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$51,674 might be a drop in the bucket for Rick Ross, but for the 244 employees of his Wingstop franchises making $7.25/hour who had their pay illegally docked, any portion of that is a significant sum. That dollar amount represents how much backpay Ross has already had to dole out to the employees of the Mississippi Wingstop franchises that he operates along with his mother and sister after the federal government’s Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division fined them for multiple infractions.

Some of these include making employees illegally pay for safety training, uniforms, background checks, cash register shortages, and even letting 15-year-old employees work past 7 pm. Nothing to sneeze at here; these are serious violations and not the image that Ross should be projecting as “The Boss.” So in an Instagram story today, he addressed the fines while sitting at a grand piano and sipping Bumbu Rum.

With a brand new Balmain sweater and a lavish, diamond-encrusted necklace around his neck, Ross said, “When you’re running a business, there will be mistakes. But as the biggest boss, you never make the same mistake twice.” Adding that, “You see… Taking accountability is big when you’re the biggest… And remember this: Most successful people don’t take stumbling as a setback, but actually as a stepping stone to greater things, ya heard me? Let’s be great.”

On the surface, it’s valiant of Ross to speak on the labor violations of his Boss Wings Enterprises. But it felt a bit tone deaf considering he dropped this clip on his Instagram Story right after other videos of him racking up a 10 foot-long Neimann Marcus receipt and dining out at a fancy restaurant. Here’s hoping the greater things he’s stepping towards include higher wages for Wingstop employees and at the very least, no cut corners on that road to being great.

It’s always fun to trace the histories and evolutions of songs’ serpentine paths through the labyrinth that is the music industry. It’s rare that a song makes it to commercial release in its original form — or even all that quickly after it’s recorded. Thanks to Hit-Boy, we’ve got a prime example from Beyoncé‘s new album Renaissance. As the California producer told Rolling Stone Music Now, he was forced to hold the beat for “Thique” for nearly a decade until Beyoncé herself was ready to release it.

“I had to sit on that beat for eight years!” he said. “That’s the way the game goes sometimes. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in the game and certain people will perceive like, ‘Oh, where’s Hit-Boy been? What’s Hit-Boy been doing?’ But then I’m sitting on stuff like ‘Thique’ that just hasn’t materialized yet. Y’all don’t even know how ahead I really am… I’ve been holding onto legendary stuff, and there’s plenty more.” I think it’s fair to say that sometimes, the timing of a song’s release is more important than its quality. Perhaps the music business just wasn’t ready for a song like “Thique,” with its blend of four-on-the-floor techno and trap rap, until just now, as interest for EDM-inspired rap and R&B is cresting.

Elsewhere in the episode, Hit-Boy talks about a Beyoncé release that did come out around that time: “Bow Down” from her self-titled album. He also touches on a number of his biggest… ahem… hits. Check out the full episode here.

There are few things in NBA basketball more anticipated, maligned, scoffed at, and thought of by fans as a league-sanctioned conspiracy against their team as the regular season schedule. No one calendar should have all this power, and yet we picture evil genius masterminds hunkered down at NBA HQ mining our every fear and worry, even taking into account our social schedules somehow, to return to us a range of dates we will scrutinize until the season starts in October.

So, who are these masterminds? Well they aren’t evil, for one, just a dozen or so incredibly organized people across multiple departments that start their work for the next NBA season as the current season you are about to enjoy is getting underway. Think of them like friendly seers looking out for your future interests, or like basketball’s Farmers’ Almanac, but with more sophisticated software. However you think of them, please stop thinking they are out to get you.

Dime had the chance to chat with one of these scheduling czars — Gene Li, the NBA’s Senior Director, National Broadcast Lead — ahead of Wednesday’s 2022-23 season release.

When do you start putting together the schedule and how long does this process actually take?

So the process usually starts in the fall when we start collecting arena dates from teams. But I would say the actual scheduling of putting games on the board, that we don’t really start doing until early July. Basically after a Champion’s been crowned, after the NBA Draft, and basically after the start of free agency. So we have a better idea of what the teams will look like in the fall.

So you’re starting to put the schedule together for the next season, in the fall of the current season?

That’s right. So pretty much when the season starts, we’ll start planning for the following season.

Oh wow. Do you get any downtime?

We also do the WNBA schedule, the G League schedule as well, so there’s not really much downtime.

How do you take into consideration other events at venues, like concerts, or hockey games, or one-off things like circuses? Do you work closely with venues across all the NBA franchise cities to coordinate that information?

