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Phew! So this week’s internet has been dominated by The Slap Heard Round the World, which is unfortunate because there were some really lovely moments at this year’s Oscars that got lost in the hubbub over it. Lady Gaga’s and Liza Minnelli’s sweet interaction, for example, is on our list of 10 things that made us smile this week. So is Troy Kotsur’s acceptance speech after becoming the first deaf man to win an Academy Award for acting for his role in “CODA.”

We’ve got some other gems lined up as well—a dog whose dream came true when his owner dressed up as his favorite toy, doting adult children sharing heartwarming messages they got from their parents, Paul Rudd successfully pranking Conan O’Brien on his podcast and a couple of pups whose adorableness is simply irresistible.

Oh, and otters. Always gotta have some otters.

If you need a little pick-me-up to round out your week, we’ve got you covered:

Troy Kotsur’s acceptance speech for Best Supporting Actor was a moment to remember.

From Youn Yuh-jung’s sweet announcement to Troy Kotsur’s wonderful acceptance speech to audience members honoring him with sign language applause, the whole clip is so full of beauty and joy. Read more about the Oscar wins for “CODA” here.

Her dad traveled a lot when she was young, but he managed to stay close in spirit.

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It’s not an easy thing to balance parenting and a career, especially if your job takes you away from your family a lot. These postcards are so precious. What a gift.

This dog owner dressed up as his dog’s favorite toy.

@charliethegolden18

Dressed up as our dogs favorite duck toy. Full video on FB & YouTube. Link in bio. #dogsoftiktok #petsoftiktok #dogs #goldenretriever

Was Charlie beside himself or what? So hilarious.

Lady Gaga being there for Liza Minnelli was a masterclass in grace and class.

This is like a lesson in how to facilitate older people while honouring who they are.nWhat a class act by @ladygaga with legend Liza Minnelli. nThe conferred whispers of “I gotcha” “I know” picked up by the mikes make it especially touching.pic.twitter.com/2JOWyrTQxn

— Naomi O’Leary (@Naomi O’Leary)
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Lady Gaga has a soft spot for the elders of show business, and we can all learn from her example of how to interact with older people with respect and dignity. Read the full story here.

Elderly British gentleman has the most wholesome TikTok channel you’ll ever see.

@brian..smith

Reply to @2_millimeter_defeater_ #generations #language #youth

It’s like if David Attenborough and Mr. Rogers morphed and made a TikTok channel to bridge the generation gap. He’s just delightful. See more of his videos here.

Ma’am, I think your dog is broken—but please don’t fix anything.

So excited.. pic.twitter.com/EyiSXUosiT

— Buitengebieden (@Buitengebieden)
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Cutest walk ever.

This puppy is 100% sure his owner needs some emotional support at the gym.

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Or maybe the pup needs emotional support. There’s definitely emotional support happening here.

Dad’s wisdom and love triumph, despite disease and disability.

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Thanks, Dad. Exactly what we all need to hear.

Paul Rudd pulls off a prank on Conan O’Brien that been going for 18 years.

Damn you, Paul Rudd.https://twitter.com/TeamCoco/status/1508886962660274176u00a0u2026

— Conan O’Brien (@Conan O’Brien)
1648600736

You need a little background for this one, but the gist is that since 2004, Paul Rudd has repeatedly gone on Conan O’Brien’s show to talk about one of his projects, and when the time comes to show a clip from the show or film, Rudd shows this clip from the 1989 film “Mac and Me.” Silly but hilarious. O’Brien had come to expect it on the show, but never saw it coming on his podcast.

Read the full story here.

Aaaaaand a bunch of otters eating popcorn, just cuz. (Sound up.) 

Otters really love popcorn. pic.twitter.com/aUxocIeqFo

— Fred Schultz (@Fred Schultz)
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Hope that brought some light and joy to your day! Come back again next week for another roundup of the internet’s best.

