People sometimes use the term “the NBA family” to discuss how people in the league have a bond simply by being part of a select group who are able to work and play at the highest level of professional basketball. What that mostly means is people are cordial and somewhat familiar with one another, with those who actually play together on a team building those real, familial bonds.
However, sometimes the NBA family thing is very real, as we learned on Wednesday when Pacers coach Rick Carlisle had his introductory press conference. Carlisle was on the Portland coaching staff as an assistant from 1994-1997, which meant he got the chance to coach Arvydas Sabonis and now will have his son, Domantas, as his leading star in Indiana. It’s a cool full circle thing and makes for a nice story, but as Carlisle noted in his presser, thanks to Arvydas’ excitement about the birth of his son in 1996, he is maybe a bit too familiar with his new budding star big man.
Got a kick out of this answer for Carlisle. I asked him about coaching both Arvydas and Domas Sabonis and he shared that during the playoffs in 1996, Arvydas showed him Domas birth video. Carlisle said it gives him a connection to Domas, who he praised many times in his presser. https://t.co/aYwHERSt8c
I have to assume this is the first time an NBA coach will have a player who he has actually seen at birth that isn’t his own, and it definitely made for a funny moment in Wednesday’s presser. For Domas’ sake, we’ll hope Rick never brings this up in a practice to humble him — the “I’ve literally known you since you were a baby” line is certainly available to Carlisle if he needs it. As noted by Tony East, who asked the question that got this answer, Carlisle seems very excited about the prospect of coaching the younger Sabonis, and already has some thoughts on how to continue maximizing his All-Star talent.
Elysian Brewing is an icon of the Pacific Northwest beer scene. The brewery was founded by Joe Bisacca (a banker and avid homebrewer), David Buhler (a beer broker), and Dick Cantwell (a homebrewer turned pro) back in 1995. 25 years later, the brewery is one of the most renowned across the entire craft beer scene, even though some purists tut at the brewery’s partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev, launched back in 2015.
Across the decades, Elysian has managed to remain one of the craft touchstones of the Seattle scene because it’s still producing great beers and pushing boundaries with innovative craft. Perhaps even more importantly, Elysian has built a community that’s spawned music/beer collabs, pumpkin festivals, and a support system for up-and-coming brewers in the region. The latter aspect has certainly helped them stay relevant as much as the former.
We were lucky enough to catch up with Joe Bisacca and David Buhler (Dick Cantwell moved on after the A-B InBev merger) on the phone recently. We caught up with them as they were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the brand, for which they created a whole line of merch and beer. They’re also celebrating the return of live music (something near and dear to every Seattleite’s heart) with their Cheers to Live Music program. They’re offering discounts on live show tickets nationwide with every purchase of one of their six-packs. The conversation spanned how Bisacca and Buhler got started, what it takes to make an iconic beer, and what beer they actually like drinking after all these years.
Joe: I hated my job. I was in banking. I knew Dick [Cantwell] through my brother, George. They moved out to Seattle about six months before I moved out here too. So I got here and I didn’t really know anybody else. I was home brewing with a couple of guys that I met over on Alki Beach.
Dick got a job as a brewer at Pike Place and we started making some beer together and screwing around and started joking about “Dick and Joe’s brewery”. And I kind of really liked that idea. I was in my late 20s. I just remember thinking that I’d love to try it because if it doesn’t work, I can brush myself off and get back up and you go back to banking or something. And so we started jotting down some notes on napkins and things.
David: So I was down in Portland where I had a brokerage business. I was the 10 state rep for Rogue Ales. I had a couple of other small brands. And at the time, I was going down to this conference to meet with Bob Leggette for Manneken-Brussels Imports because they were looking to maybe hire me to take the Chimay and Schneider brands for the Northwest. And Dick was at the conference.