Of course. So my colleague, Tom Carelli, he’s our main lead with the teams and the arenas. Basically he gets all that information for our team, from all 29 of our arenas. Basically, when the NHL plans to play, when we have concert holds, the longer blocks like a Disney On Ice. We’re aware of all of those things and that’s honestly one of our bigger challenges when creating the schedule. If we were able to have every single available day in all the arenas, then the schedule would probably be great just because we would have more options for where we can schedule games. So we try our best to navigate around those arena conflicts and still create a schedule that works for everyone.

Teams will be traveling 50,000 fewer miles this season than last year and there are 88 no-travel instances for teams as well. How do you approach mitigating as much cross-country, or long road trip travel as possible for teams?

Basic travel efficiency — averages and mileages — is one of our top priorities. Those no-travel instances, especially toward back-to-backs, are something that we really focus on. Those teams that we have, you’re going to the same market for two games, whether that’s against a team, like the Lakers and Clippers, or Nets and Knicks, those really do help with reducing stress and mileage. In the past we actually had reservations about doing those. We weren’t sure how the teams would feel, both competitively and having the same opponent visit your market for two nights, but with these past two seasons and the small sample size, we’ve seen that there really isn’t a downside from a competitive standpoint. So we’ll keep monitoring that for the seasons to come, but we’re glad it’s working out, that the teams like it and that it’s had that positive impact on travel.

Is that something you and your team focus on, these adjustments season over season? Obviously travel is a pretty huge one, but maybe smaller adjustments to streamline or tweak things?

Yes, we’re always trying to improve things for the following season, and we always get feedback from teams, from our internal league stakeholders, even from our national broadcast partners. We always like to get feedback during the season, and then we try to implement those smaller things for future schedules.

So I’ve heard of the acronym, FTE: Fresh, Tired, Even. Does that factor into scheduling?

FTE is our Fresh, Tired, Even score. So that’s basically where it compares whether you’re on the second night of a back-to-back compared to your opponent. So if you’re both not on the second night of a back-to-back, or if you’re both on the second night of a back-to-back, then you’re even. If you are not on the second night of a back-to-back but your opponent is, then you’re fresh and they’re tired. We do take this into consideration. We basically want to make sure that no team, for the entire 82 game schedule, has too many fresh games compared to tired games, or vice versa. From a competitive standpoint, we don’t want one team to have too many of one or the other. So similar to everything else, we can’t get all things to be equal. But we basically try to have a narrow range.

This might be a really broad question. How do you even break down starting to schedule this all within your team? Is it like, “I’m going to take this division,” “I’ll do these teams from the Eastern Conference”?

In creating the schedule, the first games we’ll schedule are the 160 or so national TV games across ABC, ESPN, and TNT. I’m primarily responsible for that schedule. Obviously because our national TV schedule is a huge priority not only for us, but for our team and broadcast partners, we do those first. We make sure we can hit our broadcast windows with our most marquee and appealing matchups. After we finalize those games, then our basketball strategy team will use our optimizer software to build the rest of the full, 1,230 game schedule on top of the national TV games.

Got it. I bet the software makes it a lot easier than the wild way I just made up in my head.

I cannot imagine if there was one guy doing it by hand for all 1,230. I just … I just can’t imagine that.

What would you say to fans who swear the NBA schedule has something personal against their team every season?

[chuckles] I think, honestly, it’s very rewarding to know that our fans care so much. I think we’re the league that probably has the most scrutinized schedule, obviously our teams, our players, our fans, media, everyone’s very focused on the schedule. That’s rewarding to know our work is something everyone cares about. I think because there’s so much to the schedule, there’s 82 games, there’s only a limited number of broadcast windows, everyone can feel slighted in some way when you look at parts of the schedule. So that’s natural to us. Our mantra, at the league office, is we can’t please everyone, but we hope to displease everyone the same.

There’s that saying that if you try and make everybody happy, nobody’s happy. Would you say that’s true of undergoing something like the NBA schedule?

Yes. Basically, there just really isn’t a way to please everyone because there’s probably things that have competing interests and competing desires. We just want to make sure that we are fair and we’re equitable, both across the league and teams, in terms of the game schedule and national broadcast schedule. We hope to do things in a fair way that’s transparent, and if teams are equally not happy with us, then we probably did a good job.

How and when do you factor in national games?

