Month: September 2021

Chicago rising star Polo G is gearing up to embark on his first-ever headlining tour for his No. 1 album Hall Of Fame next month, announcing the tour dates today. It’ll also be his first tour in two years and his first since achieving the aforementioned benchmark.

In a press release for the tour, Polo said, “I’m excited to head back out on the road and perform all of these songs for my fans for the first time. Die A Legend tour was big but this will be even bigger.” The Chicago rapper was unable to tour his second album due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Songs from Hall Of Fame include “Rapstar,” “Gang Gang,” “Painting Pictures,” “So Real,” “Party Lyfe,” “Toxic,” and “Black Hearted.”

The tour’s venues will determine safety protocols and tickets will go on sale Wednesday, September 29 at 10 am local times. You can purchase them here. The tour’s organizers encourage fans to check out their venue’s respective safety protocols and local regulations. You can check out the tour dates below.

10/8 — Cincinnati, OH @ Ovation
10/9 — Columbus, OH @ Express Live
10/15 — Norfolk, VA @ ODU Homecoming
11/23 — San Francisco, CA @ Warfield
11/28 — Los Angeles, CA @ Novo
11/30 — Denver, CO @ Mission
12/2 — Minneapolis, MN @ The Armory
12/3 — Chicago, IL @ Aragon Ballroom
12/6 — Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre
12/9 — Washington, DC @ Echostage
12/17– Jacksonville, FL @ Daily’s place
12/18 — Tampa, FL @ MFCU Amphitheatre
12/19 — Atlanta, GA @ The Roxy

Injuries killed the Los Angeles Lakers last season. Beyond anything else that happened down the roster, a hobbled LeBron James and an injured Anthony Davis were going to be a nearly impossible hurdle to overcome. As such, the team was bounced in the first round of the postseason, and the front office got to work. L.A. now has a nearly brand new roster, with only James, Davis, and Talen Horton-Tucker as holdovers from last season. Inbound are a collection of veterans and the occasional gamble on a youngster, all of whom are expected to help LeBron and the Lakers achieve the bar that is set for them every single year: winning a Larry O’Brien trophy.

Roster:

Carmelo Anthony
Trevor Ariza
Joel Ayayi (two-way)
Kent Bazemore
Anthony Davis
Wayne Ellington
Talen Horton-Tucker
Dwight Howard
LeBron James
DeAndre Jordan
Malik Monk
Kendrick Nunn
Austin Reaves (two-way)
Rajon Rondo
Russell Westbrook

Projected Vegas Win Total: 51.5

Biggest Addition: Russell Westbrook

Hey, Russell Westbrook’s here now! The Lakers are now his fourth team in four seasons. Westbrook is the weird player who is here to win a ring, but is not necessarily ring chasing. It is possible this fit is a bit funky — scroll down a little for more! — but the thought of him in the open court alongside the team’s heavy hitters is legitimately thrilling. Can he help in the halfcourt? Can he defend at all? Will he defend at all? Who knows! At the very least, it’ll be interesting.

Biggest Loss: Kyle Kuzma

No, Kuzma is not an All-Star or anything like that. But the young forward had carved out a niche in which he’d do anything the team asked, and usually, he’d do it pretty well. Kuzma turned into a nice shooter, a reliable defensive option, and someone who was willing to embrace being a complimentary piece alongside LeBron James and Anthony Davis during the Lakers title run. He isn’t a top-50 player or anything, but there is value in having a guy who did the stuff Kuzma did, and L.A. will miss it.

Biggest Question: [gestures at Russ, LeBron, and AD] So, is this gonna work?

The belief for years has been that you need to surround LeBron James with shooting. He gets the ball, he does stuff, he finds open dudes, they hit shots. Now, they have Russell Westbrook here, who, uh, needs the ball and finds open dudes who hits shots. Westbrook is also not a particularly good shooter, nor has he ever been. And then there’s Anthony Davis, whose shooting goes through streaks and is not going to be put in a stretch big man role or anything like that, as that is not the best use of his skill set. They certainly answered the shooting concerns with other signings this offseason, as Anthony, Ellington, Monk, Nunn, and Bazemore all bring spacing, but the Westbrook-LeBron fit remains a real question.

Frank Vogel has an interesting challenge ahead of him, particularly if this partnership shows signs of struggles in the playoffs. The good news for the Lakers is that guys tend to just end up making sense next to James most of the time, so it’s not hard to see a way this ends up figuring itself out.

What Makes This Season A Success: A championship. It’s the Lakers, a team defined by rings, and they have LeBron James, a player defined by rings. The bar is a championship and that is what they have to clear every single year.

What Makes This Season A Failure: See above! Well, this one was easy, eh?

