Aaron Rodgers’ attack against Jimmy Kimmel has a history.
Two years ago, Kimmel went after Rodgers — funny but vicious — being an anti-vaxxer and exposing the Green Bay Packers to COVID. You can see it below.
Did Rodgers wait all this time to get him back? Looks like it.
Start at 4:47
this one starts at 7:00
Jimmy Kimmel is threatening legal action against NY Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers.
Apparently, Rodgers suggested on ESPN’s “Pat McAfee Show” this afternoon that Kimmel’s name might be on the list of Jeffrey Epstein associates that’s about to be released. He said: “There’s a lot of people, including Jimmy Kimmel are really hoping that doesn’t come out.” “I’ll tell you what, if that list comes out, I definitely will be popping some sort of bottle.”
This is a real feud developing quickly, not like Kimmel’s fake one with Matt Damon.
Kimmel snapped back on Twitter:
“Dear Aasshole: for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any “list” other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless words put my family in danger. Keep it up and we will debate the facts further in court. @AaronRodgers12”
Dear Aasshole: for the record, I’ve not met, flown with, visited, or had any contact whatsoever with Epstein, nor will you find my name on any “list” other than the clearly-phony nonsense that soft-brained wackos like yourself can’t seem to distinguish from reality. Your reckless… https://t.co/p8eug12uiS
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) January 2, 2024
Broadway went bananas during Christmas week.
Total tickets sold were at a stunning $45 million, up dramatically from $33 million before Christmas.
Several shows broke house records including “Six” and “Gutenberg.”
“The Lion King” and “Wicked” cracked the $4 million mark each for one week’s run.
“MJ,” “Hamilton, “Back to the Future,” and “Sweeney Todd” were well over $2 million each.
Even shows that you thought everyone had seen were full. “Chicago” did twice its normal business at $1.4 million.
The only two laggards really were Barry Manilow’s “Harmony” and Neil Diamond’s “A Beautiful Noise.” It’s hard to imagine that either will it through January but we’ll see. “Shucked” got a nice jolt from the holiday as did “Kimnerly Akimbo.”
Even plays were full, like “Appropriate” with Sarah Paulson and “I Did That” with Danny DeVito.
Now comes long, gloomy January and February, although a ton of shows will open for this Tony season, more than in several years, so hang on.
Broadway always rebounds. Max Bialystock would be so proud!
PS Go see “Spamalot.” It’s hilarious — maybe even better than the first one. And also, Sutton Foster and Aaron Tveit are coming to take over “Sweeney Todd” later this month. Not to be missed!
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame special on ABC was a hit.
The show, moving to broadcast TV for the first time, had 3 million viewers. This up nine times the 420,000 they got last year on HBO. I guess there are a lot of lessons learned.
One is that “RRHOF” didn’t really win the night. They tied with “America’s Got Talent” on NBC.
The Rock Hall escaped scandal this year by ousting Jann Wenner from their board after he said terrible things in the NY Times.
The good news is they are trying to get more backlogged, snubbed artists into the Hall. We just have to hope they keep it up.
Nothing like a little naked dancing to get a song back on the charts.
“Murder On the Dance Floor” is having a Renaissance after 22 years. Sophie Ellis Bexter’s deliciously catchy disco song was a hit around the world in 2002. It wasn’t much of one in the US but that’s about to change thanks to the film, “Saltburn.”
In the final scene of Emerald Fennell’s wild ride of aspiration and revenge, Barry Keoghan’s Oliver is seen dancing naked through the halls of the British mansion he’s inherited after systematically killing off all the members of the family that owned it. It’s an exuberant, with Oliver flapping all about while “Murder on the Dance Floor” expresses his unbridled delight.
The record is now at number 28 on iTunes and up to number 5 on Spotify’s Daily Viral chart for the US.
Sophie Ellis Bextor wrote the song with US hitmaker, Gregg Alexander, who you may know better as the New Radicals. Alexander, who’s a bit of a genius for earworms, wrote the never ending hit “You Gotta Give What You Get,” the song Joni Mitchell once said made her not give up writing and recording new material in the 90s.
Too bad “Murder on the Dance Floor” is old. It would have been a cinch for an Oscar this year!
Yes, Kathie Lee Gifford is back plugging Balance of Nature.
(How much money does she need?)
Gifford doesn’t seem to care that the FDA has issued warnings about the shady vitamin supplement company, shut them down temporarily, and tried to warn the public that the company’s idiotic claims of fruits and vegetables stuffed into a capsule cures nothing.
Just so we’re all on the same page, Kathie Lee:
In 2020, the FDA issued a very stern warning about Balance of Nature.
This year in August, the State of California fined the company $1.1 million for fraudulent health claims.
In November, the FDA halted all sales again. Balance of Nature complied shortly thereafter, but if you’re not getting the message at this point, I’d say it’s your fault if I were a juror. The public has been warned.
I actually did think Gifford was savvier than this. She was criticized last year for doing one of these. Since then Balance of Nature has been outed for all the above reasons. She could be doing commercials for lots of things. But this outfit? She couldn’t stump for a used car dealer in Nashville?
Let’s hope KLG isn’t actually ingesting this stuff. Even prayer won’t help her then!
