Month: January 2022

On Saturday, while the Northeast was buried under snow, a tired-looking former president was in Texas babbling to a large crowd about his problems. Just over a year ago, Donald Trump’s one-term presidency came to a disgraceful end, with him whipping-up an already rowdy crowd, their heads filled with lies about voter fraud, who then stormed the Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Those who breached the barriers have been rounded up by the feds, some because they actually called lost and found. But, Trump said, if he’s re-elected they’ll be back on the streets.

Trump didn’t formally announce he was running a third time for the job that effectively landed him in all manner of legal and financial peril, but he did claim that the violent people who injured dozens of police officers and threatened to hang his vice president were being treated “so unfairly” and that it’s a “disgrace.” And he may do something about it…in a few years.

“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly,” Trump told the crowd. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly.”

Trump’s promise comes amidst the ever-escalating investigation into that fateful day by the House select committee, who have issued scores of subpoenas, some of which have been ignored by people who may wind up serving time.

Speaking of, another Trump headache is the investigation by both the New York State attorney general’s office and the Manhattan district attorney into the Trump organization’s financial history. NY State A.G. Letitia James has already uncovered “significant evidence” of fraud. At his rally, he didn’t cal the “prosecutors by name,” but he did call them “racist” against white people (James is Black).

So Trump, who’s tried to distance himself from the violent supporters he wants to pardon, called on his base to get even madder. “If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are have in this country the biggest protests we have ever had in Washington D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere,” he thundered.

In other words, the Jan. 6 insurrection was good and there will be another, even bigger one if he’s prosecuted for the crimes he may have committed.

There was a lot more than that. He did some old fashioned projection by calling out the “Biden crime family.” He told his largely unvaxxed supporters to defy the mandates keeping them and others from dying preventable deaths. He once again bragged about passing a simple dementia test. He even claimed that a New York Times reporter admitted to him that there was election fraud, which totally happened. In other words, a fine Saturday night out for Trumpists.

(Via CNN)

In less than a month, Kanye West will release his eleventh album, Donda 2, the sequel to the chart-topper he dropped back in August. The rapper announced a release date of February 22, which he somewhat explained on Instagram, and revealed that Future would executive produce. It also appears that West plans to hold a tour, with some sources (according to Complex) saying that he plans to bring his talents to Australia in March. But the nation’s prime minister has other ideas..

During a recent news conference, Prime Minister Scott Morrison left West with an ultimatum: get vaxxed or be banned from the country. “The rules are you have to be fully vaccinated,” Morrison said during the conference, according to The Independent. “They apply to everybody, as people have seen most recently,” alluding to the deportation of tennis star Novak Djokovic, who was kicked out of the country prior to the Australian Open for being unvaccinated. “It doesn’t matter who you are, they are the rules,” Morrison added. “Follow the rules, you can come. You don’t follow the rules, you can’t.”

It’s yet to be confirmed that Kanye will even head to Australia. During an appearance on the podcast Drink Champs in November, West revealed that he’d receive one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, but he did not share any plans to get the second. “I traveled to Paris, like, a couple weeks ago and I had to go through Lisbon because you can go through Lisbon without being vaccinated,” he said. “I only have one of the shots, so I’m half-ccinated.”

On top of everything else making the world an awful, anxious place, Russia wants to invade Ukraine. The ever-aggressive nation is once again on a disinformation campaign, with some help from the Trump family, of course. And in SNL’s latest cold open, the Biden administration tried to make sense of it.

James Austin Johnson, who handles both the show’s Biden and Trump impersonations (and who excels at both), was on Biden duty this week. His take on the current president is a baffled and mildly frustrated commander-in-chief who struggles to apply old school techniques to a rapidly changing world. As such he didn’t really know what to make of such Russian disinformation social media posts as Ukrainian border encroaching on Russian troops, Russian Forces Surrounding Ukraine Just to Give It Big Hug, Ukrainian President Horny for Drama, and Wants War: Slap Me Harder, Daddy.

All Johnson’s Biden could say was, “I’m going to break my New Year’s resolution and say it: Malarkey!”

