Jayson Tatum has never missed the NBA Playoffs in his career, but as the years of playoff appearances without a championship mounted, questions grew louder about whether he and Jaylen Brown could lead the Boston Celtics to a title together.
On Monday night, they put those questions to rest for good with a dominant five-game Finals win over the Dallas Mavericks to bring Boston its 18th NBA championship, but the first for the storied franchise in 16 years. The emotions poured out of Tatum on the court as the final buzzer sounded, as he bent over, head in his hands, realizing the weight that had finally been pulled off of him.
At the team’s championship celebration later that night, Tatum hopped on the microphone and addressed all those questions about what would happen if he and Brown never won a title with the Celtics, borrowing Kanye West’s line from his legendary Grammys speech, saying “I guess we’ll never know.”
Jayson Tatum dropping a Kayne quote
“Everybody was wondering what would happen if we didn’t win. I guess we’ll never know.” pic.twitter.com/buL1pTVRMt
Tatum’s teammates loved it, especially Jaylen Brown, and Tatum quite literally dropped the mic and walked off, Larry O’Brien in hand, to continue his celebration. The Celtics will take a few days to celebrate their title down in Miami, enjoying some beach time before they come back to Boston for their parade on Friday. We’ll see if Tatum breaks this back out on the parade stage or if he finds any more quotes to borrow for his speech in front of the Celtics faithful.
One of the biggest takeaways, though, was a moment where Grande appeared to switch between using two different versions of her speaking voice, one lower-pitched and one higher. Well, according to Grande herself, fans weren’t just hearing things, and it’s actually intentional on Grande’s part.
In a TikTok comment (as Pop Crave notes), Grande explained, “habit (speaking like this for two years) and also vocal health [tea emoji] i intentionally change my vocal placement (high / low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing [crying emoji] i’ve always done this BYE.”
Ariana Grande comments on viral video of her voice change:
“i intentionally change my vocal placement (high / low) often depending on how much singing i’m doing i’ve always done this BYE” pic.twitter.com/E4LYyWwpnO
This actually isn’t the first time Grande has explained this vocal preservation method of hers. When the clip first made the rounds, one X (formerly Twitter) user shared an older video of Grande in which she says, “I’m speaking in a slightly higher placement than I usually speak in, because I’ve been doing a lot of interviews all day and I’m trying to keep my voice healthy.”
Here Ariana talks about speaking in a higher placement to preserve her voice. It’s something some singers do
She’s also a theatre kid and it’s very expressive so it’s normal her voice fluctuates
Some people are tryna make it seem something it’s not
The Bikeriders will soon arrive in theaters after a long, winding road to release day. The film stars Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Jodie Comer and revolves around The Vandals, a biker club based upon photojournalist Danny Lyon’s seminal black-and-white photo book about his time embedded with real-life 1960s biker culture. The movie also boasts a vast ensemble cast of biker dudes, and of course this means that Norman Reedus had to be involved. How could he not?
Reedus, however, looks like this ^^^ in the movie, which is stunning to behold because this is the truly unwashed version of Norman Reedus rather than the simply greasy version as seen on The Walking Dead and the Daryl Dixon spin off. Heck, the spin off made it a point to give Daryl his first onscreen bath (and perhaps his only tub soak since the zombie apocalypse began), but The Bikeriders has him looking more than merely unwashed. Those teeth are a thing, obviously, but according to director Jeff Nichols, the chompers were actually Reedus’ brainchild, via Variety:
He’s almost unrecognizable as a biker with shaggy, dirty-looking hair, a beard and rotted teeth. “He just didn’t want to look like Daryl Dixon,” Nichols said, referring to the actor’s “Walking Dead” character. “The teeth were his idea and then we went with the hair and beard. His character felt like he could be a catch-all for every crazy frickin’ idea we had and Norman was up for it.”
This is understandable. As much as Reedus has discussed adoring his Daryl Dixon role, he’s also done so for over ten years at this point. Shaking it up is a good thing every so often, but let’s just hope that his wife, Diane Kruger, didn’t have to kiss him with those teeth. Then again, she seems to have a sense of humor, so who knows?
The year is almost half over, and we are still reeling from last year’s various delays to Hollywood’s release schedules. One of the more highly anticipated projects is Jordan Peele’s next flick after the success of his 2022 horror movie NOPE, which not only helped shuffle in a new appreciation for The Scorpion King, but also helped validate Peele’s role as the next great horror director. Unfortunately, we will have to wait a little longer until we get another spooky adventure.
