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Yesterday (May 23) marked the tenth anniversary of Lady Gaga’s iconic 2011 album Born This Way. She enjoyed quite the celebration: The City of West Hollywood declared May 23 to be “Born This Way Day” and presented Gaga with a key to the city in a public ceremony.

Accepting the honor from West Hollywood mayor Lindsey P. Horvath, Gaga (who was sporting a new dark-haired look) said, “Thank you for this key, you’ve been… I’m sure this will sound cheesy to some people, not to me, but you’ve been the motherf*cking key to my heart for a long time. I’ll honor this, I’ll cherish this, and I promise that I’ll always be here for this day.”

Following the ceremony, Gaga also posted on social media, writing of Born This Way, “Born This Way, my song and album, were inspired by Carl Bean, a gay black religious activist who preached, sung and wrote about being ‘Born This Way.’ Notably his early work was in 1975, 11 years before I was born. Thank you for decades of relentless love, bravery, and a reason to sing. So we can all feel joy, because we deserve joy. Because we deserve the right to inspire tolerance, acceptance, and freedom for all.”

Lady Gaga has been back in the US for a few weeks now after she finished filming House Of Gucci.

Like sweaty father, like weirdly intense son.

Rudy Giuliani’s offspring, Andrew, is running for governor for New York in an attempt to unseat Andrew Cuomo, despite being dubbed the “failson-in-chief” and never holding elected office (“Golf” is listed higher than “Political Career” on his Wikipedia). His credentials include serving as Donald Trump’s special assistant in the White House and his “five decades in politics” (he’s 35 years old).

“It’s time for change, like my parents before me. New York is in my blood. I’ve been raised from New York. I know who we are, what we can be and where we need to go,” Giuliani said in his first campaign video. “It’s time to stand and honor the great heroes of New York. The greatest chapters of New York are yet to be written. And as your governor, let’s write the greatest comeback story ever. It’s time to bring back New York.”

Giuliani is trying to be inspiring — so why does he look so angry in the video?

At least there’s no mysterious black ooze pouring down his face. Anyway, it’s probably not a great sign for Giuliani’s political ambitions that everyone’s first thought after seeing… whatever that was… is, “Is that Will Ferrell?”

It’s easy to laugh at Andrew Giuliani (I’m doing it right now!), but as John Oliver pointed out during Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, we can’t entirely dismiss him. “Yes, Andrew Giuliani is ridiculous. All these candidates are ridiculous. But if the last years have taught us anything, it’s that ridiculous people can end up getting elected,” he said.

Despite the fact that Spiral: From the Book of Saw is being critically panned and failed to hit its modest box office projections even with the star power of Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson, the attempt at reviving the horror series still managed to pull off a notable feat over the weekend. The Saw franchise now has a total worldwide box office of over $1 billion. Via Variety:

It’s a significant achievement because the “Saw” movies carry modest production budgets — ranging from $1 million to $20 million — making profit margins all the sweeter. Even more notable, the “Saw” films aren’t particularly well received among critics or audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the nine films usually generate an average around 30%, while its CinemaScore rating from moviegoers tends to range between “B” and “C” grades.

Like most movies just making their way to theaters, Spiral: From the Book of Saw was supposed to be out over a year ago, but saw it’s release date pushed back because of the pandemic. However, Chris Rock has done his part to keep the movie in headlines thanks to his star power and his plans to revive the franchise by adding the one thing he’s best at: comedy.

“I love Saw, but I was like ‘wow, it has almost no humor at all.’ So, it seemed like a good place … good fertile ground,” Rock told IGN. “It’s still Saw … it’s bloody, it’s gory, but there’s like a sprinkling of humor here and there. We’re not revamping it, it’s not Scary Movie, it’s Saw.”

(Via Variety)

It’s impossible to list Seth Rogen’s credits without including “stoner.” Try it. “Actor, writer, director Seth Rogen” doesn’t sound right. But “actor, writer, director, stoner Seth Rogen,” now that’s more like it. The same rule applies for “rapper and stoner Snoop Dogg,” so the weed enthusiast’s pasts were fated to cross. And they have, multiple times.

