Category: Viral

The Philadelphia 76ers’ head coaching position, arguably the top job available in the NBA, is expected to entice all the top candidates in the league, but according to a new report from Keith Pompey of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Mike D’Antoni may be in pole position.

From Pompey: “… the job could be D’Antoni’s to lose. The source said the 69-year-old would have to bomb his interview with the Sixers owners not to be offered the job, and said D’Antoni is the candidate they want.”

D’Antoni is expected to fly to Philadelphia to interview in the coming days and has, according to Pompey, backed away from mutual interest with the Indiana Pacers in order to more aggressively pursue the Sixers’ job. The former Rockets coach, who opted not to pursue an extension team following its departure from the 2020 postseason, spent time in Philadelphia in 2015 when he was making his way back to coaching after failed stints in Los Angeles in New York, giving him familiarity with general manager Elton Brand — then on the Sixers’ roster as a player — and the rest of the organization.

However, candidates such as Ty Lue and Billy Donovan are also expected to get a look from Philadelphia’s brain trust. And it’s not a logical fit stylistically, as the Sixers are centered around two interior non-shooters in Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons while D’Antoni is coming off many years with a unique and regimented threes-and-layups system in Houston that runs counter to how the Sixers have played through this core.

Given their social media shenanigans involve fake fan giveaways and ab-tastic handstand challenges, it sure seems like Tom Holland and Jake Gyllenhaal became even closer pals while filming Spider-Man: Far From Home together, but it turns out that they don’t tell each other everything. Holland recently revealed to Entertainment Weekly that he had no idea that Gyllenhaal was producing the Netflix film The Devil All the Time, and it sure sounds like the Mysterio actor had no idea Holland was joining the film either. Communication is the key to a good relationship, guys.

“When Jake and I were working together on Spidey 2, he was asking me what I was going to do next,” Holland told EW. “I pitched him this movie and he was like, ‘Wait a minute, I’m producing that movie.’ And I was like, Well, I’m in that movie.’ I guess someone had like messed up in the email and didn’t tell us that each of us were part of the film.”

In another superhero twist for The Devil All the Time, Holland stars along side Robert Pattinson who impressed fans with the jaw-breaking teaser for The Batman in late August. Holland’s MCU co-star Sebastian Stan also appears in the Netflix film.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

In Knockemstiff, Ohio and its neighboring backwoods, sinister characters — an unholy preacher (Robert Pattinson), twisted couple (Jason Clarke and Riley Keough), and crooked sheriff (Sebastian Stan) — converge around young Arvin Russell (Tom Holland) as he fights the evil forces that threaten him and his family. Spanning the time between World War II and the Vietnam war, director Antonio Campos’ The Devil All the Time renders a seductive and horrific landscape that pits the just against the corrupted. Co-starring Bill Skarsgård, Mia Wasikowska, Harry Melling, Haley Bennett, and Pokey LaFarge, this suspenseful tale is adapted from Donald Ray Pollock’s award-winning novel.

The Devil All the Time is currently streaming on Netflix.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

Kawhi Leonard, the Los Angeles Clippers’ typically stoic star, gave his diagnosis of the issues that led to the team’s Game 7 loss to the Denver Nuggets. While speaking with the media late Tuesday night, Leonard offered a critique of the Clippers’ basketball IQ and team chemistry.

Simply put, Leonard told reporters, the Clippers need to “get smarter as a team.”

As just one example, it’s surprising that just about all fans and analysts were able to identify second halves — and third quarters in particular — as a weakness for Los Angeles, and yet they were still not able to overcome those failures. The Clippers also had no answers for the Nikola Jokic-Jamal Murray two-man game that, while devastating, is a fairly predictable go-to set for Denver and didn’t pose nearly the same issues for the Trail Blazers in last year’s second round.

Journeyman guard and sixth man Lou Williams agreed with Leonard’s explanation.

Per Jovan Buha of The Athletic:

“I think a lot of the issues that we ran into, talent bailed us out; chemistry it didn’t,” Williams said. “In this series, it failed us. We know this is our first year together. We are a highly talented group and we came up short.

“Chemistry is something that you’ve got to build. You build it over time. I thought we were moving in the right direction at the end of the year before the COVID thing happened and coming in after the break. … Continuity is very important.”

