Month: April 2022

Magic Johnson is no longer officially a member of the Lakers front office, as he rather famously quit at the Lakers last home game in April 2019, in part so he could continue tweeting freely about the NBA as a whole without getting fined for tampering. However, he is still a very influential figure within the Lakers organization and, by all accounts, is still advising owner Jeanie Buss about organizational decisions (as does Phil Jackson).

As such, when Johnson speaks about the Lakers roster and future, he isn’t just an interested party in the matter, but a plugged in one who has the ear of ownership. So, when Johnson made the rounds on ESPN on Monday morning for Get Up! and later First Take, his commentary on what is in store for the Lakers next season likely didn’t inspire much excitement in fans.

The Russell Westbrook experiment in L.A. has not gone well, to say the least, and ahead of the trade deadline there was considerable buzz that the Lakers wanted to move him but weren’t willing to attach a first rounder to do so. LeBron James then not so subtly hinted that he wasn’t pleased that the Lakers front office wasn’t making all-in moves, and the expectation was this summer would bring another round of Westbrook trade talks.

However, Johnson indicated that won’t be the case in his appearance on Get Up!, saying he expects the Lakers to run it back. “I think they have to bring him back, because you can’t attach a first round pick to Westbrook to try and get him out,” Johnson said.

Magic goes on to say that Westbrook has played better of late and agreed with Anthony Davis that injuries played a role, but that their issues went far beyond that. Johnson says the rest of the roster will have to be retooled around LeBron, Davis, and Westbrook, but also said Russ will need to adjust his game and take more responsibility for his play, while Davis has to figure out how to change things so he stays healthy or the Lakers may have to make a decision to move on from him after next season.

It certainly sounds like the Lakers are at least strongly considering retooling with veterans and role players around their star trio once again next year, but may have bigger changes coming on the horizon beyond Westbrook if things go as poorly as they have this season.

In his first post-Oscars standup set, Chris Rock barely acknowledged The Slap. “I’m still kind of processing what happened. So, at some point I’ll talk about that sh*t. And it will be serious and funny,” he explained before ignoring the crowd’s chant of “f*ck Will Smith” (he had no such patience during the following show).

Amy Schumer, who co-hosted the 2022 Oscars, had a little more time to incorporate Will Smith slapping Chris Rock (it’s crazy how quickly that’s become a normal thing to type/read) into her set. But as she told the sold-out house at Las Vegas’ Mirage Theater over the weekend in her first stand-up show since the incident, “I don’t even know what to say about the Oscars… I have no jokes about it. All I can say is that I don’t know if you saw this but Will Smith slapped Chris Rock. Did you read that in your news feed?”

The Life & Beth star said that she was “kind of feeling myself… and then all of a sudden Ali was making his way up,” a reference to the 2001 film Ali, where Smith was nominated for an Academy Award for playing boxer Muhammad Ali. (In an unintentionally amusing coincidence, he lost that year to Training Day star Denzel Washington, who was one of the first people to speak to — and pray with — Smith following the slap.)

Schumer continued, “And it was just a f*cking bummer. All I can say is that it was really sad, and I think it says so much about toxic masculinity. It was really upsetting, but I think the best way to comfort ourselves would be for me to say the Oscar jokes that I wasn’t allowed to say on TV.” Schumer then proceeded to do so, against her lawyer’s wishes (there’s a really dark one about Alec Baldwin).

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Madison Cawthorn‘s wild claims of politicians offering him coke and orgies continues to rankle his fellow Republicans who the young congressman essentially implicated. Despite the fact that Cawthorn confessed to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy that his claims were exaggerated and untrue, former GOP congressman Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox News on Sunday and echoed Meghan McCain’s call for Cawthorn to name names.

According to Raw Story, Gowdy went on an almost 10 minute rant demanding Cawthorn reveal everything he knows. Gowdy also defended his fellow Republicans in Congress by saying he’s never been invited to do drugs or attend sex parties during his time in office:

He suggested that Cawthorn was simply “hanging around with the wrong people.” Since Gowdy was in office, 29 new Republican members of Congress have entered the House. He went on to suggest that Cawthorn name names because their constituents deserve to know what they’re doing with their time in Congress and at taxpayer’s expense. If Cawthorn participated in any of it, Gowdy demanded that he come forward about it.

