“This has been a dream for years, ever since Jon Favreau cast Harrison Ford in Cowboys and Aliens,” Feige told Entertainment Weekly. Feige couldn’t ever shake the feeling that he was born to bring Harrison Ford into the MCU, so that’s what he did! “I was always very jealous of that, so to have him finally in the MCU is just incredible. It’s like, I can cross that off the wishlist,” the Marvel Boss said.
Ford will be replacing William Hurt who starred as President Ross in The Incredible Hulk and appeared in Avengers: Endgame before his death last March. Now, Ford’s portrayal will team up with Anthony Mackie’s Captain America. “There’s a dynamic between President Ross and Sam Wilson,” Feige told EW. “They have a history together, but in this film, we’ll be seeing the dynamic between Captain America and the president of the United States in a way that is just incredible.”
As for the veteran actor deciding to dip his toes in the MCU at age 80, Ford says that he felt like he was missing out. Ford told The Hollywood Reporter: “I thought, ‘Everybody else seems to be having a great time.’ I watch all these terrific actors having a good time. I like doing something different from what I’ve ever done and pleasing people with it. So I’ll try a piece of that.” Even though Ford has played a president before, there weren’t superheroes involved, so this is different enough.
While we’re still in the midst of the winter months, there are sure signs that spring is on the way. We’re referencing days when the sun seems to shine a little brighter, the temperatures are a little higher, and you don’t even need a sweater or light jacket. With spring around the corner, the time is right to start planning that spring (and summer road trip). And while there’s nothing wrong with visiting a touristy beach destination or massive amusement park that may or may not have a cartoon mouse as its mascot, we prefer our road trips to at least include a pint or two of beer waiting for us at our final destination. That’s why we plan road trips to visit breweries.
Lucky for us (and you), there are more than 9,500 breweries currently operating in the United States. This means that (almost) anywhere you live there are at least a few decent breweries within a short drive.
But if you really want to get the most out of your warm-weather road trip, you’ll seek out some of the award-winning, more heralded, and just downright innovative breweries that litter this country. To find some of the best, we went to the source. We asked a few well-known craft beer experts and brewers and they were gracious enough to let us in on their favorite breweries that every beer fan should visit this year. Keep scrolling to see their ten picks.
Hogshead Brewery (Denver, Colorado)
Hogshead Brewery
Jim Bruckner, head brewer at Bootstrap Brewing in Longmont, Colorado
I’m going to go back to Hogshead. They brew so many traditional cask options and imperial pints. It also has a great atmosphere (it’s small but has a great pub feel to it). Summers are awesome on the patio and in winter you huddle inside with awesome beer. If you visit, try the Chin Wag ESB. It’s malt-forward and well-hopped. A truly special beer.
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery is always a fun visit. The thing that separates Dogfish Head from the others is they don’t view it as just a beer and brewery but as a lifestyle. It’s a great tour and a great visit. When you’re there, visit the eccentric, exciting brewery, and the innovative distillery, and stop in at the Brewings & Eats restaurant in Rehoboth Beach.
I very much recommend visiting Reuben’s Brews in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. If you’ve ever seen those logos curiously resembling the symbol for pi, you’ve seen that unmistakable letter “r” that is for Reuben’s. Lurking behind this humble, unsuspecting name is a juggernaut of amazing beers. I’m blown away by how many beers, cover a huge breadth of styles, with every single one always being top-notch. I dare you to go to Reuben’s Brews and find a beer you don’t like, plus the folks there are very friendly, family-oriented, and helpful.
Highland Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina. Go there. Highland is leading the East Coast in providing a destination and experience at their brewery, putting the 40-acre “campus” (my word, not theirs) to great use. There’s a classic tap room but also hiking trails, beach volleyball courts, a meadow with an outdoor stage and bar to lounge at, and a disc golf course. More than this, Highland is also great people and is still family owned and operated after almost thirty years in business.
Pryse Brewing (Minneapolis)
Pryse Brewing
Garth E. Beyer, certified Cicerone® and owner and founder of Garth’s Brew Bar in Madison, Wisconsin
Pryse Brewing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The space is incredible, the brick-oven pizza, too. Oh, and about that beer? They’re one of those rare breweries that can tackle a variety of styles extremely well. Another way to think about Pryse is its approachability. No matter where one is on their craft beer journey, they’re bound to find something to love at Pryse.
