Month: February 2021

It’s been almost two weeks since Gina Carano was let go from The Mandalorian, Disney+’s first Star Wars show, on which she played badass Cara Dune. Given the nature of her firing — she’d caused controversy, in part, for a post deemed by many to be anti-Semitic — the MMA fighter-turned-actress was loath to grant just anybody her first full-on sit-down interview. But she soon found the right person: Ben Shapiro, the conservative commentator and editor emeritus of The Daily Wire, who had also recently offered her her first post-Disney job.

Over their hour-long chat — which had been teased Saturday but dropped Sunday — Carano had a lot of unkind words for her former employers, who she accused of “bullying.” But there was one former colleague she praised to the hilt: the show’s titular star Pedro Pascal.

“I adore Pedro. I adore him. I know he’s said and done some hurtful things. I don’t think posting anybody’s number on social media is okay, ” she said, referring to the actor sharing Senator Ted Cruz’s publicly listed office phone number on Twitter in early January. “But we had an agreement after we realized we were a little bit politically different. We had an agreement that, first and foremost, you’re a human being. And you’re my friend first.”

By defending Pascal, Carano was tacitly come out against some of her fans, who claimed a 2018 tweet in which he compared kids being locked in cages by the Trump administration to Jewish people in concentration camps. Carano’s offending post involved her making a comparison to conservatives, like her. While neither analogy is exactly ideal, they are not the same thing.

Carano and Shapiro also discussed said, and she claimed that she wasn’t trying to draw comparisons between being conservative and being Jewish during the Holocaust. She told Shapiro she is “so inspired by the gentle spirit of the Jewish people going through,” and that she wanted to “bring people together,” saying the post was “more about people tearing each other apart.”

She also said that being “cancelled,” as she put it, is not easy. “It’s maybe going to be one of the hardest things that you’ve ever been through,” she said. “But each day that goes by, you find your legs again, and you stop feeling sorry for yourself and you show up.” Meanwhile, given her new job, she’s going to be spending a lot more time with Ben Shapiro.

(Via EW and The Daily Beast)

Morgan Wallen’s sophomore album Dangerous: The Double Album has stayed atop the Billboard 200 for the past five weeks. While some might have thought that his racial slur incident would end that reign, they, apparently were wrong, as the album is number one for the sixth straight week. According to the Billboard 200 chart dated February 27, the singer’s second album posted a total of 93,000 album units for the week with 81,000 counted as streaming equivalent album units and 10,000 units pure album sales.

The feat makes Wallen the first male artist to tally six consecutive weeks atop the charts since Drake’s Views spent 13 straight weeks at No. 1. Wallen is the first country singer to net six total weeks at No. 1 since 1995 when Garth Brooks’ The Hits sat atop the charts for eight nonconsecutive weeks. Dangerous is also the first country album to spend its first six weeks at No. 1 since Garth Brooks’ 1992 release The Chase.

Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, The Weeknd lands two spots in the top-10 with After Hours and The Highlights, appearing at No. 2 and No. 10 respectively. Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia returned to the top 10 for the first time in 10 months thanks to the album’s deluxe reissue, which helped lift it from No. 21 to No. 7.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It looks like Rowdy Rebel and Bobby Shmurda have big plans for 2021. Of the bigger things on their docket is appearing at this year’s upcoming Summer Jam Festival. Whether it be a virtual performance or an in-person event, that banks on the status of the pandemic, but the upcoming performance should be one of the duo’s first together since the start of their prison sentence on conspiracy to commit murder and weapons charges, back in 2014. Rowdy was freed in December and it’s been reported that Bobby will get out on February 23.

“I normally wouldn’t speak on my brother’s behalf, but I know my brother ain’t gonna miss Summer Jam,” Rowdy proclaimed during an interview on Hot 97. “Some things are just mandatory, and Summer Jam is mandatory.” The announcement comes after Rowdy said Bobby’s release would happen in less than a week. “SIX DAYS LEFT […] Then all the joy gone wash away the pain, I promise you brother,” he wrote in an Instagram post from February 17, which falls in line with Bobby’s rumored February 23 release.

Rowdy kicked off his comeback with “Jesse Owens” while Bobby is sure to have plenty of new songs when he gets released.

You can watch the Hot 97 interview above.

DaBaby recently hopped on SpotEmGottem’s viral “Beat Box” with a braggadocios freestyle and an equally boastful video that found him showing off his own dance that accompanies the song’s TikTok trend. It was the mention of a young YouTube star on the song, however, that’s left listeners baffled as to why they were mentioned in the first place.

On the song, DaBaby raps, “Turn me up n**** / You gonna see why you a b*tch, Jojo Siwa.” The line confused many as the young influencer did not seem to do anything to warrant getting name-dropped in the song.

