Month: September 2021

If you were a very young kid in the late ‘90s or the early aughts, there’s a chance you you’re a massive fan of Steve Burns. He was the original host of Nick Jr.’s Blue’s Clues, where he led preschoolers through a series of mysteries with the help of his titular blue dog. You may also remember that he left in 2002, after four seasons, replaced by Donovan Patton. No doubt the departure was devastating for many, who’d come to love Burns’ wide-eyed, earnest yet goofy mien as much as his animated canine costar. And nearly 20 years later, Burns released a video, as suddenly as he departed so long ago, hoping to give fans some closure.

The video finds Burns — now 47, bald under a baseball hat, yet still boyishly charming — addressing his now also grown-up fans directly. “You got a second?” he says, before reminding viewers about how they all used to “run around and hang out with Blue and find clues and talk to Mr. Salt and freak out about the mail and do all sorts of fun stuff.” He also addresses how he suddenly left and they didn’t see each other “for like a really long time.”

Burns has repeatedly addressed why he left: He went to college! Because he was that age and someone in the prime of his life can’t be doing shows for preschoolers for forever. But he still feels bad. In the video he admits his departure, in hindsight, was “kind of abrupt,” which he says was “really challenging but great, because I got to use my mind and take one step at a time.” It also allowed him, he says, to do all the things he’s doing now.

Throughout the video, Burns retains the mien of a pre-school teacher, talking directly, in simple terms, as though they were still kids at heart. He even tries to cushion the blow of his admission by pointing out that those watching, too, have likely done a lot since Blue’s Clues debuted 25 years ago. “Look at all you have done and all you have accomplished in all that time,” Burns says. “It’s just…it’s just amazing, right? I mean, we started out with clues, and now it’s what? Student loans, and jobs, and families.” (Although perhaps one of those, at least, may not be something worth celebrating.)

When the video dropped, especially following a hellish pre-Labor Day weekend week that saw weather disasters and multiple nightmarish laws enacted in Texas, it couldn’t help but leave Generation Blue’s Clues eating their feelings.

Some were moved by proxy.

And a lot of people did, indeed, find some closure.

Blue’s Clues debuted in 1996 and lasted until 2004. It was rebooted as Blues Clues & You! In 2019. You can watch Burns’ new video above.

(Via TV Line)

Last month was quite eventful for The LOX. The group, which consists of Yonkers rappers Jadakiss, Styles P, and Sheek Louch, began their run with an amazing performance during a Verzuz matchup against Dipset. The appearance inspired people to praise the group, specifically Jadakiss, with many calling him the star of the show. Shortly after, during Kanye West’s second listening party for Donda, The LOX made a surprise appearance on a track we now know as “Jesus Lord Pt. 2.” During a recent interview with HipHopDX, Jadakiss explained how that song came together.

“Someone from ‘Ye’s camp actually reached out to my older son,” the rapper said. “Then ‘Ye called us the next day after Verzuz, he hit me the next morning. We flew straight there (Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium) and went straight to the studio and knocked the song out. Then went and rested and came back the next day and went to the event and flew back.”

Shortly after The LOX dazzled at their Verzuz against Dipset, the group was gifted the key to their hometown of Yonkers by the city’s mayor, Mike Spano. “We recognize LOX,” Spano said during a ceremony for the key. “We’re gonna give this to you. He doesn’t need it. He could go anywhere he wants but this will confirm it all.”

You can watch the rapper’s full interview with HipHopDX in the video above.

Frank Grasberger has been wishing he could meet Dashauna Priest for more than a decade. The 95-year-old WWII veteran from Strongsville, Ohio received a letter from Priest wrote when she was in the third grade 12 years ago, and he has kept it as a prized possession since then.

The letter was addressed, “Dear WWII Veteran,” and read, “Thank you for saving us from Hitler. If it wasn’t for you we would never have freedom. You made freedom for us. You sacrificed your life. I’m so happy you made sacrifices.” It was signed, “Your friend, Dashauna Priest.”

Grasberger’s wife, Delores, told CBS News that he carries the letter everywhere. He said he sees it as a symbol of a life well-lived.

