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Trump Rants, Calls Anderson Cooper ‘Allison Cooper’ in Homophobic Slur, Rails Once Against NBC Comcast

Roger Friedman
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Trump Rants, Calls Anderson Cooper ‘Allison Cooper’ in Homophobic Slur, Rails Once Against NBC Comcast

This has become quite tiresome.

In a new rant this afternoon, overgrown child Donald Trump went on the attack against the media, especially NBC Comcast.

He labeled CNN’s Anderson Cooper as “Allison” because he’s gay. He made up some other stupid schoolyard names for ABC’s Jonathan Karl. Each of them are the best of the best, which frightens Trump. He knows they see right through him.

And this is the man with the nuclear codes, dropping bombs willy nilly, trying to bring us to the edge of World War III. Did you vote for him? How proud you must be.

Exclusive: Rock Star Stevie van Zandt Knocked Out of a Few European Springsteen Shows with Appendicitis Surgery

Roger Friedman
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Exclusive: Rock Star Stevie van Zandt Knocked Out of a Few European Springsteen Shows with Appendicitis Surgery

Yes, even rock stars are human.

Little Steven van Zandt is taking a few days off from Bruce Springsteen’s European tour.

The reason? Appendicitis. He’s gotten his Appendix removed in Spain. Very glamorous!

(They’re in Spain. I thought it was too much gazpacho!)

“I thought it was food poisoning,” Stevie emailed me. “I’ll miss a few shows and hopefully be back for Milan. Thank everybody for all their good wishes.”

Little Steven is perhaps the most important “side man” in rock history so we need him to make a safe and speedy recovery!

The downtime will give Stevie a chance to listen to “Tracks II,” the boxed set coming out on Friday from Bruce, et al. There seven albums, 83 tracks, a big book, and a lot of outstanding music. Fans are going to go nuts when they embrace this material.

At least Stevie will be back in good shape for his Disciples of Soul, everyone’s guilty pleasure!

PS After I published this, Stevie wrote on X:
“Got a sharp pain in my stomach, thought it was food poisoning, turned out to be appendicitis. Got lucky with an exceptional hospital in San Sebastian. Operation was a complete success and I’m hoping to get back on stage for at least one of the shows in Milan. Thank you all for all the good vibes. See you soon.”

“Days of our Lives,” “Young and the Restless,” “General Hospital” Conduct Baseball Like Three Soap Opera Actor Trade

Roger Friedman
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“Days of our Lives,” “Young and the Restless,” “General Hospital” Conduct Baseball Like Three Soap Opera Actor Trade

It must be near trade deadline for the soap operas.

In a baseball like movie, three of the five soaps have done a triple trade with their actors.

In a dizzying move, Connor Floyd — who played Chance– is moving from “The Young and the Restless” to “Days of Our Lives” to play a character named Chad previously performed by Billy Flynn.

Flynn has just moved to “Young and the Restless” to play a character — named Cane — that used to be portrayed by Daniel Goddard, who just moved to “General Hospital.”

Hilarious. At least Flynn and Floyd resemble each other, so viewers on “Days of our Lives” may not notice the difference. It’s sort of like when the Darrens were switched on “Bewitched.”

But Flynn is about a dozen years younger than Goddard, looks nothing like him and is somewhat shorter. Maybe they’ll say he was thrown in a dryer!

Why all the back and forth? Will any of this improve hitting or fielding? Probably not. But these are all young guys and they probably get bored saying the same thing over and over every day.

Only one position remains open after all the scuffling. Who will play Floyd’s character on “Young and the Restless”? A player to be named later? Probably someone from another soap. Or maybe they’ll just stop talking about him on the show. That happens all the time. People go upstairs and don’t come down!

Barbra Streisand Declines to Say Whether or Not She ‘Loved’ “Wicked”: “I showed it to my grandchildren”

Roger Friedman
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Barbra Streisand Declines to Say Whether or Not She ‘Loved’ “Wicked”: “I showed it to my grandchildren”

Barbra Streisand did not care for “Wicked.”

She doesn’t say so explicitly, but in an interview with Variety’s Marc Malkin she carefully sidesteps the question.

Malkin asks: “Did you see “Wicked” with Ariana?

Streisand: “I showed it to my grandchildren…They loved “Wicked.”

“Did you?” Malkin presses.

Barbra avoids the question entirely: “I was just watching their reaction and they were totally fine with the witches. I was surprised. A four- and a six-year-old, you know?”

On Friday, Streisand releases her second “Duets” album called “The Secret of Life.” The great producers Peter Asher and Walter Afanasieff were behind the board. The list of performers is insane, from Sting, Paul McCartney, and Hozier to Laufey, and Mariah Carey with Ariana Grande.

The tracks with McCartney, Hozier, and Laufey have already been released to acclaim. Each of them shot to the top of iTunes overnight. On McCartney’s “My Valentine,” Streisand’s vocal is particularly mesmerizing. (Paul’s not bad, either.)

