Jamie Jungers wins Howard Stern’s beauty pageant

She may not have come out looking like a winner in the Tiger Woods sex scandal, but former mistress Jamie Jungers is No. 1 in Howard Stern’s eyes.

According to RadarOnline.com, Jungers took home the title and a $75,000 cash prize in the shock jock’s beauty pageant composed of Woods’ former lovers.

Also vying for the prize were ex-mistresses Loredana Jolie and Jaimee Grubbs, who is said to have won $15,000 for finishing in second place.

Jungers reportedly came out the winner after answering most of Stern’s prying questions, including those about Woods’ endowments and turn-ons.

The golfer’s No. 1 mistress, Rachel Uchitel, was reportedly banned from participating in the contest due to a settlement agreement with Woods, TMZ.com reported.

No word yet on who rated the women, though it’s doubtful Woods’ estranged wife, Elin, accepted Stern’s offer to judge.

Source: Cristina Everett, NY Daily News

On The Web: http://www.howardstern.com

Will The Notorious B.I.G.’s Murder Ever Be Solved?

Thirteen years ago Tuesday (March 9), hip-hop lost one of its most beloved, charismatic and talented MCs to ever put rhymes to a beat.

The Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, as he left a Soul Train Music Awards afterparty. To date, the assailants remain at large.

Investigations into the murder of the Brooklyn rapper are ongoing, and a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Biggie’s mother, Voletta Wallace, and others against the city of Los Angeles and other defendants is also pending.

The ongoing quest to punish the people behind Biggie’s death, however, continues to leave those involved frustrated.

Ms. Wallace declined to comment on the status of her lawsuit but issued a brief statement to MTV News: “I thank you for the opportunity to touch [my son's] fans and for the network’s continued support of me and the family, but it’s been 13 years, I miss my son, his children miss their father, and the murderer is still at large.”

Theories abound about the murder of the iconic rapper, which occurred only a short distance from the Petersen Automotive Museum where Biggie, Diddy and their entourage were celebrating just moments before. According to author Randall Sullivan’s book “LAbyrinth,” associates of Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight, who was embroiled in a feud with Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, conspired to kill Biggie. The book, based on extensive research conducted by Sullivan and interviews the writer held with former Los Angeles Police Department detective Russell Poole, an investigator into Biggie’s murder, those involved in the hit on Biggie were dirty cops.

“They say some cops become gangbangers; well, these guys were essentially gangbangers who became cops,” Poole told MTV News.

Rafael Perez and David Mack, Poole alleged, were just two of the many LAPD officers who were on the payroll of Death Row Records. According to Poole, the officers’ primary sense of duty and allegiance to the police force was tainted by their involvement with Death Row. The two eventually went to prison but on charges unrelated to the investigation into the Notorious B.I.G. murder.

Poole maintains there were clues that pointed to each man that should have been looked into further. “I’ve put away guys for life with less evidence [than I had on Perez and Mack],” Poole said.

Through a complex web of deceit intended to shield the LAPD from a controversial scandal, Poole said, members of the force, including the chief at the time, suppressed efforts to look into policemen who were connected to Suge Knight and Death Row.

Poole eventually resigned in protest, amid his frustrations that the investigation was being sabotaged.

A representative for the LAPD declined to comment when contacted by MTV News about the status of the rapper’s murder investigation. At one point, the FBI picked up the investigation but later announced it had stopped its pursuit. A representative for the FBI also declined to comment when contacted by MTV News.

Ms. Wallace’s wrongful-death lawsuit remains open. The case was brought to trial at one point, but days later it was declared a mistrial after it was discovered the detective who took over as lead investigator in Biggie’s murder hid evidence. The mistrial was announced July 7, 2005, however, no further advancements have been made since in pushing the case to trial again.

Poole alleged that police initially sought to slow down the investigation into Biggie’s murder in order to keep the lid on possible LAPD involvement in the crime. Now, he said, the new administration and Los Angeles’ power players are striving to keep the truth buried for fear that civil-lawsuit payouts could bankrupt the economically challenged city. In any event, the former detective said he’s ready to be a witness in Ms. Wallace’s case and will testify whenever he is called upon.

For now, Poole waits, haunted by a puzzling case in which he seems to have too many pieces gathered to not complete the full picture.

“I want this thing solved before I die,” he said. “Every detective has a case that they think about each and every day, and this is the case right there. This is the case I think about every single day before I go to bed. It never goes away. It’ll haunt me for the rest of my life. The day it’s solved, I’ll be able to relax.”

