Category: News

John Fetterman may still be recuperating from a stroke, but that doesn’t mean he can’t campaign. The current lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania is running for the state’s soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat, and while he’s on the mend, he’s been able to attack his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, online. Fetterman is very good at social media. Oz is not. Not only has the former TV star been repeatedly humiliated, sometimes by celebrity guests, but he’s also trailing in the polls. And that’s got the GOP is worried.

Sources tell Puck that Donald Trump, who enraged some of his base by supporting Oz, is now complaining to his Fox News bud Sean Hannity about his poor performance. Hannity was the one who coaxed Trump to endorse him in the first place, and throw in the fact that Hannity hasn’t had Trump on his show since April, he must be hopping mad.

Trump’s not the only one pissed. After Oz went abroad instead of campaigning, a number of people in the GOP were aghast. “No one can believe that he took a damn vacation at the end of June, after only coming back to the state on June 10,” a Republican strategist told Puck. “He screwed up with that video that was from his New Jersey house instead of Pennsylvania house. It’s really bad.”

What’s more, Politico reports that Oz’s lackluster polling and fundraising have led to panic amongst the National Republican Senatorial Committee. On a recent donor call, NRSC officials tried to mollify concerns by pointing out they may be able to flip the Senate, currently split 50-50, without Oz. Then again, they still have to defend critical seats in Wisconsin and North Caroline, all while trying to flip states like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire.

In the meantime, Oz is out there on Twitter, getting dragged over his use of a Lost meme…by a co-creator of Lost himself.

(Via Puck and Politico)

Jon Stewart’s comedy tends to be rooted in righteous anger, but when it comes to bills concerning the health of veterans, he’s always been deadly serious. Right now, the former Daily Show host is up in arms over Republicans killing a bill that would provide necessary care to veterans who were exposed to toxic pit burns while serving the country. When one of them, Senator Ted Cruz, tried to spin his axing of the bill (while holding a Diet Dr. Pepper, just like Sidney Powell, holding a Diet Dr. Pepper), Stewart was ready to dismantle his argument.

After being called out by Stewart, Cruz recorded a video in which he slammed the bill, called the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act (aka the PACT Act), and which he’d previously supported. Cruz claimed Democrats had changed the bill so that the spending was “discretionary,” not “mandatory.” Not so, said Stewart in his own video response.

“Everything in the government is either mandatory or discretionary spending, depending on which bucket they feel like putting it in. The whole place is basically a f*ckinging shell game,” Stewart railed. “And he’s pretending that this is some new thing that the Democrats stuck into the bill and snuck it past one Ted Cruz. It’s no gimmick. It’s been there the whole f*cking time.”

The bill had already passed, with Republican support, back in June. When it went up for a re-vote, it failed. Cruz was seen giving a fist-bump to a fellow GOP senator after it died. He claimed the bill was changed, but Stewart disputed it, saying they hadn’t changed “one word.” He also pushed back against claims that it wasn’t narrow enough.

“There is nothing in the bill that is not related to veteran spending,” Stewart said. “Don’t take my word for it. Any a**hole on an iPhone can read it. It’s at congress.gov. This is for veterans who suffered health effects from being exposed to burn pits and other toxins. That is it.”

Since the bill failed on Wednesday, Stewart has been on a tear. He even went on Trumpist network Newsmax, where he tore into Cruz and every other Republican who voted against it.

The Chicago edition of Lollapalooza got underway this weekend and throughout the weekend, attendees will catch headlining performances from Dua Lipa, J. Cole, Metallica, Green Day, BTS’ J Hope, Machine Gun Kelly, Lil Baby, and Kygo. There will also be performances from Glass Animals, Big Sean, Jazmine Sullivan, Don Toliver, Charli XCX, Denzel Curry, Blxst, Willow, Cordae, and many more. On day one, Metallica took the stage to close the night, but it’s what happened backstage before their set that is worthy of attention too.

Prior to their set, Metallica took a moment to rock out with Stranger Things actor Joseph Quinn backstage at the festival. During this jam session, Metallica’s James Hetfield revealed that he’s been a fan of Stranger Things since season one. “[For] my kids and I, it’s been a bonding experience for us,” he said. Next, Metallica and Quinn took their talents to the former’s rehearsal trailer where Quinn showed off his guitar skills with a performance of “Master Of Puppets,” the song Quinn performed during an important scene in the recent season of Stranger Things.

To top everything off, Metallica ended the moment by gifting Quinn with a brand new guitar, one that was similar to the guitar he used during the scene in Stranger Things.

