Category: News

In a touching moment in Prime Video’s Red, White, And Royal Blue, Alex Claremont-Diaz (Taylor Zakhar Perez) comes out to his mother, President Ellen Claremont (Uma Thurman), revealing that he’s in love with the British Prince Henry (Nicholas Galitzine). While Alex is nervous about how his mother will handle the revelation, Ellen immediately accepts her son with open arms, phoning in an order for pizza.

Historically, we’ve seen coming out moments in film and television go one of two ways — the character’s friends and family either reject them, leaving them to find a new community, or they are initially reluctant to accept their sexuality or gender identity, but eventually come around. But in recent time, we’ve seen fresher, more relatable stories on-screen, demonstrating reassurance for characters who are already out within the context of the piece, newly out, or, in some cases, not even canonically queer.

After Ellen orders pizza in Red, White, And Royal Blue, she is seen holding and embracing Alex on the couch for as long as he needs. She then asks him, “Are you gay, bi, fluid, pan, or queer?,” expressing genuine interest in how her son identifies. Alex responds, “Mom, I’m bi,” and she reassures him “the B in LGBTQ is not a silent letter.” Though the romance between the British prince and the son of the American president comes with its controversies, Ellen shows to be fully supportive, and even offers him some sound advice.

The plot of Red, White, And Royal Blue is certainly not a universal romantic experience, however, this particular moment in the movie demonstrates a more loving and affirming coming-out experience. Ellen asks appropriate questions and provides support for Alex in a vulnerable moment, which is all most LGBTQ+ people want when they invite others into this facet of their lives. By including more moments like these on-screen, more young queer people can see that coming out isn’t always an end-all-be-all between them and their loved ones, and more of their loved ones are given examples of appropriate, safe responses to a newly out person in their lives.

But queer or not, expressing one’s true self and feelings may not result in a safe, functional environment. In a season two episode of FX’s The Bear, Chef Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) celebrates The Feast Of The Seven Fishes, an Italian-American Christmas celebration in which family and friends gather around the table and eat seven different types of fish. The episode takes place outside of the show’s regular timeline, about five years before the opening of Carmy’s restaurant. A home full of yelling Italians, and a crowded kitchen spearheaded by an emotionally reactive Donna Berzatto, Carmy’s mother, who is brilliantly played by Jamie Lee Curtis, visibly overwhelms Carmy, who is later approached by his cousin, Michelle.

Sensing Carmy’s discomfort amid his dysfunctional family, Michelle, who is played by lesbian icon Sarah Paulson, makes Carmy a special offer.

“Do you want to come stay with me for a couple of days in New York?” asks Michelle. “Just like, get the f*ck out of here. I think it’s really important to keep your head in the game…this isn’t good for your head, this isn’t good for anybody’s head, but especially yours.”

Though Carmy isn’t explicitly queer, and neither is Paulson’s character in this episode, this particular moment resonated with The Bear’s black sheep viewers. Many queer viewers — and viewers, in general, who grew up in dysfunctional households — often find solace in an affirming family member. In an interview with Variety, White revealed that this scene was improvised.

“It was such a touching moment,” said White. “It ended up being one of my favorite scenes while watching it because it’s one of the only times Carmy feels really seen.”

While the scene may not necessarily allude to sexuality or gender outright, that it was improvised may indicate something personal to Paulson. It is also worth noting that while the openly queer Ayo Edebiri, who plays sous chef Sydney Adamu on The Bear, does not appear in the episode, she did co-produce the episode, thus wrapping this moment in a cozy, queer package.

As we have the science and language to more accurately describe sexuality and gender, we realize that these identities are more fluid than they are fixed. On Netflix’s Glamorous, which was unfortunately given the ax after its first season, we meet Marco Mejia (Miss Benny), a make-up-obsessed vlogger who lands a job at a luxury cosmetics brand. Throughout the season, we see Marco, who presents as a gay man through most of the episodes until the finale, balance the corporate world with dating and supporting their mother, Julia (Diana-Maria Riva).

