Category: News

Life comes at you fast. One day, you’re reportedly President Trump’s McDonald’s-fetching manservant, and the next, you’re taking shots at each other in public. Granted, this transformation did not happen overnight for Chris Christie, but it’s worth a quick recap. Back during the 2016 Republican Primary season, Trump insulted the heck out of Christie during debates, but when Trump emerged as the frontrunner, that led Christie to assimilate like the Borg. Soon enough, his infamous “hostage face” stood behind Trump for Super Tuesday; and Christie remained loyal to Trump despite being walked all over, until they came to blows on COVID-19.

Since then, it’s been feud city, with Trump reportedly blaming his COVID positivity on Christie after the former New Jersey governor assisted him during debate speech prep, and let’s just say that the dust has not settled. Recently, Christie gave a Las Vegas speech, in which he expressed that Trump should “move on” from losing the 2020 election, and this week, the Twitter-banned ex-president issued one of his “statements,” in which he declared, “Everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating–a record low, and they didn’t want to hear this from him!”

Well, Christie responded during an Axios interview (above), in which host Mike Allen asked Christie what he thought of that quote, and then this happened. “I’m not gonna get into a back-and-forth with Donald Trump, but what I will say is this,” Christie declared. “When I ran for reelection in 2013, I got 60% of the vote. When he ran for reelection, he lost to Joe Biden.”

Trump hasn’t issued a response statement, but never say never. Christie, who apparently has a book, Republican Rescue, coming out, will appear on a CNN “series” (?) called Being Chris Christie, starting next week. CNN’s given this thing a plug.

One very popular response to this announcement has surfaced. Conservative talk show radio host Joe Walsh calls this a “bullsh*t” move from CNN. “There are plenty of conservatives/Republicans who lost everything by publicly opposing Trump,” Walsh tweeted. “Chris Christie did nothing, risked nothing, and stood by Trump every step of the way. He’s no Trump critic. He’s no hero.” Fair enough.

It’s always fun to learn that a celebrity has a fake social media account they use — so they can browse the internet free from the gaze of the public eye — and wonder what they use it for. Well, we can add another household name to the list of celebrities browsing the internet anonymously, as Adele has revealed she has both a fake Instagram account (aka a “Finsta”) and a fake Twitter profile.

In a new Rolling Stone feature, Adele claims that she’s quite the online sleuth, saying, “I know how to trace something online, like no one’s business, back to the original source or leak, more than anyone on my team.” The piece goes on to note, “She has a ‘finsta’ — fake Instagram — she uses to check out cat and interior-design content, and a fake Twitter for checking on what’s come out about her. She’s been keeping tabs on information leaking about the real 30, free from any duets outside of a deluxe-edition version of ‘Easy On Me’ featuring Chris Stapleton.”

The feature also describes Adele showing off her favorite tweet about album announcement rumors:

“Adele pulls out her phone to find her favorite Tweet from the fervor over the fake album announcement. She searches the user @keyon, whose display name is ‘HOOD VOGUE is tired of poverty.’ He called bullsh*t on the information quickly, noting that Adele famously does not do features. ‘He is so funny. I was like, ‘See, that’s a fan,” she says, scrolling through her phone. ‘If anything’s blowing up on Twitter, I always go straight to that account because I know he’ll either be like, ‘Oh, this could be real,’ or he’s like, ‘This is fake.”

A couple of hours after we part ways, she’ll forward another tweet to me, with her name in bold from the search she pulled up on Twitter. ‘Can someone wake Adele up and tell her she’s coming Friday I don’t think she knows,’ it reads, a sly reference to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the internet sleuths have it wrong and 30 is not, in fact, coming out that week.”

Check out the full feature here.

Ryan Reynolds was scheduled to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Wednesday, while Will Ferrell was the announced guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. But the two actors pulled the ol’ switcheroo, so Ferrell went on Kimmel and Reynolds talked to Fallon — and refused to answer any questions about his sex life with Blake Lively.

“How’s Blake? How are the kids?” Fallon asked Reynolds. “You know, they’re all good. Blake’s… no personal questions, by the way. But Blake is great. The sex is totally normal,” he answered. A flustered Fallon said that wasn’t what he was asking, to which the Red Notice star replied, “Hey, hey, hey! Pump the sex brakes, Jimmy. I asked no personal questions, and you’re going right in on it, all right? Barbara Walters, easy.”