I didn’t know him really well but I knew the Pike guys because I worked for Rogue. And he said, “Hey, are you driving back today? Because I could use a ride.” And I went, “Yeah. I’m leaving in like an hour or so.” So as we’re driving back to Seattle, he asked me what’s next? And I said, “Well, I’ve got a business plan…” And so I’m talking to and explaining things and Dick and finally, he goes, “You need to meet Joe.”
Let’s fast-forward a bit. When was the moment where you felt you sort of broke through the static? Was it when you put that first keg out? Was it when you got onto the shelves at Safeway?
Joe: It’s not a light switch. It’s a dimmer switch. For me, it’s kind of was the last thing I was paying attention to. You’re always trying to keep the doors open and the toilets unclogged. Or we need more tanks because of overcapacity now or something. So there are all these issues that are coming up every single day that you have to deal with. Then when you step to the side and sort of you catch those moments in hindsight. But in the moment … I don’t know that I caught it. Something felt all of a sudden. I remember like, holy shit, we’re in stores. I think there was a point where we switched wholesalers to the Anheuser-Busch network in the state and I started seeing on-premise takeoff.
Seeing us in the grocery store setting, that’s like, “oh, we’re legitimate. Wow!”
David: I agree with Joe. It’s interesting… There is no “one” moment. I’ll be honest. Without some naive thinking and ambition, would we even have started this project? In the beginning, you think, “oh, we’re raising the money and building the brewery then we’re done.” Then you realized that it’s on the day you open that you actually just started. You realized that you haven’t done any hard work. The real hard work is now getting consumers into your establishment. And learning what they want and listening to them and growing and building a real business in a community. And we did that but we’re still doing that every day 25 years later.
What’s the process of choosing a beer that becomes part of your core line as opposed to a one-and-done? Is there a sort of sense while you’re brewing that it’ll be a winner or is it the reaction that you get from the crowds?
Joe: I think you have this ramp, right? Innovation is the first stage. The innovation stage for me in brewing is like baseball. If you suck at it 70 percent of the time you’re batting a .300, right? So it’s a risk tolerance. Try it. See if it works. Most of the time when something doesn’t work, it’s that maybe we should have used less of something in what we’re trying. So when we back off a bit on a recipe, that’s when things ramp up and maybe break through.
But I can say all of that and still think it’s still always driven by the customer. If you’re going to make a large volume of stuff, it doesn’t matter if we like it. The customer has to like it because they’re the ones that are going to pull it off the shelf.
Right. What’s a good example of a beer that broke through?
David: Night Owl, the pumpkin that Marcus brewed. To us it was kind of like, “oh, we brewed with pumpkin, interesting.” It wasn’t really anything special to us. But then the response from our customer was off the charts. When we took it to a beer festival, we had the longest line and ran out immediately. We knew immediately we would be doing more of that the next year. It was big and we’re still brewing it.
It feels like you guys were at the forefront of building a deep culture around your beer. The pumpkin ale is a good example because now you have a huge festival around it. People come from all around the country to be part of that experience. How do you build a culture around your beer that creates an in-real-life community?
David: We love beer. We take pride in it, sure. But we just love it. There’s no doubt about that.
But when you look at Seattle in the mid-1990s and the revolution of music, art, and dance that was going on… We were right in the middle of it in Capitol Hill, which to me is the edge of the forest where all these different groups come together into one area. All the demographics were right there. So we put a place in the middle of it all. We started hosting shows and donating kegs to the dance companies and art showcases. And we started going to the shows to pour those beers. It was vibrant. Our beer was part of the community. But these weren’t beer geeks. These were people who were just learning to love good beer. We were the ones that were showing people what good beer could be.
Joe: The space kind of told us what it needed to do. We needed to be that welcoming because that’s what the neighborhood was. Everybody’s always invited. Everything’s always cool. And I think that welcoming environment was the start of building that kind of cultish brand that everybody wanted to join in on.
Zach Johnston
You’ve become renowned for doing some amazing collaborations with bands, labels, Rolling Stone magazine… What drives you to do these collaborations?
