Month: September 2022

Have you ever driven behind a truck hauling fruit or with a slowly opening cargo door and thought, “Am I about to get final destination’d right now” That’s definitely the thought that went through at least some people’s heads when an 18-wheeler crashed on Memphis’ Interstate 55 during rush hour on Tuesday evening. According to CBS News, this sent jars of Five Brothers alfredo sauce crashing all across the highway, coating multiple lanes.

This happened just one day after a similar crash happened on California’s Highway 80 when a truck hauling tomatoes crashed into the center divider and, according to the New York Times sent 150,000 tomatoes flying, creating a smear of tomatoes across the road. You know what that means, friends?

We’re one parmesan crash away from having a full pasta dish on our hands!

The thought of how these splattered tomatoes and alfredo sauce spills must’ve smelled baking in the hot August sun iseither wonderful or horrifying, depending on your disposition. Thankfully, no one was killed in either crash, though CBS reports that one woman was transported to the local hospital in non-critical condition, and The New York Times reports that the tomato spill in California caused a four-vehicle crash, resulting in three people needing to be taken to the hospital, with one person suffering major injuries. Slippery tomato skins on asphalt are a recipe for disaster apparently, luckily the worst was avoided.

If we can take one thing away from these crashes, it’s that we should just ditch alfredo sauce jars entirely and learn to make our own. Tomatoes we’re going to have to keep, no matter how much mayhem they cause.

Don’t call it a comeback, but only because it failed. For months, Sarah Palin — who you could arguably blame for ushering in a newer, dumber breed of Republican politician, leading to the doomed big guy himself — has been trying to edge her way back into government, partly by cozying up to Donald Trump. But her bid for a vacating House seat ended with her getting rejected by her former constituents, leading to much rejoicing.

As per CNN, Alaska held a special election to fill a House seat, albeit only for the remainder of the year. Palin was one of the candidates. She lost to Mary Peltola, a Democrat who has become the very first Alaska Native elected to Congress. The election marked a first for Alaska, which employed a ranked-choice system in which all four qualified candidates, across different parties, all ran against each other on one ballot.

Alas, Palin will get a second chance for a second chance much sooner than you’d think. The same seat will be back up for grabs in the general election, meaning Palin and Peltola will have to duke it out once more.

Palin was elected governor of Alaska in 2006, but she remained a relatively obscure figure until 2008, when then- presidential candidate John McCain chose her as his running mate on the Republican ticket. She was immediately divisive, giving bizarrely inarticulate media interviews that prompted widespread mockery. She and McCain lost to Barack Obama and the future 46th president.

Less than a year later, she abruptly resigned from her governorship, briefly became a reality TV star, and then fell back into obscurity, emerging in the last couple years as she attempted to hitch up with the MAGA movement she helped create. So far, and despite her still being an incoherent wreck, that’s been a failure, but one thing she was likely successful at was getting innocent people sick with COVID after testing positive during a trip to New York City to fight The New York Times in court. At least she lost that one, too.

Anyway, you’ll be hearing from her again, far, far too soon. But in the meantime, people were stoked that her first comeback bid was such a failure.

Some pointed to an interesting trend: Democrats are doing really well in elections since the right-leaning Supreme Court nixed Roe v. Wade.

And others were stoked for Peltola, who on top of being indigenous is the first Democrat to represent Alaska in the House in a half-century.

(Via CNN)

The Mets and Dodgers very well could find themselves meeting in the postseason later this year, as Los Angeles has run away with the NL West and New York currently holds a three-game advantage over the Atlanta Braves in the NL East.

As such, this week’s series between the two teams felt like a chance for each side to try and assert themselves as a playoff favorite, with the Mets in particular needing some wins to keep pace ahead of Atlanta. On Wednesday night, New York trotted out their ace in Jacob deGrom, and per usual he delivered a gem, allowing just one run through his first six innings of work. However, the Mets were struggling to produce much in the way of offense so deGrom entered his seventh inning on the mound with just a 2-1 lead.

With one out and no one on, Justin Turner took a two-seam fastball for a ride out to deep center field on what should’ve been the game-tying home run to spoil deGrom’s otherwise tremendous outing, but Mets centerfielder Brandon Nimmo had other ideas, skying to rob the home run at full speed running into the wall.

It truly is a sensational catch, as Nimmo doesn’t have time to slow down and time the ball as it approaches the wall, instead having to leap at full stride to make the play, crashing into the wall but holding on and taking a run off the board. His reaction is priceless, as he knows he just made the catch of the year and catch of his career, and deGrom gives him a deserved tip of the cap for preserving the lead in the game for the Mets.

