Walmart is probably best known as the place to pull off the highway, put a few quarters into a vending machine and get a can of Dr. Thunder, but perhaps soon it will also be the streaming service where you watch the latest episode of The Mandalorian.
That is, of course, if Walmart+ gets off the ground as a content curation platform. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the big box megastore is hoping to land a streaming deal to add onto its monthly subscription service you probably didn’t know already existed:
In recent weeks, executives from Paramount, Disney and Comcast have spoken with Walmart, the people said, as the retailer ponders which movies and TV shows would add the most value to its membership bundle, called Walmart+. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.
The report made it clear there’s no real indication that Paramount+, Disney+ or Peacock are ready to join forces with Walmart just yet. But it’s certainly an interesting development in a streaming landscape that’s somehow getting both more crowded and less robust in recent months.
And while it may seem really strange that Walmart wants to get into streaming, it actually makes a bit of sense once you learn what Walmart currently provides:
A Walmart+ membership, which costs $12.95 per month, includes free shipping on orders and discounts on fuel. It also includes a free six-month subscription to the Spotify Premium music service.
…
The retailer is increasingly looking to build its relationship with its customers beyond the footprint of its big-box stores, particularly given the dominance of Amazon.com’s Prime membership program.
As HBO Max and other streaming platforms have learned, actually making content can be more expensive and labor-intensive than just buying the good stuff at a premium and letting folks stream to their heart’s content. And while that’s bad news in a lot of ways, Walmart attempting to make its own Amazon Prime-like service without having to make anything for itself is certainly plausible. The Times report made note of wireless providers like Verizon and T-Mobile striking deals with streaming services to create bundles in a similar way, too.
Still, it’s weird to see the plus symbol next to America’s most famous big box store. But all things can become familiar if there’s enough money in it for everyone, I suppose.
Kenan Thompson has had one of the most prolific careers that any former Nickelodeon child star: he carried All That, had multiple television shows of his own, and is currently the longest-running cast member on Saturday Night Live. Now, he’s adding the 2022 Emmy’s host to his roster.
Thompson will host the 74th Emmy Awards on NBC on Monday, September 12th, live from Los Angeles. This will be the first time Thompson has hosted any type of ceremony besides all of the many fake gameshows he hosted on SNL.
“Being a part of this incredible evening where we honor the best of the television community is ridiculously exciting, and to do it on NBC – my longtime network family – makes it even more special,” Thompson said in a statement. “Like all TV fans, I can’t wait to see the stars from my favorite shows.”
The former Kenan And Kel star will enter his 20th (!!) season of Saturday Night Live this fall, making him the longest-running cast member on the show.
Thompson has several Emmys and nominations under his belt, including two in 2021 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for Kenan and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for SNL. He joins the ever-growing group of former comedians turned Emmy hosts, which include Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and Michael Che and Colin Jost, who hosted in 2019 for some reason, despite the fact that they maybe didn’t want to do it. It seems like Thompson is actually on board, though!
Lady Gaga’s Chromatica Ball tour took her to Washington DC last night (August 8). While she was in our country’s capital, so close to the politicians who make decisions that have an impact on our lives, Gaga decided to speak out against the recent Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Before launching into a solo piano rendition of “The Edge Of Glory,” Gaga offered a dedication, saying, “I would like to dedicate this song to every woman in America, to every woman who now has to worry about her body if she gets pregnant. I pray that this country will speak up, that we will stick together, and that we will not stop until it’s right! For every woman.”
“I would like to dedicate this song to every woman in America. To every woman who now has to worry about her body if she gets pregnant. I pray that this country will speak up and we will not stop until its right!” – Lady Gaga talking about abortion rights at The #ChromaticaBallDCpic.twitter.com/YjwlC0rg7C
This is not the first time Gaga has spoken out against restrictive abortion laws. After Alabama passed one in 2019, Gaga wrote, “It is an outrage to ban abortion in Alabama, period, and all the more heinous that it excludes those who have been raped or are experiencing incest, non-consensual or not. So there’s a higher penalty for doctors who perform these operations than for most rapists? This is a travesty, and I pray for all these women and young girls who suffer at the hands of this system.”
Following the passing of actor and singer Olivia Newton-John, the tributes have been pouring as Hollywood remembers the iconic stage and screen star. Obviously, Newton-John is most known for her breakout role as Sandy in the 1978 film adaptation of Grease. Landing the part was huge for the Australian-born actress’s career, but according to a new interview with Grease casting director Joel Thurm, Newton-John was actually very cautious about signing onto the musical.
While praising Newton-John’s savviness, Thurm admitted the production would’ve been a tight spot if she turned it down because she was the only actress John Travolta wanted and the only one the production pursued. “If she said no, I’d be playing the part in a poodle skirt,” Thurm joked to PEOPLE. “So everybody wanted Olivia here, but Olivia didn’t jump at the offer. That’s the important thing to know.”
According to Thurm, Newton-John wanted to make sure she had chemistry with Travolta, which was something the veteran casting director had never seen before:
“She said, ‘Okay, I want to see a screen test with John and myself and then I’ll let you know if I want to do it,’ ” he recalls.
Thurm confesses this was a first for him, telling PEOPLE, “I think I’ve never heard of a case where an actor being offered a role said, ‘I want to see me before I say yes.’ But that’s how smart she was.”
After a few wobbly takes of the drive-in scene, Newton-John and Travolta found their groove after using the original script from the musical instead of the screenplay, and the rest is cinematic history.
