2020 has been a really strange year for everyone, as we’ve all had to come to terms with life in the midst of a pandemic that, nine months in, is only getting worse in the United States. In the sports world, the attempt to carry on seasons has been quite difficult, with the need to either enter a bubble environment or accept the fact that there will be various stoppages throughout the season as teams deal with internal outbreaks and have to pause activities.
College basketball is among the sports that have returned and teams are trying to navigate their way through the first major indoor sports season since the pandemic started. Unsurprisingly, they’ve encountered numerous cancellations and bumps in the road. Far less importantly, but still something that matters to coaches and players, is the impact the pandemic has had on their ability to carry on certain team traditions and celebrations.
For example, Georgia Tech’s men’s basketball team celebrates road wins by stopping at a gas station and getting the entire team snacks and candy, something they can’t really do right now as they try to limit exposure to the outside world as much as possible. After beating Nebraska on the road on Wednesday, Tech coach Josh Pastner decided to get his team some candy a different way, by lobbing out a coronavirus shaped pinata — yes, like, a spiky, virus shaped ball — and had them smash that to get the candy inside.
Honestly, I’m shocked this is the first time I’ve seen a coach have his team break a coronavirus pinata, because that is something I could very easily have seen a college football coach doing to help his team “visualize beating the virus” this season or some other extreme Football Guy reasoning. Instead, it’s Pastner’s way of having his team continue a tradition in a pandemic, and now I have to wonder how many of these pinata’s he’s ordered and if this will continue on an every road win basis this season or if he’ll just eventually shift to just handing out candy from his cooler of Airheads that he apparently keeps close by.
It’s only been a few weeks since Megan Thee Stallion released her long-awaited debut album Good News. Apart from its already popular songs, it also features “Girls In The Hood” which has been the subject of a viral trend on TikTok. The videos find TikTok users dismissing a phone call because they are “busy doing hot girl sh*t.” Next, Megan’s song starts to play in the background and the videos show the TikTokers comically getting back to their important tasks once they are off the phon. These tasks include playing video games, dancing in the mirror, watching Netflix, and more.
One video finds a TikTok user shifting their focus to a game of Minecraft as the song plays in the background, while another one nervously texts a close friend for advice on how to respond to their crush’s “hey” text. Other posts to the platform show a young woman flaunting her sub-par parking skills in her own video while another absolutely crushes a game of “Flow Free.”
At the time of this post, there are over 587,500 TikToks that used “Girls In The Hood.” This is also not the first time Megan Thee Stallion has had one of her songs go viral on the service. This past summer, her No. 1 hit and Grammy-nominated single “Savage” was among the most-used songs on TikTok, thanks to an accompanying dance that was featured in the many videos.
You can check out additional posts below and dive into the trend here.
For many drinkers, IPAs are like cilantro. Either you love them in all their dank, resinous, piney glory, or you absolutely hate them for making your mouth taste like the inside of a bong. The average IPA won’t annoy anyone (except for drinkers who feel like the style overshadows other types of beer), but once you get into double, triple, and imperial IPAs things turn divisive.
“Brewers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should,” he says. “Triple IPAs are the epitome of excess and, in my humble opinion, they serve no purpose in the arsenal of drinks available to those who imbibe. They’re not good by themselves and they’re not good with food.”
Criticism from drinks experts doesn’t hinder the popularity of DIPAS, TIPAS, and beyond. And if you like them, who are we to deny you a few ounces of pleasure in this perilous age? So we reached out to a handful of our favorite bartenders and asked them to name the best IPAs for drinkers who just can’t get enough palate wrecking hops. Most of them answered with hop bombs, as requested, while a few snuck in more nuanced IPA picks.
Equilibrium Straight Outta the Laboratory
Felipe Muñoz, head bartender Sweetleaf Cocktails in Long Island City, New York
My favorite would be Straight Outta the Laboratory from Equilibrium Brewery. It is chewy and a bit heavy on the palate, which is good to stick to your bones for winter but still full of fruit — maybe some vitamin C?
90 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head Brewery out of Delaware. It’s hoppy, but not over the top like most double or triple IPA’s. It’s floral, refreshing, and bold.
