Month: November 2021

Thanks to having enough money to build a penis-shaped rocket and fire it into space with William Shatner trapped inside, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos gets to rub elbows with Hollywood’s top stars. Such was the case on Saturday evening when the billionaire and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, got to make small talk with Leonardo DiCaprio at the LACMA Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles.

However, the DiCaprio moment was captured by Variety and quickly went viral thanks to Sanchez apparently swooning all over the Titanic star. After Barstool Sports retweeted the video and captioned it, “Leo is Mr. Steal Yo Girl,” the Amazon mogul caught wind of the moment and decided to have a little “fun” on Monday by basically inviting DiCaprio to get dropped off a cliff.

While posting a photo of himself leaning on a sign that reads, “Danger! Steep Cliff Fatal Drop,” Bezos wrote, “Leo, come over here, I want to show you something…” He also made sure to included the now-viral video just so there’s no confusion over what this friendly offer pertains to.

Despite DiCaprio being tagged in the post, the actor has yet to respond. Although, his Twitter account is almost exclusively reserved for promoting climate change initiatives. Also, we’re pretty sure this isn’t the first time a crazed billionaire has threatened Leo after his girlfriend made googly eyes at him. Just another day in the week.

(Via Jeff Bezos on Twitter)

It’s that most wonderful time of the year.

No, not the pre-holiday giddiness that strikes when a Mariah Carey jingle blasts through our radio speakers or the mouth-watering anticipation that comes with gorging ourselves on canned cranberry sauce and overdone turkey. No, that kind of wonderful is for the peasants, the people whose sweaty palms you’d shake on the street before jumping into your chauffeured black car and being offered hand sanitizer by Shiv Roy.

The kind of wonderful we’re talking about is the multiple-episodes-deep binge-watching point we’ve reached in HBO’s Succession — the rising climax peppered with Little Lord F***leroy conference-line quips and Logan Roy’s “everything’s coming up f*ck” recaps. It’s here, in Succession’s fourth episode, that the tragi-comedy about an aging patriarch clinging by his fingernails to the conservative conglomerate that is his life’s work transforms, into a tragi-romance about two company men on very different paths whose bro-ship might bring down a Waystar Royco empire.

We’re talking, of course, about Tom and Greg and that absolutely bonkers interaction between Tom and Greg. While Logan and Kendall made nice(-ish) over a billionaire’s clam-bake hosted on Adrien Brody’s private island, things at ATN took a turn for the worse. A still-spiraling Tom was pushed to the brink by the notion that the company’s org chart might suggest his own wife was pegging him via corporate governance. He was given two directives by Shiv in this episode — the first being to curb the editorial freedom of ATN newsboy and WhitePrideFM favorite Ravenhead for Logan’s gain in the ongoing fight for the company’s future. The second, infinitely easier task to accomplish for the self-proclaimed minion wrangler, had to do with his himbo boy-toy Greg, whose loyalty is currently being courted with courtesy pastries and rum-and-coke tea-times. Shiv and Logan need Greg to sign with their lawyers, accepting Waystar Royco’s legal protection in exchange for his commitment to playing on their side of the larger Kendall vs. family feud. And, though Tom is waist-deep in prison blogs detailing how to burp his fermented toilet wine for maximum taste, he’s still the man for the job.

What transpires is one of the strangest showdowns we’ve seen on this drama series to date — a back-and-forth flirt-a-thon filled with thinly-veiled threats, mock cock-fights, history lessons in Roman succession, and, perhaps, the most romantic thing we’ll ever hear any person say on this show.

But what does it all mean? We’ve dusted off our history books and refreshed our Wikipedia searches to find out.

Nero & Sporus

As he laments their separate futures — Greg will be living in a theme park castle of his choosing somewhere upstate while Tom will be “sucking off ogres for phone cards” in the dungeons — Shiv’s errand boy begins to spin an unsettling yarn about the fifth Emperor of Rome, Nero. Now, Nero suffered from some serious mommy issues — she schemed and murdered to put her son on the throne when he was just 17-years-old — and he had a lecherous reputation, mostly because he preferred to act in stage productions amongst the commoners rather than do any sort of real ruling. He had a fairly mild reign until he ordered the death of his mother and the slaying of his first wife so that he could remarry a woman named Poppaea Sabina, who he most likely sincerely loved. Unfortunately for Poppaea Sabina, Nero had a temper and during a marital spat, he kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach, effectively killing her and his unborn child. This is where Sporus comes in.

