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You wouldn’t think that Madonna would need any help making a love connection, especially back in her heyday. But according to Rosie Perez, she’s the reason that the Queen of Pop ended up having a romance with one of the most influential rappers of all time.
When Perez appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show on Nov. 6, she related a story of how, just half an hour before she was due to leave for the Soul Train Music Awards, her date bailed on her. She was furious, so when her friend Tupac Shakur called minutes later, she told him what was going on.
“And he said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna go with you, we’re gonna walk up in there, we’re gonna act like we’re on a date, and he’s going to die,‘” Perez recalls Tupac telling her. Then, at the awards show, Madonna approached her and asked if she and Tupac were an item.
“She was there and she came up to me and she was like, ‘Yo, what’s up? Y’all are together?'” Perez told Barrymore. “And I said, ‘No.’ She goes, ‘Really?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’ She goes, ‘Hook me up.’ I said, ‘You got it.'”
Madonna and Tupac ended up secretly dating from 1993 to 1994. They broke up, but while Tupac was in prison in 1995 he wrote Madonna a letter apologizing for their split. He was released from prison in October 1995, but was murdered a year later. He was 25.
You can watch the clip of Perez telling the story on EW.com.
Real Time host Bill Maher has announced his 13th comedy special for HBO.
Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This? debuts in January on the network and will be recorded in front of a live audience at the CIBC Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
The comedian and Club Random podcast host noted in the announcement, “I almost called this special You Won’t Feel Safe, because if you’re purely a team player in American politics, you won’t.”
Seemingly prescient after the results of the 2024 election, Maher added, “This one is for the 80% of Americans who want to see crazy called out no matter where it comes from. And the last twenty minutes on my sex life, that’s for everybody.”
Nina Rosenstein, HBO’s EVP of Late Night & Specials Programming, trumpeted, “Bill’s comedic commentary has been an extraordinary part of HBO for 12 specials and 22 seasons of Real Time with Bill Maher. We truly value his steadfast commitment to honesty and humor, which we know will be front and center in his next special.”
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The billion views club has a few more members.
Britney Spears, Jason Derulo and 50 Cent have reached new YouTube viewership milestones on their music videos.
Britney’s iconic music video for her 1998 hit “…Baby One More Time” has passed 1 billion views. It’s her second video to reach the milestone, after the visual for “Scream & Shout” with will.i.am previously surpassed the mark.
The video for Jason’s “Wiggle,” his song with Snoop Dogg, also reached 1 billion views, making it the second video for both artists to achieve the milestone.
Lastly, 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” music video also surpassed 1 billion views. The video, which featured R&B singer Olivia, was 50 Cent’s second to reach the milestone, after his other hit “In Da Club.”
Now that Young Thug is free, his “Lifestyle” includes mandated community service, which serves as part of his 15-year probation sentence. He recently received a FaceTime call from his lawyer Brian Steel and offered some advice to the students attending Emory University School of Law.
“You gotta always look at it like they’re there to put us in prison and you guys are here to keep us from prison. Brian Steel is the best person possible. He should be a professor,” Thug said of his lawyer, before focusing on the students. “You guys should become lawyers. I think it’s very important to help people out of the situations they’re in the best you can.”
“I mean, what side do you want to be on?” Thug continues. “You want to put people in prison for mistakes? Because everybody makes mistakes, they’re human. And everybody on this phone, in this classroom, you always need to know that you’re one mistake away.”
He added that the world needs “more people like Brian Steel,” saying lawyers are one of the “two greatest things that were ever founded.”
“You actually help people. That’s doing the real God work,” Thug says. “I think every one of you in the classroom should become lawyers for sure. Anything you need from me, I’m here always. We need y’all.”
After two years in custody on a RICO case, Thug was released on house arrest after taking a plea deal. He was sentenced to time served and 15 years of probation.
Luke Combs‘ 2023 cover of Tracy Chapman‘s 1998 hit “Fast Car” was a smash — but it turns out that Luke’s version contains an incorrect lyric. How did he find out? Chapman called him out on it, much to his embarrassment.
A fan who attended Luke’s recent concert captured him on video telling the story: In his version, he sings “Still gotta make a decision/ Leave tonight or live and die this way.” But he says when he talked to Tracy, she told him that the lyric is actually “We gotta make a decision.”
“That was the first time that I knew that I recorded the song incorrectly,” he told the crowd. “It was her who told me that. Because I remember, when she said that, I wanted to crawl in a hole.”
“And luckily, she was awesome about it. And I think about it every single time that I sing the song, and I will think about it every single time I sing this song for the rest of my whole life,” he continued. “But she was so cool about it.”
He then announced that he was going to sing the correct version, “Because Tracy Chapman told me to, and dammit, I’m gonna do it.”
Luke’s version of “Fast Car” reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also topped Billboard’s Country Airplay chart, making Tracy the first Black woman ever to write a #1 country hit solo.
Luke and Tracy performed the song together at the Grammy Awards in February.
Heritage Auctions has put on the block some priceless works of comic art, with some benefiting the Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund.
“Priceless” is of course not literal, seeing as bidding has already begun for original art for page 14 from The New Mutants No. 98 — otherwise known as the debut of Rob Liefeld‘s Wade Wilson/Deadpool — and bidding reached a quarter million bucks within minutes.
The page that hit the block hasn’t been seen since it entered a private collection in the 1990s, “just as Deadpool was taking over the Marvel Universe like few characters in its storied history,” Heritage says.
“Deadpool’s debut in New Mutants No. 98 was as much a cultural phenomenon as a page in comic book history,” says Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Todd Hignite. “For fans and collectors, this is an unparalleled opportunity to own a piece of the origin story that would eventually define a generation of comic book storytelling.”
