In our continuing quest to find you underhyped, excellent-value, very affordable bottles of whiskey, we looked to the experts for a little guidance. We asked 10 well-known bartenders to tell us their favorite underrated whiskeys in the $20 range. Some of their answers are classics but they definitely surfaced a few fun expressions that had fallen off our radar.
Best of all, they were honest — freely admitting that these picks are great for the price, but still unable to hang with top-shelf expressions.
Hell-Cat Maggie
Seth Falvo, bartender at The Hotel Zamora in St. Pete Beach, Florida
Everything about Hell-Cat Maggie – which sells for a very reasonable $18 per bottle — makes it a criminally underrated Irish whiskey.
For starters, it’s named after a legendary Five Points gangster who filed her teeth into fangs and wore brass claws into battle. If that, combined with the retro tattoo flash label on the bottle, doesn’t scream “awesome cheap whiskey,” I really don’t know what does.
Hellcat Maggie is deceptively smooth, pleasantly nutty and spicy, and mixes exceptionally well in cocktails. Much like its namesake, this whiskey packs a stronger punch than its weight class might suggest.
Old Crow has always been my standby for a budget bottle. It packs a punch on its own but can also work out in a last-minute old fashioned or another cocktail. Though, to be fair, these cocktails may be best for a camping trip rather than a dinner party.
Blake Jakes, director of beverage for The Kennedy Bar in Pensacola, Florida
Mellow Corn or Heaven Hill White Label. They are both fantastic — whiskeys where people would have no idea that they cost less than $15-20.
Mellow Corn is bonded, so it’s 100 proof. But man, is it still smooth. Heaven Hill clocks in at 80 proof, I believe. I’ve taken this to whiskey tastings and it’s been blind-picked as the favorite more than once.
Andy Printy, beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis
Coming in at around $15 a bottle, J.W. Dant BIB is my pick in the “bang for your buck” BIB bourbons. One of the few rye’d bourbons finished with a touch more malted barley than rye grain. The nose is punchy — honey and corn and oak dominate. Up front, it’s a lot of caramel and cornbread, a touch of spice and sour tannin wave goodbye as it finishes.
A solid, low tier expression from a family with rich bourbon history — it’s rumored Dant’s first still was made from a hollowed tree stump. Enjoy it neat or in your hot toddy.
Josh Curtis, bar director at Carbon Beach Club in Malibu, California
Jim Beam White Label bourbon is underrated in its mixability. The corn is readily accessible among its flavors, which has a rustic quality that I like.
Patricia Verdesoto, head bartender Beaker & Gray in Miami
I’ve ended many a night with a shot of Heaven Hill Old Style Bourbon. Call it nostalgia or routine, but it is my go-to for “bottom shelf” whiskey. After working in this industry for a while, you get to taste a myriad of different spirits at all different price points and believe me, the difference is obvious. However, with Heaven Hill, you really get a bang for your buck. The price point is very reasonable and during these uncertain times when we all have to pinch pennies, its good to know that you can get a bottle of good, clean-tasting whiskey for under $20.
My go-to cheap, underappreciated whiskey is Wild Turkey 81. Compared to other bottom shelf whiskeys, this one tastes a lot smoother and very close to a top-shelf.
Cristina Suarez, beverage manager at Kush Coconut Grove in Coconut Grove, Florida
Oh man, Four Roses Yellow Label. It’s cheap, but pretty good. I found it pretty easy to use for mixed cocktails and not horrible as a low budget sipper.
I recently changed my favorite cheap bourbon because the prior favorite raised its price. Now it’s Ancient Age, from Buffalo Trace. Same #2 mashbill as Blanton’s and Elmer T. Lee, but younger and cheaper.
