Category: Viral

After announcing the impending release of the third EP in his Streams Of Thought series, Streams Of Thought, Vol. 3: Cain And Abel, Black Thought has released the first single from the project, “Thought Vs. Everybody,” which he debuted during his at-home NPR Tiny Desk Concert in April. The song itself is a breathless reminder of Thought’s chops as he tears through a hook-less, intimidating display of rhyme-stacking, unforgiving battle raps.

Black Thought also recently appeared on a remix of Public Enemy’s seminal protest track “Fight The Power” with Nas and Rapsody during the 2020 BET Awards, as well as on Eminem’s surprise album, Music To Be Murdered By earlier this year. He has a verse on Che Noir and Apollo Brown’s new album, As God Intended, which released today, and recently announced he’s writing a new musical based on the Harlem Renaissance, which he will also star in.

The variety of projects The Roots frontman is involved in is a testament to his versatility, but there’s a reason Freddie Gibbs place him among his top five rappers. While most of his work has been with The Roots, the longstanding band founded by Black Thought and Questlove in the late ’80s, his recent Streams Of Thought EPs have served as strong reminders that he’s one of the best in the biz.

Listen to “Thought Vs. Everybody” above.

It’s haaaaaaaappening! I’ll leave it to you to intone that as terrified or excited, because I’ve been oscillating so hard it’s really difficult to tell, but NBA players have arrived or are at this very moment arriving in Orlando to be injected into the bubble. No, they just sort of anti-climatically enter via charter bus into the parking lot of their designated hotel.

This week saw guys packing, giving room tours, smuggling in contraband, and otherwise trying to make the best of and/or make sense of what the next three months (or more) of their lives will look like. Frankly this might be the last stop for us here on NBA Self-Isolation Watch, given that players are for the most part out of self-iso and into another different kind of … semi-iso? We’ll talk about it internally because, if this week is any indication, things in the bubble are going to get squirrelly pretty quick. Meantime, here are the last leaps from self-iso into semi-iso in an action-packed week.

Klay Thompson

Thompson is back on the grind in rehab and Rocco, his loyal bulldog, is right there with him. Thompson was doing vertical jumps with a weighted backpack on. This screengrab was mid-jump, so Thompson is of course blurry, but I want you to focus on Rocco who is crystal clear due to his stoic and supportive nature of never unnecessarily moving.

Rating: It’s either unfortunate or very freeing to realize the way Klay Thompson describes his dog here is the way you would also describe yourself.

Donovan Mitchell

Judging by all the puking emojis in the comments of this from his fellow hoopers, it seems safe to deduce that Mitchell got a new car. Also judging by his face and his legs kicked up in glee.

Rating: I hope he has someone to send him pictures of the car while he’s in the bubble.

Jaylen Brown

Brown arrived to the Orlando bubble and he bought his own, even more exclusive bubble with him. I did not initially consider the specialized training equipment that would accompany players to Florida and am now very interested in seeing more pictures of hotel rooms laden with so much high-tech, futuristic gear that it looks like NASA’s Spacelab*.

Rating: *before it crashed to earth.

P.J. Tucker

Tucker had to pack for the bubble! This would be a docuseries I would watch with RAPT attention, truly. The fits, the combinations, going against every fiber of this man’s very being when it comes to packing practical options over four to seven matching silk pajama suits appropriate for daytime wear. And the shoes! I sincerely hope the Rockets coughed up the cost for additional bags, considering Tucker will have a dozen filled with shoes alone. He probably has shoe-shaped duffle bags that look like specific shoes for specific shoes.

Rating: If the bubble cramps this man’s style so help me.

Patrick Beverley

Beverley celebrated his birthday this week and whoever got/made him this cake knows and loves him very much.

Rating: The little chocolate cigars? The edible money? The only time you should put money in your mouth — eating this cake!

Trae Young

Trae took the boat out on the bay, forgot his job for just one day. Pop-punk classics aside, who had any idea there were lakes this big in Oklahoma?

Rating: A simple Google satellite search will show that there are, indeed, quite a few.

C.J. McCollum

McCollum celebrated his wife’s, Elise Esposito, birthday this week by taking her to a vineyard where they were so socially distanced it seems to have been just them and the professional photographer, who maybe doubles as a sommelier, who got these shots.

Rating: Elise also recently became a dentist, that’s why C.J.’s calling her a doctor, it’s not like a “doctor wine” thing or anything like that.

D’Angelo Russell

Rippin’ on boats was kinda big this week but only one man managed to rip through the most sacred waters of them all.

Rating: Purify yourself!

Pau Gasol

This week in tandem, celebratory trolling of Pau Gasol, two of the best either teamed up or had the same idea for a joke because their sense of humors do kind of align. Jimmy Butler and Serge Ibaka shared photos of themselves with Gasol, who is definitely not the focal point in either, to wish the senior (and señor) Big Spain a happy birthday.

Rating: But honestly if Ibaka and Butler were the focal points of your birthday, you’d be having a pretty good one.

JaVale McGee

Please excuse me while I go pick up all the tiny pieces of my heart for they exploded as my eyeballs came in contact with this photo!

Rating: And the avocado toast sneaking in, insult to injury!

Montrezl Harrell

Trez very tenderly gave his French bulldog or in his words, his “first daughter,” a bath this week. That little thing got super sudsy and stayed very still, then went out in the yard and dried off on a nice, soft blanket, no doubt exhausted.

Rating: Bathe me like one of your French bulldogs.

Rudy Gobert

Gobert, ever the rule bender, smuggled some serious contraband into the bubble. That’s right, a whole ziplock bag of cherries, and two different varieties at that.

