Category: News

Sunday night’s Game 7 between the Heat and Celtics in Miami will sound a bit different than expected, as ESPN will be without its top play-by-play man Mike Breen after the legendary broadcaster tested positive for COVID-19, forcing him out of the booth for Sunday night’s action. In his place, Mark Jones will step in alongside Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, with Breen hoping to be back for Thursday’s Game 1 of the NBA Finals on ABC when the Warriors play host to the winner of Sunday night’s contest.

The hope, of course, is that Breen continues to feel fine and is able to clear protocols to be in San Francisco on Thursday. Breen’s presence is synonymous with big moments and big games in the NBA and he will certainly be missed in Miami on Sunday night, but the most important thing is that the voice of the Finals gets well soon.

Mark Jones will surely step in and perform admirably as one of the best play-by-play commentators in the business, but it is almost fitting that in a series that has been defined by major absences on both the Celtics and the Heat, that even the commentary booth will have to deal with a lineup change of its own.

The new season of Stranger Things dropped on Friday, or at least most of it. Netflix did the unthinkable, which is break up the latest batch of episodes into parts, the first seven of nine episodes arriving in time for the holiday weekend, and the other two set to drop this coming week. (The reason? Probably because some of these new episodes are really, really long.) There’s a lot of increasingly dense mythology to get through, but there’s still room for some hang-time and Tarantino-esque pop culture name-dropping.

One of them came in episode three (the shortest one, at a mere 64 minutes). The boys are in the cafeteria, eating lunch, when Joseph Quinn’s Eddie Munson, leader of the Hellfire Club, turns to Gaten Matarazzo’s Dustin Henderson and Finn Wolfhard’s Mike Wheeler, taking a moment to reflect on their friendship.

“I knew it the moment I saw you,” Munson tell them. “You sat at that table right over there, looking like two little lost sheep.” He then turns to Dustin, adding, “You were wearing a ‘Weird Al’ T-shirt, which I thought was brave.” (It’s not a non-sequitur. Dustin really did wear a “Weird Al” shirt in an episode of Season 3.)

The moment did not go unnoticed by the man himself, who simply turned the adjective into a hashtag.

The response also elicited a remark by The New York Times’ Dave Itzkoff, who reflected on the novelty musician’s 1986 album Polka Party!, which features such classicsd as “Living with a Hernia,” “Addicted to Spuds,” and, yes, one of his polka medleys, this one including takes on “Sledgehammer!”, “Sussidio,” Party all the Time,” and many more.

It’s a big time for “Weird Al.” Roku will be nipping further into original content with the forthcoming biopic Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, starring Daniel Radcliffe, who already knows his way around novelty songs.

(Via THR)

It’s said that Donald Trump would even turn on his own kids to save his hide. He has a long history of burning bridges, to say nothing of pocketing donations from his own cash-strapped supporters. So when Lauren Boebert tried to paint him as a generous person, it was bound to be unconvincing. And yet you have no idea.

The Colorado representative was in Wyoming on Saturday, taking part in a Trump rally to unseat Liz Cheney, the Republican who dared come out against the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “I want to tell you a story about his generosity, about how kind he is, about how welcoming he is,” Boebert told the crowd about the former president. She then launched into a doozy.

“My family and I were with President Trump,” she recalled. “And even not liking germs, President Trump shared a bowl of popcorn with my 14-year-old son.” Boebert then admitted not even she shares food with her son, because “I know where he’s been.”

As such Boebert was blown away that “President Trump welcomed him and engaged with him and showed him love and respect, just like I’ve seen him do with hundreds and thousands of other people, all throughout America. Because he’s not a politician; he’s a family man. He’s a businessman. And he loves you.”

Boebert also vowed that “he will be back again.”

The crowd cheered at that last bit, though there were a bit more muted during the story about how Trump’s Christ-like sharing of popcorn with a kid who might have germs. As such, it seems like yet another unconvincing argument from the politician who thinks America shouldn’t pass gun control laws because we didn’t ban planes after the September 11 attacks.

