Month: August 2021

Lil Nas X’s performance at the BET Awards was one of the year’s most notable music moments, mainly because of his on-stage kiss with one of his male dancers. In a new interview with Out, he spoke about the moment, admitting that he was hesitant about doing it at first.

He said:

“Going to this place with all these overly masculine rappers and you’re finna be in there throwing a little ass every now and then, touching on dudes and hugging them and kissing them… at some points I was like, ‘Should I even do this? I don’t feel like they’re going to love me like that.’ […]

Mentally, it’s really draining and straining sometimes; The pressure of living your entire life knowing the identity of what a rapper is supposed to be, what rappers [are supposed to] do, and going out there in front of all these people, it’s terrifying. [The BET performance] was like jumping in a lake full of sharks and piranhas — and I’ve had to do that so many times within these last three years. Even coming out, that was terrifying. When I put on the costume of Nicki [Minaj, for Halloween]: terrifying.”

He also spoke about his experience with homosexuality as a kid, saying, “Growing up in the Atlanta area, I [saw] a lot of microaggressions towards homosexuality. Little things like going into an IHOP and hearing one of your family members say, ‘Look at those f****ts’ to two people eating, or even just a small [statement like], ‘Boys don’t cry.’ Little sh*t like living in the hood, not being super into sports, and then having to go outside and pretend that I was.”

Read the full feature here.

After appearing in hit (The Mummy trilogy) after hit (George of the Jungle) after hit (Bedazzled) after weirdo cult hit (Monkeybone) in the 1990s and 2000s, Brendan Fraser’s career slowed down. He was in the occasional box office success, like Journey to the Center of the Earth and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but he largely vanished from the public eye due to numerous factors, including, he believes, being backlisted from the industry after speaking out about an alleged sexual assault by producer Philip Berk.

Fraser went five years, from 2014 to 2019, without appearing in a film, but like Matthew McConaughey before him, the renaissance is on.

It began with Showtime’s The Affair. Then came FX’s The Trust (he wore a cowboy hat) and a lead role on the DC Universe-turned-HBO Max series Doom Patrol. He has since been cast in three movies from Oscar-nominated filmmakers: Steven Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move, where he gives a scene-stealing performance; Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, along with Hong Chau; and as Deadline reported on Tuesday, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. (Maybe Marty doesn’t like Marvel movies because he’s a DC stan.)

[Killers of the Flower Moon] from Apple TV + and Paramount Pictures is a crime drama, based on the bestselling book of the same name by David Grann. It’s set in 1920s Oklahoma and will examine the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. Fraser will appear alongside Oscar winners Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, Emmy nominated Jesse Plemons, and more. We hear that he will play lawyer WS Hamilton.

This is like Quentin Tarantino putting John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, hopefully minus everything that came after for Travolta. Anyway, Fraser being in Scorsese’s $200-plus million film was celebrated by everyone who’s watched The Mummy on cable a million times, which, honestly, should be everybody.

After the pandemic disrupted their in-house performances, NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series pivoted to at-home sets. Instead of bringing musicians to their Washington, DC office, bands were asked to recorded music from the comfort and safety of their own homes. The at-home tiny desk concerts allow for artistic freedom with just one requirement: A tiny desk needs to be somewhere in sight.

Dinosaur Jr. is the latest band to bring their music to the at-home concert series, and they were creative when it came to the required tiny desk. Recording the performance at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, Dinosaur Jr. placed a child-size desk and chair at center stage. They filled the remainder of the area with various props from past album cycles like dinosaur balloons, action figures, stuffed animals, and fake plastic food.

The 20-minute on-stage set went off without a hitch and brief pauses between each track allowed for playful on-stage banter. Bassist Lou Barlow noted after delivering their performance-opening track “I Ain’t” that the song’s backup vocals were courtesy of Kurt Vile, who produced their recent Sweep It Into Space LP. The band then moved into a rendition of their song “Garden” before throwing it back with their hit 1994 song “Feel The Pain.”

Watch Dinosaur Jr.’s Tiny Desk concert above.

Sweep It Into Space is out now via Jagjaguwar. Get it here.

After getting hit with its second COVID shutdown while filming in the UK, the hit Netflix series Bridgerton is back up and running (for now), and in a bit of good news, the production has taken the delays in stride. So far, there’s been no talk of pushing back the show’s season two release date, which is set for some time in 2022. Showrunner Chris Van Dusen has confirmed that things are still moving smoothly on the next Bridgerton chapter despite two COVID cases, which were handled quickly as the affected parties went into isolation. Via Variety:

“We are back under way. We had to delay because of COVID, but we’re back in it,” said the showrunner, who is currently shuttling back and forth between Los Angeles and the London-based set. “Right now I’m in post, editing our first couple episodes, which are looking great.”

