Month: January 2024

Playing pretend isn’t always something that comes as naturally to adults as it does to kids. But as we become more aware of just how important playtime is to a child’s development, more and more parents are rolling up their imaginary sleeves to put in the work.

Of course, some parents have absolutely no problem committing to the bit. Aubrey Sanchez is clearly one of those parents.

On January 1st, Sanchez debuted Rosey, a salty-but-charming grocery cashier created during a bit of play time spent with her daughter, in a video clip that racked up a whopping 61.3 million views on TikTok.

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Rest assured, anyone who’s stepped foot into a grocery store has met Rosey, which makes it oh-so hilarious. From her long nails that go clickety-clackety on the keys of her toy cash register, to the blasé way she asks for “clean-up in aisle three” to her signature sarcastic catchphrase, “that’s a blessing,” people simply can’t get enough.

@aubreysanchezx3 🤣🤣 say hi to rosey 🤣🤣🤣 #cashierlife #cashiersbelike #cleanupinaisle3 #funny #momsoftiktok #momsbelike #momsover30 #momtok #momsplaytime #toys #cashier #aubreysanchez #nyc #momlife #fyp #foryou #foryourpage #aubreysanchez #pregnanttiktok #graciecandlco ♬ original sound – Aubreysanchezx3

“Canceling the Netflix and Paramount subscriptions right now for this show,” one person wrote.

Another added, “If you did 45 minutes straight, I’d watch till the end.”

Sanchez has even added several new dimensions to Rosey’s story.

For one thing, she’s a hard worker, as seen by her “Employee of the Month” award hanging in the background of another video. This is especially well earned since she is constantly having to deal with Bobby, her imaginary coworker, never being around when she needs him—not even when there’s a difficult customer.

@aubreysanchezx3 Rosey working o.t 😂😂 #cashierlife #cashiersbelike #cleanupinaisle3 #funny #rosey #momsoftiktok #playtime #momsbelike #momsover30 #momtok #momsplaytime #toys #cashier #aubreysanchez #nyc #momlife #fyp #foryou #foryourpage #pregnanttiktok ♬ original sound – Aubreysanchezx3

Rosey also has multiple interests, including some nice relaxing tea time, doing her own shopping, and of course sharing in some workplace gossip.

@aubreysanchezx3 The customer that’s always so extra 🤣🤣🤌🏽#funny #cashierlife #funnycashier #cashierproblems #inflation #fyp #foryou #foryourpage #rosey #groceryshopping #momsoftiktok #momsbelike #momsover30 #kidsdontcare #playtime #rosey #cashiertok ♬ original sound – Aubreysanchezx3

Clearly everyone is having so much fun with these, including Sanchez’s daughter, who even dons the cashier apron from time to time. Though she does overcharge mom for a reusable bag when she does.

Maybe not everyone can create full blown characters like Rosey, but there are dozens of ways to incorporate play in a way that can satisfy both parents and kids. In her book “Joyful Toddlers and Preschoolers: Create a Life that You and Your Child Both Love,” parenting coach Faith Collins even assures that sharing in household chores together can count. In fact, according to some studies, they might even prefer it to playing pretend.

The point is: playtime is so important for kids. But that doesn’t mean it has to be a drain for adults. And who knows, maybe filming it all on TikTok is the very thing needed in this modern age to make it enjoyable for the whole “fambily,” as Rosey would say.

Losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare, but losing a child to a preventable accident is a unique kind of grief. Such bereaved parents are often haunted by what ifs, and many choose to channel their grief into helping prevent whatever killed their child from happening to other people.

That’s what David and Jennifer Booth decided to focus on when they lost their 18-year-old son Nicholas in a car accident in April of 2023. Nick and his friend Will had left lacrosse practice and were driving along a treacherous road near Richmond, Virginia, when they lost control of the car around a curve. The car hit a retaining wall, flipped and burst into flames, killing both teens. The Virginia Department of Transportation estimated that the car was traveling in excess of 80 mph when it struck the wall.

After another local teen was killed in a car crash two days before the new year, Booth reflected on how he talks about his son’s death. He took to Facebook Live in January of 2024 to share his thoughts.

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After describing the basic details of his son’s accident, Booth shared that Nick and Will’s bodies had to be identified by their dental remains, which took more than 10 days.

“Since that time, in addition to grieving our children, we parents have worked very hard to share the story of our boys and how their death affected us, in hopes that other young people would make better decisions when getting into cars,” he said. “We have focused on love and community and how special those two young men were, and how much they’re going to be missed.”

