Category: Worldwide

What’s the deal with telemarketers? They’re a pest that enrages many, including Jerry Seinfeld (or at least his Seinfeld character) and GOP senator Jon Bramnick. As per Mediaite, the New Jersey lawmaker so despises them that he’s introducing legislation inspired by the famous Seinfeld scene where Jerry gives a caller a taste of his own medicine.

Last week Bramnick introduced a bill that would require telemarketers to provide customers with “the name and telephone number of the person on whose behalf the call is being made.” Should the bill pass, they would have to do so within the first 30 seconds of the call — provided people don’t angrily hang up on them.

Lest anyone was wondering where he got the idea, Bramnick posted the Seinfeld scene, from the Season 4 classic “The Pitch” and written by the uncancellable Larry David, in which Jerry takes a break from chatting with Kramer, George, and the latter’s new (doomed) girlfriend Susan to field a call from a telemarketer. After being asked about changing his long distance service (a beautiful time capsule, this scene), Jerry says he’s busy and asks for the telemarketer’s number so he can call him later. The telemarketer refuses.

“Oh, I guess you don’t want people calling you at home?” Jerry asks.

“No,” the man answers.

“Well, now you know how I feel,” Jerry replies.

Of course, telemarketers aren’t quite the scourge they were in the days before caller ID, to say nothing of smartphones. Perhaps a Seinfeld episode made today would feature Jerry raging against a more modern annoyance: robocalls.

(Via Mediaite)

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 – This is the only thing I care about

You know how sometimes you’ll see a link to a story online and you’ll click it and then you’ll start reading it and then all the information you read just latches on to various parts of your brain with little grappling hooks, refusing to leave or even budge a little for a week or so, in a way that sometimes prevents other thoughts from making their way around in there, even when they’re important, like how you’ll be in the grocery store trying to remember if the cousin coming for dinner is the one who is lactose intolerant and wouldn’t be able to have ice cream cake but all your brain is spitting out is “WHO STOLE THE SHREK SCULPTURE?”

I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me. This isn’t a random example, either. Somebody really did steal a Shrek scripture recently. In Massachusetts. It was on the news and I saw it and I kind of can’t stop thinking about it. The sculpture was 200 pounds. IT WAS A 200-POUND SHREK SCULPTURE. The police are looking for it and everything. This is important. To me. And the police. Kind of. They’re being a little glib about it, honestly. Look at their Facebook post about it.

This approximate 200lb cement SHREK SCULPTURE has gone MISSING from his home on MOUNTAIN RD. If you have any information of his current whereabouts please reach out to our department or return him in the condition you found him.

The dragon sculpture he lives with is frustrated and lonely.

I feel like a visual will help. I feel like you will grasp the severity of the situation if you see the Shrek sculpture. Please watch this brief video.

Do you get it now? Do you see my dilemma? I have things to do! I can’t be sitting here all day thinking about who stole a massive homemade Shrek sculpture and why they did it. I have ice cream cakes to either buy or not buy! I need closure on so many pieces of this story. I need to know who made the sculpture. I need to know why they made a 200-pound sculpture of Shrek. I need to know if they have made other sculptures. I need to know what those potential sculptures are. Are they all characters from popular animated movies? Is there a Nemo one? Are there cars from Cars? Are there other Shreks? Are there only Shreks? Are there only Shreks but then one of Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny, for reasons that remain unexplained to this day? I need to know. Help.

And that’s before we get into the actual theft. That’s somehow even more fascinating. Who steals a 200-pound Shrek sculpture? How does one steal a 200-pound Shrek sculpture? I have come up with three possibilities, which I will now present to you from least to most likely:

— It was masterminded by the world’s foremost Shrek collector, who lives in a castle in Europe and whose name is probably like Ludwig Von Drawbridge. It was a piece he had coveted for years. He offered the owner everything. Money, jewels, power, anything he could ever want. But the owner wouldn’t sell. Finally, Ludwig snapped. He hired a team of skilled thieves. They swooped in with a helicopter under the cloak of night and attached it to a grappling hook and flew away with it hanging 30 feet below them attached to a steel cable.