Rihanna’s third-annual Savage X Fenty Show is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video featuring performances from BIA, Nas, and Normani and appearances from Adriana Lima, Bella Poarch, Gigi Hadid, and Erykah Badu. The latter expressed her appreciation for being included by coming bearing a gift for her gracious host: A bottle of her infamous Badu Pussy perfume, which she supposedly formulated by burning pairs of her underwear. It seems like there could be a mutually beneficial arrangement in there somewhere, right? Erykah posted a photo to Instagram posing with Rihanna and the perfume backstage.

“Thanks RiRi,” the caption reads. “I had a ball at your @savagexfenty show. Always cool to spend a lil love time with a fellow visionary Pisces mind. Enjoy the scents. I like your hustle.”

Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 became available for streaming on Friday, September 24 and also drew controversy on Twitter for some of the styles represented — something that’s becoming something of a trend for the show in its three years. The second show was criticized for using a Muslim worship song, prompting Rihanna to write on her Instagram Story: “We understand that we have hurt many of our Muslim brothers and sisters, and I’m incredibly disheartened by this!… Moving forward we will make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”

On Friday, The View set off a flurry of headlines after co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro received positive COVID test results live on the air, moments before Vice President Kamala Harris was to appear on the show. It was understandably a calamitous scene as Hostin and Navarro were ordered to immediately leave the set while Joy Behar and the producers scrambled to kill time now that Harris’ interview was obviously going to be delayed if not scuttled altogether.

Since then, both Hostin and Navarro received several negative test results, but by that point the damage had been done. The View tackled the elephant in the room first thing Monday morning by assuring viewers that Hostin and Navarro are fine, and thanking the vice president’s staff who were extremely gracious and still arranged for Harris to be interviewed remotely. The View executive producer also apologized for the whole mess. Via Mediaite:

“We found out moments before we came back on the air, and in that moment, all I could think of was that we had to keep the hosts safe and we had to keep the vice president safe. She could not walk out no matter what,” explained producer Brian Fredrick Teta. “That led to some really awkward television that I’d like to have back if I could, but I really want to acknowledge and apologize to Sunny and Ana because, in this midst of all this chaos, they were put in this position, where they had this information put out on television, and then to make it even worse, it turned out to not be true later on.”

Despite receiving the comforting and reassuring news that they did not have COVID-19, the incident had significant fallout for both Navarro and Hostin’s personal lives. According to Deadline, Navarro revealed that she had just spent the day with Harris’ sister, brother-in-law, and niece and had to inform them of the results. “I’m Typhoid Mary and I’m going to wipe out the entire Harris family in one week,” Navarro said about the aftermath.

As for Hostin, it was an especially emotional experience as she had just attended a funeral for her in-laws who had died from COVID.

“So you could imagine how I felt, thinking I could possibly be COVID positive, and my family could experience another loss, a loss that I don’t think my husband could handle,” Hostin recalled while tearing up. “So I was relieved to say the least to find out that I was COVID negative, and I always was assured by the fact that I am fully vaccinated. And so even if I were Covid positive, I was convinced that I would likely be OK.”

If there’s a light at the end of the tunnel here, it’s that everyone on The View and the vice president’s staff are okay because the safety protocols worked. Also, Navarro absolutely wrecked Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter after he attempted to gloat about her now false diagnosis.

You gotta look for the silver linings.

(Via The View)

Zion Williamson made his annual media day appearance on Monday ahead of what will be his third season in the NBA and in New Orleans. There was plenty to talk about, from his recovery from surgery after he fractured his foot earlier this summer to reports of some discontent with the organization.

On the injury front, Williamson said he likely hurt it due to going too hard in his offseason training, but expects to be able to play when the regular season starts in mid-October.

As for the reports of his less-than-stellar relationship with David Griffin and the Pelicans, Williamson tried to diffuse the situation with some comedy. Zion was asked about the reports that Griffin tried to bond with the young star in the Bubble by playing piano for him in his room, which Williamson insisted didn’t happen, noting he wouldn’t let a “grown man come to my hotel room and play piano for me.”

That was Zion’s walk-off, leaving the room of reporters with a good laugh as he left the session, and it’s about as strong of a denial as you’ll get from a player so we can probably strike down the piano man rumors as part of the reason for discord inside the New Orleans organization. Yucking it up at media day certainly doesn’t mean everything is great, but Pelicans fans have to feel at least a touch better after today knowing Zion’s health shouldn’t be a concern long-term and that he is, at the least, putting on a happy face.

Back in July, Soccer Mommy (aka Sophie Allison) released a glitchy new song, “Rom Com 2004” as the follow-up to her 2020 album, Color Theory. Now, Allison has teamed up with UK indie-pop spark plugs Kero Kero Bonito to reimagine the song for the Adult Swim Singles series. This time, the song is called “Rom Com 2021” and is taken up a few notches, replacing Allison’s guitar-work with tinkling keys, a rapid-fire drum machine, and excitable, pitchy vocals. It’s a whole lot of fun.

