Month: November 2021

If you live in an urban area, you likely struggle to source fresh produce locally. The issue is not solely a lack of farms, but often a lack of farm space. Brooklyn-based Upward Farms solves this issue by simply growing upward. They utilize an oft-forgotten space — the sky — as a means of growing food.

In the Upward Farms indoor farm, you’ll see stacks of microgreens, a nutrient-dense crop, growing atop fish tanks — a style of gardening called vertical aquaponics. Rather than using monocultural methods of in-ground, soil-based gardening, Upward Farms was founded on the principle of embracing ecology. They’re also able to avoid the use of toxic pesticides and herbicides by planting in a way that ensures a healthy harvest naturally. Their motto: Celebrate Ecology, Share Abundance.

It’s a great ethos to say out loud. But to live by that idea, you have to put in the work, think outside the norm, and have a deep desire to change deeply rooted ideas, entrenched practices, and nay-sayers. Lucky for… the world, really, those challenges don’t give Jason Green and the crew at Upward Farms a moment’s pause.

Upward Farms was founded by CEO Jason Green in 2013 as a call to action — to move away from farming methods that are harmful to the planet. But Green wasn’t alone in his efforts. He founded the company along with construction manager and systems engineer Matt LaRosa and chief technology officer Ben Silverman, with the initial goal of raising tilapia and growing vegetable greens. Their simple, streamlined approach, which focused on growing vegetables before trying to sell their fish is, what sets them apart from other aquaponic farms that didn’t last. It’s a tricky market. And until someone has successfully piloted it, it can be difficult to get investor buy-in.

“We think aquaponics provides a better model for us, the consumer, and the planet,” Green tells us. “Our yields are more than double the average for vertical farming, and we do that while reducing fertilizer levels by 90 percent.”

Aquaponics work in harmony with nature. Essentially ​​it is a system in which the waste produced by farmed fish (Upward Farms uses striped bass and salmon) supply the necessary nutrients for plants to grow hydroponically, which in turn purifies the water.

“There’s this symbiotic relationship where the bacteria are living around the plant roots,” Green explains. “They’re taking the nutrients, they’re absorbing part of that, and they’re delivering the rest to the plant. All of that symbiosis is what enables our plant health.”

While Upward farms have given the art of aquaponics a modern spin, the practice itself is ancient. It was practiced both in Chinese and Aztec cultures for millennia. In fact, Indigenous Mexican communities still use chinampas (aquatic gardens) to this day. This is a testament to the efficacy of the method. Upward Farms has no intention of reinventing the wheel, just redirecting it.

For Green, the key to a successful farm is rooted in biodiversity.

‘The key with biodiversity is building food webs,” Green says. “To date, we’ve grown four species of fish, more than 80 varieties of leafy greens, and everything from tomatoes to turnips.” Green points out that “biodiversity isn’t simply how many different kinds of greens I can grow” but about how many layers you can build to create food.

We’re not just growing fish and plants,” he says. “We’re also growing the microbiome.”

Upward Farms provides their community with microgreens, baby greens, and fish. Whole Foods was their initial retailer, selling packaged, personal-sized microgreen boxes. They recently scaled up their operation in 2020 by opening a new headquarters that expanded their production capacity by over 20 percent. But Green doesn’t think Upward Farms is the only aquaponics farm with the capacity to expand.

“In the U.S., we’re poised for massive growth in aquaculture,” he says. “The U.S. is the third-largest consumer of seafood in the world after China and Japan, and we currently import 90 percent of the seafood we eat.” Meaning that a “game-changer” is certainly called for.

“Our mission is to replace today’s globalized food supply with products that are local, organic and low cost,” he says.

That’s an innovation we should all be excited to see on the plate.

It’s been three years since Let’s Eat Grandma, the musical duo of songwriters Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, released their sophomore album. The pair have been through a lot in the three years since, facing mortality, heartbreak, and grief. It’s these intense emotions that they’ve poured into their upcoming album Two Ribbons, which they’ve just announced with the touching title track.

“Two Ribbons” is a slow and cathartic number. It plays on both singers’ heart-tugging songwriting as they deliver lyrics about fraying edges, friendship, and memory. In a statement about the track, Hollingworth noted it was written about some of the closest people in her life:

“‘Two Ribbons’ is a song I wrote to, and about, two of the closest people in my life, and how my relationships with them shifted over time through loss and life changes. It touches on the isolating experience of grieving, our powerlessness in the face of death, and the visceral emotions of grief.”

