Month: July 2021

Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (HBO film on HBO Max) — All was not what it seems for this three-day music festival that was meant to revive the countercultural idealism of its 1969 predecessor. Well, things weren’t “peace and love” in 1999, but rather, a total disaster by most standards. Mosh pits, blazing heat, a distinct lack of sanitation, and an absence of free water led to riots and looting, all of which were not deterred by the scant security measures. Decades later, this documentary looks back upon a pivotal moment when rose-tinted nostalgia evaporated under the hard truths exposed by this mismanaged festival. All pre-Fyre Festival!

Ted Lasso: Season 2 (Apple TV+ series) — First thing’s first: Everyone who’s caught a glimpse of this Bill Lawrence co-created and developed series loves it. That’s a notable feat, considering that star Jason Sudeikis first portrayed the title character way back in 2013 for NBC Sports’ promos for Premier League coverage. Fast forward to the fresh hell that was 2020, and the show surfaced as one of the year’s lone bright spots. Ted Lasso is somehow both relentlessly and charmingly cheery, and do check out Brian Grubb’s power rankings from the season premiere.

Ultra City Smiths: Season 1 (AMC+ series) — Fans of Robot Chicken will undoubtedly want to check out this stop-motion animated selection from Stoopid Buddy Stoodios and showrunner Steve Conrad. Expect very adult-oriented humor and the voices of Kristen Bell, Dax Shepard, Alia Shawkat, Tim Meadows, John C. Reilly, Bebe Neuwirth, Jason Mantzoukas, and Damon Herriman. The show revolves around a corrupt city and a sort-of whodunit with the most unorthodox detectives (literally baby dolls). Hey, this show has Dewey Crowe, so why ask for logic?

And back to some regularly scheduled programming:

Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (HBO, 9:00pm) — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow’s podcast undergoes this miniseries treatment. This week, Farrow and his fact checkers fend off threats from Harvey Weinstein’s team, and an undercover spy reveals how he was hired to gather evidence on Farrow before becoming a Farrow source.

The Beast Must Die: (AMC, 9:00pm) — Jared Harris and Cush Jumbo star in this revenge-thriller series (which originally aired on BritBox UK and achieved a viewing record) that has already been renewed for a second season. This week, Frances works out how to set her plan into motion.

Roswell, New Mexico (CW, 8:00pm) — Season 3 begins with Liz adjusting to new Los Angeles life and career while the gang’s still working out whether to worry about that stranger from the cave.

The Republic Of Sarah (CW, 9:00pm) — This show follows the ending of tranquility of Greylock, N.H., after a stash of valuable coltan leads to new overlords, and a rebellious teacher (Sarah Cooper) steps in to halt the madness. This week, Greylock’s newly sovereign, and their Congress must deal with the very relevant subject of immigration, since Greylock is so hot right now.

The dominant storyline of the offseason in the NFL has been whether Aaron Rodgers will return to Green Bay for another season with the Packers after making it clear that he wanted out due to a variety of decisions made by the organization, including using a 2020 first round pick on quarterback Jordan Love instead of some immediate help for Rodgers.

That decision seemed to kick Rodgers into gear, as he put forth an MVP winning season as Green Bay fell just short of the Super Bowl, losing to the eventual champion Buccaneers in the NFC title game. Since that point, Rodgers has threatened to walk away from football entirely (taking his turn at hosting Jeopardy! at one point this year) and has been steadfast in his desire to leave. With top receiver Davante Adams likewise shutting down future contract talks out of loyalty to Rodgers, the Packers faced a crisis as camp approached, but it seems a detente is on its way.

According to Adam Schefter of ESPN and Ian Rapaport of NFL Network, Rodgers and the Packers are nearing a deal that will bring him back to Green Bay this season, with the Packers making it easier for Rodgers to leave after next season if he doesn’t feel they have made the necessary changes to give him the support around him he wants.

According to Schefter, the new agreement would void the 2023 year in his contract while also including a provision that the Packers will promise to “review Rodgers’ situation at the end of this season,” allowing for a greater trade possibility if they can’t agree on their long term future. It appears like this deal will get done and Green Bay will get at least one more year to chase a second championship with Rodgers at the helm before potentially having to kickstart a rebuild around Love. For Rodgers, he gets the future flexibility sooner rather than later to find a better situation in the coming years if Green Bay takes a step back and his holdout seemed to produce the leverage hoped for in getting these concessions from the Packers.

