If you know anything about Ohio — and maybe you don’t! — you know that they love college football. On Saturday, September 17, the Ohio State Buckeyes — who are doing so well this season that LeBron James took his son Bronny to one of their games last week (they won) — will square off against the Toledo Rockets. Everyone who’s everyone will be there. That is, except for Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance and possibly doomed former president Donald Trump, who will be holding a rally at the same time.
Yes, Trump is back on the trail, ostensibly to stump for unpopular candidates he’s endorsed, but also to not so subtly soft launch his third presidential campaign, which he hasn’t yet announced. If it’s anything like the rally he held in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania last weekend, it will go on forever and include him baselessly calling his enemies drug addicts.
That is, if anyone shows up. Again, Ohio is a big college football state, and if they’re present at the Ohio State University stadium in Columbus, they’ll probably be at home, watching the game on television — not in Youngtown, standing for hours listening to some guy ramble. Vance, who’s trailing behind Democratic opponent Tim Ryan, should have told Trump about the big conflict of interest. But maybe, much like Dr. Mehmet Oz trying to pass his Jerseyite self off as a Pennsylvanian, he doesn’t really understand the common folk. Anyway, go Buckeyes.
Since his passing late last year, MF DOOM’s legacy has been about his lyrical contributions to the hip-hop canon through his whimsical, one-of-a-kind rhymes, but recent events have made those rhymes the center of an ugly power struggle between some of those who were closest to him in his life. More specifically, his rhyme book is the focal point of a dispute between DOOM’s widow, Jasmine Dumile, and his former business partner Eothen “Egon” Alapatt, the founder and president of Now-Again Records. Egon was general manager of Stones Throw Records, which put out DOOM and Madlib’s collaborative album Madvillainy under the duo name Madvillain.
Now, though, Jasmine Dumile tells TMZ that Egon is holding onto DOOM’s rhyme book and refuses to relinquish it, even after numerous attempts to get it back. In a statement, she says, We had hoped after DOOM transitioned Egon would do the right thing and return the books to the family but he has continued to ignore these requests. Unfortunately, Egon is not the only former associate abusing the likeness, art, and life’s work of DOOM.”
While she didn’t want to elaborate on which other former associates might be taking advantage of their proximity to DOOM, she did say she will reveal more when it’s “appropriate.”
All-female Lebanese dance troupe the Mayyas returned to the “America’s Got Talent” stage on Sept. 7 with yet another spectacular performance.
If you haven’t seen their first appearance on “AGT,” do yourself a favor and watch it. The group, whose name means “walk of the Lioness,” earned themselves a nearly instant Golden Buzzer back in June after promising to “hypnotize” the audience and totally delivering on that promise.
Blending both Chinese and Lebanese folklore, the decadently clad women created mesmerizing illusions on the dance floor all in precise synchronization. Judge Sofía Vergara called it “the most beautiful creative dancing I’ve ever seen.”
The Mayyas certainly perfected their act for the competition’s semifinal, offering a kaleidoscopic display that was nothing short of jaw-dropping.
The group’s presence always has a delightful eeriness, but this time it was downright goosebump inducing—particularly when one dancer transformed her hands into a snake’s head and puppeted a message in Arabic that, according to The National News, translates to: “His soul and my soul, my soul and his soul, saw two souls existing in one body.”
Earlier in the show’s season, the troupe shared that for women in Arab culture, building a dance career was not generally supported. Winning would mean getting a chance to “prove to the world what Arab women can do, the art we can create, the fights we fight.”
Americans everywhere are feeling the pain of the cost of living increases over the past year, but we’re not the only ones. According to a report in The Washington Post, global inflation is set to reach 6.7% this year with countries all around the world feeling the pinch.
While Americans are quick to blame our own leaders for inflation woes, the problems that have led to the increase in the cost of living are global in nature. Global inflation is the result of multiple events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a downturn in China’s economy and unpredictable weather events caused by climate change.
The Washington Post also notes that worries about inflation can also lead to inflation as people begin to expect and demand higher salaries and food costs. The United States passed an Inflation Reduction Act, but economists say that the reduction in inflation “will be statistically indistinguishable from zero.”
In Scotland, the price of energy for a typical household is expected to rise by 80% from £1,971 ($2268) a year to £3,549 ($4.084). Businesses have also seen sharp increases in energy costs. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, says that the government will soon announce a program to defray the costs.
u201cNicola Sturgeon has confirmed that a rent freeze and a moratorium on evictions will be introduced in Scotland. https://t.co/h0Y5o43QCdu201d
To add to that, Scotland has experienced an inflation rate of 10.1% over the past year.
Sturgeon calls the steep increase in the cost of living a “humanitarian emergency,” and so the Scottish government is treating it as such. To help its people weather the crisis, the Scottish government plans to freeze all rent increases and the price of riding ScotRail, the country’s publicly owned railway.