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“I’m tickled to death that I have a letter like this,” Grasberger told CBS. “I’d never be without it…it’s something that somebody thought of me that much.”

Delores added, “When he has that letter with him, he has a feeling of faith, and trust, and love.”

Priest, now 21, told CBS News that she remembers writing the letter and was honored to do so because she so admired people in uniform. Now Priest has a uniform of her own as a member of the National Guard, and she wore it when she went to surprise Grasberger at the senior residence facility where he lives.

The Grasbergers had always wanted to find Priest but had never been able to. Knowing about his attachment to the letter and how much it meant to him, the staff at the residence facility tracked her down and arranged the surprise meeting for him.

Grasberger was overjoyed. Just watch:

WWII veteran meets woman who wrote him thank-you letter 12 years ago

www.youtube.com

Priest told CBS that meeting Grasberger was the beginning of a friendship, then corrected herself. “Family, not friendship,” she said.

What a beautiful story of gratitude, honor, sacrifice, and connection. You just never know the impact one small gesture will have on someone else’s life.

A new Texas law that went into effect last week criminalizes all abortions performed after the fetus develops a heartbeat, which is at around six weeks. That means that nearly 85% of all abortions that took place in the state are now considered illegal.

Critics of the new law say it’s a major violation of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. It also has major religious connotations. The pro-life movement that’s been fighting to end abortion rights has been powered by conservative Christian activists for decades.

When signing the law, the Governor of Texas made it clear that the law is a way for Christians to force their beliefs on the population as a whole.

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“Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion,” Abbott stated while signing the law.

Strangely, The Bible has nothing to say about abortion.

Abortion laws in TX violate our religious rights and TST has taken legal action. If TX judges abide by the Constitu… https://t.co/umhFyENbns

— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_)
1630584013.0

One “religious” group is fighting back against the draconian abortion laws in Texas because it believes that “religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition.”

The Satanic Temple, headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, filed a letter with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to request that its members have access to abortion pills using its Religious Freedom Restoration Act rights. Having abortion pills readily available could make it easier to bypass the new Texas law.

The same rights allow Native Americans to access the hallucinogenic drug peyote for their spiritual rituals.

The Temple is a quasi-religious organization that claims it doesn’t believe “in the existence of Satan or the supernatural” but that religious freedom law should apply to all religions.

“Religions have special privileges under the First Amendment and RFRA. The Satanic Temple is utilizing these privileges to protect our religious belief in bodily autonomy – we’re taking our fight to the next level,” Temple cofounder Lucien Greaves said in a statement.

“As the courts affirm the rights of religious organizations to practice their faith, TST is demanding our religious rights to abortion access without unnecessary state interference,” he added.

“I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about Religious Liberty issues in other states — will be proud to see that Texas’s robust Religious Liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion,” the statement continues.

Shoutout to @satanic_temple_ for protecting my reproductive rights.🖤 https://t.co/YqhG56tJLM

— CEO of ₜₑₓₐₛ (@mikuhatsunegirl)
1630691548.0

@ServeEmma @MemberBlasts If you live in Texas, @satanic_temple_ is fighting to give you a religious right to aborti… https://t.co/xxepDoOpJS

— Trinity 🥀🌼 ($10 premium) (@TrinnityBlair)
1630638539.0

Have you heard the good word of Satan? https://t.co/F16KqVJsgI

— Matt (@aceofknaves88)
1630548795.0

The Temple says its access to abortion pills is made possible by a precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. The decision prevents the government from putting a “burden on free exercise of religion without a compelling reason.”

The Satanic Temple places a very high priority on bodily autonomy. Its third tenet reads: “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

Satanists unveil Baphomet statue at Arkansas Capitol https://t.co/XFG40C0SBy https://t.co/9i5u2t4x9X

— New York Post (@nypost)
1534572530.0

This isn’t the first time that the Temple has fought for the separation of church and state. It caused a huge stir in 2018 when it protested a Ten Commandments monument erected outside of the Arkansas state Capitol.

To make a statement about religious freedom the Temple revealed an eight-and-a-half-foot, half-man, half-goat Baphomet statue in front of the building.

