Before she was a model, before she was in Gone Girl, even before she was in the music videos for “Blurred Lines” and “Love Somebody,”Emily Ratajkowski was on a Nickelodeon show. “Did ya’ll know I was Tasha on iCarly?” the recovering teenage dirtbag wrote in captions for a video she uploaded to her TikTok. “I was 16 or 17, and took two weeks off school to shoot two episodes. I met Jennette McCurdy and her mom.” (Yes, that mom.)
Ratajkowski appeared in two episodes of iCarly, which ran from 2007 to 2012. She played Tasha, Gibby’s girlfriend; their relationship was jeopardized when she accidentally fell on top of Freddie, causing Gibby to believe that she was cheating on him (classic Gibby), which is something I already knew and definitely didn’t copy and paste from the show’s helpfully through wiki page.
In her memoir, McCurdy claimed that she was offered hush money to cover up misconduct from a man known as The Creator, who’s believed to be iCarly creator Dan Schneider. “He takes his coat off and drapes it around me. He pats my shoulders and then the pat turns into a massage,” she wrote. “My shoulders do have a lot of knots in them, but I don’t want The Creator to be the one rubbing them out. I want to say something… but I’m so scared of offending him.” Ratajkowski has her own history with creepy dudes.
While millennials and Gen Zer’s often get lumped together as the “young group,” they are certainly not the same. (Although, it is kind of hard to tell with all the Y2K fashion floating around.)
But speaking as a millennial, we definitely have different approaches to life, a lot of which seems to come down to a sense of self-assuredness. That goes for shopping, socializing, self expression…and even going to the hair salon, apparently.
Alexis Rex (@rex.artistry), hairstylist and owner of Rex Artistry Salon in Maryland, gave a brilliant (and hilarious) demonstration of some key personality differences between her millennial clients and her Gen Z clients in a now viral TikTok video.
First, Rex played her Millennial Customer.
Millennial Customer gently knocks on the door and immediately expresses her gratitude. “Hey girl! So good to see you! So excited!”
But at the same time, Millennial Customer wants in no way to be an inconvenience, so she immediately comes back with, “Where should I put my purse? It’s okay, I’m just going to shove it in my own personal space so it’s not in your way. At all.”
Never one to demand attention, Millennial Customer wants a very subtle hair color change. Really, “it shouldn’t even look like I got my hair done.” Not “super bold,” not “in your face.”
Then after flooding the hair stylist with compliments, Millennial Customer (ever wanting to be a good student) will ask a bunch of follow-up questions about how to maintain the style.
Gen Z Customer bolts through the door with a “Hey queen!” like a hurricane (who has time to knock?!) and is ready to plop her stuff down anywhere. Unlike her millennial counterpart, Gen Z Customer is perfectly fine to take up space unapologetically and even show up with hair that “hasn’t been brushed in a month.”
Gen Z Customer also knows exactly what she wants, and it’s anything but subtle. “I wanna do like in-your-face, bold contrast…I wanna look like a different f**king person. Let’s do it.”
The confidence…it’s…palpable.
Gen Z Customer has a different approach to complementing her hairstylist: “Oh my god! F**king Queen! You did that! God I love you.”
No further questions. Gen Z Customer already knows her brand of hair care products, and it’s “Olaplex. All Olaplex.”
Rex’s post quickly racked up 8.6 million views, generating literally thousands of comments discussing how spot on her imitations were.
Millennials in particular chimed in, many of whom couldn’t help but applaud its accuracy of depicting how millennials seem to constantly be apologizing for simply existing.
“I’m a millennial and once I missed the armhole for a sec when putting the cape on. I was convinced I had ruined the appointment,” wrote one person.
Another added, ‘I’m sorry for my hair. I’m sorry my hair takes so long. I’m sorry I had to move my head, omg I’m sorry. You offered me a drink? I will say yes. And then sorry.”
Many were also quick to applaud how Gen Zer’s seemed to have no issues in this arena.