The 2020 NBA Draft is still more than three weeks away but, with reports circulating that the league and its Board of Governors are angling toward a late December start for the 2020-21 campaign, the basketball calendar is building to a potential frenzy. While there are clear reasons to speed up the process, ranging from financial considerations to the “reset” of the league’s usual schedule, there is also potential downside. One potentially negative repercussion would involve teams that made deep runs in the 2020 postseason being forced into a (very) quick turnaround, and the world champion Los Angeles Lakers would fit that bill as much as any single franchise.
To that end, Lakers wing Danny Green joined Raja Bell and Logan Murdock of The Ringer to discuss the potential for a pre-Christmas return. Within the interview, he was fairly candid about the potential for veteran players, headlined by LeBron James, to miss the start of the new season, even if healthy.
Lakers guard Danny Green on the proposed Dec. 22 start to next season:
“If we start in December, I think most guys [are like] ‘I’m not going to be there… to have that quick of a restart, I wouldn’t expect [LeBron] to be there for the 1st month of the season.” pic.twitter.com/NYqNxzNEmZ
Though Green wasn’t necessarily speaking in absolutes, it absolutely makes sense that older players might not be thrilled about this kind of timeline. For a bit of perspective, the Lakers were grinding at the highest levels well into October and, with a proposed start date of Dec. 22, training camp would presumably have to open in early December. That means less than a two-month offseason and, given the rigors of the bubble environment, a shortened break might seem even more laborious.
The Lakers, as Green notes, are one of the older teams in the league, and that certainly matters in this discussion. Beyond that, teams like the Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks have been on the sidelines since March, and they might not object to the new calendar with such vigor. Still, the potential for a draft on Nov. 18, a speedy free agent period and training camp before a Dec. 22 start could be seen as overzealous for players, and the potential for veterans on playoff squads, including stars like LeBron James, to sit out the beginning of the campaign is certainly worth noting and something the league will have to take into consideration.
Ah, the awkward joy of school picture day. Most of us had to endure the unnatural positioning, the bright light shining in our face, and the oddly ethereal backgrounds that mark the annual ritual. Some of us even have painfully humorous memories to go along with our photos.
While entertaining school picture day stories are common, one mom’s tale of her daughter’s not-picture-perfect school photo is winning people’s hearts for a funny—but also inspiring—reason.
Jenny Albers of A Beautifully Burdened Life shared a photo of her daughter on her Facebook page, which shows her looking just off camera with a very serious look on her face. No smile. Not even a twinkle in her eye. Her teacher was apologetic and reassured Albers that she could retake the photo, but Albers took one look and said no way.
Albers wrote:
“Her teacher held the oversized envelope tightly against her chest. She grimaced and said “I’m sorry” upon handing me the packet containing my daughter’s first-ever school pictures.
“Retakes are next month,” she continued. Her tone was a warning that disappointment awaited.
“They’re that bad, huh?” I responded, before lifting the flap to peek inside the envelope.
The teacher gave me a half-nod and said, “we tried.”
I assumed my daughter’s eyes were closed or her hair had streaks of finger paint in it. Heck, maybe there was even a booger dangling from her nose. I mean, you can’t really expect toddlers to stay clean and tidy for more than a fraction of a second.
“Geez, her teacher seems really concerned,” I thought, and wondered how a school picture could possibly be THAT awful.
I reluctantly slid one of the photos halfway out of the envelope and whatever concern there had been immediately dissolved.
I laughed. Hard. My heart was overflowing with all the best things at the sight of this image.
“Oh, we won’t be needing retakes,” I said.
Because this is my daughter. The real her. Eyes open and unamused by whatever nonsense was taking place in front of her.
I imagine she was facing a photographer who was trying to coax her into a feigned smile by waving around a floppy stuffed dog, or making bad jokes, or acting like a total goofball in an attempt to gain her favor.
But really, it was probably the baby talk that caused this expression on her face. Because this child has always met baby talk with utter disdain.
Whatever it was, she will not be made a fool of. Such behavior is beneath her.
She saves her smiles for things that speak to her soul. And there are A LOT of them. Just not school picture day thinly veiled under the façade of fun.