“We were very excited to be invited to work on ‘Rom Com 2021,’” Kero Kero Bonito said. “Our contributions were inspired by Bridget Jones’ Diary, late summer and UK Garage vocal manipulation.”

The original, of course, was produced by BJ Burton, who is known for his work with artists like Bon Iver, Charli XCX, Chance The Rapper, and many others. Allison said of the track, “I wrote this song a while back and made a poppy demo for it. Then I told BJ to destroy it.” Next up for Soccer Mommy is a US tour, starting in late September in Cleveland, Ohio, and wrapping up in November in St. Louis, Missouri.

Check out Soccer Mommy and Kero Kero Bonito’s “Rom Com 2021” above.

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

It’s been more than a year since The Last of Us Part II came out. The game was rather divisive due to decisions in the storytelling, but it was largely seen as a success. However, the game technically did not release in its full state. While the Last of Us, and its sequel, are mainly known for single-player storytelling, the first game had a shockingly in-depth multiplayer mode.

Many fans were hoping to see multiplayer make a return in the sequel. Unfortunately, while there have always been plans to give the game multiplayer, it did not launch with that feature nor has it been patched in yet. And fans were getting a bit antsy that it may never come, which is why Sunday was a relief for fans of the Naughty Dog epic. On Sunday, the developers celebrated The Last of Us Day and included a long blog post thanking fans for their support. The post also included a hint about multiplayer: it’s in the works, and but it’s an “ambitious project.”

The Last of Us Day is also a chance to thank our incredible team inside the studio who trusted the vision and heart of this franchise and saw it through to fruition – you’re the best and the ripple effect of your efforts are leaving lasting marks around the world.

“Yeah, that’s lovely and great Naughty Dog, but what are you doing with The Last of Us right now?”

In short, we’re working on it – we see the community comments as many of you clamor for multiplayer and want updates. For now, we’ll say that we love what the team is developing and want to give them time to build out their ambitious project, we’ll reveal more when it’s ready! To that end, we’ve been busy growing our team inside the kennel since The Last of Us Part II launched and are currently in full swing of hiring for MP-related positions (hint hint), so if you or somebody you know qualifies for anything you see on our jobs page, apply!

This could be, of course, nothing. The last few years have been an extremely difficult time to develop a game, which is why such a large feature missing the cut on launch initially made sense. But historically when Naughty Dog starts getting ambitious with something it usually ends up being bigger than it was supposed to be at the start. Remember Uncharted: The Lost Legacy? What was originally supposed to be a side DLC story for Uncharted 4 ended up becoming a standalone title.

Whatever this “ambitious project” ends up becoming it will certainly be worth the time and effort the developers put into it. Even if it just ends up being standard multiplayer. Unfortunately, we likely won’t get to see the results of that anytime soon based on the wording of the blog post. But it’s nice to know we have multiplayer on the way, but let’s not get our hopes up for actually seeing it anytime soon.

It feels like just yesterday that everyone was ridiculing Tom DeLonge. The dude from Blink-182 was going to prove that aliens exist? The internet was having a field day. I reached out to DeLonge’s team around that time to see if I could speak with Tom for Uproxx, an attempt to be the one publication to actually get his side of the story on record. He understandably wasn’t entertaining press at the time.

Fast forward nearly five years, and DeLonge is finally ready to talk. During his time out of the spotlight, he wrote a few books and produced some television projects for his production company To The Stars, with a few musical releases here and there. Oh, also, he had a prevalent role in the Pentagon’s declassification of a series of videos revealing the existence of “unexplained aerial phenomena” (aka UFOs). DeLonge achieved exactly what he set out to do, proving everyone wrong in the process.

Amidst the effort to, you know, shift the very concept of life on earth as we know it (which he refers to simply as “the government stuff”), DeLonge was piecing together a new album with his band Angels & Airwaves. “I can’t seem to quit music,” DeLonge told me over Zoom in between hectic tour rehearsals. “I don’t know what it is. I just… I’m a musician and you don’t stop. It’s like who I am, it’s what I do. And regardless of the circumstance, I’m always going to go back to the guitar.”

The resulting effort Lifeforms is finally here, the band’s first full-length album in six years. The project serves as a companion piece to DeLonge’s forthcoming directorial film debut Monsters Of California, which will also feature a soundtrack from Angels & Airwaves. Lifeforms exists as a document of and homage to DeLonge’s entire musical life, echoing his biggest inspirations and even his own discography. “We have a song called ‘Spellbound,’ it’s all electronic for the most part, because of my love of Depeche Mode,” he explained. “‘Automatic’ was like, ‘here’s the song showing you how much I love The Cure.’ I’m being very intentional now. It was more fun to do that specifically on this record.” DeLonge knows how to write a hook, and Lifeforms is an impressive return for Angels & Airwaves that is certainly not lacking in moments that will get your head bobbing.

