Category: News

Plenty of (pretty, pretty, pretty good) Curb Your Enthusiasm jokes followed recent news of Larry David unloading in a screaming match with high-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz on Martha’s Vineyard. The confrontation took place in a grocery store, as first reported by Page Six, which relayed the exchange for all to see. David was all kinds of upset about spotting Dershowitz with his arm around former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, whose contribution to the unfolding catastrophe in Afghanistan hasn’t gone unnoticed. There’s been no further word from David on the incident, but Dershowitz is happy to talk (and then talk some more).

While speaking with Newsmax, Dershowitz relayed how his former friend couldn’t stomach the sight of him, following their previous fallout over Dershowitz representing Donald Trump. “Larry starts screaming at me!” the former member of O.J. Simpson’s dream team said. “He just couldn’t couldn’t control himself. I thought he was gonna have a stroke! … I was all these horrible, horrible things.”

Dershowitz, who remarked upon how he’s lost an awful lot of friends despite mostly representing Democrats (including Bill Clinton) in legal disputes, appeared to be aghast over David’s dismissal of their decades-long friendship. “This is a guy whose daughter I helped get into college… I represented him and his family pro bono in a dispute he had on Martha’s Vineyard,” Dershowitz asserted while adding that Pompeo was his former student, so he wanted to support the guy. “Just because I defended President Trump in front of the Senate and I patted Mike Pompeo on the back, that’s enough to end a 25-year friendship.”

As for where this dispute goes from here, Dershowitz maintained, “I’m not gonna engage with him in a screaming match.” Still, he added that he’s been cancelled by many friends and endless organizations, which he finds unfair: “This is pure McCarthyism. When you start blaming the lawyer because you don’t agree with the client, that’s McCarthyism.”

However, Dershowitz conceded that his analogy might not be a perfect one. “I didn’t lose my job,” he admitted. “I haven’t lost my living the way some people did during McCarthy’s time, but I have lost lots and lots of friends.” Well, U.S. citizens do have the right to an attorney for sure, so legal ethics are one thing, but people also have the right to step away from friendships as a result.

A few weeks after announcing his fifth full-length, Friends That Break Your Heart, James Blake has dropped a yearning new single, “Life Is Not The Same.” Opening with eerie, echoing vocal effects, “Life Is Not The Same” comes co-produced courtesy of duo Take A Daytrip, who you might recall also co-produced the Lil Nas X and Jack Harlow track “Industry Baby” with Kanye West. “Life Is Not The Same” also follows “Say What You Will,” a song the Grammy-winning songwriter released featuring Finneas.

“The song is about finding peace with who you are and where you’re at regardless of how well other people seem to be doing,” Blake said when “Say What You Will” dropped in July. “Comparison really is the thief of joy.”

Chatting with MixMag late last year, the reclusive Blake opened up a bit about how his in-public persona has evolved in the last 10 years:

“I think early in my career, I just didn’t do that much press, because I was quite anxious and nervous,” he said. “And that essentially equates to mystery in a way because unless people know about you, and they hear about music through the grapevine, they don’t know what you like, and all that stuff. But actually, in my real life, I found that the mystery didn’t help me. It made me feel less understood! I understand from a consumer’s point of view, there’s probably some lore to that, but I don’t resonate with it at all. But in terms of can you still be mysterious?

Now? I think you can, probably more easily because, you know, there’s just so much turnover in music and if you want to remain anonymous, then all power to you. But ultimately, if you want to make a living as a musician it’s a lot harder to do that. If you’re anonymous now, some of that is those guerrilla tactics, like keeping a name off the flyer and doing hand-stamped pressings, that’s cool. But now, I sort of don’t really see why you would want to limit yourself with it.”

Friends That Will Break Your Heart is out 9/10 via Republic Records. Pre-order it here.

