November is gearing up to be a busy month for Rihanna. Still on the heels of releasing her grand comeback single “Lift Me Up,” Rihanna has her Navy abuzz for a reported second song that is said to play in the credits of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. In the same week as the premiere of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Rihanna is also set to debut her new collection of her signature Savage X Fenty line of underwear, lingerie, loungewear, and intimates in her annual Savage X Fenty fashion show.
As usual, fans can expect a grand event filled with actors, musicians, and other notable figures modeling Rih Rih’s latest fashions.
Who Will Appear As Models In Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty, Vol. 4 Show?
Among this year’s models are Black Panther: Wakanda Forever‘s Winston Duke, and Abbott Elementary‘s Sheryl Lee Ralph. Singer and TikTok influencer Bella Poarch, as well as YouTuber Rickey Thompson are also set to make appearances during the show. Zola actress Taylour Paige and Shang-Chi‘s Simu Liu will grace the runway, along with Snowfall‘s Damson Idris and Black-ish‘s Marsai Martin.
In a polarizing move, this year’s Savage X Fenty show will feature Johnny Depp, who will be the first man to have his own spotlight segment, as reported by TMZ.
Goose made their late night television debut yesterday. The band appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to perform their song, “Hungersite,” off their recent album, Dripfield. The Connecticut-based jam band played for four minutes with each member of the five piece group giving their all — and the in-studio audience took notice. Still, fans in the comments noticed that this version was significantly shorter. (The original “Hungersite” runtime is about seven minutes.)
Outside of the television realm, Goose have played a significant amount of shows this year, including two dates at NYC’s Radio City Music Hall this summer.
“Clearly, the live thing is the main event at this point,” Rick Mitarotonda, Goose’s lead guitarist and songwriter, told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “But we love recording and want to keep exploring possibilities there. My hope is that, now, it’ll be a little bit more balanced. We have no intention of changing the fact that we are a live band, but we’d all love to to see the albums become something that they don’t typically become for jam bands.”
The band are set to join the Trey Anastasio Band on the road next week. The eight-show joint tour kicks off in Maine and will all be livestreamed. More information is available here.
Watch Goose’s performance of “Hungersite” on Jimmy Kimmel Live! above.
Irving and the Nets released a joint statement in which he said he took responsibility for the impact of his tweet, but the star still refused to issue an apology to the Jewish community, leading Adam Silver to criticize his statement and saying he will meet with Irving to discuss the situation. On Thursday, Irving again met with the media and was asked, point blank, if he had antisemitic beliefs, to which he refused to issue a direct answer. That was apparently the final straw for the Nets, as the team announced on Thursday night that Irving was being suspended for “at least five games” for continuing to refuse to “disavow antisemitism when given a clear opportunity,” and noting that he was “unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets.”
The Nets note in the statement that they hoped to educate Irving on why his tweet was so harmful but to this point he has refused to engage in those conversations — most notably sending representatives to meet with the Anti-Defamation League rather than meeting with them himself. As such, Irving will now sit out games without pay until he meets “a series of objective remedial measures that address the harmful impact of his conduct.”
Lollapalooza has announced their next global festival expansion: Mumbai, India. In 2023, the music festival — which previously holds annual shows in Chicago, Argentina, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Sweden, and France — will be their first time hosting in Asia. The current lineup is stacked with Imagine Dragons and The Strokes as the two headliners taking the stage on January 28 and 29. According to Consequence, it is also the first time either headlining act has played a show in India.
Other acts on the first annual Mumbai bill include Greta Van Fleet, Diplo, Zhu, Chelsea Cutler, Japanese Breakfast, The Wombats, and many more. The festival will take place at Mahalaxmi Race Course.
Tickets for Lollapalooza India are currently on-sale now. The festival offers three tiers. VIP passes include access to elevated main stage viewing, exclusive dining options, and a special entrance line, per their website. Platinum ticket holders receive all VIP benefits, plus transportation between stages, preferred parking, air-conditioned bathrooms, front stage area access, and more special perks. General Admission passes are open to all ages. Children five or younger can attend for free.
