Month: February 2021

It must be grinding Donald Trump’s gears that he can’t tweet about all the latest Diet Coke news, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart’s dating lives, and Tom Brady — not the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but Tom Brady alone — going to the Super Bowl. The former-president can’t even participate in his favorite pastime: coming up with bad nicknames for anyone he disagrees, even (especially?) one of his fellow Republicans.

The Daily Beast reports that Trump is fuming that he hasn’t been able to use Twitter to insult Liz Cheney (R-WY), one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Capitol siege. He was banned from the social media platform on January 8.

“He has not been able to personally trash Cheney via his once widely read tweets. He has written out insults and observations, several of them about Cheney, but with no ability to tweet them himself, he has resorted to suggesting put-downs for others to use or post to their own Twitter, according to a person with direct knowledge of this new habit,” the report reads. He’s called her “totally phony” to his Mar-a-Lago confidants, “someone who did whatever she could to embrace him when it was politically convenient, but then moved to bury him” following the riot that left five people dead.

Around Mar-a-Lago, Trump has marveled about how she “has no friends” anymore, given that liberals don’t like her and that she’s antagonized much of the Trumpist right by “siding” with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic lawmakers on impeachment. The former president has made clear to key allies that they can’t let her “get away with” this.

And yet, the world moves on without Trump calling Cheney “Lyin’ Liz” on Twitter. Sad!

(Via the Daily Beast)

Billie Eilish and brother/collaborator Finneas have spoken a lot about Eilish’s upcoming album, and while they’ve done a lot of teasing, they haven’t necessarily offered a lot of concrete info about it. The closest they’ve come to that was when Finneas said he didn’t want the album to come out during the pandemic. Now, though, Eilish has offered some quantitative info about her second record, assuming that what she said remains true.

Eilish recently took time to answer a question from a fan on Instagram, which asked, “How many tracks approx on up coming album?” Eilish responded on her Story by sharing a list of the numbers from 1 to 16 in a format that looks like a blank tracklist. She also added an emoji of eyes for good measure.

So, if Eilish’s second album ends up having 16 tracks, that will be two more than the standard edition of When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?; The Japanese edition adds two bonus songs onto the 14 of the base album. While Eilish’s post doesn’t offer any indication about what songs will appear on the album, it appears safe to say that the non-album tracks she has released since When We All Fall Asleep — “Everything I Wanted,” “My Future,” and “Therefore I Am” — are at least being considered.

Ralph Macchio was on Justin Long’s Life Is Short podcast this week, where he spoke at length about his career, from The Karate Kid to Cobra Kai and everything in between. It’s interesting to hear Macchio talk about his leaner years, basically from My Cousin Vinnie in 1992 to The Deuce in 2017 and Cobra Kai in 2018, since it sounds like The Karate Kid was both a blessing and a curse. He is mostly known for the The Karate Kid, which is great, but it also prevented him from landing a lot of other roles because casting directors didn’t want to hire The Karate Kid because it’s all that audiences would ever see. For Macchio, he said, it was like being “frozen in time.”

In fact, he remarked that he struggled even to land his role in My Cousin Vinnie for that very reason, although he was fortunately able to beat out Will Smith and Ben Stiller before his career started to decline. He also said that, though he has always been grateful for his fans, it’s a lot easier to stomach strangers shouting his iconic The Karate Kid lines at him now that Cobra Kai has resurrected his career. In fact, he told Justin Long that his car is always dirty because he refused to wash it out of fear that someone would see him pick up a sponge and shout, “Wax on, wax off!”

Now, however, he “embraces” his role. “It’s a very satisfying feeling in our current world to sort of be a ray of light. It’s pretty wonderful to be spreading that kind of joy based on these characters.”

It’s interesting, however, to consider what might have happened if Macchio hadn’t landed The Karate Kid role. After all, before the movie came along, he — along with several other actors in the “Brat Pack” and the movie The Outsiders — was on the rise. Patrick Swayze, Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane, and Matt Dillon (among others) weren’t typecast soon after their breakout roles in The Outsiders.

Of course, Macchio wasn’t the only actor up for The Karate Kid, either. As he confessed on Long’s podcast, he saw Jon Cryer in the waiting room when he auditioned for The Karate Kid. Cryer, of course, would star in a series of teen comedies before he had his own lean years, only to have his career resurrected by Two and a Half Men.

Speaking of Two and a Half Men, among the three other big-name actors who auditioned for The Karate Kid was Charlie Sheen.

“I was found early,” Macchio told Jimmy Fallon earlier this week on The Tonight Show. “I was cast very early, but it was like one of those test deals where you’re not in yet. I remember walking by and seeing Charlie Sheen hanging out outside [producer] Jerry Weintraub’s bungalow, thinking, ‘What’s Charlie doing here? [He] doesn’t look like an Italian guy from Jersey!’”

