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About a week ago, it was officially confirmed that Rihanna will be performing the Super Bowl LVII halftime show in 2023 (despite reports immediately before that Taylor Swift was going to do it). Since then, fans have been discussing what songs Rihanna should perform during her time on the field, and another topic of discussion is what special guests Rihanna should include in her performance. Now, Rihanna has addressed that, as well as her nerves going into it.

A TMZ cameraperson spotted Rihanna yesterday (October 4) afternoon at the end of a shopping trip and asked her how she’s feeling about the big show. Rihanna responded, “I’m nervous! But I’m excited.”

She was then asked who her special guest for the performance would be, and she just shrugged. Rihanna was pressed further, with the cameraperson asking if “maybe” it would be ASAP Rocky, and Rihanna replied, “Maybe, girl.” Based on the fact Rihanna was approaching her car and seemingly looking to get out of the conversation, though, it seems likely she just gave the cameraperson a “maybe” to get them off her back, instead of her answer truly reflecting what’s being planned for the performance.

After Rihanna was confirmed to do the show, she got some advice from one of this year’s performers, Dr. Dre, who said, “Put the right people around you and have fun. That’s basically what it is, making sure you have the right creative people around you. She might want to look into some of the people that we used to do our show.”

Even with the NBA preseason ramping up and four games scheduled in the Association on Tuesday evening, the eyes of many basketball observers were trained on the Dollar Loan Center in Henderson, Nevada. The venue is the new home of the G League Ignite, and it also hosted the first of two exhibition matchups against Metropolitans 92. The contests are made-for-tv (and scouting) events pitting the top two prospects in the 2023 NBA Draft against one another, and both Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson fueled the imagination and vigor of fans, scouts, and league personnel.

Wembanyama is the widely projected No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft, and the big man is listed at 7’3 with a wingspan approaching eight feet. The 18-year-old is also blessed with a unique profile that includes ball-handling, shooting on the move, and elite rim protection, and Wembanyama showed the whole package in the early going.

Within the first handful of minutes, the visiting uber-prospect executed an impressive isolation move to the rim, knocked down a pull-up three, and also rejected a shot in memorable fashion.

Wembanyama then went on to show the little things that he can do with a sequence displaying his defensive aptitude in space. He followed that with a ho-hum finish of a lob dunk, and Wembanyama finished the first half with nine points (despite three fouls) and plenty of flash plays.

On the other side, Henderson was the story of the first half, finishing with 18 points in fewer than 13 minutes on the floor. He began the scoring with a pull-up jumper and flashed a wonderful finishing package.

Henderson, a 6’2 guard from Marietta, Georgia, is playing his second season with G League Ignite, and he certainly appears to be ready to roll. His second-quarter performance included a huge dunk in transition following a steal he created, and Henderson also showcased his nifty ball-handling ability with a finish over Wembanyama’s outstretched arms.

Following the halftime break, both prospects kept it going. It was Wembanyama drawing first blood, this time with a flurry of jumpers, both with his feet set and on the move.

Henderson continued to dig into his bag of tricks, including a moment in which he slammed on the breaks, creating a fly-by situation and finishing in the lane.

Still, the third quarter belonged to Wembanyama. After Henderson had the better statistical showing in the first half, Wembanyama erupted for 17 points in fewer than nine minutes, pairing his long-range shooting with a varied and effective face-up game and bringing Metropolitans 92 back into the game after a double-digit deficit.

Metropolitans 92 trailed by as many as 22 points in the first half, only to come all the way back to take the lead in the fourth quarter. That comeback bid was thwarted by G League Ignite, though, and Henderson strung together a sequence with a three-pointer and a gorgeous pocket pass to extend his team’s lead back to seven.

While his team went down, Wembanyama did not slow down his individual brilliance down the stretch. Henderson attempted to finish over him before a Wembanyama rejection, and he continued to flash his shooting ability.

