Gammy 2017 in pics:
Monday, 13 February 2017
Sunday, 12 February 2017
Jennifer Lopez, Drake
Jennifer Lopez Posts Cryptic Message About Love Amid Drake Split
'She's a mom with an insanely busy career': Jennifer Lopez and Drake's hot and heavy romance 'fizzled out' due to hectic schedules
They've said to have called time on their exciting sudden romance.
And Jennifer Lopez and Drake's busy schedules are reportedly to blame for their hot and heavy relationship 'fizzling' out - but the pair are keen on giving it another go 'in the future.'
A source close to the On The Floor songstress, 47, told Entertainment Tonight: 'She likes Drake. They're just busy, so it has fizzled.'
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Love cost a thing? Jennifer Lopez, 47, and Drake's busy schedules are reportedly to blame for their sudden romance 'fizzling' out - but the pair are keen on giving it another go 'in the future'
'She’s a mom with an insanely busy career. He's touring in Europe. Who knows what will happen in the future when they’re more able to be in the same place,' the insider continued.
This comes after E! News reported that Jennifer and 30-year-old Hotline Bling rapper are going their separate ways, at least temporarily. A source told the website: '[They] have taken some time apart, not because they don't want to be with each other, just because their schedules started getting insane.'
But all is not lost for J Lo and her Fake Love beau: 'J Lo and Drake are still talking, so people should know they are not in any means angry or that some incident happened. It mainly had to do with timing,' the source added.
'She’s a mom': Jennifer's family and work schedule, along with the Hotline Bling rapper's hectic commitments made the pair unable to spend quality time together
![No time: This comes after a source told E! News, '[They] have taken some time apart, not because they don't want to be with each other, just because their schedules started getting insane'](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_soQ7tTFqjTl6t4BdwORwRXsEgErahTHr8DBvui30fOW0wQBi8VQ0Q8IsvHlQqoJjT4t1QrW4p0D23qjZCGu52G54lqMfuSmoi7Y-JmM3-0sZtrMc5dzke5tCkW9rqUvJhCuEiYvTAx879MrSfS_cKHAED1TczkSdm61V-9Trggsgk-ICev=s0-d)
No time: This comes after a source told E! News, '[They] have taken some time apart, not because they don't want to be with each other, just because their schedules started getting insane'
Not all over: The source said the pair 'have just cooled things off a bit' but are still in each others lives. J Lo is seen here backstage of her Las Vegas show this week.
Saturday, 11 February 2017
Tottenham Hotspur F.C., Liverpool F.C.
Liverpool F.C. vs. Tottenham Hotspur: match preview, projected lineups, predictions, and how to watch
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. continued their winning ways on Saturday against Middlesbrough F.C. It was the second consecutive game where Spurs performance was less than ideal, but unlike the their draw at the Stadium of Light earlier in the week, Harry Kane’s penalty kick was enough to tack three points on the board.
And an important three points they were. With Liverpool and Arsenal losing to Hull City and Chelsea respectively, Spurs picked up three vital points against two of their chief competitors for the top four. Spurs now hold sole possession of second place in the Premier League, nine points behind first placed Chelsea, with a shade over sixty percent of the season complete. Its a fantastic spot to be in at this point in the campaign.
Liverpool have had a devastating run of form lately and have dipped to fifth place in the table, four points behind Spurs and thirteen off the top spot. Their results have just simply been awful. In their past five games they’ve lost to Swansea, were booted from the EFL Cup by Southhampton, ousted from the FA Cup by Wolverhampton, drew to Chelsea in a solid match from them, but then lost to feeble Hull City over the weekend. Its only spanned over a month, but what an ugly month it has been.
That said, Liverpool are not a side to take lightly no matter their form. Saidio Mane, Roberto Firmino, and Philippe Coutinho are about as formidable of a front three as you will see in the Premier League this season save Chelsea, while their midfield of Henderson, Lallana, and Wijnaldum / Can isn’t too shabby either. Mignolet isn’t having the best of terms this year, but with Lovren potentially fit and pairing with Matip in the center-back spots, flanked by Milner and Clyne, their backline is more than capable defensively and can also get forward quite well too.
