This morning, Shaky Knees announced that Manchester Orchestra “will no longer be performing this Friday due to illness.” Their Piedmont stage slot will be occupied by Killer Mike instead, beginning at 6:30 p.m. local time and leading into Yeah Yeah Yeahs at 8:30 p.m.
The full list of set times is available on Shaky Knees’ official website. Doors will open at 11:30 a.m. each day.
On Friday, Peachtree stage will welcome Songs For Kids (11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.), Matt Maltese (12:45-1:30 p.m.), Lovejoy (2:15-3 p.m.), Cautious Clay (3:45-4:30 p.m.), Grouplove (5:30-6:30 p.m.), Greta Van Fleet (7:20-8:30 p.m.), and The Killers (9:30-11 p.m.).
Come Saturday, May 6, Muse will also handle the Peachtree stage at 9:30-11 p.m. Tenacious D will perform on the Piedmont stage from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., and Soccer Mommy will perform on the Criminal Records stage from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Sunday, May 7, will see the likes of Hozier (6:30-7:30 p.m.) and The Lumineers on the Peachtree stage (8:30-10 p.m.), The Flaming Lips on the Piedmont stage (7:30-8:30 p.m.), and The Walkmen on the Ponce De Leon stage (7:30-8:30 p.m.).
See the full lineup as original announced below, and find more information about the 10-year anniversary festival here.
Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Post Malone is about to become the latest star to be honored with the Songwriters Hall Of Fame’s Hal David Starlight Award, according to Variety. The award honors “gifted young songwriters who are making a significant impact in the music industry with their original songs.”
Past winners of the award have included Lil Nas X, who received the award last year and gave a cheeky speech, Drake, Taylor Swift, John Legend, Alicia Keys, and John Mayer. The Hal David Starlight Award is named after the former Songwriters Hall Of Fame chairman and was created in 2004 inspired by his support of young songwriters.
Of this year’s honoree current SHOF chairman Nile Rodgers said, “Over the last few years I have had the pleasure of watching Posty become one of the biggest artists in the world and he’s done it by writing phenomenal songs. Way before Post Malone was a superstar, he was a great songwriter, and this is his first step into the Songwriters Hall of Fame!”
Meanwhile, this year’s class of Hall Of Fame inductees includes Glen Ballard, Gloria Estefan, Jeff Lynne, Liz Rose, Sade, Snoop Dogg, and Teddy Riley. The Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction and Awards Dinner is scheduled for June 15 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York.
When Warren Zevon was nominated (for the first time!) this year for induction in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, I did not expect him to get in. The class was too strong, I thought. And Zevon — a long-dead singer-songwriter who never had a No. 1 hit or much of a media profile — was easily the least famous or successful person nominated. And fame and success tend to matter the most in these situations, I reasoned. (Artistic quality is also relevant, but only in relation to how well known you are.) Plus, his voice is weird, his past is problematic, and his songs are acidic and sardonic and pop unfriendly.
Don’t get your hopes up, I told myself.
But in recent weeks, against my better judgement, I let myself be optimistic. Zevon did well in the fan vote. Influential admirers like Billy Joel and David Letterman campaigned on his behalf. Experts who prognosticate about the Rock Hall predicted that he would make it. Hell, even I publicly endorsed the man.
Alas, my original instincts were correct. I am not about to slander any of the people who were inducted this week. There are all worthy honorees. They are legends, icons, geniuses … and also much more famous and successful than Warren Zevon. It really is as simple as that. In the end, there just aren’t enough people — at the moment! — who know about this guy.
Now, the very reason I even cared in the first place about Warren Zevon getting into the Rock Hall was that it would expose his music to a wider audience. But in order to get in the Rock Hall you must already have access to a wide audience. It’s the same Catch-22 that has kept countless other artists below the mainstream radar out of this institution.
But I’m not going to complain about this. Instead, I will do my part to fix the problem. For those who are unfamiliar with Warren Zevon, I have put together a guide to his music. I promise that once you hear the man, you will be interested. Because Warren Zevon is an extremely interesting person! What if I told you that his father was a bookie nicknamed “Stumpy” who was also a known associate of the gangster Mickey Cohen? How about the factoid that, at age 13, he befriended the great Russian composer Igor Stravinsky? Or that his songs have been covered by both Bob Dylan and GG Allin?
This is not just another boring classic rocker. Warren Zevon is one-of-a-kind and — if you excuse the cliché — the embodiment of whatever “rock ‘n’ roll” is supposed to mean.
So, let’s discuss his career!
ZEVON 101
The obvious starting point for neophytes is 1976’s Warren Zevon, his breakthrough second LP. Along with including several of his most beloved songs, it’s also the tone setter for the rest of his work. Warren Zevon is populated by the sorts of romantic outlaws, anti-social rejects, doomed dreamers, and heartbroken cynics that can be found on his other albums. And it is very much preoccupied with a film noir version of Los Angeles, where the glow of the sun and the klieg lights illuminate an underlying moral rot that is pervasive and profound. From here on out moral rot will be one of Zevon’s great subjects.
