Month: July 2021

A few weeks ago Turnstile, “the friendliest hardcore band on the planet,” announced their new album Glow On with the single “Alien Love Call” featuring Blood Orange on a spoken word section. The producer also appears elsewhere on the tracklist, collaborating on the song “Lonely Dezires” and adding vocals to “Endless.” Today, however, the band wanted to share a different side of the record, sharing the follow-up single “Blackout” to help give fans a taste of what’s to come.

The Baltimore hardcore band first shared news of their new album on Instagram, posting a local billboard that announced the project, before formally unveiling it a few days later in mid-July. And fans won’t have long to wait for the full project, it’s due out at the end of August via the label Roadrunner. Unlike the first single, which was a little slower and more drawn out, “Blackout” is riffier and focuses more on the full-on guitar sound that has defined the band in the past. For listeners who were following along with their recent EP, Turnstile Love Connection, all four songs off that release will be included on the full-length. Check out their latest single above and look for the album out August 27th.

Ashton Kutcher isn’t a billionaire, but he does have enough money to go to space. The That ’70s Show star bought a ticket for the next Virgin Galactic flight, following Richard Branson going to the edge of space earlier this month (he and fellow rich guy Jeff Bezos are not official astronauts, however), but he was talked out of it by his wife Mila Kunis.

“When I got married and had kids, my wife basically encouraged that it was not a smart family decision to be heading into space when we have young children, so I ended up selling my ticket back to Virgin Galactic,” he explained. This sounds like the plot to an episode of a crummy sitcom about a carefree husband and his nagging wife, but Kunis explained her side of the story to People, and she made some good points:

“We get together nine years ago and he was like, ‘I have a ticket to go to space.’ I was like, ‘Oh, okay.’ I was like, ‘That’s fun, have fun,’” she says. But her feelings changed once they welcomed [a] daughter in October 2014 and [a] son in November 2016.

“Years goes by then all of a sudden we have a baby and he’s like, ‘I’m going into space.’ And I was like, ‘That’s irresponsible, you cannot have… This is not what you do. You are a father,’” Kunis remembers saying. “I was all so hormonal and I was like, ‘You can’t, you’re going to die. The thing’s going to explode and you’re going to die — and you’re going to leave me with the babies.’”

I, for one, would also not want my loved ones to travel 53 miles in the air in something with “Virgin” in the name. But Kunis now wishes she could take back her decision.

“I know I hate it,” she said. “The fact that I didn’t let him go into space was so selfish of me, but I was a new mom and I was like, ‘You can’t leave me and the babies.’ And so that’s where that decision was made out of. I want everybody to know I probably would have let him to go to space now, but now it’s too late.”

When you go home to your partner tonight, look them directly in the eyes and say, “I would let you go to space.” It’s very romantic. One piece of advice, though: do not watch Alien after saying this. Otherwise, it will sound like a threat.

(Via People)

Even with only a few days left before Meghan McCain leaves The View, her co-host Whoopi Goldberg was not letting the conservative commentator get away with attempting to put part of the blame for the January 6 attack on The Left. While discussing the emotional testimony of Capitol Police officers during Tuesday’s select committee, Whoopi asked McCain “Why isn’t this a galvanizing moment for everyone?” considering the police were protecting both Democrats and Republicans during the insurrection. “Is it really about just winning? Or have we lost something?”

For her part, McCain did agree that January 6 was one of America’s “darkest days ever,” and she is frustrated how the investigation into the attack has been politicized. However, that didn’t stop her from launching into an entirely partisan response to Whoopi’s question by criticizing the Left for wanting to “Defund the Police.”

Via The Daily Beast:

“‘Blue Lives Matter’ is something many Republicans say and something I certainly have said and believe,” McCain explained. “Alternatively, I don’t like people on the left politicizing these particular law enforcement officers, because I can remember just a few mere months ago being told that all law enforcement were irredeemable and needed different kind of training and should be defunded and there aren’t just a few bad apples, it’s an entirely irredeemable group of people working in law enforcement.”

