Russia's Anna Kournikova, right, kisses fellow Russian Tatiana Panova at the end of the Women's Singles first round match at Wimbledon, Monday June 24, 2002. Panova defeated Kournikova, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4.
jess3 blogs,
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Russia's Anna Kournikova, right, kisses fellow Russian Tatiana Panova at the end of the Women's Singles first round match at Wimbledon, Monday June 24, 2002. Panova defeated Kournikova, 6-1, 4-6, 6-4.
Eminem: The Rolling Stone Interview
The loose-lipped rapper isn't afraid of his demons. Should you be?
By Anthony Bozza
In a lounge chair in the presidential suite of a Detroit hotel, Eminem sits as he always does: leaning back in his chair, his legs wide apart, eyes straight ahead. He's dressed head to toe in Air Jordan. Sometimes, he suddenly leans forward to emphasize a point, tucking his hand under his chin or gesturing with a pointed finger, the way he does onstage. His eyes and skin are clear; he looks lean and in shape, and he has an odd, almost angelic glow to him, as if he's been wandering the desert with hip-hop monks. He's been keeping late hours, but it doesn't show, maybe due to better eats. ("Damn, they didn't get me fries with that," he says, eyeing a room-service tuna melt. "I'm off that no-carb diet.") He is relaxed, a king in his castle, ready to greet the world after a year of battle.
Since the release of his second album, The Marshall Mathers LP, in May 2000, Eminem has seen his celebrity grow into a sun orbited by his own label (Shady Records), his partners in rhyme D12, a planet of fans, a nascent movie career (with the release of 8 Mile this fall) and an asteroid field of cops, lawyers and judges. In August 2000, he filed for divorce from his twisted muse and the love of his life, Kim, whom he had married only a year earlier. They shared eleven years and now share custody of their six-year-old daughter, Hailie Jade.
In June 2000, while he and Kim were still married, Eminem witnessed her kissing another man outside a suburban Detroit bar. After a very short internal debate, Em pistol-whipped the guy and earned himself the first of two felony charges that year - the second came after an altercation involving the ersatz rap group the Insane Clown Posse (see "The Troubles He's Seen," Page 75). The two charges spelled possible jail time for twenty-eight-year-old Marshall Mathers, a gangsta reality he was scared as hell to add to his portfolio. To spice the stew further, Eminem's vitriolic rhymes made him the constant subject of protests by gay -- and women's-rights groups.
The threat of prison and his current probation woke him up and grew him up right quick. He stopped drinking and downing purple pills and, as always, took his angst to the studio. The Eminem Show is confident, complex, edgy, banging and fresh. "I'm paranoid as fuck about anything of mine sounding like a track I just did or like anything else out there," Eminem says. "I practically live in the studio, aside from spending time with Hailie. I always feel that I can improve something until I just get sick of it." Eminem handled most of the production himself, with three tracks coming from his mentor, Dr. Dre. On his own, Em samples Aerosmith's "Dream On" in "Sing for the Moment," sings to his daughter in "Hailie's Song" and attacks American moral hypocrisy throughout. His new songs make this last point better than ever before, because the man making them, more than ever, is aware of who he is and how to manipulate the world watching him.
It will certainly be watching when he makes his big-screen debut in November in 8 Mile, alongside Kim Basinger and Brittany Murphy. The film, produced by Brian Grazer (A Beautiful Mind), was developed with Eminem in mind, though it is not exactly a biopic. "I was looking to make a movie about hip-hop that, like Saturday Night Fever did, really puts you in that world," Grazer says. "I randomly saw Eminem on MTV, and in the span of six or seven seconds, he goes from this icy, urban, scary glare to this fluid, self-effacing, kind of fun character. I had to meet him." They did meet, but the free-flowing feeling wasn't quite there at first. "Em and his manager came in, and Em didn't say a word for about twenty minutes," Grazer says. "He just stared. I was only getting the icy part. It got really uncomfortable. But then, Em just opened up and told me about his life for over an hour." They enlisted the talents of Curtis Hanson, director of L.A. Confidential and Wonder Boys. "He's an extraordinarily gifted artist," Hanson says of Eminem. "If Internet piracy kills the music business, Marshall Mathers need not worry. He'll have another career."
Over the course of two days in Detroit, Eminem surveyed his ever-expanding Shady kingdom. He's more professional now, but he's equally eager to run off -- to his daughter, to his studio, to his home, to anyplace he can be in peace. Or maybe just to the lyric book he still carries with him everywhere, in which he's always scrawling, usually too small for anyone else to read.
You look focused and pretty happy. Have you calmed down?
I'm on probation now, so I don't have a choice. But I probably would've done it anyways -- perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. I'm growing up, and I figure there's a certain level of maturity that comes with that. [Starts picking left nostril] Hailie is better at this than I am. You know, when you build a booger castle with your daughter -- that's quality time. It's actually what we live in now, and we built it ourselves.
You wrote this album during an insane year -- lawsuits, divorce, the threat of jail time. Tell me about the early stages of the album.
"Sing for the Moment" was the first song I wrote for the album; "Cleanin Out My Closet" was the second. I had the line in "Cleanin Out My Closet" -- "I'd like to welcome y'all out to The Eminem Show" -- and it was just a line, but I sat back and I was like, "My life is really like a fucking show." I have songs on the album that I wrote when I was in that shit last year, with a possible jail sentence hangin' over my head and all the emotions going through the divorce. I went through a lot of shit last year that I resolved at the same time, all in the same year. And, yeah, that's when half of the album was wrote.
"Dream On" was a desperate, hopeful song when Aerosmith wrote it. Is that why you used it?
Yeah. I was in that shit, and I didn't know what was going to happen to me -- I thought I was goin' to jail. But the scariest thought was, "How am I going to tell this to Hailie?" What am I going to say -- "Daddy's goin' away and he's bad, and you have to come visit him in jail"? I never told her anything, because if there was a slim chance that I'd get off, then I didn't want to put her through that emotionally -- being scared. She hates when I go away, anytime. "Sing for the Moment" is that frustration and all that shit. There I was, in the fucking precinct getting booked, and the cops were asking me for autographs while they were fucking booking me, and I'm doing it, I'm giving them the autographs. But I'm like, "My life is in fucking shambles right now, and you look at me like I am not a fucking person. I am a walking spectacle." I signed it. "They're the police, and I'm sure that if Marshall is a good guy, word will get around, so OK, fuck it, lemme do it." OK, yeah, I'm a criminal and I did a couple of things that I shouldn'a did, but I'm still a human, and people make mistakes. I didn't do anything different than any other person would have done that night [when he caught Kim kissing another man]. Some people would have done more than me, but I don't know of a man on this fuckin' earth that would have done less -- not to say exactly what I did.
You always talk about your daughter, Hailie Jade, in your songs, but on this album, "Hailie's Song" is a much more personal message. Plus, you sing -- that is certainly putting yourself out there.