Watch Let’s Eat Grandma’s “Two Ribbons” video above and find their Two Ribbons album art and tracklist below.

1. “Happy New Year”
2. “Levitation”
3. “Watching You Go”
4. “Hall Of Mirrors”
5. “Insect Loop”
6. “Half Light”
7. “Sunday”
8. “In The Cemetery”
9. “Strange Conversations”
10. “Two Ribbons”

Two Ribbons is out 4/8/2022 via Transgressive. Pre-order it here.

Madison Love remembers the first time she heard the 2016 Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello collaboration “Bad Things” on the radio. The Los Angeles-born songwriter — who co-wrote the award-nominated top 10 hit — had spent a solid week at her parents’ house tuned into local stations, hoping the tune would pop up in rotation.

“[When] I heard the song I was screaming, and the whole family ran in the house,” Love recalls now. “The dog was jumping. We were like, ‘Oh my God!’ Every time I have a song that’s on the radio, I get really excited, but that first time, if I was in the car, I probably would’ve crashed. I was so excited.”

In the half-decade since the success of “Bad Things,” Love’s enjoyed plenty of other victories. She co-wrote G-Eazy and Halsey’s “Him and I” — which reached No. 1 on Billboard’s U.S. Mainstream Top 40 chart — and has also co-written songs for established artists (Demi Lovato, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga) as well as up-and-comers Ava Max (“Not Your Barbie Girl”), Hayley Kiyoko (“Wanna Be Missed”) and Madison Beer (“Heartless”).

Growing up, Love cut her teeth on the greats. She listened to Carole King (“I started out playing just acoustic guitar and I just really fell in love with her storytelling”), as well as Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, and Christina Aguilera. “I love all types of music, but I think the female empowerment artists were always the ones that got me the most,” she says.

Love is currently writing more songs for Ava Max, as well as working on other projects that are still under wraps. She’s also set up the Madison Love Future Fund at her alma mater, the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, to provide financial aid to students so they can attend the Summer High School Program.

“As soon as I was able to afford to, I was like, ‘I need to set up a scholarship. I need to give back,’” she says. “I really wouldn’t be anywhere in my career without that program, and I can’t wait to see what other students come out of there. I’m really invested in the future of music and I’m grateful that I’m able to help in any way I could.”

Calling from Los Angeles, Love discussed how she got into songwriting, writing for Lady Gaga, and what sets her apart.

What gave you the songwriting bug? What was the tipping point where you were like, “This is what I want to do?”

I’ve always been writing in a diary, a journal, ever since I was in high school. Every time I would come home from just a bad day, or breakup, or friend issue, I would go and write a song about it. It was a cathartic thing for me, because I was so upset. I would go in my room, lock the door and I would write a song, and then I’d come out and would be okay. I wouldn’t be upset anymore. My mom was like, “Wow, look, see you just channeled all your emotions into that one moment, and now you’re good. You can move on from it.”

That started at a really young age for me, but I didn’t really think I could do it as a profession until I went to the Clive Davis school. I went there as an artist and I came out as a songwriter, which I wasn’t expecting, but they had so many incredible classes and other songwriters that were teachers at the time and they really inspired me. They’re like, “This is so easy for you to write all these concepts. You can write this for this artist one day, and you can do a Spanish song tomorrow, and you can do this. It comes so naturally for you—you should try it out, and be open to letting other artists cut your song.”
I was like, “What? Artists don’t write their own songs?” I had no idea. I was very new to the industry myself. When I started out, I didn’t even think that was a profession that I could be.

Sometimes it takes another person from the outside to look at your talent and be like, “No, you really do have something here.”

I had a very good work ethic as well. I would go and try and hustle and meet A&Rs when I was living in New York. They would give me one DJ track, and I would go home and write seven different songs with different concepts and different melodies on the same track. I would send that back to them and I’d say, “Okay, ask the artist which idea he likes.”

Then they were like, “Wow, this girl really wants to win. She’ll literally do whatever it takes. We’ve got to give her more projects to work on.” That’s how it began, all these relationships that I started to make in New York. I was demo singing at the time too, to try and meet producers, because I didn’t know how to get my foot in the door and meet bigger producers.