Joe: We’ve done a bunch. Some have worked and some haven’t. I think the big thing is that it has to feel natural. You’re not going to pull the wool over the eyes of a customer out there. It’s got to be an honest partnership, something you’re doing together that actually makes some sense for it to work. Working on the beer together, there’s got to be a story behind it that is real. If it doesn’t have that, it will fizzle.
David: The other thing is that it has to make our pulse race. We did the Sub Pop Loser Pale Ale with Jon Poneman. Hey. They came to us and said, “it’s our anniversary, can we make a beer?” I went, “yeah! That’d be fun.” Stuff like that makes our pulse race. We love it.
The world’s your oyster in that you can brew whatever you want. But then the rubber hits the road and there are only X amount of barrels to age your beer in. And there are only X amount of hops or malts you can get from some certain source. There are finite realities to brewing beer. What’s the path you take to find that next thing to brew?
David: There are so many times where I’ve tasted something and thought, “oh my God, that is awesome.” Then the first thing I’ll ask is, “what hops are in it?” Because if it’s experimental T107 or whatever, we know we can’t do this in bigger batches or we need to find a substitute.
Then we have to ask what level of play this style might get. Is that something that could just be for the pubs? Is it something that could just be for Seattle or for another market because it makes sense? Or is it really something we really feel? And then you have to think and ask everyone if this could be the next thing.
Joe: For sure, there’s the following of trends and then there’s creating the trends. Following the trends, you’re a voice in a chorus. It’s kind of stupid. I don’t want to make a style just because everyone’s making a style. We want our own beers to stand for themselves.
Is there some magic? We did Salute the Sun pale ale with black limes. Black limes are weird. It’s a polarizing taste. But we thought, “let’s put it out there and try it.” Will it have some traction? What if it draws some attention to the brand? What if it sort of pulls people into our world a little bit too? So there are those tried and true things and then there are some of these wild things that show somebody something new.
David: And you know how hard it is to get a whole bunch of pallets of black limes?!
That’s got to be hard…
David: So, yes, the supply chain comes into play because after we taste a beer then it goes to the to where do we get it? How do we get it? And some things work and some things don’t.
What was the last beer you’ve had that you really, really fell in love with?
David: Would it be stupid to say the one in front of me?
I talk to my team and my friends about drinking beer and sometimes we tend to look at it and smell it and look at it and taste it, you know. Where other times I’ve just come off the ski hill and you could give me a beer and I drink half of it in one gulp. And that’s how a lot of people drink beer. They don’t taste it. They don’t swirl it.
But I will say I had a SuperFuzz yesterday and it was spot on, and we make a lot of beer. I just thought was, “oh my God, this is a great beer.” It made me so happy to be making it.
Nice. I love that beer on a hot day.
Joe: I think I like the weirder beers. I kind of get into those a little bit. We brewed a beer this last year called Gator Pie, which was a key lime pie beer. It’s a kettle sour, which I’m into. We’re mashing the sour beer and folding it back in a new batch to help build the sour base. Then we actually crumbled up boxes of Graham crackers and threw them into the mash. You could really taste the Graham cracker crust with the lime and the sour. It had the right balance.
When I drank it, I thought, “God, this is weird…” But it was really good. For me, I love that moment of “this is bizarre.”
“Throwing your money away” is a common expression that means somebody is wasting their funds on useless things or are otherwise living with a lack of financial smarts. Kodak Black, however, decided to take that statement literally by actually getting rid of stacks of hundred dollar bills.
In a video shared on Instagram last night, the rapper is on a boat, grabbing stacks of hundreds and throwing them overboard into the water. He captioned the post, “I Broke You Off When Dem F*ck N****s Wouldn’t Give You A Dime !!! I Ain’t Owe You Sh*t N**** I Just Wanted To See You Shine !!! Yeen Never Gave Me Sh*t N**** I Had My Own Grind !!!!”