For nearly the entire decade or so that music streaming platforms have been a thing, there’s been one artist’s catalog more elusive than any other — that of late R&B singer Aaliyah Houghton, known mononymously as Aaliyah. Known for breaking boundaries and elevating the style in the late ’90s and early-2000s, as well as pioneering the first big breakthrough to Hollywood for hip-hop-generation R&B singers with hit films like Romeo Must Die and Queen Of The Damned, Aaliyah’s catalog has been subject to a legal dispute sparked by her death in 2001 that prevented her music from ever being provided to streamers.

That is, until recently. Today, for the first time, Aaliyah’s music became available on streaming via a partnership between her original label Blackground and Empire, the independent distributor, as One In A Million, her second album and first produced by Timbaland, hit streaming services. Technically, the label is now called Blackground Records 2.0 but it’s still under the ownership of Aaliyah’s uncle and former manager Barry Hankerson. Within hours, it had reached the top spots on nearly every service, to the joy of fans. Meanwhile, Aaliyah’s estate recently released a statement condemning the release, calling it an “unscrupulous endeavor to release Aaliyah’s music without any transparency or full accounting to the estate.”

That hasn’t stopped fans from rejoicing in the music’s availability, as multiple generations informed and influenced by such hits as “One In A Million,” “Try Again,” “Are You That Somebody?” and “Rock The Boat” re-discover her groundbreaking oeuvre. Blackground 2.0 intends to continue rolling out the remainder of Aaliyah’s catalog in the comings weeks, so don’t be surprised to see more of the same for a while. Check out the responses below.

The state of Texas has an official motto: Friendship. Meanwhile, the Lone Star State’s current leadership may have adopted another unofficial motto, too: Blame it on Black people!

It’s that second guiding principle that the state’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick seemed to be leaning into when chatting about his state’s rising COVID numbers with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday night. Currently, Texas is just behind Florida in the race to have the most new cases of COVID with a total of 114,913 versus Florida’s 142,671, according to Healthline. But as Raw Story reports, Patrick thinks he has a pretty good idea of what’s causing these numbers to escalate:

“The COVID is spreading, particularly—most of the numbers are with the unvaccinated.”

Sure, that makes sense.

Then came this:

“The Democrats like to blame Republicans on that. Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked, 90 percent of them vote for Democrats, in the major cities and major counties. So it’s up to the Democrats to get, just as it is up to Republicans, to try to get as many people vaccinated. But we respect the fact that if people don’t want the vaccination, we’re not going to force it on them. That’s their individual right. But in terms of criticizing the Republicans for this? We’re encouraging people who want to take it to take it, but they’re doing nothing for the Africa… African American community, that has a significant high number of unvaccinated people.”

“Them.”

You can watch the clip below.

So when Patrick says that Republicans are working to get as many people vaccinated as possible, is he talking about his boss, governor Greg Abbott—who currently has COVID—outlawing mask mandates? Or walking-talking ad for sterilization Ted Cruz’s vow to create a federal law banning all mask and vaccine mandates?

We’re not exactly sure when the “last time” Patrick checked his stats, but The Washington Post already called bullsh*t:

The latest data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that the African American population there is not driving the increase in cases. Black residents in Texas accounted for 16.4 percent of the state’s cases and 10.2 percent of deaths as of Aug. 13. Black people make up about 13 percent of the state’s population, according to census data.

Health data scientist Jorge Caballero was much more forthright in his criticism of Patrick’s claim, telling WaPo: “Making a statement that casts blame on a racial or ethnic minority for the spread of disease is a well-known racist trope that predates most of us. People are already getting hurt by this virus, and it makes absolutely no sense for us to add insult to injury.”

(Via Raw Story)

Soulja Boy really wants to get into the video game business. A couple years ago, he infamously started selling his own handheld video game consoles, will were full of presumably unauthorized copies of famous retro games. Now, he’s apparently under the impression that he owns Atari, an assertion with which Atari disagrees.

In a recent video, the rapper proclaimed, “They signed me to a deal to Atari. Big shout out to Atari, the whole staff. I’m about to revamp the company. We’re gonna take Atari to the next level. Everybody go follow @Atari. I am now the owner of Atari. I own the video game company Atari. […] The first rapper to own a video game company. We gonna take it to the next level.” The rapper also changed his Twitter bio to indicate that he’s the company’s CEO.

