Month: September 2022

Shia LaBeouf awkwardly dropping receipts aside, the promotional tour for the erotic thriller Don’t Worry Darling is in full swing as it gets ready to open in theaters later this month. Directed by Olivia Wilde, the film stars her now-boyfriend Harry Styles, Florence Pugh, and Chris Pine, whose character is based on a real life person who’s practically the actor’s polar opposite.

While being interviewed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Wilde revealed that Pine’s character will take his cues from the highly controversial Jordan Peterson, whose rhetoric has gotten so despicable lately that even Joe Rogan is calling him out. The Peterson revelation led to Wilde explaining the incel movement to Gyllenhaal, who worked in one heck of a zinger. Via Interview:

WILDE: Terrifying. We based that character on this insane man, Jordan Peterson, who is this pseudo-intellectual hero to the incel community. You know the incels?

GYLLENHAAL: No.

WILDE: They’re basically disenfranchised, mostly white men, who believe they are entitled to sex from women.

GYLLENHAAL: Oh, right.

WILDE: And they believe that society has now robbed them—that the idea of feminism is working against nature, and that we must be put back into the correct place.

GYLLENHAAL: Well, they must be psyched. Things are going really well for them.

Despite playing a character based on one of the weirdest dudes imaginable, Pine was great to have on set thanks to his “very positive force” and willingness to engage with the part.

“Chris, who I’ve known for, like, 20 years, probably agreed to do the movie at first as a favor to an old buddy, and then he really took it and ran with it,” Wilde said.

Don’t Worry Darling opens in theaters on September 23.

(Via Interview)

With the last three-day weekend of summer 2022 a mere 48 hours away, it’s time to start planning your backyard brouhaha. While shaking or stirring up some cocktails might feel like a good play, you don’t want to be stuck behind a home bar all day and night. That’s where batched or premixed cocktails come in.

Friends, the time has come to make rosé sangria.

Rosé wine is all about al fresco drinking — or “day drinking” if you’re not fancy. Add in some key ingredients and a chilled bottle of rosé goes from “nice!” to “party-ready.” It also gets a little boozier and that’s kind of what you want for a backyard Labor Day Weekend drink, right?

The best part? You can prep this the day before and have everything prechilled and frozen. That means your actual time making jugs of sangria this weekend will be about 30 seconds. Seriously, it’ll probably take longer to pull the cork from the bottle than make this drink if you’re prepped.

Also Read: The Top Five Cocktail Recipes of the Last Six Months

• Our ‘Perfect Whisky And Coke’ Recipe Uses The Last Brand You’d Expect
• The Hemingway Daiquiri Is A Deeply Refreshing Summer Cocktail — Here’s The (Very Simple) Real Recipe
• The Godfather Is A Simple Scotch Cocktail To Power You Through Winter
• Recipe: The Amaretto Sour Is The Ideal Cocktail To Close Out January
• The Tom Collins Is A Classic Cocktail That’s Perfect For The Hotter Days Ahead

Rosé Sangria

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle of pre-chilled rosé wine
• 1 cup triple sec
• 1 cup brandy
• 1 can of blood orange soda
• 1/2 cup frozen berries
• 1/2 cup frozen peaches
• 1/2 cup frozen apples
• 1/2 cup frozen lemon wedges
• Fresh mint
• Pinch of salt
• Ice

This is a very fast and loose recipe. I used Hennessy VS because it was around on my shelf. I like Pellegrino Blood Orange soda but you can use any orange or lemon soda you have around — even Squirt (this is where the bulk of the sweetness comes from so don’t skip it). The rest is pretty standard stuff.

As for the wine, I used Leslie Reserve Rosé of Pinot Noir. It’s a little spendier but delicious. Remember the cardinal rule of cocktail mixing: The better the base alcohol, the better the final product. It’s a nice, zesty, and spritely wine that works well as a sipper (without too much sweetness). It’s a nice wine on its own but really shines as a sangria. The best rule to follow is to use a wine you actually like to drink.

What You’ll Need:

• Large pitcher
• Highball glasses
• Paring knife
• Measuring cup
• Large spoon
• Straws

Method:

• Slice all the fruit into wedges and place in the freezer until frozen through.
• Add the wine, triple sec, brandy, soda, and all the fruit to a large pitcher with a big pinch of salt (about the size of a large pea). Stir until well integrated.
• Add ice and mint to a fresh glass and pour the sangria over. Scoop some fruit on top of the drink and serve.

