Month: June 2020

As the NBA’s Orlando bubble approaches, discussion persists on how COVID-19 might impact the proceedings. For the Brooklyn Nets, the endeavor was already a bit strange given the team’s (extreme) unlikelihood to make a real run in the NBA Playoffs, especially with both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant unable to play for injury-related reasons. From there, the Nets will be without Wilson Chandler as they head to Florida and, on Monday, ace guard Spencer Dinwiddie announced that he is symptomatic after a positive COVID-19 test and his status for the restart remains uncertain.

On Monday evening, things became even more perilous for the Nets from a basketball standpoint, with veteran center DeAndre Jordan announcing that he will not be going to Orlando after a positive test.

Even without a positive test, it is impossible to blame any player for not wanting to participate in Orlando. That is particularly the case for players on teams that have no realistic chance to compete for championship glory, and the Nets now have endured a handful of positive tests, dating all the way back to Durant and others in March. In one frank tweet, Jordan announced that the Nets will be even more short-handed when the team takes the floor in the bubble.

Brooklyn does have Jarrett Allen to deploy as a starting center but, with Jordan and Chandler out, the team’s depth in the frontcourt is compromised. The Nets do have a cushion when pursuing a spot in the playoffs and there is at least some equity in making the postseason but, other than that, there isn’t a lot for Brooklyn to play for and Jordan is perhaps making the prudent decision as a result.

Sacha Baron Cohen pulled his latest prank over the weekend when he infiltrated a Three Percenters rally and made attendees happily sing racist lyrics about the coronavirus and other hot topics, even apparently duping organizers into letting him take care of security and other expenses to make it happen. But the prank wasn’t, as some assumed, a content-gathering mission for his Who Is America? series on Showtime; it was apparently just to make a viral point.

Baron Cohen made headlines on Sunday when video of his performance at a far-right rally surfaced. The event, held in Olympia, Washington and called ‘March for Our Rights 3,’ saw the comedian take the stage to perform a racist sing-a-long in which the audience seemed to gladly take part. A video of organizers explaining that someone apparently representing a political action committee — Baron Cohen — approached the group and donated funds to supply security forces that then prevented the group from taking the stage to stop Baron Cohen or turn his microphone off as he played.

There was speculation that the stunt was to provide ammunition for Season 2 of Who Is America? which caused a sir in 2018 when he duped O.J. Simpson, the NRA, Dick Cheney and others into speaking to him for his series lampooning the right. But as The Wrap reported Monday, that there aren’t any official plans to bring Who Is America? back for a second season.

A person familiar with “Who Is America?” production told TheWrap there are still no plans for a second season of the series, which aired in 2018. Baron Cohen has previously said he was not going to do another season of the satirical series, though Showtime had previously said it would more than a welcome one if he ever changed his mind.

It’s unclear if Baron Cohen had a film crew recording footage of the event to do just that, or if he just wanted to prove a point and had the resources to do so. But right now it’s clear, at least officially, that we won’t see the events of last weekend playing on Showtime anytime soon.

We plan to spend a lot of time outside this summer. Like a lot. It will be socially distanced and often with masks, but damn if we don’t need to get out of doors. Probably way more than any other summer of our collective adulthood thus far.

We’re not coming in at dark, either. That’s when we’ll sit around a campfire pretending that we actually know how to play the guitar (not having an audience during the quarantine makes this easier). And while we strum, we’re going to enjoy the great outdoors with a glass of whiskey in hand. Not just any whiskey. Floral notes and easy sippers. Exciting expressions that don’t conjure any winter vibes.

To pick the right expressions for the season, we asked a handful of our favorite bartenders to tell us the best whiskeys to drink outside this summer.

Ghost Coast Honey Flavored Whiskey

Bill Myers, bartender at Kimpton Brice Hotel in Savannah, Georgia

Ghost Coast honey flavored whiskey is a delicious bourbon blended with honey from the Savannah Bee Company that is perfect to sip by the water this summer. A gold medal winner from the 2018 SIP Awards, this product doesn’t have the artificially sweet taste that some other flavored whiskeys have. It is the perfect daytime sipper this season.

