Category: Viral

Kali Uchis has shared the tracklist for her upcoming album, Red Moon In Venus. Her third studio album, Red Moon In Venus is due on March 3 via Geffen and is set to feature Don Toliver, Omar Apollo, and Summer Walker. Uchis shared the tracklist via a short video clip in which a mirror with one-half of the tracklist scribbled on each side rotates in front of a garden wall, reflecting a blue, cloudy sky.

The album is meant to be the first of two different albums from the Virginia-born Colombian singer in 2023, with a Spanish-language album set to follow before the year’s end. Presumably, her promised collaboration with Ariana Grande will appear there since she predicted the two singers will work together after she completed filming the Wicked movie.

Uchis announced the tour dates supporting her new album earlier this week, kicking off with her appearances at Coachella in April. You can check out the tracklist and her tour dates below.

1. “In My Garden”
2. “I Wish You Roses”
3. “Worth The Wait” Feat. Omar Apollo
4. “Love Between”
5. “All Mine”
6. “Fantasy” Feat. Don Toliver
7. “Como Te Quiero Yo”
8. “Hasta Quando”
9. “Endlessly”
10. “Moral Conscience”
11. “Not Too Late (Interlude)”
12. “Blue”
13. “Deserve Me” Feat. Summer Walker
14. “Moonlight”
15. “Happy Now”

04/16 — Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/23 — Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/25 — Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park
04/26 — Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
04/27 — Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
04/30 — Miami, FL @ FPL Solar Amphitheater at Bayfront Park
05/01 — Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live Orlando
05/02 — Atlanta, GA @ Coca-Cola Roxy
05/04 — New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
05/07 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
05/09 — Washington, D.C. @ The Anthem
05/10 — Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway
05/12 — Toronto, ON @ Coca-Cola Coliseum
05/14 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore
05/16 — Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
05/18 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
05/21 — Portland, OR @ Keller Auditorium
05/23 — Vancouver, BC @ UBC Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
05/24 — Seattle, WA @ WAMU Theater
05/26 — San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
05/28 — Las Vegas, NV @ The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
05/30 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre

Tequila is growing so fast as a popular spirit in the U.S. that it’s head-spinning — and not the good head spinniness you get from a nice tequila buzz. New expressions are always hitting shelves. The agave-based spirit is so popular that it’s evolved into a whole new category called “Agave Spirits” — a sort of catch-all for all the spirits that are made with agave but don’t fit into the narrow parameters to legally be called either a “tequila” or even “mezcal.”

See? Head spinning.

Very quickly, to be called “tequila” legally, the spirit in your bottle has the be made with Blue Weber agave in Jalisco, Mexico. So a Blue Weber agave spirit that’s made in, say, Baja California or Chiahuaha cannot be called “tequila” by law. Likewise, “Mezcal” needs to be produced in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, Durango, San Luis Potosí, Puebla, and Zacatecas with any type of agave plant (though there is pushback on those regional rules these days). But what happens if you ferment and distill an agave product in California, Texas, or outside of one of those Mexican states?

You get “Agave Spirits.” And yes, we know, the name leaves a lot to be desired.

This begs two questions: Are there any good agave spirits out there? Do they even begin to stand up to classic tequilas? That’s where a blind taste test comes in. Our lineup today is the following bottles:

• Revel Avila 100% Puro De Agave Blanco Triple Distilled
• Don Julio Tequila Blanco
• Nashville Barrel Company Barrel-Aged Agave Spirits
• Revel Avila 100% Puro De Agave Reposado Triple Distilled
• Camarena Tequila Reposado
• Tequila Cazadores Reposado

For this blind taste test, I’m focusing on blanco and reposado “agave spirits” and “tequila” only. Adding a Mezcal would be super obvious thanks to the smoky factor (moreover, Raicilla is a subgenre of agave spirits/tequila from Jalisco, so I’ll save those for another day too). Instead, I’ve selected good, standard tequilas and shuffled them amongst the agave spirits with the same vibe and aging, making this much more 1:1 in the blind tasting.

When it comes to the ranking, this is all about taste. There’s nothing extraordinary or next-level in this lineup. The prices are generally in the middle ground to a little pricey ($75 is the peak). Still, the overall agave vibe of these spirits is where the true depth falls and that’s what I’m looking for. Let’s dive in!

• We Put A Whole Bunch Of Bourbons To A Giant Blind Test And Discovered Some Absolute Gems
• The Affordable Vs Expensive Blind Bourbon Bottle Battle
• The 20 Most Popular Hot Sauces In America, Blind Tasted And Ranked
• Blind Soda Taste Test: Can Any Cherry Soda Beat Cherry Coke?
• The Best-Known Basic Bottles Of Bourbon, Blind Tasted And Ranked

Part 1: The Tasting

Taste 1

Tasting Notes:

Nose: The nose is classic blanco with a nice mix of soft orange sweetness, a hint of white pepper, and touches of juniper berries.

Palate: There’s a clear sense of white pepper powder and roasted agave next to a dash of lemon pepper.

Finish: The finish is short and slightly sweet thanks to the citrus with a distinct peppery buzz at the very end.

Initial Thoughts:

This was nice. I honestly cannot tell if it’s “tequila” or not because it tastes like perfectly fine blanco tequila.

