Category: News

Jorja Smith is a supportive confidant in the new video for “Home” from her lovelorn EP, Be Right Back. While the song’s lyrics debate leaving behind a picturesque but unfulfilling relationship for an uncertain future, the video portrays this dynamic visually, with Jorja playing the role of the nanny of a couple whose relationship has played itself out. As the wife contemplates telling her husband, lip-syncing the lyrics through a dinner party and a play date, Jorja looks on in supportive silence, letting her work through her tangled emotions.

“Home” is the fourth single from the EP after “Gone,” “Bussdown,” and “Addicted,” which arrived ahead of the rollout, and though all four songs convey different moods, they retain the through-line of pursuing personal freedom in lieu of the expectations of a stable relationship. Be Right Back was the British singer’s first project since 2018’s Lost & Found, her debut album containing the hit single “Blue Lights.”

Since then, Smith has released a number of non-album singles, including the Burna Boy-featuring “Be Honest,” as well as the wisftul “Come Over” with Jamaican dancehall star Popcaan. She also commented on the wave of 2020 anti-racist uprisings with “By Any Means.”

Watch Jorja Smith’s “Home” video above.

In a passionate plea on Thursday morning, The View‘s Meghan McCain called on the FBI to essentially bust down doors and free Britney Spears from her conservatorship. McCain’s comments were in response to Spears’ explosive court testimony that she is forced to have an IUD in place to prevent pregnancy and is repeatedly prescribed questionable amounts of psychiatric medications to keep her compliant and working so her family can live off her financial empire.

During her remarks, McCain praised the #FreeBritney movement while accepting blame for being part of the media that has been “brutally unkind” and didn’t listen to Spears. “I actually believe this has reached the level where the FBI needs to be involved and extradite her from her home, away from these people at this very moment, because these are people that can continue the abuse in realtime,” McCain said.

After stating that Spears is “ostensibly a slave,” McCain went so far as to call the situation a human trafficking issue to bolster her claim that the FBI needs to get involved. Via Mediaite:

“I am sadly not surprised by this, but it’s much more extreme than I ever could have possibly imagined. I feel horrible for her,” McCain said. “I hope to God they get her out of this environment and this situation today. I think it is at that level, and if this were any other person not named Britney Spears, this is a human trafficking issue, and it should be treated as such.”

McCain’s thoughts were echoed by her co-hosts on The View including Sunny Hostin, who is an attorney and called Spears’ conservatorship “unprecedented” and “highly unusual.”

(Via The View on Twitter & Mediaite)

Damian Lillard is the latest athlete to speak out in response to Los Angeles Sparks star Nneka Ogwumike’s snub from the USA 2020 Tokyo Olympic women’s basketball team. The NBA All-Star took to Twitter on Wednesday night and said that “they doin Nneka Ogwumike dirty smh.”

Ogwumike’s omission from Team USA’s roster was a shock to basketball fans. The 6’2 forward was the MVP of the 2020 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament, was one of eight athletes invited to Team USA’s college tour against top-10 NCAA programs in 2019, won gold medals at the 2014 and 2018 FIBA World Cups, and has been one of the WNBA’s biggest stars for the last decade. She’s the only former WNBA MVP to not make an Olympic roster.

Lillard is part of a long list to call out Ogwumike’s cut, including her former teammate Candace Parker, sister Erica, teammate and sister Chiney, head coach Derek Fisher, Hall of Fame inductee Lisa Leslie, and former WNBA player Devereaux Peters.

“Of course I’ve reached out to Nneka,” Parker said. “I think that there’s a number of women that are deserving. That’s not taking away from anyone on the team. Shoutout to Chelsea Gray for being the point guard. I was so excited that they didn’t mess that up, and put her on the team because she’s one of the best guards in the entire world. There’s a number of players that are deserving. I mean, when you’re the United States, you could field a first, second and third team and probably win gold, silver, and bronze. At the same time, I know there’s a lot of deserving women, but how many times are we going to say it’s unfair, right? How many times are we going to say that it’s not politics? I think we all know that. I hit Nneka, I was like ‘Listen, it sucks. It’s unfair. All that. Blah, blah, blah. You’re one of the greats. You’re the only MVP not to make the Olympic team.’ Which is bullsh*t. But that’s what it is, right? That’s why I’m commentating in Tokyo.”

