Before watching the video below, please know: don’t shoot the messenger. I’m not the one who approved of “Pudding Fingers.” I’m merely passing along Donald Trump‘s attack ad against Ron DeSantis, in which a stand-in for the Florida governor (and presumptive presidential candidate) eats pudding with his fingers. “Pudding Fingers” is a different kind of disgusting than most attack ads. It’s disgusting in the way that the bathtub spaghetti scene from Gummo is disgusting — and I’d still rather watch that movie than… this… ever again.
“Pudding Fingers” is based on an incident, in which the Daily Beast reported that DeSantis “enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert — by eating it with three of his fingers.” His denial of the story, to Piers Morgan of all people, didn’t help things. The ad played during CNN This Morning on Friday morning, following a commercial for “generic Viagra,” according to Mediaite.
“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong,” the voiceover says. “And we’re not just talking about pudding.” It goes on to attack DeSantis for his “dirty fingers” being all over “senior entitlements,” and that he should “keep his pudding fingers off our money.” Oh, and “and get this man a spoon!” it ends. That’s a lot of pudding wordplay in 30 seconds, 30 seconds of my life that I unfortunately will never get back. Watch at your own risk.
Earlier this week, Jamie Foxx’s daughter Corinne Foxx posted a statement that confirmed her father suffered a “medical emergency” while on the set of his latest flick in Atlanta. It’s unclear what exactly happened to the actor, though as of Thursday night, Foxx was allegedly communicating and in good spirits, according to TMZ.
Foxx has had a long and impressive career so far, in both the movie and music industries, scoring both a Grammy and an Oscar. His latest project is bringing friend Cameron Diaz out of retirement for Back In Action, which is what he was filming when the medical emergency happened. The film also stars Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler, and Andrew Scott.
While there haven’t been any recent updates on Foxx’s condition, many of his famous co-stars and friends have taken to social media to wish the Hollywood icon a speedy recovery.
Other celebs took to Instagram to share positive memories of Foxx, like Kerry Washington, who called Foxx her “movie huzbin.” The Duo starred together in Ray and Django Unchained.
TMZ recently reported that Foxx’s body double has been taking his place on the set of his latest movie Back In Action, which is currently underway in Atlanta and is scheduled to wrap next week.
Hollywood stardom is all too often a dangerous landscape for child actors. Many celebrities who got famous early have come out with their own personal accounts of being exploited and abused by the industry or by their own parents.
Mae Whitman, however, is not one of those actors.
At the age of 6, Whitman starred as Meg Ryan’s daughter in “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and since then has gone on to roles in notable shows like “Arrested Development,” “Parenthood” and “Good Girls.” Now, at age 34, she is starring in a musical comedy on Hulu called “Up Here.”
During a podcast interview with “Dear Media,” Whitman was asked how she managed to navigate early success while dodging those all-too-common pitfalls that many young stars fall victim to.
“I hate to give them all the credit, but it’s my parents,” she quipped. “They ruled. They were so cautious and they were so meticulous about prioritizing and walking me through what was important in life. What not to take personally. Our family was so communication-based.”
“I grew up with a gentle dad—it’s a term I’ve coined with people,” she said. “A gentle dad is like a sensitive dad. There was no teasing in my house. There was no meanness. There was no ‘You need to make us proud.’ It was an open source of communication and sensitivity and consideration.”
She then gave a sweet story as an example, explaining that as a kid, she could never get into sleepovers and always wanted to go home (relatable for any introvert, to be sure). In order to avoid any embarrassment, Whitman and her father developed a code phrase that signaled it was time to pick her up.
“I would call my dad, completely casual,” she recalled, “and be like, ‘It’s awesome I’m having the best time I’ve ever had. But quick question: Did you feed the turtle?’”
Without fail, Whitman’s dad would come and get her. That is Gentle Dad-ing 101.
The interview struck a chord with viewers, many of whom had their own gentle dad to give credit to.
“My dad was a gentle dad and I miss him everyday,” one person wrote.
Another added, “I grew up with a gentle dad, and married a man who is a gentle dad. It’s the biggest flex a man can have.”
And those who didn’t grow up with that kind of support shared how much they yearned for it.
