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There have been a number of talking points to keep track of during the Britney Spears conservatorship saga, and perhaps the biggest one of note in a musical sense is that Spears reportedly doesn’t plan to perform again as long as her father Jamie Spears is involved in her conservatorship. Now, it appears that has progressed to Spears deciding she’s done with performing altogether, regardless of who’s part of her conservatorship.

TMZ reports that Spears’ longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, submitted his resignation to Spears conservators, Jodi Montgomery and Jamie, saying:

“It has been over 2 1/2 years since Britney and I last communicated, at which time she informed me she wanted to take an indefinite work hiatus. Earlier today, I became aware that Britney had been voicing her intention to officially retire. […] I was originally hired at Britney’s request to help manage and assist her with her career. And as her manager, I believe it is in Britney’s best interest for me to resign from her team as my professional services are no longer needed. […] I will always be incredibly proud of what we accomplished over our 25 years together. I wish Britney all the health and happiness in the world, and I’ll be there for her if she ever needs me again, just as I always have been.”

Speaking of performing, Spears’ conservators recently denied that they forced her to do a European tour in 2018, despite her contradicting claims.

The 2021 NBA Finals get underway on Tuesday evening, with the Phoenix Suns hosting the Milwaukee Bucks. Both teams needed six games to prevail in the Conference Finals, though the Suns finished off the Los Angeles Clippers three days prior to Milwaukee’s series-clinching victory over the Atlanta Hawks. Phoenix also enters with fewer question marks, as Milwaukee was missing two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo at the end of the Eastern Conference Finals, who is listed as doubtful for Game 1.

Though Milwaukee has been relatively optimistic in its public sentiment, there is a healthy dose of uncertainty with regard to Antetokounmpo’s status for the series. The talented big man suffered a knee injury against the Hawks and, while there is no structural damage according to multiple reports, he was listed as doubtful (and quickly ruled out) in the final two games against Atlanta. In Antetokounmpo’s stead, the Bucks received considerable contributions from Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis against the Hawks, and the perimeter duo of Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday rose to the challenge.

All told, the Bucks are the No. 1 defensive team in the playoffs, giving up only 105.0 points per 100 possessions. That raises Milwaukee’s floor considerably, though they will need to convert more than 31 percent of their three-point attempts against the Suns, even if the Bucks have gotten by with that mark through the first three rounds. Ironically, the Suns are the No. 2 defensive team to this point in the postseason, and they have done their damage against a strong group of offenses. Phoenix leads the NBA Playoffs in effective field goal percentage allowed (49.8 percent), and the presence of Deandre Ayton and the physicality of players like Chris Paul and Jae Crowder provide reason for optimism against Milwaukee.

Offensively, the Suns are also firing on all cylinders. Paul enjoyed a dominant, 41-point explosion in Game 6 against the Clippers, and Devin Booker is fully capable of a similar eruption at any moment. The Suns are also one of the most efficient shooting teams in the NBA, both in the regular season and during the playoffs, and Phoenix’s proficiency at the free throw line (more than 86 percent in the postseason) could be key in a tight game.

Game 1 TV Info

Tip Time: Tuesday, June 6; 9 p.m. ET
TV Network: ABC

Game 1 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Suns (-200), Bucks (+165)
Spread: Suns -5.5 (-114), Bucks +5.5 (-107)
Total: Over 218.5 (-112), Under 218.5 (-109)
Money Line: Suns (-250), Bucks (+195)

Game 1 Player Scoring Props (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Jae Crowder O/U 9.5 Points (Over -129/Under +101)
Brook Lopez O/U 14.5 (-113/-113)
Chris Paul O/U 20.5 (-113/-113)
Deandre Ayton O/U 15.5 (-127/+100)
Jrue Holiday O/U 22.5 (-105/-122)
Devin Booker O/U 27.5 (-117/-109)
Mikal Bridges O/U 11.5 (+105/-134)
Khris Middleton O/U 25.5 (-117/-109)

Nick Castellanos has become a really good baseball player, earning an All-Star nod as a starter this season as he is sporting a league-leading .339 average with 16 home runs and 53 RBI for the Reds. He also is best known by many, particularly on the internet, as the guy who hit a drive into deep left field in the middle of Thom Brennaman’s on air apology for making homophobic comments on a hot mic before he was pulled from the Reds broadcast.