“You look at the screen and you see it,” Thurm said. “He had great respect for her as an artist. And she had the same for him. There was never anything untoward or romantic or stuff like that, but there was a great deal of mutual respect and friendship that lasted forever. They definitely had a spark.”
On December 7, 1941, more than 350 Imperial Japanese aircraft attacked America’s Pearl Harbor naval base on Oahu, Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 people (including 68 civilians) and wounding 1,153 more.
On September 11, 2001, a total of 19 terrorists highjacked four commercial planes and turned them into weapons of mass destruction they attacked New York City’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (The Capitol was also a target, but was diverted when passengers aboard the plane took on their attackers.) All told, nearly 3,000 people were killed; 6,000 were injured; and first responders on the ground have succumbed to a variety of diseases because of their life-saving efforts in the years since.
On August 8, 2022, the FBI raided the Palm Beach golf club/home of reality show host-turned-president of the United States Donald Trump. The only thing injured was the former president’s ego, yet Fox News host Mark Levin has declared that “the worst attack on this republic in modern history.”
As Mediaite reports, Levin chatted with his Fox News colleague Sean Hannity on Monday night, where he let loose on the “friggin’ FBI,” which he deemed corrupt:
This was well orchestrated, so this has been going on for weeks. Now, you keep asking your guests, what’s the justification? There is no justification. What’s he going to say tomorrow, the attorney general? Here’s my guess: ‘We’ve been negotiating with Trump and his lawyers since February when we found out they had this information. We were getting nowhere, and then we know or we heard that some documents were being destroyed.’
After claiming that “There is no justification for sending 30 friggin’ FBI agents to the former president’s compound in Mar-a-Lago in [the] early morning and conducting themselves this way,” Levin took his grandiose comments to new highs (and lows) when he claimed:
This is the worst attack on this republic in modern history. Period. And it’s not just an attack on Donald Trump. It’s an attack on everybody who supports him. It’s an attack on anybody who dares to raise serious questions about Washington, D.C., and the establishment in both parties. I haven’t heard a damn thing from the Republican leadership in the Senate! Have you? Not one of those guys has put out a statement. Because they’re weak. That’s why.
The Better Call Saul Lie Detector Test is a weekly recap of the major events of the final season, separated out by their apparent truthfulness at the time. This is not one of those recaps that gets into granular detail about things. It will miss the occasional callback or foreshadowing. But it will be fun. Sometimes, that’s what’s important.
Season 6, Episode 12: “Waterworks”
UPROXX
Kim Wexler is doing great
AMC
Hey, let’s check in with Kim Wexler to see how th-… aaaaand she’s bawling on a bus. That’s not ideal. It’s never ideal, really, to be ugly crying alone on a bus. Or any form of public transportation. Like, if you saw someone having that kind of meltdown on the subway, you’d assume they were really going through something. I doubt you’d jump straight to “that lady has been living in Florida as a brunette for six years to put various murders and relationships as far in her rearview as possible but she just came back to New Mexico to confess to all of it to both the authorities and the widow of her former legal partner whose life she helped ruin before he was killed in front of her by a charming sociopath,” but I don’t know. Maybe you’re intuitive like that.
There are two things going on here, related in every way but also separate. The first is the Kim Wexler of it all. The thing where she’s living in Florida and selling sprinklers and having the most boring mayonnaise conversations you can possibly imagine all day long, sometimes literally about mayonnaise, sometimes with her absolute snoozer of a new lover, a man who shouts “Yup” over and over during sex. She has stripped all the excitement from her life, almost definitely on purpose, as the first five-plus seasons of this show gave her enough for a few lifetimes. You can see how this might be appealing to her.
But then, the phone call. From “Victor St. Clair.” Out of the damn blue. That seemed to make everything real again and end whatever sun-soaked denial she’d been pushing through. She jumped on a plane and dusted off the legal writing skills and wrote up a whole affidavit about Howard and Lalo and everything she and Jimmy had been running from in very different ways. She went to Cheryl to deliver the news in person because Kim is somehow the moral center of this twisted endeavor, past actions be damned. It was a lot. You would cry on a bus, too.
Which brings us to the second thing: How freaking good is Rhea Seehorn? Holy moly. That shot on the bus lingered on her for so long as everything hit her in waves. She fought the tears and then exploded and it was all so real and so incredible and so devastating. Think about the logistics of that scene. Think about a camera pointing at you with no cuts for a full couple of minutes and you having to go from dead-eyed stare into the middle distance to dropping snot with no one to act off of or even dialogue to help you get there. And that was just the big showpiece scene. The whole episode was her putting on a clinic, even in the Florida sprinkler office where you could see how checked-out she was just by looking at any part of her face and the scene in Saul’s office where she signed the divorce papers and sighed a lot about the guy he had become. She’s pretty good, is my point.
Also, she got to do this toward the end of the episode, in a scene I’ll discuss in more detail later.
AMC
Just massively cool. One of the all-time great television characters. One of the all-time great performances. Things got wild at the end of the episode, in a way that will play out in a big way next week, but let’s all try to talk about this part of it all a bunch, too.