To celebrate the album, I spoke with DeLonge about inspirations and themes of Lifeforms, which morphed naturally into a conversation of parallel universes and flat time. Our below conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

How does it feel to be getting back to touring, given everything that’s happened over the last 18 months?

It’s good. It’s a little frustrating because the pandemic is still wreaking havoc on the entertainment industry and people don’t really know what to do. Should they get a vaccine? Should they not? It’s just difficult, but I still think life needs to go on regardless. So I’m excited to get out there and help it go on.

The last few years, you’ve been working on a lot of non-music related projects, most notably getting those UFO videos declassified by the Pentagon. With all those other things going on to keep you occupied, what made you want to make another Angels & Airwaves record?

The government stuff was a sidetrack situation because I was doing what I was planning on doing the whole time, which was developing these things for the album. And then one of the stories I wanted to discuss just ended up becoming something much greater than I thought it would be. I just took the chance to just jump in headfirst and because I realized, “oh my God, this is something that’s going to change the world.”

I read that when you were putting this album together, you placed a big emphasis on guitars. In the grand scheme of everything that goes into making a record, why were the guitar parts such a specific focus for you?

I tend to look at art as progressive and cyclical. I was looking at the way music is right now it’s very pop and electronic. Just catchy songs and people creating memes that seems to be missing an element of soul and depth, which is what rock and roll provides. Rock and roll is not about being pop or popular. So our job in rock and roll is to be super authentic and put out a point of view that people can relate to or causes them to think differently, hopefully in a positive way.

I just felt like music was missing that. So being able to do something more grounded, have more edge, bring back a nostalgic feel of some of the guitars is what I think would be fresh. It’s not like Angels is going to be the one that changes music, the way Nirvana did or something. But I think that there will be a lot of bands around this time period popping up that are playing instruments again. At least that’s my hope. I still love electronic elements, so it’s always going to be there for us, but I had a very concerted effort on a few of these songs to make the guitars very present and really try to separate this band from the pack and go deep into my roots in a couple places.

Lifeforms seems like it’s almost a loose concept album about how we have a very base-level understanding of ourselves as humans and everything else that’s going on around us at any given moment. Can you speak a little bit more about that?

Lifeforms and the movie Monsters Of California are really a discussion of about our interactions with each other through love, friendship, and how we think that these interactions are the totality of who we are and what life is about. The movie takes it further saying, “Well, what if we aren’t the only life forms?” What if all of this stuff we’ve been agnostic on, all this stuff that’s kind of more esoteric — like the paranormal metaphysics, religion, and so on — is a big missing piece to the puzzle. Once you plug it in, everything starts to make a lot more sense, good and bad. I think that conversation is more easily digested when you put it in something that’s fun and adventurous and full of wonder. The things that come next hold a little bit more weight and have a heavier discussion.

These topics are definitely very interesting to consider, but they’re also often difficult to wrap your head around — how do you distill these ideas into a two-hour feature film or a three-minute song?

I’m not doing much different than I would normally do writing lyrics about things that I see, feel, or matter to me. I think that when done right, you’re able to dig into a specific thing in a really cool way that brings a lot of emotion and brings a lot of eloquence to the discussion. I don’t think that you want to tackle all these big themes in one film. You do one thing at a time and that’s what I’m trying to achieve.

I read a quote in Kerrang where you talked about what you were calling “stacked frequencies of thought,” which are all occurring simultaneously. Have you come across any evidence of this in your day to day life?

Oh yeah. I think all the stuff with the UFO phenomenon is evidence of that: machinery that are traversing different frequencies of reality that are manifesting all in real time, which is really just the manifestation of consciousness. And time is not linear. It’s parallel. It’s not like we start from one point and move forward. Everything’s happening at one moment. They did the famous double-slit experiment, where they were shooting individual photons through one of two slits on a plate. And the photon would literally go through the slit that scientists were thinking about — their observation was causing this particle to do things. That’s why you hear these stories where Native Americans were rain dancing and then it rained, or people that were meditating levitated off the floor or like Christians were praying and they healed the blind. Then you go over to the Middle East and in Islam, they were praying to a different God, but they healed the blind. What’s going on? It’s consciousness. We go all fight each other over the dogma, which is all a bunch of bullshit we all made up. But the underlying physics is very real. You shut your mind down and you talk to God or you shut your mind down and you meditate, and some crazy shit can start happening. Just focusing your consciousness, your awareness into physical reality, you can make things happen. It’s wild.

So this is more a concept of time being flat than universes being parallel?

People think a parallel universe is, “oh, okay, you just jump over to the right.” But I think it might [actually] be anything and everything is happening right now… and it might be infinite. I’m not fully sure, but I think that by creating a machine that can create a bubble and displace the fabric of space-time, you can basically just tune in and out of different time periods or anything that is ever being manifested. It’s an ocean of frequency. It’s a pretty wild concept, but it makes sense to me. Once you get exposed to enough of these… I just have been exposed to a lot of really cool ways of thinking and understanding everything around us on the forefront of physics and so on. A lot of it I don’t understand, but it’s just really cool.

