Month: April 2023

There are a few reasons to indulge in a re-watch of HBO’s supernatural drama, The Leftovers. It’s a winding mindf*ck of a saga birthed from the synapses of the great Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen, the brand new series Mrs. Davis). It boasts some career-high performances by the likes of Justin Theroux (who happens to be popping up on HBO’s new series, White House Plumbers this weekend), Carrie Coon, Liv Tyler, Christopher Eccleston, and Ann Dowd. But, possibly the biggest thing The Leftovers has going for it is this: It’s a damn good show whose poignant philosophical musings and twisted, supernatural cliffhangers will alter your brain chemistry – if you let it.

With just three seasons and 28 episodes, the series paints a harrowingly plausible dystopia. An event known as the Sudden Departure strips the world of 2% of its population, leaving the remaining inhabitants of Earth in a kind of grief-stricken limbo. (The show flirts with many imagined purgatories but perhaps the real Dante’s Inferno is the one we’ve been living in all along?) Three years after this bastardized Rapture, survivors in a nondescript town in upstate New York are just trying to make the best of things. Theroux’s Kevin Garvey is a broken police chief trying to maintain order (and his own sanity). Coon’s Nora is the town’s resident albatross, a woman who lost her entire family in one fell swoop and now must parade her grief at every anniversary celebration while her reverend brother Matt (Eccleston) marks the Departed as sinners in order to soothe the fears of the still-living. There are also white-robed, chain-smoking cult members with their own exhaustingly nihilistic agenda (led by a cruel and wicked Dowd), after-life fantasies that double as Jason Bourne sequels, lion-worshipping sex cults, Wu-Tang Clan needle drops, and just enough animalistic mysticism and biblical mythology to remind you that, yeah, this is a Damon Lindelof production.

So how does one possibly assign a numerical value to a show sublimely chaotic, so full of highs and higher highs, so creatively distinct and viscerally moving? When we have a definitive answer, we’ll tell you. For now, here’s our attempt to name and order of The Leftovers best episodes.

10. The Garveys at Their Best (Season 1, Episode 9)

Maybe it’s the ingrained nostalgia but we love a good flashback episode and this one from the show’s first season feels especially important. There’s something about witnessing what these characters were like before the snap that makes the Departure even more tragic. Sure, the Garveys had their marital issues, Nora was exhausted by motherhood, and Patti was harping on about ominous feelings of dread and despair. But guys, Jill as a happy, well-adjusted teen who likes cat memes? Kevin Sr. winning man-of-the-year awards? What is this life? The best reveal though is the one centering on Laurie, who was always meant to go through it if her weird behavior here is any indication. Laurie had problems but those problems became unfixable once the Departure took her unborn child and forced her to mourn that loss alone. The whole cult thing kind of makes sense after a trauma like that.

Watch it on HBO

9. Pilot (Season 1, Episode 1)

Without fail, every episode ranking of a TV series that includes its pilot laments the difficulties of establishing a story on the small screen. Even truly great pilots have something wrong with them and The Leftovers is no different. What is different about its inclusion here is that it’s not just an obligatory shoutout, one of those “yeah, it’s probably not among the show’s best episodes but without it, where would we be” entries. No, The Leftovers pilot is good. It’s darker, more melancholy, and less morbidly funny than later episodes, but still, good. It kicks off on the day of the Sudden Departure, Oct. 14th, with a woman frantically searching for a baby that vanished from her car seat and then slingshots us three years into the future to witness the emotional malaise and societal collapse this rapture-like event has wrought on a small town in upstate New York. It introduces characters we’ll come to love, despise, and begrudgingly root for as flawed, helpless nobodies trying to establish a new sense of normal now that their closest friends, family members, co-workers etc. have been ripped from their lives leaving holes still unfilled. It gives us antagonistic cults, weird animal symbolism, laugh-out-loud pop culture references, and an excuse for lighting up a cigarette that’s so ridiculous, we can’t believe Big Tobacco didn’t co-opt it for marketing purposes.

Watch it on HBO

8. Axis Mundi (Season 2, Episode 1)

We’re not in Mapleton anymore. The season two premiere of The Leftovers introduced fans to an entirely different show, tonally at least. It’s chipper in that bleakly comedic way that can make funerals such a riot. And, it introduces a handful of new characters in a divinely-blessed locale that set the groundwork for the kind of expanded sense of storytelling the show needed after its season one finale. Some questions are answered. Kevin, Nora, Jill, and the orphaned baby have migrated to a place called Miracle, Texas where no one vanished during The Departure. They buy a house, set up shop, and are forced to mingle with the town’s sinister fire chief and his strange family. The Murphys are The Garveys of Miracle but with their secrets firmly under lock and key in this episode. The tension between John Murphy (Kevin Carroll) and literally anyone he interacts with – be it locals or Miracle interlopers looking for their own heavenly sign – is the visual equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Nauseating. All-consuming. Never-ending. He immediately feels like a villain, but the episode’s twist ending paints him in a confusingly sympathetic light. And look, we haven’t even touched on the excellent Kubrickian opening introducing this supernatural setting via prehistoric pregnancies, errant snake bites, and tribe-wiping earthquakes.

