It’s been almost a month since the GOP’s promised “red wave” failed, when one MAGA candidate after another either underperformed or crapped out. One of them was Kari Lake, Arizona’s anti-Trump anchor-turned-Trump-loving governor-hopeful. She lost. It was a tight race but she didn’t win. Alas, like the former president she used to hate, she’s cried voter fraud without offering any substantial evidence. Now it appears she’s following the Trump playbook all the way to the end.
As per Raw Story, Lake went on jailbound Steve Bannon’s podcast, where she said some things that could get her jail time, too, or at least sued.
“This is a time for Americans, for Arizonans to stand up,” she told Bannon. “I saw in Mohave County with [Ron Gould] on the Board of Supervisors. He said, ‘I’m doing this — I’m certifying this under duress. They’re telling me if I don’t, I’ll be locked up. They’re telling me, I’ll be arrested. They’re telling me is a Class 6 felony and I’m doing this under duress.’”
She then went one dangerous step further. “But I wish that somebody would say, ‘You know what? Arrest me then. I don’t care,’” she said. “We need people with courage to say, ‘Class what felony? Go ahead, go for it, arrest me because this is a botched election and you’re disenfranchising the folks in Mohave County when you allow this kind of election in Maricopa County to stand.’”
To recap: A candidate who lost an election is asking her supporters to commit crimes. Even Trump knew to keep this kind of language relatively vague so he could claim plausible deniability. Lake isn’t doing that. It’s yet another unhinged statement from a sore loser who’s been making wild claims, such as that everyone will become “slaves” if she’s not declared a winner of a race she didn’t win.
On the plus side, Lake doesn’t have anywhere near the same following as Trump — not even close. If we’re lucky, in a few months the only thing people will remember her for are her weird blurry Zoom filters.
We’re one step closer to getting another cinematic Bruce Lee. According to The Wrap, Sony’s 3000 Pictures imprint has closed the deal for Ang Lee to direct his own son, Mason Lee, in a biopic of the iconic, peerless martial artist/movie star.
“Accepted as neither fully American nor Fully Chinese, Bruce Lee was a bridge between East and West who introduced Chinese Gung Fu to the world, a scientist of combat and an iconic performing artist who revolutionized both the martial arts and action cinema,” Ang Lee said in a statement. “I feel compelled to tell the story of this brilliant, unique human being who yearned for belonging, possessed tremendous power in a 135-pound-frame, and who, through tireless hard work, made impossible dreams into reality.”
The film will be shot from a script by Dan Futterman, who wrote Capote and Foxcatcher and, perhaps more importantly, played Val in The Birdcage — a rare perfect movie.
Bruce Lee has been played by several actors in multiple projects, including Jason Scott Lee in the hero-worshipping Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and, more recently, by Mike Moh in a cringe-worthy scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It would be impossible to get Bruce Lee right by any metric. He simply means too many things to too many people. Still, Mason Lee has his work cut out for him in taking on the highest profile starring role of a career marked by supporting performances and a handful of leading man turns in popular Chinese films.
On the other hand, he’s been working in movies with his dad since he played “Baby” in 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, so this seems like a role he was literally born to play.
If Herschel Walker’s brain-breaking dialogue about werewolves and vampires (both of which he clearly believes are real, by the way) had you convinced the former football player might have delivered the most nonsensical political speech of the 2022 “erection” season — if not the history of the world — hold on to your get-well cards, people. Because the senatorial hopeful just gifted us with another inane word salad.
On Tuesday, PatriotTakes posted a video of a hyped-up Walker either advocating for a border wall, explaining why walls don’t work, or offering up his dog — who may or may not be a good boy — as border security while relaying a story about someone asking him about border security. Yes, it’s all as muddled and confusing as that sentence makes it sound.
Clear your head, pop a Xanax, and listen for yourself below.
