Month: October 2023

The Uproxx 2023 Fall Travel Hot List is live! Visit here for the full experience!

Fall is in the air and with that comes people preparing for the holiday travel season. While there’s still time to secure a cheap flight leading up to Thanksgiving, the winter holidays are right around the corner after this corner — posing a whole new set of potential travel woes. December is notorious for being the most expensive month of the year to travel, so your holiday plans may include dropping double or triple the dollars to make it home for Christmas Eve.

Knowing that the holidays pose extra stress on travelers, travel companies have started utilizing AI technology to help prospective travelers orchestrate the perfect trip. Earlier this year, new AI travel startup Tripnotes launched its “generative” model to help travelers plan their ultimate travel itinerary and maximize the most of their time. This technology offers an interesting starting point, to which intrepid travelers can add a “more personal, human touch.”

Just this week, KAYAK rolled out a holiday version of its popular Best Time To Travel Tool. The tool supposedly has over 8,000 routes worldwide that travelers can test to see when to book and find the cheapest days to fly for a four-day, seven-day, or 14-day trip. The tool promises to be as simple as entering your home airport, final destination, and length of travel. In return, KAYAK will theoretically recommend the cheapest days to depart and return for your holiday trip, even going as far as recommending the best time to book for the cheapest price.

This sounds great…in theory. Yet when we went ahead and tried it for six different routes, we kept getting an error message and were informed the tool “didn’t have sufficient data” to supply us with what it promised.

According to KAYAK’s website, the tool uses data derived from KAYAK’s internal historical searches for the winter holiday travel period, encompassing departure dates between December 15th to December 31st and return dates between December 26th to January 8th. Additionally, flight price forecasts are estimated based on KAYAK’s analysis of current and historical minimum roundtrip prices for a single travel in economy class, taking into consideration the projected departure and return dates.

Having lived in four states over four years, I’ve had my fair share of holiday travel difficulties trying to make it back home. To test out the tool, I tried plugging in my current home city of Asheville, NC to get some data on when to fly home to my Western New York hometown. Unfortunately, I was met with a dead end with no data available.

While annoying, it could make sense considering Asheville is only a small, regional airport.

I tried this for my previous home bases in Denver, CO, and Salt Lake City, UT, as over the years it was incredibly hard to secure a holiday flight for anything less than $600. I was still met with a dead end, which is troubling considering all three are international airports.

So what’s the catch here?

Basically, while it looks good on paper, the tool seems to lack quite a bit of what the common folk need to… actually use it. Most of its 8,000 routes come from the large airport hubs of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami. While these are great, many people aren’t necessarily flying into these cities to spend time with their families for the holiday season. There are definitely a lot of gaps and the tool doesn’t seem ready to be fully utilized by as many prospective holiday travelers as KAYAK might assume.

At this point, the world likely knows more about the intimate details of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s conscious uncoupling than the effects of climate change. The couple has been on a years-long press tour trying to redefine their complex relationship for fans — one that kicked off with Smith’s memoir, Will, and has continued with his wife’s follow-up, Worthy.

Jada’s been doing the media rounds, dropping tidbits about the couple’s seven-year-long separation, her reaction to the Chris Rock Oscar slap, and the romantic entanglements in between but, save a letter written by Will to his estranged wife, the actor hasn’t commented publicly on the book or its reception.

Until now.

Will, who looks to be filming a new adventure docuseries for Disney+, recorded a tongue-in-cheek reaction to Jada’s press tour. The video shows Will snoozing on a boat somewhere in the Arctic as notifications ping in the background as he shares the fun fact that he can sleep anywhere. The actor captioned the clip, “Notifications off :)”.

His wife seemed to enjoy the joke, posting a couple of laughing emojis of her own. And, while everything we’ve learned about their private life has been against our will, it’s still nice to see the pair supporting each other publicly as they open up about the kind of marital struggles that most Hollywood couples just don’t want to talk about.

The Memphis Grizzlies have earned a top-3 seed in the Western Conference each of the past two seasons, but are somewhat an afterthought heading into the 2023-24 season. There are a few reasons for that, most notably Ja Morant being suspended for 25 games and other West contenders having big offseasons, but this Grizzlies team is well-versed in ripping off wins in the regular season.