After the other co-hosts had their chance to voice their thoughts, Whoopi ended the segment by pushing back on McCain’s remarks and making it abundantly clear that Donald Trump and Republicans are to blame for the January 6 assault on the Capitol building.

“I have to point my finger to the other side, and this isn’t about politicizing. This is not about defunding anybody. This has nothing to do with anything but really crappy behavior by really inspired people by the guy that used to live in the White House,” Whoopi said. “That’s what this is about. This is not about anything but crappy behavior—I’m going to say it again—on the other side of the aisle.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

Louisville rapper EST Gee has been full steam ahead promoting his new project, Bigger Than Life Or Death, putting out a string of videos for the mixtape’s songs, including the self-titled lead single, “Capitol 1,” and “Price Tag.” His latest addition to the growing videography is “Riata Dada,” a bass-heavy, clamoring banger featuring his favorite things: Fast cars, chunky jewelry, stacks of cash, and scantily-clad women.

Built atop a cacophonous beat by Akachi, Southside, TM88, and TooDope (the number one producers perhaps explains the cascading, competing synth sounds), “Riata Dada” is a chorus-less, one-verse statement from EST Gee. Throughout the verse, he explains everything from why he signed with Yo Gotti over some other higher-profile labels (“If I wasn’t this, then I probably been done signed with DJ Drama/ But I’m thuggin’ and I’m shinin’, f*ck with coke, I roll with Gotti”) to whether or not he really even considers himself a rapper (“Did I really leave the streets alone to rap? I ain’t decided”).

EST Gee signing with Yo Gotti has given the CMG label a strong, stacked roster that has been racking up wins all year, including Moneybagg Yo’s No. 1, 42 Dugg’s XXL Freshman selection, and a label deal with Universal.

Watch EST Gee’s “Riata Dada” video above.

Bigger Than Life Or Death is out now via CMG/4PF. You can get it here.

The multi-talented musician, label head, and guitar virtuoso Jack White, wants to emphasize that he’s so much more than just a musical artist. Today, White has launched Jack White Art & Design, a hub that showcases his work in other fields like textiles and sculpting. The “about” section of the site describes White as “equally as conversant in sculpture and upholstery as he is in music and songwriting,” which is definitely something I didn’t know!

Apparently, back in 1996 White opened his own upholstery store in Detroit after apprenticing under the master upholster Brian Muldoon. The store, Third Man Upholstery, was in place until 1998, and White ran the business while also using it as a place for working on sculpting and songwriting. Across different mediums like industrial design, interior design, furniture and upholstery, graphic design, instruments and hardware, sculpture, vinyl concepts, film directing, and photography, the site lets fans access everything that White is or has worked on, including plenty of photos that have never been publicly released before.

Check out the new site for a gallery of his work and read the “about” section for more info on the stories behind his multi-faceted creative approach. Oh, and please also notice what the internet is most excited about: Jack now has blue hair.

Everyone probably has their favorite sketch from I Think You Should Leave season two. I won’t say anyone else’s list is right or wrong, but for me the sketch that stood out as most memorable was “Detective Crashmore,” the one in which Santa Claus is the aging star of a reactionary detective movie.

At the risk of explaining a joke, the beauty of the sketch is that it’s strange and surreal, but also an incisive parody — a quality that probably a lot of great I Think You Should Leave sketches have, of being simultaneously far-fetched and applicable. It reminded me both of inarticulate action stars not quite committing to their roles, and of that “extra gear” many actors have in press tour interviews, where they can slip into flowery pretension without warning.

A big part of the reason it all works is the actor playing Santa Claus. He combines a face that looks like it’s lived some hard years with a voice that sounds like Droopy Dog’s beer drunk uncle, with a soupcon of stoned surf dude. It’s the verisimilitude of him looking like a real mall Santa mixed with the surprise of him effortlessly handling these jarring tone shifts that becomes something sublime. I crack up every time I think about some of his line reads.