Again, Cawthorn has already admitted that he basically made the whole thing up, and at most, may have seen a staffer doing coke in a parking lot albeit from a 100 yards away. There’s also the young congressman’s well-documented history of lies that John Oliver recently highlighted. All of which makes Gowdy’s Fox News rant a bit unusual considering it’s been established that Cawthorn has already confessed to party leaders that he was bulls*itting. Then again, Gowdy has always had a penchant for dragging things out. Benghazi, anyone?

(Via Raw Story)

You gotta appreciate Ice-T for keeping it extra-real lately on several subjects, including Will Smith’s slapping of Chris Rock at the Oscars, along with some wisdom on Russia-Ukraine and a groaner on gas prices, but no one was prepared for Ice’s latest update. Before we get there, I want to briefly revisit how, in 2021, I badgered the SVU star with a random fitness-during-the-pandemic question, and he was gracious enough to oblige with an answer:

“I stay in shape. I have a little mini-gym in my house, so I do my dips and my calisthenics, so I’ve always pretty much been in shape. You can get out of shape very easily as you get older, so I gotta stay on top of it. Since I’m on television all the time, I don’t wanna look at myself and say, ‘Look at yo’ fat ass!’ I’m forced to be vain in that respect.”

Well, Ice-T definitely wasn’t saying, ‘Look at yo’ fat ass!’ to what he saw in the mirror over the weekend. “I just walked by my mirror,” the Body Count frontman tweeted. “[A]nd said ‘Hold up, not bad for 64…’ if I say so myself! Lol”

Well then. In response, SVU producer and director Norberto Barba offered this up: “I’m 58. I have a black sheet covering my mirror.”

And from there, a mixture of envy and appreciation rolled forth.

Take that, Elliot Stabler.

Last fall, it was impossible to do anything without some sort of Squid Game reference, with every person you know posting memes about the smash hit show or dressing up as the creepy little hide-and-seek girl. Now the show’s director promises his next project will be “more violent” than the bloody mess that was Squid Game.

Hwang Dong-hyuk’s latest project will be based on the novel Killing Old People club (sounds familiar) by Italian author Umberto Eco. The director promises the film will be more violent than the hit Netflix show. The project will be “another controversial film” that will have the director hiding from old people after it comes out (also familiar).

The director also noted that Squid Game was so gory that they needed a streaming service to pick it up because it was “too violent and investors would have been so worried.” Well, it was a hit either way.

As for the next season of Squid Game, Dong-hyuk says it’s in the works, with a 2024 release date. The director was taken aback by all the praise the show gained. “Steven Spielberg told me ‘I watched your whole show in three days and now I want to steal your brain!’” Dong-hyuk said. “It was like the biggest compliment I ever got in my life because he’s my film hero. I grew up watching his movies.”

So, to be clear, the latest trend in Hollywood is hating on old people now, right?

Last week, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that Ben Simmons “resumed light on-court workouts” in the hope of a “potential return” for the playoffs, but did not give any indication about Simmons’ status for the remainder of the regular season at that time.

On Monday, Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash gave the latest official update on Simmons, and said the star guard will not suit up the rest of the regular season or during the play-in tournament.

At 40-38, the Nets are tied with the Charlotte Hornets for the ninth seed in the Eastern Conference. Charlotte owns the tiebreaker, though, which pushes the Nets to 10th. They’re a game back of eighth and 2.5 back of seventh. At the moment, Brooklyn would have to win two play-in games to even qualify for the playoffs and open the door for Simmons’ debut.

It’s been an unfortunate season for Simmons. Hopefully, whenever he does take the court, he’s back to full strength and can play like the All-Star we’re accustomed to watching.

The Nets will keep at their playoff push on Tuesday when they welcomes the Houston Rockets to town. They’ll hope to snap a two-game slide and get back on track, aiming to climb into the top eight of the East, where they’d be just one win away from the playoffs.

While the obvious Grammy headlines are things like who won the big awards or who put on the best performances during the ceremony, there are usually some more peculiar takeaways to be had as well. For example, at yesterday’s 2022 Grammys, a 26-year-old song from a Super Nintendo Kirby game won an award, making it the first Nintendo song to ever do so. In similarly unexpected news, an unofficial album made up of songs inspired by the Netflix series Bridgerton also won a Grammy last night.

