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Donald Trump is continuing to melt down over Fox News seemingly getting behind Ron DeSantis even though the Florida governor has yet to declare he’s running for president in 2024. Depending on which polls you read, DeSantis could be a serious threat to Trump securing the Republican nomination, and the former president is predictably throwing temper tantrums on Truth Social. Trump also rolled out yet another new nickname for DeSantis, but your guess is as good as ours as to what the heck it even means.

“Fox News is promoting Ron DeSanctus so hard and so much that there’s not much time left for Real News,” Trump ranted before yelling at the conservative network some more. Via Mediaite:

Reminds me of 2016 when they were pushing “JEB!” The new Fox Poll, which have always been purposely terrible for me, has “TRUMP Crushing DeSanctimonious,” but they barely show it. Instead they go with losers like Karl Rove, Paul Ryan and now, even “Yesper,” who have been wrong about everything! Isn’t there a big, beautiful, Network which wants to do well, and make a fortune besides? FAKE NEWS!

Of course, it probably doesn’t help that some of Trump’s once-steadfast supporters at Fox News have turned him on. After Trump started calling DeSantis “Meatball Ron,” Mark Levin chastised the former president for the cheap insult. Although, he gave Trump some wiggle room by suggesting that maybe serial nickname maker Donald Trump didn’t come up with another nickname?

“I happen to like Meatballs,” Levin tweeted. “But this will turn off a lot of conservative voters. Not a wise move if true. I hope it’s not.”

It was.

(Via Mediaite)

So often in the music industry, artists fall out with one another, causing waves of coverage and breathless speculation from fans. However, their reconciliations rarely receive the same level of scrutiny. Case in point: Bay Area rapper Kamaiyah is pretty fed up with addressing rumors and questions about her falling out with Kehlani, who is also from the Bay.

The two artists were thick as thieves at one point in their careers until 2020 when Kamaiyah declared on Twitter that she “don’t f*ck with” Kehlani after allegedly being removed from the singer’s 2019 single “All Me.” However, Kehlani addressed accusations of colorism at the time, saying “please do not take this bold ass lie and f*ckin run with it.” At the time, I wrote that they could hopefully “get on Zoom or something and settle this out of the public’s eye.”

It seems that’s just what they did, but due to that fact, many folks missed it. When Bay-focused Twitter fan account Thizzler On The Roof (A1 name, by the way) reported on comments Kamaiyah made about feeling overlooked, it apparently drew some criticism from fans due to the prior disagreement. “This post got y’all messaging me about me and Kehlani again so I’m going to address it so we can wrap this up in 2023,” she wrote in response.

“Me and Kehlani talked privately (as we should) and have no issues whatsoever,” she continued. “What happened happened and it’s over. She’s talented, I love her, and that sh*t is dead let it go.” To further highlight the restoration of their bond, Kamaiyah also posted a photo of the pair’s matching tattoos, explaining, “I literally have matching tattoos with kehlani our fallout over business differences should’ve never hit the internet and I apologized 3 years ago PUBLICLY for it. Our sisterhood wasn’t fake, family gets into it all the time ours just got a lil ghetto because of who we are.”

Of course, nothing seals a musical reconciliation like a collaboration or two. Fans can miss out on tweets, but not new music.

Kehlani is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Selena Gomez has experienced enough unfair for a lifetime since breaking out on Disney’s Wizards Of Waverly Place nearly 15 years ago. Most recently, Gomez sadly felt the need to explain that holding on to water weight is a side effect of her Lupus medication. Then, she announced she’d be “taking a second from social media” after fans began theorizing (again) she’s feuding with Hailey Bieber and Kylie Jenner (as outlined by Complex).

So, it makes all the sense in the world that Gomez wanted to reminisce on simpler times with her former Wizards co-stars Jennifer Stone and David DeLuise on their Wizards Of Waverly Pod re-watch podcast. The latest episode featuring Gomez dropped today, February 27. (Wizards Of Waverly Place aired for four seasons from 2007 to 2012, including Wizards Of Waverly Place: The Movie in 2009.)

Roughly 16 minutes in, Gomez made DeLuise tear up by explaining that her castmates and crew on the show made her feel “safe, and that’s a really hard thing for me to feel, and I know that you guys love me for me.” She continued, “You guys genuinely loved me, and that’s all I could have asked for. The unconditional trust and bond we had, I miss so much.”

