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In celebration of her infectiously danceable new single with Dua Lipa, “Sweetest Pie” Megan Thee Stallion has linked up with Goldbelly for a special pie collaboration that attempts to capture the spirit of the song. Megan’s H-Town Hottie Pie is inspired by the rapper’s hometown of Houston and goes big on the sweets — featuring a pecan pie loaded up with a combination of shredded coconut, pretzels, butterscotch chips, and gooey brown sugar with a golden glaze over the top.

According to the branding, it promises to taste like your “favorite bakery took a trip down the candy aisle” and it’s very much that. Literally, we’re talking about the “sweetest pie” your money can buy.

Sidenote: We’re eternally thankful Megan take the line “Wanna put his Nutty Buddy in my Fudge Round” too literally with this dessert. Sexual innuendo completely aside, Nutty Buddys and Fudge Rounds are some pretty bottom-tier snacks, so if this was a giant Nutty Fudge Round pie we would’ve had to pass. I’m sorry to the Little Debbie fans out there, you all have bad taste.

Anyway, the H-Town Hottie Pie is currently available for a limited time on Goldbelly for a price of $59. Before you drop that kind of cash on a gold spray-painted pecan pie, you’re probably going to want to know if it’s any good — so let’s eat!

Megan’s H-Town Hottie Pie

Price: $59

Experience & Tasting Notes:

Before we dive into the pie we have to talk about the packaging and presentation, because this is a Gold Belly product, after all. The pie ships frozen in a small box with bubble wrap and is stable at room temperature for a full week, or a full month if you re-freeze it. By the time I received and opened up the pie, it was fully thawed and ready to eat.

That’s great if you live in an apartment with an indoor mailing room like I do, but if you’re getting this delivered to your doorstep and live in a warmer climate, I could see heat damaging the consistency of your pie, which is made of mostly gooey sugar, not exactly the biggest resistor to melt-age.

The pie itself is housed in a special promotional box featuring Megan holding a sprinkled donut with her hair made-up to look like whipped cream. The photo matches some of Megan’s recent promotional material, namely her Apple Music profile photo, but I think it’s an odd choice to decorate this pecan pie with so much whipped cream donut imagery when none of that has to do with the pie.

But hey, we’re not here to talk about the conceptual consistency, we’re here to talk about the pie.

The pie itself looks like — and I say this with all due respect to both Ms. Stallion and Goldbelly — what I imagine C-3P0’s shit would look like if he was a robot capable of using the bathroom. Spray-painted food is a trend that no one asked for and people keep giving us. Stop. I think I speak for everyone when I say that eating spray-painted food, no matter how much you say ‘its edible!’ will always feel wrong.

When it comes to cutting into this pie we’re going to suggest you use a hammer and chisel because it’s incredibly hard to get a knife through this thing. So unless you’re totally fine with eating an ugly, uneven slice, don’t approach this pie as you would any other pie.

The brown sugar/corn syrup substance that sticks all this candied snack food together does a good job of binding the ingredients together, but it makes it hard to get through easily. It’s messy, is the point — most pecan pies are.

Once I finally bit into the pie though, all my criticisms melted away into a pool of sweet ecstasy. This pie is tooth-achingly sweet, brown sugar dominates the flavor with sweet and moist shredded coconut flavor on the aftertaste, mingling with subtly salty notes. While it relies on salted pretzels to act as a counterbalance to the sweetness, it leans much more comfortably on the sweet side of the flavor spectrum.

It’s a pleasure to eat bite after bite, but if you really want to kick it up a notch you’ll throw it in the microwave. A few seconds of heat took the already pleasant experience of eating this pie to the next level. Instead of receiving the flavors in sweet and salty waves, they melded together into a more harmonious whole. The warmed-up pie had a great texture and mouthfeel, courtesy of the combination of sugar, nuts, and shredded coconut, and an even better flavor that tasted like pecan pie reimagined by munchie-seeking stoners.

I still wish it wasn’t spray-painted fucking gold though.

The Bottom Line:

Sweet, salty, nutty, and then sweet again. Once warmed up and topped with your favorite ice cream, you’re in for one of the sweetest pies you’re bound to eat all year. And a pretty damn delicious one.

