Category: Worldwide

A war vet. A gangster. A politician. A spy. Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) has worn many hats on the historical crime drama Peaky Blinders. Now, as the show enters its sixth and final season, he’s determined to turn over a new leaf. But some formidable enemies threaten the criminal mastermind’s grand plans of retirement.

Of course, there’s plenty of political maneuvering and intrigue to be had in the show’s last outing — the end of Prohibition brings about a new era of business for The Shelby Company Limited. To help catch you up and give you a map for the road ahead, we tapped Uproxx TV critic Jessica Toomer and head whiskey writer Zach Johnston to tease the new season while also celebrating the collaboration between Bushmills and the series on a new bottle — the Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey (available only in the U.S.). Buy it here.

From the beginning stages of a second world war to a new crime family emerging to challenge Tommy Shelby’s reign, this season is filled with even more of the same thrilling action and highbrow drama that fans have come to love. Let’s set the scene.

Jessica Toomer: We pick up directly after the events of the season five finale, which means Tommy is still reeling from that foiled assassination plot. He’s reluctantly taken on a new partner in business and the family’s undergone some changes. But we can’t dwell on that for too long because a time jump launches us into the action of the 30s.

Zach, you’re a bit of a history buff. What did you think about how this season kicked off?

Zach Johnston: It’s just a whole new world. Prohibition’s over. Tommy is on his own for the first time. He’s still in a position of power in Parliament, he’s still a smuggler, but he’s out of his depth in many ways when it comes to the enemies he’s facing.

JT: I love how this show weaves in historical elements around all of the action within the Shelby group. It reminds you that there were bigger things at play. We’re going to America now. There’s mention of President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. There are a bunch of things that are cluing you in to the fact that everything’s about to get really dicey for everyone.

ZJ: What I sort of love about this season is that there are double-crosses, triple-crosses, quadruple crosses. It’s kind of amazing how it all makes sense. There’s a through-line, and it’s really exciting to watch it all unravel and come together and fall apart and ultimately end where it ends. I have always enjoyed a nice whiskey while watching this show, but this season really called for one.

---

Ready to put down your phone and pick up a glass before settling in for the ride? Make sure you’ve got a bottle of Bushmills and do give our custom Peaky-inspired cocktail (and a separate Bushmills original) a try.

Tommy’s Secret

JT: This season, Tommy Shelby is a bit of a broken man. He faces challengers like Oswald Mosley (Sam Claflin), a fascist MP hoping to oppress the same working-class community the Shelbys hail from, and Jack Nelson (James Frecheville), a Boston gangster whose ties to the powerful elite rival Tommy’s own. In order to survive the political machinations and street warfare engineered by his enemies, the Shelby leader needs to keep things close to the chest, which is what inspired this original drink. Can you tell us about it?

ZJ: For this cocktail, I was drawn to the times. Things are unknown in the world in 1933, scary even. It was also a time when the liquor cabinet and the medicine cabinet shared some of the same ingredients. Apothecaries were still full of dried herbs, florals, and botanicals, and those same things went into some of the whiskey people drank.

Tommy’s Secret is a cocktail that layers elderflower, ginger, and lemon – things you’d have at the pub and at home back in those days — into a stirred whiskey cocktail. It’s floral, full of citrus, and has a hint of heat built into the apple and honey-forward Bushmills whiskey.

Ingredients:

• 3 oz. Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey
• 0.75 oz. Elderflower syrup
• 0.25 oz. Ginger syrup
• 4 dashes of Orange Bitters
• Lemon peel
• Ice

While it might seem like elderflower and ginger syrup are something you’ll have to make yourself in your own pop-up apothecary, you can get them at any good liquor store. Or just order them online. Elderflower is available here and ginger syrup here. The same goes for the Orange Bitters, every liquor store will have it.