As more stories from vaccine-hesitant conservatives lead to them contracting COVID-19 and clearly regretting their decision not to get jabbed, here’s the tale of GOP Representative Clay Higgins.

The Republican lawmaker recently took to Facebook (according to the American Press) to share a health update with his followers. In the post, Higgins confirmed that he, along with members of his immediate family (his wife and son), contracted COVID for the second time. Higgins claimed that he and his wife first contracted the virus in early January 2020, “before the world really knew what it was.” Despite experiencing the illness firsthand, Higgins spent much of the past year spreading misinformation when it came to CDC directives on things like mask-wearing. He announced in May that he refused to wear a face-covering, claiming that it actually trapped bacteria in instead of protecting people from contracting the virus.

“Can you smell through that mask?” Higgins said. “Then you’re not stopping any sort of a virus. It’s part of the dehumanization of the children of God. You’re participating in it by wearing a mask.”

Higgins had also refused to disclose his vaccination status though he recently told the American Press that, according to his doctor, he was “naturally immunized” against COVID after surviving a brush with it last year. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. Higgins latest social media announcement revealed that both he and his wife are struggling with this second infection.

What’s worse, Higgins’s own father-in-law died from complications of COVID-19 this past December. Despite all this, the GOP rep chose to use his announcement as a way to double down on the right-wing conspiracy theory that posits that the Chinese government secretly engineered COVID to wield as a biological weapon, an accusation that has no basis in fact. But it’s not the weirdest thing Higgins has claimed recently. Last October, the Congressman tweeted a truly bizarre account of a dream that his wife had:

She apparently didn’t foresee another positive COVID test in their future.

(Via American Press)

After being criticized online for making homophobic comments during his Rolling Loud set this weekend, DaBaby has responded to fans’ disapproval. Unfortunately, anyone looking for contrition, empathy, or understanding from the North Carolina rapper had better look elsewhere, as instead of acknowledging the harm, he went on a defensive tirade, telling observers “it’s not y’all business” on his Instagram Story.

In his “explanation,” he insists that his words were taken out of context and “twisted up.” More important to him is that “the show is for the n****s that paid the money and took the time out they life to come enjoy the show.” He reiterates his original words and asserts that “all the lights went up… ’cause even my gay fans don’t got AIDS” and that they “ain’t nasty n****s” or “junkies.”

DaBaby came under fire for delivering a call-and-response during his set in which he said, ““If you didn’t show up today with HIV, AIDS, any of them deadly sexual transmitted diseases that make you die in two or three weeks, then put your cell phone light in the air.” He implored, “If you ain’t suck a n****’s dick in the parking lot, put your cell phone light in the air.”

Many pointed out the misinformation contained in his statement — neither HIV nor any other STDs can kill you “in two or three weeks” — and how repeating harmful stereotypes reinforces them, but it appears their concerns fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, DaBaby has yet to address the criticism he also received as a result of bringing out Tory Lanez to perform with him after he performed his collaborations with Megan Thee Stallion, who Tory is accused of shooting in her feet.

You can see DaBaby’s response above.

KFOR Weather Woman Emily Sutton got props from a local Mexican restaurant that was so smitten with her responses to an angry viewer that they offered her free food and margaritas for life.

If you spend enough time on social media, you quickly learn everybody has got an opinion on everything. And most people aren’t afraid to voice said opinions, even if they aren’t very good.

Of course one could argue there’s no such thing as a “good” opinion or a “right” or “wrong” one. I’d argue that if you’ve got an opinion on something, it should be based on some type of evidence or logic. Perfect example: if you’re trying to tell me that Ross from Friends isn’t a psychopath, then you clearly haven’t seen this video or heard the show without a laugh track.

And if you need an even clearer example of a bad opinion, I offer up Richard Weathers for consideration. He got on local reporter Emily Sutton’s case after seeing she delivered a weather broadcast that employed the use of a Spanish translator.

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Let’s entertain the notion for a bit that multiculturalism and not having a unified national language is a bad idea. Even if that were the case, Richard’s opinion in this light would still be considered “bad.”

That’s because the news Emily was reporting on was a severe weather emergency that could’ve resulted in people being severely injured or killed.

