Category: News

The Golden State Warriors are in a pretty major rut right now. The team has lost six of its last eight games, and on Wednesday night, the Warriors followed up a 15-point home loss to the Toronto Raptors with a 36-point home loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.

While Golden State is dealing with a recent injury to Chris Paul and Draymond Green is on his way back from a suspension, watching the team lose this emphatically is not something that anyone is used to in the Steph Curry era. And after the loss to New Orleans, Steve Kerr tried to get to the heart of what is wrong.

“I think we’re just lacking confidence right now,” Kerr said. “You get to a stage sometimes where you just kinda lose your belief. It happens. And that’s what’s happened with our team right now the last few days. I think we’ve just lost the spirit, the confidence that has to carry you against talented teams, night in and night out.”

Kerr went on to say that, over the last two games, the Warriors just weren’t competitive, and then recalled something a coach said to him.

“One of the coaches on the way down said we’re the quietest team ever,” Kerr said. “I think without Draymond and Chris, it’s really exposed. There’s not much chatter defensively, we do have a very quiet group of guys with this particular team that’s out there now, and we probably need a pick me up. We need Draymond, we need guys who can kind of rally the troops right now. When you’re going through it like this, there’s only one way out, and that’s to fight together, to compete together. Somehow, we gotta get stops — we gave up 141 points, they scored at will. And we have to be able to get stops to be competitive.”

Hard as this is to believe, but a lot of people don’t like it when someone running for president says they want to be a dictator. It doesn’t exactly set the mind at ease. Even if that person says they’ll “only” go autocratic for a day, that’s not very reassuring, is it? Does anyone really think that someone who wants to be a dictator will seriously give up those powers after only 24 hours. Anyway, to the surprise of few, Donald Trump finally said exactly that.

It took him till his third presidential campaign, but he said he’d be a dictator, but just for one day, so he can get a tick a couple biggies off his to-do list. The response wasn’t so hot. And at a Fox News town hall Wednesday, Trump got mad about that…but only after saying he’d be a dictator all over again.

Last month, at another Fox News town hall, Trump was asked by his good buddy Sean Hannity a softball question: He asked the former president, who was last year indicted on 91 criminal charges, to swear he’d never go abuse his powers if re-elected. Trump couldn’t even do that.

“Except for day one,” Trump said, attempting to be reassuring. “I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.” He added, “After that, I’m not a dictator, okay?”

A month of bad press later and Trump can’t believe that people aren’t cool with a presidential candidate saying they’d be a dictator but only temporarily.

“All I said [is] I’m gonna be a dictator for one day,” Trump fumed at Wednesday’s town hall. “We’re gonna do two things: the border, we’re gonna make it so tight you can’t get in, unless you come in legally; and the other is energy. We’re gonna drill, baby, drill. After that I’m not going to be a dictator.”

Feel better? Surely it only takes a day to tighten the border and drill for oil in places maybe one shouldn’t lest you screw up the environment. And again, dictators always relinquish power when they say they will. It’s not like the words “after that I’m not going to be a dictator” aren’t as calming as Trump thinks they are.

But Trump didn’t see what was up with all the hoopla. He accused the press of taking him out of context, cutting it after the part where he said “I’m going to be a dictator.”

“They cut the rest of the sentence!” Trump marveled. He then said the opposite. “No, no. I’m not going to be a dictator. I’m going to manage, like we did…We were so successful that the country was coming together, it was actually coming together and coming together well. There was a beautiful thing to see. And we’re going to do it again.”

It’s not clear what Trump was referring to with the “coming together” part. The last year of his presidency saw a badly bungled federal response to a once-in-a-century pandemic, a spike in unemployment, mass protests over systemic racism (which included his administration teargassing its own citizens), and it concluded with him spreading voter fraud nonsense after he lost re-election. The country was rarely less together.

So perhaps the same guy who managed all that saying he’ll “only” be a dictator for one day isn’t as encouraging as the noted magnet understander thinks.

