Phil Collins was trending on Twitter, which can be a bad thing for a celebrity but not this time. Everyone was just thinking about “In The Air” and some were realizing that Lily Collins is his daughter. Has Phil Collins watched Emily in Paris? Dodger had his second hip replacement and is recovering …

I’ve been sitting on this story for a few days now to see if it develops any further. And it’s interesting to me how it’s developed – or not developed. To recap: last week The Blast broke the news that Angelina Jolie had filed documents in court on March 12 that show she has “proof and authority in …

Is that a lethal combination? If Chris Pine is your Best Chris, I had you at Chris Pine. But this is Chris Pine + Dog + he took his shirt off. So I can just cut out here and we’d be good, right? Well, for SEO purposes, I do have to write a little more, otherwise Google will think I’m a spammer. Ther…

AppleTV’s new series Calls will probably scare the Bejesus out of me. [Seriously OMG]
Harvard astronomer claims aliens are real! Of course they’re real, they’ve been here the entire time! Ancient Aliens ftw. [OMG Blog]
Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello are somehow still together. [Just Jared]
I can’t believe Dave Foley has a full head of white hair now! [Pajiba]
Oh God does Dua Lipa have baby bangs now?! [Egotastic]
Justin Bieber sampled Martin Luther King Jr. on his new album. [Dlisted]
The Rick Owens collection just looks like sleeping-bag chic. [Go Fug Yourself]
A deeper dive into the British media versus Meghan Markle. [LaineyGossip]
This NCAA story should be a huge deal. [Jezebel]
A volcano erupted in Iceland (near Bjork’s home). [Buzzfeed]
Lori Harvey rocks a Tom Ford suit. [RCFA]

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is the second Marvel show to come to Disney+ with the first episode, “New World Order”, introducing us to a more mundane aspect of the world after the Avengers brought everyone back from the blip. Set a few months down the line from the events of Endgame, and in no …

Kendall Jenner was in New York over the weekend and the paparazzi seemed especially happy to see her. I wonder about the paparazzi industry in New York specifically! Did they just not work at all during the pandemic? Were they only going out a few times a week to stake out Sarah Jessica Parker’s townhouse or something? Anyway, Kendall was out running some errands in this ensemble and there are about a million photos of her and even Vogue was praising her retro-Annie Hall vibes as the presumptive look for spring:

Kendall Jenner’s winter look was all about quiet minimalism. She spent much of the colder months wearing discreet pieces from The Row. Head-to-toe black was her style M.O., decked out in luxurious turtlenecks, trousers, and coats. But that was last season—for spring, the model has a spring new look. At least, so far.

Spotted in New York City earlier today, Jenner embraced retro-chic. She wore a crisp white shirt and layered a ’70s-inspired striped sweater vest overtop. Jenner paired it with khaki green trousers, brown square-toe loafers, and ribbed socks. The whole look has a grandpa vibe to it. But her tortoise sunglasses, beaded mask chain, and Burberry Olympia bag made the fit feel whimsical and youthful.

[From Vogue]

What’s weird is that I actually like Kendall’s look too? I’m sure the youths probably think that they’ve discovered something wholly new, but the whole menswear-inspired/vest/loose-preppy look was really popular in the 1970s, and it comes back every few years. It really works on Kendall specifically because of her body type (which was also very popular in the ‘70s) and her general Ali McGraw vibe.

Kendall was also photographed at dinner at Carbone. I kind of like this dress too!

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

If you are a public relations and/or crisis management specialist, and I know you’re out there because I’ve been hearing from a lot of you these days, heads up that you might want to, well, smash your head into your keyboard if you haven’t seen this yet – a story that came out about Prince William a…

National Geographic has begun airing Genius: Aretha. It’s their new miniseries about the life and times of Aretha Franklin, and Cynthia Erivo plays Aretha. Let’s start there! Erivo just played Harriet Tubman a few years ago and there was some criticism that she didn’t look anything like Tubman, and that producers should have tried harder to find an American woman to play such an iconic American (Erivo is British). Now she’s playing Aretha, another iconic American? Eh. But it turns out that the real drama is between Aretha’s family and NatGeo. This production didn’t want any input from the Franklin family.

