Category: Worldwide

There’s a limit on crazy — even for a president whose hobbies include retweeting QAnon conspiracies and dismantling democracy — and it looks like Sidney Powell just reached it.

Powell, an attorney, and outspoken Trump supporter was named to the president’s legal team last week as he continued to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s effort to hold up the transition of power in court with lawsuits in multiple states alleging various forms of voter fraud has been going embarrassingly poorly as more and more judges throw out unsubstantiated cases and his top legal aide, Rudy Giuliani invites the press to his public meltdowns. Powell was part of that team, working for Giuliani and Trump, who seemed confident in her abilities just a few days prior.

But this tweet didn’t age well. That’s because Powell quickly started attacking members of the president’s own party in her attempt to prove voter fraud had taken place in Georgia — a state which turned blue for Biden and is currently in the midst of a run-off election that could turn the Senate majority for the Democrats. Powell has attacked Georgia’s Republican Governor, Brian Kemp, after he certified the state’s vote for Biden, but it’s her wild claims about organized voter fraud that probably proved to be the final nail in her political coffin.

On Thursday, Powell — who’s diatribe was overshadowed by Rudy Giuliani’s hair-dye incident — told the press she believed Dominion, Georgia’s voting software system, was created at the direction of the late Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez:

“Georgia is probably going to be the first state I’m going to blow up … and Mr. Kemp and the Secretary of State need to go with it because they’re in on the Dominion scam. Another benefit Dominion was created to reward is what I would call election insurance, that’s why Hugo Chavez had it created in the first place. I also wonder where he got the technology, where it actually came from because I think it’s him or … the CIA.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, especially after Powell threatened Kemp with a “biblical lawsuit” and suggested the state had voting servers in Germany that might have also been compromised. None of these claims have been verified and Powell has shown no evidence when asked to produce back-up for these allegations. And look, we could continue to shame Trump, Powell and the rest of the GOP’s cronies by fact-checking their obvious lies to death, but then you wouldn’t get to bask in the joy of watching Twitter drag them within an inch of their lives.

Powell has said she’ll continue to pursue legal avenues to a Trump victory on her own like some kind of socialist-crusading maverick, but it looks like the moral of the story for future Trump clout-chasers is this: if your conspiracy theory involves dead Latin American Marxists rigging votes, you’ve gone too far.

Comedian Hasan Minhaj is Twitter’s latest hero after people are suddenly recalling a 2019 video that shows the former The Daily Show correspondent suggesting that Dax Shepard might be “schlubby.” The viral clip is from a feature for Vanity Fair where Minhaj agreed to be hooked up to a lie detector test while answering a series of brutally honest questions. Not long into the segment, Minhaj is told that Dax Shepard rated the comedian’s looks as a “9.” After being asked if he thought that number was low, Minhaj was then asked to rate Shepard’s looks, and that’s when things got real.

“I would give Dax a… 6.57.” Minhaj hesitantly revealed. However, when it came time to reveal his reasoning, the former Daily Show correspondent became considerably less reluctant and went all-in on not just on Shepard’s looks, but on the unfair standards for men of color who can’t just be another average white guy if they want to make it in Hollywood.

“OK, Dax is part of a thing where in show business there’s this whole movement of approachable white dudes. Whereas with men of color, it’s like Idris Elba, Henry Golding, Zayn Malik or you work in IT,” Minhaj said while pointing to himself. “There is no middle. You know how there’s a whole class of white dudes, like just schlubby white dudes who went to high school with me but now made it in showbiz? There’s no that.”

You can watch the clip below:

Minhaj’s refreshingly honest take on Shepard (and the very loose standards for attractiveness when it comes to white guys) caught fire on Twitter where Hasan is currently trending thanks to an avalanche users who can’t seem to find the lie in the comedian’s words.

You can watch the full Vanity Fair interview with Minhaj video below:

(Via Vanity Fair)

Johnny Rotten, of the bands Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd, recently published a new book, I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right, which his website says “features random thoughts about the way John sees life, along with anecdotes from his unique and extraordinary career.” One of those anecdotes in particular has drawn some attention lately, as Rotten revealed he suffered some flea bites on his penis after letting squirrels into his house.