Very Nice Brewing (Nederland, Colorado)
Very Nice Brewing
Jeff Smith, co-founder and ringmaster at LUKI Brewery in Arvada, Colorado
Very Nice Brewing Company in Nederland, Colorado. They were a big inspiration for us to develop a taproom-only model with our brewery. It’s an incredibly chill place to visit, with a local’s vibe but very welcoming to those outside the community. Jeffrey Green crafts some amazing beers, many times sourced with hyper-local ingredients, and I always find something unexpected and delicious. The Royal We IPA and the Very Nice Pale Ale always find themselves in my growlers when I’m passing through.
Suarez Family Brewery. Much has been said about their beers in the past few years and do not be mistaken, they are fantastic and well worth the journey, but the warmth and welcoming nature of Dan and Tay, and the taproom they built are what will keep you coming back for another experience. It is a simple space with floor-to-ceiling windows, communal seating, and a window that gives you the slightest glimpse into the product space. Occasionally a local food vendor will be set up selling tasty offerings like pretzels, choucroute, or other beer-friendly nourishment. It’s a place to ponder a beer, be convivial, relax, and just enjoy. Despite their growing popularity, their kind staff managed to keep the space feeling calm, casual, and intimate. Unfortunately, Covid put an end to that space and it likely will not be coming back in the same form. In its stead, the Suarez’s opened up a small outdoor space behind the brewery last summer, dubbed the Tap, so that one could not only come to the brewery and take away its wares but also hang out in a safe space and have a pour of the one beer they tapped for that given day. One beer, a far cry from the full draft, bottle, and cellar list that was once available, and yet, still a fulfilling experience. With The Tap the Suarez’s succeeded again, by creating another lovely space for a beer and an opportunity to just enjoy.
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Everyone should visit Allagash in Portland, Maine this year. It’s a wonderful spot, with wonderful people, and wonderful beer. Portland is a great beer city on its own with various other great breweries worth stopping in to as well. But make Allagash your first stop and grab an Allagash White or one of its many Coolship beers and limited releases.
While you might not think of Sacramento, California as a beer destination, you would be wrong. And one brewery that stands out as a must-visit is Urban Roots Brewing. The space is nicely done and the food is spectacular, but of course, you go to a brewery for the beer and Peter is making great beer. You can find something for any palate there, from light lagers to barrel-aged stouts and all kinds of hop-forward brews.
Asheville, North Carolina is absolutely bursting with fantastic breweries, but I can’t recommend Wicked Weed Brewing’s trio of spots around town enough, especially the original Brewpub and the Funkatorium. At both locations, you’ll find a delicious variety of beers (including some harder-to-find styles), full food menus with excellent bang for your buck, and well a well-stocked bottle and souvenir shop. Oh, and the brewpub also has a free tour.
Steven Spielberg was downright emphatic over the success of Top Gun: Maverick during this year’s Oscars luncheon. More specifically, the iconic director had nothing but praise for Tom Cruise who he personally credited with saving Hollywood.
The moment was captured in an elusive online video that’s been making the rounds on Twitter and being just as quickly pulled. In the candid moment, Spielberg can be seen gushing over his Minority Report and War of the Worlds star. Via Variety:
“You saved Hollywood’s ass and you might have saved theatrical distribution,” Spielberg said to Cruise in a video originally shared on Instagram by director Kartiki Gonsalves, whose film “Who Can Say No to Baby Elephants!” is nominated for best documentary short film. Cruise was left blushing.
Spielberg added, “Seriously, ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ might have saved the entire theatrical industry.”
Did Top Gun: Maverick save theatrical distribution? Arguably, yes. Cruise adamantly refused to release the film on streaming during the pandemic, and that gambit paid off as it became the highest grossing domestic release of 2022. However, Top Gun: Maverick wasn’t the only Hollywood success. Marvel delivered a number of hits starting with Spider-Man: No Way Home, which arguably reinvigorated the box office in late 2021, and proceeded to drop huge box office wins with Doctor Strange 2, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. There was also a small little film called Avatar: The Way of Water that may have put up some numbers. Just a few.
