This weekend is Valentine’s Day! And this year, for the first time in a long time, society can’t pile tremendous pressure on you to make elaborate dinner plans at an overcrowded restaurant — leading to stress for you, your date, and the poor overworked employees trying to make you look good. Welcome to our first (andhopefully only!) pandemic-era Valentine’s Day!
In 2021, this greeting-card-created-but-also-too-thoroughly-established-to-ignore holiday will see you and your date hanging at/near the house. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Pour a glass of your date’s favorite vintage, turn off phones, light a joint, take a stroll through the neighborhood, and then have some intimate fun together. Because Valentine’s Day may be a sham, but the alchemical formula of effort and focused attention leading to cool sexual escapades is very real.
To help get you in the mood for this weekend, we’ve rounded up our favorite CBD and THC products specifically geared toward enhancing your sex life, this weekend and beyond. Even if you’re flying solo this year, the items on this list will relax you and add to your pleasure — two things we all deserve at the tail-end of this indeterminable pandemic. Enjoy!
Kiva Confections THC-infused Love Sauce admittedly has a pretty disgusting name… or an arousing name depending on what you’re into. Name aside, what we love about Kiva Confections is that unlike High On Love’s paintable body chocolate (see below), this body chocolate is THC-infused, which means it won’t just have you feeling good, it’s going to get you high.
Each serving of Love Sauce (so long as you’re following dose suggestions) sports 10MG of THC, so ditch the paintbrush, dip your fingers in, and start spreading it wherever your Valentine wants the extra attention. Unfortunately, this one is exclusive to the Southern California market — have a friend grab some and overnight it to you!
What better way to get things started — or close things out — than with a relaxing CBD-infused bath? Playboy’s CBD Bath Bombs feature an aromatic blend of CBD and essential oils that will help you melt into a puddle of relaxation while you unwind in the tub.
Whether you’re sharing this experience with your Valentine, or enjoying it solo while you get ready for the weekend ahead, this bath bomb will have you feeling squeaky clean, your muscles relaxed, and your senses sharpened — all the elements required for good loving.
For people outside of California who feel bummed about missing out on Kiva Confections body chocolate, 1906 is a well-respected brand, and their 1906 LOVE chocolate covered coffee beans, which feature 5mg of THC per bean are available in dispensaries across Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois, and Massachusettes.
According to 1906’s website, LOVE is formulated for both a physical and psychological high, which should enhance your overall sexual experience. LOVE is also fast-acting, kicking in at 20 minutes — making it one of the fastest working edibles on the market right now.
Made with premium-grade hemp seed oil, High On Love’s Chocolate Body Paint comes in a cute heart-shaped bottle equipped with a paintbrush to help you paint on your Valentine’s body. Real talk, this Brussels-inspired chocolate actually tastes pretty damn good on its own. We’re not suggesting you eat it straight from the bottle, but go nuts when it comes to painting the chocolate on your partner.
Dosist makes THC vape pens specifically targeted to specific tasks, such as relaxation, bliss, or — our personal favorite — Arousal. Dosist’s Arousal pen features an 11:1 THC to CBD formula with a time-controlled drag feature that will automatically shut off the pen at three seconds (a complete dose) providing a head change that doesn’t get you lost in your own thoughts, but instead relaxes you, and sharpens the mind for a more creative bedroom performance.
If you need a little something more to get you going, Dosist also has an Arouse THC-plus, which is designed with a stronger formula to awaken the senses and get you laser-focused on stimulation.
Whether you already love Foria’s sex-enhancing products or you’re just discovering the brand, Foria’s new Quickie Kit is easy and fun. The bundle includes a small sample of Foria’s arousal oil and lubricant, as well as two suppositories, which deliver 50mg of broad-spectrum CBD vaginally or rectally — increasing your arousal and easing any discomfort or tension you’re about to subject yourself to.
Specifically designed for women, Playboy’s CBD Arousal Spray is formulated with 250 mg Broad-Spectrum CBD oil, Horny Goat Weed, and kava root for a warming spray designed to heighten the senses, whether you’re with a partner or all alone.
Playboy’s Arousal Spray is formulated for quick absorption and features a soothing vanilla scent.
If you’re looking for a CBD infused lube that feels silky and smooth, Playboy’s Intimacy Gel is a great pick. Not only do you still get that fast-absorbing blend of broad-spectrum CBD, kava root, and Horney Goat Weed, the Intimacy Gel also has maca root extract to kick your sex drive straight into overdrive.
It doesn’t have the same great smell as the Arousal Spray, but… I don’t know, light a candle or something — we’re not here to plan your entire date!
Foria’s Intimacy CBD vape pen is specially formulated using a blend of organic botanicals and broad-spectrum CBD in order to instantly melt away anxiety, dust the cobwebs from your mind, and relieve any pain you might be feeling (or you know, preparing yourself to feel).
Foria’s Intimacy pen will relax muscles and ease tension, as well as increase blood flow to the places that count. The pleasing mix of peppermint and vanilla is also way more enjoyable than a more herbal-scented product.
This one is a bit on the pricey end, but the attention to detail and quality is worth it, plus replacement cartridges are a steal!
High On Love has all sorts of CBD-heavy products worth your time and money, but we figured we’d close this list out with a big one. The brand’s Objects of Pleasure gift set features 30ml of High on Love’s stimulating O-gel, made with a blend of cannabis sativa oil and peppermint and designed to increase blood flow, boost libido, and supercharge your natural lubrication. They pair that with a seven setting, five-speed silicone vibrator, designed by Jopen.
If the vibrator proves too intimidating, High on Love also features an Object of Desire gift set which swaps out the Jopen vibrator with a palm massager and shaves $10 off the price. The stimulating O-Gel is also available separately. But those aren’t the gift we recommend — instead, just get over your hangups and go for the full gift set.
