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The past weekend wasn’t a career highlight for Doja Cat. The “Attention” rapper, who is gearing up for an arena tour, as well as the release of her upcoming fourth studio album, recently made news about interactions with her fans.

Over the weekend, fans noted that Doja was blocking people who had criticized her relationship with Twitch streamer J Cyrus.

She later blasted her fans through since-deleted posts on Threads, telling them to “get a job” and voicing her disapproval for her stans identifying themselves as “kittenz.”

She further exacerbated things, saying “If you call yourself a ‘Kitten’ or f*cking ‘Kittenz’ that means you need to get off your phone and get a job and help your parents with the house.”

Later, a fan asked Doja if she still loves her fans, however, Doja’s answer was rather shocking.

“I don’t though,” Doja said, “cuz I don’t even know y’all.”

As a result of her tirade, several Doja Cat stan accounts ended up deactivating. Additionally, Doja has reportedly lost nearly 250,000 Instagram followers, Billboard reports.

Since this series of posts, Doja has not updated any of her social media channels. It also appears that her Threads account has been removed from the budding social media platform.

Geoff Rickly was open to memorializing a $200-a-day heroin addiction, but not as an addiction memoir. That literary subgenre tends to subject itself to the same moral quandary as anti-war films – no matter how gory the action, no matter how high the body count, the mere process of turning it into art almost invariably ends up glorifying the very thing it claims to be against.

If the past 50 or so years of rockstar overdoses haven’t sufficiently dimmed heroin’s allure, I’m not sure Rickly’s debut novel Someone Who Isn’t Me will either. It’s not for lack of trying, as the autofictional Rickly hits many bottoms that are a matter of public record. For example, getting robbed at gunpoint while trying to cop, or sleeping under his desk at the Collect Records offices before it implodes in spectacular, public humiliation once Martin Shkreli is revealed as its primary financial backer; Shkreli indeed makes a cameo as a diabolical manifestation of Rickly’s self-loathing. I don’t recall ever seeing any news clip about Rickly fishing a bag of dope out of a clogged public bathroom, but I have to assume something sorta like that probably happened in real life.

The bigger challenge for Rickly lies in trying to avoid romanticizing the cure, which just so happened to be a Schedule I controlled substance in America. Both Geoff Rickly and meta-Geoff get sober after a weeklong, intensive clinic in Mexico where they ingest ibogaine – a psychedelic from the iboga shrub that has held promise as a cure for drug addiction since the CIA studied its effects in the 1950s. He compares the process to defragging the hard drive of personal memory, coming to terms with the most formative, traumatic experiences of your life while also seeing bugs crawling out of the wall. Also, after several days of group therapy, you smoke DMT with a shaman.

I could bring up the potential side effects, which include ataxia, cardiotoxicity, and, not infrequently, death. Then again, when has this might actually kill you ever dissuaded the most desperate drug addicts? In both Someone Who Isn’t Me and its related press cycle, Rickly is quick to puncture the substantial and paradoxical appeal of doing illegal drugs to cure an addiction to other illegal drugs. “You’ve seen the worst things you’ve done in your life and people get suicidal and start trying to call someone to pick them up in Mexico because they’re like terrified, like, ‘what am I doing here, these people are trying to kill me’,” he explains during our Zoom conversation. “It’s such a harrowing experience and when you come out of it, you’re like, ‘for real, you did that to me on purpose?’”

Someone Who Isn’t Me begins as a deceptively straightforward historical account of Rickly’s wilderness period, populated by his former bandmates, his real-life girlfriend and parents, and also, a loose network of drug dealers who speak in frightening deadpan. Certainly, Thursday fans will geek out as Rickly recalls the time he got a concussion swinging a mic Long Island-emo style and the tragedies that inspired “Understanding (In a Car Crash)” and “Counting 5-4-3-2-1.” But the emergence of Rickly’s authorial voice occurs in the midst of his ibogaine trip, a surrealist, vivid conflation of actual memory and dramatic license, part Sheila Heti, part Cervantes – a self-described tragicomic figure who truly believes he’s on a mystical quest.

The title of Someone Who Isn’t Me nods to the book’s meta angle, a preface used on Reddit’s drug-seeking forums where people (wrongly) assume it will provide them legal immunity. Writing in autofiction was a purely artistic decision at the beginning, similar to the way his band Thursday achieved massive influence and respect amidst the early 2000s Warped Tour scene by avoiding most of its cliches, taking a more oblique and literary approach to the genre’s tried and true subject matter. “If I tried to write a memoir where I just laid it bare, it would feel quite false to me,” he offers. “It doesn’t have that fictional element of what life had become for me.”

Moreover, it was intended as a savvy business decision: major publishing houses have saturated the “current events” section of Barnes & Noble with Opioid Epidemic explainers, while dozens of ex-addicts strive to write the next Cherry. Not that it initially worked out for Rickly. “Getting so many notes back [from publishers] like, ‘we already have one of these’ was such a devastating experience,” he admits. Eventually, his manuscript found its way to renowned essayist Chelsea Hodson, who appealed to Rickly’s DIY punk roots and made Someone Who Isn’t Me the inaugural release on her new Rose Books imprint. “She was like, ‘They don’t have any fucking books like this,’” he recalls. “I’m not saying it’s gonna be a hit, but they’re stupid – that’s why they’re the majors, because they’re stupid.”