When Chris Christie announced his latest presidency, he had a perfectly cromulent reason for running: He mostly wanted to trash his former pal Donald Trump. Where the rest of his Republican opponents danced around criticizing the guy who crushed everyone in the polls, the former New Jersey governor gleefully trashed him (and sometimes human “ChatGPT” Vivek Ramaswamy) every chance he could. But it’s all over now, with Christie suspending his floundering campaign. At least he did it with a bang.

https://twitter.com/BillMelugin_/status/174520922635025617

Per The Daily Beast, before Christie walked up to a podium to formally end his 2024 presidential run, he happened to be caught on a hot mic talking to Wayne MacDonald, a longtime supporter and former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, during which he speculated that Nikki Haley, who’s been gunning to replace her former boss, Trump, on the GOP ticket, hasn’t got a chance in heck.

“People don’t wanna hear it, Wayne,” Christie told MacDonald. “We know we’re right, but they don’t wanna hear it. We couldn’t have been any clearer, we couldn’t have worked any harder… And look, she’s spent $68 million so far, just on TV… and we’ve spent 12. I mean, who’s punching above their weight?”

He added, “She’s gonna get smoked. You and I both know it, she’s not up to this.”

Though Christie didn’t mention Haley’s name during the discussion, it’s not hard to suss out who he’s talking about. Who else could it be?

Luckily one of the 2024 candidates who hasn’t suspended his struggling campaign agrees with him.

Of course, even if Christie is done campaigning, that doesn’t mean he has to stop trashing the guy who might become president a second time despite having a profoundly broken brain.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Lady Gaga already has one significant release penciled in for 2024: She’s starring as Harley Quinn opposite Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker in the Todd Phillips-directed Joker: Folie à Deux due out this October. But surely she won’t let another year go by without adding to her legendary pop discography? Right?

Will Lady Gaga Drop An Album In 2024?

There are breadcrumbs. This week, Gaga posted twice to Instagram from the studio. The first shows her standing at the mic, and the second is a selfie captioned, “If anyone asks I’m at church.”

Obviously, a decorated musician spending time at the studio doesn’t exactly mean they’re recording new music. For whatever it’s worth, Universal Music Group and Haus Labs By Lady Gaga each reposted Gaga’s studio photos.

We don’t know whether Gaga is indeed working on a new album, which would be her first since 2020’s Chromatica. It also feels relevant to note that rumors swirled in November that Gaga was working with will.i.am after the two were spotted dining together.

Still, it’s best to hold out for confirmation from Gaga as to what Gaga is up to — like she did in this lengthy Instagram post from last June.

Stephen A. Smith teased that the latest edition of his podcast would wade into waters he’s tried to avoid: His apparent long-standing beef with Jason Whitlock, the former ESPN columnist and personality who currently hosts a show for Blaze Media. As Smith claims, while he’s tried to avoid mentioning Whitlock directly for a decade or so, he’s felt compelled to say something in the aftermath of comments that Whitlock made questioning if Smith wrote his own autobiography.

Well, the podcast finally dropped, and Smith really decides to explore the space that this medium provides. The full video is at the top of this post, and Smith spends essentially the final 45 minutes of his pod on the subject.

“Jason Whitlock,” Smith said at the 14:29 mark. “I said that name. It’s not a name I’ve uttered. I normally don’t do that. But it’s necessary to do now. I’ve had enough of that fat bastard, that piece of sh*t, and I wanna make sure that before I go to break, I want anyone out there who watches me, anyone out there who knows me, anyone out there — no matter what you think of me — I want you to remember, I never talk about him. I never talk about my colleagues. I don’t do that. This is a first. But it’s necessary.”

Smith continued to tease this, saying he called his pastor asking for forgiveness “because he’s not gonna recognize the person he’s about to hear,” and gave his bosses a heads up about what he was about to do.

“My sisters, my nieces and nephews, my boys in the industry, everybody that I could reach out to in time has been warned,” Smith said. “It’s time for me to address this, I’m only gonna do it once. Because this bastard is worth less than a damn cockroach. He wanted my attention, he’s got it.”

