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Cooking Solo This 4th Of July? A Texas Barbecue Expert Offers Advice

Plain and simple, Derrick Walker is a man who followed his passion. He’s spent his lifetime studying and mastering the art of the pit smoker. That depth of experience is precisely why we reached out to the barbecue legend to talk turkey — and brisket and ribs and all things barbecue — to help us feel prepared for our own smoky (socially-distanced!) summer cookouts.

In the early 2000s, Walker took his lifelong love of pit smoking from amateur to pro levels when he bought a small smoker-trailer and started doing pop-ups around Fort Worth, Texas. 16 years later, he transitioned to a food truck that quickly led to his own brick and mortar establishment in Fort Worth, the beloved Smoke-a-holics BBQ. If you’ve never been, let us paint the picture: this is one of those true Texas joints that are so loved by locals and out-of-towners alike that there’s almost always a stream of people waiting down the block. One of those spots where the line itself becomes a scene.

We got a chance to speak with Walker this week while he was pulling ribs from the smoker and wrapping them for their rest — a crucial step in all barbecue. Even while working, he took the time to lay down some serious knowledge about how we can improve our own backyard barbecues in a time when cooking for yourself is more commonplace than ever. Unless you happen to be in the Fort Worth area, then you really need to hit up Smoke-a-holics ASAP.

Let’s jump right in. What was the impetus to make your life about barbecue?

So it was my grandad who introduced me to barbecue. But that was a while back when I was a kid, like 12- or 13-years-old. He used to have a pull-behind smoker. That was the first one that I had ever seen like that. He was the one who taught me how to start a fire, manage a fire, and the ins and outs of cooking meat. But it wasn’t until I got into my early twenties that I really started to take it seriously.

Around 2003, I purchased my first trailer smoker and we started doing events at different venues and pop-ups around the city. By 2019, we got a food truck, ran it for a year, and then ended up here at our brick and mortar.

That’s awesome. It’s really been a life-long journey.

It has.

You have a proper family business. Your wife, daughter, and dad work with you. And your wife still works at a salon too?

Man, my wife is a superwoman. I don’t know how she does it. She gets up in the morning and goes to the salon and she’ll see two to three clients. And then she’ll be here between, say, 8:00 and 10:30 in the morning to make dessert. She’ll stay here and do everything from the cash register to getting orders out, to prep, to running errands, and then she’ll go back to the salon when we close and do two, three more clients. I don’t know how she does it.

Wow, that is extraordinary, man. So, obviously the last three months have been rough on a lot of the service industry. How have you guys been fairing in Fort Worth?

Actually, our business got stronger. We were already a carry-out business, to begin with. So, it didn’t really affect us much except for the first couple of months when we couldn’t let anybody in the building.

What was your workaround for that?

We opened our side door and we would just serve orders out of that door. And people stood in line all the way down the sidewalk. It didn’t stop anything. After that, we were able to let them back in. I would let them in six at a time. In the last two to three weeks, we’ve even doubled that. We got a line all the way down the sidewalk every day.

That’s great to hear. So let’s dive into some tips. Let’s start with sides. If you only were going to cook two sides for a backyard barbecue, which two sides would you cook?

Well, if I could only choose two then I’d have to go classic and it would be baked beans and potato salad.

How do you do your baked beans?

Well, here we add red and green bell pepper. We add garlic, ground beef, bacon. Then you got your white beans and your ketchup and your brown sugar. That’s your classic baked beans. But instead of putting them in the oven, we put them on our pits. So, they’re actually smoked.

So it’s low and slow and lots of smoke.

Yes, and lots of brown sugar and goodness.

Nice. What’s the secret to a good potato salad? Because I don’t know about you, man, but sometimes you get a potato salad and you’re like, “Eh.” And other times you get a potato salad, you’re like, “Oh wow, this is life-changing.”

I am an advocate of sweet and salty to balance that seasoning up. Also, I’m not one for the chunky potato salad. So if you ever come here, ours is like a rustic mash. It has little lumps, but it’s more so mashed. And at first, we got a lot of people who looked at it and were like, “Wow, I don’t know about that, my man.” Now, we have people that come here just to order our potato salad!

It’s the right amount of sweet. It’s a little salty. There’s a tang and a little bit of crunch.

How do you get that “tang”? Miracle Whip, mayo, or vinegar?

No. No vinegar at all. I’m not going to say mayo — it’s a family secret — but it’s, let’s say, sandwich spread-based with mustard. So our potato salad is yellow.

So then let’s look at the main event at a barbecue. Brisket and ribs are the mainstays, but smoked turkey is really big in Texas barbecue. And turkey is very finicky, man. How can we help people smoke some turkey and not screw it up?

Avoid high heat. You don’t want to grill it, especially with ribs. I’d say low and slow. Don’t overcook it, that’s the main thing. Just like any poultry, it’s easy to overcook. And, oh man, have fun with it. I think a lot of times when it comes to food, people are way too technical.

