Photo Credit: Splash News

The Staples Center was filled w/ celebrities yesterday as the Lakers got lucky with a surprise win over the Celtics, 92-83. If asked to guess who was in attendance, I don’t think Prince would even make my shortlist, but now that he has officially relocated to L.A., I guess he’s trying to become part of the regular crowd. He showed up with a hot friend (anyone know her name, by chance?) and for the most part enjoyed the game.

Anyway, here’s something totally off-topic. I read a nice piece about Prince’s move to L.A. from Minneapolis in the Thanksgiving issue of The New Yorker that some of you might also enjoy. Here’s a brief excerpt:

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained. In the living room, he’d installed purple thrones on either side of a fireplace, and, nearby, along a hallway, he had hung photographs of himself, in a Moroccan villa, in various states of undress. At the end of the hall, a gauzy curtain fluttered in a doorway. “My room,” he said. “It’s private.”

Prince has lived in Los Angeles since last spring, after spending years in Minneapolis, holding court in a complex called Paisley Park, where he made thousands of songs, far away from the big labels. Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.” [Read more...]