— Some billionaire stole it for kicks — just to see if he could, just for the rush — and plans on putting it back before the cops and the attractive insurance investigator figure it all out.

— Rascal teens with a pickup truck.

Either way, I need to know. I need daily updates. I need competing docuseries on rival streaming networks and I need at least one of them to be narrated by Pierce Brosnan. Make it the entire plot of the next Knives Out movie. Or a Muppet movie. Or both. I do not care. Just tell me everything about the Shrek heist every day until there is closure or something else comes along to distract me.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Tell me more about the “car-fu”

The fourth John Wick movie comes out at the end of March, along with… everything else cool and good. That’s great. The end of March isn’t that far away. Which also means winter isn’t going to be around much longer either. That’s cool, too, because winter stinks. (More on this later.) We are all going to go see the new John Wick movie soon with little light spring jackets on. Maybe even a long-sleeve t-shirt if it’s sunny and we hit a matinee. That’s fun to think about.

And when we go see it, if the new issue of Total Film is to be believed (and I have no reason to question it), we will be treated to extended sequences of car-fu. And this is where you say, “What, exactly, is car-fu?” And then I get to tell you that car-fu is kind of like kung-fu but with cars. The use of a car as a deadly weapon. There was actually a whole special thing about it on the DVD extras for John Wick 2. They explained how everything worked in the scene up there. It’s a good time. I could watch Keanu drive around and wreck some ninjas all day long.

And again, it looks like I’ll get to because the next movie is giving me more of it. I love that. Keanu loves it, too, at least according to this quote from the director, Chad Stahelski, also in the Total Film piece.

“I dare you to find anybody, any cast member in Hollywood — and I’m including all the big names — that can drive better than [Reeves]. I’ll throw down the gauntlet! You know the other names I’m throwing it down to, and I bet Keanu can out-drive them all. That’s how much time we put in. No skydiving or base-jumping; I can’t throw that gauntlet for sure. But in a vehicle, he’s amazing. And he puts in the time not just on set — he puts in the pre-lap time.”

To recap:

• Car-fu is a thing
• I am so excited to see this movie
• I think the director of the John Wick movies is trying to start a feud between Keanu Reeves and Tom Cruise?

Nothing wrong with anything here. Good for all of us. Especially me. This is all really great for me.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – I found a new kind of guy

I watched The Pez Outlaw on Netflix this week. It was a blast. It’s a whole documentary about this wild bearded collector who got a little obsessed with Pez dispensers. Maybe a lot obsessed. He started flying to Europe a lot to go to an actual Pez factory to get prototypes and rare variations and then he kind of smuggled them back into America to sell them at various shows. I love stuff like this. Very McMillions-y, which I say as the highway compliment I know how to give.

Like McMillions, this sucker featured some characters. Real people, yes, sure, but people with big enough personalities to be called characters. The big one in McMillions was my beloved Agent Doug, the FBI agent who loved his job so much but only when he got to investigate the fun stuff. Here, the big one for me was The Cool Pez Man, a fellow super collector who literally has branded himself as The Cool Pez Man. Those are his words. I did not make it up. That’s him up there in the screencap, wearing a hat that says Cool Pez Man. I love him very much.

Here’s the best part: Moments after we meet him (like seconds, not minutes) he says this, which is both one of the most incredible sentences I’ve ever heard and almost certainly the first time these words have been said in this exact order, unless the Cool Pez Man has used them to pick up Cute Pez Ladies at the Pez conventions.

You should have seen me when I saw this live. I gasped a little. I started smiling and I don’t think I stopped for an hour. I went into the kitchen and stopped a person from doing dishes to make them come see. I’m pretty sure the words I used were “Get over here and look at the Cool Pez Man!,” which is almost certainly not the first time those words have been said in that order. I bet people say that a lot.

With good reason. I mean… look at the Cool Pez Man.

LOOK AT HIM.

Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – This video goes a little viral every year around this time but I’m gonna post it again because no one has ever been more right about anything

What we have here is a video from 2016 that features a guy named Kevin Killeen from KMOX in St. Louis. There’s a decent chance you’ve seen it at some point because it usually goes viral somewhere around this time of year. There are two main reasons for this:

• It is about how much the entire month of February stinks
• He’s correct from beginning to end

Watch it now. Right now. Go click play before you finish reading this sentence. It’s so good. February does stink, a lot. The whole way through. Almost a decade ago, at this very website, I ranked the months of the year and said this while ranking February dead last. I stand by just about all of it.

February is everything January is but worse. It’s the Pluto of months, in that it is ice-cold and smaller than the others and no one would miss it if we chose to do away with it altogether. You know what? Let’s do that. From now on January is 59 days long and we just hibernate through the entire thing like bears. Black History gets a full-length month, like May, with 31 days and cookout-appropriate weather. Valentine’s Day is now optional and sometime in April. Groundhog Day is eliminated entirely, because it is a pointless holiday that consists of disturbed individuals in formal wear assaulting a confused rodent to have it do a job literally any cinder block could do, and the second an intelligent life form from the cosmos sees this charade and realizes what a silly civilization we’ve created, it will rightly assume we deserve to be dominated and show up to enslave us all in futuristic space shackles. Too risky, I say. February’s gotta go.

I say “just about all of it” instead of “all of it” only because Groundhog Day kind of redeemed itself this year. The Canadian version at least. I’m sorry that I find this funny because it’s so dark but… like… come on.

I have to assume this means winter will never end now. I feel bad for Canada but this is incredible content.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Give Joe Pera money to help you sleep

Terrific news for insomniacs and fans of soothing but offbeat comedy: Joe Pera is starting a sleep podcast. I should probably explain both parts of that, just so you understand why I — someone who sleeps poorly and likes Joe Pera — am so excited about this.

Joe Pera is a comedian who used to have a little Adult Swim show called Joe Pera Talks With You that I adored until it was canceled after three seasons. It was cool and unlike anything else I’ve seen on television before or since. There was one episode about how much fun it is to go to the grocery store. There was a season-long arc about him growing a bean arch in his backyard. There was the episode I embedded above in full where he straight-up talks the viewer to sleep. It was delightful and nice and… yeah, soothing.

This brings us to his new podcast, which he is distributing through Patreon.

Let’s let Joe explain this himself.

Drifting Off with Joe Pera is an evening comedy podcast from comedian Joe Pera and composer Ryan Dann. With low-key jokes, immersive soundscapes, and relaxing phone conversations, Joe’s narration and Ryan’s sound design will help you unwind and perhaps even fall asleep.

Featuring guest composers and interviews with interesting folks, the podcast will be released on the first Sunday of every month. Sorry, it’s not more often but this is the fastest we can do thoughtful, quality work.

Yup. I’m in. I subscribed so fast, in part because I like to support the people whose work I appreciate and in part because I suspect it will be pretty useful for me, a person who, again, rarely sleeps well straight through the night. It would be kind of like if one of your favorite comedians made a podcast about how to build a deck right around when you decided to try to build your own deck. But more useful. You don’t want to be swinging around a hammer and nails if you haven’t been sleeping. That’s a good way to end up in the hospital. Which would probably be more expensive than a monthly subscription to a podcast that helps you sleep.

It’s almost saving you money, if you think about it.

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 Joe:

I loved your article about movies where Ben Affleck runs a Dunkin. But your last pitch missed a great opportunity: instead of Affleck in Paris competing in a romcom, he sets up in London across from a cozy marmalade cafe operated by one Paddington Bear. Think about it, Paddington is running the cafe, earning a good living, cooking up lots of marmalade sandwiches, and in comes Ben with his fancy coffee and donuts. Give me Affleck yelling at Paddington after the bear takes a dip in the iced coffee dispenser. Or Paddington getting mad when Affleck tells him marmalade is disgusting and they aren’t putting it in a jelly donut. Eventually, I don’t know, Matt Damon shows up and smooths everything over. The ending doesn’t matter, give me 2 hours of Paddington and Affleck at each other’s throats.

