Lil Wayne caused a stir yesterday when he posted a tweet praising the Trump administration’s “Platinum Plan” and posing alongside the man himself. Fans reacted with dismay to learn that the Funeral rapper had endorsed Trump and even some of his peers spoke up to criticize his decision. One of those peers, 50 Cent, might not have the moral high ground — but when has that ever stopped him from a good troll?
Posting a screenshot of TMZ’s story about the endorsement along with the photo, 50 censured his fellow rapper. “Oh no, Wayne,” he wrote. “I would never have took this picture.” However, 50 himself was just admonished for doing something similar, including by his own ex-girlfriend Chelsea Handler, when he posted an Instagram photo of a misleading television news graphic about Joe Biden’s supposed tax plan proposing a 62% tax on New Yorkers making more than $400,000/year (something 50, a resident of Connecticut, wouldn’t even have to worry about anyway). He said he’d be voting for Trump just to avoid the additional taxes, never mind Trump’s racist rhetoric.
50 Cent
Such was the backlash against 50 that even he had to clarify that he was just joking about voting for Trump a few days later, with Handler confirming that he was supporting Biden instead. That didn’t stop conservative figures from adopting him as a symbol of their movement alongside Ice Cube and Kanye West, despite many of those same characters spending the past decade criticizing rappers and rap music for their content. This election can’t wrap up soon enough.
Back in the mid-00s, Mike D’Antoni’s Phoenix Suns revolutionized basketball with its high-flying, Seven Seconds or Less offense. The whole operation was possible in large part to the brilliance of point guard Steve Nash, who won a pair of MVP awards with the Suns for his troubles.
A whole lot of time has passed since then, and a number of teams have adopted principles used by those Suns. Nash will presumably try to do this, too, as he’s now the head coach of the Brooklyn Nets. Like many first-time head coaches, building out his staff is crucial, and on Friday morning, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN brought word that Nash will turn to his former head coach as an assistant, as D’Antoni, along with longtime assistant Ime Udoka, will head to Brooklyn.
Mike D’Antoni and Ime Udoka are finalizing deals to become assistant coaches under Steve Nash with the Brooklyn Nets, sources tell ESPN. Together, D’Antoni and Nash were the architects of the Seven Seconds or Less Offense with the Phoenix Suns in the mid-2000’s.
The pair will join Jacque Vaughn as members of the Nets’ assistant coach staff. D’Antoni will join the Nets following his departure from the Houston Rockets, where he was the head coach from 2016 until a few months back, while Udoka was with the San Antonio Spurs for years before joining the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019. D’Antoni isn’t the only member of the 7SOL Suns who will help Nash make the transition to coaching, either, as Amar’e Stoudamire recently hopped on board Nash’s staff as a player development coach.
In the incredibly saturated roguelike genre, Hades stands out by turning death, the most common gameplay penalty of all time, into the only gateway to the richest parts of the story. This puts a fascinating spin on the consequences of failure in video games: when you die, the story advances.
In Hades, you play as the son of Hades, the Greek god of the dead, as you make violent attempts to escape the underworld in order to find a less-chaotic life on Mount Olympus. The operative word in that description is “attempts” because, after each foiled escape, you’re promptly returned to your father’s literal office in hell for both a scolding and a new piece of the narrative puzzle.
And there will be a lot of attempts.
This should sound refreshing to fans of roguelike and Souls-esque games who typically feel an excruciating loss of progress when met with death. Usually, those are the stakes that sell the game. Spelunky, Dead Cells, and Enter the Gungeon are just a few titles that have taken off because of their difficulty level; so with the promise of not only difficulty but also “reward” each time players die, Hades offers an innovative twist that breaks new ground in the roguelike genre.
I love a roguelike on paper but can only take so much heartbreak. Yet, in Hades, when I find myself banging my head against the keyboard after a failed run, I can find some solace knowing that there’s something new to discover right around the corner. For example, an especially difficult boss will crush me for the fourth time in a row but, upon my resurrection, I’ll meet a Greek goddess who will piece together more of my backstory and introduce new means to increase my base stats. Run after run, Hades simultaneously deals out story and new gameplay mechanics to keep the player not only entertained, but motivated to try again.
I don’t think I’m alone in saying that part of why I play games is to escape my own personal day-to-day hell, so I’ve always had a hard time understanding the attraction to punishingly difficult games. Especially when, in some games, like Dark Souls itself, part of the experience is the frustrating movement or combat.
