Category: News

We once asked if FX’s What We Do in the Shadows is the funniest show on television. The answer is inarguable after four seasons: a resounding thumbs up.

This season, the vampire comedy had Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) coming out to his family (and preventing them from killing his housemate); Nandor (Kayvan Novak) wishing for the world’s largest penis; Nadja opening a vampire nightclub with barely functional blood sprinklers; and Laszlo (Matt Berry) pronouncing “New York City” the way no human (or vampire) ever has. Guess what? Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) was there, too, first as an overactive child, then a moody teen, then his boring adult self, all the while smashing hammers into walls and other good-time f*ckery, as Laszlo might put it.

But that’s the main cast, all of whom deserve to win an Emmy this Monday (What We Do in the Shadows is up for Outstanding Comedy Series). The other reason season four shined brighter than Edward in the sun, however, is the recurring characters. The weirdos, if you will. These are the lovable freaks who pop by a few times a season, or maybe only once, and steal every scene they’re in. Think: Perd Hapley, Ethel Beavers, and Joan Callamezzo on Parks and Recreation, or Lionel Hutz, Hans Moleman, and Kirk Van Houten (who, much like Baby Colin Robinson, is the owner of a race car bed) on The Simpsons, the gold standard for TV weirdos. These characters probably couldn’t support a whole show (although I once thought the same thing about Saul Goodman, and we all know how that turned out), but it’s a joy whenever these oddballs show up.

This is an ode to some of those weirdos.

Kristen Schaal’s The Guide was in nearly every episode this season, and she provided a fun (and often very aroused) counterpart to Nadja. There is also, as I recently discovered, an incredible amount of fancams online dedicated to those two, and fans wanting them to get together. Maybe now that the Wraiths have been shipped off to Universal Studios in Florida, there’s hope in season five.

Speaking of: the Wraiths are the Minions of the Shadows-verse, except even less understandable. It’s mostly a lot of hissing. They’re faceless evil employees who are pro-union and pro-killing one of their own if they obtain the precious Water Lily of the Nile. They don’t ask for much, other than supply closets to sleep in. If the Wraiths don’t return, I hope they find work elsewhere. I hear the Lord of the Rings show might be interested.

This post is dedicated to the weirdos of What We Do in the Shadows, so maybe I’m cheating by including the Djinn (Anoop Desai), the closest thing this show has to a “normal” (f*cking) guy. Guillermo used to be the show’s straight man, so to speak, but he’s as loony as the rest of his housemates. Meanwhile, the Djinn makes Nandor’s bounty of bizarre wishes come true with barely concealed exasperation. “The character first was described to me as very dry accountant vibes,” Desai told Vulture. “I was familiar with the show, and so as soon as I had that description, the character was fully formed in my mind almost immediately, with the glasses and the deadpan and all the things that have been hallmarks of the character this season.” I might start wearing my glasses on the tip of my nose, too. I’m sure it’ll look just as cool on me.

The next time a friend asks you if they should watch What We Do in the Shadows, tell me, “Well, only if you enjoy shows where indie film legend Jim Jarmusch watches director Sofia Coppola and her rock star husband, Thomas Mars, get sucked dry and beheaded by vampires at a vampire night club, and he spends the rest of the episode wondering how they pulled off the ‘gag’ even though his friends are dead for real.” If they think Shadows isn’t for them after that description, find new friends.

It’s rare for a comedy to surprise you, but I was in awe of the twist in this season’s Property Brothers spoof where we learn that Simon the Devious (Nick Kroll) has been the mastermind behind Lazlo’s favorite home renovation show — sponsored by Kohl’s — all along. The episode gave us the return of the cursed witch’s skin hat and Simon the Devious’ list of cronies, including Gunthrapple, Wesley Sikes, Evil Steve, Freakfest Tony, the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem, Elvis, Count Rapula, and He Who Shall Not Be Named… but it’s Greg. I’m going to need an entire episode about the Freak Sisters.