“Gen Z just fully owning the ability to take up space,” one person commented.
“As a millennial I love Gen Z so much. They’re so free to be themselves and so open,” wrote another.
While there may be differences between generations, we can all learn something from one another. And we all enjoy getting our hair did.
By the way, Rex didn’t leave out her Gen X or Boomer clients. She has plenty videos of her imitating them, as well as some nifty style predictions on her TikTok, found here.
Rappers and retirement historically don’t mix, but Drake is flirting it anyway. Lil Yachty is the latest guest on the Rap Radarpodcast, but that’s been slightly overshadowed by Yachty posting a clip from “A Moody Conversation” interview with Drake for his Futuremood sunglasses company.
“I think I’m at the point now where I just wanna, like — I feel like maybe we talked about this the other day, but I feel like I’m kind of introducing the concept in my mind of a graceful exit,” Drake told Yachty while ocean waves crashed behind them.
Yachty teased that the full episode will drop tomorrow, February 24.
Drake taking stock of his life and career was on full display during his Apollo Theater performance last month, which even featured him wearing his old Jimmy Brooks Degrassi jersey.
“I wanted to make this a show about gratitude,” Drake told his intimate Apollo audience, according to Uproxx’s review. “This is a little story that we put together. My deep love for my family, for my dear friends, and for each and every one of you who have been supporting me for a long time. […] This is my bedroom in my mom’s basement where I wrote a lot of new songs. […] I’m gonna play you some of the sh*t that got us out of here.”
“I love him to death,” Yachty told Lowe. “That’s my guy, man. … Our relationship has just grown so big and so tight. But that’s my guy, man. That’s my brother, man. That’s like the only person I probably talk to since I was, like, nineteen on a daily basis. Like, every single day.”
Last year, Ab-Soul released his new album Herbert featuring collaborations with artists like Big Sean, Russ, Joey Badass, and Jhené Aiko. He also teamed up with Zacari earlier this month for the track “Motions.” Now, he’s back with an NPR Tiny Desk.
His enthusiastic performance includes “Message In A Bottle,” “Bohemian Grove,” “It Be Like That,” “FOMF,” “Terrorist Threats,” “Fallacy,” “Do Better,” “The Book of Soul,” and “Gotta Rap.” His passionate flows are set to a mesmeric, eclectic backdrop of guitars, trumpets, and saxophones; there’s a sense of vibrant community amongst the cluster of talented musicians packed in the small space. To make it better, today is his birthday. What better way to celebrate?
A statement shared upon the announcement of the album Herbert explained the complexity of the meaning and making of it. “Herbert is a deliberately intimate portrait of the man behind Ab-Soul going back to his foundation,” the statement reads. “As noted by the name of the record, leaving the conspiracy theories, he’s known for behind while emphasizing his musicality. After suffering through a series of unspeakable tragedies, Stevens completed the album as a changed man with a new sense of purpose.”
Aaron Rodgers is one of several quarterbacks who went into this offseason with an unclear future. The 39-year-old signal caller could retire, or he could try to return to the Green Bay Packers for a 19th season, or he could look at one of the numerous teams around the NFL that believe they’re an upgrade under center away from making a run.
In an effort to figure out what he wants to do next, Rodgers announced that he is going into a darkness retreat, telling Pat McAfee that his plan was to spend four nights inside and come out with “a better sense of where I’m at in my life.” As for what, exactly, a darkness retreat is, Xuan Thai of ESPN spoke to Scott Berman of Sky Cave Retreats, the spot in Oregon where Rodgers unplugged for a while.
Berman said the room in which Rodgers spent his time is a partially underground, Hobbit-like structure with 300 square feet of space, devoid of light, with a queen bed, a bathroom and a meditation-like mat on the floor. It is fully powered, so at any point, the lights can be turned on from inside the room.
Rodgers has emerged from the retreat, although there is no word on what decision he’s made about his future.
