Month: February 2022

The Inside the NBA crew has not been shy in expressing its disappointment in Ben Simmons for his continued absence from the Philadelphia 76ers as he looks to jumpstart his career elsewhere. The most recent example of this came last week, when Shaquille O’Neal torched Simmons — without bringing him up by name — by calling him “soft” and a “crybaby” while praising Joel Embiid for being open to taking criticism.

Shaq is not one to bite his tongue when something disappoints him, but even by that standard, he really laid into Simmons in the clip. As it turns out, Simmons was not a particularly big fan of this. As Shaq explained on a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, the Hall of Fame big man explained that Simmons reached out via DM in the aftermath of the clip and expressed his disappointment with what Shaq had to say.

“I’ve been in this moment many times,” Shaq said. “They ask, say, ‘Hey, you think you can win with Shaq in the fourth quarter?’ My coaches say, ‘He gotta step up and knock ’em down.’ They all said that. I didn’t go, man, I got 38, I missed 12 free throws, trade me, get rid of me. You actin’ like a baby. So he kinda got in my DM and said some things, and I said some things back.”

Shaq stressed that he couldn’t go into the specifics of what they said because “that’s not cool,” but he said that Simmons was mad, presumably because “I’m his LSU brother, and I am, I’m still his brother.”

There is no word on whether or not we’ll see Simmons again this season. While the Sixers have stressed that they want him to suit up for the team again, Simmons has made clear he wants to seek greener pastures, and recently, Philadelphia executive Daryl Morey expressed his skepticism over the ability to get a deal done before next week’s trade deadline.

Dua Lipa is proving herself a very busy pop star. Not only is the singer gearing up to finally hit the road in support of her 2020 album Future Nostalgia, but she’s also just launched a weekly newsletter that highlights her favorite writers, restaurants, fashion, and more. Tiled Service95, the inaugural newsletter hit subscribers’ inbox on Thursday and it arrived with a brief tour update from Lipa.

The Service95 newsletter kick off with an introduction written by Lipa herself. She revealed that she’s been rehearsing for her tour for more than six hours a day, but she’s more exhilarated than exhausted by all the projects she has on her plate:

“Six hours a day and then some… That’s the time I’m putting in rehearsing for my upcoming Future Nostalgia tour. Oh, and I’ve also taken on another full-time job; Service95, the exciting global style, arts and culture newsletter you’re reading right now.

Soon, you’ll also be able to listen to Dua Lipa: At Your Service, my accompanying podcast where I interview some of the world’s most fascinating, inspiring and influential names across music, literature, entertainment, fashion, activism, politics… Am I exhausted? Ha. Actually, I’m exhilarated! I feel like I’m strapped to a rocket, ready for take-off – and I’m hoping you’ll join me for the ride.”

The remainder of the newsletter consisted of pieces written by writers from around the world. It included a story about South African genre amapiano, a piece about design from an Irish disability activist, news about an all-female roller derby crew in Hong Kong, and a profile on Parisian glassware.

Subscribe to Lipa’s Service95 email here.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Last night, Kamasi Washington made his television debut on The Tonight Show, and his performance of “The Garden Path” lived up to the hype. Where most late-night performers bring at most a five-piece band (drums, bass, guitar, keys, and maybe a DJ), Kamasi brought an only slightly scaled-down version of his usual extravagant orchestras with him, utilizing what looks like every square inch of available space on the Tonight Show stage to play the sweeping, funky composition.

Kamasi himself stood in the center of the storm flanked by his backup singers, controlling the chaos with massive blasts from his sax.

Although “The Garden Path” is Washington’s first solo release since 2021’s “Sun-Kissed Child,” the jazz revivalist did find time over the past year to contribute to The Metallica Blacklist, a tribute album dedicated to the metal pioneers, with a horn-heavy cover of “My Friend Of Misery.”

