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“Was I just too cynical for Bill Nye?” The thought ran through my head after wrapping a lengthy conversation with the beloved TV science educator who radiates can-do and faith in the human race to get out of its own way, a view I do not share and could not fake even if I wanted to. But what Nye is selling — specifically with his latest show, The End Is Nye (which just dropped on Peacock), is more than faith.

“Hope is not a plan,” he tells me when I offer a semi-shruggy answer to a question about avoiding calamity from natural disasters. For Nye, the plan is the plan. Real, science-based approaches to confronting really scary shit, that’s the solution put forth in the show, which introduces — through movie-quality special effects — the many frightening ways the world could end. Now, can we listen to him and others who want to flash the light of science in the dark tunnel of our existence? That’s an open question that we aren’t going to get to the bottom of here (we sort more important things here, like whether his signature bow-tie is a clip-on), but I can admit (as I did in the following interview), that listening to Nye talk does give me more faith in the possibility of solutions.

I didn’t need something else to freak out about and this end-of-the-world stuff definitely makes me nervous. Do you just like to freak people out?

So, there’s a surprising phenomenon that we have embraced. And by we, I mean the producers, Seth MacFarlane, Brannon Braga, the writers, and me. That is, when things are good, people watch romantic comedies. When things are anxiety-producing, we watch anxiety-producing movies and television. It is a surprising result. In a pandemic, people rent Contagion. And so what we have done here in the anxiety-producing world of today is produce six one-hour disaster movies. But the twist, the new thing, is this dual structure where in the second half of the show, we show everything would be great if we just embrace science. We can prepare for these problems and be ready for them and be ready to address them.

I’ve got to tell you, in the pandemic, I watched Cheers all the way through nine times. I didn’t watch Contagion, so I kind of break the theory a little bit.

No wonder you’re so anxious.

Exactly. I should have watched more apocalyptic-themed stuff.

Well, it’s not too late. There’s still plenty of anxiety out there.

And plenty of pandemic out there.

So we didn’t do a pandemic episode because it’s still going on.

We’re all still trying to figure out exactly what the second or positive half of that story is.

In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed 50 million people or whatever the numbers are — an enormous number of people. And this pandemic hasn’t killed nearly as many because we did have a vaccine. In 1918, it took about five years for things to go back to normal, or normal-ish. And so what are we into it? Three years? Two and a half years. Stay tuned.

Nobody can think with that level of perspective though.

I just did! And look, I’m fine.

Well, yeah. But you’re The Science Guy, we’re a bunch of schmucks, so it’s harder for us.

I’m a co-schmuck when it comes to this! We’ll get through it.

Do you think it’s harder for people to grasp the severity of apocalyptic scenarios because we’ve seen it so many times in so many ways on the big screen with these breathtaking, super realistic, special effects (going back more than 20 years)? The Day After Tomorrow shows global warming’s effects nearly instantly, Armageddon, and on and on and on. Independence Day.

Well, when I watch, in your example of Independence Day, I’m not that worried about aliens coming by with the mothership and they start blowing up (landmarks). So, that’s not really my thing. Our six disasters are fact-based and science-based. And so that does two things. First of all, it’s really anxiety-producing. And the other thing is by using real science, real experts, and consultants, the story is much easier to write. There are a lot fewer leaps of faith for the viewer because they’re logical and real.

But you’re co-opting, to some degree, some of the same kinds of special effects and the same kind of imagery.

We had Jeff Oaken, man. The guy who wrote the book or edited the visual effects handbook, he’s the visual effects supervisor. So we have digital effects. It’s the 21st century. You’re going to do a disaster movie, you’re going to need your digital effects. But what’s different, I claim, is this optimistic thing in the second half of the show.

How do you stay optimistic with things like that? Not just where we are with the pandemic or where we are with global warming and that situation, and not just the news and politicians (on both sides of the aisle) that don’t take it seriously, but also the general anti-science thing that is not just political. It’s in the culture, it’s in our bones now, schools where books are getting banned and things of that nature. How do you stay hopeful in a climate like that?