Where they haven’t had much success is in the playoffs, and the goal going forward is to figure out how to be better in the 16-game season to match their 82-game season success. Their young core is all locked in long-term, with Morant, Desmond Bane, and Jaren Jackson Jr. all being extended recently. The question entering this summer was what could they do to bolster their roster for the playoffs, and they took a big swing by trading Tyus Jones and a pair of future firsts to land Marcus Smart in a three-team deal. Smart brings real playoff experience to the roster as well as a point guard with plenty of experience playing on and off-ball, depending on what stars he’s paired with at any given time. That will be a useful skillset in Memphis, where lineups with he and Morant will move him off the ball, while he can also play backup point guard when Morant sits.

Whether Smart’s addition is enough to keep up in the West’s arms race remains to be seen, but Memphis is somewhat quietly lurking in the background out West coming into this season, hoping to again force people to take notice of them.

Biggest Question: How Well Can They Manage Ja Morant’s 25-Game Suspension?

There aren’t a lot of questions left for this Grizzlies team in the regular season after back-to-back campaigns, and much of what people want to see is whether they can become a more real threat to top West contenders come playoff time. However, they can only answer those questions if they’re a playoff team, and this year they will face a real challenge in securing a guaranteed playoff spot in a crowded West with the 25-game suspension for All-Star guard Ja Morant. Memphis has been very good in Morant’s absence in the past, navigating stretches without him due to various injuries, but going 25 straight games without Morant will put them to the test.

With Tyus Jones now in Washington, they no longer have their steady-handed backup able to run the show, and that means a lot is going to fall on the shoulders of Marcus Smart to pick things up quickly and establish early chemistry with his teammates. Smart is certainly capable of running the show for a playoff contender, but he’s coming from a place where he had a ton of reps and an unspoken bond with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Now he’ll have to quickly create that understanding with Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr., and there could be some hiccups along the way. In the long-run, I think the Smart trade was worthwhile for Memphis as he is an upgrade over Brooks and brings some real playoff experience and savvy to a roster that needs it. However, it’s not a guarantee that in the immediate absence of Morant things go as smoothly as they have in the past when the star guard has been out, and in what figures to be a very crowded race for the top-6 in the West, the Grizzlies will need to be able to tread water until he’s back.

X-Factor: Luke Kennard

For all of their talent, the Grizzlies still don’t have a ton of reliable three-point shooters. As a team, they were 23rd in the NBA in three-point percentage a year ago (35.1 percent, and only two of their returning players shot over 36 percent from deep a year ago. One of those is Desmond Bane, who has vaulted into stardom on the wing, at 40.8 percent from deep. The other is Luke Kennard, who shot an outrageous 54 percent from distance in his 24 appearances for Memphis in the regular season and knocked down 50 percent of his threes in their first round series loss to the Lakers. Lineups with Kennard were among the Grizzlies best last season, including in that playoff series with L.A., when five of their six best three-man lineups (out of their 25 most used) in terms of both offensive and net rating involved the sharpshooting wing.

The concern with Kennard is on the defensive end, which likely limited his minutes, but given his shooting is something they simply do not have anywhere else on this roster, the Grizzlies are likely going to need to expand his role some this season, especially with the departures of Dillon Brooks and Tyus Jones. That has thinned out the backcourt rotation a touch, even with the addition of Marcus Smart, and Kennard’s ability to open up the floor is going to be critical for Memphis come playoff time when there are fewer opportunities to run in transition and push the pace. Having a more dynamic halfcourt offense is vital for the Grizzlies if they’re going to be a real playoff threat in the West, and Kennard seems like the best bet to see an increased role to help open things up.

The question is whether he can remain as effective in more minutes (which is never a guarantee as more minutes mean more expended energy) and if the Grizzlies defense suffers at all. Playoff lineups featuring Kennard (in admittedly a very small sample) didn’t feature any real defensive struggles, in part due to Kennard almost always playing alongside quality defenders like Bane and the NBA’s DPOY. It certainly seems like Memphis needs more floor balance on the offensive end, and with plenty of good defenders on the roster like Bane, Jackson Jr., and now Smart, they can keep a strong defensive presence around their best offensive weapons like Kennard and, most notably, Morant. For Taylor Jenkins, the task will be figuring out what combinations work best come playoff time to try and raise the ceiling on what this Grizzlies team can be in the West.

