Month: August 2023

The first North American leg of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour ended with a six-show run at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California — punctuated on August 9 with confirmation that 1989 (Taylor’s Version) will be Swift’s next re-recorded release. It was full of Swiftian surprises. Channing Tatum was in full dad mode, Selena Gomez cuddled her sister in the crowd, Halsey made infinite friendship bracelets, and the late Kobe Bryant’s daughter received the “22” hat in a heartwarming moment.

But David Harbour and his stepdaughter’s core The Eras Tour memory took place at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota in late June.

“You’ve got to call in a lot of favors,” Harbour said during the August 17 episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “Normally, like, the great thing about being a beloved character on Stranger Things is I can call up Madison Square Garden and get courtside to the Knicks. But, man, to go see Taylor Swift?”

Harbour explained that he and his stepdaughter picked Minneapolis because it was “the only weekend we could go” to The Eras Tour, and Harbour has a soft spot for the city. And then, he shared how his stepdaughter landed the ultimate souvenir:

“It was extraordinary because I did say as we went in, I said something like, ‘If there’s an opportunity to say hello’ — but I’m also very conscious because, a lot of times, people want to meet me, and it can be very difficult. So, I was like, ‘Please.’ And they said, ‘She’s leaving on a plane right after this concert.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, then, [never mind].’ And we sat there for about 30 minutes of the opener, and then a woman came out with a letter.

It was addressed to me and my stepdaughter, and it was a handwritten letter on a particular stationary, and it was like, I’ve never seen my stepdaughter speechless. … She did say in the letter at one point, ‘I’ll give you a wave from the stage,’ and at one point during the beginning of one of her numbers, she did turn to our little booth, and [waved].”

Harbour added that Swift is a “force of nature,” and he was unaware of the gravity of her superstardom prior to attending The Eras Tour, but seeing her perform for three-plus hours essentially without pause converted him into a Swiftie. (He also wondered aloud, “I don’t know when she pees!”)

Watch Harbour’s full Happy Sad Confused appearance above; The Swift talk begins around the 32-minute mark.

Forget IMAX 70mm. The best way to watch Oppenheimer, a movie about the ugliest, most destructive event in human history, is to look away when boobs are on screen. It’s the way Christopher Nolan intended.

A woman named Jourdan, who goes by @thatsnotlove on TikTok, revealed that her husband was made to look away from the screen during the scenes in Oppenheimer where Florence Pugh is topless. “OK, so I research everything before we watch it, but especially this movie. Obviously I heard about it, yes we wanted to see it, it has an amazing rating. We prepared ourselves. I didn’t know when the scene was going to happen and I also didn’t understand how the scene was happening. I thought it was just several minutes straight of…,” she said, mouthing the word “sex” like a dog owner spelling out “w-a-l-k.”

She continued, “But it wasn’t, it was actually broken up into like it would be a flash of that and then it would be a flash of normal life and then it would be a flash of the scene. It was very back and forth so it was really difficult to avoid it.” She and her husband came up with a “game plan” before the movie, so “when things were happening, he literally closed his eyes and laid his head on my shoulder… And then I would just let him know when it was over.”

Jourdan uploaded another clip to the video-sharing platform a few days later to reveal that she has been suffering from “betrayal trauma.”

She told her followers: “I went through betrayal trauma 10 months ago after nine years of marriage, 10 years of being in a completely monogamous relationship. I was fully under the belief that he didn’t look at other women, he didn’t self pleasure at other women, porn was the furthest thing from my mind. I never would have thought or believed that he was using porn but he was and I found out about it on September 17, 2022. That was the hardest day of my life. It was the hardest following weeks and following months of my life.”

You can watch the TikTok below:

(Via the Daily Mail)

When ESPN announced a number of high profile layoffs this summer, the most surprising name among them was Suzy Kolber, who had been with the network for 27 years and was the longtime host of Monday Night Countdown. Keyshawn Johnson was also part of ESPN’s layoffs, and it became clear that the network was going to be making wholesale changes to its NFL studio show lineup alongside big changes to NBA broadcasts.

On Monday, ESPN finally announced its new Monday Night Countdown crew, headlined by Scott Van Pelt taking over as the new host of the show. Van Pelt will be joined by two new analysts in Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears, who have become two of the best at ESPN, with Robert Griffin III remaining from last year’s group alongside Michelle Beisner-Buck doing features and Adam Schefter handling news and notes from around the league. Larry Fitzgerald and Alex Smith will also be occasional contributors, joining the show at various points during the season.

