Month: May 2022

Holey Moley was already America’s finest television program. This much is not in dispute. The first three seasons were as close to a perfect entertainment product as you can create, just 45 minutes every week of bodies flailing into bodies of water or piles of foam all in the name of an alleged miniature golf competition, like someone watched an episode of Wipeout and said “… but what if, also, golf?” It’s the closest thing we have in real life to Wile E. Coyote launching himself off a cliff or into a mountain that was painted to look like a tunnel. I need you to understand how serious that compliment is coming from me. I consider those cartoons to be the peak of comedy, never topped before or since. I am 40 years old and have a law degree. I feel okay about it.

But then, against staggering odds, the show figured out a way to top itself. The fourth season premiered and it opened with the silliest and dumbest fake intrigue you’ve ever seen, some of it involving co-host Rob Riggle in an expensive sports car and some of it involving a secret plan to “save” the show by introducing a new and awe-inspiring final hole for the end of the season. Again, very dumb, very silly, very on-brand, but also…

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the Muppets are now a part of Holey Moley. They’re mostly there so far to help Riggle plan, and do stuff like, well, this…

… and this…

… but still. You cannot imagine how excited this makes me. It’s one of those very tiny little silver linings of massive companies buying up beloved entertainment properties en masse, because now Disney, which owns both ABC and The Muppets, can throw two of its most chaotic properties together for a goofball circus that airs for an hour a week every spring and summer. Someone somewhere deserves a raise for this. Or at least a pizza. Preferably both. This is, on paper, one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever seen.

In practice, at least so far, there is good news and bad news. The bad news, through one episode, is that we have yet to see Gonzo fly through the air on a zip line or try to run through a pair of flaming windmills, and we have yet to see Statler and Waldorf laugh at any human contestants who fail miserably at the show’s borderline impossible physical challenges. I need both of these things to happen. I need them. Replace Riggle and Joe Tessitore in the booth for one episode with Statler and Waldorf. Just one episode. It is very important to me that you know I am not joking about this.

The good news, though, is that even in its early stages, Holey Moley is still a beautiful endeavor. Madness, straight through. The show introduced some new holes this season, including one that involves trapeze and a dummy with Riggle’s face on it, and they spent like five minutes setting it up, only to cut to, well…

… and this, too, which is also funny because this guy showed up in a pink tutu and it was barely mentioned at all, because, like, it was maybe the 10th most chaotic thing going on at the time and there are only so many minutes in a primetime network slot.

Did we have a dancing bozo in a pink suit and tie who everyone knew was going to get absolutely rocked by the flaming windmills and did not disappoint the viewing audience even a little bit? I think you know we did.

The thing I like about Holey Moley — in addition to, like, all of it — is that they never settle for the easy way out. They’re always looking for ways to top the sundae, to put a hat on a hat, which is how you get things like “the windmills are on fire now” and “the Muppets are here.” It’s nice. It’s a treat for the audience. All of which I say because this poor guy got out of the water and proceeded to get rocked by the second windmill, too.

And it gets better. This guy lost on that hole — I mean, yeah — to a young woman who somehow made it through both windmills unscathed. That’s only happened a few times. It’s an athletic fest on par with, like, winning the decathlon. I was legitimately impressed. Which made it even funnier when she advanced to the next round and turned in the single worst performance on the Pol-cano zipline I’ve ever seen.

It was incredible. I was full-on belly-laughing, harder than I have at any scripted comedy in… I don’t know, maybe ever? I have no clue how people could watch this and not be charmed straight down to their soul. It’s nonsense. It’s chaos. There are Muppets now. It’s really just a perfect hour of very stupid television that you can watch with your brain switched into power-save mode. It’s important to have shows like that, or at least something like that, in your life somewhere. The world is big and scary and there are plenty of fancy prestige dramas on the 15 streaming services you’re subscribed to. Take a little time off and enjoy the Muppets and a bunch of goofballs whomping themselves into windmills. You’ve earned this. You deserve this. It’s too beautiful to ignore.