The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical by Abigail Barlow and Emily Bear (aka Barlow & Bear) was nominated in the Best Musical Theater Album category against works by legends like Andrew Lloyd Webber and Burt Bacharach but managed to win anyway.

A Recording Academy feature from shortly before this year’s Grammys notes the album was spawned from the “TikTok musical” trend that was popular in the early days of the pandemic, meaning it’s made up of songs originally created on TikTok. They also note it’s “the first musical of its kind to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Musical Theater Album. ”

The Academy also notes Barlow and Bear — at 23 and 20 years old, respectively — were the youngest-ever nominees for (and are therefore now the youngest ever winners of) a musical theater Grammy.

The Recording Academy feature offers more context about how the album came to be (including quotes from Barlow and Bear), so check it out here. Also find the full list of this year’s Grammy winners and nominees here.

The indie world was rooting for Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast last night as she attended her first Grammy Awards ceremony for two nominations: Best Alternative Music Album (with last year’s colossal Jubilee) and Best New Artist. Though she didn’t win either, it was a feat for her, someone who has been gradually rising from playing basements to selling out five nights at Philly’s Union Transfer and playing Ellen, to be at such an elite, massive event such as the Grammys.

Plus, a major perk of the awards show is the ability to meet some of your favorite celebrities and musicians. Zauner accomplished what millions of people would do anything to accomplish — she met the legendary K-pop group BTS. During the show, she tweeted a photo of her with the band; it quickly spiraled into her most viral post, currently approaching 100,000 retweets. The replies are overflowing with BTS fans — known as the BTS army — supporting Japanese Breakfast and encouraging fellow BTS fans to stream Jubilee.

This is only another exciting moment to add to Zauner’s list; last year, her memoir Crying In H Mart was named a New York Times bestselling book and ended up on Barack Obama’s list of favorite books of 2021. Jubilee also landed at No. 1 on the Uproxx 2021 Music Critics Poll.

It’s a complaint you hear more than ever these days: Hip-hop has lost its way and it isn’t about the bars anymore. Of course, that depends on who you ask. While some veterans of the rap game certainly lament that things aren’t the same, one of the culture’s most iconic figures is taking a different view. In a new interview with Billboard about his upcoming, Q-Tip-produced, Def Jam-backed 14th album, LL Cool J explained why he thinks bars matter “more than ever” in hip-hop today.

“[Bars matter] more than ever because every Snapchat, every TikTok, Instagram photo or every tweet is words,” he observes. “People love words. You have to be precise with your speech nowadays. Words are more important now than they ever been probably because the whole world is living in a giant transcript. If you’re going to say something, it has to mean something.”

The rap luminary also relates this concept to his own upcoming project, saying, “The songs that I wrote on the new record that’s coming have meaning. It’s coming from a whole other place. I think that it’ll hopefully touch people in a way that they can’t ever imagine. I don’t even think people can imagine or understand what this is.” Of his executive producer, he offers high praise; “I think [Q-Tip] quarterbacked a masterpiece, b,” LL says.

The “Rock The Bells” rapper also talks about revitalizing the defunct music festival named for his 1985 hit. The festival will return under LL’s banner (also called Rock The Bells media) on August 6, bringing such iconic acts as Ice Cube, Rick Ross, Fat Joe, and more to Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in LL’s native Queens, New York. “The energy and the goal has always been to elevate hip-hop culture and classic hip-hop culture and not allow all of these talented artists that we have be pushed to the sidelines just because at the current moment they might not have a song at the top of the Billboard charts,” he says of his Rock The Bells media venture. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not valuable. I found that so many people want this. [Fans] want to celebrate the culture, but they want it done in the right way. So the same way that The Stones get treated, Paul McCartney gets treated, and Bob Dylan gets treated, I wanted to see these artists treated that way.”

Prequels are weird. This is, perhaps, not the most professional or articulate way to open a discussion about the final season of one of television’s best shows, one that is part of a much-celebrated televised universe that dates back to the Bush administration, one that has maintained its distinctive style while galloping between genres and timelines, but, like… still. It’s true. It’s especially true when it comes to Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel that is still on the air with its original cast 14 full years after the original began, and which is about to kick off its sixth and final season later this month.