However, one thing to note, is ticket delivery for international attendees. For buyers outside India, there will be no home delivery option for passes. The official website notes that only box office pickup will be available.
Check out the full line-up below.
Lollapalooza India
For more information on Lollapalooza India, visit here.
Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
On his third studio album, Luv 4 Rent, Smino collaborates with J. Cole on a smooth track called “90 Proof.” The song is a laid-back vibe, as Smino delivers his signature soulful, high-pitched vocal stylings on the song’s chorus.
“Take a break and roll the sticky, let’s get high / Not too great at relationships, at least I try / Patient, baby, gotta make a couple rounds / ‘Fore I make it back to you to settle down,” he sings.
In typical fashion, Cole swoops in with a fiery verse, with notable bars including, “‘Bout to go pull up on RiRi, and not for the feature, Ben Franklin note / You ain’t finna catch me in the type of places everybody go / I know exactly what my hands is for, to carry a lot of dough.”
Today, Smino and Cole have shared the song’s official visual. In the Phillip Youmans-directed cut, Smino and Cole are seen enjoying time with friends and family at a house party, vibing by an old-fashioned car, and playing an intense game of Uno.
In an interview with Complex, Smino revealed that “90 Proof” almost didn’t make the Luv 4 Rent tracklist, as Cole wanted the song for an album of his own.
“I never thought about being a songwriter, but he was like, ‘You keep yourself on the song, and I’ll be on it too. But I want to put it on my album,’” Smino said. “And I was like, ‘aigh.’ I thought about it and the whole time I knew it would be great for me, being on J. Cole’s album. When I was wrapping up the tracklist, though, I just felt like something was missing, and I put ’90 Proof’ right after my intro and it just sounded like they were meant for each other. So I just called Cole and asked him if I could get the song back and he let me.”
Marty Clarke knew the clock was ticking. A coach with a near-30 year career, Clarke’s had a hand shaping the games of every Australian player who has gone on to play in the NBA, and since 2017, in his role as Technical Director of the NBA’s Global Academy in Canberra, watched as Josh Giddey and Dyson Daniels accelerated their own plans to make the jump to pro.
Tyrese Proctor was going to be the same.
“In Australia, we have a talent I.D. system and then there’s a national championship system, and those things run in conjunction with each other but one doesn’t mean you’ll make the other,” Clarke explains over the phone early one morning from the Academy in Canberra, parrots screeching occasionally in the background. “It might be a young big doesn’t make a representative team, but we know he’s going to be good down the track. So we have a program where we can see those guys even though we don’t see them at national championship. So, Tyrese is not one of those.”
Given how small basketball is in Australia relative to the country’s more popular sports of cricket, football, and swimming, Clarke says it’s relatively easy to keep tabs on athletes and their progress. Moreover, that small scale has created a tight knit community of former players and coaches where word of mouth is often the first and best way to learn about potential players that would be a fit for the Academy. Given this, Proctor, even as a skinny 15-year-old, was someone Clarke and his team were “more than aware of.”
“People in Sydney were saying, ‘Oh, Rod Proctor’s kid is going to be really good.’ So we knew Rod — I’ve coached and played against Rod — so you sort of track everyone who’s a really good player and where their kids are at,” Clarke says, recalling Proctor playing in a National Sixteen Championship at 14. “We knew he was coming along the pathway and getting good. So then it was, do we leave him? Do we bring him in?”
With a limited number of total spots — 15 at the Global Academy in Canberra, 24 at NBA Academy Africa in Senegal, and between that range at the league’s other schools in India and Mexico — bringing someone into the Academy is no small undertaking. Staff at the academies meet with the athlete and their families, there’s an assessment of academics, of personality fit.
“We have to be very selective and be as sure as we can be before we extend an invite that it’s a right fit — both from our perspective and from theirs,” Chris Ebersole, Associate Vice President and Head of Elite Basketball at the NBA says.
Ebersole, who joined the NBA in 2013 as a coordinator for its international programs such as Basketball Without Borders, was tasked with identifying the gaps that came out of those programs. Very quickly, those gaps reached out to him directly. Athletes who’d gone through camps and, with access to the coaching and resources of the NBA, saw major improvements in just four days would send Ebersole messages on What’s App and Facebook, asking what was next, inspired to get themselves to the next level.