Comedy’s preeminent MAGA scholar, Jordan Klepper, returned to the scene of the crime (literally) during Thursday’s episode of The Daily Show. The correspondent / thirst trap was back in Washington D.C. for the first time since witnessing the failed coup at the Capitol on January 6. There’s now more fencing around the building “and the thousands of screaming MAGA folks is down to two.” Klepper asked the die hards for their thoughts on the impeachment trial. “What I saw and what there’s a lot of evidence showing is that many of the initial people who entered the building violently were leftists, you have Antifa…” one of them said. Klepper responded that he “was here and it seemed like a lot of people were Trump supporters. A thousand people broke into the Capitol, erected a noose outside, and tried to kill the Speaker of the House and the vice president.”
Klepper compared the second impeachment trial to a sequel that’s “bigger and louder and more cinematic than the first one. Because as we all know, when you’re dealing with American audiences, stunning imagery goes farther than facts.” He also spoke to Adam Schiff (D-CA), who was one of the lead investigators in Trump’s first impeachment trial.
Schiff urged Republicans “to find the courage to tell their constituents back home that what they were fed by Donald Trump was a bunch of lies.” After Klepper pointed out that maybe “banking” on the courage of someone like Ted Cruz (“He won’t even stand up for his wife, let alone the country”) maybe isn’t the best idea, Schiff replied, “If I was going to bank on that, I’d be bankrupt a long time ago.” You can watch the clip above.
Tomi, stop trying to make “SHAMpeachment” happen, it’s not going to happen.
The Fox Nation contributor has not only been pushing made-up nonsense about election fraud, she’s also been trying to attach a clever (?) nickname to Donald Trump’s impeachment trial. Or should I say, Trump’s SHAMpeachment trail? No, I shouldn’t, because that’s dumb. But it hasn’t stopped Lahren in the past, and it won’t stop her now.
“SHAMPEACHMENT!” she tweeted earlier this week, along with a video of herself defending former-president Trump on Fox Nation. “Pointing out instances of potential voter fraud is not incitement: FACTS. Instructing your supporters to ‘peacefully and patriotically’ make their head voices heard is not incitement: FACTS. You can’t incite something that was pre-planned: FACTS. And lastly, you can’t impeach a president simply because you do not like him and are terrified of his electoral comeback: FACTS,” she said. I’m sorry, but you lost me after the “SHAMPEACHMENT 2.0” chyron.
Lahren used the not-viral term on Twitter on Friday, as well. Imagine being such a DC swamp rat you think this SHAMpeachment trial matters to any everyday American outside of the trash bin that is liberal Twitter…” she wrote. Lahren’s replies are filled with people pointing out the fallacy of tweeting about something you supposedly don’t care about (“If it doesn’t matter, why do you care? Why waste time posting about something that doesn’t matter? If something doesn’t matter to me, I don’t make time for it. You’ve made time for this, so it clearly matters to you,” one reads), as well as:
SHAMpeachment is really bad, Tomi. I hope it didn’t take you long to come up with that. Although I bet you thought to yourself it was a real humdinger
(Spoilers from Marvel Studios and Disney+’s WandaVision will be found below.)
The first few weeks of WandaVision laid plenty of HYDRA-related easter eggs to remind everyone Wanda Maximoff’s traumatic past. We’ve since received confirmation that this past is precisely why Wanda has manipulated the reality of Westview to fashion a happy, sitcom-y world where everything is perfect, including Vision being alive. She’s apparently reanimated him into a Zombie-vision-popsicle, and the town’s residents are pushed into personalities that are not their own. We’re not sure if this includes Agnes, or whether she’s truly Agatha Harkness, a sorceress from the comics who helped Wanda come into her powers while training with HYDRA.
The biggest issue of this week’s episode, though, is whatever the hell is going on with Pietro. Much to Marvel fans’ delight, Kevin Feige used Wanda’s brother as the perfect reason to thread the MCU and Fox superhero universes together. As such, Aaron Taylor Johnson is no longer playing the Age of Ultron version of Pietro (RIP). Instead, the character has been “recast,” and we’ve got Evan Peters, who played Quicksilver/Peter in the X-Men movies.
This week, we learn that Pietro is… not exactly Pietro. He doesn’t seem like Peter either, although the title cards from this episode (which plays like a Malcolm in the Middlehomage) try to tell us that nothing is amiss, and he’s definitely Pietro.
Marvel Studios/Disney+
Yeah, this ain’t Pietro. In fact, it kind-of feels like he’s secretly Mephisto (the MCU’s vision of the Devil), which throws a wrench into hopes that Agnes Husband is really Mephisto (and that he’ll be played by Al Pacino). Pietro is acting very strange, kind of cool-uncle-y, but also referred to as a “man child,” and at the end of the episode, his hair looks like devil-horns.
Disney+
Fans on Twitter seem to agree that while Evan Peters is doing an amazing job at whomever he’s portraying, Pietro is definitely not himself, and he’s not Peter, even though he’s technically Quicksilvering all over the place. He appears to be pushing Wanda to go further with her powers to control the town, he’s digging for information, and at one point, he also goes zombie-like (perhaps a nod to Pietro being dead, or it this could be an even more sinister thing, pointing toward true evil… is he the Devil?).
Disney+
Whatever the case, he means to shake sh*t up, and Wanda doesn’t appear to have any control over him at all. I’m rooting for him to be Mephisto, and here’s what people think.
He grew up with her, he basically acknowledged how her mind works. He knosw how tight her emotions are linked with her powers. He most likely understand why is she doing it but not necessarily is 100% okay with it. Or fuck whatever I said, he’s probably testing her limits
One thing we do learn this episode, which is a marvelously Halloween-themed one, is that Wanda is becoming Scarlet Witch, with or without the help of Agatha.