What You’ll Need:

• Rocks glass
• Cocktail mixing jar
• Cocktail strainer
• Jigger
• Paring knife
• Barspoon

Method:

• Add ice to the rocks glass and set aside to chill.
• Add the Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey, elderflower syrup, ginger syrup, and Orange Bitters to the cocktail mixing jar. Add two handfuls of ice and use the barspoon to stir until the mixing jar is ice cold to touch — about 30 to 45 seconds.
• Dump the ice from the rocks glass and add in a large ice cube.
• Strain the cocktail over the ice.
• Express the oils from the lemon peel over the glass and cocktail by gently squeezing it between your thumbs and index fingers with the outer peel facing the glass.
• Drop the peel in the glass and serve.

Bottom Line:

ZJ: This is a super refreshing and light cocktail. The elderflower plays so nicely with the honey and woody apple of the Bushmills. There’s a sweetness first, then a hint of ginger heat hits at the very end of the finish.

JT: In other words, it’s an elevated yet accessible cocktail made with the kind of authentic ingredients that will give you the vibe of that 1930s era without all of the danger that came with it. I like that and it rings true for me, as a fan.

ZJ: That was the goal! Slàinte!

The Shelby Sour

Not quite in the mood for Tommy’s Secret? The Shelby Sour is one of a few official offerings from Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey (which you can find on their site). The shaker is an easy-to-make-at-home drink that’s also super refreshing. Check out the official Bushmills site for more on that drink.

Go here to learn more about Bushmills Peaky Blinders Prohibition Recipe Whiskey. Season 6 of Peaky Blinders is now available on Netflix

It’s official: The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade today, following the leak of a draft of a majority opinion back in early May. People all over the country, and world, are deeply upset about the decision, including some prominent figures in the music community, who are taking to social media today to share their thoughts on the situation.

In a statement shared on social media, Pearl Jam wrote, “No one, not the government, not politicians, not the Supreme Court should prevent access to abortion, birth control, and contraceptives. People should have the FREEDOM to choose. Today’s decision impacts everyone and it will particularly affect poor women who can’t afford to travel to access health care. We will stay active, we will not back down and we will never give up.”

Jason Isbell tweeted, “If you’re gonna talk about how divided we are as a nation, you’ll want to mention SCOTUS decisions like this one, handing power to state reps in crazy-ass gerrymandered districts and completely ignoring the will of the majority of US citizens. This is not what the people want.” He later added, “Eggs ain’t chicken. Something has to be born before it can be murdered. That’s about as simple as it gets.”

Others offered more concise messages, like Maggie Rogers, who wrote, “abortion is healthcare. bodily autonomy is a human right.” Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon also said, “No. Not gonna last. This country is not the country we are supposedly promised. This is not for all, it’s for some.” Finneas added, “I don’t even know what to say other than absolutely f*ck this.”

Check out some more reactions below, from Cat Power, Tyler The Creator, Tegan And Sara, and others.

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

Steve-O isn’t pulling any punches when it comes to the early years of Jackass. While stopping by Mike Tyson’s Hotboxin‘ podcast, the stuntman fully admitted that the show was a terrible influence on kids when it first start airing on MTV in the early 2000s. Granted, the show posted warnings to not try any of the crew’s antics at home, Steve-O says that didn’t help in the years before YouTube, and now TikTok, took over as the prime source of maniacal stunts for impressionable audiences to recreate.

Via The AV Club:

“When Jackass came out, little kids were showing up in hospitals all over the country and maybe the world because they saw us doing this crazy sh*t and they wanted to do it themselves. So, little kids everywhere got video cameras and started f*cking themselves up and showing up in hospitals and getting really hurt.”

While Steve-O owns up to Jackass being a “legitimately bad influence” and “genuinely worth vilifying” in the beginning, he says the franchise is no longer to blame for whatever craziness is happening these days. Sure, they recently pout out a new movie, but there’s a whole sea of reckless content for kids to choose from these days.

