Category: Worldwide

It is my position that Holey Moley is the nation’s finest television program. It’s something I discussed at length earlier this year in an article titled, in an attempt to keep things as straightforward as possible, “‘Holey Moley’ Is The Nation’s Finest Television Program.” I’m going to go ahead and blockquote what I said then, in part because I still stand by every word of it and in part because I have so many GIFs of insane wipeouts to show you and I do not want to waste time thinking of new sentences.

I’m aware it’s a bold claim, partially because Holey Moley is a bozo carnival of cartoon violence masquerading as a television show, sure, and partially because of the competition. There are so many other good shows out there. Very good shows. Succession is a good show that mixes humor with an in-depth examination of class and status. Better Call Saul is a good show that somehow built off of another good show (Breaking Bad) in such a magical way that it might end up eclipsing the original. Barry is a good show that features Noho Hank, a tatted-up Chechen mobster who is actually the sweetest and goofiest character on the show and my favorite character on television. All of these are terrific television shows that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys high-quality entertainment.

But did any of them dress a man in a suit of armor and light him on fire with fake dragons in the first 10 minutes of their season premiere? They did not.

It’s perfect. It’s a perfect show. It’s one hour a week of the dumbest destruction and chaos you can imagine, all of it played for laughs, with everyone on the show very much in on the joke, including the announcers, comedian Rob Riggle and actual play-by-play sports announcer Joe Tessitore, who appear to be having more fun than anyone should be allowed to have on television.

The season two finale is quickly approaching, which means I am quickly running out of opportunities to discuss the show. And so, with that in mind, mostly to get it out of my system, I have ranked the holes on the show from least to most deranged. This list starts out slow but, I promise you, it gets wild once we get into the top five or six. I can’t wait for you all to experience the joyous mayhem of Polcano. It is all I want to talk about most days. And I will get to today. I’m very happy.

But we have work to do first.

15. Beaver Creek

Let’s go straight to Wikipedia for this one: “Players putt across a narrow strip before crossing a ditch via a rapidly rotating log. Riggle often ridicules the hole for having a drab and empty ditch and for being a relative copy of Buns & Weiners.” Yup, that about covers it. You can tell Beaver Creek is not a great hole because the announcers openly mock it and because it’s only appeared three times so far in the second season. We have much better things to get to. Let’s move on.

14. Diving Range

This hole starts with three contestants in a diving competition judged by Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis, Police Academy star Steve Guttenberg, and a huge rodent named Sir Goph. The divers with the top two scores advance and then putt for the win. The big selling point here is the gradual devolving of the whole situation, as the judges become more and more manic about it. It’s fine. We can do much better. And we will.

13. Slip N’ Putt

Slip N’ Putt looks very good on paper. It’s basically just Slippery Stairs but with putting. Two contestants try to race up a slick hill to get to the top and they fail a lot and slide back down. The potential for chaos is high. And yet. And yet. The problem here is that it can get repetitive just watching them scurry and slide over and over. The people demand action. The people demand anarchy. The people demand…

12. The Distractor

… sumo wrestlers? Sure. Why not? The Distractor is all about that initial sight gag. The contestant lines up a straight put with no obstacle between the tee and the hole. Very calm, very quiet. And then the wall behind the hole spins around and reveals some sort of thing or action intended to take the contestant’s focus off the putt. In addition to huge rumbling sumo wrestlers, this hole has featured:

• A drumline
• Can-Can Girls
• A pitcher, catcher, and batter engaged in a baseball game
• A fire breather
• Australia’s Thunder from Down Under, which is kind of like an Aussie Chippendales

I sincerely hope that one day, if they do this hole in season three, the wall spins around and it’s just like Beyoncé standing there in front of a wind machine, completely silent, hair all blowing and looking like a superstar. Just a bunch of contestants like “Hold on… is that? No. No, it can’t be. Wait. No. Hold on. Is that… is that… is that Beyoncé? On Holey Moley? Just standing there, looking at me? Oh, God. Oh, God.”

Try to putt then, chumps.

11. Gopher It

There’s a simple pleasure in watching people attempt to ride a bucking and heaving mechanical gopher — like a bull, but a gopher, because why not? — for a few seconds before getting launched all the way the hell down a padded mountain. It lacks the flair of some of the other holes, which is why it’s hanging just outside the top ten, but we’re on the right track now. Things are about to get fun.

10. Uranus

Three things you need to know about Uranus:

• It’s one of the more fun actual golfing experiences on the course, with contestants putting the ball way up and over a big fake planet and down through its rings, with the possibility of a hole in one if they land it in the correct shoot
• They then have to try to leap across a series of inflatable planets to get to the actual green
• The entire thing exists so Riggle and Tessitore can make a steady string of Uranus/“your anus” jokes and I support them unreservedly in this endeavor

The GIF at the top of this section makes me laugh every time I see it. Easily the worst effort any contestant has put forth on any hole this entire season. It’s kind of inspiring, in a way.

9. Buns & Wieners

Buns & Wieners is a lot like Uranus in that, as far as I can tell, it exists mainly for the childish jokes, which, again, I, as an 8-year-old boy in the body of a fully-grown adult male, adore. It’s also funny because those hot dogs rotate and sometimes a contestant will panic and end up clutching for dear life with their legs wrapped around a giant fake hot dog and their knuckles and faces going white as they realize they’re about to be upside-down. But mostly it’s the wiener jokes. I am a child and this show is made specifically for me.

8. Water Hazard

Another simple pleasure. Contestants putt the ball up and around a huge ramp that sends their ball flying over the obstacle and onto the green, and then they have to cross the obstacle on a thin, padded log while getting blasted by a series of water cannons. That’s all. That’s all this is. And sometimes, most of the time, that’s enough. The poor guy in the GIF up there actually fell once before this, slipping and sliding with one leg on either side of the pole, bashing his jimmies straight down onto it, which the show replayed about three times from three different angles while the hosts laughed. I’m so proud of everyone involved in this show.

7. Putt the Plank

Okay, let’s go step-by-step on this hole because so many things are going on:

• The contestants hit an initial putt, the better of which will give them an advantage in stage two, which involves, I swear to God, Jon Lovitz in a pirate costume
• Jon Lovitz walks out with a lob wedge and hits the contestants’ balls over a small water hazard and onto the green
• He wears one eyepatch while hitting the ball that belongs to the contestant that hit the better putt; he wears two eyepatches while hitting the other
• Jon Lovitz has a surprisingly decent golf swing
• The contestants then leap onto a huge stuffed shark and attempt to ride it across the water

I actually have a GIF of the moment in the picture up there, but I think I like the picture better. There’s a little anticipation to it. I mean, the result is exactly the thing you’re expecting. She smashes her face real good on that shark. But sometimes it’s more fun to conjure up these images yourself. Plus, things are about to get very GIF-heavy for very important reasons and I don’t want to crash your browsers before we get to the good stuff.

