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Episode three of Pod Yourself The Wire is now available early at Patreon.com/frotcast. Episode two is now available for free.

This week on Pod Yourself The Wire , D’angelo and the boys are playing chess, but Matt, Vince and their guest are playing 3D checkers (3D=3 dads). Comedian and host of the Out For Smokes Podcast, Mike Recine stops by to talk about The Wire season One episode Three, “The Buys.”

“The Buys” marks the first appearance of late great Michael K. Williams’s iconic stick-up man character, Omar Little. Omar’s whistling, robbing, smoking, and generally looking cool as hell while McNulty continues to be everyone’s favorite irish f*ckboy who would literally rather get wrapped up in a months-long wiretap investigation than go to therapy. He also has sex. The scene is long, breathy, and hotter than a fresh order of Baltimore’s favorite lunch, lake trout.

Mismatched socks make Matt horny, but nothing makes him as horny as a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.

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-Description by Brent Flyberg

Gucci Mane and Keyshia Ka’Oir’s family is growing by one. In a post shared to their one-year-old son Ice‘s Instagram page, which is managed by Gucci and Ka’Oir, the two couple revealed the news this past Friday.

“I’m gonna be a big brother,” read Ice’s post. In the post is a video clip of Ice pushing a Little Tikes car, with Gucci’s song “Mrs. Davis” playing in the background, notably, the lyrics, “Changed your name to Mrs. Davis, and our bond is super sacred / Let’s have another baby / Ice needs somebody to play with.” Also in the post is an image of a sonogram.

In an interview with Billboard last year, Gucci opened up about fatherhood, revealing that he enjoys the day-to-day challenges that come with being a parent.

“I never knew how much attention you got to pay to a baby,” said Gucci. “It’s not easy. It’s a great thing and I love it, but it’s definitely challenging to be a parent.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Gucci said, “Having a baby definitely made me less critical of my parents. Now I see that we’re all humans and do the best we can.”

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It was supposed to be over quickly. When Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, everyone expected the neighboring nation to fold within days. Instead Ukraine fought back. Instead one nation after another turned on Russia. Instead Russia faced untold sanctions and fleeing businesses. Throughout it all, state TV — and a handful of Americans — have tried to spin it as a win. But now, amid ongoing defeats, even some of Vladimir Putin’s biggest cheerleaders are turning on him.

As per The New York Times, bloggers who’ve stuck by Putin’s side over the last six months-plus have finally been complaining. When the Russian president threw a big to-do for the 875th anniversary of Moscow — while the nation’s soldiers were hastily retreated from parts of northeastern Ukraine they once controlled — some were appalled by the dissonance.

“You’re throwing a billion-ruble party,” one pro-Putin blogger wrote. “What is wrong with you? Not at the time of such a horrible failure.”

While Russian State TV has simply been merely depressed by the setbacks, they stop short of criticism. Not so on Telegram, where content can’t be policed and where attacks on Putin and military leaders have reportedly been growing. For one thing, bloggers — some of whom are embedded with the troops — been reporting on the difficulties Russian soldiers face, from poor leadership to supply shortages. It was bloggers who first reported that Ukraine may push back against Russian forces in the northeast, which they then did.

“It’s time to punish the commanders who allowed these kinds of things,” another blogger wrote after Russian forces were driven out of the northeast. Another called the retreat a “catastrophe.” One, Yuri Podolyaka, told his 2.3 million Telegram followers that Russians may “cease to trust the Ministry of Defense and soon the government as a whole.”

Mind you, this does not mean that the tide is turning against the war amongst Russians. As Dmitri Kuznets, an analyst who reports for the Russian-language news outlet Meduza, explains, “I think the biggest group among these people believes that it is necessary to fight harder and carry out a mobilization.” In other words, they don’t want Russia to give up the fight.

(Via NYT)

In The Fabelmans, we basically spend two and a half hours watching Steven Spielberg going through self-therapy. After its premiere Saturday night here at the Toronto International Film Festival, Spielberg himself alluded to the audience that this, indeed, served as therapy. At this point, if Steven Spielberg wants to make a movie an explore how he became the person he did through the lens of his parents’ (played by Paul Dano and Michelle Williams as Burt and Mitzi Fabelman) fraught relationship, he’s certainly earned that right. It’s an interesting scenario here because, on its surface, a young man watching his parents slowly break up over a few years while, at the same time, discovering what he truly loves (in this case, if you didn’t know, “making movies”) isn’t all that unique of a concept. But the fact we know Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle, who is terrific and somehow really does encompass the spirit of Steven Spielberg) is a stand-in for the most successful director of the last 47 years and literally shaped the definition of popular culture, yes, this seems like a topic worth exploring.