I’m not surprised if Streisand didn’t care for “Wicked.” There’s a lot of shriek singing, probably too much for her. Both Ariana and Cynthia Erivo sound better on their own recordings. Hey, that’s life.

PS Asher is performing Tuesday night at City Winery in New York. He’s on tour doing his Peter & Gordon/Beatles retrospective, one of the best live shows you can hope to see. It’s totally fun, and the music is the real thing. Even Barbra would approve!

Meryl Streep Is Just Like Us: Celebrates Birthday with Family At Berkshires Road House Eating Fried Chicken

Roger Friedman
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Meryl Streep Is Just Like Us: Celebrates Birthday with Family At Berkshires Road House Eating Fried Chicken

Meryl Streep has three Oscars and is considered the best American actress by many.

But she’s just like us. She celebrated her birthday, a young 76, at a road house in the Berkshires eating fried chicken.

Her guests were daughter Gracie, son-in-law Mark Ronson, their kids, Henry Gummer aka Henry Wolfe, Meryl’s son, and what looks like Meryl’s ex husband, and father of her kids, sculptor Don Gummer.

Not present: Martin Short, Meryl’s bff and rumored bf and co-star from “Only Murders in the Building.”

The location was a roadhouse called Hy’s in the Berkshires, just over the Massachusetts line from Connecticut. That’s where the family has their summer home.

Hy’s Fried is known for its chicken. Outside, the modest sign offers Dining Dancing Cocktails.

What luck that this Twitter poster happened to be in the restaurant before paparazzi found out what was going on. Today, Hy’s will be overrun with them, which will wreck the chances of seeing celebrities there again. Don’t expect to see Meryl– she and family traveled an hour for the culinary experience. It’s not like they’re hanging around in the area!

Anyway, Happy Birthday to Meryl, who’s been a taking a break from movies and having fun after having an extraordinary career. She’s just shot the sequel to “The Devil Wears Prada” and is reportedly thinking of doing another “Mamma Mia” movie. A fourth Oscar before she’s done? Without a doubt.

Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II Comes This Week and the Only Cover Song is Johnny Rivers’ Classic “Poor Side of Town”

Roger Friedman
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Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II Comes This Week and the Only Cover Song is Johnny Rivers’ Classic “Poor Side of Town”

Bruce Springsteen’s gigantic box set, “Tracks II,” comes out this Friday.

Is it worth $264 for the 7 CD set? Oh yes. Even the $354 for the nine LP box.

I’ve been knee deep in “Tracks II” all weekend. It’s a stunning collection of 7 albums Bruce made but never released. When did he find the time? I don’t know.

There are four or five “perfect” albums in the box, including one called “Perfect World.” It’s got the E Street Band and could be released right now as a new record — even though it was made years ago. It would be a hit in its own right.

There’s also a companion album to “Western Stars” that I think is better than the one Bruce issued. It was supposed to be a double album and should have been. More on that later, but one track — “Late in the Evening” — not the Paul Simon song — blew my mind.

A big winner on “Tracks II” is Johnny Rivers. The great blues and country pop singer had many, many hits. He’s underrated and should be in the Rock Hall. Bruce covers Johnny’s “Poor Side of Town.” I think of the 83 songs this is the only cover. Bruce could do a whole album of Johnny Rivers songs. His “Poor Side” will be an instant hit with fans.

The original version of “Poor Side of Town” has quite a provenance. Johnny wrote it in 1966 with famed producer Lou Adler, who also produced it. A bunch of the Wrecking Crew — Hal Blaine, Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn — are on it. Darlene Love sings back up. It’s classic.

Bruce’s version comes on his “Somewhere North of Nashville” album, one of the many I’ve fallen in love with overnight. On Thursday night we’ll have a video I can post here.

Disney’s Animated “Elio” Has the Lowest Opening Weekend of Any Pixar Movie with Just $21 Million

Roger Friedman
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Disney’s Animated “Elio” Has the Lowest Opening Weekend of Any Pixar Movie with Just $21 Million

Just two years, Pixar’s “Elemental” set a record for the Disney company’s lowest opening weekend.

“Elemental” began with just $29.6 million. That was set against a $200 million budget.

But now that record has been broken. “Elio” made just $21 million this weekend versus a $150 million budget.

“Elio” has no marketing. Unlike other Pixar films, I don’t think anyone knows what it’s about, or who, for that matter. I thought it referred to a very good Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. (It doesn’t, I’m sure.)

What doesn’t make sense is that the last Pixar movie, “Inside Out 2,” which preceded “Elio,” had the highest opening weekend in the company’s history, $154 million.

Of course, “Inside Out 2” was a sequel to a popular movie. “Elio” is original, a rarity at this point, and harder to bring to audiences. But this is kind of a disaster unless either foreign markets embrace “Elio” or some new way is developed to get families excited about it.

