President Obama to visit Leno’s ’Tonight Show’
President Obama will have a late-night chat with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” next week, the Associated Press reports.
White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote in a tweet that Mr. Obama will be on the show Tuesday. The president will be traveling on the West Coast next week, raising money for his re-election bid and trying to boost public support for his jobs bill.
This will be Mr. Obama’s fourth time on Mr. Leno’s show. He made two appearances as a presidential candidate. His last appearance was in March 2009, shortly after taking office.
’Extreme Makeover’ building homes in tornado-torn Joplin
When executives with “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” contacted builder Sam Clifton about a project in Joplin, Mo., he told them it was a great idea, but building a single home wouldn’t send much of a message to a community that lost more than 7,000 of them to a devastating spring tornado.
So on Wednesday, work began on a project to build seven homes in seven days that will be featured on the popular ABC show, the Associated Press reports. It is another effort by volunteers to reshape the southwest Missouri community that still is in the early stages of recovering from the May 22 twister that killed 162 people, one of the worst tornadoes in U.S. history.
The homes, which are going up a few blocks from where the city’s destroyed hospital used to be, will be far from opulent. Mr. Clifton, who is overseeing the project, said the new units will be functional, 1,300- to 1,800-square-foot homes, similar in size and style to many of the dwellings destroyed in the tornado.
“We want to help get the community going,” Mr. Clifton said. “Get some excitement going in the town. That’s my goal.”
The TV show typically rebuilds a single home for a family that has been struck with some tragic circumstances. In Joplin’s case, the seven homes are being built along the same street.
“This is what we do,” said Diane Korman, senior producer for the program. “We look for families in trouble and how to help them.”
Miss Korman said the show’s staff gathered May 23, the day after the tornado, to discuss a project in Joplin. They contacted Mr. Clifton, with whom they had worked on a 2009 show in Ash Grove, Mo., and concurred with his assessment that the project needed to be bigger than one home.
Mr. Clifton said 10,000 volunteers have signed up to help with the project, along with 21 general contractors from around the region and hundreds of skilled tradesmen.
The show paid for the families to take a trip to Disney World for the week. They’ll be back Wednesday, when host Ty Pennington will deliver the famous “move that bus” proclamation and the families will see the homes for the first time.
The episode is scheduled to be the 200th for the program, and is tentatively set to air Jan. 20.
MTV announces air dates for awards shows
MTV has set the dates for next year’s MTV Movie and Video Music awards shows, the Associated Press reports.
The MTV Movie Awards will air live from Los Angeles on June 3. After an August date in Los Angeles this year, the VMAs will move to Sept. 9. A host city hasn’t been announced. The show will air live on the network.
This year’s VMAs drew an audience of 12.44 million, which gave MTV its biggest audience since 1993.
App lets ’Sons of Anarchy’ viewers buy while watching
Watching a show about an outlaw motorcycle club apparently has a way of bringing out people’s fashion sense.
News Corp. TV channel FX is teaming up with sister movie studio 20th Century Fox on an iPad app that will follow along during airings of the hit show “Sons of Anarchy” and offer ways to buy products that appear on-screen, according to the Associated Press.
Some of the items include “Gimme Props Reaper Gold Rings,” which are exact replicas of ones used in the biker gang show, and boot-cut jeans from 7 For All Mankind.
The app, called “SOA Gear,” is set to launch Nov. 1, the same day the ninth episode of the current fourth season will air. The app also will work with Blu-ray discs of season three.
The app follows along by picking up on audio clues in the show, or through a timer the user can start when the show begins. Alternatively, users can flip through offerings manually.
• Compiled from Web and wire reports
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