Category: News

Joe Biden’s approval ratings aren’t doing so great right now, which is to say they’re about as good as Donald Trump’s were throughout the majority of his one-term presidency. Republicans, still in thrall to a pee tape-obsessed weirdo who may be in several kinds of big doo-doo, take up the bulk of the Joe hate, so much so that some have even coined an innocuous term that’s supposed to be code for an epithet. When someone says “Let’s go Brandon,” what they’re really saying is “F*ck Joe Biden.” And those, reportedly, are the words a Southwest pilot uttered on a flight that just happened to contain an AP reporter.

Journalist Colleen Long, whose beat is law enforcement, the Department of Justice, and the Supreme Court, wrote that she was on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque Friday morning. She was working on a piece about the “Let’s Go Brandon” craze. Then she had those very words from the pilot. At the end of his greeting over the PA system, he slipped in the secretive Biden bash, “to audible gasps from some passengers.”

Long claimed that when she tried to get a comment from the pilot, she was “almost” removed from the plane.

When reached for comment, Southwest top brass said the company “takes pride in providing a welcoming, comfortable, and respectful environment” and that “behavior from any individual that is divisive or offensive is not condoned.”

Where did the “Brandon” line come from? From NASCAR, of course. As per Long’s article:

It started at an Oct. 2 NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter. The crowd behind him was chanting something at first difficult to make out. The reporter suggested they were chanting “Let’s go, Brandon” to cheer the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were saying: “F—- Joe Biden.”

Trump himself is very aware of the “Let’s Go Brandon.” His PAC sells a shirt emblazoned with the words for a cool $45. Meanwhile, a statement to supporters read, #FJB or LET’S GO BRANDON? Either way, President Trump wants YOU to have our ICONIC new shirt.”

(Via AP)

Though Nirvana’s Nevermind is considered canon, an essential listen for any rock fan, it’s hard a deeper impact on some listeners than others. Say, the listener who is fully depicted on the album’s cover, one Spencer Elden, who was literally an infant when the infamous cover was shot and distributed. Now that he’s an adult, Elden has an understandably complicated relationship to the image.

Though initially Elden was happy to make bank off his relationship to the cover, getting paid by various photographers to jump into a pool and “recreate” the image over the years, he recently changed his tune. As of 2021, Elden now considers the image to be “child pornography” and is suing Nirvana for “lifelong damages” as a result of the image’s popularity. Whew, what a 180?

Well, political host Bill Maher thinks that’s just not right, and he said as much on a recent episode of his show.“The words ‘victim’ and ‘survivor’ have traveled a long way from their original usage,” Maher said, addressing the subject during his show Real Time with Bill Maher. “The baby from the Nirvana album says he’s a victim. He’s suing Nirvana for lifelong damages. I never thought I’d have to say this to a baby, but stop being such a f*cking baby. You’re not a victim. There’s no reason you can’t have a normal, happy life just because people look at you and think, ‘baby penis.’”

Check out the clip above, the Nirvana topic comes up right around 3:52.

While flying is usually a pretty hellish proposition (especially during Covid-19) no matter who you are, flying while Black remains an experience unto itself. Last year’s reckoning with racism against Black people in America opened the floodgates for stories about stereotyping and discrimination, and today rapper Meek Mill faced another example of it. Though he says he had just boarded a private jet (!), a flight attendant immediately came up to Meek and his crew and accused them of smoking weed.

After the flight attendant tries to backtrack and claims he “smelled’ the weed, Meek said he wanted to get off the plane anyway because he didn’t feel safe. The flight attendant says he will try to “fix this problem,” which should be relatively easy since he’s the one who created it. “You acting real racist right now, like real crazy, ‘must be smoking weed,’” Meek said to the attendant. It’s unclear if the rapper ended up staying on the flight or looking for a different mode of transportation, but the incident is just another reminder. It’s hard to imagine a flight attendant accusing a group of white passengers of the same thing just 30 seconds after boarding.

Oh and if you have a jet for Meek, please help him out:

One of the first bits of advice you learn when you’re a pop warner football player is to play through the whistle. There are times when that ends poorly — namely when a dude gets a little too overzealous and gives the other team 15 yards as a result — but this is decidedly not one of those times.

