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Elton John, 75 Rocks Dodger Stadium For the Very Last Time

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Elton John, 75 Rocks Dodger Stadium

Elton John took the stage at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in a sequined-studded baseball uniform as the world’s biggest pop star 47 years ago on Sunday night, dressed in a bedazzled Dodgers bathrobe, a uniform more fitting for a 75-year-old man on the verge of retirement.

The crowd of more than 50,000 erupted, which occurred in the final minutes of John’s final North American tour.

He stated, “I want to spend time with my family because I’ll be 76 next year.” “I want to show you why I’m retiring by bringing them out.”

He embraced and kissed his husband, David Furnish, while his two sons, 11-year-old Zachary and 9-year-old Elijah, waved gleefully at the crowd in matching Dodgers jackets with “Elton” on the back.

The inevitable final song that gave the tour its name, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” was then performed by John.

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The crowd, full of rocket men and rocket women, blue jean babies and LA ladies, many John’s age but plenty in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, swayed and sang along to songs like “Rocket Man” and “Tiny Dancer” throughout the two-hour show. Some wiped away their tears.

Many were dressed up in sequins and spangles, sparkling spectacles, top hats, feather boas, and, in a few cases, Donald Duck suits, representing different eras of John’s 55-year career.

“Thank you all for dressing up,” John said, “it makes me so happy when you all wear the best costumes.”

When the last song finished, John removed his robe to reveal another retirement outfit, a green-and-red tracksuit, and climbed into a small, clear elevator that lifted him into a gap in the backdrop.

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On a massive video screen, he could then be seen walking down a yellow brick road in the distance. Many others came to support Elton John on this special day.

Kiki Dee performed their duet “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”

“This woman was here with me in 1975, and we sang this song,” John explained as he brought out Dee. “I invited her to recreate that incredible moment.”

As his rehearsal piano player Adam Chester pounded the keys in his place, John jumped from his usual keyboard spot, grabbed a mic, and sang and danced with Dee.

In honour of the four bandmates who died during his career, John performed “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” After the first verse, he introduced another guest, shouting, “ladies and gentlemen, Brandi Carlile!”

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The moment was an unspoken tribute to another late collaborator, George Michael, who performed the song with Elton John in the same way in 1991.

Carlile, who played an important role in Joni Mitchell’s recent return to the stage, was dressed in her Dodger-themed spangled suit. As John wrapped his arm around her and soaked in the applause, she belted out her verses and made a “can you believe this?!” face to the crowd.

A drum machine pounded as Dua Lipa, dressed in a black gown that contrasted with everyone else’s sparkles, took the stage for the first of the encores, “Cold Heart,” her 2021 hit with John.

“I can’t tell you how it feels to be 75 years old and have the world’s No. 1 record,” John said afterwards. “And 52 years ago, this was my very first hit.”

He began playing piano chords and sang, “It’s a little bit funny, this feeling inside,” the opening line to “Your Song” from the 1970s.

elton john

“That was your song, Los Angeles!” Elton John exclaimed.

He explained the city’s significance to his music about two hours earlier, after taking the stage in a tuxedo with sequins that flared into a flame design and opening the concert with “Benny and the Jets.”

“All right, this is a very special, emotional night for me, and it’s been a long journey, and I first came here to America in 1970 to the City of Angels, Los Angeles, and I played a club called the Troubadour.”

elton john

The concert, live streamed on Disney+, was the last of three nights at the stadium (and his 103rd show in the LA area, he told the crowd). The Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour kicked off in September 2018 with the first of over 300 planned dates. It was halted in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic but resumed in 2021.

John will travel to Australia and New Zealand in January, followed by the United Kingdom and Europe. He’s scheduled to finish in Sweden in July, but he’s made it clear that he’s only done travelling and not making music.

Many of those backing him up have been with him since the beginning, including Nigel Olsson, his drummer since 1969, and Davey Johnstone, his guitarist since 1971, who led the band through a ripping version of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” at the age of 71.

