Month: September 2021

There’s a glitch that is in essentially every single sports video game. It’s one that is ultimately harmless and is really only noticed by the most astute observers. Occasionally, when the action isn’t happening on the screen and players are loitering about, a small group of players will be seen all doing the same thing in perfect harmony. This actually happens in lots of games where there’s a bunch different NPC’s on-screen at once, but it’s most noticeable in a sports game like NBA 2K, Madden, or FIFA.

The reason this happens is that most of these games have a variety of pre-set animations that the game can choose to play at any moment during non-action, and every once in awhile it might choose to play the same animation across multiple different players. The result can be three or four people all doing the exact same thing. It’s a little odd-looking, but it usually doesn’t break the game. However, it does break the illusion of realism, which is something the developers never want.

Since sports games require yearly development, it’s been a fairly slow process to add different animations to each new title. Sports developers usually bring in a couple of athletes and let them perform moves we may see on a pitch, field, or court as an individual. As video games have gotten more advanced those animations have been able to become increasingly complicated, but it was still the same process of only bringing in a couple of people to perform these moves in a vacuum.

“We always have a motion capture in an optical environment where you have, maybe one or two players at just capturing at the same time.” Sam Rivera, EA Sports’ Lead Gameplay Producer told Uproxx. “No more than three, let’s say. And then you tell them, okay, control the ball to the right then shoots to your left. And then they do it, which is good. You get good quality animation, but you don’t get the real football intensity.”

This is why what the developers at EA Sports are attempting with the upcoming FIFA 22 is so impressive. They managed to pull in 22 professional players across the world to play a genuine match and captured it all. These new captures are called “Hypermotion” and they’re supposed to change the entirety of the FIFA experience. Making a sports game is challenging, and while many of them are getting better at making it feel more realistic, the minutiae is often what fails them. That’s not to fault of the developers, because you can only work with what you’re given, but we’re finally approaching a point where the technology is allowing them to clear barriers that once boxed in what a game could be. For FIFA, this has meant reimagining what realism looks like in a soccer game, and diving deeper into the details of movement.

“So the other big part that we did with this data is train some deep neural networks to learn how players approach the ball and create animation in real-time. ” Rivera said. “So basically when you watch football and then let’s say there is a pass that is going going to bounce four meters ahead of you and you’re running to it. How do you make sure you get to the ball with the right angle with the right speed and also at the right moment with the right cadence? So if I am right footed player, and I want to hit with the right like you get a volley or whatever [then] I need to do maybe three small steps and then one longer step between the right motion to hit the ball as with as much power as possible. But if I wanted to do something else — if I wanted to control the ball based on the angle — maybe I can use my left foot. I don’t need a powerful shot. I don’t need my strong foot. So then maybe the way I position myself is different and I do other types of steps and instead of doing three smaller steps and one long one, maybe I do two long ones and one small one. So we created a neural network that learns how players in real life approach the ball…This is something that we really wanted for years because it’s not something that you can easily code.”

Just think about how much detail goes into something as simple as the way a player wants to approach the ball. To make that as realistic as possible there needs to be an incredible amount of data for the developers of FIFA to pull from. With Hypermotion they’re able to pull that data and the result of it is potentially one of the most in-depth animation systems we’re ever going to see. For a long time, it felt like sports video games had maxed out in terms of simulation, that there was no way to truly capture the feel of a match, but maybe we’re on the cusp of new technology pushing them forward yet again.

“Even five years ago,” Rivera said. “Obviously, it was already known how but just knowing the application in FIFA knowing that we will be able to go get 22 players competing against each other, put the data in a neural network and create animation real-time. I would have been shocked. And five years ago I was already doing this job basically. There’s still a lot more and I’m excited about what’s coming next. I cannot talk about details obviously, but there’s a lot of potential.”

It just goes to show that as technology grows video games are only going to get more advanced. Maybe one day the idea of three players all doing the exact same animation at the same time will be a distant memory. When that’s the case we might be able to point to Hypermotion as a catalyst of it.

