Entertainment

"This is weird as hell for me," T-Pain says. Us, too

Remember T-Pain? In the mid-2000s, he was one of the biggest names in popular culture. His hit songs included the use of auto-tune, which synthesized and distorted his voice for a futuristic sound that led him to the top of the charts. But some time around 2010, he fell off. Looking back, he blames the exact thing that made him popular for the masses souring on his music—“People felt like I was using it to sound good,” he says in an upcoming interview on All Things Considered. “But I was just using it to sound different.”

Yet to the average listener, a “different” T-Pain would be more like his recent Tiny Desk Concert for NPR. In the 13-minute video, the now 30-year-old singer performs some of his greatest and latest hits—get this—without auto-tune. His actual voice will surprise you. Before starting up, the singer says, “this is weird as hell for me.” That pretty much sums up how you’ll feel once the 13-minutes are up. If this isn’t your ideal T-Pain, NPR says he’s got a greatest hits coming out soon.

[NPR]

"I've never gotten a black eye or a busted lip”

Jennifer Lopez says in a new book that she has “felt abused” in past relationships, even if she’s never been physically harmed like other women.

“I’ve never gotten a black eye or a busted lip,” the singer writes in her upcoming book True Love, which is previewed in People magazine. “But I’ve felt abused in one way or another: mentally, emotionally, verbally.”

“I would never go into specifics about my relationships, and I don’t,” Lopez tells People of the book. “But the idea was that I learned something.”

The 45-year-old opens up about her past trials in love, including her three marriages and several high-profile courtships.

“You have to take control and you have to set up your own boundaries,” Lopez tells People of what she’s learned in relationships. ” You have the power to change it.”

Read more at People

The two will appear on the hit FX series toward the end of the season

Hollywood can’t get enough of Neil Patrick Harris. On top of all the other appearances and host spots NPH has snagged this year, the actor and his husband David Burtka will both appear in episodes of American Horror Story: Freak Show later this season.

Harris will join the cast of Freak Show for the 11th and 12th episodes, TV Line reports, in which the How I Met Your Mother star will play a chameleon salesman. Burtka, on the other hand, will appear in the season finale during a “sexy storyline” with Jessica Lange’s character.

Harris is also hosting the Oscars in 2015.

[TV Line]

Paramount TV will produce it

The 1980s classic American Gigolo is set to become the latest film adapted for television by Paramount TV. The thriller’s original producer Jerry Bruckheimer will be involved in the project as an executive producer, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Bruckheimer produced the 1980s film starring Richard Gere as a male escort in Los Angeles who falls for Lauren Hutton’s character amid scandal. “With its signature noir aesthetic, American Gigolo has remained a deeply entertaining, psychological thriller and I’m thrilled to partner with [Paramount’s] Brad [Grey] and Amy [Powell] on remaking it into a television series,” Bruckheimer said in a statement.

Gigolo is one of many films getting a small screen reboot by Paramount TV. A television version of the 2002 film Minority Report is also in the works. Paramount TV is also producing Grease live for Fox, Yahoo reports.

[The Hollywood Reporter]

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Galway Kinnell, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who opened up American verse in the 1960s and beyond through his forceful, spiritual takes on the outsiders and underside of contemporary life, has died at age 87.

Kinnell’s wife, Bobbie Bristol, said he died Tuesday afternoon at their home in Sheffield, Vermont. He had leukemia.

Among the most celebrated poets of his time, he won the Pulitzer and National Book Award for the 1982 release “Selected Poems” and later received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. In 1989, he was named Vermont’s poet laureate, and the Academy of American Poets gave him the 2010 Wallace Stevens Award for lifetime achievement. His other books included “Body Rags,” ”Mortal Acts, Mortal Words,” ”The Past” and his final book of poetry, “Strong Is Your Hold,” released in 2006.

Kinnell’s style blended the physical and the philosophical, not shying from the most tactile and jarring details of humans and nature exploring their greater dimensions. He once told the Los Angeles Times that his intention was to “dwell on the ugly as fully, as far, and as long” as he “could stomach it.” In one of his most famous poems, “The Bear,” he imagines a hunter who consumes animal blood and excrement and comes to identify with his prey, wondering “what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?”

A native of Providence, Rhode Island, and graduate of Princeton University, Kinnell was influenced in childhood by Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe among others, but was also shaped by his experiences as an adult. He served in the U.S. Navy in World War II, traveled everywhere from Paris to Iran, opposed the Vietnam War and served as a field worker for the civil rights organization CORE (Congress of Racial Equality). Like his friend and contemporary W.S. Merwin, he began weaving in the events of the time into his poetry.

In “Vapor Trail Reflected in the Frog Pond,” from the 1968 collection “Body Rags,” he invokes the chanting style of Walt Whitman to condemn American violence:

And I hear,

coming over the hills, America singing,

her varied carols I hear:

crack of deputies’ rifles practicing their aim on stray dogs at night,

sput of cattleprod,

TV going on about the smells of the human body,

curses of the soldier as he poisons, burns, grinds, and stabs

the rice of the world,

with open mouth, crying strong, hysterical curses.

University of Vermont poet and English Professor Major Jackson, who read one of Kinnell’s poems during an August ceremony at the Vermont Statehouse honoring Kinnell, called him one of “the great quintessential poets of his generation.”

“In my mind he comes behind that other great New England poet Robert Frost in his ability to write about, not only the landscape of New England, but also its people,” said Jackson. “Without any great effort it was almost as if the people and the land were one and he acknowledged what I like to call a romantic consciousness.”

Kinnell taught at numerous schools, including Reed College and New York University, and for several years was a visiting poet at Sarah Lawrence College. From 2001-2007, he served as chancellor of the poets academy.

Bristol said her husband will be buried on the hill behind their home.

Both of their shows will broadcast and livestream on Election Night

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are not only broadcasting live episodes of their shows on Election Day, but the specials have—hands down—the best names.

CNN’s “Election Night in America” sounds downright boring when compared to The Daily Show’s “Democalypse 2014: America Remembers It Forgot to Vote” and The Colbert Report’s “Midterms ‘014: Detour to Gridlock: An Exciting Thing That I Am Totally Interested In—Wait! Don’t Change the Channel. Look at this Video of a Duckling Following a Cat Dressed Like a Shark Riding a Roomba! ‘014!”

No, seriously. That’s what it’s called.

The coverage will air back-to-back on election night on Comedy Central. Viewers can also stream coverage on Comedy Central’s website and mobile app. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show.

Tickets to the upcoming film went on sale Wednesday, Oct. 29