Peele is set to direct his currently untitled fourth film, which is now scheduled for an October 23, 2026 release date. The director announced the new date on his Instagram:
Universal Pictures had previously planned a December 2024 release, though that clearly isn’t on the calendar anymore. In fact, we don’t even know what the movie is about–all we have is the date, which is over two years out.
In January, Peele spoke with Conan O’Brien about his next project, which had been delayed for several reasons. He explained, “It’s been an interesting year because the writer’s strike had had me in a state of listening, and that’s where I need to be,” the writer/director said on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast when asked about any upcoming projects.
He did share one tidbit: “I do feel like my next project is clear to me, and I’m psyched that I have another film that, you know, could be my favorite movie if I make it right.” Hopefully, he feels like he’s had enough time to make it right.
The coming of age era known as your twenties are a time for experimentation, branching out, learning about different aspects of yourself, and of course, having stupid fun.
Of course, every generation‘s definition of fun varies. Just what might Gen Zers, those who navigated their teenhood through TikTok and basically came of drinking age during a global pandemic, do to elicit feelings of fun?
Thirty-two year old (read: millennial) Ashley Tea wondered this very thing. In a video that went viral on TikTok, she shared “I genuinely think millennials got to have a way better time than Gen Z does.”
Tea then reminisced about her own experience of being “an emo kid in 2005,” going out to clubs, bars and restaurants with her friends having a “fun, great, trashy” time.
That simply wouldn’t be financially feasible in today’s economic landscape, Tea noted, leaving her “mystified” as to how today’s college age adults might enjoy themselves.
So again, Tea posed the question: “ it’s a Friday night, a Saturday night…What do do? Where do you go?”
Thousands responded to Tea’s question, and their answers were…illuminating, to say the least—and certainly different than how she spent her early 20s.
For starters, Tea’s joke about “Gen Zers not having any fun at all” rang true for many people of that age group.
“As a 23 year old: I don’t have any fun, hope that helps!” quipped one person.
Another joked, “sometimes I sit outside if I’m feeling extra.”
One obvious factor behind this is finances. With everything being far more expensive, many Gen Zer’s simply cannot afford to have a social life that resembles earlier generations.
“As a 21 year old, the economy makes it difficult to have fun that way, I work 40 hours weekly and I’m either too tired or can’t afford it,” one person wrote.
Another reason, which isn’t maybe as obvious, is surveillance. Tea noted that a lot of young people said that since either “parents can track their phones everywhere” they are deterred from doing things that could get them into trouble. Perhaps that’s a win for safety, but there is something to be said about excessive levels of control.
Then of course there’s the pandemic, which sucked the fun out of everything big time.
“I got ROBBED of my early 20s bs COVID started when I was 22 😭 Nwo things are normal but all the good bars and clubs in my area didn’t survive the lockdown,” one person wrote.
Plus a lack of third spaces to gather, leaving very little options beside staying home and scrolling on TikTok.
However, it’s not all gloom and doom, Tea discovered.
Plus, when Gen Zers do actually have fun, it tends to lean towards more wholesome activities, like house parties (sometimes even themes house parties) and crocheting. Lots and lots crocheting apparently.
So maybe things look quite a bit different for this generation. That’s not entirely a good or bad thing. And it’s definitely to be expected in some ways. The struggle of rising costs and limited opportunities to form connections and have fun are undeniably issues that must be addressed. But the fact that Gen Zers are leaning into their creativity is worth noting too. And it makes it clear that even though it might not look like it, there is still fun to be had.
Time is a strange phenomenon. It speeds up when we want it to slow down and drags when we wish it would go by faster. Sometimes it feels like we blink and a decade has gone by. Cue “the days are long, but the years are short,” “time flies when you’re having fun,” and all the other time cliches that feel 100% true.
Of course, those truisms are all about our perception of time, not time itself. Time ticks by in a never-changing rhythm of seconds, minutes, hours, days and years, perfectly metered and measured. But it sure doesn’t feel that way, which is why a simple math equation an average third grader can do has grown adults pulling out their calculators to make sure it’s correct.
The equation in question comes from meme that reads “1981 and 2024 are as far apart as 1981 and 1938.”
Yep, it’s correct. The math checks out, no matter how many times you plug the numbers into the calculator. So why does it feel so wrong?