Herschel Walker destroyed his argument for a border wall:
“A wall do work. …when you got a wall around your house people don’t— yeah, but they can get in. But, you know what, if they get in, it would be hard to get out because I got a dog that— well, my dog really won’t bite.” pic.twitter.com/Mfr4Cpe39O
Of course, it didn’t take long for others to wonder what in the f**k Walker was talking about (and for at least one person to pay tribute to Walker with a poem):
He’s so profoundly stupid (or CTE-damaged), I kinda want him to keep campaigning even after he loses to Warnock. But that’s a mean thought. https://t.co/KBudmrREqV
My wall don’t work My dog don’t bite My werewolf left me The other night I can’t beat a vampire In a fight Guess I just might Catch the goooood air to China Tonight
Speaking of Herschel Walker and dogs, never forget that he lied when he said his opponent was lying about having a dog. Raphael Warnock does, in fact, have a dog.
In a landmark, bipartisan 61 to 36 vote, the Senate approved the Respect for Marriage Act on Tuesday setting the stage for same-sex and interracial marriage to remain legal, even if they are struck down by the Supreme Court. It’s believed that the bill will be quickly passed by the House and signed into law by President Biden.
Even though same-sex and interracial marriages are legal in the U.S., after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade last summer, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas noted that the decision that legalized gay marriage rests on the same principles that underscored Roe.
This signal by the conservative justice pushed Democrats to quickly work to codify same-sex and interracial marriage into law.
If the Respect for Marriage Act becomes law it would require all states and the federal government to recognize legally-conducted marriages. Therefore, if the decisions that legalized same-sex and interracial marriages were overturned, states still would have to recognize all marriages conducted in the U.S.
So, if Kentucky made same-sex marriage illegal and a same-sex couple got married in another state where it was legal, say California, Kentucky would still have to recognize the marriage. The only barrier a couple would face to getting married would be traveling to another state to have their wedding performed.
Republicans added a religious consideration to the Respect for Marriage Act that protects nonprofit and religious organizations from having to provide support for same-sex marriages.
u201c61-36: The U.S. Senate passes the Respect for Marriage Act, repealing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and codifying federal recognition of statesu2019 same-sex and interracial marriages.nn12 Republicans joined Democrats in voting u201cyes.u201d All the u201cnou201d votes were Republican senators.u201d
After this historic vote, Chasten Buttigieg, husband of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, shared a Twitter thread where he showed what the Senate moved to protect. “This morning, after dropping the kids off, I came home and stopped to take in the aftermath of a chaotic morning. And it got me thinking. This is what marriage is to me,” Chasten wrote.
Last year, Pete and Chasten became the parents of a son and a daughter.
u201cThe Senate is poised to vote on the #RespectForMarriageAct today. nnThis morning, after dropping the kids off, I came home and stopped to take in the aftermath of a chaotic morning. And it got me thinking. nnThis is what marriage is to me. ud83euddf5u201d
Bibs I should have tossed in the sink that were leaking milk onto the counter. Little toothbrushes they used to scrub the teeth that have been keeping them up at night. Tiny hairbands from Penelope’s quick updo in which she kept repeating the word “bosh” while I brushed her hair.
The stacked plates, empty and crusty after a hurried but hilarious breakfast full of giggles ad music. The twins bounced along to the Christmas music as they ate their bananas and eggs while I prayed for the coffee maker to go faster.
My husband danced around me and fed the dogs while singing along to the music, which made the kids smile, doing his best not to get anything on his suit before rushing out the door and off to the to the airport. I didn’t remember where he was headed, but I knew it was important.
This is what marriage is to me. Mornings spent negotiating diaper bags, getting sweaters on wiggling toddlers, and feeding the dogs. It’s scattered building blocks on the floor and scrambled eggs on the wall. It’s goodbye kisses at the door and thermoses of coffee in the minivan.
It’s having the right to juggle it all with the person who makes you feel loved and supported amidst the chaos. It’s the right to have a shoulder to lean on at end of the day in the first place. It’s the promise of hard work for your partner, your kids, and for us, our country.
My marriage has filled this house with so much love it makes me want to be a better husband, father, and citizen every day. It’s called me to something bigger than myself while recognizing that my kids are now the most important thing in life, and I’d do anything to protect them.
Our family and our union push me to make sure we leave our kids a country and a world they can thrive in so that they, too, can enjoy all of the love and light and happiness that Pete and I have known simply by falling in love with one another.
I know how precious this union is and how sacred and fragile our unions can be in the eyes of our ever-changing democracy. We are not yet afforded the pleasure of letting our shoulders down, of taking a breath. We are fully aware that some desperately want to take this away.
