Just as the summer tour and festival season heats up, one venue is under legal threat to have its doors closed: Forest Hills Stadium has found itself tied up in a lawsuit launched by neighbors over noise complaints. But with musical acts such as Boygenius, Steve Lacy, and Maggie Rogers slated to hit their stage in the coming weeks, the stadium is doing its best to fight back.
As per CBS, “The nonprofit Forest Hills Gardens Corporation is suing the owners over an ‘appalling’ number of concerts, saying ‘[the venue] violates residential zoning in the Forest Hills Gardens community.”
In the paperwork, the venue alleges that, “The nonprofit threatened to close Burns Street to pedestrians, the only safe walkway into the stadium.”
Forest Hills Stadium President Mike Luba shared with CBS that they are taking measures to soundproof the venue. “This has been an ongoing project where we make continual improvements every year,” he said. “We just had another meeting with the DEP. We’re gonna do another whole ‘nother round of sound mitigation to try again to make it a little bit better.”
West Side Tennis Club and its concert booker filed a countersuit to ensure their previously booked shows (totaling 30) will go on as planned.
Arguments will be presented to a judge following the Memorial Day holiday weekend as a court date has been set for Wednesday, May 31.
Jalen Green was a highly-touted prospect as a high schooler in California, earning a consensus 5-star ranking before heading off to the G League Ignite as he was among the first to forego the college route for the NBA’s alternative.
As most top high school prospects do as kids, Green would travel to various basketball camps to hone his skills against other top players and learn from some of the game’s best. One of those camps was a Michael Jordan camp in San Diego, where Green got to meet the legend himself, but it was not a storybook meeting between a kid and one of his idols.
As Green recalled on the Podcast P Show, his first interaction with Jordan as a child was getting told to “take off them weak ass Adidas” as he walked to the gym wearing a pair of Adidas slides.
— Podcast P with Paul George (@PodcastPShow) May 22, 2023
It’s a phenomenal story, right down to Green running over to tell his mom about it and his mom proudly proclaiming she was taking pictures of it the whole time. The good news was Green got a pair of Jordan slides out of it, but it’s hysterical that even when it comes to kids at a camp, Jordan’s always thinking about the brand and not letting it slide when someone’s not wearing the Swoosh or Jumpman.
There’s no worse feeling than getting screwed by an airline. Imagine you planned the perfect escape to Costa Rica to listen to some music. Maybe you carefully budgeted and planned every detail. Nothing can possibly go wrong now (except maybe the whole festival getting canceled?). You hop on a red-eye to Miami to connect to Central America, and then — while devouring some $20 lettuce wrap in the international terminal — the airline announces in a mock-compassionate tone: “Ahhh-ttention passengers of flight 355 with direct service to San Jose, Costa Rica –your flight has been delayed. More information will be shared as it becomes available.”
You’re stranded. And not because of weather. Now you have to pay for a hotel, more food, transportation, and all the emotional trauma that entails witnessing your hard-earned budget getting pillaged. Well, no more (hopefully! In some cases!). Because last week, President Biden and his Department of Transportation announced new initiatives to protect passengers from bodying the costs of airline incompetence.
Here’s what the proposed new rules mean:
NEW LEGISLATION:
According to a White House Statement, the newly proposed legislation will require airlines to cover expenses such as meals, hotels, and rebooking when they are responsible for stranding passengers. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg even stated, “When an airline causes a controllable flight cancellation or delay, passengers should not foot the bill.”
Beyond guaranteeing fair compensation, this initiative seeks to define what exactly is a “controllable cancellation/delay.” From the looks of it, that seems to include Mechanical errors and overbooking. With respect to overbooking, NBC reported that “after thousands of Southwest Airlines flights were canceled in late December, The Department [investigated] whether company executives scheduled an unrealistic volume of flights, which under federal law is considered an unfair and deceptive practice.”
Buttigieg and his department believe holding airlines accountable will help improve their on-time performance. Weather is likely to not be included in this legislation — so hopefully the boundaries of what is considered a weather delay won’t be overly malleable.