Season four could have used more Marwa, but the way she was effectively written off the show was pretty great. The resurrected bride from the 1200s finds sanctuary in Nandor’s man cave (“I made a wish that we would like the same things,” he says, “now I think that wish has come true — I also think perhaps Marwa has been building this man cave for herself”) and gets turned into an exact copy of Guillermo’s English boyfriend, Freddie. Nothing to psychoanalyze there, nope, nothing at all.

I love domestic bliss between an undead baron, an ancient vampire (who learned to speak English using flashcards), and their fire-breathing dog who all live together in a house in New Jersey so they can feed off Airbnb customers, don’t you?

And now we come to Sean. Good ol’ Seanie, the only human that Lazlo considers a friend. Since making his introduction in the season two episode, “Brain Scramblies,” the one where he shows off the world’s largest collection of Ocean’s Twelve merchandise, Sean has become an essential part of Shadows. He invites the vampires to Atlantic City (“BAZINGA”), gets involved with a pillow pyramid scheme, and in season four, introduces his former-headmaster to Colin Robinson. And his “parents,” who believe their “son” is somewhere between the age of one and 42. I love Sean, kindhearted Staten Island goof that he is, and he provided maybe my biggest laugh of the season.

Long live the weirdos of What We Do in the Shadows. Except for the Baron. He’s already dead.

On Friday, NBA 2K23 will release to the joy, and sometimes frustration, of basketball fans everywhere. NBA 2K is a franchise that in many ways represents the many different cultures of basketball all intertwined into one video game. From stats geeks that want to build the perfect franchise to the gym grinders creating the perfect character to take on other players in Blacktop or ProAm. This year’s edition will feature all of that as always, but it’s also going to include a tribute to one of the greatest to ever play, Michael Jordan. Not only is Jordan on one of 2K’s three covers, but with him is the return of The Jordan Challenges.

The Jordan Challenges were originally 10 challenges in NBA 2K11 where players got to play iconic moments from Jordan’s career, from his 63-point effort in Boston to his final shot against the Utah Jazz. In 2K23, they’ve taken it even further with more depth. The developers at Visual Concepts wanted to show a more complete story of Jordan’s career, starting in college, and were kind enough to chat with us about what it took to make that happen. Erick Boenisch, an executive producer at Visual Concepts, worked on not only this year’s Jordan challenges but also the original mode back in 2K11 so he’s very familiar with how it’s changed from the previous iteration to this one.

So 2K23 is almost out, how excited are you?

It’s incredibly exciting. I mean we have been working on this for a year now and to see it all come to fruition in the last two or three months. It’s a good feeling as a game developer. We spend all these months designing stuff and then it’s in a very broken state when you start and to see it kind of come all the way to where the Jordan challenge, in particular, is now, it’s breathtaking and amazing. It’s an incredible feeling mostly because I know what the public gets to play a week from tomorrow. They get to play an amazing experience, whether you are an old head, whether you are a kid, and never saw Jordan play. There’s something for everyone.

So what led to the decision to bring the Jordan challenges back?

So when we did that in 2K11, obviously the reception was huge, but for that generation of fans at that point in time Jordan had only been retired eight years. Everyone had him in their head, and most people who bought the game at that point watched Jordan play in his career. Fast forward 12 years later we’re kind of in a whole new generation of fans playing NBA 2K, most of our audience, you know, 13, 14, 15, 16 17-year-old kids, they weren’t even born when he last played. They just see YouTube clips, dad says Jordan’s great, take it for his word. This is a chance for us to retell Michael Jordan’s story to a whole new generation of NBA fans. And for me, I take great honor and being able to do that and in doing it, I only wanted to do it in the most robust way possible.

Obviously have the challenges from last time to pull from, and then you have the most iconic moments of Jordan’s career. The final shot against Utah, the flu game, 63 points, 69 points all that. When adding in new challenges, why did you choose those specific moments?

