Category: News

Dolly Parton may save us all. Literally.

On Monday, drugmaker Moderna announced that it’s developing a COVID-19 vaccine that has proven to be 94.5 percent effective, “joining Pfizer as a front-runner in the global race to contain a raging pandemic that has killed 1.2 million people worldwide,” according to the New York Times. Funding for the vaccine, which could be given to “more than 20 million people in the United States by sometime in December,” came from, among others, country legend and all-around national treasure Dolly Parton.

The “Jolene” singer donated $1 million to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center earlier this year after her “longtime friend Dr. Naji Abumrad, who’s been involved in research at Vanderbilt for many years, informed me that they were making some exciting advancements towards that research of the coronavirus for a cure,” she wrote in a statement. Parton and Dr. Abumrad became buddies when he treated her after she was involved in a car accident; his son, Jad, later hosted the Dolly Parton’s America podcast:

Moderna’s efforts to clinch a vaccine were funded, in part, the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund as part of the musician’s unwavering support for the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, according to an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The centre was one of several key players and institutions in public health that have supported Moderna’s months-long bid to contain COVID-19.

Parton (who you can also thank for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer show) hasn’t publicly taken credit for the good news, but Twitter is happy to salute the angel among us.

[To the tune of “Jolene”] “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine.” (Sorry.)

(Via Yahoo! News)

50 Cent has proven himself to be a successful businessman, as he has found plenty of ways outside of music to increase his wealth. A few years ago, though, he says turned down a million-dollar opportunity that would have required virtually no effort and little time on his part. 50 guested on The Breakfast Club this morning, where he revealed that the Trump administration previously offered him a million dollars to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

50 said, “They offered me $1 million to go to Trump’s inauguration. I passed on that. [They initially offered] $500,000 and it went up to a million while I was still confused with whether I should do it.” Charlemagne Tha God then asked why 50 was confused, and he replied, “He was needing it for the same reasons you see now, he participated with different artists for the Black vote. And I’m going, ‘Nah, I ain’t gon’ put myself in that position.’ ‘Cause I don’t know what I’d have to do to recover from that.”

He also expressed his belief that Lil Wayne got paid to show support for Trump, responding to Charlamagne’s suggestion of that, “Yeah, I’m sure. Easily. He got paid. He had the sweater and the picture.”

Watch the interview clip above, and find the full conversation below.

Where were you on November 10th? November 12th? Banging your head against the refresh button only to come up empty-new-console-handed?

We get it. We were doing the same thing: at the online frontlines confused about time-zones, spamming “add to cart”, and signing petitions to make captcha’s a requirement on these big-box retailer websites. Bots should be a war crime. But pangs of rage and disappointment won’t get you through what might be a long winter before you have a chance to wrap your arms around a warm Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. That’s why we’re bringing you this super-practical (and not at all depressing) plan to make you feel just a little bit better about the wait.

1. Breathe Deep And Wait

Yes, the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 are shiny, new, and probably smell fantastic fresh out of the box, but they really aren’t going to be much different from the previous generation for at least a few more months. Obviously, they perform better in the graphics, frame rates, and load times departments, but they don’t really have any mind-blowingly different games (which is the most important part!) when it comes to the latest and most exciting offerings. Right now, at launch, the Xbox Series X doesn’t have any exclusive content– every single game available on the console is also available on Xbox One. That, and all the upcoming new games, like Call of Duty: Cold War and Cyberpunk 2077, are also available immediately on the previous generation. This is something that happens every console cycle because games take forever to develop, consoles are notoriously unavailable, and everybody is buying video games during the holidays. No developer wants to leave any gamer behind so don’t leave your Xbox One or PS4 behind just yet. Oddly enough, once the craze dies down and the consoles are more readily available is when upgrading is going to really matter for exclusive titles.

2. Recommit To Your XB1 Or PS4

Fall in love again with your old flame of yesteryear. Run your hand gently along it’s, comparatively, lack of luscious curves, and recall that time two weeks ago when you were playing Warzone with your friends. Simpler times, yes, but treasured memories nonetheless. Look, the PS4 and Xbox One, especially if you have the suped-up X or Pro, are incredibly capable workhorses that still have plenty of life in them. Everybody and their mother has one and are still very much online and looking for you! Plus, cross-compatibility with the newer systems means nothing has really changed in terms of your friends-list. So have a game night with your good friends or take a walk down memory lane on your own. I have a backlog of PS Plus games I still need to work through.

