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Ready for the most pawsitive story of all time? Have we got some uplifting mews for you.

The video game Stray (released by game company Annapurna Interactive in July 2022) is unsurprisingly mega popular among feline fans. What cat lover wouldn’t love the thought of traipsing through an abandoned post-apocalyptic city as a scrappy orange tabby, unlocking clues and scratching up carpets?

Stray – State of Play June 2022 Trailer | PS5 & PS4 Games

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Turns out, the indie video game taking over the internet with memes and general stray cat fandom is doing much more than providing kitty-centric entertainment to humans—it’s doing some real good for cats IRL. AP News announced that Annapurna Interactive used livestreams of the game on Twitch to raise money for multiple animal shelters and cat-related charities.

Cat people are a different breed, no question. It’s never a passing interest, only an all-consuming adoration, bordering on obsession. So it’s no wonder really that Stray became the fourth “most watched and broadcast game” on the Twitch platform the day it launched.

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In addition to setting up charity livestreams, Annapurna Interactive also offered copies of the game to Nebraska Humane Society as part of a raffle. Participants needed to pay only $5 for a chance to win the normally $30 game.

We’re teaching these kittens how to turn on a PlayStation so they can play Stray, the new cat adventure game from @HKdevblog and @A_i! 🎮

Wanna play with them? Donate $5 to the shelter and you’ll be entered to win a code for the game! Donate here: https://t.co/FGJhY9HNae pic.twitter.com/BFLZJCxslX

— Nebraska Humane Cats (@NHSCats) July 15, 2022

Marketing specialist Brendan Gepson told AP that within a week, the organization was able to raise $7,000 because of the giveaway, which he added was especially notable because the vast majority of those donations were from people who had never donated before.

Though the drawing has already been made, you can still donate to the Nebraska Humane Society campaign here.

New Yorkers truly got the ultimate experience, when Annapurna Interactive partnered with NYC cat cafe and adoption agency Meow Parlour for a weekend. Visitors got to play the game for free for 20 minutes, all while being surrounded by the cafe’s adorable kitty residents and maybe even go home with one! This is the stuff dreams are made of, people.

The @A_i cat cafe Stray Meow Parlour pop-up was amazing and every games industry event should be held in a room full of kittens, no exceptions. pic.twitter.com/xhh5DrBAi0

— Jules Engel (@ghoulsengel) July 24, 2022

This extra support comes at a particularly crucial time for our feline friends—”kitten season.” According to the ASPCA, “kitten season” typically takes place between March and October, though it varies across the country. Of the millions of cats that enter shelters each year, a huge majority are at-risk kittens that come in during this time period and approximately 860,000 are euthanized.

Unsurprisingly, the creators of Stray are notably cat people. The game’s website states the development team is “mostly made up of cats and a handful of humans,” and the beloved orange tabby protagonist is based on an actual adopted stray named Murtaugh. Murtaugh is so famous he even got his own interview. What a legend.

However, it’s one thing to have feline fondness. Annapurna Interactive came up with a truly purrfect way to put love into productive action. Never thought I’d see the day where playing a video game could help save thousands of cats nationwide, but here we are. What a time to be alive.

Be responsible, folks. Consider adopting from a shelter, be sure to spay/neuter your cat and of course, go play Stray.

Apparently, Monday is Classic Edition Jersey day throughout the Pacific Division. The Golden State Warriors unveiled their Run TMC Era look Monday morning and the Los Angeles Lakers have followed suit with their own retro announcement Monday afternoon.

Do I get considerable UCLA vibes from these? Yes. Shout-out former Bruin and current Laker, Russell Westbrook. Do I think these are a slam dunk (ha, get it?) and find myself delighted by them? More importantly: also, yes.

The white backdrop complemented by sky blue and golden-rod yellow trim is a great trio of colors. The old-school Nike logo is a splendid touch. It’s clean. It’s simple. It’s gorgeous. When I was a freshman and sophomore in college, I developed a passion for retro basketball jerseys and amassed an extensive collection. Transport me back to that era of my life and I’d be quickly shelling out my next pay check to snag one.