Gene could have stopped if he wanted
AMC
The thing here that’s important, a thing we discussed last week when Gene kicked off his barbiturate-laced identity theft scam, is that whether he’s Jimmy or Saul or Gene, he is still the same guy and he’s always going to blow up anything good in his life. “Good” is on a sliding scale here, I guess, as he did not seem to be enjoying his boring Cinnabon life very much, but it was not prison. Which counts for something. He just needs action, all the time, in dangerous ways. This is how one ends up brandishing a jar of doggy ashes as a weapon after an identity theft victim wakes up because one took all the time in the world and poured some whiskey while looking for passwords in a home one broke into by smashing the glass right near the front door. You know, to pick an example at random.
Think of all the stupid choices he made that led him to that moment at the end where Marion smashed her Life Alert button and blew everything up. Just the ones in the past few days:
Started the identity theft scam with two idiots because one of them recognized him at the mall
Kept doing it after he achieved his alleged goal of having dirt on them so they wouldn’t rat him out
Followed through with the grift on the cancer guy even though there was no tape on the door and he’d have to smash the glass, maybe out of lingering anger at another guy he knew who had cancer
Hung around the house so long that Jeff got nervous outside and panic-crashed his cab because there were cops behind him
Mentioned Albuquerque in the phone call with Marion, a sweet woman who recently became familiar with YouTube thanks to the laptop her idiot son — and his business partner — bought her with the proceeds from their crimes
Just a parade of unforced errors. It’s tempting to say the whole situation was avoidable, but also… was it? Wasn’t he always going to destroy his life somehow, if not involving doggy ashes and Carol Burnett using dial-up internet then… somehow? The only thing remotely resembling self-control he showed in the last few weeks was not strangling an old woman with a telephone cord when she tried to call for help after discovering his whole criminal ruse. Which was nice, I guess, but an extremely low bar.
Things are not going to go great for him in the finale, one assumes. Between Marion’s call for help and Kim’s affidavit (which was also the result of an unforced error, what with the whole disastrous phone call where he yelled that she should turn herself in), the whole house of cards is coming down fast. It was always going to happen, but it’s definitely happening now.
Vince Gilligan is kind of rusty at this television business
AMC
This episode was written and directed by Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad and co-creator of this show. He is good at this stuff. The scene with Kim on the bus, the tension in that final scene with Marion, just the confidence to open with like 15 minutes about a sprinkler office and doing puzzles and making potato salad and dates at the new Outback when the entire audience is waiting for the fireworks. Imagine being this good at your job. Imagine being this good at anything.
Part of me wants him to just keep spinning off characters from these shows and building out the universe for decades. (I repeat: Don Eladio prequel, please.) Another part of me wants to see what else he has in the tank. Either way, I think it’s fair to assume it’ll be good-to-great based on the track record. Really no losing here for me.
UPROXX
Kim is going to prison
AMC
ON ONE HAND: She did just confess to a lot of crimes and confessing to a lot of crimes is a good way to end up in prison. The stuff with Howard and the drugs, the covering up of his murder, all of it. And she doesn’t seem to be hiding from any of it. She very much seems like a lady who is tearing herself apart with guilt and is seeking some kind of punishment she feels she deserves for the actions she’s been running from.
ON THE OTHER HAND: A lot of this is hard to prove even with her confession. The murder was scrubbed clean by a guy who bled out next to a river. The body is buried under a superlab that was operated by a guy who got his face blown off. The only one who can corroborate it all is the guy she did it all with. I don’t know how that all works out. And then there’s the possibility that she gets off for testifying against Jimmy/Saul/Gene, a noted fugitive who has been on the run for half a decade.
A lot of ways this could go. All of which I will be thinking about this week. I worry about Kim Wexler a lot.
Jimmy/Saul/Gene is going to prison
AMC
ON ONE HAND: The crimes. So many crimes. Old ones and new ones. He could get a decade just for this last Nebraska-related breaking and entering. And that doesn’t even touch on the various New Mexico things he’s running from, dotting across various timelines, as far back as the Howard stuff Kim is airing out to anyone who will listen and going all the way up to and through the Heisenberg business. There are probably a number of prosecutors who would very much like to get their hands on him for any number of reasons. And it’s not like he has much to trade anymore either, seeing as most of his immediate conspirators are dead. Grim future for Slippin’ Jimmy.
ON THE OTHER HAND: There are probably some cartel guys out there who have long memories and grudges and do not have anyone else left to take it all out on. And maybe he has one last trick up his sleeve. Maybe he grows a beard and changes his name to Percy Valentine and goes to work at a landscaping company. Until he blows his life up again a few years later. Which he will. As we have discussed. So it’s basically “jail or murder for him,” really. Again, grim future.
Wild to remember this was the “fun” character they spun off from the other show.
Tammy needs a new husband
AMC
ON ONE HAND: An exercise bike? For her birthday? Come on, buddy. Come on. You simply cannot be that dense and expect there will be no consequences.
ON THE OTHER HAND: He probably thought he was doing a nice thing — “She’s always saying she wants to start exercising and I thought this would help” — but was just so hopelessly misguided that he ended up here. Sweet but dull is better than a lot of other alternatives. He won’t live this down, ever, but maybe they can work through it.
