Category: News

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – Listen to me

I have tremendous news: the trailer for the third movie in the Magic Mike trilogy — Magic Mike’s Last Dance — dropped this week. It has Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek and various thrusts and gyrations taking place across Europe. Watch it now if you haven’t watched it yet. Watch it again if you have. Please never underestimate how wild it is that we have a full-on big-budget movie franchise about greased-up male strippers traveling the world that straight men and straight women and gay men and gay women all get kind of equally fired up about. The degree of difficulty on this was remarkably high. And yet. Here we are. It’s kind of incredible.

I really only have one complaint about all of this, which I tipped off in the headline and which any of you probably could have guessed anyway if you’ve spent more than 45 seconds around me: This third film in the trilogy should have been a heist movie.

I say this for three primary reasons, which I will outline below…

REASON ONE: It feels right. The first movie was an underdog story, kind of like Rocky if Rocky had been a Tampa exotic dancer instead of a boxer from Philadelphia, which is a wild thing to type and have be completely true. The second was a road trip movie with a bunch of sweet himbos on a bus and occasionally inside a convenience store covered in Cheetos and water. It just makes sense that the third movie would be a heist film, kind of like how the Fast & Furious movies started out about cars going vroom and the Fast Five was about robbing a Brazilian crime lord. Am I suggesting that they keep making Magic Mike movies until Channing Tatum goes to outer space with Ludacris and possibly gives a lap dance to an alien queen? Hmm. I think I am.

REASON TWO: There is history here. These movies are directed by Steven Soderbergh, who also directed the Ocean’s trilogy and Out of Sight and, perhaps most notably here, Logan Lucky, a heist film that starred Channing Tatum. Everyone here has experience and is good at this and it would be something squarely inside their various wheelhouses. It feels right. We should not fight the natural progression of things.

REASON THREE: I would like it. I really would. Show me Channing Tatum and Joe Manganiello in tearaway security guard uniforms with glistening torsos hidden underneath. Let them hypnotize female pit bosses with a series of wiggles and thrusts. Have them slither through a room filled with crisscrossing lasers that bounce off of their shiny abdomens and shoot back into the source and fry millions of dollars worth of high-tech security equipment. Bring back Al Pacino as Terry Benedict and give me a series of shots of him frowning at various monitors from inside a bunker. I would watch this movie right now if it were on television. I wouldn’t even finish typing this paragraph. I need you to know that I am not joking about this.

Please. Please. Channing Tatum and Steven Soderbergh. Consider this. It’s not too late. Do it for the people. And for me. Do it for the people and me.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Hey, speaking of dancing and/or Logan Lucky

Here’s the new commercial for Belvedere vodka. It features Daniel Craig dancing and strutting and smirking through the halls of a hotel. I love it very much. I’ve probably watched it 20 times this week. I bet I will watch it another five or six times this weekend. It makes me so happy. Look at him and his face and his arms and legs. He is so happy to be done playing James Bond. Between this and stuff like Knives Out and Logan Lucky, he has become devoted to silliness to a degree that I did not see coming but really appreciate. Good for Daniel Craig.

Variety has a really solid write-up on the spot — which was directed by Taika Waititi, one of those facts that make perfect sense after you learn it — and the Bond of it all. It’s a good read. Here’s the highlight.

Here’s what’s such cool fun about the Belvedere commercial. Craig, playing “Himself,” gallivants through the hotel in a funky, hot, preening dance-club way that is so not James Bond, yet the joke is that it’s almost as if it were Bond doing it. Craig exchanges the rock-hard masculinity of Bond for a different kind of masculinity, one that’s a lot more sexually fluid. Yet if you look at his worn-granite face, he’s the same rugged king-stud dude. In the commercial, his face tells one story and his body tells another. The story the commercial is telling is about the dialogue between the two.

Agreed. I’m glad someone out there watched this and took the time to piece together this interpretation, both because I enjoyed reading it and because it allowed me to blockquote something in this section to look smart instead of just typing “imagine you are staying in a five-star hotel and wake up and stumble to your door to grab the waffles and coffee and orange juice you ordered from room service the night before and you crack it open and look to your left and the first thing you see is international movie star Daniel Craig sashaying down the gallery toward you.”

