Month: June 2022

On Thursday, nine people associated with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert were arrested at the Capitol building. One of them was Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, which is to say its puppeteer and voice Robert Smigel. Details are so far scarce, but it appears the crew stayed later than they should have after two days of pre-arranged interviews on the Hill, getting busted in the halls unescorted and without IDs. It’s an unusual story, but you almost have to hand it to conservative commentators — Tucker Carlson included — for making much more out of it than there is.

As per The Daily Beast, Carlson used a portion of his show on Friday night to make an utterly false comparison between late night TV staffers filming comedy bits and…violent Trump supporters storming the building, leading to five deaths. Carlson — who has downplayed the events of Jan. 6, even airing a “documentary” series filled with out-there conspiracy theories — called what Smigel and crew did “an insurrection,” even claiming Rep. Adam Schiff “illegally gave CBS producers access to the Capitol,” which doesn’t sound remotely right. He also pointed out that they were charged with “unlawful entry,” which as he put it is “the exact same charge” awarded the Jan. 6 rioters.

He then joked that Smigel and team will spend a year-and-a-half in solitary confinement, like some of the Capitol rioters. Thing is, he wasn’t really kidding.

“Joking aside, how could they not be held for a year and a half in solitary confinement without being charged?” Carlson railed. “Because the precedent is in place. And how in the world can Adam Schiff, who spent the last year and a half eliminating the civil liberties of Trump voters on the basis of January 6, do the exact same thing and not face punishment?”

Carlson wasn’t the only one making a mountain out of a molehill. Fellow Fox News host Jesse Watters said, “We might have to have hearings. We might have to have our own committee to investigate this sort of CBS News breach of the Capitol.” He even accused Colbert of being behind “a conspiracy.”

Perhaps Fox News honchos are just making up for that time they aired an empathetic and humane segment about a trans teen, which wound up enraging some of the GOP.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Bartees Strange’s new album Farm To Table is out now and to mark the occasion, the genre-hopping singer-songwriter appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform his new song “Wretched.” Toting his acoustic guitar and surrounded by his band, he played the soaring anthem with all verve of a multi-decade veteran.

The press release for Farm To Table noted that the album began as an Autotuned trap album, which Strange then reworked to fit his usual indie-rock aesthetic. “Where his 2020 debut record Live Forever introduced the experiences and places that shaped Bartees (Flagey Brussels, Mustang Oklahoma), Farm To Table zeros in on the people — specifically his family — and those closest to him on his journey so far,” it reads. “With his career firmly on the ascent, Farm To Table examines Bartees’ constantly shapeshifting relationship with life post-Live Forever. It also speaks to a deeper lore that says, don’t forget where you came from, and this album is why.”

Strange explained the inspiration behind “Wretched” on Apple Music, saying, “That song, in particular, is about how thankful I am for all the people who held me down when I did feel wretched. I think a lot of people second guess themselves when they feel it in their tummy — they second guess that feeling — but that’s the light. You gotta follow that. This song and this experience has really showed me the importance of doing that, so I plan to keep doing it.”

Watch Bartees Strange’s performance of “Wretched” on Kimmel above.

Since October of last year, the show at The Wendy Williams Show has gone on without its namesake star. The erratic, complicated, occasionally straight-up bizarre host has been absent since catching COVID-19. Since then health problems and other personal issues have kept her off-air, replaced by a string of guest hosts, including Sherri Shepherd, Michael Rapaport, Bill Bellamy, Leah Remini, and more. But when the show ended, it continued to do so without Williams herself.

Back in February, the company behind the show, which began in mid-July of 2008, decided that they were ending the show. It wasn’t a total cancellation. Instead, some of the same staff, including the showrunner and executive producer, would transition into a similar-but-different show hosted by Shepherd, to be called simply Sherri.

It was Shepherd who lorded over the final episode of The Wendy Williams Show, which made up for the absence of the show’s star by loading up on tributes and montages. The show even ended with one of Williams’ signature lines — “How you doin’?” — but recited by Shepherd and crew. Also present was the show’s very first guest: Vanessa Williams, who had this to say about the star:

She was real. She is real — she’s still with us — and she’s resilient. She’s a fighter and she’s real, she was down to earth, she said it like it was. She kept it 100 but she did it with fun. And she was articulate and funny and has all these weird ‘Wendyisms’ that we would grow to love and know. I’m really gonna miss the show and miss her presence. You know she’s unique.

Shepherd herself weighed in on the MIA star, saying, “there is nobody like Wendy Williams,” and claiming she “changed daytime talk with her unique take, her one-of-a-kind celebrity interviews, the signature ‘Ask Wendy’ segments and of course, y’all, her famous ‘How you doin’?”

Still, surely we’ll be seeing Williams again. After all, who else can get into fights with both Howard Stern and Aunt Viv from Fresh Prince?