As a result, listeners took to Twitter to share their reactions to the song. One user joked that DaBaby may not fare well in a fight with Siwa because she stands two inches taller than him at 5’9.” Another called for a backstory on the diss because, just like the rest of us, they have no idea why DaBaby name-dropped the 17-year-old viral star.

The “Beat Box” freestyle is just one of a few contributions has made to the music world in 2021. The track joins his “Throat Baby” remix with BRS Kash and City Girls, his “Cry Baby” video with Megan Thee Stallion, and his “Masterpiece” single.

Scroll down for more reactions to the Jojo Siwa name-drop below.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Pete Davidson is more than comfortable making himself the butt of jokes, and that was no exception as he tackled Valentine’s Day during a pandemic on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update segment. The King Of Staten Island star used the time to riff on Britney Spears, announce some big life changes and roast his own tattoos.

“In some ways I like the pandemic Valentine’s because for the first time being alone wasn’t my fault,” Davidson said. I spent the night eating chocolates and watched a movie with my mom, which is why I’m officially moving out of the house.”

As Davidson explained, he watched Framing Britney Spears with his mom and it opened his eyes to conservatorships. And he realized, well, his mom has a pretty good case to do what Jamie Spears has done to his daughter.

“My mom has, like, way more of a case to take over my finances than, like, Britney’s dad ever did,” he said. “I was like ‘Wait, she can do that? And she hasn’t? Doesn’t she love me?’

“All Britney did was shave her head,” Davidson continued. “I got a life-sized tattoo of the Tootsie Pop owl.”

Co-host Colin Jost mentioned that Davidson is getting some of his tattoos removed, which opened him up to make a few cracks about the work he’s gotten inked on his body.

“I saw a picture of myself without a shirt and I looked like a toddler went to prison,” Davidson said, laughing. “I look like I’m carrying a shiv, but only to poke open a Capri Sun.”

You can watch the full segment above, and check out the rest of Weekend Update’s roast of Ted Cruz and his Cancun vacation here.

The college baseball season began this weekend for many teams and down in Boca Raton, the Florida Atlantic Owls began their season with a series against in-state foe UCF. On Saturday, freshman catcher Caleb Pendleton made his debut and stepped to the plate in the second inning with the bases loaded and no outs for his first collegiate at bat.

Pendleton would drive a ball deep over the left field fence for a grand slam in his first plate appearance, which typically means it would all be downhill from there. Except for the fact that FAU is apparently an offensive juggernaut, having won their opener 20-15 on Friday and loading the bases once again in the same inning when Pendleton once again strode to the plate. In a repeat of his first at-bat, the freshman smashed the ball over the left-center fence for the extremely rare two grand slams in one inning feat.

Not since Fernando Tatis (Sr.) did so for the Cardinals in April of 1999 has such a feat been managed in a high-level baseball game (at least to my knowledge) and Pendleton did so in his first two at bats ever at the college level. That is one helluva way to start your career and his second inning heroics helped the Owls to a 12-6 win and a 2-0 start to their season against a ranked opponent.

Donald Trump started his presidency an enemy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, then the two became fairly friendly as Trump tried to negotiate a nuclear weapons deal with the dictator. And now that Trump is no longer in office, we know that he once offered a pretty exclusive ride to Jong-un as a sign of friendship.

According to a report, Trump once offered up Air Force One to Jong-un in order to give him a ride back to North Korea while they were meeting at a summit in Vietnam. A BBC report detailed the odd offer from Trump, which came after talks broke down: Trump abruptly walked away from negotiating with Jong-un after conceding things that shocked National Security Advisors, who detailed the meetings to the BBC.

Despite the summit ending in failure for Trump, he apparently abruptly offered Jong-un a ride back to North Korea on Air Force One rather than take the train, as he had to get there.

Trump’s second summit with Kim Jong-un, in Hanoi, Vietnam, did not go to plan. As negotiations over North Korea’s nuclear programme broke down, Trump left abruptly, saying to the press: “Sometimes you just have to walk.”

But before he departed, the then US president did make one astonishing offer to Kim.

Matthew Pottinger, the top Asia expert on Trump’s National Security Council told us: “President Trump offered Kim a lift home on Air Force One. The president knew that Kim had arrived on a multi-day train ride through China into Hanoi and the president said: ‘I can get you home in two hours if you want.’ Kim declined.”