“That’s really how the concept of the Academy was born,” Ebesole says. “How do we take this BWB model that’s clearly working, we’re seeing the improvements even in these short spans, how do we take that and extend it to a full-time, almost year-round program? Especially for these young players who maybe don’t have access to the same coaching, same infrastructure, as kids in the states or Europe have. That was the lightbulb moment for us that went off in 2015, 2016, when we started kicking around the idea.”
It was a natural symbiotic fit to host the Global Academy, which Ebersole refers to as a “United Nations of Basketball”, within the Australian Institute of Sport. The 66-hectare headquarters has a long history and track record in basketball — Basketball Australia and its Centre of Excellence (CoE) program have been honing their programs there for 40 years, and the Institute has developed athletes holistically over a number of sports. Practically, it offered a CoE team for Academy athletes to scrimmage against, and it would also allow for the multi-prong approach the league wanted to take.
Beyond basketball, which includes strength and conditioning, formal practices twice per day, and nutrition, Ebersole underscores the importance of the off-court companion piece.
“We call it our Performance Lifestyle Curriculum and it’s life skills, mental skills, how they train, their mental wellbeing. It’s leadership, financial literacy, college readiness outside the classroom and off the court but also how they manage their time,” he says, stressing, “Our goal is the feedback we get from their coaches, or college coaches, is ‘Wow, these guys are so prepared.’ And that is the feedback we’ve gotten so far.”
Clarkson, having coached Giddey and Daniels up through that same system, knows a fit when he sees one — they brought Proctor in.
NBA Academy, Nicole Sweet
July in Jakarta. The Boomers went 6-0 and took gold for just the second time since Australia began playing in FIBA’s Asia Cup, but the second time in a row. The hard-nosed group on the floor, led by veteran Mitch McCarron, was disruptive and scrappy in games head coach Mike Kelly cheerfully referred to as dogfights, and popping up as a cool head in the thick of them was Proctor.
In a game against Indonesia that secured Australia its quarterfinals spot, Proctor dished unhurried from the wing, muscled in for offensive rebounds and second chance points, pulled up smoothly from a fast break for three, and otherwise looked composed, near leisurely. He was, on average, putting up the team’s second most points in the fifth most minutes, all while playing against opponents five years older.
“It was a big one for me. My first major Australian tournament. These are my first big minutes, and I had an impact on the game a bit more,” Proctor says over Zoom one morning, affably admitting he’s also just waking up.
The games were fast, he remembers, notably against Japan where he says he got burned three times. “I was like damn, these guys are quick. So I had to drop back a little bit. The pace was really quick. I haven’t really played pace, but physicality as well, to that extreme. So that was a bit of an eye opener, but I adjusted to it and really enjoyed it.”
Proctor is a versatile athlete. He played basketball, baseball, and soccer as a kid and, when he found himself naturally zeroing in on basketball in a way he described as “gravitational”, he stepped up his training with his dad, former Ole Miss and Australian hooper, Rod Proctor. Beyond his game, but something he recognizes as foundational in it, is the support he got from his parents. He remembers them taking time off to drive him all over Australia for tournaments, fostering his skills “as well as supporting me as a person,” he says. He also credits them with his level-head, his manners, and “just being a good person overall.”
A month before the Asia Cup, Proctor reclassified from Duke’s 2023 class to 2022 when Trevor Keels declared for the NBA Draft. Duke’s coach, Jon Scheyer, called Proctor and his family and presented the option for him to jump up a year. The roster spot with Australia’s national team was a crucial bridge in service to that acceleration.
The Boomers, and really Australian basketball, have hung their hats on defensive prowess and generally being unrelenting on the floor. Think of stalwart bigs like Andrew Bogut and Aron Baynes, lunchpail little-bit-of-everything guys like Joe Ingles, and punchy guards like Patty Mills and Matthew Dellavedova. As the youngest on the roster and second youngest in the tournament, Proctor was consistently up against bigger and stronger players but held his own defensively, happily noting he did a “heaps better job” thanks to guarding McCarron and Dellavedova at training camp. He looked, for all his 18 years, pretty complete.