Castellanos will likely never shake free of that moment in the minds of many, something he had nothing to do with but created a lasting meme anyways. It’s been almost exactly a year since that moment back in August 2020, a once in a million moment — or so we thought. On Monday, Castellanos and the Reds were back in Kansas City, and this time it was the Royals broadcast trying to have a serious moment when Castellanos stepped up to the plate in the top of the 7th inning.

The Royals were paying tribute to the father of a member of the Royals organization who passed away over the weekend, offering a eulogy to a veteran of World War II, when, somehow, by some stroke of strange fate, Castellanos again sent a drive deep to left center field, making for an eerily similar moment of broadcast awkwardness.

As the Royals announcer notes, there is never a good time during a broadcast to eulogize someone because the action on the field doesn’t stop. Still, for this to have been another Castellanos home run to the same part of the ballpark, creating the same awkward call is staggering. The lesson at this point has to be, if you’re going to do something serious on the broadcast when the Reds are in town — particularly in Kansas City — save it for after a Castellanos at bat.

Matthew McConaughey’s potential run for Texas governor is going better than expected. The Oscar-winning actor hasn’t formally entered the race, but polls currently have him just slightly behind incumbent Greg Abbott. Not everyone’s into yet another screen star getting into politics, including Texan politician Ted Cruz. But if a video he released on Independence Day is any indication, having the star of EdTV leading The Lone Star State would at least be…interesting.

The video — which was posted on Twitter, along with the words “happy 245th birthday America – lets rock” — runs some 2 ½ minutes long, and it finds the possible gubernatorial candidate summing up a long, strange 2020.

“As we celebrate our independence today, as we celebrate our birth as a nation, the day that kick-started a revolution to gain our sovereignty, let’s admit that this last year, this trip around the sun, was also another head-scratcher,” he began.

Then he tried to put things in perspective. “But let’s also remember that we’re babies as a country,” he said. “We’re basically going through puberty in comparison to other countries’ timeline, and we’re going to go through growing pains.”

But that’s natural, he argued. “This is not an excuse, this is just the reality, and this is good, because we gotta keep learning, we gotta keep maturing, we gotta keep striving, we gotta keep climbing, we gotta keep building,” he said. “And we gotta make sure we maintain hope along the way, as we continue to evolve.”

And we can’t not continue to evolve, he said. “Because the alternative sucks.”

Alright alright alright, man.

(Via CNN)

Paul Rudd likes a prank. For nearly 20 years, whenever he would appear on his shows, the actor would trick Conan O’Brien into playing a clip from the bad cinema classic Mac and Me. But evidently he likes to mess with people even when cameras aren’t rolling. On Monday, Seth Rogen shared his own story of being the victim of a Paul Rudd ruse.

It was a short story, told over a single tweet. “Once I was in the spa in a hotel in Vegas getting a massage,” Rogen wrote on Twitter. “When I finished I turned over and to my shock Paul Rudd was massaging me. He saw me go in and convinced the masseuse to let him take over, thinking I’d notice immediately. I didn’t, and Paul did the entire rest of it.”

And that’s it! It sounds like Rudd knows how to do a massage. After all, Rogen didn’t know the difference between a pro and the guy who kept stealing 1996’s Romeo + Juliet. A couple weeks back, Rudd did one final Mac and Me prank for the final week of O’Brien’s TBS show Conan — which also saw the guy he once treated to a massage getting the host high.

Ever since Donald J. Trump’s presidency ended in disgrace and violence in January, Fox News hasn’t been as relentlessly fawning and fact-challenged as the likes of OANN and Newsmax. But they’ve tried. For one thing, they employ Tucker Carlson, who can always be counted on to spout dangerous nonsense — like asking viewers to harass people wearing masks. But one of the network’s former execs, who was there at the beginning, is calling them out — or trying, with not much success, to call out its owner, Rupert Murdoch.

In a blistering op-ed published by The Daily Beast, one Preston Padden — who was president for network distribution at Fox Broadcasting Company for seven years, and saw Fox News take off in its infancy — tried to square his longtime association with Murdoch with what his biggest network has become.