Did I mention the actor’s name is “Biff Wiff?”

Naturally, I wanted to know more about this man. I Think You Should Leave is actually Wiff’s third credited role as Santa Claus, after 9-1-1 and Just Roll With It. He seems to specialize in crusty outsiders, with other credits that include “Homeless Man” (Homecoming, Desperate Housewives), “Cart Driver” (Westworld), and “Hollywood Hobo” (iCarly).

Wiff had a face that positively screamed “this guy’s got some stories,” and in speaking to him for what turned out to be his first interview with any media, I discovered that my instincts had not been wrong. Yes, “Biff Wiff” is a stage name. Wiff says it came from his time in a song parody troupe called The Piparoos. He declined to share his birth name (“Everybody calls me Biff except my mom, my doctors, and the police”).

He currently lives in LA with his wife and two dogs, and he lives a life typical, in many ways, of any struggling actor. (“When it’s good, it’s very good. When it’s bad, it sucks.”) He’s also in the rare position of being able to compare The Santa Claus Circuit in different cities. Fodder for ITYSL season three, I hope? I spoke to Wiff via Zoom this week.

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Where are you talking to me from?

I’m at home. I live in North Hills, California. It’s up by the Budweiser brewery. It’s in LA, basically. We’ve been here probably close to 30 years. Me and my wife and my dogs.

How many dogs do you have?

Two, two of the best dogs in the world. Bopper and Snooki. They’re mutts I got from the pound, rescue dogs, little terriers. One of them is about 30 pounds and the other one’s about 10, 11, 12, something like that. We’ve had them a while. Snookie’s getting pretty old. She’s like me.

You seem like you’re doing all right.

I’m doing okay right now. That’s the life of the actor. When it’s good, it’s very good, and when it’s bad, it sucks. I’ve got a costume fitting this afternoon and I’m working next week. So things are going okay I guess.

Tell me about that. This is your third or fourth time playing Santa Claus, isn’t it? How did that come about? Did this kind of grow out of that?

Kind of, I guess I would say. My father is a Baptist minister. So we didn’t have Santa when we were growing up. Santa and Satan are pretty much the same dude [to Baptists]. So when I got to be old enough, I said, well, I want to see what Santa Claus is like. First gig I got hired for was down in San Diego for their Christmas parade. They had a booth set up after the parade was over to bring people up and sit on Santa’s lap and stuff. It was a real eye-opener to me about what a difference Santa Claus could make in somebody’s life. At that time, it was the old gaslamp — now it’s thriving with all kinds of new bars and stuff, but back then it was skid row. So I would see these kids, they would come up and sit on my lap, a lot of them missing teeth, and we’re giving out things like candy. I think they gave out a UNO card game. And I’m saying, “why aren’t they giving these kids toothbrushes and things they need?” That just kind of started me going honestly.

So you have sort of like an emotional attachment to playing the character of Santa Claus?

Well, I wouldn’t say I still do, but that’s where it started. I actually kind of quit doing Santa Claus on personal levels because for years and years I would deliver presents on Christmas Eve to different households. There were some real adventures in that, but I just kind of got tired of doing it, especially just being away from my wife’s family on Christmas Eve for 30 years.

So did you get into acting through being Santa Claus?

No, I got into acting due to my old man being a minister. When you see somebody do an hour monologue on Sunday morning, a 45-minute monologue on Sunday night and about another half hour monologue on Wednesdays… It wasn’t like I was listening a lot, but I watched how he performed on stage basically. Which is what it is; it’s a stage. And that, I think, really influenced me.

So, did acting become a full-time profession? And at what point did that start?

Well, it started in San Diego first off where I quit my real job and started doing acting. There was no money to make down there.

What was your real job before that?