Smith then went to break before coming back and discussing all of this, and well, it’s a lot. You can jump right to the 18:35 mark and go from there.

Jenny From The Block has been around the block. Jennifer Lopez has seen (and done) it all throughout her dominant triple-threat career, and she’s faced as much (unfair) scrutiny over her personal life as any celebrity. In other words, nothing intimidates her anymore, especially not her own past.

On Wednesday, January 10, Lopez released “Can’t Get Enough,” the lead single from her forthcoming album This Is Me… Now, alongside a very funny video directed by Dave Meyers. It features four weddings, the star trolling her own four-marriage history, and it’s glorious. Alas, Ben Affleck does not make an appearance.

At the beginning, Lopez marries her first husband while someone whispers to his plus-one in the crowd, “I told you she couldn’t be alone.” He holds his hand out for money, having won a bet. Later, Lopez is dancing with Derek Hough, meant to play her second husband. All the while, the same wedding guests come through with snide comments like “Third time’s the charm?” and “Don’t catch [the bouquet]; it’s cursed!” By the end, Lopez is stone-faced while overhearing off-camera men complaining about her nonstop work ethic, as well as her “defensiveness, and constant criticism.” The screen reads, “To be continued…”

As per press release, the video is from her upcoming movie This Is Me…Now: A Love Story, directed by filmmaker Dave Meyers, which is due out on Amazon Prime Video on February 16 — the same release date for Lopez’s first album since 2014’s A.K.A. Of course, This Is Me… Now is a bookend to Lopez’s 2002 album, This Is Me… Then, released in the thick of Affleck and Lopez’s first go-round. (For anyone living under a rock, Affleck and Lopez reunited in 2021 and have been married since July 2022.)

“I think it might surprise some people,” Lopez told Variety of her single and video at the 2024 Golden Globes on Sunday, January 7. “It’s definitely kind of a meta story about the journey that it takes from getting from heartbreak back to love […] I am somewhat of an expert, you could say, in a real way. Not so much about marriage but on weddings. Again, I don’t take myself too seriously. I think that life is a crazy journey where you fall down and you get back up, and you keep trying and you never give up.”

As for This Is Me… Now, Lopez is “embracing the return to traditional physical albums,” as excerpted from the press release:

“Jennifer has created a bespoke collection of special & limited editions. This includes a deluxe CD with a stunning 40 page booklet featuring exclusive photos, plus 2 of 20 available polaroid photos. The standard vinyl comes in Jennifer’s favorite color of green, and there are also eight additional exclusive vinyls with a variety of covers and vinyl colors creating an exciting collectors series. JLovers will be treated to a signed vinyl that is available exclusively on onthejlo.com and features an emerald disc and exclusive cover. The full product offerings are available at the preorder link here.”

Watch the “Can’t Get Enough” video above, and check out the This Is Me… Now cover art and tracklist (as first reported by Billboard) below.

1. “This Is Me…Now”
2. “To Be Yours”
3. “Mad in Love”
4. “Can’t Get Enough”
5. “Rebound”
6. “not.going.anywhere.”
7. “Dear Ben, Pt. II”
8. “Hummingbird”
9. “Hearts and Flowers”
10. “Broken Like Me”
11. “This Time Around”
12. “Midnight Trip to Vegas”
13. “Greatest Love Story Never Told”

This Is Me… Now is out 2/16 via Nuyorican Productions/BMG Rights Management. Find more information here.

Back in December of 2023, LA-based, progressive comedian Madi Hart made a joke that went viral in the most unlikely of places: right wing media.

Here’s what happened: Hart had just been on a date with someone she described as a “guy’s guy,” who incidentally paid for everything on said date. In a TikTok clip, Hart joked that because of that, she joked “I felt the feminism leaving my body,” based on a long running conservative meme.

Apparently conservatives on Twitter missed the memo that Hart wasn’t actually serious about abandoning her feminist values. Cue a comedy of errors way more hilarious than the initial joke itself.

