BTS‘ Jimin is a merchandise-selling machine after fans bought out his new purple hoodie in a matter of seconds — causing the online store to crash.
Korea JoongAng Daily, which is associated with The New York Times, reports that the Korean singer teamed with the company HYBE to launch the Artist-Made Collection by BTS. While each member of the BTS septet contributed, only a few put forth some of his own designs — Jimin, Jin, RM, Suga and V.
Jimin created a hoodie that contained several sentences, which include “You never walk alone,” “Seven with you” and the number 13, which honors his October 13th birthday. He then promoted his hoodie prior to its launch by wearing it in videos.
Then, when it — along with some earrings — went live at around 11 a.m. Korean time on Tuesday on the Weverse Shop, the HYBE servers crashed almost instantly due to the sheer number of fans accessing the site at once. The outlet notes that it wasn’t just people from Korea trying to get their hands on the collection — it was fans from across the globe.
It should also be noted that no other BTS member enjoyed such a stampede — even V who released his “Virkin” last week. While his collection sold out in seconds, his fans did not knock the website offline.
HYBE said it is now “positively considering” a re-release of the hoodie because of the public outcry and announced, “The decision will be announced soon at Weverse Shop.”
Another superstar has been added to the Super Bowl weekend entertainment lineup in Los Angeles.
The h.wood Group announced Wednesday that Drake will headline the “Homecoming” party on Saturday, February 12, one day before the Super Bowl is played at Sofi Stadium. The four-time Grammy winner will perform at the event at the Pacific Design Center.
The Champagne Papi will hit the stage one night after his mentor, Lil Wayne, who signed him to the Young Money Entertainment label in 2009, headlines Shaquille O’Neal‘s “Shaq’s Fun House” party on Friday, February 11 at the Shrine Auditorium.
The shows by Drake and Lil Wayne will lead up to the main event, Super Bowl 56 on Sunday, February 13 featuring Dr. Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Mary J. Blige performing for the first time together during halftime
Timothy Norris/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
Wolf Alice will be opening for Harry Styles during the One Direction star’s upcoming European tour.
The “Moaning Lisa Smile” outfit will be on the bill from a June 26 date in Germany to a July 31 stop in Portugal. Tickets go on sale next Friday, January 28.
For the full list of dates and all ticket info, visit WolfAlice.co.uk.
Other openers on Styles’ European tour include Mitski and Arlo Parks, while Koffee will support his South American run launching in November. Styles’ U.S. tour last year featured Rilo Kiley‘s Jenny Lewis on the bill.
Wolf Alice, meanwhile, released their latest album, Blue Weekend, last June. It includes the single “Smile.”
At 7:45 p.m. Wednesday, Broadway will dim its lights in honor of stage and screen legend Sidney Poitier.
The legendary actor and activist, who died at 94 on January 6, made his debut on the Great White Way 75 years ago in an all-Black revival of Lysistrata, and went on to earn a Best Actor Tony nomination for creating the role of Walter Lee Younger in Lorraine Hansberry‘s groundbreaking drama A Raisin in the Sun.
After becoming the first Black actor to win a Best Actor Academy Award, for 1963’s Lilies of the Field, Poitier returned to the stage as a director, with Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights.
Charlotte St. Martin, president of The Broadway League noted in the announcement, “Although Sidney Poitier’s brilliance shone on Broadway stages as a performer and director in just a small number of productions, his presence on Broadway was both titanic and influential.”
Calling him a “true icon and an inspiration to so very many,” St. Martin said, “I know that Broadway fans worldwide recognize the incredible impact Mr. Poitier had on our art form.”
Stephane Cardinale – Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images
Gaspard Ulliel, an award-winning French actor who starred in the acclaimed film A Very Long Engagement and the prequel Hannibal Rising, has died after a skiing accident, reports The Guardian.
The actor, who will appear in the upcoming Disney+ Marvel show Moon Knight was 37.
Quoting French media outlet France Bleu, the Guardian noted Ulliel collided with another skier in the Alps, but later died of head trauma after being airlifted to a hospital.
The actor was a favorite among voters for the Cesar, the French film equivalent of the Oscars, first winning a Promising Young Actor trophy for his role in 2004’s A Very Long Engagement, and later its Best Actor prize for the 2016 Xavier Dolan film It’s Only the End of the World.