Taste 2

Tasting Notes:

Nose: There’s a lightly roasted agave vibe that leads directly into lemon oils, white pepper, and a hint of grapefruit pith.

Palate: The agave lurks in the background as hints of lemon pepper and maybe a touch of sourness lingers on the palate.

Finish: The end is short-ish and has a watery-proofed vibe that’s bolstered by clear white pepper and lemongrass on the finish.

Initial Thoughts:

This was pretty good but a little light. Again, it tasted like a perfectly fine blanco tequila.

Taste 3

Tasting Notes:

Nose: The nose is leathery and full of whiskey caramel and vanilla with a counterpoint of star fruit and blood orange.

Palate: The palate leans into bourbon vanilla pods and salted caramel that’s countered by an orange tobacco vibe next to cinnamon bark and a good dusting of white pepper and dry roasted agave.

Finish: That caramelized agave and vanilla lead back to a leatheriness on the finish that’s well-balanced and long-lasting.

Initial Thoughts:

This is leaps and bounds better. It’s really good with a sense of sweet aging that’s perfectly balanced with the roasted agave spirit below.

Taste 4

Tasting Notes:

Nose: There’s a bit of barnyard funk on the nose that leads to black pepper and a sense of floral hibiscus, maybe even sandalwood.

Palate: There’s a light toffee sweetness and butteriness that moves with clear sandalwood incense before veering into the fertilizer aisle of a garden shop.

Finish: The finish is very earthy and swings back toward the woody oak and a hint of sweet toffee next to light pepperiness.

Initial Thoughts:

This was interesting but not necessarily good. I’m on the fence.

Taste 5

Tasting Notes:

Nose: There’s a sweetness that attaches to the lightly roasted agave on the nose with a hint of vanilla and caramel lurking in the background.

Palate: The palate leans into the roasted agave with freshly cracked black pepper and clove berries mingling with a touch of vanilla tobacco and a mildly sweet butterscotch mid-palate.

Finish: The finish leans away from the agave toward the vanilla and butterscotch for a sweet and slightly peppery finish.

Initial Thoughts:

This is pretty damn good. It’s clearly built and has a lovely balance of agave and aging.

Taste 6

Tasting Notes:

Nose: The nose is classic repo tequila with hints of spice, roasted agave, and white pepper with a sweet edge — think rock candy.

Palate: There’s a sense of dry dill and aloe vera plants next to more white pepper.

Finish: The end is very thin and peters out toward an almost cardboard vibe.

Initial Thoughts:

This starts off strong but falls off a cliff by the end.

Part 2: The Ranking

6. Tequila Cazadores Reposado — Taste 6

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $20

Tequila:

This tequila is made with 100$ Blue Weber Agave. The hot juice spends two months resting in new American oak barrels before blending, proofing, and bottling.

Bottom Line:

This felt like a cheap but fine mixing tequila.

5. Revel Avila 100% Puro De Agave Reposado Triple Distilled — Taste 4

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $75

The Agave Spirit:

This 100% Blue Weber Agave Spirit (fair-trade, organic, sustainable) is distilled in the state of Morelos (south of Mexico City). The agave spirit is aged for 12 months in new American white oak barrels before blending, proofing, and bottling.

Bottom Line:

This was funky — that barnyard nose and earthy body as a lot. It wasn’t bad though, just different. I can see it working in cocktails or highballs pretty easily.

4. Don Julio Tequila Blanco — Taste 2

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $45

Tequila:

This is classic double-distilled tequila. It’s bottled unaged and with a fair amount of proofing water.

Bottom Line:

This was good but felt like a solid shooter or mixer more than anything else.

3. Revel Avila 100% Puro De Agave Blanco Triple Distilled — Taste 1

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $55

The Agave Spirit:

This is Revia’s same triple-distilled agave spirit from Morelos that’s left unaged. The spirit goes into the bottle as-is with a good dose of proofing water.

Bottom Line:

This was pretty nice overall. It was still a standard blanco but had a touch more depth. That said, I’d still focus this on cocktails or shooters over slow sipping.

2. Camarena Tequila Reposado — Taste 5

ABV: 40%

Average Price: $21

The Tequila:

This tequila from the Southern Highlands of Jalisco is fairly modern. The twice-distilled juice goes into oak for 60 days before it’s proofed down with deep well water and bottled.

Bottom Line:

This was tasty. I’d still say this makes a great cocktail over it being a sipper. That said, I can see drinking this over a lot of ice with a squeeze of lime and not being made about it.

1. Nashville Barrel Company Barrel-Aged Agave Spirits — Taste 3

ABV: 55.87%

Average Price: $69

The Agave Spirit:

This is a 100% Agave Spirit that’s distilled in Mexico. That hot juice is then sent up to Nashville, Tennessee, where it’s loaded into used whiskey barrels. After four-and-half months, the barrels are batched and bottled 100% as-is without proofing water.

Bottom Line:

This was by far the best sip of the panel. It was deep, balanced, and tasted like a quintessential reposado product. I didn’t for a second think it wasn’t “tequila.” I like this as a sipper over a rock but really look forward to making some easy tequila cocktails with it.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

These were all very close in taste, texture, and vibe. Tequila is “tequila” thanks to generations of tradition in Jalisco and there’s no taking that away. Still, great agave spirits go well beyond “tequila” and it’s pretty exciting that we’re starting to see more and more.