Based on Atari’s response, it seems that what Soulja said is factually inaccurate. In response, Atari tweeted, “We know that CEO of Atari is a dream job, but that honor belongs to Wade Rosen.”

The company that currently uses the Atari brand name, by the way, isn’t the same company from the ’70s and ’80s that released Pong and the Atari 2600 console, as the brand name has changed hands multiple times over the decades.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Santa is canon now

Ted Lasso put out a Christmas episode in August, which is something so wild and audacious that I have no choice but to respect it. It’s 90 degrees outside. The sun stays out until 8 o’clock. School hasn’t even started again. And Ted Lasso is out here spreading holiday cheer and wearing a Santa hat. People were full-on singing Christmas carols with festive buskers. It’s the kind of thing that might have felt tacky and too-soon if it happened in, like, October, but is so chaotic here in the middle of summer that it makes me cackle. I love it.

But that’s not the point. I mean, it’s kind of the point, but it’s not fully the point. The point is that, at the very end of the episode, when Ted and Rebecca were singing the aforementioned Christmas carols with the aforementioned festive buskers, this happened.

Do you understand what this means? Do you, really? Because I need you to sit there for a second and think it through all the way. Santa Claus exists in the Ted Lasso universe. This is canon now. There’s no going back. Every time you’re watching an episode and Roy cusses at someone or Jamie Tartt does any of the things Jamie Tartt does throughout the day, Santa Claus is sitting in his workshop making a note about it. There is a Naughty And Nice list. Children presumably receive presents every year that were not purchased for them by their parents. In a show that is otherwise grounded in reality, Santa Claus flew through the sky and people saw it. It’s probably so normal it’s not even mentioned on the news anymore.

(It’s also worth noting that back here, in our own stupid real world, the people who make Ted Lasso had to make this happen. They had to send this out to the graphics department. There was money set aside in the budget for a CGI shot of Santa flying through the air. That iPhone in your hand helped to pay for it. It’s fun to think about all of this for a second, too.)

Is it weird that I’m making such a big deal about this? Maybe it is. I don’t know. It’s all just so fascinating to me for some reason I have not yet put my finger on. I want to know more about it. I want to know everything about it. I kind of want a Pulitzer-winning report by Trent Crimm in The Independent about Santa using unpaid elf labor to manufacture toys and load them onto a sleigh.

It also opens up a portal that we — or I, at least — can’t close now. It raises too many questions. Does the Easter Bunny exist, too? Have scientists studied the flying reindeer? Has Dani Rojas met the real Santa Claus? Why haven’t I seen Dani Rojas meeting Santa Claus? Can I see Dani Rojas meet Santa Claus? Can I watch a whole episode about him going to the North Pole? You see what a problem this is becoming for me.

I’ll get over it soon enough. I’m sure of it. I’ll move on and let it go and my brain will latch onto some other nonsense idea and refuse to let it go. But I’m going on a solid week with this one, with limited interruptions. In August. I have been thinking about Santa for a whole week in August. And, quite frankly, I think I deserve some answers. Someone get Trent Crimm a plane ticket. There is reporting to do.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — BUT I WANT IT NOW

Good news and bad news. Good news first because The Rundown has a policy of leading with positivity whenever possible: The tenth Fast & Furious movie has an official release date. Unfortunately, this brings us to the bad news.

Two months after the long-delayed launch of F9, Universal Pictures has set a release date for the 10th — and penultimate — installment of The Fast Saga. The Justin Lin-directed vehicle will arrive April 7, 2023.

And that good news and bad news leads to more good news and bad news, but this time I’m leading with the bad news because I’m mad: That date is too far away. It is so far away. It’s practically the future. We might be driving to see this movie in flying cars. We might be ordering popcorn and getting little popcorn pills that replicate the taste of the real thing without the mess. The ticket-rippers might be robots that look like humans. I hate it. I’m not made of time. Film it next week and release it at Thanksgiving.

That said, it does bring us back to more good news, which I’ll close with to bookend this sucker with solid vibes. All of this extra time gives them a chance to fix, well, this.

