Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

A Sequel To ‘Cruella,’ The ‘101 Dalmatians’ Villain Origin Story, Is Already A Go At Disney

Disney loves to do live-action remakes of their animated classics, but they also like something else: renegade origin stories for once-feared villains. It worked with Maleficent, sprung from Sleeping Beauty, and last weekend it worked for Cruella, which delved into the backstory of the baddie from 101 Dalmatians while giving Emma Stone a proper vehicle. So naturally it’s now getting a sequel.

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the super company is already in early talks for a Cruella follow-up, with director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Tony McNamara likely to return. What they’ll do next is anyone’s guess. Cruella was a highly unusual Disney product, jettisoning almost everything from 101 Dalmatians except for Cruella de Vil herself, who was reworked as a young, aspiring fashionista driven mad by a tyrannical mentor-turned-competitor (Emma Thompson). It was also set in the 1970s, making the most of its English punk milieu.

Will the sequel get to the part of Cruella’s life that made her feared and famous: that she likes to skin dogs and wear their skin? Perhaps not. It’s a Disney film after all, and Cruella is not a hero but also not exactly hissable either. But the first film did already get to the part that explains why she hates that breed of dogs in the first place.

(Via THR)

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Milwaukee Bucks At Brooklyn Nets Game 1 TV Info And Betting Lines

Perhaps the most highly anticipated conference semifinal matchup of the 2021 postseason begins on Saturday evening. The No. 2 seed Brooklyn Nets will continue their quest to bring a ring to their little corner of New York City after dispatching of the Boston Celtics in five games.

Opposing them are the No. 3 seed Milwaukee Bucks, which looked sensational in their sweep of the Miami Heat. The matchup is truly a fascinating head-to-head of the league’s most lethal offense and a defense that, when it’s cooking, is not going to give up anything easy. If any team has the guys to be able to slow down the Nets’ trio of All-NBA scorers, it might be the Bucks, although let’s face it: they might be tasked with trying to do the impossible.

Both teams are rolling, both teams are extremely good, and with the health concerns surrounding Joel Embiid’s meniscus, whomever wins here will end up feeling pretty good about representing the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals. But first, they have to get through one another.

Game 1 TV Info

Tip Time: Saturday, June 5; 7:30 p.m. ET
TV Network: TNT

Game 6 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Nets (-167), Clippers (+135)
Spread: Nets -4.5 (-109), Bucks +4.5 (-113)
Total: Over 229.5 (-112), Under 229.5 (-109)
Money Line: Nets (-200), Bucks (+160)

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Damian Lillard Reportedly Wants Jason Kidd To Be Portland’s Next Head Coach

After mutually parting ways with Terry Stotts, the head coach for a decade, following a first-round loss to Denver, the Trail Blazers figure to let their star player Damian Lillard take a leading role in finding a replacement, and on Friday night he vocalized his preference to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports, telling Haynes, “Jason Kidd is the guy I want.”

Haynes had previously reported Lillard would have “major input” on the decision, and now Lillard is upping the ante by going public with his preference. The two have a mutual hometown in Oakland and have had a relationship for years, per Haynes.

In a separate interview with Jason Quick of The Athletic, Lillard said “I like J. Kidd and Chauncey,” referring to Clippers assistant Chauncey Billups.

After four years in Milwaukee, Kidd has been on Frank Vogel’s staff in Los Angeles over the past two seasons. He has a 183-190 career record as a head coach, having never posted more than 42 wins in Milwaukee.

With all the success Portland has had during Lillard’s career and the roster-building limitations in place for the Trail Blazers, it’s unclear how much a coaching change will truly alter much for this team, yet finding someone who Lillard gets along with could certainly help. Portland also has considerable young talent to develop, including the oft-injured Zach Collins as well as Anfernee Simons and Nassir Little.