Ulliel’s passing was mourned on Twitter by France’s Prime Minister Jean Castex, who said the actor, “grew up with cinema and cinema grew with him.”
Ulliel, who will appear as Midnight Man opposite Oscar Isaac and Ethan Hawke in Moon Knight, leaves behind a 6-year-old son Orso with his model and singer girlfriend Gaëlle Piétri.
L-Davey Johnstone, R-Elton John; J. Meric/Getty Images
It’s been almost two years since Elton John‘s Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour was sidelined because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the trek relaunches tonight in New Orleans, the first show of a lengthy two-part 2022 North American leg.
With the U.S. and many other areas around the world still dealing with COVID-related issues because of the Omicron variant, Elton’s longtime guitarist and musical director Davey Johnstone tells ABC Audio he doesn’t know if the tour will go off without postponements, but he says every precaution is being made to help ensure the musicians and crew remain healthy.
“It seems it changes so much, and we’ve got to kind of be ready for anything,” Johnstone says. “So, I know there’s no backstage, there’s no guests. There are no backstage passes. There are no wives or girlfriends or anything…[E]verybody’s [going to be] super masked up and getting tested every two days to make sure everybody on the tour stays safe.”
He adds, “I think there’s like a hundred people [who] travel around, between the crew and the production staff and…the band and all that. So it’s a lot of people to keep safe. So…it’ll be a different animal, but, you know, I think we’ll be O.K., as long as we can just keep to the program.”
Asked if, after a nearly two-year layoff, there might be some changes to Elton’s set list, Johnstone says he and the other band members are more focused on delivering an exciting show.
“[W]e just get out there and play some kick-a** rock ‘n’ roll, and that’s what we’ll do,” he declares. “And there might be a couple of subtle changes…but nothing too drastic.”
The Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy is a fried green tomato sandwich that Gibbons devised in collaboration with Antone’s executive chef Alex Padilla. The sandwich is available now at both of Antone’s full-service sandwich shops in Houston, the bearded rock legend’s hometown.
“Antone’s has been notable for presenting one of the greatest sandwich collections and that fact remains unchallenged,” Billy says in a statement. “Their attention to perfection in the world of po’ boys made the draw a natural for teaming up and bringing a new twist and [a] tasty addition with Antone’s line of flavor sensations.”
The Whisker Bomb Po’ Boy features buttermilk-dipped fried green tomatoes, harissa, chipotle mayo, Gibbons’ Whisker Bomb Have Mercy hot sauce, goat cheese, spices and arugula served on warm French bread.
The po’ boy, which is priced at $9.95, is the last offering in Antone’s “H-Town Originals” sandwich series charity initiative, and will be available until June 1. Proceeds from sales of the sandwich will benefit The Clifford Antone Foundation, an Austin, Texas-based organization dedicated to preserving the local music culture and community “by caring for our elders and investing in our youth.”
Gibbons selected the foundation as his beneficiary because of his connection to the historic Austin venue Antone’s Nightclub.
“It’s surreal to be able to partner with Billy F Gibbons, someone who grew up on Antone’s po’ boys, at the same time I grew up watching him on stage,” Antone’s Famous Po’ Boys CEO Craig Lieberman. “[W]e are honored to have a Texas legend like Billy to be a part of [our 60th anniversary].”
(WASHINGTON) — On the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden is set to hold a formal news conference at the White House Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET, and is bound to face questions on waning public support for his handling of the pandemic, the economy and legislative agenda.
With Biden facing the limits of what he can accomplish with an evenly-divided Senate, unable to get either his signature social spending package or major voting rights reform through Congress in recent weeks, and with the pandemic still raging well into its second, President Biden’s approval rating in polls has hit an all-time low. A Jan. 12 Quinnipiac poll found his approval rating to be 33%, a 3-point drop from November.
Still, Biden is expected at the news conference to tout his successes over the year, including administering more than 200 million COVID-19 vaccine doses, and hitting record-low unemployment rates in many states.
“You don’t get everything done in the first year. But what we feel good about … is that coming in to an incredibly difficult circumstance, fighting a pandemic, an economic a massive economic downturn, as a result, an administration that was prior to us that did not effectively deal with a lot of these crises, that there’s been a lot of progress made,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
“We need to build on that. The work is not done, the job is not done, and we are certainly not conveying it is, so our objective and I think what you’ll hear the president talk about tomorrow is how to build on the foundation we laid in the first year,” she added.
