About an hour into 144, the new documentary from ESPN and executive producer Chiney Ogwumike that premiers on Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET and takes viewers inside the WNBA’s 2020 Bubble season, the camera subsumes Atlanta Dream star Courtney Williams, who is making her case about how to handle the league’s pause in play last August. Williams is in a ballroom on the IMG Academy campus, where the Bubble lived, in a meeting of every player in the league — all 144 of them. It’s a moment floating in time. The condensed season created a sense of urgency to every moment, and despite Williams assuring her WNBA sisters that the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, pained her just like the countless other acts of violence toward people of color by American police, something else is on her mind as well. Her livelihood.
This close-up shot of Williams, a character most hoops fans will know for her boundary-breaking persona and intoxicating style of play, lays out the thinking behind the entire Bubble experiment in the first place — as well as 144 as a film. The rest of the league listens as Williams cycles through the facts of the relatively young league: they lack the business standing, entrenched fan base and financial means to miss a season. And while the likes of LeBron James and Chris Paul contemplated hanging it up for the summer a few miles away in the NBA’s Orlando Bubble, Williams’ claim is that the W could afford no such thing.
The league’s decisions over the course of last summer, explored thoughtfully and with a pace that recalls much of 2020, reinforce Williams’ logic. Players, coaches and league commissioner Cathy Engelbert repeat it in fewer words throughout the course of the doc. By playing, the WNBA capitalized on real momentum around women’s sports and stayed in the public eye. And they used that to their advantage, growing TV ratings and drawing attention to major social causes like the Say Her Name campaign and the candidacy of now-Sen. Rafael Warnock in the Georgia special election.
What the film does well is illuminate the why and how of massive, era-defining decisions that went on in Bradenton while we all followed from afar. Aside from the historic meeting in which Williams spoke and which resulted in a “day of reflection,” we also see the deliberations between the Dream and Washington Mystics in the lead-up to the first canceled game, as well as the exhaustion on the face and lips of Ariel Atkins, who ultimately was the historic harbinger of the teams’ strike.
We get to go inside tremendous basketball moments, too. There’s Diana Taurasi pumping up Shey Peddy after Peddy’s miracle game-winner in the first round of the playoffs. And Dearica Hamby winning her second consecutive Sixth Woman of the Year trophy while parenting her daughter full-time. And of course, the legendary dominance of the champion Seattle Storm.
But what truly escalates 144 to a necessary sports doc for this moment is how it uses the WNBA Bubble to piece together the social moments of last year. Players’ union treasurer Natalie Achonwa tells a story of her Black husband’s interaction with the police, recalling a moment in time while also drawing attention back to the division between communities and law enforcement. Rookie Chennedy Carter, while getting tested for COVID-19, as was a daily routine in the Bubble, jokes with the assigned nurse that they just saw each other the previous day — how could Carter be sick now?
It’s these small moments that already feel like cultural artefacts. The new WNBA season is coming this week, and America is beginning to come out of the pandemic. The fever pitch around police reform, for better or worse, has become one of many social issues rather than the central focus of many Americans’ lives. Even the WNBPA has integrated new initiatives like public health into their mission, signaling a new moment for these players as well.
Watching the film as someone who reported on so many of these moments in real time, what was most affecting was not seeing the rooms where it happened, but rather going back at all. We can tell the story of 2020 sports moment by sports moment, and the WNBA takes up more than its fair share of that timeline. Still, it is an overwhelming space to re-enter.
As the film closes, the Bubble’s cast dwindles, and we get our one and only scene with soccer star Megan Rapinoe (hilariously listed only as Sue Bird’s girlfriend). Speaking with Bird, Rapinoe notes how the unique circumstances of 2020 allowed the league to gather, using their unification in an “awesome” way. The gravity of a shared purpose, a sense of unity, and an environment where ideas and collective action could thrive, hits as the film crescendos into Rapinoe’s monologue.
From Williams to Ogwumike to Engelbert, nobody interviewed for 144 shies from the risk inherent in the Bubble season. And in spite of that, they went. Because they knew they couldn’t afford not to, sure, but also because the opportunity was too great. As the world on many days felt one half-spin from falling off its axis, the 144 players of the WNBA determined that what they could do together was too important to not try this crazy experiment. And it worked.
Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian apparently aren’t the only unexpected celebrity couple to make headlines lately. WandaVision and 2 Broke Girls actress Kat Dennings recently confirmed her relationship with rocker Andrew W.K., and the couple have now announced their engagement.
Dennings shared the exciting news on social media. “Don’t mind if I do @AndrewWK,” Dennings wrote alongside a photo of her massive diamond ring.
She also shared a series of photos celebrating her engagement on Instagram.
It hasn’t been long since Dennings publicly confirmed her relationship with Andrew W.K. Just last week, the actress shared a photo of the musician with a heart emoji, following up with a heartwarming photo of them together. Shortly after Dennings made the announcement, Andrew W.K. snuck some information about their relationship into a press release for his upcoming God Is Partying LP. The press statement noted that the two had “met earlier this year in LA,” so it seems as though their relationship is quite new.
Andrew W.K. isn’t the first musician Dennings has dated. The actress was previously in a serious relationship with singer Josh Groban, but the two split amicably in 2016 after being together for two years. The impending wedding will mark Andrew W.K.’s second marriage. He had previously tied the knot with Cherie Lily in 2008 but the two filed for divorced in late 2019.
In an attempt to get more residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has announced a truly unexpected incentive program.
“Two weeks from tonight on May 26th,” DeWine wrote on Twitter yesterday, “we will announce a winner of a separate drawing for adults who have received at least their first dose of the vaccine. This announcement will occur each Wednesday for five weeks, and the winner each Wednesday will receive one million dollars.”
That’s right. Five people in Ohio who have received at least their first vaccine dose will receive $1 million.
Two weeks from tonight on May 26th, we will announce a winner of a separate drawing for adults who have received at… https://t.co/GzLKM22WmC
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) 1620856014.0
DeWine explained that the names will be drawn from Ohio’s voter registration base, and people can also sign up for the drawings on a website to be made available soon. The drawings will be conducted by the Ohio Lottery.
The governor also noted that the $5 million would come from federal Coronavirus Relief Funds that the state has on hand.
The Ohio Department of Health will be the sponsoring agency for the drawings, and the Ohio Lottery will conduct the… https://t.co/MiIw3bMwrw
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) 1620856094.0
A few rules apply: You have to be 18 years or older, an Ohio resident, and have gotten your first vaccine dose before the drawing.
“I know that some may say, ‘DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money,'” the governor wrote. “But truly, the real waste at this point in the pandemic—when the vaccine is readily available to anyone who wants it—is a life lost to COVID-19.”
I know that some may say, “DeWine, you’re crazy! This million-dollar drawing idea of yours is a waste of money.”… https://t.co/KmA0D9yJll
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) 1620856095.0
The reactions to the news were predictably all over the place. Some people are hardcore anti-vaccination and won’t be swayed by such an incentive, but for those on the fence or who just haven’t gotten around to making an appointment, perhaps the notion of winning a million dollars will push them to do it. If nothing else, it’s a pretty sweet reward for those who are participating in this important public health measure to end the pandemic.
Some people are questioning whether or not a lottery with big prizes for a handful of people is really the most efficient use of COVID relief funds. Certainly it seems like it could be more effective than putting up posters or making public service announcements, but is it better than using the money to provide easier access to communities where access is more limited? Time will tell.
@JahD1191 @GovMikeDeWine Would you rather give it to advertising companies to produce ineffective PSAs? If this in… https://t.co/XwCb9ai9dI
Some have pointed out that the odds of winning this lottery are much better than the odds of winning the normal state lottery, without even having to buy a lottery ticket. Those odds might incentivize people to get to the clinic—which is a little ironic considering the folks who are afraid to get vaccinated but aren’t afraid of COVID may not have the best understanding of odds in the first place.
@GovMikeDeWine To all you “do they think people are this dumb?” folks… the odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 1… https://t.co/8JpGihMjZB
It also might help that the push is coming from Ohio’s GOP governor, since the largest demographic of vaccine hesitancy is particularly high among people with conservative leanings. The fact that a conservative politician is willing to spend money to spend taxpayer funds to incentivize getting vaccinated sends a message about how important it is.
