Month: January 2021

Wednesday saw some very important national news take place and also a very big NBA trade that flipped the basketball world on its head, as James Harden was dealt to the Brooklyn Nets in a four-team trade that also brought Victor Oladipo back to Houston, sent Caris LeVert to Indiana, and Jarrett Allen to Cleveland (who kicked in one of the picks going to the Rockets).

It was a wild trade that felt like it kept growing and growing by the minute, with additional details streaming out until the complete picture was finished. As the rumors began swirling on Wednesday that a deal was going to get done either with the Sixers or with the Nets, after Harden’s incendiary press conference on Tuesday night burned just about every bridge remaining in Houston, players around the league joined fans in waiting for the news to break.

Bradley Beal, who is considered the next top player who could potentially end up moving in a trade — albeit he has not pushed his way out of Washington in the way Harden did Houston — had a pretty funny sequence of one-word tweets that basically summed up how everyone viewed the stream of news that went from rumor to blockbuster in what felt like record time.

The rest of the league likewise took notice, as pregame naps were interrupted and the NBA world recognized that everything had been flipped on its head.

Andre Drummond, meanwhile, had a laugh at jokes about the Cavs continuing to add big men to the roster.

It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of dominoes fall in the wake of the Harden trade, as you would think this would apply further pressure to East contenders to chase other opportunities — such as maybe being more aggressive in pursuing someone like Beal. For now, it turned a random January afternoon into the same kind of feeling as the opening day of free agency — with a second presidential impeachment also happening at the same time.

The Houston Rockets made James Harden’s departure official on Wednesday afternoon when he was flipped to the Brooklyn Nets in a monster deal that also included the Cleveland Cavaliers. It turns out, though, that the Rockets were not done, and that one of the players they acquired in that deal will be used to trade for an All-Star.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Caris LeVert’s tenure in Houston came to an end after all of ten minutes. LeVert is heading to the Indiana Pacers, with Victor Oladipo heading to Texas.

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN confirmed that this is going to happen, too, saying that this is an expansion of the Harden deal.

This is a gigantic move by the Rockets to get someone to fill the void left by Harden. Oladipo, a free agent at the conclusion of this season, is averaging 20 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.2 assists, and 1.7 steals in 33.3 minutes per game. Still, while his free agency loomed large and there were rumblings that he wanted to move on, his inclusion in this deal is a shock. There was no indication that the Pacers were openly shopping him, nor were there any indications that he wanted out right now. This does, however, give the Rockets a look at a very good basketball player before he becomes an unrestricted free agent at the end of the year.

As for the Pacers, LeVert gives them a young backcourt scorer to put alongside Malcolm Brogdon — the now-former Nets youngster is averaging 18.5 points per game this season. The team currently sits at 7-4, half a game out of first in the Eastern Conference, and now gets a relatively young player (LeVert is 26) back in exchange for someone who had expressed a desire to leave. Even more appealing for Indiana is that LeVert is in year one of a three-year extension, giving them a player who can stick around and be part of their core for the foreseeable future.

Everyone Is Doing Great (Hulu/Endeavor Series) — A little lightness will come in handy right about now, so this series from One Tree Hill alums James Lafferty and Stephen Colletti could hit the spot. Lafferty and Colletti star as former TV A-listers, who happened to play vampires on an enormously popular series called Eternals. Five years later, things are pretty damn awkward in their careers and lives, so it’s time for a late coming-of-age spin. The show found popularity with two episodes on the 2018 festival circuit, so the duo crowdfunded the rest of the season.

Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer (Netflix limited series) — This spellbinding docuseries dives deep into the investigation of brutal serial killer Richard Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles in the mid 1980s. Law enforcement found themselves puzzled by Ramirez’s apparent lack of rhyme or reason, given that his series of murders and sexual assaults at first appeared to be disconnected. After round-the-clock work by the members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, breaks in the case eventually arrived, and this series seeks to paint a portrait of how citizens feared becoming the next victim in this real-life horror story.