This is a strange thing to say, but I thought about Weird: The Al Yankovic Story a few times while watching The Fabelmans and these movies are direct polar opposites of each other. (Both Steven Spielberg and Weird Al would probably be happy to hear that.) Whereas Weird is Weird Al’s fictional account of his origins that purposefully leans into the trope of, “Here’s how I came up with the idea for ‘My Bologna,’” for each of his songs, there’s none of that in The Fabelmans. There’s no scene of Sammy Fabelman at the beach seeing a shark and saying, “Boy, that thing sure has some jaws, [wink wink].” (Though, now that I think about it, maybe I would also like to see Weird Al take a crack at a Steven Spielberg origin story, too.) Actually, the closest this comes to happening is a funny “wink wink” moment to The Fabelmans becoming a movie someday. (Spoiler, it does become a movie someday.)

Young Sammy Fabelman lives with his parents and two younger sisters in New Jersey. Sammy is taken to to his first movie, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth.* The movie sticks with him, especially the climatic train crash, to the point he can no longer sleep at night. His father buys him a train set in an effort to show him how they work. Worried he is going to break the nice, new train set from crashing the cars into each other so often, Sammy’s mother suggests he film the train accident, so that he can watch it as many times as he wants without breaking the train set. So Sammy picks up a camera and goes to work. (In the future, Sammy will direct Minority Report.)

*I recently watched The Greatest Show on Earth when I was watching all the Best Picture winners before this year’s Academy Awards. It’s not a very good movie and somehow won Best Picture over High Noon. But, damn, that train crash is really something else. And I can totally see how a scene like that would affect a kid for weeks. I saw The Empire Strikes Back around that same age and I’m pretty sure it messed me up for life.

Also hanging around a lot is Sammy’s “Uncle Benny” (Seth Rogen), who is not actually Sammy’s uncle (this is usually a bad sign) who seems to be really great friends with Sammy’s mom, Mitzi. When Sammy accidentally films Mitzi and Benny in an intimate moment years later, it sets off a series of cascading events that tears apart the fabric of every single one of Sammy’s family relationships. But he still loves making his movies, a “hobby” that Sammy’s dad, Burt, thinks is sort of a waste of time and wishes Sammy would concentrate more on algebra. “Uncle Benny” even, strangely enough, winds up moving to Arizona with the rest of the family after Burt gets a better job offer.

So, Michelle Williams will get a lot of attention and, yes, very well might win the Oscar for Supporting Actress. But I want to talk about Paul Dano here. This is a super interesting performance. From the above description, you might think Dano’s performance hinges on a lot of yelling about “that damn camera,” or whatever. But Dano really does present Burt as one of the nicest people to ever walk this Earth. Constantly internalizing his son’s waning attention and his marriage falling apart at the hands of who he thought was his best friend, while all the time remaining a pleasant human being. This seems extremely difficult to pull off. We see the pain in Dano’s face, but he rarely tells us about that pain or emotes that pain. He’s a good father who is just trying to be realistic that his son isn’t going to grow up one day and direct Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (Even though Sammy would grow up to direct Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.)

Also of note is Judd Hirsch who shows up for a brief moment as Sammie’s great uncle Boris, who is actually a relative and has worked in Hollywood and convinces Sammy to chase his dreams in maybe the most aggressive way possible. And, well, Boris’s advice? It paid off because Sammy will one day grow up to direct Munich.

My favorite part of The Fabelmans is when the family moves to northern California. Sammy is constantly hounded by high school bullies and also starts dating an extremely Christian girl who wants him to accept Jesus into his soul. It’s here that Sammy uses his filmmaking skills to seek revenge on his bullies. It’s also here that Steven Spielberg uses his filmmaking skills to finally exact revenge on his bullies 58 years later. I truly believe part of the reason why this movie exists is for revenge. There are a couple people out there who are going to feel pretty lousy about themselves after seeing a movie in which the most famous filmmaker of a generation publicly calls them out. This is a sweet movie that has a mean undercurrent and I admire that about it. Revenge against bullies is a good thing.

