Month: December 2021

As was the case for much of the last decade, the Golden State Warriors are perched atop the NBA this season in large part because of a stifling defense. Anchoring that unit is Draymond Green, arguably the frontrunner for Defensive Player of the Year through two months.

Recently, Green sat down with ESPN’s Doris Burke to analyze some defensive clips and provide insight into his thought process on each play. Here’s a snippet. It is brilliant:

The whole video spans five minutes and is absolutely worth your time.

So much of basketball analysis for writers and fans is a guessing game, trying to understand why and how a team or player makes a certain decision. Unless someone is entirely privy to every scheme and tendency, errors are baked into our perception of players and teams.

Green’s film room session with Burke eliminates some of that mystery, and produces masterful soundbites such as “at some point, like, you have to expect that your defense is going to break down.” It is not hard to see why Green has joined the TNT crew for broadcasts in the past.

He’s the best team defender in the NBA and hearing him explain why he executed a rotation and how he did so makes me a smarter basketball consumer. On the final play of the clip, he even holds himself accountable for not boxing out Kyle Anderson and notes the impact of that decision, as it prevents him from leading the fast break to set up Stephen Curry for an open shot.

Players and media earnestly breaking down film together enriches every fan’s basketball knowledge. Hopefully, we continue to see more of this.

Click to download here.

Kiss On Both Cheeks

Grab some ribs, hop in your car, and throw on the latest Pod Yourself A Gun. Matt and Vince are joined by comedian, writer, professor, and weiner dog enthusiast Amy Silverberg to discuss The Sopranos season 6a episode 6 “Live Free or Die.”

This is the episode where everyone finds out Vito’s secret. The boys at the Bada Bing are mortified to hear from Finn that Vito has been on the receiving end of at least one penile encounter. As you can imagine, there is not a lot of acceptance among the wiseguys, which has Amy wondering if the younger mafia guys in 2021 are more open. According to her students, if you’re not bi, you’re a loser. Maybe today’s gangsters have progressed, but as far as Tony’s concerned, absolutely no gay stuff, unless you’re in prison for a while. That’s different.

We also meet Johnny Cakes for the first time. Go ahead and let out a big sigh while you stare at his potent mustache and think about that life you could have lived in a little town in Vermont if you weren’t such a good earner.

Put your best Vito related double entendre in a five-star review on Apple Podcasts

See Pod Yourself A Gun Live! January 15th at the PianoFight Theater during San Francisco Sketchfest!

Subscribe to Pod Yourself A Gun on Apple Podcasts

Email us at [email protected]; leave us a voicemail at 415-275-0030

Support the Pod: become a patron at patreon.com/Frotcast and get more bonus content than you could ever want, AND if you sign up for the Pod Yourself a Shoutout tier, you can bask in the glory of hearing your name on the podcast like this week’s newest members: Matt Foley, The Fop, The Glove, Glen Coco, Daddy Bumpkins (RIP), & Lil Bumpkins.

-Description by Brent Flyberg.

Usually, there’s an, at least, attempt not to reveal my opinion of a movie, either way, when interviewing a film’s director. Some days I’m better at this than others. On this day I was bad at it. Perhaps because it seemed Matthew Vaughn was being a little down on himself about The King’s Man (a prequel to the previous two Kingsman films that have been ungodly successful), because he’s made a pretty weird action movie. And this is when I found myself saying, “I fucking love this movie.” Which, yes, is true. It’s just unlike anything I’ve seen recently and kind of taps into the sheer bravado and earnestness of action movies from the ’80s and ’90s.

The King’s Man stars Ralph Fiennes as Orlando Oxford during the lead-up and events of World War I. It features a plethora of historical characters from that era and involves a secret society that orchestrates events to defeat Britain. Let’s say this movie goes in a lot of directions you will not expect and gives us a full-fledged Ralph Fiennes action movie. (At one point he is riding on top of an airplane.) And, then there’s Rhys Ifans’s turn as Rasputin, which is one of the most bizarre performances I’ve seen in a long time and I loved every second of it. (As Vaughn ahead explains, that performance was the result of a perfect storm of “crazy button” between Vaughn and Ifans.)

I can’t tell what Vaughn thinks his public perception is right now. He keeps making remarks about people don’t like his movies, even though – like with X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, and these Kingman movies – they are wildly successful. (When mentioning the next Kingsman movie after this one he comes out and says, “A lot of people will hate it.”) He makes a point to say he will never be pigeonholed. And my best guess about his attitude is not many people are making these kinds of movies quite like he is these days. This is a good thing he’s doing this. But he admits, it’s leaving some audience members confused since he isn’t give them, as he says, a “generic action movie.”

