Category: News

True crime stories are the obsession of the moment, but the history of fictionalized stories about criminals who wreak all kinds of havoc is incredibly rich and action-packed while, at the same time, offering the occasional comment on society, law enforcement, and what desperation can do to people. In this list, we’re taking a look at some truly great gems from the 1990s that deliver on that promise while also mixing in some high-concept creativity and spectacle.

1. Heat

Year: 1995
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Val Kilmer
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 170 minutes
Director: Michael Mann
Trailer: Watch here

Al Pacino and Robert De Niro finally got to share the screen in Michael Mann’s sprawling crime drama (both were, of course, in Godfather II, but shared no scenes), and the results are tense and explosive. The verisimilitude that Mann is known for is present in every scene, particularly in moments when the two are facing off, either with a gun in their hands (the film delivers one of the greatest heist scenes that has ever been filmed with the chaotic post-bank robbery gunfight) or simply sitting at a table together. The depth of these characters and the space given to an exploration of their motivations and obsessions will get under your skin and stay there long after hearing Moby’s “God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters” over the end credits.

Watch it on Hulu

2. Point Break

Year: 1991
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, Gary Busey
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 141 minutes
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Trailer: Watch here

A green FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) goes undercover to investigate a string of bank robberies, leading him to charismatic adrenaline junkie Bodhi (the late Patrick Swayze) and his group of like-minded criminal surfers. Kathryn Bigelow directs this amped-up heist film, exploring then-little-known cultural enclaves of extreme sports with intense surfing and skydiving scenes that seduce Reeves’ character and the audience. Then she yanks us all back into reality with bloody action sequences and bank robberies that serve as a reminder to the high-stakes game these characters are playing.

Watch it on Netflix

3. True Romance

Year: 1993
Cast: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Walken, James Gandolfini
Genre: Crime, Romance
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
Director: Tony Scott
Trailer: Watch here

Before he shook up all of Hollywood with Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino penned the screenplay for this unorthodox love story between a comic book store employee and a sex worker (Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette) who fall in love and head to California to start a new life together with big dreams and a suitcase full of cocaine that the Mob is desperate to get back. A rollercoaster ride that unleashes mayhem from beginning to end, thanks to Tony Scott’s skillful direction, Tarantino’s memorable dialogue, and a large cast of familiar faces who make four-course meals out of every scene they get, True Romance is a must-watch.

Watch it on Amazon Prime

4. Face/Off

Year: 1997
Cast: John Travolta, Nicolas Cage
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 138 minutes
Director: John Woo
Trailer: Watch here

John Woo made a name for himself with several Hong Kong action classics such as The Killer and Hard Boiled, but he didn’t find true success in the US until this audacious actioner. Starring John Travolta (who had also worked with Woo on Broken Arrow in his post-Pulp Fiction boom period) and Nicolas Cage, Face/Off tells the high-concept story of an FBI agent and a terrorist-for-hire whose mutual hatred for each other and years-long deadly cat and mouse game somehow leads to the two men switching faces and identities, threatening the city of Los Angels and terrorizing each other in the process. While the action scenes are epic and beautiful in Woo’s trademarked style, the film also delivers in its less explosive moments when its two leads are simply pulling off subtly brilliant impersonations of the other’s mannerisms and characters.

Watch it on Amazon Prime

5. True Lies

Year: 1994
Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Eliza Dushku
Genre: Action, Crime, Comedy
Rating: R
Runtime: 141 minutes
Director: James Cameron
Trailer: Watch here

James Cameron is known for making big-budget action films that look and feel like no other, but with this film, he decided to bring the noise and bring some laughter to go with it. Here, Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as a counter-terrorism agent who has spent years hiding what he does from his wife and daughter (Jamie Lee Curtis, Eliza Dushku), a secret that turns all of their lives upside down when they suddenly learn the truth. Mixing Arnold and Curtis’ top-tier action-comedy chops with a chase scene between a horse and a motorcycle, an awkwardly comedic yet seductive pole dance scene, and a Harrier jet flying in the middle of a city shows that True Lies is yet another highly entertaining reminder of Cameron’s ability to create a crowd pleaser.