The bottomline is that Liverpool are a hugely talented squad and their recent struggles are just noise. They are too good not to bounce back and challenge for the top four for the rest of the season. In addition, the game has massive ramifications for not only Champions League places, but also the title race. However unlikely it may be already, any points dropped to Tottenham on Saturday would end Liverpool’s hopes of title contention. While it wouldn’t be a complete death knell for Spurs if they lost, its safe to say that a win would keep them close enough to Chelsea. In short, any points for Spurs would be massive for their end of the season ambitions. Spurs haven’t defeated Liverpool since, wait for it, November 28th, 2012. That is so long ago that AVB might have just finished up his first Dakar Rally. Massive points will be at stake when Spurs travel to Anfield.
How to Watch
[Editor’s note: the big news in soccer broadcasting this week in the USA is that fubo.tv is now offering a new streaming package that includes access to the NBC family of cable networks, including NBC Sports Network. NBC is offered in some markets (but not all), and the service is currently in beta. A link is included below.]
Date/time: Saturday, 5:30 p.m. (UK), 12:30 p.m. ET (USA)
Venue: Anfield, Liverpool, UK
Official: Anthony Taylor
TV: NBC (United States), BT Sport 1, BBC Radio (UK), TSN1, TSNGO (Canada), Optus Sport (Australia), other listings at livesoccertv.com
Streaming: NBC Sports Live Extra (USA), fubo.tv (free 24 hour trial)
Radio: Audio streamed at tottenhamhotspur.com, also often at BBC Radio London,BBC Radio 5 Live, and TalkSport
Venue: Anfield, Liverpool, UK
Official: Anthony Taylor
TV: NBC (United States), BT Sport 1, BBC Radio (UK), TSN1, TSNGO (Canada), Optus Sport (Australia), other listings at livesoccertv.com
Streaming: NBC Sports Live Extra (USA), fubo.tv (free 24 hour trial)
Radio: Audio streamed at tottenhamhotspur.com, also often at BBC Radio London,BBC Radio 5 Live, and TalkSport
Projected Lineup
Team news has ruled Danny Rose out for the remainder of February which is disappointing. Kieran Trippier is working back from an injury sustained against Wycombe, but looks ready to make the match-day eighteen roster on Saturday. In longer term knocks, Jan Vertonghen seems to be progressing nicely and is slated to start training as early as last week. Lastly, Erik Lamela is “taking it step by step”, whatever that means. Either way there is still no timetable on his return.
Spurs have trotted out the 4-2-3-1 the past two matches and have struggled. Sure their finishing hasn’t been the best, but the team has looked uncreative, narrow, and formulaic in this formation — a far cry from the free flowing football we were playing in the Festive period and early January. In general, Poche has played the 3-4-3 either when his best eleven are healthy or when facing a fearsome side. For me, Liverpool meets the latter of this criteria, and Spurs are away from home, so I think Poche falls back to the 3-4-3 lineup.
Hugo will start in net, while Toby Alderweireld, Eric Dier, and Kevin Wimmer will makeup the back three. Kyle Walker and Ben Davies will play on the right and left flank, with Victor and Moose raising havoc in the center of the park. Eriken, Dele, and Harry Kane will form the front three and look to put a few past the struggling Mignolet.
Prediction League
Like a sixteen year old driving stick for the first time, the HUGE storyline in the CFC Prediction League this week was the stall at the top of the table from established frontrunner Jake Meador. The morning hoddler and tactics-man extraordinaire has taken it on the chin over the past few weeks and the rest of the masthead has taken advantage. Four of the writers dropped perfect scorelines for the Middlesbrough game, while seven of the nine picked a Spurs win. This makes it Japanese subway style crowded at the top. Meador, GN Punk, Pardeep Cattry, and Brian Mechanick now share the spoils in first place, with Greenberg, Pachniuk, and Menno nipping at their tails close behind. Its on.
