Category: News

Britney Spears speaking about her conservatorship in court recently drew reactions from just about everybody, from Piers Morgan to Chris Crocker from the “Leave Britney Alone” video. The topic found its way into Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show monologue last night and he found a clever way to show his support for Spears.

Colbert started by summarizing the situation. When he mentioned Spears’ father Jamie, there was a smattering of boos from a handful of audience members. He then got into Spears’ court appearance and how she said her conservators should be in jail, which lent itself to a “not that innocent” joke from Colbert.

He wrapped up the segment by using Spears song titles to make his point, flipping through single covers of the corresponding words as he said them. He said,

“I have something to say to the court: Your honor, this conservatorship over Britney Spears is ‘toxic.’ The fact that this is legal is ‘criminal.’ ‘Everytime’ I think of the ‘circus’ around her, I ‘scream and shout’ because this is ‘crazy.’ Britney’s saying, ”I wanna go’ because all these people want a ‘piece of me,” but their response is just, ‘Gimme more.’ Britney, ‘don’t cry.’ You are ‘stronger’ than these ‘womanizers’ and we are ‘lucky’ to have you. Jamie Spears, your daughter deserves to be in control of her own ‘work, b*tch.’ Anyone who doesn’t think so is ‘crazy.’ Oh, I already used that one? Well, ‘oops!… I did it again.’”

It’s a clever bit, so check it out above, starting at about 6:35 into the video.

Jay Williams became the latest Twitter user to use the “I got hacked” excuse after something weird popped up on their account. Following the news that the Boston Celtics opted to hire Brooklyn Nets assistant Ime Udoka as their next head coach, Williams celebrated Udoka for becoming the first head coach of color in franchise history.

That statement is not correct — ex: Bill Russell coached the Celtics and was the first Black head coach in NBA history, Doc Rivers was in charge right before Brad Stevens — so Williams deleted his tweet and came back with the following:

Absolutely no one believed this, and apparently, fellow ESPN basketball analyst Jalen Rose is among that list of folks. The two were on set ahead of Game 3 of Clippers-Suns and spent some time discussing Game 1 of Hawks-Bucks. Williams raised a point where he was correct about how Trae Young would cook Milwaukee’s defense if it employed drop coverage against him, but Rose, being the pro that he is, slipped an “I got hacked” in there as an excuse for being wrong.

Let this be a lesson to all of us: Do not go at Jalen Rose, because he is more than happy to bring stuff like this up on national television.

(Via The Big Lead)

Books, canon-divergent video games, and a burgeoning TV franchise: The Witcher can do it all, and Geralt of Rivia can grunt his way through every leather clad step. Ready your swords, because Andrzej Sapkowski’s highly addictive monster-universe shall be celebrated — on July 9 — during a joint event from CD Projekt Red (the developer of The Witcher video games) and Netflix (the maker of The Witcher TV show). And as this trailer shows, the loner monster hunter isn’t thrilled about it, but that’s possibly because he’s getting no bath time (which is now canon, so c’mon).

Oh, who am I kidding? Even if Geralt got his bath, he’d be sure to grunt before and after, especially if Henry Cavill’s TV take has to witness Jaskier singing, “Toss A Coin,” which is truly the biggest monster of the entire franchise. Never fear, Jaskier got some airtime in this trailer, too.

WitcherCon is set to feature appearances from Cavill, along with Freya Allan (Ciri) and Anya Chalrota (Yennifer), as well as showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich. Expect reveals about the mobile The Witcher: Monster Slayer game and Season 2 of the Netflix series. We’ll hopefully also hear more about the prequel series in development and the upcoming Netflix anime movie, Nightmare of the Wolf. Previously, Netflix’s Geeked Week announced WitcherCon with a breezy “Geralt, meet Geralt,” and this team effort should be a satisfying one for those who wish to roam the Continent.

The event will be held exclusively online on July 9 on YouTube and Twitch, and another stream will run on July 10. As of now, though, Netflix’s The Witcher doesn’t have a Season 2 release date, but let’s cross our fingers for late 2021.

