Year: 2022

Last night, the 14th annual Billboard Women In Music event was held at the YouTube Theater in Inglewood, California to honor women in the music industry who have made significant strides or impacts in the past year. The event, which made its return after being canceled last year, awarded such honors as Woman Of The Year, Impact Award, Powerhouse Award, Innovator Award, Trailblazer Award, and Executive Of The Year. As with many awards events, the Women In Music conference also featured live performances from many of its honorees, including Doja Cat, HER, Saweetie, and more.

For Doja Cat’s stripped-down performance of “Alone” from her 2021 album Planet Her, the singer and rapper appeared in a hot pink cloak gown accompanied by piano and light strings on the darkened stage. Beginning without percussion, the instrumentation featured a slow build that never quite resolved, giving an understated appeal to Doja’s usual bombastic onstage antics.

Meanwhile, Saweetie performed her new song “Closer” — sans collaborator H.E.R. — keeping the “Icy flight attendant” aesthetic of the song’s video alive for the stage. In this case, Saweetie and her dancers wore bedazzled gold uniforms as they performed some extremely “disco queen” choreography perfect for the song’s ’70s dance vibe.

Saweetie’s fellow Filipino-American performer HER, meanwhile, delivered an acoustic take on her song “Fate.”

You can watch the performances above or on Billboard.com.

As The Boys gears up for its Season 3 premiere in June, fans who’ve had to wait almost two years for that raunchy Homelander goodness are naturally curious if the show will have a fourth season. Here’s what we know so far. As of this writing, Amazon has not officially announced a Season 4. However, there have been unconfirmed reports that production for a fourth season is set to start soon if it hasn’t already. Whether those rumors are true or not is wide open for debate, but Amazon is definitely leaning heavily into The Boys franchise.

Starting in March 2022, all eight episodes of The Boys: Diabolical will start streaming, making the animated series the first spinoff out of the gate. The madcap mini-episodes will feature canonical stories including a peek at Homelander’s origin. But Diabolical is only the start of the rapidly expanding The Boys universe.

In September 2021, Amazon gave the greenlight to a recently announced live-action spinoff that will focus on a superhero college run by the nefarious Vought Industries. There’s been little in the way of production info on the new spinoff, but Amazon did share a synopsis for the untitled series with The Hollywood Reporter:

Set at America’s only college exclusively for young-adult superheroes (run by Vought International), the Untitled The Boys Spinoff is an irreverent, R-rated series that explores the lives of hormonal, competitive Supes as they put their physical, sexual, and moral boundaries to the test, competing for the best contracts in the best cities. It’s part college show, part Hunger Games—with all the heart, satire, and raunch of The Boys.

With Diabolical and the untitled spinoff in the mix, it’s clear that Amazon is very much in The Boys business. As for whether that means Season 4 is happening, we can’t say for sure. Keeping the main show going as an anchor for the expanding universe is obviously the ideal situation, and there is still plenty of source material from the comics to adapt. However, there are always considerations like the availability of the cast, production costs, and of course, whether or not viewers are turning up to watch the series.

The Boys: Diabolical streams March 4 followed by The Boys Season 3 on June 3.

Sean Hannity would make a terrible politician. (Please remember that if he ever decides to give up his cushy Fox News gig and make a run for public office.) He proved his lack of tact and political acumen on Wednesday night, when he offered up his big idea for the easiest way we could put the Russia Ukraine War to an end right now: Basically, just to go in there and bump off Vladimir Putin. Easy-peasy.

As The Daily Beast reports, Hannity shared his ideas about how to put a swift end to the current crisis in Ukraine, which mostly consisted of a little bit of state-sponsored murder. As he explained:

“Putin has gotta be stopped. By whatever means necessary, one way or another. It’s a simple rule in life: If you invade an innocent country, and you kill women and children and men, you forfeit your right to lead a country and you forfeit your right to live. And I hope that people around Vladimir Putin… well, I hope they take action sooner than later.”

If you think Hannity, who has clearly watched too many James Bond movies, was speaking in jest in any way, think again. Because he clearly did some digging into the legal repercussions of what would happen if someone just snuffed out Putin the way he has done to journalists and many others who don’t bend the knee to him:

“Now currently, the U.S. operates under a decades-old executive order, first signed by President Gerald Ford. It prohibits the U.S. government employees from engaging in political assassination. But my final question tonight is: When it comes to Putin, is it time to now revisit the rule? My rule I like better… Simple: Cut off the head of the snake, the snake dies.”

