The late Alex Trebek is still hosting new episodes of Jeopardy!, and he will appear as the host of the show until Christmas Day. His death on Sunday, however, has sparked an outpouring of grief and tributes from fans and former contestants who loved the show’s host and the legacy game show he helped create.
Monday brought an on-air tribute to Trebek before the new episode that ran in syndication, the first since his death from pancreatic cancer was made public on Sunday. And later in the week his wife, Jean, also shared a thank you to fans for their tributes in the wake of Trebek’s passing. Jean Trebek posted a message to Instagram on Wednesday along with a wedding photo of her late husband, thanking fans for their support and the kind words that have been shared in the days since he died.
“My family and I sincerely thank you all for your compassionate messages and generosity,” Jean wrote. “Your expressions have truly touched our hearts. Thank you so very, very much.”
Thursday also brought another message from Trebek himself, filmed for a campaign to help children understand the concept of compassion.
On one of Alex’s last days in the studio, he taped this special message about the Compassion Project, a national initiative to teach elementary school kids the meaning of compassion with the #CompassionChallenge. @EVERFI
“We all know that bullying is a problem in our society, and often is in our schools,” Trebek said. “And so is a lack of understanding of others’ situations.”
It’s yet another example of the impact Trebek tried to have both in the community and among the legions of fans who continue to mourn his loss in the trivia and game show community. Trebek will certainly be missed, and whoever takes over for him once his run of new shows is over will certainly have big, compassionate shoes to fill moving forward.
It is okay if you do not watch The Queen’s Gambit. That’s the first and most important thing here. There are plenty of other shows you can watch or rewatch, and hobbies you can develop, and things around your house that probably need doing. Maybe you even started it and decided it’s not for you. That’s fine, too. None of this is meant to shame you or anyone for not watching the popular show that Everyone Seems To Be Talking About. The point of this is to try to knock down one specific objection I’ve seen from people who have not jumped in yet: “I will not like it because I do not like/understand chess and/or think it is boring.” I understand this objection. I feel it deep in my bones. It was why it took me a full week to finally get started. But it also makes me, as a self-confessed Big Dumb Chess Idiot, qualified to report that it is a load of hooey.
Let’s start with the most general explanation: It is possible to like a show without having a deep knowledge of or appreciation for the things its characters do. I know very little about the cooking and distribution of high-end methamphetamine — as far as any of you know — but I was hopelessly hooked on Breaking Bad. I was and still am heartbroken about the cancellation of GLOW even though I do not particularly care about professional wrestling. One of my favorite shows of 2020 so far was Betty, an HBO series about a diverse group of close-knit female skateboard teens in New York, which I found deeply charming and fascinating even though I am a straight white dude who lives in the suburbs and is twice their age and whose skateboard experience can be summed up by “played Tony Hawk on a PlayStation for most of one summer.” The things the characters on a show do are rarely more important than why they do them and what dominoes topple over as a result.
Zoom out even further to look at the show’s main character, Beth Harmon, played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Beth is — very general plot spoilers incoming — an orphaned child who achieves great success in her chosen field thanks to a specific kind of genius that she almost squanders thanks to repeated self-destructive behavior. You’ve seen that character before. You’ve seen almost that exact character before, in another show you liked: She’s basically Don Draper from Mad Men, but with chess, right down to the part where she gets wasted in fashionable 1960s attire. And I bet you didn’t know all that much about the world of pre-Woodstock advertising before you jumped into that show, either.
