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  • That was fast: Man who accosted Ariana Grande last week is serving time already in Singapore

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    The law works quickly in Singapore, where last week an Australian man with a habit of disrupting events charged at Ariana Grande after jumping a barrier at the Asian premiere of “Wicked: For Good.”

    This week, he’s already serving his sentence for the offense.

    Johnson Wen, 26, was convicted Monday of being a public nuisance and sentenced to nine days in jail, the BBC reported. Videos from the Thursday incident show Wen jumping a barricade at Universal Studios Singapore and running at Grande, then putting his arms around her neck and shoulders while jumping up and down and flashing a big smile to the cameras. He was separated from his shocked target by her co-star Cynthia Erivo and escorted off by security.

    But that wasn’t all — Wen tried a second time to jump the barricades that lined the event’s yellow carpet but was pinned down by security, the BBC said. He was arrested Friday.

    The Australian was in Singapore on a 90-day tourist visa and has been in custody since his arrest. He was sentenced Monday after the prosecution requested a week behind bars on a charge that carries up to a three-month sentence, according to Singapore’s the Straits Times.

    “Dude this is is not okay,” one commenter had written Thursday on Wen’s Instagram post showing him charging onto the carpet and grabbing Grande. “Look how badly you scared her! You put hands on her. I sincerely hope you [are] charged with something and banned from events.”

    The judge in Singapore apparently thought something similar when speaking with Wen at the trial.

    Wen has disrupted several celebrity and sporting events by running onto stages and into the middle of sporting events, including at the 2024 Olympics in Paris. “I won’t do it again, your honor,” he told the judge when asked if there was anything to mitigate his behavior, per the Straits Times.

    “Are you paying lip service or is this your intention?” the judge asked. Wen replied in the affirmative, saying he was “going to stop.”

    The judge referenced Wen’s earlier intrusions and noted that he hadn’t faced consequences previously, the Straits Times reported.

    “Perhaps you thought the same would occur here, but Mr. Wen, you are wrong,” the judge said, adding that there are always consequences to actions.

    The judge said Wen seemed “to be attention-seeking, thinking only of yourself, and not the safety of others, when committing these acts.” He said the act was premeditated and added two days to the requested sentence. It’s unclear whether Wen was also fined.

    Prosecutors had labeled him a “serial intruder” who was aiming for clout online, the BBC reported.

    Wen, who goes by “Pyjama Man” online, wrote on Instagram as he posted video of himself during the Thursday incident, “Dear Ariana Grande Thank You for letting me Jump on the Yellow Carpet with You.” Commenters did not support his enthusiasm.

    After doing promotion for “Wicked: For Good” with a number of her castmates in cities around the world, Grande did not mention what happened in Singapore when she appeared at a Q&A about the film on Saturday in Century City. On Sunday, she attended the motion picture academy’s 16th Governors Awards at the Ray Dolby Ballroom in Hollywood, where Tom Cruise was given an honorary Oscar, along with Debbie Allen, Dolly Parton and production designer Wynn Thomas.

    The U.S. premiere of “Wicked: For Good” — which also stars Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard — is planned for Monday in New York, with the movie opening domestically in wide release Thursday.

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    Christie D’Zurilla

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  • Cheech And Chong Are Coming To Call Of Duty Because Everything Must Be Consumed

    Cheech And Chong Are Coming To Call Of Duty Because Everything Must Be Consumed

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    Cheech and Chong, the comedy pair famous for their albums and movies from the 1970s and ‘80s, will be added to Call of Duty as part of the upcoming Season 3.

    An iconic stoner duo, Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin don’t seem like the kind of guys who would grab M4s and shoot people. The two created films and comedy routines focused on hippies, free love, drugs, and counterculture ideas. But the Activision machine demands more and so in they go, with the publisher confirming in a new blog post that the duo are heading to Call of Duty Warzone, Warzone Mobile, and Modern Warfare 3 sometime next month.

    While we don’t yet know officially when the duo will be playable in Call of Duty’s various multiplayer offerings, other weed-inspired cosmetics and a “Blaze It Up” event seem to point toward Cheech and Chong arriving on or around April 20, aka 4/20.

    Here’s how Activision, a very large and not-at-all hippie-like corporation, describes the two and the new cosmetic pack in the lengthy blog post:

    Forged in the counterculture revolution, yet armed with drive and creative power, Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin turned cultural friction into comedic success. Facing systemic barriers with humor and cannabis, the duo exploited adversity to bring underground voices into the mainstream. Chong’s ingenuity and Marin’s heritage primed them for fame, while their comedic chemistry made them icons. Their albums and films exposed injustice with subversive joy, pioneering stoner comedy and becoming symbols of irreverent truth.

