Month: January 2022

After years of mostly unfounded rumors and speculation, it has finally happened — Rihanna is pregnant with her first child. Go figure, it’d take a pandemic to finally fulfill every gossip blogger’s dream — and every R9 hopeful’s worst nightmare. People magazine confirmed the pregnancy, posting a photo of Rihanna and her partner ASAP Rocky out on the town in New York, with Rihanna sporting a cropped top to show off her baby bump. You can check out the photos below.

Naturally, the news has Rihanna fans going ballistic on Twitter. Rihanna herself shot down pregnancy rumors as recently as a month ago, joking, “Y’all breed me every year dammit,” on Instagram. However, it looks like this time, the fans were right and they aren’t being shy about celebrating — and lamenting that she may have finished making a whole human from scratch before her long-awaited follow-up to Anti, which crossed its six-year anniversary over the weekend. And some fans just seemed distraught that they have “missed their chance” with the singer — insomuch as that number was very technically non-zero in the first place.

Meanwhile, poor Drake is catching the worst of it, considering how long he openly crushed on Rihanna. Their relationship was short-lived, but that isn’t stopping fans from flaming him up too over the news.

Former MTV VJ and ex-Katy Perry spouse-turned actor, podcaster, and comedian Russell Brand has been on quite a journey over the past few years. His long-time left-leaning points of view (and Fox News opposition) appear to have been transformed into dust while he’s veered to the right. This has included hopping aboard with Matthew McConaughey’s recent toeing of the political line and expression of empathy for Big Lie supporters. Russell also’s gone on an anti-vaccine crusade during the pandemic, which has left people wondering if he’s “officially lost his mind.”

Rusty’s still dangerously (especially because he’s such a prolific and persuasive speaker) cranking away on his YouTube channel (where he posts rants titled “Vaccine Mandates: An ASSAULT On Your Bodily Freedom?” and “SHOCKING Wuhan Evidence: Did Fauci LIE?”). He’s currently shouting for joy over the convoy of Canadian truckers who are protesting requirements to get the jab or find new jobs, and he’s worked up about what he says is the “mainstream media not reporting” the protests. Here’s a taste of him (taken from a YouTube video from Russell’s page) making a “honk” gesture and shouting, “Here’s to the Canadian truckers! Here’s to standing up to freedom!”

Hmm. Countless mainstream outlets, including the New York Times, BBC, and Business Insider, are certainly covering this story. In addition, about 90% of Canadian truckers are vaxxed, but these kinds of truths (including a trucker declaring, “You want a job? Get vaccinated”) don’t sell YouTube clicks.

Instead, Russell’s pointing toward the convoy while hoping it makes the Guinness Book of World Records, and railing against the Man, and so on.

This led people to wonder, “When did Russell Brand come on over to the right side?” as well as “What happened to you?” and lamenting at how “community responsibility” has fallen by the wayside for those shouting “freedom!”

Here’s some perspective on Russell’s, uh, needle-related history in comparison to him declaring that vaccines are a bridge too far for him.

And even though the trucker convoy is being widely reported upon, here’s a Twitter user with a parting sentiment: “Tantrums don’t need to be indulged every time.”

Following the announcement that Spotify will add a “content advisory” to future episodes of his podcast, Joe Rogan has released an Instagram video where he not only agrees with the decision but promises to bring on more experts with “differing opinions.” Rogan’s conciliatory video arrives on the heel of growing pressure for Spotify to rein in the COVID misinformation on his podcast. Shortly after Neil Young pulled his music from the platform in protest of Rogan’s pushing anti-vaxxer views, more artists like Joni Mitchell began threatening to do the same.

The backlash prompted Spotify to finally address the situation, which resulted in a promise to put a disclaimer in front of any podcast that discusses COVID-19. However, no one expected Rogan himself to go into damage control by releasing his new Instagram video where he fully admits that he gets things wrong.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

He said he never tried to be controversial and expressed amazement at how a podcast of “me talking to some friends” grew into “some out-of-control juggernaut that I barely have control of.”

“I pledge to balance out the more controversial viewpoints with other people’s perspective so many we can find a better point of view, I don’t want to just show the contrary opinion to what the narrative it, I want to show all kinds of opinions,” on all topics, and not just COVID-19, he said.