“Over the past nine months I have tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert to understand the real damage that Fox News is doing to America,” Padden wrote. “I failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that I could succeed. I am at a loss to understand why he will not change course. I can only guess that the destructive editorial policy of Fox News is driven by a deep-seated vein of anti-establishment/contrarian thinking in Rupert that, at age 90, is not going to change.”

Padden calls Murdoch “brilliant, courageous, optimistic, and a gentleman,” but that what began as a “truthful center-right news network” has curdled into a “bile-filled network,” peddling claims “that no reasonable person would believe.” He singles out their misinformation about masks and vaccines, and about the election. He blames them for stumping for the rally that mushroomed into the deadly but failed Jan. 6 insurrection. “Millions of Americans believe these falsehoods because they have been drilled into their minds, night after night, by Fox News.”

But, Padden claims, not even Fox News’ owner believes the tall tales it spins on the regular:

The greatest irony is that I don’t believe that most of the falsehoods on Fox News reflect Rupert Murdoch’s own views. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by wearing a mask during the pandemic and he encouraged me to do the same. I believe that he thought that it was important to protect his own health by getting vaccinated at the earliest opportunity and he encouraged me to do the same. And I believe that he thinks that former President Trump is an egomaniac who lost the election by turning off voters, especially suburban women, with his behavior.

It’s big if true, though surely by now the damage done to a wide swath of America, perpetuated since the 1990s, is already very much done.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Anyone that has watched the Fast and Furious movies knows there’s one thing that matters above all else: family. That core value is the driving force of Dominic Toretto and his crew as they take fast cars to heights never seen before. His desire to do everything for family is an admirable trait that keeps you cheering for him whether he’s committing crimes or saving the world.

With the most recent move in the franchise, F9, recently releasing to theaters we’re once again getting to witness Dom defying the odds to protect his family. In fact it’s so inspirational it’s leading to a new hilarious meme. Everyone is inserting Dom’s love of family helping him overcome any obstacle into movies, TV shows, and, yes, video games.

This has of course led to everyone seeing what video games they can put Dom into. One of the most obvious answers, and one of the more popular choices, has been to put him into JRPG’s. Stories like Final Fantasy and Persona have always been about overcoming the odds to defeat an almighty evil. So what else is going to power the heroes through that than family? The Persona 5 photoshop in particular where he’s thanking the protagonist for reminding him of the importance of family deserves a special shoutout, because the level of detail in it is hysterical.

Of course, Dom isn’t going to keep his love for family contained to only the world of JRPG’s. He will extend his help and advice to the Elder Scrolls universe as well. Goblins are no match for the power of family after all.

If there’s any script that reaches the same level of insanity as Fast and Furious it would be the Metal Gear Solid franchise. While Metal Gear may be more of a meta-commentary on world politics, compared to Fast and Furious being car action movies, they clearly both know the value of family.

https://twitter.com/TheCoolRedben/status/1411985394758033408/photo/1

He’s even found his way into helping the only being as fast as his 1970 Dodge Charger, Sonic the Hedgehog. A perfect crossover.

If there’s one thing we learned here today is that you never mess with a man’s family. If you do, not only will you have to face the wrath of that family, but Dominic Toretto may appear to assist them. It’s a force that even video games most powerful bosses were unable to defeat. Family above all.

Doja Cat may have already put out a deluxe version of her recent album Planet Her featuring Gunna and Eve, but that hasn’t stopped fans — and some of Doja’s peers — from campaigning for a remix featuring just one more rapper whose visual aesthetic matches Doja’s well: Yung Baby Tate. The Atlanta rapper posted a video of herself freestyling to the instrumental from the exuberant Planet Her song “Get Into It (Yuh),” sparking interest in an official remix featuring the verse.

Although Doja’s already released the album and a deluxe version, if anyone were to advocate for a sharp rapper like Tate, it’d be Doja Cat, who explained when releasing her new album that she put rappers like Gunna, JID, and Smino on her projects to highlight her love for “bars.” Certainly, Tate is someone who’d have worked with Doja had they crossed paths earlier in their careers; her breakout project, GIRLS, featured collabs with female rappers like Bbymutha, Kari Faux, and Latto (formerly Mulatto).

Both rappers will be busy this year, though, with Doja touring Planet Her and Tate appearing on Love & Hip-Hop. Additionally, Doja made it clear that she doesn’t plan on doing too many more collabs going forward because she doesn’t want them to sound like mashups — but since this verse already exists, maybe she can make an exception.

