As if they didn’t already feel disrespected enough this week, Jazz teammates Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert were the last two names selected in the All-Star Draft by Team LeBron and Team Durant. Inevitably, somebody has to get picked last in this, but it couldn’t have come a worse time for them.
Earlier this week, both Mitchell and Gobert let loose on the officiating crew after losing an overtime thriller to the Sixers on Wednesday night. Mitchell was ejected after receiving two quick technical fouls and had plenty to say after the game, as did Gobert, who went on a profanity-laced tirade that, among other things, implied that Utah does not get the sort of love that other teams do because they are in a small market.
As was expected, the league handed them both the requisite fines on Friday, with Mitchell and Gobert receiving $25,000 and $20,000 hits, respectively.
Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert have been fined: Mitchell, $25,000 for public criticism of the officiating and his conduct while exiting the playing court. Gobert, $20,000 for public criticism of the officiating.
At 27-9 on the season, the Jazz still hold the league’s best record, despite dropping their last two games as they head into the All-Star break. Both Gobert and Mitchell will be in Atlanta on Sunday to participate in the scaled-down version of the NBA’s annual midseason festivities.
Coming to Netflix this week, Murder Among The Mormons is in some ways an au courant true crime docuseries about a Salt Lake City conman and murderer. Yet it’s simultaneously a woolly dark comedy sending up the particular idiosyncrasies of its Mormon setting and creators. Co-directed by TV documentary veteran Tyler Measom and Jared Hess, of Napoleon Dynamite fame, MATM explores a community that’s outwardly “average” almost to the point of parody (the boxy haircuts, the dorky shirts, the teetotalling) but also uses that facade to mask some extraordinary eccentricities.
To put it another way, everyone in Murder Among The Mormons is quite a character. Most of the talking heads are there to discuss Mark Hofmann, a man who trades in “church documents” — the uniquely Mormon phenomenon serving up runes, old books, and the assorted arcana of a church that was founded less than 200 years ago to enthusiastic collectors. Mormons are, as Measom puts it, “a peculiar people” and Hofmann is a Jared Hess character come to life, a rockstar rare documents trader trying to “live large” in a community so 1950s conformist that long sleeves qualify as rebellion.
Yet Hofmann quickly proves to be in the 99th percentile both of forgers and of sociopaths. One of his creations was “The Salamander Letter,” a document supposedly showing that in Joseph Smith’s first iteration of the Mormon origin story, in which an angel led him to a set of golden plates that became the Book of Mormon, the angel was a salamander.
Hess, obviously, has excelled at exploring exactly these kinds of dowdy villains and esoterica, and there are fanciful recreations in Murder Among The Mormons that feel like cut scenes from Masterminds or Gentlemen Broncos, dry as a bone and with Hess’s trademark matter-of-fact compositions — making Murder Among The Mormons stand alone in an increasingly utilitarian genre.
Of all the Mormon true crime stories of late (and there have been surprisingly a lot — Abducted In Plain Sight, American Coyote), Murder Among The Mormons, directed by current Mormon Hess and former Mormon Measom (a FoMo, if you will), is arguably the one that most explores this push-pull between outward averageness and inner aberration. I spoke to Measom and Hess via Zoom this week, about classic Mormon eccentrics, the true crime canon, and their respective childhoods in the church.
All of the characters in this were so enjoyable to me. Do you think that the Mormon community has different flavors of eccentrics than the larger world?
TYLER MEASOM: Jared being one of them?
JARED HESS: I mean yeah, definitely this particular saga had a lot of very charismatic personalities from across the spectrum. Jerry Dalea, one of the chief investigators, is just so entertaining, as well as Shannon Flynn. Across the board, I think we were not lacking in fascinating personalities.
TM: I think the members of the Mormon faith consider themselves a bit peculiar. In fact, they actually kind of embraced that term, “peculiar people.” They have odd beliefs to the rest of the world. And Salt Lake City in the ’80s was a rather small town. And not only just the Mormon faith in general, but these individuals who were document collectors in particular were cut from a certain cloth. They all had the same kind of interests, a love of history, backgrounds, faith, and also they had a very trusting nature. This is the environment in which Mark Hofmann was able to thrive, and utilize these individuals and their … I don’t want to say gullibility because they weren’t gullible, but their love of documents and history. He used that against them.
You mentioned Shannon Flynn, who shows up with the three-piece suit and he’s got, I think, a pocket watch, and the raspy voice. Is he still in the “rare document” business?
JH: I don’t think full-time. I think it still interests him as a hobby, but I think a lot of people got out of it after what occurred. Some stayed in it. Brent Ashworth, he’s still very much involved, but yeah. Shannon, he’s a bit of a Renaissance man and has a variety of interests. He definitely looks like either Alfred Hitchcock or Winston Churchill depending on who you’re familiar with.
TM: Yeah, he was kind of forced out of the document business. It’s something he always wanted to get into, and so when he was with Mark, he was living the high life. Documents and briefcases of cash, and then when what happened happened, no one would work with him again.
You guys both come from Mormon backgrounds. Was there a sense of wanting to tell this story so that maybe non-Mormons wouldn’t sensationalize the Mormonism aspect of it?
