Category: Worldwide

The beer world is built on buzz — literally and metaphorically. New and annual releases are hotly anticipated by the drinking public, amplified by outlets like this one, and, eventually, torn down so that new “it beers of the moment” can emerge. Only a few classics are able to endure the cycle year after year.

So why engage in it?

Well, because the process of sampling, evaluating, arguing, learning, and reevaluating cultural products — from food to film to language itself — is fun. Why else would people still write think pieces about Goodfellas or rank Beatle’s songs in 2020? And though expertise is important, when it comes to arguments about food and drinks, all opinions have some degree of validity. Because ultimately what you prefer relies on your unique palate.

Which is all a long way of explaining that we asked bartenders to name overhyped winter beers and some of their picks are beers we love. Some even made our “Best of 2020” list. So remember going in, the critiques offered below are simply opinions held by 10 people who serve beers on the daily. We’re not saying they need to be taken as gospel, you have every right to be outraged, appalled, and combative — that’s what the comments are for!

Samuel Adams Winter Ale

Deena Sayers, bartender at Common Ground in New York City

Sam Adams Winter Ale.

This brand has overwhelming popularity with their seasonal brews. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best tasting ones on the market. I personally find the mouthfeel to be a little flat, and the taste is not overwhelming with those typical nostalgic winter flavors.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. No disrespect to Goose, just feels as though the appeal started to wane with the acquisition by AB. No longer so worth the crazy hyped up wait around the block for this bottling.

Anchor Christmas Ale

Seth Falvo, bartender at The Hotel Zamora in St. Pete Beach, Florida

As much as I hate to say anything bad about a company that craft beer in the United States more or less owes its existence to, Our Special Ale by Anchor Brewing is wildly overrated.

Back in 1975, Anchor set the standard for Christmas beers in the United States by releasing the first American Christmas beer since the repeal of prohibition. But there’s a downside to setting the standard – you’re essentially making your product generic by default since it’s now the measuring stick that others are compared to. Our Special Ale seemingly pops up on every “X Must-Try Holiday Beers” list published in the United States, even though there are hundreds of American beers that taste identical to it, and dozens that are, frankly, better.

Anchor Brewing always releases quality beers, but for Our Special Ale to continue to receive such high praise is enough for me to warrant calling it “the most overrated winter beer.”

Southern Tier Pumking

Yasin Orhun Akinci, manager at Orient Express Bar in New York City

I don’t understand why people love aromatic bears like a pumpkin ale, etc. The beer should taste like beer. A great example is Southern Tier Pumking. Why not just eat a piece of pumpkin pie instead?

New Belgium Accumulation

Robert Gleim, managing partner of Bamboo Willie’s Beachside Bar in Pensacola, Florida

New Belgium Accumulation is my pick. It’s too fruity for a winter IPA and surprisingly light. They might make a better version of this for the Summer. I need a little more depth for the cooler months.

21st Amendment Fireside Chat

Erin Gowdy, bartender at Paul’s Landing in St. Petersburg, Florida

121st Amendment Fireside Chat is not necessarily overrated, but it is one of the most popular winter beers when there are so many lesser-known contenders. Local breweries are always a fantastic way to go for seasonal brews.

Sierra Nevada Celebration

Roberto Berdecia, bartender at La Factoria in San Juan, Puerto Rico

In general, the most overrated beer style is the IPA because most brewers use the hops to cover imperfections in the beer. If I was going to choose an overrated wintry IPA, I’d go with Sierra Nevada Celebration. It’s just not as good as the hype.

Writer’s Picks:

Brooklyn Winter Ale

Like many of the beers on this list, there’s nothing wrong with Brooklyn Winter Ale. It’s just not as good as the hype makes it out to be. While it’s malty, hoppy, and crisp, it’s a little too light to stand up to a cold winter night.

Deschutes Jubelale

This 6.7 percent holiday favorite isn’t bad, but it’s a little too potent in the flavor department for our liking. It’s okay to drink one bottle, but the overly sweet, spicy flavor is a little in your face.

Harpoon Winter Warmer

If you purchase this beer, you know what you’re getting. It’s designed to warm you up on a chilly day with the addition of flavors like cinnamon, nutmeg, and other spices. That said, those notes are just a bit too over-the-top for my palate.