Bridgerton became a massive hit for Netflix, and don’t even think of crediting the pandemic. The show premiered in January 2021 before COVID had become a global health criss. No, Bridgerton was buoyed by fans of the romance novel series, and the fan-favorite portrayal of The Duke by Regé-Jean Page. Of course, Bridgerton fans intensely pining over Page proved to be a double-edged sword when it was revealed that the actor would not be returning for season two.

Despite the fact that Page’s departure makes sense as the novels switched focus to new characters, and The Duke’s story ended in the first season, fans of the series were outraged that the actor was leaving. However, true Bridgerton readers know there’s a lot more story left to come, but it’ll be interesting to see if Netflix can still pull in the same numbers without the smoldering good looks of Page to lure them in.

(Via Variety)

After years of rumors that the two would join forces at some point, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony are going to be teammates. Two of the last men standing from the legendary 2003 NBA Draft will look to win a championship together in Los Angeles, as Melo will leave Portland to sign a 1-year deal (one would expect to be a minimum) with the Lakers.

The deal was first reported by Woj, with Melo quickly confirming with a clever Twitter post.

Beyond the obvious connection between Anthony and James, the Lakers needed to fill out their wing rotation and Melo has become a very good off-ball wing in Portland, where he shot 40.9 percent from three a year ago. Adding shooters is the name of the game for the Lakers, and Anthony fits the bill in his current state.

Joining Anthony in L.A. will also be Malik Monk on a minimum deal as he looks to prove his value to winning organizations and show that his shooting uptick last year in Charlotte was for real.

The Lakers have been very busy filling out the roster since free agency started and have now added Wayne Ellington, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard, Kent Bazemore, Monk, and Anthony to their group. Many have gotten a laugh out of the Lakers getting the band back together with former Lakers and how old this team will be, but a lot of the signings make sense and when you have so many minimums needed to fill, older veterans who have ties to L.A. is a pretty sure way to get guys on board.

Like the Hatfields and McCoys, the Montagues and Capulets, and the Elton Johns and Madonnas, the Trumps and the McCains just cannot get along. While the family feuding seems to have begun with Donald “I Like People Who Weren’t Captured” Trump and John McCain, it’s now found its way into extended branches of the family tree.

On Monday, Mary Trump—a psychologist, author, and estranged niece of Donald—was a guest on The View, where she talked about the January 6th insurrection on the Capitol and how her uncle left the Republican party in shambles. While Ms. Trump had clearly hoped that Meghan McCain, who is in her final week of residency as one of the talk show’s co-hosts, would partake in the discussion, she turned out to be a no-show. Which Trump noticed, and remarked on, when she told McCain’s colleague Sunny Hostin that, “This is an incredibly powerful platform and I think the more we talk openly about these things — it’s a shame that your colleague didn’t have the courage to come on and have this conversation with me — but I appreciate that you were all willing to take up these very difficult subjects because racism in my view is at the heart of everything that’s wrong in 21st century America.”

Meghan got the message… and she didn’t like it.

Later that day, she had a message of her own for Mary, which she decided to share with the world via Twitter:

There is no “good” Trump family member to me.

Continue to wish they would all just leave me and my entire family the f*ck alone.

The back-and-forth didn’t end there though, as Mary had her own response for Meghan:

I have plenty of respect for Meghan’s parents. It’s too bad she can’t take responsibility for her own actions. That’s the problem with entitlement—it’s dangerous. And so is our failure to hold powerful people accountable.

Something tells us Meghan won’t let it end there.

Parenting is the most important job that most people will ever have in life. Your decisions as a parent will be some of the most important determining factors in whether your child becomes a happy and productive adult or not. It’s a huge responsibility.

Parenting is a difficult and important undertaking, but many parents simply repeat the same strategies used by their parents. How often do we hear people rationalize their decisions by saying, “That’s what my parents did and I came out ok.”

This approach to raising children negates the fact that with every generation there are countless studies done on child development, many of which run counter to popular parenting wisdom from the past.

Dr. Kristyn Sommer, who has a PhD in child development, has received a lot of attention on social media because of her dedication to teaching “evidence-based parenting.” This expertise has made her an advocate for strategies that run counter to conventional parenting wisdom and have stirred up a bit of controversy.

Here are five TikTok videos where Sommer shares some of her evidence-based parenting strategies.

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Three Things I Do Differently as a Mum with a PhD in Child Development

In Dr. Sommer’s first video where she references her degree she admits she refuses to sleep train, co-sleeps with her daughter, and never calls her “naughty” or “bad.” She delves deeper into her thoughts on discipline in the next video.

How To Discipline Your Child So They Actually Learn

Dr. Sommer uses positive reinforcement to discipline her child and as she said in the previous video, avoids the use of terms such as “naughty” or “bad.” If her daughter is doing something wrong she asks her to contemplate whether she’s making a good or a bad decision.