“My point was to create interesting conversations, and ones people enjoy,” he said. “If I’ve pissed you off, I’m sorry. And if you enjoy the podcast, thank you.”

Rogan also had nothing but good things to say about Young and Mitchell, who he’s not “mad” at all. He’s a big fan of both of their music, but to demonstrate that he doesn’t always hit the mark, he said he loved Mitchell’s “Chuck E In Love.” There’s just one small problem: It’s a Ricki Lee Jones, which Rogan later corrected in the caption of his Instagram post with an added “Doh!”

You can see Rogan’s full video below:

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

When things get bad and everything sucks and everyone seems to hate each other, there’s only one thing that can bring us together: a new Jackass movie. With a new installment of Jackass, Jackass Forever, hitting theaters February 4th, almost 20 years since the release of the first Jackass movie, it’s high time to acknowledge Jackass for what it is: the greatest American cultural product of the 21st century.

Every time they release a new movie, some boring critic somewhere inevitably calls Jackass the death of art, the death of cinema, the death of good taste, whatever. Trolling for this reaction is essentially baked into the concept. Taking a longer view of entertainment, Jackass actually seems much truer to the spirit of what entertainment has traditionally been than our narrow conceptions of what constitutes a feature film. Strip away the swear words and skate brand t-shirts, and how much different is Jackass than Le Petomane, the famous French farter? Jackass would fit right in on Vaudeville, in any medieval court, and on any boardwalk. It’s spectacle, it’s a showcase for a kind of pure, dadaist creativity that could really exist nowhere else, and it’s probably the best of modern slapstick.

Johnny Knoxville is our Buster Keaton. His old-fashioned carnival barker sensibility suffuses the whole endeavor, and his ability to deliver a perfect one-liner in the midst of death-defying situations rivals that of his greatest contemporary, Sacha Baron Cohen.

On that note, we probably wouldn’t have Borat without Jackass. Before Jackass: The Movie, the movie industry generally assumed that the only way to turn a guerilla comedy TV show into a movie was to insert the star of it into some kind of Billy Madison plot (rather than just doing what Jackass did, which was to just make 90 minutes worth of guerilla comedy). Freddy Got Fingered is a perfect example here, though it’s a credit to Tom Green (who to some extent paved the way for Jackass in turn) that he did his best to destroy the format even as he was embodying it. If you want to know what Borat might’ve looked like before Jackass, look no further than Sacha Cohen’s pre-Borat movie, Ali G Indahouse, which managed to turn Cohen’s subversive, hilarious, improvisational interview show into a conventional and mostly sort of lame comedy film.

Jackass is also, if I may say, an enduring portrait of male friendship. You can keep your First Cow, I’ll take Jackass. It’s the only entertainment product that has ever explored the lengths to which dudes will go and the sacrifices they’ll make simply in order to make their friends laugh. This has traditionally been the foundation of the most enduring friendships. No stunt is too gross or too dangerous if it means a good hang. I can think of few more tender moments in cinema than Wee Man catching a soap bubble made of Preston Lacy’s fart on his tongue, or Chris Pontius hitting a golf ball painted like a baseball with his penis so that Bam Margera can try to catch the ball in his mouth.

The beauty of Jackass is that you get so desensitized to the absolute mayhem of it that you never know what’s going to send you over the edge. The funniest part of a stunt is rarely the stated or even intended goal of the bit. Usually it’s some secondary complication, a totally unforeseen event, or a perfectly executed bit of slapstick the occurs in the midst of it, usually entirely by accident. For me, one moment came about halfway through my rewatch of Jackass Number Two, after Steve-O “buttchugs” a beer and Bam tries to suck it out with a plunger. At this point, Bam yells, “Now you better shit piss, asswipe!”

I couldn’t stop laughing for 10 minutes and I still laugh every time I think about it. It even happens to their own cameramen from time to time, “I think we broke Lance,” being a frequent refrain, every time cameraman Lance Bangs is either laughing too hard or too nauseous to carry out his duties.

