Month: February 2021

Breakups are never easy. This is especially true when it comes to professional athletes and the cities and organizations where they’ve built a life and a career over a number of years. There’s a great deal of emotion tied up in it all, even if all the parties involved try to abide by the mantra that sports is, first and foremost, a business.

James Harden’s exit from the Houston Rockets this season was particularly ugly. Only some of that is his fault. He’d made his trade demands known to the organization, yet in doing their due diligence, it prolonged the inevitable and led to a seriously uncomfortable situation that spilled out onto the court and into the locker room.

By the time Harden had reached his breaking point, he’d already effectively alienated some teammates, who weren’t shy about voicing their frustration with the disgruntled star. Now that all of that is over, Harden has expressed remorse about how things were handled, telling Rachel Nichols of The Jump that he meant no disrespect toward his teammates, the organization, or the fans.

James Harden sits down & opens up about his new role in Brooklyn, what he didn’t like about his departure from Houston, and the Nets’ championship chances: “We’re more than confident that it’s going to be difficult for a team to beat us four times in a best-of-seven series.” pic.twitter.com/rZKkwFs1jg

— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) February 12, 2021

Harden’s full attention is now turned toward the enormous expectations in Brooklyn, where his new team will try to exert their power over their Eastern Conference counterparts. The trio of Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant has shown tantalizing previews of what they’re capable of offensively, although the defensive end has left something to be desired. Still, at this point, both the Harden and the Rockets should be ready to move on and focus on their respective futures.

Heritage Auctions is selling off a pair of sneakers bestowed upon LeBron James by the late Kobe Bryant back in 2002, when Bryant was coming off a three-peat and James was still just a high-schooler. The adidas Kobe 2s, which are decorated with patriotic images to honor the victims of the 9/11 attack, feature a lace-less look and bold imagery in addition to the meaning behind their connection to both James and Bryant.

Chris Ivy, the director of sports at Heritage Auctions, said the company was contacted by a collector who discovered the sneakers at an estate sale in Akron, and after researching the sneakers, realized what exactly they had.

“Upon review of the sneakers and the corresponding footage and images of LeBron discussing that they were gifted to him from Kobe Bryant, we quickly knew that we had something special on our hands,” Ivy told Uproxx.

The current top bid is $15,500, but especially after Bryant’s death last year and James’ championship with the Lakers in 2020, the sneakers are sure to fetch a massive sum, whether from a memorabilia collector, a Kobe stan, or just a Lakers diehard. Everything from sports cards to NBA Topshot graphics have become popular during the pandemic, so don’t be surprised if the bids rise on these Mambas quickly.

The Weeknd put on a spectacular display with his recent Super Bowl halftime show, and for fans wanting to know more about what went into the performance, they’re in luck. Today, it was announced that a documentary about the performance is being made and will air on Showtime.

The film will be titled The Show, and Billboard describes it, “The Show, directed by Emmy nominee Nadia Hallgren (Becoming), will shed light on the tireless hours, days and months of collaboration that went into The Weeknd’s hit-packed performance during an unpredictable and tumultuous year.”

In a press statement, Todd Kaplan, VP of marketing at Pepsi, said:

“The Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show is undoubtedly the world’s biggest stage, producing the most viewed and talked about moment in music every single year. The pressure to deliver an iconic, memorable and entertaining performance is felt well beyond the artist, as there are a number of people — behind the scenes — who are vital to its success. With our new documentary coming to Showtime, we are taking fans on the emotional and thrilling journey of what it takes to make the biggest show of the year — with the added complexity of doing so amidst a global pandemic. With Jesse Collins and a number of super-talented creatives at the helm, The Show chronicles all the drama and hard work that goes into successfully pulling off a show of this magnitude.”

It’s not clear exactly when the doc will premiere, but its debut is set for some point “later this year.”

There was a lot to dislike about the last four years, and though this is a minor quibble, it still hurt to see: We had a POTUS and FLOTUS who were almost certainly no longer in love. Melania Trump’s grumpy looks were infamous and plentiful, and she was not above swatting away her husband’s hand when he reached out for PDA photo ops. People are still getting used to having a nice and professional president, but they’re also still getting used to a First Couple — Joe and Dr. Jill Biden — who clearly adore each other.

The latest example came on Friday, when it was revealed that Jill had put up a lavish Valentine’s Day display on the White House lawn — a sea of hearts with words like “love” and “strength” and “healing” and “compassion.”

When asked by reporters why she had put up the holiday display, Jill responded, “I just wanted some joy. With the pandemic, just everybody’s feeling a little down, so it’s just a little joy, a little hope. That’s all.”

Granted, her predecessor was known for ostentatious holiday displays, too. But Melania tended to only go all out for Christmas, which she did reluctantly and with, some have said, questionable taste. (Although her final bout got some good reviews — or at least wasn’t compared to The Handmaid’s Tale.)

Though it had only been four years since the Obamas were in office, the combination of a happy First Couple and Valentine’s Day displays had people feeling, once again, shocked.

Some singled out Joe’s jacket.

And others gave sent some love to Champ and Major, the first White House pets since the Obama administration.

Like plenty of the music-loving public, I watched The New York Times documentary Framing Britney Spears this weekend. Then I watched it again. Then, I started researching conservatorships online, trying to understand what was really going on in the life of one of America’s most beloved and embattled pop stars. I certainly wasn’t alone in this reaction, as celebrities, the fans who initially started the #FreeBritney movement, and newcomers, just learning about the situation, all began to share their sadness and horror about the way she was treated over a decade ago, and the terrible situation she’s still in today.

