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Since its formation, Explosions In The Sky has consistently outdone itself. The band’s love for exquisite theatrical composition is heard in their work on films such as Manglehorn and Prince Avalanche. However, the group’s albums are where their artistry shines the brightest. The band’s new single “Ten Billion People” is ushering fans into its latest stage.

The new track is a cinematic start to their forthcoming album, End, their first album in seven years. Despite the lack of spoken lyrics, musicians Chris Hrasky (drummer), Munaf Rayani (guitarist), Michael James (keyboardist), and Mark Smith (keyboardist) create sound as loud as a commercial aircraft’s roaring engine. Across the track’s six-minute-plus run time, the instrumental peaks and valleys paint a vivid picture of evolution — a theme that will be further explored in their project.

In a statement, the band outlined the inspiration behind the project, saying, “Our starting point was the concept of an ending—death, or the end of a friendship or relationship. Every song comes from a story or an idea one of us has had that we’ve all expanded on and made its own world. Maybe it’s our nature, but we kept feeling that the album title was ultimately open to a lot more interpretation—the end of a thing or a time can mean a stop, but it can also mean a beginning, and what happens after one thing ends might pale in comparison to what it becomes next.”

Listen to the full track above.

End is out on 9/15 via Temporary Residence Ltd. Find more information here.

Kahan’s latest album, Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever), is a bitter taste of reality as it touches on topics such as love and life. The indie folk singer’s song “Dial Drunk,” which was co-produced by Kahan and Gabe Simon and features Post Malone, is no exception.

Kahan sings, “I’m remembering I promised to forget you now / But it’s raining, and I’m calling drunk / And my medicine is drowning your perspective out / So I ain’t taking any fault / Am I honest still? Am I half the man I used to be? / I doubt it, forget about it, whatever / And the dial tone is all I have.” Throughout, Kahan’s desperation is interwoven into each note.

On the track, Kahan suffers from the somber reality that his ex-lover is no longer returning. “Dial Drunk” is a harmonic entanglement of folk and alternative elements. However, tPost Malone’s sharp pop sensibilities were the precise boost to round out the record further.

When discussing teaming with Post Malone, Kahan said in a statement, “I have been listening to Post Malone since ‘White Iverson’ dropped, even covering ‘Congratulations’ right when my career was beginning. It feels like a full circle moment, and it has been a dream come true to make this collaboration happen.”

Listen to the full track above.

Stick Season (We’ll All Be Here Forever) is out now via Mercury Records/Republic Records. Find more information here.

While most of their work gets done in the hours leading up to the game, members of a Major League Baseball grounds crew are always on hand, ready to tend to any field needs that may pop up during a game. Typically, that just means dragging the infield in the middle of the game to smooth out the dirt, but sometimes they have to leap into action for other reasons.

One of those is hustling the tarp onto the field to protect the dirt when a rain delay hits, and this is the most frantic moment they face. They are up against the clock trying to get the field covered before it gets oversaturated, and despite having drilled it over and over, sometimes disaster strikes in the haste of trying to get the tarp unfurled.

On Monday night in Cincinnati, we saw just that happen when a poor member of the Reds grounds crew slipped and fell midway through pulling the tarp on the field and ended up just getting trapped underneath to the delight of the Giants broadcast crew who broke the entire thing down in detail.

The cut to the guy under the tarp crawling to find freedom is truly hysterical, and for anyone concerned they note during their second replay of the tarp action that he did in fact successfully find his way out. It has to be a truly helpless feeling when you go down in that situation because the other 15 or so guys aren’t stopping for you, but it is an entertaining moment for everyone else.

Robert F. Kennedy holds a lot of wackadoodle opinions. But last week, the conspiracy theorist-turned-Democratic presidential candidate went too far even for him. At a fart-plagued press dinner, he was caught on video dropping his latest steaming pile of nonsense: that COVID was “ethnically targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people. Most of Kennedy’s bull draws public indifference, but this one spread like wild fire, to the point that his fellow Kennedys have once again had to wearily distance themselves from their kookiest relative.