That song was stress off my chest. That's how it is with every song I do; it's therapy and it's releasing everything onto a record instead of doing any of it. I really dumped my feelings out in that song. I love my little girl enough to sing to her, for one, and two, it wasn't easy what I went through last year. Divorce is the hardest thing that I've ever worked through -- not that I'm bitter or anything like that. I'm a better person because I went through it, but it was hard at first. I've known this chick all my life, she's the first true girlfriend that I ever had. You grow up with this person, and then they want to leave you. And at first you don't know what to do. You know, I put the blame on everything. I put the blame on myself, I put the blame on my career. But as I got through it, I stepped back and looked at the whole picture. I realized it wasn't my fault and there's nothing I could have done. It was inevitable. It's cool, me and Kim are on speaking terms, we can communicate, no hard feelings, fuck it. Didn't work, you know, after eleven years.
Excerpt from RS 899/900, July 4-14, 2002
i just got back from the beach..it was soooo fun....chillin with scully and her bro and her dad and lindsey....in ocean city....lunchin......
Nas A No-Show At Summer Jam, Denies Planned Mock Lynching Of Jay-Z
UNIONDALE, New York — For the second year in a row, the biggest story to come out of New York's Summer Jam, put on by radio station Hot 97, is the feud between Jay-Z and Nas. Unfortunately for the fans who went to the show Wednesday night, for the second year in a row, the Queensbridge rhyme king was not in attendance. (Click here for photos).
Advertised acts Mobb Deep, Alicia Keys, N.O.R.E. and Busta Rhymes, and special guest Cam'ron — who claims he was plucked out of the audience to perform — had already got on the mic. And as Ja Rule and the Murder Inc. family sang their last notes and spit their last lyrics, confetti was dropped on the crowd at Nassau Coliseum and the house lights were turned up. At any other show that would have been the automatic signal of closure, but on this night, it took a few minutes for the pondering onlookers to figure out that the headliner, Nas, was not coming.
For weeks there had been speculation about the MC — it wasn't a matter of if Nas was going to exact revenge on Jay for calling him out in front of the tri-state area last year, but how. What surprises did Nas have up his sleeve? On Wednesday night, the only talk was about where he was.
"Where the f--- is Nas?" a man screeched futilely at the stage. "That's bullsh--."
A brief chant of "We want Nas!" even went out among the audience as everybody filed out.
So just where was Nas on the night he was supposed to perform at his first-ever Summer Jam? He was in New York, but he was on the air, taking no prisoners in an interview with Hot 97's rival, Power 105.
"I'm here to let my people know why I am not at the Summer Jam," he said on former Hot 97's DJ Steph Lova's show. "I been bamboozled, hoodwinked and the whole nine ... I'm here to let my people know that I was dissed this morning and told what I couldn't do on the show. Which is really outrageous and shows that the wrong people are in power ... It's really out of hand and I'm not going for it."
From there he went on to vent his frustration at what he considered Hot 97's dirty politics and called out some of their DJs, like Funkmaster Flex and Angie Martinez and the station's programmer, Tracy Cloherty. He also rampaged, among other things, about how his peers shouldn't be so willing to bow down to the powers that be.
On Thursday afternoon (June 27), Hot 97 DJs Angie Martinez and Sunny responded to Nas' screed against their station. They said the only problem the station had with Nas' performance was a planned "mock lynching" he wanted to do with Jay-Z.
"Management told him not do it," Martinez explained. "Nas then decided if he couldn't do that portion of the show, he didn't want to do any show. We were not trying to protect a specific artist, this was not about politics, money, nothing. This was just a decision that was made. That's the truth."
"They don't even know what I was about to do," Nas told radio personality Wendy Williams in a pre-taped interview that aired Thursday on New York radio station WBLS 107.5. "It wasn't even Jay I was coming after. I can't even [divulge] everything I was going to do on that stage that was going to raise the bar of hip-hop music."
There was strong Queens representation at the show, however. Two of QBs Finest, Mobb Deep, opened the show with a short film that starred themselves and included DJ Kay Slay and their manager Chris Lighty. The plot? A gun-busting break from the cops onscreen that segued into their opening number, "Get Away," onstage.
It took a while for the next artist, Missy Elliott, to get onstage. She did leave the audience in good hands, however. Elliott's guest Eve began the set with her verses from "4 My People" and "Hot Boyz" before Missy came out, showing off her slimmer figure in a black sweat suit. Missy came and went almost as fast a the one-minute man she rhymes about, only performing a few selections, including "She's a Bitch" and "Get Ur Freak On." She did take time out at the end, though, to give a tribute to Aaliyah and Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes.
Alicia Keys must have been peeping how the crowd last year wasn't much into the crooning songbirds (they booed Destiny's Child) (see "Jay-Z's Special Guest A Thriller For Summer Jam Crowd"). Keys showed that not only can she carry a tune, but that she's in tune with the 'hood. Hip-hop's gutter griots the LOX joined her. She sang "Troubles" over the beat to Jadakiss' "We Gonna Make It" then Kiss himself joined her for a verse off the record. His partner Styles came on with "The Life" and Keys and her background singers sang the chorus. Much like Jada received his next level-propelling stamp of approval last year at Summer Jam, the crowd overwhelmingly co-signed for Styles on "Good Times."
Foxy Brown and Capone came onstage to join N.O.R.E., who highlighted his set with his finale of "Nothin'." But no one shook things up more than P. Diddy, who danced around, jumped and rapped with Busta Rhymes.
"I'm gonna reach deep into the stash, I hope y'all ready," Busta, who had already melted the roof with M.O.P. on "Ante Up," said before Usher's recorded voice rang out around the arena. "I Need a Girl that'll ride, ride, ride."
Then the funk bassline of Puff's "I Need a Girl (Part 2)" dropped and P.D. swaggered on the stage with Loon. "Let's stop playing with them," Diddy told Busta after the song was finished, transitioning into Bus' last jam and showstopper "Pass the Courvoisier Part II."
Murder Inc. rolled out their cavalcade of singers and rappers. Ashanti defined sexiness, prancing around in her Pocahontas-like skirt, performing "Foolish" and "Happy." Ja Rule did half his songs topless, bringing out Charli Baltimore, Vita and Caddilac Tah for their various collaborations. However it all seemed anticlimactic in the end with the no-show. Many confused fans just wanted to know what happened to the closing act.
this is what i made in class...with photoshop
the assignment was positive/negative
http://www.adobe.com
Snake handler Peter Morningstar has his brow bitten by a 7 kilogram (15.5 pound), 3 meter (10 feet) long carpet snake during a photo shoot for a newspaper in Brisbane, Australia, Thursday, May 30, 2002, after Morningstar removed the snake from a roof of a house. Reptile lover Morningstar has been bitten by non-venomous snakes before and this time the snake bit off more than it could chew leaving only small puncture marks on Morningstar's face.
Woman accused of cutting off man's buttocks, leaving him near death on rural Ala. road
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - A woman enraged at her boyfriend attacked him with a utility knife and cut off nearly all of his buttocks, leaving him near death on a dark, rural road, a prosecutor said Thursday.
The injuries were so severe investigators initially believed the victim was sexually tortured and dragged behind a car in a possible hate crime.
The man has not fully described what happened to police, but they said they believe his girlfriend acted alone. She was arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted murder.
"The gruesome nature of the injuries is almost mind-boggling," said District Attorney Chris McCool. "With the trauma of the attack, how do you talk about that?"
Kimberly King, 26, of Aliceville was jailed without bail. "This ain't right," she told a TV news crew as she was arrested.
