The Timberwolves and Grizzlies first round series has featured some wild swings from game-to-game, with Minnesota jumping on Memphis in the opener and winning by 13, followed by the Grizzlies blowing out the Wolves in Game 2 to even the series.
On Thursday night, those huge swings happened from quarter-to-quarter in Game 3, as the Timberwolves took 25-point leads on two separate occasions, only to see Memphis claw their way back into the game, first to make it a 7-point affair at halftime and ultimately running away in a 9-point win, leaving the Minnesota faithful stunned. These two teams have delighted all year in talking that talk after wins, which is part of what made this series so intriguing, because there was already a foundation of bad blood.
Unfortunately for Karl-Anthony Towns and the Wolves, his mic’d up segment from early in the game as Minnesota jumped out to a big lead became an Old Takes Exposed situation, as the All-Star center gleefully told his teammates that this is what he was talking about when he said Memphis had to prove it on the road and, “we in Minnesota now.”
The Morant-Towns rivalry is pretty great, particularly because it spans generations, as their fathers spent part of Game 2 trash-talking each other during an in-game interview and have been sitting next to each other for games, as it’s clearly all in good fun. This one in particular will sting, though, as Towns got caught being just a little too excited about an early lead on national television and, if the Wolves can’t even things back up in Game 4, he’ll have a tough time living this clip down.
Tucker Carlson has never been known as much of an independent thinker, or a logical one, but he sure is full of ideas. Most of them terrible. Such was the case on Thursday night, when Carlson told his viewers about a “puzzling trend” he was seeing as it relates to traffic deaths.
“In the year 2020, the number of motorists who died on the road spiked dramatically,” Carlson explained. “Traffic deaths rose by more than 10 percent in a single year.” While he said this number would be significant in any year, he determined it was even more so in the year 2020, given that the country was in the early throes of the COVID pandemic, meaning many people were not driving to work or on the road. (Funny how COVID is an actual scourge when it’s convenient for Tucker.) Yet even though our roads were less crowded, the number of people who were killed on them rose. And “a staggering number of those who died were Black. Traffic deaths among African Americans rose by nearly 25 percent in a single year,” Carlson said, calling that number “unprecedented.”
Carlson, ever the good citizen, wanted to get to the bottom of why this was happening—mostly because he insists that “in a normal presidential administration,” this would be an urgent matter. But according to Carlson, the Biden administration is not a “normal” presidential administration, because Joe Biden doesn’t care. Neither does Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, because Carlson says Buttigieg already knows why these numbers are spiking: Racism.
“America’s roads are racist,” Carlson stated. “They’re killing Black people.”
While Carlson quoted The Washington Post’s conclusion that “Black communities tend to be crisscrossed by more dangerous roads,” he didn’t give that quote any further context. If he had, he would have also noted that “during the pandemic, people of color were more likely to be employed in ‘essential’ jobs without the option to stay home. And people driving faster amid lower traffic levels meant crashes were more likely to be deadly.”
While it’s an important part of the story, Carlson didn’t go there. Because that would be inconvenient to his theory.
Tucker Carlson claims auto fatalities rose because cops were too scared to pull over Black drivers pic.twitter.com/UOor9PlQpw
So what does Carlson think the real story is? Two words: George Floyd. Actually, that’s four words by Carlson’s count: “convicted felon George Floyd.” Yes, Tucker is blaming the increase in vehicular deaths in Black communities on a man who was murdered by police.
As proof, Carlson notes that in June of 2020, just weeks after Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, “Everything changed. [But] what changed most of all is how we regard the rule of law.”
Carlson, of course, was not referring to the police officers who murdered Floyd when referring to “the rule of law.” In the wake of Floyd’s murder, Carlson believes that “Cops across the country were told to stop enforcing traffic laws against Black drivers. No one wanted to be accused of arresting somebody for the crime of ‘driving while Black.’ So in the name of equity, the law no longer applied to huge numbers of people. Result? Thousands of Americans died.”
Following a double-digit loss in Game 1, the Memphis Grizzlies righted the ship with a blowout win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 2 on Tuesday. The series moved to the Twin Cities for Game 3 on Thursday and, for much of the evening, the No. 2 seed Grizzlies appeared to be in deep trouble against the No. 7 seed Timberwolves. Memphis trailed by as many as 26 points in the first half and faced a 25-point deficit on the scoreboard with only 15 minutes remaining in the game. However, the Grizzlies flipped the script from there, zooming to a 50-13 overall run to pick up a stunning 104-95 victory and a 2-1 series advantage.