In Hades, not only have they found an innovative way to keep the player engaged between deaths, they also spent a ton of time refining the combat and movement into a buttery smooth, well-paced, and easy to understand system. There’s a small handful of weapons, with a few different moves, and a large variety of enemies that are all exceptionally polished. It’s the perfect pick up and put down game: I’ve gone days without playing and the movement muscle memory instantly returns to me without feeling like I need a couple practice runs in before I try it for “real.” This all sounds like basic game design and something that every developer should strive for, but Hades reminds you what makes the difference between an 8/10 and a 10/10 game when it comes to “feel.”
Roguelikes sink or swim in the gameplay department, but that distinction alone clearly didn’t satiate developer Supergiant Games. In every other department they took a victory lap and they aren’t afraid to show it: in their recent marketing materials for, what ended up being, a front page Reddit AMA, they flaunted that they recorded over 300,000 words of dialogue for the game and boasted that their soundtrack is two and a half hours long, among other things.
Numbers are cool and all, but man do they become impressive when you play Hades and quickly realize that not only is every voice-actor and piece of music completely dynamite, but that an overwhelming majority of that work sat on one person’s shoulders: Darren Korb, who both composed the music and voiced the main character. The attention to detail there, combined with a gorgeous and well-researched art direction, make for a complete experience that honestly feels deserving of something beyond its $25 price point. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that a good majority of indie roguelikes have no problem looking and sounding like sh*t while still finding great success. That’s not a complaint I have per say, but I think Hades clearly wanted to be a game — not just a one-off experience beyond the competition.
And that attention to detail means no player gets left behind. Supergiant Games originally released Hades in 2018 on Steam Early Access in order to ensure that their “hardcore” audience, typically associated with roguelike games, could provide finer-point feedback before the full release. This is evident when exploring the game’s Patch Notes Archive, a detailed history of every update that was made to Hades over the course of its time in Early Access, where Supergiant goes out of its way to specifically denote changes made to the game that were “inspired by community feedback”. Once they clearly addressed those needs, namely with thousands of rebalances, Hades then took the steps to ensure that “casual” players can experience everything the game has to offer as well.
Supergiant introduced “God Mode,” a toggle that can be activated at any time during play that buffs your stats and makes enemies easier to defeat. What makes this fantastic outside of other games who have attempted something similar is that even with God Mode enabled, every player still has access to 100 percent of the content and unlockables. For me, that cultivates trust in the game that it’s going to deliver even in its final hours; it makes me feel that Hades has one final ending that everyone, regardless of skill-level, deserves to experience.
Trust, especially in the modern era of video games, is the often overlooked ingredient in game development. Ignoring the micro-transaction multiplayer experience for a second, even big companies that develop expensive and expansive AAA single-player experiences tend to produce games that feel rushed to release date. These games feel unfinished, uncared for, and create unease in communities that invest hours upon hours into these titles. With Supergiant Games, who have an impressive track record of critically successful games like Pyre, Transistor, and Bastion, it feels like they know that they’re always one failed game away from losing their audience forever.
The result is a brilliantly polished video game that wants you to feel like hours sunk into it are hours well spent, in life and in death. Hades took the time to make something worth playing, whether you like roguelikes or not because they know that your time is worth something too.
Vin Diesel helped produce one of the most distinctly odd moments of the pandemic when the Kelly Clarkson Show virtual audience danced along to his debut single, “Feel Like I Do,” last month. As for the song itself, it was a pedestrian bit of tropical house that was released on Kygo’s Palm Tree Records label and made with Kygo collaborator Peter Martin. The single was actually a chart success for Diesel, as it debuted at No. 18 on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs in early October.
After a taste of glory, Diesel is looking for more on his newest single, “Days Are Gone.” Like “Feel Like I Do” before it, “Days Are Gone” is a completely acceptable and generic tropical house song on which the actor gets nostalgic for the less restrictive lifestyle of pre-pandemic times.
