Month: January 2023

One of the more memorable scenes in Everything Everywhere All at Once involves two rocks talking to each other. Y’know, typical Oscar bait.

The best multiverse movie of 2022 was nominated for 11 Academy Awards this week, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, and Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh. To celebrate, A24 is selling a pet rock. Stop laughing. This is no “ha ha ha ha ha” matter.

“The Official Everything Everywhere All At Once Pet Rock includes one googly eye rock with paper nest and a care and training pamphlet, Rock size may vary,” the item description reads. “Ships by February 10th.” Just in time for a confusing Valentine’s Day present! You can order your pet rock here. If you don’t, A24 will call you out on social media.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Ke Huy Quan), Best Supporting Actress (Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu), Best Original Score (Son Lux), Best Original Song (“This is a Life”), Best Costume Design (Shirley Kurata), and Best Film Editing (Paul Rogers). For more on the wildly imaginative film, check out our interview with the Daniels.

(Via A24)

Earlier this week, A&W Root Beer issued a very obvious jab at the recent controversy over the M&M characters no longer being sexy enough for Tucker Carlson and his audience of candy-horny conservatives. It couldn’t be more clear what the soft drink company was satirizing in the blatantly comical statement about finally putting pants on its 60-year-old mascot.

“Since 1963, Rooty the Great Root Bear has been our beloved spokesbear,” A&W wrote. “We knew people would notice because he’s literally a 6-foot tall bear wearing an orange sweater. But now we get it — even a mascot’s lack of pants can be polarizing. Therefore, we have decided that Rooty will wear jeans going forward.”

You might be thinking, who could possibly miss the joke here? And the answer is Fox Business. The right-leaning network fell hook, line, and the sinker for the gag during Wednesday’s episode of Mornings with Maria as anchor Cheryl Casone blasted A&W for caving to the “woke police” who apparently won’t rest until animals everywhere aren’t walking around half-naked. Whatever happened to America?!

Via Mediaite:

“First it was M&M’s, now a bear has to wear pants,” [Carone] exclaimed. “This is the woke police. Cancel culture has gone ridiculous.”

“Quit your crying!” Maria Bartiromo told the root beer company. She subsequently turned to guest panelist James Freeman and asked him “you think it’s a joke?”

Yes, Maria, it’s obviously a joke, and your show is now the punchline.

(Via Mediaite)

Earlier this week, Adult Swim announced that it would sever ties with Rick and Morty creator Justin Roiland after it was revealed that he is facing domestic abuse charges from an incident that occurred in 2020. Rick and Morty will continue to live on Adult Swim, but Roiland, who lent his voice to the main characters, will be recast. Now, Hulu is severing ties with the creator over two more of his projects.

Hulu is home to Roiland’s Solar Opposites, the sci-fi animated comedy that was recently renewed for a fifth season. Roiland also produced and lent his voice to Koala Man, the new animated comedy starring Hugh Jackman and Sarah Snook, which premiered just two weeks ago on the streamer. In a statement per Deadline, Hulu confirmed: “We have ended our association with Justin Roiland.” As of right now, it seems like both shows will continue without Roiland, though Koala Man has yet to be renewed.

The charges against the producer/animator include one felony count of domestic battery with corporal injury and one felony count of false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, and/or deceit.

Roiland was quietly charged in May 2020, arrested, and released that August on a $50,000 bond. The incident wasn’t made public until this month when NBC broke the news. He was arraigned in October of that year and pled not guilty, and he will head back to court on April 27 for the next pre-trial hearing.

(Via Deadline)

If George Santos showed up to audition for the role of “Congressional Con Man #1,” he’d likely be directed to play it all with a bit more subtlety. Between the devious smirk he’s usually wearing and those beady eyes peering out from his oversized glasses, there’s something just a little too on-the-nose about everything Santos does. (To say nothing of every fib he tells.)