Again, time is a tricky thing. Those of us who were alive in 1981 remember how far back 1938 seemed to us at that time, and there’s simply no way that distance is what 1981 is to us now. It seems impossible.
Part of the problem is that, at least for the middle-agers among us, the 80s still feels like they happened 20 years ago, not 43. That’s simply how time perception works as we age.
But that’s not all of it. As some people have pointed out, there were certainly major changes in both time periods, but the hugely significant cultural changes from 1938 to 1981 were more visible in many ways than most changes we’ve seen since then. Yes, technology exploded near the turn of the millennium, but once the internet and laptops and smartphones hit the scene, tech advancements have mostly been a matter of degree—better, smaller, lighter, faster, more efficient, more intuitive—in fairly steady increments and not so much dramatic jumps.
From 1938 to 1981, we saw huge leaps, from tiny black-and-white television to full-color cable television, from the first transatlantic passenger flight to sending humans to the moon on space shuttles, from switchboards and party lines to cell phone technology, from human computers to PCs.
We also saw clothing styles change drastically from one decade to the next during that time period in a way that we haven’t really seen in the past 40 years. Same with architecture and home designs. The mid-20th century saw the birth of rock n’ roll, the Civil Rights Movement and the shift to women into the workforce. Again, huge leaps.
Wars also defined generations more in the mid-20th century than in the decades since, from WWII to the Vietnam War to the Cold War. It’s not that we haven’t had wars since 1981, but the direct impact of those wars on American life has not been as notable as those previous wars were.
Then again, it’s possible that much of the difference in feel is simply our perception of life now vs. then. Do the years since 1981 seem shorter simply because we’ve lived them, whereas most of us weren’t alive for a good chunk of the 1938 to 1981 time period and only learned it as “history”?
Hard to say, but one thing that’s clear is that people do not like the way this math feels, as evidenced by the comments people left on the post.
“Fitz is cancelled. Feeling triggered here. Lol”
“I did the math too many times because I don’t want to believe this.”
“As someone born in 1981 I really dislike this.”
“Shut your mouth. Those are fighting words! “
“I honestly did nothing to you! Like why?”
“They’re not far apart. You’re far apart.”
It certainly will be interesting to see how the next 43 years feel for the people who live through it vs. 1981 until now.
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
Every week, Uproxx is rounding up the best new indie music from the past seven days. This week, we got new music from Nilüfer Yanya, This Is Lorelei, Wishy, and more.
While we’re at it, sign up for our newsletter to get the best new indie music delivered directly to your inbox, every Monday.
This Is Lorelei – Box For Buddy, Box For Star
What if bluegrass musicians were also into making ‘80s-indebted synth-pop? For Nate Amos, the man behind This Is Lorelei, this fun thought experiment comes to life. From the outset, the NYC musician tactfully switches from twangy folk on opener “Angel’s Eye” to syncopated electro-pop on “Perfect Hand,” setting the stage for the rest of his first “proper” solo album, Box For Buddy, Box For Star. Here, everything comes together, and Amos is the great artistic unifier behind it all.
Nilüfer Yanya – “Method Actor”
On Nilüfer Yanya’s latest single, the quasi-title track of her upcoming album, A Method Actor, the British indie rocker practices emotional distance. Even as grungy, crunchy guitars come spilling into the mix, Yanya disassociates from the central conflict like a seasoned method actor. “But I mean it, and I don’t feel it,” she sings in the chorus, outlining the double-edged difficulties of feigning indifference. Yanya’s music, however, has always said otherwise. Like her other music, “Method Actor” is emotionally riveting, but she’s dialed up the intensity, leading to a song rife with dualities: quiet and loud; near and distant; heartbroken and impassive.
Spirit Of The Beehive – “Let The Virgin Drive”
Spirit Of The Beehive are secretly one of the most influential bands of the 2020s thus far. They mix their outsized, experimental edge with a melodic tunefulness, like if earworms and tapeworms coexisted. “Let The Virgin Drive,” the lead single of You’ll Have To Lose Something, is a microcosm of what the Philly trio do best. Auto-Tuned vocals, gentle acoustic guitars, and soft synths lull you in like a siren song, beautiful and disconcerting all at once. The brief screaming in the background, sampled from a news clip, scans like a warning: Despite the winsome songwriting, there’s menace lurking in the shadows.