There are two things I like about this email:

• It allows me to link back to the thing I wrote that Joe mentioned
• It is completely insane in the best possible way

The only thing I don’t like about it all is that the idea wasn’t mine. Make this movie. Put Paddington in a sequel to The Accountant. Give me everything I want and give it to me now. Thank you.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Dallas!

Two emperor tamarin monkeys were apparently taken from the Dallas Zoo, officials said on Monday, the latest in a series of bizarre episodes that have included the escape and death of other animals this month.

…
…
…

Monkey heist?

The habitat for the monkeys was found to have been “intentionally compromised,” and the breach was reported to the Dallas Police Department on Monday morning after members of the zoo’s animal care team discovered they were gone, said Kari Streiber, a zoo spokeswoman, in a statement.

See, here’s the problem. I was all excited about this. I was going to run around doing the all-caps MONKEY HEIST thing and get into who would steal some monkeys and why. I might have even plopped in a picture of Pierce Brosnan in a tuxedo, as I will sometimes do. But then I saw this…

… and it suddenly became so important to me that we find these monkeys. I need them returned safely. At once. Look at that little face. This is not a joke anymore. This is serious. I am serious.

Which is why it brings me great pleasure to bring you this follow-up report from later in the week.

Dallas Police said that they found the two emperor tamarin monkeys, named Bella and Finn, after getting a tip. Police said they then went to an empty home in Lancaster, located just south of Dallas, and found the monkeys safe in a closet.

“We are thrilled beyond belief to share that our two emperor tamarin monkeys have been found,” zoo officials said in a statement. “DPD located the animals early this evening and called our team to come secure and transport the tamarins back to the zoo. They will be evaluated by our veterinarians this evening.”

Good. Great. This is terrific news. I’m glad this is all settled and all the monkeys are safe and we can put all of this behin-…

WHAT THE HELL?!?!

Last week a strange sight appeared over Montana: a giant balloon. It was quickly deduced that it belonged to China. But why was it there? China officials have claimed it’s a meteorological device and that it — and a second one found floating over Latin America — was there by mistake. Others suspected it was some sort of “spy balloon.” President Joe Biden has vowed to “take care” of the flying object, but others in the GOP have other bizarre — and unsafe! — ideas on how to handle it.

Jesse Watters, who’s been gaming to be as kooky as Fox News colleagues like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, wondered why some random Montana-ian doesn’t, you know, just dig into their arsenal for a solution.

“Why not shoot it over Montana?” Watters said. He wasn’t exactly worried about property damage. Indeed, that could be a badge of honor. “That’s your barn that it lands on. The feds reimburse you the money, and then you set up a little museum for the rest of your life and you live off that. You do Good Morning America, you do Fox and Friends, and that’s it.”

Watters had some other solutions. “How about you crank some of those windmills cockeye and, you know, blow it back to Canada?” he suggested. “Or how about you ram it with the Goodyear blimp?” he added. “Scramble some more F-22 Raptors. Throw some lead in that sucker.”

If you live in Montana, please don’t do any of this.

Other GOPers have had similar thoughts. Both Paul Gosar and sore election loser Kari Lake both posted images of themselves brandishing guns, ready to take out the balloon. Please don’t be like either of them.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Before she became the most headline-grabbing person in Congress (or now second to George Santos), Marjorie Taylor Greene was a conspiracy theorist who liked to creepily stalk future colleagues. Maybe she was happier then. On a recent podcast appearance for journalist-turned-troll Glenn Greenwald, the Georgia representative whined about how being a lawmaker who for the first two years of her stint made no laws is hard work.

“The nature of this job, it keeps members of Congress and senators in Washington so much of the time—too much of the time, to be honest with you—that we don’t get to go home and spend more time with our families, our friends, all in our district, or maybe just be regular people,” Greene complained. “Because this job is so demanding, it’s turned into practically year-round.

It’s such a bad job that she works her butt off to keep it. “And for those of us in the House of Representatives, we have to run for Congress every two years,” Greene explained. “So you’re practically campaigning nearly the entire time that you’re here serving as a representative.”

If that weren’t bad enough, it doesn’t even pay that well — a measly $174,000 a year! — even though she used to blow a good chunk of her salary on mask fines.