The worst part of this would be — even as you watched it happen in three dimensions right in front of your face — knowing that no one would ever believe you. They might now, though, after this commercial. Let’s go ahead and that to the list of reasons it’s all just very good.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – Being a stuntman seems cool

In what appears to be my ongoing quest to hammer John Wick content into this column every week, I come to you with this: Collider interviewed the franchise’s director and general mastermind Chad Stahleski to talk to him about the arc of the saga and the recently released trailer for the fourth movie and dogs. Lots of dog chat. Which is fair, for a lot of reasons, some having to do with the whole arc of these movies starting with a dead puppy and some having to do with the thing where it’s just fun to talk to people about dogs for a while. Try it this weekend.

Anyway, the dog talk led to this, which has rocketed into my top five behind-the-scenes movie things ever.

You have to get to know your friends. So in order for the dog to be very playful, and safe, and have the confidence just like a human would, they have to spend time with each individual stunt guy. So we had to rotate every hour. One of our 10 main stunt team guys would go and play. That was his job. He had to go play with the dogs, and get tackled by the dogs, and play Frisbee with the dog. So you get acclimated to our canine friend and then that’s how we started working it. But it was about a little over five months.

There are parts of being a stuntman that do not seem fun to me. Throwing yourself off buildings, lighting yourself on fire, heading into the emergency room with yet another broken bone or squirting wound or charred extremity. This part seems cool, though. The only downside I see is that it would make it impossible to complain about your job to anyone.

YOU, A STUNTMAN: Wow, my legs sure are sore from playing with those dogs all day on the set of the smash-hit Keanu Reeves movie.

YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER, WHO IS LIKE A NURSE WHO JUST WORKED A DOUBLE IN THE ER AND HAD TO SPEND TWO HOURS IN THE EXPOSURE UNIT BECAUSE A PATIENT’S BLOOD SQUIRTED IN THEIR EYE: Sorry to hear that.

This is a real problem.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – I do not think I would enjoy explaining this to Oprah but good for Quinta Brunson

We can knock this one out with a series of bullet points:

• Abbott Elementary creator and star Quinta Brunson is going to sit down for a long interview with Oprah
• This is cool
• Quinta Brunson rules and I am happy to see her blowing up to “lengthy sit down with Oprah” levels
• Quinta Brunson also played a very loosely adapted version of Oprah in the Weird Al movie
• Imagine you played a goofy version of Oprah in a movie and then you sat four feet away from her and she asked you about it
• I do not think I would enjoy that at all
• I would immediately retreat into “student getting a stern talking to from the principal” mode
• No thank you

Congrats and good luck, Quinta.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Finally, Christmas movies for me

It is my great pleasure to report to you that HGTV and the Food Network, for reasons that are borderline unknowable but can be loosely covered by “if Hallmark can do this crap so can we,” are getting into the business of Christmas movies this year. Like, they are making their own. With actors and stories and everything. And guest appearances by the big-name state of the networks. It’s extremely weird and kind of insane and I enjoy it very, very much.

An example will help. Here is the plot summary of the upcoming Food Network Christmas film A Gingerbread Christmas, starring Tiya Sircar from The Good Place and Duff Goldman from Ace of Cakes.

“After a devastating workplace development throws Hazel Stanley’s (Sircar) job prospects as a full-time architect into question, she leaves NYC to spend the holidays with her father Ted (Varughese) in her suburban Chicago hometown. While there, she discovers that the family bakery is even worse off than she imagined, having been on the decline since the passing of her mother. And to add insult to injury, her former best friend Shelby (Teresa) has opened a trendy new bake shop across the street. When all seems to be lost, she gets the idea to enter a Gingerbread house competition led by homegrown food celebrity Mark Clemmons (Goldman) offering a $100k prize — enough to get the ailing bakery back on track. While working on her magnificent cookie edifice, a romance begins to bloom with a local contractor James Meadows (Bendavid) who — along with his daughter — has been helping her father out by lending his baking prowess to the place while trying to fix it up in his spare time. A series of frustrations and misunderstandings threaten to tear them apart, but will the magic of the holiday lead everyone to have a Merry Christmas?”

