Category: 5. Entertainment

Princess Marie made a surprise return to Copenhagen this week and she wasn’t alone.

The royal delighted fans as she stepped out at the Copenhagen Cooking Festival, where she serves as patron, accompanied by her two children, Count Henrik, 16, and Countess Athena, 13.

The trio threw themselves into the festivities, sampling culinary delights, watching the competition for the best ratatouille, and even stopping by the Ice Cream Shop for a sweet treat.

It marked a rare public appearance for Henrik and Athena, who have been living and studying in the U.S. since 2023, when Princess Marie and her husband, Prince Joachim, relocated to Washington D.C. following his appointment as defence industry attaché at the Danish Embassy.

Henrik cut a smart figure in a denim shirt and beige chinos and now stands noticeably taller than his mother, while Athena, in a blue and white striped top paired with a white A-line skirt and trainers.

The princess herself looked elegant in a sky-blue blazer layered over a white cami, with flared stone coloured trousers completing the sophisticated look for the Copenhagen Cooking Festival.

Earlier in the week, she visited Positivgruppen in Frederiksberg, a support venue and patient association for HIV-positive gay and bisexual men. 

On Wednesday, she continued her official program with a visit to the Danish Emergency Management Agency in Birkerød.

The Who may have named what they are claiming is their final North American tour “The Song Is Over,” but according to co-founder and guitarist Pete Townshend, the road will go on for him once the final strains of “Baba O’Riley” ring out at the band’s final gig on Sept. 28 in Las Vegas.

Speaking to AARP magazine, Townshend, 80, said he plans to embark on what he referred to as “one-man” solo outings after he and singer Roger Daltrey finish their current run of shows. “We reserve the right to pop up again,” Townshend said of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band that announced its first final tour in 1982. “But I think one thing is very clear: that at our age, we will not.” Townshend is not retiring, though, saying that he’s planning to finish his long-gestating solo album The Age of Anxiety, which he’s been working on since 2007, and possibly taking that show on the road.

“I’ve got songs in all kinds of development, 140 tracks ready to go,” he said. “On The Age of Anxiety, [based on his 2019 first novel], I’ve got 26 songs. It’s not not autobiographical, but the scope of my own mental journey through addiction and recovery has led me to a place where I feel that I can write a character, a genuine, realistic character — youngish, who, rather than be depressed, has an acuity, a kind of instant, psychic feeling, and he decides that he wants to really dig in to make his audience as happy as they possibly can be.”

He described the main character as a good-looking harmonica player who plays small clubs with his “very, very popular” band, but is beginning to sense an anxiety from some of the “young mums” in the crowd who are “escaping something.” Townshend hopes the album can start a conversation about depression and the struggle for artists to manage their sometimes selfish, self-obsessed inclinations.

Despite suffering from tinnitus, Townshend said his brain is “sharp as a razor,” he’s feeling “very, very creative” and generally healthy, speculating that he’s got maybe “another five years” in show business left in him. The guitarist plans to experiment touring his solo material by going out on the road for some one-man shows, while keeping open the possibility that he and Who singer Roger Daltrey might work together again some day.

“Roger and I certainly [will] work together for charity and possibly for special projects,” he predicted of the vocalist with whom he admitted he doesn’t communicate with “very well.” Regardless, he added, “together we represent all aspects of The Who legacy. You know, I’m the songwriter and creator, but Roger’s been the driving force, meaning keeping The Who band and his brand on track. Even with his solo work, we’ll continue to work together, even if we rarely socialize.”

Townshend also addressed the viral freakout over the Who’s firing (and re-hiring, then re-firing) of longtime drummer Zak Starkey earlier this year, explaining that Daltrey was peeved that Starkey “jumped straight into Instagram and started to mouth off and defend his position in a cheeky, chatty manner, which belies the seriousness of what actually happened.”

To hear the guitarist tell it, Daltrey had asked the band to rehearse the tour’s title track, the 1971 Who’s Next ballad “The Song Is Over” in a shortened version for the outing and halfway through a performance of it at the Royal Albert Hall in London in March the singer “got completely lost. He stopped, he complained, spoke to his own sound engineer, and started to rage. It looked like he was raging at Zak, but that’s not the case. It became a story among fans, and it looked like Roger made a mistake, but something technical went wrong. [Zak’s] handling of it, was, I suppose, light-hearted, but you know Roger.”

