Maren Morris is the latest subject of the Spirit Halloween trend, in which social media users photoshop Spirit Halloween costume packages to “create” particularly outlandish or silly costume ideas.
Specifically, Maren’s fake costume is a “lunatic country music person.” The costume includes a Maren wig, the tambourine she often plays onstage and a pickleball paddle, a nod to her favorite on-the-road sport.
But perhaps the most important accessories for being a “lunatic country music person” are “inclusive fans” and “beef with transphobes,” according to the photoshopped packaging. That’s a reference to a feud Maren had earlier this year with Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany, after Brittany posted transphobic comments on social media. Brittany did an interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson, who described the singer as a “lunatic country music person” — hence the name of the costume.
“I didn’t commission this but I do acknowledge it,” Maren wrote on Twitter, along with the photo of her “lunatic country music person” costume meme. “Happy Halloween, lunatics.”
While the costume itself is fake, it’s all fairly easy to create in real life. So if you’ve got a spare tambourine and long brown wig around, you just might be able to be a “lunatic country music person” this year — especially if you’ve got a “Tall Guy” handy.
On Friday, the based-on-real-life drama Till hits theaters nationwide.
The film stars Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother-turned-activist of murdered Chicago teen Emmett Till, who was abducted and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 for the “crime” of whistling at a white woman.
Director Chinonye Chukwu tells ABC Audio she made the conscious decision to avoid the brutality of the event, but instead show the aftermath. Till-Mobley did, as well, choosing to have Emmett’s body, and what he endured, on display. The public outcry over the resulting photos shocked much of the nation and paved the way for the civil rights struggle in the U.S.
“This story that I decided to tell is about Mamie and her journey,” the filmmaker insists. “And so it … was not necessary to show the physical violence inflicted upon Emmett … but what was important was to show the body as an extension of Mamie’s decision that, you know, she made in 1955. But to do so in a way that was intentional and sparing yet effective.”
Deadwyler says of the crime, “I feel like people don’t know as much as they think they know from the history books. I feel like … certain states don’t want you to know the history from the history books.”
Jalyn Hall portrays Emmett; the actor is the same age Till was when he was murdered. “Oftentimes we forget he was just a 14-year-old boy, you know, who had dreams, goals, a personality that was loving. He loved to dance. He loved to sing. He loved his relationship with his mom … So it was…just that authentic joy as a kid, which was easy for me because it’s easy to see yourself in this beautiful spirit.”
A Mariah Carey/Millie Bobby Brown duet? Well, Stranger Things have happened.
Fans of Mariah may have noticed that the young British actress occasionally appears on the diva’s social media feeds: The two became pals because Mariah’s kids are fans of Millie’s Stranger Things character, Eleven. But it seems that when Millie comes over to visit, she and Mariah spend a lot of time making music together.
“I’ll just go over and we’ll sing together…it’s the most magical [thing],” Millie said on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday night. When Fallon asked if the two would ever consider dropping a single together, the actress said, “Potentially, I don’t know.” She called Mariah “the most talented singer ever.”
Millie, who’s so close with Mariah that she gets to call her “Mimi,” noted that the two are tight because “she grew up in the public eye and we have connected just on so many different levels.”
“I also just love the way she leads her life with so much power and she just has so much knowledge and she’s so wise,” Millie added of Mariah. “She’s just been such an incredible guiding light for me.”
The actress also revealed that she and Mariah will be, for example, eating Chinese food and Mariah will randomly bust out her famous “whistle tone.” “It’s a real thing. It’s wild!” said Millie.
Maybe Millie and Mariah could collab on a Christmas single: “The ‘Eleven’ Days of Christmas.” Hey, you never know.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was “violently assaulted” by someone who broke into his San Francisco home early Friday, according to her spokesperson.
The suspect is in custody, her spokesperson, Drew Hammill, said in a statement.
Paul Pelosi is in the hospital and “is expected to make a full recovery,” Hammill said.
Nancy Pelosi was not in San Francisco at the time, Hammill said.
The motive is under investigation, he said.
“The Speaker and her family are grateful to the first responders and medical professionals involved, and request privacy at this time,” Hammill added.
Comedian Chris Redd was punched in the face in front of a New York City comedy club, where he was scheduled to perform Wednesday night.
WABC-TV, citing a a preliminary police investigation, reports that Redd was getting out of his car just before 9:40 p.m. when a man who apparently looked like a security guard charged him and punched him in the face.
The 37-year-old Saturday Night Live vet reportedly was bleeding heavily from the nose and was taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.
The suspect fled the scene. As of late Thursday night, no arrests had been made.
Thursday’s episode of Call Me Kat included a tribute to late castmember Leslie Jordan, who died
died Monday in a car crash in Hollywood on Monday. He was 67 years old.
A 30-second video featured a montage of clips of the Emmy-winning actor from various appearances in Fox series over the years, including Call Me Kat, The Cool Kids, Fantasy Island, Lego Masters and The Masked Singer. The memorial concluded with a title card that read, “Forever a part of the Fox family.”
