Category: News

Turns out, rooting for the anti-hero can prove fruitful. For the second week in a row, Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” is the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100.

The past few weeks have shown to be historic for the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Last week, Taylor Swift occupied the entire top 10 with songs from her 10th studio album, Midnights, which is the No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart for the second consecutive week. The week before, Sam Smith and Kim Petras made LGBTQ+ history, with Smith being the first openly non-binary person with a No. 1 hit, and Petras being the first openly transgender solo artist with a No. 1 hit, with their collaboration, “Unholy.” “Unholy” sits at No. 3 this week, and at No. 4 is “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy, another queer artist who reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart last month.

In other exciting news, Rihanna’s big musical comeback has proven to be worth the wait. After going six years without releasing solo music, her big comeback single, “Lift Me Up” from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever has debuted at No. 2.

The Rihanna Navy can also expect to hear another new song from her during the end credits of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which arrives in theaters this Friday (November 11).

Check out this week’s top 10 above.

Austin Theory is the latest WWE star to unsuccessfully cash in his Money in the Bank contract.

After months of teasing which belt he’d challenge for, including getting tossed around the ring by Brock Lesnar and showing up on NXT, Theory took advantage of Seth Rollins getting rag-dolled around the ring by Bobby Lashley to cash in for the United States title in the main event of Monday Night Raw.

Rollins was supposed to hold an open challenge for the belt, but Lashley attacked him before the match could get underway. After putting the champ through the announce table, Theory cashed in his briefcase and took the fight to Rollins, landing a pedigree only for the two count.

Unable to put him away, Theory then dropped Rollins with the A-Town Down for a two-count before Lashley arrived back at ringside and pulled the referee out of the ring.

With the referee out of the match, Lashley then pulled Theory out himself and destroyed him around ringside. After slamming him into the ring post a handful of times, Lashley locked in the Hurt Lock until Theory passed out. With the referee back up and standing, Theory made it into the ring before the 10 count only for Rollins to drop him with the Curb Stomp and retain his belt.

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger are buddies now. They’ve even done a movie or two together. But in the ‘80s and ‘90s they were competitors — hulking he-men duking it out for the title of king of action. Their rivalry was so heated that Schwarzenegger even tricked Stallone into making one of his most notorious movies.

Stallone sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk about Tulsa King, his first leading role on a scripted TV show. Their wide-ranging chat stopped — in a bit teased out by The Daily Beast — on 1992’s Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, one of the more embarrassing parts of his filmography. The buddy comedy, which paired him with Estelle Getty, was, he said, “supposed to be like Throw Momma From the Train with the mom as this really nasty piece of work.”

Alas, Getty was “the nicest woman in Hollywood,” which might have made for a fun shoot but didn’t result in laughs. Stallone said he had heard Schwarzenegger had been interested in the movie, which prompted him to “beat him to it.” The movie was a critical and commercial punching bag, leading Stallone to opine, “I think he set me up.”

Spoiler: He did. THR reached out to Schwarzenegger, to ask if he had indeed set him up. “It’s 100 percent true,” Schwarzenegger replied. “In those days we did all kinds of crazy things to get ahead in our rivalry. Luckily for us and everyone else, today, we root for each other. Thank God, because we sure don’t ever need another Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.”

The film wound up being Stallone’s second comedy bomb in a row, after the period farce Oscar, from the previous year. Schwarzenegger, meanwhile, didn’t make a movie in 1992, but that’s okay: He was still riding high from 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Alas, he had the underperforming Last Action Hero on the horizon, while Stallone had a comeback hit with Cliffhanger.

Elsewhere in the interview, Stallone — who sat out the forthcoming Creed III — discusses why he’s not a comic book movie leading man (though he can do a comic book movie as a talking shark) and reveals that he turned down a hefty pay day for Rambo IV, before returning to the role nearly two decades later.

(Via THR and The Daily Beast)

Post Malone‘s “Twelve Carat” tour may have been met with several mishaps — including falling through a hole on stage, having difficulty breathing, and being heckled by passersby as he was meeting with fans — but he has also had many joyful moments while touring. Throughout the tour, he has helped a couple reveal the gender of their baby, and he even beat Celtics player Marcus Smart in a game of beer pong backstage.

In his latest tour stunt, Post officiated a queer wedding on stage at the tour’s Seattle stop.

In a TikTok shared by a friend of the couple, Post asks them if they take each other as each other’s lawfully wedded spouses. The couple then shares a kiss in front of a cheering crowd.