Leonardo Di Caprio Newest Pals: Businessman Who Paid the SEC $4 Mil in Fines, NY Republican Accused of Setting Up Private Militia

Roger Friedman
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Leonardo Di Caprio Newest Pals: Businessman Who Paid the SEC $4 Mil in Fines, NY Republican Accused of Setting Up Private Militia

EXCLUSIVE Leonardo Di Caprio has an unerring eye for hooking up with the wrong people.

Latest example: the NY Post reports he just had dinner at clubby, exclusive Rao’s in East Harlem with at least four hard core Republicans including two companions he should have stayed away from.

One is Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive, a deeply right wing Republican who has turned back the hands of time on Long Island with anti-progressive, Trump era laws.

It’s the second dinner companion who is most egregious. That would be Andrew Murstein, who just paid a $4 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Murstein, his company Medallion Financial Corp, and another defendant were accused of “schemes to boost” their taxi company’s “plummeting” stock price including planting false stories in various publications including Crain’s New York and The Huffington Post.

Murstein agreed to the fine without admitting or denying his guilt. More on Murstein below.

The Post got a photo of Leo and Murstein together, and the Oscar winner is not smiling. Maybe that’s because Murstein is just the latest bad guy DiCaprio has been associated with in the last 25 years. The others include convicted (and now deceased) Ponzi scheme fraudster Dana Giacchetto, as well as convicted (in a massive gambling racket) art dealer Helly Nahmad.

And I told you in 2016 about Leo’s association with Julius Baer, the Swiss banker who had to pay $547 million to the Department of Justice.

And there was also the matter of Leo being involved in the Malaysian public fund scandal known as 1MDB. In that scandal, more than $4 billion was stolen from the 1MDB fund and spent by perpetrators on art, diamonds and property. Leo had to give back two paintings—a Picasso worth $3.2 million and a Basquiat worth $9 million.

Others at the Rao’s dinner included WABC Radio’s conservative morning radio personality Sid Rosenberg, former New York Republican appointee and sometime actor Bo Dietl, plus DiCaprio’s dad, George, and stepmother.

Is Leo moving to the right?

You can read all the charges against Murstein here.

According to the Post, the meeting had something to do with making Nassau County “Hollywood East,” as ridiculous an idea as anyone could dream up. If DiCaprio wants to invest in a movie studio operation, his buddy Robert DeNiro already owns Wildflower Studios, a new film and television production facility in Astoria, Queens. With Silvercup and Kaufman Astoria, New York is overloaded with this kind of business.

Blakeman, the first husband of Paul McCartney’s wife Nancy Shevell, is very unpopular in legit political circles. Newsday, the Long Island daily newspaper. has sued Blakeman and Nassau County, alleging retaliation for unfavorable coverage and violations of First Amendment rights. In February, local Democrats sued him for allegedly setting up a private militia. See also here.

You can’t make this stuff up. DiCaprio — who also has a mysterious $68 million 501 c 3 foundation called Re:Wild — is either followed by trouble or pursues it. No one seems to vet his companions. And he doesn’t seem to care who he’s seen in the company of.

Musk Warns That His AI Will “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors”

Roger Friedman
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Musk Warns That His AI Will “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors”

Worried that Elon Musk isn’t finished with us?

He’s threatening to use his AI program, Grok, to rewrite history his way, and erase thousands of years of facts.

He says on X (Twitter): “We will use Grok 3.5 (maybe we should call it 4), which has advanced reasoning, to rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge, adding missing information and deleting errors.

Then retrain on that.

Far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data.”

Got that? That’s the real horror of Artificial Intelligence. Under Musk, everything we’ve come to know as factual history could disappear and replaced by his own take on civilization: no more slavery, racism, Holocaust, apartheid.

Still driving a Tesla? Give some genuine intelligence to what Musk is threatening. He’s telling us explicitly what’s coming. Don’t ignore it. 

Ed Sheeran’s Secret Ingredients on “F1” Song “Drive” Pointed to the Oscars: John Mayer on Guitar, Dave Grohl on Drums

Roger Friedman
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Ed Sheeran’s Secret Ingredients on “F1” Song “Drive” Pointed to the Oscars: John Mayer on Guitar, Dave Grohl on Drums

It takes a village to get a hit these days.

“Drive” is the song from the Brad Pitt movie, “F1,” coming to theaters this Thursday.

“Drive” is from Ed Sheeran, who’s brought a long a couple of superstars to help him out.

The song is co-written by John Mayer, who also plays guitar. And Dave Grohl of the Foo Foo Fighters is on drums. Prolific producer Blake Slatkin is behind the board.

Apple and Warner Bros. will certainly try to get an Oscar nomination for “Drive,” which has a more propulsive sound for Sheeran than his well known numbers. Imagine the three of them performing on the Oscars together! That is, if the Academy brings back songs to the show.

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