For the past two years, Nicki Minaj has refrained from making very many public appearances as she focused on her growing family. However, tonight at Lil Baby’s Back Outside Tour stop at Staples Center in Los Angeles, she returned to the stage for the first time to perform her verses from “Seeing Green” and BIA’s “Whole Lotta Money” remix. You can watch videos captured by attendees below. The crowd goes bananas as Nicki emerges from backstage, reasserting her presence in pop culture as a rapper instead of a controversy magnet.
Other guests that hit the stage during Lil Baby’s show included local acts Roddy Ricch, who performed his Mustard collaboration “Ballin” and his groundbreaking 2020 hit “The Box,” and Chris Brown, who performed “Go Crazy.” You can see more videos below.
There’s a reason you’re willing to pay higher prices for long-matured bourbons and it’s not because you believe they’ll be the perfect base for an old fashioned or whiskey sour. No, you buy pricey bourbon whiskeys because you plan on enjoying them neat (or at the very least on the rocks) without any other flavors muddling things.
While we enjoy a hand-crafted bourbon cocktail, we’d rather enjoy our aged Weller, Larceny, or Angel’s Envy without the addition of bitters, shrubs, tinctures, and other ingredients. No need to dress them up.
Since the end of the summer and the beginning of fall is prime whiskey sipping time, we’ve made it our goal to help you find the smoothest sipping bourbons on the market. Expressions with no rough edges to savor as the weather turns. To do this, we once again turned to the bar professionals — asking fifteen bartenders for their favorite bourbons to drink neat this time of year.
Laws Special Finish Series Four Grain Straight Bourbon Finished in Cognac Casks. This bourbon is a bourbon lover’s chocolate-covered cherry blossom that is washed gently down by a crisp, floral spice wave, right into the back of the throat with lingering vanilla, baking spice, woody raisin finish.
Straight it is a bomb of lush dark ripe fruits and southern comfort pie spices all wrapped in sugar and oak. Cut with water or ice, as I like it, it is an addictive candy with childlike temptation. Always easy to drink and always leaving you wanting one more to compliment the one you just had.
Widow Jane 10
Widow Jane
Anton Kinloch, owner of Fuschia Tiki in New Paltz, New York
Widow Jane 10 Year. Proofed down with water from Rosendale, New York not ten minutes from where we’re located. It’s made from a blend of only five barrels per batch so each variant will be a little different.
The most recent one we enjoyed reminded us of bitter almond, spearmint, some minerality from the water too.
Angel’s Envy
Angel
Pascal Pinault, director of restaurants and bars at The Confidante in Miami
My choice is without hesitation Angel’s Envy finished in port wine barrels, giving you notes of vanilla, maple syrup, ripe fruit, and a hint of Madeira at the end of the sip. It’s hard to beat this sipper for the price.
Wild Turkey 101
Wild Turkey
Ryan Anderson, complex director of beverage at Ace Hotel in New Orleans
This summer and any summer I will always reach for Wild Turkey 101 Bourbon as a great sipper. Wild Turkey is not only one of the oldest distilleries in Kentucky, but also one of the best. Creating old-style authentic Bourbon year in and year out.
Don’t get me wrong, I like to branch out once in a while to find a new spirit from a younger distiller. But most times I reach straight for the classics.
The most mellow sipping bourbon this summer will be the Woodinville Straight. The taste of chocolate, caramel, vanilla, and orange blossom makes this bourbon great to sip on its own on the rocks or in a perfect old fashioned.
When it comes to smooth sipping bourbons, I like Woodford Reserve Double Oaked. The unique barreling process creates a beautifully mellow bourbon with hints of fruit, vanilla, and spices.
Basil Hayden’s
Basil Hayden
Myles Holdsworth, director of food and beverage at The Ritz-Carlton in New Orleans
I really enjoy sipping rye whiskeys, so for me, I like bourbons with a higher percentage of rye in the mash bill. Basil Hayden’s is always a great choice and won’t break the bank. It’s sweet, mellow, filled with butterscotch, but has the spicy, peppery kick I enjoy.
Weller 12
Buffalo Trace
Christina Ramirez, mixologist at SoBou in New Orleans
I reach for a twelve-year-old W. L. Weller which is a wheated bourbon making it sweeter and lighter on one’s palate. Flavors when drinking a W. L. Weller includes caramel, dark cherry, nuts, and citrus. I personally love to drink this straight.
