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Even though many people are celebrating the release of the long-awaited Marvel film Blank Panther: Wakanda Forever, some people (or governments) are very upset about the minuscule moment that probably went unnoticed by most.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is playing in theaters in Kuwait, though there will be approximately one less minute of content compared to everywhere else. The country has cut a scene where Michaela Coel’s character Aneka and Florence Kasumba’s Ayo share a small forehead kiss (yeah, you probably missed it among all of the war and gut-wrenching familial moments). Officials also requested that a birthing scene be edited out to remove the line “A god to his people.”

It’s pretty common for Disney-adjacent movies to be combed through and edited for various reasons for international releases. Just earlier this year, Thor: Love And Thunder and Lightyear received edited cuts in different markets, when they weren’t banned from being shown all together. Doctor Strange, Eternals, and West Side Story all had trouble hitting screens in various Persian Gulf countries due to small references or scenes.

What is surprising about this particular situation is that the movie will be released unedited in just about every other country. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the movie will be screening unedited in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar. As we know from earlier this year, Saudi Arabia is quick to ban Marvel movies from theaters.

All in all, just 60 seconds of footage was scrapped, which might seem like a lot, but compared to other movies, this is actually pretty tame! Has anyone checked in on that one theater in Oklahoma, though?

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Earlier this year, Sharon Van Etten unveiled her sprawling album We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. She then announced a deluxe to follow it, teasing it with “Never Gonna Change,” a song that she said was “about managing depression and anxiety in the midst of isolation.”

The extended version of We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong is officially out today. Along with the recently released deluxe tracks “Porta,” “Used To It,” and “Never Gonna Change,” there’s now the atmospheric, poignant new song “When I Die,” which doesn’t hesitate to dive into the cosmos.

Before releasing We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong, she announced she wouldn’t be releasing any singles. “I wanted to approach this release differently, to engage my fans in an intentional way, in an effort to present the album as a whole body of work,” she explained in a statement. “These ten songs are designed to be listened to in order, at once, so that a much larger story of hope, loss, longing, and resilience can be told. I wanted to convey that in an image with me walking away from it all, not necessarily brave, not necessarily sad, not necessarily happy.”

Listen to “When I Die” above — or listen to the album in full, as she intended.

The 2022 U.S. midterm elections spawned utter chaos in several districts, including in Colorado, where no one knows yet whether Lauren Boebert will continue to root and toot in Washington, D.C. And down in Georgia, the also-controversial, Trump-endorsed Herschel Walker will head into runoff territory against Senator Raphael Warnock. It remains wild that these are close races for both Boebert and Walker, considering their fringe behavior, but this timeline grows stranger by the day.

Speaking of strange, Senator Lindsey Graham is out there stumping (and apparently soliciting donations) for Herschel. In the process, Graham is arguing that it’s Democrats who are out to “destroy” a self-destructing candidate, who has been trounced by his own son over his contradictory abortion stance. A Black Georgia preacher also called out the GOP for pushing “the lowest caricature of a stereotypical, broken Black man.”

And here’s Lindsey Graham, who at 0:40 nearly starts crying over poor, destroyed Herschel. The wishy-washy senator from South Carolina argues that if Herschel goes down, that will be the end of the Black Republican movement.

“Here’s the most important point I’m going to make tonight: [Democrats] are trying to destroy Herschel to deter young men and women of colour from being Republicans,” Graham emphatically insisted. “If they destroy Herschel, it will deter people of color from wanting to be a conservative Republican because you just have your life ruined…. We need to have his back.”

“If Herschel wins, he’s going to inspire people all over Georgia, of colour, to become Republicans,” Graham continued. “Herschel Walker is a nightmare for liberals, he’s an African American conservative. They have treated him like crap, his family, stand by Herschel tonight, if you can give, give.” Yep, gotta ask for those dollars.

See this photo? Of Pete Davidson holding up two fingers? Add seven more.

Former SNL cast member Jay Pharoah appeared on Thursday’s episode of The Jess Cagle Show, where he was asked if the rumors about Davidson’s supposed “BDE” are true. “Hey, man, it’s Pete. There’s something in the sauce. He got something, OK. He got something inside,” he said. Pharoah asked him “what is it?” and “what’d you do?” and “how you do it?” and Davidson told him what it was, what he did, and how he did it.

“It’s his endowment. That’s what he told me it is. He was like, ‘Yeah, bro, it’s like nine inches.’ I was like, ‘What? Word. Oh snap, we twins. That’s crazy,’” the comedian joked.

