It’s unclear how much money Donald Trump has left. He’s been caught pocketing donations from his cash-strapped (yet forever fawning) supporters. He might even lose everything except a couple pensions. In the meantime, a judge has ruled that he has to keep on doing what he’s been doing since late April: forking over $10,000 a day after being held in contempt of court.
In early April, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a motion to hold the former president in contempt after he failed to deliver certain materials in the state’s criminal investigation into his business practices. On April 25, a judge approved the filing, ordering him to pay $10,000 a day until those documents are delivered. Did Trump simply comply? Nope. He did what he often does: try to clog the courts with delaying measures, reaching out to a New York appeals court, claiming his team could simply not find the documents in question.
But on Friday, as per CNBC, the same judge evidently wasn’t buying that, keeping the fines in place. On Monday, his lawyers tried again, asking an Appellate Division of the First Judicial Department to say the contempt charge, callin git “unconscionable and indefensible.” The next day, that, too, was shot down. For those counting, that means that, as of Tuesday, Trump owes a total of $80,000. Of course, that’s chump change to a self-avowed rich guy like Donald Trump, right? Then again, it wasn’t that long ago that he was sending fundraising e-mails to help fix his busted private plane.
James’ investigation is looking into allegations that the Trump Organization, as CNBC puts it, “improperly manipulated the stated valuations of real estate assets to obtain more favorable financial terms on loans, insurance and taxes.” As of early January, James declared that they’d already found “significant evidence” of fraud. And that was just three months back.
Anna Mellor is a popular TikTokker best known for making videos where she pranks her husband, Rory. But he may have got the last laugh after a secretive long-con he played left her stupefied.
The secret? He’s been leaving her love letters in her shoes. “I just discovered a six-year secret my husband has been keeping from me,” Mellor captioned a post with the big reveal. The video has over 2.4 million views since it was posted in March.
Anna got hip to her husband’s secret joke after she purchased a pair of used Fila shoes and found a secret message written in black Sharpie on the inside: “I Fila lot better when ur around.” After making the discovery, she called her husband to tell him the strange news.
“I was like, ‘I just found a love letter in my shoes,’” she explained. Rory acted confused to hear the news. “He’s like, ‘Are you being serious?’ Acting as if I should know what’s going on,” Anna said.
But he couldn’t keep up the charade for long. “We have been married for six years. I have been writing in your shoes for six years and you just noticed for the first time” he admitted. Anna then opened up another sneaker that had “If your feet get tired I will carry you” written on the tongue.
Me thinking it was a love letter for someone else has same energy as when Rory was proposing and I thought the ring was somebody else’s that got lost at the beach😂😂
It makes you wonder how many pairs of shoes that she’s thrown out had secret messages in them?
Anna was clearly shocked by the revelation and thought it was a wonderfully creative way for her husband to show his love. It also shows that the man has an incredible talent at keeping a secret. Commenters on the video thought that Rory is definitely a keeper.
“Immediately getting a divorce… none of my shoes say stuff!” TheMrsGarcia1111 wrote. “Where did you find him and how do I get one…asking for a friend,” Keelyn added.
This isn’t the first time the couple has gone viral. Back in 2020, Anna posted a video on TikTok where she sent her husband a dirty text message, but it was intercepted by her mother-in-law.
I think I just lost points with my mother-in-law….#dirtytextreaction #ilikehimchallenge #dirtytextprank #motherinlaw #motherinlawproblems #gonewrong
In the video, a horrified Anna can be heard saying, “Wait, wait, no… oh no” as she watches Rory’s mother reaching for the phone. “Did you read that?” Rory asks after taking a look for himself. “I thought it was my phone,” she responds. “That is so gross!”
Talk about embarrassing.
Research shows that good-natured ribbing, like the type that Anna and Rory share in their videos, is great for a couple. A meta-analysis of 39 studies found that couples who “create humor together” though inside jokes are more likely to last than those that don’t.