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As Hart explained in a follow-up video, her original TikTok soon became the subject of analyzation on the “Matt Walsh Show,” where the staunch right-wing host noted that if Hart was willing to give up feminism in order to have things paid for, she needed to “be willing to play her part” in being a “feminine women that a masculine man desires.”

But that was just the beginning. Pretty soon Hart was featured on Republican think pieces that labeled her as ‘progressive ‘artsy’ woman” and “smitten lib chick” who dated one “guy’s guy” and was now “ready to swear off feminism and dating liberals,” marking it as a victory to the patriarchy. Yes, really.

Hart then admitted that the real insult in all this was being called a “self-proclaimed comedian” several times.

“I make money from this! I’m a proclaimed comedian!” she quipped.

Of course, it didn’t stop there. There were also countless tweets of this nature:

Girl goes on a date with a masculine man and it erases all of her woke programming. There is hope yet for the next generation of young people, as long as they can get away from the soy boy liberal snowflakes. pic.twitter.com/y8qry4jOud

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 20, 2023

The power of the laws of nature cannot be underestimated. A plant can grow through concrete.

— Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) December 21, 2023

Homegirl reverted back to factory settings in the presence of masculinity.

6 years of “women and gender studies” down the drain. 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/Y5sbIk6i2l

— MERICA MEMED (@Mericamemed) December 20, 2023

And then, to top things off, Hart’s video made it to Fox News. How did she find this out? Her estranged Republican father called to congratulate her.

Giggling and asking “why is this on national news?” Hart played the segment where host Jesse Waters shared the clip. She explained that apparently a “dating analyst” was brought on to discuss whether masculinity was, in fact, “dead or not.”

But wait, there’s one more thing. Hart concluded her video by sharing, “In my TikTok, I say that I’m bisexual and most of my extended family did not know that I was bisexual. They all saw the clip because they all watch Fox News every night. So that is also how I came out to my entire extended family. Via Fox News.”

“Okay but coming out on national news is actually so iconic,” one person reassured in the comments.

Watch the full video below. And kudos to Hart for sharing all this ridiculousness while wearing a shirt of herself on Fox News. Please sell those at shows.

@madihart_soccer Fox News is so UNSERIOUS 😭 #storytime #grwm #single #situationship #foxnews #bisexual #comingout #relationshipstorytime ♬ original sound – Madi Hart

In an interview with Buzzfeed, Hart argued that the driving factor behind this peak comedy situation “comes down to an oversimplified, and overly-individualistic, perception of what feminism even is,” adding, “who buys who a drink has literally nothing to do with feminism. But if conservatives expanded their idea of what feminism is, they would have to expand their idea of who the patriarchy harms, and they’re not ready for that conversation.”

Maybe not. But in the meantime, who says we can’t have a good laugh?

Following Hart on TikTok and Instagram could help with that. Just remember, she’s probably joking!

For the second year in a row, the Golden Globes were back, after a little hiatus from the airwaves in 2022 over all their, shall we say, issues. By now things are more or less back to normal, which is to say Sunday night’s show was kind of a mess. Though Taylor Swift and Meghan Markle dominated the headlines, so did its choice of host: comic and Easter Sunday star Jo Koy, who delivered an opening monologue that was, to put it mildly, not well-received. But was Koy really that bad? One of his joke targets doesn’t think so.

Per Deadline, Greta Gerwig recently went on BBC Radio 4, where she was asked about Koy’s bit about her most recent directorial work, which you may have heard about. During his opener, the comic cracked that Oppenheimer, which took home Best Motion Picture — Drama, “is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”

Did that leave Gerwig offended? Pshaw.

“Well, he’s not wrong,” she replied. “She’s the first doll that was mass produced with breasts, so he was right on. And you know, I think that so much of the project of the movie was unlikely because it is about a plastic doll… Barbie by her very construction has no character, no story, she’s there to be projected upon.”

