By no means am I a wine snob. But I’ll readily admit it: I typically give a side-eye to celebrity wines. Blame it on my cynical heart, which generally assumes most celebrity products are scams meant to capitalize on and profit off of broke and adoring fans. Or maybe it’s the fact that there are so many producers who make incredible bottles that are constantly overlooked.
The wine world is literary global. There are so many wineries that exist which some of us may never get to experience, simply because of location or the size of their operations. And with tariffs and importing kerfuffles, production yields varying from year to year, shelf competition, wildfires, climate change, and pandemic-impacted marketing budgets… new winemakers are up against it. Expanding a new winery’s reach can be an extraordinary challenge.
Then comes some famous person with a collab from a winery with millions of dollars to spend on trendy labels while leveraging a loyal fan base who will purchase just about anything they stamp their names on and it’s like, do we really need this? Shouldn’t we be investing in actual good wine from wineries backed by people with a true passion for fermented grape juice?
All that said, every so often I stumble across a wine attached to a celebrity that manages to blow me away, even though I’m biased against it. Such was the case when I got my hands on a bottle of 2019 19 Crimes Snoop Dogg Cali Red Blend. Uncle Snoop’s collaboration with the Australian winery marks the label’s first foray into California grapes, and it seems that they’ve done West Coast wine right. The red blend is not only tasty but it’s a quality-made wine that’s an absolute steal at its price point (like most of the wines in the 19 Crimes portfolio). Not to mention, it’s widely accessible in retail shops across the country in addition to being available for online delivery.
Now here’s a wine collab that makes sense. On one hand, you have 19 Crimes, a wine company inspired by British outlaws who were sentenced to rough it out under the grueling Australian sun in the late 1700s. Yet they managed to not only survive the foreign territory but thrive in it. Then you have Snoop Dogg, an award-winning rapper/entrepreneur/TV host who has made the most of his own second chances, after battling convictions and felony charges. With this blend of Petite Sirah and Zinfandel—the creme de la creme of grapes in Lodi—it’s like Snoop and 19 Crimes have emerged together as the underdogs of California wine.
It’s a duo you’d be crazy to wager against.
Tasting Notes:
This rich, purple-hued wine is rolling in the deep with black and blueberries. The dark fruit aromas are strong on the nose while the palate is immersed with flavors of candied cherries and a hint of raisin. This wine literally glides down your throat — it’s that smooth! And yet… it has a slightly smokey, fuzzy quality in the extended finish that will likely lead you to pour glass after glass just to wet your tongue again.
This is a dense wine that is equal parts supple and dry, and wholly delicious. You’ll be finished with this bottle before you know it.
Bottom Line:
The Dogg Father has traded in the gin and juice just to bless us with a red wine experience. And at such a budget-friendly price!
Dramatics aside, this is a quality wine that captures Snoop’s sincere persona. He’s the celebrity who simply wants us all to enjoy the things he enjoys. Seriously, have you seen this man roll a blunt (before he hired a professional roller, that is)? This is a guy who truly takes time to savor the things he’s passionate about. Yes, I know it’s a brand collab and a famous person is getting richer off it, but I swear you can taste that same love and attention to detail in every sip of the Cali Red.
Rico Nasty refuses to touch her French onion soup. We’ve met up at The Smith in New York City and while her boyfriend Malik and publicist Ariana have tucked into their meals with gusto, Rico seems pretty disappointed with the quality of her soup. So, she begins asking about the contents of the table’s other occupants’ plates. “What’s that?” she repeats for each of our meals, her curiosity only extended as far as each dish’s title — she won’t taste anyone else’s food.
But I’m struck by how her fascination with each person’s plate seems to mirror the voracious approach she takes with her music — especially so on her major-label debut album, Nightmare Vacation, which has been in the works for so long, her fans have become as hungry for it as Rico herself seemed watching everybody else eat. She seems engrossed in so many different genres and styles but never enough to commit to any one of them — even the ones she’s seemingly chosen for herself. While she’s been dubbed a pop-punk princess, a screamo rapper, and a “sugar trap” crooner — that one she coined herself on her breakout mixtape of the same name — she shrugs off such attempts to categorize her sound and outright rejects the idea that she should belong to any of them.
Rico’s outfits are usually an indicator of this defiant mishmashing of styles, one that’s earned her a reputation as a burgeoning fashion icon. Today, though, it’s raining, so a coat covers her semi-mod-ish look. Her hair, which can normally be seen styled in a rainbow of elaborate wigs or foot-long spikes that jut from her scalp like an anime hero, is pulled into a pair of relatively demure pigtails. But her makeup reflects a little bit of her rebellious, surrealist style, which could easily be the leftovers of a previous photoshoot or just the way she felt that day. It’s unsettling enough that I can’t stop staring at the faux scars gracing her cheeks but a far cry from some of the head-turning, cartoonish looks she often displays on her social media.
Paul L. Carter
Rico’s mad scientific musical method has the benefit of both singular existence and universal appeal — there’s something for everyone on her albums, but there’s nothing else like them on the market. She’s intrigued by experimentation, following whichever whim takes her fancy and capable of shifting lanes just as the listener thinks they have her figured out. As she told me over the phone a month before our in-person meeting, “I feel like I don’t fit in those things because I feel like a lot of the reasons why people give me all these, I guess you can call them homes, [is] like trying to find a home for what I do.”
“Obviously, we don’t know what [my genre] is now because it’s only been three years of rapping,” she continues. “It’s because they’re just unfamiliar with it, but 10 years down the line, it’ll be a trail of what this is. It could be punk, it could be a bunch of things. But I say I don’t resonate with those things, because rather than putting me in those things, I would rather people just watch and see what happens. Because I change a lot, so you never know what it could be. Just appreciate it for what it is.”
