Month: August 2023

The sweet-faced, loveable Labrador Retriever is no longer America’s favorite dog breed. The breed best known for having a heart of gold has been replaced by the smaller, more urban-friendly French Bulldog.

According to the American Kennel Club, for the past 31 years, the Labrador Retriever was America’s favorite dog, but it was eclipsed in 2022 by the Frenchie. The rankings are based on nearly 716,500 dogs newly registered in 2022, of which about 1 in 7 were Frenchies. Around 108,000 French Bulldogs were recorded in the U.S. in 2022, surpassing Labrador Retrievers by over 21,000.

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The French Bulldog’s popularity has grown exponentially over the past decade. They were the #14 most popular breed in 2012, and since then, registrations have gone up 1,000%, bringing them to the top of the breed popularity rankings.

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The AKC says that the American Hairless Terrier, Gordon Setter, Italian Greyhound and Anatolian Shepherd Dog also grew in popularity between 2021 and 2022.

The French Bulldog was famous among America’s upper class around the turn of the 20th century but then fell out of favor. Their resurgence is partly based on several celebrities who have gone public with their Frenchie love. Leonardo DiCaprio, Megan Thee Stallion, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Reese Witherspoon and Lady Gaga all own French Bulldogs.

The breed earned a lot of attention as show dogs last year when a Frenchie named Winston took second place at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show and first in the National Dog Show.

The breed made national news in early 2021 when Gaga’s dog walker was shot in the chest while walking two of her Frenchies in a dog heist. He recovered from his injuries, and the dogs were later returned.

The French Bulldog’s complicated past took them from brothels (yes) to royals.

Listen to their full history and more in the Uniquely Urban podcast episode of Down & Back: https://t.co/Jx2jPNCVMb pic.twitter.com/wBQd9fsRlt

— American Kennel Club (@akcdoglovers) March 16, 2023

They’ve also become popular because of their unique look and personalities.

“They’re comical, friendly, loving little dogs,” French Bull Dog Club of America spokesperson Patty Sosa told the AP. She said they are city-friendly with modest grooming needs and “they offer a lot in a small package.”

They are also popular with people who live in apartments. According to the AKC, Frenchies don’t bark much and do not require a lot of outdoor exercise.

The French Bulldog stands out among other breeds because it looks like a miniature bulldog but has large, expressive bat-like ears that are its trademark feature. However, their popularity isn’t without controversy. “French bulldogs can be a polarizing topic,” veterinarian Dr. Carrie Stefaniak told the AP.

French Bulldogs have been bred to have abnormally large heads, which means that large litters usually need to be delivered by C-section, an expensive procedure that can be dangerous for the mother. They are also prone to multiple health problems, including skin, ear, and eye infections. Their flat face means they often suffer from respiratory problems and heat intolerance.

Frenchies are also more prone to spine deformations and nerve pain as they age.

Here are the AKC’s top ten most popular dog breeds for 2022.

1 French Bulldogs

2 Labrador Retrievers

3 Golden Retrievers

4 German Shepherd Dogs

5 Poodles

6 Bulldogs

7 Rottweilers

8 Beagles

9 Dachshunds

10 German Shorthaired Pointers

This article originally appeared on 03.17.23

Martha Stewart became the most glorious Sports Illustrated swimsuit model of all time last year. Alright, some people might accuse that of being an exaggeration, but you gotta give it up for Martha. She looked stunning for any age, let alone at age 82, and she’s cooler than anyone has any right to be. Martha may eventually have to give up her record swimsuit cover in a few decades, but for now, she reigns supreme. Martha also pushed back at accusations of plastic surgery, and although she’s no stranger to thirst traps, this particular set of photos was slightly intimidating even to her.

As Martha revealed during her recent Project Vegas keynote speech, she’s thrilled at the overall reaction to her shoot, which she said was down to feeling “comfortable” and doing a ton of pilates. The latter happened to be her secret weapon for the shoot, via Hollywood Reporter:

Shot by Ruven Afanador, Stewart says she posed for the photos at a friend’s house in the Dominican Republic and made sure to be surrounded by friends who made her feel comfortable. Still, the shoot wasn’t without some challenges. “I [only] had two months to get ready,” Stewart quipped. “So let’s just say I’m now an avid pilates fan.”

Martha also describes her experience as “authentic” but insists that she will never pose with a “bare midriff,” pilates or not. Still, she must be rocking that Reformer Machine for a swimsuit shoot like that one.

(Via Hollywood Reporter)

Mitch McConnell didn’t exactly get a warm reception at his latest public appearance. While giving a speech at the annual Family Farm Picnic in Kentucky, the Republican senator was heckled as the crowd booed and chanted for him to “retire” following the recent viral video clip of him freezing up during a press conference.

According to NBC News, who has footage of McConnell being jeered, the Kentucky politician ignored the chants, which also included “lost the Senate.” He continued to power through his speech and claim that he and wife Elaine Chao were “excited” to be at the event.