Netflix
But fine, let’s talk about the chess. Again, I am a huge chess idiot. I know almost nothing about it. I am, in the most general sense, aware of the pieces and the way they move. I know there are pieces called rooks and bishops and knights, although in a moment of panic I will call them “the castle” and “the pointy guy” and “the horsey.” There are many moments in the show where Beth will move a piece like one square to the left and people around her will gasp, and I assure you I have no idea what she did or why the people around her reacted that way. None of that stopped me from being absolutely enthralled by most of these scenes. (“Oh shit, she got his horsey,” I would say to myself, with a quiet wonder in my voice.) There are, I think, three main reasons this happens:
The scenes are shot very well, with the tension rising throughout and long closeups on Taylor-Joy as she stares lasers through the series of overconfident chess dopes seated across from her
Watching anyone do anything at the peak of their field can be endlessly fascinating, which I say as someone who developed very strong opinions about fencing while watching the Olympics on a rainy afternoon in 2012
People who play chess at the highest level are freaking intense
To illustrate this last point, let’s look at this very good piece in The Ringer by David Hill, which dives into the career of Walter Tevis, the writer who wrote the book of the same name that the show is based on:
All was not lost, however. In addition to publishing the feature on his experience, he soaked up the scene in Las Vegas and found inspiration for a new book. Much of what he witnessed there he would later use in The Queen’s Gambit. “There’s been more competitive excitement, more aggressiveness crackling around that dumb little high school gymnasium or third-rate hotel ballroom, in which chess tournaments are being played, than I have seen in any other kind of activity, and I spend a lot of time in poolrooms around pool players playing for big money,” Tevis told Book Beat in 1983. “I used to shoot nine ball for fairly large sums of money, and I’ve been around a lot of games, a lot of betting. I made my living gambling for quite a few years. Never seen the intensity and the vicious aggressiveness that chess players occasionally exhibit.”
Tevis knows a few things about gambling and competition, too. Prior to The Queen’s Gambit becoming a phenomenon on Netflix, he was probably best-known for writing two other books that eventually made their ways to screens around the world: The Hustler and The Color of Money. Both of those were about self-destructive loners hellbent on squandering their substantial natural gifts, too. Pool and chess are even similar in a lot of ways. They’re both games that require sharp focus and a strategic mind and are usually mastered by weirdos who don’t get along with the general population. The main difference is that pool is cooler and more romanticized by popular culture, whereas chess is treated as a hobby for brilliant but socially awkward dorks who smoke pipes and wear sweaters that have elbow patches.
All of which is to say… well, what, exactly? I think I can boil it down to a couple of things. The first is that you should try — like, make a good faith effort as often as you can, which feels like a reasonable ask — to not let the subject matter of a television show prevent you from giving it a try. There are gems out there everywhere, about everything, and, if they’re doing it right, the things the characters are doing are just the Trojan Horse to try to tell you a cool story about people. That’s really all you can ask for out of a few hours of television. Cool stories, done well, about interesting people. The Queen’s Gambit is very much that, and much more than it is A Show About Chess.
The other thing is that it is relentlessly satisfying to watch Anya Taylor-Joy cook those chess dopes over and over, especially the kid pictured in the center of this article, whose character on the show is named Benny Watts and who dresses like Indiana Jones for no discernible reason and who is apparently based — very loosely — on real-life chess prodigy Bobby Fischer. I don’t know why I hated him so much, for reasons I never fully grasped, even as his character changed for the better throughout the series. I suspect it’s the jacket. Whatever it was, Anya Taylor-Joy could have beaten that guy at anything and it would have been riveting television. Darts, competitive cup-stacking, pulling a 747 down a runway with their teeth like competitors in a strongman contest, whatever.
Facebook is under fire once again for decisions regarding content shared on the massive social media network, this time after Steve Bannon’s inflammatory comments that saw his profiles removed from other sites. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was forced to defend the company’s decision not to ban Bannon from the network, both the public and privately during a weekly forum with company employees.
According to Reuters, Zuckerberg says the company will not remove Bannon from the site completely, though it did delete a video he posted last week. The move, and Zuckerberg’s decision to defend it and by extension Bannon, comes after a November 5 video in which the former Breitbart editor and Trump White House employee said FBI director Christopher Wray and Dr. Anthony Fauci should be beheaded for being disloyal to Trump.
“I’d put the heads on pikes. Right. I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats. You either get with the program or you are gone,” Bannon said in the video.
Facebook removed the video but left up Bannon’s page, which has about 175,000 followers. Twitter banned Bannon last week over the same content.
“We have specific rules around how many times you need to violate certain policies before we will deactivate your account completely,” Zuckerberg said. “While the offenses here, I think, came close to crossing that line, they clearly did not cross the line.”