Source: Jayson Rodriguez, MTV

Lil Wayne Sentenced To Year In Jail, Taken Away In Cuffs

NEW YORK — After saying goodbye on concert stages and online video streams, Lil Wayne had nothing to add as he was sentenced Monday to a year in jail for having a loaded gun on his tour bus.

The Grammy Award-winning rapper delivered only a brief bow to fans and supporters as he was led out of a courtroom in handcuffs to start serving his sentence.

With that, Lil Wayne headed off to face his punishment in a case that had shadowed him as he became one of music’s most prolific and profitable figures in recent years. Arrested in July 2007, he pleaded guilty in October to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He admitted he had the loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun on his bus.

His lawyer, Stacey Richman, said the rapper was resolute as he was taken away.

“He knew what he had to do, and he’s doing it,” she said.

Lil Wayne will serve his sentence in the Rikers Island jail complex. Richman said she expected he would be held in protective custody, but the city Correction Department said it was still deciding on that. Protective custody is given to inmates who, for a variety of reasons including notoriety, require separation from the general prison population.

The 27-year-old rap star could be released in about eight months with good behavior.

Lil Wayne, born Dwayne Carter, is going behind bars with his career in full throttle. His “Tha Carter III” was the best-selling album of 2008 and won a Grammy for best rap album. His latest album, “Rebirth,” was released last month.

He made a point of leaving fans with fanfare, from a “farewell tour” in recent months to a series of videos on the Web site Ustream on Sunday.

“Law is mind without reason … I’ll return,” he wrote on his Twitter account Monday morning.

Dozens of fans jockeyed with photographers waiting on the courthouse steps Monday afternoon, cheering as Lil Wayne, fellow rapper Birdman and others arrived. Shouts of “Oh, man” and “Keep your head up, Weezy!” – a nickname he often uses – erupted in the courtroom as he was sentenced.

Although Lil Wayne had agreed to go to jail, a number of roadblocks kept him from starting his sentence in recent weeks.

First, his sentencing was postponed in February so he could undergo surgery on his bejeweled teeth. Then, a fire shut down Manhattan’s main criminal courthouse while he was on his way there last week.

He told Rolling Stone for a story last month that he planned to keep working while behind bars.

“I’ll be still rapping in there, have a gang of raps ready when I come back home,” he said.

As for listening to music, inmates are allowed to buy AM/FM radios at the jail commissary.


Source: Jennifer Peltz, AP

Ludacris, Foxx target black youth in social media push on HIV

Actor Jamie Foxx and recording artist Chris “Ludacris” Bridges today join the ranks of celebrities who have lent their popularity to push HIV prevention as part of a social media effort targeting young African Americans.

The “i know” campaign is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which aims to draw thousands of young people into a conversation about HIV using Facebook, Twitter, text messages and a website (actagainstaids.org). It launches today with an event at Clark Atlanta University that will be webcast to students nationwide.

If it works as the CDC hopes, young African Americans will no longer be passive consumers of HIV-prevention messages. Instead, they’ll become vocal advocates armed with information that will help them protect themselves and one another from HIV, says Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC’s national center of HIV/AIDS prevention. “We’re trying to create a movement,” Fenton says.

The initiative is part of a five-year, $45 million effort called Act Against AIDS, announced last year at the White House. The broader effort was designed to “refocus attention on the HIV epidemic here at home” after years of addressing the crisis in Africa and elsewhere, says Robert Bailey II of the CDC.

Public health officials say one of their biggest challenges is to shatter the complacency bred by the misconception that, thanks to effective treatment, HIV is no longer an emergency.

The AIDS virus continues to spread widely among African Americans, who represent just 14% of Americans ages 13-29 but account for half of new infections in that group, the CDC reports. Young black gay and bisexual men account for 55% of infections among African Americans in that age group, the CDC says.

Yet the number of young blacks who say they’re concerned about HIV declined from 50% to 40% from 1997 to 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Tina Hoff, who leads Kaiser’s efforts to convey prevention messages through the entertainment industry and social media, says Internet networking can raise awareness, but only as part of a comprehensive strategy.

Last fall, the foundation set out to bolster the White House initiative with its Greater Than AIDS campaign, launched with the Black AIDS Institute, MTV, BET, Essence and other media enterprises. What’s needed, Hoff says, is a “collective response” in the African-American community: “Building a social network is a useful component of that.”