Not much is known about the young man’s life — some claim he was a slave boy, others a freedman — but we do know that he likely had beautiful, delicate features that closely resembled Sabina’s. Nero had Sporus castrated, dressed him in women’s clothing, and quickly married him — announcing the young man was now, essentially, his wife. He instructed everyone to refer to Sporus as “lady” and “empress” though he himself may have called him Sabina. It’s likely that Nero’s decision to marry Sporus was his own way of coping with the death of his previous spouse, though it could have also been a power play if Sporus, who looked so like the late royal, had some sort of claim to the throne.

Sadly, their twisted love affair would come to an end when Nero, out of favor with the Senate and the Roman public following a disastrous fire that wiped out much of the city, committed suicide, ushering in a period of violence and war that would come to be known as the Year of the Four Emperors. Four separate rulers vied for succession rights marking the empire’s first Civil War and the end of a dynasty.

So, heavy, foreshadowing stuff. But what might it mean for the bromance between Greg Sprinkles and our depressed shame sponge, Terminal Tom?

The power plays happening within Waystar Royco are clearly warping each of the Roy family members, but Shiv seems to be faring the worst. Once independent and fairly removed from her father’s stifling influence, she’s now transformed into just another in a long line of lackeys vying for a bit of praise from a man who doesn’t view any of his children as fit to inherit his greatness. Her obsession with pleasing her father and seeming worthy of being passed his company mantle is fraying the already-fragile tightrope her marriage rests upon. Near the end of season two, we saw Tom assert dominance by way of stolen yacht chicken and depressingly honest truth-telling — he’s not happy in their marriage, both the personal and professional one. He’s also not too pleased that he might one day soon be offered up as a sacrificial lamb should the FBI and DOJ come looking for a scapegoat to this whole cruises mess.

Tom’s head is on the literal chopping block, so, when he lovingly tells his former protege, “ I’d castrate you and marry you in a heartbeat” the sentiment is laced with frustration over their separate futures and anxiety over their flip-flopped positions on the food chain. Tom likely views Greg as a genuine friend, mostly because he knows that he controls that relationship — for now. Their bond is the polar opposite of the power struggle he experiences with Shiv and it’s likely something he’s come to count on amidst the corporate takeovers and Congressional hearings he’s had to suffer through. Tom isn’t suited for the corporatized gladiator-like arena that is Waystar Royco but he claws for a place amongst the lions anyway because greed and power are intoxicating drugs. He’s coming down from that high at the moment though thanks to an impending criminal trial which might be enough to push him over the edge. If Tom has cast himself as Nero in this debauched comeback story, and Greg his Sporus, what does that mean for Shiv and the rest of the Roys?

The assumption is that, when the time comes, Tom will fall on his sword for the good of the company and the good of the family. Most of his in-laws see him as a simple-minded, lovesick puppy willing to do Shiv’s bidding. It’s a narrative she’s helped push along with how she publicly humiliates him in front of her family members — whether it’s an intimate dinner at Roman’s place or a brunch-timed culling in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. But, what if Tom decides not to play the part he’s been assigned? What if, instead of resigning himself to dungeons and toilet wine, he instead kills Shiv (metaphorically) and kickstarts another civil war within the Roy empire? And what if Greg, who obviously can’t keep finding a home on both sides of the fence now that he’s legally locked in with Waystar Royco, ended up aligning himself with Tom against, not just Kendall, but Logan as well?

Either way, the pair is still doomed — but maybe they burn the company and the Roy family to the ground on their way out?

A handful of Republicans seem to not care so much about your children. How else could one explain the extreme reaction from a certain faction of GOP members to a Saturday tweet from beloved—and totally fictional—icon Big Bird that he had gotten his COVID vaccine?

One of the first to speak out was, of course, Ted Cruz, who described the tweet as “Government propaganda…for your 5 year old!”