Bottom Line:

This is as delicious as it’s refreshing. The rosé is light and has a thin line of leathery body underneath all the fruit. It also isn’t overly sweetened. A lot of American sangria recipes call for syrup of some sort — definitely not necessary. The fruits leech sugars into the drink gradually and the orange soda adds more than enough sweetness.

The brandy is just there with a hint of dried grape and maybe a whisper of vanilla. The triple sec adds some orange vibe but those two additions are tertiary to the wine and fresh fruit. That said, this has a bit of punch thanks to that brandy and triple sec — it’s grown up fruit punch in the literal and metaphorical senses with a real wine base that’s light yet well-rounded.

This is fun. It’s very fun. What more could you possibly crave at the end of the summer?

Pinhead sure is raising hell once more for a modern audience! Actress Jamie Clayton will be bringing the character back to life (or… death?) for Hulu’s “reimagining” of the classic 80s thriller Hellraiser. Clayton has shared a first look at the infamous Cenobite, complete with soulless black eyes and, of course, pins.

The 2022 version follows a “young woman struggling with addiction who comes into possession of an ancient puzzle box, unaware that its purpose is to summon the Cenobites, a group of sadistic supernatural beings from another dimension.”

Director David Bruckner is hoping that Clayton brings new life to the character as a trans woman. “We felt a kind of anticipation around the fans to reimagine the character,” says Bruckner. “We knew we wanted Pinhead to be a woman. Jamie was just the right person for the role. A person’s identity can be really exciting for a role in many ways, but I have to emphasize that Jamie absolutely killed, that’s how we got there.” Killed literally and figurately, probably.

The reimagined movie will be produced by Barker, and feature Odessa A’zion, Adam Faison, Drew Starkey, Brandon Flynn, Aoife Hinds, Jason Liles, Yinka Olorunnife, Selina Lo, Zachary Hing, Kit Clarke, Goran Visnjic, and Hiam Abbass.

Hulu’s Hellraiser will hit the streamer on October 7th, just in time to be spooked for the whole month!

(Via EW)

Believe it or not, whipped cream is all over the news right now. After some confusion over a new nitrous oxide law in New York state, local shop owners erroneously thought they had to card people buying whipped cream cans to make sure they were 21 years or older. The national news cycle picked it up, thinking the story was legit since shop owners were seemingly carding people buying Ready Wip. Eventually, the state Senator who wrote the law had to step in and clear everything up.

Long story short (too late), the law is for nitrous oxide canisters that one would use in manual whipped cream dispensers (like the ones you see at Starbucks or other fancy bars/restaurants/dessert shops). People like to buy the little silver tubes of nitrous, crack them into a ballon, and have a zipping good time (or so I hear). To quell this misuse of rote kitchen equipment amongst New York’s youth, New York state enacted an ID law to buy the nitrous canisters, and shop owners misread that as all whipped cream cans. So, no, you don’t need your ID to buy Ready Wip in New York.

That did remind me, though, that whipped cream is about the easiest thing to master ever in the home kitchen. It’s also far better from scratch than any emulsifier-filled can of whipped cream. Hell, you don’t even need nitrous to make it at home (unless you’re using a snazzy whipped cream dispenser). In fact, my record to make whipped cream in a bowl with a whisk (back when I was working in kitchens) was just shy of 30 seconds. It’s really that fast and easy.

It also gives me an excuse to dust off this old GIF!

Let’s jump in and I’ll show you how to do it.

Whipped Cream

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/8 tsp. vanilla extract

Technically, you don’t need vanilla extract. The cream should have enough flavor on its own to be a nice accent to whatever you’re serving it with, though I like a dash of vanilla to give it a tiny bit more depth. Some folks add a pinch of sugar. I find that detracts from the natural flavor of the cream. It’s also likely you’ll be using this on something that’s already very sweet anyway. You don’t need extra sugar on top of that.

What You’ll Need:

• Large bowl (chilled in the freezer)
• Large whisk (also chilled)
• Measuring cup/spoon

Chilling your bowl and whisk helps speed the process up. Everything just comes together faster when ice cold. Keeping things super cold also lets the cream’s temperature stay stable.

Method:

• Add all ingredients to the pre-chilled bowl and whisk unit stiff peaks form (about one minute or so). Focus on moving your wrists with your arms close to your body in large motions through the cream, basically like you’re manically folding in the air. Always stir in the same direction. I stir away from me, basically pushing the whisk through the cream on the bottom of the bowl and pulling it back toward me over the top of the cream.
• Serve immediately.

Bottom Line:

And look at that, folks! Whipped cream and it only took one minute to make. Which was still way off my record of just under 30 seconds.

