Month: May 2022

Ah, the Goodwill. Thrifting has become even more part of American culture since Macklemore’s mega hit “Thrift Shop” was released 10 years ago. You can find just about anything you want, from formal dresses to large furniture items and antiques. Walking out of a thrift store with goodies haphazardly thrown into crinkled recycled plastic bags makes you feel like you’ve just struck the jackpot, but for one woman, a jackpot is exactly what she struck. In 2018, art collector, Laura Young of Austin, Texas, was doing her usual thrift store run to look for hidden gems when she stumbled across a sculpture. The sculpture caught her eye, especially since she looks for undervalued or rare art pieces while thrifting. The sculpture was a steal at $34.99, so taking it home was a no-brainer.

She strapped the bust into her car seat with the seat belt. Safety first, even for old heavy sculptures of heads. After getting a closer look at the dirty sculpture, she realized that the bust looked quite old and this piqued her interest enough to start searching for where it could’ve come from. After rescuing the bust, Young consulted with experts in art history at the University of Texas at Austin and experts at auction houses around the country over the next couple of years.

To Laura’s delight and surprise she finally found an answer. Jörg Deterling, a consultant for Sotheby’s a fine arts brokerage, identified the bust as one that was in a German museum decades ago before putting her in touch with the German authorities. As luck would have it, the art collector had unwittingly bought a sculpture from the late first century B.C. to early first century A.D. You really can’t make this stuff up. The bust likely depicts a son of Pompey the Great. Yes, that Pompey, the one that was defeated by Julius Caesar. At least that’s what the museum believes, on the other hand The Art Newspaper reported that the bust is believed to be Roman commander Drusus Germanicus.

In 2018, someone decided they didn’t want it u2014 maybe the owner died or gave it away. nnThey took it to Goodwill.nnWhich brings us back to Laura Young. Now she’s got a looted artifact she can’t sell, can’t keep and getting it back to its rightful owners is harder than it sounds…pic.twitter.com/JEhFa3vPiQ

— Matt Largey (@Matt Largey)
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Either way, the bust is old and existed in a time where someone had to pose for a ridiculously long amount of time while someone else chipped away at rock to memorialize their face. The ancient bust once belonged to King Ludwig I of Bavaria who lived from 1786-1868. It was part of a full scale model he built of the house of Pompeii, called the Pompejanum, in Aschaffenburg, Germany, where it stood for nearly 200 years. The full-scale model was severely damaged in WWII by Allied bombers.

No one’s quite sure how the bust made its way from Rome to Germany and then shoved under the table at an Austin, Texas Goodwill, but it sure makes for an incredible story. Whether the bust is the son of Pompey or if it’s commander Drusus, it’s back in a place where it can be honored and cared for—a museum. The Bavarian Administration of State-Owned Palaces agreed to the bust staying at the San Antonio Museum of Art until May 21, 2023, before it makes its way back to Germany.

(SPOILERS for this week’s Atlanta will be found below.)

As the third season of Atlanta comes to a close, there’s been a reoccurring theme throughout this season. Donald Glover has been alternating the point of focus in episodes this season. After we get a new update from the lives of Earn, Paper Boi, Darius, Vanessa, and company in one episode, the following one taps into the occurrences in the world of white people nearby, all for it to return to the focus of the group above in the next episode.

Following last week’s “New Jazz” episode, which followed Paper Boi during a drug-induced journey around Amsterdam, “Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga” taps into the world of biracial high schooler Aaron and his struggles with funding his upcoming college experience.

Here are some of the biggest questions we had after season three’s ninth episode.

Why Was This Episode Shot In Black And White?

“Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga” is the only episode of Atlanta in the show’s history to be shot in black and white, and with that, it begs the question why? A simple answer to this could be that it makes it harder to judge Aaron for his appearance and forces viewers to instead judge him for his actions. Aaron is a biracial high schooler who is seeking financial help in order to attend Arizona State College with his girlfriend Kate. That help seemingly arrives through Robert S. Lee, the heir to the Pink Oil hair moisturizing fortune played by the late Kevin Samuels, whose name is a bit too similar to Robert E. Lee, the American-Confederate general from the Civil War. He offers to pay the college tuition of all Black students at Aaron’s high school. However, Aaron is deemed “not Black enough,” and thus, lucks out on the scholarship. This label is placed on him due to the lack of knowledge he has about Black culture and his overall behavior, and as viewers, that’s all we can draw from with the episode being shown in black and white. If it were shown in color, it would be harder to ignore his physical appearance to make the decision that the committee did.

What Were Your Early Perceptions Of Aaron?

It’s not entirely clear that Aaron is half-Black to start the episode. During a heated argument while playing video games with people online, Aaron makes two racist comments to his opponents. First, he says, “why don’t you two n*****s go find your dads, okay?” Shortly after, he makes monkey noises and adds, “get a f*cking banana,” before turning off the game. This comes after the camera pans around his room to show posters of Post Malone and a picture of Aaron with a group of white friends. Even after we see him beside his Black father, Aaron makes snobby comments like claiming a Black teenager who was killed by police officers did “something that warranted it” and fetishizing what would happen during a police stop. Altogether, Aaron strikes the eyes as someone who isn’t exactly in touch with his Black roots — not as much as he is with his white roots at least.

Is It Really That Easy To Build A Flamethrower?

Sure, a quick Google search could’ve been done to answer this question, but 1. I’d prefer my FBI agent to not have that search on my records and 2. It’s for the sake of commentary. After his frustration with not receiving a scholarship for college boils over, Aaron picks a few items out of his garage and magically assembles a flamethrower to burn his school down in retaliation. This makeshift weapon is assembled with the difficulty of a backyard swing, but c’mon there’s no way it’s that easy. Right? Right?? It certainly puts to shame the struggles I’ve had with assembling common household items.

Did Aaron Deserve The Scholarship?

The whole premise for the scholarship is that you have to be Black, and with that in mind, you would assume that Aaron qualifies to receive it. Using the “paper bag test” to decide whether or not a student receives the scholarship isn’t a fair assessment of one’s “blackness.” With that being said, as the episode goes on it becomes very clear that Aaron is minutely in touch with his Black roots. He calls fellow online gamers (who we presume are Black) “n*****s” while also making monkey noises at them, he makes a privileged joke about being pulled over by the police, and he ironically calls an African student “not Black” due to their ethnicity. Keeping all that in mind, it seems like Aaron only cared to identify with his Blackness when it benefitted him the most.

What Was Donald Glover’s End Goal With This Episode?

With each episode of Atlanta, I try to keep in mind that it’s just a satirical take on events in the real world. Searching for an episode’s true meaning and debating whether or not it appropriately speaks on a topic can suck the fun out of things. However, with an episode like “Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga,” you can’t help but feel like there is some meaning or message within the plot. Is Donald Glover holding up a mirror to those who take advantage of Blackness when it’s convenient to them? Is this a lesson on how to, or how not to, gatekeep Black culture? Is he trying to inform us on how outsiders view and seek to interact with Black culture? There are a few more things that this episode could be, and regardless of an answer, it surely speaks to the mind that is Donald Glover.

FX’s ‘Atlanta’ airs on Thursdays at 10:00pm EST

Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks that Dr. Oz (thanks to a decade-old tweet) is languishing in Switzerland mere days before the May 17 GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania. Dr. Oz hasn’t corrected her, and that probably has nothing to do with Greene herself. Rather, Dr. Oz is very distracted right about now. And that’s to be expected, given that he’s poured approximately $12.4 million into his own campaign (and received the MAGA-coveted endorsement from Trump, who’s also not happy about this), and then a whippersnapper has come in with a mere $127,000 or so spent and has almost the same polling as he does.

