A woman who was livid after seeing another mom breastfeed her hungry baby on the beach reacted in a way that completely violated her privacy. She secretly recorded the mother and child and then posted a video of them on social media. To make things even worse, she shamed her in the caption.
“I’m not shaming women who breastfeed their babies. I’m shaming the woman who [breastfed] in public with no respect to cover themselves up and just let their boobs hang out (nipple included) for everyone to see!” the woman captioned the photo.
“I shouldn’t have to cover my son’s eyes and explain why your boobs are out, and quite frankly, I don’t want to see it, either. Have some respect!” she continued.
The video first appeared on Snapchat and then was posted to Facebook, where it was later removed. It’s puzzling that the woman posted the breastfeeding video when she found it so disgusting. If she didn’t think it was appropriate for people to see, why share it with the world?
The woman in the video, Izabele Lomax, saw the video online and couldn’t believe that a stranger would violate her and her child that way. So, she posted a reaction to the video on TikTok, and it’s been seen over 750,000 times. What’s excellent about Izabele’s reaction is she is calm and respectful about a situation where she had all the right in the world to be enraged.
The mother also turned the situation positive by suggesting another way for people to react when they see a woman breastfeeding in public.
“Imagine waking up, getting on Facebook, and seeing this video of yourself from yesterday at the beach,” Izabele started her video. “What if you were told that the only way that you could eat at the beach is if you were covered up by a towel?”
She then noted that the woman and her child walked past her more than once, even though she didn’t want her son to see her breastfeed.
“Not only did this woman walk past me multiple times with her son, you had every opportunity in the world to say something to me. Not that I would’ve cared or stopped what I was doing. My child was also hungry in multiple restaurants and while we were walking down the street, and guess what? He ate,” she continued.
Izabele finished the video by providing a new way for people to react to seeing a mother breastfeeding in public. “Next time you see a mom breastfeeding her child in public, covered up or not, tell her how good of a job she’s doing. If you are sexualizing a breast to a four-year-old, you’ve got your own set of issues.”
The video received a lot of love from women in the comments who supported her right to breastfeed on the beach and how she handled being shamed by a stranger.
“YES GIRL! Feed your baby any way you choose. You are doing AMAZING,” Emma Clark wrote. “I nurse publicly and have for 8 months now, and this is my worst nightmare. I can’t imagine how you felt. I’m so sorry,” A added.
“You’re one strong momma. I’m sorry you had to go through this, but I’m proud of how you’re handling it,” another user wrote.
To put it mildly, dating is rough. If you’re in these slime-covered streets, all the advice in the world can’t prepare you for what’s to come. But Grammy Award-winner Brittany Howard hopes her rocky romantic escapades can be a cautionary tale. The singer’s latest single, “Red Flags,” off her forthcoming album, What Now, chronicles where she went wrong.
“Don’t think / Listen what I’m feeling first / I came, I saw / Unconscious / The best time that I ever had / That’s when the worst times started / I followed you and didn’t look back / I didn’t know love could feel like that / I ran right through them red flags / I ran right through them,” sings Howard.
You can spot as many red flags as you’d like but for some, they’ll only intensify their attraction to the toxic partner. Howard is pulling from her internal rollercoaster for the upcoming project. “February 2, 2024… I can finally say it. My next album is on its way. So excited for you to hear my sonic diary from the last few years,” wrote Howard on her official Instagram page.
If “Red Flag” is the appetizer, you can only guess what’s to come from the full musical serving.
Listen to Brittany Howard’s new single “Red Flags” above.
What Now is out 2/2/2024 via Island Records/EMI. Find more information here.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – Dammit, Bosch made me cry
Bosch.
That’s a fun name to say. It’s a fun television show, too. It aired for a bunch of seasons on Amazon Prime and then skipped over to Amazon’s ad-supported tier FreeVee for two seasons of a spinoff called Bosch: Legacy that’s basically just the same as the original but with a new title and some commercials. Both of the shows feature Titus Welliver as, you guessed it, a murder detective in Los Angeles. Was he a loose cannon who played by his own rules? Brother, you know it. He also lived in a stunning glass house on a cliff and ate pancakes like a crazy person. Huge Dad Show energy here. I ripped through the whole series in like four weeks.
One of my favorite things about the series was how often other characters would grumble Bosch’s name after he got up to another classic Bosch shenanigan. No one was better at this than Lance Reddick, who played LAPD police commissioner and eventual city council member Irvin Irving, which is really just an incredible name. This should not come as a surprise. No one was better at playing a disgruntled authority figure than Lance Reddick. Look, here he is grumbling Bosch’s name while sitting at a piano with a glass of wine.
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Here he is grumbling Bosch’s name with an f-bomb leading into it, which became a thing a lot of characters did on the show.
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Here he is shouting it.
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And here are two GIFs of him giving someone a devastating stare from the backseat of a chauffeured SUV before rolling up the window and having the driver pull away, which don’t really have much to do with anything but are so good and I don’t have many opportunities to post them so here we go.
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Imagine your reaction if you were on the receiving end of that powerfully dismissive glare. I suspect all the bones in my body would crumble and leave me sloshed on the sidewalk like a sack of loose meat. He was really great at doing this. That’s the point.
It was one of many reasons I was so sad when he passed away earlier this year. And why I got kind of emotional when he popped up in the season finale of Bosch: Legacy for a brief cameo. And it turns out I wasn’t the only one. From a piece on the finale in Collider.