JH: Yeah. We also spent a lot of time figuring out how much information about Mormonism to present. Because really, to understand the stakes of this story, you have to understand Mormonism, the founding beliefs, the world of document dealing, just so you could comprehend what a disruption the Salamander Letter was to the faith. We did have to strike a balance of giving enough information, but not boring people with too much theology. Ultimately, I think we figured out the best way to do that is just to show clips of old Church films that share their own origin story. Which we also love.
Can you explain exactly what the Salamander Letter was and why it was such an important thing?
JH: The founding beliefs of Mormonism start with a boy named Joseph Smith in upstate New York, who had questions about which church to join. He had a vision where he was visited by God and Jesus, and then later was directed by an angel to translate a set of golden plates that ultimately became the Book of Mormon. Here you’ve got familiar Judeo-Christian terms like “God” and “angels,” and it feels familiar with the whole Christian lexicon. And then that’s suddenly getting subverted and challenged by this letter that gave a completely different account and suddenly twisting it to occult witchcraft terms. It seemed like he was part of this folk magic ritual. So that, I believe in Christian communities, seems to totally undermine and threaten what they believed in and paints a different picture of their founding prophet. And again, this is the story that missionaries go out and teach when they’re knocking doors. .
TM: But for some — and I no longer believe in the tenets of the faith, I left the church a long time ago — but some individuals, including our editors, would look at the Salamander Letter and go, why is it so outrageous that a salamander would appear? It’s pretty outrageous that an angel would come down and appear as well. So for some, the parallels were pretty close. The outrageousness is just as outrageous.
Did you guys both do missions?
TM: We both did. Different places, of course. But yes.
JH: I got my mission call to Caracas, Venezuela. I was there when Chavez got elected. This was back in 1988. But I had hernias and I had to come home for hernia surgery. So then I was home for a couple of months and then finished the next year of my mission in Chicago, Spanish speaking. So I kind of had a stateside mission and one in South America. Tyler, where’d you go?
TM: I was in Missouri — Independence. So I spent a lot of time in Kansas and Nebraska as a 19-year-old wearing a white shirt and tie, while my friends were in college going on dates and drinking beer. So that sums it up for me, essentially.
With the Salamander Letter and some of the other forgeries that he made, do you think Hofmann was trying to publicly embarrass the Church or was he trying to forge documents that maybe he thought that they would pay him to bury, like a blackmail kind of thing?
JH: It was both.
TM: Mark’s basis for forgery was multi-fold. If you ask him — of course, he’s a very unreliable narrator, who’s to believe anything he says? — but he claims that it was all for money. However, he does admit that his intent was to bring down the Church and he would do that kind of as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that he would appear a worthy member of the faith. He would meet with this inner sanctum of hierarchy of the Mormon Church, he would sell them documents — and not just one or two documents, he literally sold hundreds of documents. Many of them were genuine, but a lot of them weren’t. Also, I think for Mark, he had the power to change history, literally, when he came out with a document. As he says, if it were verified as true, people would accept it as true, and history books were quite literally rewritten because of the documents that he forged. The power that he must have felt in that must have given him a rise that I can’t even imagine. That need that to deceive I think was part of his DNA, to keep beating that addiction he had of fooling people, fooling everyone.
And then if he’s doing all this for money, I know that he had the little sports car, but what was the secret life that he was spending all of this money on?
JH: He traveled a lot to the East coast, to New York and he would just live large. He had a collection that he was starting to build of first-edition children’s books, so that was something that he did. But he would kind of splurge. He was horrible with money. And that’s what got him into this whole Ponzi scheme predicament that he just couldn’t get out of. He also wanted to buy a half-million-dollar home, and in Salt Lake City in the 1980s, that was a humongous amount of money. It was small things, but again, when he would travel, he would live large, he would make some big purchases, but mostly he was just terrible with money.
TM: You know, at the time of these bombings, the investigators did a composite of all the money he owed and it’s over a million dollars. One of the bills was a $2,000 phone bill, like a cell phone bill. You remember cell phones in the eighties, every call cost 50 bucks. But at the same time, he had bounced a check for a subscription to a magazine for like $50. So he was just broke and in debt. He was very desperate at the time that he committed these crimes.
JH: He did buy a hot tub. That was one of his splurges. We didn’t go into that, but he would host some really nerdy, Mormon hot tub parties — alcohol free, just invite your wife, we’ll eat some rice Krispie treats and play footsie beneath the bubbles.
I read in another interview that you thought this series could have been like six or seven episodes. What are some of your favorite side stories that you ended up having to leave out?
JH: Well definitely the hot tub stories. No, I mean, there was so much stuff. One that didn’t make the cut that just kind of shows how prolific Hofmann was, is that long after he’d been in prison, over a decade after he’d been convicted, in the late 90s, this new Emily Dickinson poem surfaced that nobody had ever heard of. The Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts did a fundraiser so they could buy it. It was up for auction at Sotheby’s and they bought it. They were so excited to add this to their collection. Lo and behold, Brent Ashworth, who’s in the film, calls them and says, “Hey, I hate to break it to you guys, but that came through me from Hofmann back in the 80s, and I’m 99% sure that that’s a Hofmann forgery. They were devastated. And that’s just a small sampling of how many more Hofmann documents are out there in the world that people do not know are forgeries, that maybe potentially on some level have rewritten history.