Yup, Kathy Barnette is shaking up the MAGA establishment by being labeled as “Ultra-MAGA” (by Drudge Report and Politico) and possibly pulling off an upset. According to the caption in the below Getty photo, the Trafalgar Group poll numbers reveal that (this week), she’s surged to 23.2% against Oz’s 24.5%.

It’s safe to say that, with mere days to go before voters do their thing, Sean Hannity is losing his mind over Barnette’s “rise.” On Thursday night, he spent his entire Thursday night episode trashing her. Granted, her positions (as detailed the Daily Beast and CNN) are incredibly unsavory. She’s expressed anti-Muslim and anti-gay views, and Hannity is doing a lot of last-minute panicking over how this looks. He’s upset that she hasn’t been “vetted,” and the “talk show host” cannot believe this surge has happened.

One has to wonder whether Hannity (or any of his guests) would be pointing out Barnette’s incendiary views if she was, say, a white male. But we may never know the answer to that question, correct? May 18 is right around the corner.

The 2021-22 season is over for the Philadelphia 76ers after a Game 6 home loss to the Miami Heat that was not as close as the final score of 99-90 might indicate. By the end of the series, Joel Embiid was clearly limited and Philadelphia was not operating at an optimal level, but plenty of attention was also paid to the passive nature of James Harden’s performance in an elimination game. Harden took only nine shots from the floor and no free throw attempts in the game, scoring 11 points in total, and he was notably absent from the offense in the second half, attempting only two shots and going scoreless in 23 minutes of action.

After the game, Harden was prompted on this interesting development and he responded by noting that “the ball just didn’t get back to (him)” in the second half.

This is, of course, a nonsensical comment from a player tasked as a lead creator from the perimeter. Harden also has an earned reputation for shrinking in similar moments and, just 48 hours earlier, he scored only 14 points on 13 shots in a blowout Game 5 loss. At this stage, it isn’t necessarily shocking to see Harden playing at a suboptimal level, but even by his shaky playoff standards, attempting two shots in a full half was, at the very least, quite notable.

From here, there is also a discussion on Harden’s future, as he will be weighing a massive player option and the potential for a long-term deal with the 76ers. Asked about the next step, Harden did align himself with Philadelphia, but gave little in the way of specifics.

Daryl Morey will have his work cut out for him in the offseason in navigating what could be a treacherous situation with Harden, who happens to be the player most closely aligned with Morey during his career as an NBA executive. The 76ers do have an elite centerpiece in Embiid, but there are overarching questions elsewhere, and Harden’s future will be at or near the top of the list of intriguing offseason topics across the league.

Love is definitely in the air. Spring has brought forth flowers, warm evenings and romance. After all the bad news cycles we’ve had, who wouldn’t be up for a little joy in the friendly skies? A couple who had joked about flying off to Vegas to get married found themselves saying their nuptials while the fasten seatbelt sign was turned off, 35,000 feet above any chapel. The couple, Pam and Jeremy, decided they would travel to Vegas once they realized that the joke about getting married in Sin City wasn’t actually a joke, and they really did want to do it.

The two booked an appointment with a Vegas chapel for Sunday night but while they were in the air from Oklahoma City to Dallas, they discovered their connecting flight to Vegas had been canceled. As luck would have it, another passenger, Chris, who found himself stranded in Dallas overheard the couple worrying about not making their appointment at the chapel and stepped up. Chris happened to be an ordained minister and when he heard they may not make it to their own ceremony, he offered to marry them himself. As all three were already headed to Vegas, they turned to Southwest to grab the last three tickets to the city, and this is where it gets interesting.

Pam was wearing her wedding dress, likely in an effort to save time once the plane landed when they finally made it to their destination. The pilot on their flight, Captain Gil, noticed the unusual attire and asked her about her get-up, given that most people wear something lounge-worthy to fly. After explaining to the pilot, and maybe even a little embarrassment, the soon-to-be bride got a surprising response to her joke about getting married on the plane. Captain Gil said “Let’s do it!” This would be the second time in one week that Pam got those surprise words coming from a man standing before her— the first landing her in a wedding dress on a full flight heading to Vegas.