Ahead of the song’s release, Diesel guested on The Late Late Show last night to discuss the track, telling James Corden of it:
“As you know, I love all kinds of music, but because of the times, I felt like the first few songs that I release should be upbeat or positive in some way. So I’ve been focusing on tropical house, obviously with the Kygo connection and with my songwriter/producer Peter Martin. We’ve been focusing on upbeat songs. ‘Days Are Gone’ is a song that kind of represents how we all feel right now, reminiscing about a time pre-COVID where our lives were different, where we… I can’t say that it’s about the pandemic, but I can say it’s something that I think people will relate to, the nostalgic element of the song, I think people will really gravitate to. I hope they do. I remember my friend Ozuna saying to me one day, ‘Every music artist in the world creates music to be No. 1, but you create music out of love, and because of that, it will probably be No. 1.”
He also spoke about his blossoming music career more broadly, saying he turned to music after he had to delay upcoming film projects: “The idea that I had to push Fast 9 made me feel… I didn’t want to feel like I was letting down a whole audience, a whole Fast audience. So, thinking about what I could do to compensate for the fact that the film was being pushed ’til 2021, I realized I had this other creative outlet and I had my first opportunity, really, to delve completely into the music. […] And that’s what I did. For me, I’m very grateful that I’ve been toying with music so long that on a year like this that no one could forget, I had a creative outlet, and that is music.”
Listen to “Days Are Gone” and watch Diesel on The Late Late Show above.
2FeetBino “can’t wait to put [his] Hancock on a check” on “Bro Code,” a swaggering single where the Atlanta rapper shows off his charismatic mic presence over an 808-based instrumental.
Courtney Bell — “PSA”
Detroit MC Courtney Bell dropped an urgent message for the times on “PSA,” a bold record from his upcoming Poverty Stricken album where he analyzes societal ills and surmises, “They infiltrate our hoods by these rappers that fit the image / these ‘Lil whats-his-names’ that get funded by the system.”
Billy Danze — “Gotham” Feat. Method Man
Two legendary movements collide on “Gotham,” where Billy Danze and Method Man get busy over producer TooBusy’s soaring production. The song is from Danze’s We Busy project, which will be out on November 15th.
Faze Blaze — “For The Team” Feat. Tee Grizzley
In the “unlikely collaboration” department, Faze Clan gamer Faze Blaze collaborated with Tee Grizzley on “For The Team,” which starts off with the Twitch streamer recounting “another day on the block.” Perhaps Blaze, who did a marathon stream with Drake (before getting unfollowed), should’ve played his cards better.
Brittney Carter — As I Am
Chicago rapper Brittney Carter gained social media fame over the past year via iPhone-recorded freestyles that showed off her technically-precise, existentially curious lyrics. This week Carter released her As I Am project, which shows her lyrically locked in and meditative over nine-tracks.
Dave East — “Pain (EastMix)”
Just a week after releasing his Karma 3 project, Harlem’s Dave East dropped some bars on a 2Pac classic with his “EastMix” of “Pain,” where he reflects on he and his team’s come-up, celebrating that he’s “got records comin’ back gold, I put ‘em on my wall now.”
Dax — “Gotham”
Dax is railing at the establishment on “Gotham,” a fiery track where he chides, “You listen to these people who got nothin’ to say / You wouldn’t know real if it slapped you right in the face.” The song was paired with a solemn clip which interspersed clips of Dax as Batman, and bloody in chains, perhaps for speaking too much truth.
El Camino — Walk By Faith
Buffalo rhymer El Camino released Walk By Faith earlier this week, beating the Friday rush. He executive produced the gritty, lyrically dense project and gave production duties to fellow Buffalo native Camouflage Monk, who laced the 15-track project with a soundscape that veered from the sinister “Run The Block” to the soulful “Valentino Quarantine.”
Hollyhood Bay Bay — “Trap” Feat. Young Dolph & Trapboy Freddy
Dallas-based DJ Hollyhood Bay Bay (of “Ay Bay Bay” homage) recently linked Trapboy Freddy and Young Dolph for “Trap,” an 808-driven ode to the fast life. Dolph jokes, “I be dead fresh, b*tch closed caskets / I got money habits, tragic” and Freddy tears through a braggadocious verse where he lets us know he “pay for it cash, no writeoff.”
Junglepussy — “Bad News”
Junglepussy released her JP4 album last week. Yesterday she unveiled a visual for “Bad News,” an enchanting ode to being “on my own” which was perfectly augmented with an eerie visual of reds, purples, and chains.
Kevin Gates — “Weeks”
Kevin Gates begins the melancholy “Weeks” rhyming “I ain’t took my chain off in weeks / if I tuck they gon / try to kill me anyway,” then proceeds to delve into the turmoil of the streets with his characteristic introspection and penchant for harmonies.