As with any disappointment, the explanation is never as simple as one or two things. Chemistry is earned, not bought, and the Clippers had little time to integrate Marcus Morris, acquired at the trade deadline, before the NBA shut down in mid-March. They were without Williams and Montrezl Harrell for most of the Bubble seeding games. And Leonard, like last year in Toronto, frequently missed games to nurse lower-body injuries and rest up for the postseason.

Both Leonard and Paul George can be free agents in 2021, meaning the Clippers will need to discover a winning formula quickly to solve the problems their stars identified last night.

Aside from being featured on the show’s soundtrack (on the song “Quicksand“), SZA is the self-declared “biggest fan” of the HBO show Insecure. The show’s writer, producer, and star Issa Rae put SZA’s knowledge to the test on behalf of Billboard for the publication’s Quizzed series, challenging her on a video chat with questions from the show’s biggest moments.

After the two discuss their respective smoking/drinking habits — Issa drinks but doesn’t smoke, SZA smokes but doesn’t drink — they commence with the questions, which include a “true-or-false” round, a general trivia round, and a quotes round. SZA gets five of seven of the true-or-false questions correct, missing the names of Lawrence’s app and Issae’s rap alter ego. In the general trivia section, SZA garners a perfect score, displaying near-perfect recall of some of the show’s funniest moments, including the wine-down apartment fire and the name of Molly’s dog.

Unfortunately, the “Hit Different” singer doesn’t wind up answering any questions from Issa about her new music. While she argued with TDE president Punch about not having a release date, she told her fans her music wasn’t being held hostage but that she just goes back-and-forth about whether she’s “strong enough” to release it.

Watch Issa Rae and SZA’s full interview above.

The Big Ten made waves earlier this summer when the conference announced its decision to postpone all fall sports in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that college football would not occur in the rust belt — and Maryland/New Jersey — this fall, which led to a major backlash that included everyone from coaches, to players, to families, to people in politics calling on the conference to reverse course.

For days, it seemed like the conference was on the verge of opting to play football, and on Wednesday afternoon, those rumblings became reality. The Big Ten announced that, following a vote by its Council of Presidents and Chancellors, an 8-game season will occur this fall, starting on Oct. 23-24 and culminating with a championship weekend on Dec. 19 in which each team will play the squad that sits in the same spot in the standings in the opposite division — 1 v. 1, 2 v. 2, etc.

The Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors (COP/C) adopted significant medical protocols including daily antigen testing, enhanced cardiac screening and an enhanced data-driven approach when making decisions about practice/competition. The COP/C voted unanimously to resume the football season starting the weekend of October 23-24, 2020. The decision was based on information presented by the Big Ten Return to Competition Task Force, a working group that was established by the COP/C and Commissioner Kevin Warren to ensure a collaborative and transparent process.

The Big Ten will require student-athletes, coaches, trainers and other individuals that are on the field for all practices and games to undergo daily antigen testing. Test results must be completed and recorded prior to each practice or game. Student-athletes who test positive for the coronavirus through point of contact (POC) daily testing would require a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test to confirm the result of the POC test.

As the conference explained, daily testing will begin on Sept. 30, and if a player tests positive, they will be sidelined for a minimum 21 days. The conference also announced that players who test positive will “undergo comprehensive cardiac testing to include labs and biomarkers, ECG, Echocardiogram and a Cardiac MRI,” with a cardiac registry getting set up — a major reason the conference cited to postpone the season back in August was information on a condition called myocarditis, which is an inflammation of the heart muscle.

The Big Ten additionally set up benchmarks that the programs and the universities will need to reach in order to play football safely, going on a green, yellow, red system.

While the remainder of the sports that are normally played in the fall and all winter sports are still up in the air, the conference announced that news regarding those will come soon.

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead want you to see their new movie starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie, but not in a theater.

While other filmmakers pushed to get movie theaters to re-open while the United States creeped towards and recently crossed 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Spring duo released a statement warning potential viewers to avoid Synchronic in indoor spaces. “At the time of writing this, we personally wouldn’t go to an indoor theater, so we can’t encourage you to,” Moorhead wrote on Instagram. “To us, this isn’t only about feeling safe in a theater, this is also about the scientific community indicating that enclosed spaces like movie theaters are still a hazard for spreading COVID-19 to others.” Luckily, there are other ways to see the science-fiction horror film: Synchronic will play in select drive-in theaters, followed by a video-on-demand release “in a few months.”