According to TMZ, The Blazers were scheduled to fly from Portland to Sacramento, California for their matchup with the Kings tonight, February 23, “but a severe snowstorm delayed their chartered flight for seven hours” last night, February 22.
While stranded, Lillard transformed into Dame D.O.L.L.A., his musical alter ego, to spit a freestyle over the beat to GloRilla’s “Tomorrow 2” remix featuring Cardi B (as noted by TMZ).
Lillard posted the video to his Instagram with the caption, “When you stuck on the plane for 7 hours and the flight get canceled [shrug emoji] … guess we try again TOMORROW [cry-laughing emojis]”:
“How the f*ck we stuck up in the snow? Guess we fly this b*tch tomorrow,” Dame rapped while reading from his phone. Later in the freestyle, he referenced his “Dame Time” nickname — “I’ma tap my wrist, it’s Dame Time / I give them fits” — and cleverly demanded, “Captain, let me in the pit!”
Lillard has been delivering cold bars for years, and he’s a respected rapper by his NBA peers and rap legends alike.
His debut project, The Letter “O,” arrived in 2016, and it housed collaborations with Lil Wayne and Jamie Foxx. Confirmed (2017), Big D.O.L.L.A. (2019), Live From The Bubble (2020) and Different On Levels The Lord Allowed(2021) followed suit. Wayne, Blxst, Mozzy, Q-Tip, and Raphael Saadiq were among the featured artists on Different On Levels The Lord Allowed.
Are you aware of what’s happening with CSI these days? It’s kind of incredible. There’s a show out there called CSI: Vegas. If you read that just now and said “Wait, wasn’t CSI always in Las Vegas?” then you are both right and wrong and about to go on a real ride. That original CSI ended in 2015. There were others in there for a while, too, most notably CSI: Miami (Caruso, sunglasses, etc.), but also CSI: NY (Gary Sinise solving City murders), and my beloved CSI: Cyber (Ted Danson and Patricia Arquette doing computer things, sometimes using a Roomba to solve a murder). Those all ended and then CBS brought back some of the original crew in 2021 and plopped them back in Sin City and called this revival/continuation CSI: Vegas, which is somehow both less and more confusing than if they had just called it CSI again. It’s really a lot, and that’s before we even get to the various NCISes or the thing where Without a Trace and Cold Case exist in the same fictional universe as CSI, too. Ask your dad about it. He’ll probably have most of it nailed down.
In fact, buckle in for a long chat about television with your dad, or any dad, really. The last few weeks have been kind of wild for them. There are spinoffs and continuations and prequels of so many of their favorite shows happening or about to happen right now. Most of the shows are going to Miami, like many dad shows and dads eventually do. It must be so thrilling. The Dad Show Extended Universe is growing at an exponential rate.
Let’s start at the top. The top of the ratings, at least. Things are happening in the world of Yellowstone. So many things, honestly, in addition to all of the other things showrunner Taylor Sheridan has going on right now. The big one is the chaos of the original, which could be ending soon on account of Dad North Star Kevin Costner (Field of Dreams, Bull Durham, Tin Cup, all the dad classics) allegedly wanting to step away from the show soon. But fear not! Plans are in place! Probably!
What all parties are now wrangling is a Yellowstone franchise extension that Sheridan will write with McConaughey as the star. The True Detective star is currently in negotiations.
Because of the wild success of the prequel series 1883, 1923 and expectations on upcoming Sheridan shows, the studio has more flexibility and isn’t as dependent on Yellowstone as was the case two years ago.
Matthew McConaughey stepping in for Kevin Costner for a spinoff of a show about a ranch where sometimes murders happen. This is some powerful business. But let’s not miss the other key part of this. There are so many Yellowstone spinoffs already and there are going to be so many more. Look at this list.
Prequel limited series 1883, which starred Tim McGraw, Faith Hill and Sam Elliott, premiered in December 2021 and told the story of how the Duttons came to own the land that became the Yellowstone ranch.