I sold fabric in a fabric store by the yard. When you do real work, you know how it is, you say this is not what I want to do. It’s more important to be doing what I want to do than being able to afford what I want to do. So times were rough down in San Diego sometimes because, like I say, I was working all the time. I was doing lunchtime theater, late-night theater, main stage theater, I had a comedy improv troupe that I worked with, I had a song parody troupe that I worked with. I was just busy all the time, but just literally barely getting by. So I said, well, I’ve got to move.

How old were you when you moved up to LA?

Oh my. Let’s see, it’s been… I was probably in my early 40s, I think.

And so Biff Wiff, is that your stage name or your birth name?

There’s the one we’re getting to, isn’t it? I’ll never tell you what my real name is, but it’s not Biff Wiff.

Is there a story behind the stage name?

Yeah, there’s probably a story. That’s my real name. Everybody calls me Biff except my mom, my doctors, and the police. I was down in San Diego with the song parody quartet that I was working with called the Piparoos. You can look up Piparoos on YouTube and you’ll see what we were like when we were kids. We all took these names because of this song parody quartet. I was Biff Wiff, I had a buddy who was Duke LaDoo; we’re still friends, my friend, Willie Bippp, who’s now deceased, and Spike Tacular. We were the four Piparoos.

What kind of songs would you guys parody?

We would parody anything and make them into dick jokes, pretty much. And, but we did a lot of parody on San Diego theater itself, because San Diego was a lot different than what it is in LA. In San Diego there’s like three or four theaters, so all the theater people hung out in the same bar. We all went to go and see each other, and we all just knew each other.

So how did I Think You Should Leave come about? Do you know how you got that call or what they’d seen you in?

I have no idea how I got that call. It all starts off with one of these self-tape interviews that you have to do, the lines and other stuff. That’s so much harder for the actors then what it was. We used to be able to go in to the casting director and you’d have somebody in the room to play off of. We’re just doing these cold tapes now that are just like, man oh man. They expect you to be memorized. And if you get more than one in a week, you’ve got a lot of pages, you have to give up on one of them because you’re not going to memorize all of them, especially when you get a little bit older. So that’s pretty much how that came about.

What was shooting that like? How collaborative was the shooting? I know Tim Robinson’s kind of an improv guy.

Yeah, I didn’t really work with Tim. I saw him. That guy works some pretty unbelievable hours on that show. He’s the first one there pretty much and the last one to leave, I was really impressed by him. I had never seen the show before I got booked. So then of course I checked it out to see what it was like. And some of it I don’t really get, but I’m probably not the target audience. But he was a super nice guy. He made sure that he said hi to me and he made sure that he came back after I’d wrapped and spoke with me for a little bit, thanked me, all that kind of stuff. The director, Zach was a really nice guy. They’d give me a lot of freedom. Almost every shot was, okay, you’ve done it, so we’ve got what we want, do it like you want. And they were real good about that. They just started calling it “The Wiff Way.”

Were you drawing on anything specific there? Like, to me, the part where you’re doing the actor, sort of, press tour interview, obviously, like I’ve done a lot of those interviews from the other side.

I thought it was funny too. The thing with the comedy was I was trying to play as real as I possibly could without giving totally flat reading, which is what they asked for. Sometimes they’d say, okay, don’t do that anymore. We shot that first, the interview scene. That thing starts off with a pretty long monologue by me, with the rant and all this stuff. I was really kind of nervous when that started. I don’t really know these people, I barely know the show, and I don’t want to make a fool out of myself. But with a name like Biff Wiff, they don’t forget. If it’s good, then I’m good. But when it’s bad, they don’t forget.

To me and other people that are really online, I guess, the show feels sort of like it’s a cultural phenomenon. I know you’ve been in other fairly high-profile stuff, but have you noticed any change in your own notoriety since this has been on?

Yeah. I’ve had relatives who had never heard of me get a hold of me and say ‘Hey, I saw you on I Think You Should Leave and all that kind of stuff. Now I’ve got another project in the can that’s really… You can’t talk about anything that’s in the future because of all these NDAs. But I got one in the can that was a real big step, I think I got cast just simply because of my name. Then they actually did write a thing around it.