Zuckerberg apparently also addressed president-elect Joe Biden and comments he made on the election trail about both Facebook and Zuckerberg, who he called “a real problem.” Biden admitted that he’s no fan of Facebook, which has been used by both foreign countries like Russia and others to spread disinformation, fuel baseless conspiracy theories like QAnon and attack liberal politicians.
While Twitter has flagged election misinformation and several tweets from Donald Trump in the lead-up and aftermath of the election, many have been critical of Facebook’s more lax policy on all of the above. It doesn’t seem like Zuckerberg’s comments indicate anything will change with Facebook, which means that criticism both inside and out of the company will continue as well.
Deftones recently released their ninth album Ohms back in September. The release was the band’s first full-length effort in over four years. Less than two months after the album, the band is still pushing and promoting the project while working on their next release, a 20th-anniversary re-release of their third album White Pony. Unfortunately, the task does not come without a bit of controversy which comes as a result of comments made by guitarist Stephen Carpenter.
The guitarist recently joined the conspiracy theory podcast, Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli, as a guest. During his appearance, Carpenter suggested that there has yet to be an effective vaccine and that the Earth is flat while casting doubt on the coronavirus pandemic and the effectiveness of wearing masks to prevent its spread.
Regarding his thoughts on vaccines, Carpenter said, “[There’s] never been one single vaccine that’s ever worked ever. All poisons, you can never get it out of your body, [your] body has no means to expel it.” He added, “It’s stuck in you forever and you just suffer with whatever it becomes.”
As for his Earth theory, the guitarist said, “If you think you live on a spinning, flying space ball, you’re in a cult.” He continued, “The simplest terms for my perspective with flat Earth is simply, I know we’re not on a spinning, flying space ball. Now, what it actually is and all that and, and, and to what depths it goes to, that’s all still to be discovered and people are working on those things.”
Last but not least, Carpenter’s comments on masks and the coronavirus pandemic was the lengthiest of them all as he labeled it as “bullsh*t” and that most people know the masks are “worthless.” He also said the mass participation in mask-wearing is similar to a “clown show” and asked people to stop “embarrassing” themselves.
All propaganda all the time. No matter how many times you want to present to people that it says right on the box that it says that this protects you against nothing, you know it won’t matter. I mean they could read it themselves and who wants to admit they’ve been played? I mean who wants to own that they were the sucker. That’s hard I guess for most people, because that’s what we’re going through.
Most people know that it’s bullshit. The germaphobes we’re not… we can’t do anything but try to help them out because they genuinely believe that there’s a deadly virus going around and they would have believed it already. They already thought life was deadly and dangerous. So this is no help to them. But everyone else part-time wears the mask, they already know it’s worthless. You know they all got their little favorite little logo matching their outfits. It’s like clown show. Please stop, you’re embarrassing yourself.
And that’s no disrespect to those who’ve fallen ill and even those who died from whatever they may have died from. Obviously none of that is disregarded, but I do not connect that to what this is, you know? What this is some, this is just some mental trickery.
And it’s unfortunate that everybody just gave in. It was a two week event when it started, and then it just now it’s forever… Thank you to all your mask wearers for making this permanent, good job.
If your heart desires to listen to the Tin Foil Hat With Sam Tripoli episode, you can find all one hour and 49 minutes of it here. Ohms is out now via Warner Records. Get it here.
Deftones is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
It is kind of difficult to “push” a week when you’re picking five football games against the number. In Week 9, though, that is exactly what happened in this space, with a 2-2-1 performance that (easily) could have been both better or worse. 2-2-1 is anything but disastrous, though there is a bit of additional motivation to get back in the win column as the final eight weeks arrive.
Before we dive into a five-pack of hopeful winners, let’s take a step back and glance at the progress through nine weeks.
Week 9: 2-2-1
2020 Season: 24-19-2
Come get these winners.
Los Angeles Chargers (+1.5) over Miami Dolphins
Two weeks in a row, the Dolphins have won while being pretty much dominated in the box score. There is something to be said for picking up victories by any means necessary, but Miami is a bit overvalued in the market as a result. In contrast, the Chargers are snake-bitten and seemingly unable to close out a victory. Give me the team that nobody wants right now.