Disney+
This week didn’t provide many clues on Agnes and whether she’s able to pull strings on Wanda’s state of mind, as some suspected, but she did speak with Vision, who’s increasingly uncomfortable with what Wanda’s doing to the clearly-disturbed townspeople. Wanda then ended up sucking in part of reality into Westview. It was an emotional end to the episode, with Vision dying again and being brought back to life and sucked back into Westview, along with Darcy.
Beyond this, there’s still a real question of who the series’ villain shall be. Hayward is clearly up to no good, and I suspect from the way that he pushed back at Monica Rambeau, he’s a HYDRA guy. Scarlet Witch is now in play, and so is the multiverse, so the MCU is now hurtling towards Wanda in the next Doctor Strange movie. And don’t count out Agnes! She clearly wants to shake off Wanda’s control, and who knows what will emerge if/when she does so.
Disney+’s ‘WandaVision’ streams new episodes on Fridays.
When it comes to Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” it’s immediately obvious what the song is about. When it comes to Cardi’s new single “Up,” though, the lyrics are a bit less transparent and more open to interpretation. Well, Cardi guested on The Tonight Show yesterday and she told Fallon that “Up” is also about the body, albeit in a markedly different way than “WAP” is.
Fallon asked about Offset’s role in the lyric and Cardi answered, “He says that a lot. I don’t know if it’s a down south thing. After the song came out, I thought it was a Georgia thing, but then people were like, ‘We say that in New Orleans,’ ‘We say that in Florida.’ I’m like, ‘OK, man, listen. I guess, whatever.’ […] So, have you ever taken a poop, right, and it don’t come out? It’s just up and it’s stuck. Yeah.”
A stunned Fallon then offered his own take, suggesting the phrase could be about reaching a certain level of success and then maintaining it. Cardi followed up, “It’s a metaphorical quote,” suggesting that achievement and constipation are just two of many possible interpretations of the song and that poop probably wasn’t actually on Cardi’s mind when she wrote the tune.
Elsewhere during the show, Cardi and Fallon faced off in the “Mimic Challenge,” so check out clips from the show above and below.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Video game glitches are always going to exist, simply by the nature of gaming. The idea of a game that is perfect and has no glitches doesn’t exist because no matter how much a game is stress-tested, there is nothing like putting it in the hands of regular people. Developers can spend months fixing bugs and polishing a game up to perfection and then as soon as it releases you have tons of people finding bugs that you never even knew existed, because every user is going to do something unique.
The range of these glitches can vary. Sometimes they’re infuriating and break the game entirely. Other times they’re minor and only exist when the game has been pushed to its absolute limits. Then there are those glitches that we just can’t help but laugh at. They don’t ruin the experience but instead enhance them. Glitches are as much a part of the gaming experience as anything else and some of them have become very famous. Some of them have even changed video games as a whole!
Here, we’ll take a look at some of the most legendary game glitches of all time.
Minus World
Possibly the most famous glitch on this list, the Minus World, or as it’s shown in the game World -1, is a “hidden” level that you can access via World 1-2 in Super Mario Bros. on NES. At the end of the stage, you need to jump backward and glitch your way through the wall until you reach the secret entrance in the back. Enter the first or third pipe and you have entered World -1 which is in reality just World 7-2 but on an endless loop.
In the game’s code World -1 is actually considered “World 36-1” but 36 is the same number used for blank tiles so it merely shows up as “-1” and this led to fans dubbing it “Minus world.” Compared to many other glitches this one is fairly tame, but Minus World became infamous among fans of the game and as time has gone on it’s become part of Super Mario Bros. lore.
This is also a good example of pushing a game to its limits and trying to break it on purpose. The process of reaching the minus world is something you almost have to force yourself to do. Rarely if ever is someone going to reach this on accident.
MISSINGNO
Arguably the most infamous Pokemon glitch, MISSINGNO became a major part of gaming culture because of just how weird it is. To activate this you need to do a careful series of steps that include re-doing the Pokemon catching tutorial in Viridian City, flying to Cinnabar Island, and then surfing right on the coast of the island back and forth. After running into wild Pokemon for a little while, at completely random levels, you will eventually run into the legendary MISSINGNO.
What MISSINGNO is in reality is nothing more than a placeholder program for when the game can’t find the number it’s seeking. Thus MISSINGNO= Missing No. = Missing Number. However, you’re not supposed to be able to find MISSINGNO in normal circumstances so when you do find it you are going to begin seriously corrupting your game. Catch it with a Masterball and then you can start putting on a magic show for anyone watching.
Culturally, MISSINGNO became infamous in the Pokemon community and has spawned fan art, creepypasta stories, and tons of fan theories about what MISSINGNO is or what it was supposed to be. As time went on though it became a trick for duplicating items and other fun tricks.
Wavedashing
If you’ve ever watched someone play Super Smash Bros. Melee professionally you’re probably amazed at just how fast they can move. A part of why they’re able to cover ground so quickly is a small glitch fans dubbed “Wavedashing.” The glitch itself is rather harmless. Press the buttons on your GameCube controller correctly with the proper timing and you will slide across the stage during matches. It’s what wavedashing became that makes it such a famous glitch.
You can argue that there’s a direct correlation between wavedashing and the growth of professional play with melee. Players who learned how to wavedash made the game faster, they got better at it, and these days it’s a high-speed eSport featuring some of the top players in the world going head to head in tournaments.
Without wavedashing it’s hard to see the game ever becoming as quick as it is. It completely changed the game and added a layer of skill that benefits the hardcore crowd of the game. It’s also a fun glitch because it’s not required to enjoy the game. You can still play the game casually with friends and never once use it, but if you want to be part of the hardcore then you need to learn how to wavedash. It’s almost like a rite of passage.