Drake dropped his first full-length album since Scorpion in the early hours of Friday morning. Despite being in the works since 2019 and an original release date of January 2021 that had to get pushed back, Certified Lover Boy hit streaming services at 2 a.m., and in the hours after its release, NBA players made clear that they loves the latest project from the world’s most famous Toronto Raptors fan.

Some players were actually a bit annoyed about the timing of the release, with Donovan Mitchell and Mikal Bridges making clear they were expecting it to drop right at midnight.

While this was a pretty common sentiment among those who wanted to listen to the record right when the calendar turned to Sept. 3, there was plenty of excitement over Certified Lover Boy, and once people got to listen, NBA players were unified in thinking Drake released one of the albums of the year.

One player seemed to enjoy it so much that he stirred up a little controversy, as Trae Young antagonized the city of New York for the first time since the 2021 playoffs by asking the Twitterverse whether or not Drake has passed Jay-Z.

Young eventually made clear he was just asking as someone whose all-time favorite rapper is Hov.

Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the desire to ban abortions. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the near-total abortion ban in the Lone Star State. The state has effectively banned abortions after six weeks (without exceptions for rape or incest). To add a vigilante slant to this madness: any private citizen in Texas can now sue someone (including doctors or anyone who even gives a patient a ride to a clinic) who assists a woman in getting an abortion. Beyond all of The Handmaid’s Tale comparisons that are prone to fly at a time like this, fingers are pointing regarding who’s most responsible for allowing this to happen.

Strangely, some people would like to blame Susan Sarandon for abandoning the DNC (and publicly declaring that she doesn’t “vote with my vagina” regarding Hillary Clinton) after Bernie Sanders didn’t secure the 2016 Democratic nomination. That’s a real stretch (to blame Susan Sarandon) when, overall, the far-right’s success in shutting down most abortions in Texas is a long-brewing mess that’s founded upon structural inequities that have been allowed to fester for decades. And as it turns out, a different Susan shoulders much more realistic blame here.

That would be Sen. Susan Collins (an ostensibly moderate Republican who represents Maine), who controversially supported (as a key vote) the 2018 confirmation of Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (who cast the 5th vote this week to uphold the Texas law). Now, Maine mainstay Stephen King is calling Collins out. “Remember when Susan Collins said she was convinced that Brett Kavanaugh believed a woman’s right to choose was ‘settled law?’” the horror author tweeted. “She was wrong. Women in Texas must pay the price for her gullibility.”

He’s not wrong. Collins, like a lot of pro-choicers (but with a much bigger platform and the power to do something), has been sitting comfy and imagining that Roe v. Wade would never be at risk of being overturned. Wrong.

For the past five years, the death of Antonin Scalia has been followed up with chess moves (multiple Trump-induced ones) that kept adding to the likelihood that a major challenge to abortion rights would swing towards the pro-life end of things. The latest 5-4 vote, too, has added a lot of scrutiny of Collins’ (very) publicly stated stance that Justice Brett Kavanaugh would never vote to overturn Roe (“His views on honoring precedent would preclude attempts to do by stealth that which one has committed not to do overtly,” Collins previously said).

Well, Collins defended Kavanaugh again after he penned a telling dissent in an abortions-right case out of Louisiana. Again, Kavanaugh was one of five justices (against four) who upheld the new Texas abortion law; and Collins should now answer for contributing to the plight of many Texas women, including a disproportionate amount of women who don’t have the resources to travel out of state for an abortion.

Also very important to remember: at some abortion clinics, part of the procedure to move forward for an abortion is for an ultrasound procedure to confirm the heartbeat. That might not be possible until the 6-week mark, which is also the cutoff date for this new Texas law. It’s a frightening combination, even moreso than any scenario in a Stephen King novel.

In the “Way 2 Sexy” video, Drake lampoons pop culture’s ideals of sex appeal through the decades, transforming himself into such archetypes as a harlequin romance hero, an action movie star, and even giving himself a dad bod. Drake loves superimposing his head onto other peoples’ bodies in his videos, but this time, he actually uses this proclivity to great, hilarious effect, as the video concept ties nicely into the overall goofy vibe of the Right Said Fred sample on the beat and his, Future, and Young Thug‘s playful lyrics. There’s even a mid-video break for a fake ad for a Drake fragrance called “Wet,” which is such a perfect distillation of everything Drake represents.

The “Way 2 Sexy” video caps the triumphant rollout for Certified Lover Boy, which appears to be a success despite being pushed back over eight months from its initial projected release date in January. The album, which contains features from 21 Savage, Giveon, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Project Pat, and Travis Scott (among many, many others), has been a hot topic on Twitter as fans speculate on whether Drake takes more shots at Kanye, express confusion at some of his more questionable rhymes, and joke around about Jay-Z appearing on both Drake and his rival Kanye’s albums.

Watch Drake, Future, And Young Thug’s hilarious ‘Way 2 Sexy’ video above.

Certified Lover Boy is out now via OVO and Republic. You can stream it here.

Young Thug is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s no secret that BTS were the most successful music group in 2021. Their track “Butter” was so popular that it even passed Olivia Rodrigo’s “Driver’s License” to become the longest-running No. 1 track of the year. Thanks to their achievements, BTS will not only be included in the upcoming Guinness World Records book, but they have also landed a spot in the 2022 World Records Hall Of Fame.

Guinness had previously hinted at BTS inclusion in this year’s World Records book, but they announced this week that the K-pop group will be inducted into the Guinness World Records Hall Of Fame thanks to breaking ten world records in 2021. “I’m here with some news about everyone’s favorite Bangtan Boys, BTS,” they announced in the video. “The boys, as your probably well-aware, have loads of Guinness World Record titles, and I’m here to officially announce that they’re in the hall of fame for Guinness World Records 2022.”

Guinness added, “2021 has been another absolutely stellar year for BTS and they’ve set loads of records.” That list includes most streamed group on Spotify with 16.3 billion streams, most streamed track on Spotify in the first 24 hours for “Butter,” with 11.04 million streams, most Twitter engagements for a music group, most viewers for the premiere of a music video on YouTube for “Butter,” with 3.9 million viewers, most weeks at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Digital Song Sales chart for “Dynamite,” with 18 weeks, most streamed track on Spotify in first 24 hours for “Butter,” most viewed YouTube music video in 24 hours for “Butter,” with 108,200,000 views, most tickets sold for a livestreamed concert with 756,000 tickets sold, most followed music group on Instagram with 48.7 million, and most Nickelodeon Kids Choice awards won by a music group with five awards.

Watch Guinness announce BTS’ 2022 Hall Of Fame inclusion in a video above.

Austin-based label Keeled Scales have announced a new compilation, arriving in October, celebrating and benefiting Athens, Georgia nonprofit Nuçi’s Space, a mental health resource center for musicians that also provides low-cost practice spaces and gear rentals.

Among the participants are (in alphabetical order): Anika Pyle, Anjimile, Annie Hart, Bachelor, Big Thief’s Buck Meek, Cassandra Jenkins, Eve Owen, Flock Of Dimes, Fontaines D.C., Ganser, Good Looks, Julia Lucille, Kate Bollinger, Katy Kirby, Lunar Vacation, Maple Glider, Momma, Moriah Bailey, Nana Lourdes, Night Palace, Odetta Hartman, Pylon Reenactment Society, Rae Fitzgerald, Sloping, Sylvan Esso, and Tyor, with more to be announced on September 16. According to a release, the compilation will consist of demos, live and alternate takes, radio recordings, rarities, and covers from “musicians supporting musicians.”

