Category: Worldwide

Spider-Man: No Way Home is out now in theaters and racking up records as one of the most popular movies not just in the series but of the last several years. It’s already crossed the billion-dollar threshold and is being credited with helping save movie theaters after a rough couple of years, and now that it’s been out for a little over a week, fans are sharing their reactions and debating some of the film’s plot points. Those fans include Long Beach rapper Vince Staples, who has — as usual — some uniquely funny takes on some of the film’s action.

Here’s why I give you a chance to click the little “X” in the corner or hit [command+w] or close your laptop or — come on guys, there are hundreds of ways to avoid spoilers. If this “ruins” the movie for you, blame yourself.

Vince was less than enthused about the death of one character in particular, demanding a role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the sole purpose of revenge. “Oh it’s up,” he wrote. “They just flipped Aunt May in the lobby!” This development led to more of Staples’ signature snark as he promised, “They need me in the MCU if they tryna have some real get bacc. Where is the vengeance?” He then made his bid for a role in a potential future film and gave a pretty solid reason: “Put me in X-Men I’m marking everything out,” he vowed. “[On the] Dead homies.”

While there aren’t many characters in the X-Men comics that match Vince’s physique, that shouldn’t be a bar from giving him a role; after all, half of the Eternals were recast as people of color, and cape films have shuffled characters’ appearances before. Just imagine Vince Staples as Wolverine. Now, that I’d gladly pay to watch.

Alex Jones is in the midst of a serious relationship crisis. And no, we’re not talking about his marriage to Erika Wulff Jones—his wife of four years, who was arrested on Christmas Eve for violently attacking the InfoWars founder after she allegedly accused him of cheating on her. We’re talking about his much more public (and, to be clear, platonic) love affair with former president Donald Trump. On Tuesday, as Raw Story reports, Jones posted a video in which he admitted that he is taking Trump’s newly pro-vaccination stance as a very personal affront.

After rattling off a laundry list of all the “evil” people who have promoted COVID vaccines like he was Bubba from Forrest Gump, it clearly pained Jones to include Trump—a man he spent many years championing—among those names.

“The fact that I was persecuted for supporting Trump makes it ten times worse! I know Podesta’s evil, I know Hillary’s evil, I know Obama’s evil, and I know Fauci’s evil, I know Bill Gates is evil, and I know they’re all evil! But Trump did a lot of good, and I believed in him! So, the fact that he’s done this makes it personal. It makes it hurt!”

Still, Jones—conspiracy theorist that he is—doesn’t seem totally convinced that there’s not some other factor at play in the former president’s vaccine U-turn (the same vaccine Trump has begging to get some credit for pushing through so quickly, and seemed shocked/touched when Joe Biden did in fact give him just that).

As Raw Story noted last week, Jones issued an “emergency Christmas Day warning” to Trump in which he declared that, “You are either completely ignorant… or you are one of the most evil men who ever lived.” (Though he also allowed that blackmail could be behind the change of heart.)

(Via Raw Story)

Grimes is active on social media and she frequently shares some headline-worthy dispatches, like when she commented on Elon Musk’s Time Person Of The Year cover or when she noted she is “def changing [her] main day job” from music. Now, she has taken a moment to address her gender identity.

Responding to a tweet asking users to “comment your gender and also a scene from a movie you found particularly, unexpectedly hot,” Grimes replied today, “Female ish – Caitlyn and vi in the brothel in arcane.”

Grimes has talked about her gender here and there over the years, like in a 2018 tweet when she wrote that she is “personally put off by the word ‘woman’ at least as far as my self id.” Dazed notes that in a now-deleted 2015 tweet, Grimes wrote, “I vibe in a gender neutral space so I’m kinda impartial to pronouns for myself. Don’t have a preferred so much but I wish I didn’t have to be categorized as female constantly. Everything I ever hear about Grimes is super gendered and it’s always really made me uncomfortable.”

On a related note, in a September Vogue video, Grimes noted, “Being a ‘mother’ feels weird to say for some reason; I don’t identify with that word. Which is also really weird because X, he says ‘Claire,’ but he doesn’t say ‘mama.’ Maybe he can sense my distaste for the word ‘mother,’ which I don’t even know why I have a distaste for it. I respect… I just… I can’t identify with it, really.”

Between FKA Twigs’ The Weeknd collab “Tears In The Club” and talk of a new mixtape, it appears fans can look forward to more new music from her in the near future. While there is some apparently leaked info floating around about Twigs’ next project, she has now addressed it herself.

A Twitter user posted a screenshot of a Genius page for a supposed Twigs project called Capri Sun, which has been rumored to be the title, that’s set for release on January 14, 2022. The partial tracklist includes “Tears In The Club,” as well as tunes called “Maji Claire,” “Darjeeling,” “Don’t Do It Again,” and “Vice.”