King did not yet have a lawyer Thursday.
King and her boyfriend had been at a bar in Mississippi late Saturday or early Sunday, McCool said. They left separately after an argument.
Police said she pulled up behind his vehicle on an isolated highway near Aliceville, and began stabbing him with a large knife. When he fell, "she got down on him and just started cutting," McCool said.
The victim, Rodney Outlaw, 25, regained consciousness some time later, and drove about nine miles (15 kilometers) to the nearest home. He remained hospitalized Thursday.
Aliceville is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southwest of Birmingham.
McDonald's in Hawaii to Serve Spam
Wed Jun 12, 8:28 AM ET
The 78 McDonald's restaurants in Hawaii are adding a new menu item that's as much an American icon as the burger chain itself — Spam.
More than 3,000 portions of low-sodium Spam, scrambled egg and rice were served in a single day during a test run of the meal, according to Melanie Okazaki, McDonald's local marketing manager.
"I'm not sure why it has taken so long," Okazaki said of the Spam breakfast, which she said is offered at no other McDonald's in the world.
Hawaii residents consume 5.3 million cans of Hormel Foods' processed Spam luncheon meat each year, four times the national average. A favorite local variation is Spam sushi.
This weekend, Hormel is holding a "Spam Jam" for the grand opening of its 16,500-square-foot Spam Museum in Austin, Minn. The celebration honoring the product introduced in 1937 as "the miracle meat" had been scheduled for September but was postponed after the terrorist attacks.
McDonald's officials will decide Aug. 1 if the canned meat will find a permanent place on the Hawaii menu.
The Spam breakfast joins other local specialties at McDonald's in Hawaii, including a local noodle soup called saimin and a Portuguese sausage breakfast.
Protesters Bury Themselves Up to Their Necks
Nine Colombians have buried themselves, leaving only their heads poking out of the ground, to protest the lack of running water and other public services in their poor Bogota neighborhood.
Their bodies numbed by the weight of soil packed in on all sides, the men waited in vain in their living burial site inside a church for local authorities to arrive to hear their complaints on Wednesday. Only reporters showed up.
Six protesters had themselves dug in on Tuesday evening in Bogota's poor Usme neighborhood. Another three later joined them.
"Here we drink polluted water. It's brown as coffee and comes from a lake where they've found dead people, horses and other rubbish. Our roads are terrible," said Hernando Rodriguez, 65, his chin just above the soil, speaking in a whisper.
About 60 percent of Colombia's 43 million people live in poverty, according to government figures. Living conditions are made worse by a 38-year-old guerrilla war.
The protesters are not eating and hardly drinking, in order to avoid having to defecate or urinate. Local people said there were rumors some protesters, who wear black or white ski-masks, were taking turns at being buried and then being dug out.
Ozzy Osbourne and Kermit the frog are shown backstage in the gardens of Buckingham Palace Monday June 3, 2002, for the second concert to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.
Satellite Enthusiast Watches NATO Spy Pix
A British satellite enthusiast has discovered that anyone can tune in live to U.S. spy plane photo transmissions over the Balkans.
John Locker said the freely available pictures by both manned spy planes and drones can pinpoint a location to within two meters (six feet).
"It's frightening -- I am amazed," he told Reuters on Thursday. "Even before September 11, this is not the sort of stuff that should be shown openly."
Locker said he had spent the last seven months alerting NATO and U.S. military commanders about the free availability of the pictures but just met with the answer: "So What?"
NATO said it was not concerned about any possible security breaches but American officials said plans were in hand to encrypt the data.
Locker, who picked up the broadcast from the Telstar satellite over Brazil at home on his satellite dish, stressed he was not tapping into anything.
"This is not an intercept," he said. "I am not a hacker -- this is free to air programming."
"I would question if this could put troops at risk on the ground. Those pictures are within real time of three seconds," he said. "It is just stunning."
He said pictures he has seen covered military exercises on the ground in Macedonia and further north in the Sarajevo area in Bosnia.
Clearly visible were troops on the ground, armored personnel carriers and a helicopter whizzing underneath the camera.
AFGHAN STRETCH?
Viewers tuning into the satellite this week were reported to have been able to watch a security alert around the U.S. Army's headquarters at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
Last week, the spy plane provided airborne surveillance for a heavily protected patrol on the Macedonian-Kosovo border near Skopje.
Locker said: "What I suspect is that they are using military satellite capacity for Afghanistan as their top priority. As that capacity runs out, they may be using a commercial satellite as a backup."
Locker is a freelance journalist who writes for satellite communications magazines.
"We can see dozens of satellites in the sky," he said. "This just happened to pop up on one of the satellites last November. It appeared to me to be of military origin."
The pictures have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. Clips from the feed, which are not encrypted, have been transmitted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on their Web site, www.icij.org.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, told the BBC plans were now in hand to encrypt the data.
"We have discovered in the period since September 11 how important this sort of real-time intelligence is," he said. "Now we are making much better use of this kind of information and it will make sense to encrypt it in the future."
"There are plans to encrypt this data."
Asked to comment on the broadcasts, a NATO spokesman in Brussels told Reuters: "This is a U.S. issue. We are aware of it but it is not new.
"It was a decision made by the United States to treat this imagery as unclassified material and to put it on a commercial satellite...This is a decision they made and we are content that they are following appropriate levels of security."
Major Bill Bigelow, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command in Germany, said the images did not constitute intelligence.
"Raw information such as that video does not mean intelligence," he said. "Intelligence means analysis of data that comes from many different sources."
A monkey who belongs to a roadside entertainer sips from a bottle of soft drink in Jullunder, India on Wednesday, June 12, 2002. Temperatures are on the rise again in Northern India with some parts recording a high of 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit).
Couple Sues Over Hidden-Camera 'Corpse' Prank
(Reuters) - MTV has been slapped with a $10 million lawsuit from a couple who say they were surprised by a fake corpse in their hotel room as part of a hidden-camera prank for a reality TV show.
James and Laurie Ann Ryan, of Washington, D.C., also named the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas in the suit, which accuses the resort and the cable network of invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress and fraud, among other things, their attorney said Wednesday.
The suit, originally filed in Los Angeles in April but gaining public attention this week after it was moved to federal court, said the couple became unwitting participants in a practical joke filmed for a series under development at MTV called "Harassment" while they were on vacation in January.
Upon entering the hotel room, the Ryans "discovered what appeared to be a dead human body covered and surrounded by blood, evidently the victim of a homicide," as hidden cameras recorded their shock, the suit says.
As the couple tried to flee, two actors posing as security guards blocked their way, and a third individual in the guise of a paramedic entered the room.
The show's host and co-producer, Ashton Kutcher, who has described the series in interviews as a "guerrilla-style Candid Camera," finally emerged to reveal the prank.
The Ryans were not amused. They are seeking $10 million in compensatory damages against MTV, the Hard Rock Hotel and Kutcher, who also is named in the suit, said their lawyer, Daniel Rozansky.
Both the cable network, which is owned by Viacom Inc., and the privately owned hotel declined to comment on the case.
An MTV spokeswoman said the incident in question was filmed as part of a pilot episode for "Harassment," which has not aired. She said the future status of the program is uncertain.