Despite whatever impact the media, paparazzi, misogyny, grifters like Sam Lutfi, and the pressure of fame might’ve had on Britney back in 2008, the real concern about her situation right now stems from the conservatorship established by her father for the last thirteen years. The average American probably isn’t aware what a conservatorship is, or how they’re used in the legal system, but veteran lawyer Lisa MacCarley, who has worked in Los Angeles probate courts and executing conservatorships for her entire career, is an expert on both the proper use of the status and how it can be abused. Since 2019, MacCarley has been devoting herself to probate court reform, founding the charity Bettys’ Hope to raise awareness about the rampant abuse in this area, and noting how the LA courts, in particular, leave room for corruption.

MacCarley participated in interviews for the Framing Britney documentary, but ultimately wasn’t included in the film. She said she was grateful for being allowed to participate and remains “in awe” of director Ms. Stark’s brilliant documentary. Lisa and I spoke over the phone earlier this week about her background in law and conservatorships, how the legal status can be abused, and why Britney Spears doesn’t need one.

Can you begin by telling me a little bit about your background as a lawyer and particularly your expertise on conservatorship?

There was never a day in my professional career where I was not involved in conservatorship and probate work. I went to Loyola Law School to be a probate and conservatorship attorney back in the 1980s. I understood that there would be an opportunity to help families dealing with very difficult problems related to aging, relating to lack of capacity. When I was attending, my name was Lisa Brown, and I went with a pair of lawyers named MacCarley and Rosen, and married Mark MacCarley. The other partner, Walter Rosen, had known me since I was a child. So they had mentored me and talked to me about this.

I’ve represented numerous professional fiduciaries throughout my career, many family members. I used to be on the panel to represent people facing conservatorship, but I intentionally stopped doing that because of cases like the Britney Spears matter. I have earned a living for the last thirty years involved in the probate courts, and in these proceedings representing the very wealthy, the very poor, and people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. So if I did twenty a year for the last few decades, I’ve been involved in several hundred conservatorship cases.

What is the purpose of a conservatorship when it is a good or a useful thing?

There are actually three different types of conservatorship. First, there’s the mental health court that handles situations relating to mental illness. They have a very different set of rules and work out of what’s called the Welfare and Institutions Code. The probate code is really meant for people that have age-related ailments like dementia that affect their ability to take care of themselves. That relates to conservatorship of the person, and I can actually read the statute: “For someone who is unable to provide properly for his or her own personal needs for health, food, closing, or shelter.”

Conservator of the estate is for someone who is substantially unable to manage his or her own financial resources or resist fraud or undue influence. This could be someone who has had a traumatic brain injury because of an accident, I have a couple of cases like that. But most often, it’s for an older adult who may have not done estate planning or who didn’t do estate planning well. That’s another problem. So they require an adult, another person, or entity to come in and be a surrogate decision-maker. It’s supposed to be a way of protecting people who are no longer competent to make decisions for themselves.

When did Britney’s legal situation first come to attention in relationship to the conservatorship?

What’s happening to Britney is an exaggerated and distorted miscarriage of justice, but these types of situations are not unusual. In fact, throughout the country there is a small grassroots movement to reform our probate courts and take back the courts so that they function properly. Because there’s so much dysfunction — here’s so many problems, so many cases of varying degrees of injustices. Families being separated. Elderly women with dementia being kept away from their children, for example, because judges don’t understand what’s going on. The probate bar doesn’t really have any type of curriculum or training.

I’ve actually been advocating, prior to COVID, trying to bring to light to the need for probate court reform. When COVID hit, it just shut everything down. No politician wanted to meet with me. No more follow-up phone calls, nothing. So in the middle of this, I became very sad and depressed, there’s so much injustice, and suddenly nobody cared anymore. One of the #FreeBritney advocates, Kevin Wu, had heard about the things I’d been doing pre-COVID, and he reached out asking if I’d be willing to come to a #FreeBritney rally. Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it except I would go to help support the cause and support them.

When I arrived, he handed me the megaphone, and asked if I wanted to say anything? I think in that moment, I was so angry and frustrated and sad, and I just kind of started screaming, like letting loose all this pent up emotion. Little did I know that I was pretty much nailing everything that has gone wrong for Britney Spears. Seeing these young people respond so positively, I was amazed. Because I always thought this fight would be way too sad and way too boring for anybody to care.

Then they started sending me the documents they had on her case, and I just couldn’t even believe what I was reading. I still can’t even believe what has gone on. I found out about Adam Streisand, and that was like, what in the world is going on here? So I began really looking at their mission, and I began to talk to them about probate court reform. I told them how important it is that they bring these issues to light. The #FreeBritney movement is going to save lives. And we’re getting there. People are finally paying attention to the unconstitutional conservatorship of Britney Spears. It’s terrifying.

Can you stress why the discovery of Adam Streisand’s role was so important for your legal understanding of what happened to her?

In our legal system, there’s the basic premise of all of our laws regarding the loss or deprivation of liberty or property. This is called due process. Our California constitution and the United States Constitution provide very clearly that everyone is entitled to a fair process, an unbiased judge, and most importantly, your own attorney. I was shocked because I had never seen before that when James Spears’ attorneys filed the packet of paperwork to commence the conservatorship on February 1, 2008, they literally prepared an order for the judge to sign nominating Sam Ingham as Britney Spears’ attorney. I’ve never seen that before. It still shocks me that I’m even saying it. But what was worse was when I found out that Britney had picked for herself a very good attorney, Adam Streisand, and Adam Streisand shows up and says, “I’m representing Britney.” And Judge Reva Goetz, says, “No, we’ve decided that Britney Spears doesn’t have capacity to retain her counsel.”

There is no such thing. That’s absolutely false, absolutely wrong, absolutely a violation. Unethical. But it even gets worse than that. Apparently, Sam Ingham had written some kind of report, or he was one of the two who had written a report, basically saying that Britney Spears didn’t have the capacity to retain counsel. Which is, again, another ethical violation as well. But the problem is that the judges are untouchable. There’s nothing that you can do when a judge goes off the charts, and does what Reva Goetz did. What these attorneys all know is that in probate court, the judges control your fees, so they control your income, and they will retaliate. This court of appeals doesn’t help. There’s no place to go for recourse when a judge does things that Reva Goetz did.

