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This summer, there was apparently a bidding war between streaming platforms to obtain the rights to an Ariana Grande film about her Sweetener tour. Sure enough, those rumors were confirmed yesterday when Grande and Netflix announced that Excuse Me, I Love You would start streaming on the platform on December 21. Ahead of then, a trailer for the movie has been shared.

The Netflix synopsis of the film reads, “Ariana Grande takes the stage in London for her Sweetener World Tour and shares a behind-the-scenes look at her life in rehearsal and on the road.” Indeed, Excuse Me, I Love You appears to be part concert film and part tour documentary. In addition to footage from on stage, the trailer also includes behind-the-scenes clips of Grande spending time with her mother and having emotional moments with her touring crew.

All in all, Grande has done a tremendous job at putting a bow on the last two months of an awful year. Positions became her fifth No. 1 album, she’s launching an animal rescue center, she just had a new single with Mariah Carey (in addition to appearing in her holiday special), and she broke a big Spotify record.

Watch the Excuse Me, I Love You trailer above.

Natalie Portman made her acting debut at 12 with The Professional in 1994 and Beautiful Girls in 1996. Both films featured Portman’s characters having controversial and complicated romantic feelings towards an older man, which made her keenly aware at the time that she was starting to be portrayed as a “Lolita” figure. While appearing on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, Portman opened up about how she didn’t feel safe during her years as a teen actress and made conscious decisions to avoid being preyed upon by older men. Via People:

“Being sexualized as a child, I think took away from my own sexuality because it made me afraid and it made me like the way I could be safe was to be like, ‘I’m conservative,’ and ‘I’m serious and you should respect me,’ and ‘I’m smart,’ and ‘don’t look at me that way.’”

As part of more “conservative” approach to her career, Portman steered clear of the usual teenage fare. “When I was in my teens I was like, ‘I don’t wanna have any love scenes or make-out scenes,’” she told Shepard. “I would start choosing parts that were less sexy because it made me worried about the way I was perceived and how safe I felt.” However, Portman stands by her choices because her defense mechanism ultimately “worked out” and kept her safe.

Portman’s heightened awareness clearly worked with Moby, who made claims in his 2019 memoir that he had a romantic encounter with Portman leading the actress to put the musician on blast for his “creepy” behavior. “I was surprised to hear that he characterized the very short time that I knew him as dating because my recollection is a much older man being creepy with me when I just had graduated high school,” Portman told Harper’s Bazaar. “He was on tour and I was working, shooting a film, so we only hung out a handful of times before I realized that this was an older man who was interested in me in a way that felt inappropriate.”

(Via Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard)

We’re still in a pandemic, during which many in Trump’s inner circle have contracted coronavirus and even bragged about their “celebrity” treatment of the disease. Yet what happens when one approaches MAGA-apparel wearing ladies, who are asked to explain why they won’t wear masks? Clearly, they’re not interested in the fact that masks work best by shutting off the two-way street of droplet spread. They’re largely meant to protect others, and in turn, others should wear masks to protect you.

As comedy duo The Good Liars found out (via Raw Story), though, two particular Trump supporters swear they won’t ever wear masks, and they have a surprisingly hippy-dippy reason for their stance. “We don’t have the vibrational frequency to host the virus,” one woman explained. “So, if you don’t have that vibrational frequency right here, you’re not gonna get it.” Her friend proudly added, “And I taught her that!”

The first woman wasn’t done yet. “Did you know that everything in this universe vibrates? And is alive, and there is life with that?” The second lady chimed in, “I don’t put life into COVID. I’m not gonna wear a mask. Ever.”

2021 (and widespread vaccination) truly cannot come soon enough. Fortunately, Biden’s first course of action as president will be to disinfect the White House and ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days. No word on how that will go with the MAGA crowd, but I suspect that it won’t go well at all.

Paul George is not going to hit free agency at the end of the 2020-21 NBA season. While the Los Angeles Clippers’ All-Star wing had the potential to decline a player option for next year, Adrian Wojnarowski brings word that George and the Clippers came to terms on a four-year max extension that could keep him in Los Angeles for the next five seasons.

According to George’s agent, the deal tacks another $190 million onto his already-existing contract. It also features a player option should George decide to part ways with the team prior to the 2024-25 campaign.