That was the point.
“When the Boomers opportunity came up, it was like alright, let’s not worry about what he’s doing here, let’s make sure he can get onto that thing because he’s going to be around people that have travelled the path that he wants to travel. And they can help teach him,” Clarke remembers.
In Australian basketball, and especially for its youngest up-and-comers like Proctor, none of that is a euphemism. Clarke notes the alumni feel the Boomers have given that most all of the country’s players who’ve gone on to the pros have been on the team and come through the CoE, and says it’s as close to the U.S. college alumni system as they have in Australia. Older athletes are, in a sense, training up their replacements.
“It makes for a healthy culture, healthy environment. Most pro teams are not like that because you don’t want anyone to take your minutes, let alone your salary,” Clark says.
The foundation of that culture is borne out of a saying that kept coming up in conversations about the Global Academy, but more widely, Australian basketball: Iron sharpens iron.
“The way we, or I see it,” Proctor says, correcting himself though his choice of pronoun already gives a good hint, “is if you’re not woking hard and giving 100 percent, then your teammate’s not going to get that. So it’s sort of like a brotherhood. You don’t only respect yourself, but the people that you’re living with, and trying to see them do well. If everyone wasn’t working hard and doing their best, then the program wouldn’t be as successful as it has been and is.”
“If you go to a club environment you have a veteran or a group of veterans that can be leaders or can teach the next group down, can make sure practice runs smoothly,” Clarke elaborates. “Here, we don’t have that. Our veterans are 18, 19 year olds. So we have to keep instilling in them, if you’re not working hard, the guy that’s next to you is not getting the benefit out of it, so he can’t benefit you.”
The idea is that the harder a person works, the faster they learn, and the more it benefits the group. In an environment like the Academy, for Proctor, he may be asked to give it everything he has every time he shows up, but he gets that back multiplied by ten in any given practice. It also means coaches don’t grill and drill players on specifics or the number of reps they get down any given week, instead, accountability kicks in.
“That was a good thing,” Proctor recalls, “You can’t just sit back and pray your work’s going to get better, your game’s going to get better, you have to do it yourself — your basketball’s up to you.”
“It’s a constant thing we say in here,” Clarke smiles, “If the guy next to you is not pushing you, remind him.”
NBA Academy, Nicole Sweet
Clarke and the staff at the Global Academy had been looking for ways to push Proctor since he declared for Duke in April 2022, then in his third year of the program. When he first arrived in Canberra, at the threshold of the youngest athletes the Academy accepts and no longer being the biggest or strongest, Proctor sought out his own challenges, often pitting himself against the older Giddey and Daniels, both of whom he’d grow close to.
Every term, Proctor and other players met with Clarke to talk through what they wanted to do better on and off court. It was a way of ensuring each athlete, in guiding their goals, stayed accountable.
“It was called IDP — Individual Development Plans,” Proctor says, “The NBA guys would talk to Marty, and the CoE guys would talk to [Boomers head coach] Robbie McKinlay. We had a diary sort of thing, so you have this outline from different points in the diary, and you go off them, and then [Clarke] shares what he thinks you need to get better on just from watching. Over that next gap before your next meeting, you try to really hone in on those specifics.”
“I know that diaries and hand writing is kind of uncool these days,” Clarke chuckles. “But the diary is as much about writing down what you’ve done well as areas you need to improve on. I think in this environment it’s kind of a bit of a blend. There’s so much going on and it’s twice a day. Sometimes players forget what they’re actually good at.”
For Proctor that was “firstly, going in and getting stronger,” he says, then dialing in on specifics like finishing, getting his teammates open when attacking the lanes, and pick-and-rolls. Off-court training would follow suit, like watching a lot of film of Chris Paul coming off screens.
“It’s more about the players taking control of their own development, and taking time to decompress. They might’ve had a shitty practice, but let’s get it down on paper, let’s figure it out and solve this problem rather than going back to your room and dwelling on it,” Clarke notes.
