Month: February 2021

While Phoebe Bridgers may have assumed her guitar-smashing moment on her recent Saturday Night Live performance would receive a big reaction, she may not have thought it would carry on for so long. For the past few days, the singer has seen a lingering mixed response to her SNL set, with some showing support for the highlight moment and others, like David Crosby, denouncing her for it. During a recent appearance on CNN, Phoebe spoke about the guitar-smashing moment and what it meant to her.

“I’ve always wanted to do it, and when I mentioned it to the show, they built me this whole monitor that would look like it was exploding even if I wasn’t hitting it that hard,” she said CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “So yeah, [it was] just a bucket list thing.”

Regardless of the response from others, Phoebe seems happy and satisfied that she was able to cross off an item from the bucket list. Hours after the CNN interview, the singer took another shot at Crosby in a post to Twitter where she shared a link to Mariah Carey’s 2007 video for “Obsessed” with the caption, “me @ david crosby.”

Elsewhere in the interview, she elaborated on her recent comments against Marilyn Manson. “I think it’s very funny that Marilyn Manson’s label decided to drop him right when the story went public, and people have just known about it for so long,” she said. “I find that very annoying. I think it’s a lot of performative activism, basically. I think people should take more responsibility internally. It doesn’t matter how many people know about it. You should look into people like you’re the FBI.” She added, “But when people make people money it’s really hard to walk away from that. But I think more people should.”

You can watch her full 14-minute appearance on CNN here.

When it comes to the most clutch shots in recent NBA history, there are two that immediately spring to mind. The first, of course, is Kyrie Irving’s dagger three-pointer in Steph Curry’s face to help seal the Cavs’ 2016 championship and put the punctuation mark on their miraculous comeback from a 3-1 series deficit against the Warriors. The other is Ray Allen’s title-saving three at the end of Game 6 of the 2013 Finals between the Heat and Spurs.

LeBron, ironically enough, had front-row tickets to each of these. Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to interpret this, the wrong way being to cast ludicrous aspersions about LeBron not having the clutch gene or some other such nonsense, and the right way being to give him the credit he deserves for trusting his teammates. After all, the results speak for themselves.

And it’s a safe bet that LeBron is eternally grateful to each of them. In Allen’s case, we know this for a fact. During a recent interview, Allen was asked whether LeBron and/or Erik Spoelstra still call him to thank him for hitting that shot, and the answer was an emphatic yes.

Via Macklin Stern of CBS Sports:

Do LeBron or Coach Spo [Erik Spoelstra] ever call you out of the blue to thank you for knocking down that shot?

Oh yeah, they do. They definitely do. And I owe them a debt of gratitude for accepting me into the fold. They already had a championship environment, and to welcome me in to help them get to the next level, that’s what true winners do. They always continue to find ways to win by any means necessary. They’re always willing to learn and get better. There hasn’t been a year that’s gone by where either one of them hasn’t mentioned 2013 to me. They’re always grateful for my input.

Just how he expresses that gratitude to Kyrie is probably a trickier question, but that’s neither here nor there. Allen’s full interview is well worth the read, as he talks about, among other things, how he failed to convince Kevin Garnett, Rajon Rondo, and Paul Pierce to join him for pedicures and the importance of foot care for NBA longevity. Given that he boasts one of the longest and most successful careers of all-time, young players would do well to take heed of that advice and make an appointment at the nearest salon soon as safely possible.

(CBS Sports)

Jay-Z is set to release his first song in a few months thanks to his “What It Feels Like” collaboration with Nipsey Hussle. The song appears on the upcoming Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack, which will be made available to fans on Friday. With that being said, it’s not the only project dropping on Friday involving the 2021 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame nominee. According to Robin Thicke, he also helped to finalize, On Earth, And In Heaven, his first album in over six years.

“Because I didn’t have Andre [Harrell] to help me with the final tracklisting, I reached out to Jay,” Thicke said during an interview on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music radio show. “And I said, ‘Hey, I don’t have Andre. Would you mind stepping in this time to help me with the tracklisting?’ And Jay gave me the greatest A&R advice. Went through each track, sent me a little note about each track.”

He added that he sent Jay a few tracks that he felt would not appear on the final album. It resulted in the rapper telling him to follow his heart on the decision.

“That kinda sealed it for me,” he said. “‘Cause I needed one other opinion that I respected that much to give me that last sign that I wasn’t crazy.”

Earlier this year, Thicke shared the meaning behind the album’s title after sharing a trailer for it with fans. “When I saw the phrase On Earth, and in Heaven, I realized that’s what I’m singing about,” he said. “The people who aren’t here and the people who are here that made me who I am.”

You can watch the clip from the interview.

Bella Ramsey stole scenes in the later seasons of Game of Thrones, but her next gig will put her front and center of another major HBO project. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Lyanna Mormont herself will play Ellie in HBO’s adaptation of The Last Of Us video game series.