Three minutes later, Stone related to how hindsight has helped them all “appreciate” the show “so much more,” which prompted Gomez to elaborate on her earlier point.

“I can’t begin to tell you guys without making it such a little cry session. I felt like I was the happiest I’d been in my whole life,” she said. “And I don’t want that to be a sad thought because I’m really grateful and happy, but it was definitely the happiest times for me, and I recognize that, obviously, I have this different attention on me that I just didn’t have then and that was a really pure time.”

At the half-hour mark, DeLuise asked Gomez for her “biggest mistake so far” and directed that she wasn’t allowed to “say a boy’s name.” As if she hadn’t tugged at fans’ heartstrings before now, she answered, “You know what? Probably not staying in touch with you guys. I think I slowly became kind of shamed. I felt ashamed of the decisions that I made, and I didn’t want you guys to see me in the state that I was in because A) you would’ve told me the truth, which terrifies me and B) I didn’t want to let you down.”

Gomez’s fans have gotten a lot of painful introspection and vulnerability from her lately. Her AppleTV+ documentary My Mind & Me premiered in early November, and it was accompanied by an evocative single of the same name. In the ensuing months, Gomez has teased more lighthearted music is on the way.

As for acting, Gomez has impressed for two seasons on Hulu’s Only Murders In The Building alongside Martin Short and Steve Martin. The Emmy-winning series will have a third season, adding the likes of Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd to its ensemble cast.

Watch Gomez on the fourth episode of Wizards Of Waverly Pod above.

This article originally appeared on 02.25.21

Middle school has to be the most insecure time in a person’s life. Kids in their early teens are incredibly cruel and will make fun of each other for not having the right shoes, listening to the right music, or having the right hairstyle.

As if the social pressure wasn’t enough, a child that age has to deal with the intensely awkward psychological and biological changes of puberty at the same time.

Jason Smith, the principal of Stonybrook Intermediate and Middle School in Warren Township, Indiana, had a young student sent to his office recently, and his ability to understand his feelings made all the difference.

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The child was sent to the office for refusing to remove his hat in class. “So, I sat down with him and asked him why, what was going on,” Smith told WRTV. “He said he just got his haircut, he didn’t like the way it looked, and he thought his hairline look a little funny.”

Having a haircut that’s a little off can be like waving a red flag at middle school bullies. So, Smith decided to fix the situation by offering the child a haircut.

“I’ve been cutting hair most of my life. I played college basketball and I cut my teammates’ hair before games and I’ve been cutting my son’s hair for 17 years so I had professional clippers and edgers at home, so I said, ‘If I go home and get my clippers and line you up, will you go back to class,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I will,'” Smith said.

A photo of the cut was posted to Facebook where it’s been seen over 21,000 times.

After Smith fixed the child’s hairline, the student kept up his end of the bargain and returned to class.

“You know that age is a time for peer acceptance. It’s huge. And So a young man, especially an African-American young man the barbershop is a big deal in the community. Looking good a representing and presenting yourself is huge for kids,” Smith said.

A few days later, Smith posted a photo on Facebook of some memorable cuts he’s given in the past. “Who knew a skill that helped me survive in college would be useful 20 years later?” he captioned the post.

Smith saw the situation as a way to help the child in the moment instead of having to resort to disciplinary actions. From the child’s perspective what’s worse — being ridiculed in front of your peers or having a parent get angry?

“We’re not disciplining with a hard fist. You could call and have the parent pick up the kid up for defiance. Or you can sit and get to the root of the problem and see what can I do to help you? What do you need right now?” Smith said.

Imagine what the world would be like if more people simply asked each other, “What do you need?”

“He really was not trying to get out of class. He just thought that he would be laughed at. So, we took the time and did what we could to help him,” Smith said.

Smith recently posted a quote by professor Brené Brown on Facebook that serves as a great reminder of the practical power of solving problems at the root through compassion and direct action. “Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.”

This article originally appeared on July 2, 2019

Sadly, a lot of men go out of their way to avoid learning anything about a woman’s period.

(That could be why throughout most of the United States — where the majority of lawmakers are men — feminine hygiene products are subject to sales tax.)