I think it is not sustainable to have a society where lawmakers think, for example, that the earth might be flat. I don’t think you can keep going, the economy won’t sustain and people won’t vote for those people anymore. So I am very optimistic about the future because young people are going to rise up and take over, the science deniers are going to age out and disappear. And then young people who are very concerned about the future, very concerned about the environment and our relationship with it, are going to be running the show and they’re going to make changes. It’s going to be exciting.

Has your mission statement changed from when you started to when you were more education based to a point where you feel like you need to kind of be a little bit more aggressive in trying to help make that reality true?

Let’s distinguish for a moment between the objective of the show and the mission statement. Let me think about this for a moment. The objective is the same. For the last 30 years, the objective is to change the world. But the mission of the Science Guy show, let’s say, was to get young people excited about science. So in the future, we’d have more scientists and engineers to address the world’s problems and make the world better for everybody. The mission of this show is to raise awareness of our relationship to the universe so that we do something about features of the universe that could kill us all. So the objective is the same, change the world. The mission’s a little different.

Do you ever worry about alienating anybody?

Well, I’ve alienated a lot of people.

Well, yeah.

Let’s put it another way. They’ve alienated themselves. I feel we can stay the course, like in the example of The End Is Nye show, I think there’s something there for everybody. And as Seth MacFarlane says, conservative media are so successful, they have so many viewers because they scare people. So we’re scaring some people and I hope the scared people will come in and enjoy the show.

I’ve seen the hurricane episode. What are the other ones that you guys cover?

So can you think of a classic world-ending disaster? You alluded to a couple of movies.

Well, aliens, I guess.

Aliens isn’t really an issue for us, but an asteroid impact, instead of an asteroid, we have a comet. The nucleus of a comet, which is the same thing, just more fun, in a way. And then we have a series of mistakes that leads to the dust bowl happening again — drought conditions and poor farming practices that lead to a collapse of our agricultural system. Speaking of, part of the reason we’re all able to eat food here in North America is the soils in the Midwest, in the Heartland were put there by a volcano, what nowadays people call a super volcano and what is now under what is now Yellowstone National Park. Well, what if that thing blew up again? And people love to discuss that possibility. What would you do? What exactly would you do about it?

I would die.

What would you do about an incoming comet? What would you do about dust bowl conditions? What would you do about the Pacific tectonic plate moving in a large way the way it did in 1964, except now we have billions of people living around that area instead of a few million?

Again, in all these cases, I would die. I just know that. I’ve accepted that. Others might survive. Why are we so obsessed with endings and cataclysms?

With eschatology, the Bible has a whole end of the world thing, many, many religions have an end of the world thing. And a lot of speculation’s been done about that. And people think people who study this, eschatologists, accept that for millennia, nature has had its way with us. If you lived in a valley and there was a flood and you lost everything, that was just how it went. If you were a First Nations person in North America and guys came from Europe with smallpox and killed everybody, there was nothing you could do about it, or very little you could do about it. If you lived on a sea coast for generations and there was a tsunami that killed everyone, there was hardly anything you could do about it.

But now we have an understanding of nature. We know where these problems come from and how they could emerge. And so we can do something about it. After blue-green algae, we are the only species that are able to affect the ecosystems on an entire planet. That’s us, man. We are in charge now. Humans probably didn’t want to be, but we’re in charge. So let’s act responsibly and change the world.

On a wholesale level, yes, we have a better understanding of these things, but at an individual level, I mean, we’re still at the whim of nature. I mean, is that part of the thing also, that we’re just so self-important that we kind of are shocked when things like floods happen and take us out? Again, it’s nature. To a certain degree, there’s no stopping it.

Well, it depends on what it is. In the case of a comet, that is a preventable natural disaster. With a space program, with diligence, you can prevent a comet from hitting the earth. You really could. Maybe we’ll get a chance someday to do that. In fact, the DART mission is coming up, dual asteroid redirection test, where we’re trying to see if we can steer a spacecraft at like 40 kilometers a second into another rock. We’ll see. And then in the case of volcanoes, there are steps you can take. One of them might be, to get out of the way.