Which brings us to Nightmare Vacation, Rico’s official debut album. Take all the ingredients of her previous projects — the dreamy, syrupy trap, the spiked collar thrash, the playful party raps — and twist the knob to eleven. For fans of more upbeat, cruising-altitude hip-hop, there are tracks like “Don’t Like Me” with Gucci Mane and Don Toliver, “Back & Forth” with Aminé (a reunion of their 2018 collaboration “Sugar Parents” from Aminé’s OnePointFive mixtape), “Loser” with Trippie Redd, and solo outings “No Debate” and “Own It.” When you just need to “Let It Out,” she goes full, balls-to-the-wall hardcore on “Girls Scouts,” “OHFR,” and the remix to her fan-favorite Nasty single “Smack A Bitch” with fellow rule breakers PPCocaine, Rubi Rose, and Sukihana. And she more than holds her own in the raunchy femme-rap department with “Pussy Poppin,” sampling the same DJ Jimi track that gave City Girls and Cardi B their own “Twerk” anthem.
Rico tells me that while this eclecticism is intentional, it’s also a simple function of who she is — she has to be herself at all times. She’s gone through a punk phase, yes, but she also got really into the anime Chobits at one point, adopting the show’s cutesy aesthetic as her own. Even the reference throws most interviewers, highlighting how deeply she delves into her interests — which are broad-ranging and varied. That means stuffing each of her adolescent phases into one constantly-evolving package that can confuse people who insist on seeing her just one way because she doesn’t have the capacity to hide any aspect of herself for other peoples’ benefit. “Everybody can put up whatever persona that they want, but everybody’s human,” she reasons. “I just feel like everybody gives a fuck. I’m tired of everybody acting like they don’t give a fuck. If they didn’t give a fuck, then everybody wouldn’t be saying that they don’t give a fuck.”
Paul L. Carter
Rico Nasty has always been like this, refusing to fit in any bubble or box, standing out, but willing to throw herself wholeheartedly into being herself. In fact, it goes back to long before she was Rico Nasty. Born Maria Kelly in Largo, Maryland, Rico credits her Puerto Rican mother for always encouraging her to listen to her own drummer, despite what her peers may naysay. “I went to boarding school and my mom is dropping me off on Sunday to go to school,” she reminisces. “I had on a neon orange skirt with rainbow-striped socks. And they were knee-high socks and all the other kids had all regular clothes. And my mom looked at me and she asked, ‘Are you going to be okay?’ I said, literally, ‘I don’t care.’ And she was just like, ‘You don’t care that they’re going to look at you and probably say that not a cute outfit?’ I was like, ‘They don’t have to wear it.’” If she sees those same boo-birds from back in the day now, she says, “They’re never going to say anything, they’re just going to look at you.”
Citing anime, the scene culture, skate culture, and more as the influences on her one-of-a-kind style, she recounts the origins of her fearlessness as she adopted looks inspired by her favorite characters from anime. “Everything was cute,” she gushes. “I just wanted everything to be cute. It was like an obsession with kawaii. It was weird as shit. I think it was good though because before I hit that, I was seen and I had a fringe bang. It was really bad.” She also remembers going through a phase of having to fend off gatekeepers and rock snobs who challenged her nu-metal cred after wearing a Korn tour T-shirt throughout middle school.
Being a scene teen made her fond of rebellious figures like Lil Uzi Vert, from whom she also learned to tune out the peanut gallery. “They just always saying something about somebody that’s different, but they still listen to them,” she observes. “It’s just like a new flavor. If I go to a restaurant and they tell me it’s a new dish I never ate before, I’m going to ask questions. ‘What is in this? What’s in this? Where did you make it? How did you make it?’ I’ve never had it before, so I’m going to ask questions.”
“That’s how the audience is,” she continues. “They always ask questions. I feel like they’re never going to be satisfied because there’s no such thing as a perfect human being. So, there’s always going to be something they don’t like about you. If it’s not your music, it’s the way you dress. If it’s the way you dress, they don’t like the way you talk. If they don’t like the way you talk, then they don’t like the way you think. If they don’t like the way you think, they don’t like the way that you type on Twitter or the pictures you post. It’s always going to be something. So, if this is the lane you want to choose to be in, then you really need to have thick skin.”
She’s cultivated thick skin herself, although she’s now passed off social media duties to Malik after the exposure to so much nonstop needling pierced even her armor. But back then, music provided an outlet for her frustrations with her peers’ perception of her, resulting in Rico producing her first mixtape in tenth grade. Rico formally made her entry into the hip-hop world in 2016 with the mixtapes The Rico Story and Sugar Trap, which spawned the viral hit “iCarly” — yes, named for the Nickelodeon sitcom starring Miranda Cosgrove. The attention garnered by the SEO-gaming hit led to her collaborating with Lil Yachty on a pair of songs at the height of his own ascension, “Hey Arnold” and “Mamacita.” The latter appeared on the soundtrack of the eighth Fast And Furious installment, Fate Of The Furious, and further extended Rico’s reach.
Then, in 2017, she had her second major breakthrough with the mixtape Tales Of Tacobella, which she calls her favorite project. “I like Tales Of Tacobella, but only because, like, it was my first time going out to Cali,” she admits. “I’m in California, Hollywood dreaming. And the first song is ‘Once Upon A Time.’ Sometimes, living in my house and just living my life, whenever I hit that song, if I’m drunk, I will cry. Because this is all I really ever wanted to do — get rich. I kind of manifested everything in that song. I remember just thinking, ‘What do you want out of this shit?’ And I was like, ‘Well, once upon a time there lived a bad bitch, and all she ever wanted to do was get rich.’ I had never felt so optimistic in my life. Let me just say that. I felt like I could be on top of the world.”
