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Steven “A$AP Yams” Rodriguez was a powerful element in the rise of the A$AP Mob. His music helped usher in a new wave of East Coast rap that took the planet by storm. To get a sense of his lasting impact at the time of this article, his single “Yamborghini High feat Juicy J” currently has more than 141 million views on YouTube. But in the middle of the truly meteoric rise of the A$AP Mob, tragedy struck. A$AP Yams died suddenly on January 18, 2015, after an accidental fentanyl overdose. The hip-hop world was shaken to its core at the death of this 26-year-old rising star. Yam’s death was part of a growing trend inside the entertainment world and mainstream America, where fentanyl overdoses were fast on the rise.

Taking a broader view, fentanyl overdoses have spiked in the country at an alarming rate over the past decade. Musicians, college kids, and even cops are not safe from the rapid death toll the drug has claimed across all American demographics. According to the DEA website, as little as 2 milligrams can kill you. The death rate increases when those small amounts are mixed with other drugs. Rolling Stone recently did a feature on how many celebrities — Prince, Tom Petty, Lil Peep, etc. — have fallen victim to having very small doses of fentanyl laced with other drugs. Two students at Ohio State University just died after an accidental overdose from buying fake Adderall pills. San Jose State University football star turned Police Officer, Dejon Packer recently died in his home from “fentanyl toxicity.”

No one is safe from this drug. Full stop.

In response to the devasting toll caused by fentanyl, A$AP Yams’ mother, Tatianna Paulino founded the Always Strive and Prosper Foundation (It follows the A$AP moniker, the acronym created by Yams). Darryl Phillips joined her in actualizing her vision. Serving as Executive Director in the non-profit they spread awareness to the streets on how to avoid the deadly impact of drugs, focusing on fentanyl. We spoke with Tatiana and Darryl about Yams’ music, A$AP Yams Day, and their mission to heal the hood.

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Can you tell me why the Always Strive And Prosper Foundation was created and what your goals are with it for young people?

Darryl Phillips: The foundation was created really as a a commemorative, but also a meaningful mission brought together by Tatiana Paulino, A$AP Yams, mom. She wanted to be able to help one family or, you know, an individual person, whoever. If we could kind of help in any way to not experience some of the mourning that she was going through. It kind of started as something that we just were talking about. Then we got together in a community room up in Riverdale, in the Bronx and just started discussing what we saw as issues.

From there we tried to figure out we could deal with substance abuse.. But really it was just about this woman here [Yam’s mom] wanting to be able to help other families and other people to not go through the same pain.

Sometimes when a rapper dies, in the expansion of public awareness, the humanity of the individual can be lost. Can you tell us who he was to you before the rest of the world got to know him?

Tatianna Paulino: Well, I don’t even know how to describe that. It’s like, he was my kid. He was my friend. He was my son and he was everything for me before he was A$AP. He was my kid.

He made a lot of jokes. So for me in the house, it was like having a comedian around all of the time. You know, having a great time, having dinner with him. He was hilarious. So I miss all the family time that we had together.

Now, do you remember the day or even the moment you decided you were gonna create a foundation?

Paulino: The same time he passed away. I wanted to do something to help other parents and other families with the problem that I’m going through at the moment. Because it’s really hard. He was helping a lot of people in the music business, we can help another family. I said, “We have to do the foundation. We have to keep his legacy alive.”

Do either of you have advice for parents who may be concerned about their kids abusing drugs or being exposed to these environments? What is your advice to them?

Phillips: I think the advice is to try and have a conversation [with your kids]. To always be able to instill something about truth with your children, with your kids, your brothers, your family members. Speak to each other in a way that involves care and some kind of trust.

I had a conversation at a friend’s house once and you know, we’re talking about drug use and just how it was impacting community lives. He’s like “Well, you know, my son is not really around friends that are into that.” The son chimed in and said, “No, actually they are.” The dad was shocked.

Then provide extracurricular things. Like “Hey, do you know, what is it that you wanna do? And how can I help you do that with art, basketball, chess- you know? Ask how you can support their personal vision of themselves.