“Ooof to not have Dad issues would absolutely rule,” commented one person.
“Where was the signup sheet? Cuz I missed it,” another echoed.
Regardless, people were unanimously on board with the idea. As one person put it, “If everyone had a gentle dad, the world would be a better place.”
Just another example of how gentle parenting can work wonders for developing some high-functioning, healthy kids, whether they’re thrust into stardom or not.
Having siblings is a toss-up. Either you grow up thinking they’re the best thing since the creation of ranch dressing, or you wish they really did find you in a trash can so you could find your other family. Luckily for these two brothers, they have the best-case scenario and like each other more than a little bit.
In a video uploaded to social media and shared by LADbible, the internet gets a sneak peek inside the delivery room of the older brother and his partner. The younger brother is enamored with his new nephew he’s holding in his arms while the new mom films the interaction, capturing the moment the brand new uncle is let in on the surprise.
This love-stricken uncle has no idea what’s coming, and how could he? New babies have a way of completely wrapping you up in a pink fog where everything is wonderful and you forget everything around you for a little while. Holding a new baby is like the ultimate dopamine rush and this uncle was fully immersed.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” the uncle says before his brother asks, “Do you want to know his name?”
Get ready to cue a big cheesy grin, because ugh, it’s an adorable interaction. While the awestruck uncle is still holding the baby, his brother informs him that the baby’s name is “Brooks Hayden Stone.”
“You swear,” the younger brother says.
His reaction to the realization that his first nephew is named after him is priceless. Watch the entire heartwarming interaction below:
The eyes of the NBA world will be on TD Garden on Saturday afternoon with the start of a seven-game series between the Atlanta Hawks and the Boston Celtics. Atlanta earned the No. 7 seed with an upset win over the Miami Heat on Tuesday, leading virtually wire-to-wire and reminding of the previously unfilled promise from an otherwise disappointing regular season. Boston zoomed to the No. 2 seed with the second-best record in the NBA, winning 57 games in the process, and the Celtics have the hammer of home-court advantage and the edge in rest as a reward.
Without further delay, let’s glance at an interesting series.
Keys for the Hawks
Broadly speaking, it will be interesting to see if the Hawks can replicate their effort from the victory over Miami. On one hand, Atlanta was the epitome of an average team this season, famously hanging around the .500 mark for months on end and finishing with a 41-41 record. On the other, the Hawks are clearly more talented than a typical No. 7 seed, much less a 41-win team, and that is doubly the case with Atlanta entering the playoffs at full health and with improved depth after the deadline acquisition of Saddiq Bey.
Atlanta projects to struggle defensively in this series, both due to the team’s own issues and Boston’s highly explosive and efficient offense. However, the Hawks do have a path to offensive success. Atlanta posted a top-three offensive rating after the All-Star break, including a top-tier mark on the offensive glass in securing more than 30 percent of missed shots on the offensive glass. The biggest key to Atlanta’s win over Miami was also domination on the offensive boards, with 22 offensive rebounds and 26 second-chance points.
Against a Boston team that led the league in defensive rebound rate during the regular season, the Hawks probably won’t be able to totally control the interior, but second-chance opportunities could swing things in Atlanta’s direction, particularly if Boston leans into smaller, offense-leaning lineups. From there, the Hawks have upped their free throw volume and three-point volume, at least modestly, under Snyder, which improves Atlanta’s upside in a series.
Keys for the Celtics
In addition to Boston needing to secure the defensive glass, containing Trae Young and a very prolific Atlanta offense will be paramount. Fortunately for the Celtics, this is a roster well-constructed to do just that. Boston is one of the league’s best switching teams, with a bevy of quality options to throw at Young, Dejounte Murray, and the rest of Atlanta’s perimeter options. From there, the Celtics deploy virtually no defensive weaknesses (unless they choose to dig deeper into the rotation with Sam Hauser, etc.), and Atlanta has sometimes struggled against more versatile defenses that don’t lean heavily into drop coverage.
