Hi Duana,

We are expecting our second child at the end of June and just can’t find a name that clicks for us. Our first is Benjamin. This time around we are having a girl. I gravitate towards grandma and/or Irish names, my husband adores anything from the 80s/90s (for boy names he was pushing H…

Last week I posted about Kristen Stewart who was seen out for dinner on May 20 with Stella Maxwell, just a couple of weeks after they were both at the Met Gala. And it’s been a few weeks since Kristen and Sara Dinkin, the woman she started dating soon after she and Stella broke up, have been photogr…

From the beginning, I have been mixed on the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark movie. The live-action realization of those godawful illustrations from the book are spot-on, and come loaded with a generation’s worth of nightmare fuel to give them extra weight as screen images. But everything else abo…

The Fug Girls posted this cover of Men’s Journal, not a magazine I’m usually interested in. He is dreamy, isn’t he? Dreamy but solid. A reliable hunk.

Hello. Kyle Chandler looks so very dreamy here. That is all. https://t.co/wcv8m7H6UP
— Heather & Jessica (@fuggirls) June 4, 2019

…

Hayley,

Looking for advice on how to stay active while on a doctor ordered 2-3 week exercise restriction from lower back injury (moved wrong doing kettlebell swings). After two pregnancies in two years and turning 38 in two weeks, I was super happy to be back in the gym and working to lose the ex…

Is Bond 25 cursed? First there was the director drama, then that spectacularly ill-timed live-launch event— these were the harbingers, the warnings that Bond 25 had run afoul of some ancient chthonian curse, it’s the part of the story where the old timer shows up to warn you to “turn back now”. But …

Chris Evans had some thoughts on his city’s proposed Straight Pride Parade. [Just Jared]
Snowflakes want to throw a Straight Pride Parade & people had some thoughts. [Pajiba]
Kyle Chandler looks fantastic on Men’s Journal. [Go Fug Yourself]
Gina Gershon will star in Woody Allen’s next movie, gross. [Dlisted]
We finally got to hear Beyonce-as-Nala in the latest trailer for The Lion King. Also, Nala is wearing eye makeup, yes? [LaineyGossip]
Vanity Fair has the tea on Donald Trump’s divorce from Marla Maples. [Jezebel]
A little girl saw drag queens for the first time & her reaction is amazing. [Towleroad]
Smash Mouth isn’t here for the Straight Pride Parade either. [OMG Blog]
Paris Jackson is not here for pot-shaming. [The Blemish]

Wow! Cool initiative, fellas!! Just a thought, instead of ‘Straight Pride’ parade, how about this: The ‘desperately trying to bury our own gay thoughts by being homophobic because no one taught us how to access our emotions as children’ parade? Whatta ya think? Too on the nose?? https://t.co/gaBWtq2PaL

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) June 5, 2019

Wow, the number gay/straight pride parade false equivalencies are disappointing. For those who don’t understand the difference, see below. Instead of going immediately to anger(which is actually just fear of what you don’t understand)take a moment to search for empathy and growth https://t.co/e98K0Z150T

— Chris Evans (@ChrisEvans) June 5, 2019

Those two blowhards, Donald Trump and Piers Morgan, sat down for an interview. You can read about it wherever you want to read about it. The only thing I want to say about it here is that Trump addressed the Meghan Markle thing again and clarified what he wanted to say the first time when he called …

Ellen Pompeo and her Hollywood home are featured in the May/June Veranda feature story and editorial. I assume that Ellen is probably putting this property up for sale, which is a common enough thing in the celebrity world: they use these home-design magazines to promote their real estate just before they put it on sale. Or maybe Ellen just wants us to look at her house because she’s proud of it. That could totally be it too.

You can see Veranda’s editorial here. She worked with interior designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard to renovate and decorate the 1930s Hollywood home. She’s apparently a huge fan of Moroccan tiles and Moroccan design. Some quotes from the piece:

On why she sets a table with black and white colors: “I love black and white. It’s like a metaphor for life – you get darkness but you get so much light.”

