Category: News

Neil Patrick Harris recently found himself under fire for an ill-advised meat-buffet platter at a 2011 Halloween party thrown by husband David Burkta. That’s the case due to a resurfaced photo, which is, uh, still out there and about as unpalatable as what happened to Neil’s Gone Girl character. The grotesque party favor in question was themed, “The Corpse of Amy Winehouse,” which wasn’t a fantastic idea then (the iconic singer died in summer 2011 at age 27), and it’s still not a fantastic idea now.

After Harris did some Twitter promotion for his new Netflix show, Uncoupled, his replies were inundated with remarks about this lapse in judgment, and he eventually caught wind of the resurfaced photo. In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, he’s now attempting to apologize for the controversy:

“A photo recently resurfaced from a Halloween-themed party my husband and I hosted 11 years ago,” Harris tells EW in a statement. “It was regrettable then, and it remains regrettable now. Amy Winehouse was a once-in-a-generation talent, and I’m sorry for any hurt this image caused.”

Yeah, the situation isn’t a good one by any stretch, and Halloween is rife with potential for backlash (so many appropriating costumes out there) on a number of levels. In Neil’s case, it’s extremely hard to fathom how anyone would have (literally) stomached that joke back in 2011, and yes, he did apologize, although people probably won’t seen forget. It doesn’t bode well for his Netflix show’s debut, but the streaming numbers will eventually tell that final tale.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Another day, another late night tweet from Elon Musk trying to back out of buying Twitter. After trolling CEO Parag Agrawal with the poop emoji, Musk is now claiming that the social media platform’s spam/fake account problem is significantly larger than what was presented in their SEC disclosure. After conducting his own wonky, crowd-source investigation, Musk says that the number of fake accounts is at least 20% if not higher.

“20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher. My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate,” Musk tweeted. “Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does.”

This latest volley is the closest Musk has come to officially backing out of his acquisition of Twitter, which analysts were never fully convinced was going to go through. Particularly as share prices began to fall shortly after Musk and the social media company entered into an agreement. As for Musk’s sudden focus on fake accounts even after Agrawal shared a detailed look at how Twitter deletes over half a million of fraudulent users a day, no one’s buying it. Via CNN:

“The bot issue at the end of the day … feels more to us like the “dog ate the homework” excuse to bail on the Twitter deal or talk down a lower price,” Dan Ives and John Katsingris, analysts at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note on Monday.

Even Donald Trump doesn’t think the deal is going to go through, and that guy can’t pronounce the name of his own social media company.

(Via CNN)

Jack Harlow may have been the last person to know that Brandy and Ray J are siblings. This news made headlines last week following Harlow’s appearance on Hot 97, when he was played Brandy’s “Angel In Disguise.”

When played the sound clip, Harlow was instructed to guess the performing artist. Hosts Peter Rosenberg and Ebro Darden offered hints, saying, “Her brother is the reason a lot of people are famous,” and, “Her brother has an amazing sex tape.”

Harlow immediately caught on that the hosts were referring to Ray J, to which he responded, “Who is Ray J’s sister?”

“It’s Brandy,” shouted host Laura Stylez.

“Brandy and Ray J are siblings? Nobody’s ever told me that in my life,” replied Harlow.

Since Harlow’s appearance on Hot 97, neither Ray J or Brandy had responded until early this morning, when Brandy responded to a video clip shared by a fan account on Twitter.

“I will murk this dude in rap at 43 on his own beats and then sing [h]is ass to sleep,” said Brandy in a tweet.

Her response seemed to have been all in good fun, as she followed up clarifying that her response to the “First Class” rapper was “all love.”

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jordan Peterson’s whole “thing” is being the worst guy to be stuck in a conversation with at a party. If the right-wing professor isn’t claiming that feminists have “an unconscious wish for brutal male domination,” he’s giving an unwatchable two-and-a-half hour presentation on “identity politics and the Marxist lie of white privilege.” Peterson’s Twitter account, which has 2.7 million followers (and probably 2.1 million bots), is also a cesspool of bad takes, including one that led him to quit the social media platform.

In response to model Yumi Nu being on the cover of this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, along with Kim Kardashian, Maye Musk, and Ciara, Peterson tweeted, “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.” Peterson quickly became the Main Character of Twitter, with his “Sorry. Not beautiful” phrasing being paired with, well, have you seen Jordan Peterson looks like?

I’m sorry in advance.

By Monday night, Peterson announced that he was leaving Twitter due to an “endless flood” of “vicious” insults. He continued, “I like to follow the people I know but I think the incentive structure of the platform makes it intrinsically and dangerously insane. So I told my staff to change my password, to keep me from temptation, and am departing once again. If I have something to say I’ll write an article or make a video. If the issue is not important enough to justify that then perhaps it would be best to just let it go.”