The Clippers also announced the news in a release.

George came to Los Angeles following one season in Oklahoma City. He was expected to play a major role alongside Kawhi Leonard in helping the Clippers get over the hump and compete for an NBA championship, but the team came up short, blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Semifinals. On the season, George averaged 21.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.4 steals in 29.6 minutes per game.

There is major intrigue around the Clippers heading into this season for a handful of reasons — the way last year ended, the rumblings of major discord in the locker room over the treatment of George and Leonard, etc. This news, though, indicates that the potential that George could hit free agency at the end of the year is now off the table heading into the season.

Since rising to fame, Lizzo has become an inspiration in the body positivity movement. She’s known for her feel-good lyrics and optimistic outlook, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy every day. Like everyone else, Lizzo has days where she’s struggling to keep her mental health in check. In a recent video, the singer got real about how negative comments can affect her body image in order to let fans experiencing the same know that they’re not alone.

Sharing a video on TikTok, Lizzo opened up about how hard it can be to not believe hateful comments about her body — and she doesn’t always have an answer:

“I came home and took my clothes off to take a shower. And I just started having all these really negative thoughts about myself like, ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe all the mean things people say about me are true. Why am I so disgusting?’ And hating my body. Normally, I’d have something positive to say to get me out of this, but I don’t — and that’s okay too. I think these are normal, they happen to everybody, they happen to the best of us. We are the best of us and I just have to know that tomorrow how I feel in here is going to change and I can only hope that it changes for the better. But I know I’m beautiful, I just don’t feel it, but I know I’m going to get through it.”

This isn’t the first time Lizzo has opened up about how fame has affected her mental health. “Fame only puts a magnifying glass on the sh*t that you already have,” Lizzo said in a previous TikTok video. “If that sh*t is f*cked up, you’re just going to have even more magnified f*cked up sh*t situations where it doesn’t even seem valid or like you’re even like supposed to feel that way so it f*cks you up even more because you feel super f*cking ungrateful.”

Watch Lizzo’s honest TikTok video above.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Compton dance-hop upstart Channel Tres has released his third EP, I Can’t Go Outside, a day early after announcing its intended release date, December 11, earlier this week. The seven-track EP features guest appearances from Tinashe and Tyler The Creator, the latter appearing on the track “Fuego,” which Tres broke out as a single today as well.

Featuring a typically uptempo beat and deadpan verses from Tres and Tyler, “Fuego” serves a double purpose in addition to its lewd dancefloor come-ons. Speaking to Apple Music about the collaboration, Tres explained, “‘fuego’ was the first song I wrote when I started the project. It was just really about me questioning my art, like, ‘Yo, it ain’t that bad. Why are you scared of this shit?’… So, that’s just me questioning myself as an artist and why am I doing it and stuff like that. And then, Tyler comes in and just kind of shuts up all my doubt. He definitely blessed me with that verse, for sure.”

“Fuego” is the two artists’ second outing as a collective, after Tres remixed Tyler’s “Earfquake” into a techno bop. Tres can also be found on Disclosure’s new album, Energy.

Listen to “Fuego” above. I Can’t Go Outside is out now. Get it here.

President-elect Joe Biden, like any new homeowner, wants to make sure he walks through those White House doors to a clean, tidy home. But, unlike virtually every incoming president in our nation’s history, he’s having to go the extra mile to make sure his family and his staff don’t catch a deadly virus from the outgoing commander-in-chief.

A spokesperson for the General Services Administration told Politico that Biden plans to disinfect and sanitize every inch of the White House before letting his staff enter following his inauguration. This comes after a large number of Trump’s inner circle — which includes lawyer Rudy Giuliani — have fallen ill with COVID-19. Trump continues to host maskless events at the White House while trying to argue the results of the presidential election in court, with no success. But Biden isn’t taking any chances.

A team deployed by the General Services Administration has plans to sweep all surfaces of the East and West Wings of the White House, cleaning every piece of furniture, doorknobs, handles, locks, and any other surface human hands have touched. In addition, the Biden administration has hired a private contractor who will employ “disinfectant misting services” to rid the air of any lingering droplets. Biden plans to take other precautions as well: he’ll be working with a skeleton staff on-site while many in his circle continue to work from home, and Biden plans for everyone working indoors at the White House to wear a mask.

