Danny Puff

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Lyndon B. Johnson was so smitten when he met Claudia Alta "Lady Bird" Taylor in 1934 that he took her on a first date the very next day -- and asked for her hand in marriage.

Taylor adored her suitor but was worried about rushing into marriage, according to dozens of love letters between the two set to be released for the first time by the LBJ Presidential Library on Thursday, Valentine's Day.

In the pages of about 90 letters that the newly renovated library plans to post on its website, Johnson seems lonely and impatient, persistently urging Taylor to make up her mind. She says she wants to wait until they know each other better, though she also writes that she is afraid of losing him.

"All I can say, in absolute honesty, is -- I love you, I don't know how everlastingly I love you, -- so I can't answer you yet," Taylor wrote him shortly after they met that September.

Johnson, then 26 and working in Washington, D.C., as a secretary to Congressman Richard Kleberg, met Taylor, 21, through a friend while visiting Texas and asked her for a date the next morning. They had breakfast at the Driskill Hotel in Austin and spent the day sightseeing. That same day, he popped the question, asking her to become his wife.

After he returned to Washington, they spent two and a half months exchanging a flurry of letters and phone calls before going to San Antonio on November 17 to, as she later put it, "commit matrimony."

In the letters, Johnson implores her to write to him frequently.

"Give me lots of letters next week," he wrote to her. "I'm going to need them. Mix some I love you' in the lines and not between them."

Johnson's letters begin "My dear" or "Dear Bird." She addresses him as "My Dearest Lyndon" and signs "Devotedly, Bird." They sent each other photos. He sent her books.

"I wish you were here this minute because I feel silly and gay and I want to ruffle up your hair and kiss you and say silly things!" wrote Taylor, who had recently graduated from the University of Texas and was living with her father in Karnack, in East Texas.

A few of the letters had been released before, but this is the first time that all of the letters are being made public.

People probably won't be shocked to see a sweet side of Lady Bird Johnson, but reading tender sentiments from her husband, the hard-charging politician, is a different matter, said granddaughter Catherine Robb.

Johnson, who served in the U.S. House and Senate and as vice president, ascended to the presidency in 1963 as the nation grieved over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Johnson closed out his administration in 1969 under the cloud of Vietnam. He died in 1973.

He was known for giving the "Johnson Treatment" -- he'd lean in close, push people's buttons and get under their skin.

"I don't think people think of him as being terribly vulnerable," Robb, an Austin lawyer, told Reuters. In the letters, "you see a much more personal side of him, much more unguarded."

For example, he writes to his future wife that he carries a little orange comb in his billfold.

"It is the only thing I have from my little girl at Karnack and when I get lonesome and blue or happy and ambitious I always get pleasure when I look at the little comb and think just think," Johnson wrote.

Robb, who had weekly dinners with her grandmother for years before she died in 2007, recalled one meal at the Driskill Hotel - the site of her grandparents' first date.

"I asked her what she thought about this brash, impatient young man who proposed almost immediately and who she put off for a whopping two and a half months," Robb said. "She thought it was reasonable to wait an appropriate period of time, but she realized that she didn't want to be without him - he was something so special and this was an extraordinary adventure she was going to enjoy if she said yes."

Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson honeymooned in Mexico and were married for 39 years. They had two daughters, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Johnson Robb.

(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Prospects for a disabled farm animal born without the use of its hind legs are normally grim.

That is not the case for Chris P. Bacon, a month-old piglet from Florida whose videotaped struggle to learn how to use a tiny wheelchair have turned him an Internet sensation.

"He's cute. He grunts. And he's got a pretty cute little wheelchair," said veterinarian Len Lucero, trying to explain why his YouTube video of Chris's exploits have logged more than 474,000 views in two weeks.

After a client who could not care for Chris dropped him off at Lucero's veterinary hospital in Clermont, Florida, 30 miles west of Orlando, Lucero grabbed pieces from a child's set of K'nex construction toys to build a tiny wheelchair to mobilize the rear-end of the pink-and-white piglet.

The six-minute video shows Chris, then one pound and 10 days old, struggling with the contraption on Lucero's living room rug.

Chris walks on his front legs while lifting and holding the wheelchair off the ground. He grunts and roots around in the rug for food. He drinks lamb formula out of a baby bottle and wears a wet milk moustache.