That said, after the pandemic put a serious hurt on the theatrical model, every box office win counts. Cruise leveraging his massive star power to stave off a streaming release for Maverick was a much-needed jolt for the industry.
Of the live-action Star Wars shows on Disney+, one is great (Andor), one is super fun (The Mandalorian), one made Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen happy and that makes me happy (Obi-Wan Kenobi), and one is a basically a prequel to season three of The Mandalorian (The Book of Boba Fett). The three episodes of the bounty hunter-focused series with Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin and Baby Yoda were the best episodes of the show and worth watching before The Mandalorian returns in March. Otherwise, you might be lost (or you can save time and read our explainer on what happened).
In an interview with Empire, The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau was asked about reuniting Mando and Baby Yoda in The Book of Boba Fett when the season two finale of The Mandalorian made it seem like they would be apart in season three. “We couldn’t just hit a hard reset,” he explained. “It’s going to be interesting to see how this unfolds for people who may not have seen The Book of Boba Fett.” Favreau continued:
“You saw what Mando was like without Baby Yoda and we saw what Grogu was like without the Mandalorian and neither of them was doing too good. So them coming back together was a really good plot point that allows us to jump back into season three while maintaining the central relationship.”
I wasn’t doing too good with Baby Yoda and his floating saucer, either, so makes sense.
Lorde has been teasing her fourth album a lot more recently. It might be hard to believe, but it’s already been nearly two years since her Solar Power record dropped. While she’s traditionally had longer gaps of time in between her era cycles, it seems she’s been working on something coming a lot sooner.
“I mean, I do just take a long time… I do a lot of research, I write a lot down,” she told Ensemble. “Sort of a big chunk of work before I actually start writing music. So yeah, that’s been a really big part of it. It’s been super exciting and I feel excited about what’s coming.”
“You know, it’s my intention, it’s always my intention, to move as quickly as I f*cking can and then that ends up taking different forms,” Lorde added. “But this one, I really am trying to. I don’t want to wait, you know, so take from that what you will.”
This isn’t the first time Lorde’s hinted at a faster album drop either. Last September at LA’s Primavera Sound festival, she shared, “Who knows what will come next? Well, I know. And you’ll know sometime soon.”
However, it won’t likely be that soon, as she’s still finishing up the Solar Power tour with a New Zealand and Australia run starting later this month.
This is sorcery, really. You shouldn’t be able to do all these things at once. You shouldn’t be able to take valuable intellectual property and stuff it into a silly cartoon that is equal parts fun and stupid and sweet and raunchy. You shouldn’t be able to make me giggle and say “Awww” when I think about a character whose most famous previous iteration tried to poison a city and kill Batman. And yet, somehow, piled up against all of that, we have the Harley Quinn cartoon series still out here thriving. Again, sorcery.
And it gets better. The show just released a 45-minute Valentine’s Day special. Think about that one. Really ponder it for a bit. The show about a slew of supervillains went ahead and made a little one-off treat about the most romantic day of the year. And it’s delightful. Bane takes some hormones because he’s sensitive about the size of his manhood and ends up 100 feet tall and so uncontrollably horny that he starts trying to have intercourse with skyscrapers and also a 100-foot-tall version of Ted Lasso star Brett Goldstein. Clayface — a sentient blob of mud, basically — gets sliced in half and his top and bottom parts fall in love. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are a couple and they are out for revenge because someone destroyed their favorite Italian restaurant. Do you get it now?
Do you see what I mean?
Maybe the trailer will help.
I’m realizing now that I spoiled some things in that second paragraph. Whatever. I stand by it. The episode has been out for a few days now and the show has been so good for three seasons that you had plenty of chances. Even if you didn’t watch it yet, I promise you that the actual depiction of the things I mentioned is much better than my descriptions of them. Get in there.
And when you do, be prepared to be charmed. The episode is kind of structured like a Love, Actually-style romantic comedy, with a bunch of storylines about a bunch of couples all smashing together — literally — at the end. Harley spends the whole episode trying to give Ivy the best Valentine’s Day ever (Harley has some… issues from her time with Joker), going bigger and bigger and bigger as the runtime ticks on, with things exploding and goons dying and really just a shocking amount of violence and destruction in the name of love, only for the reveal at the end to be the damn cutest little twist you’ve ever seen. This happens shortly after a duet between a man and his own butt. I feel like that’s important to note.
