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Phony and Petey have a lot in common. Aside from having five-letter mononym stage names that start with P and end with Y, the two were actually college roommates once upon a time. Now, they’re yet again occupying each other’s space, but this time it’s on a new song, as Phony has recruited Petey for “Kaleidoscope.”

The song starts with mostly just piano and vocals before electronic instruments swell to guide the song to its apex and cathartic end. The track comes from At Some Point You Stop, Phony’s upcoming album set for release on July 29.

Phony says of the tune, “This song is about gaining perspective and the importance of looking at things from every angle. I’ve never had a song that was just piano but it was the first thing that came to mind. Petey and I were roommates in college and had always loved each other’s music but never played with each other on a record. I called him up one day and said, ‘You wanna sing on this piano song of mine?’ and he said, ‘Of course.’ I had everything written already, so we just got bagels then hung at the house for an hour and it was done.”

Meanwhile, the two have some big plans for this summer and fall: Phony is going on the road with Joyce Manor while Petey has his own tour lined up and a few shows supporting Manchester Orchestra. In March, Petey also shared a 22-minute film based on his album from last year, Lean Into Life.

Listen to “Kaleidoscope” above.

For everything that has been reported up to this point about Deandre Ayton‘s future, the Phoenix Suns still have the clearest path to signing him to an extension due to his status as a restricted free agent. Still, the simple fact of the matter this entire time has been that Ayton wants to be compensated like a max player while the Suns aren’t quite there, and according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, that continues to be the case.

Wojnarowski went onto SportsCenter and discussed the current state of play with Ayton, which continues to be that the two sides are steadfast in their positions.

“There’s no traction there,” Wojnarowski said. “There hasn’t been. They had a chance to do an extension last year at a max number. Phoenix has simply decided they don’t value Deandre Ayton on a max contract.”

There are, apparently, teams that disagree with the Suns’ assessment. Further, there is some optimism that a sign-and-trade can be worked out with Ayton that gets him paid, while Phoenix is able to get something back for the talented big man.

“The good news for Deandre Ayton is a number of teams around the league do,” Wojnarowski said. “And I think as a restricted free agent, what most teams are expecting right now as they jockey to get involved with Deandre Ayton is a sign-and-trade scenario where, obviously, because he’s a restricted free agent, Phoenix could match and offer sheet and keep him. I think what Phoenix and Deandre Ayton would prefer is they come to an agreement where the Suns get some assets from a team, whether it’s draft picks or players or cap space, and Deandre Ayton gets his max contract elsewhere.”

The Suns took Ayton with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2018 NBA Draft.

After being named in Cassidy Hutchinson‘s highly damaging testimony to the January 6 committee, Rudy Giuliani attempted to conduct his own damage control. Per usual, Giuliani’s efforts spectacularly backfired as he may have accidentally incriminated himself in a deleted tweet.

Hutchinson’s explosive testimony outlined what was happening in the White House in the lead-up and execution of the Capitol assault, and it’s left Trump world spinning thanks to allegations of the former president facilitating weapons being brought to his “Stop the Steal” rally. Giuliani’s name was mentioned several times in connection to both the alleged planning of the January 6 event and the request for pardons afterwards.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Giuliani claimed Hutchinson couldn’t have known he asked for a pardon because she wasn’t in the room. “The January 6 Witch Hunt Cabal has now exceeded even its prior fraudulent,” Giuliani wrote via Raw Story. “The last witness was a reckless liar. Contrary to her false testimony she was never present when I asked for a pardon.”

However, realizing that he just admitted to requesting a pardon, Giuliani deleted the tweet and attempted to massage his remarks by saying, actually, he told Trump he didn’t need one. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

“Once again the January 6 Committee of ‘Russian Collusion’ Liars suborned perjury from Cassidy Hutchinson. I specifically told President Trump I did not want or need a pardon,” Giuliani wrote in a new tweet. “I, also, have witnesses to corroborate that she and the Committee are perpetrating yet another lie.”

To be clear, what Giuliani may have done here is attempt to discredit a witness by saying, “Nuh uh, she wasn’t even in the room when I totally did the thing she’s accusing me of.” Classic Rudy.

(Via Raw Story)

Snail Mail is about to have a busy summer. Not only does the Lindsey Jordan-fronted band have a headlining tour in support of Valentine to look forward to, they’ll also be a part of Turnstile’s Love Connection Tour (along with Jpegmafia) and are taking part in Courtney Barnett’s Here And There touring “festival.” Now, Snail Mail has added more material to its arsenal with two new songs releases in the Spotify Singles series.