Not only is Denzel Curry’s a great rapper; he can also convey deep emotion and tell vivid stories, which places him among the most talented acts of his generation. However, that isn’t all the Florida rapper can do. This week, he pulled out his virtual easel and made digital paintings of his new muse, Doja Cat, reimagining her as fan favorite cartoon characters from the late 90s and early 2000s, as well as turning her into the the late MF Doom.

In a Wednesday Instagram post, the Melt My Eyez See Your Future artist shared multiple photos of a Doja Cat selfie with artwork portraying her as Helga from Hey Arnold, Cosmo and Crimson Chin from The Fairly Odd Parents, Superman, Johnny Bravo, Jimmy Neutron, and many more.

The Planet Her artist apparently enjoyed the artistic exploration, as she shared the photos to her own Instagram page as well, including a drawing of MF Doom’s legendary mask over her face.

Whether this was simply some fun between friends or a sign of a potential musical collaboration to come, it was definitely a funny thing to come across as one peruses one’s Instagram timeline.

Check out Denzel Curry’s drawings of Doja Cat above.

Donald Trump’s allies are having a bear of a time sticking up for him. After all, there’s one adversary who keeps making their job harder and harder: Donald Trump. Ever since the resort he now lives in was searched by the feds, the former president keeps trying to call the Justice Department’s bluff. But they aren’t bluffing. To make matters worse, Trump keeps saying things that are not only unhinged but incriminating. Now he may have really done himself in.

Late Tuesday, the DOJ released damning photos of all the top secret government documents found hidden in random parts of Mar-a-Lago. The sight appeared to be a mess, with files strewn all over the floor. But in a report by The New York Times, the documents were “splayed out so they can be separately identified by their markings.” There was even a ruler in the image, which helped readers get a “sense of their size in relation to other objects.”

Was it a trap? If so, Trump fell for it. The following day, he took to his rinky dink Twitter clone, trying to paint himself as a victim but only succeeding in making his legal matters even worse.

“There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet, making it look like a big ‘find’ for them,” Trump wrote. “They dropped them, not me – very deceiving.”

As NYT’s Maggie Haberman pointed out, his statement directly contradicts what his lawyer had previously claimed about the investigation. “Trump has moved off suggesting things were planted and now says documents were ‘in cartons’ at his house/club…which he says even though his lawyer signed a document asserting all material was in the storage area and went back, per DOJ,” Haberman wrote.

It was, as many pointed out, not a smart move. Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti called the Truth post “evidence of his guilt,” adding, “It would be like a defendant taking issue with a FBI photo showing bricks of cocaine on the floor of his residence instead of ‘in cartons.’ It admits possession.”

Some pointed out it was like an alleged drug dealer complaining that authorities had mis-arranged their drugs.

Others wondered how things will play out now that Trump may have accidentally confessed to a crime.

And one Mueller prosecutor straight up called Trump a “criminal defense lawyer’s nightmare” whose “uninhibited mouthing off is actually serving to make the criminal case against him stronger.”

In any case, perhaps Trump will start hoping Truth Social will go bankrupt sooner rather than later, before he really gets himself in trouble.

(Via Raw Story)

Chlöe Bailey, one half of the pop duo Chloe x Halle, always finds a way to get the Internet talking. Though her photos are what get her attention on social media, it’s her musical chops that keep people talking about her. The “Treat Me” artist recently collaborated with Spotify for two of their Spotify Singles: a cover of Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” and an acoustic version of her latest song “Surprise.”

Both tracks find the 24-year-old delivering her mesmerizing vocals. “Freak Like Me” is an especially impressive outing considering how legendary Howard’s original 1995 original is. The appetitive nature of Chlöe’s social media posts certainly matches what she delivered on these two songs.

Bailey is no stranger to covers, as over the last year she has provided a woman’s perspective on such tracks as Bleu’s “You’re Mines Still,” Silk Sonic’s “Leave The Door Open” and Capella Grey’s “Gyalis,” which was later released as a “shemix” on streaming platforms.

Though there is no confirmation on when Chlöe’s solo album is coming, she has maintained a presence with her two singles “Surprise” and “Treat Me” this year, in addition to last year’s “Have Mercy.”

Check out Chlöe’s Spotify Singles here.

Late last year, as movie theaters were still struggling to get back to anything approaching pre-pandemic attendance levels, AMC Theatres debuted an unusual marketing strategy: They forked over $25 million for an ad in which Nicole Kidman welcomed people back to the multiplex. The earnest (and, frankly, pretty moving) spot quickly turned heads, and it’s been so popular that the chain kept running it before movies, and retained the Oscar winner’s services for another year as their spokesperson. Now, apropos for the age of deathless franchises, the ad is getting a sequel.

As per Vanity Fair, the writer of the first ad Billy Ray — a seasoned Hollywood scribe whose credits include The Hunger Games, Captain Phillips, and Richard Jewell, as well as directing the delightful plagiarism docudrama Shattered Glass — said he’d been tasked with writing part two of the Kidman AMC saga. In fact, he says, it’s already written.