I hope that we can move on from these votes, these arguments, and these debates soon. I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle will listen to over 70% of Americans and vote to protect families like mine and the unions that make us all better Americans.
And if a member of congress is confused, or has questions and wants to turn down the noise from the online rhetoric – our playroom is always open, should you want to meet a family who is just trying their best to make their kids happy and their country better, just like you.
Chasten’s post is poignant because it shows how all marriages, regardless of the sex of those involved, look the same. Especially after having kids. It’s constant domestic chaos, punctuated by quick outbursts of fun all tied together by love.
For those who oppose same-sex marriage, all they have to do is spend a morning in the Buttigieg household and they can see that it’s not much different than any straight marriage.
Chasten even invited members of Congress to come and visit his home to see for themselves.
“And if a member of congress is confused, or has questions and wants to turn down the noise from the online rhetoric—our playroom is always open, should you want to meet a family who is just trying their best to make their kids happy and their country better, just like you,” Chasten wrote on Twitter.
By colifying same-sex marriage into law, Congress won’t be doing anything revolutionary. It’d simply be solidifying rights that 71% of Americans think same-sex couples should have. Signing the act into law would also go a long way toward settling an issue that has been a point of contention for a generation.
“I hope that we can move on from these votes, these arguments, and these debates soon,” Chasten wrote on Twitter. “I hope that our friends on the other side of the aisle will listen to over 70% of Americans and vote to protect families like mine and the unions that make us all better Americans.”
Everyone poops, but very few think about where their drain ends.
When you flush in most U.S. cities, your poop is carried by valuable water into a vast network of aging pipes – many of which were installed around World War II – to a centralized treatment plant that wasn’t designed to handle extreme weather events or sea level rise, occurrences we’re experiencing more frequently as a result of climate change.
While the future of sanitation may look bleak, it doesn’t need to be.
Here’s some context on how climate change is affecting our waste systems. Seas are rising faster than ever (1-2 meters by 2100), and hurricanes are getting more intense and frequent. By 2050, “moderate” (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today.
When this flooding occurs, our wastewater treatment plants – often placed on coastlines for ease of effluent discharge – are vulnerable to inundation leading to service disruption.
And when these facilities get flooded and services are disrupted, people don’t stop pooping.
Untreated waste leaks into the surrounding environment, causing environmental contamination, aquatic dead zones, biodiversity loss, and public health crises.
We can view this looming disruption as an opportunity to redesign our world in a way that is regenerative, intentional, and informed by nature’s wisdom – where humanity is not only surviving, but thriving along with all life on our planet.
In the case of sanitation, some companies are looking to nature’s design for inspiration.
One of these companies is wasted* – founded to transform the least inspiring product in the world: the porta-potty.
wasted* rents their re-imagined portable toilets to construction sites and events, and transforms the collected waste into fertilizer to support local agriculture.
While their immediate focus is on the traditional porta-potty market, the wasted* vision is to provide climate-resilient, circular sanitation infrastructure in the places that it’s most needed – from large metros to developing countries, disaster relief zones, and refugee camps.
By transforming the portable toilet, wasted* aims to shift the way we relate to what we leave behind – seeing it not as waste, but as a valuable resource. In doing so, their aspiration is to change the way we as humans view ourselves in relation to the rest of life – not as separate from nature, but deeply interconnected.
Other major organizations pushing forward the circular sanitation economy are the Rich Earth Institute, VunaNexus, and Sanitation360 – who are focused on developing processing technologies that transform human waste into fertilizer.
Sanitation is just one piece of a very large puzzle to mend our relationship to the rest of the living world. But as is said by peecycling pioneers at the Rich Earth Institute, we can pee the change we wish to see in the world.
Brophy Tyree is a guest contributor to Upworthy and the CEO/Co-Founder of wasted*
It’s been a season to forget for the Arizona Cardinals. The team is 4-8, has lost two games in a row, and is barreling towards a top-10 pick. This is despite the fact that ownership decided to extend three primary members of the organization — general manager Steve Keim, head coach Kliff Kingsbury, and quarterback Kyler Murray — this past offseason.