Denver Broncos (+4.5) over Las Vegas Raiders
The Broncos are getting healthier on defense, and I think this line should probably be three. That might not be terribly sexy from a handicapping standpoint, but 4.5 is too many.
Arizona Cardinals (-2.5) over Buffalo Bills
We had Arizona last week and it didn’t go according to plan. However, the Cardinals pretty much did what we expected in the box score (as noted above in the Miami section), and it was the little things that burned Arizona. Honestly, it isn’t easy to back Kliff Kingsbury’s bunch after some of the game management messes in recent weeks, and I’ll own that. With that said, the entire universe is on the underdog in this spot, and that is usually a good sign for our principles. Lay the small number with Arizona.
San Francisco 49ers (+10) over New Orleans Saints
This number steamed all the way from as low as 6.5 to 10, and honestly, I get why. Still, the shift is now an overcorrection and getting double-digits with San Francisco is the only way to go. The Niners aren’t close to full strength, but they are well-coached and the market is going a little bit crazy after what the Saints did the Bucs last week.
Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears UNDER 43.5 points
The Bears are breathtakingly bad on offense and very potent on defense. There is some concern that a) Minnesota is shaky on defense and, b) Dalvin Cook is going insane right now. However, the Bears aren’t going to let Cook do that against a competent defensive front, and the bet here is that Chicago takes the air out of the ball and keeps this one ugly. Unders in games involving the Bears are 6-3 this season, and we’re rooting for punts and field goals on Monday evening.
Many Americans had been hoping for an overwhelming Biden landslide win in this election. Not just the clear majority victory that it turned out to be, but a full-on tsunami that would thoroughly wash away the stain of Trumpism from America forever.
That didn’t happen. And we really shouldn’t be surprised by that.
As in 2016, there’s a push in the social discourse to try to understand why 71 million Americans thought Donald Trump was a better choice than Joe BIden. (Cue the thousandth media interview with a rural, small-town American.) But Trumpism isn’t that hard to understand. It’s multi-faceted and multi-layered, but it’s not complicated. In fact, simplicity is one of its key features, which I’ll explain in a minute.
I am going to speak frankly and somewhat forcefully about my fellow Americans here, but first I want to be clear about my perspective. I am a political independent who would best be described as “leaning left,” though I hate those kinds of labels. I have always voted for both Democrats and Republicans, including on my own state’s ballot in this election. The only real passion I have for politics is my disgust with our two-party system, so don’t take my words here as toeing some partisan or ideological line.
I also believe there is a distinct disconnect between why Trump supporters think they support him and why they actually do. I’ve spent four years listening to their reasoning. I’ve tried to make it make sense. And though entire books can and will be written about this, I’ve landed on what I see driving Trumpism the most.
Though partisanship certainly plays a role in his number of supporters, the support for Donald Trump isn’t about political parties. Yes, there are people who will vote Republican even if they have to hold their nose or sell their soul to do so (same with some Democrats, I would assume). For some people, elections are all about one issue—usually abortion or taxes—so they vote Republican, but Trump hardly represents the traditional party identity.
Despite appearances, Trumpism isn’t about Republicans vs. Democrats. Political parties are merely weapons Trump wields in his battle for personal glory. After all, this is a man who changed his political party four times in less than three decades. He’s not now and has never been about party.
No, Trump is about Trump. It’s what he’s always been about and will always be about. He is a textbook malignant narcissist, always and forever obsessed with what will serve his personal need for power, glory, and adulation.
The question then is, how did Trump get 70+ million voters to believe he’s all about America or all about them? He did it the same way every demagogue with authoritarian tendencies throughout history has done it—by keeping the message painfully simple, appealing to people’s basest human instincts, lying egregiously and relentlessly, and undermining people’s faith in the real-world journalism and fact-checking that keep them from being sucked into his unreality.
Let’s start with the messaging. Trump’s gist is this: “The government is broken. I’m an outsider, but clearly a powerful one because I have money and fame. I alone can fix what’s wrong. The problems are simple and are caused by [insert ‘other’ group—undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Democrats, long-time public servants, etc.] and the solutions are simple too [build the wall, ban them from the country, vote for me—I’ll drain the swamp]. Yay, America!”
