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Olivia Rodrigo‘s sophomore album Guts just came out, and what better way to bring it to life than with an invigorating VMAs performance? She was the second performance of the night, following Lil Wayne.

In a pink two-piece outfit, she sang the first Guts single “Vampire,” an emotional ballad, while sitting by in grass by a set-up of a lake. As she gave a poignant performance, the pyrotechnics became concerning; a fake tree fell, the pop star was directed off the stage, and the curtain was drawn. However, don’t be fooled — it was just the dramatic segue into her bombastic rock-tinged anthem “Get Him Back.”

About “Vampire,” Rodrigo previously said, “I was upset about a certain situation and went to the studio alone and sat down at the grand piano, and the chords and melody and lyrics just poured out of me — almost like an out-of-body experience,” she said in a statement. “It’s a song about feeling confused and hurt, and at first I thought it was meant to be a piano ballad. But when Dan and I started working on it, we juxtaposed the lyrics with these big drums and crazy tempo changes. So now it’s like a heartbreak song you can dance to.”

Watch clips of her performance below.

Since bowing three years ago, The Drew Barrymore Show has racked up a lot of goodwill. Its host could be described as “chaotic good,” her earnest, kooky enthusiasm resulting in both bizarre moments and surprisingly strong interviews. A lot of that enthusiasm has seeped out in the last two days after it was announced the show would be returning without its writers, effectively crossing the WGA picket line. The move has already resulted in some unpleasant theatrics. And now Barrymore herself is already seeing the consequences of her and her team’s actions.

Per Vulture, the actress-turned-morning talk show host was supposed to host the 74th National Book Awards. No more.

“In light of the announcement that The Drew Barrymore Show will resume production, the National Book Foundation has rescinded Ms. Barrymore’s invitation to host the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony,” the National Book Foundation announced in a tweet. “Our commitment is to ensure that the focus of the Awards remains on celebrating writers and books, and we are grateful to Ms. Barrymore and her team for their understanding in this situation.”

The ceremony is set to go down on November 15. Currently it’s unknown who will replace the person who dressed up as the villainous robot doll from M3GAN to terrorize the film’s human star.

(Via Vulture)

Last year, The 1975 turned a lot of heads with their chaotic At Their Very Best Tour. Matty Healy ate raw meat on stage, made out with fans, brought out Taylor Swift, and more.

The band is getting ready for their Still… At Their Very Best Tour, which kicks off in just a few days. Opening for them is Dora Jar, the 26-year-old bedroom pop artist based in California. She’s known for endearing songs like “Multiply” and “Bumblebee” and has toured with King Princess.

Find the tour dates below.

09/16 — Atlanta, GA @ Music Midtown
09/23 — Las Vegas, NV @ Life Is Beautiful
09/26 — Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center
09/28 — San Jose, CA @ SAP Center
09/30 — San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena San Diego
10/02 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl
10/05 — Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena
10/07 — Greenwood Village, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre
10/12 — New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
10/17 — Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
10/18 — Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena
10/20 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
10/22 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/23 — St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Arena
10/25 — Kansas City, MO @ T-Mobile Center
10/26 — Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center
10/28 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
10/31 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
11/02 — Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse
11/03 — Columbus, OH @ Nationwide Arena
11/05 — Pittsburgh, PA @ PPG Paints Arena
11/08 — Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank Arena
11/10 — Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Arena
11/12 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
11/14 — New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
11/17 — Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
11/18 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
11/20 — London, ON @ Budweiser Gardens
11/22 — Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena
11/26 — Salt Lake City, UT @ Delta Center
11/27 — Boise, ID @ ExtraMile Arena
11/29 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
12/01 — Portland, OR @ Moda Center
12/02 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena

People often talk about how far Rudy Giuliani, once “America’s Mayor,” has fallen. But what if he was always bad news? After all, Jan. 6 wasn’t the only time he whipped up a crowd into a violent mob. One of the stories in Walter Isaacson’s new bio of Elon Musk highlights a disastrous meeting the future Tesla/Space X/X guy had with Giuliani, which ended with him declaring him a weirdo. The meet-up didn’t happen a couple years ago. It happened in the year 2000.