The record immediately established him as a “songwriter’s songwriter” in a city full of multi-millionaire musical bards. Produced by Jackson Browne — who befriended Zevon in 1968 back when he was floundering in a folk-rock duo with the comically twee moniker of lyme and cybelle — Warren Zevon features a galaxy of L.A. stars, including members of The Eagles (Don Henley and Glenn Frey) and Fleetwood Mac (Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham) as well as Bonnie Raitt and Carl Wilson of The Beach Boys. But if Zevon was accepted as part of an artistic community, he also made it clear that he was decidedly different from his peers.
As a writer, he was uncommonly sophisticated, both lyrically and musically. “The French Inhaler” is a dual narrative that simultaneously addresses the mythos of Marilyn Monroe and the failure of Zevon’s first serious romantic relationship. “Desperadoes Under The Eaves” — the consensus pick among fans and critics for his best composition — similarly manages to be a personal statement of resolve inspired by Zevon’s long professional wilderness period in the early ’70s and a broader observation about his debauched adopted hometown. As a piece of music, “Desperadoes” affects a near-orchestral sweep that drew upon his background in classical music. (Completing a symphony remained one of Zevon’s unrealized musical ambitions.) Elsewhere, he mocked the myopia of his peers in songs like “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” in which a Lothario complains about all of the beautiful women who just won’t leave him alone, and “Join Me In L.A.,” a sarcastic take-off on the utopian fantasies of Scott McKenzie’s hippie era anthem “San Francisco” from a decade prior.
But what really separated Zevon from the rest of the L.A. pack is a sensibility that feels adjacent to punk. This isn’t exactly true in a musical sense, especially on the relatively mellow Warren Zevon. (Though it should be noted that “Carmelita,” a country rock/mariachi hybrid about a heroin-addicted writer in love with a Mexican woman, was the one that GG Allin covered.) But the punk label does apply to Zevon in terms of attitude.
Zevon did not flatter the audience or present himself as an inherently sympathetic figure, and that made him an utterly untypical 1970s singer-songwriter. When his friend Jackson Browne wrote about the wreckage of his personal life, the process was ennobling — it made him seem sensitive and insightful. It felt like he was the hero of his songs. Zevon was not that kind of writer. He dragged his listeners directly into his personal muck, and he made the muck feel like muck. And this did not make him seem noble. In fact, he could be almost recklessly unconcerned with coming across like an asshole in his songs. This fearless candor in regard to the darkest parts of his life and psyche would become another trademark.
Warren Zevon was critically acclaimed and put him on the map, particularly after one of the era’s biggest pop stars, Linda Ronstadt, covered “Hasten Down The Wind,” “Poor Poor Pitiful Me,” and “Carmelita” in 1976 and ’77. This allowed Zevon to live what he described in retrospect as “the noir life – vodka, drugs, sex.” And, not for the first or last time, that lifestyle almost killed him. (“I thought my days were numbered in fractions,” he later remarked.) It was during this period that he wrote the songs for his next LP, 1978’s Excitable BoyWhile Warren Zevon gave him prestige, the looser and harder rocking Excitable Boy made him an FM radio mainstay thanks to the title track, the riotous “Lawyers, Guns, And Money,” and especially “Werewolves Of London.”
The success of the latter track was something of a mixed bag. The song’s barrelhouse piano riff and Zevon’s snarling vocal spotlighted his charismatic swashbuckling side, but it was also a novelty tune that presented a somewhat reductive version of his music. On the album, “Werewolves Of London” is followed by one of his finest ballads, “Accidentally Like A Martyr,” which presents a “regretful introvert” counterbalance to Zevon’s hell-raising bravado on the previous track. This push-pull between his demons and his conscience is the main narrative thread running through his work. Raging Saturday nights are always accompanied by hungover Sunday mornings on Warren Zevon albums.
Excitable Boy did well, but it sold peanuts compared to Hotel California, Rumours, and all the other blockbusters his compatriots were making in the ’70s. Compared with his friends, Zevon would always be a marginal figure in the pop mainstream. And this — despite what some members of the Zevon cult might want to believe — was not a professional profile he enjoyed. He sought fame right up until the end of his life, when he cannily recognized that the tragic downturn of his health could be leveraged as a publicity opportunity.
For his final album, 2003’s The Wind — released just a week and a half before his death from lung cancer at age 56 — Zevon instructed his management to “use my illness in any way that you see fit to further my career right now,” according to the 2007 book I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon. (More on that book later.) His highest profile media appearance was an historic visit to The Late Show With David Letterman in October of 2002, in which he discussed his grim prognosis with the same gallows humor he long exhibited in his songs. (“I lived like Jim Morrison,” he confesses at one point, “and then lived another 30 years.”) He also coined the phrase that became his epitaph, “Enjoy every sandwich,” and sang three songs for what turned out to be his final public performance.