What is the most concerning aspect to you about Britney’s current conservatorship?

Obviously this is an abusive conservatorship. What is the evidence of that? Number one, Britney Spears’ boyfriend publicly saying “Jamie Spears is a d*ck.” It’s a logical jump to say that at least in her boyfriend’s opinion, Britney is not being treated right. We know that she’s on a work hiatus for one or two years. She didn’t go back to doing her residency in Las Vegas, and to this day, and this is the part that makes me really pissed off, there’s still no petition to remove Jamie Spears. Then, going back to her lawyer Sam Ingham, he’s actually come to court and said, “Britney’s afraid of her father.” Seriously, that’s the guy who’s her conservator? How much more evidence do we need of this being an abusive conservatorship? There is no way this conservatorship should go on another 24 hours, if there was any decency in any of their minds. I’m furious, and that’s why I wrote the email that I wrote.

I got in touch with you via that email you wrote to other lawyers in LA, urging them to protest Britney’s conservatorship. How does it help the case to have other legal professionals lobbying against this?

Because we all do work in a small enough community that everybody knows what’s going on. And I actually sent that email not only to my colleagues in private practice, but I sent it to a couple of attorneys that work for the court in the system, who are very much aware of what these procedures are. The fact that they wouldn’t even let her have the paperwork (detailing her conservatorship decision) is just incredible. I can’t even believe that the court-appointed attorney went along with that, that he thought that was a good idea. That’s incredible to me in terms of being a miscarriage of justice.

As lawyers, we take an oath to uphold the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of California. The first sentence of the constitution of the State of California says “No one should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” That’s the first line in the constitution. What’s the point in taking that oath if it doesn’t mean something to you in terms of what is happening in a courtroom? They can absolutely call the court. They can absolutely call the state bar. They can absolutely say, between what’s on the case summary and what Adam Streisand said in this documentary, her constitutional rights were violated. It’s not even a close call. We don’t even have to speculate about what’s going on, we know.

You called the conservatorship abusive. Would you also call it illegal?

Yes, unlawful. It’s unconstitutional. They violated the very basic notion of her constitutional rights. They did everything wrong. It was almost like they looked for ways to do it wrong. She couldn’t have her own attorney. They appointed the judge’s favorite crony, Sam Ingham. This was all a setup. It was well known in the Los Angeles probate court at the time that Sam Ingham and his office cohort, Jackson Chen, were the judge’s favorite attorneys, and especially Judge Reva Goetz’s favorites. Judge Reva Goetz had a great fondness and bias towards Sam Ingham and Jackson Chen. Sam Ingham actually had the audacity at some point to say “I specialize in celebrity conservatorship.” It’s just cronyism.

Does Britney need a conservatorship?

No, I don’t think she’s needed one forever. Does she need people to help her? Yes. Does she need mature women around her? Yes. I wouldn’t let a man near her, except for her boyfriend and her sons, obviously. But, yes. She needs help. Does she need a conservatorship? Didn’t seem that way to me, given the way she’s able to perform and everything else.

Lots of public figures are beginning to speak out after watching the documentary. How can people with large platforms best help Britney?

Put pressure on the politicians, the attorney general in the state of California. Xavier Becerra is on his way out, and I believe I heard Adam Schiff might be coming in as the AG. Put pressure on the politicians. Let them know that this is a hyper-exaggerated situation of injustice, but all they have to do is open up their eyeballs, and they’ll see that it’s an emerging crisis in our probate court. So they need to fix this, and fix it now.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Give credit to the young people. Their love for Britney is just amazing to me, their passion and their compassion. Thank goodness for this group of people that saw through this. She’s able to function. She doesn’t need a conservator. I would definitely want to give the young people all the credit. They are brilliant and so intuitive. This is a love story. Right? It’s a beautiful love story about young people that just felt so strongly about Britney Spears, they were not going to let her be treated unjustly.

“The Champagne of Beers” is one of those slogans that feels sort of like a joke. And while it is kind of funny in its own American-branding, ham-fisted way, there are plenty of beers out there that are designed to have the same effervescent effect as bubbly. Some beer styles straight-up chase the flavor notes of dry bruts, while the bright fruitiness featured in many newer bottles of champers sees amalgams all over the beer world.

Today we’re chasing down champagne-adjacent beers. Some are literally meant to mimic sparkling wine notes — Brut IPAs and Berliner Weisses (called “The Champagne of the North” as far back as the Napoleonic era). Then there are a few select Belgian farmhouse saisons, lambics, and ales that touch on very similar flavor profiles. These beers don’t necessarily attempt to be champagne-ish, but they travel very close in flavor notes and the overall vibe.

The ten bottles of beer below give you the vibe of champagne while still being beer. These beers are generally light, always refreshing, and deeply tasty. It’s a great category. And yes, we added Miller’s “Champagne of Beers” in the mix, too.

Brasserie Dupont Avec Les Bons Vœux

Style: Farmhouse Ale/Saison

ABV: 9.5%

Average Price: $11.99, 750ml bottle

The Beer:

This Belgian beer is a real classic. Originally created as a brewery-only offering for special guests, friends, and family of Dupont, the beer was specifically made as a replacement for champers on New Year’s Eve. It proved so popular that it’s now available internationally and remains one of the best winter beers in the world.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a light effervescence from the get-go, with hints of banana and clove next to light spots of lemon zest and black pepper. The malts are sweetened but subtle — with notes of orchard fruits, especially pear, shining through the dry and yeasty body of the sip. There’s a minor note of floral hops that gets a little grassy but never overpowers that orchard fruit and dryness.

Bottom Line:

This is a very “I’ve graduated to really drinking good beer now” beer. It also comes in large sparkling wine bottles with a cork, making it pretty much the same as opening and sharing a bottle of bubbly.