The initial response has been overwhelmingly positive – the reviews, the presales and the publicity behind Someone Who Isn’t Me has far exceeded what Rickly imagined he’d ever achieve as a debut author on an indie press, though most debut authors never made Full Collapse. Indeed, much of Someone Who Isn’t Me owes its actual creation, not just its inspiration, to Thursday’s success; he couldn’t get much work done in his “get in the van” mode with No Devotion or as a solo act, “whereas when I’m with Thursday and we’re touring on a bus, I wake up and start writing, I can chill in bed and write.” But Rickly quickly retracts that image – nothing about the creative process of Someone Who Isn’t Me was chill for Rickly and nothing about being an author has been either. “I’ve been on tour with Sparta, I’ve been out with No Devotion, I’m out with Thursday, we were only doing festivals and now we’re doing a month of shows stringing them together,” he beams. “This was supposed to be my slow year, instead it’s just packed.”

Regardless of how “personal” your music has been portrayed as over the years, this book is likely the first time you can’t use plausible deniability – the narrator’s name is Geoff, Thursday and its band members are mentioned by name. Has it been more difficult to do interviews where you’re literally the subject matter?

With music, it can be quite personal and you are talking about yourself but there is a level of poetic license and blah, blah, blah. This feels, in some way, like the most nakedly vulnerable thing I’ve done, but I also think there are so many levels of fictional tissue paper laid over things. The life that I was living as an addict was almost fictional, it didn’t seem real. So writing a fictional book about this fictional life that I was having seems like the most real way to talk about the state of that life.

With so many people from your actual life in this book, were you concerned about whether they might be harmed by their inclusion?

Most of the people I included were either public figures or I talked to them – “You wanna read this thing before it goes out?” Not that I was going to change it, but they were all like, “it’s great, cool.” There’s a novelist who I really admire, Juliet Escoria, she wrote this book Juliet The Maniac, and I was able to get her to blurb my book. It’s a fictionalized novel about a girl living with, and understanding, a schizophrenia diagnosis in high school. It was a huge inspiration for me, I love the way she wrote it and the way that she dramatized inner states. When you’re inside them, it’s not “what you have is schizophrenia,” it’s like… “okay, now there’s black lines moving down the hallway.” I really admired how she was able to put you there inside, how the book was so beautiful and poetic and made me understand a state of being that I couldn’t imagine. I loved it so deeply and it gave me credence – I can do this, I can figure out how to dramatize this thing that is both real and also fictional. But with the fictional part, how do I portray it in a way that’s experiential?

Memoirs don’t make you feel like you’re in it, they explain it to you. I wanted to make people feel like they’re in it and can understand and empathize with it. So when I finally talked to her, and asked “why didn’t you include this thing in your book,” she said, “I wasn’t allowed to, [my lawyer] said it was too close to reality, I had to change it.” Chelsea’s lawyer didn’t tell me to take this thing out! We’ll see! We’ll see who’s got the better lawyer! More will be revealed about whether I needed better clearance, but on a moral level, I feel pretty good about it.

There’s a romantic ideal young people have of authors – particularly experimental writers inspired by drugs. How did the experience of being a sober, 40-something author compare to the one you had as a teenager?

When I started the book, I figured I should get an old typewriter, do it the old-fashioned way by hand and get a blazer with elbow patches. There was definitely the romance of writing, and the reality of writing hit me in several stages – first of which is that I do my best writing in the morning as soon as I get up. I need to give this book five hours a day in the morning, every day, five days a week and some weekends. Steadily, I gave the book five hours a day, five days a week, for five years. That’s a lot of hours for one piece. I can sell it probably on the same margins as a record and I can probably make a record working five hours a day, five days a week, for two months and be done. It would be done and it’d be sick, I know that experience. I’ve been there, I can confidently say I can make a good record in those two months, so this is a lot more time. I had to learn a new craft, I had to go back to school so to speak. I took classes, I took on mentors and I read books and listened to Masterclasses. I really studied. I got an agent and she gave me huge reading lists, and I read 50, 60, 70 books that my contemporaries were doing that she thought were comparable in style. And I made notes and tried to understand what their project was doing and how they accomplished it, I looked up notes of the interviews.

The most helpful note I got in the space of what I could do in autofiction was after reading Sheila Heti, she said, “If you can show me where the funny is, then you know where everything is.” It’s gotta be funny, it’s gotta be funny! It’s not gonna be a joke book, but I gotta find what the humor is in my situation. Luckily, I was able to find the Don Quixote character who believes himself to be on a holy quest but is actually the fool. I can make that funny. I’m the first person and you see my point of view, but you can also understand that point of view is limited by his drug use to where he only sees within the blinders and everyone else sees him clearly. I can dramatize this in a way that can be funny – the difference between what the narrator sees and what every other character sees and I think the reader will pick up on, “Oh man, the narrator is trying to tell me how it is but he doesn’t know how it is. He’s lost, I can see it.” There’s also the reader feeling a little bit superior to the narrator, “Oh man, what a fool.”

I’m curious about how you were able to recreate the ibogaine experience, were you allowed to keep notebooks during the procedure?

So your limbs don’t work when you’re in the care of the ibogaine clinic, your ataxia is so extreme that even lifting your head isn’t a good idea. The whole room spins, you lose control. Like, getting people to the bathroom, I watched other people go and when I had to go, it was a nightmare. So writing was impossible, there was no way to keep notes. It was a very vivid experience, like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life, so in that regard, it stuck with me. I decided early on I would take huge liberties with the trip and I would substitute hallucinations for fiction. So instead of being psychedelic, it’s surreal.