You can view a video and photos from the moment in the posts above.

Kevin Durant is stuck in trade request limbo. The Brooklyn Nets star wants a move, but so far, no one has been able to meet the Nets’ sky high asking price for the two-time NBA Finals MVP that stems from him entering year one of a 4-year contract. As such, the trade saga has dragged on for weeks and there does not appear to be an end in sight.

At this point, it seems plausible that Durant just does not have anywhere to go, as no one will give up with Brooklyn wants. In a new piece, Zach Lowe of ESPN floated that Nets are holding out hope that no one will be able to meet that price and Durant will have a moment of clarity that leads to him rescinding his trade request.

Even before the Minnesota Timberwolves warped the trade market by flipping five draft assets for Rudy Gobert, several smart people around the league termed the very act of trading Durant “impossible” in conversations with ESPN. There was no way to approximate fair value. A player of Durant’s caliber with so many years locked in had never before become available.

The Nets are probably waiting for Durant’s camp to realize that, and maybe for Durant to retract his trade request. The Nets have not given up on this scenario, sources say.

It’s previously been reported that the team is operating as though Durant and Kyrie Irving will be on the team this year.

We’re a few weeks away from the latest game in the NBA 2K series hitting consoles. This means that the fine folks over at 2K Sports keep dropping little hints about what we can expect in this year’s edition of the game — whether that’s improvements to the game itself or little cosmetic things that make it different from last year, the goal is to convince people to spend a money on NBA 2K23 because it’s not the same game as NBA 2K22.

Of course, not everything is going to be a smash hit, and a pretty consistent place where we see that is when a face scan doesn’t quite work out. One example that we got a few weeks back was Detroit Pistons rookie Jaden Ivey wondering what the heck was going on with a picture of him in the game, something that he did find quite funny.

JaVale McGee likewise had an issue with his apparent face scan. Pictures began making their way around the internet of a few basketball players who are in the game, one of which was McGee. The veteran big man thought he looked … unusual, so he quote tweeted what was going around and got a joke off.

McGee has had a busy summer, as he left the Phoenix Suns to join the Dallas Mavericks on a 3-year deal, with McGee telling the press he joined the team with the understanding he will be the starting center.

In the least surprising news in the world, the English play a whole lot of soccer. For a number of leagues across the country, this weekend marks the return of football — England’s top league, the Premier League, does not return until next weekend, although perhaps the top two teams in the world, Manchester City and Liverpool, will square off on Saturday.

Anyway, down in Football League Two, one of the games that started off the year occurred between Bradford City and Doncaster Rovers. It looked like the two teams were going to head into the dressing room tied up at zero in relatively uncontroversial fashion, but during injury time, Doncaster midfielder Lee Tomlin decided to get sent off by being extremely annoying.

Bradford City attempted to take a free kick near midfield in the midst of injury time, but Tomlin thought it would be fun to try and waste a little more time. This involved him leaning down and touching the ball, getting in faces, and at one point, falling down after barely any contact. All of this led to the referee hitting him with a pair of yellow cards in less than 20 seconds, which ended his afternoon a bit early.

Even the Bradford City Twitter account thought it was a bit much.

Anyway, this didn’t hurt Doncaster too much, as things ended in a 0-0 draw.

There are belated sequels and then there’s Top Gun: Maverick. A whopping 36 years separate the first fighter pilot saga from its follow-up, and the result wasn’t only a very different film — less jingoistic than the first, less a paean to the military than to its aging-but-thriving star Tom Cruise — but the box office smash of the summer. And you can bet that there are more late-coming sequels en route.

One of them may be a third Legally Blonde. The original, from 2001, is the movie that took Reese Witherspoon from respected and well-liked actress to superstar. She played Elle Woods, a fashion student who applies to law school to win back her ambitious ex-boyfriend, and winds up being secretly smarter than everyone there. It scored a sequel, which didn’t do so hot. But now that Cruise has shown you can do a decades-later follow-up that everyone adores, why not do that with Elle?

“I’m still hoping that Legally Blonde 3 is gonna come together in the right way,” Witherspoon told USA Today (as caught by The Hollywood Reporter). “It’s just like Top Gun: They waited a long time to make another version of that movie, and I loved the nostalgia piece they incorporated in it. So definitely that gave us a lot of inspiration about what we would want to do with Elle Woods and make sure that we had all those same touchstones that mattered to people [back] then.”

