• Nicki Minaj will receive the Video Vanguard Award at the MTV Awards later this month, joining such previous winning music luminaries as Madonna, Janet Jackson, LL Cool J, Jennifer Lopez and Missy Elliott. Minaj, who has won five MTV trophies for such hits as "Anaconda," "Chun-Li" and "Hot Girl Summer," will get the award and perform at the ceremony on Aug. 28 at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J. "Nicki has broken barriers for women in hip-hop with her versatility and creative artistry," said Bruce Gillmer, chief content officer of music at Paramount+ and president of music, music talent, programming and events at Paramount. "She has shifted the music industry and cemented her status as a global superstar with her crossover appeal, genre-defying style and continuing to be unapologetically 'Nicki'." Jack Harlow, Lil Nas X and Kendrick Lamar are the top award contenders with seven nominations. Harlow, Lil Nas X, Drake, Bad Bunny, Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles and Lizzo will compete for artist of the year. Styles and Doja Cat received the second-most nominations with six. Sheeran, Billie Eilish, Drake, Dua Lipa, Taylor Swift and The Weeknd each pulled in five. Madonna, who is the most awarded artist in MTV history with 20 wins, becomes the only artist to receive a nomination in each of the VMAs five decades. She earned her 69th nomination for her 14th studio album "Madame X." Also performing will be Anitta, J Balvin, Marshmello with Khalid and Panic! At The Disco. More acts will be announced soon.
• When camp counselor Allie Tarantino was flipping through a magazine years ago, he came upon a familiar name: Mark Zuckerberg. He rifled through boxes of memorabilia in his basement, running his fingers over old photos, newspapers and bus maps before finding a baseball card featuring a very young Zuckerberg grinning in a red jersey and gripping a bat. Three decades later, Tarantino is hoping that a signed baseball card featuring one of the richest men in the world will bring a fortune when it is put up for auction next month. "It's like my version of a midlife crisis. I'm 50 years old -- what am I going to do with this?" Tarantino joked. As told by Tarantino -- who still works summers at Elmwood Day Camp in Westchester, N.Y. -- Zuckerberg, then age 8 or 9, offered the card he'd had printed as a parting gift at the end of camp 30 years ago. "As somebody who collects things, it's always really difficult to part with whatever you have in your collection. But I've always been like weirdly curious about how the public would react to something that's like this that's a weird combination of pop culture and memorabilia," he said. The card will also be auctioned off as a digital collector's item -- a so-called NFT, or non-fungible token, that has become a popular way to own memorabilia. Zuckerberg posted about the auction Thursday on Instagram, partly as a way to promote NFT technology in general, but also to help promote NFTs across his company's platforms.