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Taylor Swift is having herself a year! It looks like she earned nine figures on just Spotify in 2023. Forbes reckons she’s one of the five most powerful women in the world. Time just named her their Person Of The Year. Her Eras Tour has been an event, so the prospect of getting to witness a surprise performance from the pop titan is a big deal. The Detroit edition of iHeartRadio’s Jingle Ball 2023 tour teased just that yesterday and they sure didn’t deliver.

As Stereogum notes, during the Detroit show, radio host Mojo of Mojo In The Morning sure made it sound like Swift was about to make a surprise appearance as a “special guest,” hyping up the crowd with references to “Cruel Summer” and “Karma.” The facade started to get exposed, though, when he introduced the performer, shouting, “Make some noise for Trailor Swift!”

Those who didn’t catch the pronunciation cheered loudly, but soon enough, the reality set in. The whole thing was apparently Detroit radio station Channel 955 promoting their giveaway of Swift tickets for her Indianapolis concert in November 2024.

As for real musicians who were in attendance, Usher, Jelly Roll, Big Time Rush, Flo Rida, Doechii, Kaliii, and (G)I-DLE took the stage. Not Noechii or Big Lie Rush or Faux Rida, but the actual artists.

Rapper turned podcaster Joe Budden has made his career on being one of rap’s most prolific antagonists, issuing inflamatory takes in a never-ending effort to get more attention for his podcast than his music ever got. But every once in a while, he seems to recognize when he oversteps his bounds, issuing apologies to both Logic and Megan Thee Stallion in recent years for making jokes that made light of their legitimate issues.

You can add YoungBoy Never Broke Again (aka NBA YoungBoy) to that list after this week, after Budden make efforts to deescalate his simmering feud with the Louisiana lyricist. On the latest episode of his inexplicably popular podcast, Budden said, “I owe NBA an apology too. Let’s start with accountability. I owe him an apology. He don’t even bother nobody.” He also noted that he “didn’t feel good about” the coverage the dispute prompted from “the biggest blogs,” which he perhaps felt painted him in a less-than-positive light as an over-the-hill grouch who finds inordinate joy in picking on pretty much any rapper younger (and more successful musically) than he was 20 years ago.

Budden had previously called YoungBoy’s music “horrible,” and credited his streaming success to record label trickery, rather than genuine popularity with an audience Joe hasn’t been in touch with since his mixtape days. YoungBoy responded on Instagram (because he’s still on house arrest), telling Joe to “shut the f*ck up” and weirdly using his last album’s first-week numbers as a defense. Fortunately, we all know neither rapper is willing to get physical with the other because neither is a woman.

Often when we discuss infidelity, we talk about the physical type where one partner sleeps with someone outside the relationship. However, emotional cheating is a bit more nebulous. “An emotional affair is an affair of the heart,” Dr. Jenn Mann, a licensed marriage and family therapist, writes at InStyle. “The most troubling aspect of the emotional affair, for the person who is in a committed relationship, is that it drains the primary relationship of time, energy, and focus.”

Emotional cheating is also hard on the partner who remains faithful because the situation isn’t as cut and dry as physical cheating.

A case in point is a story posted on Reddit’s Relationship Advice subforum. In this story, a wife is bothered by her husband’s relationship with the babysitter, which he swears is platonic. However, he acts like it’s something more.

The story revolves around a 35-year-old woman who has been married to a 38-year-old man for 11 years and has 2 sons. The kids are sometimes watched by a 25-year-old woman who lives in an apartment up the street. The babysitter was friends with the husband’s brother many years ago, so they’ve known each other for quite some time.

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“We always invite her over when we have parties or BBQs, she gets along well with everyone,” the wife wrote. But after a while, the babysitter and the husband became rather close.

The first questionable encounter:

“One night, she had come over to watch our sons when our normal babysitter pulled out last minute. … she had been swimming with the boys in our pool and, at one point, said something about being cold. I was going to tell her I would run upstairs and grab her one of my sweaters when my husband took off the hoodie he was wearing and gave it to her,” the wife said.

While giving her the hoodie seemed a little extra, what he did next felt like something a kid with a high school crush would do.