And on Monday night, Fox News host Laura Ingraham decided to join Cruz in his fight against Muppets teaching kids about science by sharing an Adult Swim clip of a Claymation Big Bird falling over and vomiting, which she cheekily claimed was what happened to Big Bird after he got vaccinated.

Ingraham, who the Poynter Institute once kept a regularly updated “False Fact-Checks” on, seemed quite pleased with herself for such a knee-slapper of a segment even though, as The Recount noted, the segment “baselessly suggest[ed] that the COVID vaccine is harmful to children.” Sadly, that’s the message that many Fox News personalities—despite having a pretty rigid vaccination policy in their own workplace—are happily sending to parents who believe the “news” part in the Fox News name and watch the channel for just that.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs that in November 2021—nearly two years since COVID first became a headline and more than 750,000 people have died from it in the U.S. alone—an 8-foot puppet is having to be the voice of reason and counter the misinformation that’s being fed to Americans by both elected officials and individuals who’ve been given a platform to share the “news” of the day.

And before anyone uses the word “woke” in regards to the Sesame Workshop, it’s important to remember that the series has been setting the bar for having open and honest conversations with our children about everything from racism to breastfeeding and death to AIDS for nearly half-a-century now. Back in 1972, Big Bird learned about the importance of getting the measles vaccine:

You can watch a clip from Ingraham’s infuriating segment above.

(Via The Recount)

C’mon C’mon couldn’t be more different than Joaquin Phoenix’s last movie, Joker. For one thing, there’s no scene where he dances to “Rock and Roll Part 2” or shoots Robert De Niro in the head… probably. Also, C’mon C’mon isn’t a superhero blockbuster; it’s a black-and-white indie drama about a normal guy from writer and director Mike Mills, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of 20th Century Women and Beginners.

C’mon C’mon follows Johnny (Phoenix) and his young nephew (Woody Norman), who “forge a tenuous but transformational relationship when they are unexpectedly thrown together in this delicate and deeply moving story about the connections between adults and children, the past and the future,” according to A24’s official plot summary.

Mills told the Los Angeles Times that Phoenix didn’t want to follow up Joker with another dark and gritty role. ”That was a super conscious [choice],” Mills says. “Joaquin is smart. He knew what a 180 this would be, and that was on my side.” He also described their working relationship. “It was so collaborative and fun,” Mills said. “Joaquin just made it less predictable and less me trying to make sure I come off good. He’s really good at smelling that kind of virtue signaling in different ways.”

C’mon C’mon opens in select theaters on November 19.

Ever since the tragedy that took place at the Astroworld festival last weekend, Travis Scott has shared a couple of statements about what happened. In both of them, he understandably seemed to be in a down place emotionally. Now, Kim Kardashian, who is of course related to Kylie Jenner and therefore probably knows Scott better than most, has noted that Scott is indeed feeling some significant sadness right now.

In a pair of tweets, Kardashian wrote, “Absolutely heartbroken for the lives who were lost and anyone who was hurt at Astroworld. Just like all of you, our family is in shock by the tragedy. We are keeping all of the victims, families and loved ones impacted in our prayers for healing — as well as Travis who we know cares so much about his fans and is truly devastated.”

Meanwhile, Jenner gave a statement of her own, saying, “I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show and in no world would have continued filming or performing. I am sending my deepest condolences to all the families during this difficult time and will be praying for the healing of everyone who has been impacted.”

Tucker Carlson returned to the Fox News airwaves after his leaked rant and surprise surgery last week, and things appeared to be (warped) business as usual. The host attempted to mock Pete Buttigieg, and he welcomed QAnon cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has suddenly decided that she will fight for “real prison reform.” She took up this task after visiting Jan. 6 rioters in jail and subsequently claiming to find common ground between the GOP and Islam, and if all of that wasn’t nutty enough, consider that Tucker’s Patriot Purge “docuseries” claims that the insurrection was somehow a “false flag” that was staged by the U.S. government.

The false-flag claim runs counter to those “patriots” actions in attacking the U.S. Capitol, but common sense is not Tucker’s favorite thing to highlight. Rather, he decided to invite Greene on the show, and she alleged that it’s “patriot hunting season” on behalf of the U.S. government.