No matter how ridiculous that all sounds to many of us, there’s a significant portion of the country who relish in such simplicity. We don’t want to have to think about complicated problems or work through unclear solutions. Making things black and white, removing all the gray area and nuance and complexity from the issues, feels refreshing to a lot of people. It doesn’t matter if it’s based on falsehoods instead of facts. Keeping problems simple and making it seem like solutions are cut and dry makes people feel safe.
The problem is, in order to reach that simple, safe world, you have to appeal to people’s prejudices and fears. People of every persuasion are easy prey for fear-mongering. Prejudices are common, fear is an easy instinct to manipulate, and Trump is shameless about combining the two. Scary caravans of immigrants. Scary Muslims coming in from scary Muslim countries. Scary gang members moving in next door. Scary poor people coming to live in your suburban neighborhood. Scary rioters. Scary ANTIFA.
I know there’s some debate about exactly how racist Trump is, but we don’t even have to quantify that. It’s very clear that he utilizes and allows for racism when it suits his needs. Same with xenophobia. Same with partisan tribalism. Again, Trump is all about Trump. And pushing people’s prejudice buttons, indicating when they should feel fear or enmity and then convincing them he’ll keep them safe with this simple solutions is a strategy that works.
One of the weirdest things for those of us outside of Trumpland, of course, is that it doesn’t matter whether anything he says is true at all. His followers don’t seem to care that he lies constantly and egregiously. I’ve heard some try to brush it off as “Oh, all politicians lie,” but no, all politicians don’t lie like Trump. Trump doesn’t just stretch the truth or mislead by creative wording or omission like most politicians. Trump does the Big Lie thing, where if you say untrue things enough times and with enough conviction, people will believe you, even when what you say is verifiably false.
This part of Trumpism gets tricky, because in order for it to work, you have to also successfully discredit the people who hold politicians accountable and fact check them. Hence the outright dismissal of mainstream media. Hence the constant “Fake News!” drumbeat. Hence today’s Twitter rampage against Fox News for actually reporting facts instead of constantly praising him. Hence the proliferation of right-wing news outlets that keep going further and further into conspiracy theory land.
Misinformation is Trump’s engine and praise and flattery are Trump’s fuel. The more he gets, the more he pushes the simple messaging and fear-mongering that give people the brain chemical releases they crave. (If you think people don’t like having their fears triggered, there’s an entire horror movie industry that disagrees with you.) And the more he gives people what they want, the more they give him what he wants—big crowds and rabid fandom and heaps and heaps of adulation. And so the cycle goes on, with Trump seeing himself in the thousands of faces in the crowd, which serve as narcissistic mirrors in which he sees his power and glory.
Which he then turns around and claims is all for them. And they believe him because at this point, his reality is their reality and real reality doesn’t exist anymore.
Of course, not everyone has full-on fallen into the Trump cult. We can’t discount the role that good old-fashioned self-interest plays in some people’s decision. There are a whole lot of people who simply don’t want to pay taxes, don’t care who Trump’s policies hurt, and think destroying the dignity of the office of the presidency is a small price to pay for filling their own pocketbook. There are also those who will put up with anything if they think it’ll “own the libs.”
So yeah. Trump’s support is not hard to understand. Between playing on people’s loyalties, prejudices and fears, and manipulating people with misinformation, Trump’s demagoguery works the way it has always worked in other cultured countries throughout history. Americans are not immune to the psychological pull of a “Dear Leader” type—we’re just incredibly lucky that this particular demagogue also happens to be an incompetent fool.
I know that Trump supporters will fall all over themselves trying to claim that I’ve gotten them all wrong here, but here’s what they’ll miss. If they genuinely believe that a known conman who has embarrassed the country on the world stage and whose pandemic oversight has caused countless American deaths is a truly a better choice than a man with more than four decades in government and who is personally well-liked on both sides of the aisle, then whatever they believe about either Biden or the Democrats is almost assuredly based on misinformation pushed in Trump’s unreality.
