a book review of hold me closer, necromancer by lish mcbride

BOOK REPORT for Hold Me Closer, Necromancer by Lish McBride

Cover Story: Friends & Family
BFF Charm: YAY!
Swoonworthy Scale: 8
Talky Talk: 2 Legit 2 Quit
Bonus Factor: Villains, Talking Heads
Relationship Status: I WANT this book. ?With my lady bits?

Cover Story: Friends & Family

I can?t really decide if I like this cover or hate it. ?I mean, the guy looks nothing like how I imagine the protagonist, but it does have that pop-art Shepard Fairey-thing going for it. ?Just to be safe, I?d proudly display this in front of people who know me, but use my e-reader on the train.

The Deal:

Sam is a 19-year old lost-soul college dropout who works in the food service industry. ?Where he?s miserable. ?Then again, he hasn?t really ever been able to find his place, anywhere. ?And THAT?S because he?s actually a necromancer ? only he doesn?t know it, yet. ?Through a mishap during some break-time shenanigans, Sam draws the attention of a for-serious and scary big-time necromancer, Douglas, who wonders how Sam could have been living right under his nose and yet he never sensed it. ?Why are Sam?s powers nearly undetectable? ?Still, having another necromancer in his region doesn?t suit Douglas at all, and Sam finds himself running out of time to figure out the mystery of his own life?

BFF Charm: YAY!

So I liked Sam in the beginning, but as the story progressed, and he really began to develop as a character (AND deal with the crazy-ass shizz that was being thrown at him from all directions) I began to LOVE him. ?And also like-like him. ?He?s that kinda cute awkward/dorky boy who has a wicked sense of humor but low self-esteem, who, as he grows into himself, sheds his awkwardness, revealing depth and courage that combine to make him a hot-hot-hotty. ?So I?d give him my BFF charm. Or my BF charm. Whichev.

And then there?s Brid, (pronounced Bridge, if I?m not mistaken) who is full of self-confidence and strength, not to mention raw power ? due to her lineage. Girlfriend is fierce, but also sweet, and definitely someone I?d want in my corner.

AND I?d be remiss not to mention Ramon, Brooke and even Frank, who make an awesome scooby gang, and with whom I?d be proud to solve mysteries OR sling burgers.

Swoonworthy Scale: 8

Maybe it?s because I wasn?t expecting it, which makes it hard to write a proper review of the swoon ? and the story itself. ?If I say ?this book totally blew me away?, it might lessen what could have been an organic reading experience for the readers of this review. But, this book totally blew me away!

AND it has some of the hottest S.E.X. I?ve ever read in a fantasy/adventure story. ?Despite what Annie from the venerable action classic ?Speed? said about relationships that start under intense circumstances not working out, I can?t help but feel hopeful for the romance that develops in this story. ?What is it about a brave guy who?s had the shit beaten out of him and a really powerful woman locked in a cage together with very little clothing on? ?Oh, I know. It?s the recipe for a fire in your panties.

Talky Talk: 2 Legit 2 Quit

Though I enjoyed this book from the beginning, it wasn?t until I was about half-way through that I suddenly COULDN?T PUT IT DOWN. ?Ms. McBride lays the groundwork for her characters slowly so that in the beginning, when she would leave one person or group?s storyline to follow the arc of one of her other characters, I found myself wanting to just get back to the first one. ?But she was crafty, setting the stage with solid character development for when the storylines all converged. ?Using different narrative styles, she was able to give each player their own distinct voice, while infusing the whole thing with the humor and angst of a 19-year old boy. ?Here?s an excerpt, during a ?lesson?, when Sam sees his first dead-raising:

??he looked like your average American businessman. ?Except he was dead. ?And not just soul-dead like most cubicle workers, but actually dead.
?Go ahead,? Douglas said. ?Ask him a question.?
?Why is a raven like a writing desk?? ?The zombie stared back at me blankly.
Douglas glared at me. ?I heard Brid stifle a giggle from inside the cage. ?Good to know I wasn?t the only one who?d read ?Alice?s Adventures in Wonderland?. ?How come I couldn?t meet a nice, naked, well-read girl until I was kidnapped and thrown into a cage??

This is the first book I?ve read in a while that I HOPED would be a series. (And it IS! Yay! ?But we have to wait until Spring of 2012!)

