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Spears walks the linebetween woman and girl
COLUMBUS -- Britney Spears wanted to make a statement that she's growing up.
The 19-year-old proved it again and again Thursday night during an explosive performance literally filled with fire, rain, smoke and mirrors.
Outfitted in her usual racy costumes, Spears took fans through a wild ride of song-and-dance dream sequences that all carried one theme -- her life as she wrestles with wanting to become a woman but also wanting to remain a girl.
Since bounding onto the pop music scene, Spears has fought her role-model status, saying she doesn't want young girls to look up to her. She told the audience Thursday that she has caught flak for who she is and what she wears.
"But I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm real happy where I am in my life right now. I'm just trying to find the woman in me," Spears told the heavily female crowd midway through the concert before breaking into her powerful new single, "I'm Not a Girl, I'm Not Yet a Woman."
Clooney and Roberts: a couple of couples
Tracy and Hepburn. Burton and Taylor. Kidman and Cruise. Clooney and Roberts?
At the rate they're hooking up on the big screen, you'd think Julia Roberts and George Clooney were a real-life Hollywood couple.
Hot off their co-starring gigs in Steven Soderbergh's ensemble comic crime caper "Ocean's Eleven," the stars are looking to team up again for Clooney's directorial debut, "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," reports E!Online.
The film, adapted by Oscar-nominated writer Charlie Kaufman ("Being John Malkovich"), is based on the wacky memoir of '70s game-show guru Chuck Barris, who purportedly contended that his stint as host of TV's "The Gong Show" was merely cover for his real vocation as a CIA hit man.
Roberts is close to signing on a deal to play a spy who works for the CIA recruiter (Clooney) who drafts Barris (Sam Rockwell). Her character winds up romantically involved with Barris.
ABC cuts performanceby Michael Jackson
NEW YORK -- ABC had to hurriedly cut a Michael Jackson performance out of a concert special that aired Thursday night at the singer's request, a spokesman said.
Jackson asked for his performance to be cut from the "United We Stand" concert special because Jackson's own concert special is planned later this month on CBS.
CBS had suggested that Jackson's Nov .13 special might have to be delayed if he had appeared so recently in a competing network's show, according to The New York Times.
Today's birthdays
Baseball Hall-of-Famer Bob Feller is 83. Actor Charles Bronson is 80. Actress Lois Smith is 71. Actress Monica Vitti is 70. Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is 68. Actor-dancer Ken Berry is 68. Movie composer John Barry is 68. Actor Shadoe Stevens is 55. Singer Lulu is 53. Television critic Tom Shales is 53. Actor Mike Evans is 52. Comedian-actress Roseanne is 49. Actress Kate Capshaw is 48. Comedian Dennis Miller is 48. Actress Kathy Kinney is 48. Singer Adam Ant is 47. Actor Dolph Lundgren is 42.