In his memoir, Yearbook, Rogen recounts the first time that he met the rapper born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr. He reached out to Snoop to ask if he could perform “Take To Panties Off,” the song sung by Craig Robinson in This Is the End. Snoop agreed. “I arrived at the studio, and soon after, Snoop comes in with, like, four or five people, one of whom is a blunt roller, as in someone whose only job is to roll blunts,” Rogen wrote. Snoop only expected to provide the hook, but when Rogen asked if he could rap a verse too, the rapper thought about it for a moment and replied, “Bring in the hoes.”

From the Daily Beast:

The guy left, and within thirty seconds he returned with five or six women who were very much dressed like strippers at the start of a routine. The producer blasted the beat, and the women danced and drank while Snoop wrote a rap verse on his BlackBerry.

Twenty minutes later, with the verse written, “the hoes” left. “Where were the hoes up till that point? We were not in a big building, and I hadn’t seen them before that moment,” Rogen wondered, but looking back on the encounter, his biggest question now is: “Why have I been saying ‘hoes’ this whole time? I definitely shouldn’t do that.”

You can purchase a copy of Yearbook here.

(Via the Daily Beast)

Machine Gun Kelly and Megan Fox have been dating for a while now and they seem to be having a delightful time with each other. Their relationship has been one to behold for outside observers as well. The things the pair say and do have certainly gotten eyeballs focused on them as a couple, and they added to their eyebrow-raising story this weekend at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards.

Ahead of the show, Kelly went for a surprising (or perhaps not) stylistic choice and decided to paint his tongue black, sharing clips of the process on his Instagram Story (as BuzzFeed notes). Later on, Kelly and Fox showed up on the red carpet and decided to really draw attention to Kelly’s look by packing on some tongue-heavy PDA.

When it came to the actual ceremony, Kelly did quite well. He was nominated in three categories and came away with two wins: Top Rock Artist and Top Rock Album (for Tickets To My Downfall). After getting the win, he took to his Instagram Story to celebrate by sharing a video of himself holding one of his trophies… in a bathroom, as Fox exited a stall behind him and was seemingly surprised to discover she was being filmed.

Check out the full list of 2021 Billboard Music Awards winners here.

Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige recently got roasted for marveling at the beauty of shooting outdoors when it came to Oscar winning director Chloé Zhao’s approach to The Eternals. Now, it’s rather easy to see why Feige was taken aback after over a decade of green-screening movies: this movie looks unlike any other Marvel Cinematic Universe project that we’ve ever seen. This film shall be Phase Four’s third movie — following Black Widow and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — but it will be the first in which we’ll not only see a ripped Kumail Nanjiani but another very important thing.

The Eternals, of course is the first MCU movie for which the director, in Feige’s words (to Variety), stood firm in “fighting for practical locations,” which he dubbed her “signature style.” Well, we’re finally getting a look at that style, and it’s remarkable to behold (those are honest-to-god beach shots, and that’s absurdly unusual in 2021) even in teaser form. Also, there’s a brand new (old) batch of immortal superheroes, who are (via the synopsis) “forced out of the shadows to reunite against mankind’s oldest enemy, The Deviants” in what ends up being a story that spans thousands of years.

The ensemble cast brings more A-list names into the MCU, too. There’s Richard Madden as the omnipotent Ikaris; Angelina Jolie as the intense warrior Thena; Kumail Nanjiani as cosmically-inclined Kingo; Salma Hayek as spiritual leader Ajak; Brian Tyree Henry as the innovative Phastos; and Kit Harington playing a guy named Dane Whitman (who’s also known as the Black Knight). The film also stars Gemma Chan, Lauren Ridloff, Lia McHugh, Don Lee, and Barry Keoghan.

When it comes to The Eternals, one interesting matter to note is that Thanos, the genocidal villain from the final two Infinity Saga movies, is actually linked in lineage to The Eternals. That might not mean much in the grand scheme of Phase Four, but it’s amusing that Thanos’ nickname, the Mad Titan, in fact refers to him belonging to the Titan species, which makes him, yeah, a relative. Will Thanos even get a mention in The Eternals? We’ve seen no clues yet in that direction, although Feige remains unparalleled at weaving mythology together in ways that make sense, years later (see WandaVision), so we’ll probably see some sort of dot-connecting, eventually.

The Eternals will arrive in theaters on November 5. Here’s a cosmos-filled poster, too.

SPOILERS for Fear The Walking Dead will be found below.