How would you describe the difference?

I think psychedelia is more experimental, you can see it in the text with how it fractures and fragments, whereas surrealism starts in realism and bends slightly. So rather than being an onslaught of imagery that you can’t make sense of, it’s this slow bending of reality around an emotional state. The first part is the closest we get to memory and I took liberties putting memories in there instead of what I saw on the trip because I thought I could tell this story in a more linear way. The trip itself was very chaotic and a lot of pictures, stuff that no reader would want to sit through. The truth itself [of the trip] was “now there’s bugs, now there’s this, now there’s that.” So I decided this middle section is going to be more epic and the next section is going to be about the emotional truth of places. Like, I’m gonna try to model it after Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.

Did you have any experience with psychedelics before this one?

In high school, I had several pretty heavy psychedelic experiences. The biggest one was when my high school girlfriend was like, “We have a half day of school on Friday and I got us mushrooms, so let’s take them and chill out together.” And I was like…“Okay!” She was going to meet me at my house, it was maybe 11:30 AM and I took my half and was waiting for her. And she was like, “Hey, uh…I can’t come today, I got called into work.” What do you mean, I already took my half of the mushrooms! And she’s like…“Half? You know that was for four people, right?” I tripped so hard, I went through a full death-and-rebirth process and had full-length mirrors where I thought I found spirit guides. I thought, “Oh, I’m invincible now, I’m gonna take acid,” that kinda thing. I had been a little bit down that road before but it’s not my preferred method of being, I’ll tell you that much.

It’s well known that Bill Wilson [the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous] believed that LSD could be used in the treatment of addicts and had taken supervised trials himself when it was still legal in the 1950s. Still, do you have any ambivalence about using this type of drug as a cure for drug addiction?

I was looking into [going to the ibogaine clinic] for a year. I had a friend who confronted me with it and said, “This is probably the only way you’re going to get it,” because we lived together for a while and he watched me struggle. After being like, “No this is stupid, I wouldn’t take a drug to cure drugs, I’m going to do this the old fashioned way, going to meetings high or copping after a meeting,” I started to really think…I am those unfortunate few that are constitutionally incapable of being honest with myself. Oh shit, I guess I’d better take the most extreme course of action. That was it. I can’t do anything more extreme than this and it scared me senseless. It’s so scary, some of the documentaries show a ritual practice in Gabon where they’re force-feeding people so much iboga shrub bark and the person is throwing up and being dragged through a puddle and their head is dunked in water and people are blowing smoke in their face…I don’t want to do that! I didn’t think there’d be people who’d make sure I’m OK, but they’re gonna give me an IV to stay hydrated. It was a tough decision but I think it speaks to how, by the time I went, my friends and family were like, “What are you gonna do man, you can’t stay here any longer. You go do whatever, because there’s nothing for you here.” When you get that from your friends…“Oh, it kills some people? Yeah… well, you’re definitely gonna die, so you better go.” [laughs]

There’s a great bit in the new John Mulaney special where he jokes about going to rehab and being kinda disappointed that no one recognizes him. Was there anyone in the group in Mexico that knew you were a musician?

I did get close with the other people and learned about their lives, they kinda knew that I was maybe a musician. After the DMT session where everyone’s crying and smiling and I started believing in god – which is a pretty intense experience – we were sitting in a circle and they gave everyone little things, like a fruit juice. They blend strawberries and you’re like…“Oh my god, this is the best, I can actually taste what fruit tastes like, fruit is amazing.” You’re having that experience together, “Look at the sun, look at the beach! Why were we so upset last night, the world is so beautiful!” And I noticed for the first time, there’s an acoustic guitar and I picked it up and played a song. None of them knew Thursday. I played a song I wrote or whatever and I was in it, it was especially vivid. And they were like…“Wow, you’re a musician like that? You’re a real musician?” That was a really cool experience for me because sometimes I think all of my success is based in the cultural context of the early 2000s and the way we changed certain things to an extent. I’m sure that’s true. But I don’t think of myself as having talent of some kind. I don’t think, “Oh, you’re actually good at this and you have a gift for communication through song,” but that moment was one of the first times I realized I do this because I love it and I am good at it. It changed the way I thought about myself.

Do you still keep in touch with any of them?

We kept in touch pretty regularly for the next year. The woman in the bed next to me who said that she saw Cleopatra [during her trip], she came to see Thursday play at the Roseland Ballroom in Portland. She was like, “Fuck yeah, that was awesome!” She was also really drunk and I was worried…“Oh no, is this ok, is this bad?” I’m doing 12 steps now, so I’m kinda sobriety-pilled so to speak, you gotta be 100% completely sober. We haven’t kept as much in touch since, I know not all of them have stayed sober but I think any method is gonna work for some or not for others.

Is the sole purpose of the ibogaine clinic necessarily to help people achieve sobriety or is there a component of simply trying to “expand people’s minds” or help them develop a clarity about their lives?

There are different ways to look at it, there’s a 7-day program for addicts to get clean and there’s a 3-day program that they were offering for C-suite executives to have an experience and…learn how to master the world. “You wanna know the truth? Check this shit out!” For me, it was, this has to be it. And to that extent, as long as I was looking at it like “This is the thing that has to work and I don’t have any other chances,” I had that gift of desperation that people talk about is so important.

