A new year brings with it a bevy of breathless — and quickly ignored — resolutions. (Or at least jokes about same.) But this year, like last year, is a little different. Since 2020, we’ve been living amidst a once-in-a-century public health crisis that some people keep help making worse. We’ve developed, and nurtured, a lot of bad habits. So when 2022 rolled along, some celebrities offered people their own resolutions, to help people lead healthier lives in the face of unimaginable horror. But in the case of Reese Witherspoon, that do-goodery led to them being hilariously mocked.
On Monday — a few days after being dragged for supporting cryptocurrency — the Oscar-winning actress posted a list of life-changing activities she’s “working towards” in 2022. They were:
1. Start the day with a big glass of water
2. Get 10 minutes of outdoor light. [Stanford neuroscience professor Andrew Huberman] recommends morning light.
3. Spend 30-60 mins reading without distraction everyday.
4. In bed by 10pm. *no late night TV binges. Try to get 8 hours of rest!”
This is all basic but sage advice. Water, natural light, a good night’s sleep — all important. Reading is better for you than binge-watching, late night or any other time of day. You’re right, Reese.
But someone wasn’t having it. That person was Ina Garten, host of The Barefoot Contessa and serial cookbook author. In the post’s comments, Garten told Witherspoon that her advice may “sound great.” Alas, she also wrote, “Probably not doing any of those things!” She instead offered her own four tips that are…well, maybe not healthier but certainly more fun.
1. Drink more large cosmos
2. Stay up late watching addictive streaming series
3. Stay in bed in the morning playing Sudoko instead of reading a good book
4. Spend more time (safely) with people you love.”
She added, “In a pandemic, I do what I can.”
Instagram / @ReeseWitherspoon
Since the pandemic began two years ago, Garten has been a cheerleader for cosmos, the tasty cocktail made famous on Sex and the City two decades back. Last month she went on TODAY with Hoda and Jenna, where she told the hosts, “At the beginning of the pandemic I thought we all needed a treat so I did the largest cosmo anybody’s ever had.” They then all shared super-sized cocktails, during a morning chat show. Living one’s best life, for sure.
On last week’s Billboard Hot 100 chart, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” and other vintage holiday tunes were still dominating the top ten spots. On the new chart dated January 15, though, we’re back to non-Christmas programming, as holiday tunes are out of the top ten and Adele’s “Easy On Me” is back to No. 1 for an eighth total week.
Perhaps the top-ten song that stands out most, though, is “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from the new Disney movie Encanto. The track — which is credited to Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero, Stephanie Beatriz, and Encanto Cast — jumped from No. 50 last week up to No. 5 this week, making it the first top-five song from a Disney movie since Frozen‘s “Let It Go.” Aside from those two, other Disney songs to crack the top five include Vanessa Williams’ “Colors Of The Wind” from Pocahontas, Elton John’s “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” from Tarzan, and Peabo Bryson and Regina Bell’s “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.
Furthermore, “Bruno” is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first top-ten hit, as he wrote the song (and all the others from the movie). The song is also the first top-ten track for all of the credited artists. Also, speaking of Elton John, his and Dua Lipa’s “Cold Heart (Pnau Remix)” rose to No. 7 this week, making it his first top-ten hit in the US since “Candle In The Wind”/”Something About The Way You Look Tonight” in 1997.
“We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” from @EncantoMovie, earns @Lin_Manuel his first career top 10 hit on the #Hot100 as a songwriter.
Since its release last fall, Adele’s30 has ruled the charts. It began with the biggest first week in four years thanks to 839,000 album units sold in its debut on the Billboard 200. At one point, 30 was the only album to sell over a million copies in the United States last year. Adele’s fourth album also went on to become the best-selling vinyl of 2021, seizing the crown from Taylor Swift’s Evermore. While 30 eventually became the first No. 1 album of 2022, the album’s uninterrupted reign on the Billboard 200 has come to an end thanks to the soundtrack for Disney’s Encanto film.
For the Billboard 200 chart dated January 15, 2022, the Encanto soundtrack spent its first week at No. 1 thanks to 72,000 album units. That number is comprised of 58,000 streaming equivalent album units and 11,000 pure album sales. Encanto is the sixth soundtrack to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and it marks two years since the last soundtrack reached the top of the charts, that being the one for Frozen II. Lastly, it marks a rare case of an album going No. 1 for the first time weeks after its release. The last project to do this was The Kid Laroi’s F*ck Love which did so last summer.