Watch it on HBO

7. Two Boats and a Helicopter (Season 1, Episode 3)

Christopher Eccleston has some terrific moments over the course of this series – see the lion-worshipping sex cult entry below – but this episode early in the show’s run was the first promise of great things to come from Rev. Matt Jamison. A man so consumed with his imagined holy war that he can’t see he’s the subject of the episode title’s parable, Matt scrambles to find ways to save his church. His congregation has left in a crisis of faith spurred by the Departure which is why he constantly dubs the vanished as sinners, comforting the left behind with sermons that assure them they’re not cursed. His church building is in foreclosure, about to be sold to an LLC if he can’t dig up tens of thousands of dollars to foot the bill. Ironically, he does unearth that money, remembering that Kevin Sr. buried some cash before being shipped to the loony bin, but, despite all of the ways Matt could’ve lost that windfall in this episode – by gambling with it to increase the pot, by getting caught up in a parking lot brawl, by helping a GR member, by his extended hospital stay – the reason he’s ultimately unable to save his church is brutally simple. He wasted too much time.

Watch it on HBO

6. The Prodigal Son Returns (Season 1, Episode 10)

Few shows have matched The Leftovers ability to pull off a cliffhanger so maddening, so exquisitely warped, and so filled with both promise and frustration. The season finale of the show’s initial run is the first entry in that tradition. Sure, the episode before this features a blistering monologue by Ann Dowd and a gasp-wrenching plot twist that leaves you dumbfounded when the screen fades to black, but what’s always more interesting when a TV show drops that kind of bomb is when the writers sift through the fallout – and The Leftovers is rooting through the rubble for even the faintest signs of life in this episode. A spooked Kevin buries a body but misses the burning of Mapleton after the town’s residents riot against the latest act of emotional terrorism carried out by the GR. (They really bought lifelike replicas of The Departed and set them up all over town in the exact spots they vanished, huh? This show is just so f*cked up.) But even though some happy endings are found – for Kevin, Laurie, Jill, and Tom – more questions are asked, and bigger threats (hello Liv Tyler) loom.

Watch it on HBO

5. I Live Here Now (Season 2, Episode 10)

The Leftovers was at its best when it simply posed existential questions, but there were a few times it pulled us back from the cliff’s edge with answers that felt so banal and obvious, you couldn’t help but laugh at yourself for conjuring such silly theories. This season two finale was one of those times. Of course, Evie wasn’t a late rapture, or the victim of some new supernatural phenomenon that drained an entire reservoir and stole away a couple of teenagers in the process. No, she was just a damaged, rebellious, psychotic young girl sick of living in a town that believed itself to be divinely favored, among parents so good at strapping on blinders to their own issues that they didn’t even notice her contempt and disillusion with life. Her plot with Meg (a deliciously evil Tyler) to throw Miracle into chaos is a highlight of the episode, as is Kevin’s eventual reconciliation with John – who shoots him and leaves him for dead before inviting himself over for a post-riot nightcap. We also get another glimpse of the afterlife and Theroux crooning a Simon and Garfunkel classic. What more could you ask for?

Watch it on HBO

4. It’s A Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World (Season 3, Episode 5)

We’ll admit it, we’re suckers for a good cold open and this episode has what might be the best of the entire series. A French sailor is slo-mo sprinting through the narrow hallways of a submarine, naked as the day he was born, his genitals flapping in the wind as he murders his crewmates and performs his best Reed Richards impression, twisting a pair of keys at the same time in order to set off some nukes. This is the roadblock a dying Matt (with John in tow) must work around in order to make it to Australia. With flights canceled thanks to nude Gumbys antics, they board a Tasmanian party boat that’s cruising with a bunch of sex cult members on board hellbent on orgy-ing their way Down Under and worshiping a lion named Fraiser. That same lion ends up mauling their leader Burton – a man with a terrible God complex – by the end of the episode, but plenty of strange sh*t happens in between.

Watch it on HBO

3. The Most Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother) (Season 3, Episode 7 )

A Mission Impossible-esque romp through Limbo, this near-death almost-death post-death adventure is just as wild, confusing, and darkly funny as the first (see below), though the stakes are undeniably raised. Gone are little girls and wells. Instead, Kevin Harvey’s got a new assignment: kill the president before he can launch some nukes. How did we get here when the episode started with Kevin and Nora naked in a bathtub whispering sweet nothings about their preferred method of body disposal? We still don’t know. But amidst all the shots of a soaked-to-the-bone Justin Theroux flailing in and out of bathtubs like a fish on roller skates, gunning down past enemies and literally burning the afterlife to the ground, the show poses a central question: What does Kevin Garvey want? We won’t spoil the answer here.

Watch it on HBO

2. The Book of Nora (Season 3, Episode 8)

Like Nora, who struggled with the choice of whether to attempt interdimensional travel at the risk of incineration in order to see her family again, we too had an impossible decision to make when it came to the placement of The Leftovers’ series finale on this list. Did it stick the landing in a way that broke our hearts and melted our brains? Absolutely. Was it a playful rebellion of the storytelling adage, “show, don’t tell,” that secretly delighted us to no end? Of course. Did it give us so many close-ups of Carrie Coon that we couldn’t possibly find a fault in it? Well, no, but then again, a show can always use more Carrie Coon close-ups. In the end, “The Book of Nora” was a surprisingly sentimental bow wrapping up a grandiose philosophical query that left just a few loose strings – enough to plague us with doubts for years to come. It cemented itself as both an epic love story and a puzzling musing on the purpose and futility of life. Still, the greatest mark against it is that this is the episode that marked the end, and it’s hard to look back fondly on goodbyes – even perfect ones.