Though Julia and Marco often butt heads, Julia is supportive of her child throughout their journey. In the finale, Marco begins to come out as transgender to their mother, who interrupts them and praises them for always knowing who they were. She concludes the conversation telling them “You’re the best daughter a mother could ever have.”

Confident in their gender expression, Marco is then seen visiting a doctor who specializes in transgender healthcare before the episode closes.

In an essay published in Time by Benny shortly before Glamorous’ premiere, she revealed that Marco’s journey aligns with her personal journey. She thanked the people who affirmed her identity, including the show’s creator Jordon Nardino and executive producer Kameron Tarlow, who allowed her the platform to tell her story with care.

“These two men changed my life the moment they heard my story and promised to protect and support me in telling it the way I wanted to,” Benny said.

The film and television landscape is evolving in tandem with the ways we understand gender and sexuality. No two people’s experiences are alike, however, community is essential. Through telling stories of acceptance and affirmation, modern works of cinema and media can display more authentic and relatable queer and queer-adjacent experiences. And viewers can take comfort in knowing that they will, somehow, find their people.

I was maybe fifteen or so the first time I saw the punk movie musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and though I would lack the words to describe myself for at least another decade, I felt deep kinship with the gender-bending lead character, Hedwig. Hedwig, played by the film’s writer and director John Cameron Mitchell, starts her life as Hansel, an imaginative boy in communist East Berlin before undergoing a botched gender reassignment surgery that leaves her as Hedwig, a bitter woman touring middle America with her band. In the end, she ends up finding a peace in-between the masculine and feminine, embracing both Hansel and Hedwig within herself, becoming whole.

In order to marry an American soldier named Luther (Maurice Dean Wint), Hansel is forced to have the surgery that leaves him feeling trapped between genders and worlds. On the cast and crew reunion for the Criterion release of the film, Mitchell explains that Hedwig is performative, that she’s a mask for the person beneath, a person that’s really neither a woman or a man. In the film’s wild climax, she rips off the trappings of femininity and embraces the in-between. It would take me years to understand exactly why that moment felt so revelatory because I was still in the thick of it, but Hedwig really mirrored me in surprising ways.

I spent most of my childhood furious that when the universe doled out bodies, I wasn’t given a male one. Thankfully the differences between “boy” and “girl” are pretty slim in those early years, and I was able to live pretty authentically and happily outside of the occasional frilly Easter dress. Then puberty hit like a freight train and it felt like I was suddenly a woman overnight and against my will. Like Hedwig, I took on femininity as a mask and a kind of armor. I basically intentionally became a manic pixie dream girl, trying desperately to perform gender the only way I knew how. Just as Hedwig pulled parts of her femme identity from pop culture icons, I was similarly a “patchwork person” created from pieces of the women I admired. Desperation to fit into womanhood led me to some truly awful relationships with controlling men, much like Luther forcing Hansel to become Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis refusing to love her in full. It also made me lash out when the mask didn’t fit, much like Hedwig passing her own pain onto her second husband, Yitzhak.

Yitzhak was a revelation I understood even at fifteen, as he’s played by cisgender woman Miriam Shor and longs to be feminine. (It’s pretty likely that Yitzhak is trans, unlike Hedwig, who only accepted femininity because she was forced into it.) At the end of the movie, Hedwig finally allows Yitzhak to be the woman she’s meant to be, and Yitzhak undergoes a stunning transformation. It’s always complicated when cis actors play trans roles, but with Yitzhak it felt subversive, forcing me to think about gender beyond the binary. It helped me stop trying so darn hard to fit in, though eventually I would realize that I was not Yitzhak at all, but Hedwig.

In the song “Tear Me Down,” Hedwig compares herself to the Berlin Wall, this horrible piece of iconography that had a very real impact on her life. “There’s not much of a difference between a bridge and a wall,” she sings, because she is both bridge and wall, separating and connecting two disparate worlds — masculine and feminine, capitalist and communist, punk rock and pure glamour. There’s a wall inside of her in the idea of binary gender and that she has to fit into womanhood because Luther told her as much and her body doesn’t fit into the typical standards of manhood. She even believes that she requires romantic love in order to be whole, basing her sense of self around a story from Plato’s Symposium where everyone was once two people that got split down the middle and we’re forever searching for our other half. So much of her view of the world is gendered and trapped within the rigid confines of binary thinking, and it’s only when she lets go of these ideas that she actually, finally feels whole.