Also, these all ended up being pretty equal flavor-wise. There really wasn’t that much difference between the tequilas and agave spirits bottles. There wasn’t some huge loss in quality between the two.

What does it all mean then? I think it’s time to try an Agave Spirit the next time you’re in the mood for tequila, you might be pleasantly surprised.

Pamela Anderson has been through some stuff, to say the very least. This includes the release of Hulu’s Pam & Tommy, which arrived with a shadow over it even though the series was largely a rollicking ride. Certainly, it cannot be forgotten that the show revolves around a heist that truly hurt people — Pamela first and foremost — who resolved to never watch the show and will soon tell the world “the real story” in a Netflix documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, which streams on January 31.

Anderson made it clear from the beginning of the Hulu show that she would not co-sign the dramatization of that tumultuous time in her personal and professional lives, and she previously declared that she won’t even read the letter sent to her by Lily James. Sebastian Stan declared that he was very much in favor of Pamela’s wishes and her Netflix endeavor. However, Pam is now telling the world how she really feels about the people who made the Hulu series, as she told Variety:

“A**holes,” she says when asked to describe the people behind the Hulu series. “Salt on the wound. … You still owe me a public apology.” She hasn’t watched a single minute of the show, but she couldn’t escape the billboards promoting James in prosthetics and Sebastian Stan as her heavily tattooed, pierced partner. “It just looked like a Halloween costume to me,” she says.

Fair enough. Pamela’s more in-depth version of events was produced by one of Anderson and Tommy Lee’s sons, Brandon Lee, and one can guess that he had his mom’s back for the duration. We can likely also expect to see even more rawness than portrayed by Lily James in the Hulu limited series. Also in the course of promoting this documentary, Anderson revealed that Tim Allen flashed her during Home Improvement, and she realized almost instantly that marrying Kid Rock was a mistake. As I said above, she’s been through some difficult times, so here’s to hoping that she deals with far less chaos and awfulness these days.

Netflix’s Pamela, A Love Story arrives on January 31.

(Via Variety)

For the better part of the last three years the term “cryptocurrency” has stirred all sorts of emotions in people. There are three common responses to the idea of a virtual coin:

1. You’re a true believer and you think cryptocurrencies are the future of money, a tool to create generational wealth for a set of young investors that hold the most minuscule amount of wealth in the country. Millenials control just 8% of wealth according to the Fed, the smallest of any previous generation by a wide margin.
2. You think cryptocurrencies are nothing more than digital fool’s gold. A risky investment that can pay big, but isn’t based on or grounded in reality.
3. A subset that doesn’t understand crypto, refuses to understand crypto, and wishes the whole thing would just go away.

Given the recent crypto crash and the total collapse of the digital currency exchange FTX, if you’re in that third camp you just might get your way. By now you’ve undoubtedly heard about FTX and how its founder Sam Bankman-Fried, once the super-young face of crypto and touted as possibly “The Next Warren Buffet” by Fortune Magazine, was essentially just running a Ponzi scheme. But how did a celebrated philanthropist wunderkind go from being worth an estimated $16 billion to being a disgraced alleged crook who was arrested in the Bahamas, extradited, and released on a historically high $250 million bail to live with his parents while he awaits trail, and, more importantly, what does that mean for cryptocurrencies as a whole?

We’re going to break it down, but first, we’ll explain the FTX collapse if you haven’t been following with a close eye. In truth, the FTX scandal is big and interesting enough to be a plot of a Wolf Of Wall Street or The Big Short style movie and undoubtedly will be. It’s also sure to generate a whole lot of non-fiction bestsellers. So understand that this is truncated — if we talked about all of it, you’d be reading a book, not an article.

What Is FTX?

FTX was a digital currency exchange that massively simplified the more technical aspects of buying and selling cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, DogeCoin, and Ethereum. It’s important to note that FTX wasn’t just favored by small-time investors, major venture capital groups also bought in and NBC News reports that such groups invested as much as $2 billion in the company. FTX was very much seen as a legitimate business and a smart and functional way to get in on the crypto market for both small-time and large investors.

The main idea behind FTX, according to NBC News, was that people could keep their money in accounts and earn higher yields than if they kept money in traditional banks. As for the technical aspects, rather than needing to figure out how to set up an external hardware crypto wallet, FTX allowed people to easily buy and sell their digital assets via what is called a “custodial wallet.”

Custodial wallets, according to CNET, make the exchange of cryptocurrencies easier, but the major drawback is that they offer less security as the exchange — in this case, FTX — has the private keys to your cryptocurrency. That’s where things start to get shady.

In November of this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Bankman-Fried said in an investor meeting that the trading firm Alameda Research owed the company $10 billion, loans that were extended to Alameda using money that customers had deposited on the exchange. At the time FTX had $16 billion in customer assets, meaning FTX lent more than half of its customer’s money to Alameda Research to place risky bets. Even worse than that, Alameda Research was a sister company of FTX, meaning FTX was essentially passing money to itself, gambling with its customer’s funds.

If that sounds shady it’s because it is!

What Is Alameda Research?

Alameda Research is a trading firm co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried that specializes in cryptocurrencies and actually predates FTX by two years, first launching in 2017. The company made its money primarily via what it called “arbitrage.” According to Protos, arbitrage (in this sense) involves buying an asset on one exchange and selling it for a higher price on another exchange.