The Wolves wasted no time in taking control of the festivities at the outset. Minnesota scored the first 12 points of the game, with Patrick Beverley contributing eight points and going right at Ja Morant defensively. On the other end, Memphis didn’t score for more than three minutes, missing their first five shots with two turnovers.
Memphis briefly climbed back within five in the first period, but Minnesota put together another 12-0 spurt late in the quarter, settling in with an 18-point lead after 12 minutes. The Wolves created havoc on defense, headlined by four blocks and three steals, and the Grizzlies shot just 7-of-24 in the opening period.
When the second quarter began, Minnesota kept coming, scoring the first eight points to take a 47-21 lead. At that point, the Wolves had scored 47 points on 27 possessions, shooting 59 percent from the field, and the Grizzlies had no answers.
Minnesota scored only 12 points in the second quarter and four points in the final 10:28 of the first half, including nearly six minutes of scoreless basketball to close the second quarter. That allowed Memphis to find its footing, with Desmond Bane getting going as a shooter and the Grizzlies turning defense into offense.
The Grizzlies ended the half on a 15-0 run, with the Wolves missing their final eight shots with four turnovers. That left Minnesota with only a seven-point lead at the break and, after the way the game began, that typically positive result felt like a significant disappointment for the home team.
Much as the did in the first half, the Wolves struck first after halftime, only to cede ground in meltdown fashion. Minnesota used a 17-4 run to take a 68-48 lead, taking advantage of a stretch in which the Grizzlies missed eight of their first ten shots and committed four turnovers.
Eventually, the Wolves built their lead to 25 points and, for all intents and purposes, it looked as if Minnesota might cruise to a win. Memphis had other ideas, stringing together another hugely dominant run. The Grizzlies outscored the Wolves by a 29-4 margin between the end of the third and the start of the fourth quarter and, with the help of 21 consecutive points, Memphis tied the game at 83-83.
Minnesota’s lull took place on both ends, with the Wolves scoring four points in nearly eight total minutes and failing to scratch in the fourth quarter until the 7:31 mark. When Tyus Jones connected on a three-pointer with 7:09 left, Memphis took its first lead of the entire game.
The Grizzlies took a five-point edge at 93-88, as the Wolves missed 11 of their first 12 shots in the closing period. Minnesota seemingly got away from Karl-Anthony Towns, who was also battling issues with foul trouble, and the offensive collapse was uncomfortable to watch. Finally, Minnesota seemed to stabilize with a few stops, but the home team was now trailing and in scramble mode, operating in an underdog role for the first time since the opening tip-off.
It wasn’t over at that point but, just a few moments later, the Grizzlies put the finishing touches on an epic comeback. Brandon Clarke, who was a positive contributor throughout the night for Memphis, scored six straight points before keeping an offensive rebound alive that led directly to the dagger three-pointer from Dillon Brooks.
In a remarkable turn, the Grizzlies out-scored the Wolves by a 34-point margin (!) over 15 minutes of play, turning a 25-point deficit into a 12-point lead before a meaningless bucket from Minnesota on the final possession. Memphis showed incredible resilience in battling back not once but twice, though Minnesota should also take blame for two full quarters of hideous offense, scoring 12 points in the second quarter and 12 points in the fourth quarter.
Five players scored in double figures for the Grizzlies, led by 26 points from Bane and 20 points and eight rebounds from Clarke. Morant finished with a 16-point, 10-rebound, 10-assist triple-double, and Memphis won despite 46 percent shooting on two-point attempts and 18 turnovers. On the Minnesota side, the collapse will be lamented until at least the start of Game 4, with the Wolves squandering two separate periods of utter offensive dominance and finishing the night with only 39 percent shooting and 17 turnovers. Towns was largely a non-factor, finishing with eight points in 33 minutes, and the Grizzlies’ bench out-paced the Wolves’ bench by a substantial margin.
The two teams will gather again for a potentially pivotal Game 4 matchup in Minneapolis on Saturday. Minnesota will aim to bounce back from a memorable fold, while Memphis will look to keep the flow going in search of a 3-1 advantage.
Last month, Britney Spears shared two big announcements with her fans. The first came at the top of the month when she announced that she was pregnant with her first child with her fiancé Sam Asghari. Britney’s future son or daughter would be her third child as had two sons, Sean (16) and Jayden (15), with her ex-husband Kevin Federline. A week after announcing her pregnancy, Britney confirmed that she was in the process of writing a tell-all book which came after she reportedly signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster, one reportedly valued at a whopping $15 million.