A lot of the retro jerseys debuting the past few years throughout the NBA have rocked. I like these ones a lot. The Houston Rockets’ navy blue pinstripe kits whip. The Memphis Grizzlies’ Vancouver jerseys are top-tier. The Minnesota Timberwolves’ royal blue look last year, a nod to the Kevin Garnett Era, was superb. There’s a lot to like out there these days. Hopefully, Nike and the NBA keep delivering.

Olivia Newton John, who rose to fame as the star of Grease and gained international acclaim as a singer (who racked up four Grammy wins and another 12 nominations), has died at 73 after a decades-long struggle with breast cancer.

The singer’s estate shared the news of her passing on social media on Monday, detailing first in a Facebook post that Newton John died at her ranch in Southern California.

TMZ reported that a source indicated Newton-John had died of breast cancer complications, though the initial Facebook post did not offer a cause of death. As The Hollywood Reporter detailed, Newton-John had to cancel a singing tour in recent years due to complications from her battle with breast cancer:

Born in England and raised in Melbourne, Newton-John was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992, and she announced in May 2017 that after 25 years in remission the disease had spread to her lower back. The singer in August 2018 canceled a two-date tour just three weeks after announcing it; she was to reminisce about her career with an interviewer in Melbourne and Sydney.

A country-pop and soft-rock sensation in the 1970s and ’80s with girl-next-door appeal, Newton-John sold more than 100 million albums and had nearly 40 entries on the Billboard Hot 100 during her five decades in music.

Following news of her death, fans shared some of their favorite moments from her film career, including one of the most famous scenes from Grease, which is currently making the social media rounds.

At last, Britney Spears’ musical comeback is officially on the way, as her rumored collaboration with Elton John has officially been announced.

Today, John shared a pre-save link for “Hold Me Closer,” the art of which features a rocket emoji (in reference to John’s classic “Rocket Man”) and a rose emoji (in reference to Spears’ regular use of it on Instagram). Neither the post nor the pre-save links mention Spears at all, but while Spears has yet to make any sort of public mention of the song, Variety notes both John and Spears’ teams sent announcements confirming the song today.

The pre-save link doesn’t include much more info about the track, but its ASCAP registration credits John, longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin, Andrew Watt, and Cirkut, the latter of whom has in recent years worked with Kanye West, The Weeknd, and many others.

This news follows reports that the collaboration is a duet of John’s “Tiny Dancer” they pair recorded during a recent session with Watt. Earlier this month, Spears pal Paris Hilton revealed she had heard the song, saying, “It’s going to be iconic. I just heard it a couple days ago in Ibiza and it is… it’s insane.”

If Bad Bunny isn’t the most famous native of Puerto Rico at the moment, he’s at least got a legitimate claim on the title; his album Un Verano Sin Ti has spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this year, surpassing the Encanto soundtrack as the most popular album of 2022. He’s got the whole world looking to the island nation and now, along with Adidas and its Confirmed app, he’s giving a select group of fans the chance to visit his home country alongside him before accompanying him to his August 27 concert in New York at Yankee Stadium.

Fans who sign up for the experience via Confirmed will have the opportunity to board a custom private jet, spending the night in Puerto Rico before flying to the Bronx for Bad Bunny’s show. Winners will be announced on August 18, and you can sign up now on Confirmed via Adidas.com.

Bad Bunny’s Yankee Stadium show is part of his World’s Hottest Tour, which kicked off Friday in Orlando, Florida and will continue through December 9 in Mexico City. That tour picks up where his El Último Tour Del Mundo left off earlier this year, demonstrating his rising popularity as he goes from arenas to stadiums to contain the massive crowds clamoring to see his perform his inescapable hits live.

Well, that was quick. Following the embarrassing news that Alex Jones‘ lawyer accidentally sent the entire contents of his phone to the opposing counsel representing the Sandy Hook families, the January 6 committee immediately pounced on the opportunity and requested the incriminating texts.