But more importantly, Bane. I gave you the basic gist of his arc here, but there’s so much more going on. There are dominatrix shenanigans and magic potions and really just a lot, all tied to the thing where he’s a little sensitive about the size of his junk in relation to his massive body. As co-showrunner Justin Halpern explained to Variety in a breakdown of the whole thing…
The first three seasons, I felt like we got to say a lot of the things that we wanted to say. So it was like, every dumb joke that we had hadn’t figured out a way to fit into the first three seasons. If you’ve seen the first three seasons, there’s a lot of dumb jokes in there, so you might be thinking, what was left? Specifically, the scene where Bane is working with a dominatrix. We just threw in everything we could — if you’re gonna do a special, you gotta make it special!
I think that that storyline was — I’m gonna try to speak carefully about this, because my kids are in the car with me right now — but we just thought it would be really funny if the dominatrix was insulting the size of the guy’s penis.
Which, again, delightful, especially, again, when you think about the thing where most people think of Bane as the humorless hulk played by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s bleak take on the Batman story. That is not this Bane. This Bane is kind of a goof. He has poor self-esteem and is always getting railroaded into things and kind of just shuffled around the Legion of Doom headquarters a lot. And his whole arc loops into the others in a way that made me gasp a little and then laugh a lot. This is where I post the GIF of him humping Gotham highrises. Yes, I posted it in a column on Friday. Yes, I’ve tweeted it a few times, too. But still, I think… Actually, no. I don’t need to justify sharing something this beautiful and pure. Look at my sweet massive boy.
HBO MAX
This is where a conclusion would usually go. Something like “for this and many other reasons, the Harley Quinn Valentine’s episode is a worthwhile watch, even for people who don’t love comic book movies, especially on a romantic Tuesday night in February.” But I’m not going to do that. It would just be a waste of energy, of my time and yours. If I hadn’t already sold you with “a sweet and crass and funny cartoon where Bane crumbles the Gotham skyline with hip thrusts,” I mean… I don’t know, man. Maybe you and I just aren’t on the same page here. Because, to me, that’s just a lovely episode of television.
It’s clear that Miley Cyrus‘ new No. 1 hit “Flowers” is one of the most empowering anthems to come out so far this year. “I can buy myself flowers / Write my name in sand / Talk to myself for hours, yeah / Say things you don’t understand,” she sings in the ridiculously infectious chorus, which appears to reference Bruno Mars’ “When I Was Your Man.”
As if that’s not inspiring enough, Cyrus is not done hyping herself up and flaunting her independence. She made a Valentine’s Day post today, reiterating the same idea as “Flowers”: “I can love me better. Happy Valentines Day,” she wrote in the caption. The photo is a spicy bathing suit picture; she’s standing tall and confident, looking almost like a superhero.
Yesterday, meanwhile, was a month since the release of “Flowers.” To celebrate, she posted a video in the same bathing suit, showing her lounging by the pool. She wrote a caption about how the song “feels even more meaningful to me.” It says in full, “Happy 1 month anniversary of Flowers! To still be celebrating #1 on the Hot 100 & around the world is phenomenal. With Valentines Day coming up tomorrow this song feels even more meaningful to me. I hope this holiday is filled with the joy of honoring LOVE in all of its forms. It’s human nature to want to give & receive it. Sharing your love is special but it’s always important to save enough of that love for yourself. YOU are enough anything more is just extra. [lips emoji] Thank you for another incredible week. I LOVE YOU. [heart emoji] [rose emoji].”
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week we got new music from Paramore, Indigo De Souza, Tennis, Andy Shauf, and more.
While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.
Paramore — This Is Why
Finally: It’s been five years since Paramore’s last album After Laughter, and This Is Why has arrived. The singles were all dynamic, leaning toward high energy. But This Is Why isn’t all party bangers; “Liar” is a mellow reprieve, whereas “Crave” is a dreamy detour. The songs flow well together, exploding with danceable rhythms or slowing into vulnerable moments.