Rating: Horticulture could be a good outlet inside the bubble if he hangs onto these pits and of course does not rub them all over any microphones or recorders on his way to planting them in some fertile patch of swamp.

Kyle Kuzma

If there’s one thing Kuz can’t get enough of this summer, it’s half painting Pokemon. I hope he’s coming to Orlando equipped with plenty of canvases so he can sit out on his balcony and give us the Studio Ghibli, Bob Ross, Disney silhouette mashup we want of Kuzma’s mind inside the bubble.

Rating: What can we call this era of art, Neo Kuz Noir?

Gordon Hayward

Robyn Hayward has mastered the art of subtly and deftly trolling her gamer husband for years now. As Gordon Hayward packed up what to the novice eye might look already like enough gaming related equipment, she assures anyone who might be concerned there’s still plenty more to go.

Rating: The “phews” heard round the world could collectively power a rubber duck across a bathtub, if there was no jostling going on in the water.

Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet

The Raptors, as everyone knows because you read this column, arrived in Florida two weeks before the rest of the league did. They’ve been in Naples, south of Orlando, participating in workouts and a lot of leisure time. They have done the impossible, become Florida men without becoming Florida man. To wrap up their time, Siakam and VanVleet golfed together and took part in a very respectable and not too fast golf cart chase.

Rating: The Raptors will soon offer their accumulative advice from this time in a self-help seminar entitled: “Florida Man to Men.”

Hassan Whiteside

Whiteside either forgot to pack a pillow for the plane ride to Florida or this is what he uses even while at home. I would believe both.

Rating: The curvature of the ball is a lot better than most airplane pillows, and the pebbled surface might stimulate cells to repair during sleep.

Paul Millsap

Millsap has honed many new skills during his time in self-iso. A respectable kind of magic that won’t creep you out, cartwheels, cooking, honing an already robust wine knowledge and now, cocktails. If there is one player who is not going to get bored in the bubble and who, furthermore, all the bored players are going to seek out, it’s Paul Millsap.

Rating: Look at the balance of that bottle and watermelon slice! That’s not mixology, that’s physics.

J.R. Smith

Smith got the news this week that he will be heading to the bubble along with the Lakers, so he took some extra time to snuggle with his new puppy, about five whole minutes.

Rating: The snores coming out of this thing, just picture them.

Otto Porter Jr.

Porter went to visit his mom this week and she, rightly, put him straight to work. He helped around the house and then did some gardening, very uniformly spacing these hostas. He even realigned the bricks around the garden bed.

Rating: Deft at many types of bricks, you could say. But don’t say that, because it’s mean.

Justise Winslow

Winslow got to the bubble and very adeptly took a photo that works as a testament to these twisted, twisted times. The joy of late capitalism as we, its participants, trundle along in its very belly.

Rating: It is a bit rich though that Disney sent these jolly Disney braided buses to pick up players at the airport, isn’t it? Please let’s not also normalize human sized duck children who also don’t wear pants in all this.

Evan Fournier

Fournier was one of the first to get to Disney World, being that the Magic are like what, around the corner from the park? He was also one of the first to demonstrate what might be a growing concern for the NBA in the coming weeks — the toll of player boredom in their hotel rooms and the extremely jacked up potential for sprained ankles and wrists.

Rating: Cirque du Soleil’s tryouts are the next bubble over!

Kelly Oubre Jr.

Much has already been made about the food in the bubble but you really do have to hand it to the person in charge of it on Kelly Oubre Jr.’s floor for their efficiency. Why make two trips mere hours apart when you can bag ‘em both, slap ‘em on a tray, and call it a day?

Rating: Who said efficiency ratings would go down in the bubble?

Terrence Ross

Ross (safely) lit off some fireworks with his family on the fourth. They might be close enough to his Disney hotel that they can communicate via flare like frigates in the night now, or they can probably just FaceTime.

Rating: As far as baby’s first fireworks, Roman Candles are a nice option.

Chris Boucher

Boucher played my favorite Akon song very aptly from his pre-bubble bubble balcony in Naples.

Rating: This guy is getting big on jokes and I’m here for it.

DeAndre Bembry

It was also Bembry’s birthday this week and boy did he do it big. He flew a safe amount of friends down to the Virgin Isles, took a lot of boat rides, jumped off a boat and ate some wonderfully, wonderfully thematic cakes.

Rating: 26 never looked so occupationally-related and edible.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Here’s the situation

Good news and bad news. Good news first, because I am nothing if not an optimist, and because I want to push these GIFs I’ve got coming a little further down the page. They are unsettling. I would never unsettle you this early on purpose.

Hamilton is out. The musical phenomenon dropped on Disney Plus and millions of people watched it from the comfort of their homes for much less money than it would have cost to see on Broadway. They got to see Daveed Diggs strut back and forth across the stage as Lafayette in Act I and Thomas Jefferson in Act II. They got to see Leslie Odom, Jr. belt out the role of Aaron Burr. They got to see Renee Elise Goldsberry sing herself through a brick wall as Angelica Schuyler. This is all very cool. I’m sure it lost something in the translation from the live stage show to televised production, but who cares? Lots of people got to see and experience a buzzy work of art that wouldn’t have been available to them otherwise. That’s a good thing.

Unfortunately, this brings us to the bad news and to the aforementioned unsettling GIFs. We must discuss the spittle.

Did you see it? Flying off the bottom lip of King George during his first appearance in the musical? Here, let’s enhance.

ENHANCE.

Yes, sure enough, there is the spittle, launching off his face and into the lights and presumably into the first rows of seats which were hopefully labeled “Splash Zone.” It was a not-insignificant amount of spittle. I have a few notes.