Over the summer, Wendy’s will be introducing some new, yet-to-be-announced items. And while we’re not sure what their gand plans are just yet, we have a feeling everything is going to lean on the spicy side. That starts today with the first drop in the bunch — a new dipping sauce named “Ghost Pepper Ranch.”

While the sauce won’t arrive at your local Wendy’s until July 12th, they sent us a box along with some nuggets and fries so we could have an early taste and give you the full rundown of what to expect. My hope was that the sauce would take Wendy’s already spicy nuggets and bring them to a tear-inducing state. You’d think after eating 15 Flamin’ Hot chips and ranking them, I’d have had my fill of spicy foods, but nope — I’m always here for more heat.

Let’s get into the sauce!

Ghost Pepper Ranch

On Fries

After sampling a dab of Ghost Pepper Ranch straight up, I went ahead and dipped some of Wendy’s fries in the sauce to see how intense the flavor was when paired with actual food. The sauce imparted a highly savory, almost butter-like creaminess to the french fries. I expected a burn given the use of Ghost Pepper but the heat was really subtle here, compounding onto itself the more you have. Still, for something made with Ghost Peppers — which range between 800,000 – 1,001,300 Scoville Heat Units, making them hotter than habanero peppers and, according to Wikipedia, 400 times hotter than Tabasco — I expected a more pronounced kick.

The heat does eventually build up in the back of the throat, but not in a way that is going to have you reaching for water or soda in an attempt to ease the burning sensation. I would describe it to friends as: “present but nonintrusive.”

On Nuggets

The sauce is good on fries, but it really comes alive with Wendy’s spicy nuggets. The pairing of flavors is so perfect that I’m willing to guess Wendy’s tested this sauce with these nuggets specifically in mind. When the creamy buttermilk ranch combines with the craggy coating of the nuggets, with its black pepper and cayenne-forward flavors, the fruity sweet notes of the ghost pepper start to emerge, offering a sweet-then-savory finish that helps to elevate the nuggets in both flavor and heat.

The real strength of this sauce is that Wendy’s doesn’t use it as a spicy gimmick for us nugget fans. This isn’t a sauce that you have to eat as a dare, it’s not going to inspire any social media content showing over-spiced freakouts. It’s accessible and makes an already great menu item, the spicy nuggets, even better.

The Bottom Line:

Wendy’s new Ghost Pepper Ranch isn’t as spicy as you’d think and certainly not as spicy as I personally wanted it to be, but with the way it adds subtle sweetness and heat to Wendy’s spicy chicken batter — it’s easily one of Wendy’s best sauces. I love it as a dip, but I’m hoping Wendy’s gets brave and puts it on one of their chicken sandwiches. My pick would be the Asiago Ranch Chicken Club, as it already uses ranch as its sauce of choice.

A Ghost Pepper Asiago Ranch Chicken Club spicy style would be one of the best chicken sandwich experiences in the fast food universe and the Wendy’s spicy nuggs paired with this sauce is already a classic combo.

Because Olivia Rodrigo‘s debut single and smash hit “Drivers License” was released during a global pandemic, the singer was not able to share her music with a live audience until five months later when she took 2021 Brit Awards stage for her TV debut performance. The set went smoothly, but the same can’t be said about the days leading up to the event. Apparently, Rodrigo thought she accidentally had carbon monoxide poisoning before taking the stage.

Rodrigo sat down for a spicy interview on the acclaim hot sauce challenge Hot Ones. Her Twitter bio may read “spicy pisces,” but she apparently has a low tolerance for hot foods. As someone who thinks bell peppers are spicy, Rodrigo was visibly in pain as she was asked to taste increasingly hotter sauces. During the conversation, the singer told the story of how she was extremely sick ahead of her Brit Awards performance:

“We were quarantining in this little 18th century English cottage in the countryside. It was so cold and we couldn’t figure out how to turn on the central air and heating, but they had a fireplace. So we lit the fireplace all the time and that’s how we kept warm. I remember one day waking up and it was so smokey. I think I got mild carbon monoxide poisoning because the whole day I couldn’t stop throwing up in this English countryside house. I recovered, I don’t know if I had carbon monoxide poisoning but I was very sick for a day.”