The Academy programming, though individualized for each athlete, focuses on mental boosts in reality checks to help maintain a steady level of confidence and belief. There’s an inverting of the whole rookies carrying the bags tradition, which the Academy tends to give the responsibility of to its seniors, knowing younger players have enough going on in their heads as-is. Clarke also gave the example of the Academy’s first year players competing in local tournaments — “So you come in Monday to Friday and have the older guys beat you up, basically,” he chuckles, “and Friday night you can go to a local comp and rip out 50.”
Beyond accountability, keeping a diary helps young athletes slow things down.
Watching Proctor in his games during the Asia Cup, beyond his skill and versatility, the most striking trait is how patient and easy he is. Even the fraction of a second catch-and-shoots under pressure seem unhurried. It springs from a guard’s intuition, but beyond that is rooted in patience.
Asked if he considers himself a patient person and Proctor instantly breaks into sheepish grin.
“I’m definitely more patient on the court than off the court, especially in my mum’s eyes,” he laughs. “But I’ve definitely worked on that on court. Whether that’s coming off pick-and-rolls and playing as patient as I can, as calm as I can. I try not to get revved up or bogged down in being too slow, I try to play in a neutral mindset and play style, which has helped me over the last couple years.”
“Guys that played here have that same on-court demeanor as if they are veterans, because they’ve been put in that situation. We don’t have veterans, you have to assume that mantle both on and off the court so it makes you feel like the lead, and you are the veteran. It’s an ability to slow down, in a world that’s speeding up — everything’s speeding up, we’re trying to slow people down,” Clarke adds, of the way the diaries carry over to the court. “Because on the floor, everyone talks about you need to be fast, you actually need to be slow too. You gotta see what you’re looking for. If you play too quick, you can’t do that. That’s a good hallmark of all our guards, the ability to play slow, and then play quick. Not just quick to quicker.”
Where Proctor did wind up going from quick to quicker was in his development at the Academy. Coming in as a lanky 15-year-old who had always slugged it out against older players, he worked at his strength and game composure, and gained four years worth in just under three, even when a bout with Covid set him back the summer of his third year. When asked if it surprised him, that Proctor wanted to reclassify, Clarke barks out a laugh before the question finishes.
“I had been talking to his dad for maybe six months about, ‘We’re gonna need to find Tyrese something else to keep challenging him, to get the best out of him’ knowing his pathway was another year here,” Clarke recalls.
That path forked immediately when Keels was drafted by the Knicks and the call came from Duke.
“I guess we could’ve easily tried to talk him out of it on a selfish level, said no, we want to keep him,” Clarke shrugs, before turning sincere. “In the end it was pretty obvious that going and challenging himself, putting himself in a new environment, was probably going to be the best thing for Tyrese.”
Even if it was most exacting deja vu — Clarke could recall watching Daniel’s Draft with his Academy teammates, and Giddey’s the year before, all of them realizing these guys were supposed to be there with them — it was the right move.
“If you’re good enough, and you need to, you should move on. It’s the good part of the flexibility here,” Clarke nods, “Tyrese had really made that jump.”
While Proctor’s freshman season has yet to start, he’s taken to Duke for many of the same reasons he was drawn to the collegiate route in the first place. The sense of community, being close to his teammates, the campus, all elements that run parallel to the Global Academy and to the way he talks about his family (including his 14-year-old sister who also plays ball and he got to train with, and razz, before he left), who he’ll be the farthest away from he’s ever been. It was important for Proctor, too, to pick his own path, it just now happens that the last three top prospects who’ve left Australia all went through the Global Academy, and each via their own distinct routes.
It speaks to the versatility of the Global Academy, that as a program it has enough resources to give individualized attention to its athletes and prepares them for a life in the pros as well as off the court, or after it, all of which crystallizes in what mentors like Clarke try to instil.
“When this decision came up it was more about, why do you want to go? What do you think you’re going to get out of it? And what’s your response going to be if things don’t go as planned? Everyone talks about risk and reward,” Clarke says, “there’s actually a third part of that and it’s called recovery. If things don’t go well, how can I recover from it and how much time is it going to take?”