Given how it worked for you, do you feel compelled to advocate for mainstream acceptance of ibogaine?

This is gonna maybe sound bad and I don’t mean it to be. But I think a few years ago, MAPS or one of the other psychedelic centers that are interested in the research potential might have been like, “Yeah, there’s potential here, why aren’t we doing this?” Whereas now, there’s more of a political angle to the promotion of psychedelics. “We’re really close to making psilocybin work for X amount of people in a clinical setting in the US…if we can get this done, let’s normalize it and make it sound safe and effective which it can be…but let’s not muddy the waters with this fucking 36-hour space odyssey and maybe it kills some people type of drug.” The psychedelic community might say, “Let’s be quiet about that one, alright – that’s not gonna help us right now.” That’s understandable and unfortunate because I think there is a potential and we’ve known since the 1960s about that potential. There’s a doctor, Howard [Lotsof], he was able to cure his own heroin addiction with [ibogaine] and realized how powerful it was and wrote to Eli Lilly and applied for a patent. And Eli Lilly’s like, “You’re using what? It’s not really worth it for us, how much will we charge to make it worthwhile, we’re working on methadone or whatever.” I don’t remember all the specifics, I’m not trying to smear Eli Lilly, it was that kind of response. “I don’t really see where the potential is for this drug to be profitable or work in a way we need it to, it’s too uncontrollable. We have this thing where people can see us every week and we can keep an eye on them, you know?” I do understand the clinical angle of wanting to keep an eye on people when they’re getting treatment, it’s not stupid.

I suppose there’s also the moral stigma attached to drug addiction, that people wouldn’t want to have something as simple as a pill that could cure it.

Even the resistance to harm reduction like Narcan – how can you be against Narcan when it saves people’s lives? “It’s saving the wrong people’s lives!”

Bands will often talk about how much easier making a second album is after they’ve spent years figuring out how to do the first one, do you have that sense after completing your debut novel?

I’m working on some short stories, I got a few people who’ve asked me for them, it’s just so different. I wrote this book, which is such a specific thing, and now I’m like, what’s writing in third person like? There’s a learning curve, and I’m trying to figure out what the next idea for a book would be, something that captivates my attention enough that I would throw myself into it. It’s quite a commitment, I’d better be interested in the subject matter. This is a great situation but I’m like…maybe I can get the next one on a major, because then I could get a starred Kirkus review and “staff pick” in Barnes and Noble or some stupid thing that I don’t need. I talked to Sam Tallent, who blurbed my book, he wrote this amazing book called Running The Light, he self-published and sold I think 100,000 copies and he had the #1 Audible audiobook…and he said, “But all I really want is acceptance in the literary community.” Dude, you’re making a living writing, everyone that’s “accepted in the literary world” wishes they could do what you’re doing!

In the parts of the book where you recall writing music in Thursday, the importance of collaboration and immediate feedback is very clear. How do you recreate that element of the creative process into something as solitary as writing a novel?

I wasn’t [getting feedback] on the bus, but I was in a workshop on the 92nd Street Y, which is sort of a famous New York institution for writing. I got a lot of critique, some it was very good, some of it was like…nah, you’re clearly wrong [laughs]. But even getting clearly wrong advice was helpful in being able to evaluate feedback. In the beginning, I needed a lot, I kept telling my agent I usually have a band member who’ll tell me, “That sucks.” And she was like, “I’m your band member, you got a question, hit me.” And when I found Chelsea as my other band member, I’m like I got the sickest band now. Power trio!

Do you read your own reviews?

I always read the reviews. When I was younger, I was probably too sensitive and I shouldn’t have read them all. But I just think if there’s anyone who is a smart, thinking, caring person who engages with your art, I wanna know. It’s important now that I have some self-respect – “I can see why you would want that, but I’m gonna do what I need to do. Respect.”

Literally everything I’ve seen about the book has been positive so far.

It’s been really surprising because Thursday really had to fight for any kind of respect and having people be like, “Yeah, this is good” is weird. Okay, I’m new to this, shouldn’t you hold my head underwater until I can’t breathe and then be like, “Okay, you can get up now?” I guess the other shoe isn’t gonna drop? Hopefully, we’ll see!

This just in: Meryl Streep is considered a suspect in Paul Rudd’s murder (in the Only Murders in the Building season three trailer, at least).

Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez, as Charles, Oliver, and Mabel, are joined by the multi-time Oscar winner in the new season of the Hulu comedy. This time, the mystery revolves around a murder at Oliver’s Broadway show. The victim: Ben, played by Rudd. “Finding this killer is the only way you’ll have a show,” Mabel tells Oliver. Could it have been Streep?

If you’ve ever wanted to hear Streep do a bad accent, Rudd say the word “stinkerooni,” or Steve Martin mispronounce “meme,” check out the trailer above.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Season three finds Charles, Oliver, and Mabel (played by Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez) investigating a murder behind the scenes of a Broadway show. Ben Glenroy (Paul Rudd) is a Hollywood action star whose Broadway debut is cut short by his untimely death. Aided by co-star Loretta Durkin (Meryl Streep), our trio embarks on their toughest case yet, all while director Oliver desperately attempts to put his show back together.

Only Murders in the Building returns to Hulu with two episodes on August 8th.

After many rumors, it’s official: Travis Scott’s planned concert at Egypt’s Pyramids of Giza is canceled, per a statement from Live Nation Middle East.