In the book, Rotten describes becoming friendly with some squirrels near his Venice Beach home and letting them into his house. It appears he also got friendly with some unwanted bugs that may have hitched a ride in on his furry friends, as he wrote, “I looked down there this morning at my willy and there’s a f*cking flea bite on it. And there’s another one on the inside of my leg.”

Rotten continued:

“The bites, wow, last night was murder because of it. The itching too. It’s such a poxy thing to get caught out on. The only way around it, because I’m not going to blame the poor little squirrels, is to Vaseline my legs. I just hope they don’t get the wrong idea. […] I’m determined to keep my squirrel friends independent, y’know. There’s no petting. If they want to nudge up that’s fine, but I know it’s for a peanut and not because I’m lovely. Wow, do they love me for [the food I buy for them]. I’m definitely spending a lot of money on these little f*ckers.”

Learn more about the book here.

When I walked in the front door of my apartment carrying a freshly delivered PS5, I jokingly said to my fiance that “my Bugsnax machine has finally arrived.” When I carefully opened the box, unsheathed it from the plastic, and stood it on my coffee table, I jokingly said to myself “I can’t believe they fit all those Bugsnax in such a little device.”

There are actually two jokes in there. But when I finally plugged it in, booted it up, and had to make the decision about which brand-new title was going to be the first to thrust me into the world of next-gen gaming…

I went with Bugsnax.

Bugsnax is, without a shred of humor, exactly what I needed to introduce myself to the Playstation 5. For the last few years, I’ve been a nearly exclusive PC Gamer: sitting in a chair, at my desk, keyboard, and mouse. I’ve been playing deep strategy games, long-winded RPG’s, competitive esports titles. I took a year off Rocket League because I had become so frustrated with high-ranking toxic players that I had turned into a high-ranking toxic player– video games had begun to lose their magical ability to relax, comfort, and refresh me. And even when I had attempted to get back in the swing of things with Animal Crossing on Switch much earlier in 2020, I found the act of sitting down to play intensely laborious, to the point of giving up on it after only a few weeks.

Enter, my Bugsnax machine: gateway to the most casual video game experience of the next generation.

What’s cool about Bugsnax is that it’s incredibly care-free, and I mean that in both the sense of whimsy and in the alternative interpretation of “without care” … in a good way. Let me explain. Bugsnax is advertised as a game about capturing semi-sentient hotdogs with legs, called “Bugsnax,” with characters who eat the semi-sentient hotdogs with legs, who then become part-hotdog and develop “weenie hands.” Then when you actually play the game, one of the first characters you meet is named “C. Clumby Clumbernut” and the game is exactly as advertised. That’s the experience!

The developers, Young Horses Games, don’t promise much beyond that, and it’s not expected either. They don’t care that all the names for the Bugsnax didn’t need a second draft. They don’t care that Bugsnax has PS3-era graphics. They don’t care that Cyberpunk 2077, a game promising to be incredibly deep and feature-rich, is the most talked-about game of the last few years and isn’t even out yet. They don’t care, because they know they don’t have to. The imaginative concept of the game is all they needed to get me to play it. And then when they clearly triple-commit on all fronts by including a ranch-dressing slingshot and missions that require giving someone “Bopsicle legs,” Bugsnax feels like a very on-purpose journey into what makes a video game more like a “video game” and less like a blockbuster experience.

Which is exactly why I beat it.

The whole thing is like six to 10 hours depending on how long it takes for you to figure out how to catch a Cinnasnail for the first time– I googled, sorry– but even at its most confusing/repetitive moments, it never became frustrating enough to sour my playthrough. I think this is because of two factors. The first and the easiest to understand: the game is free with PS Plus. It’s so low-risk that it can only be reward. The second factor: it’s not promising to be the most incredibly deep and feature-rich game of all time! I stopped playing Red Dead Redemption 2 the absolute millisecond it asked me, for the second time in one sitting, to brush my horse in order to avoid penalties to its health regeneration. That’s a true story and one that I’m not super embarrassed about. Some people are into that and want the most realistic gaming experience possible, some people’s attention span doesn’t go beyond holding down the X button.