Have you ever been to Mount Vesuvius, near Naples in Italy?

Mountains are not my thing.

It’s rich farmland. And that’s why we have spaghetti. Everything comes ripe at the same time because the wheat and the tomatoes and these huge lemons, everything happens all at once, olives. But if you live on the flanks of a volcano, there’s potential for trouble. So make it so you can get out of the way if it goes off again, in that example.

And then the other one that I really worry about is this coronal mass ejection, the CME, where the sun has this magnetic field churning around, the corona part of the outer layer of the sun shoots off toward us, a piece of it. These big blasts of charged particles, moving through space, create a magnetic field that interacts with Earth’s magnetic field and turns off all the lights everywhere worldwide. Do you run in a circle screaming? No, we protect our electrical infrastructure so that we’re ready for that. You don’t believe me, ask anybody from Texas a year and a half ago where they had this independent grid. We’re not going to get taken down by adjacent states, but then their grid wasn’t robust enough when it kind of got cold. So, that’s a solvable problem. Let’s address this problem. Come on, people.

You’re making me feel more confident about the possibility of solutions. I’m a little less confident in the possibility of humans, but in the solutions and the science, I’m feeling more confident.

Good. Just keep in mind, humans are almost certainly extinction-proof at this point. Not four billion years hence when the sun turns into a red giant or whatever, but right now it’s really hard to kill off all the humans. The question is, how many humans are going to go into the future with a high quality of life? For me, I want as many as possible.

I honestly have to ask, the bow tie, is it ever a clip-on? Do you ever just take a day off?

I’m sorry is it a clip-on? Can you imagine what my world would be like if I wore a clip-on tie? Talk about losing respect. [Bill Nye proceeds to undo his bow tie] I did when I was on Dancing with the Stars. That was an attach-on. But yeah, it’s a real bow tie. Come on. I mean, I’d lose respect, wouldn’t I?

Do people pull at the tie?

People seldom pull at the tie, but once in a while, you’ll get like a TV producer or a nice stylist will come and straighten the tie. That’s not bad. That’s not bad, but I don’t have a mirror, I’m just working over here. [Bill Nye masterfully re-ties his 100% not a clip-on bow tie without looking] There we go.

‘The End Is Nye’ is now available to stream on Peacock

It’s rare, but there are times when a movie feels “special” from the very first frames. Funny Pages is one of those movies, apparent almost immediately that it depicts a different place, with different people, a different way than anything we’ve seen before. For people like me who watch a lot of movies, that feeling is invigorating; one of those periodic, necessary reminders that movies are capable of being surprising. Of being, and please forgive me for putting it this way, art.

Funny Pages is the directorial debut of Owen Kline, a woolly tale of a young aspiring cartoonist who, upon the loss of his mentor, moves from his comfortable upper middle class home in Princeton, New Jersey to the mean streets of Trenton in order to pursue his imagined dream of romantic squalor. Funny Pages opens with a series of drawings by its protagonist Robert (played by Daniel Zolghadri) — actually the vulgar, sublime work of cartoonist Johnny Ryan — and from then on, it’s impossible not to imagine every person in Funny Pages as their own caricature. It helps that Funny Pages‘ actors, almost to a person, look like R. Crumb drawings come to life. Meanwhile, Sean Price Williams’ grainy, grungy, Super 16mm cinematography all but gives them visible stink lines.

At times, Funny Pages feels like a dispatch from outer space. Yet it’s clearly just a canny caricature of a world that exists here on Earth. Specifically, in the video and comic book shops of the tri-state area. Produced by the Safdie Brothers (Good Time, Uncut Gems), who Kline met when he was a teenager crewing on their pre-fame short films, Kline was, just like his protagonist Robert, once an aspiring cartoonist. He also worked at a video store, which is where he met Miles Emanuel (“Miles” in Funny Pages) when Emanuel was an 11-year-old renting an Ingmar Bergman film with his babysitter. Likewise, Andy Milonakis is in the film because he’s one of Kline’s good friends.