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 — Helen Mirren rules

What’s cool about Helen Mirren is that she looks and sounds almost exactly like you would imagine the Queen of England looks and sounds like if you were only loosely familiar with the monarchy, but she’s also awesome. Both of these things, which seem a little incongruous on paper, are pretty explainable. The first one, the royalty thing, is probably a combination of age and hair and posture and voice and the fact that she has literally played a queen about half a dozen times and the thing where uncultured Americans like me are susceptible to seeing all of those things and immediately becoming colonists again. It’s probably more on us than her. But still.

The other thing, the one where she’s awesome, is also explainable, although we can’t just wave it away as a result of appearance and 400 years of history. For that, we will need specific examples. Evidence, if you will, to make our case. And the good news here is that we have plenty of it because, for about five or so years now, at least, Helen Mirren has been doing some extremely cool stuff.

Start with the Fast & Furious movies. Helen Mirren — excuse me, Dame Helen Mirren, winner of an Academy Award for playing, you guessed it, the Queen, in a movie literally titled The Queen — straight-up openly campaigned to be in these movies. She more or less begged Vin Diesel through the press. And then she got her wish, landing the role of Jason Statham’s crime lord mother in the eighth movie and reprising it in the Hobbs & Shaw spinoff. Which was cool, for sure, but still not enough for Helen Mirren, because, dammit, Helen Mirren didn’t want to be in these movies as window dressing to class-up the joint. Helen Mirren wanted to drive. Fast. Possibly even furiously.

Which brings us to the ninth movie. And, specifically, to this scene, which was highlighted in the second official trailer.

Hell yes. Helen Mirren is playing Jason Statham’s street racing mother in a franchise that started with Vin Diesel stealing DVD players and now features Ludacris and Tyrese going to space on behalf of the United States government in what appears to be a homemade NoS-powered spaceship. I challenge you to find a single flaw anywhere in that sentence.

And Helen Mirren is not just an action star now, either. She’s also lending her well-earned gravitas and status to one of our silliest comedies, Documentary Now. I hope you are familiar with Documentary Now, both because it is a terrific show and because trying to explain it from a blank start is difficult. I’ll try. Documentary Now is an IFC series produced by Bill Hader and Fred Armisen in which they kind of do parodies of famous documentaries. My favorite example of these is “Juan Likes Rice and Chicken,” a season two episode that adds goofs to the general idea of Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s so good. It’s on Netflix. It’s 30 minutes long. Go watch it.

Anyway, Helen Mirren. The premise of the show is that Documentary Now — a fake show within the real show — is a real program that has been making real documentaries for over 50 seasons and this series is just a selection of some of the best. And to sell all of this to a degree that is just wonderful on a few levels, each one is introduced by, you guessed it, Helen Mirren in the opening moments of the episode. And she is deadly serious in these openings, as she explained to Variety.

Though the “Documentary Now!” titles and scripts are aligned with the show’s satirical tone, Mirren must pretend to be unfazed when she reads each line from the teleprompter live for the first time. She doesn’t see them beforehand — she likes to be surprised.

“You just have to put to one side that this is anything to do with comedy — this is nothing to do with comedy,” Mirren said. “This is very, very serious, and I have to think that I’m presenting an absolutely, profoundly serious documentary and treat it with that sort of respect and seriousness that I would if that was what I was presenting.”

So there’s that. Which is great. But there’s also this: Helen Mirren just started narrating a nature show on ABC called When Nature Calls With Helen Mirren. It is silly and informative and airs directly before America’s Finest Television Program, Holey Moley. That would be enough to warrant the discussion in this section about her doing awesome stuff. It gets better, though. As part of the promotional tour for the show, she appeared on The Tonight Show, and did two notable things:

• Showed a home video of her attempting to shoo off an actual black bear by shouting “naughty bear”
• Zoomed into the show from her damn bathtub

Remarkable. Look.