Now that there are civilian space flights, when are you planning to go to space?

Probably four o’clock today.

What did you think of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin trip?

It’s a huge accomplishment, but there’s something different about Jeff Bezos. [With] Elon Musk, there’s a sense of wonder and he is young and he is funny and he doesn’t want to own anything. But Bezos is like, why are you taking so long to help change the world? When I see Bezos do things, I don’t know if I get a sense that he’s trying to fix the world at all. When he does something like, “Look at me, I’m going to space,” I think it’s missing a little bit of the soul.

What did you think of the shape of Bezos’ ship?

It did look like a penis. I think a penis is a super aerodynamic form. It’s probably the most important form that’s ever been formed. You couldn’t think of anything else? Literally. No other shape. That was the only one.

Any current punk bands that you are really enjoying that you want people to check out?

I really like Turnstile, but they’re definitely a harder-edged band for a lot of people. More melodic current stuff I wouldn’t even know, because a lot of the stuff that’s coming out just still seems poppy and not really from the street. Turnstile is probably the coolest punk band I’ve heard in a long time.

Lifeforms is out now on Rise Records. Listen here.

The many phases of Kevin Smith’s career have won him tons of love and support and some criticism too. As many have onboarded, seduced by his showman’s charm and barnstorming ways, others have shrugged him off for his instinct to be in the business of being Kevin Smith. There’s also a whiplash-inducing ride going from Clerks to Tusk, and the heartrending bits from Jay And Silent Bob Reboot. This might throw off people playing the expectation game demanding a level of sameness from their creative heroes that, frankly, would make them a bit less creatively heroic. But I digress. The point is, Smith has been a pop culture institution for more than three decades with a cockroach’s level of unkillability. Literally. And he’s done it by wearing a lot of different hats, charging into a few different genres, while being ahead of the culture when it came to direct fan engagement, podcasts, and indie film financing.

When you take all of it in like a big fat meal, it’s a lot. A consequential career, though Smith half denies it, choosing to maintain a self-effacing relationship to what he’s done while, at the same time, reflecting on it in our lengthy, wide-ranging conversation with him (Marvel! Tusk 2! Hockey jerseys! Passion projects!) and in a new coffee table book/visual history that doubles as an in-depth written history of every project he’s worked on (with some testimonials from the usual suspects as well as Seth Rogen and Ben Affleck). So, without further delay, let’s get into all things Kevin Smith with Kevin Smith.

I know what the value is for fans. What’s the value for you in doing this kind of book?

It’s a glorious walk down memory lane. In order to make the book happen, I did 20 hours of interviews with Chris Prince. He’s the guy from Inside Editions who was like, “I would like to do a coffee table book.” He started the process like five years ago. Aside from just walking down memory lane, I felt proud about remembering so much. I was like, jeez, I’m a stoner. I’m an abject, degenerate stoner, and still, I could pull incredible details from the past. But there’s also a sense of like, if I had gone back in time and told the kid who started our journey, one day, there’s going to be a whole book that’s heavy enough to kill a human being, thick as a dick, and it’s about your adventures, naturally, I would want that. It’s an ego thing. When I was going through the book, I was like, “we did that!? That’s right, we did that! We did that!” When you put it all between two covers, it looks like an impressive career. I lived it, and it wasn’t that impressive. There were highlights, but there were a lot of lowlights, as well. In between two covers, there’s no high or low. It’s just one long career. There’s also this feeling of like, it’s done. It’s all on a record somewhere. Aside from feeding the audience, it feeds the ego.

It’s one more link in the chain. Just more story to tell to the audience, because at a certain point, as most people realize, I stopped being a filmmaker. Most people will be like, “Were you ever?” I really stopped concentrating on just making films and made everything the job, like just being Kevin Smith, in general. Having the book is one more great way to be Kevin Smith, professionally. One more thing to sell. I mean, at the end of the day, I wind up being a Kevin Smith salesman. That’s the only way to keep going in this business. In the beginning of my career, I didn’t have to do that. I was just interested in making a thing. Somebody else sold it. The people that sold it aren’t people that I want to be in business with anymore anyway, so I had to learn to do my own selling. I know it’s depressing when people hear that. Some people don’t like that. I’ve seen me say it in interviews, and some people talk about it. They’re like, “It’s so gross to hear him say that he’s a salesman,” but it’s like, I am.

It’s real, though. This is the age of that. I mean, anybody who would say that is cultivating their own brand, one way or another. We all do it. You’re a forerunner. So, you say the book ends, obviously with Clerks 3 and where they are in their lives, and the Ben scene in the Jay And Silent Bob Reboot… This isn’t your Quentin Tarantino, “I’m done” moment, right? There’s more to come, right?