Watch it on HBO

1. International Assassin (Season 2, Episode 8)

Purgatory has been imagined on TV before – as a Utopian neighborhood littered with delicious food puns, a TV-equipped torture chamber that plays the worst day of your life on loop, a diner that doesn’t serve flapjacks, and an island filled with underground bunkers, Egyptian ruins, and polar bears. But Purgatory as a hotel that tasks its guest with donning a tuxedo and carrying out an assassination attempt even James Bond would balk at? That’s a game-changer – not just for storytelling on screen but for the world of The Leftovers. This episode marks Kevin’s first foray into the afterlife (though it certainly won’t be his last) and it also acts as a kind of launching pad to the next (metaphysical) level Lindelof and company end up taking the show. Theroux switches effortlessly between befuddled terror and suave confidence as he bashes skulls and carries out a bit of Godfather homage-ry, all while Kevin wades through a mind-bending gumbo brewed by his own subconscious. He eventually does the right thing and pushes that little girl down the well, but it’s the journey to that murderous act that feels more revelatory and, weirdly, fun.

Watch it on HBO

James Corden illustrated Harry Styles’ aura during an interview with Howard Stern earlier this week by admitting that his celebrity was nothing compared to Styles’ during past vacations, as Corden was only acknowledged by fans to take photos of them with Styles.

Styles was one of Corden’s guests for the final episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden last night, April 27. Around the 17:45-minute mark of the full episode on YouTube, Styles was revealed to the audience. He began walking toward the stage and casually fist-bumped an excited fan.

She promptly fainted, it appeared.

Will Ferrell surfaced at the same doorway twenty seconds later, and the fan had recovered enough to stand and clap for him.

Once Ferrell and Styles were seated on the couch across from Corden, Styles revealed a “Late Late” tattoo on his arm because the show has meant so much to him since it premiered with Corden in 2015. Ferrell requested one last game of “Spill Your Guts Or Fill Your Guts,” which led to Styles being forced to address whether a One Direction reunion will ever happen.

“I would never say to never to that. I think if there was a time where we all felt like that was what we wanted to do, then I don’t see why we wouldn’t,” he said.

I can only imagine how viscerally the Previously Fainted Fan reacted when Styles said that.

Watch the full episode above.

Fans who were worried about a potential curse on Lil Baby can rest easy; if his video for “Go Hard” is anything to judge by, his skills as a rapper and a hitmaker remain untarnished. The new track is vintage Lil Baby, with a string of breathless verses in which he insists he “Need a Nike deal how I’m runnin’ sh*t” and that he’s “savin’ the ghetto” framed by yet another relentless hook asserting he’s “back goin’ hard again” (a running theme in his music).

Meanwhile, if fans thought that his photo op with the Kardashians meant a romantic entanglement, the visuals for “Go Hard” should lay those worries to rest as well. Baby and his crew throw a yacht party with all the debauchery of an Atlanta strip club, amped by what could very well be international waters. Very scantily clad women twerk all over the boat, proving there’s more motion in the ocean (sorry, I couldn’t leave that one on the table). It’s a wonder the ship doesn’t capsize from all that rocking.

“Go Hard” is thought to appear on Lil Baby’s next album ever since he previewed the track on Instagram in 2020. It certainly appears to be his first original song since releasing It’s Only Me in October, although he dropped a video for “Forever” with Fridayy in February. Could a new Lil Baby era already be on the way? Considering his philosophy about going hard, it’s not out of the question.

Watch the video for “Go Hard” above.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect to feels so sad so many times while watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. To be clear, this is by design. This movie, at times, wants you to feel very sad. To the point I had to internally scold myself, “Dude, you cannot start crying in public about a CGI raccoon. You know people here. Don’t be one of these people who cry during Marvel movies. It’s embarrassing.”

So, I’m going to be upfront right off the bat, I think James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is incredibly well done, but if the torture and mutilation of animals at all disturbs you, and I’m assuming it will, there are a couple of pretty rough scenes in this movie concerning Rocket’s backstory. It’s not flippant and they drive the entire plot of the film. The movie knows these are rough scenes, but they will cause some pretty intense emotions that at least I’ve certainly not felt during a Marvel movie. To put it bluntly: this movie fucked me up a bit. (Speaking of, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 also gives us our first MCU F-bomb.)

Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is in rough shape. The Guardians are living on a floating space colony called Knowhere and Peter, still devastated by the loss of Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and the return of a Gamaora who doesn’t know him, passes the time getting black-out drunk. One night, a mysterious and powerful visitor rampages Knowhere looking for Rocket (Bradley Cooper). This visitor is Adam Warlock (Will Poulter, having quite a great time) and he’s been sent by the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji, who isn’t just chewing scenery, but more rolling up the scenery into a pipe and smoking it) to retrieve Rocket for extremely sinister reasons. Adam Warlock’s mission fails, but it leaves Rocket mortally wounded. Nebula (Karen Gillan, who takes on a much larger role this time around) discovers any attempt to operate on Rocket will trigger a fail-safe device inside of him that would be immediately fatal. So the rest of the Guardians mount a mission to retrieve the code to turn off the fail-safe device in an effort to save Rocket. And to do this they will need Gamora’s help, who is currently hanging out with the Ravagers, led by Sylvester Stallone. (I’m just going to pretend Stallone is playing himself.)

As Rocket fights for his life, he has flashbacks to his time with the High Evolutionary and the experiments that were run on him and his friends, as the High Evolutionary tries to make the perfect being in an effort to create a new Earth filled only with perfection. This is pretty rough stuff that involves animal abuse and mutilation. It’s certainly effective. Again, it’s never flippant or done for laughs. It knows this is pretty grim stuff. I’ve never felt this emotionally involved in a villain getting his comeuppance before. To prepare you, at one point we watch the High Evolutionary literally shoot and kill a cute animal. It’s an emotionally devastating scene that informs the entire movie. But the one complaint I have here is, right after this scene, we cut to Drax (Dave Bautista) clotheslining a guy riding a motorcycle. Yeah, I just watched an animal get brutally murdered. I’m not sure I’m ready for some laughs quite yet.

James Gunn bets big that you love each and every one of these Guardians. It’s a movie about friendship and the love these characters have for each other and risking everything to help the people you love. Without that bond to these characters, this movie doesn’t work. It’s still a funny movie with some cool action scenes and a lot of nonsense going on, all glued together by this really powerful emotional core. There is a scene that sticks out, after Drax ignores an order that gets the team into some hot water. Nebula unloads on Drax, but Mantis (Pom Klementieff) comes to his defense, telling Nebula she can’t say these things to Drax because at the end of the day he loves us and we love him. It’s such a dumb simple thing, but gosh it works.

In an era of superhero fatigue, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 still feels fresh because this isn’t a superhero movie. These are sci-fi action-adventure movies. It’s always weird when they crossover into other movies involving superheroes. It’s like if Thor teamed up with Marty McFly. “Wait, why is Marty McFly here again?” And, mercifully, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a self-contained story that has nothing to do with the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a movie about the friendship and love between the members of this team, not a movie that wonders what Sub-Mariner or Shang-Chi are up to these days. The closest Guardians 3 strays to this is the introduction of Adam Warlock. This movie could exist without him. But he was teased way back in Guardians 2 (which was, somehow, six years ago now) and Will Poulter is having so much goofy fun playing Warlock as a kind of an imbecile nitwit, yeah it all works.

This is the end of the road for this version of The Guardians of the Galaxy. James Gunn is, famously, now running the show at DC. A few members of the cast have made it clear this is it for them. But, we will no doubt see other members of the team in future projects. But we won’t see this team again, which gives the whole proceedings a melancholy feel. And knowing this was it, it’s a bold move to make Rocket the central figure of the film. And it’s even bolder to make it this emotional and devastating. (I often get asked, hey, can I take my kids to this? Look, I saw Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in a theater when I was nine. A guy gets his heart ripped out of his chest and is then burned alive. I usually come down on the side of “your precious kid will be fine.” I’ll admit, this one gives me pause.) But you leave this movie feeling the bond between these characters and what makes them all so special. This is not “a superhero movie.” This is a movie about characters we love and that we will miss.

Again, I didn’t expect to feel so sad while watching this movie.

‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ opens in theaters on May 5th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Anybody who thought the vinyl resurgence was just a fad was mistaken: The industry has experienced a legitimate revival. As a result, music fans are interested in physical media in ways they may not have if the decades-old medium hasn’t made a comeback. That doesn’t mean everybody is listening to just their parents’ old music, though. That’s part of it, sure, thanks to rereleases that present classic albums in new ways. A vital part of the renewed vinyl wave, though, is new projects being released as records, of which there are plenty.

Whatever you might be into, each April brings a new slew of vinyl releases that has something for everybody. Some stand out above the rest, naturally, so check out some of our favorite vinyl releases of April below.

Get it here.

Jai Paul — Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)

It’s not often we hear much from Jai Paul, but he just played Coachella and he also has a fresh new vinyl release. It’s a pressing of Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones), the officially released version of Paul’s famously leaked set of demos from 2013. This is the first time the set has ever been made available on vinyl and only 3,000 copies were made available, so it’s a must-have for Jai Paul die-hards.

Get it here.

Warren Zevon — Excitable Boy (Reissue)

45 years ago, in 1978, the now-late Warren Zevon dropped what would become his signature album, Excitable Boy. For this reissue (which features classics like “Werewolves Of London” and the title track), the album was remastered from the original analog master tapes and pressed on 180g 45 RPM vinyl, making this edition an audiophile’s dream.

Get it here.

Rudimental — Home (10th Anniversary Reissue)

Rudimental is a beloved UK dance music institution now, but it all started with 2013’s Home. It’s been a decade since that debut album dropped, so now there’s a new anniversary edition that includes a number of new remixes made specially for this reissue.

Get it here.

