Although Uproxx has covered Redveil a bit over the past couple of years, I can’t say I was all the way tuned in — that is until I saw him perform at Camp Flog Gnaw a couple of weeks ago. I think I can truly say I Get It now, and if you’ve been wondering about this semi-obscure but rapidly rising name in hip-hop, don’t worry; as usual, we’ve got you covered.
At just 19 years old, the Maryland native has already established himself as a force to be reckoned with in hip-hop and forged some pretty impressive connections on the way. In June this year, he appeared on the Danny Brown podcast, getting advice about getting booed offstage early in your career (there’s little danger of that happening to Redveil, though).
The young rapper has used those connections to land some on some pretty impressive collaborators’ albums and features, including Chance The Rapper, Denzel Curry (with whom he toured earlier this year), and Jpegmafia and Danny Brown’s Scaring The Hoes. He also opened on tour for Freddie Gibbs last year, exposing him to an even larger audience.
So far, he’s self-released three albums (Bittersweet Cry, Niagara, and Learn 2 Swim) and one EP (Playing W/ Fire, released early this year), establishing himself as a consistent producer and a formidable lyricist, even as he finds his footing both in the industry and in life. It’s early days, but with supporters like Brown, Curry, Gibbs, JID, and Tyler The Creator, I can see him becoming a star worth following.
The best shows to watch are the ones that get popular not because they are “good” but mostly because they are just “there” and everyone is talking about them, so you might as well just be involved in the conversation for convenience’s sake. This is what happened with Suits, a moderately popular legal drama from 2011 that appeared on Netflix this summer. It was one click away, so you just did it, and now you’re one of the many unintentional Suits fans who were born this year.
Suits star Meghan Markle was recently asked about the show’s increase in popularity, and she seemed just as shocked as the rest of the world. When a reporter mentioned how Suits had recently taken the nation by storm, Markle responded, “Isn’t that wild?” The reporter asked why Markle thought that the series was getting so much love, she admitted she had “no idea” but had nothing but love for her crew.
“It was great to work on, such a great cast and crew,” Markle added. Markle starred in the legal drama from 2011 to 2018, just before she married Prince Harry and they started doing whatever it is that they do.
She concluded by suggesting that people love Suits simply because there are over 130 episodes to keep your mind occupied. “We had a really fun time. I was on it for seven seasons, so quite a bit. But it’s hard to find a show you can binge-watch that many episodes of these days, so that could have something to do with it. But good shows are everlasting.” Suits is surely everlasting and impactful.
The show has become so impactful that the creators are taking this momentum and turning it into a whole new show set in the Suits universe. Everything gets a universe now! Even law shows that just takes place in normal universes.
There are a lot of options when it comes to picking a good turkey at the grocery store. “Organic,” “air-chilled,” “heritage,” and “free range” are just a few of the buzzwords that fill up a turkey label these days. It’s okay if it’s all just a bit confusing. We’re here to help you sift through all the confusion and figure out which is the best bird for your Thanksgiving table.
The crucial starting point here is that you need to know yourself and what you want. If a pre-brined, factory-farmed frozen bird is fine for you, then that’s the path for you to take. If you can’t stomach that (sorry), then you’ll need to find the turkey that suits what you deem worthy of your feast.
One hard and fast rule is to be diligent if you’re looking for humane and unadulterated poultry. Read up at home, ask the folks behind the meat counter questions (within reason), and read those labels thoroughly. At the end of the day, it’s on you to do the hard work when finding the best bird for your Thanksgiving table — and if you want something that was raised ethically you’re going to have to wade through greenwashing and intentionally murky language choices.
Still, we’re here to help as much as we can — so keep reading to get some tips on decyphering those overloaded turkey packaging labels!
This means the bird wasn’t put into a chlorine-infused ice water bath to cool it down as quickly as possible after slaughter. The USDA allows all poultry to contain 15% of that water as part of its weight to accommodate this process. You’re basically throwing 15 cents on the dollar away on bloody chlorine-infused slaughterhouse water when you don’t buy air-chilled poultry, and that’s just bad accounting. Plus, just eww.
“Air-chilled” means the bird never touches that water. Instead, the freshly slaughtered birds are run through a cooling room that does the same thing without the bird ever getting bogged down with dirty water or touching any other turkey. It’s safer, cleaner, and doesn’t add chlorine water to your Thanksgiving turkey.