Due South Category 5
Eric Vincent, bartender at Sparrow in Fort Lauderdale, Florida
As a south Florida native, I will throw in Due South’s Cat 5 into the category. It has a beautiful amber color with aromas and flavors of perfectly ripe stone fruit. The malt sweetness is backed up quickly with the pleasant bitterness.
The best IPA I’ve had in recent memory is being brewed at Crooked Stave out of Colorado. These guys changed the game with native yeast cultivation, barrel aging, and every-which-way you could approach a sour. This IPA shows you a delicate side instead of beating you over the head with bitterness.
Every brewer should aspire to Crooked Staves’ top-notch execution and vast versatility.
Bayou Teche Techeticles
Seth Falvo, bartender at The Hotel Zamora in St. Pete Beach, Florida
When I lived in New Orleans, Bayou Teche was one of my favorite regional breweries. I recently received a bottle of their triple IPA, Techeticles, from a friend in South Louisiana and I was extremely impressed. Despite its 12% ABV, this beer is incredibly smooth, with the hops providing tons of apricot and candied grapefruit flavor with plenty of vanilla and tropical fruit on the nose. It’s perfect for the fall because the body isn’t too rich and the flavors, while strong, aren’t too heavy, making it an ideal beer for the cooler, but not quite cold temperatures we’re experiencing this December.
Bell’s Hopslam is palatable for such an aggressively hopped beer. It’s a great choice for anyone who enjoys their beer with a crazy amount of floral and piney hops.
Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA
Dan Marlowe, mixologist at Modena in Washington, DC
While admittedly I am a stout fan, especially in the fall and winter, I do enjoy the 120 Minute IPA from Dogfish Head. This floral IPA sits at 18% abv and had an almost syrup viscosity. Refreshing on the sip and warming on the swallow. Perfect for a brisk fall evening.
Long Live Three Times a Lady
Frederic Yarm, USBG bartender in Boston
Three Times a Lady by Providence’s Long Live Beerworks that they did in collaboration with Deciduous. It’s perfect for the season given its warming strength yet offers a tropical escapist element with its mango, pineapple, orange, melon, and resiny flavors and aromas.
Writer’s Picks:
Tröegs Perpetual IPA
This 7.5 percent ABV imperial IPA is dry-hopped to perfection and filled with pleasing flavors of juicy orange, fresh pineapple, subtly bitter and piney hops, and a nice cereal backbone.
Pure Formless Reflections
This murky, juicy IPA was made with Hull Melon, Nelson, and Mosiac hops. It’s filled with tropical fruit flavors and enough resinous hop presence to appeal to the biggest hop heads.
It’s not every day that a $300 million superhero movie is such a trainwreck that it gets a mulligan. But that’s what’s about to happen with Justice League, the DCEU’s woebegone attempt to craft their own Avengers-style ensemble romp. We’re a few months away from getting the “Snyder Cut,” which will restore something closer to original director Zack Snyder’s original vision. But for now we still have the one awkwardly assembled by Avengers director Joss Whedon, which has few fans — not even a fellow DC director.
Patty Jenkins, who helmed Wonder Woman and its forthcoming sequel (plus the 2003 serial killer drama Monster, which nabbed Charlize Theron her Oscar, let’s not forget), appeared on the CineBlend podcast ReelBlend (as caught by The A.V. Club), and when asked how closely she studied Justice League when designing Wonder Woman 1984, she had a good answer: she didn’t.
“I think that all of us DC directors tossed that out just as much as the fans did,” Jenkins said, not exactly pulling punches. But that wasn’t because it was bad, necessarily. “I felt that that version contradicted my first movie in many ways, and this current movie, which I was already in production on. So then, what are you going to do?”
She had, however, been following what Snyder was doing with his original, far more ambitious version of the film, before he had to leave the project for family issues. She elaborated:
“I knew, when Zack was doing Justice League, where she sort of ends up. So I always tried… like, I didn’t change her suit, because I never want to… I don’t want to contradict his films, you know? But yet, I have to have my own films, and he’s been very supportive of that. And so, I think that that Justice League was kind of an outlier. They were trying to turn one thing into, kind of, another. And so then it becomes, ‘I don’t recognize half of these characters. I’m not sure what’s going on.’
