Month: April 2021

Earlier this month, a Facebook post by Tyfanee Fortuna went viral for her hilarious description of Prancer, a Chihuahua she was fostering. Fortuna was frustrated because she had tried to make the dog seem presentable to potential adopters for months, but nothing was working.

So, she went for broke by taking the brutally honest route, and people loved her candor.

“Ok, I’ve tried. I’ve tried for the last several months to post this dog for adoption and make him sound…palatable. The problem is, he’s just not,” Fortuna wrote. “There’s not a very big market for neurotic, man hating, animal hating, children hating dogs that look like gremlins. But I have to believe there’s someone out there for Prancer, because I am tired and so is my family.”

---

One of the big reasons it was tough finding a home for the dog is because he hates men.

“Prancer only likes women. Nothing else. He hates men more than women do, which says a lot,” she wrote. “If you have a husband don’t bother applying, unless you hate him.”

The dog is also terribly nervous and really, really angry.

“Every day we live in the grips of the demonic Chihuahua hellscape he has created in our home,” she continued. “If you own a Chihuahua you probably know what I’m talking about. He’s literally the Chihuahua meme that describes them as being 50% hate and 50% tremble. If you’re intrigued and horrified at how this animal sounds already, just wait….there’s more.”

Fortuna went on to describe the dog in terms familiar to horror fans, calling him a “chucky doll in a dogs body” and a “vessel for a traumatized Victorian child.”

The post went viral on Facebook earning over 70,000 shares. Although it was a great read for a lot of people, it still seemed hard to imagine anyone brave enough to adopt such an unpleasant beast.

However, when Ariel Davis, 36, from New Haven, Connecticut read the post, it inspired her to reach out to the Second Chance Pet Adoption League, located in Morris Plains, New Jersey, the shelter managing Prancer’s adoption.

Davis thought that Prancer reminded her of an old dog she once had.

“I had a dog that I adopted probably about seven years ago and I raised him from a puppy and he was a Chihuahua/Jack Russel Terrier mix,” she told Today. “He had a lot of the same qualities as Prancer, he was a little neurotic and he barked a lot and he didn’t work well with other people and other animals. I spent a lot of time working with him and understanding his personality and learning about myself through him.”

Unfortunately, Davis had to give up both of her dogs to loving families when she went to rehab a few years back for marijuana addiction.

But after being clean for three years, she thought she was able to care for a dog again. “I read the article, I connected to it, and I was like you know what, why not? I’ll just send them an email. What’s the worst that could happen?” she said.

Davis thought she had the perfect home for the dog because as a lesbian with a female roommate, so there’s not a lot of men coming around the house. “It just felt like a perfect match… and the rest is history,” she said.

Davis and Prancer have been living together for a week and things are going pretty well.

“He is a small, neurotic dog and it’s been hard coming from a chaotic home,” she said. But he does great on walks and has made a wonderful impact on Davis’ life. “We’re one week into the adoption and he’s really changed my life, too.”

Davis and Prancer look like they have a wonderful future together.

“He’s helped me get out of the house actually and we go on walks and I want to take him to the beach,” she said. “He’s helping me get out of my shell and one of my goals is to help him become more adjusted to seeing other people.”

In a time when local businesses across the country are reeling from the pandemic and everyone could use an extra dose of joy, businesses in Christiansburg, Virginia are delighting the masses and getting some free marketing with a friendly sign war that has gone wildly viral.

It all started two weeks ago when Bridge Kaldro Music posted this message to Super Shoes, a neighboring business across the street: “Hey Super Shoes! Wanna start a sign war?”

After a few days, the shoe store took up the challenge: “Hey Bridge Kaldro! Our shoe strings are stronger than your guitar string.”

It was on.

“Your shoestring never got anyone a date,” wrote Bridge Kaldro.

“Keep your play dates,” retorted Super Shoes. “We specialize in solemates.”

---

Solemates. Clever.

Soon other businesses joined in, and the result is a friendly, socially-distanced flame game that’s leaving people in stitches.