So there are two possible reasons why Richard offered up this opinion:

A.) He didn’t consider the fact that many people living in or visiting America don’t speak English and would still need to understand important news that could save their lives.

B.) He thinks that not speaking “American” while living in the U.S. is a crime that should be punishable by death.

You could see how both of these opinions are generally considered “bad”, right?

Emily saw his message and decided to school Richard, all while also pointing out that his obsession with the “American” language isn’t one he imposes on himself.

SOURCE: FACEBOOK

In a two-part response, she carefully explains the reason the sole purpose of having a bilingual broadcast was to save lives. In the second part, she highlights Richard’s inability to grasp that there is no language called “American” and suggests the become a bit more culturally aware.

Then she absolutely roasts him with a wonderful observation: just because his name is Richard, doesn’t mean he has to act like a common nickname for Richard.

Her response quickly went viral, as everyone was loving the shellacking she gave Richard. This included restaurant and bar San Marcos No. 4, who loved her takedown of the discriminatory Facebook troll so much that they offered her free Mexican Food and margaritas for life.

And they stressed that they were being 100 percent serious about the offer too. How serious? We’re talking the “100” emoji serious. Yeah.

SOURCE: FACEBOOK

A number of people pointed out how ridiculous Richard’s original comments were, saying how ironic it was that Richard valued the English language but showcased such a poor command of it.

SOURCE: IMGUR

SOURCE: IMGUR

Others mentioned their own hometown news stations serve the diverse communities that they live in.

SOURCE: IMGUR

SOURCE: IMGUR

Mostly though, people just couldn’t get over the fact that Richard was so grammatically deficient.

If there’s ever a perfect time to show off your love and appreciation for your favorite media franchise, competing in the Olympics might just take the gold. Back in 2016, The Witcher superfan Vitalina Batsarashkina made news for sporting gear from the popular book-turned-game-turned Netflix series when she took home silver in the 10m air pistol competition at the Rio Olympics. However, this year she ditched Geralt’s signature metal to win gold.

Still clad with her Witcher-decorated gun and wolf medallion, Batsarashkina managed to beat out Bulgaria’s Antoaneta Kostadinova and China’s Jiang Ranxin, who earned silver and bronze respectively. Batsarashkina’s gold medal marks the first for the Russian Olympic Committee (or ROC) at the Tokyo games. However, it’s important to note the ROC isn’t technically representing Russia, despite featuring all Russian athletes.

Rather the ROC was created to get around Russia’s ban from the Olympics after the country was found guilty of systematically doping their athletes during previous events. A report by NBC went into more detail on the ROC as well as Russia’s ban — including how it’s actually been greatly reduced:

Russia received a two-year ban from the World Anti-Doping Agency for its state-sponsored doping program. Between December 17, 2020, and December 17, 2022, no athlete can represent Russia at the Olympics, Paralympics or World Championships. The ban was originally set to last four years, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced it to two years. The state-sponsored doping program was revealed in 2016 and included at least 15 medal winners from the 2014 Olympics, held in Sochi, Russia.

However, regardless of what country is technically taking home gold, the real winner is Batsarashkina, and we know a Witcher would toss a coin to her after that performance.

In an unsettling sign of the ongoing prevalence of QAnon conspiracy theories, a survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida has shared that his own father believes that the event was an hoax and has accused him of being part of the “false-flag operation.” According to the survivor’s Reddit post, his father saw the video of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing fellow survivor David Hogg, and that was enough for the father to fall down the rabbit hole.

Via Reddit

He’s done “extensive research” on body language and claims he can tell the shooter is a radical commie actor who was paid to sacrifice his life in order to remove our guns. He’s questioning why they released the interrogation footage if not to further deceive the “sheep believing everything they see”. He also says the trial will be rigged and the reason they’re talking about the death penalty is to prevent him from ever talking just in case.

The survivor also states that his father has repeatedly accused him to his face of being part of the hoax. “You’re a real piece of work to be able to sit here and act like nothing ever happened if it wasn’t a hoax. Shame on you for being part of it and putting your family through it too.”

According to the poster, attempts to reason with his father have proven unsuccessful, and his mother has simply advised him “to try not being home as much.”

