Category: News

On Monday, Joe Biden actually called Fox News reporter—and perpetual thorn in White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s side—Peter Doocy the thing most of us are thinking whenever the White House correspondent opens his mouth and says something: “Stupid son of a bitch.”

It was a hot mic that caught Biden’s decidedly unpresidential retort during a photo op following Biden’s Monday meeting with his Cabinet Secretaries. Doocy, never the most insightful of reporters, asked Biden “Do you think inflation is a political liability in the midterms?,” to which the POTUS snarkily replied, under his breath: “That’s a great asset. More inflation. What a stupid son of a b*tch.”

While Doocy didn’t hear Biden’s response himself, it didn’t take long for others to alert him to the fact that he had been made a fool in the middle of the East Room. Still, as Doocy told his fellow Fox News colleague Sean Hannity on Monday night, Biden has indeed issued a mea culpa.

As Mediaite reports, Doocy—son of Fox & Friends loudmouth Steve Doocy—told Hannity that he got a call from the president within an hour of the incident and that the two had “cleared the air.” While Hannity was determined to know specifically whether the president actually apologized, Doocy tried to play it cool and let him know:

“He said, ‘It’s nothing personal, pal.’ And I told him I appreciated him reaching out. Hey, Sean, the world is on the brink of like World War III right now, with all the stuff going on. I appreciate that the president took a couple minutes out as evening as he was still at the desk to give me a call and clear the air.”

When Hannity replied that, “At least he called you ‘pal,’” Doocy assured Hannity that “You know what, I don’t need anybody to apologize to me. He can call me whatever he wants as long as it gets him talking.”

(Via Mediaite)

As the release date for The Batman comes closer, the audience is blessed with more and more tidbits about the upcoming superhero film, including how Nirvana was a key player in the creating the character, and how the film narrowly trails behind Avengers: Endgame in length, making it impossible to perfectly time out bathroom breaks.

But one of the most important and mysterious bits about the newest caped crusader is his emo boy band look, complete with some (honestly impressive) eyeliner. In a new interview with Esquire, director Matt Reeves defends his choice to have Pattinson don heavy makeup.

“You can’t wear a cowl and not wear that. All of the Batmen wear that,” Reeves says, insisting that the eyeliner is important for character development. With the eyeliner, even with the mask off, he is just becoming the batman. “I just loved the idea of taking off [the mask] and under that there’s the sweating and the dripping and the whole theatricality of becoming this character.” Reeves adds.

It seemed to take a lot to convince the Warner Bros execs to cast Pattinson, who has been working on a slew of great films, but none of them as high-profile as this biggest DC superhero. When Reeves and Pattinson met, that’s when the director was convinced he could actually handle the role.

“[Pattinson] heard that we were doing this and got excited about the idea that there was going to be another version of this character,” Reeves says. “And so when I met him, and he read the script, we talked for a long, long time and I realized, ‘This guy is a massive fan.’” He then had to audition wearing Val Kilmer’s old suit.

Still, Reeves defends his casting choice, despite backlash from hardcore fans. “The people who were excited, I knew it was because they knew Rob’s work post-Twilight,” The director said. “The people who weren’t excited, I knew it was because they didn’t know Rob’s work post-Twilight.” Lesson learned, just get any Rob haters to watch The Lighthouse and they will be convinced of his ability to play a brooding recluse.

Kanye West interviews are nearly always a treasure trove of over-the-top declarations and wild reveals, and his latest one is no different in that regard. Linking up with gossip reporter Jason Lee of Hollywood Unlocked, Kanye shared his thoughts on a variety of subjects, from his failed political campaign to his recent controversies involving his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and the fan he allegedly punched in Los Angeles earlier this month (he says that the “fan” was an overly aggressive paparazzo).

However, amid the drama of his love life with Kim, — or lack thereof, now — he revealed that he felt so slighted by her public relationship with Pete Davidson (whose ass he threatened to beat on a new song) in part because of the lengths he went to in order to protect Kim from another potential sex tape scandal. According to Kanye, Kim’s ex, Ray J, who… ahem… co-starred in Kim’s previous sex tape, had apparently made another, keeping on a personal laptop which Kanye says he retrieved from Ray J after a red-eye flight to LA.

“How you gonna bring me to SNL and kiss the dude you dating right in front of me?” he questioned. “Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’ After I went and got the laptop from Ray J that night, right? I met this man at the airport, then got on the red-eye, came back… delivered it to her at 8 a.m. in the morning. I gave it to her, and she cried when she saw it. You know why she cried when she saw that laptop? It represents how much she’s been used… It represents how much people didn’t love her, they just saw her as a commodity.”

While this is treading dangerously close to gaslighting territory in the same way he turned on Big Sean and John Legend for not supporting his ill-advised political campaign despite him signing them to G.O.O.D. Music in their early careers, it seems Kanye, at least, has an explanation for his hurt feelings — even if he has mostly proven to be his own worst enemy.