Sugar Trap 2 followed, and it was a learning experience for Rico and her collaborators on the way to a major-label deal with Atlantic Records. She calls it the last, but not the least of her favorite projects, only because it was her first encounter with the tension between commerce and creativity. Up until that point, she’d done what came naturally, whether screaming her throat raw on the tracks that earned her the “punk” branding from outlets or singing along with the cotton-candy, whimsical tracks that formed the foundation of her “sugar trap” signature. This time, though, she received the first real challenge to her self-confident approach.
“There are so many songs on there that I’m like, ‘Why didn’t I punch in?’” she remembers ruefully. “‘Why didn’t I just fucking go back in and fix ‘Same Thing?’ And that song is probably the worst song I’ve ever recorded in my fucking life because I recorded it on a different beat. And then the label liked it. I wasn’t signed, but they were like looking at my shit and just had a close eye on what I was doing. So, they were like, ‘We really like this song, this song is fire!’ So I tried to buy the beat, couldn’t buy the beat, and just wound up going back and re-cutting the song on that beat. And it sounded fucking terrible. I was just like, ‘No, the label liked it, I’m going to keep it on here.’”
Her popularity exploded in 2018 with the track “Smack A Bitch,” rumored to be a shot at Dallas rapper Asian Doll, with whom she’d previously collaborated but later fell out. “Smack A Bitch” may be the quintessential track to introduce a newcomer to Rico Nasty; it’s jagged and raw, but relatable, swaggering between aggrieved and arrogant as Rico gives thanks that her myriad blessings allow her to dismiss her foe. It’s less about the rage than the relief, distilling the pufferfish essence of Rico’s rap persona into a 2-minute-and-20-second scream therapy session set to a punishingly serrated electric guitar riff that blasts through any anxiety-inducing thoughts by removing all thought entirely.
That energy carried over onto Rico’s debut mixtape with Atlantic, which coalesced the various styles she’d cultivated on her previous records into a confident amalgam of old-school influences, assertive, futuristic instincts, and punk-inspired irreverence. She doubled down on those impulses with its follow up, the aptly-titled Anger Management, produced entirely by her ace collaborative partner, Kenny Beats. She credits her sibling-esque relationship with Kenny for pushing her to new creative heights describing their dynamic in contrast to her easygoing correspondence with 100 Gecs producer Dylan Brady. “Because Dylan and I are both so weird and shit, we don’t criticize each other,” she elaborates. “We just work out like that and try to fix it. But I can be in a booth with Kenny and he’s like, ‘Nah, bruh, you can do this better.’ So we could go back and forth, low key arguing. Both of them are totally different, but I probably wouldn’t be who I am today if I didn’t have such amazing people in the studio letting me do what I want to do and then also giving me constructive criticism.”
Paul L. Carter
Rico’s last nightmare was about Nicki Minaj.
However, it wasn’t in the way that Nicki Minaj can usually be a new rapper’s worst nightmare. The notoriously outspoken Mrs. Petty has been known to sic her Barbz on unsuspecting offenders, leading to hours of noxious comments on social media and fan-fueled beef with even her most magnanimous collaborators. But Rico’s nightmare is of a more conventional, subliminal variety. “I was at the BET Awards and Nicki Minaj was up there talking, and I got up to do something and Nicki Minaj was like, ‘Don’t you stand while I’m speaking.’ It was the way she said it that woke me up out of my sleep. I swear to God, that was the craziest dream because I remember I woke up like, ‘What? Was that Nicki Minaj? Who was it?’ She had a British accent. She was like the lady from the Hunger Games.”
I wonder whether it has to do with letting down her fellow women in rap, whom she’s been intentional about working with on her past projects. On Nightmare Vacation, she makes it a point to extend her platform to the benefit of a trio of relative newcomers, who join her on the remix of “Smack A Bitch”: TikTok star PPCocaine, Kentuckian model turned gruff-voiced rap femme fatale Rubi Rose and former reality TV fixture Sukihana. Rico’s reasoning is simple; she puts her money where her mouth is. “When women talk about my music, they talk about it giving them strength, right?” she confirms. “They talk about it making them feel like a bad bitch. So I feel like obviously not every woman can relate to me because like you said, I’m different. But women can relate to Rubi Rose, women can relate to Suki, women can relate to PPCocaine.”
Paul L. Carter
“Every woman is different, and because of there being times where most of us are only used for our face or like an accessory or something, I say, ‘Fuck that.’ And I don’t care how many followers you have. I don’t care about your longevity. I care about the emotion that you bring to a song. I care about how when people put your music on, it gives them that same shit that my music gives them. I like that shit because it’s not hard rock and roll. It’s a different spectrum. It’s a different perspective on women. All of the girls are different in their own way. A real G is not ever going to try to insert themselves and do some shit that they can’t do. They would rather just let somebody — if they do it better, they going to do it better. And that’s how I feel about these girls. Instead of me getting on a song and trying to talk all nasty and stuff, that’s them.”
Of course, a therapist would tell you that the key to “interpreting” dreams isn’t in finding out what they mean but processing how they make you feel. For Rico, the main feeling she left her REM sleep with was one of anxiety. “I hate getting yelled at,” she explains. When I point out the irony in contrasting that fact with her rap persona, she comes up with what might be the perfect distillation of why she approached her music the way she does. “If somebody was to yell at me, I would yell so loud, they probably would never want to yell at me again.”