The next stop on the Who tour is Thursday night (Aug. 21) at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia.

Can you remember what your expectations were on the eve of [Deftones’ 1995 debut] Adrenaline being released? JonnyT
I was very excited that we were about to put out a real record, on a real record label. I was a little scared as well – we were this new band, putting ourselves out there. The label sent us physical copies of Adrenaline when it came out – I think we even got cassettes back then. It was so exciting to open it up and have something tangible to hold. But we had no sense of the longevity it would enjoy. I didn’t anticipate people would still be listening to it, or even that we’d still be a band this many years later. We still have nerves, obviously, whenever we release something. But we also have a sense of confidence, especially with this new record.

Do you find your creativity burns brightest in hardship? Or can peace be just as potent? shenead
There’s something to be said for both, and our music has that dichotomy built into its DNA – a lot of our songs have that yin and yang within them. There’s a lot more peace than chaos in our lives at the moment, and I’m happy it’s that way. A lot of our earlier records were made when life was more crazy, and we were able to capture that. But with this record, there’s some of that beauty that comes with this invigorated time we’re living in now. But it’s always good to be able to yell and scream sometimes, right? The pandemic was really difficult for everybody, but as someone who was spoilt by having this outlet my whole adult life, to be able to tour and play shows and express myself … I really came to a dead stop during Covid. It really affected me. Making music – to be able to express emotions, good and bad – has definitely been a gift.

I work at HMV in a small town and we sell at least five copies of 1997’s Around the Fur to teenagers every week – way more than Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours or Nirvana’s Nevermind. To what do you ascribe its longevity? DameHedwig
I would hope it’s because we made some good records that have been able to transcend time, and that people of all ages find something within them they connect with. It’s probably no different from when I was a kid discovering groups like Led Zeppelin. And I’m not saying that we’re as great as them, but those bands were around for many years before I discovered them. I was able to connect with what they created, and it’s a lovely thing. We’ve always made a constant decision to not date ourselves with the music we make. We were always afraid of being lumped-in with the nu metal groups that came up at the same time we did. Not that we felt we were in another league; we just wanted to have our own identity. So we would make certain creative decisions to try not to fall too deep into any category.

Deftones’ Covers compilation shows a wide range of influences, including a number of British artists from the 1980s such as Duran Duran, the Cure, the Smiths and Sade. How much of an influence were they on your music? JimmyD
It’s the first music that I fell in love with, and it seemed very exotic to me as a sixth-grader. When you’re watching videos by Duran Duran, and they’re cruising on yachts in Sri Lanka, it just seemed like this music from far away. It was the 80s, and this stuff was pop music, but a lot of my friends were listening to Michael Jackson and stuff like that. And I loved that as well, but this British music was different. I felt very … selective, that I had this music that nobody else knew about. And there’s things there that I’ve carried over to Deftones. We’re still a hard rock/metal group, but I’ve snuck some of those influences in. And it’s not shoehorned; it’s very natural, because I genuinely have an affinity with this music.

It seems your recent albums have had deeper, almost occult themes and symbolism. Is this intentional, or just something unconscious coming out through your art? Phronesis
It’s unconscious. I’ve always been intrigued by things we don’t understand. It’s not me buying into any of these things at all – it’s just being curious about that which I don’t understand. I don’t do it for shock value. When I was a kid, my grandmother would go to church, and all of us kids would go to the kids’ church group, where they gave us an illustrated book of stories from the Bible. It had the scariest illustrations. I would stare for hours at these illustrations of, like, King Solomon holding up a baby by its feet. And then I’d read the story, these two people fighting over who the baby belonged to, and Solomon chopping it in half. It boggles me to this day, that it would be something a kid might read. But I’ve always had a curiosity about stuff like that.

What music did you listen to when you were 22? Jlimbless
I was probably touring and listening to a lot of early electronic stuff and trip-hop. I was really into Portishead, Unkle, DJ Shadow and Tricky. I still love that music. It was marrying a lot of things that I love: sample-driven music, drum-forward music. It had a lot of the elements of hip-hop, but slowed down, and there was a lot of romantic imagery within it.