In 2017, bitcoin was valued higher in Japan, so according to Yahoo! Finance, Bankman-Fried organized a way to buy bitcoin cheaply in the US and sell it higher in Japan, wire the proceeds to the US, and repeat the process until the gap closed. In that time, as crypto experienced a crash and the price of crypto on both sides of the Pacific began to align, Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research made about $20 million in profit. Not only was all of this legal, but it was also celebrated and helped to solidify Bankman-Fried as a young genius who made a risky bet and profited big.

Why Is All Of That A Problem?

Things started to fall apart late last year. In early November the digital currency news publication CoinDesk revealed that much of Alameda Research’s $14.6 billion in wealth at the time was tied up in a digital currency created by FTX called FTT. Meaning if the price of FTT were to drop for some reason, Alameda would be at risk of insolvency.

So in simple terms, Alameda Research, a trading firm created by Bankman-Fried was gambling with the digital currency of customers whose money was being stored on FTX, a digital currency exchange also owned by Bankman-Fried, and derived most of its value from a digital currency created by the same platform it was borrowing said money from. Without surprise, this raised red flags for anyone who had serious money invested in FTX.

How FTX Collapsed

According to NBC News, after the balance sheet was leaked, Changpeng CZ Zhao, the CEO of Binance, a major FTX rival, announced on November 6th that this company would sell all of its FTT tokens, resulting in a sharp price drop and a subsequent bank run as worried investors attempted to pull their money out of FTX before it became worthless. Only two days passed before FTX stopped allowing customers to take money out of the platform. On November 9th, The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources that said Bankman-Fried told investors that FTX needed $8 billion to cover the gap between what was owed and what it could pay out to customers looking to withdraw.

On November 11th, a disgraced Bankman-Fried stepped down as the CEO of FTX, and all the companies he oversaw filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But it doesn’t end there, according to CoinDesk between November 11th and the early hours of November 12, $400 million mysteriously flowed out of FTX accounts due to an alleged hack. Many blockchain experts have pointed to several clues that the hacker was an FTX insider.

What Happened to Sam Bankman-Fried?

In December, Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas and charged by Federal prosecutors with wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and other financial crimes. The Securities and Exchange Commission also separately charged Bankman-Fried for allegedly defrauding FTX investors. Bankman-Fried has since been extradited to the US and released from jail on a $250 million bond. Vox reports that Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, two former top executives at Alameda Research and FTX respectively, have since pleaded guilty to several fraud charges and are cooperating with federal prosecutors in the investigation.

On January 3rd, 2023, Sam Bankman-Fried plead not guilty to federal charges, his trial will begin on October 2nd.

So What Does This All Mean For Crypto?

It’s not looking good. Bitcoin, arguably the most trusted and safest digital currency peaked in 2021 — during FTX’s reign — reaching a value of above $65,000 per coin and crashed during the summer of 2022 dropping to $21,000, and dropping again to around $15,000 after the FTX collapse. Today, as of this writing, the digital currency sits around $23,000. Is this the end of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole? Far from it, but what was once touted as the ‘future of money’ is seeming riskier than ever.

But with risk comes reward, and while a lot of small retail investors who put a lot of money into a belief that crypto would fundamentally change their lives have lost a lot of money, this downturn can be an opportunity for those willing to take a risk. And true believers in crypto haven’t lost faith. We spoke with Glauber Contessoto aka the “Dogecoin Millionaire” about how the FTX fallout would affect crypto in the long haul and he gave us some interesting insight and revealed that this larger downward trend predates FTX, he sent along the following:

It first started with the Celsius collapse, then the Voyager and the Luna/UST collapse which ultimately saw the FTX collapse. These are all setbacks that push crypto down more than it already is given the overall larger bear market and crypto winter currently happening. Everything is cyclical and crypto will come roaring back in the bull market. Typically we’re looking at a 4-year cycle in crypto so given our last bull run being in 2021 our next should be 2025 or 2024 at the earliest. (I also feel like these cycles will shorten as crypto becomes more widely accepted) Having said that I expect this year to remain bearish and it’ll probably be the best time to invest. This is not financial advice and I am not a financial advisor.

It should be noted that Contessoto, who made an initial investment of $180,000 in Dogecoin and grew his money to over $1M and never sold, isn’t an on-paper millionaire anymore. But considering Contessoto was bringing in a yearly income of $36,000 from a regular paying job, grew up poor, and made a risky investment that paid big, he represents exactly the sort of investor that FTX targetted and became a sort of folk-hero amongst the Reddit investment crowd. Does Contessoto think he should’ve sold some of that coin when it was hot? Absolutely, and he now focuses his investments on safer digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

When asked how the same mistakes made with FTX can be avoided in the future, and whether crypto needs more government regulation, Contessoto responded with the following:

I feel like government regulation is something that will inevitably happen in the near future given the popularity of crypto as it moves into eventual mass adoption. I do believe there are a lot of scams, pump-and-dump schemes and rug pulls that need to be regulated and there should be some type of governance over this so people don’t continuously lose money investing in projects that aren’t real or get abandoned soon after launch. I think it should also pattern itself after Wall Street in a way but not as rigid. There should just be more accountability and transparency when it comes to the people launching projects in the space so if they do end up being scams these people get jail time and not just rinse and repeat these over and over. As far as SBF, crypto can’t be run like the traditional banking system. They shouldn’t be allowed to loan out customer funds ever and everything should always be backed 1-1 and there should be transparency on where these funds are held.