At this point, you can’t support Trump and be living in the same objective reality as the rest of humanity. You really can’t. And if you are living in objective reality and chose him anyway? Sorry, but you need to search your soul to figure out what made you such an ass.
There’s nothing more to be understood at this point.
Photos of the 65-foot Norway spruce set up in Cincinnati’s Fountain Square on Saturday morning are going viral because it perfectly represents how 2020 is going for a lot of Americans.
The misshapen tree’s large patches and missing limbs made it look like a gigantic version of the pathetic tree from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
The tree was seen by many as a metaphor for a long year that’s left us all frazzled, frayed, and more than a little off-balance.
Cincinnati’s Christmas Tree getting lots of laughs.
Carissa Piper took this picture: “I think Cincinnati got the tr… https://t.co/HhCqrc9oHx
However, after news of the tree spread ’round the globe, Fountain Square officials stepped in to share some much-needed good news.
“2020 has been a rough year for all of us, including our tree. Our team is hard at work making this 65′ Norway Spruce beautiful for the holiday season,” they wrote on Facebook. “Stay tuned for transformation photos as we get her fluffed up and beautified after her long drive into town.”
Evidently, the tree’s decrepit appearance was due to the fact the team that usually puts it into shape was smaller than usual due to the pandemic. The team of eight to ten people has been reduced to two this year.
“Basically, at some point in the process every year, the tree looks a lot like this,” said Emily Stowe, 3CDC senior event marketing manager.
“The tree makes an overnight trip from northern Ohio down to the Square. The tree is tied up from top to bottom for transport, with each branch wrapped up for safety as well as to keep the tree from being damaged. After the tree arrives it’s lifted with a crane and put in place,” she said, according to FOX19.
“The branches will be shifted and moved into place to give us the end look everyone is used to,” Stowe said.
After a few days, the team slowly untied all of the branches and it blossomed into a beautiful, full, and very green Christmas tree.
How it started: How it’s going:
Cincinnati’s Christmas Tree Biggest Glow-Up Of 2020 https://t.co/yUPfHffafS
If the tree was a metaphor for how 2020 was going for most people, its glorious transformation gives us all a glimmer of hope for 2021. After all, there’s a COVID-19 vaccine on the way and the country’s new leadership looks determined to help put America back on the right track.
Christmas is going to be a little different for everyone this year. But none of that matters as long as we remember the true meaning of the holiday.
While commemorating the 30th anniversary of Home Alone (feel old yet?), director Chris Columbus shared some behind-the-scenes secrets from the film, including how now-President Donald Trump basically forced his way into the sequel. With Home Alone 2: Lost in New York taking place in the Big Apple, the director really wanted to shoot inside The Plaza, but that required dealing with its current owner at the time.
While the studio and Columbus assumed this would simply involve paying a “fee” to Trump, he took the money and then demanded to be in the film, or the deal was off. “So we agreed to put him in the movie,” Columbus said. However, the director still had the option to edit out Trump’s cameo, but he decided against it after a surprising test audience reaction. Via Insider:
“People cheered when Trump showed up on-screen,” Columbus said. “So I said to my editor, ‘Leave him in the movie. It’s a moment for the audience.’ But he did bully his way into the movie.”
We know Trump still thinks very highly of his cameo, thanks to one of his classic tantrums during Christmas 2019. Apparently, the president caught wind that his part was cut from a Canadian TV broadcast of Home Alone 2, and instead of realizing that scenes are routinely edited out for broadcast, Trump blamed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — for editing him out of Home Alone 2. You’re reading all of this correctly.
I guess Justin T doesn’t much like my making him pay up on NATO or Trade! https://t.co/sndS7YvIGR
As it turns out, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation cut Trump’s cameo all the way back in 2014, and for the completely mundane reason of making room for commercials. As of this writing, Trudeau has not been named as a suspect.
I love single malt scotch. Three years ago, I leaned toward Ireland with my whiskey preferences, but I’ve been drinking more Scottish whisky during COVID, and I have to say: the stuff is growing on me. So much so, that I decided to do a blind tasting of some of the best scotch whiskies you can buy this year — Diageo’s Rare by Nature 2020 special collection release.