That’s really why we have to wait until after the start of free agency. Usually the big movement happens at the start of free agency, and obviously knowing who’s the Champion, that’s important. They have to play on opening night, for the ring ceremony and that kind of stuff, they should probably play at home on Christmas and so forth. But throughout, I would say starting in the playoffs all the way through the start of free agency and us building out a schedule, we’re constantly having very collaborative discussions with our broadcast partners. So by the time we start scheduling the games, we’re aligned with our partners in terms of the teams they want to feature, matchups they want to feature, when and where they want to feature these teams and matchups. We have a really good idea by the time free agency starts of what we want to do.

How many people have to sign off on the schedule and are there a lot of edits?

I’ll speak to national TV and the game schedule. The overall scheduling process is very collaborative internally as well. We have stakeholders from all different departments in the league office. Everyone will weigh in. I take everyone’s feedback both internally, as well as broadcast partners. We’ll send ESPN, TNT the first draft, they’ll have some comments, and we’ll release the final broadcast schedule. For the overall game schedule, we’ll send teams a first draft of their schedule, and then teams will have about 24 to 48 hours for their feedback, and we’ll incorporate their feedback before the final schedule release.

So a lot of feedback.

A lot, a lot, a lot of feedback. Absolutely.

There are a couple new features in the schedule this year. There will be no games on Election Day, and there’s going to be an NBA Rivals Week. How do new features like this change the work your team does?

We just consider it basically like a new wrinkle that we should consider. Definitely very exciting for us to have these new tentpoles. We have various work streams within the league office, we’re always contemplating new tentpoles. Bringing awareness, for example, to civic engagement like Election Day, or to get fans’ attention, like Rivals Week. These things are always being discussed in the “lab” at the league office.

I have to say this level of competence and organization is very impressive and intimidating to me — what kind of wizardry does this amount of work take? Can you speak a little on what it is about this work that you love?

Just having the passion for the NBA — watching the games, following the teams, following the players. That passion for the league is what really drives us. And then, because our overall scheduling team, is the widest within the league office. Everyone has their skillsets that they can then implement into scheduling process. So people that have technical skills, or skills related to broadcast or to basketball and so forth. So we’re just able to incorporate everyone’s skillsets in a way that’s complimentary to create the overall schedule.

Are there any past schedules that stick out in your mind, that you look back on and think, oh we really nailed that one?

Yes, so we really caught lightning in a bottle in the 2017-18 season. We had already released the schedule in mid-August the summer of 2017, and then after we released the schedule, Kyrie Irving was traded from Cleveland to Boston. So on opening night, we had Boston at Cleveland already, we got lucky there. And then Carmelo Anthony was traded from the Knicks to OKC, and we had Knicks-OKC on opening Thursday on TNT. So we got really lucky that year, with our opening and with the big player trades that happened after we had finalized the schedule.

So happy accidents.

[laughs] Right, exactly.

And finally, do you ever get to sit back — I think of the Christmas Day games — and enjoy your handiwork?

Oh yeah. I try to watch as many of our national TV games as possible. Especially for the tentpoles, and the playoffs honestly, too. I’m always watching and thinking, you know, when the games are close and exciting, then we feel good for them, but when they’re blowouts we think, oof, that’s a tough one. Now obviously our scheduling games doesn’t impact what goes on on the court at all, but it’s definitely rewarding to get to watch those games that we had scheduled.

Ken Jennings and Mayim Bialik will continue to split hosting duties for Jeopardy! next season, but The Big Bang Theory star is the sole host of Celebrity Jeopardy!. The primetime spinoff series begins on Sunday, September 25, followed a few days later by the season three premiere of Bialik’s Fox sitcom, Call Me Kat.

In the episode, Kat returns to the United States from a trip to Paris; during the flight back, she’s seated next to a passenger played by none other than the Jeopardy! GOAT himself, Jennings, “who is much more interested in catching some sleep on the plane than hearing about Kat’s adventures,” according to TV Insider.

Jennings’ appearance comes after the sitcom’s second season premiere, in which cast members from Bialik’s ’90s sitcom, Blossom — Joey Lawrence, Michael Stoyanov, and Jenna Van Oy — guest starred as themselves. Then, in the May season finale, Bialik’s Blossom TV father, Ted Wass, appeared in a dream as Kat’s deceased father.

This was the first time Jennings and Bialik were in the same room at the same time, a claim that I am willing to make based on 15 seconds of research (a Google image search where there’s no photos of them together). Is what I just said true? Possibly!

No wonder I never got a response to my Jeopardy! host job application.

(Via TV Insider)

By now you may have heard the song “Victoria’s Secret” by Jax, who wrote the song for a young teen girl she babysits after the girl tried on bathing suits at the famous clothing store chain.

