Month: March 2021

This will make me sound like an obnoxiously nostalgic ’90s kid (because I am), but: Nickelodeon ruled in the 1990s. There has been plenty of great stuff on the channel since then, including Avatar: The Last Airbender, Invader Zim, and SpongeBob SquarePants (it technically premiered in 1999, but close enough), but it’s tough to beat the original NickToons block of Doug, The Ren & Stimpy Show, and Rugrats.

Nickelodeon got even better when Hey Arnold!, KaBlam!, and Rocko’s Modern Life, my personal favorite, were added to the lineup. And that’s just the animated shows. There was also Clarissa Explains It All, All That, Kenan & Kel, Salute Your Shorts, Legends of the Hidden Temple, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and Guts, among many others.

If you feel like taking a trip back to the decade of this annoying-but-effective alarm clock that I still hear in my nightmares, good news: a ton of old (and newer) Nickelodeon shows have been added to Paramount Plus. “It might be time to revisit some childhood friends… Check out all the classic 90s @Nickelodeon shows that are now streaming on #ParamountPlus,” the streaming service tweeted, along with individual tweets for the old-school Nick lineup. I never thought I would miss Binyah Binyah, but here we are.

One show missing, however, is The Adventures of Pete and Pete. I realize that Eureeka’s Castle probably isn’t as good as I remember it being, but Pete and Pete holds up. It’s worth getting the DVD set for the music only.

Despite being a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for the better part of a decade, Anthony Mackie only just learned what an Easter egg is this week. For the record, we’re not talking about literal Easter eggs, even though the holiday is just around the corner, we’re talking about visual references or seemingly throwaway lines that have a hidden meaning to diehard fans. While The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (so far) has nowhere near the amount of Easter eggs as WandaVision, the Disney+ series does have its share of Marvel clues, but Mackie and Sebastian Stan won’t totally nerd out over them.

While calling in to The Jess Cagle Show, Mackie responded to a question about fan theories by revealing that he only recently learned about Easter eggs, which blew away host Julia Cunningham, who couldn’t believe he’s only just now hearing about them despite doing Marvel films for so long. But Mackie offered a pretty logical explanation.

“We don’t go around saying, “Yo, you saw that Easter egg?’” he said. “That’s just not a conversation you have as an actor.”

Mackie’s explanation makes sense. As an actor, his job is to say the lines and worry about his performance in the scene, so he’s not going to be paying attention to every detail in the background that might not even be there because it was added in post-production. As for Stan, he offered a much more blunt explanation.

“We try not to think about it as much as you think we do,” Stan responded. “I have like this weird thing to say, it’s like a very strange thing, but we are actually not these characters. I mean, I know that’s just got to be so fascinatingly interesting to decipher, but we’re not these characters.”

In other words, don’t ask Sebastian if Bucky is Mephisto.

(Via The Jess Cagle Show)

The Orlando Magic are busy during the NBA’s trade deadline. The team made the first major move of the day by finally moving on from All-Star center Nikola Vucevic, who is headed to the Chicago Bulls for Wendell Carter, Otto Porter, and a pair of first-round picks. Now, the team is continuing to offload veterans with an eye on the future by coming to terms on a deal for Evan Fournier.

According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Fournier is headed to the Boston Celtics, which have been mentioned as a potential suitor for a number of players at the deadline. Wojnarowski reports that Boston will pay a relatively low price to bring him on board, parting ways with a pair of second-round Draft picks for Never Google.

Per Marc Stein of the New York Times, the scuttlebutt around the league had been that Fournier would end up in Boston for some time.

Fournier has been mentioned as a player who could be on the move all year, regardless of whether the Magic decided to overhaul its roster. He’s on an expiring contract and is in the midst of a career year, averaging 19.7 points and 3.7 assists in 30.3 minutes per game while connecting on 38.8 percent of his threes. Boston sits at 21-23 on the year, putting it in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, and now adds some more offensive firepower to its rotation.

Taylor Swift’s reworked Fearless (Taylor’s Version) album is on the way and perhaps most excitingly for fans, it features newly recorded versions of songs that haven’t been released before. One of those is dropping tomorrow: “You All Over Me (From The Vault)” and it features backing vocals from Maren Morris (along with production from Aaron Dessner). Now, hours ahead of the track’s debut, Swift has shared a snippet of it.

