After Warner Bros. Discovery made the shocking announcement that it was pulling the plug on the Batgirl movie, which was so far into production that it was reportedly conducting test screenings, DC Comics fans only have one question on their minds: Why? The film seemingly had everything going for it: The directors behind Ms. Marvel and Bad Boys for Life, Michael Keaton as Batman, and Brendan Fraser making his blockbuster return as the villainous Firefly.
However, incoming Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has been on a mission to refocus the studio on theatrical releases (and cut costs), which put Batgirl in a rough spot. Not only would shelving the movie give the company a tax write-off, but it would also help mend fences with filmmakers who felt burned by previous CEO Jason Kilar’s controversial decision to stream Warner’s entire 2021 film slate on HBO Max during the pandemic. Via Variety:
“Batgirl” found itself on the bad end of that decision, apparently neither big enough to feel worthy of a major theatrical release nor small enough to make economic sense in an increasingly cutthroat streaming landscape. Spending the money to expand the scope of “Batgirl” for theaters — plus the $30 million to $50 million needed to market it domestically and the tens of millions more needed for a global rollout — could have nearly doubled spending on the film, and insiders say that was a non-starter at a company newly focused on belt-tightening and the bottom line.
However, while Zaslav is trying to mend bridges after the infamous HBO Max release strategy, shelving Batgirl could backfire as creatives start to fear that their projects won’t see the light of day. Case in point, Batgirl directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah released a statement revealing their shock at the decision.
“We are saddened and shocked by the news. We still can’t believe it,” the filmmakers wrote. “As directors, it is critical that our work be shown to audiences, and while the film was far from finished, we wish that fans all over the world would have had the opportunity to see and embrace the final film themselves. Maybe one day they will insha’Allah.”
You can read their full statement below, which also praises star Leslie Grace as well as the cast and crew for their hard work:
Not only is summer a great time to enjoy a refreshing IPA based on the weather, but it’s also when we celebrate National IPA Day. Every first Thursday in August (this year it falls on August 4th), the world comes to a complete standstill as people from all walks of life celebrate this historic and momentous day. Flags fly at half-mast and children cheer in the streets.
JKJKJK, no one on earth gives a flying f*ck about food holidays anymore (unless someone is giving away free fries). Still, an extra reason to drink a piney, fruity, citrus-filled, sometimes slightly bitter (other times explosively bitter) hop-centric IPA is never a bad thing.
Jeremy Marshall, brewmaster at Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California says that if you’re just starting out in the world of IPAs, you should ease your way in.
“A beginner IPA can’t be too much, and definitely can’t be too bitter or have hop burn,” he notes. For that, I recommend a smooth west coast IPA over most hazies — as clear IPA is always free of hop burn.”
If you need a little more help in picking your first IPA, you’re in luck. We asked a handful of craft beer experts and brewers to tell us the best beginner IPAs for National IPA Day. Keep scrolling to see their picks.
Odell Good Behavior
Odell
Garth E. Beyer, certified Cicerone® and owner and founder of Garth’s Brew Bar in Madison, Wisconsin
For beginners in the beer scene or the IPA scene, in particular, I like to recommend Good Behavior by Odell Brewing. It’s extremely light and the slight peachy notes make it refreshing. It’s not that everyone who tries it loves it, but it drives home the point that an IPA can be sessionable (or in the words of Odell, “crushable”). The aroma is bright and tropical, so it’s quite the turn-on even before the first sip.
Faction IPA
Faction
Jeremy Marshall, brew master at Lagunitas Brewing in Petaluma, California
I’m thinking about Faction IPA. It is approachable, very aromatic, and not too bitter. It’s about mid-6% ABV alcohol so it’s not a double IPA. But it has a nice mix of Southern Hemisphere hops (like Vic Secret and Nelson Sauvin) mixed with the mighty Citra of the Pacific Northwest (also now the most widely planted and most successful hop ever out of a private breeding program).
I’ll go all the way back to what I think of as a standard in the world of IPAs and that is Odell Brewing’s IPA. It has every aspect of what made IPAs take the lead in craft beer. Beautiful hops and that ‘backbone’ people always talk about carrying those beautiful hops. It’s malty, fruity, floral, dank, and has just a touch of pine but all in balance and so enjoyable. It’s from a beer like this that all other American craft IPAs were bred and derived so if I was introducing someone to IPA, I’d start here.
Moonlight Brewing Bombay by Boat is my pick. Moonlight Brewing doesn’t make anything except awesome beer and Bombay by Boat has been one of their core beers forever. It’s an absolute masterclass on a classic American IPA. Lots of West Coast hop character bringing resin and light citrus blended with a robust malt structure that makes for a supremely balanced and drinkable IPA. This is a benchmark for anyone looking to understand IPAs.