Of his latest song, Kamasi said in a press release, “The world feels turned upside down. There’s so much push and pull in every direction, from everyone you meet—no one knows what to think, who to believe, or how to approach life right now. No matter how smart you are, it’s hard not to feel blind.”

Watch Kamasi Washington’s Tonight Show performance of “The Garden Path” above.

After Peacock dropped a short tease of Joe vs Carole last month, its new biopic series takes a deeper look at the Tiger King reality stars Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, the streaming platform is back with an official trailer and a slew of new photos of John Cameron Mitchell and SNL star Kate McKinnon in the title roles.

Described by executive producer Etan Frankel as a “fun and rich journey into the story of people who live very extreme lives,” Joe Vs. Carole will go beyond what viewers saw in Netflix’s Tiger King docuseries, and also throw in some wild performances from Mitchell and McKinnon as they recreate that led to Exotic’s imprisonment after attempting to kill Baskin through a murder-for-hire plot.

You can see new photos from Joe vs. Carole below:

Here’s the official synopsis:

Based on the Wondery podcast “Joe Exotic,” hosted and reported by Robert Moor, the limited series will center on Carole Baskin, a big cat enthusiast, who learns that fellow exotic animal lover Joe “Exotic” Schreibvogel is breeding and using his big cats for profit. She sets out to shut down his venture, inciting a quickly escalating rivalry. But Carole has a checkered past of her own and when the claws come out, Joe will stop at nothing to expose what he sees as her hypocrisy. The results prove dangerous.

Joe vs Carole starts streaming March 3 on Peacock.

For many celebrity couples, the gift of a Birkin bag is a way to flex both their wealth and their love for each other. And with bags costing a minimum of about $4,000 and upwards of $380,000, it’s definitely no small gesture. That’s why Ye’s recent birthday gift to his new boo Julia Fox is so impressive. They’ve only been dating for less than two months now and Ye celebrated Fox’s birthday by giving a Birkin bag not just to her, but to all her best friends as well.

Fox, Ye, and much of their entourage spent Wednesday night celebrating Fox’s 32nd birthday. According to TMZ, the party rented out NYC’s French restaurant Lucien for dinner. Fox opened her birthday gifts at the table, making it clear that Ye went all-out. He gave her some flashy jewelry but saved the best gift for last. Everyone at the table, including all of Fox’s closest friends, was gifted Baby Birkin bags by Ye in an assortment of colors.

Fox was clearly overjoyed about the gifts. I mean, who wouldn’t want their new boyfriend to impress their friends with designer gifts? As you can see, Fox and all of her friends were posing with their new, very expensive bags.

Check out clips from Fox’s birthday bash above.

Nintendo has always been at its best when it’s being unique. Love it or hate it, while competitors are always trying to push the boundaries of what a video game console can do, Nintendo is always going to be itself. Sometimes that leads to failures, but other times, it leads to major successes, like its current console, the Switch.

The appeal of the Switch is very simple: What if you had a home console, the kind that can play Skyrim or The Legend of Zelda, and bring it on the go with you? It’s incredibly innovative and has been one of the must-have consoles of this generation. It’s been so popular that recently the Switch hit a major milestone: it outsold the Wii. According to Nintendo, the Switch, as of December 31, 2021 has sold 103.54 million units. This puts it past the Wii’s 101.64 million units sold.

The Switch first launched back in March of 2017. Its success since then has been obvious, but as we enter into 2022, its age has led to questions about how much longer Nintendo plans to support the console. After all, on a technical level, it isn’t anywhere close to the recent PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S. But a recent earnings call reported by Bloomberg tells us that Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa sees the Switch as being in the “middle of its lifecycle.”

“Switch is just in the middle of its lifecycle and the momentum going into this year is good,” Furukawa said on a call after the earnings report. “The Switch is ready to break a pattern of our past consoles that saw momentum weakening in their sixth year on the market and grow further.”