Which seems like the perfect segue to comment on how odd it is that our first time finally meeting in person is in New York, across the country from my usual stomping grounds and from where she actually has scheduled her photoshoot at the Uproxx offices. New York is a city whose citizens are known for their confrontational nature, which Rico says she’s well-suited to. “PG County is a rude place,” she chuckles. “It’s very rude. People don’t give a fuck how you feel. They don’t care. They have a point, too. Why would we? Who cares about us.” I ask what she likes most about New York: “The people,” she replies. “My fans from New York are the best. Oh, god. Please don’t hate me guys. My fans from the DMV, I love them. My fans from New York, they’ll fight, though. They fight and they dress nice. If that don’t say Rico Nasty, then I don’t know what in the fuck else would.”
Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Pretty much the only thing she hasn’t done yet this year is an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, but she crossed that one off her to-do list today. During the pandemic, the series has moved away from its usual venue of the NPR offices, so for her performance, Lipa found herself in a different, very orange space. The set was headlined by a funky and somewhat stripped-back performance of “Levitating,” for which she was joined by some background singers, a guitarist, a bass player, and a drum machine.
2020 XXL Freshman 24kGoldn is having a stellar year. The 20-year-old rapper from San Francisco has ruled the Hot 100 chart with his Iann Dior collaboration “Mood” for the past five weeks thanks to its status as a TikTok juggernaut, as well as a remix from Justin Bieber and J Balvin. But rather than rest on his laurels, Goldn has rolled out his next hopeful hit, this time collaborating with a big-name partner in the form of North Carolina rapper DaBaby on “Coco.”
The second single from 24kGoldn’s debut album El Dorado, “Coco” once again finds him in full-on relationship therapy mode as he wonders, “Oh my God, why is shawty tryna test me?” In this instance, he uses the metaphor of famous French fashion (and noted Nazi agent — look it up!) Coco Chanel to comment on his partner’s volatility. 24k’s Coco, however, is fickle, swinging back and forth between trying to lock him down and wanting to be a free spirit. “Can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong with ya,” he laments. “Checking your temperature, thermometer.”
At the moment, El Dorado has a 2021 release date, although the rapper told Variety he’s “definitely not in a rush.” It sounds like he wants to build up a rollout that will live up to his status as a chart-topping hitmaker, which can only bode well for his future — and XXL‘s predictive abilities.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE — Listen to me
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Big Mouth is back for another season this weekend and it is just as funny and foul and occasionally sweet as ever. This should not be a huge surprise because Big Mouth is always funny and foul and occasionally sweet. All your favorites are back, and some new ones show up to join the fun. Seth Rogen pops up early on to show his cartoon testicles to you. Paul Giamatti appears as a piece of crap, and yes, I mean that literally, Paul Giamatti voices an animated chunk of feces. Big Mouth remains Big Mouth, in all the important ways.
And guess what: I don’t actually have any bad news. Just more good news. At one point in this season, Maya Rudolph, in character as Connie the Hormone Monstress, says Alec Baldwin’s name, which is not in itself newsworthy, but what makes it newsworthy is the pronunciation she throws on it. The closest I can get in text form is “Alec Bwalt-twin,” with an extra W and a big extra oomph on the T that does not appear anywhere in his name. It’s the best. Just a delight.
What better than Maya Rudolph in Big Mouth? I mean that rhetorically, yes, of course, but also literally. Name me ten things better. Any things. I’ll give you pizza and maybe “sitting outside on a 75-degree day with a big glass of iced tea,” but the list gets dicey after that, real quick. She’s just so good, all the time, delivering a voiceover performance for the ages. It’s great because she goes so huge with everything and it still fits perfectly because of the context. She’s a hormone monstress. She has no filter, no voice in her head telling her to dial it back. On a show filled with great voice work — I would love to see live-action footage of everyone recording their lines in the booth, especially John Mulaney, because he has such a sweet little boy face and his character is a perverted little creep who is practically glowing from hormones ravaging his body — she laps the field. I mean, who can forget this?
Netflix
It’s the extra syllables she tosses into the stew that makes it. “Bawabbuh bay-eth.” It’s so sultry and luxurious. It almost sounds the way taking a nice hot bubble bath feels. And that’s far from her only notable pronunciation. One of my personal favorites was when Jessie was struggling and rebelling and Connie gassed her up about shoplifting from the pharmacy and turned that last simple word into something entirely different. “Phwaaaarmacy.” It even made me want to steal something from a pharmacy and I’m a reasonably well-adjusted adult who has not shoplifted in decades, as far as the police know.
Rudolph won an Emmy for the role this year, in the recently created category of Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. (The original Outstanding Voice-Over Performance category was split after 2013 so narrators and characters could be honored separately.) This was good for a few reasons. Three big ones, mainly. The first is that she deserved it, obviously, and it’s good when deserving people win stuff. The second is that the award had gone to a cast member from either Family Guy or The Simpsons every year since the new category was created (Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, Seth MacFarlane, Seth MacFarlane, Alex Borstein, Seth MacFarlane), and it’s nice that the voters started watching a new show. The third is that she hadn’t even been nominated before 2020 despite dropping the aforementioned bubble baths and pharmacies and the whole thing had me on the verge of throwing a tantrum in the street. Its good. The Emmys are silly and I do not care much about them, in general, but if we’re going to do them every year (and it sure looks like we are), we should at least try to get it right. Giving Maya Rudolph an Emmy for voicing this character counts as getting it right.
So take some time this weekend and watch a few Big Mouths and appreciate what Maya Rudolph is doing with it. Maybe watch with your headphones in, though. Even if you’re by yourself. Big Mouth remains a lot in only the best ways.
ITEM NUMBER TWO — Okay, fine, let’s talk about the thing
Warner Bros.
I’m mad. Not necessarily about the news I’m about to share, although that’s not super ideal, either. No, I’m mad because this section was originally going to be about Henry Winkler joining TikTok and posting a video of himself dancing like a loon, which kills me for about 10 different reasons. Henry Winkler is the best. I was hyped to discuss it. But then Warner Bros. had to go and set the entire movie industry on fire yesterday afternoon and I can’t really just ignore it. Ugh. Fine. Here’s the important chunk of the press release.
