Dave Grohl is flashing back to 1991 on his The Storyteller book tour.
During his stop in New York City earlier this week, the Foo Fighters frontman brought a drum kit to the stage and played along with the studio recording of Nirvana‘s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
You can watch fan-shot footage of the performance streaming now on YouTube.
Grohl released The Storyteller, his debut memoir, earlier this week. His tour is set to continue Thursday in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, Nirvana will be releasing a 30th anniversary reissue of Nevermind on November 12. The expanded collection includes the full live recordings of four Nirvana concerts from 1991 and 1992.
Hip hop legend N.O.R.E. and wife Neri are one of the couples featured on the new season of WE tv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Hip Hop Edition.
N.O.R.E. says that although he and his wife of 10 years prefer to be private, opening up about their marital issues on national television didn’t deter them from joining the reality-based series.
“I’m fan of the process,” N.O.R.E. tells ABC Audio. “I’m a fan of these programs, so it’s literally like me sitting at home and watching basketball and saying, ‘I could do that.'”
N.O.R.E’s wife concurs, noting that the show gave her the opportunity to “see [her] husband in a different form.”
“Most of the time, our problems are kept privately at home, but now since airing it out in front of other couples, in front of [Dr. Ish Major], in front of [Judge Lynn Toler] — I got to see him open up,” she says. “So for us to be open…in front of other couples, it was a different light that I saw him in. And… it was kind of good to see him in that light, because I’m always seeing him… privately.”
Meanwhile, for N.O.R.E., the real sell of the show came after he spoke with fellow rapper and The Lox member Styles P, who was featured on a previous season with his wife, Adjua.
“My friend Styles P… [was] telling me that it actually improved his marriage,” N.O.R.E. shares. “It was something I was interested in, besides being a fan of the show…and the therapy and all of that… So I figured, why not learn something? Why not have some fun and do a little business in the process? So it was a win-win.”
WE tv’s Marriage Boot Camp: Hip Hop Edition premieres tonight at 9 p.m. ET.
John Mellencamp, the Indiana-born singer/songwriter who came to fame in the early ’80s under the name John Cougar, was born 70 years ago today.
Known for his roots-rock songs often celebrating small-town life in America, Mellencamp enjoyed his major commercial breakthrough with his fifth studio album, 1982’s American Fool, released under the John Cougar moniker.
American Fool is John’s only album to date to top the Billboard 200 chart, spending nine weeks at #1. It features his classic songs “Jack and Diane” and “Hurts So Good,” which peaked at #1 and #2, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.
Starting with his next album, 1983’s Uh-Huh, he began releasing his records under the name John Cougar Mellencamp, and beginning in 1991, he dropped “Cougar” altogether.
Among the other hits Mellencamp has scored during his long career are “Crumblin’ Down,” “Pink Houses,” “Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Small Town,” “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A. (A Salute to ’60s Rock),” “Cherry Bomb,” and a cover of Van Morrison‘s “Wild Night,” the latter a duet with Me’Shell Ndegéocello.
In 1985, Mellencamp, along with Willie Nelson and Neil Young, organized the first Farm Aid concert, and the charity event continues to raise money to support family farms each year.
Mellencamp was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
John’s resumé also includes a collaboration with horror author Stephen King on the Southern Gothic stage musical Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, which premiered in 2012. In addition, Mellencamp is an accomplished painter whose artwork has been exhibited numerous times.
Mellencamp’s latest release is a duet with Bruce Springsteen titled “Wasted Days,” and the track also will appear on John’s next studio album, Strictly a One-Eyed Jack, due out in 2022.
While there have been the traditional trailers for Marvel Studios’ upcoming epic Eternals, a new tease showcases Kumail Nanjiani as Kingo in — a Lexus commercial.
While the Eternals are a race of ancient, god-like heroes, the new ad shows they’re not immune to a very mortal problem: finding a parking spot. That’s just what Nanjiani’s character is trying to do in the ad, amid a major battle he’s missing out on, in part thanks to massive fireballs and other debris from the fight getting in the way.
As he’s getting increasingly frustrated, Nanjiani’s character is taking texts and calls from his fellow Eternals — Gemma Chan‘s Sersei and Lia McHugh‘s Sprite — both of whom are urging him to get into the fight.
Eventually, he showcases his powers when he finds a spot — and blasts away a shopping cart that is headed to ding his new ride.