Cold IPA is a new-ish style that uses lager yeast, so it’s typically a lot cleaner than many IPAs out there. It’s balanced and not as bitter as a West Coast IPA and not as sweet as a Hazy IPA. Its clean finish leaves you wanting more. Drake’s Brewing makes an awesome one. This 6.5% ABV cold IPA gets its bold flavor from the addition of Centennial, El Dorado, Citra, and Azacca hops as well as lager yeast, extra pale premium Pilsner, and Dextrin malts. Add Puffed Jasmine Rice and you have a highly flavorful beer.
Sierra Nevada’s Hazy Little Thing is consistently great. A good intro to low bitterness modern IPAs without being over the top. And it is readily available in most markets. Highly recommend it as a starting point for hoppiness. It’s juicy, hazy, and extremely drinkable on a hot summer day.
Spiteful IPA is a nice local one that is a great representation of the style. It’s straightforward and showcases classic North American hops in a pleasant manner. This well-balanced, citrus-filled IPA gets its flavor from the addition of Citra and Amarillo hops. It’s a great beginner IPA to get you started in the world of hoppy beer.
Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale
Bell’s
Josh Radigan, director of food and beverage at Viceroy in Washington DC
The best beginner IPA would be Bell’s Brewery’s Two Hearted Ale. It’s just a classic and easy approach without being overwhelming. Brewed with Centennial hops, this year-round beer is known for its mix of resinous pine and bold citrus flavors.
This year-round, 7.5% IPA is brewed with Bravo, Chinook, Mt. Hood, Nugget, Cascade, and Citra hops to give it a nice citrus, piney flavor. It’s balanced with ale yeast and Crystal, Munich, and Pilsner malts. The result is a well-rounded IPA with notes of citrus zest, dank pine, and tropical fruit flavors.
Not only is it a great beginner IPA, but it’s so good you’ll continue drinking it for years to come.
One of the highest-rated IPAs on BeerAdvocate, Societe The Pupil is a well-balanced, summery IPA loaded with ripe tropical fruits, bold citrus flavors, and slightly bitter, resinous pine. It’s clean, fresh, and well-suited for sipping on National IPA or literally any other day of the year.
Beyoncé’s seventh studio album, Renaissance, hasn’t even been out for a full week, but changes are underway for some of the album’s track. The Queen Bey has already removed an interpolation of Kelis’ “Milkshake” from the song “Energy,” after the singer/chef expressed disdain toward Beyoncé for not notifying her that she would be interpolating the track. Her team also confirmed she will remove an ableist slur from the track, “Heated.” But now, Monica Lewinsky is calling for the removal of a particular line in Bey’s song, “Partition,” which was released in 2013 on her self-titled fifth album.
In a line on “Partition,” Beyoncé recalls a steamy sexual encounter with her husband, Jay-Z. “He popped all my buttons and he ripped my blouse / He Monica Lewinsky’d all on my gown,” she sings on the track, referring to an infamous sex scandal between then-president Bill Clinton and Lewinsky, his former intern.
After news broke earlier this week that Beyoncé would be removing the ableist slur from “Heated,” Lewinsky shared a link to the news story on Twitter, commenting, “uhmm, while we’re at it…#Partition,” seemingly implying that she would like for Bey to remove the aforementioned line from “Partition.”
This is not the first time Lewisky has expressed disdain toward that particular lyric. In a letter Lewinsky shared with Vanity Fair in 2014, Lewinsky referred to the lyric saying, “Thanks, Beyoncé, but if we’re verbing, I think you meant ‘Bill Clinton’d all on my gown,’ not ‘Monica Lewinsky’d.’”
Lewinsky hasn’t shared anything regarding the lyrics since her tweet, nor have Beyoncé or her team revealed plans to change or remove the lyric.
Back in 2002, a new basketball league popped up and spent two years compelling fans as it mixed hoops, football, and trampolines. SlamBall aired on Spike TV (this is an incredible Of Its Era sequence of words) and put a twist on the game that was awfully familiar to anyone who had a friend with a trampoline and a basketball hoop that could be moved to the backyard.
There have been plenty of calls over the years for SlamBall to come back in some form or fashion, and in a recent interview with TMZ, SlamBall founder Mason Gordon revealed that it will make its return in the summer of 2023.