“After he gave it to her, she kept it for a few days, when she brought it back, it smelled overwhelmingly like her, I asked him if he wanted me to wash it and he said no,” the wife wrote.

The second questionable encounter:

“She came over for a graduation party for one of our sons. She got a phone call in the middle of it and left for about an hour. My husband went over to check on her and she came back but seemed really upset and said something was going on with her mom health-wise,” the wife wrote.

“Later on, almost everyone had left. I was putting the boys to bed, the two of them were talking by the fire pit on this swing we have, she still seemed really upset and he had his arm around her shoulders and was clearly trying to cheer her up. None of that bothered me. What bothers me is that when I came back outside, they were both asleep on the swing with her head on him,” she continued.

After the wife woke them up they seemed “genuinely surprised” but didn’t act like they “got caught.”

Third questionable encounter:

After the wife’s initial post, a commenter said she should wash the hoodie and see how he reacts. So, she did and he threw a fit. After it was washed, he threw it on the closet floor.

“I told him I didn’t think he was going to cheat on me, but I didn’t like his clothing smelling overpoweringly like another woman,” she wrote. He countered that it smelled like her fabric softener because she had washed the hoodie.

That man has a lot of emotional investment in that hoodie.

Later, when the hoodie was no longer on the floor, the wife asked if it needed to be rewashed. The husband responded, “Let go of the fu***n hoodie!” he then slammed the door and went to work without saying goodbye.

“I really didn’t need to make such a big deal about the hoodie. I kind of feel like he’s making a big deal about me washing it, right,” she wrote.

The vast majority of commenters on the post felt the wife wasn’t overreacting and should be concerned about her husband’s relationship with the babysitter. “I felt awkward reading what you wrote and don’t think you’re overreacting,” Walkingwalking123 wrote. “If it was a young male neighbor, would your husband have whipped off his hoodie and handed it over? Or fallen asleep against each other? If he would, then perhaps you’re overreacting. Otherwise, not.”

A male commenter made the situation simple. The husband is either an “idiot or a gaslighter.”

“The only thing I can say is that there is nothing more romantic than a girl sleeping on you. It’s not something that just happens like, ‘Oh hey, we both just were so tired we fell asleep on each other!.’ No, it’s actually a very conscious effort to go to sleep while someone is resting on you. It shows a very deep level of comfort and intimacy between two people,” The HairyBanana wrote. “I would say set boundaries but I can’t imagine ever having to tell my [significant other] not to fall asleep holding somebody else. Just common sense, really. You’re either married to an idiot or a gaslighter. Don’t know which is worse, to be honest.”

When it comes to romantic relationships, hoodies are a lot more than a jacket. According to an article reviewed by dating coach John Keegan, when a guy gives a girl his hoodie, it means a lot. It’s a symbol of his chivalry, a display of affection and a way to show other people she is taken.

For women, the hoodies make them feel closer to the guy and they enjoy that it smells like him.

When you add up the 3 questionable scenarios, giving the girl the hoodie, falling asleep with her head on his shoulder and his obsession with not washing the hoodie, they make a good case that the wife should be wary of her husband’s relationship with the babysitter.

It’s a good thing that the woman ached out to the Reddit audience for some clarification because emotional cheating can be hard to detect. Getting some unbiased advice on the situation was probably a big help in sorting out her confusion.

The numbers are stacked against young men when it comes to finding love on dating apps. They outnumber women 2 to 1 on the platforms, making the competition pretty tough. A new study finds that they’ll make things even harder for themselves if they admit to listening to the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast in their profiles.

A new poll by Change Research surveyed 1,033 registered voters between 18 and 34 to ask about their political leanings and dating preferences. It discovered that women’s biggest red flag when looking for a relationship is a date revealing they’re a MAGA Republican, with 76% of women saying it’s a turnoff. The second biggest red flag for women is people who “have no hobbies” (66%), and the third is those who say “All Lives Matter” (60%).

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Fifty-five percent of women say it’s a big turnoff for potential partners to listen to the Rogan podcast. They also have a problem with people who “refuse” to see the “Barbie” movie (53%).

When it comes to men between the ages of 18 and 34, the biggest turn-off is people who identify as “communist” (64%), and they also have problems with those who have no hobbies (60%) as well as MAGA Republicans (59%).

