Scouted/The Daily Beast/Hexclad.Scouted selects products independently. If you purchase something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.If you’re anything like me, cooking is not something you do in your finest threads. Whether it’s the sauce simmering or just a smoothie blending, there’s always something splashing around. Thankfully, chef-loved cookware brand HexClad tapped music producer and songwriter Benny Blanco to design a limited edition eco-friendly apron that will inspire you to get creative in the kitchen again. HexClad and Blanco collaborated on a vibrant tie-dye apron made from 100 percent plastic bottle fabric that brings flair and function to the kitchen. Adorned with pink waist ties and pockets aplenty, Benny’s Eco Modern Apron is a must-have for serious gourmands and aspiring cooks alike.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fox NewsWhere’s Jeff Gillooly when you need him?Reacting to Friday’s news that President Joe Biden said he’s “happy” to debate Donald Trump, Fox News host Emily Compagno speculated that the president could concoct a “Nancy Kerrigan situation” to force a last-minute cancellation.During Friday’s broadcast of Fox News’ roundtable show Outnumbered, the co-hosts parroted MAGA talking points that Biden is either too scared or mentally incompetent to go one-on-one with Trump on a national stage—even though the ex-president is the one who backed out of every GOP primary debate this election cycle.Read more at The Daily Beast.

NetflixBaby Reindeer is Netflix’s latest and most unlikely hit series, taking the world by storm in the weeks since its early-April release. The riveting, pulse-pounding drama is based loosely on star and creator Richard Gadd’s own experience with a relentless stalker (Jessica Gunning), who became fixated on him after he showed her kindness at the pub where he worked. It’s often horrifying to witness, but impossible to look away from—especially in one unforgettable moment in its penultimate episode, which solidifies the show as one of the year’s best.[Warning: Spoilers for Baby Reindeer ahead.]In Episode 6, to put it mildly, things are not going well for Donny, a bartender and failed stand-up comic (played by Gadd). Martha (Gunning) has started to relentlessly harass his parents, and an attempt to coerce her into sending him a violent email so he can finally get the police to do something backfires. Donny’s girlfriend has also dumped him after his inability to handle the Martha situation begins to affect their relationship. “Surely it couldn’t get any worse from here,” he narrates.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty ImagesR. Kelly’s bid to shorten his lengthy prison terms came up short on Friday, as the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago decided that his 2022 conviction would be upheld.Kelly had tried to appeal the 20-year sentence on his child porn conviction in Chicago, seeking a reduction in prison time, but the court’s decision killed that bid this week after directly linking the Chicago sentence to the 30-year sentence the singer received in New York on sex trafficking and racketeering charges.According to court documents obtained by The Daily Beast, Kelly appealed his convictions for Sexual Exploitation and Inducement of a Child on the grounds that the statute of limitations on the charges had run out, one of the charges should have been heard by a separate jury, and that 240-month sentence was “improper” procedurally.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Hollie Adams/Pool/ReutersKing Charles is to return to “public-facing duties” next week, Buckingham Palace said Friday, in an encouraging sign that his cancer treatment is working.One of his first engagements will be to visit a cancer treatment center with Queen Camilla on Tuesday, and in June he will host the Emperor and Empress of Japan for a state visit. Hopes will be high that he will now be cleared by doctors to attend the Trooping the Color ceremony which celebrates the monarch’s official birthday in June.In the statement the palace said, “His Majesty The King will shortly return to public-facing duties after a period of treatment and recuperation following his recent cancer diagnosis.Read more at The Daily Beast.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI; JIM WATSON/GETTYPresident Joe Biden told Howard Stern on Friday that he would “be happy to” debate his Republican rival Donald Trump, marking the first time the president has explicitly said he would debate Trump this election cycle.During an hour-long live sitdown with the famed shock jock, Biden was asked whether he would agree to a general election face-off against Trump, prompting the president to insist he was up to the challenge.“I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him,” Biden stated.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Icon Sportswire/GettyFormer New York Giants offensive lineman Korey Cunningham has been found dead in his New Jersey home. He was 28. Local outlet RLS Media said police and emergency services arrived on the scene around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, with the medical examiner removing the body about an hour later.Police said there was no evidence of foul play.