Anyway, I did my best to structure my love letter to Jackass in the form of an internet-friendly listicle. I considered ranking every single Jackass bit, but that seemed too tedious, and a top 10 seemed insufficient. So I thought we’d celebrate 20 years of Jackass with 20 of their greatest stunts. (Honorable mention to classic recurring bits like Party Boy and Night Monkeys, among many, many others).

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20. Riot Control Test, AKA The Ball-Bearing Embassy Mine (Jackass Number Two)

In the first Jackass, Johnny Knoxville shocked the gang (and cemented himself as the leader) by consistently being game for the gnarliest stunts. This one, for which all the other Jackass guys begged off, involved taking a “less lethal” rubber bullet to the abdomen. In part two, the crew returns to the same weapons manufacturer to test a riot control claymore filled with rubber ball bearings meant to disperse protesters outside of embassies.

This is one of those stunts that I would definitely describe more as “shocking” or “crazy” than funny (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but for me the beauty of this one isn’t that it’s so insane (even though it is), it’s the fact that while Bam and Ryan Dunn are wearing full face shields, Johnny Knoxville is just covering his face with his hand. Jackass doesn’t get enough credit for being subtle.

19. The Dollhouse Poop (Jackass Number Two)

There’s a recurring bit in Top Secret (1984) where an establishing shot will open on an object in the foreground, then pull back to reveal that it isn’t in the foreground at all, it’s actually just huge. I don’t know why I find perspective humor so funny, but Jackass flipped the script by having Dave England take a man-sized dump in a doll-sized bathroom. Dave England is a former professional snowboarder, but in Jackass became the go-to guy for poop related stunts. Jackass is a great reminder that you can be anything if you set your mind to it.

18. The Dildo Gun (Jackass 3D)

Being complicated isn’t a prerequisite for a great Jackass bit. In fact, some of the best ones are pretty simple. By the time of Jackass 3D, Johnny Knoxville was pushing 40, Steve-O was sober, and it was becoming increasingly apparent that the boys would no longer be able to heal as quickly from throwing themselves down stairs and getting shot with less-than-lethal anti-personnel mines and whatnot. They cleverly compensated for this deficit with better production values, more creative sets, high-speed slow-motion camera work. Firing a dildo into a glass of milk in super slow motion perhaps isn’t the greatest showcase for physical comedy but it is mesmerizing, and the sets were inspired. Also the apple on the head with the dick hitting the face is a classic Jackass misdirect.

17. The Swamp Chute (Jackass Number Two)

Strapping a parachute to Wee Man and having him open it behind a fan boat engine seems like a pretty one-note joke on paper, but the visual comedy of watching him skip across the water gets me every time.

16. The Toro-Totter

It’s not easy to cement yourself as the “craziest one” in a crew that includes Steve-O and Bam Margera, but Johnny Knoxville still manages to do it every time there’s a bull involved. This bit would’ve played just as well in the silent film era.

15. (tie) Snake Vs. Dick Puppet (Jackass Number Two)/Dick Vs. Bottle Rocket (Jackass The Movie)

Most groups of guys have that one friend who gets naked so often that his dick and balls become mundane, as normal to gaze upon as their nose or their forehead. So it is Chris Pontius has become Jackass‘s go-to guy for dick-related stunts, thanks to a nice-sized, not too ugly penis.

Plenty of dudes have lit farts or done the old “hey, do you guys know what time it is?” while wrapping their dicks around their wrists like a watch, but Jackass is brilliant at taking that kind of fairly-common dude humor just one step further. Attaching a bottle rocket to Chris Pontius’s dick with a string, or dressing it like a mouse and sticking it in a snake cage = pure genius.

Labeling the hole Pontius puts his dick through is also a perfect example of the kind of comedic flourish that puts Jackass head and shoulders above the competition. Johnny Knoxville is not only our Buster Keaton, Jackass is our Busby Berkeley musical. Which I guess makes Chris Pontius is Busby Berkeley starlet, if she seemed really, really stoned all the time.