— As much as the spittle disquieted me, I do have to respect the decision to include it in the final edit, in extreme close-up, as if the decision was made that if they had to watch it then so did we. I very much would have liked to be in the editing room when that was given the green light. I like to imagine there was a huge argument that ended with one guy shouting “THE SPITTLE STAYS OR I QUIT.”

— Do you think Jonathan Groff — the actor who played King George, who is terrific, for the record — was aware of the spittle in the moment?

— Guess what: He knows, as he explained to Variety recently:

“I spit a lot onstage,” Groff said on the latest episode of Stagecraft, Variety‘s theater podcast. “I’ve always been a spitter … I start sweating. I just get wet when I perform onstage. It is just what happens.”

He went on, “For the first couple weeks of the run I felt bad, because I’d walk down to the end of the stage in the second song of the show, ‘Skid Row,’ and I can’t help it, I’m just, like, spitting on everyone. And they’re either enjoying it, or they’re laughing, or they’re holding up their programs to block their face. … I don’t care anymore, but it made me feel self-conscious at first. I’d never been so close to the audience where I was actually seeing the reaction on people’s face while I spat on them!”

— What an incredible series of sentences. Read them through a couple times to let them sink it. Read them in King George’s voice. Roll your R’s and really hit those T’s. Make a meal of the whole thing. Let the spittle fly if you’re feeling it. It’s only appropriate.

— So, I knew Jonathan Groff played King George in this, and I know he’s in Mindhunter, but I don’t think I ever fully squared those two facts in my brain until I saw all of this on my television. It was a lot to take in. I’m still going to have to crank away on it mentally for a while. I kind of want to see Holt McCallany as Bill Tench as Hamilton now.

— Actually, no. Let me be clear: I really want to see Holt McCallany as Bill Tench as Hamilton. Or make Mindhunter a musical. Either or both. I’m not a picky man.

— This is easily the most words I’ve ever written about an actor flinging spittle during the recording of a live stage show

— I titled the GIF up there “Hamilton Spittle” and it’s just dawning on me now what a terrific fake name that would be.

This was a good chat.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Congratulations to Mark Wahlberg

As you already know if you spend way too much time staring at a computer and/or following the training regimens of maniac action stars (yes, I do have opinions about The Rock’s cheat day meals, but that’s for another time), Mark Wahlberg has some, oh, let’s call them “interesting” fitness practices. Remember when he posted his daily schedule and everyone lost their mind for a few days trying to figure out how any human lived like that by choice, waking up at 2:30 a.m. and getting in a workout, two meals, and a snack by 8? I do. I think about it constantly. He has 6-7:30 a.m. blocked out for a shower. That’s a 90-minute shower. It’s madness.

But I’m already getting off-topic. We are not here to discuss crazed pre-dawn weightlifting. We are here to discuss… plants? We are here to discuss plants.

It’s Wahlberg’s diet that has changed the most in recent months. Instead of eating seven to eight meals a day of mostly protein, he is now on a plant-based diet, something that only was meant to be for a short amount of time.

“I wasn’t getting enough rest, doing two-a-days, six to seven days a week, eating seven to eight meals of mostly protein, and just not feeling good,” he says. “I did a bone broth fast, and then went plant-based for what was supposed to be twelve days. That was four months ago.”

He’s completely unhinged. I love it. I just picture him sipping bone broth out of a champagne flute at dinner while he nibbles on his 400th carrot of the day. You and I will never look like Mark Wahlberg with our shirts off but we get to eat onion rings. It’s a fair trade. But again, not really the point. The point is these next two sentences from the article that pulled up to my brain in a uHaul and promptly moved in.

“I’ve discovered hummus,” he says. “I never had hummus before and I’m loving it!”

Congratulations to Mark Wahlberg for discovering hummus.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Let’s talk about Tom Cruise’s zit-growing superpower

There was a very good interview with Westworld star Thandie Newton over at Vulture this week. She lets it rip on a number of topics, most notably the way she and other women have been treated by Hollywood over the years, up to and including a few disturbing examples with names named. It’s a fascinating chat with someone who has a lot to say, which is really all you can ask for out of an interview.

One of the things she touched on was Mission: Impossible II and working with Tom Cruise. Most of it focused on how difficult he could be due to the massive amount of pressure he and everyone around him put on his shoulders, and that’s certainly interesting, but I am a child, so I screeched to a halt when I saw this passage.

I remember at the beginning of the night, seeing this slight red mark on his nose, and by the end of the night, I kid you not — this is how his metabolism is so fierce — he had a big whitehead where that red dot was. It would take anyone else 48 hours to manifest a zit.

Have you ever read anything so perfect in your entire life? Like, of course Tom Cruise — a madman who taught himself to fly a helicopter for a later Mission: Impossible movie and hung off a plane for a stunt in another, even though there are very talented stuntmen and CGI technicians who would gladly take that responsibility off his hands (and insurance underwriters who would be happy if they did) — is so unrelentingly intense that his pimples grow at three times the speed of a normal human. It’s somehow both completely believable and unbelievable at the same time, equally passable as a medical fact and urban legend.

My favorite part of this story is that Mission: Impossible II came out in 2000, which means Thandie Newton has been thinking about this pimple for two full decades now. That’s not to say it’s unreasonable on her part. I suspect I’ll probably be thinking about Tom Cruise’s super-zit in 2040 now. You might, too. Let’s set a date in our calendars now to meet up then and discuss.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Shoutout to Virgil Sheets, weirdo coroner

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about HBO’s Perry Mason miniseries. I like parts of it very much. Other parts of it, less so. I’m fairly certain this will sort itself out once the show really gets cranking in the next few episodes.