I am serious about seeing the Muppets try the obstacles before the end of the season, though. I know there are logistical hurdles there involving wires and puppeteers and potential wet fur, but I also know they did this in The Great Muppet Caper way back in 1981.

We have the technology. We have the maniacs with ambitious dreams. We have, again, the freaking Muppets. Nothing is impossible here.

It’s been, roughly, two and a half years since the last Star Wars movie. In the history of Star Wars release schedules, this is not a very long time. The longest gap was the 16 years in between Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace. Right now, we aren’t even quite at the previously customary three years between active trilogy chapters. (Though, we would be at the stage where the hype machine would have kicked in and we’d feel like something was coming soon.) But, since Disney purchased Lucasfilm, two and a half years is a long time. Between the release of The Force Awakens in December 2015 and The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019 – only four full years – there were, somehow, five feature length Star Wars movies. Anyway, my point is, at least in this current era of Star Wars, two and a half years is a good amount of time to have a breather and to have enough distance to look back with at least some kind of introspective reflection on the Sequel Trilogy.

Admittedly, with this piece, I thought about rewatching The Rise of Skywalker and kind of forcing myself to appreciate something in that movie. A kind of way to say, hey, you know, I may not have liked this at first, but there’s actually some okay stuff in here. Yeah, so, that failed. I couldn’t make it through without giving up. The Rise of Skywalker is, bluntly, an unpleasant experience. My body responds to it the same way it responds to the idea of watching Nothing but Trouble. I could be watching any movie ever made, why am I doing this to myself? So, yes, I scrapped that idea pretty early on.

Even I don’t always trust my initial enthusiastic opinions when it comes to Star Wars movies. I loved every Prequel movie the first time I saw them – each time at midnight, with a very enthusiastic crowd – and only on later viewings did the feeling sink in of, “hm, perhaps I was wrong.” (Though, as I’ve written about, I have come around on Attack of the Clones, precisely because it’s the only one of the three that kind of knows what it is, and now I appreciate it for knowing that.)

But with The Rise of Skywalker, a bucket list event for me was a Star Wars premiere. Because of my job, I am in the rare position that I can go to these. But they take place in Los Angeles and I live in New York, so I had never been. So, on my own dime, I flew to Los Angeles and slept on a friend’s futon just to see this movie. If anything, I was going to convince myself I was having a great time. No one wants to admit the thing that cost them a lot of money is “bad.” About halfway through the movie I couldn’t even fool myself anymore. I, the same person who on opening night thought The Phantom Menace was a masterpiece, was resigned to the fact that The Rise of Skywalker was not a good movie. The way the premiere was set up, you leave the theater and it exists right into the after-party. So for the next couple of hours, I just sat there at a small table, with a frown, drinking some blue drink with smoke coming off of it. (A publicist, who hadn’t seen the movie that night, tells me I was the first one this person asked for a reaction to the movie. The way the story is told, the look on my face was the first sign this publicist had that, “oh, we might have a problem.”)

The reason I’m writing all this about The Rise of Skywalker is, since then, some interesting things have happened I didn’t expect. That night, and the initial weeks after, my attitude was basically, well, that movie was the pits, but I still like The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. And, today, that’s still technically true.

The Force Awakens does a great job of introducing great new characters and, despite a derivative third act, it’s still a really fun movie. And it’s fantastic watching Harrison Ford have a good time as Han Solo again, which he truly hadn’t had since The Empire Strikes Back. (I truly believe most all of Ford’s hatred towards Han Solo came from Return of the Jedi. He’s right that the character has no arc in that movie and plays really no role in the plot, which is why he wanted to be killed off in Jedi because at least that’s something. He’s the best pilot in the galaxy, so of course in the final battle he’s just running around with the Ewoks for some reason. And at this point, Ford is a big star (he wasn’t when Star Wars and Empire came out) who had just headlined Raiders of the Lost Ark and Blade Runner and, then, was playing second fiddle again. Anyway, I’ll always appreciate The Force Awakens for letting Ford learn to like Han Solo, at least a little bit, again.