She ranted about how unfair it is that BLM protestors aren’t sitting in jail while the insurrectionists languish while awaiting trial. She detailed how upset she is after visiting the D.C. jail (where, she admits, “some of them did get involved in a riot”). She’s also upset that unvaccinated “patriots” aren’t allowed to mingle with other prisoners and go to chapel. “Even in jail, unvaccinated people are treated like 2nd-class citizens.”

Mediaite reveals that the pair also bashed Liz Cheney, who has pushed back at Tucker (without mentioning Tucker) over his false-flag nonsense:

Rep. Liz Cheney was another character that kept featuring in the interview, but not in person. She was openly derided by both Carlson and Taylor Greene, as she is sitting on the House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6th and has called out the “false flag” allegations presented in Tucker Carlsons Original series Patriot Purge, the trailer of which was received with great controversy due to its conspiratorial presentation.

Carlson played a clip of Cheney saying “And to call it a false flag operation, to spread those kinds of lies, is very dangerous,” then followed with “so the weapons of mass destruction lady is accusing other people of lying, got it.” He then cynically mimicked what he thought to be Cheney’s position, saying “We’ve got to get to the bottom of it, but how dare you ask questions about it because that’s un-American.”

With Marjorie Taylor Greene admitting that these “patriots” did in fact “riot,” it’s hard to comprehend how Tucker is trying to pull off the false-flag absurdity, too. That’s a lot of mental gymnastics.

(Via Mediaite)

Over the weekend, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) shared a violent and utterly bizarre video on social media that depicts himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “Any anime fans out there?” he tweeted, along with an altered version of the opening to popular Japanese series Attack on Titan, which was re-named to Attack on Immigrants.

Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, naturally, make cameos.

As the clip continues, controversial representative Gosar can be seen darting across a European-style city alongside House lawmakers Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Gosar — in the place of main character Eren Yaeger — circles around a giant with Ocasio-Cortez’s face photoshopped on before the anime character launches into the air and comes down, slicing the back of the giant’s neck, killing it.

Ocasio-Cortez, who feared she was going to be actually killed on January 6th, replied to the tweet on Monday. “So while I was en route to Glasgow, a creepy member I work with who fundraises for Neo-Nazi groups shared a fantasy video of him killing me And he’ll face no consequences bc @GOPLeader cheers him on with excuses. Fun Monday! Well, back to work bc institutions don’t protect woc,” she tweeted.

AOC called Gosar (who voted to overturn the 2020 election) a “collection of wet toothpicks” and added that “white supremacy is for extremely fragile people &sad men like him, whose self concept relies on the myth that he was born superior because deep down he knows he couldn’t open a pickle jar or read a whole book by himself.” She also listed the times when she’s been harassed by members of the GOP at work.

“Remember when Yoho accosted me on the the Capitol and called me a f—ing b—. Remember when Greene ran after me a few months ago screaming and reaching. Remember when she stalked my office the 1st time w/ insurrectionists & ppl locked inside. All at my job & nothing ever happens,” she wrote.

The video is still active on Gosar’s account, although with a warning from Twitter: “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

The music world has now had a few days to react and grieve to the Astroworld festival tragedy that took place last weekend, which ended up with eight deaths and many more injuries. Travis Scott has made multiple statements about the situation, and now, Drake, who joined Scott during the performance when the fatal crowd crush happened, has shared his first words about what happened.

On Instagram, Drake wrote, “I’ve spent the past few days trying to wrap my mind around this devastating tragedy. I hate resorting to this platform to express an emotion as delicate as grief but this is where I find myself. My heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering. I will continue to pray for all of them, and will be of service in any way I can. May God be with you all.”

Scott currently faces multiple lawsuits over the festival and Drake is named as a co-defendant in at least one of them. A statement accompanying the lawsuit in which Drake is named reads, ““There is no excuse for the events that unfolded at NRG stadium on Friday night. There is every indication that the performers, organizers, and venue were not only aware of the hectic crowd but also that injuries and potential deaths may have occurred. Still, they decided to put profits over their attendees and allowed the deadly show to go on.”

The Golden State Warriors are the NBA’s best team through the first three weeks of the season, entering Tuesday night atop the West with an 8-1 record. Despite the continued absence of Klay Thompson and James Wiseman, the Warriors have been on a tear to start the season, led as always by Stephen Curry.