One thing I do know, though, is that my favorite character on the show so far is Virgil Sheets, the weirdo little coroner with the Charlie Chaplin mustache who lets Perry use the corpse’s clothes as a personal Goodwill and always seems a little too excited to be in a morgue. I love him. He definitely talks to the bodies when no one else is there. He might even sit them up around a table like they’re all having dinner. I must know more about him at once.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Bring back the adorable noodle boy

Two facts, both true:

• John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch was a super fun and super weird special produced on Netflix late last year that featured the comedian doing songs and sketches with a grip of children and also a fully deranged Jake Gyllenhall
• Two new Sack Lunch Bunch specials are coming to Comedy Central

From Variety:

Variety has confirmed that Mulaney has signed a deal with the cabler to host and executive produce two new “John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch” specials. The first special debuted on Netflix this past December.

“I was an intern at Comedy Central when I was barely older than the kids in the ‘Sack Lunch Bunch.,’” Mulaney said. “I wasn’t a very good intern, so I am psyched they hired me again. We are thrilled to bring these specials to Comedy Central: a place where I have had so many good times.”

This is good news. I like that this is happening. All of the children were adorable and disturbingly talented and I can’t wait to watch more Sack Lunch Bunching. That said, if the little boy in the above video — the one I’ve been calling Noodle Boy for months now — is not involved in at least one of these specials, I will heave my television off a ninth-floor balcony.

Thank you.

ITEM NUMBER SIX — I mean… sure

I apologize. This tweet from former Deadspin staffer and great Philadelphian Dan McQuade is over a month old. I should have brought it to your attention weeks ago. I am doing it now, though, which feels like it should count for something. Partial credit, at least. Watch the video before you grade me. You’ll see why it had to be done, even this late.

People remember Baywatch mostly for the very small bathing suits and very large surgical enhancements those bathing suits struggled to contain, but please don’t forget that the show was also fantastically weird in a million ways. It’s on Hulu right now. Pick an episode in the back half of its run at random and press play. It’s amazing what you could call a television show in the 1990s.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Ryan:

A wizard approaches you on the street and makes you an offer: You get $5 million but you can only watch one television show and one movie for the rest of your life. All the other shows and movies still exist. You are aware of all of them but can’t watch them even for one minute or the whole deal is off. Do you take the deal and what show and movie are you picking if you do?

Ryan, I am absolutely taking this deal. Every day. Where is this wizard? I’ll go find him if it greases the wheels a bit. I have plenty of time. I’ll do it right now.

The answer to the second part almost doesn’t matter. It makes your question less fun to take that position, but it’s true. I would read books and go do things and watch sports — not a television show or movie… loophole! — and find other millionaire things to do. I’d have so many monocles to clean and organize. There’s just not enough time to enjoy all these shows. But now I’m just being difficult. The trick here is to pick a movie that is incredibly rewatchable and a television show that has had a long run. That way you give yourself options. They also can’t be too mentally taxing, because while those kinds of things can be powerful in the moment, you might not want to revisit them too often. You need a good plan.

All of which is to say I will take the $5 million, the full run of The Simpsons and, I don’t know, let’s go with the Clooney/Pitt Ocean’s Eleven. This is a very good deal for me. Get that wizard over here.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To New Orleans!

A cat burglar is on the loose and a Metairie family has been trying to get the word out.

People’s clothing kept winding up on the Bardi’s front porch. It all started a month ago when a tank top and some socks appeared out of nowhere

SOCK HEIST.

“We just thought alright maybe someone got drunk and had clothes and had some kind of issue,” Joseph Bardi said. “It keeps happening and happening and happening.”

A little concerned, the couple filed a police report.

“We started getting weirded out. Heather bought some surveillance cameras,” Joseph Bardi said.

I can’t wait to discover what kind of sadsack degenerate is out there running around New Orleans stealing small amounts of clothing from people’s yards and moving it to someone else’s property. It’s so weird. Why would any human do something like this? I mean…

Wait.

Hold on.

They said “cat burglar” in the first sentence.

You don’t think…

No.

Come on.

“Lo and behold it was the cat,” Joseph Bardi said.

The culprit was their pet Admiral Galacticat. He was caught on camera with evidence of the theft, as a sock clearly hung from his mouth.

Here I was all prepared to be livid about the pun in the opening and suddenly, blammo, they drop “Admiral Galacticat” on me. How can I possibly stay mad at this story now? What a wild turn of events. Almost wilder than the events in the story itself.

Some country.

“At first I was kind of thinking ‘what kind of idiot lets a cat steal their clothes?’ but then I ended up being that idiot,” O’Neal said. “As soon as she mentioned Nike socks, I was like oh those might be mine.”

Thankful the mystery was solved, he quickly forgave his feline neighbor.

“I patted him on the head and said ‘look you got to stop doing that,’” he laughed

I vote we try this with more small-time criminals. Worth a shot, at least.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

In the summer of 2019, a million years ago in 2020 time, I flirted with the idea of going on a fandango to Colorado in order to see My Morning Jacket at Red Rocks. The venue is at the top of my (apologies for using this corny term) rock-venue bucket list, and MMJ seemed like the perfect band to see there. Long hair, bushy beards, and a screamingly loud Flying V at an elevation of 6,500 feet — what could possibly be better?

Alas, my stupidly frugal and rational side won out. Surely there would be other opportunities to satisfy my Red Rocks rock fantasies, right? Right?? Jesus, what a fool I was. I feel like I shrugged at the chance to hop the last rocket ship to Mars.