Proctor and Clarke spoke often about different outcomes he might see in his first year at Duke, like being number 10 in a new group and not getting to play. None of it was meant to throw Proctor off before he took his first step in a new direction, besides, Clarke says, Proctor is an adept problem-solver and communicator. This was Clarke giving Proctor advice to focus on the fundamentals he already knew — that the onus of his own development was on him, like it always had been.
“The big advice was once you’ve made this decision, don’t look back. And don’t ever forget this is your decision,” Clarke says matter-of-factly, an earnest smile on his face. “And if you own that decision, you’ll figure it out.”
The alchemy of Fred Armisen‘s Californians sketch on Saturday Night Live feels mostly like an excuse to use an absurd accent and try to get Bill Hader to break character (not hard). Blonde-headed narcissists punctuating their soap opera dramatics with highly detailed driving directions? Pure magic. As it turns out, Armisen has fellow SNL alum Dana Carvey mocking his own son to thank for the idea. He explained the sketch’s origin story on Carvey and David Spade’s podcast Fly on the Wall.
“I had seen Dana—I was with him and we did a stand-up show in San Francisco—and Dana was telling me about his son,” Armisen said. “And he’s just like, ‘It’s hard to be mad at him,’ because, I think he got pulled over or something. He does this impression of his son and he goes, ‘No, but, no, Dad, no, you don’t,’ you know? And, from that, as we were trying to do a California accent, as we’re writing the sketch, that kind of came up.”
Carvey’s impression of his son’s accent added the secret ingredient to an idea that had been bubbling like Napa Valley champagne for a while with the absurd level of driving directions coming first. Staff writer David Anderson added the soap opera concept, and then Carvey’s son clearly gave all of them a license to try to see how far they could stretch a word until it didn’t sound like a word anymore.
The thing about Blockbuster (which just premiered with all episodes available on Netflix) is that the name, nostalgia, and bitter irony of it running on Netflix eventually fades, replaced by a different kind of wistfulness for a time of goofing off at work with your friends and easily forgotten customers who were little more than obstacles to some great conversations. And while, sure, there are grown-up economic anxieties baked into this story about what becomes a small business in a dying sector, its core is in the act of finding joy in the minutiae of your days together doing menial labor and the preservation of that joy.
Blockbuster is, like every other workplace comedy, a show that will rise or fall with the strength of its characters and its cast. And when it came time to pick a lead, creator Vanessa Ramos knew exactly what the show needed, tapping Randall Park to play Timmy, the owner of the last Blockbuster on earth whose life is thrown into chaos when he has to scramble to save, not just his business and way of life, but the livelihoods of employees that he genuinely thinks of as his family. “You never get the person you imagine when you’re writing it, but the thing with Randall is he makes it even better than I imagined,” Ramos told Uproxx when we were getting ready to talk with Park, adding, “the look he gives at the end of the pilot breaks my heart every time — and nobody has seen it more than I have.”
Park is, of course, known for playing nice guys that are easy to root for, previously starring in Fresh Off The Boat, Always Be My Maybe, and popping up in various Marvel projects as Jimmy Woo. There’s an earnestness that he brings to these roles and, with Blockbuster, a natural affinity for the kind of story Ramos and company are trying to tell. “I thought the Blockbuster thing was cool and nostalgic and interesting, but the thing that really connected to me was this workplace family and the ways in which they kind of all relate to each other,” he told us.
Ahead, Park talks more about the appeal of the show, his own experience working in a video store, the pull of playing characters that hold onto the past, and both the DVD cover that terrified him and the iconic film he’s never seen (let’s not judge).
What’s your own personal connection or affinity for Blockbuster and video stores, in general? That whole experience that’s obviously gone away.
Video stores were a huge part of my life and my upbringing. I spent hours and hours in video stores walking up and down aisles, looking at the back of the boxes, just reading about these different movies. In my very formative years, it was just the reality. And also in high school, I worked in a video store. For several summers. I worked at an independent mom-and-pop video store called New Wave Video. It was here in Los Angeles on Palms Boulevard. And it was just a great experience, just a neighborhood shop, where we’d have our regular customers coming in and we’d make our recommendations and just get to know people and it was a very, very fun time for me.
