find a guy that is right for her.”

(Photo credit ABC)

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Blake Griffin is known for dunking basketballs. He may never have done so as well as he did against Kendrick Perkins on Monday night. Video and more after the jump.

Griffin receives the perfect bounce pass from Chris Paul and proceeds to jump about four feet in the air and slam the ball home thunderously at full extension. If that slow-motion video via CBS Sports’ Eye on Basketball isn’t convincing enough for you, watch it in real-time:

And, of course, the GIF from Mocksession:

That’s a dunk so good that even LeBron James — who, you may recall, jumped over a human being to finish an alley-oop on Sunday, not that John Lucas III could do anything about it — is admitting defeat.

But the broadcaster calling the dunk “Some play” is like when Wilbur was dismissed as “Some pig” in Charlotte’s Web, right?

For more of Blake Griffin doing mostly unfair things to rims, basketballs, and people, visit Clips Nation. To pay your respects to the dearly departed Kendrick Perkins, head to Welcome to Loud City.

video

Congressman Allen West spoke at a Florida GOP dinner last night, and had some fighting words for Democrats who are trying to mark Florida in the win column this November. He declared it a “battlefield” for citizens to stand on and tell the Democrats that their message is not going to resonate with the citizens of Florida.

West called out not just President Obama, but Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and fellow Floridian Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

“Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, and take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America.”

He pledged that he will do everything in his power to stop President Obama from “destroy[ing]” the country. West issued a challenge to Democrats who think they might be able to take him down in this November’s congressional elections: “Bring it on!”

Watch the video below, courtesy of CSPAN:

h/t Breitbart.tv

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Read More: Larry Fitzgerald (WR – ), Aaron Rodgers (QB – ), Michael Robinson (RB – ), LeSean McCoy (RB – ), Jimmy Graham (TE – ), San Francisco 49ers

Now that we know who’s going and not going, the NFC starters for the 2012 Pro Bowl on Sunday are all set and they look just as imposing as they did originally.

Aaron Rodgers remains your starting quarterback and he’s joined in the backfield by LeSean McCoy and Michael Robinson. His passing targets to start the game will be Larry Fitzgerald, Steve Smith and tight end Jimmy Graham.

The offensive line protecting them consists of Jason Peters, Joe Staley, Jahri Evans, Carl Nicks and center Ryan Kalil.

The defensive unit is anchored by its line, which includes Jared Allen Jason Babin, Jay Ratliff and Justin Smith. The linebackers behind them consist of Clay Matthews, DeMarcus Ware and Patrick Willis.

The secondary includes a talent cast made up of Charles Woodson, Brandon Browner, Earl Thomas and Adrian Wilson.

The kicking game is all-49ers with Andy Lee punting and David Akers kicking extra points and field goals. Patrick Patterson rounds out the special teams starters as kick returner.

For updates leading up to the Pro Bowl and the Super Bowl, keep it with SB Nation’s NFL hub.