Darlene Love appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in 1986 to sing her holiday classic “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” For the next 28 years, Love returned every December to sing the song, which became a longstanding tradition. It’s nice when good traditions stick! There are too many bad and unworthy traditions out there.
This week, Love and Letterman reunited once again to spread some holiday cheer, even though “Baby Please Come Home” is actually a pretty depressing song. But we can overlook that, just like we overlook Letterman’s beard.
Love joined Paul Shaffer, Letterman’s bandleader, for a jolly rendition of the Christmas classic, and Letterman thanked the singer for her commitment to the cause. “Thank you for your time and generosity over the years.” Letterman said. “It became more than the event itself. It was meaningful and emotional,” he added.
Shaffer told Vanity Fair in 2014 that the tradition was actually Letterman’s idea. “It must have been Dave Letterman himself who said, ‘Let’s do it again,’” Shaffer explained, adding that other performances in the past were not as well-received. “Year after year, we’ve tried to do different things. We had a naval choir once, we had a children’s choir, we had gospel. But the best thing to do, I find, is to just get the best people we can, and let Darlene wail and that’s what I’m looking for.”
It seemed to work out well enough that they asked her back for another performance all these years later. Will the baby ever come home?! You can check out the performance above.
Whether or not you’re dreaming of a “white Christmas” or if you live somewhere without seasons, if you celebrate the Santa-centric holiday (or any of the holidays), you likely have adorned your house or apartment with at least a few twinkling lights and maybe even a blow-up Grinch in the yard. There’s also a good chance you’ve already attended your fair share of holiday gatherings and had to sit through some awkward, meandering conversations. These moments and events are what the holidays are made of and they’re sure to leave you craving a beer or two.
You’ve earned a winter warmer, seasonal ale, or flavorful stout. Below, you’ll find eight of our favorite Christmas brews ranked based on overall seasonal flavor. Keep scrolling to see if your favorite holiday beer made the list.
To say this is a unique beer is an understatement. Labeled as a “white chocolate imperial blonde stout,” this 9.5% seasonal beer is brewed with 2 Row, Cara Pils, and Blonde Roasted Malt. It gets its hop presence from Magnum, Saaz, and Styrian Golding hops.
Tasting Notes:
This “stout” is surprisingly golden in color. The nose also doesn’t resemble a stout in the least. There are notes of coffee, white chocolate, dried fruits, and Belgian yeast. The palate is loaded with more white chocolate, cherries, wintry spices, candied orange peel, and caramel. The finish is yeasty, boozy, and indulgently sweet.
Bottom Line:
This unique aroma and flavor of this “blonde stout” should be enough to add it to your Christmas beer list this year.
7) Narragansett White Christmas
Narragansett
ABV: 7.4%
Average Price: Limited Availability
The Beer:
This beer is not only named for a classic Bring Crosby Christmas song but it’s adorned with his image. That’s because this limited-edition winter warmer was brewed in collaboration with the estate of the popular singer. This warming seasonal beer gets its flavor from the addition of dark cherries, orange peel, and ginger.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is filled with aromas of caramel, dried cherries, raisins, ginger, and other wintry spices. The palate backs this up with sticky toffee, ginger, cherries, dried fruits, and a light, hoppy bitterness at the finish. Sweet, spicy, and gently hoppy, this is a can’t-miss Christmas beer.
Bottom Line:
Crank up the Bing Crosby, pour yourself a Narragansett White Christmas, and enjoy the sweet, spicy, warming brew.
Every year Rogue Ales drops a new version of Santa’s Private Reserve. Last year, the annual brew was a stout brewed with tahini, tangerine, and chocolate. This year, it’s a smooth, sweet, malty, robust toffee stout. To add to it, the can is adorned with a heavily tattooed Santa shredding on a guitar.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is all chocolate, toffee, dried fruits, and vanilla. Sipping it reveals a world of toffee candy, dark chocolate, toasted vanilla beans, robust coffee, and light floral hops. All in all, a great, sweet, toffee-filled stout well-suited for winter drinking,
Bottom Line:
You might want to buy this beer for the artwork on the cans alone. But the beer inside is pretty good too.
It almost feels like the holiday season hasn’t yet officially begun until we have an Avery Old Jubilation or two. This English strong ale, available from October through December, is brewed with Black, Chocolate, Bonlander Munich, Gambrinus Honey, and 2-row malts. Known for its mix of chocolate, caramel malt, and nutty sweet flavors, this has been a seasonal staple since it first launched in 1997.
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of cinnamon, hazelnuts, toffee, and chocolate are heavy on the nose. Sipping it reveals notes of molasses candy, toffee, dried fruits, vanilla, chocolate, and spices. The finish is warming, sweet, and lightly spiced.
