Category: News

Ahead of New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square, new CNN CEO Chris Licht made the call that less boozing would be had from on-air hosts. Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen did make mention of this omission while taking “mystery shots,” and Cohen joked about edibles, but the real point of this post is to discuss the apparent beef between Cohen and Ryan Seacrest.

This largely sources back to one year ago when Cohen made on-air noises about how “Ryan Seacrest’s group of losers that are performing behind us.” And while recently speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Seacrest approved of how CNN hosts wouldn’t be getting wasted, and he added, “I think they had something to say about my show at one point, which was I’m sure from the alcohol because, I don’t think they would say what they said about our performers if they weren’t drinking.”

Fast forward to the most recent Times Square shindig, and something else did happen. Or rather, it didn’t happen in a way. As Seacrest claimed on Live! With Kelly And Ryan, Cohen allegedly failed to acknowledge his existence on NYE while Anderson Cooper did wave towards Ryan. Via Decider:

“My big stage was right in front of Anderson and Andy and so when I was not working, I was trying to get their attention,” Seacrest said. “I thought maybe I was in the shot. I just wanted to wave and say hi. You know, they have a great show.”

The host, who called Cooper “the best,” said the CNN anchor turned around and mouthed, “Hi, how are you?” and told him, “Have a good show.” Seacrest then sharply added, “Andy did not turn around.”

To that, Kelly Ripa responded, “That’s not true. He said he was trying to get your attention,” which was met with this from Seacrest: “Really?”

Oh, but there’s more. Cohen addressed Seacrest’s claim during Andy Cohen Live. Via Deadline, Cohen attempted to set the record straight: “I didn’t see him.” Then he maybe excused himself by pointing out that Anderson usually is good about mentioning these things. “[U]sually if he’s waving at Ryan, he’ll say to me, ‘Hey, there’s Ryan.’ You know what I mean? Yeah. And then I’ll turn around and wave or I’ll say, ‘There’s Ryan,’ but he didn’t do that.’”

Yeah, this is a total mess. Cohen then claimed, “He’s got a bug up against me.” You can listen to that go down below.

(Via Decider & Deadline)

In 2022, it’s doubtful that anyone would have guessed that Marjorie Taylor Greene might ever be described as the voice of reason in any situation, but 2023 is already full of surprises. OK, so maybe she’s not exactly the voice of reason. But as the House of Representatives prepares for a sixth round of voting to maybe finally hopefully elect a new Speaker of the House, it’s still somewhat surprising that the historic political stalemate doesn’t have the Georgia congresswoman’s bleached blonde handprints all over it.

On Tuesday, in between round number whatever of trying to name a new SOTH, Raw Story reports that Greene blasted her frenemies in the so-called “House Freedom Caucus” for not backing Kevin McCarthy. Think about that for a second: Marjorie “Gazpacho Police” Greene, the woman who blew half her salary on fines just so she didn’t have to wear a face mask. The woman who tried to make an analogy between COVID and farts.

But here’s Margie, going against former bestie Matt Gaetz and frenemy Lauren Boebert — and saying she’s asking for nothing in return. As she told members of the press on Tuesday, the current chaos really comes down to three Republicans who “went in last night and were demanding positions for themselves, demanding gavel positions, demanding subcommittees, demanding for people to be taken off committees, for people to be put on committees.”

“Three! Three Republicans out of our 222,” Greene continued. “I have not done that for myself! The only thing I’ve done is debate and request and argue amongst my peers for the right things, for the rules package, and for our agenda for the American people.”

That there’s a true American patriot!

It’s also worth noting that, back in November — when McCarthy seemed to think that winning over Greene was the way to win over the rest of the rebel Republicans — the congresswoman did begin naming herself to committees.

(Via Raw Story)

Maluma is stepping into the new year with a new persona. On Monday (January 2), the Colombian superstar said goodbye to Papi Juancho and hello to “Don Juan.”

Maluma’s real name is Juan Luis Londoño Arias. Over the years, he has embraced different personas with his albums. His breakthrough LP, 2015’s Pretty Boy, Dirty Boy, saw him take on that titular persona. With 2018’s F.A.M.E. album, he became “Maluma, Baby,” which is his popular tagline.

In 2020, Maluma embraced the Papi Juancho moniker with his album of the same name. He continued to use that persona with his EPs, 7 Días En Jamaica and The Love & Sex Tape. Maluma called himself Papi Juancho one last time in his song “Ojalá” with The Rudeboyz and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine. That collaboration dropped in October.