Radio station COOL 106.3FM shared a collection of the signs on Facebook in a post that’s been shared nearly 400,000 times.

Kabuki Japanese Steakhouse hopped into the who’s-better-for-a-date fray: “Shoes and strings help get the date, but we seal the deal.”

To which Bridge Kaldro flung back: “What a ‘croc.’ IDK what stinks worse, your shoes or Kabuki’s sign.”

And that’s when the puns began.

“You got to b-sharp to make good shoe-shi and we won’t string you along,” wrote Kabuki.

Then they got sassy.

“Y’all got Crocs, but we got Godzilla. We shreddin’ this war like Kaldro shreds guitars.”

And Super Shoes pushed back with a practical point.

“Mosh pits and raw fish: Both more dangerous than shoe shopping.”

Then Bridge Kaldro called down the thunder on other businesses across the street.

“Anyone else? Come at me bro. Lookin’ at you 2 across the road.”

Soon a whole slew of businesses chimed in, including a pharmacy, church, gas station, and even a local library.

The Hampton Inn almost seemed to have the last word…

But it wasn’t over.

More and more signs have popped up all over town. Someone even created a Christianburg, VA Sign War Facebook group so people could see how the battle is progressing. As of this morning, it has more than 21,000 members—and the signs just keep on coming.

Jill Lawson

Kayla Cumbee Walton

Steve Costa

Even the sign shops in town got in on it.

Signarama/Kevin Altizer

The sign war is a positive for so many reasons, from the simple delight it’s bringing to the people observing it to the dollars it’s bringing to the businesses participating.

Ed Bridge, the owner of Bridge Kaldro, told WSLS 10 News that he had never heard of a sign war until the idea was suggested by an employee.

“I’m just so humbled because this is bigger than my little music store,” Bridge said. “If we can put this whole area a little bit more on the map for people coming to visit, why not?”

Kabuki Japanese Steakhouse owner Yoshi Koeda said business has been booming since he joined in the sign war.

“It’s amazing free advertisement for all of us,” he said. “That’s probably the best part of everything.”

Who knew that one employee’s idea to challenge another business to a sign war would escalate into something so epic? Just goes to show you how a little fun can go a long way.

Thank you, Christiansburg, for giving the whole world something to enjoy together. We definitely needed it.

Olivia Rodrigo recently had the tough task of following up her mega-hit “Drivers License,” but she did just fine with “Deja Vu,” which has managed a respectable peak at No. 8 on the Hot 100 chart. Early on during the whirlwind success of “Drivers License,” though, Rodrigo thought the song would be a bit of a problem for her creatively.

In a new Elle feature, Rodrigo said, “I thought I was going to be really in my head, like, ‘I’m never going to write a song as good as that again.’ [Instead,] this song has given me a lot of confidence in my voice.” She also noted that she’s all for people dissecting her love live because of “Drivers License,” saying, “It’s truly any songwriter’s dream. There’s something so powerful in being vulnerable and open, like, ‘This is my life, and I’m f*cking sad.’ Or, ‘I’m insecure.’ That’s what makes songwriting so special.”

She later touched on what she thinks her “brand” is, saying, “I think songwriting has really helped me home in on what I like about myself and my art. I just want to be effortless, I guess. Whether it’s in my fashion or my songs or my social media, I want to just be like, ‘Yo, this is me. And I’m sometimes weird as f*ck, and I’m sometimes polished and put together.’ I think that’s the antithesis of a brand.”

Read the full feature here.

The 2021 Oscars certainly had some controversy, but what they apparently didn’t have was a lot of eyeballs pointing at them. Ratings for the latest edition of the Academy Awards set records in a bad way, with reports indicating a 58 percent drop in viewership from 2020.

As Variety detailed, Sunday night’s telecast was the lowest-rated ceremony since 2018, which was the previous low in the event’s history. No matter how you look at the numbers, it’s pretty bleak.

Per Nielsen Live+Same Day preliminary national numbers, an average of 9.85 million viewers tuned in on Sunday evening to watch a more intimate and stripped-down version of the Oscars in the midst of a pandemic. That’s a 58.3%, 13.75 million viewer drop-off from last year. The Academy’s third host-less show in a row scored a 1.9 rating among adults 18-49 in the fast national ratings, a 64.2% dip from 2020.