Planes must be equipped to handle everything because before Pam and Jeremy could process what was happening, the crew started decorating the plane with toilet paper streamers. The flight attendants fashioned a sash for the minister out of snack mix pouches. A professional photographer was on board and grabbed the most fantastic pictures of an unforgettable event. And don’t think they forgot about the guest book. A passenger pulled out an old notebook and scrawled “Wedding Guest Book Southwest Flight 2690 4/24/22,” and passed it around to all the passengers, who signed with their seat numbers and well wishes for the bride and groom.

The newlyweds will likely never forget this event and neither will their surprise guests and crew from the flight. It’s doubtful the couple had planned to crowdsource their wedding while on a plane but this has to be the best impromptu wedding anyone could ask for.

Crayfish (or crawdads or crawfish depending on your locale) are also known as mudbugs and bottom-feeders but to some, they’re still worthy of love and affection. Just ask one Texas woman.

TikTokker Jeni Mejia found a crayfish on the floor at her local H-E-B in Houston, Texas, asked the guy behind the counter if she could have it and he obliged. While most people would have treated the little guy with the same respect they would a roach (or you know, made him into a tasty snack), Mejia saw a precious life and took it home to live in her luxurious fish tank.

“Gave a crawfish a second chance at life,” she titled her TikTok video documenting the rescue that has received over 3.7 million views.

@_jenimejia_

Gave a crawfish a second chance at life ❤️🦞#fyp #crawfish #HEB

After Mejia introduced the crayfish, now known as Crawford, to the rest of her fish in her aquarium, some commenters feared it would make a meal out of them. “Don’t put him with your fish he’ll eat them I put one with my fish 2 and he ate them all,” 4Letas wrote. “I tried this once and he or she killed all my fish lol never again,” Ben Lopez added.

However, after the first six days, the grateful little guy has kept to himself. That’s good for Mejia and the other fish because according to Encyclopedia Britannica a crayfish can live up to 20 years, depending on the breed.

Here’s the most recent update on Crawford, he seems to be thriving in his new habitat which has to be more stimulating than life in a tank at the Houston H-E-B.

@_jenimejia_

Reply to @nshtx.jr update 🦞 I need name suggestions 🤔💭#fyp #crawfish #TalkingTree

“He has not ate any of my fishes,” Mejia captioned on the video. Here’s hoping it stays that way.

Crawford is clearly one lucky mudbug.

Stand up comedy seems easy, but it’s not. First, there’s the arduous task of actually creating material–being able to look at life through a certain lens, then having enough skill to translate that perspective into jokes that actually land. Plus there’s the whole bearing-your-soul-to-a-room-full-of-strangers aspect, one of the most common fears known to man.

Giphy

These factors combined perhaps don’t seem like a recipe for helping mental health, but as it turns out, stand-up comedy is proving to be a powerfully effective therapy tool. Just ask Angie Belcher, founder of Comedy on Referral.

Belcher has taught comedy for a decade, and over the years students would comment how much “stronger, more resilient and happier they were after exploring their personal histories through stand-up comedy.” It not only helped change their perspective, but sharing it all on stage put them in a “powerful position” to change their narrative of painful memories…possibly inspiring others to do the same.

“As a comedian, you could be the reason why someone in your audience does something differently,” Belcher told The Guardian

Comedy of Referral is a six-week program that allows people to process traumatic experiences by turning them into five minute comedy sets. Similar to the way art therapy helps explore difficult emotions through different mediums, students navigate personal issues through the use of theater games, as well as group and one-on-one work as they channel their “comedic persona.” Participants are supported by psychologists in order to avoid triggering any past trauma.

Watching comedy has long been researched and documented as a constructive way to cope with tragedy. Laughter itself produces endorphins that help release stress. It inspires empathy and connection. It can even help reduce stigmas surrounding certain mental health conditions. The Comedy on Referral program is proving that creating comedy can be just as helpful as consuming it. Their website claims that through stand-up coaching, trauma can become “more manageable as the story becomes one of validation and redemption rather than an unpleasant experience.”