When you were talking about your next movie, Argyle, you said you wanted it to be an ’80s and ’90s action movie. I think you hit some of that spirit here, too, with The King’s Man.

Listen, I think I’m an ’80s boy. God, it’s very different to this, I can tell you that now.

Well, when Orlando Oxford is balancing on top of an airplane I was in a screening room by myself, applauding. I was having so much fun.

Well, yeah, this is my earlier part of the ’80s influence, in the sense that when this all started… Have you seen the movie The Man Who Would be King?

I have.

So that was one of my favorite films as a kid. I watched it four years ago and I went, oh my God, I want to make The Man Who Would Be Kingsman. I want to bring back epic adventure, good story, great characters – some good humor, some good banter, but a lot of pathos and some very strong political messaging.

Ah, I see.

So that’s where it came from. But the ’80s? I still think the ’80s was that moment for me, it’s probably because that was when I was absorbing it, so that feeling of love and passion of cinema and music and art and fashion, all that stuff. I was absorbing it every day. So you can’t help but be inspired by it. Even now I watch these ’80s movies and yeah, CG can be terrible, or some of the editing, or the fights can be really bad, but they’re escapism. That’s all this is.

There’s something so earnest about those movies, where they totally believe in what they’re doing.

Yes. If I don’t believe in it, why should anybody else? You have to commit and be strong. This is hard, by the way. We cut a lot of stuff out. I had three Rasputin scenes I couldn’t release. Everyone who saw them, “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

So let’s talk about Rhys Ifans’s Rasputin for a second. Was that you telling him to do that? Was that him? I have not seen anything quite like that.

Let’s say Rhys and I both have a crazy button that melded together very quickly.

So that was the perfect storm.

It was the perfect storm. As I said, there are three scenes, which one day they may be released, and people will look at it and go, “Oh my god.”

Can you tell me one?

There was quite a fun way of… Well, actually, this is a silly one. It was how the Tsar was told Rasputin was dead, and he said, “Get me proof.” And the proof was a certain part of his famous body on a silver tray.

Oh no.

And that was one. Another one was him having a threesome with Tsar and the Tsarina. Things like that. We went more into the dark sexual side of things.

And you have to understand, from my perspective, the scene where Rasputin is licking Orlando’s wound on his way upper thigh is still in the movie. That is one of the craziest things I’ve seen in a movie in a very long time.

Yeah. Well, what’s wrong with a bit of wound licking? Ask Ralph about his wound licking, what he thought.

I’m not speaking to Ralph, but I would love to know the answer to that, actually.

I think he enjoyed it, I’ll say.

I want to see what you think about this. These Kingsman movies are some of the most successful movies that don’t quite get the credit they deserve for being as successful as they are? I don’t think people realize how popular these movies are.

To me? I don’t know.

These movies make a lot of money and I don’t think people realize it. For example, people think Kick-Ass was successful. And it was. These movies make four times what Kick-Ass made.

It’s a hard one for me to answer that. Because all my films, I think they’re sort of different? Again, dare I say, people are saying, “Is this is a drama, is it an action film, what is this?“ But I think you can say that about Stardust, Kick-Ass?, even X-Men: First Class. I do sort of tend to mash things up, so I think people don’t know. Is this an independent movie, is it a blockbuster? I just think I’m a bit of [pauses]…

An enigma?

Yeah, I think people don’t quite… I think we’re in a world where people like to pigeonhole people quickly. And I’m trying never to be pigeonholed.

Speaking of your ’80s, ’90s roots with those type of movies: There are usually one or two scenes in every single one where it’s like, what the fuck is going on here? And you capture that well in your movies.

I think that’s my job. And if people don’t like it then they can watch a generic action movie, they’re happy. But I’ve been getting bored recently in some of the blockbusters. They are feeling a little bit formulaic.

I am, too. Which is why I like this movie because it does not feel formulaic. And I don’t feel that a lot in current blockbusters, where I’m just having the best time.

Yeah, I agree. I think when you watch these films, the things that you’ll remember, or discover even, sometimes, on the second viewing, they’re pretty packed full of stuff. But it’s my job. I don’t know, isn’t it a job of the director to take people on a journey they weren’t expecting?