BRITNEY SPEARS IS DRAGGING THE HELL OUT OF KEVIN FEDERLINE, GET HIM AGAIN, GET HIM FOR ME pic.twitter.com/quPb2fyofU
Britney is still in the process of writing this book, but as she reflects on the past to do so, she took a moment to share an update with fans through a now-deleted Instagram post. In it, she recalled the lack of support she received from her ex-husband Keven Federline during her past pregnancy. “My ex-husband wouldn’t see me when I flew to New York with a baby inside me and Las Vegas when he was shooting a video !!!” she wrote. “And as my brother’s best friend shows up to support a very pregnant woman in Vegas because he felt and PLAYED IT OFF TALKING AND EATING ICE ALL NIGHT !!! I swear I like huge pickles and biting down on ice [ice cube emoji] literally every day !!!”
She continued, ” I was so weird … As the ice hit my tongue I got a text saying ‘If you don’t divorce Kevin he will publicly do it to you ….’ Since I hadn’t seen him in a while I already knew it was over.” Britney and Kevin were married from 2004 to 2007 before they got divorced.
Elsewhere in the post, she spoke about being wrongfully labeled as a “party girl” when she enjoyed time out with Pairs Hilton following her pregnancy. She also wrote about not allowing her mother to hold her first two sons when they were infants.
You can view screenshots of the now-deleted post above.
If Johnny Depp scored any sort of sympathy points with the jury and/or trial-watchers in his ongoing defamation suit against ex-wife Amber Heard when he shared audio of their vicious fights and testified about the time she allegedly pooped on his bed, his actions under cross-examination might be eroding any good will.
On Thursday, Depp spent the entire day in court being questioned by Heard’s lawyers—and revisiting some of the violent thoughts he had expressed to others about his ex-wife. They were not pretty.
As Vice reports, Heard’s legal team unleashed a trove of texts Depp sent to both some of his closest friends and Heard herself before the couple had even married. Among the more disturbing exchanges were several texts Depp shot off to WandaVision star Paul Bettany back in 2013, in which he suggested “Let’s burn Amber!!!” (three exclamation points and all) then changed his mind and suggested “Let’s drown her before we burn her!!!” and promised that “I will f*** her burnt corpse afterwards to make sure she is dead.”
In a message to another friend, Depp expressed hope that Heard’s “rotting corpse is decomposing in the f***ing trunk of a Honda Civic.”
In 2015, texts sent to someone else—possibly Heard’s sister—had Depp claiming that “I never ever want to lay eyes on that filthy whore Amber” and that he would “smack the ugly c**t around before I let her in.” As we said: Not pretty.
Friday will mark Depp’s fourth day on the stand. Heard, too, is expected to testify (as is Bettany).
In 2019, Justin Bieber teamed up with country duo Dan + Shay for “10,000 Hours.” The song was the lead single from Dan + Shay’s fourth album Good Things, but it was also one of the most popular songs of 2019, despite being released in October of that year. “10,000 Hours” debuted at No. 4 on the singles chart which made it the first country song at that time to debut in the top ten since 2012. It also became the highest-charting non-holiday country song in the history of Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart. Additionally, the song won the Best Country Duo/Group Performance award at the 2021 Grammys Awards, but now, “10,000 Hours” finds itself in some hot water.
According to TMZ, Bieber and Dan + Shay were sued for copyright infringement over “10,000 Hours.” The lawsuit says that the three singers stole aspects of the song from Asia Luckey’s 2014 record “First Time Baby Is A Holiday,” which was originally written in 1973 by Palmer Rakes and Frank Fioravanti. Bieber and Dan + Shay are accused of copying the older track’s chorus, verse, and hook for “10,000 Hours.” The owners of “First Time Baby Is A Holiday” are suing for an unknown amount of money, credit on the song, and an injunction that would prevent any future distribution of “10,000 Hours.”
In addition to the Grammy award, “10,000 Hours” also won Collaboration Of The Year and Favorite Country Song at the 2020 American Music Awards. Representatives for Bieber and Dan + Shay have yet to issue a response to the lawsuit.
You can revisit “10,000 Hours” and listen to “First Time Baby Is A Holiday” in the videos above.
Kim Kardashian surprised a lot of people back in October when she kicked off hosting duties on SNL with a monologue that sh*t-talked most of the Kardashian clan—herself included. But as she revealed on the latest episode of Hulu’s The Kardashians, Kim had planned to take her savagery to the next level by poking fun at NBA journeyman Tristan Thompson’s penchant for poking things that aren’t her sister Khloé.