It’s true that the version of Justice League that hit theaters, with a large percentage of Whedon re-shot material, didn’t exactly gibe with what came before. Superman suddenly had a completely different personality, for one. And Wonder Woman herself was mostly regulated to hen mother duties, rolling her eyes at being surrounded by a bunch of boys (plus Ben Affleck’s pretty melancholic Batman).
Will the “Snyder Cut” align more closely with Wonder Woman 1984, and the other DCEU titles that have come out in the original Justice League’s wake? You’ll find out soon. Meanwhile, enjoy Jenkins speaking off the cuff, especially after delivering a far more measured response to the Warner Bros.-HBO Max brouhaha than did fellow DC director Christopher Nolan.
The voter fraud hearing witness who’s come to be known as “Giuliani’s wine lady,” aka Melissa Carone, has had a big week. And it’s been a big week for us, too. We learned Carone, whose unhinged testimony catapulted her to social media infamy, has a bizarre history with the law. We learned that, according to her at least, she wasn’t allegedly drunk during the hearing. We learned that she used to dance at a strip club actually called Bada Bing. And now it turns out she believes one of the battier current conspiracy theories: that COVID-19 was invented in a lab. Oh, the Obamas did it.
As per Newsweek, Carone sat down for an exclusive interview posted on the belong to — of course! — Sarah Palin, the late John McCain’s notorious (and partially forgotten) former running mate, from the more simpler times of 2008. One Kevin Scholla spoke with Carone about her being the target of derision and not a little bit scorn, to which Palin, too, can relate.
“This is what they do to Trump,” Carone said. “It’s not going to work with me. I won’t back down because I am very religious and I know God is watching over me. This started with COVID.” Carone then went next level. “The Obamas funded that Wuhan lab to make COVID. Then the impeachment process.”
She kept going. “They’ve used every avenue possible to cheat, they used Dominion,” she said. “Dominion software was created to cheat. I have a binder from Dominion that proves this. There’s so much more that will be exposed.”
Mind you, none of this is original nonsense. These are all moth-ridden Trumpist conspiracy theories, all of them easily and repeatedly debunked.
Interestingly, though, the interview mysteriously vanished from Palin’s site. Luckily, it was documented in full at Archive.org, though it mostly finds her again parroting far right talking points: the line about Trump being ahead early in the evening, before absentee votes were counted; that Republican governors not overturning the election are “RINOs”; that there’s more coming out, just you wait.
The article concludes by whipping out a term you may not have heard in the last 12 years: “Mama grizzlies everywhere have a new champion. She’s the Mama Wolverine, Mellissa Carone [sic]. And she’s not going away.”
Ordinarily we’d say her 15 minutes of fame are about to end. But the Trump era GOP always needs more like her.
The Dallas Mavericks plan to part ways with veteran guard J.J. Barea later this week — just one week after signing him to a one-year deal — ESPN’s Tim MacMahon reported Wednesday. Barea recently signed a one-year deal worth the veteran’s minimum of $2.6 million. According to MacMahon, the Mavericks knew they would release Barea, but team owner Mark Cuban wanted to “reward” the longtime player for his service.
Filed to ESPN — Sources: Mavs plan to release J.J. Barea on Thursday. Mark Cuban knew this move was likely when Barea signed a 1-year, $2.6M deal last week but wanted to reward him for his impact over 11 years with Mavs. Barea, 36, still hopes to play in NBA this season.
Dallas had 16 players under contract — one more than the regular season roster limit — including six guards, which was why they reportedly chose to release Barea. In parting ways with Barea, the Mavericks prioritize developing young players like Jalen Johnson and Trey Burke, and focus their efforts on improving defensively. In 2019-20, the Mavericks were an elite offense, but ranked 18th in defensive rating. Mavs Moneyball reported that Barea himself had a defensive rating of 116 and a box plus/minus of -1.4, meaning he was allowing 116 points per 100 possessions and the team was 1.4 points worse per 100 possessions with him on the floor.
