Month: November 2020

“It doesn’t seem right to be doing trivia in a world without Alex Trebek,” Ken Jennings said in his weekly Kennections newsletter on Tuesday. “And yet here we are.”

Two days after Trebek died of pancreatic cancer at age 80, tributes to the late Jeopardy! host continue to pour in. The show he hosted for decades aired a cold open in his honor, and the man who many feel should replace him as the show’s host offered his own brief but powerful tribute to the man who gave him a million dollars in prize money in the show’s Greatest Of All Time Tournament back in January.

“I’m guessing he was a formative force for knowledge and good in a lot of your lives, as he was in mine,” Jennings said in his newsletter. “I miss him already.”

I talked to the Jeopardy! GOAT earlier in the month, well before the news of Trebek’s death would turn the speculation about his replacement into the most important unanswered question in television. And so this interview won’t contain another quote about whether he wants to be the next host of Jeopardy! He’s been asked that question several times over, and always politely demurred about the possibility of stepping into Trebek’s shoes.

What we did talk about by phone, though, was making the best of a terrible year and what makes Jeopardy! stand out among game shows and pop culture at large. Since the last time I interviewed Jennings, he has started working on Jeopardy! as an advisor and spoke about the love and dedication to the show he’s gotten to see behind the scenes while deftly slipping in an ad read along the way. There were no real secrets to uncover, but his answers gave me confidence that the show, no matter who hosts it next, is in good hands in the years to come.

Uproxx: You’ve had a very busy year. I know the GOAT Tournament taped in December, but in 2020 you released Half Truth, now you’re working for Jeopardy! and doing some other endorsement projects with Tracfone. Is is just kind of nice to stay busy with things during all of this?

It really is. Candidly, after the Jeopardy! GOAT Tournament, I had booked a bunch of public speaking gigs at universities and corporate events and I thought, “Well I’ll have a busy year doing that, that should pay the bills.” And then that all went away in one week, and I didn’t know what I was going to be doing in 2020. Trying to make sure my kids do their virtual homework, I guess.

But then Jeopardy! called, it was actually the same day the tournament aired. And asked me if I wanted to come aboard for a front office job, which was very flattering. I would have missed Jeopardy! And then Tracfone called a couple of months ago and since they’re the plain smart choice in wireless and smartphone providers, they had an ad idea where I get to be a professional Tracfone smarty pants. And I thought it was pretty funny because I get to wear a smoking jacket and tweed. That’s what I’m into.

You’ve been through the media cycles with Jeopardy! before when you won 74 straight games, but the GOAT Tournament seemed to be a bit different. What are some ways it was different this time around celebrating your win in the public eye?

Well, I don’t know. You can definitely see kind of the niche-ization of media where to promote, for example, a trivia board game like Half Truth it’s no problem to find a dozen outlets. YouTubers, bloggers, and specialized websites that just traffic in this specific kind of thing. And that’s pretty cool.

I remember being a kid and definitely feeling kind of lonely if I was obsessed with game shows and none of my friends seemed to want to talk about Super Password as much as I did. Or being obsessed with road atlases and thinking that was a weird, shameful thing to like maps that much. Now that’s all gone. No matter what kind of weirdo you are you can find hundreds of thousands of people who love your weird hobby and also have the same kind of collections as you. That is very cool.

Yeah, there’s a bit of a connectedness to it all. Maybe in a year like this it’s rough to find in real life, but people have been able to play your game over Zoom, or really get into something and find a community online. It’s a comforting thing.

It’s an option that we never would have had in any other epidemic time in human history. And so, even if it’s not safe to see your grandma, you can check in with her every single night on video. And it’s not the same thing — my kids are remote learning and I don’t know if they’re actually learning or not. But it does feel like you’re not in this thing alone and just staring at the walls of your apartment.

You maybe have it a bit better off because you won a million dollars to kick off your 2020. But do you have any advice for the rest of us to get through this without maybe a nice payday and endorsements and that kind of thing?

Oh, absolutely. I have the ultimate kind of pandemic privilege because I arranged to win a big check on a game show right before the pandemic. And I feel like it’s a little too late to recommend that to others. But yeah, my family has been pretty lucky, honestly.