Then, in a tweet from earlier today, he tweeted a video of himself trying (and failing) to flush more $100s down a toilet.
Notably, this comes after the rapper tweeted that he would donate $1 million to charity if he received a pardon from Donald Trump in his final days in office. Sure enough, Black got the pardon he was looking for, but the tweet in which Kodak made his philanthropic promise was deleted. At the time, his lawyer said in a statement, “A statement promising something for something in exchange is not appropriate and although Kodak has always given to charity his whole career and will continue to do charity, not in exchange for anything. Some think this is a story. It isn’t.”
The Los Angeles Sparks have signed 2020 No. 3 WNBA draft pick Lauren Cox, the team announced on Wednesday. The 23-year-old forward was inexplicably cut by the league-worst Indiana Fever on Sunday after a lackluster start to her still-very-early career.
“We’re excited to add Lauren Cox to our organization,” General Manager and Head Coach Derek Fisher said in a release. “Lauren delivered on the biggest stage in college as an efficient scorer, skilled passer, and tenacious rebounder for one of the nation’s most accomplished programs. We believe in her potential to be an impact player in this league and look forward to welcoming her to the Sparks family.”
Cox has played just 25 games in the WNBA, and 14 of those were in the 2020 bubble season after she had contracted Covid-19. She joined the team late and never found her footing, averaging just 3.6 points on 41.9 percent shooting with 3.3 rebounds, 1.4 assists, and 0.3 blocks per game. In 2021, she’s hardly had a chance to play. In 11 games, she averaged 8.6 minutes and scored 1.4 points with 2.0 rebounds.
This signing was a no-brainer for the Sparks, and it’s a great opportunity for Cox, too. The Sparks will compete for a chance to make the playoffs, but are under no pressure to succeed further than that. L.A. is in a semi-rebuild after losing both Candace Parker and Chelsea Gray as free agents. Taking a swing at the No. 3 pick from 14 months ago makes a ton of sense for the team.
On paper, L.A. seems like a great match for Cox, too. With Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike both sidelined with knee injuries, she should have plenty of opportunities before the Olympic break to prove herself as a WNBA player. The Sparks are 6-8 this season and led by veterans Kristi Toliver, Amanda Zahui B and Erica Wheeler. Cox should learn a lot and have a chance to make an impact for a solid team.
The Baylor standout averaged 12.5 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 2.6 blocks in her senior college season two years ago. The Sparks will look to get her back there.
On Wednesday, Warwick posted a two-minute video message saying her “heart goes out” to the singer and calling to “set her free” of her conservatorship:
“My heart goes out to Britney Spears, it really does. I feel her pain. How in the world could anyone endure what she has been enduring: thirteen years of bondage, because that’s exactly what it is. The who, what, when, where, how, and why’s, not giving her an opportunity to express that on her own. Do you realize the amount of work this young lady puts in to bring you joy? Remembering all those verses to the songs she has to sing, the combinations of the dances she has to do, getting up at the crack of dawn to do exercises to getting her body and keeping it in shape to make you feel good. And we feel she is not able to have that kind of joy and feel good to herself? How fair is that? Bondage is not something 2021 should even recognize. She has the wherewithal [to say] how she wants to live, where she wants to live, and with whom she wants to live. Give her back her rights, give her back her life, set her free.”
Watch Warwick’s full video message below.
This has been on my heart. I wanted to take a moment to vocalize my full support for Britney Spears. pic.twitter.com/nJxJk2TGvW
Courtesy of Baker’s, Stone Road, Union Electric, and JetFuel
The biggest bummer about legal weed is that it’s expensive. Depending on which city or state you live in, you can expect to spend up to 35% more on top of the retail price, thanks to sales taxes. Additionally, all sorts of taxes levied on growers and manufacturers require them to bake increased costs into their final product prices, pushing the retail price above what’s sold on the illegal market before sales taxes are even applied.