Which is to say that Funny Pages is, like so many great things, seemingly the result of a collision between an astute artistic eye and serendipity. Just like with his movie, I had no idea what to expect from Kline himself — whose first notable IMDB credit is for playing Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney’s son in Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and The Whale. In the flesh (or whatever the Zoom screen version of that is), Kline ended up seeming a lot like a de-caricaturized version of a Funny Pages character — shaggy, bespectacled, somehow “precocious” seeming even as a grown adult, and a virtual spigot of eclectic references.

I’m not sure what was harder, keeping Kline on track or keeping myself. Funny Pages just seemed to offer so much to talk about, from the conceptual — how do you pitch a movie so inherently tactile — to the logistical — what happened behind the scenes when you were shooting Daniel Zolghadri act an entire pivotal sequence with a massive wad of food in his mouth? In the end, I felt like I barely scratched the surface. But hopefully it was a compelling scratch. We all do our part. Funny Pages opens in select theaters and VOD this Friday.

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I feel like the movie is kind of self-explanatory funny; like it’s funny on a basic construction level. Which is an achievement, but it also makes me wonder: how do you pitch something like that?

I didn’t pitch it. I just sort of spent years toiling with the script and trying to figure out how to write a comedy, you know? And try to do it true to the voice that I was trying to develop with short films and comics that I was drawing. My interest in comics was purely humor comics and comics in the newspaper. Peanuts was still in the paper when I was a kid. I don’t know. I just always kind of ran towards funny stuff. So I couldn’t really get into superhero comics, except for a couple of voices or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I know what you mean. It’s kind of a comedy on a molecular level, but I guess it’s on high as well.

It’s so visual. You get the joke when you’re seeing it. How did you make that come out on the page?

Just thinking about the voices and the characters. I think a lot of the humor comes out of just how different people’s tastes and sensibilities rub up against each other. I particularly love behavioral comedy. I don’t watch new TV too much, but I revisited King of the Hill and just kind of plowed through it recently and the behavioral comedy in that show and how the voices… there’s no real jokes. All the humor comes from the characters and how they reflect off of each other. I find that in Mike Judge’s work, I find that in Mike Lee’s work to a degree. They’re very different voices obviously, but there are no jokes.

I definitely pored through the script and the thing you are getting at is the question I always ask when I’m looking at something, or something doesn’t get a laugh at a reading or it’s just not working — that kind of joke, because it’s too much of a joke. It feels too writer-y, too constructed. It really has to come from the character, because if it comes from the characters, if it doesn’t get a laugh, you’re not going to have a kidney stone in the theater. …I don’t know if a kidney stone is the right indicator for stress, but I just said kidney stone.

A lot of the times you see a comedy — this is always just a pet peeve for me — and everybody has the same kind of jokes that they’re saying. The sensibility and the sense of humor of all the characters is one writer’s, you know? I feel like all the characters have a different sense of humor in the movie.

Right, I think so much of the comedy comes from this collection of characters. Tell me about the casting. This feels like the cast makes it in a way it doesn’t make other movies.

Thank you. Well, I just tried to find intriguing people that were off rhythm, you know what I mean? The movie’s just a little bit off rhythm, so I tried to find actors that could support that and read these things organically and not it play so comedy and play it real. And there’s a variety of… sorry, the question’s about casting, right?

Yeah. I mean, like Miles for instance, where did you meet him?

I worked at a video store a little over 10 years ago, I guess, for a while and Miles (above right) came in and rented Hour of the Wolf when he was 11 with his babysitter. Something like that, I think he was returning it and I just was like, “Who is this kid?”

And then I kind of got the low down from Joe, the video store owner, that he was plowing through the 1001 Movies to See Before You Die book from Barnes and Noble or whatever. And I’d try to recommend him movies not in the book and he would make note of it once he got through the 1001 movies. But that character, his confidence and his sort of pride really did come from Miles. He’s like one of those Bozo The Clown punching bags, where you smack it and it comes right back up. He’s like an unflappable guy and, I don’t know. He’s kind of the most courageous character in the whole movie. Stands up for Robert at the end of the movie and has absolutely no reason to.