Dear lord, this one checks all the boxes. We have:

• An architect from the big city
• Who returns home to help with a struggling family business
• And enters a baking competition
• With the help of a single dad who presumably has a jawline you could slice a sheet cake with

It’s perfect. I am so proud of everyone involved in making this happen. All I need now is for this to be a big enough success that they do it again next year with double the budget so I can pitch them my idea about Santa Claus breaking his ankle while going down a chimney and Guy Fieri stepping in to take over. I am barely joking about this. They already have a lot in common.

I will not rest until this happens. That’s not true. I will rest a lot. But I’ll be thinking about it. Sometimes. When I remember. But still. Something to consider.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Joe:

I’m not sure if you remember the awesome History Channel show Dogfights, where they would talk about famous air battles and interview historians or even the pilots who were part of the conflict, all while using early 2000s computer technology to re-enact the battle. The show was great and it featured the best moment to ever happen on History, when Jefferson Deblanc talks about how he was rescued after getting shot down in the Pacific Theater in World War Two. This man had to have told this story a million times and I’m sure he loved doing so each and every time.

Okay. First things first, Joe included the clip with the timestamp, which I appreciate almost as much as the fact that this man’s name is Jefferson Deblanc. Really great stuff all around.

https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx_fKnlvV7WXOJ_PrEL7A5UNrzjNtv4UM4

The other thing: So back when I was a freshman in college, a million years ago and before my spinal cord injury, a buddy of mine named Rob found a flier advertising a job making $20/hr to work during a Philadelphia Eagles game. We responded and showed up and it turned out the gig was like a security thing with bright yellow “EVENT STAFF” coats and walkie-talkies and all of it. At one point, we were stationed down by the field while the cheerleaders were rehearsing their dance to the song “Let’s Get Loud” by Jennifer Lopez. I turned to Rob and said “How funny would it be if we just walked into the end zone and started dancing, too?” and Rob thought for a second and motioned to our Event Staff jackets and said “Who’s going to stop us?”

So we did. For a while. The cheerleaders saw us and pointed and giggled. It was awesome.

I bring this up now because I tell this story to every single person I meet and it is maybe 10 percent as good as Jefferson Deblanc’s story. If I were him, I would never shut up about it for a single second. I would not be a good fighter pilot.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To the Big Apple!

Customs officers at New York’s Kennedy International Airport seized $450,000 worth of cocaine from a traveler who was smuggling the drugs in the wheels of her wheelchair, federal authorities announced.

Two things are important to note here…

The first thing is that this is at least the third time this year a person has been busted smuggling cocaine into an airport inside a wheelchair. It also happened in North Carolina and in Italy. The second note is something I need to be very clear about: None of these people were me. I have never tried to smuggle drugs through an airport inside my wheelchair. As far as any of you know.

The bust happened Nov. 10 when Customs and Border Patrol officers stopped a woman traveling from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic with a wheelchair whose wheels weren’t turning, agency officials said.

The officers X-rayed the wheelchair and noticed an “anomaly” in all four wheels, CPB officials said in a news release. Officers checked the tires and found a white powder that tested positive for cocaine, they said.

I have this image in my head of these big lopsided tires going CLOMPCLOMPCLOMP through the terminal and leaving a puffy cloud of cocaine dust in their wake. People behind who walk through it getting high as a kite and being jittery and miserable trapped in a huge metal tube on a cross-country flight. This is an episode of 9-1-1 that I would watch tonight.

A total of 28 pounds (12.7 kilos) of cocaine with a street value of $450,000 was removed from the wheels, officials said.

So, a couple notes that I want to cover before we wrap this up:

• This is actually kind of a bummer because a lot of disabled people struggle financially and might be doing stuff like this to make money to pay for like medical supplies or groceries or rent
• I really must stress once again that I have never smuggled cocaine or any other drugs inside my wheelchair, unless you count the times we hid a bottle of bourbon in my lap and snuck it into my dorm building when I went back to school after my injury, which I like to think is more of a “boys will be boys” situation than whatever this is
• I am serious about this being an episode of 9-1-1

Thank you.

