Month: December 2022

Dave Steele was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in 2014 and told that he would slowly lose his vision until he was completely blind. Imagine the pain and stress of knowing that every day your sense of sight will slowly diminish until you fall into darkness.

Steele was not only losing his sight, but after his diagnosis, he felt he lost his purpose.

The diagnosis came with an added gut punch: Each of his four children also has a 50% chance of having RP. Steele lost his job, his family couldn’t afford the rent on their home and the waiting list for government benefits was nine months. “I was feeling more guilty about the pressure I was putting on my family and that, in turn, was affecting my vision loss as well and I became more anxious and more isolated because of it,” he told
Henshaws InSights.

As his troubles mounted, Steele found solace in talking to others coping with sight loss through Facebook community groups. “That was a real massive, massive help to me,” he told Henshaws InSights.

---

Steele told his new friends in the RP community that he had worked as a singer, and they invited him to perform at a support group meeting. The night before his performance, he had a moment of pure inspiration. He decided to change the lyrics to Ben E. King’s hit, “Stand By Me” to reflect what life was like living with RP.

Dave Steele Stand by me RP awareness

www.youtube.com

This opened the door for his sense of purpose in life to return. “People were coming up to me saying that the words I had written were able to describe how they had always thought about their journey with sight loss when they were unable to find the words themselves,” he said.

In coping with his disability, Steele discovered a talent he never knew he had.

“I never considered myself a poet before I started to lose my sight. I worked as a singer since the age of 18 and had written a couple of poems and songs about things like previous girlfriends. But it wasn’t until I started going blind that I found the ability to write these words that have helped so many people,” he told Upworthy.

This realization led him to create a community for people dealing with RP. Every day he wrote about everything he was going through in poetry and posted them on Facebook RP groups. The experience was cathartic for Steele and his followers.

His poetry gave people words to describe their journey they wouldn’t have had otherwise, and helped countless people feel they weren’t alone. That’s when Dave Steele truly became
The Blind Poet. Steele has created a community on Facebook where thousands come to read his poems, share their stories, connect and support one another. He has written more than 1800 poems, published four books of poetry and written a book for children with low vision, “Austin’s Adventures.”

In 2019, Steele, who lives in Manchester, England, was able to do his first speaking tour of the U.S.

Steele uses his persona as The Blind Poet to clear up misconceptions about people with low vision.

“Being blind doesn’t mean that we can’t see anything. Ninety-three percent of people affected by vision loss have some kind of remaining vision. This misconception isn’t anybody’s fault but the lack of education surrounding blindness can cause people like me to become isolated,” he told Upworthy.

Steele believes this misconception makes visually impaired people less likely to use their mobility aids such as a seeing-eye dog or cane in public.

“I’ve been accused of faking my blindness many times by strangers when I’m out and most people living with vision loss have been told ‘you don’t look blind,’ but what does blindness look like?” he added.

Steele wants people to know that “blindness is a spectrum, that there are many different shades and ways to lose sight.”

The Blind Poet’s writing has a big effect on people regardless of their ability to see. “Those affected relate to the words I write and those who aren’t, close their eyes and put themselves in our shoes,” he told Upworthy. “I talk about themes that everyone can relate to whether living with a disability or not.”

The poem that’s had the biggest reaction is “The Secret,” dedicated to Steele’s daughter who lives in Scotland. “It’s about the internal struggle with when is the right time to tell your child that they have a one in two chance of going blind when they’re older due to the condition I have,” he said.

“The Secret” By Dave “The Blind Poet” Steele

It took me years to come to terms with how my eyes declined

Through stages of acceptance of slowly going blind

But nothing I could ever do would allow me to prepare
To tell my little girl the thing I still don’t want to share

It’s tortured me through sleepless nights consumed my mind with guilt

This secret I have kept from her could break the trust I’ve built

I pray that she will understand the things I tried to do and why I never told her that she could be 1 in 2

For she is still a child and far too young to burden with

a fate that I might pass to her for now’s her time to live

But soon will come a moment when I know she must be told

When all the battles I have won I’ll pass for her to hold

But for every unheard question there’s an answer I’ve prepared

They’re written in each line each verse each poem that I’ve shared

For every page I’ve filled I’ve emptied out my heart and soul

So one day she would know the way

That’s always been my goal

So Ellie I hope years from now you’ll be there reading this

Know you can do amazing things whether RP hit or miss

My inheritance to you won’t be a passed down faulty gene

But knowing all life’s beauty that this VIP has seen

Dave Steele

His words also helped a 7-year-old girl named Jackie stand up to bullies in Amarillo, Texas. Her mother taught her one of Steele’s poems and she recited it to speak up for herself. The Blind Poet met the family at an event where he spoke and wrote a poem for her. Here’s an excerpt:

I may be only 7 but it’s getting hard to see

They notice first the cane I hold but “Hi I’m still Jackie”

For I am just a little girl who loves to swim and dance

Will do it every single day if my eyes give me the chance

The classroom lights can sting my eyes

Some days I just black out

I try to do the best I can

Despite the ones who doubt

Don’t treat me like a baby

I am small but I am strong

No matter how my vision fades

It’s my world and I belong

Steele hopes that everyone who is struggling with RP can find community like he has. “Losing sight can feel very isolating and often it’s easy to feel like we are the only ones going through it,” he told Upworthy. “But through the words in my poetry and the many amazing support groups on social media, realizing we aren’t alone can be the first step in acceptance and taking our lives back.”

Facebook has been a life-changing tool for bringing visually impaired people together. “There are so many incredible support groups and pages that are created by people who are going through the same things,” he told Upworthy. “Just being able to connect with someone like that is so important and it’s been integral to my story.”

Facebook has also given him a voice.

“Without Meta/Facebook I wouldn’t be where I am today or known as The Blind Poet,” he said. “To be able to write a piece of poetry and upload it by clicking a button and sending it around the world and to someone who needs to hear its message is truly an incredible thing.”

