Month: April 2022

Prison is supposed to serve two purposes: punishment and rehabilitation. But often prisoners emerge with the skills to be a better criminal and little knowledge on how to live an improved life. A prison in California is hoping to change the revolving door effect for some inmates by being the first to have a fully accredited junior college behind bars.

At Mount Tamalpais College at San Quentin State Prison inmates can earn an Associate of Arts degree by taking classes in literature, American government, astronomy and precalculus. The college was named after the mountain next to the prison and was accredited in January after a commission determined the extension program at the prison was providing a high-quality education. The college can accommodate up to 300 prisoners, and is currently full with another 200 on the waiting list.

San Quentin State Prison is broken up into different sections, including a section housing death row. It has offered rehabilitation programs to prepare inmates for a life outside of prison walls for some time. In the medium security part of the prison, inmates have dozens of educational, self-help and job-training opportunities that they can take advantage of. The positive programming available to inmates makes San Quentin a sought-after prison for prisoners across the state who want to utilize the time they must spend behind bars.

“Now, I am resilient, because I know who I am and I can love me for me.” – Aaron Kurtis Mikkelsen, MTC studentnnIt’s the last day to support Mount Tamalpais College with a tax-deductible gift in 2021. Read more from Aaron and donate here: https://bit.ly/32NHAwwu00a0pic.twitter.com/foZCy6TCF0

— Mount Tamalpais College (@Mount Tamalpais College)
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Derry Brown, 49, is currently serving a 20-year sentence for burglary and assault. He earned his GED in prison and is now attending the college program. Brown told ABC News that he takes pride in being a college student and may pursue a music career in his hometown of Los Angeles when he is released from prison next year. “There’s a joy in learning – that’s why I want to continue. Even when I get out, I’m going back to college,” he said.

The college is privately funded by donations and includes paid staff and volunteer faculty members, many of whom are graduate students from Stanford and the University of California Berkeley. The annual budget to run the college is $5 million. This isn’t the first program of its kind at the prison, though it is the first one to be fully accredited. In 1996, there was a program eventually titled Prison University Project that also offered associate degrees. President Jody Lewen started the process to have the college run fully autonomously three years ago after the previous university closed and the partnership ended.

We are reflecting on the idea of resilience as we close out 2021. Read this powerful piece on resilience from our program clerk Carl Raybon, and make a gift today to support this work in the year ahead: https://mailchi.mp/mttamcollege.org/students-on-resilienceu00a0u2026pic.twitter.com/mJOVI4Vg09

— Mount Tamalpais College (@Mount Tamalpais College)
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Lewen told ABC News, “Very often in the field of higher ed, people will look at educational programs in prisons and they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s a program or project. It’s not a school.’ Our hope is that by being an independent, accredited, liberal arts college that operates in a prison we make it more difficult for people to overlook those inside and we help them imagine our students differently.”

The program is open to any general population prisoner with a GED or high school diploma, but excludes death row inmates.

Prison education is known to change the outcome of people’s lives when they are released, and this in turn can help change their families’ lives and the generational course that may have been set before them. The hope is that the recidivism rate for lower level crimes would be reduced with former inmates now having a solid education and plan for the future.

Actor Cary Elwes is in good spirits after he was bitten by a snake (yeah, really) and it looks just as bad as you would expect. Despite being traumatically injured by a literal rattlesnake, the actor posted a pic on his social accounts with a Princess Bride reference. “Bit not by a ROUS but a rattlesnake,” the actor wrote, which stands for “rodents of unusual size,” a nod to his iconic Princess Bride role, and his character Westley.

“Grateful to the staff of Malibu Urgent Care, LA County Fire Dept. and the staff and medical professionals at @UCLAHealth for their great care,” Elwes added. “Am recovering well thanks to all these wonderful folks.” The caption was accompanied by a photo of an injury that looks like it came from the set of another Elwes movie, Saw. Or maybe from a fight with his sworn enemy, Ted Cruz.

