Starting next week, a Los Angeles homeless shelter named after iconic Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek will open the doors to its 107-bed facility. The facility will also feature a library housing the late host‘s personal books and furniture, as well as providing services and outreach as part of a path to permanent housing. The Trebek Center held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday, which was attended by Trebek’s wife.
“We all know that homelessness is complicated,” said Jean Trebek, widow of Alex Trebek, who died in 2020 from pancreatic cancer. “There is no single pathway to the streets,” she said. “There’s no single intervention that ends homelessness. But there is a single remedy and it’s called love. Supporting another is loving another and the transformational power of support will surely be known at this site.”
Also in attendance was Los Angeles City Councilmember John Lee, who thanked local residents for making the “difficult decision” to allow The Trebek Center to take over the site of a popular skating rink. Lee told the crowd that the shelter will take “the necessary footsteps to combat what is happening on our city streets.”
Donating his name and library to a homeless shelter is another reason why it’s been so tough for the show to replace him. The man left massive shoes to fill in a lot of ways, making it a monumental task to find someone who brings the same combination of warmth, charm, and gravitas to the Jeopardy! podium. (Outside of a tiny disaster, the show has relied on a series of rotating guest hosts while prominently leaning on Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik, both of whom remain top contenders to get the gig at some point.) A final decision still hasn’t been made because, again, Trebek was just that good. You really can’t rush into this one.
When you’re replacing one of the greats, you gotta take your time.
It’s not uncommon for presidents to churn through multiple press secretaries during their administration. Barack Obama had three between 2009 and 2017, for instance, while George W. Bush had five during his two terms. Donald Trump employed four different secretaries (Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, Stephanie Grisham, and Kayleigh McEnany, who never told a lie — which was, in fact, a lie) in his four years in the White House, but unlike his predecessors and his successor, they rarely did their job.
At one point, the Trump administration went an unprecedented 300-plus days without a formal briefing. To put that into perspective, Jen Psaki, who left her post as Joe Biden’s press secretary on Friday, “held more formal press briefings in the past 15 months than former President Trump’s press secretaries held in four years,” according to Insider:
Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, has kept meticulous records of the press briefings. Psaki has held 224 briefings as of Friday compared to the 205 formal briefings held by Trump’s press secretaries, according to Kumar’s tally.
“We were following an administration that did not do daily press briefings. It should be that this is a forum for people to ask difficult questions Monday through Friday,” Psaki said this week. (The current administration isn’t as forthcoming as it seems, though: Biden only gave 22 interviews during his first year in office, compared to 92 for Trump and 150 for Obama in their first 365 days.) Psaki, who will be replaced by Karine Jean-Pierre, took a job with MSNBC, where she’ll do the yelling instead of being yelled at.
Earlier this month, Beyoncé wished Lizzo a happy birthday with a baby photo that left Lizzo flabbergasted. “Beyoncé?! Where u get this pic?? I ain’t seen this since I was born,” the “Truth Hurts” singer said on Twitter. Well, it seems as though now, Lizzo is paying the deed forward with her birthday wish to Robert Pattinson.
Today is the 36th birthday of the star of The Batman and Lizzo dug up a photo of the pair that looks like a very young Lizzo walked up to a Twilight-era Pattinson at a bar and very kindly asked him if she could snap a pic with him. I mean, look at this shot:
Lizzo looks so comfortable in the moment, not starstruck by the Brit in the least bit. Pattinson meanwhile, looks like he showed up at the bar right after tailgating a Florida Georgia Line concert. Here’s hoping this trend of celebrity photo archivists continues, because this is a solid gold moment.
In the meantime, Lizzo has been polishing off a $55,000 dollar flute that she played at the Met Gala, and Pattinson has just signed on to play Batman again in the sequel to The Batman.
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
When is a t-shirt not just a t-shirt? Ask Dean Story, the Phoenix Suns’ Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and he’ll tell you it’s when a shirt is in service to both the fans who decide to purchase it and the athletes out on the court.
Stoyer had a 17-year career with Nike and a stint with Under Armour before taking the job in Phoenix ahead of the 2019-20 season. He came on board shortly after general manager James Jones saw the interim tag removed from his title and head coach Monty Williams was hired, the trifecta representing something of a clean slate for a franchise that needed something new.
“The power of a t-shirt goes far beyond the team shop,” Stoyer says on a video call with Dime while the desert sun floods his office.
He remembers one of the last interviews he had with Jones before being brought on board, one in which he asked what it was he and Williams wanted from Stoyer and his team It came down to energy — to give players the support of the fanbase, and to make sure they felt an undercurrent of energy, respect, and love from the people cheering them on.
“They were developing the roster, and the team that is giving our fans the pride that they have today, and my job was to make sure they have many different ways to express that pride and carry that with them whether they’re from Phoenix or New York,” Stoyer says.
That integrated approach was also the tack Stoyer and his team, including Manager of Influencer Strategy and Merchandise Marketing Gerry Mildenberger, would take when developing some of the Suns’ biggest merchandise collaborations yet.
