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The grungy, sleazy queen of sidesplitting insanity is back and this time she rules LA, the city of angels.

The first look photos from HBO’s new scripted comedy series I LOVE LA, created by and starring Rachel Sennott, have been released. She’s clearly here to remind TV of its place and make it her playground. It premieres Sunday, Nov. 2 at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and is available to stream on HBO Max. The eight-episode season premieres weekly to the Dec. 21 series finale, just in time for you to have a new holiday depression to blame things on instead of in-laws.

The Premise: Friendship, Sex, and Delusions of Stardom

At its center, I LOVE LA is a show about a cast of striving friends who fight their way through love and life in LA. Translation: a lot of cringeworthy hook-ups, disastrous auditions, too many oat milk lattes, and at least one crazy rooftop fight over a Silver Lake party house.

Rachel Sennott is Maia, the delicate fantasist who can’t “make it” and stay vertical. And, naturally, comedic wit Jordan Firstman as Charlie, Josh Hutcherson (aka Peeta from The Hunger Games) as Dylan, Odessa A’zion as Tallulah, and True Whitaker as Alani. That’s enough zaniness to explode a group message, but HBO had more tricks up its sleeve. Guest stars include Leighton Meester, Moses Ingram, Elijah Wood, Quenlin Blackwell, and others. Imagining Elijah Wood crashing a drum circle in Echo Park and that’s the level of enthusiasm.

Behind the Camera: A Murderers Row of Comedy/Layout Talent

Sennott not only directs but, as creator and executive producer, as well, although she’s assisted in the latter by Emma Barrie, Aida Rodgers, Max Silvestri, and Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers). The roster of directors is no less impressive, with Sennott herself, Scafaria, Bill Benz, and Kevin Bray at the helm. If there were ever promises that LA delusion could be filmable and side-splittingly hilarious, this is it.

First Look: Sunsets, Sweat, and Savage Humor

The first photos deliver what Sennott’s fans are already waiting eagerly for: rumpled hairdo, acerbic humor, and unashamed adoration of Angeleno teenage desperation and poverty. Photos propose rooftop shots under smoggy sunset skies, rager party sequences out of control, and group photographs that yell toxic but party.

If you’ve been holding out for the ultimate follow-up to Bottoms and Shiva Baby with more palm trees, more traffic, and more unabashed hot people, then you’re in luck.

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That Venus Williams lost her first Grand Slam match in two years — and what she says will be her last match of 2025 — didn’t really matter Monday night.

Certainly not to the thousands of supportive spectators in the Arthur Ashe Stadium seats who roared for her best shots and, in a way, for everything her career means to them, before sending her off the court with a standing ovation after a 6-3, 2-6, 6-1 defeat against 11th-seeded Karolina Muchova at the U.S. Open.

The result also sure seemed beside the point to Williams herself, at 45 the oldest singles player at Flushing Meadows since 1981. She smiled and laughed and joked through her postmatch news conference — until, that is, a reporter asked something that made her think back to all of the injury and illness issues she dealt with for years.

“Oh, what did I prove to myself?” Williams began, repeating part of the question. “I think for me, getting back on the court was about giving myself a chance to play more healthy. When you play unhealthy, it’s in your mind. It’s not just how you feel. You get stuck in your mind too. So it was nice to be freer.”

As she spoke those last few words, Williams bowed her head and closed her eyes, which welled with tears. After several seconds of silence, the tournament moderator ended the Q-and-A session and Williams rose from her seat at the front of the room.

This was just the fourth singles match of a comeback that began in July after 16 months off the tennis tour, time marked by pain from uterine fibroids she had surgery for last year.

“My team and I, we worked as hard and as fast as we could. We literally took no days off. I haven’t gone to dinner. I haven’t seen friends. I haven’t done anything except train for three months as hard as I could,” Williams said. “From each match that I didn’t win, then I tried to go back and learn from that and then get better.”

She hasn’t won a match at the U.S. Open in singles since 2019, when she got to the second round. Since then, Williams exited in the first round in 2020, 2022 and 2023, and missed the tournament in 2021 and 2024.

Being back in the arena meant so much to her — and to those watching.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a crowd that much on my side,” said Williams, who appreciated the backing and yells of “Let’s go, Venus!” that came from the stands even as she dropped 11 of the night’s first 13 points. “I knew going into this match that people in this stadium, people in the United States, people around the world, were really rooting for me, and that felt great.”