It will also put a moratorium on all evictions.
“Firstly, it will aim to give people security about the roof over their head this winter through a moratorium on evictions,” she said, according to Sky News. “Secondly, the legislation will include measures to deliver a rent freeze.”
“We will take immediate action to protect tenants in the private and social renting sectors,” Sturgeon said according to TimeOut. “The Scottish government does not have the power to stop your energy bills soaring, but we can and will take action to make sure that your rent does not rise.”
Scotland’s rent freeze is drawing attention from across the globe 👀
Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants union, called the package a “huge win that would not have been possible without years of organizing by members.”
To help families, Scotland will also extend its free school meal programs and the Scottish Child Payment will increase from £20 to £25 a week for each child. In 2021, Scotland enacted a weekly payment to eligible families with children to help fight child poverty.
The Scottish people aren’t responsible for the global pandemic or a war in Ukraine but they are feeling its effects in a very real way. Instead of dragging its feet, the Scottish government took bold action to tackle rising prices and protect its most vulnerable citizens.
The Scottish people are living through a humanitarian crisis and its leaders have decided to treat it like one, instead of telling them, “You’re on your own.” This is what effective government looks like.
It’s hard to believe that Barack and Michelle Obama haven’t been in the White House since 2017, at least together, but then again, their successors were never about to invite them over. (Besides, she’s been busy writing bestsellers and he’s been recording podcasts with Bruce Springsteen.) Just as the fortunes of the Trumps seem to be finally falling, the Obamas returned to their former home, where they oversaw the unveiling of their official White House portraits. They both gave speeches, of course, and though Barack has given more than his share of stirring addresses, this time it was Michelle who made everyone cry.
Michelle told the crowd that, even after some 13 years, it’s “still a bit odd for me to stand in this historic space,” especially now with what she described as “this big beautiful painting staring back at me.”
She then reflected on the unexpected events that led her to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “Growing up on Euclid Avenue…I never could have imagined that any of this would be part of my story,” Michelle told the crowd. “Even if it’s all still a bit awkward for me, I do recognize why moments like these are important, why all of this is absolutely necessary. Traditions like this matter, not just for those of us who hold these positions, but for everyone participating in and watching our democracy.”
She continued: “You see the people, they make their voices heard with their vote. We hold an inauguration to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Those of us lucky enough to serve, work, as Barack said, as hard as we can for as long as we can – as long as the people choose to keep us here. And once our time is up, we move on, and all that remains in this hallowed place are our good efforts and these portraits.
“So for me, this day is not just about what has happened,” MIchelle said. “It’s also about what could happen because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”
Michelle’s passionate speech left the crowd chocked up. As for the paintings, the one depicting her shows her seated on a red setee in a blue dress. It was painted by Sharon Sprung in what she described as “contemporary realism.” The one of Barack is a bit different: It was painted by Robert McCurdy, and it is more in the vein of photorealism.
You can watch both Obamas’ speeches in the video above.
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke has proven that he has no problem pushing back at trolls, like the ones who review-bombed Season 2 (before even watching much of it) because they were so mad about the weekly release schedule. And Kripke has also stepped up to confront a group that’s being equally (or even more) ridiculous because, as Erin Moriarty recently revealed, they’re making the Starlight actress feel “dehumanized” and as though she’s being “silenced.” That’s the case because the trolls are tossing out misogynistic rhetoric about Moriarty’s appearance and the costume that Vought International makes the character wear. That costume has actually been a plot point and one that even otherwise horrible Stormfront drew attention toward in Season 2, and the show’s very much in on the issue with a satiric bent.
In addition, Starlight’s been through a lot on the show. Her introduction to her fellow The Seven members included a sexual assault by The Deep, an act that saw the tables turned on him later with a gill-involved scene. More to the point, though, Kripke has responded (while linking to Variety‘s story on the subject) to tell those trolls to no longer watch the Amazon show, and he’s not kidding.
“Hi trolls! One, this is literally the opposite of the show’s f*cking message,” Kripke wrote on Twitter. “Two, you’re causing pain to real people with real feelings. Be kind. If you can’t be kind, then eat a bag of dicks, f*ck off to the sun & don’t watch #TheBoys, we don’t want you. #TheBoysTV.”
Hi trolls! One, this is literally the opposite of the show’s fucking message. Two, you’re causing pain to real people with real feelings. Be kind. If you can’t be kind, then eat a bag of dicks, fuck off to the sun & don’t watch #TheBoys, we don’t want you. #TheBoysTVhttps://t.co/ZQmRlljyS6
Enough said, hopefully. In the meantime, let’s hope that Erin Moriarty is feeling the support that’s been sent her way following these revelations and her statement. And here’s to hoping that Annie January gets to kick more ass in The Boys Season 4. She may no longer be with Vought, but she’s still got her Supe powers.