A TWO-YEAR EFFORT
Transportation Dept.
These new initiatives add on to The Department’s efforts over the last two years to improve the passenger experience. Last Summer, amid a massive surge in flight cancellations, Buttigieg sent a letter to ten airline CEOs saying “he would publish charts showing which airlines guaranteed compensation for canceled or delayed flights,” according to CNN. The response: those ten airlines now promise to provide meals and free rebooking on the same airline, and nine of them even offer hotel accommodations.
You can check out all this information on the Department’s Airline Customer Service Dashboard FlightRights.Gov. The Dashboard has also been updated to show which airlines provide cash compensation, travel credits, vouchers, or frequent flyer miles when they mess up and cause flight delays or cancellations. You can also see sneaky junk fees, like which airlines will charge you extra to sit with your kid.
BOTTOM LINE:
Complacency breeds problems and Consumer rights often need to be fought for. Think back to the days when Ralph Nader rallied for cars to include seat belts among other landmark changes. In that spirit, the days of old, scammy airline practices seem to be coming to an end — something the pandemic couldn’t pull off — and much more accountability and transparency look to be on the rise.
This comes just in time for what some predict to be a huge surge in summer travel that breaks pre-pandemic travel records. So make sure to know your rights as you plan this summer and enjoy yourself out there on the road. With that said, the laws look like they may take a few months to fully implement.
The main wing of the Fast and Furious series may be beginning to wind down — or as the tagline puts it, “the end of the road begins” — but these days popular IP doesn’t really conclude. Instead they keep branching off. The franchise has already released one spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw. Turns out that’s just the beginning.
Varietyspoke with Vin Diesel, star and one of the series’ producers, and he spilled some tea about what they have up when they’re done with the 11th Fast and Furious entry. Turns out they have a lot of spinoffs in the works, including one starring one of the female characters, though it’s not clear which one just yet.
“I started developing the female spinoff…in 2017 with other spinoffs, and the sooner I deliver the finale, the sooner I can launch all the spinoffs,” Diesel told Variety, making it sound like he’s eager to put the main wing to bed so he can get moving on taking it in different directions.
Earlier this month, at the Fast X premiere in Rome, Diesel gushed about how much there is in the Fast and Furious series to spin off from.
“Look how many characters and great talent there is in the movie,” he said, saying there could be at least three more films stemming from Fast 11 (or whatever it’ll be called) alone. “There was no way I can pull that off unless I had everyone on for five seconds. These characters are appealing and we need to see more of them.”
One longtime cast member who may not be so eager to do more is Michelle Rodriguez, their resident Letty.
“You pass the baton on. You take the back seat,” Rodriguez told Variety. “You go passenger side. When it comes the next generation, you have to. It’s the only way to let them define the future.”
So buckle up, because Diesel and company may wind up pushing the end of the road back indefinitely.
There’s already been a great film adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved novel The Color Purple. Steven Spielberg directed it. It helped make Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey into stars. Now there may be two great Color Purple films. On Monday, the trailer for the musical version dropped, and it promises a vibrant and emotional affair.
There are some big names in the cast, and they have big shoes to fill. Fantasia follows in Goldberg’s footsteps as Celie, a young woman trapped in an abusive marriage to Colman Domingo’s “Mister” Johnson (a role first played, terrifyingly, by Danny Glover). Danielle Brooks plays the lifeforce Sofia, a role that netted Winfrey an Oscar nomination. Teraji P. Henson takes over for Margaret Avery as Shug, the showgirl who enters Celie’s life and helps open her up.
The cast also includes Halle Bailey, as the younger version of Celie’s beloved sister Nettie, as well as H.E.R. (in her screen acting debut), Jon Batiste (ditto), Corey Hawkins, David Alan Grier, and Louis Gossett Jr.
The latest film, which retains Spielberg, Winfrey, and Quincy Jones as producers, tackles the Broadway musical adaptation, which first bowed in 2005 and returned in 2015.
