Month: May 2023

First, there was Guardians of the Galaxy. Then came Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, followed by — you guessed it — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. What will the bigwigs at Marvel think of next? Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4?

Well, no.

Director and writer James Gunn wants to make it clear that the Guardians trilogy will remain just that: a trilogy. In response to a Twitter follower asking him, “Will there be Vol 4?” Gunn replied, “No.” When another user wondered, “Soooo… GOTG vol 4 in the future?” Gunn gave the same response.

Hmm, I’m not sure if I’m convinced yet. Is there, let’s say, an interview with Esquire Middle East where Gunn explicitly shuts down the possibility of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4? (There is.) “I don’t think there will ever be a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 4. There’s many reasons this group will not be back. There could be more Guardians movies, but it won’t be with this group,” he said. Could another director take over with the same characters? “I think as long as somebody brings themselves to it, and doesn’t just try to copy that style — I think it can be really amazing,” Gunn said. “And there’s so many directors I would like to do that. And I would love to see it happen.”

The Vol. 3 post-credits scene is one way to do it.

Tonight (May 10) is the first night of Beyoncé‘s Renaissance World Tour, which kicks off in Stockholm, Sweden. While the Beyhive has been buzzing with anticipation, not much is known about the tour, the setlist, or the visual elements, and we’ve been anxious for a taste of what to expect.

It appears some fans have gotten their hands on an early copy of Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour book. Several fans have taken to social media to share images from the book, which includes corresponding artwork for each of the Renaissance album’s songs.

Additionally, an alleged copy of the setlist also appears in the tour book, though some fans believe this setlist isn’t what it seems to be. Some fans have theorized that the alleged setlist is fake, to keep the actual setlist from leaking.

“Beyoncé put a fake setlist in the tour book,” said one member of the Beyhive on Twitter. “this girl knows her fans.”

The setlist contains notes in pen, as well as other markings, so some fans don’t believe that it’s fake, but rather an early iteration.

“This looks like an early draft, but not necessarily ‘fake,’” said another fan.

If the setlist is real, it looks like fans can look forward to hearing much of the Renaissance fan favorites, including “Break My Soul,” “Cuff It,” “Alien Superstar,” and more. Some of her other hits, including “Diva,” “Run The World (Girls),” and “Savage (Remix)” with Megan Thee Stallion also seem to be on the alleged set list.

You can see images of the alleged tour book above.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After being found liable for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll thanks to a jury siding with her civil suit against the former president, Donald Trump is doing what he does best: Having a meltdown on social media.

Despite his breathtakingly incriminating deposition playing a major factor in the verdict, the former president seems convinced that things would’ve had swung his way had the jury known… the name of Carroll’s cat?

“The partisan Judge & Jury on the just concluded Witch Hunt Trial should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for allowing such a travesty of Justice to take place,” Trump raged before questioning how the jury could’ve made such a monumental decision without knowing that Carroll’s cat is named Vagina T. Fireball. Which is true, by the way, that is the cat’s name, but also, what does that have to do with literally anything?

Via The Daily Beast:

“The ‘Dress,’ which played such a big roll early on as a threatening bluff, but which ended up being totally exculpatory, was not allowed into the trial as evidence,” he wrote, referring to a dress worn by Carroll on the day she claimed Trump attacked her in the 1990s. “Nor was her cat’s name, ‘Vagina,’ the racist name she called her Black husband, ‘Ape,’ getting caught in a lie on the political operative paying for this Hoax, & much more!”

As The Daily Beast reports, Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, requested to question Carroll about the racist name-calling that she openly admitted to in her own book. That request was shot down by the judge because “the unfair prejudicial effect of the comment outrageously outweighs any probative value.” In other words, like Vagina T. Fireball, the incident has absolutely no bearing on whether Carroll was sexually assaulted by Trump.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Coi Leray took to Twitter this week to share her thoughts on the current music industry, which were basically that there are too many artists and hits now. With the rise of social media and TikTok especially, songs from rising artists are way more likely to become big sensations.

“The music industry is over saturated. Every song is a hit. Everybody is a star,” Leray wrote.

This led to someone pointing out that Leray’s dad is Benzino, so she might benefit from that saturation. She didn’t seem to think it was true, responding with just how much work she puts into the business: “Y’all buggen. My versatility, my stage presence . My stats. My collabs. My Brand Deals. Fashion Girl. I can dance. Sing. Rap. It’s fine if you don’t see it now. I’m in no rush for you to notice.”

“lol I’m that girl. Real life. Offline. In the booth. On the stage. On the red carpet. On the radio. Overseas. And that’s just what it is. Shout out to my b*tches who stay true to them selves and dgaf what nobody has to say!” she added in a separate tweet.

Some also replied back with thoughts about Leray’s oversaturation post, as her popularity skyrocketed through her songs going viral on TikTok. But she has a shot for that too. “How many people on TikTok went top 10 gobal? How many on TikTok had the amount of success I had with NMP , TWINNEM, BIG PURR, DDG IMPATIENT , plus soooo many more,” she quoted.