Omarion — “Mutual” Feat. Wale
Wale’s been tearing up features all year. This week he dropped some slick bars over “Mutual,” a funky track from Omarion’s upcoming The Kinection album. The DC rhymer crafted a seductive verse, rhyming “dark liquor make my intentions as clear as Patron.”
Symba — “Big Homie” Feat. 2 Chainz
Symba and 2 Chainz are twin towers on “Big Homie,” a single from Symba’s upcoming Don’t Run From R.A.P album. The two take turns affirming their greatness over a hypnotizing flue, as 2 Chainz concludes, “N****s talk murder so much, it don’t even seem violent.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Guapdad 4000 is equal parts stressed and blessed in his colorful video for “Alpha,” which released today and features some truly hilarious imagery and witty rhymes from the Ferragamo Falcon. The Chris Simmons-directed video is a signature tongue-in-cheek clip from Guapdad, featuring references to import tuner culture and anime, and showing off the rapper’s latest merch, while the James Delgado-produced beat gives him some down-home Bay Area flavor to get off clever bars on.
Guap recently announced that his debut album had been completed during his trip to New York City and fans of his Falcon Fridays drops and wacky “Lil Scammer That Could” video couldn’t be happier. He’s had a busy 2020 building his buzz with tracks like “Hairless Horsemen” and “Orgasm Full Of Pain,” while he cross-branded with features on Deante Hitchcock’s “Deja Vu” and Thundercat’s “Dragonball Durag.” He’s made quite the name for himself and looks to complete his coronation soon.
Meanwhile, his hilarious sense of humor is on full display in Uproxx’s new show, React Like You Know, watching Lil Kim’s “Crush On You” video and calling Lil Cease a “50% Mase.” Check it out here.
Watch Guapdad 4000’s “Alpha” video above.
Guapdad 4000 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm has two breakout stars, as Johnny the Monkey was already a star: Tutar, played by future Oscar nominee Maria Bakalova, and Jeanise Jones, Tutar’s babysitter who teaches her that women can drive cars and that she should use her brain, because “your daddy is a liar.” (Judy Riuliani, er, Rudy Giuliani can relate.)
Following the release of the sequel, Jones’ church set up a GoFundMe to raise money for Jones, who’s currently unemployed due to COVID-19. “She is one of the most authentic people I’ve ever met. One good thing that has come from this is that Jeanise doesn’t have to worry about “Tutar” anymore. She has WORRIED about this young lady for a year,” the GoFundMe reads. The campaign is up to nearly $145,000, including $100,000 from Borat himself, Sacha Baron Cohen.
Peoplereports that the actor “donated $100,000 to Jones’ Oklahoma City community on her behalf… The money, to be distributed by the Ebenezer Baptist Church at Jones’ request, has been earmarked for shelter, food, and any other needs the community has.”
“I was blown away but not surprised because I was told about what type of heart this man has,” [pastor Derrick Scobey] says of Cohen’s donation, which will help the community currently struggling with ice storms and power outages. “Maybe it’s a little risqué, some of the things in the movie, but he has a good heart.”
In a span of just three years, the Professional Fighters League has gone from an exciting new startup to one of the most established MMA organizations in the world. With a mix of hungry, young talent like rising star Kayla Harrison, an innovative format that features a regular season, postseason and championship and a future-thinking executive in the form of Peter Murray, it should be no surprise the PFL has exploded onto the scene.
“MMA is the growth sport of this decade and the fastest-growing sport in the world,” Murray told Uproxx Sports. “We saw there was room for more than one leader and clearly, MMA fans are seeking to consume more premium, live and quality MMA events, fights and content.”
Immediately out of the gate, the PFL has differentiated itself from the UFC, Bellator, and other top MMA organizations. During the regular season, fighters from 25 countries accrue points across six weight classes, with more points awarded for finishing your opponent rather than letting judges decide the bouts. The top eight fighters in each division earn a spot in the playoffs, where the quarterfinals and semifinals are held on the same night. And in the championship, each division winner earns $1 million and the 2020 world championship.
As innovators in the space, the PFL has also already launched presentation adjustments like a ref cam that brings fans into the cage, punch speed metrics, and have kick speed and heart rate detection expected to roll out in 2021.