“At that time you could really point to us as being a bad influence,” Steve-O told Tyson. “But I think over the years, because now that there’s so much YouTube, Ridiculousness, so much, it’s not our f*cking fault anymore.”

(Via The AV Club)

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 – I need to know everything this

There’s a big profile of Brad Pitt over at GQ this week. It’s pretty interesting, as most big fancy magazine profiles tend to be, with Pitt waxing poetic about his career and where it’s been and might be going and all of it. Pitt has always been a fascinating guy. He’s got looks he could have skated by on, and enough charm to make almost anything interesting, but he seemed to enjoy playing against it sometimes. Yes, sure, he’s played the coolest guy in the room plenty of times, and he’s good at it, but he’s also been in, like, Fight Club, and he’s worked with Tarantino a couple of times. He didn’t have to do that. He could have worn a cowboy hat and/or starred in rom-coms for two decades and retired to the beach. It’s probably what I would have done.

But anyway, none of that is really the point. The point is that, at one point in this new profile, Brad Pitt revealed that he spent a not-insignificant amount of time turning his French estate upside down looking for buried treasure. This is… fascinating to me. Both the fact that he did it and the fact that he told a journalist about it while being interviewed for a cover story in a big fancy publication. That’s… yeah, it’s fascinating to me. Here, look at this.

He tells me that he was approached a few years ago by a man who explained to him that the château was supposedly home to another fortune: millions of dollars’ worth of gold that one of the estate’s medieval owners had taken from the Levant during the Crusades and buried on the grounds. “I got obsessed,” Pitt says. “Like for a year, this was all I could think about, just the excitement of it all.” He bought radar equipment and scoured his property. “Maybe it has something to do with where I grew up, because in the Ozark Mountains there were always stories of hidden caches of gold.”

Of course, no treasure was unearthed. Pitt says the man who’d approached him was ultimately seeking money for some kind of radar company; an investment opportunity, he was told. The whole thing went nowhere and Pitt was left feeling a little surprised that he’d let himself believe in the idea. The entire experience was, he says, “pretty foolish in the end. It was just the hunt that was exciting.”

Right. So, here’s my main takeaway from this, and it’s something I have considered for a while: If I had been conned by a French radar charlatan into tearing my beautiful French estate to pieces in a fruitless hunt for buried gold, I would take that information with me to the grave. I would not tell friends or family or anyone, just due to the sheer embarrassment of it all. I might even invent a whole fake cover story to explain why there are a bunch of holes in my property, like maybe something like “we had some cables that needed to be replaced” or “I’m into tunnels now” or almost anything else. I am not proud of this. But it’s true. This is, apparently, one of many differences between me and Hollywood icon Brad Pitt.

The other takeaway I had from all of this is that there are about four different television shows based on this that I would absolutely watch. In no particular order:

• A true-crime scammer show about a con man flying around the world to trick celebrities into looking for treasure
• A loosely fictionalized show about an A-list actor discovering millions of dollars worth of treasure on his estate and then fighting off a crew of heavily-armed robbers who want to take it from him
• A docuseries about Brad Pitt crisscrossing the globe on the hunt for buried gold, like Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives but for treasure
• A docuseries about the freaking radar huckster WHO CONVINCED BRAD PITT TO GO ON A HUNT FOR TREASURE

Especially that last one. Just for the stones on that guy. Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing you’re going to meet famous Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and you’re going to send him on a wild goose chase in the hopes of selling him some radar stuff. Again, it’s all deeply fascinating to me. Every part of it. Including the thing where I just pictured George Clooney’s face when Brad Pitt told him this story. Let’s go ahead and add that to the list, too. A show where George Clooney’s celebrity friends tell him embarrassing stories about themselves. You would watch. Do not lie to me.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Hobbit heist

Two important things are happening here, both of which are just delightful. The first is right up there. It’s the trailer for the upcoming fourth season of What We Do in the Shadows, which is a good show. It is such a good show. One of the best we have, probably. Few television shows commit to that level of silliness on a weekly basis. Remember the Jackie Daytona episode? Remember the thing where Matt Berry said the line “United Kingdom? More like United ding dong”? Remember when Colin Robinson just up and became a baby? Like, an actual baby? It’s all just about perfect and it’s a reminder that you are only limited in life by the furthest reaches of your imagination and it’s coming back soon. This pleases me.