Evil Twin Nomader Weisse

Style: Berliner Weisse

ABV: 4%

Average Price: $10.99, four-pack

The Beer:

This American craft version of Berliner Weisse is a solid entry-point to the style. You’re getting quality sour wheat beer without fruit adjuncts or any real faults when it comes to hitting the style marks.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a bready/wheat malt base that gives way to cloves, lemon juice, and peppery spice. The sourness arrives with the first sip and has a slight yogurt tang but leans more lemon juice than lactic. The beer picks up some apple/pear vibes while hitting on very light notes of salted cream on the finish.

Bottom Line:

Look, this isn’t going to impress someone from Berlin who has access to the best Berliner Weisse in the world. What it will do is give you a nice, light, sessionable beer with unique flavors that you can drink a lot of. You can’t complain about that.

Prairie Standard

Style: Farmhouse Ale/Saison

ABV: 5.2%

Average Price: $11.49, four-pack

The Beer:

Prairie Artisan Ales does some great work with unique styles. This brew is built as a light and airy expression, touched by Motueka hops from New Zealand.

Tasting Notes:

The beer opens with a touch of caramel-y sweet rye bread crusts with a slight sour butter funk countered by bright, almost tropical fruits. The body of the beer leverages sweeter orange zest against more tart lemon juices — as hints of pepper, hoppy florals, and savory green herbs mingle. The end is very light, semi-dry, and full of complementary flavors.

Bottom Line:

This is a very crushable beer. Find a four-pack and share it with someone looking for a new world of tastes in beer.

Alesmith Brütiful Day

Style: Brut IPA

ABV: 7.2%

Average Price: $19.99, six-pack

The Beer:

San Diego’s AleSmith is always cracking the code on new and funky beers. Their Brütiful Day is hopped with Nelson Sauvin hops, which specifically bring a white grape vibe to the beer’s flavor profile, along with a spectrum of tropical fruits and spices.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a lot of fruit next to very dry yeast on the nose, leaning toward pineapple spritzed with lemon juice next to pear, apricots, and plenty of black pepper. The vinous aspects of the sip are really tied to that dry yeast base, bringing a clear sense of champagne into the mix as you sip this beer.

Bottom Line:

This is really close to the “champagne of beers” moniker. To the point that it’s kind of weird drinking it out of a can. Our advice, pour this into a glass and take your time enjoying it.

pFriem Flanders Blonde

Style: Wild Ale

ABV: 7.1%

Average Price: $8.99, 12-oz. bottle

The Beer:

This is beer crafted in the style of a Belgian Flanders ale, which was colloquially called the Burgundy of Belgium. This brew famously spends up to two years mellowing in former Pinot Noir casks (Pinot Noir being a champagne grape).

Tasting Notes:

There’s a well-balanced mix of cellared oak next to hints of almost over-ripe apples and dry and fizzy lemon oils. The apple starts to move into a tart territory as the lemon brightens the whole experience. By the end, you’re left with a sense of lightness, brightness, and dry champagne vibes through and through.

Bottom Line:

This is one of those beers that we really can’t imagine drinking in any other situation besides as a replacement for champagne. It’s not really an everyday beer. It’s more of a “I need something really good to pair with this smoked haddock in sour cherry sauce topped with lobster confit” sort of beer.

Allagash Saison

Style: Farmhouse Ale/Saison

ABV: 6.1%

Average Price: $11.76, four-pack

The Beer:

Allagash is one of those craft breweries that really can do no wrong right now. Their Saison is a respectful nod to the original Belgian saisons it’s recreating. The base has 2-Row malts, malted rye, and oats with a dose of Tettnang, Bravo, and Cascade hops bringing the crucial fruitiness and spice into the mix.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a sense of clove and peppercorn steeped orange marmalade spread on crusty sour rye bread, next to a slightly damp pine resin. The pine remains muted as the orange zest and crusty, almost sweet bread leads towards lemon juice tartness and a touch of bitter grapefruit rinds.

The whole sip ends extra dry and light, while holding onto the citrus.

Bottom Line:

This one really goes down almost too easily while easing you into some of the funkier and more complex saisons that actually come from Belgium.

Ballast Point Brut IPA

Style: Brut IPA

ABV: 7%

Average Price: $14.29, six-pack

The Beer:

California’s Ballast Point went all-in on the dry, champagne-like Brut IPA with this brew. Their seasonal beer taps into fruity and spicy hops to create a beer the brewers at Ballast Point call “bone dry.”

Tasting Notes:

The beer is super dry even from the nose. The fruits are also front-and-center, with pineapple next to pomelo next to orange. The taste mellows the fruits toward peach and apricot as lemon tartness arrives beside a floral hoppy note with a touch of peppery spice. The dryness and fruit is really the throughline.

Bottom Line:

This really feels like fruity/dry champagne that’s been just touched by floral yet slightly spicy hops. If nothing else, this beer has the sort of combination of flavors worth checking out to expand your beer palate.

Dogfish Head Festina Pêche

Style: Berliner Weisse

ABV: 4.5%

Average Price: $10, four-pack

The Beer:

If you want solid craft, you can’t go wrong with Dogfish Head. Their Berliner Weisse is fermented with peach sugars, which are eaten by the yeast to create peachy alcohol in the foundation of this beer. This adds a natural fruity sweetness to the sour beer that works wonders.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a thinness to the nose that leans on peach skins and stones more than juicy peach flesh. That lightness carries on through the sip as the peach remains subtle against a very light tartness and touches of yeast and green apples.

Bottom Line:

If you’re afraid of sour or tart bombs, this is the beer to try. It’s ever so delicate in its tartness, with plenty of peaches, that you’ll be able to start dipping your toes in the sour end of the beer pool without being overwhelmed.