“It’s a great product, quite simply,” Murray said. “We’re the only organization in the world that presents MMA in this fashion and it speaks to not only the combat and MMA fans, but fans of other sports as well. It’s programmatic, with a beginning, middle and end, and a spectacle that includes belts and major money on the line. If you combine our sports season format with our cutting-edge presentation, integrating real-time fighter data and fight analytics, it really is MMA 2.0. It’s next-gen.”
In a short period of time, the PFL acquired the No. 1 streamed content on ESPN+ Thursday Nights in 2019 and more than 500,000 viewers to its championship event on New Year’s Eve, riding the popularity of fighters like Harrison, who is a top-3 female fighter in the world and Ray Cooper, who took home the welterweight crown in 2019. They also brought in top talent, with names like former UFC and Bellator contender Rory MacDonald.
“What comes with that is the opportunity to make more money. That’s why we’re seeing top-ranked athletes flock to the PFL. Year over year, it’s going to get harder to get in and it’s going to get harder to keep the top spot,” Murray said. “Our fighters are exclusive to the PFL, and in most cases, fighters are exclusive on multi-fight agreements. Over time, we are absolutely open to PFL champions competing against other organization’s champions. I think fans want to see that. Those would be fantastic event extensions and those are things we look forward to in the future.”
As the organization continues to grow and begins to reach even more fans with its talented roster, it’s important for Murray and the PFL to weigh in on national conversations, such as the upcoming election. That’s why the PFL has rolled out a league-wide, non-partisan initiative encouraging everyone to exercise their right to vote.
“Like any brand, and certainly I believe organization and sport, it’s on our minds, it’s on our fans’ minds and we think it’s a positive message,” Murray said. “We’re not asking anyone to pick sides, we just want them to get out there and support what this country is built on.”
What happens, though, when fighters do opt to pick sides, as the UFC’s Colby Covington has done time and time again?
“That’s up to the fighters,” Murray said. “We don’t own their likeness or political points of view. Our fighters, and other athletes beyond MMA, it’s up to them on how they want to leverage their own platforms to share their views on politics or otherwise.”
As for what actually takes place inside the cage, the PFL is ready to get going after rescheduling its 2020 season.
“We’re locked and loaded for April,” Murray said. “With respect to the pandemic, we made an early decision in 2020 as COVID became a real apparent factor to create destruction in the world and society and business, including sport. So we made the decision to reschedule our third season to 2021. The two guiding factors are the safety of our fighters as well as preservation and maintaining the integrity of our sports season format. Anything less than a full season didn’t make sense so we rescheduled. We had the benefit of seeing what worked and what didn’t in sports. So looking at what the NBA executed in a bubble, the NHL and others, even the UFC doing single-destination in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. So we took those learnings and are adapting to our model.”
The PFL plans to host a single-destination regular season with its own version of the bubble. Should the landscape change, Murray noted, the organization has the ability to open up to larger-scale, bigger events for the postseason. The first half of the PFL regular season is currently scheduled to begin April 23 on ESPN2, with scheduled bouts to be announced in the coming months.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE — Hey look, a good show
My only real complaint about the show How to With John Wilson is that I’m not sure how to explain it in a way that will get across how good it is. I’m going to try, but bear with me. How to With John Wilson is a new HBO docuseries that premiered last week and featured its host banging around New York and making conversation with people to try to understand more about the human condition. Nope. That’s not good. Let me try again.
How to With John Wilson is a new HBO docuseries and comedy that uses massive amounts of footage shot in New York and a number of interviews with people on the street to try to get at what makes people tick and why they are the way they are and sometimes the episode claims to be about scaffolding but it’s actually about psychology and nope, this sentence is entirely too long. Strike two. Let’s give it one more crack.
How to With John Wilson is a good show. It uses what its host described to us in an interview as a “psychotic” amount of footage to get at what makes people, and a city, work, together. There are man-on-the-street interviews that reveal more in 30 seconds than some documentaries do in an hour. The episodes range from funny to sweet to heartfelt to kind of crushing, in a good way, sometimes all in one 30-minute block. It’s not entirely like anything I’ve ever seen on television. The closest I can get, I think, is to tell you that it’s kind of like Nathan for You, but less mean-spirited and more hopeful about humanity, which makes sense because Nathan Fielder is an executive producer on the show.