If Peterson is doing the insulting, it’s fine. But when Peterson is the one being insulted, he’s being attacked by the woke mob. He will not be missed.

Miley Cyrus famously has some family connections in the music industry, given that her father is Billy Ray Cyrus and she’s siblings with Noah Cyrus and Metro Station’s Trace Cyrus. It goes deeper than that, though, as Cyrus’ godmother is Dolly Parton. Naturally, the two correspond and when they do, Cyrus says it happens via fax.

Cyrus chatted with Seth Meyers on Late Night yesterday and when the topic of collaborating with Parton on their 2022 T-Mobile commercial for the Super Bowl came up, Cyrus said, “It was amazing because she was doing it for the phones, yet every time I coordinate and communicate with Dolly, it’s still through fax. So I don’t know what she’s talking about. She’s rarely on the phone.”

Meyers joked about how a Parton phone commercial is false advertisement and Cyrus added, “We do use the phone, but she does a fax and then someone scans the fax, and then they put it into a text message, and then that gets sent to me. And it’s always signed, so now I’ve kind of started my own version where I go into the notes, and I’ve started to try to make my own letters, because there’s something so amazing… just about a connection, it’s not casual, you know? You know that she took the time to get out, I guess, her typewriter.”

Check out Cyrus’ full Late Night interview above and below.

Seth Meyers was spoiling for a fight on Monday night as he spoke about the sheer inanity of what has become known as the “Great Replacement Theory.” Meyers dedicated the bulk of his “A Closer Look” to debunking this “theory” and the many fraudsters who have long clung to the its basic tenet, which is that America’s leaders are trying to literally replace you with someone who will be more compliant and bend to whichever way the government directs them.

As Meyers reminded viewers, this straight-from-a-bad-sci-fi-movie plot all started back with Donald Trump, who Meyers said “tried to fan the flames of a racist conspiracy theory by claiming the Democrats were somehow organizing caravans of migrants to cross the Southern border for their own political benefit.” While the former president has spent a lot of time talking this theory up to his followers, it’s pro-testicle tanner Tucker Carlson, who Meyers seems to hold most accountable for bringing this hogwash to the forefront of the public discourse, under the guise of pretending like it doesn’t even exist.

Meyers shared several clips of Carlson talking about white supremacy and how the rumors of its pervasiveness are all a figment of the left’s imagination. He then went on to insist that if we rounded up all the white supremacists in America, they would likely fit into a college football stadium which, Meyers reminded us, would be a hell of a lot of white supremacists. “A college football stadium could fit like 100,000 people, which is a ton of people…. This dude’s like a search engine that just answers your questions with a series of more questions. He’s Don’t Ask Jeeves.”

But, according to Meyers, Carlson is intent on convincing his viewers that the Great Replacement Theory isn’t real specifically so that they will dismiss any reports of it outright. “Because he has openly and repeatedly promoted Replacement Theory on this show,” Meyers says.

In one clip (which you can see around the 6:35 mark), Carlson insists that “you’re being replaced and there’s nothing you can do about it—so shut up!” then breaks into the world’s most maniacal cackle, which Meyers described as “truly a haunting laugh. I love the audacity of calling people on the left literally hysterical and then ending one of your rants with an insane terror giggle.”

You can watch Meyers’ full report above.

In case you haven’t noticed, Dr. Mehmet Oz is creepy AF. He is also generally full of sh*t. Yes, those are official diagnoses from some of his peers. The TV show quack, who has long been known for his questionable medical advice, is taking a break from weirding out TV viewers to instead make voters in the state of Pennsylvania uncomfortable. And he did a great job of it with this short clip, which is presented with very little context, but really: is much context needed?

While being interviewed by Fox News, Dr. Oz assured voters that he never wants to let them down. “So when you go to bed at night, and put your head on that soft pillow, you know Oz will be doing exactly what you want him to do if you were there next to him.”

Even if we put aside the illeism, there are still many questions here. Chief among them: Is Oz in bed with us in this scenario? Never mind, we don’t want to know the answer. But plenty of other people were just as creeped out by his political pitch.

Way back in February, word leaked as quickly as Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye that the former New York City Mayor would be unmasked as a contestant on The Masked Singer, and all hell broke loose. While many criticized Fox’s ill-conceived bit of stunt casting, the network isn’t sorry.

