Category: News

With Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery now streaming on Netflix, people are having a blast pointing out their favorite moments and details of the wildly intricate whodunnit on social media. One of those details? Dave Bautista‘s head wrinkles.

In the film, the Guardians of the Galaxy star plays Duke Cody, a flamboyant gun-loving, mens rights streamer. Thanks to working with directors like Rian Johnson (Glass Onion) and Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049), Bautista has been significantly stretching his acting skills, placing himself in an entirely different level than wrestlers-turned-actors like The Rock and John Cena. However, his distinctive head wrinkles appear to be stealing the show when it comes to his latest role.

You can see some of the reactions that are starting to pile up on Twitter as Glass Onion racks up some serious views over the holidays:

As for the source of Bautista’s wrinkles, the actor has never publicly addressed their presence. The most likely explanation is Bautista’s prior history with the extremely graphic wrestling practice known as “blading,” which involves cutting the scalp with blades to make matches look more bloody. He was fined in 2008 by the WWE for using blades during his Raw fight with Chris Jericho, and that’s part of what prompted Bautista to leave the sport a year later.

However, that’s only speculation. According to Men’s Health, the condition known as “cutis verticis gyrata” can cause head wrinkles in men. Either way, people are here for it. Glass Onion is stacked with a ridiculous cast of talent, and what’s blowing up social media? Bautista’s head wrinkles.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is available for streaming on Netflix.

Bad Bunny is giving back to his local community. On Tuesday (December 27), the Latin superstar hosted the Bonita Tradición event to give away over 25,000 gifts to kids in Puerto Rico.

Through his non-profit organization, the Good Bunny Foundation, Bad Bunny launched the Bonita Tradición, or “Beautiful Tradition,” gift drive. The event took place at the iconic El Coliseo in San Juan, Puerto Rico where he has performed multiple sold-out concerts. The gifts that were given out to children included instruments, sports equipment, and art supplies.

“We want to close the year in the best way, bringing a bit of joy, hope, and love to the children with an event that reflects the best of this time with a very special emphasis on the traditions of our island,” said José “Che Juan” Torres, director of the Good Bunny Foundation, in a press release.

Bad Bunny showed up to the event to handout gifts with the volunteers and take pictures with the children. Puerto Rican food and drinks were available as well as live music and entertainment for the guests. Professional boxer Xander Zayas and up-and-coming Puerto Rican singer Jotaerre also showed up that the event.

Later that day, Bad Bunny returned to his hometown of Vega Baja with Dominican-American rapper Arcángel. The duo were spotted recording the music video for their collaboration “La Jumpa” from Arcángel’s Sr. Santos album. Last week, Bad Bunny teamed up with Ñengo Flow for their song “Gato De Noche.”

While Fivio Foreign has had a big year, which came with releasing his major label debut album, B.I.B.L.E., as well as collaborating with the likes of Nicki Minaj, City Girls, and more, he is well aware of the issues that accompany everyday life. This is evident in his latest track.

“I feel like I’m blessed with a big excitement / And then I worked through the pain, I ain’t into cryin’ / They said it was hard, they ain’t even lyin’ / How you winnin’, you ain’t even tryin’,” he raps on the song’s chorus.

In the video, he is seen dealing with the highs of fame, as clips of him at parties, interviews, and in luxury homes play throughout. However, he is also seen balancing fame with the role of the family man, as he takes care of his young son.

Fivio has quickly become one of the leaders of Brooklyn’s drill music scene. In an interview with Complex, he noted his confidence in the genre’s longevity.

“It’s big,” Fivio said about drill. “No other genre is growing faster than drill. I feel like so many artists want to be a part of the drill scene. I appreciate all of the artists that are reaching out to it.”

Check out the video for “Sicc & Tired” above.

During 2021’s historic winter storm in Texas, Ted Cruz was infamously caught fleeing the state for the sunny beaches of Cancun. While his constituents literally froze to death and/or experienced wide-scale power outages in blistering cold temperatures, he jetted off to a beach resort only to return with his tail between his legs when the public backlash became too large to ignore. It was a bad look all around, and Cruz didn’t help the situation by blaming his daughters for the ill-advised trip.

So with that in mind, the last person who should be criticizing President Joe Biden for waiting to take an end of the year family vacation until after a major storm system subsided is Ted Cruz. And, yet, here’s the Texas senator attempting to roast Biden for heading to St. Croix:

Naturally, Twitter immediately pounced on Cruz’s stunning, and yet exceedingly on brand lack of self-awareness. “I no longer question the theory that this fellow gets off on public humiliation,” journalist Helen Kennedy tweeted. “He practically begs for it.”