Just hearing someone being able to speak in their own words and give them time to… you give the microphone to people who usually don’t get it. I want to see what makes these people happy or sad or what they think about all of these complicated issues. We pretend to be all black and white about stuff, but we all live in this gray area, and a lot of times people don’t know why they feel a certain type of way about something. I feel like I can relate to that a lot and that’s why I just like having discussions with people and showing them… I don’t know, I also feel like it’s anthropology in a way and just documenting a specific time and place. A lot of my favorite documentaries are people just talking about their love lives or their obsessions or stuff like that.
That’s better. I probably should have just started with that. I think you’re getting the idea now. Each episode claims to be about one thing — the premiere was “How to Make Small Talk”; future episodes include “How to Put Up Scaffolding” and the stunning finale “How to Make the Perfect Risotto” — but twists and turns to get at something much deeper. It’s a wild ride that works even when it probably shouldn’t. Most of that is its creator, John Wilson, who narrates and films almost everything and is perfectly happy to follow a loose thread wherever it takes him. Sometimes it takes him to Spring Break in Cancun. Sometimes it takes him to a half-constructed hotel. Sometimes it takes him into the New York subway for a 14-second single shot of Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan trying and failing to swipe his MetroCard.
When I watched this perfect gem, these 14 incandescently funny seconds, I ached to know more. Did MacLachlan realize he was being filmed? It sure doesn’t seem that way. How did he resolve his MetroCard problem? Did HBO have to clear this with him? Does he know he’s appearing in this series? Has he watched it? Does he love it? (I really hope he loves it.)
The short version of everything I’ve tried to say goes something like this: How to With John Wilson is a fascinating experiment that required a Herculean effort and a dedication to a very specific craft and the fact that it works at all, let alone well, is a borderline miracle. It is sui generis, one of a kind, in a time where that’s becoming more rare. I’m not sure how they did it. I’m still not sure I’ve explained it well, or even accurately. I am glad it exists, though. It’s a special little thing.
ITEM NUMBER TWO — You can’t fool me
This is a commercial for LinkedIn. It is fine. It does the thing most commercials do In These Uncertain Times, with the people in masks, and the assurances that their company and/or service can be useful in new and/or different ways, and the… and the… and…
Hang on.
Wait.
Is that…
THAT’S THE TRUE ROMANCE MUSIC.
It is. I checked and everything, even though I did not have to. I have seen True Romance enough times to know the dinky bonk sounds of Hans Zimmer’s “You’re So Cool” the instant I hear them. It’s not an unrecognizable song. It stands out. It stands out in True Romance, a movie about a man who falls in love with a prostitute and kills her pimp and runs off with a suitcase full of cocaine. It’s a strange fit in that context the first time you hear it, but eventually, it becomes identifiable with the film to the degree that it becomes a very strange fit for a commercial about, like, networking to advance your career.
I won’t lie to you. I pointed at my television and shouted the first time I saw this. I interrupted the conversation I was in and yelled “THAT’S THE TRUE ROMANCE MUSIC” at my screen like I was going to win a prize for identifying it. I have done the same thing every time since. I caught myself muttering it under my breath to an empty room. It’s been a weird few months for all of us.
Anyway, here’s the proof.
And here’s the text of Alabama Worley’s closing monologue, which I really do think someone should lay over top of the footage from the LinkedIn commercial, just to see how weird or funny it is.
Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool. And sometimes Clarence asks me what I would have done if he had died, if that bullet had been two inches more to the left. To this, I always smile, as if I’m not going to satisfy him with a response. But I always do. I tell him of how I would want to die, but that the anguish and the want of death would fade like the stars at dawn, and that things would be much as they are now. Perhaps. Except maybe I wouldn’t have named our son Elvis.
Three notes in closing:
You are a fool if you thought you were going to sneak this past me, LinkedIn
I am going to watch True Romance again this weekend
Christopher Walken’s line reading of “They snatched my narcotics” in that movie will live inside my head until I expire and possibly beyond
True Romance. Good movie. Brad Pitt is a delight.
ITEM NUMBER THREE — I’m not entirely sure that I’ll watch this show but I am very happy it exists
I get on Twitter… talk a little shit.. Get off… Back to life…
There are very few jobs I want in this world more than “judge on a daytime television show.” It seems very easy and lucrative. Judge Judy films like 50 days a year and makes $50 million. That’s a cool million per day of work, just to boss people around and call them bozos. I could do that. I could do it for way less. It is infuriating that I am not a television judge yet. I even, for real, not joking, have a law degree. It’s sitting 10 feet away in a box I haven’t opened in three years. I’m qualified. Come on.