It doesn’t appear Lillard is unhappy in Portland, but he is clearly taking a more aggressive leading role this offseason right from the jump, starting with this head coaching search.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

A Vintage Kawhi Leonard Performance Delivered A Clippers Win And Forced Game 7 Against Dallas

The most hotly contested first-round series of the NBA playoffs continued on Friday night when Kawhi Leonard sealed a 104-97 Los Angeles victory over Luka Doncic and the Mavericks with a pull-up three with 1:41 to go.

The game was neck-and-neck all night, as Leonard scored 45 points on 18-25 shooting and put up a valiant fight despite Dallas’ excellent ball movement and three-point shooting. Despite clearly being the best player on the floor in this one, defending Luka Doncic on one end and scoring relentlessly on the other, Leonard didn’t get a ton of help from his teammates.

He got a combined 40 from Paul George and Reggie Jackson, but the Clippers were enormously reliant on Leonard to score on Friday night. The plays were just ridiculous:

And Dallas was actually up going into the fourth quarter thanks to a monster third quarter from Tim Hardaway Jr. and some success scoring in transition. Hardaway scored 23 points and made four of his 11 threes.

The Mavs also were able find some offense going to Boban Marjanovic (who started again) inside, and he finished with 12 points and grabbed four rebounds. But when it got to crunch time, Leonard repeatedly went after Doncic defensively, isolating against him and getting to his spots at will.

In a game where neither bench did much and the best player on the floor had to rise up to win the game, Leonard loudly proclaimed through his play that that was him. The Clippers were up against it, having not won a home game all series and needing a win to push it to Game 7 back in Los Angeles. Their best player came through.

It was another legendary playoff moment for Leonard, who already has a career full of them. Last year in the Bubble, his best never really came, and it probably wouldn’t have been enough considering how Denver dismantled the Clippers anyway. But what Leonard did in Dallas on Friday sure looked like the guy we got accustomed to seeing come postseason time in San Antonio and Toronto.

After the Clips gutted out this win, the series became the first one in NBA history in which the road team won the first six games.

Heading into Game 7, it looks like head coach Ty Lue is finally prepared to sic Leonard on Doncic full-time and Leonard is feeling healthy enough and in-rhythm enough to be the Clippers’ primary play-maker in addition to that hefty defensive job. That game will be on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Report: Portland Is Parting Ways With Head Coach Terry Stotts After Ten Seasons

Terry Stotts is reportedly out as coach of the Trail Blazers, according to reports from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and Yahoo Sports’ Chris Haynes, a move that had gained steam over the course of the season and was seemingly cemented when Portland lost to Denver in six games in the first round of the West playoffs this week.

Stotts owns a 720-402 record as head coach in Portland, but has lost in the first round in four of the past five seasons.

As Damian Lillard regroups after another All-NBA caliber campaign, Haynes reported the aging superstar is expected to have “major input” in the hiring process, while Wojnarowski provided an early list of front-runners to replace Stotts, including experienced coaches like Brooklyn assistant Mike D’Antoni and ESPN commentator Jeff Van Gundy.

The move comes after reporting from The Athletic indicating Stotts was on the hot seat after a sixth-place finish for the Trail Blazers this season despite Lillard’s continued excellence and some aggressive offseason spending by the front office. A head coach could be just one of many changes ahead for Portland.

Lillard said postgame this week that Portland’s current trajectory “isn’t good enough,” while center Jusuf Nurkic told reporters said when asked about the right situation to return to the team, “this is not it.”

So while the roster may look significantly different heading into 2022 for Portland, the first task for the Trail Blazers is to find a new coach to replace Stotts, who had led the franchise for the entirety of Lillard’s career.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Condo Prices At Trump Properties Are Apparently Plummeting Because No One Wants To Live There: ‘They’re Giving Them Away’

The real estate market in America is extremely hot these days, with prices in urban markets that saw dips during the pandemic creeping back up. In the suburbs meanwhile, there are countless stories about pandemic-driven bidding wars and an influx in corporate money pushing potential new homebuyers out of the market altogether. It’s all very hectic and stressful, unless apparently if you’re Donald Trump.

