Month: September 2021

In a time when kindness for others is in very short supply, original Blue’s Clues host Steve Burns reemerged with a sweet video addressing what he’s been up to since he left the children’s program in 2002 and, more importantly, offering words of encouragement to all the viewers who used to help him find clues when they were kids. It was a welcome moment of wholesome goodness that didn’t leave a dry eye on the internet, or on the set of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

While reacting to the video during Thursday night’s episode, Colbert struggled to keep his composure by repeatedly asserting that he’s impervious to Burns’ sweet, emotional message. “Now, I was grown up in the late ’90s. Although I was aware of the show because of my kids, those kids are all grown up and moved away now,” Colbert said. “So obviously, I have no emotional investment in Steve.”

Naturally, Colbert’s tough wall didn’t hold up, and the late-night host found himself getting genuinely choked up as Burns concluded the video by saying, “I guess I just wanted to say that after all these years, I never forgot you, ever.” While Colbert attempted to joke that “I feel nothing,” Burns walked on set and asked, “Are you sure about that, Stephen?” prompting the late-night host to get up and immediately hug the Blue’s Clues star.

It was another welcome moment of kindness to cap off Burn’s video, and is it getting dusty in here? Just so much dust getting in our eyes. Definitely dust.

(Via The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Vanity Fair)

After dazzling in 2019 with her phenomenal debut album, Shea Butter Baby, Ari Lennox kept things cool, calm, and collected in 2020. She made a few appearances on Dreamville’s Revenge Of The Dreamers III and Spillage Village’s Spilligion while delivering some singles of her own. They included her Shea Butter Baby remix EP, which delivered updated takes of tracks from her debut. As for 2021, it seems like Lennox could be bringing fans closer to the long-awaited release of her sophomore album and the road towards the project begins with her brand new single, “Pressure.”

The singer’s newest release is fun and free-spirited as it captures Lennox delivering sultry lines about her passionate love life with her new partner. Dreamville’s First Lady declares she’s “okay with being nasty” and adds, “Don’t need nobody but I’ll take you down tonight.” She also delivers a vibrant visual for the song that depicts her in a number of throwback looks which add to the fun of the new song.

“Pressure” arrives after Summer Walker confirmed Lennox, along with Lil Durk and SZA, will appear on her upcoming album. If you’re looking to catch Lennox live in concert, you’ll be able to do so at HER’s upcoming Lights On Festival in Brooklyn. As for her more recent releases, Lennox’s last release came alongside Queen Naija for “Set Him Up.”

You can press play on the new single in the video above.

Fox News‘ Rachel Campos-Duffy’s taste in men is a notorious subject that she can’t escape, and now, she’s kinda thirsting over the North Korean dictator. That’s quite a statement there, so let’s briefly back up. Rachel rose to pop-culture fame in the mid 1990s on The Real World‘s San Francisco edition. She’s never hidden her outspoken conservative ways, which ran against her inexplicable attraction to roommate and co-star Puck Rainey. They kissed on the show, which was something that her now-husband, Sean Duffy, teased her about during a Real World/Road Rules crossover event, and she had no explanation for her attraction to Puck. It was awkward.

Fast forward to 2021, and Duffy’s been a Republican congressman (out of Wisconsin) for a few terms, during which he’s complained about not making enough money. Rachel’s been TV co-hosting here and there, including some guest spots at The View, but her primary workplace is Fox News, where she pops up on weekend editions of Fox and Friends and so on. Well, she got super excited about the supposed new physique of Trump buddy Kim Jong-Un.

Move over, Jimmy Kimmel, because Rachel’s getting in on this while taking a shot at Joe Biden: “He does look good! I’m sorry, he looks better than our president.”

Oh boy. Yes, it’s a little strange to thirst (even in jest) over a dictator, and there’s really no telling whether this is even Kim Jong-Un at all, given that North Korea is even more propaganda-heavy that we could possibly realize. Rachel’s co-host even floats the idea (which might not even be a conspiracy theory, given that North Korea can never be believed) that this is a body double, and she still seems into it. Alright!

One more thing: Kim Jong-Un is 27, and Biden is 78 years old. Obviously, gonna be a difference there, though arguing any point here is equally as silly as what’s happening in this video clip.

Happy Star-Crossed day! Today, country-pop crossover Kacey Musgraves has released her follow-up to 2018’s Grammy-winning Golden Hour, and to celebrate, she’s shared an entertaining video for new song “Simple Times.” (For context, the clip is actually part of Musgraves’ just-released Star-Crossed film, which premieres today on Paramount+.) “Simple Times” works great on its own, though, with the singer engaging in the ultimate wedding revenge fantasy.