She doesn’t do phony.
And that’s okay with me.
I just pray she stays that way.”
Now that is a fabulous school picture story.
Some kids are just born with an “I don’t do b.s.” vibe, and when you meet them, it’s both refreshing and unnerving. We expect children to be simple and easy to manipulate and eager to please, but they are as diverse as the rest of us, and they are who they are. Hearing about Albers’ daughter saving her smiles “for things that speak to her soul” and “school picture day thinly veiled under the facade of fun” not being one of them, and then seeing this photo go along with that description, it’s so clear that this kiddo is beyond her years in at least one way. Her face shows what most of us would be thinking if someone tried to talk baby talk to make us smile. But to see that face on a little kid is so funny.
Keep on being you, little miss. And well done, Mama, for celebrating your daughter being comfortable in her own personality and not changing herself to please the random guy with a toy dog and a camera.
Last week, Gorillaz released their project Song Machine: Season One — Strange Timez, which boasted collaborations with artists from Slowthai to Elton John. They’re already working on the next installation in the series, but that’s not all they have on the horizon. Vocalist Damon Albarn revealed that the group has already begun working on a scripted and animated feature-length Gorillaz film.
Speaking to Bryce Segall on Radio.com’s New Arrivals show, Albarn offered a few details about the upcoming project:
“Well, we are supposed to be making a film while we’re doing season two [of ‘Song Machine’]. We signed contracts, we’ve begun scripts and stuff. Making an animated film that’s kind of abstract is quite a big risk for a movie studio because they’re very expensive. If you’re telling a slightly obtuse, weird story that only sometimes makes any sense, it’s quite difficult. That’s what we’ve discovered. But we will do it, we are doing it. I see a lot of people doing animated videos these days but I don’t think they really touch the quality of ours. We’re more in the world of Studio Ghibli.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Albarn reflected on how Gorillaz came to be. The singer said he and designer/animator Jamie Hewlett were watching MTV one night and were disappointed with the programming they saw. So the two penned a manifesto that laid the groundwork for what Gorillaz would eventually become. “It was a late night manifesto, and neither of us could really remember what was on it,” Albarn said. “We can’t find the document. We speculate from time to time.”
New Arrivals with Bryce Segall airs Sundays at 10 p.m. EDT. Listen to it here.
Song Machine: Season One — Strange Timez is out now via Parlophone. Get it here.
Gorillaz are a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Like basically everyone in the world these days, even the ultra-wealthy are (mostly) stuck at home. Apparently that’s helped escalate a very interesting battle between wealthy neighbors in Laguna Beach. The tiff started over a million-dollar sculpture, but now it’s mushroomed into a psychological battle that includes the Gilligan’s Island theme.
The Los Angeles Times has the story — and important photos for context — of “bond king” Bill Gross, his former pro tennis player wife Amy Schwartz, and their tussle with tech entrepreneur Mark Towfiq and his wife over a 22-foot-long blue glass sculpture by notable material artist Dale Chihuly.
Apparently the two couples have long been in a not-so-quiet war over property, and something damaged the statue to the point where the bond king installed a very tall net that blocked Towfiq’s view.
Gross and Schwartz in a lawsuit say more than $50,000 damage, “apparently” caused by a thrown rock, is evidence of an “escalating campaign of vandalism”; Towfiq and his wife say it was probably damaged by something falling on it.
Redacted emails released to The Times by the city of Laguna Beach indicated someone associated with Gross and Schwartz told a code enforcement officer the netting was temporary and needed to protect the sculpture from “trees and mother nature,” and that a palm frond caused $100,000 in damage.
There are a lot of fascinating details to the story, such as Schwartz and Gross’s deep love of the statue and some background on both parties’ business history and wealth. According to The Los Angeles Times, the fight over the statue has turned ugly, to the tune of using the Gilligan’s Island theme song as a noise weapon.