Steele finds that Facebook’s accessibility features have improved over the years and helped the visually impaired get the most out of the platform.

“Things like dark mode, allowing users to invert the colors on the display to reduce glare on the eyes,” he said. “Also larger text options and, of course, VoiceOver make sure that we can connect with people just the same as anyone else.”

After facing adversity, Steele has turned it into an opportunity to uplift countless people who are facing a devastating diagnosis. Even though his sight may be fading, his dedication to helping others is only growing stronger.

“Being known around the world as The Blind Poet is something I never take for granted,” he told Upworthy. “Every day, I try to reach more people and replicate the impact my poetry has already had with others. I want the opportunity to speak at more events around the world and ultimately to continue to be a voice for those who are comforted by my words.”

Tis the season for using the word tis a lot and also trying to feel something by watching endless holiday movies and specials, be they ones that feature talking trees, claymation squirrels, or saccharine sweet meet-cutes. But hark, the herald Terry sings, it’s an entirely different kind of holiday special with Reno 911!: It’s A Wonderful Heist (premiering Saturday at 8PM on Comedy Central), a sorta play on the Frank Capra classic It’s A Wonderful Life (complete with Nick Swardson’s rollerskating Terry as a Christmas angel) that quickly descends into typically hilarious and thunderously inappropriate Reno 911! chaos. All the usual favorites are involved with a ton of guest spots and cameos as Dangle and company try to thwart a theft at a local mall while dealing with a barrage of weirdos including the proprietors of a Kenny Rogers museum. It is, in a word, fantastic. Further proof that Tom Lennon, Niecy Nash, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Cedric Yarbrough, and company refuse to fade nearly 20 years after the first episode.

As we are wont to do when a new Reno project drops, we spoke with Lennon about the new special, a previous Christmas Special from his cult favorite show Viva Variety, macabre tributes to superfan Kenny Rogers, why there are so many dildo stores in Reno, and getting distracted by Robin Williams.

I would like to steal The State poster that you have in the background there.

That’s an original State poster.

I’m going to rob you of that, just so you know. Get your alarms set and everything.

It would be a Wonderful Heist.

It’d be a great heist, just like…

They plugged the movie as they did banter!

[Laughs] So, last night I was doing research and I stumbled upon…

You were doing research on me?

Well, the show and stuff. Not searching for your social security number or anything like that.

You’re doing a Steele dossier on me. I get it. I know how this goes.

Well, there is a little bit of a pee-tape situation in this (movie).

There’s a lot of pee tape.

Isn’t there? But I was watching the Viva Variety Christmas episode, which is hard to find.

I have absolutely no recollection of that. Are you serious? We did a Christmas episode on Viva Variety?

Yeah. First or second episode of season 2. And you guys had Duran Duran on. It was great. I want you to know, you actually came up with flavored nicotine gum on the show, Lemon Lua, so I think you guys actually created vaping. So someone owes you a check and a lawsuit.

When we did Viva Variety, Kerri and I were both chain smokers. We smoked so many cigarettes. So whenever we’re doing bits, and we could smoke in the studio where we did Viva Variety. So whenever we were doing commercials, whenever you’re seeing us smoking we’re definitely really smoking tons of cigarettes. Yeah, that was in a studio called Metropolis in New York that’s at 106th and Park Avenue. It was really cool. We had so many great bands, many of whom we kind of stayed friends with, which was really cool.

I saw you’re doing some kind of reunion thing?

There is, January in San Francisco, there is a Viva Variety 25th. It’s going to be a cool show. The last time we did a Viva reunion show, it was not very good. And can I tell you why?

Please.

Robin Williams came to hang out backstage. And that was the only time that we were going to rehearse, was that time we were backstage. So because Robin Williams showed up, we just hung around with Robin Williams and we didn’t work on the show very hard. Just because he’s fun to pay attention to. So then I think the show was notably not as good because he was there, and we didn’t really work on it because of him.

I think it’s understandable.

Yeah.

So, that was a Christmas episode. I know you guys have done some Christmas stuff before with Reno 911. What is it about just the season that just kind of lends itself to the show and what sparked the want to do this special?

The main thing is that we wanted to find a way to have Nick Swardson as Terry play a pretty significant role. We’re like, “A Christmas special really has to have Terry Bernadino in it.” So just the fun of what if what Clarence is to Jimmy Stewart, Terry is to Lieutenant Dangle? That was really just the whole thing. And then it was actually fun. It’s always fun to see when the Reno characters get to do something other than be cops just for a second. So to see that Wiegel’s having a great life. Everybody’s having amazing lives without Dangle, but they’re having amazing lives with tiny little dreams. Like Jones is just running a fondue restaurant. Kimball’s life goal is that she owns a snake. Everybody’s just got real small dreams that came true.

There are so many elements to this that feel just perfect. I don’t want to give too much away, but the Kenny Rogers Museum and the bus with Kerri is so great.

Thanks for watching it. It’s always nice to talk to people who’ve actually seen the movie. I’m so proud of this movie. When you tell people there’s a Kenny Rogers Body Worlds exhibit, that was the thing that really makes it a Reno 911 thing. That came up because Kenny Rogers was a huge Reno 911 fan, and he mentioned us in TV Guide. And then after he said that we were his favorite show, we kind of reached out to him and then he came on the show a couple of times. In fact, there’s an episode, if you remember, Patton Oswalt kills Kenny Rogers in an episode of Reno 911. And he walks up to him and he says, “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” And then shot Kenny Rogers in a great episode.

I don’t know if you’re being real with me or not right now.

I’m being totally real with you.

I will confess that I’m drawing a blank and will have to look that up.

So many Reno 911s that we have to now look up to see what we’ve done before.

It’s been a while. You guys have a bit of a track record.

