Category: News

The White House’s vaccine czar, Dr. Marc Siegel, had an embarrassing moment on Monday when his camera fell into his crotch during a Fox News segment. The blooper happened while Siegel was fielding a question about Regeneron from anchor Julie Banderas, only to have the camera give all of Fox News’ viewers a clear shot of the doctor’s pants, which he was fortunately wearing. While Siegel continued to talk as if nothing happened, you can tell by the look on Banderas’ face that she clearly saw what happened. She then tried to assure Siegel that these things happen, and it’s no big deal, which probably would’ve worked had she not quipped, “Nice jeans by the way.”

You can watch the embarrassing moment below, via The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona.

Of course, as entertaining as this moment is, nothing compares to Rudy Giuliani’s meltdowns over the past few weeks.

The Trump campaign attorney has been on an all-time humiliating hot streak going all the way back to October when his compromising scene in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm was revealed. That led to a series of bizarre screaming interviews, which were merely an appetizer for Guiliani’s post-election behavior. America’s Mayor was front and center for the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco, but Giuiliani somehow managed to top that debacle by dripping hair dye down his face during a deranged press conference that even Fox News denounced. In short, Rudy would probably kill for something as quaint as a mere camera to the groin. That’s like a walk in the park.

(Via Justin Baragona on Twitter)

The wheels appear to be turning on a follow-up to King Princess’ 2019 album Cheap Queen. She dropped the new single “Only Time Makes It Human” in October and now she’s back with “Pain,” a fun, upbeat tune that’s deceptively pessimistic about her love life.

She spoke about the song with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, saying:

“‘Pain’ is cool because… It’s probably my favorite song I’ve ever written. It makes me so happy when I listened to it. I haven’t gotten sick of it. I like when it’s on in the background or my girlfriend just did my new video, she was… I had to hear it a bajillion times through the editing process. I was just like, ‘This song makes me so happy.’ And I think what I love about it is it’s got that f*cking piano. It’s the ultimate George Michael meets Erotica-era Madonna meets an incredible remix if you’re in a gay club that makes you uncomfortable and horny.”

She also discussed waiting to release new music, saying, “Well, first of all, I totally respect anyone releasing music all the time, but I was just… between the global pandemic, and then a massive racial movement, I just didn’t feel like it was appropriate to be releasing music, just for me, personally, until time was right. And then early fall, end of summer, it was like, ‘OK, let’s start. Let’s put it out.’ I feel like there’s some room, and some breathing room to put out music and I just want to be respectful.”

Listen to “Pain” above.

The holiday season serves as an opportunity for people to do a whole lot of things, something that is doubly true this year as we take some time to be a little more appreciative of what we have in the face of a global pandemic. Today, we want to take a chance to celebrate the basketball players who use their platforms to help those who could use a helping hand.

In this episode of Dime Breakdowns, we decided to highlight a handful of individuals from the NBA and the WNBA. People like Russell Westbrook and Bismack Biyombo have their own charities through which they look to uplift others — Westbrook has done a laundry list of acts, like partnering with The Angelino Campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic, while Biyombo helps children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo through the Bismack Biyombo Foundation.

Others, like Jrue Holiday and Patty Mills, took their salaries from the NBA’s Orlando Bubble and put them towards organizations that help Black and Brown communities — Holiday and his wife, Lauren, started their own fund with money going towards New Orleans, Los Angeles, Compton, and Indianapolis, while Mills’ money went towards charities in Australia. And of course, there is the remarkable story of Maya Moore, who has taken a leave from the WNBA to help a wrongfully incarcerated man named Jonathan Irons get his conviction overturned through more than a year of hard work.

These five players are just a microcosm of the numerous NBA and WNBA players who see individuals in need and make it a point to lend a helping hand. The world of basketball is filled with these sorts of folks, and with it being the holiday season, we wanted to shout a handful of them out for their efforts.

A life of crime is no joke, but apparently it can make for some very funny mob nicknames. And with many other aspects of life slowly slipping into the unknown grasp of a disease-filled winter, poking fun at potential criminals with eccentric nicknames is really the best we can hope for this holiday season.

Monday brought word that a mob bust in Philadelphia had wrapped more than a dozen suspects up in RICO charges. There were some incredible names in the news bulletin, starting first and foremost with a guy nicknamed “Tony Meatballs.”

The other names on the list were good, though, too. A guy named “Joey Electric” getting… charged… is pretty great. But the focus was all on Tony Meatballs on Twitter as the RICO news spread, and for good reason: it is very easy to make jokes about people with a generic first name and a last name that is also a food.