But I think the general principles, what’s really kept us going and the thing that’s surprised me the most, even tough I have two teenagers they were kind of very sweet about the whole thing. Especially when we got them away from their goony friends, it was kind of fun to have some family time and do some old-timey stuff like do a jigsaw puzzle or pop some popcorn and play a board game. It’s like we turned into some Little House On The Prairie family almost overnight, and I see a lot of people doing that kind of throwback thing. Taking up crocheting or whatever.

And it is kinda a chance, like, for the last four years, modernity has been pretty awful. And this is a chance to say, well, let’s just turn our backs on modernity and have weird old timey hobbies and relationships again. I’m a big fan.

We talked about board games the last time we spoke. And obviously you can’t play Half Truth with your family because you wrote all the questions, but are there others that have become favorites in recent months? Any you’d recommend to others with a long winter ahead?

I did referee a game of Half Truth the other night. My wife’s parents visited us, we quarantined for like two weeks so my wife’s parents could stay with us and we had a really good time.

What else have we been playing a lot of? I can’t remember what I told you last time we spoke. I really like Codenames, everyone likes that, that’s a great family party game. My collaborator on Half Truth, Richard Garfield, has a great party game called Hive Mind, where it’s a beehive-themed game where your collective thinking keeps you in the beehive and your independent thinking moves you out. And we’ve been playing that a lot.

Trying to think of a new game we have that we’re super into right now. It might come to me.

I wanted to ask about Jeopardy! and maybe game shows in particular. You obviously have watched Jeopardy! your whole life and have noticed how shows change with culture. I was watching the new Supermarket Sweep with my girlfriend the other day and I remember watching the original. It’s different in some ways that shows are different these days, and it made me think about how Jeopardy! hasn’t really changed much. It looks the same, it feels very similar. What is it about Jeopardy! that is so timeless but also makes it still feel relevant and recent and, arguably, it’s more popular than ever?

I think you put your finger on it: The smart thing Jeopardy! did is it never changed a thing. And it was always a pretty good format: Jeopardy! is just a well-designed engine to do what it does well. But there’s nothing particularly innovative or ingenious about the Jeopardy! format, it’s just a really well-made quiz show. And the smart thing they did was arrange to just keep it in the public eye off and on for 50 years and never tinker. And the result of that is you can turn on Jeopardy! tonight and almost down to the second it will be like a game of Jeopardy! you watched in college in 1994. Or you watched with your nana in 1984, or that your parents watched in 1964.

There’s this continuity where it doesn’t feel like a TV property anymore. It’s just a part of America, almost like the national parks or something. It’s really an institution, and now that I work on Jeopardy! and can see behind the scenes I can say they know that. They take it very seriously. Like, the legacy of the show is something that they do not goof around with. And it’s just a fabric of all of our lives. It’s Biography now, we feel like it’s part of us.

I wonder if your perspective on the show has changed now that you’re behind the scenes. I know for me, I’ve watched most of my life and I work for a website where I’ve made covering Jeopardy! part of my job. I’ve approached the show the same way I do writing about sports, and it’s changed the show for me in some ways. I wonder if something has changed for you now that you kind of know how the sausage is made?

Maybe I said this when we talked before, but I always appreciated the way sportswriters talked about Jeopardy! because they understand the competition is central to the show, not the trappings, not the entertainment property. But really, the match between the three brains is really what’s central to the format.

I would say that now that I’m behind the scenes, the thing about seeing how the sausage is made is that Jeopardy! doesn’t really have anything scandalous or disappointing going on behind the scenes. So there’s nothing disillusioning about working for Jeopardy! One thing you do see is that it’s not a show on autopilot. You’d think that in its 37th season, and even as a contestant you get the impression that this is a well-oiled machine, and they just have to do exactly what they did five times last week, they just have to do it five times this week and everything is going to go great.