There are 125 of them. So yeah.

It’s funny, the first thing I ever published was, I went to the Bodies thing in New York forever ago and was appalled by it and wrote a thing. That’s the first thing I ever published. And so this is a full circle moment here. I think it’s a career. I’m going to wrap it here.

We’ve been trying to get references into the Body Worlds exhibit forever because it’s the most macabre thing that exists.

(Human bodies) just like playing tennis.

And everybody just acts like it’s okay. We brought in these corpses from China, and we’re watching them play volleyball.

You guys spend a lot of time at a mall in this one. It seems like there are a lot of dildo stores in that mall (in addition to the Rogers museum). Why are dildo stores recession-proof?

(Laughs) Yeah, Nick Swardson’s roller skating and I’m running down the middle of the mall next to him, and we’re screaming out “Merry Christmas.” It’s supposed to be like “Merry Christmas, you old building and loan.” And I think we had some ideas of names, but then we just kept riffing on what disgusting things would be in the mall. So nine of them are dildo shops. Several of them are weed stores.

We’re a long way from Things Remembered, aren’t we?

(Laughs) In the mall by my hometown, there was Things Remembered that then was empty for a long time. So there was just the hanging sign that said Things Remembered at an empty store. And I was like, “This is absolutely a Stephen King thing waiting to happen here.”

I have to ask, the Ricki Lake reference?

Ricki Lake made a movie. Is it called The Business of Being Born? It’s her documentary about home birthing. So this is Dangle. I give a great speech about Christmas and that Jesus was born in a manger because basically, it’s like the booking apps. Like they got to Bethlehem and they just got fucked because they didn’t have a reservation for them. And then I give a really long, angry speech about “This is why we don’t use the booking apps, because they’re not reliable.” And then I sort of dovetailed into Ricki Lake’s movie, The Business of Being Born. And I’m also in a leather diaper the whole time I give that speech.

You sure are.

It makes a lot of sense.

It does. It all works. It really does.

On paper, it doesn’t make sense, but in the movie, it also doesn’t make sense.

‘Reno 911! – It’s A Wonderful Heist’ premieres Saturday December 3 at 8PM ET on Comedy Central

In addition to being one of the most anticipated albums of the year (even without music videos), Beyoncé’s new album Renaissance brought fans to their knees with a stunning cover designed by Nicholas Des Jardins. On it, Beyoncé sits astride a glass horse in barely-there lingerie, showing off her hard-honed physique. In a new feature in Nylon, Des Jardins explained the concept and how it came together — and revealed that the entire cover was nearly completely different than the eventual finished product.

At one point, because sourcing the horse would be difficult with the limited time afforded to the creative team, Des Jardins almost went with just a saddle, albeit one bedazzled like a disco ball, but were able to find a fiberglass horse at the last minute, informing Beyoncé’s team only after it had already been secured. Intriguingly enough, a similar concept wound up being used later down the line when Beyoncé shot her British Vogue pictorial, although rather than a disco-mirror-ball studded saddle, she opted to plop down on the disco ball itself.

You can read Des Jardins’ full description of the shoot design below.

The horse came about working with her and her creative team. Originally we were going to do a giant 8-inch disco ball that was already in production when we shifted ideas. The job from the start was under an immense time crunch, so for a while, I was hesitant about the horse. Install was Monday after Easter weekend and the concept came about on Thursday night. We negotiated down to just doing a saddle covered in disco ball mirrors, but me and my studio manager knew it would be so worth it if we could pull it off, so we scoured the greater Los Angeles area for an available life-size horse. We waited until we knew it was possible to pull it off before we let her and her team know that we were going to deliver the full horse that inevitably became the cover.

… Thankfully, we discovered a secret source for old fiberglass horses, as many of the current manufacturers had months-long wait periods. We found and picked it up that day and immediately started to work on covering it in 1/4″ glass mirror pieces. The mirrors were coming in shipments from different vendors to get enough in time. Me and the rest of the team were literally waiting for the mail person and ripping the boxes open and continuing the task as the mirrors trickled in.

Jenna Ortega entered 2022 as a Disney Channel star. She left it as a certified scream queen, thanks to her performances in Scream and X, and a goth icon.

The actress was cast as Wednesday Addams in Netflix’s Wednesday, which broke a viewership record previously set by Stranger Things. The Tim Burton-directed series has its own viral “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)” moment in a scene where Wednesday does a “weird girl” dance to “Goo Goo Muck” by the Cramps. “Thanks to Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse’s Rich Man’s Frug, Lisa Loring, Lene Lovich, Denis Lavant, and archival footage of goths dancing in clubs in the 80’s. Helped me out on this one,” Ortega tweeted. Her commitment to authenticity has not gone unnoticed.

BuzzFeed reports that real-life goths (not her X co-star) are sharing their appreciation for Ortega on TikTok. “Attention, goth girls! Were you compared to Wednesday Addams growing up? Was the greeting ‘Hey, Morticia’ used towards you in a not-so-friendly manner? Are you tired of seeing the people who mocked your style embracing Addams Family aesthetic? You may be entitled to financial compensation,” one user wrote, while another added, “You can definitely tell the people who watched Wednesday and have never, like, experienced goth culture before because they’re making fun of the way she dances. Y’all, it’s Wednesday Addams. It’s not Addison Rae, alright?”

Ortega’s Wednesday is also the weirdo representation that many have been looking for:

You can enjoy the dance sequence for yourself below.

(Via BuzzFeed)

In September, Dua Lipa discussed the process of making her forthcoming record. “As I’m writing my new album, I feel even more liberated in a completely different way,” she told Vogue Australia. “And even more in control than I thought.”

She opened up more about the LP in a brand new interview with Variety published today. “Well, when I was speaking to Elton [John], I really felt like I was halfway done,” she said. “But it’s taken a complete turn as I’ve carried on working, and I really feel now that it’s starting to sound cohesive. So I’m going to keep writing in the early months of the new year and see where that takes me.”