This brings me to the second important thing. Taiki Waititi was on Colbert this week to promote Thor: Love and Thunder. While there, he talked about making the original What We Do in the Shadows movie with his longtime collaborator Jemaine Clement a while back. And he told this story. Which is cool.

“When I did What We Do in the Shadows, when Jemaine and I were shooting that, we didn’t have much money to do that film, and The Hobbit had just wrapped. And, so, our production designer — man, I don’t know if I should tell this. OK, but I will — our production designer, in the dead of night, took his crew to The Hobbit studios and stole all of the dismantled, broken-down green screens and took all of the timber, and we built a house.”

To summarize:

• Stealing helped them make this movie
• Without this movie, there would not have been the very good What We Do in the Shadows television show
• Also, Taika might not have gotten a break big enough to land the Marvel gig and turn Thor into a ridiculous comedy

The lesson here is clear: Stealing is good. Tell everyone you know.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – Edi Patterson is so cool

The thing about Edi Patterson is that she’s the best. The Righteous Gemstones is straight-up littered with comedy legends and scene stealers — Danny McBride, Walton Goggins, Adam Devine, freaking John Goodman, etc. — and she routinely eats their lunches right in front of them. It might be my favorite performance on television (like, all of television), just a steamroller of chaos cruising through every scene. That’s not easy to do, either. It’s not easy to pull that off without tipping over into caricature. This is, like, acting.

Which is why it makes me so happy that Vanity Fair wrangled her for an interview as part of their Emmy preview. She should absolutely get nominated for an Emmy. And win one. Or more than one. Give her like six of them and let her carry them out in a big bucket. I will settle for one, though. For now. Anyway, sayeth Edi.

The writing team started work on season three last year. So far Judy is the only member of the immediate Gemstone family who hasn’t either started a cult or been blackmailed by sinister, shadowy figures. Is that in the cards for the next go-round with the family? “Judy and everyone else will be in pickles,” Patterson says wryly. “You can expect every Gemstone, at some point, to be in way over their head. I think it’s just in their DNA.”

I am going to say something here and I need you to know I am incredibly serious: I hope Judy Gemstone runs for Congress. She could absolutely start a cult or get blackmailed, sure, she has that in her arsenal. But I want to see her on a campaign trail and I want to see her in a debate. There’s something above a 100 percent chance she would swear. And break the podium. And maybe spit on someone. I, for one, would love to see it.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – The Mario controversy is fuel to me

Are you aware of the Mario controversy? I really hope you are. I’m going to tell you anyway, so it doesn’t really matter in the long run, but I hope you’ve been living with the same amount of joy I’ve had since I first heard about it a while ago. You deserve nice things. Like, for example, the Mario controversy. Which I will explain to you now. Look at us go.

The short version goes like this: Chris Pratt, a noted not-Italian, was cast as Mario in the upcoming Super Mario Bros. animated movie and he is not going to do the voice. You know the voice. The “ITSA ME, MARIO” voice. Which is hilarious because you have to assume there was A Conversation about it at some point. People probably wore suits and sat in a conference room and debated the pros and cons of having Chris Pratt do a ridiculous Italian accent for the sake of authenticity to the character. I would watch this meeting instead of the movie. I am barely joking.

It gets better. Executives in charge of important things are getting asked about it in interviews. Here is Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri, whose company is bringing Super Mario Bros. to the big screen, being forced to talk about it. Look at this collection of words.