Meanwhile, over on Kimmel’s show, Ferrell was asked, “How’s your beautiful wife, Blake Lively?” The Shrink Next Door actor (who was wearing some stylish Star Wars pants) answered, “My wife, Blake, is wonderful. Thank you for asking. She’s doing great. It’s a really busy household. She’s a great cook.” Her specialities: “Oatmeal and killer nachos.”

Reynolds and Ferrell will both appear in Spirited, a modern musical re-telling of A Christmas Carol for Apple TV+. There’s no release date yet, but you can watch Reynolds on The Tonight Show above and Ferrell on Jimmy Kimmel Live! below.

In the days since the Astroworld Festival tragedy, Travis Scott has shared two statements about it on his social media pages. Now, his lawyer is stepping forward to speak about it and he’s calling out the Houston police department. In a statement released on Wednesday, according to Billboard, Edwin F. McPherson said, “There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.” McPherson then criticized Houston Police Chief Troy Finner for comments he made in a recent interview with The New York Times.

During the interview, McPherson cites Finner’s claim that Astroworld was not shut down for fear that fans would riot. However, McPherson said, “a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.”

“It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew,” McPherson said. “This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.”

He concluded, “Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”

The 2021-22 New Orleans Pelicans season has not gone well to say the least, with Zion Williamson having yet to play a game and Brandon Ingram has missed six in a row with a hip issue. That, understandably, has put pressure on Pelicans executive vice president David Griffin.

That pressure may be now growing and wearing on Griffin. Per a new report from Bleacher Report’s Jake Fischer, Griffin recently left a Pelicans road trip following a “heated exchange” with ex-Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry in Sacramento where he is now the Kings’ lead assistant.

Griffin reportedly approached Gentry, who considered the efforts “inauthentic.” The two then exchanged choice words that led to them having to be physically separated after Griffin told Gentry, “You must not have given Stan [Van Gundy] the answers to the test, either.” That was in reference to a Nola.com report that Griffin said he had given Gentry the answers to the test when he was the Pelicans coach for the season after Griffin was hired in 2019. Gentry was then fired after a 30-42 season, leading to Van Gundy’s hire who was fired after his lone season in New Orleans, going 31-41.

What comes next here figures to be fascinating. This feels like an incident that could, potentially, cost Griffin his job as he’s already on an ever-warming hot seat with the Pelicans spiraling to 1-11, most recently losing to the Thunder in rather embarrassing fashion at home. Barring Williamson and Ingram returning soon and saving the team, it’s not really clear what could change for Griffin in New Orleans at this point. And with Gentry’s reported animosity towards him, it’s clear that he’s not making a lot of allies along the way.

Earlier this month, Gang Of Youths shared their single “The Man Himself,” which saw lead vocalist Dave Le’aupepe explore the connection he had with his late father. The band will continue this journey on their upcoming third album, Angel In Realtime, which Le’aupepe announced on Wednesday along with the release of a new song, “Tend The Garden.” In a press release, he described the song as “the most poetic interpretation of his affinity for gardening that I could think of” in honor of his father, who he called a “gifted and passionate gardener.”

Gang Of Youths will release Angel In Realtime on February 25, 2022, giving their fans a little over three months to prepare for its arrival. The band explained that the upcoming project “is about the life and legacy of Dave Le’aupepe’s father, indigenous identity, death, grief and God. And also the Angel, Islington.” Le’aupepe added, “I hope the record stands as a monument to the man my father was and remains long after I’m gone myself. He deserved it.”

The band will also embark on a world tour starting in March in Dublin, and will continue the shows through the spring and summer before bringing things to an end on September 27 in Sacramento.

Scroll up to listen to “Tend The Garden” and to check out the full tour dates for their 2022 world tour. The tracklist for Angel In Realtime can be found below.

1. “You In Everything”
2. “In The Wake Of Your Leave”
3. “The Angel Of 8th Ave.”
4. “Returner”
5. “Unison”
6. “Tend The Garden”
7. “The Kingdom Is Within You”
8. “Spirit Boy”
9. “Brothers”
10. “Forbearance”
11. “The Man Himself”
12. “Hand Of God”
13. “Goal Of The Century”

Angel In Realtime is out 2/25/22 via Warner Records. Pre-order it here.

Gang Of Youths is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The top two picks in the 2021 NBA Draft met in an actual regular season game for the first time on Wednesday night in a primetime slot on ESPN. Cade Cunningham and Jalen Green each had solid outings in the national spotlight, with the Pistons getting the win as Cunningham had 20 points, four rebounds, three assists, and two steals.