“If you’re going to have one religious monument up then it should be open to others, and if you don’t agree with that then let’s just not have any at all,” Satanic Arkansas cofounder Ivy Forrester, said at the rally.

A trial was supposed to begin last year to settle the issue but it was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hail Satan!

After thirteen long years, Britney Spears’ conservatorship could finally come to an end in the new future. A new report from NBC News revealed the singer’s father recently filed a petition with the court to bring the conservatorship to an end. In a petition filed to Los Angeles’ Superior Court, Jamie stated that his daughter “is entitled to have this Court now seriously consider whether this conservatorship is no longer required.”

In the petition, Britney’s father adds that his daughter’s circumstances have changed to such a point that “grounds for establishment of a conservatorship may no longer exist.” The filing is a huge victory for the singer, who spent the past two years fighting to remove her father as conservator of her estate. If she and her recently-hired lawyer, Matthew Rosengart, were able to accomplish this, filing to end the conservatorship altogether, which she’s labeled as “abusive” and restrictive to her desired lifestyle, would have been the next step for Britney and her team.

The move from Jamie could be a result of recent accusations that Britney made against him. At the end of August, she accused her father of extorting her ahead of his possible removal as conservator. Britney’s team requested that Jamie step down from his position or have him suspended from the role starting on September 29 if he refused to resign.

Over Labor Day weekend, social media fixated on a brief but intense video. It found Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac on the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival, sharing a heated moment. That the video was in slo-mo made it even more of a scorcher. It gave people on Twitter the vapors, and it seems the reaction did not escape at least one of the two actors involved.

Chastain herself weighed in late Sunday night (presumably from Venice), posting a picture that bears an uncanny resemblance to what went down in Italy. It’s a still from the ‘60s TV version of The Addams Family, showing John Astin’s Gomez burying his lips in the long arm of Carolyn Jones’ Morticia.

Was that what Isaac was channeling when he grabbed his Scenes from a Marriage costar’s one arm and laid upon it a gentle kiss? Who knows! The erstwhile Llewyn Davis did, of course, voice Gomez in the animated 2019 version of The Addams Family, so it’s not unlikely.

Just a little reminder: Both actors are married, to other people. And they go way back. They met at Julliard, acted together (as marrieds) in the 2014 drama A Most Violent Year, and share the distinction of both playing X-Men villains, albeit in different movies. Their latest team up is HBO’s revamp of the classic Ingmar Bergman miniseries Scenes from a Marriage, which chronicles the slow, combative dissolution of a couple who realize they can’t be together, even as they’re in effect chained together for life.

Marriage begins its run on HBO on September 12. In the meantime, you can rewatch their red carpet moment ad nauseum.

Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch is one of those bottles that everyone in the whiskey world wants but only a few actually get to try. Each year, the famed Kentucky distillery releases about 14,000 bottles of their special small batch. Before the pandemic, those bottles would be available at the distillery on a first-come-first-served basis. But that’s not the wave they’re on right now — for the second year in a row, you’ll need to enter a lottery to win the right to buy a bottle.

Having entered and lost many a Pappy lottery, we know that the whole “win the chance to BUY” concept might sound a little elitist to the passive whiskey drinker; but Four Roses can’t safely have thousands of people milling outside of the distillery for ten, 12, 18, or 24 hours waiting to buy a bottle of whiskey during a global pandemic. The lottery system allows them to spread out the bottle pick up. It also gives you time to get to Kentucky if you win that lottery!

If a lottery isn’t your vibe, you could always just become a whiskey writer. I was lucky enough to taste the new edition with Brent Elliott, Four Roses Master Distiller, last week. You can watch our whole tasting on our Instagram channel. We also tasted Four Roses Small Batch and Small Batch Select (both excellent bourbons) before we got to the star of the show. Since then, I’ve tasted the release twice more and have developed a real fondness for this year’s drop.

My detailed notes on this year’s LE Small Batch can be found below. If this sounds like a bottle you might want to try, you have until September 12th to enter the lottery.

Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of 2021

• The Best Bottles Of Bourbon Whiskey For Under $20, Ranked
• Our Favorite Bourbon Whiskey From Every Price Point Between $10-$200
• All 19 Brands From The Buffalo Trace Distillery, Ranked
• Here’s Who Won Our Big Barrel Proof Bourbon Whiskey Blind Taste Test
• The Best Bourbon Whiskeys To Drink Neat, From $50 On Up

2021 Four Roses Limited Edition Small Batch

ABV: 57.2%

Average Price: $150 (Lottery Only)

The Whiskey:

This year’s LE Small Batch is a blend of four bourbons. Four Roses is renowned for its ten distinct recipes with two mash bills and five yeast strains. This whiskey marries four of those recipes with two from Mash B (very high rye) and two from Mash Bill E (high rye). The yeasts at play are “delicate fruit,” “spice essence,” and “floral essence.” The barrels ranged from 12 to 16 years old, making this a fairly old bourbon, all things considered.

Tasting Notes:

The nose has a mix of honey next to buttery biscuits, rich vanilla, a touch of tart red berries, dry cedar, and a very faint hint of dry mint. The palate dives into a dark plum jam with a spicy edge of allspice and nutmeg. That fruit gives way to a spritz of orange oils next to a light touch of dark chocolate on the mid-palate that leads to a rich finish. That finish leaves you with warming spice, more of that orange/choco vibe, and another mild hint of green, dry mint.

The Bottle:

The bottle is a classic Four Roses small batch bottle, which is to say that it’s very hefty. These bulbous bottles have a serious base and a legit cork. You really feel like you’re holding onto something weighty (in more ways than one). It also stands out on any bar cart thanks to its unique shape and size.

Bottom Line:

This is one of those bourbons where you’re immediately struck by its balance and depth. “Goddamn, that’s nice!” was my first reaction and that has yet to wane. This really grabs you with a solid nose that feels very “Four Roses” with that hint of greenery and deep creamy flavors.

It’s a damn near perfect sipper is what I’m getting at.

Ranking:

96/100 — This is yet another highwater mark for Four Roses LE Small Batch. While there are exactly zero faults with this expression, I didn’t blow my socks off as something completely, 100/100 mindblowing. It’s just a really, really great whiskey that deserves all the love it gets.

After going a little over a year without a new full-length project, Drake finally delivered his sixth album, Certified Lover Boy, But it seems he has more music on the way. The Toronto native just signed on to curate music for ESPN’s Monday Night Football for 10 games during the NFL’s upcoming season. The music includes tracks from Certified Lover Boy, albums the rapper previously released, plus work from other artists that Drake will personally select.

“Now we are here, the kickoff of the football season and who better to curate music for Monday Night Football than Drake who sits firmly at the intersection of music and sports?” Emeka Ofodile, Vice President Of Sports Marketing at ESPN, said in a statement according to Billboard. “We couldn’t be more excited for this upcoming collaboration. The music curator role has been a big hit with our fans with Diplo and DJ Khaled in previous years and this season, we will be living inside the moment with Drake as our NFL on ESPN soundtrack.”

The announcement comes after Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, which features appearances from Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Travis Scott, Young Thug, Future, Lil Wayne, Ty Dolla Sign, and more, set first-day records on both Apple Music and Spotify.

Certified Lover Boy is out now via OVO Sound/Republic. Get it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A new Texas law that went into effect last week criminalizes all abortions performed after the fetus develops a heartbeat, which is at around six weeks. That means that nearly 85% of all abortions that took place in the state are now considered illegal.

Critics of the new law say it’s a major violation of a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. It also has major religious connotations. The pro-life movement that’s been fighting to end abortion rights has been powered by conservative Christian activists for decades.

When signing the law, the Governor of Texas made it clear that the law is a way for Christians to force their beliefs on the population as a whole.

---

“Our creator endowed us with the right to life, and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion,” Abbott stated while signing the law.

Strangely, The Bible has nothing to say about abortion.

Abortion laws in TX violate our religious rights and TST has taken legal action. If TX judges abide by the Constitu… https://t.co/umhFyENbns

— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_)
1630584013.0

One “religious” group is fighting back against the draconian abortion laws in Texas because it believes that “religion can, and should, be divorced from superstition.”