Still, this was perfectly good whipped cream in a minute. It’s really that fast. There’s basically no prep besides putting a bowl in the freezer and measuring some cream. All told, this was crazy easy for a whipped cream that’s far superior to anything out of a can. It was so airy and soft and you could taste the fat in the milk with a near butteriness to it. The vanilla adds a smooth underlayer that helps the cream really shine. Give it a shot!

Rudy Giuliani just can’t win — though he’s only got himself to blame. The man once widely known as “America’s Mayor,” who was named TIME’s Person of the Year in 2001, has devolved into an international laughingstock, for reasons far beyond confusing Philadelphia’s Four Seasons Hotel with a small landscaping outfit. His utter (and some might say misguided) devotion to Donald Trump and his election fraud lies could very well land the former New York City mayor in prison. But for now, they’ve seen Giuliani be stripped of his license to practice law in both New York and Washington, DC. Also revoked? The honorary degrees he was given by several colleges and universities, with only five of them still in place — though all that could soon change.

For more than a year, mortified students, faculty, and alumni at Syracuse University — which is one of those five schools — have been pressuring the administration to rescind Giuliani’s fake degree, to no avail. Now, The Daily Orange is reporting that the university’s Board of Trustees is currently discussing the possibility of finally distancing themselves from Giuliani for good. On Monday, during the first University Student Association meeting of the semester, school chancellor/president Kent Syverud told the students in attendance that he had again brought up the topic of Rudy’s honorific degree, and whether it should be invalidated.

The Student Association sent a formal request to the University Senate back in April, requesting that Giuliani’s degree be erased. Though no official decision was made at the time, Syverud was asked to research how other universities go about making these decisions, as this would be the first time in Syracuse University’s history that an honorary degree was revoked. As Sarah Wells wrote for The Daily Orange:

Following his research, Syverud said he plans to present his draft recommendation for standard practices to the board at the executive committee meeting in September. Following the meeting, he said he hopes the full board will vote on the matter in November.

(Via The Daily Orange)

When Kendrick Lamar dropped his new album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, one track, in particular, got fans’ attention straight out of the gate. Thanks to its unnervingly accurate depiction of a contentious domestic dispute, “We Cry Together” became a polarizing fan favorite — if I can use that term loosely. While some were uncomfortable with Kendrick’s and guest star Taylour Paige’s performances, others (including one very enthused security guard) praised them for bringing their actual experiences to life. Now, Kendrick’s gone one step further, releasing the accompanying short film for the first time since its June premiere in Los Angeles.

The short film is pretty much exactly what the song portrays: A couple in the midst of an explosive argument, trading acidic insults and disquieting threats. Kenny’s in character as a blue collar worker and the whole episode mostly takes place in the cramped confines of the couple’s living room as the toxic discussion unfolds. It ends, as the song does, with a messy, Insecure-esque sex scene that is, frankly, not safe for work at all. In a nice twist, though, the camera pulls back to reveal that the living room is indeed a movie set, giving viewers the opportunity to decompress as they realize it’s all just a production.

You can watch the “We Cry Together” music video/short film above.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

A few weeks before he announced his third studio album The Forever Story, JID tweeted an intriguing statement about his burgeoning popularity. “None of my rap co-workers be tryna rap wit me dawg,” he wrote. “I think y’all n****z is scared, I’m talking to bigger rap artists.” The Forever Story presents a wealth of compelling evidence to support that theory.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb here and say that The Forever Story is the – as in singular, as in only – best-rapped album to come out in 2022. Present your arguments for whomever and however you see fit, but the Atlanta rapper’s project has at least one song to give it an edge over its qualified competitors.

I’ll go out even further on this narrow branch and say that JID belongs in the top five contemporary rappers discussion, and has since 2018 when he dropped DiCaprio 2. Since then, he’s followed up with the folksy Spilligion alongside his Spillage Village cohorts, utterly stolen the show on two Dreamville compilations, and made me enjoy an Imagine Dragons song.

So, why hasn’t JID gotten the recognition he deserves? There are a couple of reasons that spring to mind. First of all, JID has the unfortunate timing to have made his debut in a time slightly removed from the era where super technically skilled rappers could gain a lot of traction in a relatively short amount of time.

Think about the “blog era,” which spawned such lyrically-gifted standouts as Big KRIT, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, or Wale. Being a rapper’s rapper was prized at such a time because hip-hop goes through different cycles. There’d been a long lull in the priority of bars-first traditionalism, and the massive cultural shift toward blogs and weekly freestyles allowed artists like these to grab a lot of the spotlight.