Russia, of course, was also aiming to dupe gullible Americans, with posts like Neil Young To Remove Music From Spotify Unless Ukraine Surrenders. There was even on with Pete Davidson’s Aaron Rodgers.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

Peyton Manning has two Super Bowl wins under his belt. He was an MVP five times. He was quarterback for two great teams. He’s an NFL god who handles live TV technical issues well. And on the latest SNL, he outed himself as a massive fan of Emily in Paris.

Weekend Update invited the former quarterback on, ostensibly to talk about this weekend’s playoff games and the rumors that Tom Brady may or not be retiring. But Manning didn’t want to talk about that. When co-anchor Coin Jost asked for his take on recent games, he first tried to bluff through it. Soon he admitted that he “had an hour to kill before the first game, so just for fun, I put on the first episode of Emily in Paris Season 2, and I watched the entire season straight through.”

And from then on out, Peyton Manning couldn’t stop gushing about Darren Star’s Golden Globe nominated rom-com program starring Phil Collins’ daughter.

“Oh my god, Colin,” Peyton Manning said. “This show has everything: romance, adventure, sensuality, culture, a fresh take on feminism — finally — not to mention a culinary tapestry so rich, I could only describe it as ‘food porn.’”

Jost inevitably asked Manning about Tom Brady’s rumored retirement. But Manning punted. “Yeah, I’m not sure it’s true. I think it’s probably just speculation. But if it were me, I probably would retire, too, if it gave me more time to watch Emily in Paris,” Manning said. “I really think for Tom right now, it’s just a tough decision between balancing his career and relationships, sort of like Emily.”

Manning continued to sing the praises of the Netflix hit, but when Jost asked if he thought Season 2 was an improvement on the first, Manning was flabbergasted: “Wait, there’s a Season 1?”

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

On Feb. 2, Hulu subscribers will finally get to see the first three episodes of Pam & Tommy, the miniseries that chronicles the release of one of the most famous sex tapes in history. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and so it is with the wild story of how a most intimate tape found its way onto video store shelves. It remains to be seen how accurate the show, which stars Lily James and Sebastian Stan as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, will be. (Though Anderson rebuffed James’ attempts to get in touch.) But it’s not as though they have to do much fibbing to make it interesting.

Anderson and Lee were only married for three years, but they had a whirlwind relationship. As per a new piece about the tape by Esquire, Anderson, a model and then one of the breakout stars of Baywatch, met Lee, drummer for raucous metal rockers Mötley Crüe, at a New Years Eve party in 1994. Four days later, he proposed. By mid-February they were wed. They documented their honeymoon night, albeit only for themselves.

But in early 1996, shortly after Anderson gave birth to their child, they learned the tape of their post-martial assignation had somehow gone public. “One night, Pamela and I were chowing down on some dinner and flipping through television stations when we heard our names being mentioned on some news show,” Lee told Esquire. “On the screen, there was a dude at Tower Video stocking the shelves with videotapes. And we knew just what they were.”

How did this very private tape find its way into the world? It had to do with builders who had been hired to work on their Malibu home. After being dismissed for doing what Lee deemed a poor job, one of them — a former porn star named Rand Gauthier — broke into their home, removed a safe containing the tape (as well as jewelry, family heirlooms, and photographs), and sold it to a retired porn star, who sold copies over the internet. That prompted a legal battle led by Lee and Anderson to get sales of the tape stopped.

You can learn more about the sex tape scandal on Esquire, and you can watch the miniseries version — featuring Seth Rogen as Gauthier — starting Feb. 2 on Hulu.

Though Katy Perry’s life has been a bit more focused on events like marriage and motherhood lately, she still managed to release a new album, Smile, back in 2020. And since then, she’s also been working on a career-spanning Vegas residency called Play that recently debuted. A campy, balls-to-the-wall Vegas show full of costumes and new vocal arrangements is also the perfect time to appear on Saturday Night Live, so Perry has brought two of her Play-style songs to the late show tonight.

Kicking off her performances with the most logical choice, a brand new EDM banger that’s a collaboration with Alesso called “When I’m Gone,” Perry proved just how much of an acid trip her Vegas show is by performing with a series of dancers who can only be described as wearing “mushroom penis costumes.” Clad in a patent leather, shiny red pantsuit of her own, Perry brought a powerful vocal performance to the song, and Alesso was there performing it with her And since so many people get criticized for a fear of performing live vocals on SNL, it was impressive that Katy’s were very clearly live. And the same is true for her second performance of the night, her 2019 single “Never Really Over.”