What makes this situation even more tragic is that Greene, who is now a United States congresswoman, publicly denounced her belief in conspiracy theories while being faced with having her committees stripped. In a statement, Greene said she “9/11 absolutely happened,” and that “school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it.”

However, Greene’s about face has done very little to convince her fellow QAnon believers to see the light, and the damage she’s caused over the years continues to reverberate.

(Via Reddit)

Back in 2013, Vince Staples and Mac Miller released a collaborative mixtape called Stolen Youth, which was entirely produced by Miller under the pseudonym Larry Fisherman. Now, Staples has revealed a touching anecdote about the late rapper, who died in 2018, saying that he refused to accept royalties from the project.

In an interview on N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN’s Drink Champs podcast, Staples said that Miller had creatively inspired him when the two were initially introduced by Earl Sweatshirt. “I wasn’t really making music at that time,” Staples said. “Earl had came back and I was just you know moving around with him making sure you know he was straight and shit. And I introduced myself to [Mac] and he was like, ‘I know who you are why don’t you make beats or whatever, why don’t you make music,’ and I say, ‘I don’t got no beats and he’s like, ‘Aight, I’m making some beats come over here on Friday,’ and then that’s how we ended up making music and being cool.”

Staples continued, talking about going on tour with Miller and how “he didn’t want no publishing.”

“He said, ‘If you make a million dollars buy me a S-Class Benz or something like that,’ the whole project [Stolen Youth] he gave me ownership of it. He just said, if you if you make a gang of money, just give me like a S-Class — and then took me on the road and paid for my room and board and still paid me. So yeah, you know that was the homie.”

Watch Staples’ interview above.

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

For the first time, skateboarding is an official Olympic sport, and after watching the men’s and women’s street skateboarding events this weekend, our family has decided it’s officially a totally welcome addition.

I grew up with a skateboarding brother during the earliest years of Tony Hawk’s career, so the sport itself isn’t unfamiliar to me. But I’ve never really followed skate competitions and wasn’t sure how it would translate into an Olympic event. As it turns out, there are several things that make it both entertaining and refreshing to watch in comparison with other sports.

For one, let’s talk about the “uniform” the athletes wear. As debates rage over volleyball bikinis and gymnastics leotards, here are the male and female skateboarders in long, loose pants and baggy t-shirts. They are the most comfortable-looking Olympians I’ve ever seen (being out in the humid Japanese heat notwithstanding). They look like they just popped off the couch after watching a movie and decided to go out and hop on their skateboard.

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Secondly, hearing the announcers call out the names of the tricks was surprisingly entertaining. We laughed out loud as they strung together words like “That was a gnarly Frontside Half Cab Kickflip to a Nollie Backside 180!” as if those are just normal things everyone recognizes. Half the time it sounded like they were making things up (they weren’t, of course), which we found just delightful. At the same time, the announcers were good about explaining what the tricks entailed so that those of us who aren’t familiar with the ins and outs could appreciate what we were seeing.

Third, it was awesome to see the chill culture of skateboarding take root on the world’s biggest, most intense sports stage. Skaters are competitive, no doubt, but they also all cheer each other on and seem so supportive of one another. In skateboarding, anyone landing an epic trick is a cause for celebration, and anyone who stumbles gets a pat on the back and a high five for the attempt. There’s no cutthroat vibe here, just a unique combo of concentration and laid-backness, which is fun to witness.

Surely, there was heartbreak among those who hoped to medal, as there is in any sport. But the vibe was just different than it is n most sports. I mean, this is Margielyn Didal, who finished 7th and had some hard falls during the finals. She was like this pretty much the whole time. Pure joy.

The best tricks Margielyn Didal brought out today are these dance moves 😅

#PusoPilipinas #Tokyo2020 #PHI https://t.co/mpzKGEi0YT

— Puso Pilipinas (@puso_pilipinas)
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And how about the diversity in ages, especially among the women skaters? We almost ended up with two teens and a 34-year-old on the podium in the women’s street competition, with a spread of 21 years between the youngest and oldest. (American skater Alexis Sablone turns 35 in a couple of weeks and ended up in 4th place after the final trick.) The gold and silver medal winners are both 13 years old, and the bronze winner is 16. And while the young skaters dominated in the end, Sablone showed that it’s not just a sport for the youth.