Pharoah also credited Davidson’s vulnerability and personality with success in his personal life, as he’s also dated Kate Beckinsale and was even engaged to Ariana Grande — the latter of whom once tweeted that he was “like 10 inches.” “If a woman can’t talk to you afterwards, she gonna run to somebody with a … maybe they not as big as you. You gotta be able to, you gotta be able to listen,” the Sing voice actor explained.

Unlike Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, and Jay Pharoah are all actors hired by Pete Davidson’s PR team to convince everyone that he’s packing down there, I’m beginning to think Martha Stewart’s crush on him isn’t the only thing that’s big.

You can watch Pharoah on The Jess Cagle Show above.

(Via Page Six)

For weeks, we’ve been hearing about the “red wave” that was set to wash over the country in the midterm elections. Now that it never came to fruition, Republicans are scrambling to blame every person, place, or gender they can think of. While Fox News’ resident dope Jesse Watters tried to cover all bases by placing the blame on single women AND the GOP not hating Joe Biden enough, many conservative politicians and pundits are pointing squarely at Donald Trump as the real problem. Which, obviously, has the egomaniacal former president losing his sh*t.

While unhinged MAGA diehards like Marjorie Taylor Greene are sticking by their orange-tinted leader, Trump — who has been frantically posting every dumb thought that comes into his brain on TRUTH social — seems to be signaling to the mainstream media he has attempted to dismantle that he’s open to talking about ways to work together… Oh, and also that he’s the reason pretty much any news or social media networks have found success at all in the past.

As Mediaite reports, Trump went on a TRUTH Social tear where he suggested — presumably with a straight face — that:

“If CNN were smart, they’d open up a Conservative network, only have me on, and it would be the most successful network in History. Fox only made it because of me, Twitter only made it because of me, and even Facebook is now in the tubes, having lost almost $90 billion in value since I was taken off, which was considered one of the biggest mistakes in business over the last two years. Because with Trump go tens of millions of people who believe in MAGA, who want to Make America Great Again, and Put America First.”

Funny how those tens of millions of MAGA ride-or-dies couldn’t help several of the candidates Trump backed in the midterms win their races though. Certainly, Trump — who is quickly being labeled political poison by some conservatives, while Florida governor/Trump nemesis Ron DeSantis’ star is on the rise — could be losing sway with the GOP?!

Trump’s posts came not long after the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post ran a cover story that portrayed Trump as Humpty Dumpty, “who couldn’t build a wall.” Meanwhile, John Podhoretz, who penned the NY Post story, wrote: “After three straight national tallies in which either he or his party or both were hammered by the national electorate, it’s time for even his stans to accept the truth: Toxic Trump is the political equivalent of a can of Raid.”

On the bright side, it’s not the worst thing Trump has been called.

(Via Mediaite)

There’s something going on at JYP Nation where all of its artists have made some type of whimsical reference to a circus of some sort. First it was NMIXX with “DICE,” then it was the recent announcement of ITZY with their forthcoming EP CHESHIRE, now it’s Xdinary Heroes with “Hair Cut.”

The JYP rock band makes their first comeback with “Hair Cut” today (November 11) following their debut over the summer with “Happy Death Day.” The new lead single is a metaphorical rock anthem that delivers a message of encouragement to cut out the bad thoughts in your head by getting a hair cut — “Cut it out, slicе them all / Throw it out, let it all out / Time to let it go / Time to let it blow / All that is rotten, cut it out.”

The single comes off of the band’s second EP Overload consisting of seven tracks. According to a press release, the EP is a new chapter in the band’s lore where “the members are shown as incomplete heroes who are still unstable and insecure to embrace the popular adage ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ In the process of transitioning to a new world, the members get intoxicated with daze, and claim their heroism under the name of madness.”

Check out the full tracklist to Overload below.

1. “Zzz…”
2. “Hair Cut”
3. “LUNATIC”
4. “Crack in the mirror”
5. “Ghost”
6. “X-MAS”
7. “Hair Cut.”

Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in human history because he changed how we send money and drive cars. He’s set his sights on taking humans to Mars and just bought Twitter, one of the world’s most powerful platforms for the exchange of ideas.

He’s loved by some, hated by others and, for the most part, a mystery to all. How can someone develop such an incredibly broad, positive vision for humanity while at the same time being able to reduce himself to a Twitter troll?