But let’s be honest, that’s not why fans like ourselves were delighted to see Reddick one more time. It was what he said. For one final time, when catching up on events, we were treated to the most iconic catchphrase of the season as Irving asks what the title character is up to. Mustering up as much disdain as possible, we get that immortal line for a final time: “F*cking Bosch.”
Yes.
Yes.
Look at greatness in action.
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Did I expect, at any point, to find myself getting emotional watching a spinoff of Bosch on an ad-supported tier of a streaming service run by the website where I also just browsed for a new pair of thermal pajama pants? Well, no. I can honestly say I did not. But life is weird that way. These things sneak up on you.
And so, once again, rest in peace, Lance Reddick. You were better than anyone at doing this one specific thing you did, which is kind of a cool legacy.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – “He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died”
What we have here is the first trailer for Madame Web, a Spider-man/Spiderverse-adjacent movie that stars Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney and features a little appearance by Adam Scott, which is kind of wild. I did not have “Adam Scott in a Spider-related movie” on my 2023 bingo card. Which is on me, really. I also did not have “a powerful CEO might get hauled in front of Congress to get yelled at about a movie about a murderous cartoon coyote,” so I missed on a few things.
Anyway, here’s the official description for Madame Web.
“Meanwhile, in another universe…” In a switch from the typical genre, Madame Web tells the standalone origin story of one of Marvel publishing’s most enigmatic heroines. The suspense-driven thriller stars Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in Manhattan who may have clairvoyant abilities. Forced to confront revelations about her past, she forges a relationship with three young women destined for powerful futures…if they can all survive a deadly present.
Okay, great. Wonderful. But did you guys watch the trailer up there? Like, the whole thing? Or at least through the two-minute mark? Because just before then, let’s say start around 1:40 to be safe, this happens.
he was in the amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died pic.twitter.com/DkzYSFhKaH
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
That’s a really incredible sentence. Read it through a few times. Really soak it all in. Don’t get in too deep, though. I got a little carried away yesterday and it went and bought up all the real estate in my brain. I tried to go into my web banking to pay some bills.
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
I tried to remember the password.
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
I tried to remember the account number for the bill I needed to pay.
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
I tried to wr-…
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
I tried t-…
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
I tr-…
“He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders right before she died.”
It was a real problem. It still is. Imagine saying that sentence out loud to anyone. Imagine living the kind of life where saying that makes sense. My mom has never been to the Amazon or researched a single spider. I could think about it all weekend. I might, actually.
There is a silver lining here, though. This completely bonkers line of dialogue — WHICH THEY PUT IN THE TRAILER — reminded me of an even more bonkers line of dialogue from my beloved but short-lived CBS series Zoo.
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I say this every time I post this GIF, which has to be numbering into the mid-400s by now, but… like…
It’s definitely the lions, right?
Let’s not overthink this.
It’s definitely the lions.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Who stole Whoopi Goldberg’s lasagna?
ABC News
Well, here’s what happened: Joy Behar made Whoopi Goldberg a pan of lasagna for her birthday. That’s nice. Lasagna is one of the best foods. I would love it if someone — any of you, Joy Behar, Allen Iverson — made me a lasagna for my next birthday. A lovely gesture.
But then.
Intrigue.
“Yesterday I was home looking for [the lasagna], I had made three of them about two weeks ago,” Behar explained. “I ate one, me and my husband, I gave one to somebody else, and I saved one for you.”
When she checked the freezer for Goldberg’s lasagna, Behar said “it was not anywhere to be found.”
WHO STOLE WHOOPI GOLDBERG’S BIRTHDAY LASAGNA?
WAS IT YOU?
BE HONEST.
“There is a missing lasagna somewhere,” she declared, prompting Alyssa Farah Griffin to reply, “Where is the stolen lasagna?!”
Behar felt similarly outraged by the noodle nabbing. “I feel like putting out an APB for it [to] find the lasagna!”
CALL THE POLICE
CALL THE FBI
DEPUTIZE GIADA DE LAURENTIIS
GIVE HER A BADGE AND A GUN
SHE’S A LOOSE CANNON
BUT SHE GETS RESULTS
[LANCE REDDICK VOICE] F-CKING DE LAURENTIIS
The lost lasagna meant that Behar was forced to whip up another batch for Goldberg in honor of her special day. She added, “Anyway, enjoy it.”
What I like here is that it is really just a perfect daytime television story. Some lady made another lady some lasagna but it disappeared so she made another one. The end. Perfect.
I will say this, though: If I’m living in a house, or even just visiting one, and there’s a lasagna sitting in that freezer for more than… let’s say three days, I am absolutely defrosting and eating that lasagna. No jury would convict me.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – Good lord, Sam Richardson is a talented man
The headline of this section will make sense in a second. We have to go on a little journey to get to it, though. I’ll be fast, I promise.
This is a video of Ted Lasso stars Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddington performing an actually kind of lovely little cover of “Shallow.” Fans of the show got very excited about it because a lot of them were very, very invested in the prospect of their two characters hooking up. It was a whole thing. Also, the performance was good and cute and for a very good cause, as TV Line explained in their write-up of the event, which is called Thundergong, which is… cool.
Sudeikis once again served as master of ceremonies at THUNDERGONG!, an annual benefit concert supporting the Steps of Faith Foundation, a nonprofit that raises funds for amputees in need. This year’s event — which also featured appearances by Brendan Hunt and Sam Richardson — hauled in over $800,000.