Bonus Factor: Villains

Nothing ratchets up the tension and scariness in a story like an honest-to-goodness baddie. ?Douglas delivers.

Bonus Factor: Talking Heads

Okay, I actually meant literally, you guys. ?Silly Talking Heads. Always popping up in my google image search, just begging to be put into a post. ?If this book is ever made into a movie (which it SHOULD be, obvs) it had better have a BIG effects budget. ?You hear me Hollywood? ?Don?t skimp.

Casting Call:

This was the easiest casting I?ve had to do in a while, because from the moment Sam was first described I pictured:

She?d have to go through some serious fight training, but I totally see?

Kat Dennings as Brid

Relationship Status: I WANT this book. ?With my lady bits?

I?m not saying that this book and I have no real substance to our relationship. ?I?m not saying that what we have is purely physical. ?And I?m not saying that it couldn?t develop into the real deal. ?What I am saying is this: ?this book makes me feel tingly all over when I?m with it. ?And I think about it when it?s not here. ?A lot. ?Especially when I?m alone. ?At night. In my bed.

Tagged as: necromancy, talking heads, villains

Source: http://www.foreveryoungadult.com/2011/05/10/blue-jean-baby-wolfman-lady-diviner-for-the-band/

dr oz gossip girl office 365 residence dukan diet

New Republic: Europe's Military Doesn't Measure Up

Enlarge Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Britain's Band of the Royal Artillery lead The King's Troop through London, England. In recent years the U.S. has struggled to keep a balance with American and European troops in NATO.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Britain's Band of the Royal Artillery lead The King's Troop through London, England. In recent years the U.S. has struggled to keep a balance with American and European troops in NATO.

Lawrence F. Kaplan is a contributing editor for The New Republic.

In 1992, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jacques Poos, declared that "the hour of Europe" had arrived. The minister pronounced this falsehood in relation to the catastrophe in Bosnia, where, he assured, the reach of Luxembourg and that of its European neighbors would soon put an end to the slaughter. The hour of Europe stretched across three sickening years, culminating in the spectacle of Dutch troops cuffed to lampposts and ending only when an American column of 70-ton tanks from the First Armored Division crossed the Danube.

Fast forward to 2011. News of the hour of Europe has been supplied once more, this time in Libya. The Europeans haven't declared it so; President Obama has. Going a step beyond President Clinton, who pledged to gruesome effect that it wouldn't be our troops venturing into Kosovo, President Obama ? after conducting a de facto plebiscite on the advisability of military action against Libya ? vowed, "It is not going to be our planes maintaining the no-fly zone." Instead, we would surrender command and control functions to "NATO," an otherworldly organization that, it was soon revealed, we command and control. Thus, the administration argued itself into a "surgical" campaign of only a few days and a few hundred sorties. This effort, dubbed Operation Odyssey Dawn by the Pentagon, would, at most, "diminish" Libyan capabilities. The charge of dislodging Moammar Gadhafi, or whatever the point of the exercise was meant to be on a given day, would be left to our European allies. Or, as Antony Blinken, Vice President Biden's national security adviser, put it in The New York Times on Sunday, "We did lead ? we cleared the way for the allies."

There's just one thing: The allies don't have spare parts.

But this is a problem for the mechanics. The president, after all, has inaugurated "a new era of international cooperation" and has said it would be best for America "to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally." This paradigm responds to multiple needs unrelated to national security as such. It testifies to the virtue and good intentions of its architects. It offers assurance that U.S. military power serves not only national interests but also the interests of all humanity. No one has espoused this view more vigorously than Hillary Clinton. According to the Secretary of State, "We know our security, our values, and our interests cannot be protected and advanced by force alone nor, indeed, by Americans [alone]." Alas, and however respectful of the tenets of enlightened liberalism all this may sound, it provides no adequate response to a dilemma that is the stuff of structure and concrete, not ideology: Libya has exposed the true extent of what defense experts refer to as the "capabilities gap" between Europe's and America's military forces.