Paulino: I think as parents, we have to be open-minded. Try to get information, to see what’s really going out there. Because sometimes we are behind, because of our age.

Can you talk about A$AP Yams Day? What happens at those events?

Phillips: It was something where we were asking the mob, can we do something? A$AP Rocky was kind of always carrying a flag for that, as well. He wanted to make sure it was something that was really commemorative. It’s a concert that involves not really random artists, but up-and-coming artists.

The first year [Jan 18, 2019] seemed to be the coldest day of the year. It was marking the day that he passed. It was a who’s who of artists. But we also had up and comers take the stage as well.

The Weeknd, Kendrick, Tyler [the Creator], there has been such a host of people that have come to support it. And now we can incubate programs to do little events that we could outside the concert to develop the community. You know, I think every day is A$AP Yams Day.

Do you have any messages for the artists that promote, you know, the high drug lifestyle these days? They really do seem to have the ears of the teens and kids.

Phillips: We can’t blame the kids ever. Us being old school, we always understood that even when it was in NWA was a reflection of what we were going through in our community. We were experiencing every day going outside, the injustice that was over us. We had a generation of kids that grew up living with their grandparents. Not even their parents. So I think we have to look at the overall larger picture, which is the drug war. We have to look at the pharmaceutical companies that are really pushing the agenda [of how these drugs are made so available to teenagers]. From Purdue [an international pharmaceutical company responsible for many opioid deaths] and many others.

Follow the money on all that.I can’t blame the artists. We have to try and see what we can do to counter it or to figure out how to abate it in some way.

Tatianna, can you tell me some of the other upcoming events, your organization will be hosting?

Paulino: So we have a back-to-school event usually involving a basketball tournament. We have a show in Harlem and it’s going on in the lower east side. We have a toy and coat drive that we do as well. That’s around the Christmas holidays. It was just really us giving them scarves, brand new toys, and other people coming to donate stuff for the kids. We try and keep these quarterly events alive as well. We are always working to figure out other ways to support other people doing other events also.

Phillips: So Michael K. Williams was a friend of mine. He knew of our organization as well. And when he passed, you know, we were able to contribute. We’d like to do something, I think a little bit outta state. I’m going to talk to some people about A$AP Yams events in LA and on the west coast.

For more information and support on upcoming events, issues with fentanyl, and other addiction issues please contact the Always Strive and Prosper Foundation and on IG @asapfoundation.

Whoopi Goldberg went to town on Republicans who voted against a domestic terrorism bill in the wake of the mass shooting in Buffalo last weekend. The View co-host called out the GOP, with the sole exception of Rep. Adam Kinzinger, for turning what should’ve been an easy vote into another political skirmish.

“When did Washington really get to be a place where stopping domestic terrorism is divisive?” Goldberg said before blasting the Republican Party for voting against it, including two members who originally sponsored the bill.

Via Decider:

“The bill was put together to take care of targeted folks: Asian folks, Jews, women, Blacks. And [Republicans] just said, ‘No, no. We’re gonna create this bill, we’re gonna put it forth, we’re gonna get people to say to it, and then we’re gonna vote it down.’ So when you’re thinking about what direction we’re going in, just know where you’re being protected and how you’re not being protected.”

She added, “This was a simple thing to do. Everybody could have done this.”

As the segment continued, Goldberg continued to voice her disbelief at the Republicans’ inaction. “I thought everybody was against white supremacy. I thought that’s what everybody said they were.”

Ultimately, The View host said it’s now up to voters to fix the problem by voting the GOP out. “If they don’t know what domestic terrorism is… if they pretend they don’t know, you have to make a decision with your voting fingers,” Goldberg instructed the audience.

(Via Decider)

Six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams is coming for her little gold guy in a film aptly titled Nightbitch, which is exactly what I’ve turned into as a result of Amy Adams never winning an Oscar.

Deadline reports that Searchlight Pictures has secured the rights to distribute Nightbitch from Annapurna. The dark comedy/horror film is based on Rachel Yoder’s acclaimed debut novel of the same name. Amy Adams is set to star in Nightbitch with Marielle Heller (The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) directing. Heller, who directed Oscar-nominated performances from Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant, and Tom Hanks, also wrote the adapted screenplay.