The Satanic Temple, headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, filed a letter with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to request that its members have access to abortion pills using its Religious Freedom Restoration Act rights. Having abortion pills readily available could make it easier to bypass the new Texas law.

The same rights allow Native Americans to access the hallucinogenic drug peyote for their spiritual rituals.

The Temple is a quasi-religious organization that claims it doesn’t believe “in the existence of Satan or the supernatural” but that religious freedom law should apply to all religions.

“Religions have special privileges under the First Amendment and RFRA. The Satanic Temple is utilizing these privileges to protect our religious belief in bodily autonomy – we’re taking our fight to the next level,” Temple cofounder Lucien Greaves said in a statement.

“As the courts affirm the rights of religious organizations to practice their faith, TST is demanding our religious rights to abortion access without unnecessary state interference,” he added.

“I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about Religious Liberty issues in other states — will be proud to see that Texas’s robust Religious Liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion,” the statement continues.

Shoutout to @satanic_temple_ for protecting my reproductive rights.🖤 https://t.co/YqhG56tJLM

— CEO of ₜₑₓₐₛ (@mikuhatsunegirl)
1630691548.0

@ServeEmma @MemberBlasts If you live in Texas, @satanic_temple_ is fighting to give you a religious right to aborti… https://t.co/xxepDoOpJS

— Trinity 🥀🌼 ($10 premium) (@TrinnityBlair)
1630638539.0

Have you heard the good word of Satan? https://t.co/F16KqVJsgI

— Matt (@aceofknaves88)
1630548795.0

The Temple says its access to abortion pills is made possible by a precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 2014 Hobby Lobby decision. The decision prevents the government from putting a “burden on free exercise of religion without a compelling reason.”

The Satanic Temple places a very high priority on bodily autonomy. Its third tenet reads: “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”

Satanists unveil Baphomet statue at Arkansas Capitol https://t.co/XFG40C0SBy https://t.co/9i5u2t4x9X

— New York Post (@nypost)
1534572530.0

This isn’t the first time that the Temple has fought for the separation of church and state. It caused a huge stir in 2018 when it protested a Ten Commandments monument erected outside of the Arkansas state Capitol.

To make a statement about religious freedom the Temple revealed an eight-and-a-half-foot, half-man, half-goat Baphomet statue in front of the building.

“If you’re going to have one religious monument up then it should be open to others, and if you don’t agree with that then let’s just not have any at all,” Satanic Arkansas cofounder Ivy Forrester, said at the rally.

A trial was supposed to begin last year to settle the issue but it was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Hail Satan!

Last year we had Hydroxychloroquine. This year’s questionable miracle drug that’s making those who take it sick is Ivermectin. Trump supporters skeptical of an FDA-approved drug their favorite president helped fast-track into production have had no problem taking medication often used for horses and other livestock, even after the company that’s made it warned it shouldn’t be used to treat COVID. But while there’s been a ton of jokes — some of them reserved for Joe Rogan — no one has made a full-on parody video.

Until now. While The Daily Show, SNL, and John Oliver still on hiatus, The Lincoln Project — the cabal of anti-Trump Republicans formed last year to ensure the 45th president only served one term — have stepped up. They’ve created a dead-on send-up of already questionable medication ads, which peddle drugs as a gateway back to folksy normalcy, all while burying a host of side effects in rapid-fire boilerplate.

“When it comes to protecting yourself against the COVID-19 virus, the FDA-approved vaccine might not be the right choice for patients who are allergic to reality,” a reassuring narrator purrs over top sunlit images of fields and people doing yoga. It then offers the livestock dewormer as “the COVID-19 treatment option for real patriots.”

Of course, it comes with some warnings, advising users to abstain while “driving, operating heavy machinery or if you’re wearing your good pants.” Side effects include “the inability to pronounce Kamala Harris’s name,” while some patients have reported “hallucinations of lizard people in the halls of Congress.” There’s also a diss of Joe Rogan, perhaps Ivermectin’s most famous client.

You can watch the full video above. And please listen to the FDA and don’t treat COVID with a drug that combats worms in farm animals.

(Via Raw Story)