Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Lil Wayne Gave The Safest High Five As A Virtual Fan At Tonight’s Lakers Game

Contrary to past years, 2020 has been a very active year for Lil Wayne. The rapper began the year sharing his thirteenth album Funeral and launching his own radio show, Young Money Radio. Continuing his work with the radio show, Wayne would eventually share a deluxe version of Funeral and re-release his 2015 Free Weezy Album to all streaming platforms. Opting for a moment of fun, the New Orleans rapper found a way to show his support for his Los Angeles Lakers, whom he has been a longtime fan of, during a recent game.

Joining the big screen for the Los Angeles Lakers’ Wednesday night game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Lil Wayne joined a group of fans to support the Lakers in their latest game inside the NBA’s bubble in Orlando, FL. Donning his diamond-encrusted smile, Wayne could be seen enjoying his the experience, even hilariously “high-fiving” a fellow Lakers fan after few awkward moments as he attempted to get their attention.

Lil Wayne is not the only musician to be connected with the NBA recently. J. Cole has reportedly been preparing to tryout for various NBA teams in order to land a spot on a roster. While it hasn’t been confirmed yet, the Detroit Pistons reached out to the rapper through their Twitter page and requested that he get in touch with them in order to try out for their team.

Check out the tweets above to see Lil Wayne enjoying the game.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Stunt Beers That Actually Aren’t Total Trash

It seems like every few weeks there’s a new “stunt beer” on the market. You know the ones — beers made with Sour Patch Kids, Peeps, or coffee beans passed through the digestive systems of civets. There’s a big reason breweries release these over-the-top brews. In a market saturated by more than 7,000 craft breweries, it’s a slick way to get free media coverage.

The hope is that maybe drinkers will grab a birthday cake-flavored milkshake IPA on a lark, then decide to stick around to try some of the brewery’s other offerings. And though many of these beers are downright awful and are clearly gimmicks created to entice click-hungry editors, many are actually… not utter trash.

Check out some of our favorite recent stunt beers below.

Smart Mouth Saturday Morning

The Story:

If you’re an adult with responsibilities, there’s probably a secret part of you that misses the simple pleasure of Saturday morning cartoons. And back in the day, when sugar still ruled, Fruity Pebbles, Captain Crunch, or Lucky Charms were part of your weekly routine. That nostalgia-junk food-cereal overlap is the target Smart Mouth Brewing Co. in Norfolk, Virginia was trying to hit when they brewed a beer with toasted marshmallows like the ones in our favorite leprechaun-adorned cereal.

Tasting Notes:

If you told us that they made a beer using toasted marshmallows, we’d assume it was a stout. But this one is an IPA and for some magical reason it really works (luck of the Irish?). This 6.6 percent ABV brew starts with the sweet, caramel flavor of the freeze-dried marshmallows, but that leads into citrus and floral notes from initial hopping and then dry-hopping.

A can of this truly is the adult version of a Saturday spent watching Thundercats or Spongebob Squarepants with a bowl of cereal on your lap.

French’s Mustard Beer

The Story:

National Mustard Day was August 1st. To celebrate this obviously momentous holiday, well-known mustard brand French’s collaborated with Colorado’s Oskar Blues to create a limited-edition mustard beer. Yes, you read that right. It’s literally called French’s Mustard Beer and it was brewed with the brand’s Classic Yellow Mustard.

Tasting Notes:

If you get to try this beer, keep an open mind. This tropical wheat beer, while being made with mustard, also contains key lime, lemon, tangerine, and passion fruit flavors. The first sip is all mustard. Almost as if you squirted mustard into a wheat beer and stirred it up. But somehow, once you get used to the initial tang, it’s really drinkable and well-rounded — with the citrus and tropical fruit flavors rising to the forefront.

Pair it with a mustard-slathered hot dog for a truly meta experience.

Sheetz Hop Dog

The Story:

If you don’t know what Sheetz is, you probably don’t live in Pennsylvania or haven’t driven through the state. There are 128 Sheetz stores in the Keystone State. Earlier this summer, WaWa’s biggest rival decided to collaborate with Neshaminy Creek Brewing to create a hot dog beer. And we’re not saying that this is just a beer to be paired with a grilled tube of meat — it was “ceremonial”-brewed with hot dogs from the store.

Tasting Notes:

This 5.5 percent IPA might have been made with hot dogs, but it doesn’t taste a thing like old hot dog water. That’s because, while there are hot dogs in the recipe, it was also dry hopped with Centennial and Nugget hops. The result is a subtly floral, hoppy brew with hints of lemon, lime, and tangerine. It’s highly crushable and pairs perfectly with yard games and an open mind.

Three Heads Donuts Delite Apple Fritter Ale

The Story:

We love beer and we love donuts so obviously the two together make sense, right? Just ask the folks at Rogue (in Oregon) because they’ve been making beer collaborations with Portland’s Voodoo Donuts for years. In the same vein, Rochester, New York’s Three Heads Brewing decided to pay tribute to local pastry staple Donuts Delite by collaborating to make a 5.5 percent apple beer with apple fritters, cinnamon, and just a hint of lactose.

Tasting Notes:

Made using 1,500 gallons of fresh pressed apple juice and 720 huge glazed apple fritters, this is definitely a different kind of beer. The result is a fruity beer with a large cinnamon apple presence up front. It pretty much tastes like fall in beer form (without the awful pumpkin spice flavor) with hints of gooey caramel apples and spicy cinnamon.

Pair it with a fall dessert and you have the makings of a great night.

Captain Lawrence Cookie O’Puss Stout

The Story:

If you’ve ever been to Carvel (or looked in the frozen food section at your local grocery store) chances are you’ve come across the wild menagerie of ice cream cake characters that includes Fudgie the Whale, Cookie Puss, and his Irish friend Cookie O’Puss. If you enjoy any of those frozen confections, you might want also to test Captain Lawrence Brewing Company’s collaboration with Carvel — Cookie O’Puss Stout.

Tasting Notes:

This St. Patrick’s Day-themed pastry stout was crewed using Carvel chocolate crunchies, ice cream, milk sugar, and fudge. Fans of dark, rich, chocolatey stouts should enjoy this roasty, malty, eight-percent brew. It literally tastes like a melted Carvel ice cream cake mixed with a stout.

If that doesn’t sell it as the perfect dessert beer, we don’t know what does.

Rogue Beard Beer

The Story:

Rogue Beard Beer is the OG stunt beer (and the official beer of No-Shave November). If you’ve never heard of it, you’re in for a shock. It’s a beer that was made using yeast foraged from Rogue master brewer John Maier’s beard. Yes, beard yeast. It all started when brewers began to make jokes about Maier’s historically long beard and how it was probably full of great yeast from brewing over the years. Eventually, Maier decided he might as well figure out if he could actually extract yeast from his beard.

