The federal investigation into Matt Gaetz’s alleged violation of sex-trafficking laws (the mess that he apparently wished to be called “Gaetzgate”) continues, and the scandal keeps deepening. This has led to plenty of late-night fodder with John Oliver having a field day over Gaetz attempting to pull Tucker Carlson under the bus with him and Colin Jost roasting the hell out of the Republican congressman from Florida.
Last week, the matter already presented enough of a bad look in and of itself, and then outlets started pointing out that Gaetz was the only lawmaker (Republican or Democrat) who had voted against a 2017 anti-sex trafficking bill. Now, the Orlando Sun-Sentinel is reporting word from a former lawmaker who served alongside Gaetz in the Florida Legislature. Via the publication, Rep. Tom Goodson (also a Republican) worked for three years on a bill against so-called “revenge porn” to criminalize the act of sharing ex-lovers’ sexually explicit images, effectually making them nonconsensual pornography. Goodson says that Gaetz opposed the bill because he believed that people who receive those images should be able to freely share them. Oh boy:
“Matt was absolutely against it. He thought the picture was his to do with what he wanted,” Goodson said. “He thought that any picture was his to use as he wanted to, as an expression of his rights.”
Goodson told the Sun-Sentinel that Gaetz, in fact was the “chief opponent” to the bill, and the embattled congressman even spoke out in a meeting to declare that intimate images sent to partners “becomes the partner’s property to use however they want.” None of this is presenting a good look in retrospect, especially since Gaetz is already being (as originally reported by the New York Times) probed by the DOJ as to whether he violated sex trafficking laws while romantically involved with a 17-year-old girl, and since he allegedly paid for the girl to travel with him, he could be on the hook for federal crimes. Gaetz has denied those allegations and claimed in a bizarre interview with Tucker Carlson that he’s a victim of extortion (for $25 million) by a former DOJ official.
Though it’s the first in-person interview either of us have done in close to a year, Lily Lizotte, aka The Blossom, doesn’t seem the least bit fazed. Sporting a cautionary mask right up until the photoshoot, and keeping a safe distance for the shots, Lizotte is a bundle of energy who leaps from location to location with a practiced ease, striking silly poses that are somehow perfectly translatable on film. Growing up splitting time between Sydney and New York, and raised by artistic parents who worked in fashion and music, Lily presents a shapeshifter who is comfortable in any environment. Despite the distance, their relationship with their parents remains strong — Lily’s father, Mark Lizotte, is a frequent collaborator.
Decked out in their own designs, a markered-up babydoll dress emblazoned with BLOSSOM over wide-legged, fraying jeans, the young songwriter is just as eclectic, sweet, and unpredictable as their new EP, Blossom ‘97, out today. It’s unsurprising that Lizotte, who identifies as non-binary and favors they/them pronouns, was pursuing fashion while living in New York City before pivoting to focus more specifically on music, and style is obviously still a huge part of who they are. Sporting gold teeth, tiny hoops, and their wavy black hair long and loose, they describe their style as a sort of manifestation of gender fluidity.
Philip Cosores
“I love mixing things that are stereotypically masculine or ultra-feminine together,” they explained during our conservation. “Being nonbinary, I don’t really feel comfortable in just girls clothes or just guy clothes. I like to mix everything together and have it be really fluid. I’ll wear jeans underneath dresses — or I’ll wear Jordans and Yankees caps with big dresses. I feel most comfortable and most like myself when I’m not dressing to gender.”
Staying in one genre is of no interest to them either, and influences on The Blossom range from grunge to hip-hop to shoegaze and back again across the EP’s six disparate songs. After putting out the Bleeding Buttercup EP on SoundCloud last year, along with a few other loose tracks, the 97 EP is Lizotte’s first official release, and one of the first projects to come out of Kevin Abstract and Romil Hemnani of Brockhampton’s creative collective, Video Store. After moving to LA just a few months before the pandemic and imposed quarantine in March of 2020, a friend introduced Lily to Kevin and Romil, confident their collaborations would be valuable.