So should you start investing in digital currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum while they’re valued at historic lows so you can flip some a bit of cash into a whole lot? To borrow from Contessoto, we’re not financial advisors and this is not financial advice: hell no. Just kidding, we honestly, have no f*cking clue! THAT. IS. THE. LESSON. OF. FTX. — very few people can predict how these markets operate. But one thing is for certain, digital currencies and the people who believe in them, aren’t going anywhere, regardless of what happens to Bankman-Fried.

LeBron James is doing something no other NBA player has done in the history of the league. No, I’m not talking about scoring 40+ points against all 30 teams, although that is historical and impressive. No, he’s the first NBA player to become one of hip-hop’s go-to A&Rs, despite having little formal music business experience.

What he does have, though, is a golden ear — or at least, a big enough following to turn burgeoning viral songs into bonafide Billboard hits. Any song that makes its way into one of James’ offseason workout posts has the potential to skyrocket. For example, when he played Tee Grizzley’s “First Day Out” on his Instagram story, fans flocked, shooting what might have been a one-off from the Detroit bar smith into the upper atmosphere of rap radio bangers.

In 2019, he offered his A&R duties to trap veteran 2 Chainz, resulting in an executive producer credit on Rap Or Go To The League, and now, he’s going for a repeat with Top Dawg Entertainment rapper Ab-Soul. Despite Soulo being just a month removed from the release of his new album Herbert, he’s already looking ahead to his next, asking James at Wednesday night’s game against the Clippers (which the Clippers won, 113-104) to A&R his next project.

Ab captured the moment on video and posted it to his Instagram, calling working with James a “rite of passage.” “Top [Dawg] told me to ask you if you would A&R the next album,” he said. “Yeah, I can do that,” LeBron replied. Surely, such a project won’t be coming out anytime soon, but LeBron’s involvement will make the wait for it even harder than the six-year break between Ab’s last two albums.

Though he’s dedicated to the New York Times crossword and an avid puzzle creator when it comes to the Benoit Blanc mystery films (Knives Out and Glass Onion), writer/director/producer Rian Johnson is less concerned with twisty tricks and shocking reveals when it comes to his and Natasha Lyonne’s new series, Poker Face (which debuts with its first four episodes today on Peacock). Oh, the show will deliver on those things (and a ton of famous guest stars), but the most important thing for Johnson is that he crafts a character, in Lyonne’s nomadic and hazardously curious Charlie Cale, that you want to hang out with. Someone clever, funny, and idiosyncratic. Someone classic, but also fresh. And they just gotta have a cool car. The car is key, especially for a road show like this, which Johnson compares to Highway To Heaven and Quantum Leap (though there are no angels or time travel here). Another comp? Columbo and, of course, people will tie it to Knives Out, which is fine by Johnson even though these are two distinct things.

When we spoke recently via Zoom, the image of the car was centerstage, a blue 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, right behind Johnson. I complimented it, he remarked on the full-size Muppet (Gonzo) that lives on a shelf over my shoulder in my office, I asked if he’d confirm the Muppets would be a part of “Knives Out 3,” and he (jokingly) ended the interview. Thankfully, I won him back over for a conversation about the trait Charlie shares with Ana de Armas’ character in the first Benoit Blanc mystery and why Charlie’s unique quirks serve as mere decoration to draw attention to the marvel that is Lyonne’s ultra-captivating amateur sleuth. We also discussed the notion of winning in a procedural (a word Johnson isn’t scared of), nostalgia, and his formula for success when writing mysteries.
What are some shows that you feel inspired this?

Rockford Files, Magnum P.I. to some extent, but also, oddly, Quantum Leap because it’s a roadshow where every episode is kind of an anthropological deep-dive into another little microcosm world, into another little kind of space. But also The Incredible Hulk, moving from town to town. You got to walk on that dusty road at the end of them. Or Highway to Heaven.

I was just going to say.

I think there’s DNA from a lot of stuff kind of mixed into it, and it really is just the pleasure of that group of TV shows where I spent so much time sitting on the carpet in front of the family TV, watching reruns when I was growing up.

Obviously, there’s a difference between doing something that has some brush strokes that are reminiscent of certain shows versus, all of a sudden, “Rian Johnson does Father Dowling Mysteries or Murder, She Wrote!” What’s the right amount of nostalgia for something like this?

I mean, I try and avoid all nostalgia at all costs, but I guess that’s because of how I define nostalgia. To me, nostalgia means pleasure taken in remembering a thing that you liked through the lens of where you’re at now. Whereas what I’m really trying to do with this (or also with the Benoit Blanc Mysteries) is I’m trying to actually deliver the pleasure that you got back then when you experienced it, and deliver that in as vibrant and present a way as when you first experienced it back then. But in that context, that means not being afraid to use the tools that those things used back then. And so that means we’re going to be delivering the tropes of the genre. We’re going to be delivering the basic pleasures of it, just hopefully in a way that feels vibrant and feels real, which I guess can be defined as nostalgia in a way, but to me it’s a very different thing. I don’t know if that makes sense.