But when you actually watch the people and watch the production team make the show behind the scenes, you realize that it’s an incredible marathon to make 200 Jeopardies every year. We’re going to have to criss-cross the country on Zoom during a pandemic and find hundreds of people who can play this game. And we want them to look like America. We want equal numbers of men and women, we want people of color trying it out and making it on the show. We want the clues to not alienate older viewers who expect to see the bible and romantic poetry and opera, but we also want to kinda go viral if Alex read rap lyrics or if there’s a funny moment where a contestant doesn’t know which city the Dallas Cowboys play in, you know? We want to make sure there’s a Cardi B question so the teens don’t feel like it’s just grandma’s show.

There’s a whole lot of juggling that goes on the writing side, the casting side. It takes a lot of work to put Jeopardy! on the air and these people aren to on autopilot at all, they take it very seriously. And I liked finding that out. To find out that your favorite show is taken so seriously by 100 very dedicated people, it’s cool.

It’s funny you mention contestants struggling with sports questions. You are not one of them, I think, and obviously James Holzhauer was well-known for nailing sports categories during his run. Is there a particular category you always dreaded?

I’m not a great sports player, but Jeopardy! knows that they’re not for great sports players. The Jeopardy! clue is designed to be answered correctly, so even if it’s not your favorite category you should be able to follow your intuition to the correct response.

I’d say my biggest bugbear, and honestly it’s the thing I’ve lost on the mostly the first time: H&R Block. Business and industry. I was not super business savvy, finance world-savvy. I don’t know the stock ticker abbreviations for companies, I don’t have motivational books from CEOs on my bookshelf. So I could have thought about that H&R Block question all day and never realized that it was going to be a tax prep company, I think. And to this day it’s very easy to get me to go out on a corporate question where I don’t remember a merger or I don’t remember a car model or whatever it is. I’m a bad consumer, I guess. I’m a little too Marxist for some of these Jeopardy! categories.

Well thankfully in late-stage capitalism our only culture will be business, so maybe in a couple of years we’ll all have it down.

Yeah, [puts on announcer voice] here’s our sponsored category on Orange Julius. Thanks, Orange Julius. A delicious, green-flavored drink. [laughs]

My last question is mostly for me: Is there a clue writer that’s from Buffalo or Western New York? My friends and I have noticed questions about places like Kleinhans Music Hall and some suspect there’s someone familiar with the area working on the show. Any ideas or is this confirmation bias?

That’s a good question. There may be, I can’t think of a Buffalo-ite? Buffalovian? What’s the demonym?

Buffalonian.

Buffalonian? With an extra N? That’s terrible!

I don’t know if there’s a Buffalonian on staff. I know that in the past, like when I was a kid there was always a lot of Nebraska material on the show and it was because the head writer was from Nebraska. But I think it’s a common thing to think that someone from Jeopardy! must be from your hometown. Like, yesterday my dad emailed me and said, “Hey, I noticed a bunch of Seattle stuff on Jeopardy! Was that you?” And I was like, “No, no, I didn’t suggest any of that.” So it may be that it’s just a very nationally aware, smart group of writers and researchers who know stuff about Buffalo that you thought was Buffalonians only. I’m not sure.

Welp. Here we are, America. Exactly where millions of us expected we would be if President Donald J. Trump didn’t the win an election that he wanted, expected, and thought he was entitled to win. His refusal to concede, alleging fraud and cheating without any solid evidence, is not the least bit surprising. Heck, he told us himself that it was coming. If he lost, this was the plan all along—deny the results, claim fraud, and don’t back down.

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s effing insane, of course, and the fact that we’re sitting here watching a sitting president undermine a free election in America should be deeply concerning to every American.

Instead, we have arguments like this:

“But what about all the fraud and the stealing and the…” NO. No thank you to all of that. These are the deluded musings of a malignant narcissist who is literally incapable of admitting defeat and should not be entertained or enabled.

“But don’t you care about having a fair election, with legal votes counted and illegal votes not counted?” Yes, of course. The idea that we should only count legal votes and throw out illegal votes is not some great epiphany that needs to be stated—that’s literally just an election. Our states’ voting systems are set up with checks and safeguards and fail-safes to make sure that that’s what happens, and those system generally work as they should.