According to a report, the best deal in real estate is easy to find if you don’t mind having Trump’s name on the building. The twice-impeached former president who encouraged a coup attempt days before he left office in disgrace is struggling to get market value for condos at his properties, and the quotes are pretty damning.

According to the Associated Press, the high-priced condos in Trump buildings are much cheaper than other comparable buildings. And those selling to get out are struggling to make their investments back.

“Fifty percent of the people wouldn’t want to live in a Trump building for any reason … but then there are guys like me,” says Lou Sollecito, a car dealer who recently bought a two-bedroom unit with views of the Empire State Building. “It’s a super buy.”

The purchase price was $3 million, nearly a million less than the seller paid in 2008.

The AP report detailed thousands of transactions at Trump-owned properties and saw a huge drop in values at these buildings. As prices are surging basically everywhere else, there are deals to be had at Trump buildings.

An Associated Press review of more than 4,000 transactions over the past 15 years in 11 Trump-branded buildings in Chicago, Honolulu, Las Vegas and New York found prices for some condos and hotel rooms available for purchase have dropped by one-third or more.

That’s a plunge that outpaces drops in many similar buildings, leaving units for sale in Trump buildings to be had for hundreds of thousands to up to a million dollars less than they would have gone for years ago.

“They’re giving them away,” says Lane Blue who paid $160,500 in March for a studio in Trump’s Las Vegas tower, $350,000 less than the seller paid in 2008. It was his second purchase in the building this year and may not be his last.

There could be any number of reasons for that drop, but it certainly seems like Trump himself is a factor here considering how hot things are elsewhere. And for many, Trump’s name on the building is now an opportunity to get something that’s rare in real estate these days: a good deal.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The 10 happiest things we saw this week

Every day, people are being amazing in large and small ways. When headlines get you down, you need a little boost of humanity’s awesomeness to remind you that things aren’t as bleak as they can seem. Here are 10 of this week’s best examples of people being awesome.

1. Felix Gretarsson, the man who received the world’s first full double arm and shoulder transplant, is making incredible progress.

Doctors expected might have feeling near his elbows after a year. It’s been less than six months, and he’s already able to move his bicep voluntarily and has feeling as far down as his forearms. Read his amazing story here.

Felix Gretarsson/Instagram

2. Rudy Willingham is making the world a little more delightful with perfectly placed stickers and paper cutouts.

How fun is this?

3. Sarah Cunningham shares how she started giving #FreeMomHugs to people in the LGBTQIA+ community and launched a movement.

Many LGBTQIA+ people aren’t embraced by their families when they come out. Sarah Cunningham’s warm heart offers a beacon of love and hope for Pride month.


4. An anonymous donor whose great-grandfather enslaved people gave a six-figure inheritance to a Black-led nonprofit.

The grad student got a big inheritance on their 25th birthday, and when they found out how the family’s wealth was built, they decided to do something about it. Read the whole story here.

Change Today, Change Tomorrow/Instagram

5. This dad’s unbridled joy—and impressive acrobatics— at his kid’s graduation.

Everyone needs a cheerleader with this much enthusiasm in their lives.

6. A 17-year-old yeeted a mama bear off a wall in her backyard with her bare hands.

The “Oh No” soundtrack and the fact that no parties were seriously harmed make this absolutely wild story a happy one. (But yes, don’t try this at home, kids.)

@bakedlikepie

My cousin Hailey yeeted a bear off her fence today and saved her dogs. How was your Memorial Day?! (WTF?!) #ohno #badass #brave #fight #bear

7. A reporter was doing a story on animal shelters and got adopted by the sweetest doggo ever.

How could anyone say no to this? Is there a heart melting emoji?

8. Speaking of dogs, Tornado the service dog is making a huge difference in this 5-year-old autistic boy’s life—and his mother’s.

Dogs really can be incredible friends to humans.

9. When a neighbor sees a need and steps up to meet it unasked, a community thrives.

This neighbor saw kids playing volleyball without a net in an empty lot. So he brought out a net and the neighborhood kids all pitched in to get it set up. Caring community at its best.