The next line in “Tear Me Down” has become something I hold close to my heart, a rallying cry for people who fall outside of the binary everywhere: “Without me right in the middle, babe, you would be nothing at all.” Masculinity and femininity are defined by their opposites, and in the same way gender is truly defined by those who exist outside of it. After all, without people like Hedwig to challenge our ideas of what it is to be a man or a woman, how would anyone know that there was something other than the culturally accepted norms? For me, being non-binary is like being both the bridge and the wall, existing between binary gender and also outside of it. Hedwig went from being a confusing inspiration in my teens to a kindred spirit in adulthood, a boy who became a disaster of a woman who finally found gender euphoria by being neither — and both.

When pop culture historians look back at 2023, they will remember it as the year of live events. Taylor Swift’s Eras tour will be the chapter heading, but very quietly, it has also been a banner year for live sports. Attendance at pro baseball, basketball, and hockey games rose steeply, while the NFL continues to achieve record levels of popularity. After staying inside for parts of the last three years, people are ready to live their best lives by experiencing the thrill of the game—their favorite game, any game—-in person. Even MLS attendance is up 5 percent.

If you can’t get to the stadium or arena, you could instead head to your local movie theater, where an unprecedented number of sports movies have played in 2023. It started with 80 for Brady, which made $40 million in the doldrums of February despite featuring in its title the name of a player hated in 48 states. A month later, Creed III debuted to rave reviews and ended up earning $275 million worldwide. Then came six basketball movies in a two-month period: Champions, Air, Sweetwater, Somewhere in Queens, White Men Can’t Jump, and Shooting Stars. In the second half of the year, there were movies about baseball (The Hill), racing (Gran Turismo), Lucha libre wrestling (Cassandro), American wrestling (The Iron Claw), soccer (Next Goal Wins), swimming (Nyad), and rowing (The Boys in the Boat). These films replicate the thrill of watching live sports — or at least on TV — while deepening the stories behind the feats of athleticism.

For those who grew up in the sports movie boom of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when they were a reliable genre at the box office and a mainstay of cable television, it feels something like a return to our childhood home. Champions uses The Mighty Ducks as a template, right down to its inciting incident of a down-on-his-luck former athlete who gets arrested for drunk driving and is sentenced to coaching a team of misfits; in Ducks, it’s a Pee-Wee hockey team, while Champions centers its plot on a team of intellectually disabled adults. Creed III is a continuation of the Rocky franchise, while White Men Can’t Jump is a literal remake. Meanwhile, you can trace the lineage of The Hill, a faith-based film starring Dennis Quaid as the father of a disabled young man who ends up pitching in the minor leagues, back to Rudy, or if you want to go back even further, to weepies Brian’s Song and Bang the Drum Slowly. Many of the rest are pitched as Oscar-bait dramas, not unlike Chariots of Fire, Hoosiers, or Field of Dreams. They’re not all IP-driven, but they are driven by nostalgia all the same.

While this sports film explosion may seem to have come suddenly, there were actually several warning signs. Two years ago, there was this Oscar-nominated tennis movie called King Richard, even if some remember it more for what Will Smith did on Oscar night. Last year, there was only one mainstream sports movie, but it was a good one: Hustle, which starred Adam Sandler as a scout. Still, what has occurred in 2023 feels unprecedented, especially since we have all been told for years now that the sports movie — along with the courtroom drama, the studio comedy, and other mid-budgeted dramas — had no place in a cinematic landscape dominated by superheroes and other IP.

