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At this point, social media spats between celebrities happen as often as the blink of an eye. However, in the wake of several pieces of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation passing across the country, including states like Florida and Tennessee, these feuds have, at times, made platforms like Twitter a cesspool of bigotry, homophobia, and transphobia. While some musicians, including Madonna and Yo La Tengo, have used their shows to protest these laws, not all musicians feel the same. Gun-loving, confederate flag-wearing, and MAGA-representing musician Kid Rock and Travis Tritt are on the opposite side of the aisle.

At one point, Rock and Tritt were trending on social media for blasting beer company Anheuser-Busch. That led users to wonder why are Rock and Tritt mad at Bud Light and its parent company? Well, the musicians didn’t take too kindly to Bud Light featuring trans activist and TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney in their latest advertisement campaign.

Kid Rock took to social media to upload a video of himself shooting cases of beer with a semi-automatic weapon. Travis Tritt declared he would be dropping the brand from his tour hospitality rider. Users are calling out the musicians for the views, but Rock has been receiving the bulk of the blowback because of his use of the semi-automatic weapon.

Jason Isbell chimed in to voice his disgust with Rock. Also, a Parkland shooting parent took to Twitter to call out Rock for ignoring the facts that children trans or cishet alike have unfortunately been victims of mass shootings at the hand of semi-automatic owners.

Watching Showtime’s Yellowjackets is like trying to solve a f*cked up puzzle where half of the pieces are missing and what’s left, when assembled, looks like an Edvard Munch monstrosity that will haunt both your dreams and your waking hours.

All this to say, we love the goose chase wild goose chase this show leads us on each week.

In episode three’s “Digestif,” a central mystery that’s plagued fans ever since the early days of season one rears his ugly, eyeless head once more. The spine-chilling specter aptly named The Man with No Eyes is a blood-curdling apparition that’s tormented Taissa Turner (Jasmin Savoy-Brown / Tawny Cypress) for quite some time now. He popped up in her youth and has made some eerie, unwanted visits at the worst possible times in Tai’s life. But, thanks to the show’s latest episode — and some insight from showrunner Ashley Lyle — we’ve got a better read on who this creep is and what he represents for Tai (and her sleepwalking alter-ego).

Who Is The Man With No Eyes?

The Man with No Eyes has been with us since the beginning of the show. He was lurking in the background during the opening credits before the writers gave him a backstory worthy of his weird, frankly demonic, vibes. In season one, the character was played by Braham Taylor and though he had no lines, the actor did a terrific job of terrifying us with his menacing stare — and terrible taste in menswear. We first met him in the show’s third episode. (A coincidence given his part to play in season two, episode three’s “Digestif”? We think not.) He appeared in the room when Tai went to say goodbye to her ailing grandmother. The two were very close and on her deathbed, Tai’s grandma tries to soothe the little girl’s fears about death, referencing a higher power and the “calling back” of the soul.

Later though, Tai’s grandmother appears to see The Man with No Eyes in the mirror opposite her bed and his presence unsettles her. She becomes anxious, asking “Who are you?” before telling Tai the man wants to take her eyes. Tai also sees him and begins to scream. It’s certainly not the peaceful, idyllic passing her grandmother had promised her.

Where Have We Seen Him Before?

The traumatic event of watching her grandmother die might have been the first time The Man with No Eyes appeared to her, but Tai’s been seeing him more frequently — in the woods and on the campaign trail. The other time Tai sees the eyeless figure in season one is when she’s preparing to pull out of the Senate race. After changing her mind and giving an impassioned speech that makes clear her intentions to keep fighting to win the election, she glimpses The Man With No Eyes amongst the crowd of supporters. There are other moments that allude to the spirit’s presence in Tai’s life like the drawings her Son Sammy made depicting both eyes (of all shapes, colors, and kinds) and eyeless faces, but it isn’t until season two that his connection with the wilderness is explored.

The Man with No Eyes pops up in episode two, just in time to lead a sleepwalking Taissa over a cliff. Luckily, Van is there to stop her, but the incident calls into question the malevolent nature of the spirit and his intentions for Tai. In episode three’s “Digestif,” The Man with No Eyes makes another appearance while Tai is sleepwalking. This time, with Van with her, she reveals he’s leading her somewhere and she goes when (conscious) Tai lets her. Whether that’s to find more symbols or to find another cliff’s edge, we’re still not sure.

What Does He Represent?