Polling backs up the idea as well. A survey from Morning Consult found that 3 out of 5 unvaccinated adults say a big financial incentive would sway them to get the COVID-19 shot. Hard to say if a chance of a big payout would do the same, but considering people’s penchant for playing the lottery, it’s worth a shot.
We’ll see if the gamble pays off in the coming weeks, but kudos to Ohio leadership for doing something creative to try to increase vaccination rates. The more people we get immunized, the closer we will be to ending the pandemic and returning to some semblance of normalcy.
Remember when trading cards were huge? The excitement of going to the store, purchasing a pack, and seeing what you might get had a palpable excitement to it that is insanely difficult to replicate. How everyone chose to use their cards was up to them. They could sell cards to others, trade them with another card collector to get a card they’ve been looking for, or just take what they have and keep them as a piece of memorabilia.
Well, for those that might not be aware, card collecting has come roaring back in recent years. Pokemon, MLB, NFL, and NBA cards have seen a huge resurgence over the last few years and 2020 into 2021 saw even more growth in that area. Pokemon cards and sports cards became increasingly difficult to find because it seemed like everyone was getting back into an old hobby, but unfortunately not everyone doing so had the best intentions in mind. While some card collectors just wanted to re-experience the nostalgia of card collecting from their youth, another significant chunk were buying them in bulk to resell them for astronomical prices amid the card boom. Soon card purchasers were lining up outside stores like Target early in the morning so they could get first dibs on new drops of card packs — not dissimilar to sneaker releases.
Anyone that walked around a Target would see a sign telling purchasers they could only purchase two card packs at most. That still wasn’t enough to stop sellouts, and as the desire for cards increased it started to lead to problems for stores like Target. This eventually culminated in national news events of people violently attacking each other over trading cards. The resurgence in Pokemon cards in particular led to VICE calling it a “crisis.”
Well Target has had enough. Early this week, shoppers began to see signs informing them that cards would no longer be purchasable from them starting May 14. On Wednesday, Target confirmed that this would be a nationwide policy until further notice, via Bleeding Cool.
“The safety of our guests and our team is our top priority. Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve decided to temporarily suspend the sale of MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokémon trading cards within our stores, effective May 14. Guests can continue to shop these cards online at Target.com.”
Bleeding Cool, who received the official statement from Target stating that they would no longer be selling trading cards, also reported that Walmart would no longer be selling these cards as well. Although a Reddit thread about baseball cards claims that some are still selling them, but only behind the shelf the same way they sell cigarettes. It seems that until the market for these cards relaxes, the only way to buy these will be from card shops or online. So far Walmart has not made an official statement on the matter.
This is unfortunate for anyone that just wants to buy a pack of cards for collection or memorabilia purposes, but with it becoming physically dangerous to purchase trading cards right now this is probably for the best.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Pink has been reflecting on her life (so far) after a terrifying bout with coronavirus last year was so frightening that she actually was moved to rewrite her will. Luckily, the singer, and her son who also caught the virus, has recovered fully — and the experience has her reckoning with life in a new way. That reckoning comes to us in the form of her new single, “All I Know So Far,” which was written for her daughter Willow, and an accompanying documentary of the same name that gives fans a behind-the-scenes look at how the pop star balances life and family while on her Beautiful Trauma tour. The documentary will be out May 21 via Amazon Prime.
As she reflects on this time in her life, the singer also can’t help but also think back to her early career, when the music industry was a much different place. Especially for women. In those early days, Pink was pitted against other massive female stars like Christina, and especially Britney Spears. She was even marketed as the “anti-Britney,” which she said she never agreed with. “I love Britney — she used to carry around my album,” she told People. “I was like, ‘Dude, I’m a street punk, I just skateboard. That doesn’t have to be the anti-Britney. I don’t want to fight anybody.’ One of the best things that L.A. Reid ever told me was that this music business is big enough for everybody to win at the same time. There’s no such thing as competition. I think we navigated through it as good as a 20-year-old girl can. Now I think it’s totally different. Girls supporting girls is rad — I love to watch it.”
