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Mariah Carey, Michael Buble, Nat King Cole, Phil Spector Christmas Albums Outsold by a Soft Spoken Man Who Died in 1977

Roger Friedman
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Mariah Carey, Michael Buble, Nat King Cole, Phil Spector Christmas Albums Outsold by a Soft Spoken Man Who Died in 1977

Old chestnuts keep on roasting.

Guess whose Christmas album outsold Mariah Carey and Michael Buble? Also Phil Spector and Nat King Cole?

Hint: he made movies with Bob Hope and played a priest in a famous holiday film.

The answer is redacted but I’ll give it you anyway: Bing Crosby.

Da Bingster.

True! Taylor Swift was number 1 on Friday blah blah blah.

But number 2 was Bing Crosby’s Ultimate Christmas with 115K copies sold — mostly streaming equivalent.

Mariah was number 6 with 77K sold — also mostly streaming.

Bing died in 1977 which is like almost 50 years ago. But his fans were listening to him sing “White Christmas” more than ever.

“White Christmas” for decades held the record for most bought single. The song was written by the great Irving Berlin, who was Jewish, btw.

Coming in third was Michael Buble, followed by Nat King Cole, and Phil Spector.

After Mariah, a strong seventh place was held by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, with A Charlie Brown Christmas. Amazing!

There are 28 songs on Ultimate Bing Crosby but he didn’t write any of them. He doesn’t get publishing royalties. But maybe his daughter, Mary, who killed JR Ewing (don’t ask), will get a cut of sales.

Yes, Bing played a priest in the classic “Bells of St. Mary’s” in 1945. In 1954, he starred in “White Christmas” and sang that infernal song!

But his best movies were with Bob Hope. Look ’em up. They’re classics and fresh as daisies.

Kennedy Center, Once Home to Broadway Hits, Has Just 1 Show Coming for Next Six Months, Plus NY Year’s Eve Show Cancels

Roger Friedman
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Kennedy Center, Once Home to Broadway Hits, Has Just 1 Show Coming for Next Six Months, Plus NY Year’s Eve Show Cancels
UPDATE: There will be no New Year’s Eve for fans of The Cookers at the Kennedy Center.

The Cookers, a music ensemble, have abruptly canceled their shows at the Kennedy Center over the change of name to Trump Kennedy Center.

More acts are following suit including suit.

“Jazz was born from struggle and from a relentless insistence on freedom: freedom of thought, of expression, and of the full human voice. Some of us have been making this music for many decades, and that history still shapes us,” the Cookers jazz ensemble said in a statement.

EARLIER: The Kennedy Center is going to be very quiet this winter and spring.

The only show of note coming in for the next six months is a national tour of “Chicago,” from March 29th.

Otherwise, the famed institution will just be home to its subscription series with the symphony and ballet. They’ll have a bunch of minor events that aren’t exactly major attractions.

Already, Southern Alabama singer Kristy Lee has canceled her show for January 14th. Why? The breaking point was Donald Trump’s name change of the Center, hotly objected to by all sane people.

(The way it looks now, the fake www.trumpkennedycenter.org may have more Broadway shows, all invented, like The Epstein Dancers!)

The coming months will be in stark contrast to the 2023-24 season, which featured Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Larson’s “tick, tick… BOOM!”; the 1960 Tony Award–winning Best Musical, “Bye Bye Birdie”; and the 1982 Tony Award–winning Best Musical, “Nine.” They also staged the Temptations musical “Ain’t Too Proud,” “Back to The Future,” “Funny Girl,” “Company,” and “Girl from the North Country,” among others.

This year was supposed to bring “Hamilton” to the Kennedy Center, but Lin-Manuel Miranda and the producers backed out earlier this year when Donald Trump took over and replaced the board with his stooges.

One act that will appear at the Kennedy Center this month is Shen Yun, the Chinese theatrical extravaganza. They are already the subject of much controversy. When they performed last year there was a bomb threat at the theater. Also, their CFO is still in hot water. I told you in June 2024 that Shen Yun was caught in accusations of a money laundering scheme that included the Epoch Times and Chinese dissidents Falun Gong. The chief financial officer was indicted by the Justice Department for laundering $67 million. The case has not been resolved.

Even with Trump’s proposed new marble armrests it doesn’t seem possible for the Kennedy Center to go on this way. The Center’s chief, Trump lackey Dickie Grenell, is presiding over a Titanic situation, rearranging the deck chairs while the ship sinks. Even Trump’s deep pocketed new donors will expect some kind of Broadway entertainment this year. Here’s some news for them: it’s not coming.