That era came to an end in the middle of the last decade, as Chance The Rapper, who is probably the last of the blog era super rappers to get on, won his Grammy for Coloring Book. Then the Soundcloud era began, and colorful characters like Travis Scott who prized “vibes” over rhymes began to take center stage. JID is decidedly not one of those, but because he made his debut during that era, fans of hyper lyrical rappers likely wrote him off as just another punk kid.

Another reason might come directly from JID’s own words. One of the biggest drivers of any new – or even established – artist’s rise to stardom is the willingness of their peers to collaborate. Consider Lil Durk, who actually appears on The Forever Story on the song “Bruddenem.” He toiled on the underground scene for nearly a decade until Drake featured him on the 2020 standout “Laugh Now Cry Later.”

Now, Durk’s considered an A-lister, a hotly-demanded feature artist in his own right with numerous No. 1 albums under his belt. No one has yet done this for JID, aside from J. Cole, who hasn’t featured the younger MC on his own albums despite working with him on the Dreamville collabs on songs like “Stick.” Even if he did, JID’s an artist on his label, and would probably be subject to the “homie write-off” effect that plagued underlings in groups like Disturbing Tha Peace, St. Lunatics, and Roc-A-Fella. There’s only so much star power to go around, and artists can get overshadowed by their more famous labelmates.

Other rappers might really be nervous to feature JID, whose sheer force of persona could potentially overpower or overwhelm the sort of mainstream-friendly tracks it would take to expose him to a wider audience more used to party anthems than aggressive battle rap tracks.

Meanwhile, any rapper who considers themselves more lyrics-forward runs the risk of being “Renegaded” – the fan term for being outrapped on your own track, as applied to Jay-Z’s 2001 song “Renegade” from The Blueprint. When Eminem’s intricate, wordy verses seemed to tower over Jay’s more laid-back, heady ones, Nas ridiculed Jay, “Eminem killed you on your own sh*t.” Nobody wants the potential embarrassment.

The last reason JID might not radiate star power like some of his peers do is that he’s so down-to-earth and humble. He’s quiet, not prone to making outrageous pronouncements or having emotional outbursts on Twitter. In the few engagements we’ve had on that platform, he always seemed more curious and willing to learn than he did defensive, boisterous, or argumentative.

Hip-hop loves a villain – or at least an antihero – someone who talks loud and seems unafraid to make enemies. Acts like Kanye West or 50 Cent seem larger than life. Hell, even Tekashi 69, whose antics were decried by hip-hop fans, remains a subject of fascination. The soft-spoken JID just isn’t going to be as sensational a character for them to latch onto.

But his rhymes are sensational. Whether he’s talking tough on “Dance Now” and “Surround Sound” or telling nostalgic stories on “Crack Sandwich,” waxing philosophical on “Better Days” or getting confessional on “Sistanem,” he shows a grasp of the artform that almost nobody in the rap business today even comes close to. So, while he might not be as universally recognized as I believe he should be, The Forever Story might well change that.

He’s got the big-name co-signs from guest stars like 21 Savage and Lil Wayne. He’s starting to talk his sh*t on Twitter. He’s got enjoyable slow burners like “Can’t Make U Change” with Ari Lennox and veteran blessings from Yasiin Bey on “Stars.” All that’s left is for listeners to finally, well, listen. The Forever Story will reward them for doing so. In turn, all they need to do is hail JID as the best rapper of his generation.

The Forever Story is out now via Dreamville/Interscope. Get it here.

This weekend is an event Foo Fighters fans have been anticipating for months now: The first of two announced Taylor Hawkins tribute concerts is going down at London’s Wembley Stadium on Saturday, September 3. (Here’s how to watch it if you’re don’t have tickets to the UK show, by the way.)

The headline of Hawkins’ legacy will of course be his time with Foo Fighters and all the classic songs, albums, and tours he was part of as the band’s drummer. However, he was consistently active outside of the band, too. For example, he had his side project Taylor Hawkins And The Coattail Riders, the cover band Chevy Metal, and supergroup NHC with Jane’s Addiction members Dave Navarro and Chris Chaney.

Speaking of collaborations, his discography is full of those, too, so let’s go over some of the most notable, starting at 2022 and working backwards.

Towards the end of July, King Princess shared “Let Us Die,” on which Hawkins plays drums. In an interview, she spoke highly of Hawkins’ passion for his craft, saying, “In between takes, we’d FaceTime and he was just so kind. […] He was just saying he loves playing drums. And to hear that from somebody who’s lived such a life that, at his age and playing for as long as he has in so many different bands and his own projects, for him to just love to play the f*cking drums, that to me is just what we should all strive to be: Somebody who does not lose that love of their instrument.”