Watch it on Amazon Prime

6. Die Hard With A Vengeance

Year: 1995
Cast: Bruce Willis, Jeremy Irons, Samuel L. Jackson
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 128 minutes
Director: John McTiernan
Trailer: Watch here

It’s not set during Christmas and the scale is a bit larger with all of Manhattan now serving as John McClane’s battleground, but director John McTiernan managed to create a Die Hard film that stands up to the original in his return to the franchise after sitting out the sequel. This time, McClane (Bruce Willis) teams up (and butts heads) with an electronics store owner (Samuel L. Jackson) to stop a mysterious terrorist named Simon (Jeremy Irons). Willis and Jackson have terrific chemistry as they fight for their own lives, and the lives of millions of New Yorkers, and though Irons doesn’t surpass what Alan Rickman gave us with Hans Gruber, he still brings more than enough menace to the table.

Watch it on Hulu

7. New Jack City

Year: 1991
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Ice-T, Judd Nelson
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: R
Runtime: 97 minutes
Director: Mario Van Peebles
Trailer: Watch here

Blade is usually the first film that comes to mind whenever most people think of Wesley Snipes. But the film that first set him on the path to superstardom was Mario Van Peebles’ gangster film, in which Snipes plays ruthless and ambitious drug kingpin Nino Brown, who is targeted by a team of cops (Ice-T, Judd Nelson, Van Peebles) determined to bring him down. Bullets, betrayals, and personal vendettas get our attention, but the film takes its time as it shows us how destructive the drug epidemic can be (especially in Black and brown neighborhoods), and that the war against drugs has just as many casualties as any other.

Watch it on Amazon Prime

8. Timecop

Year: 1994
Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Mia Sara, Ron Silver
Genre: Sci-Fi, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 99 minutes
Director: Peter Hyams
Trailer: Watch here

Based on the Dark Horse comic book series, Time Cop imagines a world where time travel is such a day-to-day reality that it warrants government oversight and protection with an elite force at the ready to keep it clear from abuse and falling into the wrong hands. Jean-Claude Van Damme is captivating to watch as the star of the film and that unit, wrestling with grief and Ron Silver’s crooked politician. Their performances (Silver is in full villain-you-love-to-hate mode here), action sequences that benefit from Van Damme’s unique physical skills, and fun ’90s-era visual effects help make this one of Van Damme’s best.

Watch it on Amazon Prime

9. Desperado

Year: 1995
Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek
Genre: Crime, Thriller
Rating: R
Runtime: 104 minutes
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Trailer: Watch here

A sequel to Robert Rodriguez’s groundbreaking independent film El Mariachi, here the unnamed musician (Antonio Banderas) uses his guitar case filled with weapons to take his revenge on the drug lord whose underlings killed his girlfriend and destroyed his hopes of becoming a musician. Not only does it have the kind of gunfights that were clearly influenced by the films of John Woo, but it also introduced U.S. audiences to Salma Hayek and Rodriguez while further establishing Banderas as a star on the rise following dramatic turns in high-profile films like Philadelphia and Interview With The Vampire.

Watch it on Hulu

10. Dead Presidents

Year: 1995
Cast: Larenz Tate, Chris Tucker, Keith David
Genre: Action, Crime
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
Director: Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes
Trailer: Watch here

After the success of Menace II Society, Allen and Albert Hughes followed up with this film about an African-American Vietnam vet (Larenz Tate) who comes back home to New York, realizes how limited his options are, and decides to organize an armored car robbery with his friends. Between the gunfights and the needle drops, it shows how the Black community is often brutally reminded of how much this country continues to expect so much from them, and give back little to nothing in return.

Watch it on Paramount Plus

In a June TikTok, Halsey is sitting on the couch, her gaze crossed between an eye-roll and a daydream. She’s nodding along to a song, biting her lip in tired frustration. The song is called “So Good,” and at the time of filming, Halsey’s record label won’t let her release it — unless she starts a viral moment. “Everything is marketing. And they are doing this to every artist these days,” white text reads overtop her face. “I just want to release music, man. And I deserve better tbh.” FKA Twigs shared a similar sentiment on the app this year: “It’s true all record labels ask for are TikToks and I got told off today for not making enough effort.” Florence Welch sang a stripped-down version of her single “My Love” and captioned the video, “The label are begging me for ‘low fi tik toks’ so here you go. pls send help.”