Patrick Peterson, who spent the first decade of his NFL career with the Cardinals before joining the Minnesota Vikings last year, discussed the team on a recent episode of the All Things Covered podcast. Peterson made it a point to say that he believes Kingsbury will be the fall guy for what has happened with the Cardinals this year, before saying that “the crazy about it: the guy who hired him will still have a job.”
“Kyler Murray don’t care about nobody but Kyler Murray”
Patrick Peterson comments on what’s going on with his former team the Cardinals, since they are always in the news.
Peterson’s co-host, Bryant McFadden, then brought up Murray, and mentioned that he doesn’t like how the team’s starting signal caller will air out dirty laundry.
“I don’t like how he’s doing that,” McFadden said. “I think he should keep some things privately, but it tells me he doesn’t care about his head coach. And he’s putting everything on the head coach, basically saying…”
It was at this point that Peterson interjected and made his thoughts on Murray clear, saying that “Kyler Murray don’t care about nobody but Kyler Murray. That’s just a matter of the fact.”
Peterson and Murray were teammates during the 2019 and 2020 NFL seasons.
Ben Simmons had finally started to look like he was finding a bit of form towards the end of November, as he recorded six straight games scoring in double figures. However, injury issues have crept back up for Simmons, who has dealt with knee soreness and now will be on the shelf for at least three games with what is officially a “left lateral upper calf strain” that led to him leaving the Nets most recent game against Orlando after just 11 minutes of play.
Nets say Ben Simmons has been diagnosed with a left lateral upper calf strain. He will miss at least the next three games and will be reassessed after that.
Simmons has struggled with injuries of late, as his back issues kept him out all of last year even after he was traded from Philly to Brooklyn after sitting out the start of the season. Now he finds himself back on the injury report with a calf strain that hopefully won’t cost him significant time, but will at least have him miss a week of games before being reevaluated.
In his first year playing with the Nets, Simmons is averaging 8.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 5.4 assists per game in 28 minutes a night. After struggling out of the gate he seemed to be finding a rhythm, but will now have to miss more time and the Nets will be without a versatile piece as they look to push above .500 and climb the East standings.
It’s been three years since their self-titled sophomore album and Weeping Icon have returned with a vengeance. The punk group is back with a hypnotic new batch of tunes with their EP Ocelli, a project that puts their explosive energy on full display.
The band, composed of Lani Combier-Kapel on drums/vocals, Sara Fantry on guitar/vocals, Sarah Lutkenhaus on keys, and Sarah Reinold on bass, have honed their sound. Ocelli is a collection of songs that boast talky vocals, raucous and energetic instrumentals, and empowering lyrics that take down two-faced misogynists and capitalism.
Celebrating their Ocelli EP, Weeping Icon sits down with Uproxx to talk Kim Gordon, crashing at a haunted house, and sea turtles in our latest Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Fantry: Furious, sarcastic, emotional, and strange.
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
Combier-Kapel: It was and probably still is a dark time. So imagine the songs will still be relevant in some ways. But I’d like to think I’ll still be playing music in 2050, even if it means playing drums with one arm, one tooth and a glass eye. I hope most of the sea turtles are still alive.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?
Fantry: I always love shows in Toronto. Packed or small, there are some rad people up there.
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Combier-Kapel: I’d have to say Kim Gordon. She’s unapologetically herself onstage and off, and the breadth of visual work she’s created over the years has proven that you don’t have to keep yourself to one medium. Every way you spend your time informs other creative endeavors.
Where did you eat the best meal of your life?
Fantry: Probably a restaurant in NYC. Too much good food here for anywhere else to have left an impression I guess.
What album do you know every word to?
Combier-Kapel: Depeche Mode’s Catching Up With Depeche Mode.
What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?
Fantry: Swans at Music Hall of Williamsburg.
What is the best outfit for performing and why?
Combier-Kapel: Shorts and a tshirt, or stretchy things that don’t move around as I’m drumming. Sara F and I have a vintage store in Bushwick called “Protection Spell,” and we intend to source more of our outfits plus other people’s outfits from there! Shameless little plug.
Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?
Fantry: I love the NYC instagrams like @whatisnewyork, @yerr.nyc, @subwaycreatures, @newyorknico — there’s such a specific culture here and this is our pack. Just love to see what’s going on at home, even when I’m just in my house. It’s always something spicy.