I listen to a lot of the songs from Eros [Deftones’ unfinished sixth album, abandoned after bassist Chi Cheng was left comatose after a car crash in 2008; he died of complications from the accident in 2013] floating around the internet – Dallas especially. Do you think that record will ever see the light of day? weavermachine
We’re always asked about Eros. It will most likely never see the light of day. That would involve going back to that period and resurrecting unfinished things, and somehow bringing them to completion. Dallas is the only song that was anywhere near finished. This new album started with ideas we’d been working on alone, through the pandemic. And when we got together to actually start making the record, none of us wanted to look back at those ideas from the pandemic – we wanted to capture the moment we’re in today. So going back to try to capture what was happening back during Eros, and finishing those ideas, doesn’t really make sense.

Usually for me, it’s the heavier, the better – but then I heard Sextape [from 2010’s Diamond Eyes], which I love (and its mellower parts, especially). What inspired the lyrics, and how did it become the banger it is? danozism
I don’t have any recollection of writing the words. A lot of our songs are written very abstract, to paint a picture of a feeling. There’s three notes that go through the whole of Sextape, and they’re very lush and beautiful – they take that side of us to the extreme. There’s beauty there, in the sonics of it. Lyrically, I just ran with that emotion.

How do you separate your different creative modes between Deftones and your other projects? Mdrudolph
I don’t. Each is its own thing, but I don’t approach them in any different way. I react how Chino would react. What I mean is, there’s no such thing as “Chino from Deftones” and “Chino from Crosses” and “Chino from Team Sleep”. There’s just one Chino. And I just react to what’s presented to me, musically, as myself. [A pause] I don’t often refer to myself in the third person. Actually, I feel like that was the first time. And I felt really weird doing that!

Your cover of the Sade song No Ordinary Love is just otherworldly. Did she ever get to listen to it or give any feedback? Lazygunn
That was sacred ground because, as an artist, Sade’s unique. Even when we were recording it, it felt like a very self-indulgent thing to be doing. We weren’t intending for it to come out. The demo was recorded in my garage; we really just made it for ourselves. The fact that it ever saw the light of day at all was scary, to be honest. If you’d asked me, “Would you want to cover a Sade song, and other people are going to hear it, including possibly Sade?”, I would never have done it. I’m glad people do like it. I’m not sure that she’s ever heard it.

If you could go back in time and offer advice to your younger self, what would you tell him? Zack_S917
There’s a lot of life lessons that I had to learn the hard way, and they created the person that stands here today. I don’t have many huge regrets in life, because it all shaped who I’ve become. That said, it might be nice to go back to a few moments and tap myself on the shoulder and say, “No – go that way.”

You must get a ton of love from fans, and I imagine the gifts can get pretty creative. What’s one of the sweetest or coolest things you’ve received from a fan? StarrXperience
People often give me drawings of myself. I always wonder what they assume I will do with them. I don’t even like to look at photos of myself. They’re all different types of drawings – there’s cartoony ones, pen and ink ones. And I think it must bring the artist some kind of joy, that I’m holding on to a piece of art they created. “You shared your art with me – I want to share my art with you.” I do appreciate it. But because of that, I have stacks and stacks, hundreds of drawings of myself in my house.

This week, Disney Publishing celebrated the 20th anniversary of Percy Jackson and the Olympians — an epic young adult saga that follows the adventures of Percy, a young demigod in the present day who discovers he is the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea.

The franchise that has been both a critical and commercial success since its debut. The first book in the series, The Lightning Thief, was named a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association in 2006. It launched a seven-book saga that has remained on The New York Times bestseller list for over 780 weeks and inspired two follow-up series.

The franchise has also expanded beyond the page. A hit musical adaptation premiered on Broadway in 2019, and the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians has earned eight Children’s and Family Emmy® Awards. The show returns for its second season on December 10.

Rick Riordan — author of the book series and co-creator and executive producer of the Disney+ adaptation — recently sat down to discuss the franchise’s enduring appeal across generations, his long-standing partnership with Disney Publishing, and what’s next for fans in both print and on screen.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians has become a multi-platform franchise over the past two decades. It spans seven core novels, feature films, a Broadway musical, and a Disney+ series. What do you think has driven the enduring appeal and adaptability of the story across formats and generations?