On offense, Boston was able to do almost anything it wanted against Atlanta in the regular season. Though the Celtics and Hawks played a meaningless game in the regular season finale, Boston throttled Atlanta in the first two games, largely behind the three-point arc. The Celtics made 20 three-pointers or more in each contest and completely put the Hawks into the blender. That wasn’t an outlier either, as the Celtics ranked near the top of the league in offensive rating (117.3), three-pointers (16.0 per game), two-point shooting (56.7 percent), three-point shooting (37.7 percent), and free throw shooting (81.2 percent) with strong ball security and the ability and willingness to share the ball with unselfishness.
Atlanta is in a more stout position at this point after the hire of Quin Snyder and the aforementioned uptick in depth, but the Hawks do land firmly in the bottom third of the league in defensive rating, even after Snyder’s arrival. If the Celtics can keep the offense humming at close the rate they performed at in the regular season, the Hawks figure to be in trouble.
X-Factors
Who is the best player in this series? Jayson Tatum is the clear answer through the lens of the 2022-23 season, and it would be easy to argue that Boston’s No. 2 option, Jaylen Brown, has played better than Atlanta’s No. 1 option in Trae Young. That is a not insignificant part of why Boston is seen as a massive betting favorite in the series but, if the Hawks want to make this interesting, Young needs to be spectacular. After a very strong in the 2021 playoffs, Young floundered in 2022 against Miami and the Celtics will likely look to employ similar levels of defensive pressure to see if that still can take him out of his game. While the Hawks won’t be drawing dead without Young averaging 35 points per game, he does need to set the table for everyone else, put consistent pressure on the Boston defense, and see an uptick in his scoring efficiency for the Hawks to have a real chance in this series.
Boston also has more health questions than Atlanta does at this moment. Jaylen Brown has a laceration on his shooting hand and Marcus Smart is coming back from a late-season neck issue. Both are expected to play but, with the Celtics entering Game 1 after almost a full week off, the Hawks likely need to pounce early on to throw things into chaos. The Hawks need to play above their usual baseline to challenge the Celtics, but Atlanta has shown signs of that capability and, in general, the Hawks bring the talent, versatility, star power, health, and coaching acumen that can put up a real fight. The issue all season for the Hawks was putting that all together for an extended stretch, and the Celtics will require them to raise their level consistently across the seven-game series in a way they haven’t all season.
Drake may be in his “sassy” era, but still, even some things are off-limits for him. The “Search & Rescue” rapper laughed off a hilarious mix-up of him with another rapper but didn’t find a new AI-generated version of him rapping along to Ice Spice’s viral song “Munch (Feelin’ U).
Late last night, the Bronx native released her highly anticipated collaboration with fellow Young Money representative Nicki Minaj. As “Princess Diana (Remix)” began to gain streams, simultaneously, the AI-generated track started to creep back on the users’ timelines. Word of the AI cover eventually got back to the rapper, and he was not at all amused. Taking to his Instagram stories, the musician shared a screengrab of The Shade Room’sreporting with the caption, “This is the final straw AI.”
It is unclear if the entertainer was being sarcastic or truly upset at the fact that an off-brand version of his likeness was being used for cooking up the unauthorized song. But maybe the party responsible for the track could make it up to the rapper by giving it another go this time recording at Drake’s own home studio.
In November, rumors began to circulate that the two were feuding, but Ice Spice has since cleared up the rumors, stating that they are “still cool,” despite the slight shade Drake threw on his track “BackOutsideBoyz.”
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – KARL
Succession is a show that is filled to the brim with beautifully shaded-in characters. The children are all such specific little monsters, each deeply crappy in their own way that comes from a lifetime of their specific crappy experiences with and involving their also crappy father. There are finance vultures and eccentric Swedish billionaires and gangly cousins and all of them are playing their little games in ways that feel right and true to what their characters want in the moment. It’s an incredible feat of fiction and one of the main reasons I enjoy the show even though I hate all of them very much, even Cousin Greg, who has morphed from a lovable Gumby into a soulless self-interested cretin like the rest of the people on the show.
Actually, that’s not true. I do not hate all of them. There is one character I still enjoy, even if he is technically a high-ranking executive at an organization that is opposed to just about every single thing I stand for in the world. It is Karl. I love him.
