With the exception of calling the president “utterly f*cking disgusting” for invoking George Floyd’s name during a rambling speech about the economy, Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight was about one topic and one topic only: the police. “It’s genuinely impossible to overstate how enraging that is,” host John Oliver, showing more fury than usual, said after showing footage of cops harming peaceful protestors. “They’re protesting excessive force by police, and police just start pepper-spraying them like it’s f*cking sunscreen. And that’s just one of hundreds and hundreds of videos.”

Oliver covered “how the f*ck we got to this point, what the obstacles to reform have been, and what we can do going forward,” including pop culture’s fetishization of the police (he referred to Lethal Weapon as Manic Bigot and His One Black Friend), how law enforcement has always been “entangled with white supremacy,” and police unions. “I get unions fighting for their workers; that is what they do,” he said. “But police unions take that to a dangerous extreme and negotiate language into contracts that makes removing a problem officer incredibly difficult.” He also discussed defunding the police:

“Defunding the police absolutely does not mean that we eliminate all cops and just succumb to the purge. Instead, it’s about moving away from a narrow conception of public safety that relies on policing and punishment and investing in a community’s actual safety net.”

Oliver ended the segment with a message to viewers. “Ours is a firmly entrenched system in which the roots of white supremacy run deep, and it is critical that we all grab a fucking shovel. To do anything less would be absolutely unforgivable,” he said before showing a video of author Kimberly Jones talking about the protests. Watch it above.

View Entire Post ›

Some of ’em figuratively, some of ’em literally.

View Entire Post ›

Oh, to be a rat wearing a chef’s hat!

View Entire Post ›

“OUTER BANKS………DUHHHH.”

View Entire Post ›

“I don’t like armchair activism.”

View Entire Post ›

Police said the primary factor in the collision was the man being in the roadway, but after pushback on social media, the department clarified the incident remains under investigation.

View Entire Post ›

This spring, a lot of high school and college graduates didn’t get the chance to walk across the stage for the symbolic final steps of their academic journeys. YouTube helped soften the blow, though, with Dear Class Of 2020, a livestream event that featured speeches and performances from recognizable faces. A few of them came together for a socially distanced performance of the U2 classic “Beautiful Day.”

The performance was produced by Finneas, and it featured vocal contributions from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Camila Cabello, Khalid, Leon Bridges, Tove Lo, Ty Dolla Sign, Noah Cyrus, and more.

Before the performance, Bono also spoke about the meaning of the song and its relevance now, saying, “The song is not a description of where we were at. It was a prayer for where we could go, and a dream, like America is a dream of what might be. […] It’s a wild thought, that America is yet to exist. And even wilder that the class of 2020 may be the very people to bring it into being, after 244 years of striving for freedom.”

Watch the performance above, and read Bono’s full speech below.

“As an Irishman, I’ve always believed that America is not just a country: It’s an idea, it’s a dream that belongs to the whole world. Now I know in recent times, the world has been reminded that America is an idea that doesn’t even belong to a lot of Americans, and that for many Black Americans, Lady Liberty’s torch is far from a beacon of hope: It’s often a flashlight in the face.

Now there were storm clouds over Dublin when U2 recorded ‘Beautiful Day.’ Things were not as they might have been. But the song is not a description of where we were at. It was a prayer for where we could go, and a dream, like America is a dream of what might be. We now know that America is a song yet to be written, that America might be the greatest song the world has never heard. It’s a wild thought, that America is yet to exist. And even wilder that the class of 2020 may be the very people to bring it into being, after 244 years of striving for freedom — sometimes marching, sometimes protesting, sometimes on your knees, sometimes taking the knee, you get there.

I don’t know how, but I know who: you. You can vault the barricades of bigotry, and with your vote, you can dismantle institutions that uphold that bigotry and are in your way. You can enter America. you can enter America, we will all enter with you, but it’s gonna be you, and that is gonna be a beautiful day.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Some may not realize this, but character Creed Bratton — the quirky quality assurance manager of Dunder Mifflin — is a fictionalized version of the real-life actor and musician, Creed Bratton. Their backstories are very similar: They were both members of the rock band The Grass Roots in the 1960s; both used drugs; both had a lot of crazy stories from the 1960s, and both may or may not have had a relationship with Squeaky Fromme, a member of the Manson family who once tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford. The Grass Roots actually had a big top-ten hit back in 1967 that may sound familiar to some.

It’s in the present time, however, where Creed the actor and Creed the character begin to depart. Creed Bratton the character was basically a homeless man who walked into Dunder Mifflin one day, acted like he worked there, and somehow fell into the role of quality assurance manager. Creed Bratton, the real-life person, was basically a struggling out-of-work actor (working as a stand-in on sitcoms), who was hired to play a background actor (a guy who filled a desk in the back of Dunder Mifflin’s office) and stuck around so long that he fell into a the role of a beloved series regular. The director of The Office pilot, Ken Kwapis, met Bratton when he was working as a stand-in on The Bernie Mac Show. Kwapis overhead Bratton talking about learning a guitar lick from Jimmi Hendrix, and Bratton and Kwapis became friends. A few years later, Kwapis hired him to come in and sit on a desk in the background for the pilot episode of The Office. The rest is history, sort of.

Months after the pilot was shot, Kwapis brought Creed back again for the second episode, which he also directed. Creed was one of only two regular background actors on The Office, along with an actor named Devon Abner, who played a character named Devon White. Though he was a frequent background presence in the first season and a half, most viewers of The Office may only recognize Devon White for his role in only one episode, the Halloween episode in season two where Michael Scott fired him while Devon was in costume.

The reality, however, is that it could have been Creed who was fired instead, according to Andy Greene’s book, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s. Larry Wilmore (then a writer on The Office) came up with the idea of Michael Scott firing someone in their Halloween costume, because he thought it would be funny, and the choice of who to fire was between two non-speaking characters, Devon White and Creed Bratton.

Greg Daniels essentially told Devon Abner and Bratton that the good news was that one of them would get a line in the show. The bad news is, the person who got a line would be fired, while the person who didn’t get a line would get to stick around. Thankfully, Devon Abner — who had been cast in a play in New York — took away the decision and bowed out, leaving Creed with the continuing gig. The script, of course, ended up changing, and both Bratton and Abner got several lines, as each tried to talk Michael Scott out of firing them.

Creed won out, and gave a terrific performance in his first speaking role. In fact, the day after filming his scene, John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson came up to him, gave him a huge hug, and told Creed that he “killed it.” Bratton was so touched that he “had to walk away and cry a little bit.” Devon Abner, however, had no hard feelings. In fact, it was just the opposite: “When people ask me about The Office, I always think about how happy I am for all of those guys, but especially Creed. I have always been happy for him, because he is such a great guy.”

From there, the writers ended up giving Creed one or two lines in every episode, he eventually became a fan favorite, and then the rest is history. Devon Abner, meanwhile, ended up coming back again for The Office finale to replace Creed, who faked his own death to avoid the police.

Source: The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s

View Entire Post ›