The teen’s experience was less than ideal, as she was brought to tears over mean comments about her body from other girls. In response, Jax quickly cranked out a song about what she considers the potential self-esteem harm caused by the lingerie giant and uploaded it to TikTok where it went crazy viral with more than 39 million views. It has become such a cultural phenomenon, that it even crossed over from TikTok to the Billboard charts. So, it’s no surprise that the song caught the attention of Victoria’s Secret PINK CEO Amy Hauk.

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Girls and women have been perusing the racks of Victoria’s Secret for decades. The yearly fashion show that depicted tall, thin models donning enormous angel wings was something to look forward to for millions of people. But for others, it was a reminder that their body type didn’t fit the mold of what was deemed “beautiful” by one company’s standards. That insecurity-inducing impact in advertising is exactly what the song is about and why it resonated with so many people online.

The virility of the catchy summer bop is what catapulted the song to the attention of Hauk, who then reached out to Jax about finding a way to be more inclusive. In response, Jax turned to her 11 million followers to encourage them to put their suggestions in her comments.

Jax said in the video, “I don’t feel comfortable speaking on behalf of an entire generation in a manipulative, non-inclusive marketing culture.” The songwriter went on to say, “Since Victoria’s Secret is paying attention to my account, I’m asking anyone who feels like they never had a voice, or ever had a say in the matter to comment on this video.” She tells her followers to let the company know what they “need to feel safe and represented, and comfortable and beautiful in today’s society.”

@jaxwritessongs

My response to Victoria’s Secret. The floor is yours…. #victoriassecret #inclusivity #speakyourmind

The women did not disappoint. They came in, flooding Jax’s comments section with suggestions on what they’d like to see. Shoelover99 commented, “We want REAL WOMEN! scars, stretch marks, tattoos, we want ALL WOMEN to feel beautiful in the product & with size inclusive.”

TikTok user Heysquirrelfriend said, “How about the “older” ladies in the world? We like to feel loved and accepted too! Because our age is over 50 doesn’t mean we don’t feel young inside.”

The overall comments section was filled with women asking for inclusivity in sizes. I’m not sure if it’s Jax’s song, the comments section or something that has been in the works, but a press release went out announcing more inclusive bra sizes by partnering with Elomi, an inclusive lingerie company. It includes band sizes from 34 to 46 and cups from DD to O. With this very new development, it certainly seems as if the brand is paying attention to the desires of the people wearing its products. Women everywhere are hoping the new blip of inclusivity from the brand isn’t short-lived.

It’s been 15 years since Superbad was released and high school friendships around the world were changed forever. Suddenly, it was okay to be a nerd as long as you had a super nice best friend by your side who would get a really bad fake ID with you and almost get arrested while buying a specific brand of vodka for your crush. High school, man!

Though it might seem like everyone involved in making the classic early 2000s comedy was really close, that wasn’t the case. During the audition process, things were not so friendly between Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, who played Seth and the mononymous icon McLovin.

“Jonah immediately hated [Christopher]. He was like, ‘That was f*cking with my rhythm. I couldn’t perform with that guy,’” Seth Rogen explained in a new Vanity Fair piece celebrating the movie’s 15th anniversary.

It seems like that was the goal, as producer Judd Apatow told Hill that he wasn’t supposed to like him. “Jonah said, ‘I don’t like that guy. I don’t want him doing it.’ And I said, ‘That’s exactly why we’re hiring him. It couldn’t be more perfect. The fact that it bothers you is exactly what we want.’” Apatow said that at his third callback audition, Mintz-Plasse was getting on his nerves, just as his character would. “[He] attacked Jonah and did improvs insulting Jonah.”

Mintz-Plasse ended up getting the role, even though he didn’t think he was going to. ” I was just, like, a scrawny kid. I was super stoked to be there. I had Seth and everyone sign my script because I didn’t think I was going to get the part.” It seems like being annoying in his first audition ever certainly paid off for him.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Public speaking is never easy, but one thing we can definitely recommend is do not premiere a new HBO series by jokingly calling one of the franchise’s biggest stars a “short, dumpy girl.” Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Foxtel CEO Patrick Delaney did during the Sydney premiere of House of the Dragon. More wildly, the quip was aimed at Emilia Clarke, who is easily one of the more beautiful people on the planet.

Via Crikey, which we swear to God is an actual Australian news site:

The long-time Foxtel executive retold how he was late to start watching Game of Thrones. “I was like, ‘What’s this show with the short, dumpy girl walking into the fire?’” he said.

According to two attendees, the response to the comment was cold. “It felt like he was expecting us to laugh along but people in the room were obviously shocked by it,” one said. “There was a bit of a gasp,” another said.