She added, “The album is different — it’s still pop but it’s different sonically, and there’s more of a lyrical theme. If I told you the title, everything would make sense — but I think we’ll just have to wait.”

Meanwhile, the singer also celebrated the five-year anniversary of her debut this year. She wrote in a post, “5 years ago today I dropped my debut album ~ i’m so proud of every baby step and stepping stone, every room, club and venue, every artist, songwriter and producer that i’ve been lucky to write and collaborate with and that has led me to where I am today ~ i thank my lucky stars everyday and I thank you all for being on this insane journey with me x.”

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After a lengthy career of cranking out comedies (with a few prestige dramas peppered in), Adam Sandler doesn’t seem like the type of guy who gives a crap about critics. He makes movies with his longtime buddies, and the Saturday Night Live alum is keenly aware of his target audience. However, that wasn’t always the case. When his first lead comedy role in Billy Madison hit theaters, Sandler and co-writer Tim Herlihy were giddy to find out that New York papers were actually going to write about their goofball film. Unfortunately, that excitement didn’t last very long.

During a conversation with Netflix to promote Sandler’s new film, Hustle, the prolific comedy star opened up about his brief dalliance into reading reviews. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“When Billy Madison came out, me and my friend who wrote it,” he explained, “we were just like, ‘Oh yeah, they’re going to write about this in New York!’ We grew up reading the papers, we were going to NYU. And then we read the first one and we were like, ‘Oh my god, what happened? They hate us.’ And then we were like, ‘It must have been this paper,’ but then 90 percent of the papers are going ‘This is garbage.’”

While Sandler admitted that the bad reviews for Billy Madison “stung,” he was mostly worried about his grandmother or his family members reading them and being forced to defend his films. After that experience, he stopped reading reviews altogether, and he’s completely zen about the whole thing.

“It’s okay, I get it. Critics aren’t going to connect with certain stuff and what they want to see,” Sandler said. “I understand that it’s not clicking with them.”

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Few fast food brands are as good as Wendy’s. Not only does the chain have one of the most expansive menus of the big nationwide brands — offering everything from burgers to chicken sandwiches to milkshakes, chili, baked potatoes, nuggets, dressed fries, and a breakfast menu that puts McDonald’s to shame — but they actually manage to be good at most everything they do. I’m not sure you can say that about any other fast food brand out there.

Wendy’s is one of the few places you can eat at multiple times a week without getting bored. The burgers and chicken sandwiches are so good that I actually have a mini-crisis every time I find myself in the drive-thru. Should I order a Spicy Asiago Chicken sandwich? Grab a Dave’s Single? Or just say f*ck it and go for the Baconator?

In truth, it doesn’t matter where I land because I know whatever I end up with, it’s going to be good (Baconator with a side of Spicy Nuggets — best of both worlds). But what on Wendy’s giant menu rises above the rest? To find out we consulted the masses! And by the masses we mean, Ranker.com, where any old dork can up or down-vote their favorite menu items. Did the masses get it right?

We have a lot of thoughts about it so let’s jump in and talk about the top 10 Wendy’s menu items according to the masses.

10. Vanilla Frosty

Our Thoughts:

We have to admit that we miss the vanilla Frosty! The flavor was temporary discontinued this summer when Wendy’s rolled out the strawberry Frosty and currently Wendy’s is serving a holiday-themed peppermint flavor, which is keeping vanilla off the menu. While we love Wendy’s trying something new and expanding their flavor options, distance makes the heart grow fonder and we miss the simple pleasure that is a vanilla-based shake.

Having said that, the Vanilla Frosty shouldn’t even be in the top 10.

The Frosty is a fine invention, it’s like drinking soft-serve ice cream, but there are so many fast food chains out there that do milkshakes better. Five Guys, Dairy Queen, In N Out, Shake Shack, even Jack in the Box, the vanilla Frosty lacks a serious depth of flavor. Sure, it pairs perfectly with a side of fries for dipping, but Wendy’s has so many better food options that deserve a spot in the top ten — like the chili, or the baked potatoes, or the breakfast-only potato wedges.

The Bottom Line:

The vanilla Frosty, as delicious as it is, is entirely non-essential.

9. Homestyle Chicken Sandwich

Our Thoughts:

Before Popeyes launched its chicken sandwich in 2019, Wendy’s was in the running for having the best fast food chicken sandwich on the market. In 2022, the game has changed and as good as the Homestyle Chicken Sandwich is, it feels a little boring. This is a classic chicken sando build, breaded chicken breast, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and pickles on a toasted bun. It’s delicious, offering the perfect combination of tender chicken and an earthy pickle tang but almost every other chicken sandwich on Wendy’s menu is better than this. The masses got this one wrong, it doesn’t deserve to be in the top 10.

Right now you can get yourself an Italian Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich, which features the same homestyle chicken filet topped with marinara sauce, mozzarella cheese, and fried mozzarella on a garlic knot bun. It’s an explosion of garlic-forward, herbal, creamy, and salty flavors. If that isn’t your thing, you can also reach for a Pretzel Bacon Pub Chicken Sandwich, which is topped with honey mustard, fried onions, and muenster cheese on a pretzel bun. Both options have a more exciting journey of flavors for your tastebuds to experience.

Every other chicken sandwich on the menu is more interesting and flavorful than the classic Homestyle Chicken Sandwich.

The Bottom Line:

A fine sandwich but far from Wendy’s best chicken sandwich. Like the Vanilla Frosty, it doesn’t deserve to be in anybody’s top 10.