There’s definitely more. I’m going to keep going until the heart gives out, but based on the heart attack, I know that I got limited time. Now, I changed my life. I went vegan. I hike, and I try to be healthy, but I’m still at the mercy of my genetics, which are pretty fucking bad. My old man died of a heart attack at age 67. My mother just got her third stint put into her heart like two weeks ago, so the writing’s on the wall. At this point, post-heart attack, I honestly feel like I’m living on borrowed time, so I will keep making stuff until I go tits up, or toes up, however the expression goes.

Does that change the hierarchy of what projects you want to hit?

Yes. What a great question. It absolutely does. What it makes you do is go, “I don’t have time for anybody else’s stuff.” That’s why Masters Of The Universe was so special, because I’m like, “It’s not mine, but all right, I’ll do this,” because I could tell a comic book story through those characters, and that appealed to me. Generally speaking, post-heart attack, it’s all about, like, tell your stories. There was a minute where I did Cop Out, and I was directing CW shows. I was just spreading it around, but after the heart attack, I’m like, you don’t have the time or the lifespan to spread it around. I know there’s a lot of stuff you want to say in this life. Make sure you’re saying it if you do drop dead.

The hierarchy becomes, like, I’m at a place in my career where I should really be thinking about what makes money, and what is going to get me paid, what’s going to maybe get me awards, or whatever like that, but the hierarchy post-heart attack is like, I just want to play with my toys. That’s what Jay And Silent Bob Reboot was all about, man. It was me going, you know what? I feel old as fuck after nearly dying. You know what’s going to make me feel young? Playing with my 20-year-old toys, man, the toys I played with in my 20s. Clerks 3 was another extension of that, even better than Reboot, in terms of getting back to the soul of it all. Jay and Silent Bob are a happy accident in my life and career. They were never the plan. That was just a side thing, but then the side hustle became the main hustle. Dante and Randal, if I could have, I would have made 19, 20 different Clerks movies, like just chart them. Really, I should have made a series, a TV series, but that sort of thing wasn’t open to us, back in those days and stuff.

For me, to go, like, I’m going to spend time on a set, and try to make a thing happen, which is not as easy as it was back in the day… It took us seven years to make the Clerks 3 happen. Then, when it happened, it took six months. My two producers, Jordan and Liz, we were working on Mallrats 2 with one of the arms of Universal. It ain’t a Fast And Furious movie, so they can drag ass. It’s not a priority. It’s more of a favor to us than anything else. Liz was going, “I bet you, dollars to donuts, I know you want to write Clerks 3. If you write it right now, I guarantee you we make that movie before Mallrats.” I was like, “All right.” I knew what story I wanted to tell. I’ve been talking about it since the heart attack, so it was a matter of like, let’s see if Liz is right. In December, I guess, of last year, I sat down and started writing this current incarnation of Clerks 3, and turned it in in January, and we were shooting by my birthday, August 2nd. When it happened, man, did it go fast, but it was seven years of will it, won’t it? Getting close with another version of the movie, and then it’s falling apart.

At this point, knowing that time is limited, it’s all about my characters and my toys, less so about other people’s stuff. We live in this era now where it’s like, I should be romping from comic book movie to comic book movie. I’ve been talking about this shit since the ’90s, so I should be out there doing it, but number one, I’m not that talented. Not talented enough to pull off comic book movies. You need visual style to do that sort of thing. I don’t think visually. I think in words. Even my favorite comic books have more words than pictures in them and stuff like that. Number two, it’s more satisfying for me to create my own stories. As much as I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe… Part of the reason I love those movies so much… it’s breathtaking how they take the stories I knew as a kid and bring them to life now as movies. I don’t have that kind of ability.

Creative control is also part of it, right? Not to start a Marvel thing. I don’t want to make you the latest director to comment on Marvel, but…

[Laughs] Who was it this morning?

It was Denis from Dune.

Let me just say unequivocally for the record that I suck the dick of Marvel movies. I think they’re brilliant. I think they’re fantastic. They’re my favorite form of entertainment, and Kevin Feige is my favorite living American filmmaker right now.

[Laughs] All right, so, I crossed that off. Now, I’ve got to ask you about bathing habits. I think that’s the next thing I’m supposed to ask.

[Laughs] I have to do it all the time. I got a wife. She don’t like when I stink, so I have to bathe.

Checked all the boxes off, great. No, but, I love Marvel movies. They don’t check every box for me, but I’m not the target audience, necessarily, which I accept completely. But the notion of, it’s a big fucking corporation. You’re not going to have as much control as you have with your toys and your characters. I assume that’s also part of it, right?

I mean, yeah, but let’s be honest, they’re not knocking. Kevin Feige’s called me twice in my life, and never once to be like, “Come work with us.” One was after the heart attack, and they were like, “Call from Kevin Feige,” and I was like, oh my god, man.

