Month: November 2020

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) appeared on Fox News over the weekend to complain about numerous outlets, including Fox News, calling the presidential election in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump. “I think that is way premature. At this point, we do not know who has prevailed in the election,” he whined. “The media is desperately trying to get everyone to coronate Joe Biden as the next president. But that’s not how it works, the media does not get to select our president the American people get to elect our president.” The media being “FAKE NEWS” is one of the more toxic beliefs that the Trump clan and their hangers-on, like Cruz, have preached over the last four years.

Unless the media makes Trump look like a winner, that is. Then it’s fine.

On Wednesday, Ivanka Trump shared a tweet from the Associated Press officially declaring that her dad won Alaska’s three electoral college votes. “BREAKING: President Trump and Senate Republicans win Alaska, overwhelmingly and by a massive 20 point spread! Put AK in the books for @realDonaldTrump. Thank you Alaska!” she quote-tweeted, days after dance parties broke out in the streets after the election was called by… the Associated Press. You are not the only one to notice the irony here.

Wait until she finds out how the rest of the country voted.

Ariana Grande fans know that the singer is passionate about animals, and now she is doing something to help ones that are in need: She announced today that she is launching Orange Twins Rescue, an animal rescue center.

Grande made the announcement with a Windows 95-style promotional image that teases the website, which is still a work in progress and displays a similar graphic when accessed. “we are so happy, proud and excited,” Grande wrote. “our site comin soon.” Orange Twins Rescue already has an active Instagram account, which has about 36,000 followers as of this post and was previously used to highlight animals in need and other similar things. Fox 11 Los Angeles notes that Orange Twins Rescue will be in LA, and the website indicates the venture is a non-profit organization.

The singer showed off one of her pet dogs, Toulouse, during a 2016 appearance on The Tonight Show, when he excitedly ran to her when called. In 2018, she and Pete Davidson also got a pet pig together, which they appropriately named Piggy Smallz. Meanwhile, Grande is fresh off the fifth No. 1 song of her career as “Positions” debuted on top of the Hot 100.

Keep an eye on the Orange Twins Rescue website and Grande’s socials for more info on the endeavor.

Over a week after the 2020 presidential election took place — and a few days after news outlets like CNN and NBC named Joe Biden the overwhelming winner — President Trump has yet to publicly admit he lost his bid for re-election.

While some of his supporters continue to cheer on the orange megalomaniac’s sore loser parade, it seems he’s starting to lose the backing of the Evangelical right. Earlier this week, megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, a long-time Trump supporter who helped him campaign during his 2016 bid for president wrote an op-ed for Fox News urging Christians to accept the outcome of the election. Jeffress wrote:

“For millions of Christians across our nation, this is a bitter pill to swallow. It’s always easier to submit and to pray for someone when he was our preferred candidate. But the rubber really meets the road when the person who takes office is not the one we supported. Here is our chance to show that Christians are not hypocrites. When Joe Biden becomes president, we should commend him for the things he does right. We should condemn the things he does wrong. And above all, we must pray fervently for our president.”

This endorsement is a big blow to the Trump administration, who’s been drafting lawsuits in multiple states alleging voter fraud even as election officials fervently deny any evidence to support that claim. Jeffress isn’t the only Trump ally shading the president’s inability to admit defeat — his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill and foreign allies have also congratulated Biden and pushed for a smooth transition of power — but considering how influential Evangelicals were in putting Trump and other right-wing conservatives in power, Jeffress’ post might be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to that specific group of Trump’s fan club.

Naturally, Twitter’s enjoying the hell out of it.

You know it’s bad when even the Evangelicals tell you there’s no hope.

The NBA plans on playing games in home markets during the 2020-21 season, which is slated to tip off on Dec. 22. Part of the reason why is that the league wants to be able to have fans in attendance, which would be a way to boost revenue after the league had to go with a fan-less environment during its Orlando Bubble.

The issue, of course, is that the NBA is trying to pull this off despite being in the midst of a global pandemic. On Wednesday afternoon, we got a glimpse into the guidelines the league will put into place thanks to a memo it sent to all 30 teams, as acquired by Shams Charania of The Athletic. Included in the memo is a guideline that states fans who get close to the court will need to provide proof of a negative COVID test.