Also up for grabs is comics legend John Romita Sr.‘s original concept art for the character Wolverine from 1974. The bids for that piece are already soaring past $105,000. A portion of the proceeds will go to hurricane relief.
Also hitting the block is original art from another Marvel icon, Steve Ditko: The Amazing Spider-Man #8 from 1964, as well as Frank Miller and Klaus Janson‘s original art from Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #2 Dark Knight Triumphant.
Many more pieces of comic book history are available as part of Heritage’s Comics & Comic Art Signature Auction, which officially runs from Nov. 21 to Nov. 24. Check out all the details here.
Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen in Mark Seliger/20th Century Studios
The cast of the Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere has expanded.
The film, starring The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White as The Boss, chronicles Springsteen’s creation of his 1982 stripped-down album, Nebraska. Varietyreports that actor Marc Maron has joined the cast as Chuck Plotkin, the producer who made the songs on the album sound high-quality enough to release. The originally quality of Springsteen’s recordings was dicey, since he’d originally recorded it solo on a cassette, and then damaged it by carrying it around in his pocket for weeks.
In addition, Variety reports that Gaby Hoffmann will play Bruce’s mom, Adele, who passed away earlier this year at age 98. David Krumholtz will portray Al Teller, the record executive who Bruce and his team worked with to release the album.
As previously reported, Jeremy Strong will play Springsteen’s longtime manager Jon Landau. There’s no release date for the film, which is currently in production. Springsteen was recently photographed visiting the New Jersey set and hugging White.
(WASHINGTON) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is updating its recommendations for testing, treatment and protection for workers who may be exposed to animals infected with bird flu.
The update comes after the agency found evidence of dairy workers with positive antibodies, suggesting more bird flu infections that previously reported, according to a new report released Thursday afternoon.
Serologic testing, which looks at antibodies in the blood, found that eight out of 115 workers, or 7%, who were exposed to bird flu during outbreaks among cows at dairy farms in Michigan and Colorado had evidence of recent infection.
All eight workers said their jobs included either milking cows or cleaning a milking parlor. Four workers recalled experiencing symptoms, mainly conjunctivitis, also known as pink eye. The remaining four patients said they did not experience symptoms when the cows were ill.
As a result, the CDC said it is updating its guidance addressing who should be tested for bird flu to include workers who were exposed to bird flu and do not have symptoms.
“There may be individuals infected but who do not recall having symptoms,” Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal deputy director, told reporters during a media call Thursday morning. “That means we need to cast a wider net in terms of who is offered a test.”
Secondly, the CDC is now recommending offering oseltamivir – a prescription medication to treat influenza that’s often marketed under the name Tamiflu – to asymptomatic workers who have experienced high-risk exposure to animals infected with bird flu and who did not wear adequate personal protective equipment (PPE).
Shah said a high-risk exposure event could include a splash in the face with raw cow milk, or a culling event without PPE being worn.
He added that the Tamiflu treatment recommendation both reduces asymptomatic cases from becoming symptomatic because they are being treated, and reduces the risk of infected individuals spreading the virus to close contacts.
Lastly, the Shah said the CDC was changing its PPE guidance for workers.
Although the risk of bird flu transmission from dairy cows to humans Is low, the CDC said there have been few reports addressing how PPE is used during work activities on dairy farms.
The new CDC report said the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) offered PPE to all Colorado farms before or during the bird flu outbreak in cows in 2024.
When asked if they had access to PPE before a bird flu outbreak, 88% of workers reported access to gloves, 76% reported access to eye protection such as safety glasses or goggles, 71% reported access to rubber boots or boot covers, and 69% reported access to head covers, according to the report.
“Reported use of many individual PPE items was higher among dairy workers who reported exposure to ill cows in the week before or week after the detection of [bird flu] on the farm compared with those who did not report exposure to ill cows,” according to the CDC report.
Shah said that CDC recommendations will now prioritize what PPE a farm worker should wear based on which farm tasks present the highest risk for bird flu.
“Simply put, the higher-risk activities will call for more PPE use,” Shah said. “The purpose of these actions is to keep workers safe, to limit the transmission of H5 [bird flu] to humans and reduce the possibility of the virus changing,” Shah said.
As of Thursday, there have been 46 human cases of bird flu reported in the U.S. this year, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the CDC’s director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said during the media call.
Of those cases, 26 were due to the outbreak in dairy cows and 20 were due to people coming into contact with infected poultry. There is one case in Missouri that had no known animal exposure.
All of the patients experienced mild conjunctivitis or mild respiratory symptoms and all have recovered, according to the CDC.
Halsey‘s album The Great Impersonator has debuted on top of Billboard‘s Top Rock & Alternative Albums and Top Alternative Albums charts.
This comes after the record earned 93,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending on Oct. 31, including 81,000 traditional album sales, according to Luminate.
The Great Impersonator, Halsey’s fifth studio album, is the singer’s third to come in at #1 on the Top Alternative Albums chart, after If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power in 2021 and Badlands in 2015.
It’s Halsey’s first #1 on the Top Rock & Alternative Albums list since the chart became inclusive of alternative-leaning releases not firmly in the rock genre back in 2022.
The Great Impersonator landed at #2 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 200 and Top Album Sales chart after its Oct. 25 release.
The hit Alien: Romulus will be free to stream for Hulu subscribers on Nov. 21 and will also be available to stream via Hulu on Disney+ for bundle subscribers.
The movie from director Fede Alvarez stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu and “takes the phenomenally successful Alien franchise back to its iconic roots,” according to 20th Century Studios.
The movie centers on a group of young space salvagers who “come face-to-face with the most relentless and deadly life form in the universe.”
Alien: Romulus was Certified Fresh on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and has earned more than $315 million worldwide since its release on Aug. 16.
20th Century Studios is a division of Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
