Since last December, Taylor Swift‘s “You Belong With Me” has been the unofficial anthem of the Providence College men’s basketball team, the Friars. Taylor just congratulated the players on their stellar season, during which they captured their first regular season conference title and earned a trip to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16.
Taylor, who owns a home in Rhode Island, sent the team a note on custom “I’m Feeling 22” letterhead, which features a logo of one of her cats encircled by the words, “Happy, Free, Confused and Lonely at the Same Time.”
“Hi Friars! What an amazing 2022 season! Congratulations to you all on your incredible and inspiring success,” her letter read. “Sending you all hugs!”
Every time “You Belong with Me” was played during a Friars game, the crowd in the bleachers went nuts.
The lineup has been announced for the 11th annual installment of The KISS Kruise, a two-part event scheduled for October 24-29 and October 29-November 3.
Both cruises, which will feature what’s billed as KISS’ “final onboard performances,” set sail from Los Angeles and will stop at Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada, Mexico, before returning to port.
Week one of the 2022 KISS Kruise will also include performances by Dokken, featuring a reunion with founding guitarist George Lynch; Warrant; L.A. Guns; former KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick; Heart by Heart, a group featuring Heart‘s original rhythm section; and an “All Hands on Deck Super Jam” featuring Lita Ford and other guests.
The bill for the cruise’s second week includes Black Label Society, Buckcherry, Kulick, Stryper, Vixen, and an “All Hands on Deck Super Jam” featuring ex-Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach and other musicians.
During both weeks, KISS will play multiple concerts, including an unmasked pool-deck set for all KISS Navy members and a masked electric indoor concert.
Those who purchase tickets for The KISS Kruise XI will receive engraved commemorative gifts, and will get to take part in two on-board activities with KISS and two on-board activities with each of the band’s members.
Other activities and attractions include a KISS memorabilia exhibit, autograph sessions with some of the performers and themed costume parties.
KISS fans who purchases tickets for both weeks will be rewarded with “an exclusive laminate, a poster signed by KISS, happy hour … with KISS, and an exclusive KISS Kruise XI two-timer t-shirt.”
Week two of this year’s KISS Kruise, which was announced first, is sold out. As for the October 24-29 cruise, presale tickets will be available starting June 16, one day before the public on-sale date.
Justin Bieber will no longer be performing his two Toronto shows due to an undisclosed illness, he told fans on Tuesday.
The singer took to his Instagram Stories to break the bad news hours before he was supposed to take the stage in Toronto, Canada. It is unknown if other shows will be affected, as well. He is next scheduled to perform in Washington, D.C., on Friday and at Madison Square Garden in New York next Monday and Tuesday.
“Can’t believe I’m saying this. I’ve done everything to get better but my sickness is getting worse,” he announced. “My heart breaks that I will have to postpone these next few shows.” He added the sudden cancellation was per “doctors orders.”
Justin signed off by telling fans, “I love you so much and I’m gonna rest and get better!”
The Grammy winner did not disclose what is causing his health issues, but Justin has been open in the past about his battles against Lyme disease, mental illness and past drug abuse.
Understandably, some fans are disappointed to hear the bad news and took to social media to vent their frustrations. The ticket holders pointed out this is the third time his Toronto shows were either postponed or canceled.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced Justin to reschedule his Changes tour, with those shows rescheduled for his Justice tour. In addition, Justin cancelled his 2017 Purpose world tour dates in the city due to depression, anxiety and exhaustion.
To help ease Toronto fans’ disappointment, they can still get their hands on some exclusive Justin merchandise: he opened a Justice World Tour pop-up store that runs June 7 and June 8.
After meeting with President Joe Biden, Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey, a native of Uvalde, Texas, made a passionate plea for gun reform at Tuesday’s White House press briefing as Congress considers new legislation this week.
McConaughey, noting he is a gun owner, offered extensive details of his meetings with grieving families last week in his hometown.
“The common thread — independent of the anger and the confusion and sadness — it was the same. How can these families continue to honor these deaths by keeping the dreams of these children and teachers alive? How can a loss of these lives matter?” he began.