I really felt from a fan’s perspective, they help to better tell Jordan’s narrative from an earlier point in time. Our first game is that NCAA Championship game against Georgetown in 1982. And that’s really, I don’t want to say when Jordan first came on the scene, because he went to UNC, right? But that’s really when the star started to come out of nowhere. He made that shot over Patrick Ewing, Eric ‘Sleepy’ Floyd was on that team, and it’s just it’s a great way to begin our telling of Jordan’s narrative. You get to play him at North Carolina, in college, in our game, which is awesome. It’s just a really fun experience for that. We have his Team USA and 84 experience, which we didn’t have last time. You’re going to be on a team with Babyface Chris Mullin and you’re going against these NBA All-Stars, and that’s a lot of fun. And then from that point, it was adding things along the way to better fill out what we thought was the best narrative for his career.

When you were getting the mid-game interviews with everyone who was probably your favorite person you got a chance to talk to?

We did Kenny Smith and Kenny Smith is a super professional, right? He did an amazing job. He’s so polished. You know it’s like you’re getting a broadcast interview. Jeanie Buss was like raw, and just honest and open, and she comes across amazingly in the game because of that. So I love love that. Patrick Ewing was incredible when we did him for the double nickel game against the Knicks. Marv Albert, I had never spoken to Marv in my entire life. We talked for like an hour, we then had cut his interview down to like a minute – a minute and a half.

When you have a cut them down into a minute, what’s the greatest challenge of getting those interviews into the game itself?

So each one had two parts. There was getting their personality like, Bill Walton, you give him a question and it’s seven minutes to get the answer, right, and it’s a total side tangent. So it’s getting their flavor and their unique touch that you don’t even know to ask about, but then also kind of pairing it with the narrative of the game the users are about to play and what their impact was like, Bill Walton did the arrival game because he was on the Celtics in that game. So trying to craft all those into a piece that’s consumable for the user where they’re not just skipping it. We’d sit there and massage it, watch it, and add more flavor. This one’s too long, he talks too long here, and just really crafting it into something that they were proud of as well. There’s so much extra footage we can do with later in the year if we really want to spend the time on it. The Cutting Room floor, if you will, that I think people would love.

School is back in session (almost) and your favorite teachers are heading back to your favorite Philadelphia public school! This season, the lovable Emmy-nominated faculty of Abbott Elementary will embark on various shenanigans, including two new holiday episodes.

According to Entertainment Identifier Registry, this season will include multiple holiday episodes, based on their episode titles. “Candy Zombies” will presumably be the Halloween episode, which is set to air on 10/26. The winter finale will be called “Holiday Hookah” which will air on 12/7.

Abbott Elementary’s first season became a breakout hit and one of the few cable TV shows that stuck the landing with social media. The show received seven Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress for series creator and producer Quinta Brunson, Outstanding Supporting Actor for Tyler James Willians, and Outstanding Supporting Actress for acting veteran Sheryl Lee Ralph and Janelle James.

If you need to catch up, the first season of the series is now streaming on HBO Max thanks to a deal between HBO and ABC. On September 21st, the show will return on ABC, then new episodes will be available for streaming on Hulu the next day. Here are the rest of the episode titles for the first half of season two:

Episode 1 Development Day – 9/21/2022

Episode 2 Wrong Delivery – 9/28/2022

Episode 3 Story Samurai – 10/5/2022

Episode 4 The Principals Office – 10/12/2022

Episode 5 Juice – 10/19/2022

Episode 6 Candy Zombies – 10/26/2022

Episode 7 Attack Ad – 11/2/2022

Episode 8 Egg Drop – 11/16/2022

Episode 9 Sick Day – 11/30/2022

Episode 10 (Winter Finale)- Holiday Hookah – 12/7/2022

Indie group Wet Leg catapulted into fame with their viral song “Chaise Lounge,” so they’ve decided to share a cover of another infectious hit that took TikTok by storm — Steve Lacy’s “Bad Habit,” which is climbing its way to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

On BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge, Wet Leg transformed “Bad Habit” into a more mellow, twinkly ballad. It shows off a different side from what they’re known for with the in-your-face, witty style of “Chaise Lounge.”

Because of their brazen personality, Wet Leg has dealt with a lot of online trolls. “It’s been a pretty wild ride for us these past few months, we never really thought much past actually making music and playing gigs,” they said in a statement earlier this year. “It’s quite an odd thing to suddenly open yourself to so much criticism and praise alike. The comments that complete strangers will leave on our videos are so funny and range wildly in sentiment. Although we know it is bad for us to read them and we try to avoid it, sometimes it’s irresistible when you’re on your own; the 3 am doom scroll really gets you.”

