Jesse Grant/WireImage(LOS ANGELES) — The entertainment world lost another great over the weekend. Norm Crosby, a comedic staple that launched a successful standup career in the 1960s, passed away from heart failure.
His wife, Joan Crosby, confirmed her husband’s passing to The Hollywood Reporter, revealing that he passed away on Saturday at LA’s Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
The comedian, who started in standup in the 50s before becoming a staple in late night talk shows a few years later, created the moniker “The Master of Malaprop” by developing a gimmick of switching phrases with similar-sounding words in his comedy.
Crosby, who joined Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show over 50 times, also launched his own syndicated television show Norm Crosby’s Comedy Shop in 1978.
He also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Garry Moore Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Hollywood Place, The Jimmy Dean Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
He also appeared on Roseanne, The Boysand, most famously, as Wally the Bartender on The Love Boat.
The comedian was also a frequent volunteer for various celebrity roasts throughout the ages.
Crosby most recently appeared on Grownups 2 where he cameoed as a worker at a K Mart.
He is survived by Joan, his wife of 54 years, his sons Andrew and David, along with his grandchildren Jack and Lily.
NBC/Will Heath(NEW YORK) — (NOTE LANGUAGE) 2020 isn’t over yet, but Dave Chappelle summed up the bulk of it during his opening monologue on Saturday Night Live.
The booking was something of a bookend for the sketch show, which tapped the acclaimed comic to take the stage four years ago, after President Donald Trump’s surprise election victory over Hillary Clinton.
Chappelle, 47, donned a navy blue suit and smoked a cigarette as he delivered a 16-minute set chock full of the “n-word.” In his opening, which came just hours after Joe Biden was declared the election winner and president-elect on Saturday, Dave recounted receiving a text from a friend in London about the news.
“She said, ‘The world feels like a safer place now that America has a new president,'” he recalled.
“I said, ‘That’s great, but America doesn’t,'” he added before reminding the audience of life before the global pandemic.
“A mass shooting every week. Anyone remember that? Thank god for COVID. Someone had to lock these murderous whites up, keep them in the house,” he said as the audience erupted in applause and laughter.
Chappelle also slammed “poor white people” who don’t like to wear masks.
“What is the problem? You wear a mask at the Klan rally, wear it at the Walmart too,” he said.
“Rest of the country trying to move forward and these white n****s keep holding us back,” he added. “Don’t even wanna wear your mask because it’s oppressive … try wearing the mask I’ve been wearing all these years. I can’t even tell something true unless it has a punchline behind it.”
Towards the end of his monologue, the comedian poked fun at President Donald Trump for catching the coronavirus.
“He called the coronavirus the Kung flu… I’m supposed to say that, not you! It’s wrong when you say it,'” Chappelle joked. “You know, when he got coronavirus, they said everything about it on the news. You know what they didn’t say? That it was hilarious.”
Courtesy Adrian BallingerBy ALEXANDRA SVOKOS, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Emily Harrington was close to the 3,000-foot top of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan, close to achieving the historic goal she’d spent years working up to, and she was resigning herself to the idea that it was out of reach — again.
Just like last year, when she almost reached that point but, exhausted, just couldn’t clinch it. Or a few weeks after that, when she slipped and fell only 150 feet up from the ground, ropes catching her but leaving a rope burn on her neck that took her out for the season.
Again, she took a fall. Again, she was there, hanging off the side of El Cap, bleeding, with a gash above her eye.
“There was a part of me that didn’t want to climb again,” she told ABC News. “I was so emotionally drained and exhausted, and there was a part of me that wanted to give up and just be like, ‘This is it; this is done. It’s not for me.'”
But there, hanging off the side of the park’s iconic granite wall, her team checked out the puncture wound — they could patch it up. They ran through concussion protocol — no signs. All she had to do was get herself to keep climbing.
“I had to go through the process of convincing myself that I had earned the right to try again up there and I had worked so hard and I deserve to try again,” Harrington said. “It was like I hit rock bottom and clawed my way out.”
After that, there was just one more difficult pitch — what climbers call portions of a climb — to get through before it was smooth sailing to the top. It was after sunset, and she’d been climbing for 18 hours. That one last difficult pitch she was facing down was the one she’d bailed on last year. It was dark, she had a headlamp on, and she willed herself to just try it.
“It was one of the moments that you kind of live for in climbing, when you just execute something so perfectly,” she said.
She finished that portion “flawlessly,” and “that’s when I knew I was going to do it. And it was a really, really powerful feeling.”
There were, she said, “a lot of tears.”