For the first time since FIBA rankings began nearly 20 years, ago Team USA is not atop the list for the men. That honor now goes to Spain, who overtook the U.S. when rankings were updated Friday morning. This past summer, Spain defeated France in the EuroBasket final. Spain and Team USA hold a healthy advantage over third-place Australia, at least according to the points system. France, who’s now been the runner-up in consecutive high-profile tournaments, is fifth.

While they did not explicitly say that the following tweet was a response, someone with access to the USA Basketball seems to think that putting anyone else No. 1 is a bit silly.

FIBA rankings are derived from a weighted system based on results in international play over a six-year span. In recent years, Spain has won the 2019 World Cup, lost in the Olympic quarterfinals to Team USA, and notched the aforementioned EuroBasket crown. Comparatively, Team USA finished seventh at the 2019 World Cup, won the 2021 Olympics, and placed third at AmeriCup in September.

The next major tournament comes this summer at the 2023 World Cup. The U.S. will travel to South America in February looking to qualify. A full explanation via The Athletic for the U.S. path to qualification can be found here. For now, though, the reigning World Cup and EuroBasket champions are atop the men’s basketball circuit, with Team USA aiming to usurp them. If that tweet is any indication, it’s clearly a priority.

This week has been a tough one for Ticketmaster. Before, canceling the sale of general tickets for Taylor Swift’s The Eras tour due to high demand — fans of rock legend Bruce Springsteen had a list of grievances to share with the entertainment company.

After discovering the inflated ticket prices for his upcoming Only The Strong Survive tour with the E Street band, they called for the “Born In The U.S.A.” singer to take action. Fans assumed the ticketing outlet had a hand in select cities’ $5,000 price tag. While Springsteen remained silent, the company issued a statement (reported by Variety) to defend its pricing model, “[the most expensive tickets] represent only 11% of the overall tickets sold.”

In an interview with journalist Andy Greene of Rolling Stone, Springsteen finally addressed the backlash. When asked if he had any regret over the tour’s price points, Springsteen replied, “For the past 49 years or however long we’ve been playing, we’ve pretty much been out there under market value. I’ve enjoyed that. It’s been great for the fans,” adding, “but ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also.”

Springsteen doubled down on Ticketmaster’s statement arguing, “The bottom line is that most of our tickets are totally affordable. They’re in that affordable range. We have those tickets that are going to go for that [higher] price somewhere anyway,” continuing, “hey, why shouldn’t that money go to the guys that are going to be up there sweating three hours a night for it?”

The singer understands his fan’s anger but ensures they will receive a show worth every penny, “I know it was unpopular with some fans. But if there’s any complaints on the way out, you can have your money back.”

To view the full tour schedule, click here.

In true MAGA style, Kari Lake is refusing to concede in Arizona’s gubernatorial race and has even taken the extra step of flying to Florida to meet with America’s #1 election denier at his home in Mar-a-Lago. However, in the process, Lake has already folded to one opponent: Tom Petty‘s estate.

According to Mediaite, Lake posted a campaign video on Wednesday featuring Petty’s hit song, “I Won’t Back Down.” The video was a not-so-subtle allusion to the candidate’s upcoming refusal to accept election results that showed her losing to Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs. It was also a completely unauthorized use of the song, which Petty’s estate did not take lightly.

On Thursday evening, a statement was posted on the singer’s official Twitter account warning Lake that her use of the track is illegal.

Via Tom Petty on Twitter:

The Tom Petty estate and our partners were shocked to find out that Tom’s song “I Won’t Back Down” was stolen and used without permission or a license to promote Kari Lake’s failed campaign.

This is illegal. We are exploring all of our legal options to stop this unauthorized use and to prohibit future misappropriations of Tom’s beloved anthem.

Thank you to all of the fans who brought this to our attention and who help us protect his legacy every day.

Despite claiming she “won’t back down,” Lake did exactly that. Mediaite reports that the campaign video was deleted following the statement from Petty’s estate. What hasn’t been deleted though is Lake’s tweets about Todd from Breaking Bad. When it comes to her love for that crazy-eyed psycho, you might say she will… stand her ground.

(Via Mediaite)

It’s been a weird week in the NBA to say the least. Every time I start to think “this team is separating themselves from the pack,” they drop two of the next three games or lose to an unexpected opponent. The Bucks are awesome … except when they play the Hawks (I will note Khris Middleton hasn’t played and Jrue Holiday missed the second game against Atlanta). The Hawks are really good … until they play teams with length at all five positions like Boston and Toronto.