And The Last Jedi is just everything a modern Star Wars movie with something to say should be. Letting go of nostalgia and the idea that maybe there are other people in this galaxy other than Skywalkers. My favorite scene in this movie is literally, almost as a throw-off line, Rey’s hope and dreams are dashed by Kylo Ren telling her she’s just the kid of junk traders who abandoned her. it was a shocking reveal in that there’s no shocking reveal. It’s a truly fantastic plot point and character point, with Rey, now, not relying on some mythical heritage to save her, but now she’s just left alone to have to do this herself. It made Rey herself important. She wasn’t a cog in the machine. She was now the machine. It’s a brilliant and daring story beat. I’ll never understand the backlash to the whole “Rey is a nobody” thing. Her not being related to someone with Force powers made her a somebody! Just being the kid of someone doesn’t make anyone a somebody. It might actually be the opposite. Also, all the Jedi we meet in the Prequels all aren’t related to someone. They aren’t Skywalkers. Half of them might be the spawn of junk traders, too. How did this ever become a thing?

But for The Rise of Skywalker to just undo that by making Rey the grandaughter of Palpatine is unforgivable. (And, honestly, makes no sense whatsoever.) That decision alone, for me, retroactively ruined the other two movies. I think I could have lived with the plot of a Star Wars movie being a dumb, “let’s find the doodad, so we can find the other doodad, so we can find the magic map knife, so we can find the secret room,” type of movie as long as the plot remained intact. It would have been fluff, but whatever. But, no, that’s not what happened. They made a scavenger hunt movie and decided to ruin the previous movie in the process. So, I hope, someday, I can get to the point of pretending The Last Skywalker doesn’t exist and just enjoying the other two movies for what they are, but, two and a half years later, I am not there. Now, trying to watch The Last Jedi, I just get a sinking feeling with every story beat I like that, I know now, gets overturned in the next movie. So, instead of just forgetting about The Rise of Skywalker, I’ve, unfortunately, sort of subconsciously, forgotten about all three. I hope this changes, but that’s where I am at. And it’s a shame, because I truly enjoyed all the hype and the run-up to all three movies. It’s just so strange this was allowed to happen.

(I truly think this is why Solo is looked at in a better light today. At the time it’s like, what is this? Let’s just get back to the main story. Then we got back to the main story and saw what that actually was, and now it’s like, hey, you know, Solo is a lot of fun!)

A constant complaint I see is that “there should have been a plan” before these movies started. Though, the thing is, there was a plan. Originally it was reported that Rian Johnson would write and direct 8, but also write 9. If that was the original plan, well that’s actually a plan and would have brought cohesiveness to the whole trilogy. I get it, you may not like Johnson’s The Last Jedi, but I will hear no arguments about whatever he would have done with 9 would have been better than what we wound up getting. Now, you may not have liked it, but at least it would have made sense. The other thing I point out here is the Original Trilogy was made up as it went along. But the difference being it was pretty much the same brain-trust working on it the whole time, led by, of course, George Lucas. So if he decides to retcon something, well at least it’s his own story. (As opposed to “spite.”) But even then, it doesn’t always work out for the best. The whole “other” that Yoda mentions in The Empire Strikes Back was originally supposed to be the hero of the Sequel Trilogy, so basically what turned out to be Rey. That would have been pretty cool, actually. To tie these trilogies together. But, Lucas then decided he wanted to end after the Prequels and they had to wrap up the whole “other” plot point, so at the last minute they came up with Luke and Leia being siblings.