So we should give some love to the guys who make an effort to learn a bit about the menstrual cycle so they can help their family members when they’re in desperate need of feminine hygiene products.

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Personally, as a guy, the feminine hygiene aisle can be a little intimidating. There are multiple brands, styles of products, scents, absorbency levels, and they are all color-coded.

What do the colors mean?

Knowing there’s a lot I don’t know, I take a picture on my phone of the box I’m about to purchase and send it to my wife, asking, “Is this the right one?”

A dad in the U.K. is getting some love on social media for the hilarious way he navigated the world of feminine hygiene products while showing how much he loved his daughter in the process.

It all began when Tia Savva sent her dad to Tesco, a popular U.K. drug store, to pick up some tampons.

For all the guys out there that need a solid primer on what goes on in the feminine hygiene product aisle, this quick tutorial from Mel magazine does a pretty great job.

In 2014, few people could have imagined that a pulpy, low-budget revenge thriller about a retired hitman who dusts off the tricks of his trade after a group of baddies break into his home, steal his beloved 1969 Mustang Mach 1, and kill his adorable puppy would turn into box office gold, but here we are. Like Ted Logan (of Bill & Ted fame) and The Matrix’s Neo, John Wick has added yet another legacy-making character — and franchise — to Keanu Reeves’ CV. And the film series’ fourth installment, the aptly titled John Wick: Chapter 4, is nearly upon us. Here’s everything we know about the long-awaited sequel.

Plot

As is often the case with highly anticipated sequels, Lionsgate is keeping many of the key plot details of John Wick: Chapter 4 rather close to the chest. But here’s the studio’s official plot summary, according to Collider:

“John Wick (Keanu Reeves) takes on his most lethal adversaries yet in the upcoming fourth installment of the series. With the price on his head ever increasing, Wick takes his fight against the High Table global as he seeks out the most powerful players in the underworld, from New York to Paris to Osaka to Berlin.”

In other words: After watching Wick suffer at the hands of the High Table — the underworld’s version of a governing body, where a dozen of the planet’s most powerful crime lords work together to ensure maximum corruption where they can get it — there’s a chance he might be able to turn the tables.

What we do know is that John Wick: Chapter 4 is intended to be the first part of a two-part sendoff for Reeves’ character. While that would imply that John Wick: Chapter 5 is already a done deal, Reeves admitted that a fifth installment is not yet confirmed. (Despite previous reports that the movies were being filmed back-to-back.)

“You have to see how the audience responds to what we did,” Reeves told Total Film earlier this year of a fifth film. “The only reason we’ve had a chance to make these movies is that people have liked what we have done. So I think we have to wait and see how the audience responds to it. Hopefully they’ll like it.”

According to Box Office Mojo’s numbers, each subsequent chapter in the franchise has nearly doubled the box office take of its predecessor — so it’s probably safe to say that if Keanu builds it, people will come.

Release Date

John Wick: Chapter 4 will arrive in theaters on Friday, March 24, 2023. No information on when or where it will begin streaming has been announced yet.

Cast

While Keanu Reeves fans would be perfectly content for John Wick to be a one-man showcase for the action star/internet boyfriend, John Wick: Chapter 4’s bench is absolutely loaded. In addition to Reeves, Ian McShane — who plays Wick’s pal Winston, owner of New York City’s criminal-friendly Continental Hotel — and Lance Reddick, who plays Continental concierge Charon, will be reprising their roles. John Wick: Chapter 4 will also see the return of frequent Reeves collaborator Laurence Fishburne, who joined the franchise as “The Bowery King” in its second installment.

Hong Kong martial arts legend Donnie Yen (Ip Man) is also set to join the cast, as is fellow actor/martial artist Scott Adkins, upping the action game. Bill Skarsgård will play the Marquis de Gramont, Chapter 4’s big bad — who might just be Wick’s most challenging adversary yet.

Trailer

John Wick: Chapter 4 arrives in theaters on March 24, 2023.

Many actors have told their various chaotic audition stories, like Sam Worthington’s disastrous James Bond audition, or when we all thought that Michael B. Jordan would maybe be the next great Jedi. Just because someone might seem like a good fit for the role, doesn’t mean that they actually are. This is proven time and time again!