A family that criminals together doesn’t necessarily rally when someone is ill.
On Christmas, the Trump family took a group photo. Melania was missing, and so was her mother. Her father, however, floated off to the left, looking perplexed.
On New Year’s Eve, the family partied at Mar-a-Lago. Trump spoke to the crowd and admitted that Melania was with her mother, in a Miami hospital, because she was severely ill.
I told you last week that in 2018 the late Ivana Trump told me Melania’s mother had cancer, was very sick, and that the then-First Lady was spending all of her time with her in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Now that Mrs. Knauss seems to in serious trouble, that wouldn’t stop Donald Trump from throwing a big party, taking pictures, and carrying on. He certainly wasn’t at his wife’s or mother-in-law’s side. Of course, this is no surprise since Ivana Trump is buried on the Trump golf course without a marker, her grave covered with weeds.
Donald’s message: “I don’t care, do you?”
Also missing at New Year’s Eve: Ivana Trump and family. Her excuse: Donald wasn’t really her father, she barely knew him.
President Trump at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Eve 2023! pic.twitter.com/YmUSIJ8QHI
— Shannon Ford (@shannonfordUSA) January 1, 2024
Jennifer Lopez is starting the new year with a song built in Frankenstein’s lab.
The single is called “Can’t Get Enough” and it has no fewer than 10 songwriters! Some of them are the people who wrote the original songs used to construct this hybrid, including Alton Ellis and Dennis Coffey, back in the 70s.
“Can’t Get Enough (I’m Still in Love with You)” is a sample of a Sean Paul song called, “I’m Still in Love with You.” It’s an ‘interpolation,’ meaning JLo’s just lifted out the Paul song and stuffed it into a new single. This has been common practice now in hip hop for 35 years, and Lopez has done it before. Why write a new song when you can just stick together some old ones?
But this is a problem now because samples are being sampled. It turns out, Sean Paul’s song is really a cover of a 1967 reggae song called “I’m Still in Love with You” and made it a hit in 1977 by Marcia Aitken. It was written by Alton Ellis. Where Coffey comes in is unclear, but he is a famous Detroit instrumentalist who had a massive hit called “Scorpio” in the 70s.
Lopez’s new album, “This is Me…Now,” is loaded with samples. One song has SIXTEEN credited writers! Another one — a sample of a Chris Isaak song — also has TEN. There’s also a reworking of “Superstar” by Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett, made famous by The Carpenters.
I give a lot of credit to the people who listen to hundreds of old records looking for bits and pieces they can use to create a new song. The big winners here are the lawyers who have to get permissions and clear the songs rights — in the cases where that really happens.
Shecky Greene defined the notion of the Catskills comic on “Ed Sullivan.” How many times has someone been called “a real Shecky Greene”? It’s a term of endearment if you’re trying to be a wise guy or a jokester.
There are a ton of tributes to Shecky today on the internet. He was 97! Few people realized he was still alive. But the idea of Shecky Green brings a smile to people of a certain age. We remember! He was from the hallowed era of Alan King, Freddie Roman, Stiller & Meara, Joan Rivers, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller. Before woke and PC– when jokes could be jokes!
His real name was Fred Sheldon Greenfield, but he did once a race horse called Shecky Greene. Shecky ran with all the famous Vegas guys, the mobsters and the showgirls. He was a big part of the now defunct Friars Club. His pal, “Hollywood Squares” Peter Marshall — also 97 — posted a lovely tribute to Shecky tonight.
I loved #SheckyGreene like a brother. We met in ’50 working the Chase Hotel. I saw all his ups & downs & he made me laugh through them all. Sweetest man in the world. Best comic ever (w/80 yrs in the biz I’ve seen them all). Thank God for his wife Marie. I’ll sure miss him. pic.twitter.com/rQHOgY2x5J
— Peter Marshall (@PeterMarshallHS) January 1, 2024
(EXCLUSIVE) Oscar winning writer director Paul Schrader wants to clarify comments attributed to him about Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
Schrader, Scorsese’s long time friend and collaborator, was reported to have said he thought Leonardo DiCaprio should have played the FBI agent investigating the Osage murders.
The interview appeared in French, in Le Monde. Variety translated it this way: “Marty compares me to a Flemish miniaturist. He would be more the type who paints Renaissance frescoes. Give him $200 million, a good film will inevitably come out of it. That said, I would have preferred Leonardo DiCaprio to play the role of the cop in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ rather than the role of the idiot. Spending three-and-a-half hours in the company of an idiot is a long time.”
Something got lost in the translation. I immediately emailed Schrader to see if he was — implausibly — criticizing his friend. He was not. Today Schrader posted on Facebook:
“While in Italy for an last month I spoke openly with cineastes on awide range of subjects. Thanks the our clickbait culture one of those comments became a headline in Variety. Roger Friedman emailed me to say that my comments about “Flower Moon” had blown up on the internet. I told Scorsese when I first saw the film that his film that was a great film and I say that now. I accept full well that any comments made on FB are a considered publication choices. But what I don’t understand so well is how entre nous conversations among film buffs are also considered publication choices.”
So there you have it. Whatever happened in Le Monde, it just didn’t travel well. So just forget it. Schrader, often crankily candid, didn’t mean it to come out that way.