This week’s episode of Fear the Walking Dead is interesting on a number of levels. The title of the episode is “Mother,” which essentially refers to the mother of three characters: Teddy, Dakota, and most tellingly, Alicia. Alicia’s mother, of course, is Madison Clark, who was presumably killed off in the fourth mid-season finale, but that hasn’t prevented fans of the series from fueling rumors of her return, which is speculation that the showrunners have been happy to keep alive.

In this week’s episode, Teddy decides to take Alicia on a trip, ostensibly to pick up the corpse of his own mother, with whom Teddy seems to have a very deranged relationship. Teddy is also using the trip as an opportunity to try and convert Alicia to his cause, which is the destruction of everything and something that Teddy has long believed to be a requirement for a “new beginning.” In fact, in the episode’s cold open, we see Teddy in a prison cell, pre-apocalypse, hours away from his execution. However, the timing of the zombie apocalypse, which spares Teddy from death, only emboldens Teddy’s beliefs. As this episode further reveals, Teddy is a seriously mad man.

After picking up the corpse of what we are initially led to believe is his long-dead mother (and kissing it on the mouth), Teddy heads to another destination with Alicia and Dakota, who has joined Teddy’s cult in an effort to help Alicia escape. Later in the episode, however, Dakota actually turns on Alicia because she decides that she’s genuinely into the beliefs espoused by Teddy and his cult. Before then, however, the truck that Teddy is driving blows a tire, and Teddy, Alicia, and Dakota encounter Cole, an old friend from their Dell Diamond Stadium days. Even in the biggest state in the nation, it’s apparently a very small world because every week it seems, Fear characters somehow manage to randomly encounter someone new from their past.

Cole reiterates a number of times to Alicia how appreciative she is to her mother, Madison, for saving his life (and those of several other Dell Diamonders). However, Cole also soon reveals that he and the others have turned to the dark side, so to speak. They kill anyone they encounter and take all of their supplies. This is obviously hugely upsetting to Alicia, who now realizes that — at least as far as Cole and his people are concerned — Madison’s sacrifice was all for naught.

For the curious, it should also be noted that, though Madison’s name is mentioned several times in this episode, we are given no indication that she’s still alive. Then again, no one technically mentions that they saw her corpse, either. But if she were alive, one would imagine that Cole and the others from the stadium would know it. Still, the showrunners seem all too willing to allow that possibility to continue to dangle.

In either respect, Cole’s appearance — like Morales on The Walking Dead — ends up being something of a non-factor. They killed Cole and his people before they can kill Alicia, Dakota, and Teddy, which means that Fear brought Cole back only long enough to dispatch with him. The point, however, is to illustrate to Alicia that her mother’s sacrifice was meaningless.

However, the fact that Alicia isn’t completely dispirited by this revelation is the real crux of the episode. Teddy values Alicia’s hope for the future, despite what she learned about Cole. In fact, he values it so much that he essentially wants to bottle it up and use it to seed his “new beginning.” Teddy admits to Alicia that his plan is to drop a nuclear bomb on the area to destroy it and use Alicia’s hope to fuel his new world.

Teddy — who again is hilariously unhinged and depicted fabulously by John Glover — decides to lock Alicia in some kind of nuclear fall-out shelter, where she will remain for several years until it is safe to come out after he drops his bomb. “You are going to rebuild the world from within there,” Teddy tells Alicia. “Good luck.”

“You lock me in here, and I’m not going to make the world the way you want it to be!” Alicia screams.

“I know,” Teddy replies as he walks away. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

What’s interesting here, however, is what showrunner Ian Goldberg had to say in the behind-the-scenes featurette after the episode. “We’re going to have to see as we go into next season,” he says, “whether [Alicia] ends up doing what Teddy asks her to do or whether she forges a path entirely on her own.” The implication here is that Teddy will be successful in his plan to drop a bomb. Alicia will have to pick up the pieces in the seventh season after the destruction and, presumably, a big time-jump, one large enough to possibly align Fear the Walking Dead with the same timeline as the final season of The Walking Dead and possibly the Rick Grimes’ movie.

What we don’t know, however, is who else from this season of Fear the Walking Dead will also survive? Alicia may be Teddy’s choice to usher in the new beginning, but she won’t be able to do it on her own. She’ll need others to pass that hope onto. In the meantime, we may not see Alicia again in the final two episodes of this season.