On Call Me Kat, Jordan played Phil, the gay head baker at a café run by the show’s titular character, played by Mayim Bialik. Jordan completed work on nine episodes of the show’s third season, which is currently airing.
Fox has paused production on the series in the wake of Jordan’s death. Bialik posted a statement on Instagram on behalf of the cast and producers of the show, writing, “There aren’t words to convey the loss we are experiencing as a cast and a Call Me Kat family.”
“Leslie Jordan was larger than life. He was a Southern gentleman; tender, wise, naughty and hilarious,” the post continued. “We got to know and love him at the height of his happiness and joy and it is inconceivable to imagine a world without our Leslie: the man who would spit on his contact lenses before putting them in his eyes, the man who had a story about every man in Hollywood and some of the women as well, the man who lived to make people laugh.”
Jordan’s other screen credits included Will & Grace, American Horror Story and The Help. He also gained social media attention from his silly Instagram videos during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
(NEW YORK) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk has closed a deal to acquire Twitter, ending a monthslong saga that cast Musk as suitor, critic, legal adversary and ultimately owner of the social media platform.
A source familiar with the matter confirmed the deal closure to ABC News on Friday morning. Some of Twitter’s top executives were fired, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sam Edgett, and the company will likely be launching an internal investigation, according to the source.
Meanwhile, the New York Stock Exchange confirmed on Friday morning that Twitter shares are now suspended for trading, which means the social media platform is headed for delisting and is no longer a public company.
On Thursday night, Musk tweeted, “The bird is freed.”
The Washington Post,The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were among the first outlets to report the news on Thursday evening, also citing sources familiar with the matter.
Musk — the richest person in the world, according to Forbes — reportedly acquired Twitter at his original offer price of $54.20 a share at a total cost of roughly $44 billion.
On Wednesday, Musk posted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s offices with a sink, with the tagline: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
After initially reaching an acquisition deal with Twitter in April, Musk moved to terminate the agreement in July, citing concerns over spam accounts on the platform.
Soon after, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk over his effort to nix the deal. The judge in the trial, set to take place in Delaware Chancery Court, gave Musk a deadline of Friday to reach a deal or proceed with the trial.
The deal completes a courtship that started in January when the billionaire first invested in Twitter.
By March, Musk had become the largest stakeholder in Twitter with the social media company announcing in April that Musk would join its board. Days later, however, Musk said he had decided against joining the board.
In April, Musk offered to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, valuing the company at about $44 billion. The offer amounted to a 38% premium above where the price stood a day before Musk’s investment in Twitter became public. Roughly 10 days later, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer.
One month later, however, Musk said he had put the deal “temporarily on hold,” citing concern over what he said was the prevalence of bot and spam accounts on the platform. Roughly two hours later, Musk said he was “still committed” to the deal.
Twitter said it had provided Musk with information in accordance with conditions set out in the acquisition deal.
Eventually, Musk moved to terminate the deal in July. Soon after, Twitter sued Musk in Chancery Court in Delaware to force him to complete the deal.
A scheduling decision made by the court in July — to hold the trial over five days in October — appeared to align more closely with a timeline requested by Twitter, which had sought a four-day trial in September. Musk asked the court to set a trial date no earlier than mid-February 2023.
Inside Amy Schumer star Amy Schumer will host Saturday Night Live for the third time on November 5 with musical guest Steve Lacy, the NBC late-night sketch comedy show announced on Thursday. Schumer previously hosted the NBC show in October 2015 and May 2018. There will be a third consecutive SNL on November 12 with guests not yet announced…
Hocus Pocus 2 set a record for streaming minutes by a movie. Nielsen says the Disney sequel, starring Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker, had the most-watched debut for a streaming movie ever since it started keeping track — 2.7 billion minutes viewed in its first week on Disney+ after its September 30th premiere. Disney+’s Encanto was the previous champ, with 2.2 billion minutes…
1923, Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel for Paramount+, will debut December 18 exclusively on Paramount+, the streamer revealed on Thursday. Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford star the series, which takes place in the new titular year. The series’ official description reads, “1923 focuses on the Dutton family’s next two generations as they struggle to survive historic drought, lawlessness and prohibition, and an epidemic of cattle theft; all battled beneath the cloud of Montana’s great depression, which preceded the nation by almost a decade. The show will also touch on the end of World War I, which occurred in 1918″…
Sources tell Variety that The Good Place‘s William Jackson Harper will appear in the upcoming Marvel film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Details of his role are being kept under wraps. He joins Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, Michelle Pfeiffer and Michael Douglas, who reprise their roles from 2015’s Ant-Man and 2018’s Ant-Man and the Wasp. Kathryn Newton has been re-cast as Cassie Long, Scott Lang/Ant-Man’s daughter, who, based on the film’s trailer, invents a gadget that sucks the gang into the Quantum Realm and puts them face to face with Jonathan Majors‘ Kang the Conqueror. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania buzzes into theaters February 17, 2023. Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News…
(NEW YORK) — Police officers, firefighters and other protection service employees had the occupation with the highest death rates from COVID-19 in 2020, new federal data shows.