What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?
Combier-Kapel: Joy Division’s “Transmission,” or maybe Lana Del Rey… the last tour was a very weird time.
What’s the last thing you Googled?
Fantry: English to Spanish dictionary. Needed to look up the word for payroll to text my coworker.
What album makes for the perfect gift?
Combier-Kapel:Isn’t Anything by My Bloody Valentine. Can someone please just get it for me?
Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?
Fantry: A haunted house in Memphis TN, where I saw a real ghost. Or an apparition of some sort. It was a white glowing mist cloud that passed in front of me 3 times in a dark, windowless room. I was sober and definitely still awake. When I told the housemates in the morning that I saw a ghost the night before they all said “oh yeah, the woman in white, everyone sees her.” Oh but also we stayed at Super Happy Fun Land in Houston, TX one time and they have dozens of Raggedy Ann dolls and other creepy toys stapled to the wall — that actually was probably weirder.
What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?
Combier-Kapel: My first tattoo is a set of paisley flowers and a bluebird, done by a good highschool friend, Dorothy. It’s on my upper right back near my shoulder blade and the tail of the bird extends to the side of my ribcage. An ode to New Paltz, the town that I went to college in. I still have the tapestry that the image was taken from.
What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?
Fantry: Anyone experimental, strange, different – that can be a pop song, I just don’t want to hear anything I’ve heard played to death already (like a really contrived commercial country song). It makes my brain feel like it’s getting bed sores. I want to hear something fresh to my neural pathways.
What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?
Combier-Kapel: Sarah R’s dad sold me a nice minivan for $200. Also thanks to my mom for popping me out — I’m truly grateful for that.
What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?
Fantry: You don’t need to be an adult yet. It’s ok to not want to go to school. Give yourself time to heal from your traumas. Have fun, make lots of art, just enjoy this imaginative time of limitless possibilities.
What’s the last show you went to?
Combier-Kapel: I guess it was our EP release show on Friday with YHWH Nailgun, JWC, and Harlequin Panic at Alphaville!
What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?
Fantry: Tied for Home Alone / Jurassic Park. Can’t turn off movies with soundtracks that good. Each are such a powerful vibe.
What’s one of your hidden talents?
Reinold: I am one of few words, but my devil sticking while skateboarding abilities speak for themselves.
Netflix has another hit on its hands with Wednesday, but when it comes to movies the streaming service is certainly in an interesting place. Its Knives Out sequel, Glass Onion, has performed well during its extremely limited theatrical run to the point that it might return to theaters once it hits Netflix. Images of For Your Consideration packages for the Rian Johnson project are already leaking out, and given its success there will be considerable buzz for the elusive Oscar the streamer has spent millions upon millions to secure.
Beyond that, though, lay a veritable wasteland of downright bad original titles on Netflix. And behind the scenes, the company is trimming its budget and toying with an ad-supported option to boost growth and the all-important revenue. For every big push for Roma or The Power of the Dog there are dozens upon dozens of titles you’ve never heard of that barely crack a 6.0 on your cursory IMDB search to see if they’re worth watching. And it’s not just people holding a Roku remote at home who have noticed. Ben Affleck knows the movie business from all angles, which is why the actor/director calling Netflix out is certainly notable news.
Earlier this summer Affleck started Artists Equity, a studio he formed alongside Matt Damon. The goal is to make about three projects a year, maybe five in the future. And in talking about his hopes for the studio, he juxtaposed what a behemoth like Netflix does to survive. And not exactly in a good way.
As Deadline reported, Affleck appeared on a panel at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit this week to talk about the movie industry and what he hopes to accomplish with Artists Equity. The goal, he said, is to make movies that “people remember 20 years later.” And that doesn’t always mean aiming for the biggest audience.
“There’s bigger audience for action movies than there is for small dramas – I get that,” Affleck said. “Certain genres play more broadly and you can’t not be mindful of that. But let’s do a good one, let’s surprise the audience, let’s make them care about it.”
The goal of Artists Equity, Affleck said, was not to focus on volume but quality of movies. Which is something he noted the biggest money-movers in Hollywood have focused on in recent years. He used Netflix as an example, calling the volume approach the streamer has had lately an “assembly line process” that more often than not doesn’t create very good films.