“Becoming a member of Congress has made my life miserable. I made a lot more money before I got here. I’ve lost money since I’ve gotten here,” she moaned. “It’s not a life that I think is like something that I enjoy because I don’t enjoy it.”

For her first two years, Greene was not allowed on any committees due to her history of incendiary behavior towards elected officials. But recently she’s cleaned up her act, or at least stopped palling around with some of Congress’ other wackos.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Freshman GOP representative George Santos has been caught lying about a lot of things. No, he’s not Jewish. No, he’s not a former college volleyball champ. No, his mother didn’t die in 9/11 (!!). But this alleged whopper might be the strangest of all: He reportedly lied about producing one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.

As per Bloomberg, during his first, failed campaign in 2021, Santos allegedly told potential donors that he was once a producer on Spider-Man: Turn on the Dark, the notorious stage musical that ended its relatively short run with, as Playbill put it at the time, a “monumental financial loss.” The production was plagued with technical mishaps and actor injuries, as well as bad press. It was a walking punchline that still attracted large crowds — albeit not as large as the ones for Wicked.

When asked about Santos’ claim by Entertainment Weekly, a spokesperson for the show, Rick Miramontez, said, “Of all the tribulations the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark had to endure, we are very pleased, proud and relieved to report working with George Santos was not one of them.”

Why would Santos — whose name never appeared in the show’s playbills — lie about this, of all things? The elected lawmaker has yet to comment. It would have been strange had he helped produce the famous bomb. For one thing, he’s 34 now (or so he says). The show started previews in 2011, which would make him 21 or 22 then — a very, very young age for someone mounting any Broadway production, let alone one of the most expensive in history.

(Via Bloomberg and EW)

Anna Kendrick doesn’t use Twitter as often as she used to (if only we were all so lucky), but when she does, it’s a delight. “As an anemic little rodent, can I just ask: are there iron supplements that don’t taste like I’m swallowing a dirty penny?” the Alice, Darling actress recently tweeted, eliciting a response from none other than Russell Crowe. Kendrick also discovered the one fun thing about having her Twitter account hacked, and of course there’s the Ryan Gosling tweet. Most Oscar-nominated performers wouldn’t joke about wanting to masturbate during, like, Crazy, Stupid, Love or Blue Valentine (weird choice!), and maybe she wouldn’t 10 years later. Then again, the first thing she says in her Vanity Fair “Anna Kendrick Rewatches…” video is about her cleavage, so you never know.

In the video, Kendrick revisits scenes from her own movies, including Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the Twilight series, and Pitch Perfect. “I’m distracted by my cleavage,” she admitted while the “Cups” scene (feel free to make your own “more like [boob size] cups” joke) from the a cappella comedy is playing. “Can I say that? Is that weird?”

Kendrick also admitted that “Cups” — which reached number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 — is “a weird nails on chalkboard thing” for her. And has been since at least 2015.

You can watch the video above.

(SPOILERS for this week’s BMF episode will be found below.)

Each week for the ‘BMF’ To Blowin’ Money Fast series, we’ll recap the episode by looking at a few key things to see how they hurt Meech and Terry’s money-making goals. Each item will be marked as a profit or a loss, the former keeping them in the black and the latter pushing them into the red. Throughout the course of the season, something that was once unprofitable could turn profitable, and vice versa, but we’ll have to wait and see what that might be.

Last week on “Runnin’ On E,” the fourth episode in season two of BMF, everything nearly falls apart for life as they know it for Meech and Terry. Meech spends most of this episode recovering from gunshot wounds he received after Lamar, who he believed was dead, shot him from point-blank range. As he recovers, Terry does what brothers do best and steps back into BMF to get a few things in line to help Meech. At this point, Detroit, and the rest of the country, is in a cocaine supply drought, but Terry is able to get a small batch in order to get some money rolling through. Unfortunately, his plan to move it upstate fails when Denise, who unknowingly took the product during a drive to Lansing, was arrested by Detectives Bryant and Jin for drug possession. With their backs against the wall, Meech and Terry are forced to make a run for it from Detroit before they are arrested.