Did your wife get a kick out of seeing you on the show?

She had an accident about a month ago where she fell and broke her knee cap, so she’s been kind of bedridden. She walks with a walker, but she’s still got a long time of rehab together. So she saw it. She actually watched it without me. I was trying to be the first one to watch it just in case they do something really stupid, but she watched it without me. She enjoyed it, she thought it was fun. And like I say, she Facebooked it and pushed it more than I have, really.

For something like that, you kind of have to put a lot of trust in your director and editor with what they’re going to do with it. Were you happy with the way it turned out?

There was a couple of bits they cut that I wish they would have kept, but for the most part, yeah, I was real happy with the way it turned out. I was kind of surprised it came off as good as what it did.

Before all these auditions were virtual, was there a group of other people that frequently get cast as Santa Clauses that you would see in auditions?

Oh yeah. You see all of the Santa Clauses at auditions. I think that they do more auditioning for Santa Claus out here than they do in New York.

Did you have any odd or surreal experiences in the course of being a Santa Claus?

Oh yeah. I’ve had some weird ones. I’ll tell you a story. This has been about probably 10 years ago or so. I was doing Santa Claus in a gated community on Christmas Eve. What usually happens is that people will set out a bag of toys or sit their presents on their doorstep, and I’ll put them into a Santa bag and bring them in. That way it looks like they’re getting gifts from Santa. So this job is in a gated community — big house, two-story. When I went inside I picked up the stuff, and it had the bags sitting out for me, so I didn’t need to use my own bag. And it was a big bag. So I got inside and everything in the house that I could see was white: white carpet, white walls, the photographs on the walls were black and white. All the paintings they had were in white. There’s mom and dad dressed to the teeth. Dad’s in a sport coat, a tie, white pants, and mom’s wearing a nice white dress. And the kids are standing on the stairsteps coming down, one, two, three, the boys in blue blazers and ties, and the little girl’s in what looked like to me a communion dress. And I’m just thinking, where am I? Am I in Stepford?

So anyway, it’s time to give out the gifts, and the oldest boy was first. He got like a GI Joe, super, all the GI Joe toys, all the stuff that he could get. And then the little girl came up and she got everything Barbie, a Barbie dream house, she got the car, she got a couple of Barbie’s friends. So the next thing I reached into the bag and it’s for little Joey, eight years old. I’ll always remember this kid. Nice, sweet little kid. So I say, “Well, let’s see what this is.”

I reach inside and it’s a box about that big [making a hand the size of a Rubik’s Cube]. And I thought, well, what in the hell could this possibly be? It’s like, how could you spend that money for an eight-year-old kid on something that fits inside a box that size? So he opens it up and it’s… a slinky. He looks at me like “Santa, what the fuck man? She’s got Barbie, he’s got GI Joe, and you gave me a slinky?” I felt so sorry for the kid. I just said, “Well, you know, Joey, Santa loves you. Hope you enjoy your slinky.”

Oh man. They really set you up.

They did set me up. I was just like “wow.”

Was that a thing that happens? A rich neighborhood hires a Santa to come be their neighborhood Santa Claus?

Yeah. To come and visit them on Christmas Eve. And of course they do parties. I do corporation parties. There’s money in that. But yeah, this costed, I would guess, probably because they had to pay my agency, and they make more than I do — my Santa Claus agent, not my real agent — and I’d say they spent at least $300 or $400 to get Santa Claus to come to their house on Christmas Eve.

Wow.

Yeah, it just ran out of fun. I had another funny one — I went to one in a trailer park complex, and it was a party where I was dressed Santa Claus, and it turned out I was the youngest person there. So there’s all these old people, and the thing that went through my mind is whenever you’re taking kids on your lap, you can tell if they left anything in their diaper when they sit on you and they slide a little bit. As I was going through this thing with these old people, I thought, you might have the same precaution here. You get a sloppy diaper here just as easy as you can with a kid. That never happened but it went through my mind.