It does. And I agree. I’ve thought a lot about nostalgia lately. I don’t know, I think it’s somewhat of a toxic thing. Hard to innovate when you’re weighed down by it, I think.

Yeah. I mean, it’s also something I indulge in and something I take pleasure in. I don’t think it’s necessarily an unhealthy thing to take pleasure from.

Maybe it’s a question of how precious someone is with it. The difference between enjoying something or fixating on other people and how they’re enjoying it, and, “No, that’s not right, you’re ruining my childhood” and that kind of thing.

Oh, policing other people’s pleasure. Yeah, that bleeds into a whole other realm of badness.

Yeah, exactly. I am curious about the construction of this character. She has these quirks. She has this very amazing wardrobe, the car, the Barracuda. Can you tell me about developing the surrounding details of Natasha’s character?

I think that that’s one realm where Natasha and I let ourselves just kind of be led by our basic taste and let ourselves sink back into some of the trappings of that period. I think that’s the thing where we glance closest to the notion of nostalgia, is we let ourselves have this thing have kind of a little bit of a retro feel. I mean, it’s very much set in the present day. There are cell phones. There are all the things you’d see today, but Charlie’s vibe is very much that of someone you’d see in a Roger Corman movie or in an Altman movie, I guess. That’s all just kind of the design of it.

To me, the real work and the meat and potatoes of it was actually figuring out who the character of Charlie was. And because thinking about those shows that we’ve been talking about, the reality is, like with Columbo, for instance, I don’t watch Columbo for the mysteries. I watch it to hang out with Peter Falk. And there are not a lot of actors who have the kind of charisma and presence on screen where they alone can anchor a show to where you’re going to come back every week just to hang out with them and watch them win. And I guess it was when I became friends with Natasha and saw her work in Russian Doll and recognized that she had that, that I kind of honed in and approached her to kind of create the show together. That, for me, is really kind of what makes the character tick, I guess.

I’ve only seen the first four so far. I may be off on this, but you mentioned the character winning. For this kind of story, why is it important that they always win? Is there ever a thought to maybe shake things up and have them not win?

I won’t give anything away. It is a possibility. Everything’s on the table.

This has to do with the idea of them winning, but it has more to do with the idea of setting a pattern and paying that pattern off every week. It’s almost a contract with the audience. I mean, for me, really the genre that I was excited about doing is the genre of TV as I experienced it growing up and the notion that there’s something really pleasurable about tuning in every week and kind of walking into a room that you recognize, about a familiar pattern that you can get used to and that you know what you can expect with that pattern repeating every week.

And within that context, there are going to be surprises. We’re going to delight you. We’re going to kind of play with expectations here and there. But we have a contract with you that this is the format of the show. And when you tune in, you’re going to get the pleasure of seeing how this format’s going to play out this time. And that includes her, quote-unquote, winning at the end. Now, that doesn’t mean we’ll always do it, and we reserve the right to pull the rug out every now and then, but that’s kind of the bigger picture in my head of, for lack of a better word, although I don’t think this is a dirty word, the procedural element of the show.

Natasha’s character being able to tell if people are a liar, that’s similar to Ana de Armas’s character in Knives Out. What is it about that specific kind of special skill that is such a great fit for a detective story?

For very different reasons in both of those, it was kind of the perfect obstruction and superpower for each of those people. With Marta in Knives Out, it’s a character we care about. She’s in a situation she can only get out of via lying, and so taking away her ability to lie felt like the ultimate “make life hard on your main character” thing. And similarly, Charlie (in Poker Face), she’s on the road. Her life is constantly threatened, but she has this good heart, and so the hardest possible thing you could throw at her was having this extrasensory thing that is going to let her know, send an alarm up, when something’s off, and knowing that she’ll kind of be drawn into it because she hates seeing the little guy gets screwed.

So for me, it’s less of kind of a philosophical thing of being interested in lies. It’s almost more that in each case, it was a great kind of dramatic tool to throw as many banana peels in front of the main character as possible.

There’s a resurgence of the kind of detective genre, the whodunit genre, you may have observed this. Are you watching these and, I’m curious, are you the type who tries to race the story and figure out who is behind the murder, or do you just kind of let it play out?

I’m a junkie. I watch everything. I watch anything that’s vaguely a whodunit, and there’s so much good stuff. I really enjoyed Chris (Miller) and Phil’s (Lord) show. The Afterparty was great. I thought See How They Run was super fun, and Bodies Bodies Bodies. And it’s been really fun (seeing) stuff coming out. But the second part of your question, no, absolutely not. Maybe for the first 20 minutes, I’ll be kind of trying to put it together, but at a certain point, I’m very happy to kind of step back and let the story carry me along, which I think really informs how I approach writing my own murder mysteries. I think a big key to how I try and come at them is to never assume that the clue gathering and the solving is going to be entertaining the audience, and to always give it a dramatic spine that is actually going to carry the audience through, with either a thriller or a more basic, fundamental, dramatic engine than the audience trying to solve a puzzle.

Has that always been the case, as a viewer?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s not like it’s a conscious decision of, “This is my theory of who done it, so thus I will watch them this way.” The reality is just when I’m watching them, it just happens. Your brain gets fatigued after about 20 minutes, and you realize if the writer is worth their salt. And given most of the stuff I was watching were Agatha Christie adaptations, I knew that she was, so I will never be able to guess this solution. And so at some point, the detective’s going to explain the thing I never could have guessed. I could randomly point to one of the people and say they did it and maybe be right or not, but kind of who cares?