That said, consumers have also gained a lot thanks to weed going legal. Quality control, strain and product variety, and accessibility are all greatly improved from the days when everyone was relegated to buying from “a guy.” Still, at the end of the day, if people can’t afford it, they won’t buy it. Which has led to a boom in “value brands” or “value strains” to meet the cost-conscious cannabis consumer. It’s important to note that — like with booze — some of the cheap stuff is just flat-out crap. But the best in the business have figured out creative ways to make the supply chain work in their favor so they keep high quality alongside lower prices.
Brett Fink, who today runs the cannabis branding and consulting agency GRTR, was once a founding member of California brand Old Pal. Old Pal was the first value brand on the market, basically inventing the to-go packs of pre-ground weed, which comes in a pouch along with attached crutches and rolling papers. He says Old Pal broke the mold by going after “smalls,” which refers to bud size. Smalls, or popcorn buds, typically sell at a lower price compared with larger buds from the top of the plant.
“From the launch, Old Pal’s specific focus was the value shelf,” Fink says. “We started the brand as a response to a large dispensary partner we knew, who was looking for a value product on their menu. Another friend who had a manufacturing license helped put it together.”
With that, Fink says, a new category was born, one that “didn’t really exist” pre-2018. He explains that the brand uses “premium, lower canopy product from high-quality growers” — referring to the spot on the plant where they pull buds from. Though general potency and quality are there, value flowers don’t look like the dense, chunky nugs that have become highly prized in the cannabis market, so they sell for less money — savings that are (hopefully) passed down to you.
The only way the quality value brands could be considered “less than” is when compared directly to top-shelf designer cannabis. Potency-wise, there will never be a value bud that clocks in over 30% THC. But there are still some fantastic products out there that definitely perform as well or better than far more expensive products. Here are the eight best “value weed” brands on the market — no sacrifice in quality required.
Perfect for every kind of summer hang, Stone Road’s Roll Your Own kit comes with a 1/2 ounce of biodynamic, sun-grown California flower and is available in three fruit-tasting and smelling strains. The packs come with natural rolling papers and tear-and-use crutches. The package is 100% recyclable.
Smokes Like:
The quality of this flower is quite good for a pre-ground pack — the pack I tried was sticky, rather than dry, and the taste and smell showed through all the way from sniffing the bag to lighting up. Color me impressed. My favorite is the Banana Split strain, which is an energizing mix of Tangie and Banana Sherbet and clocks in at a chill 23.11% THC.
The OG of value brands, Old Pal takes high-quality small buds, grinds ’em up, and throws them into a handy pack that now serves as a model for other value brands in the game. Standard with every stylish 1/2 ounce Ready to Roll pack are rolling papers and disposable crutches.
Smokes Like:
Old Pal’s Ready to Roll packs come in three designations: Indica, Sativa, and Hybrid. The Hybrid pack is a nice middle-of-the-road option with neither too strong of a head or body high, but for me was more cerebral and less couch lock.
Bottom Line:
It clocks in at around 20% THC, so it makes for a super functional high that is good for prefacing any activity.
Roots is a value brand under the umbrella Flow Cannabis Co. brand (formerly known as Flow Kana), which sources all of its sun-grown weed from Northern California’s Emerald Triangle. In addition to ounces, eighths of flower and pre-rolled joints, Roots also makes live resin carts and dabs.
The Product:
One of the benefits of smoking sun-grown cannabis is that plants grown fully or partially outdoors (with greenhouses) get their energy from the sun, which provides the plant with a greater opportunity to produce different terpenes, cannabinoids, and flavonoids. This results in a more dynamic and multi-faceted high.
Bottom Line:
Roots’ weed delivers, producing a mild, balanced body and head high with exceptionally tasty flower and pre-rolled joints.
Union Electric is another value brand with simple offerings: ounce bags of dense, sticky popcorn buds of either Indica, Sativa, or Hybrid. The brand, which bills itself as serving an “underserved market in cannabis,” the working class, sources its flower from three California farms: Natura Life Sciences, Wave Rider Nursery and POSSIBL.