The Daily Beast teased out a bit from Isaacson’s Elon Musk, in which his subject, then CEO of PayPal, went to New York to meet with Giuliani, hoping to hire him as a “political fixer.” Giualini, who was in his penultimate year as mayor of New York City and not long from becoming beloved for the way he handled the September 11 attacks, did not impress him.

“It was like walking into a mob scene,” said Michael Moritz, a PayPal investor who joined Musk on his trip. He said he was “was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line their pockets.”

Giuliani, Moritz claims, demanded a 10 percent stake in PayPal, which obviously would have made him wealthy beyond his dreams. Judging from how he’s doing these days, that obviously didn’t happen. Instead, Musk saw right through him, saying, “This guy occupies a different planet.”

Perhaps one can imagine an alternate timeline in which Musk wasn’t quickly turned off by Giuliani’s chaotic energy, and the two became pals. Maybe Musk never would have been kicked out of PayPal, and never used the earnings he’d acquired there to form Space X. But a Giuliani-Musk team-up doesn’t sound much better than the crap timeline in which we’re all stuck.

(Via The Daily Beast)

The MTV VMAs are tonight and one of the most anticipated moments is Doja Cat’s performance. The star is still hyping up her forthcoming album Scarlet, whose infectious single “Paint The Town Red” became the first rap song of the year to take the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The “Demons” singer posted her revealing pink carpet look on Instagram. She’s draped in a spiderweb dress that lets everything hang out — no bra, no pasties. She’s also covered in glitter, truly glowing. She also shows off her tattoos this way, as well as eye-catching jewelry that climbs from her fingers up her wrist.

The look goes with the Scarlet album cover, which depicts two spiders. About the record, Doja said in an interview a few days ago, “One thing that I wanted to mention was that I have music that came out — these three songs came out, these were the first three songs I made during the period that I was making music,” she said. “And then there’s a second half where I went to Malibu and I made all this music in ten days. That half is very different from the first half.”

Scarlet is out 9/22 via RCA. Find more information here.

The 2023 MTV Video Music Awards are starting in just a few hours from the Prudential Center in New Jersey, and if you were still wondering who all is performing tonight, Uproxx has you covered. This year’s performers include Anitta, Cardi B, Demi Lovato, Diddy, Doja Cat, Fall Out Boy, Karol G, Kelsea Ballerini, Lil Wayne, Måneskin, Megan Thee Stallion, Metro Boomin (who will be joined by A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Future, NAV, and Swae Lee), Nicki Minaj, Olivia Rodrigo, Peso Pluma, Shakira, Stray Kids, and TOMORROW X TOGETHER.

In addition, there’s a special performance planned for the 50th anniversary of hip-hop which will include pioneers like DMC, Doug E. Fresh, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, LL Cool J, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj.

Many of these performers are also nominated for honors, including Diddy, who’s going to be given a Global Icon Award, and Shakira, who’s due to receive a Video Vanguard Award). Several are also due to present awards along with stars like Chloe Bailey, Coco Jones, GloRilla, Rita Ora, Saweetie, and more.

The VMAs are due to air at 8 pm ET/PT so stay tuned for all of Uproxx’s coverage.

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

For the last two weeks, the nation has been gripped by the search for Danelo Cavalcante, a convicted murderer who escaped from a southeastern prison. So far he has eluded the nearly 500 law enforcement members searching for his whereabouts. Cavalcante is considered “armed and extremely dangerous.” But that doesn’t scare a certain reality show veteran who may be joining the search.

Per The New York Post (as first reported by TMZ), sources claim that Dog the Bounty Hunter, aka Duane Chapman, has been following the Cavalcante case ever since he “crab-walked” his way out of Chester County Prison. He’s reportedly already contacted Pennsylvania law enforcement, though he’ll only team up with them if he can piece together a proper plan of action.