1923, which stars Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford, premiered in December 2022 and is set for a second and final season, taking in the time of Western expansion, prohibition and the Great Depression.
As Deadline scooped last October, also on the drawing board are two separate limited series that encompass the struggle to hang onto the ranch in the 1940s and the 1960s.
For the math-averse, this adds up to four Yellowstone prequels, in addition to the original and the McConaughey extension of that. My great hope is that this universe keeps growing in both directions and the next batch of spinoffs includes one called like 3023 set 1000 years in the future but nothing has changed on the ranch. Maybe the cars fly now. That’s it. Everyone still in cowboy hats and working the soil as the sun expands and threatens to swallow the planet whole. Or maybe they are ranching on Mars. Maybe both. The only thing limiting us is the furthest reaches of our imaginations.
It’s not just Yellowstone that’s expanding its universe. Bosch is growing, too. At a rapid pace. Everyone’s favorite show about a loose cannon cop who gets results and listens to jazz in a glass house overlooking Los Angeles is getting two new spinoffs (spins-off?) in the next year or two, in addition to the spinoff it already has. Here, look, there’s one about Bosch’s partner, Jerry Edgar, played by Wire veteran Jamie Hector…
A police drama following Harry Bosch’s former partner, Detective Jerry Edgar, who is tapped for an undercover FBI mission in Little Haiti, Miami. In this glamorous city, he is forced to balance his new life with the gritty underbelly of the city, while being chased by his mysterious past.
… and there’s one about Renee Ballard, too, who is a figure in a series of books by Bosch author Michael Connelly.
Detective Renee Ballard is tasked with running the LAPD’s new cold case division. Beyond simply investigating unsolved crimes, Renee is dedicated to bringing credibility to the department and justice to the community. Having learned from retired ally and mentor Harry Bosch, Renee does things her way – solving cases in unconventional ways while navigating the politics of being a woman on the rise in the LAPD.
Which is fine. Great, even. My only request is that both shows let Lance Reddick’s character, police chief Irvin Irving, swing by every once in a while to grumble the lead character’s name and/or swear a little bit. I could use a few more screencaps like these.
AMAZONAMAZONAMAZON
Sometimes I think about what I would do if Lance Reddick ever yelled at me. So far the best answer I have is “dissolve into a little pile of dust and blow away in the first reasonably stiff breeze.” I will continue to ponder this. I do not think I would enjoy it.
Hey, guess what other show is getting a handful of spinoffs in the next few years. Did you say Billions? Is it because Paul Giamatti is in the image at the top of the page? Hmm. Well, you’re right, for whatever reason. It’s Billions!
The looser plan for “Billions” is designed to give viewers various entry points to fictional worlds of money and power, and to provide Showtime with related content to premiere throughout the year. “Billions” co-creators Brian Koppelman and David Levien are developing a spinoff set in Miami, a hub of cryptocurrency (and tax breaks for TV productions). The producers will also oversee development of a potential London spinoff, plus two planned takeoffs on the “Billions” title: “Millions,” about young characters on the come-up in finance; and “Trillions,” a soapier foray into the ultrarich set.
My God. Read that again. And another time after that. Millions, Trillions, Billions: Miami, and Billions: London. This is incredible. I need the Miami one to star Giamatti and let him go full Caruso. Sunglasses, bright shirts unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, all of it. I need to see him do exactly this but with a golden suntan and a white linen suit, preferably as soon as this afternoon.
Showtime
The things I need you to take away from this discussion can best be summarized in three bullet points, so let’s go ahead and do that:
This is an exciting era for dads everywhere
I’m still kind of blown away by the CSI revival series being called CSI: Vegas even though that’s where the original series was set
We need to figure out a way to get Bosch, Billions, and Yellowstone to do a three-way crossover series, maybe about a crypto tycoon who gets murdered on a ranch in Miami that Bosch is visiting
Get your dad on the phone this weekend and ask him about it. He probably has lots to say about all of this.