Dwayne Johnson has starred in two movies based on video games, 2005’s Doom and 2018’s Rampage, neither of which are very good. (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level are video game movies, but they’re not based on a video game, an important distinction. Also, go outside, nerd.) Maybe the Rock will have better luck the third time. In a recent interview with Men’s Health, the dinosaur skull fanatic teased that he’s bringing a video game to the big screen — but he won’t say what it is.

“I can’t tell you which game in particular we’re doing, but there will be an announcement this year. We’re going to bring one of the biggest, most badass games to the screen, one that I’ve played for years. I’m really excited to bring it to fans around the world. Of course we’re going to do right by our gamer friends — but really we’re just going to make a great movie.”

Hm, what could it be?

It’s a game that Johnson has played “for years,” so it’s probably nothing recent, like Cyberpunk 2077 (Keanu Reeves has that on lock). It’s also likely to be heavy on action and violence, so unless Tom Nook gets absolutely ripped and murders K.K. Slider (not out of the question), it won’t be Animal Crossing either. I think it should be Kingdom Hearts because I would like to hear the Rock try to explain the franchise’s incomprehensible lore. Also, he doesn’t play Sora, he’s Goofy. They have a history.

(Via Men’s Health)

Earlier this month, Dreamville’s wordplay wizard JID lit up the rap world with the release of his new single, “Surround Sound,” which will presumably appear on his long-awaited sophomore album The Never Story. And while JID did his thing as usual on the new song, fans still gave plenty of attention to its guest rappers, 21 Savage and Baby Tate, albeit for different reasons.

While Savage’s verse was praised for its dexterity — especially in comparison to such an accomplished lyrical acrobat as JID, fans lamented that Tate’s verse was cut off when the song pulled a beat switch at its halfway point, leaving them to wonder whether Tate would have impressed as much as her collaborators. Truthfully, it was a foregone conclusion that she would but it was still disappointing that we didn’t actually get to hear her do it… that is, until now.

Knowing that fans were hungry to hear her full verse, Tate celebrated “Surround Sound” reaching the Hot 100 by posting what she called the “HIGHLY REQUESTED BABY TATE EXTENDO VERSE” to Twitter via a video of herself twerking along to the song in her bathroom. The full verse finds Tate dismissing an ex, cycling through three different flows, and bragging on her own prowess and accomplishments. While it remains to be seen whether the full verse will see any sort of official release — fans are still waiting on her remix of Doja Cat’s “Get Into It (Yuh)” to become official — it’s still fun to see Tate showing off her own underrated rap skills.

Watch Baby Tate’s video below.

Baby Tate is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

By the time Amy Schneider started showing up on TV screens to quickly rise through the ranks of Jeopardy! champs, she had already completed filming the hit game show months earlier. So while it seems like these contestants are just magically appearing on Jeopardy! that day, in reality, they’ve already gone through a gauntlet of trying to balance their work schedules and personal lives with the demands of flying to Los Angeles to film new episodes.

In a new feature on the secret life of a Jeopardy! champ, Schneider opens up about how she had to make significant changes at her job to accommodate her then-secret success on the show. For starters, she had to step down from being an engineering manager, which is how she’s introduced on the show, and take a position with less direct reports so she didn’t let down her work team. Via The Ringer:

Schneider got into a routine of flying to L.A. on Sunday nights, then heading back home on Tuesday nights, then trying to cram a full week’s worth of work into the next three days. “It’s funny because my boss and the vice president, who are the two people who really knew that I was missing so much time—neither of them really watches Jeopardy! and had no real conception of what it meant that I had to keep going down,” she says. “I had to let them know that in a shocking development in the modern world, I was actually not going to have access to my phone for the taping days.”

Of course, now that Schneider has been racking up huge money on Jeopardy! she’s contemplating what to do next after she finally gets that big check.

“Like so many people during COVID, I had started thinking about—is this what I want to be doing with my life?” Schneider told The Ringer about her day job. “I’d felt like, well, it sounds nice, but I really like the financial security. But now that I’ve got that anyway, I’m really thinking about it.”

(Via The Ringer)

It’s been about a year since Kim Kardashian and Kanye West (who now goes by Ye) parted ways in their marriage, and it didn’t take long for both to boo-up with another celebrity. Kardashian has been steadily dating SNL comedian Pete Davidson for several months, a celebrity pairing that baffled many, including Davidson himself. Ye’s dating life has also been making headlines lately after being seen on several outings with Uncut Gems actress Julia Fox. But it now seems like their relationship is official as Fox has coined a celebrity couple name for them.

Earlier this week, Fox and Ye jetted off to Paris to attend this year’s Paris Fashion Week. They were seen dressed head-to-toe in leather outside of Schiaparelli Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2022 show, with Ye sporting a black balaclava and gloves. Fox posted a photo of her and Ye outside the runway on her Instagram stories, giving them the celebrity couple name “Juliye” with a black heart emoji. The blended name is very similar to Ye and Kim’s, Kimye, but doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as well.