Per Deadline, “Nightbitch tells the story of a woman thrown into the stay-at-home routine of raising a toddler in the suburbs, who slowly embraces the feral power deeply rooted in motherhood, as she becomes increasingly aware of the bizarre and undeniable signs that she may be turning into a canine. Bond Group and Annapurna acquired film rights to Yoder’s book back in 2020 and developed the script alongside Heller. It marks a reemergence of Megan Ellison’s reconfigured Annapurna in the marketplace.”

Nightbitch, which will hopefully make us forget about Adams’ involvement in Hillbilly Elegy, is currently in pre-production, with filming set to begin in Los Angeles in September, according to Variety. It will be released on Hulu.

“Rachel Yoder’s book took my breath away,” Heller said, per Deadline. “I haven’t felt this way about [a] book since I read The Diary of a Teenage Girl many years ago. Rachel’s darkly hilarious tale of motherhood and rage made me feel seen. And adapting it with Amy Adams in mind has been the thing that has kept me going through the pandemic. I am so thrilled to be bringing this movie to life with wonderful partners in Anne Carey, Annapurna Pictures, and Searchlight. It is a dream come true.”

2022 has been a strong year of music releases from younger stars and seasoned veterans, and another one of the latter is looking to throw his name in the ring. Lupe Fiasco shared some additional information on his upcoming eighth studio album Drill Music In Zion, confirming it will release on June 24 plus the accompanying cover art which incorporates some elements of 2015’s Tetsuo & Youth.

The Lasers artist’s engineer Craig Bauer wrote in an Instagram story “The new @lupefiasco record is Rap Album of the year” before correcting himself and saying “Nah. Decade. If you don’t feel something after listening to this…. You may want to check your pulse.” Bauer previously worked on Kanye West’s Late Registration (2005) and Graduation (2007), plus Fiasco’s Food & Liquor (2006) and The Cool (2007).

Lupe is more focused on how it compares to his catalog, tweeting back in October 2021 “It’s my best album. Calling it now…may pull back later but for now it’s #1.” Fiasco hasn’t released an album since 2018’s Drogas Wave, but has maintained a presence through Twitter, freestyles, and a podcast with Royce Da 5’9″. Lupe has also ventured into television, making cameo appearances on Beat N Path and Empire.

Check out the Drill Music In Zion announcement above.

Have you missed the sweet, soothing sounds of nature series narrator David Attenborough oozing out from your television?

Soon enough, you’ll get to hear the international icon explain dinosaurs. Apple TV+ just shared the full trailer for its upcoming series Prehistoric Planet, which uses technology to present the habitats and lives of dinosaurs in a similar way as a real, actually filmed nature doc. This is my Jurassic World Dominion.

Here’s the show’s description, courtesy of Apple TV+:

“The series combines award-winning wildlife filmmaking, the latest paleontology learnings and state-of-the-art technology to unveil the spectacular habitats and inhabitants of ancient Earth for a one-of-a-kind immersive experience. ‘Prehistoric Planet’ presents little-known and surprising facts of dinosaur life set against the backdrop of the environments of Cretaceous times, including coasts, deserts, freshwater, ice worlds and forests. From revealing eye-opening parenting techniques of Tyrannosaurus rex to exploring the mysterious depths of the oceans and the deadly dangers in the sky, “Prehistoric Planet” brings Earth’s history to life like never before.”

The trailer, which showcases the show’s truly mind-blowing technology, includes magnificent dinos including a T-rex swimming despite his little hands and a baby triceratops. Even better than that, the series includes zero Chris Pratts. Prehistoric Planet starts its five-night event next week on Apple TV+ with the first episode dropping on May 23.

While Madison Cawthorn has made for plenty of laugh-out-loud funny headlines over the past year—most notably by claiming he’s regularly invited to coke-fueled orgies by older Republicans, then saying he lied—the majority has spoken, and made it clear that they’ll be glad to see the back of him. At the top of that list? Seth Meyers.