It made sense in 2020, that an app providing windows into peoples’ homes would be the object of fascination. It made sense that without concerts, people would turn to their screens to simulate the experience of live music. Two years later, TikTok has trained a generation of eyes — and ears — on its tech and transformed the way they discover artists and listen to music. The personally catered user-generated content feed has evolved from lip-syncs and dance challenges at the forefront to include a wider range of videos, like skits and outfit try-ons and confessionals. The app calls its songs “sounds,” designed to soundtrack creators’ lives and carry viewers from clip to clip. This year, artists realized it’s no longer as simple as describing dance moves for a single to get attention on the app, leaving artists like Halsey and their teams scrambling for the elusive “TikTok song.” TikTok has rewritten the anatomy of an earworm and changed what people expect from pop stars.

For a pop song to become a TikTok song, it has to play to the whims of the algorithm and users’ shifting attention. It has to abide by a set of unspoken rules. It has to be relatable. It has to be genuine. It has to be familiar. It has to have a moment. In 2022, nearly all of Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 number-one songs — singles like “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy, “About Damn Time” by Lizzo, “As It Was” by Harry Styles, and “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals — were associated with TikTok moments.

“Moment” is the new “catchy,” rebranded for a visually-focused, fast-moving content stream. A moment is a part of a song that inspires listeners — or, more accurately, viewers — to use the music as a tool for self-expression, and embody it in their own short-form videos. The moment can be call-to-action lyrics that command a series of hand gestures, or a turn-of-phrase that provokes a personal anecdote. Taylor Swift’s refrain, “I’m the problem, it’s me,” from her 2022 single “Anti-Hero” has been used hundreds of thousands of times on the platform, playing in the background of videos where TikTok creators share their “problems” in bold text. The moment can be an emotional verse about missing an ex that accompanies a slideshow of a creator’s old romantic photos. It can be a sunny chorus to soundtrack a video of someone’s beach vacation or general good vibes, like “Sunroof,” which initially gained popularity on TikTok and then peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The moment can be a dramatic sound effect or key change that complements a before-and-after makeover clip, like Sam Smith’s “Unholy.” It’s hard to imagine these songs weren’t written with TikTok front of mind.

Cole Silberman discovered the artist Role Model a few years back and now mainly manages young, up-and-coming talent. “When a label says ‘make a TikTok song,’ they’re not looking for a full body of work,” he said. “They’re looking for things that they can share quickly and build quick moments on, and then continuously lean into those moments. A label is a business, and they have to make money.” When a song does well on TikTok, it juices streaming numbers and sales. Labels figure that these moments are like ads for their product, and why would you put out a product without a commercial?

The TikTok moment has become so crucial that users have been speeding up songs, as if to get to the climax quicker, before a viewer gets bored and swipes up for something new. Sped-up versions of songs took off on the platform this year, to the point where artists like Panic! At The Disco and Marshmello re-released their old hits in double-time. Some newcomers released three recordings per single — normal, fast, and slow.

Hannah Hicks is a manager whose company roster includes Grammy-winning producers and artists like Grimes. “TikTok is such a big part of what we think about, even from the creation of a song. It’s defined what it means to be an artist in 2022,” she said over the phone. Most artists have been trying to “make transitions hit harder” in their songs, Hicks told me, a bass drop or chord progression to soundtrack the pacing of a video, to signal a turning point in a 30-second clip. If enough creators use your transition, you’ve got a moment.

A TikTok moment should be easy to latch onto. One straightforward way for an artist to achieve this, as the platform showed this year, is to go back to basics. Gen Z pop-punk-ish artist Leah Kate released “Twinkle Twinkle Little Bitch” in June and it’s been used nearly 45,000 times in TikTok videos. Meanwhile, her counterpart Gayle’s TikTok hit “ABCDEFU” was nominated for next year’s Grammys. Counting, spelling, and nursery rhymes are well-worn pop strategies — The Jackson 5’s “ABC,” Brian McKnight’s “Back At One,” Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E” — taking on new life in the TikTok era. Another way artists facilitated the moment this year was by remixing old songs, warming up melodies that have proven successful in the past. Nicki Minaj took on Rick James circa 1981 for “Super Freaky Girl,” Jack Harlow did his best 2006 Fergie for “First Class,” and Yung Gravy sampled Rick Astley on “Betty (Get Money).” Each song had its moment on TikTok upon release.