What temps are we talking with low and slow?

So, low and slow, you got 225 degrees, and not for too long. Definitely, if you got yourself a thermometer, take the temperature of your turkey breast. You don’t want to cook it after it hits 160 degrees. I know poultry is supposed to cook to 165, but if you wrap the turkey breast and rest it on your counter, you have something that’s called carry-over cooking. If you cook it to 155 or 160 degrees, it’s going to hit 165 when it’s wrapped and resting. So if you cook it to 165 and then pull it and rest it, you going to eat it at 175 and you’re going to end up with a dry product.

So theoretically, you could have brisket and a turkey breast on the same rack in the same smoker.

Mm-hmm.

Sticking with fighting dryness, how often should you be spritzing your meat?

Well, in Texas, and I’m sure anywhere in barbecue, there’s a saying, “If you’re looking at it, it ain’t cooking.” So you don’t want to consistently be in the cooker. But what I tell everybody is, whenever you have temperature drop, that’s your opportunity to open the door. So if it’s time to add some fuel, that’s the opportunity to spritz the meat.

What’s a good spritz mix to have?

It’s really subjective. I caught a barbecue this past weekend with a truck from another local barbecue joint, and they were using 50/50 water to apple cider vinegar. I even seen people use Worcestershire and water or just use water. There are all kinds of spritzers, man.

With my temp, I prefer a 50/50 apple juice to apple cider vinegar.

What is the secret to getting that peppery bark on a brisket?

The first secret is pepper. You have to be delivering with the pepper in order to get that bark. The second thing is time. It just takes time, man. You got a lot of people who want to try to cook a brisket in five or six hours. You can do it. You can eat a brisket done in five to six hours. But, you will not have that bark. You will not have the depth of flavor that you’re looking for. 12 to 14 hours with a good base of pepper and kosher salt will get that bark that you’re looking for.

What’s the method for cooking ribs in Fort Worth?

I dry rub the ribs the evening before. After trimming the tips, we apply the dry rub that we make here in-house. And then they go on the pit the next morning. They really need to sit overnight in that dry rub. I usually put the ribs on about six in the morning and they’ll come off the pit here at about 10:40 and then rest for about 30 minutes. In fact, I’m wrapping ribs right now as we’re talking, man.

Can I ask your dry rub mix?

You can ask. I’m not going to tell you.

Fair, fair! One last question: What’s the one dessert that you would serve at a backyard barbecue?

Man, especially in the summertime right now, I’d have to go with peach cobbler.

Oh, nice.

We have a dessert here that we call “Peach Thang.” It’s kind of a cross between a peach cobbler and a peach cake. The crust is almost like a dough. It’s crispy on the top, but it’s really, really soft in the middle. And then the peaches, man, are just sweet and cinnamony and syrupy and it’s crazy. We sell a lot of them. We sell that the most and we only do it on Wednesday and Saturday.

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‘Back To The Future’ At 35: Looking Back On The Movie That Made America Great Again

The View From 1985A

Back To The Future was originally released 35 years ago, on July 3rd, 1985, meaning we’re now further removed from it than 1985 was from 1955. I had a professor in college who would talk about how Back To The Future was the perfect distillation of Reaganism.

Just like Ronald Reagan was going to fix America by acting like a man, tossing out Jimmy Carter’s wussy sweaters and instructing the band to start playing “Hail To The Chief” again (Carter had discontinued it), Marty McFly travels back in time, teaches his own father to start acting like “a man,” and his reward, just like what Reagan promised, was entirely materialistic. He has a new truck, his parents can afford vacations now, and Biff Tannen now works for George McFly, rather than the other way around. Big malls and shiny guitars, the American Dream!

(I always thought it was a little funny that future George McFly decided to keep Biff, the guy who famously tried to rape his wife in high school, around the house as a handy man. “That Biff… what a character!”)

Back To The Future was both a reflection and a riff on America’s collective desire to return to an imagined halcyon age — specifically the fifties, before everyone started to fight about everything (or so a sheltered, suburban white person, or the average Reagan voter, might have imagined it). This desire manifested in electing Ronald Reagan, the cheesy fifties movie star, famous for snitching on “commies” and arresting student radicals, the president of the country. This was commented upon directly in the movie.

DOC: Who’s the president in 1985?

MARTY: Ronald Reagan.

DOC: The actor?! Then who’s the vice president, Jerry Lewis?

Reagan naturally loved the movie, supposedly laughing so hard at this scene that they had to rewind it. Reagan even quoted the movie in his 1986 State of the Union address. (“As they said in the film Back to the Future, ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.’”)