It’s the best. Helen Mirren is the best. It’s not always easy for actors and actresses — especially actresses — to land quality roles as they advance in age. Hollywood tends to spit people out quickly. But Helen Mirren appears to have made a decision a few years ago that she’s only doing cool stuff that seems fun and she ended up bending parts of Hollywood to her whims. I respect it so much. Helen Mirren is the greatest.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — This is either the worst or best idea I’ve ever seen

This is the trailer for a new Netflix dating show called Sexy Beasts. It is maybe, and I mean this with all the love and affection I can possibly muster, the stupidest thing I have ever seen. Please, if you have not watched it all the way through, take a moment and do that now. Witness dating show perfection. Ignore the fact that the basic premise of this has already been done, at least once, most notably by the show Love Is Blind, because Love Is Blind did not, at any point, to my knowledge, feature anything on the level of a man in a full-on beaver mask listing his priorities in a potential mate thusly:

The harsh truth here is that I doubt I will ever watch a full episode of this show. I’ve already extracted everything from it I could possibly ask for, just here, just from this teaser. Anything beyond this feels like a case of rapidly diminishing returns. But I could be wrong. Lord knows I have been wrong before. Many times. Loud and in public. This is pretty good, though. I’m happy for everyone involved. I hope a couple from this show hits it off and gets married and has a slew of kids and grandkids, and I hope to be watching when one of those kids or grandkids asks them how they met. Eavesdropping at minimum.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — It’s good to see Conan going out with a bang

Conan is the best and has been for a long time. Take a spin through YouTube and run through the highlights. Look around and see his fingerprints on the world of comedy in 2021. He’s influenced an entire generation of people who are now influencing the next generation of people. He’s the Letterman of people who were a little too young for Letterman, and he’s forging a similar career path by moving onto something else once he felt he’d done the late-night thing. His final episode on TBS aired this week and now he’s moving to a whole new thing on HBO Max. I’m excited to see what he does next.

But before he does any of that, he’s taking a much-deserved victory lap. There’s that clip up there with human charisma bomb Paul Rudd showing up in a tuxedo and pulling the same Mac and Me ruse he’s pulled dozens of times. There’s this clip of Conan smoking weed with Seth Rogen on-air and, yes, please do imagine explaining the concept of any of this to a person watching the earliest iterations of his show.

It’s all pretty great. Conan has somehow had both a triumphant and sympathetic run over the years, with high-profile successes and failures playing out extremely in public. His influence is everywhere, first as a writer on The Simpsons and SNL, then as a goofball talk show host, then as someone who hooked into his fandom and the internet to make something new. And he’s not done. I kind of hope he does it forever.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Why did it take so long for us to cast Regina King in a Western?

This is the trailer for an upcoming Netflix movie titled The Harder They Fall. It looks incredibly dope in a lot of ways, as you can tell by watching it or by reading the description and names of all the cool people in it.

When outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) discovers that his enemy Rufus Buck (Idris Elba) is being released from prison he rounds up his gang to track Rufus down and seek revenge. Those riding with him in this assured, righteously new school Western include his former love Stagecoach Mary (Zazie Beetz), his right and left hand men — hot-tempered Bill Pickett (Edi Gathegi) and fast drawing Jim Beckwourth (R.J. Cyler)—and a surprising adversary-turned-ally. Rufus Buck has his own fearsome crew, including “Treacherous” Trudy Smith (Regina King) and Cherokee Bill (LaKeith Stanfield), and they are not a group that knows how to lose.

My only complaint here, to the extent I have one, is that it took us all until 2021 to cast Regina King in a Western. What have we all been doing? Why didn’t we get on this earlier? Regina King is great in everything. She’ll obviously be great in a Western. And I say this as someone who doesn’t even like Westerns that much. Deadwood, Tombstone, I mean, it’s a short list for me. And I’m still stoked. I was stoked at “Idris Elba and Regina King in cowboy hats,” regardless of context. They could have been having lunch al fresco in cowboy hats — not even for a movie, just to chat and eat Caesar salads — and I would have been thrilled. This is even better than that.