6. Dragon’s Breath

The thing about this hole is that it’s all very straightforward — line up your putt, hit it toward the hole, very little in the way to stop you — except for the teeny tiny issue that you are ON FIRE WHILE YOU ARE PUTTING. Is it the most exciting hole on the course? No. Does it actually get a little boring sometimes once the initial shock value of the gimmick wears off? Yes. Does it say a lot about both this show and my attention span that a fake dragon is setting humans ablaze on a network primetime mini-golf competition and I’m like “Ugh, this again? Get to the exciting stuff.” I assume it does but I will not be doing the self-examination required to get to the bottom of it.

5. Putter Ducky

Oh, you know, just giant demonic hellducks wobbling from side-to-side and casually brushing people off of a pathway and sending them into the water below. Definitely not the most nightmare-inducing hole on the course. I’ve never had a nightmare about giant demonic hellducks like this, monstrous dead-eyes children’s bath toys come to life for the sole purpose of wreaking havoc on the innocent souls who approach them. Not even one. It’s fine. I’m doing fine.

4. Frankenputt

I promise everything I’m about to tell you here is true. This hole starts with the players getting electrodes placed on their limbs. Then, every time they miss a putt, a man in a gopher costume — who is dressed like a mad scientist and goes by Dr. Frankenputt — throws a giant lever that causes streaks of lightning to fly around before the contestants are given an electric shock through the electrodes on their limbs. Again, after every missed putt.

I understand that the PGA Tour cannot adopt every aspect of Holey Moley and insert them into their standard golf tournaments (although water cannons couldn’t hurt), but I do think The Masters would be a lot more interesting if a giant evil scientist gopher tased Phil Mickelson after he slid an important final round putt just left of the hole. Something to consider.

3. Hole Number Two

Hole Number Two has the best of both worlds: childish puns and lunatic misadventure. The contestants putt their ball down a narrow strip of fake grass toward the hole. The narrow strip has a row of portable toilets on one side and a steep drop into the water on the other, which is notable for three reasons:

• The contestants must then sprint down the same narrow strip of grass
• As they are sprinting, the doors of the portable toilets are flung open by people in what appear to be — for reasons that have never and should never be fully explained — people in cheap Halloween-store-in-strip-mall monster costumes
• A staggering number of contestant take these doors straight to the face and go tumbling into the water in a whirling jumble of arms and legs

The lady in the GIF up there is wearing a cocktail dress because she was on a Bachelor-themed episode of the show. It was a solid hour of dudes in tuxedos and women in nice sparkly dresses just getting walloped by every demonic funhouse creation you can think of. It was mesmerizing television. And this isn’t even my favorite example from this hole. That honor goes to this guy.

You ever see a guy on the street who has on a backward visor and has the general vibe of a person who calls his girlfriend “dude” and start thinking to yourself “Man, I would love to see that guy get bonked real good with the door to a portable toilet and sent flying fully clothed into a body of water?” No? Hmm. I suppose that’s understandable, if only because you might not have considered it an option. Well, guess what: You will now! And then you’ll remember this payoff and feel great about it.

Holey Moley is cathartic like that.

2. Double Dutch Courage

No hole on the course goes above and beyond your expectations quite like Double Dutch Courage. “It’s just windmills,” you say. “All you have to do is putt the ball down a long straight path and then run between the blades. How hard can it be?”

This is where the producers of the show are basically supervillains, though. They added a blade to the windmill from the first season and appear to have speeded it up, with the result being an almost undefeated obstacle. Like, two or three people have made it through safely all season. Everyone else gets wiped right off of terra firma. I could watch the GIF at the top of this section for hours straight. I think I have, to be honest. It’s just such a clean hit, catching her elevated and knocking her halfway out of the frame. You could see it coming, too, the way she was kind of standing there trying to time it. I was so excited and I was not let down even a little.

There’s also this one, in which a very nice woman fails so miserably that I started to feel bad for her until I saw the hosts’ reactions. Then I started cackling.

This is a pretty good metaphor for 2020, generally. Failure so quick and complete that success was never on the table, not even at the beginning, not even for a second. It also brings up an important point about the show: After an episode or two, you start getting conditioned to expect disaster, to a degree that it’s kind of a bummer when someone successfully navigates an obstacle. You’ve never met these people and most of them seem nice and you’re still at home frothing at the mouth and praying they get absolutely clobbered by whatever satanic experiment is in front of them. It would be disturbing if I thought about it for more than 90 seconds, which I refuse to do under any circumstance. I’m just here for the clobbering.

1. Polcano

The statement “Polcano is the best hole on Holey Moley” is both objectively true and a massive understatement. Polcano is so much more than that. It is the most riveting slice of television this year has to offer. It is fascinating. It is wondrous. It has, for some reason that we can probably file under “because Holey Moley is a delightful carnival of madness,” fireballs shooting into the night sky. It might result in a serious injury one of these days, but until then, we should just keep enjoying it. I’m going to explain it a bit here, but please feel free to disregard all of these words and just enjoy the GIF above this paragraph sans context if you prefer. You deserve it.

Here’s the thing about Polcano: it has everything you could possibly ask for. The first putt involves hitting the ball up a huge hill and then watching it trickle back down through a maze of rocks in a way that loosely mimics the best Price Is Right game, Plinko. Then they climb up to the top of a fake volcano, grab two handles connected to a hydraulically-powered zip line, and are sent screaming towards a large pole in the middle of a swimming pool. They are supposed to try to grab the pole and hold on. This almost never happens. No more than three people have completed this successfully. Usually, the whole operation ends with someone bonking off the pole at a high rate of speed and twisting and flipping and flailing as their body tumbles into the water.

Here’s a guy doing it while wearing a shirt and visor covered in images of $100 bills. I like the little nod he does first, like, “I got this, for sure.” Then the visor goes flying along with the rest of him.

Here’s an amateur kickboxer named Mallory getting just rocked by the whole thing, white sneakers pointing toward the heavens and torso barreling hopelessly toward the abyss.