It makes sense to try as many things as possible. That’s a good strategy, especially if you’re just starting out and there’s so much competition.

Yeah, and there were a lot of students in the program, but they didn’t take it as seriously as I did. All the teachers were Grammy Award-winning producers, Grammy Award-winning songwriters in the industry, working at publishing companies. I stood out from the rest of the class, because I was taking my homework seriously. I was treating it like I was trying to get a job every time.

In my second year, I ended up signing to a publishing deal and the head of the company was like, “Great, this is what we do. We got you to this point, you can leave now. You’re working, you have songs on the radio,” and I said, “No, I told myself I was going to start this program, and I was going to finish it. I want to stay. I can do both.” I was a new signee to a publishing deal, and I was FaceTime writing, before Zoom was a thing. We were just FaceTiming every day and I would go back [to L.A. and work] for winter vacations and all the breaks.

To what do you attribute that inner ambition? Did it come from your parents? Was it just something built into you?

My dad is in the music industry as well. He’s a renowned vocal coach, but my mother is Asian and she is always pushing me to be the best, and to never give up, and start things and finish them. She really gave me that work ethic. If I’m just sitting around, she’s like, “What are you doing? You should be practicing piano. You should practicing guitar. You should be doing all this.”

I’ve always had that drive, but I knew that once I got the opportunity to go to a program, like the one I went to, I wanted to make the most of it and really take it seriously. I felt lucky that I got chosen, because it’s such a small group of people. I was like, “I’m going to get the most out of this whole program, because I really want to win.”

And I feel like so many kids, when they go off to college, they don’t necessarily see that. It’s cool that you recognized that straight away. You’re better for it.

I definitely missed a lot of really fun parties, sitting home and writing on random tracks. I regret that a little bit.

But it’s all good. You have things to show for it now.

Now I can party.

Looking over your career, you have this pattern of writing songs for artists who are just breaking out — Madison Beer, Ava Max, and Hayley Kiyoko. That must be such a great position to be in. They’re really finding their voice, and as a songwriter, you’re really helping boost that. Talk a little bit about that.

Yeah. After I did “Bad Things,” G-Eazy reached out to me to come write one for him. He was like, “I want a ‘Bad Things.’” I went over there with the same crew and we ended up writing “Him And I” that night at his studio, because he’s like, “I really want a radio song the way you did it.” I was like, “Okay, let’s do it.”

He ended up getting Halsey on the song too, which was an incredible thing, and I remember running into them in New York, when the song was number one and they were like, “Oh my God, this is so exciting. Our song is number one,” and I met them right when the song hit number one for two weeks, or something.

It was such a cool experience, to give these artists that. Halsey already had a few songs on the radio, but it was still pretty new for them to be having a really big pop single, at the time, and for G-Eazy, that was exciting for him as well. I don’t think he had a song that went number one on pop radio.

It definitely felt really cool to be a part of that with artists that I’m obsessed with, and I’ve always been a huge fan of Halsey. To have that moment together, they were grateful for me and I was like, “I’m so grateful for you, and this is so cool. I can’t believe this my life. This is my job.”

As a songwriter if you are working with artists that you’re fans of, is there more pressure involved?

When I worked with Lady Gaga, I definitely was super nervous, because she’s probably my favorite artist ever. I got to work with her through BloodPop, which was such an incredible experience, and we ended up writing a song for her last album Chromatica [“Sour Candy”]. She’s just a legend.

I was mostly quiet in the room, because she worked on the song when I wasn’t around, because she likes to do a lot of the work on her own. She’s so prolific. She took an idea that I started with them and then she finished it on her own. Then she invited me to the studio to hear it, and she was just so cool. I was speechless the whole time I was sitting there.

I just didn’t know what to say. I was so nervous, but she was dancing around the room and we were listening to the song together and she was like, “I love this. I never take outside ideas. This is really exciting,” and it was just so cool to be able to just see her in real life, and hear her singing lyrics that I helped work on. That was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been.

But with most other artists, I’m pretty cool, because everyone is so nice and they all want to work. They reach out to work with me specifically, because they want what I’ve got going on. I don’t have to be too intimidated because they really are trying to work with me. I’m excited to work with them, but they come to me for a specific thing.

What a great position to be in and to have that balance. It helps you work better as an artist, if you know that you’re wanted, they want you in the room.