@katiedavies71

@willowhope25 #foryoupage #veteran #neighbors

10. Doorbell camera captures kids returning a wallet they found in someone’s driveway.

“I’m just going to put it over here so no one takes any money.” Honesty. Integrity. Helpfulness. Someone has taught these kids so well!

Good things are happening everywhere, all the time—we just need to look for them. Hope this happiness round-up helps you end the week on a positive note!

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Magic Johnson Rips Dennis Schroder For Not Having ‘The Winning Mentality And Attitude That We Need’

Magic Johnson is making the rounds following the Los Angeles Lakers’ ouster from the 2021 NBA playoffs. Johnson, in a tweet sent on Friday afternoon, stressed that former front office colleague Rob Pelinka needs to do some serious work to get the team back to a championship level during the upcoming offseason.

Now, his attention is on one member of the organization who is an upcoming free agent. In a radio interview, Johnson remarked upon the play of point guard Dennis Schroder, saying that while he will root for him if he comes back to the team, Johnson believes that the German guard’s mentality is not a fit in L.A.

“Schroder, I don’t think he’s a Laker, and that’s just my opinion — I don’t know if they’re gonna sign him back or not,” Johnson said. “I don’t think he brings the winning mentality and attitude that we need, and he had a chance to show that in this series, and to me, he failed in this series. But, again, if he comes back a Laker, I’ma support him, I’ma cheer for him, and all that. But I just don’t think he’s a Laker.”

Schroder struggled in the Lakers’ first-round loss to the Suns, averaging 14.3 points, three rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game while connecting on 40 percent of his shots and 30.8 percent of his threes. Included in these struggles were a zero-point outing in Game 5. Of course, the argument can be made that Schroder, while a nice player, never should have been relied upon to be the savior of the Lakers’ season after Anthony Davis got hurt, and that he is a useful player in the correct role. But Johnson, despite his lack of a formal title in L.A., carries a lot of sway with the organization, so it’s fair to wonder what him speaking out might mean for Schroder’s future with the team.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Trump-Loving, Self-Described ‘Proud Islamophobe’ Laura Loomer Crashed Jack Dorsey’s Speech At A Bitcoin Conference To Protest Twitter ‘Censorship’

Bitcoin is the talk of Miami this weekend at a big conference that’s seeing plenty of attention in the tech and cryptocurrency world. But a talk from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was derailed on Friday by a Trump-loving troll with a troubled history with the social media network.

Laura Loomer, an alt-right activist with a long history of using Twitter to abuse others until she was banned from the platform in 2018, interrupted Dorsey’s talk at Bitcoin 2021 to protest what she’s described as censorship on the social media platform. Dorsey, the Twitter CEO, was speaking in favor of Bitcoin when the talk was interrupted by a woman shouting. She had to be stopped by security, but not before causing a stir.

That “lady,” as it turns out, was Loomer. The alt-right activist is no stranger to attention-grabbing protests. She famously once chained herself to Twitter headquarters to protest her ban from the platform, which came as a result of violating Twitter’s rules in a series of false attacks against Ilhan Omar, a Muslim member of congress.

When Dorsey did get to speak, though, he certainly talked a big game about the future of currency when it comes to Bitcoin, saying it “changes absolutely everything” and called for an end to banking in favor of the growing crypto market.

It’s unclear if this will help her overturn her Twitter ban, but as of Friday she’s certainly in interesting company when it comes to deplatforming.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Trans kids were seeking treatment decades before today’s political battles over health care

In 1942, a 17-year-old transgender girl named Lane visited a doctor in her Missouri hometown with her parents. Lane had known that she was a girl from a very young age, but fights with her parents over her transness had made it difficult for her to live comfortably and openly during her childhood. She had dropped out of high school and she was determined to get out of Missouri as soon as she was old enough to pursue a career as a dancer.

The doctor reportedly found “a large portion of circulating female hormone” in her body during his examination and suggested to Lane’s parents that he undertake an exploratory laparotomy – a surgery in which he would probe her internal organs in order to find out more about her endocrine system. But the appointment ended abruptly after her father refused the surgery, feeling “the doctor did not know what he was talking about.”