“Feeling Like I Do” is a cover of a Superdrag song off of their 2002 album Last Call For Vitriol, while the band also put out a new version of “Headlock,” from Valentine. The biggest shift on the new version of “Headlock” is in Jordan’s delivery. She sounds like a vocalist who has been perfecting her range and experimenting with new ways to convey lyrics like, “Man enough to see this through. Man, I’m nothing without you.”

In a statement, Jordan said of the main difference between the two versions, “The original was recorded almost two years ago, and the more I perform the song the more I think of ideas that I wish I had put into the original. This version gave me the opportunity to implement some of those ideas.”

Meanwhile, the “Feeling Like I Do’ cover gave Jordan an opportunity to have fun with a favorite song. “I love it, and I’ve loved it for a while,” she said. “And I was able to make it my own by singing on it.”

Listen to Snail Mail’s “Headlock” and “Feeling Like I Do” cover below.

20 years ago, an emerging 17-year old Canadian pop-punk singer named Avril Lavigne released her debut album, Let Go, and enamored the world with earworm singles like “Sk8er Boi,” “Complicated,” and “I’m With You.” Those songs are still a part of pop culture consciousness today and the album has been certified Platinum seven times over by the RIAA. As she celebrates the album’s 20th anniversary, Lavigne has been having a career resurgence, performing “Complicated” on stage with Olivia Rodrigo and releasing her latest album, Love Sux.

But nothing can really top the lightning in a bottle of Let Go, and to commemorate the anniversary, Lavigne, who is about to get married again, took to TikTok to recreate the album’s now-iconic cover photo. Back then, the redhead teen stood with arms crossed on a New York City intersection, on Canal Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She wore baggy blag pants, matching black trench coat, and boots, along with a blasé expression that just seemed to say, “Whatever, dude.” The image captured the apathy that counterculture teens felt about living in a soon-to-be post-emo world.

In the cover shot recreation video, Lavigne walks matter-of-factly onto the same Canal St. intersection in broad daylight. She crosses her arms and tilts her head not caring what’s happening around her. “I’m Just A Kid” by Simple Plan plays and it’s pop punk perfection once again. Check it out below.

The Holiday, Shrek, and The Mask are all good movies with one thing in common that sets them apart from every other movie. As it turns out, all perfect cinema can be traced back to one important player: Cameron Diaz.

Diaz famously retired from acting in 2014, returning for a minuscule cameo in 2019’s Charlie’s Angels and also a one-time stint on RuPaul’s Drag Race earlier this year, of course. It looks like her hiatus is coming to an end, so we can breathe a sigh of relief that one day, maybe, there could be another Shrek movie out there.

According to Variety, Diaz is slated to return to the big screen (well, whatever screen you stream Netflix on) alongside Jamie Foxx in the action-comedy Back In Action, where she will seemingly be back in action. Diaz and Foxx have worked together on numerous projects in the past, including Any Given Sunday and her last movie role pre-hiatus, Annie.

There are minimal plot details, though the movie is being written by Neighbors’ Brendan O’Brien and directed by Seth Gordon, who worked with Diaz on Horrible Bosses.

Diaz has been quiet since stepping back from Hollywood, a move she famously did not regret, as she felt like she was being treated like a “machine.” The actress has had some time to rest and recharge, so perhaps now is the perfect time to ask about a potential Being John Malkovitch follow-up.

(Via Variety)

Little Havana is having kind of a moment in hip-hop. Not only did Rick Ross offer a musical ode to the Miami neighborhood on his latest album but now Future has also given a glimpse of a day in the life there with his new video for “Holy Ghost.” Strolling down the street one evening, a shirtless Future finds himself hanging out on the porch with some residents, playing dominoes, and having what appears to be one heck of a great time with the natives, who all sport matching house arrest monitors on their ankles.

The implication is clear; no matter where Future ends up, he’ll always find his people. Despite our differences, we have a lot more in common. If you doubt it, just break out the dominoes and watch what happens. And because it’s a rap video, of course, they found a way to get some booty in the clip too, via a scantily-clad woman hanging up laundry on a clothesline.

“Holy Ghost” is track 13 on Future’s latest album, I Never Liked You, which was released on April 29 via Freebandz and Epic Records. Sporting the singles “Worst Day,” “Wait For U,” and “Keep It Burnin,” the album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, becoming Future’s seventh album to do so. Future has since released one more video, for the song “Puffin On Zootiez.”

Watch the “Holy Ghost” video above.