UPROXX
I still love hearing Jesse Pinkman drop an unnecessary “yo” or two
AMC
Three things are true here, all of which I can pound out via bullet point:
For the second week in a row, I whooped a little when I saw Jesse, this time as the camera pulled back and revealed him outside Saul’s office, mostly because I still have a soft spot for that goofball even knowing who he is and what he’s about to do
There was one second where I thought Kim had flown to Alaska instead of Albuquerque, when she was standing near the signs for Alaska Airlines and Frontier airlines, and I got very excited she might have gone up there to find him and do some sort of business up there related to Saul
“It’s like bananas, all this rain” has now officially entered my brain and I suspect it will reappear every time the clouds open up around me in real life, at least for a few years
I wish there was a way I could alter history and save him from the meth Nazis. He’s a sweet misguided boy. He just got in with the wrong crowd. Leave him alone.
I called it
AMC
I apologize in advance for how insufferable I am going to be about this for pretty much the rest of my life, but here’s what I said last week.
We need to consider the thing at the end of this episode. The thing where she heard a doggy ruckus outside and looked through her window while Gene was melting down on his accomplices in that shed. And the thing where she now has an internet-connected computer and an increasing knowledge of how to navigate YouTube. And the possibility that there are a number of YouTube videos — news reports, weirdo fan tributes, etc. — about the mysterious disappearance of crooked New Mexico attorney Saul Goodman. And the possibility that she will stumble across one and think about how much that guy looks like sweet Gene and how her beloved Jeffy spent time in New Mexico and how it’s weird that the two of them are spending so much time in that shed.
What I’m saying here is that there’s a non-zero chance that the diabolical Saul Goodman ends up finally getting arrested after years on the run because a Nebraska senior citizen played by Carol Freaking Burnett got bored watching cat videos one day. That would be pretty awesome.
Freakin’ nailed it. Close enough, at least. Is there an argument to be made that this was all less me being a handsome genius and more the show laying out details meticulously — Marion getting a computer and going on YouTube, her getting suspicious about Gene and Jeff meeting in the backyard, a show casting Carol Burnett in 2022 like they wouldn’t absolutely use her for a pivotal moment in the series — in such a way that even a doofus like me can see what’s coming, even subconsciously?
Hmm. Maybe. Possibly. But it’s more fun for me to run around shouting “I CALLED IT,” so let’s just all agree to go with that.
That cop was right about fish tacos
AMC
We live in the damn future. We can send satellites to outer space to take pictures just so we know what the weather will be like in a few days. Elderly ladies can uncover years-long criminal mysteries with a box they use to watch cats being silly. We should be able to get fresh and delicious fish tacos anywhere at any time. Figure this out. It’s madness and we should not stand for it.
Over the past few months, Dreamville-signed Atlanta rapper JID has been slowly but surely rolling out his third album, The Forever Story, picking up the threads he left on his 2017 debut The Never Story and its star-making 2018 follow-up DiCaprio 2. In January, he kicked off the new year and his album campaign with “Surround Sound” featuring 21 Savage and Baby Tate, then followed up throughout the year with an impressive array of guest verses demonstrating his lyrical prowess.
Today, he released the second single from The Forever Story, “Dance Now,” featuring rising fellow ATLien Kenny Mason, with whom he previously collaborated on the festival favorite “Stick” from Dreamville’s D-Day: A Gangsta Grillz mixtape earlier this summer. The new track dropped with a frantic music video that finds JID rapping as chaotic scenes whip by him including riot police, disgruntled citizens, and twerking exotic dancers.
In addition to his two singles, JID has raised his visibility this year with features alongside Denzel Curry, YSL rapper T-Shyne, R&B star John Legend, up-and-coming San Antonio rapper Mike Dimes, and hitmaking producer Dot Da Genius. He also dropped the “29 Freestyle” with a music video after performing it during his Governor’s Ball set.
Watch JID’s “Dance Now” video above. The Forever Story is out 8/26 on Dreamville/Interscope.
A lot of factors influence that favorite chip, from bag design to ad copy to which chips you’ve actually had and remember. Unless you’ve made it your specific mission, I highly doubt you’ve had them all. There are so many! What we Americans may lack in universal healthcare we tend to make up for in the snack aisle, miles of bagged junk food that make me want to hum “God Bless America” while my fingertips gently caress the crinkly bags.
I digress, but my point is that we, myself very much included, are suggestible when it comes to food and beverages. If you tell me a cool story about an alcoholic beverage while I’m on vacation, there’s a 96% chance that I’ll think it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted, spend too much to smuggle some back home, and will force it on a handful of my confused friends the second I touch down back home. Certainly a chip bag isn’t the same as a cool foreign bartender, but still, the only way to account for suggestibility in testing potato chips was to taste them blind. Just chips on a plate, no words or colors or anything else clouding my mind beforehand.
Okay, so art thrives on limitations, and this test couldn’t encompass every single flavor and brand. We had to narrow it down somehow, and since it’s summer, aka barbecue season, we chose BBQ-flavored chips. Almost every brand makes one, and it’s one of the most “classic” American potato chip flavors there are. Why not? I’m probably more of a salt and vinegar kind of guy myself, but I do enjoy a good barbecue chip from time to time.
I did my best to find every brand of chips that some schmuck in the comments section will inevitably say is “the best!” This involved traveling to at least five separate supermarkets and three or four delis. But understand that certain regional brands simply do not distribute to California and can’t be bought online in non-bulk quantities or for reasonable shipping fees. I did my best to be as thorough as I could be. But at the end of the day, I’m still bound by the limitations of space and time (sorry, I’m not Steven Seagal). So if your favorite brand isn’t listed here, try to remember that it’s because I hate you.
My wife helpfully randomized the chip brands and laid them out in unmarked batches of three or so — whole chips, no fragments! I then went through and sampled them and rated them all on a thoroughly scientific scale of one to ten.