Meyers kicked off Wednesday night’s “A Closer Look” segment by addressing Cawthorn’s failed bid for re-election, and reminding his viewers of the many reasons why the 26-year-old North Carolinian won’t be missed. “Oh Madison—you may be gone, but soon you will be forgotten,” promised Meyers, who had some ideas of new careers Cawthorn might want to consider, like “starring as the bad boy villain in a CW drama. He looks like he should be next to a locker threatening to tell Pacey about Dawson’s relationship with Joey.”

What Meyers was most intrigued by, however, is how Cawthorn—who was yet another Trump-endorsed candidate—was taken out by the Republican party that he considers himself a part of. As Meyers explained:

It was Republicans who waged a relentless campaign to take Hawthorn down. One GOP operative told The Daily Beast: “It’s definitely a hit job that I’m happy to be a party to. Most of the GOP universe has come around to align against this guy. You’re seeing a full-court, state-based, establishment pushback against him. Get this guy out. Take him out.”

I will say it’s a rare treat to watch Republicans tear each other apart. Because when Republicans decide to knife each other, they hold nothing back. Democrats just snipe at each other on cable news about who’s responsible for their sh*t poll numbers. They’re like the WASPy Connecticut family that just passive-aggressively bickers at the dinner table and then goes to bed full of quiet resentment.

Meyers was particularly amused by Donald Trump’s last-minute attempt to get people back on the Cawthorn train by admitting that the congressman had made “some foolish mistakes” recently, but implored his followers: “Let’s give Madison a second chance.”

“‘Let’s give Madison a second chance’ sounds like something you’d hear at a sorority after a pledge barfs all over the rug,” Meyers observed. “‘Ok, I know she drank an entire box of Franzia, but her dad knows the Dean and I think we should give her a second chance.’”

You can watch the full segment above.

When he’s not galloping around the galaxy being a guardian, Chris Pratt has been consistently playing a big-time war dude, whether it be a real war or dinosaur war. The point is, this guy loves acting with guns. Now, he gets to do that in his own TV show!

The Terminal List is an upcoming Amazon Prime series based on the novel of the same name by Jack Carr. The series follows Pratt as Navy Seal James Reece as he returns from a deadly mission and tries to piece together what exactly happened out there, and why he was the only one to survive. There are explosions, gunfire, and of course a scene of Pratt playing guitar.

The series also stars Friday Night Lights’ Taylor Kitsch and Hustlers’ Constance Wu, along with Jeanne Tripplehorn, Riley Keough, Arlo Mertz, Jai Courtney, JD Pardo, LaMonica Garrett, Stephen Bishop, Sean Gunn, and Patrick Schwarzenegger, who is also Pratt’s brother-in-law, in case you needed a refresher on that family tree.

Showrunner David DiGillio told People: “Jack [Carr]’s mixture of action, conspiracy, and military authenticity is unparalleled on the page. We knew that if we honored that authenticity, and added in some hair-raising psychological twists and turns, we would have something not just entertaining, but wholly original onscreen. We’ve taken all of Jack Carr’s tradecraft and set it against a tone of paranoia and intrigue.”

Rihanna has been thriving during her pregnancy, but now it appears that era has come to an end and a new one has begun: TMZ reports Rihanna has given birth to her and ASAP Rocky’s baby, a boy, according to “sources with direct knowledge.” The publication reports the baby was born in Los Angeles on May 13. Neither Rihanna nor Rocky have yet to confirm the news or share any public statement about the birth. The baby’s name has not yet been revealed.

That date of birth lines up with a report from earlier this week, of a Facebook post from an apparent nurse who works in the hospital where Rihanna gave birth. The post, shared on the 13th, reads, “Rihanna about to have her baby at the hospital I’m working at they cleared everybody off the floor [crying emojis].” They later added, “She HAD A BOY YALL.”

The timeline of the birth also seems to make sense since Rihanna had been in the third trimester of her pregnancy for some time now: In an Elle interview published in mid-March, Rihanna said, “There’s a pregnancy glow. There’s also those days, girl. Especially in the third trimester where you wake up and you’re like, oh, do I have to get dressed?” Rihanna and Rocky also reportedly had a baby shower in late April.