Watch Rodrigo’s full interview on Hot Ones above.

It wasn’t long ago that Microsoft was wondering why it is they had an Xbox division in the first place. The Xbox One wasn’t a colossal failure by any means, but it was a console that failed to inspire. Years later, Microsoft’s tone has completely changed. Not only are they fully behind the Xbox, but they’ve made a massive push to include PC gaming on Windows.

With Windows 11 on the way, Microsoft is at the point where it’s going to begin hyping up and sharing with everyone why they should be switching over to the newest operating system as soon as possible. One part of that push is how Windows 11 is going to be an OS that is beneficial to gamers. Throwing support behind the Xbox is one thing, but it’s become clear that Microsoft as a whole is going to make gaming a huge part of its future – and Windows 11 is going to make it a centerpiece.

With DirectStorage, which will only be available with Windows 11, games can quickly load assets to the graphics card without bogging down the CPU. This means you’ll get to experience incredibly detailed game worlds rendered at lightning speeds, without long load times. “DirectStorage Optimized” Windows 11 PCs are configured with the hardware and drivers needed to enable this amazing experience.

To put the above quote in layman’s terms, if you have a gaming PC and you play on Windows 11 you’re going to have a smoother experience than you would on competing OSs. Of course, everyone that is involved in PC gaming has known that Windows is the place to be, but it’s been rare to see Microsoft as a company throw itself behind gaming. Giving their support to the Xbox is one thing, but Windows OS is what the entire company is built on. This is a sign of support that Microsoft has rarely shown to the gaming side of its’ company in the past.

All of this does line up with how Microsoft and Xbox have been approaching this console generation so far. They want people in the Microsoft ecosystem on Gamepass. We’ve seen this with their push into the cloud and we will continue to see it in the future. Microsoft, as a company, is all in on gaming and Windows 11 is going to be another example of that support.

I’m not a religious man, but there is one holy holiday that I celebrate: Toretto Tuesday.

Every Tuesday, fans of the Fast & Furious franchise (FotFFF, for short) share their love for not only Dominic Toretto, but also Brian O’Conner, Letty Ortiz, Roman Pearce, Tej Parker, “Justice for” Han Lue, and the rest of the family, on social media. There are Tumblr photoshops; tweets (F9 star John Cena is a recent convert); and countless tributes to the late Paul Walker. I can’t locate the first use of #TorettoTuesday, but the term / way of life dates back to at least 2015 (it really took off around the release of Furious 7) and was originated by Vin Diesel, because of course it was. Vin Diesel *is* Fast & Furious, even if he doesn’t star in two of the nine movies (arguably the two weakest). He’s the lead, he’s the producer, he’s the franchise architect, he’s the guy who calls out freaking Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — our future president — for not doing a good enough job.

But Diesel wasn’t the studio’s first choice to play Dom Toretto.

In 1995, Diesel’s directorial debut, Multi-Facial, was selected for screening at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. The short, which he also starred in, wrote, produced, and provided the score of, caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who cast the California-born actor in 1998’s Saving Private Ryan. That same year, Vibe published a story, “Racer X,” about New York City’s underground racing scene. “I was making The Skulls with Paul [Walker] and [director] Rob [Cohen], and we were looking for another movie to do together, and Universal approached me about this article in Vibe,” The Fast and the Furious producer Neal H. Moritz told EW. “I’ve always loved movies about subcultures and I knew Paul really loved car racing.” Walker was cast as Brian O’Conner, an undercover cop who’s tasked with investigating the street race scene.

The Fast and the Furious had its Brian, but still needed a Dominic, the family-loving street racing king who lives his life a quarter-mile at a time. It’s obvious in retrospect (and even at the time) that Universal Pictures should have targeted Vin Diesel and only Vin Diesel for the role — his last name is literally Diesel (actually, it’s Sinclair, but you get the idea). But the studio had another actor in mind. “The studio said, ‘If you get Timothy Olyphant to play the role of Dominic Toretto, the movie’s greenlit.’ We went to Tim and he passed, and we wondered if we were going to get to make it,” Moritz revealed.