3. Broaden Your Horizons

Y’all ever heard of Nintendo? If you don’t have one already, get a Switch or a 3DS! There is an absolute wealth of fantastic content out there just waiting for you to goomba-stomp. I know so many folks that have never experienced a Zelda game and I’m telling you, they will really knock your socks off. Even if you roll your eyes at the mention of Breath of the Wild, the 3DS has ported versions of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask which, if you’ve never played, are critical entries in the video game history books. Why stop there? You’re already browsing eBay wondering if it’s worth it to spend $900 on a scalped Series X– go retro and bid on a Super Nintendo (or get one of these) and spend some time learning about what life was like before the internet. You know, if you’re a youngin’. Old heads don’t need to go through that again.

4. Finally Make A Change

If you really feel like burning $900, maybe it’s time you moved into the world of PC Gaming instead. For nine hundred bucks you could get a whole lot of computer that is actually, really going to change the way you play video games. Wait don’t go! I’m not here to convince you that computers are better than consoles (I mean, graphically it’s undeniable but that’s for a different day)– I just want to highlight some big differences in the experience that are maybe super attractive to you. Genuinely answer this question: What does it mean to be “playing video games?” What is the first thing that comes to your mind? The answer is different for everyone, but the one thing that all answers have in common is that they are completely different from what someone would answer a decade ago. “Playing video games” is no longer an isolated experience that begins and ends at the “on” button. Video games are just as big an industry as movies and music these days and to “play a video game” is to share an experience with a friend, be a part of a community, and in some cases even compete. Playing on a computer is the best way to “experience” what video games have to offer in their entirety. On the same piece of hardware I can, for example, play Rocket League, join a Rocket League-League, organize a scrimmage against people in a different time zone, and broadcast it all to Twitch– I mean, there’s a reason why the most prominent video game streamers all play on PC. It’s having the world at your fingertips and, when video game memes are the front page of Reddit nearly every day, video games are the world. Maybe it’s time you gave it a shot? Started streaming? Tried out Counter-Strike to truly understand just how good Shroud is?

Regardless of what you choose to do, know that in 2020 video games are here for you despite all the drama surrounding loot boxes and file sizes. As long as you have something to play on there is something to play and people to play it with. Whether it’s convincing your Mom to download Among Us on her phone or beating the Halo 3 campaign on Xbox 360 for the eleventh time, find a game and play it, because that’s really what this season of gaming is all about.

Netflix’s Oscar-race ambitions might run stronger than ever this year with streaming being the place to watch all the movies during the pandemic. Certainly, we can expect Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial Of The Chicago 7 to draw multiple nominations, and Vanessa Kirby has emerged as a likely nominee in Pieces Of A Woman after snagging the Best Actress award at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The Martin Scorsese-produced film also got a nod for the festival’s Golden Lion honor, and it doesn’t look like an easy watch by any stretch, but Kirby’s performance might convince you to watch nonetheless.

Maybe you’re a Shia LaBeouf fan, too? Well, I’m not sensing a discernible way for him to go disturbingly method here, so for now, all eyes on Kirby. She and Shia portray hopeful first-time parents who lose their child during a home birth. As one can imagine, that scene was a grueling one to shoot, and as Kirby revealed to Entertainment Weekly, it happened as a thirty-minute take that made her feel like she and cinematographer Benjamin Loeb had “been to war together.” After watching Kirby throw down white-hot-yet-simmering rage in The Crown, I believe her.

From the synopsis:

Martha (Vanessa Kirby) and Sean (Shia LaBeouf) are a Boston couple on the verge of parenthood whose lives change irrevocably when a home birth ends in unimaginable tragedy. Thus begins a yearlong odyssey for Martha, who must navigate her grief while working through fractious relationships with Sean and her domineering mother (Ellen Burstyn), along with the publicly vilified midwife (Molly Parker), whom she must face in court. Directed by Kornél Mundruczó, written by Kata Wéber, and executive produced by Martin Scorsese, Pieces Of A Woman is a deeply personal, searing, and ultimately transcendent story of a woman learning to live alongside her loss.