“I’m not standing between you and Congress,” Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told Sandy Hook lawyer Mark Bankston last week when Jones’ lawyer attempted to block the request. “That is not my job. I’m not going to do that.”

According to CNN, the House select committee now has two years worth of texts from Jones’ phone, which could provide insight into the plotting of Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally that ended in a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol building:

Jones was a central player on January 6. He was on restricted US Capitol grounds that day, riling up protesters, though he did not enter the building itself. He has rejected any suggestion that he was involved in the planning of violence, and claims he tried to prevent people at the Capitol from breaking the law.

Jones testified before the January 6 committee earlier this year, but he later said on his show that he repeatedly asserted his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent during the closed-door deposition.

Needless to say, Congress getting ahold of his text messages is the last thing Jones needs right now. He’s currently on the hook for over $50 million to the Sandy Hook families from the disastrous trial that ended last week. However, that hasn’t stopped from peddling conspiracy theories. On Monday, he stopped by Steve Bannon’s radio show and suggested that Barack Obama would orchestrate some sort of terrorist attack to flip the midterm elections to the Democrats. Considering Congress has him underneath a microscope, it’s probably not the best time for Jones to be openly revealing ways to overturn an election like he’s thought of them before. Not great, bud.

(Via CNN)

After The Queen’s Gambit premiered on Netflix, there was a 125 percent increase in purchases of chess sets. Cinnabon hasn’t revealed if the chain got an Anya Taylor-Joy-like boost in sales following the first Gene episode of Better Call Saul season six, but they sold at least one: me. And I’ll go again on August 15, the day of the series finale, when Cinnabon gives away a free treat in honor of the conclusion of the best show on TV.

That Monday, Better Call Saul fans (the haters are welcome, too) can get a free Center of the Roll, which is described as the “ooegy-gooey center of the brand’s classic cinnamon roll,” using the coupon code CALLSAUL through the Cinnabon app. (That same code can also be used for a free 30-day trial of AMC+.) Here’s how it works:

TO UNLOCK THE OFFER:
1. Open the Cinnabon app & sign into Cinnabon Rewards
2. Tap “Unlock a Code” and enter CALLSAUL

It’s funny how Cinnabon is forever synonymous with Better Call Saul because of a throwaway line from Breaking Bad: “If I’m lucky, a month from now – best-case scenario – I’m managing a Cinnabon in Omaha.” I’m still waiting on Boyd Crowder’s Dairy Queen, though…

To find a Cinnabon, go to the nearest abandoned mall. Or check the website.

Well, after nine months together, Pete Davidson and Kim Kardashian have broken up. This is much to the delight of Kanye West, who has identified Davidson as a target ever since he and Kardashian became an item. The two have a history that actually started before all this, though.

Now that the Davidson/Kardashian relationship is no more, now feels like a good time to break down the beef between the rapper and the former Saturday Night Live star. So, let’s get into it.

September 2018: West’s Donald Trump rant on SNL

On the September 29, 2018 episode, in a rant that didn’t make it onto air, West said many things, including, “So many times I talk to a white person and [they] say, ‘How could you like Trump, he’s racist?’ Well, if I was concerned about racism, I would have moved out of America a long time ago.”

The next week, Davidson addressed the rant during “Weekend Update,” saying, “What Kanye said after we went off the air last week was one of the worst, most awkward things I’ve seen here, and I’ve seen Chevy Chase speak to an intern. He added, “Then Kanye said that Democrats broke up Black families with welfare and that slavery’s not real. You know how wrong about politics you need to be for like me to notice? Do you know how annoying that is? Like, Kanye is a genius, but a musical genius. Like Joey Chestnut is a hot dog-eating genius, but I don’t want to hear Joey Chestnut’s opinions about things that aren’t hot dog-related.”

December 2018: Mental health tweets

In December that year, Ye fired off a bunch of tweets about his mental health, which Davidson applauded, writing, “Bravo Kanye West for standing up for yourself and speaking out against mental health. I can’t explain to you enough how difficult and scary it is to be honest about stuff like this. We need people like Kanye. No one should ever point fingers at you for your bravery in speaking about mental health. I’m seriously disgusted.”