Booth explained that he woke up the morning December 30, on what would have been Nick’s 19th birthday, to the news that another teen had lost his life in a car accident because of poor decisions. Booth said it felt like he was reading about his own son again—a young man who was “an athlete” with “an unwavering smile and sense of optimism.” At first, Booth felt sad, but then he became angry that another young life had been lost after all they’d done to tell Nick and Will’s story.

“What it made me realize was that we’re telling the story the wrong way,” he said. “Instead of talking about how awesome those boys were when they were alive and how much they were loved and how much they meant to the community, in order to reach the young people we’re trying to reach, we really need to focus on their death. The fact that it’s not cool. It’s not a badge of honor. It’s not ‘neat’ that they have 3-on-3 tournaments named after them and plaques hung up on walls and trees planted for them in other neighborhoods. That all sucks. Because they’re dead.”

“So I will forever change the way I deliver my message,” Booth continued. “Instead of showing pictures of my son and his friends having a good time and loving life, I will show pictures of the crash scene. Or instead of talking about what an amazing kid he was, I will talk about how scared he must’ve been when the car hit that wall. I will talk about the pain associated with the fact that we never even got to see him again in death because he was burned beyond recognition.”

“We are doing this the wrong way,” he reiterated. “We’ve got to do better. Young people do not believe that it can happen to them. They do not believe that when it happens, it’s forever, and they do not understand that in some cases, death may be a better alternative than some of the other things that can happen to them. I am forever changed by my son’s death, but now I am equally changed by the realization that in order to really send the message, you have to use the shock factor and you have to use words that make people uncomfortable.”

Watch Booth’s message here:

It’s heartbreaking that a parent should have to share and relive their son’s death in tragic detail in order to prevent the same thing from happening to other young people, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. Teens and young adults often see themselves as invincible and, unfortunately, take life-threatening risks in the name of fun, but Booth is on a mission to get people to rethink taking risks behind the wheel.

“I do this for me, I do it for my family, and I do it for my son,” he said.

Here’s hoping that this father’s courage to tell it like it is, even though it’s painful, will help the message sink in so that other families can be spared being put in the same position.

Eating hibachi at a Japanese restaurant is an experience. The hibachi chef wheels out his cart, cleans off the cooking space and the next thing you know there are flames shooting two feet in the air from an onion volcano. Spatulas go flying, eggs spin on end and with each squirt of oil the flame dances wildly while the heat warms your face.

It’s truly a show of skill and entertainment that you simply don’t get with other dinning experiences, so it’s no wonder people enjoy it. But when you add in pregnancy cravings, it takes that enjoyment to a whole new level and this woman’s husband got the memo. The couple, Dan and Sam uploaded a video to their TIkTok channel where it has gone viral with over 1.5 million likes.

In the video, Sam, who is pregnant is laying in the bed craving hibachi when her husband comes to beckon her into the kitchen.

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Dan then wheels in a little black cart full of seasonings while wearing a black robe and tall white chef’s hat with cooking utensils holstered on his waist. When your pregnant wife is craving hibachi, you become a hibachi chef complete with a griddle and your best flying spatula tricks.

At one point his reenactment was so accurate that he flipped a hot carrot off the griddle and into his paper hat before being quickly reminded that the carrot was scalding. People in the comments couldn’t get enough of how sweet his accurate performance was.

“That’s so sweet of him. I love how he got all the hibachi restaurant staples down pat,” one person writes.

“This is my favorite video I’ve seen in a long time, give that man some love bc 10/10 for talent, humor, and it looks delicious hello,” another says.

“He’s a keeper. Cooks, cleans and can flip food into his hat!! Yep, a keeper,” a commenter gushes.

@wearedanandsam

But why is all of this so accurate 🤣🤣 #couplehumor #couplecontent #couplecomedy

That performance does take talent and the fact that he even made a heart out of the rice just makes it that much more special. Hopefully homemade hibachi will become a family staple after baby comes.

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers should have thought twice about making false allegations about late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. It’s probably not a great idea for an NFL quarterback to pick a public fight against a man who spent decades taking shots at people in the news.

It all began when Rodgers speculated that Kimmel would be on the Jeffrey Epstein client list, basically insinuating that he’s a pedophile, on the January 2 episode of ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.” It was a tasteless, baseless accusation that Kimmel denies and he hasn’t appeared in any of the unsealed court documents.