That’s why she’s already supporting young stars like Olivia Rodrigo. “I love singing ‘Drivers License’ with my daughter,” Pink said. “Her and her little 12-year-old friends gave me the whole lowdown on what happened between the three of them in all the songs!”
If it seems like every week a new celebrity launches a weed brand, that’s because… every… week… a new celebrity… launches… a… weed brand. For the most part, these entries into an increasingly crowded marketplace are pretty forgettable. But occasionally — as with the case of Jay-Z’s Monogram and Seth Rogen’s Houseplant — the right team manages to knock it out of the park, earning permanent shelf space at your local dispensary.
I’m pleased to say that FlowerShop — a new brand launched by rapper and producer G-Eazy, along with co-founders and fellow Bay Area boys Isaac Muwaswes and Gabe Garcia — is one of those select few. But FlowerShop isn’t just a cannabis label. It’s also a wellness company, with a long list of products on deck. Its first drop delivers rolling papers, lighters, ashtrays, and three glass-tipped pre-roll joint packs, called Bouquetpacks. A 1/8th flower jar and “cannabis juice” are coming soon.
The Bouquetpacks offer three different mood-focused strains — dubbed Comfort, Smile, and Joy — each packed in reusable plastic tubes and sporting a glass-filter tip for better handling and flavor. After smoking the Comfort strain, I spoke with Muwaswes, Garcia, and G-Eazy himself about the origins of the brand, their own relationships to cannabis, and why joints will always feel special.
But first, let’s break down the weed.
The Packaging
Dane Rivera
Right out of the gate, the first interesting thing about FlowerShop is the brand’s design aesthetic. The Bouquetpack’s matte flip-top box features a magnetic top, and four pre-rolled single flower joints packed in resealable plastic tubes with glass filter tips. At four joints per pack and a retail price of $50, you’re looking at a cost of $12.50 per joint.
Dane Rivera
Since an eighth of Panacea Farms Purple Double Deja Vu will cost you about $60 before taxes, this pack has pretty good value for what you get, it’s a lot better than Monogram’s $60 hand-roll, for example, and the weed is of a much higher quality.
A fifth joint would’ve really set this up as something special though. The packaging is playful and colorful, but we would’ve preferred just a little bit more information for the consumer.
One of the things that first struck me about FlowerShop’s pre-roll pack was just how fragrant it smelled after I cut open the sealed plastic envelope it came packaged in. Once the scissors pierced the plastic I was instantly greeted by a wave of floral and slightly minty smells, with a slight pepper edge that tickles the nose. The joint itself is incredibly well packed, just rolling it through my fingers showed a consistent and dense pack that led to a lengthy smoke session with thick clouds of milky intoxicating smoke.
Again, FlowerShop’s attention to detail and design is at the forefront here. Each glass filter utilizes blue-colored glass — fitting with the color scheme. Does that have any effect on how high you get? Absolutely not, but it certainly has an effect on the experience. Smoking FlowerShop’s joints feels like you’re enjoying something special, it’s practically begging to be shared just so you can pass it around as a conversation piece.
Of course, cool filters would feel like a gimmick if the high didn’t deliver. It does. This will be a fun joint to pass between friends when we’re past Covid, but right now I’m not sharing with anyone. Which resulted in me getting — to borrow a Bay Area phrase — hella high.
Comfort is made using Panacea Farm’s Purple Double Deja Vu and the high comes on incredibly quickly here. Well before you make your way through the joint, a pleasing buzz took over me — beginning in the center of the forehead before melting down in radiating waves of euphoric bliss through the rest of my body. Real talk: I did not expect a celebrity-fronted weed brand to hit this hard. FlowerShop chose well by linking up with Panacea Farm for this one and opting for a single-sourced full flower joint (rather than a blend of shake) led to a better tasting, less harsh product.
I broke up one of my spare pre-rolls (which I regret) to get a look inside — Comfort has a great medium-coarse grind and the bud is fresh and still slightly sticky.
Dane Rivera
Flavor-wise, Comfort had floral notes with a heavy gas flavor and a peppery, slightly melon aftertaste. The smoke was remarkably smooth which is rare in pre-packaged joints, resulting in pleasingly smooth drags that didn’t lead to a single cough during my whole experience.