With the recent launch of the OLED Model and Nintendo saying outright that the Switch isn’t near the end of its lifecycle, it looks like the Switch isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Tom Brady recently announced his retirement from the NFL. It was the end of a spectacular career that saw him win the Super Bowl seven times in 10 appearances while racking up numerous statistical records and individual honors. It was more than just a Hall of Fame career — the argument can be made pretty convincingly that Brady is the greatest football player of all time.

Of course, Brady was not only an incredible on the actual football field, but he was a monster in the world of video games. In the Madden franchise, Brady and his teams have always been fun to use and a nightmare to go up against. Right up until his final days in the NFL, Brady was a 97 overall, rating putting him second to only Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. To coincide with Brady’s retirement, Madden 22 decided to bump him up to an overall rating of 99 one final time.

This isn’t the first time he’s entered the 99 Club — in fact, he received this honor earlier this season — but it’s a fitting re-entry for a player who spent plenty of time there during his playing days.

It speaks to how highly everyone thought of Brady — along with the work he put in to continue performing at this level — that even at the end of his career, he was still one of the highest rated players in all of Madden. For comparison’s sake, Ben Roethlisberger is also retiring and his Madden rating fell all the way to a 74 by the time he decided to leave the game.

“Spinster” was one of the worst insults a person could hurl at a woman in the Victorian era. Typically, a spinster was a single woman who was childless, unmarried and had few prospects.

Spinsters were the subject of cruel jokes and thought of as sad, lonely women, left on the shelf.

The term spinster dates back to the 1300s and refers to women who spun yarn for a living. This was often the profession of single women because they didn’t have the resources to purchase expensive materials, so they were relegated to spinning wool.

In 1889, the editor of Tit-Bits, a British weekly magazine, asked single women to write in and explain why they aren’t married. The woman with the best response would be featured in the paper and win a prize.

The article was discovered by historian Dr. Bob Nicholson.

In 1889, Tit-Bits magazine offered prizes to single, female readers who sent in the best answers to the question: u2018Why Am I A Spinster?u2019 Here are some highlights…pic.twitter.com/7gRG0kVbUO

— Dr Bob Nicholson (@Dr Bob Nicholson)
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The request was a response to an earlier piece the magazine had run asking male readers, “Why are you a bachelor?”

The editor received a ton of letters and they weren’t the cordial responses we’ve come to expect from women of the era. Nope. They were smart, funny and sharp retorts that showed there were a lot of women out there who were single for a reason.

The editor originally only planned to post one response, but instead, he ran 21 responses and gave each one an equal piece of the prize. Each woman earned 5 shillings, which is about $25 today.

Here are 11 of the best responses. The first one is a reference to the tide of American women who flocked to England to marry into the aristocracy in the era.

1. It’s the damn Yankees

“Because I am an English lady, and the Americans monopolize the market,” — Miss Jessie Davies

2. She’s a wild horse

“Like the wild mustang of the prairie that roams unfettered, tossing his head in utter disdain at the approach of the lasso which, if once round his neck, proclaims him captive, so I find it more delightful to tread on the verge of freedom and captivity, than to allow the snarer to cast around me the matrimonial lasso,” — Miss Sarah Kennerly

3. She’s a self-made woman

“Because I have other professions open to me in which the hours are shorter, the work more agreeable, and the pay possibly higher,” — Miss Florence Watts

4. She’s rare china

“Because (like a piece of rare china) I am breakable, and mendable, but difficult to match,” — Miss S.A. Roberts,

5. Only Shakespeare could describe her

“My reason for being a spinster is answered in a quotation from the ‘Taming of the Shrew’: ‘Of all the men alive I never yet beheld that special face which I could fancy more than any other,” — Miss Lizzie Moore

6. Ready for action

“Because I am like the Rifle Volunteers: always ready, but not yet wanted,” — Miss Annie Thompson

7. No need for a beast 

“…I do not care to enlarge my menagerie of pets, and I find the animal man less docile than a dog, less affectionate than a cat, and less amusing than a monkey,” — Miss Sparrow