“This is my 28th Fancy Farm and I want to assure you it’s not my last,” McConnell told the crowd. “The people of this state have chosen me seven times to do this job, and I want you to know how grateful I am.”

After videos of McConnell being booed spread across social media, a spokesperson told NBC News that the Kentucky event is always a raucous affair. “It wouldn’t be Fancy Farm if Democrats weren’t heckling every Republican and vice versa — it’s been a very spirited event for decades.”

However, the footage of McConnell received a significant boost from Donald Trump who echoed the jeering from the crowd while sharing the video with his MAGA supporters.

“I AGREE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “BOOOOO—RETIRE, RETIRE, RETIRE—BOOOOO!!!”

(Via NBC News)

A game between the Cleveland Guardians and the Chicago White Sox on Saturday night saw two of its most high-profile players, Jose Ramirez and Tim Anderson, get ejected for a fight. Ramirez slid into second, got tagged out by Anderson in a way that he did not appreciate and confronted him, which led to Anderson dropping his gloves and the two squaring up.

Both players swung at one another, but only Ramirez connected, as he landed a right hand that sent Anderson to the ground despite being held back by White Sox pitcher Michael Kopech. The pair were ejected, and on Monday afternoon, we learned the punishments they’ll face from Major League Baseball. Despite being on the receiving end of one hell of a right hand, Jesse Rogers of ESPN reports that Anderson got the longest suspension, as he’ll end up missing six games. Ramirez will miss three, while a handful of other individuals received 1-game suspensions.

MLB went on to announce the suspensions, with Jayson Stark of The Athletic bringing word that Anderson and Ramirez are appealing.

While it’s unclear exactly why Anderson, who got punched and hit the deck, got a longer suspension than Ramirez, who threw the punch, it stands to reason that the league is giving him a few extra games for escalating all of this.

Barbie is the first movie with a Stephen Malkmus joke to surpass $1 billion at the worldwide box office. It’s also (and most importantly) the first film from a solo female filmmaker to join the $1 billion club.

But it’s not the first $1 billion movie for a member of the cast.

The obvious guesses are Margot Robbie or Ryan Gosling, but their top-grossing films before Barbie are Suicide Squad ($745 million) and La La Land ($436 million). It’s also not Will Ferrell, or Kate McKinnon, or Simu Liu, but it is, unsurprisingly, another member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Ariana Greenblatt, who plays tween Sasha in Barbie, was also young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War, which is one of only six films to exceed $2 billion at the box office.

The list of performers who have been in multiple billion dollar movies includes Samuel L. Jackson (10), Don Cheadle (6), and Scarlett Johansson (6), mostly from Marvel films, but no one did it at a younger age than Greenblatt.

“I just remember thinking, no matter how this turns out, I’m so happy I got to have a meeting with the two of them,” she told Flaunt about interacting with Robbie and Gerwig while auditioning for Barbie. “I was like, ‘Just kill it in this meeting so they remember you, and you’re good.’”

(Via Screenrant)

Musicians have had mixed opinions on artificial intelligence. Grimes is all in, Lil Wayne isn’t intimidated, and now Ed Sheeran has spoken about not quite being on board.

Of what he’s planning for the release of his next project to look like, Sheeran said in a new interview with Audacy, “I’m planning an interesting rollout of it. I feel like… I don’t understand the music [industry]… every time I work out the music industry, it changes, so I kind of want to do my own thing rather than try to do the traditional thing. So the next thing that comes out will be something that hasn’t been done before, I guess.”

That provided a transition to AI, about which Sheeran said, “What I don’t understand about AI is like, for the last 60 years, Hollywood movies have been telling you, ‘Don’t do it,’ and now everyone’s doing it. Have you not seen the movies where they kill us all? I just don’t know why you need it. […] If you’re taking a job away from a human being, I think that’s probably a bad thing, because then the world is just going to be… the whole point of society is we all do jobs. If everything is done by robots, everyone’s gonna be out of work. I just find AI a bit weird. But, you know… ChatGPT, f*ckin’ why not?”

Check out the interview above.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If Donald Trump was looking for any sort of break in his ongoing legal troubles, the E. Jean Carroll case wasn’t it. The former president’s countersuit against Carrol has been tossed out by a federal judge. Adding insult to injury, the judge also doubled down on the verdict that found Trump liable for sexual assault.

Trump’s legal team attempted to claim that Carroll defamed him with her allegations, but considering a jury already found that it was actually Trump who defamed Carroll by disparaging her assault allegations (and continued to do so after losing in court), the countersuit didn’t stand a chance.

Via NBC News:

U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan noted Monday, the jury did find Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll during an encounter in the dressing room of a New York City department store in the mid-1990s, and the details of that finding show that her having maintained that the former president raped her is “substantially true.”

Kaplan dismissed Trump’s counterclaim, which sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, as well as several of Trump’s defenses against a separate still-pending defamation lawsuit brought by Carroll.