By pre-ordering the compilation, listeners will get access to Ganser’s contribution, “Told You So (Live @ Altered States).” Here’s what Nadia Garofalo of Ganser had to say about Nuçi’s Space: “Every musician we know, ourselves included, have struggled one way or another with mental health over these past eighteen months. Resources like Nuçi’s Space are essential to the lifeblood of the music community as a whole,”

The full Nuçi’s Space benefit compilation drops 10/1 via Keeled Scales. Pre-save it here.

Little Simz’s album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, arrived last night after a months-long rollout. That rollout included videos for “Introvert,” “Woman,” and “I Love You, I Hate You,” as well as her US television debut on The Tonight Show to perform “Woman” and her NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert debut, where she premiered the Afropop-inflected single “Point And Kill featuring London-based Nigerian artist Obongjayar. Today, along with the album, she released a groovy video for “Point And Kill” to accompany the album.

In the video, Simz takes a trip to Nigeria, her parents’ homeland, to tour the countryside, encountering a diverse cast of characters, including weightlifting macho men and church-going aunties. The video culminates in a very stylish club scene, seeing Simz and Obongjayar grooving in a small club full of people dressed in retro-chic ensembles. The overall vibe is very Queen & Slim, especially in the closing scene, which finds Simz and Obongjayar surrounded by armed police officers all pointing their guns at him as she defends him with a machete. The video ends on this ambiguous note, giving viewers plenty to ponder — much like many of Simz’s other videos.

Watch Little Simz’s “Point And Kill” video featuring Obongjayar above. You can catch Simz live at End Of The Road in Dorset this Sunday.

Sometimes I Might Be Introvert is out now via AWAL Digital Limited. You can check it out here.

September is here, and the 2021-22 NBA season technically begins this month. Granted, that “beginning” is simply the start of training camp, but the offseason is short and there is a lot to discuss. There is great attention to be paid to the top of the league but, on a team-by-team basis, season win totals are of considerable intrigue for both casual and die-hard observers.

In this space, we’ll take a glance at the Northwest Division, with five interesting situations to monitor. For clarity, each line below comes from the good folks at DraftKings, and they will arrive in alphabetical order.

Denver Nuggets Over 47.5

The Nuggets won at a 54-win pace a year ago, with Nikola Jokic zooming to the MVP award. The biggest factor in this number being considerably lower is the absence of Jamal Murray, who played 48 games last season. That injury obviously hurts Denver, but Jokic is fantastic, the Nuggets get a full season of Aaron Gordon, and players like Michael Porter Jr. could be in line for a jump. This isn’t a slam dunk over without Murray, but Jokic is reliable and this is a high-floor team.

Minnesota Timberwolves Over 34.5

Minnesota was the equivalent of a 26-win team last season. If you go by their offseason activity, it would seem (quite) odd to project at least a nine-win uptick, but this Over is based on internal improvement and a coaching upgrade. Chris Finch did a quality job, albeit in a small sample, when he took over, and the Wolves should see obvious growth from Anthony Edwards. Then, Karl-Anthony Towns and D’Angelo Russell combined to play only 92 games, and Malik Beasley played only half the season in his own right. Patrick Beverley will help too and, while I wouldn’t be running to bet this, 35 wins seems reasonable.

Oklahoma City Thunder Under 23.5

If the Thunder really put their foot on the gas, they’d probably beat this number. There is nothing to indicate that will happen. OKC is still in full-blown rebuilding mode and, with the exception of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, there isn’t a lot to latch onto at this stage. The Thunder will probably let Josh Giddey play through some mistakes on the floor and, while his upside is high in the future, it could be ugly this season. This feels like a team that will be on pace for 25+ wins until February, and then a long lull could be in the offing.

Portland Trail Blazers Under 44.5

Warning: Stay away. With full confidence that Damian Lillard would be on the team all season, this would be an Over lean, and the number would probably be higher to boot. Without that assurance, the Blazers are really a stay-away. Portland routinely outperformed expectations, at least in the regular season, under Terry Stotts, but there is a new era in place with Chauncey Billups. The addition of Larry Nance Jr. was a sneakily positive one, but if you made me choose, the potential volatility would make me pessimistic.