The Goldbergs (ABC, 8:00pm) — Adam’s planning a spooky party with Beverly while Erica’s actually considering changing her major to pre-med while she counters Barry’s attitude on the same subject.

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Riz Ahmed, Angela Bassett, Jacob Collier ft. Daniel Caesar

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Paul Bettany, Lennie James

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Rachel Brosnahan, Bobby Moynihan

In case you missed these recent picks:

Surviving Death (Netflix series) — Dive into this investigative series about whether or not the afterlife exists and whether death is really the end of life. As one might expect, this show provides firsthand accounts from those who have come close to (and even experienced) the D word to provide an illuminating view of the ultimate question that plagues us. The show’s based upon Leslie Kean’s best-selling book of the same name.

Gordon Ramsay’s American Road Trip (FOX series premiere on Hulu) — FOX staple Gordon Ramsay takes a pre-pandemic roadtrip (yes, in an RV fondly named “Betty”) with two chef fancy friends (an Italian chef and a French maître d’hôtel). Together, they cross half of America, including California, Vegas, and Texas. They eat barbecue and do the dude ranch thing, and yep, this might be surprisingly essential viewing.

James Harden’s tenure as a member of the Houston Rockets has come to an end. According to Adrian Wojnarowski and Shams Charania, Harden, who has wanted out of Houston in recent months, is headed to the Brooklyn Nets.

Earlier in the day, a report had emerged that the Nets were willing to offer as many as seven first round picks for Harden, which, given Houston’s general lack of future first rounders from their own trades made it a very enticing package. In the end, the two teams brought in the Cleveland Cavaliers to bolster the deal with an additional first round pick, making it four picks and four swaps going to Houston, with Taurean Prince and Jarrett Allen going to Cleveland, while Caris LeVert headlines the package going to Houston, per ESPN’s Wojnarowski.

However, LeVert won’t be long for Houston as the Rockets and Pacers will swap LeVert for Victor Oladipo, per The Athletic’s Charania, as Houston gains some star power and the Pacers swap out their disgruntled star for the up-and-coming LeVert.

The full deal looks as such:

For Harden, he joins what now has to be considered the frontrunner in the Eastern Conference, re-teaming with former OKC teammate Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving (whenever he returns from his personal leave) to form a trio that is unmatched in the East and really in the NBA. He also reunites with his old coach Mike D’Antoni, who will know as well as anyone how to deploy the superstar on the offensive end.

Harden joined the Rockets ahead of the 2012-13 season in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder. While he served as the team’s sixth man in his old digs, Harden was immediately given the keys in Houston and turned them into a hyper-efficient offensive juggernaut. He made the All-Star Game in every year that he played for the franchise and made top-2 MVP finishes the norm, taking home the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 2018.

While he is perhaps the most efficient offensive player to ever live, the Rockets have never been able to get over the hump with Harden at the helm. The team came close a number of times, but also had a number of high-profile meltdowns — they famously were up, 3-2, on the Golden State Warriors in the 2018 Western Conference Finals before a Chris Paul hamstring injury (and an historically bad shooting night in Game 7) led to their demise, and the following year, they could not topple the Dubs in the conference semis despite Kevin Durant going down with a calf injury when the series was tied at two games each.

The inability to get over that hump reportedly played a major role with him wanting out, with a report surfacing on Wednesday that part of the reason Harden wanted to leave town was that he could not envision the Rockets toppling the Los Angeles Lakers. But this past offseason, turmoil in Houston proceeded his wanting out — Mike D’Antoni and Daryl Morey both left the franchise, while the Rockets opted to trade Russell Westbrook for John Wall. The first two men, in particular, advocated for creating a Harden-centric culture, building a franchise around his gifts as an offensive player.

That, ultimately, may be the biggest question facing Harden in his new digs. Houston’s decision to make Harden the sun, the body around which its entire franchise orbited, rubbed some (like Westbrook) the wrong way, and he is now headed to a place where the culture likely will not be as Harden-centric as his now-former franchise.