Ommegang Brut IPA

Style: Brut IPA

ABV: 6.5%

Average Price: $12.99, four-pack

The Beer:

This celebratory IPA from Ommegang is crafted to feel like dry champagne that’s been hopped. The beer’s foundation is a base of Pilsner malt and flaked corn that’s then hopped with a mix of Mandarina Bavaria, Calypso, and Citra hops. The brew is then bottle conditioned to create natural carbonation.

Tasting Notes:

That champagne dryness is present from the jump. Hints of pine resin sit next to pineapple cores and bitter grapefruit pith. The sip really ends dry, resinous, and full of that tropical fruit with an earthy edge.

Bottom Line:

This is another crushable brew. The light dryness really marries well to that resin nature in the taste, making this approachable yet unique.

Cantillon Saint Lamvinus

Style: Fruit Lambic

ABV: 7%

Average Price: $33.98, 750ml bottle

The Beer:

This lambic purposefully bridges the world of beer and wine. The brew is fruited with Merlot and Cabernet-Franc wine grapes from Bordeaux. The berries and lambic go into old Bordeaux oak barrels where they help start a fermentation, imbuing the already two to three-year-old beer with extra, winey layers.

Tasting Notes:

This opens up smelling of sweet dark berries and red grapes with a hint of oak and leather. That mellows massively into subtler fruits like pear, tangerine, and white grape skins next to hints of dry grass, potting soil, and a musty cheese cellar. By the end, the lightness and semi-dry aspects will leave you with wine tannins, brie rinds, and a final note of those almost woody berries.

Bottom Line:

Look, this whole list could have been different versions of Cantillon and 3 Fonteinen lambics and gueuze. But that would have been too narrow, expensive, and, in some cases, impossible to find for American beer drinkers. Still, this one is worth tracking down.

It’s a brew for the advanced beer drinker — complex, eye-opening, and goddamn delicious.

Bonus Pick: Miller High Life

Style: Adjunct Lager

ABV: 4.6%

Average Price: $10.50, 12-pack

The Beer:

The “Champagne of Beers” is a classic American brew dating all the way back to 1903. The beer has a base blend of malted barley that’s hopped with Galena hops brought in from the Pacific Northwest.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a malty cracker body to the nose with a slight corn syrup sweetness. The beer has a light body with echoes of unsalted Saltines next to an almost caramel corn vibe. There’s a fairly malty body by the end with a slight svelteness next to all that corn and cracker.

Bottom Line:

This is one of my favorite $2 happy hour brews, or $5 “beer and shot” happy hour deals. It’s super easy to drink, usually well-rounded, and absolutely fine for what it is.

Ludacris is a multitalented fellow: He remains one of hip-hop’s sharpest MCs, one of Hollywood’s most versatile actors, and a savvy businessman whose successes continue to multiply. However, it turns out there’s one thing he can’t do: Cook. To be fair, stars at his level can just hire private chefs, but it appears he wants to add to his multihyphenate resume, and obviously, the best way to learn how to do something is to hire a celebrity chef and film a television special in which he teaches you techniques to learn your way around the kitchen.

Wait, what?

That’s right, Ludacris turned his learning experience into what will undoubtedly be some truly entertaining TV with Ludacris Can’t Cook, an hour-long special set to debut February 25 on the Discovery+ streaming service. Chai Pani executive chef Meherwan Irani will show Luda how to step up his cooking game and introducing him to new, international flavors to expand his palate — and hopefully, the viewers’ as well. In a video call to Billboard, the “Stand Up” rapper and Fast 9 star explained his rationale for doing the show.

“When men like myself are hungry, we just want to eat,” he explained. “We don’t want to take 30 minutes to an hour to cook.” He calls the experience “an eye-opener” and elaborated on just why it was he couldn’t cook in the first place. “I love my mother with all my heart,” he disclaims. “My mother was not the best cook in the world. Her food and cooking has gotten better and better over a long period of time.” He says his Gabonese wife Eudoxie “does all the cooking, which is part of the reason I can’t cook.”

While it’s unlikely that the special will make him as culinarily skilled as he is lyrically adept, hopefully, he’ll learn enough to be able to pick up a few shifts at home and take some of the work off Eudoxie’s plate.

It was initially a random question about Mr. Miyagi that led me to Robert Kamen, the writer of The Karate Kid. While The Karate Kid has become a cottage industry unto itself, and made fine careers out of originally small parts for half the cast (a few of whom I’ve interviewed myself), the man who created “wax on, wax off” and “sweep the leg” has stayed well out of the spotlight. This despite the movie being, at least partly, a riff on his own life story. After getting beaten up by bullies on the way to the 1964 World’s Fair, Kamen took up karate, being taught first by a bellicose Marine captain and later immersing himself in Goju-ryu, founded by Okinawan karateka Chojun Miyagi.

There would seem to be an obvious reason for Kamen avoiding the limelight: he doesn’t need it. After The Karate Kid, Kamen went on to write The Fifth Element with Luc Besson, became a prolific “script assassin” on movies like Lethal Weapon 3, Under Siege, and The Fugitive, and collaborating with Besson, created both the Taken and Transporter franchises. The latter was inspired, Kamen says, by how big a pain in the ass Bruce Willis was on the set of The Fifth Element. Besson’s resulting epiphany, according to Kamen: “We have to create our own movie stars.”

It sounds self-aggrandizing on the face of it, but if you look at Jason Statham’s filmography it seems to bear out. Before The Transporter, he was a semi-obscure English indie actor. In virtually every role after that, Jason Statham played Jason Statham from The Transporter. Liam Neeson’s post-Taken arc is much the same.

Who knew that was all because of the same guy? How many movie roads lead back to Robert Kamen? How many times had I written about Robert Kamen without even really knowing I was writing about Robert Kamen? (See Statham voice posts, lists of Taken ripoffs, and love letters to The Fifth Element for evidence of this).