HBO
Karl doesn’t… do much. A lot of times he doesn’t even say anything. He’ll just be there when other people are talking and he’ll attempt to fade into the background because he — like his counterpart Frank, who I will also discuss shortly — has realized that the best way to survive in this shark tank is to be the kind of fish who blends into its surroundings to disappear instead of the kind that tries to physically fight off the predator. Sometimes when someone asks him something directly he’ll just do this instead of give an actual answer.
HBO
Just a beautiful spineless man. The actor who plays him, David Rasche, does such a good job at nailing his various uncomfortable shifting and throat-clearing, too. It’s not easy to do so much with so little, especially when it’s deliberate like this. We do a lot of public fawning for — to choose an example not so much at random — the kind of stuff that Jeremy Strong and Sarah Snook did in the last episode, but please keep in mind that nailing the delivery of a line like this in such a tiny moment also takes a whole heap of skill.
HBO
Also, it’s just extremely funny. Which is not nothing on a show that sometimes rips your guts out.
Speaking of Succession and things that are funny (this is what professional writers refer to as “a real good transition”), I’ve also really come to appreciate Karl’s relationship with Frank lately. Frank is another one of the high-ranking, non-family figures at the company. He and Karl have probably known each other for decades. They’ve probably fought for the same positions and watched the crappy Roy children grow and gain influence after knowing them as bratty little toddlers and are both just trying to hang on to the little slivers of authority and power they have left right now. These are men who are brothers and enemies and have seen things. Sometimes they’ll hang each other out to dry. Like this.
HBO
It’s delightful. I think I would honestly watch a prequel series about the two of them rising up the ranks. I would definitely watch a spinoff about just Karl. Or a standalone movie. Send him on a golf vacation. I know for certain Karl golfs. I bet he’s a six-handicap and is pretty sure he can get it down to a four once this merger is done and he can get back out on the range a little bit. I just closed my eyes and saw him in a golf cart. I wasn’t even trying to think of it. That’s just how invested I am in all of this now.
He’s just so… “pure” feels like the wrong word because, once again, he’s a suit at a goon corporation and if I met a person like this in real life I would probably groan for 25 straight seconds and then spit a little bit. It’s definitely fondness by comparison, the thing where the company he keeps is so much worse than he is that it makes him look like a prince. We barely even know him. He could be stealing millions from the company and stuffing it in numbered accounts on a dozen islands. Actually, wait. No. That would just make me like him more.
I don’t know. I need Karl to thrive. I’m at the point where I do not care what happens to anyone else on this show. Hit them all with hammers at the beginning of the next episode. Just leave Karl alone. Send him on that golf vacation. Or just let him hang around and chime in with useless garbage like this.
HBO
It is all I ask for at this point.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – More movies should have Chris Tucker in them for at least a little bit
AMAZON
I went to see Air last weekend. That was fun. It’s a good movie that I would put in the category of “a thing I would start watching on a basic cable channel some rainy Saturday afternoon and end up finishing even though I’ve seen it like 20 times,” which I mean very much as a compliment. I love those kinds of movies. It’s been a while since we had a good one. And it was fun to see it in the theater. There was a red-band trailer during the previews and, when that blood-red screen popped up to let us know cusses were coming, a lady in front of me let out an audible “oooooo.” I wish her nothing but the greatest things in life.
Another thing I liked about Air: It had Chris Tucker in it. Did you realize it’s been seven years since Chris Tucker was in a movie? That’s too long! I’ll come back to this. There are facts I need to share first. Like this one: Tucker took the role of Nike executive Howard White in part because he’s friends with Howard White in real life. Here’s what he told People about the process of all that.
“My agent called me and said they got a movie about something to do with Michael Jordan, and they want you to play this character called Howard White.”