Speedrunning
This one is kind of cheating, but speedrunning has played a huge part in changing how glitches are viewed among gamers. For the longest time, when you found a glitch, it was an annoyance that hampered your enjoyment of the game. However, as speedrunning has gotten more popular it has led to players seeking out more ways to play the games faster. So they seek out glitches, ways to teleport ahead of where they should be, break through invisible barriers, and complete hour long games in sometimes literal minutes.
Utilizing glitches is a major part of speedrunning and it leads to players seeking out new ones. They’re constantly pushing games to their limit and seeing how they can bend them to their advantage. The craziest part is sometimes the most important glitches they find are the ones that only save precious seconds. It may seem minor, but when the difference between the world record and your time is three seconds, those glitches become extremely important to your run.
The Corrupted Blood Plague
What if a pandemic happened virtually? It’s already happened before and it became one of the most infamous glitches ever!
A raid in the popular MMO World of Warcraft featured a boss with an effect where they would infect players and drain their health. The effect was highly contagious and if the player ran near other players or their pets it would infect them as well. The effect would eventually go away on its own or when the player died, but where the glitch occurs is that the effect could be taken outside the dungeon.
If a player’s pet was infected during the raid and they de-summoned it in the dungeon, they would keep the effect outside of the dungeon and if the player chose to release their pet back outside the dungeon they could infect themselves and other players with what was essentially a virus. Other players, other players’ pets, and even NPC’s could all get the virus. Even worse when an NPC got it they would remain unaffected while still being contagious. So if an NPC had the virus and you went up to them then you yourself would become contagious. World of Warcraft had a pandemic in their game due to a glitch.
The aftereffects of this ended up becoming worldwide news with media outlets, the CDC, and terrorist prevention organizations all keeping a close eye on the effects of this in-game outbreak. It was the closest they had to a virtual example of what a pandemic might look like at the time. It even got referenced in the TV show Mythic Quest.
CyberPunk 2077
Call it recency bias or call it over reactionary, but the glitches of Cyberpunk are going to have a massive effect on video games as a whole.
The glitches themselves can be hilarious, featuring flying cars, and players being launched into space, but they aren’t always funny. Many of them were game breaking and actively ruined the experience. It became such a problem that CD Projekt started telling players that weren’t happy with the game to ask for refunds. Sony responded to this by pulling the game from their online store.
There is no telling what kind of pandora’s box was opened with this. Games shipping broken is becoming a little too much the norm these days and fans are growing increasingly tired of it. You can see this in more than just Cyberpunk. Just look at the response to Madden 21‘s release. What is stopping fans the next time this happens from demanding a refund again? We’re seeing more pressure than ever for games to release in a more complete state, especially with prices increasing to $70 in this new console generation.
Cyberpunk isn’t the first game to be a buggy mess, but it might have been the final straw for fans. Glitches can be fun, they can change the entire course of a game’s history, but when you see too many of them they can ruin a game.
Taylor Swift has said that she enjoys leaving Easter eggs and clues for her fans to discover and analyze, and it looks like Swifties have found another one in the album art of Swift’s recently announced re-recorded album Fearless (Taylor’s Version).
The new art is based on the original, as Swift is in a similar pose. A big difference that fans noted this time, though, is Swift’s shirt, which they think is intentionally similar to the one the Romeo character wore in her original “Love Story” video. As one fan put it on Twitter, “taylor is wearing romeo’s shirt, she no longer needs a knight in shining armour because she is her own.”
taylor is wearing romeo’s shirt, she no longer needs a knight in shining armour because she is her own pic.twitter.com/tdEgd3fJEA
Swift said of her new version of “Love Story,” “‘Love Story’ is a song that I wrote when I was 17 and I think it involved some teenage angst I think I was mad at my parents for not letting me go on a date or something and it also was a good example of what a hopeless romantic I was and and still am I really loved the story of Romeo and Juliet except for the ending because that was just like two devastating for me to process so I changed the ending in the song and I’ve just ever since been so honored by the fact that people have celebrated this song so much I feel really lucky that people responded to it the way that they did and continue to.”
Check out some other fan reactions to the Fearless (Taylor’s Version) cover art below.
TAYLOR IS WEARING ROMEO’S SHIRT IN THE ALBUM COVER!! She is her own armor now So Proud of Taylor pic.twitter.com/Yz8t8JS4AU
SO TAYLOR IS THE ROMEO AND WE (SWIFTIES) ARE HER JULIETS !! SHE WROTE THIS SONG FOR HER FANS. THIS SONG IS SWIFTIE’S POV BECAUSE WE LITERALLY CONSIDER HER OUR ROMEO pic.twitter.com/rT5eFyaOyA
Netflix knows that love is in the air, but it’s an unconventional year, so how about a little unconventional love, too? The massive streaming service is up to that challenge and more, but first, one must witness Noah Centineo doing his best Lloyd Dobler in the conclusion of the To All The Boys I’ve Loved trilogy. There’s also a horror-thriller about a married couple trying to put it all back together, and once you’re tired of the romantic vibe, Joe Berlinger’s latest crime documentary is coming at you in series form. Netflix simply cannot stop loving its subscribers, and the feeling is mutual.
Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) the streaming platform this week.