It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that this genre of film has re-emerged at a time when the superhero film is losing some of its luster. This year, The Flash, Quantumania, and Shazam: Fury of the Gods all flopped badly. It is obvious to even casual observers of the box office that comic book movies have peaked, and while they will probably never go away completely — Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Across the Spider-Verse still performed well, while Thor 5 is reportedly on the way — it feels like there is suddenly an opening for long-dormant genres to emerge and fill that space. The courtroom drama is one, with The Burial, Anatomy of a Fall, and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial suddenly available all at once. No Hard Feelings indicated an appetite for concept-driven comedies. And the sports movie is proving as sturdy and reliable as it has always been.

At the risk of overstating things, they fill a need for both the studios and the audience. Sports films are an attractive proposition for companies looking to make a profit in this uncertain era. They mostly feature ensemble casts, and you don’t need major stars for them. That’s helpful — we don’t really have as many bankable stars since Hollywood traded them for IP. More importantly, sports movies provide a catharsis for audiences we don’t really get in film anymore. The athletic competition in sports movies is more grounded than the CGI battles of Marvel and DC.

These movies also show the human body achieving real feats of excellence in a relatable and recognizable earthbound setting. They have the power to move us in ways that the little ones and zeroes of superhero movies rarely can. Stereotypical tough guys may rarely cry in real life, but they’ll sob like babies every time Rudy runs onto that football field or Ray Kinsella asks his dad if he wants to have a catch. These films are basically tearjerkers for men.

While there are some terrific women-driven sports films to be considered part of the canon — this year, 80 for Brady and Nyad qualify — a lot of these films are made with men in mind, and they provide that segment of the audience with a rare opportunity for emotional release and the chance to work through our irresponsibility (Champions), our childhood traumas (Creed III), or our unquenchable need to define ourselves through our work (Air). Journalists and authors have increasingly identified a burgeoning crisis of masculinity in America, and while it’s certainly a sensitive topic in a world that still holds far greater dangers for women, the movies can provide a useful and noncontroversial way to begin the conversation and maybe allow men to tap into the healing power of a good cry.

Historically speaking, millionaires aren’t very good at putting up Christmas decorations or decorating in general. There is something about having money and becoming disconnected from society, but it happens.

Kim Kardashian decided to be cute and quirky for her holiday decor, but joyous holiday cheer does not clash very well with her cold and dark minimalist aesthetic, so it ended up looking questionable. But she had to give Kylie’s BF some free Wonka promo, so she took one for the team and went for it.

Kardashian put her Elf on the Shelf, the most cursed holiday legend since Krampus, in the all-white bathroom and filled the bathtub with chocolate. If you don’t know what Elf on the Shelf is, then 1) congrats, and 2) it’s a tradition where parents hide a little elf around the house to convince their kids to be good. It’s like Santa Claus but instead of him breaking in through your chimney, he’s working from the inside. Kardashian conspired with her elves to make a scene right out of Wonka.

The Paw Patrol star took to Instagram to show off her work, which consisted of a bunch of marshmallows and elves floating in hot chocolate. “Walked into my bathroom, and what do I see here,” Kardashian said in her Instagram story yesterday, asking her millions of followers to join in on her madness of looking at chocolate in a tub “Elves left a mess and made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory over here,” she said. Notice how she didn’t say Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Interesting!

Before you proceed, think about what possible harm looking at a tub full of brown liquid will do to you.

Meanwhile, North West is happy as can be eating an onion like an apple. She doesn’t need a chocolate bath.

(Via The Cut)

For those who still use Tidal, Jay-Z dropped a new playlist of his favorite songs of 2023 on the app (revealed via a live session) — and some of the picks might be surprising. Of course, the rapper included his wife, Beyoncé, and her new “My House” track that appeared in her Renaissance Tour film.

He also gave a nod to some other close musicians. Drake was included on Jay-Z’s list, with his song “8am In Charlotte,” the second single from the Canadian rapper’s For All The Dogs album, according to HotNewHipHop.

Travis Scott and Playboi Carti’s “Fe!n” collaboration was also one of Jay’s favorites. He also included JID and Lil Yachty, who teamed up on the “Half Doin Dope” track.