Smokes Like:
Holy gas! I tried the hybrid Chem Driver strain, which clocks in at 24.88% THC and is a cross between Sundae Driver and Chem Dawg. This is a true hybrid: a strong head change eventually settles into a stoney body high.
Bottom Line:
It smells gassy and tastes sweet, which is probably owing to the Myrcene terpene, as well as piney, owing to Pinene.
Baker’s is the value brand under the Canndescent umbrella, which is known for producing high-quality indoor cannabis. The Baker’s brand displays similarly high quality — the 1/2 ounce pre-ground packs come with 40 rolling papers, and crutches and are available in Indica, hybrid, and Sativa. Like with all pre-ground weed, it’s a mechanical grind, but Baker’s isn’t quite as fine as the grind from other brands, which I think helps retain good texture, smell, and taste. In addition to 1/2 ounce pre-ground packs, Baker’s also sells 1/2 ounces of whole flower, as well as shake packs.
Smokes Like:
I tried the Sativa pack, which in this case is the Peach Ozz strain. The resulting feeling is concentrated right in the head — a cerebral hit that centers in the face, almost like an electric cloud. At 14.62% THC, it is quite literally perfect for the daytime or active smoker.
Bottom Line:
I’ve kept this pack on hand for a little toke throughout my days since I first tried it.
Weed
Price: varies
The Product:
San Diego-based, aptly named Weed uses that classic tagline that anyone who has bought off the legal market will remember: “buy a pound, break it down.” Like other value companies, Weed buys in bulk from large indoor cultivators to sell 1 gram, eighth, and 1/2 ounce Indica, Sativa, or hybrid flowers, as well as pre-ground packs of sugar trim, and pre-rolled gram joints.
Smokes Like:
The Sativa pouch produces an upbeat, effervescent high that isn’t too overpowering.
Bottom Line:
Overall, the weed sampled from the flower, pouches, and pre-rolls is good quality — it’s not too dry and smells and tastes potent.
Cloudious9
Price:$110 for either a grinder or vaporizer and three grams of flower
The Product:
Cloudious9 has released a product bundle that combines gear with low-priced flower. There are two options for the Gravi7y bundle: one with a battery-powered grinder (it’s great) or a portable dry flower vaporizer. Either option comes with three grams of indica, sativa, and hybrid flower from either indoor or mixed-light cultivation facilities.
Smokes Like:
Cloudious9 is a leader in low-cost cannabis tech and, purists be damned, their automatic grinder is a pleasure to use. Their portable vaporizer is a good buy, too, especially if someone doesn’t already own one and is looking for a low-cost way to enter the market.
Bottom Line:
The flower is potent, not too dry, and a good product to kick off using one of the brand’s tech products with.
Jetfuel
Courtesy of Jetfuel
Price: $32 for an eighth
The Product:
Jetfuel is Airfield Supply Co’s in-house value brand. It is small-batch grown and craft cultivated and sells in eighth jars.
Smokes Like:
Jetfuel’s most popular strain, Jack Herer, is a powerful cross between Haze, Northern Lights, and Shiva Skunk. Named after the lifelong cannabis activist, Jack Herer lives on with a euphoric high and herbal flavor with punchy citrus zest.
Bottom Line:
This strain is a particularly social one — expect to get chatty.
Ahead of season two of I Think You Should Leave, Netflix released a “previously on” for the first season of Tim Robinson’s triumphantly funny sketch show. No show has ever needed a “previously on” less than I Think You Should Leave (yes yes, that’s the joke), but it’s a good excuse to laugh yourself silly at “oh my god, he admit it” all over again.
The recap video highlights just how many great lines came from those six episodes. “You talked about how their bones were money like four times.” “F*ck you, Harley Jarvis.” “Ah! Gazpacho soup just burned my lips.” “There’s is no mud pie” — Oscar nominee Steven Yeun. “YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE TURBO TEAM.” (To be fair, every line from I Think You Should Leave could be in all-caps. There’s so much yelling.)