Watch the band’s rendition of “Bad Habit” above.

Remember around this time last week when I wrote that JID is the best rapper of his generation? Well, here’s his NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert to help hammer that point home. Adding a jazzy, soulful live band only enhances the JID experience, but make no mistake; JID is the star of this show, and everything he does earns that distinction. His charisma is on full display here, as is his impressive breath control, wit, and wordplay as he runs through selections from his new album The Forever Story.

The 31-year-old Dreamville rapper’s star has been on the rise since dropping his 2018 album DiCaprio 2 and his appearance on the 2018 XXL Freshman list. In the years between then and now, he has utterly stolen the show on Dreamville’s compilation album Revenge Of The Dreamers III, earning his first platinum plaque in the process, led his group, Spillage Village, on their inspiring group album Spilligion, and has run rampant on a string of guest appearances on songs like Conway The Machine’s “Scatter Brain,” Imagine Dragons’ “Enemy,” John Legend’s “Dope,” and many, many more. The hard work has paid off: The Forever Story’s No. 12 debut on the Billboard 200 makes it the highest-charting Dreamville debut outside of J. Cole and marks a 29-spot jump from DiCaprio’s No. 41 debut. In the words of JID’s Dreamville team captain J. Cole, a star is born.

With The Bear still going strong on streaming, we wondered whether Carmy’s eye-catching chicken recipe could really be the dinner item that helped keep the restaurant afloat. It’s not a super common order these days but it did look sexy when he spooned butter on top of a sizzling cutlet. Butter and meat — surefire win… right?

Friends, today we’re making lemon chicken piccata!

Before we dive in, lemon chicken piccata — more often just called “chicken piccata” — is very old-school. The dish is pretty common across Italy, unlike rigatoni al vodka which is more common here. “Piccata” is simply a “thin cutlet” that’s usually either veal or chicken and shallow fried. Generally in Italy, you’d order a “piccata di vitello al limone” for a light pan-fried veal cutlet in lemon sauce. The dish is a “secondo” course, which means it’s the meat/fish dish served after the pasta course and not with it.

Naturally, there are as many variations in Italy as there are regions and kitchens. Over time, Italian-American kitchens shorthanded that recipe to mean either veal or chicken cutlet (also lightly shallow pan-fried) and served with a pan sauce with capers and parsley and a smidge of lemon. The latter recipe — the classic Italian American version — is what we’re looking at today.

While Chicken Piccata might sound new and fresh (Carmy certainly thinks it’s a winner), the dish has had its ups and downs over the centuries from a holiday dish in Italian-American households in the early 20th century to a light alternative to the heavy red sauces in Italian restaurants up and down the East Coast in the 1950s to home cooks in the 1970s bringing it back and so on and so on until we reach 2022 where a TV show on Hulu made it popular again.

But is this Italian-American relic really worth passing along through generations? It certainly has lasted the ages so there’s got to be something there that people keep going back to. Though, that’s kind of an easy thing to answer — it’s lightly fried chicken cutlet in a butter-heavy pan sauce with a nice hit of lemon. What’s not to like?

Well… that depends on how you like capers.

Since we’re pro capers around these parts, we grabbed the recipe from Matty Matheson, the actual food consultant on the show, and followed that while adding a little more flare — it needed way more lemon and parsley to liven it up, IMO. Let’s see if it’s worth adding it to your own dinner rotation, cousin!