Ramsey, who played the young Stark ally in one of HBO’s biggest ever hits, has reportedly been cast to play one of the two major roles in the survival series based on the video game from Naughty Dog. The second Last Of Us game hit consoles in 2020, and later in the year word that HBO was adapting the franchise with the help of Chernobyl showrunner Craig Mazin

The story also has a brief explanation of the role, in case you’re much more well-versed on the world of Bear Island and not the post-apocalyptic gaming world Ramsey will explore next.

The story set 20 years after modern civilization has been destroyed and centers on the relationship between Joel, a smuggler in this new world, and Ellie, a teenager who may be key to a cure for a deadly pandemic. Joel, a hardened survivor, is hired to smuggle the 14-year-old girl out of an oppressive quarantine zone. What starts as a small job soon becomes a brutal, heartbreaking journey as they traverse the U.S. and depend on each other for survival.

Ramsey will play Ellie, a 14-year-old orphan who has never known anything but a ravaged planet who struggles to balance her instinct for anger and defiance with her need for connection and belonging … as well as the newfound reality that she may be the key to saving the world.

Ramsey’s nine episodes on Game of Thrones certainly are her most widely-recognized work, but she also voices the titular role in the Netflix animated series Hilda, which is just delightful. But be forewarned, The Last Of Us will be a very different show. One much more in the vein of Game of Thrones when it comes to bleak storytelling and grit.

[via THR]

Flopping in the NBA is a tricky subject. A few years back, the league implemented a new “respect the game” initiative, one of the tenets being a supposed crackdown on blatant flopping, with a series of fines handed down to serial offenders. But anyone who watches the game regularly knows that some players still do their best to oversell the contact on a fairly regular basis.

It’s hard to eradicate something that had become so insidious over the years, as players grew increasingly savvy about how to toe that careful line between selling contact and putting on an Oscar-worthy performance. Gary Trent Jr., for instance, recently joined the latter ranks with his Hall-of-Fame-level flop against the Thunder, one that was the textbook definition of a fine-able offense.

On Tuesday, Jimmy Butler submitted his own entry into the cannon late in the fourth quarter against the Knicks, although the obvious meta-nature of this one puts it in a category of its own.

Jimmy Butler deserves an Oscar for trying to sell this flagrant foul.

pic.twitter.com/JPI2Fu1XX8

— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) February 10, 2021

After the game, Butler told reporters that he was inspired by his close friend, and star of stage and screen, Mark Wahlberg. Via Yahoo Sports:

“I’ve studied Mark Wahlberg and how he acts so incredibly well,” Butler told reporters. “I’ve taken a few pointers.”

The pair have been close pals since his early days in Chicago, with Butler saying that Wahlberg was something of a mentor to him as his own career was starting to take flight. When it comes to work ethic, Butler and Wahlberg are certainly cut from similar cloth. But Butler’s acting chops probably still need a bit more refinement if he wants to more effectively convince the refs to give him the type of calls he’s searching for.

G-Eazy has apparently been dealing with a stalker at his Hollywood Hills home for the past several months. Thankfully, the bay Area rapper has just secured a restraining order against the woman who he alleges is creating the problems at home.

According to legal documents obtained by TMZ, G-Eazy filed for a temporary restraining order last week against Monika Andrody, who allegedly comes to his home to ring the doorbell and pace back and forth at his front door. When she does this, he calls the police, but he says she always leaves by the time authorities arrive. He added that the situation got worse back in November after she appeared at his house ringing the doorbell at all hours of the night, something that Andrody apparently did as recently as January 15.

The rapper said he fears that Andrody will appear at a public event and attempt to make physical contact with him. He also claims the rampant doorbell ringing from her has ruined the peace of mind he hoped to have at his home. While he was able to secure a restraining order for himself, he was unable to do the same for his now ex-girlfriend Ashley Benson. When he filed for the order last week, G-Eazy asked the judge to extend it to Benson, but the judge did not comply with his request. Despite this, a future hearing could reverse this decision.

The decision from the court comes after G-Eazy ended his 2020 with a deluxe reissue of his 2017 album, The Beautiful & Damned.

(via TMZ)

In quite possibly the best example of the worst instance of bad timing, news that rock legend Bruce Springsteen had been arrested in his native New Jersey last November on charges of driving while under the influence. Unfortunately for him, he had just starred in Jeep’s likely million-dollar Super Bowl ad “The Middle,” encouraging increasingly polarized Americans to find common ground.

Jeep didn’t quite appreciate the irony, pulling the ad from YouTube after TMZ reported the arrest earlier today. Clearly, the company thought it’d be a bad look for its spokesman to be facing charges of drunk driving so soon after the controversial commercial officially aired. As a Jeep spokesperson told Adweek, “It would be inappropriate for us to comment on the details of a matter we have only read about and we cannot substantiate. But it’s also right that we pause our Big Game commercial until the actual facts can be established. Its message of community and unity is as relevant as ever. As is the message that drinking and driving can never be condoned.”