“If you ask Reed Hastings … I’m sure there’s some risk in that, and I’m sure they had a great strategy, but I would have said, ‘How are we going to make 50 great movies?! How is that possible? There’s no committee big enough. There aren’t enough — you just can’t do it. It’s a thing that requires attention and dedication and work and resists the assembly line process. Scott Stuber is a really talented, smart guy who I really like… but it’s an impossible job,” Affleck said, referring to the giant streamer’s founder and co-CEO and to its head of original films.
It’s interesting to see Affleck be so blatantly critical of Netflix and the quality of the projects they make (especially given his experience with them on Triple Frontier), but it offers a glimpse into what many see as a problem of the modern movie landscape itself. When the goal is volume over quality, regardless of what size screen the product is intended for, the whole industry suffers. It’s clear that Netflix is capable of making good movies — as Glass Onion can certainly prove — but Affleck made it clear this week that the current model in place doesn’t mean they make a lot of good movies. Which means a lot of stuff to scroll past to get to the things people actually want to watch.
Matt McCormick can still remember the sound his childhood basketball hoop made when the ball thudded against it. He describes it as a rumble, the result of the looseness of the cheap hoop, and a sound that even in memory can dredge up the anxiety of chasing a ball that ricocheted hard off the backboard down a slanted driveway before it had the chance to bounce onto any cars parked nearby.
It’s a visceral memory many people who grew up as basketball fans can relate to. It’s also the heart of McCormick’s upcoming show during Miami’s Art Week, opening December 1st and running until the 4th. Presented in tandem with Bleacher Report’s Artist Series and the NBA, McCormick has created a space at The LAB in Wynwood in homage to his earliest memories of NBA fandom. One part traditional art show, with large-format paintings of the icons of his youth in Dennis Rodman and Allen Iverson, another part experiential installation in the form of a “sports bar dive bar” McCormick’s cobbled together from the places he frequented when he was younger, the show, he hopes, will ultimately create a bridge through NBA fandom into fine art.
“A lot of that stuff is a part of the foundation that we subconsciously don’t even realize is building the experience for us. All these different noises, touches, feel, smells, et cetera,” McCormick says over Zoom, taking a brief break from installing the show. “And I think that is a very integral part of being a fan that we may not even pay attention to until years down the line, when you’re like, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that noise the backboard made.’”
Growing up in the Bay Area, McCormick remembers the years when he and other fans were “just kind of dragged along” by a middling Warriors team. Lean seasons of fandom where a 2007 playoff appearance felt like winning a title, but otherwise a team no one would have predicted turning into the golden juggernaut of the West. But like so many other fans of his generation, McCormick had already been hooked by the larger-than-life Rodman and audaciousness of Iverson.
“They were tattooed, they were loud, they very much had a personality that extended to the way they dressed, the way they looked, and then just the way they carry themselves,” McCormick says. “And that to me was like highly influential as a young person. I’m covered in tattoos to this day, so I’m sure it had some effect on that side of it too.”
Matt McCormick
For him, they were caricatures of an American individualism. Tough, audacious, independent and alluring outlaws, all themes that would later come to stick in McCormick’s work with its Western motifs and American iconography — cowboys and their rearing horses, stock cars, old motel signs and Coke bottles, all dreamily collaged over canyon lands and open plains, aflame in the day’s last or early light. Those symbols and what they’ve come to reference, both in McCormick’s work and wider imagination, have parallels within sports, and certainly the NBA.
Line wolf players, relegated franchises, gunners and lights-out shooters — the terms we’ve coined as colloquial in basketball are borrowed from our broader, collective understanding of desperados but more than that, their expansiveness and sense of possibility. McCormick remembers the first work he ever had published, in Sports Illustrated for Kids, was a “made up version of a basketball team”. The cover of that issue featured Tim Duncan and David Robinson, meeting midair, both with basketballs in one hand and cowboy hats in the other, as a shadowed cowboy attempts to lasso their arms. An armadillo looks up from the ground at them in awe.
“And they were in, it was like them superposed in front of Monument Valley, which has become a huge part of my visual language in my non-basketball related work, so it’s kind of a full circle moment right there,” McCormick recalls, smiling. “So that’s kind of what I’m generally referencing back to is this kid, you know, trying to like learn how to be a man and a person and being obsessed with these larger than life characters.”