8. We’ll marry when John can afford it

“John, whom I loved, was supplanted in his office by a girl, who is doing the same amount of work he did for half the salary he received. He could not earn sufficient to keep a home, so went abroad; consequently, I am still a spinster,” — Miss E. Jones

9. Men are deceitful

“Because men, like three cornered tarts, are deceitful. They are pleasing to the eye, but on closer acquaintanceship prove hollow and stale, consisting chiefly of puff, with a minimum of sweetness, and an unconquerable propensity to disagree with one,” — Miss Emaline Lawrence

10. There’s no way off the marriage toboggan

“Because matrimony is like an electric battery, when you once join hands and can’t let go, however much it hurts; and, as when embarked on a toboggan slide, you must go to the bitter end, however much it bumps,” — Miss Laura Bax

11. Waitin’ fer a dook

“Dear Mister Tit-Bits,-beein a cook with forteen pund 5/10 1/2 savins in the bank i natterally looks down on perlseesmen soljers an setterar, so i ham waiting fur a erle or a dook or sumthin of that sort to perpose fer my and and art, and that’s why i ham a spinster,” — Miss Annie Newton

An argument can be made that Aug. 21, 2017 is the most consequential day in the recent history of the Cincinnati Bengals. About 110 or so miles away from Paul Brown Stadium, the Ohio State Buckeyes were in the midst of trying to figure out who would serve as the backup quarterback behind All-Big Ten signal caller JT Barrett.

One of the two guys battling for the job, three-star redshirt sophomore Joe Burrow, suffered a broken bone in his right hand. He got surgery the next day, and in the aftermath, four-star redshirt freshman Dwayne Haskins won the job. Burrow, an Ohio native, got a little run in Barrett’s stead the year before and looked good, but ultimately was not able to win the backup gig back. He threw 11 passes to Haskins’ 57 in 2017, and that following offseason, Burrow decided that the best thing for his career would be to transfer to LSU.

“I came here to play,” Burrow said after the Buckeyes’ spring game in 2018, per Eleven Warriors. “I didn’t come here to sit on the bench for four years. And I know I’m a pretty darn good quarterback. And I want to play somewhere.”

Things generally went pretty well in Columbus — Haskins took over in 2018, won the Big Ten, and led the Buckeyes to a victory in the Rose Bowl while finishing in the top-3 of Heisman voting before becoming a first-round pick — but of course, Burrow would go on to show that he is, indeed, a pretty darn good quarterback. After being a perfectly solid signal caller for an LSU team that went 10-3 in 2018, Burrow threw down quite possibly the best individual season for a college football player that these eyes have ever seen.

LSU’s offense in 2019 boasted an all-time great collection of skill position talent. The best wide receivers of the last two NFL Drafts came from Baton Rouge (Justin Jefferson in 2020, Ja’Marr Chase in 2021) and a third was a second round selection (Terrace Marshall Jr. in 2021). Add in first-round pick Clyde Edwards-Helaire at running back, and LSU had, quite literally, an entire starting unit of NFL players.

Still, Burrow was the straw the stirred the drink, and he did it better than anyone ever has in a single season. The team’s pass-happy offense saw its signal caller complete 76.3 percent of his passes for 5,671 yards with 60 touchdowns and six interceptions. Burrow was a unanimous All-American, won just about every award a quarterback can win, brought home the Heisman with the second-most first-place votes in history, and of course, parlayed all of this into a national championship and a No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft.

The thing that made Burrow so much fun to watch was his total control of his surroundings. Offensive coordinator Steve Ensminger and passing game coordinator Joe Brady built an offense around Burrow’s unflappable nature, accuracy to every part of the field, and the fact that the team’s pass catchers were so good that 50/50 balls were more like 70/30 balls when they were given a chance. Burrow’s deep accuracy, in particular, was put on display every week — his adjusted passing yards per attempt that season was the eighth-highest in FBS history, and stuff like this was commonplace.