The statement shared today (July 26) starts, “We regret to inform you that the UTOPIA show, originally scheduled for July 28th at the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt is cancelled. Unfortunately, despite highest efforts, complex production issues meant that the show could not be constructed in the desert. We understand that this news is disappointing and not the outcome any of us desired.”

It concludes, “Refunds will be issued to all ticket holders at their point of purchase. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this cancellation may have caused and appreciate your understanding. We remain committed to bringing exceptional live performances to fans and hope to have the opportunity to do so in the future.”

The news follows reports that cultural concerns from the Egyptian Musicians’ Syndicate forced the Scott show to be canceled, with a statement from the group reading in part, “After examining social media opinions and feedback, as well as the news circulating on search engines and social media platforms, which included authenticated images and information about peculiar rituals performed by the star during his performance, contradicting our authentic societal values and traditions, the Syndicate’s president and board of directors have decided to cancel the license issued for hosting this type of concert, which goes against the cultural identity of the Egyptian people.”

Live Nation said in response at the time, “There have been no changes to Travis Scott’s show in Egypt; any reports to the contrary are false. We can’t wait to celebrate ‘Utopia’ with you in Egypt!”

Now, though, the show has indeed been canceled. There were reports earlier this week that Scott’s team was looking to find another venue for the show, but it’s not clear if that remains, or ever was, the case.

It makes some sense why, in Talk to Me – the new A24 horror film coming out this weekend by twin brothers Danny And Michael Philippou – a group of rambunctious young people would be so gung ho to let demons possess their bodies. Normally, even in horror movies, people don’t like that, as opposed to willingly letting it happen. (Though Ghost is a notable exception, but then again in that case we’re talking about Patrick Swayze.) You see, there’s this evil statue of a hand. If a person grabs the hand and says, “Talk to me,” a ghoul appears in front of the person. Next, the person has the option of letting the ghoul possess their body, which seems, from the get-go, a pretty bad idea.

The reason it makes at least some sense is both Danny And Michael Philippou (these are two very spirited fellows) made their bones with YouTube videos and, yes, at one time owned a YouTube house. If you are the kind of person who would willingly live in a YouTube house and, as the Philippous say, love attention, then, yes, I could see the hand being a pretty popular thing to do. Though, in the film, if you let the ghost possess you for over three minutes, there are repercussions, as Mia (Sophie Wilde) finds out the hard way as she is now haunted by visions even without touching the hand.

Ahead, Danny And Michael Philippou (did I mention how spirited these two are?) try to convince me that if I were at one of their parties I would touch the hand. I concede, yeah, maybe, but once I see a ghoul I’m not ever letting that thing inside me and that would be it. They didn’t believe me.

Danny: What are those posters you got behind you?

Michael: Is that La La Land on the right?

It is. It’s hanging up because I got quoted on it.

Michael: What’s the quote? What’s the quote?

“Glorious.”

Danny: [Laughs] How awesome.

So it’s all about my ego.

Danny: What about the one next to it? Did you get quoted on that one?

Well, that is a movie called Manhattan Cocktail and it came out in 1928, so I did not get quoted for that. By the way, it’s a lost movie. It doesn’t exist anymore.

Michael: Oh, really? Wow.

Okay, so your movie … you know what I thought after watching it? It’s just kids having fun.

Danny: Until it gets messy.

These kids wanted to show themselves a nice time.

Danny: That’s a beautiful way to view it.

So, usually in horror movies, people do not want to get possessed.

Danny: Man. I think that this generation would do The Hand if it existed. I think I would do The Hand if it existed…

To be fair, you both lived in a YouTube house. So I do believe you both would definitely do this, but there’s a large segment of society who do not want to live in a YouTube house as well.

Michael: Yeah, that’s the thing. I guess our take, if this was real, that’s what would be happening with people that we know. It’s just the world that we grew up.

Danny: If you look up Ouija board on TikTok, you’ll see kids just wanting to get possessed and doing that Ouija board…

But we all know that’s fake. This thing’s real. You see the monster. You don’t see anything with the Ouija board.

Michael: Back in the day, it used to be, “Don’t walk into the dark forest. Don’t do this horrific thing.” Now it’s, “Do it and film yourself doing it.” It’s this attention-seeking culture that we’re a part of. It’s anything to get attention: positive or negative. But young people haven’t built in their minds, some of them, what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s what gets seen. And that’s a big part of it.

Danny: Even people staying in haunted rooms, or are signing up for haunted experiences, or going on the tracks where serial killers murdered all these people, or obsessing over true crime – there is a morbid obsession with today’s society.

Michael: And doing it safely. I think that these kids, in their minds, are doing it safely. Because it’s like, “You have other people that can pull The Hand off. We’re going to time it.” You’re not scared and by yourself. You’re going to be looked after. And they’ve got a set of rules that they think works.

But I think once I see the grizzly monster right in front of me, well, I’ve had enough. I’m not going to let this thing inside me. I’m going to bow out gracefully here.

Michael: I’d be the same. I’d wait to connect with the spirit I want to let in. One that looks nice.

Danny: “Yeah that one looks nice, maybe I’ll let them in.” I feel like I’d do The Hand with a very close group of friends that I trust entirely. And I wanted to capture that, falling a victim to your vices a little bit. And throughout that film at those possession parties, every party, it dwindles, and it gets more and more sad and more and more lonely.