I’m glad it didn’t happen.

Yeah. I’ve had a couple of sloshy bottoms, but never anything to where they leaked out onto my costume. That’s what you worry about the most.

‘I Think You Should Leave’ is currently on Netflix. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Dusty Hill, who was the bassist of legendary rock group ZZ Top for five decades, died at 72 years old, the band confirmed.

The band’s Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons shared a statement on the ZZ Top social media accounts today (July 28), writing, “We are saddened by the news today that our Compadre, Dusty Hill, has passed away in his sleep at home in Houston, TX. We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top’. We will forever be connected to that ‘Blues Shuffle In C.’ You will be missed greatly, amigo.”

ZZ Top recently kicked off their 2021 tour, and last week, the band performed without Hill for what is believed to be the first time since he joined the group. At the time, the band said in a statement that Hill returned to Texas “to address a hip issue.”

Hill was born in Dallas, Texas on May 19, 1949. After performing with local bands in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, he joined ZZ Top when he replaced founding member Billy Ethridge in 1969. He and the group went on to cement their place in rock history with a number of top-10 albums, including 1973’s Tres Hombres, which is often considered one of the best albums of all time. The band is also known for singles like “La Grange,” “Cheap Sunglasses,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs.”

The most recent ZZ Top album is 2012’s La Futura, the band’s 15th LP. In 2019, Hill spoke about the possibility of another ZZ Top album, saying, “We’ve got a lot in the can. It depends on how we would want to put it together or re-do it or whatever, because it’s years of stuff. We just record everything, and then we go, ‘Well, no, this didn’t quite feel right right now.’ […] Suffice to say, we’ve got a lot in the can and we keep talking about it.”

Amymarie Gaertner shared a revealing video she created about how difficult it is for people with ADHD to clean the house and many are saying it perfectly describes the disorder.

Gaertner admits that she’s “never been professionally diagnosed but it’s pretty damn evident I’ve had it since I was little.” But her behaviors mirror those described by ADHD blogger Katy Rollins, who says that “many people who have attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD) have difficulty with tasks like household cleaning and organization.”

“The requirements of these tasks often max out our ability to logically and emotionally even start them, never mind follow them through to completion,” she adds.

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Gaertner is a dancer, actor, and musician who’s “in love with all forms of creative expression.”

In the video, she attempts to clean her home on a Saturday afternoon but hops from task to task without completing any of them. By the end of the video, all of the unfinished tasks make her home even more chaotic than before she started the project.

“I think I just understood ADHD in 30 seconds,” a commenter named Ganesh said. “Pretty much sums it up nicely, ” Gaertner agreed.

“This is so unbelievably accurate,” TikTokker Ashley said. “Literally my life,” commented Kristen.

Since Simone Biles backed out of the team final at the Tokyo Olympics two days ago, the question everyone’s been asking is “What the heck happened?”

After two botched vaults, Biles took herself out of the competition, later saying, “I had no idea where I was in the air.”

Former gymnasts recognized her wording and have taken to social media to explain a condition known as “the twisties.” On a basic level, the twisties is a mental state where your muscle memory shuts down in the air mid-twist. It can happen to any gymnast at any time, but is more likely under intense pressure. It might seem like a mental block is not something that could happen to the unrivaled Simone Biles, who routinely performs incredibly well under pressure, but brains are fickle things.

This explanation from former gymnast and diver Catherine Burns lays it out:

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Hi, your friendly neighborhood former gymnast and diver here to attempt to explain the mental phenomenon Simone Bil… https://t.co/6ayXPmJQqB

— Catherine Burns (@WittyNameChoice)
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She wrote:

Hi, your friendly neighborhood former gymnast and diver here to attempt to explain the mental phenomenon Simone Biles is experiencing: the dreaded twisties. 💀

When you’re flipping or twisting (or both!) it is very disorienting to the human brain. When training new flips and twists, you need external cues to learn how it feels to complete the trick correctly. (In diving, a coach yells “OUT” and you kick your body straight and pray).