This event holds a special place in her career. Her first Grand Slam final came at the 1997 U.S. Open, when she was 17. She won two of her seven major championships there, in 2000 and 2001.

And it was at the U.S. Open more than a decade ago that Williams withdrew before she was supposed to play in the second round, revealing she had been diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, an energy-sapping auto-immune disease that can cause joint pain.

Some thought she might leave tennis because of that, but she remained a leading figure — on and off the court.

“She’s such a legend of our sport,” 2023 French Open runner-up Muchova said, calling it an honor “to share a court with her.”

Muchova, a 29-year-old from the Czech Republic, made it to the semifinals in New York in both 2023 — when she lost to eventual champion Coco Gauff in a match interrupted by a climate protest — and 2024.

So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Williams started slowly. But with her fiance, Andrea Preti, leaping out of his seat after many points, Williams got back into the match, smacking vintage serves at up to 114 mph and finishing with just one fewer winner than Muchova.

In the third set, though, as the contest reached two hours, Muchova was simply too good.

Since making her professional debut in 1994, Williams has accomplished pretty much everything one can in tennis. There are the 14 Grand Slam trophies in women’s doubles alongside her younger sister, Serena, plus two in mixed doubles. The record five Olympic tennis medals. The time at No. 1 in the WTA rankings.

Both siblings transcended their sport and became much more than successful athletes. Serena, who won 23 Grand Slam singles titles, played her last match at the 2022 U.S. Open.

“She’s Venus Williams. She’s so iconic in so many different ways,” said Frances Tiafoe, an American player who won his first-round match in Ashe earlier Monday. “She’s won so much. And to see how much she loves game still at her age is amazing. It’s amazing to still see her out here.”

It’s unclear what the future holds. Williams said she doesn’t want to travel to tournaments outside the country; after the U.S. Open, the tour heads to Asia.

When she was asked at the Washington tournament why she was still competing, she offered a simple reply: “Why not?”

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Alex Eala signed her name into history books at Flushing Meadows as the first-ever player from the Philippines to win a Grand Slam singles match since the Open Era was introduced. The 20-year-old battled through an heart-thumping first-round match at the US Open, overcoming World No. 14 Clara Tauson of Denmark, in a 6-3, 2-6, 7-6(11) epic that put the stands at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center at full standing cheers.

For a nation whose tennis had already been eclipsed by basketball and boxing, Eala’s victory is more than just one match, it’s that one moment that brings the Philippines to the big stage of tennis.

Battle of Nerves and Resilience

The match played out just like one of those vintage Grand Slam encounters. Having pushed Eala around in the first set came the counterattraction of heavy serves and ruthless pressure by Tauson throughout the second to overwhelm. By the third, the impression was that the Danish giant was dominant, gliding along at 5-1.

But champions are forged in adversity. Behind the wall, to coin a phrase, Eala tapped into all the determination she had learned at the Rafa Nadal Academy. With the ear-piercing “Let’s go Alex!” chants of the growing, noisier New York crowd spurring her on, she fought her way back into contention.

At 6-5, even Eala was leading with match point, but Tauson took it into a tiebreaker. That was preceded by an 18-minute heart-in-the-throat of tension and shot-by-shot mastery. Tauson’s 12 service aces kept her moving, but Eala’s 49-reception points and rock-like defense made the difference.

Ultimately, at 12-11 in the breaker, long was hit by a Tauson forehand. Eala crashed down on the court, face into the blue hard floor, while the fans stood up with a standing ovation.

“Push the Limit”

Breathless in her post-match interview, Eala acknowledged the enormity of the occasion.

“Oh my God. It was so so difficult. She’s a huge player, a great player, and definitely not an easy draw in the first round,” she added. “I was just thinking to push the limit, physically, mentally, this was it.”

Her style of play was typical of her idol and teacher Rafael Nadal, whose academy has imparted that mix of ferocity and humility.

The Stakes Ahead

Apart from taking Eala to the round of 64, the victory also earns her a $154,000 (approximately ₱8.7 million) prize money. The US Open this year has the largest ever tennis purse of $90 million. She then will play either Spain’s Cristina Bucsa or American Claire Liu, a chance to continue her Cinderella story on tennis’s biggest stage.