Michael: It starts off big, and then you see as the film goes on, the party’s getting smaller and smaller.

Danny: I think that the case of alcohol and drugs? It can be the case. Someone that gets addicted to those things.

To be fair, in Ghost, Whoopi Goldberg allows herself to be possessed.

Danny: Oh my God! That movie is so fun. I only watched that recently. It’s awesome.

I’ll admit, if I touch The Hand and Patrick Swayze is in front of me, yeah, I’d probably be like, sure, come on in.

Danny: Oh my God. She should have kissed Whoopi Goldberg. It should have been Whoopi Goldberg for that scene. It would’ve been phenomenal.

So you’d let in the grizzly monster? You would both do that? Or you’d only do it if it’s Sam Wheat?

Michael: I’d do it if it were Mike Ryan, I’d probably let him in.

Say no. You don’t want anything to do with what’s going on up here. Say no to that one.

Danny: Also, important for us as well, is that each of the demons that the kids are connecting to are connecting and drawn to their emotions and everything as well. So both your mental states are the same, that’s why you’re drawn to Michael’s physical being.

Living in a YouTube house, is that where an idea like this comes from? Like, what’s a crazy thing we could all do together that would get views?

Danny: The main inspiration for this were these neighbors that we watched grow up. And as one of these kids was growing up, he was experimenting with drugs for the first time, and he was convulsing on the floor and having a really negative reaction. And all the kids that he was with, no one went to help him. Everyone was filming him and laughing. And that clip was going around on Snapchat and I remember seeing that footage and it really bothered me. I’m so surprised that the reaction to this really horrifying reaction was literally just laughing, pointing, and stuffing his face. And he was on the floor! His eyes nearly rolled to the back of his head and people were shooting it. That just seems to speak to today’s generation a little bit. Not that I’m saying that social media is all bad. I don’t at all, because I think there are positives and negatives to almost all those things … You would do The Hand. You would do The Hand, my friend.

I said I would do The Hand. But once I saw the creature that would be it for me.

Michael: It’s the same with drinking. Imagine your alcohol had a face. It was like, it’s happy or sad. You’re like, “If it’s happy, I’ll drink it.” But if it’s sad you’re not going.

I did want to ask, a lot of people who get their start on YouTube and social media are still quite satisfied there and have huge followings. Was it you wanted more than that?

Michael: It’s been our dream since we were little kids. Film and television’s always been our overall goal. And when growing up, we didn’t want to be YouTubers. That was never a thing. We wanted to be filmmakers. YouTube we just fell into. So it was so quick to gain traction and all so much fun and you see progress straight away. You see subscribers.

You get immediate satisfaction.

Michael: Yeah, you can make stuff and then it gets seen straight away. With a script it’s not like that. It’s a lot of long nights – long sad nights by yourself writing. I mean, Danny is a depressed fool when he is writing. You don’t get that instant validation. And it takes time. It takes a lot more time. But it’s a long-term form.

Danny: It’s more rewarding! I feel that going on set, it was the most overstimulating experience: writing, casting, directing, editing. That whole entire experience of collaborating with all these masters of their craft and everyone putting all their creative energies into this one big product, is the most incredible feeling in the world.

‘Talk To Me’ opens in theaters this weekend. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

A little over a year after Mitski’s last album, she is welcoming fans into a new realm. Today, she dropped the lead single, “Bug Like An Angel,” from her next record, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We.

“Did you go and make promises you can’t keep? / Well, when you break them / They break you right back / Amateur mistake / You can take it from me / They break you right back,” she points out.

Still, through the darkness, Mitski includes a somewhat lighter touch to the song, as a choir joins in — and also appears in the music video. Directed by Noel Paul, it visualizes the song’s themes of self-destruction as an older woman is intoxicated outside of a bar.

“As I got older / I learned I’m a drinker / Sometimes a drink feels like family,” Mitski sings, with the choir emphasizing “family.”

A few days ago, Mitski left a message for fans to announce the record, part of which was recorded at Nashville’s Bomb Shelter studios. According to a press release, the band recorded live together, and there is the presence of an arranged orchestra on the album.

Check out Mitski’s “Bug Like An Angel” above. Continue scrolling for the cover art and tracklist.

1. “Bug Like An Angel”
2. “Buffalo Replaced”
3. “Heaven”
4. “I Donʼt Like My Mind”
5. “The Deal”
6. “When Memories Snow”
7. “My Love Mine All Mine”
8. “The Frost”
9. “Star”
10. “Iʼm Your Man”
11. “I Love Me Aer You”

The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We is out 9/15 via Dead Oceans. Find more information here.

The Atlanta Hawks entered this offseason coming off of a second straight first round exit, but this year there is far more optimism after pushing Boston to six games and feeling like there is something to build off of.

This will be Quin Snyder’s first offseason as head coach of the Hawks, after he signed on midseason following the firing of Nate McMillan. After their playoff series, star guard Trae Young expressed his excitement about what Snyder was going to bring the team with a full offseason to install his system, as the Hawks look to avoid the Play-In this coming season. If they’re to do so, they’ll have to see some internal improvement under Snyder, as — as of now — there aren’t any major changes being made to the roster.

Atlanta had a fairly quiet offseason, making one major trade and, otherwise, only making additions via the Draft. Here, we’ll take stock of their summer so far, handing out grades for their Draft, free agency signings and contract extensions, and work on the trade market.