And honestly, being able to forget about tracking stats or weapon durability for a little while is actually pretty fun. I played over half the game before I encountered a cliff I could fall off of. I realized I had yet to die and that’s when a cliff you could “fall off of” became a cliff you could “jump off of.” I didn’t care if I died because I had no health, no inventory, no set amount of lives. So I jumped and the screen faded to black for a second… and just spawned me right back where I lept. Fantastic.

Bugsnax isn’t a kid’s game. The amount of off-beat sexual innuendos, tumultuous marriages, and dark moments of humor in the game should let you know that pretty quickly. But it is remarkably easy, pretty silly, and enough fun for a couple of afternoons. It’s also my first and, as of this moment, only “must-play” recommendation for those of us lucky enough to have a PS5 right now.

Just promise me that if you do play it, you’ll play until the very end. Also, Kero Kero Bonito made the Bugsnax theme song and they also made this song which is a good song that I like a lot.

Kinda bug and kinda snack, try to catch ’em in your trap… Oh-oo-oh talkin’ ’bout Bugsnax…

After the success of its first artist partnership, fast-food giant McDonald’s went international with its next bid for pop culture dominance, tapping the Colombia-born Reggaeton star J Balvin for a new meal and merch deal. It’s a smart move on the part of the golden arches; while Travis Scott is one of the best-selling hip-hop stars of the moment, tapping into a youth movement that’s all about rage, J Balvin is the hero for Latin culture both in the US and worldwide, reaching an audience that any brand would love to be granted access to.

One of the best-selling Reggaeton stars ever, J Balvin boasts more than 35 million records sold worldwide, with a list of hits both solo (“Azul,” “Mi Gente,” “Morado“) and alongside other major stars (“I Like It” with Cardi B and Bad Bunny, “Con Altura” with Rosalía). Put quite simply, J Balvin is a superstar of the same wavelength as Michael Jackson or Queen. His partnership with McDonald’s officially launched on Friday, with a meal in McDonald’s locations (a Big Mac with no pickles, medium fries with ketchup, and an Oreo McFlurry), merchandise (now available at Balvin’s online merch store), and a musical ad titled “Dorado” featuring a fleet of J Balvins as customers and employees at a McDonald’s.

I got to interview J Balvin about the collaboration via Zoom, asking him about the zany wigs he wears in the commercial, what the partnership with a globally recognized brand like McDonald’s means to the growing global community of Latin music aficionados, and most importantly, whether or not the ice cream machines worked when he was behind the counter. Check it out below.

What was your reaction to hearing that McDonald’s wanted to give you your own meal?

Man, it was crazy because even though I was born in Colombia, I used to watch it in the movies and on the TV. When I had the chance to go to the States, that’s when I was like, “Wow, I love this.” And the meal is basically what I ordered every time I used to go to McDonald’s. I’m still going to McDonald’s, but I’m talking more about when I was a kid, so it really means a lot to me.
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What does it mean to you to be a part of this incredible resurgence of reggaeton in the American market, and what impact will this have on the perception of it here in America?

We’ll just keep reaching more globally than before, and we want to keep showing the planet that this movement is here to stay. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Keep working and keep elevating the culture and connecting with the world and definitely with the United States, too.

Now, I’m old, so I grew up on reggaeton, like Ivy Queen’s first few albums, Wisin y Yandel-

You’re not old. Come on.

I feel old sometimes. Who are your first reggaeton heroes?

Daddy Yankee definitely was my biggest inspiration when everything started, and of course, he still is. But of course, the OGs, Tego, Yandel, Wisin, Don Omar, all those guys really inspired me. Héctor & Tito. It’s a lot of people that inspired me.

What’s your favorite piece of merchandise from the collaboration collection?

Man, the hoodies are amazing.

Did you see the chicken nugget body pillow that they did with Travis Scott?

Yeah. Fire!

Would you get one?

Of course!

Have you tried Travis’s meal, and what did you think of it? Do you think he’s tried yours?