Today, the Warner Bros. Pictures Group announced that it has committed to releasing its 2021 film slate via a unique, consumer-focused distribution model in which Warner Bros. will continue to exhibit the films theatrically worldwide, while adding an exclusive one month access period on the HBO Max streaming platform in the U.S. concurrent with the film’s domestic release. The hybrid model was created as a strategic response to the impact of the ongoing global pandemic, particularly in the U.S. Following the one month HBO Max access period domestically, each film will leave the platform and continue theatrically in the U.S. and international territories, with all customary distribution windows applying to the title.
Warner Bros. Pictures Group’s 2021 expected release slate currently includes The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, Tom & Jerry, Godzilla vs. Kong, Mortal Kombat, Those Who Wish Me Dead, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, In The Heights, Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Suicide Squad, Reminiscence, Malignant, Dune, The Many Saints of Newark, King Richard, Cry Macho and Matrix 4.
There are a few things happening here, with varying degrees of importance. The biggie is what this means for movie theaters going forward, because movie theaters were already struggling and Warner Bros. basically giving these movies away to anyone with an HBO subscription ain’t gonna help that. (Remember when Disney charged Disney+ subscribers like $30 extra to watch one kind of mediocre Mulan movie? I do!) Some big theater chains might not make it through the next 6-12 months, especially if this proves to be the first domino to fall of many: F9 on Peacock, No Time to Die somewhere else, and all the way down, blockbuster after blockbuster streamed directly into our living rooms. It’s sad and exciting and weird and about four other things at once. I miss movie theaters tremendously. I can’t wait to see a movie in one again someday. I don’t think this will be the end of the entire industry, but I do wonder how much different it will look this time next year. My gut says it’ll be more of a luxury experience, with food and drink and a whole atmosphere about it, a big special Night Out feel. But I don’t know. No one does.
I also respect that Warner Bros. has their hands tied a bit. They can’t really be expected to sit on a whole slate of films just waiting for a green light that might not come for over half a year. And they have this big fancy new streaming service that they want to roundup new subscribers for, one that still has to negotiate deals with the big providers like Amazon and Roku. To whatever degree this stinks (I do not especially want to watch the fourth Matrix for the first time on a screen small enough to fit in my living room, which is another bummer), I can at least rationalize it. A lot of things are going to look really different when we come out of this, not just the movie-viewing experience, and it’s probably good if we all start coming to terms with that sooner rather than later, just so the shock doesn’t send us all on a roller coaster ride of emotions when it’s safe to go do things again.
Uggghhhh. See what I mean? What a downer that became. I regret doing any of it. I should have just stuck to my guns and posted the TikTok of Henry Winkler dancing. Here it is. Go watch that and chill out. There’s no point in worrying about Monday stuff on a Friday, and “will I ever be able to see a movie in a theater again should I survive the global pandemic?” is some extremely Monday stuff. Forget I said anything.
ITEM NUMBER THREE — Hmm… yes, this counts
DISNEY+
Here’s the thing: I am bad at Star Wars. Just terrible at it. I am not a big sci-fi guy and I’m not even really a big “space” guy, in general, unless you count watching The Martian 600 times on basic cable and finding it 11 kinds of funny that the Fast & Furious franchise is allegedly headed there in the very near future. It’s just not my thing, which is fine, as I’m sure I like lots of things you don’t. It does make it awkward when a show like The Mandalorian comes along, though, especially when it starts catering directly to me. Look at what it’s done in the last few weeks alone. We’ve had a Timothy Olyphant sighting (Raylan!), a Titus Welliver sighting (Bosch!), and a mix-up where some dude in jeans was just hanging around in the background of a shot. I love all those things.
And then last week the show really went and did it, dropping a slightly modified “we’re not so different” scene right in the middle of a climactic battle. I love when that happens. It’s one of my favorite things. I don’t know why I like it so much. But I do. I talk about it all the time. I talk about it so much that now my Twitter mentions light up any time it happens in a show or a movie, because so many people know how much I love it. This is not a complaint. Far from it. I hope it never stops. Let me put it this way: a reasonable argument can be made that the only reason I’m still watching Westworld — a confusing show I barely like — is because it has at least one “not so different” scene every year, and that makes me happy.
So between that and the thing where this is the actual, adorable, borderline-manipulative-but-whatever subtitle they use when Baby Yoda makes his little sounds…
D
… the show has won me over despite how terrible I am at Star Wars. I still think they should have made Baby Yoda’s name, like, Randy Yoda instead of Grogu, but that’s an issue for another column. Which I almost wrote this week. I was not lying about being bad at Star Wars.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Nathan Fielder is a maniac
How to With John Wilson was a good show. I think it would be good to get that out of the way first. I did not expect to be moved close to tears while watching an episode about scaffolding, or to be moved to actual tears while watching an episode about making risotto. And yet, there I was, feeling things, often like 90 seconds after laughing very hard at something very dumb. A real ride, that show. Highly recommended.
If you watched it too and found yourself thinking “hmm, this feels kind of like a Nathan Fielder production,” there was a good reason for that: it was a Nathan Fielder production. Like, he was an actual producer on it. Which he explains in this video. Briefly. Before everything takes a hard and progressively dark turn. I did not see where this was heading until it was most of the way there, and then I was kind of laughing and cringing and remembering that Nathan Fielder is a genius. He’s a maniac, for sure, and I’m a little terrified of him and the way his brain works, but he’s also a genius. I guess I’m trying to make two points here:
How to With John Wilson was an incredible slice of television and not entirely like anything I’ve ever seen
It is good to have Nathan Fielder making television and weirdo disturbing YouTube videos
Yeah, that about sums it up.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Being famous seems awful
Getty Image
It is the position of this column that the ideal situation in life is being rich and anonymous. It’s the best of both worlds. All the money you could ever want and none of the hassle. My colleague Josh Kurp pointed out that the bassist for U2 is worth like $300 million and I wouldn’t know who he was if he walked into my kitchen and introduced himself by name. That’s a nice gig. After Rich But Not Famous, I suppose we go Rich And Famous, then Not Rich Or Famous, then Famous But Not Rich, but things start getting dicey there really fast. Being famous does not seem very fun.