    I know some will get a kick out of this, giggle about all the weed content, and not think much more about it all, and that’s fine. But I just keep getting sadder and sadder as I watch all of pop culture and entertainment slowly consume itself and we get closer and closer to a future where everything is one big grey blob owned by WarnerBros Disney Fox Universal Monsanto Sony Tencent Apple Microsoft.

    Sure, it’s silly that I can watch Ariana Grande fight Goku and Michael Myers in Fortnite. But watching all art get chopped up and chucked into the never-ending maw that is the metaverse makes me really sad, man. I miss when stuff was distinct and unique.

    Season 3 of Call of Duty Warzone, Warzone Mobile, and Modern Warfare III starts April 3 on all platforms.

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    Zack Zwiezen

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  • A Swanky French Restaurant Will Replace Ruth’s Chris This Weekend in River North

    A Swanky French Restaurant Will Replace Ruth’s Chris This Weekend in River North

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    New York City-based hospitality brand The Group continues its splashy Chicago expansion with the launch of Parisian brasserie La Grande Boucherie, a restaurant trying to channel the joie de vie of La Belle Epoque-era France parked in the prominent former two-level home of Ruth’s Chris Steak House in River North which has remained vacant for nearly three and a half years.

    Poised to open on Saturday, February 17 at 431 N. Dearborn Street, La Grande Boucherie is the second of three new restaurant projects The Group has planned for Chicago. It follows the late 2023 entrance of Olio e Più, a spacious trattoria perched just steps away from its French sister spot, and precedes the unveiling of intimate 10-seat sushi counter Omakase Room projected for the spring. That’s not to be confused with the Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises venue inside Sushi-San River North the bears the same name.

    Design renderings show off the enormous scale.
    La Grande Boucherie

    A table laid with steaks and French dishes.

    The New York restaurant made a cameo in Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That…
    La Grande Boucherie

    Boka Restaurant Group attempted to usher a new age of French dining in River North when it opened Le Select in January 2023, but it closed 10 months later. Now, a new contender has emerged where Ruth’s Chris spent nearly 28 years; it closed in October 2020, mostly due to deflated downtown traffic during the pandemic.

    As the opening approaches, here’s five things to know about La Grande Boucherie Chicago:

    • The Group invested around $1.5 million to build and install a new facade for the Dearborn Street building, replacing the steak chain’s unremarkable beige brick with a soaring, scrollwork-gilded stone exterior that’s outfitted with 25-foot windows. Despite the time and cost involved, founder Emil Stefkov feels the juice is well worth the squeeze. “It was a super ugly building that we transformed into a jewel, so I’m very happy [and] very proud of it,” he says. “[It’s] literally another landmark building in Chicago.”
    • At a whopping 10,120 square feet, La Grande Boucherie Chicago is The Group’s largest restaurant, outpacing even the New York original, which seats up to 600 and spans half the length of 6 1/2 Avenue in Manhattan. The massive construction project extended to the building’s interior, where workers gutted the structure to create a grandiose ground floor and mezzanine with curved vaulted ceilings, custom mosaic tile floors, and a century-old French glass mural featuring a scene from a Paris cafe — a collection piece that survived the Nazi bombardment of Paris during World War II.
    • Stefkov and New York-based designer Julien Legeard (Olio e Più) tapped French and Chicago crews to create the restaurant’s most prominent element — a 40-seat, 82-foot-long oval-shaped pewter bar crafted with 200-year-old metalworking techniques. That’s where bartenders will lavish special attention on absinthe, a famed symbol of Parisian decadence, served out of traditional fountains. Drinkers can expect around a dozen varieties of absinthe as well as cocktails starring the so-called Green Fairy, a drink favored by Ernest Hemingway. Even happy hour gets the absinthe treatment, as La Grande aims to resurrect the 18th-century tradition of the green hour.
    • For some local color, the team has brought in Chicago bartender Tim Williams of Pour Souls to design the cocktail and absinthe menus (he also created the drinks for Olio e Più) and partnered with modern Jewish deli Steingold’s of Chicago, which will furnish smoked salmon for La Grande’s menu.
    • The Chicago outpost’s food menu will strongly resemble that of its older sister restaurant with a focus on brasserie classics (think French onion soup and escargot) alongside a raw bar and large cuts of meat including chateaubriand for two and plateu de boucher, a “meat-lovers plate” featuring several cuts that can feed up to four. The Group sources its beef from Idaho’s Snake River Farms and ages it on-site.

    Le Grande Boucherie Chicago, 431 N. Dearborn Street, scheduled to open Saturday, February 17, Reservations available via OpenTable.

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    Naomi Waxman

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  • common grande meaty

    common grande meaty

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    embarrassed, he later went in a draconian campaign of book-burning, but historians kept recording the fact and hiding it in increasingly obscure places. Ironically, it’s unknown how much of his history was lost, but King Taejong of Korea later was mostly known for falling off his horse and trying to censor the event.

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