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield cited the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief law, the American Rescue Plan, and a major, bipartisan infrastructure package as two achievements Biden will highlight in an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Wednesday. But she also acknowledged the president can do more on other issues.
“He has been laser-focused on taming COVID and growing the economy. He would be the first to say we’re not where we need to be on those,” Bedingfield said.
Wednesday’s session marks just the second time Biden has held a solo formal press conference at the White House. The first such news conference was held March 25, 2021.
Since then, he held five news conferences on foreign trips, and three in partnership with other foreign leaders at the White House, for a total of nine news conferences. While Biden often answers questions shouted by the press at other events, his tally of formal news conferences is the lowest for any president since Ronald Reagan, according to data from University of California Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project.
(WASHINGTON) — In a rare event, the Senate will convene on Wednesday morning with all Democrats instructed to be in their seats inside the chamber when the business begins as they try to move forward on voting rights legislation and a challenge a long-standing Senate rule, efforts poised to fail without the support of a single Republican and likely even some Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats will seek a carveout to the filibuster rule to pass voting rights legislation by replacing the current 60-vote threshold needed to break a filibuster with an old-fashioned “talking filibuster.”
“We feel very simply: on something as important as voting rights, if Senate Republicans are going to oppose it, they should not be allowed to sit in their office,” Schumer said Tuesday following an evening caucus meeting. “They’ve got to come down on the floor and defend their opposition to voting rights, the wellspring of our democracy. There’s broad, strong feeling in our caucus about that.”
“To anyone who says, ‘Oh, well you may not win.’ Don’t do it. Look at history,” Schumer added, preemptively defending the effort as a moral win, if not a legislative one.
Under a talking filibuster, senators are required to “hold the floor” during debate, testing their stamina as they must stand and speak to block bills. Once a party runs out of steam and gives in, the chamber would then pass the bill that was filibustered by a simple majority. So, in theory, Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, would serve as a tie-breaking vote for Democrats to pass the once-filibustered bill.
But both Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have repeatedly made clear their opposition to changing the filibuster rule to pass voting rights, although they say they support the underlying legislation.
“I don’t know how you break a rule to make a rule,” Manchin told reporters Tuesday, shooting down the proposed talking filibuster.
And without the support of every single Democrat, it’ll be a non-starter in the chamber.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell gave a highly critical speech on the floor Tuesday of the effort after weeks of warning of “scorched earth” if Democrats made a filibuster carveout.
“Does the Senate exist to help narrow majorities double down on divisions or to force broad coalitions to build bridges?” McConnell said. “This fake hysteria does not prove the senate is obsolete it proves the Senate is as necessary as ever.”
Both parties have supported filibuster carveouts in the past decade for judicial nominees – first under then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who lowered the threshold for judicial nominees to 51 votes to make way for then-President Barack Obama’s nominees in 2013. McConnell, as Senate majority leader in 2017, also used the so-called “nuclear option” to confirm then-President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
The Senate rules change vote is expected in the early evening.
Across Pennsylvania Avenue, President Joe Biden – one day shy of one year in office – will hold a press conference from the White House around the same time, where he’ll likely take questions on his stalled legislative agenda.
The election reform bill at hand in the Senate would make Election Day a federal holiday, expand early voting and mail-in-voting, and give the federal government greater oversight over state elections. And would come at a time when nearly 20 states have restricted access to voting fueled by false claims in the wake of the 2020 election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
Fleetwood Mac drummer and co-founder Mick Fleetwood is set to executive produce the music drama 13 Songs, currently in development at Fox, according to Deadline.
The series reportedly follows an aging rock star who’s diagnosed with terminal cancer. Given just a few months to live, he reconnects with his old band to write and record 13 final songs as a final love letter to his fans and hopefully leave his mark on the world forever.
Will Reiser, who wrote the Joseph Gordon-Levitt-led comedy feature 50/50, will script the project, along with American Soul creator Jonathan Prince.
It will be directed by Jonathan Levine, who directed Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers.
Additionally, Fleetwood “will lend his creative and musical voice” to the project, according Deadline.
13 Songs is the latest in a series of musical dramas being prepped at Fox, along with Monarch, the country music family dynasty series starring Susan Sarandon and Trace Adkins, and Icon, an anthology drama series profiling some of the world’s biggest music legends, starting with country music duo The Judds.