On the other side, Green had 23 points, five rebounds, and two assists for the Rockets, including a few highlight reel buckets as he was clearly fired up for the showdown. Green wasn’t shy after the draft in saying he felt he should’ve been the top pick and wanted to prove the Pistons got it wrong whenever Houston played Detroit going forward, and after getting past Cunningham for an emphatic dunk, he let the No. 1 pick know all about it.

Cunningham was his typical stoic self through the interaction, but after the game he offered a little spice in return when asked about the trash talk from Green and the Rockets, saying it was all for show and had nothing of substance.

Getting the win certainly afforded Cade the high ground here to cast some shade on his fellow rookie and do so in a very collected, on-brand way. Hopefully these two can continue to grow and improve into the stars they certainly have the potential to be, because this kind of rivalry between two stars who clearly aren’t particularly buddy-buddy would be great for the league. Their last meeting this season is in a month, on December 18 in Detroit, where they’ll get to continue the conversation.

Throughout the pandemic, moviegoers got used to studios delaying their blockbusters. After all, they couldn’t go to the movies. But even though movie theaters have slowly (if maybe not so surely) roared back, there’s still a whole lot of delaying going on. Disney bumped a slew of their movies, including MCU titles and the fifth Indiana Jones, to later release dates, partly due to production issues. And now Paramount is doing the same to two of their bigger projects — again.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio has rejiggered the release dates for two big movies in particular: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and whatever their next big Star Trek movie will be. The former will be the first in the franchise since 2018’s spin-off Bumblebee, and the first in the main series since 2017’s The Last Knight, which noticeably underperformed. Originally scheduled for June 24, 2022, it’s been delayed almost a year, to June 3, 2023.

Rise of the Beasts ditches series director Michael Bay for Creed II’s Steven Caple Jr, and swaps out Mark Wahlberg for Anthony Ramos and Dominique Fishback. It even jumps into the past, moving things to the 1990s and bringing in, as per Caple Jr., “prehistoric animals who travel through time and space.”

As for the next Star Trek film, who knows what’s up there. We do know that it will be helmed by WandaVision director Matt Shakman (and not, alas, Quentin Tarantino), though it’s unclear whether Chris Pine and team will be returning. But Trek as an overall franchise has never been more populated, with reams of shows on the studio’s streamer Paramount+. That film, whatever shape it takes, was once set to drop on June 9, 2023, but will now do so “only” half a year later, on Dec. 22, 2023.

(Via THR)

Bryson Tiller has a lot of music on the way. After he took just a little over five years without new music, he released his third album, Anniversary, at the end of last year. Once again, Tiller is gearing up to close out the year with a new release and he took to Twitter to make the announcement.

“Before we get into my next album, i wanted to share another special project i worked on for you guys,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “This one was really fun to make. Inspired by Bieber, Ariana, and by one of my loneliest holiday seasons ever.. A Different Christmas.” He added, “Happy Holidays from me to you, especially if you’re spending them alone!”

Tiller revealed that the project will arrive next Friday, November 19. Tiller also attached the cover art. The inspirational Christmas projects from Bieber and Grande that he refers to are most likely Bieber’s 2011 release Under The Mistletoe and Grande’s 2013 EP Christmas Kisses as well her 2015 EP Christmas & Chill.

The announcement comes after he gave an update on his upcoming album Serenity earlier this year. “Over the years, I realized how much f*cking music that I had for Serenity, all this different sh*t, so Serenity is now not one album, but it’s three albums,” he said. “It’s three volumes, one is a rap album, one is an R&B album, and then one is a pop album.”

You can view Tiller’s announcement for A Different Christmas above.

A Different Christmas is out 11/19 via Trapsoul/RCA.

The investigation into the tragedy at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival is still ongoing, but authorities took a moment to point out one incorrect piece of information that’s been floating around. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner spoke to reporters on Wednesday and walked back a previous report that said a security guard at the event was pricked with a needle and required Narcan after he went unconscious. “We did locate that security guard. His story is not consistent with those previous claims,” Finner said. “He says he was struck in his head, he went unconscious, and he woke up in the security tent. He says that no one injected drugs into him.”

The update comes after Variety and Complex both reported that Travis canceled a $5.5 million “one-off” performance in Saudi Arabia as a result of the Astroworld tragedy. He also canceled his upcoming headlining performance at the Day N Vegas festival which is set to occur on the weekend of November 12-14. According to Variety, a source said he was “too distraught to play.” Post Malone was later announced as a replacement for him.

The morning after the Astroworld Festival tragedy, Travis shared a written statement about the matter. “I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night,” he wrote in part. “My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.”