I do have one request, though: I’m going to need her to drop at least one emmeffer in here. I’ve said this before, many times, but Regina King is one of her generation’s great cussers, especially when it comes to tossing around an MF or two. Need proof? Won’t just take me at my word? Fine, consider this: This is just a screencap of her saying it, without audio, and it’s already hundreds of percent more convincing than anything you or I could pull off in our angriest and most passionate moment.

Let Regina King cuss. In a cowboy hat. Just once. Or many times. Preferably many times. For me. Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Let’s check in with Vin Diesel on the F9 press tou-…. oh, yes

I have terrific news: The F9 press tour is still taking place. We talked about it last week when Vin Diesel discussed his plans to release an entire album of original music, but we are going to talk about it this week, too, and every week for all of time if, Lord willing, the cast and crew continue doing interviews to support it. That would be fun, if it’s like November and the movie has been out for five months and Vin Diesel is still popping up on magazine covers to give incredible quotes to lucky journalists. Quotes, for example, like the ones in this blockquote, taken from a profile in Men’s Health.

“It was a tough character to embody, the Hobbs character,” Diesel says. “My approach at the time was a lot of tough love to assist in getting that performance where it needed to be. As a producer to say, Okay, we’re going to take Dwayne Johnson, who’s associated with wrestling, and we’re going to force this cinematic world, audience members, to regard his character as someone that they don’t know—Hobbs hits you like a ton of bricks. That’s something that I’m proud of, that aesthetic. That took a lot of work. We had to get there and sometimes, at that time, I could give a lot of tough love. Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing.”

First of all, I love it. Everything about it. I love that Vin Diesel talks about these movies like they’re fine cinema. I love that he’s saying this about a character —Hobbs, the government agent played by The Rock who travels to Brazil to hunt them down — who wears what appears to be child’s medium Under Armor shirts at all times in defiance of physics or biology. I love that Vin Diesel says the word “Felliniesque” and now I need to hear him say it in his gravel-coated voice.

But please do me a favor: Close your eyes right now, maybe put on some white noise really loud so it’s just you and your thoughts, and get a clear mental image of The Rock’s face as he read those words. I’ve been doing this all week and it’s sustained me to a degree that I’ve barely needed to eat food.

And it gets better. Vin appeared on The Kelly Clarkson Show this week, too. Here, look:

What we have here is Vin talking about the casting of John Cena as his secret brother, which is already an amazing collection of words. But let’s really highlight the magic here. Let’s look at these words in their printed form.

“Obviously I’m multicultural. You could’ve cast anybody to be my brother. For two months before I went into filming, I created a shrine where I could do all the combat training, all the stunts and I had the Charger there to simulate the garage to get into the Dom state of mind.”

I need, more than anything else in the world, to see this Dom Shrine, possibly as a DVD extra for F9, possibly via a guided tour by Vin himself. I need this for a bunch of reasons but, mostly, I need it because it appears to be a magical place.

“[Cena] comes into the shrine one morning, and I had this strange feeling…that Paul Walker had sent him.”

Perfect. It’s a perfect movie franchise. None of you can take this away from me. I’m so happy I might float off into the clouds in a homemade NoS-powered spaceship.

ITEM NUMBER SIX — Your periodic reminder to watch everything with the captions on

Luca was a fun and sweet movie with a nice message. These bastards at Pixar made me get all misty again. Their batting average is almost too good with that, like in a way that’s bordering on suspicious. Like they’ve unlocked a cheat code somehow. Or they’re using subliminal messages. Either that or I am just an emotional basketcase with these kinds of movies, which can’t be true because I am a big strong man.

But that’s not really the point. The point is that, at multiple moments in the film, a caption like this would pop up on the screen and delight me to no end. Always watch movies and television shows with the captions on. There’s gold in there if you dig a little. I love to exclaim in Italian.