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

When New Orleans paramedics and longtime best friends Steve (Anthony Mackie) and Dennis (Jamie Dornan) are called to a series of bizarre, gruesome accidents, they chalk it up to the mysterious new party drug found at the scene. But after Dennis’s oldest daughter suddenly disappears, Steve stumbles upon a terrifying truth about the supposed psychedelic that will challenge everything he knows about reality — and the flow of time itself.

Synchronic comes to drive-ins on October 23.

Fajitas rule. They’re devilishly simple — it’s just bell peppers, onions, and a protein or two — while still very much feeling like a luxury splurge off an otherwise standard Tex-Mex menu. Part of that comes from the fact that you can build your own taco using as much guacamole, sour cream, salsa, meat, cheese, and fried veg as you want. There’s something freeing about that approach.

Then there’s the sizzle. The famed fajita sizzle — that hiss and crackle of meat and oil on cast iron — is one of the most satisfying pieces of ASMR in existence and a surefire “get the attention of everyone in a 20-foot radius” order.

But fajitas don’t have to be relegated to the restaurant setting — they’re relatively easy to cook. So I thought I’d share a riff on Surf ‘N Turf Fajitas that I made with a nice hanger steak and some large red prawns. I didn’t go overboard with the sides. I’m just using guacamole and crema. You can add your own salsa, pico de gallo, and/or shredded cheese if you want.

Overall, the whole recipe is all pretty straightforward Tex-Mex, which is easily sourceable at any U.S. supermarket. I’ve also done this recipe with skirt steak and strip steak but I just happened to have hangers on hand. Anyway, let’s dive in because, again, fajitas rule. Just ask our own Brian Grubb, whose Twitter handle is veering dangerously close to becoming a fajita-themed account.

Surf ‘N Turf Fajitas — DIY Recipe

Ingredients:

Steak and Marinade:

• 8-oz. Hanger Steak
• 1/2 cup Fresh Cilantro
• 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
• 1/4 cup Lime Juice
• 1/4 cup Sesame Oil
• 1/4 cup Resposado Tequila
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 4 Garlic Cloves
• Large tablespoon Cumin
• Salt
• Black Pepper

Prawns and Marinade:

• 6 Red Prawns
• 1/4 cup Fresh Cilantro
• 1/2 Chili Pepper
• 1/4 cup Lime Juice
• 1/4 cup Resposado Tequila
• Salt
• Black Pepper

The Rest:

• 1/2 Red Bell Pepper
• 1/2 Green Bell Pepper
• 1 medium Yellow Onion
• 2 Avocados
• 1/2 Red Onion
• 1/2 Tomato
• Salt
• Cumin
• Limes
• Sour Cream
• Neutral Oil

Prep:

This is the most labor-intensive part of the process. The first thing you need to do is get the steak marinating. Now, do you need to really marinate your steak? Yes. Yes, you absolutely do. To get that real Tex-Mex restaurant vibe to the fajita steak, you need to get some marinade in there.

This marinade is easy. Combine 1/2-cup soy sauce with 1/4 cup of each lime juice, sesame oil, tequila, and sugar. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Then add in the garlic, cilantro, cumin, and a generous pinch of salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

Stir to combine. Done.

I pour that over the steaks in a fridge safe dish and cover tightly with plastic wrap. I let my steaks marinate for four hours. You can let these rest overnight but I didn’t think ahead enough for that.

In the meantime, I get my prawns shelled and deveined. This process is a lot easier than it sounds.

• Step one, twist the head off.
• Step two, gently pull the shell from the meat starting from the top, where the head was. It should slide right off.
• Step three, devein the prawns by running a sharp pairing knife down the back of the prawn, about 1/8-inch deep, revealing the intestine. Remove and discard.

That’s it. It may take a little practice, but it’s easy to master cleaning raw shrimp like this. Also, save the heads and shells to make shrimp stock later. It’s the only way to make grits for shrimp and grits but that’s a story for another day.

I then add the lime juice, tequila, chilis, cilantro, and prawns to another bowl to get them marinating. I hit that with a very big pinch of salt and a few cracks of pepper. I cover and let refrigerate until we’re ready to cook (about an hour).

Next, I make some really fast guacamole. Into a bowl goes: two avocadoes, half a red onion finely diced, a handful of chopped cilantro, the juice of two limes, the other half of that chili pepper used with the prawns, a large pinch of salt, and a heaping teaspoon of cumin. I mash that together until it’s semi-smooth. I then stir in half a tomato that’s roughly chopped. I cover that with plastic wrap and let rest in the fridge. I then make a quick crema with about half a cup of sour cream and the juice of half a lime. Stir. Done.