“People say they want a sense of humor in a mate, but that’s a broad concept,” Professor Jeffrey Hall from the University of Kansas said according to The Daily Mail. “What is strongly related to relationship satisfaction is the humor that couples create together.”
June 24 is going to be a hot summer night in LA — both literally (likely) and figuratively (almost assuredly). A Hot Summer Night In LA is the name of Summer Walker‘s headlining concert at the Staples Ce-fine, Crypto.com Arena (yuck), which will feature a slew of special guests including Jazmine Sullivan, Ari Lennox, Saucy Santana, Joyce Wrice, Doechii, and Alex Vaughn. Ladies, leave your man at home. The show is billed as part of BET Awards weekend, with a special pre-sale for Summer Walker fans today through May 5 at 10 pm PT. The general sale starts on Friday at 10 am.
The show will be something of a coronation for Ms. Walker, who released her new album Still Over It last November to a truly impressive reception. It became the first album by a female R&B singer to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 since 2016 (following Solange’s A Seat At The Table) and signified that R&B’s mainstream comeback is no passing fancy. A Hot Summer Night In LA is sure to keep that energy going with a lineup consisting mainly of R&B-singing women backed by rappers who bring boss-bitch energy.
After being convicted of first-degree manslaughter for a 2017 stabbing, Kidd Creole, formerly of pioneering rap band Grandmaster Flash And The Furious Five, has been sentenced to 16 years in prison, according to Rolling Stone. Creole, real name Nathaniel Glover, was accused of stabbing a John Jolly, a 55-year-old homeless man, to death on the street, believing that Jolly was propositioning him.
In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said, “Mr. Jolly’s death was devastating to his family and those who knew him. Every life we lose to violent crime ripples throughout our entire city, and we will continue to ensure everyone in our borough can live their lives with the sense of safety and security they deserve. This case makes clear that if you commit a violent crime, we will hold you accountable, and I thank our team for their hard work achieving justice in this matter.”
However, Glover’s lawyer Scottie Celestin sees the sentence as “egregious and extreme.” He told Rolling Stone, “I continue to have faith in our judicial system. My focus is now on the appeal process. There are many appealable issues, specifically the denial of Mr. Glover being able to assert the justification of self-defense, despite the fact that he was retreating and the victim followed behind him. While some may be happy with the presumed victory of the acquittal on the top charge of Murder, we don’t view it as a win. I believe the 16 years given are heavy-handed and motivated not by the evidence and mitigating facts but by external factors.”
As a member of the Furious Five, The Kidd Creole was pivotal in the early development of the hip-hop music business. The group’s 1982 hit “The Message” is largely credited as one of rap’s first “conscious” songs and was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry.
The attorney of Majorie Taylor Greene might be talking too much, but that’s something he has in common with his client.
The QAnon congresswoman’s had a string of wacko declarations lately, including accusing the Catholic Church of being Satanic and freaking out when someone brought up her “Jewish space lasers” shenanigans. And no one can forget how Greene, who’s in real danger of being barred from reelection ballots this fall, defended herself in administrative court by seemingly lying and then lying some more under oath. She suddenly claimed to not recall a text chain with Mark Meadows and several GOP-ers, to whom she suggested that Trump declare “marshall law” in order to prevent Biden (who won the election) from entering the White House.
Things got so bad during the hearing that a group of lawyers banded together to formally accuse Greene of lying under oath. As Law & Crime points out, Greene appeared to lie about her own documented statements at least 80 times regarding her role in the insurrection, and on a Law & Crime podcast (hosted by Adam Klasfeld), Greene attorney James Bopp Jr. tried to defend his client.
Bopp’s explanation for all her lies: “This isn’t a memory test.” The conversation only devolved from there:
“She was asked about, you know, text messages from 15 months ago or two years ago. I’ve been doing this business for a long time, and people don’t remember inconsequential things, and even some consequential things over time. And she had no way of refreshing her recollection about that because her cell phone is set to delete texts that are more than 30 days old.”