In the past, the hulking star of Dog the Bounty Hunter, which ran on A&E between 2004 and 2012, has wormed his way into big time cases. He joined the hunt for the MMA fighter known as War Machine after his attempted murder of porn star Christy Mack. He declined to go after El Chapo, but he did put up the bail bond that sprung Nicolas Cage from prison after a drunken night out went awry.

Should Chapman shlep out to Pennsylvania, he’ll be hunting down someone who escaped from prison only a week after being handed a life sentence for the fatal stabbing of his girlfriend. Cavalcante allegedly has a .22 rifle, which someone fitting his description stole from a Chester County resident’s garage, while said resident was present. The man fired after Cavalcante, but he’s not believed to be wounded. Making the search more challenging is that the area is densely wooded, but surely Dog the Bounty Hunter isn’t afraid of trees.

(Via TMZ and NY Post)

Last fall, I was wondering whether Charlie Hunnam was being a stinker when he teased something that vaguely had to do with the Sons Of Anarchy circle. He had dropped a tidbit, and Entertainment Tonight asked him if that meant Jax Teller would ride again, and Hunnam played coy, like, “There’s nothing I can say at all, other than if it happens, it’ll happen.”

So, no denial, no confirmation, and no mention of the fact that Jax Teller drove into a green screen Mack truck to meet the Reaper. True, we never saw the body, but c’mon — we saw a makeshift roadside memorial and Wendy talking about dead Jax to EZ in Mayans M.C.. Also, never mind that almost every SOA character in the above still died before the finale, and then Happy croaked in Mayans M.C., and only Tig and Chibs seem to be breathing now. And there’s no way that these dudes can be in a prequel because too many years have passed since the pilot.

Still, that didn’t stop Hunnam from also hinting the same vibe to Comic Book: “I have an idea that I’m exploring in its infancy where that could be a possibility.” Additionally, the reality of what happened to Juice Ortiz after he ate that pie (“you went out good, sweetheart”) didn’t stop Theo Rossi (while promoting Emily The Criminal) from recently having some fun with Deadline:

“There might be something coming up where we’re all back together, which is insane,” Rossi told Deadline. “If it happens, it’s wild, but if it doesn’t, it would be perfect and really cool because we also talk every day,” he added, referring to his continuing friendship with the show’s lead, Charlie Hunnam, and the rest of the cast.

When asked if this might be an idea for a Sons of Anarchy movie, Rossi smiled cryptically and said, “It’s totally different. It’s really cool.”

No one knows if Hunnam and Rossi were talking about the same thing, and both were being purposefully vague, yet Rossi did throw the “totally different” into the mix, which probably tells us that this is no SOA-branded project. Also, I couldn’t even begin to guess whether franchise creator Kurt Sutter, who has not mentioned a hypothetical prequel or Abel-focused offshoot for quite some time, would be involved or interested in picking up the crowbar again after that Disney dustup.

Besides, I’d guess that Sutter is focused upon polishing the first season of The Abandons for Netflix. Whereas Hunnam will soon be seen in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon for Netflix. Still, I’ve already expressed the vain hope that Hunnam just kinda pops up in The Abandons, maybe while being simultaneously cussed out by Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson’s characters.

I’d like that. Let’s make it happen.

What are women up to when no one is watching?

Artwork courtesy of Sally Nixon, used with permission.

Well, take a look at Sally Nixon’s illustrations and you’ll see.

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The subjects in her artwork aren’t aware we’re looking at them.

And that’s the point. They’re living in a world free from the pressures that exist in the real one.

“I like drawing girls doing their everyday routine — just hanging out, not worried about what others are thinking,” Nixon told Upworthy. “They’re usually alone or with other girls. Their guard is down.”

Editor’s note: An image below contains partial nudity.

Capturing her subjects in this liberated light wasn’t intentional at first, she explained.