“There wasn’t no words, it wasn’t no character, it wasn’t there in the script. I said, ‘Wait a minute, that’s my friend.’ So I called him [White] and found out that it was, he was in this movie and I said, ‘Whoa man, but they said it’s not much, but you know, I’m considering it cause it’s you.’ “
A few notes here:
I am willing to place a $100 wager that you, like me, heard that entire quote in your brain in Chris Tucker’s voice, which is how most quotes should be heard, now that I think about it
Imagine how weird it must be to have one of your friends play you in a movie
Imagine how much weirder it would be if that friend were Chris Tucker
But yes, more importantly: He was such a blast in this movie. Just an absolute charisma bomb that breathed life into every scene he was in. I need more. Seven years is too long between Chris Tucker appearances. He doesn’t need to full-on lead a movie if he’d rather stay home and chill at this point, but I do think more movies should at least try to sprinkle him in. Just give me, like, 15 minutes of Chris Tucker. In any movie. As many movies as he’s willing to do. Ask him which of his other friends he wants to play on the big screen. Ask him to play literally anyone in a Knives Out. Ask him to start doing a voice in every Pixar movie like he’s John Ratzenberger or something. Let him swear. Throw money at him if it will help.
I do not care how we make this happen. I just want someone to handle it.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Today is a great day to rewatch the Barry dirtbike chase
Barry is back this weekend for a fourth and final season. It’s so, so good. Bleak as hell and as silly as it is bleak and just a pleasure to watch. I’ve seen most of the season already because I’m a big fancy television critic who writes reviews of these things, but please know that this is one of those times where that’s not a good thing. I want to talk about it so much with everybody and there are so few people to talk about it with. It’s like one of those cartoons where a dude asks a genie for a billion dollars but he gets it in like fake Chuck E. Cheese money and can’t spend it. It’s a real problem.
Since I can’t talk about the new season, let’s talk about the previous season. Specifically, let’s talk about that dirtbike chase. The one in the video up there. You can probably still get the idea even if you don’t watch Barry. But also… go watch Barry. Dude. It’s so good and the episodes are 30 minutes each and there are three seasons on whatever exactly HBO Max is calling itself now.
My colleague Josh Kurp wrote a great breakdown of the scene last year after it aired, so that’s a good place to start. There’s a GIF in there of the failed gun handoff that I should be using in more group chats and will try to going forward because it is just outrageously funny. Barry is a good show.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Think about this one a little bit
Getty Image
Here’s what happened: Last month, we found out Matthew McConaughey’s wife Camila Alves was on that terrifying Lufthansa flight that just dropped like 4,000 feet out of nowhere. Everyone was basically okay, which is good. But what we didn’t really know was whether Matthew was on the flight, too. Until now. Now we know. Because he talked about it on Kelly Ripa’s podcast.
“My tray table is what held me down,” the actor, 53, recalled. “I did not have my seatbelt on, and there was not a seatbelt warning right before it happened.” The Oscar winner noted that he “immediately reached over” to make sure his wife, Camila Alves, had her seatbelt on.
The “hell of a scare” left McConaughey feeling like he had “no way to get control of this situation the moment.”
So, three things about all of this:
I am glad everyone, including the McConaughey family, is safe, because that does not sound fun
It is a little hilarious that this story was broken on Kelly Ripa’s podcast
Please think about how weird it would be to be sitting inside an airplane that suddenly drops 4,000 feet and sends you into a panic about whether your life is about to end and whether you’ve done everything you want to and told the important people in your life how important they are and then you look over at the person in the seat across the aisle and you lock eyes with this stranger and you blink twice quickly to be sure you are seeing what you think you are seeing and you realize that the person you have now connected with on a very deep level during this horrifying shared experience is FREAKING MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
You’d probably think you were hallucinating.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Beef chat
It’s been a week now since Beef dropped on Netflix, so I feel like it’s safe to talk about the thing from the end of the first episode, which I have been laughing about since I saw it. Quick Beef backstory, which you can grasp from the trailer up there and would also be a fun name for a tough guy in an action movie (“The name’s Beef Backstory”): Two strangers have a little traffic run-in in a parking lot and proceed to try to ruin each other’s lives. That’s really it. It’s so good.
Anyway, stuff goes down at the end of the first episode and then, just as a big reveal hits and these crazy people launch into their journey of revenge and self-destruction, a few notes of a song start playing in the background. And they sound familiar. And if you’ve taken my advice from years ago and started watching television with the captions on, this pops up on the screen.
NETFLIXNETFLIX
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. We have a Hoobastank sighting. And I laughed very hard when I realized that was what was happening, in part because it’s a perfect fit for the action and in part because… well, the Hoobastank of it all.