Watch Yung Baby Tate’s freestyle video above.

Yung Baby Tate is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

While we occasionally hear about how Donald J. Trump is doing after his presidency ended in violence and disgrace, details remain thin on the ground. For instance, we know he mostly lives in resorts, ranting to strangers about the election he lost. But we don’t know if he’s living alone. Where is Melania? Where is Barron? Are they by his side or enjoying a peaceful existence away from Mar-A-Lago and his many groveling hangers-on?

According to Insider, a forthcoming book fills in some gaps. It’s called Landslide: The Final Days of the Trump Presidency, by journalist Michael Wolff, and though it won’t be released until July 27, it’s already provided solid dirt. It’s how we learned it was Rudy Giuliani who convinced Trump that Mike Pence could overturn the election (which he couldn’t). Ditto the stories of Trump staffers requesting offices on the second floor of the White House because the then-president hates stairs.

The latest breakout bit from Wolff’s book involves his post-presidential life. For one thing, it’s reportedly “unclear” how much time Melania is spending at Mar-A-Lago with her husband, just as it was unclear how often she was in the White House or in a Maryland home with her parents. But when she is there, she and Donald dine at the center of a patio restaurant, alone, at a “roped-off table.”

That sounds weird and presentational, but it’s gets stranger. As Wolff describes it, the former POTUS and FLOTUS are “looked at, somewhat, like zoo animals. No, no, that’s not right. They are like a newly married couple: every night is a wedding at which they spend their dinner greeting friends and wellwishers.”

What’s more, Donald seems to time his arrival for dinner just as everyone has filled the tables, at which point, Wolff writes, “everyone stands and applauds.”

Back in April, CNN reported on some of Melania’s mysterious involvement in her husband’s life post-White House. “She’s not a presence at Mar-a-Lago at all. She’s not mingling with people and rarely interacts with her husband’s staff,” a couple told the network. CNN also claimed that, when she is there, she “makes frequent trips to the on-site spa — with one person telling CNN she sometimes goes for treatments twice a day.”

Anyway, sounds like they’re living their best life, far away from almost everyone else’s.

(Via Insider)

Richard Donner, one of the most successful Hollywood directors of the ‘80s and ‘90s and one of the major architects of the modern superhero movie, has died, according to Deadline. He was 91 years old. No cause of death has been reported.

Donner got his start in the industry, like so many in his generation, with television. He cut his teeth directing episodes of The Twilight Zone, Route 66, The Rifleman, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Perry Mason, even Gilligan’s Island. His feature film debut came in 1961, with X-15, aviation drama co-starring Charles Bronson, hot off of The Magnificent Seven.

It would take another decade and a half for his first blockbuster: 1976’s The Omen, which introduced the screen to Damian, the young Antichrist who unwittingly causes the gruesome death of anyone who happens upon his secret.

Donner parlayed that into the gig directing 1978’s Superman: The Movie, the first major film to take comic books seriously. Filled with big, handsomely paid names (Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Glenn Ford, screenwriter Mario Puzo), plus one fresh-faded instant star (Christopher Reeve), it was a troubled production. Indeed, Donner’s relationship with the producers was so fractured that they removed from the adjacently filmed sequel, replacing him with A Hard Day’s Night auteur Richard Lester.

But Donner’s contribution to comic book cinema would leave it forever changed. No longer would superheroes be treated only like kitsch and camp. They were epics with big themes and flawed heroes who didn’t always do good. They would get big budgets and big names and dominate the box office. And it all started with Richard Donner’s Superman: The Movie.

Despite the Superman production headaches, he went on to a very successful career. He rebounded with The Goonies, for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, as well as the fantasy Ladyhawke. In 1987 he found his per series: Lethal Weapon, the buddy comedy that changed the buddy comedy forever. He’d return to the series every few years, in between comedies (Scrooged), dramas (Radio Flyer), and other thrillers (Assassins, Conspiracy Theory, 16 Blocks).

One of the last films he worked on, some 15 years ago, was a redux of Superman II, which cobbled together something like a director’s cut, using never-seen footage and some digital touch-ups, getting as close as he could to his original vision. But you can see Donner’s touch in every comic book movie you see today.

(Via Deadline)