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It’s officially mulled wine season — when Christmas markets in the United States and Europe serve steaming mugs of spiced glühwein by the ladleful. Of course, with COVID continuing to spike, many of those markets don’t exist this winter. Making 2020 your year to finally prep your own mulled wine at home. God knows we could all use a drink.

Thankfully, this recipe doesn’t present a particularly tough challenge. You just need the right ingredients and a little patience.

Having lived in Berlin since 2008, I’ve become something of a mulled wine snob. Roaming the German Christkindlmarkts is one of my favorite activities of the season — if not the year — and I happen to live next door to the best in the city. (It’s hard not to put on the pounds in December when you’re a five-minute walk from a daily drunken Christmas party with piles of fried, stewed, and grilled foods at every turn.) This year, the markets are canceled — which saddens me for a whole host of reasons. But missing out on glühwein isn’t one of them.

To be honest, I usually bring my own mulled wine to the Christmas markets anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I still buy food and gifts while strolling the stalls, but I know where the market’s mulled wine comes from, and you’re getting industrial juice sold in five or ten-gallon plastic jugs. It’s… fine. But homemade mulled wine is a million times better. My play is to fill up a big thermos and walk around the market sipping that.

The (somewhat) secret to the perfect mug of glühwein is hard alcohol. You want to get your order “mit schuss” or “with a shot” of either brandy, rum, whisky, or amaretto liqueur. That extra bump of dark booze adds depth and ABVs to the otherwise light (and sweet) drink.

Okay, enough pre-game. Let’s get into the recipe. Again, this really isn’t a terribly tough one. If you have a big pot, stove, and a little time, you can make glühwein perfectly with ease.

What you’ll need in the kitchen:

• Large pot
• Ladle
• Slotted spoon
• Kitchen knife
• Mugs

STEP 1: Make The Mulled Wine

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles of red wine
• 16-oz. dark berry juice
• 1-oz. simple syrup
• 3-oz. Orgeat syrup
• 10 juniper berries
• 10 allspice berries
• 4 stars of anise
• 6 cloves
• 1 large cinnamon stick
• 1 orange

I’m using a Temperallino wine from Rioja in Spain for this recipe. But you can really use whatever red wine you like to drink. BUT: Don’t just get some cheap bullshit wine. Get wine you like to drink in the $10 range. You’re making enough for 10 servings. So $20 worth of wine is a very fair price to pay for that much.

I’m also using Amarena cherry juice. It’s basically a sweet cherry juice (it’s not the syrup from a jar from Amarena cherries). Alternately, you can also use blackberry, blueberry, red currant, plum, or even red grape juice. The point is to use a juice that is as dark as the wine, but sweet. In the end, we’re using this to add flavor and sweetness to the mulled wine.

The real x-factor is the Orgeat syrup. Orgeat is an almond-based syrup made with rose water, orange oils, and sugar. Every liquor store will have it. It’s also the key ingredient for a Mai Tai. So if you buy a bottle, you can always use what’s left for whipping up some nice tropical cocktails.

As for the rest, it’s really up to you. The mix of dried spices I’m using is what I personally dig. You can play around with it for your palate. If you like more cinnamon, then use more of it. This is just a basic launching pad for spicing up your mulled wine however you want.

WARNING: Careful with the cloves. Too many and you’ll get a medicinal flavor and an anesthetic effect (cloves were once used as precisely that in early dentistry).

Method:

The only thing you really need to prep is the orange. I use a sharp kitchen knife to slice the peel from the body. You don’t want to bring along too much pith (inner white part). You can also do this with a vegetable peeler.

Other than that, put everything in a big pot, give it a quick stir, and that’s it!

I place the pot on medium-low heat. You want to bring the whole thing up to just below a boil. If you want to be super technical about it, you’re aiming for 195f to 200f, temperature-wise. That’s hot enough to steep the spices and emulsify the sugars and alcohol without simmering anything down into a syrup and cooking off the alcohol. You don’t need a temperature gauge. Just don’t let it boil or even simmer.

After about 45 minutes to an hour, taste your glühwein. Does it taste good? Then it’s done. Basically, the spices, orange, Orgeat, juice, and wine should all be present in the taste. It should be sweet, woody, nutty, spicy, and still feel like red wine.

If you’ve hit that mark, use a slotted spoon to fish out the orange rings and spice berries. You don’t want to leave those in as they’ll turn everything very bitter if overcooked. I do leave in the cinnamon stick if I’m serving right away. If not, take it out to avoid overly bitter mulled wine.