8. Dave’s Single

Our Thoughts:

The Dave’s Single is quite simply one of the best fast food burgers, period. Wendy’s uses fresh ground beef and the difference is palpable, the burgers here are juicy and savory, with a soft tender mouthfeel that places like Carl’s Jr., McDonald’s, and Burger King just can’t compete with. Wendy’s is right up there with In-N-Out, Shake Shack, and Five Guys so we think the Dave’s Single is ranked way too low by the masses. Granted, it’s not the most exciting thing you can order at Wendy’s, but it’s so good it at least deserves to be in the top five.

Our only major gripe with this burger build is the lettuce. Wendy’s has the worst lettuce in all of fast food — they simply throw a single leaf of romaine in their sandwiches, complete with a thick watery spine that dilutes some of the meaty flavor of this burger. The only thing better than a Dave’s Single is a Dave’s Double which is literally just more of the same thing.

The Bottom Line:

Criminally underrated, Wendy’s Dave’s Single is one of fast food’s best cheeseburgers.

7. Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger

Our Thoughts:

I think the masses are on drugs. Don’t get me wrong, the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger is a steal, for just $1.99 you get a delicious cheeseburger that is topped with crunchy and smokey bacon. Nothing to hate there, but don’t mistake value for flavor, while Wendy’s Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger is cheap, it’s nowhere near as good as the simpler Dave’s Single. Wendy’s doesn’t use the same quarter-pound ground beef patty used on the flagship burger, instead this is a thinner cut and it’s not nearly as flavorful as its beefier counterpart. Gone is that salty savory meaty flavor, and in its place is a meat that is more texture than flavor.

The bacon does a lot of heavy lifting here, but it doesn’t compare to a dish where bacon is the centerpiece, such as the Baconator. At the end of the day, the Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger just tastes like a less flavorful rendition of two separate dishes that Wendy’s does much better. Skip this one if money isn’t a cocnern, it’s not worth the savings.

The Bottom Line:

Somehow less than the sum of its parts.

6. Dave’s Double

Our Thoughts:

This one feels like it’s ranked a bit low, but the Dave’s Double is indeed a better experience than its single counterpart. What makes the Double better is the extra dose of meat, it results in a much beefier bite with a better bun to meat ratio. The extra layer of cheese doesn’t hurt either. The bun is merely a delivery system here, the dominating flavor is mouthwateringly savory and decadent and results in one of the most satisfying meals in all of fast food. The Dave’s Double is so substantial that you don’t even need a side order of fries to make this a meal, the burger is more than enough to keep you full and fed no matter how big your appetite is.

If you do grab an order of fries with your Double, we strongly suggest you place a layer into the burger itself, it’ll add this buttery salty component to the burger that makes it all the more delicious.

The Bottom Line:

In the top five of fast food double cheeseburgers, it deserves to be ranked higher.

5. Natural Cut Fries

Our Thoughts:

Wendy’s fries… are fine. They get the job done, they aren’t divisive like In-N-Out fries, and they aren’t universally beloved like McDonald’s fries, they are sufficiently mid-tier, so they don’t belong in Wendy’s top 10. I don’t know what’s wrong with the masses, but these fries just aren’t that great. They’re crispy, sure, but they’re also incredibly over-salted, which leads me to believe Wendy’s is trying to hide something. They also don’t taste very good once they cool down a bit turning into salty-soaked greasy sponges by the end of your meal.

For that reason, we suggest you eat these fries first, or simultaneously with your main course. Don’t save them for the end of your meal.

The Bottom Line:

Wendy’s fries are fine, they’re not gross but they aren’t good enough to land in anyone’s top 10 Wendy’s menu items. Order a side of nuggets instead.

4. Crispy Chicken Nuggets

Our Thoughts:

I’ve spent the last few entries criticizing the masses for missing the mark but the Crispy Chicken Nuggets at the fourth feels spot on. I say this knowing full well that Wendy’s also has Spicy Nuggets and while I love those, the non-spicy version is better. Unlike the Spicy nuggets, the Crispy nuggets are tender, almost juicy, while the Spicy version trades in a softer more pleasing mouthfeel for heat. The Spicy nuggets come across as way drier, with a hard breading that is so crispy it can actually irritate the roof of your mouth.

The Crispy version doesn’t have any of those problems, and once dipped in sauce provides enough flavor that you won’t miss the lack of heat. Good on the masses for recognizing greatness here.

The Bottom Line:

Instinct will tell you that the Spicy nuggets are better, but order these side by side the next time you have a chance. You’ll be surprised to find that the Crispy Nuggets are much juicier.

3. Baconator

Our Thoughts:

The Baconator is definitely a top three Wendy’s menu item but I kind of feel like it deserves the number one spot. We’ll need to do a full Wendy’s ranking to determine this (which I plan to do soon) but the Baconator is fast food’s greatest bacon cheeseburger, and it deserves a bit more credit than this bronze medal placement.

The Baconator is simple, it features a double layer of beef, bacon, and cheese, with some mayo on the bun. That’s it, no watery lettuce or tomato to distract you, just a meat bomb of beefy, smokey, and salty flavors that tastes so dangerously decadent, it can make you break out into a sweat while you eat it.

That’s right, the Baconator gives you meat sweats — in the best way possible. It’s near impossible to eat this massive meat bomb without slipping into a food coma after. It combines two of Wendy’s greatest contributions to fast food: fresh unfrozen beef and fast food’s greatest bacon into a single perfect sandwich.

The Bottom Line:

It deserves the number one spot. If you’ve never been to Wendy’s, start with the Baconator, you’ll be an instant fan guaranteed.

2. Spicy Chicken Sandwich

Our Thoughts:

Wendy’s offers three variations of its chicken patty: homestyle, spicy, and grilled, and the spicy iteration is the best so we feel like this sandwich landing in second place is well deserved. It has a tastebud tantalizing mix of cayenne and black pepper with a thick audible crunch and tender white meat inside. Next to burgers, what Wendy’s does best is chicken sandwiches, but as I mentioned in the entry for the Homestyle Chicken Sandwich, there are much better iterations of this sandwich on the menu.