The male artists love to have me in the room, because they’re like, “Can I say this? Is this okay to say? What would a girl think?” and they want that female perspective as well, because they’re like, “All my fans are girls like you, and I want them to love the song.” That’s what a lot of male artists say to me. I’m like, “Sure, I got you. This is great. I think they’re going to love this.”

What have you learned the most as a songwriter from working with either other songwriters or some of these artists that you’ve worked with? Are there any lessons or things in particular you can pinpoint?

I’m very prepared when I go into a room. I’m not the kind of girl that shows up and has no ideas prepared. I very much come with my journal with 20 ideas. When I work with artists that are just like, “Let’s just do whatever,” I’m always [like], “I got this, you can count on me to make sure that we don’t just waste the day.” I’ve learned that that’s the most productive thing, because most artists don’t come in with ideas that they want to do. Camila [Cabello] will come in and she was like, “I have this idea for a song,” and then we’ll work on it. But most artists come in the room [with] nothing, and I have to always be prepared and try and not waste the moment.

I think that’s what helped my career, too, because people know that I was reliable. They were like, “Madison’s going to show up. She’s always early. She’ll stay there until it’s right. She’ll do edits. The label’s really happy, because if we don’t like this, she’ll go back and change it a million times. She just wants to get the song.” There’s nothing precious about anything and I’m willing to make the artist happy. They’re the ones that have to sing it and perform it every night. If I have to change a little bit of the concept to help them want to put it out, then that’s what you’ve got to do.

After dropping a teaser trailer last week for “La Fama,” Rosalía and The Weeknd have delivered on their promise in spades. The first song off of Rosalía’s Motomami, due out in 2022, “La Fama” arrives with a video that’s both deadly and metaphoric.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” actor and taco entrepreneur Danny Trejo says to an opulent club crowd as the video begins. “I want to introduce the following number. But I must warn you, she’s not for everyone. She will pierce your heart and she will be your only obsession! So get ready for some heat… La Fama!”

But this is no ordinary club, this is a decadent cabaret where people snort diamonds and sip gemstone martinis. Rosalía is the titular “La Fama” singing and dancing seductively and setting her crosshairs on The Weeknd, sitting front and center. His high-pitched voice joins her in Spanish as he rises to heed her siren call. They get closer and closer, and just as their lips are about to meet, she kills him.

“I wanted to write, in my own way, a bachata with a little story around ambition,” Rosalía said in a statement. “Taking as a reference the lyrics of Ruben Blades or Patti Smith and the songs of Aventura, I ended up writing a story of romance with fame.”

The video and the song’s lyrics are definitely symbolic of an obsession with stardom, something that both Rosalía and the Weeknd have experienced a lot of. It’s a cautionary tale to the endless thirst traps surrounding the entertainment industry. And as the lights dim, Rosalía poses for applause while The Weekend lays lifeless and Trejo punctuates what we just witnessed: “Don’t forget, be careful what you wish for!”

Watch the video for “La Fama” above.

Kid Cudi made headlines earlier this year when he donned a dress while performing on Saturday Night Live. That wasn’t a one-off thing for him as he proved yesterday, when he showed up to an award show wearing another dress, one that was flashier than his previous look.

Cudi wore a custom wedding dress to attend the Council Of Fashion Designers Of America’s annual award show, the CFDA Awards, yesterday alongside American Emerging Designer Of The Year nominee Eli Russell Linnetz. Linnetz designed the look and People describes it, “Cudi’s wedding-inspired look featured a full lace catsuit worn underneath a matching tea-length skirt and sleek white blazer. Instead of heels, he opted for embellished white sneakers to add some edge. Of course, the ensemble wouldn’t be complete without a statement veil.”

Linnetz told the publication, “I just out of the blue sent him a text of a wedding dress and I was like, ‘Will you be my bride?’” Cudi also said, “I trust this man so I was down to take it wherever his mind went.”

Following Cudi’s SNL appearance where we wore a dress, he explained that he wasn’t concerned with negative reception his fashion choice, saying, “I’ve never been someone who’s like thinking about the backlash. I don’t give a f*ck about what anyone thinks. You can’t when you’re doing this sh*t. I knew it would piss some people off, but I love that. Because hip-hop is so weird about sh*t. I’ve already seen people making YouTube videos where they’re just strictly talking about me and this dress. Like grown men angry, grown Black men angry. ‘He’s doing something against men and masculinity, it’s a big thing going on…’ And I just be like, yo, this is so funny, this is crazy that I’ve stirred it up like this.

