Category: Viral

Halloween as we know it (parties, costumes, bars) probably shouldn’t happen this year for obvious reasons. However, Blumhouse Television and Amazon Studios have teamed up to bring Halloween to your living room — in the form of four horror movies. Beginning on October 6, Amazon Prime will start releasing these titles, so you can start feeding those spooky urges as the witching month heats up. They might be best enjoyed while pilfering through a mixed candy bag and chomping on Snickers, who knows? But skip the candy corn. That stuff is trash.

Some recognizable faces, including Joey King in The Lie, pop up in the above trailer, as well as a new song by FJØRA, “What’s Up,” which was produced by the late 4 Non Blondes lead singer, Linda Perry. Here’s a list of all four movies:

– Black Box (Oct. 6): A single father involved in a tragic car accident agrees to an experimental treatment that results in a terrifying identity crisis.

– The Lie (Oct. 6): Two parents race to cover up the crime after their teenage daughter confesses that she killed her best friend. This, naturally, results in even more lies and deception.

– Evil Eye (Oct 13): A mother grows convinced that her daughter’s boyfriend actually holds a dark connection to mom’s past. Uh-oh.

– Nocturne (Oct 13): An elite music academy becomes an unsettling setting when a mysterious notebook (belonging to a dead student) invigorates a timid girl’s practice.

Blumhouse rarely swings and misses, so this is promising news for those Saturday nights when big Halloween gatherings won’t be such a good idea in 2020. Stay safe everyone, and pop some popcorn for a few double features.

The New Mutants, an X-Men spinoff originally produced by Fox (which itself was acquired by Disney 2019) slunk into mostly empty theaters this past weekend. Which, to be fair, was probably more a function of the timing than of the movie itself.

Given that the film was originally shot in 2017 for a 2018 release, and the studio declined to screen it for critics or offer it on VOD in the midst of a pandemic (there were vague intimations that they were contractually obligated to give it a theatrical run), it seems fair to infer that Disney — who, again, didn’t even make it — were just trying to get rid of The New Mutants as quickly and as quietly as possible. Of course, why would we ever want to let them do that? The more a studio wants to hide a movie, the more I want to see it.

Considering The New Mutants‘ weird release and its studio’s seeming embarrassment about it, this seemed like the perfect time for Plot Recreated With Reviews. That’s when we try to recreate an entire movie using only expository quotes from the critics who saw it. Because sometimes it’s just more fun to hear a movie described than actually see it.

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Directed by “The Fault in Our Stars” helmer Josh Boone, who co-wrote the screenplay with Knate Lee, “The New Mutants” takes place at an abandoned hospital where five teenage mutants reside semi-voluntarily while learning about themselves and their powerful abilities. –TheWrap

THE GANG’S NOT HERE

We don’t see Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto, Jean Grey, anybody. Instead, we meet a crew of mutant nobodies, who have zero control or understanding of their dangerous powers, and therefore are forced to live on a gross, crumbling campus in hopes of one day becoming proper X-Men. –NY Post [The NY Post guy REALLY seems to hate the building for some reason -Ed.]

Even Professor X, the patron saint of post-pubescent angst, is merely alluded to with a wheelchair and a look. –NY Times

OUR HERO

The film stars the spectacularly named Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar, a Northern Cheyenne teenager whose whole Reservation has been wiped out by . . . something. –Vanity Fair

…computer-generated carnage outside: an ominous cloud formation, too targeted to be a tornado, that flips cars and smashes mobile homes, emitting a deep, demon-like growl as it destroys all in its path. The phenomenon obliterates the reservation. –Variety

THE DEMON BEAR

Three times Dani repeats the proverb of the Demon Bear: “Inside every person there are two bears, forever locked in combat for your soul. One bear is all things good: compassion, love, trust. The other is all things evil: fear, shame, and self-destruction.” –Polygon

Which one emerges victorious? The one we feed. -TheWrap

[Oh God, not this “two animals inside you” shit again. At least it wasn’t wolves this time. -Ed]

THE ASYLUM

When Dani wakes up handcuffed to a hospital bed, it is revealed that she is the sole survivor from whatever happened at her reservation. –LA Times

Dani finds herself ominously kept prisoner/patient at an asylum of sorts run by Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), whose soft tones and frowning concern for her charges belie obviously dire motivations. -VanityFair