Amazingly, this legal trending topic had nothing to do with Donald Trump or Rudy Giuliani.

Despite the bad news for all parties involved, they will have their day in court eventually. Which is how the criminal justice system works in this country, if only because it means a judge in Philly will have to say names like “Tony Meatballs,” “Joey Electric” and “Louie Sheep” out loud someday. It’s the least that 2020 can give us after all this, really.

In April, Post Malone set an impressive chart record. “Circles” spent its 34th week in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, which was the most time any song had spent in the top 10. A few weeks after that, “Circles” left the top 10 after spending 39 total weeks there. While Malone was setting that record, though, he was being chased by The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which was also in the midst of a huge top-10 run. Now, The Weeknd has taken over the top spot: On the Hot 100 chart dated November 28, “Blinding Lights” is No. 7, giving the single its 40th total week in the top 10.

This comes just weeks after “Blinding Lights” set the record for the most weeks spent in the top five spots of the Hot 100. It was also revealed not long ago that The Weeknd will perform at halftime of next year’s Super Bowl.

Malone talked about his prolonged chart success in a recent interview with Uproxx, saying, “I can’t believe this many people still want to hear my sh*tty songs. It’s crazy with all the talented artists and all the massive records out over the past year or so. For me to have a song on the charts that long is just unbelievable.”

Check out our recent interview with Malone here.

When the PlayStation 5 made its wide release on November 12, the majority of those that bought the next-gen console on release day or via pre-order did so in order to play Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It is, by all accounts, an excellent game that takes the best of the first Spider-Man game and builds on the existing framework for a new installment — you can read our review of the game here.

However, as happens with any new game, there are glitches and issues to smooth out in the first weeks of the release and one such glitch that’s popped up is especially funny. On rare occasion, gamers have reported that they have gone from Miles Morales to becoming random objects on the street that still have the same functionality, just aren’t human. One video from Twitch streamer Froste shows him go from a block of snow that lands on a car fighting bad guys to a fence to, somehow, a rack of t-shirts before becoming the facade of a building.

Froste has the right response to this, which is to cackle wildly while seeing what happens next — and, impressively, he continues on with his mission even as he goes from object to object. He was not the only person to suddenly become an inanimate object with superpowers, as a post on TikTok showed another person become a heating lamp that shoots webs.

The delivery of “I’m the pole?” is incredible here, as the confusion is palpable in such a short clip.

The other Spider-Man: Miles Morales glitch that has gotten viral attention is how Miles is greeted by police after helping to recover someone’s stolen car.

Maybe a little heavy-handed, there. Again, these are seemingly rare glitches, but it is pretty hysterical to see a block of snow taking out bad guys in a car.

Oscar winner Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series is made up of five films, including Mangrove; Lovers Rock (out this week, and extremely good); and Red, White, and Blue. It stars John Boyega as Leroy Logan, a Black forensic scientist who becomes a cop to challenge the racist attitudes of London’s Metropolitan Police Force from within.

Red, White, and Blue is based on a real story, and the Star Wars actor met with Logan “to understand the man behind that decision, how the man was strong enough to take on that kind of conflict in order to give the police force the proper kind of representation it needed,” he told IndieWire. “Leroy actually had quite a comfortable life and could have just lived his life being a scientist, made his money, moved on. He actually chose the obstacle. He chose the challenge. And so for me, that difference was very important.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

After seeing his father assaulted by police officers, a young Black man is driven to join the force, with hopes of changing racist attitudes from within. He soon finds himself facing both his father’s disapproval and racism in the ranks.

Red, White, and Blue, which also stars Steve Toussaint, Tyrone Huntley, Nathan Vidal, and Jaden Oshenye, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on November 29.

It’s been a tense year for everyone, including at Fox News, where the morning show crowd at Fox & Friends is looking pretty frenemy-esque these days. The cracks started to show themselves a few months ago when Steve Doocy went rogue in response to Trump’s claim that he’d be calling into the show every week. The subsequent dejected look on Brian Kilmeade’s face was comically palpable, and more friction between the two co-hosts seems to be continuing. Monday morning turned into an all-out shoutfest from Kilmeade over COVID-19 guidelines and restrictions amid spiking U.S. cases.

Toward the end of the below video, Kilmeade summed up his anger in regard to states closing down in-person dining and limiting gatherings. “They don’t trust us!” he raged. “They’re making these restrictions and taking personal decisions away. That’s what they’re saying: they know more. Which I find unbelievably disrespectful.”