What’s the Rare by Nature collection? Eight iconic single malts from some of the most famous distilleries on earth. Aged from eight to 30 years. With clever barrelling techniques and a whole lot of history. Also, a few hefty price tags.
A little background here: I’ve been professionally tasting whiskey (beer, wine, gin, and every-f*cking-thing else) for nearly a decade now. I say that not to brag, but to emphatically note that I still don’t know most of what’s out there. There’s just so much booze to try. That being said, I do know what I know. And I can call out drams, even in a blind tasting.
This was made abundantly clear on this project. There were three Scottish single malts I know well — one of which I ride or die for — featured in this lineup. On the flip side, I wasn’t overly familiar with the other five whiskies in play. And tasting them blind really opened my mind to diving deeper into each label. In the end, I discovered eight whisky expressions that are all extremely good in very different ways, priced from “maybe I’ll get a bottle for someone I love for Christmas” to “maybe I’ll buy that if I win the lottery one day.”
There was a nice pear nose on this one that’s sweet and welcoming. The taste really amped that up with an apple candy sweetness that almost reminded me of a Jolly Rancher. There was a nice counterpoint of worn leather and a note of savoriness as the finish lingered and warmed.
The Bottom Line:
This was really nice, but a little sweet for me. I have no clue what it is but I could see cutting it into a highball to calm down the apple candy sweetness.
Number Two
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
There’s a clear ashy peatiness on the nose and it’s already evident that this is a Lagavulin. There’s a nice body of orange zest, spice, and buttery vanilla that leads back to the smoke and peat on the long and winding end.
The Bottom Line:
This is one of the best peaty whiskies out there, in that it doesn’t overdo it on the smoke while also keeping it front-and-center. I’d kill highballs made with this stuff all night long.
Number Three
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
There’s a really buttery cream soda aspect to this that delivers on the palate. The fruit peeks in but it’s really the vanilla-forward cream soda that dominates. The end takes a bit of a turn towards a mossy and wet forest as it slowly fades away.
The Bottom Line:
This is really easy to drink. A little water really amped up the earthy nature of the dram, while holding onto the lighter edge of the cream soda notes.
Number Four
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
There’s a rush of tropical fruits that lean towards banana, but not just banana sweetness. There’s a banana leaf grassiness to the sip, too — which mingles with Christmas spices and plenty of oak.
The Bottom Line:
I’ve never quite had anything like this and it literally made me say, “Woah.” in a good way. The fruit, spice, and oak are so delicate and light that you really don’t need anything with this dram.
Number Five
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
The sweetness in play is butterscotch, which leads towards a baked, spiced apple. The spice leans more towards a rich tobacco smoke for me with a long, spicy, fruity, and buttery finish.
The Bottom Line:
I wrote down that this is “really f*cking good.” And, wow, it is. I’m still thinking about it.
Number Six
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
This one delivers fresh florals next to bright, sweet fruit with a nice dose of oakiness. The sip edges into a black pepper spiciness that’s balanced with an overall creamy texture. The end is subtle and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
The Bottom Line:
I have no clue what this is, but I like it. That being said, it’s the dram I have the hardest time remembering after the fact.
Number Seven
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
Brine, mild smoke, and sweet pears mingle up top and this is 100 percent a Talisker. There’s a salty/sweet/smoky/fattiness to this dram that is exactly like a still-warm brisket smoker that’s smoked thousands of briskets.
Amazingly, the actual body of the whisky is light, approachable, and doesn’t overdo any of those notes.
The Bottom Line:
This doesn’t need anything besides a glass and your lips. For me, this is a spectacular dram.
Number Eight
Zach Johnston
The Taste:
There’s a nice fruit cake note up top with plenty of spice and dark candied fruits in play. The sip has this interplay with dark chocolate and chili spice that helps amp up the Christmas cake fruitiness and sweetness.
The Bottom Line:
This is super easy to drink … or maybe I’m just getting tipsy?
This Speyside whisky was distilled in 1999. That means it spent 20 long years maturing in refill and freshly charred new casks before going in the bottle at cask strength.