“I STRONGLY condemn my brother’s deplorable and untruthful remarks last week about Covid being engineered for ethnic targeting,” wrote Kerry Kennedy, president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights (and, as she noted, one of his sisters).

One of Kennedy’s brothers also weighed in. “Bobby’s comments are morally and factually wrong,” wrote Joe Kennedy II in a statement. “They play on antisemitic myths and stoke mistrust of the Chinese. His remarks in no way reflect the words and actions of our father, Robert F. Kennedy.”

Joe Kennedy II’s own son, Joe Kennedy III also weighed in, tweeting, “My uncle’s comments were hurtful and wrong. I unequivocally condemn what he said.”

Not everyone in the Kennedy clan condemned RFK Jr.’s beliefs. Another brother, Doug, a Fox News employee, took a softer tack, saying that while he’s not familiar with the “science” behind his claims, he did feel his comments were “misinterpreted.”

“When COVID first happened, a lot of people were wondering whether there was an ethnic component to who was affected,” Doug Kennedy said. “I remember the Italians were dying at incredible rates. And people were speculating whether they were more susceptible.”

After his comments blew up, RFK Jr. said something similar, claiming he’d “never, ever suggested that the COVID-19 virus was targeted to spare Jews.” Problem is, his comments were caught on video.

The kicker? RFK Jr. is flat-out wrong, as The Washington Post points out:

Study after study after study has shown that Jewish people (most of whom are Ashkenazi) were actually disproportionately harmed by covid-19 across multiple countries. The idea that Chinese people were protected from the virus, according to Kennedy’s remarks, means either accepting the country’s obviously artificial toll as accurate or ignoring a lot about the pandemic.

It’s not the first time Kennedy’s family has had to distance themselves from his campaign. After its launch in April, Kerry Kennedy released a statement, saying, “I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the COVID pandemic, vaccinations, and the role of social media platforms in policing false information.”

Must be fun to be a Kennedy these days — or to be his spouse.

(Via The Daily Beast)

All eyes were on three NFL players at 4:00 p.m. EST approached on Monday: Saquon Barkley of the New York Giants, Josh Jacobs of the Las Vegas Raiders, and Tony Pollard of the Dallas Cowboys. The trio of running backs were given the franchise tag this offseason, and all three hoped to get a long-term deal with their respective teams before the deadline to extend players who were tagged rolled around on Monday afternoon.

Ultimately, all three players struck out, meaning they’re set to play this year on their $10.91 million franchise tenders, which Pollard signed. Barkley and Jacobs, meanwhile, have not, which has led to questions about when they will report to their teams this offseason — Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that it’s unexpected that the players will report to training camp.

Barkley was the only one of the trio to have a public reaction to the news, as he tweeted “It is what it is” just before the deadline. But all three players received a whole lot of support from their fellow running backs, like San Francisco 49ers back Christian McCaffrey, who called it “criminal” that they’re all in this situation.

A number of other running backs were especially upset by a tweet from ESPN’s Matt Miller that advocated for not giving players at that position long-term deals, with all of them making clear that they aren’t happy with how the league is approaching paying running backs.

It’s worth mentioning that these tweets were all liked or retweeted by Barkley, Jacobs, and/or Pollard, with Jacobs even reacting to Henry’s post.

Both the Giants and the Raiders will kick off their seasons on Sept. 10.

Drake has a vault full of music in which he discusses his life, there’s one topic he tends to shy away from, or so one person argues. During Apple Music’s latest episode of Rap Life Review, host Ebro Darden aimed at Drake’s silence related to Black issues.

On Drake and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour, the screen displayed a message dissing Childish Gambino’s 2018 song “This Is America,” which they dubbed overrated. At the time of its release, the song’s video was praised for creatively tackling topics such as political brutality, gun violence, and more. That enraged Darden, who singled out Drake for what he sees as an unflattering career-long pattern.

“Drake, who has never shown up, and y’all know I’m the biggest Drake fan on this show,” said Darden.”Drake has never shown up to have anything to say about anything going on in society with Black folks or anything other than himself.”