A brief portion of the song was debuted on Good Morning America today and it sounds like a mid-tempo country ballad. Lyrics include, “No amount of freedom gets you clean, I’ve still got you all over me.”

When announcing the track yesterday, Swift wrote, “HI. I wanted to let you know that the first ‘From the Vault’ song I’m releasing from Fearless (Taylor’s Version) comes out tomorrow at midnight eastern. It’s called You All Over Me (From The Vault). One thing I’ve been loving about these From The Vault songs is that they’ve never been heard, so I can experiment, play, and even include some of my favorite artists. I’m really excited to have @marenmorris singing background vocals on this song!! Produced by Aaron Dessner and co-written by Scooter Carusoe – can’t wait for you to hear it.”

Check out the “You All Over Me (From The Vault)” snippet above.

The Nikola Vucevic era in Orlando has come to an end. According to multiple media reports, the Magic have decided to move their All-Star center and franchise lynchpin to the Chicago Bulls in exchange for a package of players and picks. The news of the deal was first broke by Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, who brought word that the Magic will package Vucevic and veteran swingman Al-Farouq Aminu in the deal.

Then, Wojnarowski and Shams Charania of The Athletic began piecing the deal together, with the Magic receiving a haul back. According to the reports, a pair of first-round Draft picks will head to Orlando — including the Bulls’ selection in the 2021 Draft — along with young big man Wendell Carter Jr. and the expiring contract of Otto Porter Jr.

The deal positions Chicago, which sits 19-24 and is in 10th place in the Eastern Conference, for a push towards the playoffs, while Orlando gets itself in a spot to build towards the future with a promising young big man in Carter and a pair of potentially solid Draft picks, although it is unclear if there are any sort of protections that will exist on either of them. Since joining Orlando in 2012, Vucevic has been a two-time All-Star selection, and this season, he’s averaging a career-best mark in scoring at 24.5 per game.

The final season of The Walking Dead is already in production (in fact, we’ve already seen a glimpse of the Wall of the Lost) and is expected to continue shooting for all of 2021. The 24-episode final season also won’t end until the end of 2022 (although, it will debut this summer).

As such, the creator of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman, is not yet mourning the loss of the series because there’s still so much left to see. Kirkman, who is currently out promoting his new Amazon series, Invincible, doesn’t seem to be that involved in the final season. He wrote the source material, and he trusts showrunner Angela Kang to handle the rest. “This is something that Angela Kang is working really hard on crafting,” Kirkman told Comicbook.com.

“I have had some vague conversations with Scott [Gimple] and Angela about the direction and how things are going to wrap up, and what aspects of the comic they may or may not be using,” Kirkman said. “But I think that it is, still somewhat in flux and I’m very excited to see what Angela does and I’m very confident that she’s gonna do something amazing because that’s what she does.”

Meanwhile, the Rick Grimes movie will eventually go into production, as well. The last we heard, it was expected to begin production in spring 2022, although it’s unclear if that is still the case. In either respect, in his interview with Comicbook.com, Kirkman did elucidate on the differences we can expect between the series and the Rick Grimes movie:

“I think that the show is very much an ensemble story and this is very much Rick story. So, I think being able to focus more on Rick as a character and do more with him is really cool. I think it’s gonna be a very different kind of Walking Dead story, which is really exciting. You know, when you’re doing something like this you have to make sure that it makes sense for it to be a movie. This isn’t just some kind of expansion of what you’re expecting from the show. This is something that’s gonna be very different but it’s gonna be the Rick Grimes that we all know and love. And I’m very excited for people to finally see it when it’s released in 2032.”

Kirkman had a hand in the script, so he obviously knows the course that the movie is taking. If it is a “Rick” story, however, I wonder if Michonne will still make an appearance, or if her storyline will sputter out? I would also like to know if there are still plans for three Rick Grimes movies, as before, or if AMC has scaled back its plans, especially in the wake of the pandemic?

While the future of the franchise is still very much up in the air, Season Ten continues on this weekend with the penultimate episode of a season that began way back in 2019. Kirkman’s Invincible, meanwhile, premieres this Friday on Amazon.