It wasn’t just Sheen and Cryer, however. There was also “Nic Cage, I think, and Robert Downey Jr.,” Macchio told Fallon. “Robert Downey Jr. also did the workshop of the part I did in The Outsiders.”

Imagine Cage or Downey, Jr. being cast in The Karate Kid, and then imagine those careers more or less dying for three decades because they were never able to shake the typecasting. All of which is to say: being cast as Daniel LaRusso may be the best thing that ever happened to Macchio; being passed over for the role, however, may have also been the best thing to happen for the careers of RDJ and Nic Cage, as well.

(Via Life is Short & The Tonight Show)

Tobe Nwigwe has been on an unstoppable streak lately. Due to his #GetTwistedSundays and #Cincoriginals campaign — along with other releases, too — the Houston indie rap phenom has been surely but slowly letting the world know he’s next. From collaborating with fellow Houston legends like Bun B and joining Lil Keke in paying homage to Prince, to getting a more elusive rapper like Black Thought on a track, and even making space for some rap queens, Nwigwe simply won’t slow down. And if all that wasn’t enough for you, just ask Big KRIT or D Smoke.

Today, Tobe is once again releasing new music with “The Truth,” and though he’s been known to drop songs that have almost no rapping in them, today’s track is all about bars. “I know that my bars are esoteric,” he raps, later adding: “My flow the rarest it deserve some merit,” along with plenty of other lines boasting about his abilities. And based on his performance on this track, all of them are warranted. Once again joined by another Houston rapper, Trae Tha Truth, who continues in a similar vein of relentless rhyming. It’s a pretty impressive offering from the two Texas rappers, check out the video above.

Earlier today, Chloe Bailey hopped on Instagram Live to address some “backlash” to the self-confident videos she’s been posting to her social media lately. People perked up when her emotional performance of “Forgive Me” at the end of last year indicated a shift in the polished young star, and when her “Buss It” viral challenge dropped, conversations about her body and sexuality reached a fever pitch. Add in another casual Instagram post at home in a t-shirt and underwear, and apparently the chatter got to Chloe, because she was emotional in her Live, saying it was hard for her to grapple with the idea of herself as “sexual” at all, and detailing her own journey with self-confidence in her body.

But never fear, in this case Twitter is completely on Chloe’s side over the ridiculous claims that she shouldn’t dance and perform in whatever clothing she wants, whenever she pleases. There has rarely been a musician so universally defended as a wonderful person, or who elicited this kind of protective energy from the sometimes prickly power users who make Twitter what it is. But everyone from musicians to comedians had something positive to say about the young singer. Hopefully this will help her drown out the haters. Check out some responses below.

Ever since the enormous success of “WAP” took over 2020, much in the same way “Bodak Yellow” did when she dropped it back in 2017, fans have been clamoring for Cardi B to follow-up her debut album, Invasion Of Privacy. The rapper has let fans know that she definitely has music in the works, but like most of the industry, had her plans disrupted by the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Since she’s mentioned COVID-19 as a reason to hold off on releasing new music, and the vaccines are slowly beginning rollout, perhaps there is hope that we’ll get a new Cadi album by the end of 2021.

And on Sunday she just added to that hope by letting fans know she’s going to be making a special announcement on Monday. Decked out in a very intentional lingerie set with a floor-length, denim trench coat, Cardi struck a dramatic pose on her staircase before sashaying her way down, and telling fans she’s going to let them know something about her plans very soon. “I got a announcement to make tomorrow,” she wrote in the text Tweet.

Here’s hoping we get news of that second album, or at least another massive single that makes Republicans cry.

Chloe Bailey has been coming into her own recently, between a particularly emotional performance of “Forgive Me,” to her jaw-dropping “Buss It” challenge, the young singer seems to be owning her body and self-confidence in her sexuality in a new way. A few more recent posts on her Instagram apparently had some internet commenters doing what they do, and shaming her for just living her life at home… during a pandemic. When was the last time most of us put on pants?

Regardless, Chloe took the comments to heart and even hopped on Instagram Live earlier today to address those who have a problem with her being too “sexual” and showing her body whenever she feels like it on her own personal social media. In her live, she talks about things that are so common for young girls to experience — feeling distress over something like stretch marks or feeling “fat” — and addressing the seemingly impossible task of achieving self-love and acceptance, a task that is even more difficult for young Black girls due to racist beauty standards endlessly perpetuated in American culture.