I say all of this in part to get it on the record and in part because Ice-T has a judge show now. Kind of. He has a mediator show. Called The Mediator. Here, look.
Each side will plead their argument, providing the evidence, facts and details of the case to Ice-T, who will then call upon various well-known and knowledgeable experts to share their perspective and advice. As an unbiased and respected third party, Ice-T will offer his best recommendation for how the complainants should proceed. If they accept his suggestion, the case will be settled. If they choose not to accept, the case will move to court.
This is all cool and interesting and it’s a little funny that Ice-T of all people has now played both a cop and a judge on television, but the real story is the quotes Deadline ran to accompany this announcement.
“Finding a resolution between two hostile sides means finding someone levelheaded that not only has respect but can also analyze complex issues in different ways,” said Ice-T. “I think my opinions are rooted in facts and fairness so I know I can help these people.”
Well said, Ice-T. But I think what would really drive this home is a borderline insane set of analogies from a well-meaning producer who has no fear at all of deploying hyperbole on the record.
“Ice-T has the credibility of an OG, the wisdom of Yoda, and the sense of humor of a standup comic. Never has a voice like his been needed more in the marketplace,” Krasnow added.
Again, I don’t know that I’ll ever watch this show. I might check it out once out of curiosity. Either way, I’m mostly just glad it exists. Good for Ice-T.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR — “To be fair…”
I don’t have much to say about this video. I don’t know that I need to say much. It is Desus & Mero — who are consistently great — doing a parody of John Oliver’s show, as a bit, in reference to Oliver and his crew always winning the Emmy in their category. It is very good and very funny and it nails a lot of the little gestures and phrasing that Oliver uses on his show, probably without even realizing. The accents are… less on point. Which makes it even funnier. And the wigs. Wigs help, too.
I voted by mail last week. It was easy and straightforward and important, in general, obviously, but also specifically, because I live in Pennsylvania, one of the only states that matter this year, thanks to the relentlessly stupid Electoral College. I did miss voting in person, though. There’s a ceremony to it all that I really enjoy. I love pressing the buttons. I wish I got to pull a big lever that made a loud KA-CHUNK sound when I locked in my decision. That would be satisfying.
Another reason I like voting in person: snacks. There are these sweet ladies who work at my assigned polling location and the last few elections they’ve handed out donuts to people who voted. And that’s cool. At least I considered it cool until I heard that ageless wonder Paul Rudd was handing out cookies to rain-soaked voters waiting in line outside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
And lest you think those pictures are just some hokey celebrity photo opp, here’s video of him doing it.
What a king. What a sweet man. Do you think he baked the cookies himself? I bet he did. I have no reason to believe it, nor is it very likely, but I still believe it anyway. Ugh. Paul Rudd might legitimately be the most likable human being on the planet. It almost makes me angry how likable he is, but even then, I can’t stay angry at Paul Rudd. No, I love everything about this. Almost everything. It does put a damper on my excitement about the sweet ladies with the donuts, though, because none of them have ever been Ant-Man. I mean, to my knowledge. I only see them every two to four years. I don’t know what they’re up to the rest of the time. One of them could be Ant-Man.
Although, I will say this: Donuts are a better snack than cookies. So the sweet ladies have that going for them, even if none of them — again, I’m assuming — own a powerful suit that allows them to adjust their size to sneak into and out of places in the name of fighting crime. So I guess, taken as a whole, I still have to give the edge to the sweet ladies who may or may not be Ant-Man. Unless Paul Rudd shows up on Election Day with bear claws. Which he might. That would tip the scales back in his favor.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Lee:
I saw this article about a girl going on the date of her dreams with Godzilla and started thinking about my ideal Godzilla date. I think we’d start in Pripyat, so he could smash buildings without an army hassling him and I could hoot and holler while he does it, wash the dust off with a nice float in the Dead Sea, and then watch volcanoes erupt in the Ring of Fire before dropping him off at Monster Island. What would your evening on the town with Godzilla look like?
Lee, this is a really great email. It has a link to a fun and true story (and yes, you should all go watch the sweet/weird video of the teenage girl going on her dream date with Godzilla), it has a thought-through answer of your own, and it tees me up nicely. I could not possibly ask for more.