John also gave a rare on-stage glimpse of an even more long-running collaborator, lyricist Bernie Taupin, who wrote most of the lyrics that the audience sang along with all night.

“We’ve been writing together since 1967,” John said as he hugged Taupin, who, with his bald head and plain, earth-toned coat, couldn’t be more dissimilar to his writing partner. “We still love each other more than we ever have.”

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Celebrity

Ambulance Called for Britney Spears at LA Chateau Marmont

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Ambulance Called for Britney Spears

Britney Spears and her on-again, off-again boyfriend reportedly got into a “major fight” at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles early Thursday morning, prompting the dispatch of an ambulance.

The singer is claimed to be healthy and was not brought to the hospital, but the incident has raised concerns about her health.

Multiple media agencies published photos of Spears on Thursday, showing her barefoot and clutching a pillow next to Paul Richard Soliz, with whom she has been linked since late summer, while emergency responders appear to transport her possessions on a stretcher.

It’s unclear what transpired in the hours preceding the Los Angeles Fire Department call. Spears addressed “fake” news in a social media post shortly after the photos were released, claiming she “twisted” her ankle.

An LAFD representative confirmed that an ambulance was dispatched to an address that corresponds to the renowned Los Angeles hotel.

“The LAFD received a 911 call at around 12:42 a.m. this morning [Thursday] requesting aid for an injured adult female at [Chateau Marmont], but the caller did not offer any specifics regarding the injury,” Brian Humphrey said in a statement to Yahoo News.

“One LAFD paramedic ambulance responded to the scene. At this point, it is unclear whether the paramedics encountered the injured person or provided any medical aid. The paramedic ambulance left the scene at 1:17 a.m. without taking anyone to the hospital.”

Ambulance Called for Britney Spears

Ambulance Called for Britney Spears: Yahoo Image

Reps for Britney Spears did not respond to Yahoo News request for comment.

An eyewitness told Entertainment Tonight, “Britney went out with Paul Richard Soliz and others. Someone handed her a blanket to throw over, and a cushion covered her front.

She moved a few feet, turned around, and returned without getting into the stretcher they had brought out.” According to the site, a member of Spears’ entourage spoke with paramedics.

Police responded earlier this evening to a probable assault with a deadly weapon.

The Los Angeles Police Department said that officers arrived at Chateau Marmont “around 10:30 [p.m. on Wednesday] for a possible ADW suspect.”

“It was secondhand information from the caller stating the suspect was threatening people at the location,” according to a press release. “When officers arrived, all parties had left, including the caller. Officers were unable to identify whether a crime had happened.

Brittney Spears is home safely.

As previously stated, the superstar did not travel by ambulance. CNN quotes a source close to the singer as saying she is “home and safe” after a “major fight” with Soliz.

Who is aul Richard Soliz?

Spears has been seeing her former housekeeper since the breakdown of her marriage to Sam Asghari in August 2023. According to reports from September, Spears and Soliz broke their relationship weeks after it began, due in part to his criminal history. They eventually reconciled, though.

“She’s a phenomenal woman,” he told US Weekly in September. “She’s a very good, positive person… “She is a good person.”

Spears claimed on social media that she “twisted my ankle last night” and called out paramedics who “showed up at my door illegally.”

“Just to let people know… the news is fake!!!” the caption said. “I would like respect at this time so that people understand I am growing stronger every day!!! Truth stinks, so can someone teach me how to lie?

Goddesses out there, I’m reaching my higher power, and I hope you are too!!! … I also twisted my ankle last night, and paramedics arrived at my door illegally. They never came into my room, but I felt completely harassed.

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Trump Awarded 36 Million More Trump Media Shares Worth $1.8 Billion After Hitting Price Benchmarks

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AP - VOR News Image

Washington — Former President Donald Trump has purchased an extra $1.8 billion in shares of Trump Media, according to a regulatory filing this week.