It’s a thoughtful response to what was a silly joke. And it’s not like the movie has been treated like some joke. On top of making gobs of cash money, it has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many of the reviews praising its smarts, particularly that moving, Meryl Streep-approved America Ferrera speech. Perhaps we don’t have to remind you that it’s the latest from the director of Lady Bird and the 2019 Little Women, and it was cowritten by the maker of Greenberg, which co-starred [drum roll] Gerwig.

At this year’s Globes, Barbie was nominated for nine trophies, including Best Motion Picture — Musical of Comedy. It won two: one for the Billie Eilish song “What Was I Made For?” and another for the odd Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.

(Via Deadline)

Star Trek may be thriving on TV, but whatever happened to the franchise’s movie wing? It’s been a good while since their last film, namely Star Trek Beyond, from all the way back in 2016. Donald Trump wasn’t even elected yet, to show you how long ago that was. There’s been talk of getting the old, Chris Pine-led gang back together, but that’s yet to get off the ground. (There was also that “gangster” one Quentin Tarantino was going to make, but that was too pure for this world.) Now, finally, a new Trek film is in the offing, though Captain Kirk and company won’t be in it.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount has announced a kind of prequel film, set decades before the events of the J.J. Abrams-helmed 2009 revival, which brought the series back to the big screen for the first time since 2002’s woebegone Star Trek: Nemesis, about the Next Generation cadre. The film will be helmed by Toby Haynes, who directed episodes of the gritty Disney show Andor.

This doesn’t mean moviegoers won’t ever see the Pine crew on the big screen. Paramount still still wants to bring the likes of Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, and Simon Pegg back for one last hurrah. That project was announced last March, though it seemed a bit premature, with other cast members admitting they hadn’t even been contacted about it, to see if they were even available/willing to do it.

In the meantime, there are so, so many of the deathless franchise’s TV shows on Paramount+ that Trekkies ought never to feel restless.

(Via THR)

Between dropping How Do You Sleep At Night? and supporting Travis Scott on tour, Teezo Touchdown hasn’t had much time to sleep in recent months. It would appear the Texas-born artist doesn’t believe in downtime because he’s begun 2024 being just as restless.

On Wednesday, January 10, Teezo surprise-dropped the extended version of his debut album, entitled How Do You Sleep At Night? With You. The extended album adds three songs: “Up & Down,” “Out Of Respect,” and “Third Coast.”, Apple Music also revealed Teezo Touchdown as its first Up Next artist of 2024.

“I’m honored to have the opportunity to be the January Up Next artist for 2024 and I’m looking forward to the other artists who will push music forward for the rest of the year,” Teezo said in a statement, as per press release. “Thank you to everyone at Apple Music.”

Uproxx thought highly of Teezo, as How Do You Sleep At Night? made our “Best Albums Of 2023” list. Anyone who has yet to get a taste of Teezo’s daring, eclectic artistry will have an opportunity when he begins his Spend The Night Tour this spring.

Watch Teezo’s Apple Music Up Next short film above, and see his upcoming tour dates below.

03/21 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg OZ
03/22 — Zurich, Switzerland @ M4 Music Festival
03/25 — Paris, France @ Bellevilloise/Cabaret Sauvage
03/26 — Berlin, Germany @ Gretchen
03/29 – London, United Kingdom @ Village Underground/Electric Ballroom
04/30 — Charlotte, NC @ The Underground
05/02 — Boston, MA @ Paradise Rock Club
05/03 — Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of the Living Arts
05/07 — Toronto, ON @ The Phoenix
05/08 — Detroit, MI @ Saint Andrews Hall
05/10 — Minneapolis, MN @ Amsterdam
05/13 — Denver, CO @ Cervantes Ballroom
05/14 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell
05/16 — Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
05/17 — Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theatre
05/18 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
05/21 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
05/24 — Santa Ana, CA @ Observatory OC
05/25 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre
05/27 — Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom
05/30 — Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
05/31 — Austin, TX @ Come and Take It Live
06/01 — Houston, TX @ House of Blues
06/04 — Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade