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While neither Taylor Swift nor Travis Kelce have confirmed that they are dating, it sure looks like they are: Swift keeps showing up to Kelce’s football games, the two both made surprise appearances on the same episode of Saturday Night Live, and they had a date night in New York City last weekend. In fact, there’s one rumor that suggests the two are so far along that they’re looking into buying a house together.

Are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce actually buying a house together?

Probably not, no.

As Page Six notes, the rumor started on yesterday’s (October 16) episode of NBC’s Today With Hoda And Jenna. On the show, co-host Hoda Kotb was talking about the frenzy surrounding Swift and Kelce. Then, co-host Jenna Bush Hager chimed in, “A friend from Kansas City texted me there might be news they’re buying a house.”

She quickly hedged that, though, adding, “This is not confirmed by NBC News. I said ‘might be!’ My friend said ‘could be!’” She also noted that her source isn’t a realtor but knows realtors.

So, the biggest source on this is Hager’s hearsay that she walked back almost immediately after saying it. Given that it’s only been about a month since rumors of the two dating surfaced, odds are the two aren’t looking at homes just yet.

It’s not clear quite yet who the two main candidates are going to be in the next US presidential election. As far as a fantasy pick, Grimes has a compelling one: Taylor Swift.

Yesterday (October 16), GrimesAI, the automated X (formerly Twitter) account that’s made to simulate Grimes, tweeted, “it’s not just the fact that Taylor Swift as president would course correct society and fix carbon emissions in 10 years. it’s that I care about her mental health and she cares about mine (she doesn’t know me but she’d care).” The actual Grimes shared the tweet and replied, “In many ways Taylor Swift is the only presidential candidate who can unite the country. Trump v Swift is totally occurring in a parallel universe rn.”

Another user responded to the GrimesAI tweet, “Actually not a bad idea, Don’t know how good it would be for her mental health though.” Grimes replied, “It’s probably exceptionally unadvisable. It just probably would work.” Another user said, “Perhaps she should run as the Republican candidate,” and Grimes responded, “She’d be preferable as a Republican I think – actually unbeatable at that point.”

It would seem like Swift probably won’t run for president any time soon, but she’s currently the queen of the box office.

French fries are perfect. It’s astounding that something so simple — potatoes, cut, fried, and seasoned — can be so damn good. It’s a food that needs little improvement and yet… we’re not going to stop our favorite fast food brands from trying to elevate this mighty side dish. And the easiest way to do so is by piling salty cheese all over the fries.

Cheese fries take an already perfect dish and make it somehow better. Now granted, cheese fries are not as much of a necessity as French fries because once you start piling cheese, sauces, and other ingredients on top of a bed of fries it turns your side dish into a meal in itself — which makes it hard to balance when you’re also eating a giant bacon burger or a spicy chicken sandwich. Still, on those rare days that you feel like going HAM, cheese fries are the play.

So who makes the best cheese fries in fast food? We’re finding out by putting a few of our favorites to the blind taste test.

Methodology:

For the blind taste test, I didn’t want to limit the options to strictly fries with cheese on them. While I think this is a perfectly acceptable way to enjoy cheese fries, I think we can all agree that more ingredients are better.

Because we’re dealing with something that is going to taste best melted and hot, I had to pick fast food restaurants that were relatively close to one another so that I could pick up all the fries quickly before the cheese could harden and make the dish inedible.

That hurdle only allowed me to pick up fries from four establishments. Here are today’s players:

• Rally’s — Fully Loaded Fries
• In-N-Out — Animal Style Fries
• Shake Shack — Bacon Cheese Fries
• Wendy’s — Baconator Fries

Once I had the fries, I drove up to a local parking lot, sat outside on a curb, donned a blindfold, and had my girlfriend bring each order of fries to me at random. Will people notice if you wear a blindfold and sit in a parking lot while eating cheese fries on a curb? Yes. Yes, they will. Luckily people didn’t seem to think I was insane. Instead, they asked, “Are you a YouTuber?”

Maybe I should be! Anyway, here were the results.

Part 1: The Cheese Fries Blind Taste Test

Taste 1:

Crispy, a great mouthfeel here. underneath all the crunch I’m getting a heavy dose of salty cheese, some herbal notes, a hint of tang, and light smokey notes from bacon. The bacon seems a bit soggy to me, it doesn’t have much crunch, but the texture of the fries makes up for that.

The fries themselves are amazing, I’m tasting a lot of black pepper, a hint of ginger, and some sea salt.

Taste 2:

The fries here are a bit soggy, but I’m really liking the smokey, sweet, and salty flavor of the bacon. The cheese on this one has hardened a bit, but it’s not affecting the flavor too much.

A real focus on salt here, not enough to be overwhelming but that is the strongest flavor note I’m picking up on. The potatoes have a sort of bitter flavor to them, very natural tasting, if they weren’t soggy it would massively improve the experience.

Overall? Good, not great.

Taste 3:

This one is a bit of a mess. Again, the fries are a little soggy, making each forkful less crispy than I’d like it to be but the flavor is pretty good. I’m getting grilled caramelized onions and a lot of sweetness and tang that give each bite a savory vibe that is addicting.

The cheese adds a noticeable salty characteristic but the onions feel like the star of the show. Meaning that I can be certain which iconic Cali restaurant served these.

Taste 4:

The bacon is thin, but flavorful. The cheese has a sort of milky quality to it that I don’t love, but the bacon is so good, offering smokey and sweet flavors, that I’m willing to give this cheese a pass.

The fries are crispy and work as a great foundation for the other ingredients. I’m torn on this one. Easily this is the best bacon of the four, but there isn’t much of it and most of what I’m getting are salty fries and that weird, wet cheese.

If there is a way to order this option with extra bacon, definitely do it.

Part 2: The Cheese Fries Ranking

4. Wendy’s — Baconator Fries (Taste 2)

Great bacon, but where this order fails is in the fries — which were soggy — and the cheese which wasn’t abundant enough. Now granted, you could argue that it was the transit time that hurt this order the most but I disagree.

The order was still hot — I think the main issue is that these are served in a plastic box, which gets sweaty. I will say that even though I’m ranking these at the bottom, they’re still pretty tasty and worth ordering. But for a dish that shares a name with the mighty Baconator burger, this is a bit disappointing.

The Bottom Line:

Good, but it’s built on a shaky foundation. Wendy’s French fries are far from the best, and until they have better fries as a base, will never truly be great.

Find your nearest Wendy’s here.

3. In-N-Out — Animal Style Fries (Taste 3)

This order was the one major outlier in this taste best because it’s the only one of the three that didn’t have bacon, but you know what? I didn’t miss it. The Animal Style Fries are coming in at the third place spot for me not due to a lack of flavor, but just because these weren’t the best french fries to build upon.

In-N-Out’s fries are made from natural potatoes cut and diced in restaurant, which makes for a tasty fry but not a crunchy one. With all the layers of cheese and sauce, this dish just lacked texture. But given that In-N-Out’s burgers are pretty small, I think this makes for a great pairing with the brand’s very famous burger. It may be the only order of cheese fries that doesn’t feel like a meal in itself.

The Bottom Line:

It’s not top-tier but Animal Style Fries are still very satisfying and enjoyable. Especially if you’re one of those people who don’t love In-N-Out’s regular french fries.

Find your nearest In-N-Out here.

2. Shake Shack — Bacon Cheese Fries (Taste 4)

Straight up, what made this order of cheese fries get the second place spot is the bacon. Without the bacon, I have no doubt that this would’ve ranked last for me.

Last week I did a blind taste test of Bacon Cheeseburgers and complained that Shake Shack’s bacon was too thin to be enjoyable, I stand by that when it comes to burgers, but fries are the perfect canvas for this applewood smoked bacon to come alive.

The cheese, I find straight up off-putting. Rather than melted cheese, it’s a milky and runny cheese sauce. Luckily the texture of the fries and bacon are enough to offset the wet quality of the cheese, giving these cheese fries a lot of crunch and a satisfying salty and smoky flavor.