Lastly, I cut up my bell peppers and yellow onion. As you can see in the photo up top, you don’t have to go too crazy here. A pole-to-pole chop does the trick.

Cook:

The first thing I do is get my serving skillet in the oven on high. This has to get super hot to get that iconic sizzle when you serve your fajitas.

I fetch my hanger steaks from the fridge and remove them from their marinade. That’s when I realize that I forgot to trim the exess fat and sinew off. So I trim a bit off while I heat a cast iron skillet on high with a thin layer of canola oil.

Once the skillet is ripping hot, I lay in the steak. I want to get a deep sear on the thing. It’s about one-inch thick, so I leave it on one side for about 3 minutes before I flip it. I let it sear for another minute and then I turn the heat down to a medium flame. I let the steak sit for another two minutes before I flip it one last time to cook for another two minutes on the first side that touched the skillet.

I place the steak on a wooden board and let to rest for ten solid minutes.

In the meantime, I add the peppers and onion to the skillet, hit them with a pinch of salt, and toss them around with a wooden spoon, bringing up all that steaky fond from the bottom of the skillet.

You don’t want to overcook the veg here. The onion should be going just translucent and the peppers should be brighter and softening with a crunch still in them. Once I hit that mark, I set the peppers and onions aside.

Lastly, I add the prawns to the skillet for about 30 seconds on each side. I just want to give them some color and heat — they’re already cooked from the lime juice.

I grab my pipping hot skillet from the oven and I’m ready to serve. I quickly slice into my steak, making about half-inch thick slices across the grain of the steak.

Serve:

I hit the peppers and onion with a little Canola oil and drop them into the skillet first and they smoke and sizzle brilliantly. I place the steak on top and arrange the six prawns around.

And … I wish you could smell and hear this sizzling skillet. The smells and sounds transport you straight to your favorite Tex-Mex joint.

I serve these with some warmed flour tortillas, a little sour cream cut with lime juice, and the guacamole. These fajitas were a big hit at my dinner table and not a morsel was left. The steak was cooked just right (on the rarer side, as you can see) with a nice umami depth thanks to the marinade. The prawns popped with a hint of spice, lime, and tequila. The veg was a nice balance with just the right amount of crunch.

Seriously, take a crack at these. You’ve made more than enough sourdough.

Fox News’ Steve Doocy went rogue and pushed back this week after Trump’s 47-minute call into Fox And Friends, and the late night hosts loved it. Doocy even crushed Brian Kilmeade’s spirit by telling Trump that his claim of calling in “every week” wasn’t gonna fly: “You may want to do it every week, but Fox is not committed to that, and we’ll take it on a case-by-case basis.” Doocy added that Joe Biden was also welcome to dial in and talk for, you know, 47 minutes, and the whole thing was probably a blow to Trump’s ego, given that he admitted to watching up to eight hours of Fox News on some nights. As you can imagine, both Trevor Noah and James Corden had a field day with this.

In the above video (beginning around the 5:45 mark) Corden briefly addressed the matter on The Late Late Show while quipping, “I think Trump just got Fox and Friend-zoned.” Yup, it sure looks like Doocy, at least, is not willing to disregard the equal-time rule and realizes that Biden should receive also Fox News air time, should he desire it.

Trevor Noah chimed in on The Daily Show by describing the moment as a clear-cut example of the writing on the wall for a Fox News co-host: “Wow, Steve Doocy just told the president of the United States, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’” Noah added, “He’s the most powerful man in the world and they’re treating him like he’s a Jehovah’s Witness who’s also selling timeshares.” Time will only tell if Fox News takes the Doocy route on Trump’s desire for lengthy on-air phone calls, but below (at around 6:45), you can see Noah enjoy the fallout so far, including Kilmeade’s downcast reaction.

Kanye West is blaming “white media” for “taking down” Bill Cosby, Michael Jackson, and R. Kelly in his latest Twitter rant, arguing that a “Black media company” would never do the same to a white celebrity. In the midst of his latest multi-day tirade, which included demands for apologies from Drake and J. Cole and an attempt to upload his recording contract to Twitter, Kanye parroted popular conspiracy theories about the three entertainers, all of whom have been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct.