The report, published Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics — a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — looked at COVID mortality during the first year of the pandemic across 46 states and New York City by profession.
The authors only looked at Americans between ages 15 and 64 who were in the paid, civilian workforce, meaning those with unpaid jobs or who serve in the military were not included in the analysis.
Results showed that those with protective service occupations — including police, firefighters, fire inspectors, correctional officers, private detectives, security guards and probation officers — had the highest rate at 60.3 deaths per 100,000 workers.
According to federal data, this is twice as high as the overall workers’ COVID-19 death rate in 2020, which sits at 28.6 per 100,000.
This was followed by food preparation and serving-related staff at 57.5 deaths per 100,000; construction and extraction workers at 57.3 per 100,000; transportation and material moving employees at 56 per 100,000; and farming, fishing and forestry workers at 54.8 per 100,000.
By comparison, Americans working in jobs where they were surrounded by the sickest COVID-19 patients had lower death rates in 2020, the data shows.
Health care support workers — who help doctors and nurses care for patients, perform tests or manage equipment, among other tasks — had a rate of 31.2 per 100,000.
Meanwhile, health care practitioners had a rate of 19.1, below the national average.
The study did not examine why some professions were more at risk of dying than others.
However, the authors noted that many workers with high COVID-19 death rates were “often required to work in person throughout stay-at-home orders in 2020.”
What’s more, these employees were more likely to be working in close proximity to others, both colleagues and the public, increasing their risk of infection.
A report from the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum, which found COVID-19 to be the leading cause of death for officers in 2020 and 2021, said it was from direct exposure in the line of duty.
“It has been reported to NLEOMF that these officers have died due to direct exposure to the virus during the commission of their official duties,” the report said.
Among those who died is 48-year-old Cedric Dixon, the first uniformed member of the New York Police Department to succumb to COVID-19 in March 2020.
Dixon served the city for 23 years, according to the Detectives’ Endowment Association.
“We are hurting, we are crying, and we continue to fight,” then-Commissioner Dermot Shea said at the time. “He was known as the person who would do anything to help you. He is going to be so sorely missed.”
COVID-19 vaccines weren’t available until the end of December 2020, and they’ve since been shown to be protective against severe illness and death.
However, many police officer and firefighter and unions across the country have pushed back against vaccine mandates, several of whom have been fired for refusing to comply.
(NEW YORK) — Parts of Southwest Florida that were left unrecognizable in the wake of Hurricane Ian are still cleaning up the remnants of the widespread destruction one month after the monster storm made landfall.
Hurricane Ian reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble in places like Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island after it ripped through Southwest Florida with Category 4 winds and menacing storm surge on Sept. 28.
So far, cleanup and recovery has been a slow and painstaking process, Holly Smith, mayor of Sanibel Island, told ABC News.
Recent images out of the regions hardest hit by the monster storm show the magnitude of work that remains to pave the way for rebuilding.
A photo out of Fort Myers Beach shows piles of rubble that remain among foundations torn apart by winds topping 150 mph. The area, flanked by restaurants and businesses, was previously frequented by tourists and locals.
The amount of work done so far, especially the speed of the temporary repairs for the Sanibel Island causeway, are “nothing short of miraculous,” Smith said. The open causeway is now allowing for residents, business owners and cleanup crews with permits to access the island to survey the damage, Smith said.
The destruction of Sanibel Island, a barrier island off the coasts of Fort Myers Beach and Pine Island, is “extensive,” Smith said. The electrical grid has been “decimated,” and while there is running water, sewage systems are not operating optimally, she added.
The mayor has remained in her Sanibel Island home, sticking mainly to the couple of rooms powered by a small generator, she said. When she surveys the island, still in recovery and debris removal, she sees condominium complexes that have completely been washed away, mountains of debris and homes that were completely destroyed.
It will take years, not months, to rebuild, Smith said. But the signs of life returning to the island are already evidence.
One grocery store, Jerry’s Foods on Periwinkle Way, is up and running, Smith said. One school, grades Kindergarten through 8th grade, has been relocated to another part of Lee County, she added.
“We’re resolved to get back together and build this Sanibel again,” she said.
Homes and trailer parks lining the coast were also decimated by the waters rushing in from the Gulf of Mexico during the storm.
Cleanup crews were seen using forklifts to transfer large pieces of drywall, building foundations and furniture into dumpsters.
The pier at Fort Myers Beach, one of the most recognizable landmarks in the area, is also in the process of being rebuilt after seawaters toppled over the structure as the storm system pushed onto land.
At least 127 people have died as a result of Hurricane Ian, according to local officials. After Ian passed, it prompted the largest urban search and rescue response in Florida history to find survivors.
The total economic damage from Hurricane Ian could reach up to $75 billion, according to a projection released earlier this month by Enki Research, a data firm that studies the financial impact of storms.