TM: Or know that they’re forgeries and they don’t want to acknowledge it because they spent X amount of dollars on it.
And then he was doing this and getting these forgeries verified by the verifying bodies. How much did his story discredit some of those people that were supposedly verifying these things as genuine?
TM: Well, Mark was great at what he did. He was a craftsman. He didn’t just get the right paper of the era, but he’d create the right ink. He used the right pen. He used the handwriting style of this individual. He used the right verbiage of this individual and he would research intently. And he fooled the top experts. But there’s no shame in being dunked on by Michael Jordan. Mark was the best at what he did. I do think he did set back the collecting world a bit, but in other ways he raised the bar on the verification of documents. What Mark did is what is happening in many ways now. We are being presented with faulty misinformation continually. I think it’s up to us to just not instantly glom onto something that we think is fantastic, like a lot of these people did when they were presented with a document that seemed too great to be true. They wanted to believe it, and they would typically overlook a lot of things. I think there’s Mark Hofmanns everywhere and we need to be a little bit more careful.
What was his first big hit as a seller and/or forger?
JH: Definitely the Anthon transcript. The document that he found that supposedly was a transcription of the symbols that were found on the golden plates that Joseph Smith translated. That was a very apocryphal story within Mormonism. Nobody knew what that document actually looked like. So when Mark supposedly found it in this old Bible that belonged to Joseph Smith’s family, this was groundbreaking for the Church, because it affirmed everything that they’d always believed and hoped for as it relates to the Book of Mormon. That immediately took him to the top leaders of the Church. The paper checked out, the story checked out. And so that really put him immediately in the big leagues of document collecting.
Did you get any sense of childhood trauma or something from him? The fact that he was so sort of cavalier about killing people, usually that comes from somewhere.
JH: I mean, he came from a very strict, devout Mormon family, with very strict parents and he was a closeted atheist at a very young age. He couldn’t really discuss his true beliefs with anyone. So there’s nothing in our research that shows that he was traumatized in any specific way, but I think just having to keep his personal beliefs bottled up in a very strict religious home was probably difficult and definitely shaped certain decisions that came later.
TM: I just think about the mental gymnastics he must’ve done. First and foremost, I think he had an interest in deceiving. I think he gained power from that. You know, it’s covered in the film, but when you’re 14 years old and you create a mint mark on a coin and make that valuable and it fools the US treasury, at that point you think you can get away with anything, especially when you’re a 14-year-old boy. Remember telling a lie and getting away with it? You think you can get away with anything. So I think that early need to deceive just kept getting bigger and bigger until maybe he felt he was infallible in some ways.
‘Murder Among The Mormons’ is currently streaming on Netflix. Vince Mancini is onTwitter. You can access his archive of reviewshere.
We’re so over winter. Snow, frigid wind chills, and hour-upon-hour of darkness really seem to exacerbate the whole quarantine thing. Who needs it, right? This year, we’re making a declaration that everyone should go ahead and head into spring early. Like next week.
Honestly, we deserve this. After the year we all had, we don’t need to sit around and wait for warm, sunny days.
Through this winter of our collective discontent, we already got our fill of stouts, porters, barleywines, and old ales. So we’re going to spend the remaining chilly nights drinking closing things out with seasonally appropriate IPAs (not all IPAs are meant for summer, fam). To find the best options, we turned to the professionals — asking a group of well-known bartenders to tell us their choices for the best IPAs to sip on from now until the weather turns for good.
Those in search of an IPA to drink this winter should look no further than Florida’s own Crooked Can High Stepper IPA. Not only is this a local gem, but it is well balanced and refreshing, from the coldest days up north to the warmest Florida days.
Lagunitas IPA for a winter IPA is extremely refreshing. In Puerto Rico, there is no winter. It’s about 83 degrees in February, so it’s always summer here.
I would pick a juicy, hazy IPA. Flying Dog Brewery’s Thunderpeel has all of this without using any citrus fruits. This New England Style IPA achieves juice notes through its unique blend of hops.
Austin Zimmer, bartender Le Prive in New York City
The Sierra Nevada Hazy Little Thing is a great IPA for the winter season. The rye, herbal, and piney notes, paired with a nice, hazy presence remind the season and are way more balanced than most IPAs.
Jeff Rogers, bar director for Jester Concepts in Minneapolis
Castle Danger Brewery’s White Pine Project IPA. The light pine flavors from the hops blend perfectly with citrus notes that remind you of the upcoming spring.
Made in Two Harbors, Minnesota, the sales of this beer help to replant the North Shore.
Andy Printy, beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis
I spend most of my summers wandering the Grove in St. Louis looking for pinball machines in various bars. The IPA I seem to have in hand is Art of Neurosis from 2nd Shift brewery. It’s big, hoppy, and malt-forward, so it stands up to frigid temps.