“Immediately, we loved a lot of the same stuff,” Lily remembered. “We have similar influences and I think we also have the same process as far as creating. As far as the label, we just operate like a big creative family. It’s like a little machine where we can just make everything we want. You want to make it? Make it. I’m pretty fearless like that, and they’re pretty fearless, too. So it’s just fun — we’re just friends having fun. When we were making the EP, it was like, are we enjoying making this? Yeah, then let’s put it out. It’s really that natural, which is really nice.”
The Blossom’s sound builds off the skittering beats and looped instrumentals that define modern hip-hop, cribbing big and twangy guitar licks from the ‘90s, and wielding their raspy, elastic voice in a hundred different ways. The EP’s opening track, and arguably its standout, “Confetti,” is both a reflection on a current situation’s irritation and an unrelenting hope for improvement. “I think the essence and the message of the whole EP is in that one song,” Lizotte said. “I carry a lot of symbolism in that song with me. It’s about one of the most painful and grueling points in my life, but it feels like a time capsule that I’m digging up and singing about. What I was going through then, I’m still going through now, so it’s all continuous.”
Philip Cosores
And even though hip-hop and indie rock are both major influence on The Blossom’s sound, the unrelenting force that comes through is pure ’90s. From the massive guitar tones to the melancholy and longing in the lyrics, Lizotte explains that her birth year 1997 also doubles a lucky number, hence the ’97 in the title, but their fascination with the decade runs deeper than a personal connection. One of their first singles, “Hardcore Happy,” hits on the connection the hardest, but even if the melody is nostalgic, the lyrics are introspective and unsettled in a way that feels very current.
“I also love how the ’90s recontextualized a lot of sounds,” they said. “It was also an era that deconstructed a lot of what was popularized and really broke it down to to the visceral parts. That’s kind of what I’m doing on this project. There are definitely guitar tones and melodies that I’m influenced by, but I’m more influenced by the whole intention and energy of the ’90s instead of trying to rip that sound directly.”
Philip Cosores
Of course, back in the ’90s it was rare to hear a queer artist addressing their gender fluidity in incredibly direct way that Lily does, but their focus is also on preserving ambiguity. And if there’s any artistic space where that’s possible, songwriting is it. “You’ll never hear me refer to any gender in my music,” Lizotte said. “I don’t like to sing from a girl’s point of view or a guy’s point of view. I really feel so free when I’m creating music and when I’m immersed in music, I feel really free from gender. It’s the place where I feel most safe. I create without gender in mind, so that’s really cool. It’s so freeing.”
97 Blossom EP is out 4/6 via Video Store. Get it here.
Sufjan Stevens hasn’t really stopped moving over the past few years. He released two albums in 2020, Aporia and The Ascension. Now, he’s already coming back with another one, and it’s massive: Convocations is a five-volume ambient album that’s set for release in full on May 6. The first volume, Meditation, comes out on April 8, and ahead of that, Stevens shared “Meditation V.”
A statement about the album was written by Grayson Haver Currin and it describes the project in part:
“As musically erudite as it is emotionally experienced, Convocations can be dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, or calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through loss, isolation, and anxiety.
Indeed, Convocations moves like a two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for our present times of difficulty, its 49 tracks allowing for all these feelings to be felt. The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all.
In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much.”
Listen to “Meditation V” above. Below, find the Convocations art and tracklist, as well as the full album statement.
“It may be tempting to reduce Convocations into a longform ambient anomaly within Sufjan Stevens’ vast catalogue. It is, however, neither an anomaly nor entirely ambient. This is not a side project. From his numerous dance scores for New York City Ballet to instrumental albums such as Enjoy Your Rabbit, Aporia, and The BQE, Stevens spends at least half his working life making largely instrumental music, as he has for decades. And though the first ten pieces, dubbed “Meditations,” unfurl as gorgeous states of reflective new-age grace, this is by no means an ambient enterprise. Stevens invokes the lessons of Morton Subotnick, Maryanne Amacher, Christian Fennesz, Brian Eno, and Wolfgang Voigt here. As musically erudite as it is emotionally experienced, Convocations can be dissonant, vertiginous, rhythmic, repetitive, urgent, or calm—that is, all the things we undergo when we inevitably live through loss, isolation, and anxiety.