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Lemon Chicken Piccata

Serves 4 (on the show Carmy makes a single serving so the ratios are not the same as listed below)

Ingredients:

• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I ended up using 3 to feed five people)
• 1 cup AP flour
• 6 cloves of garlic (roughly chopped)
• 2 tbsp. small capers
• 2 lemons
• 1/8 cup fresh broadleaf parsley (roughly chopped)
• 6 tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1/2 dry white wine
• 1/2 cup hot chicken stock
• Kosher salt
• Black pepper
• Olive oil

What You’ll Need:

• Large pan (stainless or non-stick)
• Cutting board
• Meat mallet (or use the frying pan)
• ZipLock bag
• Kitchen knife
• Small grater
• Hand juicer
• Measuring spoons/cups
• Dredging bowl (for flour)
• Resting rack (for cooked chicken)
• Tongs
• Large spoon
• Whisk

Method:

• Place the chicken breast in a large ZipLock bag. Use the back of a heavy pan/skillet or a food mallet to flatten the breast to about 1/3 to 1/2 inch thickness. This isn’t Schnitzel so it doesn’t have to be paper thin, just thin enough to fry evenly and fairly quickly. Repeat with the other breasts.
• Hit each flattened breast with a pinch of salt and a crack of black pepper and set aside.
• Ready your ingredients: Roughly chop the garlic and parsley and set aside. Half the lemons and set aside. Get the capers, butter, wine, and chicken stock ready to go.
• Once you have your ingredients ready, heat a large pan on medium-high heat with a good layer of olive oil coating the whole bottom of the pan (maybe 1/8-inch). While that’s heating, pour the flour into a pie dish or large, shallow bowl and hit with a large pinch of salt and black pepper to season, use a fork to incorporate.
• Once the pan is hot (not smoking but visibly hot), dredge the chicken breast in the flour to just coat it, make sure to shake off any excess flour, and then place the breast in the hot pan. You should be able to fit two breasts in the pan at a time.
• Fry the breast until one side is lightly browned (about two to three minutes) and then flip and cook the other side until lightly browned too (another two to three minutes). Set the breasts aside on a wire rack and repeat with the remaining chicken cutlets.
• Once the cutlets are cooked and resting (place them in the oven on the lowest setting to keep warm if needed), lower the heat to medium and add the garlic. Cook for about 30 seconds or until very fragrant. Immediately add the wine to deglaze the fond from the bottom of the pan (the brown bits created from frying the chicken). This will create a brown liquid base around the garlic.
• Reduce the wine by half and add in the capers and the chicken stock. Again, allow to reduce by about half.
• Once reduced, add in the juice of two lemons and reduce again for a minute or two.
• Then turn off the heat and add in the butter and whisk until a thickened pan sauce forms. Finally, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed, and add in the parsley and a few grates of fresh lemon zest.
• Plate the cutlets on a large plate and spoon the pan sauce over the meat. Serve immediately.

Bottom Line:

Overall, this was a good dinner course — though I probably overdid it on the parsley (I blame Steve Bramucci’s influence over the years). I ended up serving it with white rice, which really worked well in absorbing the butter/lemon pan sauce. All told, it took about 45 minutes from beginning to table to make, which isn’t terrible for a weeknight meal but a little long.

When it comes to the flavors… yeah, this is nice. I can see why it endured. Again, it’s chicken in a lemon-caper sauce with — did I mention? — a lot of butter. The chicken was juicy and had a good crunch to the outside that kept its bite even after sauced and while eating.

The sauce was earthy and lemony with a nice sweet and sharp garlic bite. The parsley added to the earthiness of the capers while the lemon kept the whole sauce and chicken bright. There was a nice balance of acids and fats that played well with the light bitterness from the capers.

In the end, this still felt very standard. It was good but not something that I’d ever think might help save my restaurant — unless it was literally 1953. It tasted like it was from a bygone era. Not in a bad way, mind you. It’s more like going back to your favorite childhood Italian joint and realizing your parents took you to eat there because it was affordable, not mind-blowing.

Will I cook this again? Sure (with less parsley from my end) — probably with veal next time, though. If you want to try Matheson’s exact version, it can be found below.

After years of seeming like the film was possibly a pipe dream for writer/director Kevin Smith (he seriously teased the thing for almost a decade) Clerks III is finally starting to see the light of day. However, as the first reviews roll in, critics are clearly caught off-guard by the deeply personal tale. Mining Smith’s own experience with a heart attack that nearly killed him, Clerks III uses the writer/director’s most beloved characters, Dante and Randall, to tell a self-indulgent, but “strangely poignant” tale about grappling with one’s mortality.