You may not realize how many factors are at play in choosing a good chip. There’s the matter of which has the best BBQ flavoring (I tended to prefer the ones that leaned sweeter/smokey, and wasn’t so into that fake wood flavor of the more mesquite and hickory-heavy ones), but that’s only one factor. There’s also the chip itself. Thickness. Size of the potato slice. Fry color. Type of oil used. So many things!
In my head, I wanted a thicker chip with a darker fry. In practice, thick is only good if still has a melt-in-your-mouth crunch — the too-thick ones can taste stale without that melt factor, not to mention ruinous to gums and mouth. This test was more subjective than most, so I included my wife’s ratings. Unlike me, she notably does not enjoy smoky things, like mezcal or baba ghanoush (hers were not blind, obviously). Our favorites were distinct, but there was a lot of overlap.
These are hexagonal-shaped, for some reason. Is this some sort of Pringles situation? A non-potato? They don’t have kettle folds and they’re lighter. Must be baked.
Biting in, yep, definitely baked. Zzz. The BBQ flavoring is also super mild, just sort of bland and crackery. These are fine if you’re cutting calories or whatever, but they can’t really hold a candle to real fried potato chips.
Rating: 3.5/10
Bottom Line:
A baked chip is more of a cracker, which probably isn’t really going to compete with the fried chips. I do think more aggressive seasoning could’ve helped. There’s no fat in the seasoning, right? Don’t be shy.
Wife’s Rating: 7/10 (!!!)
26. Zapp’s Mesquite Bar-B-Que
Vince Mancini
Price:$32.99 for 25 2-ounce bags on Amazon ($0.66 per ounce)
Original Notes:
Vince Mancini
These look medium fried but heavily seasoned with bigger potato pieces.
Biting in, yeah, these chips are too thick and the seasoning is a straight-up smoke bomb. Being drenched in that overwhelming seasoning makes pretty much everything else irrelevant.
Rating: 4/10
Bottom Line:
Like I said, not a huge fan of the wood-heavy flavorings, and these, an Utz product, were too thick and overseasoned to boot.
Very thin, pale, and crispy looking with bubbles. On the opposite end of the spectrum from the “kettle-style” potato chips, or the way I think of them, anyway.
Biting in, the sweet BBQ flavor is nice, but it’s very mild. Needs more. The chips melt in your mouth, but they’re too thin. They’re just not substantial enough, and not very addictive. I feel like I’m eating chip fragments rather than chips.
Rating: 4.5/10
Bottom Line:
In the course of this test, I think I discovered that I like the thick, kettle-style potato chips less than I thought I did. That being said, thin-ass nothing-burger chips like this were basically the reason kettle-style chips became popular in the first place. I have a hard time imagining opening these bad boys and not being disappointed. They feel timid in every way.
Pale, thin, no folds, Lays-y looking, bigger pieces. The fry is light colored but also inconsistent and a little oily, like when you crowd the pan. I’m not sure what that looks like on an industrial scale, but that’s what it reminds me of.
Biting in, I kind of like the crumble and melt-in-your-mouth quality of these, but the seasoning is just really, really timid.
Rating: 5/10
Bottom Line:
Like a lot of these entries in the bottom third, these weren’t inedible or even especially terrible, but there wasn’t a lot to recommend them.
These are some of the palest of the bunch, though I’m not quite sure what that means. A light fry?
Biting in, I like the thickness on these — and they melt in your mouth — but I don’t like the seasoning at all. It’s sort of just… sour pickle with no sweetness. Pepper is there in the aftertaste. I dunno, not a fan.
Rating: 5/10
Bottom Line:
Chipotle was definitely an outlier in this ranking, as was the very light color on these. It’s hard to say how much of my dislike was based on them being bad and how much was just them being not what I was expecting. A lot of my favorites were barbecue with something extra, but chipotle did not fall into that camp. This is weird because my go-to rib sauce has chipotle in it. Go figure.
These are also thick, but not folded. They’re flatter chips with lots of bubbling and lighter fry color. Seasoning is more visible, with bigger pepper flakes.
Biting in, these are thick, maybe a little too thick, but nicely melt in your mouth. The BBQ flavor is barely there but the dominant flavor is… salt. Yep, these are definitely oversalted.
Rating: 5/10
Bottom Line:
These chips were good in almost every respect except a crucial one, seasoning. The salt level is sort of like the Price Is Right. You want to get as close to the limit as you can without going over. But once you go over, you’re sunk.
Wife’s Rating: 2/10
20. Ruffles Flamin Hot BBQ
Vince Mancini
Price:$5.19 for 8 ounces at Smart & FinalOriginal Notes:
Vince Mancini
These look like Flamin’ Hot Ruffles, and I don’t consider myself a genius detective for saying so. Look at them, they’re big crinkle-cut jobs with lots of red powder on the outside.
Biting in, these looked really appetizing, but the thickness is weird. They don’t really crunch hard and somehow don’t really crumble either. They taste kind of stale. The seasoning is like hot pepper + molasses. I like Flamin’ Hot stuff, but I dunno, I’m not that into these.