Indeed, Convocations moves like a two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for our present times of difficulty, its 49 tracks allowing for all these feelings to be felt. The album is divided into five sonic cycles, each replicating a different stage of mourning. Convocations occasionally soothes and sometimes hurts; when it’s done, you’re left with a renewed sense of wonder for being here at all.
In fact, Stevens made Convocations in response to (and as an homage to) the life and death of his father, who died in September last year, two days following the release of The Ascension. It is, then, ultimately an album about loss, and an album that reflects a year in which we have all lost so much. One could easily compare this project to Stevens’ album Carrie & Lowell, which he wrote following his mother’s death. But this is something entirely different. A new time, a new season, a new life lost, a new reckoning, a new kind of isolation, grief, despair, frustration, confusion, and the search for happiness and hope for the future. This is not a personal record, but a universal one. Convocations is built on a shared experience that seeks to be honest about how complicated grief can be in these difficult times—the pain, the anxiety, the unknown, the absolute joy of memory. This is also an album made in lockdown, when we were all cloistered in whatever space we had. So long as the science and statistics hold, Convocations arrives just as we begin to emerge from a year whose losses we will calculate for a lifetime. It is, then, right on time, as we begin to process our grief and try to carry on with it.”
Convocations is out 5/6 via Asthmatic Kitty. Pre-order it here.
Emily VanCamp made her Marvel return in “Power Broker,” the latest episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and her character, Sharon Carter, is in a much different place than we last saw her in Captain America: Civil War. For starters, any chance of having a relationship with Steve Rogers went completely out the window after the events of Avengers: Endgame, which might have a tiny bit to do with Sharon’s jaded demeanor in Falcon and Winter Soldier. However, that budding relationship didn’t sit well with fans, and while talking about her MCU return, VanCamp opened up about experiencing the backlash from the Sharon and Cap kiss in Civil War. Via Variety:
“There was quite a bit of backlash about that. With Sharon, it was always trying to fit her in and these movies are just too big, and it’s completely understandable. To get to see who she’s become over this long period of time, and independent of Captain America as we know him, is really interesting to me. The intrigue for me was to see who is Sharon now.”
VanCamp got even more honest by admitting that not even Marvel gets everything right. “Some of these storylines play and some of them don’t,” she added. “But, you know, I thought that was an amazing film. It’s just one of those things.”
But it wasn’t just fans who weren’t thrilled with Steve kissing the love of his life’s niece. Peggy Carter actress Hayley Atwell was not feeling the “romantic” scene at all. “I just feel that, you know – I wouldn’t want to date my great aunt’s guy,” Atwell told IGN. “It just feels like it crosses an incestuous boundary. And Peggy just died. That’s even more disrespectful, right? It’s like, ‘don’t touch that.’ You can’t tap that!”
John Cena and John Oliver share more than a first name: they were born on the same day, April 23, 1977. This bit of celebrity trivia may surprise you, considering the Last Week Tonight host looks like someone who Roy Kent from Ted Lasso would shove into a locker and John Cena is, well, John Cena.
Oliver thinks about the WWE champion every time his birthday comes around, “specifically thinking, ‘I’m not just one step closer to death, I’m about 20 steps closer to death than he is,’” as he joked during a February episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. But what does Cena have to say about sharing a birthday with Oliver?
“Mr. Colbert, do you know what it’s like living in someone’s shadow? John Oliver said he thinks about me every birthday ‘now.’ I’ve thought about John Oliver for 44 years,” The Suicide Squad actor told Colbert during Monday’s episode of Late Night. “I think this is a psychological warfare tactic by my parents. We were born on the same day, in the same year, we share the same first name, and I think possibly if you do a little research, maybe even the same last name, I’m not sure.” Cena has tried to carve out his own identity, but every year around his birthday, he remembers that he’ll “never, ever, ever, possibly going to do anything better than the existence of John Oliver.”
While the pandemic has obviously been, well, a pandemic and largely not good, it has yielded some silver linings. One of those for Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl has that he was able to write more. He started an Instagram account to share short stories from his life and now he has gone ahead and written a whole book: A Grohl autobiography titled The Storyteller: Tales Of Life And Music is set for release on October 5.