“[Co-creator] Zach [Kanin] and I just found ourselves writing a lot of scenes like that, where the person is refusing to admit they’ve done something wrong, or lying, and will do anything to cover that up,” Robinson told GQ about his thought process behind many of the show’s funniest moments. “So it became the theme of the whole show because we kept gravitating towards writing those scenes.
I Think You Should Leave returns on July 6 with guest stars Sam Richardson, Tim Heidecker, Patti Harrison, Bob Odenkirk, Julia Butters, John Early, Mike O’Brien, and Paul Walter Hauser. You can revisit our ranking of every sketch here.
While it shouldn’t be a surprise to see hip-hop acts getting in on the NFT craze at this point, the latest rappers to announce their non-fungible product have attached some real value to it. A Tribe Called Quest is selling an NFT through Royalty Exchange which will grant holders access to a 1.5% share of the royalties from the iconic rap group’s first five albums: People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, Midnight Marauders, Beats, Rhymes And Life, and The Love Movement.
The NFT is being auctioned on the Royalty Exchange website using Ethereum, beginning today and running through the next 27 hours as of press time. The starting price was 16.500 ETH (or $35,000) and so far, that number has gone up to 16.659 ETH ($35,921), with just two bids. Expect that number to jump as the deadline nears You can watch the bids in real-time, and the winner can expect a biannual distribution of around $3,000, provided that CDs, vinyl, streams, and sync licensing hold steady.
The site describes Tribe’s catalog as “celebrated by critics and fans alike as the most intelligent, artistic rap group of the 1990s.” Some of the places their music has appeared include the 2021 live-action Tom And Jerry film, the 2020 Pixar film Soul, the fan-favorite Apple+ series Ted Lasso, and tons of video games, movies, shows, and advertisements.
George Romero, the father of the zombie genre, famously hatedThe Walking Dead, essentially writing it off as a soap opera and blaming it (and World War Z) on his inability to finance smaller, zombie-driven movies with sociopolitical messages like his Night of the Living Dead trilogy. The no-frills, minimalist Black Summer from John Hyams and Karl Schaefer, however, is the perfect antidote, and precisely the kind of zombie television series George Romero would appreciate.
Black Summer is light on plot, but heavy on action, although there’s also a surprising amount of depth to its characters, even if most of them aren’t long for this world. There are no lurching, shambling walkers who are deadly only in hordes. In Black Summer, the zombies are rabid, ferocious, fast-moving, and lethal. They can’t be corraled and led over cliffs to their demise. They’re heat-seeking and unrelenting. In a war between the Black Summer zombies and those in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, I’d take the Black Summer zombies in a heartbeat. In fact, the only thing they seem to have in common with zombies of The Walking Dead is an inability to turn a doorknob. No matter; they just beat down the door and rip their prey to bloody pieces.
The zombie apocalypse of Black Summer is bleak, and there are certainly no communities that have banded together to take on the undead threat. In Black Summer, everyone has turned on each other because safe spaces and supplies are limited, so in addition to taking on the empties, the entire world has been pitted against each other. To wit: One of the major storylines in Season 2 of Black Summer centers on a crate of supplies that has been dropped from a plane in the sky. It seems like a humanitarian mission, but it’s just one more thing to give the remaining survivors something to kill each other over, and that is precisely what they do. Not that it matters who comes out on top because in Black Summer, victory is fleeting, and death is around every corner.
Season 2 picks up several months from where the first season ended. When we last saw Rose (Jamie King) she had finally found her daughter, although we were left uncertain as to whether it was real or a hallucination. The second season answers that question: Rose is accompanied by her teenage daughter, Anna (Zoe Marlett), and the two of them are a formidable duo. Anna is great with a shotgun, while Rose dispenses parental advice as needed, things like, “Never let them take you alive.” There aren’t, however, a lot of conversations in Black Summer. Most people speak in nods, grunts, and shotgun blasts, at least when they’re not letting out their final piercing screams.
