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Cleto Escobedo III, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” bandleader, dies at 59

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Cleto Escobedo III, “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” bandleader, dies at 59


Cleto Escobedo III, longtime bandleader of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, has died, Jimmy Kimmel announced on Tuesday. He was 59 years old.

The late-night talk show host mourned the death of one of his oldest friends — whom he met when he was 9 years old — writing on Instagram that “[t]o say that we are heartbroken is an understatement.”

“The fact that we got to work together every day is a dream neither of us could ever have imagined would come true. Cherish your friends and please keep Cleto’s wife, children and parents in your prayers,” Kimmel wrote.

This image released by Disney shows Cleto Escobedo on the set of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in March 2025.

Randy Holmes/Disney via AP


Escobedo and Kimmel met as children in Las Vegas, where they grew up across the street from each other. Kimmel wrote on Tuesday that they were “inseparable.”

“We just met one day on the street, and there were a few kids on the street, and him and I just became really close friends, and we kind of had the same sense of humor. We just became pals, and we’ve been pals ever since,” Escobedo said in a 2022 interview for Texas Tech University’s Southwest Collection oral history archive, disclosing that he and Kimmel were huge fans of David Letterman as kids.

Escobedo would grow up to become a professional musician, specializing in the saxophone, and touring with Earth, Wind and Fire’s Phillip Bailey and Paula Abdul. He recorded with Marc Anthony, Tom Scott and Take Six. When Kimmel got his own ABC late-night talk show in 2003, he lobbied for Escobedo to lead the house band on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

“Of course I wanted great musicians, but I wanted somebody I had chemistry with,” Kimmel told WABC in 2015. “And there’s nobody in my life I have better chemistry with than him.”

In 2016, on Escobedo’s 50th birthday, Kimmel dedicated a segment to his friend, recalling pranks with a BB gun or mooning people from the back of his mom’s car.

“Cleto had a bicycle with a sidecar attached to it. We called it the side hack. I would get in the sidecar and then Cleto would drive me directly into garbage cans and bushes,” Kimmel recalled. 

News of Escobedo’s death comes after Thursday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was abruptly canceled. David Duchovny, Joe Keery and Madison Beer were set as the show’s guests. The date and cause of Escobedo’s death weren’t immediately known.

Escobedo’s father is also a member of the Kimmel house band and plays tenor and alto saxophones. In January 2022, the father-son duo celebrated nearly two decades of performing on-screen together.

“Jimmy asked me, ‘Who are we going to get in the band?’ I said, ‘Well, my normal guys,’ and he knew my guys because he had been coming to see us and stuff before he was famous, just to come support me and whatever. I’d invite him to gigs, and if he didn’t have anything to do he’d come check it out, so he knew my guys,” Escobedo recounted in the 2022 interview. “Then he just said, ‘Hey, man, what about your dad? Wouldn’t that be kind of cool?’ I was like, ‘That would be way cool.'”

In the 2022 interview, Escobedo said the bandleader job had one major benefit: family time.

“Touring and all that stuff is fun, but it’s more of a young man’s game. Touring, also, too, is not really conducive for family life. I’ve learned over the years, being on the road and watching how hard it is, leaving your kids for so long. Sometimes they’re babies; you come back and then they’re talking, it’s like, ‘What?'” he said.

Escobedo’s survivors also include his wife Lori and their two children.





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Selena Gomez hits salon before ringing into the New Year

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Selena Gomez hits salon before ringing into the New Year


Selena Gomez hits salon before ringing into the New Year

Selena Gomez is treating herself to a self care routine ahead of welcoming the New Year.

The Only Murders in the Building star took a quick trip to a tanning salon over the weekend.

On Saturday, December 27, she was spotted visiting Palm Beach Tan in Beverly Hills, California.

As per photos circulating over social media, the 33-year-old singer and actress looked relaxed and low-key as she left the popular salon.

For the casual outing, the Calm Down songstress was dressed casually in a white tank top, black sweatpants, and some fuzzy slippers.

She accessorised her look with a pair of sunglasses and some plum-colored over-the-ear wireless headphones.

The Lose You to Love Me singer was also seen carrying her iPhone and a fluffy jacket.

Prior to her latest sighting, Gomez, who is married to music producer Benny Blanco, was seen out on Christmas Eve.

She was spotted in a black ensemble as she visited a dermatology office in the same area.

Earlier in December, she and her new husband celebrated decorating their first Christmas tree together as a married couple.

They decorated the festive-staple with various ornaments and recorded the process to share it with their admirers.





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Book excerpt: “Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent

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Book excerpt: “Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent


Sourcebooks Landmark


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Susie Dent’s debut novel, “Guilty by Definition” (‎Sourcebooks Landmark), introduces a dictionary editor at Oxford who begins receiving strange messages tied to her sister’s long-ago disappearance.