Pinhook Rye Whiskey

Sondre Kasin, principal bartender at Cote in New York City

Pinhook is a fairly new whiskey/bourbon producer that makes really cool products. If I were to sit by the lake or pool and enjoy a whiskey I would definitely go for a lighter and fresher style of whiskey. Pinhook Rye is definitely that! The rye has classic notes as black pepper, vanilla and caramel. However it also has this minty /green herb freshness, which for me is a perfect summer flavor. Also try it in cocktails, it works great in a mint julep.

Skrewball Whiskey

Sammy Norris, bartender at EVO Entertainment in Schertz, Texas

Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey. It is the perfect American infused whiskey. It’s great on the rocks or neat. I am a huge fan of the flavor profile.

Jim Beam Black

Jennifer Jackson-Keating, co-owner of Island Culture Tiki Bar in Pensacola, Florida

Jim Beam Kentucky straight bourbon is a great sipping whiskey for any occasion. The combination of new flavors including Madagascar bourbon vanilla bean, apple, peach and maple make for crowd pleasing options whether you’re drinking it straight or mixing it up. Our faves: Jim Beam Black Extra Aged and the new Jim Beam Peach which is sure to become a southern staple when mixed with iced tea.

Maker’s Mark Bourbon

Eva Al-Gharaballi, bartender for the Datz Restaurant Group in Tampa, Florida

For a sip of something after you take a dip in the pool or a lake this summer I would reach for Maker’s Mark. Maker’s has a very smooth finish that could easily be mixed with peach puree and some iced tea to cool you off after a swim.

Jameson Irish Whiskey

Dean Powers, restaurant and bar manager at Shore Lodge and Whitetail Club in McCall, Idaho

Personally, I like to drink something a little lighter and approachable during the summer months. Since I am a bartender at heart, Jameson is my anytime go to. It’s a little sweeter and goes down without a bite.

Old Hamer Straight Rye

Jacob Cantu, tasting room manager at West Fork Whiskey Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana

Old Hamer Straight Rye is perfect for hot summer days out on the lake. This historic whiskey recently resurrected by West Fork Whiskey Co. showcases a 45% corn, 51% rye, and 1% malted barley mash bill. Crafted in #4 char new American Oak barrels and aged approximately three years, this easy-drinking bourbon features hints of butterscotch with a pleasant finish.

Angels’ Envy Bourbon

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Angel’s Envy has a nice smooth, almost sweet feel thanks to the port cask finish. Pairs well with the crisp air at water’s edge on a warm, summer day.

Writer’s Picks:

Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon

Summer evenings are perfect for Elijah Craig Barrel Proof. Once the sun goes down and a sweatshirt gets pulled over your tank top, you’ll be happy to have this warming, uncut, 12-year old slow sipping bourbon.

Ardbeg Wee Beastie

Campfires deserve to be paired with a smoky whisky. There are few better at making peat smoked Scotch whiskies than Ardbeg. One of the Islay distillery’s newest offerings is the sweet and smoky Wee Beastie. It’s matured in ex-bourbon casks and Oloroso sherry butts, it’s full of caramel sweetness, subtly briny salt, and pleasing peat smoke.

This one has the smoke but it’s not so overpowering as to overwhelm the senses.

I started Purpose Accelerator 2 days after I quit my job, 2 months after my mom died and 2 years after I graduated college.

Then, two weeks into the program I fell asleep on the subway and missed my stop. I ugly cried my entire walk back to the Airbnb as the gravity of everything that just changed settled in. They say you never become a true New Yorker until you’ve cried on the subway. I passed that rite of passage on the second week.

Everyone’s journey is different and I’ll explain why mine was so filled with tears. Hopefully you aren’t scared off by my emotional ride, but understand that the Purpose Accelerator program is just as much a personal exploration as it is professional. And like any journey, if you fall asleep, you might miss your stop.

When my mom died, I felt untethered. I was my mom’s main support for the last few years and for the last six years my life revolved around being there for her. Staying at home during college, I found work afterward in the city. I had plans to travel the world, work in China, go to law school, you name it, but my first priority was to be there for my mom. It was easier in a sense because I had narrowed all my potential stops to Portland’s geographic parameter.