It worked and Rogue Beard Beer was born.

Tasting Notes:

You might be wary of drinking a beer made with yeast extracted from a stranger’s beard. It sounds fairly unhygienic and seems like it couldn’t possibly pass health standards. If you’re able to look past this quirk (yeast is all around us all the time), you’ll get to sip on a subtly tangy, smooth, refreshing brew with hints of tropical fruits.

The best part? There are no weird beard flavors whatsoever.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

A Timeline Of The Disintegration Of Ellen DeGeneres’ Shiny Public Persona

By now, you’ve surely heard that The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the Emmy award-winning talk-variety series that launched in 2003, is sitting at a crossroads. This is the result of more than a few controversies over the last couple of years, which have culminated with employees stepping up to accuse Ellen of allowing a toxic workplace environment to flourish. As a result the host — who has preached a “Be Kind” mantra as part of the show’s image — is on the defense as accusations continue to swirl. A handful of celebrity supporters have rallied on her side as others call for her replacement.

Should we really be surprised by the downfall of Ellen’s image? This shift didn’t happen overnight, and even if it feels like revelations are coming fast and furious now, Ellen dropped a few hints of her own along the way. Let’s hammer this out, timeline style.

December 4, 2018

In a trailer for her Netflix stand-up special, Relatable, Ellen complained about how she’s unable to do anything that’s considered even mildly rude, like honk her car horn, due to her ultra-nice reputation as the reigning queen of daytime talk TV. This assertion does seem somewhat relatable, given that people apparently expect her to dance with them on the street during fan encounters.

December 12, 2018

During a lengthy profile with The New York Times, Ellen strongly suggested that she’s considering leaving the building and canceling her show within a few years. She admitted wanting to pursue projects that explore more of her own personality or portray “someone unappealing” on a TV show or movie. Ellen also pointedly stated, “The talk show is me, but I’m also playing a character of a talk-show host. There’s a tiny, tiny bit of difference.” Within the profile, Ellen’s wife, Portia de Rossi, signaled that she was ready for her spouse to move onto other challenges.

January 4, 2019

Ellen — who remains one of the most prominent gay celebrities in the U.S. — stirred up controversy by urging Kevin Hart to return as Oscars host following his “choice” to step down after the resurfacing of his homophobic tweets (including calling a Twitter user’s profile picture “a gay billboard for AIDS”). In making this call, Ellen pushed back at the “haters” and described Hart as “one of the smartest people I know.”

May 21, 2019

Despite making those public noises about wanting to move past her talk show, Ellen re-upped her contract for three more years to keep the show going until 2022. While addressing her audience, she joked that this happened “[m]ostly because I love doing it so much every day but also because that takes me to the end of my car lease.”

October 7, 2019

Amid a backlash over being spotted laughing during a Dallas Cowboys game with former President George W. Bush (whose anti-LGBTQ stance included his staunch support for the Defense of Marriage Act), the talk show host defended their friendship in a monologue. In doing so, she argued that “we’re all different,” and just because she differs in viewpoint from Bush, that doesn’t mean they can’t be buds. “When I say be kind to one another, I don’t mean only the people that think the same way that you do,” she argued. “I mean be kind to everyone.”

March 20, 2020

On Twitter, comedian Kevin Porter called Ellen “notoriously one of the meanest people alive” while engaging in some wordplay about how “we all need a little kindness.” He encouraged people to share “insane stories you’ve heard about Ellen being mean” in exchange for his donations to the LA Food Bank. Porter has received thousands of responses to his tweet, and at $2 per pop, that adds up to a huge donation.

April 8, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic took root in the U.S., Ellen received criticism after likening her self-isolation experience (from within her scenic and luxurious multimillion-dollar compound) to being incarcerated. “This is like being in jail, is what it is,” DeGeneres told her audience during a home-filmed episode of her show. “It’s mostly because I’ve been wearing the same clothes for 10 days and everyone in here is gay.”

April 20, 2020
Variety reported that Ellen’s staff was furious over her lack of communication during the pandemic. Sources told the trade publication that they received no written alerts about their working hours or pay while the show hired an outside company to help her film remotely at home. After weeks of attempted contact, crew members say that executives told them to expect pay cuts of 60% despite the show continuing to air. In a statement, Warner Bros. TV tells Variety that, while communication could have been better, “the crew has been paid consistently, though at reduced hours.”

July 16, 2020

Buzzfeed published an investigative report that contains several stories from former The Ellen DeGeneres Show employees, who allege that her “be kind” slogan is all “for show.” The accusers claimed that they experienced intimidation tactics, racist comments, and microaggressions from producers (particularly executive producer Ed Glavin) on Ellen’s show. The Glavin accusations have led to him being released from his position.

July 30, 2020

Ellen responded to the above allegations with an apologetic statement about claims of show’s “toxic” workplace. “On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness — no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect.” DeGeneres insisted. “Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that I am sorry.”

July 31, 2020

Brad Garrett publicly declared that he’s not buying Ellen’s apology. He stepped up to claim that he knew multiple people who “were treated horribly by her,” and he pushed for further accountability while stating that toxicity “comes from the top.”

August 3, 2020

A former The Ellen Show producer, Hedda Muskat, went public about her experiences working on the show. While speaking with The Wrap, Muskat accused Ellen of fostering a “culture of fear.” She further alleges that when Ed Glavin screamed at a crew member during a staff meeting, Ellen simply giggled and responded, ‘Well, I guess every production needs their dog.”

August 4, 2020

As unverified rumors of Ellen possibly being replaced (maybe by James Corden?) swirled, comedian Eric declared his support for a petition to give him the hosting gig. And yes, Andre tweeted some photoshopped nightmare fuel to get that ball rolling further down the hill.

—–
Following the recent revelations, celebrities have begun to rally around Ellen in support.

Portia de Rossi Instagrammed an “I Stand By Ellen” image while seemingly blaming “bots” for some of the backlash against her wife.

Kevin Hart hopped aboard, presumably by returning a favor for her support of him during the Oscar kerfuffle. “I have known Ellen for years and I can honestly say that she’s one of the dopest people on the f*cking planet,” he attested. “She has treated my family and team with love and respect from day 1.”

Katy Perry stepped up to praise Ellen for “the light & continual fight for equality that she has brought to the world through her platform for decades.”