Look, I love Timothy Olyphant. Justified is one of my favorite shows of all-time, and I was delighted when he popped up in The Mandalorian, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Fargo. But he would have been a terrible Dom. He thinks so too. “It’s not my thing,” he said about turning down the role. “With me, I just thought, ‘Well, this will just be stupid.’ And I thought no one’s going to want to see this movie eight or nine different times. I mean, by the third or fourth sequel, people are going to definitely get bored of it.”

Olyphant, who has his own fast cars movie in Gone in 60 Seconds, does not have the right energy to play Dominic — he would not be able to say lines like, “You don’t turn your back on family, even when they do,” without a smirk. Diesel genuinely believes in what he’s saying. Fast & Furious is also one of the most racially diverse franchises, and having two white dudes, Olyphant and Walker, as the leads, would not have set a good precedent.

After Olyphant declined the part, Moritz’s attention turned to Diesel. “I had seen Pitch Black and knew Vin from [Multi-Facial], and I had convinced the studio that he had to be the guy,” he said. “We had our first meeting at the famed Kate Mantilini’s in Los Angeles, and I remember I’m sitting at the bar waiting for him, and, boy, when those doors opened, it was like there was a klieg light on him — here comes the biggest star in the world.” He’s not wrong: Diesel is in three of the 10 highest-grossing movies of all-time (Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, Furious 7), but he was initially hesitant to play Dom. His reaction to reading the script for the first time: “Eh, I don’t know.”

Here’s co-writer David Ayer (Suicide Squad) on working with Diesel to fix the movie:

“I sat down with Vin and really created that character with him. Yeah, there were characters in the script but it needed life, it needed to become real, it needed to become dimensional. He had a few really specific ideas about the character, and those little touchstones he handed me became something I could flesh out. It’s an honor to help an actor create and achieve a vision.”

Moritz added, “There’s nobody else that could have been Dominic Toretto. There would be no Fast & Furious without Vin in that role.” It’s hard to imagine Olyphant making “a trip to Cuba to understand the character,” as Diesel did, to play Dom. So why didn’t Vin, ever protective of his character, return for 2 Fast 2 Furious? Basically, he thought the script was terrible. When asked about the advice he would have given to himself years later, Diesel answered, “I would’ve said, ‘Don’t walk away from it just because the script sucked in 2 Fast 2 Furious because there’s an obligation to the audience to fight, no matter what, to make that film as good as possible.’ Just walking away doesn’t help that saga at all. I might have had a little bit more patience or belief in the long-term of it.”

He also had the siren song of The Chronicles of Riddick calling him.

Diesel returned for an uncredited cameo in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but after the Justin Lin-directed film made almost $100 million less than 2 Fast 2 Furious, “the talk internally was that the franchise was played out,” Jeffrey Kirschenbaum, the co-president of production at Universal Pictures, told The Wrap. “At that point, we were weighing whether to go straight to video or not for future sequels. We weren’t sure what we were going to do.” But the studio wisely figured that the Tokyo Drift audience would go “ballistic” for Diesel’s cameo (they did), so an offer was made: “They said, ‘You haven’t returned to this franchise, but if you do this cameo, we’ll let you produce this thing into a true continuation piece of the first story.’ That’s how it all started,” he said. Diesel getting the rights to the Riddick character also sweetened the deal.

Vin was back, baby. Fast & Furious made $363 million at the international box office, dwarfing the totals from 2 Fast 2 Furious ($236 million) and Tokyo Drift ($158 million). From there, the franchise hit a new level of popularity, including two films, Furious 7 and The Fate of the Furious, that grossed over $1 billion worldwide. Even without Hobbs and Shaw (it’s a sore subject), the nine films have made well over $5 billion. If the studio had gone with Olyphant, Fast & Furious would have long ago stalled out as a direct-to-video curiosity; it might not have even made it to the VOD-era.

That would be a shame, because if there’s one thing I love, it’s:

One of the biggest questions facing any NBA team this offseason centers around Ben Simmons’ future with the Philadelphia 76ers. Following a playoff meltdown in which Simmons struggled mightily in a seven-game Eastern Conference Semifinal loss to the Atlanta Hawks, calls are louder than ever for the two sides to part ways.

Philly is taking a more pragmatic approach to Simmons’ offseason. President of basketball operations Daryl Morey did not make a definitive statement about the All-Star point forward’s future, saying that while “none of us can predict the future of what’s going to happen,” they “love” what Simmons brings to the table.