To All The Boys: Always And Forever (Netflix film streaming 2/12)
Noah Centineo’s reign as the Internet’s Boyfriend may be coming to an end with the conclusion of Netflix’s smash-hit, romcom trilogy. Lana Condor’s still keeping Lara Jean’s head on as tightly as possible while things get dreamier with her boyfriend, although everything could change with their oncoming plans for college. Will they both go to Stanford and keep their love alive, or will Lara Jean depart school in New York City? Long distance love isn’t so lovely, and god only knows what else can be revealed in this film that they haven’t shown in this trailer (this franchise is a master at the art of revealing the whole movie in a few minutes), but fans will be excited to find out whether Peter and Lara Jean can actually make it beyond their idyllic high school setting.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel (Netflix series 2/10)
(Netflix series) — Director Joe Berlinger (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, the Ted Bundy movie starring Zac Efron and Paradise Lost, the HBO documentary trilogy about the West Memphis Three) launches this new anthology series that explores why some notorious crime locales gain their reputations. This season’s all about L.A.’s so-called “hotel death” and what happened when a young woman named Elisa Lam disappeared without a trace and after behaving bizarrely. Along the way, Berlinger seeks to crush conspiracy theories and vanquish ghost stories, although the whole affair is still a spooky ride.
This might be a cautionary tale for people who decide it’s a great idea to rekindle their marriages in the unforgiving wilderness — who knows? For sure, though, this is a claustrophobic tale about what happens when a sadistic killer points a red laser dot into Nadja and David’s tent, and that act sends them fighting for their lives. Naturally, a lot of marriage drama will happen along the way, as they attempt to save themselves in the snowy terrain. I guess couple’s counseling was a no-go, but that’s not nearly as entertaining as escaping into other people’s hell when they find themselves feeling like they’re on the other end of a video-game gun. Also, there’s a dog in this trailer, and nothing had better happen to him, or I’m gonna call for John Wick vengeance.
Squared Love (Netflix film 2/11)
This romcom follows a teacher who’s moonlighting as a model, all to pay off some debt, but then she meets a womanizer/journalist, who’s being blackmailed to appear in some advertisements. They become worst enemies, and we can probably guess (given the whole romcom thing) how these two will proceed, right?
Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:
Avail. 2/8 iCarly: Seasons 1-2 War Dogs
Avail. 2/10 Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel
The Misadventures of Hedi and Cokeman
The World We Make
Avail. 2/11 Capitani
Layla Majnun
Middle of Nowhere
Red Dot
Squared Love
Avail. 2/12 Buried by the Bernards
Nadiya Bakes
Hate by Dani Rovira
To All The Boys: Always And Forever
Xico’s Journey
Avail. 2/13 Monsoon
Avail. 2/15 The Crew
And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:
Leaving 2/14 Alone in Berlin Hostiles
Leaving 2/16 Brave Miss World: Collection 1
Leaving 2/19 Bates Motel: Seasons 1-5
Leaving 2/20 A Haunted House
Leaving 2/21 Trespass Against Us
Leaving 2/24 Dolphin Tale 2
Leaving 2/26 The Frozen Ground
Leaving 2/28 A Walk to Remember
Basic Instinct
Easy A
The Gift
GoodFellas
Gran Torino
Haywire
LA 92
Little Nicky
My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Friendship Games
Retribution
Saving Mr. Banks
Sleepover
In 2004, it was hard to conceive of a band more out of step with what was currently fashionable in indie rock than The Hold Steady. Founded by former Lifter Puller members Craig Finn and Tad Kubler, The Hold Steady was in fact inspired by their shared dissatisfaction with the prevailing trends of the time. As post-punk throwbacks and danceable grooves were captivating critics, The Hold Steady emerged with riff-heavy, piano-accented anthems that drew on Finn’s youthful, Middle American misadventures. Right when everyone else was enraptured with leather jackets and Duran Duran, The Hold Steady waved the flag for cheap beer and Bob Seger.
As the decade progressed, The Hold Steady somehow become one of indie’s most acclaimed and popular acts, not bad for what was initially looked at even by the band members as a lark that likely wouldn’t go far. But then, as they entered the 2010s, the fairy tale started sour. Over time, a band that once commented on classic-rock clichés with wit and insight now seemed to embody them. There was in-fighting, health scares, indifferently received mid-period albums, and failed reboots. By the mid-2010s, they were teetering on the edge of a break-up.
And yet, in the manner of all rousing rock ‘n’ roll comeback stories, The Hold Steady weathered the storm and came out stronger on the other side. Thrashing Thru The Passion, their 2019 album featuring the return of prodigal keyboardist Franz Nicolay, was The Hold Steady’s most loved LP in years. Now, they’re prepping for the Feb. 19 release of Open Door Policy, an album that integrates the more layered production of Finn’s solo records (steered by excellent indie producer of the moment Josh Kaufman) into The Hold Steady’s bedrock, rough-and-tumble sound. The result suits this battle-scarred though ultimately lovable band — it’s their most mature record and one of their darkest, but it also evinces the genuine joy that’s enabled them to endure.
To trace their path to Open Door Policy, Finn and Kubler looked back on their catalogue, and spoke candidly about The Hold Steady’s myriad highs and lows over the course of more than 15 years and eight albums.
Almost Killed Me (2004)
Tad Kubler: Look, I’m not going to lie to you: We were very, very aware that what we were doing was not at all popular, you know? But I think we tried to celebrate that.
Craig Finn: In 2002, I went to see the Drive-By Truckers at Bowery Ballroom and I was like, “Oh, I want to be in a band again.” Just straight ahead, telling stories and playing guitars.
TK: I guess the thing that I remember most is writing that record in Craig’s kitchen. I would be sitting at his table with just an electric guitar not even plugged into an amp playing along, and he would be pacing back and forth in his kitchen writing down lyrics and singing.
CF: I was a little burnt on indie rock. In Lifter Puller, we started to like rock ‘n’ roll more than indie rock. What we listened to in the van was AC/DC. Back then, you could go into a record store and find a used copy of Let It Bleed, pay $3 for it, and come home and be like, “Wow.”
TK: I was listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin, and especially on the first record I was listening to a lot of Rolling Stones. Classic rock is very much where I come from growing up in Wisconsin with some of the older kids in the neighborhood. When I was 11 or 12 years old, Eric and Tony Goth, they had a band called Holy Terror and they used to rehearse in their basement. And it was everything from Judas Priest to Black Sabbath to Van Halen, and I just used to go over and watch them play. And then as I got into junior high and discovered the Clash and the Sex Pistols and Circle Jerks, stuff like that.