TMZ also noted that one of the last times Rihanna was seen in public was on May 9, when she and Rocky got dinner at Los Angeles restaurant Girogio Baldi.

For Ethan Hawke, the opportunity to work within the bounds of an Audible Original with the freshly released Fishpriest [you can download the series here] checked a few boxes. For one, as the actor told us recently during the following wide-ranging conversation, it was a strike in his own personal battle against the pandemic, with him, the other voice actors, and the creative team coming together on the project despite the production limitations that have made it harder to make art over these last few years. It’s also an opportunity for him to, again, play a cop (or former cop, in this case) trapped in a complex situation in a story within a genre with which he has great affection.

“I grew up loving French Connection, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Prince Of The City, all those cool crime fiction pieces, Richard Price. This is all aspiring to live in that kind of milieu,” Hawke said after recalling how the New York of this project connects to a time when he first came to the city in the early ’90s, sparking sense memories in addition to recollections of his time doing ride alongs in New York in preparation for Training Day.

This project is also yet another job for someone who works near ceaselessly, and so we spoke about the motivation to do so much work, whether it be an audio project, writing another novel, creating a graphic novel, or his upcoming docuseries focused on the life, marriage, and careers of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. That series, in particular, dominates the latter part of our conversation as we discuss the inspiration found in Newman’s astonishing third-act dominance and how Hawke sees his own career at this point in his life.

A lot of things attempt to be in this [crime fiction] space, and I’m sure a lot of them cross your desk too. What is it about this project that specifically made you want to do this?

I’ve never done this form of storytelling before. I’m a storyteller and I like to do plays and write books and I’ve written graphic novels and made documentaries — just the whole experience of telling a story. And one of the things that is wonderful about reading a book is it asks so much of you. Like if the book says, “Bodega, 1991, New York City.” Your brain has to do a lot of the work. Your brain becomes a cinematographer. Sunset, what does it smell like? What does it sound like? And in a movie, they do all that for you. And so oftentimes, you don’t like the way they did it. They didn’t do it real.

One of the things that’s super hard about reading scripts and deciding what movies to do and everything is, well, the best version of most scripts is pretty damn good. It’s just, your brain as a reader creates the best version of it. It casts the guy behind the cash register at the bodega perfect. The way you really see it. But often directors and casting, they get it wrong. And they screw the movie up, and the movie isn’t any good. And what I love about this — in the old days they’d call it a radio play. It asks a lot of you, but by asking a lot of you as a listener, it gives a lot to you, because you’re engaged in the experience yourself. You’re an artist in it, with it, making it as it goes.

And so many modern movies just do everything for you. They tell you exactly how to feel, and when. They tell you exactly what’s a good moment. What’s not a good moment. It doesn’t leave any space for you to enter. The way that if you or I were to read, I don’t know, Anna Karenina, or pick a book you love, you have to provide a lot of the imagination. And so, just as a storyteller, I was turned on by trying like, “What is this medium like?” As a kid, I remember hearing about Orson Welles, reading War of the Worlds, and people thinking Martians really were attacking. And so, I don’t know, could you create a sense of realism just from a vocal performance?

You’ve played cops that are dirty or that are in this space before. What is the fascination for you to go back to play those characters again? And also what is it about our continuing fascination with them?

Well, one of the reasons why I think people like superhero movies is they like to goose life. Our lives seem so daily and dull and your imagination wants to goose life, make it better than it is. And the wonderful thing about cops is their lives are extremely dramatic. They’re faced with these moral quandaries, but they’re just ordinary people intersecting with other ordinary people. People who run a bodega, people who are trying to put their sister through a diabetes center by slinging drugs.

You hear these words thrown around like diversity and social justice, but cops, it’s in the DNA of the storyline that they’re touching all walks. They deal with rich people and they deal with the homeless and they deal with everybody in between. And the story of their lives naturally is ripe with so much of the stuff of life, politics without being political. Their lives are so interesting. It allows you to talk about real human beings in a way with a heightened drama. Did that make sense? Awfully long-winded.