Three months ago, Musk gave a little insight into his inner world and what drives his decision-making. On August 1, he retweeted a plug for “What We Owe the Future,” a book by the Scottish philosopher and ethicist William MacAskill. “Worth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy,” Musk captioned the retweet.

MacAskill’s book is a call for the embrace of a philosophy known as “longtermerism,” which he defines as “the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.” He argues that we can make the future better in two ways, “by averting permanent catastrophes, thereby ensuring civilisation’s survival; or by changing civilisation’s trajectory to make it better while it lasts … Broadly, ensuring survival increases the quantity of future life; trajectory changes increase its quality.”

u201cWorth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy.u201d

— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk)
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The philosophy strives for the common good by focusing on the long-term goal of humanity’s survival. But long-term good may sometimes come at the expense of the short-term. “Because, the theory goes, giving a poor person a blanket isn’t likely to be as useful for the future of humanity as building a rocket to Mars,” investigative journalist Dave Troy writes on Medium.

Musk’s development of the Tesla fits right into the longtermer view of the world. “The fundamental goodness of Tesla … so like the ‘why’ of Tesla, the relevance, what’s the point of Tesla, comes down to two things: acceleration of sustainable energy and autonomy,” Musk said.

“The acceleration of sustainable energy is fundamental because this is the next potential risk for humanity,” Musk added. “So obviously, that is, by far and away, the most important thing.”

To achieve this goal, Musk had a long-term master plan that was an extremely rare thing in the auto industry. It was more akin to John F. Kennedy’s call to go to the moon than the auto industry’s usual vision, which is boxed in by quarter-to-quarter thinking.

Musk’s work to drive to normalize space travel and eventually colonize the moon and Mars fits nicely into the longtermerism theory as well. Musk has called interplanetary travel and colonization “life insurance” for the human species. While some focus on the medium-range goal of reducing the planet’s temperature, Musk is focusing on a possible future that may never come to fruition. However, aside from climate change, we may face other cataclysmic events that make Earth unfit for human life such as a meteor or ice age.

So why did Musk buy Twitter? Troy believes that the acquisition fits perfectly into the longtermer worldview.

“The goals are more ideological in nature,” Troy writes. “Musk and his backers believe that the global geopolitical arena was being warped by too much ‘woke’ ideology and censorship, and wanted to fix that by first restoring voices that had previously been silenced—and then implementing technical and algorithmic solutions that allow each user to get the experience they want.”

It appears as though Musk believes that the more regressive forms of progressive ideology work to stifle the spread of ideas and opening up the platform to all voices, regardless of how vile they may be, serves the ultimate goal of broadening human potential. Again, he’s sacrificing the short-term problems that stem from hate speech in favor of the potential for good ideas to emerge from the platform without being squelched.

Musk also alludes to longtermerism with his stated mission to “extend the light of consciousness.” If Musk believes that humans are the only truly conscious beings in the universe, our demise would effectively extinguish the universe’s knowledge of itself. The universe would be nothing more than the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it.

u201cIt is unknown whether we are the only civilization currently alive in the observable universe, but any chance that we are is added impetus for extending life beyond Earthu201d

— Elon Musk (@Elon Musk)
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The thought of the world’s richest, and potentially most powerful, man making world-altering decisions with no rhyme or reason is a scary proposition. It’s woefully inadequate to simply label Musk a visionary or a troll. But if he’s driven by a moral imperative, then we can get a better handle on the objectives behind his work and make sense of him accordingly.

The problem is, given his focus on results that won’t be apparent for generations, will we ever truly understand what he’s about?

Kaylani Simpson has gone megaviral on TikTok for a video describing how she went to the ER with what she thought was appendicitis but wound up being a baby girl. The video has received more than 18.8 million views on the platform.

Simpson says it all began when she went to a college party as a sophomore. Nine months later, she went to the hospital complaining of abdominal pain.

“Doctors didn’t know what was wrong in the ER,” she captioned the video. “While they were doing an ultrasound, my mother saw something familiar on the screen. Seconds later I started screaming and the doctor ran in. It was a head! I was rushed up to give birth. I pushed her out 15 min later in three tries.”

“I had no bump, my period, and was the skinniest I’ve ever been,” she continued. “Came home two days later with a perfectly healthy baby and my best friend.”

The video received a ton of great comments. “Well your appendicitis is absolutely adorable,” Kat wrote. “All these people saying this is their worst fear and I’m over here thinking this is the only way I could handle pregnancy,” Kaitlin Emily Janevski added.