Taika Waititi, as he says ahead, enjoys “playing” with fans’ expectations of what a Thor movie should be. After Thor: Ragnarok (which came out, somehow, five years ago now), he’s certainly cracked the code on how to make a Thor movie. Waititi’s Thor is less “stoic god” and more “lovable lunkhead,” which makes this iteration of Chris Hemsworth’s Thor extremely endearing. (And having an actor like Hemsworth who can look the part, but also be hilarious, certainly helps.) So for Waititi, the obvious next step, in Thor: Love and Thunder, was to have Thor go through a midlife crisis and reassess his feelings on love.

Which means Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is back. And, following a similar arc from the comics, Thor’s old weapon, the hammer Mjölnir, calls out to Jane (there’s also a love triangle in this movie between Thor, Mjölnir, and Thor’s new weapon, Stormbreaker), which results in her becoming Mighty Thor. So she joins Thor, Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson), and Korg (Waititi) on a galaxy-spanning adventure to stop Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) from killing all the gods in the galaxy (which would include Thor). But, as comic fans know, Jane’s new powers come with a price.

Ahead, Waititi says they started discussing where Thor should go next literally the day Ragnarok hit theaters. And he tells us how he got Russell Crowe to play Zeus (in a performance that can best be described as “over the top,” who had to be convinced this would not be anything like Maximus from Gladiator. But, first, Waititi makes fun of my Zoom feed. Because, now, I’m the only person left who does not have a good Zoom background.

Good to see you.

You, too. This looks good. This video is interesting to me. This looks like found footage from a horror film.

Me? Yeah, That’s accurate.

It’s awesome. I love it. It looks like it’s 4:00 AM.

This corner is the only place in this room that doesn’t have a bunch of stuff behind it. If I tilt up, see, there’s a Star Trek: The Motion Picture poster…

[Laughs] Oh… I’m not promoting Star Trek: The Motion Picture?

Yeah, that’s what we are here to talk about.

Alright.

So, Thor owns a Cocktails and Dreams neon sign from Cocktail. In the theater I did the DiCaprio pointing at the screen meme…

Yeah. I think a lot of the design of that stuff was like, what would seem really just weird. Like other things that are going through space, why not have Cocktails and Dreams on the outside of the goat boat? And also, it’s a goat boat, a Viking ship being dragged by goats through space and the space dolphins. And a lot of the stuff is from the comics. And a lot of the stuff is from the Norse mythology as well – the goats and the towing the ship through space, all that stuff. And it’s just like, I think with this film, after we did Ragnarok, we wanted to do something that felt just as colorful and energetic and just as much of a sort of bombastic feel to it, but we wanted to be able to make it maybe a bit more emotional, push Thor further. And out of all of the elements that we managed to get into the film, it sort of retains that. And I think maybe just because it’s the closest film to me right now, but I do think it’s better.

So when you finish Ragnarok, you’re thinking to yourself, “You know what this movie’s missing? It’s missing a direct reference to Cocktail, and we have to correct that.”

Exactly. Yeah. That’s right. My big regret with Ragnarok was not doing Cocktail.

And now it’s corrected.

Well, probably Jeff Goldblum’s big palace in Ragnarok? It should have been in there.

Right.

When we finished Raganarok, we actually all went to dinner. And this was five years ago, the night that the film opened in cinemas. And then we all discussed, we were like, what would be next for Thor? We knew Raknarok would be leading up to Endgame. But what would be the next thing? And it was five years ago that we came up with this whole montage: his travels, clips from things you’ve never seen him in or seen him doing, as a kid, how he grew up. And the whole film kind of about this all sort of unraveled from there. Then wanting to bring Jane back, wanting to bring in the God Butcher. Because even on Ragnarok, we were looking at the God Butcher there.

Am I crazy, or is Beetlejuice in this movie? I saw a shadow creature at the end that looked like Beetlejuice once he transforms into a monster. I didn’t know if that was a reference or not, or maybe my brain made that up.

Maybe one of these computer people did it themselves. I wouldn’t mind.

So it’s possible is what you’re saying?

Yeah. It’s possible. And if it did happen, I’m okay with it.

Especially the first third of this movie, I felt a connection with Thor. He went through trauma, and we’ve all been through trauma with the pandemic and everything. And I think a lot of people have reassessed their lives. This really hits something.

Well, the film is about finding Thor in a midlife crisis, trying to figure out his purpose. And as you’re saying, a lot of people in the last two years, have gone, “Was I happy before? Was I doing what I’ve been doing?” Suddenly, they’re realizing they’re at home with their families. They’re like, “Oh, I think this is actually what I want.” And it’s about finding purpose and finding just a reason for what we do and whether it counts. Can I do more? And that whole aim by the end of the film was to sort of find his real purpose. And I’m not going to say what that is, but yeah, that was important.

Do you want to do another Thor? I mean, I feel like you’ve cracked the code with Thor. I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes where it’s like, yeah, I could easily do another one and probably do a really good one, but would you want to?

