Month: June 2023

Billy Joel has a lot of memories at New York City’s famous Madison Square Garden. In 2018, he performed “Born To Run” and “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” with Bruce Springsteen. Just last year he was joined by Olivia Rodrigo for “Deja Vu” and “Uptown Girl.”

Though the great times at that special location are aplenty, Joel’s residency there is coming to an end. His 150th performance there will be taking place in July 2024 and it’ll be the last of the concert series, according to The New York Times.

This was discussed at a press conference today (June 1) by Joel, Mayor Eric Adams of New York, and MSG Entertainment CEO James L. Dolan. Mayor Adams said, “There’s only one thing that’s more New York than Billy Joel — and that’s a Billy Joel concert at MSG.”

Joel is also currently on the Two Icons One Night Tour alongside Stevie Nicks, stopping through Arlington, Philly, Columbus, Kansas City, Foxborough, Baltimore, and Minneapolis.

Last year, it was also reported that a Billy Joel biopic titled Piano Man was in the making at Michael Jai White’s Jaigantic Studios. However, there was the quite big problem that the project apparently did not have the rights to Joel’s name, music, or even his likeness.

When kids look around at television shows or toys on the shelves, they instinctively look to see if there’s someone that looks like them. It’s a natural desire to want to see yourself represented in different areas of life, and for kids, play is life. Mom Niki Coffman knew that, so she decided to go out on a limb and write to Fisher-Price to gently hint at a favor.

Coffman has a 5-year-old son named Archer, whom she adopted as an infant. The mom explained to Today.com that her family is white and her son goes to a predominantly white school, so there was very little representation of Black people, let alone Black people with red hair, like Archer.

“The thing is, if you feel like, ‘you should just be grateful to have a toy,’ it’s probably because your toys did look like you. It’s probably because my princesses did look like me, and once you know someone it matters to who doesn’t have that, how could it not matter to you?” Coffman told Upworthy. “Archer identifies with all the toys with brown skin, but to have something that looks like him so that he sees himself in the world, it’s not just about a toy. It’s really about the rest of the world seeing you, too.”

So Coffman went on a mission to make sure her son felt represented in the world around him, even going as far as asking for donations of diverse books and dolls to be sent to the school.

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Coffman explained to Upworthy that they knew going into the adoption that they would have to do everything they could to make sure Archer felt represented in a white household. They stay in close contact with Archer’s first mom and his younger sister, and Coffman emphasizes that while the pre-schooler is living with her, she doesn’t think “its better than if he got to be with her [his first mom].”

The family has hard conversations about how unfair it is for Archer not to have been able to live with his first mom. But, Coffman doesn’t shy away from acknowledging his emotions and tackling the disparity of diversity in her community for her son. In fact, the mom told Upworthy that she first began writing letters to companies when Archer was just a year old, and while most don’t respond at all, some have told her they’re going to work to do better.

But after seeing how inclusive Fisher-Price Little People are, Coffman decided to write the company a thank you letter. She explained the family’s predicament and her love for how diverse the Little People collection was.

“It hasn’t always been the easiest thing to find toys & books that reflect the incredible diversity of the world we live in,” Coffman wrote. “But man, oh, man do your current Little People offerings deliver on that diversity. We were so thrilled to find Black firefighters and doctors, girls with braids & and teacher with locs.”

The mom continued her letter by explaining how important it was for non-white kids to see themselves represented. As her praise of the company’s diverse dolls continued, she threw in a tiny request.

“‘If you ever decided to design a Little Person with brown skin and red hair, please let us know,'” Coffman told Today.com about her P.S. at the end of her letter.

To the mom’s surprise, she received a reply from Gary Weber, the Vice President of Design at Fisher-Price. He told Coffman that he shared the story with everyone that works on Little People.

“You and Archer have inspired us! We know that when kids play with Little People they are playing out scenarios they see in the world around them, and feeling like they are a part of that world is critical,” Weber wrote.

The VP ended the letter by asking for the family’s address, and shortly thereafter, a surprise for Archer arrived on their doorstep. Little People that looked just like the red-headed 5-year-old wearing a perfect replica of one of Archer’s outfits. The gift even came with a colorful letter with a picture of the boy inside that was signed by the entire Little People team.

“I immediately burst into tears,” Coffman told Upworthy. “He has shown every single person we know. He carries it in his pocket, his little person, so he can show everyone that it looks just like him.”

“By having a toy that looked like him, he was really seen and that’s what was so moving about this gesture from Fisher-Price is that they really saw him,” she continued.

“There’s truly so much goodness in the world, and Gary, Dafna, and their entire team are that goodness personified,” the mom wrote on Facebook.