Take, for example, Millie Bobby Brown, star of Stranger Things and Enola Holmes, who recently deleted her TikTok and posted a tearful Instagram story after a fan harangued her for a video while she was out minding her own business. We pick up the story after she had already told the fan once that she did not want to be filmed in that moment.
But the fan wouldn’t leave her alone. Millie continued her story, saying, “I was paying and she walked past me and began to video me again. And I said, ‘I’m a human being. Like, what more can I ask from you?’”
She began crying, telling fans through tears, “She said ‘So I can’t take a video of a human being?’ And I said, ‘No, not when I said no.’ It just makes me upset when people try to push the boundary, and I just wish people were more respectful.”
The actress then stood up for herself and demanded to be treated better. “I’m still trying to navigate this all and it’s still overwhelming… Where are my rights to say no?” Millie questioned.
This stinks! Leave people alone. At most, if you see a famous person you like out in public, and they aren’t eating dinner or trying to wrangle their children or are otherwise engaged in the type of activity you would not like to be bothered by some goofball during, maybe say like “Hey, sorry to bother you but your work means a lot to me” and then TURN AROUND AND LEAVE. Just walk away! It’ll be fine! You don’t need a picture or a video to document that you met someone, unless they offer or say yes if you ask very nicely. Sheesh. Don’t be a weirdo. Try not to be a weirdo. Try to be cool, for once. Come on.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Anne Marie:
I’m heeding your call for more hidden TV gems, though this one would probably require getting a hold of a Season 1 DVD. (It’s not on YouTube or AppleTV, last I checked.) Lo, the Ad-Rock ep of Edward Woodward’s The Equalizer is a true 1985 delight to behold.
Some highlights:
1. 19-year-old Ad Rock’s unapologetic Noo Yawk accent, though his parents are played by Christine Baranski and fricking Jim Dale, MBE.
2. Christine Baranski! Jim “All The Harry Potter Books” Dale! Alex Winter! Bob “The Last Thing That Went Through His Head” Gunton! Edward Woodward, OBE!
3. One of Ad Rock’s lines to Edward Woodward, OBE is “You just want to get next to Moms, that’s where it’s at.”
4. The ep is called “Mama’s Boy.” (Or as I like to think of it, Moms’s Boy.)
But the real hoot is Eugene Benton, the allegedly “dangerous drug dealer” who has Ad-Rock under his sway and prompts Christine Baranski to desperately seek some quality equalizing. Hahahahahahaha. Eugene would blow away if you pulled a Kleenex from a tissue box near him. He wears super short NBA throwback ‘80s shorts. He’s an Ivy League grad. He practices some type of martial arts involving swords, only the swords are accessories for awkward close-talking and it’s really just an excuse to wear half-open robes. His name is *Eugene*. He preens, he flashes his eyes, his idea of a threat is “… or I might have to change my orientation towards you.”
This last line is highly relevant, because I truly believe that whoever wrote the script* wanted to see how much gay subtext they could sneak onto a mid-eighties primetime network show. The piece de resistance is, of course, the alleyway fight scene; the dialogue could double as ADR for softcore porn. I defy you to watch it, with its “Harder! Harder!” and primal grunting, and tell me I’m wrong. Also, Mark Soper is perfect in the role, but I can’t help envisioning a Deadfall-era Nic Cage in it instead.
This is just a fantastic email. I know I say that about every email but this time I mean it. (I mean it the other times, too.) Look at everything we have here: Ad-Rock from Beastie Boys appearing in a network procedural just before breaking big as a rapper, Christine Baranski, swords, I mean, come on. The best part is that I found this episode on NBC’s website and watched it in chunks over the last week and can confirm everything Anne Marie said. Not that I assumed she was lying. It’s just… there’s a lot going on here.
Please consider this your reminder that the Beastie Boys Story documentary is still on Apple TV and is still great. As is this recent essay by comedian Josh Gondelman about listening to Paul’s Boutique a lot here in 2020. As is the song “Shadrach,” which I will now embed, driving home, once again, the fact that this was a very good email.
Police in California responded to a report of a suspected burglary in progress and arrived to find the cause of the ruckus actually was caused by about a dozen brawling raccoons.
Okay, first of all, I love it. The are few things in this world better than sentences that take a dramatic swerve at the end and few swerves are more dramatic than “the ruckus was actually caused by about a dozen brawling raccoons.”
The Richmond Police Department said two officers responded to the City Corporation Yard after an employee called authorities to report a banging on the administration office door that sounded like a burglar attempting to break in.
I’m sorry. I can’t focus yet. It’s going to take me at least one more paragraph to get past “about a dozen brawling raccoons.” Take a second and try to get a visual on that. It’s harder than you think. What does a dozen brawling raccoons even look like? I’ve been cranking away on it for days and the best I have is a cloud of dust and claws and screeching little beasts tumbling around an alley with one of them up on top of a trash can diving back into the fray. I think I’m close.
“Although mentally prepared to take action for an in-progress felony, the crime-fighting duo were surprised to find approximately one dozen raccoons in a physical altercation,” police said in a Facebook post. “When challenged, all but one fled westbound.”
