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Over the weekend, Ja Morant made some waves in an interview with Bleacher Report’s Taylor Rooks when he said he would’ve “cooked” Michael Jordan like he does today’s stars, making the point that he has to have that level of self confidence to believe no one could stop him.

That very real quote was juicy enough to become fodder for sports radio and sports television shows in the A-block on Monday, but unfortunately for ESPN’s This Just In, they didn’t talk about that Ja Morant quote but instead a different one — one that wasn’t real. As David Jacoby filled in for Max Kellerman, he read Kendrick Perkins a fake quote from Ballsack Sports, a Twitter account that exists solely to produce fake quotes and try to get people to believe them — which they succeed at an upsetting amount of the time.

Jacoby reads the quote to Perkins and asks for his thoughts on the disrespect, which was, again, not real.

It’s fairly embarrassing and sadly not the first time ESPN has run a TV segment off a fake quote making the rounds on social media. As someone who is in the business of writing about quotes that often come from other interviews and sources, I’m fairly empathetic to how you can initially be duped by one of these, but for it to make it to air (or in my case print) requires far too many people to sign off on running with something without ever putting in the relatively mild amount of work to find the original source. There are dozens of accounts that exist solely to try and get aggregated — with ending up on national TV the greatest reward of all — and at this point it has to be standard practice to find the actual source of the quote before you’re willing to run with it.

That can be time consuming, but in the process it it will assure that you don’t run a fake quote if you can’t find the original source. ESPN didn’t do that and in the process ended up making Jacoby and Perk foolish in the process.

The House Oversight Committee is planning to hold another televised hearing detailing the build-up to the Jan. 6th insurrection and this one sounds like it could be the most shocking yet.

Over the course of six different hearings, testimonies from Trump White House insiders like Attorney General William Barr, Ivanka Trump, and, most recently, Cassidy Hutchinson, aide to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, have exposed the absolute chaos governing Trump’s bid to overthrow the 2020 Presidential Election. But, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin, Tuesday’s hearing will be the most damning yet. That’s because the Jan. 6th panel plans on exposing an Oval Office meeting held on Dec. 18th, 2020 by members of Trump’s “Team Crazy,” AKA former attorney Rudy Giuliani, conspiracy theorist Sydney Powell, and retired general Michael Flynn.

“Donald Trump was, of course, the central figure who set everything into motion,” Raskin told CBS News’ Face The Nation. But, according to witness testimony, the panel intends to share with the public, Giuliani, Flynn, and Powell were the ones who encouraged the “seizure of voting machines around the country,” despite senior advisors in the administration trying to convince Trump that no evidence of voter fraud had been found. The divide between the two groups — the White House officials urging Trump to accept defeat and Giuliani’s team — led to insiders dubbing the trio “Team Crazy.” They’re the ones who, according to Raskin, prompted Trump to tweet to his followers, demanding they mobilize in protest of the election results.

That tweet, and the meetings between Giuliani, Powell, Flynn, and Trump, will be the subject of the next hearing with testimony from former White House counsel Pat Cipollone expected to play a big role in showcasing Trump’s involvement in the planning stages of the Jan. 6th insurrection.

“He was the White House counsel at the time. He was aware of every major move … that Donald Trump was making to try to overthrow the 2020 election and essentially seize the presidency,” Raskin said of Cipollone adding that this was the “first time in American history when a president of the United States called a protest against his own government, in fact, to try to stop the counting of Electoral College votes in an election he had lost. [This was the] greatest political offense against the union by a president of the United States in our history. Nothing comes close to it.”

(Via HuffPost)

R. Kelly may be going to prison for a very, very long time, but that doesn’t mean the saga of his mistreatment of women is over yet. According to TMZ, one of his alleged victims, Joycelyn Savage, wrote to the judge in his New York case ahead of his sentencing to ask for a more lenient sentence. In her letter, she introduces herself as “Robert Kelly’s fiancee,” suggesting that at some point in the past nine years — Savage is currently 26 years old and met Kelly when she was 17 — the pair became engaged.

She also asserts that “I’m not the victim that the government has portrayed me to be,” writing that the relationship between the two is “amazing” despite the near-30-year difference in age (Kelly is 55) and the disturbing circumstances under which they met. However, Savage’s parents, Timothy and Jonjelyn, are not convinced. They told TMZ through their attorney that Joycelyn never made any engagement known to the family, and wonder why she put it in a letter to the judge rather than mentioning it in court while under oath.

In 2017, Savage told TMZ in an interview that she was “not being brainwashed or anything like that,” insisting that she was staying with Kelly of her own free will shortly after it was reported that Kelly was keeping multiple young women in a “sex cult.” Obviously, it has been since revealed that his activities went much further than that, with a jury convicting Kelly of racketeering and sex trafficking; he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The fourth edition of Brandi Carlile’s Girl Just Wanna Weekend festival was announced today and in a most unusual, but highly welcome twist, Carlile welcomed fan input when putting together the lineup. The festival itself takes place in Mexico’s Riviera Maya from January 9th to the 13th and Carlile is of course the headliner (and playing multiple sets.) But there’s a star-studded cast of all female-fronted acts joining her on the tropical getaway music festival’s bill.