There may be two Aretha Franklin biopics coming out this year, but only one so far is getting an endorsement from members of the Queen of Soul’s immediate family. Earlier this week, the late singer’s granddaughter, Grace Franklin, posted a TikTok of her family protesting the release of Genius: Aretha, NatGeo’s four-part series starring Oscar-nominated actress Cynthia Erivo as Aretha. The series, for which Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is showrunner, premieres on Sunday. In the clip, she’s chanting along with her parents, siblings, and friends, “This movie has to go! This movie has to go!”

“As the immediate family, we feel that it’s important to be involved with any biopic of my grandma’s life, as it’s hard to get any accurate depiction of anyone’s life without speaking to the ones closest to them,” she says later in the clip. “During the process of writing, directing, and filming this movie, we’ve reached out to Genius as a family on multiple occasions where we have been disrespected and told we will not be worked with. As the immediate family — emphasis on immediate — we do not support this film and we ask that you also do not support this film, as we feel extremely disrespected, and we feel there will be many inaccuracies about my grandmother’s life.”

In a phone call on Friday, her father and Aretha’s son Kecalf Franklin supported his daughter’s words. “What we’ve found out in the past is that usually when people don’t want to work with you, that is a prelude to some type of unprofessional behavior or a prelude to some type of untruth or slander, so we’re not quite sure where we’re going to see in this series,” he tells Rolling Stone, adding that he has not yet seen any clips from Genius and will not be watching it Sunday. “That’s usually the case when people say that they don’t want to work with you.”

[From Rolling Stone]

I mean… all of this. I don’t watch those NatGeo series because they seem like a nursery-school version of what actually happened. I don’t really even understand why NatGeo thinks they should be the channel to make these miniseries either? And if you’re going to barge in and make the series, why would you go out of your way to piss off the family? Yikes.

Embed from Getty Images

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, NatGeo, Getty.

In LA, there’s a famous bar called the Pig ‘N Whistle. And nearly as famous as the bar is the halfway secret nightclub in the backrooms of the bar, the Cloak & Dagger. The Cloak & Dagger is known as an underground Goth club, invitation-only, for people within the LA Goth community or, as it turns out, random famous people and predators. The Cloak & Dagger has now closed amid a wave of accusations of predatory behavior from guests. Guests like Thomas Middleditch, the guy who announced in Playboy in 2019 that he and his wife were “swingers,” and it turned out that “swinging” was just an excuse for Middleditch to sleep with other women and act disgusting to other women (his wife left him less than a year after that Playboy interview). Here’s more from the LA Times:

Hannah Harding parted a thick wooden gate and walked into the barely lit labyrinth of the Hollywood club Cloak & Dagger on Oct. 22, 2019. An evening at the Goth club, where a cast of experimental artists performed eerie, sexually charged ceremonies each week in the back rooms of the Pig ’N Whistle bar, was a coveted invitation: an uninhibited, LGBTQ-friendly, members-only club where underground DJs, actors, rockers and adventurous partygoers could revel in safety and secrecy.

The scene felt a little spooky, but that was part of the appeal for the then-21-year-old. As the party ramped up in the main “black room,” actor Thomas Middleditch, best known for his role as Richard Hendricks on the HBO series “Silicon Valley,” approached Harding on the dance floor, she said. He’d met Harding at the club before. Staff had brought concerns about his behavior to co-founders Adam Bravin and Michael Patterson.

Harding said Middleditch made lewd sexual overtures toward her and her girlfriend. She turned him down, but he kept pursuing her, groping her in front of her friends and several employees, including the club’s operations manager, Kate Morgan. Morgan said she asked her bosses to kick Middleditch out and ban him, but they didn’t seem to take it seriously.

“I felt like they dismissed it,” she said. “I told Adam that he needed to listen, that this was not OK.” Harding has Instagram direct messages from Middleditch, seen by The Times, saying, “Hannah I had no idea my actions were that weird for you … I know you probably want to just put me on blast as a monster … I don’t expect you to want to be my friend or anything … I am so ashamed I made you uncomfortable.”

Ten women, including four former employees, told The Times that Bravin and Patterson — prominent artists in L.A.’s rock and electronic music scenes — ignored sexual misconduct among members at Cloak and at its festivals. They allege that the owners took cover under the club’s secrecy and boundary-pushing aesthetic, until a Zoom call in June, when members unloaded on Bravin and Patterson about how they’d been treated.

