Month: May 2021

Last November, Conan O’Brien revealed that Conan, the late night TBS talk show that followed his abbreviated stint hosting The Tonight Show, would be coming to an end after 11 seasons. We were bound to hear from him again, and we don’t mean a postcard: He was simply moving to HBO Max for a weekly, not a nightly program. And though we knew it was ending some time early summer, we now have a date.

On Monday night’s show, the Simpsons writer-turned-longtime TV host revealed Conan will conclude on June 24. That’s not that far from now, but the team is planning to make the most of it. The next several weeks will see a number of special guests, as well as favorite clips from the decade-plus of the show’s run.

Back when O’Brien announced the show’s end, he did so via a jokey statement. “In 1993 Johnny Carson gave me the best advice of my career: ‘As soon as possible, get to a streaming platform,’” he wrote. “I’m thrilled that I get to continue doing whatever the hell it is I do on HBO Max, and I look forward to a free subscription.”

The HBO Max show, which has yet to reveal a name or a release date, will be O’Brien’s fourth such program. He started Late Night with Conan O’Brien in 1993, nearly 30 years ago. He ended it in 2009, then took over The Tonight Show from Jay Leno…who then infamously came back some six months later, orphaning O’Brien. He later wound up with Conan, and the rest is history — and, now, future.

Russell Westbrook’s triple-doubles have long been a topic of conversation, from when he first averaged a triple-double for a season en route to an MVP award in 2017 to now when it’s become a debate over just how impressive his historic production is.

Westbrook has shrugged off questions about his triple-doubles as he closes in on Oscar Robertson’s all-time record, saying that if everyone could do it they would and noting that he simply tries to compete hard every night and do whatever he can. Part of the reason for the debate over his numbers is some believing he doesn’t impact winning as much as other stars, but as the Wizards have gone on a tear to end the season, thanks in large part to his productivity, he’s offering ample pushback of that argument.

On Monday, Westbrook had another monster outing in a 154-141 win over the Pacers that pulled Washington within a half game of Indiana for ninth in the East and just a game and a half back of Charlotte for 8th. For the second time in his career, Russell Westbrook had a 20-assist and 20-rebound performance, as he went off for 14 points, 21 rebounds, and 24 assists, becoming the first player to ever have two such games in NBA history — Wilt Chamberlain did it once. The 24 assists and 21 rebounds both matched career-high marks for Westbrook, as he is enjoying some of his best basketball right now in Washington.

For all the fatigue over the discussion of Westbrook piling up the stats, it shouldn’t be overlooked that this is an incredible feat, as any time you can do something Wilt never did it means you have done something truly preposterous. As a whole, the Wizards had an historic evening, putting up 154 points and racking up fifty (50) assists in the game, becoming the first team to do so in more than 30 years.

Westbrook and Bradley Beal (who had 26/6/5 in the win) have this Washington squad rolling and as the play-in approaches, they look like one of the East’s more dangerous teams which is a wild thing to say after how they started the season.

In the wake of the disastrous, deadly end of Donald Trump’s presidency, Republicans sprang into action: They put all their muscle into making fake controversies out of children’s entertainment. Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, Pepé Le Pew, the Muppets — conservatives claimed they were all being “canceled.” They weren’t. But it made for good fake outrage to deflect from other real controversies, such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and other GOP lawmakers inspiring Trump loyalists to storm the Capitol.

On Monday, that brief, strange period made a comeback. Fox News spent a good chunk of the day trying to gin up controversy over Snow White. Progressives, they claimed, had come for the Disney version of the Grimm fairy tale. Specifically they were coming for a newly revamped version of “Snow White’s Scary Adventures,” the ride version of the company’s maiden animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, claiming that Prince Charming’s life-reaffirming kiss of the sleeping heroine is a violation of her consent. Ted Cruz tweeted about it. Tomi Lahren came to Snow White’s defense. Liberals, they said, had gone too far.

The problem? It was based on almost nothing at all.

As per The Daily Beast, the entire controversy was based on a single paragraph in a single travel magazine. In a mostly positive review of Disneyland’s reopened park published in SFGate, the San Francisco Chronicle’s online travel publication, the journalist briefly touched on the new version of the classic ride, which features a more organic story but also some old-timey politics.

