Quoteworthy
Kate Bush Backs NHS Worker Pay Raises in Christmas Message
Reclusive art-pop singer Kate Bush emerged today to share a Christmas message posted to her official website, in which she touched on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and advocated for UK National Health Service (NHS) workers to receive pay raises for their heroic efforts. “It’s been a terrible time of loss for so many. I want to say a big thank you to all the people on the front line and in the NHS,” she wrote. “I have such huge respect for all the nurses and doctors who’ve already been working flat out for nearly two years. These caring people are showing such extraordinary acts of kindness to others. Let’s hope they get the pay rises they rightly deserve.” Back in March, Prime Minister Boris Johnson came under fire for offering a puny 1% increase in wages to doctors and nurses....
Brian Eno on NFTs: “Now Artists Can Become Little Capitalist Assholes as Well”
Add Brian Eno to your list of stars charmingly unimpressed with NFTs. When asked about today’s hottest economic scam in an interview with The Crypto Syllabus, the legendary musician said he wouldn’t be dabbling in the trend any time soon. “I’ve been approached several times to ‘make an NFT.’ So far nothing has convinced me that there is anything worth making in that arena,” Eno said. “‘Worth making’ for me implies bringing something into existence that adds value to the world, not just to a bank account. If I had primarily wanted to make money I would have had a different career as a different kind of person. I probably wouldn’t have chosen to be an artist. NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of...
Keanu Reeves’ Mother Designed Dolly Parton’s Playboy Outfit and He Wore It for Halloween
Not all parents will have the opportunity to dress their children for Playboy Magazine, but we can all aspire to be as supportive — literally and figuratively — as Keanu Reeves’ mom Patricia Taylor. A costume designer, Taylor created the bustier that held in Dolly Parton on her iconic Playboy magazine cover, and as Reeves revealed in a new appearance on Jada Pinkett Smith’s Red Table Talk, after Parton was done with it, he wore it for Halloween. The episode of Red Table Talk served as a Matrix reunion. Smith appeared in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions alongside Reeves, and they were joined for the conversation by Reeves’ The Matrix Resurrections costars Carrie-Anne Moss and Priyanka Chopra Jonas....
Billie Eilish Began Watching Porn at 11, Says It “Destroyed My Brain”
Billie Eilish’s song “Male Fantasy” opens with the pop star trying to “Distract myself with pornography,” though the footage is so disturbing that the verse ends with her declaring, “I’m going back to therapy.” Those lyrics are based in her real experiences, she recently revealed on The Howard Stern Show, noting that she “started watching porn when I was like 11,” which she said, “Destroyed my brain.” “As a woman, I think porn is a disgrace,” she told Stern. “I used to watch a lot of porn, to be honest.” She said she was drawn to X-rated material in order to feel like “one of the guys.” Eilish remembered looking at a lot of “abusive” videos, which she believes contributed to her recurring issues with sleep paralysis and night terrors. “I think it really destroyed my brain and I f...
Lil Uzi Vert: “My Insurance Tried to Cut Me Off” over Diamond Forehead Piercing
To Lil Uzi Vert’s apparent surprise, having a $24 million diamond implanted in your forehead comes with some drawbacks. In an appearance on the Scuffed podcast, the rapper said that after he got the gaudy piercing, “My insurance tried to cut me off.” Speaking to a roundtable of Twitch streamers, the rapper motioned to his currently sparkle-free forehead, saying, “This is actually the back post of it.” He had once again removed the stone, explaining that, “It was pretty heavy, it was like ripping my forehead, so I had to let it re-heal.” Whether or not he decides to implant it once again, the process has already been draining. “I had to really get all my shit together,” he said. “My insurance tried to cut me off, they were like, ‘This kid’s trying to kill himself.’ ...
Courtney Love Beefs with Elon Musk, Calls Him Out for “Kendall Roy Shit”
Succession is a brain-breaking show; once you see it, you see it everywhere. So it goes with Courtney Love, who approved her late husband’s song “Rape Me” for an episode of the HBO series in November, and who is now using it as ammunition in an attack on Elon Musk. After the billionaire tweeted a rude comment about Senator Bernie Sanders, Love called him out for acting like Succession‘s number one birthday boy, naming Musk’s behavior as, “Kendall Roy shit.” Love’s December 2nd tweet was a little late to the party; Musk’s attack on Sanders happened on November 14th. After the senator posted, “We must demand that the extremely wealthy pay their fair share. Period,” Musk responded, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.” It’s the kind of thing Musk probably says all the time to his ...