Big shoutout to the one that stayed to take the fall for this. Very honorable. I’m proud of him.
The beginning of every NBA season leaves everyone fantasizing about their favorite players improving, winning a championship or sometimes even changing teams. Late at night on Thursday, reigning NBA Finals MVP LeBron James joined in on that dreaming by retweeting a viral tweet asking who in the league would take a “massive leap” this upcoming season.
In his first year adjusting to the championship pedigree of the Lakers’ roster, Kuzma improved as a three-point shooter over the previous season and his advanced defensive statistics, such as Defensive Player Impact Plus-Minus, trended upward as well.
The biggest thing to watch for when it comes to Kuzma is how he continues to learn how to play off of James and Anthony Davis. Now that starting wing Danny Green is gone from the Lakers, Kuzma is the only player aside from James who has the size on the wing to defend bigger play-makers like Kawhi Leonard or Luka Doncic in the Western Conference.
There is still a solid chance Kuzma emerges as a 3-and-D option at forward for the Lakers over the next few years, and as he works toward an extension in Los Angeles, that’s what this team needs from him.
QUESTION: Is expensive rum (climbing into the hundreds of dollars) really that much better than mid-shelf expressions?
ANSWER: Yes and no.
Rum, like most other booze, gets better with age. That being said, rum doesn’t demand decades spent in the barrel to reach well-aged, nuanced heights — thereby making it all-around more affordable. Yes, there are some very expensive rums out there, but those are typically priced (at least in part) for their exclusivity, packaging, and backstory.
For this exercise, I’m blindly tasting eight dark rums. Four of the expressions are in the $20 to $40 range, which is very affordable. The other four expressions range from $65 to $200, a little more pricey (though not stratospheric). Since this is a blind tasting, I’m going to guess whether these rums are expensive or not, solely on taste.
I have to admit first off, there are some mile-markers in dark rum that usually give it away. Spicy tobacco often denotes long age while butterscotch reveals the opposite. Plus, Caribbean rums have a very distinct feel to them. Bacardi, for instance, smells like Bacardi. Jamaican rums often have a very particular funk to them or “hogo.” One of the rums I tried was very sweet, which gave the brand away immediately. However, I still called it wrong when it came to price. In fact, I actually called three rums incorrectly — which I’m telling myself is more a testament to dark rum’s depth and affordability than my own failings.
This is smooth, smooth, smooth. There’s a bourbon edge that leads towards a Cognac fruitiness. There’s a clear spicy tobacco vibe with hints of vanilla and Christmas cake. Then you get an almost salted caramel counterpoint on the long and warming end.
Botton Line:
This is delicious. It’s also clearly old and expensive. You can drink this stuff neat. It’s so velvety, I don’t even think it needs water.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Peaches and pears meet vanilla pudding and brown sugar in butter. There’s a spicy edge that’s a little grassy and tobacco-forward. I think there’s a hint of banana on the end that mixes with the vanilla pudding to give a banana cream pie feel to this sip.
The end is long, warming, and pure silk.
Botton Line:
This is 100 percent on par with the last dram. It has to be expensive. Again, this is a killer served neat, though I’m sure a rock or water would open up a lot more lurking below the surface.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Vanilla, molasses, butterscotch, heat, spice — this is Black Seal. There’s even an old plastic Christmas tree sense to this which, inexplicably, works.
Botton Line:
This is cheap rum that tastes perfectly good, but it’s clearly a mixer. Now, where’s that ginger beer?
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This is a Christmas cake teeming with dried and candied fruits, spices, molasses, and nuts in a glass. It’s almost unbelievably soft and light while packing in serious notes of dark chocolate and orange oils next to all that Christmas cake depth and tobacco-y spice.
Botton Line:
This has to be expensive. Final answer. It’s so, so easy to drink yet so full of dialed flavors.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This is interesting. There’s that fruit/nut/spice matrix as with the last dram. But the sweetness is edging towards butterscotch for me. Still, it’s grassy and has hints of banana, pineapple, and vanilla with a svelte mouthfeel.
Botton Line:
I’m going with this as expensive and well-aged, perhaps blended with something younger to add that little bit of butterscotch-leaning-towards-toffee.
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Okay. This is Bacardi. It’s spicy, sweet, and smells like, well, Bacardi. It’s light and a little thin but still carries a nice depth of vanilla, oak, caramel, and spice.
Botton Line:
This is a great mixer but definitely cheap.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Just from the look, I know this is Don Papa. It’s so sweet, fully in a butterscotch way. There’s a bit of dried fruit, nuts, and spice somewhere under all that sweet but it’s hard to find.
Botton Line:
Don Papa has its fans. But, wow, it’s sweet. Because of that, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether there are additives. Regardless, it’s squarely in the “affordable” camp.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
There’s that Jamaican funk. This sip has a nice candied fruitiness next to nuts and a bit of ginger spice. There’s a nice grassiness too, next to subtle whispers of vanilla and oak.
Botton Line:
This is light and easy but it’s definitely not expensive rum.
Bermuda’s Goslings is a classic blendery. This expression is a marrying of single barrels of rum that were aged seven to 21 years in ex-bourbon barrels. The juice is then finished for two years in Bermuda in new white American oak.
This is Bacardi’s high-end expression that’s crazy cheap. The rum is aged for ten long years in lightly charred oak before it’s charcoal filtered and brought down to proof, creating an ultra-refined expression.
This rum is a blend of Caribbean rums that were aged for varying years in ex-bourbon barrels. The blend is specifically designed to be mixed but can work as a sipper. Really though, this is known as the base ingredient in a Dark ‘n Stormy and that’s really the best use for it.
This rum is made all in-house from the growing of the sugar cane to the special yeast used to ferment the juice. This expression is a blend of at least 21-year-old rums that each have the best textures and flavors in the barrel.