Last month, Blink-182 surprised fans by announcing they’d be returning with a new album, One More Time… — and it’s dropping quite soon. With just a few more days to go until the rock group returns, some might be wondering what to expect with the record. Here’s everything to know.

Release Date

Blink-182’s new album is set to drop via Columbia this Friday, October 20. Find more information here. It’s been nearly a year since they teased it with their single, “Edging,” but the band dropped the official album reveal during an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe.

Tracklist

1. “Anthem Part 3”
2. “Dance With Me”
3. “Fell In Love”
4. “Terrified”
5. “One More Time”
6. “More Than You Know”
7. “Turn This Off!”
8. “When We Were Young”
9. “Edging”
10. “You Don’t Know What You’ve Got”
11. “Blink Wave”
12. “Bad News”
13. “Hurt (Interlude)”
14. “Turpentine”
15. “F*ck Face”
16. “Other Side”
17. “Childhood”

Singles

Given that Blink-182 has been leading up to the album’s rollout for a while, there have been a few early singles. Last October, “Edging” was the first preview of the record. Since then, they’ve also shared the title track (and a music video for it), “Dance With Me,” “More Than You Know,” and “Fell In Love.”

Artwork

One More Time…‘s cover artwork is still TBA.

Tour

Blink-182 spent most of this year playing across the globe on a massive tour, given the significance of Tom DeLonge rejoining. They still have a few more dates left over the next few months for fans who might be looking to catch them live.

10/21/2023 — Las Vegas, NV @ When We Were Young Festival
02/09/2024 — Perth, Western Australia @ RAC Arena!
02/11/2024 — Adelaide, South Australia @ Entertainment Centre!
02/13/2024 — Melbourne, Victoria @ Rod Laver Arena!
02/16/2024 — Sydney, New South Wales @ Qudos Bank Arena!
02/19/2024 — Brisbane, Queensland @ Entertainment Centre!
02/23/2024 — Auckland, NZ @ Spark Arena!
02/26/2024 — Christchurch, NZ @ Christchurch Arena!

! with Rise Against

During a wide-ranging panel at New York Comic-Con, director Matthew Vaughn opened up about the reason he walked away from X-Men: The Last Stand after initially being tapped to replace Bryan Singer for the third film.

At the time, the X-Men movies were a blockbuster franchise that foreshadowed Marvel’s ability to dominate the box office. However, the series wasn’t immune to Hollywood politics, and that’s a game Vaughn was not interested in playing. Particularly when it involves trying to pull a fast one on Halle Berry.

According to Vaughn, the situation went south when he discovered a fake script that was designed to trick Berry into signing on to the third X-Men film. She had expressed concerns about Storm’s portrayal in the previous installments, so apparently, the plan was to pretend those concerns were addressed — until they weren’t.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“I went into one of the executive’s office and I saw an X3 script, and I immediately knew it was a lot fatter. I was like what the hell is this draft. He went, ‘Don’t worry about it,’ and I’m like, ‘No, no. I’m the director. I’m worrying about this draft,’” he recalled. “He wouldn’t tell me, so I grabbed it literally — it was like a crazy moment — opened the first page, and it said, ‘Africa. Storm. Kids dying of no water. She creates a thunderstorm and saves all these children.’”

Vaughn actually liked what he read and thought it was a “pretty cool idea.” Then the bottom fell out.

“[I went,] ‘What is this?’ [They said,] ‘Oh, it’s Halle Berry’s script. I went, ‘OK, because she hasn’t signed up yet.’ ‘But this is what she wants it to be, and once she signs up, we’ll throw it in the bin,’” Vaughn recalled. “I was like, ‘Wow, you’re gonna do that to an Oscar-winning actress who plays Storm? I’m outta here.’ So I quit at that point.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Pete Davidson’s SNL hosting gig happened nearly six months after it was originally scheduled. This also happened at a time when great global strife has reared its head, and he addressed the Israel-Hamas conflict with perspective that few people could manage. Pete concluded his cold-open address after revealing how his mother had “tried pretty much everything she can do to cheer me up” following his father’s death while battling the 9/11 Twin Towers fires. He relayed how she had accidentally shown him Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, and “the first time in a long time, I was laughing again.” He admitted, “I don’t understand that. I really don’t and I never will. But sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy.”

Pete then promised, “I’m gonna do what I’ve always done in the face of tragedy, and that’s try to be funny,” and he did not let the audience down.

