July 30th, 2010

FacebookTwitterE-mailFive months after his first “six pak,” Hillbilly Bone, country star Blake Shelton returns with his second, All About Tonight, due out Aug. 10. The EP of a half-dozen songs is led by the title-track single, a feel-good foot-stomper co-written by Rhett Atkins, which is already a Top 10 hit on the Billboard country charts.

“All About Tonight has a vibe to it from beginning to end,” Shelton says. “The songs make you want to play air guitar. Even the ballads have a more sing-along quality to them.”

The disc includes two collaborations with Shelton’s fiancée, Miranda Lambert. “Suffocating” is a ballad that Lambert co-wrote with Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott, while the mid-tempo “Draggin’ the River” features Lambert on vocals.

For his 18th birthday, it was a game of cricket. But for his 21st, Daniel Radcliffe hit the bars of St. Petersburg.

Calling it “the most beautiful, the most incredible, wonderful place I’ve ever been in my life,” Radcliffe, who turned 21 on July 23, was on vacation, and spotted whooping it up with two male friends at 48 Chairs in the exotic Russian city.

According to the Daily Mail, it was vodka on the rocks for the Harry Potter star – and plenty of it!

“He was laughing like a hyena all night,” one onlooker said, “He enjoyed himself so much.” And photos of Radcliffe pouring his own drink and posing with fans prove it!

Now of legal drinking age in the U.S., Radcliffe continued his celebrations in London Thursday. No word on when the American leg of his birthday tour happens!

Just call it Snookigate.

He may have told Joy Behar and all her View co-hosts Thursday that he’d never heard of Jersey Shore star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi – but President Obama has, in fact, used the buxom brunette as a punchline before.

Recall in May, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner in D.C., when he made a crack at the expense of the rather tan House minority leader, John Boehner. While talking about his health care bill, President Obama joked about a tanning tax, and said, “the following individuals shall be excluded from the indoor tanning tax within this bill: Snooki, JWOWW, The Situation and House minority leader John Boehner.”
Just blame the lapse on work fatigue – or the very real fact that Obama employed a team of joke writers, including some from The Daily Show, to pen his bon mots at the dinner.

Watch Obama joke about Snooki below:

The father of Phoebe Prince says he doesn’t want revenge or even tough justice against the people who bullied his daughter before she committed suicide. He’s simply seeking an apology.

“I’d dearly like to see admission and contrition so that I could forgive,” Jeremy Prince tells Slate.com about the six schoolmates charged in the death of the 15-year-old.

“If they confessed to the court and said they were sorry, I’d appeal to the court for total leniency,” Prince says in his first interview since Phoebe hanged herself after she was allegedly bullied at her South Hadley, Mass., high school.

Though the teens have been accused of tormenting Phoebe, a previous Slate article reported that Phoebe was “deeply troubled” long before the Jan. 14 suicide.

The most serious charge the group faces is the civil rights violation with bodily injury offense, which carries a 10-year maximum prison sentence. But Prince says he doesn’t think such a harsh punishment may be necessary.

“There are levels of culpability among the kids. You want to see the law acknowledged, and reasonable penalties, but without making an example of them,” he says.

“You can go two ways. You can look to the court for revenge or you can look for leniency,” says Prince. “The latter path is mine.”

She may not still be rocking her custom Monique Lhuiller gown, but there was no mistaking Carrie Underwood’s honeymoon glow as she hit the Today show stage Friday morning to not only perform hits like “Undo It” and “Cowboy Casanova”, but also flaunt her sparkling new wedding band. After tying the knot with hockey player Mike Fisher, 30, in a Southern style wedding earlier this month, Underwood has swapped a diamond band by jeweler Jonathon Arndt for the yellow diamond engagement ring he had also designed for her. So how’s married life treating the country queen? “It’s a lot like dating life,” she said, which includes continuing their long distance relationship with hockey player husband Fisher in Canada, where he plays for the Ottawa Senators. “It’s good,” she says. “We’re both very busy people and understand each other’s life, so we’re okay with it.” ––