Needless to say, Foxtel quickly scrambled to address their CEO publicly calling a famous actress a “short, dumpy girl.” According to a spokesperson, Delaney meant for his introduction to be “self-deprecating and light-hearted” even though he notably didn’t call himself short and dumpy. Excuses aside, the company did apologize for the remarks.

“The aim was to convey that for him, Games of Thrones was something very different for television in 2011 and that Emilia Clarke went from relatively unknown to one of the most recognised and most-loved actors in television and film,” a spokesperson told Crikey. “On behalf of Mr Delany, the Foxtel Group apologies if his remarks were misunderstood and caused any offence.”

(Via Crikey)

ASAP Rocky was arraigned in Los Angeles on Wednesday morning on two charges of assault with a semiautomatic firearm. Accompanied by his lawyer, Sara L. Caplan, Rocky quickly entered a not guilty plea to both charges and was placed on a $550,000 bond. If convicted, the rapper could face up to nine years in jail. These charges stem from an altercation with ASAP Relli where Rocky allegedly shot Relli. Relli is also suing Rocky for assault and battery, negligence, and emotional distress.

The case at hand claims that on November 6th, 2021, ASAP Rocky asked ASAP Relli to meet him in Hollywood. But as Relli’s lawyers contend, this wasn’t just a meet-up that Rocky had planned, but the rapper instead had a premeditated purpose of shooting Relli. He allegedly did and struck Relli in the hand. Months later, Rocky was arrested at LAX airport in April, his house was raided and police say they found surveillance footage of the incident, but can’t produce the weapon used in the assault.

While ASAP Rocky is out on bail, Caplan asked the judge if he’d be able to travel for work. Per a Rolling Stone report, the judge said that he’d have to “clear dates” ahead of time to do so. This makes it seem like the rapper should be able to perform his headlining set at Rolling Loud New York on September 24 while out on bail.

A preliminary hearing for ASAP Rocky on the two assault charges is set for November.

After weeks of games trickling out, the NBA released the entirety of its schedule for the 2022-23 season Wednesday afternoon. As part of that announcement, it unveiled a new aspect to the schedule, “NBA Rivals Week,” which will run from Jan. 24-28.

Some of these matchups are absolutely rivalries that fit perfectly into the NBA’s vision for the week, namely Lakers-Celtics, Grizzlies-Warriors, and Knicks-Nets. Others have recent playoff history and should be both good teams again next season, such as Celtics-Heat, Grizzlies-Timberwolves, and Suns-Mavericks. Clippers-Lakers will overflow with starpower. Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid’s rivalry is manufactured by outsiders (they are seemingly good friends), but they’ve finished 1-2 in MVP voting the past two years and play the same position for a pair of title contenders. That’s a sweet battle and presumably mirrors the spirit of the week.

Not all are hits, though. Lonzo Ball vs. LaMelo Ball seems a couple years late, given this is their third year in the league together. That game could feature prolific offenses, with Chicago and Charlotte, at least. Warriors-Raptors doesn’t make sense. The majority of Toronto’s championship core from when it faced the Warriors in the 2019 Finals is no longer on the team. Golden State’s is intact, sans Kevin Durant, but the franchise is in a new era as well.

Nets-76ers could be fun if Durant is around and the Ben Simmons angle is relevant, for sure. I worry that game might pit two teams in vastly different tiers against each other, but I’m nitpicking here. Regardless, this is a pretty cool and nifty idea from the league to help spice up the middle of the season when things can grow stagnant.

NBA teams can take two approaches to schedule release day. One is they can decide to play it straight — this isn’t boring, necessarily, but it’s a pretty safe option. The full schedule is posted on social media, some cool graphics get made, maybe fans learn about the fun promotions that are on the calendar for their next year. There is basically a zero percent chance of this flopping.

And then there is the riskier option, which is doing something cool and fun. The possibility of this backfiring exists, but fortunately for the New Orleans Pelicans, the cool and fun thing they did to announce their 2022-23 schedule was extremely good. You might remember a report from last year that indicated team executive David Griffin played the piano for Zion Williamson in his hotel room in the NBA’s Orlando Bubble, which led to Williamson saying “I’m not letting a grown man come to my room and play piano for me.”

Well apparently, that lingered for a bit, and on Wednesday, the Pelicans had Griffin sit at a piano and play a tune to announce some of the biggest games on the calendar.

Zion showing up around the 50-second mark and saying “you get used to it” really is a spectacular touch. We give this a 10/10.