Month: April 2024

Over the weekend, as Coachella was rolling along, Drake decided to finally respond to all the disses that have been directed his way lately with a diss track of his own. He also gave a self-assessment of his current situation by shared a photo of Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, surrounded by foes who want nothing good for her, comparing that situation to his own.

Well, Thurman herself caught wind of this and decided to get in on the fun. As The Wrap notes, Thurman took to social media to share a photo of her iconic original jumpsuit from the movie and tagged Drake, writing, “Need this?”

Drake replied, “Yes pls. The pen is the Hattori Hanzo,” in reference to the sword and swordsman from the movie.

As for Drake’s diss, the song contains barbs meant for Kendrick Lamar, The Weeknd, Future, Rick Ross, Metro Boomin, and others. One bar about Lamar, for example, goes, “You won’t ever take no chain off of us / How the f*ck you big steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?” There’s also the line, “You ain’t in no Big Three, SZA got you wiped down / Travis got you wiped down, Savage got you wiped down.”

Coming in hot to promote his new movie The Fall Guy, the always solid Ryan Gosling hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend where he managed to make the entire cast break character. (Well, nearly the entire cast. Kenan Thompson was a rock.)

The viral moment went down in the middle of a Beavis and Butt-Head sketch where Gosling and Mikey Day played the classic MTV characters. The two sat in the audience for a NewsNation discussion on AI. Thompson played an expert in the field who took questions from the host played by Heidi Gardner. However, Thompson had a question of his own: Does a guy in the audience look like Beavis? And that’s when all hell broke lose as nobody could keep a straight face while looking at Gosling.

The situation got even worse when Day, looking like Butt-Head, came over and sat next to him. Gardner couldn’t stop herself from laughing, and even Gosling broke. He was dying. Again, Kenan Thompson held it together, and we have no idea how he did it because the whole sketch was hilariously falling apart.

Seeing Ryan Gosling playing Beavis went over huge on social media, especially watching him break almost half the cast of SNL (and himself) in the process. You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via Saturday Night Live on Twitter)

Hannah Waddingham had words for a male photographer during a recent red carpet event who asked her to “show me leg” as she posed for pictures.

The Ted Lasso actress was attending the Olivier Awards on Sunday when she called out the photographer. The moment was captured by X user @odeiotedlasso, who tweeted, “i not only saw hannah waddingham but i saw hannah waddingham being pissed at an asshole misogynistic prick photographer and calling him off on it and i never yelled MOTHER so loud.”

In a follow-up message, the fan account wrote, “long story short: hannah was being her gorgeous self and the made some comment about her leg we couldn’t quite make out and… well, the video speaks for itself. This woman is a role model. Always, always call pricks out on their bullsh*t.”

You can watch the video below.

Waddingham will next appear in The Fall Guy, followed by Mission: Impossible 8. “He’s lovely and fabulous to work for and that’s it,” she told Variety about working with Tom Cruise. “We arrived on an Ossprey on the moving [USS George H.W. Bush fighter carrier] with 4,500 serving men and woman in the hull. It was insane! It’s a proper, ridiculous pinch me job. Him and Christopher McQuarrie are total dreamboats.”

Mission: Impossible 8 comes out on May 23, 2025.

(Via Variety)

Ryan Gosling said goodbye to Ken, his horse- and patriarchy-loving character from Barbie, on SNL over the weekend. But he said hello to his favorite Taylor Swift song. During his monologue, Gosling performed a parody of Swift’s masterpiece, “All Too Well,” with help from The Fall Guy co-star Emily Blunt.

“Cause here we are again on that technicolor beach / I didn’t win the Oscar, it was just out of reach / I was there, bleach blond hair / Now it’s time to wish fit Ken farewell,” Gosling (who cries to the 10-minute version of the song in The Fall Guy trailer) sang, while Blunt — sticking up for the -enheimer part of Barbenheimer — added, “Father of the Atom Bomb / And a bottle of Jack / I usеd to be the alcoholic wife of a dudе in a hat.”

Gosling and Blunt clearly loved it, and so did Taylor Swift herself.

“All Too Well (Ryan and Emily’s Version) !!! Watch me accidentally catch myself singing this version on tour. This monologue is EVERYTHING,” she wrote on Twitter, along with a pair of hand hearts and clapping emojis. That explains why Travis Kelce was lifting Taylor in the air at Coachella: she was trying to get a decent signal to send this tweet.