Draft: A-

The Hawks brought in three players via the Draft, with Kobe Bufkin as their first round selection and then adding Mouhamed Gueye and Seth Lundy in the second round. Bufkin and Gueye signed 4-year rookie deals to join the main roster, while Lundy signed a two-way contract. The Bufkin and Gueye picks were both well received, with our Brad Rowland giving Atlanta an A- for the Bufkin pick, explaining the grade as follows.

Bufkin is a very strong pick for the Hawks. He checks a lot of boxes on both ends of the floor with shooting guard size and point guard skills. Bufkin has strong basketball feel and he is already a quality defender that could continue to improve as he gets stronger.

Bolstering their point guard rotation and adding another young big made for a solid draft night, as the Hawks did well to seemingly maximize pick value.

Free Agency/Extensions: B

The Hawks haven’t signed any free agents this summer, which is rather incredible, but this was a team that came into the offseason without any real departures from their rotation. While they’ve been active in the trade market (both in discussions and deals getting done), they were never going to do much when it came to free agency.

There was one major contract decision for the Hawks to make, and that was whether to give a 4-year, $120 million contract extension to Dejounte Murray (the max they could offer this summer). They did and Murray accepted, as he got the big long-term deal he was seeking without having to be concerned about the free agent market next summer. Given what we saw this year with some free agents getting squeezed, it’s hard to blame him even if he very well could’ve gotten a bigger deal on the open market. For the Hawks, they’re now committed to the Murray-Young backcourt after some rumblings Murray was a part of trade talks early in the summer, but get Murray at a potential discount by locking him up on an extension now rather than waiting another year — and don’t have to worry about the possibility of losing him in free agency after trading so many draft picks to keep him around.

Trades: D+

After years of trying to move John Collins but balking at the offers from other teams, the Hawks finally sent him to the Utah Jazz in exchange for Rudy Gay and a second round pick. It was far less value than Collins’ production deserves in return in a vacuum, but considering how much is left on his contract (three years, $78 million remaining), how he was coming off the least productive season of his career, and the lack of teams with cap room this summer, there weren’t a lot of options. We have grown accustomed to the Hawks making moves to dodge the tax in recent years, but doing so and selling low is particularly bad and it’d be hard to sell lower on Collins than this summer.

They did do well in taking advantage of the Rockets’ haste to create more room for their pursuit of Brook Lopez by bringing in Usman Garuba and TyTy Washington, who they flipped alongside Gay for Patty Mills in a deal with the Thunder. Mills gives them a veteran guard who can shoot for their bench rotation, but how much he can help them is a question mark as he enters his 15th season in the league and is coming off a season in Brooklyn where he was used sparingly.

There is, of course, a chance the Hawks make another splash in the trade market and change their grade, as there are still rumblings of interest in Pascal Siakam amid their very public efforts to trade De’Andre Hunter. However, for now, they’ve not done particularly well, entirely because of the Collins trade made too late.

As Donald Trump continues to face a mounting barrage of indictments and lawsuits, reports have painted Melania Trump as largely indifferent to her husband’s legal troubles. The former First Lady has maintained a low public profile and is only occasionally seen with Trump at Mar-a-Lago where she reportedly lives in a separate area with her parents and son Barron.

However, a new report claims Melania’s involvement in Trumpworld is not as minimal as it seems. According to The New York Times, Melania has remained “defensive of her husband” and “deeply distrustful of the mainstream media.” (She’s reportedly an avid reader of the Daily Mail, which noted Never Trumper Meghan McCain is probably thrilled to know.)

More damningly, Melania is reportedly “skeptical” of the E. Jean Carroll accusations and “livid” with Trump’s legal team for losing the court case that found her husband liable for sexual abuse and defamation:

When Mrs. Trump saw coverage of her husband’s deposition in the case, she was livid at his legal team for failing to do more to raise objections. She has also privately questioned why Ms. Carroll could not recall the precise date of the alleged assault.

In another surprising twist, sources close to Melania also claim that she’s become increasingly receptive to a second term in the White House and has been paying close attention to Casey DeSantis’ activities on the campaign trail. However, Melania has yet to join her husband at rallies despite his repeated requests.

(Via The New York Times)

Barbenheimer went from a meme to a movement to a celebration of movies with the power of 1,000 Nicole Kidman AMC ads. In a world painted gray by the overuse of phrases like iconic, culture-defining, and earth-shaking, this phenomenon was actually all of the above. And it got that money, too. But will Barbenheimer’s success be studied like a new playbook or shaken off as a once-in-a-blue-moon perfect storm?

Let me start by saying I don’t participate in box office discourse, I endure it. Quickly assigning badges like “blockbuster” and “bomb” makes movies less accessible by telling an incomplete story about their actual quality. It also taints the overall conversation as debates over art and meaning give way to talk about franchise viability.

Some fans pay so much attention to box office returns that you’d think they’re getting points on the backend. It weirds me out. But Barbie and Oppenheimer combining to make approximately $240M through their opening weekend in the US (over $400 million worldwide) is undeniably interesting and worth comment. Especially when compared to the rather middling performances of this summer’s most anticipated tentpoles – The Flash, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, and Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1.

Those films collectively, represent a popular path that’s all about an assumption (somewhat undone by Barbenheimer) that there is only safety in franchises and in what is known, such as the 5th Indiana Jones, the 7th Mission Impossible, and the umpteenth DCEU movie. (I could have gone back and counted, but haven’t those films taken enough of my time?)