Midwife – “Killdozer”
As Midwife, Madeline Johnston makes tender, spellbinding music that she herself has dubbed “heaven metal,” a term that accurately encapsulates her proclivity for murmured vocals, spectral soundscapes, and barely audible guitars. So it might be a surprise to learn that Johnston penned her new single, off the forthcoming No Depression In Heaven after the infamous Killdozer. In 2004, small-town muffler repair shop owner Marvin Heemeyer went on a murderous spree with a bulldozer shortly before taking his own life, and Johnston uses this true story to explore the parasitic effects of gentrification. It’s a haunting, quiet song that resounds with the volume of industrial metal.
The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – “Auguries Of Guilt”
Emo bands aren’t known to shy away from grand, sweeping theatricality and earnest ambition. By that metric, The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die might just be the most emo band of all time. Their most recent LP, 2021’s Illusory Walls, closed with a 15-minute song followed by a 20-minute song, and there was still room for nine other tracks preceding them. The six-piece is back with “Auguries Of Guilt,” an epic, colossal return that, as the band’s David Bello puts it in a press release, “tries to smudge historical and present-day conflicts with the emotions of loss and vengeance.” Suffice it to say that TWIABP largely succeeds on this front.
Wishy – “Triple Seven”
There have been a lot of AI-generated music videos lately. Most often, they’re predictably horrible and un-chic at best and a bleak omen for the future at worst. For Wishy, however, the video for “Triple Seven,” the excellent title track of their forthcoming new album, is an AI video parody that’s as excoriating as it is hilarious. Featuring lead vocals from Nina Pitchkites, the Indianapolis band’s summery, Sundays-esque take on indie-pop is another stellar preview of a promising debut.
Anohni And The Johnsons – “Breaking”
Anohni And The Johnsons are back in full swing, and it’s a welcome return. Following last year’s masterpiece My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross, she’s taking her classic backing band on a North American tour for the first time in 15 years. To coincide with that tour is the one-off single, “Breaking.” It’s a sparse song ornamented with nothing save for Anohni’s mesmerizing, commanding vocals, minimalist guitar, and a flute that fades in around the halfway mark.
Toro y Moi – “Tuesday”
Chaz Bear is the king of genre-hopping. From 2019’s clubby Outer Peace to 2022’s psychedelic Mahal, Toro y Moi allows for a kind of genre agnosticism that speaks to larger themes of omnivorous listening habits and the flattening of musical categorizations that become more prominent by the day. Just take a look at the guest list for Hole Erth, Chaz’s new album out Sept. 6. He has recruited Ben Gibbard, Don Toliver, Porches, and Kevin Abstract, amid many others. “Tuesday,” its lead single, is an indie-pop banger with blown-out, trap-influenced drums and fuzzed-out guitars. His vocal tone evokes the radio-ready, mathematical slickness of Rivers Cuomo but without all the schlock. It’s an exciting new song from a perennially exciting artist.
Fax Gang & Parannoul – Scattersun
Parannoul is the master of the 10-minute song, not the 10:01-minute song, nor the 9:59-song; 10 minutes is exactly what the anonymous Seoul-based shoegaze artist aims for. “White Ceiling,” from the mononymous musician’s 2021 debut LP, packed stacked MIDI guitars and alarm clocks into a sprawling opus. “Scattersun,” the title track of Parannoul’s new collaborative record with the alt-hip-hop collective Fax Gang, pulls off something similar. As the penultimate cut on Scattersun, it feels like a summation of everything you’ve previously heard, like a victory lap through all the worlds you’ve visited at the end of a lengthy JRPG. Pulling from digicore, shoegaze, post-rock, and cloud rap, Fax Gang and Parannoul seamlessly merge their disparate sounds.
Enumclaw – “Change”
Even though Enumclaw broke through with their 2022 debut Save The Baby, worked with Toro Y Moi on their 2023 EP, and have now signed with revered Boston label Run For Cover, the Tacoma, Washington group haven’t changed. “Change,” the lead single off their upcoming sophomore album, Home In Another Life, presents the PNW indie rockers in their purest form, with ’90s alt-rock guitars, frontman Aramis Johnson’s laid-back yet emotive vocals, and a towering, infectious chorus. “Would you want me to change,” Johnson asks in the refrain. That’s a no for me: Enumclaw are perfect just the way they are.
If you are a pop music fan, odds are good that over the past year, you either went to a concert, went to a movie theater to see a concert, or watched a concert live on TikTok. So now that everything revolves around concerts and pop stars, it’s only natural for the horror movie trope to follow!