In an announcement for the book, Grohl wrote:
“There is a common thread that runs throughout everything that I do: storytelling. Whether in song, documentary film or on the page, I have always felt compelled to share moments from my life. This inclination is a huge part of what excites me creatively but also as a human being. In March 2020, realizing that my day job with the Foo Fighters was going to go on hold, I started an Instagram account (@davestruestories) and decided to focus all of my creative energy on writing some of my stories down, something I love doing but I’ve never really had the time for. I soon found that the reward I felt every time I posted a story was the same as the feeling I get when playing a song to an audience, so I kept on writing. The response from readers was as soul-filling as any applause in an arena. So, I took stock of all the experiences I’ve had in my life — incredible, difficult, funny and emotional — and decided it was time to finally put them into words. Now with the amazing people at Dey Street Books I’m excited and honored to announce THE STORYTELLER, a collection of memories of a life lived loud. From my early days growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, to hitting the road at the age of 18, and all the music that followed, I can now share these adventures with the world, as seen and heard from behind the microphone. Turn it up!”
Having entertained the idea for years, and even offered a few questionable opportunities (‘It’s a piece of cake! Just do 4 hours of interviews, find someone else to write it, put your face on the cover, and voila!’) I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I’ve recorded and can’t wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.
This certainly doesn’t mean that I’m quitting my day job, but it does give me a place to shed a little light on what it’s like to be a kid from Springfield, Virginia, walking through life while living out the crazy dreams I had as young musician. From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on. I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.”
He also shared what seems to be the book’s introduction as well as audio of him reading it, so check that out below and pre-order The Storyteller: Tales Of Life And Musichere.
Jason Momoa often finds himself wearing fur coats or, alternately, going shirtless for roles where he portrays fierce warriors, but he’s got a different type of role going on soon for Netflix. The streaming giant showed off the See and Aquaman star’s newest look, and yes, he’s probably ripped, but not showing it off for the time being. Instead, he’s wearing horns, and I’m not talking about that thing he does with his hands sometimes to communicate his rocker status. Nope, these are actual horns.
The streamer tweeted out a few first-look photos of Momoa filming Slumberland (based upon the Little Nemo in Slumberland comic book), which shows the actor wearing a full set of horns. He’s also peering out of a wardrobe or something? No visible horns there, but they’re showing in the next image alongside his young co-star, Marlow Barkley.
No, you’re not dreaming—that’s Jason Momoa with a full set of horns.
Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes at SLUMBERLAND, a new adventure story about an eccentric outlaw (Momoa) who guides a young hero (Marlow Barkley) through a secret dreamworld.
Momoa’s apparently portraying “an eccentric outlaw,” as you can see above. Does he lurk in people’s bedrooms, too? Whatever the case, this looks to be very much in the vein of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s run of kiddie flicks in the aughts. The best thing about that approach is that the grownups won’t mind watching those movies along with their children. Add a dash of The Rock, and everything is instantly better. The same goes for a sprinkle of Momoa.
Slumberland (which co-stars Weruche Opia from I May Destroy You, India de Beaufort, Kyle Chandler, and Chris O’Dowd) will stream in 2022.
Bob Odenkirk is so well known now as Saul Goodman in the Breaking Bad universe (and even as an action star in the John Wick-like Nobody) that his work for four years as a writer on SNL is now fourth or fifth on the list of things that we associate with Odenkirk (also behind Mr. Show and even The Ben Stiller Show).
Odenkirk, however, has another fond memory from SNL of something he isn’t particularly proud of, namely a monologue for SNL host Jeremy Irons that Odenkirk wrote with Rob Schneider. It’s a March 1991 episode that takes place two nights before the Oscars, for which host Jeremy Irons was nominated. The skit is not particularly successful, and it’s about Irons’ obsession with winning an Oscar. In the monologue, Irons talks about how he’s been trying to take his mind off of the Oscar race with some woodworking (shows a wooden Oscar he made); candle-making (shows a wax Oscar he made); painting (a portrait with an Oscar); fashion design (shows a coat he’s wearing with an Oscar on the back); and playing the piano (sings a song about winning the Oscar).
The good news is, Irons actually won the Oscar two nights later for his role in Reversal of Fortune. The bad news is, he hated the monologue, and he let Bob Odenkirk know it, as Odenkirk explained to Howard Stern this week. “You know who really yelled at me,” Odenkirk asked? “Jeremy Irons.”
