Month: May 2021

Most people would count themselves lucky to have a sighting of more than a dozen endangered animals out their front window when there aren’t very many of the creatures living in the wild. Such a one-in-a-million kind of opportunities don’t come around every day.

But for a California woman whose deck a group of 15 or so endangered California condors chose as a roosting spot, “lucky” isn’t exactly the right sentiment.

Twitter user Seana Lyn shared photos of the giant birds and the havoc they are wreaking on her mom’s house.

---

“Over the weekend ~15 California condors descended on my mom’s house and absolutely trashed her deck,” she wrote. “They still haven’t left. It sucks but also this is unheard of, there’s only 160 of these birds flying free in the state and a flock of them decided to start a war with my mom.”

Over the weekend ~15 California condors descended on my moms house and absolutely trashed her deck. They still have… https://t.co/3SVB9Xr1rH

— Seana Lyn (@SeanaLyn)
1620176081.0

The photos show the gigantic birds boasting colored tags with numbers on them, which is how the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service track which breeding program they belong to.

Seana Lyn on Twitter

twitter.com

You can also see how they’ve knocked over planters and pooped everywhere.

pbs.twimg.com

And also how they’ve torn off and torn apart covers for items on the deck—and pooped and pooped some more.

California condors have a wingspan that ranges from 8 feet to nearly 10 feet, and they weigh an average of 18 to 20 pounds. These are not small birds, and when you get 15 or so of them together, the damage they can do is formidable.

Happy Mother’s Day mom, hope you like the condors 😂😭

— Seana Lyn (@SeanaLyn)
1620184141.0

Seana’s mom, to her credit, thinks the whole thing is “pretty amazing but also the worst.” That about sums it up.

Checked in with mom, they’re still hanging out ominously on one of her trees but thankfully are not on the house at… https://t.co/OiW3EiyUsM

— Seana Lyn (@SeanaLyn)
1620236234.0

The condors did move to the trees nearby so they at least weren’t using the house as their personal bathroom, and then circled overhead. “Fingers crossed they’re enjoying the neighborhood but being good neighbors now,” wrote Seana Lyn.

Update after being MIA for half the day mom said that they have returned and now theyre circling overhead. Haven’t… https://t.co/yD51lzrqu0

— Seana Lyn (@SeanaLyn)
1620255507.0

“Still wild to me that in my lifetime there went from being about 25 condors left alive to no almost that many descending on my mom’s house at once,” she added. “Makes me wonder if we will start seeing more giant flocks as their numbers rise.”

Good morning to everyone especially my mom who gave these two condors on her roof a “shower” this morning with a ho… https://t.co/G3554B3liO

— Seana Lyn (@SeanaLyn)
1620317558.0

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service weighed in on the matter on Twitter, writing, “Hi @SeanaLyn, her home is located in historical condor habitat where natural food sources occur…unfortunately they sometimes perceive houses and decks as suitable perch locations.

“If this happens again, hazing to preclude them from causing damage and habituation is encouraged. This includes methods that will not harm them such as water hoses, yelling, clapping, shouting or using other preventative measures such as scarecrow sprinklers.”

They also said they don’t encourage people to touch the birds. (Who on earth would approach a ginormous California condor and try to touch it??? Oh, right. Lots of people, probably.)

@SeanaLyn If this happens again, hazing to preclude them from causing damage and habituation is encouraged. This in… https://t.co/Vbc1TNg2bv

— U.S. Fish and Wildlife (@USFWS)
1620239068.0

While an endangered animal encounter is indeed pretty amazing, this wasn’t the kind of encounter anyone wants to have, so Seana’s mom was undoubtedly glad to hear she could do a little condor “hazing” if need be. She did end up hosing two condors off of her roof, moving them into a nearby tree with their buddies.

The saving of the California condor is one of the great endangered species success stories. Their numbers dwindled to a couple of dozen in the 1980s, when wildlife conservationists gathered up those that were left to start an intense breeding program to bring them back from the brink of extinction. Now there are more than 300 California condors living in the wild and more than 500 total including those in captivity and breeding programs.

Trashing a human’s house is a heck of a way to say “thanks for saving our species,” birdies. (Then again, since their near-extinction was kind of our fault, I guess we have to look past it.) Maybe just leave the nice lady’s porch alone and go find some nasty politician’s home to poop on. That would be a win-win all around.

Five years ago, Isaiah Rashad was flying high, on top of the rap world. The Sun’s Tirade, his 2016 debut album, had released to critical and commercial success — and more importantly, was a fan favorite, delivering on the potential promised by his 2014 mixtape, Cilvia Demo. But then, instead of following up, the Top Dawg Entertainment rapper more or less vanished from public view, beginning a long wait for a follow-up that left fans frustrated, decrying the label for “mismanaging” Rashad’s career.