BOTTOM LINE:
Overall, air-chilled is the only way to go.
What “Organic” Means
You’ll see “organic” on a lot of labels. But what does that mean exactly? Well, according to federal regulations that means that the turkey was never fed feed with “antibiotics or antifungals” and only “organic feed.” So organic sort of automatically also means “no antibiotics” as well. It also relates to how many herbicides and sanitation chemicals are used in the living space of the birds and keeping all of that to a minimum.
Those are all positives. The only drawback is that “organic” turkeys tend to be on the smaller side. Otherwise, all of these points seem pretty solid when considering what to put in your body on Thanksgiving.
BOTTOM LINE:
You might have to end up buying two smaller turkeys — which will bring up questions of oven space. If those issues don’t worry you, this is going to be a better-cared-for bird.
What Are “Heritage” Breeds?
Heritage turkeys are the closest to wild turkeys in domestication. They’ll have a much richer tasting meat. They won’t be juicier per se (that depends on your cooking skills) but these birds will be a tad fattier. That’s something you want in your Thanksgiving turkey.
Bourbon Red, Standard Bronze, Narragansett, Auburn, Buff, Black, Royal Palm, Slate, and Midget White are the breeds you’ll likely see. Sometimes the label will just say one of those breeds and assume you’ll know it means “heritage” without explicitly stating that the bird is a heritage breed.
It’s worth noting that these birds are going to be mostly found at local butcher shops, higher-end grocery stores (think Whole Foods), and farmers’ markets. It’ll probably be worth looking up your local poultry farm today and seeing if they have any birds left to pick up. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to ask the good folks behind the meat counter at your local grocery store. They might have something in the back.
BOTTOM LINE:
Fattier birds are better in our book. If you’re aligned with that, this is the play.
Pre-Brined Or Not Pre-Brined
If you’re buying a frozen turkey from the average grocery store, it’ll likely be pre-brined. Hell, even if you’re buying a fresh turkey, you’ll want to look over that whole label to see if it’s pre-brined or not — sometimes this information is buried on the back.
The difference can be drastic. Pre-brined turkeys are soaked in water solutions with salt and “spices” that, according to Butterball, “enhance tenderness and juiciness.” Really though, you’re letting someone else season your turkey in a factory setting. That’s never really ideal unless you’re in a huge hurry leading up to Turkey Day. That might be the case, obviously — it’s a busy season.
Dry or wet, brine is all about the nuance — and you want to be in control of that nuance. You can add aromatic herbs, botanicals, and fruits to amp up specific flavors that will make your turkey shine. Brining your bird gives you control over the flavor of the turkey and the outcome. If you can accommodate the time it takes to brine at home, it’ll enrich your turkey and keep it super moist while adding deep flavors. You want all of that.
BOTTOM LINE:
Brine your turkey at home if you can. You’ll need an extra day or two ahead of time (and a fair amount of fridge space) but it is 100% worth it.
“Free Range” Birds
“Free range” birds will likely be heritage breeds and usually air-chilled. They’re often “organic” products as well. So you’ll be able to hit all these points at the same time. You can mostly find these turkeys by going to farmer’s markets and/or farms in your area. Even if you’re in a big city, it’s worth a short train ride or drive out of town to hit up a farm. Likewise, you can go to a higher-end supermarket and ask behind the counter if you don’t see “free range” birds in the coolers. Sometimes grocery stores can do special orders for you. But you’d have to do that — again — like tomorrow at the latest.
Moreover, “free range” is a no-brainer. Don’t eat meat that lived a shitty life. It’ll taste blander, for one. Plus, you don’t want to eat an animal that suffered through the only days it had on this planet. It’s that simple.
BOTTOM LINE:
You vote with your pocketbook every time you go shopping. Vote for the ethical treatment of the protein you’re spending all that money on. Okay, we’ll get off our soapbox.
Frozen Or Fresh?
This is the big one. Do you buy a frozen bird or a fresh one? I’ve roasted both quite a few times and there’s rarely that big of a difference, especially if you’re buying from a grocery store.