This outburst followed Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt’s attempt to explain to Kilmeade that the health care system soon won’t be able to accommodate the surge of patients, and restrictions are needed until the vaccines really get rolling, so it’s ultimately necessary to close bars down earlier in the evening in an attempt to curb at least some of the spread. Kilmeade shouted that restaurants are being clipped “off at their knees again,” and here’s how Doocy responded about his shared stance with Earhardt:

“The problem is, and this goes back to the very beginning, they don’t want to overwhelm the hospitals. The numbers are going through the roof and hospitalizations are going up as well. So, ultimately, what we’re saying is, you just have to be smart, understand the risk, and that’s why there are these restrictions.”

Kilmeade didn’t appear to understand why curbing the spread matters, as he puts it, “because the vaccine is no longer a hope, it’s a reality.” And he argued, “We are weeks away from three straight vaccines in a row,” and that’s good enough for him to let the reopening stand unabated. However, health experts have cautioned that it will likely take until May 2021 to get enough of the U.S. population vaccinated to where things can start feeling “normal” in the U.S. The hope is to start vaccinating health care workers in December and go from there, and as Doocy articulated, this situation is “a very super-challenging time” for all. This hasn’t led to any resolution with a fiery Kilmeade as of yet.

I learned what a cartographer was thanks to video games (thanks, Halo) so perhaps it’s fitting that I enjoyed Carto so much. The Humble Games title is a nice departure from the next-gen console blitz of AAA games all reaching toward our ray tracing future, sure, but it’s also just a really satisfying puzzle game with some familiar but unique mechanics.

If you’ve ever played the board game Carcassone, you mostly know how to play Carto. The adventure game has an explorable map you can wander aimlessly but is best parsed in square sections you can rearrange to discover new tiles and secrets. Each piece of the puzzle is different, and each side of these square is a type of land that matches up with and connects to others. Grass connects to grass, water connects to water and forest connects to forest. On and on. You can even move the tile Carto is standing on to shuffle yourself across lands easily, as long as everything lines up.

Some new pieces are stumbled upon as white wisps as you adventure, but more complex and essential pieces only emerge after solving puzzles. You’ll find sheep, discover a desert oasis and shuffle around room tiles to unlock new tools that help you move around each island faster. The building and tunnel puzzles are particularly interesting, as they take a bit more thinking to piece together.

Depending on how sharp you are, some puzzle solutions may be very obvious. But executing those solutions often takes some digging. There’s usually someone you can talk to on screen that will give slight hints, and nothing is so complex that it feels impossible. Finding the balance between obvious and challenging is the hardest part of making a puzzle game, but Carto hits the sweet spot. It’s a game that flows surprisingly well, and even if the mechanics are simple there’s some depth to the journey you take.

Carto is the exact opposite of the major AAA releases that get consoles sold and garner huge marketing budgets. The graphics are fairly simple and the animation is far from stunning. It’s an indie title through and through, but it’s well made and offers a nice, quick journey that’s equally clever and funny. It’s a calm, clever puzzle game that has a lot of heart.

I played my way through this on the Switch, and it’s the perfect platform for this kind of indie game. It’s portable, doesn’t need long sessions to make progress and also looks good on a bigger screen. And in a gaming marketplace where bigger and better is selling new consoles, Carto plays well on pretty much any device you like using for games.

It’s extremely chill, with relaxing tunes and challenging-yet-encouraging puzzles. As the landscapes change and Carto finds her way through islands and tunnels and mysterious forests, it’s easy to be reminded that sometimes the simplest mechanics are the ones that work best. And at $20, Carto offers a journey that’s well worth the shuffle.

Billie Eilish has yet another hit on her hands with “Therefore I Am,” although it’s taking an unconventional path to the top of the charts. The song was released on November 12, which was a Thursday. That means the song was released on the final day of a tracking week in terms of the Billboard charts, so its debut week only consisted of a day of listening activity. Naturally, then, the track didn’t do all that well on the Hot 100 chart during its first week, debuting at a modest No. 94.

Now the song has had a full tracking week under its belt, though, and its chart performance is more in line with the kind of numbers Eilish usually puts up. The song charted at No. 2 this week (behind 24kGoldn and Iann Dior’s “Mood,” which is No. 1 for a fifth week), which means it rose 92 spots between last week and this week. That’s historically impressive, as it’s the fourth-largest jump a song has ever made in a week on the Hot 100.

Another noteworthy tidbit is that with Eilish at No. 2 and 24kGoldn at No. 1, this is the first time the top two songs on the Hot 100 are by artists who were born after 1999; Eilish was born in 2001 and 24kGoldn was born in 2000.

Meanwhile, Eilish just performed “Therefore I Am” at the AMAs yesterday (the song’s live debut), so check that out here.