Once you’ve practiced a trick enough, you develop the neural pathways that create kinesthesia which leads to muscle memory. Your brain remembers how your body feels doing the trick and you gain air awareness.

Think about something that took you a while to learn and required a lot of concentration at the time to get it right, but now is second nature. Driving a car is a good example (especially stick!)

Suddenly, in the middle of driving on the freeway, right as you need to complete a tricky merge, you have totally lost your muscle memory of how to drive a car. You have to focus on making you foot press the pedal at the right angle, turn the steering wheel just so, shift gears.

It’s terrifying. You’re moving way too fast, you’re totally lost, you’re trying to THINK but you know you don’t usually have to think to do these maneuvers, you just feel them and do them.

The twisties are like this, and often happen under pressure. You’re working so hard to get it right that you stop trusting your muscle memory. You’re getting lost in the air, second-guessing your instincts, overthinking every movement.

It’s not only scary and unnerving, it’s incredibly dangerous even if you’re doing basic gymnastics. The level of skills Simone throws combined with the height and power she gets can lead to catastrophic injury if you’re not confident and connected to your kinesthesia.

This isn’t as easy to fix as just sleeping it off and hoping for a better day tomorrow. It can look like retraining entire routines and tricks. I never mastered my front 1.5 with a full twist because I’d get the twisties and it would mess with my other twisting dives.

So. When Simone says she’s taking it day by day, this is why. She’s not soft. She didn’t choke. She isn’t giving up. It’s a phenomenon every gymnast and diver has experienced and she happens to be experiencing it at the Olympics. Can you imagine the frustration? The heartbreak?

I’ll also add that @Simone_Biles choosing to bow out pushes back against a dark narrative in gymnastics that you sacrifice yourself for the sake of the sport; you are the product of your coaches and you owe them wins, no matter the personal cost.

No. You owe nobody anything, and you especially don’t owe them your body, your health, or your autonomy. I hope every single tiny baby gymnast got that message on self-advocacy and setting boundaries loud and clear. Thank you, @Simone_Biles.”

Biles herself retweeted a post that reiterated how dangerous her situation truly was:

“For non-gymnasts, the fact that she balked mid-air and accidentally did a 1.5 on her first vault instead of a 2.5 is a big deal. It’s terrifying. She could have been severely injured getting lost in the air like that. The fact that she somehow landed on her feet shows her experience and is incredible The margin for error on a skill like that is insanely low. A very small wrong move, and career-ending or even worse, life-threatening injuries can occur.”

From a gymnast friend regarding Simone Biles 🐐❤️ https://t.co/4eWPIgi4yf

— Brandon Marino (@TheBatMarino)
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And other gymnasts have weighed in with attempts to explain to people outside the sport what the twisties mean and how real the mental block is.

One particularly sobering response came from Jacoby Miles, who was paralyzed after a gymnastics accident at age 15.

“I experienced those mental blocks throughout my career as a gymnast,” she wrote, “and to be quite blunt, it only took one bad time of getting lost (or what they call the “twisties”) in the air in a big flip to break my neck and leave me paralyzed…most likely for life…so I’m SO SO glad she decided not to continue until she’s mentally recovered.”

A post from former gymnast Jacoby Miles on Instagram about how dangerous the “twisties” can be.

(TLDR: She broke h… https://t.co/sIprqKozwB

— Susie (@Gymtertainment)
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Many armchair commentators have attempted to explain why Biles backed out of the team competition and what it means about her as a competitor, but the only people whose commentary counts are those who have experienced what she’s going through. Arguably, no one knows what it’s like to be in Simone Biles’s shoes, but other gymnasts understand the mental elements of the sport and what can happen if everything isn’t aligned just right.