In what comes as a surprise to no one, Taylor Swift’s Evermore debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album charts. The singer’s ninth album came just a little over four months after her previous one, Folklore. Prior to its release, Swift revealed that her two 2020 projects were “sister” records, saying that Evermore came as a result of her inability to “stop writing songs.” She added, “It feels like we were standing on the edge of the folklorian woods and had a choice: to turn and go back or to travel further into the forest of this music … We chose to wander deeper in.”

Evermore sold 329,000 equivalent album units in its first week on the charts. The album was only released through digital retailers while its CD edition will be available for purchase on December 18. The project becomes the eighth No. 1 album of Swift’s career and her second of 2020. She also earned the shortest gap between a pair of No. 1 albums by a female artist since Billboard began consistently publishing a weekly chart in March 1956. Swift holds the new record because Folklore and Evermore were released four months and 18 days apart.

Swift also earned the second-largest streaming week of 2020, thanks to 220.49 million on-demand streams of the album’s songs. This comes second to Folklore which tallied 289.85 million streams of its songs in its first week.

Revisit our review of Evermore here.

(via Billboard)

No one reads the terms of service during when updating apps. What’s more, everyone knows they should. Tucked away in acres of boilerplate and legalese are sometimes, if not always, some really alarming revelations about what certain services can do with your information. There’s even an old South Park episode parodying this very issue (as well as The Human Centipede). Last week some people tried to raise red flags about some scary stuff buried in an Instagram update, which went live on Sunday. One of those people was no less than Madonna Louise Ciccone, better known to you as simply Madonna.

The pop goddess took to Instagram on Saturday, hoping to warn people about an update mere hours before it went into effect. “Starting tomorrow,” she said in a video, “Instagram’s new cyber surveillance policies allow Mark Zuckerberg to spy on you and your family, steal your most intimate secrets and monitor your compliance with government mandates through all your devices – including your television – and sell your data to government and industry or punish you for disobedience.” She added, “This is some scary s*it.”

Mind you, she didn’t go into detail about how the new update does…well, any of this. But she’s far from the only person who’s singled out the December 20th update as a harbinger of worse things to come. Some highlighted some densely and vaguely worded business about what Instagram can do with the pictures you post on their service.

Some pointed out that one section implies that your username can’t also be your own personal url, which could affect bloggers and small businesses.

One issue, which Madonna did not highlight, is how it could affect sex workers. When the ToS in the update was first made public, those in the industry worried that Instagram — which is owned by Facebook, who forbid sexually explicit or even implicit content — would start deleting their accounts, which they use to attract clients. In fact, social media is often the way they first interact with clients.

Instagram did respond to the concerns, telling Mashable: “that the new terms are focused on clarifying how the app uses data to serve personalized ads; what data advertisers receive; and licensing and IP usage. They did not change any of the language around the posting of sexual or suggestive content.” They also posted an explanatory tweet.

And yet a number of sex workers came forward, accusing Instagram of already targeting their accounts, sometimes deleting them multiple times. Even sex educators, including tantric coaches and professional Dommes, have claimed to have been targeted.

While Instagram’s posts have tried to calm nerves, it hasn’t entirely worked. When Mashable asked them about removing accounts that link to OnlyFans, which has been popular with sex workers, they received some jumbled rhetoric: “We don’t take action simply because accounts post OnlyFans links, we take action if these links are shared alongside content attempting to share or offer sexual materials, or coordinate sexual encounters between adults.”

It’s the kind of impenetrable word salad that George Orwell once warned against; after all, as he argued, being unclear, or even just boring, is a tried-and-true way to screw people over. You can read the full new Terms of Service right here. It may or may not contain some of the grim shenanigans against which Madonna warned, but we may not know for sure until accounts start vanishing en masse.

(Via Mashable)

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York has never had the cultural pull of its predecessor, though not for lack of trying. Indeed, it’s pretty much the first film, with almost every beat replaced by some Big Apple counterpart. Then again, maybe that explains its lowly rep. But it’s remained a holiday staple, despite or maybe even because of the cameo from You Know Who. And its stature is such that it even got parodied on SNL, with host Kristen Wiig stepping into the shoes of the beloved “Pigeon Lady” who some people recently thought — erroneously, alas — was Piers Morgan. (In fact, she was played by Oscar-winner Brenda Fricker.)

The sketch imagined an alternate ending to the movie, in which Melissa Villaseñor played Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister opposite Wiig’s Pigeon Lady. In the movie, she’s the sequel’s equivalent of the old next door neighbor from the original: a figure of fright who turns out to be a savior. But the parody savages one unremarked-upon aspect of the film: Kevin, the scion of upper middle class parents, armed with a portion of his dad’s wealth, really could have gotten her a room at the Plaza, too.