Like Make A Wish!

Yeah, that’s what I said! I was like, “I almost died, and now they’re going to offer me a Marvel movie. I’m going to have to turn this guy down, but this is lovely.” He called, and he said the loveliest things, man. He goes, “Look. When I heard about the heart attack,” he’s going, “it really affected me, because, as a kid from New Jersey who made a movie, you meant something to me. Your journey meant something to me. I’m so glad you’re alive.” I’m like, “Thanks, man. That means a lot.” I expected him to be like, “Okay, so, now, let’s get down to business,” but he was like, “All right, Kev, be good,” and hung up, and that was it. Then, he called me one other time to tell me about the Stan Lee cameo in Captain Marvel. Even then, that time, I was like, I think he’s about to ask me to be in Captain Marvel and co-cameo with Stan. He was like, “No, we’re just looking for Stan’s voice.”

I think everyone knows what my relationship with the Marvel movies is… particularly at Marvel. They’re like, “He’s a fan, and he will remain a fan, as far as we’re concerned.” That’s for the best, man. I don’t have that kind of vision to pull that stuff off. Look, I’ll be honest with you. This is the call that I really want, Kevin Feige calling up and being like, “Will you be in one of these movies?” That would be far more valuable to me than making one of those movies.

I’ve been friends with Edgar Wright for a long time, and I remember when Edgar Wright was working on Antman. It wasn’t a fight. He didn’t leave angry and stuff, but Edgar is an independent filmmaker like myself, has his own voice, his own style, and everything like that, and it did not mesh with their plan. I respect that, and he respected it. He walked away, and he’s done great things ever since without Marvel and stuff. He’s an auteur filmmaker. When I saw him go through that, I was like, look, if Edgar had a hard time, me? Never. I mean, I wouldn’t even get near the gauntlet. They go for young, talented kids and stuff. I think I was at my speed in CW land, because in CW land, they make those shows over the course of eight or nine days, and the directors get replaced every episode, so even if you drop the ball horrendously, the machine is so well-oiled that it will still produce a pretty watchable episode, and if you don’t like it, don’t worry, another episode happens next week.

It’s interesting, though, the Edgar thing almost feels like it’s this huge waypoint in the direction of those films, because I feel like they’ve opened up more to specific visions since that happened, since they got trashed for that.

I agree completely. It felt like it was a teachable moment. Where it wasn’t like Kevin Feige had some sort of come to Jesus… I don’t know, I wasn’t in the room, but we have seen auteur Marvel movies since then, hands down, so it looks like they are, I wouldn’t say loosening up, but I think they’re letting people bring more of their style into it. They’ve got a blueprint. They’ve got a story, a never-ending story that they want to tell, and I want them to tell that, but it is breathtaking when you see somebody come in and do something different with the movie. He doesn’t get enough credit, man, but Shane Black’s Ironman 3 is, I think, one of the first auteur Marvel movies.

That’s a good point, yeah.

That movie felt like Shane Black. It felt like Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. It even felt like the Lethal Weapon movies, even though he didn’t direct those. I feel like more of that is starting to happen, but I have nothing to offer Marvel beyond my money for their movies. [Laughs]

When you talk about playing with your characters, your toys, obviously for so long that’s meant the View Askewniverse and Jay and Silent Bob. Does that extend to characters from Red State, from Tusk? I’ll tell you what, I had a thought, and this was before the J-Lo/Ben stuff started up again. Jersey Girl 2 would make sense. Coming off of the scene with Ben in Reboot, that would hit. Emotionally, that would hit.

I wish I could go back in time and tell Uproxx that one day they’d be going, like, “You know, a Jersey Girl sequel might work.” [Laughs] I’m very familiar with Uproxx. It’s funny if you live long enough, the shit people hate that you did, they eventually come around to. Mallrats was definitely that. Now, everyone talks very highly of Mallrats, but as the guy who lived Mallrats, I had to eat shit for 10 years about Mallrats. It wasn’t until the audience found it and made it what it is today on video that that movie was reclaimed and stuff.

In terms of other characters beyond View Askewniverse, yes. Here. This is going to terrify everybody, but the other day, I was like, you know, maybe in like five years I can hit up Harley and Lily-Rose and try again with Yoga Hosers. Like, not the same movie, but just, what would happen if those kids grew up and stuff? Lily-Rose is huge now, and Harley’s got her own career, so when we first made Yoga Hosers, they needed me to help them. If I was ever to do it again, I would definitely need them to help me. They got more juice in their careers right now, so, it lingers. There are thoughts like that. Red State I could never do again because you need Parks. Parks is gone. Now, Tusk, I could do without Parks, even though I wouldn’t want to, but Parks died in the movie, so we’d have to do it without him anyway. I always whimsy, like, Justin’s character, Wallace, we showed him as the human walrus at the end. He opted to live that way, but there’s a version of a Tusk sequel where he becomes the Parks character. He becomes Howard Howe. He was driven mad by his experience, and so he wants to visit that on somebody else.