Ashton Kutcher rallied as part of the Ellen Support Club while asserting that “She & her team have only treated me & my team w/ respect & kindness… When things aren’t right she handles it and fixes.”

And Diane Keaton, who probably won’t be the last to join, added how Ellen “GIVES BACK TO SO MANY INCLUDING ME.”

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

LeBron Called A Video Of A Colorado Family Being Wrongfully Detained By Police ‘Disgraceful’

Throughout the summer, protesters have taken to the streets in cities across the nation to demand social justice and police reform in the wake of George Floyd’s death by police. NBA players and the league as a whole have taken front and center in the Black Lives Matter movement to use their influence and their platform to enact change.

Teams, coaches, and other league personnel have joined together in kneeling during the national anthem prior to the games in Orlando, and many have used their media availability to speak out on various causes, such as justice for Breonna Taylor or the voting rights initiative that LeBron is spearheading.

On Wednesday night, LeBron took a moment to speak about a recent video involving Colorado police officers, who detained a Black family under wrongful suspicion of a stolen vehicle, handcuffing the woman and her young daughters and nieces and forcing them to lay flat on the concrete despite pulling over an SUV when the stolen vehicle was a motorcycle. LeBron called the incident “hurtful and disgraceful,” and explained the exasperation of the Black community to seeing yet another example of discrimination by police.

Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry also commented on the video earlier in the day, questioning the type of training protocols that would lead to police treating citizens this way and advocating for major changes in how officers approach these types of interactions.

Aurora police chief Vanessa Wilson has since issued a public apology, saying that it made her “sick to my core,” though it remains unclear what disciplinary action might be taken against the officers in question, given that they were technically following protocols for felony stops. Wilson, who had been appointed as the city’s full-time chief on the same day as the incident, did, however, promise major changes in bias and sensitivity training in her department moving forward.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The Best Movies On HBO, Ranked

Last Updated: August 5th

In addition to being America’s most trusted source of Succession episodes, HBO has a lovely collection of movies available ranging from trashy action thrills to elegant period pieces to star-studded comedies. With all the recent changes to HBO’s streaming services, though, it can be confusing to know what the heck is on which app. Here is a ranking of the 25 best movies on HBO (previously known as HBO Now) that you could and should be watching right now. We also rounded up the best movies on HBO Max in another guide.

Related: The Best Shows On HBO Ranked

Universal Pictures

1. Jaws (1975)

Run Time: 124 min | IMDb: 8.0/10

With just a few bars on the piano and an oversized mechanical shark, Steven Spielberg terrorized generations of moviegoers with Jaws. The film follows a local sheriff, a marine biologist, and an old seafarer who team up to hunt a great white shark who has a worrisome bloodlust and seems to be targeting a small beach town during the busiest time of the year. Spielberg’s camera work — the lingering, underwater shots, the quick cuts of flesh being torn from bone and rows of teeth flashing to the surface — make this exercise in inciting aquaphobia even more chilling. You’ll never look at a carefree day at the beach the same way again.

United Artists

2. Apocalypse Now (1979)

Run Time: 147 min | IMDb: 8.5/10

Francis Ford Coppola’s war epic starring Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen is a feat of filmmaking and a wild, gory ride. It’s basically a reinventing of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness — a truly bonkers novel — with the bloody conflict in the Congo being swapped out for the then-timely Vietnam War. Sheen plays Captain Benjamin Willard, an Army officer tasked with assassinating Brando’s Colonel Kurtz, a renegade Army officer accused of murder. Most of the film’s action centers on Sheen’s secret mission, his journey from Vietnam to Cambodia, and his showdown with Brando’s Kurtz, who’s been driven mad with power.

Roadside

3. Winter’s Bone (2010)

Run Time: 100 min | IMDb: 7.2/10

A film noir set in the Ozarks of Missouri, Winter’s Bone was the breakthrough role for Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old who looks after her family since her father disappeared. With the looming threat of losing her home, Ree goes in search of her missing father, ending up in a world of distrust and violence. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and though it didn’t take any Oscars home, it did win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

best movies on hbo go and hbo now
HBO

4. Deadwood: The Movie (2019)

Run Time: 110 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

HBO managed to pull off the seemingly impossible with this follow-up movie based on a series that left us too soon. Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, and the rest of the residents of the camp are back to celebrate the South Dakota’s statehood in the only way this dusty drama knows how — with reignited rivalries, betrayals, bloodshed, and lots of swearin.’ The show became a fan favorite thanks to its gritty performances and nuanced storytelling, and the movie continues the tradition, investigating the lives of these pioneers who’ve endured plenty of hardship for their piece of the American dream.

Warner Bros.

5. Joker (2019)

Run Time: 122 min | IMDb: 8.5/10

In case you didn’t catch it in theaters, or you just want to revisit the chaos and mayhem of Joaquin Phoenix’s troubled clown, Todd Phillips’ Joker is now on HBO Max. This gritty origin story imagines the DC supervillain as a mentally-ill clown-for-hire named Arthur, who spirals when his stand-up career turns sour, and he discovers some details about his lineage. Really, it doesn’t take much to put this guy over the edge.

20th Century Fox

6. Alien (1979)

Run Time: 117 min | IMDb: 8.4/10

Ridley Scott basically invented sci-fi horror with this alien thriller about a crew on a commercial space tug who must battle a violent extraterrestrial being that’s infiltrated their ship. Sigourney Weaver plays Ripley, an officer aboard the Nostromo, who’s forced to face down the titular Alien, an aggressive lifeform intent on killing the ship’s human crew. Most of the action revolves around Weaver’s attempts to destroy the creature and save her shipmates but it’s Scott’s direction behind the camera that creates the suspense and terror this film has become known for.

Via Fox Searchlight

7. Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Run Time: 108 min | IMDb: 7.9/10

Visionary director Taika Waititi gives us this World War II-set satirical masterpiece (and Oscar screenplay winner) that follows a young German boy, whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler. The kicker is that Waititi plays the genocidal maniac, making him a weak, comedic caricature of the infamous mass murderer, and as Jo Jo (a terrific Roman Griffin Davis) begins to bond with a Jewish girl hiding in his house, his worship of the dictator wanes in hilarious ways. Scarlett Johansson does some of her best work here as Jo Jo’s mother, a woman fighting to help the Jews, and Sam Rockwell steals every scene he’s in, playing a queer Nazi commander. Yet the joy and humor in this belongs to Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, and Archie Yates — the kids who give the film some much needed heart.