Other turnoffs for men include being interested in astrology (41%) and saying “All Lives Matter” (41%).

Interestingly, people with no hobbies are a big red flag to people of both men and women. The common assumption is that people with no real hobbies or interests will rely on their partners to bring fun into their lives. Also, a lack of hobbies can mean a person lacks passion and may not have many personal goals.

When it comes to having too many hobbies, both men and women agree that it isn’t a big problem. The poll found that only 8% of women believe that having too many hobbies is a red flag and 6% of men agreed.

When it comes to green flags in a relationship, both men and women overwhelmingly agreed that they are very interested in potential partners who read. Ninety-five percent of women and 91% of men saw reading as a green flag. So, if you’re crafting an online dating profile, you may want to show some photos of you reading a book or list some of the books you’ve read recently.

They also agree that they are interested in people who research the best deals and rates before buying things. Eighty-eight percent of women listed being a smart consumer as a green flag, and men were close behind at 85%. Men (63%) and women (51%) also agreed it’s a green flag when someone looks better in person than in photos online.

Those of you looking to be in the dating pool during the upcoming presidential election should know there is a discrepancy between the genders regarding political affiliation among the 18 to 34 crowd. Although most people in this age range are moderate to liberal politically, there is a significant difference between genders.

This article originally appeared on 9.14.23

Just in time for the holiday season, Bright Eyes dropped a new cover of the late John Prine’s 1973 song, “Christmas In Prison.” Not only that, but the band also incorporated a sample of Prine’s “A John Prine Christmas,” which gives it a sweet touch — almost like he’s still around to sing along.

“It is strange to get a chance to share a track with a hero of mine who has passed on,” lead singer Conor Oberst shared in a statement. “Normally not something I would do. I don’t like holograms. But I have so much love and affection for John as a person and his music.”

“He really changed my life on a lot of levels,” he added. “When I heard the sample of him talking about Christmas just put such a big smile on my face and I couldn’t help but want to share it with other people. A little Christmas gift to a stranger. It’s all about John and his beautiful song. But I am happy to sing in the choir.”

Proceeds from the track will go to Prine’s The Hello In There Foundation, a charity that was started by his family in his honor, which offers “support for people who are marginalized, discriminated against or, for any reason, are otherwise forgotten.”

Check out Bright Eyes’ cover of “Christmas In Prison” above.

Following their infectious dancefloor anthem, “Dancer,” Idles has shared a new song, “Grace,” from their upcoming album, TANGK.

Dialed back from the rowdy “Dancer,” the new song, “Grace,” features the band calling upon the listeners to extend love to one another. Over slow-burning drums and downtempo cadence, lead vocalist Joe Talbot makes an appeal to the listener’s emotion by way soft, silky vocals and lyrics.

“Give me grace / Make me pure / When they’re knocking at my door / Make me safe / Away from harm / Hold me in my brother’s arms / Make me pure,” sings Talbot in the song’s intro.

“Grace” primarily features production by Nigel Godrich, whose resume boasts work with Radiohead, The Smile, and Beck.

“The song came from nowhere and everything. It was a breath and a call to be held,” said Talbot in a statement. “The only words or singing that came from our sessions with Nigel and I needed it, truly. All is love.”

In addition to releasing TANGK next year, Idles is set to embark on a tour, with various dates set across North America, Latin America, and Europe.

In the meantime, you can listen to “Grace” above.

TANGK is out 2/16/2024 via Partisan Records. Find more information here.

Kenan Thompson has been on Saturday Night Live for 20 years, making him the longest-running cast member of all time. However, in his new memoir, When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown, the actor reveals that he almost walked away from the iconic sketch show early into his now record-breaking run.

According to his memoir, a show of support from Maya Rudolph went a long way and was exactly what Thompson needed to gain his confidence and become a beloved SNL staple.

Via PEOPLE:

“Rookie mistakes” in his early years, as well as being “donut’-ed,” an industry term for having no airtime, led his confidence to “sink to an all-time low.”