New addition John Cena told EW ahead of F9 that he wasn’t allowing himself to think about the future of his character, Jakob Toretto, while Fast favorite Dwayne Johnson is officially out due to his beef with Diesel. Johnson recently declared, “I wish them the best of luck on Fast 10 and Fast 11 and the rest of the Fast & Furious movies they do that will be without me.”

I need my two dads — Vin Diesel and The Rock — to stop fighting. Let’s put all this extra time to good use. Please. For the kids.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — My new favorite thing is actors admitting they don’t understand the Marvel universe

People used to lie. When actors or actresses were cast in big roles in comic book movies or shows they would lie, usually. They would say things like “I’ve been a fan of Giraffeman ever since I was a kid” or “Hammerwoman got me through a hard time when I was still shy and awkward” and you’d read it and you’d say “Hmm… nope” because it was obvious hooey. Maybe it was true sometimes but it was usually just a shameless play to the fans they needed to show up and buy tickets so they could make a Giraffeman and Hammerwoman: Escape From Danger Lagoon sequel that paid double their original rate and launched them into the A-list. And that was fine. I think everyone knew what was happening there, that it was all a series of winks and nods we agreed to accept in the interest of playing the game.

But lately, people have been getting honest. Maybe it’s because these kinds of projects are bulletproof juggernauts that reel in more than just the fanboys now, maybe it’s because there’s a higher premium on authenticity now because social media has given an appearance of more transparency. I don’t know, really. And I also do not care. I just love that it’s happening because I am an idiot at comics, too. I watch a lot of the movies and shows and I enjoy many of them but the lore and history and references are completely lost on me. So, for example, when Owen Wilson said this in an interview about his appearance in Loki…

You have a lot of dialogue as Mobius in the first two episodes in which you’re explaining what the TVA is, and the complicated rules of how they and time travel operates — how much do you feel like you had to fully understand that yourself, to deliver that kind of stuff?

You’re describing this to me and I don’t really have much of a memory of it, so I don’t know if I blocked it out of my mind the way you would math class. Because it is complicated, and it’s hard sometimes if you feel you’re saddled with a lot of exposition. I don’t quite remember it being too burdensome. We must have found a nice flow for it, where it was able to naturally work its way in to the conversations with Tom. Because I don’t remember it being too, ‘Oh god, now we’ve got to lay this out.’

… it delighted me to no end because that’s how I feel when a character starts laying out paragraphs of exposition that tie together past and future movies I also didn’t/won’t understand. And that’s why it brings me great pleasure to report that Owen Wilson has done it again, this time in a really fun profile in Esquire.

“They asked me a lot about—‘It sounds like you had to be convinced to do this.’ I don’t know where they’re getting that. That isn’t true. The director just called me and told me the idea, and I wanted to work on it. But somehow what seems to be in their press notes, maybe, is that I know zero about the MCU. I don’t know a ton about it, but I know—”

He pauses.

“Actually, yeah, I probably don’t know that much about it. I kind of know about Iron Man. I’ve seen Aquaman. He’s swimming in jeans. No one can swim in jeans! That was my argument with the kids about Aquaman.”

There are three things I like here:

• You can’t read this without hearing it in his voice
• I will never look at Aquaman the same way
• If we want to be technical about everything, Aquaman is a DC character, not a Marvel one, and that’s coming from me, the guy who just described himself as a huge comics idiot

It’s great. Owen Wilson is the best. But do you know who else is the best? Michael Keaton, who also was the subject of a fun profile this week and who also professed his ignorance about the deeper levels of backstory and tie-ins related to a character he played in a comic book movie.