The Nets send out a significant amount of talent and draft capital, but certainly have to feel like the East favorites at this moment with the firepower they can deploy come playoff time. Losing Allen is a significant blow to their frontcourt rotation and one would expect they might need to tinker with their roster further on the buyout market or at the trade deadline, but their core is unbelievable.

The Rockets, one would think, will be looking to lock Oladipo up on an extension given that they made him the centerpiece of the trade along with the draft picks, and with Oladipo, Christian Wood, John Wall, and the rest there’s some reason for optimism that they’ll continue to be competitive this year.

The Pacers get a terrific young player in LeVert who fits a lot of what they could use offensively in replacing Oladipo, who went from having little to no trade market this offseason to netting them a player some believe could be an All-Star. And the Cavaliers step in to provide an additional (late) first round pick for next year courtesy of the Bucks as well as salary filler in Exum and in exchange bring in a terrific young big in Allen and a solid wing in Prince who very well could be flipped at the deadline to a contender in need of 3-and-D assistance.

Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert hasn’t been in Congress very long, and she’s already made a name for herself. The freshman representative burst onto the scene by vowing to carry her Glock every time she’s on the floor of Congress, which quickly put her on the radar of the Capitol police. She followed that up by live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi’s exact location during last week’s violent insurrection. When that very same insurrection led to metal detectors being installed in the Capitol building, Boebert, once again, drew national attention by refusing to comply with the officers working the security gate and throwing a tantrum when they attempted to search her purse.

Less than 24 hours later, Boebert is at again. This time she made Sarah Palin trend after Twitter users couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the two while Boebert issued a rambling defense of Donald Trump during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing. Boebert took particular aim at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was a direct target of last week’s violent coup attempt. Via New York Post:

“What about the gentlewoman from New York who defended the looting by saying looters just wanted loaves of bread? Well, the last I checked, Best Buy and Teslas and stores of the like do not produce baked goods. Where’s the accountability for the left after encouraging and normalizing violence?” she said.

Boebert’s odd rant brought back memories of Palin’s numerous word salads, and it wasn’t long before tweets started firing off equating the Republican politicians:

Speaking of Twitter, Boebert took to Instagram to reveal that her account was locked this week with no explanation given as to why. However, within hours of Boebert sharing news of her Twitter suspension, the lock was reversed with Twitter saying the suspension was a “mistake.” Her account is currently active. For now.

Post Malone has essentially been the public face of Crocs for the past few years, and now he and the company have teamed up for a good cause. They partnered with Musicians On Call, a nonprofit that “brings live and recorded music to the bedsides of patients in healthcare facilities” (per their website), to give Crocs to hospital staffs in hospitals across the country.

They’re not handing out just any Crocs either, but the sold-out Post Malone x Crocs Duet Max Clog II, the same ones Posty recently gave away to people at the chicken restaurant where he used to work and to staff and students at his high school.

In a statement, Musicians On Call President and CEO Pete Griffin says of the donation, “The stress of the pandemic on staff in all areas of the hospital has been unrelenting and we have been doing what we can to continue bringing them the joy of live music. We are so grateful to Post Malone and Crocs for joining us in providing even more relief when they need it the most through this generous donation. Thanks to them, caregivers at 70 hospitals nationwide will have the added support of their Crocs to help them through their day.”

Susan Hernandez — DNP, MBA, RN, and chief nurse executive at UT Southwestern Medical Center — added, “We are grateful for this donation of footwear from Musicians On Call for our frontline health care workers and appreciate the recognition and caring it represents.”

Revisit our recent interview with Malone here.

While most streaming services boast finely-tuned music discovery algorithms, Sonos Radio lets fans discover music directly through their favorite artists. With their new high-fidelity subscription service Sonos Radio HD, Sonos is aiming to expand their reach. That’s why they’ve added even more artist-curated stations to their new HD platform.