“Rob Schneider and I had written this monologue, and it wasn’t great,” Odenkirk continued telling Stern while laughing. “He was really mad. He was so mad.”
Irons told Odenkirk, “I can’t do this. I can sing. I can dance. I can juggle. I am a Shakespearean-trained actor. And you have me doing this!” Hilariously, however, Odenkirk secretly taped the scolding. “I had a little recorder, and I taped it because I loved it so much. I played it for many people. I don’t know where it is now. It’s at the bottom of a bin somewhere.”
“And he was right, God bless him. It wasn’t a great monologue. But he’s a trooper.” Thankfully, I’m sure, after winning the Oscar, Irons never thought about that monologue again.
It wasn’t the only time Odenkirk was yelled at by a host. Odenkirk and Conan O’Brien were also yelled at by former New York Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner, although that would put Odenkirk is good company.
Odenkirk, meanwhile, can be seen in theaters in Nobody, and he is currently in New Mexico taping the final season of Better Call Saul.
Donald Trump has a complicated relationship with Coca-Cola. And his kids, especially Tiffany, but mostly Coca-Cola. The former-president once tweeted, “I have never seen a thin person drinking Diet Coke,” but he also reportedly guzzles 12 Diet Cokes a day and even had a Diet Coke button in the Oval Office (which Joe Biden has removed). Trump is now calling for a boycott on his beloved “garbage” after Coca-Cola Company CEO James Quincey said that he does not support controversial new legislation in Georgia, where Coke headquarters is based, that “makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.”
“For years the Radical Left Democrats have played dirty by boycotting products when anything from that company is done or stated in any way that offends them. Now they are going big time with the WOKE CANCEL CULTURE and our sacred elections,” Trump said in a statement on Saturday released by Save America PAC. “It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back — we have more people than they do — by far! Boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck. Don’t go back to their products until they relent. We can play a better game than them.” (As long as the game isn’t in Georgia.)
This may come as a surprise, but Trump is not a man of his word:
“Just had a terrific meeting with President Trump!” former adviser Stephen Miller tweeted on Monday, along with a photo of himself in the former-president’s Florida office. If you look closely behind the phone on Trump’s desk, you’ll see an obvious bottle of his carbonated drink of choice. I respect drinking from the iconic glass bottle, but that’s probably because he can’t pick up an actual glass. Needless to say, Trump hiding his Coke after calling for a boycott is being mercifully (and hilariously) mocked on Twitter.
Still laughing from Trump boycotting and then hiding a Coke bottle behind his phone. I’m surprised Johnny Damon wasn’t visible under Trump’s desk with a Delta flight parked outside the window too.
Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” was easily the defining song of last week-plus, as it was discussed everywhere from Saturday Night Live to Fox News. Now the charts are mirroring that: “Montero” has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated April 10. It’s his first single to debut at No. 1 and his second chart-topper ever, following “Old Town Road.” Lil Nas X now just one of a handful of artists with multiple No. 1 singles since 2019.
Lil Nas X celebrated the feat in a number of ways yesterday. One of those was dropping a new video for the song, subtitled “Official Video except its not the official video at all.” As opposed to the high-production original video, this one is a behind-the-scenes video, showing clips of Nas recording the song and spending time with friends and family.
The rapper also had a lot to say on Twitter. His initial reaction was heartfelt, as he wrote, “y’all told a 19 year old who had just escaped the lowest point of his life that he would never have a hit again. you told him to stop while he’s ahead. he could’ve gave up. but 4 multi platinum songs and 2 #1’s later, he’s still here. thank you to my team and my fans! ily.” After some jokes and meme tweets, he later added, “all jokes aside, we get to control our own destiny, never let the world decide it for you. no matter how dark it may look keep f*cking going!”
Check out the new “Montero” video above and find Lil Nas X’s tweets about his latest accomplishment below.
y’all told a 19 year old who had just escaped the lowest point of his life that he would never have a hit again. you told him to stop while he’s ahead. he could’ve gave up. but 4 multi platinum songs and 2 #1’s later, he’s still here. thank you to my team and my fans! ily https://t.co/cW0UiXjJOk
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