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 Bill:

I just wanted to thank you for recommending Mythic Quest. It’s become the show my wife and I watch together on Friday nights to unwind after the week. It’s a great strategy most weeks, except for this week when the show left me emotionally spent and on the verge of tears in the final scene where Poppy sings to Ian. There should be a warning for that stuff like there is for violence and language. I need to prepare myself, man!

This email is all true, from beginning to end. I too got a little choked up at the end. Although, to be fair, they did shoot an arrow straight into my soul with the song selection…

If you can watch someone sing “Rainbow Connection” to a scared friend in a hospital bed without feeling things, you need to evaluate huge parts of your life. That sucker got me really good. This makes two sections in this week’s column where I’ve discussed sweet shows or movies that made me cry in the last week. And in two others, I discussed the Fast & Furious franchise. This is, more or less, everything I am about boiled down to a sticky and concentrated paste. I feel okay about it.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To California!

As Touchstone Pistachio Company ran through its routine audit earlier this month, something wasn’t adding up.

More than 42,000 pounds of pistachios had vanished.

21 TON NUT HEIST???

The company soon enlisted the sheriff’s office in Tulare County, Calif., for help and on Saturday, law enforcement officials said they had found the missing nuts and arrested the thief. Police said Alberto Montemayor, 34, was hiding the pistachios in a tractor trailer parked in a nearby parking lot and then repackaging them to sell.

21 TON NUT HEIST!

The case is just the latest heist of pistachio nuts in Central California, where the nuts were a $5.2 billion economic engine tied to more than 47,000 jobs last year, according to studies commissioned by the industry. Last August, the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office arrested a 23-year-old man and accused him of stealing two trucks full of pistachios valued at $294,000.

STRING OF NUT HEISTS!

Heists skyrocketed between 2014 and 2017, resulting in the loss of more than $7.6 million worth of nuts, according to CargoNet, a company that tracks truck thefts. But during the past few years, thefts have declined as the farm industry has become savvy to the schemes and larger growers have adopted new policies, such as taking photos and thumbprints from drivers, according to Capital Press.

So, three things here:

• It is deeply, deeply hilarious to me that there have been so many nut heists that truck drivers are out here using fingerprint scanners like they’re carrying top-level military technology
• It’s fun to imagine a world where the first Fast & Furious movie was about them stealing many tons of pistachios instead of DVD players
• I cannot get over how satisfying it was to type NUT HEIST in all-caps like that

I need to see a movie about a nut heist task force and I need it to star Regina King in a cowboy hat. I do not think this is an unreasonable ask. I will show up on set and give notes if it will help.

Rap veteran Timothy J. Parker, better known as Gift Of Gab of the Bay Area rap duo Blackalicious, has died at the age of 50, according to his label and crew, Quannum Projects in a press release.

Gab, perhaps still best known for the tongue-twisting Blackalicious single “Alphabet Aerobics” and the duo’s Blazing Arrow standout “Feel That Way,” was diagnosed with kidney failure in 2014. He underwent successful surgery in January of last year on the last night of the most recent Blackalicious tour. Despite working hard to recover, he passed away last week on Friday, June 18. He is survived by two brothers, one sister, and many nieces and nephews.

Gab’s manager Brian Ross said in a statement, “He was one of the most positive human beings I have ever known and always looking toward the future. He was endlessly brimming with new ideas, philosophical perspectives, and thoughts about the future. He was always ready to learn, grow and engage in a deep conversation about things he was less familiar with. A simple conversation with him about nearly anything could take you places you would never have expected.”

DJ Xcel, the other half of Blackalicious, wrote, “Our brother was an MCs’ MC who dedicated his life to his craft. One of the greatest to ever do it. He’s the most prolific person I’ve ever known. He was all about pushing the boundaries of his art form in the most authentic way possible. He truly believed in the healing power of music. He viewed himself as a vessel used by a higher power whose purpose was to give positive contributions to humanity through Rhyme.”

Quannum is planning future releases for “years to come” as Gab left behind nearly 100 tracks for upcoming and planned Blackalicious releases. Meanwhile, the hip-hop world will mourn the physical loss of one of its brightest, most dextrous, and most inspiring presences. Thanks for everything, Gab.