My only gripe is that calling the strain “Comfort” is a bit misleading, they might as well call it “KO” — smoking a full joint solo launched me beyond couch lock and straight into a nap. I had no plans on taking a nap, I wasn’t even tired, so this is definitely not something to mess with if you’ve got plans.
The Bottom Line
Smooth smoke with earthy flavors of cracked pepper and subtle melon and mint, which results in a body-tingling euphoric high designed to knock you out.
The Interview
FlowerShop
You’re all Bay Area kids, can you speak to the cannabis scene in the Bay Area while you were growing up. I know it’s always been a big part of the culture.
Muwaswes: I was born and raised in San Francisco, not too far from Haight Ashbury, so some of my early memories of being exposed to weed was going down to Haight Ashbury with my friends to kick it. As a young kid you’re kind of exposed to this narrative around the history and the demonization of cannabis, but as I kind of got into it in middle school going to high school you start to make your own assumptions.
But even then, pretty early on in high school, I started to hear about all these medicinal uses for it and hearing about the groundswell that was happening surround Prop 215. It was really being looked at as a medicine, and I’ve come across friends of my parents who were using it as a medicine as well, so pretty early on I started to see it as “oh this is something we in the Bay Area kind of have a different view upon and are really progressive on” and that intertwined with the cultural aspect, growing up listening to hip-hop, being into all things hip-hop, music, fashion — it was intertwined in those subcultures.
Whatever group of friends I had — whether it was my athlete friends, my friends into music, the friends into fashion — that was one thing we all shared. One experience that connected us all was smoking.
I know the brand takes a heavily sensory approach to cannabis, that’s right on the packaging. What’s the thinking behind positioning the brand this way and how does it differ from other celebrity-fronted brands that are springing up in the cannabis space?
Muwaswes: When we built Flower Shop we really built it as a wellness company as a whole, I think we always looked at cannabis as one aspect or one category of what we’re trying to do from the perspective of wellness. For us, we tried to really define what wellness means to us. One big realization we had was that it’s not one thing, it’s not singular, it’s more about the journey than the destination
Through that, we started to define how we can take people through that journey, and what we do to get on that journey. It’s about inspiring our senses, whether it’s the music we listen to, the candle we burn that smells a certain way, whether it’s the lighting in the room that makes us feel a certain way and opens up our mood to certain elements or experiences, we always knew it tied back to one or many of our senses and we’re already in that mindset for a lot of the other things we were doing previous to FlowerShop. Whether it was in the design world with Gabe or the music world with G, it’s about bringing all of that together in a retailer experience.
That was kind of the genesis of sensory care, and then we started to apply that to everything we were doing from product to packaging to messaging to content.
G Eazy: To jump in, from my perspective as a musician, music can be a healing agent. Similar to flower, it can be something that brings people together, people who share this commonality come together for this shared experience. But as a musician I have a wide array of influences and taste in music, I can deliver “No Limit” but then I can do “Everything Will Be OK,” that wide offering and understanding of mood and emotions are important in anything you offer because you don’t just have one customer, and each customer doesn’t have just one mindset and mood.
We wanted to find what resonates at different times of the day or different times in your life, and wanting to reach people on a level of emotion and feeling, similar to the way music would.
FlowerShop
I wanted to ask you specifically about your smoking habits G, are you smoking a bowl before you hit the studio, something you do after to unwind, what’s your creative relationship with the plant?
G-Eazy: There is pretty much a constant burn in the studio. Atmosphere is huge in the creative process, that comes down to lighting, how cold I like it, the people I want and don’t want in the studio, and that comes down to what I’m drinking and smoking. With smoking, it’s not a requirement. It’s not needed to unlock creativity, but nonetheless, it’s something that loosens you up and makes you feel better and makes you feel joy or relaxation, that can only open you up and enable more flow of stream of consciousness.
Garcia: To add to that we started thinking about whether cannabis a creative performance enhancer? We like the idea, we can’t go shout it off the mountaintops, but for us, we like that conceptually and believe it. But to G’s point, it’s not a reliance.
FlowerShop
G what’s your preferred smoking method and why did you guys start with the BouquetPack over a flower jar?