How can you drink something with tropic in the name and not feel like you are on a beach? Or in my case, hidden under an umbrella avoiding the sunshine out of fear of sunburn. The tropic part isn’t overbearing and doesn’t add sweetness. It just has this light pineapple/mango thing going on, with a nice balance of grapefruit to keep things nice and bitter.
This question is a little hard for me because, down here in South Florida, we don’t really have winter and almost never need to warm up. But I have lived in the Northeast and Boston area and dealt with some harsh winters and I remember drinking Clown Shoes Haze Cake.
This IPA is the perfect winter warmer because the aromatic fruit notes and malty finish give it a light-yet-warm feel, making it a perfect beer for a winter day.
Nikole Calvo, bar manager at SIX in Tampa, Florida
The best IPA to drink during the winter is Sierra Nevada’s Fantastic Haze IPA. It’s a full-body IPA with a hazy twist. It’s extremely hop-forward and is geared up to drink during the winter seasons. The fresh fruit and hops are a great take on a winter IPA.
Ryan Cunningham, bartender at Anchor and Brine in Tampa, Florida
New Belgium does a great winter IPA called Accumulation. Not unlike other beers in their line, it’s gone through a few different recipes but one thing I’ve always enjoyed is the warmness of the hop selection while not destroying your palate with IBUs.
Open an M-43 from Old Nation. New England Style IPAs generally use hops that provide tropical fruit and creamy citrus notes. Make sure to pour it into a glass to enjoy its trademark murky haze.
The best mid-winter IPA is Space Dust by Elysian Brewing Company. Its aromas remind you of winter with pine, citrus, and grass. It has a high alcohol content that isn’t noticeable and an elevated version of a classic IPA, making it a must-try.
Siobhán Cusumano, bartender at Buya Ramen in St. Petersburg, Florida
I am not the biggest IPA drinker, and with a gluten allergy, there are few options. Glutenberg does a phenomenal job capturing a warm summer day on the beach with their session IPA. It’s not overly hoppy, but clean, light, and crushable.
This juicy, hazy, crushable, 6.5 percent New England-style IPA is the perfect last winter sip. It’s filled with tropical fruits like guava, pineapple, and mango. It’s so good, you’ll want to continue drinking it well into the spring and summer.
One of the newest offerings from the Pennsylvania-based brewery, Joyous IPA is a nice mix of spicy, resinous pine and juicy, fresh pineapple, mango, and tangerine. It’s quite possibly the best beer to ease your way into spring with.
Never one to miss a chance to complain about Republicans being “unfairly” criticized, Meghan McCain bristled at President Joe Biden’s latest remarks where he called the recent decision by conservative states to get rid of mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking.” While her co-hosts on The View called the media attention on Biden’s quip “manufactured outrage,” McCain went the opposite direction and called Biden’s comment a self-inflicted injury because now Republicans are just going to close ranks even more. Via The Daily Beast:
“You can laugh and say ‘Oh, it’s a joke,’ whatever, but Republicans across the country already feel like people on the left think they’re dumb rednecks,” she continued, “they’re just stupid deplorables in baskets, nobody cares about their trucks and their flags. That’s what Republicans think the media thinks of them.”
In the end, she said, “All it does is it’s going to help Republicans be more tribal and think that we’re just deplorable Neanderthals, the left has no place for us, so there’s no unity whatsoever.”
The problem with McCain’s “tribal” prediction is that she has already repeatedly used that word to describe her reactions to criticism of the party. When co-host Sunny Hostin referred to the GOP as the “Party of QAnon” last month, McCain fired back “when I hear that I automatically get tribal” before launching into a rant about her pro-life beliefs and accusing the Democratic Party of engaging in “murder” by supporting abortion rights, which has been a GOP tactic for decades.
On a larger political level, every single Republican in the House voted against the COVID relief package last Saturday, and that was before Biden made his Neanderthal remark. Why, it’s almost like this outrage was all theatrics all along.
Hayley Kiyoko’s 2018 debut album Expectations established her as one of the most important new voices in pop — and one who is devoted to prioritizing diversity and inclusion. Kiyoko is open about her experience as a half-Japanese, lesbian woman, who grew up as a closeted teen, and she’s been a vocal advocate for the LGBT community during an era where representation has become more important than ever. Following up her debut with the I’m Too Sensitive For This Sh*t EP in 2020, she’s now pivoted to work on another kind of artistic project — a perfume.
Announced last month, Kiyoko’s new fragrance Hue is a gender-inclusive perfume that’s not designated by gender as many scents are. “Fragrance can be an aphrodisiac for any gender or sexuality,” Hayley said in an interview when we spoke about her new project over the phone a few weeks ago. She spent two years creating a scent that felt true to herself, actively involved with selecting all the top, middle, and bottom notes in the fragrance. Fascinated by the connections that music and perfume share, and bolstered by the memories of using perfume as armor as a teenager, Hayley wants Hue to be a comforting, safe place for fans. Read more of her thoughts about her new scent and the perfume-making process below.
One of the first things that stood out is that it was important for your scent to be gender inclusive, why was that something you wanted to prioritize?