Utah Jazz Over 51.5

The bookmakers didn’t make it easy on Utah backers with a pretty lofty number, but it’s not quite high enough. Even if you don’t think the Jazz will fully repeat last season, they won at a 59-win pace and their point differential was that of a 62-63 win team. Utah is built beautifully for the regular season, and the swap of Derrick Favors for Rudy Gay may even be a positive. Throw in the fact that both Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley missed some time last season, and I can’t lean anywhere but Over. Don’t let the playoff struggles bother you when it comes to a regular season projection.

Ivan Reitman’s Stripes recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with a limited run in select theaters, which was my initial excuse for a rewatch, though it turned out to be relevant in other ways.

Admittedly, Stripes isn’t a movie that I’ve thought about much in the four decades since its release. It’s been eclipsed in the cultural memory even by its SNL-vehicle peers of the same era — Animal House (1978), Caddyshack (1980), Blues Brothers (1980) National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), and Ghostbusters (1984). Stripes existed more for me as a “boob movie” than a comedy, joining Revenge Of The Nerds on the list of “VHS tapes to put on when the parents were distracted” and emblematic of an era when comedy and full frontal nudity were strangely inextricable (almost certainly the legacy of the National Lampoon, the dominant comedic force of the era).

Under the circumstances, rewatching Stripes in 2021 is at least partly an anthropological endeavor. Certainly, it’s a classic boob movie for boys of a certain era. But is it more than a boob movie?

Bill Murray and Harold Ramis headlined in an era before Bill Murray had fully emerged as a movie star. Ghostbusters was probably the turning point, with Murray fully coming into his own in the late 80s/early 90s, with the string of Scrooged (1988), What About Bob? (1991), and Groundhog Day (1993). Before that, his cinematic output was decidedly mixed, with movies like Meatballs in 1978 (barely watchable today) and Where The Buffalo Roam in 1980, Murray’s weird, bad take on the Hunter S. Thompson mythos that probably came out a decade too early.

In Stripes, Murray was famous, but still more of a “star in the making.” Initially, it wasn’t even written as a Murray vehicle. According to Reitman, the script for Stripes began as an idea for “Cheech and Chong Join The Army.” Reitman sold it as such, but Cheech and Chong themselves ended up wanting too much creative control. The project was rejiggered for Murray and Ramis, who don’t especially seem like weed guys, though the finished product retains in many ways the feel of a loosey-goosey stoner comedy. It’s of a piece with boomer comedy touchstones like Animal House and Caddyshack — whether you find them subversively anarchic or just sort of half-assed is sort of in the eye of the beholder. For me it’s a bit of both; sometimes it feels like they were onto something, other times it just feels like they were just on something.

Stripes stars Murray and Ramis as John and Russell, two buddies living in New York City, working as a cab driver and an English-as-a-second-language teacher, respectively. Murray’s model girlfriend, played by Roberta Leighton, shows up just long enough to walk around their apartment topless before breaking up with John on account of he’s too much of an incorrigible slacker. It is, yes, part of a pattern of women being treated as largely ornamental in Stripes. It’s mostly just a product of its time, though arguably much lower on the problematic scale than, say Revenge Of The Nerds (the pseudo rape scene) or even American Pie (filming the exchange student changing for laffs).

“It’s just not that cute anymore,” John’s girlfriend tells him, about his slacker ways.

“…It’s a little cute,” John teases.

Carefully maintained insouciance has been Bill Murray’s calling card basically since the beginning of his career, but he was still limited as an actor at this stage. It wasn’t until his slightly melancholy interior began to seep through his blasé exterior and humanized the whole that he developed the range we know and love him for now. Early on, and especially here, Murray’s aloofness is more like an impenetrable shell. Comedically-speaking, it mostly works, vaguely arrogant as it is, but it’s hard not to identify with the people in the story who get fed up with John’s shit. 40 years have sapped the “lovable asshole” character of much of its novelty value.