Now, even the London tube was an option.

SO, COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLUE, I CONTACTED JEFF, THE CO-FOUNDER OF PROJECT X.

I came across the Project X email newsletter and Jeff graciously responded to my unsolicited outreach. After our conversation, and with absolutely no original intent to do so, I quit my job and looked up New York’s subway system.

Coming to New York was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I needed time to process losing my mom and my sense of purpose and to bring some direction to my newly expanded map. The program gave me the space and the supportive community to explore those deeper questions of fulfillment, purpose, and living life with intention.

PEELING THE LAYERS

Jeff led activities that peeled back the layers of our ‘wants’ and ‘shoulds’ down to what truly matters to us. Then, we learned specific guidelines on how to better navigate those distilled needs.

Instead of 5- or 10-year plans, we learned that forecasting in three-month increments allows us to be more responsive to our VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world. And a way to experiment with this world is via the MVPs (Minimally Viable Products). It’s the terrifying technique of simply throwing out our imperfect ideas into the world to see what happens.

Since VUCA and MVPs are basically different acronyms for anxiety, having a supportive community to navigate it all with was both disarming and empowering. The people I met and the community we created together became the most valuable aspect of this program to me. I developed new life-long friendships, partly because I got to know my cohort more intimately than some of my old friends. Hard not to, when you tell everyone your story on the second day.

Speaking of stories, the mentors that shared theirs and worked with us are FAB (fascinating, admirable, and bold). I made that one up. Their experiences challenged my thinking and inspired me to pursue life with greater ambition. I met with two mentors outside the program, and I have pages full of notes and insights from their stories and our conversations that I still reference regularly.

“Choices are in life’s moments. If you miss the moment, you miss your opportunity to make a choice.”

Now back in Portland, Oregon, I am still the quintessential millennial sitting in a coffee shop scouring the web for opportunities. But this time, I have guiding notes accompanying a wider but clearer map. My three-month plan has a starting point and I’ve decided not to add the Beijing Subway just yet.

Vibha Chokhani, a Purpose Accelerator mentor said to me, “Choices are in life’s moments. If you miss the moment, you miss your opportunity to make a choice.”

It all begins with awareness.

WE NEED TO BE AWARE IN THE PRESENT SO WE DON’T MISS OUR CHANCE TO CHOOSE THE LIFE WE WANT.

If we fall asleep, we might miss our stop.

Interested in learning more about upcoming Purpose Accelerator programs in New York and other cities? Leave your information below.

Three officers were fired this week from the Wilmington, North Carolina police department after dash cam footage revealed horrifically racist conversations between them.

But before we delve into that, let’s look at a brief timeline of select white supremacist incidents in police departments across the U.S.—and the FBI warning that came in the middle of them—to add some context to this story.

In 1991, a group of Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies were discovered to be part of a “neo-Nazi, white supremacist gang” known as The Vikings—membership that department officials knew about and did nothing to address.

In 1999, an unknown number of officers in three different Cleveland, Ohio police districts were found to have scrawled racist or Nazi graffiti throughout police quarters, including restrooms and locker rooms.

In 2001, two officers in Williamson County, Texas were fired after they were discovered to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2006, the FBI detailed the specific threat of white supremacists purposefully infiltrating police departments. Though largely (and frustratingly) redacted, an intelligence bulletin describes how white nationalists and skinheads try to blend into police departments by hiding their true beliefs (a practice known as “ghost skinning”) with the purpose of disrupting investigations into supremacist groups and recruiting other white supremacists.

Moving right along, in 2014, a Florida deputy police chief and another officer were fired after an FBI informant outed them as members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 2015, a ProPublica article describing copious racist messages in a New York cop blog also pointed to other racist incidents around the same time in various U.S. cities’ police departments.

And now, here we are in 2020, watching three Wilmington, North Carolina officers lose their jobs after accidentally recording their blatantly racist and violent conversations.

This is by no means a full list, and North Carolina incident is by no means any less egregious than those that preceded it. In a routine review of dash cam footage, former officer Kevin Piner was heard talking to another officer about the protests for racial justice. He said the police department was only concerned with “kneeling down with the black folks.” He called a Black officer in his department “bad news” and a “piece of shit,” saying, “Let’s see how his boys take care of him when shit gets rough, see if they don’t put a bullet in his head.”