The album has the same self-conscious sense of mortality, as well as a sentimental streak that is absent from his other records. That, of course, is understandable given the gravity of Zevon’s personal circumstances. It would probably be dishonest for a man at the end of his life not to write a heartfelt farewell like “Keep Me In Your Heart.” Though The Wind also has moments that are simultaneously harrowing and darkly funny, like the cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” which starts off like a sick joke and then transforms into a literal plea for spiritual salvation.
The most heartwarming aspect of The Wind is the number of legends — Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Don Henley, Emmylou Harris — who turned out to help him make it, which bookends the album nicely with Warren Zevon. And while he didn’t live to see how The Wind was received, the publicity worked: The album went gold, and it garnered five Grammy nominations, including Song Of The Year for “Keep Me In Your Heart.” Zevon, posthumously, won two awards.
ZEVON ADVANCED STUDIES
While The Wind remains his most mainstream album, the inspirational “Enjoy every sandwich” aspect of his persona stands in stark relief with the self-destructive posture he struck in his prime. If you’re looking for that Zevon, head straight to 1980’s Stand In The Fire, a hellacious live album recorded the same year at The Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood.
The case for Zevon being the antithesis of the typical laidback L.A. singer-songwriter starts here. On the cover, a bleary-eyed photo of Zevon thrusting out his crotch makes him resemble the devil himself, an image entirely appropriate for the music contained within. Apparently the mood in the audience was pandemonium — audience members were literally brawling in the bathroom — and that translates to the action on stage, where Zevon acts like a cross of Jerry Lee Lewis, Keith Richards, and the ’80s era shock talk show host Morton Downey Jr. After listening to Stand In The Fire, you might be amazed that Zevon didn’t die sooner.
The tour documented on Stand In The Fire was in support of Zevon’s fourth LP, Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School, which failed to capitalize on the success of Excitable Boy. While it doesn’t have an obvious radio hit in the mold of “Werewolves Of London,” it does have “Play It All Night Long,” a classic anthem about a dysfunctional redneck family in which Zevon manages to make the word “brucellosis” sound musical. The rest of the album similarly eschews the accessible rock of the previous record for more inscrutable fare — delicate musical interludes commingle with the head-banging self-flagellation of the title track (the refrain of “swear to God I’ll change” was another personal mantra) and the eccentric New Wave pop of “Gorilla, You’re A Desperado.” The album’s weakest track, a limp cover of Allen Toussaint’s “A Certain Girl,” was the first single, which speaks to his questionable commercial instincts at the time.
In 1981, Rolling Stone put Zevon on the cover. In the photo, he’s posed spread-eagle in a manner that makes it look like he’s being ripped apart. That he was on the cover of at all was a minor miracle — not only because he was already past his commercial peak, but also because Jann Wenner had once vowed to ban him from his magazine after he witnessed a drunken and crazed Zevon acting out backstage at a Bruce Springsteen concert. But the frankly astonishing article, written by Zevon’s close friend Paul Nelson, promised that he was now on the straight and narrow. Though what ultimately stands out are the horrific details about the depths of Zevon’s addiction, which are shared with a level of honesty that would be unthinkable in a modern celebrity profile.
“From what I know about alcoholism,” he says at one point, “I’d say there’s nothing romantic, nothing grand, nothing heroic, nothing brave — nothing like that about drinking. It’s a real coward’s death.”
What’s amazing about the Rolling Stone piece is that Zevon’s substance abuse actually got worse in the mid-’80s. And you can tell when you listen to 1982’s The Envoy, a record so shrill and punishing in places that it can only be the product of a man who is gakked-up beyond all recognition. The song that seems most representative of his headspace is “Ain’t That Pretty At All,” a screaming expression of nihilism in which he declares “I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.” But there are Sunday mornings here as well — “Let Nothing Come Between Us” is as sweet as “Ain’t That Pretty At All” is bitter. Pitched somewhere in the middle is “The Hula Hula Boys,” about a husband who is humiliated when his wife has her way with the hotel staff while on vacation in Hawaii. In true Zevon fashion, it’s a comic concept that he’s also able to play for genuine pathos.
After The Envoy, Zevon decamped to Philadelphia for an extended “lost weekend” that lasted until he sobered up in 1986. Now a decade removed from Warren Zevon, he was faced with the tall task of putting his life and career back together. The following year, he responded with one of his greatest records, 1987’s Sentimental Hygiene. Once again, his famous friends showed up: Neil Young plays guitar on the title track, Bob Dylan blows some harp on “Factory,” and Don Henley sings on “Trouble Waiting To Happen.” (Even Flea pops up to play slap bass on “Leave My Monkey Alone.”) But the most crucial guest stars are from R.E.M. — guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry act as his backing band, which gives the album a rougher and more youthful feel compared with the slick L.A. studio cats who populate his records from the Carter administration. (Three-fourths of R.E.M. also joined Zevon for the side project Hindu Love Gods, whose self-titled 1990 LP is a fun but minor curio with a cool Prince cover.)