Our mighty Utah Jazz have tumbled losing three straight, which is partially expected, but I was ready to crown this team as the next iteration of the Iguodala Nuggets. The Suns are fantastic, but Deandre Ayton has been a shell of himself. Cam Johnson is out for a few months with a knee injury. Jae Crowder might be on the move, according to multiple outlets. Cam Payne has filled in admirably for Chris Paul and Mikal Bridges is taking a step as a scorer.

I could go on and on, but the point remains that the winds keep shifting, a significant reason I love the early season. The sample size we have at this juncture allows for some truly wild, wacky, and unexpected things to play out. It rocks.

The Boston Celtics stand alone atop the NBA for the time being. I’m not ready to crown them as inevitable champs, but they have been the most complete and dominant team on the season. You’ve heard about the league-leading offense, humming at an absurd 120.1 points per 100 possessions clip, per Cleaning the Glass. On defense, the foretelling of Boston’s demise was ill-fated.

The team is 12th on the season on that end of the floor, paltry and subpar compared to the way they took the NBA by storm last year. Marcus Smart has been good, but not the DPOY version of himself. Al Horford has taken a step back, although I think that’s more to conservation than losing gas. It is worth noting that Derrick White and Jayson Tatum have both been amazing and would warrant All-Defensive consideration. And of course, they’ve missed Robert Williams III.

Still, the switches haven’t hit the same. The communication hasn’t been to the same standard. The scrams aren’t there in a way we’re accustomed to seeing. I’m not worried, nor do I think the fuss has been warranted. The Celtics have the third-best scoring differential in the fourth quarter in the NBA, including the fifth-best defense, allowing only 104.2 points per 100 possessions.

I want to see them play with the tenacity and ferocity they had last season, which is admittedly hard to do for an entire year. They have it in them, and we’ve seen them turn it up when it’s necessary. Boston continues to answer questions to some of the playoff issues they had in the Finals, and that’s the bigger storyline here.

And now, with all of that out of the way, let’s take a look at the league’s Most Intriguing Players this week.

Malik Monk

We have to start by heading out to Sacramento. Shout out to the 8-6 Kings! They’re 6-2 in November! Light the Beam!

Malik Monk cannot take the band-aid off. Ever.

Monk is developing some excellent two-man synergy with Domantas Sabonis. We’ve even gotten some of the electric De’Aaron Fox/Monk transition play like we saw at Kentucky when the two of them starred in the backcourt for John Calipari.

The playmaking has hit to a higher degree in this up-tempo, high motion offense. Monk, to his credit, has helped the team achieve that. He is thriving and it’s awesome to watch.

Usman Garuba

If Garuba could play starter’s minutes, he’d warrant All-Defense honors. He’s that good on that end of the floor. His hand speed and hand-eye coordination are unreal. He’s remarkably strong with a low and sturdy base. I’d go as far as saying that he may have defended Giannis Antetokounmpo the best I’ve ever seen anyone defend him, including the likes of Onyeka Okongwu, Draymond Green, Thad Young for that one season, and Al Horford.

He’s so disciplined and sound. It’s almost like watching a highly technical boxer picking apart opposition. Never off-kilter, but playing with an edge.

But I’m not here to write about his defense. What matters is doing enough and being aggressive to a degree on offense that he can play more and showcase his defense. It’s early, but there are encouraging signs. He’s carving out a role as a screener, hand-off hub, roller, and occasional popper. He’s played double-digit minutes in every game the team has played November, and that’s in due part to starting to look at the rim.

He’s taking fewer than four attempts per game in November. It needs to be more without question, but that he’s starting to even take anything is encouraging. There were moments the opening weeks of the year and in his limited play with the club last season that he didn’t even contemplate taking a shot. He’d get an offensive board and auto-pilot kickouts. Now, he’s starting to find some assertiveness.

His game against the Mavericks, which the Rockets won, showcased what Garuba appreciators and purveyors believe in: scoring easy baskets out of hustle seals. Popping and shooting without thinking. A few rolls. Stellar backline defense and switchability.