Perhaps the more perceptive among you noticed something in this last example. Perhaps you noticed that the contestant in red pants and black halter top, Mallory the Kickboxer, is the same person from the first GIF I posted from the windmill hole. This brings us to two very important points:

• Mallory got wrecked — just destroyed — by all of the top three holes on this list in the three rounds of the competition (an unprecedented development in the history of the show), and, somehow, she still managed to win her episode and advance to this season finale, where she has a chance to earn $250,000
• In another episode, a musician named Donald successively navigated Uranus, Polcano, and Double Dutch Courage without falling into the water (also an unprecedented development in the history of the show and one of the greatest feats of athleticism I have ever seen), and he still lost because his opponent hit a walk-off hole-in-one on the final hole

I repeat: Holey Moley is our nation’s finest television program.

We hope you didn’t spend all your cash on Labor Day apparel sales. Because while we hit a little bit of a lull when it comes to truly dope apparel drops this week, on the sneaker end of things it’s a week jam-packed with must-cops. Adidas and Nike continue to bring the fire, knocking all other brands out of the top five. Throughout the year, the two brands have been fighting it out on a weekly basis here on SNX and while Nike generally has the edge over the three stripes, this week Adidas managed to nab the lion’s share of the spots.

For the colder days ahead, Palace is gearing us up with some matching GORE-TEX winter wear, and Chinatown Market has a new grip of fall fashion for us in collab with Lacoste. Buckle up, because as we approach the holiday season the drops are about to truly get insane. For now, let’s dive into the week’s best.

Cactus Plant Flea Market x Nike Air Force 1

Cynthia Lu’s Cactus Plant Flea Market has linked up with Nike for a minimalist take on the Nike Air Force 1 that utilizes Air More Uptempo paneling to spell out the word “SUNSHINE” across the sneaker’s all-white upper. Reflective detailing outlines the letters, allowing your feet to be the sunshine in the darkness.

It’s a fun sneaker and a reflection of Cynthia Lu’s playful but minimal CPFM aesthetic.

The Cactus Plant Flea Market Nike Air Force 1 is set to drop on September 10th at 12 AM for a retail price of $130. Expect these to sell out fast. Pick up a pair via Nike SNKRS.

Air Jordan 5 Apple Green/Oregon

Sneakerheads will recognize this week’s Air Jordan 5 Apple Green as an obvious callback to the 2014 University of Oregon colorway. But this pair is even better, because it doesn’t have any ties to the University — which means no Duck branding. Instead what you get is an AJ5 dressed in a lush shade of apple green with contrasting yellow accents and black detailing.

The Air Jordan 5 Apple Green/Oregon is set to drop on September 12th fo a retail price of $225. Pick up a pair at through the Nike SNKRS app or select Nike retailers.

Ninja x Adidas Nite Jogger

I haven’t been the biggest fan of gamer superstar Ninja’s foray into sneakers. Not because I have anything against gamer’s dipping their toes (accidental pun, not intended) into the sneaker world, but just because the designs so far have tended to hit us over the head with callbacks to the fact that Ninja is in fact, a gamer.

Ninja fans care about the gaming connection…people who just like sneakers? We don’t.

That isn’t the case with these Nite Joggers though, simply dressed in a deep black upper, the sneaker features stitching, laces, and accents in a mismatched radioactive blue and soft pink that kind of resembles Ninja. That’s cool — a sneaker designed by a streamer that resembles the streamer, and captures their vibe, rather than shoe-horning (pun very much intended this time) gamer language where it doesn’t belong.

The Ninja Adidas Nite Jogger is set to drop on September 10th for a retail price of $177. Pick up a pair through Asphalt Gold, Adidas, or select Adidas retailers.

Prada x Adidas Superstar Collection

You could call the new Adidas Prada collaboration a lot of things: lazy, overpriced, uninspired, boring, but at the end of the day, if you love the Adidas Superstar, it’s a little hard not to love these. Prada did next to nothing to the Adidas silhouette, aside from constructing the upper from premium full-grain leather and stamping their name at the tongue and side branding, and yet the results are three clean and crisp pairs of the Superstar.

Dropping in an all-black, brushed chrome, and white and black, the Prada Adidas Superstar is a testament to streetwear’s dominance of the fashion industry, from casual wear to luxury.

The Prada x Adidas Superstar Collection is, unsurprisingly, sold out! Which means you’ll have to pay a slightly inflated price hovering around $580 on aftermarket sites like StockX. The original sale price was $500.

Nike Dunk Low Community Garden

If you’re all about that crunchy hippie meets hip hop Travis Scott Cactus Jack aesthetic, you’re probably going to love the Nike Dunk Low Community Garden. Even if that isn’t your vibe though, who wouldn’t love these? Look at that lemonade-toned swoosh and laces combo, the collage-style patchwork graphics, that combination of midnight turquoise, indigo, and grey — simply one of the dopest Dunks to drop all year.

This is what the Chunky Dunky wishes it was.

The Nike Dunk Low Community Garden is set to drop on September 10th for a retail price of $100. Pick up a pair through the Nike SNKRS app.

Palace Fall 2020 GORE-TEX

Supreme already got the GORE-TEX treatment and now the ultra-durable weather-ready fabric is coming to Palace for a Fall 2020 range of Wave-Length jackets, matching pants, and a British club-kid Boonie Hat. We could’ve done without the Boonie hat, but hey, that’s just us.

Each piece in the collection is tech-focused and functional, but from a pure fashion standpoint, we have to say that the Camo makeup is a must-buy. The jacket, pants, and hat all come in your choice of black, white, or camo. We’ll say the black is a close second pick behind the camo unless you want to look like a Backstreet Boy rocking that all-white makeup.

Do you!

The Palace Fall 2020 GORE-TEX Collection is dropping as part of Palace’s 6th fall drop on September 11th. Shop the collection at the Palace webstore.

Chinatown Market x Lacoste Capsule Collection

Dropping today at 1 pm PST, Chinatown Market and Lacoste have teamed up for a collection of casual wear that attempts to bring the preppy 80s icon into the modern streetwear age. The collaboration couldn’t be more of a perfect matchup, Lacoste is a label that packs a lot of nostalgia in the brand’s logo alone, and Chinatown Market has made a name for themselves from mining the nostalgia of its Millennial and Zoomer customer base.

The collection consists of season-appropriate basics like hoodies, button-ups as well as some Lacoste staples, like the polo shirt.

The Chinatown Market Lacoste Capsule collection is set to drop today at 1 pm PST and is shoppable at the Chinatown Market online store.

For many music fans, the first sign that something was going to be drastically different about 2020 came when Coachella was postponed. Initially, the massive, Southern California event — which serves as a bellwether for festivals globally — announced on March 10 that they would be postponing until October of this year. A few days earlier, on March 6, the annual Austin, Texas conglomeration of music, technology, and film, SXSW had similarly canceled its entire lineup for this year. SXSW has always been much more industry-focused than other festivals that cater to casual and serious fans alike, but Coachella? If the nation’s biggest, most influential festival was halting their programming, things were serious.