Some fans have theorized that The Man with No Eyes is some kind of curse tied to Taissa’s family considering both she and her grandmother, and likely her son as well, have seen him while the rest of the team can’t. Others believe he might be a spirit attached to the wilderness in the same way the dead man in the cabin in season one was. While showrunner Ashley Lyle didn’t confirm or deny any of those possibilities, she did tell fans at PaleyFest that his connection to tie isn’t just a supernatural one, it’s also psychological:

Tai has lived as this person who’s based her life on pragmatism. I personally believe that she would define herself as an atheist, if not, an agnostic. And yet as a young child, she had this incredibly informative, traumatic experience when her grandmother, who she was very close to, was close to death and had this sort of terrifying moment where she was anticipating, you know, the transition to the next life and expecting sort of angels and trumpets and instead had a terrifying vision. I think that for Taissa, who’s very much not in touch with her spiritual self, and very much not in touch with her ability to believe, or, her faith, there’s this sort of symbolic character of, you know, you could look at him as death incarnate. I think what he [the man with no eyes] represents is ‘the unknown’ and the unknown is something that Taissa is very uncomfortable with as a character.

It’s likely we’ll see more of The Man with No Eyes as the season progresses and the situation — for the girls in the woods and the women back home — worsens.

(Via Insider)

“Buckle up!” That was Ron DeSantis’ advice on Thursday morning to a room full of Republicans eating breakfast at a sponsored event in Michigan when asked about his ongoing feud with Disney. Which is about to get a whole lot uglier, according to Politico.

The rift between De Santis and the Mouse House began just over a year ago, when Disney openly expressed its opposition to Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill. DeSantis responded by calling Disney “woke,” which is just about the worst thing a person or entity can be called in Republicanspeak these days. But Disney is a behemoth in Florida where, according to the Tallahassee Democrat, the company has a $75.2 billion annual economic impact on Central Florida, adds approximately 465,000 jobs to the workforce, and puts an estimated $5.8 billion back into the state tax revenue’s coffers each year. So DeSantis might have picked a fight with the wrong mouse.

Still, the pudding-lovin’ politician claims that the company ​​“tried to pull a fast one” on the state while working around the DeSantis-directed near-dismantling of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the organization that some believe has let Disney largely govern itself over the past half-century. During a meeting with shareholders earlier this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger called out DeSantis and the new governance as both “anti-business” and “anti-Florida,” which really set Meatball Ron off. As Gary Fineout writes for Politico:

The rapid escalation between Disney and DeSantis this week comes in the aftermath of a Central Florida governing board that had been controlled by Disney passing a series of agreements that ensured Disney would keep a large degree of power despite a new law passed in February that created a new board controlled by the governor.

The moves stunned the DeSantis administration and the governor’s hand-picked board, which has since hired lawyers to examine whether it should challenge the legality of the agreements.

But DeSantis seems to think that something shady is happening and has charged his chief inspector with doing a “thorough review and investigation” into exactly what happened to allow Disney to “undercut Florida’s legislative process, and defy the will of Floridians.” He has also floated the idea of developing state-owned land directly adjacent to the theme parks, imposing tolls on the roads tourists use to travel to Disney, and doing a deep dive on the company’s hotel taxes. In other words: DeSanctimonious wants to tank Disney’s business in Florida, which seems like it would be bad for the state he was elected to govern, but what do we know?

“They are not superior to the people of Florida,” DeSantis said of Disney during a speech at Michigan’s Hillsdale College on Thursday evening. “So come hell or high water we’re going to make sure that [the] policy of Florida carries the day. And so they can keep trying to do things. But ultimately we’re going to win on every single issue involving Disney I can tell you that.”

Mickey might have a different opinion.

(Via Politico)

While there is no guarantee they’ll need the Play-In Tournament to make the postseason, odds are the New Orleans Pelicans‘ path to a postseason berth will involve needing to win a game to secure the 7 or 8-seed in the Western Conference. If that happens, Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the team will not have the services of All-Star forward Zion Williamson.

The Pelicans announced on Thursday evening that, after an evaluation, the plan is for Williamson to “continue his rehabilitation and conditioning regimen” following a hamstring injury that has kept him sidelined since the beginning of January. One day later and Charania brought word that, due to their commitment to being cautious with his rehabbing of the injury, Williamson would not participate in the Play-In, although there is no word on whether or not the team would want to bring him back if the Pelicans made it to the playoffs.