That is even more true for Sun (Christine Lee), who speaks Korean and has to navigate the apocalypse with the additional challenge of a language barrier. She gets caught up in the factions warring over the crate of supplies, although she’s largely used as a pawn or a human shield. That she has survived as long as she has is purely a testament to luck. That, plus the fact that she doesn’t pose much of a threat, so she’s usually the last target. In Black Summer, characters are rarely alive long enough to take out their last targets, and so Sun is passed around from one faction to the next, surviving almost by accident.
Spears (Justin Chu Cary) is the third holdover from the first season, and he is a mess. He may be alive, but in his condition, it’s hard to see the point. That, however, is the nature of Black Summer. In true Romero fashion, it’s hard to imagine the long-term prospects of any of the characters. They’re living not for the future, but for their next meal.
If that sounds grim, it’s because it is. There aren’t any laughs or romantic pairings or meet-cutes. There’s no exposition, either. The series just drops us into these stories and asks us to orient ourselves and figure out where we are. Black Summer, which is told in a series of short vignettes, is pure, unending horror. It is intense, and certainly not a show for everyone. For those who like their zombie shows pure, uncut, and undiluted, however, Black Summer continues to do the trick in season two.
Season 2 of ‘Black Summer’ is currently streaming on Netflix.
LA electro indie-pop duo Magdalena Bay gained a cult following with their synth-laden 2020 EP A Little Rhythm And A Wicked Feeling. Composed of musicians Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin, the duo now unveil details about their debut LP with the charged track “Chaeri.”
Magdalena Bay’s Luke Orlando-directed video alongside “Chaeri” coaxes listeners into the otherworldly universe the duo have built around their upcoming album, Mercurial World. The song itself reflects the visual’s enticing nature and is reminiscent of Grimes’ Art Angels era of music. “Chaeri” stitches together Tenenbaum’s saccharine vocals with dynamic synths and a hurried beat to craft a memorable tune about the complexities of friendship and mental health.
About the LP, Lewin says they were inspired by the isolated world they’ve lived in this past year. “We spend all of our time together, and in some ways Mercurial World is about that particular sense of madness in containment. We live together and make art together; this immerses you in our creative, insular universe.”
Watch Magdalena Bay’s “Chaeri” video above and find their Mercurial World album cover, tracklist, and tour dates below.
Magdalena Bay
1. “The End”
2. “Mercurial World”
3. “Dawning Of The Season”
4. “Secrets (Your Fire)”
5. “You Lose!”
6. “Something For 2”
7. “Chaeri”
8. “Halfway”
9. “Hysterical Us”
10. “Prophecy”
11. “Follow The Leader”
12. “Domino”
13. “Dreamcatching”
14. “The Beginning”
10/08 — Los Angeles, CA @ El Cid
10/12 — Boston, MA @ The Sinclair *
10/13 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere (Zone One)
10/14 — Philadelphia, PA @ First Unitarian Church *
10/15 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg *
10/16 — Washington DC @ Songbyrd *
10/17 — Charlottesville, VA @ The Southern *
10/19 — Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle – Back Room *
10/20 — Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade – Purgatory *
10/24 — New Orleans, LA @ Gasa Gasa #
10/27 — Dallas, TX @ Deep Ellum Art Company #
10/28 — Houston, TX @ The Satellite #
10/29 — Austin, TX @ Levitation
10/30 — El Paso, TX @ The Lowbrow Palace #
11/01 — Tucson, AZ @ Club Congress #
11/02 — San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar #
11/10 — Berkeley, CA @ Cornerstone #
* with George Clanton and Vitesse X
# with George Clanton and Negative Gemini (DJ Set)
Mercurial World is out 10/8 via Luminelle Recordings. Pre-order it here.
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