“Going back to very traditional merchandising models of having your good, better, best options, and how you segment those percentage wise, we started at…” Stoyer pauses and laughs. “We had a lot of ‘good,’ we didn’t have much better, we definitely didn’t have any best.”
“Authenticity is the name of the game,” Mildenberger stresses. “It’s not only for our fans, the players, but goes back to the culture. There’s a huge streetwear following here in Phoenix that’s slept on.”
The first partnership to develop found its roots on the streetwear side, and within somewhat serendipitous timing. Designer Warren Lotas has made inroads around the NBA with its teams and players. The Pistons, Bucks, and Jazz have partnered with the designer for custom team shirts, and players like Suns star Devin Booker have worn pieces in pre-game tunnels.
“We reached out to Warren and his team about the same time they were trying to reach us,” Stoyer recalls. “It was to reach a different audience but really to tap into a different energy.”
Lotas’s signature motif of skeletons and psychedelic colorways paired well with the Suns “Valley” launch that made its debut in the 2020-21 season with its gradient desert hues. The collection, called “Always Heat in The Valley,” has since sold out but launched on its heels another collaboration that put the aesthetic elements of the franchise front and center with hip-hop and lifestyle brand LRG.
“They saw what we were doing,” Stoyer says. “If we’re doing things right, that word of mouth and that credibility is very important. They were looking for a partner to help lift their brand back onto center stage.”
The LRG collection features tank tops, hoodies, and t-shirts that pay homage to the classic Suns design elements that proliferated in Chales Barkley’s era.
Stoyer notes that while Phoenix does have a budding culture with its growing transplant population relocating from larger American cities, the city doesn’t share some of the more storied roots that other markets boast, like Detroit or Atlanta with their history in music. “So, we’ve had to seek out the partnerships that either have connections to fandom, or to our team,” he says.
One of the behemoth brands synonymous with fandom in basketball is designer Jeff Hamilton’s signature varsity jackets. Going all the way back to custom jackets made for Michael Jordan and Tim Duncan, and more recently with Drake enlisting Hamilton’s help in creating his OVO line of Raptors jackets, it was a dream collaboration for Stoyer, Mildenberger, and the team.
Phoenix Suns
Like the other partnerships, working with Hamilton came about holistically. The designer had a previous relationship with Chris Paul and had been to a Suns playoff game last season, which sparked Hamilton’s interest in doing something with the team.
Stoyer recalls with a self-depreciating chuckle that he ran late to the first meeting he had with Hamilton, expecting the Zoom call to be with a group in the designer’s studio. Instead, there was one person waiting for him when he logged on five minutes later.
“It was shocking and delightful at the same time that we were able to have a direct conversation with Jeff, and those conversations have continued through the recent design work, and design work we’re looking at ahead of this season and into next year,” Stoyer smiles, “He’s very passionate about it and has been great to work with.”
For each partnership, the onus has been on breaking past the traditional jersey and warm-up shirt of a fan’s takeaway merch and figuring out what will make it into someone’s regular wardrobe rotation. The team looks for “energy moments” to time its drops. Some are obvious, like the postseason, and some cater to the rhythm of the team and the city. The end goal is tapping into a market of fans who see themselves in the broader lifestyle elements of basketball, rabid on gamedays but with a finger on the wider pulse of the league year-round. The tiered offerings Stoyer and his team have created allow access to that at all different price points.
“Basketball has its culture around it, it’s so important to be able to serve different demographics that come in but also realize there’s a niche audience that isn’t getting served — and that was people fully involved in the lifestyle,” Mildenberger says, adding with a grin, “I love it when you see a family walk in and they each walk out with someone unique to them.”
The biggest barometer Stoyer and Mildenberger have are also the most discerning: the players. Both joke that every collaboration has passed its own unique stress test with the team, but that the biggest signal of acceptance (and likely sigh of relief) comes when Suns players incorporate them into their pre-game tunnel fits.
“They’ve only got 82 walk-in fits, outside of playoffs, if we’re going to be one of them I’ll take it,” Mildenberger chuckles.
A pilot project called Valley Threads took that concept of collaboration with the team one step further. For its inaugural drop, Cam Payne sat with the design team to create a limited edition hoodie from start to finish with elements meant to tell his story. Mildenberger says that Payne “wears that thing all the time,” but that the biggest moment of impact was the day it was released. “We made sure to get one to all the players,” Mildenberger recalls. “They flew out on the next road trip and all of them came on the plane wearing the hoodie.”
The continuation of that pilot is something the team is working on with an eye to next season, as well as a throwback to Barkley’s iconic 1992-93 season, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next year.
“There’s nostalgia when you think of the players, but going back to the looks. We weren’t going to mess with that. We have some surprises coming,” Stoyer confirms.
