The way words get added to a language is an endlessly fascinating topic. Most English root words originate from Latin and Greek, but we also excel at borrowing from languages around the world.
Some of our words are just weird, though. For instance, “pineapple.” Rather than calling the delicious yellow fruit with pokey leaves “ananas” like most of the world, our ancestors apparently took a look at one and decided, “Eh, kinda looks like a pinecone. But it’s clearly a fruit. How about we call it a ‘pineapple’?”
A video creator who goes by @thejazzemu made a hilarious song exploring what would happen if we named other words the way we named “pineapple”—by combining two words with “minimal conceptual link”—and it’s a silly feast of musical and etymological brilliance.
Take the word “curtain” and change it into “windowwink.” So much more fun and descriptive. What about calling a banana a “hotdoglemon” instead? Utterly delightful.
Watch how the Jazz Emu pineapple-izes several English words in a clever, catchy and chaotically over-the-top song:
The most OFFENSIVE word in the English Language? #offense #word #language #cancelculture #pineapple #linguistics #fyp #foryou #help
People have tuned in millions of times to view the video, and the comments on YouTube explain why.
“Morninggravel almost made me spit out my morninggravel,” wrote Steve.
“This is my favorite sound-dance. When I’m on the poop-throne, in the rain-box, or at my money-slaver, I enjoy listening to it. Gets the meat-paddle-tips tapping,” wrote Joshua Shupe.
“‘When every other language said ananas English panicked and mentally combined the concept of a pine cone with frikkin’ apple’ is a structurally-delicious sentence,” shared Ashanna Redwolf.
“Damn….why is this song so catchy? Also, why am I so entranced by this ‘dance’ that goes along with it?” wrote ChrisJMP88.
Seriously, though. We need a full-length version on Spotify, please.
Believe it or not, the actual history of the word “pineapple” is even weirder than what is relayed here. According to Merriam-Webster, the seeded part of a pine tree that we now refer to as a pinecone actually used to be called a “pineapple.” Yes, really. So the word pineapple actually predates pinecone—it just happened to stick to the fruit.
Why would a pinecone be called a pineapple in the first place? Merriam-Webster explains that the practice of calling any foreign fruit, vegetable or nut an “apple” stems from ancient times. For example, a peach was first known as a “Persian apple,” and a pomegranate’s initial name meant “an apple with many seeds.” So even though a pinecone wasn’t technically a fruit, it was still referred to as a “pineapple”…that is until it became a pinecone and the fruit forever claimed “pineapple” for itself.
Words are just so wacky. I vote that we just call things whatever we want and let people figure out what we mean.
On May 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, Carrie Fisher is getting a long overdue star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In honor of the occasion, Mark Hamill paid tribute to his late co-star, the Leia to his Luke. “I was completely unprepared for the person I met, who just was overwhelming, in the sense that she seemed so much wiser than her years,” he told Variety. “Very funny, very spontaneous, very witty.” Don’t forget that she had a very good dog.
Hamill said Fisher was “the perfect person in the perfect role. She was as far from a damsel in distress as you could get. She was in charge of her own rescue. I think that first impression that the audience got really established how they perceived Carrie overall, and she just grew from there.”
Fisher passed away in 2016, and Hamill still has a hard time thinking of her in the past tense. “There are people that you encounter in life that are so vibrant and make such a profound impact on you, they stay with you forever,” he said. “Had she only done Princess Leia, that would be enough. Had she just written one book, that alone would be something that would be enough to satisfy someone who wanted to make a mark on the world. But she did it from every different direction… She really was just such an original.”
You can watch Fisher’s Walk of Fame ceremony here.
In 2010, Robin Williams randomly appeared in a Saturday Night Live sketch that was particularly unusual for the comedic actor because it involved him barely saying a word. When you book Robin Williams, you let him do his Robin Williams thing, which usually entails lots of talking and flying out of his seat.