Pieces Of A Woman streams on Netflix on January 7.

Chance The Rapper is more successful than at least 99.9 percent of rappers, but like many young artists, there were those who tried to dissuade him from pursuing his art as a career. Chance guested on The Tonight Show yesterday, and during his conversation with Jimmy Fallon, he revealed that his father originally didn’t want him to be a rapper.

Fallon asked Chance if everybody was supportive of his rap growing up, and he responded:

“Uh… I don’t know if they were supportive of it, but it was understood. It was a thing that… People knew that I rapped, since I was a kid. […] My dad actually really… right when I got out of high school, we kind of… as parents do when their kids graduate from high school and they don’t go to college or get a job, it’s kind of like a friction thing. But after we separated for a while, we got back together and he really helped guide me in terms of the amount of work and focus that I needed to work on it from the business side, and he’s still doing that to this day. But in the beginning, my dad did not want me to be a rapper, for sure.”

They also chatted some about Chance’s musical origins, with Chance telling Fallon that he used to perform as Chano, which he called a “terrible name,” when he was in high school.

Watch the full conversation above.

One of the best scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is the conversation between Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton and Julia Butters’ Trudi Fraser about the books they’re reading. She’s absorbed in a biography of Walt Disney, while he’s halfway through the story of poor Easy Breezy and his spine problems. “Jeepers, this sounds like a good novel,” Trudi tells an emotional Rick. Soon, you’ll be able to say the same thing while reading the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel.

Tarantino has signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins imprint Harper, including the Oscar-winning writer’s “first work of fiction, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a novel to be published next summer that breathes new life into the characters and the premise of a film that got 10 Oscar nominations,” according to Deadline. “Tarantino has long been infatuated with the movie novelizations he read voraciously growing up, paperbacks that accompanied a film’s release. He has set in that tradition a book that teases out the characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.” It’s like the A Million Ways to Die in the West novelization by Seth MacFarlane, except something you actually want to read!

The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novel will chart the lives of Tarantino’s two protagonists – TV actor Rick Dalton and his stunt double Cliff Booth – both forward and backward in time… I’ve seen a sample of the book, an appreciation of Dalton’s post Bounty Law career from by Pulp Fiction filmmaker Tarantino, who recounts Rick Dalton’s attempts to extend his career in Italy.

Now we need a The 14 Fists of McCluskey spin-off movie. Then the train will have really left the station. Tarantino is also working on a non-fiction book, Cinema Speculation, that’s described as a “deep dive into the movies of the 1970’s, a rich mix of essays, reviews, personal writing, and tantalizing ‘what if’s,’ from one of cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers, and its most devoted fan.” A fitting topic for our finest film critic.

(Via Deadline)

Last month, Lana Del Rey caught some backlash after she was seen wearing what appeared to be a mesh mask at a book signing event. People of the internet tore into Del Rey for wearing what seemed to clearly be an ineffective mask, but now Del Rey has finally offered a response.

The Michigan Daily, the student newspaper of the University Of Michigan, wrote an article about the mask, and Del Rey replied, “Great article. The mask had plastic on the inside. They’re commonly sewn in by stylists these days. I don’t generally respond to articles because I don’t care. But there ya go. Same goes for everyone’s masks in my video. I’m lucky enough to have a team of people who can do that.”

Del Rey also responded to people who believe she supported Donald Trump in this year’s election and to those who accuse her of glamorizing abusive relationships, writing, “Again not that I believe it’s anyone’s business at all-but I made it clear who I voted for. And I don’t glamorize tough relationships. Relationships can just be tough. Period. Every other singer sings about the same damn thing. Always have, Probably always will. Thanks stay tuned.”

In response to a fan who wondered why it took Del Rey this long to respond to the mask controversy, she wrote, “Bro I’m working on 2 albums and excitedly and happily donating a million dollars throughout the nation. If I responded to everything I would be [shrugging emoji].”

Meanwhile, Del Rey recently announced that she’s working on a covers album.

In case you missed today’s bad news, Scooter Braun has sold Taylor Swift’s masters — once again, not to her. This is bad news because an artist should have the right to own their own music, especially when they have the necessary fortune to buy it back. Taylor alleges that before she even had a chance to bid on her work, Braun hit her with the kind of NDA that silences women forever, one that Taylor’s legal team described as reminiscent of sexual assault accusers hush money cases. Overreaction much?