You know who was also a fan? The official Albert Einstein Instagram account.

You can watch Gosling’s SNL monologue below:

Here is what I love about chicken nuggets – unlike most fast food menu options, nuggets are functional as a full meal but more importantly a side order. If you go the full meal route, you can generally order eight, ten, or beyond at most fast food restaurants, and paired with fries and a drink this is a satisfying protein-rich meal. But if nuggets sound like a boring meal you can always opt for that big juicy cheeseburger and then simply get some nuggets on the side, giving you the best of both worlds. That’s generally the route I take, and I can’t do that with other menu options like a chicken sandwich.

Think about it — a double bacon cheeseburger with a whole a** chicken sandwich on the side? That’s some last-meal sh*t. Nuggets allow you to have your cake and eat it too. And because we love fast food here at Uproxx, we’re obsessed with finding the absolute best.

Last year, that was Chick-fil-A. Not only did we name the brand the best nuggets in fast food, we even put them to a blind taste test against five other brands, and they still came out on top. But there are new nuggets on the scene, so we’re ready to put them to the test against the champ in our second chicken nugget blind taste test. Let’s see if any of the new birds can step to the current king!

Methodology

For this blind taste test, I rounded up four different orders of chicken nuggets, all from fast food restaurants that were luckily relatively close to one another. In total, it took me about 20 minutes to round up all of these nuggets and return home. All four were still warm, and either way, nuggets tend to travel better than any other fast food dish, so I wasn’t too worried about them degrading in flavor with the transit time.

Two of these nuggets, McDonald’s Spicy Chicken McNuggets and Burger King’s Fiery Buffalo Nuggets, were just launched, while KFC’s chicken nuggets debuted last year but didn’t make our first blind taste test. Our full tasting class for today includes:

• Burger King — Fiery Buffalo Nuggets
• Chick-fil-a — Nuggets
• KFC — Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets
• McDonald’s — Spicy Chicken Nuggets

Once home, I had my girlfriend shuffle up each box of nuggets and serve me one at a time while I wore a blindfold. I tasted each, recorded some initial impressions into a voice recorder, and ranked each accordingly. Here are the results.

Part 1: The Blind Chicken Nugget Taste Test

Taste 1:

There is a pungent aroma to this one, it’s a bit sour and peppery and almost smells sauced. The chicken itself doesn’t seem like it has a sauce though, it’s not quite as crunchy as I would expect. The flavor is dominated by a mix of black pepper and tangy buffalo. There isn’t a lot of meat flavor here. I don’t know where I stand on this one, it’s enjoyable to eat but I don’t know if I’m completely sold.

Taste 2:

Juicy, tender, a little briney, and meaty. There is a good balance of everything here, it has a satisfying crunch, a deep flavor that combines pepper, and garlic powder, and a tender texture. A significant step up from Taste 1.

Taste 3:

This one has a lot of the qualities of Taste 2 — it’s crunchy, heavily seasoned (mostly black pepper), and very meaty, but where the last nugget was tender this one is a bit dry and tough. Almost like it’s been over-fried, or re-fried.

Taste 4:

Because I had these recently and they have a distinct airy and crispy texture, I can tell that this is McDonald’s new Spicy Chicken McNugget. I’ll try not to let that sway my opinion too much, but I like the crunchy texture and cayenne-heavy seasoning. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite hitting, it lacks that satisfying meaty quality of Taste 2.

Part 2: The Blind Chicken Nugget Ranking

4. KFC — Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets (Taste 3)

Coming in last place today are KFC’s fairly new nuggets. This is a surprise for me because I think the quality of this nugget is quite high. It’s clearly going for a Chick-fil-A style nugget, which is an improvement over the brand’s old Popcorn Chicken. But KFC lacks some serious quality control, these were the last nuggets I picked up and yet they were the most lukewarm.

The flavor was great but the chicken was way too dry to be truly enjoyable.

The Bottom Line:

It has the makings of a great chicken nugget, but a lack of quality control keeps it from truly shining.

3. Burger King — Fiery Buffalo Nuggets (Taste 1)

This was a tough one, go ahead and consider number 3 and number 2 essentially tied. I’m still not sure if these nuggets have sauce on them, if they do they’re tossed with such a light amount that the nugget still retains its crunch, which is a good thing. This is a sharp improvement over Burger King’s regular chicken nuggets which I’ve always found to be a bit dry and chalky.