Barea began his NBA career as an undrafted rookie in 2006 before signing with the Mavericks, and he went on to spend 11 of his 14 seasons in the league in Dallas. The 5’10 guard was an integral part of the Mavericks’ 2011 NBA Championship winning season, leading the team’s comeback against the Miami Heat. Down 2-1 in the series, Barea started the next three games and averaged 13.3 points and 4.7 assists alongside Jason Kidd to help take down Miami and win the title. Barea also ranks fifth in in Mavericks history for most games played, having made 637 appearances.
After returning from an Achilles injury, Barea made 29 appearances last season and averaged 7.7 points and 3.9 assists while playing around 15.5 minutes per game, proving that he can still be productive off the bench. Throughout his career, Barea averaged 8.9 points and 3.9 assists per game, mostly coming off the bench for the Mavericks and Minnesota Timberwolves, for whom he played from 2011 to 2014.
ESPN reported that the 36-year-old is still eager to play in the NBA and has hopes to find a spot on a team this season. With valuable NBA Finals experience and great veteran leadership, Barea would be a worthy asset for a few NBA teams.
The Mavericks will debut their full roster in their first preseason game coming against the Milwaukee Bucks on Dec. 12. Dallas’ first game of the regular season is against the Phoenix Suns on Dec. 23.
At the end of the week, Jack Harlow will share his debut album That’s What They All Say. Its release follows his monster hit “What’s Poppin,” whose remix peaked at No. 2 on the singles chart. That remix will also appear on Harlow’s new album, but there’s one problem: It features, alongside DaBaby and Lil Wayne, Tory Lanez, whose become persona non grata in the music world after shooting Megan Thee Stallion in the foot. After people took umbrage with Harlow not deleting Lanez from the track, Harlow felt compelled to explain his decision.
“I don’t think I’m God,” he replied. “I don’t have no room to judge anybody. I wasn’t there when this and that happened, I don’t know anything.” He also added that there is “a certain integrity you have to keep as an artist” and that there are “three sides to every story.” He also spoke about “cancel culture,” saying he “hate[s] the pack mentality” that’s behind it and it’s “just a lot of judgment and laziness.” He added, “People aren’t perfect bro. I feel like people should be able to recover from their mistakes.”
Harlow also discussed the criticism he’s faced in his career, saying that most of it comes from white people. “I remember saw somebody talking bad about me online, and you know you see that kind of stuff all the time, but I saw somebody really think piece it up,” he said. “Got really analytical and tried to shred me… and you know, it was just another white guy.”
You can watch Harlow’s full interview on Power 106 above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
When the Clippers landed both Kawhi Leonard and Paul George in the summer of 2019, they instantly become one of the top two or three contenders in the NBA. In many people’s estimation — including and especially their own — they were the runaway favorites to win the title last season.
As we are all aware — and as the Lakers are fond of reminding us — the Clippers suffered a spectacular meltdown in the second round, blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Nuggets and sending their organization into something of a tailspin this offseason as they scrambled to figure out what went wrong and get back on track.
It’s hard to isolate one specific cause, but in general, the Clippers never recaptured the chemistry they’d developed the previous season, despite all their declarations that they were the team to beat in the West. LeBron, in particular, seems to believe that all the trash talk eventually caught up with them when it came time to own it.
Here’s what he said on the Road Trippin podcast.
“I couldn’t believe it. To this day, I still can’t believe it,” LeBron says in the video. “Obviously, the better team won. That’s what happened. But still, because all the sh*t-talking that they were doing all year – and exclude Paul and exclude Kawhi. Even exclude Trez. Obviously, we know who the sh*t-talkers was. And put themselves in a position to get what they been talking sh*t about all year, and I just couldn’t fathom the part or come to the realization that that they did not seek that opportunity when it was right there.”
LeBron pretty clearly appears to be alluding to Patrick Beverley, who had a lot to say all season long and throughout the Bubble, right up until things started going South.