It’s kind of weird we don’t even know what movie will be next. (The fact there have been Star Wars television shows has probably quelled that a bit.) We keep hearing about high-profile directors being attached, then nothing ever seems to come of it, or it gets “delayed.” Though with today being Star Wars Day, and Star Wars Celebration coming at the end of the month, I’m sure this will all change soon. But as all these other side projects happen, exploring other parts of the galaxy, what will become of this Sequel Trilogy? Will it, over time, become more popular like the Prequels did? Honestly, I don’t know. I think more kids were into Star Wars in the late ’90s than they are now. So I’m not convinced the same effect will happen. But, for now, it just feels like a disappointment. At least the Prequels had an arc and a story. So if I decide to watch those again, at least there’s a payoff and a conclusion at the end. A strong case can be made the Sequel Trilogy were better-made films but without an arc and story, what does it matter? Why would I watch one movie, then two movies after that just kind of cancel each other out, to the point there’s nothing? Something interesting was right there. But, now, it all kind of feels like it was for nothing.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The Los Angeles Lakers season was nothing short of a disappointment. Between injuries and the rumblings of internal strife, the Lakers stumbled to a 33-49 record on the season and missed the play-in tournament in the Western Conference, leading to the firing of head coach Frank Vogel and a number of questions about what the team can do to improve heading into next season.

While the Lakers lack the kinds of players and picks that could give them a new and improved core around LeBron James and Anthony Davis, much has been made of a potential Russell Westbrook trade now that the team can include an unprotected first-round pick in the 2029 NBA Draft. On Wednesday’s episode of First Take, Stephen A Smith presented a different idea: What if the team just traded LeBron?

Smith stressed that he means it to be a compliment and a testament to James’ excellence on the court that is advocating for this, then dove into his argument.

“He’s the only person that has extreme value,” Smith said. “You’ll never get equitable compensation for his greatness. But it’s the only chance you have to be immediately respectable, if you’re the Los Angeles Lakers.”

Smith laid out all the teams ahead of the Lakers in the Western Conference, then suggested calling teams that have younger star players (the Cavaliers and the Heat) or potentially disgruntled stars (the Jazz and the Blazers) to gauge their interest in a move for James, all with the hopes that they can fid someone willing to “sacrifice my youth … sacrifice picks to make a two-year run at the title.”

“If I’m the Lakers, I know I ain’t going nowhere,” Smith said. “What I got to do is prevent from falling off the cliff entirely and completely stinking up the joint for years to come, because the reality is that I can’t move Russ, in all likelihood — I’ma try, but I don’t think I can pull it off. Anthony Davis, I can’t get equitable compensation, because everybody is telling me he’s too injured, so we not gonna give up a piece for a dude that’s missed half the season two years in a row.”

J.J. Redick, as he is wont to do, broke down all the ways that this “crazy take” is not something he could ever imagine coming.

“Everything you’re talking about is teams, essentially, operating the way the Lakers have operated for decades,” Redick said. “Teams don’t wanna operate that way anymore, and that’s the problem with the Lakers: They have refused to modernize how they operate.”

Big weekend for Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson.

The pair attended the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where they rubbed elbows with the effusive Martha Stewart (who had a lot to say about Pete). Then they popped over to the Met Gala, where Kim wore a certain item from pop culture history for the red carpet (and the red carpet only). That would be an iconic Marilyn Monroe dress, which the star wore in 1962 while gushing birthday wishes towards JFK.

That dress is now in the possession of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum (who previously purchased it for $4.8 million) in Orlando. The museum allowed Kim to wear the dress, although “armed guards and gloves” were in order to do so. On Instagram, the museum posted a video from a related moment, during which staffers presented Kim with a gift: a lock of Marilyn’s actual hair. She promptly declared that she was going to do some “crazy voodoo sh*t” to “channel” Monroe.

Well, it was a joke and actually a surprisingly good one. The museum’s team also descended upon Kim’s gala dressing room, where they unloaded other Marilyn and JFK memorabilia, and she apparently got to keep that hair. She’s a superfan if there ever was one, and if Netflix already didn’t have a Monroe biopic (starring Anna de Armas) on the way, there’d be cause to watch for Kim hitting them up to play the late icon. But since Kim’s tight with Hulu, who knows, maybe she’ll be phoning them instead.