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesAs the first week of testimony in Donald Trump’s criminal trial wrapped up Friday, former tabloid king David Pecker was on the defensive.Trump defense attorney Emil Bove already faced a tongue-lashing on Thursday from the judge—New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan—over the way Bove was “misleading” the jury as he cross-examined Pecker about the hush-money payments that went to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election.But Bove picked up right where he left off on Friday, asking Pecker detailed questions about specific aspects of Pecker’s previous testimony, looking for any inconsistencies in the publishing magnate’s recollections to plant a seed of reasonable doubt in jurors’ minds.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Michael M. Santiago/GettyDonald Trump used his break between court sessions to wish wife Melania a very happy birthday with a message focused mostly on himself. “I want to start by wishing my wife Melania a very happy birthday. It would be nice to be with her—but I’m in a courthouse for a rigged trial,” grumbled the former president, who is facing 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business records to cover up an affair that could’ve hurt him in the 2016 presidential election. In typical style, the 77-year-old repeated himself, meandered, and bragged about a supposedly crushing performance in court. “We’re doing very well in this rigged trial, and everybody knows it. Yesterday was a big day—but I do have to start by wishing Melania happy birthday,” he continued. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mohammed Salem/ReutersA premature baby girl who was saved from the womb after her mother was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza has now died as well.Sabreen Jouda passed away in a hospital in the southern city of Rafah on Thursday after surviving for five days in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit, her uncle told the Associated Press. Her father and four-year-old sister were also killed in the airstrike that claimed the life of her mother shortly before midnight on Saturday.First responders transported the family’s bodies to a hospital where medical workers performed a posthumous cesarean section on Sabreen’s mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant at the time she was killed. The infant was then rushed to another hospital where doctors battled to keep her alive.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via GettyReaching for an example of her unflinching preparedness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it needs to be done, Kristi Noem landed on a chilling example: the time she killed her pet dog, Cricket, in an execution-style gravel pit slaying.The South Dakota governor, whose unbreakable devotion to Donald Trump has propelled her to somewhere near the top of his list of his potential 2024 running mates, reportedly included her disturbing tale of canicide in a book set to be published next month. “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Noem writes, according to The Guardian, which obtained a copy.According to the newspaper, Noem recounts the story of how she not only killed Cricket—a female “wirehair pointer, about 14 months old”—but then also proceeded to botch the killing of an unnamed goat that she owned to which she had taken a disliking. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Mark Peterson/AFP via GettyDavid Pecker, much like Arnold Schwarzenegger, will be back.On Friday, the former National Enquirer boss will take the stand for the fourth time this week in Donald Trump’s hush money trial to face a second grilling from the former president’s defense team. Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc (AMI), has already testified about his efforts to act as Trump’s “eyes and ears” ahead of the 2016 presidential election by buying up the exclusive rights to negative stories about the Republican as a way of burying them, a practice known as “catch and kill.”Pecker spoke Thursday about his role in silencing stories from two women who claimed to have had extramarital trysts with Trump (Trump denies the sexual encounters ever took place). One involved AMI paying $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal, who said she’d had an affair with Trump in 2006. The other was a payment of $130,000 that former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels—which is at the center of the 34 felony counts of falsifying business records that prosecutors have brought against the former president.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastWelcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 election sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com. To get Trail Mix in your inbox, subscribe here for free.This week, an exploration of how much Trump can run afoul of MAGA and why he would do it. Plus, life after the 2024 primary, and more news from Michigan’s Senate race.NOT SO BASED DONRead more at The Daily Beast.