Over the course of the program, Pete fueled audience laughter with Barbie parody skit. Before that happened, his monologue shifted immediately into stand-up comedy mode. He, too, is thinking about a certain dragon-filled HBO franchise, and so he let the world know how he first watched Game of Thrones in the worst way — while sitting next to his sister:

“I had no idea how sick everyone was. I thought it was like dragons and stuff and magic. Hardly any dragons. Lots of incest. Tons of incest. So much incest. You can leave the house come back incest’s still happening.”

His sister, however, was apparently thrilled with what she was seeing. You can see the reenactment of his response in the above video.

Zack De La Rocha of Rage Against The Machine returned to the stage for the first time in over a year last week, joining Run The Jewels to perform their 2014 collaboration “Close Your Eyes And Count To F*ck” during RTJ’s show at the Palladium in Hollywood on Thursday. You can check out the video below:

De La Rocha hadn’t performed since July of 2022 when he injured his leg on the first night of Rage Against The Machine‘s first tour in eleven years. The band was forced to cancel the European leg of the tour then the North American dates as well as it was revealed that Zack had torn his Achilles.

Although he finished the first handful of shows seated, it was clear that he needed to rest and rehabilitate his leg, which would be extremely difficult with the grueling schedule of a summer tour. From the video above, it does look like he’s recovered enough to stand alongside El-P and Killer Mike, and could likely perform a few full shows provided he doesn’t move around too much, but Rage fans would certainly be expecting a different level of activity. Even Tom Morello admitted he didn’t know if Rage would ever be able to tour again; even with De La Rocha fully recovered, the band’s health concerns include bassist Tim Commerford’s recent cancer diagnosis.

Fingers crossed, though. If ever there was a time we all needed some Rage Against The Machine, it’s certainly now.

Jung Kook from BTS is officially making his solo debut, as he released the tracklist for his new album, Golden. Spanning 11 songs, his record will include some previously-released tracks, including his chart-topping “Seven” collaboration with Latto (both the explicit and clean versions).

Fans can also expect to hear his other collaborations, like “3D” with Jack Harlow, “Closer To You” with Major Lazer, and “Please Don’t Change” with DJ Snake. Golden‘s main track, according to an early promo poster, is Jung Kook’s “Standing Next To You.”

According to Rolling Stone, Ed Sheeran also has a songwriting credit on “Yes Or No.”

“Golden takes its motif from the golden moments of Jung Kook as a solo artist,” Big Hit Music, the label, shared. “Known as the ‘Golden Maknae’ (‘golden youngest’ in Korean) of BTS, Jung Kook is set to unveil a new release with his unique timbre that will captivate listeners worldwide.”

Continue scrolling for Jung Kook’s full tracklist for Golden.

1. “3D” (ft. Jack Harlow)
2. “Closer To You” (ft. Major Lazer)
3. “Seven” (ft. Latto) Explicit Ver.
4. “Standing Next To You”
5. “Yes Or No”
6. “Please Don’t Change” (ft. DJ Snake)
7. “Hate You”
8. “Somebody”
9. “Too Sad To Dance”
10. “Shot Glass Of Tears”
11. “Seven” (ft. Latto) – Clean Ver.

Golden is out 11/3 via Big Hit.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Back in 2021, the Milwaukee Bucks finally ascended to the NBA’s mountaintop. It came on the heels of a Giannis Antetokounmpo openly floating his desire to look around due to his desire to win a championship and a major swing by the front office to bring a big-time guard — in this case, Jrue Holiday — to Milwaukee.

If that playbook sounds familiar, well, that’s because the team did that exact same thing this offseason. Antetokounmpo said on multiple occasions that he won’t remain a Buck if the team doesn’t match his desire to compete. Not long after, the front office swung for the fences, pulling off a monster deal to bring Damian Lillard to the Eastern Conference for the first time in his career. There’s a lot of basketball that needs to be played, but if all goes right, this season will end the same way as their 2021 campaign, and Milwaukee will get to call themselves champions once again.

Biggest Question: Is Upgrading Their Offense With Damian Lillard Worth Downgrading Their Defense?

Milwaukee having to part ways with Holiday was not easy. As a player and as a person, Holiday was a beloved member of the organization, the sort of guy that you root for even if you have no stake in the Bucks. Watching him go to the team’s biggest rival in the Eastern Conference following a pit stop in Portland had to have been a gut punch.