Cartilage Free Captain Prediction League Table
| Name | Score |
|---|---|
| Jake Meador | 17 |
| GN Punk | 17 |
| Pardeep Cattry | 17 |
| Brian Mechanick | 17 |
| Alex Greenberg | 16 |
| Matthew Pachniuk | 16 |
| Dustin Menno | 15 |
| Luke Zimmermann | 13 |
| Earl of Shoop | 12 |
| Brian Meyers | 10 |
| Skipjack | 10 |
| Salmon Chase | 9 |
| Ben Daniels | 7 |
| Bryan A. | 5 |
| Ed F. | 4 |
Dustin Menno: Spurs have drawn all three matches against Liverpool under Klopp. I see no reason that won’t happen again. 1-1 draw.
Matthew Pachniuk: Spurs have found so little success against Liverpool that its hard to be optimistic in this one. To further that idea, both Jan and Danny are out, Poche might roll with the strangling 4-2-3-1, and we are away. With all of this said, awful things happen to my place in the CFC PL Standings AND Tottenham Hotspurs when I pick them to lose so....Spurs 3-1.
Jake Meador: Everything is terrible. 2-0 Liverpool.
GN Punk: 2-2 Draw. Jurgen Klopp chokes out the fourth official at the end of the match.
Skipjack: Everything sucks, 3-0 Liverpool.
Salmon Chase: 2-1 Liverpool based on casual pessimism and a minimum amount of critical thought.
Pardeep Cattry: Two productive attacks are up against a Spurs defense missing starters and a Liverpool defense that's a bit leaky; I'm expecting goals. Liverpool 2-2 Tottenham
Earl of Shoop: What a bunch of downers in these predictions. Liverpool may never walk alone or whatever, but they're also not walking into the top four at our expense this weekend. Spurs 2-1.
Alex Greenberg: Liverpool are quietly the new West Brom. We'll draw them 1-1.
Brian Mechanick: Feeling quietly optimistic this Spurs D is coming along strong again. Time for another tight win. Spurs 1-0.
Bryan Ashlock: I predict that there will never be another Wheeler Dealer Radio ever again. Is that not how this works? Spurs 4-1.
Friday, 10 February 2017
Lena Dunham, Girls
With Girls, Lena Dunham Created and Destroyed a Millennial Reality
HBO's popular series comes to an end, but did it actually capture a generation?
Girls began with so much promise. It was a show that, in its initial stages, seemed to represent a world imagined for millennials by millennials. It resonated with the young adult crowd through showcasing the manic daze of love, heartbreak, career-confusion, and, of course, financial security (or the lack thereof) that we were, and many of us still are, experiencing everyday. We all knew a free-spirit (Jessa), an aspiring dreamer (Hannah), the beautiful girl with a long-term boyfriend (Marnie), and the uptight virgin who’s ready to get their heartbroken by the big city (Shoshanna), and they felt very much like the same friends we had in our own social circles. Girls was at the forefront of a new movement in television that brought reality one step closer, changing the game for drama and comedy during a time when literally everything about our daily life was unwritten, untraversed, and separate from anything any generation before us had ever experienced.
That spark of life started fading when Lena Dunham’s pitfalls began to reveal themselves. Her show lacked diversity, despite being set in the multi-cultural hub of Brooklyn, and while her series is far from the first in not showcasing a broad range of actors in New York, it was supposed to be a progressive narrative, and its popularity in millennial circles made it an easy target for attack. It didn’t help that Lena Dunham became an outspoken “progressive” voice that pushed the problematic white feminism narrative, forgetting that progressivism should be more inclusive than what her tunnel vision was letting her see. Dunham’s wishes of having an abortion, or her shock that Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t interested in her, among a million other small fires she lit on a monthly basis, began to push more of her multi-cultural viewers away. Her inability to respond well to these backlashes and her eventual addition of Donald Glover (as a Republican, no less) didn’t do much to improve the situation.