20th Century Fox

8. Fight Club (1999)

Run Time: 139 min | IMDb: 8.8/10

There are timeless classics and then there’s David Fincher’s exercise in understanding modern masculinity (a.k.a. Fight Club). The film has managed to remain relevant over the decades, with fans finding new themes and messages to dig into when it comes to Edward Norton’s depressed, unfulfilled office worker and his machismo friend, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt). The two start an underground fight club — with a now-famous set of rules — and wreak havoc on the city as they let loose their aggression and search for the meaning in life. But it’s the film’s surprise, introspective ending that really elevates this bloody drama.

Fox

9. Die Hard (1988)

Run Time: 132 min | IMDb: 8.2/10

Bruce Willis stars in this action classic that gave birth to a genre-defining franchise. Willis plays John McClane, an NYPD officer tasked with rescuing his wife and children from a group of German terrorists who hold a Christmas gathering hostage at an LA hotel. Alan Rickman plays the group’s leader, and it’s his bad guy that makes this thing so enjoyable to watch. That, and Willis’ iconic one-liners.

Sundance

10. The Tale (2018)

Run Time: 114 min | IMDb: 7.3/10

Laura Dern gives a hauntingly beautiful performance in Jennifer Fox’s autobiographical drama, The Tale. The film recounts Fox’s own history of sexual abuse at the hands of a riding instructor who was three times her age. Dern plays a grown-up version of Fox, a woman struggling to recall illicit memories of her past, to reconcile the relationship she thought she had as a teenager with a man old enough to be her father with what actually happened — years of grooming, mental, and physical abuse at the hands of adults she had put her trust in. It’s a brutal but necessary watch.

HBO

11. Temple Grandin (2010)

Run Time: 120 min | IMDb: 8.3/10

Inspirational without being self-congratulatory or condescending, Mick Jackson’s Temple Grandin places Claire Danes in the role of the real-life title character as she develops into a voice in animal science that cannot be ignored. A world that’s unaccommodating to autism and women in the ranching industry does not make things easy for Grandin and Danes portrays her with detail, intelligence and heart. Bonus points awarded for having the courage to include comedy and taking the effort to make something with warmth. You don’t get that too often in movies featuring the inner workings of slaughterhouses.

Miramax

12. Gangs of New York (2002)

Run Time: 167 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonard DiCaprio, and Cameron Diaz star in Martin Scorsese’s historical epic that re-imagines the birth of New York City. DiCaprio plays Amsterdam, an Irish immigrant who returns to the Five Points years following his father’s murder, looking for revenge. To get it, he infiltrates Bill the Butcher’s (Lewis) gang, a group of proud natives tired of the influx of foreigners in their city. Diaz plays a prostitute who forms a relationship with Amsterdam as he befriends Bill, then struggles to follow-through with his plan to kill the man who murdered his father and lead the Five Points in a rebellion against the city’s elite.

Focus Features

13. Boy Erased (2018)

Run Time: 115 min | IMDb: 7/10

Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges, and Joel Edgerton star in this queer drama directed by Edgerton based off the memoir of author Garrad Conley. The film follows the son of a Baptist preacher (Hedges) who is outed to his strictly religious family and forced to undergo his church’s gay conversion therapy camp. There, he’s abused mentally and physically because of his queerness and his bonds with his family are tested.

HBO

14. Mommy Dead And Dearest (2017)

Run Time: 82 min IMDb: 7.4/10

Erin Lee Carr’s spellbinding crime doc Mommy Dead and Dearest plunges into the bizarre and absorbing true story surrounding the murder of Dee Dee Blanchard. It’s an absorbing, strange and disturbing watch that doles out enough jaw-dropping moments in 83 minutes to put full seasons of TV to shame. Sundance hopefuls would have a field day with the visuals in this documentary if they were to try and adapt this stranger-than-fiction tale of manipulation, murder, and motherhood.

Lionsgate

15. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)

Run Time: 131 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

Keanu Reeves is back as everyone’s favorite dog-loving assassin but this time, he’s the bad guy on the run after he kills a member of the guild. While every killer worth their salt is gunning for him, Wick must reach out to some old friends for help. He dispatches handfuls of his comrades, rides the streets of New York City on horseback, and wanders through the desert, searching for a way to clear his name. It’s full of the high-concept action the franchise is known for and Reeves is having a blast playing the badass character he’s made iconic.

Focus Features

16. The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Run Time: 106 min | IMDb: 7/10

Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and a handful of other embarrassingly talented actors carry this heartwarming family drama about two kids in search of their father. Josh Hutcherson and Mia Wasikowska play Laser and Joni, siblings conceived by artificial insemination. Their moms Jules (Moore) and Nic (Bening) each used the same sperm donor to have them and now, as the kids have grown up, they’ve become curious about this mystery paternal figure. Enter Ruffalo who plays a hippie restaurant owner named Paul that seems more interested in hooking up with Jules than getting to know his kids. It’s messy and difficult, but it’s a relatable story about unconventional family dynamics that feels refreshingly original.

20th Century Fox

17. Moulin Rouge (2001)

Run Time: 127 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Baz Luhrmann’s bohemian rhapsody set in 1900s France follows the tale of a struggling writer who falls for a beautiful courtesan. Ewan McGregor plays Christian, a poet with grand ideas on love who move to the Montmarte district to write a novel and truly experience life. A trip to a pleasure theater called the Moulin Rouge introduces him to Satine (Nicole Kidman), a gorgeous performer who’s also caught the eye of a rich duke. Torn between her love for Christian and the trappings of her luxurious life, the pair embark on a forbidden romance that has disastrous consequences for everyone.

Newmarket Films

18. Real Women Have Curves (2002)

Run Time: 93 min IMDb: 7/10

Living up to the immense hype it earned at Sundance that year, Real Women Have Curves is a coming-of-age tale that balances drama and comedy while shining a spotlight on the acting skills of future Superstore star America Ferrera. (The film marked the actress’s cinematic debut.) Ferrera plays Ana García, a young Mexican-American woman navigating cultural, societal and familial expectations in Los Angeles as she works toward her goal of heading to college. Smart, dignified and occasionally bittersweet, Real Women Have Curves is a movie unafraid of its warmth and humanity.

Universal Pictures

19. Love, Actually (2003)

Run Time: 133 min | IMDb: 7.6/10

Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Kiera Knightley, and a host of other famous faces star in this beloved holiday rom-com. The film follows a few different storylines, all connected by six degrees of separation that converge around Christmas. Knightley plays a recently-married woman who discovers her husband’s best friend is in love with her. Neeson plays a widower trying to care for his young son. Firth plays a writer scorned by love and given a second chance when he retreats abroad to finish his book. And Grant plays the newly-elected Prime Minister who falls for a member of his staff. There are more love stories in here, but really, just watch it if you’re that curious.