As his defense of critical race theory and his desire to learn about “white rage” has set conservative circles on fire, Gen. Mark Milley is once again racking up another viral moment thanks to a new book excerpt where Milley reportedly pushed back on Donald Trump‘s attempts to unleash violence on Black Lives Matter protesters.

According to Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost by Wall Street Journal writer Michael C. Bender, Milley was present for a meeting where Trump proposed increasingly violent solutions to the protests brewing in Seattle and Portland. “Crack their skulls,” Trump reportedly said before ratcheting up his rhetoric to the point where Milley had to reel him in. Via CNN:

Trump also told his team that he wanted the military to go in and “beat the f–k out” of the civil rights protesters, Bender writes.

“Just shoot them,” Trump said on multiple occasions inside the Oval Office, according to the excerpts.

When Milley and then-Attorney General William Barr would push back, Trump toned it down, but only slightly, Bender adds.

“Well, shoot them in the leg—or maybe the foot,” Trump said. “But be hard on them!”

Things got more heated when Trump’s top advisor Stephen Miller joined the president’s calls for military force, and the situation reached a boiling point when Miller said, “These cities are burning.” According to the book, Gen. Milley, a seasoned veteran who led troops in combat, had enough of Miller not staying in his “lane” and let him have it.

“Shut the f–k up, Stephen,” Milley said. That phrase quickly became a trending topic on Thursday evening following CNN publishing the excerpt.

(Via CNN)

Indie rap stalwart Russ’s new single “Satisfy” sounds like it should be a love song, with its tender guitar chords and downtempo crooning. In reality, though, it’s more of a sex anthem, featuring explicit lyrics right out of an adult video description. The contrast more amusingly cheeky than it is sensuous, but with Russ, the distinction between the two moods has always been more of a suggestion than a hard line in the sand. The video accompanying the single throws soft lighting across the outspoken artist as he performs in what looks like a cave.

Russ’s raunchy descriptions of his sexual activities may read more like a sext than a hit single, but as he’s been on an emotional roll lately, his shift into slightly porn-y subject matter might come as a welcome turn. Prior New Music Friday releases have included much more serious material like the hopeful “Lucky,” the romantic duet “Private” with Rexx Life Raj, and the melancholy “Bankrupt,” so it’s nice to hear him nodding to the more — ahem — enjoyable aspects of relationships. Still, another boastful track like “Ugly” with Lil Baby or “Status” probably wouldn’t go amiss in future weeks. With Russ, all possibilities are on the table, a testament to his versatility and willingness to push himself.

Watch Russ’s “Satisfy” video above.

The zombies from The Walking Dead are about to welcome a whole new bunch of undead pals to the AMC family. On Thursday, the network announced that it has greenlit a brand-new Interview With the Vampire TV series. The news comes just over one year after AMC announced that it had acquired the rights to two of Anne Rice’s bestselling book series: the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches, which include a total of 18 books.

While it’s not the first adaptation of Rice’s work—Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst most notably played a trio of bloodsuckers in Neil Jordan’s 1994 adaptation of Interview With the Vampire; its 2002 sequel, Queen of the Damned, was far less notable—it does hopefully mark the end of a long road for her works to see a small-screen treatment. After years of seeing the rights bounce around, Rice announced in 2016 that she and her son Christopher would be working on a television series. In early 2018, Hannibal’s Bryan Fuller became attached for a potential Hulu series. As it stands now, Anne and Christopher Rice will remain on as executive producers, and playwright-turned-screenwriter Rolin Jones will serve as the show’s creator, showrunner, and executive producer.

“In 1973, a grieving mother and extraordinary writer began what would become the finest Vampire novel ever written (all respects to Mr. Stoker),” Jones, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006 for his play The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, said in a statement. “Nearly 50 years later we know what’s expected of us. We know how much this book and the ones that follow mean to their massive fan base. We feel you over our shoulders as we tend the Savage Garden. Louis and Lestat are coming out of hiding and we can’t wait to re-unite them with you.”