This isn’t the first time that Drake was called out for not using his platform to advocate for societal issues plaguing the Black community publicly. However, the entertainer has made several substantial momentary donations to civic rights organizations and causes, including the National Bail Out Fund and Black Lives Matter.

Watch the full clip above.

“The Carol Burnett Show” ran from 1967 to 1978 and has been touted as one of the best television series of all time. The cast and guest stars of the show included comedic greats such as Tim Conway, Betty White, Steve Martin, Vicki Lawrence, Dick Van Dyke, Lyle Waggoner, Harvey Korman and others who went on to have long, successful comedy careers.

One firm rule Carol Burnett had on her show was that the actors stay in character. She felt it was especially important not to break character during the “Family” scenes, in which the characters Ed and Eunice Higgins (a married couple) and Mama (Eunice’s mother) would play host to various colorful characters in their home.

“I never wanted to stop and do a retake, because I like our show to be ‘live,’” she wrote in her memoir, as reported by Showbiz Cheat Sheet. “So when the ‘Family’ sketches came along, I was adamant that we never break up in those scenes, because Eunice, Ed, and Mama were, in an odd way, sacred to me. They were real people in real situations, some of which were as sad and pitiful as they were funny, and I didn’t want any of us to break the fourth wall and be out of character.”

It was a noble goal, and one that went right out the window—with Burnett leading the way—in a “Family” sketch during the show’s final season that ended with the entire cast rolling with laughter.

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In the scene, Eunice, Mama, Dan (an old friend of Ed’s) and Mickey (Ed’s employee at the hardware store) are playing “Password” and the word they’re trying to get their partners to guess is “ridiculous.” Eunice (played by Carol Burnett) gives Mickey (played by Tim Conway) the clue word “laughable,” and after pondering for a bit, he says “elephant.”

Eunice scolds him for his bizarre answer, then Conway launches into a wild ad-libbed story about a circus elephant that goes on and on and on.

Burnett is the first one to lose it. The cast barely keeps it together through the sketch.

But that was just one take. Between takes, the director gave the actors a note: The elephant story would be different in the next filming—and good luck.

The next elephant story was even wilder than the first, and Burnett and Dick Van Dyke couldn’t stop themselves from laughing. Conway himself breaks a couple of times, and even Vicki Lawrence (playing Mama), who famously never broke character, had to hide her face for a moment.

Then, just when they finally got themselves composed and Burnett was able to deliver her line, “Go on, Mama,” Lawrence delivered the most perfectly timed a-bomb and the whole cast exploded:

So delightful. And for an added bonus, watch Vicki Lawrence tell the story about how that scene came about:

See the full interview at http://emmytvlegends.org/interviews/people/vicki-l…

This article originally appeared on 9.14.22

“Crispy Rs” are taking over social media. The phrase has sent many curious people down a deep, dark rabbit hole of confusion while they try to decipher what a “crispy R” is and if they have it. It’s supposedly some sort of leftover Mid-Atlantic or Transatlantic old-school Hollywood actor dialect, which conjures the image of someone like Humphrey Bogart scolding some poor doe-eyed woman.

Is that what it is? Seems like everyone is trying to figure it out. Just about every part of the country has a different dialect, and words sound different depending on the region in which someone grew up. In some cases, words may be completely different for the same item—for instance, Northerners and Southerners argue over if soft drinks are called “pop” or “soda,” and some people in the South just call it all “Coke.” (Yes, all soft drinks, not just one particular brand.)

Some people say “worsh” instead of “wash” and “ruf” instead of “roof.” Regional dialect really shapes the way we all speak, and I’m assuming has a hand in shaping the muscles that help us say certain words.

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I recall moving from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, where I developed more of a “lazy tongue,” unintentionally picking up a slight southern drawl. But when I would visit home, I would get literal cramps in my tongue as my normal dialect quickly returned.

It was fascinating, and yet with all of my dialect acrobatics, I’ve never been told I had “crispy Rs.” What the heck is a “crispy R,” and who’s responsible for thrusting the internet into a tailspin of dialect semantics?

