Category: News

What did you do on New Year’s Eve 2020? Probably not much. It was the first year of the pandemic and vaccines had yet to be made widely available. But whatever you did was probably better than what Donald Trump’s lawyers did. How did they ring in 2021? By frantically trying to overturn the election their client lost, of course.

Axios (in a bit caught by Raw Story) recently obtained emails between Eric Herschmann, a former White House attorney, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Cleta Mitchell, an activist and Trump lawyer. On Dec. 30, Mitchell had emailed Meadows an “almost final version” of a lawsuit against Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, which had been edited by notorious Trump memo-writer John Eastman. The next day, i.e., Dec. 31, Mitchell forwarded a version a “version from John Eastman with your edits.”

Alas, it didn’t take long for Herschmann to pour cold water on their actions. He pointed out that the lawsuit contained already debunked claims of voter fraud in Georgia, and he cautioned against Trump signing a sworn court statement alleging that they were true, especially when they were not.

Alas, Mitchell wouldn’t let a holiday keep them from keeping the wheels turning. With 30 minutes to midnight and a new year — not to mention less than a week from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — she wrote back to Herschmann, telling him she was frustrated with him and telling him to get on the phone with her “ASAP.”

But Herschmann — who later revealed he’d been exasperated with all the loopy conspiracy theories being bandied about by Trump’s associates — held steadfast, demanding that Trump not sign a draft until there was sound documentation attached. Trump did eventually sign it, but it’s not yet clear how he came to do so. Whatever the case, it doesn’t sound like there was much celebrating by the Trump team on NYE 2020. And there wouldn’t be anytime soon.

(Via Axios and Raw Story)

Fans are getting creative with their fun spoofs of Taylor Swift‘s Midnights cover art. As the excitement surrounding Swift’s 10th studio album is still high, several fans and public figures have shared their fun imaginings of the Midnights artwork.

Even if you’re not a Swiftie, you’ve probably seen the album’s standard artwork, which features a picture of Swift holding a lit lighter, encased in a white border with the album’s title overhead, and the tracklisting on the side.

On the heels of the album’s release, Food Network personality Guy Fieri shared a parody of the album’s cover, titled Flavors. The cover art also featured parodies of the album’s tracks, some of the most notables including “Lavender Cookies,” corresponding to Swift’s “Lavender Haze,” and “Midnight Snack,” for “Midnight Rain.”

Ahead of the Teletubbies Netflix reboot, the show’s official Twitter account shared their own version of the cover art, which was titled Midnights (In Teletubbyland), which featured Teletubby Laa-Laa holding a lighter. Like Fieri, the Teletubbies included their own versions of the Midnights track names, including, “Hugging Heroes” in place of “Anti-Hero,” and probably the most noticeable difference, “Silly Things,” in place of “Vigilante Sh*t.”

Swift herself has not yet commented on the parodies.

Midnights is out now via Republic. Stream it here.

Taylor Swift has long acknowledged the women in music who have inspired her. Ahead of her Lana Del Rey collaboration, “Snow On The Beach,” from her latest album, Midnights, Swift called Del Rey “one of the best musical artists ever” and said “[t]he fact that I get to exist at the same time as her is an honor and a privilege.” On the song itself, Swift shouts out another one of her inspirations, Janet Jackson.

“I can’t speak, afraid to jinx it / I don’t even dare to wish it / But your eyes are flying saucers from another planet / Now I’m all for you like Janet / Can this be a real thing? Can it?,” sings Swift on the song’s bridge, referring to Janet Jackson’s 2001 song and album, All For You.

On the day of Midnights release, Jackson shared a video of herself listening and reacting to the line.

“i LUV it,” said Jackson in a tweet.

Swift responded, saying, “I feel like I’m dreaming. I have so much love and gratitude for you and all you’ve done to inspire female artists everywhere.”

Check out the lyric video for “Snow On The Beach” above.

Midnights is out now via Republic. Stream it here.

You could argue that the modern comic book movie began with 1978’s Superman: The Movie. You could also argue it really began just over a decade later, with the release of 1989’s Batman. It’s a remarkably dark — and weird — blockbuster, though it’s markedly different than the ones that have all but taken over Hollywood. It’s so different that its director thinks it’s not even that dark anymore.

As per Deadline, Tim Burton — who at the time was coming off such eccentric hits as Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and Beetlejuice — was speaking at the Lumière Festival in Lyon, France when he was asked about the genre he helped create. He remarked that, at the time, the 1989 Batman, with its “tortured superhero, weird costumes,” felt “exciting” and “new.”

At the time, he took some flak from execs and critics for how dark the second highest-grossing film of 1989 was. But compared to what followed — the Christopher Nolan trilogy, this year’s even more brooding The Batman — it’s nothing.

“The thing that is funny about it now is, people go ‘What do you think of the new Batman?’ and I start laughing and crying because I go back to a time capsule, where pretty much every day the studios were saying, ‘It’s too dark, it’s too dark,’” he told the crowd. “Now it looks like a lighthearted romp.”