(Via Raw Story)

Fans of Young Thug and Gunna received some unfavorable news about the rappers last week. Thug and Gunna were among 28 members of the YSL collective that were arrested and charged in the 56-count Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act case. Gunna received a single charge of conspiracy to violate a RICO Act, however, during a recent trial prosecutors said Gunna had a “command” role in YSL, which prosecutors described as a criminal organization. As a result of his alleged “command” role, and other allegations, Gunna was denied bond and his next court date was set for January 9, 2023.

Days after news of Gunna’s denied bond and new court date arrived, one of his frequent collaborators took a moment to show him love on Instagram. Roddy Ricch shared his support for Gunna with a sweet post. “Free @gunna,” Roddy wrote on his Instagram Story. “We miss you out here champ. Mom’s praying 4 U.”

Gunna’s arrest was an unfortunate turn in a year that was set to be the best of his career. He kicked things off with the release of his third album DS4EVER, a project that debuted at No. 1 on the albums chart to become his second chart-topping album.

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

The weirdest story in baseball right now involves fantasy football and group chat jokes gone wrong.

A pregame altercation between Reds outfielder Tommy Pham and Giants outfielder Joc Pederson on Friday saw Pham slap Pederson and the two being separated. On Saturday, (grainy) video of the incident emerged, showing Pham loading up and giving Pederson a pretty hard smack, earning himself a three-game suspension from Major League Baseball in the process, and Pham said Pederson crossed the line with a joke in a group chat with other MLB players about his old team, the Padres, and there was also a dispute over a fantasy football league where “big money” was involved.

Pham said the group chat comments were “disrespectful” and also referred to himself as a “high roller,” which is an objectively funny thing to say about yourself amid a fantasy football dispute.

After the Reds and Giants played on Saturday, Pederson decided to clear up exactly what happened and revealed screenshots of that group chat, in which he made a rather tame joke about the Padres, causing Pham to get very mad and then drop out of the football league — which Pederson did admit involved a lot of money.

The funniest part of this is Pham getting this mad over a group chat joke and losing money over the fantasy league caused him to lose even more money because of the loss of three game checks for slapping Pederson in the outfield. The lesson, at the very least, is to never confront someone at work over a thing like this where your bosses will see it.

Remember Star Wars movies? There’s plenty of Star Wars shows, including a new one that catches up with middle aged Obi-Wan Kenobi. But the last time there was a big screen missive from the universe George Lucas created some 45 years ago was in 2019, and that didn’t go over so well. But now there’s new hope that the next one will arrive sooner than anticipated.

This weekend marks the annual Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, and they rolled out the red carpet. There was the revelation that Jude Law would be appearing in a Star Wars show about kids, to be helmed by Spider-Man director Jon Watts. Harrison Ford even showed up (to talk about the next Indiana Jones). There was also Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm honcho, who doubled down on her pledge to move away from the Skywalker Saga (i.e., the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy, and then the trilogy following the original trilogy). Instead, they want to create a “whole new saga,” Kennedy said.

Kennedy also discussed the next Star Wars film on the chopping block: the mysterious one from Taikia Waititi. The film and TV-maker is pretty busy, and it was assumed he’d get around to his SW film whenever he finally had time. But Kennedy claimed they were aiming to get his film ready for release “not [in] 2023, but late 2023” — a fairly confusing pile of words, but it does indicate they want to stick with the holiday release pattern they’ve been doing since The Force Awakens.

What exactly is Waititi’s Star Wars film? There are no details. But Waititi has been teasing what’s in store, telling Wired that the film so far feels “pretty me,” which may indicate that it will have some mix of goofiness and darkness, from someone who can play Korg in the third Thor, which he also directed, and make a Holocaust movie like Jojo Rabbit, which itself has some laughs.

In the meantime, late 2023 isn’t that far away, and big space movies take a while to finish. So they better get cracking.

(Via Consequence)

After more than a hundred matches between teams all over the country, the UEFA Champions League held its final matchup today. Liverpool from the English Premier League and Real Madrid from La Liga are facing off today for the championship title. Prior to the start of the game, Camila Cabello took over the stadium floor for a vibrant performance. The tracks she played, which included “Don’t Go Yet” and “Bam Bam” featuring Ed Sheeran, were both from her recently released third album Familia. While her set looked good, fans in attendance at the stadium felt like otherwise.