It’s not hard to see why Burrow’s entire schtick would appeal to an NFL team, especially one like the Bengals, which had a decades-long history of bleak moments, could have really used someone who doesn’t really get shaken to be the face of the franchise, and also happened to have the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. Taking Burrow was as easy a selection as there was, and while he flashed during his rookie campaign, Cincinnati’s inability to consistently protect him eventually took its toll — in Week 11 against the Washington Football Team, Burrow dropped back and got hit in the leg, suffering a torn ACL that ended his season.

Cincinnati being bad last year afforded them the opportunity to get Burrow some reinforcements. The team had the No. 5 pick in the 2021 NFL Draft and saw Oregon standout offensive lineman Penei Sewell fall right to them, filling an obvious need. But instead of doing that, the team decided to bolster its already pretty good wide receiver room by reuniting Burrow and Chase. The pick raised some eyebrows — plenty of folks (the author of this piece included!) subscribed to the thesis laid out in this graphic — but the decision could not have worked out much better: Chase was a second-team All-Pro selection as a rookie.

The Bengals bet big on skill talent being able to make up for some holes up front, and so far they’ve been right. Chase (second) and Tee Higgins (18th) were among the league leaders in yards per reception, Tyler Boyd is a reliable third option, CJ Uzomah had a career year, and Joe Mixon gave the team a reliable option, both as a runner and a receiving option out of the backfield.

The biggest reason that gamble worked is because, well, Burrow is a pretty darn good quarterback. The sacks were again a problem — he was taken down 51 times, the most in the league — but Burrow didn’t allow constant pressure to rattle him. The second-year star led the NFL in completion percentage (70.4 percent) despite consistently attacking teams downfield — he also also led the league in yards per attempt (8.9). Burrow attacks secondaries with aplomb, but also understands the value of taking what a defense will give you if that’s the best option. Of all the traits that he put on display in college, though, none is more prominent than his ability to remain level-headed no matter the situation, something that Bengals coach Zac Taylor praised after the team knocked off the Kansas City Chiefs.

“When the game is on the line,” Taylor said, “he is going to figure it out.”

We’ve seen plenty of teams make it to the Super Bowl for the first time and promptly lose. Hell, the team that the Bengals are about to play made it to football’s biggest game in 2019 and got stuffed into a trash can by the New England Patriots. Losing in the Super Bowl has the potential to be an excellent learning experience … but of course, it’s far, far better to go out there and win the whole thing. We’ll find out in a little more than a week if that’s the case, but if the Bengals are able to lift the Lombardi Trophy for the first time in franchise history, it will almost certainly be because the guy who had to transfer because of a horribly timed injury has turned into one of the best quarterbacks in the sport.

Historic Jeopardy! champ Amy Schneider jumped into a Twitter Space last night to share updates on her post-game show life. When asked about her next steps, Schneider discussed the possibility of writing a book chronicling her experience on the show and beyond.

“I’m trying to put together a book proposal to see if that gets interest. That just really needs my focus. I’m really excited about it. The chance to put all the stuff I’ve been thinking my whole life into a book is kind of exciting,” Schneider said. There most definitely will be interest.

Schneider discussed her monumental winning streak last week with The New York Times, opening up about how strange the fame has been, and the whirlwind experience she has had since losing on Jan. 26th, after 40 episodes. “It wasn’t just a feeling of sadness, there was a sense of relief,” she said. “It was so exhausting.” She has garnered a strong social media fanbase, who have supported the winner beyond her historic streak.

The software engineer has also been sharing interesting tidbits about her time on the show, including why the producers had her dress a certain way, and her favorite pre-game track.

Of course, the fans of the show are always curious what kind of lavish and over-the-top thing a big-winning contestant will spend their small fortune on. When asked on Twitter, Schneider wholesomely responded, “We went to this really fancy, boutique hotel in Half Moon Bay, Calif., last Saturday night, specifically for its giant bathtubs.” This is a person who knows how to handle her winnings! Give her the book deal!