He also pointed out that it helped kick off another major industry trend. “When I first did Batman, I’d never heard of the word ‘franchise’,” Burton said. “After that, it became something else.”

It’s not the first time Burton has discussed the Batman franchise, which he left after only two films (the other being the S&M-heavy Batman Returns). Over the summer he took umbrage with the Joel Schumacher-era Batsuit nipples.

Burton’s latest project isn’t even a movie. It’s Wednesday, the Addams Family spinoff he did for Netflix.

(Via Deadline)

In 2022, we’re seeing more and more music festivals wrapped in the decadence and glam of a top-end hotel or resort experience. With varying degrees of ambition and success, these total package getaways have flipped the script on the perpetual search for a better venue for organizers while also making it significantly easier for music lovers. Sure, the “pair music with nice digs” idea is something Vegas figured out in the 1950s, but it’s finally becoming more widespread around the world and we’re here for it.

Think about it. No booking a hotel miles away for a jacked-up price. No annoying Uber rides to and from the venue during “peak” rates. No searching for food trucks when you’re starving. All of this melts away when the hotel you’re staying at is the venue. The music festival in a hotel concept fosters a kinship that only comes from being able to say, “I was there too!”

To better understand this value-packed travel trend, UPROXX spoke with three music festival organizers each of whom had a different perspective on the hotel-based festival concept.

Hosting a festival at a hotel is an opportunity to improve operational efficacy and simplify (sometimes even reduce) costs. Dirtybird CampINN, the hotel-based spin-off of a summer camp-themed music festival, Dirtybird Campout, is a prime example.

“When you’re building a festival, budgets are crazy high because you’re building all this infrastructure,” Aundy Crenshaw, who co-founded and runs both DirtyBird events, tells UPROXX. “It costs a lot of money and you have to have a high number of attendees for that to really pan out. Otherwise, your pricing gets super expensive, right?”

Crenshaw then breaks down the obvious perks, “The transition to hotels allows you to skip building all that infrastructure. Now you have the buildings, you have the power, you have the bathrooms, you have people that want to take showers and want to have rooms, and you’re not building the showers!”

While obviously a simpler plan, setting up shop in a hotel or resort isn’t always easy.

“It’s like you really have to work to transition that into your own space,” Crenshaw explains. “Like last year, there are these three ballrooms at the CampINN location and we put up all these little cool art walls and the fire marshal made us take them all down like two minutes before the event because they were made of wood.” Crenshaw breaks it down that while it seems easier to just move into a hotel, there’s always a learning curve no matter how easy something looks on paper.

Other event organizers were much more interested in developing their offerings to build better experiences for their audience. Holy Ship! is a prime example.

“After 13 sailings of Holy Ship! on luxury cruise ships, we were ready to curate a new kind of experience,” says Carrie Kaufman, the Marketing & Activities Director for Cloud 9 Adventures and one of the co-founding producers behind Holy Ship! Wrecked.

“The first edition of Holy Ship! Wrecked at a resort was in January of 2019,” says Kaufman. “When your passion is focused on creating experiences that bring people together, there is a natural inclination to keep those experiences fresh for everyone and to keep innovating.”

That translates to Holy Ship! Wrecked as a bevy of highly personal once-in-a-lifetime interactions with mega stars that would normally only be enjoyed from afar. Over the last few iterations, Holy Ship! Wrecked has also been offering volunteer opportunities where guests can roll up their sleeves and take part in efforts that benefit the folks in Riviera Maya too.

In the case of Hotel El Ganzo in San José del Cabo in Mexico, the legendary music festival Ganzo X has thrived for 10 years. The primary goals may have once been enhancing cost efficiency and smoothing operations, but today it’s all evolving the little moments that make time spent in between sets so much more special while being much more focused on driving bigger impacts outside the hotel and festival in the community that surrounds it.

As a B Corp, Ganzo X is able to raise money to feed impoverished families, fund coral reef protection programs, and rebuild schools that were devastated by hurricanes. “We are very close with the local community and always try to source locally for whatever we need or do,” explains Daniela Sánchez Sutcliffe, the Head of Marketing for Hotel El Ganzo.

“We hope to create and develop job opportunities and create awareness of San José del Cabo as a rich and diverse destination not only for nature and vacationing, but for its music and art programs,” Sutcliffe tells us. “Our objective is also to enrich the plurality of the community by inviting artists and creatives to be part of it and see and feel all San José has to offer.”

With a healthy balance of attendees and an increased operational capacity to focus on the fun parts, festivals making this transition into hotels are setting themselves up for major success where those who attend also get a real vacation experience out of the show. Rather than leaving exhausted, festival goers can potentially depart recharged and revitalized too. You can’t beat that.

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In a match made in hell, Kanye West spoke with Piers Morgan on Piers Morgan Uncensored. In the latest of a series of strange claims, Ye is now saying that Quentin Tarantino and Jamie Foxx stole the concept of Tarantino’s 2012 film, Django Unchained from him.

The film tells the story of a freed slave named Django, played by Foxx, who works with a bounty hunter to reunite with his wife and rescue her from a plantation. In the interview with Morgan, Ye says that he first approached Foxx with a similar concept for the music video for their 2005 collaboration, “Gold Digger.”