You can watch the full clip over on The Daily Beast here.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is Sam Raimi’s first comic book movie since Spider-Man 3 (and first movie overall since 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful). If the reaction to the Doctor Strange sequel is anything like how the Spider-Man trilogy capper was greeted in 2007, it will take years for it to be properly appreciated.

Spider-Man 3 is too long with too many villains and I’m not going to claim it’s better than Spider-Man 2, still the best Spider-Man movie. But it shines in the moments when the studio let Raimi (who did not have a fun time making the film) channel his inner Evil Dead-ness. There’s a real joy to the evil Peter Parker sequence that you don’t get in a lot of other comic book movies. Tobey’s emo haircut and makeover was maligned at the time, but it’s now considered a franchise highlight. It’s also being embraced by a younger generation, based on a video that the Marvel Multiverse Twitter account shared.

“This kid is doing the #BullyMaguire dance!” the tweet reads. He sure is. Little guy’s got all the moves memorized perfectly. Raimi must feel… VINDICATED I AM SELFISH I AM WRONG I AM RIGHT I SWEAR I’M RIGHT SWEAR I KNEW IT ALONG.

(Via Comic Book)

Larry David’s highly-anticipated documentary The Larry David Story was unexpectedly pulled just one day before it was supposed to premiere on March 1st. The move left fans confused, rightfully so, as many were excited for a rare glimpse inside the comedian’s mind.

According to HBO, David requested that his doc be postponed so he could premiere it in front of a live audience. Why he decided to make the move a day before its premiere is a little strange but hey, comedians can be a little weird, in case you haven’t heard.

The two-part docuseries features a candid conversation between David and fellow director/friend Larry Charles as he gives a behind-the-scenes look into David’s early days of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

“I was 25 years old, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. What do you do when you’re talking and people are laughing? You do comedy.” The now 74-year-old said. If he wants laughter, screening the doc in front of an audience is probably the right move! (But maybe he should have decided that a few weeks ago?) Then again, fans of David have been a little hesitant (AKA devastated) since his Super Bowl crypto ad. (Cue the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme music here).

There is no word yet on when the series will air on HBO, or if the in-person premiere will happen, but hopefully it will happen soon. We all need some more Larry David wisdom in our lives. Just maybe not about crypto. Check out the trailer below.

In 2018, when Christine Blasey Ford and other women accused then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Bret Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting them in the past, Tucker Carlson was heralding the beer-loving judge as a “folk hero” and “inspiration to millions” (though he has since turned on him). But the Fox News host doesn’t seem as confident in the skills of Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s pick to replace U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, who Jackson once clerked for.

Hmmmm…. why ever could that be?

Jackson is a Harvard Law School graduate, just like Breyer and fellow Justices John Roberts, Elena Kagan, and Neil Gorsuch.

She was an editor of the Harvard Law Review, just like Breyer, Roberts, and Kagan (not to mention Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia).

In 2009, Barack Obama nominated Jackson to become vice-chair of the United States Sentencing Commission—a nomination that was unanimously confirmed in early 2010.

She’s been a well-respected judge for a decade, and is even related to former GOP vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan for chrissakes (through marriage).

But darn it if Tucker isn’t buying that Jackson is qualified enough to sit on the highest court in the land. And now he’s taking it one step further by demanding that we see her LSAT scores. As Mediaite reports, Carlson had some questions on his Wednesday night show:

“So, is Ketanji Brown Jackson—a name that even Joe Biden has trouble pronouncing – one of the top legal minds in the entire country? We certainly hope so. Biden’s right. Appointing her is one of his gravest constitutional duties. So it might be time for Joe Biden to let us know what Ketanji Brown Jackson’s LSAT score was. How did she do on the LSATs? Why wouldn’t you tell us that? That would settle the question conclusively as to whether she’s a once-in-a-generation legal talent, the next Learned Hand. It would seem like Americans in a democracy have a right to know that and much more before giving her a lifetime appointment, but we didn’t hear that.”

Between 2017 and 2020, Trump confirmed a whopping three new Justices to the Supreme Court, and Carlson never made a peep about LSAT scores or anything else. So what is it about Jackson that seems to have him so skeptical? Surely it’s not the fact that… wait, no, it couldn’t be because she’s a Black woman… right?

Sounds like a case for the Supreme Court to figure out.