Maybe one day those dolls will make their way into stores so other kids can have their very own Archer figurine.

These playoffs have been mercurial. Most of the star-studded, sure thing contenders have all fallen away — some in spectacularly dull displays of confusion at their own competitive mortality, others with full-bodied attempts at making history. What remains are two title challengers that shirk comfortable prediction. Part of that has been the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets’ paths here, as both have beaten opponents in ways that range from “fluid” to “dog fight”; and part, probably the larger part, is in the way both teams are constructed.

It’s a stretch to say neither of these franchises boast big stars. Denver has an affably beguiling MVP in Nikola Jokic and the most demure lights out shooter in the league with Jamal Murray. The Heat have Jimmy Butler, a man who has become a superstar by being the biggest workaholic in the league. While it’s easy to dislike people who try too hard, Butler never has — this is just his default. Why these three certified stars are not necessarily top of mind when running down the list of the league’s biggest names has more to do with where they play than their skill-sets or personalities, though both are the reasons all three athletes play, and thrive, where they do.

Denver and Miami are made up of role-players. Chock-full of role-players, if we’re being honest. A cursory glance down either roster reveals well-rounded veterans on second- or third-chance runs, young draftees or signings brought up in those vets’ images, and players who were landed by intentional trades to match an existing system, rather than roll the dice at building around one athlete. Miami’s entire ethos, Heat Culture, comes out of the front office’s ability to find and sign under-utilized or undervalued athletes and shape them into keen Swiss Army knife-style players. The Heat also have the sun drenched draw of South Beach and some storied franchise history to back themselves up with, but have struck a balance between development and too much reliance on attracting big names like other teams at their level.

“I don’t call them role players, I call them teammates,” Butler said in his postgame presser, after Miami beat Boston to win the Eastern Conference Finals. “Your role can change any given day, especially with how many games I’ve missed — in and out of lineups, off nights, whatever you call it. We got some hoopers. We got some real deal basketball players that can score, can defend, can pass, and can win games for us.”

To Butler’s point, the catchall of role player falls short with the Heat — at least when it comes to what we might consider the traditional construction of a competitive NBA team, where a roster with two to three role players may have cut it in the past. Even the Celtics, who almost pulled the making NBA history card on the Heat, are a team comprised of high-aptitude, high-effort athletes that looked so seamless this season because of how traditional roles, and the effort entrenched in each, were able to shift. And where the Nuggets have found the most lasting, demonstrative success has been in developing their stars while understanding their limits (due to injury, ability, matchup) and developing their role players alongside them to plug gaps dynamically.

It’s egalitarian basketball, and given the success both Denver and Miami (and Boston, and Sacramento, and New York) have found with it these playoffs, it shouldn’t be a surprise when we see more teams adopting it in seasons to come.

For smaller markets alone it’s a more lasting, less reliant on the whims of the league’s biggest names way of team building. Toronto, despite all the identify crisis stuff of the past season, has found success with the model of everyone doing a little bit of everything, to the point where the team perhaps tipped too far in the positionless direction without sufficient structure to hold it all together. Oklahoma City, with such a young roster all developing along similar timelines, could find the kind of identity it’s been craving by first defining some roles for its key players and then encouraging some democratic overlap.

The key for any team is buy-in, translated in the comfort that’s clear when watching Caleb Martin dive for an out of bounds ball as decisively as he demands the ball from Butler because both realize Martin has the better shot, or the way Bruce Brown can toggle between being a guard, running the ball down the floor, and being the easy outlet for Jokic or Murray for under the basket finishes and careening dunks.

What makes the rise of role players feel less like a trend, or an anomaly fix for developing teams, is how the best teams have leaned on them to win and the inverse, where the supposed better teams didn’t and lost. The Suns traded away Mikal Bridges, an elite defender and intuitive offensive player, for Kevin Durant and looked flat against Denver through their six game series. Against the relentless, spontaneous to sloppy Heat, the Bucks had no backup option once it was clear their crisp and concise gameplay wasn’t going to hack it.

While the adoption of more role players, or role players in bigger and sustained roles, is going to catch on, it may be the only team trend that can’t be outright copied. To make it work, front offices will have to resort to trial and error and be open, to some extent, to blowing it. No team’s structure is quite the same, given roster age, contract lengths, inherent skills, how developed the development arm of the franchise, or myriad other factors. Not all front offices (or ownership groups) sit so comfortably with the idea of embarrassment, or the patience needed to back something new without immediate payoff. The line of best fit won’t and can’t be direct, but it’s going to be paved by role players.