Together with her girl gang (You’s Victoria Pedretti, Princess Nokia, and Drag Race’s Symone), Musgraves marches through an abandoned mall, picks up some Medieval weaponry from comedian Meg Stalter (Hacks), and goes positively HAM on an unsuspecting bridal boutique, where a soon-to-be bride has just shrieked “yes to the dress.” For anyone who has ever soured on weddings and marriage, the whole scenario looks pretty satisfying.

Meanwhile, the lyrics to “Simple Times” reflect Musgraves’ very human wish to turn back time and arrive at a place where she could “kick it at the mall like there’s nothing wrong.” Watch the excellent clip above.

The “Simple Times” release also follows Musgraves’ recent appearance on The Late Show, where she told host Stephen Colbert how the new album is about being “f*cked celestially.” Colbert then asked what Musgraves meant with her use of the term “Star-Crossed,” and she responded, “It’s ill-fated. You are doomed by the stars. You are f*cked celestially.” She continued, “There is a roller coaster of emotion on the record and the film that we made. It is kind of a wild ride.”

Star-Crossed is out now via Interscope Records/UMG Nashville. Get it here.

If there’s one thing worse than listening to one Fox News host spout ridiculous conspiracy theories, it’s listening to five of them at once. Which is why The Five may be the scariest show on television. Of course, that just happened to be airing when Joe Biden made the announcement about his new vaccine mandates and, well, the panel’s reactions were a lot to take in.

Among some of the choicest comments, as Mediaite noted, came from Greg Gutfeld, who somehow got from the president’s press briefing that Biden was saying “the unvaxxed are the new terrorists” and that he “showed more anger toward that 80 million” unvaccinated Americans than he has toward the Taliban. (Always with the Taliban with these people.)

(As a reminder, this was Gutfield the day before, when Donald Trump was doing grunty impressions of what Taliban leaders sounded like.)

The always-uplifting Jeanine Pirro called the mandate a “Marxism thing” then reminded her co-hosts that she has both have COVID and been fully vaccinated, so “How am I at risk from someone who doesn’t get the vaccine?” It was Geraldo Rivera who was the voice of reason in this conversation when he reminded Pirro that her grandchildren were at risk (oops!) and also that: “This was a president who is doing something that he feels necessary to curb an emergency that has already, ladies and gentlemen, taken more lives than the American Civil War. I mean, let’s put it into context.”

Most notably, however, was Jesse Watters—who was the first one to take control of the conversation with a conspiracy theory that he’s clearly been working on for a while, just waiting for the opportunity to whip it out. And here it goes:

“He’s an angry man, he’s a bitter man. He’s humiliated by the Afghanistan situation. He’s upset with the economic recovery, where it should be but it’s not, so he’s taking the anger out on the unvaxxed. He’s targeting 80 million Americans who don’t trust him, don’t trust the media, for good reason.

Instead of uniting the country against the virus—and against China, because that’s where it came from—he’s trying to divide the country against itself for political exploitation. He has obviously poll-tested ‘mandates’—never said ‘mandates,’ it’s ‘requirements’ now… If he gets away with this power grab, he’s gonna be bloodthirsty. Imagine what he thinks he’ll get away with next.”

Like Geraldo, let’s put this into context to make sure we understand Watters’ theory: The president—who was not president when COVID first arrived—is dealing with record-high COVID infections and hospitalizations which, in some areas, are making it impossible for health care professionals to give adequate care to all the people (COVID or not, vaccinated or not) who need it. And there’s a vaccine that could easily put an end to this insanity. But there are 80,000 million adult humans who refuse to be vaccinated, some of whom are opting to instead ingest horse medicine to protect themselves. Because they’ve somehow decided that is safer. Yet big, bad, angry man Biden’s reason for requiring people to get vaccinated is… because of a war we lost in Afghanistan 15 years ago?

Yes, makes total sense.

(Via Mediate)

The 2021 MTV VMAs will air this Sunday, but unfortunately for Nicki Minaj fans, the Queens rapper will not be one of the performers at this year’s show. While the show is returning to having a live audience this year and planned performers include Chloe Bailey, Doja Cat (also this year’s host), Lil Nas X, and Olivia Rodrigo, Nicki has joined Lorde in pulling out of the festivities.