Trying to explain the premise of Showtime’s latest series Yellowjackets feels a lot like Bill Hader’s SNL alter-ego Stefon listing out the elements of his new favorite NYC nightclub.

But the truth is, this show really does have everything: Coming-of-age tropes, ’90s nostalgia, teen drama, thrilling murder mysteries, cannibalism. And it’s all housed in a survival epic that spans decades and stars an eclectic cast of industry greats and promising newcomers.

The main arc starts with a high school girls’ soccer team finding themselves stranded in the wilderness following a tragic plane crash. They’re forced to do some pretty terrible things to survive but survive, they do. We know that for sure because the first few episodes made available for critics effortlessly bounce back and forth between that remote, forested hell and the present day as the now-grown women are all sent anonymous postcards with cryptic messaging, forcing them to reunite to find out who amongst them has broken their decades-long vow of silence about what really went down out there.

It’s Lord of the Flies on steroids, bolstered by a cast that includes Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, and Melanie Lynskey. It’s also one of the more unique, original stories we’ve seen on TV in quite a while.

So we sat down with Lewis and actress Sophie Thatcher who both play versions of the same character — a young woman named Natalie who finds her purpose in the disaster’s aftermath and struggles to adapt to more civilized society in the present. The ladies told us about what drew them to this story, the challenging shoot, and whether they think they’d survive some time out in the wild.

We’ve seen survival stories before. What stood out to you as really different with this one?

Juliette Lewis: For me, it was one of the best scripts I had read in over 10 years. I love how distinct each character was in the present day and their past selves. I love the marriage between young female athletes in the ’90s to a survival trauma story to these women that were all so different in the present day. All of it was just really seamless. I was like, ‘Oh, I want to be that girl.’ It was one of the grittiest scripts that I’d read in a while.

You both play different versions of the same character. Who is Nat when we first meet her, and how does the crash affect her psyche?

Sophie Thatcher: She starts off with a very different background from everyone else. She’s already had to fend for herself, and she’s already been in kind of a survival mindset most of her life. So I think she comes into the wilderness situation more naturally because she’s already had this part of her brain triggered to work through a lot of things and take care of herself. Out of all of the characters, she thrives out there. I think the wilderness kind of gives her a purpose that she didn’t have before.

When we meet her 20 years later, she’s in rehab. So I’m guessing that loss of purpose really hits her hard at some point?

JL: Yeah, she’s mid-patterns. She’s mid-repetition, and what breaks her from it is this postcard. It emboldens her to go, ‘I’m going back home now.’ And Misty, Christina Ricci’s character, she’s similar in that some people never felt more alive than they did out there. I’ve had that on so many occasions, on tour. You’re like, ‘How am I existing? I need to get off tour.’ But the second you’re home, you’re like, ‘I’ve never felt more alive than when we were slugging it out.’

But in the present day, she’s going back home to find out what the f*ck is up. That’s her vibe, but then you’re going to see her sort of devolve in confusion because she can’t make it quite fit. She can’t make the pieces pull together.

Did any of the cast have to go through survival boot camp to prep for some of the more intense wilderness scenes?

ST: I think just being out there in the wilderness itself was already an immersive crazy experience. Going to Vancouver … I didn’t know anybody. I only knew the actors that I was with, and I know that’s not boot camp, but I think just being there for a week straight staying in this hotel in the middle of nowhere was boot camp enough for me. We were just thrown right into it. But I think that’s good in a way because the characters were thrown right into it. They weren’t prepared.

How do you think you’d fare if you were put in that situation.

ST: I would probably be the first to die.

JL: Oh my god, Sophie! Unacceptable.

You have a character’s rep to protect.

ST: [laughs]

JL: I’m 40, so I’ve lived through some sick stuff. Once you’ve lived through a couple of things, you’re like, ‘Hmm, I think I could survive anything.’ I’m a good person in a crisis. I’ve been in a hurricane, an earthquake. I’ve been on a plane where it was almost going to fall out of the sky. I go into a very weird calm. That’s a survival mechanism, I think. But yeah, I can survive disasters.

Some really weird things end up happening out in the wild. Are we going to dive into the supernatural at some point?

