Month: September 2021

Upvoted, an online publication from Reddit featuring the most compelling content from their site, recently republished this “classic” piece originally posted around 2011. The beautiful piece of writing was done by a commenter in response to a poster asking for advice on grief.

The original post simply read: “My friend just died. I don’t know what to do.”

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Here was redditor GSnow‘s moving advice:

“Alright, here goes. I’m old. What that means is that I’ve survived (so far) and a lot of people I’ve known and loved did not. I’ve lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, mom, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, neighbors, and a host of other folks. I have no children, and I can’t imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here’s my two cents.

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. I never did. I don’t want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don’t want it to “not matter”. I don’t want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can’t see.

As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

Here’s the original post:

Great impressionists are able to transform into their subjects after finding a unique hook that brings them into the character. Recently, we shared how master impressionist and “SNL” alum Dana Carvey was able to figure out Joe Biden by imagining him at a town hall rally.

Dana Carvey’s Biden is A+. He’s so cool. https://t.co/0f0gmYC85Y

— rob delaney (@robdelaney)
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Our favorite Trump impersonator James Austin Johnson says he was able to dial in his version of the former president after mimicking his rambling rally performances.

PRES TRUMP TODAY IN CALIFORNIA: ” ‘WEIRD AL’ WAS VERY MEAN TO MR. COOLIO!! DIDN’T ASK FOR RIGHTS. NOT VERY NICE!” https://t.co/kgF5UFYRLP

— James Austin Johnson (@shrimpJAJ)
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Mary Elizabeth Kelly has earned over 14 million views on TikTok for mastering over a dozen impersonations of popular actors and actresses by figuring out their mouth movements. She calls this form of impersonating people “mouth acting.”

Kelly is an actress who’s appeared on “Master of None” and “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”

It all started when she was watching “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“I’m a huge film and TV watcher and am always drawn to the mouth movements and idiosyncrasies of actors for my own study and for fun,” she told the Shropshire Star. “I think I was watching ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ and noticed Johnny Depp’s mouth movements were so much a part of his performance and after that I started noticing it in other actors and made a list.

“I love impersonating other actors and doing accents and such, so I thought it’d be fun to show all the actors who act with their mouths!” she added.

This led to a video of her mouth acting Jennifer Coolidge, Emma Stone, and Drew Barrymore that received over 1.2 million plays on Twitter.

“Mouth acting”. This is amazing https://t.co/VdbyWHLE8k

— Declan Cashin (@Tweet_Dec)
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What it would look like if Jennifer Garner, Nicole Kidman, and Mark Ruffalo were stuck in traffic?

What would happen if Winona Ryder, Emma Stone, and Mandy Moore starred in their own cooking shows?

On “Star Wars” Day she ran through a list of characters from the films and proved she does a seriously funny Mark Hamill.

What do your favorite stars look like ordering coffee?

Before she made a name for herself through mouth acting, she did a video showing her amazing ability to do accents.

Nearly two years after his death, three Aurora, Colorado police officers and two paramedics have been indicted by a grand jury and will face criminal charges for the killing of 23-year-old Elijah McClain. According to The Denver Post, the five individuals face charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for their roles in violently detaining McClain and injecting him with the sedative ketamine, leading to his death.

McClain’s killing rocked the nation in the midst of the biggest racial justice movement the U.S. has seen since the Civil Rights era. His life mattered, and his death was a tragic example of the injustice of police brutality. The officers were originally cleared of all wrongdoing, so this grand jury indictment is one step toward accountability.

Read our story published on 6.24.20, contrasting Elijah McClain’s gentle life with his unnecessarily brutal death, below.

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Elijah McClain was a massage therapist who played violin for shelter kittens on his lunch break in his hometown of Aurora, Colorado, because he thought the animals were lonely. If that detail alone doesn’t conjure up a picture of a gentle soul, Colorado Music described McClain as a young man who was “quirky, a pacifist, a vegetarian, enjoyed running, and known to put a smile on everyone’s face.”

According to The Cut, McClain’s sister says he sometimes wore a ski/runner’s mask because he was anemic and would often get cold. One night last August, he was walking home from the convenience store with his mask on when the police approached him, responding to a call about “a suspicious man” in the area. What ensued was “a struggle” according to police, which was only partially caught on body camera, as all of the officers’ body cameras allegedly fell off during the incident.

McClain was held in a carotid hold, a controversial restraint technique banned in some cities for its potential danger, and was also given a shot of ketamine by paramedics. He had a heart attack on the way to the hospital and died there three days later, after having been declared brain dead.

He was unarmed. He was only 23. And his last words as the officers held him down are heartbreaking.

Unknown

The full body camera footage of the entire evening’s events was posted on YouTube by the Aurora Police Department in November, three months after McClain’s death. (Discretion is advised.)

Body Worn Camera Regarding the In-Custody Death of Elijah McClainwww.youtube.com

After the body camera footage was released, according to the Sentinel, District Attorney Dave Young sent a letter to Aurora police chief Nick Metz stating, “Based on the investigation presented and the applicable Colorado law, there is no reasonable likelihood of success of proving any state crimes beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Therefore, no state criminal charges will be filed as a result of this incident.”