Emotional mirroring, as every source I spoke to told me, can be just as important as a song’s immediate stickiness. Gayle released chill and angry versions of “ABCDEFU,” in addition to fast and slow renditions. She, or her team, knows her song needs to meet fans where they are…be it chill or angry. Specific, relatable content goes a long way in this landscape, and a wider array of emotions means more chances for her moment to land.

On TikTok, you’re not just listening to music, you’re projecting yourself onto it, pairing it with a snapshot of your life. A TikTok song has to resonate with a creator for them to feel compelled to use it in a video, or for a viewer to listen to 30 seconds of it. People want to lip-sync along to a song where they feel exactly the same way as the artist. “It’s like everyone is their own music supervisor,” Hicks said. “They’re thinking, ‘what song can not only capture the emotion, but also the movements of what I’m doing?’”

The word “moment” came up 20 times in my conversation with Silberman and seven times with Hicks. The thing about moments, though, is they end. A viral hit isn’t enough. What listeners really want from today’s pop artists is a relationship. The person behind the moment. They don’t want artificial pop stars, they want down-to-earth people. They want to feel like they’re hanging out with their artists, like they can reach through the phone and touch them.

They also want to feel heard, like they’re part of something, like social media is including rather than isolating them. In 2022, fans wanted input. This year, many artists quasi-collaborated with fans on TikTok, letting them have a say in which lyrics they should use or which songs they should put out first. Artists shared intimate footage of their processes writing and recording songs, hooking viewers to follow through to the final product. Charlie Puth shared pieces of his song “Light Switch” on TikTok as he was writing it, building hype before it was even available on streaming services. Fans are the decision makers, perhaps even more than the invisible music industry execs. “It’s interesting to see the kids just picking and choosing what music is gonna work and what’s not. I feel like all the power is in their hands right now,” Scout Easley, an A&R Manager at Sony/ATV Music Publishing, said.

Everything comes back to the algorithm. TikTok rewards consistency, so if an artist is constantly uploading videos, the algorithm will have their videos populate peoples’ feeds more frequently. More videos also means artists will have to show more of their lives and days to the platform, which conveys a certain level of intimacy by proxy. The TikTok machine wants genuine personalities as much as listeners do.

The formula is, of course, always evolving and impossible to pin down. And that’s why artists have to move fast. Stacey Ryan, a 22-year-old singer-songwriter, had the moment, after responding to an “open verse challenge” with a piece of her original song. She had the emotional connection with her 1.5 million followers, all of whom wanted to hear the finished product. And then, she had two weeks. Two weeks to record and put out “Don’t Text Me When You’re Drunk,” while people’s thumbs still hovered over her profile. Another week and she might’ve been lost in the scroll.

“That was a song that I had written that wasn’t even finished. And then, it all of a sudden blew up,” Ryan said. “We recorded the song and put it out in under two weeks, because we really wanted to jump on the bandwagon. That kind of kickstarted my professional career on TikTok. That was when I got signed.”

Charlie Finch, a 19-year-old artist, says he uses TikTok as a “testing platform,” a way to get a sense of what listeners want from him. The first video Finch posted about his single “Enough” got a million views, and the next 20 “Enough” TikToks did similar numbers. Other songs of his stay in the thousands.

This new world might feel strange for artists like Halsey, whose careers predate TikTok, but it can be a land of possibility for rising names like Ryan and Finch. This is how a new slate of pop stars are being made. But it comes with a price. “There is a stress that comes with it, because TikTok definitely does penalize you for not posting and consistency is the number one thing,” Finch said. “You have to keep going, keep going, keep going. If I’m on vacation with my family, I can’t stop. I have to figure out a way to make it work.”

Just as easy as it is to swipe away from a video, it’s easy to forget a TikTok song the minute a new one comes around. When music is content and content is ephemeral, nothing is built to last.

Halsey’s label eventually let her release “So Good” after her initial TikTok made headlines. The song has been used 16,100 times on the platform, small numbers compared to Gayle and Ryan’s millions. User TheRealTophiaChu commented on one of Halsey’s videos about the debacle, “Any time a song is TikTok famous it loses value SO fast.” The comment continued, “There are so many good songs that I can’t even listen to because they were so overused.”