Kardashian has approved of Juliye in the past, but Ye apparently isn’t as on board with her and Davidson’s coupling. Fox is reportedly a huge fan of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, a fact that “relieved” Kim when she heard. Ye, on the other hand, reportedly took aim at Davidson in a leaked song lyric, in which he allegedly says he wants to “beat Pete Davidson’s ass.”

Fans of UK music know that Oasis and Blur had a major rivalry that began in the ’90s, a feud that has continued in recent years. (NME published an oral history about the rivalry in 2019 that offers more context about it.) Meanwhile, Oasis’ Liam Gallagher is active on Twitter, so naturally, he has caught wind of the current situation between Taylor Swift and Blur’s Damon Albarn, which started when Albarn insisted Swift doesn’t write her own songs. Now, Gallagher has weighed in.

Hours ago, Gallagher was asked by separate Twitter users about his thoughts on both Swift and Albarn, and he responded with the same answer for both artists, writing, “Great songwriter.” Somebody else commented, “isn’t it mad Taylor swift and damon are beefing on twitter wtf,” to which Gallagher responded, “Love it,” a reply that’s perhaps indicative of some schadenfreude from Gallagher given that Albarn isn’t exactly coming out of this situation smelling like roses.

Gallagher is far from the only person to share their thoughts on the situation. Swift herself offered a response, to which Albarn replied. Others who have chimed in include Jack Antonoff, Aaron Dessner, Chile’s president-elect, the biggest Minecraft streamer on Twitch, Eve 6, and others.

Earl Sweatshirt finally found his way to the Tonight Show stage Monday night to promote his new album Sick!, performing the not-quite-nostalgic single “2010.” Ironically, it was just after 2010 that Earl’s rabble-rousing crew Odd Future first made their own television debut on The Tonight Show (albeit minus Earl, who had been shipped off to boarding school in Samoa by his protective mother for his troublemaking activities), menacing host Jimmy Fallon and the audience in a performance Questlove was sure would get the show canceled altogether.

Fortunately, it wasn’t canceled, leaving the path clear for Earl to make his own appearance a little over a decade later. While his performance this time was much more self-contained, with just Earl, his DJ, and the projections on the screen behind him, Earl proves to be sufficient by himself to capture and hold the audience’s attention as he narrates the tumultuous time that led to his absence when Odd Future took over with their unique brand of anti-establishment chaos.

Watch Earl Sweatshirt’s Tonight Show performance of “2010” above and catch earl on the NBA Leather World Tour with Action Bronson and The Alchemist.

Sick! is out now via Warner Records.

Earl Sweatshirt is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Just over a year ago, James Harden was applying immense pressure on the Rockets to trade him, making it known that his preference was to join Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn. Ultimately, a deal was made that sent the former MVP to the Nets, beginning a full-scale teardown in Houston and, somewhat unwittingly, sparking the rise of the Cleveland Cavaliers for this season.

The expectation was that Brooklyn would fork over big money to extend their new star triumverate this past summer, but when the season arrived, only Kevin Durant had inked an extension. Kyrie Irving’s refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine, thus making him ineligible to play home games, pulled his extension off the table and puts his future in Brooklyn in question. As for Harden, he opted against signing an extension, choosing instead to pick up his large player option for this season and setting himself up for a four-year deal this summer.

At the time, Harden insisted there was “nothing to worry about” for Brooklyn, and that he had no plans to leave the organization. Now, three months later, there are rumblings that Harden is no longer favored to return to the Nets this summer, as rumors swirl about a potential reunion with Daryl Morey in Philadelphia. According to Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer, Harden has expressed frustrations about his situation in Brooklyn, both in his lack of comfort in living there and the situation he finds himself in with Kyrie not playing home games, and wants to look into “other opportunities outside Brooklyn” when free agency arrives.

Harden remains invested in competing for the title in Brooklyn this season, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation. But Harden has recently informed several confidants—including former teammates and coaches—of his interest in exploring other opportunities outside of Brooklyn this summer, league sources told B/R.

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Harden has been vocal to Nets figures and close contacts alike about his frustrations regarding Kyrie Irving’s part-time playing status. A recent injury to Kevin Durant has exacerbated the issue, leaving Harden to shoulder the majority of the offensive burden during Brooklyn home games.

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His new city could also be an issue. According to multiple sources, Harden has not enjoyed living in Brooklyn, compared to his days as a central Houston magnate. Outside of the change in climate, the chasm between state taxes in New York versus Texas is quite obvious as well.

Fischer makes clear that there has not been a trade request from Harden, but the window for the Nets to win a championship with their Big 3 very well could be down to this season and this season only. Coupled with the recent reports that the Sixers would prefer to wait to deal Ben Simmons until this summer, when they could pursue someone like Harden in a sign-and-trade, and there is an awful lot of smoke out there about Harden rejoining a Morey operation.

Still, there’s a lot of time for things to change, both on the Simmons front in Philly (although something drastic would seemingly have to happen to see him moved in February at this point) and with Harden in Brooklyn. Frustrations in the middle of the season are one thing, but should the Nets win a championship, it wouldn’t be hard to see Harden change his tune about his feelings about Brooklyn and look to return to the Nets.