Focus Features

20. In Bruges (2007)

Run Time: 107 min | IMDb: 7.9/10

In Bruges was the movie that revealed Colin Farrell could be funny. A character actor stuck in a leading man’s body, Farrell gives arguably the best performance of his career as Ray, a rookie Irish hitman on the run with his partner and mentor, Ken (Brendan Gleeson), after accidentally killing a kid while executing a priest. While that may not sound much like the premise of a comedy, director Martin McDonagh crafted a truly hilarious movie. Farrell and Gleeson play off each other wonderfully all the way to the film’s dark finale. But as great as they are, they’re overshadowed at times by an incredible performance from Ralph Fiennes as their boss, Harry. Fiennes is at once funny and terrifying as a man steadfast in his principles, even when that involves committing murder.

Warner Bros.

21. A Star Is Born (2018)

Run Time: 136 min | IMDb: 7.7/10

Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut racked up plenty of awards earlier this year, and now you can finally find out why (if you haven’t seen it in theaters like pretty much everyone else already has). Cooper plays a washed-up musician who finds inspiration in a talented singer played by Lady Gaga. The two have a whirlwind romance sprinkled with fame, mentions of addiction and mental illness, but ultimately, it ends in tragedy. Still, the soundtrack is a banger.

HBO

22. Behind The Candelabra (2013)

Run Time: 118 min | IMDb: 7/10

It’d be rude for a Liberace-focused film not to be showered in sparkly awards upon release, don’t you think? Steven Soderbergh’s HBO Films take on Scott Thorson’s memoir Behind the Candelabra: My Life with Liberace earned Emmys galore for its blend of effective drama and dark comedy. Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, and Scott Bakula all scored well-deserved praise and trophies for their work in this gripping (and appropriately stylish) drama that will have you scrambling down many a Wikipedia rabbit hole after.

HBO

23. Grey Gardens (2009)

Run Time: 104 min | IMDb: 7.5/10

Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore star in this HBO remake of the 1975 documentary of the same name. Lange plays “Big Eddie,” aunt to former First Lady Jackie Kennedy, while Barrymore plays “Little Edie,” Kennedy’s first cousin. The two women became famous when it was revealed that their estate, Grey Gardens, was in ruin and they’d been living there in squalor for years. The film chronicles their journey to destitution, following “Little Edie” as she tries and fails to make a name for herself away from her mother while “Big Eddie” tries to prevent the end of her marriage. It’s a gripping, tragic tale, one made more visceral thanks to some stellar performances by Lange and Barrymore.

Warner Bros.

24. Contagion (2011)

Run Time: 106 min | IMDb: 6.7/10

It’s always surreal when life imitates art but watching Steven Soderbergh’s star-studded thriller during the age of Corona feels more like a warning than anything. That’s because Soderbergh approaches the film’s plot — a deadly virus originating in China ravages the planet forcing regular civilians and CDC workers to do the unthinkable in order to survive — with a methodical, scientific formula. There are real stakes, especially when we watch Matt Damon’s character scramble to save what’s left of his family or Laurence Fishburne fail to manage the crisis as a CDC head, but there’s also so much scientific jargon that this could be taught in schools. It probably should.

Universal

25. Bridesmaids (2011)

Run Time: 125 min | IMDb: 6.8/10

Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph star in this raunchy comedy about a woman on the brink of marriage and her best friend who’s struggling through a series of failures in her life. Wiig plays Annie, a woman who lost her bakery and relationship in one fell swoop right before her friend Lillian (Rudolph) gets engaged. To make matters worse, there’s competition for the maid of honor spot when Lillian finds a new friend in the wife of her fiancé’s boss (played by the excellent Rose Byrne). Ruined bachelorette parties, Parisian wedding showers, and quite possibly the funniest, most disgusting poop explosion to ever happen on screen, quickly follow.

Recent Changes Through August 2020:
Removed: Us, Blindspotting, Casino Royale, Mighty Ducks, Yesterday, Brexit
Added: Jojo Rabbit

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

Watch Jason Momoa Stun Wife Lisa Bonet After Completely Restoring Her First Car, A 1965 Ford Mustang Convertible

In the words of the folks over at The Cut, “there’s no real reason to get a husband if he isn’t Jason Momoa.” The Game of Thrones and Aquaman star already has quite a reputation for being a big, sweet Teddy bear of a human, and a pretty solid husband as well. He helps Girl Scouts sell cookies. He goes to Iowa to visit diners that name dishes after him. He champions his female co-stars. He rips world leaders for “half-assing” it on climate change. We could go on and on. And now he’s raised the bar even higher by surprising his wife (Lisa Bonet) with a complete restoration of her first car — a blue 1965 Ford Mustang convertible she bought when she was 16 — a incredibly good husband-y move that is documented fully in the video above that Momoa posted to his YouTube page.

The restoration was overseen by Divine1Customs, a Las Vegas based operation that claims they can restore pretty much anything that has wheels.

Reports the Drive:

After everything was taken apart, the parts were all restored or replaced, including the engine. It appears to have been replaced with a brand new crate motor from Ford itself, however, it’s possible the original engine was sent out for a thorough rebuild and then sent back. The car is seen to be running with this engine at the start of the video, so that could be possible. We reached out to Divine1Customs to try and get more details, and we will update this story when we hear back.

Besides the mysterious drivetrain, the rest of the car’s fixed-up parts can be seen in plain sight, and thankfully everything was done tastefully. The car was repainted black, factory-looking wheels were added, and the interior was of course totally redone, albeit in conservative black leather upholstery. The four-speed stick was also maintained, as it seems like both Momoa and his wife Bonet are fans of three pedals.

Additionally, if all of this weren’t enough, Momoa wore a Slayer t-shirt when he presented the car to Bonet.

youtube

“That first love, cruise by a lonely beach with the top down and salt water air. Feels like dancing over the ocean… it’s that first car” — Jason Momoa. When it comes to choosing husbands, Lisa Bonet has done pretty well.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

The Thunder Will Make Some Team’s Life Miserable In The Playoffs

The Oklahoma City Thunder moved to 2-1 in the NBA bubble on Wednesday, as they gave the Lakers fits in a 105-86 win that ensured that anyone that hadn’t taken them seriously opened their eyes.

This is a team that few, if any, expected to be here. After trading Paul George and Russell Westbrook in the offseason with a clear eye on the future with all of the draft picks they acquired, the expectation was that the Thunder would likely look to move off of veterans Chris Paul, Steven Adams, and/or Danilo Gallinari if able to fully shift towards a youth movement. However, the Thunder got off to a strong start and never slowed down, leading Sam Presti to happily keep their veterans at the deadline and press forward with a playoff squad.