However, Williams was surprisingly game for the cameo, and Kenan Thompson recently revealed how the whole thing happened thanks to a last minute cancellation. According to Thompson, an unnamed celebrity backed out of appearing in his “What Up With That?” sketch that involves Thompson’s talk show host constantly interrupting his guests and never giving them a chance to talk. Whoever is sitting in the second seat really gets the brunt of it, and that’s the spot Thompson needed to fill.
As the story goes, Lorne Michaels knew Williams was in town and floated the legendary actor as a quick fix.
“He was like, ‘You should ask Robin,’” [Thompson] said. “I was like, ‘I should ask Robin? I should just go ask Robin Williams to just sit in my sketch and not say a word? Like, seriously?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I was like, ‘S—.’”
But Thompson need not worry, because Williams instantly accepted the role. “I went and talked — I didn’t even finish my sentence — he was just like, ‘Absolutely,’” he said. “He was just an angel. That was crazy.”
Not only did Williams join the sketch, but he stuck to the concept and only spoke a handful of lines while sitting next to the real Robert De Niro and Bill Hader impersonating Lindsey Buckingham.
The 2023 inductees to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame were announced this week, and although at least one of the names included was a groundbreaking first for hip-hop, one of rap’s most pioneering groups was left out for the second year in a row. A Tribe Called Quest was eligible as of 2015 (People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm was released in 1990) but wasn’t nominated until 2022. The group has been officially defunct since 2016, with the death of founding member Phife Dawg and the release of their final album, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service.
Former group member Consequence had plenty to say about what he perceived as a snub, telling TMZ, “This is the family tree for me. This the tree that brought you G.O.O.D Music. This the tree that allowed Common Sense to be Common. This is the right-hand man to De La Soul. Stop me when I’m lying. What we not gonna do is keep subjugating that name, A Tribe Called Quest, to a white popularity contest.” However, his sour grapes didn’t stop him from congratulating Missy Elliott, the first female rapper to be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
This year’s induction ceremony is planned for November 3 at the Barclays Center in New York, which the broadcast to be announced at a future date.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
This one is pretty straightforward: The Broken Lizard comedy troupe, the wonderful little sickos that brought you movies like Super Troopers and Beerfest, are back once again, this time with a goofball feature-length take on the Middle Ages and the tale of Quasimodo. If that sounds like something you think you’ll enjoy, well… uh, it’s here now. Really just terrific news for you. And the Broken Lizard guys, who are still out there doing it. Good news for everybody. Congratulations to us all.
Amazon’s latest big-budget, globe-trotting binge-watch has plenty going for it. Sexy spies (hello Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas), intense action, an interesting (if a bit clunky) premise, and enough twists to keep you guessing until the end of its initial six-episode run. Will it change the game when it comes to espionage thrillers? Eh, probably not, but it’s got enough camp, and enough Stanley Tucci, to make it worth a watch.
Here’s the thing about Frog and Toad: they’re nice. They’re the Paddington of amphibians, and now the charming children’s book series has been turned into an Apple TV+ series starring Nat Faxon as Frog and Kevin Michael Richardson as Toad, as well as Ron Funches, Margaret Cho, Tom Kenny, and Aparna Nancherla, among other favorites. Succession is great and all, but sometimes you just want to watch a frog and a toad eat cookies, y’know?
Beef is about a road rage incident between two strangers, played by Steven Yeun and Ali Wong (it’s a Tuca and Bertie reunion!), that sparks a feud that unearths their darkest impulses. You will also have an impulse while watching Lee Sung Jin’s Netflix series: an impulse to binge the entire season in one day. Beef is getting a lot of Best TV Show of 2023 So Far buzz. Just don’t watch it on your phone while driving, OK? You don’t want to get into a Beef scenario in real life.
Awkwardness icon Dave Burd returns for the third season of Dave, taking Lil Dicky on the road for a star-studded cross-country adventure through the real America, spreading rhymes, sewing oats, and getting into trouble. The whole concept of the new season seems like a big swing that’s guaranteed to connect, taking Dave out of his more familiar setting while creating countless opportunities to have him go wild, free from the burdens of cutting a new album.