(Via Deadline)

Last month, Doja Cat canceled her upcoming tour with The Weeknd, warning her fans that she had to have tonsil surgery after they’d become infected and would require several months of rest to recover. The “Vegas” rapper apparently has undergone the required surgery, sharing a series of photos from a hospital bed on Twitter on Thursday. She also demonstrated the effect that the surgery has had on her vocal cords, attempting to rap Nicki Minaj’s fan-favorite verse from Trey Songz’s “Bottoms Up.” Unfortunately… well, you can see for yourself below.

So it looks like she’ll be out of commission for a while — which could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. After all, for much of the past year, she’s apparently been feeling the effects of burnout after skyrocketing to fame pretty quickly on the strength of her breakout hit “Say So” — which, ironically, features Nicki Minaj on the remix. The atypical pop star tweeted in October, “I’m just tired and i don’t want to do anything… I’m not happy. I’m done saying yes to motherf*ckers cuz I can’t even have a week to just chill. I’m never not working.” She also posted about feeling pressured by the demands of her flourishing career. “I’m doing all this shit that I don’t f*ckin’ wanna do,” she said in an Instagram Live stream. “I don’t want to do that. I want to be home. I wanna make music. I wanna play f*ckin’ video games.”

Doja’s time off could be a chance for her to check off some things on that to-do list while rediscovering her passion for rapping, which she says she wants to do more of on her next album. And for fans who’ll miss seeing her on tour, there’s at least some consolation; she’s always been highly active on social media, so her inevitable boredom will likely lead to some hilarious and interesting content.

James Harden is eligible to get a whole lot of money from the Philadelphia 76ers this offseason. Harden is expected to pick up his player option for the 2022-23 campaign that will see him make a little more than $47 million, but beyond that, it’s unclear exactly what the future holds for the former league MVP whose debut season in Philly raised questions about his ability to return to that level.

One person close to the situation anticipates that Harden is going to get paid like someone who can, indeed, do what needs to be done for the Sixers to become a championship contender. TMZ caught up with Doc Rivers earlier this week, with Rivers saying he anticipates Harden will sign a “huge deal” to remain with the franchise.

“I’m excited, very,” Rivers said. “I love him.”

It was reported earlier this week by Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report that the expectation is increasingly becoming that Harden will opt for a shorter-term extension with the team. Should he get a 4-year supermax extension after picking up his option, Harden can earn more than $220 million over the life of that deal and become the first player in NBA history to make more than $60 million in a season.

Detroit rapper Obie Trice — a former artist on Eminem’s Shady Records — was arrested on Thursday on a charge of using a telephone to harass or threaten someone, according to The Detroit News. He was booked into Oakland County Jail and is being held on a $10,000 bond for the misdemeanor charge, punishable by a $1,000 fine, six months in jail, or both.

Obie Trice — real name, no gimmicks — was best known for his debut album Cheers, along with appearances on albums by D12, Eminem, and on the 8 Mile soundtrack. The lead single from Cheers, “Got Some Teeth,” peaked at No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100. Trice left Shady Records in 2008 over concerns that his music wasn’t being promoted as much as other signees’ (a concern that future Shady artists would also share over a decade later), and he continued to release mixtapes and albums independently.

In December 2019, Trice was arrested for shooting his girlfriend’s son during an argument when the 18-year-old jumped between Trice and his mother. Obie was charged with a misdemeanor and spent 90 days in Oakland County Jail.

Last year, Eminem explained what it takes to get signed to Shady Records, saying, “Obviously we want anyone who signs with Shady to succeed. But first and foremost we’ve always focused on the raw talent and ability of the artist as an MC. We’ve always been pretty clear on that being the main thing we look for: high level fundamental skills and mechanics are definitely the priority.”

It might have seemed odd when the guy who burst onto the scene with the foul-mouthed, Tarantino-esque Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels started making franchise movies — even one for Disney. But Guy Ritchie has managed to take a break from those biggies by making some smaller “for me” movies: The Gentlemen, Wrath of Man, and the forthcoming spy comedy Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. But now he’s going back to the House of Mouse for another of their live-action remakes.

Ritchie’s name was previously on 2019’s Aladdin, with Will Smith as the wise-cracking blue genie. Now, as per Deadline, it will also be on their new take on Hercules, which will put a live-action spit-shine on the corporation’s 1997 take on the Greek legend. That film featured Tate Donovan as the voice of a more doubting, even scrawnier take on the muscle-bound taskmaster, whose main foe was a Hades voiced by no less than James Woods.

This might be a better fit for Ritchie than Aladdin, with plenty of chances for feats of strength and derring-do, as well as the occasional insults, maybe even funny names. (Ritchie previously threw characters named “Goosefat” and “Mischief John” into the world of King Arthur.)

The big screen has been bereft of Hercules for quite some time, the last major one being a more postmodern take starring Dwayne Johnson. In fact, there aren’t too many Hercules movies at all, besides the Italian ones with Steve Reeves and the truly bizarre one where Lou Ferrigno fights a guy in a bear suit. Then again, there was that long-running TV series featuring future Republican punching bag Kevin Sorbo, and its Ryan Gosling-starring spinoff. So maybe the big guy is due.