While Oklahoma City exists in the realm just below expected contender status in the bubble, they are a team that no Western Conference contender will want to face in a playoff series. The Thunder have taken on the identity of their leader in Chris Paul, which is to say playing them is a grating, miserable experience. They are almost nauseatingly active on both ends of the floor, harassing opponents on the defensive end into turnovers and awkward, contested looks, while on offense able to attack you with waves of ball-handlers.

Oklahoma City doesn’t boast a ton in the way of star power on a national scale beyond Paul, but what they’ve managed to do is put together a roster that has incredible balance in spite of the apparent haste with which Presti and company had to change their vision this summer when George requested out. Their backcourt trio of Paul, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Dennis Schröder (currently on an excused absence from the bubble after the birth of his child) seemed like an odd mix of three ball dominant players, but to their credit and Billy Donovan’s, they’ve made necessary adjustments to each of their games and all appear to be maximizing their talents.

Schröder has managed to become a terrific spot-up shooter after years of woeful efficiency in Atlanta and early in his OKC tenure, embracing his increasingly off-ball status and the looks SGA and CP3 can create for him, while being better at picking his spots to attack off the dribble. Gilgeous-Alexander has only built on a terrific rookie season in L.A., likewise taking to an off-ball role when needed, as it’s hard to argue with putting the basketball in the hands of one of the best to ever do it. Still, he’s afforded plenty of opportunity, leading the team in scoring at 19.4 points per game, and with a wing rotation that was thin on established players this season, the two long-limbed guards can take on difficult wing defensive assignments.

Paul is, well, Chris Paul, which is to say he look an awful lot like the Point God of old, controlling the tempo and toying with defenses to get the looks he wants for both him and his teammates. The 34-year-old is still a dominant presence on the floor, and while his counting stats have taken a dip in the egalitarian flow of OKC’s backcourt, make no mistake who has the basketball in important moments. Paul has become a master of managing his energy, recognizing the exact moment in a game in which to unleash the Thunder’s athletes at a frenetic pace and also when to regain control of the reins and assert himself in isolation play as only he can.

Gallinari has likewise embraced his new surroundings, often the forgotten man when discussing what makes the Thunder tick given the somewhat surprising success of their young-and-old duo in the backcourt. The ever steady power forward, while capable of creating his own shot, thrives off the ball, hitting 40.9 percent of his threes with 85 percent of those being assisted, as he’s more than happy to take every look created by the gravitational pull of a driving Paul or SGA.

The rest of the team, offensively, thrives in the roles they’re asked to play around that nucleus. The wing rotation isn’t filled with household names, but does boast incredibly long, bouncy athletes, happy to cut to the rim and take spot ups in the corners when asked. Darius Bazley, Terrance Ferguson, Lugentz Dort, Hamidou Diallo, and the recently returning Andre Roberson all profile fairly similarly on offense. None are great shooters, but take the open looks when needed to keep the floor spaced and are excellent cutters. Most importantly, they are all long, active, athletic defenders who Donovan can throw at opposing wings in waves to wear them down. Combined with Gilgeous-Alexander and Schröder, they have switchability and play with an energy that few teams can match on a nightly basis.

On the inside, a significant burden falls on the broad shoulders of Steven Adams, happy to clean up on the boards and body up opposing big men. Adams may not be as dynamic a defender as he once was, losing a touch of foot speed and quickness, but he’s still a monstrous presence in the paint and his defensive IQ almost always sees him in the right position and rotation. Offensively, he screens and dives to the rim, using his excellent hands and touch to finish around the basket in pick-and-rolls and deep post ups. Behind him, Nerlens Noel, while not the star some hoped he could become as a prospect, profiles an awful lot like what the Sixers hoped he would be in terms of a rim-runner and versatile defender.

The Thunder are currently tied with Houston for the 5-seed in the West, just a half game back of Utah for fourth, and it would be of little surprise to see them come out of a first round series with a win. If they do, you can rest assured that neither L.A. team wants to deal with a series against OKC because of their style of play.

Most every team that plays the Thunder looks like they’re having a terrible time, win or lose. Their activity level is off the charts on defense, with players with the skills and defensive IQ to make that activity level actionable, and on offense have full faith in what they do and understanding of their roles. That’s a dangerous combination, and while the Lakers clearly looked flat in their first game after clinching the 1-seed in the West, Wednesday’s game was yet another example of the Thunder’s ability to compete with the best.

Whether they have the gear to make a deep run in the playoffs is something we’ll have to wait and see — teams that play with this much energy and effort on a regular basis can be overwhelmed when top teams flip the proverbial switch come playoff time. But no matter what, they’re going be a tough out once the postseason arrives, wearing someone down and making basketball miserable for 4-7 games.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

A Swan Song For Boomer Innocence: Reckoning With ‘Caddyshack’ At The Time Of Its 40th Anniversary

By the time I saw Caddyshack, I probably already knew dozens of Caddyshack quotes by heart. It’s just that kind of movie, one that lends itself easily to endless repetition. Bill Murray’s mushy, crooked-mouthed rendering of “It’s in the hole!” is to the 80s what “oh behave” or “my wife!” were to later generations.

As with any comedy deemed sacrosanct by earlier generations, it’s tempting to try to rewatch Caddyshack today and categorize everything as either “still holds up” or “I guess you had to be there.” It’s always silly to try to separate any work from its initial context, but especially so with comedy, relying as heavily as it does on timing, where simply being the first to do a certain joke makes all the difference.

Caddyshack is very much the product of Boomers, directed by Harold Ramis (born 1944), written by Douglas Kenney (born 1946) and Brian Doyle-Murray (1945), with unforgettable contributions from Bill Murray (1950) and Chevy Chase (1943). From the perspective of someone who wasn’t around when it originally happened, it’s hard to tell whether a lot of this generation’s comedy classics were considered classic because they were actually funny, or if they were memorable and well-loved simply for representing the first time Boomers were allowed to joke about having sex and doing drugs.

Certainly, drugs and sex are inseparable from Caddyshack. The film was shot in Florida in 1979 and virtually everyone involved agrees that it was the product of tremendous amounts of cocaine and pot. According to Chris Nashawaty’s seminal making-of book, the original rough cut of Caddyshack ran four and a half hours, with an extended version of the Bill-Murray-masturbating-the-ball-plunger gag running more than 30 minutes alone.