In recent years, Jay-Z’s year-end playlist of his favorite songs has become a fun tradition. Through scrolling around on Tidal, it seems he has made the annual lists since 2018.

Continue scrolling to see a few other songs Jay-Z loved this year.

1. “Jennifer’s Body” by Ken Carson
2. “Kostas” by Westside Gunn
3. “FE!N” by Travis Scott & Playboi Carti
4. “Japanese Soul Bar” by Nas
5. “Not A Drill” by Veeze
6. “89 Earthquake” by Larry June & The Alchemist
7. “Spirit 2.0” by Sampha
8. “My House” by Beyoncé
9. “8am In Charlotte” by Drake
10. “Half Doin Dope” by JID & Lil Yachty

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

You have probably seen a clip on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube that shows a group of friends from a video game all screaming for their lives as they die in increasingly comedic ways at the hands of monsters called Coil-Heads, Thumpers, or Forest Giants. The game is called Lethal Company, and yes, it’s just as fun as it looks. Very few games can strike fear into your heart one moment only to leave you gasping for air from laughter a few seconds later, but that is the line that Lethal Company walks perfectly.

The premise of Lethal Company is quite simple: Land on a moon, enter a facility, collect random scrap, avoid the monsters, bring the scrap back to the ship, and sell it for money. If you manage to meet quota then you get to do it all over again. If you fail? Well, capitalism doesn’t take too kindly to a lack of profits.

Thankfully, death in Lethal Company is a fairly minor penalty in the grand scheme of a playthrough. If your crew survives, then you manage to get back on the ship with the only consequence being that you don’t get as much experience and you lose any items you were carrying at the time. If your entire party dies, then you have to start over from the beginning with less funds for buying supplies like walkie-talkies, but restarting a session takes almost no time at all. This quick, seamless style of play helps players not feel discouraged when a run fails and instead encourages them to give it one more go.

At that point, it’s up to the players to make their own fun and set their own goals. Do you want to simply meet quota and move on to a higher bar? You can do that, or you can try to go above and beyond to earn larger potential rewards. The more money you earn, the better equipment you can buy for your excursions to make them easier and more entertaining. Items such as jetpacks, shovels for beating back monsters, and a teleporter to bring back a friend in danger all go from luxuries to a necessity in longer runs. If players want, they can even download mods to enhance their experience even further.

Since Lethal Company is still in early access, the base game — while fun — is missing a few features that can make the experience even better, such as alternative costumes or the ability to play with more than four players. While not a requirement, mods can change Lethal Company from a fun game to one of the best games of the year.

One of the best mods out there right now is one called Skinwalkers. When players load into a session, the game begins listening to your voice and then monsters will be able to talk back to you using the voice of other people in the session. There is nothing quite as terrifying as walking through a hallway only to hear “hey come here” out of nowhere in your friend’s voice. It can make you feel like you’re going crazy, only to burst out into laughter when you realize you’ve been duped, and it’s those moments of laughter that make Lethal Company as fun as it is.

Despite being a horror game, it is not a traditionally scary one. It can be anxiety-inducing and monsters will sneak up on you in scary ways, but nothing ever reaches truly horrifying levels of fear. At most, you’ll get a little nervous turning the corner because you’re worried a coil-head is waiting there, or you weren’t paying attention so a Bracken comes up and snaps your neck, which is obviously startling. None of this ever crosses over into too scary territory, though, making it a great game for people who aren’t a big fan of horror games.

If anything, Lethal Company is more like a campy horror movie than anything else. Can it spook you out occasionally? Sure, but it is best experienced with a group of good friends who are there with you to get scared, laugh, and make it more fun. It’s only $10 on Steam right now and modding it is extremely easy. Grab a group of friends, pick a Saturday night, and just give it a try for a few hours.

After being ordered to pay $148 million in damages for defaming two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, and subjecting them to a violent harassment campaign following the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani has reportedly filed for bankruptcy.

The man who was once revered as “America’s Mayor” hitched his wagon to Donald Trump and became a key figure in the former president’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. As a reward for his efforts, Giuliani is now faced with calamitous financial ruin.