As a writer, Zevon naturally addressed his tenuous sobriety directly in “Detox Mansion” and indirectly in “Reconsider Me,” a devastating ballad in which he promises to one of the many women he’s wronged that he will “never make you sad again / ‘Cause I swear that I’ve changed since then.” Anyone worried that a clean Zevon had lost his edge only had to listen to “Boom Boom Mancini,” a brutal story song about the real-life boxer who mistakenly killed the South Korean fighter Duk-koo Kim in the ring in 1982. Not the kind of figure that most songwriters would empathize with, but a quintessential Warren Zevon protagonist through and through.
By the end of the ’80s, Zevon didn’t have the budget to tour with a band. So he hit the road as a solo act and played any market that would have him. Known as a piano player, the acoustic troubadour era is captured vividly on 1993’s Learning To Flinch. In the case of “Splendid Isolation” – an all-time Warren Zevon song stranded on 1989’s Transverse City — he managed to improve on the studio version. An ode to the type of reclusive lifestyle to which he was drawn, “Splendid Isolation” shouts out Georgia O’Keefe and Michael Jackson as inspirations as Zevon slowly reveals the paranoia and loneliness endemic to the loner’s way of life.
Then again, Zevon was now forced by financial constraints to work by himself. On 1995’s Mutineer, he recorded at home and played most of the instruments. The result is a fascinating (and weirdly moving) combination of cheap, rinky-dink sonics and rich, mature songwriting. The title track became one of his most enduring songs, with covers by Dylan and Jason Isbell, among others. But Zevon’s version remains the most affecting, if only for how his voice breaks as he reaches for the high note in the chorus. A love song posed in the language of a crime at sea, “Mutineer” is about putting the person you love ahead of yourself, a sentiment delivered in a manner that somehow doesn’t come across as sentimental. The song is understated but attentive about the ways that committed partners communicate. Like when Zevon sings, “Grab your coat, let’s get out of here,” an invitation that is as casual as it is incredibly romantic.
The next Warren Zevon record, 2000’s Life’ll Kill Ya, is also the strangest in terms of what happened to him afterward. Released two years before his cancer diagnosis, it sounds like the work of a man who already knows he’s living on borrowed time. The signature track, “My Shit’s Fucked Up,” essentially predicted his own fateful doctor’s visit, and the surprisingly effective cover of Steve Winwood’s “Back In The High Life Again” sounds like a preview of The Wind. Calling the album prescient is a massive understatement, though the reality is that Zevon’s death obsession was just a byproduct of his overall reflective mood at the time. Take “Hostage-O,” perhaps the tenderest song ever written about S&M, which Zevon described as a sequel to “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”
PH.D.-LEVEL ZEVON
One of the most interesting — and obscure — corners of Zevon’s career is his output in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when it was finally clear that he was never going to be rock star. Zevon reacted by making Transverse City, a quasi-concept album about cultural decay aided and abetted by omnipresent technology. Inspired by the cyberpunk science fiction of William Gibson, Zevon’s pre-internet musings occasionally are ahead of their time, especially the proto-social media portrait “Networking.” But the production inextricably bounds the album to its era, though like Neil Young’s Trans, the janky synth tones have aged from “bad” to “charming” over the course of time.
Zevon’s next studio effort, 1991’s Mr. Bad Example, was an attempt to retrench. Even more than Sentimental Hygiene, this record sounds like Zevon emulating the style of his ’70s records. Which is hardly a bad thing, even if the songs rarely reach that standard. This was the era when Letterman really emerged as a crucial benefactor, putting Zevon on his show on a semi-regular basis even if most of his audience only knew him as the “Werewolves Of London” guy. (This super-cut of Zevon appearances on Letterman’s show runs for an hour and 45 minutes, and is one of my most reliable “before bed” watches.) And Letterman kept up with his hero’s output — decades later, he still cited “Searching For A Heart” as a personal favorite.
If you have gotten this far, you definitely need to read Crystal Zevon’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead. In the annals of rock books, it is utterly unprecedented: Neither a straight biography nor an unauthorized tell-all, it is an oral history corralled by Zevon’s ex-wife that Zevon himself asked her to write before he died. And she responded by documenting his monstrous behavior — the substance abuse, the domestic violence, the womanizing, the self-interest at the expense of his family — as well as his genius artistry and post-sobriety kindness and sensitivity. It has to be the most complete biographical portrait that any public figure has consented to be put forward, and it mirrors the unflinching honestly of Zevon’s songs.
ZEVON EXTRA CREDIT
Warren Zevon feels like his proper debut, but his actual first album, Wanted Dead Or Alive, came out in 1970. The most well-known song, “She Quit Me,” landed on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack, but like the rest of the record, it sounds like generic late ’60s boogie rock. It took several more years of woodshedding before he mastered his own style.