After the premiere, Steven Spielberg assured the crowd this was not his last movie and any reports of such were false. I can see why people might think that though, on the surface. He turned down another Indiana Jones movie to make this and it does feel like one last look back. There’s even nods in The Fabelmans to why Spielberg shoots movies at the angles he does and who gave him that advice in the first place. But after you see The Fabelmans you realize this man will never stop making movies. It truly his his life. And, here, he is inviting us in to see how and why that all happened. (Well, “inviting” … with the purchase of a one ticket, please.)

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Week 1 of the NFL season started on Thursday with the Buffalo Bills thumping the Los Angeles Rams, and on Saturday night, the Rams got some company in being knocked out in the early season.

Longtime NFL running backs Adrian Peterson and Le’Veon Bell faced off at the Social Gloves boxing event on Saturday night and, while it was sparsely attended, it did feature quite the finish for those who did venture out to watch. The two former All-Pros traded blows with Peterson ending up on the losing end, as he got knocked out cold by Bell in the fifth and final round with a vicious straight right hand that bent Peterson backwards.

You can see on the slow motion replay from behind Bell that Peterson goes out on his feet almost as soon as the punch lands, falling straight back with glossy eyes.

Hopefully Peterson is alright, as he surely took enough damage as an NFL running back, but while it seems the celebrity boxing bubble has burst a bit (or at least, interest has declined considerably) those that tuned in did get some fireworks in the final round. Bell very well may continue pursuing boxing, but I hope Peterson hangs up the gloves after this one.

On Hillary and Chelsea Clinton’s new docuseries, Gutsy, the mother-daughter duo sits down with women artists, activists, and leaders inspiring change. In the series’ second episode, the two sit down with Megan Thee Stallion, as they each paint a portrait while discussing the criticism and misogyny they’ve faced in their careers.

“I kind of came to awareness of you with Cardi B, ‘WAP,‘” said Hillary, referring to the collaboration the pair dropped two years ago.

“I’ve always wanted to do a song with Cardi,” Megan said. “As soon as she sent it to me, I think I sent [my verses] back to her the next day.”

“It’s great to see women be so fierce,” said Chelsea.

Elsewhere in the interview, Chelsea asked Megan, “Were you surprised by the conservative backlash to you?”

Megan responded, “I was surprised that in this day in time, when you have so many options of so many things to look at and listen to, that the first thing you want to critique and talk about is something that you don’t like.”

Hillary then refers to Megan’s video for “Thot Sh*t,” in which an elected official is seen watching one of Megan’s music videos, and commenting on the video calling Megan and her dancers, “stupid regressive whores.” This portion of the video is likely in response to commentary from political commentators like Ben Shapiro, who called the song “really really really vulgar.”

“They dissect my lyrics, they dissect my life,” Megan said. “Well, let me give y’all something y’all might actually want to see. So I’m like, ‘Boom, here you go.’ I think they secretly like it.”

“I do too,” Chelsea said.

“I feel like they’re the majority of the views,” Megan said.

All episodes of Gutsy are now available for streaming on Apple TV+

Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

There was a ton of news out of this weekend’s D23 expo. So much news. Sequels, trailers. At one point Harrison Ford got atypically misty about retiring Indiana Jones. Speaking of which, also in attendance that weekend was Ke Huy Quan, best known for playing Short Round, Indy’s child associate in Temple of Doom. And wouldn’t you know the two shared a little reunion that all but broke the Information Superhighway.

Quan has been back in the news, as they say, for his endearing turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once, where he played the earnest, easily agitated, slightly sadsack husband of Michelle Yeoh’s multiverse-hopping everywoman. It was his first plum role in ages, having mostly abandoned acting in the ‘90s to become a stunt choreographer. Before then, he was in two big ‘80s classics: The Goonies and Temple of Doom, where he and Ford’s Indy escaped mobsters in China, survived an out-of-control plane over the Himalayas, and battled a religious cult in northern India.

Now, Quan has landed a role in the second season of Loki, which brought him to D23. Ford, meanwhile, was presenting Indiana Jones 5, where he movingly reminded the crowd that he was hanging up his whip and retiring from whatever university Indy employs him as a dreamy professor. “This is it,” Ford told the crowd. “I will not fall down for you again.”