So Miles was a guy you knew from this video store environment, and then in the movie, a lot of these characters, they know each other from this comic book store that they’re all centered around. Does that world still exist, where people go to a video store or a comic book store? When I was watching it, I couldn’t tell if it was a period piece at times or if it was meant to be contemporary.

Well, we all watched streaming decimate the video store, you know? That was a pretty slow and agonizing death. But I think both should be able to exist. It was a sad day when we closed our video store, man. It was a real sad day and Miles was crying [laughs]. He was helping us close and throw out the last of the crap that was left over.

But yeah, I watched every great video store in New York with all these really unique individualized collections get broken apart, thrown out, and disappear. The Kim’s collection was the big terrifying one, but comic book stores are kind of the only… there is a remnant of that where you get every walk of life in a comic store. Or again, it goes toward that variety of person, that motley crew thing where you have the guy that’s in there all day, reading Owly, or the guy that’s a snob about Wolverine or the kid with the chain wallet that dresses like The Crow that’s reading Nightwing, you know? You get every kind of walk of life and then you get some weird kid who draws his own comics behind the counter.

I grew up with this comic book store that was sort of modeled off called Rocketship (in Cobble Hill). It was the first store that opened in New York that was sort of catering to the sort of art comics, “graphic novels” alternative voices, as well as… it was opened by people who owned St. Mark’s Comics, so they did offer superhero comics too, of course. That was in Brooklyn and I met my best friend there who was self-publishing his comic. It was just such a great mix of people.

Tell me about directing Daniel. Were there scenes where you just had him take the biggest bite of food that he could right before you started filming?

Yeah. I mean, that’s the kind of thing where the scene needed something, more than sitting at a diner. Clearly, this kid doesn’t have any self-preservation. He’s not taking care of himself. He’s sort of in a tailspin already by that point, and yeah. I just thought it was funny that he was pigging out, stuffing his face. You know, it’s visual. It looked way funny in close-up and it was the right attitude. It was just kind of like he was this slobby, contrast. But Daniel… you said directing Daniel?

I mean, what were you having him eating there and how much of it did he end up going through in the course of shooting that scene?

I’m sure we brought him a couple of plates of gigantic diner burgers. I mean, doing that, it’s funny, whenever you have someone eating in a movie, seasoned actors, they take these little theater bites because they’re actually thinking about continuity. So it’s fun when you kind of get to do something like that. It’s kind of revolting, you know?

Was he spitting any of it out? Or was he going full method and swallowing all of it afterwards?

I think he was spitting some of it out at a certain point. I didn’t want him to get fat. I didn’t want him to have a heart attack, eating too many burgers.

Sure. That’s important as a director, I would think.

It’s a weird scene. That’s actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie. It’s one of those ones where you don’t know if it’s going to work and it ends up being where you just kind of do it as a story beat and go, “Oh yeah. Yeah.” But then it kind of surprises you. It’s one of those things that actually sticks out in a movie with so much crazier stuff.

‘Funny Pages’ will be in theaters August 26th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

The Los Angeles Lakers made a potentially savvy transaction this week, adding Patrick Beverley in a swap with the Utah Jazz involving Talen Horton-Tucker and Stanley Johnson. While the loss of Horton-Tucker could potentially ding the Lakers in the future if he can rekindle some of the upside from earlier in his Los Angeles tenure, Beverley brings valuable defense and shooting to a team that desperately needed both.

However, an immediate question from Beverley’s arrival is how he might fit with Russell Westbrook, as the two veteran guards have famously enjoyed a toxic relationship. While nothing is official by any means, a report from Jovan Buha of The Athletic points in the direction of a potential resolution in the next few weeks.

Citing a source, Buha writes that, “Beverley’s arrival makes it more likely that Westbrook will be off the active roster by the start of training camp, either through a trade or the team sending him home a la the Rockets with John Wall last season.” Of course, this is easier said than done given Westbrook’s massive $47 million salary and apparent lack of trade value.