What makes a person a champion? What makes a person a success? What is that extra edge that allows a person ascend above the expectations made by outsiders, as well as themselves? Before he was a Super Bowl winner and All-Pro wide receiver, Cooper Kupp was an underweight, unassuming high school senior with no college recruits knocking at his door.
So how did he go from mostly ignored by recruits to the Most Valuable Player of the biggest game in the NFL?
The answer is an endless amount of work, early mornings, and a religious dedication to becoming better every single day. But there is something more than training routines or diet plans that we can learn from Kupp — the ultimate power of perseverance and self-improvement. We spoke to the LA Rams slot receiver about his personal journey to greatness to get a glimpse into the mentality of a champion. And while you may not be trying to compete in the NFL, there are plenty of takeaways that you can apply to any of your own passions or endeavors.
***
Do you remember the first time you realized that football was your path in life?
The first time I stepped out onto a football field, when I was nine years old, I knew that I wanted to be a football player. That day I put on the football pads for the first time, and I told my dad that that is what I wanted to do. I had thrown the ball around with him for years before that, he was a NFL quarterback, but that is when it became a reality for me. I was lucky that the first great coach that I worked with was my dad. Since he was teaching me from the perspective of a quarterback, I learned the role in the right way.
Did you face any adversity early on in this pursuit?
Growing up everyone was taller than me and everyone was faster than me. There came a point where I needed to be working when nobody else was so that I could keep up with my friends and hang with them. Freshman year of high school I was 5-foot-4 and 115 pounds. I made a concerted effort to put on 15 pounds every off-season that I had. During those high school years, I got laughed at all of the time. But that didn’t stop me.
How did you go about that process of putting on the muscle?
I would go into the weight room after hours and late at night — I knew all of the janitors who would let me in. I wore these ankle weights to school every day because that is what I felt I needed to do to make the leaps and bounds that I needed. I would wear them under my sweatpants while walking around. The work paid off though. By the end of high school I was 175 pounds, but still coming out of a school that no one had really heard of.
It wasn’t until my sophomore year in college that I felt like I really came into my body.
Courtesy
What was it like showing up for your first real spring training and participating in your first OTAs (organized team activities)?
I am always excited about finding ways to improve. The only issue was I have allergies, more specifically eye allergies, and it’s hard to catch a football when you can’t see. I started to use Pataday eye drops which got me through. I know there are a lot of people out there that suffer from allergies like me.
What kept you pushing forward during the more difficult years or situations? And kept you winning?
The only thing that never changed was my mindset and my mentality. That is the most important part of everything. You can get yourself in the best shape in the world, and still come up short. I know that because every year we see freakily strong athletes who are able to do incredible things physically who, for whatever reason, don’t end up making it in the league.
There has to be a reason, a differential, and I believe a lot of that is the right mentality.
I put just as much importance on proving myself of this mentality, as I do those around me. That happens in moments like practice, when we are doing a five versus five match-ups, offense versus defense. I want my coaches to count on the fact that I wanted one of those slots every time. I do it for them, but also because I want to solidify it in my own mind. Everybody has that opportunity to go above and beyond, and when you take those chances are when you find what you are capable of.
Who are the coaches that have helped guide you to where you are today and what did they impart to you?
There are so many people who have helped me get as far as I have in this sport. This past year is the first year I have worked with the same trainer back to back, Erik Jernstrom of EForce Sports. I have been lucky enough to work with some great coaches and trainers from who I pulled bits of what I have in the routine now. One of those coaches was Junior Adams, who I had in college and who is now an offensive coach at Oregon State. Skills-wise he’s one of the best out there. I was driven by what he challenged me and the other players to be. He helped me believe in myself. That year made the biggest difference for me and how I play football to this day. I have built upon that foundation over the last ten years.
Back during my senior year in college, they had us figure out some sort of competition after every one of our workouts. They were always awful and punishing, like how long can you hold a pull-up or some other kind of miserable experience. Those challenges gave me the extra ability to take on those end-of-game experiences. My attention went inward during those tests and when it came time to make a play in a game, I wanted to be the one who stepped up to make it happen.
I didn’t want to be in my head at all about what people might be thinking or what they might be expecting or who was watching. I learned that I wanted to be the one who made that big play.
Cooper Kupp / Twitter
Can you speak on how you managed to keep your head during the highs and lows of last season?
I truly enjoyed the whole process of last year. I’ve always tried to be a very process-oriented and process-driven person when it comes to results. I think people forget that we didn’t win a single game in November, and went on a three-game losing streak. There was a bye week right in the middle of that losing streak and that was a rough stretch. We lose again after all of that, the last game of the regular season going into the playoffs. That is when you are wanting to be building momentum, not losing it. The whole world noticed it at that point, saying that we had lost what we had gained to that point.