Another user shared that tweet and wrote, “.@FKAtwigs im starting to get pissed off, can you announce it please????” Twigs responded, “this is bare wrong lol, nice try doe.”

Regardless, Twigs did previously suggest that a new album would be arriving at around this point in time. In September, she told fans on Discord that when it comes to her next project (which will be a mixtape), she was “thinking about a capri season take over,” presumably meaning Capricorn season, so between or around December 22, 2021 and January 19, 2022.

She also noted of the project, “It’s really deep emotional and honest but hopefully more golden tears than blue i channelled my melancholy differently this time and it was so amazing. […] i made my next project thinking about all of u and my friends it’s for getting ready and going out to and being with people who make u feel good, turnt litty bronzer in the sink shimmer on the bathroom floor.”

The NBA is scrambling, along with much of the world, to get a handle on the latest COVID-19 variant that is spreading like wildfire. Teams across the league are dealing with breakouts, and players, coaches, and executives have expressed frustration in navigating the treacherous scenarios in front of them. Earlier this season, LeBron James was placed in the league’s health and safety protocols and, while he only missed one game, James used the words “confused, frustrated, angry” to describe his feelings. Fast-forward a few weeks, and James made headlines with an Instagram post that seemingly compared COVID to the cold and flu.

From there, NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar used his considerable public platform to criticize James for promoting vaccine hesitancy, among other issues. On Tuesday, James was asked about Abdul-Jabbar’s sentiments, and he essentially declined to share a direct response.

However, James did say quite a few words in an attempt to explain his intended desire.

“No, I don’t have a response to Kareem at all,” James said, via Harrison Faigen of SB Nation’s Silver Screen and Roll. “And if you saw the post and you read the tag, you know that I’m literally, honestly asking, ‘help me out.’ Help me kind of figure it all out, like we’re all trying to figure this pandemic out. We’re all trying to figure out COVID and the new strain. And the flu, I think people forgot about the flu. People like literally forgot about the flu during these times, like that’s still going around. It’s flu season, so people have forgot about the flu. People have forgot about common colds. That happens, especially with a lot of our kids that’s in school. My daughter is in first grade, so a lot of these kids are getting like common colds and getting the flu. But no, I don’t have any response to Kareem. No. At all.”

While it is true that the flu and the common cold are not good, the issue many have with James is the apparent conflation of the three ailments as similar, not whether the flu and the common cold are still prevalent in a world that includes COVID. It will be interesting to see if there are additional public comments from James on this issue, or even Abdul-Jabbar may respond to this non-response.

Daniel Faalele is going to play professional football for quite a while once he makes the jump to the NFL. The 6’9, 380 pound tackle for the Minnesota Golden Gophers is one of the most interesting offensive line prospects in the 2022 NFL Draft, and because he is a senior, Tuesday night’s bowl game is the last time he will suit up at this level.

The game itself is not exactly one of the tentpoles of college football’s bowl season, as Minnesota is playing West Virginia in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl. Having said that, the big fella gave us one of the best moments in this year’s bowl calendar during the second quarter, when the Golden Gophers faced a first-and-goal from WVU’s 2.

Instead of lining him up on the line, Minnesota thought it’d be cool to put Faalele at fullback. You can guess what happened next: Faalele received a handoff, trudged forward, was not taken down by a single Mountaineer, and broke the scoreless tie.

Faalele was an All-Big Ten offensive lineman this year, so we assume that any NFL team that drafts him is going to, you know, take him because he is huge and hope they can mold him into a bookend on the line for the next decade-plus. But please, whichever team takes him, let Faalele play some fullback.

This year already proved to be a huge year for vinyl record sales. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), vinyls generated $467 million in the United States by mid-2021, more than doubling the $207 million that was made at that point in 2020. The success of vinyl records this year can be credited to projects like Adele’s 30, Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever, Taylor Swift’s Evermore, and more. In fact, 30 recently edged out Evermore to become the best-selling vinyl album of 2021. With just a few days left in the year, vinyls have crossed a mark previously untouched in the last 30 years.

According to Billboard, in the week ending on December 23, 2.11 million vinyl records were sold making it the largest sales week for vinyls since MRC Data began tracking music sales back in 1991. It’s also the first time that vinyl sales have surpassed the 2 million mark in the MRC Data era. It’s a 45% increase from the week prior (1.46 million), which suggests that the spike was caused by the Christmas holiday. In fact, the previous high was set on December 24, 2020 with 1.84 million vinyls being sold. Adele’s 30 was the top-selling album of the week as it moved 59,000 copies.

Furthermore, the week ending on December 23 was the sixth consecutive week that vinyl sales surpassed the one million mark. This past week, vinyl records also accounted for 50% of all albums and 57% of all physical albums that were sold in the United States.