Rating: 5.5/10
Bottom Line:
I’m a big fan of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. And as for Ruffles, I can’t really explain this, but if there’s a ranch-based, French onion or sour cream-type dip around, Ruffles are really the only choice in my mind. I don’t really use them for anything else, but I also wouldn’t use any other chip for that exact use (and I will thoroughly disgust myself with how many potato chips and French onion dip I will put down). This is a long way of saying that this is a combination of things I enjoy that’s somehow less than the sum of its parts. With all due respect to Jayson Tatum.
Big pieces, medium fry with medium curl, bigger flecks of black pepper on the exterior.
Biting in, texture and crunch are sort of replacement-level fine. The seasoning comes on nice and smoky sweet but seems to vanish halfway through the chew. I don’t quite know how to explain this. There’s not enough potato flavor either. There’s no finish so they’re oddly non-addicting.
Rating: 5.5/10
Bottom Line:
These are like a weird optical illusion. They look like they’d be great chips, but they taste like imitation chips. The flavors don’t linger, it’s like they give you a little tease, and then they’re gone. Very strange. Even weirder, there’s a different flavor of this brand that scored much higher.
Amber, small to medium-sized, with a darkish fry. Lots of bubbles. Kettle style.
Biting in, these are … okay. Again, the taste dissipates more than it lingers. The texture of the chips is really nice, but you don’t get the chance to enjoy it much because the actual potato pieces are so small. What is this? A potato for ANTS?!
Rating: 6/10
Bottom Line:
Who knew there were so many pitfalls for a potato chip? But add “tiny potatoes” to the list.
Thick, deeply fried, smaller-sized chips. Very kettle-style in appearance. I wish the pieces were a little bigger.
Biting in, these are thick and kind of hard. So in that way, the smaller-sized chunks actually help. The BBQ flavor isn’t too strong. Tastes more oily/salty though.
Rating: 6/10
Bottom Line:
These were too oily and too salty. If the barbecue flavor and seasoning had been on point, I don’t think the greasiness would’ve been as big an issue, but not getting the oil or the seasoning right is a big problem.
Thick chips with medium fry color. The pieces are bigger, and one is folded in half. Very much a kettle-style chip.
Biting in, there’s a nice crunch but maybe a little too thicc for my taste. I’d like it to melt in my mouth a little more (…in bed). The BBQ seasoning skews sweeter than smoky, which I actually like. It’s a shame, these are average to above average in most ways, but too thick overall, which makes them more of a chore to eat than addicting.
Rating: 6/10
Bottom Line:
Crunch is good, and these are definitely that, but I’m of the opinion that crunch should be fun for my mouth and not a daunting test of endurance. Thinner slices, plz.
These look like smaller chip fragments, with kind of a darker fry and more bubbling. The fry looks less uniform than the others I’ve had so far.
Biting in, the crunch is hard and shattery, and the BBQ flavor is bold, spicy, sweet, and intense with a lingering pepperiness. These are big, bold flavors, and crunchy chips. But the oil has an odd taste to it, or maybe too much of it just soaked into the chips.
Rating: 6/10
Bottom Line:
These are Steve Bramucci’s favorite, so his first question was whether these were the winner. To me, these felt like what I think I want out of BBQ chips but actually don’t. The seasoning was big and bold and tasty, but maybe too much of it? They were definitely too oily regardless. I feel like I’d eat a few of these and quit before they gave me heartburn.
Heavily fried, thicker, kettle-looking chips. These LOOK too thick and overseasoned, but we’ll see.
Biting in, they’re not as thick as I thought, and they kind of melt in your mouth. But they are on the oily side. Seasoning is fine. These are replacement-level chips.
Rating: 6.5
Bottom Line:
I didn’t really notice the promised imperfections in these, for whatever that’s worth. They were fine. I guess I could see buying them for being the only chips named after your mom (oh!).
Smaller chips, darker fry, thicker chip. A little bubbling. Not folded, but definitely skews kettle-style.
Biting in, they’re not as thick as they look, and they melt in my mouth quite nicely. What’s that flavor though? Pickle? Maybe dill or coriander or something I associate with pickles? The texture is nice, but the flavor is bizarre. Are these actually pickle-flavored chips that got mislabeled?
Rating: 6.5
Bottom Line:
This one was an interesting case in that it was a nicely sized, fried, and textured chip with easily the worst seasoning of the bunch. Nothing in the ingredients list jumps out as something weird, and yet weird they were. And they’re just labeled “barbeque.” I’m honestly confused.
Medium color fry and thicker cut, these feel like classic kettle style. Not too many folds in the potatoes. Very pungent BBQ seasoning that’s different than any of the rest.
Biting in, is that lime? No, wait, mustard? This feels like mustard BBQ sauce or something. It’s interesting, but I don’t love it, and the chips are a little too thick for my taste.
Rating: 6.5/10
Bottom Line:
According to the ingredients list, there was indeed some mustard in there, along with (deep breath) “Cane Sugar, Sea Salt, Brown Cane Sugar, Organic Corn Maltodextrin, Tomato Powder, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Natural Flavor, Gum Arabic, Red Chili Powder, Yeast Extract, Citric Acid, Mustard, Modified Cornstarch, Red Pepper Sauce Powder, Vinegar, Oleoresin of Paprika, Ground Cinnamon, Ground Black Pepper, Rosemary Extract.”
I’m not sure what makes a barbecue sauce “Texas-style,” but I’m guessing chili powder? Anyway, the kettle style was a big improvement over the regular 365 chips, but the “Texas-style” seasoning wasn’t my favorite.