Eric Holder, the man accused of shooting and killing Nipsey Hussle in March of 2019, will finally go on trial in June, according to HipHopDX via the Los Angeles Criminal Court website. Before that, a pretrial readiness hearing has been set for May 19 in which the defense and prosecution will determine whether or not to resolve the case without going to trial. Holder has pled not guilty to one count of murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, and one count of felony possession of a firearm.

The trial has been delayed multiple times, with the first occurring in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, in May 2021, Holder reportedly refused to leave his cell, and then, two months later, both the assigned judge and Holder’s original defense needed to be replaced (the judge due to retirement, the attorney due to death threats against his family). The most recent delay was earlier this year, after the trial was scheduled to begin in January.

Holder was arrested just two days after the shooting in the Los Angeles County suburb Bellflower. Police said that the shooting was motivated by a personal disagreement in front of Nipsey’s Marathon store on Crenshaw and Slauson. A security video allegedly shows the agitated Holder walking up and firing on Nipsey, hitting him and two bystanders multiple times. Nipsey was pronounced dead at the hospital just hours later, leaving the hip-hop world to mourn his loss just as he was finally receiving the mainstream success he’d worked for a decade to get.

The new trial date is June 2, 2022.

As May 4th is the official “post a meme about Star Wars” day, many fans are reflecting on their favorite moments from the galaxy not-so-far-away. Despite the fact that the franchise has become a massive Disney property with some debatable installments, it’s still a great time to look back at all of the fun tidbits about the series, especially the originals, which featured the scariest villain ever at the time, Darth Vader, voiced by James Earl Jones.

The EGOT winner has been open about his love of the character and has reprised the role as often as he could. But with an instantly recognizable voice like that, it’s only natural to wonder if he used his Vader voice for evil outside of the movies.

In an interview on The Dick Cavett Show in 1995, Jones discussed his iconic Vader voice, which he admitted he did use in public, at one point. Only after he began scaring people is when he decided to quit it.

“I was driving across the country with a CB radio and I used ‘Darth Vader’ as my handle,” the actor explained. “It freaked a lot of people out. When I got to the truck stop, there was a buzz about it. So, I decided not to do that anymore.” Maybe he began using “King Mufasa” instead?

Jones then discussed how he has complicated feelings about his voice, as he used to struggle with a stutter. “I can’t string ideas and words together that well,” the actor admitted, though Cavett said he actually sounds very eloquent. Plus we all know of some words he can string together.

Check out the interview here.

Kumail Nanjiani makes a blink and you’ll miss it appearance in the new Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer, but that was enough of a tasty morsel for Star Wars fans to go absolutely nuts on social media. While Nanjiani is only briefly shown, his character is seen wearing what looks like a Jedi robe, and he appears to be hiding from the Inquisitors, who are featured prominently in the new trailer.

For you non-nerds, Inquisitors are an elite force of assassins tasked with hunting down any remaining Jedi after the Emperor destroyed most of the laser sword monks with his devious Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith. They also seem to be particularly obsessed with finding Obi-Wan, who not only survived Order 66, but left his fallen pupil Anakin Skywalker for dead following a fiery duel on the planet Mustafar.

With the new trailer suggesting that Nanjiani’s character is hiding from the Imperial assassins, that has led many fans to speculate that he’s the Jedi on the run mentioned in the first teaser. Star Wars buffs are also speculating that Nanjiani’s possible Jedi character brings the Inquisitors to Obi-Wan’s doorstep, kicking off the events of the show, which will eventually culminate in a rematch between the Jedi Master and Anakin, who is now the villainous Darth Vader.