There’s a glut of good TV at the moment so even a modern remake of a bit of classic David Cronenberg-ian body horror needs some buzzwords to cut through the noise. Luckily, Dead Ringers has that. And we’ll list them out for you now: Rachel Weisz. Evil twins. Surrealist sci-fi. Fertility clinic. Power struggles. A shocking finale. And Rachel Weisz (again). Helmed by Alice Birch (Normal People) with a few episodes directed by horror maestro Karyn Kusama, this show takes Cronenberg’s central idea and gender-flips it, giving us twin obstetricians Beverly and Elliot Mantle whose day job sees them playing god at a cutting-edge fertility clinic. But, when their toxic relationship dynamics are threatened by both their professional success and personal entanglements, their bond reaches disturbing new depths.
Keri Russell isn’t quite an anxiety-provoking spy in this series, but this show does call back her old FX stomping grounds. Here, Russell portrays a career-consumed diplomat who’s also struggling to maintain a complicated marriage. Spy or not, this show still sits squarely within the same meat-and-potatoes, mainstream-appealing arena as the similarly-toned The Night Agent, so expect the binging to happen, along with the nostalgia associated with seeing Russell back on TV.
GLOW standout Betty Gilpin is teaming up with TV king Damon Lindelof in this seriously terrific show about a nun who fights an almighty algorithm. What’s not to enjoy about that, especially since it delivers upon a truly nutso premise? Gilpin plays Simone, not to be confused with the title character of the AI, and Margo Martindale co-stars as a booze-loving nun. If there’s anything that Damon Lindelof has taught us in his post-Lost days, you never know precisely what to expect from his projects. Never forget Lube Man.
We’re in a golden era of Hollywood satire, specifically when it comes to HBO’s offerings with Hacks and Barry (in and around all the murder and Chechen drug wars). Even Succession dips a toe into the mix from time to time (gotta get that franchise pump-pumpin!). But while The Other Two doesn’t have the same level of prestige or attention, nothing bites harder than this Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider created show that returns for its third season with the entire Dubek family thriving while also searching for meaning and connection.
Dystopian sci-fi has never been done quite like this before. In Apple TV+’s newest drama, a ruined and toxic future that forces humanity to dwell in underground silos hundreds of stories deep isn’t the antagonist of the story, it’s merely the setting. The real problem lies in a murderous cover-up whose unraveling threads reveal a bigger conspiracy when a scrappy mechanic (Rebecca Ferguson) and a disillusioned sheriff (David Oyelowo) start tugging in earnest. What is truth and who decides it are the questions this show is asking but even if the answers don’t come readily, the insane worldbuilding and thrilling action will leave you happy to keep guessing.
Peter Pan is back, once again, this time as a live-action movie on Disney that focuses the story more on Wendy. Peter is still there, though. As is Captain Hook. And Tinkerbell. All the classics are out here doing it again, which is actually kind of nice. Check out the story again, or for the first time, depending on your experience with Never Land and ageless swashbuckling children and evil mustachioed pirates. Again, it’s nice. You earned a fun little watch this weekend.
The Veep guys bring us the Watergate story that you never knew that you’d enjoy watching. Justin Theroux delivers a knockout performance in this David Mandel-directed adaptation of Egil Krogh and Matthew Krogh’s book, Integrity. In doing so, the team puts a satiric spin upon the experiences of Egil (played by Rich Sommer) during and after his time leading the Special Investigations Unit that was tasked with plugging information leaks. Yep, that’s where the “plumbers” comes from, and this show is fun and tragic but, fortunately, mostly fun.
Chris Evans plays a hot farmer who has an amazing date with a woman he near-instantly deems to be “the one” (aka Ana de Armas) before she ghosts him, sparking a “romantic gesture” that involves flying to London to surprise her. For that cringey overreach, Farmer Chris is surprised to find out that “the one” is a CIA operative who has to then spend the rest of the film dodging explodey chaos while saving his ass (and that’s America’s ass, remember). A high-action rom-com that aims to evoke the best of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Ghosted gives Evans a chance to play in something a little lighter while expanding de Armas’ killer No Time To Die action hero presence across an entire film.