Most of these are folded over once and medium-sized, with either a medium fry color or a heavy dusting of BBQ seasoning powder. They look halfway between kettle and regular.
Biting in, they’re nice and crumbly and they melt in your mouth more than they shatter, which is surprisingly nice. The BBQ flavor is mildly sweet and smoky. These are good but kind of one-note.
Rating: 6.5/10
Bottom Line:
These were my wife’s favorite and I was a little surprised to see old school Lay’s do as well in my own rankings. The texture of the chip was really nice, a little thinner than your standard kettle style, which can tend towards too thick and mouth hurt-y. I think our point of departure was the lack of smoke flavor in the seasoning, which was a big plus for my wife but stood out as a lack for me. I don’t need it to taste like a campfire, but a subtle hint of smoke is nice.
Thick, lightly fried, medium-sized chips mostly folded over once, with visible pepper flakes and lots of bubbling.
Biting in, the BBQ flavor isn’t too strong, in fact, it’s barely there. But the chips have a nice thickness — okay, maybe just a tad too thick. These are just fine otherwise.
Rating: 6.75/10
Bottom Line:
Sometimes the chips are too thick. Chips should not hurt, this is my platform. “First of all, do no harm.” That’s the Chippocratic Oath.
These are more Pringles. Hooray, Pringles! These look slightly lighter in color with reddish powder coating them unevenly.
Biting in, what the heck is this flavor? It’s sweet, but also spicy, and… kind of cheesy? There’s a Cheez-It quality to these. Intriguing. But in a good way? I dunno.
Rating: 7/10
Bottom Line:
It’s hard to rate a Pringle against another kind of chip, but I also do love a Pringle. They may not be the best, but they’re always a Pringle, and Pringles sometimes just hit the spot. This was my least favorite flavor of Pringle though. The cheese was weird and the spice didn’t really hit and mostly it tasted like it was trying to do too much. Relax, Pringle! Take a load off. Life doesn’t have to be so hard.
Biting in, these are a little smokier than the other Pringle-type ones with that Pringle biscuitiness though, and melt-in-your-mouth addictiveness. They’re more Pringle-flavored than BBQ flavored, but hey, if you’re gonna eat a Pringle, eat a Pringle.
Rating: 7/10
Bottom Line:
First of all, how are you going to give your company a fancy-pants, mid-Atlantic name like “The Good Crisp” company and then make Pringles? Are Pringles even “crisps?” Quick, someone find a Bobby or a chimney sweep to ask. Anyway, these are basically Pringles, which are 10/10 when you want a Pringle.
These are quite plainly Pringles or an imitator. Light-color fry (?) and uniform, with no folds. Listen, a Pringle is a Pringle.
Biting in, they crumble more than crunch and have that biscuity kind of flavor. The seasoning is barely there, more just a mild sweetness, an overtone, or a nuance to your standard Pringle flavor. Which isn’t a bad thing. I’ve always found these things weirdly addicting. The bbq flavor adds to the effect. I don’t know how to rate them against standard potato chips because they’re kind of a different thing, but they’re undeniably good.
Obviously sweet potato, and weirdly the only one of these. These were also cut lengthwise, which is interesting — why don’t they ever do that with regular potatoes? They really look nice and crispy.
Biting in, the texture is nice: crispy, but not too hard. Flavorwise, there’s a hint of heat and some sweetness, but it’s hard to tell whether the sweet comes from the BBQ flavoring or the sweet potato itself. It’s pretty mild, but mostly in a good way. Definitely something different, but I’d eat these.
Rating: 7/10
Bottom Line:
It’s weird that in all the places I went to buy chips I could only find one single barbecue-flavored variety of sweet potato chips. These are pretty good. Much better than sweet potato fries, in my opinion.
Amber, orangey-brown chip, looks thicker than a Lay’s but with big pieces — not really kettle-style looking.
Biting in, the BBQ flavor is mostly sweet without a ton of smoke or spice, but well seasoned and nice. These are pretty good, if maybe ever so slightly too thick.
Rating: 7.5
Bottom Line:
These Lay’s Kettle-Cooked have the same sweet yet not-too-smokey/peppery seasoning as regular Lay’s, but in a thicker, harder, more “kettle cooked” variety. Though Lay’s version of kettle cooked has bigger potato slices (nice) and arguably not as hard/stale feeling.
These are fried darker with smaller, thicker pieces and more folds in them of the kind I associate with “kettle” style chips. Fairly regular brownish seasoning dusting them.
Biting in, the seasoning is the most intense yet. It’s a nice, sweet-smoky bbq flavor, and the crunch is thicker and harder but still melts in your mouth. These are good, but maybe overseasoned? I oddly miss some of that potato flavor. Still, pretty good overall.
Rating: 7.5/10
Bottom Line:
I still don’t think that wood flavor — mesquite or hickory — is my favorite in chips, but the texture and fry on these were pretty ideal. Crunchy and substantial but still melt-in-your-mouth.
Big pieces, thick and dark with folds, look heavily seasoned. Like kettle-style chips with big pieces.
Biting in, this is a nice kettle-style chip, and the BBQ flavoring is strong and bold. There’s an extra flavor in there though, like bourbon or heavy smoke or molasses? It’s a lot and these are pretty thick, but they’re very good. Addictive.