CF: I moved to New York in 2000. In those three years, we found a really cool group of people that we were having a lot of fun with and that’s the album cover, all our friends. Towards the end, we found a clubhouse, which was HiFi on Avenue A. We were just having a lot of fun. I think that that really shines through on that record.
TK: We weren’t sure if we were going to play shows or if we were even going to put music out. I tend to just stumble into things and am very fortunate that way, where Craig has more of a vision and can kind of see the bigger picture.
CF: When that record was recorded, the expectations were minor. I don’t know that we totally even knew we were making a record. We had six songs and we recorded those. Then a few months later, we had six more. We went in and recorded those. It was two different weekends. We hadn’t really started touring heavily and all that. We all had other jobs. There was a real party atmosphere in the studio. There was a looseness to it that I really love.
TK: I remember being in the studio and making overdub decisions, and Craig and I were kind of smiling and laughing with Dean [Baltulonis, the album’s producer] saying, “Oh man, if or when people hear this, this is going to bum everybody out.”
CF: Everything else culturally was bands with tight pants and making indie rockers dance again, that kind of thing. We were like, “What if we bummed everyone out?”
TK: You know, like the absurdly long solo at the end of “Most People Are DJs.” There was a lot of me doing guitar overdubs after many, many, many beers, and Craig and Dean egging me on a little bit.
CF: Something that was smart was releasing it on Frenchkiss. They were a label known for Les Savy Fav and a lot of the artsy punk stuff. To come out with a down-in-the-middle rock record, I think people looked at it in a certain way that ended up being really helpful. In our first bio, I wrote that we were a bar band and that’s been repeated ad naseum.
Separation Sunday (2005)
CF: For a lot of people that that’s still their favorite record. It’s certainly very Minneapolis-centric and has the characters, which people always want to know more about. I came up with the overarching concept, which I had done before a little bit on the last Lifter Puller record, so I knew we could pull it off. I felt like even though I’m making up these stories, there’s some way to keep them honest just by setting them in someplace I know about. In New York, you can feel like you’re living in the shadow of it a little bit if you’re not going to the Met Ball or whatever. You’re just getting by in the city. I felt like I had that distance from Minneapolis and I could see it clearly. I remember at the time really not wanting to be the Midwestern guy that moves to New York and then three minutes is a Yankees fan. A lot of people do reinvent themselves when they’re here. I started wanting to do the opposite of that.
TK: That was the first time I felt like, “Oh wow, we came up with this. We wrote this.” It felt like we were starting to develop a sound that was ours. Where honestly Almost Killed Me seemed less of that and more like just pulling pretty heavily from influences.
CF: Both Rolling Stone and Spin called Almost Killed Me “the best album you didn’t hear this year.” When we sat down to start on Separation Sunday, I remember saying, “Let’s make a record that people do hear.” Franz joined at that point. Although we had most of the songs already written. He ended up playing on top of us.
TK: We had known Franz from World/Inferno Friendship Society and we had him come in and play piano on a handful of tracks on Almost Killed Me. The piano just added so much drama and Franz was easy to be around. And he was a caliber of musician that I really admired and respected and wanted to become, and I felt like we kind of tricked him into being in the band.
CF: I think he played a saw on that record. He could do a lot of things and expand our palate.
TK: Franz was really busy with other projects. I remember Craig and I sitting down with him at a bar and being like, “No, it’s not going to be a big-time commitment. I don’t know whether we’re going to tour that much at all. We’ll do the record and we’ll see what happens.” And I believed that!
CF: It felt good in the studio. I thought people were going to like it and then it came out and there was just a lot of really good press. We decided to do the record release show at Bowery Ballroom, but it was a little bit of a stretch. We were like, “Everyone has to get really aggressive to invite a lot of people from their work.” Then The Village Voice article came out. We were on the cover and the show sold out immediately, and just the whole thing became different.
Boys And Girls In America (2006)
TK: My daughter was born right before we started working on Separation Sunday. For Boys And Girls, it was a lot of me getting up super early and then walking over to Franz’s place. Franz lived two blocks from me at that time, and I would walk over there in the morning and he had this little piano in his bedroom, and he and I would work on songs for four, five hours every day. It was a real honeymoon phase for Franz and I specifically. It felt like the songs and stuff and the ideas were being realized in a way they hadn’t been before.
CF: We started working with John Agnello on that one. It was a huge thing to bring in a producer and he made it awesome and became a good friend of the band and brought out a lot of good things. One thing that impressed me was John pulled out a calendar and he said, “These are the days we’re going to work, and these are the days you have off.” I’d never been in a situation that was so pro.
TK: It was exciting. Things happened so quickly, so the songs came really easy. The writing went really fast.
CF: We were able to create some of the dynamics right off the bat with “Stuck Between Stations.” It goes down to just a pure piano break, and we were playing with dynamics that way.
TK: Franz and I actually didn’t talk about this until we were working on songs for Thrashing Thru The Passion, but for Franz and I, the honeymoon would eventually end. Franz said, “You know, I came into this band that was this guitar band, and as a piano player, I felt I had to really plant my flag.” And I felt like I had to make sure that we didn’t become a piano band. That kind of started … I don’t want to say a struggle because I think some of that struggle was what made the songs great.
CF: You don’t work necessarily harder on these records that really connect, but it felt like the audience met in the middle because people were ready for it. People were open to it. Everything just felt big. The rooms were bigger. We played with Springsteen at Carnegie Hall. Our first two records didn’t come out in Europe and that one did with the new label and it exploded over there. Before we were touring pretty heavily in the States. Now we had two areas to cover. We spent a lot of time in the U.K. where things went really well. We still have a great audience there and a lot of fun over there.