While an overt promotion for the film, the spot does highlight Kingo’s character — and how the normally comedic Nanjiani will be portraying him. As fans all know by now, the actor got into superheroic shape to play the character, but the spot shows his sense of humor wasn’t lost in all that muscle.
Incidentally, the ad was directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, who called the shots on four Marvel movies, including Avengers: Endgame.
Directed by Nomadland Oscar winner Chloé Zhao and starring Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, with Salma Hayek, Richard Madden, Kit Harington and Brian Tyree Henry,Eternals opens November 5.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Coldplay has announced a series of interactive, in-person events to celebrate the release of the band’s upcoming new album, Music of the Spheres.
Presented by Amazon Music, the exhibits are described as a “five-minute immersive experience, transporting you into the Music of the Spheres universe.” They’ll be held on October 15 and 16 in New York City, London, Tokyo and Berlin.
Music of the Spheres, the ninth Coldplay album, is due out October 15. It includes the lead single “Higher Power,” the number-one smash hit BTS collaboration “My Universe,” and a forthcoming song with Selena Gomez called “Let Somebody Go.”
Coldplay will keep the Music of the Spheres party going with a week-long residency on CBS’ The Late Late Show, starting October 18.
Culkin (left) and “Succession” cast — David Livingston/Getty Images
Being the brother of an uber famous celebrity has its perks. However, it also gives insight to some of the not so fun parts, which Kieran Culkin is opening up about.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporterpublished Wednesday, the Succession star recalled the unfortunate incidents his brother, Home Alone star Macaulay Culkin, would experience when they were young child stars.
“He would get harassed on the street,” Kieran said. “One time, a woman pulled off his hat and looked at him and said, ‘Yeah, it’s him! You’re not that cute.’ And then handed the hat back and walked away.”
Kieran also shared a story of his own about a fan who apparently wouldn’t accept that he was not Macaulay.
“When I was doing one of the Father of the Bride movies, this woman ran up to me and said, ‘Are you Macluckly Macluckly?’ And I went, ‘No.’ She goes, ‘Can I get a picture?’ I said, ‘I’m not him.’ And in my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Nobody’s that.’ “
Fast forward three decades. Thanks to landing HBO’s Succession, Kieran has finally found the role that solidified his desire to be an actor.
“I’m trying to remember the exact moment it hit me,” he said. I think it was at the end of the first season. I remember coming home and thinking, ‘This is what I want to do with my life. I think I want to be an actor.’ I was, like, 36. I’d already been doing it for 30 years.”
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss have shared another new song from their upcoming collaborative album, Raise the Roof.
The track, titled “High and Lonesome,” was written by the Led Zeppelin vocalist alongside producer T Bone Burnett. It’s the lone original tune on Raise the Roof, which is otherwise filled with covers of “legends and unsung heroes of folk, blues, country and soul music.”
You can listen to “High and Lonesome” now via digital outlets.
“High and Lonesome” is the second song to be released from Raise the Roof, following the lead single “Can’t Let Go,” originally written by Randy Weeks. The whole album is set to arrive November 19.
Plant and Krauss, of course, previously collaborated on the 2007 album Raising Sand. The record won a total of five Grammys in 2009, including Album of the Year.
(WASHINGTON) — With the fall of the Afghan government, the Biden administration has so far brought roughly 60,000 Afghans to the U.S., with plans for tens of thousands more to arrive in the next year.
But those high numbers belie a broken refugee resettlement program that has been struggling to bring new refugees to the U.S. — and now, new data shows just how bad the situation is.
In the 2021 fiscal year — from Oct. 1, 2020, through Sept. 30 of this year — the U.S. admitted its lowest number of refugees in the program’s over 40-year history: just 11,411, according to newly released State Department data.
That means that in the last year, including President Joe Biden’s first nine months, the U.S. resettled fewer refugees than former President Donald Trump’s final full fiscal year, when 11,814 total refugees were admitted. Biden had pledged to admit up to 62,500 refugees during his young term, while Trump’s administration took several steps to dismantle the refugee resettlement program and bring admissions to a halt.
The Afghans who have been brought to the U.S. in the last two months do not count toward this total because they were granted entry under “humanitarian parole” — a short-term legal status — given the urgency of the unprecedented U.S. airlift that evacuated them from Kabul.
Those Afghans will now have access to support and services usually given to refugees because of the federal government funding bill that passed last week, but their future legal status is in question, as a White House proposal to fast track them to receive a green card was left out.