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

J.J. Watt’s NFL career is about to come to an end, and one of his teammates desperately wants to get a piece of memorabilia. Watt revealed during a press conference this week that Jesse Luketa, a rookie outside linebacker out of Penn State, tried to contact him recently about getting his hands on some gear after Watt’s final game. There were two issues: 1. Watt did not know Luketa’s number, which meant he did not answer a FaceTime from the youngster and wasn’t sure what was going on when that same number sent him a weird Voice Memo, 2. Luketa, per Watt, was “high off his ass” after getting his wisdom teeth out while asking for a signed jersey.

Watt said he was going to make sure Luketa was cool with him sharing the Voice Memo after the presser. Well, apparently, Watt got the all clear, as the Cardinals posted the video to their Twitter account on Thursday evening. Not only that, but you can see the exchange the two had via text and a picture of Luketa looking like a person who just got their wisdom teeth out — head to the 1:08 mark of the below video to hear the voice message.

On Tuesday morning, Watt tweeted that the Cardinals’ Christmas Day game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was the final home game of his decorated NFL career. He’ll play in Arizona’s final two games — road trips to Atlanta and San Francisco — before hanging the up and, hopefully, giving Luketa a jersey.

For the last few years, Greta Thunberg has been the face of teenagers begging the world to save them from climate change. In her speeches, she’s righteously angry. But it’s not as though she doesn’t have a sense of humor. During the chill week between Christmas and New Year’s, she found herself targeted by prominent misogynistic moron Andrew Tate. Her witty response was so powerful that it didn’t just humiliate him — it might have led to him getting thrown in the clink.

As per The Daily Beast, Romania’s Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) confirmed in a statement that authorities had raided five homes tied to four suspects part of an investigation involving organized crime, human trafficking, and rape. Several local outlets identified two of those suspects as Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan. Their alleged crimes aren’t pretty:

DIICOT said at least six victims had come forward to allege they were trafficked by the two British citizens, and kept captive in houses surrounding Bucharest, where they were sexually assaulted and forced to produce pornography for social media under threats of physical violence.

Was it a coincidence that Tate was arrested a day after his Twitter scrape with Thunberg? In the inciting post, Tate, a former professional kickboxer, taunted Thunberg by asking for her email so he could brag about his 33 cars and all the carbon emissions they pumped into the atmosphere. Thunberg responded with what has already become one of the most popular tweets in Twitter history, sarcastically asking him to “enlighten” her, telling him to “email me at [email protected].”

The exchange made Tate instantly go from semi-obscure MAGA clown to humiliated household name. He couldn’t let it lie, though, providing a response that managed to be both lame and, possibly, accidentally self-incriminating.

In a two-minute video, Tate, gleefully puffing on a cigar, tried to one-up her. He failed. Towards the end of the video, though, someone hands him two pizza boxes, which he jokingly said not to recycle. The boxes were from a place called Jerry’s Pizza, which eagle eyed sleuths could note is a Romanian chain. Back in April, Tate was arrested by Romanian authorities as part of a human trafficking investigation but were later released.

Details about the current investigation are still up in the air, but reports pointed out that the video, revealing that Tate was back in Romania, may have tipped authorities off to him being back in the country.

To sum up: Andrew Tate picked a fight with a teenage girl, said teenage girl torched him beyond recognition, and he responded in a way that may have gotten him busted.

As news of Tate’s arrest spread, many pointed out that one shouldn’t mess with Greta Thunberg, or today’s teenagers in general.

Others wondered if it was really the fault of Elon Musk, who included Tate among the many previously banned users whose accounts were recently restored.

Some gave credit to Jerry’s Pizza.

Or maybe, some argued, it’s Tate’s own damn fault.

There were jokes.

Anyway, the whole strange affair seems like an ideal way to end the surprisingly not terrible 2022.

(Via The Daily Beast)

In the age of social media, it’s easy for moms to feel bad about themselves. Given the “positivity bias” of social media, parents are much more likely to share idealized pictures of their families that make everyone else feel like they’re the only ones who don’t have it together.

A study published in “Computers in Human Behavior” found that being confronted with “idealized motherhood” can increase anxiety and put unnecessary pressure on your mental health.

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“And interestingly, it didn’t matter if the idealized portrayal was from a social media influencer [a “mommy influencer”] or an average Instagram user [an “everyday mom”],” the study’s author Dr. Ciera E. Kirkpatrick writes.