Bopp’s view of the “marshall law” text was that Greene was perhaps repeating what someone else thought of the situation. And Bopp, who Law & Crime points out was “instrumental in Bush v. Gore,” did emphasize that he “of course” accepted Biden as the 2020 election winner. As for what Greene believes, he only responded, “I don’t know what she says about that.” Hmm.
Outside of cricket, I’m not sure there’s a sport that puts the groin region in more danger more often than baseball. It is a constant hazard of the job, as balls get thrown and hit in your general direction, always capable of taking a weird hop right into the your nuts.
This season, we’ve already collected a pickoff throw to the beans on our bingo card this year, courtesy of poor Alcides Escobar, and on Wednesday, Jose Altuve offered up a likewise extremely rare foul tip that went directly into his nuts — not even taking a bounce off the dirt to slow it down.
Usually if there’s a foul tip, it’s the catcher or the umpire who are in the most danger, but Altuve swinging at a pitch well off the plate inside brought himself into the danger zone and of all the places that ball could go after contact, it goes square into the junk. Altuve would take some time to walk it off and try to settle himself, and managed to get a single on a 3-2 count, scoring later in the inning on an Alex Bregman sacrifice fly — although I’d go so far as to say the man that made the greatest sacrifice this inning was Altuve.
“I’ve sat in the shadows for over 14 years allowing the Kardashians to use my name, to abuse my name, make billions of dollars over a decade-and-a-half talking about a topic I’ve never really spoken about,” he said. “I’ve never leaked anything. I have never leaked a sex tape in my life. It has never been a leak. It’s always been a deal and a partnership between Kris Jenner and Kim and me and we’ve always been partners since the beginning of this thing.”
When rumors of the tape first emerged way back in 2006, the former couple went to court along with Vivid Entertainment, the tape’s eventual distributor. Eventually, both reached an agreement with Vivid for the tape to be commercially released. According to Ray J, it was just one of many — all of which he says are in the possession of the Kardashians (which he says Kim kept in a Nike shoe box). “They’re not letting the world know that there’s a bunch of sex tapes that we made but they’re not going anywhere because she has them all,” he confessed.
He also claimed the initial leak was orchestrated by Kris Jenner — Kim’s mother and manager — to generate publicity for the family’s other endeavors, which eventually included a reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. “Once I pitched the idea to [Kim], just playing around a little bit, that’s when she jumped on the idea, talked to her mom and it was out of my hands from there,” Ray J insisted. “From the beginning of us putting this sex tape out, this has been the biggest lie in the industry in the history of entertainment.”
Elsewhere in the story, Ray J provided screenshots of conversations between him and Kim in which he vents his frustrations about the narrative painting him as a villain and she attempts to smooth things over. You can read the full story here.
After an attacker rushed the stage during a stand-up performance at the Netflix Is A Joke comedy festival on Tuesday, Dave Chappelle and the streaming company have both issued statements on the incident that’s brought the infamous Will Smith and Chris Rock slap back into the spotlight. Despite the comedian laughing off the event and making a comedy meal out of the attacker allegedly getting beat down backstage, Chappelle wants to put the whole thing behind him and not let it ruin an “historic” occasion for the veteran comic.
“The performances by Chappelle at the Hollywood Bowl were epic and record-breaking and he refuses to allow last night’s incident to overshadow the magic of this historic moment,” his rep, Carla Sims, says in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Dave Chappelle celebrated four nights of comedy and music, setting record-breaking sales for a comedian at the Hollywood Bowl. This run ties Chappelle with Monty Python for the most headlined shows by any comedian at the Hollywood Bowl, reaching 70k fans of diverse backgrounds during the first Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival, and he refuses to allow last night’s incident to overshadow the magic of this historic moment.”