Check out some more of Leray’s music industry tweets below.

Matt Gaetz, the “ass-kisser” representative from Florida who was accused of sex trafficking a 17-year-old girl, got caught pushing Chinese propaganda, and body-shamed a teenager, has his limits. This month, he and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) teamed up to co-sponsor a bill that would prohibit members of Congress from owning stocks. Greg Gutfeld found this cross-party alignment hilarious, because if there’s one person who knows comedy, it’s the guy who talked about jerking off to stepmom porn with Bill Maher.

“I smell a romantic comedy,” Gutfeld said on the Fox News show The Five. “A beautiful left-wing communist in Congress. A dashing right-wing male fresh off a wrongful allegation of sexual misconduct. They come together to fight one of the most corrupt practices in politics. And they fall in love. They can’t help themselves. She’s got a French Poodle. He’s got a strange hairline, but somehow they’re gonna make it work. And then they’re gonna leave politics and start their own business. It’ll be like a bakery. A vegan bakery, a vegan bakery for pets.” When co-host co-host Jesse Watters pointed out that Gaetz is married, Gutfeld replied, “No, he’s gonna leave her.”

Speaking on his Firebrand podcast on Tuesday, Gaetz said, “It does seem a little childish to me that the media always has to over-sexualize everything that AOC is involved with.” He thinks “they wouldn’t do that to men. And two people can engage in serious legislation that’s not renaming some post office, but trying to make our Congress more honest and more ethical without that type of, I think, very childish and immature commentary.”

Gaetz also criticized Gutfeld’s co-host, Jeanine Pirro.

“And then Judge Jeanine, Judge Jeanine, who starts out saying I am happily married – Judge Jeanine, who was sitting at my table at Mar-a-Lago the night I proposed to my wife – by the end of the Greg Gutfeld rant, she’s bailed and she’s wanting to be the officiant for me and AOC!”

Only Greg Gutfeld could make Matt Gaetz seem like the voice of reason.

(Via Mediaite)

Back in 2015, Leonardo DiCaprio was reportedly gearing up to star in a project that he’d long-since longed to bring to the screen. That would be The Crowded Room, then envisioned as a film and which adapted Daniel Keyes’ true-crime book, The Minds of Billy Milligan, The Crowded Room. DiCaprio would have played Milligan, the first defendant to be found not guilty by successfully using dissociative identity disorder as a legal defense. The crimes in question included a 1970s robbery and multiple counts of rape.

That film never happened, and Apple TV+ has now adapted this story as a fictionalized version of events in a series created by Akiva Goldsman (who won an Oscar for his A Beautiful Mind screenplay). Tom Holland now plays “Danny Sullivan,” who is arrested in connection with a late 1970s shooting, and he recently told Entertainment Weekly that he had a “meltdown” after “thinking like, ‘I’m going to shave my head. I need to shave my head because I need to get rid of this character.’” From the looks of the above trailer, it’s pretty clear why he felt that way. From the synopsis:

“The Crowded Room” follows ‘Danny Sullivan’ (Holland), a man who is arrested following his involvement in a shooting in New York City in 1979. A captivating thriller told through a series of interviews with curious interrogator ‘Rya Goodwin’ (Amanda Seyfried), Danny’s life story unfolds, revealing elements of the mysterious past that shaped him, and the twists and turns that will lead him to a life-altering revelation.

Apple TV+’s The Crowded Room co-stars Amanda Seyfried, Emmy Rossum, Sasha Lane, and Lior Raz and premieres on June 9.

As fans wait for new Billie Eilish music, the singer has instead shared some old music: Yesterday (May 9), she brought “Hotline (Edit)” to streaming services. The track is just a minute long and it’s a cover of the Drake classic “Hotline Bling.”

While this may seem random, it doesn’t come completely out of nowhere.

Per setlist.fm, Eilish performed the song dozens of times in 2017 and 2018, seguing it into her own “Party Favor.” Those songs were paired up for a Record Store Day-exclusive vinyl release in 2018 and Eilish shared the two-minute “Hotline Bling” cover on Soundcloud shortly after. The newly shared version is just the second half of the Soundcloud upload.

As for why Eilish decided to share the one-minute version now, that remains unclear. “Hotline Bling” album Views just celebrated its seventh anniversary on April 29, so perhaps that make Eilish think about her old cover again.

Meanwhile, Eilish recently said of performing for huge crowds, “It’s weirdly in a way underwhelming when there’s more people. I played my first stadiums over the summer. […] I was like, ‘I’m in a stadium, it’s so sick, it’s so big, you’re a f*cking star.’ And then you’re on the stage and you feel like you’re alone. It feels like there’s a printed out wallpaper of thousands of people. They’re so far away that there’s like no intimacy.”

Listen to “Hotline (Edit)” and the longer 2018 Soundcloud version above.