And yet, it’s not hard to see why Milwaukee’s front office made the decision to turn Holiday (along with Grayson Allen and Draft capital) into Lillard. An issue for the Bucks is that their offense is prone to getting stuck in the mud, particularly when the game slows down and they have to play in the halfcourt. This comes with the caveat that Antetokounmpo was clearly not right as he played through injuries and essentially missed the first three games, but the Bucks’ offense in their first-round loss to the Miami Heat in the playoffs was brutal. Small sample sizes and what not, but in four losses, Milwaukee had an offensive rating of 109.4 with an effective field goal percentage of 53.2 percent. Their true shooting percentage came in at 55.9 percent. While a wonderful player, Holiday’s had some postseason warts over the last few years, namely when it comes to efficiency from the field (38.4 percent on field goals, 30.6 percent from three over 17 playoff games in the last two years).

Offenses do not stall out when Lillard is running the show, and the thought of a two-man game with himself and Antetokounmpo is legitimately one of the most exciting things in the league. The bet that the Bucks made was that all of this is that the gains they’ll make on that end of the floor will offset what losing Holiday — perhaps the most versatile defensive guard in the league — means on the other. While we don’t know what new head coach Adrian Griffin will want his defense to look like, it’s worth mentioning that Milwaukee’s defense in recent years has featured elite rim protection, and with Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez returning, that should remain.

X-Factor: Khris Middleton

Is it just me, or has everyone kind of just forgotten how good Middleton is at his best this offseason? There were glimpses where he looked like the multi-time All-Star last season, you just needed to squint sometimes as he was working his way back from surgery to repair a torn ligament in his wrist. He was hot and cold against Miami in the playoffs, but his good games looked great. His efficiency as a shooter took a step down, but his per-36 numbers looked an awful lot like what you generally expect out of him — from 2019-22, Middleton had per-36 averages of 23 points, 6.6 rebounds, 5.7 assists, and 1.2 steals. Last season, he was at 22.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 7.3 assists, and one steal.

Between him being in a good place physically and his long-term future being settled, it’s not hard to foresee Middleton having a big bounceback season. His ability as a secondary playmaker should fit great next to Lillard, and after an awful season on catch-and-shoot threes (he only connected on a legitimately jarring 29.5 percent), don’t be surprised if he’s immediately the best third option in the league. How he holds up defensively — he might have to take on the opposing team’s best perimeter player with some frequency — is a real question.

Yoko Ono will forever be a significant part of the history of The Beatles, with some having blamed her and her relationship with John Lennon for the band’s demise. Now, Paul McCartney has spoken about how Ono’s presence during recording sessions wasn’t something the rest of the band necessarily liked.

In an episode of his McCartney: A Life In Lyrics podcast (as People notes), McCartney spoke about a time when the band was “heading toward” a breakup, during the recording of 1968’s The White Album.

McCartney said, “John and Yoko had got together and that was bound to have an effect on the dynamics of the group. […] Things like Yoko being literally in the middle of the recording session [were] something you had to deal with. The idea was that if John wanted this to happen, then it should happen. There’s no reason why not.”

He later added, “Anything that disturbs us, is disturbing. We would allow this and not make a fuss, and yet at the same time, I don’t think any of us particularly liked it. It was an interference in the workplace. We had a way we worked. The four of us worked with George Martin. And that was basically it. And we’d always done it like that. So not being very confrontational, I think we just bottled it up and just got on with it. […] It was the idea of The Beatles, it was also just this straight, practical thing of, ‘This was our job.’ This is what we did in life. We were the Beatles. That meant if we didn’t tour, we recorded. And that meant if we recorded, we wrote.”

Meanwhile, in 2021, Peter Jackson, who directed the Get Back documentary series about the band, said of Ono, “I have no issues with Yoko in the sense… I can understand from George and Paul and Ringo’s point of view it’s, like, a little strange. But the thing with Yoko, though, that they have to say, is that she doesn’t impose herself. She’s writing letters, she’s reading letters, she’s doing sewing, she’s doing painting, sometimes some artwork off to the side. She never has opinions about the stuff they’re doing. She never says, ‘Oh, I think the previous take was better than that one.’ She’s a very benign presence and she doesn’t interfere in the slightest.”