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Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.

I grew up knowing the difference between a mistake and a pattern. A mistake is a bad night. A pattern is a system. Netflix’s “The Truth About Jussie Smollett” makes you think the story is about him and whether he lied, staged a hoax, or played the media.

That’s the bait.

The real shock isn’t Jussie. The real shock is the Chicago Police Department, a force with hundreds of misconduct complaints, a history of covering up brutality, and a knack for turning Black victims into villains. Forget debating whether Jussie is “believable.” The real debate should be: how can anyone trust the people deciding his fate?

Let’s be clear: the officers tied to Smollett’s case had 563 complaints on their records. Not five. Not fifty. Five hundred sixty-three. If a surgeon had even five malpractice suits, you wouldn’t let them touch a scalpel. If a teacher had dozens of abuse complaints, they’d be banned from classrooms. But in Chicago, hundreds of misconduct complaints don’t end a career; instead, they make you a lead detective. And those same detectives get to decide the fate of a Black man under the glare of national media.

Consider how the investigation unfolded. Security guard Anthony Moore testified that he saw a white or pale-skinned man fleeing the scene. Instead of following that lead, detectives stacked a lineup with only Black men and told Moore to pick “the lightest one.” That isn’t a mistake. That is rigging the outcome. Then there’s the missing footage of ten crucial seconds that vanished from surveillance cameras. Ten seconds. If those seconds disappeared in a case against the police, the evidence would have been thrown out. But here? They were ignored because they didn’t fit the CPD’s story.

And it gets worse. This is Chicago. The same department that covered up the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times while walking away from officers. For over a year, the official story claimed he “lunged” at police with a knife. Dashcam footage later revealed the truth: officers closed ranks to protect one of their own. That wasn’t a mistake. That was a pattern. And if they could bury the truth about a child’s death, why should anyone trust them to get it right in a celebrity case?

Jussie Smollett’s story makes it easy to get lost in debate. Did he lie? Did he embellish? But let’s be honest: Jussie is a mirror. He reflects everything we expect from the media, the public, and the police. We want him to be guilty because it makes us feel smart, because it makes the world orderly. But what if the shock isn’t that Jussie lied? What if the shock is that we are conditioned to trust the people lying to us?

Even the Illinois Supreme Court overturned Smollett’s conviction, ruling that prosecutors violated his due process rights. That should have sparked outrage. Instead, the world shrugged, joked, and argued over whether Jussie was “worth believing.” We missed the real scandal is that the system that judged him is built to win, not to tell the truth.

I know this playbook. I grew up in the Bronx, stopped and searched, and was lied on by police. I’ve lived the reality where an officer’s word outweighs yours, where their version becomes fact, and your own memory becomes fiction. Watching this documentary, I can’t focus on Jussie’s honesty alone. The bigger question is: why do we keep trusting a system with a long track record of abuse and deception?

The real story is not Jussie Smollett. It is the fact that the people judging him were Chicago police officers with 563 misconduct complaints, missing evidence, and a decades-long record of lying and covering up brutality. Yet they were still allowed to control the narrative. That is the real hoax.

Arguing about whether Jussie was truthful is a distraction. The real question is why we keep trusting a system that was never built to deliver truth in the first place. In Chicago, mistakes are ignored. Patterns are protected. Corruption is routine. This is not about one man. It is about a system that has proven over and over again that it cannot be trusted with Black lives. The real lie is the system itself.

Jonathan Conyers is the author of the acclaimed memoir I Wasn’t Supposed to Be Here. He is also a respiratory therapist, writer, and producer, as well as the owner and investor of several successful business ventures. Through his storytelling and work, Conyers continues to amplify underrepresented voices and create impact across industries.

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Streaming culture is unfiltered emotion, and Yonna Jay provided that last night. The young social media personality whose untamed looks and amiable streams are becoming increasingly popular wept on stream after she broke the news that she was robbed, harassed, and kicked out of the Atlanta home where she lived after the landlord orchestrated a strange scam.

The 100 A Year Rent Scam

In a popular TikTok and Twitter clip, Yonna described how she was offered a tiny house in Atlanta for a ridiculously cheap $100 per year. “Bitch, who wouldn’t accept a tiny home for $100 a year?” she taunted her audience, visibly agitated.