For comparison, last year’s ceremony garnered a 5.3 rating in the key demographic and 23.6 million viewers per the night’s time-zone adjusted fast national charts.

In other words, the Oscars lost more viewers from last year than actually watched the show on Sunday night.

Why viewers didn’t show up is anyone’s guess, and given the circumstances, it’s likely any educated guess can nail at least one factor in what’s going wrong for the fledgling event. The host-less format didn’t go over well with critics, and pandemic safety rules have made every live televised event land somewhere in the entertainment uncanny valley of sorts. There’s also the issue of actually seeing the movies nominated for awards in the first place. With theaters closed across the country for large portions of the pandemic-stricken year and many still hesitant to see films in person, the award-worthy films may have been overlooked by huge portions of the potential audience unable to see them in more traditional ways.

There’s also the continued fragmentation of viewership across cable, streaming, and other entertainment options after a fatigued public after a difficult year for basically everyone. Whether viewers weren’t interested in a Steven Soderberg-directed broadcast or simply didn’t want to watch maskless celebrities accept awards is anyone’s guess, but the numbers here do not paint a pretty picture.

[via Variety]

Last night, Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe won the Oscar for their short film, Two Distant Strangers. Among other things, the movie is perhaps the most bleak-yet-realistic-feeling time loop movie ever made. A loop in which Carter, played by rapper Joey Badass, tries any number of ways to keep from getting murdered by a police officer, only to land on the same violent result, thereby resetting the cycle. It’s an idea that feels tremendously potent right now — the same month as the Chauvin verdict and the killings of Daunte Wright, Ma’Khia Bryant, and Andrew Brown Jr., all by police.

But the truth is, as Free stated in his acceptance speech last night, the plot of Two Distant Strangers has always been relevant for Black Americans. And it will continue to be relevant for as long as our current system of policing remains in place — colliding headlong with both overtly personal and more broadly systemic forms of racism. As Free says, “Until we address the actual issues, this will never stop.”

In the days preceding the Oscars ceremony, I spoke to Free and Roe about their co-directed film, the systems that perpetuate police brutality, and what questions they hope the film’s newfound audience will walk away asking themselves. Spoilers for Two Distant Strangers to follow.

Two Distant Strangers is a time-loop movie. When I think of that genre, what comes to mind is Groundhog Day and Palm Springs. In both of those, you have a white male protagonist who is able to make his single day progressively better. In this movie, the construct is very similar but our protagonist is Black and he’s not able to improve his situation, though his actions change.

Did you intend this movie to contrast Palm Springs and Groundhog Day on any level?

Free: I didn’t even know Palm Springs existed until we were starting our movie, to be honest. I am well aware of Groundhog Day, of course, but it wasn’t until we were partway through our process that I saw Palm Springs. I didn’t know it was a movie that used that trope until I watched it. I was like, “Oh wow, what interesting timing.”

But it was more about just connecting to the feeling of what it feels like in reality. I mean, Martin always uses the example of how in our movie, the Groundhog Day trope is a metaphor for life, which doesn’t necessarily play out that way in the other movies that use it. I think that’s why it was a more direct inspiration because of all the scenarios it has been used in, the scenario in which Black people keep getting killed by police in the same manner — it feels like we’re living the reality of it.

One of the conservative or pro-police arguments we hear so often is, “Well, did this person, who was shot by the police, properly acquiesce?” The movie goes out of its way to show Carter as charming, funny, and self-confident, but he also makes himself progressively more accommodating to the cop. Was that layer always central to the story?

Free: From the beginning, what I was thinking was that the only way it would connect beyond the Black experience and connect for other audiences is that if I made the character unimpeachable in every way I could imagine. He had to, at every turn, be innocent. He had to be. There could never be a moment where you could question his behavior or character because that opens that door. That’s the door that always opens in real life. It’s like if you do anything that — which is almost always white people in these scenarios — deems as bad behavior toward a police officer and interaction with the police officer, then that somehow justifies you being shot.