“We started thinking really early on in the process that there’s a real chance our festival couldn’t happen in August,” said Allen Scott, who is the co-producer of San Francisco’s Outside Lands festival and head of concerts and festivals at Another Planet Entertainment. “Like everyone else, we were consumed with the news cycle toward the end of March and beginning of April, trying to understand what could happen and what may or may not be allowed. We looked at holding backup dates in October and had given ourselves a deadline, that if it was allowed to happen this year, we felt like we could sell the festival in two months. But by the middle of May we realized for certain that Outside Lands wasn’t going to happen this year.”

And even though it’s almost comical to think back to those initial shockwaves in March, now that it’s September and partial lockdown and shelter-in-place ordinances have been rolling in waves for close to six months, March is exactly when most music festivals began to take a hard look at what the future might hold for their business model. Because of Coachella’s initial decision to postpone their event until the fall, other festivals were definitely hoping for a similar possibility. The first two initially canceled events were slated for early spring, would gatherings planned for summer and fall of this year need to be scrapped as well?

“It was really scary, from a promoter point of view,” remembered Zale Schoenborn the founder and director of Portland, Oregon’s Pickathon festival. “There’s not a lot of margin for error for arts organizations like ours, private or public. It felt really uncertain if we were going to survive, and if a lot of the different events and promoters we work with could actually survive, too. In the best of times, we have a very small break-even profit margin. How in the world are we going to possibly come out on the other end?”

By early June, Coachella finally canceled their October rescheduling as well. Festivals, for 2020 at least, weren’t going to be happening like normal. So came a series of pivots and shifts, hopeful reschedules and plans for 2021 that have varied drastically from event to event. What is the future of music festivals during a global pandemic? Without a vaccine or any sweeping, federal legislation that might make quarantine measures truly effective, trying to predict when festivals might be able come back is nearly impossible. And what’s worse, even when it is safe to gather in groups again, it’s still hard to say if the old model will survive.

“There’s no predictive measure here,” explained Seth Fein, the founder and creative director of Pygmalion Festival in Illinois. “Because it’s not just enough to say ‘we can do a festival again!’ The economy that surrounds it is still an actuarially and predictive measurement. You put down an offer for an artist predicated on what you believe you can sell in tickets. And there’s not going to be a way to do that for 2020. How do you know how many people are going to come to a show? There’s no possible scenario.”

Before we get any further, a brief recap on the health crisis that has halted live events completely: Coronavirus aka SARS-CoV-2 is a respiratory illness that is spread by respiratory droplets. Staying six feet away from other people is among the best ways to keep the droplets from making contact and cause infection. Wearing masks also helps prevent the spread of the virus. In an outdoor setting, it is far less likely the virus will be spread, particularly if masks are used, but the quickest way for the virus to spread is in enormous groups of people, where droplets can potentially transfer to hundreds of people at once, and then continue to transfer to whoever those infected people come in contact with.

This means that music festivals and other large concerts fall into the category of events that are most dangerous during a pandemic. Correspondingly, festivals and music venues were the first businesses to shut down, and they will be among the last to reopen. Coronavirus can be deadly, and is particularly harmful for older people and those with preexisting conditions. The safest, most effective way to prevent it from spreading is by staying home and only coming into close contact with members of your own household. If you’re willing to take the risk of leaving the house, which, frankly, many people have been after six months of quarantine, then preventive measures of social distancing more than six feet away from others, only gathering outdoors, and wearing a mask at all times are the recommended safest practices.

And while there have been a few attempts at socially distanced live shows in the UK — more on that in a second — for most festival settings, those kinds of drastic measures are either too difficult to enforce. Smaller crowd sizes also make events not worth it financially, or even with measures in place, promoters are simply not willing to risk anyone’s life. Fein, for one, said he knew there was no chance that his local festival Pygmalion, which normally takes place in Champaign, Illinois, would move forward this year.

“It’s really devastating to see the effects of this, and there’s no way of negotiating,” Fein said. “You can’t rationalize and be like, ‘well, we could do X, Y or Z’ when it’s literally impossible to gather without putting people in danger. And we can’t can’t put anyone in danger. I’ve enjoyed watching the pivot some people have made, and I think the drive-in concept is pretty cool. It’s not something that I’d do as a promoter, but I’m happy that it’s making people happy. As long as people are outside, and thoroughly distance from each other, I think we now know COVID-19 isn’t a ballistic missile. But if you gather in spaces with close quarters, it is going to spread.”

For artists, the tension between a responsibility to keep themselves and their fans safe, and the desire to be out on stage performing and providing work for their bands and crew is a tricky dilemma. Ingrid Anders, a rising country star who released her debut album, Ladylike, to critical acclaim in early March and was scheduled to perform at Stagecoach this year, said she personally doesn’t want to perform until there’s a structured, federal guideline that lays out what we can safely do.

“I think no live shows until we have a solid strategy, because every state is doing something different, which I think is what’s causing it to still be here,” she said. “Because we’re not really being a United States Of America, if you will. So, to me, I’m just waiting for there to be like actual guidelines that everybody can follow so that it’s not this confusing, scary thing to want to go to a concert. I won’t feel comfortable putting other people in situations like that until there’s some kind of guideline.”

Speaking of federal action, another way the nation is being called on to support the music industry is through the organization of NIVA — the National Independent Venues Association, which also supports independent festivals — and the Save Our Stages Act and Restart Act that are currently before congress. These bills point out that other forms of government aid aren’t robust enough to preserve the operational model for independent venues and festivals. Without government aid, so many of these buildings and events will not be financially solvent for the rest of the year, and probably longer.

Jeri Gennaro, who has been a tour manager for Lee Ann Womack since 2019, and also worked venue-side at Nashville’s iconic Exit In, said she’s frustrated with the lack of support for smaller companies, while larger corporations qualify for government bailouts. “Companies like Live Nation can stay afloat because they get huge bailouts from the government, but there’s nothing for independent venues,” Gennaro said. “It’s so heartbreaking, because I love Exit In. Anyone you can think of has played there. Music is something that everyone enjoys, and live shows are the lifeblood of the music business. These independent venues build up the small bands that turn into huge arena bands, and those venues are closing because the government doesn’t want to give them support. Everyone in the government listens to music, right? But they don’t care at all.”