Even though we didn’t get to see the L.A. rivalry play itself in Orlando, there’s no doubt that there will be plenty of intrigue between them throughout next season as the Lakers look to defend their crown and the Clippers try to prove that what happened in the playoffs was somehow an aberration.
Six years ago today, J. Cole released his third album 2014 Forest Hill Drive. While the rapper is currently at work on his upcoming sixth album, The Fall Off, he opted to honor the anniversary with a video for his new song “Fire Squad,” The video finds Cole in a deserted area, discussing his rise to fame and claiming he’s one of the best rappers in hip-hop.
A bunch of @JColeNC videos got deleted way back and today were getting them all back up. And because it’s the anniversary #FHD heres the world premiere of the never before released video for ‘Fire Squad’ Happy Holidays! https://t.co/103ttJ79Hhpic.twitter.com/MDJgOwjZH2
The video arrives after people were left disappointed after rumors that Cole’s sixth album would arrive on December 9 proved to be false. Had it arrived as planned, it would have been Cole’s third album to arrive on that day. The rumor about Cole’s sixth album’s December 9 release began after Zane Lowe announced on his Apple Music show that a big artist would release their album on that day. People believed Cole was that mystery act, but they quickly discovered they were wrong.
This is not the first time this year that fans believed they would receive an album from J. Cole. Back in July, EarthGang’s Olu said that he was preparing to release his sixth album in the near future, but the pandemic caused him to delay it. Days later, Dreamville co-founder Ibrahim “Ib” Hamad refuted the claim, saying simply, “There is no Cole album coming out soon.”
At this point it seems like the best choice is to fully lean into the absurdity of everything as we claw our way out of the weirdest, if not the worst, year in recent memory. And from that perspective, Lifetime’s new Kentucky Fried Chicken mini-movie—yep, you read that right—totally fits the bill.
I mean, Mario Lopez playing a sexy Colonel Sanders in a murderous love triangle romance thriller plot seems right on schedule, doesn’t it? We did the whole “Tiger King” thing early in the pandemic, so it’s high time for another “What did I just watch?” guilty pleasure.
Lifetime’s “A Recipe for Seduction” is clearly a marketing ploy for KFC, but who cares. The trailer is deliciously wonderful and horrible, leaving me unable to look away long enough to roll my eyes at its ridiculousness. Like, I don’t want to admit that I actually want to watch this because I’m not a fan of humiliation, but at the same, I totally want to watch this.
I mean, come on. Watch this trailer and tell me you know exactly how to feel about it. You can’t. Because psychology or something.
A Recipe for Seduction | Premieres December 13th | Presented by Kentucky Fried Chicken | Lifetime
So, the first issue is that Colonel Sanders is hot. How is that even a thing? It’s ruining My second issue is that I want to know how this turns out. It’s only a 15-minute mini-movie, so it can’t be that complicated of a plot. And again, how is this even a thing?
The part that really cracked me up though, was the “Premieres December 13th at noon” part. At noon? Really? What kind of production makes a premiere at noon, for gracious sakes?
The “brought to you by Kentucky Fried Chicken” kind, apparently.
I would love to have been a fly on the wall at the marketing meetings where these mini-movie ideas came to fruition. Like, how did those conversations go? Was it just a bunch of goofy creative types talking about how they could make the silliest branded content ever, but not make it overtly silly, but still somehow make it overtly silly? And how did the filming of it go? The production quality is way up there. It probably took hundreds of people to make this “film.” Did they die laughing between takes? Was it just another job for them? Did they weep over what had become of their careers?
I mean, it looks like a soap opera mixed with a feature film mixed with an advertisement mixed with a parody. It’s either totally genius or totally not. I genuinely don’t know what to think or how to feel.
Maybe that’s what this movie/ad/monstrosity/delight is designed to do. Maybe it’s an emotional biproduct of this wonky, absurd year. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m going to pretend that I’m not going to watch it but will totally watch it when it comes out on December 13th. At noon. Brought to me by Kentucky Fried Chicken.
God Bless America.
Mark your calendars because Lifetime and @KFC have partnered for a Lifetime Original Mini-Movie you don’t want to m… https://t.co/RnbpgBW9LO
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