For him, it needed to be him portraying the average Black American just going about their life, doing very mundane things, going to work, going home, seeing friends, seeing family. Just like trying to enjoy their life and being caught up in these moments that we also find ourselves caught up in. I think about my own experiences, that’s how it happened. I’m just living my life, and then all of a sudden there’s a cop present. Occasionally, that ended up with guns pointed at me for reasons to this day still don’t make sense. It’s a very scary way to live your life, not knowing or knowing that at any given moment, someone can just decide to take your life for whatever reason. If you don’t immediately bow to authority from someone who is essentially asking you to give that up because they simply say so — it’s a challenging way to live.

It was important that people saw him do everything possible to not open that door. People have asked, “Why didn’t he fight back? Why didn’t he shoot the cop?” And it’s like, “Well, what happens to Carter if his goal is to go home to his dog and he shoots a police officer? Let’s say the loop stops when he shoots the police officer, does he just get to go home and live his life?”

Of course not like, “Okay, you shot the cop who’s killed you a hundred times. Now, guess who’s coming to your front door? Guess what happens?” It’s a ridiculous assertion, I think, for people to stop the logic there. “Well, why didn’t he shoot him?” Okay, and then what? You wouldn’t do that in real life, that was kind of good thinking behind it.

The movie mixes very subtle metaphors and very clear metaphors. The blood in the shape of Africa at the close, for instance, is on the nose but also really worked for me as a viewer. It added depth. On the flip side, one of the things that felt the most realistic to me — even as a white male with all the privilege that entails — was how police officers ramp up so fast.

How have people reacted to how those police interactions escalate in the movie?

Free: I’ve heard that mostly from Black people, who say that it’s almost watching a memory in the way that this stuff went on for them. I mean, me and Martin, we screened the movie a couple of weeks ago for a couple of people from BAFTA. One of them was a Black gentleman, and he talked about how the film felt like a recreation of his younger adult life. It’s that for so many. So many people. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to make this particular story. I could have thrown in 10 more scenarios of his trying to escape.

I mean, it’s exactly what you described. It’s what happens. I have had a couple of times where police officers would tell me at the end of a stop or something, whether that stop is justified or not, I always pretty much keep the same temperament and they’re like, “I’m going to let you go because you were respectful.” And I was like, “You’re not going to harm me because I’m going to behave a certain way?” You’re supposed to remain calm no matter what I do, as long as I’m not trying to physically harm you.

If I’m yelling, that shouldn’t change the way in which you, the person with the gun, behaves. But for some reason, there’s this sense of domination that they have when it comes to their interactions where you’re expected to behave like a well-mannered person at every turn. No matter what they say or do. That’s just a lot to ask of the public, the general people they are encountering, who are unarmed and just kind of living their lives.

As far as the blood, that was actually not written that way. That was unintentional. That actually happened on its own. I mean, Martin, do you want to talk about it?

Roe: It was the last shot, on the last day, and we were stealing it because we ran out of time on the location. The location very kindly let us back a couple of days later just to pick up that shot. Cause we knew we really wanted it. And then, the blood just started pouring out and Travon was punching me in the arm — “It looks like Africa.” We tidied it up a little bit in post, ’cause it was once the universe gave us that we were like, “Well, let’s finish off the job.”

I mean, obviously, everybody catches it and it’s become the visual metaphor of the film. It was a gift from the universe that one.

It comes at the end of the car ride, which I think is an incredibly successful sequence and deeply agonizing. Can you guys speak to choosing that moment as the climax? The film has been doing short chops and jump cuts and then that sequence is really long. What do you want to share about that moment?

Roe: Did you think it was the climax?

For me? Yes, the tension created in the car ride was the climactic event.

Roe: Well good, I’m glad. ‘Cause, we worked really hard for that. Travon, do you want to say why?