(Via Deadline)

Over the past two years, student debt has become a hot-button issue, in part because of certain campaign promises made by Joe Biden during his successful bid for the Presidency. While conservative commentators have railed against debt forgiveness — mostly to oppose Democrats, despite the policy’s overwhelming popularity among voters — others have taken matters into their own hands. In 2019, Vista Equity founder and billionaire Robert F. Smith paid off the tuition of the entire Morehouse University graduating class. Now, Pharrell Williams, in an attempt to lead by example, has done the same for five student leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

During a Friday panel on the student debt crisis for Black scholars at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC, Pharrell announced he was paying off all student debt for students of Southern University, Howard, and Florida A&M, as well as alumni of North Carolina AT, and Norfolk State. The panel’s organizer, NAACP National Director of Youth and College Wisdom Cole, said, “Pharrell forever changed their lives. This was a powerful moment. Now just imagine if President Biden made this a reality for all student debt holders in America.”

Meanwhile, NCAAP President and CEO Derrick Johnson posted photos of the youth leaders as they learned of their debt cancelation on Twitter, imploring President Biden, “It’s your turn now to do the same for all Americans plagued by student debt.” Hours later, Pharrell kicked off his Something In The Water Festival, where he’s set to perform with Clipse, Justin Timberlake, SZA, and more.

The argument can be made that the best wide receiver prospect in the 2022 NFL Draft was the second player off the board at his position. After an ultra-successful collegiate career as a member of the Ohio State Buckeyes, Garrett Wilson was the 10th overall selection by the New York Jets, a potential No. 1 receiver for second-year signal caller Zach Wilson.

There’s a whole lot of hype around what he can achieve in the league, and ahead of his rookie campaign, Wilson appeared on The Pivot podcast. It featured one spectacular moment where Wilson was informed what it means to pay for a rookie dinner, which left him stunned.

“I gotta take all the receivers to a dinner,” Wilson said around the 44:55 mark. “That’s gonna be cool, I’m excited for that.”

It was at this point that Ryan Clark, Channing Crowder, and Fred Taylor told him this is very much not cool, with Taylor informing him that the bill could get run up to $75,000. Wilson could not believe this.

“Nah, they ain’t doing me for $75k,” Wilson said before getting resoundingly told that he’s wrong.

“All I’m gonna say is, we didn’t do a whole lot of rookie dinners, all the rookies, when I was in Jacksonville,” Taylor said. “We did position by position. But when I was in New England, the entire team went out on the rookies — if it’s 10, 12 rookies, whatever it might be in that class. All I know is, that bill comes back $50-60,000, because Tom [Brady] would come in there and buy a $3, $4, $5,000 bottle of wine, take one sip, put it, and say ‘goodnight.’ So, it’s gonna happen.”

Wilson laughed at this story, but deep down, we can tell that he’s still getting ready to spend a lot more money on a meal than he anticipated.

They might be the oddball-iest couple in the public sphere: Kellyanne and George Conway. She spent nearly four years as Donald Trump’s senior counselor (and was part of his empire for well before that). He’s a longtime Republican who became famous for trashing his wife’s boss and even trying to end his re-election chances. For years, Kellyanne kept shtum about how they made that work, but lately she’s been speaking ill of her spouse of over 20 years.

As caught by Raw Story, Kellyanne went on CNN, where host Michael Smerconish dared ask about the state of her marriage, especially considering her husband had accused Trump of “witness tampering” on MSNBC mere hours before. He got more than he perhaps expected.

“You know, in 2016, known as the year of the tweet, George Conway sent zero tweets,” Kellyanne said. “Now he’s sent over 100,000. He can change his mind about Donald Trump, this is a free country, George has no allegiance to a political party or presidential candidate but his vows to me I feel were broken because we were all in.”

Kellyanne then launched into an epic rant, which Smerconish tried — and often failed — to interupt. She said it was George that told her to take the campaign management job that led to her post in the White House, but that he eventually turned on Trump, tweeting about him relentlessly and even co-founding the Lincoln Project, comprised of anti-Trump renegade Republicans. She she confronted him about his “steady diet of ‘Trump, Trump, Trump,” but to no avail. Instead, he “became some kind of resistance folk hero but not at a small cost.”

Kellyanne was even surprised at how far George went. “I feel that I should have known ahead of time if this thing called the Lincoln Project was going to exist there were going to be ads, dumping an op-ed the next day, his tweets are going to be about my boss,” she said. She continued:

“Again, just so your viewers who are saying ‘why did you have her on? I turned off the TV,’ although they didn’t or are reading online, they should know that George — I feel like I was owed an explanation. And this is not the situation, I gave up millions of dollars to go be a public servant in the White House. George wanted to have a big job in the Trump administration, we moved our family to Washington as a family. He changed his mind about Donald Trump somewhere along the way. Famously, Donald Trump never changes. I didn’t change my mind.”

Kellyanne has been promoting her new memoir, which has led to revelations about how much Trump hated all the mean things her husband was saying about him. Nevertheless, she’s standing by her old boss.

You can watch Kellyanne’s CNN appearance in the video above.

(Via Raw Story)