Aaaaand there we go. The destination of the journey I sent us on at the beginning of this section. Please watch this short clip of Sam Richardson performing “Rosanna” by Toto at the event:
Sam Richardson is always so good in everything he apples in, from Veep to Detroiters to Ted Lasso to The Afterparty to I Think You Should Leave, just a bomb of charisma and personality and talent, and I really hope someone somewhere figures out how to make him a massive star on the level of, like, Paul Rudd, who shares many of these qualities
I have no clue how he did a leaping split in leather pants
Sam Richardson rules.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – CAR CHASE TV
We’ve seen live broadcasts of car chases on the news.
We’ve seen compilations of car chases on the internet.
We’ve seen entire television shows dedicated to the wildest police chases from around the world.
What we’ve never had, though, is an entire television channel dedicated exclusively to showing viewers car chases 24 hours a day, like how CNN is for news but with stolen Acuras trying to outrun 10 cop cars on a Los Angeles freeway.
Today, Pluto TV and Local Now launched a 24/7 car chase channel showing all the best car chases out there. The channel will include live feeds of real-time chases plus a curated list of some of the best car chases from local news stations around the United States. According to the ad for the network, there are over 10,000 car chases every year in California alone.
I need to be very clear about three things here:
It is incredible to me that nobody thought to do this until 2023
I would have watched this channel for hours a day as background noise while I was in college, occasionally perking up when something especially wild happened
This should be the only thing shown in televisions in waiting rooms from now
Uproxx’s Matt Prigge wrote up a blog about this earlier in the week and, bless that lovely man, did a little journalism about it.
What to expect from the Car Chase Pluto channel? As this article is being typed up, the Car Chase channel is showing someone on a motorcycle trying to flee the fuzz along a darkened highway in southern California. It might never end, unless one of them finally runs out of gas. It’s murky and the images can be impossible to parse, but that just means it’s more real.
I’m serious about the waiting room thing. I don’t care what anybody says. If there’s a car chase on a television anywhere close enough to see it, people will watch. It’s better than leaving it on a channel where two talking heads shout at each other between commercials for prescription medicine to lower the blood pressure the talking heads just sent spiking.
It’s a good idea.
Listen to me.
Do like two hours a day from midnight to 2 AM where the chases are narrated by stoned college students.
That’s a good idea, too.
I’m just giving them away over here.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Sarah:
I don’t know why exactly this section of the new Vogue profile of Olivia Colman made me think of you, but it did: “The Norfolk-born Hollywood star will turn 50 in January as one of the most in-demand British stars working today, while having spent the majority of her career as a not-mega-famous person. As such, she has carved out a unique space for herself in the public’s affection. How would she summarise the Colman worldview, I ask? ‘Just be kind, and try not to be a twat,’ she replies with that winning hint of a lisp. ‘You’re not better than anyone.’”
Seems like your kind of vibe, too. I swear I meant this as a compliment when I started writing it.
So, a few things here. Let’s go with four:
Olivia Colman rules and has for a while so I’m actually kind of touched that something cool like this that she said made you think of me
This really is very good advice and I think some people could benefit from having it tattooed on their forearm where they can see it regularly
I was about to type “Olivia Colman should be in a Paddington movie” but then I remembered I literally mentioned that she’s going to be in the next one, Paddington in Peru, in this very column a few weeks ago
A cargo plane heading for Belgium was forced to return to New York City after a horse escaped from its crate on board.
Folks, we have a horse loose on an airplane.
“We have [a] live animal … horse … on board the airplane,” the plane’s pilot told air traffic control.
Please stop for one moment here and picture the face of the air traffic control person who received this message.
I’m serious.
Think about it.
Think about their whole day.
I’ve been doing it all week and it’s made me start giggling a little each time.
“Hey honey, how was your day at work as an air traffic controller?”
“Well…”
All week in my head.
“We need to return back to New York. We cannot get the horse back secured,” the pilot said, adding that flying the plane was not a problem.
I choose to believe this last part meant the horse was capable of serving as co-pilot if things got really dicey.
The plane also had to dump 20 tonnes of fuel into the Atlantic Ocean “approximately 10 miles west of Martha’s Vineyard”, due to the weight of the plane.
“We regret to inform you that the beach is closed today. The water quality is poor because an airplane had to dump 40,000 pounds of fuel into the ocean to make an emergency landing after a horse got loose in the cabin. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Allow me to introduce myself as the target demographic for Blink-182’s self-titled (or untitled) album — someone who was theoretically amenable to Blink’s ruthlessly hooky form of pop-punk and had no hang-ups about “punk cred,” but was absolutely not going to say a Blink-182 album title out loud if it was another masturbation (or anal) joke. A 23-year old who read Pitchfork but was still mad about their Jimmy Eat World reviews. Someone who still considers Blink-182 the band’s first and only album that they actually liked. In short, someone with no sentimental attachment to Dude Ranch or Enema Of The State and was willing to see it the same way that Travis Barker supposedly did – “Think of it as the first Blink-182 record.”
Even during my middle school years in suburban Pennsylvania, pop-punk never really spoke to me the way it was supposed to – not even local legend Weston’s Got Beat Up did the trick. But it’s not like I’m in a position to look down upon my many friends and colleagues who genuinely love Blink-182 and have written many thoughtful words on their behalf. During Blink’s commercial peak, I genuinely loved Korn and Weezer and Linkin Park songs and I suppose it’s only a matter of inches between what I viewed as the work of genuinely dark and disturbed people and what struck me as nerd stolen valor in the case of Blink-182. This was a band playing both sides, claiming the romantic failures and parental misunderstandings of the dorks while making music embraced by jocks – I had trouble believing anyone who was from San Diego and also looked like the most San Diego people on earth could ever truly be depressed or heartbroken. They were a boy band for people who shopped exclusively at Hollister, spiritually indistinguishable from everyone they mocked in the “All The Small Things” video.