Free: If you notice a lot of times when the country finds itself having these conversations, the talk of community policing comes up and all these different things police can do to better connect with the black communities they police. You see police playing basketball with kids and you see police throwing water balloons with kids. It’s always Black kids; always innocent kids. We’ve also seen that even when these programs exist, cops still kill some of these kids who actually participated in these programs in these neighborhoods. To me, I think the notion is so ridiculous that in order for you to not kill the people in my community, you have to know me.

First of all, that you’d have to know me. Then, that you have to know me on a level that involves you playing games and sports with me. For you to see me as a human being worthy of not being shot at a moment’s notice. I’ve for the last, I don’t know how many years now, between working at The Daily Show and coming back to L.A., in Hollywood and near Hollywood. It’s mostly white people and I’ve yet to see the police playing basketball with the white kids. I have yet to see any of those programs be deemed necessary for police to stop killing white people. We know that police kill a lot of white people. In terms of sheer numbers, they kill a lot of white people. They just happen to kill Black people three times more. It’s that type of prescriptive behavior that ignores the actual problem.

In that car ride, that’s Carter doing those things. That’s his version of the basketball game. It’s like, “Let me get to know. Let me try to disarm you. Let me show you that I’m a person with thoughts and feelings. I met a girl that I like, and also, I read books. I’m pretty knowledgeable about the situation with which my people find themselves in.”

Even when you think he’s connecting and they’re connecting, even though they agree to disagree, that they found some human common ground, the end result is the end result. Because that’s the reality. It does not change the reality of the way in which they see you. It’s why they are the scorpion and the frog, because the scorpion does not know how to not behave like the scorpion.

When I think about the type of police officers who would take a selfie in the spot where they killed Elijah McClain or the type of police officers who would watch another police officer abuse a dog and then ask each other to make sure that the cameras were off — things where you feel like there’s so much humanity lacking in those situations — that to me is what Merk represents in that last moment. He represents the thing we don’t want to reckon with, which is people like that exist and we continue to ignore it. The cop who shot the young man in Kenosha is back on the force. It’s the thing that we just continue to ignore the reality of — what these situations actually mean and the impact that they have.

Until we address the actual issues, this will never stop. It will never stop. The Band-Aid prescriptions just have to end. It can’t be about community policing. It has to be changing the way police behave and are training to do their jobs.

The movie is nominated for an Oscar. On the day of this phone call, it’s on the front page of Netflix. As more people see it, what are some of the conversations that you hope to hear people having about the film?

Free: I hope that especially given what happened this past weekend [the killing of Daunte Wright], that people now can connect even more emotionally with the actual community who’s feeling that pain. I don’t think there’s been a movie like ours previous that has done anything like this with this particular subject matter to this effect. I think now that you have a “companion piece” to the pain that you see on the news, I hope it actually allows people to connect on a deeper level with what they see when they see a mother and brother crying in a video about the loss of their son.

Now, you have a better idea of what she’s actually feeling. I hope that translates into more questions about the actual solution to the problem. To not think that it’s always just a few bad apples or we just need to like talk more with the people in the community. I hope it leads to people being so exhausted and so tired and so hurt that they really want to wrestle with the real issue of how to solve the problem. The problem is not us. The problem is not the victims. The problem is not the people who are encountering the police. It is the police, and they have to change their behavior in order for this to stop.

Roe: I hope that it becomes a curio in ten to 15 years’ time. That people look at it and can’t really understand what it’s referring to.

Two Distant Strangers is available to stream on Netflix.

Korn was a defining nu-metal group of the ’90s and ’00s, so there is probably a good amount of people out there who have gotten tattoos of the band. That’s a major way to pay tribute to a group, but not necessarily an uncommon one. Now, though, somebody has taken it a step beyond that by naming their baby Korn. The problem, though, is that while that baby is legally named Korn, the whole thing was actually an accident.

A new mother, an illustrator and video game developer named Kells Tate, went viral over the weekend after revealing that a mistake at the hospital led to her new child to be legally named Korn. Sharing a photo of the birth certificate that shows the child’s legal first name is in fact “Korn,” Tate wrote, “THE HOSPITAL MESSED UP MY BABYS NAME AND WE JUST GOT THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE AND ITS KORN MY BABYS NAME IS LEGALLY KORN.” That tweet spread and racked up over 138,000 likes since this weekend.