Exclusive: Miley Cyrus Has a Great Best Song Candidate This Year for “Avatar,” But She Almost Had One Recently Until It Got Pulled

Roger Friedman
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Exclusive: Miley Cyrus Has a Great Best Song Candidate This Year for “Avatar,” But She Almost Had One Recently Until It Got Pulled

I’m just reading about Miley Cyrus and her “Avatar” song this year.

The song is “Dream as One,” and it’s most certainly in the running for Best Song at the Oscars. Mark Ronson helped write and produce it. Her label should be pushing it as a single.

Miley tells the Hollywood Reporter that she went out pitching herself for a song in a movie this year. There’s nothing wrong with that, everyone does it. She was smart to go to the Oscars last year and tell anyone who’d listen she was available.

I will you tell this much exclusively: in the last few years, Miley had a Best Song recorded and ready and slotted into a hit movie. Sources say if the song had been in the movie, as planned, she would have had her nomination.

At the last minute, however, a player in the production decided they had to have another singer, and a whole new song. This shows you how capricious it is in Hollywood, to be a big star like Miley Cyrus and to see all agreements cast aside. Her song was out, and a new one was in. Maybe one day we’ll hear the song that didn’t make it.

The Universe was obviously angered by this turn of events. To make up for it, Miley got “Flowers,” which was the biggest hit of 2023 and won the Grammy Award. “Flowers” is one of those once-in-a-lifetime lightning strikes hit that will last forever. It was the cosmic make up for another Hollywood deal gone sour.

What was the movie, or the song? It doesn’t matter now. The story is about Miley’s resilience and determination to not let it stop her.

Even if “Avatar Fire and Ash” isn’t nominated for Best Picture, “Dream as One” is right at the top of every list. It definitely shows that Miley Cyrus should be performing on the Oscars (if they do that again) soon.

“Marty Supreme” Starring Timothee Chalamet Paddles $28 Mil in 10 Days Despite Tina Brown Snarking Real Life Subject as “Maddening Rando”

Roger Friedman
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“Marty Supreme” Starring Timothee Chalamet Paddles $28 Mil in 10 Days Despite Tina Brown Snarking Real Life Subject as “Maddening Rando”

Tina Brown, the founding editor of the real Vanity Fair, didn’t like Marty Reisman much.

She says on Substack that he was a “maddening rando” who stuck like “a burr” to the side of her late husband, famed editor Harold Evans, who liked to play ping pong with him.

Nevertheless, other people seem to like Marty a lot. The movie based loosely on his life, called “Marty Supreme,” is a hit. (Vanity Fair should have featured him when he was alive, he probably knew some of the dictators and murderers they wrote about!)

Josh Safdie’s brilliant film, starring Timothee Chalamet as the renamed Marty Mauser, has made $28 million since its limited release on December 19th.

Most of that has been over this weekend.

“Marty Supreme” from A24 cost $70 million, not including the massive marketing campaign that’s gone on for several weeks.

Audiences in the big cities, especially New York and Los Angeles, are mad for “Marty,” even if Brown didn’t like him.

Chalamet is headed to an Oscar nomination and maybe a win if the Academy can get past the viral videos, $250 Marty jackets, and Kylie Jenner.

There could be a sequel to “Marty” if Chalamet ages in the next few years. The current movie is based on a book — stupidly out of print — that Reisman wrote in the 70s called “The Money Player: The confessions of America’s greatest table tennis champion and hustler.” The one copy left on Amazon is selling for $1,999.

Reisman got to know Evans when he was peddling the sequel, which seems to be as yet unpublished. Evans turned it down, but someone would certainly scoop it up now, and a second movie would be of some interest.

My friend Mark Simone, top rated NY radio personality at 710WOR, knew Marty and used to eat with him at the legendary Patsy’s on Eighth Avenue in the 1980s. (The picture here is of Mark — with a Tom Selleck mustache — and Marty on the right. Yes, that’s also legendary comedian Jackie Mason, who apparently loved Marty.) He tells me that Reisman was quite the character, if not a little annoying (no surprise).

More than a few people knew Reisman in real life, and if you Google him you’ll see plenty of recollections of the “maddening rando.”

Trump Kennedy Center Website Goes Live, Except It’s Owned by Satirist, Comedy Writer and Activist: Epstein Dancers Next!

Roger Friedman
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Trump Kennedy Center Website Goes Live, Except It’s Owned by Satirist, Comedy Writer and Activist: Epstein Dancers Next!

The Trump Kennedy Center website is now live on the internet.