The neighbor’s lawsuit accuses the billionaire and his partner of playing blaring music at all hours, including the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song, rap and pop, in an effort to force him to drop the complaint. The couple say they have had to take refuge twice with either relatives or in a hotel room. In an application for a temporary restraining order filed Oct. 15, which was granted, Towfiq cites a text message allegedly sent to him by Gross after he asked the music to be turned down: “Peace on all fronts or well [sic] just have nightly concerts big boy.”
First of all, it needs to be said that this is an incredible use of the phrase “big boy,” even if there are some grammatical errors in the text. As the Times pointed out, both sides have issued lawsuits involving various other complaints against each other, and so, as often is the case in battles between two very wealthy parties, there are no real good guys here. But the Gilligan’s Island theme usage is a very funny, and certainly inspired, quirk in a battle that started over a piece of artwork.
Sacha Baron Cohen’s most notorious character is back with Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which is still funny, even if racism in America isn’t nearly as shocking in 2020. The film’s full title, of course, is the characteristically overwrought Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which the “victims” become the performers, and Borat’s “daughter” is along for the satirical ride. The film probably entertained millions of home viewers over the weekend, and of course, Rudy Giuliani isn’t a fan, but guess who’s come around? The Kazakhstan tourism board.
Through a series of four videos, it would appear that the country’s new tourism ad slogan is “Kazakhstan. Very nice!” It’s certainly an unanticipated turn of events, given that the Borat character has always received a mixed reception, since not everyone’s thrilled with the joke. Of course, it’s also understandable that not everyone in the country would be pleased that an anti-Semitic and frequently gaudy character from Kazakhstan could be construed as a representative, no matter how satirical. Times have changed.
According to the New York Times, Kairat Sadvakassov, the Kazakhstan tourism board deputy chairman, feels that Borat 2 could actually help his country during our pandemic times. “In Covid times, when tourism spending is on hold, it was good to see the country mentioned in the media,” he said. “Not in the nicest way, but it’s good to be out there. We would love to work with Cohen, or maybe even have him film here.”
Sadvakassov admitted that he did, however, feel slightly wary when the first Borat 2 trailer surfaced: “It was like, ‘Oh, again?’” At first, the tourism board was good with simply ignoring Borat’s return and “to let it die its natural death and not respond.” Such a shrug of the shoulders already would have been quite the turn of events after the authoritarian Kazakh government banned the first movie, but an intervention happened. A former U.S. exchange student, Dennis Keen, who now lives in Kazakhstan and hosts a state-television channel travel show, dug in and pitched the travel videos to the tourism board and received a yes. Then Keen and his friend, Yermek Utemissov, produced the videos on a pro bono basis, but they do look very professional. Well, as professional as one can look while cracking urine jokes.
Congrats to Sacha Baron Cohen for at least having fewer enemies as a result of this sequel. There are already enough angry parties for him to dodge.
But among all of history’s cannabis lovers, two names rise above the rest. Tommy Chong and Cheech Marin.
For many present-day tokers, “Cheech & Chong” served as an introduction to the world of cannabis. Whether you grew up on movies like Up in Smoke or Born in East LA or were introduced to the pair via some other means, maybe Fern Gully or That ’70’s Show, weed and Cheech & Chong just go together. It’s like peanut butter and jelly.
Which makes it even more surprising that the comedy collaborators currently have zero shared presence in the booming legal cannabis industry. Because as solid as both Cheech’s Private Stash and Tommy Chong’s Cannabis are, what the people want is a Cheech & Chong co-branded line. Five Point Holdings (run by Tommy’s son, Paris) definitely seems to think so. The brand recently signed Marin and Chong to a multi-year agreement with shops opening in California, Nevada, Arizona, Illinois, and Washington. These legal dispensaries — which will feature Cheech & Chong movies on loop, film and TV memorabilia, and city-specific decor –are set to open in 2021, beginning with San Francisco and followed shortly by Los Angeles.