Obviously, there’s a lot of nostalgia for Blockbuster, but it sort of became the brand most synonymous with video stores and there are a lot of people who are like, “Yeah, but Blockbuster drove a lot of mom-and-pop video stores out of business.” It’s not exactly a fairytale story.
To me, it’s a part of the story of the show in a lot of ways because a lot of people talk about the irony of Netflix, of it being on Netflix and Netflix being the company that kind of wiped out Blockbuster. But then at the same time, Blockbuster was the company that kind of wiped out a lot of other video stores. And I think there is something really, really fascinating about the show in the sense that it is about a small business trying to survive. But the small business was once a big business that took out a lot of small businesses trying to survive. There is a strange irony there. But I think it’s really interesting because Timmy, the character I play, his heyday was when Blockbusters were on top of the world and that’s when he was the happiest. And here he is trying to hold onto that feeling.
How does it feel to play a character like that with that sort of arrested development mindset where he’s very much focused on, not reliving so much, but remembering and celebrating the past, that nostalgia drunkenness?
It comes very naturally to me. That is me in a lot of ways. I’m a very analog guy.
I have some issues with that myself.
I just love all the things that I grew up with and I feel like those were the best things and the coolest things. And there will always be a longing for that time. And I feel like in that way I really identify with Timmy.
Obviously, the character gets really romantic about movies and the human interaction side of the thing and this sort of anti-algorithm mindset, which I’m sure Netflix loved. Is that something that you find in your own life with your community of actors and friends?
I feel like I have it in my own life but I think I’m very conscious and active in making sure that I keep my world small. And I think it’s just second nature for me to do that. But I do have to remind myself that my happiness lies in those interactions with people, face to face and in hanging out with friends and being with my family. And because I’m very conscious of that, I’m always making sure to prioritize that as much as possible in my life. And going into a store and feeling the fabric of a shirt, to me that brings me so much more joy than buying a shirt online. It’s just that old-school way of thinking. I think I’m very conscious of keeping that in my life.
This question pops up on Twitter from time to time: is there a horror movie that, when you used to go into a video store, the box cover would just hold your eye? For me, it was the original IT. Every time I saw that cover, my eyes would just lock on. And I felt like Pennywise was following me. It’s the source of deep trauma. I’m just curious if you have one.
Yeah. It’s so funny you asked that because it just popped into my head. The box. I think it was called Ichi the Killer or something like that. It was a Japanese horror movie that was in our store and the box, still just thinking about it, it just freaks me out. It just freaks me out.
I think the box covers are why I didn’t watch many horror movies. “Eh, no, I’ll go rom-com. I’ll rent When Harry Met Sally for the 15th time.
Oh my gosh. And it’s so funny you say that because that’s all I’ve been saying in every interview is how much I’d rent When Harry Met Sally over and over again. That’s so funny. I never rent horror. Or I never watch. If I scream when I look at the box, I’m not going to watch it.
Any late fees left over at Blockbuster or Hollywood Video? I think the statute of limitation is expired. Is your conscience clean?
(Laughs) My conscience is clean. I was always good with that. I was so good with that. Because I was so broke. I was so broke. The idea of more debt than all the debt I was already in, it was like just, I couldn’t.
I’ll tell you, I put Hollywood Video and Blockbuster into the ground with about $40 owed to both of them and I won because they’re done.
You won. You got away! (Laughs)
Clean. So I read another interview that you’d done where you said that there are a lot of movies that you haven’t seen. I’m totally in the same boat and I know the feeling. When I tell somebody I haven’t seen Lord Of The Rings they look at me sideways. But now I’ve said one of mine. Can you give me one of yours? What’s one that you’re embarrassed about having not seen?
I mean, I haven’t seen so many. Oh gosh. What’s like one that everyone says to see? I did see Lord Of The Rings. I will say that.
(Laughs) Everybody did, it seems.
Yeah, but I didn’t see Jurassic Park.
Oh, for real?
Never seen it. Never seen any of them.
Any reason? Fear of dinosaurs?