G-Eazy: Joints and blunts. It’s what I grew up smoking. Every day in high school coming home from work, I’d get home around midnight or 1 AM and I’d roll up a personal blunt and smoke it in the backyard while my mom was asleep, just to be able to wind down and decompress and get ready for school the next morning. It was just culturally what I grew up doing.
Garcia: That’s the reason we’re excited to share the bouquet pack and included the glass tip pre-rolls, that’s our attempt to elevate what is standard.
Where is the product sourced from?
Muwaswes: Sourcing wise we have a number of really good relationships with cultivators throughout the entire state of California. A lot of the key growers out here we have partnerships with and what we’re doing right now is these drops or deliveries with individual strains and growers. The one you have right now, we partnered with Panacea Farms for — a craft grower under the NorCal banner. We’re doing a number of different things with brands, growers, and cultivators, long term we are going to be having our own genetics out there, but for the time being, we’re trying to find the best of the best that we want to work with that also understand our vision and understand what we’re trying to do from a sensory care perspective with these products.
FlowerShop
What brought you to the cannabis business? Your backgrounds are comfortably in design and music, not in the cannabis industry.
Garcia: It came to us really, growing up in the Bay Area and how prominent it is it was probably inevitable. It came through a design project at first. We’ve been in the creative design space for a long time.
We started getting inbound requests from the cannabis end, that’s how it initially started to come to us, and we entertained one specific deal and that’s where it really started. As we got into it and did the research, we wanted to find our foothold and what felt authentic to us to enter the space and it was through design, through packaging through a vision, but as we got into it, we started asking ourselves deeper questions.
This is a two-and-a-half-year project in the making and we’re really proud of it and excited to share it with the world.
What’s special about FlowerShop, what sets it apart from other brands?
Garcia: It’s all in our packaging! We really did our best to make it as recyclable and eco-conscious as possible. We tried to make everything reusable — or unique enough to make people want to reuse it. The tubes the pre-rolls come in, our incense sticks are coming in those, it’s also a tube you can use to clean your glass tips and reuse them, same thing for the box itself.
Our Bud Vase, which will be dropping in 90 days, has a jar that’s able to be reused. With all of our packaging, we’ve thought about how we can inspire people to reuse it and reapply it to something else. The vase is food grade, it can be washed in the dishwasher, it can be used to store yogurt —
G-Eazy: As a shot glass!
Garcia: You know it!
Muwaswes: We were just as focused on what was going into the packaging as who we are sourcing weed from. Using a single strain indoor for our prerolls, not using shake, grinding the best of the best, being meticulous about the grind and the coarseness, consistency on the burn and smoke, even on the sourcing of the paper!
Despite the fact that the exclusive 30 day window to come to terms on a deal came and went earlier this week, an agreement is reportedly now in place for Minnesota’s two professional basketball teams to come under the ownership of former Major League Baseball player Alex Rodriguez and former Walmart executive Marc Lore.
According to a report by Front Office Sports, the pair came to terms with Glen Taylor to take over the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx. Shams Charania of The Athletic reported the same, with both reports mentioning that the price tag will ultimately come in at $1.5 billion.
Former MLB star Alex Rodriguez and tech entrepreneur Marc Lore have reached agreement to purchase the Minnesota Timberwolves from Glen Taylor for $1.5 billion, sources tell @TheAthletic@Stadium.
Front Office Sports also confirmed an earlier report that Taylor would stick around in some capacity as ownership eventually transfers to Rodriguez and Lore, with full ownership coming after the 2023 campaign. As for how the new owners will run the franchise, Charania reports that a 50-50 split between the two is in the cards.
Rodriguez and Lore are expected to sign formal paperwork shortly, and sources say A-Rod and Lore are equal, 50-50 partners in the purchase. https://t.co/9u5GqadCLH
News of Rodriguez and Lore being interested in purchasing the team has been out there for about a month, and while it took a little bit longer than expected for this to come to fruition, it appears the deal is essentially done. Next up: Have A-Rod introduce himself to Anthony Edwards in person.
Ashnikko has been on a tear ever since her stint opening for Danny Brown put her on the map in the underground rap world, and the release of her Demidevil album at the top was diverse enough to put her on our 2021 Rising Pop Stars To Watch list, too. She’s as versatile as they come, perhaps best illustrated on her Birds Of Prey soundtrack co-write, Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch” (Which shares a name with a song she features on off Brooke Candy’s 2019 album that I highly recommend).