That being said, there are always some irregularities and tallying issues that pop up in every election, which is why we have processes in place to check for them. We just don’t usually put a microscope-of-doubt on the process as it chugs along. That microscope has resulted in people seeing only bits and pieces of the process, which leads to erroneous assumptions at best and baseless accusations at worst. And when those assumptions and accusations are broadcast from the supposed leader of the free world, it leads to chaos, confusion, and crisis of democracy.

This is where we are. Good times.

The one thing we should all agree on is that a candidate does have the right to legal challenges if they truly do see issues that aren’t being caught by the normal process. If Trump wants to throw his or his supporters’ money at lawsuits, more power to him. But those lawsuits have to have actual evidence to back them, as attorney Joanne Molinaro pointed out in a viral TikTok video this weekend.

Most of us who aren’t lawyers yawn at legalese, but Molinaro’s entertaining and informative explanation of how this actually works is fabulous.

“Let’s talk about the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure!” Molinaro begins. “First, Rule 8 and the Supreme Court requires that all complaints include FACTS, not legal conclusions. Next, let’s talk about Rule 9(b), which says that fraud complaints are SPECIAL! In order to survive dismissal, a fraud complaint needs to allege who did the fraud, the date and time they did the fraud, where they did the fraud, and how they did the fraud. So general allegations like ‘how could he get that many votes when no one came to his rallies?’ is just not gonna cut it, honey. It also has to allege damages, i.e., enough votes were affected that it would actually change the results.”

“And finally I bring to you my favorite rule!” she continued. “Under Rule 11, when you file a complaint you are making a representation to the court that the facts contained in your complaint actually have evidentiary support. If a complaint doesn’t have evidentiary support or if it’s unlikely to lead to evidentiary support, it will not only be thrown out, you’ll be subject to sanctions!”

While holding a piece of her hair, which might just be the best part of the video, Molinaro explained, “While it’s true that Rule 11 rarely gets enforced, when a lawyer starts talking ‘But Rule 11??’ what they’re actually trying to say is that the complaint is full of sh*t.”

A lack of evidentiary support is why Trump’s lawsuits so far haven’t gone anywhere. Many have been dismissed outright, in fact. And today The Wall Street Journal reported that the 28-member delegation of international observers invited by the Trump administration has given high marks to the way last week’s elections were conducted and is criticizing President Trump for his baseless allegations of systematic fraud.

Again, the notion that the outcome of the election is illegitimate is nothing but the rantings of a man who can’t handle losing and the sycophantic enablers who enjoy the power they receive in his orbit. Unfortunately, that man is the president of the United States and his words and behavior matter.

Thankfully, that won’t be the case for much longer.

As the college football season presses forward, the number of games that have been postponed or outright canceled due to COVID-19 outbreaks among teams around the country grows larger and larger. This week, the virus has hit SEC teams particularly hard, as the post-Halloween bump on campuses nationwide that was both predictable and unfortunate seems to be hitting.

Arkansas coach Sam Pittman will not coach this weekend after his positive test was confirmed, and Texas A&M, Auburn, Mississippi State, and LSU have all reported having to halt practices due to the virus spreading through the locker room. Mississippi State’s game with Auburn has already been postponed to December 12. The biggest game of the weekend in the SEC was set to be a primetime showdown between LSU and Alabama, but on Tuesday, we learned that game too will be postponed due to LSU having a shortage of players, along with A&M-Tennessee.

There were also reports on Tuesday that Missouri was dealing with a number of positives as well, with a matchup with Georgia looming Saturday, as the SEC could conceivable have to postpone more than half of the league’s games this week. It is a firm reminder of the dangers the virus still presents to our day-to-day lives and how vigilant people have to continue being as new cases spike over 100,000 a day around the country.

Hopefully the players and staffers that contract the virus will be able to remain asymptomatic or experience only mild symptoms and make a full recovery without longterm impacts, but it’s clear that it is getting harder and harder for programs to mitigate the spread as the year wears on.