Smile 2, the sequel to the unexpected horror hit Smile will head to theaters this fall, and this time, the elusive smiling demon will target a major pop star, played by Naomi Scott. Not to be confused with the otherpop-star horror film by M. Night Shyamalan.
After the gruesome conclusion of the first film, the demonic entity is still claiming everyone in its path, and the latest target is the pop singer Skye Riley. The gist of the Smile demon is this: someone smiles (creepily) then kills themselves in front of an innocent bystander, the curse is passed to them and the cycle starts again, presumably until everyone is dead. Kyle Gallner returns from the first film, while Lukas Gage, Rosemarie DeWitt, and Dylan Gelula also star. Hopefully the MLB will also get involved again.
Director Parker Finn said that he wanted the sequel to have a different feel than the first installment. “The last thing I ever want to do is just directly repeat myself or retread ground that I’ve already gone over,” he told Den of Geek in 2022. “I want it to feel very unexpected and exciting and fresh in a way that might catch audiences off guard, and make sure that the film has a brand-new bag of tricks up its sleeve.” Those tricks include a choreographed dance number and some new pop songs sandwiched in between the brutal deaths. Are you smiling yet?
Smile 3 hits theaters on October 18th. Check out the trailer above.
Back in 2021, Sweet Tooth overcame the odds of being a series that largely revolved around a virus and went forth to be a justified streaming hit during pandemic times. Of course, that’s not the only obstacle that the Team Downey Netflix show tossed into the garbage. The Sweet Tooth comic book, after all, had been summed up as “Mad Max Meets Bambi,” and the show (starring Christian Convery as Gus and Nonso Anozie as Jeppard) turned out to be about much more than that catchphrase would suggest.
The third season arrived on June 6 amid a sea of Bridgerton fanfare but still emerged in the upper half of the current Top 10 English-speaking TV shows. Viewers who have finished the show (and have seen who survives) will likely want to know whether there will be more post-apocalyptic adventures for Gus and his hybrid friends. However, the answer to that question would be “nope.”
Netflix previously announced that the third season of Sweet Tooth would be the final batch of episodes. Showrunner Jim Mickle further explained why he felt that the latest New Zealand-shot season delivered a proper conclusion:
“At the beginning, I think you set out to tell these landmark pieces of Gus’ story and the big pieces of the comic book, but the beauty of long-form storytelling and Gus’ journey over 24 episodes is the characters themselves tell you what they want to be. The crew and cast bring so much depth and point of view to who the characters are and where they’ve come from and where they’re going.”
If you want to see more of Christian Convery and Nonzo Anosie, however, you are in luck. Nonso can be seen his TV roles everywhere from Game of Thrones to The Mandalorian to Ted Lasso, and Convery also has a lengthy list of credits, including Cocaine Bear and the upcoming Frankenstein and an adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey.
Sweet Tooth three seasons can now be streamed on Netflix.
With their entire playoff rotation signed for at least one more year, many wonder if this will be the start of a dynasty run and an end to the NBA’s recent era of parity, where six different teams have won the last six titles. There are more than a few teams that hope to challenge Boston’s basketball supremacy next season, including the 2023 champs in Denver, who will feel like they let an opportunity slip away with their Game 7 collapse against Minnesota in the second round.
Denver has some work to do to round out the roster and get a bit more trusted playoff depth, but when you have the three-time MVP in Nikola Jokic on the roster, you’ll always have a puncher’s chance. As is the case every summer, Jokic is back in his hometown of Sombor, Serbia, where we get videos regularly on social media of him enjoying life at the race track or singing and dancing at a local bar.
What we don’t always see in the summer is Jokic putting in work on the court, as he is not the type of basketball player to post photos or videos of him “in the lab” during his offseason training. However, on Tuesday, video popped up on Twitter of Jokic getting some light reps on the court in the form of a 3-on-3 game at a park in Sombor with what appears to be a random group of guys playing pickup.
Jokic is clearly not going full speed here, but I would never stop talking about it if I was the guy that got a bucket on Jokic here. I also have to shoutout Jokic’s teammate who refuses to play a two-man game with Jokic, dribbling straight past him and waving him off before launching a three that bricks. That’s what pickup ball is all about and I’m glad the over-confidence of random guys in the park doesn’t change even when you have literally the best basketball player in the world out there on your team.
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i’ve always done this BYE” 
(@itsyaboyari__) 