Regarding any upset over casting the non-Italian Chris Pratt as Mario in the upcoming Super Mario Bros Movie, Meledandri asserted: “When people hear Chris Pratt’s performance, the criticism will evaporate, maybe not entirely — people love to voice opinions, as they should.” He added, “I’m not sure this is the smartest defense, but as a person who has Italian-American heritage, I feel I can make that decision without worrying about offending Italians or Italian-Americans. … I think we’re going to be just fine.”

Okay, I know what you’re all thinking.

You’re sitting there saying, “Hmm, I bet Brian just wrote this whole section so he could post the video of Lou Albano singing the ‘Do the Mario’ song.”

First of all, how dare you?

I am a serious writer.

I wanted to post that blockquote, too.

I mean, I did really want to post the “Do the Mario” video again.

Like, a lot.

Let’s call it 70-30 in favor of the video.

Maybe 80-20.

I stand by every decision I’ve made here.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – I love Sox

I saw Lightyear last weekend. It was pretty good. Maybe not my favorite Pixar movie ever but still, a solid way to spend two hours on a hot summer day. And the “lesbian kiss” crisis was kind of hilarious — like, sad and upsetting, but also hilarious — because people were clutching their pearls with such fervor that I thought it was going to be like a passionate smooch with tongue and fireworks going off in the background when in reality it was such a tiny little “welcome home, honey” peck that I almost missed it.

Also, and this is cannot be overstated… I love Sox

A little context will help: Sox is a robot cat and he’s a good boy and… actually, that’s all the context I’m going to provide. Look at him up there. Look at his face. The people at Pixar are diabolical.

This all did raise an important question: If Lightyear is the movie Andy saw that made him want the Buzz Lightyear toy he got in Toy Story, why did he not also want or have a Sox toy, considering Sox is Buzz’s sidekick and is cool and adorable? Thankfully, this has been addressed.

In a press interview for “Lightyear” with director Angus MacLane, producer Galyn Susman, and composer Michael Giacchino, it is jokingly proposed that the creators now need to go back to the original “Toy Story” and add a Sox toy. MacLane plays along with the idea, explaining that the issue may have been that “Andy’s mom couldn’t get it, it was sold out everywhere.”

He continues, “That’s an expensive toy, it would’ve been like Worlds of Wonder or Tiger Electronics, it would’ve been a kind of fancy $70 toy.” He goes on to compare it to his own childhood where he wishes he could have owned an AT-AT toy from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” but wasn’t able to get one.

The next Pixar movie should open with a short about a collection of frazzled parents standing in line outside a local mall on Black Friday, all trying to get a Sox doll or toy, climbing over each other the instant the doors open as the whole scene devolves into a furious dust cloud of limbs and cussing. That would be fun. For me.

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 Nick:

Did you see the thing the other week about how Al Pacino wants Timothee Chalamet to play a younger version of his character in Heat in a remake or a prequel? Because I saw that and my first thought was “I need to see Timothee Chalamet yell ‘She’s got a GREAT ASS and you got your head ALL THE WAY UP IT” and then my second thought was “I should email Brian.”

This is a terrific email. Yes, I did see this, and yes, I did have the same thought. Pacino’s character in Heat is so ridiculously grizzled and shouty and late-stage Pacino and the idea of Chalamet doing all of that makes me really happy. I want to see him in all the shouty Pacino roles now. Show me Chalamet doing the “six inches in front of your face” speech from Any Given Sunday. Give me him screaming about flamethrowers in Scent of a Woman. This should be his whole career now. But we definitely start here…

One of the great line deliveries in history. I would watch a reel of every actor in Hollywood giving their interpretation of it. Kieran Culkin could do wonders with it.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Australia!

A Darwin publican has given a crocodile “an almighty smack on the nose” after the reptile upset the pecking order on his island.

Goat Island Lodge owner Kai Hansen used a frying pan to whack the saltwater crocodile named Fred who charged towards him.