In a conversation with another officer later in the day, Piner called a woman he arrested the day before a “negro” and “n—-r.” He referred to a Black magistrate judge as “fucking negro magistrate,” saying, “She needed a bullet in her head right then and move on. Let’s move the body out of the way and keep going.”

As if that weren’t bad enough, the two officers talked about the possibility of a “civil war” coming, with Piner saying he was going to buy an assault rifle. “We are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking ni—–. I can’t wait. God, I can’t wait,” he said, followed by saying that such a war was needed to “wipe ’em off the fucking map. That’ll put ’em back about four or five generations.”

The full report of what was recorded can be found here.

And a news conference with the city council and the new Wilmington police chief, Donny Williams, who had to deal with this mess on his first day on the job:

There’s a lot of talk about implicit racial bias—racial prejudices that we don’t even know we have—in policing. While that’s an important consideration, we can’t overlook the fact that there are also actual white supremacists within some police departments. How many? No one knows. Those mentioned here are just some of the ones who have been caught and identified. But there have clearly been enough of them that the FBI felt the need to issue a bulletin about it and warn that it was a threat. And what was done with that information in that warning after it came out? Did police departments change the way they screen recruits or do a deep dive into their own ranks? Unclear.

No one is saying that all police officers are blatant white supremacists, obviously. But we’ve seen far too many stories of officers voicing white supremacist beliefs and far too many officers and officials turning the other way instead of outing them and ousting them.

In 2016, Samuel Jones, professor of law at Chicago’s John Marshall School of Law, told PBS News Hour that neither the FBI or police departments had established systems for vetting people for white supremacist ties.

“I cannot imagine that the FBI today could issue a report concerning any kind of threat without people being alarmed and wanting immediate action,” he said. “But in this case there seems to be almost an acceptance of it. The thought is ‘it’s just ideology and they have a right to believe this.'”

The problem is “just ideology” isn’t a small thing when we’re talking about people with the means, power, and authority to take people’s lives. A police officer cannot serve and protect the public if they believe that a large percentage of the public isn’t worth serving or protecting. No matter what our personal beliefs are about policing, we should at least all be able to agree on that.

We’ve been hearing about racism much more frequently the past several weeks, but it’s not because racism just appeared. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Racism is sewn into the fabric of America and it doesn’t always look like overt racism. In fact, it doesn’t even always look like the microaggressions that we feel or see on a daily basis. The language we use is filled with racism that we don’t even realize or see. I like to call this “sneaky racism.” It’s sneaky because it is spoon fed to every American from birth through death, and if you aren’t made aware so you can look for it, it will pass right by you, creating what’s known as implicit bias.

Implicit bias is something that we have little control over. It’s that snap judgment or quick tug in your belly that you equate to intuition or just feeling like you have a better understanding of a situation than you actually do. It’s subconscious in nature and we often don’t even know it’s happening.

In American media, we are fed these biases through our television programs, movies, books, newspapers, and news networks. It’s everywhere, and in order to truly get rid of racism and lower the rate of fatal police shootings of unarmed Black people, we need to seek out and eliminate sneaky racism. The type of implicit bias I’m referring to implies that Black and brown people are inherently dangerous.

Implicit bias is a vicious cycle that Americans are caught in and the first step to breaking the cycle is recognizing it when you see it. A great example is this image of a newspaper page from Mississippi, shared by Orlando Jezebel. The caption reads, “Does anyone else see it. Take all the time you need. #BLM.”

Immediately I noticed the disparity between the two headlining stories. I’ll break it down in case it’s not immediately clear.

The photo of the white man is very small, and looks to be a school photo of some sort. His headline is tiny and he’s in the side margin of the paper. The writer of that piece continually refers to the man as a “teen” throughout the article, which technically is correct as the suspect is 19, but in contrast, Black teens and children are often referred to as men and women in articles (even 12-year-old Tamir Rice was referred to as “the Black male” in an interview with the officer who shot him). This particular man is also accused of murder, but you almost wouldn’t know that by the size of the story in comparison to the other headline sitting flush with this one sharing the same front page.