Justin [Long] is such a magical actor who I love being on set with. Not just for what he does for, “here’s your script, please do these lines,” but then he ad-libs, like Seth Rogen, 10 other movies better than yours that are ad-libbed within the world of your movie. I could see a world, 10 years from now, where I go to Justin, and I’m like, “Let’s Tusk it again, but this time, you’re Howard Howe. You don’t have to put on the walrus suit until the end.” I could see possibly doing that. It’s always predicated on the people you get to do it with. In that instance, it’s purely about hanging out with Justin for the three weeks that it would take to make that movie and writing fucked up dialogue. That was the most fun about Tusk was just writing this weird, fucked up dialogue, knowing that Parks would deliver it like music, about this land-locked old man who loved the sea and was fucking batshit crazy.

I could get away with that with Justin Long, but it would require Justin Long to be like, “All right, I’ll do it again.” You would have to talk to Justin. He still says nice things about Tusk, but I have a feeling that it didn’t help his career one iota. Art school kids love him, you know what I’m saying? But I don’t know… He directed a movie with his brother that’s out right now, but that has nothing to do with Tusk. I’m just saying, he might have had to go in a few different directions post-Tusk. It’s a weird movie.

It’s a great movie.

Thank you.

I have one more question. It’s a dumb question.

Ain’t no such thing.

The hockey jerseys that you used to wear, we don’t see them anymore. As a large person, I understand the comfort of a hockey jersey. How many different versions did you have? Was there this closet of just hockey jerseys? I’ve got to know.

If you go on my Instagram and deep dive to almost the beginning of my Instagram I put up a photo of my closet, and it looked like Doug’s closet from the cartoon. Because they’re all next to each other, you don’t see the crest. You just see the side of them, same number, same color. You could get a blank, and I had tons of blanks. Then, basically, I would hit up my artist friends and be like, “I’m looking for this,” and they would draw it and stuff, and then we would have it made as a patch, and boom, it went on. At its height, I think the most jerseys I ever had was 85. Then, post-heart attack, I stopped wearing them. Not because I was superstitious, but I did almost die in a jersey. So, I was like, maybe I’ll try something else. I started losing weight, so suddenly I was like, I’ll put on a jacket. Suddenly, I shifted back to jackets, which is what I wore circa Chasing Amy, but I loved the hockey jersey era.

Somebody recently beat it out of me, because we did a first episode back at the bar of Fat Man Beyond. It was after a particularly eat-y week, where I had been munching on a bunch of shit, and I hadn’t exercised, so I was looking pretty bloated. Somebody wrote online, “Uh-oh, time to go back to the hockey jerseys.” Just… the good folks at Geeky Jerseys made these beautiful, beautiful Quick Stop jerseys, man, that we used in Clerks 3. They made the new Leonardo Reapers jerseys. They made a movie jersey. They’re gorgeous. I can’t put them on, because of that one stranger in the audience who’s like, “I know if you put on a hockey jersey, that is some sort of admission of failure on your part. I can read you, Kevin Smith.” It made me more honest. I doubled up my workout that week and started leaning out what I was eating, because at first, I was mad. I was like, fuck this asshole. Then, I was like, you know what? This guy, that comment, it wasn’t designed to make me feel good, but it will keep me off a fucking operating table in the future if I listen to it properly. So, yeah, as much as I love the hockey jerseys, now, apparently, if I wear one, people are like, “Kev must have put the weight back on.”

‘Kevin Smith’s Secret Stash: The Definitive Visual History’ is available on Amazon and wherever else you get your books.

Arca has become one of music’s finest experimenters in recent years, and she furthered that vision today with her latest single, “Incendio.” The instrumental is hard-hitting and eclectic electronic music, while Arca raps in Spanish in a machine gun rhythm.

The song is just part of Arca’s offerings for today: Arca is premiering a concert film today at 3 p.m. ET via Dice.FM. The film is directed by Weirdcore, a digital artist who is known for their work with artists like Charli XCX, Aphex Twin, and MIA. The film is part of Club To Club festival’s “C0C, The Festival As A Performance,” which describes the film as “a transdisciplinary euphoric performance alongside guest performances from Physical Therapy and Total Freedom, which reflect an investigation into avantgarde, and new pop pursued by the C2C Festival; always under the banner of cultural independence.”

The set will feature guest appearance from Total Freedom and Physical Therapy, as well as a remix of Ariana Grande’s “No Tears Left To Cry.” Tickets for the event are €3 (about $3.50) and proceeds will benefit the trans and non-binary shelter Casa Rifugio Marcella.

Meanwhile, Arca is fresh off contributing to Lady Gaga’s new remix album, Dawn Of Chromatica.

Listen to “Incendio” above.