A few things here, all of which will, I think, be helpful. The first is that “publican” means pub owner in Australia. I did not know that. It makes it somehow funnier. As does the picture they posted of the guy holding the frying pan he used to bonk the croc, which is the second thing and something you need to see at once. I can’t post it here for copyright reasons but please, click on the link up there as soon as possible.

And once you’re back here, please take a few minutes and think about the thing where the crocodile he hit was named Fred. An Australian bar owner hit a crocodile named Fred with a frying pan. This is news.

Hansen, also known as “King Kai”, lives on the island alongside his beloved pet crocodile Casey.

The reptile entertains visitors on the banks of the Adelaide river.

Sure. Of course.

Hansen added that when Fred moved in, Casey started to climb up onto a walkway near the island’s heliport.

“Now he’s bigger than her and that is a problem,” Hansen said.

Hansen said this forced him to bring out his kitchen utensil shield.

So, to be very clear about all of this: An Australian bar owner hit a crocodile named Fred with a frying pan because it was encroaching on the territory of a second crocodile, named Casey, who the bar owner loves very much and uses to entertain people who line up near the river.

I will be thinking about this a lot in the next few weeks. Maybe every day. A part of me wonders if Fred is plotting revenge. A bigger part of me wonders if there should be a movie about this called Fred’s Revenge. We all have a lot to consider here.

Christian Bale’s one of those actors who (quite notoriously) cannot resist a good physical transformation. To his credit, he also brings the inward transformation as well, so the change-ups don’t seem like they’re done for the sake of simply looking different. Still, one can’t imagine that it’s healthy to live on only coffee, tuna, and apples ahead of The Machinist and the a bunch of donuts and cheeseburgers to prep for American Hustle. Those strenuous regimens still didn’t prepare him for how difficult one aspect of his Marvel transformation (into Gorr the God Butcher) would be for Thor: Love And Thunder.

Granted, Gorr has to compete with Thor’s butt for attention, but if you look at the above photo of Gorr the God Butcher, this doesn’t seem too rough in comparison with what Bale’s previously done. He’s wearing contacts and a full body of makeup, yes, but nothing that would really affect his quality of life outside the studio, right? Wrong. As Bale explained to Deadline, those nails extensions were killer:

“It rendered me completely incapable of everything. I was pathetic,” he said. “I found myself thinking things like, ‘I don’t think I can walk because I’ve got long nails.’ It affected my brain. I was like, ‘I can’t eat, I’ve got long nails.’ I was trying to type. I couldn’t do anything.”

Yeah, try to open a soda can with those nails! (Pro Tip: Use a spoon.)

Bale also glossed over comparisons between his character’s look and Marilyn Manson while declaring, “I hadn’t heard that. I was certainly influenced by the look of Nosferatu.” He further added that Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” video contains “a character in that that Taika and I both enjoyed and he was my reference, even though perhaps the children would have run to the exits screaming had we fully embraced that.” Between that and the Thor butt, the MCU’s really getting wild these days.

(Via Deadline)

During Thursday’s January 6th hearing, we learned that 150 members of the Department of Justice were prepared to resign en masse had Donald Trump gone through with his plan to appoint Jeff “Whatever You Say, Mr. President” Clark as acting attorney general in order to complete his attempt at dismantling democracy. And sure, it would be easy to call those folks “heroes.” But Jordan Klepper is equally deserving of hero status.

On Thursday, The Daily Show posted Klepper’s latest “Fingers on the Pulse” segment, in which he traveled to a Trump rally in Mississippi to share footage from the hearings and get the MAGA take on whether the former president may have lied about that whole election fraud thing and/or acted just a teeny weeny bit shady. Unsurprisingly, the attendees—who paid anywhere from $9 to $4,000 for their tickets—weren’t having any of it.