Two other YouTube videos of Chris playing with a stuffed yellow duck and waking up in an incubator attracted another 160,000 views.

More than 14,000 people have clicked on "like" the "Chris P Bacon Pig on Wheels" Facebook page, and 1,000 people follow him on Twitter.

"You are the cutest piggy ever, you pink oinker!" wrote one of the thousands of fans.

Lucero said Chris was born on January 13 with the congenital defect.

His owner thought the only option was to have Chris put down, but Lucero realized Chris could live a full life with proper care. He offered to bring Chris to live on his own farm along with the family's goats, horses, dogs and cats.

"He was healthy and I was afraid he would have eventually met his maker," Lucero said.

Lucero said he does not know how big Chris might become, or anything about his parentage. Chris has outgrown his second wheelchair and will soon grow into his new, more permanent and rugged model.

Owning a celebrity pig that is set this week to make his national TV debut on a daytime talk show has changed his life, Lucero said.

"He just makes me happy," said Lucero, adding that he is getting "3 or 4 hours of sleep a night, if that, because I'm trying to keep up with all his media."

He has drawn up plans for "I Love Chris P. Bacon" T-shirts and possible advertisements on his YouTube videos.

Lucero said he does not expect to make much money off Chris' celebrity and that Chris' true value to him lies elsewhere.

"I want my piggy to be famous," Lucero said. "My goal is to put him out there because he makes people happy."

(Reporting by Barbara Liston; Editing by Kevin Gray and Toni Reinhold)

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc shares climbed more than 4 percent on Tuesday after an analyst note fueled optimism about the company's Kindle e-book business.

The e-book market is a lot bigger than previously thought, and owners of Kindle e-readers and tablets are reading more e-books, Morgan Stanley's Scott Devitt, a leading Internet and e-commerce analyst, told investors in the research note.

Devitt estimated worldwide e-book unit sales of 859 million in 2012, up considerably from a previous estimate of 567 million. With almost 45 percent of the e-book market, Amazon likely sold 383 million e-books last year, compared with an earlier estimate of 252 million, the analyst added.

Amazon's broader strategy is to sell mobile devices at or near cost and make money when consumers use the gadgets to buy digital content, including e-books, music, videos, apps and games.

Devitt said on Wednesday that the strategy may be working with e-books, one of Amazon's oldest digital categories.

"We initially assumed that early adopters of eReader devices would be avid readers and, therefore, the marginal buyer would read less," Devitt wrote.

However, data from a recent Amazon presentation show that consumers who bought a Kindle in 2011 read 4.6 times more e-books, on average, in the 12 months following their gadget purchase, compared with the 12 months before getting the device, the analyst noted.

Similar data from 2008 show consumers reading e-books 2.6 times as much after their Kindle device purchase, on average, according to Devitt.

The success of Amazon's Kindle business is important because it is more profitable than some of the company's other operations, Devitt said.

The Kindle business, which includes the gadgets and related digital content sales, generated about 11 percent of Amazon's sales last year and 34 percent of the company's consolidated segment operating income, or CSOI, Devitt estimated. The CSOI is a closely watched measure of Amazon's profitability.

"The Kindle franchise is a profit pool that subsidizes investments in other growth initiatives," Devitt wrote.

Amazon shares rose 4.1 percent to $269.30 in afternoon trading on Wednesday.

(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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WASHINGTON (AP) Michelle Obama on Wednesday gushed over the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild," calling it one of the "most powerful and most important" movies in a long time in a ringing endorsement delivered less than two weeks before this month's Academy Awards ceremony.

The first lady commented during a Black History Month workshop at the White House for about 80 middle- and high-school students from the District of Columbia and New Orleans. The movie was set in Louisiana.

Students saw the film, then got to question director Benh Zeitlin and actors Dwight Henry and 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis. Wallis stars in the mythical tale of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy struggling to survive in the southern Delta with her ailing father as a storm approaches. Her world consists of a tight-knit, shantytown community on the bayou with wild animals, both real and imagined.

The film won four Oscar nominations, including for best picture, best actress and directing.

Mrs. Obama said she saw the 93-minute film over the summer with a large group of friends and family who ranged in age from 3 to 73, and they were enthralled by it.

"It's rare these days to find a movie that can so completely and utterly captivate such a broad audience and that was one of the things that struck me about this movie," she said. "It managed to be beautiful, joyful and devastatingly honest."