I’ve always battled with balancing my masculinity and femininity, sometimes I feel more masculine, sometimes I feel more feminine. I wanted to create a perfume that embodies both. I thought this fragrance should be for everyone. Whether you like fruity or floral tones shouldn’t really describe who you are as far as your gender. I was really excited to create a fragrance that embodies both.
How would you describe the scent you’re going for with Hue?
Specifically, it has fruity and floral top notes — it has some blood orange and freesia. Then, the heart of it is more like lychee, pink magnolia, and rose. The bottom notes are more musk and cacao. So it really has this awesome freshness to it, but then it also feels like you’ve had it on forever. So it’s very comforting.
What was the process like building out the scent of the perfume?
The process is really intense, it took two years for me to finally create something that felt authentic to who I was. It’s like music, when you go into a songwriting session, you’re explaining a feeling, and then you’re trying to create a feeling. So the same thing goes with perfume, you go ‘I want it to feel like this,’ but how to create a feeling through scent is a whole other obstacle in itself. What I did love about the process is that there’s so many connections to music. Music is created of notes and perfume is created of notes, and you combine the notes in a certain way and that creates a chord, which is basically like a chord in music. And then you rearrange the chord and that’s how you create a fragrance. So it was really fascinating, and such an exciting process. It really makes me respect any type of fragrance that can really embody a feeling so authentically.
How did you want people to feel when they put Hue on, what’s the driving emotional force?
How I feel about my fans was a driving emotional force. I think I struggled a lot growing up, being in the closet, searching for courage to get through every day life. Especially nowadays, we don’t have that physical connection or comfort in person. So how do you comfort yourself? For me, it’s through scent, and it’s through lighting a candle, spraying my perfume — that can make me feel good. Because right now it’s all about self-soothing and taking care of yourself. That was a really important thing for me going into this whole process.
Trevor Flores
So was the feeling you want Hue to evoke something to do with comfort and self-soothing?
The feeling I wanted Hue to convey was to highlight and enhance whatever you’re going through, and creating a safe space for it. Igniting hope and comfort through whatever you’re going through.
Were there any major shifts that came in the process of working on the perfume due to the pandemic?
Absolutely. First of all, I never thought the process would be so long. But it’s also been interesting, creatively, I thought I liked certain scents and then realized I didn’t. Learning that you can like certain scents but certain things can evoke other feelings that maybe I didn’t necessarily want. That was an interesting part of the process for me. I love comfort and I want to feel comfort but I don’t personally like vanilla. And that kind of world of comfort. I love more of the musk world of comfort, so we went in that direction. Also, I loved watermelon going into this, and watermelon didn’t make the cut. It was really interesting to see where it landed — again, it’s like music. I go into the studio and go ‘I want to feel like this,’ and then you put the chords together and sometimes you can accomplish that feeling, but sometimes I go ‘oh ok, this combination doesn’t encompass that feeling, how do I adjust it? How do I fix it? How do I rewrite the lyrics so it can evoke that feeling?’
What are some of your personal favorite perfumes?
Growing up, my very first perfume was Elizabeth Arden Green Tea. I wore that for many, many years going into high school. And then I wore Dolce & Gabbana No. 3, and that was probably a staple for a long time. And now I have Hue. I’ve been very loyal to my perfumes, I feel like once you find a perfume that I love, I wear it forever.
And what drew you to working with scent as a medium?
Growing up, perfume was like an armor for me. It gave me courage and it made me feel confident at times when I didn’t feel confident at all. That is something that I wanted to give to my fans, and create something that can hopefully help them get through what they’re going through.
I love the portrait by Liz Hirsch that’s included with the perfume. How does that tie into the concept?
The name Hue is inspired by the idea and the reality that everyone brings color to this world. We’re all different shades, and we all don’t fit in one box or stereotype. So that was really important for me to convey. The image is a portrait of me, but it’s very multicolored but it’s not necessarily a rainbow. They’re what makes me, me. And the same thing goes with everyone else — we all don’t fit in one category, we’re all different shades. The motto for this perfume is embrace you, embrace what makes you you.
Do you see yourself expanding into other categories beyond perfume after this?
I have no idea, we’ll see how this goes first. I’m just really excited to get to share this with the world. For me, it’s just one step at a time. I’m taking it one day at a time like everyone else, but obviously I hope that it’s successful and I hope that people love it. And hopefully I’ll be able to continue to make more. But it’s been a really fun process for me to be able to have another outlet besides music and try to embody my message through another medium.
What are your plans for 2021 with music?
I’m definitely working on my album, and I think what we all went through with 2020 is just taking it day by day and focusing on what’s important, which is health, number one. So for me, it’s interesting this was the first year I didn’t really make any resolutions. I’m just grateful to be here and take whatever comes my way this year. And I’m really enjoying that mentality and being open to whatever opportunities are able to come.
That didn’t take long. Blake Griffin went from a trade candidate to being bought out to now leaning toward a new contract with the Brooklyn Nets in no time, as Shams Charania and James Edwards of The Athletic report the Nets are the “leaders” to sign Griffin once he clears waivers from Detroit.