All told, G League Ignite managed to pick up a 122-115 victory but, no matter the result on the scoreboard, Wembanyama and Henderson absolutely blew away even the most outsized expectations. Wembanyama further cemented his status as a potentially generational prospect, finishing with 37 points (on 11-for-20 from the floor and 7-for-11 from three-point range) and five blocks. Henderson was also exceptional, producing 28 points, nine assists, and five rebounds in the process of affirming his status as the top challenger to Wembanyama at the top of the draft board.

Basketball enthusiasts can look forward to another matchup between Wembanyama and Henderson on Thursday, further kickstarting a months-long conversation about which prospect should land at No. 1 overall. With other high-end talents like twins Amen and Ausar Thompson of Overtime Elite also in the mix, things are heating up considerably at this very early stage, but the focus will seemingly be on Wembanyama’s unbelievable potential and the more traditional appeal of a do-everything guard like Henderson, with plenty of fun along the way.

Earlier this year, Miguel and his wife Nazanin Mandi reconciled after announcing their separation in 2021. It was exciting news, especially since the couple has been together for 17 years. However, it was reported today that Mandi filed for divorce.

According to the documents obtained by TMZ, Mandi cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for the separation. They were high school sweethearts, getting engaged in 2016 and married in 2018. Their reconciliation was announced via an Instagram post of the two with the caption: “Love heals. Proud of us.”

In a statement when they first announced their split, they said “they wish each other well,” and that “after 17 years together, Miguel and Nazanin Mandi have decided to separate and have been for some time now.”

Earlier this year, the R&B singer collaborated with Diplo on the DJ’s first solo album in 18 years for the song “Don’t Forget My Love.” Other guests on that long-awaited album included Aluna, Busta Rhymes, Leon Bridges, and Lil Yachty. It hasn’t been quite as long since Miguel’s last full-length release, but fans still eagerly await the follow-up to his 2021 EP Art Dealer Chic, Vol. 4 and his 2017 album, War & Leisure, so hopefully something new is on the horizon for fans to finally have.

It’s been nearly a decade since the first installment in the The Last of Us video game series came out. (It’s also been about as long since the supervirus-within-the-game went airborne, turning hordes of people into aggressive creatures called the Infected. It’s one of the rare post-apocalyptic things to not take place well into the future.) It’s finally getting a big splashy HBO show, which bowed its first teaser last week. But when is it coming out?

Right now, as of this writing, the answer is: 2023. Sometime next year. More information will be made available later, but for now, there’s one thing you can do: You can play the newly released “remake” of The Last of Us, which updated the 2013 original to nine-years-later technology — as well as giving people an excuse to catch up with the game (and its semi-divisive sequel) before the show comes out, which, again, is at some point next year.

The Last of Us tells of a smuggler (played by Pedro Pascal) tasked with escorting a teenager (Bella Ramsey) across a virus-strewn United States. The HBO adaptation was created by Neil Druckmann, who directed the original game, and Craig Mazin, best known for going from comedies (two Scary Movie sequels, two Hangover sequels, Identity Thief) to the very grim HBO miniseries Chernobyl. Now this. Pascal has compared the show to The Mandalorian, and he’ll be joined by such folks as Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, Storm Reid, Graham Greene, and the great Melanie Lynksey.

Again, The Last of Us debuts on HBO in 2023.

Warning: This posts contains vague-ish spoilers for the horror hit Barbarian. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s best if you go in knowing as little as possible. That said, again, the spoilers contained within are on the vague side.

The box office hasn’t exactly been on fire in weeks, but it has had one genuinely sleeper/word-of-mouth hit: Barbarian, a genuinely original horror film that has both thrilled and amused moviegoers to the tune of (as of this writing) $33 million. A non-IP original with a tricky logline that isn’t afraid to be unlike anything else — sounds like one of those A24 pictures, like The Witch or Midsommar, doesn’t it? Well, as it happens, in this case, when the project was presented to them, the indie studio made like everyone else in Hollywood and passed.