The officers were cleared of all wrongdoing.

However, the public outcry over the case has grown into a tsunami of calls for accountability. More than 2.2 million people have signed a Change.org petition calling for a more in-depth investigation into McClain’s death.

On June 9, City Manager Jim Twombly agreed to an independent investigation of McClain’s death. But even that investigation has hit snags, as the initial attorney commissioned to lead the investigation was a former police officer who specialized in defending police departments in liability cases.

“Unfortunately, an attorney with a long career in law enforcement that specializes in defending municipal police departments from liability claims doesn’t qualify, in our minds, as a neutral review,” the Aurora city council said in a statement.

Some policy changes have taken effect in Aurora this month. According to CBS Local in Denver, Interim Police Chief Vanessa Wilson has announced that officers can no longer use the carotid hold, they must give warnings before shooting, must intervene if they see an offer using excessive force, and relieve other officers when a use-of-force incident occurs. They will also be trained to not assume a person is suspicious based off of a 911 call.

Victims of police brutality don’t need to be angels. What’s wrong is wrong. But when a demonstrably tender and sweet soul like Elijah McClain is killed from a police encounter and no wrongdoing is found, it’s long past time to examine the rules that govern the entire system. No one in their right mind can say this young man shouldn’t be alive right now, playing violin for lonely kittens on his lunch hour.

The Grit N’ Grind era of Grizzlies basketball was the high point of the franchise’s history, as Memphis became a perennial playoff team and a thorn in the side of just about every opponent they faced in the postseason, win or lose. The Grizzlies were led by a quartet of players that defined that era, with Marc Gasol and Mike Conley as the stars, but equally important in creating a culture as well as producing on the court were Tony Allen and Zach Randolph.

Those two were the tone-setters, with Allen providing some of the best perimeter defense the NBA’s seen in the last two decades, and Randolph being the OG of the team, who in his prime was a walking double-double. It has been long acknowledged that those two will eventually see their jersey numbers hanging in the rafters of the FedEx Forum one day, but it’s been awhile since that was initially announced back in 2017.

Four-plus years later, that will happen in actuality as the team announced on Wednesday that on December 11 (against Houston) Zach Randolph’s No. 50 will go up in the rafters, followed by Tony Allen’s No. 9 on January 28 (against Utah and old friend Mike Conley).

It’s a fitting tribute to a pair of Memphis legends and they will surely be greeted with an overwhelming amount of love from the Grizzlies faithful on these two nights. To have Allen’s jersey retired with Conley in town will be very cool, as one day Conley and Gasol’s numbers will surely join them as the Core Four from the Grit N’ Grind era deservedly will be remembered forever for pushing the Grizzlies franchise to new heights.

NBC’s latest live musical production is turning into an Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt reunion thanks to the recent addition of Jane Krakowski. The actress joins her Kimmy Schmidt co-star Tituss Burgess in Annie Live!, a musical special that’s set to premiere in early December. The pair will join Taraji P. Henson as Miss Hannigan, Harry Connick Jr. as Daddy Warbucks, Nicole Scherzinger as Grace, and Celina Smith who recently joined the cast as Annie, according to Deadline:

As the larger-than-life Lily St. Regis, Krakowski teams up with Burgess’ conniving Rooster Hannigan as a greedy duo that schemes to abduct Annie and pose as her parents to land a big reward. The role of Lily was created on Broadway in 1977 by Barbara Erwin and portrayed in the 1982 film version by Bernadette Peters.

Krakowski and Burgess reunited last year for a choose your own adventure-style Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt interactive special that couldn’t have come at a better time as the world descended into the early throes of the pandemic.

“The timing clearly was not planned, but when I actually tried out the technology of this special for the first time, I did feel that,” Krakowski told Uproxx. “This colorful candyland of escapism — it feels lovely to revisit these characters, and what a time.”

Unfortunately, Annie Live! will not be interactive, but if you wait to watch it on streaming, you can fast forward through “Tomorrow” so it’s not stuck in your head. That’s kinda like choosing your own adventure.

Annie Live! premieres December 2 on NBC.

(Via Deadline)

Rico Nasty‘s debut album Nightmare Vacation is less than a year old, but lately, it feels as though she’s already building up to its inevitable follow-up. Within the last two months, she’s released a pair of polished singles, “Magic” and “Buss,” and just weeks after releasing the video for the former, she’s already back with a new video for “Buss.”

The video brings plenty of visual flair to its rather plain concept, embellishing Rico’s frantic performances with sizzling neon lights and sending bright bolts of vibrantly colored electricity shooting across the screen and around Rico’s body. Whatever it is she happens to be working toward, it would appear to line up with the version of Rico first introduced on her candy-coated Sugar Trap mixtapes, returning to the synth-heavy, SoundCloud-friendly production style and cocky, straightforward raps she used to cross over in the first place — as opposed to the more experimental, hyperpop-laced material on her album.