The first lady said "Beasts" makes viewers "think deeply about the people we love in our lives who make us who we are" and shows the strength of communities and the power they give others to overcome obstacles.

"It also tells a compelling story of poverty and devastation but also of hope and love in the midst of some great challenges," she said.

Mrs. Obama also said it was "cool" that "there are so many important lessons to learn in that little 93 minutes."

"That a director and a set of writers and producers can say so much in just 93 minutes," the first lady told the students. "And it doesn't always happen in a movie, quite frankly, but this one did it, and that's why I love this movie so much and why our team wanted to bring it here to the White House and share it with all of you."

Mrs. Obama also used the film to inspire her young audience, noting that Wallis was just 5 years old when she auditioned for the part and Henry, who runs a bakery, had never acted a day in his life.

"You all have to really be focused on preparing yourselves for the challenges and the opportunities that will lie ahead for all of you. You've got to be prepared," she said, urging them to go to school, do their homework every day and follow her husband's example by reading everything they get their hands on.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Beyonce is letting fans into her charmed life, introducing daughter Blue Ivy to the world and talking about motherhood, marriage and miscarriage in a new documentary.

The 31-year-old pop singer and her rapper husband, Jay-Z, 43, one of music's most influential couples, have been guarded about their private life.

But in "Life is But a Dream," airing on Saturday on cable channel HBO, Beyonce gives fans a glimpse of her working life and even a peek at baby Blue Ivy, who has been fiercely shielded from paparazzi since her birth in January 2012.

The "Crazy in Love" singer addresses the widely reported claim from 2011 that she was faking her pregnancy, calling it "the most ridiculous rumor I've ever heard of me."

"To think that I'd be that vain ... especially after losing a child. The pain and trauma from that just makes it mean so much more to get an opportunity to bring life into the world," she says in the documentary.

The Grammy-winning singer shows footage of a sonogram, her growing bump and grainy video of herself posing nude as she neared her due date.

The HBO film, which Beyonce co-directed, is part of a return to performing by the singer, who took a year off after her first child was born.

The arrival last year of Blue Ivy Carter gained worldwide media attention and prompted Beyonce to share more with her fans, launching a Tumblr page with snapshots that showed glimpses of her family life, including the baby.

Her miscarriage had been kept secret from the public until Jay-Z referred to it in his song "Glory," that he released following the birth of Blue Ivy.

In the documentary, Beyonce touched on the topic briefly, saying, "It was the saddest thing I've ever been through."

"My life is a journey. ... I had to go through my miscarriage, I believe I had to go through owning my company and managing myself ... ultimately your independence comes from knowing who you are and you being happy with yourself," she said.

"Life is But a Dream" serves as a coming-of-age for the star as she entered motherhood.

She gives audiences a peek into her four-year marriage to Jay-Z, showing footage of the couple singing Coldplay's "Yellow" to each other.

"This baby has made me love him more than I ever thought I could love another human being," she says.

The documentary shows Beyonce putting herself and her team through grueling choreography rehearsals in 2011 and planning every second of her performances at big awards shows that year.

Beyonce began her comeback with a controversial lip-synched performance of the national anthem at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January, followed by a live performance at the Super Bowl halftime show that wowed critics.

She has also announced a new album for this year. "The Mrs Carter Show World Tour" - Jay-Z's real name is Sean Carter - will kick off in April with more than 40 performances in Europe and North America.

"Life is But a Dream" airs on HBO on Saturday, the same day as Beyonce's interview with Oprah Winfrey on the OWN cable channel.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)

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TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, talk about their continued push for gun regulation in the upcoming issue of Vogue magazine.

The couple has formed a political action committee in hopes of preventing gun violence and changing laws to require compulsory background checks for gun buyers. The PAC will also work to limit the size of ammo magazines and to ban the sale of assault weapons to civilians.

Kelly said "now is the time" to do something in the wake of recent mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut.

Giffords and Kelly were interviewed at their Tucson home for the article, which appears in the March issue of Vogue that will be available on newsstands on Tuesday.

Giffords, 42, is shown lounging on a couch, dressed casually in a turtleneck sweater and holding hands with her husband.

Giffords was among 13 people wounded in a January 2011 shooting rampage as she met with constituents outside a Tucson supermarket. Six people were killed.