Even as it joked about Reagan, you could extend the Back To The Future-as-metaphor-for-Reagan policy to virtually every aspect of the film. All Goldie Wilson, the black soda jerk at Lou’s Malt Shop, needs to become successful is a positive attitude and a willingness to pull himself up by the bootstraps (possibly inspired by Marty?). (“Mayor… I like the sound of that…”) The American Dream was still alive, doggone it, all it took was a little initiative (and definitely not social programs).

Back To The Future wasn’t entirely alone in these ideas. American Psycho parodied this same all-you-need-is-a-little-willpower mentality when Patrick Bateman tries to “help” a homeless bum in an alley. “Get a goddamn job, Al. You’ve got a negative attitude, that’s what’s stopping you.” (He then realizes he has nothing in common with the man and stabs him to death). Rambo similarly tried to solve the problems of the present by fixing the past, not quite by going back in time, but by rescuing the (largely mythical) American POWs and essentially winning the Vietnam War retroactively. I had a history teacher in high school who told us that it was those pencil-necked politicians who wouldn’t “let” the military “win” in Vietnam, so you can imagine how powerful those movie myths were (he also had an NRA sticker on his podium). Again Reagan aligned himself with the movie myths, saying “I saw Rambo: First Blood Part II last night and I know what to do next time [a hostage crisis] happens.”

The 1950s weren’t so great for a lot of people, but there is a distinct sense that for 1950s pop culture, utopia existed in the future, whereas for 1980s pop culture, it was in the past. Specifically the 1950s, or at least a whitewashed and retconned version of the 1950s, where bullies who called black musicians “Spook” got what was coming to them. “Make America Great Again,” drawing on the notion that our best days were behind us, was originally a Ronald Reagan slogan.

If America’s best days were behind us in 1985, what does that mean for us 35 years later? Back in the late aughts I used to joke that watching a block of TLC programming (with shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and whatnot) was like falling asleep and waking up in the alternate future from Back To The Future 2 where Biff is the president (also known as “1985A”). And who was the model for the character of Biff? You guessed it, Donald Trump. Now Donald Trump is actually the president. I wonder if he also hates manure?

If there was a sense that America’s best days were behind it in 1985, 2020 feels like an alternate timeline created by a rogue time traveler who has fucked up severely. I don’t entirely blame Back To The Future for many of the myths it embodies, it was even critical of a few of them. The fact is, I’ve seen it probably 100 times, maybe more than any other movie. Watching it in 2020, there are aspects of it that seem dated or silly, naturally.

The character of Marty McFly, the guitar shredding jean jacket kid from the ‘burbs who got to school by holding onto cars while riding a skateboard, seems like he was concocted by the same producers who came up with Poochie, the wisecracking hip-hop surfer dog from The Simpsons in “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.” Marty’s Eddie Van Halen-influenced band, The Pinheads, get rejected from the school talent show, by Huey Lewis in a cameo as a school administrator, on account of they’re “just too darn loud.” The guy driving the pick-up Marty hitches a ride on, incidentally, was wearing a Mountain Dew hat, perhaps the least believable of the film’s 12 paid Pepsi references. Back To The Future oozes with the kind of “rebellion” reimagined as advertising so ubiquitous in the 80s.

Netflix

But Michael J. Fox (famous at the time for playing a precocious Republican on Family Ties), maybe one of the best actors of his generation with the benefit of hindsight, makes Marty feel real. Back To The Future is paced and executed just about perfectly. Christopher Lloyd gives another goofy-on-paper character recognizable humanity, every bit of foreshadowing is clear, and every line lands. Not many movies truly are “fun for the whole family,” but I have particularly fond memories of Back To The Future. It might be the most commercially slick movie ever made, the perfect cinematic equivalent of its own theme song, by Huey Lewis & the News — slightly saccharine and wildly overproduced, but impossible not to tap your foot to. (Huey Lewis being another parallel between Back To The Future and American Psycho).

The narrative arc of Back To The Future was essentially Ronald Reagan’s vision for America. We would rewrite the past as something manlier, more noble, and in the process create for ourselves a brighter future, where everyone gets a shiny new pick-up truck and a hot girlfriend to take to their house on the lake. 35 years later those myths are approaching middle age. Like Eddie Murphy’s character in The Distinguished Gentleman, our own Biff Tannen simply swiped Ronald Reagan’s slogan and adopted it as its own. We’ve watched it mutate, like a meme or a game of telephone, from the movie cowboy Ronald Reagan’s reclaiming the myths of the frontier and the “prestige of the white man” into the game show businessman Donald Trump’s ideal of being an asshole at all times and never having to apologize.

