Month: January 2022

This go home edition of Monday Night Raw is brought to you by absolutely nobody. But this recap is hosted by yours truly, while Claire handles blogging duties as per usual. The Royal Rumble is Jan. 29. Is WWE ready? Dig in and find out. Let’s talk Raw! Do Not Boo Birthdays Miz is an awful singer. Lucky for us, he’s a pretty good wrestler. That means Miz can take even the most stereotypical professional sports entertainment wrestling segments, like a birthday celebration for Maryse, and make it work. In fact, Maryse, Edge, and Beth Phoenix all played their parts just as well in Raw’s best story going into the Royal Rumble. For those who missed last week due to football or just living their lives, Maryse hit Beth with a brick. Yes, a brick. Sure, it was wrapped in a leat...

Neil Young wants to pull all of his music from Spotify over COVID-19 misinformation.  Health professionals previously called on Spotify to mitigate the spread of misinformation.  Young and the health professionals' statements were directed at misinformation on Joe Rogan's podcast.  Loading Something is loading. Musician Neil Young has demanded that his music be removed from Spotify over...

If Emily the Criminal had been made in the 1970s, it might have been an angry drama starring Jane Fonda. If it had been made in the ’80s, it would have been a feelgood comedy starring Dolly Parton. And here we are in 2022, where it lands with its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival as a taut, gripping but nevertheless damning portrait of how much ground has been lost in the last 40 years. The setting is America, but the subject is universal: the growth of wage slavery and, in particular, the glass ceiling that exists for people, women in particular, on low income. The title sounds like an edgy comedy, and Aubrey Plaza is no stranger to those, which might be the Trojan horse subterfuge director John Patton Ford is using. Like this year’s U.S. Competition entry Emergency, it’s a...

I often feel like The Bachelor focuses on the wrong things. It shows us contestants completing obstacle courses and performing in talent shows—but what’s actually most interesting is the way they interact during their downtime at the Bachelor Mansion. What do they do all day? What do they talk about? What do they eat? We never get to learn these things. Until Monday night, that is. I’m talking about the Shrimp Incident. In Monday night’s episode, Elizabeth decides to cook up some garlic butter shrimp for her housemates. She offers the shrimp to everybody, including Shanae, which is notable because they’ve been fighting. Two episodes into their feud, it remains unclear why Shanae chose to pick a fight with Elizabeth. I think it might be because they’re the two blondest people on the ...

The National‘s Aaron Dessner, who co-produced Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums ‘Folklore’ and ‘Evermore’, has responded after Damon Albarn suggested that Swift doesn’t write her own songs. In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Blur and Gorillaz frontman said that Swift’s co-writing approach is at odds with his “traditionalist” view on songwriting. After it was suggested to him that Swift is an “excellent songwriter”, he claimed that she doesn’t write her own songs. “That doesn’t count. I know what co-writing is. Co-writing is very different to writing,” Albarn said. “I’m not hating on anybody, I’m just saying there’s a big difference between a songwriter and a songwriter who co-writes. Doesn’t mean that the outcome can’t be really great.” Earlier today (January 25), Dessner ...

Barbara Gordon has officially found her roommate. Ivory Aquino (“Tales of the City,” “When We Rise”) has been cast in the HBO Max feature film “Batgirl” as Alysia Yeoh, the best friend of the titular superhero, a.k.a. Barbara Gordon (Leslie Grace). Both Aquino and Yeoh are transgender, marking the first time a live-action feature film adaptation of a DC Comics title will feature an openly trans character. Yeoh first appeared in a 2011 issue of “Batgirl” written by Gail Simone and penciled by Ardian Syaf. News of Aquino’s casting first leaked online in mid-January after Grace posted a photo seemingly from the set of the film to her Instagram story, tagging Aquino and captioning the shot (of two women crossing the street) with “Barbara and Alysia 😍🦇”. There have been se...