No, I don’t know, it just missed me for some reason. And then once they started making more, it was like, “Oh, well I got to see the first one to see these other ones.” And then it became too much. And I’m too busy watching When Harry Met Sally, so I just don’t have the time.
When these movies hit the culture, they sort of seep into you even if you haven’t seen them. I haven’t seen any of the Halloween movies. I haven’t seen Friday The 13th, or any of that stuff. But I know so much about them that it’s like I have.
Totally. And I do love reading about movies, even movies that I haven’t seen. Reading about them and any podcast about the making of. It’s weird that there’s so much I know about the making of movies that I have never seen.
Even if you went back and watched Jurassic Park now you couldn’t get the full experience from whatever it was, 1993 or whatever. They had these massive cardboard cutouts like gates to the park at the theater.
Yeah, I missed it.
Jumping back to the show. The set looks so well done. It looks like a Blockbuster. You worked in a video store. If you’re on set, does your mind ever wander and you fall back into that mode, like, “we need to stock that there. We need to move that?”
(Laughs) No, no. I don’t fall into that mode, but it’s so accurate. The signage is like exactly like the signage of my local Blockbuster here in LA that I used to go to every other week. So it did feel like a time machine every time I stepped onto that set. It felt like I was back in the late nineties just walking up and down my neighborhood blockbuster. And yeah, it was very kind of discombobulating in a lot of ways because it was so detailed. The details on that set were so real and exactly like the old store and kind of aged too. There’s an aging thing that they did that made it feel even more just like the store. So it was a trip. It was very much a trip.
I mean, you can see it on the screen from the signage to everything. They spared no expense, which is a line from Jurassic Park. But you wouldn’t know.
I wouldn’t know. (Laughs)
‘Blockbuster’ is available to stream on Netflix right now.
As part of his no contest plea agreement, Bridges will not serve any jail time and does not officially admit guilt, but will instead be sentenced to three years of probation, which comes with a variety of stipulations, per ESPN’s Baxter Holmes.
During his three-year probation, Bridges, 24, will have to undergo 52 weeks of domestic violence counseling and 52 weeks of parenting classes, serve 100 hours of community service, and undergo weekly narcotics testing with marijuana allowed only if there is a valid doctor’s prescription. He cannot own any guns or ammunition or any dangerous weapons. He also will have to pay a restitution fine of $300 and a domestic violence fine of $500, and obey the terms of a 10-year protective order, staying 100 yards away from and having no contact with the woman. Bridges and the woman maintain custody over their two children, and any visitation or exchange of children must be done peacefully and through a neutral third party.
Bridges is not currently in the NBA, so the league has not handed out any punishment to the former Hornets star, but should he sign, the league could suspend him or outright disqualify him from playing in the league as part of the collective bargaining agreement for having plead no contest to a domestic violence charge.
Legendary basketball coach John Wooden once remarked, “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching.” If Wooden’s adage is true, then a video of two children trick-or-treating shows they have impeccable character.
Q13 Fox Seattle reports that 12-year-old Abby and her younger brother Levi were trick-or-treating in Waconia, Minnesota, on Halloween. When they arrived at Kristina Kallman’s house they realized the treat bowl she left out was empty. Abby appears to be dressed as a superhero and Levi was a scary clown.
Kallman left the bowl so kids in the neighborhood could get some candy while she was out at a Halloween party. Either she had more trick-or-treaters than expected or some kids helped themselves to too much candy.
Instead of walking away from the porch feeling dejected, Abby replenished the bowl for the next group of kids by filling it with some of their own candy. Footage of the generous act was caught on Kallman’s doorbell camera.
“Wow, special children there! I’d have to guess this behavior starts with the family. You young lady are destined for greatness and all those around you will be blessed by your friendship,” a YouTube user named Speed Bump wrote. “Bless these children, they deserve an extra treat for their kindness,” Harley Vampey-Sis Quinn added.
After the video went viral, the kids’ mom shared Abby’s thoughts on what she did. Her response was simple, “Well I didn’t want other kids to not have candy.” If more adults thought that way, the world would be such a better place.
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