There are many red flags at this facility. Mount Sinai, it ain’t. This dump looks like an abandoned insane asylum, and it’s run by just one stern woman, Dr. Reyes, who is a mutant with the power to create impenetrable force fields. -NY Post

“This isn’t a hospital,” Dani is told. “It’s a cage.” –South China Morning Post

THE GANG THAT IS HERE

The mutants in question are five deadly teenagers who, shortly after their powers kicked in at puberty, each killed someone (or some entire town, in the case of the distraught Dani). -NY Times

Handsome enough to begin with, jock-like Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga) turns scorching hot when his libido kicks in. Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams, “Game of Thrones”) may seem mousy, but she’s actually a kind of werewolf who can transform on command. -Variety

I think she can turn into some kind of angry badger. Very scratchy when threatened. She can also morph into a standard dog if anything needs to be fetched. –National Post

Sam Guthrie (“Stranger Things” big brother Charlie Heaton) has a thick Southern accent and the ability to shoot, rocket-like, across the sky. –Variety

Anya Taylor-Joy makes for a compelling Illyana Rasputin. Presented as a victim of child slavery (and presumably rape) –Forbes [thanks for making that connection clear there, bud -Ed]

she’s a sword-conjuring sorceress who snarls that she’s killed 18 men. -South China Morning Post

Her character carries a pterodactyl hand puppet at all times -Variety

and is able to teleport and turn her eyes and arms into weapons. -Variety

Dr. Reyes, says they’ve been incarcerated to keep them from harming themselves and others with their nascent powers, but I think they’re undergoing AART, or Atrocious Accent Reversion Therapy. How else to explain the fact that Illyana Rasputin is rocking a ra-ra-Rasputin Russian voice? (Her other superpower seems to be perfect bangs.) Or that Charlie Heaton’s Kentucky drawl occasionally wanders as far south as Nashville, and up into Ohio? Meanwhile, Henry Zaga, actually born in Brazil and playing a Brazilian, somehow sounds Californian. –National Post

DR. REYES

Dr. Reyes tells Dani that baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than their grownup counterparts because they don’t know how to control their venom. So Dani and her fellow captives are there for their own good, to protect themselves and others until these magic adolescents can more carefully realize their full potential. -Vanity Fair

Dr. Reyes, who works for the mysterious Essex Corporation. -South China Morning Post

swears she can soothe their guilt with a mix of talk therapy and constant camera surveillance. The sickly teal walls are the first hint that this dormitory isn’t what it seems. -NY Times

It looks an awful lot like the hospital in “Shutter Island.” That’s because both were shot at the Medfield State Hospital, an imposing late-19th-century red-brick asylum that makes for an ideal horror-movie location. -Variety

MUTANT BONDING

As Dani works to understand her talents’ true nature, her newfound friends find themselves plagued with nightmares about the lives they’ve taken. And before long, these nightmares begin to manifest themselves in the physical world, creating real-life monsters that the patients are powerless to resist. -ThePlaylist

Like “The Breakfast Club” on steroids, these five misfits slowly overcome their differences, bonding and becoming friends. -Variety

Naturally, the kids rebel with a dance montage. -NY Times

MISFITS MAKE GOOD, SORT OF

This is the first Marvel movie to depict an openly queer relationship, giving Dani a lesbian love interest. -Variety

“It’s going to get better,” Maisie Williams’s character says, in Panglossian fashion, at one point in The New Mutants. -Vanity Fair

Boone assigns teen mutants to teenage clichés, like the misunderstood jock (Da Costa) or mean girl with a dark back story (Rasputin) and expects the audience to feel something because there are violins playing in the background. –Polygon

Glimpses of a TV playing episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” help drive the point home. –LA Times

STYMIED EXPECTATIONS

In the comics, these guys become known as Wolfsbane, Sunspot, Cannonball, Magik and Mirage. Those nicknames are never used here -NY Post

and we’re only given passing glances at their abilities. -TheWrap

None of the patients ever step foot outside the hospital grounds. -ThePlaylist

For the most part we’re meant to be invested in the twin mysteries of (A) what is Dani’s secret power and (B) is Dr. Reyes a good doctor or an evil one? -National Post

When the true mastermind behind the villainy is unearthed, it’s a deep cut throwback to a franchise that no longer exists. –CinemaBlend

POWER UNLEASHED! SORT OF

Fox’s 20-year, 13-film X-Men series goes out not with a bang or a whimper . . . but a bear attack. Yes, every camper’s worst fear is the asinine conclusion of a two-decade stretch of mutant movies -NY Post