Naturally, Jay and Silent Bob are along for the ride, but don’t expect a wild dick joke bonanza this time around. Not that there aren’t jokes, but Smith is taking a more meditative approach to the movie universe that surprisingly began with a tiny little black and white movie that could.

Here’s what the critics are saying:

John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter:

Smith knows he has enough loyal followers to justify multiple returns to nearly every well he has dug, at least those related to his “View Askewniverse.” But while some of his many spinoffs and sequels have smelled of near-desperation and little more, this one’s also personal: Inspired by the heart attack that nearly killed him in 2018, it’s a story about valuing those you love and trying to keep living until you’re dead. You know: heartwarming stuff, but with blasphemy, endless fanboy musings and jokes about fellatio.

Matt Donato, IGN:

Clerks III is the product of an ego-less filmmaker with nothing to lose. While Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was technically Kevin Smith’s first feature after miraculously surviving a “widowmaker” cardiac arrest, Clerks III marks Smith’s creative reckoning with the life-altering event. Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is an off-color war against reboot culture by an indie gunslinger — Clerks III is the meditative culmination of a father, husband, and geekdom advocate who came face-to-face with his mortality.

Andrew Barker, Variety:

Is this all wildly self-indulgent? A bit. Does it feel like the product of a filmmaker with plenty of fresh ideas? Not really. Has Smith lost his fastball as a writer? You could certainly make that case, and the screenplay’s attempts to recapture some of the rapid-fire pop culture references and x-rated musings of the director’s heyday often land painfully wide of the mark. But there’s something strangely poignant about it all the same. This film is clearly an unusually personal one for Smith.

Amy Kuperinsky, NJ.com:

“Clerks III” is like watching a singalong version of a popular movie musical — you know the songs, it’s more about the experience of singing together. So it follows that Smith, Mewes and the cast are touring with the film, as they did three years ago with “Reboot.” It also follows that Mewes is still owning all his scenes, starting with a dance sequence in a Devils jersey. The authenticity of his persona always made it seem like he was the soul of “Clerks,” and there’s enough of that spirit remaining so it still rings true.

Ross Bonaime, Collider:

Even more so than the previous installments of this series, Clerks III works because of the performances from O’Halloran and Anderson. These two have basically become Smith’s version of Jesse and Celine, and it has been brilliant watching them grow together. Clerks II had these two friends admitting that they loved each other and needed each other, and we begin from that point in Clerks III, as Dante and Randal are now not just co-workers and business partners, they admittedly need each other.

William Bibbiani, The Wrap:

“Clerks III” is serious to a minor fault and breezy to a minor fault. It’s got all the same laid-back, chill vibes cinema that Smith is well-known for, and the same immature approach to genuine maturity that he’s also known for, with a new sense of emotional severity that makes it harder to laugh than it probably should be. “Clerks III” is, if nothing else, “A Kevin Smith Film,” into which he has clearly poured his heart, his soul, his good intentions, and his disarming sense of whimsy. For better and occasionally for worse.

Christian Zilko, IndieWire:

Yes, “Clerks III” is about the characters from “Clerks” making “Clerks.” Although they wisely avoid rupturing the space-time continuum by naming their film “Inconvenience,” much of “Clerks III” consists of watching meticulous recreations of famous scenes. All of the famous anecdotes from the unorthodox shoot (like Smith writing about the shutters being jammed to hide the fact that they filmed at night or scrapping an original ending about Dante being killed by a robber) make it into the film, and Smith’s voice is so present in each character that it essentially feels like you’re watching a director’s commentary track.

Danielle Ryan, /Film:

Smith’s latest isn’t an easy watch, but neither is growing older. “Clerks III” is the director at his most mature and emotionally resonant. It would have been easy to make “Clerks III” an easy nostalgia-fest with lots of throwbacks, but instead Smith opted for something more. It’s a big swing that might not work for frat boys looking to laugh at dick and fart jokes, but that’s what “Jay and Silent Bob Strikes Back” is for, after all. “Clerks III” brings things full circle at the Quick Stop in many ways, and it feels like a definitive ending to the saga he started.