As for Netflix, the streaming giant issued a simple statement condemning violent attacks on comedians. “We care deeply about the safety of creators and we strongly defend the right of stand-up comedians to perform on stage without fear of violence.”
Jamie Foxx has yet to issue a statement, but we’re guessing he’s too busy working on his tackle for tonight’s show. Seriously, if Netflix isn’t paying him to work security, they should probably start.
Running is one of the most expensive free sports you can get involved in. Ask any runner and they’ll tell you that you need the right shoes to avoid injury, but first you need to be properly fitted at a store that analyzes your gait. Most non runners don’t even realize that the way you run requires different running shoes depending on a lot of random sounding things like “heel strike” and “pronation.”
These things sound made up, but they’re real and the wrong shoe can cause joint pain, shin splints, IT Band issues—just a whole host of pain in parts of your body that you didn’t even know existed. Proper shoes are likely the most expensive part of running, but many people get bit by the bug and start entering races which can end up being very costly to their physical health over time.
Unlike most competitive sports, people pick up running at all ages. It’s been found that most runners don’t actually peak until middle age. Elite runners peak closer to 35, but for the rest of us, there’s still plenty of time to find our stride if you’re thinking about just getting started. And it doesn’t take much. A study by Harvard revealed that people running even just 50 minutes or less a week were less likely to die from cardiovascular disease or other causes compared to those that didn’t run at all. So maybe these runners are onto something.
Lester Wright started running in the 1930s when he ran track at Long Branch High School in New Jersey. Wright graduated high school in the ’30s where he not only ran track, but met his wife. The two have been married 80 years and Wright recently celebrated his 100th birthday. He doesn’t let his age stop him from running though. In fact, studies would suggest that running well into your elderly years has significant health benefits, including a lower risk for cardiovascular disease and mitigation of an age related decline in the ability to walk. Wright not only runs, he still competes in races, often being the oldest on the track.
Wright continued his incredible journey with running while serving in the U.S. Army where he fought in World War II, earning four Bronze Battle Stars. When he returned home from war he went to college using the GI Bill before opening up the first African American owned dental lab in Monmouth County, New Jersey where he made prosthetic teeth. Lester still runs the streets of Long Branch at least three times a week, completing 1.5 miles each time and he doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. He recently competed in the 2022 Penn Relays in Philadelphia, where he competed against runners 20 years his junior, with the second oldest runner being 92-years old.
While Wright didn’t win the race, his time was still quick: 26 seconds for the 100-meter dash, though if you ask him, the distance was too short for him to shine. When speaking to APP, the runner said, “At 100 meters, I feel like I’m just getting started. I thought this was nice, but I wanted a longer race.”
“Have you ever heard of Cinema Therapy?” my college-aged daughter asked me one day. I had not. She proceeded to tell me all about this YouTube channel she’s hooked on, in which a licensed therapist and a professional filmmaker—who also happen to be best friends—analyze movies together through each of their expert lenses. I was intrigued, so I checked it out.
Each Cinema Therapy video focuses on some psychological aspect of a film and runs approximately 30 to 40 minutes. Filmmaker Alan Seawright talks about the cinematics that lend themselves to emotional storytelling while licensed therapist Jonathan Decker talks about the mental health elements. With video titles like “MEGAMIND and Nice Guy Syndrome,” “Ranking the Relationships in LOVE ACTUALLY” and “Psychology of a Hero: HULK and Anger Management,” it’s easy to see the appeal. Most people who love movies enjoy analyzing the heck out of the characters in them, and having people who actually know what they’re talking about do so is too good to pass up.
Seawright and Decker met as roommates in college in 2005 and bonded over their love of cinema. More than a decade later, when Decker pitched the idea of creating Cinema Therapy (Decker describes that initial pitch as “a ‘Siskel and Ebert’ meets ‘Mr. Rogers’ kind of thing”), Seawright instantly envisioned what it would look like and why it would work. They were confident they would find an audience for it because of how seamlessly their two fields blend.