Tennis — Pollen
The shimmering, lively sound of Tennis never gets old. The sensual basslines, glowing vocals, and infectious rhythms create a hypnotizing ambiance, much like that of Mac DeMarco. Pollen is full of special moments, but overall it’s the kind of music to suck you in and make you float. By the time it’s over, you forget where you are.
Andy Shauf — Norm
The singles of Andy Shauf’s Norm were all fascinating glimpses into the complex record. The folky record mixes tenderness with an ominous texture, seeing how far longing can go before it turns into obsession on songs like “Wasted On You” and “Catch Your Eye.” On “Halloween Store,” the narrator imagines running into his crush at the Halloween store — a funny yet eerie scene that sums up the appeal of the LP.
Pierce The Veil — The Jaws Of Life
Pierce The Veil’s last album Misadventures arrived in 2016, a time that barely feels real anymore. It’s inevitable that the band would evolve since then, and The Jaws Of Life shows an expansion into new sounds and an overall maturation. “Shared Trauma” buzzes like an electronic song; “Pass The Nirvana” is indebted to Deftones.
Yo La Tengo — This Stupid World
Yo La Tengo have been going at it for decades and never seem to miss. This Stupid World — which is a great album title — kicks off with a Sonic Youth-esque instrumental that immediately pulls the listener into a distorted, introspective state. All of the following tracks retain this thoughtfulness: “Prepare to die / Prepare yourself while there’s still time,” Ira Kaplan sings on “Until It Happens” against meditative guitars.
Black Belt Eagle Scout — The Land, The Water, The Sky
“My Blood Runs Through This Land” is the opening track of Black Belt Eagle Scout’s new album The Land, The Water, The Sky, and it’s urgent, striking from all angles, turning singer Katherine Paul into something of a prophetic. Though it’s risky to start off so strong and powerful, the pace of the LP works, going back and forth between building into a crescendo before quieting down and laying low again, which feels metaphorical of the whole world.
Indigo De Souza — “Younger & Dumber”
Indigo De Souza’s 2018 LP I Love My Mom and 2021 record Any Shape You Take are unique bursts of poignant, mesmeric indie rock that showcase a singular artist. Now, the Asheville, NC native is preparing for her third album, All Of This Will End. “Younger & Dumber” is the first taste, and it proves that De Souza is wise beyond her years as she reflects on being a kid: “Which way will I run when I want something new?”
Scowl — “Opening Night”
How Flowers Grow by Scowl was one of the most exciting hardcore records of 2021. Endlessly invigorating, rippers like “Four Walls” and “Bloodhound” came for blood. “Opening Night” takes things a little easier, watching vocalist Kat Moss sings all the way through, at least until the corrosive track ends in a build-up that explodes with Moss’ unrelenting howls.
Squid — “Swing (In A Dream)”
Squid are back with the announcement of their new album O Monolith. “Swing (In A Dream)” is a disorienting, vibrating track that gets weirder as it goes on, sounding as if it’s from another world: “To live inside the frame / And forget everything,” sings Ollie Judge ominously.
Pile — “Lowered Rainbow”
All Fiction, Pile’s new album, is just on the horizon and the singles thus far have been compelling. Known for darkness, Pile go all-in on these new songs, unafraid of the sinister. “Lowered Rainbow” is no different; the track is an eerie hymn. the instrumentals are cinematic and the lyrics are haunting and vaguely profound.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Talent was never the question for Anthony Edwards as he came into the NBA. Instead, the question was whether he’d be able to refine and apply that talent in such a way that he’d reach his sky-high potential.
Edwards arrived in the league with an NBA frame and the athleticism to match, but plenty wondered if he would put all the pieces together. An infamous pre-draft profile on ESPN raised questions about his commitment to basketball, while his love of Popeyes and McDonald’s led to plenty of scrutiny of his diet (including from his own teammates). All of this combined to paint a portrait of an immensely talented young player whose ceiling may never be reached.
In his first two years, Edwards’ lack of consistency was maddening, including to Edwards himself. Teams around the league grew to expect him to effectively no-show back-to-backs, with Edwards lamenting that “it’s normal for me to be bad on back-to-backs” after a dismal effort against the Spurs in the second week of the season in which he scored just nine points in a loss. He said he needed to find the juice to come out every night with the same effort and energy level, putting the onus on himself to make that leap to being a more reliable star for the rest of his team.