Only one thing: it’s not owned by the US government, the Kennedy Center, or Donald Trump.

www.trumpkennedycenter.org is registered to a former comedy writer for “South Park” who’s also a political activist.

He also owns www.trumpkennedycenter.com, although that one doesn’t have a design or information yet.

The Washington Post was first to feature this news that Toby Morton, who has other writing credits, had added the site’s url to his portfolio of sites named for public figures.

But now TrumpKennedyCenter’s site is live, and kicking.

According to the site, the next booking is The Epstein Dancers. “Ring in the New Year” with them. On the site, Morton announces:

COMING JAN 2026 A Sacred Continuation of Purpose Beginning January 2026, TrumpKennedyCenter.org enters a new era of devotion, unity, and inherited authority. ​We exist to preserve what must endure, to honor what must not be questioned, and to gather those who understand that greatness is not chosen, it is recognized.​Here, tradition is not remembered. It is maintained.

Ceremonies, recognitions, and sanctioned appearances will be revealed in due time.

How is this going to work out? It’s unlikely anyone will be able to pry the urls away from Morton. He’s got them, and he’s going to keep them. The dot-org site is funny, but the dot-com one may prove an issue for MAGA patrons who want to see what’s going on at Donald Trump’s ruined arts institution.

(This, of course, is unlikely, since MAGA wouldn’t be interested in anything even the “Kennedy Center” has to offer.)

What will be funny is Morton adding actual events, and real ads, which is entirely possible. His sites — like Moms4Liberty.org — are just like The Onion — or in olden days, Mad Magazine (he was a writer for MAD TV), or the great work from the people who brought us Not the New York Times during the 1978 newspaper strike, or not Not the Bible — Chris Cerf, George and Freddy Plimpton, Rusty Unger, and Tony Hendra. (I still LOL at “The Having Section.”)

Can’t wait to see what Toby Morton does with his sites. And how much traffic they get. Maybe they can book “Hamilton,” a musical about blenders!

All Mariah Carey Wants for Xmas is for Son Rocky to Stop Giving the Finger in Every Family Photograph and Daughter to Stop Looking Sarcastic

Roger Friedman
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All Mariah Carey Wants for Xmas is for Son Rocky to Stop Giving the Finger in Every Family Photograph and Daughter to Stop Looking Sarcastic

Mariah Carey is finally living every parent’s nightmare.

She’s got two teenagers exactly like herself and their famous father, Nick Cannon.

In Christmas photos, Mariah actually has these almost-15 year old twins dressed in matching holiday sweaters promoting her song, “All I Want for Christmas is You.”

The kids — son Rocky and daughter Mo — don’t look happy.

Surprisingly suddenly grown, Rocky gives the photographer “the finger” in every picture. It’s not a coincidence, and unless he has dyskenisia and his hands are stuck in that position, this is hilarious.

Daughter Mo sports a sarcastic grin in every picture, as if to tell her friends, Can you believe this?

As for Rocky, let’s not forget his dad has fathered 10 children after these twins were born. That’s a lot to process.

Kids do not have ironic senses of humor. They won’t know for 20 years what this was all about. But they’ll get through it. Somehow.

Christmas Miracle! Barron Trump Spotted in Captivity at Mar-a-Lago, Solemnly Following Father To Morose Holiday Dinner

Roger Friedman
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Christmas Miracle! Barron Trump Spotted in Captivity at Mar-a-Lago, Solemnly Following Father To Morose Holiday Dinner

Barron Trump has been seen in public!

It’s a Christmas miracle!

The Daily Beast reports he turned up on the Instagram page of Valeria Berkland aka Valeria Sokolova, a Russian model and influencer who was in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago. (Who else do you think eats at that rundown restaurant?)

Valeria got Barron on her camera as he lumbered solemnly through the dining behind his father. Barron wore the same blue suit uniform as his father, as usual.

Barron has not been seen for most of 2025 after dropping out of NYU’s main campus in New York. His parents said he was moving to the White House, where he would attend classes at NYU’s local campus.

But then he was never spotted anywhere, even on that campus. Trump PR, however, paints him as a ladies man and crypto king who knows how to start a computer.

The Daily Beast — citing the New York Times — now says Barron has become close pals with a group of high profile misogynists like Andrew Tate, barred from Romania after an accusation of accused of rape and of having sex with and beating a 15-year-old.

Tate and his brother, accused also of coercing women into pornography, were finally liberated from Romania by Donald Trump, who can’t find a criminal he doesn’t like. The brothers were flown home to Florida on a private plane.

Among those who intervened for the Tates’ release, the Times says, is Kennedy Center chief Richard Grenell, who is now suing a jazz musician for refusing to play at the renamed — for Trump — theater, and has presided over a year of canceled shows and empty seats.