The TikTokker who posted the video said the couple plans to have an official celebration sometime next year, and now, she is currently trying to get Post to come to the actual ceremony.

While tour has been demanding for Post, he says he still finds time to relax in between stops. This mostly comes by way of watching reruns of an iconic sitcom, as he revealed in a recent interview for GQ.

“I watch literally every episode of Modern Family every single day,” Post said. “Every day, I start on season one, episode one, and then by the time I go to bed… Because I just leave it on as background noise, as well, whenever I’m not even deliberately watching. But by the time I fall asleep, I’m done with season eight already.”

Check out the clip above.

The Portland Trail Blazers have gotten off to a fast start to the season, entering Monday night’s game in Miami at 6-3 on the young season and got a boost in the form of the return of Damian Lillard after a four-game absence with a calf strain.

Miami took an 8-point lead into the fourth quarter and it seemed like Portland just might not have the juice against the Heat’s swarming defense, but the Blazers came alive in the fourth, scoring 37 points in the final quarter to storm back and take a late lead. After going up three on a pair of Lillard free throws, the Heat had 10 seconds to find an answer and got it in the form of an outrageous Max Strus three over a heavy contest in the corner.

Instead of calling a timeout, Chauncey Billups left the game in the hands of Lillard, who drove up the floor and found a wide open Josh Hart in the corner for the buzzer-beater to give Portland a 110-107 comeback win.

It’s a great play by Lillard to attack downhill and not settle for a contested three (which he’s certainly capable of making) and he draws all of Miami’s attention, blowing by Jimmy Butler and Duncan Robinson, with Kyle Lowry stepping out towards him and never even considering staying with Hart in the corner. Lowry’s contest comes too late as Hart has already let go of the dagger.

It’s a big win for Portland, which continues to prove to be a nightmare to deal with on a nightly basis, as they just keep coming at you and, when the shots start to fall, the offense can be lethal. On the other side, it’s another tough loss for Miami, dropping them to 4-7 on the season as they just cannot quite get it all going at once and will continue their search for consistency with a back-to-back against a struggling Charlotte team next.

Three months and ten billion scandals ago, Donald Trump’s resort home was searched by the feds. They emerged with boxes of government documents, some of them highly classified. In the wake of the search, Trump’s story kept changing. He claimed he’d declassified them with his mind. He accused the agents of planting them. He even railed over agents not taking off their shoes in his home. To make matters worse, Trump keeps accidentally blurting out confessions.

At a rally in Miami on Sunday, Trump did what he always does: rant to his devoted followers about his personal problems. He’s got a lot of them, including the ongoing Justice Department investigation, which could end with him indicted on a very serious crime. Trump tried to get ahead of this issue by turning the tables on the FBI, who he said “violated” his “Fourth Amendment rights.” He then kept talking.

“Presidents leave, they take things, they take documents, they take things, they read them,” he told the crowd. “Nobody else has ever gone through this.”

Couple things. One, no American president in history has ever taken government documents with them after leaving office. Second, if the Justice Department was looking for a confession, him all but saying he took top secret documents with him is close to the real deal, as some noted.

This isn’t the first time Trump has inadvertently incriminating himself while discussing the Mar-a-Lago search. A few after it happened, he took to his rinky dink Twitter clone, where he managed to basically reveal that his lawyer had lied to the feds about the placement of said boxes.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Coming through with more surprises during her Midnights era, Taylor Swift has dropped an updated version of her buzzy new single, “Anti-Hero.” The new version features Bleachers and contains a new verse by the band’s frontman Jack Antonoff, who also co-produced Midnights. The instrumental has also been updated, and now sounds more electronic and synth-driven.

The first verse and the chorus remain the same, however, Antonoff’s verse replaces Swift’s second.

“Sometimes, I feel like everybody is an art bro, lately / And I just change them on the hill / Too hurt to hang out, talking shit about your famous baby / Pierced through the heart of 90’s guilt,” he sings.

Antonoff and Swift have collaborated several times throughout their respective careers, and he has contributed to the production on every single one of her albums since her 2014 record, 1989.

In an interview with Billboard last year, Antonoff detailed their musical chemistry and praised Swift’s craft.

“Nobody does it like her,” said Antonoff. “And at the core of all of this, all of these things are only interesting because of the brilliance of the songs. I think it just it restores my faith in that, more than anything.”

