Month: August 2022

Back in March, during arguably the most shocking Oscars ceremony in its 94-year history, something very nice happened: Troy Kotsur, a supporting player in the Best Picture-winning CODA, became the first deaf man to score an Academy Award for acting. (Marlee Matlin was the first deaf person to win such an honor back in 1987.) He’s since gotten some more work, including the lead on a Disney+ show about a deaf football team. He also, alas, came awfully close to literally losing his trophy.

As per Deadline, Kotsur was being honored in his hometown of Mesa, Arizona when a vandal absconded with his jeep. The actor had brought his trophy with him to the ceremony, but it was in the vehicle at the time. Police were able to track down the jeep and return it, and his Oscar, to him.

Kotsur initially tweeted about the incident, claiming a “little kid” had taken off with his jeep. He also posted a picture of him alongside the officers, whom he thanked. Kotsur later deleted the tweet from his feed, leaving only reports of the ceremony honoring his milestone.

Kotsur was one of the first wins at this year’s Academy Awards, which bestowed him with the trophy for Best Supporting Actor, beating out Ciarán Hinds in Belfast, J.K. Simmons in Being the Ricardos, and Jesse Plemons and Kodi Smit-McPhee, both from The Power of the Dog. Then a couple hours later, something happened…

(Via Deadline)

At the Gorge Amphitheatre in George, WA, The Chicks performed a rendition of a classic Olivia Newton-John song, following the singer and actress’s death last week. During this stop on their tour in support of their 2020 album, Gaslighter, The group honored the late Newton-John with a performance of one of her signature songs, “Hopelessly Devoted To You.”

“We lost a worldwide sweetheart last week, Olivia Newton-John,” said The Chicks’ lead singer Natalie Maines to the audience. “I thought I was Olivia Newton-John from like [ages] 4 to 12, and then I only wished I was Olivia Newton-John. So we worked up today at soundcheck a little Olivia Newton-John song.”

Newton-John first performed “Hopelessly Devoted To You” in the film adaptation of Grease, where she starred as Sandy Olsson. John Travolta, who starred opposite of Newton-John as Danny Zuko, took to Instagram to honor his Grease co-star.

“My dearest Olivia, you made all of our lives so much better,” Travolta said in a caption. Your impact was incredible. I love you so much. We will see you down the road and we will all be together again. Yours from the moment I saw you and forever!”

Check out The Chicks’ performance of “Hopelessly Devoted To You” above.

Megan Thee Stallion’s new album, Traumazine, just came out this past Friday. It features the already released single “Plan B” and “Sweetest Thing” with Dua Lipa, as well as other collaborations tracks with Latto, Future, Rico Nasty, Jhene Aiko, and more. Megan says she chose the album’s 18 tracks from over 50 recorded songs and fans on social media are already having their way with favorite lyrics from the new songs.

As expected, Megan has been on the promotion warpath for Traumazine, which has already included a stint as the co-host of The Tonight Show alongside Jimmy Fallon on Thursday night. And while she was still in New York City on Friday morning to celebrate the album’s release, she took to the Central Park stage to play two new songs as part of the Good Morning America broadcast: “Hot” and “Pressurelicious.”

“For the first time in out summer concert series, we got a park full of hotties!” Good Morning America’s TJ Holmes said. Megan wasted no time flashing her dance moves while singing “Hot” for the crowd wearing torn fishnet stockings. She greeted the New Yorkers with a cheeky, “Good morning hotties!” and blazed through a bleep-heavy “Pressurelicious” as well.

Watch Megan Thee Stallion perform “Her” in Central Park above and “Pressurelicious” below.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Amid dealing with a stalker ex-husband, as well as another ex-husband claiming that their kids are avoiding her, Britney Spears has been through the wringer in recent months. However, this isn’t stopping her from enjoying her married life to her husband, Sam Asghari, as well as her life free of a conservatorship.

In an Instagram post, which has since been deleted, Spears shared a clip of herself in good spirits, dancing to music.

“In a world where you have the right to use your feet … heart … mouth … eyes … and body… to express yourself however you may !!! Declaration of INDEPENDENCE … for equality and to be equal !!! Not even touching, covering, and holding me against my will for 4 months !!!,” said Spears in a caption. “As Jennifer Lopez once said, ’You look right down that camera and tell every little girl in the world to get loud and never ever back down to giving light to injustice ‘ !!! I’m here to share that freedom is a state of mind !!! GOD BLESS U ALL Psss I shot this today !!!”

