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Samuel J. Seymour was one of the approximately 1,700 people at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865, the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. He was also the last to live long enough to talk about that historic night on television.

Seymour was 5 years old when he went to see the play “Our American Cousin” with his nurse, Sarah Cook, and Mrs. Goldsboro, the wife of his father’s employer.

When Booth shot Lincoln, he pulled the trigger during the biggest laugh of the night so that it wouldn’t be heard. What caught Seymour’s attention was when Booth fell from the balcony after a scuffle with Henry Reed Rathbone.

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Chaos erupted in the theater and Seymour was ushered out by his nurse. While they fled he overheard people screaming, “Lincoln’s shot! The President is dead!”

“I saw Lincoln slumped forward in his seat,” the old man later recalled. “That night I was shot 50 times, at least, in my dreams—and I sometimes relive the horror of Lincoln’s assassination, dozing in my rocker as an old codger like me is bound to do.”

Two months before Seymour’s death at the age of 95, he appeared on the game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” where panelists tried to guess his secret: “I saw John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln (April 14, 1865).”

Seymour didn’t speak much during the show but he did make a historic understatement when panelist Jayne Meadows asked if his secret was “a pleasant thing,” to which Seymour replied, “Not very pleasant I don’t think. I was scared to death.”

This article originally appeared on 2.3.23

On Friday Netflix dropped a new original film on their coffers. It’s called Leave the World Behind, and it finds Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail offering his vision of a very possible apocalypse. It’s not computers enslaving humans that’s the problem. It’s technology — phones, computers, wifi, everything we’ve come to rely on to get by — stops working. (There are also killer Teslas, which is definitely not far-fetched.) The movie’s inciting incident is a getaway house rented by one family (led by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) but owned by another (led by Mahershala Ali). But where is this home, and where was it filmed?

The answer to both questions is: Long Island. The majority of Leave the World Behind was filmed on location, in Old Westbury, one of the wealthiest parts of what is truly a long, long island, which is saying something. Old Westbury isn’t too deep into Long Island; it’s about an hour drive from Brooklyn, though it takes over twice as long by public transportation. For some perspective it takes nearly three hours to drive from Brooklyn, at the western-most part of Long Island, to Montauk, the easternmost place (and made even more famous by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). By public transportation, it’s three hours. They weren’t kidding about that name!

Not all of Leave the World Behind was filmed on Long Island. Some scenes were filmed in Katonah, New York, about an hour’s drive north of Manhattan.

Leave the World Behind now streams on Netflix.

Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” may be No. 1 song in America, but Mariah Carey is still the Queen of Christmas. With just a few weeks before Carey’s holiday, Carey has to pack as much holiday cheer into her live shows as possible. On Saturday, December 9, she took her Merry Christmas One And All Tour to Madison Square Garden in New York City.

So far, the setlist for the tour is filled with fans’ favorite holiday tracks, including Carey’s record-setting song “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” However, yesterday’s show offered a little surprise. As Carey prepared to sing “Oh Santa!” she was joined onstage by EGOT holder Jennifer Hudson and Ariana Grande. The powerhouse trio spiced things up, delivering the remix version of a song initially released in 2020.

Following the performance, Carey took to Instagram to thank her collaborators for making a cheerful cameo during the show, writing, “Grateful to have the gorgeous and talented Christmas angels Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson join me on stage tonight at Madison Square Garden for our song ‘Oh Santa! (Remix)’ .”

The Buffalo Bills are dealing with one of the weirder controversies we’ve seen in the NFL this week. A multi-part piece by Ty Dunne into Sean McDermott’s tenure as Buffalo’s head coach included an anecdote about a speech he gave in 2019 to the team where he, essentially, cited the 9/11 hijackers as an example of a group that worked together to achieve a goal.

“He told the entire team they needed to come together,” Dunne wrote. “But then, sources on-hand say, he used a strange model: the terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. He cited the hijackers as a group of people who were all able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection. One by one, McDermott started asking specific players in the room questions. ‘What tactics do you think they used to come together?’”

McDermott went on to apologize, both at the time and once the story came out, but for a team with an uphill battle ahead of it to make the playoffs, it was the exact sort of weird distraction you’d think everyone would want to avoid. And unsurprisingly, McDermott has been the butt of a ton of jokes in the aftermath, which included Colin Jost on Saturday Night Live cracking a joke during Weekend Update at his expense.

You can very clearly tell that a whole lot of people in the crowd learned that McDermott made this joke right then and there. Anyway, the Bills will spend their Sunday in Kansas City, as the team has a showdown with the Chiefs on the horizon.