Clerks III clocks into theaters on September 13.

The Dallas Mavericks will keep one of their most important players around Luka Doncic on their roster for the next few years. German forward Maxi Kleber, who was slated to enter unrestricted free agency at the conclusion of the 2022-23 NBA season, will sign a new contract extension that is going to keep him around through the 2025-26 campaign.

According to Shams Charania of The Athletic, Kleber and the Mavericks agreed to a 3-year contract extension that will pay him $33 million. It’s a nice raise for Kleber, whose current deal pays him an average of just under $9 million a year.

Kleber has turned into Dallas’ most important players off of the bench due to his ability to knock down looks that Doncic generates and his willingness and ability to switch onto perimeter players on the defensive end of the floor. He was instrumental to the Mavericks’ run to the Western Conference Finals last year, as Kleber averaged 8.7 points and 4.6 rebounds in 25.4 minutes per game, all off the bench, while connecting on 43.6 percent of his threes. This included a playoff career-high 25 points in a win over Utah and knocking down a little more than 46 percent of his triples during the team’s upset of the Phoenix Suns.

After going undrafted in 2014, Kleber spent time with Bayern Munich before joining the Mavericks as a free agent during the 2017 offseason.

Oh boy. Neil Gaiman has found himself on the receiving end of Elon Musk followers who argue that Amazon’s Lord of the Rings is too “woke.” This all started when a Twitter user asked Gaiman what he thought of Musk’s remarks, to which The Sandman legend declared that Elon should stay in his own “fail” lane. On the “fail” note, Neil had referred to Musk’s on-and-off-again quest to buy Twitter, an adventure that’s led to a public legal battle. And Gaiman does know more than Elon about what it’s like to adapt epic fantasy for streaming, given that his new Netflix show is a rousing success, and he’s previously jousted with a tiny “backlash” over diverse casting.

Well, Gaiman poked the metaphorical bear, which is poking him back, and he’s now playing with that bear. Angry Twitter users are now coming at him while seemingly believing that Neil adapted Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (he did not) for Amazon. “YOU crushed my hope – not Elon,” one user wrote while accusing him of refusing to “listen to fans” or “respect the source material” and making “a parody of LotR!” To that, Neil is mock-apologizing. “I’m so sorry,” Neil wrote. “I have taken your hurt to heart and promise that I will no longer make any Lord of the Rings based television for any network ever.”

It doesn’t stop there. When a user came at him with a request to “Stop all the ‘woke diversity’ sh*t, and give us GOOD Lord of the Rings expanded universe,” Gaiman responded, “I’m doing my best but, you know, making all that Lord of the Rings stuff is hard. Er.”

To make things even clearer, Gaiman found himself articulating that he had nothing to do with Rings of Power. Rather, he simply “made the mistake of answering a question when someone tagged me.”

Let’s just say that these interactions are providing amusement.

In conclusion, Neil also has some practical advice for dealing with trolls: “Keep them talking until sunrise.”

Harry Styles has already proven he knows how to dominate the pop landscape; “As It Was” just became the longest-running No. 1 single of the 2020s so far. He could be getting into a different type of music in the future, though, as the way Olivia Wilde sees it, the singer and Don’t Worry Darling star will end up scoring movies at some point down the road.

Wilde is the subject of a new Vanity Fair profile and the feature notes that Wilde gave her Don’t Worry Darling cast “a list of books, articles, music, and movies to absorb” during pre-production. Styles went ahead and sent her song recommendations and even wrote some music for the movie.

Wilde explained, “He called me one day and was like, ‘Hey, what are you using for the trigger song?’” Vanity Fair described the “trigger song” as “the recurring piece that accompanies Alice’s gradual awakening to buried truths.” Wilde said she wanted something “sort of classic, contemporary, simple, melodic, romantic.” Wilde continued, “Harry was like, ‘Huh.’ Then five minutes later he sent me a demo from his piano. I was like, ‘Yep, that’s it. That’s the song. Thank you very much.’”

Wilde added, “He will absolutely end up scoring films for fun.”

Read the full feature here.