During the second quarter of the team’s game against Clemson, Florida State signal caller Jordan Travis dropped back and found his running back, Lawrance Toafili, on a wheel route. Normally this is enough to get college football fans excited — who doesn’t love a good wheel route? — but Toafili had acres of space ahead of him and took off.

It looked like he was going to get taken down deep in Tigers territory and set the Noles up for at least three points on the possession. But somehow, instead of getting tackled, Toafili rolled on the defender without a single body part that would rule him down hitting the ground. A few yards later and he was in the end zone giving Florida State the lead.

This was the first receiving touchdown of Toafili’s career, and it is certainly not a bad way to open his account.

At 42 years old, Glover Teixeira’s Cinderella run isn’t quite over yet. Teixeira (33-7) claimed UFC gold with a second-round submission over Jan Blachowicz (28-9) to win the UFC light heavyweight championship at UFC 267 from Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.

In the first, Teixeira ate a few stiff shots from Blachowicz, but he earned an early takedown and held position through the end of the round. In the second, Blachowicz stuffed two takedown attempts from Teixeira and looked to be gaining momentum. But late in the round, Teixeira hurt Blachowicz with a big hook and then locked in a rear-naked choke after flattening the champion to earn the submission.

Teixeira became the second-oldest champion in UFC history, making it six wins in a row for the veteran. Teixeira’s last three wins have been some of the most notable of his career — over two former title contenders in dominating fashion with a knockout victory over Anthony Smith and a submission over Thiago Santos, and a submission over the champion. Blachowicz himself was coming off a notable five-fight run, one that included wins over Luke Rockhold and Dominick Reyes. He also handed Israel Adesanya his first professional loss.

After the win, Teixeira gave no hints that retirement is in his sights with full anticipation to defend the belt.

Madonna loves to skirt the line between edgy, uncomfortable, and downright disgusting. And some fans think she might’ve crossed over it with a new magazine cover shoot. Working on a shot for the cover of V Magazine, Madonna apparently thought a good conceit for the scene would be recreating the bedroom where Marilyn Monroe was found dead. For those who might be unaware, Monroe tragically died at age 36 of a drug overdose when she took too many sleeping pills.

While the connection between the two has been well-established in Madonna’s art in the past, this gruesome depiction takes it to a whole new level. Sure, the “Material Girl” inspiration from Monroe performing “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” made sense, and there’s an obvious similarity between the two, appearance-wise. It’s a great Halloween costume, as her photos below reveal:

But the emphasis is more on one of the three covers that V ended up choosing:

Photographer Steven Klein defended his artistic choices, saying the shoot was about the relationship between photographer and subject. “We were not interested in recreating the images exactly,” he said in a press release. “But more importantly, we wanted to explore the relationship between photographer and subject. Both the friendship and the artistic process, and how art can imitate life and vice versa. When I sent Madonna the photos, she was really taken by the incandescent fragility of Marilyn at that moment in her life. We decided to find a hotel suite and try to capture the liaison between a star and the camera, the mystery, and magic of this creative collaboration.”

Not sure if the scene of someone’s death by overdose is part of the mystery and magic he’s talking about, but critics seem to have a fair point for this one.

Last week, an accidental gun discharge on the set of the Western Rust resulted in the death of one of its crew members. Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed when star Alec Baldwin unwittingly fired a prop gun he didn’t know was loaded. (Its director, Joel Souza, was also wounded.) Since then, one startling revelation after another about what caused the incident has emerged. Throughout, Baldwin has been cooperative with police and investigators. And now he’s talking to reporters.

As per Deadline, the actor and his wife, Hilaria, agreed to speak to a journalist as they drove through Manchester, Vermont, far from the Santa Fe set of Rust.

“A woman died,” Baldwin said. “She was my friend. She was my friend. The day I arrived in Santa Fe to start shooting, I took her to dinner with Joel, the director. We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together and then this horrible event happened.”

Baldwin couldn’t go into details, saying he was instructed “not to talk about the investigation.” What he could say was that he was “eagerly awaiting for the sheriff’s department’ to release their findings,” and that he “talks to the cops every day.”