And so Villaseñor’s Kevin remains oblivious to the desperation of Wiig’s Pigeon Lady, who keeps hoping he’ll at least give her some of that limo pizza. Kevin eventually catches on, but it’s too late: the Wet-turned-Sticky Bandits — Kyle Mooney doing Joe Pesci and Mickey Day doing Daniel Stern — arrive, stealing the kid’s riches. But instead of simply incapicatating them, as she does in the movie, Wiig’s Pigeon Lady bashes them to bloody death.

It’s reminiscent of another famous SNL alternate ending: the one they did for It’s a Wonderful Life, which concludes with Dana Carvey’s George Bailey learning that Jon Lovitz’s Mr. Potter was the one who took his money, leading an angry mob to his home, and beating him to death, all while the townsfolk continue to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

You can watch the sketch above.

Eddie Izzard, the legendary comedian and actor who’s fond of history, digressions, and James Mason impersonations, has always pushed gender fluidity. She’s a transvestite, not a cross-dresser, and she’s often performed her beloved shows in a dress, and has long called herself a “male transvestite.” That changed recently when Izzard went one step further, declaring that her pronouns are now she/her.

Izzard made the news public last week while sitting in for Sky Arts’ Portrait Artist Of The Year, in which various celebrities pose for portraits, ending in a competition. She was being drawn by artist Curtis Holder — who won, by the way — and while his subject sat, she discussed her new transition.

“I try to do things that I think are interesting, and this is the first program I’ve asked if I can be she and her. A little transition period,” Izzard told Holder, who then asked her how her new status feels. “Well it feels great, because people just assume that they just know me from before, but I’m gender fluid. I just want to be based in girl mode from now on.”

Izzard — whose 1999 show Dress to Kill is truly among the great stand-up specials, teeming with untold quotables — was showered with online support.

She also received a lot of pushback from transphobes.

But those who know her know that this is an organic transition from something she’s been doing her entire career.

(Via EW)

It’s been exactly one month after Megan Thee Stallion shared her long-awaited debut album Good News. While the response has been positive, there has been one source of unexpected controversy. On Saturday night, Asian Doll played a version of “Do It On The Tip” on Instagram Live that contained a verse from her that had been removed from the album version. After it ended, she said, “Yeah, I don’t know what the f*ck Megan was thinking.”

However, the truth is more complicated. LilJuMadeDaBeat, the track’s producer, later revealed her verse was going to be used later, on a remix of the song. “I made that beat for Megan. Megan sent that beat to her anticipating a remix,” he said. “I don’t even have contact with Asian Doll to even send her beats. And why would I send a beat to Asian then send the same one to Megan?”

Asian Doll also made sure to clarify that she did not have any issues with City Girls, the Atlanta rap duo comprised of JT and Yung Miami. “If Jt ain’t say my name then she wasn’t talking to me stop being messy cause what I said was between me & Megan !” she said in a tweet. Despite this, things took a left on Sunday.

In a long string of tweets, JT and Yung Miami began a back and forth with Asian Doll, in which JT called Asian Doll “desperate” and claimed that she’s “been getting took off songs for the longest.” Yung Miami, on the other hand, called her “salty.” Asian continued with comments about City Girls’ record deal, calling it a “360,” as well as about JT’s relationship with Lil Uzi Vert.

Megan Thee Stallion eventually chimed in, expressing her disappointment in the war of words between City Girls and Asian Doll. “I hate that all of this is getting so blown out of proportion. It was never as deep as the comments made it seem,” she wrote. Asian responded, saying, “We was real friends f*ck rap you should’ve said some yesterday & cleared sh*t up but NO you let that h*e get in your ear & and you don’t even know that that h*e.” Megan defended her actions and said, “Asian you kno me better than that you kno I don’t even like all this internet sh*t. You blow sh*t out of proportion bc you a f*cking hot head. You played the song on live that was that… what do I need to clear up?”

Many of these tweets were deleted shortly after they were posted. However, they were screengrabbed by fans and can be viewed in the tweets above.

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

Lizzo has had the kind of come up that most musicians dream about. Even if 2020 was a strange one for her, as it was for the rest of the music industry, she still picked up the most Grammy nominations of any artist this year, and it was only her first year being nominated. To celebrate the success of last year’s Cuz I Love You, and likely all the years her mom was there before the money and the fame, Lizzo decided to share her Christmas gift to her mom with the world.