"Harassment" is not the first reality show to land MTV in legal trouble. Two teenage girls sued the network in April, 2001 after they were sprayed with human excrement by performers billed as the "Shower Rangers" during the taping of a program called "Dude, This Sucks."
MTV apologized for the incident and promised never to air footage of the incident. That suit remains in litigation, the girls' high-profile Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred told Reuters.
A Battle Eminem Doesn’t Want
No, this is not a joke. Seriously, sources close to Eminem have reported that the superstar has received death threats from a group of Bin Laden’s followers, called “al Qaida.” This of course comes in response to Eminem dressing up as Bin Laden in his video for “Without Me.”
Eminem is taking these threats very seriously and is taking several precautions to ensure the safety of him and his daughter. He has hired several more security guards as well as upgrading his homes security system. He has also contacted specialists in dealing with terrorism and how to counter it.
For all the shit-talking and controversial things that he has said and done over the past three years, who would have thought that this would bite him in the ass. I never thought much of his dressing up like Bin Laden, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Does this mean that Bin Laden and the al Qaida watch MTV?
Heavyweight fighter Hasim Rahman sports a severe hematoma on his forehead during the eighth round of his heavyweight fight against Evander Holyfield in Atlantic City, New Jersey, June 1, 2002. The 39-year old Holyfield was awarded a split technical decision in the eighth round.
Lewis jabbed and battered Iron Mike Tyson into submission last night at The Pyramid to retain his world heavyweight championship.
Lewis, who heard from the Tyson camp that he was a coward, bloodied Tyson's face in the first six rounds with a punishing jab before knocking him down and out at 2:25 of the eighth with a thunderous right.
It was Lewis, not Tyson, who was the bully. Referee Eddie Cotton repeatedly warned Lewis for holding and hitting off the break. He even deducted a point from Lewis in the fourth for pushing Tyson to the canvas and punching him.
Lewis' trainer, Emanuel Stewart, had said on Thursday that his fighter was ready to give Tyson a dose of his own medicine. He was relentless in putting Tyson in his place.
"Lennox' philosophy is when he fights bullies, he bullies bullies. because bullies don't like to be bullied," Stewart said in prophetic fashion. "Lennox considers Mike an old bully, and Lennox is a bigger bully who's going to bully him in his own technical way."
Lewis buckled Tyson with a right hook early in the eighth round. Tyson took the standing eight count from Cotton and came out of the neutral corner to meet his fate.
Lewis landed a thunderous right that dropped Tyson, leaving him sprawled on his back. He struggled to one knee and was gallantly trying to stand, but Cotton waved his hands.
The fight was over and perhaps Tyson's career is done as well.
"I am happy for him and I hope he gives me a fight one more time," said Tyson, who said he loved Lewis and the champ's mom Violet.
"After the fight he apologized and he told me that I was a masterful boxer," said Lewis. "And he asked for a rematch."
The apology was because Tyson bit Lewis on the leg at a news conference in New York on Jan. 22nd. That forced this fight to be move from Las Vegas to Memphis.
"This guy bit me," said Lewis. "I just said to myself, ‘He's going to have to get some discipline.' "
Tyson was the aggressor, as expected, in the first round, but he was measured in his attack. He tried a lunging jab to get to Lewis, but the six inch difference in height between champ and challenger prevented Tyson from getting through.
Once he got inside and landed a hook. Lewis spun Tyson and landed a right upper cut. Tyson would land another hook and Lewis just missed with a right counter.
Early in the second, Cotton cautioned Lewis about holding. Lewis threw a right upper cut that caught Tyson but didn't hurt him. Cotton then warned Lewis a second time about holding.
Clearly Lewis' strategy was to play it safe and smart early. Midway through the round Lewis landed the best punch of the fight, a short chopping uppercut that stunned Tyson.
Lewis also started zeroing in with his left jab, his most important punch. He landed another upper cut and the bell sounded with Lewis having withstood the first two rounds - Tyson Territory.
Lewis seemed to be taking control with the left jab in the third when Tyson landed a big left hook. Lewis didn't flinch and when the fighters separated blood was dripping from Tyson's right eye.
Lewis' jab had opened a cut on the eyelid. Lewis dominated the fourth. He landed a straight jab, measured the stuck the jab and then tattooed Tyson with a big right. A left-right combo send sweat and water flying from Tyson's head.
"Those punches he were taking were hard and he took them like a man," said Lewis.
At the end of the round, Lewis was pushing down on Tyson's head when he threw a right. Tyson went down and appeared hurt. Lewis raised his arms but Cotton immediately ruled it a foul and deducted a point from Lewis.
Lewis' jab took over the fight in the fifth. Tyson's left eye began to swell. Lewis reopened the cut over the right eye.
Whenever Tyson got close, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Lewis tied him up or pushed him away.
The crowd was now clearly in Lewis' corner. He was bullying the fighter known for being a bully.
"Emanuel told me to take him out earlier," said Lewis. "He was pleading with me."
Lewis opened the sixth with a left-right and then connected on a left hook. Tyson hadn't thrown an effective punch in three rounds. Lewis' jab was sapping Tyson's will.
Lewis was in complete control by the seventh. Tyson, sensing he was in deep trouble, tried to mount an attack at the start of the eighth. He quickly lost steam and Lewis clocked him with a left hook that staggered Tyson.
"I'm the best in the world," said Lewis.
Ex-Mobster John Gotti Dies of Cancer
Mon Jun 10,11:38 PM ET
By RICHARD PYLE, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - John Gotti, who swaggered, schemed and murdered his way to the pinnacle of organized crime in America only to be toppled by secret FBI ( news - web sites) tapes and a turncoat mobster's testimony, died at a prison hospital Monday. He was 61.
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John Gotti
The U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., announced the death of the former Mafia boss. Gotti had suffered from throat cancer and had been moved to the prison hospital from the maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Ill.
"He's a man amongst men, a champion," said longtime family friend Lewis Kasman. "He fought like hell this terrible disease."
Once known as the "Dapper Don" for his fine double-breasted suits and confident bearing, and as the "Teflon Don" after a series of acquittals, Gotti was sentenced to life in 1992 for racketeering and six killings. His victims included "Big Paul" Castellano, whom he succeeded as boss of New York's Gambino crime family in 1985.
Gotti reigned for six years as the nation's most high-profile mobster, passing himself off as a plumbing supply salesman while strutting about in $2,000 Brioni suits and sneering at law enforcers who kept trying to put him behind bars. Some crime chroniclers called him the most important gangster since Al Capone, a comparison Gotti did not discourage.
When Gotti finally was convicted by a federal jury in Brooklyn, James Fox, the FBI agent in charge in New York, declared: "The Teflon is gone. The don is covered with Velcro."
In the end, Gotti's leadership of the Gambinos led to the loss of power and money for the crime family, because his high profile attracted so much attention from prosecutors.
His undoing was Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano, his one-time closest confidant and underboss who turned government witness.
When Gotti moved to take over the Gambinos, they were the biggest and most powerful of the city's five Mafia families, with 300-plus "made" members, 2,000 "associates" and fingers in every pie, including the garment district, garbage hauling, construction, extortion and loan sharking.