(Via Mediaite)

(Mild spoilers for Netflix’s Bad Vegan will be found below.)

Tales of grifters rule the streaming services these days, from Amanda Seyfried’s turn as Theranos’ mega-frauder Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout to Julia Garner’s take on super-shady Anna Delvey in Inventing Anna. There’s another similar limited series (called Bad Vegan from Netflix) on the horizon, but this one involves a truly talented and hard-working individual who fell from grace, big time.

That would be Sarma Melngailis, the restauranteur and founder of One Lucky Duck and Pure Food and Wine, which were all the rage in New York City. The joints specialized in raw vegan cuisine was all the rage with celebrities, and then in 2016, everything fell completely to pieces. As Bad Vegan details, this wasn’t an overnight process, but the spectacle seemed to explode all over the gossip scene. In 2016, New York Post sensationally wrote about “the downfall of NYC’s hottest vegan” while attorneys that represented Sarma’s defrauded employees called her “the vegan Bernie Madoff.”

When all was said and done, Sarma did hard time at Rikers Island. She had ended up in an awful relationship with a compulsive gambler and terrible person named Anthony Strangis (who used a pseudonym). Long story short, there was a cult-like mentality involved with this coupling. There were promises of dog immortality and references to a “meat suit,” and the two ended up on the lam and in the hole for millions of dollars. The series follows Sarma’s experiences, which are at times unbelievable, and reactions to those who knew her, both in positive and negative ways, to dramatic effect.

The show hails from executive producer Chris Smith of Tiger King and Fyre: The Greatest Party, so get ready for drama.

Bad Vegan will stream on March 16.

Every year, Heaven Hill releases three versions of their beloved (and award-winning) Elijah Craig Barrel Proof. While it would track that these releases would be very similar from one to the other, they’re really not. Case in point, last year’s first release was a berry bomb with brambles and earthy soil layered in. This year’s first release is definitely not that.

I was lucky enough to snag a bottle of this year’s first Elijah Craig Barrel Proof and I was a bit hesitant to dive in. These are always good but I was left a little cold by last year’s late offerings and didn’t want to go back in just yet. I was mistaken. Not to spoil the end, but this is a very good whiskey.

So let’s skip more preamble and dive into what’s actually in this year’s first Elijah Craig Barrel Proof.

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Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Batch No. A122

ABV: 60.4%

Average Price: $85

The Whiskey:

This year’s first drop is a 12-year-old whiskey made from Heaven Hill’s classic bourbon mash of 78 percent corn, 12 percent malted barley, and a mere ten percent rye. Those barrels are masterfully blended into this Barrel Proof expression with no cutting or fussing. This is as-is bourbon from the barrel.

Tasting Notes:

Caramel draws you in on the nose with a slight sourdough cinnamon roll with pecans, a touch of floral honey, and a soft and woody drug store aftershave with an echo of vanilla candle wax and singed marshmallow. The palate rolls through a soft leather and vanilla pie note as cinnamon ice cream leads to spicy oak. The mid-palate leans into a sweeter, almost creamy spice (think nutmeg-heavy eggnog) which, in turn, leads to a dry cedar bark next to a dry stewed-apple tobacco leaf folded into an old leather pouch for safekeeping.

The Bottle:

Elijah Craig’s bottle is the same as Larceny’s but the lack of lock and key graphics makes it a little subtler. The real draw is the large wooden stopper that’ll pop out on any bar cart. Plus, the “label” is largely embossed, meaning you get a good look at the brown juice in the bottle.

Bottom Line:

This is such a classic bourbon that I almost want to capitalize every letter of “classic” and put a period between each of those letters. This feels like nostalgia from top to bottom and I’m here for it. I’m taken back to my grandfather’s bar on the nose. The taste takes me back to those first sips of good bourbon back in college. This really hits it out of the park for anyone looking for pure Kentucky bourbon vibes.

Ranking:

97/100: This is a stone-cold classic bourbon with a kick. It might be a little warm for beginner palates but the flavor is just absolutely classic.

Kansas City, Missouri, is having a moment. This hotbed of American barbecue is home to lively bars, picnic-worthy public parks, unique hotels, must-visit museums, and an eclectic music scene. One of the area’s own local bands, The Greeting Committee, has taken their KC roots to new heights with the release of their new single “Sort Of Stranger” and their upcoming headline tour, which will feature a hometown show in KC.