Source: USA TODAY, Steve Sternberg

Cash Money founders trade Lil Wayne for big rig

Maybe they should call it Cash Money Oil & Gas.

As their star rapper Lil Wayne prepares to go to jail next month, the founders of rap record label Cash Money Records appear to be on the hunt for a new kind of bling — this one involving black gold.

The label’s co-founders, Bryan “Birdman” Williams and his brother, Ronald “Slim” Williams, have launched an energy exploration enterprise under the name Bronald Oil & Gas LLC, which they describe as an “independent oil and gas company focused on exploration and development of assets in several US Gulf Coast states and Osage County in Oklahoma.”

What began as an image on Bryan “Birdman” Williams’ head (above) may turn into a reality as the Cash Money Records mogul seeks a new venture to take the place of the label’s rapper Lil Wayne, who is going to jail.

Details about Bronald are scant, and the Williams brothers have declined requests for details. However, sources said the Bronald name — a rollup of the brothers’ first names — has been around for two years.

The firm on its Web site says it plans to “grow through development and via the acquisition of prospective acreage that complements its existing assets and exploits the abilities of the Company’s technical resources.”

The company also says it is committed to “preserving the environment, promoting worker safety and maximizing the potential output of various oil and gas assets.”

The idea of celebrities diversifying into other businesses isn’t new. Former basketball great Magic Johnson has had an equally successful career in real estate, and just yesterday revealed an interest in publishing by holding talks to buy African-American magazine Ebony. Meanwhile, ex-boxer Evander Holyfield last year outlined plans to build a solar farm on his vast estate in Georgia, with plans to sell the power generated from the farm.

And the Williams brothers aren’t alone in wanting to get in on the energy business, which though well off its highs from a couple of years ago, is still well above historic levels, with some analysts predicting a return to triple-digit crude prices once the economy recovers.

It would also seem the oil business is close to the heart of Bryan Williams, who has an oil drilling rig tattooed on his head.

Nevertheless, the Bronald Web site is short on details of the company’s business, except for a short video featuring a montage of oil rigs and derricks. Further, several attempts by The Post to reach an official at the company came up short.

Instead, the site features as a bio of Bronald’s founders an article titled, “Cash Money Records: Still Blinging After All These Years,” which details the Williams brothers’ rise from a New Orleans housing project to rap superstars.

Source: Mark DeCambre, NY Post

Saints overcome early deficit, stop Colts late to seal victory

MIAMI, Fla. — Who Dat won the Super Bowl? The New Orleans Saints, that’s who.

Ain’t kidding.

Put away those paper bags forever: Drew Brees and the Saints are NFL champions, rallying to beat Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 Sunday night in one of pro football’s most thrilling title games.

Brees tied a Super Bowl record with 32 completions, the last a 2-yard slant to Jeremy Shockey for the winning points with 5:42 remaining. The Pro Bowl quarterback was chosen Super Bowl MVP.

New Orleans’ lowly ranked defense made several key stops, an onside kick sparked their second-half comeback, and Tracy Porter’s 74-yard interception return on a pass from Manning, of all people, clinched it.

Manning gave chase, but fell awkwardly as the cornerback raced by. The four-time NFL MVP forlornly walked to the sideline as the Big Easy celebrations began. Who would have thought the biggest mistake of the game would have come from Manning?

An NFL embarrassment for much of their 43 years, the Saints’ football renaissance, led by Brees and coach Sean Payton, climaxed with Shockey’s touchdown and Lance Moore’s 2-point conversion catch. The conversion pass originally was ruled incomplete, but Payton challenged the call and won.

Porter’s pick, just as dramatic as his interception of Brett Favre’s pass to force overtime in the NFC title game, was the game’s only turnover. It’s one Manning will forever regret.

The Saints (16-3) won three postseason games this winter after winning only two in the previous 42 years. They beat Arizona, Minnesota and Indianapolis (16-3) — all division winners — for their first title, scoring 107 points and allowing only 59.

The championship came 4 1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, making the Saints nomads for the 2005 season. There even was some doubt they would return, but the NFL refused to abandon the Big Easy. The Superdome was rebuilt and the Saints won the NFC South in ‘06, their first season with Brees and Payton.

That was the season Manning won his only Super Bowl. He had the Colts in front for much of this one, but New Orleans’ league-leading offense, which scored 510 points this season, outscored Indy 31-7 after falling behind 10-0.