A 42-year-old mother wondered whether she did the right thing by disciplining her 18-year-old daughter, Abby, who disinvited a friend from vacation because of her weight. The mother asked people on Reddit for their opinion.

For some background, Abby had struggled with her weight for many years, so she went to her mother for help. The two set up a program where Abby was given a reward for every milestone she achieved.

“Four months ago, she asked that I don’t get her any more rewards and add it up to her birthday gift, and for her gift she wants a vacation I will pay for, for her and her friends instead of the huge party I had promised for her 18th. I said OK,” the mother wrote.

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So, instead of a series of small gifts, Abbey wanted one large one, a vacation with two of her friends. The vacation would also celebrate Abby’s 18th birthday. The mother agreed and booked the trip for the 3 girls.

“Fast forward to last weekend, we started preparing for her vacation,” the mother wrote. “I called the other two girls’ parents to confirm the girls would be and learned Abby’s best friend Betty isn’t going. Betty loves traveling and was looking forward to the vacation, so I asked why. Apparently, Abby uninvited her because ‘she is too chubby to look good in pictures.’”

When the mother approached Abby about the situation, she doubled down on her comments to Betty. “I calmly talked to Abby and reminded her how Betty would feel being left out for such a reason, and she went off with, ‘I didn’t work so hard for this vacation so my pictures will be ruined,'” the mother wrote.

Abby then asked Betty to contact her mom and say that she decided not to go on the trip because she wasn’t feeling well. Betty refused to lie, and Abby sent her a “ton of hateful texts and body-shaming insults.” Betty shared screenshots of the texts to the mother, and she promptly canceled the entire vacation.

Now, Abby’s father, who shares 50-50 custody with the mother, is livid, and Abby won’t speak to the mother. The mom asked the Reddit
AITA forum to see if she was in the wrong, and the commenters overwhelmingly said she did the right thing. “Some of my friends agree on my approach, while others think I should have put my daughter first,” the mother said.

The most popular commenter was short and to the point.

“Teaching your daughter to not be a horrible human being IS putting her first,” Due_Laugh_3851 wrote. “I commend your strength and parenting skills. This was the right thing to do and would’ve been hard to do. Well done, you deserve to go on the holiday yourself,” Loud_Wallaby737 added.

“… uninviting someone because you only want skinny people in your pictures is a disgusting attitude frankly. Sorry, I just don’t find a nicer word for it. I am totally with you that this needs to have consequences, and while I’m very much against breaking promises, I do believe this is an exception. Like you said, your daughter knows what it feels like. She (but anyone really) should be supportive of friends wanting to lose weight if that is the case and if it isn’t they she should just mind her own
business body,” SensitiveSires wrote.

One of the few people who thought she was in the wrong believed that the mother set her daughter up for failure.

“[You’re wrong] for giving your daughter who is a child rewards for weight loss. Her behavior of value based on weight shows she likely has developed disordered eating patterns and attitudes and this will cause her a lifetime of pain,” tamtheprogram wrote.

The silver lining to the story is that many people who commented said that even though her daughter did something very hurtful, she’s still a teenager and there’s a chance she’ll realize the error of her ways.

“The daughter is just a teenager, she still has a lot of time to learn and grow up. Writing off her entire future as a mean girl when it’s very rare to be the same exact person you were at 18 as you grow up is a lot,” Stephapeaz wrote.

This article originally appeared on 9.18.23

Adam Driver is a fine thespian, capable of great variety and sometimes accents, too. But chances are most people know him for one role in particular: Kylo Ren from the last Star Wars trilogy. Specifically they know him as the guy who killed one Han Solo. Christmas is nigh, so during his latest stint on SNL, he asked Santa for some gifts, including that people will stop blaming him for what he did in The Force Awakens.

During Driver’s opening monologue, he gushed about the holidays, one of his favorite times of year. At one point he took to a piano, where he played music while addressing Santa directly.

“Hey, Santa. It’s me, Adam Driver, from the nice list. And also Girls’” he said. “I turned 40 this year, Santa, so I would like five pairs of chinos. I also want one of those giant metal Tesla trucks. I think it would pair perfectly with my teeny tiny micropenis.”

Eventually he got to a more ambitious wish. “I would like people to stop coming up to me on the street saying, ‘You killed Han Solo!’,” he said. “I didn’t kill him. Wokeness killed Han Solo.”

There were more wishes. “Oh, you know those TikToks, like those couples that do pranks on each other? Can you kill those people?” he added. “What I want for Christmas is a gingerbread house. Do you think a gingerbread man gets scared when he realizes the house is made of his own skin? That’s a cute one. You can tell your kids that one.”