When Keaton shot Morbius, a Marvel movie due from Sony in 2022 for which he reprises the Vulture role, the filmmakers started talking him through the logic of the fictional universe, referencing recent Marvel plot points. “I’m nodding like I know what the fuck they’re talking about. I go, ‘Uh-huh.’ And I’m thinking, ‘You may as well be explaining quantum physics right now to me. All I know is I just know my guy. And I know the basics.’ So finally, they were looking at me, and they just started laughing. They said, ‘You don’t know what we’re talking about, do you?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t, no idea what you’re talking about.’ “

This probably has as much to do with these two guys being two of the coolest and charismatic dudes around as it does with anything else. I doubt some unknown could walk into the role of Spider-man and be like “I don’t know, boss, I played sports,” but it’s still nice to see. There’s nothing wrong with reading comics. There’s also nothing wrong with not reading them. I just like that people are being honest about it now.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Oh look, an episode of television for me

Hey, speaking of comics-related stuff I understand on the most basic level, this week’s episode of What If…? was awesome. The show kind of plays a game of Sliding Doors with the Marvel universe and mixes everything all up. This one swapped T’Challa from Black Panther into the Star-Lord role from Guardians of the Galaxy. The most notable thing about it was that it marked one of the last projects Chadwick Boseman worked on before he died. It was both weird and good to hear his voice again. This is my analysis.

But the other good thing about the episode is that it appeared to pander directly to me, a person who loves heists and involuntarily does the DiCaprio pointing meme whenever a character does some variation of the “we’re not so different” thing that characters do sometimes. I say this because this happened at the beginning of the episode…

… and this happened near the end.

I appreciate that the people at Marvel and Disney did this for me. It was nice of them. Now all I need is for them to cast Allen Iverson as the next… I mean, anything really. Maybe just as himself. Let Allen Iverson and Rasheed Wallace be Avengers. That would be cool. If we’re doing things for my personal enjoyment now. Which would be nice. Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — I have decided this is good news

Something I try to keep in mind is that two things can be true at the same time. I say it all the time and write about it a fair amount of the time, but I do all that because it’s important. So, for example, it’s true that there are probably too many shows and movies that reboot or reimagine shows and movies from years ago, and that it would be nice if we could all toss some more money at newer original stuff. But it’s also true that Mike Schur — creator of Parks and Recreation and The Good Place — getting a crack at making a Field of Dreams television show has me a little excited.

Written by Schur, the series will reimagine the mixture of family, baseball, Iowa and magic that makes the movie so enduring and beloved.

The pickup comes amid a surge in popularity for the 1989 film starring Kevin Costner following baseball’s “Field of Dreams” game last week between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox, which aired in primetime on Fox. It was the most-watched regular-season Major League Baseball telecast on any network since 2005, according to Nielsen, and Fox’s most-streamed regular-season game in its history.

Schur is one of the smartest and best television minds we have right now, and he’s also one of the smartest and best baseball minds we’ve ever had. It’s still bc a little crazy to me that the dude who cracked me up under a pseudonym at the blog Fire Joe Morgan over a decade ago turned out to be the same guy who created two of my favorite television shows ever. I’m going to go ahead and say I’m optimistic about this one, even though the first true thing is still true. Some people have earned the benefit of the doubt on things like this. So, yes, I will watch the show about baseball ghosts. I don’t even like the movie that much. But I will watch. And I hope Jay Jackson pops up at some point in character as Perd Hapley to report on it all, the ghosts and the cornfields and everything. That would be fun.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Chad:

I knew I recognized Crashmore [from the new season of I Think You Should Leave] from somewhere before. I have recently been rewatching Brooklyn 99 in anticipation of the new season coming up soon and I found him – he played Tito, the meth addict locked in the jail with Holt and Peralta in season 4, episode 2.

That’s right, Santa is a meth addict who was once locked up in a Florida jail. This makes sense to me.

Well, guess what, buddy: It gets even better because, while every word you typed in that email is true, so are all these words I’m about to type. Here we go: This actor’s real name is, I swear, Biff Wiff, and he also just appeared as himself in an episode of Dave.

Look at Biff Wiff go.

Welcome to the summer of Biff Wiff. It’s nice here. We have fun.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To England!

A baked bean bandit is emptying cans of the good stuff all over a village in a sticky reign of terror.

The mystery vandal has been covering doorsteps, homes and cars with the famous orange sauce.