The only other Zevon album that doesn’t really land is 2002’s My Ride’s Here, the rare example where his stylistic tics feel like shtick. (Co-writing a song with Mitch Albom probably didn’t help.) Then again, Bruce Springsteen recorded a cover of the title track for the 2004 tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich — The Songs Of Warren Zevon, so what do I know?
Much better is 2007’s Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings, which collects demos that were discovered posthumously from his pre-Warren Zevon era. While mainly of interest to die-hards, Preludes does include some pretty great previously unreleased songs, particularly “Studebaker,” a tribute to “a misbegotten car” that could be a metaphor for Zevon’s career.
Some of my favorite Zevon music isn’t on proper albums — the bootleg of his 9/29/82 gig in Boston plays like a longer and more nuanced version of Stand In The Fire, with excellent performances of songs from the bulk of his late ’70s and early ’80s albums. In terms of drama, it’s hard to beat this recording of a show in Milwaukee from the Life’ll Kill Ya era. The audience heckles him throughout, demanding to hear his early hits. But Zevon soldiers on, joking about how this will be his last tour.
If it were anyone else, the situation might seem pathetic. For Zevon, however, the environment is, if not ideal, at least nothing he can’t handle. A professional wrestler of inner demons, on his night he is triumphant over the external adversity. Even in defeat, he wins.
If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.
Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.
Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3
ACUVUEhas been encouraging people to take time off social media and use their newfound time to see their vision, whether that’s becoming a makeup influencer, focusing on athletics or embracing their unique talents.
Upworthy caught up with influencer, YouTube star and contact lens wearer Amber Alexander to talk about how she balances her social media use. Recently, she took a social media break while visiting her sister.
“I was able to slow down time and take in each moment,” she told Upworthy. “Being on social media 24/7 always puts me in a very overwhelmed and anxious state of mind, so it was so refreshing to put my phone down and see life from a clearer perspective. Every moment felt more meaningful.”
“As soon as I put my phone away, I was able to really connect with my family and cherish our time together. I saw how my peace of mind improved when I took a break from social media,” she continued.
Alexander understands how social media can have a huge effect on her self-esteem and productivity.
“Scrolling through social media often leads people to compare their own lives, achievements, and physical appearance to people they see online,” she told Upworthy. “It is unrealistic and discouraging to see so many attractive, successful people online 24/7. Also, being on social media takes up so much time from our day that could be used socializing with real people, going outside, and working towards meaningful goals.”
ACUVUE is challenging young people to take social media breaks to pursue their purposes, visions, missions, and dreams through its Where Vision Meets Sight campaign. But the campaign from ACUVUE is about a lot more than just personal development. They’d like you to inspire others by sharing what you’ve done during your social media break by using #MyVisionMySight.
2Tsubota K, Nakamori K. Dry eyes and video display terminals. N Engl J Med. 1993;328(8):584. doi: 10.1056/NEJM199302253280817.
3Patel S, Henderson R, Bradley L, et al. Effect of visual display unit use on blink rate and tear stability. Optom Vis Sci 1991;68(11):888-892. doi: 10.1097/00006324-199111000-00010.
The way words get added to a language is an endlessly fascinating topic. Most English root words originate from Latin and Greek, but we also excel at borrowing from languages around the world.
Some of our words are just weird, though. For instance, “pineapple.” Rather than calling the delicious yellow fruit with pokey leaves “ananas” like most of the world, our ancestors apparently took a look at one and decided, “Eh, kinda looks like a pinecone. But it’s clearly a fruit. How about we call it a ‘pineapple’?”
A video creator who goes by @thejazzemu made a hilarious song exploring what would happen if we named other words the way we named “pineapple”—by combining two words with “minimal conceptual link”—and it’s a silly feast of musical and etymological brilliance.
Take the word “curtain” and change it into “windowwink.” So much more fun and descriptive. What about calling a banana a “hotdoglemon” instead? Utterly delightful.
Watch how the Jazz Emu pineapple-izes several English words in a clever, catchy and chaotically over-the-top song:
The most OFFENSIVE word in the English Language? #offense #word #language #cancelculture #pineapple #linguistics #fyp #foryou #help
People have tuned in millions of times to view the video, and the comments on YouTube explain why.
“Morninggravel almost made me spit out my morninggravel,” wrote Steve.
“This is my favorite sound-dance. When I’m on the poop-throne, in the rain-box, or at my money-slaver, I enjoy listening to it. Gets the meat-paddle-tips tapping,” wrote Joshua Shupe.
“‘When every other language said ananas English panicked and mentally combined the concept of a pine cone with frikkin’ apple’ is a structurally-delicious sentence,” shared Ashanna Redwolf.
“Damn….why is this song so catchy? Also, why am I so entranced by this ‘dance’ that goes along with it?” wrote ChrisJMP88.
Seriously, though. We need a full-length version on Spotify, please.