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily BeastAbout the authors: James Roosevelt, Jr. is a grandson of President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Henry Scott Wallace’s grandfather, Henry A. Wallace, served President Franklin Roosevelt as Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President, and Secretary of Commerce.Pop quiz: Who said this?“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty ImagesDonald Trump is set to hold a “major donor retreat” next week in Florida, and it could signal the unofficial start of the presidential veepstakes.According to an invitation obtained by Politico, special guests include “Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina and J.D. Vance of Ohio, as well as Govs. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Kristi Noem of South Dakota, and Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).” These, of course, are names frequently mentioned as being on Trump’s shortlist for a presidential running mate.Trump won’t have to announce his running mate until mid-July, when the Republican National Convention kicks off in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But time is ticking, and this is a decision with both electoral and governing implications. What is more, Trump’s advanced age (77), coupled with his four impending criminal trial verdicts, may raise the stakes even higher than normal.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / GettyListen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.Republican operatives have been forced to rework their strategy to deal with Donald Trump’s absence from the campaign trail while he sits in court for his hush money trial in New York.With the former president only having weekends and Wednesdays off they have had to get creative about how best to utilize that time.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Disney/Hulu“We’re halfway there,” I said to myself at the two-and-a-half-hour mark of Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, a four-part early Christmas gift to hard-core Bon Jovi fans and a ludicrously detailed look at the pop-rock luminary’s career for everyone else.Like the anthemic songs the platinum-selling New Jersey-born singer is known for, it would take an extra step to actively dislike this very by-the-numbers Hulu documentary, but the excessive length and the overblown manner in which it tries to manufacture drama does get a bit irritating. Put bluntly, there just isn’t much going on in this sanctioned and manicured portrait, yet it still goes on forever.Jon Bon Jovi is, was, and always shall be an extremely handsome and charismatic fella. That smile! Those eyes! Even in the deepest archive footage, striking a pose in preposterous ’80s hair-band outfits, the guy still looked good. What’s more, you can tell, you can just tell, that he’s a nice guy. Have you ever heard anyone say anything nasty about Jon Bon Jovi? Think a minute. No. The answer is no.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Magnolia PicturesAn adult sex comedy that’s also the most amusingly unerotic film of the year, The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, which hits theaters April 26, treads into explicit terrain in order to chart the disaffection and confusion of a thirtysomething Brooklynite in search of direction, fulfillment, and companionship. Written and directed by star Joanna Arnow, this bracingly awkward indie—which played at last year’s Cannes, Toronto, and New York film festivals—is a portrait of millennial estrangement and discontent that, despite suffering from sporadic redundancy, strikes a raw cringe-comedy nerve.In New York City’s trendiest borough, Ann (Arnow) lies nude in bed beside Allen (Scott Cohen), an older lover whose eyes stay closed as she begins humping his leg. “I love how you never care if I cum. And you don’t do anything for me,” she announces in a monotone come-hither manner. “It’s so disrespectful and misogynist.” When she gets no response, she drops her head to his chest and asks, “Do you think people can change?” Roused to actively engage with this, Allen merely sighs and states, “I don’t know.” This prompts Ann to resume her dry-humping routine and attendant dirty talk, declaring, “I like how you don’t care if I get off because it’s like I don’t even exist.” This may be true about Allen, but he mostly just comes across as exasperated by his partner’s shtick, staring at her and saying, “Can you not?”Ann tells Allen that he’s the only one she’s seeing but theirs is a decidedly uncommitted relationship, as well as a BDSM one in which she’s the “submissive” and he’s the “master.” During their encounters, Allen has Ann do things like repeatedly suck his nipples and then run to a bedroom wall, or walk over to a dresser, bend over, and spread her cheeks—an act that’s made all the more humiliating by the fact that this positions Ann’s face directly in front of photographs of turn-of-the-20th-century immigrant relatives, whose eyes stare back at her as if asking, “Is this what we struggled for?” Ann, however, is far from a victim in this scenario, since she eagerly seeks such treatment, and her later trysts with other men further reinforce the sense that her sexual proclivities are a means of attaining the power she doesn’t have in any other aspect of her life.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/MGMEvery once in a while—in spite of the inferno of lunacy, cruelty, and soul-crushing stress flaming all around—the world resembles one that I still want to live in, that reflects my deepest values and belief in a society that is fundamentally good.By some soul-affirming miracle that’s happening right now: People everywhere can’t wait to see Zendaya and two cute boys kiss. This is my America.I can’t remember the last time I’ve observed as much anticipation for a movie as I’ve seen these last few weeks for Challengers. The new film features Zendaya as a tennis superstar at the center of an erotically charged rivalry-turned-love triangle with her husband, Art (Mike Faist), and her former lover—and his former best friend—Patrick (Josh O’Connor).Read more at The Daily Beast.

Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with ShowtimeHow many little women is Count Alexander Rostov (Ewan McGregor) going to befriend in A Gentleman in Moscow? Alex’s habit of acquainting himself with little girls—this sounds odd, but he’s the one doing it over and over again—has returned in the fifth episode of the season. This man really needs to get some pals who are his own age.Alex has taken in Sofia (Billie Gadsdon), the tiny daughter of his old friend Nina (Leah Balmforth). Unlike Nina, who was full of childish whimsy and happiness, Sofia is a bratty thumbsucker. Sofia demands to sleep in the Count’s bed. Sofia only talks when she absolutely must. Sofia has messy hair and a messy life and Alex, somehow, still cares for her deeply. Every time he looks at her, he remembers young Nina. Nina is now somewhere off in Russia trying to find her husband, likely putting herself in danger.But at least Sofia is safe here with Marina (Leah Harvey) and Alex. Well…maybe. Alex is asked to come into questioning by the hotel manager Halecki (Rob Jarvis) and his right-hand man The Bishop (John Heffernan). While Halecki is keen on siding with Alex, the Bishop—a devoted follower of Stalin—firmly believes Sofia needs to be given away to an adoption agency. Alex has no rights over her, and she needs to get a proper education in the outside world. They table the discussion for later.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Comedy CentralThat Donald Trump has a tendency toward pettiness is hardly surprising to those who have been paying attention to the former president’s antics in recent years. (See Exhibits A, B, C, D, and E.) But a late-night outburst on Wednesday attacking Bill Barr has The Daily Show correspondent and this week’s co-host Jordan Klepper declaring the former president the official “King of Pettiness.”Though Trump spent most of Thursday in a New York City courtroom (again) for his hush money trial, Klepper’s co-host Ronny Chieng said that it wasn’t all bad news for the former president. “After months of calling him unfit for office, Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr said he’s voting for him anyway,” Chieng shared. “And Trump responded with as much grace as you’d expect.”Just after 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Trump posted the following message to Truth Social:Read more at The Daily Beast.

Reuters/Elijah NouvelageVideo taken by a witness and confirmed by local reporters captured the moment Noëlle McAfee, the chair of Emory University’s philosophy department, was dragged from a pro-Palestine campus protest in handcuffs Thursday evening—as she called on a student to let her peers know she’d been arrested. McAfee, who’s also the president-elect of the Emory University Senate, can be heard calling out to a stranger—who recorded the whole ordeal—and telling him she was merely observing the protest and was not participating.While McAfee spoke, she was drug in the opposite direction down a sidewalk by an officer who’d concealed his face with a balaclava. The onlooker recording repeatedly told her he was sorry as she was whisked away. Read more at The Daily Beast.

NBC NewsAs the Supreme Court weighs whether Donald Trump is shielded from prosecution for acts committed while president, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he opposes Trump’s view of absolute immunity.McConnell spoke with Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker Thursday for a pre-recorded interview set to air Sunday.During their talk, Welker inquired whether McConnell stood by his February 2021 comment—made just after he voted to acquit “shameful” Trump during his Jan. 6-related impeachment trial—that former presidents are not immune from criminal prosecution.Read more at The Daily Beast.

GoFundMeThe search for a missing Iowa trucker came to a tragic end Wednesday, with loved ones revealing David Schultz’ body was found lying in a field, his cowboy boots still on and his keys in his pocket—details police used to identify him.Schultz, 53, disappeared without a trace on Nov. 21 in Sac City, Iowa, where his truck was left abandoned, loaded with hogs he was set to deliver to a farm 10 miles down the road. His keys and phone were left in his rig, and his jacket was found in a nearby ditch, police said.A months-long search ensued, with his wife, Sarah Schultz, pleading for authorities to pursue answers about her husband’s whereabouts. She told the Sioux City Journal she now feels equal relief and sorrow—glad her family has some answers, but grief-stricken by the outcome. Read more at The Daily Beast.