“We’ve gotten opportunities,” Gordon said. “Pretty much every couple of months, there will be an opportunity to bring SlamBall back in some form. And my partners and I have always looked at it and said, ‘We’re not gonna come back until the market conditions are, like, really optimal,’ and the alternate sports marketplace is on fire. And there’s a reason for that: Younger audiences are really out there looking for, like, what sport can I call my own, because a lot of them aren’t watching two and a half hour, three-hour long broadcasts anymore.
“SlamBall just kind of fits the bill,” he continued. “They’re 20-minute games, television half hours. People always really gravitated to the action, and it’s this incredible mash-up between basketball, football, hockey, little bit of gymnastics, little bit of video games. That’s just SlamBall, you get a whole lot in one neat, tidy little package.”
The original SlamBall league, the one that was on Spike, featured six teams during its first season and expanded to eight in its second. There have been additional attempts beyond that to have SlamBall in some form or fashion, and all of us at Dime are excited to see how this one will turn out. And now, here is a SlamBall dunk compilation I found on YouTube:
Scratch that. Things are going so terribly wrong for Jones that some are comparing his trial to an episode of Law & Order. The whole mess started when Jones, who is being sued for $150 million in damages by parents of the children killed in the 2012 massacre, began perjuring himself on the stand, claiming his business was bankrupt, that he couldn’t provide any emails or texts he sent about Sandy Hook because there were none and that he didn’t defame both the presiding judge and the jury in the case on his televised show. And the reason we know Jones was lying about all of this — besides that taping of Infowars where he shared an image of Judge Maya Guerra Gamble on fire and claimed the jury was rigged — is because his lawyers “accidentally” sent a digital copy of the entire content of Jones’ cell phone to the lawyers representing the Sandy Hook victims’ families.
Here’s the moment it happened in court.
Omg — where did Alex Jones find this lawyer — Groupon?
That’s right. Either Jones — a man reportedly worth millions despite his claims of being broke — hired the most incompetent legal representation he could find or the guys representing him just really hate his guts. Not only did the lawyers hand over years’ worth of unredacted texts and emails, but they also did so without marking them as privileged which means the team representing the Sandy Hook side has been using the Infowars host’s own words against him all day in court. Even worse, Jones’ lawyers made the error 12 days ago, which means they’ve allowed their client to lie on the stand for nearly two weeks before copping to their mistake.
Obviously, this is a devastating turn of events for Jones who has now lied about everything from how much money Infowars was making from his Sandy Hook conspiracy theories — sometimes 800K a day — to having one of his producers harass Sandy Hook officials during the height of his media blitz against the school. But, for everyone hoping this scumbag, who profited off the death of innocent children for a decade, finally gets what’s coming to him … well, they’re having a hell of a time over on Twitter.
Wow. Sandy Hook parents’ lawyer is revealing that Alex Jones’ lawyers sent him the contents of Jones’ phone BY MISTAKE.
“12 days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of every text” Jones has sent for years.
Alex Jones’ lawyer accidentally sending the Sandy Hooks parents the entire contents of his phone feels like God adding an edit button to the fucked up world we live in.
Seen a lot of Law & Order, haven’t seen a twist as good as “Alex Jones’ lawyers accidentally sent Sandy Hook parents’ lawyers the entire contents of his phone and his long-hidden financials, but they waited 12 days to let him lie” in my life. Just an absolutely wild day.
screen grab of Alex Jones’ reaction after the prosecuting attorney informed him his lawyer accidentally sent 2 years of phone/email records which prove he committed perjury pic.twitter.com/GkRclFUST2
— LeGate (founder @ pillow-fight.com) (@williamlegate) August 3, 2022
QAnon cultists have been disappointed a handful of times when they’ve predicted that John F. Kennedy Jr. will somehow rise from the dead (or never have been dead at all) and reappoint Donald Trump to his rightful place as president. Or that the two will somehow run on a ticket together. In the meantime, these kooky conspiracy theorists have been running in local elections to snatch the seats of power across the country. And they’re faring about as well as that JFK Jr. revival.
Case in point: Ron Watkins, one of the main leaders of QAnon, who some people believe to be Q himself. As Mediaite reports, Watkins was one of the many individuals who was determined to face off against Democratic incumbent Tom O’Halleran in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. He faced a humiliating defeat.
While Watkins was always considered an underdog, he somehow managed to out-fundraise many of his competitors, leading some (probably terrified) individuals to believe that he had a real shot at pulling off a surprise win. Instead, he received less than 4 percent of the vote.
Zoinks!
Watkins was thought to be an underdog as his fundraising was outpaced by his many rivals, and the results from InMaricopa.com show that Crane took 33.5 percent of the vote on Tuesday. Blackman was next with approximately 25 percent of the vote, followed by Deluzo, Yates, Moore, Ksystofiak, and then Watkins with 3.8 percent.