You can see some of the fan reactions below, and clearly, Star Wars fans are here for Nanjiani living his best nerd life with both the MCU and now Star Wars under his (maybe) Jedi belt:

Obi-Wan Kenobi premieres May 27 on Disney+.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is under federal investigation over whether he engaged in sex trafficking and had a sexual relationship with an underage girl, had a predictably terrible take on the all-too-real possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned. “How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” he tweeted, which probably delighted fellow far-right cronies like J.D. Vance and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and no one else.

It’s beyond parody (because parody is no longer possible) that Gaetz sees a woman being “over-educated,” whatever that means, as a bad thing, considering…

In two late-night Venmo transactions in May 2018, Gaetz sent his friend, accused sex trafficker Joel Greenberg, $900. The next morning, over the course of eight minutes, Greenberg used the same app to send three young women varying sums of money. In total, the transactions amounted to $900… When Greenberg made his Venmo payments to these three young women, he described the money as being for “Tuition,” “School,” and “School.”

As one Twitter user pointed out, “The very concept that a woman can be ‘over-educated’ tells me all I need to know about this. And the idea that the only women who want rights must be unattractive and frigid is the oldest misogynistic trope in the book. This is a sitting member of Congress.” Another tweet reads, “Matt Gaetz’s dates definitely aren’t over-educated, they aren’t even old enough to have a Bumble account.”

Here’s more:

Jack Harlow‘s upcoming sophomore album, Come Home, The Kids Miss You features a promising selection of collaborators. Fans, however, have already gotten a taste of some of the upcoming tracks in the form of a leaked Drake collaboration, which surfaced online last month. The track was revealed to be titled “Churchill Downs” yesterday, following Harlow’s unveiling of the album’s tracklist.

In an interview on Hot 97, Harlow admitted that he was upset by the leak.

“It hurt my feelings,” he said. “I’m really tight about leaks. I don’t bounce my music so I haven’t had leaks in a long time. I don’t ride to my music while I’m working on an album… the only time we get to experience it is in the studio. [The leak] was heartbreaking, especially because [Drake]’s an idol of mine. I wanted to control that moment, but it’s destiny.”

Harlow mentioned that Drake was also sad about the leak, but as an artist who has dealt with his music leaking for years, Drake was able to offer Harlow some words of encouragement.

“[Drake] kind of, you know, nudged me like, ‘Aye, don’t trip. This what was meant to happen,’” he said. “I think his experience, he let me know like, ‘You think this is gonna affect your life? Like, it’s fine.’”

In addition to Drake, Harlow also collaborated with Lil Wayne, Pharrell Williams, and Justin Timberlake on the album.

Check out the full interview above.

Come Home, The Kids Miss You is out 5/6 via Atlantic. Pre-save it here.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In times of stress and strife, it’s only natural to want to lash out and blame someone for the situation. With the leak of the Supreme Court’s opinion draft about overturning Roe v. Wade and setting our entire country—not to mention women’s rights and health care—back by a half-century, Justice Samuel Alito, who penned the opinion, would be the most obvious choice. (And is a totally valid one.) But as Stephen Colbert pointed out, so would Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett “I Love Beer” Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who were all in agreement with Alito’s opinion… despite indicating otherwise during their confirmation hearings.

But Colbert offered one additional target who is equally deserving of your understandable ire: Maine Senator Susan Collins. On Tuesday night, The Late Show host launched into a tirade against Collins, the “moderate” Republican who has regularly seemed to pretend like she’s really considering which way to lean on an issue just before siding with her party—then seems surprised when she learns that someone in her party has lied to her. As Colbert noted:

“Collins, who says she supports abortion rights, got a lot of people mad at her in 2018 when she supported Brett Kavanaugh, even though everyone knew he would not hesitate to overturn Roe vs. Wade…

This morning, Collins released a statement saying: ‘If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.’

OK, so she’s just another gullible grandma. ‘I don’t understand why they lie. We pinkie swore in my office. This is just like that time my niece sent me the email saying she was stranded in Guadalajara and needed money to get out of jail. So I sent her $10,000, then found out I don’t even have a niece.”

You can watch Colbert’s full‚ and very animated, segment above.