Trump was granted an additional 36 million shares in the firm that controls his social media network, Truth Social, in exchange for the company’s stock meeting specific price targets. Based on Wednesday morning’s market price, this takes his overall holding to more than 114 million shares, valued at $5.7 billion.

trump

CNN – VOR News Image

Trump Awarded 36 Million More Trump Media Shares Worth $1.8 Billion After Hitting Price Benchmarks

Trump, the probable Republican presidential nominee, now owns almost two-thirds of the company’s outstanding shares.

Trump Media & Technology Group shares have risen sharply recently, closing Tuesday at $49.93. To get the new shares, Trump merely needs the stock to trade over $17.50 for 20 consecutive trading days.

Trump Media joined the Nasdaq after merging with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). These mergers provide emerging companies with a faster and easier path to publicly listing their shares.

trump

AP – VOR News Image

Trump Awarded 36 Million More Trump Media Shares Worth $1.8 Billion After Hitting Price Benchmarks

On March 26, the first day of trading following Trump Media’s merger with Digital World Acquisition, shares of the newly combined business reached nearly $80 apiece in intraday trading before closing at $57.99.

Less than a week after its glitzy stock market debut, Trump Media revealed that it lost roughly $58.2 million last year, sending its stock down more than 21%. The $50.5 million profit the company reported in 2022 was significantly lower than the 2023 losses, according to a regulatory filing.

trump

Mashable – VOR News Image

Trump Awarded 36 Million More Trump Media Shares Worth $1.8 Billion After Hitting Price Benchmarks

The company’s shares fell to roughly $22 in the following weeks before recovering in mid-April.Truth Social was created in February 2022, one year after Trump was barred from major social media platforms such as Facebook and X, previously Twitter, following the January 6 revolt at the US Capitol. He has been reinstated to both but has remained with Truth Social.

Trump Media’s stock sank 8.6% to $45.64 in morning trading on Wednesday.

SOURCE – (AP)

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Paul Auster, Prolific And Experimental Man Of Letters And Filmmaker, Dies At 77

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AP News - VOR News Image

NEW YORK —Paul Auster, a prolific, award-winning writer and director known for creative tales and meta-narratives such as “The New York Trilogy” and “4 3 2 1,” died at the age of 77.

The Carol Mann Agency, Auster’s literary representatives, announced his death on Wednesday but did not immediately disclose any other information. Auster was diagnosed with cancer in 2022.

Auster wrote over 30 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages, beginning in the 1970s. He was a longtime fixture in the Brooklyn literary scene but has yet to achieve major commercial success in the United States. However, he was widely admired overseas for his cosmopolitan worldview and erudite and reflective style, and the French government named him a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1991. He was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

auster

AP – VOR News Image

Paul Auster, Prolific And Experimental Man Of Letters And Filmmaker, Dies At 77

Auster, dubbed the “dean of American post-modernists” and “the most meta of American meta-fictional writers,” combined history, politics, genre experiments, existential quests, and self-conscious references to writers and writing. “The New York Trilogy,” which featured “City of Glass,” “Ghosts,” and “The Locked Room,” was a postmodern detective story in which names and identities blurred, and one protagonist was a private investigator named Paul Auster. The brief “Travels in the Scriptorium” tells a story within a story as a political prisoner is forced to read a sequence of narratives by other victims, which will eventually include his own.

The author’s longest and most ambitious work of fiction, “4 3 2 1,” was published in 2017 and was a Booker Prize nominee. The 800-page novel is a story of quadraphonic realism in the post-World War II era, following Archibald Isaac Ferguson’s simultaneous adventures from summer camp and high school baseball to student life in New York and Paris during the major uprisings of the late 1960s.

“Identical but different, meaning four boys with the same name parents, the same bodies, and the same genetic material, but each one living in a different house in a different town with his own set of circumstances,” the author writes. “Each one on his own separate path, and yet all of them still the same person, three imaginary versions of himself, and then himself thrown in as Number Four for good measure; the author of the book.”