The song wasn’t Hawkins’ first posthumous release, though. That would be him teaming up with Edgar Winter on a cover of Johnny Winter’s “Guess I’ll Go Away” for a tribute album. That recording was released in April. He’s also set to feature on Ozzy Osbourne’s upcoming album, Patient Number 9.

Other noteworthy Hawkins contributions from the 2020s are drumming on Elton John’s The Lockdown Sessions album and on “Night Crawling,” Miley Cyrus’ Billy Idol collaboration from 2020’s Plastic Hearts (Hawkins is credited as a co-writer on that song, too).

Pre-2020s, Hawkins performed on Perry Farrell’s Kind Heaven (released in 2019), Pink’s Hurts 2B Human (2019), John Fogerty’s Wrote A Song For Everyone (2013), Slash’s Slash (2010), Coheed And Cambria’s Good Apollo I’m Burning Star IV, Vol. 2: No World For Tomorrow (2007), Cat Power’s You Are Free (2003), and Brian May’s Another World (1998). He was also Alanis Morissette’s touring drummer for a spell in the ’90s and performs on her Grammy-winning 1997 concert film Jagged Little Pill, Live.

Check out some of Hawkins’ collaborations above and below.

Pete Davidson isn’t the only former-SNL cast member with BDE. On her Broad Ideas podcast, The O.C. favorite Rachel Bilson was asked by 13 Reasons Why star Tommy Dorfman about the thing she misses the most about her relationship with Emmy-nominated Barry actor Bill Hader (they dated for an unspecified amount of time). “His big d*ck,” she replied. Good for him, good for her, good for Lindsey Buckingham.

Bilson previously described the breakup as being “probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done⁠, harder than childbirth,” a comment she now takes back. “I said it was during a time where you could not leave your house,” she said on a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, referring to the pandemic. “You had to sit in whatever it was that you were going through. So, I had to deal with this, I had to deal with being alone and taking care of my kid.” She added, “Like all of these things — that time having to force facing all of your sh*t. [That’s what I was saying] was harder than childbirth.”

“Is there anything more painful? F*ck no,” she shared. “Maybe kidney stones—definitely a close second. But like, no, I didn’t say that. All breakups are hard. Especially when you’re in something that you’re really into and things happen. You know, things change. There was a pandemic. There were so many things going on. So, it was a hard time.”

When asked by Call Her Daddy‘s Alex Cooper whether she’s currently single, Bilson responded, “I am not.” She declined to get into her specifics about her partner, but she did answer a pair of questions from the host: “Is he bringing you coffee in the morning? Is he bringing you missionary?” Bilson’s answer: “F*ck yeah.” Again, good for her.

(Via E! Online and People)

After John Fetterman spent most of the summer relentlessly trolling Dr. Oz on social media, the Pennsylvania senate race took a nasty turn when the TV doctor’s campaign attacked Fetterman for having a stroke. It was a low point in Oz’s already humiliating campaign that was reeling from Fetterman capitalizing on Oz’s ridiculously bad grocery shopping video. In fact, just this week, Oz seemed to throw his staff under the bus for the stroke comments by telling a radio show, “The campaign’s been saying lots of things. My position is — I can only speak to what I’m saying.”

Despite Oz’s palpable uncomfortableness, the issue of Fetterman’s stroke is continuing to be brought up by his campaign. After Fetterman recently turned down a debate invitation because he’s having intermittent issues with “auditory processing,” Oz’s campaign released a sarcastic statement offering to “pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.”

It was yet another crack at Fetterman’s stroke, but the PA lieutenant governor was quick to fire back. During his first national TV interview since being hospitalized, Fetterman was candid about his lingering, yet improving health issues and eager to tear apart Oz. “Desperation is the worst cologne,” he told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle before calling out Oz for trying to distance himself from his campaign’s remarks.

Via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

“[The Oz campaign] figured out that, you know, let’s appeal to folks that get their jollies making fun of a stroke dude,” Mr. Fetterman added. “And again, if that’s your story, tell it the way you got to. But he really should own those words, and he just acknowledges that, as a doctor, you are going around making fun of somebody that had a stroke.”

Meanwhile, someone called in a favor with Donald Trump. Following reports that the former president has been privately telling people that Oz is going to “f*cking lose,” Trump pumped up Oz during a recent radio interview and ridiculed Fetterman for not agreeing to a debate, according to Mediaite.

“The guy, if you look at his past, I mean, he’s out, he’s into the world of communism,” Trump said. “His past is terrible. And I think Oz is gonna do very well. He’s coming up. He’s a good — actually he’s very energetic. He’s all over the place.”

(Via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)