In the fifth episode of season two, titled “Moment Of Truth,” Meech and Terry escape the grasp of death and imprisonment by running out to Atlanta. We see that their main goal is to somehow purchase product to bring back to Detroit and sell in order to pay back debts. The duo thinks it will be an easy process, but it proves to be much harder as they run into respected figures in the city who aren’t willing to budge. As expected though, Meech and Terry are able to find a way and make their trip successful. Back in Detroit, Charles reaches new heights to frustrate viewers and Lamar continues to terrorize the Flenorys despite Meech and Terry being out of town.

Meech

PROFIT

Meech’s tunnel vision is one of his best qualities. While Terry has one foot in a life on the straight and narrow and the other in the drug game, Meech always has his eyes set on making more money and elevating. So during their trip to Atlanta, Meech does everything to make sure Terry’s head is in one place and that includes throwing his textbook out of the car window. When Terry is set on gambling and playing dice to win more money to pay for product, Meech eventually proves that there’s a better way to go about it. Throughout their time in Atlanta, the Flenory brothers’ success together proves that they are better together and it’s just what Terry needed to convince himself that he does want to continue in BMF. For what it’s worth, it was Terry who forced him and Meech to flee to Atlanta, but it’s Meech and Terry together that will help BMF rise to the top.

Charles

LOSS

Throughout the season, we watched Charles and thought, “There’s no way this can get worse.” Sure, he can be a pain in the behind to everyone in the family. Yes, he hounds Terry and assumes the worse in him and yes, he neglects Lucille, but that’s got to be it right? Nope. In “Moment Of Truth,” we watch Charles’s frustrations with his family and their situation, as well as his own exhaustion from it all, push him to do the worst: cheat on his wife. A party at Mabelle’s house with just the right amount of attention and temptation causes Charles to fall into his trap. While he seemingly intends to hide the secret for as long as he can, his first night back home with Lucille after their retreat proves that things will certainly not be the same between them. It remains to be seen if the family can at least stick together because if not, that’s a big loss in terms of everyone’s support system.

Terry

PROFIT

As we mentioned already, it’s Terry’s fault that he and Meech were forced to flee to Atlanta. His refusal to listen to Meech, and instead, enlist Denise to bring product to Lansig ended terribly as she was arrested by Detectives Bryant and Jin. Even when the duo makes it to Atlanta, it was Terry’s rash decision-making and rare impulsive that causes he and Meech to lose half of the $15,000 they had left to their name. Still, when their backs were against the wall, Terry was able to come through and save the day by rolling a seven during a dice game where he and Meech needed to win all the money on the table. To make things even better, Terry admits that his time in Atlanta with Meech made him want to return to BMF. Terry certainly had his fair share of mistake, but his return to BMF only means that the sky is the limit for the pair.

Lamar

LOSS

Lamar Silas is not giving up his search for the Flenory boys. At the end of episode four, we watch him track down Meech and Terry in his Jeep and attempt to take them off the road and possibly kill them. Luckily for Meech and Terry, he fails as they’re able to escape to Atlanta. However, that doesn’t stop Terry. He later decides to pay a visit to Lucille and Charles’ house where he nearly makes a move to shoot Lucille. Fortunately for the Flenorys again, they’re able to survive as Lucille says a prayer with Charles that makes him run off for some reason. Lamar is by far the most dangerous thing standing in Meech, Terry, and all of BMF’s way. Everything they love and want to protect is at risk as long as Lamar is around. Meech made a promise to Monique that he would take Lamar down, and with the way things are now, Meech needs to act on that as soon as possible.

Goldie

PROFIT

In the spring of 2022, 50 Cent expressed desire to cast Mo’nique in one of his shows. Two months later casted her in BMF to make up for lost time. Though most of the entries in the BMF To Blowin’ Money Fast series have to do with the characters on the show, but with Mo’nique’s debut on BMF this week, it’s only right that she gets some love in addition to her character. Mo’nique makes her debut as Goldie, the owner of a strip club in Atlanta who has plenty of street smarts and a no f*cks given attitude that comes in handy for men who want to try and overpower her — as we see in this episode. Goldie’s is a slick-taking, bossed-up character which is perfect type of person that Meech and Terry need to have their way in Atlanta. It remains to be seen what other interactions the duo has with Goldie, but I pray to the man upstairs that this is far from the last time we seen Goldie. Mo’nique is great and Goldie is great, so let’s not fix anything that isn’t broken yet.