On dinner party guests: “…that’s really what I’m after when I entertain. I love original spirits, people who bring life to the table.”

On why she favors Moroccan style to entertain: “I’ve always gravitated to Moroccan style. It’s cozy, and exotic and sexy. The pierced lights, the intricate tilework and patterns that each tell a story. I love how it instantly sets a mood.”

[From Veranda]

I love many elements of Moroccan design too – the tile work, the colors – but I feel like Ellen and her designer maybe aren’t taking the right things away from Moroccan design? The outdoor/porch table design is cute, but her kitchen is awful! It’s like half-clinical and halfway ill-functioning. Not to mention ugly. No disrespect to peeps who like a black-and-white palette, but don’t call this mess Moroccan. Moroccan style would have so many natural colors, fabrics and textures. It would have more blue too.

Photos courtesy of David Tsay for Veranda, sent from promotional Veranda email. Additional photo courtesy of WENN.

I feel like Forbes probably intended to drop their Serena Williams cover in the middle of her French Open run, like they hoped that it would drop just after she won her fourth-round match or something. Instead, Forbes released their cover just after Serena lost in the third round of the French Open, and just after a weekend where professional sports journalists were spreading lies about Serena’s “rude” and “diva” behavior off the court. But Serena stays unbothered, and she stays rich as hell too. There was a joke going around earlier this year that Serena is basically only playing tournaments to debut her new commercials and endorsements. It’s funny because it’s true. She’s making a ton of cash from her sponsorships nowadays, and what’s great is that she’s paying it forward and becoming a venture capitalist, financing small businesses run by people of color and women. You can read the Forbes cover story here.

Serena Williams is now the first athlete ever to hit Forbes’ annual list of the World’s Richest Self-Made Women, with an estimated fortune of $225 million, the vast majority of it having come via her brain and brand rather than her backhand. And over the past five years, she’s been quietly dropping money into 34 startups. In April, Williams formally announced that Serena Ventures is open for business, to fund others and launch companies herself.

“I want to be a part of it,” she says, sitting at the hotel. “I want to be in the infrastructure. I want to be the brand, instead of just being the face.” Given her longtime background in style and design, that means overweighting on fashion lines, jewelry and beauty products. Yes, she’ll keep competing at tennis—her resilient comeback last year after giving birth burnished her as a cultural icon who transcends sports. And sure, she’ll happily continue to rake in easy endorsement money from the likes of Nike and JPMorgan Chase—her $29 million total income over the past 12 months is the highest of her career.

So at Serena Ventures, she focuses on companies founded by women and minorities. Yes, there’s a social purpose to that decision. But as with her tennis upbringing, she’s also finding opportunity by avoiding the herd. Just 2.3% of the total venture capital invested last year in the U.S. went to women-led startups—and even when including firms with both a male and female founder, you’re just at 10%. The numbers are worse for black and Hispanic founders. Yet some 60% of Williams’ investments so far have gone to companies led by women or people of color. “What better way to preach that message?” asks Williams.

The only way to find enough of those companies right now is to nurture them early, something that Williams got hooked on after investing and losing (eventually) $250,000 in a startup in the years before Serena Ventures. “I learned you can’t overspend, but I also learned that I love seed investing,” she says. Of the 34 companies she’s backed through Serena Ventures, more than three quarters are early-stage. “It’s fun to get in there. I don’t gamble. I don’t jump off buildings,” says Williams. “I’m the most non-taking-a-chance kind of a person, but I felt like seed was where we wanted to be.”

[From Forbes]

That’s really cool. I knew that she was getting more involved with financing and start-ups, but I didn’t realize it was this big. People don’t give Serena and Venus enough credit for what they do off the court – Venus is also a businesswoman. Venus went through a WTA college program and got her bachelor’s and her MBA. Venus owns her own clothing label (EleVen) and her own interior design firm. And now Serena has yet another clothing line, and Serena Ventures plus a million other things. Incredible women.

Cover courtesy of Forbes, additional photos courtesy of Backgrid.