Joan MarcusLet us be clear: it is mesmerizing, a delicious treat, a little surreal, and utterly thrilling to watch Jessica Lange act on stage in Paula Vogel’s Mother Play: A Play in Five Evictions (2nd Stage, to June 16). In this Broadway play, she plays Phyllis, the louche, erratic, loving, and extremely not-loving mother of Carl (Jim Parsons) and Martha (Celia Keenan-Bolger). The play, set in various apartments inside and outside the Beltway of Washington D.C., spans 1964 to the 21st century, and Martha in various stages of detachment from her children and the world around her.The one constant is this season’s most skin-crawling special effect: Shawn Duan’s projections of cockroaches, who—in the five evictions the title mentions—range freely over refrigerators, and even march in relentless unison all over the walls. You may go home and look up the number of an exterminator.Those evictions seem a strangely inert dramatic device. Rather like the relationships between mother and son, and mother and daughter, they flare into life and flare down. The characters are also types, who we don’t really get to know, except in relation to Phyllis; here Parsons plays a gay son, who wants acceptance, and who will forgive his mother her ugly homophobia out of a deeply felt devotion. Martha, who also comes out, is less forgiving, especially as Phyllis seems far more judgmental and sniping towards her. Carl is warm and fluttering, impervious to Phyllis’ viciousness, while Martha remains a block of suspicion and disbelief at their mother’s words, deeds, and blithe lack of care.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Jim Watson/AFP via Getty ImagesDonald Trump’s claim that the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 was less hateful than pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses lately was “repugnant and divisive,” the White House shot back Thursday night.After proceedings in his criminal trial in New York concluded for the day, Trump said the torch-lit rally on the campus of the University of Virginia—in which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us” and a Neo-Nazi murdered a counter-protester with his car and injured thirty others—was “a little peanut” compared to the largely peaceful encampments springing up on college campuses in recent weeks.“It was nothing compared, and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate you have here. This is tremendous hate,” Trump claimed.Read more at The Daily Beast.

KRON-TVA passerby interrupted a local television interview Tuesday with San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan to start a fight with one of Mahan’s security personnel, leading to an arrest for felony battery on a police officer, among other charges, local media reported.During an interview with KRON, which captured video of the altercation, Mahan was speaking on camera when a man, who police have identified as 35-year-old Wesley Pollard, approached the security detail from behind Mahan and began swearing.After Pollard got into frame beside Mahan, the mayor told him, “Sorry, we’re doing an interview, sir.” Pollard soon spoke to Mahan’s security guard, who is an officer of the San Jose Police Department. “I’m talking on the phone. You got a problem?”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Getty The extraordinary claim by Rebel Wilson that she was invited to a drug-fueled orgy by a minor royal at an LA party was greeted with wry amusement by friends of some hard-partying members of the aristocracy and minor royals this week.Dubbed the “narco-toffs” by their peers, there has always been a section of the upper class that has incorporated copious drug taking alongside the more traditional society pursuits of hunting, shooting and fishing.Take the famously dissolute John Hervey, the 7th Marquess of Bristol who inherited a vast fortune but died penniless from drug addiction in 1999. The writer Anthony Haden-Guest described his parties as places where “cocaine and heroin were catered like flowers.” Hervey kept a helicopter at his country estate, and would famously steer by a road map on his knees, while snorting cocaine off it. He died in agony of multiple organ failure brought on by drug use.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Prince Williams/WireImageFollowing news that Emilio Garcia, a former cameraman for rap star Megan Thee Stallion, is suing the rapper for withholding wages and creating a “hostile work environment,” including forcing him to watch her have sex in a car, another former employee of the rapper has come forward to corroborate some of his claims.Megan Thee Stallion, whose real name is Megan Pete, denied Garcia’s allegations soon after they were made, with her attorney, Alex Spiro, telling The Daily Beast, “This is an employment claim for money—with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her. We will deal with this in court.”Garcia’s suit, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, mentions that he confided in a former makeup artist for Megan Thee Stallion about what he was experiencing while working for her, and makeup artist Akil McCoy has come forward as the likely confidante in question. McCoy tells The Daily Beast that he was very familiar with what happened between Garcia and the rap star. “What I witnessed from Megan was acts of selfishness, lack of integrity and accountability when it came to me, Emilio, and others,” McCoy says via email.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Wikimedia CommonsA Maryland high school athletic director was arrested Thursday after police said he used artificial intelligence to generate a fake audio clip of a principal making racist and antisemitic remarks—an alleged frame-job believed to have been in retaliation after the school official opened a probe into him. Dazhon Darien was arrested at Baltimore’s international airport on Thursday, three months after the fake voice recording of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert circulated far and wide, announced Baltimore County Police Chief Robert McCullough.Eiswert’s voice, which McCullough and AI experts believe was simulated, made disparaging comments about Black students, which make up 50 percent of the student body, and the Jewish community. The clip caused a firestorm in the Baltimore suburb of Pikesville, with students reportedly calling for Eiswert’s ouster while many staff members spoke out to defend his character. Read more at The Daily Beast.