Source: Associated Press

Dance Review | ‘Alone, OH’: Of Pasta and Memories: 3 Women in a Kitchen

Any of the disaffected characters in “Alone, OH” could have penned the Mad Libs-inspired letter found in the choreographer Michou Szabo’s program: “In the kitchen — we never knew having [blank] for dinner was anything other than your choice — not because we didn’t [blank].”

In the brittle work, seen on Friday night at the Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, three women gather in a tidy kitchen as they contend with clashing personalities and memories. (In this nonlinear tale it’s not always clear what is real and what is imagined.) The set and décor, credited to Mr. Szabo and Joanne Howard, is impressive for its diorama accuracy; along with a sink and stove — both are white and most likely from the 1950s — there is a table, center stage, where much of the action takes place.

Julie Alexander eats briskly from a bowl with a spoon before stretching her arms along the table’s surface and whipping her body into something amounting to seizure-inspired choreography. Such a turbulent approach to movement is a recurring theme in “Alone, OH.” Jennifer Lafferty, slim and more reserved than the others, could be the younger sister, while Sandy Tillett, who prepares and serves the food, is the maternal figure. Or not? After she pours pasta into a pan, Ms. Tillett starts to shake, undulating from the hips and wiggling the shoulders. “What are you doing?” Ms. Lafferty asked.

“I’m doing my macaroni dance,” Ms. Tillett replied. “You know that.”

The women all have a similar look — long brunette hair, bangs — and an especially strident way of crossing the floor in heels. Mr. Szabo creates tense scenarios that involve throwing silverware and plates (the ear-splitting act occurs during the song “Ohio” by the band Over the Rhine), but the characters’ constant mood swings grow tedious.

Watching dancers, even those as compelling as Ms. Alexander, lean into and push away from furniture while twitching uncontrollably gets old fast. The atmosphere is better enhanced by its intangible elements: Joe Levasseur’s muted lighting and Guy Yarden’s finely etched melodic score. More turmoil can be heard in its echoing swirls of wind than in the dancers’ physical outbursts.

Dance: When Hippos Are Muses for Choreographers

It’s strange to think that film animation (though its definitions and dates of origin vary) is now in its second century: it still seems a young art form. Something in its nature seems to prompt brightness of energy and rhythm. Though several of the latest experiments in it may be both fanciful and forgettable, they don’t seem markedly decadent or mannerist.

The Dance on Camera Festival at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center includes shorts featuring animation. Several of these will be shown on Sunday in a special animation event; but moving cartoons also play a significant role in at least two of the other dance shorts being shown at the festival later that day. Those two, “The Last Martini” (directed by Vickie Mendoza) and “Sunscreen Serenade” (directed by Kriota Willberg) are among the nominations for the Jury Prize for Best Short.

What’s animation? It’s striking here that almost all of these shorts combine cartoons with live-action photography. In the best of these, “Entanglement Theory” (directed by Richard James Allen, Karen Pearlman and Gary Hayes), this mixture gives a new vitality to the dream states that preoccupy so many of the current crop of Dance on Camera filmmakers.

“Entanglement Theory” shows us several main planes of existence: a young man with red hair in realistic, prosaic circumstances; the same man switching into dance activity (sometimes defying gravity); and the cartoon versions of himself, sometimes also dancing. Neither the dancing nor the drawing is rewarding for its own sake, but as drama this film is absorbing.

Although animation still seems young, its golden age, to many of us, happened before we were born. I refer in particular to the first 18 years of Walt Disney. Sunday’s event starts with 40 minutes of animation produced by the Disney Studios and commentary by the dance scholar Mindy Aloff (author of the 2009 book “Hippo in a Tutu”).

I regret that I can’t attend this session; I understand that it addresses some of Disney’s depictions of animals dancing: Prunella Pullet, the chicken heroine of “Cock o’ the Walk” (1935); the ballerina Hyacinth Hippo, who in “Fantasia” (1940) emerges from a pool and finds riotous joy with her suitor Ali Gator; and the efforts of a bewildered Goofy, in “How to Dance” (1953), as he follows the cutout footprints from a dance manual.

When you watch the hilariously memorable version of the history of musicals on film in “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), you get the idea that screen musicals took plenty of time to reach maturity, and that’s surely how we now feel when we watch “The Jazz Singer” (1927, a smash hit in its day), “Rio Rita” (1929) or Eddie Cantor musicals like “Whoopee” (1930).