Maker’s Mark
Maker
Brandon Parnell, general manager and director of beverage for Flora-Bama in Perdido Key, Florida
Maker’s Mark is definitely ‘ol trusty in this equation. Red winter wheat drives this delicate but complex taste profile perfect for any occasion. It’s cheap, mellow, and available everywhere.
Larceny Small Batch
Larceny
Brian McDonough, food and beverage manager at The Tides Inn located in Irvington, Virginia
Larceny Small Batch. Even though it comes in at 92 proof, it drinks like a much lower-proof bourbon. Being a wheat bourbon, it is a more mellow drink than heavier rye mash. The honey and caramel flavors, along with the lightness of the wheat, make this a beautiful sipper. I always have a bottle in the house.
George Dickel 8 Year Old
George Dickel
Ryan Pines, beverage director at Ukiah in Asheville, North Carolina
It’s really hard to limit myself to just one bourbon. However, George Dickel Tennessee Whiskey just launched their new Dickel 8 Year Bourbon and it is absolutely amazing. It lingers on the palate, is very well pronounced in corn caramel, and is not overly done. It’s all the things you look for in a bourbon.
Milam & Greene is a small producer from Texas putting out some high-quality whiskey that has my attention. They just released their Castle Hill Series bourbon and it’s a fantastic blend of twenty vintage casks of bourbon that we’re each aged at least 13 years. It has a bold drier than typical bourbon structure that’s accented by aromas of almond, and tobacco with hints of spice.
The team there has a lengthy history of working with some of the best liquid available and there coming out of the gate strong with their new projects.
I’m not sure if mellow is the word I would use to describe this one, but W.L. Weller Special Reserve is one of my all-time favorites for sipping. It’s a wheated bourbon, which is the same style as the super popular Maker’s Mark, but I find Weller to be in a class of its own.
If you can find a bottle, pick one — or two – up.
Buffalo Trace
Buffalo Trace
Deke Dunne, master mixologist at Allegory DC in Washington, DC
When I think of mellow bourbons that are easy-sipping, my mind will always go to Buffalo Trace bourbon. Buffalo Trace bourbon, in my mind, is the ultimate introduction to Kentucky bourbon for people looking to get into whiskey. It comes in at a fairly affordable price point and it is very accessible. One of the reasons I like it so much is that it is a very fresh tasting bourbon that doesn’t feel thin or young. It is aged anywhere between 8-10 years but has light, refreshing notes that are absolutely perfect for the summer. I always get a wonderfully surprising explosion of fresh fruits, especially green apples, that balances beautifully with the more traditional bourbon notes of brown sugar, vanilla, and oak.
Balance is the name of the game for traditional Kentucky bourbons, and Buffalo Trace does it better than most. One of my go-to bourbons, especially this time of year.
Jim Beam Single Barrel
Jim Beam
Johnny Swet, master mixologist and founding partner at JIMMY at Modernhaus SoHo in New York City
I really Enjoy Jim Beam Single Barrel. It’s very smooth over Ice. But mellow enough, with hints of caramel, vanilla, and dried fruits, to be sipped neat.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
Over the past six years, it feels like race relations have been on the decline in the U.S. We’ve lived through Donald Trump’s appeals to America’s racist underbelly. The nation has endured countless murders of unarmed Black people by police. We’ve also been bombarded with viral videos of people calling the police on people of color for simply going about their daily lives.
Earlier this year there was a series of incidents in which Asian-Americans were the targets of racist attacks inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Given all that we’ve seen in the past half-decade, it makes sense for many to believe that race relations in the U.S. are on the decline.
A Gallup poll taken over the summer found that 42% of adults in the U.S. say relations between white and Black Americans are “very” or “somewhat” good, while 57% say the relations are “somewhat” or “very” bad.
This is a sharp decline from 2004 when 72% of American adults said that race relations were “very” or “somewhat” good.
However, a recent poll by Gallup has found that more Americans support interracial marriage between white and Black people than at any time in the country’s history.
Pixabay
“Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013,” Gallup said. “The current figure marks a new high in Gallup’s trend, which spans more than six decades.”
When Gallup asked the same question in 1958, just 4% of Americans approved of marriage between white and Black people.
“Shifts in the 63-year-old trend represent one of the largest transformations in public opinion in Gallup’s history — beginning at a time when interracial marriage was nearly universally opposed and continuing to its nearly universal approval today,” Gallup wrote.