ST: Yeah, it’s never explicit, but pretty early on things get borderline surreal. But I think that is tapping into what people are experiencing and how something so traumatic can actually shift your perception. That’s how I like to take it because I like to find grounding within anything, even anything supernatural.

Without giving away any spoilers, what’s the wildest thing you had to shoot this season?

JL: I did something that I’ve never done on screen before. And it’s all an expression of pain. It’s really intense. I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to show. I’m not going to watch anything. But it was an interesting scene to play and it’s at the end of the show. It’s going to be wild and I can’t tell you anything about it.

ST: Oh, there was a lot of stuff that I had never done before. It was scary coming into it. I’ve never gone to a place as dark as it got. But I worked with a female director, which made me feel more comfortable. There’s a lot of backstory within one specific episode. I hadn’t dug that deep on-screen before. So everything was on a different level.

There are some obvious Lord of the Flies comparisons in this story. We all know how that turned out. Do you think gender plays a role in the group’s survival odds at all?

ST: I don’t think it matters what gender. I think naturally, especially at such a young age, women are more emotionally intelligent. So to turn into that cannibalistic mindset … it maybe took them longer just because I think women are smarter men. [laughs]

Obviously.

ST: But I think that’s it. Besides that, there’s no difference. They’re going to go batsh*t crazy.

JL: It’s funny because when you first asked the question, that’s what rises. It’s like, ‘Well we would figure some sh*t out that [men] certainly couldn’t.’ [laughs] With that said, when you’re talking about people that have narcissistic tendencies, that are sociopathic, alphas who put [others] down to feel stronger? That’s in both genders.

Is this the kind of story that lends itself to multiple seasons, or are we going to find a resolution to this by the end?

JL: Oh no! You know how TV people do. They like to torture people. No, they’re going to leave you on a cliffhanger, but they going to answer some questions.

ST: There’s just going to be new questions at the end.

Showtime’s ‘Yellowjackets’ premieres on November 14.

During the Summer of 2020, as COVID-19 cases continued to devastate the country and public gatherings were severely limited, then-President Donald Trump decided to throw an indoor rally to help bolster his depressingly-low polling numbers. We all know how the event turned out — low attendance, high infection rates, and the tragic passing of Herman Cain, a devout Trump supporter and former GOP presidential candidate.

But, according to a new book, what went on behind the scenes of Trump’s vanity-fueled super-spreader event was even worse than what the media initially reported. Basically, this whole thing was a total sh*tshow.

In his new book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, Jonathan Karl recount the weeks leading up to the event. With Trump polling abysmally low numbers thanks to his mishandling of the recent Coronavirus outbreak, his staff advised he’d need to do something to win back voters. Trump, who had been pining for more rallies full of adoring MAGA fans shouting his name, decided a huge gathering during the middle of a pandemic was the shot of adrenaline his campaign needed. Campaign manager Brad Parscale tried to tempt him with a boat rally in Florida and some drive-through options to keep people safe but the former president wanted large crowds, indoors which is why Oklahoma — a state with a Republican governor and lax COVID protocols — was eventually chosen to host the rally. Days before the event, staffers gathered to set things up, hosting their own late-night reunion at their hotel. That’s where the trouble really started.

“Nobody bothered to keep their distance or wear masks,” Karl writes, detailing a booze-filled after-party held in a Trump staffer’s hotel room. “As it turned out, the virus wasn’t just spreading across the country—it was also spreading among the Trump campaign staff.”

Eight members of Trump’s staff would soon be infected with Covid, along with two Secret Service members.

“The headlines were embarrassing,” Karl continues. “Trump was furious that news about infected campaign staffers was getting in the way of news about his triumphant return to the campaign trail.”

Trump officials instructed staffers to stop testing and directed infected staffers to “rent a car” and drive the 1300 miles back to Washington, D.C. despite the CDC issuing a mandatory quarantine of 10 days for those testing positive. They dubbed the vehicle the “Covid-mobile. “One staffer was so sick, he was eventually admitted to a hospital in Tulsa after the rally took place. Still, the thing that almost stopped Trump from attending wasn’t the public health crisis but the embarrassingly low attendance numbers which he had, at one point predicted would be in the 1 million range.