No, it did. It’s interesting though, that this is a character who’s obviously trying to claw his way back to a certain extent. It’s a very human kind of failing that we see, I think all too often. Especially in pop culture, we see a lot of cops that are crossing over that grey moral line. You are right. It does touch on so many different aspects of life.

Playing them is really interesting. And I mean, like even a show like The Wire, they just touch so much life, the pulse of life. And I think that’s what appeals. I always loved Richard Price. Clockers. It’s hard to do well. It’s damn hard to do well, because the world is just full of poor cop dramas.

I do a lot of these and it’s rare that I come away just like, “I don’t even know which project to ask about first.” There’s just so much. You work so much. Do you take time off? What is it that drives you to keep going and going?

It’s a really good question. I think, I’m really lucky that I have an intrinsic love of my job that makes it so interesting to me over and over again. I mean I loved working on The Northman. Working on Robert Eggers’ Viking epic is so different than working on Scott Derrickson’s Black Phone, but they’re both rigorous artists of the medium that they’re trying to do. And it makes my job new for me every time.

I did this documentary over the last couple of years about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. And studying my profession from a journalistic way was completely new for me. Connected. I mean, obviously, it’s studying the life of actors. That’s something I know about, but trying to be a journalist, it was new for me. And trying to do the Marvel Universe [with Moon Knight], trying to live inside that genre, then acting gets new because it’s like something that would be not funny in a normal movie is kind of funny in a Marvel movie.

You have to understand the same is true of the horror genre or a romance. Each genre of storytelling has its own math. And learning that math and trying to be a better storyteller all the time, I just love it. And so, I do work a lot and I don’t really understand it. [Laughs] I have the same thoughts sometimes. I’m like, “Why don’t I take a vacation?” My wife always says to me, “We never had a honeymoon.” I’m like, “Oh yeah, we haven’t.” But this seems to make me so happy.

In terms of your ambition, how has it changed as far as like when you were starting your career? Obviously, the roles are different. The challenges are different. You’re getting to do more things, obviously.

Well, I remember when I was younger, I worked with this old Canadian Shakespearean actor. And he was working really hard. It was getting harder and harder for him to learn his lines and he was so good. He was just so deep and interesting and thoughtful and insightful. And I said, “So why do you still do this?” And he said, “One lifetime is not enough.” You know? It’s just not enough.

It keeps being interesting and you get to work with talented people. I mean, take a weird movie, like Black Phone. I got to do all this mask work. I’d never done that before. And this artist who made the mask was a genius and he had this idea that what if the mask wasn’t the same? And sometimes you see the top half of his face and sometimes you see the bottom. And we started devising in what ways would that unlock the story? It’s like something I’d never done before. It was so interesting. Or working in a sci-fi genre like with Moon Knight, thinking about the ways that Phillip K. Dick or Kurt Vonnegut would tease your brain. And how we could utilize that thought energy inside the Marvel Universe.

The word ambition is kind of fascinating because when I was younger, I definitely had goals and those kind of superficial goals have disappeared for me. I just enjoy the doing of it. And I try not to think about what’s going to happen with it because, invariably, all that goes away anyway. Time, we’re all building sandcastles, right?

It’s just trying to be a part of your time and talk and communicate. And it was so rewarding to do Good Lord Bird and tell the story of John Brown right in the middle of what was happening with George Floyd. And see the connection between the Civil War and what’s happening now. And the division in the country. And part of our job as the artistic community is just to be conversation starters.

This will run counter to what you just said, but the latter third of Newman’s career — he didn’t let up. Obviously, you’re not there yet [in terms of that later stage], but actors do start to fall down the call sheet a little bit as time goes on. You’re not the name of the poster. Maybe certain people aren’t willing to take as many chances on you. Newman is such a unicorn in the sense of not having that happen. [With that in mind] is there a sense of urgency in you to go bigger in terms of just taking a bigger slice of the pie for you creatively?