And by the turn of the century, it appeared that Blink-182 had achieved a longer imperial phase than Green Day or The Offspring because they conscientiously avoided trying to make a “mature album”; rather than an Insomniac or Ixnay On The Hombre, a conflicted, cred-conscious response to a diamond-selling, surprise blockbuster, Blink gave us Take Off Your Pants And Jacket. Still, whether it was due to “Adam’s Song” or “Stay Together For The Kids,” I had gotten the sense that Blink-182 would inevitably feel the need to be taken seriously. In 2002, Tom DeLonge assembled Box Car Racer as a means of establishing his post-hardcore bona fides, name-dropping Fugazi and Refused as influences; yet, when I heard lead single “I Feel So” on MTV, it mostly sounded like the pop-punk parody song that Built To Spill slapped on the end of There’s Nothing Wrong With Love.
Regardless of the internal tension about their future direction – brought on by artistic considerations, physical injuries, touring fatigue, Barker’s budding multimedia fame — Blink probably sensed a culture shift already underway. By 2003, it was clear that Is This It was not a Nevermind-type extinction-level event for rap-rock or post-grunge or boy bands or pop-punk that many hoped for, if only because the latter’s impact has often been overstated as a means of creating “the 90s”; yeah, Nirvana made it a lot harder for Winger and Great White to eat and Poison and Motley Crue made hilarious attempts at grunge rebranding. Still, that didn’t stop Aerosmith and Meat Loaf and Guns ‘n Roses and Bryan Adams and Metallica and Eric Clapton from sharing MTV slots with “Heart Shaped Box.”
In fact, pop-punk and nu-metal and emo got even bigger, albeit while heading in a more refined, dare I say, “tasteful” direction. Many of the late-’90s emo bands with whom Blink were once conflated (mind you, they did have a song named “Emo” on Dude Ranch) were making solemn, indie rock records, most of which flopped so badly that their creators broke up immediately afterwards. But whether it’s Sing The Sorrow or Deja Entendu or Meteora, bands that might have once been seen as a little too jokey or juvenile were reinventing themselves as brooding perfectionists. This would only become more apparent in 2004 when American Idiot and Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge secured pop-punk and emo’s future as classic rock.
So when word got around that Blink were getting into turntables and linking up with DJ Shadow and whatnot, it was hardly unexpected, probably no different than all of the alt-rock also-rans in the late ’90s claiming allegiance to electronica. But before we go any further on Blink-182, let’s talk about Jimmy Eat World. In the summer of 2001, Rolling Stone published a lead review of Bleed American — prescient in hindsight, but certainly not merited by the band’s immediate status. The title track was making minor inroads on rock radio, but it would still be three more months before “The Middle” was released as a single. The first paragraph nonetheless lauds “The Middle” as a potential Song of the Summer and the second one acknowledges the best thing Jimmy Eat World had going for them at the time: Blink-182 liked them, so much so that Tom DeLonge hired them as his wedding band. As the story goes, DeLonge first said “I love you” to his then-girlfriend during “Episode IV,” a soft-serve power ballad from Jimmy Eat World’s unheralded 1996 debut Static Prevails that featured Tom Linton on vocals (unlike Blink-182, Jimmy Eat World’s “Tom songs” all but disappeared from their catalog after 1999). According to Setlist.fm, they haven’t played this song live since 2005.
Of course, Bleed American would result in Jimmy Eat World becoming direct competition, as “The Middle” and “Sweetness” jockeyed for airtime against “First Date” and “The Rock Show.” But as the above anecdote makes clear, Blink-182, or at least DeLonge, admired Jimmy Eat World’s earlier, more atmospheric work, specifically Clarity, a masterpiece of experimental emo that was famously unsuccessful in 1999 and caused them to make the “disgustingly catchy and straight ahead” Bleed American as revenge. I often think of Blink-182 wanting to make a kind of karmic realignment — what if Clarity was made by a band that had just gone double platinum instead of one that could indulge in their most experimental impulses solely because they were being ignored by their label? Would the public love it as much as Tom DeLonge did?
Oddly enough, though Blink-182 had previously worked with Mark Trombino, the guy who actually produced Clarity, they stuck with Jerry Finn for Blink-182, who produced AFI’s Sing The Sorrow earlier that year. Even as DeLonge namedropped Bad Astronaut’s post-Lagwagon cult classic Houston: We Have A Drinking Problem as a touchstone, the point remains that Blink-182 remains a fascinating “experimental” album because it looks no further than their immediate friends. It’s Inside SoCal asking, “Art, is it gangster?” in musical form.
Sucker that I am, the most successful songs on Blink-182 are the ones that owe the most obvious debt to Clarity, the album’s true north star; what In Utero was to Razorblade Suitcase, what The Chronic was to The Documentary, this is what Clarity is to Blink-182, not just the primary influence but often times, seemingly the only one. Even Clarity itself is a part of this lineage, as its opening song, “Table For Glasses,” was inspired by the state of awe and confusion that Jim Adkins felt while watching an abstract art performance. Maturity in pop-punk and emo might mean tweaking the lyrical formula, as Blink does on “All Of This” and “Obvious.” Listen to how “I heard you fucked him again” on the latter is delivered compared to “Did you hear? He fucked her” on “Dammit” – this is understood to be deeply felt, adult pain, not locker room talk. When DeLonge sings “Come on and uuuuussse me” on “All Of This,” there is an air of danger and conflict, not just some simp shit begging to get to second base. This is how you get a song that compares getting ignored by a woman you can’t have to actual violence. Naturally, the song is called “Violence.”