The White Stripes — Elephant (Deluxe)

Jack White and the folks at Third Man Records know their way around vinyl, so their new deluxe reissue of the White Stripes classic Elephant is one to behold. It’s pressed on beautiful clear, colored, smoky vinyl, which is home to beloved tunes like “Seven Nation Army” and “The Hardest Button To Button.”

Get it here.

Aesop Rock and Blockhead — Garbology Instrumentals and The Recycling Bin

Aesop Rock and Blockhead have formed a strong partnership over the years, and now the rapper and producer are bringing a pair of their projects to vinyl for the first time. Garbology Instrumentals is an instrumental version (duh) of the pair’s 2021 album, while The Recycling Bin is a companion EP featuring Blockhead remixes of Aesop songs that Blockhead previously wasn’t involved with.

Get it here.

Love And Rockets — Earth, Sun, Moon (Reissue) and Love And Rockets (Reissue)

’80s English rock group Love And Rockets (which rose from the ashes of Bauhaus) is in the midst of some catalogue reissues and April brought a pair of new ones. Both albums — Earth, Sun, Moon and the self-titled one — come on classic black vinyl and the latter includes their best-known song, the top-three hit “So Alive.”

Get Earth, Sun, Moon here. Get Love And Rockets here.

Violent Femmes — Violent Femmes (Reissue)

Record Store Day was this month and Craft Recordings came through with a number of reissues, including a new picture disc to mark the 40th anniversary of Violent Femmes’ self-titled album. Aside from being a gorgeous piece to look at, it features favorites like “Blister in the Sun” and “Please Do Not Go.”

Get it here.

Paul McCartney And Wings — Red Rose Speedway (50th Anniversary Reissue)

Speaking of Record Store Day, Paul McCartney And Wings made the day count with a 50th anniversary rerelease of Red Rose Speedway. This edition will sound as good as possible thanks to the half-speed remastering treatment the LP received. This was the first Wings album to top the charts in the US, so if you don’t have any of the McCartney group in your vinyl library, this reissue is a good place to start.

Get it here.

GoldLink — At What Cost (Vinyl Me, Please Reissue)

At What Cost was a strong and well-received debut for GoldLink back in 2017. Vinyl Me, Please is celebrating the project in 2023 with a lovely new reissue, which is pressed on 2-LP orange and blue galaxy vinyl and comes with newly written listening notes.

Get it here.

Metallica — 72 Seasons

Metallica have been at it for over 40 years now, and on their new album 72 Seasons, it really sounds like James Hetfield and company truly haven’t lost a step. All the new fans they gained after their Stranger Things sync last year are in for a treat with this exceptional LP.

Get it here.

The legacies of Snoop Dogg and Tupac loom large in Los Angeles, as their fingerprints are all over West Coast rap, but one muralist is trying to preserve a tangible homage to them.

Earlier this week, a Los Angeles painter going by @sloe_motions on Instagram posted that his mural prominently featuring Snoop and Tupac is at risk of being taken down. The late Kobe Bryant, Danny Trejo, Vin Scully, and Oscar De La Hoya are also in the mural.

“SAVE THE LA MURAL IN BELLFLOWER! we recently received a notice to take down this mural in the city of bellflower. I want to reach out to everyone n help get the word spread to keep this up. this is our culture and these are our city’s,government policies n politics shouldn’t have any effect on the peoples art or expression,” the artist captioned an Instagram video showing the mural in question.

The caption continues, “I’m tired of the cities tryna stop artist and make things hard on us when we are the ones giving the inspiration to the community’s n giving back in a real way. this mural is also on the owners property. I want to start fighting for what is ours and stop letting these city people silence our art and making them think there’s no encouragement in our community’s without them. they love to hop on the train tho when we bring good attention n want to act like they were apart of it the whole time and take credit.”

They added, “Everyone i had been in touch with loved this mural and long time residents of the area kept saying ‘we have nothing cool like this in our area.’ let’s get this mural to stay and please share if u can.”

Fox 11 Los Angeles quoted the property’s owner, Renae Cornejo, “I guess [we] broke a code we didn’t know about.” Cornejo was confused as to why city officials are getting involved because “it’s our home; we own the property.”

“We didn’t know about the code violation until we got served last week with it. So we’re doing our best to work with the city,” property co-owner Robert Cornejo added.

The Change.org petition to save the mural was closing in on 5,000 signatures as of April 28.

Kevin Durant‘s future in the NBA got sorted out a little earlier this year, as the Brooklyn Nets sent the All-Star forward to the Phoenix Suns ahead of the trade deadline. With that all sorted out and the Suns in the midst of a run in the postseason, it appears Durant’s attention turned to making sure he has Nikes on his feet for the rest of his life.

Boardroom announced on Friday morning that Durant, who has been a Nike athlete ever since he entered the NBA as a member of the Seattle SuperSonics, agreed to a lifetime deal with the company, making him the third basketball player after Michael Jordan and LeBron James to agree to such an arrangement.

“When I first signed with Nike, I couldn’t have dreamed of how far we’d go in this partnership,” Durant said in a statement. “We’ve done amazing work creatively and philanthropically. We’ve traveled the world together and built a business that will now last forever. I’m excited for the future and honored to be in rare company with this deal.”