Forget the Pretzel Pub and Italian Mozzarella iterations of this sandwich though, let’s talk about the Asiago Ranch Chicken Club. The Spicy Asiago Ranch Club is a simple improvement over the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. Instead of a simple lettuce, tomato, pickles, and mayo combination, you get the added addition of nutty asiago cheese, a few strips of bacon, and creamy and tangy ranch in place of the mayo. Sure, you lose the pickles, but I’ll gladly replace some sour tang with the unbeatable combination of ranch and bacon.

The sandwich ends up tasting more than simply spicy, it’s smokey, creamy, nutty, and salty with a pleasing audible crunch between bites that is as wonderfully addicting as it is delicious.

The Bottom Line:

Wendy’s truly makes an amazing Spicy chicken sandwich, and with a few tweaks and substitutions, you can take a good sandwich and turn it into a delicious one that is competitive with what Chick-fil-A and Popeyes have to offer.

1. Chocolate Frosty

Our Thoughts:

Now, this is just offensive. In no world should the Frosty be ranked this highly — for what it is, it’s seriously lacking. A great milkshake is creamy, sweet and luxurious in its thickness, the Frosty has the thickness down and… that’s it. The sweetness here is almost overwhelming, instead of tasting nuanced and complex like good chocolate, it just tastes candy sweet. Like a Hershey bar liquified and frozen. Don’t get me wrong, every once in a while particularly on a hot day, I’ll order a Frosty and it’s a wonderful snacking experience, but on those days I crave a good milkshake. There isn’t a chance in hell you’ll find me at a Wendy’s.

This is the major difference between our extensive menu rankings and what’s going on at Ranker. At Ranker you’re getting an audience that maybe hasn’t tasted the food they’re voting on recently. Maybe they’re going by memory, maybe nostalgia is at play here, I’m not sure, but if the masses think this is the best menu item at Wendy’s, hell even the tenth best menu item, they’ve simply got it wrong.

The Bottom Line:

Don’t let the masses fool you, the Frosty is a sub-par dessert and far from the best menu item at Wendy’s.

The Big Takeaway:

The masses may have gotten the placement of certain menu items wrong, but our big takeaway from Ranker’s ranked list is that it doesn’t reflect the variety of what Wendy’s menu has to offer. The salads, the baked potatoes, the breakfast menu, the chili, they are all delicious options worth exploring. To do that, you’ll have to ignore the masses.

Find your nearest Wendy’s here.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – I don’t know if I like this

My position on watching television with the captions turned on is as follows: I love it. I don’t know what I did before I started. It’s great. It’s especially useful for this job I have, sure, between making funny screencaps for posts like this and not missing potentially important lines of dialogue that could get me yelled at by very passionate fans when I’m discussing or recapping a show. I’ve written about all of this before and I stand by all or most of it. Try using them if you haven’t. Maybe not for a fast comedy where the captions might pop up early and step on a joke, but for almost any other show. I think you’ll like it. Most of the time.

This brings me to the current season of The White Lotus, a show I enjoy quite a bit and have been writing about a lot. Jennifer Coolidge and Aubrey Plaza are so good in this in completely opposite ways and all I want in the world is for their two characters — or just, like, them — to have brunch together. That’s something I would enjoy. What I’m enjoying less… the slurping.

I don’t remember at what point in the show I noticed how often the captions use “slurps” or “slurping” when a character sips a drink, but it’s all I can see now. It happens so much. I suppose that can be expected in a show set at a luxury hotel where everyone is drinking wine and umbrella drinks on vacation, but… guys. There is honestly so much slurping. Too much, I think. Here’s another one.

And here’s one from a wine tasting. It’s actually Aubrey Plaza’s character doing the slurping, even though she’s offscreen…

… which is notable because it’s not her only slurp so far this season. She also slurped some coffee at a breakfast where she was being fake cheery to annoy her husband.

Here’s Jennifer Coolidge slurping champagne at the opera.

And here’s Theo James, in character as a weasely investment bro, slurping an iced cocktail while lamenting that his wife is exploiting his crippling FOMO.

It’s… it’s really just a lot of slurping. And this isn’t even all of them, probably. These are just the ones I started yoinking in the last few episodes after I really started noticing it. I bet there are at least a half dozen more. I bet there will be at least three or four in the last couple episodes of this season, which could be a problem because I need to watch them and stay locked in — see above, regarding getting yelled at by super fans for missing things — and I’ll be over here watching every wine glass and coffee cup to see if it gets lifted up to someone’s lips to be slurped. And now you will, too! I’ve made my problem yours! Joke’s on you, sucker!

It gets even better/worse, too. Once I noticed the slurping, I also noticed the descriptions when a character eats. The good news here is that they mix these up a little. We’ve had both munching…

… and chomping…

… which I appreciate if only for the variety. But now I need to know what other descriptions they might break out. Noshing? Nibbling? Scarfing? It’s somehow the polar opposite of the repeated slurping but also the exact same problem. Yes, it’s a real problem. For me. And again, for you now, too. You’re quite welcome.

The takeaways here are as follows:

• I am normal/fine
• At some point, I need to find some of the people who do these captions and ask them questions about their job until they call the police on me

So that’s what I’ve been up to this week.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Cocaine Bear!

This is the trailer for Cocaine Bear, the movie about a bear that eats a bunch of cocaine. I love it very much. I’ve loved it for a while now, actually. I wrote it all back in March of last year when it was first announced. This kind of thing will happen when someone makes a movie called Cocaine Bear. It’s kind of like when Kelsey Grammer starred in a movie called Money Plane. He even said the phrase “Money Plane” in the movie Money Plane. I really appreciated that. I hope the cocaine bear in Cocaine Bear looks right into the camera and says “I am the Cocaine Bear.” Maybe with a British accent. Let Liam Gallagher voice the Cocaine Bear. This is a good idea.