I felt especially sharp pangs of regret last month when one of MMJ’s Red Rocks shows from August 2019 was streamed for free online. As I expected, the concert had everything I craved — the hair, the beards, that stout Flying V. Once again, this band proved that they could deliver everything I could possibly want from a band: in short, a hybrid of a bombastically cathartic “big” rock experience mixed with something brainier, jammier, and more nimble. There were delicate, spacey textures that sprawled for minutes on end like an ocean of sound raining down from the sky. They also played the one where Jim James screams “oh shit ruuuuuuuuun!” at the top of his freaking lungs. These guys still can blow minds! How inspiring!

As I watched on my laptop, my guts churning with a mix of elation and profound loss, I was reminded of a fact that I forget all too often: My Morning Jacket truly is one of the great American rock bands of the last 25 years.

Of course, in the past decade, it has seemed as if MMJ has deliberately worked to make people forget this. After building their legend in the aughts with a series of auspicious albums that culminated with the 2005 hit Z, as well as scores of iconic concerts that climaxed with a marathon four-hour show at Bonnaroo in 2008, MMJ took most of the ’10s off. They released two pretty good albums, 2011’s Circuital and 2015’s The Waterfall, and dutifully toured behind them. But otherwise James — the band’s charter member and unquestioned leader — drifted into solo projects and supergroups. And the mighty MMJ faded a bit.

When I spoke with James in 2015, he front-loaded his exhaustion with being the frontman of a medium-popular rock band. He had been haunted by health problems and personal heartache that he attributed more or less directly to the toll of MMJ’s non-stop touring. “I feel like I’ve paid a really heavy cost, a really heavy physical health cost, for the years of touring and how physical I’ve been onstage,” he sighed. “We’ve worked really hard, and maybe it hasn’t been a fair deal. I actually feel a little bit [ripped off]. We’ve had a lot of blessings and a lot of opportunities to do a lot of cool things, but I’ve definitely paid for them all with interest.”

At the time, James was promoting The Waterfall, an album sold as a kind of comeback record and sign of renewal. Which was a little weird, given that James sounded so beat up. But it was also true that The Waterfall was the most engaging album that MMJ had made since Z. And there was supposed to be another LP made during the same sessions that James promised would be out soon. “The two records aren’t related or anything. I don’t want to put it out as, like, The Waterfall 2 or anything like that,” he said. “I just think it’d be fun to put out another record a little bit quicker than we normally do.”

Smash cut to several million and five years later. In 2020, the album that James spoke of back in 2015 has finally been released. Instead of coming out “a little bit quicker” than the normal MMJ album, it arrives after the longest break ever between the band’s records. Oh, and it’s also called, in spite of James’ initial protestations, The Waterfall II. Like all of us, James has hastily improvised under impossible circumstances.

Had My Morning Jacket not just demonstrated with startling efficiency how potent they are as a live act, one might assume that The Waterfall II — an album that sat in the vault for at least five years, and was made as part of a project that began in late 2013, in the early days of Obama’s second term — signals a discouraging sign of the band’s future vitality. Does this even actually count as a “new” record? Or is it technically a “lost” record, a la Neil Young’s recent Homegrown?

Let’s set that aside for a moment. After wondering about this album for so many years, I’m happy to finally have The Waterfall II out in the world. Nobody at this point is expecting the second coming of It Still Moves or anything, but it’s just nice to feel like these guys haven’t ridden completely off into the sunset. And that all comes down to James. He’s the one who had to decide this thing was actually worth putting out. For years, he was ambivalent. (This album came up again when I interviewed him in 2018, and he was in no hurry to even ponder it.) I wonder if on some level he resented MMJ, his life’s work and also the thing that had ripped him off, with interest.

James has said he decided to finally put out The Waterfall II as a surprise summer release when the album’s first song, a wistful psych-soul ballad called “Spinning My Wheels,” came up on his personal shuffle. He felt the song’s dreamy allusions about the need to “find a new day / a new way / to get clear / to be here” applied to the current moment. Which, okay, sure, I can see that. Though the song opens with a couplet that more directly speaks to James’ frame of mind when I interviewed him five years ago: “I’ve been wrong for so long / Risking my life for the sake of the song.”

On The Waterfall, My Morning Jacket sounded determined to remind fans of the monolithic jams they made their name with in the ’00s. It was a record designed to be played live at places like Red Rocks and Bonnaroo, with a bevy of anthemic howlers that could sonically expand to fill the expanse of any venue. A true “we’re back, baby!” record. The sequel, however, carries no such pretenses. Even the hardest rocking track, “Wasted,” which settles on a surly guitar groove accented with punchy horns, feels more like an invitation to explore the darkest corners of innerspace than a call to party. In that way, The Waterfall II feels (apologies for using another corny term) more honest. Much of the record is composed of bleary-eyed, pedal steel-laced ballads that dwell ruefully on loss and aspire gorgeously to a state of healing, creating an all-too-relatable vibe of heartsick restlessness driven by a desperate desire to believe that tomorrow will somehow be better. So I guess it really is relevant to our endless now after all.

Starting with the likable career-ruiner Evil Urges, James has been moving away from the heart-exploding arena-rock sound that MMJ pursued as well as any band of their generation. But it wasn’t until the Waterfall albums that he was able to coherently incorporate the pop and R&B influences he’s pursued in his solo work into the framework of MMJ. On The Waterfall II, he guides his band through some stunningly silky golden age of soul exercises. “Still Thinkin’” starts as an amiably bopping ’60s pop song, and then melts into a hazy coda accentuated with fusion-jazz keyboards and Quiet Storm sax wails. MMJ returns to this well time and again at the heart of the record, with James cutting through the slinky “Magic Bullet” with a molten lava guitar solo and then settling into a comfortable Bill Withers purr on “Run It.”