Ultimately, I gave this nugget the bronze because I don’t like the tangy flavor of buffalo sauce over the clean heat of cayenne (you can probably guess our number 2 choice by now). Having said that, this is worth trying if you’re already a BK fan.

The Bottom Line:

The best new Burger King menu item in a while! Expect slightly sweet tangy heat.

2. McDonald’s — Spicy Chicken McNuggets (Taste 4)

Call me crazy, but if McDonald’s decided to ditch its original McNuggets and replace them instead with these, I wouldn’t complain. Now, granted, I like spicy chicken so these aren’t for everyone, but more fast food menus should reflect my taste, not yours!

I’m kidding, but really, you should try these if you love McDonald’s McNuggets, or like spicy chicken. It is, currently, the best spicy nugget you’re going to find in all of fast food.

The Bottom Line:

A must-eat, but unfortunately, not as tender, meaty, or nuanced as our number one choice.

1. Chick-fil-A — Chicken Nuggets (Taste 2)

The champ remains the champ. You hate to see it! I would’ve loved for one of the new nuggets on the scene to dethrone Chick-fil-A but none of the nuggets we tasted today came close to tasting as good as these do. The flavor of the breading is deeper and more flavorful than anything else on the market, and the chicken itself is tender.

Where most fast food chicken nuggets need sauce for them to be really enjoyable, these nuggets are delicious and addicting even when completely sauceless. Because of that, dipping sauce elevates and accentuates the base flavors here. And considering Chick-fil-A has something like 10 sauces, you have all sorts of variations on the flavor that you can customize to your particular tastes.

The Bottom Line:

Simply the best chicken nuggets in all of fast food. I’m waiting for the day another brand can dethrone the king, but it’s looking like that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

Kesha’s music career got off to a scorching start with her 2009 debut single “Tik Tok,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was ultimately one of the defining songs of its era. The opening lyric, though, hasn’t aged particularly well: “Wake up in the morning feelin’ like P. Diddy.”

Diddy, of course, is currently facing multiple sexual harassment/assault lawsuits. Kesha isn’t going to let that stop her from performing her biggest hit, but a change is in order, and Kesha made one during a surprise appearance at Coachella this past weekend.

Reneé Rapp brought Kesha out during her set and the two launched into “Tik Tok,” tweaking the opening lyric to have a totally opposite stance on Diddy: “Wake up in the morning like, ‘F*ck P. Diddy!’”

Kesha, meanwhile, has a lot to celebrate. Last year, she released Gag Order, which fulfilled her contractual obligations with Dr. Luke’s label, Kemosabe. Shortly after, Kesha and Dr. Luke, after years of allegations of sexual assault and defamation, ended their legal battle. Last month, Kesha celebrated by teasing an unreleased song and writing, “First day I’ve owned my voice in 19 years. Welcome.” On Instagram Live later, Kesha was seen wiping away happy tears as she previewed new music.

Donald Glover shared some exciting news yesterday. More specifically, he started by sharing exciting news about exciting news: He announced a GILGA Radio Instagram livestream, on which he promised to share some new music. Now that the broadcast has come and gone, we know some more about what the end of Childish Gambino will look like.

During the show, Glover revealed that there are two more Gambino projects on the way, saying, “We’re releasing Atavista, but after that, there’s the final Childish Gambino album — a soundtrack for the fans.” Elsewhere in the broadcast was a teaser for the “original soundtrack” to Bando Stone & The New World, which will serve as that final Gambino album.

Glover teased Atavista a month ago, and it is set to be a re-worked version of his 2020 album 3/15/20. As was indicated, the Bando Stone project is set to accompany a new movie. Elsewhere during the project, Glover also noted that he’s working on an anime project alongside Zach Fox.

Last year, Glover told E! News, “I’m making music right now, I love it. I’m actually working, I’m in the studio. I’ve been bringing people in, like secret people, working on little things. But I just been, you know, making it for fun right now. But soon something will happen, I promise. Something will happen.”

Thank you for proving me right, Doja Cat. I said you deserved to be headlining Coachella two years ago. This year, you brought a full-size Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton to your headlining set. Bless you, you demented genius. You are the best.