The biggest difference I’ve been able to pinpoint is fresh from a farm versus frozen or fresh from a grocery store. There’s a pretty big uptick in the quality of farm fresh birds compared to ones that have to go through the process of getting into a grocery store, fresh or frozen.
BOTTOM LINE:
If you’re going “fresh,” get it from a farmer. If you’re not getting it from a farm, fresh or frozen will be splitting hairs.
In professional wrestling, the most compelling storylines are the ones that have some element of truth to them.
In their first confrontation, Swerve Strickland said he was ashamed of “Hangman” Adam Page. With every word that followed, it dug further into what the former AEW world champion has become. Swerve questioned how Hangman had gone from a cornerstone of the company to wrestling on the pre-show, and said he’d lost his fire.
That last part, to an extent, was true.
His program with CM Punk ended with Page dropping the AEW title, and rumors swirled on the difficult backstage dynamic between Punk and the Elite (Page, Kenny Omega, and the Young Bucks).
Page spent much of the last year in and out of short-stint rivalries. He found himself in tag and trios bouts with the Dark Order, reunited with the Elite to face off against the Blackpool Combat Club, and eventually landed in the pre-show Over Budget Charity Battle Royal, not making the AEW All Out main card.
One of the faces of the promotion and a beloved wrestler among AEW fans, Page says he was frustrated and considered all of his options, even unrealistic ones like briefly stepping away from the roster to reframe his path forward.
“At my lowest in all of this in the past couple of years, the thing that — I don’t want to say kept me motivated, but kept me going, was that I knew I needed to continue to do this to provide for my family. It was not something that I could walk away from,” an introspective Page tells Uproxx Sports.
“And I kind of found that at the bottom, knowing I was going to continue doing this, knowing that deep down there’s still a part of me who enjoyed it and loved it,” he continues. “I needed to throw myself into it more. Because if I’m going to be here, I damn well better have fun and enjoy it. That’s what all of this, for better or worse — (and it) has been a lot of awful, awful shit that’s happened — but for better or worse has helped me in a lot of ways to really feel something again.”
Now, Hangman is flying again. It’s evident in how he’s talked and carried himself from the moment he squared off in the ring with Strickland, with the payoff coming on Saturday night in a Texas Death Match at AEW Full Gear in Los Angeles.
“I needed to be challenged mentally,” he says. “I needed something to really sink my teeth into and regain some passion and desire that maybe had slipped away to some extent over the past year and a half. (Strickland) said some things that were hard to hear, but I needed to hear them and I’m very glad that I did because it’s motivated me to fix those things. All the things that have happened since then have been even bigger motivators to be the best me that I can be.”
Page’s motivation for Saturday couldn’t be higher, as he takes the words and actions of Swerve — which includes breaking into his home — to this ultimate resolution.
“The first (Texas Death match) I was challenged to, a little terrified of the prospect. But I found my feet in it very quickly. I didn’t sink, I swam, I thrived. Eventually found that it was a tool for me to escape the way that I normally try to conduct myself,” Page continues.
“I think wrestling is a very honorable thing. I think it’s a very sacred thing,” he continues. “And it was difficult for me at first to step away from that for a moment. You know, let there be no rules, let the violence flow. But once I found that I thrived in that and that it was only a moment in time that would come and go and I could set it aside for the rest of my life, I found that I loved it and it was a tool when someone took things too far or someone needed to be dealt with, it was a way that I could deal with them.”
Page’s perspective on wrestling formed a natural bond with The Elite early in his career. While their lives are very different, the group shares the same beliefs in and out of the squared circle.
“(In wrestling) there should be something for everyone and a little bit of everything, and I think we all collectively believe that there’s really no right or wrong way to do this,” Page says. “It’s not science, it’s an art and whatever your art is, you should pursue it and do it the way you want to do it. Ultimately, I think that it’s kind of something that’s drawn us together as wrestlers. The way that we see things, do things, our take on wrestling as an art is different and it’s led us in slightly different directions for right now.
“We all have the same beliefs, morally about people, that regardless of anything that people should be treated with dignity, respect, and you should appreciate what they bring to the table, whatever it is,” he continues. “That’s something that I’ve always appreciated about Matt and Nick and Kenny as well. They’ve always treated people well, treated people kindly.”