Despite the string of lies and controversy that trails the freshly sworn-in congressman everywhere he goes — and an official criminal investigation into those untruths — Kevin McCarthy has been appointing Santos to congressional committees where he’ll actually have a hand in lawmaking. And the Speaker of the House doesn’t care what you think.

On Tuesday — as seen in the video above, posted by Aaron Rupar — McCarthy was swarmed by reporters demanding answers as to why he would entrust the governing of our country to a seeming pathological liar. While he didn’t have a satisfactory reply, that didn’t stop McCarthy from getting testy while responding.

When a reporter asked McCarthy, point blank, whether the reason he was standing behind Santos is because the alternative would cost Republicans a seat in congress, the SOTH laughed at the question — as if such a trivial matter would even play into his decision.

Instead, McCarthy said that the reason he’s continuing to support Santos is “because his constituents voted for him.” (Or, at least, the version of Santos they thought they were getting.) While he said that if the Ethics Committee decided that Santos did something wrong, he would stand behind that decision, he must have forgotten that he disemboweled the Ethics Committee as one of his first orders of business (a move that Santos himself described as “fantastic“).

Then, like any good Republican, McCarthy attempted to change the narrative by stating that if he were to go along with the idea that anyone who lies shouldn’t be allowed to hold office, then “Joe Biden couldn’t be president right now,” he said.

When pressed further (right around the 2:00 mark) and told by a reporter that he was not answering her question, McCarthy snapped back and got testy—under the guise of being… respectful?:

“Let me be very clear and respectful to you. You asked me a question. When I answer it, it’s the answer to your question. You don’t get to determine whether I answer your question or not, ok? In all respect. Thank you.”

How did it take a full 15 rounds of voting to get this respectful gem of a GOP leader elected?

(Via Aaron Rupar)

Chipotle spent all of 2022 rolling out new protein options on their not particularly change-prone menu. It was wonderful and a few of those new additions like the guajillo steak, pollo asado, and smoked brisket dunked on the meats that enjoy permanent status on the menu. The new options were such a success that at the end of last year, we gave Chipotle our coveted Golden Bag Award for best overall fast food brand. If you would’ve told me three years ago (when I started heavily covering fast food for Uproxx) that Chipotle would win an award for best fast food brand, I would’ve laughed in your face.

Unfortunately for all of us, all of these delicious and flavorful new protein options were limited, and now Chipotle is back to its base menu of options. We’re not sure what Chipotle has in store for this year, but so far all the brand has announced is some TikTok quesadilla hack set to join the menu next month. That news is… fine, but what would be better is a quesadilla hack with some of that guajillo steak! Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world.

The removal of short-term items means that last year’s ranking of Chipotle proteins is now obsolete and we need to update it. And since Chipotle is a fast food restaurant with a lot of variables (all realized in their purest form with this burrito build) we figured the easiest and most transparent way to rank all of these proteins is to eat all of them completely naked. No sauce, no extra ingredients, just a forkful of meat or veg or tofu!

Here are the best protein options you can order at Chipotle in 2023 (so far).

6. Sofritas

Calories: 150

Protein: 8g

Tasting Notes:

I feel bad about ranking Chipotle’s only plant-based protein option last, but…this stuff sucks. To be fair, when it comes to flavor, the sofritas aren’t half bad. They have a great blend of peppery and cumin-dominant notes that really cut nicely through your burrito add-ons and give you that savory meat vibe. That in and of itself is a commendable achievement. If you’re a vegetarian, straight up, this is a great meat substitute. Don’t feel bad about ordering it or think of it as an excuse to skip Chipotle entirely.

What I don’t like about the Sofritas is everything else.

First of all, they’re incredibly wet. Is wet not a strong enough word? Should I say “moist”? What’s the deal with people not liking the word moist? Moist is great. You gonna tell me you don’t want to eat a moist brownie? Anyway, I digress — the sofritas are so wet that they will soak through your tortilla, which will totally ruin your meal. Aside from the wetness, the sofritas also have a terrible mouthfeel, the tofu is really chunky and chewy to the point of distraction, and it becomes very obvious that you’re not eating meat. In a loaded burrito or bowl there are enough other ingredients going on that you aren’t going to notice that mouthfeel, but in something like a taco, forget it.