With the reeling Atlanta Hawks coming into town, Golden State had a chance to get their ninth win in 10 games to open the year, but things got off to an inauspicious start, as, after scoring the teams first 10 points, Curry appeared to hurt his shoulder in the first quarter and had a heating pad on it as the Hawks opened up a 15-point lead in the early going.

However, Steph would eventually return to the floor and serve as the catalyst for what was at one point an extended 58-26 run by the Warriors to turn that around and take full command of the game. Curry was doing, well, Steph things, as once he got a few to fall it seemed as though he simply couldn’t miss, no matter how much attention the Hawks gave him on defense.

While the game was well in hand, Curry’s early absence meant he was still light enough on minutes to chase the 50-point benchmark well into the fourth quarter and got there with just over four minutes to play, to the delight of the home crowd.

Curry was pulled immediately after that, finishing with 50 points, 10 assists, and seven rebounds — the third Warrior ever with a 50-point, 10-assist game — in 35 minutes of action on 14-of-28 shooting, including 9-of-19 from three-point range in what became a 127-113 win. It was a sensational performance and an early signature scoring night for a player who, at the moment, has to be considered the MVP frontrunner 10 games into the season.

On Monday, conservatives piled upon Secretary of Transportation (and former presidential candidate) Pete Buttigieg for saying something that sounded, on its face, completely strange: He claimed that some roads in America were racist. His comments were, naturally, taken out of context, and he admittedly wasn’t speaking as clearly as he should have been. But the thing is: Buttigieg was completely right. He was referring to certain parkways in the New York City metro area that, when they were designed in the first half of the 20th century, were made to block transportation to low-income and non-white people. But that didn’t stop conspiracy theorist and dangerous zealot Tucker Carlson, from trying to own him with some ahistorical jabs.

Buttigieg’s comments came during a press conference, where Grio reporter April Ryan asked him how he and his team planned to “deconstruct the racism that was built into the roadways.”

Ryan didn’t specify what she was talking about, but Buttigieg picked up on it right away:

“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly Black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach—or it would have been—in New York, was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices … I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality.”

Buttigieg didn’t go into specifics, either, but while the GOP was making hay over his purportedly bizarre comments, others in the know caught on, too. He was referring to something made famous in The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, journalist Robert Caro’s seminal biography about the “master builder” of New York City. Published to great acclaim (and a Pulitzer) in 1974, the epic tome paints the notorious public servant (who was really an unelected despot-of-sorts) as an idealist who soured into a petty, bigoted monster who doomed his city, particularly its low income residents, to a special kind of hell.

Moses did do a lot for New York City. As park commissioner (one of 12 positions he held over his decades-long tenure), he built numerous beautiful parks, as well as beaches that stretch across the south of Long Island. He just didn’t want the poor or non-white to go to them. Had he simply made fares and tolls high, that wouldn’t have been enough. Fares and tolls could be lowered later, and the people Moses hated could one day travel freely to his precious property. So he came up with something closer to permanent: He built roads with bridges too low to carry buses, which would have been used by the city’s cash-strapped, including much of the city’s Black population.

So Buttigieg was right — he just didn’t speak as clearly as he could have, explaining to those not in the know that he was referring to one of countless harrowing details in a famous doorstop.

But sure enough, Tucker spent part of his show mocking Buttigieg for saying something that was historically accurate.

After referring to people who know history and may have even read a book that runs over 1200 pages “the dumbest people in the world,” he insisted that “roads can’t be racist,” because they’re “inanimate objects.” (Like nooses.) And he played dumb for his audience, knowing they’d like it.

“Here we have news, according to the Department of Transportation secretary, overpasses in New York were designed to keep buses of Black and Puerto Rican kids from getting to the beach,” Carlson told his audience. “And here’s the amazing part, those very same overpasses somehow allowed buses full of white kids to get through. How does that work?!”

It works in that it also targeted low-income white people, but Carlson was on a roll, saying that “thank heaven he’s got a trillion dollars to get to the bottom of the racist road problem.” He then let out his signature high-pitched laugh.

Then again, what do you expect from someone who slams Critical Race Theory even though he admits he doesn’t understand it? For everyone else, you can always crack open a book.

(Via The Daily Beast)