To dive deeper into this new project, we chopped it up with Tommy Chong over the phone about the corporatization of cannabis, why it’s taken so long for a Cheech & Chong joint project to hit the weed space, and just how much weed the legend actually smokes. He also shares a pretty damn funny Joni Mitchell anecdote.
…
How involved are you and Cheech in the curation of the products?
We’re the number one testers. We test all the products, and then we reach out to my wife for sure, and Cheech’s wife to some extent… and all our kids. They’re all connoisseurs. They grew up with the best weed in the world, all of their lives. We have a very close-knit family testing system set up. We’re involved in every stage of this thing, it’s not just lending our names, sitting back, and collecting our money.
@heytommychong/Instagram
Why has it taken this long to do an official Cheech & Chong branded weed? It seems like as soon as dispensaries opened it would’ve been a natural fit.
It was. But the trouble was it was too soon. We had to wait, you don’t want to grab the first one off the assembly line. Let everything play out, that’s what we did. All the greedy entrepreneurs who were just in it for the money, they got burned. They had no eye on consumers, or the product, no respect for the actual plant itself.
We’re like growers, you don’t pick the plant before it’s totally ripe. So we let the industry ripen, the ones that were early fell by the wayside. We had the advantage of seeing what mistakes they made and how we can come in and correct the mistakes. One of the biggest problems was the way the government was trying to overtax and over-regulate everything. Now we’re coming into a point where it’s no longer number one on the radar as far as people trying to make a buck.
Anything good, you have to work at it to make it work for you.
Take us into these new dispensaries, what can we expect?
Each one is going to be [different] according to where it’s at. We’re going to start with San Francisco and LA. What we’re doing is we’re going into Cheech and Chong territory. We could live off our fans in the Southwest, but we have fans all over the world. Our big core audience has always been in California though. Cheech is Chicano, and I’m… Canadian. I can be from anywhere. We go very deep into a family thing in California, so our stores are going to start here. We want to make that distinction. It’s about respecting the product and the people that use it.
Other than Texas, California really was the epicenter of marijuana. That’s where it came through, that’s probably where it was made illegal! When Hearst decided it made you crazy and would kill people. That was a racist law! We’re taking advantage of that and going right for our hardcore fans off the bat. Then we’ll broaden out to places that need us because it is a medicine and it is essential. We’ve proven that with the pandemic. Bars closed, the dispensaries never did. That tells you a lot.
How do you feel about the overall corporatization of cannabis?
It’s a medicine. We’re trying to provide medicine for as many people as we can. If we make a few bucks out of it, great. I know for myself, I’m going to turn my profits into helping people. The last thing I’m going to do is warehouse it offshore. You can do so much with money — I’m only speaking for myself I’m not speaking for Cheech.
The reason Cheech and Chong don’t retire is because we have too many families between us to support, so we gotta keep working.
@heytommychong/Instagram
You’re a legend when it comes to smoking weed, but like other legends — I’m thinking maybe Woody Harrelson or Willie Nelson — you probably don’t smoke as much as people think right?
Oh not at all. Not even close. Up in Smoke was a movie, you know? One of the greatest things about marijuana is that you don’t have to smoke it, it’s not addictive. Not like cigarettes. I remember when I smoked cigarettes, I was addicted. A lot of my energy was spent going on cigarette runs. Marijuana? No. When I got busted I quit smoking for three years, not because I had to — well… in a way I had to, because they were trying to bust me and to make the bust look more palatable, but no, I learned very early that marijuana wasn’t addictive.
The first time I got high, a jazz musician gave me a joint and that joint lasted me a month but after that month there were no more joints. I wouldn’t smoke until I came across it. It was always given to me — I was a music man, people always just say “oh here! Here is a joint!”
Do you have a favorite method of smoking?
I’m a one-hitter. I’ve got a series of pipes I’m looking at right now. I make pipes! Out of bamboo, wood, kombucha bottles, I just found a bottle with Chinese sauce in it, it’s beautiful so I’m going to clean it out. That’s my hobby. I had a bottle collection that I had to get rid of, I had kombucha bottles coming out of everywhere, my family had to put me through an intervention.