Anyway, once again, here is the official synopsis of Cocaine Bear:

Inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it, this wild dark comedy finds an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500- pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of cocaine and gone on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow … and blood.

And here are three other things I need to point out:

— This really is based on a true story, kind of, which I mention every time I bring up Cocaine Bear, in part because it’s incredible to me and in part because the sane true story was used as inspiration for the Drew Thompson plot on Justified, which was a good show we should all probably rewatch at some point in the near-ish future

— The cast of Cocaine Bear (the movie about the bear that eats cocaine) is freaking incredible. Look at this collection of hitters:

Cocaine Bear stars Keri Russell (The Americans), O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (Straight Outta Compton), Christian Convery-Jennings (Sweet Tooth), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Brooklynn Prince (The Florida Project), Isiah Whitlock Jr. (BlacKkKlansman), Kristofer Hivju (Game of Thrones), Hannah Hoekstra (2019’s Charlie’s Angels) and Aaron Holliday (Sharp Objects), with Emmy winner Margo Martindale (The Americans) and Emmy winner Ray Liotta (The Many Saints of Newark).

It’s one of Ray Liotta’s last credited roles. That’s wild. And yes, now I am thinking about the Goodfellas scene where he’s driving around high on cocaine with helicopters in the sky around him, but with a bear in the passenger seat next to him, because this movie is a gift in many ways.

— If the guy at the very beginning of the trailer looks familiar, there’s a good reason for that. It’s Scott Seiss. This guy.

We are all going to see Cocaine Bear. In the theater. We’ll do a matinee and then hit Chili’s after. Margs for the table.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – This is a good idea!

Speaking of trailers for things that are Right Up Brian’s Alley, here’s the first look at season two of Baking It. The first season featured Maya Rudolph and Andy Samberg as hosts of a cooking competition judged by grandmothers, which is so good on paper that I’m kind of angry no one thought of it until recently. The bad news is that Andy had to exit the show due to various other commitments. The good news is that he’s been replaced by Amt Poehler. Which is… better. No disrespect to Andy Samberg. Popstar and Hot Rod are legendary. But… yeah. This is better. Look at the description.

Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler invite a new batch of home baker teams to a second season of their award-winning musical baking competition show. With bigger and batter challenges judged by a panel of grandmothers, one baking team will rise to the occasion and win some serious dough.

Amy Poehler is the best. She has been for a long time. Parks and Recreation, yes, obviously, but beyond that. She has this thing where she gets a little mischievous twinkle in her eye sometimes that kind of scans as either “I’m up to something fun” or “I’m thinking of something much funnier that I can’t say on television.” These are, to put a fine point on it all, my people. Pairing her with Maya Rudolph for a cooking show judged by grandmas is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing with 700 streaming services. I’m happy.

Good for them.

Good for me, mostly.

But good for them.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – AWOOGAH

There’s a big new thing about James Cameron over at The Hollywood Reporter, with all sorts of stuff about Avatar and his thoughts about Avatar and what it’s like working with him on Avatar and all of it. You can read it if you want. It’s all very James Cameron straight through, for better and worse. But that’s not the point. I’m going to tell you the point.

The point is this paragraph, which has been living in my brain ever since I read it and will probably stay there for a little while longer, if I know me and my brain like I think I do.

Cameron is shuttling between the mixing theaters where the crew is tweaking the sound on the last four of 15 reels — Avatar: The Way of Water will run just over three hours — and a dark nearby visual effects office that he ducks into to oversee the last 60 or so of the movie’s jaw-dropping 3,350 visual effects shots. At 68, the director looks pretty much like he did on the first Avatar movie. He’s still lean, still wears a motocross jersey and jeans on set, and still focuses so intently on whatever he’s doing at the moment that his crew plays an “awoogah” sound effect of a submarine-style diving klaxon on speakers to get his attention. “I don’t even respond unless they do the ‘awoogah,’” he says.

Three notes here. Maybe four. Let’s see how things shake out.

• I kind of like that his crew feels comfortable busting his chops a little, to the degree that they blast cartoon-y sound effects at him to get his attention rather than creeping up to him nervously and gently clearing their throats and whispering “Excuse me… Mr. Cameron… sir” like he’s a temperamental monarch who might have them beheaded for looking him in the eye
• “I don’t even respond unless they do the ‘awoogah’” is an objectively funny sentence to read and say, both because “awoogah” is a funny word and because I don’t think I’ve ever seen those words all together in that order before today
• There should be more awoogahs in all of our lives, just generally, maybe not in the mornings but once we’re all awake

In conclusion, awoogah.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Wile E. Coyote is the funniest character in the history of television

This tweet popped up in my timeline a few times this week. Stuff like this is why I’m still on that hellscape of a website. Mute enough words and phrases and dipshits provocateurs and you can make a nice little sandbox to play in. One where, sometimes, you get a nice little bit of classic animated comedy to watch and chuckle at 6-8 times in a row while you’re supposed to be getting ready to go out to dinner. I am blessed to have people in my life who understand that I am sometimes going to be late to an engagement because of Looney Tunes.

The main thing I need you all to take away from this is that there’s like a hundred hours of Looney Tunes sitting there on HBO Max just waiting for you, including dozens of Road Runner shorts. I genuinely do not think there has been a more perfect delivery system for comedy before or since. They’re all just perfect, dancing back and forth across the line between brilliant and stupid with a little smirk on their face. I could watch hours of them in a row. Every day. I might do it right now.

While I’m doing that, please take a second and enjoy Chuck Jones’ rules for these cartoons.