The Bottom Line:

Great, but the worst part about the cheese fries is the cheese — that’s a weird thing to come to terms with. I wish Shake Shack would just melt a few slices of American cheese on this order of fries but until then, it remains the best way to experience Shake Shack’s bacon.

Find your nearest Shake Shack here.

1. Rally’s — Fully Loaded Fries (Taste 1)

This is the first time Rally’s has ever taken a top spot in one of our food rankings, so if you’re a hardcore Rally’s/Checkers fan — congrats! Rally’s Fully Loaded Fries were far and above the best entry in this tasting.

The fries themselves are the reason. They’re flavorful, crispy, and well-seasoned. When paired with crumbles of bacon, melted cheese, and ranch, the result was forkful after forkful of decadent indulgent flavors that remained crispy even though they were the very first order I picked up in my roundup.

Ironically, I think Rally’s bacon was easily the worst. Still, bacon is bacon — smokey, still sweet, and delicious even in the worst of times.

The Bottom Line:

Hands down our top choice. Rally’s Fully Loaded Fries are the best cheese fries in all of fast food.

Find your nearest Rally’s here.

Chipotle was on fire last year! In 2022, Chipotle expanded its protein with new limited-time options every few months, including Guajillo Steak, the brand’s best chicken recipe ever, the Pollo Asado, Smoked Brisket, and Plant-Based Chorizo — all of which were pretty damn good. The new meats kept Chipotle exciting, which is why we awarded the brand our Golden Bag Award for best overall fast food brand in 2022.

So far this year, Chipotle has failed to keep up the momentum. In 2023, they have given us the ability to put fajitas in a quesadilla (a hack that had originated on TikTok and was already possible), and Chicken Al Pastor, an admittedly good inclusion but one that isn’t nearly as good as last year’s Pollo Asado. That’s it.

This is why we’re pretty hyped to see Chipotle is bringing back Carne Asada, a protein option that hasn’t been on the menu for over two years. Sure, it’s not brand new. But at least it’s something that will allow us to mix up the flavors a bit and add something different to our best food builds.

Because we’ve done a lot of Chipotle build experimentation, we figured the best way to try this new protein option is by putting it in our best burrito build of all time! Let’s eat.

The Burrito Build:

Our burrito build is the easiest way to have the best experience at Chipotle, and the concept here is simple: keep it as close to a San Francisco Mission Burrito (the burrito Chipotle’s whole restaurant concept is based on) as possible.

The build includes pinto beans, white rice, protein, red tomatillo salsa on the side, cheese, lettuce, and guacamole. I know, I know, it seems crazy to skip the fajitas but trust us on this, fajitas work much better in a bowl than in a burrito where all they do is take up space and distract from the flavor of the meat.

If you’d like some deeper reasoning on why this is the best Chipotle burrito build, hit up our Best-Possible Chipotle Burrito investigation here. Now let’s taste test this burrito with Carne Asada.

Carne Asada Burrito Taste Test:

Thoughts & Tasting Notes

Unlike what you’ll find at Mexican establishments, the Carne Asada here is not finely chopped into bite-sized pieces. Instead, what you get here are large chunks of steak. Part of the reason Mexican food spots chop up their carne asada so finely is that the meat can be tough, Chipotle’s version isn’t quite as easy to chew or as tender as its Steak option — it’s going to be a bit more laborious on the jaw to get through this meat. That said, it’s not full of fat, nerves, or other random chewy bits either.

The meat is dense and hearty but it’s flavored well with a mix of earthy oregano notes, some coriander, and a hint of cumin that helps it to finish savory and satisfying. As is the tendency with most things from Chipotle, there is also a lot of lime here adding a burst of citrus with every bite.

The steak is also finished with cilantro, so if you’re one of the unfortunate individuals who taste a soapy flavor when eating cilantro, you’re not going to be able to avoid that here. Luckily if you do like cilantro, like me, this adds a bright peppery freshness to the meat that deepens the flavor and results in a very nice journey for your taste buds.