Either way, they’re not legally considered refugees. Just 872 Afghans were admitted under that category in the 2021 fiscal year, according to the data.
Trump admitted 604 Afghans as refugees in his final full fiscal year.
Biden had vowed to boost refugee admissions during the 2020 campaign and in his administration’s earliest days, but in the spring, he signed a memo that kept Trump’s refugee cap of 15,000 — the program’s lowest — only to then backtrack and raise it to 62,500 after outrage among Democrats and refugee advocates.
But those Trump-era efforts to dismantle the program led to this small number, and now they endanger Biden’s promise to admit 125,000 refugees in the fiscal year of 2022, which runs through next Sept. 30.
There had been some uptick in the number of admissions under the Biden administration — climbing from 283 in March to 1,533 in June to 3,774 in September — but advocates say the administration didn’t do enough to make repairs and expand those numbers.
“If we are to reach President Biden’s goal of welcoming 125,000 refugees, the administration must be aggressive and innovative in ramping up processing,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the largest U.S. faith-based resettlement agency. “We urge the Biden administration to do everything in its power to align refugee admissions with our core values as a welcoming nation.”
There have been warnings for months now that the U.S. refugee resettlement program has not recovered from the previous four years. In particular, the major resettlement agencies in the U.S. had been forced to slash staffing as federal funds dried up, the pipeline of potential refugees had been blocked by new rules advocates have called onerous, and the pandemic meant the required in-person interviews weren’t happening.
While several resettlement agencies in the U.S. say the Trump-era damage is obvious, they expressed some disappointment that Biden’s team hasn’t done more to reverse that, saying responsibility now lies with them.
“The U.S. is taking in fewer refugees than ever at a time when there are more refugees in the world than at any point in recorded history, which is unacceptable. The Biden administration will need to prioritize creating more efficient and equitable methods of processing for refugees in order to reach the ceiling of 125,000 refugees for the fiscal year that’s just begun,” said Myal Greene, president and CEO of World Relief, another Christian humanitarian group.
In his executive order last February, for example, Biden directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security to “consider all appropriate actions” to permit virtual interviews between USCIS case officers and refugee applicants, as the pandemic makes in-person interviews still challenging.
But eight months later, no changes have been made in that process. The number of refugee interviews conducted in the first quarter of this fiscal year was zero, according to USCIS data, compared to 1,373 in all of fiscal year 2020 and 44,538 in FY 2019. Data from USCIS is so far only available for the first quarter of FY 2021.
(WASHINGTON) — Americans will soon be seeing new, empowering faces on some U.S. quarters.
On Wednesday, the United States Mint announced its quarter designs for 2022, which feature five trailblazing American women.
The five women featured are Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood; Dr. Sally Ride, the first American woman to soar into space; award-winning writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou; Wilma Mankiller, the first woman elected principal chief of the Cherokee Nation and an activist for Native American and women’s rights; and Nina Otero-Warren, a leader in New Mexico’s suffrage movement and the first female superintendent of Santa Fe public schools.
“These inspiring coin designs tell the stories of five extraordinary women whose contributions are indelibly etched in American culture,” the United States Mint’s acting director, Alison L. Doone, said in a statement.
The designs are part of the American Women Quarters Program, a four year program featuring coins with reverse (tails) designs of women who have made their mark in American history.
For each year until 2025, the Mint will issue five quarters honoring individuals with a wide range of accomplishments and fields, including suffrage, civil rights, abolition, government, humanities, science, space and the arts.
“Generations to come will look at coins bearing these designs and be reminded of what can be accomplished with vision, determination and a desire to improve opportunities for all,” Doone said.
(ARAB, Ala.) — More than 10 inches of rain pounded northern Alabama over the last 24 hours, leaving some neighborhoods underwater.
A child died as a result of the flooding in Arab, located in northern Alabama, the Marshall County Coroner’s Office said.
In Hoover, near Birmingham, crews have been searching through the night for two people who were in a car that was swept away in the floodwaters. The vehicle is believed to be submerged, officials said, adding that divers are at the scene.
In Pelham, fire officials said they responded to 282 calls for service. Officials conducted 82 rescues from homes and over a dozen rescues from cars.
Schools in Pelham are closed Thursday due to the excessive flooding. A flash flood watch remains in effect through Thursday night.
The flash flooding threat will expand east Thursday into Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, where more than 3 inches of rain is expected.
Flash flooding is also possible in Tennessee and Florida.
