Category: News

In the most Doctor Who-ish episode of Loki, Tom Hiddleston’s Loki of Asgard became the first openly queer lead character in Marvel Cinematic Universe canon. But an actual Doctor Who writer has criticized the Disney+ series for its “feeble gesture” at inclusion.

“I think huge, cleaning warning bells are ringing as the giants rise up with Netflix and Disney Plus especially,” Russell T Davies, who created Queer as Folk and It’s a Sin (one of the best shows of 2021) and served as showrunner for the Doctor Who revival from 2005–2010, said during a virtual Pride month panel for Swansea University. “I think that’s a very great worry. Loki makes one reference to being bisexual once, and everyone’s like, ‘Oh my god, it’s like a pansexual show.’ It’s like one word. He said the word ‘prince,’ and we’re meant to go, ‘Thank you, Disney! Aren’t you marvelous?’ It’s a ridiculous, craven, feeble gesture towards the vital politics and the stories that should be told.”

In the scene, Sylvie asks Loki (who is gender fluid) about his love life and whether he’s been involved with any “would-be princesses, or perhaps another prince.” He replies, “A bit of both. I suspect the same as you.” Davies is concerned that streaming shows will “damn us” with “their condescension in the end” when it comes to LGBTQ+ stories. But Loki director Kate Herron, who called it her goal “to acknowledge Loki was bisexual,” hopes the MCU will continue to explore the character’s bisexuality in the future.

“I don’t know plans for the future with Loki — I’m so focused on this story. But I would say that part of my thinking was, well, if it’s canon and it’s acknowledged, then yeah I hope there’s obviously more road to travel with that aspect of his personality. And I hope it has opened the door to more stories, definitely,” she told Collider.

(Via Pink News)

If commercial and critical success had anything to do with which of Stephen King’s stories were his all-time favorites, you might expect to see It, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, The Shining, Carrie, and a whole lot of other familiar tales on that list. However, it turns out the “King of Horror” has some slightly unpredictable takes on which of his stories he thinks are the best. In an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Colbert asked King what his favorite Stephen King stories are and his top five are a bit surprising.

The first title King shared was his short story “Survivor Type,” which was first published in the 1982 horror anthology Terrors and was later included in King’s 1985 collection Skeleton Crew. The story, which King once said in an interview “goes a little bit too far, even for me,” follows a surgeon who is marooned on an island and resorts to eating parts of himself to survive until… he doesn’t. It’s an interesting and incredibly grisly choice, even by King standards.

The next short story King mentioned was “The Body” which you might recognize by its more well-known film adaptation Stand By Me. Interestingly enough, “The Body” was also published in 1982, making that year a pretty big one for King, apparently. “The Body” follows a man as recounts the year he and his group of friends found the body of a young boy in hopes of becoming famous for the discovery. It’s a grim coming-of-age story that delves into how just children process death.

As for what novels King likes best, the author shared that The Stand, Misery, and Lisey’s Story are among his favorites. In the year 2021, The Stand is an interesting choice considering the behemoth of a book is all about a virus that all but wipes out mankind and feels a little too close to home. This also might be part of the reason the new CBS miniseries based on the book didn’t fare too well when it premiered in December of 2020. Misery and Lisey’s Story are also curious choices, albeit for different reasons. Both titles revolve around a male author and the mania and madness surrounding them, leading many to believe they might come from a fairly personal place — though perhaps that is what makes them so resonant to King.

All in all, we shouldn’t be all that surprised that such an unconventional person would have some unconventional takes on his own catalog. If anything, it just means now we have a few new titles to go back and check out.

Well, that moved quickly. After The White Lotus creator Mike White recently revealed that discussions for a second season were happening, but were “unresolved” at the moment, HBO has officially confirmed that the show all your cool friends are talking about is returning for a second “installment.” While initially announced as a limited series, The White Lotus — which airs its first season finale this weekend — will now become an anthology as the next chapter will involve new guests and a new location, according to HBO:

With the finale episode debuting this Sunday, THE WHITE LOTUS is a social satire set at an exclusive Hawaiian resort and follows the vacations of various hotel guests over the span of a week as they relax and rejuvenate in paradise. But with each passing day, a darker complexity emerges in these picture-perfect travelers, the hotel’s cheerful employees and the idyllic locale itself. Episodes are available to stream on HBO Max.

The next chapter of THE WHITE LOTUS leaves Hawaii behind and follows a different group of vacationers as they jet to another White Lotus property and settle in temporarily amongst its inhabitants.

Shortly, before the season two renewal was confirmed, White spoke to Entertainment Weekly where he revealed the reasoning behind switching to a new location if HBO gives the green light on the next installment, which we now know is a “go.”