The Carne Asada is made from cattle that are raised without antibiotics or added hormones and is grilled in small batches daily and only hand-sliced once finished. This should allow the meat to be more tender and juicy. In my experience it wasn’t noticeably tender, but I’ll note that I did come early in the morning so I may have been eating meat stored from the previous day.

The Bottom Line:

A solid addition to Chipotle’s menu, we definitely recommend you try it in either the bowl, tacos, quesadilla, or burrito. Now give us nachos already, Chipotle!

Find your nearest Chipotle here.

After he received less than favorable feedback from fans regarding his teaser snippet for the song “Flex,” Kid Cudi returned to the creativity drawing board. Unfortunately, extra time was needed to make that musical pivot so that Cudi could rethink his approach for his forthcoming album, Insano. Ultimately, he postponed the project, which was slated to drop in June. Due to the temporary album setback, Cudi has fed fans other collaborations, including a campaign with Star Trek and a song with Lil Durk.

Thanks to his recent concert, supporters have more insight into what the future holds for the body of work. Here are the features on Cudi’s upcoming ‘Insano’ album. Following Cudi’s last Cudder’s Clubhouse performance at Kings Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday, October 15, he took to X (formerly Twitter) to confirm a handful of collaborations that could appear on the project.

Cudi confirmed Pusha T and Travis Scott during an exchange with a fan on the platform. According to HotNewHipHop, other suspected cameos include ASAP Rocky, Young Thug, and Lil Yachty.

Cudi felt generous during his online browsing and confirmed that Insano will still be released in January 2024.

Several pop-up dates remain for Cudi’s intimate show, including stops in Dallas and Houston, Texas; more details will be revealed then.

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

This weekend’s III Points Festival is gearing up to be a gathering for the history books. The multi-day event will feature headline performances by Black Coffee, Skrillex, and Fred Again… on Friday, October 21. Iggy Pop, Grimes, and Caroline Polachek are the most notable acts slated to perform on Saturday, October 21.

The festival will spotlight several dozen other entertainers across its six stages, each with their own headliner, namely Mind Melt, Isotropic, Sector 3, RC Cola, S3quenc3, and Grand Central. Some of the bands that are scheduled to play over the musical bonnaza include Explosions In The Sky, Aluna, Tokischa, Nia Archives, Mau P, Alice Glass, Las Nubes, Jonny From Space, Sespacio, Guacho, Roll-E, plus some more.

Set times are subject to change. Visit the festival’s official website to stay updated on the performance schedule.

III Points 2023 will take place on October 20 and 21 at Mana Wynwood in Miami, Florida. According to the festival’s official website, day passes for Friday, October 20, and the 2-day package are entirely sold out. However, a limited number of general admission passes are on sale for Saturday, October 21. Find more information here.

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

Thanks to the WGA strike, Jordan Klepper had five months off from one of the more chaotic jobs in America: talking to Trump supporters. On Monday, The Daily Show returned, and with it the correspondent’s segments in which he hobnobs with MAGA heads. Have they gotten better, more sensible since May? Absolutely not. If anything, the three indictments Donald Trump has nabbed since then have made them even more incoherent.

The segment finds Klepper in New Hampshire, where he runs afoul of many a shirt emblazoned with Trump’s instantly iconic mugshot. “Never surrender to the tie-ryanny,” says one younger fan, badly mispronouncing a word even Trump gets right. When Klepper points out that on the shirt the former president is doing exactly that — surrendering to tie-ranny — the poor guy can only respond with a truant “Huh?”

Another gentleman, clad head-to-toe in pricey MAGA merch, complains about how under Biden Americans have trouble buying basic necessities, like milk and eggs. He then admitted he’d spent “a couple thousand dollars” on Trump swag.

Then there’s the 91 elephants in the room. While supporters parrot Trump, calling the dozens of criminal charges filed against him part of a “witch hunt,” some have trouble keeping each indictment straight. One supporter tries to remember when Trump started using that phrase, guessing it might have been around the time of the “lady charges.”