It’s time to go back to the wilderness, where this season doubles down on the darkness and refuses to apologize for it. The show still puts forth one of the most solid examples of dual timelines in TV history. Not only that, but all four sets of leads are firing on all cylinders this year. Sure, Juliette Lewis can pull off this type of role in her sleep, but we love to see her do it. Christina Ricci chews everything up, and Melanie Lynskey is finally getting her due. Oh, and don’t forget about those earworms. Get ready for the return of the Antler Queen, gang. Spooky.
Break out your biscuits and put on your custom-bedazzled Diamond Dogs silk bomber jackets because the best mustache on TV is back, baby. This might be the last season of Ted Lasso which is a bittersweet pill to swallow but it’s best not to dwell on all of the loose ends still in need of tying. Ted wouldn’t. Instead, let’s just enjoy these characters as long as we have them. And hope something awful (but not irreversible) and humiliating (but appropriately so) and devastating (but ultimately life-changing in a positive way) happens to Nate “not so great” Shelley.
The internet’s comedy boyfriend has had a notably hectic few years; weathering a drug relapse, stint in rehab, divorce, and the birth of his and Olivia Munn’s first child, but he’s back on these streets and back on top with a new special that is as revelatory as it is hilarious and on par with his previous specials. In fact, while the subject matter of Baby J certainly goes to some different and maybe even uncomfortable places about Mulaney’s odyssey, his sensibilities and storytelling mastery are as sharp and present as ever, allowing him to somehow create a special that is charmingly accessible even while being highly personal and, at times, painting himself in a less than likable light.
What we have here is a Bridgerton prequel, a good one, that focuses on the real-life marriage of Charlotte to King George II, with the usual Bridgerton twist of Olde England being a racially integrated society. Shonda Rhimes serves as showrunner and gives it all the classic Rhimes-y snap and pizzazz, which works well with the show’s subject matter. If you like Bridgerton or history or a sexy/fizzy series about rich people who are kind of miserable, this might be your new favorite show… or at least a way to kill a rainy weekend.
The continuing fascination with the life and times of Pete Davidson, uh, continues with Bupkis, a new semi-autobiographical project (following King Of Staten Island) that promises some self-awareness and family dysfunction. And guest stars! In addition to the main cast featuring Edie Falco as Davidson’s mom/tenant and Joe Pesci as his grandfather, Bupkis promises appearances by John Mulaney (forgetting his child), Al Gore (throwing up the Wu-Tang sign), Ray Romano (alluding to his crotch), and Simon Rex (brandishing a golden gun). These are exaggerated versions of these very famous people, we’re almost certain. Almost.
Everyone’s favorite hitman-turned-actor-but-still-sometimes-hitman is back for a final season. Things get… bleak. Still funny, borderline silly in parts, but also just very, very bleak. As it probably should be given… you know… the murders that Barry has committed. A lot of them. Thank God we have NoHo Hank and Henry Winkler in there to break it all up for us. This is our last season with all of these maniacs. Let’s enjoy it while we can.
Good news and bad news, ladies and gentlemen. The good: The cretins and weasels of Succession are back for a fourth season full of drama and dark comedy and more than a little delightful flailing by Cousin Greg. The bad: This is also the final season. So… you’re going to have to come to terms with that as things play out. It’s a lot to deal with, especially with the frenetic pace things have been and are shaking down. This is one of our best shows. It’s going to sting to say goodbye. But let’s all agree to enjoy the ride while we can.
Rihanna excited fans earlier this year when she finally discussed a new album during interviews about her Super Bowl halftime performance. “Musically, I’m feeling open. I’m feeling open to exploring, discovering, creating things that are new. Things that are different,” she explained.