There’s also a pronounced country feel to many of these songs, more than on any MMJ album since The Tennessee Fire. Though James, as usual, never plays southern rock straight: “Climbing The Ladder” is like a Waylon Jennings song with a disco beat, an inadvertent nod to Sturgill Simpson’s future, while “Feel You” is acid-laced yacht rock with a delectably fluttery Seals & Crofts guitar lick.

What does any of this portend for the band? Apparently there’s another MMJ album that was recorded after their brief 2018 and ’19 tours, though it’s unclear when it will come out. Perhaps the answer can be found in the music. The Waterfall II ends with the album’s prettiest ballad of all, “The First Time,” in which James pines for the innocence of the past.

“Can tomorrow feel like it did back in the past? Before we knew it too well?” James sings in a spine-tingling falsetto. “But only time, time will tell / If tomorrow feels like / The first time… the first time.” In other words, who knows? As another long-lost rock band who returned in 2020 recently observed, this is the new abnormal. Nevertheless, I like not having to completely let go of everything we once knew just yet. The Waterfall II gives me hope that there’s another Red Rocks concert in all of our futures.

The Waterfall II is out now via ATO Records. Get it here.

After making five arrests in connection with the murder of Brooklyn drill rapper Pop Smoke, the Los Angeles Police Department has revealed the names of the adult suspects, as well as the charges against all five of the suspects and their bail amounts.

Yesterday, it was reported that LAPD had arrested three adult men and two juveniles after serving several search warrants in the LA area. While the juvenile’s names are still being kept under wraps as is standard procedure, the LAPD’s Twitter account revealed that the three adults are listed as Corey Walker, Keandre D. Rogers, and Jaquan Murphy. Walker and Rogers, as well as the two juveniles, were booked for murder, while Murphy was booked for attempted murder.

The Los Angeles Times‘ crime reporter also revealed yesterday that police believe that none of the suspects actually knew Pop Smoke; rather, they got the address of the Hollywood Hills home he was renting from an Instagram post, confirming a theory that emerged in the wake of Pop’s death.

Surveillance video confirmed that five people broke into the house late at night in what was thought to be a targeted hit. Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, released last Friday.

Without Andy Samberg and Chris “Parns” Parnell catching a screening of The Chronicles of Narnia on the Upper West Side, it’s fair to wonder if there’d be no Hot Rod, no “Dick in the Box,” no Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which would be a tragedy.

“Lazy Sunday” was an immediate sensation. On the morning of December 17, 2005, the day the Jack Black-hosted episode of SNL aired, the Lonely Island, made up of Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone, were a niche comedy group; by the following Monday, the trio were iTunes chart-toppers and, as Samberg told the New York Times at the time, “I’ve been recognized more times since the Saturday it aired than since I started on the show. It definitely felt like something changed overnight.”

But “Lazy Sunday” wasn’t the Lonely Island’s SNL debut. “Lettuce” was.

There’s a reason you probably don’t remember “Lettuce,” which aired two weeks before “Lazy Sunday” reclaimed Magnolia Bakery from Sex and the City. It’s not available on Hulu or NBC.com or YouTube (the only active clip is on Tumblr, which is to say, it’s extremely low-res), and you won’t find it on any The 10 Best Lonely Island Sketches list. It would be a curiosity and otherwise forgotten, like many other mid-2000s SNL sketches (“Art Dealers” anyone?), if it didn’t, years later, lead to Palm Springs (so good) and “Jack Sparrow.” Bob Dylan didn’t become BOB DYLAN with his self-titled album — he became the Voice of a Generation with his second album. I’m not going to claim that the Lonely Island guys are also the voice of a generation, but, hypothetically, if they were, “Mona Lisa, you’re an overrated piece of sh*t / With your terrible style and your dead shark eyes” is a better era-defining lyric than that “blowin’ in the wind” hooey. Hypothetically.

“Lettuce” — which was cut during dress rehearsal from the Eva Longoria episode (November 19) before airing during the Dane Cook-hosted, James Blunt-musical guested episode (December 3) — is charmingly simple, lacking the catchy songs, CGI imagery, and guest stars of later Digital Shorts. Will Forte walks up to a glum-looking Samberg on the stoop of a New York City apartment. “I just keep trying to tell myself he’s in a better place, you know?” Samberg says to his pal, who responds, “You know, it’s all right to feel sad. But the pain goes away.” Forte then reveals that he’s been holding a head of lettuce this whole time, and he takes a huge honking bite out of it. Samberg later does the same with his own lettuce head. We never find out who the “he” is, but we do learn that the conversation between two grieving buddies is actually a commercial paid for by the “United Lettuce Growers Association.” Through good times and bad… lettuce.

The way things usually work at SNL is that if you have an idea for a sketch, you pitch it to your fellow cast members, writers, and the Grand Poobah himself, Lorne Michaels. And if you’re lucky enough to get a laugh in the room, you have to actually write the sketch. Then there’s a read-through, set building, makeup and costuming, and rehearsals, all while the soul of the joke slowly drains away through repetition. Live from New York, baby! But that’s not what the Lonely Island guys did for “Lettuce.” As newbies, with Taccone and Schaffer as writers and Samberg as a featured player, they made it during their spare time. “We knew if we had to pitch it and go through the table and get a budget, we weren’t going to be allowed to do it because we were so new,” Schaffer told GQ back in 2012. “It would have cost a lot of money and been a big deal, so we just decided to skip all that. And a few weeks later it got on air… We had total freedom.”