Durant has gotten 16 signature sneakers during his time with Nike. The latest, the KD 16, has not been released yet, but he has worn them during the 2023 NBA playoffs.

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 – Follow me

Okay, here’s the situation…

This week’s episode of Ted Lasso featured a fun little throwaway joke about how Dutch soccer legend Johan Cruyff looks a little bit like Tim Robinson, the creator and star of the very funny Netflix sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave. The context isn’t really important to the journey we’re going on here, but I did go through it all a bit in my weekly Ted Lasso Power Rankings, so you are welcome to click that and peruse if you require background information. The important thing is the part where it happened at all, which I can prove to you with this screencap…

Which is great. But here’s where it starts to get really fun: One of the main recurring players in I Think You Should Leave is Tim Robinson’s longtime comedy partner Sam Richardson (shoutout Detroiters), who has appeared in a number of sketches, including but not limited to the wonderful “Baby of the Year,” which I will link to right now, in part because I think providing evidence is important and in part because it’s very fun and I want an excuse to watch it again.

Still a 10/10 piece of business. And noteworthy for our purposes here because Sam Richardson — star of that sketch and also The Afterparty, which was so freaking good, too — also appeared in a few episodes of Ted Lasso last season. He played an African billionaire who swung through Richmond and caused a bunch of chaos and also, at one point, did this.

The takeaways here are twofold:

• If I Think You Should Leave exists in the Ted Lasso universe, then that means Sam Richardson exists in it, too, which means there is an African billionaire running around who looks exactly like a beloved American comedy figure, and that’s something I’m going to be thinking about a lot going forward
• Sam Richardson is the best

But maybe that’s all a little flimsy for you. Maybe that’s not weird enough. Maybe you read the Power Rankings and saw me make this point already a few days ago. That’s fine. Because I can make it even weirder. Chew on this…

If, as we previously deduced, Sam Richardson, the person, exists in the Ted Lasso universe because I Think You Should Leave exists, then that means, one assumes, the other projects he has been in exist, too. Projects like Veep, where he played Richard Splett, but also projects like the Harley Quinn animated series, where he showed up as the voice of Swamp Thing in a season three episode. Here, look.

And this is fascinating — to me, if not to anyone else — because, in the Valentine’s Day special episode of Harley Quinn that dropped this February, Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, showed up as a heightened cartoon version of himself — with repeated mentions of his writing and acting duties on Ted Lasso — and performed a sold-out, shirtless poetry reading for an audience of very thirsty ladies that was thwarted because a sexually frustrated Bane grew to 100-feet tall and started trying to have intercourse with skyscrapers. That last part isn’t super-relevant to the point I’m making but it is a lot of fun to say. (Harley Quinn is a good show.) Anyway, here’s the evidence of his appearance in that show.

Do you see?

Do you see what is happening here?

Brett Goldstein, who plays Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, also, in theory, if we connect all these dots from I Think You Should Leave to Sam Richardson to Harley Quinn, exists as himself in the Ted Lasso universe… as the co-star of… the television show Ted Lasso.

Ted Lasso, the television show, exists within the television show Ted Lasso. What a delightful little philosophical pretzel they went and created for themselves, all because of a fun little throwaway joke about a soccer player looking like Tim Robinson. I want to see someone — Coach Beard, preferably — explain all of this to Dani Rojas.

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

ITEM NUMBER TWO – FOLLOW ME AGAIN

This is a screencap from the most recent episode of Succession. I suspect you knew that already, either because you watched it or because it’s been all over your social media feeds all week long, as it should have been, because it’s great. Look at Frank and my beloved Karl just chilling in the robes outside the sauna that a bunch of Swedes are sweating in. These two have it figured out. They’re just waiting for their golden parachutes to kick in and not making any waves and looking like everything I could possibly want out of life. I am so happy for them.

And again, so was everyone. People went a little nuts, as people will sometimes do. There were a bunch of tweets that compared them to Statler and Waldorf, the famously cranky Muppets who sit up in the balcony and crack themselves up with jokes at others’ expense. I don’t know if this is accurate, really, but I do like it a lot. The only downside is that now I am upset neither of them has a mustache. I think Karl would look good with a mustache. Maybe he’ll grow one in retirement.

But here’s the fun thing…

Just after this episode ended, as people were starting to flood social media with comparisons of Frank and Karl and famous Muppets, this tweet started making the rounds, too.

This is… it’s really just incredible. And true! I looked it up and everything! Talk about a life well-lived, man. Good for Peter Friedman. Good for Frank and Karl. Good for the Muppets.

But mostly, good for us. It’s nice to have fun online. People forget that.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – The Chandler-Keanu feud has ended… probably

It is really kind of funny that Matthew Perry wrote a big memoir about his life in Hollywood and his struggles with addiction and all of that but the only thing people took away from it is that he was mean to Keanu Reeves. I don’t know why I enjoy that so much. I have nothing against Matthew Perry. I hope he’s doing great! But I do find it pretty funny. I don’t know. It’s fine.