But for the most part, maturity just means drum machines, cellos, acoustic guitars, intricate stereo panning, choral vocal overdubs, and “the studio as an instrument.” “Obvious” tunes down to C#, maybe the first time they showed any interest in actually considering the tuning of their instruments. No amount of tasteful mic placement or flange effects could restrain Travis Barker from doing the same thing he does on every song, i.e., play enough fills to balance out the utter lack of technical frill from Hoppus and DeLonge.
Which is to say that I disagree with Rolling Stone’s claim of it being “pop-punk’s Sgt. Pepper,” that it fundamentally changed the idea of what the genre was capable of achieving. Rather, it’s a fascinating example of “art” albums by rock bands who are not all intrinsically artsy — I’d argue, with all due respect, that this includes every Deftones album made after Around The Fur, or at least Chino Moreno’s side projects. Or, Coldplay wanting so badly to be U2 that they were willing to have Brian Eno insult them in the press. I dunno, those late ’90s albums where bands like Better Than Ezra tried to go trip-hop. Or, hell, even A$AP Rocky or Travis Scott trying to present themselves as genius polyglots by getting James Blake and Kevin Parker to phone in some hazy beats.
The difference between, say, Stankonia or even Electric Circus and Warning or Utopia comes down to whether the creator sees themselves as artistes or, rather, a curator, someone who wants to present themselves as an insightful consumer of taste. Substance vs. signifiers. What is art rock to Blink-182? Art is not something that must be excavated from the deepest, darkest parts of the soul, something heretofore unheard. Art is obtuse song titles, like “Asthenia.” Art rock is spoken word interludes. Art rock is Tim Burton. Art rock is the stuff on the higher shelves of Hot Topic. Art rock is The Cure, which emerged as the “art rock” entry point for pretty much every pop-punk or metal band during the early 2000s, peaking with the airing 2004’s MTV Icon; alongside AFI, Deftones, and Razorlight, Blink-182 paid homage to The Cure by covering “A Letter To Elise” and performing “All Of This,” the Blink-182 deep cut that actually featured Robert Smith, no stranger to making a mid-career pivot from snotty, punkish pop.
“All Of This” isn’t the best song on Blink-182 and I’m not sure it’s even my favorite either, but it is the most illustrative of its charms — even on a song where they’re barely present, Blink-182 just cannot be fully pretty or artsy. This should’ve been obvious enough on “I Miss You”; the use of upright bass and cello and skittering brushed drums and piano signifies “taste” and then DeLonge literally opens his mouth and turns it into the most meme’d song in Blink-182 history. “Feeling This” revisits Blink-182’s single favorite topic — making out, or, at the least, wanting to make out, and stretches it towards more visceral extremes of longing and consummation. And by repeating the title every two seconds, it ultimately sounds like a commercial for Mountain Dew or Dell laptops, betraying its roots as a song once titled “Action” on the Madden 2004 soundtrack.
But also, the dissonance between Blink-182’s abilities and their ambitions makes this their most interesting album, or at least the one that’s likely to provide something new every time I hear it. I deeply admire their intent to make writers rehash every single “I guess this is growing up” punchline they’ve ever written, yet the way they succeed is more in subtext. What I hear is a document of three guys in their late 20s, and having a very age-appropriate freakout over the person they’re seen as and the person that they think they are.
Getting from one point to the other is all in the follow-through, and that’s perhaps why Blink-182 most reminds me of…hear me out, Radiohead’s The Bends — which, at the time, was largely perceived as an unserious band trying to make a serious album. I’ve often wondered how The Bends would be perceived in 2023, or if it would even be perceived at all if Radiohead had broken up immediately thereafter or if their third album was closer to Coming Up or Be Here Now than OK Computer. For all of its pedal board razzle dazzle and unconventional melodic sensibilities, “High And Dry” and “Bones” and “My Iron Lung” and the title track aren’t that much less angsty than “Creep.” Indeed, critics at the time treated The Bends about as kindly as they did Blink-182, which is to say that many saw it as a great leap forward whereas others saw Thom Yorke’s self-loathing as the one thing holding them back.
Rather than following through on Blink-182’s grand experiment, the trio punted; Blink went on hiatus in 2005 and their experimental streak resulted in +44 and Angels And Airwaves, which respectively resembled a more guitar-focused Owl City and a less pompous 30 Seconds To Mars. After finding their footing on 2011’s Neighborhoods, Blink more or less committed to pure fan service. They indeed made a Clarity that was as popular as Bleed American, but only going platinum represented a Clarity-like flop for Blink-182.
Yet, it’s 2023 and Blink-182 is an arena rock band. Literally. No, really — think about that for a second. The same songs that so many associate with their days of faking an illness to miss gym class are sharing space with the Vancouver Canucks or New York Knicks. In 2024, they’re even booked for summer headlining concerts at SoFi Stadium and Petco Park. All of this despite not having a meaningful pop hit in 20 years or evolving beyond their core sound. All of this despite being, by all accounts, a legendarily shitty live act. But if Blink-182’s current status is largely due to the sheer goodwill of reviving the classic Mark, Tom, and Travis Show lineup, it’s the culmination of two decades of damage control after the “first Blink-182 album,” the one they named after themselves, became their only identity crisis.