“Haven’t we already agreed that consent in early Disney movies is a major issue?” the writer wrote. “That teaching kids that kissing, when it hasn’t been established if both parties are willing to engage, is not OK?”

No one else had picked this up. But Fox News did. And soon the conservative calvary had rushed in, defending the ride from a furor that was only happening on one side. And when social media found out, they pointed out the fake outrage.

But by the end of the day, Fox News had handed the reins to Tucker Carlson. And the network’s focus moved away from fake Snow White news to telling people not to get a vaccine that could save millions.

And thus the circle of life over at Fox News continued.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Portland Trail Blazers forward Carmelo Anthony is firmly in the twilight stage of his NBA career, providing scoring off the bench and filling a role in a highly effective manner. Anthony was a star-level player for a long, long time, however, and he is working his way up the NBA’s all-time scoring list as a result. In fact, Anthony entered Monday night’s game against the Atlanta Hawks just nine points shy of cracking the top ten and, in the second quarter, he surpassed Elvin Hayes on a trademark pull-up jumper.

Anthony scored 12 points in his first 11 minutes of action against the Hawks, connecting four of his six shot attempts. With this jumper, Anthony reached 27,316 career points in his 18-season career, and his career scoring average (23.0 points per game) speaks for itself as one of the game’s best scorers in history.

It takes a tremendous amount of talent and consistency to reach the top ten in any all-time statistic, and Anthony’s career will unquestionably be honored with a Hall of Fame induction when he is eligible after retirement. The 10-time All-Star forward’s next task on the all-time list is attempting to pass Moses Malone, who has 27,409 points, and there is a chance that could happen before the end of the 2020-21 season.

Some 75 years ago, in bombed-out Frankfurt, Germany, a little girl named Marlene Mahta received a sign of hope in the midst of squalor, homelessness and starvation. A CARE Package containing soap, milk powder, flour, blankets and other necessities provided a lifeline through the contributions of average American families. There were even luxuries like chocolate bars.

World War II may have ended, but its devastation lingered. Between 35 and 60 million people died. Whole cities had been destroyed, the countryside was charred and burned, and at least 60 million European civilians had been made homeless. Hunger remained an issue for many families for years to come. In the face of this devastation, 22 American organizations decided to come together and do something about it: creating CARE Packages for survivors.

“What affected me… was hearing that these were gifts from average American people,” remembers Mahta, who, in those desperate days, found herself picking through garbage cans to find leftover field rations and MREs to eat. Inspired by the unexpected kindness, Mahta eventually learned English and emigrated to the U.S.

“I wanted to be like those wonderful, generous people,” she says.

The postwar Marshall Plan era was a time of “great moral clarity,” says Michelle Nunn, CEO of CARE, the global anti-poverty organization that emerged from those simple beginnings. “The CARE Package itself – in its simplicity and directness – continues to guide CARE’s operational faith in the enduring power of local leadership – of simply giving people the opportunity to support their families and then their communities.”

Each CARE Package contained rations that had once been reserved for soldiers, but were now being redirected to civilians who had suffered as a result of the conflict. The packages cost $10 to send, and they were guaranteed to arrive at their destination within four months.

Thousands of Americans, including President Harry S. Truman, got involved, and on May 11, 1946, the first 15,000 packages were sent to Le Havre in France, a port badly battered during the war.

Thousands of additional CARE Packages soon followed. At first packages were sent to specific recipients, but over time donations came in for anyone in need. When war rations ran out American companies began donating food. Later, carpentry tools, blankets, clothes, books, school supplies, and medicine were included.

Before long, the CARE Packages were going to other communities in need around the world, including Asia and Latin America. Ultimately, CARE delivered packages to 100 million families around the world.

The original CARE Packages were phased out in the late 1960s, though they were revived when specific needs arose, such as when former Soviet Union republics needed relief, or after the Bosnian War. Meanwhile, CARE transformed. Now, instead of physical boxes, it invests in programs for sustainable change, such as setting up nutrition centers, Village Savings and Loan Associations, educational programs, agroforestry initiatives, and much more.

But, with a pandemic ravaging populations around the world, CARE is bringing back its original CARE packages to support the critical basic needs of our global neighbors. And for the first time, they’re also delivering CARE packages here at home in the United States to communities in need.