Anyway, as we all know Taylor, she would clearly never sign something like that, and a company called Shamrock Holdings, which is affiliated with Disney, now owns Taylor’s work. It sucks for Taylor and her fans, but the situation also sucks for fans of Scooter’s other pop star clients, namely Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato. These fans have to figure out where they stand given Scooter’s behavior. Some are reacting by not wanting to listen to Demi or Ari’s music since they’re staying silent about the situation:

Others wonder if Scooter would abuse his power like this with Taylor, why not with those he has even more control over? Or if those artists have already signed an NDA that prevents them from speaking out:

There’s plenty of gray here, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but the most important thing to remember is there’s zero reason to pit Ariana and Taylor against each other for a man’s behavior. His connection to Ariana aside, she doesn’t have to be held accountable for his actions, and her and Taylor have never had bad blood, remember?

If fans are disappointed Ariana and Demi aren’t speaking out, that makes sense too, but boycotting their music is probably not the way to help Taylor here. Now, we wait and see what else happens in this saga.

Is there a modern rock hero more heavily associated with the guitar than Jack White? Wait, don’t answer that, no reason to start a turf war when the point is simply to discuss the one and only Jack White and his guitar obsession. Catapulted to mainstream fame during his work with The White Stripes, Jack has since become known for a plethora of other bands, like The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, and his solo work, not to mention his record store and label Third Man Records — and for collaborating with plenty of other artists, notably Loretta Lynn and Bob Dylan.

But the thing that Jack might be best known for (at least after this video), is his obsession with guitars. In a new lighthearted clip posted to Youtube via The Raconteurs, Jack talks the audience through all the many tricks and “contraptions” that his Three Wheel Motion Low Rider Telecaster has been outfitted with. It’s pure guitar nerdery, but done with such earnest excitement, and with changes and updates offered over the course of a few months, that it’s hard not to get sucked in. The video has the slapdash feel of quarantine-driven fun, and hey, it’s nice to know famous musicians are getting a little silly while they’re cooped up, too.

Of course, listening to Jack’s music it’s clear that he’s doing things on a guitar most musicians can’t, but actually seeing him walk through some of the elements is pretty mind-blowing. And then of course, there’s the plug for a Raconteurs song at the end — this guitar can be heard on last year’s track “Somedays (I Don’t Feel Like Trying),” which you can also stream below.

The Milwaukee Bucks are going all in on this upcoming season after yet another disappointing playoff exit. With Giannis Antetokounmpo’s supermax deal looming as the biggest decision in the NBA this offseason, Milwaukee is doing everything it can to ensure he knows they’re committed to building a winner.

Late Monday night, word broke that Milwaukee was sending a haul of three first round picks, two pick swaps, Eric Bledsoe, and George Hill to New Orleans to land star combo guard Jrue Holiday. However, the Bucks weren’t done there, as they reportedly executed a sign-and-trade to bring Bogdan Bogdanovic from the Kings to Milwaukee. The rumblings of that interest was first reported by Kevin O’Connor of The Ringer, with Adrian Wojnarowski offering the first report that a deal was indeed done — with Justin James also going to Milwaukee to make the deal work.

The Bucks, who exhausted their draft capital in the Holiday trade, managed to get the Kings on board by sending Ersan Ilyasova’s expiring contract to Sacramento along with Donte DiVincenzo and D.J. Wilson. DiVincenzo is the centerpiece of the deal for Sacramento as he’s emerged as a reliable 3-and-D wing, with Wilson as a stretch big that some believe was underutilized in Milwaukee.

For the Bucks, they add more wing help that they seriously needed and suddenly have a robust starting five of Holiday, Khris Middleton, Bogdanovic, Giannis, and Brook Lopez that they hope can make them the top team in the East and compete with the Lakers and other top teams in the West for a title. Bogdanovic is a terrific shooter, hitting 37.4 percent of his threes on his career (on impressive volume) and is also a capable secondary ball-handler. He will add serious offensive punch as a tertiary option alongside Middleton and Giannis, further spacing the floor and giving them someone who can be a lead option in bench minutes when needed — which is especially important for Milwaukee given Mike Budenholzer’s propensity for keeping his stars’ minutes fairly low.