If you’ve ever dreamed of donning a slick suit and traveling around the world while bringing down the bad guys, perhaps a James Bond-themed competition is for you. Luckily, there is one in the works at Amazon!

007’s Road To A Million will feature contestants traveling the world and competing at tasks in various James Bond locations, all for the goal of winning up to 1 million pounds — which comes to about 1.3 million US dollars. There will be physical challenges as well as trivia questions that the teams of two will have to answer correctly in order to advance.

The show has been in the works for a while since a globe-trotting competition series sounds like it will need a lot of planning. Production is slated to begin this year, so there is still time for civilians to train and practice their Bond-style moves and rehearse the correct way to order a vodka martini. So, more or less, the show sounds like The Amazing Race with fancier cars.

No premiere date has been announced yet, but the show will consist of eight parts and be available to stream on Amazon Prime. The show will be produced by 72 Films in collaboration with Bond producers Michael G Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, and MGM Television.

Now that Daniel Craig is done with his spy days, maybe whoever wins this competition will be the next Bond? And maybe it will be a comedy!

During the never-ending break between seasons two and three of Atlanta (which is finally back, and good as ever), Donald Glover signed an eight-figure development deal with Amazon. “The pact is believed to include a content channel of sorts that will spotlight Glover’s work and other curated content on Amazon’s Prime Video hub,” the Hollywood Reporter wrote. Nothing has made it to streaming yet, but announced projects included a Mr. and Mrs. Smith series with Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (at least until she dropped out) in the lead roles, and another series, potentially called Hive, about a “Beyoncé-like figure.” One of the show’s other writers: Malia Obama.

“She’s just like, an amazingly talented person,” Glover told Vanity Fair about collaborating with the eldest daughter of former-president Barack and first lady Michelle Obama. She previously interned on HBO’s Girls and worked as a production assistant on the Halle Berry-starring CBS series Extant. Glover added, “She’s really focused, and she’s working really hard. I feel like she’s just somebody who’s gonna have really good things coming soon. Her writing style is great.”

When asked how he might shoot down one of Obama’s pitches — knowing that she could tell her parents — [Donald’s brother and Atlanta writer] Stephen joked, “Well, you know, we just hurt her feelings. We can’t be easy on her just because she’s the [former] president’s daughter.” He added, “Nah, she’s very down to earth, and cool. So, it’s not a problem at all. She has a lot of good ideas. She’s great. She’s just a regular person like everybody else.”

It must be tough being the younger sister (tfw you’re the younger sister and also your dad was the freaking president), but Sasha Obama will get the last laugh when she starts writing for Succession.

(Via Vanity Fair)

When it comes to senatorial self-owns, Ted Cruz is the undisputed king, and his skills have been on full display during the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Earlier in the week, Cruz made headlines after he asked Jackson if she thinks “babies are racist” as he joined several Republican senators in using the hearing as a platform to rail against critical race theory. While holding copies of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Baby and Stamped (For Kids), Cruz demanded that Jackson denounce the books even though they had absolutely nothing to do with her ability to serve as a Supreme Court justice.

“There are portions of this book that I find really quite remarkable. One portion of the book says babies are taught to be racist or anti-racist,” Cruz said. “Do you agree with this book that is being taught with kids that babies are racist?”

As you can see, the line of questioning was completely nonsensical. Not only did it blow up in Cruz’s face as he was ruthlessly roasted on social media and by late-night comedians, but both books have now become bestsellers thanks to Cruz putting a spotlight on them. Via Variety:

“Antiracist Baby” and “Stamped (For Kids),” both of which came out two years ago, shot to Amazon’s bestsellers list the day after Cruz’s comments. Both were No. 1 New York Times bestsellers upon their initial releases in 2020.

Cruz also unwittingly helped boost sales for the other titles that he mentioned. Alex Vitale’s 2017 book “The End of Policing,” which argues for the eventual abolition of the police, became a No. 1 bestseller in Amazon’s Government and Social Policy category.

Like we said, nobody dunks on themselves like Ted Cruz. He’s the Michael Jordan of self-owns.

(Via Variety)

To describe the experience of watching Everything Everywhere All At Once as “sensory overload,” (as Florida Project director Sean Baker put it recently) is a bit of an understatement. There are times it feels like trying to take a sip of content and getting blasted with the totality of the last 40-years of pop culture through a firehose. When the publicist asked me what I thought after the screening, I said “I feel like I just got skull-f*cked. But in a good way?” (The directors apparently appreciated this description).