Once unleashed on a series of computer-generated whatsits (including a phalanx of gangly, befanged disco dancers), the teens’ inability to control — or explain — their skills just makes them look goofy. -NY Times

Featuring a demon bear, -NY Post

wolves and sharp-toothed skeletons, -South China Morning Post

it’s a messy action orgy that explains Dani’s mysterious powers. -NY Post

While their elders boast the ability to control weather or metal or minds, the fledglings appear to have gotten the dregs of a white elephant exchange. Illyana has the gift of flickering into an alt-world where her hand puppet becomes a belching, parrot-size dragon. As for Sam, an explosive miner’s son from Kentucky, his biggest moment is when he chains himself to a post and bangs around like a tetherball. -NY Times

If it wanted to be the first Marvel horror movie – a very interesting choice for a story about mutants locked up in an institute – it’s never scary. -CinemaBlend

Without any palpable atmosphere, the jumpy moments and creepy suggestions arrive like only more exposition, -Vanity Fair

scares that you’ll forget about as you’re watching. -Empire

All of its awe is perfunctory, its reveals of superpowers and troubled backstories thunking around like particle board—dense with the pulp of other things -Vanity Fair

IN CONCLUSION

The New Mutants is like watching a lousy TV pilot for a show that you know didn’t get picked up. -Forbes

Part of me wishes its new owners had continued to punt its opening date ever farther into the future. It could have attained mythical status as the film always on the verge of opening, but never quite making it. Sometimes the best X-Men film is the one you don’t see. -National Post

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Well, there you have it, folks. It doesn’t sound so bad, but then it doesn’t sound that good. Probably a solid B+. Honestly I wanted to know more about the pterodactyl hand puppet.

Also, one more thing, I couldn’t fit this quote into the format, but I felt like you should see it.

Most baffling sentence award: Dan Buffa of KSDK:

“Anya Taylor-Joy’s accent doesn’t just come and go; it overwhelms you the way a bad karaoke singer would right after a bad plate of nachos.”

Look out, everyone! The man has a simile and he’s not afraid to use it! Two points for anyone who can figure out what the hell that means.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more ‘Plot Recreated With Reviews’ here.

ASAP Mob co-founder ASAP Illz had some choice words about fellow member ASAP Ferg on Tuesday. Claiming Ferg was no longer a part of the crew, the rapper wrote: “Sorry guys. That n**** burnt out, songs dumb trash. Mr. Anthem can’t get right.” While the news shocked ASAP Mob fans, crew member ASAP Nast has backtracked on Illz’s comments, denying Ferg was officially let go.

Nast took to Twitter to refute Illz’s statements, saying the group had a “dispute” but that doesn’t mean Ferg is out for good. “Disputes happen in families all over the world everyday,” Nast wrote. The rapper continued to say that Ferg “was not and will not be kicked out of A$AP.” Nast also went on to apologize for group members airing grievances in public but says the situation will be “taken care of the right way.”

After Illz stated that Ferg was kicked out of the crew, Ferg seemingly responded to the situation with a vague post on Instagram. The rapper didn’t directly respond to Illz’s comments. Instead, he’s shared a clip of him listening to Meek Mill’s 2016 Dreams Worth More Than Money track “Cold Hearted.” The snippet played over Diddy’s verse which addresses disloyal friends, seemingly making a dig at Illz’s comments.

See Nast’s defense of Ferg above.

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

Taylor Swift released her self-titled debut album in 2006, and it didn’t take long for her to become a superstar. She followed that in 2008 with Fearless, and that album and all the ones that have come after it have topped the charts and been certified multiple times Platinum (except for the new Folklore, but that will surely happen soon enough). She has told many stories throughout her career, and now one superfan has converted them into theme park form.

Matthew Ables has shared a video in which he breaks down a Swift-themed theme park that he designed. He wrote in the video description, “I really enjoy going to theme parks and attending Taylor Swift concerts and had arrangements to do both of those things this summer, but evidently, 2020 had other plans. And those plans apparently included me designing a Taylor Swift theme park called Wonderland with 60+ attractions, because, well, that’s what I did!”

The park has areas based on Swift’s albums — Taylor Swift, Fearless, Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation, Lover, and even Folklore. Attractions of the park contain references to Swift’s discography and life, like Abigail’s Cafeteria, the Fearless zone (one of the park’s more intense areas), and more.