There is a potential partnership with the Indiana Pacers on an oft-rumored swap involving Myles Turner and Buddy Hield but, aside from a possible pursuit of Kyrie Irving, the Lakers don’t have obvious trade options. As Buha notes, Los Angeles could simply decide to pay Westbrook to stay home, instead seeking a trade between October and the trade deadline in February. That can be taxing as well, however, and the Lakers don’t exactly have a roster overflowing with talent outside of the top tier of LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

It isn’t impossible that Westbrook and Beverley could share the backcourt in Los Angeles, and many players who have clashed as adversaries have cooperated in team settings — the Lakers recently made a situation like this work with Rajon Rondo and LeBron James. Still, many in the league immediately commented or joked about the relationship now including the teammate dynamic, and Buha’s report doesn’t come as a shock.

For the third year in a row, Dish Network is looking for someone to numb their butts and raise their heartrates for the sake of science and $1,300. They’re looking for someone to take on the Stephen King Scream Job, tackling 13 of the horror God’s films and living to tell the tale.

And, unlike most job listings these days, this one lists the payrate. From their announcement:

“Movie buff? Scaredy cat? Adrenaline junkie? All of the above? This job is not for the faint of heart, but it could be for you. The ideal candidate has to be detail-oriented enough to track their experience. They could even share their scares on social media and vlog every time they jump out of their seats. . . We also want to know everything about your experience. You will track your heart rate and jump scares. You’ll let us know who joined in on the scares with you. You’ll let us know what you thought before watching certain movies, and if your feelings changed after you completed them. You’ll even log your sleep—if you can sleep.”

So it’s part movie marathon, part social media chronicle with a little dose of medical monitoring thrown in for good measure. Not a bad gig.

Whoever gets the job will be watching Carrie, Christine, Creepshow, Cujo, Doctor Sleep, Firestarter, It (both parts), Misery, The Mist, Pet Sematary, Salem’s Lot, and The Shining. If you want to earn money for doing something you were already planning on doing, get in your application by September 16th.

Earlier this month, during the shake up caused by the Warner Bros. Discovery merger which killed Batgirl and a slew of animated favorites, it seemed like fans would have to wait a while before getting Elvis in their living rooms via HBO Max. The Baz Luhrmann biopic-ish celebration of the iconic King of Rock spent the month available as a 20-dollar rental on some PVOD platforms as Warner Bros. Discovery ditched its 45 day theater-to-streaming pipeline.

Now, 70 days after it first bowed in theaters, the film will land at HBO Max September 2nd.

That’s great news for everyone clamoring to watch or rewatch Austin Butler shake his hips through an existential crisis brought on by the heavy toll of fame. For those who aren’t fully sold on checking out, our own Carrie Whitmer recently penned 5 reasons to get hyped (Tom Hanks in a fat suit, people!). Speaking of which, Hanks is going through kind of a phase right now, huh? First Elvis and now the strange mustache and prosthetics for the new Pinocchio. At any rate, now you’ll be able to compare both looks if you’ve got HBO Max, a profound love for Elvis, and about three hours of your life to spare.

(via The Wrap)

Minnesota Timberwolves forward Taurean Prince was arrested on Thursday at the Miami airport on a “fugitive warrant” from the state of Texas, per the Miami Herald.

Prince, 28, who recently signed a two-year $16 contract extension with the Timberwolves, was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Thursday evening. What charge he’s wanted on in Texas remains unknown. It was also unclear if he had retained a defense attorney.

Prince, who is from San Antonio, Texas and went to school in Waco at Baylor, is coming off of his first season in Minnesota after stints in Atlanta, Brooklyn, and Cleveland. According to Andy Slater the warrant from Texas is for drug charges, although there are not specifics known about those charges.

Prince is supposed to head into his seventh season in the NBA when training camp starts next month, but now his presence on the Wolves roster for the start of the season has to be in at least some doubt as he faces upcoming legal troubles. Once details emerge about the charges he faces in Texas, we should also get a better understanding about what kind of punishment he faces from both the legal system and from the league.