Maren Morris, Sara Bareilles, Wynonna, Lucius, and Yola are all slated to perform. As well as Allison Russell, Joy Oladokun, Ruby Amanfu, Natalie Hemby, Brandy Clark, and Brittney Spencer. The all-inclusive “concert vacation” is held at the Hard Rock Hotel, with lodging offered at the swank Barceló Maya Riviera resort as well.

“This LINEUP!!!!!….We asked you what artists you wanted to see on the Girls Just Wanna Weekend stage and we listened!” Carlile tweeted. “This will be the party to beat all parties. Ladies Of The ’80s brings on the apocalypse! See you in the hot tub misfits, the island awaits you!”

There are a number of ticketing and room packages that are going on sale this week. Check out the Girls Just Wanna Weekend 4 website for full details on purchase options.

On Sunday afternoon, Kelsey Plum stole the show in Sue Bird and Sylvia Fowles’ final appearance in the WNBA All-Star Game, tying the all-time record with a 30-point performance to lead Team Wilson to a 22-point win in Chicago and earned All-Star MVP honors.

While it was a well-deserved honor, many fans couldn’t help but notice how hysterically small the WNBA MVP trophy was when she was presented it at midcourt by commissioner Cathy Engelbert.

The tiny trophy was so funny that even Plum’s Aces teammates had to crack jokes about it, with Theresa Plaisance and Dearica Hamby putting on a reenactment of the ceremony in Las Vegas’ team hotel to the delight of Plum and everyone else by using a squeezable apple juice in lieu of the very small trophy while everyone cracked up.

The real trophy really is preposterous, like they realized on Saturday they didn’t have an actual trophy and just drove out to a local shop in Chicago that supplies little league team trophies. In any case, Plum’s performance was sensational and deserving of the MVP honor, but probably a more substantial trophy. Hopefully next year they can get figure out something that looks better but at least everyone got some laughs about it this year.

Thanks to a hidden “cubcam,” the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) gave the world some truly adorable—and super rare—footage of a mama tiger giving birth to triplets.

The video shows Gaysha, a 10-year-old Sumatran tiger, carefully tending to her three little newborns in a cozy den filled with straw by the ZSL zookeepers. Even Asim, proud tiger dad, makes an appearance as he pops in to welcome each cub. At one point, the entire tiger family can be seen sleeping together peacefully. It doesn’t get much sweeter than that. Aside from nothing being cuter than baby animals, there’s something else that makes this footage particularly special. Sumatran tigers are not only the smallest of their species (a male Sumatran tiger maxes out at about 310 pounds, compared to a Siberian tiger, which can weigh up to 660), they are also the rarest. With fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers remaining, the World Wildlife Fund has deemed this subspecies critically endangered.

The good news is, each new birth brings in a little more hope for all Sumatran tigers. And according to a statement on the ZSL website, the zoo has added a total of eight cubs to its Tiger Territory since its launch in 2013. Before her summertime triplets, Gaysha had previously delivered a tiger cub near Christmas time in 2021. Now with triple the babies, we have triple the reasons to celebrate.

London Zoo Head of Predators Kathyrn Sanders shared that since their early morning arrival on June 27, the tiger babies have already reached a “key milestone”—feeding and taking small steps almost immediately. Pretty soon they will be ready to open their eyes, receive vaccinations and be named. Until then, the zookeeper will be observing from afar, “taking care not to disturb the family so that they can continue to bond together.”

You can watch the video below. Enjoy all the stripy goodness.

Sports moments tend to live on forever, thanks to highlight reels and the emotions they can evoke in their fans. Recently, a video has been making the rounds that reminds people of some of those moments. In December 1999, sports channel ESPN compiled some of the greatest sports moments of the 20th century to air on New Year’s Eve.

With a new millennium approaching, the network wanted to remind sports fans (die-hard and casual alike) of just how far most sports had come in the 1900s. Football helmets used to be leather! Jackie Robinson integrating Major League Baseball! Babe Ruth! Even by 1999, a lot of those moments were being forgotten by younger generations. The video is a beautiful mash-up of the awesome wins and moments that made people hold their breath, mostly set to the song “Dream On” by Aerosmith.

Arguably one of the best basketball players of the 20th century (and beyond), Michael Jordan gets a lot of face time. He had an absolute chokehold on 1990s culture; from his partnership with Nike to his McDonald’s commercials, everyone wanted to be “like Mike.”

Muhammad Ali also gets a lot of attention, given that he was a formidable figure in the boxing world for 20+ years. From his early days as Cassius Clay to the moment he lit the Olympic torch in 1996 (his hands shaking due to Parkinson’s), it’s impossible to talk about great sports moments of the 20th century without highlighting his contribution.

There are some moments that you may not remember if you’re a certain age. The Chicago Bears performing the “Superbowl Shuffle” is one of them, but it is iconic.