After some time away, The Antlers are in the midst of a comeback. They haven’t announced a new album, but last month, they shared their first new song in six years, “Wheels Roll Home,” and now they’re back with another one. This time, it’s “It Is What It Is,” a relaxing tune that the group’s Peter Silberman says is “a song about hindsight”:

“‘It Is What It Is’ is a song about hindsight. It considers what might have changed had you handled things differently back then, and the reluctant acceptance that it’s too late for all that now. It’s the inevitability of changing seasons, transitions that feel like loss in the moment, but come to represent growth over time.”

On Election Day, the band also shared an endorsement of Joe Biden, writing on Instagram, “I’ll avoid giving a whole spiel about why T***p is so monstrous, why the Dem ticket isn’t ideal, why I think it’s okay to elect a line of best fit right now, or why voting is important — you’ve probably heard enough of that at this point. So I’ll just tell you that @joebiden and @kamalaharris strike me as competent, compassionate people who genuinely care about others. Honestly, it’s that simple for me right now. So If you value that quality in a person, I think you should vote for them. Be kind and stay safe, friends.”

Watch the “It Is What It Is” video above.

Shawn Mendes recently ushered in a new era of music with a cinematic visual alongside “Wonder,” his first single of 2020. The singer followed up the song by announcing it is actually the title track to his next studio album, which is slated for a December release. While Mendes has yet to offer another preview of the record, the singer recently stopped by BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge studio to showcases his soaring vocals.

Seated at the piano, Mendes dove into a chilling rendition of “Wonder.” While the performance offered an acoustic take on the single, Mendes was also joined by a full band to expand on his sound. Mendes then offered a captivating cover of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” This time, the singer elected to forgo the full band and he instead relied on the piano and his room-filling vocals to craft an intimate performance.

In other Mendes news, the singer recently announced he is the star of the upcoming Netflix documentary In Wonder, which follows his rise to fame and culminates with his extensive 2019 tour. In the film’s trailer, Mendes details his upbringing, describes what it feels like to be on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans, and sheds some light onto his relationship with Camila Cabello.

Watch Mendes perform “Wonder” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” on BBC’s Live Lounge above.

In Wonder premieres 11/23 on Netflix and Wonder is out 12/4 via Island. Pre-order it here.

Chicago rappers Tobi Lou and Dreezy unite on “Okay,” the latest single from Tobi’s upcoming album Parrish Blue, the follow-up to his 2019 debut, Live On Ice. Over a bubbly beat produced by 20-year-old San Diego, California beatmaker Matteo Woods, Tobi and Dreezy trade flirty, melodic raps from either side of a crush between a couple who can’t help but celebrate their connection.

“Okay” follows “Pretty Much,” Tobi’s September single, in promoting Parrish Blue. The album, which was originally due in October, is named for painter Maxfield Parrish, whose distinctive approach to color saturation led to art connoisseurs nicknaming his favorite shade of blue, cobalt, after him.

Tobi also kept his name buzzing throughout the year with feature appearances on other artists’ projects. In April, he appeared on Peter Cottontale’s album Catch on the song “Pray For Real,” and in May, he popped up on “Morocco” from Kota The Friend’s Everything.

Meanwhile, Dreezy, who had a relatively quiet year, made an explosive comeback with her freestyle over Moneybagg Yo’s viral hit “Said Sum.” Earlier this year, she and a plethora of other artists garnered their first platinum plaques thanks to their participation on Dreamville’s Revenge Of The Dreamers III compilation.

Listen to “Okay” above.

If there’s one line of Kentucky bourbon that almost every single whiskey drinker knows by name, it’s Pappy Van Winkle. But besides some vague recognition, actual knowledge of Pappy — his kin, the extent of the line, where it’s made, and by whom — is a lot murkier. The Van Winkles are, at least partly by design, shrouded in mystery. Theirs is a luxury product, like clothes from Supreme, that thrives in a state of scarcity and grows ever more expensive on the aftermarket.