TK: It was kind of like waking up every day and having your dreams come true. I don’t want to sound corny about it but it was just like, “Fuck, are you kidding me?”
Stay Positive (2008)
TK: I can’t really differentiate Stay Positive from Boys And Girls. I know that Craig said this too probably because he and I talked about it.
CF: I get them confused because we had the same producer in the same studio and it was pretty quick. When we wrote a lot of those songs, we realized we wanted to keep the momentum going, but we didn’t have much time off, so a lot of the songs were written in hotel rooms or backstage. Things like “Joke About Jamaica,” there’s this idea of rock ‘n’ roll creeping in, which seems to happen with any band that tours a lot, for better or worse.
TK:Stay Positive was the beginning of something I think every band that starts to have a little bit of success goes through. It’s growing pains or whatever you want to call them. There were a lot of opinions about what we should be doing. There were just sort of whispers at that point, but I do remember talk about a single and I was just like, “A single? What? First of all, we don’t have that kind of money, to do some kind of radio campaign. And we’re not really that band.”
CF: When we were writing “Stay Positive,” the song, we were pretty aware that the “whoa-oh-oh” part was going to go over with the audience. It was an ethos. From the top, we talked about creating a band that had a community, which seems weird, that we talked about that, but we were able to do it.
Heaven Is Whenever (2010)
TK: Well, obviously a lot happens between the time Stay Positive comes out and Heaven Is Whenever. Obviously one of the big ones is Franz leaves.
CF: That was a blow, but I feel like if anything, we were a little bit too cocky, like, “We’ll be fine.”
TK: At the time it seemed like that relationship just didn’t seem sustainable, and I think Franz had become kind of frustrated with him having to try and manage his time. And then I got sick and ended up in the hospital before a pretty serious European tour that we had to cancel, which I think was hard for everybody. And then, I was sick enough to the point where they weren’t sure that I was going to make it.
CF: We were pretty tired, pretty fried. There was certainly the sense of, “We’ve got to go make a record because that’s what we do. We make records and go on tour.” Also, we had this idea that we were going to scale back on the producer.We were trying to make it with Dean Baltulonis, who made the first two with us, but he was such a good friend and a peer. Even though I think he’s a brilliant guy, he didn’t have the levity of Agnello. He wasn’t scary in any way. He was just more of this dude we hung out with.
TK: With Franz departing, a lot of the weight of bringing ideas in for songs kind of landed solely with me. Craig always brings in music, too, but Franz and I were coming up with the lion’s share of the music.
CF: I have a lot of thoughts about this record because we reissued it recently and I had to go through it all. When I went through it all and saw all the B-sides and everything, I was pleasantly surprised that even though I don’t think it’s our best record, we put a lot of work into it.
TK: We had a shitload of songs for that album.
CF: That record could have been better in maybe two different ways. One is if we would have either stayed with Agnello or even gotten another producer. Production is often leadership. We didn’t have a strong leader at that moment. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone. I think that that might have helped if we had someone to say, “No, let’s just work on these 10 songs. We’ve got to work harder. This is flat.”
TK: I thought we should use Dean for Heaven Is Whenever because it felt like we had created a lot of expectations and pressure that didn’t need to be there. I thought, “If we can go back to working with Dean, we can go back to kind of having fun in a way that we did on those first two records.” Unfortunately, it didn’t really work out like that.
CF: I wonder, since we recorded so much music, if it could’ve been a double album. I’m thinking about records like Exile On Main St. or London Calling — not to say that it could have been as good as any of those records, but they’re letting you behind the scenes, where you put out a lot of music and some of it’s really well-considered and some of it is off-the-cuff, but it shows a lot of the personality of the band. I think maybe in my mind, that’s what we were supposed to do, but then we got scared and it ended up sounding too slick. I was there for all of it and I signed off on all of it, so it wasn’t like someone did this to me. But 10 years on, I look back and I think those are the mistakes that were made.
TK: I think that that’s one of those records where I can kind of see the end zone, but I just can’t ever quite get there. And again, the one thing that I would say about this record is I think there were these expectations that had been created, or we were getting all this input on what we should be doing, instead of just doing what had worked for us in the past, which is we did what we wanted to do and we had fun.
CF: When I went back for the reissue, I was like, “I don’t know why we didn’t put ‘Beer On The Bedstand‘ on the record.” Tad had some health problems and we left the studio quickly, let’s say that. I think that at the time, we thought that song was unfinished. I can’t even tell you that 100 percent, but that’s my memory.
Teeth Dreams (2014)
TK: We did that with Nick Raskulinecz, who’d done Rush and Mastodon and the Foo Fighters, you know, kind of these hard rock bands.
CF:Heaven was a little tough, I wanted to do my own records, so I went down to Austin and did the first solo record.
TK: We did a lot of the writing without him. And between Steve and I, we can fill up a lot of fucking space with guitars. In fact, if you let us, we will fill up every single little nook and cranny and corner. By the time Craig came in he was like, “Where the fuck are the vocals going to go?”
CF: It was so intense. I remember having a hard time finding my spot because of the two guitars. Also, in 2013 my mom passed away. I don’t know that I ever got my head around a lyrical thing. It seemed to be a lot about anxiety, but I don’t know if it was as well-defined as some of the other stuff.
TK: I think it was hard for Craig to feel a part of what was happening, which is absurd since he’s one of the most important parts if not the most important part of what’s happening on a Hold Steady record. But that said, I think he still killed it. “Oaks,” I still say, maybe even to this day, is the only time I’ve had an idea for a song and how it sounds recorded is exactly how I heard it in my head.
CF: I think I missed the piano, the dynamic of going down to just a piano and being able to build things up. There’s not a lot of variance on Teeth Dreams.