Harold Ramis (then a first-time director) had thrown out the script and let the actors do basically whatever they thought was funny at the time. The warty, unreleasably long initial cut was the result. As many have noted, Ted Knight, a well-known actor from the Mary Tyler Moore show who played Judge Elihu Smails, Chevy Chase (still the biggest star from Saturday Night Live), Michael O’Keefe (the young actor who played Danny Noonan, who was nominated for an Oscar in his previous performance), and Rodney Dangerfield’s acting styles are all so different as to feel like they were making different movies. In essence, they were. Usually, when I write these movie retrospectives, I include a few contemporary reviews to show how wrong those critics were. With Caddyshack, most of the specific criticisms leveled at the time are fairly accurate.

Producer Jon Peters came up with the idea of the gopher (originally Carl Spackler’s unseen adversary) as a Hail Mary attempt to tie the movie together, and reportedly spent a quarter to half a million dollars on the animatronic puppet, built by an Oscar-winning puppet designer for Star Wars. Peters, incidentally, got his start in show business by being Barbra Streisand’s hairdresser (turned boyfriend). He’d later go on to try to convince Kevin Smith to have Superman fight a giant spider. Doug Kenney (and to a lesser extent Harold Ramis) apparently hated the gopher. Kenney was reportedly still depressed about how the film turned out when he died in a hiking accident (or possibly suicide) in Kauai just three months later. As Michael O’Keefe put it, paraphrasing David Crosby, “If you can remember the filming of Caddyshack you weren’t really there.”

Of course, we can celebrate the sexual and chemical liberation of the time without necessarily wanting to relive the products of it. Animal House (the 1978 smash hit precursor to Caddyshack, also co-written by Harold Ramis and Doug Kenney), to my Gen Y eyes, is only kind of so-so. And both of Bill Murray’s pre-Caddyshack starring efforts, Meatballs and Where The Buffalo Roam, are basically unwatchable. Blues Brothers, shot in parallel to Caddyshack with more or less the other halves of the Saturday Night Live and National Lampoon crews, has great music but is largely indecipherable to me as humor. I literally don’t understand what the joke is supposed to be.

It doesn’t help that my generation essentially had our own Caddyshack (Happy Gilmore), and even our own John Belushi (Chris Farley). Every time an older person told us that what we liked was a sad echo of what they liked we doubled down out of spite. Watch Caddyshack, you say? How about f*ck off?

It’s also weird to talk about Caddyshack being cool, because, to state the obvious, it’s about golf, the least cool, least iconoclastic sport ever devised, outside of maybe polo or lacrosse. As Chevy Chase himself told Nashawaty, “I’d never gone for golf: I was more of a tennis player. My father told me to stay away from Republicans on golf courses, because they just wasted the day so they could stay away from their families.”

When people talk this way, or suggest seizing golf course land to house the homeless or reclaiming it for public green space, I can’t entirely disagree. Yet my own experience was different, more like the Murrays’. Despite being solidly middle class, I grew up golfing. Mine was the rare father who took up golf in middle age, more as a way for the family to do something together rather than escape them. We played the crappy muni courses exclusively, unless I had a school match or a tournament at a country club (none of which I ever won).

I don’t think I saw golf specifically as a strategy for us non-Anglo whites to ingratiate ourselves to WASP society at the time (not much “old money” where I grew up, for one thing), though that theme was present if I’d been attuned enough to look for it. I do remember a country club that brought out rubber mats for my school team to hit off when we arrived to play a match (to keep from damaging the nice grass on the range that the members used), where the club pro had a heated argument with a 15-year-old about whether the kid’s twill pants counted as denim or not. I still wish those people nothing but the worst.

All of which is to say: golf, then and now, is fertile ground for a class struggle story, even beyond the autobiographical elements for the ex-caddy Murray boys, and Douglas Kenney, whose father was a tennis pro. Maybe that’s why, despite all the things working against it, generationally and technically, Caddyshack stands above its peers (excluding Airplane!, which Doug Kenney realized even then was funnier than Caddyshack, and probably still is).

As Nashawaty writes in his book, Caddyshack represented the coming together of the three dominant comedic forces of the era: Saturday Night Live (with the Murray brothers and Chevy Chase), the National Lampoon (Doug Kenney and Harold Ramis), and SCTV (Ramis and Doyle-Murray). The first time I saw it when I was younger, much of it surely didn’t translate, outside of the boobs and the catchphrases. Understanding the history of the National Lampoon does help you appreciate it on a different level — the goofy character names, like Lacey Underalls and Maggie O’Hooligan (or the more embarrassing “Smoke Porterhouse,” for the black shoe shiner), and the odd vignettes, like the synchronized swimming bit in the pool scene, especially feel like Lampoon cartoons.

It’s also refreshing for the way it preceded certain conventions. Modern comedies tend to stick star performers into stock situations; Caddyshack seems more willing to let a situation itself be funny. The whole candybar-in-the-pool scene doesn’t have any of the major players in it, but still stands out as one of the better scenes and clearly took a lot of work to shoot (the Busby Berkeley synchronized swimming parody in the middle). 70s comedies also had a great appreciation for the sight gag, like when Mrs. Smails attempts to christen the dinghy.

Orion Pictures

Mostly though, I appreciate some of the more subtly clever bits of Caddyshack that tend to get drowned out by the gopher, the boobs, Rodney’s one-liners, Bill Murray’s catchphrases, and the general loudness of it. Like Chevy Chase asking, “Do you do drugs, Danny?” “Every day, sir.”

It’s worth noting that the two worst parts of the movie (at least for me) — the gopher and the nonsensical, much-too-long scene between Bill Murray and Chevy Chase (where Chevy Chase has to play through Bill Murray’s greenskeeper hovel with his smokable grass) — were both Jon Peters’ ideas. Meanwhile, the entire drunk bishop exchange, ending with him slurring “there is no God,” is sublime in a way I never fully appreciated the first time around.

In jokes like that, and in Judge Smails casually telling Danny “I’ve sentenced boys younger than you to the gas chamber. I didn’t want to do it. I felt I owed it to them,” you get a sense of Doug Kenney’s rebellious streak, so much discussed in all the later histories and biographies of him. Assuming, of course, that those jokes were even Kenney’s (at the very least, we know that “every day, sir” wasn’t the line in the script).

I think part of the reason Caddyshack persists as a cultural phenomenon is that it’s fundamentally unexplainable. There’s a disjointedness and mystery to the movie — even amidst a mostly broad, stupid comedy — that allows for multiple interpretations. Even Douglas Kenney’s death was up for interpretation (Drugs? Accident? Suicide?).