(But let’s also take a moment of awe for these 13-year-olds, Momiji Nishiya of Japan and Rayssa Leal of Brazil. Holy moly. So much talent and such great sportsmanship and such a young age.)

Finally, let’s have a moment of appreciation for the sport itself. It took a long time for the athletic world to fully appreciate the skill and practice it takes to do things like flip a moving board with four wheels several feet into the air with your feet, make it do just the right number of flips and turns in the air beneath you, stop it in exactly the right position to slide down a railing over a flight of stairs, and then land it on the ground—all while the board and you are flying through the air—without falling off. When skaters do it perfectly, it looks easy. But it’s a million little movements and balances and weight distributions and calculations that make these tricks work, and as we saw from how many they don’t land how hard it really is.

Also, they land on concrete when they fall. Ouch. And sometimes things like this happen:

Double ouch.

Our family and friends have thoroughly enjoyed seeing skateboarding take its place on the Olympic stage, and are looking forward to seeing the park skateboarding competition coming up. Good move making skateboarding an official Olympic sport, finally. Definitely recommend checking out the highlights if you missed it:

THIRTEEN-year-old Momiji Nishiya wins gold in street skateboarding | Tokyo Olympics | NBC Sports

www.youtube.com

Matt Damon’s been doing the rounds to promote Stillwater (which recently premiered at Cannes), so we’re seeing assorted nuggets here and there, like Damon revealing that his daughter is afraid to watch Good Will Hunting because she fears that it “might be good.” This week, Damon appeared on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and he went a little further to discuss how his daughter enjoys roasting him. The Bourne star then pulled back the curtain on his experience with Jack Nicholson on the set of Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film, The Departed.

As Damon tells it, he learned a lot by watching the way that Nicholson works, and he’ll never forget how, the first time they rehearsed together, The Shining star declared, “You know, I never would have made it this far if I wasn’t a great f*cking writer.” Later on during the production, Damon realized how seriously he took that side-part of the job while going home at night and, while unable to sleep, coming up with additions to scenes that had been sparingly written for him. Here’s how one of those scenes expanded, although the full breadth of what Nicholson (wildly) wrote didn’t make it into the final cut.

“The scene was one-eighth of a page… It said, ‘Costello executes a man kneeling in the marsh.’ That’s all it said.” Damon told Maron while suggesting that a lot of actors would have looked at that for one day of shooting and maybe felt a sense of relief because it was a long movie, and they’d just go and get it done. However, “Jack was so excited and said [to me], ‘Wait until you hear what I did.’” Hmm. “He goes, ‘Well, it was an eighth of a page,’ and he goes, ‘I’ve seen that before, so what I did is I made it a woman… and I put Ray [Winston] in the scene with me.’” Oh, that wasn’t all, not by a long shot. Damon continued with this telling anecdote:

He goes, “We’re gonna keep in this same shot, I’m not gonna add any time or money to the schedule. But I shoot her in the back of the head, and she falls over. Now, you could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, I turn to Ray and I say, ‘Geez, she fell funny.’ Now, that’s a very sinister line. It suggests that I’ve done this before. There’s a way that people fall.

“Now you could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, Ray reveals an axe that he’s holding behind his back. He’s gonna chop her up. So Ray starts to step forward…

“Now you could end the scene there, but if you leave the camera rolling, I say, ‘Wait, I think I wanna f*ck her again.’ Now that’s a very sinister line.”

At that point, Damon explained, “I’m like, ‘Jesus.’” And Nicholson continued:

“You could end the scene there, but if you keep the camera rolling, Ray gives me a look and after a long pause, I go, ‘Ahhhhh!’ Like I’ve got him. Now, you could keep the camera rolling, Ray says to me, ‘Francis, you really ought to see somebody.’”

Oh boy. As Damon sees it, Nicholson’s additions only added one minute to the production time, and these rewrites didn’t cost producers any more money. And obviously, not all of this made it into the movie because “what ended up being in the movie, I think, was he shoots her, he says, ‘Geez, she fell funny,’ and [Ray] says, ‘You really ought to see somebody.’” Still, there’s a lot of additional (and disturbing, and absurd) emotional breadth to what Nicholson added. This resonates in an unspoken way, especially if one were to, say, go rewatch the movie while imagining Marty’s face after seeing these Nicholson rewrites. You know the assignment… enjoy!

(Via WTF with Marc Maron)