Perhaps more importantly, because the sofritas are also Chipotle’s least popular meat option, they don’t get changed out enough so they are almost always served a little stale and lukewarm. That doesn’t do any favors to the overall experience.

The Bottom Line:

If you don’t abstain from eating meat, there is no reason to even look at the sofritas. It isn’t the flavor that’s the problem it’s the wet consistency and the awful rubbery mouthfeel that ruin this option.

5. Carnitas

Calories: 210

Protein: 23g

Tasting Notes:

I’ve heard people swear by the carnitas at Chipotle, and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Chipotle carnitas are not “real” or “proper,” but these are without a doubt consistently the worst carnitas I’ve ever had. If you love the Chipotle carnitas, sorry, but you have bad taste in carnitas — you’re playing on my homecourt here and I’m telling you: not good.

Where to start with these things? They’re dry, over-salted, and so fatty-sinewy that you’ll constantly be picking sh*t out of your mouth because it’ll end up sticking around even after you’ve already swallowed the rest of your food. What makes carnitas special is the slow-cooking, this helps the pork reach a level of tender juiciness that is downright orgasmic. Flavors of cumin, oregano, salt, and pepper are supposed to dance across the tongue with each bite.

Chipotle’s carnitas has none of that.

The juicy tenderness is replaced with a bone-dry texture that enables you to feel each strand of pork in your mouth as you chew through it. Tooth floss. It can even double as floss, which is a point in its favor considering it’s going to get stuck in every crevice between your teeth. The earthy flavors of cumin and oregano are instead replaced with a small ocean’s-worth of salt. I’m almost amazed that Chipotle could fail at carnitas this hard. If you told me this was Taco Bell’s new meat, I’d believe it.

The Bottom Line:

When people say “Chipotle isn’t real Mexican food” it’s because they’re offended by this poor excuse for carnitas.

4. Guacamole

Calories: 360

Protein: 2g

Tasting Notes:

Does guacamole count as a protein option at Chipotle?

Not in the “protein” sense, no. But we’re using the phrase to mean: “main item featured in an entree” and in that sense, it certainly fits the bill. So what the hell, we’ve decided to include it!

People go nuts for Chipotle’s guacamole, and if you’re comparing it to Taco Bell and Del Taco guac, sure, it’s downright amazing. But if you’ve ever eaten at a local taqueria or crushed your own avocados, this is nothing worth obsessing over. This is pretty standard stuff at every Mexican joint in California, and if anything Chipotle goes a little heavy with the onion here.

Aside from the dominant flavor of red onions, we have some consistently ripe avocado here acting as our base, mixed with lime juice (a little too much — someone on Chipotle’s board must be heavily invested in lime groves), cilantro, and diced jalapeno bits throughout. The diced jalapeno is my favorite feature, it adds a nice subtle kick that lingers on the palate after each bite and leaves you wanting more. It’s a great trick, and I wish they would’ve focused more on the peppers than the onion, but I get that they’ve got to please the average consumer who probably can’t handle the spice.

The Bottom Line:

Chipotle’s guacamole is astoundingly consistent. I’ve yet to have a serving that tastes like it was using over or under-ripened avocados, and though this is more onion-dominant than I like, I’d still order a veggie burrito over getting the sofritas and carnitas — so we’re ranking this higher.

Even though it’s not really a protein option.

3. Steak

Calories: 150

Protein: 21g

Tasting Notes:

Chipotle’s steak is probably the most frustrating meat option the chain has on offer. On the one hand, when it’s good it’s great — tender chunks of medium-cooked steak with a perfect caramelized outer and a simple seasoning blend of salt, black pepper, cumin, and finished with what I’m assuming is butter to help achieve that crunchy glaze. But when it’s bad — which, unfortunately, is most of the time in my experience — it’s grainy, chewy, and tough. An absolute chore to eat.