Witherspoon added, “I feel like these characters are my friends, so I safeguard them. I would never make the subpar, mediocre version of their story.”

Top Gun: Maverick has lots of thrills (and incredible aerial footage), but it’s a considerably more reflective affair than the Reagan-era original, which essentially embodied the Team America song “America, F*ck Yeah.” Will we see a more solemn Elle Woods, perhaps working for the ACLU and ruminating on her regrets over wine with Jennifer Coolidge’s manicurist Paulette? We shall see. In the meantime, there’s already talks about a Top Gun 3.

(Viai and THR)

Music fans only have so much patience to give out as they wait for their favorite artist to share another project. Sometimes this thin patience is understood, especially when artists take longer than the expected 2-3 years to share their new bodies of work. We saw it with Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé prior to their recent releases and we’re still seeing it with names like Cardi B, Normani, and Nicki Minaj. In other cases, fans can be a bit impatient with their beloved artists and it’s something we seemingly saw Ariana Grande deal with recently.

Ariana Grande recently shared a TikTok promoting her R.E.M. Beauty line which she launched back in November. Specifically, Ariana was promoting the Sweetener Concealer from the line by using it on herself and also informed fans that the fourth chapter from the R.E.M. Beauty line would be available the following day on the R.E.M. Beauty website. Under the TikTok video, a fan wrote, “pls remember you’re a singer,” and the comment caught Ariana’s attention and she offered a response to them. “I have actually never felt more at home in my voice or like more of a singer,” she replied.

This could be a hint that Ariana is working on music for her upcoming seventh album. The project would be her first full-length release since fall 2020’s Positions which debuted at No. 1 while the album and its title track each received a nomination at the 2022 Grammys.

You can view the TikTok and the comment above.

Donald Trump is 76 years old, and yet he’s busier than people half, even a third his age. He’s facing multiple lawsuits, he’s under investigation by both the Jan. 6 committee and the Justice Department, he’s got that rinky-dink Twitter clone, and he’s recently pissed off 9/11 survivors and their families. Oh, and he’s (almost certainly) running for president for a third time. But with the last one, he’s run into a bit of a snag: His favorite 24-hour news network appears to be giving him the cold shoulder.

According to The New York Times, there’s one thing Trump dislikes more than all the “negative” press he receives: that Fox News has essentially ignoring him. They didn’t air his rally in Arizona last weekend; instead, they showed Laura Ingraham interviewing his potential rival in 2024, Ron DeSantis. When he was in D.C. for the first time since leaving office in disgrace, they didn’t air his appearance at a conservative gathering; instead, they showed 17 minutes of a speech by his former VP Mike Pence. Indeed, even his old buddy Sean Hannity seems less interested in him.

What’s more, Trump — who used to be a regular fixture on the top-rated news network and conservative brand-maker — hasn’t made an appearance in over 100 days, closing in on four months. The last time, on April 13, he called onto Hannity’s show to vent about Joe Biden and repeat 2020 election lies.

For months it’s been speculated that Rupert Murdoch and his media empire were moving away from Trump. Last week, two of the mogul’s papers ran separate takedowns of him, with The New York Post calling him “unworthy” to return to the Oval Office after revelations that he did nothing for over three hours to stop the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Trump’s reportedly worried that Ingraham secretly hates him. And if Trump can’t win what’s dubbed “the Fox News primary”…well, he’s always got OANN.

(Via NYT)

In celebration of the premiere of the third season of Ludacris‘ Netflix children’s series, Karma’s World, the rapper has partnered with Mattel to launch a series of dolls inspired by the show. The collection will feature dolls modeled after three of the show’s characters, whose namesake is based on Ludacris‘ daughter, Karma.

In an interview with Billboard, Ludacris detailed the process of creating the dolls with Mattell.

“Mattel was so outstanding with their pitch compared to the other toy brands,” Ludacris said. “Mattel blew us away with their presentation and one of the things that took us over the top was they hired someone specifically for Black hair…Myself, Mattel and our resources took so much of our time getting the absolute most authentic feel and look of the hair with premium quality. Even the hair roots are top-notch. When you touch the hair and texture, it will blow you away because of the quality developments within the hair fibers.”

Karma’s World is centered around a young named Karma, who is gifted with outstanding rapping ability. The show also focuses on family dynamics and social justice issues.

“As soon as you have kids,” said Ludacris in an interview with The Root, “you start thinking about the next generation and stop thinking so much about yourself.”

The Karma’s World dolls are available for purchase at Target and Walmart stores.