January 2019: Kid Cudi’s birthday dinner

The two continued to be on good terms in January 2019, when they, Kardashian, Kid Cudi, and Timothée Chalamet celebrated Cudi’s birthday with dinner at Nobu. Davidson later revealed he didn’t know West or Chalamet would be there, saying that March, “Kanye kept ordering the whole entire time. I didn’t know he was coming. And I already put my card down to pay, ’cause I thought it was just me and Cudi, and then Chalamet showed up, and then Kanye showed up, and I was like, ‘F*ck.’ And then I had to book two more gigs in Ohio.”

January 2022: “Eazy”

It took a while for the West/Davidson feud to really pick up following the Nobu dinner. In October, Davidson and Kardashian kissed in an Aladdin-themed SNL sketch, and the two were seen out together and rumored to be dating not long after that. They officially started dating in November 2021, months after Kardashian filed for divorce from Ye that February.

Not long after, Ye had fighting words for Davidson in an unreleased song snippet, saying, “God saved me from the crash / Just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.” Shortly after, West claimed he was blocked from seeing his kids at Kardashian’s home because Davidson was there.

That snippet, by the way, was from “Eazy,” which was released shortly after the snippet. After the song came out, Davidson reportedly hired more security for himself. In March, West shared videos for “Eazy,” which show violence being inflicted upon Davidson. Davidson apparently thought the video was “hysterical.”

February 2022: Instagram beef

In February 2022, West shared an edited version of the Captain America: Civil War poster, which pits West, Drake, Megan Fox, Travis Scott, and Future against Davidson, Kardashian, Cudi, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift. This is also around the time Ye started calling Davidson “Skete,” as the caption read, “THE INTERNET HAS STILL NOT FOUND A DECENT PICTURE OF SKETE.”

Later that month, Davidson may have trolled West with an Instagram post before deleting his account. In response to that, Ye wrote, “Ran Skete off the gram Tell your mother I changed your name for life.”

March 2022: “In bed with your wife”

In March, a text conversation between West and Davidson leaked. The most famous takeaway there was Davidson telling West he was “in bed with your wife” and sharing a photo of him in said bed to prove it. West later said, “At this point, it’s going too far. The boyfriend texts me, antagonizing me, bragging about being in bed with my wife. He texts me, talking about bragging about how he’s in bed with my wife. And it’s like, well, who’s watching my children?”

Shortly after, West expressed concern that Davidson was going to get Kardashian “hooked on drugs.”

April 2022: Stand-up

As comedians do, Davidson worked this significant life event into his stand-up act. At Netflix’s comedy festival in April, Davidson made light of Kanye saying his rival has AIDS, saying he had an “AIDS scare” this year before revealing West told him he has it: “I better call my doctor: The guy who made College Dropout thinks I have AIDS.” He also joked that he hopes West “pulls a Mrs. Doubtfire.”

May 2022: Davidson’s SNL farewell

On Davidson’s final episode of SNL in May, he briefly poked fun at his Ye drama, starting, “Hello Colin [Jost] and [Michael] Che and millions of people only watching to see if I bring up Kanye.”

August 2022: Breakup

Things on the Davidson/West front have been mostly quiet over the past few months as Davidson and Kardashian continued to enjoy dating each other. Just a few days ago, though, it was revealed the two had decided to end their relationship after nine months. Naturally, this brought West much joy: This morning (August 8), West celebrated by sharing a fake newspaper headline that read, “Skete Davidson Dead At Age 28” (and has since deleted the post).

That’s where things stand now and given that Davidson and Kardashian are no longer romantically linked, there may not be much reason for this Kanye beef to continue, especially since Davidson isn’t an active social media user and hasn’t responded to most of the jabs Ye has thrown. So, while Pete Davidson is alive and well, Skete Davidson may truly be dead.