John decides to join the army on a whim, figuring it’s the only way to give his life some direction (and maybe get chicks in the process). He convinces his pal Russell to go along with it. Russell’s motivation here is a little thin, but I suppose the idea is that he can’t resist his old aloof pal, John. Anyway, no need belaboring an obvious contrivance. There’s a brief, funny scene at the army recruitment office, where the recruiter asks whether John and Russell are homosexuals.

JOHN: “You mean, like, flaming?”

RUSSELL: “No, we’re not homosexual — but we’re willing to learn.”

JOHN: “Yeah, would they send us someplace special?”

Credit to Stripes for writing a gay joke that’s still funny and relatively unproblematic 40 years later.

After that, John and Russell are off to basic training, joining a rag-tag group of enlistees that includes John Candy as “Ox” (the fat guy) and Conrad Dunn as Francis, who demands to be called Psycho. “Anyone calls me Francis, I’ll kill ya,” he tells the group. Which sets up arguably Stripes‘ most enduring line: “Lighten up, Francis.”

It’s hard to tell whether the Army was drastically different in 1981 or if Reitman and Murray were just applying what they’d learned on Meatballs, but Stripes‘ depiction of the Army is a lot like a glorified Summer camp, complete with gettin-to-know-you games played in a circle. It’s hard to imagine R. Lee Ermey standing for this.

John and Russell join what is, essentially, the Bad News Bears of Army units. Sergeant Hulka, played by veteran western character actor Warren Oates, is the acting standout, giving weird depth to what could easily have been the stereotypical “hardass drill sergeant” character (see: Ermey, R. Lee). Yet like John’s girlfriend, you end up weirdly identifying with Hulka, or at least bits of him, trapped as he is between his impenetrably insouciant new recruits and a sexually deviant commanding officer, played by John Larroquette. Larroquette’s Captain Stillman wears an ascot like a dandy while spying on women showering through a telescope (this scene, along with the later mud wrestling interlude, being most of the reason Stripes was “a boob movie”). Not enough “effeminate, megalomaniacal general” characters in comedy these days, I always say.

Eventually, Larroquette’s character inadvertently takes out Oates’ with an errant artillery shell, leaving the Bad News Bombardiers without a leader a week before the big drilling parade. Returning to the barracks after making love to some sexy MPs, played by Sean Young and PJ Soles, John and Russell find their compadres dejected and ready to quit. He gives them a Blutarsky-esque pump up speech — “We’re the US Army! We’ve been kicking ass for 200 years! We’re 10 and 1!” — and they stay up all night practicing. They show up late to the next day’s parade, not in dress uniforms, but stepping and marching and chanting with the panache and unity of a fraternity at a traditionally black university. Stripes clearly came from the Blues Brothers era, when white guys simply singing or dancing was its own joke, no funny lyrics or context required. For me, it doesn’t quite land as a joke or a believable situation, but it’s pleasant enough.

The team’s surprisingly good performance at the gun dancing competition wins them a trip to Italy, to debut the new “EM-50 urban assault vehicle” (basically an armored RV) at a military trade show. They go AWOL touring Europe with their girlfriends and end up having to rescue their unit from Czechoslovakia. Just as with Full Metal Jacket, Stripes loses a lot of steam after basic training. Perhaps it’s just an eternal truth, that the idea of joining the military is much more intriguing than actually being in the military. Just ask anyone in a patriotic t-shirt about the time they almost served.