“Michael Jackson Bill Cosby aaaaand wait for it … R Kelly had documentaries made or were taken down by white media,” he tweeted. “There has never been a Black media company that would take down a white celebrity.” As usual, Kanye’s assertions were missing a few points — namely, that Bill Cosby and R. Kelly were accused by multiple women — supported by plenty of physical evidence — of sexual abuse. Cosby was accused by multiple (Black) women of slipping them drugs and taking advantage of them and was convicted in 2018, while R. Kelly filmed himself having sex with underage (Black) girls and is currently on trial in multiple jurisdictions while threatening witnesses through proxies.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson continued to be one of the most popular entertainers in the world a decade after his death. While the Leaving Neverland documentary painted an unflattering picture of the singer, there were many who refused to believe the subjects of the documentary, questioning their motives. Jackson’s and Kelly’s songs still get millions of streams and in fact, saw increases after both documentaries were released. It’s questionable whether any of these men were “taken down” by anyone or anything but their own behavior, and with increases in streaming for some of their music, they’re arguably more popular than ever.

Kanye’s position makes a certain kind of sense. These men were obviously heroes for him growing up and it’s hard to see your heroes for what they are. Undoubtedly, more than a few Kanye fans are going through the same thing now as he pokes holes in his self-conception as a genius by the day.

As the voice of two of the most popular animated characters on television, H. Jon Benjamin has stayed busy during the production slowdown sparked by that pandemic thing you’ve heard so much about. Bob’s Burgers has continued its production and will soon launch its new season and Archer was able to wrap up season 11, which premieres tonight on FXX.

But despite that, things haven’t exactly been normal. Benjamin has moved out to the woods of Connecticut, he’s doing his job from a studio someone sent him in the mail, and he’s refinding a love of bird watching that seems to frighten him just a little bit. We discuss all of those things and the new season of Archer ahead, but the facts of the thing don’t quite sell the experience.

Benjamin is a unique interview, happy to riff and keep it a little awkward for the sake of a laugh… or quite possibly his own amusement. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
A fun thing is that I had a bunch of thought starters and I have lost that document, so we’re just going to fly here.

I’m excited.

Me too. It’s going to get dangerous. We’re going to really break some rules here.

Oh, we’re going to… Might get into the danger zone.

[Laughs] Perfect. Well, I did not mean to set that up, but it happened organically.

Yeah, no I’m sorry I even said that.

It’s the headline now: “H. Jon Benjamin Dives Right Into The Danger Zone With Archer,” and then I’ll have to resort to day-drinking after doing that, but that’s fine.

Right. Well, I already started, so…

So how has the apocalypse/pandemic been treating you?

Well, it’s moving along swimmingly, I think. Yeah. Every day getting worse and worse by slow degradation. Obviously it’s been difficult, but regarding the shows, it’s been relatively normal in a way, so that’s a good thing. The ability to do the shows has been a positive.

Yeah. With any kind of voice work and everything like that, have things been mostly been uninterrupted as far as that goes? Are you, like everybody else, recording in your closet?

Yeah. I’ve been recording at home in a sort of makeshift studio that was sent by mail. That’s been going on pretty regularly with both shows. I actually did finish up probably in May, but they did the last two recordings at home. For Archer, it’s probably been a little bit more normal because everybody recorded independently anyway so it’s basically the same setup with Bob’s Burgers. It’s a little more complicated because we don’t get to record together anymore, which is what we did as a group.

With Archer, I know Adam Reed is still involved in the process, but not necessarily directly writing episodes as much. How has that change been?

Well, to be honest, not a great deal [has changed]. Last season was perhaps the first season where he was not writing every script. I think it was a little different. I don’t think I’d ever been a part of rewriting a scene on the fly and we did that a couple of times just based on tone. Adam had been writing a series for 10 years completely on his own, pretty remarkable. I think his voice is so strong, just the shift into getting new people to try and either reproduce that or find their own particular version of the voice of the show was a little rocky at first, but not a lot. Like I said, my example is that I’ve never been like, “Hey, I don’t think Archer would say that.” I had never done that before. And I did that maybe a couple of times. To make a long story longer… Should I keep going?

Yeah, go. Go. Run.

[Laughs] No, I just wanted to say that. I have nothing else.

[Laughs] Are you surprised that you’re back in the Archer prime story?

Not really. I think…

Oh, I might have lost you.