“Filmmaking is all about psychology,” says Seawright. “Storytelling in general only connects with an audience when you’re able to help people feel something, and how and why people feel things is all about psychology.”
Decker agrees. “There’s a lot of psychology that goes into screenwriting, or good screenwriting at least,” he says. “Creating worthwhile characters requires a knowledge of human thinking, feeling, and motivations.”
Decker points out that people have always been drawn to stories, whether written or on stage or on screen, to learn lessons about their own lives. We live vicariously through characters, connecting with them emotionally and investing in their journeys.
“But since their stories are not our stories, we have enough distance for objective insight compared to when we’re in the thick of our own problems,” Decker says. “I see movies as a tremendous teaching tool for mental health, emotional wellness, and relationship skills.”
Seawright and Decker have taken on toxic perfectionism in “Encanto,” men’s mental health and masculinity in “Fight Club,” love versus obsession with Severus Snape’s character in “Harry Potter” and more. In one of their more popular videos, they tackled the concept of gaslighting by showing examples of it in Disney’s “Tangled.”
Seawright and Decker analyze heroes and villains as well as romantic, platonic and familial relationships. And they frequently use characters to talk about mental illnesses and personality disorders, which is brilliant. By exploring real psychological and emotional realities through fictional characters, they can talk about individuals we’re all familiar with without breaching anyone’s privacy or personal boundaries. Judging by the thousands of comments their videos receive and the discussions that ensue, people love it.
That’s not to say the channel hasn’t received any hate. People can be fairly fanatical about films and characters they love, and people can also misunderstand or misinterpret things. Plus, let’s face it, when you talk about certain emotional or psychological topics, some self-loathing fellow somewhere is going to react negatively.
Seawright gave their “ARAGORN vs. Toxic Masculinity” episode as an example of when some comments got ugly, but also brushed it off as an anomaly. “Unsurprising, but a pretty decent number of dudes calling us soy-boy cucks or some-such,” he says. “Pretty funny, honestly.”
Both Seawright and Decker say that their fan base overall is incredibly supportive.
“To put yourself out there on the internet is to be criticized and attacked, but it’s a very small percentage,” says Decker. “Most people are kind and appreciative, disagreeing respectfully when disagreements happen.”
“I had no idea that our audience would be as supportive and wonderful as they are,” says Seawright. “Not just to us, but to each other! Seriously, our comments section is one of the kindest places you can find on the internet. There are some trolls in there, but it’s overwhelmingly loving.”
“It’s weird,” he jokes. We’ve all seen what a cesspool the comment section can be, so it’s great to see a space where people are nice to one another.
Seawright and Decker have high hopes for what their viewers will take away from their Cinema Therapy experience.
“I want them to get tools to have healthy relationships, to healthily balance self-acceptance with self-improvement, and to know that getting help is a good thing,” says Decker. “I also would love for them to gain a new appreciation for film, which is such a layered, stunning art form.”
“I hope people will get hope out of it,” says Seawright. “The film education I can provide is pretty meager, and isn’t going to be life-changing in any case. But feeling things with me, and learning about why/how you’re feeling things with Jono is a pretty lofty goal, and I think we’re doing an OK job with it.”
After creating more than 100 episodes, the duo has no plans of stopping. They’re having too much fun and people are enjoying their content. There’s also no shortage of movies for them to talk about, and with mental health being such a hot topic, the therapeutic element of what they do adds value to people’s lives.
“We exist to counter the negativity out there, to unify, uplift and entertain,” says Decker. “We’re sharing skills that change lives, and want people to have so much fun that it hardly feels like learning.”
Check out one of their biggest hits—and most natural fits—as they examine the psychology, relationships, family dynamics and more in Disney’s “Inside Out”:
You can follow Cinema Therapy on YouTube and check out the website as well.
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