Still, the image of guys in hazmat suits having to clean up after Trump and his family leave is a stark reminder of how miserably the current administration has failed to contain the pandemic.

(Via Politico)

Long one of the best tight end in the NFL, Travis Kelce has been at the core of the the league’s best offense with the Kansas City Chiefs for three years running. Up to this point, though, he had never earned the top honor in the virtual NFL world.

That honor, of course, is the “99 Club,” the shortlist of NFL athletes who have a perfect 99 rating in Madden.

The All-Pro finally saw his stats improve this week and joined the 99 Club, where he was greeted by another member: Chiefs teammate and 2018 NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes.

Earlier in the season, it was Kelce, not yet a member himself, who announced to Mahomes that he was in select company as a 99-rated quarterback. The QB returned the favor to one of his favorite targets in a video released by Madden on Thursday.

Through 12 games this season, Kelce has recorded 82 receptions for 1,114 yards and eight touchdowns as the Chiefs have run out to the best record in football. In its announcement, the game makers said “Madden Ratings Adjustors took note of improvements in pass catching and run blocking and shifted his overall rating up to a 99.”

Kelce becomes just the third-ever Chief to join the 99 Club, alongside Mahomes and former Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez.

Jpegmafia returned after a few quiet months in November with a new EP titled, fittingly, EP! The eight-track project features each of his previously released, exclamatory singles from 2020, including “Bald!” “Covered In Money!” and “Bodyguard!” Now, he’s preparing to release a sequel, EP2!, with “Super Tuesday!” Featuring a stripped-down instrumental and a non-stop barrage of witty, wordplay-packed bars dissing Donald Trump, “Super Tuesday!” landed on YouTube with only a warning from the rapper that he’s working on a new EP. Whether he’ll see increased promotion for the project from EQT Recordings thanks to its new deal with Republic Records remains to be seen.

Still, EQT’s deal makes for a big win for the Bandcamp favorite, who broke out in 2018 with his sophomore project Veteran and gained an even bigger following the next year with All My Heroes Are Cornballs and his spot on Vince Staples’ Smile, You’re On Camera tour. He also produced “3 Tearz” featuring Run The Jewels on Danny Brown’s Uknowwhatimsayin? album, as well as IDK’s “Hello, Pt. 4” freestyle before embarking on his run of standout, self-produced quarantine music videos. “Cutie Pie!” “The Bends!” the “Bald! (Remix),” and “Last Dance!” can all be found on EP!, while Peggy also guests on Gorillaz’s Song Machine.

Listen to “Super Tuesday!” above.

Will Ferrell and (most of) the cast of Elf are reuniting for live virtual table read to help Georgia Democrats in the upcoming senate runoff election. Considering the 2003 film has become a holiday staple, if not an outright Christmas classic, the timing of the reunion couldn’t be more perfect. Zooey Deschanel announced the news on Twitter Tuesday night.

“If I were any more excited to be in the #ElfForGeorgia reunion I might explode into a burst of snowflakes,” Deschanel tweeted. “Join me, Will Ferrell, and many other amazing people from the original cast along with some special guests for our live reading! All donations go to support GA dems.”

You can see Deschanel’s tweet below along with a secure link to tickets:

The live table read will take place on Sunday, December 13 at 4 PM EST, and almost the entire cast of Elf will be there along with some special guests. Via ElfReunion.com:

Featuring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart, Edward Asner, Mary Steenburgen, Amy Sedaris, Andy Richter, Kyle Gass, John Lithgow, Danny Woodburn, Jon Favreau*, Ed Helms, Busy Phillips, and Matt Walsh. Hosted by Ashley Nicole Black.

*Pod Save America’s Favreau

Notably absent is Elf director Jon Favreau and actor James Caan. While the two could easily be busy with other projects, Caan revealed back in September that an Elf sequel never happened because Ferrell and Favreau didn’t get along. According to Caan, Ferrell was on board with returning as Buddy the Elf, but he wanted a different director, which wasn’t possible due to Favreau’s contract. “It was one of those things,” Caan said while lamenting the loss of what he hoped would be a franchise.

(Via Zooey Deschanel on Twitter)