Once Camila finished her performance prior to the matchup between Liverpool and Real Madrid, it appeared that she was met with boos from those in attendance. Many were surprised and taken aback by the response from fans as they questioned why Camila was boo’d. It appeared that fans might have grown tiresome as the game was already a half-hour behind schedule during Camila’s performance. There’s also the possibility that fans were just uninterested in Camila’s set, as some noted on social media.

Nonetheless, Camila’s performance at the UEFA Champions League final continues what’s been an impressive year for the singer. She previously performed on Saturday Night Live and covered The Killers in an appearance on Carpool Karaoke. She’s also released videos for “Psychofreak” with Willow and “Hasta Los Dientes” with Maria Becerra.

You can view clips from Camila’s UEFA Champions League performance above and reactions from fans below.

Logic is far removed from his retirement. Following the release of his sixth album No Pressure, Logic claimed that he was calling it quits from the rap world, but that proved to be short-lived as he began releasing new records some months later. His slow return has eventually brought us to the upcoming release of his seventh album Vinyl Days. He announced the album at the top of the year, and since then, he’s released a few singles in support of it like “Therapy Music” with Russ. Now, he’s back with another track, “Orville,” featuring Blu & Exile and Like.

The track is named after the science fiction series The Orville, and throughout the song, the rappers make multiple references to the series. It includes this line from Logic to kick off his verse: “I’m Captain Mercer on the beat, watch me murder the Krill / That’s a sci-fi reference, nerd sh*t my preference.”

When Vinyl Days arrives next month, as it holds a release date on June 17, it will extend his streak of consecutive years with a project to 12. Since 2010, Logic has released 15 projects in total with his last one being 2021’s Bobby Tarantino III.

You can listen to “Orville” in the video above.

Vinyl Days is out 6/17 via Def Jam. You can pre-save it here.

The country is still reeling from the gun massacre in Uvalde, which left 19 children and two adults killed. There’s debate on what to do next. Most Republicans are adamant about blaming everything but the easy availability of guns. Gun control advocates, meanwhile, found themselves some unlikely allies. Meanwhile, two big shows that dropped this weekend both had scenes that were inadvertently reminiscent of what happened in Texas. And now both have content warnings.

One was Stranger Things, whose Season 4 premiere opens with the aftermath of a violent act at a school, with images of dead students. Netflix quickly added a disclaimer. The other was Obi-Wan Kenonbi, the new Disney+ Star Wars spin-off, which follows Ewan McGregor’s older, more weathered Jedi master. That premiere begins by revisiting the scene from Revenge of the Sith in which young students are massacred at the Jedi Temple, showing the killings in greater detail.

Netflix went all in on their disclaimer, directly addressing the massacre and saying they’d filmed the season a year before. Disney+ decided to be a bit more vague, with a cryptic warning that There are some scenes in this fictional series that some viewers may find upsetting.”

Then again, while the Uvalde massacre is the worst K-12 school shooting since the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, there have been 27 shootings at school in America in 2022 alone. And it appears that the GOP won’t be taking action anytime soon, at least none that actually make sense.

(Via Variety)

The Kid Laroi is preparing to release his debut album Kids Are Growing Up, which is set to arrive at some point this year. While things on the music end may be all set for Laroi, who is still enjoying the success of his single “Stay” with Justin Bieber, things on the management end haven’t been so consistent. Laroi departed from Scooter Braun’s SB Projects last fall — a move that was in part due to Braun’s lack of direct involvement with him according to Billboard — and joined Adam Leber’s Rebel Management. His time there didn’t last too long as Laroi departed Rebel Management last month.

Eight months after he left SB Projects, Laroi is back with Braun’s management group. According to Billboard, Laroi reconnected with Braun after his mother Sloane Howard re-approached Braun which led to a deal being finalized just a week ago. Keeping Laroi’s frustrations about Braun’s lack of direct involvement with their last deal in mind, Billboard says a source tells them that Braun will now oversee all aspects of Laroi’s career.

The new deal comes after Braun and Laroi played a prank on fans as a part of the promotion for the latter’s “Thousand Miles” single. Laroi seemed to throw shade at Braun in a TikTok, but the following day, Braun clarified that it was nothing more than a joke the two planned together.