How to Handle Tantrums

Most people tend to think of a tantrum as naughty behavior. However, they are actually a combination of a bunch of little stresses that the child has experienced throughout the day that eventually overwhelm them. Once they hit the tipping point, all of their big feelings bubble up to the surface, resulting in a healthy expression of emotion.

Should You Spank Your Child?

Dr. Sommer is passionately against “spanking, corporal punishment, physical punishment, what ever you want to call it.” She says it needs to stop because it has little effect on behavior and can lead to antisocial tendencies in the future.

She Doesn’t Teach ABCs and 1,2,3s

Dr. Sommer isn’t worried about teaching her child her toddler alphabet or how to count. She says that it “doesn’t really help them with anything” but they should spend that time playing because that’s where they learn best.

While there are still a few significant NBA free agents still deciding on their futures, most of the moves that will come out over the next week are smaller deals as teams look to add depth and fill out rotations.

Few role players had more teams vying for them this summer than Patty Mills, as the sharpshooting Australian guard was departing San Antonio for a role on a contender, and just about every top team was linked to him in recent days. The Lakers, Warriors, and Nets interest were all well known, with others surely checking in on whether they could make a run at the former NBA champion who is a career 38.8 percent three-point shooter.

In the end, Mills chose to go East and join the Nets on a 2-year, $12 million deal that will take up the taxpayer mid-level in Brooklyn and provide them with the backup scoring guard they were about to lose with Spencer Dinwiddie on his way out.

It’s a really good get for the Nets as it all but rounds out a very good guard rotation and gives them a significant upgrade over what they had a year ago taking up significant minutes when Kyrie Irving and James Harden were injured. The hope, of course, is that Mills is playing a smaller reserve role, but he is terrific insurance that can take on a much bigger minutes load should one of their stars be out.

For the other teams that were in the Mills hunt, they have to shift gears and figure out someone else to spend their $5.9 million taxpayer mid-level on, with no one on the market quite as appealing for teams wanting shooting and secondary ball-handling as Mills.

Robin Lopez hit the free agent market after a productive season with the Washington Wizards, largely in a role where he came off the bench and gave the team a veteran presence on its second unit. On Tuesday, we learned where Lopez is headed to next, and really, he could not be heading to a better spot.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the NBA’s most well-documented lover of all things Disney, will sign a contract with the Orlando Magic. It’s not a long-term deal, as Lopez is reportedly set to make $5 million for the 2021-22 season before hitting unrestricted free agency again.

Going through all the times that Lopez has expressed his love of Disney would take 10,000 or so words. Instead, here is a collection of some of the high points, like the time he used Goofy in a special Disney edition of the board game Clue…

…or the time he got his hands on the jacket Dick Van Dyke wore in Mary Poppins.

Back in 2019, Lopez famously (and unknowingly) purchased rare items that were stolen from Disney, and more recently, he’s used his Twitter account to get into debates about Disney movies.

As for his favorite moment in a Disney park, Lopez and his twin brother, Brook, appeared in a video to lay this all out — Robin told a story about going to Animal Kingdom and riding a roller coaster a lot.

Anyway, the basketball fit is a good one — the Magic have a ton of young dudes, and Lopez gives them a veteran frontcourt presence to help shepherd guys like Wendell Carter Jr and Chuma Okeke. But ultimately, anything that gets Robin Lopez to Disney more frequently is something we can get behind 100 percent.

Taylor Swift has been one of the most consistently successful pop stars of the past couple decades, and the charts have always reflected that. Now, Swift finds herself in some exclusive and historic territory thanks to the long-running success her albums have achieved.

Pop Crave reports that five of her albums have charted for at least 150 weeks (nearly three years) each on the Billboard 200. She’s the only female artist to pull that off in the history of the chart.

As Billboard notes, 1989 has spent 349 weeks on the Billboard 200 (as of the chart dated August 7), while her other albums with at least 150 weeks on the chart are Taylor Swift (275 weeks), Fearless (261 weeks), Red (170 weeks), and Reputation (150 weeks). As for her other charting releases, Speak Now is at 139 weeks, Lover is at 101 weeks, Folklore is at 53 weeks, The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection EP is at 43 weeks, Evermore is at 33 weeks, the Beautiful Eyes EP is at 21 weeks, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is at 16 weeks, and Speak Now: World Tour Live CD + DVD is at 11 weeks.

It’s not just the charts the recognize her importance: Recently, collaborator Jack Antonoff said of Swift’s influence, “I’ve seen her change the music industry first-hand. She’s amazing for being a champion and making things better for the generations to come. She has a long history of rightly exposing some real darkness in the music industry. And I’m personally thankful for it, outside of our friendship and working relationship, just as an artist.”