He took charge by murdering Castellano, who had angered Gotti and others with, among other things, his ban on drug trafficking. By some accounts, Gotti feared Castellano was plotting to eliminate him, so he carried out a pre-emptive strike.
Gotti and Gravano watched from half a block away as a hit squad in matching raincoats ambushed Castellano and his driver outside a Manhattan steakhouse on Dec. 16, 1985. They then cruised brazenly past the scene to make sure the pair were dead.
Gotti's seizure of power made him a criminal celebrity. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine and was glamorized as a gangster the law couldn't bring down.
Already in 1984, he had walked free when he was charged with attacking a motorist over a minor traffic dispute. The alleged victim refused to identify him in court, inspiring a tabloid headline, "I FORGOTTI." In 1987, Gotti beat a federal rap in Brooklyn by bribing a juror, and in 1990, another apparent payoff helped win his acquittal in the attempted murder of a union official.
Embarrassed federal authorities finally made gains through electronic surveillance, planting bugs in Gotti's Manhattan headquarters, his social club and an apartment that Gotti borrowed for private discussions.
In 1990, FBI agents arrested Gotti, Gravano and crony Frank Locascio on charges of racketeering and murder, the key charge being the Castellano rubout.
At pretrial hearings, prosecutors played tapes of Gotti delivering profane, egotistic tirades about "whacking" people and other mob topics. He said a crony was murdered because he "didn't come in when I called."
Weeks before the 1992 trial, Gravano cut a deal and became the star witness.
During the trial, Gotti smirked, preened and feigned boredom as Gravano explained the tapes and admitted his own participation in 19 murders. Prosecutors called him a more important witness than Joe Valachi, who had first exposed La Cosa Nostra in the 1960s.
Given Gotti's record of subverting justice, the jurors were tightly sequestered; even the judge didn't know their names. The jury found Gotti guilty on all 14 counts, including murder, racketeering and tax evasion.
From his underground cell at Marion, Ill., Gotti allegedly continued to control the Gambino family through his youngest son, John Jr., but his power and influence clearly waned. The younger Gotti eventually pleaded guilty to bribery, extortion, gambling and fraud and was sentenced to nearly 6 years.
Gravano, branded a "rat" by Gotti, continued to testify for the government in one mob trial after another. He eventually dropped out of the federal witness program and was indicted anew in Arizona for allegedly running an Ecstasy drug operation.
Gravano pleaded guilty last year to state and federal charges in the Ecstasy scheme and is awaiting sentencing. The federal charges carry 15 years.
John Gotti was born Oct. 27, 1940, one of 13 children of poor immigrant parents from Naples. Gotti quit school at 16 and gravitated to petty crime. His violent ways drew the notice of Gambino family wise guys in his Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1950s.
Within a few years, he was running cargo thefts at Kennedy Airport, for which he served three years. Released in 1972, he killed the murderer of a nephew of boss Carlo Gambino — an act that earned him four more years in prison but helped him climb in mob ranks.
By the early '80s, Castellano had replaced the deceased Carlo Gambino as family boss. And Gotti began attracting the attention of the FBI, which was making increasing use of the new RICO anti-racketeering statute to fight organized crime.
Married in 1960, John Sr. and his wife, the former Victoria DiGiorgio, had four other children — daughters Victoria, a successful romance author, and Angela; and sons Peter and Frank.
In 1980, at 12, Frank was killed by a neighbor's car while riding his minibike. Though ruled blameless by police, the neighbor was abducted weeks later and never seen again. No charges were ever brought.
Eminem's Pill-Purple Ride Up For Auction
Fans who wish they could walk a mile in Eminem's shoes now have a chance to cruise one in his car.
The rapper traded in his Ford Mustang last week to a Detroit-area dealer who plans to auction the car to the highest bidder.
The 1999 Mustang convertible, custom-painted purple from its original red and with a tan leather interior, is available for viewing at Russ Milne Ford in Macomb, Michigan. One lucky buyer with cash to spare can drive Eminem's near-mint ride, with 17,656 miles on it and a small mark on the front bumper, right off the lot.
The buyer will not be getting the whole package, however, as general manager Keith Batko believed the car once featured a $7,000 stereo system and Mustang Cobra wheels which were removed prior to the trade.
Russ Milne Ford will donate any money the sale brings in "over and above the normal Mustang price," Batko said, to the Macomb Literacy Project, a charity that teaches adults to read. He is looking to enlist the help of eBay or Christie's to execute the auction and hopes that "the Eminem factor" will help hike up the asking price.
Batko believed the Mustang to be Eminem's first automobile purchased after the release of his first album. He recalled that Eminem rolled into the dealership in a beat-up old car and drove out in a rental while his royalty check cleared.
In his video for "Without Me," Eminem labels himself the "worst thing since Elvis Presley." Batko insisted that the purple Mustang will someday be an important piece of music history and boldly declared, "Eminem will be the next Elvis."
Teen Killing Prompts Call for 'Scream' Ban
A French politician called on Wednesday for a ban on "Scream," a trilogy of violent teen-slasher movies that a 17-year-old boy said inspired him to stab a schoolmate to death.
Didier Fischer, a left-wing candidate in next week's parliamentary elections, also said movie makers should be investigated for crimes linked to violent films.
"I call for the immediate withdrawal from sale and public rental across the national territory of any videotape, DVD disc and any other form of distribution, including on the Internet, of the film 'Scream'," Fischer said in a statement.
The victim, a 15-year-old girl, was found bleeding in a park near the western town of Nantes on Monday. She was able to give the name of the attacker before dying in hospital.
When questioned, the adolescent suspect said the "Scream" films had given him the desire to kill and he wanted to commit a murder similar to those shown in the movies, police said.
The case mirrors that of two French teenagers who were convicted in 1998 of killing a classmate after watching U.S. director Oliver Stone's ultra-violent "Natural Born Killers," about a couple on a serial-killing spree.
Bullet-Proof Baby Seat Latest in Security
Palestinian suicide attacks, shooting ambushes and car bombings have underscored the old adage that necessity is the mother of invention -- at least in Israel 20 months into a Palestinian uprising against occupation.
Bullet-proof baby car seats, cameras that detect potential explosives planted in public places and robots that x-ray bombs were among the latest in gadgetry on display at Israel's annual Security and Defense Exhibition in Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
But missing this year were the thousands of foreign security experts who normally flock to the conference to learn about the latest in high-tech security wizardry.
"They are concerned about Palestinian terror attacks," said conference organizer Lior Caspi.
A wave of Palestinian suicide bombings on buses, city streets and cafes deterred some of the hardiest anti-terror experts from visiting Israel for the conference. Only about 500 showed up compared to 3,000 attendees in previous years.
The conference organizers were forced to offer free insurance to convince the normally unruffled security experts to make the journey to Tel Aviv as many insurance companies in the United States and Europe refused to cover them, Caspi said.
Many of the devices on display were designed with the Israeli market in mind as there are not too many countries in the world with a demand for bullet-proof car seats for babies.
The Israeli armory company Kata recently added the car seat to its product range. It consists of bullet-proof panels built around a regular baby's car seat and weighs about 70 pounds.
"It doesn't give maximum protection, but it does protect the baby's head and its body from the side and back," said Kata salesman Tamir Yoeli.