A campaign devised to showcase the benefits of multilateral action has done exactly the reverse. Easy talk about declining power, multipolarity, and cooperation raises a fairly straightforward question: Exactly whose cooperation do we mean to obtain? Here, the reply also tends to be straightforward: the Europeans, obviously. Leaving aside the question of will ? that is, whether the Europeans wish to cooperate in garrisoning the farthest-flung precincts of (what used to be) American influence ? is it really necessary to point out that, given the assumption European power alone would suffice to persuade Gadhafi to back down, someone on the Obama team ought to have inquired about European capabilities ? that is, whether the Europeans can do this or, more to the point, anything at all? Because, for 10 years ? or 20, or 60, depending on one's reading of the international scene ? it has been fairly straightforward, obvious even, that the Europeans have left their historical role to history.

Over the past few years, they have gone further, decisively repudiating that role. There is, to begin with, the massive and ongoing wave of defense cuts that has swept the continent. Ten years ago, the U.S. contributed roughly half of NATO's defense budget; today, it accounts for three-quarters of the alliance's military expenditure. During the same period, the number of active duty military personnel in Europe declined by more than one third. (The day after he proposed to take military action against Moammar Gadhafi, British Prime Minister David Cameron's government said that it would be cutting 11,000 troops from Britain's armed forces. Just before the war, he also announced that the U.K. would scrap its only aircraft carrier.) For 10 years now, it has been clear that, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has put it, NATO is "evolving into a two-tiered alliance, in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect people's security and others who are not." What Gates said was true in Kosovo, where 83 percent of the bombs dropped came from U.S. planes; in Afghanistan, where U.S. troops account for two-thirds of the NATO presence (and a much higher fraction of the combat force); and now, in Libya, where, at least before it abandoned the battlefield, America's strike aircraft were flying more than one half of the sorties.

If it reveals anything, the war in Libya shows that Obama's predecessors didn't spin their proclivities for unilateral action out of whole cloth. "The Libyan crisis has strikingly exposed the lack of a European defense policy: no ability to achieve a common political vision and no capacity to take on an operation of this kind," said French defense analyst Bruno Tertrais, while a European diplomat predicted to the German news agency Deutsche Press Agentur that a common European defense policy "died in Libya ? we just have to pick a sand dune under which we can bury it." Indeed, the Germans have remained strenuously neutral during the conflict, other than to snipe at the French and the British, while the latter, according to The Washington Post, have nearly run out of bombs to drop.

Far from caviling about the American hyperpuissance, the Europeans have been reduced to pleading for an escalation of U.S. involvement (such as it is). To which the American response has been swift, unequivocal, and wholly beside the point: "Unilateral, open-ended military action to pursue regime change isn't good strategy, and wouldn't advance American credibility anywhere," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor insisted, even though what was on the table was a request for multilateral, limited action to pursue a humanitarian end. Perhaps sensing that if America wills the ends, America really ought to will the means, the administration has now dispatched Predator drones to the skies above Libya. Animate pilots, according to the Beltway buzz, may soon follow.

The conceit here is that President Obama enjoys as much room to maneuver as his rhetoric appears to suggest. In fact, from America's emergence as a power on the international scene through to the present, the main thrust of U.S. national security policy hasn't budged: The world will permit nothing else. This unilateral bent has less to do with American exceptionalism, or liberalism, or neoconservatism, or any philosophical preference than it does with the preponderance and immensity of American power. As a result, U.S. policy has boiled down to variations on the same theme, not fundamentally distinct sets of policies.

Where all this leads is clear. Regardless of his own inclinations, President Obama has been presented with successive crises to which he has been obliged, kicking and screaming, to respond. The United Nations has not been able to. Europe has not been able to. Either the United States will respond, or no one will.

"The demilitarization of Europe...," Gates has said, "has gone from a blessing in the twentieth century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the twenty-first." This hardly applies in Washington, which spends substantially more on defense than all of Europe's nations combined. So, deluded about what can be accomplished through mere professions of powerlessness, and advertising their fears as if they were virtues, those who guide the fortunes of the world's only superpower have embarked upon an experiment in virtual demilitarization.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/26/135730923/new-republic-europes-military-doesnt-measure-up?ft=1&f=1057

jonathan rhys meyers air pollution alvin ailey mickey rourke spanx

Fergie Makes A Special Appearance At Macy?s Herald Square To Launch Her Shoe Collection Of Fergie Footwear

Source: http://www.celebritymound.com/fergie-makes-a-special-appearance-at-macys-herald-square-to-launch-her-shoe-collection-of-fergie-footwear/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fergie-makes-a-special-appearance-at-macys-herald-square-to-launch-her-shoe-collection-of-fergie-footwear

section 8 jackie cooper solar system justified pandora radio

Bin Laden, Confluence Of Trends Changed America

As President Obama visited Ground Zero Thursday, accompanied by former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani, the ceremony offered some reminders of the feelings of unity that swept the nation after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, nearly 10 years ago.