The final day of Coachella 2024 was a bit thinner on must-see artists; while there was still plenty to do and see, there was also enough time to wander and explore between the priority sets. So, rather than rushing around from tent to tent and stage to stage, there was time to poke around, try new things, and make a few observations. For instance:

Call me biased, but there is no better backing band in music than a churchy-ass Black band. They have the power to uplift pop singers like Reneé Rapp, who we caught in the late afternoon, and to elevate R&B stars like Victoria Monét to transcendent performances. Monét – who also incorporated soul and R&B staples like The Supremes’ “Stop! In The Name Of Love” and Usher’s “There Goes My Baby” and rap breakouts like Sexyy Red’s “Get It Sexyy” into her early evening set – proved every bit to be a star worthy of even better placement upon her inevitable return to Coachella. And speaking of “Get It Sexyy,” while the St. Louis rapper wasn’t on the bill, her presence was felt at practically every DJ set and activation… Sexyy Red is out. Of. Here.

One place her impact was felt was GV Black’s Party In My Living Room activation. An initiative from Coachella promoters Goldenvoice, GV Black aims to promote equity and inclusion at the festival, living up to all those promises brands made back in 2020. It partnered with Inglewood rapper Thurz and his long-running party promotion to present DJ sets from both unexpected names like “Billie Eilish” rapper Armani Black and local LA mainstay DJ R-Tistic. One of the upsides of Sunday being a bit more laid back was getting to pull up on friends here and spend an hour two-stepping to club faves in a fun atmosphere out of the sun and wind.

It also gave the Uproxx team more time to wander and try new food options. While the team typically has faves that we frequent year after year, there, there are still so many other options that it’s worth trying out something new. This year, it was Big Belly Burger, which offered an Impossible version of its signature smash burger. And hallelujah, we may have found a new favorite. With a unique, light sweetness to its spread, Big Belly may even have overthrown some of our usuals.

After a calm and cool set from psychedelic funk rockers Khruangbin, Colombian Latin artist J Balvin put on a stellar show at the main stage, complete with an early appearance by Tainy, a surprisingly on-theme surprise pop-in by Will Smith, and an alien invasion storyline straight out of a 1950s B-movie. (Between Balvin, Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘70s thriller set up on Friday, and Tyler The Creator’s own flying saucer on Saturday, they’ve got one hell of a weekend matinee triple feature.)

Manwhile, Lil Yachty completely revamped his set from Camp Flog Gnaw in November, tapping into his career beginnings with a big reference to his nickname, Lil Boat, starting the show from the prow of a ship onstage. However, despite what might have been a throwback to his early days, his setlist stuck to the more recent, rock-focused Let’s Start Here and even tapped an indie reference point: multi-instrumentalist Mac DeMarco, who performed two songs, “On The Level” and “Chamber Of Reflection.” Still, Yachty was sure to hit maintstays like “Minnesota” and “Broccoli,” making his set one of the most sastisfying yet.

Now, remember what I said about bands? Doja Cat’s stunning headlining set not only incorporated that signature vamping but took things a step further with a five-part harmony from a South African vocal group, The Joy, paying homage to her roots. Once again, a set was enhanced by understated innovations like a spider cam swooping over the audience and a high-concept, post-apocalyptic sci-fi setup.

While Doja’s set did not incorporate a storyline per se, it did a great job of actualizing the things that have been on her mind lately. The eye-popping visuals addressed the public’s preoccupation with her hair, her tattoos, and her heritage; hence, backup dancers draped in Wookie-like wig costumes, South African vocal groups singing in Zulu, and yes, a massive T-Rex skeleton traipsing along her catwalk, aided by a team of puppeteers.

Doja Cat, like Lana Del Rey, Tyler The Creator, J Balvin, and a slew of other artists to rock the stage, showed the potential still remaining to be wrought from the platform provided by Coachella. What she – and they – demonstrated was that it doesn’t take flashy streaming numbers or worldwide name recognition, so much as the imagination to prove that they belong. There’s a whole generation of new stars waiting to be minted, and Coachella gives them the opportunity to make their case – which Doja Cat did with her signature wit and weirdness.

For anyone who thinks stories of sexual harassment and assault are complicated, writer Maura Quint has a story for you. Actually, she has quite a few.

