T LOunge for August 12th 2024

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PinAbrielle Restaurant – Toronto, Canada

It’s MONDAY, dammit. May as well spend it in elegant surroundings doing elegant things and eating elegant nibblies while sipping elegant drinks with our pinkies raised. You have your assignment. Get to it.

The Best Moments of the 2024 Olympic Games Closing Ceremony
This Sunday marked the closing ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, putting an end to 17 thrilling days worth of exciting athletic contests, patriotic uniforms, and, of course, A-list star sightings in the crowds. (See all of the highlights here.) It was certainly a successful showing for Team USA, which left the Paris Games with 126 medals—40 golds, 44 silvers, and 42 bronzes—the most of any competing country.
This evening’s concluding ceremony took place at the Stade de France, an 80,000-seat stadium that, over the last two weeks, hosted the Games’ track and field and rugby sevens competitions. Among those tapped to perform? Billie Eilish, H.E.R., the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Snoop Dogg. (The next Summer Olympics are set for Los Angeles, after all.) But they weren’t the evening’s only entertainment: In an official statement released beforehand, organizers promised that the closing ceremony—titled Records and artistic-directed by Thomas Jolly, who also handled the opening ceremony—would also feature “over a hundred performers, acrobats, dancers, and circus artists.” Needless to say, they all delivered.

Hugh Jackman Passion Project The Greatest Showman Will be Transformed into a Live Theater Event
Disney’s iconic take on the P.T. Barnum tale will be adapted into an on-stage musical.
Hugh Jackman-led movie musical The Greatest Showman demonstrated an unexpected level of persistence following its 2017 debut, bucking lukewarm reviews to become ubiquitous through 2018, spurring plans for a sequel that were only boosted by Jackman’s Showman-song-heavy arena tour. It’s unclear if the sequel—which, like the original, would likely star the Deadpool & Wolverine frontman as an extremely soft-pedaled P.T. Barnum—is still in play, but now there’s another Showman plan afoot. The movie will be adapted into a live theater spectacle, Disney announced Friday, a staged musical that is likely Broadway-bound.

Are Olympic medals solid gold? Well, not exactly
Spoiler: they are in fact, not worth their weight in gold.
The 2024 Paris Olympics are drawing to a close, with most of its medals having been awarded and GOAT status having been reinforced (we’re looking at you, Simone Biles). But one thing we’ve been wondering throughout is are the Olymics medals solid gold? Or even real gold at all?
Gold, silver and bronze Olympics medals all look suitably legit and are clearly very solid, as proven by the fact that German Olympian David Moeller broke a tooth while biting his silver medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Ow.

It Ends With Us: The 5 biggest changes from book to film
The big-screen version of Colleen Hoover’s best-selling novel ages up the characters and scraps a whole Ellen DeGeneres subplot.
Despite the embrace of It Ends With Us, the book has also drawn extensive backlash from those who believe that it romanticises domestic violence. The first portion of the narrative follows the swoony courtship of Ryle and Lily; the story also blames his abusive tendencies on his traumatic past. Others have taken issue with the way that the novel is framed, shelved in the romance section of bookstores or marketed as a love triangle story. (A hastily scrapped colouring book version of It Ends With Us didn’t help matters.)

What’s this Colleen Hoover controversy all about?
No author can be as massively successful as Hoover without some backlash.
Of course there’s a Colleen Hoover controversy. The author has outsold the Bible and once held six of the 10 positions on The New York Times’s paperback fiction bestseller list. There are over 44 million posts on BookTok discussing her work, and she’s the second most followed person on Goodreads. (Just behind Stephen King and ahead of Sarah J. Maas.) This month, Blake Lively stars in a big-screen adaptation of It Ends With Us, one of Hoover’s most popular novels. No author can become that massively successful without some criticism or backlash.

Yes, there’s such thing as too much – so, how often should you do Pilates to see the best results?
Top experts impart their wisdom.
Pilates is the never-not-trending workout, thanks to the host of benefits it packs in – but knowing how often you should be doing Pilates is vital for getting the most out of it. As a Health Editor and fitness instructor, I recommend Pilates to everyone, including my sister who just had surgery, my running friends who complain about pain and my mum who has never done an intentional workout in her life. But, question: how often should you do Pilates to see the best results?
I do Pilates and Pilates-style exercises many times throughout my week, too. But with statistics showing that overtraining impacts around 38% of recreational exercisers in some sports, how much is too much Pilates?

The Best Hotels In Santorini For 2024
There’s more to the Greek isle than sunsets – namely, stylish Santorini hotels
The Greek island is the world’s undisputed champion of sunset viewing – and also home to some seriously stylish Santorini hotels (from which to watch the sun go down, obviously).
The Cyclades may span hundreds of different islands, but few get more footfall than Santorini and Mykonos, and with just one glimpse of Santorini’s famous volcanic caldera from along its croissant-shaped coastline, it won’t take you long to see why. Whitewashed, cave-like suites are the standard here, but the island also has some more colourful hotels, many of which still focus, unsurprisingly, on sourcing the prime position for sunset.