There’s a really intriguing player there who could also fit around the top picks of the organization, which can’t be said of all of Houston’s numerous role-player prospects.

Jevon Carter

If you missed it, Carter put up a career high 36 points last week against the Thunder.

Carter should not be expected to score 20+ points a night, but man, it’s been awesome to see him find some aggression, much like Garuba. Mike Budenholzer mentioned earlier this season that Carter needed to take more shots and be less passive within the offense, and that’s played out recently, as he’s taken double-digit shots in five of the last six games.

There has to be a blend, of course. Carter taking 13 shots a game isn’t going to happen when the Bucks are mostly healthy. On the other hand, we’ve seen Carter’s playmaking open up by taking more shots.

He’s more of a combo guard who can continue plays, attack off of secondary actions, or start initial actions due to the gravity and screening of Milwaukee’s bigs. He has the basic pick-and-roll reads down pat. He has pretty fun and budding synergy with Brook Lopez. His pull-up three isn’t going to bend defenses — he’s shooting 31 percent on one pull-up attempt per game — but he’s solid relocating and moving without the ball. He has some juice off the bounce inside the arc.

With how incredible his defense has been, I’m leaning towards the idea that Carter should be part of Milwaukee’s starting lineup, even when the team is fully healthy. It’s probably imperfect, to a degree. And yet, I can’t help but think that Carter remains the answer as a starter this season if that blend can be found. Regardless of how this plays out long-term, it’s been awesome watching Carter put together the best stretch of his career, and help the Bucks win some games.

Taylor Swift fans are distraught. To put it simply, Ticketmaster underestimated how many Swifties would be participating in the Eras Tour presale yesterday. “The site was supposed to be opened up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans,” said Liberty Media CEO and Live Nation chairman Greg Maffei. “We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots — another story — which are not supposed to be there.”

After a majority of the pop star’s fan base did not acquire tickets after hours of attempting, they called on Swift to speak out. Meanwhile, second-seller sites like Stubhub had tickets up from scalpers at absurd prices like $30,000. This fiasco ended with Ticketmaster canceling the general sale that would’ve been today.

And now, finally, Swift has posted a statement on he Instagram Story claiming that her team “asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could.” She also noted, “It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”

Read the full statement below.

“Well. It goes without saying that I’m extremely protective of my fans. We’ve been doing this for decades together and over the years, I’ve brought so many elements of my career in house. I’ve done this SPECIFICALLY to improve the quality of my fans’ experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse.

There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward. I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.

And to those who didn’t get tickets, all I can say is that my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to all get together and sing these songs. Thank you for wanting to be there. You have no idea how much that means.”

Drake‘s love for art is almost as well-known as his penchant for appearing in memes making fun of his emo tendencies. Recently, though, he took that hobby to a whole new level. Instead of buying a new piece to prominently display in one of his many mansions dotted around the globe, he’s invested in an entire art amusement park, according to a feature in New York Times.

Housed in a 50,000-square-foot warehouse, Luna Luna, conceived by the Viennese artist André Heller in 1987, contained works from the likes of contemporary art greats like Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dalí, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, but closed down shortly after its opening in 1990. While the project was greeted with enthusiasm by art connoisseurs in West Germany, it didn’t make much money, and plans to sell it to the city of Vienna and tour Europe with it fell through.

And so, for the past 30 years, was consigned to the realm of the historical footnote, gathering dust in Texas for around 15 years. However, when Michael Goldberg, the creative director at American Eagle, found out about Luna Luna online, he became obsessed with the idea of resurrecting it. It was Goldberg who reached out to Drake, who said in a statement: “When I first heard about Luna Luna I was blown away. It’s such a unique and special way to experience art. This is a big idea and opportunity that centers around what we love most: bringing people together.”

With Drake onboard, a sale was finalized pretty quickly. The works comprising Luna Luna have been restored and a worldwide tour has been planned for the relaunch, akin to similar traveling exhibits like the ones that you always see being advertised on Instagram. And with Drake’s name attached, this time, the hope is that it’ll turn out to be as profitable as everything else his brand has produced.

You can read the fascinating full story here.