A new piece by Vulture (as caught by The AV Club) breaks down the convoluted story of how this little indie horror that could somehow wound up being distributed by…Disney? It’s an incredibly byzantine story, but the short-ish version: Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger — a co-founder of the sketch comedy troupe “The Whitest Kids U’ Know” — threw a wide net, betting that at least one production company would respond to a daring script. Problem is, it appears it was too daring:

“I made a spreadsheet of every production company that had made a horror movie in the last 15 years and sent it out to all of them, and every one of them said no … They didn’t like that the movie resets on page 50. They didn’t like that there’s a character who’s part of Hollywood. And they said nobody wants to follow a rapist for 30 pages. All of these things that people were picking on, especially the lack of a structure, were the things that excited me the most. I knew that if I were to polish those edges, I would be compromising this thing and defanging it before it had a chance.”

Eventually Cregger wound up teaming up with the micro-budget genre company BoulderLight Picture, whose team wound up wrangling in their industry mentor, Roy Lee, who happens to have produced little movies like The Lego Movie, the How to Train Your Dragon cycle, and the It diptych (which featured eventual Barbarian co-star Bill Skarsgard as Pennywise). Together, they tried to sell it to bigger indie studios. They almost worked out something with Neon, but it fell through. A24, meanwhile, straight-up ignored it.

How it wound up at Disney is even more convoluted. Barbarian’s producers were able to fund it through foreign financing, some of which abruptly fell through soon before shooting was to begin. They worked out a last-second deal with New Regency, who had a long-standing deal with 20th Century Fox for distribution. Fox, of course, had been absorbed by Disney (who later dropped the “Fox” part). Instead of the famously family-friendly company being turned off by an R-rated hard-to-sell horror grinder with some nasty stuff in it, they decided to market it as a film that gets “discovered” by audiences. And so it has. And it’s all thanks — eventually, sort of — to the company currently at war with the governor of Florida, who’s busy being belittled for his dorky boots.

Barbarian is currently playing in theaters nationwide.

(Via Vulture and The AV Club)

Willow has been having a great year, one filled with attention-demanding songs with razor-sharp edges, such as her collaboration with Camila Cabello for “Psychofreak” or her crossover with PinkPantheress for “Where You Are.” Her new album COPINGMECHANISM arrives in just a few days, and she’s celebrating by performing on SNL for the second time this year.

The last time she was on SNL was in April with Camila Cabello, and they gave an iconic performance of “Psychofreak.” It was just announced that she’ll be a guest on the show again this Friday, Oct. 8, the day after her album release.

“I’m honestly really, really surprised that I’m going to be on SNL twice in one year, five months apart,” she said in an interview. “That’s crazy. I’m really excited. I’m nervous obviously, because being with Camila, a really, really good friend of mine, there’s that feeling of comfortability there where you can look across the stage and be like, ‘Girl, we’re in this together. We’re doing this.’ I’m not baring my soul alone on the stage. But now it’s going to be me baring my soul alone on the stage, and I’m just so grateful and so excited, but also sh*tting my pants, slightly.”

For the first time since the 2016 campaign, the New York Mets are heading to the postseason. While the road has been a little bumpier than they would have liked — the team blew a 10.5-game lead over the Atlanta Braves and are in a battle to take the NL East instead of getting a Wild Card spot — the Metropolitans are a dangerous team as the postseason rolls around.

The chance to beat out the defending champs could go until the final day of the season, as Atlanta’s magic number entering Tuesday night was 1. All the Mets can do is win their games, and in the first inning of their contest against the Washington Nationals, Francisco Lindor helped mightily in that endeavor by hitting a moonshot into deep right field. It was Lindor’s 26th dinger of the year, it came off of a leadoff homer by Brandon Nimmo, and OH MY GOD LOOK AT THIS DOG.