Jordan Chiles May Keep Olympic Bronze Medal After All As USA Gymnastics Submits New Evidence To Court
Right, what is going on here?
We might be counting down the days until the Paris Paralympics 2024 in just over a fortnight, but it seems the Paris Olympics drama is far from over.
While viewers might have been treated to the Paris Olympics 2024 closing ceremony on TV on Sunday night, it seems the ongoing debacle regarding Team USA’s Jordan Chiles and Romania’s Ana Barbosu’s battle for the former’s bronze medal continues.
For those who need a recap, last week the International Olympics Committee said that the medal Chiles received for her individual floor exercise routine at the Games needed to be reallocated to Barbosu after USA Gymnastics announced they had submitted new evidence to challenge a court ruling that had led to the shocking decision.

How Much Do Olympic Medalists Get Paid?
It entirely depends on what country they’re competing for.
As the Paris Olympics wind down, lucky athletes from around the world are leaving the City of Light with a gold, silver, or bronze medal (or perhaps multiples!) in their suitcases. But the question on many minds: Will they also be returning home with an Olympic bonus? Essentially: Do Olympic medalists get paid?
The answer is not very straightforward, as it varies by country, and by sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) does not give out cash prizes, only a medal, and at the Paris Olympics, a box with a poster as well as a stuffed toy version of this year’s mascot.

Kate Middleton Made a Rare Appearance to Congratulate Team Great Britain Amid Her Cancer Treatment
An unshaved Prince William also made a cameo.
Kate Middleton is showing her team spirit. While the Princess of Wales didn’t end up attending at the 2024 Paris Olympics this week as many speculated she might, she did make a rare virtual appearance celebrating the athletes who participated in the Summer Games.
In a video shared to the Prince and Princess of Wales’s official Instagram page, Middleton gave a sweet shoutout to Team Great Britain alongside her husband, Prince William. “From all of us watching at home, congratulations to Team GB,” said Kate while wearing a blue-and-white striped shirt with her glossy brunette hair styled straight and tousled over one shoulder.

How Gen Z Is Shaking Up Millennial Wedding Conventions
Gen Z may be the first generation to grow up with social media, but millennials were the first to get married on it. Over the past 15 years, as these ’80s and ’90s kids tied the knot, they participated in the total transformation of wedding days into #weddingcontent. It’s not easy to be first. The archetypal millennial bride feels pressure to execute a Fortune 500-level marketing campaign, complete with couples’ hashtags, branded bathing suits for extravagant bachelorettes, and painfully long bridal party photo sessions. Over on TikTok, “cringe millennial wedding” has racked up over 200 million videos.
Now, Gen Z is starting to rewrite the modern wedding script. As these young couples head to the altar (the oldest members of this cohort are now 27), they’re bringing their generation’s uncurated, unfiltered, random-photo-dump vibe to the big day. Hold the punny hashtags, please.

Adele Confirms Her Engagement to Rich Paul
Congratulations are in order for Adele! The British musician finally confirmed her engagement to her partner Rich Paul during a concert in Munich, where she is currently playing a sold-out summer residency. After a fan held up a sign asking for Adele’s hand in marriage, she revealed, in typically casual fashion: “I can’t marry you—because I’m already getting married!”
Rumors have swirled for many years that the British pop powerhouse was planning to tie the knot with Paul, a sports agent best known for working with NBA star LeBron James—not least after she referred to him as “my husband” during a show at her Las Vegas residency in September 2022.

The Best Dance Movies to Cue Up Now—From Dirty Dancing to Step Up
Is there anything more uplifting than watching an iconic dance film? Even the darkest of dance movies—Hustlers, Black Swan—can’t help but compel you to get up, sashay, and twirl around the room.
Of course, the benefits of dance are well-documented—and even engaging in intuitive, non-choreographed forms of dance has been proven to improve your well-being. But you don’t have to actually dance to reap the benefits of this age-old form of expression: research shows that just watching dance really can promote emotional and physical healing. As Patrick Swayze’s character Johnny Castle says in Dirty Dancing: “It’s not the mambo. It’s a feeling; a heartbeat.”
Not that you need to know any of that to enjoy the dance movies listed below. Dance is also just plain fun—whether you’re tapping, pirouetting, shimmy-ing, moonwalking, or just watching someone else do all the above from the comfort of your own couch.

Sitcoms Led Me to Believe I’d Be Eating a Lot of Takeout Pizza When I Grew Up
‘Friends’ and ‘Seinfeld’ convinced me that pizza boxes were the surest sign of adulthood.
To me, every sitcom from the ’90s and early ’00s is about pizza. What happened on Friends? They got pizza and then they ate the pizza out of the box, standing up at the counter. What else happened on Friends? I could not tell you. What’s Seinfeld about? Ordering a pizza. Who was the mother on How I Met Your Mother? I have no idea, but I do know that those guys ordered pizza a lot.

