Category: Worldwide

The best way to honor Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is to share her legacy with the next generation. The feminist icon may have passed away last week at the age of 87, but she lives on in the hearts and minds of multiple generations of Americans, especially women.

In the 1970s, the young Ginsburg “convinced the entire nation, through [her arguments at the] Supreme Court, to… adopt the view of gender equality where equal means the same — not special accommodations for either gender,” Abbe Gluck, a Yale Law School professor and former clerk of Justice Ginsburg, told ABC News.

However, Ginsburg’s influence extends far beyond those who admired her during the feminist movement of the ’70s.

Ginsburg was an inspiration to millions right up to her passing. She resonated with younger groups as a pop culture icon and the subject of countless memes. She was even the subject of several “Saturday Night Live” sketches starring the brilliant Kate McKinnon.

“I think it is absolutely extraordinary that Justice Ginsburg was both a hero to the women of the 1970s and then an icon to the little girls of today,” Gluck noted. “She was an amazing teacher and her influence remains with me today and will remain with me forever.”

In 2016, Ginsburg was the subject of a children’s book, “I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark,” by Debbie Levy. The book gave young readers the opportunity to learn about the justice from her childhood to the Supreme Court.

To honor Ginsburg’s legacy after her passing, parents have been sharing photos of their daughters dressed as the Justice on social media to show how her legacy won’t soon be forgotten.

The “I Dissent” book clearly had a powerful influence on young women.

Ginsburg was a popular subject for young girls to cover in book reports.

Ginsburg has left behind generations of women who aspire to be a Supreme Court justice.

RBG is an inspiration even to the youngest of girls.

“Dissents speak to a future age,” Ginsburg once said. “It’s not simply to say, ‘My colleagues are wrong and I would do it this way.’ But the greatest dissents do become court opinions and gradually over time their views become the dominant view. So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today, but for tomorrow.”

Ginsburg was known for her powerful, dissenting opinions and if her long-term goal was to provide a true north for those who came after her, her mission was clearly accomplished. RBG may have thought she had more work to do when she passed, but there’s no doubt that it will be achieved by those she’s inspired to follow in her footsteps.

The world discovered this year that almost everything in their lives is actually cake. Those memes are genuinely pretty darn impressive, because as an artistic medium, cake is not easy to work with. That was proven during the recent season Season 11 premiere of The Great British Bake Off. Contestants were tasked with making a cake bust of their personal heroes, and one baker decided to portray former Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge. Well, they may have tried their best, but the results have drawn the ire of the internet.

DeLonge himself got in on the fun, too. He shared a screenshot of the cake — which, again, bears a passing resemblance to him in that it has human-like features — and wrote, “When I was younger, and needed the money, I did a few hundred adult films. This looks EXACTLY like me at the time. EXACTLY. #Cake.”

DeLonge wasn’t the only music figure to be immortalized as a baked good during the episode. He also wasn’t the only one to be portrayed poorly, as artists like David Bowie and Bob Marley also fell victim to the British bakers.

Fans had plenty to say about the DeLonge cake, so check out some other reactions below.

Anderson .Paak and Rick Ross are super seniors in the comedic video for their Madden NFL 21 collaboration “Cut ‘Em In.” Confronted by their teacher — portrayed by former Vine star and comic cameo contract killer King Bach — on the last day of school, the boys are told not to get in any trouble. Naturally, they can’t help but contradict that order, raising a ruckus in the halls with their peers.

The Hit-Boy produced track is embellished throughout by shots of a brassy band playing with .Paak at the helm — a fitting addition, considering it’s Andy’s first video as director. It looks like both rappers and their comedian co-star had a blast shooting as well. The video game the song soundtracks also makes an appearance thanks to its mobile version on Anderson’s phone.

.Paak’s had an eventful year, playing performances for an NPR Tiny Desk and the BET Awards, voicing a character and providing a track for Trolls World Tour, appearing on The Price Is Right (and ditching a studio session with Dr. Dre to do so), and working with hip-hop legends Nas (on new album King’s Disease) and Busta Rhymes (on E.L.E. 2 track “Yuuu“). Meanwhile, Rick Ross has kept it decidedly lower key, popping up on the odd feature and participating on Swizz Beats’ Verzuz show with 2 Chainz.

Watch Anderson .Paak’s “Cut Em In” video featuring Rick Ross above.

Netflix is almost ready to unfurl the next chapter of their word-of-mouth, theory-spawning The Haunting anthology series following the first chapter, The Haunting Of Hill House. Creator Mike Flanagan and producer Trevor Macy are swinging back with a taste of Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw in the upcoming The Haunting Of Bly Manor, which includes familiar faces from the first round, who are (of course) all in fresh roles.