As Variety reports, Fox Entertainment’s president of alternative entertainment & specials Rob Wade, a.k.a. the man partly responsible for Rudy showing up on the popular reality series, said that the network has “absolutely no regrets” over inviting the man who has spent the past 18 months attempting to overturn the very fair and legitimate 2020 presidential election with nonstop lies and accusations to appear as a Jack in the Box on the series.

“The marketing is all about delivering jaw-dropping moments, which is exactly what the casting accomplished,” Wade told Variety. “And whether it was on set or with the viewers at home I suppose my only regret or surprise was obviously the reveal was spoiled [by the press], but kudos to you guys. Just please don’t do it again. Thanks a lot.”

Whether Wade really regrets the press spoilers or not is unclear, as The Masked Singer used that added bit of publicity to tease that the season would reveal “the biggest event in Masked Singer history.” How it all went down, however, may not have been exactly what the network had expected, or hoped for. In a word: It was a mess.

Giuliani’s big reveal caused some mixed reactions from the show’s judges. While noted anti-vaxxer Jenny McCarthy seemed thrilled to see Trump’s former personal attorney, actor/comedian/doctor Ken Jeong walked off the set. Then there was poor Nicole Scherzinger, who asked Jeong, “Is that Robert Duvall?” But the biggest surprise of all might have been that none of it really mattered, as no one was watching; the Rudy episode scored the lowest ratings of the season—not to mention forever ruined George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.”

Giuliani’s big reveal wasn’t the Fox series’ first brush with terrible stunt casting. In 2020, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin showed up in a bear suit singing and wildly flailing around to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby’s Got Back.” When Palin went to court earlier this year after suing The New York Times for defamation, she desperately pleaded to make sure the footage of her appearance was not shown to jurors. (But you can watch it below.)

(Via Variety)

Martha Stewart, defender of peacocks and friend to every celebrity who matters, has weighed in on gut feeling about Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian’s romance. Previously, Martha gave some initial thoughts on Pete after she ran into the duo at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and she posed for a photo with the pair after they enjoyed Trevor Noah’s show. At the time, she described Pete as (whom she’s been acquainted with for quite some time) “kind of homely,” but she was impressed with how she’s “squiring gorgeous women around and appearing everywhere.” That included his romance with Kim K., for which Martha declared, “You know, he’s a very different kettle of fish than Kanye, you know?”

Ain’t that the truth. Well, Martha’s still answering questions when asked, and Us Weekly asked for a followup on the situation, to which Martha described the situation as “fun,” but her first response to whether the couple would last is a telling one:

While speaking to Us Weekly just a couple weeks later, the Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party host said of the couple, “They’re hanging out. They seem to be very fun with one another.”

Does she think their relationship is going to last? “No, of course not,” Stewart said. However, she quickly added that she has “no idea” how serious the pair are about their romance.

Yup, Martha probably nailed it. And that’s not a negative response, either, merely a realistic one. Kim just got out of a marriage that ended on a very stressful note, and it’s highly doubtful that she’d want to jump right back into something very serious. And Pete’s doing his thing while they both seem to be very happy at this moment in time. As for Martha, yep, she’s keeping it real, always, and enjoying life, as with this relatively recent moment.

(Via Us Weekly)

Harry Styles and Billie Eilish are both young musicians in their 20s (they’re 28 and 20, respectively) and even though their music careers only started a few years apart, they’re very much part of different musical generations. Eilish’s approach to the industry was distinct from Styles’ and it turns out that had a major impact on Styles when he was going solo post-One Direction.

In a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Styles said:

“I definitely had a really big moment, I think, when Billie Eilish first blew up. And I think being in the band, I’d always felt like we were really young. We were just really young, and it was fun and exciting because we were young. And I had a moment seeing her do this at such a young age where I felt like, ‘I’m not that young anymore.’ And for a while it was, how do you play that game of remaining exciting? And I just had a moment where I felt like, ‘ OK, we are not the same thing.’ And in the same vein of, you’re not always going to be the young thing, I was like, ‘OK. I would like to really think about who I would like to be as a musician.’

Well, I think we’ve ran into each other a couple times, but I’m, from afar, incredibly thankful to her because I feel like she felt like she represented something to me that… I don’t know. It felt like, came in in a way that was like, ‘Don’t worry about being this thing ever,’ because she’s a lot younger than me and there’s no point in me going like, ‘OK, how do I get back in? How do I get back to… She totally broke the spell for me in a way that I’m very grateful for that. It’s maybe weird because I’ve never told her that, but for me, it just let me go. This is so unbelievably liberating to go, ‘I just want to make good music.’ That’s it. That’s what I want to do. And everything else is what it will be. And that’s kind of it.”

Watch the interview above.