The decision to release Encanto on Disney+ a month after it debuted in theaters most likely contributed toward its rise to No. 1. As for Adele’s 30, it checks in at No. 2 with only 57,000 units sold in the week ending on January 6.
For months now, it has been rumored that The Weeknd and Angelina Jolie are romantically involved, ever since the pair was spotted going out to dinner back in July. Jolie stoked those flames in the eyes of some when she expertly avoided a question about The Weeknd during an October interview. Now, though, fans think The Weeknd is directly addressing the topic on his new album Dawn FM, as one lyric from the record is being interpreted as being about his supposed love interest.
On “Here We Go… Again,” he sings, “My new girl, she a movie star / I loved her right, make her scream like Neve Campbell / But when I make her laugh, swear it cures my depressin’ thoughts / ‘Cause baby girl, she a movie star.”
After the album’s release, fans took to Twitter to share their thoughts about those words, with plenty of them believing that it essentially confirms a Weeknd/Jolie relationship.
Dawn FM has only been out for a few hours now, but fans have already found plenty of elements to explore. Aside from the Jolie angle, The Weeknd also gives out a phone number on the album, which turns out to be real and not connected to the artist at all.
The Weeknd has announced that his new album, Dawn FM, is set for release this week, on Friday, January 7.
The trailer describes the project as “a new sonic universe from the mind of The Weeknd.” The trailer also includes a list of what seems to be collaborators on the project, and it features Jim Carrey (yes, that Jim Carrey), Quincy Jones, Tyler The Creator, Lil Wayne, and Oneohtrix Point Never. The clip, which features footage of The Weeknd in aging prosthetic makeup, ends with a voiceover (which sounds like it’s recited by Carrey) that says, “You are now listening to 103.5 Dawn FM. You’ve been in the dark for way too long. It’s time to walk into the light and accept your fate with open arms.”
While the Carrey collaboration may be unexpected, it’s not entirely unprecedented: The Canadian entertainment icons were introduced at a party and spent The Weeknd’s 30th birthday together. The Weeknd previously explained, “On my [30th] birthday, he called and told me to look out my window, and on his balcony he had these giant red balloons, and he picked me up and we went to breakfast. It was surreal. Jim Carrey was my first inspiration to be any kind of performer, and I went to breakfast with him on my first day of being 30.”
The Book of Boba Fett: Season 1 Premiere (Disney+ series) — The middle-of-the-night drop now favored by Disney+ shows is coming your way. When that happens, the iconic bounty hunter turns into a crime lord following his surfacing in The Mandalorian‘s second season. The very dead Jabba the Hutt has left a void in the galactic organized-crime realm, and Boba Fett is all too happy to fill it, but not by ruling by fear. Rather, he’s asking for respect, so we’ll see how that goes. Expect to see mercenary Fennec Shand along the way as these two head into underworld adventures that take them to Tatooine. It’s doubtful that we’ll see any Baby Yoda here, but one can hope for a miracle.
In case you missed these recent picks:
Don’t Look Up (Netflix film) — Director Adam McKay brings us the latest assembling of an A-list cast (Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Kid Cudi, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Tyler Perry, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, and Ariana Grande) to satirically tackle a pretty serious subject that’s dealt with in an unserious way. Here, an asteroid’s about to slam into Earth and potentially kill off humanity, and of course, people aren’t dealing with this in the most civilized way.
Being The Ricardos (Amazon Prime movie) — Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem take a stab at roles that are more challenging than mere physical transformations. As well, this isn’t merely a light and fluffy production, given that Aaron Sorkin has infused the story with not only the complexity of the pair’s working and professional relationships but also the drama inherent with cultural and political controversy. In addition, expect to see some scandalous accusations flying, along with peeks behind closed doors during one pivotal week of I Love Lucy production. J.K. Simmons also appears in this project because he’s basically in everything these days.
Emily In Paris: Season 2 (Netflix series) — Somehow, the newest show from primetime TV king Darren Star has already returned (pandemic be damned) to pull some attention from the Sex And The City revival. Lily Collins returns as the mildly offensive protagonist, who must clean up the mess from spending the night with the hot chef who very much has a girlfriend. Justice for the gross, unwashed skillet, y’all.