“Lettuce,” it’s worth noting, is extremely dumb. That’s a compliment, as the Lonely Island does dumb as well as anyone. It takes an expert (or, in this case, experts) to come up with something as profoundly stupid as a socially-awkward dweeb teaming up with Rihanna to rob a bank, only for the shy nerd to get a “boner alert!” during the heist. “Lettuce” isn’t on the level of “Laser Cats” (or “Laser Cats 2” or “Laser Cats! 3D” or “Laser Cats! 4 Ever” or “James Cameron’s Laser Cats 5” or “Laser Cats 6: The Musical!” or “Laser Cats 7”), and it was written by Forte, not Samberg, Schaffer, and/or Taccone, but it set the template for 100-plus Digital Shorts to come. It was also SNL‘s online breakthrough; 15 years later, millions watch the best sketches on YouTube the next day.

The Lonely Island departed SNL in 2012, but when I (regularly) re-watch their old work, I get the same thrill seeing the familiar “An SNL Digital Short” title card as I do when I hear the HBO static. And that’s, in part, because of “Lettuce.” Beautiful, stupid “Lettuce.”

The Lonely Island’s latest effort, ‘Palm Springs,’ premieres this weekend on Hulu.

Interview Magazine often puts artists together for a chat, and the result is usually a fascinating conversation. Their most recent pairing is Phoebe Bridgers and The Killers’ Brandon Flowers, the latter of whom humbled himself and admitted he was “just kind of a sh*t” early in his career.

At one point in the interview, Flowers noted, “I used to be — what would the word be — I was just kind of a sh*t. When we first started, I used to trash talk a lot of people.” Towards the end of the conversation, Bridgers circled back to that point and asked him to elaborate. He explained that he loved Oasis growing up, and since the Gallagher brothers are famously confrontational, he worked that into his persona early in his career, saying:

“Oh, I talked about other bands. I grew up idolizing Oasis, and they wrote great songs, but they were also just big sh*t-talkers. For some reason, I thought to gain respect that was part of the territory. And that’s not who I am at all, but there were a few people I ended up calling and apologizing to later on. Then there are still people that I said things about, and I still carry it with me. I still need to apologize to them. I did it to John Mayer.”

He then described the apology, which happened when the two happened to be in the same Los Angeles restaurant:

“I was at a restaurant in LA, and he comes and sits at a table right near us, and you just feel so bad. I walked up to the table, and he was in the middle of a circle. It wasn’t a square table — he was in between people, so I couldn’t just talk to him. I just addressed the whole table, and I was like, ‘I said this about John, and I regret it, man, and I’m sorry.’ He was really gracious about it. The world doesn’t need more negativity.”

In an April 2005 Rolling Stone interview, Flowers was asked, “If you went to Hell, what song would be playing over and over?” He responded, “What song do I hate? I think ‘Daughters,’ by John Mayer, would be a good candidate. I don’t know why he bugs me so bad. ” A few months later, in an August 2005 column for Esquire, Mayer addressed Flowers’ then-disdain of him, taking the high road and writing, “The Killers’ lead singer doesn’t like me, but he can eat it. I think he has some great tunes.”

Read Flowers and Bridgers’ full conversation here.

The search continues in the disappearance of Glee star Naya Rivera following her swimming accident at a Ventura County lake. Authorities revealed on Thursday that the operation had shifted to a recovery mission, and Naya has been presumed dead.

The updates only grew grimmer with law enforcement admitting (via People) that they “don’t know” whether Naya’s body will ever be found, given that the lake’s filled with debris, and it can take anywhere from a week to ten days for a body to surface after a drowning. Late Thursday, Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Captain Eric Buschow declared, according to ABC 13, that “there’s no evidence of foul play at this point.” He was followed by Deputy Chris Dyer, who added, “There are no signs of foul play; there are no signs of anything wrong besides a tragic accident.”

The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office released this CCTV footage from a security camera that shows Naya and her son, Josey, arriving and departing from the dock at Lake Piru.

CBS Los Angeles was among the first to report the sad news of Naya’s disappearance after she and Josey had rented and deployed a pontoon boat early Wednesday afternoon. At some point, a swimming accident occurred within the next few hours, and Rivera’s child was discovered alone in the boat about three hours after the pair embarked upon the lake.

The child, who was sleeping unharmed upon discovery, told investigators that he and Rivera, age 33, had gone swimming in the Ventura County lake, “but his mother never got back into the boat.” As of Thursday, the child had been reunited with his father, Ryan Dorsey, and Josey’s reportedly “in good health.”

(Via People, ABC 13, CBS Los Angeles & CNN)

It’s pretty remarkable that Palm Springs, a movie which has a time loop as its central story beat, was first conceived without a time loop. Director Max Barbakow and writer Andy Siara conceived this project, at first, based on just that feeling that daily repetition that so many of us feel even before the pandemic started. Of course, now, it’s not lost on both of them that the film takes on an even deeper meaning.

But in its conception, it was influenced by movies about the daily minutia of life. Film’s like Rachel Getting Married, Patterson, Inside Llewyn Davis, and Anomalisa are all listed as influences. (As a lover of all of those movies, it’s no wonder I like Palm Springs so much.) Eventually, they landed on a literal time loop, then enlisted Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti to star as Nyles and Sarah, characters both stuck in an infinite time loop coinciding with Sarah’s sister’s wedding in Palm Springs.

Palm Springs wound up being a massive success at Sundance, setting a record for the most money ever paid for a film. It was also under sad circumstances because just a couple hours before the premiere the news broke about Kobe Bryant’s death, which, I remember, was heavy in the air as the lights went down. Ahead, Max Barbakow and writer Andy Siara take us through what that particular premiere was like, and then take us through all the films that influenced this funny and very weird movie.