The theory appears to be spot on. After a highly successful trial NHS-course for trauma survivors in Bristol, England, London’s NHS (National Health Service) has agreed to fund Comedy on Referral so that private practices throughout the country can prescribe the course to men at risk of suicide. Lourdes Colclough, head of suicide prevention at Rethink Mental Illness, noted that this demographic is an especially “hard-to-reach group.”

“Even though they’ve been diagnosed, [they] don’t think they have an issue and so won’t go to counseling or attend anything signposted [as] ‘suicide prevention’,” she reflected. But this is exactly the kind of challenge that Comedy on Referral is designed for. The unique curriculum uses creativity and humor to help people not only feel comfortable enough to open up, but come out being able to experience their life in a more empowering way.

Humor can be the friend we need when life gets hard. In times of uncertainty, crisis, and despair, it can uplift us from the inside out, and remind us that joy is a basic human need.

“I hope that participants will use what they learn on the course in their practical everyday life, so that they go into future endeavors with joy, hopefulness and playfulness rather than taking out their bully teenager-persona or their depressed 20-something persona or their grieving mother-persona or whatever it is,” said Belcher.

Comedy of Referral has plans to support as many people as possible. In addition, Belcher is also in talks to extend the program to young people with autism and ADHD, the Guardian reported.

Through programs like Comedy on Referral, people can learn to harness humor for themselves, and in the process become resilient, hopeful, and of course, funnier. Not a bad trade-off.

Two years ago, the Gonzales family let Leela (named after the one-eyed character played by Katey Sagal on “Futurama”), their Shih Tzu, outside to go to the bathroom and the dog never returned. “We searched for months down the neighborhood. We thought a coyote or something got her,” Mark Gonzales said according to My San Antonio. The family had given up all hope of finding Leela until a strange event bought them back together.

On Mothers Day at 8:20 pm, police were called to the H-E-B store in Lytle, Texas after reports that a man had fled the store after stealing a $15 bouquet of flowers.

“The guy gets into a car with paper tags and drives off,” Lytle Police Chief Richard Priest said. “Then the [H-E-B manager] noticed the guy left a little brown Shih Tzu in the shopping cart. I’ve never had somebody leave their dog there when they commit a theft,” Priest said. “Nothing says I love you mom like stolen flowers.”

The police took the dog to a local shelter where its chip was checked and they discovered it belonged to the Gonzales family. The next day, Mark’s wife, Belinda, got a call from Lytle Animal Care and Control saying they had their long-lost dog.

“We were visiting a friend in the ICU, having breakfast, when she got the call,” Mark said. “It was totally unexpected. Thank God my wife got her chipped, spayed and her shots back in 2018.”

Gonzales said his wife is “tickled to death” to have Leela back home and that their son is in for a big surprise when they get home.

“When she got lost, he was eight. It feels good. I encourage people to chip their dogs, either way you might get your dog back,” Gonzales said. “This is a strange way to get my dog back, but at least we got her back.”

The police believe they know who the man is because he visited the shelter in an attempt to get the dog back after stealing the flowers. The suspect who is in his 40s faces a Class C citation for theft. The good news for the Gonzales family is that even though Leela was associated with the man who committed the crime, she won’t face any charges.

“The dog isn’t facing any charges, as we can’t prove he engaged in the theft,” Priest joked. “Hopefully, the dog hasn’t been on (a) 2-year crime spree and picked up bad habits.”

Studies show that microchip programs have been very effective at reuniting lost pets with their owners. A 2015 study on over 7700 microchipped animals found that the reclaim rates were substantially higher for pets with chips.

Chipped dogs that were picked up by shelters made it home 52% of the time, versus 22% of the non-chipped, and 39% of chipped cats found their owners versus just 2% of non-chipped.

