Category: News

Evan Rachel Wood came forward this week to name ex-partner Marilyn Manson as her alleged abuser following years of advocacy as the survivor of abuse and rape. The two went public with their relationship in 2007, when she was 19 years old, and he was 38. They became engaged in 2010 and later split, and over the course of years, Wood testified in front of Congress and California lawmakers about her experiences as an abuse survivor to help pass multiple statutes to expand abuse and rape survivors’ rights. However, her statement this week was the first time the Westworld star publicly identified Manson, who she accused of “grooming” and “horrifically abusing” her over the course of their relationship.

In response to Wood’s Monday Instagram post, four other women came forward against Manson with allegations of abuse against him. Hours later, his record label, Loma Vista Recordings, announced that they’d dropped him from their roster. Now, two TV shows — AMC’s Creepshow anthology series and Starz’s ongoing American Gods — that filmed appearances by Manson for their new seasons have declared that they’re following suit. In a statement to Deadline, Shudder confirmed that the Creepshow episode starring Manson will not air. Starz is on board with that sentiment.

“Starz stands unequivocally with all victims and survivors of abuse,” Starz tweeted. “Due to the allegations made against Marilyn Manson, we have decided to remove his performance from the remaining episode he is in, scheduled to air later this season.”

Following the decision from his record label, Manson issued a statement to deny any wrongdoing. “Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality,” he wrote. “My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

The objective of every Super Bowl commercial is to stop people from talking, going to the bathroom, or getting another beer during breaks in the game. One effective way of keeping Chiefs and Bucs fans glued to the television is is to have Michael B. Jordan take his shirt off. The Black Panther star, who was named 2020’s Sexiest Man Alive, plays a physical manifestation of Alexa in Amazon’s Super Bowl commercial, “Alexa’s Body.”

Instead of a circular device that definitely isn’t listening to everything you say and sending that data to Jeff Bezos’ underground lair when you’re asleep, Alexa takes the form of Michael B. Jordan. He’ll help you cook, turn on the sprinklers (and get wet in the process), dim the lights, add bath oil to your shopping lists, and assist with all kinds of household tasks. Leaving aside the creepy implications of having your robot butler made flesh and blood, the ad also serves as a promo for Jordan’s new movie, Without Remorse. The thriller, based on author Tom Clancy’s second most famous character John Clark, is about a “Navy SEAL who goes on a path to avenge his wife’s murder only to find himself inside of a larger conspiracy.” But does he get shirtless?

Without Remorse comes out on Amazon Prime Video later this year.

For recent late-night television appearances, Post Malone has sat down for interviews in his Utah home, and it was revealed in 2019 that the building will have an underground bunker added to it. Progress may be being made on that space right now, as Malone discussed on Late Night yesterday.

As Seth Meyers and Malone started their conversation, Malone apologized for construction noises in the background, which prompted Meyers to pivot the direction of the chat and ask if the construction was related to the bunker. Malone tentatively confirmed Meyers’ suspicion while noting that he’s taking his beer pong game up a level, saying, “You know, it might be part of it. We’re doing some fun stuff over here, like marble beer pong tables. The bunker’s coming. Things take a little bit, but we’re figuring everything out. Hopefully I can keep my Grammys in there.”

Malone also discussed why he enjoys spending time in Utah as opposed to California, saying, “LA was just a lot, especially working on music. In LA, there’s always something to do, there’s always some place to be, and there’s always people around you. Here, it feels good to be kind of secluded and relaxed and I can just take my time and take it easy and work on being a better artist.”

Watch clips from the interview above.

The Weeknd’s Super Bowl halftime show is only a few days away, and now we’re starting to get a better idea of what the performance will entail. Here’s a new tidbit: Despite the pandemic presumably presenting more challenges from the production side of things, the show will still be performed completely live.

The show’s producer, Jesse Collins, spoke about it with Entertainment Tonight, saying, “It’s all happening in that stadium, in that moment. We’re not bouncing off to another stadium and then cutting in, like some people have had to do. We are fortunate enough in this situation that we are able to do a live, live show. It’s gotta be about entertainment from a truthful perspective. Get away from the massive sets, all the hoopla, the flying this and that, and get to the core of what makes an artist special.”