Still, the team is in a position where due diligence is required, and according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Morey and general manager Elton Brand met with Simmons’ agent, Rich Paul, to discuss the future.

Paul engaged the Sixers on whether it makes sense to work together to find a trade before the start of next season, but no request was made and the sides are expected to continue talking ahead of the July 29 NBA draft and August free agency, sources said.

…

Teams have been using the Chicago pre-draft camp to gauge the Sixers’ interest in trade packages, sources said, although Philadelphia remains reluctant to break up the tandem of Joel Embiid and Simmons without maximizing a return and exhausting all possibilities to improve Simmons’ offense, sources said.

Simmons, who is signed through the next four seasons and is owed approximately $147 million, played well in the team’s first round win over the Washington Wizards, but looked like a shell of himself against the Hawks. Simmons averaged 9.9 points, 8.6 assists, 6.3 rebounds, and 1.3 steals against Atlanta while shooting 60 percent from the field. His most prominent issue was his free throw shooting, as he connected on 33.3 percent of his attempts from the charity stripe.

Rudy Giuliani‘s relentless (if not crazed) work pushing the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election has finally caught up with the once famed attorney. Through a court order issued on Thursday, Giuliani has been suspended from practicing law in the state due to his “demonstrably false and misleading statements” to court officials, lawmakers, and the entire American public. To throw salt in the wounds, the court order specifically states that Trump lost the election, and it was not “stolen” from him through fraud.

“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court wrote. “We conclude that respondent’s conduct immediately threatens the public interest and warrants interim suspension from the practice of law, pending further proceedings before the Attorney Grievance Committee.”

Of course, this latest development is just one of the many legal woes facing Giuliani. He’s currently embroiled in an investigation over his part in the Ukraine scandal that led to Trump’s impeachment. Giuliani’s home and office were raided by the feds in such a way that his attorneys complained he’s being treated like “the head of a drug cartel or a terrorist.”

Giuliani also reportedly hasn’t been paid for his work for Trump that’s placed him in constant legal jeopardy up to and including having his law license suspended.

(Via Axios)

While most of us would love to never have to interact with Jared Kushner in person at any point in our lives, former president Donald Trump is reportedly annoyed that the 6’ 3” version of the doll from The Boy who he calls his son-in-law is trying to distance himself from the Trump name. While reports are swirling that Jared and Ivanka Trump are getting tired of hearing her pops bitch and moan about the “stolen” 2020 election, #45 seems more annoyed about being ghosted by Jared than his own flesh-and-blood (if that is indeed what Trumps are made of).

While appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 on Wednesday night, CNN anchor Jim Acosta—the man who recently dubbed Tucker Carlson the Fox News ‘Bullsh*t Factory’ Employee Of The Month—reported that people close to Trump say he’s grumbling about feeling “used” by slumlord-turned-failed Middle East peacemaker Kushner.

“It sounds as that Jared and Ivanka are trying to treat Trump as the coffee boy in all of this. I never thought I would see that day. I did talk to a long-time Trump adviser today who said, ‘You know what, Trump feels used by Jared Kushner.’ There’s a twist, Anderson, that I don’t know if we would ever see—Trump feeling used in all of this.

But listen, as for Jared and Ivanka trying to distance themselves: Keep in mind, I don’t want to go over all of the history in the last four years, but Jared was in charge of Middle East peace in the Trump administration. He had a heavy hand in the COVID response. He was working on, you know, the border wall. He was a campaign adviser and so on. There’s no rehab tour. There’s no PR spinning. There’s no separation that can be put in place between Trump and Jared and Ivanka that is going to wash the blood of January 6th off of their designer suits. It’s just not going to happen. And I think Jared and Ivanka can try this, but I don’t think they’re fooling anybody. I think a lot of people out there see their failures tied very tightly to the failures of former president Donald Trump.”

Acosta also reminded viewers that there were photos from January 6th that showed Ivanka with her father, so it’s clear that she knows exactly what happened on that day. “They could tell all,” Acosta said. “They could tell the public how sorry they are about January 6th and what happened to this country. And until they do that, should anybody really take them seriously? I think not.”

You can watch the full clip below.

(Via Raw Story)