Community leaders like Janice Dixon are on the front lines of that effort. Dixon, president and CEO of Community Outreach in Action in Jonesboro, Ga., now sends up to 80 CARE packages each week to those in need due to COVID-19. Food pantries have been available, she notes, but they’ve been difficult to access for those without cars, and public transportation is spotty in suburban Atlanta.

“My phone has been ringing off the hook,” says Dixon. For example, one of those calls was from a senior diabetic, she remembers, who faced an impossible choice, but was able to purchase medicine because food was being provided by CARE.

Today, CARE is sending new packages with financial support and messages of hope to frontline medical workers, caregivers, essential workers, and individuals in need in more than 60 countries, including the U.S. Anyone can now go to carepackage.org to send targeted help around the world. Packages focus on helping vaccines reach people more quickly, tackling food insecurity, educational disparities, global poverty, and domestic violence, as well as providing hygiene kits to those in need.

From the very beginning, CARE received the support of presidents, with Hollywood luminaries like Rita Hayworth and Ingrid Bergman also adding their voices. At An Evening With CARE, happening this Tuesday, May 11, notable names will turn out again as the organization celebrates the 75th Anniversary of the CARE Package and the exciting, meaningful work that lies ahead. The event will be hosted by Whoopi Goldberg and attended by former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Jimmy Carter, as well as Angela Merkel, Iman, Jewel, Michelle Williams, Katherine McPhee-Foster, Betty Who and others. Please RSVP now for this can’t-miss opportunity.

Back in 2017, Michelle Rodriguez threatened to quit the Fast and/or Furious series until they finally hired a female writer. Turns out she’s always kept the franchise in check. A new oral history of the films with Entertainment Weekly contains lots of nuggets, including Vin Diesel saying Dominic’s relationship with Rodriguez’s Letty is “potentially the biggest love story” in cinema history. But there’s also the actress saying that she almost never took the role in the first place until the writers made it less sexist.

Originally Letty wasn’t the badass that makes her and Dominic one of the screen’s great power couples. Costar Jordana Brewster said that when Michelle read the screenplay for the 2001 original, “she was like, ‘No, I’m not playing that.’ And then she changed it completely. It went from a trophy girlfriend to this really layered character.”

For Rodriguez, the script just wasn’t realistic. (Mind you, the franchise didn’t get truly ridiculous until Fast Five.) So she pushed for rewrites.

“It was a reality check for them to realize that the streets don’t work like that,” Rodriguez said. She elaborated:

“You don’t just get with a guy because he’s hot. There’s a hierarchy there. Can that hot guy get beat up by who you’re dating? If he can, then you don’t date him, because why would you want to lose the hierarchy? In order to keep it real, I had to school them: ‘I know you guys like Hollywood and all that, but if you want it to be realistic, this is how it really works, and I’m not going to be a slut in front of millions of people, so you’re going to lose me if you don’t change this.’ And they figured it out.”

Producer Neal H. Moritz claims they were happy for the advice. “It was nice to have that female perspective and really try and dive deep,” he said. “We wanted everybody to be empowered, whether you were white, Black, Hispanic, male, female, didn’t matter to us.”

Rodriguez even had to hustle to get some action. “I remember fighting to get a moment where Letty gets into a fight herself,” she said, “because I felt like you don’t sit around and let your boys throw down without getting your hands dirty.”

And that’s why Letty is Letty.

(Via EW)

It is exceedingly rare to see coaches in professional sports leave for the college ranks for the same job title, but with two weeks left until the start of the WNBA season, that’s exactly what happened with Atlanta Dream head coach Nicki Collen.

Collen, who took over as head coach in Atlanta in 2018, was announced as the new head coach at Baylor after Kim Mulkey left for the LSU job.

The news came as a shock to everyone, including to players of the Dream, as Collen has been running Atlanta’s training camp and even met with the media on Monday to talk about the upcoming season.

Folks from around the WNBA community were stunned by the news and had some very funny responses to Collen just dipping out right before the start of the season.

The Baylor job is, without a doubt, one of the best in all of college basketball and for Collen it is likely a spot that provides her more job security long-term. Still, it is pretty wild to see someone leave an active head coaching job at the professional level for a college job, and the Dream are left with more questions than answers with less than two weeks until the start of the regular season. We’ll find out soon who they elevate to head coach, but if nothing else this provides a whole new layer of drama to the WNBA season.