It appears that night proved to be a wake-up call for Edwards. Since then, the Wolves have played nine back-to-backs and Edwards has matched or exceeded the first night’s scoring total six times, averaging 27.2 points on 51.2 percent shooting in those nine games on the back-to-back.
That consistent productivity has allowed Edwards to become the much needed North Star for this Timberwolves team. He has quite literally been the most reliable star in the league, having played in all 60 games this season and leading the entire NBA in minutes played. On a team where Karl-Anthony Towns has missed the last 39 games and Rudy Gobert has missed 11 games, that availability has been critical in keeping the Wolves afloat. But it hasn’t just been that he’s on the court, because Edwards is giving his team star production most every night.
Edwards has fully embraced his role as the offensive engine in Minnesota in Towns’ absence. He is posting the best numbers of his young career across the board in every category, whether it be a raw productivity, efficiency, or usage stats. His 28.8 usage rate is a career-high and ranks 18th in the NBA among players who have logged 1,000 minutes. His 24.7 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game are all career bests, as is his 53.3 eFG% and 57.1 TS%.
The biggest difference this year has been the continued development of his jump shot and his ability to get it off in tight quarters, aided by a handle that continues to improve. With the Wolves roster constructed as it is — particularly with the addition of Gobert — maximizing the space on the floor to make strides as a scorer from all three levels was necessary in order to make the leap he has this season.
Edwards is already an elite driver. He gets to the rim at a rate (30.3 percent of his shot attempts inside three feet, per Basketball-Reference) that is equal to LeBron James and higher than any non-big on the top-20 in usage in the league, and he finishes at a robust 66.5 percent clip when he gets there. His burst, deceleration, balance, footwork, and touch around the basket are spectacular, and you can start to see how that foundation he’s built as a driver and finisher is already starting to expand beyond the restricted area.
He has gotten more adept at the little push-offs and tricks great scorers use to create enough separation to get his shot up, using an off-arm or his shoulder to get a defender on his heels to give him space to stepback for a jumper. His deceleration was already a weapon at the rim, but it’s now a bigger part of his midrange arsenal, taking advantage of how defenders have to retreat due to his ability to drive to the rim to stop and pop at the elbow. His footwork and handle are steadily improving, allowing him to get into his shooting motion from just about anywhere and remain on balance on fadeaways and stepbacks. While he’s still a ways from being at the elite level of a Devin Booker, his improvement from the midrange has been notable and is creating serious issues for defenses facing the Wolves who want to collapse on his drives.
Even with those improvements, attacking the rim is where Edwards creates the most headaches for opponents. Edwards is fearless getting into the paint no matter what center is lurking, but it’s against teams that lack an elite shot-blocker that he becomes unstoppable. Take Monday’s win over Dallas, where he showed his full range of abilities around the basket, speeding past perimeter defenders, absorbing and finishing through contact, throwing a long stride at the end to get a big stuck under the rim, Euro-stepping through a pair of defenders, and more.
What’s scary is this feels like the floor for him as a scorer. While there’s no way to know if his jumper continues to improve, it’s good enough now to keep defenses honest even if he plateaus in terms of efficiency — although, given his prodigious talent, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him continue improving. But if he starts getting calls at a rate that’s more in line with how often he gets to the rim, he could start to add 3-4 points to his scoring average just off of free throws.
Edwards’ .281 free throw rate is among the lowest of the top-20 usage guys in the league, with only Stephen Curry, Jaylen Brown, LaMelo Ball, and Donovan Mitchell below him. That’s particularly notable when you again consider he has the highest rim frequency of any of the non-bigs on the list. That’s where his strength works against him, as does his stature as a first-time All-Star who hasn’t quite earned the same respect of the officials. Edwards absorbs contact and finishes so fluidly that fouls don’t always look like fouls because he muscles through them — his propensity to yell “HEY!” on just about every drive when he gets contact might also not endear him to the officials. Still, the calls will come as his stature rises and he continues to attack the rim, and if that free throw rate creeps closer to the .400 range where most of the league’s elite drivers live, he’s going to see that scoring average take another leap.