In a follow-up, Tate clarified that the name was supposed to be Kora and that thankfully, it shouldn’t be a major issue to update official documents to reflect the child’s intended name. Given this saga, Tate noted that she now knows a lot more about the band Korn, the word “corn,” and the name Kora than she used to. Tate also clarified that Kora isn’t named after the titular character from the Nickelodeon series The Legend Of Korra.

This situation should be resolved soon, as Tate has mailed the necessary paperwork to have the baby’s name officially corrected.

As for the band Korn, they have yet to address the child that mistakenly bears their name, but if they catch wind of the story, they’ll presumably be a bit bummed that “Korn” didn’t stick as the baby’s name.

Korn is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When I drove into Yosemite Valley for the first time, I started to cry. The granite rising up above me on all sides was overwhelming. It didn’t seem real. “I am so grateful to be here,” I thought. “So happy to be in this place.”

I’ve been back several times since then and my feelings haven’t changed. I am so grateful. In awe. But what has changed is the number of people who are standing in similar states of awe around me. There are a lot of us. Visitors have only been increasing in most National Parks over the past half-decade, spurred on by social media and, more recently, the desire to get out of town safely during the pandemic. It is now almost guaranteed that you’ll experience a traffic jam to enter many of the more popular parks during the summer. Expect to have trouble finding a parking spot or to have to wait in a Disney-style line to get that iconic Instagram shot.

Because of this overall surge in visitation (with a serious dip last year, due to the pandemic), along with continued Covid precautions, many iconic parks have instituted reservation systems for summer day-use. Even more parks have shifted their entire camping reservations online for the first time and many attractions that have always required ticketing or reservations are filling up faster than ever.

Ultimately the reservation system should cut down on some annoyances. But first, you have to figure out how to navigate the rules and timing to obtain the reservations — which can be tricky, to say the least. Below, we’ve put together all the information you need to make your National Park trip as smooth as possible.

PART I — Reservations for Day-Use

The parks below have instituted day-use reservation systems for the first time. Certain parks, like Dry Tortugas National Park, have continuing day-use permit policies in place.

Yosemite National Park​

Yosemite went to a reservation system at the beginning of the pandemic, eased it in the spring, and is now back to the system for the busy summer months. From May 21 – September 30 you will need an advance reservation to enter the park (unless you have a reservation for camping or lodging within the park — then it’s included).

The park is releasing 80% of the tickets in advance and then the remaining 20% two days before each entry time at 8 am PT. The day-use ticket is good for three consecutive days and will run you a whopping $2. The National Park Service recommends being logged in and ready immediately at 8 am, as tickets are sold out almost immediately when they are released (you can find the schedule for release here).

Canceled reservations become immediately available, so if you’re desperate there is always hope. Still, it’s a complex and competitive system, but totally worth it to experience the grandeur of Yosemite. It also will likely cut down on some of the crowding and traffic that a summer visit to Yosemite has become famous for.

Make your reservation here.

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park, like many on this list, started utilizing a timed entry advance-ticketing system at the beginning of the pandemic. Now they are bringing it back for visits from May 28 – October 11. Starting May 1, reservations are available online on the first day of each month for the following month, with guests picking a specific time frame for entry. The park is opening up reservations up to 75-85% capacity, so this is a great time to see the Rocky Mountain splendor, possibly without fighting the notorious summer crowds.

Additional reservation dates will open on the 1st of each month through September. The park says that 25% of tickets will be held back and available the day prior at 5 pm MST, but will sell out quickly. To further complicate things, there are actually two separate reservations to make at RMNP. One is just for the infamous Bear Lake Road and another is for the rest of the park, excluding the road.

It seems convoluted, but it will be more than worth it when you are smelling the pines and looking out over an alpine lake in the park.

Make your reservation here.