“I was famous enough that people were trying to follow me off the subway, but I couldn’t get on the show,” Thompson writes. He also says that then-castmate Maya Rudolph assured him that he was ready, which was influential for him.

“It took a major attitude adjustment to earn my place at SNL,” Thompson wrote about how much Rudolph’s encouragement helped him tough it out and not bail on his burgeoning SNL career.

Thanks to sticking around, Thompson got a chance to meet some of his comedy idols like Eddie Murphy. As Thompson wrote, the two “kicked it.”

“And by ‘kicked it,’ I mean I was fanboying from afar and leaving him alone as much as possible,” Thompson quipped in the memoir.

(Via PEOPLE)

As Luka Doncic started to show his superstar potential as a rookie in Dallas, the Mavericks decided to accelerate their rebuild and try to get him a co-star immediately, trading for Kristaps Porzingis in a blockbuster trade with the Knicks. Porzingis didn’t play that year as he rehabbed an injury, but still was given a max extension that summer with the idea that he and Doncic would create a formidable tandem between a big guard and a versatile, stretch big.

However, the idea on paper ended up being better than what they put together on the court, and the duo lasted just 2.5 years together before Porzingis was traded to the Wizards ahead of the deadline in 2022. In theory, they should’ve complemented each other well, but Porzingis still had his eyes on being a top star and the young Doncic wasn’t willing to cede much of his spotlight, leading to the two butting heads.

In a recent sitdown on Old Man and the Three with J.J. Redick, who spent a couple months with the pair in Dallas, Porzingis admitted that “maturity and communication” a big role in why he and Doncic didn’t work, taking plenty of the blame himself for not being willing to embrace the role he was being asked to take on.

“It’s a big mix of things,” Porzingis said. “Maturity, for sure. Again, I’m talking about what I could’ve done better. And then I wasn’t that much into analytics and numbers. Like if somebody I think at that stage of my career had presented to me in the right way and said, ‘This is what we need to do. This is what we need from you. You’re going to be way more effective doing this.” Like kind of explain it to me better, I think that would’ve made a difference a little bit.”

“Do you think there was a young bull dynamic with you and Luka?…Like a pissing contest?,” Redick asked.

“Um, early on for sure,” Porzingis admitted. “But, I think we both tried to make it work, you know. It’s just, I think communication, maturity on both of our parts should’ve been better.”

Redick then offered an anecdote about the tensions on the bench after Luka got pulled in a game in Memphis, where Rick Carlisle told the team to stop acting like babies and Porzingis said to tell Luka to stop acting like a baby, which Rick did, raising eyebrows from Redick. It’s only been a two years since Porzingis left Dallas, but it seems he already has seen some growth in how he views his role on a winning team, embracing a secondary role in Boston alongside Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. The Celtics have been the beneficiaries of the poor experience Porzingis had in Dallas, and a bit of a needed reassessment of his standing in the NBA hierarchy.

The Mavs, meanwhile, are still trying to build the right team around Doncic, who may not quite be in the same reflective space as Porzingis when it comes to how best to sacrifice to win just yet.

The fifth season of Fargo so far, summarized briefly, via bullet point, with spoilers so we can get to the GIFs of goons getting walloped by booby traps

• Juno Temple plays a Minnesota housewife named Dot Lyon who, we realize very quickly, has some sort of secret
• The secret — surprise — is that she’s living under an alias because she fled her menacing husband, a militia-adjacent North Dakota sheriff named Roy, played by Jon Hamm, who enforces laws in his own sometimes extrajudicial manner and also has nipple rings
• Roy finds out where she has been hiding and sends his loser failson Gator, played by Stranger Things star Joe Keery, to collect her and bring her home after a first attempt went sideways and got the state authorities involved
• She’s known they’re coming for a while now and has been booby-trapping her house to prepare for their arrival

There’s more going on, too. Jennifer Jason Leigh is playing the CEO of a scummy debt collection agency who is Dot’s mother-in-law and has the kind of snobby New England accent where words like “what” and why” become “hhhhwhat” and “hhhhwhy.” There’s a mysterious madman out for revenge who is leaving demonic symbols on the walls and is either 500 years old or haunted by things from 500 years ago. Lamorne Morris from New Girl is a state trooper who got shot. Dave Foley from NewsRadio has a sparkly eyepatch. It’s a good time. Dark and violent and sometimes a little spooky but a good time.