After a disastrous appearance on a recent episode of The Problem with Jon Stewart that tackled “The Problem with White People,” political commentator Andrew Sullivan is now claiming that he was duped into appearing on the show by an allegedly dishonest booker. During the panel discussion, Sullivan was repeatedly called out by the former Daily Show host for “minimizing” the systemic presence of white supremacy in America. At one point, Stewart got so frustrated after repeatedly explaining himself to Sullivan that he said, “Andrew, you’re not living on the same f*cking planet we are, honestly.”

Stewart would later drag Sullivan on the podcast episode recapping the show. “I thought that conversation would be productive and ultimately I thought it was,” Stewart said via Mediaite. “Making Andrew Sullivan play the role of the white person who doesn’t understand that this is being taped – holy sh*t!”

Realizing that he didn’t come off looking great, Sullivan took to his The Weekly Dish newsletter on Friday and essentially accused The Problem with Jon Stewart booker of deceiving him into the panel appearance. According to Sullivan, the booker asked him to come on discuss racism, but he was told it would just be him and Stewart:

I said I’d think about it — especially since they seemed desperate with just 24 hours till taping — and later I called to say sure, if it’s just Jon. “I trust him to be fair.” I hadn’t had time to read the email invites, so I trusted the booker’s word.

But just before the taping, as I emerged blearily from Dishing, I found out, in fact, that there would be two other guests, and that it would, indeed, be a debate. Surprise! As the show started, I also realized for the first time there was a live studio audience and that the episode was called “The Problem With White People” — a title I’d never have been a party to, if I’d known in advance. (I wouldn’t go on a show called “The Problem With Jews” or “The Problem With Black People” either.) At that point I should have climbed carefully off the stake, tamped down the flames, made a path through the kindling, and walked away.

As Sullivan continued, he claimed that he protested to producers who gave him the option to back out, but he didn’t want to leave the show “in a lurch” and he trusted that Stewart “was a pro.” Instead, Sullivan was shocked to find himself “demonized” and “cursed at” by someone he thought believed in “sane discourse.”

You can watch the segment below and judge for yourself:

(Via Mediaite, The Weekly Dish)

The weather is heating up, the travel restrictions are lifting, and it’s looking like we’re finally going to have a summer that we can actually enjoy. Will Covid still be a thing we have to contend with? Absolutely, but we’re better positioned and equipped to resume some sense of normalcy in our lives than any time in these past two years that Covid has been a thing.

We are, dare we say… excited? Yes, we’re saying it: EXCITED!

But before you step out into the world in your old fits from 2019, you’re probably going to want a wardrobe refresh. Luckily, the big streetwear brands are here to answer the call. In their best apparel release in a minute, Adidas Originals are continuing the rollout of their Blue Version collection, with the second drop set to arrive globally on April 13th.

The Blue Version collection is geared toward the Spring/Summer climate and features some extensive reimaginings of some of Adidas’ strongest archival looks. The collection features draping silhouettes that are perfect for layering while still being lightweight enough to keep you cool, consisting of satin fabrics and plissé construction. Our favorite thing about the new collection, which includes Trefoil branded jackets, shorts, skirts, t-shirts, leggings, vests, jackets, and button-ups in loose comfort fitting silhouettes in aquarelle water-color inspired colorways, is the way it manages to exude that vintage cool of the Adidas archives, while recontextualizing the silhouettes for a more modern fit.

Check out the full collection below and be sure to cop the drop on April 13th online and at flagship Adidas stores.

2021 belonged to Olivia Rodrigo and her debut album, Sour. After “Driver’s License” dominated the first few months of the year, pushing us all to remember the formative heartbreak that snapped us in two, Rodrigo landed seven Grammy nominations, including all of the big four categories, in 2022. And remarkably, she was the second-youngest artist to accomplish that feat. 