He also added, “I think there’s a lot of stuff happening in the show that people aren’t going to expect. It’s just going to be fun. It’s so perfect. We started creating this thing back in September, and the message of it really worked out. The world worked out for the message that The Weeknd wants to communicate in this performance… It’s definitely a very special show.”

Of the show, The Weeknd himself recently said, “We’ve been really focusing on dialing in on the fans at home and making performances a cinematic experience, and we want to do that with the Super Bowl.”

Ted Cruz recently revealed that the first movie he saw in theaters was Fantasia. “It was playing at a film revival. It scared me; I cried — I was 4. My Mom had to take me out. Good times,” he tweeted, to which Seth Rogen, who delights in mocking the senator more than anything else (with the exception of pot and pottery), replied, “Everyone who made that film would hate you.” This is true of everyone who made Watchmen, too.

In a recent episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz, the world’s least enjoyable podcast, Cruz was ranting about Democrats and virtue signaling and his other favorite buzzwords (it’s shocking he left out “cancel culture”). “Look, if you actually respect people, you say, you ought to be able to choose what you want to do with your life,” he said. “Listen, I’m not a steelworker… but I’m not going to presume to tell you that what you chose to do is somehow illegitimate and should be eliminated.” Cruz has told many people that abortion should be eliminated, but go on. He then brought up Avengers: Endgame and something he found “curious” about the highest-grossing movie ever. “Have you noticed in how many movies how often rabid environmentalists are the bad guys?” he asked. “Whether it’s Thanos or go to Watchmen. The view of the Left is people are a disease.”

I think Lila Byock, a writer for HBO’s Watchmen, put it best:

Cruz, who once named Rorscach as one of five favorite superheroes (meaning he missed the point of Watchmen), should check out the HBO series, which tackles systemic racism, police brutality, and white supremacists. He could learn something.

Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez recently breathed fire at Ted Cruz when he revealed that he agreed with her statement that a hearing should be held over Robinhood’s role in blocking investors from purchasing Gamestop, AMC, and other Redditor-fueled stocks while hedge funders could continue to do whatever they pleased. In doing so, AOC tweeted that she was perfectly willing to work with Republican lawmakers but only those members who “aren’t trying to get me killed.”

AOC was referencing Cruz’s role in helping to incite the MAGA coup, which ended with five deaths (including two Capitol Hill cops) while rioters made it their mission to halt the Senate’s sealing of the Electoral College vote. To somehow make matters even worse, one MAGA rioter was revealed to have made it his personal mission to assassinate AOC, and she has now spoken about what she endured that day via an Instagram Live video. Things got emotionally charged with AOC describing how she felt when she heard a man (who she believed was an insurrectionist) pounding on the doors to her office, within which she initially took refuge. On January 6, she genuinely believed that she was going to be killed, and this was a perfectly valid fear, given what we’ve learned about the rioters’ zip-tie-fueled behavior.

AOC described the trauma of the event, which she likened to being trapped in a zombie movie, and she heard a man yell, “Where is she?” She peered through a door hinge at the man as he kept yelling, and “I thought I was going to die.” That portion of AOC’s Instagram Live session can be seen here:

Even more chilling, as AOC revealed, was her eventual realization that this man was a Capitol Police officer, although as she stated, he approached here with a “tremendous amount of anger and hostility.” At that point, she had no idea whether he was a friend or a foe, or whether he meant to help or hurt her, and although he yelled at her to move toward safety (and following the news that a rioter intended to kill her), it’s apparent that Congressional members’ lives were in danger on January 6. As AOC progressed into discussing how certain Republicans kept asking Congress to “forget” the attack, she described how “these are the same tactics of abusers.”

While speaking, AOC described how time had frozen while the officer pounded on her door, and she grew tearful during this next revelation:

“The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s no big, that we should forget what happened, even telling us to apologize, these are the same tactics of abusers. And I’m a survivor of sexual assault, and I haven’t told many people that in my life, but when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other… as a survivor, I struggle with the idea of being believed.”

AOC eventually hid in the the office of Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), who revealed (also on Monday night) on MSNBC that AOC stated, “I just hope I get to be a mom. I hope I don’t die today.”

Likewise, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) also revealed on MSNBC that he was concerned about being locked in a room with GOP colleagues (who included Rep. Lauren Boebert) who live-tweeted their location during the insurrection. He called for those members to be expelled from Congress.