I think at its core, it’s because Greek mythology is so universal and digs into so many themes that are inherently human: love, family, anger, revenge, loyalty. What do these things mean? The Greek myths are all about that and being able to explore that in the 21st century with modern day demigods is an idea that is much bigger than me and has really lit the imagination of all the readers out there.

You’ve maintained a long-standing relationship with Disney Publishing, not just from Percy Jackson. What makes Disney such an appealing partner for you?

It’s been really great because over the years with Disney Hyperion as my partner for most of that time, I’ve had all the advantages of a small boutique publishing house with lots of personal attention and lots of great relationships, with the muscle of the Disney Corporation. So it’s kind of been a “best of both worlds” situation.

For parents who want to encourage their children to get into reading, why are your books — and the books that are published alongside you by Disney — a great place to start?

I’m glad that they do work for many kids, and I hope that’s because of my experience in the past as a teacher, that I spent a lot of time in the classroom telling stories, teaching mythology, and trying to make the old stuff relevant to new generations, hopefully with a little sense of humor in there. So that’s my hope and that’s, I think, why they work for kids.

Can you talk more about your next book being published by Disney, The Court of the Dead?

It’s coauthored with Marc Oshiro, and is a follow up on the book we did called The Sun and the Star. It is The Court of the Dead, and it’s about Nico di Angelo, who is a character from Percy Jackson’s world, but is such a fan favorite as the son of Hades and sort of this goth figure, and the readers have loved that he now has his own books going. And it’s been really fun to explore his point of view because it’s so different from Percy’s.

Season 2 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is coming to Disney+ in December. What are you most looking forward to fans experiencing?

I am so excited that it’s finally coming out and that we can share it with people because I’ve been reading the scripts and looking at dailies and looking at cuts for so long that it seems incredible we’re finally almost here. The thing I’m looking forward to most is some of the artwork that you’re going to see, bringing the Sea of Monsters as a setting alive. Scylla and Charybdis — the monsters — the ironclad ship that they sail into the sea. Incredible stuff, very cinematic.

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The Callisto Quartet has announced the appointment of Taiwanese-American violinist Eric Tsai as its new first violinist, replacing violinist Cameron Daly. He joins violinist Gregory Lewis, violist Eva Kennedy, and cellist Hannah Moses.

Tsai has studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, and Stony Brook University, with teachers including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Ida Kavafian, Catherine Cho, and Hagai Shaham. His accolades include second prize at the 2019 Michael Hil International Violin Competition, the bronze medal at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and the Chimei Arts Award. He also reached the semi-finals of the Premio Paganini competition, and from 2022–2023 his ensemble Quatuor Cael was the honours ensemble at the Juilliard School.

Most recently Tsai established the Spiritus Festival in Long Island, which held its inaugural summer season in June, and he will be continuing with residencies with the Callis Ensemble throughout the 2024–2025 season. Tsai has also performed across New York and Philadelphia as part of community engagement projects, and during the Covid-19 pandemic his quartet performed for under-served communities throughout Taiwan in partnership with Taiwan Connection.

The Callisto Quartet was established in 2016 at the Cleveland Institute of Music has since won accolades including the grand prize at the 2018 Fischoff Competition, second prize at the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition, as well as prizes at the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition, and the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.

The quartet has also held residencies at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, Yale University, Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, Caramoor Center for Music and Arts, Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía, and currently serves as associated faculty at the Chamber Music Connection in Columbus, Ohio.

The quartet expressed its enthusiasm for Tsai’s appointment:

‘We are so excited to welcome violinist Eric Tsai to our ensemble. Eric is an amazing musician with a rich history as both a performer and an educator. He brings such thoughtful musicianship and energy to our ensemble, and we are so excited for this next chapter together!’

Early on in its 27th season, South Park has garnered more controversy than it has in years (possibly ever), along with some of its highest ratings.

Last week’s episode took aim at the Trump administration’s brutal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids, poked fun at secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s penchant for puppy murder and cosmetic surgery (Noem has since climbed atop her moral high horse and accused the show of sexism), and of course, Donald Trump himself. Along with Trump’s martial takeover of Washington DC, this week’s instalment, titled Sickofancy, takes aim at artificial intelligence (specifically ChatGPT) and the larger tech-bro industry.