The car seat which sells for $2,000 is intended for Jewish settlers who have been targeted by Palestinian gunmen as they drive along West Bank roads since the Palestinian revolt began in September 2000 after peace talks deadlocked.
In a post-September 11 world where security has become paramount, Nice Systems has invented a computer-camera device that locates suspicious objects left behind in airports, train stations and other public areas.
The device also alerts guards if a car stops outside an embassy or airport for too long.
Bomb squad sappers no longer have to sweat over whether to cut the red wire or the green wire if they use an x-ray device fitted to a robot which gives an x-ray of the bomb, showing the wiring and type of explosive used.
The device was invented with the input of Israeli sappers who detonate dozens of suspected bombs every day.
Another entrepreneur provides sniffer dogs to protect restaurants, cafes and shopping malls from suicide bombers.
"The dogs are taught to sniff for explosives. If they smell explosives, they send a signal to the handler," said Maavarim company owner, Reuven Israel, who used to head the Israeli police's bomb-sniffing dog unit.
Maavarim has 12 operational dogs including a fierce-looking Alsatian, a young Labrador and a small mixed-breed dog that is able to poke his nose into nooks and crannies. When the dogs smell explosives they sit facing the bomb.
"I am endangering the lives of the dogs and the handlers. But one thing is for sure, the bomber won't get inside the restaurant," said Israel.
Missing Man's Body Found in Freezer
Japanese police on Thursday arrested a woman on the northernmost island of Hokkaido after the body of her husband, who had been missing for five years, was found in a discarded freezer, a police spokesman said.
The decomposed body of civil servant Hidenori Iinuma was found the previous day by employees of a real estate company who were trying to move the freezer, apparently abandoned on the firm's property.
The body was clothed, doubled over to fit into the small freezer and covered with a blanket, police said.
Police arrested Akemi Iinuma, 40, on suspicion of murder. She had reported her husband missing in 1997.
Woman Loses Case Over 'Bin Laden' Hairstyle
A Hong Kong woman lost her case for compensation against a hair salon which she claimed made her look like Osama bin Laden when she wanted a hairstyle like Hollywood actress Julia Roberts.
After the judgement was handed down, she refused to leave the Small Claims Tribunal and had to be taken away by ambulance following a standoff of more than an hour with court staff, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.
Chu Ieu complained her hair was seriously damaged by two perms she had done at the New Idol Hair Salon last July and August.
"Do you mean you did not get the Julia Roberts look after the perm?" adjudicator Yuen Chun-kau asked her during the Wednesday hearing.
"Not just that. It was like a broom. Every hair struck out and it looked like an open umbrella which could not be shut. It was horrible. I looked like Osama bin Laden," Chu replied.
Yuen dismissed her claim for HK$50,000 (US$6,410) in compensation as she had offered no evidence to prove her hair had been damaged. "You've only shown the court that the hairstyle did not look good," he said.
But Chu said that Yuen was not sympathetic to her claim.
"He's bald. Of course he would not know the pain of having damaged hair," Chu fretted, sitting on the floor of the courtroom in protest against the judgement.
Court Jester Sued Over $26 Million Boondoggle
For a while it looked like the court jester was going to get the last laugh and a payday fit for a king.
But the Kingdom of Tonga was not amused, and has now launched a U.S. suit accusing the jester -- a former U.S. bank employee who doubled as a royal investment adviser -- with defrauding the government out of some $26 million.
"I hope we can get some of that money back," attorney Bruce Ericson, Tonga's lead attorney in its suit, said on Wednesday.
Tonga's unfunny run-in with its royal jester has been big news in the tiny Pacific island kingdom, a constitutional monarchy where the government's annual revenue was just $41 million last year.
At the center of the controversy is Jesse Bogdonoff, a former employee of the Bank of America who struck up a close relationship with Tonga's King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV after noticing that the kingdom had millions of dollars sitting in a low-interest checking account.
Tongan officials say that Bogdonoff -- who asked for and received the appointment as Tonga's court jester -- persuaded the government to put him in charge of the $26.5 million Tongan Trust Fund, which was established largely with money earned through the sales of Tongan passports to foreigners.
FUNDS EARNED FROM SELLING PASSPORTS
Tonga, which has a population of 100,000 spread over 170 coral islands in the South Pacific around 1,250 miles (2,000 km) north of New Zealand, sold citizenship in the late 1980s to Hong Kong residents worried about their future under Chinese rule.
In its suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco this week, Tonga claims that Bogdonoff beat out bidders including Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch by promising higher returns and lower management costs to build a fund intended to benefit the kingdom's impoverished population.
In 1999, Bogdonoff and his company Wellness Technologies, recommended that the fund invest some $24.5 million in three companies: a Nevada-based purchaser of life insurance policies, an energy start-up company and a dot-com.
But it soon became clear that the investments were not performing as expected. The Nevada company, Millennium Asset Management, has been dissolved, the energy company Trinity Flywheel Power is struggling and the dot-com FilmAxis.com is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy -- its name up for auction on the Internet at a starting price of just $1.
"As a proximate result of Bogdonoff's negligence, the Tonga Trust Fund has been damaged in an amount...that, at minimum, exceeds $24.5 million," the lawsuit says.
The suit further charges Bogdonoff -- who has been identified variously as a musician, a poet, a follower of Japan's Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization and a peddler of "healing" magnets -- colluded with executives in the U.S. companies to squeeze the Tongan fund dry.
"Defendants paid themselves and their friends and business associates millions of dollars in charges, commission and fees which they did not disclose" to the fund, the suit said.
Altogether, the Tongan fund is seeking restitution of at least $26.5 million along with possible punitive damages.
The sudden disappearance of so much money has sparked a political scandal in Tonga, where officials say the fund is now left with just $2.2 million in the till.
Two Tongan government ministers who acted as fund trustees -- Deputy Prime Minister Tevita Tupou and Education Minister Tutoatasi Fakafanua -- resigned after government auditors started investigating the trust fund and the investment.
Officials at Tonga's Consulate General in San Francisco did not return calls Wednesday seeking comment on the scandal or the lawsuit.
But acting Deputy Prime Minister Clive Edwards has told Tonga's parliament that he now fears the kingdom will be a laughing stock following its decision to plunk so much money into such shady investment vehicles.
Bogdonoff -- who, after his royal appointment, claimed to be the only official court jester in the world -- has kept a low profile and did not return calls Wednesday to his northern California home seeking comment on the case.
Eminem Sells 1.3M in First Week
Eminem's fans couldn't live without him. His latest release, "The Eminem Show" sold 1.3 million albums in its first full week in stores, according to industry figures released on Wednesday.
It's the biggest single-week sales total of the year and easily allowed Eminem to retain his hold at the No. 1 spot for a second week in a row.
Last week, the disc sold 285,000 copies in just three days of release. Interscope Records pushed the release date up to May 26 because it was being heavily bootlegged.
The first song from the CD, "Without Me," was up to No. 4 this past week on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
"The Eminem Show" is the rapper's third disc and the follow-up to his Grammy-winning, multiplatinum album, "The Marshall Mathers LP," which was released in 2000.
Eminem gets his act together—though his mom might not be too happy to hear it.