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After the accusation, Kimmel noted that Rodgers’ “reckless words put my family in danger.” When he returned to do his monologue on Monday, January 8, Kimmel gave a thoughtful and funny takedown of Rodgers, painting him as a man who is “too arrogant to know he’s ignorant.”

He added that Rodgers probably suffers from the Dunning-Krueger effect. This psychological phenomenon occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skill in a particular area causes them to overestimate their own competence.

— (@)

​“He genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball, he’s smarter than everybody else. The idea that his brain is just average is unfathomable to him. We learned during COVID somehow he knows more about science than scientists,” Kimmel continued.

“And by the way, I’m not one of those people that thinks athletes and members of the sports media should stick to talking about sports,” Kimmel said. “I think Aaron Rodgers has the right to express any opinion he wants. But saying someone is a pedophile isn’t an opinion nor is it trash talk, sorry Pat McAfee.”

Rodgers responded by denying that he accused Kimmel of pedophilia. “I don’t give a s— what he says about me,” Rodgers said. “As long as he understands what I actually said and that I’m not accusing him of being on a list, I’m all for moving forward.”

The rising cost of living in the United States, combined with new technologies that make it easier to work wherever you like, has made it much more attractive for some to live and work in another country. Over 50 countries have made it easier by easing visa restrictions to encourage digital nomads to work within their borders.

Further, many people simply don’t like the rise-and-grind corporate mentality pervasive in the U.S. and prefer places that offer shorter workweeks, more vacation time and robust support systems.

They’re tired of the hustle and bustle of the American work culture and are looking for a life that values personal happiness, family and relaxation.

Jeronimo Noriega is an American expat showing zero interest in returning to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. The 27-year-old student has been living in Oviedo, Asturias, in Northwest Spain for the past 14 months after his family decided to pack up its bags and explore a new lifestyle.

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In a viral TikTok video that has been seen over 5.4 million times, Noriega makes the case for why he has no interest in returning to Texas after falling in love with the Spanish way of life and cost of living.

@jeronimoooo0000

Who needs to be rich anyways give me some culture boiii

The first thing that Noriega admits is that salaries are better in Texas. However, everything balances out when you consider the cost of living. He says that people who make around €30,000 ($33,000) a year in Spain are “middle class” and that if you make €90,000 ($98,000) you can live like a king.

“Listen, if you’re making 90 grand in the north of Spain, where I live right now, you’re going to work in a limo. You’re getting drinks at the Tennis Club after work,” Noriega said in the video. He also enjoys having 3-course meals with wine and coffee for “like 20 bucks.” In an interview with Business Insider, he said he routinely eats “delicious” dinner for just $11.

But what he really doesn’t miss about life back in Texas is the rise-and-grind lifestyle.

“What am I supposed to be in Dallas 2 hours a day and the car to get to work it back and never have time to do anything? No way,” he said in the video.” I love the work culture in Spain,” he told Business Insider. “In America, I felt like my only options were to rise and grind and get beat down by the machine, but everything is different here. In Spain, they seem to value their lives over their work — it’s not even a work-life balance.”

He also says that in America, there is a deep dread within the culture that he doesn’t feel in Spain. “I love the US, but even the mood is different here,” Noriega admits. “In the US, there’s turmoil going on underneath. No thank you.”

So, Noriega has no plans of returning to the U.S. anytime soon.

“Now that I’ve had a taste of what life is like outside the rat race, I’m not eager to get back on the wheel,” he told Business Insider. “Life is long, and you never know what will happen, but I’m staying here for the foreseeable future. All I have to do is take a walk to the coffee shop, have a delicious dinner for $11, or take a break in the middle of a weekday to remind myself why I’m staying.”

“To bee, or not to bee,” is a line of dialogue in The Beekeeper, a movie so delightfully stupid I couldn’t help but kind of love it.

As I write this I saw The Beekeeper five days ago and for the life of me I can’t stop thinking about its absurd plot. A plot so absurd that it kind of overshadows how cheap the movie looks. When I have told people the plot of this movie, I can hear my words coming out and I sound like a crazy person. Once I convince the listener that I am not making any of this up, the response, every time, has been, “I need to see The Beekeeper.” So I am going to do that now because if you thought you didn’t want to see The Beekeeper … well maybe you actually do want to see The Beekeeper?