The feelings then were so strong that it became an instant cliche ? the notion that "9/11 changed everything." It has been expounded by countless pundits and politicians, as well as forming the basis of everything from the title of academic papers to jokes on the raunchy cartoon show "Family Guy."

Doug Kanter/AFP/Getty Images

A man standing in rubble shouts to see if anyone needs help, after the collapse of the first World Trade Center Tower in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.

But in the wake of the killing of al-Qaida terrorist leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, it is becoming clearer that while the attacks changed America profoundly, they didn't change "everything." And what they did change, they didn't necessarily change alone.

"The shock of the news of bin Laden's death was in part a measure of how little the war on terrorism affects the lives of most Americans day-to-day apart from those with friends and loved ones who are in combat abroad," says Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University historian.

America is by all accounts a different place than it was a decade ago. The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led directly to the ongoing war in Afghanistan and became part of the casus belli in Iraq.

But while bin Laden and the threat of international terrorism that he symbolized had a major effect on attitudes about privacy, civil liberties and immigrations ? to cite a few examples ? these areas of American life also were altered in response to a confluence of other trends, observers say.

Lower Expectation Of Privacy

Airport security was already getting stricter in the period following the first Persian Gulf War. But passengers forced to take off their shoes before boarding airplanes largely have bin Laden to blame. Each successive attempt to use planes as weapons ? the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber ? has led to new measures being introduced at airports.

By the time of his death, Osama bin Laden had receded from his former front and center place in the American consciousness, says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

To the extent he was still spoken of at all, it was mostly by late-night comedians cracking "where's Waldo" jokes about bin Laden's whereabouts.

"Saturday Night Live" comedian Seth Meyers got a laugh out of President Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday by saying bin Laden kept himself hidden by hosting a program on C-Span.

"He's been a figure in more comedies I can think of than dramas," Thompson says.

John Powers, a critic for NPR's Fresh Air, agrees that bin Laden became a less threatening figure as the decade since 9/11 has passed. Each of his subsequent communiques lost some of its power to shock, Powers says, because of al-Qaida's inability to land another crushing blow on American soil.

"He was like this nightmare projection of the West ? a nightmare vision or some sort of super-villain," Powers says. "By the time of his death, he almost was a non-entity. He was a punch line, or like Kilroy."

Both Powers and Thompson say that bin Laden did not retain the same symbolic power as a figure of evil that Adolf Hitler still has.

"It always struck me, going back to World War II, that various images of Hitler were integrated into movies and cartoons," says Richard Bloom, an associate vice president at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. "It really hasn't happened that way with Osama bin Laden."

? Alan Greenblatt

And perhaps the most persistent policy debate reopened by the Sept. 11 attacks is the need to balance such security and surveillance efforts against privacy and civil liberties.

Bin Laden's death itself has resurfaced the question of whether torture is a necessary or even effective means of gathering actionable intelligence.

Those who argue that security concerns must trump individual liberties have, for the most part, carried the day so far, experts say. The U.S. government has set up a vast protective apparatus since 9/11. Security and surveillance agencies now take up far more space physically around Washington than the Pentagon.

"Searches have been done in the broadest meaning of the term, with the government having much less need to justify them to the judicial branch than was the case before 9/11," says David K. Shipler, author of The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties.

Most Americans view electronic surveillance as being less intrusive than physical frisking by police, Shipler says. That has led to an erosion of the zone known legally as the "expectation of privacy," which refers to settings in which people can reasonably expect that their actions won't be monitored by law enforcement, absent a warrant.

But even a civil libertarian like Shipler, who believes that portions of the post-9/11 Patriot Act should be reconsidered, says that American notions about privacy have been shifting anyway, due to the growth of the Internet and constant electronic communication.

The combination of security threats and the march of technology, Shipler says, "have made us less conscious of the boundary between our public and private information."

Effects On Immigration

Concerns about international terrorism also have altered, in part, policies surrounding immigration ?- particularly when it comes to incarceration and deportation, says Edward Alden, author of The Closing of the American Border.