STEP 2: Serve

I like setting up a little service station on the table with mugs, the pot and ladle, and some booze for spiking. I’m using a well-aged rum, as that adds the nicest depth in my opinion. Again, use a dark booze you dig: Brandy, scotch, bourbon, whatever.

I ladle in a mug full, leaving room for a three-second pour off the rum bottle. I top it up with said rum and take a sip.

It’s delightful. There’s a nice sense of those spice berries next to nuttiness and sweetness that’s subtle. It smells wonderful as well. It’s exactly what you need this time of year: Pipping hot, sweet, spicy, nutty, and delicious.

And this particular year? Feel free to treat yourself to an extra glass.

With the news that Alfred Molina is reportedly returning as the villainous Doctor Octopus, it’s getting harder and harder to deny that Spider-Man 3 is planning on going buck wild in the Spider-Verse. News of Molina’s involvement comes from The Hollywood Reporter, which cites sources close to the production as well as reports of Molina already being spotted on set. However, much like Jaime Foxx reportedly returning as Electro, Sony and Marvel are being extremely secretive and refusing to comment. Via THR:

Molina’s involvement ties together three generations of Spider-Man movies. Jamie Foxx is returning as Electro after playing the role in 2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which starred Andrew Garfield as the wallcrawler, while Molina’s Doc Oc terrorized Maguire’s version of Spidey. In October, Foxx suggested in a since-deleted Instagram post that three different Spider-Men could appear in the film.

Molina returning is only going to add further fuel to rumors that former Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield will collide with Tom Holland in the highly-anticipated sequel that’s currently filming in Atlanta. Just last week, Comic Book reported on a now-deleted Sony Latin America YouTube video that boasted all three Spider-Man will appear in the new film. Not long after that, Zendaya appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live where she coyly dodged a question about Maguire and Garfield’s rumored involvement. “I can neither confirm nor deny,” the Euphoria actress replied with a smile.

As for where all these multi-dimensional shenanigans are coming from, Spider-Man 3 will also feature Benedict Cumberbatch‘s Doctor Strange, who will take over the mentor role left open by Tony Stark following his death in Avengers: Endgame.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

After weeks of allegedly feeling harassed by a recent ex, Diplo is getting the authorities involved. The producer has now reportedly filed a restraining order against a woman who he briefly dated. After they parted ways, the woman accused Diplo of spreading revenge porn, but the producer now says she’s actually the one sharing the photos.

Per a report from TMZ, Diplo filed court documents seeking a temporary restraining order against the woman. The report alleges the woman has been posting explicit photos and videos of the two of them, and she’s also harassing the producer and his family. According to the court documents, Diplo and the woman began their fling in 2018, but their relationship went sour this year and she has since made the several private images of him public.

Interestingly, the woman was making the same exact claims about Diplo himself. She was granted a temporary restraining order against him last month which she hoped would block him “from distributing revenge porn” that she claims was “designed to humiliate her and to scare other women out of coming forward.” The woman also claimed that Diplo hired a private investigator to intimidate her after a particularly heated argument.

Diplo’s lawyer Bryan Freedman, however, addressed the producer’s side of the story in a statement to TMZ: “Unfortunately, in spite of repeated requests to stop, this individual has continued to stalk and harass my client and his family for more than a year. As a result, we have asked the Court to grant a restraining order against her and to continue this case so that this troubling situation can be resolved once and for all.”

This is not the only scandal Diplo has found himself involved in recently. Back in October, rumors began circulating that the producer, who is 41, was living with 19-year-old TikTok influencer Quenlin Blackwell. After Diplo was accused of being a groomer, both Blackwell and Diplo denied the rumors. They clarified that Blackwell is simply living in an apartment that Diplo is renting out to her, making the producer her landlord and nothing more.

Earlier today, we were treated to the best that England has to offer, in the form of an adorable and recently vaccinated old man. Now here’s the weirdest (and arguably the worst): Piers Morgan was forced to clarify that despite rumors to the contrary, he is not the pigeon lady from Home Alone 2: Lost in the City.

The Good Morning Britain presenter was put on the spot by his co-host Susanna Reid, who said, “Can we just have a look at Home Alone 2? Because, frankly, it is the best picture. Lots of people watch Home Alone 2 and wonder if this is you.” Cut to a side-by-side photo of Morgan next to the pigeon lady, played by Academy Award winner Brenda Fricker, who befriends Kevin in the Home Alone sequel. “Why does this keep coming around?” Morgan responded. “That is not me. I am not the bag lady in Home Alone 2.”