Unlike Lorde, though, Nicki didn’t give a reason for backing out, instead confirming her cancelation on Twitter in response to a fan question and promising to return in the the future. “I just pulled out,” she replied to the fan’s inquiry about whether or not she was performing. “I’ll explain why another day.”

In the past, Nicki took issue with the BET Awards’ Facebook post, pulling out of the BET Experience performances in 2019, but in this case, it appears that the split was more amicable. “I love those guys at MTV,” she gushed. “Thank you Bruce. I love you so much. Next year we there baby.”

Lorde, meanwhile, previously explained that her own reason for pulling out was the show’s updated safety protocols, which would have forced her to change her planned performance. Rather than doing that, she decided to cancel rather than shortchange her fans.

The VMAs air this Sunday at 8:00 pm ET / 5:00 pm PT.

Take a page from his dad’s playbook, Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter on Thursday evening to rant against President Joe Biden’s sweeping vaccine mandate. In predictable Junior fashion, the tweets were low on original thoughts and high on regurgitating right-wing talking points such as “Who’s the oppressive dictator now?” and “Actually, all the COVID comes from illegals.” Then again, we’re dealing with a guy who thinks his father terrified the Taliban with his superior “brainpower” and obliterated ISIS, despite the terrorist group still being active.

But perhaps Junior’s biggest crime is that he still hasn’t learned to thread his tweets just like dad. You can see his scattershot rantings about Biden’s vaccine mandate below:

Do we even live in a free country anymore?

In Biden’s America, American citizens who make a personal medical decision that Joe disagrees with are talked down too, segregated from society & not allowed to provide for their families, but all of unvaccinated illegals coming across the border are welcomed with open arms!!!

Where’s all the oppressive totalitarian dictator talk??? We heard it for 5 years for everything and anything Trump said but the press and the left is strangely silent when there’s actually totalitarianism happening???

Biden’s sweeping mandate is in direct response to the Delta variant continuing to tear through the country, particularly amongst the unvaccinated. With the COVID vaccine now approved by the FDA, businesses can now mandate their employees get the shot or be subjected to weekly tests if they refuse. Naturally, the announcement didn’t sit well with anti-vaxxers, but the biggest bombshell for right-wing corners was hearing Biden name-drop Fox News as one of the companies that already has a vaccine mandate, despite its prominent hosts like Tucker Carlson pushing anti-vaccination views.

(Via Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter)

Divorce is one of those life events no one prepares you for. (Take it from me, a person who has been divorced.) Because the subject is everywhere — in statistics, pop culture, and maybe even your own family unit — we kind of expect that if it must happen to us, then we’ll on some level know how proceed. (Just me?) The awful reality, though, is so much more complicated; it’s a messy emotional cocktail of guilt, relief, disappointment, anxiety, and anger. It’s also a process Kacey Musgraves, who filed for divorce from ex Ruston Kelly last year, tries to navigate throughout her masterful new album, Star-Crossed.

Amplifying the album’s overarching theme into a series of surrealist, through-the-looking-glass scenes is Musgraves’ accompanying film, which premieres today on Paramount+. Directed by Matthew Libatique (A Star Is Born, Black Swan) and featuring cameos from Eugene Levy, Victoria Pedretti, Princess Nokia, Drag Race star Symone, and comedian Megan Stalter, the Star-Crossed film offers a deeper look into Musgraves’ psyche as it pertains to divorce. The result is magnetic, colorful, stylish, at times hilarious, tragic, and surreal. A movie might be linear, but starting over is not, and in the Musgraves Extended Universe, new beginnings mean trashing a bridal boutique, undergoing broken-heart surgery, running alongside a stallion, and voguing at the club with your friends.

Just like the album, Star-Crossed also plays out over the course of three acts, with Musgraves marching through the California desert, defiantly wearing a wedding gown and preparing to enter a small, Kill Bill-looking chapel. (I think we all remember what happened to Uma Thurman’s Bride.) The first act, “I Just Want To Be A Good Wife,” eventually finds the country-pop crossover meeting up with a brightly dressed girl gang (including Victoria Pedretti, Princess Nokia, and Symone), who proceed to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting bridal boutique. “Wish I could put this game on pause / Skip this round, take the headset off / Put my lipgloss on / Kick it at the mall like there’s nothing wrong,” Musgraves soundtracks, expressing a human desire for “simple times” when life gets complicated.