But then I read this from an interview with Beef star Stephen Yuen and I started to feel bad about laughing.
“You grow up past your teens, what we call our awkward phase, [but] when we’re probably the most pure and having the most fun. The perfect analogy is Hoobastank. Everybody really s— on Hoobastank for a while. And turns out, when you hear the needle drop at the end of an episode, you’re cheering up and down. Like ‘What’d ya’ turn on Hoobastank for?’ They’re just trying to put out music.”
That’s a fair point. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I once saw Hoobastank in concert. Not, like, just Hoobastank. It was at the 2002 Sprite Liquid Mix Tour in Camden, New Jersey. Jay-Z and Talib Kweli and 311 were there, too. I got really drunk in the parking lot and don’t remember much of anything. Money well spent.
The lessons here are as follows, I guess:
Beef is a good show
Leave Hoobastank alone
Maybe don’t mix Captain Morgan and Mountain Dew at noon before an all-day outdoor concert
All useful.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Paul:
I was texting with a friend of mine about the big death in Succession this week (I won’t say who died just in case you publish this email and it spoils it for someone, although you do have to admit that that would be a pretty funny way to have it spoiled for you), and we were trying to think of the funniest possible character to kill off in the middle of a season. Like if Frasier Crane had a heart attack and died with four episodes left in Frasier, or if they had killed off Bosch in season two and made three more seasons of the show without changing the title. I figure you have a take on this. The people are waiting.
This is a good email. I’ve been thinking about it for a few days now. Both of these examples are so funny to me that I kind of can’t get over them to come up with a better idea. The closest I’ve come so far is if Ted Lasso — a very nice show about humans dealing with stuff and also playing soccer sometimes — killed off Ted Lasso in next week’s episode. Like, violently. Crazed fan with a rocket launcher or something just splatters him on the field. Or even deeply stupid, like he’s walking down the street and a piano falls on his head. Either one. I’m laughing a lot right now.
The sick thing here is that I enjoy Ted Lasso a lot. I am legitimately looking forward to seeing how things wrap up. But the little rascal in me is thinking about the chaos that would unfold in the wake of this — on-screen and off — and I’m doing what can best be described as a hushed supervillain cackle at my desk. I do not know why I am like this.
Police are investigating after someone broke into a trailer containing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of dimes in Northeast Philadelphia.
DIME HEIST
WE HAVE A DIME HEIST
I… I DO NOT THINK I HAVE EVER SEEN A DIME HEIST BEFORE
…
…
…
DIME HEIST
Police on the scene say an estimated two million dimes, worth $200,000, were stolen. That’s an increase from an earlier estimate of one million dimes.
A total of $750,000 worth of dimes were in the truck, police said.
Two million dimes is so many dimes. I can’t even get an image in my head of what two million dimes looks like. So far, the best I’ve been able to picture is, like, “a lot of dimes,” but even then, it’s probably not two million dimes. I would consider 100 dimes to be a lot of dimes. So would most people, I think. If you walked around a convenience store and grabbed $10 worth of food and tried to pay for it with 100 dimes, everyone in line behind you would be so mad about the ridiculous amount of dimes you were counting out.
Now think about 1,999,900 more dimes than that. Maybe this isn’t helpful. If you couldn’t picture two million dimes, I doubt you can picture 1,999,900 dimes. It’s really a lot of dimes. That’s my point.
Action News has learned the truck driver picked up the dimes from the Philadelphia Mint on Wednesday but then went home to get some sleep before a long drive to Florida.
“This is common practice – to pick up a load going to Florida and go home for the night, get to sleep, and get on the road in the morning,” said Capt. Jack Ryan of Northeast Detectives.
Well, okay. I guess if it’s common pract-… hold on. Did that say “said Capt. Jack Ryan?”
JACK RYAN?!!!!
I’m sorry, but now I’m picturing Harrison Ford in character as Jack Ryan in Clear and Present Danger — or any of the other Jack Ryans from the other movies based on Tom Clancy books — on the scene briefing the media after someone stole two million dimes from a parking lot in Northeast Philly. Maybe he’s there because he got demoted after his various shenanigans.