The league also has mask requirements in place and will not allow fans close to the court to eat. There are also requirements that teams will need to meet based on how their localities are handling the virus.

It is unclear if the league would have any failsafes in place to stop games altogether, or if these various rules would be amenable based on the virus getting better or worse in a given area. There is also no word on how a potential COVID vaccine would impact any of this.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Eminem’s influential album The Marshall Mathers LP. To celebrate two decades of the record, Eminem re-released his videos “The Real Slim Shady,” “The Way I Am,” and “Stan” on in HD on YouTube. But now, Eminem is saluting another major milestone: The rapper’s “Without Me” video has officially surpassed one billion views on YouTube.

Celebrating the impressive feat, the rapper has also given his 2002 “Without Me” video an HD treatment so that fans can get the full experience. The visual has everything — from Eminem cross-dressing on a faux talk show to the rapper dancing on Elvis Presley’s turd — and showcases the heyday of MTV-era videos. Antics aside, the visual’s general plot follows Eminem and Dre. Dre as the two MC’s are called on a mission to stop a young child from listening to the rapper’s explicit record.

While the video just now broke a billion views, the rapper’s The Eminem Show had already garnered a handful of accolades. At the time of its release, The Eminem Show was the best-selling album of 2002 and has since been certified Diamond. The album has seen worldwide sales of 27 million copies, according to NME, which is tied with Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me as the second best-selling album of the century, behind Adele’s 21.

Watch Eminem’s “Without Me” video in HD above.

The biggest news in the Jeopardy! universe right now is the death of the show’s most important figure: Longtime host Alex Trebek recently passed away at 80 years old after a fight with pancreatic cancer. This doesn’t mean the show will suddenly go off the air, though. After Trebek’s death, executive producer Mike Richards shared a heartfelt message about Trebek and about the show, noting that the remaining episodes (35 of them at the time) would be aired as planned, the last of which is set to air on Christmas. Before then, though, Mariah Carey popped up on the program, as she had her own category.

On last night’s episode, one of the categories was titled simply “Mariah Carey,” and the titular singer read all of the clues. The questions and answers were all related to her career, with some answers including Jay-Z, Precious, and “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

Ahead of the episode, Carey shared a promo clip and wrote on Twitter, “Saddened by the passing of our beloved Alex Trebek. He is a staple of American TV and will be so missed. I recently taped clues for my category on @Jeopardy, and will be watching this bittersweet moment with all of you today. Thank you, Alex. RIP.”

Watch Carey’s Jeopardy! appearance above.

Courtney Bell is an up-and-coming rapper from Detroit whose gift for witty wordsmithing in singles like “Say You Wanna” and “Ice” has put him on the radars of traditional rap fans this year and garnered him a respectable following for a rapper without an official album out yet. Bell’s talent has secured a trustworthy cosign from Compton’s Boogie on his latest single, “Lion’s Den,” ensuring that his underground credibility and profile will grow before too much longer.

The song’s lyrics find the conscious-minded Bell and the street-centric Boogie taking on a topic that’s been at the forefront of the news cycle throughout 2020: The ongoing pattern of racially-motivate police brutality that has turned so many Black people’s names into hashtags and reasons for protest. Drawing on his religious beliefs, Bell defies the conditions that oppress Black people, while Boogie maintains “my heart is not on auction.”

In the video, the duo and their crew surround and bully a police officer who pointed his gun at them, hammering home the idea that officers are meant to protect and serve the people, who should hold more power than them. It ends with a list of names of people killed by police in recent years, including Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Breonna Taylor, and more.

Although it’s been a relatively quiet year for Boogie, who is billed to appear on LVRN’s Home For The Holidays Christmas album later this year, he did have appearances on Reason’s “Trapped In” and Guapdad 4000’s “Hairless Horseman.”

Watch the “Lion’s Den” video above.

David Fincher is a famously demanding director, but he gets results, dammit.

“Fincher is meticulous,” actor John Carroll Lynch once said about working with him on Zodiac. “He’s after something. And it takes him 50 takes to get it.” Fifty is low, actually. Fincher shot a nine-minute scene for Mindhunter 75 times, and Amanda Seyfried recalls doing 200 takes for a single scene in his new film, Mank.

The black-and-white Netflix biographical drama, starring Gary Oldman as Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, is a “splendid” movie, but the rest of Fincher’s cast, along with Seyfried, did not always have a splendid time making it.