It’s where I was standing. In an electromagnetic booth. Wrapped in tinfoil. Sorry.

Hey listen, that’s how I get my news now too, you’ve just got to make sure the 5G doesn’t get you.

Yeah, that’s where I masturbate, and I apologize for masturbating during this interview.

It’s fine. I talk to a lot of standup comedians.

I just love your voice.

[Laughs] It’s silky.

[Laughs] So… What were you saying?

I was asking if you were surprised to be back in the Archer Prime story.

Not really. I think Adam, Matt [Thompson], and Casey [Willis] probably had discussions back and forth about ending the show after the last coma/dream season, which would have been Space 1999. And then they probably just shifted because, in good part, I think there was probably a lot of discussions (and I’m just guessing this) from the world of Archer, including the fans of bringing the show back to where it was. I think they were probably just working to find a way to do that, so it was probably two things at once and they went with continuing the show, which was… That’s a good thing. I know that Adam in particular had a notion to end the show as a creative choice for him, but I think he shifted as well once they started talking about bringing it back to the world of the original Archer.

The amount of time that’s passed is obviously a significant aspect of this season and how Archer is dealing with the world now and how the world is dealing with Archer. Is that re-energizing for you to voice the character when he’s maybe not at his best and he’s having to be back on his heels a little bit?

From an acting perspective, not at all. I don’t do a deep dive into figuring that stuff out, it’s pretty much on the page. In certain cases, Archer has been faced with some amount of introspection or tragedies that he has to overcome. In other seasons there was the cancer thing and obviously having the child with Lana, so there’s a little bit more going on here than probably the coma seasons, which were just sort of flights of fancy, I guess, for Archer. But on the whole, yeah, I can’t cop to being a good actor.

Well, as a fan of the show, were you excited to see the development of this season? Assuming you’re a fan of the show. If you want to admit to not being a fan of the show, that’s totally fine, I’ll run with it.

[Laughs] Not really a fan, yeah. I’m not loving it, guys. Not loving it. Yeah, it’s hard. I would say you’d have to go back to a lead actor hating his show as much… the only example I could think of is According To Jim, Jim Belushi. I think I hate Archer as much as he hated According To Jim.

Did you see that he’s a professional weed farmer?

A wheat farmer?

He’s a weed farmer out in, it might be Oregon. There are some amazing pictures of him in the fields.

Good for him.

He’s becoming a titan of the legal weed industry.

Oh, you mean weed farmer. I thought you said wheat.

No, weed. Much more interesting.

Oh, that’s way less interesting. Wheat farmer is very interesting, weed farmer is not so much… Honestly, good for him, I guess, if he’s an independent farmer and harvesting weed. The only thing I’ve seen of his recently was the clip of him mowing his lawn, but maybe he was mowing weed.

Maybe. That seems like a waste.

I don’t think that’s how you harvest it.

Maybe he’s just bad at it.

There was something on like Tik Tok or Instagram of him on one of those zero-turn mowers. [Laughs] Which is like a piece of art. I would loop that and put it on my wall, a video of Belushi turning on a mower and it keeps looping.

Speaking of social media, The Bird Report…

Oh my god.

Is it a natural love of ornithology that sparked that?

In the beginning of quarantine, I left New York City, not that there aren’t birds there, but we rented this small house in Connecticut in the country and I started… There were a ton of birds in the backyard. For some reason, I had a weird sense memory of studying birds when I was really young and I think I memorized all the birds when I was a kid from the Audubon book and I hadn’t thought about that for years. I saw a mockingbird, I think it was a northern mockingbird, in the backyard and for some reason, I knew that it was a northern mockingbird, which is at the moment very crazy, as in I can’t believe I know the name of that bird. [Laughs] So I assumed the massive anxiety of feeling a deep, existential panic from the initial response to the quarantine inspired a memory from childhood that I knew somewhat about birds. Yeah, that was a good thing, but that was my repressed memory, just knowing about birds.

Were there more frightening choices that you could have dipped into?

No, I’m just glad that was the thing that I was shocked to remember, as opposed to some horrible incident. I also probably had a lot of bourbon and ecstasy and LSD, so it might have been that.

And this is all while recording The Bird Report or you’re saying that you had repressed memories of drinking bourbon and taking LSD as a child?

No, I have absolutely no repressed memories of that, I remember all of it.

‘Archer’ returns Wednesday, September 16 at 10PM on FXX