It was Driver’s fourth time hosting the show, which he clearly relishes. You can see him as the lead in Michael Mann’s Ferrari when it’s released December 25.

Recently Questlove, musician, author, and director, served as curator for the Grammys‘ tribute to 50 years of hip-hop, bringing together pioneers like Grandmaster Flash and newcomers like Lil Uzi Vert. While the transitions through the decades appeared smooth onstage, Questlove was falling apart behind the scenes. On December 7, during an interview on Grammy.com, Questlove claimed due to the sheer level of stress brought on by all of the planning, he lost two teeth by the end of the process.

“After the success of the thing that we did in March — that 12-minute revue thing — I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “For 12 minutes, that was like going through damn near, and I’m not even using hyperbolic statements by saying, coming out within an inch of my life.”

He continued, “When that moment was literally over, and I was on the airplane landing back in New York, two of my teeth fell out. That’s the level of stress I was [under]. Imagine landing in JFK, and I got to rush to ‘The Tonight Show,’ but then it’s like, Oh, wait, what’s happening? Oh God, no! My teeth are falling out! And going to emergency surgery. My whole takeaway was like: Never again.”

It looks like the culture owes Questlove a considerable debt and reimbursement for medical expenses.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“Old Town Road” rapper Lil Nas X is walking on the heavenly path and ensuring that his ‘Satan Shoes‘ are far behind him. Instead, he’s putting his best foot forward with comfortable footwear for the rocky journey.

No, Lil Nas X isn’t rolling out another sneaker. Even if he were, we know, based on Nike’s response to the misguided backlash it received, they probably wouldn’t be open to the idea. No matter, Crocs has opened their designer studio up with open arms. So, how can you buy Lil Nas X’s mega crush clog with Crocs?

According to Crocs’ official website, Lil Nas X’s mega crush clog and the matching $20 5-pack Jibbitz charms (but note that the design does not accommodate charms being inserted into the shoe) are solely available online. Currently, only men’s and women’s sizing are up for grabs on the website. It doesn’t appear that a children’s option was ever listed.

The item retails for $110, well above the brand’s standard pricing model. However, the Lil Nas X’s mega crush clog has several design upgrades, including the inclusion of a faux-shearling exterior as well as a strap for added warmth and increased height of its platform. Just not as the item’s description lists; all finals are final and cannot be returned or exchanged.

Lil Nas X’s mega crush clog by Crocs and Jibbitz charms are available while supplies last. Find more information here.

In 2021, Lil Nas X released a limited-edition sneaker with the viral fashion company MSCHF. Dubbed the ‘Satan Shoes,’ it incorporated actual human blood into the design. Now the “Industry Baby” rapper left his devilish ways behind. Is his new collaboration with Crocs receiving a normal rollout, right? Wrong.

Although the comfort footwear item doesn’t involve blood, Lil Nas X was sure to insert his troll-like tendencies in its promotional video. On Saturday, December 9, he took to his official X page to upload a clip revealing the item. In the video, Lil Nas X makes a few unsubstantiated claims about the shoes’ capabilities.

The comedic infomercial promises that if the wearer is suffering from depression, physical attractiveness, and loneliness, all of these problems will go away once they slip into a pair of Lil Nas X’s Crocs. The wildest of the clip’s insertions was that it could somehow make owners heterosexual if they weren’t already.

Lil Nas X’s fans got a kick out of the video and joined in on the joke with replies. View a few of their responses below.

Lil Nas X’s mega crush clog Crocs retails for $110 and are available for purchase now. You can find more information here.

Adam Driver has always been a very game SNL host, but his fourth time on the show found him tackling one of his most disturbing characters: a weird baby with a giant head. The sketch in question found Chloe Fineman as a mom flying with her 11-month-old son. Alas, the baby had not only the head of Adam Driver, but also an atypically advanced intellect. He still has the emotional wildness of a toddler, but he can also speak in complete sentences, articulating his confusion and temper tantrums like an adult.

“Ahhhh, my ears feel strange,” the Driver baby says as the plane hits a higher altitude. “My ears, they feel different! I don’t like this!” When his mom offers him an iPad as emotional relief, he calls it his “Peppa Pig device,” which is “the only thing I want.”

Fellow passengers, played by Heidi Gardner and Kenan Thompson, aren’t buying that the Driver baby is less than a year old. When he states his age, Thompson replies, “And 15,000 days?”

Eventually Fineman tries to appease her son by playing with his toy bear, but when she playfully hides it behind her back, the Driver baby has a meltdown, screaming, “He vanished!” and “You killed him, you b*tch!”

You can watch the sketch in the video above. Driver’s latest film, Michael Mann’s Ferrari, hits theaters on December 25.