I was in Colombia when they dropped that one. I don’t know, man, but it’s dope to be a part of this campaign where an icon like Travis started it, so it’s really dope.

As far as the commercial, who came up with the concept of the commercial, and why did it appeal to you?

Colin Tilley. Basically, he brought the idea and we loved it 100%.

What was your favorite character to play?

Man, all of them. The old guy. The grandpa is fire. The emo dude. No, it’s a lot of different vibes. I enjoyed them all.

Did the ice cream machine work?

It did work.

So, all we need to get ice cream at McDonald’s is to have J Balvin come with us.

Be with me. [Laughs]

How many takes did you need to film the entire commercial?

It was a lot of takes because we have to change for every single character, do the right steps and the right moves, not to cross the cameras. It was, I guess, 10 hours nonstop.

You know what was really bizarre was seeing you with the wigs on. I’m so used to seeing you with your short hair. What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done with your hair?

There’s a lot of looks that I’m like, “Why did I do that before?” I remember that I used to have, when we dropped “Mi Gente,” was kind of like a long hair, straightened.

I remember that.

We were so ahead, doing these crazy things. Now I see it like, “Wow, what happened to me?” But I like to be different. I mean, not being different, just being [myself].

When I was getting ready for the interview, I Googled “J Balvin,” and one of the first suggested questions was, “Is J Balvin a Bad Bunny?” And it cracked me up. Have you ever Googled yourself, and what was the funniest or weirdest result?

I haven’t Googled myself in the latest months, honestly, but that’s funny.

What’s a question no one ever asks you in interviews that you wish they’d asked?

Wow. If I know how to cook?

If you know how to cook, what do you know how to cook?

Nothing. That’s what we got McDonald’s for!

What’s your favorite non-McDonald’s meal to eat?

Pasta!

This has been an amazing year for you. What was your favorite accomplishment from this year, and what are some things you hope to accomplish in the next one?

The fact that we were at the Super Bowl this year was amazing. It was really a big dream accomplished. The McDonald’s collab was super dope. The fact that we still doing this and people connect with it. We dropped the album Colores. And definitely my new Jordans. They’re coming up on December 4th.

There’s always the tweet. And a turkey. Since the 1980s (not the 1940s, as widely believed), the president has pardoned a turkey every Thanksgiving. It’s a weird, barbaric tradition when you think about it for even a second, but so is Thanksgiving. Anyway!

In 2018, Donald Trump pardoned two birds, Peas and Carrots, based on the results of an online poll. “The winner of this vote was decided by a fair and open election conducted on the White House website. This was a fair election,” he said to light-to-nonexistent laughter on the Rose Garden lawn. “Unfortunately Carrots refused to concede and demanded a recount, and we’re still fighting with Carrots. And I will tell you, we’ve come to a conclusion: Carrots, I’m sorry to tell you, the result did not change. It’s too bad for Carrots.” Hmm, this whole “refusing to concede a fair election” thing sounds familiar…

In case you’re wondering, Peas and Carrots “were implied to be still alive as of November 2019,” unlike Trump’s chance of serving a second term. This year’s ritualistic turkeys are Corn and Cob, who will be driven from Iowa “to Washington, D.C. in a van, but the second they arrive, the celebration begins. The turkeys get a red carpet welcome at a fancy hotel. They have their own room, adjoining with their caretaker,” according to WQAD. “On Thanksgiving, they will be 19 weeks, weighing about 42 pounds each.”

If you’re not Team Cob, you’re wrong.

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw a bunch of EPs and Megan Thee Stallion deliver some good news. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

Megan Thee Stallion — Good News

Meg has a lot going on in her life right now, both related to and outside of music. The most joyous of it all is her new album, which starts with an everything-but-the-name shot at Tory Lanez and goes on to see Meg confidently strut her stuff from there.

Miley Cyrus — “Prisoner” Feat. Dua Lipa

Both Miley and Dua have pumped out a lot of collaborations this year, so it was almost a matter of time before they managed to cross paths. That’s what they did last week on “Prisoner,” which averages out their respective styles and comes with a steamy video.