“Idealized content from either of these sources had the same negative effect—indicating that anyone putting out idealized motherhood content like this can have harmful effects on new moms. It’s not just a problem with influencers,” Dr. Kirkpatrick continues.

See on Instagram

One stay-at-home mom is doing her best to make everyone feel better about the chaos that comes with having children. TikTokker Emily Feret has earned over 1 million followers on the platform because of her videos that aim to “normalize being normal.”

In one of her posts, she shows you what a “normal” person’s fridge looks like. “You guys love these, I like to normalize being normal, life without the filter. So I’m gonna show you my fridge so you can feel better about yours,” Feret says in the video.

@emilyjeanne333

THE FRIDGE #WorthTheWait #normalizechaos #normalizenormal #messyhouse #fridgetour #normal #nofilter #pinterestmom #hotmessmom

In another video, she takes a walk through her house, “so you can feel better about yours.” On her journey, she encounters a washing machine that doesn’t work quite right, a bed that isn’t made properly and a massive stack of toilet paper she keeps in her hallway.

@emilyjeanne333

Reply to @magickaldust normalizing normalcy #normalizechaos #normalizenormal #normalizenormalcy #messyhouse #hotmessmom #nofilter #fyp

Feret also provides support for mothers who feel overwhelmed.

“The mess isn’t going to go anywhere. You have young kids. You’re at home all the time. You’re living in your home. It’s going to look lived-in, and that’s okay,” she said. “Your kids are little. Enjoy them. Love them.”

“I want you to know that you’re doing enough by doing exactly what you’re doing right now,” she added.

@emilyjeanne333

#stitch with @marandaarbo I don’t know you but I see you and I love you. Breathe mama #breatheinbreatheout #nornalizechaos #nornalizemess

Feret told Parents what inspired her to share her home life on TikTok.

“I was watching all these videos and seeing all these pictures on social media of these picture-perfect houses and ‘filtered lives,’ and it was making me feel bad about my life,” Feret told Parents. “I was not seeing any houses or moms that looked like me and my life. I wanted to show how my life is not at all like that and that you can be ‘normal’ and be doing a wonderful job even if your house is a mess and your kids are driving you crazy.”

Feret’s videos are clearly resonating with parents because she’s had over 38 million likes on TikTok. She can’t believe the success that she’s had being “normal” but is happy she can help mothers like herself.

“All I have ever wanted to do is to help other people. The response has been overwhelming. I have people sending me gifts and celebrities commenting on my posts. It’s incredibly surreal,” she told Motherly. “I wanted other moms, and really anyone out there, that if their life does not look like an Instagram post it doesn’t mean you aren’t doing well.”

Working remotely usually isn’t this hands on but two doulas in Buffalo had to get creative when a patient went into labor while trapped inside the house due to the historic blizzard. Davon and Erica Thompson found themselves in a peculiar situation when Erica went into labor on Christmas Eve.

Davon called 911 multiple times in an attempt to get assistance but the operator couldn’t send anyone out according to NBC News. But the baby was not going to wait until EMS was free. Erica’s contractions quickly jumped to just three minutes apart and Davon knew he was about to become a midwife.

Davon told the Buffalo News, “At that point, I was like: ‘This is going to be me. I’m going to have to put my big boy pants on and figure this out,’” so he reached out to a friend.

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With his friend’s help, Davon found a Facebook group that led them to Raymonda Reynolds, a doula – who then called Iva Michelle Blackburn, a doula and licensed practical nurse. Typically doulas don’t deliver babies, but are there to help the mother through the birthing process through coaching, massages and advocacy. But since they see a lot of birth, it’s not a surprise that if there’s no other option, one may be able to walk terrified parents through the process – like in a storm…a blizzard where the baby is coming regardless.

While doulas aren’t trained to deliver babies, most LPNs complete a rotation in labor and delivery and Blackburn told NBC that she has helped deliver more than 50 babies in a hospital. But needless to say, this was the first time she’d helped deliver a baby in the Metaverse.

By the time Blackburn began video chatting with the nervous dad, Reynolds already had him collect the supplies, boil water and get mom in the shower to take the edge off of her pain. Once Blackburn saw the soon-to-be-mom, she knew a baby was about to make their entrance. With a loud moan – it was go time.