Of course, how can one improve on perfect? The Nicole Kidman AMC ad has become a fixture of moviegoing, at least at the chain’s theaters. It’s not unusual for it to get hoots and hollers, even people reciting Kidman’s speech à la The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Who doesn’t get choked up at the newly ripped movie star saying that “somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this”?

Kidman was kind of shocked when the ad turned heads, but she fully supports its message. In an interview with The Playlist, she got weepy about the power of movies in movie theaters, which were shuttered for so, so long. “I mean, talk about not feeling alone, sitting in a cinema with a broken heart, and then watching something that breaks your heart again, and you go, ‘I’m not alone,’” she said. “Please. This must not go away. We have to have cinema.”

Incidentally, you know who else loves going to the movies? Her ex-husband Tom Cruise.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Many musical legends never get the chance to work together, leaving fans wondering what could result from a collaboration. Diddy and Dr. Dre are indelible parts of music history, but they’ve never formally got the chance to work together — that is, until recently.

In a Tuesday Instagram post, the one known as “Brother Love” shared photos of himself and the Beats Electronic co-founder working together in the studio coupled with an earnest message. “Yesterday, one of my biggest dreams finally came true. I remember the first time I heard @DrDre’s production. It gave me clear direction on the level of Producer that I wanted to be,” Diddy said. “Last night, I got the chance to work with this man and to see his genius as he coached me through vocals. He reminded me of myself, but with a different style and way more focused. I gotta step my focus up!”

Rap Radar reported that the two joined forces to contribute to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s forthcoming joint album, which Snoop confirmed in his recent appearance on the Rap Radar podcast alongside Jamie Foxx. Though details about the project remain thin on the ground, with heavy hitters like Diddy in the mix it’s bound to be a mindblowing listen.

Check out Diddy’s Instagram post above.

At a time when inflation is eating away at family budgets, the Cinema Foundation has announced National Cinema Day on Saturday, September 3. It’s a one-day event where all tickets at participating theaters will be $3 or less.

That’s a big dip from the national average of $9.17 a ticket.

More than 3,000 theaters with over 30,000 screens are participating in National Cinema Day. AMC Theatres announced that it’s celebrating by offering popcorn and drink for just $5 as well.

The special day is to welcome back folks who haven’t been to the movies since the pandemic and to celebrate the surprisingly solid summer 2022 box office. AP reports that before each $3 screening, theater-goers will be shown a sizzle reel of upcoming films from A24, Amazon Studios, Disney, Focus Features, Lionsgate, Neon, Paramount, Sony Pictures Classics, Sony, United Artists Releasing, Universal and Warner Bros.

The hope is to continue the momentum of this summer into the fall. If National Cinema Day is successful it could also become an annual event, much like Record Store Day.

u201c#NationalCinemaDay is Saturday, 9/3! All tickets, including IMAX and Dolby Cinema, are only $3+tax, and our fountain drink and popcorn cameo combo is just $5+tax. https://t.co/O6q3d38atsu201d

— AMC Theatres (@AMC Theatres)
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“After this summer’s record-breaking return to cinemas, we wanted to do something to celebrate moviegoing,” said Cinema Foundation President Jackie Brenneman in a press release. “We’re doing it by offering a ‘thank you’ to the moviegoers that made this summer happen, and by offering an extra enticement for those who haven’t made it back yet.”

The summer of 2022 has been seen as a success by some in the motion picture industry because theaters pulled in roughly $3.3 billion or 80% of the 2019, pre-pandemic box office. The totals may be lower than the last pre-pandemic summer, but 2022 saw 30% fewer releases.

The summer box office rallied this year due to big showings from “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: Rise of Gru,” “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and “Jurassic World Dominion.”

Even though there has been a big box-office rebound, the types of films that have found success in theaters has dramatically changed over the past few years.

“The dramas, the middle-of-the-road action movies that are not the A-list franchise tentpoles—those have really struggled,” Matthew Belloni from Puck, told NPR. “[Studios] don’t see evidence that there is an audience for the mid-budget and lower-budget drama movies in theaters, so they’re just not putting them in. But there can’t be a surprise hit if they’re not in theaters.”

Let’s hope that National Cinema Day is a big success for both theaters and movie-goers. Over the past few years, there has been a paradigm shift where more people now prefer to watch movies in their homes on streaming services than going to theaters. This has many worried that the experience of seeing movies on the big screen may become a thing of the past.

There’s something exhilarating about the communal experience of watching a film with an audience and listening to a booming sound system and seeing images fly by on a massive screen. Films were made to be seen this way and it’d be a travesty to lose the cinema experience. Events like National Cinema Day that encourage people to relish the cinema experience could prove to be an effective way to remind people of the power of seeing a film on the big screen.