Al Pacino, like most people, was surprised to learn that his girlfriend, 29-year-old girlfriend Noor Alfallah, is 8 months pregnant (as originally reported by TMZ). The outlet now follows up with confirmation from their sources that Pacino was “shocked” by this information because he believed himself to be incapable of impregnating anyone. TMZ’s sleuthing follows word from Showbiz 411 of a paternity test, which (to be fair) was not the most outlandish idea, considering that Pacino is 83 years old.

Then again, Pacino’s good buddy and repeated co-star, 79-year-old Robert De Niro, recently welcomed his seventh child, so strange things do happen. “Where the f*ck did this heat come from?” De Niro’s character wondered in Michael Mann’s 1995 crime drama, and the cause of another kind of “heat” is still a mystery, but yep, Alfallah did “oblige” with a paternity test, via TMZ:

Al Pacino was so certain he could not get his girlfriend or anyone else pregnant, he did not believe the baby was his at first, and got a DNA test for proof … sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ.

The 83-year-old actor, we’re told, had medical issues that would have commonly prevented a man from impregnating a woman. We’re told Al had no idea until 2 months ago that 29-year-old Noor Alfallah was pregnant, and when he found out he was “shocked.”

He seems even more shocked than the world was to learn about that (alleged) Shrek phone case. And everyone will also want to know who The Godfather is, so the weirdness probably will not stop here.

Alfallah has apparently been dating Pacino for about a year and was previously linked to Mick Jagger, now age 79, and billionaire Nicolas Berggruen, now age 61. Since news of Noor’s pregnancy broke, one of her friends spoke with Page Six to declare, “She is very positive and not an opportunist… She loves old people and these guys are fascinating.” So there you have it.

(Via TMZ, Showbiz 411 & Page Six)

The Rock is now fully back in the Fast and Furious universe. After making a surprise appearance in a Fast X end-credits scene, Dwayne Johnson has cemented his return to the vehicular series by signing on to a new standalone film centered on his character Luke Hobbs.

Granted, Johnson has already starred in the series’ first spinoff, Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, but this latest film will seemingly have The Rock going solo. Although, we wouldn’t rule out Jason Statham popping up as Deckard Shaw. This franchise has been giving Marvel a run for its money in the cameos department, so you never know who’s going to drive a car into something that cars shouldn’t drive into.

Via Variety:

Universal Pictures announced the project on Thursday. Longtime “Fast and Furious” collaborator Chris Morgan wrote the untitled film’s script. Plot details were not available, though individuals familiar with the deal said the new movie will bridge between the events of the just-released “Fast X” and the upcoming “Fast X: Part II,” which is expected in 2025.

Naturally, The Rock’s production company Seven Bucks will produce the Fast and Furious spinoff, which arrives at an interesting moment in the actor’s career. His last film, Black Adam, failed to light the box office on fire and ultimately led to an embarrassing situation for Henry Cavill, who announced he was returning as Superman only to be replaced by new DC Studios head James Gunn weeks later.

However, Gunn did meet with The Rock and the actor put out a statement saying that Black Adam will sit out Gunn’s first DCU chapter, but the door is open for his return.

(Via Variety)

In the season finale of Peacock’s Mrs. Davis, Betty Gilpin’s Nazi-fighting, AI-hating nun is thrown for a loop so dumb and so absurd – it might be the most genius twist we’ve ever seen on TV. The all-powerful algorithm that’s manipulated Gilpin’s Simon to undertake a quest for the Holy Grail originated as a beta app for Buffalo Wild Wings.

That’s right. The sports bar franchise with its signature 26 flavors of seasonings and sauces is creators’ Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez’s version of Skynet and suddenly the expiration dates (coupons) and wing-earning tasks all make sense.

The show’s final episode aired May 18th and fans are still processing how an omnipotent AI could wreak so much havoc while being so, so dumb. The revelation feels even more poignant considering the many ways in which AI is fascinating and threatening industries in the real world. Is there something to learn from the pointlessness of Mrs. Davis? Absolutely. Will that lesson take? We’re still not sure.

But we asked Gilpin to spell it out for us anyway. Ahead, we chat with the actress about her thoughts on the AI Boom, the joy of working with Jake McDorman and finding her creative sweet spot.

First of all, what the fuck?

Yeah. That’s the tee shirt.

How did you interpret the Buffalo Wild Wings twist?

I think it’s a pretty brilliant turn — you find out that it’s not some ominous, evil, pulsing other in the sky that’s going to eat us. It’s this beta app for Buffalo Wild Wings that couldn’t be simpler or stupider, and, the ominous, evil, narcissistic calls are coming from inside the house.