Again, it’s a reminder that a lot of work by a lot of smart people goes into making something this delightfully stupid. Go watch a bunch of these this weekend. I assure you that it will be the best use of an hour you can muster. Hopefully, your friends are as understanding as mine when you’re late to whatever else you had planned. If not, find new friends. This is important.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Rich:

I was going to send you the Colin Farrell Muppet tweet, but then I realized I only saw it because you were the one who tweeted it into my timeline. I can’t stop thinking about it. He would be so good with them. I can see him saying “Hello, darling” to Miss Piggy with his Irish accent and turning her into a puddle on the floor. I’m actually a little annoyed it hasn’t happened yet.

I don’t have a question. I just wanted to talk about Colin Farrell in a Muppet movie.

Hmm. Yes, this is a good email. Here’s the tweet Rich was referencing, if you haven’t seen it.

It’s so staggeringly correct and true that it almost startled me when I saw it in the waiting room of a doctor’s office this week. I might have gasped a little. The gold standard of Muppet acting is either Michael Caine or Charles Grodin, both of whom treated them like real/normal beings in the way you need to do it to make any of this work, but Colin Farrell would be so good, too. Let him swear a little while we’re at it. Let Colin Farrell drop a few charming f-bombs while talking to… let’s say Gonzo. I would enjoy that.

Hollywood, if you are reading this, please hurry. I went and got myself all excited about a movie that doesn’t exist. Again. Help me out here.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Nebraska!

The renegade goat of west Lincoln was elusive.

The city’s Animal Control officers started getting calls about it — brown-and-white, maybe a dwarf, maybe not — Nov. 8.

Well, guess what: I love the renegade goat.

The goat is up in the girders beneath the Southwest 40th Street bridge, spanning the tracks along West O Street. The goat is in a field near the county jail. The goat is moving east into the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe railyards.
The goat would not go easy.

Two things are important to note here:

• This is not the only goat they’ve been dealing with this year, as the same local officials just spent three months tracking a white goat that was on the loose, too
• I would, no joke, watch a Parks & Rec-style comedy about animal control experts trying to track down loose goats across the Midwest

Especially when you consider this part…

“Animal Control has not had anybody call and say, ‘I’m missing a goat,’” he said. “So we don’t know where either of these came from.”
And it’s also unclear what happened to the white goat; the last report came Nov. 4.

These aren’t just renegade goats.

These are mystery renegade goats.

MYSTERY RENEGADE GOATS.

This is the only thing I care about now. I might move to Nebraska and start investigating this myself. I’ll need a quirky and/or wisecracking sidekick. Or I can be the sidekick. I can be flexible here. We can talk about it on the drive out there.

Anyway, I am pleased and/or regret to inform you all that the second of the renegade goats was tracked down and corralled near the railroad recently.

This time, four Animal Control officers — Rachael Middleton, Bryce Gruhn, Faith Steen and Finelli — responded, arranging their cruisers in a semicircle, then collapsing the perimeter to corner the animal.

NO

LEAVE HIM ALONE

LEAVE MY SWEET BOY ALONE

“He looked pretty good. He looked healthy. So he was doing something right out there.”

New plan: instead of investigating this, we are springing this guy from lockup. Goat jailbreak! We’ll be heroes. We can enlist that other goat they never found. Scrap that other idea for the show about tracking down renegade goats. This is the show. Humans and a wily goat freeing another goat from animal control. Goats dancing through lasers. Like this…

… but it’s a goat.

It could work.

During the Obama administration, a number of high-profile artists such as Common, John Legend, and The Roots received (and accepted) invitations to the White House for various events. Now, under Obama’s former Vice President, Joe Biden, that tradition has apparently resumed. John Legend made his return to the White House, along with fellow Grammy fave Jon Batiste and other celebrities like Stephen Colbert, for the first-ever state dinner undertaken by Joe Biden as President of the United States.

A CNN report on the dinner posits it as an opportunity for Biden to “shore up relations with a key American ally” in French President Emmanuel Macron. Apparently, a recent deal with Australia angered French officials, who have taken a leadership role in many issues in Europe, including the Russia-Ukraine war. The heads of state (and their first ladies) exchanged gifts such as fancy dinnerware (appropriate), a record of the soundtrack of the film Joe and Jill Biden watched together on their first date, sweaters, books, and a watch.

Interestingly enough, as the White House staff are in the process of decorating for the holidays, a temporary marquee was set up to host the dinner, prompting the organizers to use rental settings rather than the traditional china of presidents past.

John Legend, meanwhile, has been busy lately, releasing a Spanish version of his song “Nervous” with Sebastián Yatra, dropping his album, Legend, and appearing on Metro Boomin’s new album, Heroes & Villains. Batiste, who performed at the event, is due to make his acting debut in a remake of The Color Purple.

Arcángel dropped his hotly-anticipated new album Sr. Santos today (December 2). On one of the songs, the Dominican-American icon teamed up with an artist that he helped come up, Bad Bunny.

Arcángel is a reggaeton music OG and a pioneer of Latin trap music. Bad Bunny first rose up through the Latin trap scene alongside Arcángel. In the early years of Bad Bunny’s career, they collaborated on his breakthrough song “Diles” and “Tu No Vive Asi” that has over 1.4 billion views on YouTube. On Arcángel’s Sr. Santos album, they reunited for the song “La Jumpa.”

“A song with Arcángel always feels f*cking awesome like it was the first time,” Bad Bunny wrote about on the collaboration on Twitter.

In “La Jumpa,” Arcángel blended trap beats with influences of pulsating house music. He trades verses with Bad Bunny about living large in the swaggering club banger. Hearing Bad Bunny back in his Latin trap bag alongside Arcángel is an incredible throwback for longtime fans of both artists.

Arcángel also reunited with his duo partner De La Ghetto for the song “Entonces.” The Sr. Santos features knockout collaborations with Myke Towers, Eladio Carrión, Young Miko, and Bizarrap as well. The heartfelt song “JS4E” is an ode to Arcángel’s brother, Justin Santos, who was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver last year.

Sr. Santos is out now via Rimas Entertainment. Listen to it here.