“For every woman out there, don’t change who you are to make society feel comfortable,” Chloe said during her Live. “And I’m telling myself that’s not what I’m going to do, even when I posted the video yesterday, I posted it because I was saging and doing Palo Santa and I was like, ‘Let’s spread positive vibes. I didn’t even really notice you guys were talking about my ass because I was like, ‘OK, I’m just walking in from one seconds, two seconds…’ And I feel like I’ve shown my ass more than I have with that like if you look at our performance videos, the last performance we had in December,” she added. “Like, I was just so excited and on stage, and just being myself, so… I don’t know.”

“I just felt it was important to address it, so you guys get to kind of know who I am inside,” she continued. “And it’s really hard for me to think of myself as a sexual being or an attractive being quite frankly. So, when I see all the uproar about my posts and stuff, I’m a bit confused. Like, I really don’t understand because I’ve never seen myself in that way.”

During the conversation, at some points Chloe gets so emotional about her experience she starts to cry, wiping away tears while she continues to talk. Check out snippets from her Live below.

As promised, Bad Bunny showed up at the Royal Rumble tonight to bring his own appreciation for wrestling to the event.

Before he actually got involved with the fight at the Royal Rumble, quite literally getting into the match with The Miz and John Morrison, the Latin pop superstar welcomed the crowd in by performing his single “Booker T,” which is an apt choice considering it’s named after a wrestling legend.

One of the tracks off his El Último Tour Del Mundo album — the third record he released late last year, following up March’s Yo Hago Lo Que Me Da La Gana and May’s Las Que No Iban A Salir — the video for the song featured none other than the wrestling legend Booker T himself. So it wasn’t necessarily a huge surprise that he was also onstage during Bad Bunny’s performance of the track at the Royal Rumble. Booker T has already been having a busy 2021, starring in a Bills hype video, and now collaborating not once but twice with one of the biggest musicians in the world.

Check out the performance video above, and check out clips of Bad Bunny getting into it with The Miz and Morrison below.

There is no event on the WWE calendar quite like the Royal Rumble, where the 30-man and 30-woman battle royale matches allow for filler spots that let WWE go chase cheap pops through nostalgia by bringing back former superstars and, on occasion, a celebrity appearance in the match.

On Sunday, we got both as Bad Bunny was on site for a performance at the WWE Performance Center, but got involved in the Rumble match after The Miz smashed his equipment along with tag team partner John Morrison. Bad Bunny stormed down the ramp and a giddy Miz and Morrison tried to goad him into entering the ring while referees attempted to stop him from entering. Damian Priest would take advantage of the distraction to eliminate both Miz and Morrison with a double clothesline over the top rope, which Bad Bunny followed by living out every wrestling fan’s dream and climbing to the top rope to do a diving crossbody onto Miz and Morrison.

In terms of celebrity spots, this one was pretty damn good. He doesn’t get a ton of height off the top ropes, but the commitment was there and he executes it to damn near perfection. He even pops up and gives a DX crotch chop to Miz and Morrison as they lay on the ground, which really tells you when Bad Bunny was at the height of his wrestling fandom.

We’ve learned a lot of strange things about the world during the Trump era, but up there as the weirdest is the existence of QAnon believers. It’s not just your typical disproven conspiracy theory; believers actually think the former president was battling an army of Satan-worshipping pedophilic cannibals. It’s so cuckoo not even Alex Jones is buying it. Among those claimed to be involved are various Democratic politicians as well as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.

No one was more shocked to hear that QAnon believers believed that Anderson Cooper was involved in a Satanic cabal than Anderson Cooper. The journalist recently spoke to one former QAnon-er, name of Jitarth Jadeja, who spent part of their interview personally apologizing for thinking he was a cannibal.

“I would like to apologize for that right now. I apologize for thinking you ate babies,” Jadeja told Cooper, uttering one of the most surreal sentences ever aired on a news network, which is saying something.

“You actually believed that I was drinking the blood of children,” a flummoxed Cooper asked him.

“Yes. I did,” Jadeja said, through a thick cloud of embarrassment.

When Cooper asked him if it was something about his personality or something that made him think he was capable of eating babies, Jadeja explained that “Q” — the secretive founder of the discredited theory, who had claimed to be a part of military intelligence — had mentioned him “very early on” in the theory’s life. He also told Cooper “some people thought you were a robot.” And he mentioned something about “fifth-dimensional interdimensional extraterrestrial bipedal bird aliens called ‘Blue Avians.’”

Well, at least Jadeja got better! In the meantime, QAnon has a supporter in Marjorie Taylor Greene, the new Georgia representative who’s already making life hell for her colleagues, some of whom she once said should be “executed.” Fun times!

You can watch their full exchange, complete with some heavy furrowed brow action from Cooper, on CNN.