Month: October 2021

Who doesn’t love Cousin Greg? As portrayed by the freakishly tall Nicholas Braun, he’s the bumbling, awkward heart of Succession, and the closest thing the show has to a decent person. (Although even he’s not that decent, and he’s been known to stab family members in the back.) He’s also the closet thing the show has to a sex symbol. And so the inevitable has happened: He’s inspired a sex toy.

Just in time for the long-delayed third season to start dropping, the adult entertainment company CamSoda (link definitely NSFW, so be forewarned) has unveiled a new “teledildonic,” which is to say “Internet-connected sex toy,” entitled “Greg the Egg.” Here’s how it works, as per a press release:

• People synch their teledildonic device (aka Internet connected sex toy) on www.camsoda.com [ed. again, NSFW] to the “Greg the Egg” cam room every Sunday night before every episode of Succession at 9 PM ET/6 PM PT.
• Once a user’s toy has been synched, they insert it into their vagina or butthole (depending on the toy).
• The toy will vibrate at a consistent, moderate pace through the duration of each episode.
• The vibrations will increase in frequency whenever Cousin Greg makes an appearance, with the ultimate goal of causing a “Greg-gasm”

So there you have it. Go forth and prosper.

Succession begins its third season Sunday at 9pm on HBO and HBO Max.

The Chiefs came into Week 6 at 2-3, having lost to three of the AFC’s top contenders — the Ravens, Chargers, and Bills — already. It has been a strange year for the defending two-time AFC champs as the defense has been downright atrocious, but the offense has looked rather pedestrian at times.

Patrick Mahomes can be included in those having a bit of a down year considering the lofty standards he’s set for his play so far in his career. He entered the week with 16 touchdowns and six interceptions, as turnovers have been a major issue for Kansas City this season after years of being one of the best at avoiding giveaways. The turnover woes continued against the Football Team, including an early contender for the worst interception of the season from any quarterback from the typically reliable Mahomes.

On a third and one from the Football Team 20, trailing by three late in the first half, Mahomes dropped the snap and then, rather than just eating a sack to preserve a field goal to tie before halftime, decided to try and heave the ball downfield only to see it flutter out of his hands as he got hit and fall into the waiting arms of a Washington defender.

Mahomes has had a few of uncharacteristic interceptions this season where he’s forced the ball when nothing’s been available, but this one is the worst of the bunch. There is absolutely nothing there — his receiver isn’t even running a route and is looking to block on a run play that got botched by the snap — and yet he tosses one up anyways as he gets hit. If anything, it feels like a guy who is desperate to recapture that magic from years past but can’t seem to get it going, leading to some forced throws and poor decisions that he typically doesn’t make.

Rick Ross has a new business venture. The rapper recently teamed up with Rap Snacks’ CEO and Founder James Lindsay as well as the San Diego-based hemp manufacturing company Hempacco to create a new company that will deliver a line of smokeable products, which includes cannabinoid cigarettes and hemp blunt rolling papers. The company is called Hemp Hop Smokeables LLC and it seeks to use Hempacco to introduce something new to the smoking industry.

In a press statement, Ross said that his past health issues pushed him to help create safer and more beneficial products. “Having had my own health scares, and through my healing process, I decided I would develop a line of smokables to help others with the benefits of Hemp cannabinoids,” he wrote in the statement.

This news comes after Ross bought his son a Wingstop franchise for his sixteenth birthday. Prior to that, he appeared alongside Lil Wayne on Drake’s “You Only Live Twice” from Certified Lover Boy. He also recently signed Boston rapper Smoke Bulga to his label Maybach Music Group.

Hemp Hop is currently holding a giveaway for Ross fans who register on their website, where more information about the product can be found.

She believes in “Jewish space lasers” and had to go to a museum in her late 40s to learn about the Holocaust. He’s been compared to Butt-Head and is being federally investigated for ties to a sex trafficking ring. They’re both United States representatives. But the combined power of far right stars Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz is not as strong as one may think.

A new report by Mother Jones alleges that the PAC they created together, entitled Put America First, is all but broke only six months after it was started:

In its first few months, the Put America First PAC seemed like it was off to a hot start, raising $360,000 in its first two months—but according to new campaign finance filings made by the PAC it now has just $13,000 in cash. Multiple tour stops were cancelled this summer. Gaetz and Greene did hold at least one major event in Iowa in August. Despite attracting big headlines, the rally was, apparently, a financial bust. The group spent $159,000 from July 1 to September 30, and raised just $57,000.