The first 4 episodes of ‘Poker Face’ are now streaming on Peacock with new episodes premiering Thursdays

The Eye features music’s premiere rising artist in a stripped-down studio space to deliver renditions of their finest songs with just one camera, one microphone, and one take. The latest group to bask in the spotlight is Phony Ppl, a Brooklyn band that you probably know better than you think.

The five-piece group combines sounds of hip-hop, R&B, soul, and more, and they’ve been doing that for over a decade now. Their biggest chart success came in 2015 with the release of the album Yesterday’s Tomorrow, which found its way onto the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. Months later, they made their television debut by backing Fetty Wap for his Jimmy Kimmel Live! performance of “Trap Queen” and “My Way.”

More recently, they turned some ears in their direction with the 2020 single “Fkn Around,” a fun and funky tune that boasts a feature from Megan Thee Stallion. (They previously debuted the song together in Meg’s 2019 Tiny Desk Concert performance.) Also in 2020, the group linked up with Joey Badass for “On My Sh*t.”

These days, Phony Ppl is fresh off the release of their latest album, Euphonyus from November 2022. Also these days, they recently graced The Eye with a trio of performances.

The group sounds tight on “Why iii Love The Moon,” a jazzy and vibrant cut that comes with a simple but thought-provoking message: “That’s why I love the moon / Every night it’s there for you / It’s constant / Unlike these human beings / Who lie about what it seems to be.”

Beyond that, they also delivered the funky “Nowhere But Up” and, of course, “Fkn Around.” They didn’t get Meg to join them in the studio for this rendition, but even without her, the song’s smooth and infectious energy holds up tremendously well.

Watch Phony Ppl perform “Why iii Love The Moon,” “Fkn Around,” and “Nowhere But Up” for The Eye above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After Donald Trump and Republicans seemingly had a gift dropped in their lap thanks to classified documents being found at Joe Biden’s residence, former Vice President Mike Pence barreled into the fiasco thanks to classified documents being found at this residence, too. Turns out, the heads of our government are not the best stewards of top-secret information.

The situation has reportedly gotten so bad that the National Archives sent a letter asking former presidents and vice presidents to basically look around the house to see if there are any classified documents in the garage or tucked under a couch cushion. You guys are killing them here. Via CNN:

“The responsibility to comply with the [Presidential Records Act] does not diminish after the end of an administration,” the letter states. “Therefore, we request that you conduct an assessment of any materials held outside of NARA that relate to the Administration for which you serve as a designated representative under the PRA, to determine whether bodies of materials previously assumed to be personal in nature might inadvertently contain Presidential or Vice Presidential records subject to the PRA, whether classified or unclassified.”

The letter was sent to every administration going all the way back to President Reagan. Interestingly, Jimmy Carter was not a recipient because even though he signed the Presidential Records Act, it didn’t go into effect until he left office. So God knows how many documents that crafty little peanut farmer has or whether he dives into a pool of them like Scrooge McDuck.

(Via CNN)

After starring in the Netflix trilogy To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Noah Centineo swiftly became the streamer’s up-and-coming golden boy by landing his own action show The Recruit, a spy thriller that premiered last month on the streamer. Season one followed Centineo as Owen, a new CIA lawyer who becomes entangled in international espionage. Think James Bond but for Gen Z! Your dad would love this show, by the way.

The show managed to attract a solid fanbase, which probably has nothing to do with the leading man and everything to do with convoluted political games. And now said fans can look forward to even more of Noah Centineo running around in a suit because The Recruit was renewed for a second season.

Netflix confirmed that the show will return, with Centineo on board. The actor said “I know I speak for our entire cast and executive team at eOne and Netflix when I say that we are thrilled to be returning to The Recruit for a second season. I’m looking forward to seeing what [showrunner] Alexi Hawley has in store for us all.”

Despite all of the Netflix cancellations, it’s pretty rare to see a show that didn’t smash records get another shot on the streamer. Showrunner Alexi Hawley said that a rabid fanbase helped them get the show renewed for another season. “I’m thrilled to dive back into the fun, funny, action-packed world of The Recruit,” he said. “Seeing how invested our audience became in the show’s adventurous take on the spy world has been incredibly rewarding, and I can’t wait to turn it all up to 11 in Season 2.”

This is a win for Centineo, who was supposed to be gearing up to portray He-Man, but was replaced last year. So now he will have to settle for being a CIA agent instead, which some would say requires less training.

How can a fun social media platform that promotes creative dancing, life hacks, pink sauce and all things super trendy be anything short of awesome? How could anyone be a TikTok hater?

Well, they exist. In fact, some of these naysayers are anxiously prepping for doomsday like Joel from the Last of Us. But instead of fungus, these doomsayers are bracing for a great battle against, in their eyes, America’s greatest foe, China. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, is Chinese, and as TikTok has grown into one of the world’s most popular apps, many fear it will be used as a tool for misinformation campaigns, spying, espionage, and calculated IQ degradation.

Over the past month, it seems like the anti-TikTok movement has really picked up steam. Since December, the US government banned the platform on all federal devices, Bi-partisan legislation has been announced (labeling TikTok as “digital fentanyl”), and dozens of university campuses like UT-Austin, and Texas A&M have outright blocked it.