Read the Times story about Barron’s new friends. Andrew Tate is now suing for defamation after a woman accused him of strangling her once he returned to the US. She’s suing him now.

Melania must be so proud that Barron is having these play dates.

Did Barron speak at the Christmas dinner? Or even smile? His hair doesn’t seem to have grown in the last year, he still sports that Eddie Munster haircut.

We wait to see if he merited a supporting role in mother Melania’s upcoming documentary.

As for Berkland/Soskova, she sells a beauty brand called LoVa on Amazon, although the product is currently unavailable.

Flip through this post from Valeria to see the video of Donald and Barron making their way through what looks like an outdoor terrace behind a family restaurant in Orlando.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by (@valeriasokolovaofficial)

Trump Plans to Turn Kennedy Center into Marble Bathroom, Did He Get a Deal? Says Armrests in Theater “Unlike Anything” — For a Reason!

Roger Friedman
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Trump Plans to Turn Kennedy Center into Marble Bathroom, Did He Get a Deal? Says Armrests in Theater “Unlike Anything” — For a Reason!

Donald Trump has been busy redecorating the White House.

He’s remaking historic rooms with cheap looking marble he probably got in deal. It may only be glue-on marble tiles. I guess we’ll see soon when Russell Vought tries the bathroom and water starts spurting at him. (Or when Stephen Miller, a professional douchebag, tries the bidet– and finds it takes Trump coins.)

The cold, generic marble is now being considered by Trump for the Kennedy Center. He wants to cover the arm rests of the seats with it. On Truth Social, he’s presenting options. What everyone likes in a theater is a cold, slab of marble to lean left or right on, right? Trump reasons, One day you’ll be doing this in a mortuary, so why not start now?

Trump wants to spend hundreds of millions gilding the Kennedy Center, which is losing all that money on ticket sales, canceled performances, etc. The KCH is a not for profit arts institution, not Nicholas and Alexandra’s Tsarist tomb. It’s supposed to break even. But the report for 2025 will show massive losses from programming.

Trump Voices Panic About Discovery of 1 Million More Files in Epstein Case While Everyone Else Spends Time with Family, Watches Sports

Roger Friedman
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Trump Voices Panic About Discovery of 1 Million More Files in Epstein Case While Everyone Else Spends Time with Family, Watches Sports

What is Donald Trump doing over Christmas and Boxing Day?

He’s not watching sports or spending time with his family. He can’t summon the presence of his 19 year old son, Barron. His wife wants nothing to do with him.

From his Truth Social, he panics about the NY Attorney General, who he tried to sue — and lost — after she got him convicted on 34 counts of fraud — has found 1 million more Jeffrey Epstein files.

Trump writes tonight:

“Now 1,000,000 more pages on Epstein are found. DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE, and work on Election Fraud etc. The Dems are the ones who worked with Epstein, not the Republicans. Release all of their names, embarrass them, and get back to helping our Country! The Radical Left doesn’t want people talking about TRUMP & REPUBLICAN SUCCESS, only a long ago dead Jeffrey Epstein – Just another Witch Hunt!!!”

Where and Tiffany and the new baby? Where are the Jewish grandchildren? Where’s the fake golf playing one? Can’t anyone spend time with him before he goes to jail?

And this was just last night:

Box Office: “Marty Supreme” Bounces to $7.5 Mil Christmas Day, Snakes Past “Anaconda,” “Song Sung Blue” Sings a Happy Tune

Roger Friedman
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Box Office: “Marty Supreme” Bounces to $7.5 Mil Christmas Day, Snakes Past “Anaconda,” “Song Sung Blue” Sings a Happy Tune

Christmas Day brought joy to the new holiday films

“Marty Supreme” bounced to a $7.5 million Christmas Day and beat the less anticipated “Anaconda” by a whisker.

“Marty” now has a total of $10.7 million including shows from last week.

Last night, “Marty” pulled in a healthy $3,574 per screen. Shwap!

“Anaconda” has slithered to a total of $9.1 million.

In less competitive waters, “Song Sung Blue” sang its way to $4.4 million. The Neil Diamond tribute is a little less intense than the other new films, and more comfort food for the holiday.

This would have been a great week for indie, art house movies heading to awards season. But films like “Blue Moon,” “Sentimental Value,” and others are playing in very small numbers of theaters. See them if you can!

Meantime, “One Battle After Another” is on HBO Max, “Nouvelle Vague,” “Frankenstein,” “Jay Kelly,” and “Train Dreams” are all on Netflix.

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