When I was growing up there was no toy store, there was no city — I grew up in the country. So whatever toys you had, maybe you’d find a softball or a ball in the gutter, but if you wanted a toy you had to make it. I would make these crude knives and guns, so, eventually, I started carving pipes. I starting looking at bamboo and I’d say “oh this would make a nice pipe.”
I got bamboo growing in my yard, I go and harvest it just to make pipes. I’m trying to work it into how I can do it on an artistic scale but I haven’t come to that realization yet.
Dropping this limited, truly one of a kind artwork – CHONG BONG by @JeromeBaker420 10am pacific time TOMORROW, Saturday morning on my Instagram @ HEYTOMMYCHONG! Portion of the proceeds will go to the @lastprisonerprjpic.twitter.com/REg20qskL6
Are you an indica, sativa, or hybrid guy? Or just anything green?
My favorite strain is called marijuana! Or cannabis. I understand what Indica does to you, but because I’m a one toker, it’ll only last for a few hours. Now I’m getting old and this virus is going around so every once and awhile I’ll go “oh no, I feel weird am I getting the virus?” and then I’ll realize “oh, you smoked up, idiot!”
Can you speak on your experience with cannabis in the seventies compared to today?
In the 70s, Cheech and I always liked our weed, but then the cocaine came in. It was short-lived as far as Cheech and I go. Cheech is very health conscious all his life, he was a track star in school. He didn’t indulge too much, the same as me. Cheech was a bit of a lightweight too because he’d smoke up and get really stoned and do stupid things. That’s how we made all the movies.
One time, he was dating Joni Mitchell and we were in Paris at the time shooting a movie, and Joni came to a concert. Cheech had a piece of hash and had no way to smoke it so he ate it. He got so stoned man he couldn’t talk. We’re sitting at a little brasserie with Joni and he’s just very very quiet, usually, he’s Mr. Entertainer. I looked down and realized he never ordered anything to eat.
That’s how stoned he was! He was so stoned he forgot to eat.
What was Joni’s reaction?
Oh, she’s such a sweetheart. She’s Joni! When you go out with those famous people, you’re like an accessory. “Oh yeah, I’m with him.” They get all the attention, I don’t think she even noticed. Cheech will do that. He was in Israel and they’re going to go visit the Wall, and Cheech again ate something he shouldn’t have eaten and he started projectile vomiting in a cab, can you imagine the poor guy? “We’re under attack by these fucking Americans!”
Can you imagine if he did it now with the COVID going around? Oh no. But we’re lightweights both of us, we’re good actors! When we did the records though, we did smoke weed before — but not a lot.
[Dog barks]
That’s my stupid dog. He’s a racist dog. Ww got Mexicans working here and he’s barking at them. He’s a white poodle, maybe that’s why.
What do you hope to see change in the weed industry going into this next decade?
I get a lot of blowback from everybody, but marijuana is a medicine. All marijuana use is medical no matter how you do it. It changes the composition of your body and that’s why you do it. It affects the brain, the organs, the whole body in a healthy way. It gives bulimics and people with eating disorders an appetite.
You can’t tax medicine. They got a sin tax on marijuana and it’s ridiculous. Everybody will pay a little bit but no one is going to pay too much. It’s overtaxed and over-regulated right now.
This is just me, but it has a phenomenal medical reach. Marijuana was always considered a medicine in ancient times, it was an herb. It was used for various ailments. In China for cancer and menstrual cramps. It wasn’t until the hippies in the 60s started using it and people in the Vietnam war that the government got up in arms about it. You can’t protest when you’re drunk, but when you’re high on pot you can run around and create all sorts of mischief.