See on Instagram

Davon was ready with towels to catch his daughter as Erica squatted to help the baby enter the world. Blackburn told NBC, “At first mom and dad looked like they were both in shock and the baby looked like she was in shock, too, because she was alert but not crying. But as soon as they picked her up, she started crying and we all started cheering.”

Devynn Brielle Thomas was caught by her dad and she weighed 6 pounds, 9 ounces and was 20 inches long. The family couldn’t make it to the hospital until the following day but everyone is healthy. And the person that drove them to the hospital in his truck, a real angel – Angel Lugo. Once the snow melts the Thompsons plan to meet the doulas in person but something tells me, they’ll be connected for life.

This just goes to show that while social media can have its downfalls – it truly is a connector of people when they need it most.

SZA got candid about some of the influences on her album in a recent interview with Rolling Stone’s Music Now podcast. The “Kill Bill” songstress revealed that she looked to pop-punk artists like Blink 182, Avril Lavigne, and more. To help her cultivate the sound she was looking for, the TDE singer says she turned to her friend and pop star Lizzo after a run-in while she recorded her latest album, S.O.S.

SZA revealed that she and the “About Damn Time” singer recorded at least “five or six songs” during the session. The long-time friends took turns freestyling over the beat that became “F2F,” which was initially titled “Charlatan,” said songwriter/producer Carter Lang who joined the singer during the interview.

“They were putting some energy into it,” he said. “That was the thing that I feel sparked SZA really taking it into her own world and figuring out how it can be part of her story in an authentic way and not like, ‘Hey, I just did a rock joint.’”

For SZA, the pairing made sense because she feels Lizzo “gets her,” and they “have so much together.”

“She’s another person who has hella [wide] music tastes and doesn’t fit in anybody’s box of anything,” the singer said. “She makes it seem like she doesn’t even care, like she just does whatever she wants. And I just love being with her, just as a friend and hanging out. So whenever she comes to a studio, I just feel like, ‘Let’s drop into some bullshi*t.’”

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Warning: This post contains some mild spoilers for a scene in Glass Onion that happens very early on and has already been widely reported.

On top of its copious twists and semi-accidental topicality, Glass Onion (we’ll leave off that subtitle that’s not even in the film itself) also boasts some genuinely decent cameos (plus one that’s not exactly a cameo). Some of them happen very early on, before most of the cast is sequestered to a far flung Mediterranean island. One of them is no less than Angela Lansbury, who appears as herself as part of a group Zoom call with Daniel Craig’s bathtub-bound Benoit Blanc. It’s a great, bittersweet get, especially considering the stage and screen legend passed away mere months before its release. But if you think the moment captured the real Lansbury, turns out she was just acting.

In a new piece by The New York Times, writer-director Rian Johnson revealed how he nabbed Lansbury and what it was like working with her on what would turn out to be her final (albeit very brief) screen performance. In the scene, she and a group — which also features the august trio of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Natasha Lyonne, and Stephen Sondheim — whiling away the quarantine era of the pandemic by playing the online mystery game Among Us.

“She couldn’t have been lovelier and more generous,” Johnson recalled, before adding, for posterity, “Not a gamer.” Johnson said she was “very patient” as he laboriously described how the game worked, at least “up to a point.” When she reached that point, Johnson remembered, “she just said, ‘You know what? Just tell me what the lines are. I’ll trust you.’”

The fact that Lansbury can be seen on a Zoom call with Sondheim is no accident: Lansbury played the conspirator Mrs. Lovett in the original Broadway production of Sondheim’s grisly Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Like Lansbury, Sondheim also made his final screen appearance in Glass Onion, and getting him was no easy feat, until it proved incredibly simple.

“I wasn’t really sure how to get to him,” Johnson’s producing partner Ram Bergman told NYT. “But then I was on a call with Bryan Lourd, our agent, and it somehow came up. I said, we really would love Stephen to do this. And I swear, five minutes later, he emailed me: he’s going to do it.” In fact, once they got Sondheim, he hooked them up with Lansbury.

The call itself was, alas, not real. For Lansbury, Johnson recorded it himself, at her home in Los Angeles, using his personal computer. But movies are magic, and so you can imagine that Daniel Craig really did Zoom chat with four legends at the same time, while in the bath tub.

Glass Onion can now be streamed on Netflix.

(Via NYT)

At a time when it can feel like America’s most pressing problems aren’t being addressed, there’s some very good news on the healthcare front that everyone should know. The percentage of Americans who are uninsured has hit the lowest point in American history.