Rating: 8/10
Bottom Line:
A lot of times in these blind taste tests with a lot of different variations on the same thing, the ones that are a little different end up standing out in a bad way, where the weirdness comes off unpleasant, or like someone made a mistake. In this case, the “bourbon” tweak was really successful. I liked these a lot. It’s interesting, the “bourbon BBQ” flavors were one of my favorites, but the “backyard BBQ” was one of my least favorite. Do I just hate backyards? What makes a backyard BBQ different from a bourbon?
Bigger potato chips, lighter in color — more like traditional Lay’s than your darker, harder, kettle-cooked chips. Some bubbling on the exterior of the chips and seasoning flecks.
Biting in, these are thicker than Lay’s, but not as hard as the kettle kind of chips. They’re crispy, but more in a crumbly way than a shattery way. They melt in your mouth. The BBQ flavor is more sweet than peppery. Nice potato flavor. Tasty. Hard not to keep eating these.
Rating: 8/10
Bottom Line:
I didn’t identify these without the bag, but I always get excited when a sandwich shop (which is where I normally find this brand) stocks these — like my favorite sandwich joint in college, Board & Brew in Del Mar, California. It’s not surprising to find them near the top of my blind tasting. Fried in a peanut oil blend with “parts of the peel left on for flavor,” the Funky Fusion flavor of this Utz product is my favorite.
Wife’s Rating: 2/10 (My wife is even more turned off by fake mesquite than I am, turns out. I’m curious how she’d rate a different flavor of Dirty chips, but I didn’t have another on hand).
Sort of a gold color, thick and foldy with bigger potato pieces. Very kettle-style.
Biting in, I expected these to be overly hard but they weren’t. They have a nice crunch and the BBQ seasoning is some of the best in the bunch, sweet, smoky, and garlicky. I like these.
Rating: 8.5/10.
Bottom Line:
I get the feeling I could do this test four times on four different days and get four slightly different results. Anyway, the texture and size of these were nice. That notably garlic-heavy barbecue seasoning was that “little something extra” that put it over the top for me today. I liked everything in the top three quite a bit and there wasn’t a huge separation between them.
Wife’s Rating: 7/10
Final Thoughts
It’s hard to find many common threads because there are so many factors at play here, but I’m going to try anyway. I think the ideal chip is made from large slices of potato. It’s thicker than a traditional Lay’s but thinner than a standard kettle-style. It’s substantial and crunchy but it melts in your mouth. It’s medium-fried and not too greasy. It’s well seasoned, but not overseasoned. The barbecue flavoring has some sweet, some smoky, maybe a little heat, and a little “somethin’ extra” (bourbon, sweet onion, garlic, whatever). Ideally, it doesn’t have that weird hickory or mesquite flavor.
There, that is my second Corinthians as applied to barbecue-flavored potato chips. Have I wasted my life? Discuss.
Following a very public break-up with Kim Kardashian, Pete Davidson received some not so kind words from Kardashian’s ex-husband, Kanye West. In a since-deleted Instagram post, West shared a mock-up of a fake New York Times front page, which read, “Skete Davidson Dead At Age 28.” This wasn’t the first time West expressed disdain toward Davidson while Davidson and Kardashian were dating: In a video for “Eazy,” a song by The Game on which Ye is featured, West kidnapped and buried an animated version of the comedian. He has also made several violent threats to Davidson numerous times on social media over the past few months.
A source close to Davidson spoke with People and revealed that since April of this year, Davidson has “has been in trauma therapy in large part” due to posts by West.
“The attention and negativity coming from Kanye and his antics is a trigger for [Pete], and he’s had to seek out help,” the source said.
The source also noted that since the breakup with Kardashian, Davidson “has no regrets for dating Kim and wants it to be made very clear that she’s been nothing but supportive of him throughout their relationship.”
“Moving forward, he just wants to focus on his career,” the source said.
Things haven’t exactly gone according to plan for Boston Red Sox ace and noted retro jersey haterChris Sale. An uneven 2019 was followed by a lost 2020 season thanks to Tommy John surgery. 2021 marked a return to the mound at midseason and to his previous form across nine starts, but he’s again been beset by injuries this year, missing three months due to a broken rib, making the wrong kind of headlines on his rehab assignment after destroying some signage in a minor league tunnel, and then promptly breaking his pinky in just his second game back.
Sale had been on the comeback trail from his most recent injury, but he apparently took a detour, falling off his bike and breaking his wrist — an injury that will keep him out for the rest of the season, according to MassLive reporter Chris Cotillo. The Red Sox are taking this in stride, with the team’s head of operations Chaim Bloom telling reporters, “We need to dispatch some people to find whoever has the Chris Sale voodoo doll and recover it.”
“You couldn’t make this up, right? We need to dispatch some people to go find whoever has the Chris Sale voodoo doll and recover it.”
Bloom explained that Sale fell off his bike while riding it to pick up lunch after a throwing session at Boston College (because Fenway was being occupied by a concert).
This is probably a death blow to already waning postseason hopes that were previously hampered by the team’s weird two-steps-forward-two-steps-back approach to the trade deadline. And while “wait till next year” sentiments are a popular balm for these kinds of burns, it’s an open question if stars like Xander Bogaerts (with his opt-out) and Rafael Devers (with his lack of an extension) will be back, and what, if anything, they can expect from Sale. After all, he’s only thrown about 50 innings since signing a 150 million dollar five-year extension that runs through 2024, so whether it’s all connected to a voodoo doll or a lack of the team wrapping its star pitcher in bubble wrap, something’s gotta be done to get actual value out of that contract.
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