@greg.plus.coco

#fyp #fypシ #🏳️‍🌈 #foryoupage #unhhhh #trixieandkatya #trixiemattel #katya #katyazamolodchikova #dragqueen #rupaulsdragrace #viral #funny #queer #queertiktok #gay #gaytiktok #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #trending #podcast

Brian Firkus, better known by his stage name, Trixie Mattel, mentioned his disdain of “crispy Rs” on his podcast, The Bald and the Beautiful, and the clip went viral on TikTok. Firkus co-hosts the podcast with Brian McCook, who goes by the stage name Katya Zamolodchikova. McCook was initially confused by what a “crispy R” was until Firkus demonstrated, causing the other to react dramatically.

This 36-second interaction about “crispy Rs” set off a firestorm of people in the comments either thanking them for finally giving the sound a name or being confused about the difference. It didn’t take long for people to attempt to explain the difference between a “non-crispy R” and a “crispy R,” including a couple of speech pathologists.

@mare_kell

#stitch with @greg.plus.coco thank you @trixiemattel for putting a name to this! they mention sarah michelle gellar in the vid but any other celebs that do this?

What constitutes a “crispy R” is difficult to explain, which causes people to get lost in explainer videos to figure out what it is and if they have it. One consistent example of this speech dialect is Kourtney Kardashian, which would make sense if it truly is a leftover from old Hollywood.

After climbing out of the deep hole of comparative videos that include speech experts, it would seem the “crispy R” sound comes from an air pocket that forms on the tongue of people that use the tip of their tongue to produce the “R” sound when pronouncing words. A “noncrispy R” happens when the speaker uses the middle of their tongue to pronounce the “R” sound in words. It seems very subtle, but for some people hearing someone use the “crispy R” is a pet peeve. Although dialect isn’t typically a choice, some would like to never hear that sound again.

Are your “Rs” crispy, or are you one of those that are annoyed by the sound?

Depression hits different folks in different ways. But whether it’s an occasional episode of the blues or more long-lasting, debilitating clinical depression, there are two factors that only make the ache worse: one, the pervading loneliness from feeling like no one can possibly understand what you’re going through, and two, wondering if the storm will ever truly pass.

That’s why an encouraging word from a loved one can be helpful during these low episodes. Or in this case, from Samwise Gamgee.

“Lord of the Rings” actor Sean Astin was recently signing autographs at Knoxville’s Fanboy Expo when a female fan (@easttnelvira on TikTok) opened up about how one of his character’s iconic lines had been helping her through “severe depression.”

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Astin knew exactly what line she was referencing, and without missing a beat said, “Even darkness will pass and a new day will come.”

But he didn’t stop there. Astin then validated the woman’s experience in a lighthearted way (“You know what the best part about severe depression is? NOTHING! It blows!”) before reminding her that, just as the quote promises, “It gets better.”

He even took her hand, looked her right in the eyes, and said, “You know what’s wrong with you? Nothing. Absolute nothing. I’m sorry it’s hard sometimes…Be strong. I love you.”

Can you believe that? Girlie came for an autograph but unlocked a new core memory instead.

@easttnelvira I met one of my childhood heroes Sean Astin today and he offered me some words of wisdom and encouragement over the battles of depression that I needed to hear. I am so glad this was captured on video to remember this moment, cherish, and reflect on anytime I am feeling down. I hope anyone else who struggles with depression takes his words and kindness to heart too. 🖤 #seanastin #samwisegamgee #lordoftheringstiktok #lotr #lotrtok #lordoftherings #fanboyexpoknoxville #fyp #trending ♬ original sound – 𝖊𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖙𝖓𝖊𝖑𝖛𝖎𝖗𝖆

In the clip’s caption, the woman wrote, “I am so glad this was captured on video to remember this moment, cherish, and reflect on anytime I am feeling down. I hope anyone else who struggles with depression takes his words and kindness to heart too.”

Even her boyfriend, who filmed the whole thing, felt some residual joy. “I can say with confidence she was overwhelmingly ecstatic to the point of happy tears. This meant the world to her and seeing the person you love that happy was a moment I’ll remember forever,” he wrote.