To top it off, on Tuesday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley released a very forward challenge.

With election season fast approaching, and new information becoming available, the battle against TikTok is only going to get more intense. In this highly polarized country, this could soon be one of those pressure points used by politicians. So, to stay on top, here’s a breakdown of how the TikTok narrative has transpired and what it means going forward.

How did we get here?

Josh Hawley’s first sentence,”TikTok is China’s backdoor into American’s lives,” encapsulates why a lot of people are freaking out over the app. Not to brush aside the extremely problematic subversion campaigns committed by The US Government, China’s no boy scout. The fact is, China has harvested data and stolen trillions of dollars of IP (Intellectual Property), using hacking capacities that eclipse every nation on earth combined, as reported by CBS.

At the core of this conflict is TikTok’s Chinese-based parent company, ByteDance. The concern is basically that ByteDance, while controlling an app with over a billion users, could disclose oceans of private data about American citizens to the Chinese Government if they demanded it. Once mostly a Republican concern, this has since become more bi-partisan, as Democratic Senator Mark Warner mentioned, “TikTok, ByteDance, and other China-based tech companies are required by Chinese law to share their information with the Communist party.”

Even FBI Director, Christopher Wray has verbalized his concerns over TikTok’s influential algorithm and its spying capacity. All of this to say, if the Chinese wanted to weaponize TikTok, they certainly could. That’s not really up for debate.

So… Was Trump Right?

If you remember pandemic days, these TikTok concerns reached mainstream attention when Donald Trump ordered the app to be banned if ByteDance didn’t sell their American operations to an American company within 45 days. Software juggernaut Oracle seemed a contender, but alas, the deal never went through. This 2020 executive order was soon replaced by Joe Biden’s new initiative for the US Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) to thoroughly investigate TikTok’s potential threat. That security review has still not concluded.

All the while, ByteDance continued to invest millions into lobbying, and over a billion dollars on campaigns such as Project Texas to bolster confidence that American data would never be shared with China. ByteDance made assurances that their US user data was stored in Virginia, backed up in Singapore, and even made sworn testimonies that only US security teams could determine who accessed data.

Tensions boiled after bombshell reports from BuzzFeedNews in mid-2022 revealed that in fact, several Chinese-based ByteDance employees had toiled with private data. Leaked audio of several executive meetings revealed, “everything is seen in China,” and there’s even a guy known as “Master-Admin” who has access to everything.

The Bans: What’s the other side of this?

The result has been, most notably, the ban of the app on all federal devices. These revelations fueled the fire of many lawmakers, like Texas Governor Greg Abbott, already skeptical of TikTok, to take further action. 31 States have even taken the ban to the state level, and thus public universities have followed suit. Auburn University, University of Texas-Austin, and Texas A&M are just some of the many schools that have banned the app on their campus Wifi. As of this writing, no private schools have reported blocking access to the app.

Students haven’t been quiet over the matter. The bans on public campuses have provoked a huge uproar about censorship and opened debates about free speech violations. Here’s a thread from UT Austin content creator Eric Aaberg’s TikTok account.

It’s not just outraged TikTok users who feel like this is overkill. There are many who question: is this solely a TikTok issue? In reality, other platforms like Google and Facebook / Meta also harvest swaths of data. Lawmakers fear TikTok’s access to keystroke patterns, searching habits, location, names, ages, and phone numbers can be weaponized, but Meta is just as snoopy and tracks browsing history even when not using the app.

All these software programs harvest your data, target you for ads, and strive to keep victims glued to the screen for eternity. But the most important question is this: Is it to maximize profits or for a foreign regime’s geopolitical ambitions? The answer to that will determine what’s banned and what’s allowed to run wild. While dystopian and concerning, the issue of data privacy concerns stretches beyond just TikTok.

Some wonder if politicians are using this ban on TikTok as a symbolic attack on China to win political points. Following the Congressional ban on federal devices, American TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter noted “We’re disappointed that Congress has moved to ban TikTok on government devices — a political gesture that will do nothing to advance national security interests.”

While there’s an inherent bias in that comment, it begs the question: Is this really just a political gesture? Should we be concerned? And what are people willing to give up for national security?

Bottom Line: Will TikTok be banned nationwide?

While Josh Hawley declared he would bring this nationwide ban to the Senate floors for a vote, the reality is that, though a lot can be done to dissuade the use of TikTok, an outright ban is quite unlikely. Take the College bans: Although the campus Wifi blocks TikTok, a simple VPN or switch to personal data jumps over the firewall with ease.

So, why exactly is the nationwide ban unlikely? (Check here if you want to dig deeper) Basically, the government has the ability to take “narrowly tailored” specific action to limit speech if it concerns national security, and for that reason, the ban of the app on federal devices is lawful. For example, a government employee could have sensitive information that they could be blackmailed for, whereas, does it really matter that “Master Admin” knows you’re obsessed with Charli D’Amelio?

Regulating ordinary citizens’ speech is a whole different animal. While it’s possible, the legislative hoops that would need to be jumped through to prove its constitutionality would be rigorous. A nationwide ban should not be expected any time soon, however, as election season approaches, be prepared for the topic to come up as a hot-button issue.