Teasing the new stations Wednesday, Sonos announced they will be hosting curated stations by FKA Twigs, D’Angelo, The Chemical Brothers, Björk, and more.

With her station titled Main Squeeze, FKA Twigs describes the kind of music that can be heard when it launches February 10. “As an artist I’ve always been inspired by music that creates a world,” she said in a statement. “360° visionaries like Prince, André 3000 and Grace Jones have always made me fall in love with music over and over again. I’m excited to share my station, main squeeze, on Sonos Radio HD because it includes all the amazing artists that have helped shape my world – music I like to get ready to with my friends, songs that have got me through heartbreaks, backstage nerves, and nights out. It’s great to have all this music that has touched me all in one place, I hope you like it.”

D’Angelo’s station, Feverish Fantazmagoria, is available for Sonos listeners to tune in on January 13. “This is a curation of sorts — a collection of musical expressions that I call Feverish Fantazmagoria,” he said. “It includes some crate digging; a lot of psych rock and funk rock in there, even some gospel and soul. Just a lot of incredible music that’s fun and inspires me.”

About her station, which is available February 24, Björk says she’s excited to finally share decades of music discovery. “I am quite thrilled to have had a reason to go through 21 years of music-file collecting,” she said. “Since my first laptop I have been cd shopping, awkward cassette finding, vinyl searching in secret stores on my travels and gathered them all into a library of gorgeous wave-files. It was only a question of time before I would share them and then in yet another form: them clouds and streams.”

Listen to Sonos Radio here.

Shake Shack just delivered one of the best fast-food chicken sandwiches currently on the market. Trust me on this, I don’t throw around chicken-based praise lightly and I’ve been at this game for a long time (in internet years). I was there in the trenches during the insanity that was the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich rollout. I’ve tested and ranked the spiciest sandwiches to ever grace a fast-food menu board. And I’ve even started crafting my own chicken sandwiches at home.

What I’m saying is, I’m a (self-certified) chicken sandwich expert. So when I tell you that this thing is good, you can trust that I mean it.

But it’s also complicated — the centerpiece of Shack Shack’s “Korean-Style” menu, the launch of which surfaced some very legitimate concerns about cultural appropriation in food (especially during this independent-restaurant-obliterating pandemic). And as good as the sandwich is, those concerns deserve to be reckoned with. (Why oh why must chicken sandwiches be so problematic!?)

A little primer:

When Shake Shack rolled out the Korean-style chicken sandwich and its accompanying menu items, the company was criticized across the internet for what seemed like a shameless attempt to gentrify and appropriate Korean flavors. This comes on the heels of the chain accepting $10 million in COVID paycheck protection relief, despite being a billion-dollar nationwide food corporation. So the use of Korean ingredients (and co-opting of its sauces, etc.) by a national chain while mom and pop Korean restaurants struggle was impossible to ignore.

The conversation surrounding the menu also surfaced annoyance in the online food community about what makes a food “Korean-inspired” in the first place. In Shake Shack’s case, it seems to mostly mean Gochujang sauce and kimchi — which, many noted, felt lazy when you consider that we’re talking about a complex foodway with wide-ranging influences.

Shake Shack’s inability to read a room will, unfortunately, hang over this menu like a storm cloud. This partially (and rightfully) obscures the fact that, as far as fast-food chicken sandwiches go, this thing is easily top tier. So while we don’t begrudge anyone eating this, we’d certainly encourage them to balance that out with more culturally authentic Korean fare from local, independently-owned restaurants.

Availability:

The “Korean-style” Fried Chick’n sandwich — which should just be called the Kimchi Chicken Sandwich — was released alongside other “Korean-inspired” menu items, including a gochujang and mayo-based dipping sauce for Shake Shack’s fries and chicken nuggets, and a black sugar vanilla shake.

The whole line is available at every Shake Shack location from now until April 5th.