14. Jacking off Sea Cucumbers (Jackass The Movie)

Sea cucumbers are penis-shaped creatures who expel their white, ropy innards when agitated, so you can probably imagine what happened when the Jackass guys discovered them. The best thing they did with this bit was to frame it around the wildlife expert explaining sea cucumbers to the camera. “I made the mistake of showing this to the boys, and…”

It’s a tenet of Jackass that sometimes the funniest part of a bit is the person who doesn’t think it’s funny.

13. Terror Taxi (Jackass Number Two)

Another tenet of Jackass is that the best way to save a bad bit, or to subvert a prank that seems a little too cruel is to turn it against the prankster. The most basic example of this is in “The Gong,” when Rick Kosick (I think?) sneaks up behind a napping guy and holds up the gong. Johnny Knoxville just hits him in the nuts instead. This three second gif might be the purest distillation of Jackass.

Jackass Number Two, released in 2006 in the midst of aughts terror paranoia, applied this same framework to a bit about terrorism. They led Danger Ehren to believe he was going to play a high-larious fake terrorist in a pretend suicide bomber skit (quite obviously a really bad idea!) only to glue actual pubes to his face, lock him in the trunk of a car, and make him believe he was about to get murdered. You could probably write a whole thesis on how this bit subverts the tropes of War On Terror-era propaganda, but that’s maybe giving it a little too much credit. I tend to think it was more just a great way to play a really f*cked up prank and have it still be funny because maybe the prankee kind of deserved it? Brilliant in either case.

12. The Ram Jam (Jackass 3D)

Watching Johnny Knoxville risk death against a raging bull is always impossibly compelling, but how many times can you tempt fate? Having Steve-O and Ryan Dunn try to play trumpets and tubas for an angry ram is a nice way to reduce the danger while maintaining the magic. The ram is sort of “angry killing machine” in miniature, which makes it funnier. And of course not that miniature, that dude still looks like he could snap a femur.

11. Duck Hunting (Jackass 3D)

Through the course of its existence, Jackass has seen a gradual evolution from death defying stunts to inventive sight gags. Duck Hunting is a nice illustration of later-stage Jackass brilliance, in that it’s a wonderful sight gag and is greatly improved by high speed cameras, to the point that you don’t really miss the pathological insanity of
earlier Jackass. Heck, I would probably even try this one, not that it doesn’t still look like it would hurt like shit.

10. Electric Avenue (Jackass 3D)

Watching Jackass bits evolve from getting hit with a taser to this elaborately choreographed and meticulously filmed sight gag is like seeing a Wright Brothers’ kite become a supersonic fighter jet before your eyes.

9. The Butt Chug (Jackass Number Two)

Steve-O almost certainly isn’t the first drunk idiot to stick a beer funnel in his ass, but it’s the spontaneity of this bit, the genuine camaraderie, and the unintended consequences that make it so sublime. That combination is the essence of Jackass. The butt chug itself is only sort of funny, but the genuine glee of everyone involved makes it a little funnier, and then Bam yelling “now you better shit piss, asswipe” really sent me over the edge. (Also great: “look at him, he’s peeing like a girl!”).

The moment when the gang realizes that shoving a plunger in Steve-O’s ass to get the beer back out has actually worked is nothing short of magical.

8. Beehive Tetherball (Jackass 3D)

(*Dave England Shrieking*)

Dave England could’ve had a great career in horror films, no one can communicate sheer agony and physical pain quite like he can.

7. Manfishing (Jackass Number Two)

I’ve grown to appreciate sight gag Jackass probably more than death-defying stunt Jackass, but few could deny that Steve-O jamming a fish hook through his cheek and then jumping into a shark-infested ocean is next level. No, it’s not the funniest Jackass stunt I’ve ever seen, but come on, he almost got his leg taken off by a Mako.

6. The Fart Mask (Jackass Number Two)

This is one of those Jackass stunts that we all want to pretend is too gross and too crude and therefore we cannot in good conscience sanction it, but in practice it has hidden comedic layers and makes me shriek every time. (Yes, I should probably note that I tend to laugh when I am uncomfortable.) This wouldn’t have been funny if Steve-O hadn’t puked inside his own astronaut helmet almost immediately, which turns out to be a better sight gag than the original stunt, and then the tertiary joke of pulling out to reveal that Preston has actually pooped in the funnel leads to a barf-o-rama-esque finale in which it now appears that everyone else in the room is also going to puke. That poor, poor hotel maid. I hope they left them a thousand dollar tip.