She resigned from Congress last year. Kelly, a former astronaut, has been by her side during her recovery.

They both attended Tuesday's State of the Union Address in which President Barack Obama called for stricter gun laws.

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Online:

http://www.vogue.com

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NEW YORK (AP) Alec Baldwin and his wife are expecting their first child together.

Publicist Matthew Hiltzik confirmed Tuesday that Hilaria Baldwin is due late this summer.

Alec Baldwin already is the father of a 17-year-old daughter, Ireland, from his previous marriage to actress Kim Basinger (BAY'-sing-ur). Hilaria Baldwin is a special correspondent for the TV show "Extra." The couple wed last June after a three-month engagement.

Alec Baldwin recently won a SAG Award for best actor in a TV series for the NBC comedy "30 Rock," which concluded its seven-year run two weeks ago.

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GAMMESFELD, Germany (Reuters) - Peter Breiter, 41, is an unusual banker. Not for him the big bonuses, complicated financial instruments and multi-million deals.

He is happy instead writing transaction slips out by hand for the 500 inhabitants of the tiny southern German village of Gammesfeld.

"Why would I use a cash machine?" said Friedrich Feldmann, a customer sitting in the bank's small waiting room on his once-weekly visit to withdraw cash. "They cost money anyway."

The Raiffeisen Gammesfeld eG cooperative bank in southern Germany is one of the country's 10 smallest banks by deposits and is the only one to be run by just one member of staff.

Small banks like this dominate the German banking landscape. Rooted in communities, they offer a limited range of accounts and loans to personal and local business customers.

While numbers have shrunk from around 7,000 in the 1970s to around 1,100 now, cooperative banks like Raiffeisen Gammesfeld provide competition for Germany's two largest banks - Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank.

A typical day's work for Breiter involves providing villagers with cash for their day-to-day needs and arranging small loans for local businesses. Not to mention cleaning the one-story building that houses the bank, which is 200 metres from his own front door.

Moving from a bigger bank, where it was all "sell, sell, sell", Gammesfeld-born Breiter says taking up this job in 2008 was the best decision he ever made.

The advertisement required someone to work by hand, without computers. The typewriter and the adding machine bear the signs of constant use, although Breiter, in his standard work outfit of jeans and jumper, does now have a computer.

"It's so much fun," Breiter, a keen mathematician, says as he deals with a steady stream of lunchtime customers. He knows his customers by name and regularly offers advice on jobs, relationship and money woes.

"People said I would get bored, but I'm not," he said.

Breiter doesn't even mind that he gets barely any holiday each year, saying he is happy to settle for weekends skiing in the mountains nearby. "My hobby is my job. What could be finer?"

The cooperatives' existence is entwined closely with that of the Mittelstand, Germany's medium-sized and often family-run firms responsible for much of its export success.

"The Mittelstand is the lifeblood of Germany, and these are often our customers," Steffen Steudel, a spokesman for the BVR cooperative banking group association told Reuters.

Mittelstand customers served by Gammesfeld include farmers, a maker of solar panels with around 100 employees, and a window firm, which supplied the windows for the bank.

CAN WE HAVE ONE TOO?

While many cooperative banks took a hit from the financial crisis, they fared better than some banks because they had mostly not tried to expand too quickly or take on too much risk-laden business.

The shock of seeing big banks go bust has also sparked renewed interest in the cooperatives, seen as steady and reliable, according to the BVR.

"Just as consumers want to know where their food is coming from, they also want to see what the bank is doing with their money," Steudel said.

Raiffeisen Gammesfeld restricts its business to traditional retail banking - no credit cards, shares, funds or even online banking. Annual profits are stable at around 40,000 euros and the biggest loan it ever agreed was for 650,000 euros.

Breiter said the financial crisis prompted interest in his bank from all over Germany: "One person rang up five times asking for a 4 million euro loan but I had to refuse because he wasn't from Gammesfeld!"

Breiter also says people have called to ask how they too can recreate Gammesfeld in their own village, although he says that the model is impossible to start from scratch today because of the sums of money that would be needed.

Breiter is also proud that Gammesfeld is there to serve the community and not just make profit. Each customer is offered the same interest rate, whether they earn 1,000 or 10,000 euros a month.