Least Essential Item — Korean-style Gochujang Dipping Sauce

It might be a little strange to kick off this ranking with a condiment, but considering Shake Shack’s Gochujang fries and chicken nuggets are just the Shack’s usual fries and chicken nuggets served with a side of dipping sauce — see what people mean about this menu feeling lazy? — the only new thing here is the sauce. So it’s really all there is to review.

From what I can tell, this stuff is a 50-50 blend of Korean gochujang and mayo. If you’re unfamiliar with gochujang — or just don’t know it by name — it’s a simple sauce consisting of a blend of fermented chili and soybeans, red chili peppers, and salt, with a distinctive bright red color and a potent umami flavor. It typically has a medium-to-severe level of heat, depending on the brand. Shake Shack adding mayo to it is perhaps the aptest metaphor one could imagine for this whole messy controversy.

As you’d expect, the gochujang spice is drastically mellowed by the mayo. But to its credit, it does retain that savory rich flavor that is so characteristic of the condiment. I wish they would’ve given us straight Gochujang, but flavor-wise this makes a great addition to the Shack’s roster of sauces and a great accompaniment to both fries and Shake Shack’s chicken nuggets.

Bottom Line: Ultimately uninspired, but pretty tasty when compared to fast food sauces.

A Twist On A Classic — Black Sugar Vanilla Milkshake

I don’t have a decent photo of Shake Shack’s Black Sugar Vanilla milkshake because being a food writer during a global pandemic means experiencing every meal in your car, and I live in Southern California, where a car parked in the sun gets hot enough to cook food, even in winter. By the time I got around to my milkshake — at the end of my meal, like a dessert — the shake’s thick custard topping drenched in black sugar syrup looked gross.

Why didn’t you just eat your food outside like a normal person?

Because, dummy, I live in Southern California, where 62 degrees is too cold to be eating food outside. Reminder to non-Californians: This is a Goldilocks state where no one is ever happy.

Anyway back to the shake. Despite its inability to retain its presentation in a hot Mazda Protege, it is good and offers some nice variety to Shake Shack’s usual shake roster. At Shake Shack, you can order vanilla, chocolate, mixed, strawberry or cookies and cream milkshakes. While my preferred flavor will always be chocolate, Black Sugar Vanilla would be my clear second choice.

This rich and luxurious handspun milkshake has all the properties of creamy and aromatic vanilla with a nice twist of buttery and deep caramel-like tones, courtesy of the black sugar syrup and additional black sugar mixed in (black sugar is just raw cane sugar without the molasses stripped out, FYI). It makes vanilla — a beloved but boring flavor — seem fun! I recommend skipping the custard, for what it’s worth.

Bottom Line: How exactly is this one “Korean-inspired?” Well, aside from Black Sugar syrup being popular in South Korean coffee houses… we. Have. No. Idea. But it is tasty as hell.

Could’ve Been A Contender — Korean-style Fried Chick’n

And now we come to the main event. From the moment I first heard the news of Shake Shack’s new Korean-style fried chicken sandwich to the moment I first unwrapped the thing, I never thought this had a chance of becoming fast food’s best chicken sandwich. All controversy aside, I’ve had Shake Shack’s “Chick’n” sandwich before and… it’s fine. Certainly not my first choice. I’ve definitely never opted for it over the burger when visiting the chain.

Between my previous experiences and the appropriation controversy, I bit into this thing full of skepticism. But that quickly melted away (with help from my hot-ass car) as my taste buds were awakened by an umami bomb of rich and complex flavors. (Disclaimer: Complex for a fast food joint, etc., etc.)

I feel that almost every chicken sandwich needs modification of some sort, but the…*sigh* “Korean-style” Fried Chick’n is superb exactly as is. It features a hearty piece of white meat chicken hand-breaded in the Shack’s sauce-absorbing batter, submerged completely in a subtly spicy and sweet gochujang sauce, atop a brioche bun covered in white kimchi slaw, and finished with a modest dusting of toasted sesame seeds.