The election follows a shaky performance from Watkins, who was called out by his rivals for botching the facts during the district’s primary debates. Watkins’ tenuous relationship with facts coincides with his involvement with QAnon, the right-wing movement claiming that a secret cabal of globalists, child sex traffickers and deep state Satan-worshipers conspire to oppose Donald Trump and bring the United States under their control.
Doesn’t look like Watkins is their man. There’s still time to hold out hope for JFK Jr. though.
Sara Quin of Tegan And Sara is currently caring for a couple of babies. One is the duo’s upcoming album Crybaby, which they announced last month, when they also shared a new single, “Yellow,” along with a video. The second baby is more literal: Yesterday, Sara took to the band’s social media accounts to share a photo of her with her new baby, writing, “My #crybaby.” The photo is of her holding the child, whose back faces the camera.
The comments section of the Instagram post is full of loving comments from people including Phoebe Robinson, Cobie Smulders, and others.
While that post could have just been about Sara holding any old baby to make a joke about the new album title, Tegan did confirm it is in fact Sara’s kid in a tweet calling out an article that uses a photo of her instead of Sara, writing, “My favourite part of this article about Sara announcing she has a new baby on IG is that they used a photo of me performing at the top of it. So Sara has a baby, whatever. I have a microphone. Take that Sara.”
My favourite part of this article about Sara announcing she has a new baby on IG is that they used a photo of me performing at the top of it. So Sara has a baby, whatever. I have a microphone. Take that Sara. https://t.co/dI6y0tB3mc
The story in the AFC East for much of the last 20-plus years has been the New England Patriots run things, everyone else is trying to play catch-up, and ultimately, they come up short while the Patriots make a run at a Super Bowl. That’s no longer the case — yes, three teams are still playing catch-up, but now, the Buffalo Bills appear to be the clear-cut best team in the division, and have legitimate hopes of bringing the Lombardi Trophy to Western New York for the first time in history.
Still, each team in the division is interesting to one extent or another. Today, we’re going to look at the AFC East and try to answer the biggest question that face each of them as we prepare for the 2022 NFL season.
Buffalo Bills: Can they actually win a Super Bowl?
“The Buffalo Bills are the favorites to win the Super Bowl” is a very weird sentence that is also 100 percent accurate. After losing in the AFC Championship Game two seasons ago and the AFC Divisional Round last year — both times traveling to Kansas City and falling to the Chiefs — Buffalo went out and appeared to address a number of the biggest issues that existed on their already loaded roster. Most prominently, the Bills’ defensive line got an overhaul, as Von Miller brings a pass rushing threat they did not have and a trio of battle-tested defensive tackles (DaQuan Jones, Jordan Phillips, Tim Settle) should add some heft up the middle. Their skill position players around Josh Allen were bolstered, both in free agency (Jamison Crowder, O.J. Howard, Duke Johnson) and in the draft (James Cook), while Rodger Saffold brings Pro Bowl pedigree to the offensive line. Basically all the pieces are here for the Bills to make a serious run at the Super Bowl, especially if Allen can take another step forward. Perhaps the biggest hurdle they’ll need to clear is the decades of bad luck that is synonymous with the franchise.
New England Patriots: How will the offensive play-calling work?
No seriously, the Patriots don’t have offensive or defensive coordinators. That might not be a huge concern on the defensive side of the ball — the team hasn’t had a recognized defensive coordinator since 2017, which is probably something you can get away with when Bill Belichick is your head coach — but in the aftermath of Josh McDaniels leaving to become the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, the team does not have a coordinator on the offensive side, either. Belichick was recently quoted as saying, “We’re not really big on titles and all that. It’s important that we all work together and create a good final product. That’s what we’re going to try to do. That’s what we’ve always done.” It seems like some combination of offensive line coach Matt Patricia (whose background is as a defensive coach), QB coach Joe Judge (whose background is as a special teams coach), Belichick, and second-year QB Mac Jones will have input on how the offense works. It seems risky, but maybe it’ll work — the Patriots are masters of figuring things out.
Miami Dolphins: Can a new head coach unlock Tua?
Tua Tagovailoa is on the short list of the best college quarterbacks to ever live. Despite that, things just haven’t really worked in the NFL. It hasn’t all been on him — offensive line issues and a less-than-stellar group of skill position players have hampered things considerably — but compared to the guy who tore defenses apart as the signal caller in a high-flying Alabama offense, Tagovailoa has looked tentative and unsure of himself.