Bottom Line:
If you’re looking for a beer that tastes like Christmas in a pint glass, you’ll have a difficult time finding out better than Avery Old Jubilation.
Sadly, Southern Tier 2XMAS doesn’t mean that we get to celebrate Christmas two times. Its name is a reference to the fact that it’s a spiced double ale. Brewed to be reminiscent of the Swedish holiday drink Glögg, it’s brewed with fig paste, orange peels, ginger root, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll find scents of caramel malts, ginger candy, cloves, cinnamon, and zesty orange peels. The palate continues what the nose started. There are notes of ginger, clove, cinnamon, candied orange peel, dried fruits, and vanilla. The finish is dry and has a hint of bitter hops.
Bottom Line:
This is a beer for fruit cake fans. It’s spiced, fruity, and borderline dessert-like. This is a beer to drink on a cold night. Slowly.
Not all Christmas beers are winter warmers or spice bombs. The folks at San Diego’s Pure Brewing Project released a hazy IPA for this year’s holiday season called Home for the Holihaze. This collaboration with Burgeon Brewing Company is brewed with Superdelic and Nectaron hops from New Zealand and Citra Cryo hops from Washington.
Tasting Notes:
This sublimely hazy, cloudy IPA begins with a bouquet of ripe raspberries, tangerine, passionfruit, mango, and light floral hops. The palate is extremely juicy and loaded with flavors like ripe orange, sweet peach, passionfruit, and earthy, floral, lightly piney hops. The finish is sweet, hoppy, and leaves you craving more.
Bottom Line:
Who says hazy IPAs are only for the summer months? We plan to drink this seasonal juice bomb all winter long.
2) Columbus Tracksuit Santa
Columbus
ABV: 7.8%
Average Price: Limited Availability
The Beer:
First launched in 2020, this annual 7.8% ABV spiced holiday ale is brewed with Indonesian cinnamon, ginger, and orange peel. It’s a malty, sweet, seasonal ale with just the right amount of spice to remind you that you’re drinking a Christmas beer.
Tasting Notes:
Aromas of cinnamon, dried fruits, ginger, candied orange peel, and toffee intermingle on the nose. The palate is centered on caramel malts, cinnamon candy, chocolate, ginger, orange peel, and light spices. For the amount of holiday flavors, it’s surprisingly balanced and not over-the-top.
Bottom Line:
This is a well-balanced, malt-forward, warming seasonal brew that is made even better with the addition of ginger, cinnamon, and orange peel.
When it comes to holiday beers, there are few as eagerly awaited as the seasonal release of Troegs Mad Elf. This famous Christmas beer gets its flavor from Belgian yeast, locally sourced wildflower honey, and five different types of cherries.
Tasting Notes:
Caramelized sugar, dried cherries, butterscotch, and honey make for a very inviting nose. On the palate, you’ll find flavors of caramel malts, sweet cherries, honey, toffee, and a warming, boozy finish. Cherries, caramel, and booze, what’s not to love?
Bottom Line:
There’s a reason Troegs Mad Elf is a popular Christmas beer. It’s not an over-the-top spiced beer. It’s all caramel, cherries, and honey sweetness — a very memorable brew.
But, like a stake to the heart, all good things must come to an end: Vulture reports that What We Do in the Shadows is ending after next season, its sixth.
No premiere (or finale) date has been revealed by FX.
What We Do in the Shadows has been nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series at the Emmys twice, but lost both times (to Schitt’s Creek and Ted Lasso, respectively). The show has only won a single Emmy, for Outstanding Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes, which is a shame. There’s still time to make things right, however: create an Outstanding Ensemble in a Comedy Series category and give it to Kayvan Novak (Nandor), Matt Berry (Laszlo), Natasia Demetriou (Nadja), Harvey Guillén (Guillermo), and Mark Proksch (Colin Robinson). Or, better yet, let them host the Emmys. The Nadja doll, too.
As Friends became a massive sitcom hit for NBC that’s still wildly popular to this day, another show was also climbing the ranks at the network. A little drama called E.R. starring a rising star by the name of George Clooney.
While promoting his new movie, The Boys in the Boat, Clooney reminisced about coming up on NBC alongside Matthew Perry. The veteran actor shared his candid thoughts about Perry’s passing while also praising his undeniable comedic talent.
“I knew Matt when he was 16 years old,” Clooney told Deadline. “We used to play paddle tennis together. He’s about 10 years younger than me. And he was a great, funny, funny, funny kid. He was a kid and all he would say to us, I mean me, Richard Kind and Grant Heslov, was, I just want to get on a sitcom, man. I just want to get on a regular sitcom and I would be the happiest man on earth.”