Though there’s been no more information about new material, the star is making headlines today (May 4) for her new wax figure at Madame Tussauds in Amsterdam. The museum proudly shared a photo of the stunning figure on Instagram, in which she dons an attention-grabbing purple bodysuit and a confident facial expression, encapsulating Rihanna’s powerful vibe.
“Madame Tussauds proudly welcomes Rihanna’s wax figure to our attraction,” the caption reads. “Her beautiful outfit is based on her floral look for the Savage X Fenty show in 2020! Visit now and meet the stylish queen of pop in Amsterdam.”
The “Umbrella” singer turned heads at the Met Gala on Monday (May 1), though not without being fashionably late. In a red carpet interview, she described what her second pregnancy has been like: “It’s so different from the first one! Just everything,” she said. “All of my… no cravings, tons of nausea, everything’s different. But I’m enjoying it, I’m enjoying it. I feel good. I feel energetic.”
Lil Baby dropped the video for “Go Hard” last week. In the track, Baby raps, “Need a Nike deal how I’m runnin’ sh*t,” but he should be perfectly happy with his ongoing Axe partnership.
Earlier this week, Axe and Baby announced they have collaborated on a forthcoming manga, Shonen Baby, due out July 11.
According to ComicBook, the collaboration is meant to commemorate Axe’s “new Fine Fragrance Collection at Walmart.” Fans must purchase an Axe product from the collection at Walmart to gain access to the manga, which will officially be available for download “during an exclusive invite-only virtual launch event” this summer.
The report continues, “Produced by Passion Pictures with artist Future Power Station and Lil Baby in tow, Shonen Baby is teased as a manga that taps into the aspects of Shonen action manga releases. Shonen Baby sees Lil Baby and AXE ’embark on a unique journey to save Atlanta from the evil Culture Vultures out to drain the city of its juice, while unlocking their inner G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time).’ Lil Baby will be tapping into special powers for the manga as well.”
Axe’s official website has initiated a countdown clock to the Shonen Baby release and laid out all the necessary steps: purchase any qualifying Axe product via Walmart before May 31, upload proof of receipt by June 15, and voila, “unlock the Ll Baby experience.”
Axe has served as a vessel for Baby to express his love for anime before. Last September, as relayed by Revolt, Axe and Baby generated “three animated digital episodes” to “give people an inside look into some of [Lil Baby’s] most distinct memories associated with Axe scents.”
Baby said in a statement at the time, “I’ve always been a big fan of anime, so having Axe turn some of my intimate memories and thoughts into an animated mini-series is kind of surreal.”
When The Falcon and The Winter Soldier burst onto Disney+ in March 2021, Marvel Studios already had over 20 movies under its belt and a release schedule that got thrown to the wind because of the COVID pandemic. With those factors in play, it’s understandable that the timeline for TFATWS got a little… murky. However, a new book has set the record straight on when the series took place, and how long Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) hesitated on accepting the mantle of Captain America from Steve Rogers (Chris Evans).
According to a new book that will create a definitive chronological order for the MCU, the events in TFATWS took place in 2024 a year after Avengers: Endgame, the film that saw Steve gift Sam his shield. At the start of the series, Sam donates Cap’s shield to the Smithsonian, and the book confirms this took place in 2024.
At first glance, this new information seemingly goes against what the show’s director, Kari Skogland, said on the topic. After she revealed the series is six months after Avengers: Endgame, many took that to mean it was simply later in 2023.
So, either there are some big contradictions or the assumed timeframe for Endgame was wrong all along, and six months after is actually in 2024.
Of course, this information is mostly for the wonkiest of the wonky MCU fans. Thanks to the blockbuster franchise’s current focus on the Multiverse, time and space really have no meaning at the moment. In fact, Season 2 of Loki will follow Tom Hiddleston’s trickster God as he tracks Kang through time and ripens history for the conquering.