So my advice is to give the steak a good look when you’re ordering it. If it glistens with rising ribbons of steam like in the photo above, get it — it’ll be excellent. But if it looks like it’s been sitting around for a while and they’re about to change it up with a new batch, ditch it because you might as well be eating rocks.

The Bottom Line:

Because of its hit-or-miss quality, we’re giving this one the bronze medal, even though sometimes it’s at least worthy of a silver.

2. Chicken

Calories: 180

Protein: 32g

Tasting Notes:

Chipotle’s chicken doesn’t suffer from the same consistency issues that plague the steak. Even when the chicken has been sitting in the bin for a while, it’s still packed with flavor. The only thing you lose with time here is how hot the meat is, and considering you’re eating at Chipotle I’m just going to assume you don’t care about whether your food is hot or not. Because at Chipotle it rarely is.

Chipotle’s chicken is flame-grilled and features a flavor profile that is dominated by the smokey qualities of ancho chilis and the savory zest of adobo sauce. I have no doubt the restaurant spends a good amount of time marinating this meat. Because Chipotle uses grilled chicken thigh rather than breast, each bite is juicy and tender, never suffering from the dry tendencies of over-cooked white meat. If you’re wincing at the idea of dark meat over white, you must hate flavor. Just kidding (kind of), but if chewy fat generally keeps you away from ordering dark meat, that’s not a problem here. The meat is still remarkably lean, you almost can’t tell it’s dark meat aside from the fact that it’s so consistently tasty with each bite.

The Bottom Line:

Flavorful, juicy, and most importantly, consistent. It’s hard to get a bad serving of chicken at Chipotle. If this is your first time, this is your second-best meat for a positive experience overall. If you want the best experience, go with our number one choice while you still can.

1. Barbacoa

Calories: 170

Protein: 24g

Tasting Notes:

The strength of this meat is in its insanely tender texture — each bite bursts with juicy savory goodness. For this barbacoa, Chipotle uses shoulder-cut meat, (rather than the more traditional cabeza) which keeps it tender, helping to soak up Chipotle’s marinade, which it spends overnight bathing in. Putting in that extra time marinating really helps this meat soar above the rest of Chipotle’s options, and while I miss the silky sumptuous qualities that I’ve come to expect from traditional barbacoa, this comes way closer than I’d expect a national chain to ever get to the real thing.

The barbacoa is dominated by the earthy notes of oregano and cloves, I’m also getting a bit of bay leaf in there and Chipotle’s usual pepper and adobo-forward flavor. It works great in each of Chipotle meal form factors, whether you’re crunching on tacos, putting together an epic burrito, or you’re looking for the best salad of your life.

The Bottom Line:

On most days, Chipotle’s most flavorful protein and almost as good as the traditional barbacoa you’ll get at a classic SoCal taqueria. Almost. Seriously, if you’ve ever left Chipotle thinking the chain is seriously lacking in flavor, you must not have tried the barbacoa yet. Ask for a spoonful of extra liquid if you’re getting a bowl!

Jimmy Butler didn’t play in the Miami Heat’s game against the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night. Miami made up a double-digit fourth quarter deficit against the defending Eastern Conference Champions to pick up a 98-95 win, which was good news for everyone in South Beach, even a pair of Heat fans who were a little disappointed earlier in the evening because Butler watched at home due to a back issue.

A 12-year old fan named Felipe and his sister, Zoe, went to the game with a sign asking Butler for either a photo or a Big Face Coffee. They ran into the problem of Butler missing the game entirely, and when Felipe got word of this, he was understandably devastated.

While Felipe and Zoe were able to get some gear during the game from the Heat and went on the floor to meet Gabe Vincent, Jamal Crawford brought word that Butler saw everything and was able to get their information. Butler also posted on his IG Story a clip of the two and simply said “i got you.”