Believe it or not, the actual history of the word “pineapple” is even weirder than what is relayed here. According to Merriam-Webster, the seeded part of a pine tree that we now refer to as a pinecone actually used to be called a “pineapple.” Yes, really. So the word pineapple actually predates pinecone—it just happened to stick to the fruit.
Why would a pinecone be called a pineapple in the first place? Merriam-Webster explains that the practice of calling any foreign fruit, vegetable or nut an “apple” stems from ancient times. For example, a peach was first known as a “Persian apple,” and a pomegranate’s initial name meant “an apple with many seeds.” So even though a pinecone wasn’t technically a fruit, it was still referred to as a “pineapple”…that is until it became a pinecone and the fruit forever claimed “pineapple” for itself.
Words are just so wacky. I vote that we just call things whatever we want and let people figure out what we mean.
On May 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, Carrie Fisher is getting a long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In honor of the occasion, Mark Hamill paid tribute to his late co-star, the Leia to his Luke. “I was completely unprepared for the person I met, who just was overwhelming, in the sense that she seemed so much wiser than her years,” he told Variety. “Very funny, very spontaneous, very witty.” Don’t forget that she had a very good dog.
Hamill said Fisher was “the perfect person in the perfect role. She was as far from a damsel in distress as you could get. She was in charge of her own rescue. I think that first impression that the audience got really established how they perceived Carrie overall, and she just grew from there.”
Fisher passed away in 2016, and Hamill still has a hard time thinking of her in the past tense. “There are people that you encounter in life that are so vibrant and make such a profound impact on you, they stay with you forever,” he said. “Had she only done Princess Leia, that would be enough. Had she just written one book, that alone would be something that would be enough to satisfy someone who wanted to make a mark on the world. But she did it from every different direction… She really was just such an original.”
You can watch Fisher’s Walk of Fame ceremony here.
In 2010, Robin Williams randomly appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch that was particularly unusual for the comedic actor because it involved him barely saying a word. When you book Robin Williams, you let him do his Robin Williams thing, which usually entails lots of talking and flying out of his seat.
However, Williams was surprisingly game for the cameo, and Kenan Thompson recently revealed how the whole thing happened thanks to a last minute cancellation. According to Thompson, an unnamed celebrity backed out of appearing in his “What Up With That?” sketch that involves Thompson’s talk show host constantly interrupting his guests and never giving them a chance to talk. Whoever is sitting in the second seat really gets the brunt of it, and that’s the spot Thompson needed to fill.
As the story goes, Lorne Michaels knew Williams was in town and floated the legendary actor as a quick fix.
“He was like, ‘You should ask Robin,’” [Thompson] said. “I was like, ‘I should ask Robin? I should just go ask Robin Williams to just sit in my sketch and not say a word? Like, seriously?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I was like, ‘S—.’”
But Thompson need not worry, because Williams instantly accepted the role. “I went and talked — I didn’t even finish my sentence — he was just like, ‘Absolutely,’” he said. “He was just an angel. That was crazy.”
Not only did Williams join the sketch, but he stuck to the concept and only spoke a handful of lines while sitting next to the real Robert De Niro and Bill Hader impersonating Lindsey Buckingham.
The 2023 inductees to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame were announced this week, and although at least one of the names included was a groundbreaking first for hip-hop, one of rap’s most pioneering groups was left out for the second year in a row. A Tribe Called Quest was eligible as of 2015 (People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm was released in 1990) but wasn’t nominated until 2022. The group has been officially defunct since 2016, with the death of founding member Phife Dawg and the release of their final album, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service.
Former group member Consequence had plenty to say about what he perceived as a snub, telling TMZ, “This is the family tree for me. This the tree that brought you G.O.O.D Music. This the tree that allowed Common Sense to be Common. This is the right-hand man to De La Soul. Stop me when I’m lying. What we not gonna do is keep subjugating that name, A Tribe Called Quest, to a white popularity contest.” However, his sour grapes didn’t stop him from congratulating Missy Elliott, the first female rapper to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
This year’s induction ceremony is planned for November 3 at the Barclays Center in New York, which the broadcast to be announced at a future date.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
This one is pretty straightforward: The Broken Lizard comedy troupe, the wonderful little sickos that brought you movies like Super Troopers and Beerfest, are back once again, this time with a goofball feature-length take on the Middle Ages and the tale of Quasimodo. If that sounds like something you think you’ll enjoy, well… uh, it’s here now. Really just terrific news for you. And the Broken Lizard guys, who are still out there doing it. Good news for everybody. Congratulations to us all.
Amazon’s latest big-budget, globe-trotting binge-watch has plenty going for it. Sexy spies (hello Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas), intense action, an interesting (if a bit clunky) premise, and enough twists to keep you guessing until the end of its initial six-episode run. Will it change the game when it comes to espionage thrillers? Eh, probably not, but it’s got enough camp, and enough Stanley Tucci, to make it worth a watch.