Damon and Tara talked to me about how AI is not very smart. Our episode titles are named by an algorithm that they created, and they are ridiculous. They’re just trying to spit back simulated humanity. And luckily for creative people everywhere, they have a really hard time doing that. So I think that they wanted it to be this reflection of it having less to do with placing the blame on the algorithm and placing more responsibility on each human’s individual desires and quests.

Did working on this show change the way you think about AI and tech in general?

A lot of what Simone is concerned about interacting with Mrs. Davis … I share similar concerns about outsourcing things to AI. Simone worries that it’s going to mess with her connection to Falafel and this central relationship that she has in her life. While I don’t have a romantic relationship with Jesus Christ in a metaphysical falafel restaurant, I do worry that interacting with AI and the internet and finding these electronic workarounds to vulnerability and risk and questioning and original thoughts — that we’re gambling with our ability to do all of those things. I don’t think that we can just take for granted that those capabilities will always be there.

And I think that right now, this race to create, to perfect these AIs, without stopping and asking, ‘Why are we doing this? What is the goal?’ is terrifying to me. And I think what makes us human and what makes TV shows enjoyable are the connections and the relationships between people. If you are eliminating the ability to reach out to another person or to explore your own psyche within yourself, if you’re just having a robot puppy screen in your pocket do all of that for you, what’s even the purpose of existing as a human race?

Fake Popes. Exploding heads. Getting stuck in the belly of a whale. What was the wildest moment on set for you?

Jake McDorman and I would catch our reflection in a car window that we were walking by and just burst out laughing because we were like, ‘We look like rejected toys. We look ridiculous, a cowboy and a nun, walking around together.’ But honestly, we were so obsessed with the world that Damon and Tara had created that we were just so fully in it, and it didn’t seem bizarre at all.

Watching it now, I’m like, ‘How did that even happen?’ Watching it feels like watching CCTV footage of the wildest mushroom trip that I ever had.

How does this show rank in terms of projects that have challenged and stretched you as an actor?

I think that there’s this creative sweet spot that all of us strive for, that you’ve matured out of being so neurotic and self-hating that you are deleting all your good ideas, but you’re not too narcissistic and solipsistic to think that every idea is good. You’re somewhere on the island between self-hate and narcissism, where you can create what you want to.

And I think that I feel that right now. I feel that I’m not doing the self-sabotage creatively that I used to be doing, in terms of feeling nervous or like I didn’t deserve to be there. But I’m trying to not sway too far the other way, which is selectively reading only positive things about myself and deleting any negative feedback. I’m just trying to stay in that sweet spot. So this really felt like the first time where I was… I don’t know. I just felt unleashed in the best way.

What’s your read on Hollywood’s fascination with AI at the moment? Is it just laziness on the part of studios and executives?

I think that the corporations who are in this race towards outsourcing creativity to AI are perhaps misinterpreting what their audience is drawn to when they tune into something or read something; that it’s not about a perfectly simulated human experience. It’s human experience. And our culture is certainly very self-focused, and it’s easy to turn to one’s phone to be transported into your own echo chamber of wish fulfillment and doom-scrolling. But I think ultimately the why of why people are drawn to good writing and good acting and good lighting and painting is the work of somebody exploring their own internal gray area and presenting it in their art.

That sort of inexplicable process is hard to soundbite and hard to explain to a corporation, but it is the why. Watching my parents in plays, I did feel often like some sort of magic was happening. I remember envisioning it like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when Mike Teavee gets exploded into particles that float up in the ceiling. I remember when a scene was going well, when I would watch it on stage, it was like those particles were between the two actors, floating between them and over the whole audience. We were all connected by this thing that felt so impossible to describe.

That is what is conjured when you connect to something creative or someone else’s work, and I don’t think AI is capable of that. So I worry that these corporations if they’re going to build their business model on something incapable of creating magic, it’s going to hit their pockets sooner or later.

Timothy Bliefnick, the Family Feud contestant who joked (?) that he regretted marrying his wife, has been convicted of murdering his wife.

A jury found the 40-year-old guilty of first-degree murder and home invasion in the slaying of his estranged wife, Rebecca Bliefnick, in her Illinois home in February. During the trial, Rebecca’s sister, Sarah Reilly, testified that Rebecca had voiced concerns about Timothy. “If something ever happens to me, make sure the number one person of interest is Tim. I am putting this in writing that I’m fearful he will somehow harm me,” she wrote in a text, USA Today reports.