Overall it is certainly a younger look for the show and it’ll be interesting to see how much they change things up with the structure and format — i.e., will they look for new segments or stick with longtime bits like C’mon Man. One reason for the delay on the announcement may have been hammering out the full details on a new contract for Van Pelt, who ESPN has re-signed to join Countdown while also remaining in his midnight ET timeslot for SportsCenter most nights, including the postgame SportsCenter live on site after Monday night games. Clark and Spears will also continue their work on NFL Live, as ESPN looks to consolidate its talent across shows.

If Chris Christie accomplishes anything during the Republican primary, it will be aggressively prosecuting every word out of Donald Trump‘s mouth as he continues to run for president despite facing four indictments.

This time around, Christie went after Trump’s recent remarks about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The former president told Fox Business that Vladimir Putin would’ve never entered the country if he was still in office.

“Putin would have never gone into Ukraine, but that was just on my relationship with him,” Trump said via Newsweek. “My personality over his. [He] would have never gone in. I used to speak to him. I was the apple of his eye, but I said ‘Don’t ever do it.’ It was tough stuff there, but he would have never done it.”

Trump bragging that he’s the “apple of Putin’s eyes” is, obviously, a very weird thing for a former American president to say, and Christie made it a point to call out the quote while speaking to Erick Erickson at a conference in Atlanta over the weekend.

Via Politico:

“We have folks in this race who have called Vladimir Putin brilliant, a great leader,” Christie said. “Just yesterday, Donald Trump called him that he was the apple of Putin’s eye. I have to tell you the truth: I don’t want to be the apple of Vladimir Putin’s eye.”

“A Christie administration would stand up for our friends around the world and work with them,” he added.

The former New Jersey governor also called out fellow GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy who suggested pulling back on America’s commitment to Taiwan.

“We need to stand up for people who want freedom,” Christie said. “And if we let the Chinese do that kind of domination game, because we’re unprepared or unwilling to deter them, then they will not stop there. And we’ve seen this act before.”

However, despite the Putin remarks and several indictments, Trump continues to significantly dominate the GOP primary. For now.

(Via Politico, Newsweek)

Lana Del Rey has developed a reputation for casually touring through chain restaurants, from Waffle House to Texas Roadhouse, and she was most recently spotted at a 7-Eleven in New Jersey after attending the wedding of Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley (as circulated by Pop Crave).

Fans won’t have to wish for a chance encounter with Del Rey come this fall, as the multi-platinum-certified artist announced a 10-date US tour on Monday morning (August 21).

Per Variety, Del Rey’s Live Nation-produced trek will begin on September 14 at FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee and wrap on October 5 at Charleston Coliseum in Charleston, West Virginia. Tickets will go on sale beginning at 10 a.m. local time on Friday, August 25 via Live Nation. Del Rey’s official website has yet to be updated to reflect these dates as of this writing, but more information can be found on Del Rey’s Live Nation artist page.

In March, Del Rey released her Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd album, which Uproxx’s Indiecast reviewed.

See Del Rey’s upcoming US tour dates below.

09/14 — Franklin, TN @ FirstBank Amphitheater
09/17 — Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance Amphitheater
09/19 — Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion
09/21 — Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheater
09/23 — West Palm Beach, FL @ iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre
09/25 — Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
09/27 — Brandon, MS @ Brandon Amphitheater
09/29 — Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
10/03 — Pittsburgh, PA @ The Pavilion at Star Lake
10/05 — Charleston, WV @ Charleston Coliseum

Over the past few days, there have been rumors (unsubstantiated ones, to be clear) floating around that The Little Mermaid star and musician extraordinaire Halle Bailey is pregnant. She hasn’t offered any clarification herself yet, but it looks like her sister Chloe Bailey has shared a reaction.

During a recent Instagram Live session, Chloe said, “Y’all better keep my sister’s name out your mouth, thank you. Amen, hallelujah. ‘Bout to get me riled the hell up.” Somebody off camera said, “We don’t play about Halle.” Chloe added, “No. Like, what the heck? Period.”

Meanwhile, the two talked about making new music together in an interview with Elle that was published today. Halle said, “You can always expect new music from my sister and I,” and Chloe added, “I’ve been really inspired by that and just life: going out and experiencing people celebrating and having fun and just seeing what gets different types of people going. I can’t wait for my sister and I to put that within our own music, in our solo music and group music. It’s gonna be fun now knowing who we are individually more, and what we can bring when we come back together as a group — that’s gonna be really exciting.”

More Ron DeSantis? More like Ron DeerInHeadlights.