Picking up where we last left off, the show’s resident doofus, Randy Marsh, sees his beloved Tegridy Weed marijuana farm raided by border patrol agents. They kidnap all of his workers (“Hey! Those are my Mexicans!”), leaving him with only one employee, the ever-stoned Towelie (a talking bath towel, naturally). Despondent, Randy turns to ChatGPT for advice. The sycophantic, soft-voiced app draws up a new business plan for him and Towelie to implement. With the help of a single Mexican who they spring from an Ice detention centre and plenty of recreational ketamine, they rebrand to Techridy, “an AI-powered marijuana platform for global solutions”.

Meanwhile, in Washington, President Trump takes a break from receiving lavish gifts (as well as assurances that “you do not have a small penis”) from politicians, business titans and foreign leaders to remake the capital into a dystopian police state festooned with his own image (which includes his less-than-impressive member).

The two storylines converge when Randy attempts to bribe Trump into legalising marijuana nationwide by bequeathing Towelie to him. It’s all for naught though, as ChatGPT’s advice proves useless and he ends up having to sell Tegridy Farms and move his family back to the suburbs (the end of an era for the show, which has heavily featured this subplot for seven years, much to the annoyance of some fans).

Parker and Stone’s take on AI – that it is dumbing us down, robbing us of person-to-person connection and giving us really, really bad advice – is refreshingly clear-eyed, if not particularly incendiary. The larger skewering of tech bros is solid, although it’s slightly disappointing that Elon Musk never gets brought in for any of it, even though the running gag about ketamine addiction is clearly aimed at him. That said, the digs at Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg help fill that gap.

The Trump material remains roundly funny and it’s clear the show is building to a big conclusion, most likely involving his unwilling partner and lover Satan (who is finally taking steps to free himself from the abusive relationship).

This episode is unlikely to cause as big a stir as the previous two. But watching South Park satirise the horrifying militarisation of Washington DC in real-time – Union Station, which features in the show’s central montage, was the scene of a fascist photo op featuring vice-president JD Vance, defence secretary Pete Hegseth and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – is another reminder that no show has ever worked harder to have its finger on the US nation’s pulse.

With just a few days to go before Oasis kick off the North American run of their Live ’25 reunion tour in Toronto, the band offered fans two surprise gifts on Wednesday (Aug. 20). The first was a live rendition of their beloved 1995 single “Wonderwall” from one of their recent shows in Dublin, Ireland, where the band returned to perform for the first time since 2008.

The footage from Croke Park finds singer Liam Gallagher crooning the yearning ballad in fine voice in one of his signature anoraks over a hoodie, which he has pulled up tight over his head so his eyes are barely visible. Brother/songwriter Noel Gallagher provides the propulsive acoustic guitar backing as he gazes out at a massive stadium lit up by fans’ waving cellphone flashlights.

In addition, they posted a “Postcards from Dublin” compilation video of their double-down on Aug. 16 and 17, with film of a young fan in homemade Oasis shirt and bucket hat selling waters outside the venue, a man in official gear holding up his baby in matching shirt and hat, the excitement outside the venue as well as the earth-shaking, full stadium hopping up and down from the crowd inside and clips from several songs.

So far, the band has offered up a number of live tracks from the reunion shows in the U.K. and Ireland, including “Slide Away” from the kick-off in Cardiff, Wales, as well as “Cigarettes & Alcohol” from their home town of Manchester and “Little By Little” from their London run.

But perhaps the biggest gift of all is a note that went up on Wednesday announcing that some last-minute seats for the North American shows will be released in the coming days. According to a post, “as the North American shows are getting closer, Oasis promoters may be able to release a very limited number of additional tickets for sale once final sight lines are checked and the production is fine tuned. These final production releases will happen over the coming days.”

That’s great news for those who haven’t yet scored tickets as the North American run is slated to kick off on Sunday (Aug. 24) at Rogers Stadium in Toronto — where the band will play again on Monday (Aug. 25) — before moving on to Soldier Field in Chicago (Aug. 28), then MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. (Aug. 31, Sept. 1), the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. (Sept. 6, 7) and Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City (Sept. 12, 13); Cage the Elephant will open all the North American dates, with Cast joining for the N.J. and California shows.

Find out how to score those tickets below.

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The Sidemen

‘An element of kudos and legitimacy’

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