In David Ayer’s The Beekeeper, Jason Statham plays Clay, also known as The Beekeeper. The Beekeeper is both an actual beekeeper and retired member of some unstoppable super secret government strike force that, according to this movie, makes SEAL Team Six look like “pussies.” The Beekeeper has just delivered some homemade honey from his beehive to his neighbor, Eloise (Phylicia Rashad), right before she falls for an internet phishing scam that not only wipes out her bank account, but the bank account of her employer. So distraught, she shoots herself in the head.

The Beekeeper finds the now-deceased Eloise and vows revenge on the internet scammers. But Eloise’s daughter, Verona (Emmy Raver-Lampman), also happens to be an FBI agent and at first blames The Beekeeper for her mother’s death. Once that’s sorted out, Verona is now tasked with both finding the internet scammers and making sure The Beekeeper doesn’t wage a war of destruction, but also deep down kind of wants him to wage a war of destruction.

So all of this happens in the first 20 minutes of the movie. I just kind of assumed the rest of the movie would be The Beekeeper using any means necessary to find the scammers, resulting in a climatic showdown. That is not what happens. The Beekeeper finds the scammers’ boiler room-type facility fairly quickly (The Beekeeper called in a favor) and burns it down. The Beekeeper literally walks into this office with two large gas cans and sets the place on fire. Apparently, the scammers have offices all over the country, run by a rich tech bro named Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson). Derek Danforth and his consigliere, Wallace Westwyld (played by Jeremy Irons, who I can only assume added a new wing to his estate for appearing in The Beekeeper), send their goons after The Beekeeper, which does not go well for the goons. Ending with The Beekeeper telling Derek over the phone that he is going to kill Derek. Derek relays this information to Wallace, mentioning in passing the whole Beekeeper thing, and Wallace gets a hilariously grim look on his face and says something to the effect of, “A beekeeper told you he’s going to kill you. Yeah, you’re dead. There’s nothing that can stop him.” To Wallace Westwyld’s point, nothing does seem to stop The Beekeeper. He’s more efficient than The Terminator. I don’t think there’s one moment in this movie where anyone thinks, “Oh no, The Beekeeper is in trouble now.” Nope, just nothing but success for The Beekeeper.

Okay, here’s the part that I love. The part that separates The Beekeeper from being a dumb January action movie to a hall-of-fame dumb January action movie that, again, I can’t help myself from loving. The whole scamming enterprise is a subsidiary of a larger corporation that Derek is now running. The reason Derek is running the company now is because his mother had to recently step down from the company to become the President of the United States. Yes. Yes! Yes! This is fantastic. You know what that means? This goes all the way to the top! So to get to Derek, The Beekeeper will have to make his way past United States Secret Service. There’s a line Wallace Westwyld delivers that delighted me so much where he explains that the Secret Service is no match for a Beekeeper. So in response to this Derek hires a gang of Scottish mercenaries. This movie, hot damn. It just does not care. I can’t help but respect all of this. Please create an honorary Oscar for The Beekeeper. Dame Judi Dench walks on stage, “And the Oscar for most chutzpah without caring even one time about its audience’s intelligence goes to … The Beekeeper.” Jason Statham then runs up with a big smile and says something like, “Always bee true to your convictions. Bee safe. Bee well. Woo!”

The Beekeeper, as you might expect, is filled with enough bee puns to last a lifetime. You will never need one again. Actually, you may never need to see or want to see a movie again period.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The Los Angeles Clippers have been on a tear of late, moving into fourth in the West as they’ve hit their stride with James Harden alongside Kawhi Leonard and Paul George — with Russell Westbrook coming off the bench.

What made the Clippers so interesting this season is it had the potential to be the last year of this current era of stars, as Kawhi Leonard and Paul George both have player options this summer and James Harden is set to be a free agent. However, a big chunk of that possible offseason pressure was alleviated on Wednesday when, suddenly and with no notice from the usual suspects on Twitter, the team posted that Kawhi had signed an extension.

“We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with Kawhi. He is an elite player, a terrific partner and a relentless worker who knows how to win and makes it his first priority,” Lawrence Frank said in a statement. “He elevated our franchise from the moment he arrived. We feel fortunate that Kawhi chose to join the Clippers five years ago, and excited to keep building with him.”

It was an extremely rare major signing where the team got to break the news themselves, and none of the NBA’s big newsbreakers had a clue it was happening or what the details were. Adrian Wojnarowski, Marc Stein, Shams Charania, Chris Haynes, and everyone else who is plugged in to every agency and front office in the league was left in the dark, only able to tweet some form of “Kawhi Leonard has signed an extension, the team says,” without any details on length or how much money it was for.