The trailer brings all the spooks and suspense that one would expect, along with an instrumental cover of Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home” — because you know what viewers need on on top of ghosts? visions of Tommy Lee upside down in his drum kit — to remind viewers that they’re in a familiar universe, even if the series is now terrorizing a new family. Set in 1980s England, this season promises more chilling gothic romance at a home where the dead aren’t necessarily gone, given that the home hides centuries worth of love and loss. Here are some set-up and casting details from Netflix:

After an au pair’s tragic death, Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) hires a young American nanny (Victoria Pedretti) to care for his orphaned niece and nephew (Amelie Bea Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) who reside at Bly Manor with the estate’s chef Owen (Rahul Kohli), groundskeeper Jamie (Amelia Eve) and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (T’Nia Miller).

The Haunting Of Bly Manor streams on October 9.

The Wikipedia page for “List of The Simpsons guest stars” is so long that it’s actually two pages: one for seasons 1-20, and another for seasons 21-31 (season 32 premieres this Sunday, September 27). Basically, anyone who’s been even remotely famous between 1989 and now has been on The Simpsons. With a few exceptions, like when Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Pearl Jam all “respectfully declined” to appear in the season seven classic “Homerpalooza.” (I shudder to think what Homer’s response to “Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam” would have been). Nicolas Cage never turned The Simpsons down, but he has never voiced a character on the show, although he was considered for one.

I’ll give you a hint: don’t call him Grimey.

In response to a Twitter user asking whether Nicolas Cage is “a good actor, bad actor, or a good-bad actor,” former-The Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein wrote, “He’s a great actor who often makes weird choices. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t but I’d much rather watch him than some other actors who are more interested in looking ‘cool’ or only being the hero. I say God bless actors like him” (having recently seen Color Out of Space, I agree). He then tweeted some “little known” Simpsons trivia.

“Nicolas Cage is one of the only other actors we considered asking to play Frank Grimes, before we realized @HankAzaria would be the ultimate Grimey,” Weinstein wrote. “And Hank’s performance was one of the best in the show’s history.”

Azaria’s Grimes is one of the show’s best one-time performances (Frank Grimes, Jr. does not count), up there with Albert Brooks as Hank Scorpio. Still, it’s fun to imagine what Nicolas Cage saying “I live in a single room above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley” would sound like. Obviously he’d be great at the freak out scene.

(Via Josh Weinstein on Twitter)

At the top of the month, Kevin Morby announced his new album, Sundowner, with a “Campfire” video featuring Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield. He premiered a new visual this morning, for “Wander,” and this time, Crutchfield is the video’s star.

In it, she drives the blue truck from the previous video and sings along with the song. In the YouTube chat during the video’s premiere, Morby noted the visual was shot in western Kansas, and that the track is his “shortest song ever recorded”; the song itself clocks in at under two minutes.

At the same time, Morby also shared a lyric video for “Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun.”

Press materials previously noted of Crutchfield’s impact on the album’s recording sessions, “Kevin’s isolation was given a subtle lift when Katie Crutchfield began visiting. She would stay weeks at a time, living quietly beside him — their love taking shape in a quiet refuge from their lives on the road.”

Morby also previously said of Sundowner, “”It is a depiction of isolation. Of the past. Of an uncertain future. Of provisions. Of an omen. Of a dead deer. Of an icon. Of a Los Angeles themed hotel in rural Kansas. Of billowing campfires, a mermaid and a highway lined in rabbit fur. It is a depiction of the nervous feeling that comes with the sky’s proud announcement that another day will be soon coming to a close as the pink light recedes and the street lamps and house lights suddenly click on.”

Listen to “Wander” and “Don’t Underestimate Midwest American Sun” above.

Sundowner is out 10/16 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.

A week ago, the world had no clue that Fleet Foxes’ first album since 2017 would arrive in the near future, but then Shore was released just a day after it was formally announced. Now Robin Pecknold has revealed that he and the band plan to release even more new music next year.