You remember this, yes? The thing where Matthew Perry repeatedly busted on Keanu out of nowhere and for no reason? The thing where he said “Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” and the thing where he says he punched a joke through the wall of Jennifer Aniston’s dressing room when he heard Chris Farley died and then punctuated the story in the book by saying “Keanu Reeves walks among us”? And the thing where the masses rose up like the mighty ocean and dumped a tsunami of rage on him for being mean to Keanu?

I hope so. It was a good time. But it appears this one-sided feud is now over. Matthew Perry revealed earlier this week that copies of his book going forward will edit out the Keanu digs. Sayeth Matthew:

“I said a stupid thing. It was a mean thing to do,” Perry said at a recent book festival, as per The Los Angeles Times. “I pulled his name because I live on the same street. I’ve apologized publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”

He added, “If I run into the guy, I’ll apologize. It was just stupid.”

There are, as far as I can tell, two possibilities here. The first and more probable one is that Matthew Perry was still thinking of Bill & Ted era Keanu, the one whose public image was that of a goofball stoner who ambled through life aimlessly, and he made this joke without realizing Keanu had become a kind of widely beloved sweetheart for a significant chunk of the population that spends a lot of time on the internet (guilty as charged here), and backtracked after he got yelled at a lot.

The other possibility, less likely but much funnier, is that Matthew Perry had never seen the John Wick movies and was home sick one day after his book published and watched three of them in a row on basic cable from the couch and saw Keanu move like a ballerina while mowing down dozens of trained assassins and he sat up and thought to himself, “Mother of God, I have made a terrible mistake.” It’s a fun little mental image to tinker with. Put Matt LeBlanc in the room with him if you want. It’s your daydream. You can do whatever you want.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Let Rihanna swear in the Smurf movie

Hey, here’s a really fun coupling of sentences from a recent report in Deadline…

In her third trimester, Rihanna showed up at Paramount Pictures’ CinemaCon presentation on Thursday in Las Vegas to say she’s playing “a little blue badass” — that being Smurfette in Par and Nickelodeon Movies’ The Smurfs Movie. Rihanna also is producing the movie and providing original songs.

I am going to be very direct here. No rambling or dilly-dallying. This is too important…

Please let Rihanna swear in the Smurf movie. Let Smurfette cuss. I think Rihanna would like that. I know I would. Let her sing some steamy club banger and have Smurfette perform it in character in the movie. Let’s do it all. There’s nothing stopping us. Look what they are doing to Winnie the Pooh in a new series that is being shopped around right now.

Christopher Robin is a comedic live-action/animation hybrid reimagining of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. Per the logline: Christopher Robin is a disillusioned New Yorker navigating his quarter-life crisis with the help of the weird talking animals who live beyond a drug-induced portal outside his derelict apartment complex, the Hundred Acres.

If Christopher Robin can be a junkie who hallucinates famous characters from children’s books then we can let Rihanna cuss as Smurfette. It is only fair.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Jimmy Kimmel seems like a pretty good dude

John Mulaney has a new Netflix special out this week that touches on the roller coaster ride he’s been on the last few years. Drug addiction, intervention, rehab, divorce, having a baby with Olivia Munn, really just a lot. He looks like he’s doing okay now. I hope he is. And if telling the world about it in a comedy routine is helpful at all for him, man, god bless. Whatever works.

He stopped by Jimmy Kimmel’s show the other day to promote it and, while there, revealed that he had lived in Jimmy’s guest house for a few weeks after he got out of rehab. That’s… I mean, that’s pretty cool. Think about it a little. A guy you know hits rock bottom — divorce, drugs, all of it — and you just invite him to stay with you while he puts his life back together. That takes a real solid dude. It helps that Jimmy Kimmel had a whole separate guest house to put him up in. I imagine it would be different if Jimmy had a two-bedroom and John Mulaney asked if he could crash on the couch. But still. Pretty cool.

Jimmy Kimmel seems like a really good dude. It’s kind of wild that we got here after he started his career with crank calls and busty women jumping on trampolines, but hey, everyone’s journey is different, you know? The destination is what matters most. Pretty good lesson to file away.

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 Eric:

Just as the absolutely delightful Shrinking ended its first season, Succession began its final season, and watching them so close together, I had a brainstorm: I need a show in which David Rasche and Ted McGinley play brothers. I mean, they look more like brothers than most real brothers do. I looked up their ages — Rasche is 78, McGinley is 64, which sounds like a big gap, but, hey, Michael McKean played Bob Odenkirk’s brother, so, ya know, Hollywood magic and so forth, good enough.

McGinley, despite his reputation as the Patron Saint of Shark Jumping, is a national treasure, as he reminded us with his portrayal of the D-Man. As for Rasche, well, he’s now paying off that stock I bought the first time Sledge Hammer shot a hole in my screen.

What would the premise be? Doesn’t really matter. I just want them to play brothers. But if I must suggest something: They’ve both just gotten divorced and their wives are keeping the houses so they get an apartment together, two 70-ish bachelor brothers back in the game. We can’t call it The Disgusting Brothers, unfortunately. But we can call it anything else.

I really don’t have too much to add here. This is just a really great email. I like that Eric thought all of this and then said “I bet Brian would like this” and then he typed it all out and sent it to me. The best part is that he sent it a few weeks ago, before I even wrote my ode to Karl, the character Rasche plays on Succession. Another one of those emails that really makes me feel like I’m doing something right out here. Terrific vibes.