Most of the value of Stripes in 2021 is what an anachronism it is. Not just for the bare breasts and white guys singing, but for the depiction of American Empire at arguably its greatest period of calm in 100 years. We had pulled out of Vietnam years earlier and Ronald Reagan, the famous Cold War revivalist, had only been president for about six months. The idea of Czechoslovakia as “enemy territory” is funny now, but even the movie itself acknowledges the silliness of it (“Russell, come on, it’s Czechoslovakia,” John says after Russell suggests rescuing the unit). The movie is necessarily patriotic in certain ways, its protagonists being Army recruits who have to “save the day” after all. In fact, it was even made with the full cooperation of the US Army, and shot on an actual Army base, which is amazing to think about in and of itself.

Yet even Stripes‘ patriotism is heavily tongue-in-cheek. John’s remark about “we’re 10 and one!” in the middle of his pump-up speech, for example. The whole movie is suffused with the idea that the military is this weird relic of olden times. “What does the military do now, anyway? March around twirling their guns and going to glorified car shows? Join the Army? Gosh, what a silly idea!”

As Reitman told an Army reporter earlier this year: “I felt like it was time for another service comedy. We were in peaceful times, it was post-Vietnam, and I thought it would great to have some comedic look at the Army that would not be another protest movie. Those had been a staple of Hollywood.”

Though it’s certainly not “a protest movie,” as Reitman puts it, Stripes still feels subversive to modern eyes, which probably says more about the social climate in which it was created than the creators’ intentions.

As someone who spent a decent portion of my formative years in the post 9/11 years, when even your high school marching band t-shirt probably had an American flag on the back, it’s refreshing, almost shocking, to see the military not treated with that kind of post-W Bush-era reflexive deference. Even before 9/11, I remember a guy loudly saying “that’s treason!” at the screen while his girlfriend tried to shush him during the scene in Saving Private Ryan in which the weenie translator frees his German prisoner. That was in 1998. Even in 1994’s In The Army Now, which shares the same basic slackers-join-the-Army blueprint as Stripes, and was released in the relative lull between Gulf Wars, the comedic emphasis was more on Pauly Shore’s fish-out-of-water persona. Where Stripes is about two average-ish Joes joining the military, In The Army Now is about a wacky weirdo joining the military. John and Russell don’t really change that much, mostly they change the military.

Stripes is weirdly refreshing in this way, not because I desperately needed to see the military disrespected, it’s just that only a vanishingly small portion of my life was ever spent with the US not actively engaged in a war, proxy war, or pseudo war somewhere. And with the advent of the all-volunteer Army, that fake deference is mostly all we ask of our citizenry in times of conflict. (One joke in Stripes is that the unit’s dumb guy joined up because “I was going to get drafted anyway,” not realizing that there wasn’t a draft anymore).

The volume was turned way down on world affairs in Stripes. Rewatching it 40 years later, it’s animated not so much by nostalgia for movies that they don’t make like this anymore, but by a yearning for a world that didn’t seem so relentlessly serious and apocalyptic.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

It’s been almost exactly three years since Nicki Minaj told her fans she would be retiring from music to focus on starting a family. While Nicki’s retirement wasn’t exactly permanent, the rapper still took time off of music to focus on having her first child with her husband Kenneth Petty. Ever since, rapper has clearly been loving watching her baby reach all of his developmental milestones, like his first-ever words.

Nicki has yet to tell her fans what her baby’s real name is, but she affectionately refers to him as “Papa Bear.” The rapper took to Instagram to give some updates about the 11-month-old, revealing that he just said some of his first words. Thankfully, the whole thing was caught on camera — and it’s about as adorable as it gets.

The video shows Papa Bear sitting on Nicki’s lap next to his father. Nicki keeps coaxing Papa Bear to speak, waving his arms at the camera. The baby then clearly says the word, “Hi,” which sends Nicki over the moon as she gasps in excitement.

In other Nicki news, the rapper briefly appears on a track from Drake’s anticipated Certified Lover Boy album. Nicki’s voice sample is featured on the track “Papi’s Home,” a collaboration fans had been looking forward to since Nicki hinted that Drake was in her studio a few months ago.