This particular age of Cragganmore has never been released before.
Lagavulin is one of the most iconic single malts from Islay. This expression was solely matured in refill American oak barrels. The final product is meant to imbue the beauty of Islay in each sip.
This whisky from one Dufftown was distilled back in 2002. The juice spent 17 years aging in refill American oak hogsheads, which is about a quarter the size of a full barrel. The results were bottled at cask strength.
Number Four: Pittyvaich Aged 30 Years
Diageo
ABV: 50.8% Average Price:$500 (very limited and available later this year)
The Whisky:
Pittyvaich is a Speyside “ghost distillery.” It’s been closed for 18 years. That means this is a very limited release, with only 7,000 bottles and that’s it … forever.
The juice is the very last of the stock from 1989, finished in first-fill ex-bourbon before bottling.
This Speyside whiskey is all about embracing the flower-covered hills around the distillery. The juice is aged in refill, new, and ex-bourbon American oak for eleven years before going into the bottle at cask strength.
Dalwhinnie has the honor of being the highest altitude distillery in Scotland. This expression is an ultra-rare one-off whisky that was put to rest in 1989 in ex-bourbon hogsheads and left alone for all those decades. 30 years later, there was only enough whisky for 6,978 bottles.
This was the first-ever Talisker to be finished in pot-still Caribbean rum casks. The idea was to enliven the briny seaside aspects of the young juice while adding a deeper sweetness. This whisky really brings something new to the table amongst the salty-smoky whiskies that Talisker is known for.
Mortlach was the first “legal” distillery in Dufftown, giving this a classic heritage. But the shingle is also largely unknown, or at least unheralded outside of hardcore scotch aficionados. The whisky is small-batch aged and then finished in Pedro Ximenez and Oloroso sherry seasoned casks, adding some serious depth to the sip.
Part III: Final Thoughts
If I had to rank these from most preferred to least, It’d be something like this…
1. Talisker 8 (hands down — what can I say, I’m a sucker for smoky Texas brisket in a glass)
2. Cardhu 11
3. Pittyvaich 30 (biggest surprise)
4. Mortlach 21
5. Lagavulin 12
6.The Singleton 17
7. Dalwhinnie 30
8. Cragganmore 20 (too much apple candy for me)
All of that being said, I also ranked Talisker higher because it sneaks into the affordable range for a special occasion. Some of the others I really dug — Pittyvaich and Mortlach — are squarely outside of that range.
You’d think after so many rappers have put their feet in their mouths on Instagram, they’d learn to self-edit, if not hire social media managers to handle their fan interactions. Doing so would certainly have helped Memphis rapper BlocBoy JB, who incurred a backlash from fans over his opinion on the upcoming next-generation video game consoles during a recent live stream on Instagram. When he was apparently asked about which console he preferred, he offered some controversial — and let’s face it, offensive — reasoning for choosing the new Xbox over the PlayStation 5.
Blocboy JB says PlayStation is for the LGBTQ community and Xbox is for gangsters. pic.twitter.com/2rutD9C9ZK
“If you really look into it, PlayStation, they got pride colors so PlayStation supposed to be for the gays and Xbox supposed to be for the street n****s,” he rationalized. “Not saying that the gays can’t play the Xbox but I’m just saying, Xbox for the gangster n****s. That’s my calculations.”
While it’s likely he was trying to make a joke, fans quickly reversed his “calculations” on him, turning him into the butt of the joke — which we’re sure he enjoyed. They pointed out how illogical his conclusion was by noting that many of the games on both systems fall under stereotypically masculine pursuits like combat, sports, and various combinations of the two. As one fan put it, “@BlocBoy_JB thinks I’m gay because I play violent manly video games on my manly Playstation when I’m gay for many other reasons outside of that.” Check out some of the responses below.
@BlocBoy_JB thinks I’m gay because I play violent manly video games on my manly Playstation when I’m gay for many other reasons outside of that https://t.co/cYG7mlfCwf
the homophobia that just left your mouth just shows once again how obsessed you heterosexual men are with the #LGBTQ+ community. https://t.co/GlC66xAZsy
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