TK: One thing I did hear about, was people saying, “Oh, it’s over-compressed.” You know what, you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about. Okay, so tell me what you mean by over-compressed, because if you want to have a conversation about the dynamic range of that record we can, but I’m not sure that you’re going to have anything intelligent to say about that. I think what people are really saying is it sounds slick. It sounds like a sparkly big rock record, which I fucking love. Is it right for the Hold Steady? Probably not.
Thrashing Thru The Passion (2019)
TK: I was convinced the band was done. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was just like, fuck this, man.
CF: We had taken a good year-and-a-half break.
TF: And then Craig and I started hanging out again and we went to go see some shows.
CF: We were going to do a Boys And Girls In America 10-year anniversary show. I was like, “If we’re going to do this, we should call Franz.”
TK: I said, “If Franz doesn’t want to do it, I’m a lot less interested in the whole thing.”
CF: We offered it to him to do it and he said, “Yeah, I’ll do it, cool.”
TK: Total typical fucking Franz.
CF: We did it and it was a lot of fun.
TK: I feel like Franz and I were able to work through some shit without doing it deliberately. It just sort of happened. To this day that guy is one of my favorite people.
CF: We booked another weekend in Chicago. We thought it would be fun for the fans if we learned a cover of a song by a band from Chicago that we played in the encore each night. I think the first night, we did “Southern Girls” by Cheap Trick. The next night we did “I’m the Man Who Loves You” by Wilco. Then the third night we did “Too Much Time On My Hands” by Styx. While we were learning the Styx song, which was harder than I thought it was going to be, I was like, “We could totally be using this time to write new songs.” Pretty soon, we went in the studio. We recorded “Entitlement Crew” and we started putting out songs as we released them. There was a return to Almost Killed Me‘s level of low-pressure expectations.
As the industry changes, consuming music changes. I think the thought was, “Do we need to go and make an album and then wait six months for it to come out?” I was really excited. I thought the music we were writing was really cool. “Entitlement Crew,” when we play it live, that’s a classic Hold Steady song. At this point, that one gets the crowd as much up as “Chips Ahoy” or “Stuck Between Stations.”
Eventually, the five songs we recorded sounded like a side of an album. I was like, “Let’s make this the first side and put some of the other songs on the B side and call it an album.”
Open Door Policy (2021)
CF: We did decide early on we were going to make an album. When you’re just recording songs and putting them out, you’re swinging for the fences at all times. With this record, this song sets up that song, and maybe the lyrics can be a little more referential. It was cool to think that way again.
TK: I think that we’ve managed to get back to making decisions that are maybe a little out there, because we think they’re going to be funny.
CF: I’m super excited about it, but I’ve struggled to tell people what’s different about it. I think there’s been a continuation of figuring out this six-piece line-up and where everything goes and I think that that’s a huge part of the story. It’s allowed us to be more expansive musically than maybe we have in the past. There’s maybe a little bit more of headphone moments. There’s this weird scraping of guitars, some weird little noises that brought something we haven’t done before.
TK: I think it is Craig’s best record. Lyrically, it is a fucking slam dunk. I mean, there’s some shit on there that he says that I’m just like, “Whoa! Like, hold on a second. What the fuck is going on with you right now?” And I can really hear everybody in it, too. I can hear Galen and I can hear Bobby and I hear Franz and I can hear Steve.
CF: We recorded it in two sessions, which was like Almost Killed Me.
TK: I’m just so happy that I get to do this with those guys. Obviously, with the way things have gone over the past year, I’m sure everybody is taking stock in some way or another. But I still can’t believe that this is what we get to do.
CF: It feels good, really good, internally. It’s a blast. Somehow, The Hold Steady just does better if we’re all having the maximum amount of fun.
Open Door Policy is out on February 19 via Positive Jams. Get it here.
Jason Segel was on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast this week. At the risk of coming off condescending, Segel’s real-life personality — at least as its depicted in a long-form podcast — is exactly what one might expect from an actor who found huge success playing man-children for roughly a decade but has since pivoted toward more thoughtful material that he often writes himself.
To wit, Dispatches from Nowhere on AMC was a great, weird little gem that was buried by the early days of the pandemic, and AMC+ subscribers would be wise to revisit the series, which stars Segel, Andre 3000, Sally Field, and a break-out star, Eve Lindley.
Much of the reason why his career has pivoted, Segel told Shepard, is that after a successful sitcom (How I Met Your Mother) and a string of romantic comedies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall, “We tried to stretch 24-year-old Jason as far we could and at 33, the rubber band kind of snapped.”
It was a difficult period in Segel’s life because he’d lost most of everything by which he had been defined, and so he stopped drinking, and after starring in a movie based on an interview between Rolling Stone reporter David Lipsky and the late David Foster Wallace (End of the Tour), Segel delved into different and more challenging projects.
The evolution of Segel’s career also sparked a brief conversation between Shepard and Segel about imposter syndrome, which elicited a hilariously cruel story about a focus test for The Muppets that Segel was subjected to. It involved children, and children of course can be brutally honest. For context, in the The Muppets movie, Segal played a character named Gary.
“We did a test screening, but for kids,” Segal told Shepard. “We ask these questions, and they fill out these forms. And I have one framed. It asked, ‘What did you like about this movie?’”
“The muppets sing!” “The muppets are fun! The muppets dance!” the kid answered on the card.
“What did you not like about the movie?” a question on the card asked.
“Gary’s face,” the card read.
“There’s nothing more [truthful],” Segel said, “than a 10-year-old just being honest.”
The Muppets compete with Gary’s unsightly face is currently streaming on Disney+. It’s fantastic, notwithstanding Segel’s child-repellent visage. Segel, meanwhile, can be seen now in Our Friend with Dakota Johnson and Casey Affleck.
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