Sentencing is set for August. The New York Post has more:

Prosecutors alleged that Bliefnick used Google to research how to commit a murder before riding a bike to her house — which was about a mile away from where he was staying. He pried open the second-story window with a crowbar and shot his wife. Bliefnick’s body was found by her father on Feb. 23 after she failed to pick her kids up from school.

Timothy appeared in a Family Feud episode that was filmed in 2019 and aired in 2020. At one point, host Steve Harvey asked him, “What’s your biggest mistake you made at your wedding?” Timothy replied, “Honey, I love you, but ‘said I do.’ Not my mistake, not my mistake — I love my wife. I’m gonna get in trouble for that, aren’t I?” It was a bad joke then; it’s tragic now.

A GoFundMe has been set up for Rebecca’s three kids.

(Via USA Today and New York Post)

Joji kept his strong run going last year with Smithereens, his third album and third to reach at least the top five on the Billboard 200 chart. The album also features “Glimpse Of Us,” his first top-10 single that’s currently approaching a billion plays on Spotify, with about 931 million at the moment. So, there’s a lot for Joji fans to be excited about, and now there’s something else: He’s going on tour this fall and he’s taking some special guests with him.

He made the announcement with a comedic video featuring elderly people at a speed dating event.

The run starts with a trio of Texas shows in late September/early October before wrapping up about a month later in Orlando. Lil Toe (Ammo) and Savage Realm will join Joji on all dates, while Kenny Beats will also be on board for all but the first two.

Check out the tour dates below and find information about getting tickets here.

09/29 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center #
09/30 — Fort Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena #
10/03 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center #*
10/05 — Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center #*
10/06 — Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena #*
10/07 — Las Vegas, NV @ Michelob Ultra Arena #*
10/09 — Oakland, CA @ Oakland Arena #*
10/11 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena #*
10/13 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena #*
10/14 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center #*
10/17 — Denver, CO @ Ball Arena #*
10/20 — Chicago, IL @ United Center #*
10/21 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center #*
10/24 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena #*
10/25 — Columbus, OH @ Schottenstein Center #*
10/27 — Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center #*
10/29 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden #*
10/31 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center #*
11/01 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena #*
11/04 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center #*
11/06 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena #*
11/08 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center #*

# with Lil Toe (Ammo) and Savage Realm
* with Kenny Beats

Republican frenemies Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are fighting again, this time over a conservative satirical news site that serves (or tries to) as the conservative answer The Onion.

Trump, who some day might be running his presidential campaign from the inside of a jail cell, is reportedly fuming over his rival’s budding relationship with The Babylon Bee and its CEO, Seth Dillon. That’s right, a fake news site obsessed with boycotting Target that thinks headlines like “Bible Experts Determine Goliath Died of COVID” and “Female Scientists Still Unable To Make Sense Of Strange Lever That Makes Car Lights Blink” serve as comedy is now the shiny toy these tyrading grown toddlers are arguing over.

According to a Rolling Stone report, Trump, who began a relationship with The Babylon Bee after mistaking their stories as factual and retweeting them to his followers on social media, is pissed that Dillon is pals with DeSantis and DeSantis supporter, Elon Musk. The friendship between Trump and the Bee has further soured over a recent reveal that DeSantis’ team paid the site for its speechwriting services. In February, far-right Trump-lover Laura Loomer confronted Dillon via text over a payment made by the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC to the Bee for $21,500. Dillon explained that the site helped DeSantis punch up his public speaking routine in order to “fight Democrats.”

“You could consider us speech writing consultants,” Dillon wrote. “We help him find funny angles on Democrats. We don’t attack Trump for him. That’s silly and false. They have never suggested that we write anything about Trump.”

Now, we understand why a human AI with a hyena cackle like DeSantis would need some assistance in the charm department. The guy has a proven track record for appearing downright awkward in public. But Trump was satisfied by Dillon’s explanation so, naturally, he took to his Truth Social account to air his grievances with one of the few “news” sites he actually reads:

“You don’t spend that much money on The Babylon Bee if you’re running for Governor, in fact, you don’t spend money on The Babylon Bee if you’re running for anything!”

The Bee is just the latest right-wing influencer the former bros are battling over. Plenty of one-time Trump supporters are now flocking to DeSantis as he seems less problematic — in their eyes, anyway — and less likely to be convicted of a felony before the 2024 Presidential Election takes place. There are also rumors he’s offered money, policy influence, and full-time jobs to MAGA mascots willing to switch teams. Those sticking with Trump think DeSantis doesn’t have what it takes to smack-talk on a national level.

And the rest of us, we’re are having a grand ole time sitting back and watching these two catty dudes duke it out.

(Via Rolling Stone)

Something new is coming to the podcast world: An audio-only singing competition series.