“Being a fan is more than just like what happens on the court,” McCormick says. “we kind of look to these people for everything.”
There are plenty of nods to that full-circle meeting of early fandom, in all its well-worn sentimentality, in his show, because McCormick was intent on distilling fandom down to its anchor points.
“Materials are highly important. It’s funny, I sat courtside for the first time recently and touching the court is almost like a religious experience of some kind. That’s why I love basketball so much,” he says. “All your senses are on overdrive. So the feeling of that court, the squeaking of a shoe, those noises. There’s a feeling of the wood floor, it’s so much different than say a concrete or asphalt court. There’s the differences between a metal chain link net versus a cotton net.”
Concentrating on materials, he wanted to channel the tactile and sensual elements of the game, and built four “pretty much regulation sized” backboards out of things like house siding and portions of an old boat. McCormick painted each backboard carefully — and quickly, over just one weekend — and purposefully, with homages to art that’s become the most influential to him in his practice, as well as his life.
“It was kind of a way for me to insert the new fandom for me, which has become the most important fandom in my life, and blend these two worlds where like, I grew up as a fan of this sport and now I’m a fan of this art, and how can we make the conversation come together,” he says. “I’m really excited about those.”
The hoops he sourced individually, and each have their own unique patina, reflective to real-life reps.
“They’re supposed to emulate the homemade backboard that you’d find on the side of a barn or something, like middle of nowhere. ‘Cause I find it fascinating, the reach of these sports, you know, you’ll have people in the inner city, and then you’ll have people like in the middle of nowhere, and there’s still the same kind of obsession and gravitation towards this thing.”
Matt McCormick
To house the work and cap off the sensory experience he’s aiming for, McCormick built a sports bar referential to the real thing as much as the dogma of them. He notes that within the duality of a dive bar — a place with its low points as well as one where everybody knows your name — there’s accessibility: they exist everywhere.
“But what is even more appealing to me is the decor, which is essentially anti-decor and anti-design. It’s basically building spaces of the most affordable, least considered, in a high brow sense kind of elements.”
McCormick, who became sober after his own bout with addiction, describes those elements with warmth. Fake wood panelled walls, Christmas lights that get left up, “and then what I love is the spaces kind of grow,” he says. “So it’s like the people that own the spaces, start acquiring, you know, what some people might see as junk, these of mementos. There’s family photos, some things are framed, some things are not. And there’s a real beauty to that kind of space.”
Creating a welcoming environment was crucial to McCormick when conceptualizing the show, and not just having it be free in contrast to Art Week’s exclusive tentpole convention of Art Basel. As someone who came to fine art in his own, roundabout way, he understand the barriers — both perceived and actual — in the art world. It’s why he’s so passionate about making and presenting art in a way that encourages people to come in.
“I think that one of the major problems with art and something that needs to change is this exclusionary mentality, because it doesn’t encourage people to participate,” McCormick stresses, mentioning the inroads basketball and contemporary art have made through artists like Tyrrell Winston, Jonas Wood, and the art basketball magazine turned gallery and record label, Franchise. But he also doesn’t knock something like basketball bobbleheads which, while people understand they aren’t getting a piece of art, do represent an entry point and “easy moment” for people to enjoy. Those little undulating figures spark something. Likewise, clothing with McCormick’s designs for the show will be available at the event, and online afterwards.
“Not to keep going back to those backboards,” McCormick chuckles. “but that was a big reason why I wanted to make this allusion to these artists that I find so important, so that someone could maybe be like, what is that about?”
Fandom, for McCormick and within the themes of this show, is an open avenue rather than something meant to be restrictive. It’s where his own practice sprang from, however unbeknownst to him then, flipping through a magazine with his art in it and a rootin’ tootin’ Tim Duncan and David Robinson on the cover. It’s where he learned, as a young punk kid reading the linear notes of his favorite albums, where the cool tattoo and skateboard shops were.
“And so if some kid who cares about basketball, but knows that it’s Art Week and this is all happening here, comes in and they have a moment anywhere close to that, that would be a win,” McCormick smiles. “I want people to love art as much as I love art, and I want people to love art just as much as they love basketball.”
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