Holiday Weekend News Roundup! Ben Affleck is Not Running for Senate

AFFLECK LOOKS BETTER ONLY HALF IN THE PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT.

Happy Wednesday! Here’s our compendium of pop-culture news you may have missed while you were opening presents and getting drunk with your family over the long holiday weekend.


• Ben Affleck posted a statement on Facebook on Monday refuting rumors that he’s planning to run for the Senate seat that will be vacated in Massachusetts if John Kerry is confirmed as Hillary Clinton’s Secretary of State replacement. He did use the “right now” qualifier, though, which speaks for itself… [THR]

• In case you’ve been wondering what Drake did for the holidays, the answer is that he partied at “Ladies’ Night” at a club in St. Maarten. The closest we came to that this past week was watching the St. Maarten episode of House Hunters International with our parents before turning in at a reasonable hour, but hey, we all #YOLO in our own way. [P6/NYP]

• One of Rihanna’s pals called the cops after a chubby German dude wandered onto the beachfront property in Barbados where she spent the holiday weekend (“presumably topless,” TMZ hilariously hastened to add). [TMZ]

• The Hobbit won the weekend box office with $36.9M; opening in second and third places, respectively, were Jack Reacher and This is 40, with $15.6M and $12M. Rise of the Guardians pulled in $5.9M, and Lincoln rounded out the top five with $5.5M. Of course, these numbers don’t take into account Christmas Day figures, which were pretty substantial. Les Misérables is expected to have made $17.5M yesterday, and Django Unchained pulled in about $13M. [BOM; Deadline] 

• Character actors Jack Klugman (who memorably played Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple) and Charles Durning (Doc Hopper in The Muppet Movie, duh) both passed away on Monday. [Vulture]

• 10 of Andy Warhol’s Mao portraits (fun fact: four of these hang in the lobby of our office!) will be disincluded from an extensive Warhol retrospective’s tour of China at the request of government officials. [ArtsBeat/NYT]

•  Frank Ocean’s song “Wiseman” was cut from Django Unchained (with, it seems, no hard feelings on either side), but Ocean released it on his Tumblr. If you are wondering whether you’ll like it, the answer is that you probably will! [XXL]