5. The Jet Engine (Jackass 3D)

This is such a great stunt in that it is simultaneously: a silly idea (to recreate the old Maxwell ad), a wonderful sight gag, and slightly terrifying in execution. You laugh, then you gasp, then you laugh again. The football they toss into the jet’s exhaust looks like it’s going about 300 miles an hour and appears to end up in a different county. Which doesn’t stop Johnny Knoxville from dressing like an old-timey leatherhead and taking one directly to the chest. Magnificent.

4. The High Five (Jackass 3D)

The old “mechanical boxing glove fist” gag has been around at least since I was a kid, and probably dates back to the inception of film. This hand slap gag from Jackass 3D is a straightforward variation on that, though it’s another great example that simply messing with the scale of the props in a prank can add an exponential degree of comedy. “What my sketch presuppose is… what if hand big?”

Adding hot soup to the bit is a stroke of pure genius, setting up one Jackass‘s all-time great lines, “I can’t believe he fell for the soup!”

This gag is perfectly planned, and yet, as with all the greatest Jackass stunts, there’s an element to it that couldn’t be planned. The way Bam Margera’s feet tilt straight backwards like he’s a falling tree makes me indescribably happy.

3. Department Store Boxing (Jackass Number Two)

This one goes from silly to terrifying in a hurry, thanks to Eric “Butterbean” Esch punching Johnny Knoxville into another dimension in the middle of a “swap meet location deep in the valley.” It was a remix of a bit that Knoxville had originally done on the show with director Jeff Tremaine, but for the movie they flew out Butterbean from Alabama, apparently in economy class (keep in mind Butterbean’s official weight in his final boxing match was 425 pounds). Knoxville’s instruction to Butterbean was reportedly to “go game speed.”

Butterbean famously smashed Knoxville’s face, knocking him out cold, though in fairness it’s hard to say whether it was the fist, the sharp corner of the counter he hit on the way down, or the concrete floor he landed on that caused the unconsciousness. It was mostly too scary to be funny, but Johnny Knoxville saves the entire bit by asking, immediately upon waking up, “Is Butterbean okay?”

Such is the power of a well-placed Dad Joke. I don’t know that it can cure a TBI but it can sure make it feel okay to laugh at one.

2. The Rental Car Crash-Up Derby (Jackass: The Movie)

I admit, I didn’t initially remember this bit as well as I did Department Store Boxing, but after rewatching all three movies for this piece I’m convinced that Rental Car Crash-Up Derby is one of the greatest things they ever did. Conceptually it’s already a winner, cathartically exercising the anxiety one is bound to feel every time one signs all the papers and makes all the inherent promises it requires to rent a car. All of which boil down to, “Now, you’re gonna drive real safe, right?”

“Yes, of course, I pinky promise to be the most careful driver there ever was.”

Of course, it’s Knoxville’s general knack for dopey silent film comedy that makes the whole thing sing, starting with the way he arrives to the rental agency seemingly dressed like his idea of “serious adult business traveler,” complete with newsboy cap and orthopedic-looking glasses, perfectly evoking three kids stacked on each other’s shoulders underneath a trenchcoat. His one-liners are all sublime, starting with “We’ll take good care of ‘er,” continuing through “Yeah I hit a dog,” and finishing off with Knoxville’s insistence that he couldn’t be held accountable for the car’s repair costs because he was drunk when he signed the paperwork declining the insurance.

1. Golf Course Air Horn (Jackass: The Movie)

Yes, my favorite Jackass bit is one that’s neither stunt nor sight gag nor even particularly creative. It simply combines golfers, air horns, and Orlando, Florida, all leading up to arguably the greatest exchange in Jackass history:

I’m sorry, I’ve got bursitis.

You’ve got bursitis. So that means you gotta play with a horn?

…It helps.

I’ll give you something to play with, pal.

This man turned out to be the perfect Knoxville foil, matching his one-liners with his own, even while furious. It’s perfect.