This isn’t the first time the actor has been hurt: on the set of The Princess Bride, Elwes was famously knocked out while filming a fight sequence. Elwes recounted the story in his book, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From The Making Of The Princess Bride: “I woke up in the emergency room, still in costume, to the frightening sound of stitches being sewn into my skull…It was my dumb idea.” Method acting really has come so far, hasn’t it?

The Miami Heat dominated Game 4 of their first round series against the Hawks on Sunday, beating the Hawks by 24 in Atlanta to take a 3-1 series lead despite being without Kyle Lowry, who missed the game with a hamstring injury.

It was a sensational performance headlined by their smothering defensive effort that kept Trae Young outside the paint for the entire game aside from one shot attempt in the All-Star’s worst game of the series. The Heat were relentless from the opening tip and the Hawks were never able to put together a second half run to get back into the game as they did to swipe Game 3, and maybe part of that motivation came from an impromptu speech they received at the team hotel by the elevators from none other than Denzel Washington.

The movie star offered the Heat veterans advice on always paying it forward and continuing to set the standard every day with their effort, while offering Lowry a speedy recovery before noting he expected the rest of the team to “handle their business for you.” The funniest part, without a doubt, is him giving them some trash talk to deliver on his behalf to Trae Young, saying “tell that little boy to get a haircut…what kinda haircut he workin’ with?”

Maybe that message was delivered and played a role in Young’s Game 4 performance, because I’d certainly struggle to stay focused on the task at hand if I found out that Denzel Washington was roasting my haircut.

In what is surprisingly not a Glee plot point, Lea Michele has revealed that she and co-star Jonathan Goff were very close when they played opposite each other in the broadway musical Spring Awakening.

Michele and Goff are both featured in the new HBO doc, Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known, where they go in-depth on the history of the show and its legacy. Of course, the weirdest tidbit of information wasn’t about the show, but about the fact that Michele admitted she had once shown Groff her vagina and used a desk lamp to explain her anatomy. Though it might sound weird to fans, Michelle insisted that that’s just showbiz, baby! Allegedly Groff, a gay man, wanted to learn more about the mysterious body part.

Michele told EW, “Honestly, the great thing about this documentary is it’s a wonderful microscope into who we are as individuals, and not just who people think we might be. Radical Media and the incredible production team behind this documentary, we felt so safe and comfortable with them.”

She added that the two have only grown closer with her co-star. “It was so wonderful to talk about this material as an adult and get asked real serious questions. Not like, ‘What’s it like to have sex with Jonathan Groff every night?’ So I just felt really comfortable with them. With that level of comfortability came a story of just what goes on behind closed doors between me and Jonathan Groff. That’s only one of them. There’s a lot of other things,” Michele added, to which Groff laughed.

Groff and Michele have been friends for years, the duo even released a Christmas duet (cute!) and of course, starred on Glee together. Does Groff think she’s not a nightmare to work with?

Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known will premiere on HBO on May 3rd.

Karol G has her foot firmly on the gasolina right now. The Colombian urbano singer brought out J Balvin for her explosive Coachella weekend two set this past weekend, and dropped her first new single of the year on Friday in the breezy “Provenza.” Now she’s just added a complete slate of $trip Love Tour North American tour dates to go along with her previously announced Latin America dates.

Once the Latin American leg wraps up in June, the $trip Love Tour officially begins for Karol G in Chicago on September 6th and presses on for over 30 new dates. Tickets for Karol G’s $trip Love Tour go on sale Friday, April 29th here. An artist pre-sale begins on Tuesday, April 26th and noon local time at the same link with the pre-sale code: AMOR.