Well, yeah, not right now. If Chris was into it and stuff, I’m sure there’s an even crazier thing that we could probably come up with.

Right.

It’s just got to be something that’s at least, that no one expects. With Love and Thunder, we were like, what would be good after Ragnarok? What could we do? And I was thinking, well, I like kind of like playing with the fans a little bit. And I was like, the thing that no Thor fan really wants to see is the word “love” in a Thor title. “I’m Thor, and I go out and smash things and stuff.” No, but Thor being in love, the idea of love surrounding Thor, is actually pretty amazing. And there’s a character I want to see.

Speaking of that, I’m just guessing, but I felt like you were almost at your happiest directing the stuff with Thor and Jane when they’re dating. All the flashback stuff.

Totally! Totally.

I feel like you could do a whole movie of just that.

Yeah. For me, the film is really just that relationship, you know? We’ve got his story as well. But for me, one of the most important things really was just to continue those little looks to the side and looking at each other and just kind of that throughout the film that you really get the feeling, oh, these feelings are still here.

How did you convince Russell Crowe to do this? Because he’s amazing in it!

Yeah, he’s incredible.

I couldn’t believe what I was watching.

It made sense seeing his name. And I’ve always wanted to work with him or put him in something. He was very close to coming to do this soccer movie, but I couldn’t make the schedule work for him. And we became friends before Love and Thunder. I’d been wanting to work with him and then just came to him while we were in Sydney, came out to his place, and I was like, “Look, mate, I know it’s going to look like we’re just trying to get you to redo the Gladiator role. but this is going to be more fun.”

No, he’s not Maximus in this.

No, there no Maximus in this. I love him in this because I’ve never seen him like this.

You should do a Zeus movie with Russell.

That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?

‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ hit theaters on July 8th. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

O.J. Simpson has tangled with the law on more than one (high-profile) occasion. There was, of course, that mid-1990s double murder trial, in which Simpson famously brandished the above gloves, which his Dream Team alleged were planted by problematic Detective Mark Fuhrman. The incident would lead one to believe that The Juice is not exactly a pro-cop kind of guy. And a subsequently-surfaced interview, in which he meticulously detailed Nicole Brown Simpson’s “hypothetical” murder, would support that chain of thought. And then there’s the fact that O.J. was convicted in 2008 (and served hard time) for 10 charges (ranging from armed robbery to kidnapping).

For the latter set of crimes, O.J. emerged on parole after nine years in prison, and he now spends his days making video rants for “Twitter world.” In his latest installment, he became an unlikely proponent of not defunding the police. There’s no telling why he oddly transitions into talking about the January 6 hearings. Here’s what O.J. had to say about law enforcement and funding in general after an election development:

“In Los Angeles, they voted to defund the Sheriff’s Department. I think that’s all wrong. I spent a little time in one of our institutions, and trust me, we need police. We need the Sheriff’s Department. I’ve always said they should just redirect some of those funds to better training, and I’ve always said [they should be] expanding the IA. The Internal Affairs who investigate the police, but defunding the police as a whole, or the Sheriff’s Department as a whole? No.”

The entire subject of the argument aside, it’s difficult to accept a “trust me” from O.J. Simpson. Yet at least he appears to be staying out of felony territory lately while emerging in bizarre TikTok videos for the masses, and he goes golfing a lot. Alright!

It was reported yesterday that Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker was hospitalized for an unknown reason. Now, it appears we know more about what happened: TMZ reports that according to “multiple sources connected to the family,” Barker has pancreatitis (an inflammation of the pancreas) and doctors believe it was triggered by a recent colonoscopy.

It seems colonoscopy-induced pancreatitis is at least somewhat rare: In 2011, the Journal Of Hospital Medicine noted, “Complications of a colonoscopy include perforation and bleeding. There are 2 published cases of colonoscopy‐induced pancreatitis in the English‐language literature. It is postulated that colonic manipulation induces trauma to the pancreas because of the anatomic proximity of the pancreas and colon.”

While it’s not clear what type of pancreatitis Barker may have, American Family Physician notes, “Mild acute pancreatitis has a very low mortality rate (less than 1 percent), whereas the death rate for severe acute pancreatitis can be 10 to 30 percent depending on the presence of sterile versus infected necrosis. In the United States, up to 210,000 patients per year are admitted to a hospital for acute pancreatitis.”

Barker’s hospitalization came just hours after he tweeted, “God save me.” The drummer reportedly visited Los Angeles’ West Hills hospital being being transported to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Barker’s daughter, Alabama Barker, took to social media to write, “Please send your prayers.”

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.