The sesame seeds on the bun add a nice aromatic quality that tames some of the more pungent qualities of the kimchi slaw, which is made using Choi’s kimchi — highlighting a spicy mix of Napa cabbage, daikon radish, carrots, garlic, Asian pear, green onions, and sea salt. The slaw really pulls the flavors of this sandwich together and elevates the experience.

(See that Shake Shack? Choi’s Kimchi, A Portland-based company that grew organically out of the local farmer’s market scene, based on a family recipe that was founded and operated by actual Korean people, made your sandwich a winner. Cultural authenticity helps!)

Bottom Line: In October of last year, Shake Shack’s Seoul location dropped an iteration of this sandwich that we suspect has a stronger spice kick to it, as this recipe was a “slight variation,” according to Shake Shack’s press release. I want that sandwich.

Until then though, this is my top fried chicken sandwich in the whole game, warts and all.

So should you go out and buy it?

Maybe.

We don’t begrudge anyone for looking at this whole project sideways. And this is fast food — if you feel a certain way about it, definitely don’t bother with it. You’re not missing something life-changing.

If you’re don’t agree with the critique, live in a food desert, find yourself visiting Shake Shack anyway, or just want to taste the dang thing, well… divorced from context, this sandwich is delicious. We can’t deny that.

That said, I hope we can all agree that the pandemic is a crucial time for supporting local, independent restaurants. Post-pandemic will be a crucial time for that, too, come to think of it!

James Harden’s tenure with the Rockets seems to have all but come to an end, as the former MVP was not at practice on Wednesday for what coach Stephen Silas cited as being what was “best for the group” if he wasn’t in attendance. This came after Harden effectively burned all bridges in his postgame press conference on Tuesday night following a loss to the Lakers, ripping the organization and making it clear he needed to be moved ASAP.

That message was apparently heard, and reports indicated that Harden likely won’t ever be back at the Rockets facility and a trade, either to Philadelphia or Brooklyn, is expected to be done either later today or in the very, very near future. Those comments last night by Harden were quickly pushed back on by John Wall in his postgame presser, as the point guard noted that Harden, without saying his name, wasn’t buying in.

On Wednesday, DeMarcus Cousins was even less subtle when asked about the Harden situation, calling out the disrespect Harden has shown the Rockets not just in his postgame presser last night, but in his actions since the beginning of the season.

Cousins is certainly not wrong here, as Harden’s disinterest in being on the Rockets has been evident since his club tour of America during training camp. Still, the way he vocalized things last night was especially disrespectful in the eyes of Cousins, who noted that it felt inevitable that a nasty breakup was coming, and doesn’t seem interested in seeing harden come back.

It honestly feels rather incredible that it took a month for all of this to spill out publicly, and the good news for Cousins, Wall, and the rest of the team is that they can now move on. Harden also will be getting his wish in the form of a new team, and as long as the Rockets get a strong return back, one has to believe everyone will just be relieved that this saga has come to a close.

Hiss Golden Messenger took things slowly in 2020 after firing off a string of consistently productive years: Between 2016 and 2019, the M.C. Taylor group released five albums. 2019’s Terms Of Surrender, the group’s most recent album, earned the band some Grammy consideration this year, as the record is up for the Best Americana Album award. Now they’ve returned with their first new music since that album, a single called “Sanctuary.”

The track is a breezy and thoroughly pleasant slice of ’70s-inspired folk-rock on which Taylor reflects on how things have been lately, singing, “Feeling bad, feeling blue / Can’t get out of my own mind / but I know how to sing about it.” The song’s video features Taylor singing the track in front of a large American flag, as well as other people getting in front of the camera to lip-sync along.

Taylor says of the track:

“Over the past year, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we care for ourselves and each other, and how hard it is to live truthfully in a world that is so tangled. ‘We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men,’ says the poet Wendell Berry. The song ‘Sanctuary’ is one small piece of my own personal reckoning with what it feels like to search for some kind of shelter in the storm. Fare thee well, John Prine, AKA Handsome Johnny, a speaker of truth if ever there was one.”

Watch the “Sanctuary” video above.