You can see more reactions below as people made it abundantly clear that they still remember Cruz’s escape to Cancun in the middle of a deadly winter storm. “Cancun Cruz” is a nickname that won’t be going away anytime soon. Or possibly ever.

(Via Ted Cruz on Twitter)

Bad Bunny played a free concert last night on the rooftop of a gas station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The show was seemingly unplanned, as crowds in the videos taken gathered around in the street. He even had the makeshift stage decked out in lights, giving it the energy of a real concert.

The videos of Bunny’s performance have since gone viral online, and fans appear to love the Puerto Rican singer even more. “When you make half a billi on concerts for the year but still take time to do this>>>,” one fan wrote.

“this man is amazing, he REALLY loves his fans,” another pointed out.

Bunny’s show comes weeks after a President of another country wanted him to play a free show. Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked the singer to return to Mexico City for a performance following the fake ticket scams that fans faced at his sold-out concert on December 9.

“I would tell him how deeply we were touched to see young people sad because they couldn’t get in, because they had duplicated tickets, because they were victims of fraud,” López Obrador said. He also noted that the country would pay for the costs of lighting, sound, and a zipline in the plaza.

According to NPR, Bunny’s reps didn’t respond to the President’s comments.

Continue scrolling for some additional fan reactions to Bad Bunny’s impromptu gas station concert in Puerto Rico.

The Pick Me Up is a classic cocktail that’s perfect for New Year’s Eve sipping and partying. You can make these one at a time with a loved one or you can batch the base for easy pouring while you party this weekend. However you do decide to make this cocktail, rest assured that you’ll be drinking a classic and very tasty elixir to ring in 2023.

The Pick Me Up has its roots all the way back in the 1920s/1930s Paris cocktail scene. The modern adaption is largely attributed to the Ritz-Carlton in Paris and includes fresh orange juice, grenadine, and cognac with a champagne topper. The orange juice and cognac really drive this drink into a boozier mimosa territory.

Over the years, that recipe has been refined to give it a higher-end cocktail feel instead of the brunch feel it once had. That’s largely accomplished by jettisoning the OJ for a spritz of orange oils over an elegant mix of cognac, grenadine, bitters, and champagne. That’s the version I’m mixing up below, so let’s get into it!

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Pick Me Up

Ingredients:

• 2 oz. cognac
• 0.5 oz. grenadine
• 2 dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters
• Brut champagne to top (make sure it is very cold)
• Ice
• Orange peel

This is all pretty straightforward. I’m using a nice cognac and quality champagne both in the $50 range. You should be able to get all of this at any good liquor store right now.

What You’ll Need:

• Champagne flute (pre-chilled)
• Mixing glass/jug
• Cocktail strainer
• Barspoon
• Jigger
• Peeler

Method:

• Add the cognac, grenadine, and bitters to a mixing glass with a handful of ice. Stir until the glass is ice-cold to the touch.
• Strain the cocktail base into the pre-chilled champagne flute. Top with champagne.
• Express the oils from the orange peel over the glass and discard the peel. Serve.

For a Batch:

• 22 oz. cognac
• 4 oz. grenadine
• 4 oz. water (this replaces the water from the stir/dilution in a single serving)
• 20 dashes of Peychaud’s Bitters

***

• Combine all ingredients in a bottle and stir well. Store in fridge.
• Add 3 oz. of batched liquid to a pre-chilled champagne flute and top with champagne, express orange oils, and serve.

Bottom Line:

This is a great, sweet, and boozy champagne cocktail that’s sure to wow. The deep red of the fruity grenadine really adds a nice base for the cognac to pop with a brandy-butter and raisin vibe that’s part fruit cake and part fruit orchard on a sunny day.

The champagne adds a lightness that really shines. The yeasty nature of the brut brings forth a slight scone vibe with berry compote. It’s really refreshing and… almost nourishing (a strange thing to say about alcohol).

The orange oils tie the whole cocktail together and help it really snap on the senses. Overall, this is a complex yet very refreshing and light drink that packs a nice and boozy punch. Basically, it’s exactly what you need in your hand as 2023 dawns.

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is fast approaching the one-year mark, and Russian troops aren’t seeing any light at the end of the vodka-soaked tunnel. Recent reports have indicated that soldiers are drunkenly shooting each other on accident, but things must be growing even worse than they already are in Ukraine. Early on after the invasion, leaked audio revealed a mutiny, in which soldiers refused to follow a general’s orders and even threatened to blow him up. Now that even Putin has publicly admitted that he’s failing to supply the basics (on the medical-related and ammunition fronts), the atmosphere has spawned more mayhem.