Some staff and regulars said Cloak used its Goth allure as a front. “Michael said he wanted to have a ‘real cult,’” Morgan, 37, said of her three years working at the club. “We all felt complicit but realized we’d been duped as well.”

Harding said that after she complained, she saw Middleditch grope another woman in the club. She said Bravin did reach out a week later, only to tell her she must have been mistaken about the incident. “Adam called me ‘to make sure and get a second opinion on him’ because they didn’t trust my story in the first place. They cared more about famous people at their club than women’s safety,” Harding said.

[From The LA Times]

I’m getting an absolutely horrible feeling that this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is just what one woman experienced during the few times she was there. It was probably so much worse than we know. Also, the LAT name-checks Marilyn Manson this way: “Libertinism was an accepted part of the culture, though the scene has begun reckoning with sexual abuse accusations against Goth’s most famous figure, Marilyn Manson.” Manson is accused of raping, abusing and torturing multiple women and he did so under the guise of being goth and “controversial” (and perhaps a “libertine”). How many times did Manson hunt for victims at the Cloak & Dagger? As for Middleditch… what a disgusting man. Ugh.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

In the last two weeks we have been reminded of how vile and racist Sharon Osbourne really is and how defensive she is about it. There have been several times Sharon’s racism has been on display, from the time she said that Meghan didn’t look Black to allegedly getting her cohost Holly Robinson Peete fired.Sharon’s racism is indicative of a larger issue and shows how insidious and ingrained racism can be.

Now some of Sharon’s nearest and dearest white friends are coming out in support of her. Cyndi Lauper took to Instagram to defend Sharon, stating she doesn’t “believe Sharon is racist.” I have been a fan of Cyndi since I was a kid and none of us at CB remember hearing anything bad about her. However, this has me doing an internal eye roll. White people need to understand that THEY don’t get to tell BIPOC what is or isn’t racist. Below is what Cyndi had to say about Sharon:

I wanted to come out publicly to support my friend @sharonosbourne. I have known her for a long time and I do not believe that she is racist. I understand that she may have misspoken, used the wrong words, and acted in ways that have been hurtful to others. She may have even flubbed her apology. But I do believe that she is sincere in trying to make things right. We all make mistakes. I could not sit by and not say something. We all want to be given second chances but no one wants to give a second chance. We all want to be forgiven but no one wants to forgive. I believe that Sharon is sincere in her desire to apologize and change. I hope that everyone will be at least willing to hear her out.

[From Instagram]

Listen, I am tired of the “Rent a Black Person” world tours and the “My White Friend Apology” tours. Instead of defending Sharon’s behavior and expecting people to forgive and forget her vile behavior, Cyndi should allow her friend to feel this experience. It is uncomfortable, I get it, but making it seem that being called a racist is worse than doing racist things is absolutely egregious. The demeaning way in which Sharon spoke to Sheryl and the fact that Sheryl feared reacting because she may lose her job showed how racism created an imbalance of power. Racism is not just about hating another race, it is about a power dynamic that is often unjust and violent as well. I am sure Cyndi meant well but aligning herself with Sharon is similar to Sharon aligning herself with Piers Morgan and that didn’t turn out so well.

The biggest take away from this situation is to be quiet, listen, and do some heavy reflection. Don’t deflect, blame, or play the victim. Just acknowledge the other person’s experiences and feelings. We have also seen in real time that racism has consequences. For example, CBS has extended The Talk’s hiatus, putting the cast and crew’s jobs in jeopardy. I don’t think Sharon is done with blowing up her life. She will continue to react to the perception that she is not racist versus actually doing the work to not BE racist and a terrible human being. And some of her white friends (notice no Black or Brown people have come forward to dispute her being racist) will continue to be tone deaf and not understand the conversation. I am very disappointed in Cyndi because she has always been the poster child for radical self acceptance and acceptance of others. But seeing Cyndi publicly siding with Sharon in this dispute has given me pause. Hopefully Cyndi will do a bit of self reflection because it seems her friend Sharon is incapable of that.

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photos credit: Avalon.red and via Instagram