It was not until right now, as I am composing this blog post, that it dawned on me that this dog, attending a Bark in the Park promotion and blissfully having a wonderful time, has caught more homers/foul balls at baseball games than I have in my 30-plus years on this earth. This is very humbling for me, but regardless, it is nice that the dog is having fun. Good dog.

Cardi B And JT’s beef has been taking the Twitter world by storm. You’ve probably come across one of their fights on social media, and maybe you were wondering what’s the context behind it. The tension between the two rappers actually dates all the way back to 2020.

The year after JT and Cardi B collaborated on the song “Twerk,” City Girls found themselves in a war of words with fans on Twitter shortly after a video dropped for another Cardi B collaboration: “WAP,” between her and Megan Thee Stallion. Some people online accused City Girls of not showing support for it. JT clarified: “We was not talking about any artist in specific. I was talking about those fan pages.” It seemed like she was clearing up the rumors. However, that was not the end of it.

The recent Twitter fight involves Nicki Minaj’s new remix of her single “Super Freaky Girl (QueenMix)” featuring JT and other female rappers, as well as Cardi’s new remix of a viral GloRilla song called “Tomorrow 2.” They came out around the same time and one person pointed out the difference in success for both of the songs. JT quoted it, writing, “im not like that at alllll I been doing remixes & never got credited ON A CHART BUT they get sung word for word and help push the original songs as intended unlike y’all well I can’t even say y’all cause you don’t rap,you TWEET! Congratulations Glo&stream FNF remix AND QUEENMIX.” Minaj responded by tweeting, “Go fetch.” JT then quoted it, writing, “Cardi you go fetch a real talent! We DM’ing why you come back here to put on a show for these KIDS?”

Though it looks like they’re just not meant to be friends, hopefully a truce is on the horizon.

By his incredibly lofty standards, Aaron Judge took his time hitting his 61st home run, and only produced one home run from September 20 through October 3. On Tuesday evening, Judge launched his American League record 62nd home run against the Texas Rangers and, in addition to the celebration of Yankees fans, college football observers are also throwing a party about the end of live television cut-ins.

The focus was largely on Judge but, with any momentous swing like that, there is always a scramble for the ball. Judge’s 61st home run ended up in the Toronto Blue Jays bullpen after a fan came up empty on a good chance to snag it, and folks were trying to position themselves for the best chance to catch No. 62. Tuesday’s eventual blast went over the wall and several people spotted what seemed to be a fan falling over the railing in pursuit of the ball.

However, it was later reported by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News that the fan who went over the railing was removed from the building for seemingly attempting to jump over, acknowledging they did not suffer any injuries.

It will be interesting to see if this individual ends up going on the record about his pursuit. Still, it is a reminder that, when the monetary value of a baseball like this is in play, people will do strange things.

Aaron Judge officially stands alone atop the American League’s all-time home run list. After last going yard on Sept. 28 during a game against the Toronto Blue Jays to tie Roger Maris’ league record with 61 dingers in a single season, Judge went through his version of a mini-drought. But on Tuesday night during the second half of a double-header with the Texas Rangers, Judge stepped to the plate to lead off the game and made history.

The count stood 1-1 when Rangers pitcher Jesus Tincono tried to get an 88 mile-per-hour slider past Judge. That did not work, as Judge sat on the pitch and drove it deep into right field. It was a no-doubter from the moment it left his bat, and by the time he crossed home plate, Judge was greeted by those in his dugout.

It was the latest memorable moment in what has been one of the best seasons at the plate that we have seen by anyone in baseball history.

Of course, Judge has quite the way to go to reach the all-time single-season home run record of 73, set by Barry Bonds. Seeing as how the Yankees wrap up the regular season against the Rangers on Wednesday, well, that is probably not going to happen. But nevertheless, this is quite the moment for Judge and, also, college football fans (and broadcasters) who were getting annoyed at ESPN cutting into live shots of his at-bats as he chased 62.