House of the Dragon’s latest episode proves that even royals can be messy b*tches.

“King of the Narrow Sea” ramps up the drama in King’s Landing, beginning with the return of the prodigal son (Daemon Targaryen, naturally) and ending with disinheritance, a bromance breakup, a secret tryst, and an arranged marriage. In other words, this episode of HoTD is cosplaying as a later-season installment of Gossip Girl and we are loving it!

Strap in, the tea is piping hot – unless you’re a Targaryen. Then, we guess, the temperature really doesn’t matter to you.

Pretenders

Otto Hightower

Well, well, well. How the turn tables … turn. Otto Hightower’s fall from the king’s grace comes swiftly this week, propelled by his glaringly obvious ambition to put his grandson on the Iron Throne. Technically, Otto did the job he was hired for. His spies in King’s Landing reported Rhaenyra’s discretion and he warned the king before the rest of the small council – and all of King’s Landing – could pass their own judgment. But Otto failed to remember one vital piece of information – the messenger is always killed, especially when he’s trying to gossip about a girl’s sex life with her own father. Not cool, my dude.

Alicent Hightower

Speaking of weird father-daughter relationships, Alicent really went through it this episode. It turns out, wearing a golden crown doesn’t really make the role of “royal brood mare” any more bearable, and, despite patching things up with her bestie, Alicent seems really unhappy in her current situation. She’s surrounded by crying babies and decaying husbands and fathers who overlook her worth in favor of her son’s. She’s been reduced to a royal bather and sex doll and honestly, it’s just gross. If she wasn’t such a try-hard, we’d feel sorry for her. As it is, her father’s recent ousting can’t mean anything good for her own relationship with the king.

Rhaenyra Targaryen

Like a typical teenager, Rhaenyra spent this week’s episode dating around, drinking underage, and partying a bit too hard. After being disappointed with the medieval speed dating event her father arranged for her, Rhaenyra sulked her way through Daemon’s welcome home party before confiding in Alicent about her worry over getting married. Instead of talking to her therapist about this deep-seated trauma response, she sneaks out of the castle and goes galavanting around King’s Landing with her mischievous uncle. Their whole escape after dark outing was giving major “a whole new world” vibes until Daemon decided to take his intoxicated niece to a damn pleasure house, reveal her identity to all the miscreants there, then try to bang her in a crowded room filled with naked strangers. An Aladdin remake this most certainly was not. Daemon abandoned her before things could go too far but Rhaenyra decided to do her own bit of seducing when she got home on poor Sir Cristin Cole. On the one hand … go girl? On the other, Rhaenyra is clearly in a position of power and Sir Cole obviously struggled with how to say no. What seems like a harmless fling for her could mean his death, or, at the least, the end of his knightly career. She ends the episode betrothed (against her will, of course) but relatively unscathed thanks to the plot armor of white privilege.

Contenders

Daemon Targaryen

Listen up ones, a ten is speaking. Daemon Targaryen is firmly in his Hot Girl Summer era. He’s got a new haircut, a new crown, and a devious new plan. First, he returns to King’s Landing and ingratiates himself to his estranged brother by revealing he’s won control of the Step Stones and, despite the people there wanting to name him king, Westeros’ true ruler is already seated on the Iron Throne. Of course, any goodwill Daemon earns is quickly squandered when he f*cks with the reputation of his niece, but even that felt like a calculated move. Daemon’s intentions towards Rhaenyra are purely selfish. He sees her as a way to more power and uses her insecurities – her loneliness, her worries about childbirth and marriage – against her, grooming her, abandoning her, and then falsely claiming he took her virtue. Daemon hopes his confession will lead to his brother giving him Rhaenyra’s hand in marriage but Viserys surprises him (and all of us) by instead disinheriting Daemon and trying (in his own way) to protect his daughter by marrying her off quickly to the realm’s most powerful House. Still, Daemon is clearly more cunning than we first thought so best keep an eye on this drama queen.