The shock of the news of bin Laden's death was in part a measure of how little the war on terrorism affects the lives of most Americans day-to-day apart from those with friends and loved ones who are in combat abroad.

- Sean Wilentz, a Princeton University historian

"Before 9/11, the standard practice when an illegal immigrant was arrested was to give them a court date, and a lot of them never showed up," he says. "This was largely an accepted thing, but as a result of 9/11, this became seen as a security threat."

But illegal immigration would have risen to the fore as an issue irrespective of terrorism, Alden says. Illegal crossings and arrests along the southern border had peaked in 2000, he says. And most of the debate about immigration concerns economic migrants, not national security risks.

"You already had the public and politicians primed to support tough measures to reduce immigration," he says. "Because of 9/11, the security threat got thrown in."

Putting Bin Laden To Rest

That may be the enduring legacy of bin Laden in America ? the sense that tighter security is needed to offer protection against sudden, unexpected threats. The desire clearly was strong in the country to respond in highly-visible and forceful ways to bin Laden and his minions with box cutters.

Although some advocacy groups are saying that his death offers the occasion to reconsider the Patriot Act, few people expect that the government will soon shut off the security cameras or box up the body scanners.

"The attack changed the country, and he was the architect of that," says Philip Zelikow, who served as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. "It's opened up a psychic wound that has been slow to heal, although this ... [bin Laden's death] ... will help the process."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/05/05/136021758/bin-laden-confluence-of-trends-changed-america?ft=1&f=1004

true fight for your right revisited go daddy hot cross buns recipe baltimore sun

Violence In Iraq Down, But Killing Indiscriminate

Rather than a war-torn country gripped by an insurgency, Iraq is starting to feel like a Latin American nation, riddled by assassinations and revenge killings. In fact, the murder rate of Guatemala City in 2009 was higher than that of Baghdad.

Copyright ? 2011 National Public Radio?. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:

In Iraq, violence is at its lowest level since the beginning of the U.S. invasion. In fact, the murder rate there is now on par with that of Brazil or Mexico, and it's much lower than in Colombia, Venezuela and even New Orleans or Baltimore.

But as NPR's Kelly McEvers reports from Baghdad, the violence in Iraq is still unique and troubling.

KELLY McEVERS: A country's so-called murder rate is the number of violent deaths each year per every 100,000 people. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the death rate here was about 40. At the height of the sectarian fighting in 2006, it was around a hundred. Now, it's 14. Venezuela's rate is at least five times that. Guatemala's, three times.

John Drake monitors violence in Iraq for a London-based intelligence and security firm. He says the comparisons between Iraq and Latin American countries are interesting, but they don't tell the whole story.

Mr. JOHN DRAKE (Senior Risk Consultant, AKE Group): Perhaps the difference in risk is that in Iraq, a lot of the killings involve explosive attacks, which are much more indiscriminate.

McEVERS: In layman's terms, that means...

Mr. DRAKE: A lot of injuries. There are hundreds more people injured in Iraq as a result of attacks than, say, somewhere like Mexico.

McEVERS: It's an impersonal way to describe what happened to college student Karrar Sami Abed(ph). He was about to start a new job at a furniture shop in a neighborhood here in Baghdad. On his way to pick up the key to open the shop, a bomb went off.

Mr. KARRAR SAMI ABED: And I see my arm was bleeding, and I can't feel it.

McEVERS: Abed's left arm was hit by shrapnel that almost made it to his heart. He's now in physical therapy to get the arm moving again.

So why did that bomb go off? The sectarian war is by and large over. Sunni insurgents do manage to launch large-scale attacks, but only every few months; last fall at a Christian church and last month at a government building north of Baghdad. Both attacks involved hostages and suicide bombers and were carried out by the local branch of al-Qaida.

But al-Qaida isn't responsible for everything, neither are the Shiite militants who U.S. officials say are still behind attacks on American interests here.

Drake says Iraq has almost reached a state of post-insurgency, like in Northern Ireland, where after the bombs stopped going off, what remained was a high level of criminality.

Mr. DRAKE: There's a lot of impoverishment in Iraq. So people who have the means of conducting attacks to get hold of money, they're not going to be held back by concerns about being tried in a court of law. And they're not going to be too concerned about their civilian casualties either.