DaBaby — My Brother’s Keeper (Long Live G) EP

This was a strong week for EPs, and DaBaby had one of the finest. The project honors the rapper’s brother who passed away earlier this month from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His passing puts a dour cap on an already-gloomy year, but DaBaby processed his feelings in the best way he knows how, which has resulted in a poignant and impactful work.

Meek Mill — Quarantine Pack EP

It’s been two years since Meek Mill last released an album, which may as well be two decades in a time when rappers drop multiple projects a year and deluxe albums come less than a week after the base record. He broke up his quiet spell last week, though, with a surprise new EP, which he managed to release presumably during downtime from campaigning for James Harden to head to Philadelphia.

Jeezy — The Recession 2

The biggest Jeezy story of the week was his reconciliation with Gucci Mane ahead of their Verzuz battle, but he also dropped a new project. Gucci’s not on it, but Demi Lovato, Ne-Yo, Yo Gotti, Rick Ross, and some others are.

Slowthai — “NHS”

After a year full of collaborations with artists like Disclosure and Gorillaz, Slowthai is ready to drop a new release of his own. He announced that Tyron will be out early next year, and that announcement was accompanied by the introspective single “NHS.”

Tierra Whack — “Feel Good” and “Peppers And Onions”

A song called “Feel Good” creates assumptions of a certain disposition, but Whack takes the tune in an opposite, more introspective direction. She also dropped “Pepper And Onions,” which is similarly thoughtful but with a more upbeat aesthetic.

IDK — “2 Cents”

IDK, always productive, dropped off IDK & Friends 2 this year, his fourth project in four years. He’s not resting yet, as he just shared a new single, “2 Cents,” on which he pleads the fifth and keeps his thoughts (or two cents) to himself after observing what’s going on around him.

Phoebe Bridgers — Copycat Killer EP

After reinterpreting a Goo Goo Dolls classic, Bridgers has gone ahead and reinterpreted her own music. Her new EP features re-worked versions of some Punisher songs that take on a more orchestral vibe thanks to help from Rob Moose.

The War On Drugs — Live Drugs

The War On Drugs is one of the best live rock bands today, so it’s about time they put out a live album. Adam Granduciel said of the collection, “It feels like it’s kind of a reset, to be able to put something out that’s a really good interpretation of the way we interpret our music live. Even though this recording is from a year of tours, this is really how these six guys evolved as a band from 2014 to 2019.”

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

In a move that surprised even Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit is now its most-watched limited series ever. According to the streaming platform’s internal numbers, the chess drama starring Anya Taylor-Joy has been watched by a “record-setting 55 million households” during its first four weeks. The Queen’s Gambit has also been an global hit as the show made the Top 10 in 92 countries and ranked No. 1 in 58 countries.

Of course, Netflix doesn’t share its numbers with third parties for verification, but it does point to external signs that The Queen’s Gambit is making an impact on the cultural zeitgeist. According to a press release from Netflix, the original 1983 book The Queen’s Gambit has reappeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and the show is driving demand for all things chess. Google searches for “how to play chess” are at an all-time high and sales of chess sets are through the roof as Goliath Games has seen a 170% increase in chess set purchases while eBay is reporting a 250% increase. On top of that, the number of players on Chess.com has increased “five-fold.”

It also didn’t hurt that Taylor-Joy worked intensely on her chess skills to bring authenticity to The Queen’s Gambit, and she recently described to us how it felt like learning dance choreography:

Thomas [Brodie-Sangster] and I had the best time in the speed chess matches because chess is historically a solitary game. But when you’re learning sequences, you have a dance partner. You cannot move until he moves. So we both felt very chuffed and very proud of ourselves whenever we would finish those sequences, because it was like, “Oh, we achieved something together. You were great. I was great. This was great.”

The Queen’s Gambit is currently available to stream on Netflix.

The Los Angeles Lakers will enter the 2020-21 season looking to defend the NBA championship they won just over a month ago in the Orlando Bubble, and while LeBron James and Anthony Davis will still be the starring pieces, the roster around them will look quite different.