On Saturday, the juice-less Florida governor was questioned about his campaign communication director Andrew Romero suggesting the other candidates will have their “knives out” for him during the first GOP debate. He was also asked about a leaked memo from the “Never Back Down” PAC which included suggestions on how to act during the debate, like that he should “defend Donald Trump” when Chris Christie badmouths the former president (who won’t be there). To both questions, DeSantis looked like me in elementary school when I told my best friend I knew where babies come from, and he asked “OK, where?” What follows is some grade-A stammering.

“Well, the memo is not mine, I haven’t read it, um, I think he’s something we have to put off to the side,” he said. “But in terms of the debate, look, I know from the military, when you’re over the target, that’s when you’re taking flak. If you look, really, in the last six to nine months, I’ve been more attacked than anybody else. Biden, Harris, the media, the left, other republican candidates, and there’s a reason for that, because people know I’m the biggest threat.”

It was an uninspiring answer from a meatball of a man who, as Twitter realized, has the same “tics” as Homelander, the jingoistic superhero from The Boys. In a “which superhero are you?” quiz, that’s not who you want to get.

There’s one issue with the comparison, however:

When Britney Spears first addressed the news of her and Sam Asghari getting divorced a couple days ago, part of her message read, “And I’m actually doing pretty damn good !!!” Indeed, it does appear that this is the case, as evidence by a couple of new Instagram posts that show Spears putting herself out there and having fun.

The first of two posts shared last night is a video of Spears in bed, topless, and striking various poses for the camera over the course of 24 seconds, set to Annie Lennox’s rendition of “I Put A Spell On You.”

In another post shared a couple hours later, Spears explains, “When you go to meet up with a so called ‘friend’ and drive an hour for chicken !!! Then you have to wait in the car and need to use the bathroom … I knew paps were tipped off because the car I was in was never used before … so how I was I followed ??? Malibu Canyon Road is the most horrible road ever to drive on … so what does a b*tch like me do !!??! I put my green dress on and show up at my friends !!! I invited my fav boys over and PLAYED ALL NIGHT !!!”

Also in the post is a compilation of clips of a night spent with the aforementioned “fav boys.” One of them licks Spears up her leg, and the men also got shirtless and posed while holding Spears horizontally.

Over the past few months, Bruce Springsteen’s health has not been the best. In fact, Springsteen was forced to postpone a number of shows because of it, including his string of concerts in Philadelphia. Hopefully, news of The Folk Americana Roots Hall Of Fame’s (FARHOM) new exhibit centered around his extensive career will bring him some comfort.

Beginning on September 13, the Boston institution will display dozens of photos of Springsteen providing visitors with an intimate look into his journey through the industry. The exhibit, titled Bruce Springsteen: Portraits of an American Music Icon, is curated by the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music and will feature the images captured by photographers Danny Clinch, Ed Gallucci, Eric Meola, Barry Schneier, Frank Stefanko, and his sister Pamela Springsteen; all of whom have worked intimately with the singer.

On FARHOF’s official website, the exhibit’s description reads as follows: “From the streets of New Jersey to the sunbaked landscapes of California, this career-spanning photo exhibit showcases intimate photographs of one of America’s most important musical voices. Through photos and interviews, this exhibit gives a unique perspective of Bruce Springsteen away from the sold-out arenas and in front of the lens.”

Public guided tours of the Bruce Springsteen: Portraits of an American Music Icon exhibit will begin on September 13. Find more information here.

Donald Trump would love to spend the next year and change doing nothing but holding rallies for his third presidential run. But he can’t because he has to try and stay out of jail. The former president has racked up four criminal indictments, one of them pertaining to his alleged meddling with Georgia’s wing of the 2020 election. At one point he threatened to hold a no doubt wackadoodle press conference in which he would allegedly lay out incontrovertible proof of his innocence. Then he abruptly cancelled it. And one of his friends has a good theory about why.

Chris Christie, Trump’s former pal and now one of his fiercest critics, went on CNN Sunday, where he marveled that Trump actually did a first for him.

“He never listens to his lawyers. But he listened this time, didn’t he?” Christie explained. “Why? Because he’s scared. He is scared he’s just a couple of steps away from that jail cell closing behind him.”

Last week Trump teased that he could clear his name without the fuss of going through some old fashioned courtroom trial.

“Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others – There will be a complete EXONERATION!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!”

As one can imagine, Trump’s latest batch of lawyers weren’t too happy with that one and reportedly tried to put the kibosh on what could be yet another case of their client making his life worse — and their job harder. They couldn’t stop Trump when he did straight-up witness tampering.

But evidently they put enough of the fear of God in him that he called off a presser that could have made Mike Lindell look like Mike Wallace. For once those poor attorneys can take a breather — at least until the next time he shoots himself in the foot.

(Via HuffPost)