Watch Ables explain his park in the video above.

Dune (1984) is a confounding, often-incomprehensible movie, which is to say, it’s a David Lynch movie. But unlike earlier works like Eraserhead and The Elephant Man and later masterpieces like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, there’s something… off about it. Dune has its hardcore defenders, of course, but even Denis Villeneuve, who directed the 2020 adaptation, admits he felt “half satisfied” while watching Lynch’s most expensive film.

“I’m a big David Lynch fan, he’s the master,” the Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival filmmaker told Empire. “When I saw [Lynch]’s Dune, I remember being excited, but his take… there are parts that I love and other elements that I am less comfortable with. So it’s like, I remember being half-satisfied. That’s why I was thinking to myself, there’s still a movie that needs to be made about that book, just a different sensibility.”

That “different sensibility” involves Big Dave looking like helmet-less Vader. I can’t wait.

Anyway, Villeneuve was respectful in his criticism of 1984’s Dune, but no one (with the exception of Roger Ebert) has fewer kind things to say about the film than Alan Smithee, I mean, David Lynch. “With Dune, I sold out on that early on, because I didn’t have final cut, and it was a commercial failure, so I died two times with that,” he recently told Deadline. We’ll find out what he thinks of Villeneuve’s Dune (and whether he agrees that Timmy has “insane charisma”) on December 18, when the film is scheduled to come out.

(Via Empire)

Have you ever gone back and watched a movie from your childhood as an adult and been walloped in the face with the realization that it crafted a huge chunk of your personality? I hope so, because that will make what I’m about to say next make much more sense: I watched The Great Muppet Caper on Disney+ recently and, hoo boy, was that an eye-opener for the grown-up version of me. My whole life, I have loved heist movies and weirdo absurd comedies. The Great Muppet Caper is both of those things, somehow. There’s a chicken-or-the-egg situation at play here, sure. Did I love this movie because I’ve always been wired this way? Or did watching this movie dozens of times in my formative years alter my wiring? It’s a fair question. A complex one. One I have no interest in examining more deeply. Let’s move on!

Watching it now, it’s kind of incredible it even exists. Like, I’m not entirely sure who the movie was supposed to be for? It’s a children’s movie filled with characters breaking the fourth wall more often than Fleabag. It’s got huge runs of nonsense jokes that would fit in nicely on the strangest Adult Swim creations you can imagine. There’s barely a plot, and what small amount of plot there is serves mostly as a delivery system for more nonsense jokes. I’ve been thinking about all of it a lot since I watched it again, and the best answer I’ve come up with is this: The movie was made specifically for me to enjoy at any age of my life. I feel great about it.

The time has come to talk about The Great Muppet Caper.

1. The plot of The Great Muppet Caper goes something like this: Kermit and Fozzie play newspaper reporters who travel to London with their trusted photographer, Gonzo, to investigate a string of jewel robberies perpetrated by Nicky Holiday (Charles Grodin), who a) is the sleazy playboy brother of London fashion icon Lady Holiday (Diana Rigg); b) frames Miss Piggy for the crimes; and c) plans to steal his sister’s most valuable possession, a baseball-sized diamond called “The Baseball Diamond,” with the assistance of three fashion models in trench coats. I would challenge you to find a better plot for any movie, ever, but we have entirely too much to get to for me to send you on a wild goose chase. Let’s just go ahead and agree that there isn’t one.

2. “But how,” you ask, “do three Muppets become newspaper reporters who fly to London to investigate a string of jewel robberies?” Excellent question. Allow me to present an incomplete list of things that happen in the first 15 minutes of the movie:

• Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo ride in a hot air balloon during the opening credits, which they comment on as the credits appear on the screen, marking the first of many, many times characters in the movie absolutely obliterate the fourth wall
• There is a huge musical number titled “Hey, A Movie,” in which various Muppets dance through the streets and explain the plot of the film you are about to watch, and which ends with the first robbery of Lady Holiday’s jewels
• Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo are called to their editor’s office, where they are fired for missing the huge robbery story entirely and instead running a large photo of themselves on the front page under the headline “Identical Twins Join Chronicle Staff”
• They fly to London on their own dime in the luggage area of an airplane and are heaved out an open door over England, where they safely crash land in a pond

Perhaps you noticed something odd in those bullet points. Perhaps it was the phrase “identical twins.” This was not a mistake on my part. In The Great Muppet Caper, Kermit (a frog) and Fozzy (a bear) play identical twin brothers. Here, look:

It makes no sense, in any way. I could not possibly love it more.