When Christina Applegate attended the SAG Awards earlier this year, she suggested that this could be her “last awards show as an actor probably,” but hopefully, she will also be nominated for an Emmy after the third season of Dead To Me. To that end, the actress spoke with Vanity Fair about the end of her excellent Netflix series and also reflected upon how not-wonderful it was when Hollywood tried to typecast her as a over-sexualized, ditzy-blonde type.
Applegate also necessarily discussed her battle against MS (which she has told where to shove it), and the progressive nature of the disease causes her to fear setting foot on set again. As she describes, that fear extends to everyday tasks that we all take for granted, including showering. As well, the Married… With Children star opened up about why she had to challenge right-wing troll Candace Owens, who went off on a rant about Kim Kardashian’s Skims clothing line for the “inclusivity thing.” This was related to Owens’ irritation that the company dared to have a disabled model star in an underwear shoot, and here’s why Applegate couldn’t let this behavior slide:
“I had to say it because it’s crap. I know how hard I tried to get my bra on today and I was stuck. And thank God Skims, the beautiful company that has adaptive clothing for people, sent me the one that you can just put on like a vest and it has things in the front for you to clip. With the underwear, you can just pull it up one leg and clip it on the other. We sometimes sit on the toilet for an hour because we can’t get our pants on. It was sad that that person–whose name I don’t speak–took so much space in my f*cking energy field.”
At the time, Candace didn’t accept Applegate’s challenge to get educated, and one surely cannot expect her to step up and do so now because that would involve admitting being in the wrong. Applegate, however, made her point and remains a beloved figure, and one can rest assured that, no matter what she does next, people will be listening and watching.
Everyone has a Muhammad Ali story, even if just a memory of witnessing him from afar or an awareness of his perpetual influence.
Louise Argianas had three. Before recently retiring, she headed up clearance and licensing for ABC Sports/ESPN for forty years. Ali visited the ABC Sports office in 1991, putting on a magic show for employees’ children, including Argianas’ oldest son, Jesse. Ali returned nearly ten years later, pulling new magic tricks from up his sleeve, and politely asked to use Argianas’ back as a surface to sign autographs — “he had his entourage trying to pull him away, but he just wanted to be with the people.” She attended his 70th birthday bash at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas in 2012, four years before his death at 74 from Parksinson’s.
“Ali was one of the most central sports personalities of my career. If you’ve seen any documentaries or movies on Ali, I probably had a hand in them because they had to come to me for [archival] footage,” Argianas says. She pauses, then adds, “But meeting him three times? That just doesn’t happen.”
Max Siegelman, Argianas’ youngest son, has his own Muhammad Ali story now — applying a fresh coat of paint to Ali’s cemented legacy as “The Greatest,” in essence and in resume, as a revolutionary 20th-century icon across activism, boxing, and humanitarianism.
On April 28, Siegelman Stable and the Muhammad Ali Estate released a six-piece capsule collection featuring three hats, one boxing-style cut-off sweatshirt, boxing shorts, and boxing tape — all made from dead stock material. Printed across the sweatshirt are four never-before-used photos of Ali standing with one of his horses juxtaposed by his most-used-catchphrase, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”
“There’s a handful of people that you can go anywhere in the world and say their name and 99.9 percent of the time, someone’s facial expression will be a smile, or the first thing that they have to say will be positive and impactful,” says Max, who founded Siegelman Stable in the summer of 2020. “To be such a young brand, even though we have a heritage story, and to be able to attach to such an unattainable person and tell this piece of his story that may be unknown to a lot of people, that opens doors.”
Everyone has a Muhammad Ali story. And since Max transformed Robert Siegelman Racing Stable, his father’s harness horse-racing and equine therapy stable since 1982, into Siegelman Stable, a full-blown luxury sports and streetwear brand, he’s learned that everybody also has a horse story.
This is Muhammad Ali’s.
Sean Jackson
In 1979, Ali raced a harness horse in a non-betting race at Maywood Park in Melrose Park to benefit Chicago’s Provident Hospital, the first Black-owned-and-operated hospital in US history. Yes, the three-time heavyweight champion of the world won the race (as reported by The New York Times).