With more distance from 1985 than Marty McFly had from his parents’ first date, I’d like to believe we can treat our nostalgia a little more critically this time around. That we can acknowledge that there are consequences to whitewashing past mistakes. Though to some extent it’s clear that we’ve already failed.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

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Soccer Mommy And Sasami Share Renditions Of The Cars And System Of A Down For Charity

In light of the pandemic, many musicians have found creative ways to raise funds for those in need. Father John Misty recently announced he’s debuting a handful of covers to benefit charity, and Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison has been doing something similar. Each week, Allison taps various indie musicians to share a single of their choosing, whether it is a demo or a cover, as part of her Soccer Mommy & Friends Singles Series. This week concludes the series with unexpected covers by Allison and former Cherry Glazerr member Sasami.

For her cover, Sasami elected to pull from System Of A Down’s back catalog and rework their 2001 Toxicity title track. Sasami strips down the song, reimagining the raucous number as a quiet acoustic guitar ballad.

For Allison’s single, the singer also chose to perform a cover. This time, Allison paid tribute to The Cars’ late vocalist Ric Ocasek with a soulful rendition of their hit song “Drive.” Allison also gave a rendition of “Drive” for a recent studio session with SiriusXM. “I’m really glad to get to release this cover of drive,” Allison said in a statement. “It’s a song I’ve loved for a long time that I started covering pretty recently. It was nice to get to record one last thing in the studio before everything shut down.”

All proceeds from the songs and the remainder of Allison’s Single Series will benefit Oxfam’s COVID-19 relief fund, which works in over 50 countries to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in vulnerable communities and support people’s basic food needs and livelihoods. Along with Sasami, MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, Beabadoobee, and Jay Som also participated in the series.

Listen to Sasami sing “Toxicity” by System Of A Down and Soccer Mommy cover The Car’s “Drive” above.

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Saweetie’s Homemade ‘Pretty Bitch Freestyle’ Video Might Make You Say “Whoa!”

Saweetie hasn’t been shy about her love for the music she grew up with. In the past, she’s sampled such 2000s-era hits as “My Neck, My Back” by Khia, “Freak-a-Leek” by Petey Pablo, and “Blow The Whistle” by E-40, but she’s definitely not done mining the sounds of her youth to drive her career forward. Today, she released a new single for her birthday called “Pretty Bitch Freestyle,” which comes complete with a sample of Black Rob’s relentlessly sing-along-able “Whoa!” as well as a homemade music video flexing her ’round-the-way girl style and newfound success.

Dressed in a baggy look that wouldn’t have been out of place at a Bay Area picnic circa 2005, Saweetie brandishes her glossy, nearly foot-long claws at the camera as she brags, “All my quarantine pics goin’ up, I ain’t miss.” A stack of red cups fills her hands as she dances through her marble-adorned kitchen reeling off her list of accomplishments, which includes securing a diploma from USC after basically living out of a car at one point. Not bad for someone who was considering getting out of the rap game for good not too long ago. Saweetie is hard at work on her debut album; don’t be surprised if a few more turn-of-the-millennium gems appear on it, as well.

Watch the “Pretty Bitch Freestyle” video above.

Saweetie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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‘Conan’ Will Be The First Late-Night Show To Ease Away From At-Home Filming By Moving To A Historic Venue

Conan O’Brien was the first late-night host to start airing full-on episodes (while shooting with an iPhone) during the pandemic, and now, he’s making a historic move. Yep, he’s stepping out, doing his Team Coco thing, and he’s doing it as safely as possible. In a press release, TBS has announced that the production is leaving O’Brien’s home soon (whoa, July 6) to start broadcasting from West Hollywood’s historic Largo at the Coronet venue. It’s a location that’s near and dear to the host’s heart.

“I got started doing improv at the Coronet in 1986,” O’Brien explained in a statement. “And I’m glad we’ve figured out a way to safely keep that theater going during this lockdown.” It sounds like a challenge but a worthy one, if it works.

All aspects of production will be carried out as safely as possible during the ongoing pandemic, with only a limited cast and crew on site to aid O’Brien in his travels while keeping a live audience away and conducting interviews via the Zoom platform. Still, the protocols involved with such a move will be substantial, though O’Brien himself seems committed to keep plugging away with much of his staff working at home. He’s also continuing to keep them all on the payroll, just like he did with his entire non-writing staff during the 2007 writers’ strike.

We can look forward to not only nightly episodes of Conan from the venue but also a monthly live-standup show, which will begin streaming on July 9. The Largo’s owner, Mark Flanagan, is understandably thrilled. “We are thrilled that Conan and his great team reached out and offered to help us through these awful times,” Flanagan said. “We have a long history together and look forward to many more great years to come.”

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A ‘Mission: Impossible’ Star Would ‘Love To Go Into Space’ With Tom Cruise

The next time a boomer tells you about how great things “used” to be, bring up the Space Race. No, not the one between the United States and the Soviet Union. I’m talking about the race between which movie series will shoot in space first: Fast and Furious or Mission: Impossible. That’s way more interesting than Apollo 11, or whatever.