To show how far we’ve come, consider the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case in which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage. Before that decision, marriage between white and Black people was still illegal throughout the south. At the time, the decision was extremely unpopular because only 20% of Americans approved of interracial marriage.
via Wikimedia Commons
The big change in attitude towards interracial marriage has come from white Americans. Majorities of non-whites have approved of interracial marriage since 1968. The majority of white people didn’t come to this opinion until 1997.
Geographically, the western United States is the most accepting of interracial marriage with 97% approving and the south is the least tolerant with 93% of people supporting interracial marriage.
How do we make sense of the fact that support for interracial marriage is at an all-time high in American while, at the same time, so many believe race relations are on the decline? I think the lesson here is that when it comes to race relations anything is possible. If you were alive in 1958 it probably seemed impossible that one day just about everyone would be fine with white and Black people getting married.
That should give us all hope that if we keep fighting the good fight, eventually we’ll live in a world that is a lot less racist and a lot more loving.
The Warriors’ season starts in less than a month, and as of now, the status of their starting small forward, Andrew Wiggins, is in doubt after the NBA denied his request for a religious exemption from the San Francisco Department of Public Health’s vaccine mandate.
The NBA announced the denial in a statement on Friday, saying, “Wiggins will not be able to play in Warriors home games until he fulfills the city’s vaccine requirements.”
The ruling would prevent Wiggins from playing home games, though he theoretically could play road games in areas not governed by similar mandates. Wiggins will also be restricted from even doing solo workouts in the team facility starting in October unless he chooses to be vaccinated.
Previously, the league had said it would comply with local mandates such as this one in San Francisco, which is based upon the fact that a Warriors game counts as a large, indoor gathering and thus all in attendance must be vaccinated. Similar mandates exist in Los Angeles and New York City, where four of the league’s teams play.
With training camps opening Tuesday, the league’s rules came into question repeatedly in these markets. Brooklyn general manager Sean Marks said he expected the rule not to be a problem, but subsequent reporting indicated that star guard Kyrie Irving has not yet been vaccinated.
The NBA reportedly will not require players to be vaccinated, but depending on where they play, challenges are already cropping up for many.
Amodio’s win on Friday night was good for his 28th straight victory on the program, a streak that spans not only several guest hosts and the ill-fated run of Mike Richards but also an entire summer break between seasons. And his victory on Friday night gave him an additional $48,800 to a total that pushed into seven figures for just the third time in the long history of non-tournament Jeopardy! play.
“This was beyond my wildest dreams going in,” Amodio said according to a press release. “I knew it was a possibility, but I thought it was a very remote possibility, and to have it actually happen is unbelievable.”
Amodio is now officially in rarefied air when it comes to the show’s best champions. Though many never got the chance to string together enough wins to reach seven figures, since the five-game cap was lifted just two players have reached more than $1 million in winnings: Holzhauer and Ken Jennings. The former won 32 games and earned $2,462,216, while Jennings holds the record for both wins (74 games) and winnings ($2,520,700).
While Holzhauer reached millionaire status much quicker than both Amodio and Jennings thanks to his big betting and strategic play, Jennings’ historic run still stands as the most impressive in history. It’s unclear just how far Amodio will get on his run, but now he’s no longer known as just one of the more frustrating players in the show’s history because of his answering style: He’s officially one of the best ever.
Heroes don’t always wear capes. Some sport a viking beard with a tank top.
A video went viral on Twitter yesterday of a man who in my mind shall be called Sheep Thor. In the video, Sheep Thor steps out of his car after seeing a helpless lamb struggling to release itself from the death grip of a barbed wire fence. We see Sheep Thor step out of the car and grab both sides of the sheep with his bare hands, gently trying to pull it out.
Alas, no buck wouldn’t budge. The camera zooms in on the poor beast, still stuck in the fence, and Sheep Thor gives a narration that would fill Crocodile Hunter fans with nostalgia. “So he’s got this barbed wire here, he’s got his horns caught behind the wire…gotta be careful.” He then takes a horn and gingerly works it back through the wire. Despite Sheep Thor’s requests to “hurry up buddy,” the ram doesn’t seem too keen on aiding his rescuer.
But at last! The head comes out! Almost. Sheep Thor still has to get him over the fence safely. As Sheep Thor deliberates the best way to get the sheep over the fence. Clearly, only one choice can be made. As Sheep Thor eloquently put it, ” I’m gonna have to swing him over.”