@kaylanicolesimpson

crazy that a year ago I was 9 months pregnant

People may find it hard to believe that someone could carry a baby to full term without knowing they were pregnant until the day they delivered. However, it’s more common than people think. One Serbian study estimates that one out of every 7,225 pregnancies is unknown to the mother until the moment of delivery.

The scary part is that when people don’t know they’re pregnant they don’t get important prenatal care. The good news is that Kaylani’s baby was “perfectly healthy.”

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – One of our best shows is back

It would be easy to write off Mythic Quest as “that other show Rob McElhenney does.” You wouldn’t be entirely out of line, either, at least not in the broad strokes. He’s been making Always Sunny for almost two decades now, as impossible as that sounds. The show premiered in 2005. It’s about to start its 16th season, extending its record for most seasons of a live-action show and putting some distance between it and the show in second place, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, which might be the funniest possible show for it to have displaced at the top. All of this is notable and fine and good, but again, it gets in the way of the point here.

The point here is that Mythic Quest is a blast. It’s so good. The Apple series is kicking off its third season this weekend and I am as excited about it as I’ve been about any new season of any returning series this year. This gist of it, if you’re not caught up, goes like this: McElhenney plays the egomaniac creative genius behind a wildly popular series of video games called, you guessed it, Mythic Quest. The whole thing is basically your standard workplace sitcom from there. We’ve got goofballs and schemers and romance and jokes and heart and sometimes someone has a sword. You could do worse.

The cast is loaded, too. Charlotte Nicdao plays his constantly flustered number two and brings a pretty great nervous energy to it all. Danny Pudi is in there as the slimy business guy whose Svengali shenanigans eventually get him thrown in jail. Jessie Ennis is running around doing Jessie Ennis things, all bubbling intensity and wildfires raging behind the eyes. We’ve got Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim as testers and David Hornsby — Rickety Cricket from Always Sunny — as the hopeless manager and it’s all just lovely. Here’s the trailer for the new season.

I’ve talked about this show before. Kind of a lot. I’ll do that when I like a show. I still believe that the “Quarantine” special episode they aired smack in the early stages of the pandemic was the best take on the situation any television show put together. I was so amazed by it all that I reached out to a bunch of them to do interviews for a piece on how they all did it. This is notable because I am usually awful at doing interviews and try to avoid them whenever possible, and because when I dialed in to talk to Rob, he saw my Eastern Pennsylvania area code and we wrapped up the interview by shouting “GO BIRDS” at each other. I am very professional.

(Also worth noting: Apple is really killing it with half-hour comedies right now. This show, Ted Lasso, Loot with Maya Rudolph, my beloved murder mystery The Afterparty, and more. A ridiculous hit rate on these. Something to monitor going forward.)

So, yeah. Definitely get in here. Watch this season if you’ve watched the first two. Watch all three of you haven’t. Start this weekend. It really is the highest level execution of a genre that has worked forever, and done with the fun twist, which is kind of all you can ask for out of a nice little binge. It’s basically The Office or Parks and Recreation but about video games and without the crutch — not that those shows used it as a crutch, more that many shows since have — of the mockumentary format to explain the action. I’m excited. Wait until you see Danny Pudi in this new season. And wait until you see the Elizabeth Holmes joke in one of the early episodes. Just a masterclass on a few levels here. I’m so happy it’s back.

ITEM NUMBER TWO – Just an incredible week for the John Wick universe

Two important developments in the John Wick universe this week, which is a really fun thing to get to type out like that. The first is that we have a new trailer for the fourth movie in the franchise. That’s it up there. I wrote 1500 words about it here, because… well, because what’s the point of having this job if you’re not going to drop everything on a Thursday morning to blog about Keanu Reeves getting into sword fights in Paris, you know? I do not take this for granted.

The second thing was this update about the upcoming John Wick spinoff titled Ballerina, which will star Ana de Armas as… well as a ballerina assassin who is also out for revenge.

While the studio couldn’t be reached for comment, it’s understood that Reeves will join an ensemble led by Ana de Armas, which will also include Ian McShane. The latter will reprise his role as The Continental Hotel manager Winston, which he’s played since the original John Wick film, as was announced earlier today.

Ballerina will watch as a young female assassin (De Armas) seeks revenge against the people who killed her family — as Wick has against those who have done him wrong, in three films released between 2014 and 2019.