Via Associated Press:

The former New York City mayor listed nearly $153 million in existing or potential debts, including almost $1 million in tax liabilities, money he owes lawyers and many millions of dollars in potential legal judgments in lawsuits against him. He estimated he had assets in the range of $1 million to $10 million.

However, Giuliani’s latest ploy will not get him off the hook for the $148 million judgment. The judge ordered that Freeman and Moss can start collecting immediately to prevent Giuliani from “hiding assets.” The AP also reports that “bankruptcy law does not allow for the dissolution of debts that come from a ‘willful and malicious injury.’”

“This maneuver is unsurprising, and it will not succeed in discharging Mr. Giuliani’s debt to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss,” the election workers’ attorney said in a statement.

Meanwhile, social media is having a field day watching Giuliani’s finances implode in real time. The reactions started pouring in shortly after news broke that Giuliani is filing for bankruptcy and reportedly buried in debt.

You can see what people are saying below:

(Via Associated Press)

Beauty product influencer Gabi Day shared a personal problem she was going through as a parent and daughter on TikTok, and resonated with many fellow Millennials. Her mother, who watches her 18-year-old twins, expresses her love for her family through demonstrative anxiety.

Day believes that this personality trait made her an anxious person, and she doesn’t want it passed on to her children.

“Does anyone else have a Boomer mom whose primary love language is anxiety-at-you?” she asked her followers. She added that her mother was always “reactive,” “nervous,” and “anxious” throughout her childhood. Now, when her kids are playing and aren’t in any danger, her mother is still on edge. “She’s immediately like gasping and just really like exaggerated physical reactions, and then, of course, that kind of startles my kid,” Day said.

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“Again, I know that this comes from a place of care. It’s just a lot,” she continued.

@itsgabiday

It comes from a place of love but it is exhausting 🫠😬 #millennialmomsoftiktok #boomergrandma #reparenting #gentleparenting

To further complicate things, Day’s mother believes this constant expression of anxiety is her love language and shows she cares. She can’t understand why it causes such problems within her family.

“The flip side of this is she sees me actively trying to be the calm in the room, model emotional regulation, breathe through things being regulated and she looks at me confused. As if me not anxiety-at-ing my children somehow means that I don’t care about them enough,” she revealed.

The post resonated with a lot of people in the comments.

“My mom thinks that her anxiety is proof of her love. The more she wrings her hands, the more she loves you,” Lori wrote. “I think the commonly accepted stereotype of a loving mom is the worrywort. Women don’t recognize it as a problem,” Claire added.

Street artists are a special breed. While “the art world” can sometimes be a snooty, elite place for those with means, street art is made for everyone. Sometimes that means large public murals, but street art can be small, too. In fact, some of the best street art is so small you might miss it if you’re not paying attention. But those who are can discover some delightful surprises.

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Just imagine walking down a sidewalk and seeing this little fella at your feet:

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Or this young lady:

Or this creature:

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That would make your day, wouldn’t it? Or at least bring a smile to your face for a while?

Public art is an act of love to strangers, a way of connecting to people without saying a word. It says, “Hey there, fellow human. Here’s a little something to make you smile, just because.”

That’s the beauty of David Zinn’s street art. It’s meant for the public—just average passers-by—to enjoy, individually and collectively.

Zinn has created an entire world of characters who pop up in unexpected places. For instance, meet Gerald the otter, who is waiting for a blind date in this tree stump.

See on Instagram

Zinn uses chalk and charcoal to make his cast of characters come to life in cracks and crevasses, sidewalks and tree trunks. His creations aren’t meant to last forever; in fact, as Zinn points out, the temporary nature of them adds value to them.

“Famous works of art hanging in museums get seen by thousands of people every day. But this? You could be among the dozens of people who get to see this while it exists,” he told CBS Mornings. “That’s pretty special.”

Watch how he takes something he finds in the sidewalk and transforms it into a sweet little duo.

Sometimes he uses natural things he finds as inspiration for a piece.