In this day and age, a lot of people have side hustles. They aren’t really for fun, but more of a requirement if you want to be able to afford all of the various streaming services (looking at you, Netflix). But having multiple jobs and nighttime gigs is super common among both us normal folks and celebrities who are also trying to make a quick buck. Why do you think Super Bowl commercials have become so star-studded?!
Former Disney star Bella Thorne has had her fair share of side hustles: she became involved with helping to create a site similar to OnlyFans after crashing their own site, which is pretty good for just a “side gig,” in addition to acting in the high schooler-acclaimed Netflix film series The Babysitter. But her latest gig is about as far removed as you can get from her Disney roots.
Thorne recently revealed the success of one of her latest projects in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. When asked about how she finds the most financial success in her various business ventures, the actress had a surprising answer. “It’s hard to say now for sure but I would say my cannabis company. That’s the big revenue stream,” she explained.
Forbidden Flowers, Thorne’s personal weed brand, launched in 2021. Thorne explains that being financially stable allows her to pick and choose her movie roles without having to be afraid of not making ends meet. “I definitely make money in my film career for sure but when it comes to movies, I take more indie projects because I like small budgets and often you’re saying yes because you like the writing or think the director is going to be f**king awesome,” she explained, adding, “I have always wanted to have other businesses so that I could afford to take the projects that I really want to take. That was, that’s taken me I think a while to get financially really in a good place where I can afford to completely say no to things and feel good about it and not be genuinely worried.”
Thorne isn’t the only actress who has been open and honest about the various brand deals and projects that they sign on to in order to stay financially secure. And we all know how much celebs love weed, so she made a pretty smart move here. This means, thanks to the booming success of Thorne’s brand, there will be even more Babysitter movies to come! And that’s what matters most here.
The way we come across long-lasting friendships is often unexpected. But when you’re part of a military family. You learn to grab hold of the good people you meet and carry those friendships across states and oceans. You mark your friendships based off of what base you were stationed at when you met them and know those friendships can withstand just about anything because they’ve been tried.
So for an American family stationed in Japan, there was no doubt at least one lifelong friendship would be made. It just may have been surprising that the friend wasn’t affiliated with the military. Instead, the friend was an older Japanese man who didn’t speak English and lived next door to the young family in Yokosuka, Japan.
But this isn’t the first time this unique story went viral. In 2013, Reddit user Theresa52 posted a picture of a note that she received from her neighbor-turned-friend. People loved the letter and sweet story attached. Theresa explained that after moving to their new neighborhood in Japan, she and her husband passed out beer and chocolate to their neighbors. A few hours later, they met, Hiroshi Yamashita, their new neighbor and one of the recipients of their gift.
When Yamashita knocked on the family’s door, he presented them with gifts of his own—toilet paper, stuffed animals and a note. In the thread Theresa noted, “Things that are consumable and household necessities are popular gifts. We have heard lots of stories about people getting laundry soap,” after someone asked if toilet paper was a common housewarming gift in Japan. The stuffed animals were for their infant daughter at the time.
But the note is what keeps going viral. It starts out, “I can’t speak English. Thank you for the present. My name is Hiroshi Yamashita. I’m 52 years old. [I’m divorced] and I live alone.” Since Yamashita didn’t speak English, the note had some spots that were difficult to understand but the intent was clearly pure.
Theresa wrote in the comments of the post that it appeared that he was asking if her husband was in the Navy. While the sentences are out of order a bit, if you reorganize them a little, it seems Yamashita is attempting to say, “I have stuffed animals and toilet paper. You can use it if you’d like.”
The man concludes the letter with “Thank you for your friend operation.” It seemed that he was thanking the family for their hospitality, but Reddit users surmised that he was referring to Operation Friendship in 2011 when the United States aided Japan after an earthquake. Either way, it was still friendship operation because what says friendship like taking time out of your day to write in a language you don’t speak just to make sure your neighbors feel welcomed?