In the meantime, she’s been semi-enjoying the “bittersweet” moments of motherhood, such as sending her five-year-old off to kindergarten, and contributing to her friend IDK’s No Label Academy at Harvard University.

Watch Rico Nasty’s “Buss” video above.

Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The NBA has been rolling out its policies regarding vaccinations against COVID-19 ahead of the 2021-22 campaign. The most prominent move the league has made has been making the folks who interact with players and officials — coaches, executives, stadium staffers, etc. — get the vaccine. While players are not included due to that being something the league needs to negotiate with the union, the NBA came up with something of a workaround.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, players who refuse the vaccine and do not have a medical or religious exemption will not be allowed to play in home games or go to their facilities for team activities in markets where local rules will prevent them from doing so. Charania specifically pointed out the New York teams and the Golden State Warriors, both of which are based in places that have strict COVID-19 mandates.

This doesn’t mean that unvaccinated players are done for the season. Charania noted this is only for those teams when they play home games, but does not apply to players on those teams going on the road or road teams visiting those cities.

Perhaps the league will mandate the vaccine instead of relying on home cities laying out guidelines that are not particularly broad. If you are an NBA player in any of these markets and you wanna play this season, but you have not yet gotten vaccinated against the novel coronavirus, click here for information on how you can change that.

The hits (to the nuts) keep coming.

Paramount Pictures has pushed back the release dates for two already-delayed Tom Cruise movies, Top Gun: Maverick and Mission: Impossible 7, due to the pandemic. The Top Gun sequel moves from November 19, 2021, to May 27, 2022, while the seventh installment in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which was supposed to come out on that May 27th, will now be released on September 30, 2022. It gets worse:

The studio has also pushed back Jackass Forever, which moves to Feb. 4, 2022, departing an Oct. 22, 2021 date.

The Jackass movies are some of my favorite theater experiences in my life, so while I understand the reason for the delay (wear a mask and get vaccinated, folks), me and the boys are sad that we have to wait another four months to watch Johnny Knoxville get speared by a bull. Especially with Venom: Let There Be Carnage delayed, too.

While studios such as Warner Bros. and Disney have experimented with putting tentpoles on streaming services and in theaters day-and-date, Paramount has kept many of its big titles, such as A Quiet Place Part II, for theatrical only. It did sell off The Tomorrow War to Amazon and put Mark Wahlberg’s Infinite on Paramount+, but it has been expected that Top Gun and Mission would remain theatrical only, as Cruise is a strong proponent of the theatrical experience and because of the hefty budgets of these movies.

The one positive from all this: you can take your sweetie to Jackass Forever on Valentine’s Day.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

In 2005, perhaps no song was more ubiquitous and earthshaking than Mike Jones’ “Still Tippin’.” The track, which was the lead single from Jones’ album Who Is Mike Jones?, constituted not only most of America’s introduction to the boisterous Houston rapper but also to the signature “chopped and screwed” sound first popularized in H-Town rap. Produced by Salih Williams over a sample of Gioachino Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” the hypnotic loop took over, launching Jones, guest rappers Slim Thug and Paul Wall, and Houston hip-hop to national recognition.

But our React Like You Know panel, which consists mostly of artists in their 20s like BIA, Blxst, BlueBucksClan, Blueface, and Houston native Erica Banks, might not remember all that. Certainly, it’s plenty of their first time watching the Dr. Teeth-directed video, as they marvel at the low-fi visual effects, country-fried concept, and the fact that, upon testing, the phone number that Jones rhymes in the song’s lyrics still works. A marketing revolution in its time, the phone number connected callers to a recorded voice message from Jones himself, which he’s astonishingly kept going for the 15 years since the song’s explosive popularity.

Watch the newest episode of React Like You Know above.

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

Twitter officially launched its new Super Follows feature on Wednesday, and predictably, it’s getting roasted on Twitter. Announced earlier in the year, the new feature will allow users to charge their followers a monthly subscription fee for access to exclusive tweets. However, the feature is not open to everybody, and naturally, Twitter will be taking a cut. Via Variety:

Users will be given 97% of the revenue generated from the monetized features after in-app purchase fees. However, once an individual user makes $50,000 in lifetime earnings from Twitter, the company will take 20%. To become eligible for the Super Follows waitlist, a user needs to have at least 10,000 followers, be 18 years old and have tweeted 25 times in the last 30 days.

So far, the reaction to Super Follows has been not great. The official Super Follows account is getting pelted with insults comparing the feature to OnlyFans but for Twitter as users scoff at the idea of paying for tweets.

According to Variety, “iOS users in the U.S. and Canada can Super Follow select accounts starting Wednesday, and the feature will roll out globally in the next few weeks,” but it’ll be interesting to see if users actually start plunking down for tweets or the reactions are a sign that your average Twitter user just don’t think that bird is ready to fly.

Get it?

Because of the logo.

It’s a very subtle joke.

(Via Variety)