I see it evolving. The reason it’s legal is because of a year-old baby with epilepsy. Sanjay Gupta showed the world that epilepsy could be cured with marijuana. You have this weird alcohol mentality, but it’s a racist mentality. All prohibition is racist. When they prohibited alcohol it was because of the Italians, the Germans, and the people from Europe. The Puritans wanted to get rid of that. When prohibition ended, that’s when marijuana prohibition started, you had all these cops with nothing to do so they sent them to chase Mexicans and black people for marijuana.
Look at the jails! They’re filled with marijuana cases! California just expunged records, I’m trying to get my time expunged too. I had a chance to get pardoned from Obama but I turned it down because I didn’t want to be pardoned for something that shouldn’t be a crime. It didn’t seem right.
In the future, I see it as being treated more like medicine. Just like any drug store, a dispensary should be able to operate the same way. That’s my hope.
It’s been two years since Rae Sremmurd dropped the third edition of their SremmLife album series, Sr3mm. Swae Lee, one half of the duo, has since had an illustrious solo career, topping the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his Post Malone collaboration “Sunflower” and receiving a handful of Grammy nominations. But now, it looks like Lee is back with his brother Slim Jxmmi putting some final touches on Rae Sremmurd’s fourth studio album.
Teasing the return of Rae Sremmurd, Lee took to Instagram to share a snippet of an upcoming song. Both Lee and Jxmmi appear in the clip and excitedly sing along to the lyrics playing over their studio’s speakers. “Sremm 4 OTW,” Lee wrote, signaling that SremmLife 4 is coming sooner rather than later.
In other Rae Sremmurd news, the duo are apparently down to compete against Migos in an upcoming Verzuz battle. Lee confirmed his interest in a recent interview with Power 106. “All I’m gonna say is we got a nice catalog,” he said. “It’s gonna be hard. We got some classics. I got some classics. SremmLife got some classics. You know what I’m sayin’? The numbers don’t lie. That would be good because they got some hits, we got some hits. That’d be fun. […] They’d have to cut us all a nice little [check]. That’s gonna be action-packed. You know we gonna turn up.”
Watch Swae Lee play a snippet of a new song above.
A TikTok video is making the rounds because it continues to make people question their own senses. In the video, a voice can be heard saying either the word “brainstorm” or the words “green needle.”
What you hear depends on what you’re thinking about when you read the screen.
So, if you play it while thinking “green needle,” that’s what you’ll hear in the clip. The same goes for “brainstorm.” Then, go back and forth between the two. It’s a surreal experience.
The video is a great reminder of how subjective our senses really are. It’s a perfect example of how our minds have the power to interpret sensory data how it chooses, depending on our own internal biases.
It makes you wonder just how many things you see, smell, hear, taste, and feel that may not be what they seem. It also shows how two people can experience the same sensory data, interpret it completely differently, and not be wrong.
That’s why two people can witness the same car accident and tell conflicting stories in court, while both people swear they are telling the truth.
“Basically, you are priming your brain to expect acoustic patterns that match expected patterns for a particular word,” Valerie Hazan, a professor of speech sciences at University College London, said according to People.
“When faced with an acoustic signal which is somewhat ambiguous because it is low-quality or noise our brain attempts a ‘best fit’ between what is heard and the expected word,” she added.
This video first appeared in 2018 after a toy review by YouTube creator DosmRider. The toy is from the Children’s TV show “Ben 10 Alien Force” that features a character called Brainstorm.
Brainstorm is the Omnitrix’s DNA sample of a Cerebrocrustacean from the planet Encephalonus IV. Whatever that means.
You can hear “Brainstorm” or “Green Needle” based on whichever one you think about.
Pure black magic. We’re well p… https://t.co/5WapMZhhm2
According to The New York Times, people hear Laurel or Yanny based on the “frequency range” they pay attention to. So if someone tends to hear in the higher range of things, then they’re going to hear “Yanny” rather than “Laurel.”
These videos are another example of how the human psyche has a real problem with ambiguity, even if that means incorrectly interpreting sensory data. “The brain is built to turn messy signals into meaning,” Dr. Kevin Franck, director of audiology at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, told Time.