As everyone knows, Perry got his wish and landed the biggest sitcom of all time. Unfortunately, it didn’t bring him the peace he needed, according to Clooney:
“He wasn’t happy. It didn’t bring him joy or happiness or peace. And watching that go on on the lot — we were at Warner Brothers, we were there right next to each other — it was hard to watch because we didn’t know what was going through him. We just knew that he wasn’t happy and I had no idea he was doing what, 12 Vicodin a day and all the stuff he talked about, all that heartbreaking stuff. And it also just tells you that success and money and all those things, it doesn’t just automatically bring you happiness. You have to be happy with yourself and your life.”
As for how Clooney managed the pitfalls of fame, he watched his aunt Rosemary Clooney struggle with drugs and drinking and wanted nothing to do with that. He was also prepared for rough patches after getting some advice from acting greats.
“The people who I loved and got to know, Paul Newman and Gregory Peck, they’d always talk about how your career is not constantly going up,” Clooney said. “There are down moments, and struggles. And then it comes back up and you got to ride it all out.”
Although BTS is on hiatus, love for the K-pop band hasn’t subsided. Each member, V, Jin, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, Suga, and Jungkook, has attempted to feed their ravaged BTS army base with solo work. While supporters are enjoying the releases, supporters are dying for the group to reconnect. In an attempt to hold them over, their new documentary series, BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star, will provide a dose of new content about the group.
So, how can fans watch the BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star documentary series?
How to Watch BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star
BTS Monuments: Beyond The Star is exclusively available on Disney+. Tomorrow, December 20, the first two episodes will be accessible on the application. On Wednesdays, an additional two episodes will be uploaded each week until all parts are live. Find more information here.
The series is described as: “An in-depth journey across the band’s 10-year career, highlighting their highs and lows for the first time in a captivating docuseries featuring never-before-seen interviews, performances, and behind-the-scenes moments with RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jung Kook.”
In the documentary, fans can expect to see personal moments from the group’s past, from their initial meeting, the difficulties of isolating during COVID-19, and more.
For decades now, New York City’s Carnegie Hall has annually played host to The Tibet House Benefit Concert. The 37th edition is set to go down on February 26, 2024, and now part of the lineup has been announced.
The lineup currently features Maggie Rogers, Maya Hawke, Laurie Anderson, The Philip Glass Ensemble, Tenzin Choegyal, and Scorchio Quartet, and more artists are set to be announced ahead of the show (per Brooklyn Vegan). 2024’s honorary chairs for the event are Uma Thurman (Hawke’s mother, by the way), Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Arden Wohl. Additionally, Philip Glass will serve as Artistic Director, as he always does.
The show is a benefit for Tibet House US, which is described on its website, “Tibet House US is dedicated to preserving Tibet’s unique culture at a time when it is confronted with extinction on its own soil. By presenting Tibetan civilization and its profound wisdom, beauty, and special art of freedom to the people of the world, we hope to inspire others to join the effort to protect and save it. Tibet House US is part of a worldwide network of Tibetan institutions committed to ensuring that the light of the Tibetan spirit never disappears from the face of this earth.”
Tickets start at $48, and more information about attending the show can be found on the Tibet House US website.
In case anyone happened to be wondering who earned Grindr’s award of Mother Of The Year for 2023, the queer dating app surveyed 10,000 of their users about who grabbed their attention the most, according to Rolling Stone. As it turns out, Beyoncé took home the title this year, with her Renaissance Tour and film keeping her in the conversation.
“Beyoncé gave us everything on her ballroom culture-inspired Renaissance tour and film, making her the undisputed mother of the year — the inspirational queen who just gets us,” Grindr’s VP of Brand Marketing, Tristan Pineiro, told the publication. “The queer community has always had its finger on the pulse of pop culture, and it’s always so much fun to see our users’ hot takes on the year via Unwrapped.”
Rounding out the top five of the user’s faves were Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Kylie Minogue, and Madonna, in that order. Minogue took home the top spot for Song Of The Year with the “Padam Padam” viral trend.
But anyway, back to Queen Bey. Grindr users also gave Beyoncé the title of the Biggest Serves Of 2023, citing all of her costumes throughout the Renaissance Tour. A few of the other serves listed included Britney Spears dancing with knives and Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Nikola Jokic is a two-time NBA MVP and one-time NBA champion, but despite holding a claim to being the best basketball player in the world, he is not someone who we see a lot in ad campaigns.
Jokic, rather famously, prefers to live mostly out of the spotlight, going back home to Serbia in the summers to watch his horses race and live it up in his home country. However, Jokic finally found a company to work with that aligns with his laid back lifestyle and is the star of a new Hotels.com campaign in which he takes his young Nuggets teammate Peyton Watson along for some vacation time to show him the finer points of travel.
