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On Wednesday afternoon while attempting to speak to reporters, Mitch McConnell froze up for about 30 seconds before being escorted away. No matter what you think of the Speaker of the House, it’s a disturbing video, showing someone appearing to lose control of their neurological functions, and while in public.

And yet McConnell wasn’t whisked away to a hospital and it’s unclear if he was attended to by a doctor. Instead he returned shortly thereafter to answer reporters’ questions. His staff claimed he was simply “lightheaded.” It’s also unclear if it has any relation to the injury he suffered earlier this year.

Later that evening, McConnell returned to the halls of the Capitol to briefly — very briefly — talk with reporters, even claiming he’d landed a zinger when he received a worried call from sitting president and frequent sparring partner Joe Biden.

“The president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell cracked, referring to Biden tripping over a sandbag last month at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony.

Reporters repeatedly asked McConnell if he was okay and if he had any inkling about what happened. He only repeated, twice, that he’s “fine” before moving on.

After the incident, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, who has not examined McConnell, speculated that he might have suffered a “neurological event,” maybe even a stroke.

(Via Mediaite)

It’s quite common for people to fantasize about their wedding day—the ceremony, the bridal party, the dress, the cake—and some people spend months or even years meticulously planning every detail. People even spend thousands of dollars hiring wedding planners to make sure that the big day stays fully organized and all the moving parts come together without a hitch.

But no matter how well you plan, sometimes things that simply can’t be predicted happen. And how you and your beloved handle the hitches and glitches on your wedding day can say a lot.

Especially when that hitch or glitch is something major…like watching the beautiful, four-tier wedding cake—the one you spent time choosing and lots of money creating to share with your wedding guests—come crashing to the ground right in front of you.

That’s what happened to one couple who eagerly watched as the caterers who were carrying their wedding cake tripped on their way into the room, sending their cake to an untimely demise in spectacular fashion.

The video, shared by @the.sarik on Instagram, is only about 10 seconds long, but it tells a whole beautiful love story in the reactions of both the groom and the bride.

Watch:

See on Instagram

First of all, hope those waiters are OK. But secondly, staying calm and making the most of a bad situation is a huge character plus, and this groom clearly has those qualities in spades. You can see in the bride’s face that she knows it, too.

“Her eyes show that she knows she got the right guy,” wrote one commenter.

“The way he just called her to eat is just phenomenal,” shared another.

“‘Cake is still cake.’ Yelling at those waiters won’t solve anything, but it can ruin their whole lives,” wrote another. “They know their mistake, and they can be corrected privately. May the reaction of this man be an inspiration to us all, to care for the feelings of other people more than material things.”

“Of all the things that could ruin a wedding day, I’m glad the husband knew this didn’t have to be one of them,” shared another.

When unpredictable things do happen, it’s largely the reaction of the people involved that determines whether they become tragic tales or entertaining stories. If what we saw in the video is any indicator, this couple will be telling their grandkids someday about how the guys carrying their wedding cake tripped and ruined it, and how Grandpa’s response won Grandma’s heart all over again.

Big Thief guitarist Buck Meek is one month out from Haunted Mountain, his third solo studio album and his first via 4AD. Meek has been gradually mounting his album rollout for the better part of two months, beginning with the title track in late May and “Paradise” in late June.

As that pattern would suggest, Meek wasn’t going to let July end without releasing another single. His latest is “Cyclades,” a folksy nostalgic tune filled with vivid anecdotal lyricism about his dad’s past motorcycle crash in Siskiyou County and his mom’s similarly scary experience in Greece.

“These are all true stories, or at least as I was told, or remember them being told,” Meek wrote on Instagram. “There’s a thin line between history and mythology. Our lives are made of an endless myriad of unfinished stories, of every encounter of billions of people at the center of thousands of years in each direction. the telling is secondary.”

Meek also announced new tour dates across the US, Japan, and Korea. Tickets for his added US dates will go on sale beginning this Friday, July 28, followed by Korean shows going on sale on August 1 and Japanese shows on August 8. All dates and ticketing information can be found here.