“We would go somewhere different because there’s no way we could be able to afford the Four Seasons in Maui, not in a pandemic,” White said. “So yeah, it would have to be The White Lotus: Kyoto or something. Which would be fun too, because we could get into culture clash ideas and stuff like that.” So the gears are already turning, it appears. This is good news.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

While the NFL’s vaccination rate leaguewide has increased to over 90 percent, there remain a few prominent holdouts who have found themselves in the news recently. Kirk Cousins missed some of training camp as a close contact and made headlines by talking about how he planned on putting up plexiglass all over the Vikings facility in places like the QB room to protect himself and teammates instead of just getting the vaccine.

In Baltimore, Lamar Jackson missed time as well after testing positive for the second time since last year, as he missed a game during the 2020 season after a positive test. Jackson spoke with the media recently and said he still didn’t plan on getting the vaccine despite a second positive test. On Tuesday morning, Stephen A. Smith and Max Kellerman pointed out how ridiculous that was on ESPN’s First Take, with Kellerman calling out the absurdity of people believing they can do better independent research on the internet than doctors and scientists.

Smith leaned more on the football side of things when speaking about how irresponsible it is for Jackson, as the quarterback of the team, to refuse the vaccine and put his teammates at risk — citing that they had to bring the same energy for Jackson they had for Cousins, saying Jackson’s situation was arguably more “egregious” since he’s already had it twice. He particularly took issue with Jackson saying he’d talk to his teammates to see how they felt, wondering how a supposed leader of the team could have gone this long without having those conversations.

“It’s incredibly alarming that he’s 24 years of age and he says, ‘Well, I got to talk to my teammates.’ Well, where the hell have you been?” Smith said. “Have you not been talking to them? What have you been doing?”

He also echoed Kellerman’s sentiment about athletes in particular saying they want to know everything in the vaccine when they regularly take pain injections and supplements from team doctors and their nutritionists without nearly the same screening process.

“Suddenly you need to know everything and all the ingredients about this vaccine when throughout your professional career, your collegiate career, stuff was injected into your body that you had limited knowledge about,” Smith ranted. “Give me a break. Come on man. It’s ridiculous.”

We’ll have to see if Jackson’s conversations with teammates change his mind, but there’s no doubt that, at minimum, he is keeping the Ravens in a precarious position by not getting the vaccine given the NFL’s policies this coming season.

It is, sadly, not often that boxing gets its biggest stars in the ring together, which is why mega-fights draw so much buzz. Typically, promotor/network issues and prickly negotiations come in between the best of the best meeting, but Manny Pacquiao and Errol Spence Jr. had managed to clear all of those hurdles and were prepared to meet in less than a week’s time in Las Vegas for a welterweight showdown between the legend and the current WBC and IBF champ.

It was a highly anticipated bout, but with just 11 days out from the fight, Spence has had to withdraw after finding he had a torn retina in his left eye that will require immediate surgery, as announced on Tuesday. In his place, Yordenis Ugas, the new WBA welterweight champion, will step in on short notice to face Pacquiao.

Pacquiao will go from an underdog against Spence to a heavy favorite against Ugas, and hopefully the fight with Spence can be remade in the not too distant future once Spence has healed and is able to return to the ring. For now, boxing fans will have to deal with another disappointing late cancellation of a fight and hope Pacquiao-Ugas can deliver a surprise in the form of a good fight — although taking a fight with Pacquiao on late notice seems like a tough ask.

Boundary-pushing hyperpop artist Dorian Electra tackled the darkest corners of the internet with their 2020 LP My Agenda. After exposing harmful online culture with the album’s 11 songs, Electra handed off My Agenda to their producer friends to rework some of the tracks for a deluxe version of the album.

Electra heralded their My Agenda (Deluxe) LP with a new version of “M’Lady” remixed by S3RL. The reworked song takes the original version up a few notches, layering a pulsating beat over skittering synths to compliment featured artist Kero Kero Bonito’s saccharine vocals.

Listen to “M’Lady (S3RL Remix) above, check out the My Agenda (Deluxe) cover art, tracklist, and 2022 tour dates below.

1. “F the World” Feat. The Garden, Quay Dash and D0llywood1
2. “My Agenda” Feat. Village People and Pussy Riot
3. “Gentleman”
4. “M’Lady”
5. “Iron Fist” Feat. Faris Badwan
6. “Barbie Boy” Feat. Sega Bodega
7. “Sorry Bro (I Love You)”
8. “Monk Mode (Interlude)” Feat. Gaylord
9. “Edgelord” Feat. Rebecca Black
10. “Ram It Down” Feat. Mood Killer, Lil Mariko and Lil Texas
11. “Give Great Thanks”
12. “My Agenda (Anamanaguchi Remix)” Feat. Village People and Pussy Riot
13. “Gentleman (d0llywood1 Remix)” Feat. Danny Brown
14. “M’Lady (S3RL Remix)” Feat. Kero Kero Bonito
15. “Iron Fist (Alice Glass Remix)” Feat. Faris Badwan and Alice Glass
16. “Edgelord (Johann Sebastian Bach Remix)” Feat. The Joker, Savage Ga$p and Rebecca Black
17. “Barbie Boy (ElyOtto Remix)” Feat. ElyOtto
18. “Crusader”
19. “Strapping Young Lads”
20. “1 Pill 2 Pill”
21. “Chainmail”
22. “Give Great Thanks (Count Baldor Edit)”
23. “F the World (Acoustic Version)”