After meeting Julian Van Winkle at a food event, the renowned author and sports journalist Wright Thompson found himself intrigued by the company and the family behind it. So he set out to sate his curiosity, while also diving into the history and culture of Kentucky bourbon. His new book, Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and The Things That Last is out today. It’s highly informative, as any bourbon aficionado would expect, but it’s also deeply human. In vivid, punchy prose, Thompson handles these larger than life figures of whiskey culture with care. In the process, we see gain insight into not only the Van Winkles but the entire bourbon industry and the author himself.

After reading Pappyland early, I jumped on a call this week to talk with Thompson. We touched on his work habits, the increasingly wide world of Kentucky bourbon, and the people behind one of the most sought after bourbons on the market.

Let’s start with your first memory of drinking Kentucky bourbon.

I got into it like so many people who grew up in the Southern United States, I think, stealing it from my father’s liquor cabinet after they’d stolen it from their father’s liquor cabinets. Beer was really hard to get in high school, but bourbon was not. And so, frankly, it started that way.

My friend’s father’s Old Charter was always hanging around the house. It’s thievery.

I can empathize, I promise.

This is a very fascinating story — since Pappy has such huge brand recognition but so few people who really know the product. But the book goes well beyond that and really dives into the human side of the family history. Can you walk us through how you first met Julian van Winkle?

I met Julian at an after-party for a food festival, some chef-y thing in Atlanta. So I obviously knew who he was and he had some Pappy in his pocket and was passing it around. It was just a great fun night, but that’s as far as it went.

Then we kept getting put together at things.

So how did the book come about?

I would love to take all of the credit, but my agent, a guy named David Black, was really pushing me. At first, it was just going to be a pretty straight forward story of the world’s most sought after bourbon.

Then the more and more I went to Kentucky and went around the country with Julian, the more I realized that all of the things I was thinking about in my own box — about how to be a man, how to be a son, and a father — were being influenced by those conversations with Julian. So pretty late in the process, the book became what it is.

I wrote the first third of this without telling anyone at Penguin that that’s what I was doing. I just did it. And I’m like, “Goddamn, I hope they like this!” I thought, “Well if they hate this, I can make this a straightforward story.” But the way my time with Julian has been impacting me to think about life, I imagined that there was some way to transfer that feeling to a reader.

So that’s what the goal became: To make it a book about this quest that all humans at some point, go through. I mean, there’s nothing special about me. I just wrote mine down as a way of maybe articulating things to other people themselves, or sparking conversations or thoughts in other people.

I think one of my favorite humanizing anecdotes is when you’re talking about back in the dark days when nobody was drinking whiskey, much less bourbon, and there’s the story of Julian on top of a still, hitting it with a wrench, trying to get the damn thing to work. How did you go about pulling those stories out of Van Winkle?

Oh, it took forever. I don’t think there’s a single word in the book from the first two trips to go see Julian. That’s not true actually, but there’s not much. It takes a long time. It was interesting. So now, his children and sister have read it and they said that there were things about him they didn’t know.

I felt like if nothing else, I did the thing I came to do. This is the guy on the page.

Then these stories are filtered through your life at the time, making you a conduit for the reader.

I wish I could say that it was some sort of grand unified theory of doing it. I was going to write a draft where I let it go where it wanted to go. And then if everybody hated it, then I could either start over or whatever.

There were a lot of false starts on them, where I just couldn’t get the voice right, or the distance the narrator was supposed to stay in, stuff like that. That was a real process. And so I was like, “I’m going to let this thing go where it wants to go, and then we can go back and figure it out.”

So it was a little more stumbling along in the dark, as opposed to having, “I wish I was smart enough to have come up with a strategy.” Maybe next time.

For sure. And, I’m in the booze industry and I go to all of the booze conventions and the foodie bullshit and so on. And it’s the sort of thing where I’ve been to these after-parties and you actually meet the people behind these companies, behind the marketing, and you realize that they’re just people out there trying to get by. It’s so much more real, because you really want to champion those folks because you see the hard work, you see the humanity, you become friends with them, and aware of how much work it actually takes.

I think people will say, “Oh, everybody’s going to buy Pappy anyways.” But that’s a misunderstanding. Presley and Julian van Winkle are out there hitting the streets every day, selling, working, hustling still. Eddie Russell and Jimmy Russell are out there hitting the streets every day…

Oh my God, Jimmy Russell. I mean, these guys are legends. And they aren’t sitting up there as trust fund babies. Do you know what I mean?