Ali grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, not far from Churchill Downs. The Ali x Siegelman Stable collection purposefully arrived one week before this year’s May 6 running of the Kentucky Derby, and a portion of proceeds will benefit equine therapy — but Ali’s relationship with horses was not a competitive one. For Ali, horses presented a conduit back to his humanity.
In 1963, Ali was spotted running alongside Queen Elizabeth II’s horse carriage in London. His hood was up, but that didn’t deter people from recognizing him. Ali returned to boxing in 1970 after he’d been banished from the sport for three years due to his stand against fighting in the Vietnam War, and the public eye was (somehow) more intensely trained on him. And so, in 1972, he built “Fighter’s Heaven” near Deer Lake, Pennsylvania, where he trained until his last boxing match in 1981.
Ali discovered the six-acre property through Bernie Pollack, a boxing fan who owned Pollack’s Mink Farm three miles down the road. Ali trained at an outdoor boxing ring at Pollack’s. He hated the unpredictability of the weather threatening his regimen, but he loved the tranquility in nature and the ability to jog the backroads without detection.
“Bernie brought him up to where ‘Fighter’s Heaven’ is now,” relays Mick Stefanek, the “Fighter’s Heaven” general manager since August 2017. “He wasn’t at his best. He had his license suspended, and then he lost to Joe Frazier [in 1971], his first career loss. He wanted somewhere he could get back to basics. There was nothing built here.”
Except for a barnstable.
“The story I’ve heard most often is he took a liking to the horses that were here through the Pollack family,” Stefanek adds.
Ali kept the barnstable and built his boxing gym nearby. When Ali had to be on, he was on — as clever as he was confident, boisterous as he was unbeatable — but when he was at “Fighter’s Heaven,” he could be.
Stefanek notes that it’s “an eye-opener” for most people who tour “Fighter’s Heaven” to see a photo of Ali riding a horse —like the horse photographed next to him on the Siegelman Stable sweatshirt — hanging by his boxing ring. If it wasn’t important to Ali for his cabin to have running water or electricity in the early years, why was it important to have horses?
The Siegelman Stable crew visited in mid-March to film this collection’s campaign, and they understood why Ali benefitted from having horses nearby. The magic in the air was infectious, and Max could only imagine what the energy must have been when the cabins were filled with not just Ali’s presence, but everyone else who came to be around him.
“Butterflies start as caterpillars, right? Muhammad was a caterpillar. We all were caterpillars at some point, but he was able to become that butterfly,” says Thai Richards, who has modeled for Siegelman Stable since its 2020 inception.
For one day, Richards felt honored to “exude what I was able to garner from [Ali]” and “add to how transcendent he is as a figure.” Of course, Richards’ emulation of Ali wouldn’t have been complete without posing with the horses on the property.
There’s a belief that Ali’s horses knew him better than anyone, experiencing him at his most human, and being around horses symbolized a return home to Louisville, before he belonged to the world.
Sean Jackson
Max Siegelman spent much of his adolescence in Long Island (NY) commuting to his dad’s New Jersey stable and learning to appreciate horses as powerful athletes. Robbie Siegelman would approach Max’s soccer injuries the same way he would an injured horse. The Siegelmans treated their horses in a humane way that wasn’t always afforded to Muhammad Ali.
Siegelman and Karoline Spenning, Siegelman’s girlfriend and Siegelman Stable’s creative director, watched hours of Ali footage. There are usually missing files in the retelling of someone’s life. It’s less likely with someone as exhaustively documented as Ali, and because of how publicly he lived, an authentic campaign message was hiding in plain sight: Footage of Ali reciting a poem called “Truth.”
Spenning explains, “In the very beginning of our video, we have Muhammad Ali’s interviews where he talks about how confident he is. If you’re good with horses, you have to be confident. You have to be sure. A horse can read energy way better than humans.”