L.A.’s run through the Bubble playoffs was impressive, going 16-5 as they rolled past the Blazers, Rockets, Nuggets, and Heat en route to their first title in a decade. Such a run could have lulled them into a sense that all they needed to do to position themselves for next season was to bring back the same rotation players and add some on the periphery. However, Rob Pelinka and the Lakers front office recognized that their run to the title wasn’t perfect and also didn’t come up against the expected top teams in either conference, and with the possibility of those teams loading up to make a run at L.A., the Lakers had to be proactive.

The result has been an offseason overhaul that has seen a number of contributors from last year leave L.A. and new faces brought in with the hope of raising the team’s ceiling. Gone are Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, Avery Bradley, and JaVale McGee, all of whom played fairly significant roles in the regular season, with Rondo, Green, and Howard all being key contributors in the playoffs. In their place, the Lakers have brought in Dennis Schröder, Wesley Matthews, Montrezl Harrell, and Marc Gasol, bringing a balance of savvy veterans and a touch more youth than the Lakers had a year ago, along with ensuring they re-signed Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and got Markieff Morris back on a minimum deal.

What’s most interesting about the Lakers moves is they hinge on the playoff readiness of two players who, to this point, are quite unproven on that stage. Schröder’s raw production in the postseason has been fine over his last three trips since becoming a heavy rotation piece in Atlanta and OKC, but the concern lies with his shooting. Last year was the best shooting season of his career, but in the first round loss to the Rockets he hit just 28.9 percent from distance on 6.4 attempts per game. Meanwhile, Harrell’s playoff woes from this past season with the Clippers were well documented, as he struggled mightily to match the productivity that made him the league’s Sixth Man of the Year as the other L.A. squad bowed out in the second round.

The hope of the Lakers is that putting those players around LeBron and Davis is enough to alleviate some of the pressure they may have felt that contributed to some playoff shakiness. Harrell, on top of that, was coming off of a personal tragedy and significant time away from the court, and may simply have not been able to regain his rhythm once he arrived in Orlando. Matthews and Gasol are the known commodities and will slide into the roles of Green and Howard, although Gasol’s skillset is wildly different from any of the centers the Lakers had on the roster last year.

If it all shakes right, they’ll be prohibitive favorites once again no matter what else happens with the Clippers and Bucks and the rest, but questions certainly persist. If Schröder’s shooting uptick from last year is real, he’s a massive upgrade in the backcourt. If not, he’s not really an upgrade from Rondo. If Harrell’s playoff issues were the result of his absence and not a referendum on him as an 82-game player compared to a 16-game one, he’ll inject some much-needed life into the bench unit. If not, he might find himself on a shorter leash than Doc Rivers provided a year ago. If Gasol’s shakiness at times in the Celtics series was simply a bad seven-game stretch and not signs of decline, he’s a delightful fit alongside LeBron as two of the great modern basketball savants. If not, Lakers fans will be pining for Howard’s athleticism as Gasol plods along.

I say this not to pour cold water on their signings, but to note that none of these moves are sure things. The Lakers hope that enough of them pan out to raise their ceiling, which we already know is tremendously high.

There is very real upside to all of the moves the Lakers made, and for that they are being rightfully commended for a strong offseason.

They were able to remove the rose-colored glasses in the post-championship fog and take real stock of their weaknesses as a roster, and for all the crowing about criticism of the team’s construction being over the top last season, this front office clearly recognized there was legitimacy to some of it. They needed more playmaking and added Schröder to the backcourt and Gasol to the frontcourt. They had to let a veteran 3-and-D wing go to make the Schröder deal happen and managed to pick arguably the best one up off the free agent market in Matthews. Howard’s presence last year was terrific, but he wasn’t as versatile as they’d like to be able to play against every team and so they let him walk to Philadelphia and landed Gasol, who won’t be the shot-blocker Howard was but gives them the aforementioned playmaking and shooting Howard couldn’t.