They’re working.

Jimmy Russell’s got grease under his fingernails.

Yeah, and that’s one of the things I love about the Kentucky bourbon community. Everybody works and helps each other.

Oh, 100 percent. There’s that thing in the story where Julian had some shitty old bottling line that no one had anymore. And the only people in the world who knew how to fix it were these old men who had worked on the one at Wild Turkey, 30 years earlier — before Wild Turkey had installed whatever the most modern thing in the world at that time was. And Jimmy Russell is sending his guys to fix the bottling line of a competitor because he’d been friends with Julian’s father and grandfather.

That’s real, and that’s how these guys roll.

I love it.

It makes me want to drink Wild Turkey.

Maybe grab a bottle of Russell’s Reserve or something?

Have a word with the bird! A little 101? We drank that shit in high school, man. If somebody got a bottle of Wild Turkey, we thought we were James fucking Dean.

For me, hearing the stories is what makes the difference. And that’s what I dig about this book, the stories add to the experience. For instance, the letters of Julian’s dad writing from being in the Pacific during WWII, where else are you going to get that? How many letters did you have to go through from the family?

I went through all of them. I felt like those were representative. I wasn’t just pulling out the wildest thing. Those in the book felt representative of the guy and that’s what he was doing. All he thought about was killing the enemy and the Stitzel–Weller plant. That’s it.

Another thing you seemed to get across well is explaining the industry. One of the most salient points, which I try to share with people as well is, most of your bourbon comes from one place. Why do you think it’s important that people know that a lot of bourbons are just a label?

Well, just because you should understand it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be loyal to your brand or invest complicated feelings of home in your past with it. But you should interrogate it a little and understand what it is you love. Love the fact that the label is the label that was in your dad’s liquor cabinet. Bourbon’s hold on people is so metaphysical and beyond the technical tasting notes. That felt important to explore.

On some level, this book is just the story of someone who makes whiskey and the story of someone who drinks it. And so let’s talk about it.

It’s tough because people want to put their point of view on every aspect of it, including how you’re supposed to enjoy it.

Well, it’s interesting. At one point we were having dinner and I was being a jerk and going for an easy laugh and making fun of people who obsessively collect whiskey. And Julian was like, “Wait a minute. Who are you to tell someone how to enjoy this? Why is your way of enjoying it the one true way? There is no dowel of whiskey.” And I was like, “Oh, shit. I’m an asshole.” You know what I mean?

But that was really something — there is no one true way.

I like to say, “You do you. You enjoy your whiskey the way you want to enjoy your whiskey.”

Yeah, whatever joy you’re getting from it, good for you.

You also look into the culture of Kentucky, in general, and how it informed bourbon. You talk about the whole “Southern” identity of Kentucky, which is a bit of a sham because Kentucky wasn’t even part of the traditional “South” and most Kentuckians fought for the Union. As somebody from the West Coast, Kentucky never really felt Southern to me in the same way that Mississippi or Georgia.

It always felt borderland to me. I mean, it is interesting. One of the things I kept coming back to is — and this felt like an important question to ask and answer — to unpack in the context of the myth of bourbon.

It is interesting that bourbon comes from a state that pretends it lost a war it actually won. If you start from there, everything about bourbon suddenly makes sense. It is self-defeat in a bottle. It becomes very interesting to me what’s it in context to or what’s it in conversation with…

How do you see the industry dealing with the last nine months? Have people gotten more into their community and their bourbon, or do you see people taking a step back?

I think that once again, bourbon is a proxy. All of these broken and displaced and paused communities that we were a part of before the virus hit, now exists symbolically in these bottles and in drinks alone, and in drinks six feet away from the next person, and drinks with friends over Zoom.

I think that if anything, the metaphysical ideas of home and community and tribe that we can invest in something so nakedly commercial as a bottle of bourbon, have grown stronger.

Are you going to do something about Tennessee whiskey next?