All of this is a testament to Edwards’ commitment to putting in the work to round out his skill-set and become more consistent. The talent has been there, but over the last few months, he has started to show a maturity on the court that is impressive for someone who is still just 21 years old. He embraced the challenge from Chris Finch to be more reliable and change the league-wide perception of him on back-to-backs and beyond. He’s also done so as the unquestioned focal point of opposing defenses with Towns on the shelf, and has refused to let that or an ever-changing roster do anything to the upward trajectory of his career.
The result is an All-Star campaign that has kept Minnesota afloat in the crowded and always fluid Western Conference playoff race — currently 8th, but a half-game back of 5th — with the added bonus of shifting his reputation into being one of the league’s most reliable stars. When the playoffs and play-in arrive, the question this year won’t be whether their star shows up at his best every night, and that is a dimension the Wolves have lacked for some time.
In episode 18, season eight of Seinfeld, “The Nap,” (yes, the one where George sleeps underneath his desk and triggers a bomb threat at Yankee Stadium) Elaine walks through the streets of New York with her new love interest (Hal Kitzmiller) and says “I like that stuffed crust pizza,” to which Hal, foolishly responds “It’s just more cheese!”
“Hey, let me tell you something,” Elaine quips. “It’ll be years before they find another place to hide more cheese on a pizza,’
How many years? 26, apparently. But now, after nearly three decades, those beautiful bastards at Papa John’s have finally done it. Enter the new Crispy Parm Pizza.
Available from now until an unspecified limited time, the Crispy Parm Pizza takes Papa John’s thin crust and adds a layer of shredded parmesan and Romano cheeses to the bottom, resulting in a crispy-fied crust that adds another dimension of cheesy notes to your pie. It’s the only way to enjoy thin crust, and extra cheese without, you know, just ordering extra cheese on your pizza.
So is it any good? We found out for you so you don’t have to spend $12.99 to satiate your curiosity. Let’s dive in.
Crispy Parm Pizza
Dane Rivera
My first job was at a Domino’s and during our free time (which there was a lot of) my fellow employees and I would experiment with the dough to make all sorts of off-menu items that would absolutely dunk on anything we had on the menu. I’ve had a calzone at Domino’s, even though they’ve never made one. I’ve had a Brooklyn-style pizza topped with spicy Chicken Kickers (Dominos side chicken snack). But my greatest creation was what I called the “Double Decker Thin Crust.”
This pizza consisted of a thin-crust pizza dough covered in a layer of cheese and topped with an additional thin-crust pizza dough, smeared with sauce and whatever toppings I was feeling at the moment. This resulted in a pizza that was one part quesadilla, one part stuffed crust, one part pizza, and all parts delicious.
To this day I’ve been waiting for a pizza chain to follow my ingenuity and make something equivalent, The Crispy Parm Pizza is not that, but it comes pretty damn close.
Dane Rivera
Whether or not you like this pizza is going to come down to how much you like the taste of fried cheese (spoiler: I like it). By covering the entire bottom of the crust with shredded parmesan and Romano that is then baked in an oven, you lose some of the complex nutty and creamy qualities that those cheeses give, but what you do get is a wonderful crispy mouthfeel that snaps with each bite and adds a caramelized, earthy tone to the mix.
My pizza was topped simply with pepperoni and the way the zesty and pepper-forward savory meat flavor played with the salty blend of cheeses tasted great. And yet, if you told me this pizza didn’t have cheese on the bottom of the crust, I might not have noticed. The flavor that it adds to the mix is ultimately very faint unless you go looking for it. In that way, it’s not as significant a change to your pizza as something like stuffed crust, but it is a way to hide more cheese in a dish that consists mostly of cheese.
I wish there was an extra component to this crust that made it feel just a bit more special, as it stands it’s delicious but completely inessential.
The Bottom Line:
Papa John’s found a brand new way to sneak more cheese into a pizza and for that, we commend them. Definitely order this pizza to satiate your curiosity but don’t expect it to blow your mind. If you make pizza at home, this might prove a nice hack but the Papa John’s version is a tasty-though-not-revolutionary concept.
Now my Double-Decker Thin Crust? That would blow your mind. Until someone makes this happen, this is a generally solid consolation price.
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