“Tarantino can write a movie about slavery where – actually him and Jamie, they got the idea from me because the idea for Django, I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for ‘Gold Digger’. And then Tarantino turned it into a film.”

Despite his frustrations for the alleged theft of the Django concept, Ye praised Foxx’s acting abilities earlier this month, and even said he would like Foxx to play him in a movie. In a post from his now-deleted Instagram account, Ye called Foxx “One of the greatest geniuses.”

You can watch the Piers Morgan interview above (if you must).

Is Donald Trump ever going to run for president a third time? Or will he be consumed by his many scandals? His good pal Sean Hannity thinks that he can always run while in prison, so it’s a strong possibility. But right now he’s still unofficially on the campaign trail, though he’s already signaling that should anyone run against him, that would not be wise.

As per Mediaite, Trump did a phoner on The Brian Kilmeade Show, where the Fox News host pushed him for an answer on whether Trump 2024 is indeed a thing. Specifically he asked how he felt about possibly running against people who were once in his cabinet. In short, he did not like that.

“Well, many of them have said they would never run if I run,” Trump said. “So, we’ll see whether or not that turns out to be true. I think it’d be very disloyal if they did [run], but that’s okay too. And the polls have me leading by 40, 50 points.”

It was a classic Trump threat, where he sternly warns, mafia-like, against someone doing something, then claims that it’s “okay” if they did that. Also classic Trump: Kilmeade repeatedly pushed him for an answer on whether he’s running, to which Trump only said there will be an answer in the “not-too-distant future.”

Trump also predicted a “red wave” in November, though polls have uniformly shown tight races. He also predicted that Putin, in his disastrous war with Ukraine, may resort to nuclear weapons “in some form, maybe limited form.” Oh, and he wants to sue Bob Woodward over the audiobook of unflattering/damning interviews he’s releasing. He even had the temerity to call him “a very sleazy guy.”

(Via Mediaite)

Earlier this month, Nicki Minaj shared some thoughts online after it was revealed that her No. 1 single “Super Freaky Girl” wouldn’t be considered for nominations in the rap categories, but rather, in the pop categories. Despite her shock, Minaj revealed to E! News that she is still looking forward to next year’s ceremony.

When asked if she would attend the Grammys if she were nominated, Minaj responded, “Yeah, why not? I’m not a coward.”

“I feel like I am in a really good space and therefore, why not?” she continued. “Why not put on a beautiful dress and cover my big boobs and show off my big old butt. Why not go and flaunt it?”

Upon receiving the news that “Super Freaky Girl” would be considered in the pop categories, she took to Twitter insisting that she wasn’t upset, but that it would only be fair if Latto’s “Big Energy” was also moved to the pop categories. The two rappers engaged in a heated exchange of words via Twitter, however, Minaj insists that she is not angry — with the Recording Academy, at least.

“I think sometimes people think that I’m more ‘angry’ than I am,” she said. “I could be heated about something right now or this second and five minutes from now, I’ll forget about what I just spoke about.”

The 2023 Grammy Nominations are set to be announced on November 15.

Rudy Gobert took on his old team on Friday evening. While the game did not take place in the stadium he called home at the start of his NBA career, Gobert and the Minnesota Timberwolves played host to the Utah Jazz.

Despite the fact that Utah were 8-point underdogs, the team managed to give Minnesota all that they could handle. And with less than 10 seconds remaining, the Timberwolves had the ball down by two and needing a bucket to elongate the game. This was where D’Angelo Russell decided it would be fun to break the ankles of another former Ohio State Buckeye, as Mike Conley hounded him and tried to keep him from getting a shot off.

This did not work. Russell pulled off a nasty crossover that sent Conley flying, and the veteran guard hit the deck while Russell was able to take a midrange jumper that he banked off the glass to force overtime.

On the night, Russell went for 23 points, seven assists, six rebounds, two steals, and a block in 39 minutes of work. But unfortunately for him and the Timberwolves, the extra period was not especially kind to them, and the Jazz were able to pick up a 132-126 win to move to 2-0 on the year.

The list of NBA players who are capable of doing something extraordinary is pretty long. The list of NBA players who are capable of doing the sorts of extraordinary things that Ja Morant is capable of producing, however, is far shorter. Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies took on the Houston Rockets on Friday night, and despite the fact that the up-and-coming home squad fought admirably, Memphis was able to pick up a 129-122 victory.

Morant, as he usually does, led the way, scoring 49 points on 17-for-26 shooting with eight assists, four rebounds, two blocks, and a steal. One of those blocks, in particular, stood out, as Rockets youngster Jalen Green pushed the ball in transition and tried to get a layup in the fourth quarter. Green is another special athlete, but he was able to get too much lift as he threw up a layup.

As a result, Morant was able to rise up and block the layup, as his head went about halfway up the net while he spiked the ball against the backboard like it was a volleyball.

This angle shows that he actually blocked the ball with his right hand and grabbed the bottom of the backboard with his left.

Ja Morant is unbelievable.