‘Jackass Forever’ is set to hit theaters February 4th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Last year, The Black Keys embarked on the cheekily named “World Tour Of America,” which consisted of just three shows in the southeast part of the US. Now, though, they’ve announced a new tour that better fits the name of their previous one. This one is called the “Dropout Boogie Tour” and it runs from July to October, actually hitting venues from across the continent this time.

They’ll be joined by Band Of Horses on all dates, while supporting on select shows will be Ceramic Animal, Early James, and The Velveteers.

Check out the full list of shows below.

07/09 — Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena *
07/11 — Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre *
07/13 — Denver, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre *
07/15 — St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre St. Louis *
07/16 — Indianapolis, IN @ Ruoff Music Center *
07/17 — Chicago, IL @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre Tinley Park *
07/20 — Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center *
07/22 — Jones Beach, NY @ Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater *
07/23 — Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center *
07/25 — Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion *
07/27 — Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion *
07/29 — Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center *
07/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ Waterfront Music Pavilion (formerly BB&T Pavilion) *
08/24 — West Palm Beach, FL @ iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre ^
08/25 — Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre ^
08/27 — Atlanta, GA @ Ameris Bank Amphitheatre ^
08/28 — Huntsville, AL @ Orion Amphitheatre ^
08/30 — Charleston, SC @ Credit One Stadium ^
09/01 — Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek ^
09/03 — Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center ^
09/06 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage ^
09/07 — Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Theatre ^
09/09 — Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center ^
10/02 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena ~
10/03 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena ~
10/05 — Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre ~
10/08 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum ~
10/10 — Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion ~
10/13 — Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP ~
10/15 — Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion ~
10/17 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center ATX ~
10/18 — Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion ~

* with Ceramic Animal
^ with Early James
~ with The Velveteers

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

Last Halloween, I wrote about the pros and cons of watching every movie in a long-running horror series. The post was inspired by a marathon of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, from 1974’s classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (“Back in my day, chain saw was two words…”) to the 2017 prequel Leatherface. It was a forgettable finale to a classic franchise (although one with more cons than pros), so hopefully 2022’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre gives everyone’s favorite misunderstood skin-wearing monster a better sendoff… at least until the inevitable next movie in the series.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place decades after the events of the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and has Leatherface getting “canceled” for his head-bashing ways (he’ll tell his side of the story on The Joe Rogan Experience by the end of the week). It also brings back Sally, the blood-covered survivor from the original film, although she’s now played by Olwen Fouéré (the original actress, Marilyn Burns, passed away in 2014). The rest of the cast includes Sarah Yarkin, Elsie Fisher (Kayla from Eighth Grade!), Mark Burnham, Jacob Latimore, Moe Dunford, Alice Krige, Jessica Allain, and Nell Hudson.

You can watch the trailer above. Here’s the official plot synopsis:

After nearly 50 years of hiding, Leatherface returns to terrorize a group of idealistic young friends who accidentally disrupt his carefully shielded world in a remote Texas town.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was directed by David Blue Garcia with a screenplay from Chris Thomas Devlin, based on an original story co-written by Fede Álvarez and Rodo Sayagues (Don’t Breathe, Evil Dead). It hits Netflix on February 18.

What are they teaching kids today? Apparently not the Streisand effect; otherwise, a school board in Tennessee would know that attempting to censor Maus would only increase awareness for Art Spiegelman‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel.

MSNBC reports that the McMinn County board removed Maus, which chronicles Spiegelman’s parents’ time in Nazi death camps during the Holocaust, from “an eighth grade language arts curriculum due to concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust.” Spiegelman called the school board “Orwellian” for the ban, and added, “I also understand that Tennessee is obviously demented. There’s something going on very, very haywire there.”

The school board’s plan also backfired: The Complete Maus is currently at the top of Amazon’s best-sellers list, while Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History is #3 and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began is #9. None of the books were in the top 1,000 at the beginning of last week.

The book’s author told CNBC in an email: “I’m heartened by reader responses… The schoolboard could’ve checked with their book-banning predecessor, [Russia President] Vladimir Putin: he made the Russian edition of Maus illegal in 2015 (also with good intentions—banning swastikas) and the small publisher sold out immediately and has had to reprint repeatedly,” Spiegelman wrote.