There’s a lot to unpack here, in a lot of ways, but it’s probably best to start by getting to the point: The new season, through the first two episodes released to critics, is good. I suspect this information does not surprise you. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould have been doing this — doing it well — for a while now, and the result is a confidence in their storytelling and visual style that feels comfortable to watch even when the action is steeped in menace. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a television show — or movie, for that matter — be so enjoyable while continuously building dread. Everyone here knows what they’re doing and is going to do it regardless of what you expect. I said something similar in my review of the new season of Atlanta, which feels right, in a way. The shows are very different on their faces but not so different in their bones. It’s cool that they’re both back.

An example will help, with as few spoilers as possible: It takes a lot of stones to come back after two full years off the air, after a season finale that closed with an assassination attempt gone awry and the show’s moral center starting to break bad herself, and slip a wordless five-minute montage set in a completely different time period into your season premiere. Find me another show that can pull that off. I’m serious here. Please, find me one. This show is about to end and I need other good stuff to watch. It’s going to become a problem.

But let’s rewind, briefly, if only to fill in some spots that have gone blank in the 24 months since the season five finale ended. When the credits rolled on that episode, the following things had just happened:

• Gus Fring and Mike Ehrmantraut had tried to assassinate Lalo Salamanca at his compound, with an assist from a double-cross by Nacho
• Lalo had thwarted the attempt by going full John Wick meets Spider-man on the killers, complete with hot grease flinging and gunplay, and had faked his death upon his escape to make everyone think the operation was a success, continuing his run as one of television’s most charismatic and terrifying villains
• Jimmy McGill had started his transition into Saul Goodman, finally officially, with the colorful suits and ties to match
• Kim Wexler had started going to the dark side a bit, complete with plans to ruin her ex-boss Howard and Jimmy-style finger guns

Also, Lalo had just done this, which was not as much an important plot point as it was, like, my favorite thing that has ever happened on television.

It was a lot. Today, the day this review goes live, is April 4. The new season premieres two weeks from today. You should probably at least consider a season five rewatch in the interim. The last few episodes, at minimum. You should do this in part because you’ve probably forgotten some important stuff and in part because Better Call Saul — like Breaking Bad before it — loves to drop little references and callbacks to its own history, and while you can follow along just fine without catching all of them, they do add to the experience in a really fun way.

And you’ll want to find fun anywhere you can in all of this because large chunks of it are going to be stressful. This is one of the things I mean about prequels being weird. The fact that we’ve seen Breaking Bad and know what happens to most of the characters on this show already — Saul meets Walter While and everything goes to hell and he becomes Gene the Cinnabon Man; Mike dies; Gus loses about 45 percent of his face and then dies; etc. — makes the things we don’t know more nerve-wracking. What happens to Kim Wexler, who plays a huge part in Jimmy’s life and the action in the show and is never mentioned or seen once in Breaking Bad, even though the timelines are starting to squeeze together? What happens to Lalo, who is now out hunting Gus and Nacho and is briefly referenced but never seen in Breaking Bad? Will there still be lots of stakeouts where characters hold up binoculars to look at the action in the distance? Spoiler on that last one: Yes, there will be.

This final season is going to be split into two parts, with the first seven dropping from April through May and the last six rolling through in July and August. We are still over four months away from getting the answers to all of these questions, probably, although I suppose there’s a chance Kim could just up and move to Monte Carlo in the third episode and settle that part of it. (Let me pretend for now, please.) There’s going to be a part of you that just wants to hunt these answers, to speculate and look for clues and yell about it all if the show doesn’t provide them in the time or fashion you want. That’s fine, for the most part. It’s one of the things that makes watching a show like this one fun. Let’s get all the way in there for one last go-round, you know? Cover the wall in your living room with pictures of characters and unhinged handwritten notes and connect them all with strings of red yarn and thumbtacks. I would never take that kind of joy away from you.

But please, when that part of your brain starts yelling “JUST TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS TO KIM, JESUS CHRIST, COME ON,” try to pull back a little. The show is and has been too good for too long to let the loud part of your brain take control now. There’s a beauty to what’s happening here, to watching smart people make something cool, to watching something wholly unique and original play out before your eyes at its own pace, to settling in and letting the story come to you instead of trying to rush out ahead of it all the time. Don’t lose sight of the whole thing in a maniacal hunt for a handful of specific pieces. Don’t ruin a good thing for yourself. That’s what I’m getting at here.

Enjoy the ride while you can, people. There’s only so much of all of this left.

The first part of the final season of Better Call Saul premieres on AMC on Monday, April 18