“We did take after take after take after take,” actor Charles Dance, who plays William Randolph Hearst, told Total Film about shooting a dinner party scene in Mank. “And [Oldman] said to David at one point, ‘David, I’ve done this scene a hundred f*cking times.’ And Fincher said, ‘Yeah, I know, but this is 101. Reset!’” Fincher admits that filming Mank was “exhausting” for Oldman, “because I’m fairly didactic about, ‘These are the things that the scene needs to accomplish for me, and we will continue to play, to look for ways to underline these ideas that are as subtle as we can make them.’”

Fincher usually gets his way, too, unless it involves a Yankees hat.

(Via Total Film)

Over the years, Zack Snyder fans have shown up in a big way to help support suicide prevention, and this time, the director is driving the fundraising with an exclusive T-shirt featuring the epic DC Comics villain Darkseid. In a Tuesday night tweet, Snyder thanked fans for raising over $430,000 and urged others who haven’t already snatched up a Darkseid shirt to help him reach half a million dollars for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

You can see Snyder’s tweet below, along with a link to the fundraising site Ink to the People:

Snyder has confirmed that the villainous Darkseid will appear in his director’s cut of Justice League when it arrives on HBO Max in 2021. The long awaited “Snyder Cut” will showcase the director’s original vision for the film that he wasn’t able to complete after his daughter committed suicide during production. (Out of respect to Snyder and his family, the social media movement #ReleaseTheSnyderCut often contained a suicide prevention component for this very reason.)

Snyder also recently revealed that he did make future plans for Darkseid that go beyond his soon-to-be-restored appearance in Justice League. Via Comic Book:

“It’s a fair question to ask me, you know, like what do I say to the world about, you know, what happens when Darkseid comes to Earth? Then what? You know, Is that a thing? And I think, listen, the truth is that did I write and did I have and conceive a complete- do I know what happens when Darkseid… yes. I do know what happens. To say and to speculate about what that is and that that would be exciting, I think that’s a fine thing.”

While Snyder didn’t reveal what those exact plans are, there’s one small wrinkle. Ava DuVernay is currently developing a New Gods movie that would presumably involve Darkseid and is not connected to Justice League. However, things have been very fluid with the DC Comics movies lately, and we’re already seeing a multiverse component happening with Michael Keaton’s Batman possibly appearing in The Flash. So who knows what might happen with Snyder’s vision for Darkseid down the line?

(Via Zack Snyder on Twitter)

Prime TV Network Soap Opera King Darren Star’s latest show, Emily In Paris, racked up the views for Netflix in October. At least, that’s what one could gather by its placement on Netflix’s rotating Top 10 list, and the social media responses on release weekend. This is not a show that’s meant to be taken seriously, and a lot of people enjoyed watching something fluffy while the world burned around them. However, an equally strong contingent either hate-watched it or skipped it altogether while the French response has been one of ridicule, given that Emily enthusiastically exudes Ugly American tropes and wields destruction-by-vibrator while loving baguettes and selfies.

The fervor grew so heated that (in early October) New York Magazine‘s Yashar Ali hilariously tweeted, “‘Emily in Paris’ is dividing our nation.”

One month later, a Netflix press release announced the show’s renewal with a “letter” from Emily’s employer, Savoir, which reads (in part), “Call it bonne chance, or American ingenuity — I’m leaning towards to former — her results are impressive… We hope that by extending her time in Paris, Emily will… perhaps pick up a few words of basic French. We love having Emily in Paris! But please don’t let her know that.”

Then the streamer tweeted the news, including, “Friendly reminder Emily in Paris is supposed to be pronounced with a French accent so ‘Emily’ and ‘Paris’ rhyme.”

The wordplay of the second tweet brought some pushbacks.

And someone whipped out a Hillbilly Elegy reference, of course.

Again, some people do dig this show for not being as stressful as the rest of life in 2020.

More than that, though, people responded today with questions about why beloved shows, including the Emmy-winning GLOW (I Am Not Okay With This, The Society, and Teenage Bounty Hunters also got some nods) have been cancelled over the past few months, but Emily will enjoy more champagne-fueled fashion show debacles.

It’s not probable that the show will be able to film in Paris anytime soon, given the current global situation, but it’s official: more of Emily In Paris will be coming… at some point.