I was worried before this movie it would be like the first one where we don’t get Ralph Fiennes the whole movie. But, no, we finally get the all-in Ralph Fiennes action movie.

Yes. Can you imagine how good Ralph would have been as Bond 20 years ago?

Well, watching him in the new Bond, I wanted to see him do some action. And here it is.

Yeah. And he is a pleasure to work with. And deep down he’s a fanboy, he just didn’t know it.

Oh, is that true?

Yeah, yeah. You just have to drag it out at him and relight the fire, and it exploded.

When this was announced there were some reports you were doing this movie and the third movie of the original storyline at the same time. Is that third movie still on track?

Yeah, we’re going to conclude the Eggsy and Harry relationship, it’s all ready to go. COVID came and just derailed that, so we’re behind. So this comes out and we start filming. I think we’re aiming to film August, September next year, with Eggsy and Harry. It’s fun. It’s different, by the way. A lot of people will hate it, but I like it.

No, they won’t. You keep saying that. People love your movies.

Well, yeah, some. Not all of them.

‘The King’s Man’ opens in theaters on December 22nd. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Tyler The Creator doesn’t call himself “Bellhop” for nothing. His fascination with bags and luggage has been at the forefront of his Call Me If You Get Lost rollout. However, while he loves to show off his designer trunks — just check out the video for “Lumberjack” to see an example — from this point forward it seems likely that those trunks will include some from his own brand, Golf Le Fleur.

After introducing a line of nail polish — also something he showcased during the rollout — and a fragrance — maybe someone who’s spent some time in his proximity can confirm if this one was part of the album promotion — Tyler has unveiled the latest Golf product and in all honesty, it really might be his best to date. The Golf bags come in three sizes: the 9″ London Square handbag ($1,395), the 14″ Mini Attache ($1,695), and the 20″ Trolley trunk ($2,095). All are made from Vulcanized Fibreboard with leather corners and handles featuring neutral colors with Golf’s signature pops of pastel. They are kind of gorgeous.

In typical Tyler fashion, he introduced the new products with yet another self-directed short film titled “Globetrotter.” It’s semi-inspired by French New Wave cinema and has a quirky, tongue-in-cheek plotline that gives his bag a goofy origin story that seems like a bit of a satirical, daydream-y nod to his own absentee pops.

In addition to the bags themselves, the latest drop also includes stickers, a luggage tag, and a leather passport case. All are also luxury prices but then again, they also come in luxury quality. You can check out the full drop here.

Last month, Britney Spears called out Christina Aguilera for not speaking out against Spears’ conservatorship. One of Spears’ contemporaries who did have her back, though, is Mariah Carey, who says that one point during Spears’ conservatorship troubles, she reached out, given that she had some related experiences in her life.

In a new NME feature, Carey says:

“I think everybody on this planet deserves to be free and what they did to her, what I saw, was horrific. So I reached out to her through a mutual friend because I wanted her to know: ‘Guess what? You’re not alone.’ I remember when I was going through a lot of stuff years ago, Prince reached out to me and gave me a Bible and he talked to me for hours. He’s an amazing person and he cared about the music business and the industry being so screwed up — which it is. You’ve got to be a giving person. It doesn’t matter whether they’re my best friend or whatever, I just felt like it was the right thing to do.”

Elsewhere in the piece, she spoke about how she came to record her classic album Merry Christmas, saying, “Someone smarter than myself suggested I do a Christmas album as a young, young girl and I was like, ‘Hmm – doesn’t that happen later in life?’ And then I said, ‘But you know what? I love Christmas!’”

Check out the full feature here.

If you’ve ever wondered what type of porn people in Wisconsin are jerking off to (and who among us hasn’t?) you might be surprised to learn that the answer is “lesbian yoga.” How do we know this? Jimmy Kimmel told us!

At the end of each year, Pornhub shares some of the data the site has collected over the past 12 months to share with the public, including a map of the most searched types of pornography in every state. And some of the results were, well, kind of sad.

Maybe it’s because of the near-two years we’ve spent living in a pandemic, but some of the topics being searched out were downright sob-worthy. In Arkansas, for example, the top searched term was… “Divorced,” which Kimmel admitted “might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

In North Dakota, people are all about the “Quickie,” which Kimmel thinks “makes sense, because it’s freezing up there. You don’t want to be naked too long.” He presented Louisiana with the Least Imaginative Award, given that their top search was simply “Naked women.” (Do better, Louisiana!) North Carolina got a little more imaginative with their interest in “penis pumps,” while Indiana opted for the more traditional “dildo.”