05/14 — Santiago De Cali, CO @ Estadio Olímpico Pascual Guerrero
05/21 — Bogota, CO @ Movistar Arena
05/22 — Bogota, CO @ Movistar Arena
05/25 — Santiago, CL @ Movistar Arena
05/26 — Santiago, CL @ Movistar Arena
05/27 — Buenos Aires, AR @ Movistar Arena
05/28 — Buenos Aires, AR @ Movistar Arena
06/02 — Quito, EC @ Coliseo General Rumiñahui
06/03 — Guayaquil, EC @ Coliseo Voltaire Paladines Polo
06/04 — Lima, PE @ Arena 1
06/05 — Lima, PE @ Arena 1
06/08 — Zapopan, MX @ Auditorio Telmex
06/09 — Monterrey, MX @ Arena Monterrey
06/11 — Mexico City, MX @ Arena Ciudad de México
06/12 — Mexico City, MX @ Arena Ciudad de México
06/15 — Tegucigalpa, HN @ Estadio Chochi Sosa
06/17 — San José, CR @ Parque Viva
06/18 — Panama City, PA @ Plaza Amador
06/19 — San Salvador, SV @ Estadio Cuscatlán
09/06 — Chicago, IL @ Allstate Arena
09/08 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
09/09 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
09/10 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
09/13 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
09/14 — Washington, DC @ State Farm Arena
09/17 — Montreal, QC @ State Farm Arena
09/18 — Toronto, ON @ State Farm Arena
09/20 — Charlotte, NC @ State Farm Arena
09/22 — Miami, FL @ State Farm Arena
09/24 — Orlando, FL @ State Farm Arena
09/26 — Tampa, FL @ State Farm Arena
09/27 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
09/29 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/30 — Hidalgo, TX @ Payne Arena
10/04 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
10/05 — Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
10/07 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center
10/09 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
10/11 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center
10/13 — San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena
10/14 — Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
10/15 — Anaheim, CA @ Honda Center
10/18 — Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
10/20 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
10/21 — Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
10/25 — Fresno, CA @ Save Mart Center
10/27 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
10/28 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
10/29 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena

Earlier this month, Elon Musk started flexing his billionaire wallet with a bid (to buy Twitter) that didn’t immediately go well. All appeared to be shut down, and amid news that Hulu will soon premiere a New York Times exposé about Tesla autopilot crashes, Elon got what he wanted from social media. CNN reports that Twitter went ahead and accepted a cash offer from Musk, who’s said to have lined up $44 billion for the deal.

All of this took place within the same month of Elon buying up 11% in Twitter shares and sparring with a Saudi prince and then deciding/not-deciding to sit on the board. Musk celebrated his purchase with a statement, in which he praised Twitter’s “tremendous potential” and further declared, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”

Yes, that’s a lot. And everywhere on Twitter, people are alternately thrilled and upset, depending on whether they think the platform will go downhill in a deluge of trolls or (somehow) improve. Well, let’s just say that there’s at least one person who isn’t stressed over it, and that would be Ice-T. Don’t talk to him about the Oscars, but feel free to consider what he thinks Elon could do: “It would kinda dope if Musk bought Twitter and just shut it off.”

Ice also offered up a “For the Record” statement, just so no one interprets what he’s saying in a political way. “I’m not on the Left or the Right,” he wrote. “Red or the Blue.. That’s Gang Bangin if you ask me… #Politricks.”

One could safely guess, however, that Ice-T wouldn’t be upset if he got that “edit” button that he’s wanted for years. Fingers crossed!

AMA (ask me anything) sessions aren’t just a great way for fans to get to know artists better or for artists to promote their new work, they’re also useful in manifesting interesting collaborations — both for artists and fans who want to see their favorites working together. Pusha T, who just put out his new album, It’s Almost Dry, logged onto Twitter for a curated #AskPusha session via Twitter Music, and among the usual silly questions (Push had a particularly aggressive response to “is a hot dog a sandwich?”), he also gave status updates on collaborations with a number of fan-favorite artists.

After revealing that his Nigo collaboration “Hear Me Clearly” originally featured rap OG Nas, fans naturally wondered whether Pusha would drop a remix. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards for now. “No we probably will not hear that remix,” he replied before offering some hope. “Maybe another song in the future tho…”

Another rapper fans wanted to know about was Tyler The Creator, with whom Pusha previously worked on the single “Trouble On My Mind.” However, it doesn’t look like that one’s coming anytime soon either, as Pusha wisecracked, “Absolutely I would but this nutcase only asks me to go Miami house hunting with him…”

Push posited his own dream collab when another fan asked if there were any Toronto artists he’d work with — probably trying to bait him into a Drake-related response. While he avoided the low-hanging fruit, he offered a surprisingly sincere reply that wasn’t too many degrees from the 6 God himself: The Weeknd.