In a video that Maluma posted on Instagram, he celebrates his triumphs as Papi Juancho and gives that persona a farewell. In a voiceover, Maluma thanks his fans and his family for their support. In Spanish, Maluma says, “Undoubtedly without you guys, I wouldn’t be who I am, but I have made up my mind. It’s time to say goodbye forever to Papi Juancho.”

Maluma is then shown with a new look and his hair braided. While smoking a cigar, he adds, “Don Juan is here.” It appears that a new Maluma album with that title could be on the horizon later this year.

In early 2022, Mac DeMarco played a make-up show at The Warfield in San Francisco after a rainout the year before. But instead of motoring back home to Los Angeles, DeMarco decided to take a road trip to nowhere in particular and only end it when he was done recording a new album along the way. These are the bones of Five Easy Hot Dogs, DeMarco’s new album which will be coming out on January 20th, via his own Mac’s Record Label. Conceptually, it’s a trip.

“I’d spend a bit of time putting together a portable recording system that I had packed into my Toyota before the San Francisco show, eight channels max,” Mac said in a statement. “I had my guitars with me, a bass, a weird little drum kit with a kick drum we sawed in half in Golden Gate Park, all the stands and cabling I’d need, a couple of mics, an old model D, and a TX7. I wound up picking up a bunch of stuff as I went as well, trying to keep it as travel friendly as possible though.”

The road trip ended up taking him up the West Coast through California, the Pacific Northwest, and then into Canada before heading East through Chicago and to New Jersey. The new album’s track titles are a reflection of where each song was recorded and mixed. From the sleepy Pacific Coast Highway town of “Gulala,” to the Canadian metropolis of “Edmonton” where he’s originally from, and Jersey’s “Rockaway.”

The album of hypnotic instrumentals from DeMarco follows a similar spirit to his 2015 Bandcamp-only release, Some Other Ones, a soundtrack to backyard BBQs of sorts. “Maybe it’s the last couple of years, or maybe it’s my age now, but the idea of forgoing any sort of normalcy or comfort and making my entire life, for a segment of time, completely insane feels very inspiring to me. I stayed out on the road doing this for almost four months,” DeMarco added. “This record sounds like what rolling around like that feels like.”

Check out the album artwork and tracklist for Five Easy Hot Dogs below.

1. “Gualala”
2. “Gualala 2”
3. “Crescent City”
4. “Portland”
5. “Portland 2”
6. “Victoria”
7. “Vancouver”
8. “Vancouver 2”
9. “Vancouver 3”
10. “Edmonton”
11. “Edmonton 2”
12. “Chicago”
13. “Chicago 2”
14. “Rockaway”

Five Easy Hot Dogs is due out on 1/20 via Mac’s Record Label. Pre Order it here.

After the first creepy dancing trailer caught the attention of Megan Thee Stallion (and to a far lesser extent, Meghan McCain), M3GAN is ready to murder its way into theaters this week. In a surprisingly welcome move, the first reviews are pretty much unanimous with praise for this latest installment in the evil children’s toy genre. Even The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw loves M3GAN, and that guy hates everything.

Based on the reviews, M3GAN appears to hit that sweet spot of campy fun and satirical commentary as it takes a scathing look at the current trend of pacifying children with technology. You can see what the critics are saying below:

Matt Donato, IGN:

M3GAN nails this American Girl meets American Psycho vibe that accentuates an automaton’s binary, soulless assessment of humankind’s follies while still finding time for memeable horror entertainment. Don’t expect perfection between flatter storytelling devices that clunkily push through familial drama or how humor overrides dolly-damndest frights, but do expect M3GAN to kickstart 2023’s genre scene with an out-of-the-box playtime villain who does it all.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety:

Movies released during the first week of January tend to share a quality of utter disposability, but “M3GAN” almost feels like it could be a cult film, the sort of thriller that generates a small but devoted following and maybe a sequel or two. You don’t have to take the movie seriously to enjoy it as a high-kitsch cautionary tale for an age when technology, especially for kids, is becoming the new companionship.

Kate Erbland, IndieWire:

There are many fun games to play during the riotously campy and delightfully self-aware killer robot horror comedy “M3GAN,” but the best is the most simple: Which one of these weirdo human suckers will this murderous android bump off first? (A much less predictable game, but just as edifying, is trying to guess when M3GAN will break into song; yes, song.) And while the final death tally might be a smidge lower than you might expect from a Blumhouse joint, this film from director Gerard Johnstone can’t help but delight its audience.

Germain Lussier, Gizmodo:

M3GAN is half an exploration of real-life horrors and half a wild murder spree starring a killer doll. Each part of the film has its own merits and important takeaways, but in the end, the world we live in is so full of its own real-life horrors, the off-the-wall escapism resonates much more.