“Lady charges: Is that Stormy Daniels lady charge or sexual assault?” Klepper asks him.

“Sexual assault,” he replies. When asked if he was found guilty on that one, the man replies, “I think so.”

There was also a disturbingly weird trend: When asked to name their favorite Trump rally, multiple people said January 6. Klepper asked one if he made it inside the Capitol building alongside the many who were later arrested and sometimes jailed on federal charges.

“Uhhhh, I can’t say that, for legal reasons,” he replied.

“So you may or may not have been involved in treasonous activity?” Klepper asked.

“Yeah, well, I can’t get into that one,” he sheepishly responded.

Klepper then told him to “try not to overthrow any duly elected officials,” to which he said he’d “be good today.”

You can watch Klepper’s return segment in the video above.

All emo roads this weekend lead to When We Were Young 2023. The Las Vegas Grounds will host Green Day and Blink-182 headliners, amongst many others, on Saturday, October 21, and Sunday, October 22. Several notable artists are expected, including Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Thirty Seconds To Mars, All Time Low, 5 Seconds Of Summer, Kennyhoopla, and Jean Dawson.

Since the festivities are spread across two days and four stages, managing your time on the ground could get tricky. Here are the When We Were Young set times for 2023.

Due to overwhelming demand, the second day, October 22, was added. However, it’s important to note that although the event will span the entirety of the weekend, the set times will remain the same across both days. But still, set times are subject to change. For an up-to-date itinerary for the event, download their official mobile app.

When We Were Young 2023 will take place from October 21 to 22 at the Las Vegas Grounds in Las Vegas, Nevada. There aren’t any festival passes available for purchase at this time, but there is a waitlist if any ticket slots open up. Find more information here.

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

Hard to believe, but it’s been over a month since Lauren Boebert was thrown out of a regional production of the Beetlejuice musical for disruptive behavior, including getting handsy with her date. Since then the incident has produced one plot twist after another. But if you thought the story had run its course, think again.

Per Politico, the Colorado representative’s most recent campaign finance filings reveal she dropped a whopping $317.48 back in July at Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar in Aspen. That, incidentally, is the same establishment owned by Quinn Gallagher, Boebert’s date at the show.

As earlier reported, Gallagher is a Democrat, which Boebert claimed is the reason that she parted ways with him after getting busted getting frisky at an all-ages musical. What’s more, his bar hosts drag queen events — something Boebert and her fellow MAGA extremists stridently oppose, at least publicly.

Boebert’s campaign manager tried to brush off her spending hundreds at a gay-friendly establishment that runs in the face of one of her culture war bugaboos, saying, “Meeting with donors and covering their food and beverage costs at a popular local establishment of their choosing is a standard campaign procedure.”

In the filing, the money is reported as being for “event catering.”

After word that Boebert had been ejected from a family musical about ghosts, the lawmaker tried to play it down. Surveillance footage soon contradicted her claims. She then kept accidentally bringing it up. It’s been a couple weeks since her Beetlejuice antics produced new news, but apparently the story’s not quite dead yet.

(Via Politico)

In May, “To Be Honest” singer Christine and the Queens (also known as Redcar) hit the road to support his latest album, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, which included an appearance at Primavera Sound 2023. Unfortunately, he won’t finish the second half of his tour due to an undisclosed illness.

On Sunday, October 15, Christine and the Queens was scheduled to take the stage in Montreal, Canada. However, hours before the show at MTELUS, he took to his official Instagram to reveal that the “remaining 2023 tour dates” are cancelled.

The note read, “Red (aka Christine and the Queens) was taken ill today and, on the advice of doctors, was forced to make the difficult decision to cancel all remaining tour dates for 2023. The tour was scheduled to resume tonight in Montreal and end in Paris in late November. Refunds are available at the point of purchase.”

Christine and the Queens did not share any specifics regarding his medical condition. Last year, he faced a similar complication when he injured himself during tour rehearsal, which caused him to postpone a show in England and his home country of France.

The remaining tour dates included performances in Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Washington, DC, Toronto, and Chicago.