“Vermont’s number one is ‘tribbing,’” Kimmel said, “which not only do I have no idea what that is—I don’t want to look it up, because I’m afraid I might run into Ben & Jerry, like, eating ice cream on top of each other.”

If you want to see where you fit in in your state, you can watch the full clip above.

Pushing nutty conspiracy theories to the masses over the airwaves can be a costly business, as Fox News might be about to find out the hard way. On Thursday, according to Variety, Delaware Superior Court judge Eric M. Davis denied Fox News’s motion to dismiss the $1.6 million defamation suit that was filed against the network in March of this year by Dominion Voting Systems, the election technology company that sells many of the voting machines Americans used to cast their vote in the 2020 presidential election.

In their original suit, according to Variety, Dominion alleged that, “Fox set out to lure viewers back—including President Trump himself—by intentionally and falsely blaming Dominion for President Trump’s loss by rigging the election.”

Fox has vehemently denied these claims. Shortly after news of the original lawsuit broke, Fox News issued a statement in which they claimed: “FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court.”

While there’s still a long road ahead for both parties, some legal experts believe that the Superior Court siding with Dominion on the motion to dismiss could portend a rough road ahead for Fox, according to Raw Story. On Thursday, Anderson Cooper chatted with a panel of legal experts to get their take on the matter—and there seemed to be a general agreement that Fox could be in some serious doo-doo (yes, that’s proper legal jargon).

“By putting Rudy Giuliani [and] Sidney Powell, making these outrageous false allegations, on the air without allowing Dominion to refute them, that’s libel,” CNN’s chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said (yes, that Jeffrey Toobin). “And that’s what Fox is going to have to defend. And I don’t know how they’re going to defend it. I think it’s a very good case for the plaintiffs.”

John Dean, former White House Counsel to Richard Nixon, was surprised by the Delaware Supreme Court’s verdict. “Most of these cases get dismissed at this very early stage with a motion to dismiss,” he told Cooper. “I think that probably handles overwhelming number of defamation cases, because the standard is very unique. They have to show actual malice that was employed, meaning that they either knew it was false and went ahead with it or they did it with reckless disregard, they had some indication but yet they still went ahead.”

You can watch the full conversation above.

(Via Raw Story)

There was quite a stir on the internet when British singer Adele “debuted” her new beau Rich Paul after months of low-key “hanging out” (as he put it in an interview in The New Yorker in May), with fans flabbergasted (or outright confused, for the singer’s fans who don’t watch the sportsball) by the seemingly unlikely pairing. Paul, of course, is the agent of NBA superstar LeBron James, who it turns out isn’t above teasing his friend’s PDA with the “Easy On Me” singer, as he did on Twitter last night during the Thursday night football game between the Los Angeles Chargers (still feels weird to type) and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Adele, Paul, and LeBron’s other right-hand man Maverick Carter were all caught on the broadcast along with James’ mentor and favorite rapper Jay-Z, and he couldn’t resist taking the opportunity to troll his friends for being less famous than their companions. “Who the heck are Jay-Z and Adele’s +1s????” he tweeted, adding a monocle emoji for extra effect.

Of course, Mav and Rich are likely used to drawing just a little less attention after growing up with LeBron in Cleveland and helping to manage his career since he was drafted straight out of high school in 2003. Nearly 20 years later, it seems they’re as tight as ever — and enjoying the benefits of it, hanging out not just with LeBron, but with two of the biggest names in entertainment as well.

Oh, and the Chargers lost. Sigh.

While a chunk of the Republican Party stays tethered to Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is standing firm against his GOP colleagues by touting the importance of the January 6 House select committee. During an interview on Thursday, McConnell condemned the assault on the U.S. Capitol building following Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally and praised the investigation into the MAGA coup, despite initially calling the committee “slanted and unbalanced.”

“It was a horrendous event and I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know,” McConnell told Spectrum News.

McConnell’s stance puts him at odds with his counterpart in the House, Kevin McCarthy, who has shown intense loyalty to Trump and denounced the select committee investigation. However, McConnell’s position shouldn’t come as a total surprise. In October, it was revealed that McConnell and fellow Republican Senator Tom Cotton quietly worked behind the scenes to stop Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. While the two weren’t able to prevent the January 6 rally from turning to violence, they were instrumental in convincing fellow Republicans to pull back from derailing the certification process.