“As Air Force One prepared to land in Tulsa, Trump called Parscale to check in on the thing he cared about the most: the size of the crowd,” Karl writes. “‘Is it going to be full?’ Trump asked. ‘No, sir. It looks like Beirut in the eighties,’ Parscale responded. Trump hung up on him.”

Days after the rally, Cain, who had flown out to the event and attended maskless, was hospitalized with Covid-19. A month later, he died from complications from the disease. Karl describes the reaction amongst staffers to his death as devastating:

“‘We killed Herman Cain,’ one senior staffer told ABC News reporter Will Steakin not long after Cain’s death.”

So yeah, as bad as it looked on TV, apparently Trump’s death rally was even worse in real life.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Fergie sang the national anthem at the 2018 NBA All-Star Game. While plenty of folks have received heaps of praise for their own renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Fergie’s version, uh, didn’t do that. Instead, cameras caught a handful of people listening laughing — Draymond Green and Steph Curry both found it hilarious, LeBron James and Kevin Durant appeared to enjoy it, and Chance the Rapper and Jimmy Kimmel both cracked smiles from their seats.

The rendition was famously remixed by the Warriors, who danced to it just days after Fergie’s ex-husband, Josh Duhamel, said Green was “kind of a prick” for laughing at it. And now, the anthem has been immortalized in the form of a children’s book titled The Fergamerican National Anthem, which takes it and spells out the lyrics as they were sang by Fergie.

You can, indeed, purchase this, so while it would have been extremely good as a thing made one time as part of a bit on the internet, this is even better. Don’t take my word for it, take Curry’s, as the Warriors’ star caught wind of this and is a huge fan.

Perhaps one day things related to this anthem will stop being funny, but today is very much not that day.

Christopher Walken once explained that his unique line delivery is due to his aversion of punctuation. “I think it has to do with the fact that I love the words, but I don’t like the punctuation. I feel that punctuation is a kind of stage direction,” he said. “Punctuation tells you how to say something, and I think the words of what you have to say and how you say them is really up to you.” I bring this up because I would love to hear where Christopher Walken would put the punctuation in the following sentence: Christopher Walken destroyed a Banksy painting potentially worth millions for a BBC comedy series.

The New York Times reports that the Oscar-winning actor “wiped away a real Banksy painting from the side of a building in England on an episode of BBC’s The Outlaws that aired Wednesday night. Though Banksy’s work has fetched millions of dollars at auction, Mr. Walken unceremoniously painted over the artwork on the comedy-drama series, which is set in Banksy’s hometown, Bristol.” A spokesperson for the show, created by The Office‘s Stephen Merchant, said that Walken painted over it during filming, “ultimately destroying it.” Something tells me Banksy would approve of what Walken did.

Here’s what it looked like, mid-paint:

Christopher Walken’s got a fever, and the only prescription is more destruction of million-dollar artworks.

(Via the New York Times)

Five years after 2016’s Suicide Squad landed in theaters, comic-book fans are still asking to #ReleaseTheAyerCut. And five years later, we’re also still hearing revisions on stories about Jared Leto’s gift-giving to his co-stars while going method on the Joker. His version was a twisted Joker who literally had a “Damaged” tattoo, and that’s even before the “We Live In A Society” meme service in the Snyder Cut of Justice League.

That gift-giving was weird, man. There were rumors about a dead rat, and then Leto insisted that it was a live rat, and as Entertainment Weekly noted (while speaking with Leto about House of Gucci) he claimed to have given “used condoms” to cast members, including Margot Robbie and Will Smith, to “create a dynamic,” and some sense of closeness between colleagues. What? Well, Leto now insists that all gifts were “filmed” and “given with a spirit of fun and adventure and received with laughter, fun, and adventure.” He even gave Margot cupcakes, he says, which actually sounds like a great gift that could redeem this whole story, but then this happened:

“I’m playing a guy called the Joker, it’s okay to play some jokes. Nothing ever crossed any lines, and it’s not up to other people on the internet to create those lines,” he says, later adding: “I’m an artist at the end of the day. If I do something risky and you don’t like it, basically, you can kiss my ass.“

I don’t know, man. If those condoms were truly “used,” then that goes past being an artist and dives into matters of hygiene. And hopefully, those condoms had nothing to do with the cupcakes. (Must think about cupcakes.)

A prosthetic-clad Leto stars in House of Gucci, in theaters on November 21.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)