01/20 — Seattle, WA @ Neumos
01/21 — Vancouver, BC @ Venue Nightclub
01/22 — Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
01/25 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Soundwell
01/26 — Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre
01/28 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
01/29 — Chicago, IL @ Metro
02/01 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
02/04 — Washington, DC @ 9:30 Club
02/05 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
02/08 — Detroit, MI @ Tangent Gallery
02/10 — Toronto, ON @ Phoenix Concert Hall
02/11 — Montréal, QC @ Théâtre Fairmount
02/12 — Boston, MA @ Royale
02/15 — Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
02/16 — Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
02/18 — Dallas, TX @ Trees
02/19 — Houston, TX –Warehouse Live @ Studio
02/20 — Austin, TX @ The Parish
02/23 — Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
02/25 — San Francisco, CA @ August Hall
03/02 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre
04/01 — London, England
04/04 — Dublin, Ireland
04/05 — Glasgow, Scotland
04/06 — Manchester, England
04/07 — Bristol, England
04/10 — Brighton, England
04/12 — Brussels, Belgium
04/13 — Amsterdam, The Netherlands
04/14 — Paris, France
04/16 — Milan, Italy
04/20 — Zurich, Germany
04/21 — Prague, Czech Republic
04/25 — Berlin, Germany,
04/26 — Warsaw, Poland
04/27 — Poznan, Poland
04/28 — Krakow, Poland
04/30 — Moscow, Russia
05/01 — St. Petersburg, Russia

My Agenda Deluxe is out 11/5. Pre-order it here.

Most of us who have had kids have experienced the WTF-I-literally-looked-away-for-two-seconds chaos of toddlerhood. One of my daughters walked out of the ice cream shop at the zoo with another family while I was looking at ice cream flavors when she was three. If you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to understand how quickly a wee one can get away from you when you unpeel your eyes from then even for a few seconds.

Fortunately, most of us don’t experience such moments on live television in front of a huge audience. That’s not the case for Morgan Tucker, mom of 2-year-old Zaydek, though.

Tucker told Good Morning America that she turned her head for just a second during the pro soccer match in Cincinnati Saturday night, which gave Zaydek just enough time to duck under the fence and sprint onto the pitch about 70 minutes into the game. To make matters even more mortifying, Tucker and her family were sitting in club seats on the sidelines as guests of her employer when this happened. The dash and chase and slide-tackle-scoop-up were captured on video, and even from a bird’s eye view, it’s hilarious.

Go, little man, go.

We hope this mother and her young pitch invader are having a great day. 😂
https://t.co/hKfwa6wyWI

— Major League Soccer (@MLS)
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Cincinnati Enquirer photojournalist Sam Greene managed to get a close-up pic of mom and kiddo as they rushed back to the sidelines and shared it on Twitter, writing, “A young pitch invader was quickly scooped up by their own personal security detail without incident.”

Zaydek and his mom had a great time at the game https://t.co/53TgisKvis

— Sam Greene (@SGdoesit)
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Normally, a field streaker would not get their big moment televised, as giving such folks the attention they seek only encourages more people to disrupt games. But the pure innocence and obliviousness of a toddler racing to join the big boys and a mom hastily chasing after him is just too adorable not to share.

“He was just running after them,” Tucker told GMA. “He was just laughing and had no idea what he did.”

Tucker said she was worried Zaydek was going to get hit in the head with a soccer ball. He had been enjoying the game but would be upset when the players would run to the other side of the field. He wanted to be right there with them.

Clearly, she never expected that he would actually try to join them on the pitch. As she ran out to grab him, the reaction from the crowd made it clear that he was noticed.

“Everyone was screaming and cheering and I knew they were not cheering for the game,” she said. “My face was as red as a tomato.”

However, according to TODAY, the gameplay never even stopped. Kiddo bolted onto the field just when the players were heading in the other direction, mom dashed and grabbed with lightning-fast reflexes, and all was well. Phew.

At least the Tucker family will always have a fun story to tell at parties.

Before dropping her 2020 debut album Heaven & Hell, Ava Max had been hard at work on her music career. Already boasting over a billion streams on Spotify, her singles “Sweet But Psycho” and “Salt” went No. 1 in several countries upon their release. But her music’s success didn’t happen over night. Speaking with Uproxx for the How I Blew Up series, Max describes being fired from a few jobs before her music career took off.