It’s really incredible for this to happen in the current media climate, but if there was ever a star capable of pulling it off, it’s Kawhi Leonard, who rather famously moves in silence. There is also progress on a Paul George extension to line up with Leonard’s, as Woj reported after Kawhi’s signing.

About half an hour after the Clippers announced the extension, Shams finally tracked down the details on it, which is a 3-year, $152 million contract that is fully guaranteed — which is obviously a big detail given Leonard’s injury history.

Has Donald Trump eaten his last Big Mac? No, of course not, what a ridiculous question to even ask. But the former president, who once claimed that a White House doctor told him that he’s “the healthiest president that’s ever lived” (even though he doesn’t believe in exercise), has recently lost some weight.

A source told Page Six that Trump is “staying away from the Mar-a-Lago buffet” with help from his wife, Melania. The insider added that he’s “allegedly ‘dropped at least 30 pounds,’ and that ‘people at the club say he’s eating healthier,’ and less from the buffet.” He hasn’t been seen “scarfing down ice cream sundaes or chocolate cake with two scoops of vanilla ice cream on it.”

Trump has the palate of an eight-year-old. It’s honestly the most enjoyable thing about him.

In November, his personal physician, New Jersey’s Dr. Bruce Aronwald, wrote, “I am pleased to report that President Trump’s overall health is excellent.” He added, “Trump has reduced his weight through an improved diet and continued daily physical activity while maintaining a rigorous schedule.” Trump’s weight was reportedly listed as 215 pounds [in August] when he surrendered to Georgia authorities on charges related to his alleged efforts to overturn 2020 election results there.

Weight-loss drugs like Ozempic are popular in Florida, where Mar-a-Lago is based, but Trump is supposedly shedding the pounds the ol’ fashioned way. “He does lots of sport,” a source said. It’s true: he spent nearly a year of his presidency doing one sport in particular.

(Via Page Six)

Rick Grimes left The Walking Dead in Season 9, Episode 5, but it feels much longer than 5-6 years ago since he tied his record for “worst horse ride” in the entire franchise, doesn’t it? Our real-life world feels almost as chaotic as one with walker hordes and killer nuns, after all, so let’s just say that it’s been a long time, and viewers will finally be able to see Rick’s boots onscreen once more in The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

This isn’t happening in a movie as originally planned but, even better, in a full-on spinoff starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Guirira as Rick and Michonne. She went looking for her missing husband as well, and she’s evidently found him from the looks of the above trailer. And how is Rick doing after life in the CRM? Not so fantastic! Janis/Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh), who is the reason that he ended up there in the first place, is also still kicking in this trailer, but Rick seems like he’s barely keeping a lid on being unhinged while in custody and otherwise starting to let his fury fly.

And boy this show is not shying away from teasing the possibility of Rick losing his hand in the promotional material for this show, since we received another look at that glove. Let’s do the synopsis thing:

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live presents an epic love story of two characters changed by a changed world. Kept apart by distance. By an unstoppable power. By the ghosts of who they were. Rick and Michonne are thrown into another world, built on a war against the dead… And ultimately, a war against the living. Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they’ve ever known before? Are they enemies? Lovers? Victims? Victors? Without each other, are they even alive — or will they find that they, too, are the Walking Dead?

Wait for the end of the trailer. Yep, there it is.

AMC’s The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live debuts on February 25.

We are just weeks away from Super Bowl LVIII, during which Usher is set to perform the Apple Music Halftime Show. With over three decades worth of hits to his credit, Usher‘s halftime performance is sure to be iconic. And, we hear that the “Good Good” hitmaker is kicking it into high gear ahead of the show.

According to the Sunday Mirror, Usher is currently hard at work in rehearsals as the Halftime show is imminent. He is also reportedly on a very strict dining regimen.

“The Super Bowl has always been on Usher’s bucket list and he wants to be in the best shape to give the performance of his life to the 100 million-plus people watching. He has quit all sugar and alcohol and is rehearsing endlessly,” said a source to Sunday Mirror.

Upon the initial reports, fans noted similarities between Usher’s pre-performance diet and that of Beyoncé’s ahead of her 2018 performance at Coachella.

One fan on Twitter even noted “He on that Beyoncé Homecoming diet. We’re in for a treat.”

However, some may consider Bey’s a little more extreme, as she gave up alcohol, sugar, caffeine, meat, dairy, and bread, as revealed in her 2019 Netflix documentary, Homecoming.

Super Bowl LVIII broadcasts live on Sunday, February 11 at 6:30 p.m. EST on CBS.