In other countries, there have been more clearly stated rules about what can and can’t happen, which has led to more experimentation. For example, UK indie rocker Sam Fender attempted what was one of the first socially-distanced concerts this summer in Newcastle, England. He said that performing the show was a “no-brainer,” and that for him and the band, and that it felt almost back to normal to be onstage. “I was obviously skeptical at first, and I thought yes, it’s probably going to be a bit weird,” he admitted. “But it was fantastic. It was a gig. There’s two and a half thousand people there, they were screaming all the songs back to us. We were playing and we were having fun. It didn’t feel much different than the real thing, or shows we played last year.”

Fender is in a position that many young artists are — just on the cusp of making his dreams of making it as a musician become a reality. After a great reception for his debut album, Hypersonic Missiles in September of last year, he and his band had recently booked their first big arena show to 90,000 fans. The show had sold out very quickly and Fender had quite a bit of buzz based off those numbers. But now, that whole tour has been canceled, and it’s hard not to feel that his career momentum might be impacted as well.

“It’s been miserable, we’ve all been miserable,” Fender said. “For my band, we were at the pinnacle of our career so far. We were supposed to play our first arena show to 90,000 people and it sold out quickly, so there was a ton of buzz. That got canceled. It’s bizarre and it’s sad and somber, and I think it was quite hard for us to remain focused on creating when the setting wasn’t what we expected. There’s no live music at all, and there’s where our income comes from, for a live band and anyone on the alternative/indie spectrum. We don’t make much money from streaming and record sales, our revenue comes from playing. So we were financially stumped as well, as is my forty man crew that are now out of work.”

Though the socially-distanced show was a positive experience for Sam from the artist side of things, he doesn’t think the model would hold up for the festival market. For one thing, the makeshift, pop-up venue, Virgin Money Unity Arena, covered the losses that were incurred on the night of his show since it was sold at only about 10% capacity. For another, the sheer volume of people that the biggest festivals in the world require to execute everything means the numbers of possible attendees is so small that ticket prices would skyrocket.

“I‘m not sure if festivals work, because festivals have to sell a certain number of tickets to even break even,” Fender said. “If a festival only sold 10% of its tickets, I’m not sure it would work. But maybe there’s a way it could work in a weekend capacity, with just one stage or something. But I don’t think Glastonbury or something could work. I couldn’t see Coachella or Glasto or any of the big festivals around the world surviving with a reduced capacity, because it would be about 10% of what they normally get, unless they charged ten times what they normally get.”

But most of the major festivals haven’t looked into socially-distanced shows as an option as of yet. Instead, the vast majority of them have created some kind of virtual or digital option that can happen in lieu of in-person live performance, at least for 2020. And even if those kinds of elite, overpriced events develop, industry lifers like Fein are certain that the sense of rebellion and punk ethos that has always driven DIY scenes in music will rise back up, too.

“One of the things that comes out of that type of economic disparity is that punk ethos that happens inside a basement that grows out into the world,” said Fein. “And that’s where you get that exciting new energy from. The last thing the music industry needs right now are aging promoters to fuck it up. I think there’s going to be a pretty serious economic disparity as far as what’s being presented and who can go. Out of that, there’s going to be a bunch of kids and young people who are going to be hungry in different ways, and we’ll make it happen.”

And a new initiative in that realm is already happening with Club House Global, a streaming platform that prioritizes social impact and democratic compensation to provide support for musicians, DJs, and other live events and hospitality workers who have lost the bulk of their income and ability to work due to COVID-19. “Our primary goal was to provide opportunity and income to our fellow DJs and live musicians in a safe, sustainable, tech-forward and democratic way (equal payment for all participants),” explained Anjali Ramasunder, the executive producer and head of development for the platform. “Our weekly programming offers our audience a slate of talent to watch and a community to belong to. Through a pandemic and civil unrest, our programming and curation has allowed us to offer a place for BIPOC artists and allies to activate and advocate through the one universal commonality: Music.”

From a virtual dancefloor hosted on Zoom, to weekly Saturday streams at 2 PM, monthly subscription tiers — ranging from $4.99, $9.99 and $24.99 — and a robust chat community, Club House Global has been able to create a hub for music obsessives to remain safely in isolation while connecting with each other digitally, and supporting musicians, DJs, and the many charities that the organization encourages donations for. Additionally, CHG has partnered with the Theatre at the Ace Hotel as a homebase for streaming, modeling how physical venues can help support new virtual ventures. Could a partnership like this work for festivals in the future?

“There will certainly be short and long term adapting tactics that will need to be implemented,” Ramasunder said. “What we do know is that the actualization of the merging of digital and IRL will definitely be at the forefront of the experience. Once we do go back to IRL, we believe that those events will be able to be experienced in a far more sophisticated and engaging way, just based on what people (like us) are developing right now. And when faced with a moment that required hotels to pivot and function differently in order to maintain strong bonds with their guests, Ace Hotel DTLA turned to the arts to help.”

Like the Ace, other venues have reimagined their space to make way for drive-in concerts, a take on drive-in movies that allows all guests to remain safely in their cars, or masked and distanced from other fans, while the band performs on stage quite a ways from the audience. Of course, this concept relies on a venue that’s already outfitted for that kind of vehicle capacity, and then further adapted to keep cars much further away from each other than was necessary in the past. And again, this event style can’t really function on a scale similar to a festival, or even that of a regular concert.

Which has led so many people to continue shifting programming to the digital space. For instance, just a few weekends ago Outside Lands debuted their virtual concept — cheekily titled Inside Lands — with the streaming partner Twitch. A mix of iconic festival sets from acts who played the fest in the past, like the Gorillaz and Jack White, ran alongside new livestreamed performances from smaller, emerging artists like Madeline Kenney and Mxmtoon. Inside Lands happened over the course of two days with a set schedule that mimicked the festival’s normal layout, but other festivals have also expanded into much larger livestream projects.

Pygmalion’s answer to the new conditions was to create a free, virtual festival with entertainment programming of all kinds — none of which is musical. Instead of shifting to a livestream model for older sets or at-home concerts from musicians, their new lineup features names like comedian Ilana Glazer, NPR’s Ari Shapiro, and podcasters Tawny Newsome and Andrew Ti of Yo! Is This Racist? “We wish to interact, to play games, to create space, to listen — and listen well — to people who know more than us, or who have some perspective, some idea, about the past, the present, and if we are lucky, the future,” the festival wrote in their statement about the programming shift. “We want to feel human with you.”

Most festivals are hanging onto the musical element in some way, though. Pickathon, for instance, embarked on a Concert A Day series for over 120 days to support the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund. As pioneers in the field of live streaming and recording their festival, the event was able to open up their vault and share daily footage of past shows, all of which were shot in multi-camera HD.