Here’s the thing about Frog and Toad: they’re nice. They’re the Paddington of amphibians, and now the charming children’s book series has been turned into an Apple TV+ series starring Nat Faxon as Frog and Kevin Michael Richardson as Toad, as well as Ron Funches, Margaret Cho, Tom Kenny, and Aparna Nancherla, among other favorites. Succession is great and all, but sometimes you just want to watch a frog and a toad eat cookies, y’know?
Beef is about a road rage incident between two strangers, played by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong (it’s a Tuca and Bertie reunion!), that sparks a feud that unearths their darkest impulses. You will also have an impulse while watching Lee Sung Jin’s Netflix series: an impulse to binge the entire season in one day. Beef is getting a lot of Best TV Show of 2023 So Far buzz. Just don’t watch it on your phone while driving, OK? You don’t want to get into a Beef scenario in real life.
Awkwardness icon Dave Burd returns for the third season of Dave, taking Lil Dicky on the road for a star-studded cross-country adventure through the real America, spreading rhymes, sewing oats, and getting into trouble. The whole concept of the new season seems like a big swing that’s guaranteed to connect, taking Dave out of his more familiar setting while creating countless opportunities to have him go wild, free from the burdens of cutting a new album.
There’s a glut of good TV at the moment so even a modern remake of a bit of classic David Cronenberg-ian body horror needs some buzzwords to cut through the noise. Luckily, Dead Ringers has that. And we’ll list them out for you now: Rachel Weisz. Evil twins. Surrealist sci-fi. Fertility clinic. Power struggles. A shocking finale. And Rachel Weisz (again). Helmed by Alice Birch (Normal People) with a few episodes directed by horror maestro Karyn Kusama, this show takes Cronenberg’s central idea and gender-flips it, giving us twin obstetricians Beverly and Elliot Mantle whose day job sees them playing god at a cutting-edge fertility clinic. But, when their toxic relationship dynamics are threatened by both their professional success and personal entanglements, their bond reaches disturbing new depths.
Keri Russell isn’t quite an anxiety-provoking spy in this series, but this show does call back her old FX stomping grounds. Here, Russell portrays a career-consumed diplomat who’s also struggling to maintain a complicated marriage. Spy or not, this show still sits squarely within the same meat-and-potatoes, mainstream-appealing arena as the similarly-toned The Night Agent, so expect the binging to happen, along with the nostalgia associated with seeing Russell back on TV.
GLOW standout Betty Gilpin is teaming up with TV king Damon Lindelof in this seriously terrific show about a nun who fights an almighty algorithm. What’s not to enjoy about that, especially since it delivers upon a truly nutso premise? Gilpin plays Simone, not to be confused with the title character of the AI, and Margo Martindale co-stars as a booze-loving nun. If there’s anything that Damon Lindelof has taught us in his post-Lost days, you never know precisely what to expect from his projects. Never forget Lube Man.
We’re in a golden era of Hollywood satire, specifically when it comes to HBO’s offerings with Hacks and Barry (in and around all the murder and Chechen drug wars). Even Succession dips a toe into the mix from time to time (gotta get that franchise pump-pumpin!). But while The Other Two doesn’t have the same level of prestige or attention, nothing bites harder than this Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider created show that returns for its third season with the entire Dubek family thriving while also searching for meaning and connection.
Dystopian sci-fi has never been done quite like this before. In Apple TV+’s newest drama, a ruined and toxic future that forces humanity to dwell in underground silos hundreds of stories deep isn’t the antagonist of the story, it’s merely the setting. The real problem lies in a murderous cover-up whose unraveling threads reveal a bigger conspiracy when a scrappy mechanic (Rebecca Ferguson) and a disillusioned sheriff (David Oyelowo) start tugging in earnest. What is truth and who decides it are the questions this show is asking but even if the answers don’t come readily, the insane worldbuilding and thrilling action will leave you happy to keep guessing.
Peter Pan is back, once again, this time as a live-action movie on Disney that focuses the story more on Wendy. Peter is still there, though. As is Captain Hook. And Tinkerbell. All the classics are out here doing it again, which is actually kind of nice. Check out the story again, or for the first time, depending on your experience with Never Land and ageless swashbuckling children and evil mustachioed pirates. Again, it’s nice. You earned a fun little watch this weekend.
The Veep guys bring us the Watergate story that you never knew that you’d enjoy watching. Justin Theroux delivers a knockout performance in this David Mandel-directed adaptation of Egil Krogh and Matthew Krogh’s book, Integrity. In doing so, the team puts a satiric spin upon the experiences of Egil (played by Rich Sommer) during and after his time leading the Special Investigations Unit that was tasked with plugging information leaks. Yep, that’s where the “plumbers” comes from, and this show is fun and tragic but, fortunately, mostly fun.