Individually they’re not doing great either. Greene has been far more successful at fundraising than Gaetz, having raised over $8 million in less than a year in office. But almost half of that was amassed in her first three months as a Congresswoman, and has been trending downward ever since. What’s more, the cash she’s raised, Mother Jones says, has been “increasingly eaten up by the costs of chasing donors and paying off the operatives and professional fundraising consultants and vendors that she hires.”

Gaetz’s fundraising, meanwhile, has all but dried up, probably because he’s being federally investigated for ties to a sex trafficking ring.

But maybe he can scrape a couple bucks together as a Rick Astley impersonator.

(Via Mother Jones)

Jay-Z and Beyonce are reportedly putting their New Orleans mansion on the market for the price of $4.45 million, according to TMZ. The building, which is located in the city’s Historic Garden District and was originally a Presbyterian church, covers 13,292 square feet and features seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms. Spanish baroque architecture and four separate living spaces can also be found throughout the mansion. There’s also a rooftop garden, which one of them said was a kind of magical space: “I did my best writing ever, while watching the sunset from the rooftop garden!”

The musicians’ decision to sell the home comes less than two months after it caught on fire. The reports for the incident called it a one-alarm fire that required about two hours and 22 people to put out. An investigation afterward named cause of the fire as simple arson, but a suspect has yet to have been arrested.

As a part of the mansion’s sale, Jay-Z and Beyonce will have the house repainted to the preference of the new owner prior to the deal’s official deal. Altogether, the couple looks to make just under a $2 million profit on the mansion, having bought it in 2015 for a whopping $2.6 million.

It’s been less than two calendar years since LSU was on top of the college football world, but after a disastrous 2020 and little in the way of a bounce back to start 2021, head coach Ed Orgeron found himself firmly on the hot seat in Baton Rouge.

On Saturday, the Tigers stunned Florida in a thrilling 49-42 win that many thought might keep Orgeron in town a bit longer, but even a big win over a ranked rival won’t be enough to save Coach O’s job. On Sunday, word broke from Ross Dellenger, Steven Godfrey, Pete Thamel, and others that Orgeron was negotiating an agreement to leave the program and would be out after the 2021 season — with the expectation that he will not receive his full buyout amount as he departs.

Not only was the on field performance lacking after the national title winning season, but an investigation into the football program’s culture revealed the program had mishandled rape allegations against former running back Derrius Guice while he was at LSU and not followed their legal responsibility in reporting them. That seems to have provided LSU with leverage to move on from Orgeron and push him into taking less than his buyout amount.

As for who could be next to take over in Baton Rouge, Bruce Feldman reports Mel Tucker is a favorite of many around the program for what he’s done in turning around Michigan State quickly.

There will be plenty of coaches floated as possibilities for the LSU job in the coming months, as Orgeron becoming a lame duck coach opens the door for plenty to put their name in the ring for one of the nation’s biggest jobs.

The Jacksonville Jaguars entered Sunday as arguably the NFL’s most hapless team, with an 0-5 record (one of two winless teams, alongside Detroit), only one game they were truly competitive in, and plenty of off-field drama involving their embattled head coach Urban Meyer (all of which was self-inflicted).

However, the Jags were back in familiar territory on Sunday, as they played their seemingly annual London game as the hosts, with Miami making the trip across the pond to face them. The Dolphins were getting Tua Tagovailoa back from the injured list for the game and after four straight losses, things seemed set up for Miami to get back on track. However, through a combination of unforced errors, poor decision-making from the coaching staff and players, and a suddenly red-hot kicker for the Jaguars, the Dolphins managed to squander leads early and late as Jacksonville picked up its first win of the season in London.

After going up 20-17 early in the fourth quarter, Miami would scuffle on offense, as Tagovailoa struggled to find anything approaching a sustained rhythm all game, and that left the door ajar for Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars. After a very close call on a punt return in which Jamal Agnew nearly touched a bouncing ball that was recovered by Miami in the end zone (ruled a touchback and simply got the “call stands” upon review), the Jaguars marched into Miami territory to set up a 54-yard field goal from a kicker who, including his college career, had never hit from that far out.

Somehow the kick that at one point was a good five feet wide of the upright drew back in, clearing the bar by maybe two feet, tying the game. The Dolphins would work it back to near midfield on their effort at a game-winning (or at least, lead-taking) drive, but found themselves with a 4th and inches. They chose not to trot out Jacoby Brissett for a QB sneak or even the threat of one, and ran a simple dive play that didn’t come particularly close to picking up the first down.