Despite wrecking that boutique, thus ruining another bride’s “say yes to the dress” moment, Musgraves yanks us back into her marriage mindset. If she could just do all of the “good wife” things (“bring him coffee in bed, try to loosen up and be more fun”), maybe she could make this work? Soon, she’s attending “good wife” etiquette classes in a nondescript all-purpose room (how very The Lobster), with dozens of blonde-wigged Stepfords learning how to look after a home and not cause any trouble. As Musgraves obediently sets the table and irons, she prays for guidance: “God help me be a good wife, ’cause he needs me… And I know that I need him.”

Despite her best efforts, Musgraves still finds herself hurtling forward in her car as the second act arrives and the weather rapidly changes outside her window, mirroring the jumbled emotions found in “Justified” (“Moving backwards, hurt comes after / Healing doesn’t happen in a straight line”). Then, as our phones always do, Musgraves’ reminds her that she has “MEMORIES” to review. The constant dinging sends her careening headfirst into an oncoming truck, and what follows is a hyper-literal look at what divorce feels like: being china-doll shattered and clumsily fitting yourself back together.

A literally broken Musgraves gets carted off into the Star-Crossed Center (“for broken hearts and such”), where she is reassembled by Dr. Eugene Levy (“I know you’re feeling kind of all over the place,” he cracks). With a little bad bedside humor and a metal breastplate, Musgraves is up and running through the LA River alongside a stallion. She’s ready for the final act: “There Is A Light.”

As the film comes full circle, Musgraves swaps her white wedding dress for a crimson gown, singing a striking cover of Violeta Parra’s “Gracias A La Vida.” Translated, the opening words mean, “Thanks to life, which has given me so much.” Musgraves has so much to be thankful for. That’s the good part about starting over. Eventually, getting through each day involves a little less effort. This is clearly the case for Musgraves, who, post-surgery at the Star-Crossed Center, is ready to go out dancing at the disco. “There is a light inside of me, uh-huh,” she acknowledges. Now, walking away from the little Kill Bill-looking wedding chapel, which has a sign in the window advertising annulments for $15.95 (if only dissolving a marriage was really that cheap), Musgraves is on her own again, but undoubtedly stronger than before.

Here are some things that happen in the first six minutes of the first episode of FX/Hulu’s Reservation Dogs, before the opening credits even start:

• A group of rascal teens steals a potato chip truck — the entire truck, with the spicy chips inside — and drives off with it in broad daylight
• They speed past a police car in the stolen truck but the cop doesn’t notice because he is fully distracted by conspiracy theory videos he’s watching on a tablet
• The rascal teens sell the stolen truck to a salvage yard owner named Kenny, which is mostly notable because Kenny is played by Kirk Fox, Sewage Joe from Parks and Recreation, who appears to have found a wonderful sewage/salvage niche on television

This is good. This is exactly how you should start your television show. It’s crazy that no other show figured this out already. And I am pleased to report that the good news does not stop there, not even for a second, because after all that happened the show pulled out a Wu-Tang needle drop as it displayed the title.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a show zero in on my exact interests this efficiently. I love rascal teens and snack heists and incompetent police officers and Sewage/Salvage Joe/Kenny and when shows slip in Wu-Tang songs. It’s even better because this is the same song that was used in the trampoline scene of The Leftovers, so it also led to me remembering how good that show was. I have nothing to complain about with any of this. It’s all just about perfectly ideal.

But let’s stop here and zoom out a little. Let’s move from the specific to the general. Let’s talk about Reservation Dogs as a whole. The show — created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi — follows four Indigenous teenagers as they run around Oklahoma committing small-scale crimes and pocketing the proceeds as part of a long-term plan to eventually bounce to California. Is there a rival gang of teens? Of course. Are there paintball shootouts that are edited to look like dramatic death scenes from classic movies? At least one. Is one of the rascal teens named “Cheese”? Yes, and please know I would never lie to you about something that important.

The show is more than just rascals teens stealing stuff, though. It is funny and sweet and sad and strange as all hell in places. There’s really very little you can even compare it to. I’ve been cranking away on it for a while and the best I’ve come up with is “Atlanta but in Oklahoma and sometimes there are female serial killers with deer hooves for feet,” which is both a fun thing to type and just terrifically unhelpful. Maybe that’s for the best. It’s always nice to have something truly original on television. Reservation Dogs is nothing if not original.

It also features one of my favorite television characters of the year. While all four of the young leads are good at delivering jokes and carrying heavier moments in a way that most actors twice their age could struggle with, the standout here, for me, is the character named Willie Jack, played by Paulina Alexis. Willie Jack is a blast, all sharp edges and cuss words and rough exterior until someone digs a few layers deep to hit some vulnerability. She has at least one line each episode that makes me laugh out loud. She might be television’s second-best f-word-sayer, just behind Roy Kent from Ted Lasso, which is as high a compliment I know how to give.