When we asked Chris Morgan, who’s written every Fast movie since Tokyo Drift, if we’ll ever see Vin Diesel throw a moon rock at Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson (the quip writes itself), he answered, “Look, I get all versions of that question. I get, ‘Are you going to space?’ and ‘Please, God, tell me you’re not going to space because you’ll lose me if you do.’ The only way I’d go to space is if I had something so good.” Meanwhile, Tom Cruise is already shooting a movie set in space with Elon Musk, the Rick to Kanye West’s Morty, and he’s “thought about” leaving this cursed Earth for a future M:I installment. “It’s the mechanics of getting it there,” he added. “How do you build a sequence [up] there and how long can we have that sequence? Because if I went up and just dropped, how do you put that into the structure of a screenplay of a mission?” Good questions, ones that Cruise’s M:I co-star, Simon Pegg, hopes will get answered.

“I’d love to go into space, it would be amazing! But you have to also think about your family and safety and stuff,” the Shaun of the Dead star told NME with a laugh. “Tom never does anything recklessly and all of his stunts are meticulously designed, rehearsed, and trained for. If he does it, it will be really safe… You never know.”

It’s not a bad idea: space might currently be a safer filming location than a soundstage.

(Via NME)

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The Best Dark Rums For Under $30 To Get Delivered Right Now

We’re in that special time of year when a great bottle of dark rum is almost impossible to argue with. The sugarcane-based spirit, aged in oak in a tropical climate, just sings with summer night sultriness — lending itself to exceptional cocktails or being taken neat, with a few ice cubes clinking around the glass. It’s like your favorite bourbon turned on its head. Yes, it’s dark. Yes, there are notes of oak and spice. But dark rum is also just a different beast, every bit as nuanced as the best whiskeys on the market.

While the vast majority of rums that we get on our shelves come from countries dotting the Caribbean Sea, rum is actually just as universal as any spirit. Got sugar cane, sugar beets, or molasses? You’ve got the recipe for rum making. For this list, we’re focusing on the bottles that come from closer to home — in order to keep things both inexpensive and accessible. Expect us to widen the net a little further as July fully gets kicking.

The ten bottles below are rums that work wonders in fruit or citrus-forward cocktails, as smooth sippers over ice, or in mixed with a nice splash of bubbly mineral water. They’re also all available for delivery — a perk for those who are still fully homebound on 4th of July weekend.

Cruzan Black Strap Rum

ABV: 40%
Origin: St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Average Price: $17.46

The Rum:

This rum is deep and dark for one big reason: The addition of blackstrap molasses (which has the lowest sugar content of any molasses) after it’s aged. This Caribbean rum is aged between one and two years in old bourbon barrels. Next, the blenders cut the harsher edges from the sip with the dark molasses. This addition technically makes this a “black” rum, which is necessary for mixing up a Dark ‘N’ Stormy.

Tasting Notes:

The sweetness of this sip is tempered by a sense of fennel and vanilla. That sweetness edges towards high-fructose corn syrup masquerading as maple syrup with hints of spice and coffee bean bitterness. A note of dark spice arrives with more vanilla and a syrup nature on the semi-hot finish.

Plantation Original Dark Rum

ABV: 40%
Origin: Trinidad and Jamaica
Average Price: $20.89

The Rum:

This blend comes from Maison Ferrand (which has announced a forthcoming name change). The French proprietors bring a Cognac sensibility to rum making in the Caribbean. This particular expression is aged for three to five years in new American oak before being blended and transferred to Cognac casks from Maison Ferrand for a final 12 to 18-month finishing.

Tasting Notes:

This is a fascinating sip. The nose opens with a sense of bananas next to rich plums and pods of vanilla. The sip carries touches of orange zest next to cardamon, cloves, and allspice while the sweetness stays hinged to the plummy fruits. Those Christmas spices and oak marry on the end as a billow of smoke brings about a concise final note.

Goslings Black Seal Rum

ABV: 40%
Origin: Hamilton, Bermuda
Average Price: $20.99

The Rum:

Goslings imports rum made in both pot stills and continuous stills. They then age the hot juice in ex-bourbon barrels for an undisclosed amount of time. This iconic rum was the original spirit used in a Dark ‘N’ Stormy, in case you’re looking for something to mix with this one.

Tasting Notes:

Caramel and dark spices ride heavy upfront with a note of dried fruits. The taste then moves toward butterscotch, vanilla, and sharp cinnamon. Finally, there’s a rush of caramel that leads toward more oaky spice and a wisp of fresh herbs.

Blackwell Rum

ABV: 40%
Distillery: Kingston, Jamaica
Average Price: $22.99

The Rum:

This rum — distilled and blended by J.Wray and Nephew — is a Jamaican gold standard. Master blender Joy Spence (of Appleton Estate fame) worked with Chris Blackwell (founder of Island Records) to revive his mother’s recipe for this rum. They ended up with a rum that embraces the classic styles and craft behind great Caribbean dark rum.