Late last week, it was announced in a Deadline exclusive that James Franco would play Fidel Castro in Alina of Cuba, from director Miguel Bardem, with screenplay by Oscar-nominated Jose Rivera and Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz.

Most of it was your typical Deadline fare, a trades-y casting announcement full of lengthy PR quotes, but this section on how and why the producers had cast James Franco really jumped out at me (emphasis my own):

[John Martinez O’Felan, the project’s lead creative producer] adds, “Finding and convincing James Franco to play Castro, was a fun and challenging process and has been the collaborative work of the universe, because our director’s original order was to find an actor who holds a close physical resemblance to the real Castro to build from, along with finding someone Alina Fernandez would strongly endorse. To get there on such a tough look to cast, we used Fidel Castro’s ancient Galician heraldry as our focal compass, and then combed through the entire ranks of actors with Latin roots in Hollywood to find someone who has a similar facial structure. In executing a close search into our hopefuls through the eye of Spanish and Portuguese genealogy which the Galicians held, we found that James, by far, had the closest facial likeness of our Industry’s leading actors, meaning that the focus would be to build out his character accent and we’d have a stunning on-screen match to intrigue audiences and bring the story to life with true visual integrity.”

God only knows how we’re meant to parse weasel phrases like “we used ancient Galician heraldry as our focal compass.” Galicia is a region of Northwest Spain near Portugal, and heraldry is the practice of assembling familial coats of arms, but how that translates to a casting process I have no idea. I guess there were banners?

Point being, taken as a whole, it sure sounds a lot like “we found some actors with Spanish, Galician, and/or Portuguese roots and then we measured their skulls to see whose most closely resembled Fidel Castro.”

At a certain point, the Hollywood brain trust collectively decided that episodes like John Wayne playing Genghis Khan and half the non-Puerto Rican cast playing Puerto Rican in the original West Side Story was kind of embarrassing. Not to mention cruel to the many authentically-their-own race actors fully capable of playing characters of similar heritage. People began to recognize this phenomenon as “whitewashing,” and took steps to avoid it. And that was good!

Unfortunately, there’s nothing the corporate world excels at like coopting genuinely progressive sentiments and twisting them until they become onerous, unworkable, and/or entirely self-defeating mandates. “Actors should play characters of similar heritage” is a solid rule of thumb, but it’s easy to get into the weeds pretty quickly, considering that “race” is kind of a construct, the boundaries between races are blurry, and ultimately we all came from the same place so who is “authentically” of a particular place kind of depends on which time period you set as the boundary. Which no one has really even thought to discuss, let alone agree on.

So while “actors should play characters of similar heritage” is probably a positive sentiment, it should also probably come with the unspoken corollary, “as long as we don’t get so obsessive about it that we start measuring skulls like turn of the century eugenicists.”

What makes this particular episode so funny is that not only does it sound like they did do some skull measuring, the outcome was to hire JAMES FRANCO. Who not only have I not ever heard referred to as Latino (according to Wikipedia, his father was Portuguese and Swedish, though I can’t find a source for this) but who also has spent most of the past few years settling sexual harrassment allegations. Whether or not that means he should or shouldn’t be able to work is up for debate, but I think most would agree that he’s not the least controversial choice.

To recap, these producers were so concerned with “getting it right” that they did some lengthy coat of arms and skull-shape analysis, which led them to cast a notably non-Cuban alleged sex pest. All that research paid off when the Academy voted unanimously that Alina of Cuba would remain inoculated from race-based criticism and declared it illegal to dunk on the producers on Twitter.

Just kidding, they immediately got dragged for it. Notable Latino actor John Leguizamo immediately called it “fd up” and called for a boycott, writing on Instagram: “How is this still going on? How is Hollywood excluding us but stealing our narratives as well? No more appropriation Hollywood and streamers! Boycott! This F’d up!”

To recap, once again, it went something like this:

PRODUCERS: We measured everyone’s skull in Hollywood to ensure that no one could ever call us racist!

PROMINENT ACTOR: I regret to inform you that the casting is racist.

PRODUCERS: Ah, well. Alas.

I love the film industry.

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Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.