Faulkner

Bobby Caldwell’s death was trending this morning, and, sadly, his official accounts have confirmed his passing. If you grew up listening to black radio as I did, you knew Caldwell and especially “What You Won’t Do For Love,” which was a Quiet Storm staple that was constantly sampled by hip-hop artists. Many people didn’t even realize he was white—he wasn’t a video artist, and his vocal timbre and even his name “Bobby Caldwell” sounded like that of a black man—and every now and then, you’d see him trending on Twitter, as a new group of people discovered his identity. Yet, like Teena Marie, he was fully embraced by black listeners, as he was steeped in the culture and wasn’t simply an appropriator.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson 🇬🇧 for Calvin Klein (commercial) Bonus video: ATJ doing a backflip:

She’d won the Golden Globe Drama Actress and both the LA and NY Film Critics for Best Actress that year, so she was the consensus pick for a while. But, like Yeoh, Halle Berry won the SAG and the rest was history.

Haha, he’s an AI rendering of what a hunky young Teddy Roosevelt might look like today.

RHOP: Juan Dixon has been fired from his coaching job:

GH comes back down to Earth.

Oh dear:

She looks great, Veronica Redd. Eyeroll at the bicentennial. Sounds so quaint.

Not just the film industry, but they are definitely a main offender.

Wowee zowee! Mary Cosby is back on SLC!

Football player Syd Brown 🇺🇸

I hadn’t thought about this. Funny.

Such a great album

Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s delectable son:

He’s absolutely reckless in a way that you can’t be in this day and age (like the partying and getting COVID, which resulted in his first SNL appearance getting cancelled). He was definitely poised as a future star in country music, which is why SNL pushed him so hard. He got banned by radio and from awards show appearances, and I think there was a backlash to the backlash, a lot of it driven by reactionary racists and maybe a bit of it from people who thought the punishment didn’t fit the crime, especially after he apologized and some of his black peers like Kane Brown and Jimmie Allen defended him. (Whether Kane and Jimmie did that to avoid being targeted by racists is one thing, but I do believe they were genuine. Kane, in particular, has not been one to shy away from calling out the racism among country fans.)

I’ll admit, as a black man, that I don’t think he’s racist in the Scott Adams sense. I think he’s just dumb and one of those white dudes who thinks he has access to language he absolutely shouldn’t use. I *do* agree that the surge in popularity was in part due to racism. It’s a shame because I think he’s actually talented.

Morgan Wallen has sprung back from last year’s blacklisting and has scored his first No. 1 amid an album bomb of the Hot 100:

I remember hearing that, similarly to Grammys, there are a lot of factions in the Academy that demand parity in representation in the In Memoriam segment, which is limited due to time. Hence the number of publicists and executives who simply have no name recognition with the general public, which means a lot of famous people just won’t make the cut.

Yeah, the draw is kinda lame. They put the “Good Ones” all in one quarter instead of having the @ssholes evenly dispersed to ensure the most competitive final four. Lol I’m taking it way too seriously. But I’d love to see Eboni tangle with the Potomac women. It would also take the burden of representation off her shoulders as well as force her to be more open and vulnerable. My only fear would be the balance of the cast. Like if she were adversarial with Wendy, for example: Wendy has enough enemies among those women LOL. I’d love to see them spar a bit, though.