As the touching interaction began making the rounds on TikTok and Reddit, viewers couldn’t help but praise Astin for showing authentic compassion.

“He said it with the conviction of someone who means it 100%,” one person wrote.

Another added, “All that validation with a good solid bit of empathy and encouragement. This is a VERY thoughtful and helpful way to reply.”

Some were quick to point out that Astin’s mother, sitcom actress Patty Duke, had her own struggles with bipolar disorder, which led her to become a mental health advocate. Astin has followed in his mother’s footsteps, regularly championing the importance of seeking help and self-forgiveness

And then, of course, some folks just wanted to bask in how Astin is one of the nicest guys in Hollywood. As one person commented, “Oh Sean, you are one of the good ones from my generation. We are lucky to have grown with you and see how great you’ve become.”

“That is a man who has seen every fan, done every photo, shaken every hand. And he’s still out here, loving and caring for people,” seconded another.

Be it carrying a cursed ring back to Mordor whence it came, or carrying a heavy emotional burden, struggles are easier to manage with support on your side. It can be hard to know exactly what to say to someone going through severe depression in a way that truly helps them feel supported, but take a page from Astin’s book and start with empathy.

When we’re kids, fun comes so easily. You have coloring books and team sports and daily recess … so many opportunities to laugh, play and explore. As we get older, these activities get replaced by routine and responsibility (and yes, at times, survival). Adulthood, yuck.

Many of us want to have more fun, but making time for it still doesn’t come as easily as it did when we were kids—whether that’s because of guilt, a long list of other priorities or because we don’t feel it’s an age-appropriate thing to long for.

Luckily, we’ve come to realize that fun isn’t just a luxury of childhood, but really a vital aspect of living well—like reducing stress, balancing hormone levels and even improving relationships.

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More and more people of all ages are letting their inner kids out to play, and the feelings are delightfully infectious.

You might be wanting to instill a little more childlike wonder into your own life, and not sure where to start. Never fear, the internet is here. Reddit user SetsunaSaigami asked people, “What always remains fun no matter how old you get?” People’s (surprisingly profound) answers were great reminders that no matter how complex our lives become, simple joy will always be important.

Here are 14 timeless pleasures to make you feel like a kid again:

1. Playing with dogs

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Doggos are basically furry children, so this one’s a no-brainer.

2. Legos

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The only thing NOT fun about Legos is stepping on one. Everything else is pure magic.

3. Popping bubble wrap

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With each satisfying “pop” sound, just imagine tiny bursts of dopamine flooding the brain.

4. Riding roller coasters

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While it’s true that riding roller coasters might become less physically possible with age, barring that limitation—you’re never too old to ride one.

5. Arcades

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Playing video games at home is cool, but there’s a special thrill in seeing an arcade absolutely buzzing with different game sounds, colored lights and other people enjoying themselves.

6. Go-karts

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Because speeding in real life is irresponsible.

7. Pillow fights

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A quintessential sleepover activity that can easily be done with a roommate. Bonus points for surprise attacks.

8. Dinosaurs

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Whether in toy or nugget form, dinosaurs are a delight.

9. Dressing up for Halloween

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Halloween costumes can go from a fun form of playful expression in our younger years to a source of self-image issues in our teens and beyond (as so many things in life do). Hopefully though, dressing up for the spooky season can be a highlight on the calendar.

10. Water slides

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Roller coasters in liquid form!

11. Dolls

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We no longer have to hide our passion for toys under the serious moniker of “collecting.” Playing with dolls is a fun practice in storytelling and has even shown a very specific set of therapeutic benefits. Permission, granted!

12. Daydreaming

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Remember peacefully imagining made-up worlds while staring up at the clouds? Those were good times.

13. Swings

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Whether you are a traditionalist or prefer to go crazy and twist yourself up for some epic spins, a swing set is a perfect place to let your inner child out.

14. Taking sick days

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Everything is more fun when you do it during a time you technically should be somewhere else.

This article originally appeared on 9.7.22