Listen to “Cyclades” above.

Haunted Mountain is out 8/25 via 4AD. Find more information here.

Warning: This post contains some minor spoilers about Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, which is good and which you should go see on as big a screen you can find.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens with a bizarre sight (and sound): A de-aged Harrison Ford as a younger Indy…who surreally speaks with the gravelly rasp of an 80-year-old man. In another timeline it wouldn’t have been the only summer movie this year to sport de-aging tech. At one point the Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One crew toyed with using it on Tom Cruise for scenes set about 30 years in the past. They thought better of it. But if they had they would have done the same for another actress a handful of years younger than him.

In a new interview with Empire (as caught by /Film), director Christopher McQuarrie reveals they thought about casting Julia Roberts as Ethan Hunt’s doomed lover, seen in flashbacks that take place before he joined IMF. Explains McQuarrie:

“I said, ‘OK, if I were doing this sequence, it would be Tom in, say, 1989. It would be Tony Scott’s ‘Mission: Impossible.’ That’s who would have been directing the movie before Brian De Palma, you know, in that era. We looked at ‘Days of Thunder’ and we looked at the style of it, and we started thinking what would it look like if Tony Scott had shot this, and who would it have been? I looked back at who was the ingenue, who was the breakout star in 1989? And right around then was ‘Mystic Pizza.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God. Julia Roberts, a then-pre-“Pretty Woman” Julia Roberts, as this young woman.’”

Eventually cooler heads prevailed — that and bills for what using de-aging tech would look like, on top of Robert’s potential payday. McQuarrie realized that “if you put two of them in a shot together, or three of them in a shot together, it would have been as expensive as the train by the time we were done.”

And so they did the cheaper, simpler alternative: They kept the flashbacks short and hyper-cut, so you never see young Ethan Hunt’s face, nor that of Esai Morales’ baddie.

Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is now in theaters.

(Via Empire and /Film)

Lizzo is among music’s foremost newsmakers, but she’s repeatedly proved that she’s a diligent observer of the news cycle as well. Between contributing to the Barbie soundtrack and headlining her ongoing Special Tour, Lizzo somehow had time to comment on congressional developments.

On Wednesday, July 26, former Air Force Intelligence Officer David Grusch testified to Congress before a House Oversight subcommittee. Per the Associated Press, Retired Maj. Grusch asserted that “the US is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reserve engineers unidentified flying objects [UFOs]” and “likely has been aware of ‘non-human’ activity since the 1930s.” The Pentagon has denied his claims.

According to NBC News, Grusch also claimed “he has interviewed individuals who have recovered ‘non-human biologics’ from crashed UAPs” — opting to use “non-human” in favor of “alien.”

After the news broke, Lizzo tweeted (or Xeeted?), “Aye.. I know there’s a lot of pop culture news and memes going on rn but… THE GOVERNMENT JUST STATED *UNDER OATH* THAT THEY ARE IN POSSESSION OF UFOs AND NON-HUMAN ALIEN BODIES YALL WTF.”

It’s far from the first (or, surely, last) time Lizzo has used her social media account to process news in real time. In March, she tweeted about transphobia in relation to racism. A separate March tweet drew attention to anti-LGBTQIA legislation and Jim Crow laws.

As for Wednesday’s news, Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge was delighted to hear someone else believes “aliens f*cking exist.”

Watch the full hearing below.

Blink-182 and Lizzo are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In January, Samia released Honey, her sophomore album. “The whole record watches the singer/songwriter stepping into the most confessional version of herself as possible,” wrote Uproxx‘s Danielle Chelosky at the time. “The vignettes are endearing; it’s particularly relatable on the title track, when she sings about going to a Porches show in Brooklyn after a long week.”

On Wednesday, July 26, Samia made the title track all the more captivating by releasing “Honey (Maya Hawke Version),” the latest in her series of Honey Reimagined singles.