Viserys Targaryen

Poor Viserys. He begins this episode by reuniting with his beloved brother, bro-ing out in front of his wife and daughter, enjoying a hot bath, and getting laid. He ends it by banishing his sibling, breaking up with his Hand, suspecting his wife of deceiving him in his time of grief, and having to discipline his wayward daughter by marrying her off to a rival House that’s been causing him all kinds of headaches. The crown is heavy and Viserys is buckling under its weight. But he does manage to make some surprisingly calculated choices this episode that should ensure the safety of his bloodline for a little bit longer. That’s more than we expected from this wet blanket tbh.

Corlys Velaryon

The Sea Snake is proving to be just as wily and ambitious as his partner-in-crime, Daemon Targaryen. This week, his negotiations with the Free Cities, and his threat to marry his daughter off to a House of Bravos, had the small council shaking in its gold-threaded little house slippers. Now normally, such aggressive chess moves would end with the King declaring war, or at least, cutting Corlys off from the rest of the Realm’s resources but Corlys lucked out this episode when Rhaenyra decided to Thot her way through the underbelly of King’s Landing. And really, isn’t that all one needs to become king? A bit of planning and a lot of luck?

Aegon Targaryen

Aegon is still in diapers so he doesn’t do any of his own scheming this episode but, when you’ve got Otto Hightower on your team, you really don’t need to. In fact, Aegon could very likely sit back for the next decade and let his older sister and trouble-making uncle ruin their own inheritance plans – they’re doing a bang-up job so far – and just ascend the throne once he survives puberty. It’d be a lot less embarrassing for the poor kid.

Wound Watch

*Alexa, play Sheryl Crow’s “The First Cut Is The Deepest”

Once again, Viserys avoided injury by simply avoiding sitting on his pointy-ended throne but his missing fingers and discolored forearm were on full display. And, was it just us, or did the camera really focus on his infected back wound during that torturously-long sex scene?

Steven Spielberg has always worn his heart on his sleeve, but he’s never made a movie about himself. With The Fabelmans, he still hasn’t. But it’s as close as he’s going to get. His latest is the story of a young boy growing up in post-WWII Arizona, falling in love with movies, and dealing with family drama, as the real Spielberg did at that age. And the first trailer promises to rip your heart out,

The Fabelmans, which made its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, tells of Sammy Fabelman, played first by Mateo Zoryna as a kid, then by Gabriel LaBelle as a teenager. Michelle Williams plays his pianist mother; Paul Dano his computer engineer dad. If you know about Spielberg’s life — or have seen the errant fathers in so many of his movies — you know the story won’t be only heartwarming.

You can also see plenty of footage of a doe-eyed, enraptured young Spielberg stand-in gawking slackjawed at a big movie theater screen, even if one of the films is the much-hated Best Picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth. There’s images of Sammy making his first amateur movies, and though there’s no David Lynch (playing legendary filmmaker John Ford), you get glimpses of Seth Rogen, playing his beloved surrogate uncle, and the mighty Judd Hirsch, as an actual uncle.

The Fabelmans hits theaters on November 11. You can watch the trailer above.

Britney Spears continues to open up about her the estrangement between herself and her children. Last night, she took to Instagram, posting a series of five audio recordings. In the recordings, she revealed how she’s felt not having seen her kids in six months.

Spears’ ex-husband Kevin Federline and their children, Jayden and Preston, have openly expressed concern for Spears, and have decided to distance themselves from her for the foreseeable future.

“I used to have my kids at one point, way more than Kevin,” she said in the recordings. “People don’t remember that part because they always focus on the negative. But from when they were six to nine years old, I had them 70% of the time. Since they’ve been gone, I’ve honestly felt like a huge part of me has died. Like literally, I have no purpose anymore. They were my joy. They were my everything. I looked forward to seeing them. That was what I lived for. And then all of a sudden, they were gone. And I was like, ‘Did my heart just stop beating?’”

She continued, saying, “I don’t understand how it’s so easy for them just to cut me off like that. I don’t understand it.”

Last week, Spears shared a now-deleted recording, revealing her hurt towards her children’s choice to distance themselves from her, following an interview Jayden did with 60 Minutes Australia.

“Jayden,” she said the in the recording, “as you undermine my behavior just like my whole family always has with, ‘Hope she gets better, I will pray for her.’ […] Pray for what? I keep working so I can pay off [my mother Lynne Spears’] legal fees and her house. Do you guys want me to get better so I can continue to give your dad $40,000 a month? Or is the reasoning behind you guys deciding to be hateful is because it’s actually over in two years and you don’t get anything?”