In the How I Blew Up episode, Max said she knew she had always wanted to be a singer. But she was briefly swayed by outside voices, who convinced her that becoming a pop star was a “one-in-a-billion” chance. “So I started getting a bunch of 9-5 jobs. I started getting fired — I wasn’t very good at any of them,” Max says.

The singer tried a brief stint as a nail salon receptionist, but she was let go after struggling with the math aspect of the job. “It was not my cup of tea,” she notes. Eventually, Max began selling hair straighteners at a mall kiosk. The singer describes the gig as “fun,” but said she quit after being reprimanded for showing up late with a cappuccino in hand every morning.

Eventually, Max’s song “Anyone But You” blew up on SoundCloud and led to a record deal with Atlantic. Thanks to the success of Heaven & Hell, it’s not likely that Max will have to go back to a 9-5 job any time soon.

Watch the latest episode of How I Blew Up with Ava Max above.

Ava Max is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Biz Markie’s iconic hit “Just A Friend” is a prime example that technical skill isn’t everything when it comes to music. While the late rapper wouldn’t be considered by many to be a skilled singer in a traditional sense, his passionately sung hook on the song remains one of the most memorable in the history of recorded music. Markie’s producer/cousin DJ Cool V recently spoke about the moment he and Markie recorded that hook, and he paints picture of a heartwarming scene.

He told HipHopDX:

“People called me crazy for letting him do that record. I’m in the studio, he wanted to do it so bad, but I got to get the whole album done before the deadline. I was almost done except for maybe three or four records, because Biz didn’t like to stay in the studio. So, I made him fight and fight and do records and do records. He was coming along so good with the other records. I said, ‘OK, OK, you finally can do it.’

I got him in the booth and he was singing, and even though it might not be perfectly correct to anybody else, the feeling of it was good. He had his fist balled up and he was really trying. He was really, really crooning, and I said, ‘That’s it.’ And he had one take. Then he had another take that was not as good as the first one. So I took the first one and put it with the next one. So it’s the same one, twice. He did both of them and he did them very well and maximized it too. He did it as best he could do it — and it was good enough for me.

Everybody called us crazy, like, ‘Yo, you going to really let him do that?’ I said, ‘Man, he feeling it. I got a good feeling about this record.’ And we did it. It just took off. It morphed into something that we could never imagine.”

Cool V went on to note, however, that neither he nor Markie ever made any money from the song. Citing Markie signing “an incredibly bad contract” and other factors as the reason for that, he said, “The sweetness comes in that we were able to perform it for almost 31 years. And now comes the other side of it — we never made money off the record. I still haven’t got paid for that record. It trickled down. So, we never made money off the record. But, we made the money off the shows and we had a great performing career. But now it gets back to the bittersweet because every time I hear it, it’s going to remind me of Biz, but it’s also going to remind me of how I can’t make more money off of it. Everybody’s feeding their family off our work and we’ve never made money off that record.”

Revisit “Just A Friend” below.

In early July, Hugh Jackman either intentionally or unintentionally triggered a massive rumor mill after he shared an Instagram Story that included a photo with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige. Granted, the two go way back thanks to Feige’s time as a producer on the X-Men films that rocketed Jackman to superstardom, but that didn’t stop fans from going wild with theories that he’s returning as Wolverine. The rumors ranged from Jackman just straight-up continuing to be Wolverine in the MCU to the actor making a cameo in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness and/or Spider-Man: No Way Home.

But after a month of letting the Wolverine rumors run rampant, Jackman finally addressed the situation in a new interview with Jake Hamilton. According to Jackman, nothing has changed, and he meant it when he said that Logan was his last outing as the clawed Canadian mutant. Via Comic Book:

“I’m hearing about this from you [Hamilton], and there’s nothing in my inbox from Kevin Feige means it’s probably, no matter what idea I came up with, not on the table,” he explained. “Let’s just be clear that, but now, I realized, before we shot Logan, I was like, we got the idea. We knew what it was going to be-ish, right? And I thought this is it. And that really helped me, it really helped knowing I was going into my last season, that it was my last season that I made the most of it. And it’s still a character I hold close to my heart. But I know it’s done.”

While that response feels pretty definitive, it should be noted that “I haven’t heard anything” has become the go-to answer for actors rumored to be making an MCU cameo thanks to the multiverse shenanigans that are now officially on the table following the Loki season finale. The Amazing Spider-Man star Andrew Garfield gave a similar response back in May when he finally responded to rumors that he’ll be making an appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

However, in Jackman’s case, Logan was the perfect ending to his portrayal of Wolverine, so it would make sense for the actor to err towards leaving the character on a high note. Then again, there’s always the allure of blowing fans’ minds with one last surprise, so who knows?

(Via Jake’s Takes)