This is also why we get so many Marvel and Star Wars shows and movies every year: familiarity, but it’s starting to come at a risk. Like, people still get up for these projects, but the excitement and cultural conversation dominance are palpably lighter. The whys are myriad and subjective, but one thing is, as a Marvel and Star Wars fan, I might need to track 40-50 hours of entertainment each year to stay engaged with those two separate worlds. This is at a time when it feels like other “prestige” shows are cutting their episode counts or ending altogether after shorter-than-typical runs. Comparatively, Marvel and Star Wars fandom can feel like an obligation. A fun one, often, but an obligation all the same.

I think studios sense this. Despite critical hyperbole, they aren’t actually churning out carbon copies, it’s more like variations on the same. Big, explosive, CGI-powered variations on the same that expand ideas. It’s simple Hollywood math: the sequel to the sequel’s sequel must be 4X bigger than the original or what are we even doing here and why are we spending $400 million and don’t we have to spend that if we want to make a billion and don’t we HAVE to make a billion? It’s kind of desensitizing and it’s definitely exhausting.

It’s not that people don’t want to see familiar characters in slightly remixed scenarios, it’s that the urgency might just be capped because of the sheer volume of prompts every year to do exactly that with another familiar franchise. You can’t feel FOMO when it’s all a bit “been there done that.”

A movie about a doll with fading relevancy and a 3-hour historical epic about a weapon to end a war waged by our grandparents and great-grandparents. By those descriptions, Barbie and Oppenheimer weren’t supposed to capture broad audiences and crush at the box office. And yet.

It was almost immediately clear from the first images and footage that these films would be ambitious, specific, smart, well-acted, and the product of letting two tremendous filmmakers (Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan) cook. Barbie and Oppenheimer were fresh and unlike other things on the summer slate, and so originality and the promise of a good time became their own kind of must-see spectacle. Still, no one predicted the two films would combine to break records and unify fans, creating a celebratory moment of culture and commerce that we have rarely seen.

I’m sure, in some circles, this is all a little terrifying. A lot of people in the entertainment industry justify their existence by knowing the future before it happens when it comes to what audiences will and won’t gravitate toward. But this is why we play the game, and now we have new data that, hopefully, points toward betting on creative vision more and maybe letting off the gas a little when it comes to franchise golden geese before exhaustion settles in.

The audience is out there, money in hand, begging for more (that doesn’t necessarily mean Barbie 2 or the Adventures Of Young Oppenheimer). We’re ready to embrace more unicorn films like Barbie and Oppenheimer (and They Cloned Tyrone, which was the #1 streamed film on Netflix this weekend and an utterly fantastic, imaginative, and clever sci-fi social satire). Evidence is mounting that we’re verifiably less inclined to care about paint-by-numbers products pumped out by computers (or unambitious humans) that just repurpose and re-order pre-existing words and ideas, rarely challenging or respecting us.

Studios should remember all of this, especially in this tense moment as they consider the impact of the ongoing stalemate with the writers and actors that is, at least in part, about leaning into AI tech that would create that kind of cookie-cutter content. The resulting rationing of films and scuttling of positive momentum for the industry does not one any good in the short or long term. Because it’s not just about lost dollars, it’s about lost relevancy and enthusiasm, which are harder to recover.

Can you remember the last time there was this much excitement and joy about movies? It’s like there’s a shady figure just out of view sneaking up on all of us to drag us back down to the dregs of empty theaters and boring weekends. I hope someone does something about it. If we avoid calamity, we may have Barbenheimer to thank.

(Spoilers from The Walking Dead will be found below.)

A new teaser for The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (starring Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira as Rick and Michonne) actually looks much better than I imagined it would look, given the lovey, dovey vibe stressed in initial promo images. This spinoff should arrive sometime in 2024, following the success of Dead City and the upcoming Daryl In Paris, both of which have already been renewed for second seasons.

However, we almost wouldn’t have received a Rick Grimes spinoff at all, or even much of Rick, if co-creator Robert Kirkman had originally gotten his way. Unlike with the comics (his own comics, mind you), Kirkman initially thought it would be amazing to make Rick bite the dust on TV. This obviously didn’t happen, and I am further convinced that Rick Grimes cannot be killed. I mean, he somehow survived the below scenario and kept living after un-impaling himself, no less, albeit with the wrong kind of help.

We were nearly deprived of this moment, too! Still, yeah, Kirkman admitted (during this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con) that he was a “lunatic” who wanted to kill off a beloved (although bad-decision-making) character. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“With Walking Dead, I was much younger and much more reckless,” Kirkman told the audience. “I was an absolute lunatic. I would get in the writers’ room and be like, ‘Kill Rick Grimes today! I don’t care! It’ll be funny! People will freak out, and it’ll be fun!’ The writers were like, ‘Robert, you’re crazy. We can’t do that.’ But any time there were big changes in The Walking Dead, that’s what excited me.”

I do wonder, though, how Kirkman wanted to do it. That first horse scene would have been the funniest in retrospect, but the entire trajectory of the show would have been altered. Who would we have seen Jon Bernthal’s character go nuts with jealousy against, after all? That had to happen, as did the flashbacks of their once-wonderful friendship. Yet it seems that someone talked Kirkman off that story ledge, and over a decade later, we’re about to see Rick Grimes and Michonne return with their own show (I hope she saves his ass several times) within the next year.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)