Pecknold shared a lengthy statement about the new album, and he discussed a collection of nine songs the band wants to release in 2021 “to augment” the fifteen tracks on Shore. In the section titled “The Future,” he wrote (emphasis his):

“Since the beginning, Fleet Foxes has encompassed two facets: the studio albums and the live show. The studio albums have always been predominantly my work and my vision; I’ve always handled all the songwriting, most of the vocals and harmonies, and most of the recording of the instrumentation, usually working most closely with one other person, a producer or bandmate, to see the album through to completion. That’s as true now as it was a decade ago. In addition to that, I’ve been lucky to participate in the great adventure of long world tours with a fairly consistent team of live collaborators who I love and respect. And since we won’t be able to collaborate live in the near future, we have begun experimenting with writing songs together, in a way that we have never done before in the history of the band. For 2021, we hope to have nine more songs ready to augment the fifteen here. Those songs will be co-written from the ground up with Morgan Henderson, Skyler Skjelset, Casey Wescott, and Christian Wargo, in an attempt to make good use of this liminal time without extensive touring to he done. I’m incredibly excited to see where those songs end up and I hope that by the time they are done we will be able to bring all of this music to crowds around the world in some form or another.”

Read the full statement here, and check out our interview with Pecknold here.

Kevin Parker has been as active as just about any musician during the pandemic, performing in various capacities and putting out some new material. He was back at it last night, as Tame Impala visited The Tonight Show to bust out a rendition of The Slow Rush single “Borderline.”

For the performance, he and a couple of his band members manned various synthesizers and other electronic doohickeys in a space lit like a small club venue. The setup looks like what Parker did for his recent NPR Tiny Desk performance, for which he was joined by Jay Watson and Dom Simper. He explained to NPR then, “I’ll get Jay and Dom and we’ll do this kind of electronic jam with heaps of equipment around us and we’ll recreate the songs with samplers and sequencers. I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while and thought Tiny Desk would be the opportunity to do it.”

Aside from Fallon and Tiny Desk, Tame Impala also recently had a song remixed by Four Tet, shared an “Is It True” video, remixed 070 Shake’s “Guilty Conscience,” and performed on The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Watch Tame Impala perform “Borderline” above, and check out our recent interview with Parker here.

Three Netflix movies have been nominated for Best Picture: Roma, Marriage Story, and The Irishman. The Trial of the Chicago 7 will likely be the fourth. The latest feature from writer-director Aaron Sorkin (whose should-have-won-Best Picture masterpiece The Social Network came out 10 years ago next month) tells the true story of the Chicago 7, a group of anti-Vietnam War protestors were charged by the federal government with conspiracy and inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention — what followed was one of the most closely-monitored trials in American history. It’s got a stacked cast (including recent Emmy winners Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jeremy Strong), an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in Sorkin, a timely message, and most importantly, looks really good. That’s a strong recipe for Oscar night glory,

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

What was intended to be a peaceful protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention turned into a violent clash with police and the National Guard. The organizers of the protest — including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Bobby Seale — were charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and the trial that followed was one of the most notorious in history.

The Trial of the Chicago 7, which also stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Daniel Flaherty, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Keaton, Frank Langella, John Carroll Lynch, Eddie Redmayne, Noah Robbins, Mark Rylance, and Alex Sharp, premieres on Netflix on October 16.

Sure, you can spend the rest of your life drinking whiskeys made by large brands and end up completely happy with your choices. We’re talking about the likes of Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Jameson, and Suntory (along with some of the slightly smaller brands). These behemoths all make enough whiskeys to keep your palate interested and engaged for decades to come.

But if you have more of an adventurous spirit or root for the underdog and you want to sip on something tuly unique, there are countless brands out there that don’t have parent companies or hedge fund investors. True independents — focused on perfecting their specific version of the grain-to-glass experience.

Below you’ll find the independent American whiskey expressions that I love best.

Leopold Bro’s Maryland-Style Rye

ABV: 43%

Price: $48.99

The Story:

This is a seasonal release from Leopold Brothers and won’t be offered again until 2022. This pre-prohibition-style rye from the Colorado-based distillery is aged for two years in new charred American oak casks. Unlike its Pennsylvania-style counterpart with its rich oak and big notes of peppery spice, Maryland-style rye is much more mellow and fruit-driven.

This offering lives up its name with smooth, easy drinkability.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a lot going on with this whiskey as you nose it. The first aromas that fill your nostrils are dried orange peel, cinnamon, and sweet cream. The first sip brings forth flavors of butterscotch, caramelized sugar, sweet vanilla, and just a hint of peppery spice. The finish is long, warming, and filled with toffee, cocoa, and a final flourish of white pepper.

Bottom Line:

If you can get your hands on a bottle of this seasonal release, make it last. Sip it slowly with a few ice cubes on a chilly fall evening.

Dry Fly Straight Washington Wheat Whiskey

ABV: 45%

Price: $45.99

The Story:

In recent years, wheat whiskey has become fairly popular. One of the best is Dry Fly Washington Wheat. Made from 100% soft white wheat, it’s distilled two times before aging for 3 plus years in charred new American oak barrels.