Alyse Wax, Collider:

M3GAN herself is a marvel. Created with a combination of puppetry, animatronics, VFX, and a human actor (Amie Donald, with a voice by Jenna Davis), it’s hard to tell when she is real, when she is fake, and when she is a combination. The sound design of M3GAN certainly helps the illusion of the character. With virtually every step, M3GAN whirred and clicked, the sounds of gears moving. Not loud enough to be obnoxious, just noticeable, so that it’s clear M3GAN is a robot. Jenna Davis brings an especially joyous vocalization to M3GAN, making her sound both lighthearted and somehow ominous.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian:

Derivative though M3gan undoubtedly is – with creepy fake toy TV ads that are a ripoff-homage to Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop, and a freakout finale that references James Cameron’s android meisterwerk – there are some adroit satirical touches about dolls as toxic aspirational templates, dolls as parodies of intimacy and sensitivity and tech itself as sinister child-pacification, with kids given iPads the way Victorian children were given alcoholic gripe water.

Pete Hammond, Deadline:

Although it is all entirely predictable, there is some fun entertainment to be had here as the creators including director Gerard Johnstone (Housebound) and writer Akela Cooper (Malignant, The Nun 2) working from a story she devised with [James] Wan, have serviced the idea with some very funny ideas that even have the truly creepy title character dancing her way into murder, as well as singing lullabies that seem to come out of nowhere, all the better to give this less-than-original exercise some off-the-wall moments.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter:

A satirical tale of treacherous technology in which the shocks and scares and even the cautionary notes are not lessened by the enjoyable vein of campy humor. While comparison to the Child’s Play and Annabelle movies seems inevitable, the malevolent agents in those franchises clearly are dolls. The Model 3 Generative Android known as M3GAN, by contrast, is a sufficiently realistic humanoid to be subversive as well as creepy, echoing AI insta-classics like Ex Machina.

M3GAN opens in theaters on January 6.

An unsupervised toddler with a pair of scissors is nightmare fuel for parents.

Will you find shredded books, a hole in your new couch, or a pile of lopped off hair when you emerge from your quick trip to the potty?

Toddlers may still be very young but they are fast and have a knack for getting ahold of unapproved things quickly, inflicting maximum destruction. TikTok user, @designerluxury4you, shared a video of their toddler proudly showing off the haircut she had given herself.

Experiencing your child giving themselves or their siblings a haircut seems to be a rite of passage for parents.

But the way this mom handled the discovery is showing how gentle parenting is changing the game. It’s pretty safe to say that most parents would react in a more expressive way and immediately remove the scissors from the child’s hands. This mom responded in the most kind and respectful way you can imagine and maybe the internet is a little better for having seen it.

When the mom walks in to see her daughter holding a pair of child’s scissors she calmly asks, “What’d you do?” to which, the now mullet sporting toddler, explains her actions. The little girl, Max says, “I cutted all of it off and I put it on here.” While the toddler is finishing her story we get a quick glimpse of the pile of blonde hair sitting on the night stand. This is the point that seems to divide the commenters, because the reaction isn’t anger or even a stern tone. Instead, this shocked mom says, “Oh, wow. You did a really good job, Max.”

The mom asked if her daughter felt better since her hair was no longer in her face, to which, Max answered, “yep.” Max was given several options, including going to the hairdresser to fix it. The video cuts off before we find out the toddler’s choice but mom’s reaction was the topic of discussion in the comments.

One person wrote, “seriously, this is impressive parenting. What a gift you are to her.”

Another said, “wow, you handled that so well lol she’s so adorable.”

Others were confused and more critical of the mom’s calm reaction and lack of consequences. Someone wrote, “I just can’t with gentle parenting. She lost me when she said no but allowed it anyway.”

A different user expressed confusion, writing, “not knocking gentle parenting but at the end of the day how does she learn this was wrong and not to do it again?”

There were multiple comments reminding people that even though the girl is a toddler, it’s still her hair and she should get to decide what to do with it.

Watch the video below, do you think this mom handled this situation well?

@designerluxury4u

Talent #gamimy #kidsoftiktok #girlpower #beautician ##parentsoftiktok

Tini has new music on the way with Steve Aoki. Yesterday (January 4), the Argentine pop star teased photos on Instagram from her upcoming collaboration “Muñecas” with Aoki and La Joaqui.

Before the photos reveal, Tini actually posted an audio preview of “Muñecas” last week. In the video teaser, she sings along to the track with fellow Argentine singer La Joaqui. Aoki blended EDM with an influence of cumbia music that Tini is known for with her global hit “La Triple T.” La Joaqui expressed that she was excited to work with Tini in a comment.