As she explains it, she was presented to alleged tiny home dwellers by one of the people she knows who were making the ridiculous offer. Assuming it was genuine, she transferred the items of her existence into this setup thinking she had struck gold on the rental market.

Rather, Yonna said she didn’t expect it to happen. On stream, she outlined why the landlord trudged on the porch, literally touching things and kicking her out of the house. “I just don’t think it’s right to touch other people’s things, if you know what I mean,” she told her chat, holding back tears. Clips of video from previous streams allegedly of the man involved hanging around the house in the week or so preceding the actual eviction.

From Atlanta Dreams to Hotel Rooms

Her impassioned testimony described how quickly the ATL trial with the influencer imploded. Yonna said that she had relocated to Georgia partly because it’s near her grandparents outside of North Carolina, and she wanted to “try it out” and see if she would enjoy living there permanently. Her desire to live affordably in a hip mini-house, though, was dashed when she realized that the landlord’s guarantees were a scam.

She has a hotel room now as she is figuring out what she is going to do next. “I’d love to live in ATL though,” she admitted. “But as far as inside, you know, I don’t have a problem finding a job. So we’re gonna go check out another job today, and this one’s gonna be really fun.”

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President Donald Trump fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook late Monday, a sharp escalation in his battle to exert greater control over what has long been considered an institution independent from day-to-day politics.

Trump said in a letter posted on his Truth Social platform that he is firing Cook because of allegations that she committed mortgage fraud. Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, made the accusations last week.

Pulte alleged that Cook had claimed two primary residences — in Ann Arbor, Michigan and Atlanta — in 2021 to get better mortgage terms. Mortgage rates are often higher on second homes or those purchased to rent.

The announcement came days after Cook said she wouldn’t leave her post despite Trump previously calling for her to resign. The Fed’s board has seven members, meaning Trump’s move could have deep economic and political ramifications.

Trump said in announcing the move that he had the constitutional authority to remove Cook, but doing so will raise questions about control of the Fed as an independent entity.

The firing is likely to touch off a legal battle and Cook could be allowed to remain in her seat while the case plays out. Cook would have to fight the legal battle herself, as the injured party, rather than the Fed.

It is the latest effort by the administration to take control over one of the few remaining independent agencies in Washington. Trump has repeatedly attacked the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting its short-term interest rate, and even threatened to fire him.

Forcing Cook off the Fed’s governing board would provide Trump an opportunity to appoint a loyalist. Trump has said he would only appoint officials who would support cutting rates.

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The net craves nothing more than a scandal, and this week it was social media fixated over Power Book II: Ghost actress Alix Lapri, whose given name is Alexus Geier, after what appeared to be a mugshot of the actress went viral. The assertion? That the 28-year-old singer and actress from Topeka was arrested on August 18 in DeKalb County, Georgia, on charges of child cruelty and disorderly conduct.

A Rumor and a Mugshot

The chaos began when there was a supposed arrest report uploaded on a news website called The Georgia Gazette wherein “Alexus Geier” was reported to have been booked. In a move to further obscure the news, there was a mugshot on the Web with the charges that had fans believing the love interest on the Starz wildly acting Power spin-off Effie Morales actor Tariq St. Patrick was arrested.

Then Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram came along and did what comes naturally to them: spreading the news like gospel, where the hashtags around Lapri’s supposed fall went viral overnight.

The Facts: Receipts Don’t Match

This is where it gets tricky. Although the arrest record went live on the internet, there is no credible news outlet or verified medium that has reported Alix Lapri was arrested. Actually, the social media history of the woman indicates something entirely different.

It was on August 21 when five days after she was purportedly arrested, Lapri posted a hilarious video clip of herself partying at a bar.

She posted on Instagram a recent Carousel featuring behind-scenes footage from the shooting on the location of her recent acting project. Captioned:

“gotta keep at it buddy. chase the dream and know no fear.”

Not exactly words spoken from the confines of the county jail.

Why Fans Got Hooked on It

The early panic was probably due to poor timing and the rumor mill that is the web. There is an “Alexus Geier” on Georgia’s DeKalb County arrest database. But is she the Alix Lapri, the 1.3 million Instagram-followed Hollywood starlet, we can’t confirm. And if the web action was any indicator, she was neither locked up nor holed up but on set, still going for the goal.

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