There are so many interesting questions inside that statement. There’s so much to think about there. Newman is a unicorn. What I was hypnotized by with him is when you picture him falling in love with acting in class with Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan, who’s in his acting class? Oh, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Steve McQueen, Geraldine Page. These people who changed my profession. But a lot of them, if you look at his male counterparts, they really burnt out. Monty Clift, James Dean, Brando. And Newman continued to be a leader. And the thing I’m most hypnotized by about his career is, yes, I love Cool Hand Luke, yes, I love Hud. Yes, The Hustler is one of my favorite movies. But it’s really The Verdict, Color Of Money, Road To Perdition, Nobody’s Fool, Hudsucker Proxy. You’re like, “Wait, who is this guy?”

I mean, there he was at the end of his life working with top tier, not just filmmakers, not making hit movies. He’s working with artists. He’s working with Scorsese and Sidney Lumet and Joel Ethan Coen and Sam Mendes. Or Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, James Ivory. That movie’s a masterpiece. I mean, is it bigger? No, but is it bigger in the sense of that level of difficulty, what they’re trying to communicate artistically? Yeah, it is. In the beginning of his career, he was constantly compared to a Brando wannabe. And then at the end, it’s almost a story of the tortoise and the hare, isn’t it? One took off and fell asleep by a tree because it got bored with how easy it was. And the other just slowly plotted along and created this 50-year masterpiece.

And so, I do think about it. And you do fall down in the call sheet. You start playing bad guys, you start playing dads. But I look to Robert Duvall and Jeff Bridges or Donald Sutherland or Jason Robards. And I see a lane in which you could contribute in a heavy way without all the accouterments of superficial perceived success. It might be a better lane.

I just read a New Yorker interview with Elizabeth Moss where she was talking about actors specifically, not wanting to give away too much of themselves. You’ve been around for so long. And I’m sure you’ve done so many of these interviews. Do you ever want to not give away too much of yourself in fear that it might be a distraction when people see you on screen?

I read that interview. I think she’s really smart and really impressive. I thought a lot about it and I know that what she’s saying is true. I know for me, I’ve more bought into the idea of aspiring to live a really boring life and make your art extraordinary. And if you live an insanely boring life, there is no secret. They can’t learn anything. The human experience is so deep and complex and profound. Things that were true about me 15 years ago aren’t true anymore. I’m a different person. I don’t worry about secrets and giving them away or not giving them away.

There’s a great Allen Ginsberg quote that I read years ago that changed my outlook on interviews. Which is he said, “More people will read these interviews and see what I’m putting forward into the world through these interviews is just as important as the art I make. Because if my goal is to connect with other human beings and to be a part of a collective conscious dialogue, these interviews are an opportunity to not just sell something, but to have an exchange.” And so, I just try to take it seriously and then not think too much about it and let it go.

‘Fishpriest’ is available to download on Audible here

Madison Cawthorn’s apparently doing the Guilfoyle Challenge on Twitter. That’s a reference to how Don Jr’s then-girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, stood up at the 2020 RNC and screech-shouted, “The Best. Is Yet. To Come!!!!!” As we all (I hope) know by now, Trump lost the reelection, so “the best” never happened. And the incendiary representative from North Carolina will soon leave the congressional building after losing his own reelection bid, which caused him to initially lash out with a “sore loser” mentality.

Now, however, he’d like everyone to know that he’s doing great, and the 26-year-old MAGA enthusiast tweeted, “The best is yet to come.”

Madison is not doing superbly, obviously, and other members of the far-right must be nervous to see such a blow to the ultra-MAGA crowd at a relatively early primary. Lauren Boebert’s conspicuously ignoring how she’s potentially on the chopping block, too, and it will be a real test to see if Marjorie Taylor Greene and her love of conspiracy theories will pass muster with Georgia voters. When it comes to Madison, a certain faction of the GOP apparently saw fit to campaign him out representing their party after a series of embarrassing articulations of Cawthorn’s far-right views. And then there was that naked humping video and the cousin-crotch grope, and well, his fate seemed to be sealed.

The 2022 primaries have, to paraphrase Cawthorn here, only just begun. Yet when Madison claimed that “the best” is yet to be seen from him, people naturally wondered whether this means that they should brace themselves for another video.

The “Take The L” and cousin jokes began to pour in, too.

In closing, here’s a touching poem.