Offering a world leader that Trump called “rocket man” and threatened on Twitter just months earlier a ride back is weird enough, but it’s just a glimpse of the bizarre negotiating that Trump apparently did in the meetings with the Korean dictator. The report detailed John Bolton’s bewilderment at Trump conceding things to Jong-un while getting nothing in return, let alone offering one of the most famous planes in the world up to someone he failed to negotiate with in any meaningful way. The swift turnaround of the relationship between Trump and Jong-un will likely go down as one of the weirdest things about Trump’s presidency on the international level. But for Bolton, it was apparently a pretty simple thing to rationalize.

“Trump thought he had a new best friend,” Bolton told the BBC.

Bad Bunny is an undeniable star at this point in his career, and it’s resulted in some pretty cool opportunities for the singer that don’t always pertain to his chart-topping Latin records. The latest example of this came when he landed a role in a recent Saturday Night Live episode as a talking plant.

In the sketch that also featured Ego Nwodim, Pete Davidson, and Bridgerton star Regé-Jean Page, the group creates a song titled “Loco.” Basically, it’s about the odd feeling that nearly a year worth of social distancing in a pandemic has left them with.

Led by Nwodim, she took viewers on a journey through the odd post-quarantine interactions that take place with people, one of them being Regé-Jean. Davidson lays a verse that follows her sentiments and when the mic returns to Nwodim, she’s interrupted by her talking plant, played by Bad Bunny, who labels her as a “loco” for holding a conversation with him in the first place.

The sketch joined two performances Bad Bunny delivered on SNL, both being songs from his late-2020 album, El Ultimo Tour Del Mundo. The first was “La Noche De Anoche” with Rosalía, who performed beside the singer for the intimate set, and the second was a solo rendition of “Te Deseo Lo Mejor” which Bad Bunny performed with his WWE championship belt beside him.

You can watch the sketch above.

Saturday night saw a couple tight finishes in the NBA, including a wild swing in the closing seconds of the Warriors’ visit to Charlotte. With Stephen Curry out with an illness, Golden State found itself leading 100-98 with just under 10 seconds to play when Brad Wanamaker and LaMelo Ball got tied up to force a jump ball at midcourt.

On that jump ball, neither player could really control the tip and Draymond Green came charging in to poke it away. Gordon Hayward grabbed the ball, falling to the floor, and the referees determined he had been able to call timeout before Green dove on the floor to try and force a jump ball of his own. Green would get incensed at the officials for deeming that a timeout and not another tie up, picking up two quick technicals and getting tossed from the game.

After Terry Rozier sank both technical free throws to tie the game at 100-100, the Hornets got the ball in and turned to Rozier, who had 20 in the fourth quarter, for the game-winner, fading in the corner over two defenders.

After the game, Steve Kerr wasn’t too upset at the officials for the Green ejection, as he explained that Draymond certainly “crossed the line” with what he said to the officials to earn both of his technicals.

The pool report with crew chief Marc Davis confirmed that Green was ejected for his profanity laced tirade towards the refs, and explained that video review confirmed Hayward had the ball while the Hornets were calling for timeout before Green got to him.

It was a rather incredible ending to the game and Green’s frustration was understandable, given the Hornets had just been able to force a jump ball the possession before and he felt he had gotten there in time to do the same with Hayward. However, in a two-point game, no matter how frustrating the situation, going after the officials to the extent he did was always going to earn at least one technical foul and with Charlotte getting the ball you couldn’t afford to give them free points. For a Warriors team fighting for positioning in the West, seeing a win turn into a loss in that manner hurts.

Donald Trump’s exile to Florida continues weeks after he left the White House and Joe Biden became president. Saturday brought word that we might see him appear at a conservative convention later in the month, but his son, Donald Trump Jr., has done plenty of appearing in his father’s stead in increasingly bizarre videos he’s posting online.

While the elder Trump remains deplatformed on Twitter, Don Jr. is finding a number of ways to get his unhinged videos out to his supporters, with a weirdly frenetic energy that made him (and some illict drug references) trend on Twitter on Saturday morning when his latest video dropped on Sunday.

The video, which is about teachers unions and safety in reopening schools during a still-ongoing and extremely deadly pandemic.

“Whatever happened to follow the science,” Trump Jr. asks, shaking the camera and turning the wall of guns behind him into a Mr. Krabs meme of sorts. The video clip most people posted online doesn’t really go anywhere as far as rhetoric, but most people were extremely distracted by his Men In Black backdrop of firearms wall-mounted and the bizarre way the video is shot. While talking about teachers and schoolchildren.

Even Monica Lewinski was concerned.

The GI Joe-inspired font of the ‘Don Jr.’ in the video also got plenty of attention, too.

‘Amped as hell” seems to be Trump Jr.’s standard operating procedure these days, so don’t you can really only expect more videos with more and more guns in the background moving forward.