Bad Bunny and Rosalía were big winners at the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards. Last night (November 18), Rosalía made history with one of her wins and she also delivered a memorable performance.

Out of his 10 nominations, Bad Bunny won five Latin Grammy Awards, though he was not in attendance. The biggest winner of the night was actually Uruguayan rocker Jorge Drexler, who took home six awards. Rosalía and her Motomami album were close behind with four wins.

Rosalía won the biggest award of the night Album Of The Year for Motomami. With her win, she made history as the first female artist to win Album Of The Year twice. She previously won in the category for her 2018 breakthrough album El Mal Querer.

Rosalía also performed a medley of songs from the Motomami album. She started out on the piano singing “Hentai” and moved her way to the stage to perform “La Fama.” Rosalía then later danced through the audience while singing her breakup anthem “Despechá.” She grinded on her boyfriend, Rauw Alejandro, who was in the front row during the performance.

Another one of the awards top moments was Karol G’s medley of her hits. She opened her set with a sensual performance of “Gatúbela” that was reminiscent of the music video. Karol G also danced through the audience while singing her feel-good bop “Provenza.” She later turned the stage into an astonishing Egyptian set to perform her latest single “Cairo.”

Anitta also delivered one of the night’s most-talked about performances. The Brazilian superstar performed her global hit “Envolver.” On the Latin Grammy stage, she executed her viral dance move of twerking to the ground that helped the song blow up on TikTok. Anitta went out in the audience as well and playfully danced on Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra.

Anitta is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

We’re living in a society where we could wake up tomorrow, and Twitter may have imploded. It’s not looking wonderful over there with a mass employee exodus shutting down the office until next week and Elon Musk reportedly scrambling for engineers (what’s left of them) to help him “better understand” what’s going on at a tech level.

With that said, it’s time to celebrate what the platform gave us, and one of my fave takeaways is this: several Ted Cruz moments were the height of hilarity. Remember those times when the noted The Princess Bride superfan feuded with Cary Elwes and disastrously tweeted about Fight Club? Then there was the time that Twitter collectively pounced upon his Cancun vacation during a Texas ice storm.

Yet all of that madness doesn’t hold a candle to 2017 moment when Ted Cruz, a sitting senator from Texas, was up late on 9/11 and “liked” porn on Twitter.

The self-proclaimed “fighter for liberty” then decided to blame staff members for this “mistake.” I don’t think anyone believed him then, and they sure don’t believe him now. Yet it’s one of those moments that shall live in Twitter infamy, long after Twitter itself no longer exists and has been launched to Mars as part of a SpaceX mission.

Remember the good times, people!

It’s too early to say RIP Twitter, but at least we can all have a laugh while the platform continues to hiccup its way into the weekend.

Last night (November 17), #RIPTwitter was trending on Twitter as people said bye to the platform. Why? Elon Musk’s acquisition of the site and the instability that followed, specifically the reported mass exodus of employees over the past few days, has people thinking Twitter won’t last much longer.

If this really is the end, Twitter had a strong run. The social media site was launched in 2006 and not too long after that, it really took off and attracted big-time celebrities. So, as this trying time for Twitter, let’s look back at the first-ever tweets from some musical artists.

Drake’s first tweet was from March 28, 2009, and it reads, “Fine…you got me.” For reference, he previously noted on his MySpace page that he didn’t intend to ever get on Twitter.

Speaking of Canadians, Justin Bieber entered the Twittersphere right as his career was about to take off: His first post directs to his MySpace page and says, “Check out my single ‘ONE TIME’ on my myspace and spread the word for me. Thanks www.myspace.com/justinbieber.”

Others were trying to get a feel for the place with their first tweets. Alicia Keys wrote in 2009, “It’s officially me, the real AK…trying to figure out the Twitter thing.. Looking forward to the weekend, gonna be gorgeous in NY!” In 2010, Lil Wayne wrote, “im super new to this twitter sh*t but wudup tho !……….follow me biot¢h……….wudup mak……happy bday LO……8 days of freedom..ym.” Carly Rae Jepsen’s first tweet seemed to be styled like an early-era Facebook status update: “Carly Is finally on twitter.”

Check out some other first tweets — from Eminem, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Post Malone, Machine Gun Kelly, Madonna, and others — below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.