Adam McKay Says Will Ferrell Won’t Answer His Emails: “I Fucked Up”
Adam McKay has opened up about his professional break from longtime collaborator Will Ferrell. In a new profile with Vanity Fair, the Oscar-nominated director said, “I fucked up” in replacing Ferrell with John C. Reilly in HBO’s miniseries about the Los Angeles Lakers. He added that now his old friend won’t return his emails. McKay directed Ferrell in a string of comedy classics, including Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers. In 2006, the two formed Gary Sanchez Productions, which produced dozens of films and TV series including HBO’s Succession. But in 2019, the partners announced the end of Gary Sanchez Productions, writing in a joint statement, “The two of us will always work together creatively and always be friends. And we recognize w...
Kanye Gets Real About His Mental Health, Temper, and “Misactions” in Thanksgiving Prayer
Kanye West has shared a Thanksgiving prayer to his Instagram page. In the five-minute spoken-word piece, the rapper speaks openly and honestly about his mental health, politics, religion, and narcissism, and the strain it has put on his family. At the onset, Kanye says, “All I think about every day is how I get my family back together, and how I heal the pain that I’ve caused” his wife, Kim Kardashian. (Kanye and Kim separated following a six-year marriage in February 2021. She has since begun dating Pete Davidson). “I take accountability for my actions,” Kanye continues, adding that he’s coined a new term: ‘misactions.” He goes on to admit that “the one thing that all my successes and failures have in common is me,” and proceeds to detail each of his failures: alcohol, episodes, ego, temp...
Ridley Scott Blames “Millenians” for The Last Duel’s Box Office Flop
Ridley Scott knows he’s a film legend, so he’s not taking the blame for his latest endeavor’s modest success. Instead, the English director has found a different explanation for why his historical drama The Last Duel flopped at the box office: millennials — or as he calls them, “The millenian.” Scott joined Marc Maron for a recent episode of the comedian’s WTF podcast to discuss his long-spanning career, and he took the time to reflect on the low sales of his latest picture, which drew only $4.8 million domestically from a $100 million budget in its October 15th opening weekend. Scott said he feared the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios would undersell the film — which sees Matt Damon and Adam Driver fight to the death in a medieval France duel — since Disney’s target audien...
Eddie Redmayne Calls Playing Trans Woman in The Danish Girl a “Mistake”
Eddie Redmayne is reflecting on his Oscar-nominated turn in 2015’s The Danish Girl, calling his performance as Lili Elbe, one of the first trans women to ever undergo gender reassignment surgery, a “mistake.” “No, I wouldn’t take it on now,” he told The Sunday Times. “I made that film with the best intentions, but I think it was a mistake.” He added, “The bigger discussion about the frustrations around casting is because many people don’t have a chair at the table. There must be a leveling, otherwise we are going to carry on having these debates.” Tom Hooper directed The Danish Girl from a 2000 novel of the same name by Daid Ebershoff. Some members of the LGBTQ community criticized the film at the time of its release, suggesting that the part of a trans w...
Britney Spears Rips Christina Aguilera for Silence on Conservatorship
For the first time in 13 years, Britney Spears is able to speak her mind without reservation. On Friday night, she called out fellow pop singer Christina Aguilera for staying silent about her conservatorship. Spears and Aguilera’s history dates back nearly 30 years, as the two first met one another as members of the Mickie Mouse Club in 1992. A few years later, the two were famously pitted as rivals during the height of the late 90’s pop music explosion. Prior to last week’s court ruling ending Spears’ 13-year conservatorship, Aguilera voiced her support for the #FreeBritney movement. In a statement released in June, Aguilera wrote, “These past few days I’ve been thinking about Britney and everything she is going through. It is unacceptable that any woman, or human, wanting to be in c...
Eric Clapton Talks Anti-Vax Nonsense with Anti-Vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Former rock icon and current loony Eric Clapton doubled down on his COVID-19 trutherism in a conversation with noted anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the latter’s podcast, The Defender. As Clapton explained, holding anti-science beliefs has taken a toll on his mental health. “I thought I was going crazy,” he said, though he rationalized it with an acronym he found on the internet. “I think everybody I know has got, what do they call it? CAS [Covid Anxiety Syndrome], everybody I know is unsettled about it,” Clapton said. He added, “The lifesaving part of it was I’d found a group of people who were inviting me to talk about it because I couldn’t talk about it anywhere.” In fact, Clapton feels more committed to this cause than ever before. “It’s funny, because t...