It also became clear that all four of the major actors involved in the series — Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and Dunham — were from an incredibly rich inner-circle of friends. As the offspring of successful artists, writers, musicians, and journalists, the cast have certainly lived a life that the average person doesn’t exactly relate to. For the record, there’s nothing wrong with this kind of wealth, and each actress seems well-brought-up and well-educated, but it was more of an issue that the program touted itself as a voice of our generation, relatable and flawed in the way young people today are, and finding out the veil was using actors that couldn’t relate to some of our more difficult struggles made it a pressure point for viewers.
The new season, its sixth and final, sees Hannah working with The New York Times, Marnie (kind of) going through a divorce, former lovers Ray and Shoshanna moving in together, and Jessa dating Adam, Hannah’s ex. At times, it’s hard to understand why they’re still a group of friends — after all, they’ve all moved on in terms of career, finance, and emotional capacity — and their stories feel more like disparate parts that rotate in completely different circles rather than existing under one narrative. The story continues to explore love, sex, career, and friendship, but it seems like past seasons may have done more damage to their friendship than can be salvaged by the time Girls ends.
The problem is that the characters have become caricatures of everything they were beforehand and they’re consistently straddled with larger-than-life conflicts that embellish their worst features — and this warrants a larger issue. Because really, past generations love to spend time arguing about everything that’s wrong with millennials, and a show like this does nothing to discredit the work that we as a generation actually put in. Dunham’s narratives are undoubtedly progressive by nature, but they’re also simultaneously in line with how many elders tend to criticize millennials. Which begs the question: If the show is for us and by us, why does it seem to hate young adults so much? Sure, we’re flawed, but we’re not unforgivably awful.
Girls appears to think otherwise, even though so much of the story still manages to slip in some simple truths. Anyone who’s experienced life as a young adult should relate to the heartbreak, bad sex, career strides, incomprehensible emotions, and flat-out weird eccentricities of the millennial generation. In fact, Chelsea Peretti’s role as an online journalist and Riz Ahmed’s stoner surfing instructor do a pretty good job of capturing these raw moments of honesty early on in the season. In the end, however, Dunham’s inability to keep her characters grounded and intriguing rears its ugly head by about the second episode.
Marnie is once more stuck in various messed up situations with her husband, Hannah is learning to move past any judgment, everyone can’t seem to stand Jessa while she herself appears to have no sympathy, and Shoshanna explains to Andrew Rannells’ ever-indelible Elijah her mistake in ditching her friends from college for the group. It’s here that Elijah tells her a crucial component that helps bring sensibility to the entire show and all of its many flaws: “We can’t all be perfect. We all have our own path.” In some respects, it’s Elijah who winds up being the saving grace of the entire season. He’s the voice of reason and levity in any moments of tension, and without him, the program would be an absolute slog to get through.
As an Asian woman watching the show, I felt myself wanting to like Girls, but it ultimately failed to connect. Asian culture sits in a weird position in the world today. We don’t worry about fear of unprovoked attack like so many other nationalities have to, and our stereotype balances more on being seen as too good, too unthreatening, too nerdy, and too passive to be a threat to the white narrative. Through that, we’re sometimes being tugged at by people of caucasian descent on one side and everyone else on the other. In many ways, I can see why Girls can have a strong fanbase because it can touch on certain truths about today’s world. On the other hand, it just simply hurts to see a lack of any type of color on the screen when a self-identified liberal fails to understand why POC are upset at her program. We need strong female characters on TV, and Girls could have brought forth interesting characters who represented every girl out there. I’ve had my own share of failed relationships, problems with my career, and backstabbing between friends, but through watching the show, it didn’t feel inclusive of people like me.
But truth be told, Girls overreached. There just aren’t six seasons worth of interesting material for the average millennial girl to live through without bringing in sensational elements that go above and beyond an average reality. In the beginning, the first season promised a show that attempted to frame the modern young woman, but looking back, that changed as the tonal shifts around season two and beyond made that reality very difficult to believe as the multitude of stereotypes piled up. However, as a whole, perhaps we can see the show as a warning of the consequences that follow in the wake of bad decisions, especially when taken to the nth degree. And as the final season brings back a dose of reality into the mix, and the girls confront some of their past mistakes with tangible consequences, Girls may stretch just enough to close its final chapter.