Everything Everywhere All At Once concerns “the metaverse” — the infinite number of parallel dimensions created by every life decision and the random collisions of sub-atomic somethingorothers. Where other directors may have toyed with concepts like time travel, separate realities running in parallel, and different versions of characters living in separate universes, usually these concepts show up as sparsely-explained excuses for why, say, three different Spider-men have to appear in the same scene. It’s a commercial imposition masquerading as an artistic choice, and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (the directors known collectively as “Daniels”) don’t believe in those.

To them, the way most movies toy with the nature of reality seemed infuriatingly utilitarian. “My pet peeve is time travel when you introduce it and just do a tiny bit like it’s no big deal,” Scheinert told Indiewire this week. “It would be such a big deal! Like if logic broke down and time didn’t move forward and a million people could go back in time a million number of times, there’d be absolute chaos.”

In many ways, Everything Everywhere All At Once is the Daniels creating the chaos they’d hoped to see in the world, a movie in which commercial impositions cannot exist without artistic consequences. The plot concerns Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), the owner of a failing laundromat, who has a lesbian daughter who resents her (Stephanie Hsu), a husband who’s sick of being ignored (Ke Huy Quan), and an ailing father with a series of crushing expectations (James Hong). Then one day, a version of her husband who isn’t really her husband shows up to explain that there’s a disturbance in the fabric of space-time or some such, and that Evelyn might actually be the key to everything.

The next 40 minutes or so are a manic pastiche of Evelyn meeting other Evelyns from different dimensions in a race against different daughters from different dimensions with the help of different husbands and grandfathers. Her adversary generally takes the form of Dierdre, an IRS functionary played by Jamie Lee Curtis. The parallels to a thousand other things, from Cloud Atlas to The Matrix to Douglas Adams (AC Weisbecker’s 1986 book, Cosmic Banditos, arguably the funniest book ever written about quantum physics, also deserves mention here), are obvious, and the casting alone should give you some sense of the pop culture stunt the Daniels are trying to pull off.

Just as with mainstream cinema’s too easy takes on interdimensional travel, the Daniels strive to delve deeper into actors who have too often appeared in gimmicky ways. Yeoh, too often the martial arts movie sidekick; Hong, the all-purpose Asian heavy of the 80s and 90s (perhaps you remember him from Big Trouble In China?); and Quan, in another life the little kid who played Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom and Data in The Goonies, now a 50-year-old man coming off a 20-year acting hiatus.

As a stunt, Everything Everywhere is interesting enough, at first, though its frantic manic shifting between different universes does get a little enervating. Through it all, it offers just enough moments of weirdly perfect meta-comedy to stay invested. Daniel Scheinert made unforgettable comedic magic with Nickelback and Puddle of Mudd in his 2019 masterpiece, The Death Of Dick Long, and Everything Everywhere similar squeezes comedy from a perfect musical: Nine Days’ 2000 hit, “Absolutely (Story Of A Girl),” which becomes a recurring musical motif in Everything Everywhere. It’s the perfect song, that you remember but can’t place, and don’t know where or why you heard it, the ultimate sonic uncanny valley.

If Everything Everywhere All At Once was just the Daniels pulling a stunt, even for all its technical brilliance it would go from cute to tiresome in a hurry. But just when you think you’ve been battered within an inch of your attention span by this… cosmic gumbo, which moves to the beat of jazz (oh yeah, Biff Wiff gets a cameo here, did I mention that?)… Everything Everywhere takes a necessary turn for the earnest. It goes from using the multiverse as a narrative plaything (going rightly overboard in the process, like Homer Simpson with the star wipe), to genuinely trying to reckon with the concept of infinite realities.

If existence really consists of an infinite number of parallel universes, who are you in all of it? Why are you? The point at which Everything Everywhere becomes more than just a movie stunt takes place in a dimension where life never happened and Evelyn and her daughter, Joy exist as a pair of rocks, conversing with subtitles about what it means to be, or not to be. It’s cutesy, certainly, but in a world where post-modern digression is the dominant style, being a little cringe is revolutionary.