Tasting Notes:

Light molasses covered orange peels mingle with dried tobacco and a note of dark spice. There’s a cacao bitterness at play with a dash of fatty nuts, fruit, and smoke. The wood and fruit combine with the spice and sweetness to bring about a pleasant and short finish.

Myers’s Original Dark Rum

ABV: 40%
Origin: Kingston, Jamaica
Average Price: $24.99

The Rum:

This is another classic rum to have on hand for mixing up some cocktails night or day. The rum is a blend of nine Caribbean rums that have been aged for up to four years in old bourbon barrels. The result is a dark and deep rum with a clear Jamaican molasses signature.

Tasting Notes:

Sweet notes mingle next to black pepper and a sense of wet earth. The sip tips very lightly into mild vanilla and a molasses sweetness. The oak takes hold on the finish as the earthiness dries out, leading to a quickly fading end.

Pusser’s British Navy Rum

ABV: 40%
Origin: British Virgin Islands
Average Price: $26.28

The Rum:

This is an English-style navy rum meant to emulate what the British Navy handed out to its seamen every day for centuries. When the rationing of daily rum stopped in the 1970s, Pusser’s arose to recreate the rum with a spirit distilled and aged in Guyana and Trinidad and blended in Barbados.

Tasting Notes:

This rum has a lot going on, which can turn some people off. There’s a certain, tough to pin down, rickhouse funk next to mild spices and vanilla pudding. On the palate, the sip turns toward that funk with notes of spice, sugar cane syrup, more vanilla, dark chocolate bitterness, and a touch of earthiness next to a wisp of smoke. Finally, that funky age mellows to a mild worn leather and pipe tobacco as the wood takes over with a nice hint of spice on the long-lingering finish.

Appleton Estate Reserve Blend

ABV: 40%
Distillery: Appleton Estate, Jamaica
Average Price: $27.99

The Rum:

Remember Joy Spence, mentioned above? She’s been making magic happen at Appleton Estate for a good while now. Although Appleton is in the midst of rolling out a whole new line, including their much anticipated 8-Year-Old expression, this bottle is going to be around for a while. The expression is blended from 20 different rums that aged for up to six years.

Tasting Notes:

Funky old barrel rooms meet dried orange zest, hazelnut, and ginger cake cut with honey. The sip leans towards a matrix of earthiness with caramel notes next to bright fruit and sharp spices. The finish comes up slowly with oak front-and-center but supported by funk, zest, and sweet notes.

Diplomatico Mantuano Extra Anejo

ABV: 40%
Origin: Venezuela
Average Price: $27.99

The Rum:

This Venezuelan rum comes from the foothills of densely forested mountains. It’s a departure from the Caribbean’s gently lapping shores in more ways than one. The rum is distilled in three different ways — by column still, batch kettle still, and pot still — before being aged in both ex-bourbon and ex-single malt barrels. The juice spends up to eight years in those barrels before being blended into the final product. You can sip this one all day, folks.

Tasting Notes:

Prunes dance with oak as dark echoes of spice cut through. Those prunes lead towards an oily vanilla pod and a clear sense of old oak barrels with hints of Christmas spice next to hints of florals and a lingering whisper of smoke. The finish arrives fairly slowly with the plummy nature fading out as the spice ramps up.

Mount Gay Rum Black Barrel

ABV: 43%
Origin: Bridgetown, Barbados
Average Price: $29.99

The Rum:

Mount Gay, the oldest rum distillery in the world, has created a unique and very new expression of rum with their Black Barrel rum. The rum is distilled in double pot and column stills and then aged in ex-bourbon barrels. Finally, the rum is blended and then finished in heavily-charred ex-bourbon barrels, hence the “Black Barrel” moniker.

Tasting Notes:

Toasted oak greets you with a nice dose of orchard fruit and mild spice. That spice leads towards a bourbon caramel sense with a hint of vanilla next to a building sense of spice and oak. The sip ends on a long, spicy note with that oak char adding a dry bitterness underneath.

EDITOR’S PICK: BACARDÍ Reserva Ocho Rum

ABV: 40%
Distillery: San Juan, Puerto Rico
Average Price: $29.99

The Rum:

This expression is what I use when leading rum tastings to give people a baseline of what “good, sippable rum” tastes like. Nothing is off-balance or demands special attention. It spent generations as a private label product, bottled only for the Bacardi family, but they were wise to share it with the world — it’s a massive upgrade to their base-level dark rums.

In short, we’re talking about classic Bacardi rum that gets left alone to stew in a Puerto Rican rickhouse — spending eight long years aging and maturing into this special (and affordable) bottle.