If you want to support Maus and not give money to Amazon, a bookseller in Knoxville, Tennesse, about 15 miles from McMinn County, started a GoFundMe to buy copies of the graphic novel and loan them to students across the country. You can donate here.

(Via MSNBC)

Neil Young currently has beef with Spotify, the home of The Joe Rogan Experience. He took his music off the platform over Rogan and other artists have shown him support, with some, like Joni Mitchell, following in Young’s footsteps and removing their music from Spotify, too. Young doesn’t want to leave his fans without a viable alternative, though, so now, he’s pushing Amazon Music Unlimited.

In a post on his website from over the weekend, Young wrote, “All of my fans who are looking for my music should use this link amazonmusic.com/neilyoung for the US (or amazonmusic.ca/neilyoung for Canada, etc.). All new listeners to Amazon Music will automatically get four months free. Amazon has been leading the pack in bringing Hi-Res audio to the masses, and it’s a great place to enjoy my entire catalog in the highest quality available.”

Visiting whatever country-specific link users opt for will grant them access to a four-month free trial for the service, which is a major upgrade from the free 30-day trial you get when visiting the standard, non-Young-affiliated sign-up link.

This comes after Young slammed Spotify’s audio quality in relation to its competitors, writing, “AMAZON, APPLE MUSIC and Qobuz deliver up to 100% of the music today and it sounds a lot better than the shitty degraded and neutered sound of SPOTIFY. If you support SPOTIFY, you are destroying an art form. Business over art. SPOTIFY plays the artist’s music at 5% of its quality and charges you like it was the real thing.”

Neil Young is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Bad Bunny should really be taking it easy. He’s got his Último Tour del Mundo starting on February 9th in Denver and his World’s Hottest Tour of North and South American stadiums starting in August. If he keeps entering the wrestling ring to grapple with a WWE savage like Brock Lesnar, though, he might not make it to either of those.

That statement might sound preposterous, but that’s exactly what happened this past Saturday night (January 29th) at WWE’s Royal Rumble in St. Louis, Missouri. You see, last year, the Puerto Rican reggaeton star and reigning Spotify streaming king merely performed his song “Booker T” at the event, but this year he actually got in the ring, and it wasn’t pretty. Bad Bunny was first body-slammed by the eventual Royal Rumble champion Brock Lesnar, who then tossed over the ropes like yesterday’s laundry.

The Royal Rumble is a last-man-standing competition, so you have to throw everyone out of the ring to be crowned the victor. Lesnar had just eliminated a wrestler when Bad Bunny knew he was surely next and he retreated to a corner of the ring, looking visibly freaked out. “Did you see the look on bad Bunny’s face?” one announcer says. Before the other announcer shouts, “Jump over the rope Bad Bunny! You got two tours! You got fans, you got music to make!” But it was too late. Lesnar made quick work of Bad Bunny and here’s hoping Bad Bunny has.. .errr… recovered, in time for his tours (wink, wink).

Watch the video of Brock Lesnar “decimating” Bad Bunny above.

Just like Ariana Grande before her, there’s nothing Doja Cat loves more than an intergalactic moment. The pop/rap/R&B star is still slowly but surely doling out videos from her extremely successful 2021 album Planet Her, and tonight she’s shared a video from one of the record’s deep cuts, “Get Into It (Yuh).” And speaking of Ariana, she gets more than just a nod in the album title track — which features a spelled out version of signature “yuh” adlib — but also in the lyrics when Doja commands: “y’all b*tches better “yuh” like Ariana.”

Nothing we love more than when the girls are getting along! That’s how masterful pop culture moments like the “34 + 35” remix video come along. Anyway, in her own video for the track, Doja is a diva in all kinds of space suit getups, alternating between ruling a crew of musical women in a spacecraft, fighting off aggressive alien interlopers, and dancing alone in what looks like a space station elevator shaft. What has this evil boss done? Stolen a beloved cat, one of the most heinous crimes in the entire galaxy. Don’t worry though, just like she’s winning down here on earth, Doja gets the best of him in the end. Watch the clip above.