“A big piece of Siegelman Stable going forward is bringing attention to harness racing and to horses being athletes,” Siegelman adds, noting that boxing tape is in this collection because it doubles as compression tape for a horse’s legs. “Ali is talking about the truth and what that looks like and or is perceived as. Karoline’s idea was to utilize his words as showing a horse as an athlete, and the truth of that, and the truth of Muhammad Ali as an individual.”
And then, there’s the truth of Siegelman Stable.
Like “Fighter’s Heaven,” Siegelman Stable was built from scratch. Argianas drew the logo on a napkin in the 1980s so that Robbie, her husband, could found a training stable as dedicated to harness horse-racing as providing equine therapy to traumatized groups, like inner-city youth or children in hospitals.
Max moved to New York City in 2014 and was surprised to find that people unfamiliar with Siegelman Stable admired it as a fashion statement. He’d wear his grandfather’s old Siegelman Stable jacket out and about, and more and more strangers approached him to ask where they could cop one. “That’s when I started selling hats and sweatshirts,” he says. “Everybody used to say they had a family member who went to races or grew up with horses, some [tie to] horses,” he says.
The pandemic hit in 2020, and Max went in all on carrying his family’s legacy forward.
“When he told us he was going to make Siegelman Stable clothes with the logo from his dad’s stable, I was like, ‘Who is gonna wear that?’” Argianas says, laughing now because that reminds her of Max’s US history teacher in high school, Mr. Davis, telling her, “Max is going to do something where he has his finger on the pulse of American pop culture.”
“What a weird thing to say, but how true it became,” she says.
Some of today’s most influential people became loyal Siegelman Stable fans because they love that logo, starting in the NBA Bubble with Dallas Mavericks forward Tim Hardaway Jr. The brand’s A-list customer base is growing all the time, boasting the likes of Aaron Judge, Dwyane Wade, Future, Post Malone, Justin Bieber, Kendall Jenner, Kane Brown, Justin Turner, The Chainsmokers, and more. Official collaborations to this point have included the Hambletonian, San Antonio Spurs, Kygo’s Palm Tree Crew, and Johnnie Walker Blue Label.
The mounting visibility caught the eye of Barry Clarke of Authentic Brands Group, which acquired the Ali Estate in 2013, last August.
“Siegelman Stable is a luxury sportswear and streetwear brand that is capturing a young audience through purpose. Their deep connection to horses and history make them the perfect partner to bring this rarely visited aspect of Muhammad’s story to life,” says Mychal Bogee, brand director of entertainment at Authentic Brands Group.
At “Fighter’s Heaven,” the synergy was undeniable for the Siegelmans.
“You can feel how special of a place it was. There are a bunch of different cabins where his family, trainers, or other boxers lived. The boxing ring is in a cabin, and it opens to a concrete basketball court, and then 20 feet past that was a horse stable,” Max says. “He obviously surrounded himself with things that either made him happy, comfortable, or just brought him joy. It’s cool to see that horses were a part of it.”
Sean Jackson
Ken Burns’ 2021 four-part docuseries, Muhammad Ali, could have opened with any number of iconic fights scenes or evoking speeches. Instead, the first scene is of Ali tricking his toddler-aged daughter into looking out the window at “a pretty horsey” so he could playfully steal a bite of her food.
It was the same genuine, imaginative Ali that Argianas watched perform magic tricks for Jesse and other children in an ABC Sports conference room.
“Horses force you to live in the moment. You forget about your past and everything that haunts you. Horses don’t care if you are rich or poor or famous; they only judge you on who you are at that moment,” Argianas says. “Anyone who met Ali felt special because, in that moment, you felt like this amazing icon, who has done so much not only for his sport, but for all humanity through charities and his fight for social justice, is focusing on you in the most inclusive way. To him, all people were important and mattered. You appreciate this as a gift.”
There was no horse outside on that day decades ago, but the thought of one delighted Ali. If he were looking through that window now, he might see a pretty horsey on a black-and-red Siegelman Stable hat, worn by someone with a new Muhammad Ali story to tell.
Sean JacksonSean JacksonSean Jackson
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