At least as it relates to Caddyshack, “I guess you had to be there” isn’t entirely a criticism. It’s also a decent summation of its appeal. The film represented both the culmination and the end of an entire artistic era. The Boomers had rebelled against the old rules long enough to discover their own. Never again could they be so confident that doing tons of cocaine was just harmless fun, or that throwing out the script would make for a better movie. Yet you can sense all the fun they were having even when you know it won’t all turn out great for them, and the freedom is contagious. It carries with it the nostalgic glow of a time before consequences. Who wouldn’t want to relive that?

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read his interviews with ‘Caddyshack’ author Chris Nashawaty here and his interview with Danny Noonan actor Michael O’Keefe here.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

More Reports Have Surfaced Of Trump Associates Helping Kanye West Land On Presidential Ballots

While fans await his now-delayed Donda album, Kanye West’s main focus has been on his aspirations to become president of the United States. After officially launching his campaign with a rally in South Carolina, which received mixed reactions from both attendees and people on social media, West briefly considered postponing his presidential run to 2024 before back-pedaling. Despite declaring his run much later than most candidates, West is getting quite the help in landing on this fall’s ballots.

A new report from CNN says that Republicans, some of which have ties to President Donald Trump, are working hard to get West on presidential general election ballots in a number of states, including Wisconsin, Vermont, and Arkansas. Another report from VICE confirmed, thanks to an email they obtained, that Rachel George, a top Colorado GOP strategist and longtime Republican operative, is do the same thing in Colorado.

Earlier this week, a report surfaced that West was receiving help from the GOP despite previously saying he distanced himself from the Republican Party to run as an Independent, thanks to The Intelligencer. The report claimed that one of West’s electors in Vermont, Chuck Wilton, and his campaign’s Arkansas point of contact, Gregg Keller are well-known members of the Republican party.

Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

When should you ditch your doctor? Why I fired my psychiatrist and never looked back.

Picking a psychiatrist is a precarious situation, one I know all too well. I have bipolar disorder, depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. I have been in and out of therapy for nearly 20 years. And while I have left doctors for a wide variety of reasons—I’ve moved, I felt better and “been better,” I’ve given up on pharmacology and stopped taking meds—I’ve only had to fire one.

The reason? She was judgemental and disrespectful. In her office, I wasn’t seen, heard or understood.

To help you understand the gravity of the situation, I should give you some context. In the spring of 2017, I was doing well and feeling good, at least for the most part. My family was healthy. I was happy, and life was more or less normal, so I stopped seeing my psychiatrist. I decided I didn’t need my meds.

But by the summer, my mood was shifting. I was cycling (which occurs when bipolar patients vacillate between periods of mania and depression) and when I suffered a miscarriage that fall, I plunged into a deep depressive episode—one I knew I couldn’t pull myself out of.


I called my psychiatrist to make an appointment. She put me in the books for later that week. But then I got a call back.

“I’m having an issue processing your payment. Has your insurance changed?”

It had. My carrier had changed over the summer, but I didn’t think much of it. Insurance providers change all the time. But this change, I learned, was problematic.

“I’m sorry, Kim, but we don’t take United Healthcare.”

I was gutted. I had worked with the same psychiatrist for years. She knew my family, my story and my backstory. With her, I could be honest. She put me at ease. But now, I needed to find a new doctor—in the midst of depression, while moving through life in a fog, a haze.

I called more than two dozen numbers. Some doctors were not accepting new patients. Others had exorbitant wait times. I was given an appointment four months in the future. But most never called me back. I pled and left messages but my phone never rang—at least not until she called. Not her receptionist or her office manager, but the doctor herself.

To say I was excited would be an understatement. I assumed Dr. W’s responsiveness was a sign of her devotion and dedication. She must be very committed to her patients. Plus, she was close by. I had an appointment less than two miles from my home the following week.

But my enthusiasm ended then and there.

During our first session, Dr. W suggested that when my meds were balanced out I would have a more “normal” appearance—and normal hair. My bright pink locks offended her. She said I should consider a more natural color. I should consider going back to my roots.

During our second session, she asked what my husband thought about my piercings and tattoos. Yes, I have a lot, but she asked this in 2017, not 1967. My husband’s opinion shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Plus, these were my appointments. These sessions were supposed to be about my mental health. And each appointment thereafter was riddled with put downs. She constantly criticized me, my relationship and my appearance.

But that wasn’t my breaking point. I decided to fire my psychiatrist when I told her I was having suicidal thoughts and she dismissed them. When she called in (yet another) prescription—one with a higher dose.

Of course, psychiatrists prescribe medication. That’s their job. That is what they do. But the problem wasn’t medication per say, it was the fact that I thought my antidepressants were causing said thoughts and she wrote me off. She said such side effects were very rare. She also told me it was all in my head. I just needed to breathe. To relax. To “take my meds.”

I walked out the door that day feeling helpless and hopeless.

I walked out the door that day and never went—or looked—back.

That said, there are several reasons why you should fire your psychologist, psychiatrist, and/or therapist. Some medical professionals are dismissive, while others are overly supportive. Some seem distant and distracted. They rush you and lack interest in—and concern for—your life. And some relationships are just not meant to be. Comfort and rapport is key.

You also may need to find a new doc if and when you stop progressing because growth is everything. Good therapists challenge you. According to Katie Lear, a licensed clinical mental health counselor in private practice in North Carolina, good doctors support you.

“A good mental health practitioner always makes sure that their client feels safe,” Lear says. “You may feel challenged, vulnerable, or even a little defensive, but never unsafe or uncertain about your trust in your provider.”

That said, there is also no one-size-fits-all answer for what makes someone a good therapist.

“Studies show time and time again that more than any particular skill set, the relationship and trust between therapist and patient is the most healing part of therapy treatment,” Lear explains.

Christene Lozano, a certified sex addiction therapist, licensed marriage & family therapist and the founder of Meraki Counseling providing online sex therapy in California and Oregon, agrees.

“While there are many factors that go into making a good therapist, such as the therapist’s training and expertise, one of the most important components is the relationship between the client and their therapist,” says Lozano. “While there can be many excellent therapists out there, they all won’t be a good fit for the client. It is somewhat similar to dating: There are some awesome people in the world, and all those people may not be the best romantic partner for you.”

So how do you find your best match? Through research, trial and error. Getting recommendations can also help.

As for me, I have an excellent psychiatrist today—one whom I trust wholly and completely. One I trust with my life. And the reason is two-fold: He is educated, qualified, empathetic and sympathetic. He also listens. So please know you are worth it. Your life is worth it. Your health and happiness matters, and it’s okay to set boundaries, even with psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.