CelebSpice

George Huff is back with his gospel-flavored "George Huff" album April 7, including the song "Hold On" that he relates to facing hardships before -- and after -- his becoming popular with the mass audience as a Season 3 finalist on "American Idol." Huff's family lost everything in Hurricane Katrina. "I couldn't focus on my career. Of course I had to deal with family members -- starting with finding family members alive," he recalls. "A lot of the money I got on 'American Idol' was used to get family members on their feet and maintain them through this ordeal," adds the singer, whose old neighborhood in New Orleans and the building where he grew up remain abandoned and untouched since the 2006 disaster.

Now, he notes, "As Americans, we are all going through this recession. People are suffering." He and his producers, he says, "tried to think of something that would inspire everybody in America that even in hard times, in trouble, dreams can come true, and you can acquire success and maintain stability in your life." The devoted Christian says he also gets inspiration from his friendships with fellow one-time "Idol" singers Fantasia Barrino and Jennifer Hudson. "We're like brother and sisters," he says. "We talk to each other and text each other all the time.”
BETTER OFF WATCHED: Jay Harrington, title star of ABC's "Better Off Ted" admits that it's been hard waiting for tonight's (3/18) debut of his comedy that deals with corporate immorality. However, "I'd rather wait as long as I have to for a good timeslot," says the handsome veteran of "Desperate Housewives" and "Summerland." "I see the shows put up against 'American Idol' every Thursday being blown out of the water, and I can't help being kind of glad our show is being put on when it is."
Portia de Rossi plays Jay's boss, who isn't a bad person, he stresses, though the two conspire in such shenanigans as creating an award to give an employee almost killed in a research and development experiment to keep him from suing the company. "I haven't read anything as consistently funny in a long time, for me personally," Jay says. "My character loves his job, so it's not that he's a victim per se. I guess he is, in a way, a victim of the corporate world. He wants to have pride in what he does and how he does it." He also has an 8-year-old daughter (Isabella Acres) serving as his conscience booster.
CROSS-OVER: "This American Life" host and producer Ira Glass reports that there are movies based on stories from his popular radio show currently in development at Warner Bros. and DreamWorks -- in addition to his just-announced deal with Endgame Entertainment to develop a film based on the Arthur Phillips story, "Wenceslas Square," that aired on the radio program last summer. (It's about two spies who fall in love while on separate missions.) Says Glass, "I've been told to develop four or five things. Cross your fingers, and hope one of them gets made," he says. "One of the reasons I got into it is that my sister is a movie executive. She used to say, 'Hollywood has got all this money and needs decent stories, and you have just the opposite situation.''" Will the siblings collaborate some time? "We are hoping to do one together," says Ira.
With reports by Emily Feimster.