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Joe Rogan, dressed in full colonial regalia for reasons that probably make sense with context, railed against the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, which the podcaster cited as a move to “enslave people.” It was yet another issue where Rogan deviated from conservatives, who have been celebrating the decision. For his part, Rogan doesn’t agree with forcing rape victims to carry babies to term nor denying women medical treatment when it’s clear a pregnancy has gone heart-wrenchingly south.

“This f*cking Roe versus Wade thing freaks me out. For so many reasons, first of all, because how many women need to get abortions because of the health of the child?” Rogan said. “How many people need to get abortions? Because their child was raped?”

However, despite making salient points about Christian conservatives ignoring the realities of the situation like the health of the mother or cases of rape and incest, Rogan couldn’t help but tie things back to the pandemic. Via Mediaite:

“Rights that we never thought we were gonna lose,” Rogan said. “Like there’s certain ways that we looked at the world. We’re like, ‘Well, we’ve passed that the government’s control over us is not nearly what it was in the eighties or the nineties. We’ve moved past that.’ And then all of a sudden, especially during the pandemic, it’s almost like while you were sleeping, they’re just like gaining ground.”

Obviously, the pandemic and the overturning of abortion rights are two completely separate issues. Republicans have been working for decades to overturn Roe v. Wade and Donald Trump installed two conservative Supreme Court justices before COVID-19 was even a thing. Fortunately, Rogan moved away from mentioning the pandemic as an underlying cause and went back to slamming SCOTUS.

“Like to say to those people that we get to decide what you do with your body. That’s where shit gets really f*cking squirrely,” Rogan said.

(Via Mediaite)

Tessa Thompson is one of the best celebrities we have right now. The actor, currently promoting Thor: Love & Thunder in which she plays Valkyrie (she truly deserves the Marvel money), has been making the rounds in the press leading up to its release on Friday, July 8.

In an interview on Variety’s “Just For Variety” podcast, Thompson, who came out as bisexual in 2018, said that fans tell her that she inspired them to come out. “I’ve had so many folks write me and say that they were able to come out or to talk to their family, which is a dream,” Thompson said.

During the interview, Thompson also pushed back on a need for her queer MCU character Valkyrie to have a romantic interest. “I think a part of really being able to normalize queer characters, LBGTQIA characters, is to allow them to exist in their humanity and that doesn’t always mean that they’re in love or in a partnership because plenty of us know that sometimes you’re not,” she said. “So, yeah, we’ll see if she finds love.”

But this isn’t all of the Tessa Thompson news. On Thursday, First We Feast released a Tessa Thompson episode of Hot Ones on YouTube. Thompson describes one of the tamer hot sauces as “kinky” and goes on to take the hot sauces like a champ, until water starts coming out of her face in the home stretch. “That really cleared my sinuses,” she said of one of the hottest sauces. After consuming one of the titular hot ones, Thompson makes it worse by licking her napkin.

Long before there was a Ben Affleck or Robert Pattinson suit, there was: The George Clooney Batsuit. The iconic costume not only starred in one of the most critically panned of all the Batman movies…but it also features nipples built into the suit. Does this sound appealing to you? Do you happen to have around $40k you’ve been itching to use? Well here is the good news: that suit can soon be yours!

Heritage Auctions has listed the official suit, with bidding starting at $40k, but it’s worth millions more due to the fact that Clooney’s germs are still in there somewhere. Clooney infamously wore the suit in Batman & Robin, the final installment in Tim Burton’s Batman franchise, though Burton was not involved in this one at all (and you can tell).

Here is the stunning description:

Original screen worn superhero costume display constructed of cast foam latex, vinyl, resin components, leather, and other mixed media elements. All expertly painted, finished, and assembled on a life-size poseable mannequin with hyper-realistic George Clooney head with prosthetic grade false eyes. Costume pieces include hero signature cowl, full length superhero cape with 2-cape clips, muscle tunic with signature “Batman” icon on the chest, muscled tights, peaked and finned gauntlet gloves, and knee-high character boots. The cowl and cape are both marked “GC” for George Clooney and originally came from the Warner Bros. Archives.

Signature cowl! Hyper-realistic Clooney head! Mixed-media elements! What more could you ask for?

Not only is the BatSuit up for auction, but a collection of other various Batman items are also listed, including Jack Nicholson’s Joker costume starting at a reasonable $65K, and Jim Carrey’s Riddler cane from Batman Forever. Those don’t feature the Clooney nipples, though, so what’s the point?