To answer your question: I would take Godzilla to a drive-in movie where we would watch all three John Wick movies in order throughout the night, and every now and then I would lean over and whisper things like “Hey, please don’t eat me” or maybe “Hey, don’t rip the screen out of the ground and start destroying the cars.” It would get really annoying. Godzilla would be like “Ugh, I’m not going to do that. I’m on a date.” And then some jerk would start laying on his horn and hooting and hollering at the screen and I’d lean over and say “You know what? Maybe you should eat that guy and heave his car into the ravine, just so we can enjoy the movie,” and Godzilla would be all “Actually, that’s more of a work thing for me. I’m just trying to enjoy the movie.” And then I’d get kind of huffy about it. And Godzilla would sense it and get irritated, too. We’d probably leave between the second and third movies and say we should try it again sometime, but we never will.
We’ll still see each other around sometimes at parties thrown by mutual acquaintances. It will be awkward.
A dispute between bond king Bill Gross and his next-door neighbor over a $1-million outdoor sculpture has devolved into police calls to their Laguna Beach mansions, multiple legal actions — and allegations that the billionaire investor blared the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song on a loop at all hours to annoy his neighbor.
I’ll tell you what: I love a story about wealthy neighbors feuding over the dumbest stuff in the world. It’s petty of me and it’s probably not the slice of my personality that I’m proudest of, but I don’t care. I love it. There’s something relaxing about it, in a weird way, just knowing that people can reach the pinnacle of their profession and be considered a success by their peers and have every possible advantage in life right there at their fingertips and still be hopelessly miserable in a deep, ugly way. This isn’t even my favorite example of it. My favorite example is from this exhaustively reported longread in Vanity Fair that I read five years ago and still think about constantly.
But this one is close. You should definitely read the whole thing to grasp just how stupid and childish it all is, but start here.
The neighbor’s lawsuit accuses the billionaire and his partner of playing blaring music at all hours, including the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song, rap and pop, in an effort to force him to drop the complaint. The couple say they have had to take refuge twice either with relatives or in a hotel room. In an application for a temporary restraining order filed Oct. 15, which was granted, Towfiq cites a text message allegedly sent to him by Gross after he asked the music to be turned down: “Peace on all fronts or well [sic] just have nightly concerts big boy.”
They’re cluttering up the courts with an argument over a big stupid statue that is or is not blocking a view and they are taunting each other with text messages and beloved television theme songs. Imagine having a billion dollars and behaving this way. You could just sell your house and move, or go on a three-month vacation. You could buy an island and stay there and never have another neighbor. You could hash it out over a barbecue and a handshake like civilized human beings and go back to enjoying your otherwise picturesque lives.
But, bless them, they did not.
Towfiq and his wife allege in their lawsuit that the harassment escalated to the point this month that loud music was played even when Gross and Schwartz were not home, “apparently controlling their sound system remotely.”
Money can buy you a lot of things. It can buy you peace of mind. It can buy you a big beachfront mansion in Laguna Beach. It can buy you a giant sculpture that drives your neighbors insane. But it can’t buy you the joy I feel in reading about you wasting hours — days, weeks, months! — of your life on a massively stupid argument with your neighbor. No price on that one, baby.
This week’s episode of Indiecast kicks off with a reader question asking for Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen’s thoughts on the artists of the 2000s and 2010s that were hugely influential to the new crop of indie musicians coming out today. Each “scene” has its own central name, but Cohen is quick to assign roles of leadership to artists like Mac DeMarco, Frankie Cosmos, Alex G, and Title Fight. Hyden also adds to the stack artists like Tame Impala and The War On Drugs, who influenced a whole other sect of emerging indie artists with their psychedelic tendencies.
The meat of the episode is dedicated to diving into new albums from Oneohtrix Point Never and Salem. In the case of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, Hyden wonders whether this will be the record that breaks Daniel Lopatin into the pop mainstream, with a track featuring none other than The Weeknd. On the other hand, Hyden and Cohen are unsure what to think of Fires In Heaven, the new album from Michigan duo Salem, who The Washington Post called “the stupidest band on Earth” in 2011.
In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen is digging No Driver, the new album from Swedish band I Love Your Lifestyle, while Hyden is tiding himself over until the return of live music with new live albums from The War On Drugs and Arctic Monkeys.
New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 14 below and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.
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