“We are grateful to Kansas City for treating our band with love and support,” says The Greeting Committee’s front-woman and vocalist Addie Sartino. “We look forward to reuniting with y’all at Uptown Theater on Saturday, April 9th.”

As a passionate Kansas City native, there’s no one better than Sartinto to give us a local-approved travel guide. She’s sharing the best places to stay, party, and explore for an epic trip to Kansas City below.

WHY KANSAS CITY?

Kansas City is a must-visit destination because it’s a hidden gem. I love how welcoming everyone is, all eager to show you why we’re the place you’ve been missing. Visitors are bound to be pleasantly surprised, making KC the underdog everybody roots for.

What’s one thing that every first-time visitor should see or do in Kansas City?

Every first-time visitor in Kansas City should start their morning at Messenger Coffee on Grand Boulevard. As touring musicians, we go to many coffee shops across the country. Messenger Coffee has a unique quality to it as it holds three floors and a rooftop to explore. Grab some Ibis Bakery bread, a coffee, and soak in your surroundings.

Three must-stop locations for an epic Kansas City bar crawl?

Kansas City is filled with great bars and frequent bar crawls. The first stop I recommend making on your KC bar tour is Tom’s Town, a Pendergast 1920s-themed bar and distillery. Once you’re done at Tom’s, head down the street to The Green Lady Lounge for some live jazz. Finish the night off at Lucky Boys, a West Bottoms dive bar, for a round of pool and some food to satisfy all the drinking.

Best place to spend an afternoon outdoors?

Located near The Plaza, Loose Park extends far and wide. Take a walk around the pond, explore the rose garden, play a round of tennis, climb the jungle gym, or simply lay in the wide-open grass. Loose Park is my favorite as everyone always seems happy to be there. Bring a pack of your favorite Boulevard beer and relax.

Coolest hotel or place to stay?

Crossroads Hotel is by far the spot to be when staying in Kansas City. In the heart of everything, Crossroads is stylish, accommodating, and always pushing the envelope with unique ways to enhance your stay. Get a drink at the downstairs bar or on the rooftop for an amazing view. Grab some Lulu’s Noodles across the street or hop a street over to snag a table at Michael Smith’s Farina.

What do you think surprises people the most when visiting Kansas City?

I believe people are most surprised when visiting Kansas City by how much there is to do. While it is a small city, it’s a small city filled with life and liveliness. Whether it’s the middle of the day at Westwood Park or approaching midnight at Missie B’s, you’re in good company.

Best time of year to visit?

In my opinion, September or October are the best months to visit Kansas City. The weather is warm but not uncomfortable. The streets are lively with First Friday’s street art fair, nearly every venue has a show, outdoor and indoor seating are enjoyable for dining, and it’s the perfect setting to walk around the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum.

The latest star to come to the defense of controversial podcaster Joe Rogan is former guest Freddie Gibbs, who actually appears on the latest episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast offering his take on Rogan’s recent racial slur scandal. Although Gibbs didn’t openly approve of Rogan’s comments and actions, he did give the host some grace while reminding him that he shouldn’t have said the things he said.

“You can’t say that sh*t, Joe, ’cause you pissed n****s off when you did that compilation,” Gibbs said. “It was funny as f*ck, though, I can’t even lie. But hey man, look, I don’t think you a racist, my n****a. You my n****! I f*ck with you. I never thought you was a racist. I just think you were saying some sh*t you shouldn’t have said and a lot of us n****s say stuff that we shouldn’t say sometimes. It is what it.”

One thing Gibbs was adamant about, though, was the proper context for the use of the word in question. “I want to tell white people right now: y’all just gotta let us have that,” he quipped. “Just let us have ‘n****.’ Y’all already human trafficked us over here, let us have that.”

Rogan received a massive backlash after a recent episode of his video in which he makes some (ahem) off-color remarks about Black people was followed by several old episodes in which he says “n****” were resurfaced by social media users. After being called out by Trevor Noah, Fat Joe, and others, Rogan issued a boilerplate apology, which was praised by such milquetoast cultural authorities as the hosts of The View and The Rock (who later backpedaled after realizing that class solidarity doesn’t always trump racism). Others, like Samuel L. Jackson, didn’t accept the apology at face value. Meanwhile, Rogan faced a separate, but related backlash as multiple stars pulled their music from Spotify, which hosts Rogan’s podcast, over his constant propagating of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.