If you think Olivia Rodrigo was an overnight sensation, that’s probably only the case because you don’t consume Disney Channel content. She entered the sphere of influence for six to 14-year-olds back in 2016 on Bizzaardvark, a show that co-starred Jake Paul. Ironically, the premise was that Rodrigo was the star and content creator on a YouTube-like platform. And in the videos, she played guitar. It probably wasn’t too tricky; Rodrigo took voice and piano lessons for a few years, starting when she was nine. She wasn’t faking it: Rodrigo learned to play for the show when she was only 12. 

She’d also been lowkey becoming a music nerd. In an Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe, Rodrigo went over some of her favorite artists and shared that her grandmother bought her one of those Urban Outfitters Crosley record players when she was a tween. She and her mother would go to thrift stores and pick out vinyl to listen to that they thought was cool, which led to her discovering Tanya Tucker and Carole King. Both of them would influence her songwriting — as a storyteller and how she treated heartache and vulnerability. 

Her songwriting started long before she found those records or got her hands on the keyboard and guitar. She told MTV Push that Rodrigo’s family had been videoing her making up songs since she was a little kid. She remembered writing her first song at around nine — a little ditty she called “Superman,” an empowering jam about how she didn’t need anyone to save her. She shared the footage with the New York Times of herself at age seven singing her heart out onstage to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and some footage she shot herself as a young teen playing guitar and singing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” Both are classics and indicative of some tiny part of her sphere of musical influences.

Rodrigo moved on to a Disney+ series in 2019, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Yes, that hilariously long and unwieldy title is a joke. The series itself is a mockumentary-style reboot of the HSM franchise, set in a universe where a new set of students at East High put on their version of the musical set in their high school. There’s a lot of Glee-esque humor, teen drama, and, of course, musical numbers. Rodrigo plays Nini Salazar-Roberts, who lands a starring role. The series would also give Rodrigo her first chance to have a single released.

“All I Want” was written by Rodrigo and inspired, at least in part, by her character’s story arc, she told Genius. “I always try to insert pieces of my real life and my real emotions…into the songs I write for High School Musical because I feel like songs are better that way. People can tell when something is honest and coming from a real place versus when it’s not. It is really interesting to write for a character. I think that’s fun, and I think restrictions like that make you more creative,” she said on the Zach Sang Show. 

The Disney label released the song, and it bopped into the lower part of the Hot 100 but wasn’t worked as a single at radio. So, it didn’t hang around for more than a few weeks. However, it was a streaming phenomenon — enough to get the attention of Interscope Records and land her a deal.

Despite “All I Want” making a small splash, she calls “Driver’s License” her first single — but it wasn’t exactly devoid of HSM ties. Some of the initial interest in the song came from the real-life love triangle of Disney stars involved in it, which Vulture recounts more thoroughly than this piece needs to. Suffice it to say, Rodrigo and her co-star, and purported love interest, released their singles within days of each other, followed by a possible reaction track from the third corner in the triangle. What’s stunning is how quickly none of this drama mattered anymore because Rodrigo’s song eclipsed it and every other song on the planet in January of 2021.

The song went to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in one week after doing blockbuster streaming numbers on Spotify and Amazon. It bested Spotify’s record for the most streams in a week worldwide, taking executives at the streamer by surprise. “It did align perfectly and quicker than anything we’ve ever seen,” Spotify co-head of music Jeremy Erlich told the New York Times. “We’ve seen alignment like that, but typically it’s spread over three to six months — this happened in a day and a half.”

The stars kept aligning. The song was featured in a Saturday Night Live sketch on February 20, Rodrigo’s birthday. She became the youngest artist in history to debut at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for eight consecutive weeks. With over one billion streams, it’s among Spotify’s 100 most streamed songs ever. Rodrigo tapped into something emotionally that everyone could identify with: heartbreak.

The release of a debut EP was supposed to follow. But, Rodrigo called up Geffen Records and told them she wanted to record an entire album instead. She holed up with the producer she’d created “Driver’s License” with, Dan Nigro, and they started reworking her songs and writing new ones. Nigro spotted Rodrigo some years before, reaching out about one of her songs on Instagram and suggesting they work together.