You can watch AOC’s full Instagram Live video below.

Yesterday was a big birthday in the music world, as Travis Scott and Kylie Jenner’s daughter Stormi turned 3 years old. To mark the occasion, Scott took to Instagram to share some photos of himself with his offspring, as well as an adorable poem that he wrote for her.

Scott’s post features two photos, one of him holding Stormi and another of the pair each flexing their biceps. Scott captioned the post, “3 is bigger than 2 / 3 more years of love that’s true / 3 more inches u might have grew / 3 more years a lot to dooo!!! / 3 more TIMES I LOVE UUUUUU.” He then capped off the post by adding, “Happy bday to my Lil storm storm.”

It would seem that Stormi had a lot of people wishing her a happy birthday yesterday, as she’s probably the most famous 3-year-old on Instagram: Of the top ten most-liked post on Instagram from 2020, four of them were from her mother, and three of those featured Stormi. Meanwhile, Stormi has been busy lately, as she and her father recently hosted a pre-Christmas toy drive, which ended up getting 2,000 toys into the hands of about 1,000 Houston children. On top of that, things like food, Christmas trees, blankets, and more were made available to those in attendance.

LeBron James is no stranger to getting heckled during basketball games. Still, the latest example of this on Monday night was a little unique, in large part due to the fact that there is a global pandemic going on right now and seeing people attending a sporting event is a little jarring.

The back-and-forth led to the fan and those in the immediate vicinity getting tossed from the game. In all, two women and two men were ejected, and while they seemed to be extremely not cool with the whole ordeal, James brushed it off his shoulder and explained after the game that he both did not think that the fans should have been tossed and that he missed the interaction that comes with the fans in the venue.

And then, LeBron had some time to mull it over and decided to get a joke off from his Twitter account about how “MAD MAD” that he was able to make “Courtside Karen.”

James has the support of a former teammate, too, as Jared Dudley thought this was extremely funny.

It is very much implied that if you are going to sit courtside and chirp at an NBA player during a basketball game that they are probably going to throw it back at you in some capacity. If this was not something that Courtside Karen anticipated, then this is now something that has been hammered home by the Twitter account of LeBron James.

Few are as ride-or-die for Donald Trump as Mike Lindell, better known as the “MyPillow guy” — the founder, CEO, and perhaps too public face of the line of pricey pillows. Lindell has continued to stand by the former president even has many in the Republican party have tred to move on, and he’ll even go so far as to burn his company to the ground to do it. Not only have his antics gotten MyPillows dropped by certain retailers, it also got him banned on Twitter. He thought he found a clever workaround for that last one, but that one backfired spectacularly, too.

This comes from CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan (caught by The Daily Beast), who pointed out that the official MyPillow Twitter account had suddenly also been disappeared into the social media ether.

According to O’Sullivan, Twitter HQ said the company’s account was “suspended for violating its ban evasion policy.” Ergo, it stands to reason that “he tried to tweet through the company’s account.”

“Therein concludes my reporting on the social media suspension of an account about pillows,” O’Sullivan added.

It’s not clear if the suspension is permanent or what had been tweeted from the account, or whether what had been tweeted had been written by Lindell himself. But given his eccentric nature — or even the recent Mad Libs-y news that he had, falsely, been romantically linked with 30 Rock’s Jane Krakowski — it’s certainly possible. Anyway, hope all this has been worth it!

(Via The Daily Beast)

Evan Rachel Wood spoke out against her ex Marilyn Manson in a statement Monday, detailing how he “horrifically” abused and groomed her throughout their relationship. Following the release of her statement, at least four other women came forward and shared their own accounts of abuse. Manson’s record label, Loma Vista Records, dropped him from their roster following the allegations. Now the singer has shared an official statement in response.

In the statment, Manson made a sweeping denial, claiming they are “horrible distortions of reality.” He continued:

“Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality … My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

Wood has been vocal about her experiences with domestic violence and sexual assault in the past, and she detailed a few of her disturbing experiences with Manson in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone. In 2018, Wood went into detail about some of her accusations in a testimony in front of California lawmakers. Her harrowing story helped successfully pass legislation that gives rights to victims of domestic abuse and violence.