A BAKED BEAN BANDIT

WOW, I GUESS THE COPS PROBABLY WANT ANYONE WITH INFORMATION TO SPILL THE B-

Cops are now urging anyone with information to spill the beans.

Dammit. Come on. It’s my job to make awful jokes like this. I can’t just have the news infringing on my territory. It won’t do. I’m mad now.

A Surrey Police spokesperson said: ‘Local officers have received reports of incidents in Wonersh where beans and other food has been poured onto residents’ front doors and cars overnight.

‘The victims are understandably distressed by this unacceptable behaviour.’

Big fan of the “unacceptable behavior” in this quote because, like, yeah. Dumping full cans of baked beans on your neighbors’ property definitely falls under the umbrella of “unacceptable.” Imagine a world where we did accept that as reasonable behavior. It would be chaos. You’d have to hose off your car every morning. There would be a worldwide bean shortage. The President would have to address the nation about it.

I am barely joking when I say I would watch this movie.

In one picture, four empty cans of Heinz beans are discarded near a doorstep studded with little orange beans.

While another shows a grey car with sauce dribbling down the driver’s window, leaving an unsightly orange smudge.

I am so proud of the person who wrote this. The language is so vivid. I feel like I’m there, looking at the bean-related mess. This is wonderful journalism.

One person wrote online: ‘Hope you catch those horrendous criminals! Otherwise the house prices in Wonersh will plunge!’

Another joked: ‘What half-baked idiots would do this? I hope they get thrown in the can!’

Everyone is doing great.

Following a damning report on his history of sexist and racist remarks, Mike Richards has stepped down as the host of Jeopardy! as the controversy surrounding his selection to replace Alex Trebek continued to bring one embarrassing headline after another for the iconic game show.

After Claire McNear of The Ringer unearthed Richards’ old podcast where he made remarks about women’s bodies along with problematic comments on Jews and Asians, Variety reported on Thursday that Sony Pictures was starting to consider “alternative scenarios for the host slot” even though Richards had just begun filming new episodes that day. However, by Friday morning, Richards was out, and McNear’s reporting is being widely credited on social media as the final nail in the coffin.

Considering he was the show’s executive producer, Richards being chosen as the new host of Jeopardy! was already a controversial decision. Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings was believed to be a solid candidate for successor, and there was a sizable fan campaign to see LeVar Burton become the new host. However, fans of the classic game show were shocked by Richards being chosen, and that decision was soon followed by damaging headlines about his past controversies on The Price Is Right and revelatory reports that he had more influence on the selection process than his public statements suggested.

In a nutshell, people on Twitter are not holding back their thoughts on the Richards fiasco.

Heck, even Dictionary.com got in on the action:

And then there was this LeVar Burton tweet, which is apparently something he does every Friday, but it seemed to have a palpable hint of schadenfreude following the Richards’ announcement:

In 50 years from now (provided the world still exists), we’ll be telling our grandkids about the time a crack-addict-turned-pillow-salesman attempted to convince the world that the 2020 presidential election was hacked by shouting nonsensical words and regularly shaking his fists at the clouds during a chaotic “cyber symposium.” If, however, you happen to be Douglas Jensen—the 41-year-old insurrectionist who chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman in a video that has since gone viral—you might remember Mike Lindell’s 72 hours of online chaos as the thing that sent you back to the clink.

Jensen, who spent seven months in a D.C. jail before being sent home to Des Moines under house arrest in July, could be headed back to the hoosegow after he admitted to a court officer that he spent two days streaming Lindell’s off-the-rails event. Why does that matter? Because one of the terms of Jensen’s release, according to BuzzFeed News, was “a prohibition on using devices with internet access, including cell phones.” As Zoe Tillman writes:

“But according to the government, 30 days after he was released from jail, a court officer assigned to check on him arrived at his house and found Jensen in his garage listening to news on a WiFi-connected iPhone through the video platform Rumble…

More than that, though… Jensen also eventually admitted to the pretrial services officer that he’d spent two days watching a ‘cyber symposium’ hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, one of the most prominent and prolific proponents of the election fraud conspiracy theories and lies that fueled the January 6 riots.”