And swing him over he does. The newly freed sheep runs off into the distance without so much as a thank you. Sheep Thor still gave a polite salute and a quick “you’re welcome.”
Seriously, where’s this guy’s nature show?
This video currently has over 13 million views. But as written below, Sheep Thor really does deserve endless tweets.
Beyonce’s 40th birthday was this month, and both fans and celebrities paid their tributes on social media. Queen Bey in turn shared a heartfelt handwritten note on her official website. Though the lives of celebrities often seem removed from anything a “real” person would experience, her note really does offer some tear jerker insights that are completely universal.
Loving everything about this. As Virgo season ends, #Beyonce writes a personal heartfelt (and rare) note to everyon… https://t.co/wMmNPGf2NZ
The letter starts out with a genuine, yet expected thank-you to her fans:
“I’m so thankful for every inspiring human who took the time to send me all the beautiful messages,” she wrote in her note. “I cried tears of joy and was covered in chilly bumps. Your videos, your posts, your countdowns, your playlists and your well wishes, I will cherish forever. I’m grateful to everyone involved, especially the fans, for the time and level of detail it took to organize such beautiful tributes. I admire and respect all of you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
But here, Beyonce’s thank-you takes a more sentimental turn as she looks back on her life. Notice what’s NOT mentioned: career, fame, world tours… some of the things you might expect her to consider/ponder/contemplate. Instead she writes:
“This is the first year that I really understand what it means to be alive and to live in the moment. It’s the first time that I have an understanding of how fragile life truly is, how hard life can be at times, and therefore how important it is to stop and smell the roses during the good times. I thought I knew that at 21 or 30 . . . but I didn’t. The more mature I become, the more I understand and the deeper my joy grows. There’s a freedom and liberation knowing that I’ve made it to the other side of my sacrifice. I’m finally giving myself permission to enjoy the seeds I’ve worked so hard to plant my whole life.”
Be it through a pandemic, or growing older, or both, I think we can all relate to this discovery. Grammy wins or not, many of us are hitting a point in our lives, where everything we thought was so crucial, is not actually the source of our joy. That bliss comes from simplicity, from appreciation, and most of all, from time.
Then the real kicker comes in when she debunks the notion that happiness and self worth somehow have an expiration date, especially for women.
“Whoever tried to condition women to feel that we are supposed to feel old or unhappy when we turn 40 got it ALL THE WAY F’d UP,” she wrote. “This has absolutely been the best I’ve felt in my life.”
Beyonce signed off her note with a bumble bee daring and an “I love you deep” (with the word “deep” being written out 40 times, a clever touch).
It’s an important reminder that no matter how successful, wealthy, or prestigious anyone is perceived to be, we are all navigating through life for the first time. Sometimes we think we have it all figured out. Sometimes we fear our best days are behind us. And sometimes, as Queen Bey has eloquently put it, it might take a while- and some deep reflection- before we realize how much we’ve “GROWN GROWN.”
The “Stop the Steal” movement has been going on for nearly a year and has yet to find any substantial evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The movement was dealt an embarrassing blow on Friday when a Republican recount of Maricopa County in Arizona not only confirmed Trump’s loss but found that it was by a wider margin than the official tally.
Back in March, Arizona State Senate Republicans hired Florida-based company Cyber Ninjas to audit the election results in Maricopa County. The company has no prior experience in auditing election results and is headed by Doug Logan, a man who has promoted baseless election conspiracy theories.
“I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast,” he tweeted on December 31.
After several months with zero bipartisan oversight, Cyber Ninjas were set to send the results of the audit to the Arizona State Senate on Friday but they were leaked to The Arizona Republic ahead of time.
The audit found that Trump lost by 45,469 votes in the county, 360 more than the previous tally. According to Cyber Ninjas, Trump received 261 fewer votes while Biden picked up an additional 99.
The Arizona “audit” coming out tomorrow didn’t just confirm Biden won. Biden actually gained votes in their recount… https://t.co/fpO7PfA1Qd
Responding to news reports on Friday, Trump said the findings were “far different than that being reported by the Fake News Media,” and that it had “uncovered significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD!”
“Huge findings in Arizona! However, the Fake News Media is already trying to ‘call it’ again for Biden before actually looking at the facts—just like they did in November!” Trump said in a statement.
“Every time Trump and his supporters have been given a forum to prove this case, they have swung and missed,” Ben Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election attorney, said according to theArizona Mirror.
Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 election appears to be doing him and his party a lot more harm than good. Ron Nehring, a former chair of the California GOP, says that his party’s constant fraud claims only work to depress Republican turnout and are a major reason that Larry Elder lost to Democrat Gavin Newsom in the California recall election.
In the days leading up to the election Elder alleged that fraud had taken place on his website.
“We can’t have an evidence-based party if we are bullshitting people in advance that this election was stolen when it was not,” Nehring said Wednesday. “One way not to have Republicans win is by telling Republican voters that their votes don’t matter…. Lying to Republicans claiming an election was stolen, before a single vote or result had been published, is grossly irresponsible.”
Unproven fraud allegations are a lose-lose proposition for the GOP. They depress voter turnout by killing people’s faith in the institution and hurt the party’s credibility when its claims go unfounded.
In a two-party system, they’re giving their opponents an unfair advantage by telling their own people that elections don’t matter.
4. Modern-day superhero rescues a sheep trapped in a barbed-wire fence.
Everything about this is perfection. The expertise in handling a sheep. The figuring out how to heave it over the fence. The Steve-Irwin-meets-Thor vibe. And of course, the bleat of thanks at the end.
7. This traditional folk dance from the Philippines is just pure, joyful energy.
The Tinikling is a rhythmic dance that mimics a bird found in the Philippines called the tikling. I could watch this all day.
8. Puffin and Binx, two rescued cats, can’t get enough of each other.
And we can’t get enough of them. Puffin and Binx were rescued from a hoarding situation and they are inseparable. Just look at them hugging. Cue all the endorphins.
9. These babies were accidentally switched at birth, and how the families handled it was amazing.
What do you do when you find out you’ve been raising someone else’s baby for three years? That happened to two families who found out their daughters had been switched at the hospital as newborns. After DNA tests confirmed it, they did the most extraordinary thing—the two families simply raised their kids together. Read the story here.
Mayim Bialik wants you to know that she’s fully vaccinated despite what she may have written about vaccine skepticism in the past. The Jeopardy! guest host finished her first impromptu week on the job Friday following the Mike Richards flameout, and in a new interview she once again clarified that she’s vaccinated, including against the novel coronavirus.
Bialik had previously set the record straight about her (and her children’s) vaccine status several times in the past, including in a video she put on YouTube late last year. The long and short of it: Bialik and her family are now fully vaccinated and she supports vaccinating against coronavirus in particular.
But it’s notable because any name attached to the full-time Jeopardy! hosting job has seen at least one news cycle where past controversial comments were resurfaced. In Bialik’s case a book she wrote in 2012, Beyond The Sling, where she explained that her children were not fully vaccinated has become a lightning rod of sorts, especially in the coronavirus pandemic where vaccine skepticism is now a full-blown public health crisis.
“We made an informed decision not to vaccinate our children, but this is a very personal decision that should be made only after sufficient research, which today is within reach of every parent who seeks to learn about their child’s health regardless of their medical knowledge or educational status,” Bialik wrote at the time.
She’s obviously changed that stance in the years since, and it continues to come up as her role at Jeopardy! expands. Asked about her controversy in an interview with the Associated Press on Thursday, Bialik said she didn’t “regret” what she wrote but clarified that her entire family is vaccinated now.
“I don’t regret that at the time I wrote a book about parenting, my kids were young, they hadn’t received all their vaccines,” she said. “Now I’ve been very public and declared that I am a vaccinated person, we’re a vaccinated family, we’re all vaccinated for COVID.”
Bialik admitted that her public perception as an anti-vaxxer has been difficult, as many anti-vaxx sentiments from nearly a decade ago have been shared on platforms like Facebook in recent months despite her evolving viewpoints. And she also thanked those working at Jeopardy! for sticking with her despite her past comments.
“That’s part of the challenge of being a public person, and the court of public opinion is extremely significant,” she said. “I’m grateful to Sony and to ‘Jeopardy!’ for believing in me as a host right now, with the ability to do my job with all the other things aside.”
Considering just how difficult it is to combat the spread of misinformation online, especially on social media, Bialik’s stance on vaccines will continue to come up. But while Richards’ controversies were simply too many to keep him involved with the show, it’s clear that Bialik’s words haven’t impacted her chances of being selected as the show’s full-time host. Time will tell if the same can be said for fellow guest host Ken Jennings, who has his own past comments online continue to haunt him.
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