His other works included the nonfiction compilations “Groundwork” and “Talking to Strangers”; a family memoir, “The Invention of Solitude”; a biography of novelist Stephen Crane; the novels “Leviathan” and “Talking to Strangers”; and the poetry collection “White Space.” In his most recent novel, “Baumgardner,” the titular character is a widowed professor troubled by mortality and wondering “where his mind will be taking him next.”

Auster was such an old-fashioned novelist that he used a typewriter and disliked email and other Internet communication. However, he had an extraordinarily active film career compared to his writing peers.

In the mid-1990s, Auster worked with filmmaker Wayne Wang on the celebrated art-house film “Smoke,” which was an adaptation of Auster’s funny narrative about a Brooklyn tobacco shop and a customer named Paul. The film stars Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, and William Hurt, among others, and earned Auster an Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay.

auster

AP – VOR News Image

Paul Auster, Prolific And Experimental Man Of Letters And Filmmaker, Dies At 77

Wang and Auster immediately followed up on “Smoke” with “Blue in the Face,” an improvised story set in a Brooklyn cigar shop that starred Keitel and featured appearances by everyone from Lou Reed to Lily Tomlin.

Auster eventually created the films himself. Keitel appeared in Auster’s 1998 love story “Lulu on the Bridge,” which he directed and co-wrote with Vanessa Redgrave. Nine years later, Auster wrote and directed the drama “The Inner Life of Martin Frost,” which starred David Thewlis as an author and Irène Jacob as a lady who has an unusual connection to the story he is writing.

“The four times I’ve worked on movies, I’ve never had a problem talking to actors,” Auster told filmmaker Wim Wenders in a 2017 interview published in Interview magazine. “I was always in excellent harmony with them. After those events, I recognized a connection between creating fiction and acting. The writer does it with words on a page, whereas the actor does so with his body. The effort remains the same.

Auster married fellow author Siri Hustvedt in 1982, and they had a daughter, Sophie, who appears in “The Inner Life of Martin Frost.” He also had a son, Daniel, from his first marriage to the author-translator Lydia Davis. Daniel Auster would suffer from drug addiction and die of an overdose in 2022, shortly after being charged with second-degree manslaughter in the death of his young daughter, Ruby.

Paul Auster never publicly discussed his son’s death, but he had written extensively on parenthood. In “The Invention of Solitude,” published in 1982, he reflected on the “thousands of hours” he’d spent with Daniel in the first three years of his life and wondered if they were worthwhile. “It will be lost forever,” Auster wrote. “All these things will vanish for the boy’s memory forever.”

auster

AP – VOR News Image

Paul Auster, Prolific And Experimental Man Of Letters And Filmmaker, Dies At 77

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Paul Benjamin Auster grew up in a middle-class Jewish family caught between his father’s thriftiness and miserliness and his mother’s desire to spend to the point of irresponsibility. He would soon feel like an outcast in his family, turned off by their materialism and inspired by James Joyce’s “Ulysses” or Edgar Allan Poe’s stories rather than the stability of a typical employment.

His ideals would be thoroughly tested. After graduating from Columbia University, Auster toiled for years before finding a publisher and making money from his works. He wrote poetry, translated French literature, worked on an oil tanker, tried to sell a baseball board game, and even considered making money by raising worms in his cellar.

“All along, my only ambition had been to write,” Auster wrote in her brief memoir “Hand to Mouth,” released in 1995. “I knew it as early as 16 or 17 years old, and I never misled myself into believing I could make a life from it. Becoming a writer is not a ‘career decision’ like becoming a doctor or a police officer. You don’t select it; you’re picked, and once you realize that you’re not cut out for anything else, you must be prepared to walk a long, hard road for the rest of your life.”

SOURCE – (AP)

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