Those who were fortunate enough to be in the building for this one-of-a-kind and once-in-a-lifetime event honoring Aretha Franklin, got more than their money’s worth. Artist after artist took the stage to speak reverently about Franklin and then offer their best rendition of a Franklin classic.

One of hip-hop’s icons, 44-year-old Dwight “Heavy D” Arrington Myers, was pronounced dead this afternoon at an  L.A. hospital.

 Get ready for a no-holds barred live experience like no other when Drumline Live returns to Cleveland. Tickets as low as $10 at www.playhousesquare.org

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, the third installment in the franchise, unfolds a half-dozen years after the conclusion of the pot-smoking pair’s previous outing, Escape from Guantanamo. At the point of departure, we learn that the pals have grown apart over the interim, ostensibly because Harold has married, settled in suburbia and taken a job on Wall Street while Kumar has continued to enjoy the life of a carefree bachelor after getting kicked out of med school for flunking a drug test.

The natural stand out in this amazing rooster of joke peddling master craftsmen is Gary Owen who of course is the only melanin deficient member of the troupe.  Unswayed by this fact Gary nonchalantly explains that this has become the normal climate for his work environment since the very inception of his career when it was easier to perform on a black stage in front of a Black audience.

In 1956, at age 14, she recorded Spirituals and launched a career that would enrich popular music with such hits as “I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You,” “Do Right Woman-Do Right Man,” “Dr. Feelgood,” and her rendition of Otis Redding’s “Respect” that soared to the top of the charts.