3. This gets us to an important point, one I touched on in the introduction: This movie is powerfully weird, bordering on absurd. Again, Kermit and Fozzie play twins. Nicky and Lady Holiday are siblings, but Nicky has an American accent and his sister has the most British accent you’ve ever heard. Characters are constantly commenting on the fact that they’re in a movie. Kermit prepares for a date with Miss Piggy by shaving, despite the fact that he is a frog puppet who does not have whiskers. At one point, Kermit and Miss Piggy stop an important scene right in the middle to discuss whether Miss Piggy is over-acting. Kermit, Fozzie, and Gonzo stay in a dilapidated glorified hostel called The Happiness Hotel, and the cab driver who takes them there, Beauregard, asks them what room they are staying in, and when they say they’re on the second floor, he replies “Oh, I’m sorry. I can only take you as far as the lobby” before crashing through the front door.

At another point, Miss Piggy is thrust into the role of runway model at Lady Holiday’s big fashion show and proceeds to have a full-on musical daydream that features an extended synchronized swimming performance. Yes, Miss Piggy swims. Underwater. It is not the most impressive and confusing thing a Muppet does in this movie. We’ll get to that. But first, proof.

The Muppets are chaotic and good.

4. The Great Muppet Caper is, in many ways, a showcase for Miss Piggy. She shows up at Lady Holiday’s door with dreams of becoming a model, gets hired as an assistant, and within moments finds herself in a mistaken identity ruse of her own creation that starts with Kermit thinking she is Lady Holiday, features her falling butt-first into a trash can, and ends with her agreeing to let him pick her up for a date at a house that does not belong to her. Later in the movie, after she’s been framed for the jewel theft, she breaks out of prison by pulling the bars apart with her bare hands. She also does this thing where she kind of bounces when she gets excited. All of the Muppets do this, technically, but none of them do it better.

5. Speaking of things that no one does better, I promise all of you that you have never seen anyone enjoy playing a lecherous sleaze more than Charles Grodin does in this movie. As much as? Maybe. Possibly. But not more. He looks like he’s having so much fun. It reminds me a lot of Hugh Grant’s performance in Paddington 2, just the acknowledgment that this — playing a human villain opposite stuffed/animated beacons of light and joy — is all very silly and therefore there’s no reason to do one iota less than the absolute most in every single scene. Here is a GIF of him dancing away from a table before scurrying off. I promise you he brings this exact energy to every scene. It’s delightful.

6. The Great Muppet Caper is littered with the stupidest and most perfect little jokes you’ve ever heard. My favorite is the one where someone references catching the bad guys red-handed and another person replies “What color are his hands now?” It’s so aggressively dumb and pointless and they do it three times. They make this exact joke three times! It somehow gets funnier each time, too. It’s like the people involved are calling our bluff. Like they’re saying “Oh, you groaned at that one? Well, we’re going to keep doing it until you laugh.” This kind of commitment to a stupid bit takes courage. I’m so proud of them.

7. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Gonzo, my favorite Muppet.

What a madman. What a lunatic. He spends this whole movie taking pictures of chickens and birds for reasons that are never explained, and launching his whole body into the street to get a taxi to stop (“It’s great when it works”), and just generally inserting anarchy into every scene. It’s one of the many reasons I enjoy A Muppet Christmas Carol so much. Whoever looked at that classic story and said “Let’s have the blue maniac narrate the whole thing in character as Charles Dickens” deserves a big smooch right on the face.

8. Okay, this is where we discuss the bicycles. Look at the Muppets riding bicycles.

This did not register for me when I was a child, but… how? Look at this. How? There is a real answer to this question that you can find with enough Googling. It involves pulleys and radio controls and a million other things that are hilariously complicated for a movie about a stuffed frog and bear thwarting a diamond heist. But my favorite answer to the question comes from the Muppet Movie director James Frawley, who also coordinated a scene with Muppets on bicycles.

Every time I show the film — whether it’s to film students at USC or UCLA or I’m going to a festival — that’s always the first question: How did Kermit ride the bicycle? And my stock answer is: I put him on a three-wheeler until he got his balance, and then I put him on the two-wheeler.