Inge Dill, whose son went to school with Breiter, says the bank offers the best interest rates around. "Why would I go anywhere else?"

The bank, however, almost did not make it this far.

Back in the 1980s, the bank's previous CEO, Fritz Vogt - whose grandfather founded the bank back in 1870 - had to go through the courts to ensure the bank kept its licence because it did not have a permanent second member of staff to act as a "second pair of eyes" to double-check transactions.

Even now, 82-year old Vogt, whose house backs onto the bank, still pops in each week to help out and cast an eye over the books.

Breiter says he too wants to stay working at the bank as long as possible. "Of course I have to be careful not to withdraw completely into my shell. There's a whole world outside Gammesfeld after all."

(Additional reporting by Lisi Niesner; Editing by Stephen Brown and Peter Graff)

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HOUSTON (AP) A cruise line says it is making the passengers stranded aboard a disabled ship in the Gulf of Mexico as comfortable as possible with running water and some working bathrooms, contradicting the accounts of some passengers who told relatives of filthy, hot conditions and limited access to food.

The ship, the Carnival Triumph, is still at least a day from being guided to a port in Mobile, Ala.

Carnival President Gerry Cahill said Tuesday the ship has running water and most of its 23 public restrooms and some of the guest cabin bathrooms were working. He downplayed the possibility of an outbreak of disease from unsanitary conditions, saying the ship had not seen an abnormal number of people reporting to the infirmary as being ill.

"No one here from Carnival is happy about the conditions onboard the ship," Cahill said at a news conference in Miami. "We obviously are very, very sorry about what is taking place."

Jimmy Mowlam, 63, whose 37-year-old son, Rob Mowlam, got married Saturday onboard the ship, said his son told him by phone Monday night that there is no running water and few working toilets. He said passengers were given plastic bags to "use for their business."

Despite a forecast of brisker winds and slightly higher seas, the Coast Guard and Carnival said they did not expect conditions to deteriorate aboard ship.

A cold front was expected to cross the central Gulf where the vessel is under tow, bringing north and northwesterly winds of 15 to 25 mph and seas of 4 to 6 feet, said Dennis Feltgen, spokesman for the National Hurricane Center.

However, such conditions shouldn't affect conditions aboard ship, said Bill Segelken, spokesman for the Coast Guard Galveston command center.

The ship was about 200 miles south of Mobile, Ala., as Tuesday faded into Wednesday, the Coast Guard said. Carnival says the ship is expected to arrive in Mobile on Thursday.

The ship left Galveston, Texas, for a four-day cruise last Thursday with 3,143 passengers and 1,086 crew members. The ship was about 150 miles off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on Sunday when an engine room fire knocked out its primary power source, crippling its water and plumbing systems and leaving it adrift on only a backup power.

No one was injured in the fire, but Carnival spokeswoman Joyce Oliva said Tuesday that a passenger with a pre-existing medical condition was taken off the ship as a precaution.

Everyone else likely will have to remain onboard until the ship reaches Mobile, Ala., which is expected to happen Thursday, weather permitting.

Besides two tugs, at least two other Carnival cruise ships have been diverted to the Triumph to leave supplies and a 210-foot Coast Guard cutter was at the scene, Coast Guard Petty Officer Richard Brahm said Tuesday.

Mowlam said his son told him the lack of ventilation on the Triumph had made it too hot to sleep inside and that many passengers had set up camp on the ocean liner's decks and in its common areas. Mowlam said he wasn't sure where his son was sleeping.

"He said up on deck it looks like a shanty town, with sheets, almost like tents, mattresses, anything else they can pull to sleep on," said Mowlam, of the southeast Texas town of Warren. His son is from nearby Nederland.

Mowlam said his son indicated that passengers are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

"So far people have been pretty much taking it in stride," Mowlam said his son told him.

Rob Mowlam told his father the ship's crew had started giving free alcohol to passengers.

"He was concerned about what that was going to lead to when people start drinking too much," Mowlam said.

Other passengers have described more dire conditions, including overflowing toilets and limited access to food.

Jay Herring, a former senior officer for Carnival Cruise Lines, said one of the biggest concerns crew members will have until the ship docks is the potential for disease outbreak, particularly norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea.

"Housekeeping, others are probably working double shifts to keep the mess clean and wipe down and sanitize all the common areas," said Herring, who worked for Carnival from 2002 to 2004 and spent four months on the Triumph.