The History of Hot Dish
Hot dish is not just a casserole, it’s a Midwestern icon.
When 2007 F&W Best New Chef Gavin Kaysen decided to leave New York City’s acclaimed Café Boulud to go home to Minnesota and open Spoon and Stable in Minneapolis, he did not expect a group of ladies from a local Lutheran church to be his most formidable critics. Kaysen clearly has affection for Midwestern comfort food classics: His menu includes creamed spinach with panko-crusted cheese curds alongside more global recipes like scallop crudo with shiso leaf.
But he’d never taken on hot dish, a layered casserole invented by budget-conscious farmwives in the 1930s that came to rely heavily on canned vegetables, creamed soup and crunchy toppings like Tater Tots or chow mein noodles. “Hot dish is a dangerous thing to play with,” Kaysen says. “There will always be someone with a grandma who makes it better.”

The Best Vinegar for Pickling, According to a Pro Pickler and Chef
Use these picks for the crispest, tangiest pickles, whether you’re canning or quick-pickling.
If you’re making pickles to preserve cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, or carrots, you know you need vinegar — but not just any vinegar. “If you’re going to be canning those pickles, the most important thing is to stick to a vinegar acidity,” says April McGreger, a fermenter at The People’s Kitchen of Philadelphia, chef, and author of Jam On!, noting that the correct acidity is important for ensuring your pickles will be safe to eat.
“The National Center for Home Food Preservation and most canning guidelines suggest a 5% acidity to ensure that your pickles have a finished pH that is below 4.6,” she says. Any acidity or acetic acid content below 5%, which is sometimes labeled as 50 grain, is unsafe for canning and can lead to botulism or other health conditions.

Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony In Pictures
Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers performed in California, and Tom Cruise dived into the Stade de France during a daring stunt as part of the 2028 Summer Olympic Games handoff from Paris to Los Angeles.
The show featured over a hundred performers, including acrobats, dancers, and circus artists, all brought together under the visionary direction of Thomas Jolly, who also helmed the Opening Ceremony.

Billie Eilish, H.E.R., Snoop Dogg and More Perform at the Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony
The Summer Games wrapped up with a star-studded celebration on Sunday.
The Paris Olympics closing ceremony was full of surprises on Sunday and featured performances by Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg, H.E.R and Phoenix.
Phoenix, originally from France but now based in the U.S., kicked off the show with their 2009 hit “Lisztomania,” as athletes danced and sang along to the indie classic. Their set featured surprise appearances from French synthwave artist Kavinsky and Belgian singer Angèle for a rendition of “Nightcall,” known from the Drive soundtrack (the original version featured CSS singer Lovefoxxx instead of Angèle).

Joaquin Phoenix Drops Out of Todd Haynes’ Gay Romance, 5 Days Before Production
The untitled film, which was set to be Haynes’ “May December” followup, is on pause after star Phoenix pulled out of the Mexico shoot. People still need to be paid.
Todd Haynes‘ untitled detective movie about two men in love and fleeing to Mexico is now on hold after star and co-writer Joaquin Phoenix pulled out of the project days before production began.
Phoenix developed the screenplay for the intense gay romance with Haynes and Jon Raymond, a frequent collaborator of Haynes’ friend Kelly Reichardt (“Wendy and Lucy”). Raymond co-wrote the teleplay for Haynes’ HBO miniseries “Mildred Pierce.”
Sources tell IndieWire that Phoenix, who was set to star in the explicit gay love story, dropped out of the Killer Films production five days before filming was set to start in Guadalajara, near the Southwestern coast of Mexico in the state of Jalisco. Phoenix dropped out of the project while in Los Angeles before the Mexico shoot began.

Vesper martini, please! Inside Raffles’ real-life James Bond bar, 60 years on from Sir Ian Fleming’s death
In the former MI5 stomping ground, The Spy Bar is shaking things up and causing a stir
The aged wooden door to The Spy Bar is completely unmarked, save for three digits: 007. Coincidence? Well, it is inside this very building that Sir Ian Fleming, then a naval intelligence officer, dreamt up the idea for his James Bond novels. I, for one, have decided to honour that history by channelling my inner Bond girl for the evening, with a sleek black dress and Dior heels. I guess you can call me Bond – Jasmine Bond. (I’ve even brought my very own Q with me: my software engineering boyfriend.) When we step into the dark room, a sharply dressed man sits behind an imposing desk. And he knows my name before I even say it – clearly, The Spy Bar has done its research. Or perhaps I was the only 7pm reservation.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reveal sequel title Freakier Friday: ‘More fun’ and ‘more emotional’
In the sequel to 2003’s “Freaky Friday,” Curtis’s Tess and Lohan’s Anna switcheroo with Anna’s teenage daughter and stepdaughter.
The long-awaited sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday just got freakier.
At Disney’s D23 fan event in Anaheim, Calif. on Friday, stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan joined forces to tease the new film, with a flashy new title.
“We have a new title, I don’t if we should share it her,” Curtis told her costar. Lohan replied: “These are the best fans in the world!” Curtis relented, whispering into Lohan’s ear before the pari in unison shouted out, Freakier Friday!

[Photo Credit: abrielle.ca, thedesignagency.ca]

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