Robert Kirkman knows who Steven Yeun is playing in the MCU, and he’s not afraid to tell anybody. While promoting the new season of Invincible, Kirkman casually dropped the major bombshell and basically dared Marvel to do something about it.
WARNING: Major spoiler for the Thunderbolts below.
According to IGN, Yeun’s top secret role is Sentry, a massively powerful character who is virtually unstoppable. With the strength of a “million suns,” the threat he poses to the MCU cannot be underestimated. The casting reveal confirms months of online speculation that the Sentry’s presence will be the dire problem that puts the Thunderbolts team in action. As for whether Marvel was ready to release that information, Kirkman isn’t sweating it.
“I don’t think this is a spoiler or anything that will get anybody in trouble,” Kirkman said during a recent podcast interview with comics artist David Fin. “We’ll see. I don’t care. I don’t work for Marvel. What are they going to do to me?”
Kirkman revealed that Yeun called him after the costume fitting, which unfortunately shared some similarities to his Invincible voice role.
“Yeah, he called me and he said, ‘I just came back from a costume fitting for the Sentry. I guess I only do superheroes that are yellow and blue,’” Kirkman recalled. “He said he was at the costume fitting and was like, ‘Aww, crap. I forgot Invincible was yellow and blue.’”
If Yeun truly is playing Sentry in Thunderbolts, that team will have their work cut out for them because here’s the lineup:
None of those characters have powers anywhere close to Sentry, which could explain why David Harbour teased that the Thunderbolts movie will “drop a bomb” on the MCU.
Now, Boygenius, Bridgers’ supergroup, have released a cover of “The Parting Glass” in honor of O’Connor. The cover was recorded alongside Ye Vagabonds.
“‘The Parting Glass’ with @yevagabonds is out now,” Boygenius wrote in the Instagram captioned of a photo of O’Connor taken by Kate Garner. “As chosen by Sinéad O’Connor’s estate, proceeds will go to the @aisling_project, an after-school project working with children and young people growing up in a disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland.”
“The Parting Glass” is a traditional Irish and Scottish song. O’Connor released her take on “The Parting Glass” in 2002.
Upon O’Connor’s death, the London Inner South Coroner’s Court confirmed O’Connor had been found “unresponsive” and “pronounced dead” at her London home (as reported by the BBC). On August 3, The Irish Timesrelayed that an “autopsy was conducted to secure a medical cause of death,” and O’Connor’s remains had been released to her family. O’Connor’s cause of death has yet to be disclosed publicly.
Listen to Boygenius’ “The Parting Glass” cover above.
After it was reported earlier this week that “Me & U” singer Cassie had filed a lawsuit against producer and label owner Sean “Diddy” Combs alleging abuse and sexual assault, one of Diddy’s former Bad Boy artists has spoken up in support of her.
Aubrey O’Day, formerly of the girl group Danity Kane, posted on her Instagram Story, “Been trynna tell y’all for years. Prayers up for this queen.”
Former Danity Kane singer and Bad Boy artist Aubrey O’Day has shared support for Cassie after she filed a sexual abuse lawsuit against Diddy. pic.twitter.com/ndjNPWWj19
O’Day has gone on record several times about Diddy’s handling of the group and its formation on the show Making The Band, telling Vulture in 2019, “Puff is a very difficult person to work with. Everything had to be perfect. I remember times where he looked at my toenails and was like, ‘What is your third toenail doing? Go get that sh*t fixed before you walk into a room.’ Or we would be in rehearsals performing an hour-and-a-half set over and over and he would walk in for five minutes with a camera and say, ‘Aubrey, why are you sweating? You look like a wet dog. You’re the hot one, so do you think anyone wants to see that?’ … I experienced everything from race [remarks] to sexism and a lot of it was scary.”
Although O’Day expressed hope that the music mogul had grown from his time as her mentor, she also noted that the problems with sexism in the music industry go way beyond Diddy. More recently, she also said that Diddy’s recently relinquishing former artists’ publishing came with strings attached — namely, that those artists would have to sign NDAs promising to “never disparage Puff, Bad Boy, Janice Combs, Justin Combs Music, EMI, or Sony ever in public.”
Meanwhile, Diddy is currently under investigation by the NYPD, although it’s unclear whether it’s connected to the lawsuit.
The Last Of Us became an instant favorite when it debuted in January 2023, and fans are eagerly awaited to see what their favorite grotesque zombie buddies have been doing since we last saw them. Everyone’s reaction to the Bloater was totally normal.
The series is based on the popular video game franchise of the same name. Season one of The Last Of Us brought the first game to life, and season two is expected to cover the events of The Last Of Us Part II, though the events of the game might require more than one season to properly finish off the story. “We will not say how many. But more than one is factually correct,” screenwriter Craig Mazin told UK GQ earlier this year.
While we don’t know how many seasons we will get to watch those fungi guys on screen, we do know that a second season is definitely on the way. Here is everything we know so far.
Plot
Season two of The Last Of Us will show the events of The Last Of Us Part II, which was released in 2020. The game follows Joel as he deals with the repercussions of the first game and the major decision he made at the Fireflies hospital. Four years after that night, Joel and Ellie are living together in Wyoming. Here is the official synopsis of the game:
When a violent event disrupts that peace, Ellie embarks on a relentless journey to carry out justice and find closure. As she hunts those responsible one by one, she is confronted with the devastating physical and emotional repercussions of her actions.