(Via GQ)

Donald Trump may have removed himself from the board of Truth Social just a few weeks before the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury slapped the social media platform with federal subpoenas. According to a new report, Trump, as well as five other members with ties to his former administration, exited the board ahead of what reportedly appears to be a pending criminal investigation.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune, who broke the news, reports that state business records show Trump and the board members were removed on June 8. The SEC subpoena hit on June 27 followed by the Manhattan grand jury subpoena on July 1:

The investigations appear to be related to a proposed merger between Trump’s media company and a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisitions Corp., according to a recent regulatory filing.

Digital World is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Companies such as these raise money to go public with the intent of finding a company to merge with. SPACs are prohibited from finding a partner before going public, but the SEC is investigating potential talks between the two companies that were possibly premature, according to a filing.

Following the Herald-Tribune‘s report, Truth Social fired off a statement denying claims that Trump is no longer on the board.

“Contrary to an ‘exclusive’ fake news story filed by a reporter who is incapable of understanding state business records, Donald Trump remains on the board of Trump Media and Technology Group,” Truth Social wrote in whatever Truth Social is calling its posts. (Truthies? Troots?) “In fact, the reporter acknowledges that Trump’s title is ‘chairman,’ but apparently has no clue what a chairman presides over. Hopefully this helps clarify things.”

(Via Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

Not much happens on Joe Pera Talks with You, and that’s what made it so special.

In one episode, host Joe Pera went on a hike. In another, he watched YouTube videos in bed with his girlfriend, played by the delightful Jo Firestone. There have been season-long arcs about bean arches and chairs. In an era of $50 million episodes, it was a joy to watch Joe Pera talk to us about the simple joy of a second fridge.

All good things must unfortunately end, though, and Joe Pera Talks with You has been canceled by Adult Swim after three seasons. “I am writing to share the unfortunate news that Joe Pera Talks With You is over for now. We were driving home from Bethlehem, PA the morning after my final Spring Tour show when I got a call that it wouldn’t be renewed for another season,” Pera wrote in a note published to his humble website.

He continued:

The more I learn how TV works, the more I realize that it’s kind of a miracle that our quiet, 11-minute show about rocks, beans, grocery stores, and breakfast crews got on the air and lasted as long as it did. I also felt very lucky that I was able to work with my close friends and recognized how special it was that all these funny people were working on the same thing for a period of time. There was always a little guilt that Jo Firestone and Conner O’Malley should be devoting energy to shows of their own, but hopefully they will be soon. As should all of the writers – Dan Licata, Nathan Min, Katie Dolan, Whit Conway, the editor, and of course, director Marty Schousboe.

Pera, non-problematic awkward king that he is, apologized for the “disappointing news… but maybe I’ll see you at a live show this Summer or Fall and I will let you know when the next thing is rolling.” Until then, let him talk you to sleep for 10 hours.

Drake once famously made a big deal about his humble beginnings on the 2013 single “Started From The Bottom.” Now, he has again chronicled some of his early days, this time with an Instagram post in which he compares his journey to that of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The post even got a response from Bezos himself.

On Instagram yesterday, Drake shared a two-image gallery on Instagram, one photo of a younger him and another of a younger Bezos at work in a meager-looking office. Drake wrote, “Gotta start somewhere.” In the comments, Bezos wrote, “Started from the bottom now we’re here.”

What the post and comments don’t note, though, is that the seemingly-humble Bezos photo Drake shared is from a time when Bezos was actually already more prosperous than most: The image comes from a 60 Minutes segment on Bezos and Amazon that aired in 1999. That year, Bezos was worth $7.8 billion and named Time‘s Man Of The Year. So, while it’s true that Amazon did in fact have a small start in a garage, the photo Drake chose for his post is certainly not representative of that era.

The desk, though, is indeed a DIY setup, a door with 4×4 pieces of wood for legs, which Bezos explains in the 60 Minutes segment, “It’s a symbol of spending money on things that matter to customers, and not spending money on things that don’t.”

Tucker Carlson seems to have a problem with women. While he’s a 53-year-old husband and father of four with a nationally televised “news” program, he’s been acting even more like a sexist frat bro these days (which, given his past obnoxiousness, is saying a lot). He took that puerility to new lows on Wednesday night when he shared a photo of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit for no reason other than to body-shame the Speaker of the House, who—spoiler alert—looks pretty damn good at 82 years old!

As Mediaite reports, Carlson closed out his Wednesday night show by mockingly stating that “Nancy Pelosi was so upset at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine that she fled America over this last Fourth of July weekend and went up on a private beach in Italy. And we’re going to go out tonight by singeing your retinas with a photograph of that event.”