Lopez caught wind of the post, and encouraged Spears to “#StayStrong” in a tweet sharing an image of the two.

This coming Friday, Spears is set to release a new version of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” called “Hold Me Closer,” which features John himself. You can pre-save the single here.

Right now, Donald Trump is probably looking back fondly on that time everyone made fun of his golf tournament look. The former president is facing potential jail time over possibly violating the Espionage Act and two other laws following an FBI search of his home at Mar-a-Lago. Agents left the premises with 11 boxes of classified documents, some of which may pertain to nuclear weapons. The search reportedly came after a tip from inside Trumpworld. But who was the mole? Trump’s niece has a good idea.

As per Insider, Mary Trump went on The Dean Obeidallah Show Friday, where she was asked to speculate on who could be the rat within her uncle’s midst. She ruled out some people. “We need to start with who would have access to this stuff,” Mary Trump said. “I don’t think Mark Meadows would have access to it.”

She then turned her attention to someone whose private equity firm received a huge sum from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. “I think we need to look very hard at why Jared [Kushner] got $2 billion,” she said. “We need to look very hard at why he has been so quiet for so many months now.”

She was reluctant, though, to name Kushner himself, saying, “we need to think about who could also be implicated in this that would need as big a play as turning Donald in in order to get out of trouble, or at least to mitigate the trouble they’re in. It sounds like somebody in Jared’s position. I’m not saying it’s Jared, but it could be.”

It’s true, Jared has been quiet since the final days of Trump’s presidency. It’s also been said he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have been trying to distance themselves from her father’s ever-more erratic outbursts. On top of that, Kushner has been known to surround himself with dicey associates, including on his disastrous attempt to reign in the COVID-19 pandemic. All in all, it sounds like one leaky ship down there at the resort where the former president now resides.

(Via Insider)

The first weekend of Premier League action was not short on drama, and Sunday’s game between Tottenham and Chelsea was the wildest of them all.

Chelsea, despite dominating the majority of the game, could only squeeze a point out of the match as Tottenham struck twice with goals out of seemingly nowhere, the final of those coming on a Harry Kane header more than five minutes into stoppage time.

That capped off what was a rather wild game featuring missed chances, missed calls leading to goals, and some altercations on the sidelines between Tottenham manager Antonio Conte and Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel. The two managers got into it after Tottenham’s first goal of the game, which came after what Chelsea felt was a missed foul on Kai Havertz that led to the goal, with Tuchel and Conte bumping chests and having words as the Tottenham manager celebrated the equalizer.

After the final whistle blew, the two went for what everyone assumed would be a tense postgame handshake, but turned into a full blown kerfuffle, with both managers receiving red cards after Tuchel refused to let go of Conte’s hand, pulling him in to go chest-to-chest again and have some words.

It’s as close to an actual coach fight as you’ll get without some actual fisticuffs — which clearly was never in danger of happening as neither coach ever really lifted a hand to possibly hint at escalating things beyond some barking back and forth — and sets the tone for a chippy season between the two rivals.

Ahead of the season premiere of Power Book III: Raising Kanan tonight, Joey Badass spoke with HipHopDX about his role. On the show, Joey plays a drug kingpin named Kadeem “Unique” Mathis.

Joey‘s performance has received much praise, and in the interview, he said he drew from real-life experiences of witnessing drug deals growing up in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn.

“I always been around that stuff, but I never took that path because it was right there,” Joey said. “I wanted to challenge myself to do other things, and then I had good older cousins and family that pushed me to not do that because they were doing it. It would’ve been easy for me to do it, but they wanted to see better for their little cousin and nephew…So it was easy to just kind of pull from those experiences that I’ve had or those observations that I made as a kid.”

Over the years, Joey has built an impressive acting resume, with stints on Mr. Robot, Grown-ish, and Wu-Tang: An American Saga. Elsewhere in the interview, Joey said that acting, to him, comes as easily as making music.

“Acting, in general, comes pretty instinctively to me…just in a way where you kind of go somewhere else. Like on that stage, I gotta go into superstar mode. I’m still here but it’s like a superstar hangover, but when I’m home, it’s a different vibe where I’m chill.”

Season 2 of Power Book III: Raising Kanan premieres tonight at 9 p.m. EST on Starz.