And among other questions, Pusha answered how he felt about those fans of his music who wouldn’t appear to be his “target audience.”

All in all, #AskPusha turned out to be insightful and possibly even fruitful if it means Tyler The Creator and Push coming together — or maybe even a cokestravaganza featuring the powder’s two biggest promoters.

Anitta is riding a high from her breakthrough Coachella performances and the release of her latest album, Versions Of Me. So how does the Brazilian pop star celebrate the two biggest weeks of her career? By going to the movies to see Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets Of Dumbledore, of course (celebrities: they’re just like us!)

The thing is, Anitta grew up in Brazil and was used to watching movies in English with Portuguese subtitles. And it’s not that she doesn’t have a good understanding of the English language, but subtitles help non-native speakers better understand dialogue nuance (hat tip to Bong Joon Ho), especially if the audio isn’t always crystal clear (hello special effects and spatial sound!) So Anitta went to see the Harry Potter universe wizardry film, but missed a couple of core elements of the plot and needs some help. In a pair of tweets, she said (translated from Portuguese):

“Spoiler alert…hey peeps…can somebody who’s already sees The Secrets Of Dumbledore help me with his one… I went yesterday, but I was with a big group and the sound was low and there were no subtitles it was all in English… anyways, I missed two explanations… How and why did their sister die? Yes, I get that she was also an Obscurial. But I didn’t understand the broad point. I also missed the explanation about why Credence’s Dad abandoned him?”

So without spoiling the answers to her questions, feel free to help a movie buff out and holler @Anitta. Fans already are and the replies are all over the map, and often not relevant at all…or are they?

Apple TV+’s sinister workplace comedy Severance is one of 2022’s most acclaimed TV shows, but if you haven’t gotten around to watching it yet, you might have seen this GIF of Adam Scott dancing on Twitter. He doesn’t sing, but luckily Step Brothers exists.

The “Music Dance Experience,” as it’s known, is maybe the best scene in the season, but don’t take my word for it. Here’s creator Dan Erickson during a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything in response to a question about his “favorite part” of the show so far:

“The Music Dance Experience is probably my favorite scene, which is funny ’cause I’m the idiot who tried to cut it in the script stage. I wasn’t sure we needed it or that there was room for it or whatever, but Ben and producer Mark Friedman were adamant it could be something special. The moment Tramell [the actor who plays Mr. Milchick] started dancing I was like, ‘Welp, I was as wrong as humanly possible on this one.’ Stay humble, is I guess the moral.”

In the same AMA, Erickson also revealed that there’s subtle reference to Jaws in episode five (“I don’t think anyone’s commented on it yet, at least that I’ve seen”), but he wouldn’t spill about the beans about the baby goats. “They were very sweet on set! (But we weren’t allowed to pet them because of covid protocols)” is all he would say.

Maybe some defiant jazz will get him to talk.

(Via Reddit)

Future’s dismissive disposition toward romantic partners has long been the subject of debate, discussion, and jokes on social media. He’s earned the title of “Toxic King” among fans who’ve come to expect and enjoy his petty musical diatribes and it appears he’s decided to lean into this reputation on his next album. After releasing the sneering “Worst Day” to upend the romantic vibes of February 14 earlier this year, he finally broke his silence about the album’s title, revealing both the project’s name and its cover art on social media.

It’s called I Never Liked You and as he previously revealed, it’s dropping this Friday, April 29. Its cover art depicts Future slouching in the backseat of a luxury car wearing a tasteful, two-piece maroon suit with a matching sleep mask. He also looks to be wearing an ascot, which is a look fashion-forward sartorialists can get behind and a possible shout-out to his Dungeon Family roots, as fellow ATLien Andre 3000 has also been fond of the look in the past.

Future’s been a busy fellow the past few months; in addition to completing work on his new album, he’s made appearances on songs from Earthgang (“Billi“), Lil Durk (“Petty Too“), Gunna (“Pushin P“), and Nardo Wick (“Me Or Sum“).

I Never Liked You is due 4/29 via Freebandz/Epic.