We live in an age of Mad Libs news, but this is one might be the most leftfield story of 2021: Dr. Oz is running for Senate. As a Republican. The surgeon-turned-TV star recently quit his extremely successful daytime show to become a Trumpist politician, to the bafflement of many, including the hosts of The View. It hasn’t been going so hot. He even badly flubbed an abortion question on Fox News.

But what of the person who made him a household name? What of Oprah Winfrey, who regularly brought him on as a health expert on her own old daytime talk show? So far, she’s remained shtum. But a couple days before the year ended, Winfrey broke her silence — or at least gave a canned and kind of awkward statement to her spokesperson, who gave it to a journalist.

A new profile of Dr. Mehmet Oz in New York (as caught by The Daily Beast) looks at both his back story and his unexpected, possibly doomed new life choice. Oprah is all over it, but she only makes an actual appearance very, very briefly. When reporter Olivia Nuzzi reached out to Winfrey, asking for an interview, she was turned down. Instead, Oprah let her spokesperson, Nicole Nichols, pass along her response.

Here is Nichols’ response, containing Winfrey’s response, in full:

“I have one statement for you from Ms. Winfrey. No other comments: ‘One of the great things about our democracy is that every citizen can decide to run for public office. Mehmet Oz has made that decision. And now it’s up to the residents of Pennsylvania to decide who will represent them.’ —Oprah Winfrey.”

Not exactly a glowing recommendation! There’s not much there, though read between the stiff lines and you can spot a rift. She clearly doesn’t want to burn the man whose name she made, but she also probably doesn’t want to fully endorse someone who one could argue is cynically courting a new kind of Republican voter. And so Dr. Oz has received the kind of quote you don’t put in a campaign ad.

(Via New York and The Daily Beast)

Shortly after the second anniversary of his death, Juice WRLD’s estate released the late rapper’s second posthumous album. Fighting Demons arrived nearly a year and a half after Legends Never Die, the first album released after his death. At the same time, there have been a lot of leaks of music he never released. It’s unknown where these leaks are coming from, but it’s reached the point where iJuice WRLD’s mother, Ms. Carmella Wallace, has spoken out against them.

“I understand they loved him,” she said while speaking to XXL. “They loved his music, but there’s a proper way to do it. Let us give you our best. Leaked music is not necessarily cleaned up music, it’s just leaked, it’s not finished. So, it’s just a lot of work just going into it.” She continued, “It’s a bit disrespectul to him, honestly, to leak his music like that. But I know that monster is there, been there and it’s not going anywhere. We can just do our part and put out good music. He made a lot of good music.”

Just a month after Juice WRLD’s death, TMZ reported that he had around 2,000 unreleased songs in his vault. Some of those can be found on Legends Never Die and Fighting Demons while others are set to appear on future efforts, like the trilogy of projects which includes an EP titled The Party Never Ends.

You can read Ms. Carmella Wallace’s full interview with XXL here.

Rand Paul is a doctor but he doesn’t seem to know how vaccines work. He’s a staunch libertarian who’s intransigently against government spending, but he will ask for federal aid, only if it’s for people who could keep him in office. Now he’s a politician who doesn’t seem to understand how voting works.

According to Raw Story, the Kentucky senator posted a link on Tuesday to a piece by The Washington Examiner that detailed how Democrats were able to carry Wisconsin, whose denizens had voted Trump four years prior. Short version: They convinced enough people to vote for them. Amazing how that works! But to Paul, getting voters to vote for you is tantamount to stealing.

Paul quoted a section from the Examiner piece: ‘Seeding an area heavy with potential Democratic votes with as many absentee ballots as possible, targeting and convincing potential voters to complete them in a legally valid way, and then harvesting and counting the results.’” Paul prefaced this with the words, “How to steal an election.”

Thing is, even Paul’s selective, out-of-context quote doesn’t remotely suggest stealing. In fact, it’s how democracy works. Perhaps his beef is with absentee ballots. If so, he would be shocked to learn absentee ballots are legal forms of voting. So is “convincing potential voters to complete them.” Counting votes is also legal. Indeed, there’s no illegal activity going on anywhere in the sentence Paul quoted as evidence of malfeasance.

But don’t take it from us. Take it from the many, many people who dragged Paul on social media over what was either a mental hiccup or a damning self-reveal, suggesting he simply doesn’t like it when voters vote Democratic.

“You literally described the legal voting method,” wrote Project Lincoln’s Fred Wellman. “That’s not stealing you idiot. It’s called letting American’s vote. It feels like stealing because your party is shrinking into nothing.”

Others were happy to educate Paul as well.

Others posited that perhaps Paul simply doesn’t like secure and fair elections.

And others reflected on some of Paul’s other curious positions.

Still, better being mocked online than being told to “get f*cked” by someone over a virtual town hall.

(Via Raw Story)