“When we were recording ‘Honey’ for the album, we added this ironic depth by turning what was originally a painful song into a kind of campfire sing along — big bouncy guitars, a happy melody, that endless refrain,” Samia said in a statement. “So I was eager to hear what Maya would do with it. Surprisingly, she stripped all of the campfire away. In her version, you can hear every bit of the desperation in how spare the production is. Exploring these new vantage points in my own work is exactly what draws me to the Reimagined concept.”

Hawke added, “It’s an amazing thing when a favorite person writes a favorite song. I was honored to be asked to cover ‘Honey,’ and I wanted to bring out the sadness I felt behind the celebration. I loved working with Will Graefe as a producer. I’ve never recorded a song without him and experiencing him as a producer was even better.”

“Honey (Maya Hawke Version)” follows “Charm You (Blondshell Version)” from late June. Per press release, Hovvdy, Ruston Kelly, and “more TBA” will also feature in Samia’s Honey Reimagined series.

Listen to “Honey (Maya Hawke Version)” above, and see Samia’s upcoming live dates below.

08/11 — San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands Festival
08/24 — Vancouver, BC @ Hollywood Theater %
08/25 — Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom %
08/26 — Port Townsend, WA @ Thing Festival
09/02 — Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival
09-03 — Stadbury Hall, IR @ Electric Picnic Festival
09/05 — London, UK @ O2 Forum
09/30 — Philadelphia, PA @ Mann Center *
10/01 — Columbia, MD @ All Things Go Festival
10/03 — Nashville, TN @ Ascend Ampitheater #
10/04 — Nashville, TN @ Ascend Ampitheater #
10/09 — Jacksonville, FL @ VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena
10/10 — Tampa, FL @ Midflorida Credit Union Amphitheatre
10/12 — Nashville, TN @ Paradise Festival @ Brooklyn Bowl ^
10/15 — Irving, TX — The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory #
10/16 — Oklahoma City, OK @ Beer City Music Hall &
10/18 — Boulder, CO @ Fox Theatre &
10/19 — Fort Collins, CO @ The Aggie &
10/21 — Omaha, NE @ Waiting Room &
10/22 — Des Moines, IA @ Wooly’s &
10/23 — Indianapolis, IN @ Hi-Fi &
10/25 — Detroit, MI @ Shelter &
10/26 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Club AE &
10-27 — Columbus, OH @ A&R Bar &

% with Raffaella
* with Boygenius
# with Noah Kahan
^ with Briston Maroney
& with Venus & the Flytraps

Back in 2020 when the NBA went to Orlando for the Bubble, they stopped testing players for marijuana, but it wasn’t until this summer that weed was officially taken off of the banned substance list.

NBA players have long smoked weed, hoping to dodge suspensions in testing, but now they are free to partake as much as they want. Kevin Durant, who is invested in some cannabis companies and is not exactly shy about his personal usage, was part of the push to officially remove it from the banned substance list, and had a conversation with NBA commissioner Adam Silver about it prior to the agreement.

In a recent CNBC event, Durant was asked about that conversation and what he said, and KD noted he didn’t have to say much, as he notes the commissioner smelled it at soon as he walked in and knew exactly what was up.

Given marijuana is now legal to smoke recreationally in many states, which as KD notes has removed a lot of the stigma around it, it made sense for the NBA to take it off the banned substance list. Still it’s funny that Durant effectively let the weed do the talking for him in a meeting with the commish, and now he and other NBA players can, officially, stop trying to count their drug tests to know when it’s safe to smoke unabashedly.

Earlier this month, Beyoncé began the North American leg of her Renaissance World Tour. While fans in Pittsburgh unfortunately had to grapple with the cancelation of their Acrisure Stadium show, other stops have been astounding successes. Jack Harlow introduced his mom to Queen Bey in Louisville, and last weekend the tour was credited with reportedly single-handedly boosting Chicago’s economy.

Of course, the Beyoncé economy extends to the internet. On Wednesday, July 26, Amazon Music released its Drop 2.0 of Renaissance World Tour merchandise, which represents “the second of the four-part exclusive online collection that is being released throughout the North American leg.”