Quint posted a thread on her Twitter account that quickly went viral in which she talked about a number of real-life encounters with men that started out sexual, involved her expressing disinterest, and the men responding appropriately.

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It wasn’t an unrealistic hero’s tale of men handing over the keys to their autonomy. Rather, Quint’s incredible thread made it clear that the only variable in cases of assault vs. non-assault are when a man doesn’t respect the autonomy of the woman he’s propositioning.

Her thread opens up in an all-too-familiar tone, where we’re led to believe it will go to an incredibly dark place:

Instead, Quint says her indifference to his proposition was met in kind with a guy just acting in a basic, non-rapey way:

She goes on to offer several other examples of being in sexual or potentially sexual situations with men who also managed to not sexually assault her:

And here’s the real kicker, Quint says she has been assaulted. To her, the difference isn’t hard to pinpoint:

Her thread has been re-tweeted nearly 50,000 times and “liked” more than 100,000 times. Other women and some men jumped in with their own tales of drinking, partying and still, somehow, managing to not assault or even harass the women they encountered.

It’s a stark contrast to the half-baked defenses of Brett Kavanaugh and other men like him. There are incredibly rare exceptions where a man is accused of assault or harassment and he is entirely free of guilt. But for women, or anyone for that matter, who has survived sexual assault or experienced sexual harassment, there is no “gray area.”

There’s being OK with assault and then there’s everything else. Whether or not we’re consciously aware of this, we’ve all chosen a side. But if you’re on the wrong side, it doesn’t have to be that way forever.

This article originally appeared on 10.02.18

92-year-old Norma had a strange and heartbreaking routine.

Every night around 5:30 p.m., she stood up and told the staff at her Ohio nursing home that she needed to leave. When they asked why, she said she needed to go home to take care of her mother. Her mom, of course, had long since passed away.

Behavior like Norma’s is quite common for older folks suffering from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Walter, another man in the same assisted living facility, demanded breakfast from the staff every night around 7:30.

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Jean Makesh, CEO of Lantern assisted living facilities, says he meets folks with stories like these every day. It’s their stories that inspired him to make some changes at Lantern.

“I thought I knew a lot about elderly care. The more and more time I was spending with my clients, that’s when I realized, ‘Oh my god, I have no clue.'”

Confusion is common in Alzheimer’s patients, but Makesh knew there had to be some way to minimize these conflicts.

A big believer in the idea that our environment has an enormous effect on us, he started thinking big — and way outside the box.

“What if we design an environment that looks like outside?” he said. “What if I can have a sunrise and sunset inside the building? What if I’m able to have the moon and stars come out? What if I build a unit that takes residents back to the ’30s and ’40s?”

And that was just the beginning. He also researched sound therapy. And aromatherapy. And carpet that looked like grass. No idea was off-limits.

What he came up with was a truly unique memory-care facility. And after testing the concept in Lantern’s Madison, Ohio, facility, Makesh is opening two new locations this year.

Instead of rooms or units, each resident gets a “home” on a quiet little indoor street reminiscent of the neighborhoods many of them grew up in.

Instead of a boring panel ceiling, residents look up and see a digital sky, which grows dimmer late in the day to help keep their biological clocks in tune.

Throughout the day, nature sounds and fresh aromas like peppermint or citrus are piped in.

Some studies have shown that this kind of aromatherapy may indeed have some merits for improving cognitive functioning in Alzheimer’s patients.

For Makesh, this isn’t just about making patients comfortable, though. He wants to change how we think about the endgame of severe dementia.

Makesh said one of the frustrating shortcomings of most nursing facilities is that they create conflicts with unnatural environments and schedules, and they try to solve them by throwing antipsychotic and anti-anxiety medications at patients. In other words, when someone has severe dementia, we often give up on them. From there, they stop getting the engagement their brain needs to thrive.

Of course, we’re a long way from a cure for Alzheimer’s.

But Makesh’s project shows that when we think strategically about altering the environment and focus on helping people relearn essential self-care and hygiene skills, the near-impossible becomes possible.

“In five years, we’re going to [be able to] rehabilitate our clients where they can live independently in our environment,” he said. “In 10 years, we’re going to be able to send them back home.”

He knows it’s a lofty goal. And whether he’ll meet it remains to be seen. But in the meantime, he’s proud to own one of the few places that offers something pretty rare in cases of severe dementia: hope.

This article originally appeared on 09.08.16