Hilaria repeated had to remind her husband not to go into “details,” and when asked about his meeting with Hutchins’ widower, Matthew Hutchins, he simply said he “wouldn’t know how to characterize” their discussion, but did say he was “overwhelmed with grief.”

What Baldwin did say was that what happened was a “one in a trillion” accident. “How many bullets have been fired in films and tv shows in the last 75 years?” he said. “This is America. Probably billions. And nearly all of them without incident.” He did, however, call for new safety measures on film sets.

The conversation only lasted four minutes, and Baldwin said he did it “out of courtesy.”

Among the revelations about what happened on the set of Rust leading up to the tragic shooting was that there had been an air of “complacency” towards safety issues, as well as questions about certain crew members, including its armorer and assistant director.

On the heels of losing his bantamweight crown due to a controversial disqualification against Aljamain Sterling, Petr Yan is once again holding UFC gold. Yan (16-2) had no problem dispatching Cory Sandhagen (14-4) by unanimous decision to claim the UFC bantamweight interim title at UFC 267 from Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.

Yan had trouble with Sandhagen’s range early on, peppering the former champ with combinations up top. Yan began to eat away with body shots through the first and second, and set up connections up top late in the second round. Yan continued his advantage through the third and fourth, chipping away at Sandhagen with massive shots. Every punch was powerful and by the fifth, Sandhagen

Before his loss to Sterling, Yan handed devastating knockouts to UFC legends Uriah Faber and Jose Aldo in back-to-back tilts. Sandhagen entered his showdown with Yan following a five-round decision loss to T.J. Dillashaw back in July. Before that bout, Sandhagen earned quality wins over Frankie Edgar and Marlon Moraes.

With the win firmly in his rearview, Yan can now turn his attention to Sterling, the reigning bantamweight champion. Sterling, who earned his shot at UFC gold following five consecutive wins, including a submission in June 2020 over Corey Sandhagen, has been clear that he’s ready to unify the belts in 2022 after his return from neck surgery.

All the rumors are true: When it comes to Halloween costumes, few come to play the way Lizzo does. The pop star decided to go as a beloved internet character this year, donning full Baby Yoda aka Grogu garb for a look that has fans of the Disney+ Star Wars television series The Mandalorian absolutely losing their minds. Appearing at a Spotify Halloween party in LA (where was my invite??), as well as several other locations, the rapper posted photos and videos of her costume all over social media with playful captions:

Of course, celebrity Halloween costumes have become an ever popular form of content during the social media era, and a chance for us to see how the most powerful and popular among us can flex their creativity. So many celebrities only do it for the ‘gram though, and don’t take their costumes out into the real world. As you can see above, this is not the case for Lizzo, who remains realer than ever even on the spookiest holiday of the year. Just like she stands up to bullying and always congratulates her peers on their success, Lizzo is the queen of Halloween, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t have more costumes coming this weekend.

The Jan. 6 committee is still investigating into what caused a legion of Trump supporters to overtake the Capitol building, with little help from Trump himself. Perhaps it was Trump himself? With some help from staffers and die-hards? Just spit-balling here. The former president himself has tried to point the finger elsewhere. And a new report from The Washington Post reveals that one of his more dastardly advisers tried to pin the blame on someone else — a certain person who said supporters wanted to hang.

The Post unearthed an email sent from attorney John C. Eastman to Greg Jacob, the former vice president’s chief counsel, while Pence was hiding from the mob that wanted him dead.

“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman wrote.

The email was featured in a draft opinion article Jacob had written about Trump’s legal team, Eastman among them. Jacob told The Post that, by sending the email at the peak of the Capitol siege, Eastman had “displayed a shocking lack of awareness of how those practical implications were playing out in real time.”

If Eastman’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the author of the infamous “Eastman memo,” which outlined how Pence could overturn the election results and generally create chaos. (He didn’t, thanks in part to Dan Quayle.) The memo was penned in late 2020 but wasn’t made public until this fall. But it’s clear that there’s still plenty more damning evidence about the lead-up to one of the darkest days in history en route.

(Via The Post)