In the larger photo, we see a Black man who was accused of burglary. Throughout this article the man is referred to as a suspect. The article does not use a school photo, which I’m sure is somewhere publicly as most photos are nowadays; they chose to use an obvious mugshot with him donning an orange jumpsuit.

The way implicit bias is displayed in these articles is blatant if you know to look for it. It may not seem like it’s a big deal, but language matters. By using the term “teen” when describing the white suspect, you are humanizing him and providing him more innocence than the Black suspect. Teens are impulsive and make mistakes. They’re easily forgiven their flaws in the name of a second chance due to a teens inherent naivety.

When you use the term “suspect” it conjures the image of someone that is guilty, or likely guilty. It invokes a feeling of wrong doing with little benefit of the doubt. It’s also peculiar that the story on the burglary took up more of the page than the murder. This is also a play on our psyche, making the Black suspect appear more dangerous than the white suspect. Our eyes will automatically be drawn to the larger photo and headline. A school photo versus a mugshot also aids in altering our emotion for the white suspect, though he was the one accused of murder.

These things are sneaky. I would wager that the editor likely didn’t even notice the disparity. These biases are present in movies and television shows with Black and brown characters who are typically portrayed as maids, drug addicts, drug dealers, thugs, gang members, or someone who generally just needs help to navigate life because they’re somehow doing it all wrong until their fairer skinned counterpart comes to save the day. This problem is starting to be somewhat counteracted with more Black and brown writers being hired to shape some of our favorite shows, but the implicit bias is pervasive, and even Black writers can be guilty of the same biases as white writers since we have all been eating from the same media spoon our entire lives.

As the world continues to wake up from its long slumber and actively works to become anti-racist, I have hope that we can work together to call attention to these biases in media and fix them.

Michael Keaton, who famously played Batman in two Tim Burton movies, 1989’s “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns, is in talks to reprise the role for Warner Bros.’ upcoming DC movie “The Flash.”

If Keaton makes the deal, he may be in for more than just one film. He could be cast as the Dark Knight in several other D.C.-related film projects.

The idea is that Keaton’s older version of Batman would be more of a mentor or guide, like Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The news should be especially exciting to people of a certain age group. To put is simply, for Gen X, Michael Keaton is Batman.

Every era and generation has its own heroes that reflect the values and aspirations of the day. Cowboys have always seemed to reflect the times whether it was John Wayne who played the “white hat” good guy in westerns of of the 1940s or Clint Eastwood who played the outlaw in ’70s Spaghetti westerns.

James Bond has also evolved with the times. A Baby Boomer will swear by Sean Connery and his mid-century Sinatra-like swagger. Gen Xers may love the high-concept and tongue-in-cheek Roger Moore-era Bond, while Millenials swear by the gritty, serious performances by Daniel Craig.

Batman is a similar character. Boomers’ Batman was the campy, colorful TV show from the ’60s starring the intentionally stiff Adam West in his gray tights. Millennials swear by Christian Bale, who played a scarier, gravelly-voiced character.

However, wedged in between is the best Batman, at least if you ask any Gen Xer, Michael Keaton. The Tim Burton Batman films staring Keaton were groundbreaking because they created a dark version of Batman that paid tribute to the character’s pulp roots.

The films were also a nod to recent comic book versions of the character, “The Dark Knight Returns” and “Batman: The Killing Joke.”

These days, it’s assumed that modern adaptations of comic books and reboots of old properties will be dark. It’s become one of the most boring cliches in Hollywood.

The lets-go-dark fad was never more evident than the most recent cinematic return to Gotham, “The Joker” starring Joaquin Phoenix that mistook grit for substance.

In the ’80s, most people associated Batman with the campy ’60s television show starring Adam West and superhero films with the Superman blockbusters starring Christopher Reeve.

Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” was controversial right off the bat with the casting of Michael Keaton who was most famous for his comedic roles in “Mr. Mom,” “Gung Ho,” and the 1988 Tim Burton hit, “Beetlejuice.”

Keaton was suggested for the role by producer Jon Peters who thought he had an “edgy, tormented quality” after seeing him in “Clean and Sober.”