Despite her obvious skill in writing songs for other artists, though, today she’s back to promoting songs off her own Demidevil, sharing the video for the Princess Nokia-featuring “Slumber Party,” a raucous affair that finds Ashnikko quite literally stealing your girl. Dressed in a deconstructed renaissance fair style of corsets and flowy hair, the two women playfully subvert heteronormative ideas about innocent slumber parties with a decidedly sexual, queered account of what might happen between the two of them. As each frame of the painting comes to life, eventually the women are dancing through their explicit lyrics together, as sex toys and almost-make-out-moments abound. Check out the NSFW video above, and keep an eye out for more from Ashnikko.
Twenty One Pilots are combining their love of music with their love of burritos. The duo are just over a week away from releasing their sixth album, Scaled And Icy. To celebrate, Twenty One Pilots partnered with Chipotle to create their own official burrito that’s hopefully anything but “scaled” or “icy.”
The official Twenty One Pilots Burrito is on the lighter side, opting for a combination without beans. It’s filled with chicken, white rice, fresh tomato salsa, roasted chili-corn salsa, cheese, romaine lettuce, and queso blanco. It’s available to order only through Chipotle’s website or app and comes out to $8.65 and an estimated 1050 calories.
To share the news of their new partnership, Twenty One Pilots vocalist Tyler Joseph and drummer Josh Dun filmed a cheeky teaser. It depicts to duo pulling up at their local Chipotle joint and being outed as regular customers. After the employees exchange niceties with Dun, he hops behind the counter to begin crafting the Twenty One Pilots Burrito for Joseph.
— twenty one pilots (@twentyonepilots) May 13, 2021
Along with the burrito, Twenty One Pilots plan to celebrate the release of Scaled And Icy with their first-ever global livestream event. The livestream takes place on the album’s release date and will see the band performing songs off their new LP, as well as hits from their previous projects.
Watch Twenty One Pilots’ Chipotle commercial above.
Scaled And Icy is out 5/21 via Fueled by Ramen/Elektra. Pre-order it here.
Twenty One Pilots are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Meghan McCain is apparently tired of talking about the January 6 insurrection. After spending the past few days notably breaking from the Republican Party and taking congressional leaders to task for ousting Liz Cheney, McCain returned to her usual routine of criticizing the Biden Administration for every problem under the sun, even if she has to veer completely off topic to do it. This happened a little after the 4:30 minute mark in the below video.
HEARING ON RIOT EXPOSES PARTISAN DIVISIONS: The co-hosts react to the differing views between Republicans and Democrats during a hearing on the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and question if some GOP lawmakers are rationalizing the riot. https://t.co/ecY4yJWw2Zpic.twitter.com/eDG2ZSLxkt
During a panel discussion on the GOP’s attempts to rewrite history when it comes to the insurrection attack on the U.S. Capitol, McCain announced she was done rehashing something that happened “four months ago” and proceeded to derail the entire conversation by… complaining about the amount of gas in her car? Via Mediaite:
“But when Joy says friends of hers are frightened, friends of mine are frightened as well,” she continued. “I had to have a conversation with my executive producer yesterday about whether or not I’m going to be able to find gas in my car because the lines at gas stations near where I live are down the street, or there’s just no gas whatsoever.”
McCain then accused the media of refusing to report negatively on Biden. “These are real problems. It’s like the ’70s all over again,” McCain said. “Just because Trump was so bad doesn’t mean this is good.”
While McCain is correct that there is a gas shortage happening, it’s the direct result of two events that are completely out of the Biden Administration’s control: a cyber-attack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline for six days (it’s now up and running) and motorists ignoring repeated warnings to not “panic buy” gasoline, which has caused shortages in the southeast.
As for being over the Capitol attacks, co-host Sunny Hostin followed up McCain’s remark by bringing up the newly released footage of DC Metro Police Officer Michael Fanone being attacked by the MAGA insurgents. “That is an important story that we should never, ever, ever stop talking about or forget,” Hostin said.
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