While not everyone was aware of the attacks on the Capitol (!!) or clued into “January 6th” being anything more than just a random date of the year (yes, really), those who did witness the violence of that day seemed far more offended by the hearings themselves. “An abomination,” “McCarthyism,” and “a witch trial” were a few of the terms used to describe the hearings, while one Trumpster was convinced that Nancy Pelosi planned the Capitol riots. When Klepper asked why Pelosi would “plan to get attacked by a mob of Trump supporters,” the answer was obvious: “Because she wanted to be able to blame it on the Trump supporters and have something bad to say about them.” When Klepper suggested that we should probably investigate that, the woman wholeheartedly agreed. When Klepper guessed that she must be watching the hearings then, her response sounded something like a cat coughing up a hairball, which we’ll assume was Trumpspeak for “no.”

Instead, Klepper decided to bring the January 6th hearings to the rally. While many people refused to watch even just a few seconds of the clips he had with him, those who did had a range of reactions—all of them stupid. Several people cheered on Bill Barr’s declaration that any claims of election fraud were bullshit—until Klepper explained to them what Barr was saying (at which point, he had clearly been paid off). As for Ivanka Trump saying she believed Barr, one man suggested “it might be one of those, what they got clones out there these days.” Which sounds totally reasonable.

You can watch the full clip above.

We can almost always expect to see amazing acts and rare skills on “America’s Got Talent.” But sometimes, we get even more than that.

The Mayyas, a Lebanese women’s dance troupe whose name means “proud walk of a lioness,” delivered a performance so mesmerizing that judge Simon Cowell called it the “best dance act” the show has ever seen, winning them an almost instant golden buzzer.

See on Instagram

Perhaps this victory comes as no surprise, considering that the Mayyas had previously won “Arab’s Got Talent” in 2019, and competed on “Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions.” But truly, it’s what motivates them to take to the stage that’s remarkable.

“Lebanon is a very beautiful country, but we live a daily struggle,” one of the dancers said to the judges just moments before their audition. Another explained, “being a dancer as a female Arab is not fully supported yet.”

Nadim Cherfan, the team’s choreographer, added that “Lebanon is not considered a place where you can build a career out of dancing, so it’s really hard, and harder for women.”

Still, Cherfan shared that it was a previous “AGT” star who inspired the Mayyas to defy the odds and audition anyway. Nightbirde, a breakout singer who also earned a golden buzzer before tragically passing away in February 2021 due to cancer, had told the audience, “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” The dance team took the advice to heart.

For the Mayyas, coming onto the “AGT” stage became more than an audition opportunity. Getting emotional, one of the dancers declared that it was “our only chance to prove to the world what Arab women can do, the art we can create, the fights we fight.”

---

The Mayyas went on to fulfill their promise of a truly hypnotic performance. Starting in a single file line, the women created magnificent shapes while moving in flawless synchronicity. At one point the group even became a pair of eyes (a major crowd pleaser).

According to ET Canada, Cherfan blended moves from both Chinese and Lebanese folklore. It made for a wholly original celebration of cultures, not to mention one breathtaking spectacle. The judges—and the audience—were left dumbfounded.

It was no time at all before judge Sofia Vergara leapt up to give the Mayyas their well-deserved golden buzzer. “There are no words to explain to you what we were feeling over here. It was the most beautiful creative dancing I’ve ever seen,” she told the team.

Howie Mandel added, “You said you were going to hypnotize us. When we sat here and we watched the movement and the perfection and the time and effort that went into that, we were hypnotized by what you did.”

You can watch the Mayyas’s spell-binding act below. Prepare to be hypnotized yourself.

Fred Rogers was truly one of humanity’s greats, in every sense that counts most. He wasn’t a titan of industry or a builder of empires. He wasn’t a man of great means or a wielder of political power. He was humble, gentle and kind. He was a teacher, a learner and a leader in his own way.

For generations of children, he was a consistent voice of compassion, curiosity and caring. He was a calm haven in our television set, a safe space where we always knew we were loved just the way we are.