Also in the mix is a considerable amount of animosity between Trump and McConnell as the former president has routinely bashed the Senate Minority Leader for not being loyal enough. In a recent interview with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Trump called McConnell an “old crow” and a “disaster” before blasting Mike Pence for certifying the election.

(Via Ron Filipkowski on Twitter)

From the epic opening strains of “Introvert,” the introductory track on Little Simz’s sweeping, eclectic new album Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, you know you’re in for something special. The album is equal parts fantasy storybook and intimate journal marked all the way through by the London native’s wit and vulnerability. It’s no wonder that it has been so highly regarded, perching neatly near the top of so many publications’ 2021 year-end lists. Her broad-ranging and nigh universal critical acclaim could be the first step toward her gaining and maintaining a toehold on the public’s attention stateside.

Such a feat would put her in rare company; while there have been several British rappers to develop cult followings in the US, few of them ever did so while maintaining such a stark, British outlook on the art form. Going back to the 1980s, rappers like Monie Love and Slick Rick switched up their accents to fit in — you’d hardly know they weren’t from New York’s concrete jungle hearing them rap alongside contemporaries like Queen Latifah and Doug E. Fresh. In the ’90s and 2000s, MF DOOM earned a stranglehold on the city’s underground scene, but again, there were many who were unaware of his origins until his visa issues in 2010.

Hell, even 21 Savage was unaware of his own British citizenship until recently, and his struggles to remain in the country in which he grew up have highlighted this nation’s archaic and byzantine approach to immigration policy. For all intents and purposes, he’s an Atlantan at heart and sounds like it. And while there was a minor grime explosion here in the US, it was largely spearheaded by another immigrant, Drake, who made a point of collaborating with artists like Skepta and Headie One. However, their popularity on their own feels limited to their joint works with artists who already hold a certain degree of social capital.

Simz is different. Her growing popularity on this side of the pond has come organically, without the help of flashy local features, which she has mostly eschewed since her signature 2017 project Stillness In Wonderland, on which the first inklings of her fantastical flourishes began to sprout. 2019’s Grey Area continued in much the same vein, showcasing the Brit’s verbal virtuosity and singular approach to left-of-center production. Unlike many of her countrymen, she seems distinctly disinterested in integrating popular local sounds — there’s no trap and nothing that could be counted as classic boom-bap either.

Nor does she employ the glitchy, sometimes off-putting digital sounds that have distinguished grime and drill, the two main British exports in rap-focused music, although she has dabbled in them from time to time. Instead, the production on SIMBI (it’s her name, see) is organic, pulsing with the living energy of the score from an epic, swords-and-sorcerers film series like Lord Of The Rings or Game Of Thrones. There is that regal-sounding intro, the Blaxploitation big band feel of the soul-baring “I Love You, I Hate You,” the militant funk of “Standing Ovation,” and the moody ballad, “How Did You Get Here.”

She also sticks close to her roots, incorporating West African rhythms into tracks like “Point And Kill” and “Fear No Man.” And despite the similarity of their titles, Simz’s approach to the praise of her gender on “Woman” is a far cry from Doja Cat’s, backed by a slinky beat and loungey instrumentation supported by Cleo Sol’s lilting chorus. Through it all, Simz’s poised flow anchors the wide-ranging production, drawing listeners in with its conspiratorial quiet. Though she rarely raises her voice, she still wields it like a dagger, whirling and flashing in dextrous patterns with the cool of concrete at twilight.

While hip-hop and rock-and-roll are cousins with unsurprisingly similar origins and parallel trajectories over the course of their respective eras of dominance in global pop culture, there’s one area in which they diverge. After rock swept the globe, the US was visited upon by the acts it had inspired, like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who were met with an equally fervent enthusiasm to the one that brought these acts to our shores seeking their fortunes here. While rap has been met with just as much excitement around the world, that love has rarely been reciprocated by Americans who’ve kept international hip-hop acts at arm’s length.

Ironically, as I write this, the Disney+ streaming service hosts a documentary about The Beatles, their process, and their popularity called The Beatles: Get Back which stitches together close to eight hours of footage of the Liverpool band noodling around and creating some of their beloved works. It’s hard to say whether we’ll be watching a similar show about any British hip-hop acts in 50 years — after all, times, they have a-changed — but right now, Little Simz is at the cusp of starting her own British Invasion, one that could prove to be every bit as fascinating and influential as the original.