The lexicographer-turned-sleuth follows clues that draw her into literary puzzles – and unresolved parts of her past.

Read an excerpt below. 


“Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent

Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.


Chapter 3

eidolon, noun (seventeenth century):
a spirit, phantom, or apparition

Martha turned and fled through the crowd, down the wide flight of stone steps, and out into Beaumont Street, looking at nothing but the ground. Three corners later, she found a side road and turned into it. She put her back against the wall and tried to breathe.

She had known there would be ghosts in Oxford. She wasn’t afraid of any headless horsemen or nuns haunting the local ruins; it was Charlie, always Charlie she was afraid would find her. There had been times in the first year after her sister’s disappearance when Martha’s heart would stop as she spotted her through the crowd: the long blond hair, the shapeless cardigan draped over a thin cotton dress. She’d hear a laugh, throaty and sudden, or catch a movement, a walk, a twist in the shoulders, and she’d be certain. Just for a moment. Then the illusion would shatter, and the person she knew to be her sister would resolve into a stranger.

As the years passed, so the ghost of Charlie aged. Now it was women in their midthirties who made Martha stop dead in the streets. In Berlin, once a month perhaps, she’d felt that same flickering certainty before realizing the woman with a child on her lap as she drank a coffee at a sidewalk café was not her sister, just an echo of Martha’s own image of who Charlie might be now, thirteen years after fleeing Oxford and her family.

Martha pressed her palm against the wall behind her. She reminded herself of her therapist’s mantra for the moments when she was in danger of being overwhelmed. What can you see now? The shiny cobbles of the side street, the white brick of the wall opposite. What can you feel? The bricks under my fingers, a breeze ruffling my hair. What can you smell? Cooking oil, the Black Opium perfume I put on this morning.

Her breathing slowed.

She pulled the letter out of her bag again and stared at it. Could it be from Charlie? Impossible. What could this Chorus know? Should she burn it? Throw it in the river? Take it to the police?

Ah, the police. She heard the scrape of her mother’s chair on the kitchen floor as she leaped up at the sound of the doorbell. They had found Charlie’s bike not far from the ring road. Did she hitchhike? How was her PhD going? Martha couldn’t remember their faces, just their hands around tea mugs as they sat at the table, the low rumble of their voices as they talked about stress and pressure. Most runaways come back in time, they’d said. They left literature, helpline numbers, and world-weary sympathy behind them.

Martha realized she was at her own front door. Her body had picked her up and carried her here through the gathering dark. She looked up. All the lights were off; her father must be in bed.

Charlie had been living here when she went missing, taking advantage of the space, their mum’s cooking, and the glow of parental approval while she slogged through her PhD. Martha had just left for university and was starting to experiment with life out of Charlie’s orbit.

As she put her key in the lock, she remembered Alex’s shadow moving across the folded letter at the museum. Now it was Charlie’s. Always here: the shadows of the past thrown against the walls and floors. She pushed open the door….

She took the letter out again and laid it on the kitchen counter while the kettle boiled.

Truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hid long.

     
Excerpted from “Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent. Copyright © 2024, 2025 by Susie Dent. Reprinted by permission of Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks.


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“Guilty by Definition” by Susie Dent

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Kylie Jenner’s mom Kris gives strong approval to Timothee Chalamet

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Kylie Jenner’s mom Kris gives strong approval to Timothee Chalamet


Kris Jenner sends love to daughter Kylie’s boyfriend Timothee Chalamet after Christmas party

Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner have her mom, Kris Jenner’s, blessings for their relationship as she publicly showed him support.

The 70-year-old matriarch has also turned into a fan of the award-winning actor and shared a glowing review of his new release, Marty Supreme.

The Kardashians star posted a picture of a red merch jacket, which she had been gifted, and wrote, “greatest movie ever,” tagging the Dune actor, 30.

Kris is not the first of the Kardashian-Jenners to sport the Marty Supreme jacket, but previously, Kendall Jenner, their friends, Hailey and Justin Bieber, as well as Kylie herself, have all worn the movie merch out in public.

Kylie Jenners mom Kris gives strong approval to Timothee Chalamet

The momager’s supportive message came after the Beautiful Boy star celebrated Christmas with her girlfriend’s family.

In the Khy founder’s social media posts, Timothee’s name was included in the gingerbread family house they had created.

A Complete Unknown star and Kylie have been together for more than two years, and insiders have shared that their families have intermingled and all of them really like spending time together.

Timothee has reportedly gotten close to Kylie’s kids – Stormi and Aire, whom she shares with ex Travis Scott, and the kids like to hang around the Oscar contender.





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