You can purchase the “Anti-Hero” remix exclusively on Taylor Swift’s website.

Sitting courtside at a basketball game is as close as you can get to the action in any sport, with there being no wall between you and the action like in any other venue. Having a seat with your feet on the floor provides quite the view, but it also comes with some responsibility to keep your head on the swivel, because at any time you might find yourself suddenly very close to play.

Sometimes that can mean a player flying at you chasing down a loose ball that might end up in your lap, while other times it can be as simple as keeping your feet clear for referees running the sidelines. On Monday night in Philadelphia, Meek Mill forgot about that part and had his legs stretched out as the ball came back to his end of the floor and caused a ref to take a tumble as he tripped over Meek’s feet.

You never want to go full Curb Your Enthusiasm in real life, but here’s Meek Mill in a Larry David recline, legs kicked all the way out, tripping the ref — which is better than if he’d tripped Joel Embiid or something — and luckily the referee was alright aside from the confusion of what just happened.

As for Meek, he’s a veteran of sitting courtside so you’d think he’d know better than to have the legs all the way out, but here we are and a lesson has been learned.

The Indianapolis Colts fired Frank Reich on Monday after a 3-5-1 start to the season that most recently saw the team get trounced 26-3 by the New England Patriots.

That was a bit surprising considering how solid Reich seemed in Indy entering the season, but given the Colts expected to contend and are now looking unlikely to reach the playoffs, it wasn’t a total shock. What was a shock was who they selected as their interim head coach, bypassing everyone on the coaching staff and instead hiring former center Jeff Saturday, whose only coaching experience is three years of high school ball in Georgia.

Saturday, who has been working as an ESPN analyst, was formally introduced on Monday night in a press conference alongside GM Chris Ballard and owner Jim Irsay, the latter of whom put on a performance from the ages in front of a microphone. First, he went out and said this about a man who was literally not on anyone’s radar for any coaching position in the NFL.

From there, he was pressed on the Rooney Rule, accurately saying this abides by it but only because of a technicality in that interim coaching moves don’t have the same requirement to interview a minority candidate, as well as Irsay having no experience at the NFL or even college level. It was there that Irsay really got in his bag and explained that, actually, it’s good that Saturday has no experience in the NFL because he won’t coach with “fear” or be beholden to the always terrifying “analytics.”

Irsay wasn’t done, as he buried his entire coaching staff in the process of defending the Saturday hire when again asked about going off board with the selection.

Saturday, meanwhile, couldn’t believe he got hired either, joining the rest of the football world in that feeling.

Other highlights from Irsay include something about not knowing how sausage is made and then noting that they do a “simple job”, that it’s not like they’re building a rocket to go to Mars, and something about Michael Jordan losing games.

It really was a tour de force of wild defiance from Irsay, and while he’s right that the hire won’t face scrutiny for the Rooney Rule immediately, his comment that Saturday will be the coach for eight games and “hopefully more” was certainly eyebrow raising. This is clearly an audition, and if Saturday becomes the eventual full time choice (as it’s clear Irsay wants him to be), that quote would be Exhibit A in any potential complaint against the Colts hiring decision — which will be under the magnifying glass as the NFL is already facing a lawsuit from Brian Flores about the league’s hiring practices.

Continuing their promotional run for their collaborative album, Her Loss, Drake and 21 Savage have shared yet another fantastic spoof. Their latest sees the two performing in a booth set up to resemble that on A COLORS Show.

For this parody, the two performed “Privileged Rapper,” on which they address some of their peers in the rap game.

“I hate a privileged rapper who don’t even know what it take / The diamonds, they hit like a rainbow, that’s ’cause the necklace a Frank,” raps Drake on the song’s chorus.

On the second verse, 21 swoops in, reminding his opps that he is always on his guard.

“Look at me dead in my eyes / you see all the times that I had to go slide / Too many sticks, we go to war with whoever, ain’t never been biased,” he raps.

21 and Drake’s promo run for Her Loss began last week, as the two teased a fake Vogue cover, a pseudo interview with Howard Stern, an imagined Tiny Desk Concert, and a fake Saturday Night Live performance.

But in actual news, Drake teased a potential joint tour with 21 Savage on his SiriusXM Table For One show.

“I’m excited for tour,” Drizzy said. “It’s just another opportunity for me to be with my brother and just — I mean, sh*t, our set that night is gonna be dangerous.”

Check out the clip above.