Rodrigo’s second single, “Deja Vu,” came in April and was followed by “Good 4 U” the next month. And on May 21, 2021, Sour dropped. Rodrigo was the first artist in history to debut three pre-release singles in the Billboard Hot 100, and upon the release of her album, all of the songs on it hit the top 30 in the Hot 100. Variety called her the voice of her generation.  Rolling Stone called it revelatory. Teen Vogue promised it would “give you the toolkit to cope with what you’re going through right now.”

Many agreed, and it became one of 2021’s best-selling albums. But, lest you forget, we were all firmly in the middle of a pandemic. So in July, Olivia Rodrigo went where only select pop stars have gone before: the White House. President Biden enlisted her to help get out the word about COVID vaccinations to young people, whose vaccination rate lagged behind other groups. Rodrigo, who suggested the partnership, saw her profile get even more prominent from behind the White House briefing room podium. “We need to reach people, meet people where they are and speaking to young people… who are under the age of 18… hearing from her that… getting vaccinated is a way to keep yourself safe, a way to ensure you can see your friends, a way you can ensure you can go to concerts, a way you can ensure that you can live a healthy life is an important part of what we’re trying to do here,” Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.

Because of the pandemic, concerts — and a tour — were something that Rodrigo didn’t pack in as part of her experience as a newly minted pop star. In September, she’d make her first appearance playing for the public at the iHeartRadio Music Festival while hundreds sang along to her songs. But she still hadn’t played a “proper show” ans she won’t until the spring of 2022 when she kicks off a sold-out world tour.

With two concert films, Sour Prom from July 2021 and Driving Home 2 U (A Sour Film) now on Disney+, under her belt, Rodrigo has one last hurdle to pass: collecting some Grammy gold.

It’s been a long week of Oscar-fiasco talk. It’s not over yet, either, despite Daniel Radcliffe recently telling everyone that he was “dramatically bored” with hearing about Will Smith hauling off and smacking Chris Rock. And even though there have been some entertaining takes otherwise (like noted hothead Alec Baldwin referencing the Jerry Springer Show) it’s also quite something to hear people say that they’re tired of hearing about it and need a little break.

Or at least, don’t ask about it if you’re talking to Ice-T. The no-nonsense SVU star has had enough. In fact, he’s fed up with the subject: “I’m Smackin the Sh*t outta the next MF that asks me about the Oscars….”

That’s an understandable sentiment, especially since Rock himself isn’t talking much and continue to process the incident. The discussion will no doubt continue, but if you need a distraction, perhaps reading Ice-T’s takes on Russia-Ukraine and gas prices are enough to get you going. Or you can read the below tweets, where he’s discussing how car prices are astronomical lately, even without taking inflation into account.

Yep, it’s almost the weekend, and hopefully, everyone will be able to take a load off, but in the meantime, Ice has something else to say…

Last month, a 31-year-old woman who was shot and killed at a bowling alley in Atlanta was identified as LaKevia Jackson, the mother of rapper Young Thug‘s oldest child. Today, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta police working with US Marshals arrested 25-year-old Joshua Fleetwood, charging him with felony murder, possession of a firearm while committing a felony, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Jackson was attending her best friend’s birthday party at the bowling alley on March 17 and was allegedly shot by Fleetwood while leaving the venue after an argument over a bowling ball. Jackson’s 14-year-old, Kyvion Jackson, is Young Thug’s oldest child, conceived when they were living in the same apartment complex before his rap career took off. Jackson’s mother, Sherina Jackson, told CBS 46, “I didn’t know that was going to be the last time I talked to my baby. I could hear her over the phone crying and screaming then her best friend said, ‘She’s not breathing!’ … I lost my baby all over a bowling ball.”