“We ended up connecting with the Recording Academy — The Grammys — and other industry players like Amazon Music and Spotify who were major sponsors of our effort,” explained Schoenborn. “We were able to put together a pretty herculean concert from our previous catalogue with over 800 shows recorded in full definition. We did a concert a day for five months — 120 concerts in 120 days — all the way up to our final weekend when Pickathon actually happened, we called it Pickathon At Home. And we raised over $300,000 for MusiCares.”

Since the festival’s inception, Pickathon has been one of the only festivals in the country who has been building their own content production team. Starting in 2010, the event has been employing hundreds of people on their film team alone, learning how to create stages that doubled as film sets, so the viewer at home was getting as high-quality experience as the live audience. “Most festivals bring in a team to do content for them, they don’t really spend or do anything special,” Schoenborn said. “If you’ve been to Pickathon, you know it’s kind of like Fantasy Island, but it’s also a movie set. Content is something we’ve also known has been really valuable for the festival industry, it’s what we had going into COVID that helped us pivot.”

Working with their robust catalogue of extremely high-quality concert videos, Pickathon has slowly but surely been putting together a plan for a virtual pivot that can help them survive if programming for next year is still halted. “I think the chances of a normal festival season next summer are really low,” Schoenborn said. “So there’s this idea of what else can we do? How can we reinvent ourselves and be ready for when we can do events again? The sad reality is that most festivals really don’t make sense at half capacity, or quarter capacity. It’s really expensive to do events, and they just don’t make sense at that size.”

Instead of focusing on live event plans for 2021, the founders of Pickathon have shifted to create a brand new company that focuses exclusively on live streaming music, and attempting to solve the two problems Schoenborn sees with how it’s currently happening: One, quality for actual live events that are happening in the moment, not edited and streamed later. And two, the experience, which Schoenborn envisions needs to be more aligned with how attending a real live event feels.

“We’re creating our own live streaming company called FRQNCY.Live that leverages our expertise in quality and from a production point of view,” Schoenborn said. “It’s a separate company, but the people from Pickathon are the founders. There has to be other ways to make money, and we have to make better live streaming experiences to make that happen. We have a strong ethos to make streaming additive for elements like venues — we think local communities and venues are such an important piece.”

On the even more optimistic side of things, Baja Beach Fest has done what seemed unthinkable to some promoters — sold out their 2021 dates while the pandemic is still raging on. Instead of looking for a way to pivot their programming digitally during 2020, this newer Rosarito, Mexico-based event, which hadn’t announced their lineup for this year yet, simply shifted their focus to the future. Baja Beach Fest is a reggaeton and Latin music festival that Den Uijl and his partner Aaron Ampudia created in 2018 as an inclusive event for Mexican-Americans. After a two-day lineup for the first two years, the festival had shifted to a full three-days for 2020, and will move forward at that capacity for 2021 with headliners Ozuna, Anuel AA, and J. Balvin.

“We really quickly pivoted internally, and the Latin community really spoke,” said Baja Beach Festival co-founder Chris Den Uijl. “The core essence of what we do is bringing people together and breaking down social barriers, and wondering if that was going to be impeded and taken away from us. Are people not going to feel the same way about it? This was a big validation moment that was really fun to share with other promoters: 30,000 people bought tickets in the last 21 days. That’s a powerful thing. And I think a lot of us weren’t sure if that was going to happen.”

The festival also announced just today that they will also be producing a second weekend in 2021 with the same lineup. “We felt like there’s just way too many people that want to go who won’t be able to attend,” Den Uijl said. “So we’re trying to provide an opportunity that’s safe, and the fact that we were able to sell that many tickets over a year away from the festival has just provided a lot of confidence for us. The fans have genuinely spoken about how big this genre has become.”

Another event that has completely announced their lineup for 2021 is Outside Lands, who will feature a huge slate of headliners like Tame Impala, Lizzo, Vampire Weekend, Young Thug, The 1975, Kehlani, and more. Scott said his hopes for next year are that things are able to operate normally for the event, just as they did before the pandemic — and that the government does take action to help keep independent music companies and venues alive in the meantime.

“My hopes are that we have a normal, pre-Covid style festival,” he said. “I think when we get the OK that it’s safe to go out to live events, people are going to be so excited and ready to go. In the meantime, Outside Lands is an independent music festival, and Another Planet and Superfly Presents are independent companies. For us, and the 2,600+ independent live music venues in this country that are part of NIVA, it’s imperative that we get support from the federal government right now. Because you need that ecosystem nurturing talent so that they can one day headline an event like Outside Lands.”

Across the board, the desire for the government to support independent music venues and festivals — so that they can survive while it’s unsafe for people to gather in large group — is the strongest sentiment expressed by anyone who is or has been working in festivals and live music space. For someone like Fein, who was formerly a musician, then a promoter, and now the founder of a festival, looking at the way the industry has quickly shifted away from business-focused and returned to our connection with other humans, is a promising aspect of the current moment.

“It’s been an interesting but also very human-centered moment for a lot of people inside the music industry,” Fein said. “Over fifteen years we’ve built a network of unbelievable community support for Pygmalion that has grown and sustained as a result of actual human relationships. And I think that despite the fact that everyone is scared and desperate for Congress to act, there’s a lot of love being shared. The optimistic side of me that I still retain can celebrate that.”

Mike Huguenor has been a constant presence in the DIY punk scene for the last several years, playing in Jeff Rosenstock’s band, Shinobu, Hard Girls, and more. Although he has released a string of solo music over the last few years, X’ed is his first proper release under his own name, and it was composed using nothing but guitars. You read that right: all of the instrumentals on X’ed were created using nothing more than two acoustic guitars and one electric guitar. Despite the limitations of its production, X’ed still manages to deliver a collection of impressive pop-rock tracks, making it one of the coolest and most unconventional albums of the year.

To celebrate the new album, Huguenor sat down to talk Chadwick Boseman, sleeping under a hammock, and the movie Zodiac in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Improvisatory all guitar pop.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

As the sound of the early days of revolution.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

Chicago.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

There are so many! But I will say PHAROAH Sanders, because once I started to really listen to him, the kind of music I wanted to make changed forever.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

If we’re being real, probably New Orleans.

What album do you know every word to?

Left And Leaving by The Weakerthans.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

The Ging Nang Boyz playing in Shinobu’s practice space

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

Full Goku outfit, so that everyone knows your power level is off the charts.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Bree Newsome. If anyone is an American hero, it’s her.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

Probably “Castro Halloween” by Chuck Prophet. One of the great San Francisco melodies.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

Chadwick Boseman’s age 🙁

What album makes for the perfect gift?

Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-Revolutionary America by Culturcide.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

UNDER a hammock.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

I had just read Alain Badiou’s Being & Event and thought, you know what? I’m gonna get the Void Set tattooed on me as a reminder of the ever-present “not-yet-arrived-possibility.” Typical American.