Speaking of which, after a one-week hiatus, Fear will return in two weeks with the penultimate episode of the season, which might prove to be less about preventing the attack and more about finding safety from it.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC.

Over the past month or so, Justin Bieber had been sporting a different hairstyle than usual, as he had put his hair in locs. Given that the hairstyle has cultural and historical significance for Black people, Bieber faced accusations of cultural appropriation. Bieber hasn’t addressed any of those allegations, but now he has offered the closest thing he has to a response: He got rid of the locs and buzzed his hair down to a much shorter style.

A TMZ video shows Bieber (debuting the buzz cut) and wife Hailey Bieber out in West Hollywood over the weekend. As they got into a car, the person behind the camera complimented Bieber on the cut, asked what inspired the change, and asked if it had anything to do with criticism he faced over his previous hairstyle. Bieber was silent and did not acknowledge the questioner before leaving.

Furthermore, Bieber also shared a photo of himself on Instagram with his new buzzed look. He also took to his Instagram Story and posted another photo of his fresh haircut.

Meanwhile, also earlier this month, Bieber unveiled dates for his rescheduled Justice World Tour, which will include 52 dates spanning from February to June in 2022.

Four years ago, Last Week Tonight warned viewers of the far-right empire, Sinclair Broadcast Group, that was taking over local news. That phenomenon resulted in trusted local news anchors being made to recite scripted right-wing rhetoric, and this is still happening at stations across the United States. Meanwhile, host John Oliver would like to inform everyone about more shenanigans that are possibly going down with your local news stations: sponsored content that can include fake-fake-fake medical products.

In order to explore how pervasive this content really is, Oliver invented a line of sexual wellness products, led foremost by the “world’s first sexual wellness blanket” (called the “Venus Veil”). It’s not a real product (and it kind-of looks like home insulation), but more details can be found at a real website (VenusInventions.com), and he did all of this to illustrate how easy (and relatively cheap) it is to buy time to advertise products like this on the local news while claiming that these are medical products. Yep, this happens with other products that are likely more dangerous than a sexy blanket, but he managed to buy airtime for $7,200 (total) on local stations in Denver, Austin, and Utah.

From there, Oliver hired an actress to make all kinds of wild claims about this sexy blanket, which promises to “fix erectile issues and improve vaginal lubrication” through “magnetogenetics” (apparently invented in Germany in the 1940s, so basically, this can be blamed on the Nazis) and even better (supposedly), this can be done “confidentially” by the blanket. It all sounds perfectly absurd, but yup, this rhetoric ended up on local news in multiple U.S. communities.

The danger here, of course is that, in the words of John Oliver, “the integrity of local news is crucially important. There is real harm for everyone if that integrity is damaged.” To that end, he would like to know (of these station owners), “The f*ck are you doing?” That’s a very fair question.

The Portland Trail Blazers were the first of three Western Conference road teams to pick up wins in Game 1 of the NBA Playoffs, as they went into Denver and pulled away late to a 123-109 victory.

The focus for the Blazers was pretty obvious: Let Nikola Jokic score all he wants, but don’t allow him to orchestrate the Denver offense to where everyone else gets in a rhythm. That’s when Denver is at their best and most dangerous, and the result was a monster 34-point, 16-rebound game from Jokic, but he had just one assist. Michael Porter Jr. did his best, pitching in 25 points and nine boards, but no one else really got involved to the point of making a major difference and the result was an inability to stay in touch with Portland’s offensive onslaught.

Damian Lillard had 34 points of his own to match Jokic, with CJ McCollum adding 21, Carmelo Anthony catching fire early to get to 18, and overall six Blazers finished the night in double figures. It’ll be interesting to see how Denver adjusts on both ends, as they struggled to contain the Portland backcourt and need to figure out how to better work as a team offensively, because as we saw in the opener, as great as Jokic and MPJ are, they can’t be effectively going it alone.

From a betting perspective, Game 1 went Over the total and Portland covered with the big win.

Game 2 TV Info

Tip Time: Monday, May 24; 10:00 p.m. ET
TV Network: TNT

Game 2 Betting Lines (via DraftKings Sportsbook)

Series Prices: Blazers (-295), Nuggets (+230)
Spread: Nuggets -1.5 (-113), Blazers +1.5 (-108)
Total: Over 227 (-112), Under 227 (-109)
Money Line: Nuggets (-122), Blazers (+102)