This week, Isaiah released “Lay With Ya” featuring Memphis rapper Duke Deuce. the first single from his upcoming album, The House Is Burning. It appears to showcase an artist who hasn’t lost a step from his glory days at the height of the so-called SoundCloud Rap era — one who managed to not only adapt to ways the Southern rap sound has evolved since then but to adapt those sounds to his own unique style. However, a cover story in The Fader revealed just how much personal tumult the Chattanooga native had endured in the years since he seemingly faded from view.

The profile provides a perfect example of how patience pays off for both fans of artists and their business partners. It also highlights a fact that often gets lost in the clamor for new music to feed the nonstop churn of the streaming era: Artists are human beings who deserve empathy. Oftentimes, we take the artifice of music at face value; the cars, the clothes, the sexual fantasies, and the piles of money depicted in videos are their day-to-day realities in fans’ minds because that’s all we see of the lives these people “live.” However, Isaiah Rashad’s story especially belies that fantasy, revealing just how much artists can struggle with once the video wraps, the spotlights go off, and they step off the stage.

In 2016 and 2017, amid the rollout and subsequent tour for The Sun’s Tirade, Isaiah was open about the addictions that plagued him. He said that he was abusing alcohol the antidepressant Xanax in the years between his mixtape and his debut, jeopardizing his standing at TDE. He even put a voicemail from former TDE co-president Dave Free on the album’s intro in which Free admonished him for blowing through deadlines without turning in the project. He said that the alcohol abuse had destroyed his stomach lining. Yet, amid all that, the label patiently stood by him, and reaped the benefits of that steadfast support when The Sun’s Tirade debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 — before the publication changed the counting rules that would have allowed streams and almost certainly pushed it to the top ten.

And that persistence appears to still be paying off as fans celebrate Isaiah’s long-awaited return to the spotlight after a stint in rehab. Isaiah, who revealed how dire his situation had gotten before then to Fader’s Jeff Weiss — he’d spent nearly all his money, wrecked his Jeep and his label boss Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith’s car, and moved back home to Chattanooga feeling like a failure — seems to be in better spirits than ever and replaced his negative habits — alcohol and pills — with positive ones, like collecting comic books.

Fans of artists like Isaiah who are open with their struggles with anxiety and addiction would do well to learn from Top Dawg’s example. The label head was empathetic to Isaiah’s struggles, helping him to get clean and never pressured him to live up to the outsized expectations and pressure that he heaped on himself. When fans push artists to “drop the album,” it’s understandable but unnecessary. Of course, we would like more music that makes us happy, that soundtracks our best moments, and gives us something to look forward to when festival season rolls around. But artists already want — and need — to put out music. It’s their job, but having to hear about how their job is more important than their lives not only puts undue extra pressure on them, it minimizes their struggles.

We’ve all been there, wanting to call in sick because things have just gotten on top of us. But our bosses need us to clock in, our customers don’t care that we’ve got bills and problems at home, and that clock is the most indifferent, counting down the hours until we can escape. Now imagine you never got that escape, that work followed you everywhere you went until yelling at you to get more done. No one deserves that, least of all the artists who help us to endure the pressure we deal with ourselves. Besides, the wait can make receiving the final product that much sweeter, as we may soon find out when The House Is Burning arrives. Even after nearly five years, it’ll be right on time.

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

Allen Iverson is an NBA legend, not just because of his spectacular skills on the court, but because of his cultural impact off of it, too. Iverson was himself at all times, and his willingness to be comfortable in his own skin is what has allowed a lot of current NBA stars to feel the same way about themselves.

Iverson’s legacy includes one off-court moment that gets brought up all the time: the practice rant. His infamous media remarks about practice became a sports moment that is still replayed to this day on every morning talk or debate show. While Iverson has embraced this famous moment in his life, it’s understandable that he can sometimes be a little annoyed about it, usually in interactions with fans.

On a recent episode of the All The Smoke podcast, Iverson recounted how fans will come up to him and start talking about his practice rant rather than bringing up the many incredible moments from his playing career, which he believes is a little odd considering he was a Hall of Fame player.

It’s definitely an iconic moment, but he has a point Iverson was the guy who, despite his size, managed to fight his way into the paint and tough out points. He was for years the owner of the deadliest crossover in the league, won MVP in 2001 as the leading scorer for the Philadelphia 76ers, and was credited for dragging an overmatched team to the NBA Finals. At the very least, let’s use this as an excuse to watch a bunch of Iverson highlights.

Though it’s been less than two years since Veep’s series finale aired on HBO, it feels like much longer—though not quite in the same way that spending 20 minutes with Catherine Meyer feels like a lifetime. Julia Louis-Dreyfus feels your pain. Though the award-winning star has kept herself plenty busy since the biting political satire bid farewell—what with having to be smuggled onto the set of Falcon and The Winter and Soldier and all—Louis-Dreyfus says she misses playing Selina Meyer.