Source: Comicbook.com

While JaVale McGee entered the NBA as a member of the Washington Wizards, he spent three and a half years with the Denver Nuggets and made the postseason for the first time as a member of the franchise. Now, McGee is headed back to the Mile High City in a trade between the Nuggets and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

According to multiple media reports, McGee is getting swapped in a deal for backup center Isaiah Hartenstein and a pair of future second-round Draft picks.

The timing of the move is fun for McGee, who last month explained to Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports that he did a ton of growing up as a player when the Nuggets acquired him back in 2012.

“When I got to Denver, and I got to a team that was winning already when I got there, it was a whole different feeling of, ‘Ok, this is the point, people don’t care what you’re doing as long as you’re winning,’” McGee said. “That’s when I really fell in love and was like, ‘Ok, this is what it’s about.’”

McGee has provided the Cavaliers with a veteran presence off the bench and in the locker room this season. In 33 games, McGee has averaged eight points, 5.2 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks in 15.2 minutes a night.

Justin Bieber recently released his sixth studio album Justice, and while promoting the new project, he stopped by his friend and frequent collaborator DJ Khaled’s Amazon Music podcast, The First One. Over the course of their conversation, the discussion turned to that favorite topic of hip-hop heads everywhere: The top five rappers in hip-hop — namely, Justin’s personal list.

A fun thing about this topic is that someone’s list can change a lot over the years (contrary to some folks’ opinions) as they grow and learn or as new rappers enter the scene. Justin has answered this question in the past, offering an unusual mix of names that included Eminem, Mase, Nas, The Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac, mixing in some conventional favorites with a rapper few would expect (but don’t act like you don’t hit your two-step the instant “Feel So Good” comes on).

This time around, though, he shook things up almost completely. Although he retained Biggie and Eminem from his prior list, he now counts fellow Canadian Drake, Mase disciple Kanye West, and the seemingly immortal Lil Wayne among the best to ever grace the mic. Drake is the most recent addition to the rap game overall, but Bieber justifies his inclusion by pointing out his music is “constantly pushing culture and the needle forward”.

Watch Justin Bieber’s conversation with DJ Khaled above.

In 2015, GQ published a tribute to Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland entitled “Rock’s Greatest Poseur.” The headline was a winking reference to STP’s ignoble status in the 1990s as the ultimate grunge rip-off, a band destined to be compared unfavorably to Pearl Jam and Nirvana, apparently, forever.

But “poseur” had originally been applied to STP for reasons that went deeper than allegations of mere sonic hackery. For music writers in the alternative era, Weiland and his bandmates were viewed as emotional charlatans, a group of wanton opportunists who, in the parlance of rock’s most cred-conscious era, “didn’t really mean it.”

“They remain a national joke for their shameless impersonations of Pearl Jam and Nir­vana,” venerable rock critic Greil Marcus observed in 1994. “With Kurt Cobain dead, to hear his misery and his intelligence transformed so blithely into someone else’s kitsch commodity is sickening.”

I’m leaving out a crucial bit of context for the GQ article: It was published right after Scott Weiland died. Just the night before, he was found laying in a fetal position inside of a tour bus parked near the Mall Of America outside of Minneapolis. He was 48 years old.

At the time of his death, Weiland’s life had all but fallen apart. Two years prior, he was fired from Stone Temple Pilots, which occurred after he had already alienated his former bandmates in his other superstar rock group, Velvet Revolver. He was estranged from his two children, nearly broke, and reeling from both of his parents having been recently diagnosed with cancer. Professionally, he was embarrassed by a lethargic, seemingly drugged-out performance of the STP hit “Vasoline” by his current band The Wildabouts that went viral.

The local county Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled that Weiland died of mixed-drug toxicity from cocaine, ethanol, and a form of MDA. He also had cardiovascular disease, asthma, atherosclerosis, and multiple-substance dependence, plus a medicine-cabinet’s worth of prescriptions in his system: Lunesta, Klonopin, Viagra, Dalmane, Buprenex, and Geodon. It was the last stop on a decades-long journey into the abyss that began around the time that he was accused of taking someone else’s authentic expression of pain and turning into a “kitsch commodity.”