He then cut to a closeup of Pelosi’s cleavage, which… really? This from a “man” who’s been pushing testicle tanning on his viewers? And on a network that has been plagued for years of sexual harassment claims—and reportedly paid out $13 million to former anchor Bill O’Reilly’s victims alone?

The misogyny didn’t end there though. Former congressman-turned-political commentator Jason Chaffetz, who was filling in for Sean Hannity, joined in the male chauvinist pig fun by joking that Tucker had just forced “every person in the country to turn off their televisions,” then threatened that he would one day get him back.

All of this came just one day after Carlson blamed nagging women for the rise in mass shootings in America.

Ha ha ha! Sexism is funny!

(Via Mediaite)

While Nas’ collaborations with Hit-Boy have been the primary driver of his successful career Renaissance of late, there remains one producer that fans still want to work with the Queens rap icon. Ever since he heavily contributed to Nas’ groundbreaking 1994 debut Illmatic, fans have clamored for a full Nas project produced by DJ Premier. The two hip-hop pioneers have acknowledged those requests in the past, promising to make rap fans’ dreams come true, but aside from a handful of singles, little has ever come of those assurances.

However, come July 15, that could very well be changing. That’s the date DJ Premier put in a tweet earlier today along with a video from outside a studio control room with what very much sounds like a new Nas song produced by Premo blasting through the doorway. And what else do you see hanging on the wall but the gold sales plaque for Illmatic? The suggestion is clear: that Nas and Premier have joined forces at the successor to the legendary D&D Studios, Kaufman Astoria Studios in Long Island City, Queens.

Of course, the duo could just be releasing one standalone single and using the joint album speculation to generate the necessary buzz for it — after all, they’ve done it before. But with Nas’ collaborations with Hit-Boy prompting his career revival (and another on the way), he could have found the necessary creative spark to try out similar experiments with other producers, getting over his former reticence toward working with one beatmaker for a full project. I guess we’ll all find out next Friday, when whatever they’re working on officially hits DSPs — hopefully, with more news about whatever comes next.

As Christian Bale racks up rave reviews for his performance as Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, the actor has opened up about his first foray into the comic book realm: Batman Begins. While the 2005 film launched the critically-lauded Dark Knight Trilogy thanks to Bale’s now-iconic portrayal of the DC Comics hero, apparently, Hollywood didn’t have a whole lot of faith in the project.

Before Bale slapped on the cape and cowl, the last live-action film starring the Caped Crusader was the 1997 franchise-killing bomb, Batman and Robin, starring George Clooney. So when Bale started going around telling people about Christopher Nolan‘s new take on the character for Batman Begins, they didn’t hold back their thoughts. Via The Washington Post:

“I would [tell people] we’re going to sort of do Batman, but take him seriously. I had tons of people laugh at me and just say, ‘well that’s just not going to work at all,’” Bale said. “So, it’s wonderful to be a part of a trilogy that proved those people wrong. I’m not certain if it kick-started [the MCU] but it certainly helped along the way.”

Obviously, Bale is correct and The Dark Knight Trilogy was a freaking juggernaut and the last time DC Comics really went toe-to-toe with the still-burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe. In fact, it might not be the end of the story. While working the Love and Thunder promotional rounds, Bale recently admitted that he’s game for a fourth Batman movie if Nolan is on board.

“If he wished to tell that story with me, I’d be in,” Bale told Screen Rant. Needless to say, nobody laughed at that idea.

(Via The Washington Post)

Is there anything better than a Bong Joon Ho/Robert Pattinson collab? Yes, it turns out. Steven Yeun, who received a best actor Oscar nomination for his stunning performance in 2020’s Minari, has just joined the project, making it even more of a must-see than it already was.

Deadline reports that Yeun has joined Oscar-winning Parasite director Bong’s currently untitled film adaptation of the novel Mickey7 by Edward Ashton. Along with Pattinson and Yeun, the film includes Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Ackie, and Toni Collette (who deserves an Oscar for her performance in the television series The Staircase even though that’s not how that works.) Yeun first worked with Bong on the 2017 film Ojka.

While details of the actual film’s plot, which could differ from the novel, are as unknown as the film’s title, here’s a summary of the novel, per Deadline:

The novel’s story follows Mickey7, who is an Expendable: a disposable employee on a human expedition sent to colonize the ice world Niflheim. Whenever there’s a mission that’s too dangerous—even suicidal—the crew turns to Mickey. After one iteration dies, a new body is regenerated with most of his memories intact. After six deaths, Mickey7 understands the terms of his deal…and why it was the only colonial position unfilled when he took it.

The project is Bong’s first since 2019’s Parasite, which became the first non-English language film to win an Oscar for best picture.

(Via Deadline)