McEVERS: Mainly because they've been desensitized to killing after so many years of violence. Drake says rather than just killing for killing's sake, like terrorists do, many killers in Iraq these days are killing with a purpose.

Mr. DRAKE: Now, it's a lot more about political maneuvering and getting key parties in influential positions of power.

McEVERS: Especially as Iraq's lucrative oil sector comes online.

John Sloboda is a co-founder of Iraq Body Count, a London-based organization that's arguably kept one of the most accurate tallies of civilian deaths in Iraq since the U.S. invasion.

The war is over, Sloboda says. Now, the violence in Iraq is something more like...

Mr. JOHN SLOBODA (Co-Founder, Iraq Body Count): Low level but very clear and continuing and virulent political violence.

McEVERS: Even with this new and complicated description, Sloboda warns against comparing Iraq's violence to Latin America's.

Mr. SLOBODA: We have not sent troops into Mexico. We sent troops into Iraq. Therefore, what's happening now is a very complex result of a whole range of things, but one of those is our own actions.

(Soundbite of chanting)

McEVERS: It's the third day of mourning for a federal education official who was gunned down in his car last week. These kinds of political assassinations are becoming the norm in Iraq. After the service, we hear a cacophony of theories about why the man was killed.

Unidentified Man #1: (Foreign language spoken)

McEVERS: He was killed because he refused to be corrupt.

Unidentified Man #2: (Foreign language spoken)

McEVERS: He was killed by Americans who want to stir up trouble to justify keeping their soldiers here.

Unidentified Man #3: (Foreign language spoken)

McEVERS: He was killed by religious people because he was educated and secular.

Unidentified Man #3: (Foreign language spoken)

McEVERS: Or maybe he was killed for his resources. Somebody wanted what he had.

Probably one of the most chilling things about the violence in Iraq is that the real reason could be all or none of the above.

Kelly McEvers, NPR News, Baghdad.

Copyright ? 2011 National Public Radio?. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/26/135745223/violence-in-iraq-down-but-killing-indiscriminate?ft=1&f=1010

the good wife flip camera jp morgan thomas jefferson cougar town

Exclusive: Kris Allen And Matthew Morrison Talk 'Still Got Tonight' Collabo

'Glee' star tells MTV News he didn't know the 'American Idol' champ co-wrote the pop/rock tune when he received it.
By James Dinh, with reporting by Jim Cantiello

Kris Allen and Matthew Morrison
Photo: MTV News

We knew from his team-ups with Elton John and Gwyneth Paltrow that Matthew Morrison was intent on making his debut solo album one to remember. Now, the "Glee" actor has one more surprise up his sleeve for the May 10 release: a collaboration with "American Idol" winner Kris Allen.

On Wednesday (April 27), MTV News' Jim Cantiello was busy chatting it up with the "Idol" alum via Skype when the singer surprised us with a special appearance from Morrison.

"I am in a special place that only one person can tell you where I'm at," the singer teased from inside a trailer before a smiling Morrison popped in front of the webcam, decked out in his traditional Mr. Schuester getup.

Sitting side-by-side, the singers discussed how the Allen-penned tune Still Got Tonight" found its way into Morrison's lap.

"It's actually a funny story. I got my hands on the song. It was an amazing song, and I didn't find out until a little later on that Kris was a writer on it," Morrison said, adding, "It was kind of strange, 'cause he didn't know either that I had done it."

Allen, who co-wrote the tune with Andrew Frampton and Stephen Allen Kipner, shared a similar story. "I had no idea," the singer admitted. "I got an email from the other writers saying 'Urgent, urgent,' and then I read it, and it said that Matthew Morrison was going to sing the song, and I was pretty stoked about it. That's why we're here today. We thought we'd hang out."

While the two did not collaborate in the studio on the track, Morrison revealed that they shared nothing but cool vibes with each other upon their first meeting.

"We thought we'd hang out and actually meet each other and say, 'Hey, you're cool,' and he said, 'I'm cool,' so we're cool with each other," Morrison said.

Asked why he wasn't with his fellow "Glee" castmates filming an upcoming episode in New York, Morrison, assured fans that he'll be there later in the week. "Well, I'm actually shooting all day today, and then I fly on the red eye tonight and I start shooting there tomorrow morning," he said.