Check out her live version of “When I’m Gone” above.

LCD Soundsystem should’ve ended 2021 with a triumphant slew of year-end shows that welcomed fans back to live music — but that dreaded Omicron variant had other plans. When a new outbreak of Covid-19 began to wreak havoc on New York City, even severely limiting taping for that week’s episode of Saturday Night Live (and sadly no Charli XCX), the NYC indie icons ended up making the heartbreaking decision to cancel some of their last shows during the mini-run at Brooklyn Steel.

Luckily for them, the band will still have a chance to put on a show (and maybe even play the hits?) for fans next month as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. The announcement came as a bit of a surprise tonight, when the upcoming show’s host, comedian John Mulaney, took to Twitter to give fans the good news. He used the phrase “and just like that” to let fans know he’d be hosting — marking his fifth time hosting the show — and getting in a clever use of the title of the Sex And The City reboot all at the same time.

Since Mulaney’s last public appearances, he has gotten divorced from his longtime wife, Anna Marie Tendler, and also got together with Olivia Munn and fathered a child with her. So, maybe he has some new material in the works? Seems likely. Check in next month to see what he has to say — and for those James Murphy dance moves.

Katy Perry has been shifting gears in her career recently. The pop star recently had her first baby, Daisy, so she wrote a song that name checks her daughter, natch. She also recently unveiled Play, a very campy, career-spanning show in Vegas, and pretty shortly after let fans know a sneak peek of that show would be coming to SNL.

Though she’s been a bit more of a downturn critically since the release of her 2017 album, Witness, her latest release in 2020, Smile, had a few more bangers that made their way through. And some of them even made their way into her Vegas show, and by proxy, SNL. Perry opened up the show with an adapted version of her latest single, a collaboration with Alesso called “When I’m Gone,” but her second song of the night was of the 2019 single “Never Really Over.” This one involved a more acoustic version of the song, more mushroom dancers, and a stunning, voluminous blue tulle skirt.

If the clips of her Vegas residency on social media are to be trusted, costumes are a huge part of the residency, so she’s brought that same energy to Saturday Night Live to help illustrate how involved the show is. Check out her performance of “Never Really Over” above.

The Brooklyn Nets went out to the west coast to take on the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night, and while Kyrie Irving was on the floor, Brooklyn didn’t have the services of Kevin Durant or James Harden. As a result, the team didn’t quite have enough firepower to take down the Dubs, and the home team won, 110-106.

There was a moment late in the game, however, that presented a gigantic swing in Golden State’s favor. Steph Curry pump faked and got Kessler Edwards in the air, at which point he jumped into the Nets’ rookie, pretended to shoot for a split second, then realized nothing good could come of it and passed. The problem for Brooklyn was that Edwards, somehow, got called for a foul here.

If anything, Curry initiating the contact here means that the foul should have been called on him. But instead, he got the call, went to the line, and knocked down a pair of free throws to extend the Warriors’ lead to 102-97. There was an avenue through which this could have been remedied — the Nets had not used their challenge at this point — but Steve Nash decided he didn’t want to do that.

It raised the question: Why on earth did he do that when this is an objectively bad call that is going against his team? As Nash explained after the game, it’s because someone told him not to do that.

With the loss, Brooklyn fell to sixth place in the Eastern Conference.

The Memphis Grizzlies are one of the best stories in basketball this season, as the team entered Saturday night 34-17, good for third place in the Western Conference. Part of what has made Memphis so much fun to watch this season has been the play of third-year guard Ja Morant, who has taken quite the leap en route to being named an All-Star starter for the first time in his young career.

Morant produces highlights at an insane rate, something that really just applies to the Grizzlies in general. Behold our latest example of this, which happened on Saturday night against the Washington Wizards and almost did not count.

Spencer Dinwiddie thought he had a dunk, but was met at the summit by Desmond Bane. The ball eventually made its way into the hands of Jaren Jackson Jr., who brought the ball up the court and decided to throw a dang lob up for Morant, who took off, threw down a windmill, and dunked.

As you can see, the referee called Jackson for a charge, which took a little bit of the juice out of the moment, but Taylor Jenkins challenged and it got overturned. It is unclear if the overturn was because it was not a charge (it was not) or if the referee decided this was far too cool to not stand.