The tension during Eminem's performance at an RFK Stadium concert is escalating as thousands of young rock and rap fans slam against each other with such force that you sense bones are about to snap.
Police huddle anxiously during a 15-minute break in the music to see if they should let the concert resume. This isn't Bono, the friend of popes and presidents, performing on stage. It's Eminem, the rapper who once wrote a song about killing his wife and who cusses out the vice president's wife on his latest CD.
Rebellion and outrage are Eminem's trademarks, so it's anybody's guess what he might do if he returns to the stage. What if he tries to fuel his angry image on stage by attacking the police for interfering with the concert?
Eminem finally picks up a microphone and addresses the crowd. "OK, I'm going to count to three and then everybody take one step back. One, two, three ... take one step back."
The crowd begins to respond. He repeats the instruction two more times and the tension eases. Eminem resumes his performance.
The Detroit rapper came to this all-day, radio-sponsored concert last weekend to promote his new album, "The Eminem Show," and to use the capital setting to showcase "White America," a song on the album that decries the FCC and others for threatening to censor his music.
But he made another kind of statement. Ever since his arrival on the pop scene in 1999, Eminem--Marshall Bruce Mathers III--has been seen as a virtual madman by many anxious parents, a hero who challenges authority by millions of young fans, and a complex but major artist by critics and enough members of the recording academy for "The Marshall Mathers LP" to be nominated for best album in 2000.
It's as if there are three faces of Eminem.
On this humid spring day, there was only one way Eminem looked--responsible.
In an interview here hours before taking the stage, Eminem--as soft-spoken offstage as he is bratty and confrontational on it--suggested he is emerging from a personal darkness that fueled not only his lyrics, but also his private life.
"I feel good about myself ... and there have been times in my life, including not that long ago, that I didn't know if I'd ever be able to say that again. I can't tell you that I had a clear head a couple of years ago because of all the stuff that was going on around me.
"Ending up on probation was almost a blessing in disguise ... not being able to do drugs and stuff. I needed to do that anyway because I'm a father, and the worst thing I could ever do was come home off tour and be [messed up], me going through withdrawals or something. It's cool to go out and have fun every now and then, but I'd rather be a father before anything."
The most alarming thing about Eminem earlier in the day as he sits in hotel room just around the corner from the Capitol building is the mound of bacon and eggs on the plate in front of him. It's 2 p.m., but he's just starting his day.
"Want some bacon?" he asks.
Instinctively, I say something about not wanting all that cholesterol, and he smiles. "I try not to eat too much of this either, but I just get a craving sometimes."
Eminem, 29, is wearing the loose-fitting sports gear that rappers have turned into a fashion statement for young America. It's pretty much the same outfit he had on when I first met him two years ago. The main difference is the pricey Rolex watch on his arm.
"Oh, that," he says, playfully. "That's my Jimmy Iovine watch"--a gift from Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine for selling 30 million albums.
Three things stood out in that 2000 interview with Eminem: He was courteous, smart and oh-so-tightly wound. The first two qualities were surprising given the startling, X-rated nature of his music.
The tension made sense though, because his first album had sold 3.5 million copies in the U.S., and he was under a lot of pressure to match that amount at a time in pop music when fan loyalty has been an elusive quality.
Still, it was hard to believe the polite young man in the studio was the same one who was charged two weeks later with using a gun to hit a man who had kissed Eminem's then-wife in a nightclub. Two days later, he was arrested again and charged with wielding a gun in an altercation with an associate of the rap group Insane Clown Posse.
"I believe in temporary insanity," he says now in the hotel room, referring to the Michigan incidents. "I believe that somebody can do something to you that can make you so mad that you literally can't control yourself."
Still, the insanity of the moment he saw the man kissing his wife is mirrored on the album when he raps, "What I did was stupid, no doubt it was dumb, but the smartest [thing] I did was take them bullets out of that gun / Cause I'da killed 'em."
"I was going crazy," he adds about that period. "Fame was hitting me. I wasn't even two years into all this when we talked. I had just bought a house. To show you how naive I was, I bought it on the main road. I had no idea how famous I really was, especially in Detroit, and people were coming by there day and night. Plus, I had the pressure of my relationship with a certain female in my life [his ex-wife] that was falling apart.
"The difference now is that I came through all that and I've still got the things I love. In this album, I spoke about a lot of that journey. There are a lot of the same people in the songs, my mom, my ex-wife, my daughter, but it's not just the same story. If you look at the songs closely, you can see there's some closure there. I have things in order."
That closure is most obvious in "Cleaning Out My Closet," a savage message to his father, who split when Eminem was just a few months old, and his mother, whom he has blamed for his largely dysfunctional childhood.
Most of his rage is directed at his mother, "Remember when [my uncle] Ronnie died and you said you wished it was me?/Well guess what, I am dead./Dead to you as can be."
"I wrote that for my mother and people can see it for whatever it is, mean or not, maybe just me venting," he says. "But I'm just getting a lot of stuff off my chest. It's like closing a chapter in my life. I'm not thinking of anyone else hearing this when I'm making the record. I'm just writing it for her and thinking how she's going to feel because of how she made me feel."
Parents have been worried about the effect of pop and rock rebellion on their youngsters ever since the sexual energy of Elvis Presley in the '50s. But Eminem seems to evoke unusually deep fears. The two things adults normally ask about Eminem is why does the music have to be so violent and doesn't he feel any responsibility to young people.
Eminem admits he's trying to provoke in his music, because that's what he liked about music when he was a teen. But he maintains his young listeners get the humor and exaggeration in the songs, and that they can draw strength from the darker moments.
"If you listen to the album as a whole, you'll see a lot of different mood swings," he says, pushing the breakfast tray away and leaving half of the eggs untouched. "With each song, I try to make it fall into three categories. Is it happy? Is it sad? Or is it anger? If it's not one of those, then there's no feel to the song and I'll throw it out."
There are a lot of other possible emotions, but songwriters are often drawn to particular themes again and again because it hits an emotional nerve in them. When asked why he wrote so many sad love songs, Leonard Cohen responded, "The question presumes I have a choice in the matter."
Eminem thinks his only responsibility to his audience is to make the most honest and entertaining music he can.
"I'm not a baby-sitter for anyone else's kids," he says matter-of-factly, a line he's probably used before to explain himself. "I have one seed and that's all I need and that's all I'm responsible for raising. That's why there is an advisory sticker on the albums. If you are a parent, you should watch what your kids are listening to."
There are plenty of moments on the new album that will give parents pause, moments ugly and troubling. One reason Eminem is such a complex artist is that he can be seductive musically when he's simply trying to be a mainstream entertainer or when he's dealing with topics that seem more suited for a therapist's couch.
Most noticeably, Eminem continues to show a discouraging lack of respect for women, which seems strange given his devotion to his 6-year-old daughter, Hailie. The youngster spends lots of time with the rapper under a joint-custody agreement with his ex-wife.
Eminem has one of the most dynamic, motormouth deliveries ever in rap, but his talent goes deeper than his words. While Dr. Dre is the executive producer on "The Eminem Show," Eminem did the production work on most of the album's tracks himself.