The Brooklyn Nets are believed to be leaders to sign six-time All-Star Blake Griffin, sources tell me and @JLEdwardsIII. Rival teams with interest are expecting Griffin to choose Nets as a title favorite for chance to win a championship.
This confirms initial indications from Marc Stein of the New York Times, and as ESPN’s Bobby Marks noted, Griffin will not officially become a free agent until Sunday at 5 p.m. ET, but it is expected nobody would claim him because of his exorbitant salary. The Nets will make Griffin the first major addition to their roster since they traded for James Harden and became among the top contenders for the 2021 NBA championship.
Since trading Jarrett Allen to Cleveland in the Harden deal, the Nets have often leaned on small lineups to close games, with either Jeff Green or Kevin Durant functioning as a small-ball center. So while Griffin’s usefulness in those situations make him a good theoretical fit in Brooklyn, the fact remains that he is severely hampered physically after multiple major injuries over the course of his career and is shooting 37 percent from the field.
As Stein noted, Nets players were a part of the lobbying to get Griffin to Brooklyn, and that team is soaring up the standings even without Durant healthy, so it’s not as if they need peak Griffin to keep winning. But it is a peculiar choice with roster spots limited and defense so clearly a need for the team, which ranks 24th on that end this season.
Welcome to our roundup of the best streetwear apparel releases of the week! This week, we’re hitting a bit of a lull as we enter that weird transitional period between seasons that leads apparel companies to not have a clear idea of what to drop. As such, expect a lot of layer-able late-winter early-spring looks that’ll help you ride out the rest of the season and begin to gear up for this year’s fall, you know, six months from now (fashion drops are weird like that).
While things are quiet on the apparel end of things, sneakers are having quite a week with a number of super hyped drops, so if you’re on the hunt for some sneakers to complete the fit, be sure to hit up SNX DLX, our weekly sneaker column. As for the style side, this week we’ve got new clothes from Marc Jacobs, Fjällräven, Supreme, Palace, and an NBA All-Star collection from Canada Goose and Rhode.
Let’s dive into this week’s best streetwear!
Marc Jacobs SS21 Heaven Collection
Marc Jacobs/Harley Weir
Marc Jacobs’ expanded Heaven collection is what happens when the vibrant color sensibilities of the 2020s meet the slacker grunge vibes of the ‘90s. Don’t expect to find your typical high-end Marc Jacobs stuff here, instead, the Heaven Collection consists of everyday basics like sweaters, pants, dresses, and shirts in loose-fitting silhouettes that’ll have you looking like an extra in a Goo Goo Dolls video… if the Goo Goo Dolls were holograms — because this collection is also weirdly futuristic.
Elsewhere in the collection, Marc Jacobs utilizes their creepy two-headed teddy logo. We never imagined we’d see a Marc Jacobs collection with so many graphic t-shirts, and yet here we are. Streetwear’s influence on fashion truly is at a peak.
The Marc Jacobs SS21 Heaven collection is available now at the Marc Jacobs webstore.
Marc Jacobs/Harley WeirMarch Jacobs/Harley WeirMarc Jacobs/Harley Weir
Fjällräven Samlaren Capsule
Fjallraven
Fjällräven — the Swedish brand that is responsible for everyone’s favorite bag that isn’t a Telfar — has just dropped a new capsule collection that repurposes leftover fabrics to construct some of the brand’s iconic silhouettes in a patchwork style without creating additional waste. The Samlaren collection is actually pretty damn brilliant! Because patchwork colors are having a moment in streetwear right now, Fjällräven is able to sneak in sustainability while still looking modern and fashion-forward.
The Samlaren collection consists of the Greenland Jacket, a new Kånken backpack, tote bags, and a cap all dressed in an earthy color block style making them ideal for the trail and the streets.
The Supreme drip-feed continues this week, as the New York label releases its second drop of the Spring/Summer ’21 collection. Winter isn’t quite over so this drop goes heavy on the outerwear with a collection consisting of denim and puffer jackets, hoodies, sweaters, and long-sleeves. Elsewhere in the collection, Supreme offers three different cap styles, and 7 knit beanie colorways, with accessories including Supreme branded bats, and lighters.
The Spring Summer drop is also releasing alongside those ultra-hyped Supreme Dunks.
The second Supreme Spring/Summer 2021 drop is available now at the Supreme webstore.
SupremeSupreme
Canada Goose x RHUDE NBA All-Star Weekend Collection
Canada Goose
In celebration of the 2021 NBA All-Star Game Toronto-based apparel brand Canada Goose has teamed up with another streetwear-meets-luxury brand, RHUDE, for a throwback unisex collection that celebrates b-ball culture. The full collection consists of just four pieces including Canada Goose’s Macmillan Parka, Freestyle Vest, Chilliwack Bomber, and Portage Jacket, dressed in Rhude’s muted and timeless aesthetic with official NBA branding.
It’s cool that Canada Goose and RHUDE were able to actually snag an official NBA collaboration, but these jackets would’ve looked even better without the NBA logo, which kind of breaks up the design, in our opinion. The colorways are kept spring-friendly here, featuring a mix of greens, blues, caramel, orange, and camouflage.
