From the great Rhondda:

A companion video interview (to the article found below) with MLE
was posted to AP's site on Friday. 

Check out MLE's interview at http://tinyurl.com/297bml ; it's about
2:48 in length. 

Interspersed amongst the interview segment, there are short clips of
the Oscar nominees lunch, the I Need to Wake Up video, An
Inconvenient Truth and the Live & Alone DVD.

There's a longer version of this video on the AP Television News
site, but you have to log in to access it (it looks like you have to
be in the news business to successfully register). 

The longer version of the video (5:47 in length) is located at (if
the URL doesn't work, the it's located on page 6 of the
Entertainment video section and dated February 15th):

http://www.aptnvideo.net/Browse/Entertainment.do?page=6&view=v

here's the link to the script for the longer video:

http://tinyurl.com/34r2r9

Article:

http://tinyurl.com/2qahls

For Etheridge, Oscar nod is a dream
By MICHAEL CIDONI, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 13 minutes ago
 
LOS ANGELES - Melissa Etheridge knows all about labels. First there
was the "rock goddess" with the classic hit, "Come to My Window."
Then there was "lesbian singer." Then came "cancer survivor." Now
there's "Oscar nominee."

Etheridge, 45, competes in the best-song category for the anthem "I
Need to Wake Up" from the global-warming documentary, "An
Inconvenient Truth."

"That was part of my dream, being a rock star and all that stuff,"
she recently told AP Television. "And, 'Oooo, someday, I want to
have Oscar: best song.' Of course that's out there. Never, when I
was presented with this - this was a slide show. I had no idea it
was going to be a film and it was going to be that sort of thing."

"Inconvenient Truth" is director Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-nominated
portrait of former vice president Al Gore's personal history and
lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate
change.

Gore asked Etheridge to write a song for the film, she said. It
proved no easy task - even for the Grammy-winning songstress.

"Because, what do I write? Help! What do we do? 'Give a hoot, don't
pollute' or something?'" she recalled. "And that got to be
overwhelming to a point until, actually, (to) my partner, my wife,
Tammy, I said, 'Help me. I am trying to find my way to write a
song.' She says, 'Just do what you do. You write about what you
feel. Tell people how you feel.'"

The result could add one more label to her resume.

Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michaels held a commitment ceremony in
2003. They are parents to twins: daughter Johnnie Rose, and son,
Miller Steven, born in October 2006. Etheridge has two children with
former girlfriend Julie Cypher, fathered by rocker David Crosby
through artificial insemination.

The 79th Annual Academy Awards are set for Feb. 25 in Los Angeles.