Williamson has appeared in 29 games this season, with his last game coming on Jan. 2 against the Philadelphia 76ers. Entering Friday night’s slate of games, the Pelicans have a 41-39 record, which puts them in eighth place in the West with two games left to go. They’re one game behind the Los Angeles Clippers, which hold the fifth seed, and the Golden State Warriors, which are in sixth, and have the same record as the Los Angeles Lakers, which hold the tiebreaker between the two teams.

New Orleans will host the New York Knicks on Friday night before traveling to Minnesota to take on the Timberwolves on Sunday in its final game of the regular season.

Less than six months after famed New York City restaurateur Keith McNally banned (then unbanned, then banned again) late-night host James Corden from his perennial hotspot Balthazar for reportedly being an “abusive” “tiny cretin of a man,” someone else is coming for the Cats star. As The Wrap reports, director Craig Duncan — who worked with Corden a decade ago — just posted a YouTube video in which he called out Corden as “the most difficult and obnoxious presenter I’ve ever worked with.”

In 2013, Duncan was asked to direct an episode of A League of Their Own, a sports-focused panel show that Corden hosted from 2010 to 2019. Before he even agreed to shoot the episode, Duncan says the production company asked how he was working with “difficult presenters.” Having previously worked with The Three Tenors, Duncan says he was pretty used to prickly personalities. “You can’t get much more prima donna than an opera singer.” But Duncan had yet to meet James Corden.

The task was to film a sort of MasterChef-like cooking competition, and he and the rest of the creative team were given very little time to build the set — or shoot it. But Duncan was thrilled with how it all turned out, and made sure to let the team know. “They busted their guts to get this thing ready, and I appreciated it,” Duncan said. Corden, however, was a different story.

While Duncan really enjoyed meeting the show’s other personalities, at one point he started noticing “a creeping sense of anxiety.” Eventually, Corden made his way onto the set while the director commenced shooting the segment. Eventually, the segment got to the part where the winner was going to be revealed. As they only had about six minutes left, Duncan realized their original plan for shooting would take too long, so he huddled with his team to come up with a quick Plan B. “We were working it out, to save time, when old buggaluggs pipes up: ‘What the f**k is going on here? It’s obvious what you do. You put a camera there, you put a camera there, you put a camera there, and you put a camera there… It’s so obvious how you shoot it. You’re stupid.’”

Rather than get annoyed, Duncan played along for appeasement’s sake and shot the rest of the segment the way Corden had suggested, which ended up taking about 40 minutes longer. “So cheers, James,” said Duncan. “You got your way. Well done. Well done for treading all over my toes. I don’t care; I’ll get paid at the end of the day. And I hope I never, ever work with you again.”

Since the media picked up on the story, Duncan posted a postscript statement on his YouTube page:

This video is just intended as a benign anecdote. I have a tiny following, so didn’t think it would be seen TBH. For the media to pick up on James Corden being rude to me 10 years ago is insane. It’s a non-story as far as I’m concerned. Bosses are ‘short’ with staff all the time. James never told me “You’re stupid” in fact, I can’t remember the exact things he said… it was more a rant at me about camera positions with an element of swearing involved. It probably “felt” worse than I portray in the video, but it was certainly as bad as I say it was. In the video I’m mumbling “It’s stupid,” not saying he said I was stupid. I’d have walked if he had.

(Via The Wrap)

Because we are obligated to talk about the biggest indie news of the week — it’s right there in our introduction — we were required to open this week’s episode with an overview of the Boygenius discourse. Which turned toxic over the weekend for all of the predictable reasons. However, is it possible to think that The Record is neither a masterpiece nor the worst thing ever but simply … okay?

One album we think is a lot better than okay is Rat Saw God, the latest from North Carolina band Wednesday. Steve and Ian both wrote about this album this week, and we both came away impressed by Karly Hartzman’s ability to evoke a real sense of place in her lyrics. Coupled with the band’s heavy guitar sound, Wednesday brings to mind one of their biggest influences, Drive-By Truckers. Might the critical acclaim of Rat Saw God bring more people to the DBT fold? We came up with some suggested albums for newbies.

Next we turn to the mailbag, and address an interesting listener question: What is the best album of the decade so far? Which leads to other interesting questions: How did the pandemic mess with how we perceive early 2020s music? Has the album that will define this decade even been released yet? After that, we proceed to talk about the legacies of two very different acts: The Beastie Boys and Coheed & Cambria.