Fast forward to Wednesday and Crawford posted on Instagram that Butler was able to meet Felipe and Zoe at Miami-Dade Arena, which included the pair getting to go into the Heat’s locker room.

There is no word, however, on whether or not Felipe and Zoe got their hands on some Big Face Coffee.

There was a whole actual plot in the season four premiere of 9-1-1: Lone Star. Romantic entanglements, drama, Rob Lowe buying a motorcycle, all of it. And you are welcome to watch for yourself and read other recaps elsewhere and do whatever you like with that information. I would never get in the way of you having a little fun. But we are not going to talk about that here. We are going to focus, as we usually do, on one of the ridiculous emergencies the first responders on the show get called in to deal with. Sometimes it’s a yard blowing up or a bus launching into a building. This time, it’s a flying toilet. A portable one. At a fair. With a person stuck inside it. What a lovely television show.

Context will help, in small doses. Here’s what you need to know:

• We open on a county fair in Texas
• Foul weather is coming in the form of a huge storm
• A young couple is walking around, the girl holding a giant stuffed bear and the guy talking about some disgusting fried fair food he just ate and is chasing with ice cream

A really solid foundation to build upon. Also, as they’re walking around, the guy says this…

… which is, by itself, just about enough to get a B or B- on a short story assignment in a creative writing class. But that’s not the point. The point is that, just after this, there is some rumbling. First, from his tummy, on account of the fried fair food, which leads to this statement and a frantic dash to the row of portable toilets.

And then more rumbling, this time from the skies as the storm approaches, which leads to… well, this.

A few notes here:

• Yes, he is still in the portable toilet
• It is also sweltering in there due to a rapid rise in temperature from the storm
• The storm also sucked water out of a nearby pond and sent from into the sky, and then the frogs all fell from the sky and one of them got lodged in a man’s windpipe and his daughter called 911 and said her daddy couldn’t talk because he had “a frog in his throat”

Perfect. No notes. Prestige television at its finest. Anyway, the kid calls 911 from the toilet. Also, the toilet has splash-landed in some body of water and he’s still stuck in it and it’s filling up with water laced with poop and chemicals. Also, the lady he’s talking to on the phone Googles the portable toilet to see if there’s an emergency hatch and, I swear to god, this is the name of the portable toilet company.

So Rob Lowe — Rob Lowe plays the captain on 9-1-1: Lonestar, which we have established many times but is still a lot of fun to type, so here we are — and his crew show up at the fair to try to help this poor doofus. But they can’t find him. All they know is that there’s a kid stuck in a portable toilet that flew away in a storm and landed in water somewhere and if they don’t find him soon he’s going to drown. And this leads to Rob Lowe saying a line of dialogue that has to be a very early contender for Television Sentence of the Year.

It’s so good.

Are you ready?

Are you, honestly?

Because here it is.

Here’s what I need you to do: Click on that image and save it to your phone and/or computer and send it to one or many of your friends. Do not explain it. Just send the picture with no words. It’ll be fun. You deserve to have a little fun.

But we’re getting off-topic. We have a missing toilet that is filling with water and a scared young man with furious bowels stuck inside. They have to find him. But where could it be? A lake? A pond? A river? What body of water could he have flown into?

Hmm.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

GUESS

GUESS WHERE THE TOILET LANDED

GUESS

…

….

…

DID YOU GUESS “IN THE FREAKING DUNK TANK”?

I BET YOU DID NOT

DO NOT LIE TO ME

LOOK AT THIS

So, a few more things, via bullet point once again:

• I am not joking at all when I say that this stupid reveal made me laugh harder than almost anything from almost any actual comedy in the last few months
• They cut him out with a chainsaw — let’s be very clear here: “they chainsaw the portable toilet that flew through the air and into the dunk tank” — and hit him with the defibrillator to save his life
• There are better shows on television but almost none with more episodes that feature airborne portable toilets, which is something worth noting somewhere

But now you’re wondering, “Hey, what do you think your first words would be after the fire department chainsawed you out of a portable toilet that flew into a dunk tank with you in it and almost caused you to drown in chemically treated water that may have had your own poop in it from the fried fair food you ate and chased with ice cream?” It’s a fair question. And the answer is, well…

Just a beautiful piece of business all around.