The new Color Purple movie hits theaters on December 25. You can watch the trailer above.
Last month, Donald Trump became the first U.S. president in history to be indicted on criminal charges. This month he was found guilty of sexual assaulting and defaming journalist E. Jean Carroll. He has plenty of other legal and financial woes still in the works. All the bad news would sour most people on a politician. Not Trump fans. They apparently love it when he’s found guilty of crimes. Now there’s yet another reason for them to adore him.
As per The New York Times, E. Jean Carroll is once again suing Trump, this time only for defamation. On May 10, one day after the trial ended, Trump took part in a notorious CNN town hall. There he addressed the verdict — which again was in part about defamation — calling Carroll’s story “fake” and “made-up.” He also called Carroll a “wack job” and declared the trial a “rigged deal.”
After Trump’s rant, many expected Carroll and her attorneys to drag him back to court. And so they are. The court filing on Monday said that Trump’s latest defamatory comments “show the depth of his malice toward Carroll, since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will or spite.”
In the filing, Carroll and her lawyers say they seek a “very substantial punitive damages award,” so as to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”
In a brief interview with the press, Carroll’s lawyer Roberta A. Kaplan stressed that Trump’s statements came “literally the day after the verdict,” which made the filing all the more pressing. “It makes a mockery of the jury verdict and our justice system if he can just keep on repeating the same defamatory statements over and over again.”
Perhaps Trump will respond to the news with further defamations, trapping himself, Carroll, and their respective lawyers in a permanent defamation loop.
Childless women in the public eye are often plagued by the question: “So, why don’t you have any children?” It’s a deeply personal question that cuts right to the bone, and there can be many answers. But, if the woman doesn’t want children and says so publicly, she is bound to face some judgment.
“[I don’t] like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women—that you’ve failed yourself as a female because you haven’t procreated. I don’t think it’s fair,” Jennifer Aniston told Allure. “You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t mothering—dogs, friends, friends’ children.”
On the Monday, March 6 episode of “The Diary Of A CEO” podcast, host Steven Bartlett asked actor Seth Rogen about why he’s childless, and it was a rare moment where a man in the public eye was challenged on the topic. Rogen gave a thoughtful explanation for his and Lauren Miller’s decision to be child-free.
Rogen and Miller were married in 2011.
“There’s a whole huge thing I’m not doing, which is raising children,” Rogen told Bartlett. The host attempted to play devil’s advocate and asked Rogen if he considered whether having children might have made him and his wife “happier.”
Then, as if anticipating the question, the “Pineapple Express” star upended one of the arguments that people who have children often make: that people who don’t have children have no idea what it’s like.
“I’ve been around obviously a lot of children; I’m not ignorant to what it’s like…Everyone I know has kids. I’m 40, you know? I know,” Rogen said. “Some of my friends have had kids for decades. Some people want kids, some people don’t want kids.”
He added that many people seem to have kids without considering the issue.
“I mean, a lot of people have kids before they even think about it, from what I’ve seen, honestly,” he said. “You just are told, you go through life, you get married, you have kids—it’s what happens.”
Rogen and his wife have only grown stronger in their decision and they believe that it has helped their relationship.
“Now, more than anything, the conversation is like, ‘Honestly, thank God we don’t have children,’” he continued. “We get to do whatever we want.”
“We are in the prime of our lives. We are smarter than we’ve ever been, we understand ourselves more than we ever have, we have the capacity to achieve a level of work and a level of communication and care for one another, and a lifestyle we can live with one another that we’ve never been able to live before. And we can just do that, and we don’t have to raise a child—which the world does not need right now,” Rogen concluded.
Everyone has the right to choose whether or not to have children, and no one has the right to judge them. Rogen and Miller have thought their decision through and should be applauded for living how they see fit. It’s cool to see Rogen with such a thoughtful opinion on the matter. It’d be even cooler if celebrities never had to discuss the topic in the first place.