Two of Jokic and Watson’s ads went live on Tuesday (via Katy Winge of Altitude TV) and they are truly delightful, with one featuring Jokic wandering through a hotel with Watson with a pony (while a piano plays “Pony” by Ginuwine in the background) and the other having Jokic explain the similarities between a hotel pool and an NBA arena to his young teammate.
Jokic feeding a pony out of his hand in a hotel lobby and lounging in a cabana by the pool is maybe the most realistic ad campaign featuring a star athlete in history. His dry humor also shines through (as does Watson’s) in the ads, and thankfully there is also a blooper reel that includes the pony trying to eat Jokic’s fingers, pooping while he holds onto the leash, and Jokic cursing himself out for forgetting his lines.
The bloopers might be better than the actual Nikola Jokić & Peyton Watson commercials pic.twitter.com/Tkj195b9pq
I don’t expect this will be the start of Jokic becoming the next Shaq or Peyton Manning and showing up in tons of ads, but there might not be a better ambassador in sports for a brand that’s about fining the right vacation.
Nikola Jokic is a two-time NBA MVP and one-time NBA champion, but despite holding a claim to being the best basketball player in the world, he is not someone who we see a lot in ad campaigns.
Jokic, rather famously, prefers to live mostly out of the spotlight, going back home to Serbia in the summers to watch his horses race and live it up in his home country. However, Jokic finally found a company to work with that aligns with his laid back lifestyle and is the star of a new Hotels.com campaign in which he takes his young Nuggets teammate Peyton Watson along for some vacation time to show him the finer points of travel.
Two of Jokic and Watson’s ads went live on Tuesday (via Katy Winge of Altitude TV) and they are truly delightful, with one featuring Jokic wandering through a hotel with Watson with a pony (while a piano plays “Pony” by Ginuwine in the background) and the other having Jokic explain the similarities between a hotel pool and an NBA arena to his young teammate.
Jokic feeding a pony out of his hand in a hotel lobby and lounging in a cabana by the pool is maybe the most realistic ad campaign featuring a star athlete in history. His dry humor also shines through (as does Watson’s) in the ads, and thankfully there is also a blooper reel that includes the pony trying to eat Jokic’s fingers, pooping while he holds onto the leash, and Jokic cursing himself out for forgetting his lines.
The bloopers might be better than the actual Nikola Jokić & Peyton Watson commercials pic.twitter.com/Tkj195b9pq
I don’t expect this will be the start of Jokic becoming the next Shaq or Peyton Manning and showing up in tons of ads, but there might not be a better ambassador in sports for a brand that’s about fining the right vacation.
A24 almost never, ever misses, and this holiday season, they’re bringing us the tragic-but-jacked wrestling-dynasty story ofThe Iron Claw and preparing us for next year when Kristen Stewart will romance a bodybuilder in Love Lies Bleeding. As well, the production and distribution house has unfurled a particularly unsettling movie, the Auschwitz-focused drama Zone Of Interest, that is currently beginning to hit selected theaters to rattle audiences.
The film hails from Under The Skin director Jonathan Glazer and paints a haunting portrait, so let’s talk details:
Plot
The film follows Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, who was convicted of war crimes following the end of WWII. He committed unspeakable horrors, essentially overseeing mass murder of the Jewish people, but also apparently didn’t want to commute too far to do so. As the film’s synopsis succinctly describes, he “tries to build a dream life for his family near the Auschwitz concentration camp.”
What transpires involves a disturbingly lavish setup, wherein Höss, his wife, and children live a life of luxury, practically next door to agonizing screams and the stench of death. Christian Friede portrays the central commander and previously told Vogue “felt the responsibility towards the victims every day. And when I visited Auschwitz for the first time and understood the dimension of the crime, I felt the responsibility. It’s so… huge.” That feeling must have been particularly intense given that Höss tasked himself with “efficiency” in running the camp, which is as an exceedingly brutal approach as it sounds.
Still, Höss appreciated the shooting style of Glazer on the film while capturing the family’s everyday existence. “For me, as an actor, it was a luxury situation because we had no technical interruptions,” he told Gold Derby. “And every scene outside and inside were shot with five to ten cameras at the same time simultaneously, sometimes in different rooms at the same time.”
Cast
As mentioned already, the film stars Friede as Höss and, and Sandra Hüller portrays his wife, Hedwig. The cast also includes Medusa Knopf, Maximilian Beck, Daniel Holzberg, Sascha Maaz, Ralph Herforth, and Wolfgang Lampl. The story is based upon Martin Amis’ same-named novel with a screenplay from Glazer.
Release Date
The film began to arrive in selected theaters on December 15.
Trailer
Zone Of Interest will hopefully be playing somewhere near you.
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