Along the way to the writing the world’s most famous martial arts movie, Kamen traveled to Afghanistan, wrote a novel about it, turned the novel into a screenplay that he sold for $135,000 in 1979, and used the money to buy a vineyard in Sonoma. That vineyard, which Kamen says he bought for $1,000 an acre and speculates is probably worth $500,000 an acre now, became Kamen Wines, which does brisk business. It’s hard not to conclude that he’s led a charmed existence.

This, I figured, was a man who had some stories. From getting his black belt in a Long Island parking lot after a drunken bar fight to ballbusting Liam Neeson, I was not wrong.

I realize I’ve written about a lot of your movies not knowing that they were all you.

That happens with somebody who steers clear of all publicity.

I don’t blame you. I’ve interviewed Billy Zabka and Martin Kove within the last year, just randomly.

I tell you, it’s all very interesting. Here you’ve got Billy, who basically was in, I don’t know, five scenes of the original Karate Kid, and Marty, who was in four scenes, and they made a career out of who they were. They would go around doing autographs at conventions. And then this thing comes up, and now here’s Marty doing Intuit commercials on television, and Billy is like a houseplant that was dead, and he was watered, and he has just flourished. Even the Cobra Kai kids, most of them had no lines, and yet they have dined out on being the Cobra Kai for many, many years.

Martin’s my favorite kind of actor to interview, who just will talk and talk and talk forever and tell you a story about every person in Hollywood.

Yeah, I love Marty, but the problem with Marty is that also when I see his number on the phone, I send it right to voicemail. He’ll just go on and on. Actually, when he would call the Cobra Kai guys to ask them questions, they would refer him to me. And I said, “Dudes, I have nothing to do with your fucking project except I collect residuals. Do not do this to me.” He’ll just talk and talk and talk.

So the reason I reached out initially was that story about this other Miyagi. I have a hard time believing that there was a completely different Miyagi who has the same name, is also a karate champion, had a Hawaiian wife and saved a bunch of people from a cave. Does that seem like an insane coincidence to you?

I have no idea what that’s all about. You have no idea the kind of stuff that has come out of this. Miyagi is a common Okinawan name. It’s not a very common Japanese name, but whatever. You have no idea how many people have claimed that they were the Karate Kid or that they had something to do with The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi’s first name has been changed four different times by people who don’t bother to pay attention to the script.

So yours was based on the founder of your karate style then.

Right. Of the Okinawan Goju karate style, Chojun Miyagi. He was the guy. But he wasn’t kind and gentle, as my teacher was not kind and gentle. He was kind, but not gentle. Karate in Okinawa takes on a different significance than it does in, say, Japan or Korea or someplace else. Karate is part of their culture. When I was in Okinawa, the thing that struck me the most was they don’t say, “Ah, that guy is a great fighter.” What they say is, “He trains hard.”

The movie came directly out of you learning karate?

Yeah, it came directly out of me knowing about this stuff. Jerry Weintraub, the late, great Jerry Weintraub, had bought an article about a nine-year-old kid who got a black belt. Frank Price, who was the chairman of Columbia, bought the article and called me up and said, “What do you think about this?” I said, “Well, considering it took me five years to get my first degree of black belt, I think this nine-year-old kid stuff is very Americanized.” And he said, “Well, what do you know about it?” And I said, “Well, I know this is a lot of nonsense, but I have a story.” And I told him my story, and he bought it, and it had nothing to do with the article. It didn’t hurt that he was my mentor. I started it the day my oldest daughter, Allie, was born, and I finished it September 15th. 13 months later, we were shooting.

That wasn’t your first script that had been produced at that point, right?

No. It was my third. I had this golden, blessed career. I thought this was the way that all screenwriting careers went. I sold a script. Three weeks after I sold my first script, I bought my vineyard with the proceeds from that. And then I was hired to do Taps at 20th Century Fox. Six months later they were shooting the movie. And six months after that, they were shooting another movie called Split Image that I rewrote. And I’m like, “Whoa, this is great!”

Then I did The Karate Kid and, of course, life became much easier. Because I didn’t live in LA., I start meeting screenwriters and hear about guys who have been writing for years, never getting anything made. My friend, Richard LaGravenese, my friend, Tony Gilroy, all these people were working for years before they got anything done. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, la-di-da.” Of course, as the years went on I started seeing how hard it was. I’ve been blessed.

I read that you got into screenwriting because you’d gone to Afghanistan as a grad student and then you wrote a novel afterwards. What was that like?

It was like sometimes you were on a camel, sometimes you were on a donkey. Sometimes you were walking. It was a bunch of nomads. I was with a bunch of Kochi nomads. They went from north to south. They followed the season with their flocks and their kids and their wives and their very vicious dogs, and I was with them. It was great — when you’re 22. It’s not so great if you’re 73. But I just said to my wife the other night, I said, “It was the best 11 months of my life.”

Do you have that one project that didn’t get made that you are most annoyed by it never getting made?

Yeah, I do. We all do. It’s called Oasis, and it’s a love story between a girl with cerebral palsy and a boy who is one slice short of a loaf that takes place in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in the Italian-American neighborhoods. I call it my cerebral palsy love story. And we have a cast. We have a girl who has muscular dystrophy who is a great actress, Madison Ferris, who co-starred with Sally Fields on Broadway, and she is confined to a wheelchair. We have John Magaro, who just costarred in First Cow as the boy. And we have Adam Salky to direct it, and all we need is 3 million bucks. It’s easier to get $50 million to do one of my action movies than it is to get $3 million bucks to do a disability love story. It’s 15 years now, and we’re still trying to get it made.

I read that you were working on doing a Karate Kid Broadway musical.

Oh, I am. It was going full-steam until the hoax of a pandemic happened, and then Broadway shut it down. But now we’re gearing up again because Broadway will be reopened. We got our first view of the choreography this week. We have all the lyrics written. We have the book written. We have the production designer who was nominated for two Tonys in the same season — Derek McLane. The greatest living theater director in Japan is directing it. We’re ready to go, but the theaters are closed.