In the pre-internet world, the blowback for the casting of Keaton was incredible. Warner Bros. received over 50,000 letters from angry comic book fans who couldn’t stomach the idea that Mr. Mom would be playing the Dark Knight.

But when the film came out, Keaton was lauded for his performance.

Hal Hinson from The Washington Post perfectly summed it up saying:

“For Batman purists, Michael Keaton was an upsetting choice, but it’s a choice brilliantly redeemed in realization,” he wrote. “What Keaton brings to his characterization of both Batman and his millionaire-playboy alter ego, Bruce Wayne, is a quality of coiled concentration, a wary vigilance … This is a true star performance, subtle, authoritative and sexually vibrant.”

With his first performance in the Batsuit, Keaton would lay the groundwork for just about all to follow by bringing an intense, brooding quality to both the Batman and Bruce Wayne personas. Since, most film portrayals have been variations on the themes created by Keaton.

“Wayne’s eyes are piercing in a way that flashes icebergs of emotion,” Joshua Meyer form Slashfilm writes. “Keaton’s Batman has a thousand-yard, hard-ass stare that cuts through every other live-action Batman we’ve seen since.”

When asked how he feels about others playing the role, Keaton’s answer is short and sweet. “I’m Batman. I’m very secure in that.”

And Gen X agrees.

It’s officially backyard barbecue season — or, at the very least, backyard grilling season (we’re sticklers). Combined with the likelihood of full-on lockdowns returning to the U.S., that means it’s time to get some cool ingredients in the kitchen and try new things. No more sourdough bread for a few days.

Our recommendation: Truly travel your tastebuds. Forget the failed idea of certain foods being “American” on the 4th and make something completely new. Like this Sumatran Crispy Fish Rendang recipe from Gordon Ramsay’s second season of Uncharted. In season two of the NatGeo show, Ramsay has traveled to Tasmania, India, Norway, Guyana, Lousiana, South Africa, and Indonesia. In each episode, Ramsay meets up with local experts, chefs, foragers, hunters, and even fishing crews.

In the Sumatra episode — which aired Sunday, June 28th — Ramsay and legendary chef and Indonesian food historian William Wongso break down a Crisp Fish Rendang. Having lived in Indonesian and traveled around Sumatra, I can say with authority: This is a dish you definitely want to try.

My recommendation here would be to skip frying the fish and instead throw it on the grill — just slather it in olive oil and salt first. You can easily follow this recipe with either whole tilapia or whole sea bream. Small white fish that are still whole are fairly interchangeable. Also, the ingredients on this list for the chili paste are fairly easy to find. If you can’t find “candlenut,” I’ve seen it supplemented with either macadamia or cashew in a pinch.

Check out the recipe below! Uncharted airs on NatGeo Sundays at 10/9c.

Crispy Fish Rendang

Yields: 1 whole fish, 4 servings

1 whole 2- to 3-lb white fish, scaled and gutted
FOR SPICE PASTE

• 10 shallots, roughly chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 10 large red chilis, chopped
• 2 tsp chopped ginger
• 4 tsp chopped galangal
• 4 tsp ground candlenut
• salt, to taste
• 1 tsp ground white pepper
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tbsp palm sugar
• zest of 1 lime
• 2 cups water

Plus:

• 2 cups and 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 cup coconut cream, 24% fat content

FOR CRISPY FISH

• kosher salt, to taste
• black pepper, to taste
• 1 lime, cut into wedges
• 2 tbsp sliced scallions

METHOD

• In a blender, combine all spice paste ingredients except coconut cream.
• Add 2 tbsp vegetable oil to a wok. When hot, add spice paste and coconut cream. Stay close to it and continue to cook, allowing to caramelize. Remove from heat when paste is dark brown but not burnt. Set aside.
• In a separate wok, heat two cups vegetable oil.
• When oil is hot, be sure to dry off fish as much as possible. Score the skin of the fish with light hash marks and place in the hot oil. Fish will likely pop with any moisture, so be cautious and do not stand too close to fish for the first five minutes of frying.
• After 10 minutes, fish will be crispy and cooked through. Remove from wok and place on a wire resting rack. Season with salt and pepper.
• On a platter, place the crispy fish and top with spice paste. Garnish with sliced scallions and lime wedges, squeezing one lime wedge on fish directly.