As Page Six reports, the episode featured footage of Kim getting some professional advice on being funny from Amy Schumer, who seemed genuinely taken aback when the reality TV star ran one joke idea by her: “Oh, Khloé, you have the biggest heart. It’s so big it has room for Tristan and all of his side pieces.”
“Oh sh*t!” was Schumer’s only response.
Ultimately, the all-in-good-fun dig didn’t make it into Kardashian’s final monologue, which is probably a good thing. While rumors of Thompson’s penchant for stepping out on Khloé plagued the now-seemingly-permanently-off couple from day one, the two have remained close. During the premiere episode of The Kardashians, as Page Six notes, Khloé even referred to Thompson—with whom she has a 4-year-old daughter, True—as “one of my best friends” and praised him for being “a really hands-on dad.”
In January, however—months after that episode was taped—a paternity test confirmed that Thompson was the father of a baby boy born to another woman, Maralee Nichols. That child was conceived over the course of a wild 30th birthday weekend back in March 2021, when Thompson and Khloé were reportedly still together.
While acknowledging the results of the paternity test via Instagram, the Chicago Bulls’ center-forward also made a public apology to Kardashian, writing: “Khloé, you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve the heartache and humiliation I have caused you. You don’t deserve the way I have treated you over the years.”
Still… it would have made for some great television.
In early February, the news leaked that Rudy Giuliani would be one of the “celebrities” appearing on the newest season of The Masked Singer. If some Fox executives thought this kind of stunt casting would be a boon to the show’s ratings, heads are definitely rolling today. On Wednesday night, after several weeks of “Is this the night we’ll see Rudy?!” anticipation, the disgraced former New York City Mayor finally showed his face on the reality series… and it was a sadder spectacle than anyone likely anticipated.
If a gushing Jenny “Vaccines Cause Autism” McCarthy weren’t already enough to make viewers want to rethink every single one of their life choices, there was Rudy—a guy who was once named Time’s Person of the Year (in a good way)—looking like the world’s most pitiful Mardi Gras float. But the real kicker (aside from Nicole Scherzinger asking “Is that Robert Duvall?,” and her fellow judge Ken Jeong walking off the stage) is that nobody was even watching the damn thing.
As The Daily Beast reports, the episode attracted just 3.6 million viewers—a season-low for the typically popular reality series. “The meager audience paled in comparison to that of timeslot competitors Survivor and Chicago Med,” Jordan Julian wrote. “Imagine portraying a guy who has actively tried to sabotage American democracy on multiple occasions as a silly, harmless old grandpa in a parrot costume, just to lose viewers to Dick Wolf’s least interesting franchise.”
On the plus side: At least we now know which Oscar-winning actor to call when Rudy’s life, including that time he married his cousin, is turned into a biopic.
The notion of a “jazz music” festival has become about a lot more than just jazz. Like the storied Montreal Jazz Festival and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival that came before it, the brand new Blue Note Jazz Festival in Napa Valley presents the best in jazz music and the hip-hop and R&B artists who are inextricably tied to the genre’s roots. Blue Note’s first outdoor, multi-stage festival will be hosted by Dave Chappelle and features Robert Glasper as the artist-in-residence. Glasper will be performing onstage alongside Erykah Badu, Ledisi, D Smoke, Terrace Martin, and BJ The Chicago Kid. It all goes down at the Charles Krug Winery in St. Helena, CA on July 30th and 31st and the loaded lineup just keeps getting better from there.
Also performing at Blue Note Jazz Festival will be Maxwell, the newly reunited Black Star, Thundercat, and Flying Lotus. But the most intriguing part of the lineup is the jazz and hip-hop collaboration sets: Maurice Brown featuring Anderson .Paak?! The Soul Rebels featuring GZA & Talib Kweli?! Now this is unique curation. Not to mention appearances from Chief Adjuah (fka Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah), Butcher Brown, Keyon Harrold, and late-night DJ sets from Dj Jazzy Jeff and Badu’s DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown alter ego.
Peep the full lineup poster below and stay tuned for tickets which go on sale on 04/26 here.
On June 1, 1997, the Chicago Tribune published columnist Mary Schmich’s fantasy commencement speech entitled, “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young.” In the piece, she lamented that “Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out,” but most of us, “will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns.”
Next came her attempt to share the knowledge she’s learned with the graduating “Class of ’97.” In the column she shares one piece of advice she is sure about—“wear sunscreen”—and a litany of wisdom that she admits “has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.”
Among Schmich’s observations is that we should remain close to our siblings, appreciate our youth and never be reckless with other people’s hearts.
The title of her piece suggests it would never be embraced by her target audience. But in a strange twist of fate, it would become a pop culture phenomenon that in the late ’90s was an inescapable part of youth culture.