Finally, in Recommendation Corner Ian recommends the reissue of an emo classic by Braid, while Steve stumps for the patio and cookout friendly jams of Sluice.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 133 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Blackpink have reached world domination status. They’re about to be the first girl group and K-pop act to ever headline Coachella. But with wild success comes some downsides.

Rumors have been spreading about drama between the members. In a new interview, Jisoo was asked (translated from Korean), “Some people might think that as Blackpink is so famous there will be trouble between members and some might think that a certain member has trouble with the other.”

“We laugh when we see those things,” Jisoo replied. “I say like, ‘They say that I am your competition so be careful.’ ‘Hey, why didn’t you post it on your Instagram, it made a rumor.’ ‘You should have promoted my album,’ like this right? We treat it as a joke.”

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Jisoo will be releasing her debut solo album. “BLACKPINK’s Jisoo is currently working hard on recording her solo album,” YG Entertainment wrote (translated by Soompi). “While carrying out a busy world tour schedule since last year, she finished the album jacket photo shoot and worked on music production whenever she got the time in order to keep the promise with fans. She will greet [fans] soon with good news.”

“Flower” and “All Eyes On Me” are out now.

Here’s a fun thing that none of us really needed to know: Charles Barkley apparently loves soap. During a recent episode of The Steam Room, Ernie Johnson brought Chuck a listener question about soap, which led to a riff from the Hall of Fame inductee about how much he loves soap, how he travels with “a big bar of soap,” and how an incident in a hotel … you know what, I’m just gonna post the video and you can go ahead and watch.

“These hotels started being cheap,” Barkley said. “Those bars ain’t big enough. Cause I almost had a couple accidents with the soap at hotels.”

Johnson asked what on earth he could have possibly meant, which led to Barkley vaguely describing something that happened while “washing a part of my body.” When pressed further, Barkley said, “Almost lost it, and I was like, woo! That was too close for comfort.”

It was at this point that the camera went back to the Inside the NBA studio, where Johnson was laughing and Shaquille O’Neal was keeled over with laughter. He did, however, compose himself just long enough to say that he is afraid they are going to get kicked off the air before deciding to egg Barkley on, which led to Kenny Smith saying he had a bunch of jokes he did not want to tell. When we update our list of the funniest Inside moments in a few years, we will be sure to give this one some pretty heavy consideration.

It may be rumored that Dua Lipa is cooking up the official theme song for the forthcoming Barbie movie. But Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame nominee Missy Elliott was living in the beloved doll’s plastic world in the late 1990s. Seeing social media go into a full-on frenzy about the release of the movie, the multi-hyphenated talent took a trip down memory lane.

Sharing a clip from her take on the Barbie-verse on Instagram, Missy wrote, “They say a Barbie movie is coming out. Well, let me bring this back one time,” referring to the official music video for her single, “BeepMe911,” featuring the R&B group 702. The video, which, as Missy proudly points out, was released 26 years ago.

“Back then, some folks clowned me, Timbaland, and Magoo, for doing a Barbie-style video. With our arms painted like joints and Tim and Magoo for having Ken hair styles. I remember crying, but I realized I was just years ahead of the game,” wrote the musician.

Barbie has long since been incorporated into the music industry in several ways, especially in hip-hop. Several artists, including Lil Kim, Missy Elliott, and Nicki Minaj, have all referenced the brand in videos, on track, and in promotional photo shoots.

The Barbie movie is set to hit theaters on 7/21. For more information, click here.

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Stage fright happens to even the most veteran entertainers… yes, even The Jonas Brothers. Although the singing family made their musical debut in 2005, that doesn’t make them immune to nerves. The “Wings” singers are prepping for their big one-night-only show at Yankee Stadium in August, and what better way to promote than by making their return to SNL this weekend?

In part of the hilarious promo trailer, Kevin, Joe, and Nick join host Molly Shannon and cast member Ego Nwodim to tease just what viewers should expect. But instead of the trio belting about a beautiful tune, Shannon teaches them a rather odd performance nerve hack, the armpit trick (a nod to the 1999 film Superstar in which she starred alongside Will Ferrell).

To subdue her anxiety before performing live, Shannon confessed, “Sometimes when I get nervous, I stick my fingers under my arms, and I smell them like that.” Despite just how bizarre the reveal was, the Jonas Brothers and Ego Nwodim join in, and just like that, the group claims to be cursed. Well, at least Nwodim does.

The Jonas Brothers are rightfully so confused about what strange group activity just took place while cameras were recording them.

Watch the promo clip above.