Don't miss "Idol Party Live" every Thursday at noon on MTV.com for analysis, celebrity guests and even some karaoke — get in the conversation by tweeting with the hashtag #idolparty! In the meantime, get your "Idol" fix on MTV News' "American Idol" page, where you'll find all the latest news, interviews and opinions.

Related Artists

• Kris Allen

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1662823/kris-allen-matthew-morrison-still-got-tonight.jhtml

arkansas weather asus eee pad transformer philadelphia flyers charles bronson christina aguilera

General: bin Laden Death Will Spook Afghan Insurgents

There aren?t many al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan anymore. Maybe 100, judging by most estimates. But the Marine general who recently ran the war in rugged southwestern Afghanistan says that Osama bin Laden?s death will still have a major psychological impact on the insurgency.

Tactically, al-Qaida?s support of Taliban fighters in provinces like Helmand is ?more indirect than it is direct,? says Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, who ran Regional Command Southwest for NATO from April 2010 until last month. ?Equipment and personnel flowed up from Pakistan into the Helmand river valley,? he explains, but ?very few? actual fighters. Guns and cash, mostly.

Those facilitators now have to watch their backs, Mills predicts during a Thursday breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington. Intelligence gathered from bin Laden?s captured hard drives ?will identify people who are involved in material support for the insurgency in Afghanistan,? he says. ?I think it will provide targets to be worked, and I think it?ll have a tremendous impact a little bit later in the year, as the loss of that leadership begins to take place and they lose that capabilities.?

And that leads to the bigger overall impact for the war, Mills predicts, even amongst fighters who don?t have anything to do with al-Qaida. The killing of bin Laden will ?sow seeds of distrust among the leadership and cause considerable turmoil on the battlefield for the [insurgent] soldiers themselves.? ?Taliban leaders who previously thought they were untouchable by U.S. forces now have to reconsider their assumptions. ?We don?t leave our missions,? Mills says. ?Once we?ve targeted you, we?re going to maintain our focus on you until mission?s accomplished. ? That has to have a psychological impact on the leadership of the insurgency.?

Whether it hastens the end of a decade-long war is a different story. Experts are still debating the impact of killing bin Laden on al-Qaida?s global terrorism operations. But when it comes to the Afghanistan war itself, launched to destroy a terrorist network that?s now based in Pakistan and dispersed worldwide, the Obama administration has so far declined to announce an accelerated schedule for reducing troops this year in the wake of killing bin Laden. The?Washington Post reported on Wednesday that Team Obama hopes bin Laden?s death will shock the Taliban into negotiating.

In a talk with Danger Room readers on Wednesday, Stephen Grey, a Frontline reporter who recently interviewed senior Taliban commanders in Pakistan, said that the Taliban ?is crucial FOR Al Qaeda but [I'm] less sure how much they matter to the Taliban? the Taliban has its own inspirations.? If he?s right, then losing bin Laden won?t spur the Taliban into suing for peace, let alone laying down their weapons. The Taliban?s support structure is more dependent on Pakistani intelligence than its old allies in al-Qaida.

But at lower levels, Mills ? nominated on Wednesday to head the Marines? Combat Development Command ? thinks the unexpected, dramatic killing of bin Laden might freak out the average Taliban fighter. ?It?ll have tremendous impact in showing we?re able to reach out and get what might be perceived as a completely safe target,? he says. Marine special operations units in the southwest have already ?decimated the insurgent command and control structure,? leaving operations to be run by Talibs in their early 20s rather than their mid 30s, another factor that might cause a Taliban rethink.

Mills stops far short of predicting an accelerated end to the war thans to bin Laden?s death. Instead, he thinks the Taliban are certain to try to retake Helmand during 2011. But they may not have the same morale, confidence or sense of momentum that they had before bin Laden was iced, and that might compel the insurgents to reconsider the fight ? especially as U.S. troops continue to pursue them. Mills points to a peace deal he considers durable in northeast Helmand that came after months of fierce fighting as a possible prologue. It might not be the most satisfying coda to the bin Laden death. But in a war whose adversaries only have an ?indirect? relationship now to the original rationale, expecting more might not be realistic.

Photo: Sgt. Pete Thibodeau/USMC

See Also:

Source: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/general-bin-laden-death-will-spook-afghan-insurgents/

motorola atrix worlds fair rick ross gabrielle union beltane