1706: Benjamin Franklin is born. 1885: James Whitcomb Riley writes the poem "Little Orphant Annie." 1914: Benjamin Franklin's face makes first appearance on $100 bill. 1924: The New York Daily News begins running Harold Gray's comic strip "Little Orphan Annie." 1930: The comic strip is adapted into a popular radio show. 1932: The first film adaptation, Little Orphan Annie, is released and panned. 1938: The second film adaptation, Little Orphan Annie, is released and panned. 1969: Shawn Carter, younger brother of Andrea "Annie" Carter (frequent dresser and shampooer), is born. 1977: The Broadway phenomenon Annie opens, includes song "It's the Hard-Knock Life." 1982: The first film adaptation of Annie is released, nominated for an Oscar for "Best Adaptation Score." 1994: Jamie Foxx releases debut album, Peep This, which peaks at no. 78 on the Billboard 200. 1995: Will Smith lands his first executive producer credit, for The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Season 6, Episode 1. 1997: Puff Daddy releases "It's All About the Benjamins." 1997: Jay-Z hears DJ Kid Capri play the instrumental to "It's the Hard-Knock Life" on the Puff Daddy and the Family World Tour, is reminded of childhood. 1998: Jay-Z releases "Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)." 2000: Willow Smith is born to Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. 2000: Jay-Z releases "Anything," heavily reliant on a sample from Oliver! 2002: All About the Benjamins is released in theaters, starring Ice Cube and Mike Epps. 2003: "Caddy more trucks, it's Daddy Warbucks. And you orphan Annie" — Cam'ron, "I Really Mean It" (Roc-A-Fella Records). 2003: Quvenzhané Wallis is born. 2003: "From O's to opposite of Orphan Annie" — Jay-Z, "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" (Roc-A-Fella Records). 2007: André Benjamin refers to himself as "Three Stacks" three times in UGK's "International Players Anthem (I Choose You)." 2009: Jay-Z joins Will Smith to executive produce Fela! on Broadway, proving his love for Broadway shows with exclamation points in their titles. 2013: A$AP Rocky makes reference to "Benjamin 3 Stack" in song "Wild for the Night."
There's this one episode of Married With Children where Al Bundy fills his attractive ditz daughter's brain with all of his worldly information so she can compete on a local sports trivia show in his stead. Everything goes great until the final question: Who rushed for four touchdowns for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 championship game? The answer, of course, is Al Bundy — but Kelly only has a finite amount of information she can fit into her brain, and the answer, devastatingly, eludes her. The moral of this very important story is that, if we only have a finite amount of pop culture information we can squeeze into our brains, knowing who won what at the MTV Movie Awards is one thing we're probably safe skipping. That said: The MTV Movie Awards were last night, and some stuff happened.
Host Rebel Wilson and the cast of best movie ever Pitch Perfect opened the show. And the question on everyone's minds: Seriously, what the hell was Anna Kendrick doing that was more important than this?
Tea tweaking on “Breaking Abbey,” the Downton Abbey–Breaking Bad hybrid you never knew you needed until you considered the image of a person snorting a line of Earl Grey. Soon Downton will be “kicking it with mad bitches and Benjamins.”
Jamie Foxx has lined up a splashy post–Django Unchained gig: Variety reports that Sony has booked the once and future Willie Beamen as the villain Electro in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. As Foxx tweeted, "Dressed up as Electro for Halloween last night. Costume fits well." So he's just going to bring a costume from home? Smart cost-cutting move, Sony!
Now that Prometheus has come and gone, if we're being honest — and really, what incentive could we possibly have to lie to you about it? — there is not a single upcoming movie that we're more excited about than Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Not the final Nolanized Batman, not The Master, not even Magic Mike 2: Dallas Does Miami, which by the time you read these words will have been green-lighted, added The Rock (Hollywood's designated franchise-thief) and Taylor Kitsch (desperate to learn something about career development from breakout foil Channing Tatum) to its ensemble, and taken the Boogie Nights–style turn we kept waiting for in the weekend's first installment. But we digress.
If it wasn't utterly dumbfounding, it'd be almost comforting in its predictability: a black actor gets cast as the President of the United States in a movie, and that movie's plot line inevitably involves the world going to hell.
Next up is Jamie Foxx, who's in negotiations for White House Down, a Die Hard–style thriller in which Secret Service agent Channing Tatum has to stop a paramilitary group from taking the president and everyone inside his home hostage. (Foxx, who is still wrapping up shooting on Tarantino's Django Unchained, hasn't officially been made an offer, but Variety reports that the outcome looks promising.)
Bill Simmons: Here are four minutes that will make you ask yourself things like, "Why am I enjoying this so much?" ... "Are these two just going to start humping on the stage?" ... "Is there any definitive way to figure out who had a worse hairdo?"