Gunna may be planning a triumphant comeback to the rap business, but he may find the environment much more hostile than when he was arrested for racketeering with several other members of Young Stoner Life back in 2022. There are plenty of fans who believe he violated a code of honor in accepting a plea deal in exchange for his freedom, and at least one of his peers feels that it went even further than that.
Lil Durk told gossip blogger DJ Akademiks he’s convinced that the Atlanta rapper cooperated with authorities’ investigation. “I don’t sit up here and play games,” he said. “That man told. You should have went in there and kept your mouth closed.”
Gunna has denied that he “snitched,” agreeing only to plead guilty to one count of racketeering — an acknowledgment to the government’s insistence that YSL is actually a street gang. Several members of the collective were also offered so-called “Alford pleas,” which are reportedly common in such cases, as they can help strengthen prosecutors’ cases against the primary targets of an indictment — in this case, Young Thug, the founder of YSL.
“If you rewind the clip a little bit, I looked into the camera and I told you, if you a rat, I f***ing hate you,” Durk said. “Because I love Thug.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Ted Cruz is best known these days for the constant stream of Cancun jokes that he even inflicts upon himself, but he’s still the master of the self own on other subjects. Recently, he’s stepped in it while attempting to outwit Stephen King and clutching his pearls over Sam Smith. Now, Cruz is wading into the mess created by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who has been sacrificing the economic well-being of his entire state (by irrevocably feuding with Disney) to win over a few MAGA voters for the GOP presidential primary race.
Not only have DeSantis and cronies been attacking the LGBTQ+ community, but the NAACP has seen more than enough regarding the state’s new discriminatory laws, including the yanking of funding for diversity programs in higher education and expanding concealed carry rights. Over the weekend, the NAACP responded by formally issuing a travel advisory for the Sunshine State. As relayed by CNN, the group warned against “DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson added, “Beware that your life is not valued.”
Ted doesn’t see the big deal here. So, he decided to put words into Martin Luther King Jr.’s mouth over the fiasco. “Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way,” he lamented on Twitter.
This is bizarre. And utterly dishonest.
In the 1950s & 1960s, the NAACP did extraordinary good helping lead the civil rights movement.
Today, Dr. King would be ashamed of how profoundly they’ve lost their way. https://t.co/F9EAiEfDP6
Not so, responded Bernice King. She took umbrage with Ted for attempting to speak for her father, and she insisted, “What my father would be deeply concerned about is the harmful, discriminatory legislation in Florida.”
Ahead of her villainous performance as the iconic Ursula the Sea Witch in the live action remake of The Little Mermaid, comedic superstar Melissa McCarthy opened up about her lengthy career in Hollywood and some of the experiences that did not go so swimmingly.
While McCarthy has nothing but praise for her co-stars over the years (she’ll make a Bridesmaid sequel “right now,” she says), there was one notable acting gig that made McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone insist on a “crazy check” for all of their productions where they “demand” kindness.
“You know, we were so astounded and grateful at getting to build our own little worlds, we were like, “We have to build the one we’ve always talked about, where everybody gets to have an opinion and everyone is really nice. It’s going to run a lot better with no screamers or crazy egos bumbling around. Why would we risk destroying that?’” McCarthy said before revealing more about her toxic experience.
“I did work for someone once who ran such a volatile, hostile set that it made me physically ill. My eyes were swelling up, I was absorbing all of this nuttiness.” What did it look like? “There were people weeping, visibly so upset by this one person. And I think that’s why the manipulation worked, because to get to me, this person would fire people I loved, which kept me quiet. It was very effective. Then one day, I was like, ‘It stops today!’ I just kept saying to them, it stops, it stops. And I know now I’ll never keep quiet again.”
True to her word, McCarthy has been gushing about her The Little Mermaid co-star Halle Bailey for almost a year now. Here’s McCarthy talking about the first time she heard Bailey sing, and that it was so powerful, she literally started crying. (And may have freaked Bailey out a bit.)
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