And if you really want to know more about it, if I can’t convince you to just live with the illusion that Muppets can ride bicycles through a London park while singing, then I guess I can direct you to this paragraph from a truly incredible webpage: The “Bicycles” entry on muppet dot fandom dot com.

Although marionette devices continued to be used in this sequence, the process was simplified when multiple bicycles were in the same shot. Two bicycles could be connected together with a stiff rod from axle to axle, eliminating the need to hold the bicycles up and enabling them both to be pulled from in front. In shots of the whole Muppet gang, the entire mass of bicycles — all wired together — was pulled by a fleet of over-sized tricycles and bicycles, ridden by Brian Henson and other performers. Another innovation in this sequence was the use of radio controls to move the characters’ mouths in long shots.

It’s not quite as informative as the page about Kermit and Miss Piggy’s offspring, but it’s also substantially less upsetting. A fair trade-off.

9. Cameos are littered throughout this movie, although some of them might be a little dated for anyone under 40 to catch. John Cleese plays the clueless owner of the house that Miss Piggy crashes for her date with Kermit, and it is a blast. At one point he refers to Kermit as “a lizard” and it made me think of this iconic tweet.

But the best cameo, by far, is the uncredited one by Peter Falk, Columbo himself, who slides up to Kermit on a park bench and delivers a monologue for the ages.

Again, The Great Muppet Caper is such a weird movie. I adore it in ways I will never be able to explain.

10. The ending, in brief. Kermit and the other Muppets show up at the museum to try to stop Nicky Holiday from stealing the Baseball Diamond. Their plan goes sideways in a few different ways. Things look bleak. Nicky and the models have them cornered. But then… what’s that? What’s that rumbling in the distance?

I suppose I could sit here and explain to you how exactly Miss Piggy ended up on a stunt motorcycle that crashed through a plate glass window and allowed her to disarm Charles Grodin and save the day, but, like, why? Why would I do that? Just go watch The Great Muppet Caper, again, with your jaded grown-up eyes, and marvel at the loosely-controlled absurdity of the whole experiment. It’s barely 90 minutes long. I assure you that you don’t have anything better to do.

The Joe Rogan Experience has officially launched on Spotify around the same time that the host moved to Texas. He’s got the cowboy hat to prove it, but for his first podcast on the new platform (which was recorded in Los Angeles before the move), he donned a NASA suit. His guest, comedian and podcaster Duncan Trussell, wore a silvery space suit, and the whole episode was very spacey on so many subjects. Not only that, but it was five hours long (Joe took a pee break at around the 4:38 mark), but at about 3:58, the two got serious and discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and the police killing of George Floyd.

Both Rogan and Trussell agreed that Floyd’s death was an “unforgivable” act, and but Rogan wanted to stress his believe that “we need cops, man.” While Trussell (who said that he’d received backlash for posting Black Lives Matter content on Instagram) stressed that compassion was needed in order for society to move forward, Rogan wanted to dig into what went wrong with Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin:

“Any man that would do that to another man… that man needs help. I bet he didn’t think he was gonna kill that guy, but he tortured that guy for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. That guy needs a DMT trip, he needs something, he needs to recognize who he is. I think we’re asking people to do things they’re not really qualified to do.”

Rogan doesn’t claim to have all the answers, but he does believe that people must understand that institutional change takes a lot more coordination and work than simply making a change within one’s self. Of police, Rogan offered, “They don’t have the tools to handle it. They don’t have the infrastructure to handle the load of pressure that comes in… right now, we’re so anti-cop, it’s over the top.” In response, Trussell continued to press on with the need for compassion for those who experience racism in the U.S. No easy answers shall be found, of course, but these are discussions that must be had.

In the meantime, Rogan’s followers continue to press him on social media over when he might (again) host Alex Jones, whose episodes are currently absent from Rogan’s Spotify archive. Yet Jones has claimed that he has spoken to Rogan, and there’s no reason to worry because “Joe Rogan’s favorite 100 episodes of the last 10 years or so will be left on YouTube starting December 31 when he goes exclusively to Spotify. For this couple months no man’s land the content will be on both platforms and will be migrating over.” He then added, “And so that’s why the Alex Jones interview is not there. That’s why some of the other interviews are not there.”

Yesterday, ASAP Mob founder ASAP Illz noted in his Instagram story that “Plain Jane” rapper and longtime member of ASAP Mob, ASAP Ferg, was no longer a part of the collective. “Ferg ain’t ASAP no more,” he wrote. “Sorry guys. That n**** burnt out, songs dumb trash. Mr. Anthem can’t get right.” Today, Ferg seemingly issued his response to the announcement in a rather obtuse manner. While Ferg didn’t comment directly on ASAP Illz’s comments, he did share a video that was extremely theme appropriate.