It’s an act of wisdom to acknowledge when you’re faced with a limitation out of your control, and an act of courage to sacrifice a dream in order to protect your well-being as well as your teammates. Good for Simone Biles for setting an example to other athletes to know when it’s time to call it.

For Ja Morant, there is no better time than now.

This is true on the court, where Morant has established himself as one of the league’s boldest, most daring players after just two NBA seasons. As the face of an up-and-coming Memphis Grizzlies team, Morant is the engine that makes them go. When he’s on the court, something — an audacious dunk attempt off the dribble, catching a lob from a teammate, throwing a no-look pass — is guaranteed to happen.

Off the course, Morant has started to tell his own story. Out now on Crackle, Morant is the subject of a six-part documentary titled Promiseland that dives into his rise from unknown at Murray State to No. 2 Draft pick to one of the NBA’s biggest young stars.

“I just want to show my journey, go deeper into it, and show people things they don’t know about me,” Morant told Dime. “It comes from people that might want to tell someone else’s story and just add things in or just have some stuff that’s not true, so I thought if I’m telling my story and it’s coming from me, more people are going to believe it.”

“He can look back and have a timeline for everything in his life,” says Tee Morant, Ja’s father.

According to the younger Morant, Promiseland began production during his rookie season, after he started with the Grizzlies and embarked on what would become a Rookie of the Year campaign. Production involving director Dexton Deboree and a crew flying to Memphis to do interviews with Ja and others around him continued well into the 2019-20 season. Deboree also traveled to interview the likes of Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson, the rapper Moneybagg Yo, and Carmelo Anthony for the series.

“Even the first meeting we had, when I flew out to Memphis to meet Ja and his dad and just had a pitch, right from the jump, I saw that there was a family dynamic that I wanted to tap into,” Deboree says. “We clicked in that meeting and saw that there was something there.”

But then the pandemic hit, and production changed.

“It was tough, not being able to be face-to-face for certain parts of the documentary,” Ja says. “Having to find ways to be able to knock out videos was hard, but worth it.”

Deboree, in fact, was scheduled to fly to Memphis and do a slew of interviews with Morant on March 13, 2020, just two days after Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and our new reality rapidly set in. They opted to keep those dates for the project, but pivoted to recording on Zoom. As he interviewed Ja, Tee, and Ja’s uncle, Phil Morant, he realized the video quality wasn’t up to the standard they wanted. So, after working with some of his crew, Deboree shipped the Morants higher-quality cameras.

“I shot another 30 or 40 days and never went physically back to him again,” he says. “We did send crews in at the later stages, but from April to the end of 2020, it was remote. Even in the Bubble, he took the kit into it. And we had to do it to keep the look and feel.”

For Deboree, the appeal of the project largely came from wanting to work with an athlete just entering the league instead of someone reflecting back on their career. Deboree’s previous projects include an Air Jordan 1 documentary called Unbanned: The Legend of the AJ1 that featured interviews with Anthony, Russell Westbrook, and Spike Lee, among others.

“Guys and gals would always reflect back on their rookie season and their early experiences and things like that,” Deboree says, “but I never felt like we got an intimate look at what this is like. What are the thoughts? What are the fears? And what are all of the inner experiences a 19-, 20-year-old goes through when they get into the league?”

The first episode opens with Morant detailing what his parents gave up for him in order to pursue his dream and what it was like for him growing up in Sumter, South Carolina. It also features a look at his childhood bedroom, where a quote attributed to LeBron James — “You can’t be afraid to fail, it’s the only way to succeed.” — has been displayed above his doorway.

It’s the shot in the documentary that tells the viewer what Ja is about and what it took for him to get to Murray State, then the Grizzlies and whatever heights are still to come.

“As a message of hope and inspiration for any kid with any dream and any obstacle, this is a radically powerful message,” Deboree says. “For [Ja], that idea resonated more than wanting to tell his story or get it out there or even having a story to tell.”

“I’ve embraced everything that I’ve been through and continue to push and get through it,” Morant says.