This is cool. I am ready for this movie as soon as they want to release it. Today is fine. Show me Ana de Armas in a cocktail dress at a formal gala just mowing down a collection of goons who have wronged her and/or her loved ones. Have her and Keanu do it together with a synchronized efficiency that makes it look more like dance than chaos. Give the bad guy a name like Victor St. Aspen and put him in a tuxedo and cast Jeremy Irons to play him.

I hope they keep spinning off more things. Give me a prequel about Ernest, the assassin played by Boban Marjanovic. Give me a whole movie from the point of view of the dogs. Make it a cartoon. Let the dogs sing. I will still go see it in the theater the first day it opens. I promise I am at most barely joking about any of this.

ITEM NUMBER THREE – Ryan Coogler seems like a pretty good dude

Ryan Coogler is out making the rounds to promote Wakanda Forever, the Black Panther sequel he directed that opens this weekend. It’s been weird, mostly because Chadwick Boseman was so good as the lead in the original and he’s just… not here anymore. That sucks a lot. And Coogler has done such a good job on the press tour discussing that loss even though it’s probably painful as hell to discuss every day for weeks. I feel bad for him about it all. Which is one of the reasons I’m going to stop talking about it… now.

Instead, I’m going to talk about this: Ryan Coogler learned how to swim to make this movie. That’s a pretty cool thing, as was his reasoning, which was basically that if he was asking his cast to be in the water for a huge chunk of the movie, then he should be in the water, too. He discussed the whole thing in an interview last week, getting into the racial history or swimming and why a substantial chunk of the Black community feels weird about it, which is also a good thing to open up a discussion about, just to get it out there. Here’s the thrust of it all, though.

When training began, Coogler’s swimming ability peaked at knowing how to “stay alive” — but that was about it. So, as one would imagine, there was a bit of a learning curve. Those who’ve attempted to free dive probably won’t be surprised to read that, for example, Coogler initially struggled to learn how and when to clear his ears. (He now knows you do it on the way down, not up.)

Ultimately, Coogler found learning to navigate those depths and overcome that fear was rewarding. “I remember it was a wild feeling, like I can’t believe I’m this deep in water,” he recalled. “Then I started to work on the breath hold and got comfortable.”

I need you to really think about this for a second. I need you to think about how weird and intimidating and kind of embarrassing it must be to take beginner swimming classes at age 36, especially if you’ve reached a level of success in life where you do not have to look silly or do embarrassing things on a regular basis if you do not want to. A lot of people, at that point in their lives, would just throw up their hands and decide they’ll just never know how to swim. I really dig that he did this. It’s a good reminder that it’s never too late to learn cool new stuff, and that sometimes the only way to do the hard thing is to swallow your pride a little and just, like, do the hard thing. Again, it’s really cool. Ryan Coogler seems like a cool dude.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – James Cameron, please calm down

Hey, speaking of directors who are making water-based movies that they’re out doing press for, let’s check in with James Cameron and his tour to promote the upcoming Avatar sequ-…

Above all, however, The Way Of Water is a family story. This is because, 14 years after falling in love, Jake and Neytiri are now the proud parents of five children. “People say, ‘Oh my God, a family story from Disney? Just what we want…’ This isn’t that kind of family story,” Cameron clarifies. “This is a family story like how The Sopranos is a family story.”

The thing I like about James Cameron is that he’s consistent. Just totally James Cameron all the time.

“Hey Jim, what’s up with your movie about the blue nature dudes who we last saw on the big screen over a decade ago?”

“Thank you for asking. It is kind of like the greatest television show of all time.“

Good for him. What else you got, buddy?

“I don’t want anybody whining about length when they sit and binge-watch [television] for eight hours,” Cameron said. “I can almost write this part of the review. ‘The agonizingly long three-hour movie…’ It’s like, give me a fucking break. I’ve watched my kids sit and do five one-hour episodes in a row. Here’s the big social paradigm shift that has to happen: it’s okay to get up and go pee.”

I love it. I remain on the record as saying movies should be two hours long and every minute over that should cost you a $1 million donation to charity, but fine. Good. Rage about this all you want, James Cameron. I like to picture him answering questions about the length and family aspects of this movie from cranky critics and executives and then going home and watching his kids crank straight through six episodes of The Sopranos in one sitting and then heaving his cell phone into the fireplace in a blind rage.