The GQ article attempted to turn the meaning of “poseur” on its head, praising Weiland for his ability to move between many different styles of music. But the sting of that word nevertheless remained. The guy dies alone on a tour bus, possibly the worst and loneliest death imaginable for a musician, and he still gets called a poseur? It hardly seemed fair, especially given how “poseur” is now viewed as a term best left behind in overly judgmental ’90s music culture. At the very least, his harshest critics should have conceded that Scott Weiland was, in fact, not faking his misery after all.

I’ll go one step further: The idea that Stone Temple Pilots is worthy only of backhanded praise — they were good at being phony! — is pure bull. Their first four albums have more than stood up as some of the most tuneful and compulsively playable rock music of the ’90s. That includes what I would argue is their very greatest LP, Tiny Music … Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop, which turns 25 this week.

Let me point out something else that ought to be obvious by now: Stone Temple Pilots don’t actually sound all that much like Pearl Jam, Nirvana, or any other grunge band. It’s true that all of these groups drew from the same well of ’70s arena-rock influences, but STP had a distinct spin on this source material that diverged significantly from their peers, especially by the time of Tiny Music, their third album. In retrospect, it seems clear that the “rip-off” libel stemmed almost entirely from the video for “Plush,” from their 1992 debut Core, in which Weiland’s contorts his handsome cheekbones to appear extra Vedder-like. (Perhaps not coincidentally, it was directed by Josh Taft, who also helmed the first two Pearl Jam videos, “Alive” and “Evenflow.”)

Musically, the song’s lumbering mid-tempo power balladry and Weiland’s growly yarl evoke Ten, though that might have been unintentional. (“Plush” was written in 1989, two years before the release of Pearl Jam’s debut.) But anyone actually listening to STP after “Plush” — as opposed to repeating lazy music-critic groupthink — could hear how quickly they moved on from their biggest hit on subsequent albums like 1994’s Purple and Tiny Music.

Whereas many platinum-selling alt-rock acts reacted to fame by defensively retreating to the sanctity of “credible” punk and indie influences and signifiers, STP’s music only got grander and catchier. By the time they made Tiny Music, they were a melodic power-pop band in hard-rock clothing, skillfully aping glitter-era Bowie, The Beatles’ psychedelic period, and the cheesy ’70s soft-rock acts (like The Carpenters and John Denver) that Weiland had loved since childhood.

Of course, Stone Temple Pilots were hardly a one-man band in the ’90s. The band’s musical engine was Dean and Robert DeLeo, the guitar-and-bass brother duo from New Jersey who grew up playing Rush and King Crimson covers before meeting Scott Weiland in the late ’80s.

I interviewed the DeLeo brothers in 2016, just a few months after Weiland died. Their emotions were still raw and complicated; while they could be complimentary when speaking about their former singer, they were also still angry about how he had repeatedly derailed their band, starting with his arrest for buying crack cocaine in 1995.

“I spent half my life just full of false hope, with every intention to try to help him and try to get him together, and it led to what we’re talking about right now,” Dean told me, in a tone that was both rueful and resentful. “When I was a kid, the term ‘rock star’ was intriguing to me, it meant something. As I got older and I was in business with somebody who abused that term, I found it more and more repulsive, because I don’t know any other line of work where you could just simply show up late, or not show up at all, or show up really out of it, and it’s glorified. I think it sucks. It sucked for me, it sucked for Robert and Eric.”

At that time, STP was doing a cattle call for a new lead singer. After firing Weiland in 2013 — the final straw was when he attempted to book a greatest hits tour without the rest of the band — they worked briefly with Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, releasing an EP, High Rise, that year. (Just over a year after I spoke with the DeLeos, Bennington took his own life.) But I was mostly interested in talking to them about Tiny Music, which I consider to be one of the great alt-rock albums from the genre’s “death throes” period.

In 1996, there was a series of big-ticket releases from bands who only two or three years earlier were on top of the rock world. Along with Tiny Music there was Pearl Jam’s No Code, R.E.M.’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi, Soundgarden’s Down On The Upside, Counting Crows’ Recovering The Satellites, and Weezer’s Pinkerton. While all of these albums did relatively well — in some cases spinning off hit singles and selling millions — they were perceived as commercial letdowns in the midst of a music scene on the verge of being taken over by nu-metal and teen pop acts. These bands, in other words, already seemed old, mere leftovers from a period that already appeared distant.