Despite getting rave reviews for her role in Glass Onion, Janelle Monae recently said she doesn’t consider herself a serious actor. That’s understandable, as the multi-hyphenate triple threat originally got her start as an inventive singer and songwriter, garnering warm receptions for high-concept projects like The ArchAndroid, The Electric Lady, and Dirty Computer.

Now, with the press run for Glass Onion behind her, Monae is apparently kicking off the rollout for her fourth studio album, teasing a new single apparently titled “Float” with a spicy video compilation of her recent post-birthday vacation. In the new video, collage-style cutouts of Monae and her friends appear over beautiful shots of the vacation venue. And like the photos posted from her birthday party, she’s topless in many of the shots, making the video pretty NSFW (depending on your workplace’s policies about gold pasties).

The song finds Monae feeling herself, boasting that where she once walked into rooms with her head down, “I don’t walk, now I float.” It’s another stylistic departure for her, incorporating triumphant brass like a mid-2000s trap anthem and some rumbling 808 backline that promises the single will be an exuberant, standing-on-the-couches-ass club banger.

Although the single hasn’t been given a release date just yet, it’s a promising sign that Monae is ready to enter a new, carefree era — and bring us all along with her.

Back in 2011, Taylor Swift filmed the “Ours” music video alongside Friday Night Lights actor Zach Gilford. However, over a decade later, he made a recent appearance on the Ladygang podcast to reveal that he didn’t know her name at the time.

In the timeline of Swift’s life, she was already practically a household name with several Grammy awards under her belt.

“Here’s the thing… I’m just so out of touch,” Gilford admitted.

“They were doing all this behind-the-scenes footage on that music video, and they’re interviewing me and I’m really bad with names and I wasn’t sure if her name was Taylor or Tyler,” he added. “I’d go, ‘Ms. Swift. She’s so great. She’s so sweet. She’s so great to work with.’ And I was terrified. […] I would have been the first person ever canceled if I said her name wrong.”

Despite his confusion, he also said that Swift gave him a gift during the process of making the video together.

“This was the nicest thing,” Gilford also shared. “She gave me, like, a handwritten note of ‘Things To Do In Nashville.’ It was so sweet and thoughtful, and I think there were like little hearts over the I’s. It was really cute.”

The version of Infinity Pool that premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival is not the version of Infinity Pool that’s coming to theaters this weekend. The Sundance cut, so to speak, was rated NC-17, and “shocked” festival-goers with drugs, orgies, adult breastfeeding, and a scene where “Alexander Skarsgård’s character ejaculates, with his member in full view of the camera.” Sounds like a bunch of squares to me.

Some of the “gloriously perverse” hedonism will remain in the theatrical cut, but not all of it, considering the film is only (“only”) rated R.

“The U.S. has a sort of particular issue because of the NC-17 rating,” director Brandon Cronenberg explained to Collider. “NC-17 was an attempt to rebrand the X rating, but they didn’t do it successfully, and it came with all this stigma. You can’t actually market a film if it’s an NC-17 rating. So specifically in the U.S. that means that you can’t really have a theatrical release of any size.” In other words, if Infinity Pool had an NC-17 rating, like the Oscar nominee Ana de Armas-starring Blonde, it wouldn’t be playing at your local AMC. That’s the kind of heartbreak Nicole Kidman should have been talking about.

Cronenberg continued:

“But I knew that going into it, and it’s not a problem everywhere and usually there’s a plan to release the full film. The R-rated version isn’t hugely different, I should say. I would love people to just see it in theaters and not worry about the versioning. It’s fine.”

Mia Goth is delightfully unhinged in both versions. Infinity Pool comes out on January 27.

(Via Collider)