In a sweet Instagram post, Lizzo shares the clip of her mom coming out with eyes closed, not knowing there’s a brand new car in the driveway. Once she opens her eyes, the excitement takes over. Her mom doesn’t really have words besides “thank you so much!” but her exclamations get the point across — this is still unreal to her. ‘You see these things on television and you never expect it to happen to yourself!’ her mom said. “Got my mommy a brand new Audi for Xmas,” Lizzo wrote in the caption. “I remember crying in my car when my daddy passed, no job no money nowhere to live, wishing I could one day provide for my family.. I couldnt do it for my dad so ima make sure I spoil Mama. Happy holidays y’all.” Check out the post below.

The Los Angeles Lakers front office was very busy this offseason, working to beef up the roster that won a title this past season in trades and free agency, but also in locking up some of the key pieces already on the roster. The biggest of those were inking Anthony Davis to a 5-year max deal and also extending LeBron James for two more seasons to keep their superstar pairing together for years to come.

They also brought back Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency and, on Sunday, got another extension deal done with another of their key contributors from last season, Kyle Kuzma. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Lakers and Kuzma agreed to a 3-year, $40 million extension that includes a player option on the third year to let him hit free agency should he so choose in 2023.

It seems like a solid deal for both sides, as the Lakers keep a contributor on the roster when it’s very difficult to make outside additions to the team with two max players locked up. Kuzma gets paid and gathers some financial security while also having the opportunity to seek a new deal in three seasons when he’s 28 should he show growth and find there’s a more robust market out there for him.

The Lakers have made clear their intentions this offseason, which is to keep this core intact for as long as possible while upgrading on the periphery where able. We’ll find out if it can lead to back-to-back titles eventually, but they’ll certainly be in contention for some time.

The Houston Texans have been painful to watch this season, particularly for their fans, as they’ve been dreadful despite the presence of star quarterback Deshaun Watson trying his best to make them competent. They fired coach and GM Bill O’Brien earlier in the season, but the roster mess he left behind remains and, without DeAndre Hopkins out wide, Watson simply doesn’t have the weapons around him to make up for the Texans other deficiencies.

Those issues were on display on Sunday as the Texans took on the Colts in a divisional game that saw them go down two scores, rally to tie the game at 20, fall behind 27-20, and then again march down the field in hopes of forcing overtime. Their last gasp effort to tie the game ended in disaster after Watson hit Keke Coutee on 4th and 5 on a slant over the middle. Coutee fought through a hit and found his way near the goal line, but had the ball punched out as he tried to stretch for the end zone where it was recovered by the Colts to seal another Indy win and yet another brutal Houston loss.

The Colts would take knees to end it and Watson’s face at the end said it all from his perspective.

The Texans fall to 4-10 with the loss, two games away from the merciful end to the season and in need of some serious changes if they are to get back to playoff contention soon. The good news is they have the quarterback situation figured out, which is usually the biggest hurdle. The bad news is, well, everything else.

In addition to yet another No. 1 album, 2020 has now brought Ariana Grande another highlight moment to relish. The singer announced on Sunday she is engaged to her boyfriend Dalton Gomez and shared a collection of pictures on Instagram to celebrate.

The photos were posted with a caption that read, “forever n then some.” Three of the photos showed the singer cuddled up with Gomez while another gave fans a close-up look of the diamond ring that also boasts what looks like a pearl to the left of it.

Ariana was first reported to be dating Gomez, a 27-year-old real estate agent from California, earlier this year when TMZ shared that the two were spotted together on Valentine’s Day. Their relationship was later confirmed at the two began quarantining together, something that fans got a quick glimpse of in a clip that was included in Grande and Justin Bieber’s “Stuck With U” video.

The singer’s announcement comes hours before her Excuse Me, I Love You film arrives on Netflix. It poses as both a concert film and a tour documentary that will take fans back to Grande’s 2018 Sweetener World Tour. Fans who tune in to watch will also see a small portion of her personal life as clips of Grande spending time with her mother and having emotional moments with her tour crew are shown. After announcing the film, the singer shared a message with fans about it.

“I know this project only captures some of one tour (out of all the other hundreds of shows and moments we have shared over the past six or seven years… jesus lol),” Grande said. “But i just wanted to thank u all for showing me more in this lifetime already than i ever dreamed of,” she said in an Instagram post.”

You can check out Grande’s engagement post above.