There are countless shameless conservative commentators, but few are willing to go to the lengths of Dinesh D’Souza. The pundit, propagandist, and Trump-pardoned ex-felon loves to say things so patently ludicrous it sometimes seems like his shtick is an elaborate Andy Kaufman-esque joke — a parody of Republican crapulence. Whatever the case, it’s clear he thinks his fans will believe absolutely anything, no matter how inane. Back in February, he launched a defense of the failed MAGA coup of January 6 that was dumb even for such defenses.

Now he’s back with an even dumber attempted vindication. He posted a picture of one of the more famous insurrectionists — the guy who stole the Speaker of the House lectern, but not before posing for a clean picture while smiling and waving, ensuring the feds could easily track him down. (He turned out to be a Florida Man, who was turned in by another Florida Man.) It’s the closest thing to a fun and fancy free image from the day, which resulted in five deaths.

“Does this LOOK like an insurrection? A riot? A coup attempt?” he wrote, adding, “If it doesn’t walk like a duck or talk like a duck then it probably isn’t a duck.”

But even with the man’s big smile, the image D’Souza chose was clearly of a duck. And D’Souza’s tweet was instantly called out for its failed attempt at gaslighting.

Others showed some other, more obviously damning images.

Others poked holes in his logic (or lack thereof).

Others reminded D’Souza that people actually died.

And others reminded him that he himself is a former felon, pardoned by a possible future felon.

D’Souza is far from the first Republican to try and downplay the violence of January 6. Tucker Carlson tried to do the same thing last month. But at least Carlson put some effort into the ruse. D’Souza, as usual, isn’t even trying.

On Monday, one of the richest couples in the world announced they were parting ways: Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce after 27 years together. It’s the end for a pair who have spent the last 20-plus years working together to make the world a better place; in 2000, they founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and since then they’ve used a vast endowment of some $50 billion to influence such areas as global health and early childhood education. (Sometimes he does some solo do-goodery.)

But, Gates wrote in a tweet, the two will part ways, at least as a private couple, if not business partners. “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” Gates wrote. The Microsoft co-founder — and, as per Forbes, the fourth richest person on the planet, with an estimated $124 billion in wealth — boasted about how they had “built a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives.” Alas, he said they “no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.”

It’s sad news, and it throws the future of their foundation into some jeopardy: As per The New York Times, much of their vast fortune, which will be split in some fashion, has yet to be moved into their charitable company.

Gates asked the world to grant them “space for privacy.” But people couldn’t resist some Microsoft or Microsoft-related jokes.

Some made jokes about Bill Gates bro-ing down with a certain other divorced billionaire.

And others imagined Melinda hitting the town with other rich divorcees.

(Via NYT)

While WandaVision ended up being an unpredictable delight that left Marvel fans spinning out theories, week after week, the show pulled an unexpected twist by not having a Doctor Strange cameo. From the jump, the show was promoted as a lead-in to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so it was assumed that the Sorcerer Supreme could pop up at some point, even if it was nothing more than a brief end-credits scene. Instead, he was nowhere to be found. Of course, this could’ve been another case of fans getting ahead of themselves, but in a new interview, Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige has confirmed that Benedict Cumberbatch was signed on to make an appearance, but the cameo was nixed at the last minute to keep the focus on Wanda. Via Rolling Stone:

“Some people might say, ‘Oh, it would’ve been so cool to see Dr. Strange,’” says Feige. “But it would have taken away from Wanda, which is what we didn’t want to do. We didn’t want the end of the show to be commoditized to go to the next movie — here’s the white guy, ‘Let me show you how power works.’”

Here’s where Marvel’s decision gets even… stranger. According to head writer Jac Schaeffer, WandaVision‘s commercials were supposed to be “messages from Strange to Wanda,” and at one point, Cumberbatch was actually going to be in one of the ads. Ultimately, Strange was cut, but the dark, creepy ads were left in, which probably explains why some of them still don’t make a lick of sense. A claymation child literally died trying to eat yogurt. What the heck, Marvel?

(Via Rolling Stone)