[You can call me a terrible journalist here, but I couldn’t tell if “hoax of a pandemic” was a joke or not. And I had so much that I wanted to ask that I didn’t want to derail the whole thing by getting off on some conspiratorial tangent. Later in the interview he mentions hating Trump, so who knows. Ultimately I thought his views on COVID, whatever they may be, are probably the least interesting thing about him.]

I read another story about you getting your black belt in a parking lot in, what was it, Long Island?

Oh my God. Yeah, I got my first black belt. I wasn’t studying Okinawan Goju at the time, I was studying Uechi-ryu karate, which is another Okinawan style, kind of a hybridized style, with a guy named Ed McGrath, who was a great fighter. He didn’t really have a lot of time for the art, but he was a great fighter. He taught me how to be a really tough guy, and for being a short, skinny Jewish guy from the Bronx, learning how to fight was a great thing. He took me to a bar one night in Northport, Long Island, and we went with my friend, Dennis and him. Dennis was my training mate, and he insulted some construction worker by hitting on his girlfriend. And then he just turned to me and said, “Mr. Kamen, dispatch this man.” The next thing I knew, we were in a bar fight, and we were punching and kicking. He had an alcohol problem, Ed McGrath did. He was a drunk, and he was a big guy. Finally, we leave the bar, and he took me to the trunk of his car, had me kneel down in the parking lot and gave me my black belt.

So I guess that influenced your negative mentor character [John Kreese]?

Very charming guy, Ed. Very tough, but he was very charming. There was another guy who taught at a dojo in Queens who was a very hard-ass guy. This other guy wasn’t very charming, and he encouraged people to hurt people. Ed McGrath didn’t encourage people to hurt people, but the art was secondary to the fighting. And Kreese is just an over-the-top lunatic.

Did that or any of your later lessons make it into things that Mr. Miyagi did in the movie?

You mean wax on, wax off?

Sure, stuff like that.

Well, wax on, wax off is actually a real block. Paint the fence is actually a blocking system. Sand the floor is actually a blocking system. But I just made that shit up. I am in the make-shit-up business. That’s what I do.

I’m impressed with how well the movie holds up. When you watch it now, are there things that you find yourself regretting or wishing you’d done differently at all?

No. Not one thing. There are a couple of lines in there I could have done without, but we needed filler lines. And no, everything about the experience, everything about writing the first two films, I don’t regret anything at all. The genius of the Cobra Kai guys is that they shamelessly stole and mined these movies to fit in with what they wanted to do, which, watching season three and how they got the girl who Daniel saved in the watchtower during the typhoon to be the regional head of whatever the auto dealership was, I just thought that was brilliant. I didn’t even remember that sequence. We needed something to lead up to saving Sato and Miyagi’s relationship and needed something for Daniel to do that was heroic. I just made that stuff up. And when we did it, I looked at it, and I turned to John and said, “This is never going to fly.” And he said, “No, this is great.”

On that note, were any specific creative battles that you remember winning or losing during the process?

The big creative battle was to keep the scene with Mr. Miyagi drunk and talking about his ex-wife, which is going to play a very significant part in the stage play. Columbia wanted to cut it out of the movie. And despite what he said later, Jerry Weintraub was all ready to cut it. “I don’t care. It slows the story down, blah, blah, blah.” And I said, “This is the heart of the movie.” John Avildsen and I felt that way. I went right to Frank and I played my mentor card. I said, “Frank, please, I’m begging you. Test it with this. If it doesn’t work, you can take it out.” He did, and it worked. It pissed everybody off. I didn’t go through channels.

I think that’s a big part of the social commentary of the movie that holds up, and that scene is anchoring it.

The reason they wanted to cut it is that it made the running time of the movie so that you could only have one less show a day for the exhibitors. Of course, that’s not what they said. What they said was, “Well, it’s slowing down the story,” and this and that. But I do think The Karate Kid holds up because it’s genuine and the emotional beats are universal. And also because Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio were magic, especially Pat. I can’t see Toshiro Mifune and Ralph Macchio having chemistry.

Also, Morita’s story is more like Miyagi’s than Mifune’s would have been too, right? Having been in internment.

Yeah. They just did a documentary on Pat called More than Miyagi, and he had a sad life even though he was a funny guy. He was the sweetest guy but had a sad life. He was an alcoholic.

So The Fifth Element. It didn’t occur to me that those were both your projects.

A lot of people don’t make that connection. But The Fifth Element is the genius of Luc Besson, who is a fucking genius.

What was getting involved with that like?

I was working for Warner Brothers at the time as their script assassin. I would doctor scripts they were putting into production. Bill Gerber, who produced Gran Torino, who was the executive vice-president or whatever at Warners, 1993, called me in. He said, “We have this script. We can’t make heads nor tails of it, but we think this guy is a visionary.” He sent me the script, and it made no sense. But I watched La Femme Nikita, and I saw a cinematic genius.

And I said, “I’ll come in and meet him.” He said, “Great.” So I come in and meet the guy, and I tell him everything that’s wrong with his script. He doesn’t get all of it because his English wasn’t that great. And he sits there, and I could see that he was getting more and more pissed off. He’s a French auteur, I’m just this fucking Hollywood screenwriter. And at the end of the meeting, Billy called me up, he said, “Dude, you just ruined that relationship.” Because all I had done was I just kept saying what a huge piece of shit this script was.

A week later, my phone rings, and it’s Luc. And he said, “I thought about what you said, and will you work with me on the script?” And I said, “Oh my God, yeah, sure. I’d be honored to work with you.” And he said, “Good. Come to Paris.” I said, “When?” He said, “What are you doing tomorrow?” I should have known right then and there what I was getting myself into because the guy wasn’t going to say no. I went to Paris, and I was supposed to stay for three days. I stayed for three weeks. He takes me directly from the airport on a Sunday, to this studio with no heat in it. It used to be an old foundry, and it was freezing. And he opens up the back of this warehouse, and there’s everything for The Fifth Element — the costumes, the creature, everything. But he doesn’t have a coherent story. So we sat down, and for three weeks we worked, and at the end of three weeks, we had a coherent story. Then it took another four years to get the movie made because he had to get together $90 million.