It “all comes down to the brain,” he added. “The fact that brains go in one way and some brains go in the other means that we’re all just wired a bit differently based on our experiences.”
The clip also another reminder that even if someone sees things differently than we do, it’s best to reserve some judgement or give them the benefit of the doubt. As research shows, two people can look at the same thing and get a totally different meaning.
As someone who has given birth to three children and who was raised by a labor-and-delivery nurse, you’d think I’d have a good handle on the physical mechanics of childbirth. But despite knowing all the terminology and experiencing all the details first hand—uterine contractions, cervical dilation, etc.—I’m a visual person, and most of the birth process happens internally. Feeling it and being told what’s happening isn’t the same as being able to visualize what’s actually happening.
Enter high school teacher Brooke Bernal, who teaches consumer sciences. She shared a video on TikTok demonstrating how she teaches her students about childbirth, which she says is her “all time favorite lesson,” using a balloon and a ping-pong ball. It’s a simple, but-oh-so-helpful demonstration that even helped me get a better grip on the miracle of childbirth. (Without the baby shooting across the room at the end, of course.)
Bernal explains that the big round part of the balloon is the uterus, the skinny tube part is the birth canal, and the opening is the cervix. Then she puts a ping-pong ball into the balloon and shows how the pressure of the contractions causes the ball baby to push on the cervix, causing it to thin out (efface) and open up (dilate).
There’s one little hiccup with this demonstration, which is that the “birth canal” isn’t actually above the cervix like shown in Bernal’s video. The cervix is immediately outside of the uterus, and then the birth canal is the vagina below that. So in a real birth, what you see happening with the cervix would happen before the baby goes through the birth canal (and is, in fact, what allows the baby to do so).
A video that may have served as the inspiration for this one (Bernal told Buzzfeed that she had seen the idea shared in a teacher group on social media but wasn’t sure where it came from) illustrates that a bit more clearly:
Use a balloon and ping pong ball to show how the cervix thins and dilates during labor
Aside from the birth canal bit, Bernal’s video is great. The first awesome part is how she illustrates the difference between Braxton-Hicks contractions and real contractions. For those who haven’t experienced the joy of thinking you were in labor half a dozen times before you actually were, Braxton-Hicks contractions are basically practice contractions. It’s your uterus running drills. Some people have them for weeks before real labor starts, and they can be pretty uncomfortable..
Real contractions come from the top of the uterus and actually move the baby down into the birth canal. This part of the video makes that difference so clear.
The other part that I found helpful was the effacement and dilation illustrations. Not being able to see your own cervix, it’s hard to imagine what a midwife or doctor means when they tell you you’re “90% effaced” or “7 cm dilated.” You can see it in drawn diagrams, but I don’t find those nearly as helpful as watching that balloon opening get thinner and wider as the ball was being pushed down.
“Normally, this demonstration does not faze my students at all,” Bernal told Buzzfeed. “They are really just surprised that a ping pong ball can fit into a balloon and that a balloon can stretch like it does without popping. It’s just a good visual aid for them.”
“And, yes, they know a baby will not actually yeet across the room!” she added. “I personally feel that they get more out of me showing it this way than they would watching birthing videos because it’s something that is hands on and they can’t just zone out.”
I will say, though, that as illustrative as it was to see the mechanics of contractions, effacement, and dilation goes, it’s definitely a limited demonstration. First of all, babies are nowhere near the size of a ping-pong ball, and that whole contraction > effacement > dilation > baby popping out process takes a heck of a lot longer and involves a crapton more work than that. It doesn’t even touch on the reality of what our bodies go through and what it’s really like to grow an entire human being and then push it out through an opening that does not look or feel nearly large enough to do so.
So yes, this demonstration (with the caveat about the birth canal) combined with some real-life footage would go a long way in helping people understand what’s happening during childbirth.
Well done, Ms. Bernal.
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