The Timberwolves released a brief statement on Thursday night that they are aware of the situation and are, like everyone else, trying to gather more information.

Karol G and Maldy, one half of the duo Plan B, are here with the sensual video for “Gatúbela.” The record, which translates to “catwoman,” is a vibrant reggaeton record fit for any lengthy summer function. Whether dancing alone or with a partner, there’s an undeniable urge to move your hips once the beat drops.

The video matches that energy, with incessant scenes of couples grinding on one another or women twerking by their lonesome. Many men are shirtless, exposing glistening abs and the “Don’t Be Shy” artist makes sure to share the wealth with a few of them. Maldy opts for a more calm approach to the dance floor, but he is definitely enjoying the ambiance.

The video closes with a man showing scratch marks on his obliques, followed by a transition to a scene where Karol G is running away from something. She finally ends up on a beach covered in blood, and the video finally ends by showing a number of cats walking on a patio.

This video is also the debut of Karol G’s fiery red hair, ushering in a new era of her career in addition to the 2022 single “Provenza.”

Check out the video for “Gatúbela” above.

According to Deadline, Dan Lin is the favorite for an impossible job. The producer of massive blockbuster IP hits like Sherlock Holmes, The LEGO Movie, and the live-action Aladdin may become the new shepherd for DC Films, overseeing the attempted connected universe of expensive superhero movies.

This move comes during a great reset for the superhero universe, set into motion by the new CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, who has been transparent about his desire to copy the Marvel/Kevin Feige model. That requires a Feige of their own.

Is there really anyone who can pull off the once-in-a-lifetime miracle feat that Feige did with Marvel? A calculated gamble that owes an equal amount of its success to luck as it does to shrewd motion picture business savvy? Deadline notes that Lin is potentially favored by Zaslav because he’s a Harvard MBA grad, but could that possibly matter when trying to build a conveyor belt of connected blockbusters? Feige got his start thanks to a TV producer grandfather and a job as a production assistant on You’ve Got Mail! One of the main reasons he was so successful with turning Marvel into a movie juggernaut (sorry) was because he cut his teeth as a producer for Marvel and knew the company’s characters inside and out. Lin’s pedigree as a blockbuster producer is undeniable and laudable. Maybe that’s exactly the right blend of talents to make the DCU truly rival the MCU.

But whoever takes the job is effectively volunteering to be the second person to climb Everest. Meanwhile, they’re holding “funeral” screenings for the shelved Batgirl, and the Joker sequel is the only thing that’s safe under Zaslav’s reign.

Speaking of which, that same Deadline piece mentions that Todd Phillips also made the shortlist, is beloved by Zaslav, and won’t be taking the job because he’s spending all his energy on the new Joker. Thankfully, this rumor gives us the opportunity to close our eyes and imagine 10 DC movies in a connected universe brought into existence under Phillips’ creative umbrella.

(via Deadline)

I don’t come from money. In fact, I come from the stark opposite. My mother was one of nine children who grew up in an abusive household that was well below the poverty line and her mother grew up poorer than she did. This cycle of poverty goes back as far as I can trace, so it’s no surprise that I also grew up poor. There were days when the only thing we had to eat was peanut butter on a spoon during the day to keep us satiated until dinner because it was the only meal that day.

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That’s not for lack of trying on my parent’s part. My stepdad worked a full-time job and lived the hustle life before it became coined by millennials and slapped on a mug. The one thing that was consistently impressed upon me by my parents was the importance of going to college so I could do better than the generation before me. But there wasn’t a roadmap for me to follow. Neither of my parents had gone to college at the time and really didn’t know the requirements to get in nor the process of applying for financial aid. Since this was before Google, there was no information readily available at my fingertips. There was no financial literacy to pass down to their children when their only goal was survival.

The Biden Administration has done something unprecedented in the history of the United States by forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for Americans making under $125,000 a year (under $250,000 if married or head of household). If you received Pell Grant assistance while in college, you qualify for up to $20,000 in student loan forgiveness. In order to qualify for the Pell Grant you have to be in great financial need, which means I also received this money to assist with college expenses. But contrary to what some believe, the Pell Grant isn’t a large sum of money so loans are still necessary, even for people like me that worked while in school. Escaping poverty is expensive and exhausting and a program like this will help others break the cycle.