Drop 2.0 includes the “Alien Superstar” tee ($35), “Virgo’s Groove” tee ($35), “Heated” tee ($35), “Summer Renaissance” tee ($35), and the Renaissance World Tour sticker pack ($30).

The latter item “comes with 16 black-and-white graphic stickers, each with their own unique design,” and each tee takes its name from track on Beyoncé’s acclaimed July 2022 album, Renaissance. The full collection is available here.

The Renaissance World Tour landed in Detroit, Michigan for Wednesday, July 26, before tackling back-to-back nights at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on July 29 and July 30.

Initially, the North American leg was to end in New Orleans on September 27, but the Kansas City, Missouri date had to be rescheduled due to “production logistics and scheduling issues, as reported by Deadline. It will now serve as the finale on October 1. See all of the dates here.

Far as reboots go, Ron DeSantis’ attempts to revive his floundering campaign has been going about as well as Universal’s Dark Universe. So far, the Florida governor — once seen as the guy who could finally rid the GOP of Trump, if by becoming his younger and more disciplined clone — has had to gut his staff, including a guy who spread Nazi imagery. Now he’s losing fellow conservatives after saying he’d offer a key health job to a total nutjob.

As per The Daily Beast, DeSantis recently spoke with rightwing pundit Clay Travis, during which he shot down the idea of making Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., currently gunning for the Democratic ticket, his veep. Not that he wouldn’t use him in another capacity down the road.

“I’m aligned with him on Fauci and the corruption and the health bureaucracies 100%. And I think he’s probably done said some other things that I agree with, too,” he explained.

Does DeSantis agree with Kennedy about his recent claim, delivered at a fart-filled press dinner, that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people? He was pretty vague, but he was more specific about the role Kennedy would play in his hypothetical administration that probably isn’t happening.

“And so on that regard, it’s like, okay, if you’re president, sic him on the FDA if he’d be willing to serve, or sic him on CDC,” DeSantis said.

According to Mediaite, even Republicans, who have been turning on him as his only six-week-old campaign crumbles. Among them was The National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke, who wrote, “It’s flat-out insanity for DeSantis to mention RFK Jr. within the same sentence as the FDA or CDC, let alone as a potential appointee to do anything related to medicine. RFK Jr.’s a kook who’d improve nothing.”

Cooke’s colleague Philip Klein called it his plan simply “embarrassingly bad.”

Aaron Sibarium, of the conservative Washington Free Beacon, sounded almost liberal, tweeting, “Far and away the worst decision DeSantis has made is playing footsie with cranks who hate modern medicine and would slow-walk vaccine development in a future pandemic.”

Fox News’ Guy Benson, meanwhile, simply wrote, “Nope.”

So far, DeSantis’ Mulligan doesn’t seem to be taking. Maybe third time’s the charm. Or fourth.

(Via The Daily Beast and Mediaite)

Back in March, Rauw Alejandro and Rosalía confirmed their engagement by way of their video for “Beso,” a single from their joint EP, RR. Alas, their couple goals came to naught. As per People, their relationship, which ran some three years, apparently ended long before it became public knowledge earlier this week.

“Sources say that despite the love and respect the singers have for one another, they have both agreed to end their engagement,” the publication relayed.

Meanwhile, unverified allegations that Alejandro was unfaithful to Rosalía have begun circulating. Alejandro addressed the situation with a lengthy Instagram Story on Wednesday, July 26, explaining that he would prefer not to speak publicly on such a private matter but felt compelled to dismiss any false rumors of infidelity “out of respect” for Rosalía, their families, and all they’d been through together.

Translated roughly from Spanish to English, Alejandro confirmed his and Rosalía’s engagement ended “a few months ago” and acknowledged “there are thousands of problems that can cause a breakup, but in our case, it was not because of third parties or infidelity.”

Rosalía has yet to publicly comment.

You can read Alejandro’s full statement in the screengrab below.