Over his two decade-plus career, Christopher Nolan has more or less gotten sterling press, from glowing reviews of his popular movies to fawning profiles that treat him as a brainy genius who makes movies that play like intricate puzzles. He even loves MacGruber! That all changed on Monday, though. After an interview with Anne Hathaway, veteran of The Dark Knight Rises, went viral, in which she said he doesn’t allow people to sit when filming his movies, Nolan suddenly got the worst reviews of his career.

The news came via a chat Hathaway did with her Les Misérables co-star Hugh Jackman for Variety. Jackman was talking about strict directors, and he casually mentioned those he’s worked with who forbid cellphones on set, namely Darren Aronofsky and Denis Villeneuve. Hathaway pointed out he forgot Nolan, with whom he worked on The Prestige. It also made her think about something else he bans:

Chris also doesn’t allow chairs. I worked with him twice. He doesn’t allow chairs, and his reasoning is, if you have chairs, people will sit, and if they’re sitting, they’re not working. I mean, he has these incredible movies in terms of scope and ambition and technical prowess and emotion. It always arrives at the end under schedule and under budget. I think he’s onto something with the chair thing.

Hathaway likely mentioned it off-handedly, as an eccentric quirk, not as something that particularly bothered her. After all, sitting is bad for the body! Then again, absolutely no sitting is a bit much. And with that, Twitter had finally come for Christopher Nolan.

There was simple mockery:

And the use of popular GIFs.

Some were even more pointed in their criticism, thinking he sounds like a bad chain store manager.

https://twitter.com/kaludiasays/status/1277683723513839616

Some used his own movies against him.

And some pointed out that there’s an awful lot of sitting in the films of Christopher Nolan.

Meanwhile, perhaps one day we’ll get to learn how many chairs there are in the perpetually delayed Tenet.

Scrubs was just one of several shows that saw old episodes removed from streaming services over blackface, joining The Office, Community and even The Golden Girls as classic shows that have had their content altered or removed in recent days. But according to Scrubs showrunner Bill Lawrence, the episodes removed due to blackface may return to Hulu after those scenes are properly edited out.

As TV Line noted, Lawrence apologized for the show’s use of blackface on Fake Doctors, Real Friends, the Scrubs-based podcast (started by show stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison) that deals with both the show and topics in the present.

One of the podcast’s episodes, called Our Difficult Past, featured a discussion of episodes that featured blackface, including one where J.D. wore blackface at a party and another where he and Sarah Chalke’s character wore makeup to look like Turk in fantasy sequences. He apologized to Braff, Faison and Chalke for putting them in an uncomfortable position, describing himself as the “gatekeeper” of what happened in the series as showrunner:

“The reason why that word ‘showrunner’ exists in television is because you’re the gatekeeper, and anything that gets allowed on a show you ultimately have to take responsibility for,” Lawrence said. “So, first off, super sorry that any of you guys had to deal with any stuff because… even though we’re all friends and it was a super creative and reciprocal environment, you guys still, at the end of the day, did and were receptive to doing whatever stuff we told you [to do].”

He also noted that the episodes in question could reappear on the streaming service after editing, which has happened to an episode of The Office last week. Lawrence didn’t confirm that it would happen, but essentially said it was possible:

During the 42-minute discussion, Lawrence also suggested that the episodes depicting blackface will “probably” return to Hulu after he has the chance to remove the offensive material. “Twitter is like, ‘Why did you pull the whole episodes?’ Why didn’t you just edit those moments out and put them back on?’ And I said to one person, ‘It’s a pandemic. I don’t really have an editing facility up right now.’ I’ll probably do that, but the first thing I wanted to do was get them off TV because it bummed me out personally,” he said. “It just made me feel sh–ty.”

Based on that comment it may take a while for those episodes to return, but it seems Lawrence is doing his best to acknowledge why they were removed and take responsibility for the trope’s use in the show. You can listen to the full episode of the podcast and conversation between the show’s creator and its stars here.

[via TV Line]