His most revolutionary contribution to rap, however, has been his ability as a storyteller to step past the gangsta clichés of hard-core rap to give us personalized stories of anguish and desire that have a greater universality and depth.
At one place on his album, Eminem taunts parents by saying he doesn't blame them for getting upset about his music. "I wouldn't let Hailie listen to me neither."
Eminem laughs when the line is mentioned.
"I was kidding with that line," he says. "The irony of it is she's on that song with me. That's her going, 'I think my dad's gone crazy.' I'm doing that just to push people's buttons ... to push the envelope as far as it will go. I'm a pretty liberal parent, but if there are too many cuss words in a row, I'll make sure Hailie hears the clean version.
"If there is an [expletive] here and there, that's fine. I would rather her hear that this way than hear it at school or behind my back. Me and Hailie have a little understanding. When she hears those words, she knows they are bad and she knows not to repeat them. She's pretty good at that. Believe it or not, she is a happy little girl. She's always got a smile on her face, always upbeat. She's the most important thing in my life, and I want to make sure she has everything I never did in life."
But he knows there's a world of fans trying to combat the same low self-esteem and struggle that he went through.
"If someone came to me and said nothing was working for him at school or at home, I'd say, 'Find an outlet, something you're good at and believe in and lock in on that.' For me, it was music. Early, early on, it was comic books and drawing. I used to draw a lot. I used to be able to escape into those things and I had certain relatives that I could go visit and try to get away from that because I hated school and I hated being at home. It was like I had nothing to look forward to, but music changed that."
It's not just his themes that are evolving in the new album, but his sound too. There are traces of '70s rock guitars and even a sample of Aerosmith's "Dream On" in one track.
"I listened to a bit of rock in the late '70s," Eminem explains. "There was some Aerosmith, some Queen, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin. If hip-hop had never come along, I may have gone that way."
Once he heard hip-hop, while still in grade school, he knew he found his future. He loved the wordplay and the competition of rap contests around Detroit. Although he struggled in school, he studied the dictionary to improve his vocabulary.
Interscope's Iovine played a key role in launching Eminem when he was so impressed by the rapper's demo tape four years ago that he passed it along to producer Dr. Dre, who also loved the clever wordplay and machine-gun delivery on the tape. At the time, the idea of a quality, best-selling white rapper in black hip-hop seemed absurd.
But Dre's endorsement and production work, along with the steady support of manager Paul Rosenberg, helped establish Eminem as the best-selling artist in rap history. His first two albums have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
The new one wasn't scheduled to be released until Tuesday, but it was moved up to May 28 because of widespread downloading and piracy. With Interscope's permission, some stores began selling it as soon as it arrived May 24. Its three-day total of 285,000 copies was enough to make it enter the sales chart Wednesday at No. 1.
While Eminem hopes his success opens a door for other white rappers, he seems humble about his place in the rap hierarchy.
"Sometimes I feel like people just couldn't believe there was a white guy who was good at rap, so they made me seem like I was more incredible than the next man, when the truth is I don't even put myself in the same league as people like Jay-Z and Redman and Biggie," Eminem says, his bleached blond hair covered by a Nike skullcap.
"Lots of people also don't understand the skill that is involved in rap. They'll just look at the last rhyme in a line. The challenge in hip-hop is to do compound syllable rhymes so that you have a flow to the sentence that carries the words along. That's the secret of what makes rap so cool."
Eminem may seem like he's always on television or in magazines, but he does far fewer interviews than most stars of his stature. He thinks mystique is important, plus one senses that he, like a lot of performers who grew up with low self-esteem, wonders if he's really all that interesting.
His big gamble is starring in an upcoming film based loosely on his life. Titled "8 Mile," a reference to the dividing line between economic classes in Detroit, the film was directed by Curtis Hanson, whose credits include "L.A. Confidential" and "Wonder Boys." It's due in November.
"The script was great," Eminem says, when asked why he would agree to act in a film, given the history of so many pop acting embarrassments. "I felt like even if I'm halfway decent in it, it's going to be great. Besides, I enjoyed making videos. But this was a lot different. One of the hardest things was stripping myself of whatever ego and confidence I have to play this character, Jimmy.
"I had to go back to when I was just Marshall and I was reserved and shy and nobody cared much about me, and I didn't know if I could ever reach my dreams. It's weird when you think I only had to go back about four years to find that point in my life."
Eminem will tour this summer, but don't expect him to be on the road indefinitely. "There's part of me that loves being on stage, but I don't want to be on the road 200 days a year or anything," he says at the hotel. "That's no life for my little girl."
After the RFK concert that evening, Eminem doesn't stick around for the usual post-show parties. He's soon on the way to the airport for the flight back to Detroit. You can guess who he's eager to see.
* * *
Robert Hilburn, The Times' pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com
MIT Grad Student Hacks Into Xbox Security System
A graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found a way to circumvent the security system for Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox video game console, opening the way for hackers to use it to run competing software, according to documents released over the weekend.
The MIT computer expert, who posted his report on his university Web site, also questioned the security behind Microsoft's soon-to-launch online service, Xbox Live, saying hackers could exploit a flaw in the system to identify individual players from their game machines.
Andrew Huang, who recently completed a PhD thesis on supercomputer architecture, wrote a memo May 26 describing his efforts to build hardware that would read the Xbox's internal security system. A link to the 15-page report was posted this weekend at technology news and discussion Web site Slashdot.org (http:/www.slashdot.org).
Computer enthusiasts have been excited about the possibility of using the $199 Xbox, which is technologically similar to a PC, as a stand-alone computer running operating systems like Linux.
Some see it as the ultimate slight against Microsoft -- using the software giant's own hardware to run software that competes against its Windows operating system.
In the memo, Huang said the Xbox's primary security is contained in what he calls a "secret boot block" that is encoded into a media processor chip built for the Xbox by Nvidia Corp.
Representatives of Microsoft and Nvidia were not immediately available for comment. An MIT spokesman told Reuters the university has not been received any request to take the paper down from its sites.
TAPPED SYSTEM HARDWARE
Huang said he had extracted the contents of the boot block by tapping the data path that travels between the media chip and the central processor.
By attaching a custom-designed board to that high-speed data path, Huang was able to capture the data transmitted between the two chips and manually process it to uncover the secrets contained in the "boot block."
He said it took a total of three weeks to build his custom board for a total cost of around $50.
Given the particular encryption algorithm that was used and the decryption key, both of which Huang has identified, "one can run original code on the Xbox," he said, meaning it would be possible to run things like unauthorized games and other operating systems on the console.
Huang also said he had discovered a vulnerability in the console's programming, that would allow the boot-up sequence to be interrupted so that any code can be run on the system.
In an e-mail to Reuters, Huang said he notified Microsoft in advance he would be publishing the paper, gave them a copy to read, and has been in regular contact with the company. He also said he is not working on any of the attempts to run Linux or other systems on the Xbox.
"I know a lot of people are exploring the possibility now, but I personally am not spearheading any effort toward this end," he said.
Huang also said in the paper he has discovered keys to the identity of the console owner that may, in theory, be vulnerable through an online connection.
Huang said he separately discovered that the console's serial number is stored in its memory, and that the data might be readable by the central operating system. "What happens to this information when the Xbox is plugged into the Internet?" he said.