The result is a very well–rounded, easy-drinking whiskey.

Tasting Notes:

This whiskey deserves a nosing before sampling. Unlike a high-rye whiskey, the wheat gives the aromas of sweet cereal, charred oak, and caramel. The first sip yields sweet cream, sticky toffee, cooking spices, and honey. The finish is long, warming, and dry — with hints of toasted oak and just a whisper of pepper at the very end.

Bottom Line:

The reason I picked this whiskey is that it feels effortlessly velvety and smooth. There’s no reason to mix this highly drinkable whiskey into a cocktail.

Kings County Peated Bourbon

ABV: 45%

Price: $44.99

The Story:

If you’re a fan of Scotch, you’re probably at least aware of the peat-smoked whiskies, specifically those from distilleries located on the island of Islay. But you might not know that it isn’t just Scotch that’s peat-smoked. One of the best American offerings comes from Kings County. This Peated Bourbon is made using peat-smoked malted barley. The result is a highly complex whiskey with sweetness from corn and smoke from peat.

Tasting Notes:

Your first whiff of this whiskey will transport you to Scotland — making you think of the likes of Ardbeg and Bruichladdich. But behind the smoke, there’s also sweet caramel and rich vanilla. The first sip is a mixture of soothing smoke, butterscotch, and dried fruits. The finish is long, warming, and filled with more campfire smoke paired with sweet cream.

Bottom Line:

If you get your hands on a bottle of this special small-batch bourbon, you should enjoy it with a blanket on your lap in front of a bonfire on a cold fall night.

Stranahan’s Diamond Peak Colorado Whiskey

ABV: 47%

Price: $79.99

The Story:

Part of the appeal of Stranahan’s Diamond Peak is the fact that from batch to batch, the flavors will be subtly different. Made from 100% Colorado barley and water and aged in charred, new American oak casks for four years, Diamond Peak also comes with its own shot glass. (The bottle ingeniously comes with a black metal 3-ounce cap — a clever little topper for a fantastic bottle.)

Tasting Notes:

Your first sniff will deliver a ton of flavor notes. First comes hints of cinnamon and candied pecans before leading into sweet cream and butterscotch. The first sip drops notes of toasted oak, rich caramel, spicy chocolate, and brown sugar. The finish is long, warming, and full of velvety sweetness and fall spices.

Bottom Line:

Take a hike and bring a bottle with you. As soon you reach a lookout, take a seat, crack open the bottle and take a sip while you sit back and enjoy the view.

Dad’s Hat Pennsylvania Straight Rye

ABV: 47.5%

Price: $40.99

The Story:

It might seem like rye has only become popular in the last few years, but before prohibition, it was arguably the most popular whiskey. Of the pre-prohibition ryes, there were two very popular styles: Pennsylvania and Maryland. This one is a Pennsylvania rye. That means this rye, made from local grain and aged for at least four years, is spicier than its counterpart.

Tasting Notes:

Like all rye whiskeys, this one deserves a nice nosing before taking a sip. If you do, you’ll be met with subtle spice, brown sugar, and creamy vanilla. The first sip will bring you white pepper, Christmas spices, rich caramel, dried cherries, and delicate floral notes. The finish is long, rich, and full of a pleasing kick of black pepper and butterscotch.

Bottom Line:

Unlike dad’s actual hat, you shouldn’t leave this whiskey laying around just anywhere. It’s a lovely fall dram and a fun one to share and taste with rye whiskey newbies.

Iron Smoke Straight Bourbon

ABV: 40%

Price: $45.99

The Story:

It’s likely that you’ve never heard of Iron Smoke. This small-batch bourbon is made using locally sourced grains in limited batches. At first glance, it looks like well-made whiskey using a similar recipe to many other well-made whiskeys. The difference is Iron Smoke’s version is a four-grain bourbon with applewood smoked wheat. The result is a subtly smoky, sweet bourbon you’ll want to sip all autumn long.

Tasting Notes:

The first aromas you’ll be met with when nosing this bourbon are sweet corn, rich caramel, and velvety vanilla. The first sip teases flavors of toasted marshmallow, subtle bonfire smoke, sweet cream, and brown sugar. The finish is long, dry, warming, and filled with a pleasing kiss of applewood smoke that will make you wish you had a plate of ribs to pair the dram with.

Bottom Line:

This truly unique expression might be the perfect bridge for peaty Scotch fans to get into the world of American bourbon. Enjoy it on the rocks and sip it slowly.