Disney’s very first sound cartoons, however, were instant classics: they seem to have burst into life full grown, and to have mastered music and dance from the get-go. Both the first Mickey Mouse sound film, “Steamboat Willie” (1928), and the first Silly Symphony, “The Skeleton Dance” (1929), feature dancing that’s musically vivid, funny, pointed: you enjoy them as dancing, as characterization and as film all at the same time.

Dance just permeates early Disney. Mickey and Minnie Mouse are gyrating from “Steamboat Willie” on. In “Three Little Pigs” (1933, a phenomenal box-office hit), the two sillier pigs keep prancing musically on their pointlike hind trotters, and they’re at it again in “The Big Bad Wolf” (1934) and “Three Little Wolves” (1936). Even the owl judge in “Who Killed Cock Robin?” (1935) does a little dance.

In “Woodland Café” (1937), the insects are all jazz jivers; who but Disney could have conjured two snails doing the Jitterbug? “The Cookie Carnival” (1935) is full of cakes behaving like vaudeville hoofers, and Miss Jello shimmies her sizable way through a belly dance.

But what’s dancing? Disney makes you ask the question because he gives such dance vitality and musical brio to movements that involve no actual dance steps. In “The Birthday Party” (1931), Mickey’s way of climbing the stairs to Minnie’s front door has the clickety-click of tap dancing. When the newborn title character of “The Ugly Duckling” (1931) sheds two tears, they fall, ping! ping!, like notes in music made visible. Animals had been bursting into anthropomorphic life in the late-19th-century fictions of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear and in the early-20th-century ones of Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame; Disney took the animal side of Wonderland and turned it into musical comedy.

Whole species or landscapes move to music in the Silly Symphonies “Birds of a Feather” (1931), “The Busy Beavers” (1931) and “Just Dogs” (1932). In “Birds,” the peacock preens like a fashion model to the Barcarolle from “The Tales of Hoffmann.” The title characters of “The Busy Beavers” turn whole riverscapes into industrial choreography, with one propelling a trunk across the water with his tail working like an outboard motor, while others are rowing a second trunk like perfect oarsmen. It’s not just the musicality that feels dancelike; Disney — who has often been compared to Diaghilev — loved pattern, design, symmetry. (“Birds of a Feather” has one aerial formation after another as birds team up to rescue a colleague from a raptor in the air.)

The ultimate Disney dance film is “Fantasia.” Everyone loves Hyacinth Hippo and Ali Gator, rightly so: few scenes in any film are more exhilaratingly funny. Yet Disney, unnervingly, comes yet closer to the feeling of pure dance in his “Nutcracker Suite” scenes, even though here the movement is performed by mushrooms, fish, blossoms, leaves, snowflakes. The score is just about the most famous ballet music ever written, but most of the dances here (apart from the high-kicking thistles in the Russian Dance) have no footwork and no steps. This is Disney at his most large-spirited, finding poetry in the minutiae of everyday details.

Some of the dances are funny, but not all, and the “Waltz of the Flowers” is the greatest marvel, catching the constant self-renewal and the skating-like glide of its music in ways Tchaikovsky could never have dreamed of. When purists ask how a director or choreographer can dare to present action to music in a way that was far from the composer’s intention, there is no better example to show them than this. Here is musicality that reveals essences that no ballet version ever could.

The Dance on Camera Festival runs through Tuesday at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street, Lincoln Center; dancefilmsassn.org/DanceOnCamerMain.

A Recuperated Swan Takes Flight

THE words “swan” and “lake” mean a lot of things to a lot of ballerinas, but for Sara Mearns, the words have a special significance. They put her on the map of the New York City Ballet.

In 2006 Ms. Mearns was a 19-year-old member of the corps de ballet when she was chosen to perform the lead in Peter Martins’s “Swan Lake.” She was shocked, she said, even though Ann Brodie, her first ballet teacher in South Carolina, always told her that she looked like a swan.

“I remember after the curtain came down that Merrill Ashley came back and had tears in her eyes,” Ms. Mearns said recently at a cafe near Lincoln Center. (Ms. Ashley, who is a guest teacher with the company, had coached her in the role.) “I couldn’t even believe what I had just done.”