Which brings us to last night’s episode. We’ve seen this all coming for a while. Hell, they teased it all in a little video before the season even started.

Last week set it all up, with Halloween night upon them and trick-or-treaters out in masks and Juno Temple swapping street signs to throw the goons off the scent. There were a slew of Nightmare Before Christmas references in that episode, because why not do that if you’re showing a Halloween episode around the holidays? But this week was straight Home Alone. Let’s investigate.

Here’s Juno Temple hiding in a closet and spraying mace in a home intruder’s eyeballs through his mask and then kicking him down the stairs.

Here she is triggering a trap she set up a few episodes ago, where some sort of sledgehammer is tied up on the ceiling and set loose and swings down to mash a goon in the face…

… which is like a bloodier version of the thing in Home Alone where the Wet Bandits get clobbered by swinging paint cans.

(It really is kind of wild in hindsight that Harry and Marv didn’t end up in the hospital or the grave after the events of the first movie. Go back and watch it sometime. They get kagonged with paint cans and shovels and irons. They fall down multiple flights of stairs. They step on rusty nails and tar and have encounters with tarantulas. In any reasonably realistic universe, they would have concussions and broken ribs and probably tetanus. It’s a silly thing to get stuck on in a movie that is basically a live-action version of the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote set in an upper-class Chicago suburb, but it’s worth noting here because the depiction of these kinds of booby traps in this episode of Fargo is probably the more accurate take on it all.)

Here’s the guy who got sprayed with mace also getting damn near decapitated by tumbling attic stairs.

It wasn’t just the bad guys who got bonked or otherwise injured by the series of traps. Even Dot’s own husband, a simple little goober named Wayne who really has no idea what is happening and basically just blows around like one of those inflatable stick figures you see outside car dealerships in the gusts of wind created by his domineering mother and jungle cat wife, gets caught up in the chaos by touching an electrified window, which both fries his entire body and starts a fire that turns the family home into a smoldering pile of ash.

It was all really very fun. Again, dark and creepy and violent, but fun. There’s still a lot that needs to play out here. The state troopers aren’t buying Dot’s story. There’s a demon running around who is hellbent on destroying Sheriff Roy. The FBI is looking into Roy, too, and his ties to various militias he’s been arming with government weapons. Jennifer Jason Leigh still has a lot of lines to deliver with that delightful little accent she’s using. It’s all very exciting. I missed Fargo a lot.

But let’s just stop here and focus on what is important today: Juno Temple is basically Kevin McAllister now. Please make a note.

Chris Paul and NBA referee Scott Foster have been at odds for years, and their feud is one of the strangest of the very public beefs in the NBA.

That recently resurfaced in a game two weeks ago when Paul got ejected by Foster during a game against the Suns, calling Foster a “b*tch” as he exited the court. After the game, Paul explained that his issue with Foster runs far deeper than most knew, saying it’s “personal,” involved his son at one point, and led to a sitdown between Paul, Foster, the Clippers, and the league years ago.

It’s all very strange and becomes the storyline every time Foster officiates one of Paul’s games. Naturally, that’s not a very tenable situation given Foster often gets top game assignments and Paul plays for one of the league’s most prominent franchises. On Wednesday, Adam Silver was asked about their feud and what the league has said to both of them about it on Sirius XM NBA Radio, and explained that the expectation is they both go out and do their jobs.

The question, of course, is whether Silver thinks that’s happening right now. The stats on Chris Paul playing in Scott Foster officiated games are well known, as he’s 3-17 lifetime in playoff games called by Foster, and it’s clear from their most recent incident that they have trouble setting aside whatever their differences are during games. Many have wondered why the NBA keeps putting Foster on Paul’s games, but the league seems to not want to set a precedent of moving a ref off of a team’s game due to a problem with a player.

In fairness to Silver, it’s pretty wild that these two can’t move on from whatever started this whole thing, but we have a long sample showing neither is willing to drop this. The result is an odd tension for those games and no real resolution, with history seemingly doomed to repeat itself the next time Foster gets assigned to the Warriors.