This obviously doesn’t apply to Austin Butler, who has spent the better part of the last three years slowly letting Elvis Presley possess his body, soul, and voice box. But he has had his fair share of stressful auditions, too. Butler told Variety about when he auditioned for Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a process that took “months,” according to the actor.

After several screen tests, Butler made it to the final round of auditions, when he said he finally met the director. “Quentin came in, and most auditions last 10 minutes if you’re lucky. I was there from like 9 in the morning to 9 p.m. He doesn’t record auditions, he really works with you and looks at you. It’s the same way on set, he doesn’t look through a monitor. I was supposed to have two other meetings that day and because I didn’t have my phone, my agent was worried,” Butler said.

Now, had things ended up differently and Butler’s agent was unable to get ahold of him, perhaps Quentin Tarantino would have ended up on the national news for kidnapping future Oscar nominee Austin Butler. Instead, he just got the part. “But at the end of the day, Quentin told me I had the part and gave me a hug.” The real surprise here is that Quentin is a hugger!

Butler then explained that working with the director was a longtime goal of his, as he used to print out the Pulp Fiction script and read it to his mom while prepping for auditions when he was a kid. Honestly, it sounds like he would have been fine if Tarantino decided to hold him hostage for a few more hours.

(Via Variety)

Michael B. Jordan got one heck of a chance to rise above some high school teasing from back in the day. While walking the red carpet for Creed III, the actor/director took a minute to field some questions from The Morning Hustle host Lore’l. Turns out, the two of them went to Chad Science Academy in Newark together, and Lore’l had recently admitted on a podcast how everyone in school used to make fun of Jordan because of his name. Also, The Wire star used to bring headshots to school, which his classmates capitalized on.

“We teased him all the damn time because his name was Michael Jordan. Let’s start there, and he was no Michael Jordan,” Lore’l said on the podcast via NME. “And he also would come to school with a headshot. We lived in Newark, that’s the hood. We would make fun of him like, ‘What you gonna do with your stupid headshot!?’ And now look at him!”

When Lore’l caught up with Jordan on the red carpet, he surprised her by revealing she heard what he said:

“[I was] the corny kid, right?” he replied, referencing her recent podcast chat.

“I did not say that! [I was] misquoted, for sure,” she replied, though Jordan noted: “I heard it. I heard it. It’s all good. What’s up?”

“I said we used to make fun of the name,” she then said. “But yeah, he is obviously killing things out here.”

In an attempt to make things right, Lore’l tried to tell Jordan that he’s “not corny anymore,” and he responded by… walking away. So, okay yeah, maybe things got a little awkward.

(Via NME)

Saturday Night Live‘s ventures into the world of sports can be fairly hit or miss, but SNL has struck gold with some sports characters and impressions in recent years, particularly in Weekend Update segments. Kenan Thompson’s LaVar Ball stands out in particular, but this weekend James Austin Johnson debuted a new basketball impression that was startlingly spot-on, as he donned a tie-dye shirt and joined Michael Che on the Weekend Update desk as a prescient Bill Walton to talk about the Lakers.

Johnson really hits all the notes as Walton, particularly refusing to answer Che’s very simple question of “will the Lakers make the playoffs” in any direct manner. Walton calling a game from the future that no one else can see is also a very good bit, as he bounces back and forth between his stream of consciousness rambling and Lakers highlights no one else can see.

What makes the bit even more impressive is that Johnson apparently had no idea who Bill Walton was a few weeks ago when the writers pitched the idea to him, but spent the past few weeks watching Walton and doing some research to dial in a near-perfect impression.

Hopefully JAJ’s Walton will make a return appearance for the playoffs, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Bill brings him on his Throw It Down broadcast on the NBA App one day to drive Jason Benetti further into insanity.

When a friend texted to ask how Cocaine Bear was, I responded “there are child actors doing Southern accents in it,” which felt like all the explanation that was necessary. You can stop reading here if you like.

As evidenced by its popularity as a meme, “cocaine bear” is a funny idea for a movie. It’s also already a punchline, and a funny idea for a movie works better when it’s a setup. When it’s already a punchline, there isn’t much left to do except to tediously construct a scenario we’ve already gotten what we want out of. In this case I think I would’ve rather just given them the $12 as a tip for making a funny poster rather than sitting through 86 minutes of extraneous action and four minutes of people saying “cocaine bear.” (One thought for improving Cocaine Bear: make the joke everyone standing around awkwardly waiting for someone to say “cocaine bear,” like Andy Kaufman’s Mighty Mouse bit).