My recollection of the Sundance Premiere was it was the day Kobe Bryant died, everyone was in a sad mood, and the movie started and everyone started laughing. It was therapeutic. Were you pleased how it was received?

Max Barbakow: We had some test screenings and I sat in the back during those and I couldn’t really feel how the movie played and I swore I would never do it again. And then the premiere happened and I sat in the back. And I knew we got a laugh during the Lonely Island Classics card coming up with a room full of acquisitions people, so that was beautiful to know that we got a laugh out of the way. But still, it was a crazy emotional experience for us, because it was like we were giving the movie away to the world at large. I can’t say I had any indication of how it played because I was sitting in the back until afterwards. I knew people liked it, but I’m glad. I don’t know how you felt, Andy. I just was in the back paralyzed with emotion during the thing.

Andy Siara: Yeah. I was paralyzed with emotion and all that. Once people laughed during the Lonely Island Classics card, that put me at ease a little bit, But, yeah, it was just a weird day.

And now the film has new meaning, with people being at home and kind of living the same day every day.

Siara: Obviously we could never have predicted that. I think Max and I were both, during those few years of talking about this movie, each in our own lives, were feeling this daily repetition. And I remember we talked about Paterson, that Jim Jarmusch movie.

Oh, I love that movie.

Siara: As we were coming up with a movie still, what we found was at least we’re in this together. Either be it me and Max in this together, or me and my wife, not having to go through this shit alone. So I think that line has taken on a new, more powerful meaning in the past four months of not having to go through this shit alone.

At the premiere you were asked about Groundhog Day and responded, “Never heard of it.” So obviously you knew that question was coming at some point. Did you consider referencing it in the movie?

Siara: That was brought up, and then we decided to not directly reference it, but people know. Our goal was just to try to take it in a different direction, which is why the movie starts where it does. And this is a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist. There’s probably a whole lot of movie that can happen when Nyles gets first stuck in that time loop that we don’t do because far more talented, smarter people have already done that movie.

And you kept the whole “time loop” aspect a secret before Sundance. Why? When people found out they were very excited.

Barbakow: It was very, very fun doing press and withholding that information, and I personally loved going into stuff blind. I don’t think there was any way of bringing this movie out into the real world, especially after it was reviewed at Sundance, where people wouldn’t know. But I think there’s enough in there, once you get past the time loop, more surprises and twists and turns and subversion.

See, I kind of like the rules to this universe in comparison to the rules of Groundhog Day. Like how if you can stay awake long enough you can travel anywhere.

Siara: Once we decided to just do the time loop thing, a couple of years into talking about this movie and trying to figure out this movie…

Wait, it wasn’t always a time loop?

Siara: No, no. We just knew we wanted to do something was that “contained.” Rachel Getting Married was a big influence.

No wonder I like this movie. You keep mentioning movies I love.

Barbakow: And then Anomalisa and The Lobster came out. A lot about Inside Llewyn Davis and even The Great Beauty. And it started as a hipster goes to Las Vegas or to Palm Springs to die and weird metaphysical fissures happened. You’re giving us way too much credit if you thought we knew that we were going to always be the time loop.

Again, you list all these influences and it’s no wonder I like this movie. That’s a lot of my favorite movies of the last decade.

Siara: Yeah. That’s where so much of it came from, and then once the time loop stuff got in there, there was a base set of rules and through the writing of it I realized like, oh, there’s a problem here. And then Max and I would put our heads together like, okay, what is our role here? Different problems arise that we did not know, or we did not initially realize when it comes to a time loop. It’s like the mathematics of it all, so there was never one single session that was like, “Let’s come up with our rules.” It was running into roadblocks along the way. Or logical bumps along the way. Then we would talk and figure out our way around it.

What was the biggest roadblock, time loop wise?

Siara: It seems so silly to focus on it: but what time they wake up and where Sarah is versus where Nyles is. So, to me, I think Sarah wakes up at nine o’clock every day, and Myles is always 20 minutes later.

See that’s clever, because she always has a head start and there’s nothing he can do about it.

Siara: Right, because no matter what happens, there’s no way that he could ever wake up earlier and get there in time before she gets up.

So at one point, they celebrate Nyles’ millionth birthday. How long have they actually been in the loop?

Barbakow: Definitely long enough for Nyles to forget what his life was like outside the loop. And definitely, definitely many, many moons. I don’t think we ever explicitly put a number on it, but a very, very, very long time.

Siara: Looking back on our own lives, we go through something ten years ago that seemed so big and important to us, and then ten years later we have whatever wisdom that comes with time and age. And people can get over things in different ways. I think the Nyles sense of truly not knowing who he was or what he did before he got trapped in this loop, so therefore it has to have been, like what Max said, long enough for that to happen. Long enough for the petty things to be pushed aside.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The Office is an international franchise, with multiple adaptations across the globe, but the original series, the one that premiered on the BBC in 2001, is still arguably the best. (The American Office is obviously great, too, but at least the British Office didn’t have a David Brent/Michael Scott-less season nine.) If it debuted in 2020, however, the show’s creator Ricky Gervais doesn’t think it would be nearly as beloved due to “outrage mobs.”

In an interview with Times Radio on Friday, the five-time Golden Globes host said that contemporary audiences would take things too “literally.” Gervais continued, “There are these outrage mobs who take things out of context. This was a show about everything – it was about difference, it was about sex, race, all the things that people fear to even be discussed or talked about now, in case they say the wrong thing and they are canceled… People want to keep their jobs, so would worry about some of the subjects and jokes, even though [we] were laughing at this buffoon being uncomfortable around difference… Some people have lost their sense of irony and context.”

Is Gervais accurate? Who knows. But at least he’s not giving terrible SNL advice.

(Via Evening Standard)