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

These days? E-40, and that’s about it.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Once, a kid literally gave me the shirt off his back. I told him not to, but there was no stopping it. If it wasn’t the nicest, it was definitely the most ludicrously nice thing someone has done for me.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Accept yourself!

What’s the last show you went to?

I think Flipper with David Yow??

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

Zodiac. If I catch Zodiac on TV, I’m like, “there goes the next four hours.”

What would you cook if Obama were coming to your house for dinner?

I can make a pretty nice lemon butter swai filet…

X’ed is out now on Lauren Records. Listen here.

Eminem faced a scary situation earlier this year when a home invader entered his home late at night. At the time, it was reported the man, Matthew Hughes, wanted a meeting with the rapper. It looks like that fact holds up today, although it seems Hughes wasn’t looking for a friendly interaction.

Court reporter Nick Perreault wrote in a pair of tweets that a detective confirmed Hughes told Eminem he was there to kill him, and that Eminem initially thought the home invader was his nephew: “Court. Eminem news. ‘Mr. Mathers (Eminem) said Matthew Hughes told him he was there to kill him.’ Detective said that’s what Eminem told him after his home was broken into in April. Hughes pictured faces felony charges. Case now heads to Macomb County Circuit court September 28. Eminem was not in court today. Bond remains $50,000 cash surety for Mr. Hughes. Investigation showed a window was broken, Mathers security team responded. At first Mathers thought Hughes was his nephew, but it was dark & Mathers soon realized he did not know the man in his home.”

It was previously revealed that Hughes is a repeat offender, as the man was arrested in June 2019 for trespassing on two properties, one of which belonged to Eminem.

Jason Momoa‘s brand is being a buff, rugged mass of badass, hunky handsomeness, but while filming Dune, the actor finally felt an adjective he’d never felt before: Beautiful. And now that he’s had a taste, he’s never going back.

While sitting down with massive Dune fan Stephen Colbert and the rest of the cast to celebrate the premiere of the movie’s first trailer, Momoa gushed about the opportunity to star in the Denis Villeneuve film alongside actors like Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. He also raved about working with Villeneuve, and how it set the bar for the rest of his career.

“Working with Denis and this level of actors, I learned so much every day,” Momoa told Colbert during the Variety panel. “I don’t ever want to go back to not being treated that [way]. I felt beautiful in this film. It’s a very hard thing to say, but I felt very beautiful.”

Momoa also revealed a little known fact about himself: He’s not a fan of running, and apparently, he had to do a lot of in his role as Duncan Idaho. But in true Momoa fashion, he masked his pain behind his rugged exterior.

“I’ve never run this much in my life,” Momoa said. “The sun was setting and so we had to get the shot. I had to run through this windstorm to Timothée, and I couldn’t see where I was going. I just didn’t want to fall on my face and I didn’t want to disappoint [Villeneuve]. But I’m not the best runner … and the amount of the chafing and the sweat that had built up, and I was like, I’m not gonna give up, I’m not gonna give up, but inside, I was crying like a little baby. There’s no way I want to be the black sheep in this thing, man.”

It looks like Momoa powered through and got the job… dune? Yup, that was awful. No excuse for that.

(Via Variety)

Ever since the pandemic shut down the live music industry, livestreams have taken the place of concerts as the new normal. Rolling Loud, hip-hop’s biggest festival, was set to take place in cities across the US and boast setlists with artists like ASAP Rocky, Travis Scott, and Post Malone. Since Rolling Loud had to cancel every one of this years’ festivals, the organization partnered with the streaming platform Twitch for a completely digital event to take the festival’s place.

Rolling Loud’s Loud Stream event unveiled its full lineup Wednesday. Fans will be able to catch performances by Swae Lee, NLE Choppa, Lil Keed, Smokepurpp, Tay Money, Lil Skies, and many more. Streaming on Twitch September 12 and 13, fans will be able to tune into the event free of charge.

Matt Zingler, Co-Founder/Co-CEO of Rolling Loud, addressed the Twitch partnership in a statement: “Partnering with Twitch, we also saw the opportunity to further connect fans with the Rolling Loud brand beyond our flagship live events… We’ve always had our eyes on content creation; it felt like the natural next step for the brand, but it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that we had the bandwidth to execute these ideas to the fullest. Twitch gave us the creative control to produce unique shows that hold true to our ‘ahead-of-the-curve’ mentality and play to Twitch’s strengths as the leading live stream platform out there.”

See Rolling Loud’s full digital lineup above.

Rolling Loud Loud Stream kicks off 9/12 on Twitch. Watch it here.

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

If everyone had taken after quarantine king Teddy Perkins and stayed inside in March, seasons three and four of Atlanta might have come out in January 2021 and fall 2021, as was originally intended. That’s no longer the case.

FX head John Landgraf confirmed on Wednesday that the pandemic has shut down production on the Donald Glover-created surreal comedy (one of our favorites of the 2010s). The seasons were going to be shot back-to-back in Atlanta, Georgia, obviously, as well as Europe; out of precaution for the cast and crew’s health, and because shooting availabilities have shifted, Atlanta won’t begin filming again until early 2021.

“The ‘availability’ of the seasons were being pushed back, in part because of when the show could resume production safely, as well as due to the scheduling of the cast to resume working on the longer stretch of production that is two seasons at once,” Variety reports. “Landgraf shared that cast and crew safety was the ‘number one priority’ and that includes not only new practices and procedures, such as testing, social distancing and contract tracing, but also simply giving them access to doctors and epidemiologists.”

There is some good news, though: Landgraf revealed that seasons three and four have already been written. “One of the things that’s been kind of an unexpected boon from COVID-19 is that writers have had a lot of time to write,” he said. “Donald Glover and his intrepid team of partners have written everything for seasons three and four.”

The wait for more Darius shenanigans is worth it.

(Via Variety)

Drinking wine out of a can a decade or more ago would have sounded like pure blasphemy (unless you lived in Europe where the stuff has been sold in cans for a very long time). Today, it’s not only encouraged but has its own set of charms. But like any new/ emerging vertical for beer, wine, and spirits, the market is beginning to get saturated. That’s where we come in.

First, a little more context — single serving or half-bottle cans are the perfect backyard BBQ accompaniment and also make for an easy way to split a bottle of wine with someone. Each can is usually exactly one-half bottle. Keep in mind, a can of wine is not equal to a can of beer when we’re talking ABVs (in most cases). Wine has two to three times the alcohol of your average beer. That’s 12 to 14 percent ABV compared to four to six percent ABV for beer. Just be aware of how many cans you’re downing and balance your intake accordingly.