Acadia

As one of the top 10 visited National Parks in the United States, Acadia has only shifted to a vehicle reservation system for specific parts of the park. From May 26 to October 19 all vehicles will need a permit to travel to the summit of Cadillac Mountain road — one of the highlights of an Acadia trip.

Vehicle reservations are $6 (in addition to the park entrance fee) and can only be obtained online. 30% of reservations are available 90 days in advance, with the remaining 70% released two days ahead of time at 10 am ET (good for the people like me, who hate commitment).

Make your reservations here.

Glacier

Glacier National Park in Montana is a true bucket-list park. There are so many things to experience in the park, but the most legendary is probably a drive on Going-to-the-Sun Road. The nearly 50-mile road is the only road that crosses the park (and connects with three of the seven entrances) and the Continental Divide. It’s a huge attraction in itself, which leads to heavy crowding on a road that is already narrow and somewhat precarious-seeming in spots.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road is probably the most beautiful stretch of road I have ever driven. But to that end, like other park roads on this list, it requires a timed entry ticket this season. Timed entry reservations for West and St. Mary Entrances, or via the Camas Road that connect to Going-to-the-Sun will begin to be released on April 29 for entry from May 28 to September 6. The tickets are $2 each (in addition to park entrance fees) with 75% released 60 days in advance online only. The remaining 25% are also only available online, two days in advance. Tickets are available promptly at 8 am MDT and valid for seven days.

Make your reservations here.

Zion

Of Utah’s Mighty Five National Parks, Zion overwhelmingly sees the highest visitation numbers. It’s also one of the most logistically complex. The road through Zion is just eigh-ish miles from the visitor center to the last stop at Temple of Sinawava (home of the infamous Narrows hike). But to access the road you have to ride a shuttle. I remember standing in line for what felt like hours for a spot on the shuttle, so I’m personally pumped about the shuttle reservation system.

This is how it works: starting March 13th the only vehicles allowed on the Scenic Drive (other than guests at the Zion Lodge) are the shuttle buses. I was able to secure a reservation in late March, the day before my visit, at 5 pm MST on the online reservation system for $1. Otherwise, tickets are released on a rolling two-week basis.

Unlike the other parks, there are limited walk-up shuttle tickets available between 1-3 pm. These are, as they say, limited, however. I wouldn’t want to get all the way to the park and risk not being able to see some of the iconic spots on the Scenic Drive (this is how you access Angel’s Landing, The Narrows, and most of the other iconic spots in the park).

More info and make reservations here.

PART II — Camping Reservations

I love being able to pull up to a park and find an epic campsite, but of course, that isn’t usually the way it goes. First come first serve camping has been the rule in many parks until recently, but along with day-use reservations, many parks have also shifted to full or nearly all online advance camping reservation systems.

Haleakala, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, Great Smoky Mountains, and Big Bend are just a handful of parks that you’ll need to reserve spots for. They all fill up at different rates, but I’d recommend booking now if they aren’t already accounted for. Cancellations will often be re-released immediately, so if you can’t snag a spot now, keep checking! It’s worth it to wake up under the stars and in a National Park.

More info and make camping reservations here.

PART III — Attraction Reservations

Since you already have several reservation tabs open on your browser, you might also want to make some attraction reservations. While parks like Isle Royale, Mesa Verde, Denali, Dry Tortugas, Kenai Fjords, Voyageurs, Channel Islands, and Haleakala have always had advanced ticketing for park attractions, you can bet that they are filling up much faster this summer.

Clearly, there’s some extra planning involved here, but I’m telling you: it’s worth the hassle now to be able to relax and enjoy yourself later. Welcome to the Summer of National Parks, 2021!

If you spent any time watching conservative news this weekend, you might have heard that President Joe Biden is planning on limiting every American’s red meat consumption as part of his administration’s ambitious new climate plan. Fox News ran with a graphic titled “Up In Your Grill” that informed the public that Biden’s climate requirements included cutting 90% of red meat from our diets, allowing Americans a max of four pounds of red beef per year, or just one burger per month. Soon after, Colorado representative Lauren Boebert tweeted out “Joe Biden’s climate plan includes cutting 90% of red meat from our diets by 2030… Why doesn’t Joe stay out of my kitchen?” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to President Biden as “The Hamburgalar” and Texas Governor Greg Abbot tweeted out a Fox News graphic writing, “Not Gonna Happen in Texas.”