He’s technically not wrong, because he’s the pigeon man. I mean…

Even Piers’ son Spencer sees the resemblance.

You’d think Morgan would be thrilled to be in Home Alone 2 with his “friend” Donald Trump (who bullied his way into the film), but I guess he still hasn’t gotten over the president unfollowing him on Twitter. And he never will.

(Via the Independent)

On Monday, Houston Rockets coach Stephen Silas met with the assembled media and confirmed that James Harden had yet to report to training camp as the team expected he would on Sunday, calling it “a setback.” This came after videos circled around social media of Harden once again out and about in a club in Las Vegas, and with his lingering trade request there were legitimate questions as to when he would join the team, questions Silas simply couldn’t answer.

On Tuesday, word emerged that Harden’s trade request, which to this point had been focused on Brooklyn, was being opened up to Philadelphia and other contenders, with Harden seemingly recognizing the need to cast a wider net if he wants to find a new home. Later in the afternoon, he apparently arrived at the Rockets facility to enter the NBA’s COVID-19 testing protocol and, finally, begin the process of joining the team for training camp, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski — although Stephen Silas still didn’t seem to know much about what it meant for Harden’s timetable.

What this means is that Harden can begin individual workouts at the team facility soon — something they anticipated happening late last week or this past weekend — and then join the team for full workouts once he’s cleared the appropriate number of negative tests. The Rockets open their preseason slate on Friday against the Bulls with two games in Chicago (the second on Sunday) and one would think Harden is unlikely to be available for Friday and probably not Sunday either. Their final two preseason games are at home against San Antonio on next Tuesday and Thursday, which seems like the target for Harden’s first action of the season, but that is of course all pending testing results and, you know, a trade happening or not.

If you’ve been anywhere near hip-hop in the past 25 years, you’ve seen the Hieroglyphics logo before. Guaranteed. You know, the deadpanned circular face with three dots for eyes and a straight line for the mouth? Maybe you don’t remember the first time you saw it, because it’s just been everywhere. On a hoodie in the Bay Area. On a hat in New York City. A sticker on a bathroom wall in Chicago or even on a pair of skate shoes in Brazil. It’s global. And it’s come to symbolize much more than the Oakland-based Hieroglyphics crew that it represents. It’s become one of the rare symbols of hip-hop culture and style.

But how did an independent hip-hop crew formed in 1991 develop a ubiquitous logo that’s towered over most other hip-hop iconography since and still keep it fresh in 2020? The answer lies in an unwavering ethos of independence from the nine-member crew and in a fundamental design concept: Keep it simple.

“I was hella into counter-culture. ’60s rock…hippie era sh*t and funk. I was into that cause I was born in the ’70s,” says Del The Funky Homosapien, the eclectic Hieroglyphics MC and the artist behind the logo’s original design. “I wanted something like the yellow smiley face, but the way I drew it, with the third eye in the middle and a line instead of a smile, it indicated that you’re concentrating or something. I’m into graphic design and I wanted something simple like that. I doodled it on a napkin.”

The logo became the mark of the Hieroglyphics (Hiero) crew which also includes the group Souls Of Mischief and appeared on all of their album covers. Between the two groups and their respective solo careers, the entire Hiero Imperium has produced undisputed hip-hop classics like Souls Of Mischief’s “93 ‘til Infinity”, Hiero’s “You Never Knew” and Del’s “Mistadobalina.” A part of the Bay Area hip-hop fabric, Hiero have stayed relevant on their golden age era stature and a steady stream of solo releases from the crew’s members. But above all, it’s the merch component predicated on the Hiero logo that has cemented their stylistic legacy.

In 1992 and 1993, the Plan B Skateboards company’s influential skate videos “Questionable” and “Virtual Reality” featured songs from Del and Souls Of Mischief. The rappers were soundtracking your little brother’s favorite Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater character, Rodney Mullen, flipping tricks that nobody had ever seen before and it flowed so well. Skaters started gravitating to the music and Hiero’s appeal was immediately beginning to transcend hip-hop circles. In short, the logo was gravitational.

“A lot of skaters, headbangers, and punk rockers started getting the tattoo or putting it on their skateboards representing,” says rapper Tajai of Souls Of Mischief. “So then it took on a different cultural significance, almost like a fight club. This counter-culture club where if you know about Hiero, you know and ‘I f*cks witchu.’ Like the masonry or something… And the people getting the tattoos were actually listening to the music, you see what I’m saying?”

Hiero seeped into the underground, where skaters and rap cats who consciously looked away from the mainstream were finding meaning in the logo. It was something that they could don on decks and shirts to simply show that they were looking for style and culture below the surface. And for many, it was an introduction to hip-hop.