Look at Willie Jack work.

Look at Willie Jack work.

Every now and then you’ll see something that makes you realize you’ve been living your life wrong. That’s how I felt when I saw this scene and realized I’ve never held a bag containing the hair of my enemies. I need to rectify this as soon as possible.

You know what else is cool about Reservation Dogs? I’ll tell you: It is inclusive in the right way. Sometimes a show will pay lip service to inclusion by, like, casting people from different backgrounds (good!) but then writing those characters in the same boring and/or stereotypical ways (bad!). Reservation Dogs goes the extra step, with a cast and crew and creative team filled with Indigenous voices. This allows the show to have it both ways: they can tell a true story with all the little shading and shadowing that makes it feel real, and they can also blast through the stereotypes to show you that the characters are also just regular kids at heart. Ones who steal trucks filled with snacks. And collect the hair of their enemies.

Hmm. I’m not sure I’m explaining that well, this idea of maintaining an identity while also depicting relatable human experiences. Luckily, the creators have explained it all much better. Here they are in the New York Times.

“We are making fun of non-Native audiences’ expectations while acknowledging aspects of that part of Native culture,” said Harjo, 41, a founding member of the Native American comedy troupe The 1491s. “We’re teasing the audience using the history of cinema. Native Americans grow up on pop culture — it’s how we learn what the rest of the world is up to.”

Waititi added: “We’re tired of seeing ourselves out there wandering through forests talking to ghosts, putting our hands on trees and talking to the wind as if we have all the answers because of our relationship with nature. And there’s always flute music.”

“I don’t know any ghosts and I don’t talk to trees,” he continued. “I grew up loving comic books and being interested in girls just like the other kids.”

And here’s Taika Waititi — who, between this show and Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do in the Shadows and Jojo Rabbit, really does not miss at all these days — putting a finer point on it at in a chat with Deadline.

“Now we don’t want to tell stories like that, we don’t want to depress people. There’s so much humor in our communities, so many jokes,” Waititi said. “All they want to do is see us riding whales, talking to the trees, playing flutes on mountaintops and talking to ghosts and learning something from our grandmother. To subvert expectations is such a powerful thing.”

This rules. As a member of another group whose stories are not often told well on television (I’m in a wheelchair and stories about people in wheelchairs are often depressing or gratingly inspirational), I dig this approach. It doesn’t have to feel like taking medicine. It just takes some cool stories told by people who have the right perspective on things. It helps if one of those people is Taika Waititi.

What I’m getting at with all of this is a pretty simple point: I think you would like Reservation Dogs. It’s good and fun and introduces you to characters that are wholly original. These characters steal snacks and get in fights and go through some real-life stuff. One of these characters is named Cheese. I know I said that already but I really like saying it, so here we are. And each episode is only 30 minutes long, which is nice. You’re pretty busy. And there are so many shows. I try not to recommend things lightly. But I do think you would like this one.

Go watch Reservation Dogs.

The 20th anniversary of September 11 is bringing back painful memories of that horrible day for many Americans, including Steve Buscemi. The actor was a New York City firefighter in the 1980s and returned to volunteer following the attacks on the World Trade Center; he worked 12-hour shifts, searching through the rubble for signs of life but more often found death. As you might imagine, this experience left him shaken.

“I haven’t experienced any health issues, and I get myself checked out. But definitely, yeah, post-traumatic stress? Absolutely,” Buscemi said on WTF with Marc Maron. “I was only there for like five days, but when I stopped going and tried to just live my life again, it was really, really hard.” He added, “There are times when I talk about 9/11 and I’m right back there. I start to get choked up and I realize, ah, this is still a big part of me.”

Buscemi also wrote an essay for Time about the trauma of 9/11:

“Never forget,” everyone said. Some people have no choice. What’s surprising is who has to be reminded. Shortly after the attack, Congress created a Victim Compensation Fund to help first responders cope with the aftermath of the day. When the money began to run out, survivors had to launch a lobbying campaign to secure permanent funding, which finally came in 2019. It was an effort led by Jon Stewart and activist John Feal and backed by every former firefighter who cannot laugh without coughing, and every family member who pretends not to notice.

Never forget, because people are still struggling. People are still dying.

You can listen to Buscemi’s WTF episode below.

(Via Time)