“It was adorable! We had brought him a six pack and some chocolate and tried to introduce ourselves to him. A couple hours later he brought over this letter with a pack of toilet paper and some stuffed animals for our daughter,” Theresa wrote in the comments while joking that their initial introduction probably amused Yamashita.
Further explaining within comment threads, Theresa said that they used pointing and Google Translate when they initially met Yamashita, and in turn, he used a translator app to write the note.
Theresa shared an update in the comments about six years after the story originally went viral saying, “We all exchanged gifts and food regularly for the four years I lived there. We would go to neighborhood festivals and have dinners together as well. I miss them all and think about them often.”
You never know when being kind will turn into a life long friendship. We certainly hope Yamashita and Theresa are doing just as well today and are continuing to spread their kindness around.
My friend and I were hiking along a beautiful coastal trail when her phone chimed. “Oh, time for my BeReal!” she exclaimed. She pulled her phone from her fanny pack, snapped a photo of our ocean view, then beckoned me for a quick selfie with her. A few seconds later, she put her phone away.
I had no idea what had just happened.
As she explained what BeReal was, my first reaction was, “Great. Another social media app. Just what the world needs.” She described it as being a more genuine version of Instagram, but I didn’t get the appeal.
Then I saw my teen and young adult kids using it. Then I downloaded it myself. Then I got it.
The beauty of BeReal is in its limitations. You can only post one time per day. There are no filters. No businesses to follow. No ads or sponsored content. Not even any DMs to slide into. You connect with your friends, and their daily BeReals are all you see in your feed.
A BeReal is simply a two-way photo—a snapshot of whatever the person is doing, wherever they are, and an inset selfie of them while they’re doing it. Everyone is prompted to post a BeReal at the same time with a two-minute window, though you can actually post any time after the chime rings. You can’t view anyone else’s posts until you share yours.
You can add a short caption once it’s posted, and your friends can react to your BeReal post with a “RealMoji” (an emoji you make with your own face) or a comment.
That’s it. That’s the whole app experience. Refreshingly simple.
And people have been flocking to it. The app was launched in 2020 and it kicked off 2022 with 920,000 monthly active users. By August, that number had skyrocketed to 73.5 million, according to Business of Apps. As TechCrunch reports, some of that growth was due to intentional, paid promotions among college students, but I’ve witnessed huge organic growth in my own social circles in the past six months. BeReal has quickly become my teen and young adult kids’ and their friends’ favorite social media app.
That tracks, since according to Statista, 90% of BeReal users are younger than 35. So what is it about the app that has Millennials and Gen Z so hooked? According to the young people I’ve spoken to, they like that the photos aren’t staged, there’s no pressure to post or comment and it’s “not addictive.” There’s no algorithm trying to suck you into whatever it thinks will keep you scrolling, and because people can only post once a day, it’s naturally limited in the amount of time you want to spend on it.
It’s also just fun to see what people are really up to in their everyday lives, even the mundane stuff. It feels far removed from the filtered, perfectly posed and curated photos people share on other apps, and you don’t have to wade through people’s political diatribes or sponsored content to use it. Kids can connect with their friends near and far, sharing silly daily life stuff without fretting over “likes” or trolls or other social media drama.
In other words, the kids who grew up with social media are tired of feeling overwhelmed by the over-edited, over-advertised, over-argumentative nature of it. BeReal feels genuine, which is exactly what its creators, French entrepreneurs Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau, intended.
The big question is whether or not the app will be sustainable as it is in the long run. Barreyat and Perreau have managed to avoid media interviews, so it’s hard to know what their plans are for the future. There has been some buzz about adding some paid features rather than relying on advertising, so we’ll see. But in the meantime, it’s a lovely respite from the fray and a brilliant way to keep young people connected online without the pitfalls of traditional social media.
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