Noticeably missing was Kerri Strug’s winning vault in 1996 after she had severely injured her ankle. If you were a young woman in the ’90s, that is one of the sports moments that would stick out to you vividly. But they do show gymnasts Mary Lou Retton and Nadia Comăneci. We also get flashes of track and field star Florence Griffith Joyner, aka FloJo, tennis star Martina Navratilova, and the iconic moment soccer star Brandi Chastain ripped her shirt off after scoring the World Cup winning penalty kick. We also see Nancy Kerrigan holding her knee after being ambushed at the ’94 Olympics.

Comments on the video are full of nostalgia, many people remembering watching the clip for the first time.

“Remember exactly where I was when I first saw this back on December 31st, 1999…with my late father getting ready to start celebrating New Year’s Eve. He watched the whole thing without comment and then just said, “Wow”. We both had chills…maybe ESPN’s finest moment.”

“I’m not even a sports fan, but damn if this video doesn’t give you a sense of the achievement and dedication that these athletes have. Such an epic video.”

“Arguably the Greatest Sports Journalism Montage Ever Produced… PERIOD. I saw it live in 1999 and it brought tears to my eyes then. It’s now 2020 and we just celebrated Kobe yesterday. It STILL brings me to tears 20 years later! Bravo ESPN and Thank You!”

Watch the video below:

Ever look at your parents’ high school yearbooks and think people looked so much older back then? All of the teenagers look like they’re in their mid-30s and the teachers who are 50 look like they’re 80.

When we watch older movies, even those from the 1980s, the teenagers appear to be a lot older as well.

Why is it that they looked so much older? Was life harder? Did people act more mature? Did they spend more time outdoors and less time playing video games? Is it their sense of fashion? Were they all smokers?

Educator Michael Stevens, who runs the super-popular Vsauce YouTube channel, explains the phenomenon in a new video called, “Did people used to look older?” In the video, he explains that people in the past appear a lot older due to a phenomenon known as retrospective aging.

When we see people in the past, they are wearing outdated styles that we associate with older people; therefore, we think they have aged rapidly. For example, a teenager in the 1950s may have been in fashion while wearing thick Buddy Holly-style glasses.

But as people age, they tend to cling to the fashion of their youth. So many people of that generation continued to wear the Buddy Holly-style glasses into their 50s. So when younger people see those glasses they see them as old people’s glasses and not a hip kid from the ’50s.

So in the photo from the ’50s, the teen appears to look a lot older because our perspective has been tainted by time.

But it isn’t all just an illusion. Stevens also points out that people did age faster back in the day due to differences in nutrition, lifestyle and medicine.

Few are as prolific in their creative weirdness than Rudy Giuliani. When he’s not farting on fellow Trump lawyers, he’s accidentally incriminating himself or claiming, unconvincingly, that he wasn’t hammered on Election Night 2020. Now here’s another strange confession: He says he waited three weeks to check up on heart issues after checking in with the Nazarene.

The very former America’s Mayor went on War Room, Steve Bannon’s semi-seditious podcast, and when asked about his health, he had one hell of an answer. Giuliani said he’d been having breathing problems, which he predictably blamed on the guy who lightly slapped him on the back in a Staten Island supermarket. He admitted he didn’t get it checked out for three whole weeks, which prompted Bannon to ask why on earth he would do that, especially at his age.

“The answer is my son was running,” Giuliani replied, referring to his son’s failed gubernatorial campaign. “I made a calculated decision. Really, I had a conversation with Jesus about it. Seriously! I made a calculated decision. I said, ‘Give me three more weeks.’ And thank God he did.”

So thanks to the son of God, Rudy Giuliani was able to stick around to watch his son embarrass himself further, so clearly, it was all worth it. Jesus really is just alright.

(Via Raw Story)

The inaugural edition of the Palomino Festival went down this past weekend at Pasadena’s Brookside at the Rose Bowl venue. Headlined by Kacey Musgraves, we’ve touted the new music festival as one that’s “pushing wonderful boundaries of what can be considered country music.” And while Musgraves presented a pop and country crossover name at the top of the bill, acts like Jason Isbell And The 400 Unit, Orville Peck, Valerie June, and a set from the great Willie Nelson & Family were also there for the one-day affair.

So as Musgraves took the stage for her headlining performance, she didn’t waste the opportunity to bring up the red-headed stranger midway through her set. Nelson emerged from the side of the stage with a cowboy hat on his head and clipped his acoustic to the most ornate guitar strap you’ve ever seen. As the drum beat to “On The Road Again” played, Musgraves said to the audience, “So my actual grandpa is here in the audience tonight from Texas. And my other Grandpa is here tonight from Texas!”

The crowd roared and Nelson opened up his classic tune before being joined by Musgraves for a delightful “On The Road Again” duet. As the song ended, Musgraves and Nelson blew each other a kiss, then Nelson took a bow as Musgraves seemed genuinely dumbstruck at what just happened. “That was it, show’s over,” she joked. Her set pressed on and included a “9 to 5” Dolly Parton cover, “Rainbow,” and the set closing “Slow Burn.”

Watch Kacey Musgraves and Willie Nelson perform “On The Road Again” at Palomino festival above.