The eight cans below are all wines that are easily available at most liquor stores and online for delivery. This list is by no means comprehensive. There some niche brands out there that are hard to get unless you’re in the region where they’re produced, so we left those off this list. We also left off the spritzers and fruited wines from this list. In the end, these are straight up classic canned wines that taste good, aren’t too expensive, and are accessible to the neophyte wine drinker.

Nomadica Sparkling Rosé

ABV: 12%
Region: Monterey County, CA
Average Price per Can: $6

The Wine:

This wine is made from 100 percent Pinot Noir grapes. The juice spent a year in stainless steel tanks resting. The point of the wine is to have a crisp edge next to the depth of a hefty grape and this one hits that mark.

Tasting Notes:

The bubbles are sharp but not overly fizzy. You really get a sense of the fruit with a lean into tart red juices and a very mild hint of sweetness. The sip is light with a fleeting sense of mineral water and grassy notes, making this one very easy-drinking and refreshing.

Underwood Pinot Noir

ABV: 13%
Region: Oregon
Average Price per Can: $7

The Wine:

This Oregon wine pulls its Pinot berries from all over the state, giving it a real sense of Oregon in a can. The wine is simply designed to be a table wine that you can take anywhere with you. It’s a great outdoors wine, especially when you’re camping out and left the corkscrew back at home.

Tasting Notes:

The dark berries are the star of the show. The sip has an echo of Cherry Coke with a hint of pipe tobacco next to the fruit. There’s a wisp of minerals in the background with a velvet mouthfeel that invites you back for more.

BABE Grigio with Bubbles

ABV: 12%
Region: California
Average Price per Can: $3.25

The Wine:

This very branded wine is probably the most quaffable one on the list. This fizzy white is made quickly and accessibly to be drunk and enjoyed. The smaller format of the cans also means that you need three of these to equal one bottle of wine.

Tasting Notes:

While this wine is on the thinner side, its bubbles pop with a nice dry fizz. There are hints of sweet melons next to plenty of lemony citrus. The sip has a very slight minerality that leads towards the echo of an apple orchard near the end.

Hogwash California Rosé

ABV: 12%
Region: Napa, CA
Average Price per Can: $6.25

The Wine:

This is a winemaker who only makes rosé. That makes this California wine very dialed in and probably the most sippable on the list if you’re a rosé fan. The cans again are smaller, meaning you’ll need three to make a full bottle of wine.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a clear sense of sandy peaches next to blooming wildflowers on a late summer day. A distant note of seaside brine cuts through the sweeter fruit and helps the orange and lemon citrus shine. The end is slightly honeyed with plenty of that zest to keep it light. All of this makes it the perfect sipper year-round.

Tiamo Organic Rose

ABV: 12%
Region: Abruzzo, Italy
Average Price: $5.49

The Wine:

This wine hails from the coastal regions of Abruzzo. The wine is made from 100 percent Montepulciano grapes from the village of Chieti and feels like Italy in a can, in a good way.

Tasting Notes:

Wildflowers and ripe, red strawberries dominate the nose. The palate leans into orchards full of stone fruit and pears with a grassy underbelly. The sip ends lightly with a bright crispness supported by all the fruit and florals.

Crafters Union Red Blend

ABV: 13.6%
Region: California
Average Price per Can: $6

The Wine:

This blend of California wines is what you want from wine in a can. It’s not overly done but has enough body to make it worthwhile as a sipper. It’s also very easy to drink, even with the higher ABVs.

Tasting Notes:

Sweet and tart red berries mix on the nose. The taste edges into vanilla territory with a light sense of jam laced with cinnamon. There’s a wisp of dark cacao powder underneath all the berries that offers a nice change of pace.

Dark Horse Pinot Grigio

ABV: 13.4%
Region: California
Average Price per Can: $6

The Wine:

This California wine is a blend of Pinot Grigio, Viognier, and Riesling grapes that’s then blended with an unoaked Chardonnay. The end result is a crushable everyday wine that’s pointedly crisp. The stainless steel aging adds to that lightness without sacrificing the flavors of the grapes involved.

Tasting Notes:

There’s a note of earthiness underneath all the crisp apples, pears, and berries. The sip leans into the fruit while staying light and almost airy. At the end, there’s a very mild sense of butter, adding a nice texture to the wine.

House Wine Rosé

ABV: 12%
Region: California
Average Price per Can: $6

The Wine:

This is probably the most awarded and easily purchasable can of wine on this list. It’s also amongst the best, simply for its drinkability. This can is so popular that House Wine now has 15 different canned wines to choose from with standards like Pinto Noir and new concoctions like the very refreshing Paloma Wine spritz.

Tasting Notes:

Notes of bright florals mingle with ripe berries on the nose. The berries lean towards slightly sweet/slightly tart strawberries with an edge of dried straw. Citrus arrives late to cut through the fruit and bring about a dry and very thirst-quenching end.

On Tuesday, Xbox confirmed the upcoming release of the Xbox Series S, a smaller, digital-only console that will have a much more affordable $299 price point. The smaller console will provide the same gameplay experience as the Series X, but just have less storage (512 GB) and not be capable of playing games off of discs.

While we still await official word on the pricing and release date of the Series X, Xbox made another major announcement on Wednesday with the news that their Xbox All Access program will be expanding and allow gamers to get the Series S or Series X, along with a Game Pass Ultimate subscription, for a monthly rate with no money required up front. There will be a 24-month agreement (two years, for those bad at math) required but rather than having to pay $299 or (the rumored) $499 for the console, you can pay $24.99 a month for the Series S or $29.99 a month for the Series X.

The Game Pass Ultimate subscription provides a library of over 100 games for Xbox, PC, and Android mobile devices, and also provides Xbox Game Studio releases the day they come out, such as Halo Infinite, as well as an EA Play membership included starting this holiday season. Those with current Xbox All Access subscriptions can upgrade that to get the next-gen console and pre-order the Series S and Series X through All Access beginning today.

It’s clear that Xbox is looking to swoop in and claim the more casual gamer market with this next-generation release. PlayStation has incredible brand loyalty due to its exclusive titles, but the higher price tag can leave casual gamers behind. Xbox seems to have recognized this and rather than try to compete with Sony to get more exclusive titles, they’re simply making their new system far more accessible to a broader market. From a cheaper, smaller console for those of us that only play a few titles a year and aren’t looking to fork over big money on a console, to this new monthly subscription service that comes with that new console without the upfront cost of hundreds of dollars, Xbox is making some shrewd moves to cultivate a larger marketplace for its system and go down a different path than PlayStation.