The Canada Goose x RHUDE NBA All-Star Weekend Collection is set to drop on March 5th at the Canada Goose webstore.
Canada GooseCanada Goose
Palace Spring 2021 Drop 4
Palace
This week Palace will release their fourth drop of the Spring 2021 collection which consists of some co-branded Adidas football shirts, as well as jackets, t-shirts, and towels with graphics that recall Gatorade’s iconic lightning bolt branding, and caps with embroidered Palace animal branding. It’s a pretty extensive drop with a lot of alternate colorways, so be sure to check out Palace’s site for the full collection.
Highlights include the embroidered Palace caps, which depict your choice of a T-rex, giraffe, bird, or turtle forming the Palace “P” logo, which also releases alongside matching heavy long-sleeves. We imagine as we make our way closer to the Spring we’re going to see less layer-able offerings coming out of the British skatewear label, so this may be your last chance to grab some dope Palace outerwear before we hit graphic t-shirt country.
The fourth Palace Spring 2021 drop is set to drop on March 5th at the Palace webstore.
Veteran Memphis rapper Young Dolph and his charismatic protege/cousin Key Glock set the rap world on fire in 2019 with their joint album, Dum And Dummer. Released independently, it had an impressive No. 8 debut on the Billboard 200, establishing Key Glock as a rapper to watch.
Get ready for another ride, because they just announced a sequel, Dum And Dummer 2, releasing the first single, “Aspen.” With a thumping beat riddling with quick hits of a church organ, “Aspen” once again displays the Memphis duo’s indelible chemistry, boasting about their rags-to-riches stories and promising to take a vacation at the famed Colorado resort town.
In the wake of the original Dum And Dummer, Key Glock capitalized in a huge way, following up his stellar performances with two well-received full-length projects in 2020, Yellow Tape and Son Of A Gun. The former debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200, proving that his newfound popularity from the joint tape could carry over to a solo project.
Meanwhile, Dolph himself followed up in 2020 as well with Rich Slave — which debuted at No. 4 on the 200 — and its deluxe version, which added eight new songs and an appearance from another of his Paper Route Empire signees, Kevin Muney.
Listen to “Aspen” above and keep an eye out for more Dum And Dummer 2 news.
Assane Diop is back, and this time it looks like he’ll have to stage a heist of his own son. The trailer for Part 2 of Lupin is full of drama, and promises to revolve around the seaside cliffhanger where his son, Raoul, is the bait with which the bad guys hope to lure our favorite thief to his doom.
“If you touch my son, I’ll kill you,” Diop says to start the trailer, which features a long-distance showdown between himself and what turned out to be the big bad from first season’s final episode. The rest of the trailer makes it clear: Diop will need to rescue his son, and that’s exactly what the rest of the bad guys are hoping for.
“We’re gonna use his kid as bait,” says Hervé Pierre, the man who Diop spent the first Lupin episodes seeking revenge against. “He’ll come right to us.”
That’s exactly what appears to happen, though it’s not that simple when it comes to the French thriller. There’s an elevator fight, a quick change or two and some flashes of the characters who set the scene for a diamond heist decades in the making in the show’s first season.
The trailer includes a big moment with a gasping Diop, though we’ll have to wait a bit longer to find out what got him so surprised. Fittingly, it ends with a very funny set piece about cleverly stealing a car, which should give fans plenty of optimism that Part 2 will be more of the same fun and flash so many fell in love with in 2020.
A very simple thing happened earlier this week. Dr. Seuss Enterprises—the company that runs the Dr. Seuss estate and holds the legal rights to his works—announced it will no longer publish six Dr. Seuss children’s books because they contain depictions of people that are “hurtful and wrong” (their words). The titles that will no longer be published are And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super! and The Cat’s Quizzer.
This simple action prompted a great deal of debate, along with a great deal of disinformation, as people reacted to the story. (Or in many cases, just the headline. It’s a thing.)
My article about the announcement (which contains examples of the problematic content that prompted the annoucnement) led to nearly 3,000 comments on Upworthy’s Facebook page. Since many similar comments were made repeatedly, I wanted to address the most common sentiments and questions:
How do we learn from history if we keep erasing it?
A racist image in a children’s book is a historical artifact, but it isn’t “history.” History is the recording of and study of events in the past. Things themselves aren’t history. (If physcially holding onto things were necessary to remember history, we’d still have segregated water fountains to remind us that they existed.)
What’s happening with these books right now, though, is history. A famous author’s estate choosing to stop publishing a handful of his books because they contain racist imagery is literally history in the making. It’s not like the images have just disappeared altogether. Students can learn about this history with images in digital archives and museums where they can be learned from at an appropriate age with appropriate context.
Why don’t they keep the books in print and use them as an educational tool?
There are at least two reasons for that, as far as I can see:
1) As Dr. Seuss Enterprises said, these depictions are hurtful. It really doesn’t make sense to keep producing hurtful content in order to educate people who are not hurt by it. You don’t keep punching someone in order to teach observers who aren’t being punched that punching hurts. That’s cruel.