“There’s so much creativity on our roster right now,” Mildenberger says, “We see that in their high opinions of what we bring into the store, in a good way. So it’s like how do we channel this creativity into another outlet that’s authentic for them, and really give our fans another avenue to really get a peak into our players’ lives.”
The Black Keys stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! this past week to deliver a captivating performance of “Wild Child.” The track comes from their latest album Dropout Boogie, released on Friday (May 13). The college-dropouts-turned-successful-musicians leaned fully into the theme of the album by displaying rows of lockers on the backdrop and dressing as if they were too cool for school.
Dropout Boogie is the 11th album of The Black Keys’ discography, led by singles “Wild Child” and “It Ain’t Over.” Coincidentally, Dropout Boogie arrived almost exactly one year to do the day of the group’s 2021 LP Delta Kream, released on May 14. The Black Keys are gearing up for their Dropout Boogie tour along with Band of Horses for all dates, and Ceramic Animal, Early James, and The Velveteers on select dates. The tour kicks off on July 9 in Las Vegas, Nevada continuing all the way through the middle of October with a grand finale in Dallas, Texas on October 18. Black Keys fans will also be happy to know that El Camino is set to get a ten-year anniversary deluxe edition.
Check out the “Wild Child” performance above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
In addition to anointing UK rapper Dave as one of the most unique artists in the business today, Drake also had another surprise for fans at Dave’s tour stop in Toronto last night. After performing “Wanna Know” and “Knife Talk” alongside his host (or guest, since Drake owns the venue, History), Drake told the diehards in attendance that he’s also planning on bringing back his own event, OVO Fest, sometime this year. “I love you with all of my heart,” he said. “They let the city back open so I will see you at OVO Fest soon.”
Drake’s festival would have had its 10th iteration in 2020, but COVID-19 and the resulting safety restrictions forced him to forego plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary at the event itself. Unfortunately, as a side effect of the slowed income from that year, there was no 2021 edition, either. The last OVO Fest took place in 2019 with guests like millennial favorites B2K, Chingy, and Lloyd. Intriguingly enough, Drake’s festival isn’t the only one coming back to Toronto this year; in April, Rolling Loud announced its own event in The Six featuring none other than Dave as a headliner alongside Future and international superstar Wizkid.
Drake didn’t offer any more details, but you can bet when he does, there will be a frenzy to get tickets to his hometown show — no matter how much they cost.
A new Nielsen report is highlighting the “staggering” amount of television that Americans have watched over the past few months. Despite its current troubles, Netflix was the undisputed champ, besting every single broadcast network thanks to streaming series like Ozark, Squid Game, and The Witcher. On the network side, the winner was also predictable: CBS, although the total there was just barely half of the viewing minutes pulled in by Netflix. (Netflix had 1.33 trillion — yes, trillion — to CBS’ 752.8 billion.)
More importantly, the Nielsen report reveals a massive amount of TV watching by American audiences, and that’s without factoring in HBO Max, or other cable channels, or other broadcast networks outside of the biggies, which were all left out of the calculations. Via The Hollywood Reporter:
Nielsen data showing total minutes viewed for the season so far (Sept. 20, 2021-May 8, 2022) show that Americans spend a staggering amount of time in front of screens. The big four broadcasters and the five streamers the measurement company publicly tracks (Apple TV+, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix and Prime Video) accounted for more than 4 trillion minutes of viewing time — or 203 hours for all 332 million people in the United States. That figure doesn’t include other streaming services, broadcast networks The CW, Univision, Telemundo and PBS or any of the dozens of cable channels.
Of course, it’s tempting to draw the conclusion that America is still in a pandemic, but that’s not exactly the strongest argument. While the Omicron variant did send cases through the roof over the holidays, the country has essentially been open for a while now, and even more so after the introduction of COVID vaccines. That said, the pandemic did delay many seasons, so when new episodes started coming in, Americans gobbled them up after months of watching reruns. The point is people are watching insane amounts of TV. Four trillion minutes. To put that in perspective, it is… so many minutes. An unreasonable amount of minutes, probably.
Arcade Fire stopped by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform a luminary rendition of “Age Of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole)” off of their latest album We. Singers Win Butler and Régine Chassagne belted passionately with the backing of band members Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Jeremy Gara. Strobe lights, mini stands, and a big eye taking up the background contributed to the vibrant sonics of “Age Of Anxiety II.”
Arcade Fire is currently preparing for their upcoming We tour, the eighth of their career, supporting We, their sixth studio album. The trek begins its European leg in August, joined by Feist. Arcade Fire returns to the states in October to close out, with the assistance of Beck.
Director David Leitch told Entertainment Weekly that Gaga was in talks to appear in Bullet Train, but “it really all came down to her schedule with [House of Gucci]. There were short discussions and then, this isn’t going to work because she was preparing for Gucci. They shot right before us and overlapped with us and it really didn’t work.”
Leitch wouldn’t say what role Gaga was supposed to play, but she focused her energy on another action movie project. I’ve always said planes are the bullet trains of the sky.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
(@jayemkayem) 