And yet he was strong, too, just not in the way we often think of strength. He was a fierce defender of children and a champion of justice. His testimony before Congress about public television totally turned around the sentiments of a judge who was extremely skeptical before Rogers started speaking. He wasn’t forceful, he didn’t yell or cry, he just shared his feelings, indicated his trust in the judge’s conscience and explained the value of quality children’s television programming in a way that was impossible to disregard.

---

No one could deny the wholesome awesomeness of Rogers. No one. He was the real thing, tried and true, through and through and the world misses him greatly.

It’s quite well known that Rogers was the same man off-screen as he was on his show, and a video of his cast and crew pranking him once during his opening song offers a bit of delightful proof.

Check this out:

Seriously, he was the most delightful human. His laugh when he sticks his foot in the second shoe—priceless. His “Thanks ever so much”—epic.

People have responded to the video on Reddit with gushing praise.

“Mr. Rogers thanking that man for a delightful practical joke just changed something in me for the better,” wrote one commenter. “Off to go thank my husband for some stuff.”

“What a magical person that just a clip of him having a laugh is making me well up,” wrote another.

“My childhood was a scary place but when I turned on Mr. Roger’s, it all disappeared for awhile,” shared another. “Thank you for being a light to so many children. May you Rest In Peace.”

“An amazing human being and an utterly sweet person,” wrote another. “We should all aspire to be the person Mr. Rogers knew we could be.”

Indeed, we should.

There may be many wonderful people who walk this earth, but there will never be another Fred Rogers. What a precious gift that we have so many hours of him on film to enjoy and share with generations to come.

Lil Nas X was recently honored by the Songwriters Hall Of Fame with the Hal David Starlight Award, which recognized the significant impact he’s made on the music industry in his relatively short time in the spotlight. However, it doesn’t look like he’s letting that success go to his head. He’s still got the same absurdist sense of humor he came into the music business with, as illustrated by his low-key reaction to the recognition on social media.

Tweeting a screenshot of a Variety tweet reporting on the Songwriters Hall Of Fame honor, Nas accompanied the image with another screenshot taken from the lyrics scroll of his new song, “Late To Da Party” with YoungBoy Never Broke Again, from Apple Music. The lyric in question reads: “Farted on these n****s [fart noise] / Oops, I think I sh*tted,” undercutting the austerity of receiving an award for songwriting with an example of just how silly his songwriting can be. It’s Nas showing that he doesn’t take himself too seriously — a trait that will probably help him remain grounded in an industry that can quickly make artists lose touch.

However, he also seems to appreciate his position in the business. During his speech at the Songwriters Hall Of Fame 51st Annual Induction And Awards Gala in New York earlier this month, he said, “This award means a lot to me for the simple fact that, somehow, I keep just doing things and it keeps working out. I don’t know why the universe is letting me have these moments, but thank the universe.”

George Miller has an entirely unique filmography. After directing three gritty and violent Mad Max movies and the best segment in the Twilight Zone: The Movie, he made: a talking pig movie that was nominated for Best Picture; a “nutso” sequel to the talking pig movie; an animated film about dancing penguins; another dancing penguin movie for children; and Mad Max: Fury Road, arguably the best movie of the 2010s.

Fury Road could have been the remarkable capper to an unpredictable career, but the 77-year-old has a new movie coming out this year, Three Thousand Years of Longing, in which Idris Elba plays a genie, and he’s also working on Furiosa, a prequel to Fury Road centered on Imperator Furiosa. The younger version of the character made famous by Charlize Theron will be played by Anya Taylor-Joy; the film also stars Chris Hemsworth.

Warner Bros. has released the synopsis for Furiosa, which you can read below:

As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland they come across the Citadel presided over by the Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.

“Warlord Dementus” instantly ranks in the top 10 of Best Mad Max Names, along with Toecutter, the Lord Humungus, and Rictus Erectus.

Furiosa is expected to come out on May 24, 2024.

(Via Collider)