The Daily Beast now passes on word from a local Russian news site, which revealed how Putin’s massive draft (in which he called up hundreds of thousands of variously ranked troops) led to a deadly altercation between two men. In the end, a commander lost his life after a sergeant got drunk and beat the holy hell out of him. The incident took place on a military train, and the beating was so severed that the “commander was pronounced dead at the scene.” Yikes:

A military court in Magnitogorsk announced Wednesday that the soldier will remain in custody for two months on charges that carry a sentence of up to 15 years, local media reported. The incident occurred last Friday, when investigators say the inebriated staff sergeant attacked his commander, who had also been called up under the Russian president’s order.

Although this report (given that it involves a death en route to the battlefield) stands out, these Russian-on-Russian deaths only appear to be increasing. Business Insider recently reported that Putin’s soldiers are taking each other out at a rate that might even exceed those who are killed by Ukrainian soldiers. The Russian army desertion rate has also grown so high that a commander was reportedly “threatened with execution” because he couldn’t stop his soldiers from fleeing. That’s possibly a natural result of being forced to use degraded ammo that could kill them when fired, along with being told that feminine hygiene supplies are the only available medical supplies. Putin doesn’t appear to be giving up this war anytime soon, though, so we can probably expect similar reports into the new year.

(Via The Daily Beast, Business Insider, & Newsweek)

Andrew Tate, a right-wing “misogynist” who was banned from Twitter in 2017 for making comments like rape victims “bear some responsibility” for putting themselves in a position to be assaulted, recently had his account reinstated by Elon Musk. Outside of imploring his dude-bro followers to “Escape the Matrix” (the Wachowskis must be thrilled), the former-kickboxer is using his platform to pick on a teenage girl, of course.

“Hello @GretaThunberg,” Tate tweeted to climate activist Greta Thunberg, “I have 33 cars. My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo. My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s. This is just the start. Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.” Thunberg was not impressed by this Extremely Cool Guy’s collection of cars. “yes, please do enlighten me,” the master troll replied. “email me at [email protected].”

Who knew Thunberg was such a big Chris Elliott fan?

Unable to fathom that Thunberg not only doesn’t find his collection of expensive cars fascinating but also has zero interest in engaging in conversation with him in any capacity beyond calling out his SDE, the only response Tate was able to come up with was a question of disbelief: “How dare you?!”

If only the heat from that burn could be turned into renewable energy.

(Via Rolling Stone)

While recapping the events of the past year last night (December 28), producers of ABC’s The Year: 2022 made a rather embarrassing mistake. When honoring rapper Takeoff during the program’s In Memorium portion, a picture of his Migos bandmate, Quavo, was shown. As one could expect, fans were not thrilled about the mix-up.

“So I’m watching #TheYear on @abc and was caught off guard by the disrespect and ignorance of the programming,” said one Twitter user. “All black people don’t look the same and y’all got this one wrong, the person is the picture is clearly, clearly [Quavo], do better.”

Another Twitter user said the mistake shouldn’t have occurred, given that Quavo had a long, prolific run of notable guest verses a few years ago, and should therefore be easily recognizable.

“This sh*t lame as hell,” they said. “This man Quavo was the face of popular music 3-4 years straight. Ain’t no way y’all confused this man for Takeoff.”

After several fans voiced their chagrin about the mistake, ABC corrected the video and has since issued a statement on social media.

“We apologize for the unfortunate error in a previous version of ‘The Year: 2022,’” said ABC News Studios in a tweet. “It has been corrected.”

A couple in the UK, Hannah and Tomas Mazetti, hates a classic holiday song SO much that they’re trying to own the rights… with the hopes of banning it from existence forever. The song in question is Wham!’s 1984 hit, “Last Christmas.”

Mazetti spoke to South West News Service (via Daily Mail) recently and said that her disdain for the song started when she was at work as a 20-year-old. She is now 33, but it seems the hatred has only grown.

“The owner of the cafe had planned for a super cozy holiday season and had his own made CD with a number of ‘hits’ on it,” Mazetti said. “He was only in now and then, so he didn’t fully appreciate the agony the rest of the staff felt when ‘Last Christmas‘ played for the 111th time of the working day.”

“Then someone told us it was theoretically possible to buy the rights to the song and then take it off all streaming platforms!” she added. “We asked around among our friends and word spread. It’s fun because people either love or hate the idea! Maybe next Christmas will be the last Christmas!”

So far, the couple has raised about £51,500 (around $62,200) from 330 donations, so it turns out that they’re not the only ones who don’t like it. However, the official rights to the song have been reported to cost £15 to £20 million (about $18 to $24 million) — so, thankfully, fans of “Last Christmas” still have some hope before the Mazetti’s try to send the tapes to a nuclear waste site in Finland.

Last year also marked the first time that Wham!’s “Last Christmas” hit No. 1 in the UK, so it seems the love for the classic jam is only growing stronger.