Anyway, my only requests for this show are as follows:

• They live on a golf course
• They have a neighbor played by Joe Pera
• The ex-wives are played by Jennifer Coolidge and Catherine O’Hara and they become friends, too

I would binge this all in one weekend.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To England!

The most menacing animal at the Blackpool Zoo in England isn’t in a cage. It’s flying overhead.

I promise you all that you do not know where this is headed. Unless you read the article earlier in the week. Then you do. But be quiet and don’t ruin the surprise for everyone else. It’s too good. I mean, like, look at this entire paragraph.

Seagulls have been diving down to rip hot dogs and hamburgers from the hands of visitors, sometimes biting their hands. It has gotten so bad, the zoo has hatched a plan: Hire someone to walk around in an eagle costume to spook the seagulls and keep them at bay.

Perfect. From beginning to end. Because it starts out with the objectively great visual of seagulls dive-bombing out of the sky and absconding with entire hot dogs that had once belonged to now very startled British people, and then it somehow improves on that in the next sentence by introducing the concept of a man or woman in an eagle costume running around the zoo flapping its wings to scare away lunch-snatching seagulls.

This is already better than most of the television shows I watch. Hell, it is a television show I would watch. A workplace comedy about a zoo dealing with repeated seagull attacks. Parks and Recreation but with more animals. I was joking when I started this paragraph but now I’m serious. This happens a lot.

“They love ice cream,” he said. “They’ll take the whole cone and swallow it in just one go.”

The birds even got a taste for indoor dining. Mr. Fawzy said automatic doors had to be removed because the seagulls learned how to work the sensors and wander into the cafe.

ZOO EMPLOYEE: [running into office, out of breath] Sir…

ZOO MANAGER: What is it, Johnson?

ZOO EMPLOYEE: [gasping, covered in peck wounds] The seagulls, sir… they’ve… they’ve…

ZOO MANAGER: Dammit, Johnson, spit it out!

ZOO EMPLOYEE: [sweating, voice cracking] They’ve… they’ve learned how to open the automatic doors, sir…

ZOO MANAGER: [cigar falls out of mouth] Mother of God.

The job pays £8 an hour, or about $10 an hour, for those between 16 and 20 years old, a zoo spokeswoman said. Those 21 years and older make £2.80 more an hour. Mr. Fawzy said about 200 applications have come in, including some from as far away as Uganda.

It’s really very exciting to me that a handful of teens from England and around the world are, a decade or two from now, going to be able to explain to someone that their summer job in high school was to dress up like an eagle at the zoo and flap their fake wings furiously in an attempt to scare away dessert-thieving seagulls. Hell of an icebreaker on a first date.

Yesterday, I was so distracted by quotes like “I was absolutely baffled that Aquaman was received so well” and “Han Solo! Indiana Jones! Bro!” that I neglected to mention the most important part of the time that Men’s Health spent with Jason Momoa: his naked bike ride.

In “Jason Momoa Shows Off His Gym & Fridge,” the Fast X star, well, shows off his gym and fridge — and his body. The video begins with Momoa answering the door while holding a Guinness and wearing nothing but a pink robe; his genitals are censored by a bottle of his liquor, Meili Vodka. Later, he shows his fridge, the contents of which include more beer, more vodka, and ham. “Gotta have the pork,” Momoa says. Speaking of meat…

At one point, Momoa shows off his variety of mountain and riding bikes before deciding to hop on one completely in the nude. “Yeah I like to mountain bike, like to go downhill fast,” Momoa says as he bumps up and down on his bike with — once again — a Meili bottle graphic covering his private parts. The Game of Thrones alum then continues riding in circles around his rustic gym and eventually flashes the camera with his bare bum on the bike seat.

Momoa also showed off his record collection, which includes albums from Howlin’ Wolf, Nirvana, and Slayer. He’s never been more relatable (mostly the Slayer-listening, beer-drinking part, not so much the nude bike riding).

You can watch “Jason Momoa Shows Off His Gym & Fridge” (which could be the title of an SNL sketch) above.

French Montana’s journey toward achieving mainstream international success has not been easy. The “Ain’t Worried About Nothin’” rapper is ready to showcase the trials and tribulations on full display in his forthcoming documentary For Khadija. Executive produced by fellow musician Drake and his record label’s founder Diddy, the film includes never-scene-before clips of the recording artist’s start in the rap game, growing up in the South Bronx, his return to his native country Morocco, and more. Artists like Drake and Fat Joe make appearances in the trailer.

Pulling it’s name from Montana’s mother, Khadija Guled, the film’s trailer is a heartbreaking look at the high and lows of his career thus far.

“Us watching America as kids, they sell you the dream. They don’t show you that behind those buildings, there’s the nightmare part,” declared Montana. From his time as a street dealer, to the imprisonment of his longtime friend and collaborator Max B, dealing with the emotional scarring the abandonment of his father left him with, For Khajida leaves no stone unturned.

With everyone celebrated victory, Montana has quietly battled a few losses proving that everything that a life in the limelight isn’t always glitter and gold.

For Khadija is slated to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. For more information, click here.

Watch the trailer above.