That letdown feeling is actually embedded in the albums themselves. In each case, the bands sound exhausted and defeated, though because they leaned into that feeling these records have kind of “last stand” power to them. (For the record, I love each and every one of them.) But Tiny Music is the wittiest and most fun album out of this bunch.

With the industry reckoning of Napster still several years away, STP was afforded the full luxury rock-star treatment while making Tiny Music, decamping to a massive ranch house situated on 100 acres in California’s Santa Ynez Valley. (“We were getting back to our roots,” Robert DeLeo noted sardonically.) They were inspired by expansive ’70s classic-rock albums famously recorded inside mansions, like Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. And you can hear that space on the album, particularly on rockers like the Zeppelinesque “Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart” and the blissfully glammy “Big Bang Baby,” which was recorded on the front lawn of the property while horses stared off in the distance. (“There was a horse vibe” to the album, Dean DeLeo recalled.)

While the DeLeos flexed their musical muscles on Tiny Music, even delving credibly into psych-tinged jazz rock on “And So I Know,” Weiland put his musical stamp on the record by contributing the primal two-chord riff to “Tumble In The Rough,” making the most of his near non-existent guitar chops.

It’s as a lyricist and vocalist, however, that he made his most significant mark. On Tiny Music, Weiland typically sticks to evocative but largely nonsensical rock-dude patter. (“I’m lookin’ for a new stimulation / quite bored of those inflatable ties.”) But the lines that manage to cut hardest through the wall of heavy-riffing guitars, insistently melodic baselines, and Eric Kretz’s Bonham-esque drums tend to comment on alt-rock’s rapidly fading commercial and critical fortunes: “I’m lookin’ for a new rock sensation” (from “Tumble In The Rough”); “Sell your soul and sign an autograph” (“Big Bang Baby”); “But I’m not dead and I’m not for sale” (“Trippin’ On A Hole In A Paper Heart”); “Just because you’re so cliched / it don’t mean you won’t get paid” (“Ride The Cliché”).

The most uncomfortable listen in this regard is the dreamy ballad “Adhesive,” in which Weiland muses about his own impending irrelevance with detached cynicism over crunchy, slow-motion power chords: “Sell more records if I’m dead / Purple flowers once again / Hope it’s sooner hope it’s near corporate records’ fiscal year.”

Those lines are as scathing about the failed promise of “alternative” culture marketed and funded by mainstream record companies as anything on In Utero. But the metatextual qualities of Tiny Music — it’s a late-stage ’90s alt-rock record that comments on late-stage ’90s alt-rock — are easy to overlook given how, well, plush this record sounds. It was STP’s curse to make smart rock music that sounded dumb — in the best possible sense — which supposedly smart critics too often took at face value. Looking back, it makes you wonder who the actual poseurs were after all.

Stone Temple Pilots is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

I didn’t think it was possible, but Ted Cruz, against all odds, is selling an even odder piece of merchandise than an autographed copy of a book he didn’t write.

“Spring Break is here! Show your pride as a member of the #CruzCrew with this gear. Get a hat for $25 and a shirt for just $30,” the Texas senator tweeted from his account, along with a link to the — [deep sigh] — #CruzCrew gear. There’s a tank top in two colors and a trucker hat, all with the same design: “McConnell in the front / MAGA in the back.” There’s also a graphic of Cruz with his impeachment mullet. Whoever pitched this idea to Ted must hate him even more than Meghan McCain’s hair stylist hates her.

I believe this tweet speaks for everyone:

One item not for sale is a mask.

While speaking in front of a group of reporters on Wednesday, Cruz was asked to put on a mask. “Uh, when I’m talking to the TV camera, I’m not going to wear a mask,” he answered. After a journalist said it “would make us feel better” if he wore one, as not everyone in attendance had received the vaccine yet, Cruz fired back, “You’re welcome to step away if you like.” He later went on Fox News and called wearing a mask “theater. It just becomes a virtue-signal as people wear two, three, and four masks… People have gotten pretty crazy about this stuff.” Love to own the libs by not wearing four (?) masks.

(Via the Huffington Post)