Cryptically enough, the crew came to find out that if you remove the circle from the face, the three dots and single line look exactly like the Mayan numeral for eight. Del explained that Souls Of Mischief’s A-Plus showed him a book of ancient hieroglyphs after he created it and that’s when he first noticed it. Tajai says that the Mayan number 8 means “infinity and harmonious resonance” and that these tangential, coincidental meanings just added to the allure of the logo.

The Hiero logo merchandise has flourished non-stop across almost three decades. Shirts, hats, custom skateboards, beanies, lanyards, millions of stickers, men’s clothes, women’s clothes, baby clothes, all emblazoned with the Hiero logo. Of course, there’s even a Hiero mask available in the pandemic era. It’s available in every color combination you can think of. Bay Area sports teams crossover designs, limited edition runs, you name it. It’s become bigger than hip-hop. It’s become a hip-hop lifestyle brand.

“The Rolling Stones logo symbolizes rock, the Black Flag logo symbolizes punk and sh*t, you feel me?” Del says. “It’s definitely one of them types of logos. And I never had an idea that it would be [big] like this.”

“It’s huge. It’s our main thing,” Tajai adds. “It’s the main reason why we have money. Show money? There’s nine of us, you can’t do nine shows a day, but you can sell $1000 of merch every day. It’s become iconic; we’ve got fans worldwide and that’s the thing, kids might not be old enough to go to a show, but they can definitely wear a t-shirt.”

A couple of years ago, in an effort to be able to focus more on their music and less on the day-to-day operations of the merchandise, Hiero partnered with Oaklandish, a civic pride-focused retailer and designer in Oakland. A bastion of Bay Area style themselves, Oaklandish now produces and sells the full-line of Hiero merch.

Previously a vendor at the yearly Hiero Day festival in Oakland since 2014 and making the official shirt of the event, Oaklandish and Hiero shared a distinct history and each had unique footholds in Bay Area culture. Bringing the two Oakland institutions was a natural fit in that regard, and Oaklandish CEO & Creative Director Angela Tsay knew the power of what she was working with.

“There’s certain logos that are so simple and iconic,” Tsay says. “Even as a one-color design, you can immediately recognize them; for a split second in a video or someone walking down the street. That’s what makes the best logos, that instant recognizability and that it means something. You’ve seen it so many times, that it’s become a part of your life.”

Tsay says that Oaklandish has helped Hiero elevate the fabrics, added more custom made cuts and sew pieces to the line, and can ship orders out more efficiently. They did a Hiero fleece collection with major performance wear brand Champion and a New Era fitted hat that sold out in 24 hours. They’ll soon be rolling out a colorway of the Hiero fitted hat with new color combos every month for people to match their outfits to and Tajai says that even with a partner in the mix, the sales returns for the Hiero crew have increased.

“Those guys have proven that being independent can work,” Tsay says. “That you can still control your own destiny even in the midst of capitalism, and they’ve stayed true to that.”

Fans spazzed out hard when a Clubhouse chat spawned a rumor that a Verzuz battle between longtime rivals Foxy Brown and Lil Kim is imminent. However, the event’s founder/primary coordinator Swizz Beatz wants fans to hold their horses. Perhaps it was lost in the wash of excitement or maybe it was due to the rules of Twitter that only allow users to see a direct reply if they are following both accounts (that’s why tweets must start with a period if they use an @ handle first), but it didn’t seem too many folks saw Swizz’s reply to Bossip associate editor Jason Lee about the plans for the battle.

“No!!!!!” Swizz denied. “Not confirmed!!!”

Of course, even if fans had seen his tweet, they’d have probably only used it as a chance to harangue the veteran producer to make the rumor come true. If there’s one immutable rule of social media, it’s that once a fan theory has been adopted, they’ll run it into the ground until they make it happen (see: The Snyder Cut). Fans have plenty of reason to want to see Fox and Kim share the stage, though. It was previously unthinkable that Gucci Mane and Jeezy could be in the same room without violence, yet Verzuz reunited the beefing trap rap pioneers to perform their hit “So Icy” just last month.

Meanwhile, Foxy and Kim’s beef goes back even farther and includes fewer dead homies, so there’s even more investment in seeing them bury the hatchet — especially in an era where women in rap are helping each other more than ever and even Cardi B and Nicki Minaj seem prepared to reunite on a track. Whether we’ll actually get to see that long-awaited reconciliation is, per Swizz, still unconfirmed — but we can dream.