Now, former San Francisco 49ers run game coordinator and offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel is here and will presumably bring an offense heavily influenced by the years he’s spent around the Shanahan family. McDaniel and OC Frank Smith are tasked with figuring out how to best take advantage of Tagovailoa’s accuracy and ability to make anticipatory throws, and with a pass catching duo of Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle that should be able to burn opposing corners, perhaps they’ll be able to figure that out. If not, Miami might be in for a rough year with major questions that need answering heading into 2023.
New York Jets: Can they take any serious steps forward in year two of Robert Saleh?
The Jets were bad last year, going 4-13 and generally looking like a team that had a first-time head coach and a rookie quarterback. Progress doesn’t happen overnight — or, more accurately, in one offseason — so New York probably shouldn’t make plans for a ticker-tape parade to celebrate a Jets Super Bowl or anything like that. Having said that, the team is going to look for just about anything it can get in 2022 as it looks to build something. Can Zach Wilson go from a rookie who struggled mightily to a guy who shows glimpses of being a franchise signal caller? Can the team’s highly-regarded 2022 NFL Draft class — led by first-round picks Sauce Gardner, Garrett Wilson, and Jermaine Johnson — be part of a foundation that brings better days to East Rutherford?
Can the free agent signings they brought in on both side of the ball with their copious amounts of cap space prove to be smart investments that immediately raise the team’s floor? This is a big rebuilding job, and this is a year to show that the team is building towards something other than what the status quo has been in New York.
Love spreader Jason Momoa will return to theaters as Aquaman in March 2023, but before that happens, he’s gone home. At least, that’s what he was doing on a flight where he acted as a stand-in flight attendant on the way to his native Hawaii. It’s wild to think about how, nearly three years ago, Momoa faux-threatened to boycottAquaman and the Lost Kingdom filming while protesting construction on a sacred Hawaiian mountain. A lot has happened since then, but it’s all coming full circle.
Momoa’s also sticking to his steadfast promise to use as few plastics as possible, and he’s always done the most (including filming a shirtless video, with armpit scrubbing and everything, for Earth Day), and he’s brought that sensibility to his Mananalu water brand. Here he is promoting the brand by handing out water (while also admitting to feeling nervous to make an in-flight announcement) to delighted travelers. (Page Six noted that he got dubbed as “Aguaman” in the process.)
“My idea to create @Mananalu.water came to me while on a flight,” Momoa wrote on Instagram regarding his partnership with Hawaiian airlines. “We’re on a mission to end single-use plastic. Drink one, remove one – For every bottle of Mananalu sold, we remove one plastic bottle from the ocean. We have removed 3 MILLION plastic bottles from the ocean this year. Don’t stop making waves to save our beautiful planet. aloha j.”
In related news, Lenny Kravitz (and fellow ex-spouse to Lisa Bonet) recently sent out a birthday message to his ride or die. No one can ever break up these dudes.
Sharp-eared fans who pressed play on Beyonce’s new album Renaissance today may have noticed that a couple of the songs sound slightly different than they did on Friday when it dropped. On one song, “Heated,” a line has been changed to replace a word described as a slur by disability activists, following up on similar actions taken by fellow star Lizzo when the same concerns were raised over her song “Grrrls.”
The other subtle but big change to Renaissance appears in the song “Energy.” Prior to the album’s release, “Milkshake” singer Kelis posted a video raising concerns with the song, which she had been informed would include a sample of one of her songs. Kelis believed that she was not credited and also felt that she deserved a heads-up call from either Beyonce or the song’s producers. It later turned out that while “Energy” does include interpolation of Kelis’ hit “Milkshake,” the songwriting was properly credited to Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka The Neptunes, who wrote and produced the original.
However, that didn’t stop fans from debating whether or not there was an uncredited sample of Kelis singing in “Energy,” so Beyonce apparently updated the song on DSPs to remove a vocal clip toward the end of the track. Industry veteran Naima Cochran, whom Uproxx interviewed about the dispute, believes that Beyonce did so to remove a distraction from the larger discussion she hoped to spark with Renaissance about the breadth and history of Black music, which includes pioneering dance music styles like house and techno in addition to hip-hop and R&B.
So, technically, Beyonce did NOT remove a sample of Kelis from “Energy” because there never was one in the first place. However, she did remove disputed vocals that some fans thought were similar enough to cause confusion. The interpolation of drums from Kelis’ single “Milkshake” remains, but it was properly credited to its original songwriters, The Neptunes. For more information, you can check out our interview with Naima, who brings 20+ years of music business experience with multiple music labels to her expert perspective.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
(@RealGregorad) 
(founder @ pillow-fight.com) (@williamlegate) 