Carnival hasn't determined what caused the fire, said Oliva, the company spokeswoman.

The National Transportation Safety Board announced Tuesday it has opened an investigation into the cause of the fire. The NTSB said the Bahamas Maritime Agency will lead the investigation because the ship carries a Bahamian flag.

The ship was originally going to be towed to a port in Progreso, Mexico, but after currents pushed it northward, the company decided to take it to Alabama, saying it would make it easier for passengers without passports to get home.

Cahill said Carnival has reserved more than 1,500 hotel rooms in Mobile and New Orleans for Thursday. The company plans to return passengers back to Houston on Friday using charter flights.

A similar situation occurred on a Carnival cruise ship in November 2010. That vessel, named Splendor, was stranded with 4,500 people aboard after a fire in the engine room. When the passengers disembarked in San Diego, they described a nightmarish three days in the Pacific with limited food, power and bathroom access.

Cahill said the Spendor's fire was different because it involved a "catastrophic explosion" in a diesel generator, and the Triumph's fire had "some other cause." He could not say what the economic impact will be due to the fire aboard the Triumph. The impact from the Splendor was $40 million, he said.

Carnival canceled the Triumph's next two voyages, scheduled to depart Monday and Saturday. Passengers aboard the stranded ship will also receive a full refund.

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Associated Press writers Terry Wallace in Dallas and Christine Armario in Miami contributed to this report.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) The man who was arrested after attempting to upstage Adele at Sunday's Grammy Awards has a new message for the singer: "help me."

Vitalii Sediuk says his appearance onstage at the Grammys was a spontaneous event and that he is only now realizing that it might have legal consequences for him. The Ukrainian journalist, who did not have a ticket to the awards show, spent several hours in police custody before being released with a trespassing citation and a March 4 court date.

Sediuk briefly took the microphone Sunday night before Adele accepted her award. He only got a few words out before Jennifer Lopez shooed him away.

"It was spontaneous," Sediuk said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It was not planned of course"

He said he realizes now that he may be banned from covering award shows, which would be problematic for a reporter who's already got a reputation for awkward celebrity encounters. Last year, Will Smith slapped Sediuk, 24, after he tried to kiss him on a red carpet, and he drew Madonna's ire a year earlier by presenting her a bouquet of flowers she hated.

He said he hopes that Adele, who called Lopez her "good luck charm" at Sunday's show, will help him out of his latest mess.

"Oh Adele. Help me not to go to jail," Sediuk said.

He said he arrived at the show in a car that had access to the red carpet, and he did a few interviews before attempting to follow Nicole Kidman into the show. She stopped to talk to reporters and he then followed in Katy Perry all without a guard ever stopping him to ask for a ticket. Once inside, he got a seat near the stage, apparently taking Adam Levine's seat.

"I didn't really think about the fact that I didn't have the ticket," he said.

Publicists for the Grammys did not return email messages about security at the event. The show received additional police protection due to the ongoing hunt for ex-officer Christopher Dorner, who is suspected of three killings and has stated a desire to target police and their families.

Los Angeles police said Sediuk was arrested by private security who were responsible for making sure those at the show belonged.

Sediuk said he had to get creative because he didn't get a media credential for the show. Before going onstage, Sediuk said he had been daydreaming about receiving an Academy Award. He also said he wanted to be able to send in an interesting report. The incident is unlikely to shock those who know Sediuk, he said. "It was not a surprise to them."

He said he hopes the incident exposes some security flaws. "It's their fault as well," he said.

In addition to being slapped by Smith, Sediuk garnered attention for giving Madonna a bouquet of hydrangeas at the 2011 Venice Film Festival. The actress-singer promptly stashed them under a table, declaring, "I absolutely loathe hydrangeas."

Lopez looked less than pleased but remained composed during the incident Sunday. Sediuk's stunt went largely unnoticed until his arrest was first reported Monday night by The Hollywood Reporter.

"Like Adele said, she's her good luck charm," Lopez's publicist Mark Young wrote in an email Tuesday.

Publicists for Adele and Levine didn't return messages seeking comment.

Sediuk said that he was initially excited about the whole incident, but he is now more apprehensive about the prospect of going to court. He still thinks the stunt was worth it.

"I don't regret doing anything," he said.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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