Bella Ramsey also confirmed that Ellie will share an integral storyline with newcomer Dina, who was already hinted at in season one. “I’m really excited to be honest for the Ellie / Dina story,” the actress said on Happy Sad Confused earlier this year. She added, “I’ve watched a cut together, someone’s made a phenomenal — I don’t know how they do it — like an amazing edit of just like the gameplay, like Ellie and Dina’s love story. So I’m excited to play that out.”
Cast
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are expected to return as the fearless duo Joel and Ellie, respectively, while Gabriel Luna has expressed interest in returning. Because season one had some iconic guest stars, we can hope for some more surprises in season two.
Release Date
There is no official release date for The Last Of Us season two yet, though it will likely be sometime in 2025 at the earliest.
Trailer
The series does not have a trailer yet, though we can expect a teaser when the series goes back into production.
Travis Scott dials in on the remix of Tyla‘s hit single “Water,” showing off his knowledge of country codes (“It’s +27 when I dial in”) and adding his H-Town touch to extend the song’s success. The single otherwise remains unchanged, still featuring that mellow amapiano backing beat sprinkled with hints of Nigerian Afropop topped with Tyla’s silky, seductive vocals.
That’s a good thing, though, because if it ain’t broke, you don’t have to fix it. The OG was good enough to net the South African singer her first-ever Grammy nomination and her US television debut just a few years into her career, and she’s only likely to go up from there.
Travis, likewise, looks to benefit from the collaboration after semi-successfully bouncing back from the 2021 Astroworld Festival disaster. While he said he’s “devastated” by it in his first interview since then, he’s enjoyed a subdued renewal of his former popularity with his new album Utopia reuniting him with the top spot on the Billboard 200 and its accompanying tour receiving a warm enough reception. He has also returned to feature appearances on other artists’ songs; in addition to the “Water” remix, he also offered a verse on Kid Cudi’s new song “At The Party.”
On the surface,A Murder At The End Of The World scans like a more serious-minded version of Glass Onion, but it’s something else, with complex family dynamics, lost love, and tech futurism mixed into a slow-burn murder mystery set in the alien confines of snow covered Iceland. The players? A wildly successful and mildly suspicious band of thinkers, the seemingly shady suspect #1 in the ambitious tech billionaire (Clive Owen) who brought the attendees to the “end of the world,” and the show’s very own Benoit Blanc: a young genius amateur sleuth named Darby (Emma Corrin) who provides the show with its POV and power.
Consider Owen a fan. In the interview below, the actor makes it clear that the whodunnit genre was in need of the fresh perspective that Darby brings through Corrin’s awesome performance, lauding the creative choice of centering the show around a Gen-Z woman and talking about how his character is both intimidated by and drawn to Darby’s intelligence, curiosity, and independence.
A veteran of the mystery genre (Gosford Park) and an icon of screens big (Children Of Men, Closer) and small (The Knick), Owen leans into risk-taking as a litmus test for the roles he’s offered, telling us, “I don’t like to play it safe.” We talk a bit about that operating principle, how he defines success, and not judging his younger self too harshly, before offering a quick thought on whether a return to The Knick would ruin the previous finale or even be of interest to him should a continuation series make it to the screen.
What it is about this character that was so compelling to you and made you want to sign on for this, go to Iceland, go through this entire adventure?
I really like Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij and I was a really big fan of The Oa, and I think they’re very kind of ambitious writer/directors that are really reaching out and trying to do interesting, unsafe projects really. They’re bold and that was a big attraction.
It was sort of pitched as a modern murder mystery and I, back in the day, did Gosford Park which was, if you look at it as a group of people held captive in one place and something goes on. But this, I felt, was a really fresh take. Not only the subject matter — we’re in the world of tech and AI and the world in which this thing is inhabiting felt very modern and relevant, but also the fact that Emma Corrin’s character of Darby is young, super smart, a very savvy female taking us through it; that feels very of the moment. And it made you realize that we’ve seen many, many murder mystery movies, but we haven’t seen enough young females who are smart (within that genre) and we should. It was a big attraction to me. I haven’t seen this. I haven’t seen a character like this take us through one of these stories before and I liked it. I thought it was fresh and alive.
In terms of the hierarchy when you’re presented with a project, is that riskiness, that danger, and that need to be something you haven’t seen before of foremost importance?
It’s always hugely exciting. I suppose I’ve always been that person who likes to sort of push it and have a look at things. I’m always attracted to projects that I think do that. I’m quite fearless in that way. I don’t like to play it safe. I don’t like to repeat things. I don’t like finding something that I think, “Oh, I’m good at that and I’ll just keep repeating that.” I’m always going, “Let’s risk it. Let’s try this.”
I mean, if I look back through my whole career, really, it’s full of taking a step out and deep down I say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen? That I’ll be bad in it? I’ve been bad before. I’ll be bad again.” But that’s where you learn to get better.
How important is it to be able to stand up and say, “This is the career I want, this is the career I’ve wanted?” I compare it to swimming against the current as opposed to just floating in the ocean. How important is that to you and when did that become important? Because obviously, as a younger actor, one can’t be as choosy.
I do think acting, like lots of other professions, is all about you creating yourself some space, you get some traction for something and then how do you use that? What are your decisions then? That’s the crucial time. You do a film that opens things up for you, or you do a project that people suddenly are looking at you and the potential there and you’re suddenly given choice. Now, what are your choices? That’s a crucial time, and that’s where you decide what kind of career and what kind of life you want, really.