Jeopardy! has been roaring back into regular-play action following the two-week professor tournament, but Monday night’s episode got a little strange. Don’t worry, Amy Schneider kicked overall ass again (she’s up to over $700,000 in winnings, and she’s the current top-earning woman in the show’s history and fourth overall champ), but one question stumped everyone while amusing the hell out of the audience.
Here’s what happened: Ken Jennings was doing his co-hosting thing when he dropped this question: “The stage name of this rapper and actor gets shortened to MGK.” Even Amy drew a total blank, which led Jennings to declare, “Not fans of Machine Gun Kelly, apparently.” This was the case despite the face of MGK (real name Colson Baker) flashing onto the screen, and still, no dice.
There’s been no word yet from the Blonde Don on the subject, but surely, he will recover from this slight. Heck, not even prolific tweeter Amy has addressed the matter, but hey, you can’t win all the questions. She will return to defend her champ status on Wednesday night. In the meantime, the floodgates have opened over the MGK slight (although some dads and moms out there apparently know the drill).
my dad is watching jeopardy and just dropped machine gun kelly’s name when NONE of the contestants knew skdjskjf my dad is almost 70 HOW DOES HE KNOW THIS LMAO
My mother calls me every time she sees Machine Gun Kelly on TV. He is on ET, she’ll say, or on People. She watches Jeopardy religiously and didn’t tell me he was an answer tonight. But my daughter did so we’re all good.
— Shelly-Let Your Light Shine BLM – 59 y.o. (@shellymarie19xx) December 28, 2021
Very proud of tonight’s Jeopardy contestants for completely blanking on the Machine Gun Kelly clue but getting the Guided By Voices one
Musicians are major players in the realm of social media, and that remained true in 2021: A good chunk of the most-liked Instagram posts from the past year were by musicians or were music-related.
Ariana Grande has the top post among musicians and the second most-liked one overall, as a May 26 post featuring photos from her wedding with Dalton Gomez has over 26 million likes (according to Wikipedia, with data accurate as of December 23 and updated by Uproxx on December 27 for this post). It could be argued, though, that Billie Eilish actually fared better on the list: While the aforementioned Grande post is her only one in the top ten, Eilish has two posts on the list, the most among musicians. A post revealing her blonde hair ranks at No. 4 with 23 million likes and a photo from her Vogue photoshoot is No. 6 with 22.1 million likes.
Other musicians make cameos on the list as well. Kylie Jenner’s pregnancy announcement post from September, in which she tagged Travis Scott, is No. 3 with 24.6 million likes. Meanwhile, Iron Shore Mermaid, a professional mermaid performer, had a post in the top ten, a video set to The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s “Stay.”
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodriguez had the honor of having the year’s top post, as their pregnancy announcement racked up over 32 million likes since it was shared in late October. Meanwhile, Lionel Messi had three posts in the top ten, making him the person with the most top-ten posts this year.
In terms of the people involved, this year’s list looks similar to the 2020 ranks, as Ronaldo, Messi, Grande, and Jenner all had some of last year’s top posts, too.
Check out the top ten list of the year’s most-liked Instagram posts below.
(Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in 2018 but we’re republishing it today because it’s, well, that time of year. Enjoy.)
“You grow up Jewish and you can’t help it, it’s a big part of your life being the person who’s not celebrating Christmas,” TV Funhouse creator and former Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel told us recently. (Smigel, by the way, is also the mad genius behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.)
The accuracy of this remark is not lost on me as someone who was raised half-Jewish and half-Catholic and kept on the outside looking in at Christmas revelry during part of my childhood (before my parents eventually relented and started celebrating both — which is its own weird thing). That’s why Smigel’s “Christmastime For The Jews” means so much. Born on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live and inspired by a love of claymation Christmas specials, Wall of Sound music, and the desire to merge them with Jewish and pop culture references that swing from clever to delightfully absurd, this lovingly crafted sketch/song exists as something Jews (and half-Jews) can call our very own.
The weight of what “Christmastime For The Jews” means to people who share an annual laugh, let the song dance around in their head for a few days, and feel utterly seen by its timeless jokes about the Jewish experience is not lost on the people who created it. Partly because they feel it too and partly because, as you’ll see, an immense amount of time, effort, and heart went into making it and getting it as close to perfect as possible. And since you’re reading this, you likely love the sketch and feel like they got pretty close. In the off chance you’ve not seen it, or just want to relive it again, here it is below.