“While we honor and acknowledge the victims, we need to recognize that this time [it] seems that something is different.”
His wife, Camila Alves, was also present at the briefing and brought green Converse sneakers that had belonged to one of the shooting victims. McConaughey described how the small shoes — with a heart drawn on the right toe — were the “only clear evidence that could identify her.”
“These bodies were very different,” he said of the victims. “They needed extensive restoration. Why? Due to the exceptionally large exit wounds of an AR-15 rifle. Most of the bodies were so mutilated that only DNA tests or green Converse could identify them.”
McConaughey met with scores of lawmakers on Capitol Hill as he pushes for reform, including universal background checks and raising the minimum age to buy an AR-15 from 18 to 21 — measures beyond what would appear in any Senate compromise.
“Responsible gun owners are fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals. These regulations are not a step back. They’re a step forward for civil society and the Second Amendment,” he said passionately while standing at the podium.
McConaughey also spoke at length about growing up in Uvalde, where he said he “learned responsible gun ownership.”
“It’s where my mom taught kindergarten — less than a mile from Robb Elementary. Uvalde is where I learned to master a Daisy BB gun … took two years before I graduated to a .410 shotgun,” he added, saying he was brought up “to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun.”
Trivium frontman Matt Heafy has teamed up with Epiphone to launch the Les Paul Custom Origins collection of signature guitars.
The instruments come in Ebony and Bone White finishes, and are available as both six-string and seven-string models.
“I needed to make that sure that if Trivium fans were going out and getting these guitars, they could play every single song of ours the exact same way I would,” Heafy says.
You can pick up one for yourself now via Epiphone.com.
Trivium released their latest album, In the Court of the Dragon, last October. Heafy, meanwhile, debuted his black metal solo project Ibaraki with the album Rashomon in May.
Ted Lasso‘s Brett Goldstein, who serves as a writer and plays Roy Kent on the hit Apple TV+ comedy seies, tells Britain’s The Times that season three is being written as its last.
“We are writing it like that…It was planned as three,” the Emmy winner reveals, adding, “Spoiler alert — everyone dies.”
Ted Lasso creator and star Jason Sudeikis expressed the same sentiment in an interview with Entertainment Weekly last year, although he left the door open for future seasons of the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series, if the opportunity presented itself.
“The story that I know is the one that I wanted to tell, and so that’s the one we’re telling with the help of numerous people in front of and behind the camera, so it’s by no means me typing every keystroke and saying every word,” Sudeikis said. “It’s nowhere near like that. But the story that’s being told — that three-season arc — is one that I see, know, and understood. I’m glad that they are willing to pay for those three seasons. As far as what happens after that, who knows? I don’t know.”
Ted Lasso season three is currently being shot and is set to premiere later this year.
WALK THE MOON has announced a tour celebrating the 10th anniversary of the band’s 2012 self-titled album.
The six-date run begins October 19 in Los Angeles and will make stops in San Diego, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Boston before wrapping up November 12 in New York City.
“We’re taking those songs back to the rooms we played them in a decade ago, playing the record top to bottom, and then adding some more,” WALK THE MOON says.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, June 10, at 10 a.m. local time via WALKTHEMOON.com.
The album WALK THE MOON, the sophomore follow-up to the group’s self-released 2010 debut, I want! I want!, put the Ohio-based band on the map with the singles “Anna Sun” and “Tightrope.” They then exploded with 2014’s TALKING IS HARD, which spawned the mega-hit “Shut Up and Dance.”
WALK THE MOON’s most recent album is last November’s HEIGHTS, which includes the singles “Can You Handle My Love??” and “Giants.”
Original Beach Boys member Brian Wilson and his solo band kick off a summer co-headlining tour with Chicago tonight in Phoenix. The 25-date U.S. trek is mapped out through a July 26 concert in the Detroit suburb of Clarkston, Michigan.
As has been the case for the last several years, Wilson’s band will include two other Beach Boys alums, co-founding singer/guitarist Al Jardine and Blondie Chaplin, who sang and played guitar with the band in 1972 and ’73.
“It’s gonna be a big, big tour, and it’ll be a lot of fun,” Jardine tells ABC Audio. “I encourage people to come out and see it. It’s gonna be a great show.”
