Ann Marie Frohoff ☮️

A 13-year-old Canadian kid uploaded R&B covers to YouTube in 2008 from his bedroom. A talent manager named Scooter Braun stumbled on the videos and signed him. For the next 15 years, Braun controlled everything. Tours, branding, business deals, public image. The kid became the biggest pop star on the planet, sold 150 million records, racked up 32 billion Spotify streams, and had three Diamond-certified singles before turning 25. Then in 2022, he got hit with Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Partial facial paralysis. Cancelled the world tour. Disappeared from public life entirely. Here's where it gets interesting. In January 2023, he sold his entire 290-song catalog to Hipgnosis for $200 million. Every song he'd ever released. "Baby." "Sorry." "Love Yourself." All of it. Gone. At 28 years old, he cashed out his past. Then he dropped Scooter Braun. After 15 years. No manager. No agent. For the first time in his career, nobody was making decisions for him. Fast forward to this weekend. Coachella calls. He picks up the phone himself. Rolling Stone confirmed he negotiated his own headlining deal directly with Goldenvoice. No agent commission. No manager cut. $10 million for two weekends, and he kept all of it. Then he walked onto the biggest stage in music, sat down behind a MacBook, and pulled up YouTube. He played "Baby" from 2010. He played his bedroom covers from 2008. He harmonized with his 13-year-old self in front of 100,000 people. Katy Perry joked about whether he had YouTube Premium. Half the internet called it lazy. The other half called it genius. They're both wrong. It was a receipt. He sold his catalog for $200 million. He fired the man who discovered him. He negotiated his own deal. And then he went back to the exact platform where it all started and said: I built this from a laptop. I'm headlining Coachella from a laptop. And for the first time in my life, every dollar is mine. The kid from YouTube just closed the loop.

The woman who inspired Before Sunrise never saw the movie. She died in a motorcycle accident seven weeks before filming even started. Richard Linklater met Amy Lehrhaupt in a toy shop in Philadelphia in 1989. They spent the whole night walking the city from midnight to 6am talking about everything, and he turned that one night into a script. Took him 11 days. The casting search lasted nine months. Jennifer Aniston auditioned before she ever got Friends, and Gwyneth Paltrow tried out too. The role went to Julie Delpy. Amy died on May 9, 1994. She was 24. Linklater kept waiting for her to show up at a screening, maybe tap him on the shoulder and say “Hey, that was our night.” He waited through the premiere. Waited through the sequel nine years later. Didn’t find out she was gone until 2010, when a friend of hers put the pieces together and wrote him a letter. He kept making the films. Brought Hawke and Delpy back every nine years, letting them age on screen in real time. Before Sunset (2004) was shot in 15 days for $2 million. Before Midnight (2013), same thing, 15 days, under $3 million. That last one is dedicated to Amy. All three films together cost $7.5 million to make and earned $61.5 million worldwide, and both sequels got nominated for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The entire trilogy cost less than a single Janet Jackson music video that Kahn himself directed. The Library of Congress added Before Sunrise to the National Film Registry earlier this year. It’s now one of 925 films the government considers worth keeping forever. Linklater turned a single night with a woman he’d never see again into an 18-year trilogy. He just didn’t know the “never” part when he started.

I'm partnering with Scholastic to give $200k to teachers ($200 to 1,000 teachers)! The link to enter is here: bit.ly/4sVnXK0 . The website for entries will close the last day of Teacher Appreciation Week: 5/8/26. What are you waiting for? Go enter!

@atrupar Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship through the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 (aka 'the Snyder Act'), signed by President Calvin Coolidge on June 2, 1924. This act granted citizenship to all Native Americans born within the United States, including Alaska Natives.

“Practice any art… no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.” - McKellen reciting Vonnegut

Well, when a child is conceived, the DNA split is 50/50 from both parents. Except for one small detail: mitochondrial DNA. It’s passed down only through the mother and never through sperm. Which means something interesting: all living humans can trace their mitochondrial line back to one woman, not one man. And every daughter born continues passing that same line forward. Happy Women’s Day 💐

I was honored Eric Dane chose The Open Field to publish his memoir, “My Book of Days.” He told me he wanted his family to know how much he loved them, and he wanted to leave them a story they could be proud of. He was working on the manuscript right up to the end. In keeping with Eric’s wishes, it will be published on November 3, 2026.

Letz go even bigger and better,,, ALL Female US Olympians and Paralympian medalists are invited out to celebrate in Viva Las Vegas for the SHE GOT GAME Weekend ,,, Hit a guy up and LETZ GOOO

The selfie of the year❤️🥹

love language

i work at a bookstore. teenager came in daily. read for hours. Never bought anything. finally asked. “looking for anything specific?” “just reading. can’t afford books. Library’s far. this is closer.” let him stay. read whatever. whenever. brought him snacks. hot chocolate. safe space. learned his story. Foster kid. Seventh home. books were his escape. his education. his hope. started giving him books. “damaged copies. can’t sell them. you want?” he knew better. took them anyway. read everything. three years of this. he aged out of foster care. eighteen. scared. nowhere to go. helped him apply to college. scholarships. got in. full ride. English major. Graduated. he’s a teacher now. High school English. Brings his whole class to the bookstore. Shows them where he spent his teenage years. “Bookstore worker gave me sanctuary. Knowledge. Hope. taught me one person caring changes trajectories.” he buys books for students. who can’t afford them. pays it forward. Every kid in his class reads. because someone let a foster kid read for free.

a little something for your nervous system

#BenAffleck says film crews deserve to be paid “the decent middle wage that’s been provided for decades in this country” — which is why he and #MattDamon struck a first-of-its-kind deal with #Netflix on their new movie “The Rip” where all 1,200 cast and crew members could receive a back-end bonus if the film succeeds. “There’s no guarantee that everyone’s going to get rich and be successful, but if you work on a project and it is successful, you ought to benefit from that,” Affleck told Variety on Tuesday night at “The Rip” worldwide premiere in New York. Most streaming projects pay workers a flat fee upfront, ditching the old model where cast and crew could earn more when a project became a hit.

Quote of the day. #qotd

Creator loved us enough to grant us free will. We are free to make choices but are not free from consequences. Do good things, good things will come. Do bad things, bad things will come. Natural law others know as karma does not know color, creed, religion, faith or social class.

Can’t say enough about what a difference surrounding yourself with people doing cool shit makes.

Here is a great way to teach your kids more about Native Americans this month. Molly of Denali–the only kids TV show to feature an Alaska Native character–is on the road for Native American Heritage Month. Molly, the main character, visits 5 reservations. ictnews.org/arts-entertain…

Steve Martin & Martin Short singing the way you look tonight to the beautiful #DianeKeaton 🥺💔