I dare someone to ask him if he ever considered making this movie as a 10-episode television show for a streaming service. Please. I need this.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – A simple suggestion…

So what we have here is the trailer for Lindsay Lohan’s new Netflix holiday movie, Falling for Christmas. It is an extremely Hallmark operation, which I say with nothing but respect for that particular craft. Guess if she plays an heiress who bonks her head and gets amnesia. Guess if they tell you all of that in the official description. Well: “A young, newly engaged heiress has a skiing accident in the days before Christmas. After she is diagnosed with amnesia, she finds herself in the care of the handsome cabin owner and his daughter.”

It’s beautiful. Good for Lindsay Lohan. I’m glad she’s out here doing it. I’m glad she’s still making movies and showing up on screens big and small.

But.

I do have a request.

At some point, maybe if things slow down again or even if they heat up and make her a bankable commodity again, I would really like Lindsay Lohan to start narrating audiobooks. I think she’d be great at it. She’s had that smoky voice ever since she was a teenager and she’s growing into it now and I think she would be perfect at narrating like an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery. I can’t believe she hasn’t done it already. Think about it. I know I’m right about this.

Listen to me.

LISTEN TO ME.

It’s a good idea.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Drew:

Had an idea that was so stupid that I knew I had to send it straight to you. We take the story about the guy who threw eggs and King Charles and we give it to the team that made American Vandal. It’s a full season-long look at it, maybe fictionalized a little for comedy, shot mockumentary style with interviews with everyone from the king to the grocer who sold him the eggs. English Vandal, coming to Netflix next spring.

Yes.

YES.

This is a good email, starting with the first sentence. I am truly honored to be the person people send their stupidest ideas to. It makes me feel like I’m doing something right. Anyway, three additional notes here:

• I want an entire episode about him trying to transport three loose eggs in his pocket while riding on a crowded double-decker bus through a bumpy part of town
• I want one of the people interviewed in this fake show to be one of the Buckingham Palace guards who stands there silent and motionless in front of the gates all day and whenever they cut to him I want him to remain silent and motionless on camera until they cut away
• I love the real update to this story that this guy is now legally required to carry the receipt with him whenever he has eggs on him in public

God, I’m so excited now for a show that will never happen. A real gift and curse situation over here.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To El Paso!

The rumors had been circulating through the hallways of El Paso High School for days: Students had seen test papers strewn across busy Mesa Street on Oct. 28, and the pencil-filled Scantron bubbles were a dead giveaway — these were SAT tests, just like the ones that 315 students had taken at the school in Texas the day before.

We are getting to the meat of this in a second but I want to pause here to state for the record that “Scantron Fiasco” would be an incredible name for a villain in like a Gerard Butler movie.

Moving on.

Students were called to a meeting during last period on Wednesday and told the news: the SAT tests they had taken on Oct. 27 would not be scored, because they had flown off a UPS truck that was transporting them. Instead of using their results to finalize their college applications, the students would instead have to take the often-harrowing test again.

This is maybe the funniest possible reason for a slew of SATs to get compromised, especially in 2022. Not hackers, not a computer glitch, not a power surge. Nope. They just flew off the truck and into the street. It’s an excuse so bad I don’t think any teacher in America would accept it as the reason a project is late. Although now I want someone to try. Print out this article and be like “See? It happens?!” Report back and let me know how it went.

UPS is still conducting an investigation, but was quick to own up to its error. “We have apologized to the school and extend our apologies to the students,” UPS said in a statement. “The driver’s actions in this case are not representative of UPS protocols and methods, and we have addressed this with him. Safely and reliably meeting our service commitments is UPS’s first priority.”

I have this image in my head as clear as day…

The driver is like some burnout dude with long hair and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he’s blasting Steely Dan in the cabin up front and is completely oblivious to dozens of papers flying out the back of his open van and when people try to pull up beside him to wave and alert him to the trail of loose leaf chaos he’s leaving in his wake he just smiles and waves back because he thinks they’re being friendly.

Big late-90s Jim Breuer energy here.

Ezra Ponzio, a senior, said that when students first heard the rumors, they all hoped that it wasn’t their tests on the road. According to the El Paso ISD, all but 55 of the 315 tests were recovered. Mr. Ponzio said even though most tests were found, they were still considered compromised, so everyone would have to take the test again.

“They were like, ‘Hey, this is not our fault whatsoever. It’s on the UPS, but you still have to retake it,’” Mr. Ponzio said. “So that was annoying.”

I’m sorry, Ezra. I’m sorry this happened. I hope everything goes well the second time around. But look at the bright side: this will be an incredible story to tell at your freshman orientation the first week of college. Real A+ icebreaker.