But when she started a 365-day challenge last April to create one art piece a day, the work started reflecting the nuances of her own life away from prying eyes — “I was kind of like, ‘Oh, I’m brushing my teeth, so I’ll draw that.'” — and a theme began to form.Her illustrations show how women look, away from the exhausting world where they’re often judged more harshly than men.

You also might notice none of the girls in her illustrations are smiling.

According to Nixon, that’s a deliberate choice.

“I don’t sit around smiling to myself,” Nixon said, noting the double standard that exists in thinking women should always appear cheerful.

“I’ve been told, ‘You need to smile more.’ It’s so infuriating. I wanted to show the way girls actually look, comfortably.”

The theme of friendship is also an important one in Nixon’s drawings.

“I have four older sisters, so female friendship has always been a big part of my life,” Nixon told The Huffington Post. “You gotta have someone to talk about periods with, and dudes just don’t get it.”

Creating relatable scenes was key to Nixon, too — from the details of women’s lives to the physical shapes of their bodies.

“It’s important that the women I draw aren’t rail thin with huge boobs,” Nixon said. “I think there are enough images of bodies like that out in the world. The ladies I draw typically have small-ish, droopy breasts and thick thighs. They’re kind of lumpy but in an attractive way. Just like real people.”

The women in Nixon’s work aren’t real, but she hopes their stories are.

“One of my absolute favorite comments [on my work] is, ‘Oh my God, it’s me!'” she explained of the depictions.

“There’s a little bit of beauty in [everyday life] and I wanted to bring that out.”

You can view more of Nixon’s artwork on her website and check out her prints for purchase on Etsy.

This article originally appeared on 04.15.16

Dogs hold a remarkable knack for tuning into human emotions. Witnessing their ability to sense our moods and see how they react is astonishing. Whether it’s a nudge of their nose when we’re feeling down or their tail wagging excitedly to mirror our joy, their empathy and understanding go beyond mere animal instinct.

This deep-seated connection, honed over thousands of years of companionship, attests to the beautiful symbiosis and understanding that can happen between different species. Even though we’ve always known how close we can get to dogs, a new study shows that connection goes even further than we knew.

A preliminary study found that our dogs listen to us when they sleep.

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A team of researchers at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary performed a small pilot study on 13 dogs, which found that dogs’ brains light up when hearing both canine and human noises while asleep. “This finding is significant insofar as it is the first evidence of complex auditory processing during sleep in dogs,” Eötvös Loránd University ethnologist Huba Eleőd and colleagues write in their paper.

The dogs were connected to apparatuses to record their event-related brain wave reactions while asleep. Then, they were introduced to various vocalizations from dogs and humans while in different states of consciousness: fully awake, semi-conscious, and deep sleep.

The sounds the researchers played were various non-threatening vocal expressions, including yelps, whines and laughter. The researchers were careful not to make any distressing noises that might wake the dog.

Despite being asleep, the researchers found the dogs demonstrated a remarkable ability to discern the source and emotional tone of the sounds — whether dog or human — and detect if the underlying emotion was positive or neutral.

A dog’s ability to understand and process vocalizations while sleeping is much like a human’s. Researchers have found that while humans are asleep, they can differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar voices talking in the background. When people hear a stranger’s voice while sleeping, they are more likely to wake up than if it’s someone they know.

Researchers theorize that an unknown voice is more likely to threaten a person’s safety.

A dog’s ability to recognize other voices while asleep shows they are more like humans than we thought. Eleőd and colleagues believe this similarity between the two species supports the idea that dogs should be used in comparative neurobiology research, which could also teach us more about the human mins as well.

“Although use of a non-invasive ERP paradigm with dogs is quite labor-intensive, it is nevertheless the most feasible possibility to study vocal stimuli processing during sleep, as it does not require prior training and does not cause any distress or harm,” the team writes.

This new research not only shows that humans and dogs are even more connected than we knew previously. But it’s also a warning to dog owners everywhere. Be careful not to utter the words “walk” or “treat” around a sleeping dog, or you just may wake them up.