I first encountered Lane’s story buried among the papers of an endocrinologist, but her brief encounter with a doctor during her teenage years was typical of many transgender children like her in the early to mid-20th century. These stories form a key thread of the first several chapters of my book, “Histories of the Transgender Child,” and they point to the tremendous obstacles these kids faced in a world where the word “transgender” didn’t even exist.


The living laboratories of gender

In the first half of the 20th century there was nothing like today’s gender-affirming pediatric care model, which involves building a social support network and can include treatments like hormone blockers. Doctors simply did not allow trans patients to transition.

That doesn’t mean doctors and researchers weren’t interested in seeing children like Lane as patients. But instead of supporting their wishes and hopes, doctors tended to see them as canvases for experimentation – to see how their growing bodies responded to various surgeries or hormonal cocktails. In my research I tracked several decades of this kind of medical research, beginning in the early 20th century at research hospitals like the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

In fact, medical researchers were particularly interested in treating still-developing LGBTQ youths as a way to refine their techniques for forcing a binary sex on intersex children or carrying out conversion therapy – which aims to coerce a heterosexual or gender-confirming behavioral outcome – on gay children.

In this climate, Lane’s father may have unwittingly saved her from a harmful attempt at “corrective” surgery or hormones to try to prevent her from being trans. Even though Lane left home at age 18 to live as a woman, she would have to wait over a decade before finally obtaining access to hormones and surgery in the mid-1950s.

Trans childhoods before trans medicine

The struggles of trans children in the era before modern transgender medicine show not just how trans youths are far from a new phenomenon, but also how tenacious and forward-thinking they were compared with their parents and doctors.

Two stories of other trans people like Lane show how clinicians’ refusal to let them transition never stopped them from being trans. Both of them found their way to the Johns Hopkins Hospital, which, during the first seven decades of the 20th century, was widely regarded as the one institution in the U.S. for people with questions about their sex and gender.

When psychologists at Johns Hopkins interviewed a retired trans woman from the Midwest in 1954, she told them about her childhood in the 1890s. Even then, without any concept or term for being trans, this woman – by then in her 60s – told them it was obvious to her that she was a girl.

“I wanted a doll and buggy very much,” she reminisced of her intense attachment to the toys given only to girls. While her wish to be a girl never waned, her life had never afforded her the opportunity to transition to living full time as a woman until she retired.

Five years later, the clinicians at Johns Hopkins met a trans man who was then in his 30s. He had come to them seeking top and bottom surgery. Growing up in rural upstate New York in the 1930s, he had been forced to drop out of school “because of the excruciating sense of embarrassment at being obliged to wear girls’ clothes.”

Unlike the trans woman from the Midwest, this trans man, as a teenager, found a path to living openly as a boy: manual labor at a lumber mill. By working in a men’s profession and proving his masculinity through showcasing his strength, his presentation as a boy was embraced by his community. Decades later, he sought out the doctors at Hopkins only to confirm what had long been true in his life: that he was a man.

Growing up despite every obstacle

Each of these three children – like the countless more from this early 20th-century era – had to wait until adulthood to finally transition.

Yet the failure of doctors and other gatekeepers to stop them from transitioning as children, and their inability to access any form of gender-affirming medical treatment, hardly prevented them from being trans or growing up to be trans adults.

This is all the more remarkable given that before the 1950s, very few Americans had access to any concept or information about trans life. While small communities of adult trans people are evident as far back as the turn of the 20th century, most children would not have had access to these discreet social worlds, which tended to exist in major cities like New York and San Francisco. Without any media to supposedly influence them and without role models, these remarkable young people were able to stay true their inner feelings en route to living trans lives.

They’re a reminder that conversion therapy, attempts to suppress or limit transness and gatekeeping through legislation don’t work.

They didn’t work a century ago and they won’t work today.

Jules Gill-Peterson is an Associate Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at University of Pittsburgh.

This article first appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.