While most are focused on the loans being forgiven, there’s a piece of information being overlooked that could make a big impact on people’s lives. Under the new plan, people who are on an income based repayment plan can now cap their monthly payments at 5% of their income. Previously the repayment amount was capped at 10% of a persons income.

Obviously such a big move has set off a firestorm of conversation around who should and shouldn’t get it, or if it should be done at all. But the conversations around student loan forgiveness seems to be missing this integral piece of information; everyone doesn’t start from the same place at the starting line. It’s easy to say people should know what they’re getting into when signing up for student loans if you grew up with a different set of circumstances.

But for people like me, student loans were the only way out of poverty and I’d do it again. Because I took out debt to pay for a college education, my children won’t have to do the same. They will now have a financially literate parent to walk them through the process, explain complicated forms and help them find more cost effective alternatives. My own children have never experienced coming home to no lights or running water. They will never have to escape from poverty because they don’t come from it and I don’t know that I’d be able to say the same if I didn’t make the choice to accept student loans.

While forgiving $10,000 to $20,000 worth of student debt for a select group of people isn’t ideal, this could open up the door for future borrowers. The awareness around predatory lending to students, the continuously growing cost of college attendance and the stagnation of wages could lead to real policy change that could impact everyone. No student should be saddled with insurmountable debt just for getting an education and this could be the first step to ending this practice.

We’ve all been there. Standing in line to be seated at a fairly busy restaurant while your stomach growls in protest. But when two women left a concert August 22 in search of food, they had no idea they’d find themselves taking orders and cooking food. Sylvia Arrendondo and her mother Idalia Merkel went to a local Denny’s in Texas and were seated by another customer before realizing the restaurant was extremely short-staffed. Instead of taking their business elsewhere, they decided to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

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Arrendondo wrote about the unique experience on her Facebook page where she explained that only two people were working. One was serving tables and the other was the cook. As for the man that was acting as host, seating new guests, he had no idea what he was doing because he didn’t work there. He told Arrendondo and Merkel that his wife used to work at Denny’s so she started helping to serve tables and he decided to help get people seated.

The service industry has been hit hard by the pandemic and the subsequent “great resignation.” Complaints about low wages, poor management and rude customers that abuse staff members are just a few of the reasons cited by people who have left the industry. It may be surprising for some to learn that the federal minimum wage for tipped employees like servers and bussers is just $2.13 an hour. The rest of the wage is supposed to be made up of tips, which, depending on where you work, may be split at the end of the night between other workers. This act of splitting tips is called “tip pooling” and is calculated by number of hours worked.

Splitting tips after a long day of work dealing with customers who may not have been so kind would understandably make some people upset. But it didn’t take a deep dive on the treatment of restaurant employees for Arrendondo and the other customers who helped out. They saw two seemingly college-aged kids doing their best to keep the place running and they didn’t hesitate to jump in to help, completely unpaid.

When asked why she didn’t just leave, Arrendondo said, “We just looked at each other and it wasn’t even a question. We both knew what we had to do.”

“This was probably the most beautiful act of American unity that I have personally encountered,” Arrendondo told Upworthy. She added that the sole paid server would occasionally start to cry before being comforted by the cook, only to return the favor when he would get overwhelmed.

Talk about community.

These two kids had exhausted all of their resources, including calling their manager multiple times. And instead of customers getting angry, demanding better service or walking away, Arredondo and Merkel stepped up. The kindness of this group of strangers will surely stick with these employees and the people who were involved.

“The strength, courage and integrity by these two workers was beyond admirable. My mom and I have never been so proud and happy to help,” Arrendondo told Upworthy. “After all, we have all been there.”

Eventually after some convincing, the two employees shut the restaurant down and Arrendondo and Merkel went home much more tired than anticipated. Still hungry, but full of gratitude and pride.