Sports & Entertainment Beat

Happy New Year, and welcome back to the Spotlight! If your New Year’s resolution is to get up to speed on the latest in the sports and entertainment business, while also getting the occasional chuckle, you have come to the right place. Skeptical? You have nothing to lose—and I’m far less expensive than that impossible-to-cancel gym membership that you’re never going to use anyway. That being said, if you're trying to cut back on the amount of cheese you consume, then you're out of luck. As we roll into 2024, maybe you’re energized by a clean slate for the year ahead or (like me) propelled forward with a fantasy football championship

• • At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2024, the copyrights in the original "Steamboat Willie" character on which Mickey Mouse was based fell into the public domain and opened up the door to no shortage of gory horror films (“we’ve got fears, say ”’cheers!’”) featuring the aforementioned mouse. This is great news to those of us who thought parenting wasn't hard enough these days.
    
    
  • New York Jets Quarterback Aaron Rodgers strongly implied that late night talk show host and comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s name would appear on a list of associates of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  With good reason, Kimmel took exception to the jab (apparently motivated by Rodgers’ animus towards Kimmel’s jokes about him), threatening legal action against Rodgers. You might call Rodgers’ grudges his Achilles.
    
    
  • In an effort to bring in a new audience for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, NBCUniversal is enlisting the services of Snoop Dogg, who may be utterly disappointed to find out what it means to pass the torch.