To better appreciate the story of “Christmastime For The Jews,” you have to go back to Smigel’s past tinkerings with the themes that came to life in the sketch. Here’s the short(ish) version: In 1987, Smigel wrote a sketch called “The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” that was, by his account, a much earlier (and direct) attempt at speaking to the dearth of Jewish holiday standards, at least in contrast to those orbiting Christmas. Smigel acknowledges that the sketch didn’t quite “hit” in the same way that others like “Hanukkah Harry,” Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” and “Christmastime For The Jews” did among SNL‘s best-remembered contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture (which are basically the only contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture over the last 30 years). It features Al Franken as Henry Kissinger selling an album of Jewish Christmas songs that were “acceptable for Jewish people to hear, because all Jews love Christmas carols,” says Smigel. “Christmas carols are so much better than Hanukkah songs,” he (accurately) adds before offering a reminder that many great Christmas carols were actually written by Jews.
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“The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” and “Christmastime For The Jews” were far from Smigel’s only attempts at holiday parody. “I did two that involved a Charlie Brown Christmas, which is my favorite half-hour of television ever, probably,” he says. “I did a big one after 9/11 that was a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer parody.”
Smigel also has an affinity for crafting what he calls “silly musical stuff” that goes back to the late ’80s, as well. He authored a jingle for the first “Mister Short-Term Memory” sketch in 1988. More jingles followed before they became so common on the show that Smigel says they were mocked by The Simpsons.
Smigel left SNL in the early ’90s to work as head writer for Conan O’Brien during his foray into late-night before joining TheDana Carvey Show, where he debuted “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” Cartoons had also been an interest of Smigel’s going back to his time on SNL with “Cluckin Chicken” (where he worked, for the first time, with animator and eventual TV Funhouse cohort J.J. Sedelmaier). He was eager to continue playing in that space, conjuring up ideas for “Fun With Real Audio” and “The X-Presidents” before pitching SNL producer Lorne Michaels on an idea for a unique path back to the show after The Dana Carvey Show got canceled. That idea eventually became the TV Funhouse so many of us came to know and love.
“I was aware of how much fun I was having reaching back into what made me laugh as a child,” says Smigel. “It felt very pure and very exciting.”
Which brings us back around to “Christmastime for the Jews.” The stories we collected about its creation, from Smigel and the creative team involved — contributing writers Julie Klausner (Difficult People), Eric Drysdale (Full Frontal With Samantha Bee), Scott Jacobson (Bob’s Burgers), musical director Steven Gold, director David Brooks, producer Samantha Scharff, and legendary singer Darlene Love — shed some light on the mixture of insanity, brilliance, stubbornness, and catharsis that ran through the entire three-week production in addition to the irony of launching the same night that internet-culture game changer “Lazy Sunday” launched.
A lot has changed in the last week. On Monday, society was largely back to normal, as it had been for months and months, all thanks to vaccines. People were gearing up for some holiday travel. They were going to in-person events, like movies and Broadway shows. In the back of everyone’s mind, there was the Omicron variant, far more transmissible but also — if you’re vaxxed — far less deadly. Then cases started spiking. New York City, once the epicenter of the pandemic, suddenly had days of record-breaking cases. Shows got cancelled. Events were postponed. (People are still flocking to the movies, or at least one of them.) And now it’s affected tonight’s Paul Rudd-hosted SNL, too.
As per Deadline, what was supposed to be a joyous occasion — last episode of 2021, host Paul Rudd’s acceptance into the “five timer’s club” — will still happen. It will just be dramatically scaled back.
“Due to the recent spike in the Omicron variant and out of an abundance of caution, there will be no live audience for tonight’s taping of Saturday Night Live and the show will have limited cast and crew,” a spokesperson for SNL announced on Saturday. “The show continues to follow all government safety guidelines in addition to a rigorous testing protocol.”
It’s a return to SNL in the pre-vaccine days of the pandemic, when the performers played to little or no crowds, doing their best to deliver laughs while social distancing and staying safe. At the early day of the pandemic, in spring of 2020, the show dramatically revamped itself, with performers doing everything from their home over their computers and assorted gizmos, with sometimes outside-the-box results.
SNL, of course, records in New York City, which has transformed from a largely reawaken mecca of culture and commerce into a place of long COVID testing lines, people scrambling to get results before boarding planes, trains, and automobiles. On Friday, New York State counted 21,027 new cases — a record, up from the original peak of 19,942, in January of 2021.
But the show must go on, albeit a modified version. Host Rudd will be joined by musical guest Charli XCX.
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