But, wait, there’s more. In a separate filing, Kaplan also signed off on letting Manhattan prosecutors subpoena Trump’s “entire deposition” in the Carroll case and review it while pursuing charges for the former president’s alleged hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.

That decision makes Trump’s loss to Carroll even more damaging if it aids prosecutors in nailing the former president for falsifying business records to cover up the alleged affair with Daniels.

(Via NBC News)

Things got a little heated between Klay Thompson and Devin Booker when the Golden State Warriors and the Phoenix Suns went head-to-head last October. The pair went at one another during the game, to the point that Thompson got ejected and chirped at the Suns bench as he made his way into the locker room.

Prior to getting tossed, Thompson kept holding up four fingers for Booker, signifying that he has four rings and the Suns star hasn’t won anything yet. It’s a reliable piece of trash talk that we’ve seen from athletes in a number of sports over the years, but as Thompson explained on “Podcast P with Paul George,” he regrets doing that for a pretty interesting reason.

“Yeah, I was in my feelings, though, and Book was busting my ass that day, I was not where I needed to be,” Thompson said when George brought up his run-in with Booker. “Stuff doesn’t age well, and that didn’t age well for me. I don’t need to be flexing four rings, bro, everybody knows that, that’s on Wikipedia. My game wasn’t where it was at, and we all get insecure at times. I’m man enough to admit that we all have our moments of weakness. I’m not really proud of that one, cause I see Devin Booker and I should be proud of this young man, the work he’s put in, he survived a tough regime in Phoenix where everyone’s getting traded, he’s playing for a new coach every year, but now, he’s a franchise player cause he kept working. So, I admire the guys who have work ethic like that.”

It’s good to see that Thompson has this kind of perspective on things, especially because it was clear last year how much his inability to play at the level he was accustomed before his injuries weighed on him. Whether or not he regrets doing the same thing to the Memphis Grizzlies, however, remains to be seen.

Tory Lanez is due to be sentenced in a little over 90 minutes as of this writing, but first, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Herriford had over 70 letters of support for the rapper to read through as he considered his decision, according to independent journalist Meghann Cuniff. One of those letters, she reported, comes from fellow rapper Iggy Azalea, who was rumored to be dating Lanez after collaborating with him late last year. She reportedly asked for a sentence that would be “transformational, not life destroying.”

No stranger to controversy herself, Azalea was criticized by fans online for her connection with Lanez, who was accused of shooting Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion in the back of her feet after a disagreement in the summer of 2020. Azalea took the backlash in stride at the time, writing on Twitter, “You’re all very welcome to speak your opinion freely about me… just as long as we all have an understanding: you are having a monologue & not a discussion with me – because (respectfully) my bills remain paid without your two cents.”

Tory had previously announced he was executive producing the Australian rapper’s next album, although his motivations struck some as dubious. While he said he wanted to produce a female artist’s album “for a while,” to some observers, the announcement appeared to be a PR move, as he was then facing a criminal trial for assaulting a female artist — a crime for which he was later convicted. Meanwhile, Azalea has been censured multiple times in the past for allegedly co-opting her rap persona from existing Southern female rappers.

In addition to summarizing the letters of support for Lanez, whose defense requested a lenient sentence of probation and rehab against the prosecutors’ recommended 13 years in prison, Herriford heard from three speakers on the rapper’s behalf. One was Tory’s father, who apologized for his outburst after the original verdict, and a jail chaplain who spoke to Lanez’s character. Another jail employee wrote a letter calling him “remorseful,” which Cuniff notes is the closest Lanez has ever come to admitting guilt or taking responsibility for the shooting.

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

A dockside disagreement turned into a violent brawl over the weekend in Alabama and now, footage from the fight has gone viral, according to Newsweek, Page Six, and the above local news video — which can be viewed on YouTube — from NBC affiliate WSFA.

On Saturday evening at Montgomery’s Riverfront Park, a fight ensued, leading to several arrests by local police. Montgomery Mayor Steven L. Reed shared a statement on Twitter saying officers, “acted swiftly to detain several reckless individuals for attacking a man who was doing his job.”

What happened beforehand? Via Newsweek, footage taken from someone on the riverboat showed a woman explaining what led to the altercation. According to her, the man in the white shirt got off the riverboat to push the pontoon further down the dock after its owner was told he couldn’t leave his vessel there.

The riverboat worker then reportedly exchanged words with several shirtless white men surrounding the pontoon with things eventually escalating. While the Black dock worker tried to convince the people in the pontoon to move their boat, a man in grey shorts reportedly attacked him, encouraging the rest of his group to gang up on the man who was just trying to do his job.

Via WSFA, a handful of police officers arrived after the brawl began but seemed to let it die out on its own before issuing any arrests. At one point, a fold-up chair was reportedly used to beat one of the passengers on the pontoon while another was thrown into the water by a riverboat worker. Warrants have been issued for several people involved with more arrests likely to follow, but as serious as this whole situation was, Twitter was able to find some humor in the more bizarre bits.

(Via WSFA, Newsweek & Page Six)