This will be all I think about this weekend. That, and what these people plan to do with all those dimes. It’s so many dimes. It’s not like you can just go spend them all on a Ferrari, or buy a house in cash with two million dimes. And I feel like even if they try to go to the bank and cash it in, they’re going to get caught. The people at the bank will be like, “Well, where did you get all of these dimes from?”
I’m not alone on this, am I?
One bystander wondered what the thieves will do with all of those coins.
“I feel like if they try to go to the bank and cash it in, they’re going to get caught. They’ll be like, ‘Well, where did you get all of these dimes from?’” said Jasmine Waters.
Christmas is typically the biggest movie day of the year. Not in 2023, baby. July 21st sees the release of both Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s colorful comedy starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and Oppenheimer, the latest Very Important Film from director Christopher Nolan. Or does it!
Thierry Fremaux, the director of the Cannes Film Festival, told Variety that Oppenheimer won’t be part of this year’s lineup because it’s supposedly been delayed. “I would have loved [that],” he said, “but it’s being released at the end of the year as part of their awards strategy. My two regrets this year are Oppenheimer and Barbie, but it won’t be ready either by May.”
Now, before dreading that you’ll be dragged to see Trolls Band Together instead of Oppenheimer on Thanksgiving, a clarification was added to the Variety article: “Thierry Fremaux later clarified that Oppenheimer is still set for a July release.”
Associated Press editor Lindsey Bahr confirmed the July 21st release date:
Ben Affleck has been having a blast working with his old pal Matt Damon. During the premiere of their new movie Air, Affleck even took a minute to gush about his best bud (and, of course, Jennifer Lopez) to a crowd full of people. However, like any friendship, there were some rocky moments in their past, particularly when the two were struggling actors sharing an apartment.
“He has an ability to block things out — I think that’s why he’s such a great actor, because he can just focus,” Affleck said. “One of the things he blocks out is the idea that when you finish with something, it has to be washed or thrown away.”
Affleck then shared an anecdote about going on a cleaning strike to see if Damon would start to tidy up a little bit. It didn’t work. Via Rolling Stone:
“Me and my brother, after cleaning up after the guy for years, we said, ‘You know what, we’re gonna go sit-down strike.’ We’re going to wait and see how long he could go before he finally gets up and goes, ‘I’m covered in garbage.’ We went weeks, two weeks, without touching the apartment.”
However, the mess didn’t break Damon, who amid the chaos was playing Sega Genesis at the center of “concentric circles of garbage: pizza boxes, a sushi thing that was like a week and a half old, and there were maggots.”
Eventually, the Affleck brothers gave up and resumed cleaning the apartment. “We submit,” Affleck quipped. “You are too good. We cannot beat you.”
Every May 9, Victory Day takes place in Russia to mark the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany. Last year, the parade still took place, and Vladimir Putin may have wanted it to celebrate winning his Ukraine invasion, but that didn’t happen. Also, hackers interrupted the TV propaganda machine, and one year later, Putin has clearly not seen victory in Ukraine. He recently canned a high commander and has lengthened recruitment contracts, and god only knows how long this war will drag out because Russia will have to be forced out to admit defeat.
Also, Russian troops have been abandoning tanks (after fleeing the battlefield in large numbers) for months in Ukrainian cities. This could be contributing to an existing issue because now there aren’t enough tanks to hold proper Victory Day parades in Russia. As Newsweek relays, parades began to drop off the schedule in some cities, and the originally cited reason (“for security reasons”) has been adjusted. As well, explaining the situation as not wanting to “provoke” Ukraine didn’t work out either. Here’s the tank-fueled rationale:
Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Belgorod Oblast, said that the parade “would also not be held in order not to provoke the enemy with a large number of vehicles and soldiers” in the center of the regional capital, Russian Telegram channel ASTRA reported.
However, the Twitter account of Tendar, which provides updates about the war in Ukraine, wrote that the decision was taken “because they simply have not enough functioning tanks to run up and down the road.”
Additionally, we’ve heard that Putin’s army is running so low on ammunition that they’re using supplies that could “explode in your face.” Recruits are being told to bring tampons to treat their own bullet wounds and lacerations, and also, there’s that alleged Viagra shortage to complicate matters. Now, that’s embarrassing for Russia.
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