Lt. Ralph Woolfolk, an APD homicide commander, made a video statement regarding the arrest, saying, “This was a relentless investigation in which we worked through the night and into the next day in trying to gather all the facts and circumstances regarding the investigation.”

Young Thug, who has been executive producing his YSL artist T-Shyne’s newly released project Confetti Nights, has not commented on the shooting or the arrest.

The casting for Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut continues to heat up. Keke Palmer — the former child star who busted out dramatic chops in Hustlers and will soon appear in Jordan Peele’s next project, Nope — has now joined the Bill-Murray starring dramedy, Being Mortal, which also recently picked up Seth Rogen. As for what roles the actors will be playing… that is anybody’s guess. Ansari is keeping details about the project close to his chest, but we do know that the Searchlight Pictures film is based on the non-fiction book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

Logline details for Mortal are being kept in the casket, but the book explored the concepts of death and aging and how the medical profession tends to mishandle both. Searchlight has previously described the project as being at the intersection of “insightful humor and pathos.”

As Master of None fans know, Ansari’s father, who played himself on the Netflix series, is a doctor, so the medical profession isn’t unfamiliar ground for the comedian. Nor is tackling the emotional bonds of life. After the overwhelming response to seeing Ansari’s actual parents on Master of None, the comedian wrote a Tumblr post expressing how great it was to reconnect with them after years of not visiting his hometown as often as he should have.

“What’s strange is doing that episode and working with my parents has increased the quality of my relationship to my parents IN MY REAL LIFE,” Ansari wrote. “In reality, I haven’t always had the best, most open relationship with my parents because we are weirdly closed off emotionally sometimes. But we are getting better.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Earlier this year, Aziz Ansari announced his directorial debut Being Mortal based on the popular non-fiction book from Atul Gawande. Now, actress Keke Palmer has signed on to the project.

Palmer joins Seth Rogen and Bill Murray for the movie from Searchlight Pictures. The movie will be a comedy-drama based on the book Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, a non-fiction account of Dr. Atul Gawande and his experience working as a surgeon in hospice and end-of-life care. Ansari wrote the script himself.

After becoming the breakout star of Akeelah And The Bee in 2006, Palmer became a Nickelodeon star, leading her own series True Jackson VP as a teen. Most recently, she has been a voice actor in Netflix’s Big Mouth and starred in 2019’s hit film Hustlers alongside Jennifer Lopez. This year, she is slated to star in Jordan Peele’s highly-anticipated horror movie NOPE with Daniel Kaluuya and Euphoria’s Barbie Ferreria.

Ansari is known for his work on Parks and Recreation and co-creating Netflix’s hit Master of None, which snagged two Emmys. This will be his first time in the director’s chair for a major motion picture, though the actor previously directed a handful of episodes of Master of None. In addition to writing and directing, Ansari is also expected to star in Being Mortal.

LeBron James has missed the last two games for the Los Angeles Lakers due to an ankle injury. It came at the absolute worst time for L.A., which is trying to hold onto a spot in the play-in tournament as it waits out Anthony Davis’ potential return for an injury, although a report from Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports earlier this week indicated that the former league MVP hopes to return soon.

On Friday, James announced that is not going to happen via his Twitter account. The Lakers star posted that the ankle injury is going to keep him out for the remainder of the season, and that we can expect to see him back in the fall.

Now, if you have looked at a calendar today, you are probably going to jump to the assumption that James is pulling a fast one for April Fool’s Day, and at some point in the next few hours, he’s going to post that this is a joke and he’s going to play on Friday night against the Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena. And unsurprisingly, a whole lot of basketball fans think the exact same thing.

Others want James to ease up on the jokes and focus on the whole making the play-in thing.

As of Friday afternoon, Los Angeles is 31-45 on the year, putting them in a tie for 10th place in the Western Conference with the San Antonio Spurs. Because the Spurs hold the tiebreaker, the Lakers would miss out on the postseason altogether if the season ended today.