Jacksonville would do little with the ball on the next possession, finding themselves in a 4th and 8 with five seconds left, outside of field goal range. It was then that magic would strike, as Lawrence threw a bullet of a slant to pick up the first and, somehow, got a timeout called with one second on the clock. Once again, Matthew Wright trotted out for a 50-plus yarder and this time he didn’t need a lucky late turn from the ball to hit it, banging through the game-winning kick to send the Jags into a frenzy in London.

There were some horrific decisions from both sides throughout the game, but to the Jags credit, they executed when it mattered most with a tremendous back-to-back plays to set up the game-winning field goal. They now move to 1-5, tying the Dolphins in record and leaving Detroit as the lone winless team in the NFL, and providing some rare positive discussion of the franchise and even the coaching decisions of Meyer after some truly awful coaching early in the season.

Musical biopics were dead for a good while, thanks in part to Walk Hard, the devastating parody that sent up the corny likes of Walk the Line and Ray. But they’re alive again. The Queen movie Bohemian Rhapsody even netted its star, Rami Malek, an Oscar. So it’s only inevitable that one day soon we’ll get a Prince biopic. But who will play him? An SNL sketch had some suggestions.

Malek, who hosted the most recent episode, plays one of two actors auditioning for the role. The other is Kenan Thompson. Malek isn’t Black. Thompson, even with a wig and purple get-up, doesn’t look much like Prince. But they’re still the final two contestants for a movie by director Jordan Peele (Chris Redd).

But there are two twists. One, Jordan Peale’s Prince biopic winds up not being about Prince at all. Instead, as one of them guesses, it turns into a “horror movie about racism.” The other is that they wind up with an unexpected guest: erstwhile James Bond, Malek’s No Time to Die co-star, and NYC resident Daniel Craig shows up, thinking it’s an audition for “a prince,” with regalia to match. None of them are ideal Princes, reminding us that perhaps no none could ever embody the late musician.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

The young class of artists on Gucci Mane’s The New 1017 label started an HBCU tour last week. The rappers, which include Bic Fizzle, Big Scarr, Bigwalk Dog, Enchanting, and Hotboy Wes, will visit Jackson State University, Morehouse College, Howard University, Florida A&M University, and Texas Southern University over the course of eight days. The performances at Jackson State University and Morehouse College went as planned, but the one at Howard University’s own did not. Instead, the artists chose to join the students in a sit-own protest against deplorable campus conditions.

The protest was captured on Big Scarr and his manager’s Instagram Stories. In one post, Scarr’s manager wrote, “We’re still here! Students you are the revolution. We are the revolution. This is not okay.” Another showed the artists standing beside students. Bigwalk Dog also shared posts about the protest to his story.

Students at Howard have spent nearly a week protesting at the university in hopes of attaining a list of improvements to campus life. According to Teen Vogue, one major issue is a campus housing crisis that has left many dealing with water damage and mold in their dorms. Others struggle to find affordable housing close to campus. Other issues include tuition hikes, a lack of COVID-19 testing, and more. A sit-in was staged on October 12 at Howard’s Blackburn University Center, with somewhere between two dozen to over 50 students occupying the area at various times. The following day, hundreds of students joined in the sit-in after they were instructed to leave the building in a letter from affairs vice president Cynthia Evers.

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

Perhaps you’ve heard of Squid Game. It’s the biggest global televisual sensation right now, watched by so many people Netflix has gotten sued in its native South Korea for breaking internet traffic records. And to prove that a program from a non-American country in a non-English language has truly penetrated subtitle-hating America, it got sent up on SNL.

The parody takes the form of a music video, sending up Branchez & Big Wet’s country hit “Turn Up On the Weekend.” Host Rami Malek and Pete Davidson — who also impersonated each other in a separate live sketch — play down-on-their-luck contestants in the deadly game, which invites the cash-strapped to endanger their lives for money.

“There’s a robot girl who caught me running, better duck behind the nearest guy,” Davidson sings as he hops behind fellow cast member Chris Redd, who’s then shot down by the creepy robot girl from the show.

Eventually Davidson turns on Malek, letting him be killed in his place. (“I just won the Squid Game, killed all of my friends to win the Squid Game.”) He wins, but he does something deeply foolish: He bets his entire winnings on the Jets, forcing him to return to the game. Perhaps it’s an ending Lebron James would have preferred.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.