In a wide-ranging interview with Variety, the 60-year-old actress was asked about any past roles she’d be interested in revisiting. While some would have expected her to answer Elaine Benes, given how long it’s been since we’ve checked in on the members of the Seinfeld gang, she was quick to admit that “I miss playing Selina Meyer.” While the opportunity to drop some of the most brilliantly sweary dialogue and insults ever written since The Thick of It (another Armando Iannucci joint) is enough of a reason to miss the role, Louis-Dreyfus says it goes beyond that.

In addition to missing the show’s equally brilliant cast and crew, Louis-Dreyfus—who broke an Emmy record when she won six consecutive Best Actress awards for her part in Veep—says that is was just really “exciting” to be Selina: “Playing that character, who was so out of her f*cking mind, and so undeveloped; it was just freeing! Everything was about her ego, with not a care in the world for another human being.”

Though the show’s finale did that Six Feet Under thing to see into the future, there’s certainly plenty of time to bring Veep back. And Louis-Dreyfus would love to see it happen. “It would give me enormous joy to do more Veep,’” she said. “And who knows, maybe we will one day.”

If any politician lacked the self-awareness to run for president yet again and think they had a chance of winning, it’s Selina Meyer (fictional politicians, that is; there are real ones who are much more deluded).

(Via Variety)

“Woman,” the second single from British rapper Little Simz’s upcoming album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, finds Simz celebrating femininity in sort of an audio Miss International pageant. Naming locations all over the world from African nations to Brooklyn, New York, she describes the beautiful qualities of each woman in both physical and deeper terms, praising them for having both beauty and brains.

The video follows the theme, with Simz signing seven-figure checks at a banquet attended by beauties in business suits and dancing in silk slips at an elegant mansion pajama party. Simz also bartends at a classy lounge, singing along to Cleo Sol’s dreamy chorus as the women around her boogie to the beat.

Simz first announced the impending release of Sometimes I Might Be Introvert two weeks ago with the release of the video for its lead single “Introvert.” The album will be her first full-length release since 2019’s critically acclaimed Grey Area, a ten-track effort that featured appearances from Jamaican reggae artist Chronixx and Swedish electronic band Little Dragon. In 2020, Simz also released the Drop 6 EP, recording its five songs to help herself shake off the quarantine blues from the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch Little Simz’s “Woman” video above.

While attempting to prop herself up as a potential replacement for California Governor Gavin Newsom, Caitlyn Jenner held a town hall with Sean Hannity earlier in the week where she she made a ridiculously out-of-touch comment about the homeless. While talking to Hannity, Jenner recounted a conversation she had with a friend in the next private plane hangar over, which was already a bad start, and the anecdote continued to go downhill from there.

“My friends are leaving California,” Jenner said. “My hangar, the guy right across, he was packing up his hangar and I said, where are you going? And he says, ‘I’m moving to Sedona, Arizona, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless.’”

Jenner got blasted on social media for the classist remarks, and on Thursday night, Jimmy Kimmel got in on the action. While teeing up the Hannity clip, Kimmel quipped, “This is how well Caitlyn Jenner understands the plight of everyday Californians here in L.A.” After Jenner’s hangar anecdote played for the audience, Kimmel joked, “Ah, homeless people: can’t walk around them, can’t fly over them.” But he was just getting warmed up. Via THR:

“Is it transphobic to call a trans person an ignorant a-hole?” Kimmel asked. “Or does calling that trans person an ignorant a-hole — even though she happens to be a trans person — show that we don’t discriminate against ignorant a-holes, no matter their gender orientation? It’s a tough one. I don’t know, I guess we’ll let the Internet decide tomorrow.”

Unlike Jenner, Kimmel’s “a-hole” remarks have not caused an internet backlash as of this this writing, so we’re guessing he’s good.

Kelly Clarkson had an interesting introduction for Megan Fox during Thursday’s episode of her eponymous talk show. “She’s brought some of our favorite childhood cartoons to life on the big screen with her roles in Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” she said before welcoming her guest out. Nothing that Clarkson said was wrong, exactly, but it leaves out Fox’s two best performances, Jennifer’s Body and New Girl.

“Wondering why Kelly Clarkson didn’t mention Megan Fox’s 15-episode arc on a Fox sitcom” is not why I’m posting about her appearance, however. It’s because of her Britney Spears impression. The pop star helped Fox conquer her fear of flying. “There was a point where I was working in New York and I also lived in L.A., so every four days I was flying,” which is where the fear came from, she said. “It’s like, yeah, if you fly twice a year you’re good but not if you’re flying like twice a week. So what I did, and what I do recommend to people if you hit turbulence and you’re like, ‘I don’t like how this feels,’ I would throw on certain music that I just knew I wasn’t going to die to, which, for me, that was Britney Spears.” Not just any Britney, but Oops!… I Did It Again-era Britney.

Fox then sung a snippet of “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” (which appeared on the Oops followup, Britney, but they were only a year apart). “That’s not the soundtrack to my death. So, that always made me feel better,” she said. Hearing Fox mimick Spears’ vocals made me feel better, too. You might even say it made me… stronger.

Hear the Britney chat around the 5:00 mark in the video above.