I’ve trained in the theater even though I would say that now film and TV is probably my first love. But because I trained in the theater, it’s all about playing different parts. It’s all about stretching yourself in different ways. That’s how you learn. That’s how you grow. That kind of risk-taking is the most exhilarating, exciting thing. There’s nothing more boring than if you just find something you’re good at and keep repeating.
What allowed TV and film to sort of jump up a level and become your first love versus theater?
Weirdly, I think, I just love the community of making a film. I love the fact that it’s kind of out of everybody’s control, that you can have the best director, the best DP, the best actors, and still put out something that’s not very good. I find that fascinating that it’s the combination of things and the combination of talents. I get as thrilled meeting and coming across a brilliant props guy as I do another great actor. I love when people are great at what they do and actors, they have much more control in the theater. They edit their own performance. They dictate the rhythm of everything. But I love the fact that the film is just sort of a coming together of lots and lots of… There’s something elusive about it, and I’m just super comfortable on a film set, more so than I am in the theater these days.
How do you define whether something is a success or not for you?
If I like it.
It doesn’t have anything to do, obviously, with success, failure, or box office, I would imagine?
No, it’s if I like it. I’ve done plenty of things that have done okay that I’m so-so about. I’ve done plenty of things where it hasn’t done very well, but I’m very proud of it. I think if I go in there and it is close to the reason that I wanted to do it in the first place. Even if it doesn’t hit and doesn’t become the big success that everyone hopes. I’ve noticed as well with certain things in my career that things sometimes take their time, that they might come out and not get the heat that people were hoping or expecting. Then, over time, they stick around and it becomes something that stands the test of time. I’ve seen that a few times. I think that often you can get caught up in what is really, really hot and then three years later you won’t even think about that particular film. (Laughs)
Chris Saunders/FX
That’s very true. Are you someone who is sort of a rigorous investigator of your own past performances? Do you look back and judge yourself or try to figure out what went wrong?
No, no, no, I’d never do that. No, I hardly look at myself at all. But I did have a strange experience a year or two ago. A really good, really close friend who sadly passed away, Mike Hodges, who directed a film that was hugely important in my career called Croupier, which was a small film, but kind of opened doors for me in America and sort of got the whole film thing going. They had a big retrospective at the National Film Theater and they screened Croupier, and I went and introduced it for Mike, and I watched that film for the first time in about 20 years. I love what Mike did in it, but I could see a young, naive actor [referring to himself] who made some choices that I definitely wouldn’t do now. (Laughs) But that’s not to say they weren’t the right choice for that guy at that time. That film did an awful lot of good for me. So whoever that actor was, it did me okay.
Taking this back to the show in terms of who the character is, obviously a tech billionaire, highly innovative, highly ambitious. There are some other aspects. Are you someone who is fascinated by these tech billionaires in real life and the sway that they have over society and did you look into that when preparing for this?
I mean, I looked at them. We can see clearly the sort of inspiration for a character like that. I didn’t do the thing of honing in on somebody and going, “That’s who I’m going to base it on.” I was very much led by talking to Brit and Zal and the script and doing that. But it is fascinating, the influence and the power really. But similarly, people who are at the forefront of social media and how that’s used, we are in a sort of time where information is spread in a really fast, complex way. If people get ahead of that curve, it can be extremely powerful.
Similarly, AI features heavily in this, and we’ve just seen the actors’ strike go on for some time with AI being a central thing that they’re trying to get on top of. It’s hugely important because the potential there is so enormous, probably outside of our grasp at the moment of what the real potential of it is. But if you slip behind that, I think you’ll end up years chasing it. So it was hugely important to address it and start looking at it and start getting protection from it. I think the interesting thing about those guys at the front of these massive tech companies is that they’re kind of ahead of the curve because they can see what’s coming.
I’m curious about Andy’s relationship to Emma’s character, Darby. What is it about her character that fascinates him and what is it about her character that scares him? Because I feel like of all the interactions she seems to be someone who does spook him a little bit.
Yeah, I think the answer to both questions is that she’s very smart and I think he’s attracted to that and very wary of that as well. I think he sees quite early that she could be a threat but, at the same time, I think he’s impressed by her smarts and her intelligence.
She seems like the character who needs him least in the room also.
For sure, for sure. And because of that, (she) is a threat and that’s why at some point he pulls her close and then enlists her help and puts her in the position of an ally because he can tell otherwise she could be quite a threat.
Definitely a threat, but also is that partly appealing to him because of the fact that obviously when you’re in that position, you’re going to be surrounded by sycophants and people that just have their hand out?
No question. No question. We all know when we’ve met really powerful people, they’re not attracted to the sycophants and the ones that sort of do the same as everybody else. They’re always pulled to the people who hold themselves in a different way.
Cinemax
As you said, you don’t like to jump back into things that you’ve already done and play the same part over and over again. I thought The Knick was tremendous. I thought the ending of The Knick was fantastic. There’s been some talk about bringing it back with André Holland’s character and setting it differently. I’m just curious if you feel like one can ruin a good ending by going back to the well too many times.
I don’t know if it’s about ruin. I had one of the best times. That was just such a sublime piece of writing. Soderbergh was on just amazing form, and the whole experience was an absolute joy and I absolutely adored it, but I was always going in for two seasons and he sort of told me he knew how he wanted to leave it with me, and he told me that off the bat. So it was kind of perfect in its sort of shape really that. So it’s not something that I would want to go back to, really.
The first two episodes of ‘A Murder At The End Of The World’ are available to stream on FX On Hulu with new episodes dropping every Tuesday.
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