Artificial intelligence has progressed rapidly in recent times and has therefore increasingly found its way into our everyday lives. Meek Mill had an encounter with AI recently and it left him scratching his head.

Late last night/early this morning (May 10), he tweeted, “Ai wrote a rap about my dad and this what he said WTF.”

The tweet included a video of an apparently AI-generated rap song, called “Back From The Grave” and credited to Big Robbie; Meek’s father, Robert Parker, died from a gunshot wound when Meek was a child, which Meek rapped about on “Traumatized.”

The lyrics of the AI song go, “I died in a shootout, just tryin’ to feed my fam / But death couldn’t stop me, I’m back in the lab / My son Meek Mill, he’s the light of my life / Gotta watch over him, I’m back from the afterlife / I’m Big Robbie and I’m back with a plan / I’m comin’ back to life to see my fam / My soul’s come alive, I’m gonna make it right / Back from the grave, I’m gonna fight the fight.”

Check out the AI track above.

Meek Mill is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“Housing alone will never solve homelessness, but community will.”

That’s the philosophy of Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a faith-based organization in Travis County, Texas, that provides not only housing but a caring supportive community for people who have experienced chronic homelessness.

Homelessness is a challenging issue that affects communities across the United States, from small rural towns to large urban centers. It looks different in different places and for different people, but according to the 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report, more than 580,000 people experienced homelessness in the United States on any given day in 2022.

Figuring out how solve the multi-faceted problem is an ongoing struggle. Some advocate for simply providing housing, but that doesn’t address the issues that might cause someone to be unable to maintain a home. Some suggest tackling the addiction and mental health disorders at the root of many homeless experiences, but that alone won’t solve the problem, either.

Mobile Loaves & Fishes doesn’t claim to have solved the homeless crisis, but the Community First! Village they’ve built sure looks like a solid step toward addressing it effectively.

Sitting at the outskirts of northeast Austin, Community First! Village is a 51-acre master-planned housing development that “provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.” The village, which has been built up slowly and is slated to have 500 homes by the end of this year, has an outdoor movie theater and indoor spaces where residents can gather, an art house where they can create and express themselves, gardens where they can cultivate their own food and more.

Mobile Loves & Fishes founder Alan Graham taps into the heart of homelessness and explains why the community approach works with just a handful of words: “It’s about being lonely, man.”

The idea that community is the key to ending homelessness has been gleaned from the 35 years Mobile Loaves & Fishes has been serving meals and building relationships with their neighbors experiencing homelessness, learning about what they truly want and need. Their model is both simple and not—it’s simple in its premise of focusing on personal connections, but multi-pronged in its approach to creating community. It truly takes a village to build this kind of community, but they’re doing it.

As is clear in the name Mobile Loaves & Fishes, the organization doesn’t hide its Christian foundation, but you’ll rarely hear anyone involved talking about it overtly. Proselytizing in the community is not allowed—anyone who wants to share their faith shares it through deeds.

“What we want people to do is preach the Gospel often, and only when necessary, use words,” Graham told the Today show. They are all about showing love and faith through service rather than preaching to people about Christianity. “It’s why most of our neighbors love Christ, but can’t stand Christians,” he added. There are no religious requirements in the community or for volunteers.

The community is not a utopia, of course. Residents bring struggles with them, but here they have a community to support them through those struggles.

“It’s life. It’s real life, with all the beauty in the marinade of dysfunction, all put into that one little tasty gumbo,” said Graham. Residents aren’t even required to be free from alcohol or drug use to find a home there.

“The two essential human needs are to be fully and wholly loved and fully and wholly known,” said Graham. “And when you bring all that to the table, it creates an environment of welcoming.”

Watch the Today show’s segment on Community First! Village:

You can learn more about Mobile Loaves & Fishes and the other work they do in the Austin area to assist people experiencing homelessness at mlf.org.

Folks, this blog is being written at 1:21 a.m. EST, you know that can only mean one thing: Something silly happened on Inside the NBA. Following a pair of stinkers in the NBA in which the Philadelphia 76ers and Denver Nuggets took care of business against the Boston Celtics and the Phoenix Suns, respectively, the fellas turned to the segment “EJ’s Neato Stat of the Night,” which revolved around the guys getting a bunch of customized hats.

This ended up being pretty silly, in large part because Shaquille O’Neal‘s hat had a picture of Shaq as Shrek on it, a long-running bit on the show that the big man hates. And then, things really escalated when one of those big hats that you have surely seen around got handed to Charles Barkley, who threw it on and laughed at it. “I look like a damn idiot,” Barkley said.

And then, things escalated even more when Ernie Johnson very obviously hinted that they were going to drop things on Chuck’s head, which Chuck did not realize, because he was too focused on how he couldn’t see anything. This meant he was ultra-surprised when a bunch of ping pong balls were dumped on him.

Ernie’s laugh here really tells the whole story, because he very rarely busts out laughing this hard. As always, Inside the NBA is the best show on television.