An initial order for a first season of eight episodes has been ordered, and is expected to premiere in 2022.

Rexx Life Raj recently said he hadn’t been able to make much new music during the pandemic, but what music he has released since then has been stellar. Of course, there were songs like “Tesla In A Pandemic,” celebrating his recent financial come-ups, and the California Poppy 2 EP that doubled down on the success of its predecessor, and more recently, the Untitled EP, which held meditative songs that helped give him peace in tumultuous times. But today, he’s back to boasting, releasing the swaggering yet contemplative “Lockheed Martin.”

Complete with an accompanying video of Raj rapping at the port, “Lockheed Martin” positions the burgeoning Bay Area star as both a grizzled sage and a hedonistic money-making machine, switching from bars about turning “a square b*tch into something off of Pornhub” to mocking “grown men infatuated with gangsta rappers.” He flexes but also advocates fiscal responsibility, rhyming, “If I can’t cop it three times, then I am not coppin’.” Then he lays out his plays for the future, involving investments, farming, and therapy, as well as continuing to keep it real and make sure his friends and family stay paid and all his dreams get accomplished, “shootin’ for the stars like I’m Lockheed Martin.”

Watch Rexx Life Raj’s “Lockheed Martin” video above.

Before there was TMZ, there was Perez Hilton—one of the first major “celebrity” bloggers. In the mid-2000s, anyone looking for a juicy bit of celebrity gossip would look to Hilton (real name Mario Lavandeira Jr.) for their fix. And while he seemed to put some “celebrities” on a pedestal (see: Paris Hilton, from whom he took his pen name), others became favorite targets of Hilton’s often brutal takedowns. Britney Spears was one of the latter, and Hilton is now paying the price.

Earlier this year, the February release of The New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears—which detailed the conservatorship she’s been under since 2008 and her fight to be released from it as well as the hyper-sexualized, and often abusive, way she was treated by both those around her and the media—there’s been a sort of reckoning around Spears and her career. And Hilton has been a major part of that conversation.

“I can’t say I was just young and dumb,” he told Sky News earlier this week of his treatment of Spears. “I think we know a lot more. And initially, many folks, myself included, were shocked and alarmed and especially concerned for her young children … I know I did not express myself as well as I could have. I didn’t lead with empathy and compassion, which thankfully seems like most people now are understanding the severity of Britney’s situation. I absolutely apologize and carry deep shame and regret.”

Yet, as The Wrap reports, that “deep shame and regret” didn’t seem evident in parts of a 20-minute video Hilton released on his YouTube page on Wednesday, in which he seemed more bothered by how he was currently being treated. Hilton—decked out in a Britney T-shirt—complained:

“Today I have been getting so much hate and bullying from people who were and are upset about how I used to talk about Britney Spears. And my message to all those people is: f*ck you! It just does not compute that you’re going to bully someone for bullying somebody in the past. How does that make you any better than what I did? I fully own how reprehensible I used to be in the day.”

Something doesn’t compute alright. While being outrageously snarky was part of Hilton’s brand, certain lines of decency were regularly crossed. Like the time when, following Heath Ledger’s death in 2008, Perez had T-shirts made up asking, “Why Wasn’t It Britney?” (Ick.)

But the latest news stories surrounding Spears aren’t the first time Hilton has addressed his treatment of her in the past. In his 2020 memoir TMI: My Life in Scandal, Hilton expressed regret for the way he talked about Britney, writing:

“It was so bad that I could hardly believe what I was seeing and hearing. That’s why I didn’t try to soften the blow: I wrote that she should be ashamed of herself, that she was an embarrassment—something I really regret today. I just assumed that her meltdown was a result of her wild party lifestyle and all the drugs she was taking. It never occurred to me that there might be some kind of mental health issue behind her behavior. Looking back now, it really does seem like Britney is lucky to still be alive.”

You can watch all 20 minutes of Hilton’s “Message to Britney Spears and The Free Britney Movement” below.

(Via The Wrap)