But that was not a reality that we were going to accept, we just kept building as a team. Those results, even though they weren’t what we wanted, didn’t mean that we were any less of a team. There were things that just didn’t play out for us the way that we wanted, and we fell short in certain areas. So the conversation became about how can we move past that and continue to improve as a team in those moments.
We got to that place where we were stepping onto the field at So-Fi and we know who we are. We know that we are a better team than we were earlier in the season.
That last drive to victory at the Super Bowl was epic and you stepped up to the challenge in a big way, including catching the winning pass. Were you able to take in that moment of success amidst and after the chaos?
Of course, to a degree, but there is also a part of you that remembers that you are going to be back at it in two months. So it’s important that those months are spent recovering before we are back on the field. Because as happy as we are for the result of this year, we are starting back over this next season, to win another Super Bowl.
There are a lot of people that pay attention to stats, whether they are fans, sports professionals, or producers of games like Madden NFL 23. How do they fit into your vision of success if at all?
When it comes to football I’m not big on numbers, accolades, or any achievement that isn’t a team achievement for that matter. My goal is simply to be a better football player every year, every month, and every day. Being a better person every year, every month, and every day. That’s what keeps me focused and what keeps me moving forward. Always.
Batman is returning to theaters. Batman Returns is also returning to theaters. So many batty returns.
In addition to the Tim Burton-directed, Michael Keaton-starring Batmen hitting Cinemark on September 17th in celebration of Batman Day, the animated Batman: Mask of the Phantasm rounds out the marathon of some of the best orphaned Billionaire crime-fighting around.
This comes 33 years after Keaton first defined the character for the modern era, becoming the Bruce Wayne to live up to (to varying degrees of success throughout the sequels…). In a different world, it would also be an introduction and reunion of a classic incarnation that was about to spread through the DCU like wildfire. Instead, Batgirl and Keaton’s return to the character have been shelved, his presence has been dropped from Aquaman 2 because it made no sense for him to be there, and it’s a Riddler-sized question mark what will happen with the upcoming Flash movie and Keaton’s presumed cameo there.
So it’s possible that the Batman Day celebration will only make the world thirstier for a Keaton Batman that they can’t have.
If you can’t make it to Cinemark, all three films are streaming on HBO Max (until they’re inexplicably removed by corporate decree).
I don’t know if anyone other than the producers at Revolt would have thought Yung Miami of City Girls would be such a provocative and surprisingly insightful talk show host, but if they did, they were right on the money. In previous episodes of her show Caresha Please, Miami got some dating advice from Gucci Mane and brought out the flirt in Megan Thee Stallion; in this week’s episode, she puts Bay Area rapper Saweetie in the hot seat, making the usually unbothered Icy Princess visibly flustered as she fires off her probing questions.
Among the inquiries that appear in the teaser, Yung Miami shared for the upcoming episode of Caresha Please are plenty of queries into Saweetie’s dating life. Caresha doesn’t hold back, asking the coy culture consultant about supposedly having her car repossessed after breaking up with Quavo, that rumor that she and Lil Baby went on a $100,000 shopping spree date, and whether or not she cheated herself. Give the trailer editor some props — even if her dumbfounded expressions don’t really match up with the questions in the full episode, it’s clear that Saweetie is having fun, even if she does get a little hot under the collar.
Like so many other one-time opponents who Trump cut down to size (in Rubio’s case literally — remember Trump’s “Little Marco” nickname?), Rubio has now at least positioned himself to seem squarely on the side of Team Trump. In the wake of the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, Rubio has put himself out there with some one of the dumbest excuses for why a former president would have classified intel shoved into boxes with much memorabilia as magazine covers: it was simply a “storage” issue.
Marco Rubio, on Fox & Friends, indicates he’s more angry about leaks than he is Trump reportedly mishandling nuclear secrets pic.twitter.com/e64zr2xcPD
While Rubio has been appropriately dragged since making his “storage” comment to MSNBC over the weekend, he hasn’t backed down from defending the former president. On Wednesday morning, he appeared on Fox & Friends, where even the hosts seemed skeptical that Trump should have had access to the documents that were taken from Mar-a-Lago. Yet Rubio wasn’t about to play along or speculate with Fox or its Friends. Instead, he decided the best response was to question where the information about the documents was coming from — and make that the problem. As Rubio sees it:
All of this information is coming from one side and one place, and that is sources with knowledge of the investigation. Well, who are the sources with knowledge of the investigation? The FBI and the Justice Department. And they are leaking to the media.
So, generally, when there’s an investigation by the FBI or the Justice Department, they’re not even acknowledging there is an investigation, much less leaking. These people, every single day, are strategically leaking information — that can’t be rebutted, by the way, or in any way analyzed — for a reason. And that’s politics. To influence the narrative.
Yeah, that should shut them up Little Marco.
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