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Other times, he uses something human-made, like this upside down terra cotta pot:

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Or this manhole cover:

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Sometimes the shape of a rock lends itself to a character, like Keith and his emotional support chick here:

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Or the space itself serves as inspiration.

Nadine the mouse features in many of Zinn’s pieces, probably due to her small size making it easy for her to fit into small spaces.

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Usually his pieces use what’s already there—like a crack in the sidewalk—to tell a story.

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The 3D nature of his drawings make it feel as if his characters are truly there.

“Looks like another long day of things stubbornly refusing to be impossible,” he writes in a caption of one of his “pigasuses.”

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(Speaking of having wings, Nadine found a pair for herself.)

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Watch Zinn turn a simple pot into a character with personality in a matter of minutes:

His entire Instagram page, Facebook page and TikTok channel are filled with endless delight. It was nearly impossible to decide what to include in this article because I wanted to include everything.

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This is all well and good, you might say to yourself, but how does Zinn make a living if he’s not selling this art?

He sells books and prints of photos of his artwork on his online store. He also gets invited to schools and events. He has created a career for himself by rejecting blank canvases, putting his imagination out on the street for everyone to see for a while, then selling versions that will actually last. Pretty brilliant, really.

Zinn gave a fascinating TEDx Talk explaining how he found his own artistic niche. You’ll never look at a parking meter or sidewalk the same way again.

This article originally appeared on 02.12.22

Ten months after a man’s wife passed away, he finally got the courage to read a letter she left him, which contained a devastating admission. The 4-year-old son they had together may not be his.

“My ‘darling’ wife passed away 10 months ago,” the man wrote on Reddit’s Off My Chest forum. “She wrote a letter for me before she died, but I couldn’t bring myself to read it until now. She told me how sorry she was that she didn’t have the guts to tell me this to my face when she was alive.”

In the letter, the wife revealed that there was a “good chance” that the son he thought was his wasn’t his biological child. A few weeks before their wedding day, the wife got drunk at her bachelorette party and had a one-night stand with another man. Soon after that night, she became pregnant but was unsure who the father was.

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The man was torn whether or not to have the paternity test done. The child had only one parent in this world, and he would have to take care of him regardless. He also thought it was cowardly that his former wife would wait until she was no longer around to share the truth with him.

“So she thought she’d rather drop this bomb on my life when I could no longer confront her about it,” the man wrote. “Now that my son would only have one parent looking out for him, and she’d have no idea how I would even react. Maybe I should not have got the paternity test done. Maybe it might be better to live in ignorance. But I just had to know.”

The man took the paternity test and learned he wasn’t the child’s biological father.

“I’m devastated. This doesn’t change how I feel about my son,” he wrote. “He’s my whole world and he’s innocent. But boy, does it hurt. There’s so much going on in my head right now. I haven’t stopped crying. Thank god my son is at my parents’ place for the day. I’d hate for him to see me like this.”

Facing a pain nearly too much for him to bear, the only outlet he had at the moment was reaching out to Reddit to find some solace. “I just needed to let this all out. Don’t have it in me to tell anyone in my life about this right now,” he wrote.

The commenters send him hundreds of messages of support to get him through the shock of first learning the truth about his family.

The most popular message was straightforward and honest. “All your feelings are valid, a lot of people will react with some kind of toxic positivity to things like these. Your feelings are valid. Each and everyone,” femunndsmarka wrote.

Another commenter added that someday, his son will appreciate how he stepped up and did what was right in a very trying circumstance. “He is going to find out the truth one day. Imagine how much more he will love you knowing you didn’t leave him, even though he wasn’t yours,” ImNotGoodatThis6969.

Another commenter provided valuable insight from the son’s perspective.

“As an adopted child, I just want to thank you on behalf of your son. I deeply believe it changes nothing, family is not about blood, its about who you love, want to have by your side, and care for the most. Sending hugs, strength and gratitude,” Mariuuq wrote.

The father at the heart of this story is understandably devastated because his life was upended almost overnight. But the hope in the story is that his trials also taught him a powerful truth—his love for his son goes much deeper than blood.

This article originally appeared on 9.28.23