Jensen, you may recall, is the QAnon conspiracy theorist who posted a video of himself “touching the f*cking White House!” (Spoiler alert: It wasn’t the White House.)

Ironically, as the Des Moines Register shared, it was that video that helped get Jensen sprung from jail when Judge Timothy Kelly ultimately decided that, “It’s hard to imagine Mr. Jensen planned or coordinated the events of January 6 when he had no basic understanding where he even was that day.” Also working in Jensen’s favor was that he had publicly disavowed his association with QAnon; in court filings, according to the AP, Jensen’s lawyer claimed his client felt “deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies.”

Jensen’s decision to tune into Lindell’s cyber nightmare, however, tells another story. “Jensen’s swift violation confirms what the Government and this Court suspected all along: that Jensen’s alleged disavowal of QAnon was just an act,” assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Arin Levenson Mirell wrote in a petition to send Jensen back to jail, adding that:

“Jensen managed to violate one of the most difficult-to-enforce conditions in the most egregious way imaginable… Indeed, the Court need look no further than Jensen’s virtual attendance at a symposium dedicated to challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 electoral election to know that Jensen will continue to let his loyalties to certain conspiracy theories prevail over his obligations to this Court and his family.”

(Via BuzzFeed News)

Mike Richards’ run as new Jeopardy! host is over as quickly as it began. In a surprise move, the embattled executive producer abruptly stepped down on Friday morning, days after his history of troubling remarks surfaced in a lengthy report from The Ringer’s Claire McNear. Add that to what was already known about Richards’ controversial past as a game-show producer, and Sony had a nightmare on its hands.

Well, Richards is out, and the search for a new replacement-for-the-replacement is undoubtedly in process. There’s no word on whether this will affect Mayim Bialik’s role as host of Jeopardy! prime time incarnation and spinoffs (probably not?), but one should expect renewed calls for LeVar Burton to receive additional consideration (and a more optimal guest-host slot, hopefully) after still riding high in fan polls. And speaking of LeVar Burton, look at what he tweeted around the same time that the Richards resignation news broke: “Happy Friday, y’all!”

That’s everything that one would expect from the Reading Rainbow host, even though part of everyone would want this tweet to mean a whole lot more. Admit it, you want to see LeVar drop some shade, too, but alas, this was not what happened. As Whitney McIntosh pointed out on Twitter, this a LeVar Burton tweet that pretty much happens every Friday. The man loves his weekends!

Fingers are still crossed for Burton to tweet something about Richards’ resignation, though. And maybe we’ll also see something from Laura Coates, the Black female attorney that beloved longtime host Alex Trebek once namedropped as someone who he’d like to see as his potential replacement. And the hosting fiasco continues!

UPDATE – 11:55 EST: Judging from this tweet that LeVar “liked,” he’s got a little fire in him, for sure.

Lil Nas X has never been afraid to put his flamboyant personality front and center of his public persona or to share some details of his private life that other stars would shy away from. In a new feature in VMAN magazine, Lil Nas X reveals in a conversation with Kevin Abstract that he’s currently dating and calls the relationship “natural” and “effortless.” Abstract, who is able to ask some piercing questions — there might be a future in journalism for that one after his rap career is over — also asks Lil Nas about the influences other queer artists have had on him.

“I feel like without Frank and people like [Kevin], it definitely would’ve been much more scary,” Nas admits. “I feel like for everybody, no matter who the artist is, there’s always some person that in some way made them feel slightly more okay with doing something and being themselves… That’s what you guys did for me.”

Nas, who describes himself as “much more of a pop star now than a rapper,” also addresses the reaction to his “Montero” video from his nearest and dearest. “My dad texted me the next morning,” he recalls. “He was like, ‘I got through it’ — almost as if it was a bad movie or something. Even that was great [to me]. For the rest of my family, I don’t think everyone’s going to be 100 percent honest with me about how they felt. But a lot of them were understanding, to say the least.”

Read Lil Nas X’s full interview with Kevin Abstract here.