Tasting Notes:

For a rum defined by smoothness, the nose does have a little bit of alcohol punch. After that, I agree with Zach, who says, “dried apricots and plums lead the way towards a clear sense of freshly ground nutmeg.” In other words, aged stone fruit leading toward holiday spices. There’s vanilla and cinnamon, but you don’t sense them as directly as you would with a spiced rum — it’s more like a rum cake where you say to yourself “is there cinnamon and vanilla in here? I’d bet there is!”

On the palate, Zach noted “hints of fresh grass, dried tobacco, and stewed pears leading towards a mix of allspice, cinnamon, and more nutmeg” and… damn, he’s good at this. I totally agree on the dried grass or hay — not barnyard funk, but definitely some age. You get the molasses throughout but it doesn’t hammer you. The finish is allspice and fruit and “fruitcake” — which is, I suppose, both of those things combined. Zach picks up a “whisper of smoke” but for me, what lingers is the molasses.

-Steve Bramucci

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Forget ‘The Notebook,’ Rachel McAdams Is A Comedy Icon

Perhaps the worst thing that could’ve happened to Rachel McAdams is The Notebook. I say this with the wistful, nostalgic affection of one who spent her formative pubescent years worshiping that sentimental nightmare of a film. The Notebook sold us many lies as truths — lies my preteen brain was easily fooled by.

A man threatening to commit suicide because a woman he was interested in wouldn’t go out with him? The Notebook told me that was a swoon-worthy story that you’d want to tell your future children. A relationship in which the two people had nothing in common and spent most of their time screaming at each other for trivial miscommunications? The Notebook told me that was passion. You didn’t paint anymore? The Notebook said you were probably bored in your healthy, sustainable relationship. You spent years of your life and all of your money fixing up an old house so your ex-girlfriend would come back to you? The truest gesture of love and commitment.

But the biggest lie was the one The Notebook told us about Rachel McAdams. She’s a gifted actress who, up until her turn as Allie in Nicholas Sparks’ drama, had starred in two fairly popular comedies: the forgettable Hot Chick and the cult-classic Mean Girls. In the latter, the Tina Fey-penned high school saga that served as a spiritual successor to Heathers, McAdams played Regina George, the Queen Bee of the school’s most popular clique, The Plastics. Narcissistic, manipulative, controlling, and petty, Regina George embodied the titular trope, and though we rooted for Lindsey Lohan’s naïve newcomer to beat her at her own game, years later, it’s Regina George we can’t stop quoting. It’s “So you agree, you think you’re pretty,” and “Stop trying to make fetch happen” that we remember. And that’s because of Rachel McAdams.

After Mean Girls came The Notebook, a cultural phenomenon that defined idyllic romance for a generation of idiots (myself included) and pigeonholed her career with other weepy relationship odes. The Time Traveler’s Wife, where she played a lovestruck woman saddled to a man with the frustrating affliction of spontaneous time travel. The Vow, where she inhabited the role of a woman who suffers a troubling case of amnesia after an accident and can’t remember her own husband. About Time, where she plays a woman with a (different) time-traveling boyfriend, who risks their relationship for his own gain.

A theme had emerged. Of course, because McAdams is so undeniably talented, she also starred in films that didn’t trade off tragic, troubled love stories. Spotlight, True Detective, Red Eye — these films gave us a different side to the woman who once got a man, on camera, to tell her he was a bird, too. But for a long time, when you thought of Rachel McAdams, you thought of these melodramas, these date-night flicks, these movies you’d put on when you needed a good cry. When you thought of Rachel McAdams, you thought of a woman who once launched herself at Ryan Gosling on the MTV Movie Awards stage. But now, you should think of Rachel McAdams as a comedy icon, because that’s what she really is.

Rachel McAdams is one of those rare chameleons who can seamlessly shift from the heavy to the humorous so yes, she’s terrific in The Notebook and To The Wonder and Disobedience. But she’s also uniquely identifiable in her comedic roles, like the ones in Wedding Crashers or Mean Girls or the severely underrated Game Night, or, most recently, Will Ferrell’s Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga.

In fact, her filmography is littered with comedy, whether she’s played bit parts as a crush-worthy bridesmaid to Owen Wilson’s imposter or the black sheep suffering through another holiday get-together in The Family Stone. McAdams has slowly been working her way to the kind of balls-out comedy on display in Netflix’s Eurovision parody with early entries that relied on her relative unknown status. She was a fresh face in Wedding Crashers, a witty love interest in Guy Richie’s Sherlock, and a positive-thinking peacemaker in Morning Glory. In these films, the comedy was happening around McAdams and she, more or less, reacted to it.

But as she’s become more recognizable, taken on franchises and genre films and indies that people like to fawn over on the festival circuit, she’s broadened her comedic horizons too, banking on her likability and pushing her limits to include physical gags and ridiculous costumes and eccentric, over-the-top characters normally reserved for the established comedic geniuses — the Ferrells and Steve Carells and Seth Rogens.