The Venezuelan rum is a blend of rums aged from four to 35 years in former Spanish sherry and brandy barrels. Those key barrels are hand-selected for their depth and then married into this masterful rum.
This is Bacardi’s new entry point aged rum. The juice is blended with a minimum of four-year-old rums with a distinct purpose for working as a mixer in the Tiki revolution (and Cuba Librés).
This Filipino rum is made from locally grown sugar cane and then cut with a bit of molasses, making it a very dark (almost black) rum. The rum is then aged for ten years in ex-bourbon casks before cutting down to proof.
I knew the brand, but assumed it was their entry-level expression.
This entry-point rum from Appleton Estate blends 15 different rums that were barreled in a variety of methods and aged for around four years. The blend is designed to be a mixer and a sipper that won’t break the bank while introducing the drinker to that signature Jamaican funk.
Part III — Final Thoughts
Zach Johnston
That Don Papa really threw me. As for the Santa Teresa and Bacardi 10, what can I say? It’s really f*cking delicious rum that’s very affordable.
If I had to rank these by which ones I want to drink again, it’d go something like this:
8. Don Papa 10 7. Black Seal 6. Bacardi 4 5. Appleton Signature 4. Santa Teresa 3. Appleton 21 2. Bacardi 10 1. Papa Seal
That Papa Seal is just so. damn. good. I’m still thinking about it, hours later. The price is high but I really don’t care. It’s that type of spirit. That being said, the Bacardi 10 is pretty much a tie for me, especially given the amazingly accessible price point.
If you need a bottle to trot out for guests (when guests are a thing again), that’s the pick.
In February, Frank Ocean started selling a vinyl record that featured an unnamed new song. In November 2019, Ocean announced the release of a 7-inch vinyl of a song called “Little Demon,” but canceled it when the new song was announced. Now, nearly a year after the newer release first went on sale (and over a year after this whole saga started), it too has been canceled.
Pitchfork reports that an email sent to people who purchased the vinyl notified them of the cancellation. According to a post in the r/frankocean subreddit, the email reads:
“Due to the events of this year, Frank will no longer be releasing the song that you purchased on vinyl.
We will be refunding your purchase of this item and any additional items in your order will begin shipping next week.
If you have had a change of address since you originally made the purchase please email [email protected] this week with your order number and new address.
We are grateful for your understanding and are wishing you love, positivity and health.
Best regards,
The blonded team.”
Fans in the Reddit thread have expressed their frustration at the news. One attested, “The delay and lack of communication is unacceptable.” Others criticized Ocean’s general release practices, with multiple users saying they have yet to receive 7-inch vinyls of “In My Room” despite ordering them in late 2019.
Although no specific reason was given for the cancellation, its worth noting that Ocean has faced some tough times in 2020. Aside from the pandemic, he also had to deal with the death of his brother this summer.
The 11th and final season of Shameless premieres this Sunday, meaning there are only 12 more opportunities for Emmy Rossum to return. Her character, Fiona, has been absent since leaving the Showtime series in season nine. In a normal world, Rossum making a cameo would have been difficult, but there is nothing “normal” about 2020.
Might she be back?
“Emmy is doing Angelyne, a show for Peacock, and they had to shut down in the middle of it and they’re not sure when they’re going to go back. She and I have talked, and I think she would like to come back for a brief something,” showrunner John Wells told Entertainment Weekly. “Whether or not that will be possible given what our shooting schedule is and what her shooting schedule is and where she’s going to be in the country, I have no idea. Again, not trying to be clever about it or anything. It will be based on circumstances when we’re ready to shoot, whether or not she’d be able to. But would love her to, I think she would like to, not sure it will be possible.”
The thing is, it’s not as easy as Rossum dropping by the set if she has a free day. There are COVID-restrictions and social distance guidelines to consider (the final season will tackle the pandemic). But if she can swing it, a “brief something” is better than nothing.
CNBC hosts Rick Santelli and Andrew Ross Sorkin went at it on Friday morning in a downright shouting match over COVID restrictions. Santelli, who’s known for his infamous 2009 rant that helped launch the Tea Party movement, kicked things off by launching into a fiery screed about how it’s not fair that “big box” retailers can be open, but restaurants are being closed as coronavirus cases continue to surge. Santelli was adamant that it makes no sense why parking lots are allowed to be jam-packed with shoppers, but dine-in seating has to be restricted.
“You can’t tell me that shutting down, which is the easiest answer, is the only answer,” Santelli argued. However, when Sorkin tried to explain that there is a very significant issue between the two (namely that shoppers are masked and largely silent while people eating in restaurants are not for extended lengths of time while also having extended conversations with dining companions), he was repeatedly interrupted, and the situation only devolved from there as Santelli refused to believe the science that packing restaurants is dangerous. Via The Hill:
“Well you don’t have to believe it, but you’re doing a disservice to the viewer,” Sorkin replied, before Santelli said, “You’re doing a disservice to the viewer. You are. You are.”
“I’m sorry, I would like to keep our viewers as healthy as humanly possible. The idea of packing people in restaurants,” Sorkin said before Santelli talked over him: “I think our viewers are smart enough to make part of those decisions on their own.”
CNBC’s Steve Liesman then asked: “How’s that working out for you Rick, look at the numbers.”
This incident is the first time that Santelli has run afoul with his thoughts on the pandemic. He was forced to apologize back in March after suggesting that it’d be “better off” if everyone got the virus to help preserve the economy. “It was just a stupid thing to say,” Santelli said during his show. “It is not appropriate in this instance, and we are resilient, both in the United States and in the globe, and that resilience will get us through. The idea of something so absurd, I just apologize, and I apologize to everyone on this segment and all my peers at CNBC.”
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