Al, who’s best known for singing lead vocals on The Beach Boys’ 1965 chart-topper “Help Me, Rhonda,” says that with Wilson sharing headlining duties with Chicago, Brian’s set will focus mainly on their old group’s best-known tunes.
“Yeah, it’s gonna more of a hits-driven performance,” Jardine notes, adding with a laugh, “And that’s…for the new generation. They want to hear the hits…and the old farts, too.”
After the tour with Chicago, Wilson — with Jardine and Chaplin — will play three headlining shows in Tennessee this September.
Prior to Wilson’s trek with Chicago, Al toured with his “Al Jardine’s Family & Friends” show, which featured Jardine performing with his son, Matt, and Wilson’s two daughters — Carnie and Wendy Wilson of Wilson Phillips fame. There are two more “Family & Friends” currently scheduled for 2022 — on July 29 in Paso Robles, California, and October 21 in Cerritos, California.
Visit AlJardine.com to see a full list of concerts that Al will be playing this year.
Gabe Ginsberg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The economic recovery from a pandemic-induced downturn has prompted a surge in worker pay, especially in some low-wage sectors like leisure and hospitality, leading to pronouncements of a shift in leverage between workers and management.
Despite a pandemic-era boom for low-wage workers, the hike in pay last year for a typical worker at the nation’s lowest-paying companies failed to keep up with the raises enjoyed by the chief executives at their firms, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank.
Moreover, at more than a third of the lowest-paying companies, the pay hike last year for a typical worker fell short of inflation, effectively amounting to a pay cut, the report said.
The 30-page report — which examines the 300 U.S. corporations that provided the lowest median pay in 2020, including large corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks — found that the CEO-to-worker pay gap at those companies grew wider last year compared with the year prior.
The average gap between CEO and median worker pay among those 300 low-paying companies rose last year to 670-to-1, up from 604-to-1 in 2020, the report said. Forty-nine firms had ratios above 1,000-to-1 last year, the study showed.
“Instead of using 2021 as an opportunity to reward low-wage workers, many of whom did work to keep the economy going during the crisis, we saw gaps further widening and companies focusing on keeping their CEOs happy,” Sarah Anderson, the director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the report, told ABC News.
Andy Jassy, the Amazon CEO, received compensation totaling $213 million last year, resulting in a pay ratio of 6,474 to 1, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson, who retired in March, received total compensation of $20.4 million last year, which amounted to 1,579 times the pay of a typical worker at the company, a SEC filing showed.
The increased wage gap between CEOs and median workers at Amazon and Starbucks last year coincided with a surge in unionization at the companies. A nationwide labor campaign at Starbucks, which began with a victory at a store in Buffalo, New York, in December, has achieved union representation at 72 stores, the National Labor Relations Board said last Tuesday.
“We’re seeing more and more workers turning to unionization and other ways to try to stand up and demand their fair share,” Anderson said.
But the increased gap between CEOs and median workers may reflect the heightened need for capable leadership during the economic crisis brought about by the pandemic, said Rachel Greszler, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“It could’ve made sense for companies to increase compensation to keep people they had on board or to attract people to get them through difficult times,” Greszler said.
In addition to Amazon and Starbucks, the report examined major corporations such as McDonald’s, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Nike and The Home Depot, among many other companies.
Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo dropped hints about his latest project on Instagram Monday and it’s not new music on the way, at least not in this instance. Instead, the “Said Sum” rapper posted the script to an upcoming movie it looks like he wrote and shared that the project will be released in September.
“Hope y’all ready,” he said in an Instagram Live video later shared by The Shade Room.
The short clip shows Moneybagg flipping through a few pages of the script; the title page reads, “If Pain was a Person,” and “Story by: Moneybagg Yo.”
In addition to his message of “Hope Y’all Ready!!” he captioned the video by writing, “Big Screen Bagg” and “#september.”
It’s unknown how long the movie has been in the works or in what capacity the film will be released.
The 30-year-old rapper is currently promoting what he says is “the official song of the NBA,” his new single “Big League,” with YoGotti, Lil Poppa and Mozzy