A report from the Office of Health Policy earlier this year announced that the uninsured rate hit an all-time low of 8% in the first quarter of 2022. To give some perspective, in 2010, before the Affordable Care Act (ACAalso known as Obamacare) had been fully implemented, the uninsured rate was twice as high at 16%.

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To add to the drop in the number of uninsured, more Americans have purchased health insurance during the recent Open Enrollment Period through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces than ever before.

“The historic 13.6 million people who have enrolled in a health insurance plan so far this period shows that the demand and need for affordable health care remains high,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement.

A major reason for the increase in healthcare coverage has been the American Rescue Plan’s enhanced marketplace subsidies, state Medicaid expansions and an increase in enrollment outreach by the current administration.

Approximately 5.2 million Americans have gained health coverage since 2020. The new numbers were cause for celebration at the White House.

“From November 1st to December 15th, nearly 11.5 million Americans signed up for insurance on HealthCare.gov—about 1.8 million more people, an 18 percent increase, over the same period last year,” President Biden said in a statement. “That’s an all-time record, with enrollment still open and not counting people who have signed up for coverage through their state marketplaces. Gains like these helped us drive down the uninsured rate to eight percent earlier this year, its lowest level in history.”

The drop in the uninsured rate is a great example of the benefits of smart policy-making in Washington. The ACA wasn’t the most popular piece of legislation when it was passed in 2010. Critics on the right demonized it as a state takeover of healthcare that would result in death panels, sky-high premiums and socialized medicine. Many on the far left thought that the ACA was bad policy because it stopped short of offering full coverage for everyone like Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All proposal.

But over time, the ACA has become a cornerstone in American healthcare policy that has changed the lives of millions. Former President Barack Obama knew it wasn’t perfect when it was passed, but he saw it as a strong foundation to build on. Now his Democratic predecessor has done just that and we’re seeing the results.

The American public has developed a much more favorable view of the ACA since the GOP’s 2017 crusade to “repeal and replace” the bill that failed in Congress. Now, 55% of Americans have a favorable opinion of the bill versus 42% who disapprove.

“I think it’s probably here to stay,” Republican senator John Cornyn recently told NBC News, referring to the ACA.

The numbers for healthcare sign-ups during this Open Enrollment Period are definitely encouraging but things may get even better. This year’s HealthCare.gov Open Enrollment Period has been extended until January 15, 2022

Donald Trump has shared more and wackier conspiracy theories than almost anyone alive. Sometimes they even get others in trouble. Where does he get his kooky ideas? For instance, what cynical doofus told him to exhume some long debunked nonsense about how Joe Scarborough may have murdered an aide? According to one of his turncoat former employees, he got that one from one of the biggest dorks in MAGA land.

As per Mediaite, Alyssa Farah Griffin — the Trump press secretary-turned-cast member of The View — told some wild tales in her deposition to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot. She spoke about the pure chaos of the former president’s administration. To illustrate this, she spoke about a time in 2020 when she spotted Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz hanging out in the West Wing. The latter was wielding a folder, and Griffin went up to him to ask what was inside.

And he pulls it out. It’s conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough murdering his intern. And I said, “Please do not bring that into the West Wing — or to the Oval Office.” We were literally outside of the Outer Oval. And just — as I’m saying that — I said, You cannot put that in front of the President, he — he gets ushered in. And sure enough, within — by the next morning, the former President is tweeting wild conspiracy theories about a cable news host, you know, allegedly murdering his intern.

Said theory had already been torn apart back in 2017 by The Washington Post. It involved an incident that occurred all the way back in 2001 when a 28-year-old aide died in Scarborough’s office, back when he was a Florida representative, while he was far north in D.C. A coroner found no proof of foul play and everyone moved on.

After Trump and others revived this debunked silliness, the late aide’s widower begged then-Twitter honcho Jack Dorsey to delete them, saying they’d “perverted” the memory of his late wife for their own political gain.

Meanwhile, Gaetz, who’s still under investigation over alleged connections to a sex trafficking ring, has spent most of his energy lately being part of an inner MAGA circle beef between former besties Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, as well as accusing Democrats of being “Grinches” over Christmas — despite looking a bit like the Grinch himself.

(Via Mediaite)