I don’t think I’ll do another whiskey book. I was much more interested in what this whiskey meant to Julian and his family and what that made me think about my own family. I think that’s done and done.

Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and The Things That Last is out now.

Atlanta rap star Quavo is almost as well-known for his athletic prowess as he is for his raps as a third of Migos. Now, he’s getting involved in the sports world in a different capacity. Today, Quavo announced he has acquired a minority stake in the athletic apparel brand Legends. After previously partnering with Legends for his annual Huncho Day charity event, Quavo joined an investment group that includes NBA players Matt Barnes and Steve Nash and NFL players Baker Mayfield and William McGinest, as well as a number of other young NFL stars in taking ownership of Legends and beginning work on new collaborations.

In a press release, Quavo said, “I’m excited to officially be a part of the Legends family. Legends is about striving to be the best no matter what it takes, fighting to get to the top. The team is already shaking up the game with performance gear that fits the look and lifestyle of the new age athlete. Now we’ll take it to the next level.”

Other brand partnerships Quavo has started this year include one with video game publisher Activision to promote Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. He also leveled up his education, announcing that he’d graduated “high school” by receiving his G.E.D.

Check out more information about Quavo’s partnership with Legends here.

By many metrics, “Baby Shark” is the most successful children’s song in the history of recorded music. Just a week ago, the song’s video surpassed Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” to become the most-viewed YouTube video ever. Now, the track has achieved yet another milestone, as the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) has declared the single is the only children’s song to ever achieve Diamond certification, meaning it has sold at least 10 million copies; “Baby Shark” is currently 11-times multi-Platinum.

The RIAA website also indicates that “Baby Shark” is the only children’s music single to earn Gold certification or above. The only other release listed is Disney Lullaby Album, a 2000 release which achieved Gold certification in 2015.

The song is one of 26 to achieve Diamond certification in 2020. Other songs that joined the Diamond ranks this year include Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Foster The People’s “Pumped Up Kicks,” John Legend’s “All Of Me,” Katy Perry’s “Firework,” Pharrell’s “Happy,” The Chainsmokers and Halsey’s “Closer,” The Weeknd’s “The Hills,” Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” and, of course, “Despacito.”

Aside from all the quantitative data, the song has also earned love from people in all walks of life. Kids are clearly still playing the song on YouTube, and everybody from Coachella festivalgoers to Travis Scott have enjoyed turning up to “Baby Shark.”

Ever since the #FreeBritney movement has caught a second wave, fans have been meticulously following the singer’s legal battles with her father and court-assigned conservator Jamie Spears. Fans continue to insist that Spears’ father is taking advantage of her situation and unnecessarily controlling her life. These claims have since been dismissed by Jamie Spears as well as her legal team, and Spears herself even assured fans of her well-being. But as the case continues to develop, the motives of Spears’ father are once again being called into question.

According to a report from TMZ, Spears is not happy with how her father is handling her finances. The report states that Spears’ legal team filed documents that point to an agreement made between her father and her former management company, Tri Star Sports & Entertainment Group. The company has been representing the singer for over a decade and their contract promised a five-percent payout of Spears’ gross income.

The management company’s payout was much larger when Spears was actively performing. But since the singer went on an indefinite hiatus from touring in 2019, Tri Star reportedly sought to renegotiate their pay and allegedly made an agreement with Spear’s father to receive a $500,000 minimum annual salary on top of their five percent. However, Spears’ legal team claims that the singer’s father didn’t negotiate the deal and screwed her out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Spears’ legal team alleges the new deal (which they call “radical new arrangements”) secured Tri Star a 260% raise, which went against Spears’ wishes. Because Spears feels as though she was given the short end of the stick, the singer’s legal team is now seeking about $309,000 from Tri Star, the amount she thinks the company was over-paid.

The decision to request a refund arrive days after Spears took the initial steps for her father to be removed as her co-conservator. The motion was filed after Spears’ longtime Tri Star manager resigned without notice — and the singer was not informed. Instead, Spears’ father appointed Michael Kane of the accounting firm Miller Kaplan to act as her new business manager without her approval.