Cocaine Bear is, in case you haven’t Googled it by now, based on the true story of the 1985 cocaine smuggling flight that killed a former narcotics officer-turned-drug smuggler named Andrew C. Thornton II. He bailed out of an overloaded Cessna along with 40 packages of jettisoned cocaine and was found splooshed against the ground after his chute didn’t open. This part of the story opens the movie, with Matthew Rhys playing a Wile E. Coyote version of Thornton we never see after the first scene. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation later found a black bear corpse in the woods, whose stomach was reportedly filled with cocaine. Someone taxidermied that bear and it became a tourist attraction.

Thornton’s story actually sounds like an interesting one, a rich kid turned Army soldier turned cop turned drug smuggler who died during a daredevil cocaine stunt gone wrong. I could see the Death Of Dick Long guys making a great movie out of that. The brilliance of director Daniel Scheinert and writer Billy Chew in that movie was to take a wacky news story and try to imagine every character in it as a real person. That’s basically the opposite of what director Elizabeth Banks and writer Jimmy Warden do with Cocaine Bear.

Cocaine Bear is basically a horror movie about the bear who ate the cocaine, which is a slightly curious choice to begin with seeing as how the real bear was just minding his own bear business when some cocaine literally fell out of the sky and killed it. In the movie though, the black bear eats the cocaine and kills people, first some Scandinavian hikers played by the Tormund Giantsbane guy from Game of Thrones and his fiancee, played by Hannah Hoekstra. I guess it’s supposed to be funny because they were in love?

Later we meet two kids, a tween boy and girl, who ditch school to hike to a waterfall — they of the aforementioned child actors doing southern accents. Now, if you’re adapting a true story that requires no child actors, adding an element that requires child actors has to be one of the greatest unforced errors of all time, but maybe that’s just me. Keri Russell plays the mother of the girl tween struggling to get her daughter back after she finds out the bear “took” her. That’s something cocaine bears do, I guess, they kidnap young girls. I dunno, man.

Other characters include the cop investigating the dead smuggler (the always great Isiah Whitlock, aka Clay Davis from The Wire), a horny park ranger (Margo Martindale), some whacky paramedics, including Scott Seiss (who’s really funny on Twitter) some teen delinquents who hang out in the national park, and the guys from the drug gang trying to get their coke back — which include angry bad guy Ray Liotta (in his last film role) O’Shea Jackson Jr. (aka Ice Cube Jr.) as the straight man, of sorts, and Alden Ehrenreich as Liotta’s character’s son, distraught from just having lost his fiancee to cancer. I guess it’s supposed to be funny because they were in love?

None of these characters really have an arc, though they occasionally get to shoot at each other and yell at, and yell about, a bear. Even the bear is just a killer bear that could’ve come from any number of killer bear movies. Why this one needs “cocaine” as a motive isn’t clear. Does cocaine even make people kill? I guess it can, though first it makes them wired and annoying. Cocaine Bear isn’t really about a bear on cocaine, it’s mostly sort of a pre-fab killer animal B-movie with “cocaine” slapped on the title (which, admittedly, is a good title). It’s a horror movie reconfigured as a comedy, and I suppose the comedy is that no one is taking the horror very seriously.

“Cocaine: It makes bears KILL” feels like a parody of an 80s D.A.R.E. commercial, and Cocaine Bear might have worked if it had embraced this, functioning as a satire of the over-the-top anti-drug propaganda fed to the young minds of my generation. There are actually a few of those ads in Cocaine Bear (the “this is your brain on drugs” one with the egg in the frying pan) suggesting that the filmmakers maybe knew this, or wanted this to be the thrust of Cocaine Bear, but either couldn’t follow up on it or couldn’t sell it to the financiers. I don’t know, I wasn’t in the room.

A movie about a guy having to write a movie called “Cocaine Bear” where the only directive is “and the bear has to kill people” might actually be kind of good. That story has pathos in it. This one is mostly just a poster in search of a story.

‘Cocaine Bear’ is in theaters everywhere now. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.