After 21 hours and 13 minutes of climbing, Harrington reached the top. In doing so, she became the first woman — and fourth person of any gender — to free-climb the Golden Gate route of El Capitan in one day. She is now the fourth woman to free-climb El Capitan in a day on any route. “Free-climbing” means you’re attached to ropes, so if you fall, you’re caught, but the ropes do not assist the climb.
“[Climbing] still is very much a world where men kind of dominate,” she told ABC News, “and I think for me it took a long time to realize that I did belong up there and that I didn’t have to do it the way everyone else said I had to do it. There’s no formula and I did it my own way.”
It’s an extraordinary feat that requires not just technical climbing skill, not just power, but also mental and physical stamina.
After the two failed attempts last year, Harrington spent 12 months working on those factors, building up strength and power through bouldering and building up stamina through runs in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, where she lives with boyfriend Adrian Ballinger, a mountaineer who followed her through the training and attempts. She worked on climbing efficiency, looking at where she could move smarter to climb not more quickly, but with less energy.
It wasn’t always clear she was going to be able to make an attempt this year: The coronavirus pandemic shut down Yosemite National Park in the spring, and in the fall, it shut down due to wildfires.
The pandemic, Harrington said, did have one “silver lining” as it allowed her to stay focused on her goal, with travel and other distractions cut off.
She did, she said, have some anxiety and fear going back to the wall after her fall last year — which caused a media frenzy.
But for one thing, she knew she had the training, and for another, she knew exactly what had gone wrong (she and Alex Honnold, of Free Solo fame, who has been her partner on El Capitan, didn’t use enough gear for the ropes, she said, and they climbed on a cold day), so she knew how to avoid it.
Harrington first completed a climb of the Golden Gate route of El Capitan in 2015, over six days. Two years ago, she began seriously training to do it in under a day.
But, she said, it feels more like “a life goal” than something she’s been working toward for years.
“In a way this was my life’s dream,” she said. “This is the culmination of everything I’ve ever put into my climbing all summed up in one day.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events:
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE Atlanta 34, Denver 27 Baltimore 24, Indianapolis 10 Buffalo 44, Seattle 34 Houston 27, Jacksonville 25 Kansas City 33, Carolina 31 Minnesota 34, Detroit 20 NY Giants 23, Washington 20 Tennessee 24, Chicago 17 Las Vegas 31, LA Chargers 26 Miami 34, Arizona 31 Pittsburgh 24, Dallas 19 New Orleans 38, Tampa Bay 3
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER New York City FC 4, Chicago 3 Columbus 2, Atlanta 1 Montreal 3, D.C. United 2 Miami 2, Cincinnati 1 New York 2, Toronto FC 1 Nashville 3, Orlando City 2 Philadelphia 2, New England 0 Colorado, 2 Houston 1 Los Angeles FC, 1, Portland 1 (Tie) Minnesota 3, FC Dallas 0 Sporting Kansas City 2, Real Salt Lake 0 Seattle 4, San Jose 1 Vancouver 3, LA Galaxy 0
CMA Heading into Wednesday’s 54th Annual CMA Awards, Ashley McBryde has an impeccable record: she’s taken home every trophy for which she’s ever been nominated.
Last year, the Country Music Association named her its New Artist of the Year, and in 2020, she could add Album, Female Vocalist, and Musical Event to her collection.
For Album, Ashley competes against Miranda Lambert‘s Wildcard, Luke Combs‘ What You See Is What You Get, Jon Pardi‘s Heartache Medication, and Old Dominion‘s self-titled record.
“I was really excited to see Miranda’s record and Luke and Jon,” Ashley tells ABC Audio. “I mean, Heartache Medication is a fantastic record and I was really happy to see it get some recognition, too.”
“And I was speaking to Caylee Hammack,” Ashley continues, “and she said, ‘I had no idea how important nominations were until I had so many people I truly love and care about that are in these categories.'”
“And that’s definitely the way I feel,” Ashley reflects, “especially about Female Vocalist of the Year and Album of the Year, because those are albums that I love and I get to go sit with them in that category.”
For Female Vocalist, it’s Ashley, Miranda, Maren Morris, Carrie Underwood, and Kacey Musgraves. But there’s no denying a win for the diverse Never Will would mean a lot.
“It’s a nice pat on the back and it’s a really good ‘Well done!’ stamp…” Ashley says. “If it was bluegrass, it was bluegrass. If it was bone country, we did it that way. If it was rock and roll, then we head-banged a little bit. And I’m so glad that it’s resonated and it’s getting some recognition.”
Ashley’s also set to perform on Wednesday’s show, which starts at 8 p.m. ET live from Nashville on ABC.
Jesse Grant/WireImage(LOS ANGELES) — The entertainment world lost another great over the weekend. Norm Crosby, a comedic staple that launched a successful standup career in the 1960s, passed away from heart failure.