Despite the NFC East being, by far, the worst division in football, the Philadelphia Eagles still find themselves third in the division at 3-8-1, trailing both the Giants and the Football Team, who are both 5-7. It was a year that, in theory, should’ve shaken out for Philly to make the postseason as they were the only one with, theoretically, a proven commodity at quarterback after Dallas saw Dak Prescott go down for the year with a gruesome leg injury.

Dallas has been platooning backups, led by Andy Dalton, while the Football Team has turned to Alex Smith coming off two years away from football rehabbing his own nearly career-ending leg injury, and the Giants have won their last two games with, of all people Colt McCoy. The Eagles, meanwhile, have had Carson Wentz healthy all season, fresh off of a monster contract extension that will pay him $128 million over the next four years — with $66 million guaranteed at signing.

So far this season, Wentz has been a disaster, as his career has followed a truly bizarre trajectory of, at times, looking like an MVP candidate but this season looking totally rattled behind a shaky offensive line and not finding any consistency. That has led to Eagles fans begging Doug Pederson to turn to rookie second round pick Jalen Hurts, and they finally got their wish late in this weekend’s game against the Packers. While Hurts wasn’t perfect, his performance (and that of Wentz) was enough to lead the Eagles to finally, officially, make the change to hand Hurts the keys.

Hurts will now start against the Saints, with Wentz serving as his (highly paid) backup, and we’ll learn an awful lot about how ready the rookie is against the NFC’s top team and a pass rush that is downright nasty. The Eagles offensive line woes have been among the reasons some have advocated against the QB change, but at this point Philly has nothing to lose as a team as they have to rattle off a number of wins in a row to have a shot at the playoffs. As for Wentz, it remains to be seen what his future holds as he’s guaranteed $25 million next year and carries a ton of dead cap so Philly likely won’t want to release him outright (and his deal makes it incredibly unlikely to find a trade suitor), but if Hurts plays well down the stretch of the season his future seems like it won’t be with the Birds.

For the majority of her career, Taylor Swift’s music has been pretty safe for work and appropriate for people of all sensibilities. That remains mostly true today, although there is one moment on Folklore where kids might want to put on their earmuffs. On “Mad Woman,” she says “f*ck” for the first time in one of her songs, singing, “What do you sing on your drive home? / Do you see my face in the neighbor’s lawn? / Does she smile? / Or does she mouth, ‘F*ck you forever?’”

Studies have shown that swearing is good for you, and indeed, Taylor says dropping that F-bomb felt awesome. In a new Entertainment Weekly interview, she was asked how it felt, and she responded simply, “F*cking fantastic.”

She then elaborated:

“Every rule book was thrown out. I always had these rules in my head and one of them was, You haven’t done this before, so you can’t ever do this. ‘Well, you’ve never had an explicit sticker, so you can’t ever have an explicit sticker.’ But that was one of the times where I felt like you need to follow the language and you need to follow the storyline. And if the storyline and the language match up and you end up saying the F-word, just go for it. I wasn’t adhering to any of the guidelines that I had placed on myself. I decided to just make what I wanted to make. And I’m really happy that the fans were stoked about that because I think they could feel that. I’m not blaming anyone else for me restricting myself in the past. That was all, I guess, making what I want to make. I think my fans could feel that I opened the gate and ran out of the pasture for the first time, which I’m glad they picked up on because they’re very intuitive.”

Check out the full interview here and see where Folklore falls on our list of 2020’s best albums here.

Several notable indie rock artists joined together for charity recently. To raise money for Seattle Children’s Hospital, artists like Angel Olsen, Kim Gordon, and Fred Armisen were tapped to perform music for the annual benefit livestream SMooCH, which took place virtually this year. During the event, Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard was joined by a Foo Fighters member and others to deliver a subdued cover of a country classic.

Gibbard united with Foo Fighters bassist Nate Mendel, Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, and Guns N’ Roses members Duff McKagan and Mark Lanegan for a jangly rendition of “Highwayman.” Each musician took turns delivering verses, combining their unique styles for a compelling cover Jimmy Webb’s iconic 1977 track.

The cover isn’t the only musical charity project that Gibbard has been involved in this year. Along with raising money for various organizations at the beginning of lockdown, Gibbard recently appeared on The Georgia EP, a benefit record featuring covers of TLC, R.E.M., and other prominent Georgian songwriters. Proceeds went directly to Fair Fight, an organization started by Stacy Abrams to combat voter suppression in states like Georgia and Texas.

Listen to the “Highwayman” cover above, around the 53-minute mark.

Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.