Taking a break from playing a game of pickup basketball, Ferg sat on the sidelines and played a clip from Meek Mill’s 2016 Dreams Worth More Than Money track “Cold Hearted.” The song features Diddy speaking in an interlude, giving a classic and very Diddy speech on turncoat friends:

Ayo, it gets f*cked up when your own family start calling you up
Sh*t, money’s the root of all evil
Family start telling you, “You acting different, n****”
You’re goddamn right I’m acting different
With all this motherf*cking money
But then when it comes from your brother, your sister
Your mother, your father, that sh*t hurts you to the core, man
When they start acting like something that you ain’t never motherf*cking seen
You done grew up motherf*cker
They gave birth to you, know what I’m saying?
You got raised, you done played in the park with them
This money thing, this sh*t will f*ck you up, man
You got to watch what you ask for
You sure you want this son? You sure you want this money?

Again, Ferg didn’t say anything directly about the situation, and while it’s kind of a reach to assume that he specifically meant to address his former crewmates’ comments about him with the video — it’s not much of one. Meanwhile, Ferg’s been branching out with his music, specifically tapping into New York’s drill movement with the help of Jay Gwuapo and Lil Wayne on “No Ceilings” and featuring on Nas’ new album King’s Disease alongside Fivio Foreign. He also collaborated with Nicki Minaj on “Move Ya Hips.”

See ASAP Ferg’s mysterious possible response above.

Donovan Mitchell is on the verge of a big payday. One day after the Utah Jazz fell in Game 7 of their first round series to the Denver Nuggets, Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reports that the extension-eligible Mitchell and the Jazz will hammer out a new max contract right at the start of free agency this year. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, free agency is slated to begin in mid-October.

As Mitchell explained to Haynes, he had some concerns about potentially getting hurt in the Bubble and jeopardizing that big payday, but they subsided pretty quickly.

“Once my teammates told me they wanted to play, then I was all in. I couldn’t make it all about myself,” Mitchell said. “There are younger guys who aren’t established in this league and needed this time to show their value. It would have been selfish of me to stand in the way of that. I couldn’t let my contract get in the way of the bigger picture. I had to rely on God. If I got hurt, it was God’s will. But I put my trust in Him and didn’t worry about potentially getting injured. That allowed me to go out there and play. My faith was in God.”

The max extension for a player in Mitchell’s situation is projected to be $170 million over five years. While Utah was unable to make it past Denver, the third-year All-Star guard was magnificent in the series, playing perhaps the best stretch of basketball in his young career. Mitchell averaged 36.3 points on 52.9 percent shooting from the field and 51.6 percent shooting for three against the Nuggets while chipping in five rebounds and 4.9 steals in 37.7 minutes a night.

Mitchell isn’t the only major piece to the Jazz’s puzzle that is eligible for a huge payday this fall. Rudy Gobert is eligible for a supermax extension, and there’s no word on how talks are progressing between the big man’s camp and the franchise.

It’s no secret that Post Malone loves Nirvana. Back in April, the musician hosted a benefit livestream concert. But instead of performing his own hits, Posty covered all of his favorite Nirvana tracks. Now, Posty has been seen shredding another tribute to Nirvana, this time in a jam session with his close friends.

Since the musician still can’t play live shows, he’s been linking up with fellow musicians to try his hand at a number of covers. Linking up with YouTuber Jared Dines, Posty and his crew covered a number of songs from likes of Nirvana, Motley Crue, and even Wild Cherry. In a series of clips posted to Instagram by Dines, Malone can be seen wielding an electric guitar and even hopping on the drum kit to assist the group in a very metal cover of Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music” and Nirvana’s “Breed.”

The videos were posted over the weekend, but it looks like they may have been filmed months ago, before Malone shaved his head (a look he appears to have stuck with based on recent Instagram posts) and got new tattoos.

Ahead of the jam session, Posty’s Nirvana livestream raised an impressive amount of money to benefit charity. His fans were on board with the covers he chose and the livestream event raised $4.3 million for relief funds, breaking the $1 million mark in just the first hour. The even also received a co-sign from former Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselić and even Courtney Love.

Watch Post Malone jam out above.