Governor Greg Abbott is right, this policy is not going to fly in Texas… or anywhere else in the United States for that matter, because it’s not part of Biden’s climate plan. When President Biden laid out his climate plan last Thursday, he made no mention of attempts to change the American diet, instead focusing on plans to create new infrastructure jobs, and deploying cutting-edge tools to farmers in America’s heartland, according to The Washington Post.

The information shared on Fox News actually came from a Daily Mail article titled, alarmingly, “How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs” that cited an unrelated University of Michigan study (conducted before Biden was elected President) that examined the impact of limiting meat consumption on the environment. The study includes an extreme scenario — the one the Daily Mail ran with and tried to tie to Biden’s plan — that showed that a 90% decrease in red meat consumption by 2030 would cut diet-related emissions to 2.4 kg CO2 per capita per day.

Unchanged, the American diet would result in 646 million metric tonnes of CO2 in 2030. So while the Biden administration doesn’t have any plans to limit our consumption of meat…maybe we should do that ourselves?

Obviously, a 90% reduction is going to alarm people but the case to decrease our overall meat consumption isn’t revolutionary. According to the University of Michigan study, the total emissions associated with producing the average American diet equals out to 5.0 kg CO2 per person per day, which, if unchanged, will likely lead to 5.14 kg CO2 per person per day with current population projections. Cutting meat consumption and replacing it with less energy-intensive plant-based alternatives is a reasonable piece of planning a sustainable future on this planet.

Regardless, Biden’s plan isn’t about that at all and the news is simply fake — extrapolated from unrelated sources and hyperbolized in bad faith. No one is trying to take your burgers, but maybe you should try a plant-based burger now and then anyway. You might actually like it!

Sufjan Stevens is currently working his way through the gradual release of his five-volume album Convocations, from which he has so far released the full-length collections Meditation, Lamentation, and Revelation. This week will see the release of the fourth part of the series, Celebration, which Stevens has previewed with “Celebration VIII.” The ambient track has an optimistic tone, with some naturesque sound effects (I’m not convinced there aren’t actual real-life recordings of frog noises included on this one) giving the track an ethereal wilderness feel.

Convocations was previously described in a statement, “The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all. In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much.”

Listen to “Celebration VIII” above.

Convocations is out 5/6 via Asthmatic Kitty. Pre-order it here.

Stalker Joe’s third round of terrorizing the world on Netflix’s You (formerly of Lifetime) apparently went smoothly (with Joe now officially on the hook with fellow homicidal maniac Love), at least from a production standpoint. That’s actually remarkable, considering all that the world’s going through and how countless movies and TV shows have repeatedly shut down due to positive COVID-19 tests. And it’s also good news for the show that’s based upon Caroline Kepnes’ novels, since fans are obsessed with the show that keeps ratcheting up its own batsh*t-crazy quotient. They’re also obsessed with Penn Badgley’s character to a point where it almost disturbs him. At least we know that we won’t be seeing a ghostlike Chris D’Elia on the show in the future, and there’s even more good news from showrunner Sera Gamble.

In a lengthy thread on Twitter, Gamble confirmed that shooting wrapped last Friday in Los Angeles, and somehow, “We had zero on-set positive COVID tests through a significant and scary surge here in LA. And haven’t had one since.” She’s doing a justified “brag” here, although she’s partially attributing the statistic to “sheer luck” in addition to everyone staying diligent on set. In other words, it appears that no one on the You production had to pull a Tom Cruise in order for people to comply with virus protocols.

Gamble wasn’t done yet. She added that “the episodes are f*cking bonkers and the performances are insanely good.” Don’t ask her for more details yet, though: “That’s all I’ll say about that till we are ready to talk about the new season.” There’s no Netflix release date as of yet, but fingers crossed to see more stalker comeuppance by the end of 2021. You can read Gamble’s full Twitter thread below.