Because they are new players and different moves, it’s easy to point out the potential pitfalls, but running it back had the same, if not greater risks. Rondo was tremendous in the playoffs last year, but he was genuinely shaky in the regular season and for the money he was commanding, it would’ve been a hefty investment to try and bring him back. Howard looks revitalized, but the combination of he and McGee isn’t exactly guaranteed stability, and while Danny Green did a lot of things that go unnoticed because of the shooting woes, it might just be possible that he’s taken a step back as a sharpshooter. Had they run it back, few would’ve batted an eye, but it would’ve been risky in its own right.

As such, Pelinka and company deserve the praise they’ve gotten for the roster overhaul, because it’s so easy to rest on your laurels as the defending champs and assume you can replicate it with the same group. They recognized the danger in doing that and have done what they can to give this team a chance to get even better next season, which always should be the goal because every other contender is going to be putting in the effort to close the gap and pass you.

We’ll find out next postseason if the moves pay off, but the status quo wasn’t going to be enough for the Lakers and they certainly took advantage of their position as the top contender to lure in more talent.

Who knew the saga of The Croods was so … fraught. Look, I’ll be honest here, I had little to zero working knowledge of The Croods backstory before Universal sent me a screener of the new sequel, The Croods: A New Age. If you had asked me when the original The Croods came out I would have guessed 2017. But, no, it was way back in 2013, somehow. And that movie made over half a billion dollars. This sequel was supposed to come out in 2017 with the original directors, Kirk DeMicco and Chris Sanders (who is one half of the How To Train Your Dragon directors), but obviously did not and DeMicco and Sanders left the project. Now, seven years after the original, right smack in the middle of the worst time in history to release a movie, The Croods: A New Age, directed by Joel Crawford, is upon us. Reading between the lines here, it sounds like there are people walking the earth today who hear the words “The Croods” and respond, “I’m just not ready to talk about that yet.”

Also, the release strategy with this movie is pretty interesting: It will play in theaters over Thanksgiving weekend (if you look around at how the pandemic is very much out of control right now, you should probably not – beyond drive-in theaters or renting out a theater of your own – risk your life to see The Croods: A New Age in a movie theater; and if you want to spend the money to rent out a full theater to watch The Croods: A New Age, well that is between you and your god) and then on December 18th it will be available for streaming (if you want to see this movie, this should be your course of action).

Honestly, it’s hard to make heads or tails out of all these different release strategies, which seems to tell us that no one quite has this figured out. The Croods: A New Age gets a three-week run in theaters, while Wonder Woman 1984 will be on HBO Max, with no extra charge, the same day it hits theaters. Sure, the latter is to boost HBO Max subscriptions (over the last few months, I’ve probably used HBO Max more than any other streaming service, so I get why they probably want to promote it more, thinking, hey, we’ve got a good thing here), but why doesn’t Universal to the same thing with Peacock? (Speaking of Peacock, a few days ago I tried watching Mad Dog and Glory on their premium service and it still had commercial interruptions. It was so maddening I wound up renting it on iTunes instead. This seems like a bad way to run a streaming platform.)

Oh, right, The Croods: A New Age. Like I said, I knew very little about The Croods mythology before watching this movie. I had never seen the first one, but, I guess not surprisingly, I caught on pretty quickly and got the gist. They are cave people (voiced in part by Nic Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and Catherine Keener), who have the intelligence of people today, but haven’t set up a Flintstones-style community with foot-powered cars, or jobs down at the gravel pit, or having an alien friend named The Great Gazoo.

In this adventure, the gang stumbles upon a utopia of food and safety, run by a guy named Phil (Peter Dinklage), his wife, Hope (Leslie Mann), and their daughter, Dawn (Kelly Marie Tran). Everything seems fine and dandy, except the one rule about not eating any bananas and Nic Cage’s Grug really wants a banana. Hijinks ensue! Whatever! I actually found myself enjoying this movie even though I didn’t think that would be remotely possible. What a world.

Again, it should be noted, “I actually found myself enjoying this movie” is not an endorsement for, “and I think it’s worth risking your life to see it in theaters.” Please do not do that. Wait until mid-December and, if you have kids, they will probably love this because it’s very colorful … and even I found myself mesmerized by how colorful it is. A cornucopia of colors! (I guess that’s my pull quote.)

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.