Thursday Links

1. I love celebrity news and celebrity couples. (Keep the duhs to yourself, peanut gallery). But it's always funny to watch TV shows or movies with stars who used to date each other. I love Gossip Girl (stop judging me) and Serena and Dan dated for a few years. And there they are on the show giving each other longing glances (sometimes). It makes me giggle. Anywho, here are some celeb couples who worked together after splitting.

2. I love Twitter. (Remember, keep the duhs to yourself). It's fascinating watching it grow in importance. TV, especially, has latched on to it and now both are helping each other grow.

3. This made me giggle. Who wore it best? Mariah Carey's baby Monroe or Kim Kardashian?

4. Hip hop is an ingrained part of American culture now, but the music genre is only around 30 years old. I liked this look back at one of the early stars, Big Daddy Kane.

So yeah, all of my links today were on the entertainment side and none on the sports side. I looked for some interesting ones, but honestly, the sports side of my brain has been consumed with the Penn State debacle. It sickens me, it hurts me, it pisses me off that football was deemed more important than protecting kids. I can only hope that the kids have found help or will now seek it out and they find or have found a way to live a happy, peaceful life.

A Music Channel that Actually Plays Music - Seriously!

Maybe everyone has heard of Palladia and I'm just seriously late to the party. It's happened before. But since it's new to me, I had to share. I "discovered" Palladia few months ago. It's an HD channel grouped with MTV AND VH1 in the channel listing in my cable system. As we all know, MTV and VH1 stopped caring about music a long time ago, so I'm ecstatic that Palladia exists.

All those MTV Unplugged and VH1 Storytellers episodes? They've found a home on Palladia.* Since I figured out the channel was there and what it was, I've watched concerts featuring Lady Gaga, Adele, Usher, Sara Bareilles, Kanye West, and Cee-lo Green. And those are just the ones that immediately popped into my head. There are more.

I watched a documentary chronicling the lead-up to the release of Beyonce's latest album 4. It was fascinating to watch if only to hear her talk about why she decided to relieve her father of his managerial duties. She said she wanted to gain more control over her career. Is that spin? I'm sure to a certain extent it is, but as Beyonce is very private and doesn't publicly address issues like this often, it was nice to get an explanation directly from her.

A few weeks ago, I watched Madonna's Truth or Dare. Although it's twenty years old, I'd never seen it. I was fascinated.

Madonna seems remarkably unaffected by her fame. I kept wondering if she did a sequel today would she still come across that way. She did a show in Michigan and said she loved being home, which is funny because she basically makes England home now and people make fun of her for faking a British accent.

Also, I loved how she said she found it weird that celebrities assumed a level of friendship with her and other celebrities just because they happened to be famous.

Anywho, I make it a point to stop by Palladia to see what they're showing when I'm channel surfing. For those who don't care about the pop and R&B scene, they show a lot of other stuff like country, classic rock (there was a ZZ Top concert on a few days ago), and indie rock music. I'm not into bands like Mumford & Sons, but if you are, know Palladia isn't ignoring them.

And they show videos, too. As someone who was raised on BET, this makes my heart happy.

Basically, Palladia has something for everybody. Yay for its existence! It's totally epic and awesome.

*Funny enough when I went to Palladia's website, I saw that it was owned by MTV and VH1. Guess that explains why the channel has the rights to air all those old concerts. And maybe why MTV and VH1 are fine with airing so little music these days.