Chris Evans plays a hot farmer who has an amazing date with a woman he near-instantly deems to be “the one” (aka Ana de Armas) before she ghosts him, sparking a “romantic gesture” that involves flying to London to surprise her. For that cringey overreach, Farmer Chris is surprised to find out that “the one” is a CIA operative who has to then spend the rest of the film dodging explodey chaos while saving his ass (and that’s America’s ass, remember). A high-action rom-com that aims to evoke the best of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Ghosted gives Evans a chance to play in something a little lighter while expanding de Armas’ killer No Time To Die action hero presence across an entire film.
It’s time to go back to the wilderness, where this season doubles down on the darkness and refuses to apologize for it. The show still puts forth one of the most solid examples of dual timelines in TV history. Not only that, but all four sets of leads are firing on all cylinders this year. Sure, Juliette Lewis can pull off this type of role in her sleep, but we love to see her do it. Christina Ricci chews everything up, and Melanie Lynskey is finally getting her due. Oh, and don’t forget about those earworms. Get ready for the return of the Antler Queen, gang. Spooky.
Break out your biscuits and put on your custom-bedazzled Diamond Dogs silk bomber jackets because the best mustache on TV is back, baby. This might be the last season of Ted Lasso which is a bittersweet pill to swallow but it’s best not to dwell on all of the loose ends still in need of tying. Ted wouldn’t. Instead, let’s just enjoy these characters as long as we have them. And hope something awful (but not irreversible) and humiliating (but appropriately so) and devastating (but ultimately life-changing in a positive way) happens to Nate “not so great” Shelley.
The internet’s comedy boyfriend has had a notably hectic few years; weathering a drug relapse, stint in rehab, divorce, and the birth of his and Olivia Munn’s first child, but he’s back on these streets and back on top with a new special that is as revelatory as it is hilarious and on par with his previous specials. In fact, while the subject matter of Baby J certainly goes to some different and maybe even uncomfortable places about Mulaney’s odyssey, his sensibilities and storytelling mastery are as sharp and present as ever, allowing him to somehow create a special that is charmingly accessible even while being highly personal and, at times, painting himself in a less than likable light.
What we have here is a Bridgerton prequel, a good one, that focuses on the real-life marriage of Charlotte to King George II, with the usual Bridgerton twist of Olde England being a racially integrated society. Shonda Rhimes serves as showrunner and gives it all the classic Rhimes-y snap and pizzazz, which works well with the show’s subject matter. If you like Bridgerton or history or a sexy/fizzy series about rich people who are kind of miserable, this might be your new favorite show… or at least a way to kill a rainy weekend.
The continuing fascination with the life and times of Pete Davidson, uh, continues with Bupkis, a new semi-autobiographical project (following King Of Staten Island) that promises some self-awareness and family dysfunction. And guest stars! In addition to the main cast featuring Edie Falco as Davidson’s mom/tenant and Joe Pesci as his grandfather, Bupkis promises appearances by John Mulaney (forgetting his child), Al Gore (throwing up the Wu-Tang sign), Ray Romano (alluding to his crotch), and Simon Rex (brandishing a golden gun). These are exaggerated versions of these very famous people, we’re almost certain. Almost.
Everyone’s favorite hitman-turned-actor-but-still-sometimes-hitman is back for a final season. Things get… bleak. Still funny, borderline silly in parts, but also just very, very bleak. As it probably should be given… you know… the murders that Barry has committed. A lot of them. Thank God we have NoHo Hank and Henry Winkler in there to break it all up for us. This is our last season with all of these maniacs. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Good news and bad news, ladies and gentlemen. The good: The cretins and weasels of Succession are back for a fourth season full of drama and dark comedy and more than a little delightful flailing by Cousin Greg. The bad: This is also the final season. So… you’re going to have to come to terms with that as things play out. It’s a lot to deal with, especially with the frenetic pace things have been and are shaking down. This is one of our best shows. It’s going to sting to say goodbye. But let’s all agree to enjoy the ride while we can.
Rihanna excited fans earlier this year when she finally discussed a new album during interviews about her Super Bowl halftime performance. “Musically, I’m feeling open. I’m feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new. Things that are different,” she explained.
Though there’s been no more information about new material, the star is making headlines today (May 4) for her new wax figure at Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam. The museum proudly shared a photo of the stunning figure on Instagram, in which she dons an attention-grabbing purple bodysuit and a confident facial expression, encapsulating Rihanna’s powerful vibe.
“Madame Tussauds proudly welcomes Rihanna’s wax figure to our attraction,” the caption reads. “Her beautiful outfit is based on her floral look for the Savage X Fenty show in 2020! Visit now and meet the stylish queen of pop in Amsterdam.”
The “Umbrella” singer turned heads at the Met Gala on Monday (May 1), though not without being fashionably late. In a red carpet interview, she described what her second pregnancy has been like: “It’s so different from the first one! Just everything,” she said. “All of my… no cravings, tons of nausea, everything’s different. But I’m enjoying it, I’m enjoying it. I feel good. I feel energetic.”
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