2) These books are made for small children. Kids who are 4 or 5 or 6-years-old don’t have enough background knowledge about the history of racism and racial stereotypes to make these books a useful tool for teaching them about racism. (That doesn’t mean they don’t have an impact on them—more on that in a sec.) While parents should be talking to their kids about race starting young, the imagery here is a more complex element of the topic that doesn’t fit the developmental stage of the kids the books are targeting.
Imagine what that lesson would look like in a class of kindergarteners. “See this picture, kids? That’s an exaggeration of racial features and cultural stereotypes that are hurtful to people of African/Asian descent. It’s just one example of how racism was long accepted in America because they believed people who looked different or came from different places were inferior.” That’s already too much for a kindergartener to process, and that’s just the basic overview. Developmentally, cognitively, educationally, they’re just not there yet.
At that age, kids are just subconsciously absorbing these stereotypes. And what’s worse is that they’re enjoying absorbing them because Dr. Seuss’s whimsical rhymes are fun and reading time is fun.
Seems wiser to just stop publishing them and use what we already have published to teach older kids, teens, and adults about the history of racism in literature.
So “WAP” song being Song of the Year is appropriate but Dr. Seuss isn’t?
I’m personally not a fan of sexually explicit lyrics, but this is an apples and oranges comparison. A highly sexualized song that isn’t made for kids is not comparable to problematic racial imagery in a book that is made explicitly for kids. I’m assuming (and hoping) parents aren’t singing WAP when they tuck their kids into bed at night. Dr. Seuss is deemed innocent and his books are beloved. Warm and cozy childhood memories are made with books. Having warm childhood memories intertwined with racist imagery is a problem.
Dr. Seuss?!? Is there anyone cancel culture won’t come for?
The term “cancel culture” is getting a bit overused, in my opinion. Criticism isn’t canceling. A company receiving critical feedback and making a decision based on that feedback isn’t canceling (unless you count self-canceling as canceling). I grew up loving Dr. Seuss books and read them to my kids when they were little, but I think the company made the right move.
Racism can’t be perpetuated just because we like someone. If we think of this as an attack on racism rather than an attack on a person, it might be easier for Seuss lovers to digest. Ted Geisel was a whole, imperfect human being who evolved over time and left a complicated legacy. His early racism should absolutely be discussed as part of that legacy. His racist works should absolutely be “canceled” by ceasing to be published. People can debate whether or not to read his other books, but the idea that his racially insensitive stuff should continue to be published for children is a pretty gross take.
Get over it. It’s a children’s book.
The same could be said to people throwing a fit about these books no longer being published. The difference is that the people who are hurt by the imagery have an entire history of racial oppression—and likely a good amount of personal racial discrimination—behind their feelings about the images. The people who are offended that a company isn’t making the books anymore have no actual harm to get over. Seems like the lesser offense, objectively and by far, is to stop publishing them.
Why do people even care about color of the characters? Why can’t you just enjoy the stories?
Adults think kids are colorblind. They’re not. Research shows that very young children—even infants and toddlers—notice racial differences. That doesn’t mean that they discriminate, but they do notice race. So presenting racial differences in the form of stereotypical caricatures is a problem. It may not matter to you if you don’t identify with the race being depicted, but it matters to many.
Who gets to decide what’s offensive and what’s not?
The people on the receiving end of racism get to decide what’s racist or not. That doesn’t mean there’s always a unanimous consensus, but it’s pretty clear when a large number of people point out that something is racially offensive. There’s also research behind this decision. A 2019 study of 50 Dr. Seuss books found that only 2% of his human characters were not white, and nearly all of them were depicted in problematic ways. Whether the imagery is truly racially insensitive isn’t really the question. The question is whether or not that imagery should continue to be published anew forever and ever.
Why is this just a problem now when these books have been around for decades?
It’s not just a problem now. This isn’t a new issue or a new complaint—the people who have been portrayed problematically just haven’t been listened to in a real enough way for changes to be made until now. This is what learning and progress and growth as a society looks like. When we know better, we do better.
Yes! What took so long?
Despite the uproar, many people praised the decision, citing years of complaints about the racial stereotypes and caricatures in those books. People also pointed to the blatantly racist political cartoons Geisel (Dr. Seuss’s real last name) drew early in his career as evidence that, yes, the imagery really was rooted in racism.
There’s no question that some of Geisel’s early work was racist. Some argue that he was a product of his time, but that doesn’t make the works any less problematic. His views did evolve over the course of his life, and he tried to make indirect amends with his later books that had anti-prejudice themes, but never formally apologized for his early work. (As writer Danielle Slaughter points out, the kinds of apology statements that are standard now weren’t expected in the time in which he lived, so a public apology would have been nice, but unusual.)
Some people have suggested that Geisel himself may have actually supported the Dr. Seuss Enterprises decision if he were alive today. If he was truly open to learning and broadening his understanding of race, the 30 years between his death and now may have prompted him to make that decision himself. Who knows. But undoubtedly Dr. Seuss Enterprises knows better than the average American what the author would have wanted, and they have the authority to make choices in his name.
So if people are still angry that Dr. Seuss canceled some Dr. Seuss books, they’ll have to take it up with Dr. Seuss.
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