If your dog is chipped make sure you have updated their information with the service provider. The study also found that 35% of pets with chips that wind up in shelters have an incorrect or disconnected phone number associated with the pet.

Mother’s Day can cause a mix of emotions for a lot of people. Some of us have mothers who raised and nurtured us in love, with whom we treasure our time. Some of us have complicated or downright toxic relationships with our mothers that make Mother’s Day little more than a painful reminder. Some of us have had to say goodbye to a beloved mother earlier than we would have hoped, making Mother’s Day a bittersweet day of memories and remembrance.

When we miss our mom on Mother’s Day, it can be hard to figure out how to commemorate the holiday. Do we grieve? Do we celebrate? Both? Neither?

Every person’s experience with the loss of a loved one is different, but one TikTok user shared how they celebrated their first Mother’s Day after their mom’s passing in the sweetest, silliest way.

In a post on Tiktok, user @chacha.blue wrote, “First Mother’s Day without my mom… I decided to do something that would’ve had her crying with laughter and spread wildflower seeds in a bee costume.”

The video shows the user joyfully prancing around in a bee costume, complete with honeycomb glasses. The “bee” carries a bag of seeds, tossing them about and joyfully meeting people they encounter. The end of the video shows a photo of their mom in the garden, with the words “Love you mom.”

The video was also shared on Reddit, where it has gone viral.

“Today was my first Mother’s Day without my mom…” the Reddit post read. “She loved gardening and was a total goofball. So, in her honor I ran around the neighborhood throwing wildflower seeds in a bee costume and met some fun folks while at it… I just wanted to share since it made this day a little easier.”

So sweet. Watch:

@chacha.blue

First Mother’s Day without my mom… I decided to do something that would’ve had her crying with laughter and spread wildflower seeds in a bee costume. 🌸🐝

(For those wondering about the wisdom of randomly tossing seeds around, the poster clarified in the comments that the seeds were flowers that are native to California, where they live, and were specifically slow-spreading varieties so as to avoid an invasive plant situation.)

People loved the video, especially those who were also missing their moms on Mother’s Day.

“If this is how you are celebrating her, your mother must have been absolutely awesome,” wrote one commenter. “May her memory be a blessing to you.”

“I love this. I’m also spending Mother’s Day with my mom who was gone too soon,” wrote another. “Thanks for honoring your mom well. You left my day on a much better note. Hugs.”

“I am picturing your mom running along with you all day but her bee suit has little angel wings,” shared another.

Honoring a loved one who has passed in a way that we know they would have loved is a lovely form of remembrance. And when that loved was was “a goofball,” the sillier the remembrance the better. Perhaps we can all go out and do something for someone we miss that would tickle their funny bone this week, and bring a little joy to others in the process.

In 2019 and 2020, Burna Boy declared himself king of afrobeats with his fourth and fifth albums African Giant and Twice As Tall. For what it’s worth, the star Nigerian singer proved that he was worthy of the title with the projects. African Giant gave Burna worldwide recognition, together with the release of “Ye,” while the success of Twice As Tall was stepped after it gave Burna his first Grammy award. Nearly two years after he released the award-winning album, Burna is ready to bring things to a new level, and its starts with his new single, “Last Last.”

On the new record, Burna conquers heartbreak and reinforces the claim that he is the best of the best. The track also arrives with a grandiose video that captures him in a celebratory mood around friends as he flaunts his lavish mansion, flashy jewelry, and of course, his Grammy trophy. “Last Last” was released together with an announcement about Burna’s sixth album.

Love, Damini, with the latter word being the singer’s first name, will arrive on June 30. Burna first announced the project last month at his Madison Square Garden show where he became the first Nigerian singer to have a headlining performance at the legendary venue. Love, Damini will feature 19 songs including “Last Last” and the previously released “Kilometre.”

You can watch the video for “Last Last” above.

Love Damini is out 6/30 via Atlantic. You can pre-save it here.

Burna Boy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.