I read that his original draft of The Fifth Element was 300 pages or something, and it was like a novel.

It was actually 180 pages, and then he added a second part to it, which made no sense either. We were going to do it as a sequel, but it made no sense, and The Fifth Element wasn’t big enough here. It was huge in the rest of the world, and it’s a classic, but it only did $75 million here or $80 million. It was way ahead of its time. So we never did the sequel, and the sequel would have been taking the other 180-page thing he had and working it into a script. He and I worked for a long time, we’ve since done 15 or 16 films together.

He used to say, “I don’t see that. I don’t see that.” And at first I don’t know what the fuck he was talking about. He didn’t see it because he’s a camera on legs. He’s a visualist. Once I understood that, he was easier to work with. He’s a genius. And Leeloo, he made up a whole language, and he and Milla used to speak the language to each other! It was bizarre. And then he married her. Then he went off and married her.

Bruce Willis now has a reputation as being a pain in the ass.

He was very difficult, and Luc worked around it. But Luc wasn’t used to it. After he did that, he came to me and said, “We have to create our own movie stars.” And that’s what we did with The Transporter. We created Jason.

And then what was Taken? How did that come about?

Luc told me a story about this guy who was auctioning off women in a chateau in Belgium or something. And then we read an article in the paper about a bunch of Albanians who, instead of doing what all the other thugs were doing, which was going to small towns in eastern Europe when the iron curtain fell and recruiting women, these guys were just kidnapping women, backpackers. But they were so stupid they didn’t realize that backpackers have families, and it didn’t last very long. So we took the two things. We mixed them together, and Taken came about.

It seems like there have been at least 20 movies that tried to do exactly what Taken did.

Liam Neeson has made a fortune doing Taken 1, 2, 3. I always kid him about it. I say, “Oh, where are you?” “I’m in Australia.” “Are you doing Taken 12?” He figured out that he’s a great actor, but he wanted to make money. This is a money machine for him. Liam picks up a gun, and they pay him a lot of money.

Are you proud that you created something that’s become such an industry of its own?

No. I’m not getting paid for it. What do I care?

Do you have lines that you’re particularly proud of that you feel like people don’t remember?

No, I don’t. Once something is gone from me, it’s gone from me. In Karate Kid 2, I had a sweatshirt that said it, “A lie becomes truth only if you want to believe it.” And that is more telling today than ever with this creature we just got rid of in the White House. He lied so often and so much that people started believing the lies. I loved that line, and nobody else loved it. But it is. A lie becomes truth only if you want to believe it. Then it’s the truth, even though it’s a lie.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

When Phife Dawg passed away in 2016, he was a few months into recording a new solo album — his first since 2000’s Ventilation: Da LP. While the album was originally slated for release in 2017, it was shelved for unknown reasons until very recently. In November of 2020, A Tribe Called Quest announced that the album would finally come out sometime in 2021, and today, the first single was released. “Nutshell Part 2” is a sequel to the 2016 J-Dilla-produced track “Nutshell” and features two of Tribe’s oldest and most frequent collaborators: Busta Rhymes and Redman.

The beat over which the trio rhymes is a vintage Tribe combination of cracking drums and sparse sample hits, putting the focus on the three MCs’ intricate wordplay. All three use the fun tactic of repeating their words’ prefixes multiple times each bar, stressing the echoing sounds for emphasis. Phife flips the “re-” sound to start out with, while Busta plays with “un-” words. Redman bats cleanup by hammering the word “keep” over and over again, finding more and more clever ways to stretch the word’s utility throughout his verse.

The song turns out to be an effective preview of what’s to come on Phife’s album, titled Forever: The sort of wholesome, nuts-and-bolts throwback rap Tribe was known for throughout its tenure in the 1990s. Forever is slated for release through indie distributor AWAL sometime this year.

Listen to Phife Dawg’s “Nutshell Part 2” featuring Busta Rhymes and Redman above.

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley is once again in the crosshairs of a home state paper for his continued support of Donald Trump in light of the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building. Hawley has already faced intense criticism for his infamous raised fist salute to the insurrectionist crowd on his way to do Trump’s bidding and “Stop the Steal” by objecting to the certification of the 2020 election results, which Hawley still believes are fraudulent. Or in other words, the same “Big Lie” that prompted the attack on the Capitol.

Now, as Trump’s impeachment trial proceeds in the Senate, Hawley has continued to defend the former president despite damning evidence that he incited the January 6 assault. In a scathing op-ed, the Editorial Board of the St. Louis Dispatch blasts Hawley as “pathetic” and an “embarrassment” for his false statements that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional and partisan:

Missourians must not allow themselves to be fooled by the weak boilerplate defenses by Hawley and [Missouri Senator Roy] Blunt. Hawley tweeted on Tuesday: “Today Democrats launched their unconstitutional impeachment trial while President Biden cancels thousands of working class jobs across this country. Americans deserve better.” In fact, a bipartisan majority of senators have deemed the proceeding to be constitutional. And the attempt to divert attention to Biden, who has not canceled a single job, is pathetic but oh-so-typical of Hawley.

Getting roasted by Missouri newspapers is starting to became a habit for Hawley. The day of the Capitol attack, the senator was taken to the woodshed by the Editorial Board of the Kansas City Star who accused Hawley of having a direct hand in the insurrection that is second only to Trump. “No one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley,” the op-ed reads. “Hawley’s actions in the last week had such impact that he deserves an impressive share of the blame for the blood that’s been shed.”

(Via St. Louis Dispatch)