New episodes of ‘BMF’ are available on the STARZ app on Fridays at 12:00 am EST and on the STARZ TV channel at 8:00 pm EST.

Today, a longtime Bruce Springsteen-themed fanzine, Backstreets, officially announced that they’ll be shutting down after 43 years of publishing. The zine, which has covered The “Boss” and his E Street Band since 1980, felt “dispirited, downhearted, and, yes, disillusioned” over Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing model.

Backstreets broke the news on social media, with an image bearing lyrics from Springsteen’s “Nebraska” and a longer goodbye letter on their website.

“After 43 years of publishing in one form or another, by fans for fans of Bruce Springsteen, it’s with mixed emotions that we announce Backstreets has reached the end of the road,” Backstreets‘ editor-in-chief, Christopher Phillips, wrote.

“There’s no denying that the new ticket price range has in and of itself been a determining factor in our outlook as the 2023 tour approached — certainly in terms of the experience that hardcore fans have been accustomed to for, as Springsteen noted, 49 years,” he added. “Six months after the onsales, we still faced this three-part predicament: These are concerts that we can hardly afford; that many of our readers cannot afford; and that a good portion of our readership has lost interest in as a result.”

Springsteen’s trouble with Ticketmaster started last year after he announced his 2023 tour, which he currently is playing right now. Certain cities, through Ticketmaster’s “platinum” option, fluctuated because of increased demand and had tickets being sold for thousands of dollars.

“You don’t like to be criticized. You don’t like to be the poster boy for high ticket prices. It’s the last thing you prefer to be,” Springsteen later told Rolling Stone.

Read Backstreets‘ full closing statement here.

Five players were ejected from Friday night’s game between the Orlando Magic and the Minnesota Timberwolves after a brawl broke out in the third quarter. Two players, Austin Rivers and Mo Bamba, were at the center of the whole thing, with Rivers running up the court and towards Orlando’s bench, where he was confronted by Bamba.

Things escalated between the two quickly, and eventually, the pair were tossed from the game. Apparently, they weren’t done with one another as the two got into a confrontation after they left the court.

Both players were asked about the incident after the game, with Bamba passing on the opportunity to comment and Rivers claiming he was acting in self-defense. Things were not quite as cordial on Instagram, though, with both players posting things about just went down. Bamba went first with a meme that seemed to imply that Rivers had this coming.

Rivers, meanwhile, decided to post a note to his IG Story where he called out Bamba, saying “we only know u from an old rap song,” and insisting that people in Orlando “don’t mess with u there.”

In a bit of unfortunate news for anyone who hopes to see these two step on the court again this season, Friday’s game was the last matchup between the Magic and the Timberwolves of the 2022-23 NBA season.

Raye isn’t afraid of speaking her truth. Today (February 3), the singer/songwriter is celebrating her debut album My 21st Century Blues. In honor of the feat, she cheekily set up an installation comprised of white-painted guitars, speakers, stereo systems, and other instruments — right in front of her former record label.

She unveiled the installation in a TikTok clip, which contained text reading “maybe I was petty and built this installation in front of my old record label.”

Raye signed to Polydor back in 2014, and split from the label in 2021. During those years, she recorded several songs, some of which were released in the form of EPs and standalone singles, and some given to other artists to sing. Shortly before parting ways with Polydor, she expressed her frustration with the label via Twitter.

“I have had albums on albums of music sat in folders collecting dust,” she said, “songs I am now giving away to A list artists because I am still awaiting confirmation that I am good enough to release an album.”

It’s safe to say going independent paid off for Raye, as My 21st Century Blues has reached No. 1 on Apple Music UK, as well as UK’s iTunes store.

My 21st Century Blues is out now via Raye. You can stream it here.