Now a principal dancer, Ms. Mearns, who recently turned 24, will reprise her part in the ballet, which returns to the company’s repertory in February. But it isn’t entirely a case of a dancer returning to the role that made her famous. This time the ballet represents something more to Ms. Mearns, who was sidelined with a back injury for six months last year. “I told myself, ‘There is no choice,’ ” she said in her husky voice. “ ‘I have to be back for this.’ ”

Ms. Mearns may look like a swan queen when she’s dancing — there is the fluid ease with which her arms unfurl from her supple back — but swathed in black street clothes, she could be a model for the designer Rick Owens: leather pants, layers of scarves, silver chains everywhere.

Her skin is so pale it seems translucent, yet Ms. Mearns’s beauty isn’t ethereal. In person she comes across as the opposite of a waif — full blooded and alive — and dances pretty much in the same luscious way. This month, as Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she floated along with the music with such abandon that it seemed a wonder she didn’t fall over. In November, to her chagrin, she did fall twice, as Dewdrop in the opening-night performance of “The Nutcracker.”

“I had so much energy,” she said, laughing. “I did go for it. And Peter was happy. Even though I was crying after the show, he was happy. He said, ‘Everybody falls.’ ” She shook her head in dismay: “I think everybody’s going to say, ‘Oh, that was a little too much.’ But I don’t care about falling. I hope that’s what people get when they come and see me — that it’s not about tricks. It’s about the performance and what I transform into.”

While Ms. Mearns’s injury, which affected her lower back, was never officially diagnosed, she called it a blessing in disguise. “I hadn’t taken a break for two years, and I probably wasn’t taking as much care of my body as I should have,” she said. “I think it was a way of telling me to stop. It woke me up.”

During her recuperation she filled her time with physical therapy and moved to an apartment close to Lincoln Center, where she found herself learning how to live on her own. “I had never done that before,” she said. “I feel born again, not as a dancer, but as a person.”

Still, her time offstage was a struggle, both physically and mentally. “I put pictures up on the wall in my new apartment of me dancing when I was so in shape and so in my groove,” she said. “I would think: Am I going to be able to dance like that again? But if you really stick with it and sacrifice everything else for it, you can.”

That’s pretty much the way Ms. Mearns, who began dancing at 3 in jazz, ballet and tap under the guidance of Ms. Brodie, has approached her career. Ms. Brodie, who died in 1999, encouraged her to seek training in New York. She attended the School of American Ballet for several summers; at the end of the fourth session, in 2001, Ms. Mearns asked her teachers if she could stay on for the year.

“I still can’t believe I did that,” she said. “But I did not want to go back home.”

It worked out. After two years at the school, she was named an apprentice with City Ballet and joined the company in 2004; in rather swift progression, she was named a soloist in 2006 and a principal in 2008. For her forthcoming performances in “Swan Lake” Ms. Mearns reflected on the many roles she has performed since that auspicious debut.

“Before, I had never been alone onstage before, and that was scary,” she said. “Now I feel like this is me out there. I feel like it’s my swan. It’s not me trying to be somebody else. I’m comfortable with eyes on me, and I want the audience to see every little move I make, what my face is doing, every emotion I have. It’s like: Come and see me dance. Be in this world with me.”

Ms. Mearns added that performing such a strenuous role so early in her career taught her about the importance of devotion to her craft. “People sometimes make fun of me for rehearsing a lot, but I feel like when I go out there, I know what it’s going to feel like — that I’m prepared for anything,” she said. “And it’s not like I calculate my performances. It just feels like if you put everything you can into one role, it’s going to translate to the audience. That’s what really matters — so they don’t just come away with, ‘Oh, that was nice.’ ”

She flinched. “You don’t want nice.”

Ja Rule loses battle to get gun possession case tossed

Rap star Ja Rule has lost his battle to get his 2007 gun possession case tossed, but his lawyer says he remains on track to fight the charges.

Ja Rule — real name Jeff Atkins — had argued in a two-week hearing last spring that cops had no cause to search his Maybach after a concert at the Beacon Theatre and seize a .40-cal, unlicensed handgun found inside. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Richard Carruthers denied the motion this morning.

The judge did throw the rapper one crumb — his helpful statement to cops that he had “a little weed” in his pocket can’t be used against him.

“We disagree with the decision, but we’ll tend to other issues now,” said defense lawyer Stacey Richman.

Next fight for the hip-hop big will be against the methodology investigators used to match a microscopic amount of DNA recovered from the gun to Ja’s own profile, Richman said.

He remains free on bail on gun possession charges carrying a mandatory minimum of 3 and 1/2 years prison; his next court date is March 3.

Source: Laura Italiano, NY Post