Their views on wrestling and life is what led to them collectively to making a decision to stay in AEW. Page says they felt like four voices were louder than one when negotiating their deals. He pointed out that they’ve traveled alongside one another on a journey that has included a number of stops — in New Japan, in Ring of Honor, and the very start of AEW.
“It felt like one big ride, and it wasn’t a ride that we wanted to get off of together,” he says. “So whatever we did next, we knew that we wanted to do it together.”
That ride continues into Saturday, where Hangman says he plans to take care of business against Swerve.
“I fully intend to finish that for good on Saturday,” he says. “Once I can bring closure to that, for me, I feel that now I’m in a very different place than I was for the past year and a half, and I feel extremely motivated and I know that once my current goal is done, (winning the world title again will) be my next one.”
Hangman says winning the championship was a very special time for him. He was the fourth champion in the promotion’s history following Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, and Omega, and the gravity of being at the very top of the AEW food chain is not something that is lost on him.
But heavy is the head that wears the crown, and even Page admits that the physical and mental strain got overwhelming, going as far as to admit that he was “so deep in it … almost too much.”
As time has gone on, though, he’s been given an opportunity to reflect on his spell as champion. And as he does that, he’s able to look back on what he accomplished and hold his head up high, all while feeling a sense of excitement about what his future holds.
“The whole thing was taxing on my body, on my mind, on every part of life that you can imagine,” he says. “Looking back at it, I can always say… I wish I had done something differently or this or that or had it ended this way or that way. But I’m not going to do that. I’m proud of it. It’s more than most wrestlers ever accomplish in their lifetime. I should be proud of that and I am proud of it. And I’m looking forward to doing it again.”
How To Buy Tickets For Nicki Minaj’s ‘Pink Friday 2’ 2024 World Tour
Minaj shared the link on social media today (here’s the link), and while tickets aren’t for sale just yet, fans can RSVP with their phone number or email to be notified with more information when it becomes available.
The actual tour dates have not been shared yet, but the RSVP site reveals the tour is set to hit the North American cities of Austin, Boston, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Montreal, Nashville, Newark, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, and Washington DC. Internationally, the tour will go to the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
Meanwhile, Minaj recently spoke about her plastic surgery regrets, saying, “I guarantee you, if you change anything on your body and do anything surgical and all this, you’re going to — more than likely, not definitely, more than likely — look back one day and say, ‘I was fine just the way I was.’ And that’s what happened to me.”
Parenting can be pretty tricky at times. It’s like a string of endless pop quizzes and no one knows what grade you’re going to get until 18+ years later. It’s not until they grow up that you get to take in all of your hard work in raising a productive human. But there’s one part of raising kids that doesn’t get talked about enough, and that’s when they’ve reached the age of being able to be your friend.
One mom and her adult son are going viral on the internet for their admirable bond and ability to keep the belly laughs coming. The duo is truly parenting relationship goals. In a compilation of videos shared by VT, Jonah Bolona and his mom spend clip after clip pranking each other or just getting into family friendly mischief.
Bolona has been sharing videos of the silly nonsense he and his mother get into on his TikTok page, The Jonah Bolona, and has amassed nearly 2 million followers.
But it was the compilation video that took some of their funniest moments and mashed them together showcasing their fun relationship. In the very first clip, you know you’re in for…something. Bolona’s mom appears to be sitting on the floor patiently in some sort of black trash bag sealed up to her neck as he attaches a vacuum hose. Somehow mom falls over as the vacuum sucks all of the air out of the bag sealing her inside as Bolona runs away.
The entire compilation is just keeps getting more amusing and commenters love their dynamic.
“Ha ha his mum is a legend,” one person writes.
“Honestly don’t know how they haven’t given each other heart attacks or destroyed the house XD Guess it’s just a norm for them,” another comments.
“This is an extremely HEALTHY relationship!!! I love it,” someone else says.
Some people were quick to point out that there’s nothing wrong with living with your parents, especially when the relationship is healthy. While other’s clarified that it’s his house and it shouldn’t matter what others think as long as they’re having fun, which clearly they are. You can see their hijinks below for your own chuckle.
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.
AMAZON
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.
AMAZON
Here he is shouting it.
AMAZON
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.
AMAZONAMAZON
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.
AMAZON
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.
CBS
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.
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