“Thank you for trusting me for such a beautiful project,” La Joaqui wrote. “You are the sweetest person there is. You treated me with so much love and you made me feel capable at all times of building something together with an artist as accomplished as you are.”

Now Tini is teasing photos that look like they are from the “Muñecas” music video. Tini is wearing a red latex outfit while La Joaqui is by her side in a metallic look. “La TiniTiniTini tonight is thirsty,” she wrote in Spanish in the caption. That could be one of the song’s lyrics.

There’s no release date yet for “Muñecas.” Last month, Tini closed out the year with a concert in Buenos Aires where her boyfriend, World Cup winner Rodrigo De Paul, came out as a special guest.

When he’s not working out or committing genocide on the world’s cod population, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is either spreading the good word about his Teremana tequila brand or working on his next project. Sometimes both at the same time.

Variety reported on the supposedly soured relationship between the Black Adam actor and Warner Bros. Discovery, including “Johnson directly [pitching] CEO David Zaslav on a multiyear plan for Black Adam and a Henry Cavill-led Superman in which the two properties would interweave, setting up a Superman-versus-Black Adam showdown.”

The Rock’s direct plea to Zaslav rubbed some higher ups the wrong way, especially after Black Adam failed to become a Furious 7-sized hit, “scuttling any plans for more outings for the antihero and officially ending the Cavill Superman era.” It also didn’t help that he reportedly requested to get his tequila at the premiere of the PG-13 movie.

Meanwhile, the Johnson-Warners relationship already was wearing thin after Johnson pushed for a producing credit on the animated film DC League of Super-Pets, which opened in July, but did little to promote it. The actor also insisted on a tequila bar at the New York premiere of Black Adam featuring his Teremana brand, despite the film being rated PG-13.

Best on the reviews for Black Adam, it sounds like The Rock made the right choice in trying to get everyone liquored up. Just keep the Aviation away. That’s for the Marvel folks.

(Via Variety)

It doesn’t matter if you work for minimum wage or have a net worth of over $40 million, inflation is affecting all of us as the prices of goods keep going up. Reliably relatable star Cardi B noted the sharp increase in cost for fresh produce on Twitter and wound up wondering if she might not be better off simply foraging for herself.

“Naaaaaa grocery shopping prices are ridiculous right now!” she marveled. “You might as well eat outside!!” Apparently, Cardi’s shopping trip went downhill from there, prompting her to follow up with: “Bitch why lettuce cost 6 dollars where I live at?” adding a Love & Hip-Hop meme in which Remy Ma declares, “This is where I’m starting to get aggravated.”

Cardi has been a critic of the rising cost of living since last summer, asking “how are people surviving?” during an Instagram Live stream with fans in September. Just before the holidays, she shut down a fan’s criticism of her perceived wealth after she rightly pointed out that the economy appears to be headed for a recession, has pointed out how even with her impressive income, she’s just as susceptible to going broke as anyone. “If I don’t save, work, and budget I could lose it too!” she tweeted. “What makes you think that no matter how much money you got you can’t lose it all if you don’t manage your money correctly?”

Last year, The Bear became a standout hit due to the fact that calling one another “chef” all the time is really fun. But the real reason the show stuck with viewers was the realistic (and sometimes heartbreaking) situations that can knock you on your feet, like the death of a family member or inheriting his sandwich shop. Or both!

Season one of The Bear centered on Carmy moving back to Chicago from his upscale New York City chef role, and now that we have establishes that everybody is in love with Jeremy Allen White, it’s time to expand the universe a bit with season two!

The second season will get more into the business side of the shop, and whether or not Sydney will be involved in the profits. “It really is the natural extension,” creator Chris Storer told Variety in a new interview. “The thing we talk about a lot is that winning is losing, so even though they have this new opportunity, it still creates a lot of the same problems,” he added.

Even though we probably won’t get a Carmy/Sydney romance, Storer says that he wants to explore the characters’ relationship with the shop in the sophomore season. “Season 2 really is about the opportunity to start fresh and what does that mean. What does Carmen and Sydney’s dream restaurant look like? But also at the same time, what is a dream restaurant in 2023 look like? I think that’s the thing they’re sort of battling with,” says Storer.

As for Carmy processing his brother’s death, Storer says that there will be some opportunities for the chef to learn more about himself, along with his co-workers. “Nobody’s fixed and everyone’s a work in progress. Every second counts,” Storer added.

In addition, co-showrunner Joanna Calo made mention of how the show’s first season’s theme revolved around “finding a family and feeling anchored,” whereas Season 2 will be about expanding the cast’s lives and looking toward taking care of community.

While we don’t have a premiere date for season two of The Bear, the producers have apparently mapped out future seasons in case it does just as well. It probably will.

(Via Variety)