For what it’s worth, the ad only seemed to confirm the division it condemned; Adweek reports that polls of social media drew some markedly contrary results, with Instagram responders split 50/50 on whether they hated or loved it and Twitter responders also split evenly along loving, hating, and being lukewarm on it, with a slight majority for “hate.” As for The Boss, TMZ reports he’ll have a court appearance in a few weeks, but we find it hard to imagine the living New Jersey state treasure getting anything worse than a slap on the wrist.

Westside Boogie continues his pre-album-release warmup routine with “Do 4 Love,” his latest buzz-generating freestyle video designed to keep fans watching while he polishes up the near-finished product. This time, he takes on Tupac Shakur’s fan-favorite 1998 single “Do For Love,” sticking to his usual themes and again inviting his son Darius to offer his thoughts on the subject of love. Of course, Darius may think it’s trash, but that’s because he’s like 10. Marinate on that few years, little man — I’m sure you’ll change your mind.

Meanwhile, Boogie’s own observations remain as deft as ever. “She said she don’t f*ck with Boogie — she discriminating,” he jests. In the lo-fi, VHS-mimicking video, Boogie roams a grow house, hitting his two-step just as the Bobby Caldwell sample hits on the hook.

Fans have been waiting on a new album since 2019’s Everything’s For Sale, Westside Boogie’s major label debut. Along with videos for “Said Sum” and “Joe Exotic,” the Compton native is keeping his fans’ anticipation high for a full project, which he’s teased could be coming along in the very near future after beginning the rollout with an elaborate kidnapping prank and the video for “Outside” with Joey Badass.

Watch the “Do 4 Love” freestyle video above and stay tuned for more.

Saturday Night Live is always ready to comment on political issues in America, but it’s not every day a more obscure reference from the show’s history is used in present political dealings. That’s the only way it’s possible, however, for a sitting U.S. Senator to indirectly call Bernie Sanders an “ignorant slut.”

John Kennedy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, was speaking on Wednesday to Neera Tanden during a conformation hearing for the White House Office of Management and Budget where the line was used to characterize her past comments on social media. Tanden was a bit of a controversial pick because of her past tweets about a variety of political figures, both Republicans like Donald Trump but also more progressive politicians like Bernie Sanders.

As The Hill noted, Tanden has compared Ted Cruz to a vampire and Mitch McConnell to Voldemort from Harry Potter. But Kennedy focused in particular about the many tweets she’s fired at Sanders, and used an SNL reference to do so.

“I’m very disturbed about your personal comments about people,” he said. “I mean, you called Sen. Sanders everything but an ignorant slut.”

The video is a bit awkward, which is likely because the reference to the Point/Counterpoint sketches from Saturday Night Live, where Dan Akroyd would say extremely insulting things to Jane Curtin.

The clip quickly went viral, with a lot of people reacting to both the botched SNL line and the Sanders reaction.

Kennedy did apologize, sort of. Or at least tried to make it clear he was not calling Sanders any names.

“I want the record to reflect that I did not call Sen. Sanders an ignorant slut,” Kennedy said. Sanders replied that he didn’t know what to say in response.

“I don’t know how I should take that, Sen. Kennedy,” he responded.

(Via The Hill)

After Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel actress Charisma Carpenter publicly accused creator Joss Whedon of “abusing his power” and creating a toxic work environment that led to Carpenter being “berated” and fat-shamed for getting pregnant, Sarah Michelle Gellar has offered her support to her Buffy co-star and any others who have come forward with allegations of abuse while working on the show and its spinoff. Via Gellar’s Instagram:

While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon. I am more focused on raising my family and surviving a pandemic currently, so I will not be making any further statements at this time. But I stand with all survivors and am proud of them for speaking out.

You can see Gellar’s Instagram post below:

Following Carpenter’s statement on Wednesday, other actresses have come forward with accusations against Whedon. Amber Benson, who played Tara on Buffy, tweeted that “Buffy was a toxic environment and it starts at the top” while backing up Carpenter’s allegations.

Clare Kramer, who played the villain Glory in Season 5, also tweeted her support for Carpenter and wrote “a lot of this industry needs a reset.”

On Instagram, Michelle Trachtenberg, who played Buffy’s young sister Dawn, reposted Gellar’s statement and accused Whedon of being inappropriate while Trachtenberg was still a teenager. “I am brave enough now as a 35 year old woman…. To repost this,” Trachtenburg wrote. “Because. This must. Be known. As a teenager. With his not appropriate behavior….very. Not. Appropriate.”

(Via Sarah Michelle Gellar on Instagram)