In Game Night, for instance, McAdams plays a fairly straightforward character, a wife who hosts a game night with her husband that quickly spirals out of control. Jason Bateman plays her partner in crime, and they do commit crimes, eventually, but only after they’re taken hostage and thrown into the middle of a black market deal that involves underground fight clubs and Bulgarians and moles in the police force. McAdams plays the plucky, ultra-competitive foil to Bateman’s stiff-lipped, dry-witted half, and she’s tasked with the heavy lifting as Bateman leans on his trademark sarcasm, leaving her to pull off the more exaggerated bits. She does, elevating a hostage scene with a wildly funny dance number that sees her character whipping a “fake” gun around and shoving it into men’s faces before accidentally shooting Bateman’s character and trying to clean his wound with a “nice chard,” a Good Housekeeping recipe, and a squeaky toy. But she’s also able to easily switch from these more ridiculous moments, like being flattered by a henchman holding her at gunpoint, to emotional interactions that carry weight, like when the movie’s main couple open up about their infertility issues.

That emotional heft that McAdams brings to her funnier roles is, oddly enough, what makes her such a compelling comedic actress. It’s on display in Game Night, and also in her Netflix Eurovision parody, where she plays one half of an Icelandic pop duo with dreams of winning the biggest singing competition on the planet. The movie is mid-level Ferrell funny, a cross between Pitch Perfect and Blades of Glory, that’s at its best when it’s not focused on its male lead.

Instead, it’s McAdams’ Sigrit, a wide-eyed, optimistic woman hopelessly in love with her best friend and willing to do anything to help him achieve his goal, that becomes the character you root for, and laugh at, the most. Armed with a heavy accent, a childlike sense of wonder, and an unflinching belief in the power of elves, Sigrit is the better half of this singing group — and McAdams commits to her, eccentricities and all, in a way that makes even the weirdest plot points believable. Her comedy serves a dual purpose — we cackle at her desire to match Lars’ bulge with her own camel toe, or when she finally expresses her anger with a well-timed “sex nuts” jab, but even when she’s making a complete fool of herself, McAdams is also giving us character development, showing us a woman finally beginning to search for her own purpose in life.

So maybe McAdams isn’t just a great dramatic actress or a comedic mastermind. Maybe she’s both, and we’re only now starting to realize it. I blame The Notebook.

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Father John Misty Covers Leonard Cohen And Cat Stevens For His Upcoming ‘Anthem +3’ Benefit EP

Father John Misty’s latest record, God’s Favorite Customer, was released just about two years ago. While the singer hasn’t shared any information about his next studio release, Father John Misty is still debuting fresh music: The singer compiled a handful of covers for the EP Anthem +3, which will benefit select charities.

Anthem +3 features covers of songs by Leonard Cohen, Link Wray, and Cat Stevens. The four-track effort will see an early release via Bandcamp on a day the platform is waiving their fees. Father John Misty will donate proceeds earned from the EP to CARE Action, an international humanitarian organization fighting global poverty, and Ground Game LA, a community-driven organization dedicated to building power for the residents of LA.

Father John Misty’s Anthem +3 marks the second effort released in recent months that aims to raise funds for charity. Most recently, the singer shared the live album Off-Key In Hamburg as a way to assist musicians affected by the pandemic. Also released through Bandcamp, all proceeds from the live album went to MusiCares’ COVID-19 relief project, which provides financial assistance to musicians in need.

Check out Father John Misty’s Anthem +3 cover art and tracklist below.

Sub Pop

1. “Anthem (Leonard Cohen)”
2. “Fallin’ Rain (Link Wray)”
3. “Trouble (Yusuf / Cat Stevens)”
4. “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong (Leonard Cohen)”

Anthem +3 is out 7/3 on Bandcamp and 7/14 everywhere via Sub Pop. Pre-order it here.

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St. Vincent Will Discuss Her Influences And Career For Audible’s ‘Words And Music’ Series

St. Vincent has done a lot of different things in her career and explored a myriad of musical styles. Her brain would be an interesting one to pick through, and she is set to offer a look at her process and career as part of Audible’s Words And Music series. In St. Vincent: Words & Music, the artist will discuss her influences, lyrics, and the “discovery of her authentic self.” The release date for this installment has not yet been revealed.

St. Vincent said of the release, “Life is strange and full of uncertainty right now. But music is a constant. Music transcends the chaos. It’s always been there for me when I’ve needed it — whether in times of fear, heartbreak, anger, joy. So I’m thrilled to be working with Audible to share my story and my music, especially at a time when music is such a crucial part of coping and getting through these unprecedented days.”

A previous installment of the series recorded in 2018 at the Minetta Lane Theatre in Manhattan featured Patti Smith, and it included “original spoken-word stories from her life, interwoven with the music of her beloved catalogue, played live by Smith.” Alanis Morissette and Smokey Robinson are set to be featured in upcoming editions.