Soon after the column’s publication, Australian film director Baz Luhrmann was working alongside Anton Monsted and Josh Abrahams on a remix to the 1991 song “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good),” by Rozalla. The song had appeared in Luhrmann’s film “William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.” During the sessions, Monsted received an email with Schmich’s column, but it was attributed to writer Kurt Vonnegut.
Back in 1997, there was no social media so things went viral through a new technology called email.
The team thought a spoken-word version of the speech would go great over the song and reached out to Vonnegut for his approval. But after doing some early-era internet sleuthing, they discovered it was written by Schmich. Australian voiceover artist Lee Perry was given the task of doing the spoken-word vocals and his deadpan delivery would become iconic.
The original release opened with the line, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Class of ’97” but it was changed to “’99” on subsequent releases. The song would go on to be a major worldwide hit and imbue a generation with simple, but profound advice on how to live their lives.
Twenty-five years later, many of the lines in the song are still etched in the minds of countless people.
While Schmich’s words are powerful, when set to music and played continuously on MTV, VH1 and the radio, they were hard to forget. The song also has an emotional heft and a wary sincerity to it that’s mesmerizing. Some of the song’s greatest lines, “Do one thing every day that scares you,” “Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts” and “The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself,” have come to be embedded in the culture.
In the beginning of her column, Schmich admits that her advice—besides the bit about the sunscreen—is purely anecdotal, but she was onto more than she knew. Research has backed up a lot of her advice and proves it’s worth taking.
“Do one thing every day that scares you.”
Research shows that the greatest opportunity for personal growth is to step outside of one’s comfort zone. Also, when exposed to our fears, we have the greatest chance of overcoming them.
“Exposure is hands down the most successful way to deal with phobias, anxiety disorders, and everyday fears of any sort,” says neuroscientist Philippe Goldin. “Simply repeatedly exposing ourselves to the thing we’re afraid of—ideally in a positive way—gradually brings down the physiologic fear response until it’s gone, or at least manageable.”
Further, when we stay in our comfort zone for too long we are prone to boredom and stagnation. According to Positive Psychology, what lies outside of our comfort zone is an amazing place called the growth zone.
“Don’t waste your time on jealousy.”
Twenty-five years later, Schmich’s words mean more than ever. Because, as Moya Sarner wrote in The Guardian, we “live in the age of envy. Career envy, kitchen envy, children envy, food envy, upper arm envy, holiday envy.”
Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, adds that we are constantly bombarded by “Photoshopped lives, and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And it is not particularly pleasant.”
Overcoming jealousy has less to do with ignoring what others have than appreciating what’s ours. Lindsay Holmes, Senior Wellness & Travel Editor at HuffPost, says that people who are free of jealousy “take stock of their blessings,” “don’t seek approval from other people” or “compare themselves to others.”
They also probably spend a lot of time off Instagram.
“Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.”
Negativity bias is a real issue. We always remember insults more vividly than compliments because the human mind evolved to look for potential danger and to remember trauma to keep us safe. It’s great in practice but terrible when reading the comment section on Facebook.
Schmich admits she has a problem with this because it’s hard-wired into human psychology. Hopefully, over the past 25 years, some of us have learned how to get it right and to ignore the haters.
“Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.”
Since Schmich’s column was first published there have been countless studies on how unrealistic beauty standards affect women and yes, they “make you feel ugly.”
Dr. Laura Choate wrote in Psychology Today that these impossible beauty standards make girls think they should be focused on having the “perfect physique” and “believe something is wrong with them if they are somehow unable to reach this goal.”
Problems with body image are related to a host of problems including low self-esteem, depression, excessive dieting and eating disorders.
“Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.”
A study published by NPR found that during middle age (Gen X, I’m looking at you) and older, indicators of well-being—mood, health, morale, stress, depression, loneliness, life satisfaction—are tied to how you feel about your brothers and sisters.
“You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.”
If you remember when “The Sunscreen Song” was a hit back in the late ’90s then you probably have warm feelings of nostalgia for those times. But as Schmich points out, we always look at the past through rose-colored glasses. Psychologists call this “rosy retrospection” and it’s the reason why some people think that America should be made “great again” or that the ’90s was the greatest decade ever.
The ’90s may or may not have been the greatest decade ever, but it must have been a pretty cool time if a massive pop hit was simply someone sharing practical life advice young people should pay attention to and, low and behold, they did.
Oh yeah, summer is coming up. Don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
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(@GhostFaceDrizzy) April 22, 2022
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(@BritneyTheStan) 