Joey Badass’ newest album, 2000, is out now via Columbia Records. Stream it here.

No one seems to much like Ted Cruz, which may be why he’s so desperate to be loved. He’ll even kiss the ring of a guy who called his wife ugly and claimed his dad helped kill JFK. Now the most-mocked man in Congress has found another way to make the worst people in the world like him: make dumb transphobic jokes about Elizabeth Warren.

Cruz was speaking at a rally in Nevada Saturday when he tried to paint D.C. as a Sodom and Gomorrah of progressive attitudes. “We need courage responding to crazy town,” Cruz told the crowd. “Elizabeth Warren told reporters that a guy came up to her and said, ‘I would have voted for you if only you had a penis.’”

Cruz called Warren’s story — accusing even her own party of rank misogyny — a “lie.” Then he went one step further. “In today’s Democrat [sic] Party, how do we know she doesn’t?” he cracked, earning big applause. He added, “How could you possibly know? ‘My name is Elizabeth. Call me Bob.’”

Later, Cruz called trans swimmer Lia Thomas a “dude,” and said, “He looks like Michael Phelps.”

Cruz’s comments (as well as another transphobic joke he made on Twitter the same day) come as the GOP has resurrected old school homophobia while amplifying their already pronounced transphobia. But again, no one seems to like Ted Cruz, not even the star of his favorite movie, and no one ever buys his weak attempts to act like a tough guy. He even recently had his butt handed to him by Jon Stewart, who showed how little he cares about veterans. Perhaps that’s why he’s reaching for the low-hanging fruit of bigoted jokes.

(Via Raw Story)

With the NBA set to release its schedule sometime in the next week, newsbreakers are starting to learn some tidbits about the league’s plans for its biggest days on the calendar.

We’ve learned that the Lakers will head to San Francisco on the opening night of the season for the Warriors’ ring ceremony, while a couple of Christmas Day contests have been revealed: Lakers-Mavericks and Grizzlies-Warriors.

The latter of those was something that wasn’t just a matchup fans were hoping for, but players on both sides were angling to see after they developed something of a rivalry after their West semis matchup that saw the Warriors come out on top in six games. During that series there was plenty of chirping on both sides, accusations of dirty play, and some really good basketball too, and the league seems to be embracing that budding rivalry in the West by giving it a spot on the biggest day of the NBA calendar.

The two stars of each team that have done the most talking, Ja Morant and Draymond Green, celebrated the news of their Christmas Day showdown on Twitter, feeling like they’d posted this into existence — with Green even offering to open his home to Morant’s family for Christmas dinner.

It’s a cool gesture from Green who clearly enjoys the banter with the young Grizzlies and knows the difference between real beef and some trash talk on the court (and on Twitter). While the Greens and Morants might get together and break bread afterwards, it seems less likely that type of invite will be extended from, say, Klay Thompson to Dillon Brooks.

Rand Paul hates government so much he got a job working inside it. The Republican senator, outspoken libertarian, and frequent Dr. Fauci punching bag is notorious for standing up to laws that may actually help people — unless they’re for his constituents, in which case he’s all for them. Now he’s conveniently come out against the very law that might land former president Donald Trump in the slammer.

As caught by Insider, the Kentucky lawmaker wants to do away with the Espionage Act, just after it was revealed that Trump may have violated it. “The Espionage Act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI,” Paul tweeted. “It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment.”

To make his case, Paul linked to a 2019 article by former Libertarian presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger, who called the law “tyrannical” after it was applied to Julian Assange. The law, which was enacted in 1917, punishes those who share information that could harm the U.S. or benefit foreign adversaries.

Last Monday, FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago, the resort in which Trump now resides, taking with them 11 sets of documents. Sources claim some of the items pertain to nuclear weapons. In a statement he released Friday, Trump did not deny this.

Trump has claimed — erroneously — that as president he had the power to declassify any documents he wished. The Justice Department revealed Friday that they are investigating whether Trump broke the Espionage Act as well as two other laws. A conviction for breaking the Espionage Act carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. Even if he’s sent to the clink, Sean Hannity claims he could still run for president.

Paul’s comments earned derision, including from Charles Booker, who’s currently challenging his Kentucky Senate seat. Booker called Paul’s actions “shameful” and vowed, “When I am elected to the Senate, you will never have to question my loyalty to our country.”

(Via Insider)