So yeah, in a fractal kaleidoscope of clashing interdimensional worlds, of course the characters were ultimately going to discover that having each other is really the most important thing. Maybe that’s a corny answer, but it’s kind of the best we’ve got. If Turning Red used the fantastic to explore one first-generation Asian immigrant daughter’s fraught relationship with her mother, Everything Everywhere does much the same using the multiverse — it’s a bit like if Edgar Wright tried to direct a live-action Pixar movie high on ether.

What makes Everything Everywhere work is not that it’s zany, it’s that it actually finds a purpose for its zaniness, or least tries to. The Daniels are provocateurs, brilliant technical filmmakers. More importantly, they actually strive not to be full of shit. God bless them.

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ opens in theaters March 25th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. More reviews here.

Grimes revealed recently she and Elon Musk had a second child together, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk. They used a surrogate this time around, unlike when Grimes gave birth to her and Musk’s first baby, X AE A-XII. Grimes has suggested that pregnancy didn’t go too well for her health-wise and now she says it was “incredibly traumatic.”

In a new interview with Atmos, Grimes said:

“So I recently had a baby and it was incredibly traumatic for me. And the whole time, I was like, ‘I f*cking hate this and this is so f*cked up and there’s not enough information.’ Having a child is one of the few things in the modern era that is just inherently a pretty savage experience. It’s hardcore, you cannot escape the nature of it. It’s just happening. And it actually really re-centered me in the end. I was like, ‘You know what? I’m really glad I did that. I feel really reconnected with nature in an interesting way.’ And it also made me grateful for modernity. We’ve eradicated pain from most parts of existence at this point, and that’s really amazing. I feel like we don’t realize how lucky we are.”

Grimes touched on pregnancy challenges in a recent Vanity Fair interview, noting she couldn’t walk during the last month of her pregnancy, saying, “He was pressing on my nerves, so I kept collapsing. I took a few steps and collapsed. It was kind of scary, because you don’t want to fall a lot when you’re eight months pregnant. So I would just crawl to the bathroom and crawl back or whatever.” She also said of a moment she thought she was dying, “Like, I hemorrhaged. It was scary.”

Elsewhere in the Atmos interview, she discussed Musk (while avoiding using his name), saying that being involved with him has given her the opportunity to be close to history:

“I’m a huge student of history. I’m just obsessed. My dream in life would be to be able to observe or be around events that matter. Again, I don’t want to invoke the names of certain people because I can very easily get sucked into just being a satellite in the story of certain unnamed people. But whether I like it or not, I’ve had this unavoidable association with certain people, and recently I started being like, ‘Why am I thinking about this so negatively?’

At first it really hurt me because it undermined all the things I’d accomplished and turned me into arm candy. And then I started being like, ‘I have a front row seat to the most historic thing that has ever occurred. The Earth was formed, blue and green algae turned into tiny little creatures, and then creatures went onto the land, and then mammals were formed, and then humans were formed, and then civilization happened — colonization of the stars is on the level of the top five craziest things that have happened in our whole universe. And I’m sitting here watching it with the best seat in the house. Why am I denying this out of some perverted sense of feminism?’ So it’s a weird time because everyone keeps telling me, if you refer to it, you’re losing yourself.”

Read the full interview here.

As per tradition, it’s pretty rare that a comedic performance is nominated at the Oscars. Even rarer is a Christmas comedy, which is often overlooked as a piece of real cinema (clearly not enough of the Academy has seen Krampus). But controversial Love Actually director Richard Curtis thinks that that mentality should change.

“I always get very antsy about the fact that Will Ferrell didn’t get nominated for Elf,” the director told reporters at the Oscar Wilde Awards in Los Angeles earlier this week. “But it’s the price you pay, as it were. Comedies tend to make a bit of money, and then you don’t get the prizes.”

Every once in a while, a comedy will snag a Supporting Actress nomination, like with Bridesmaids or Juno, which ended up winning the award for Best Original Screenplay. But Farrell did pretty much act his heart out in the beloved Christmas comedy. Still, it was never recognized by the Academy, since most comedies are left with nothing but a Teen Choice Award nomination if they are lucky.

“I think it’s a real issue that comedy isn’t respected as much… but I do try and push for comedy performances whenever I can,” Curtis added.

Curtis received a nomination for his screenplay for the 1994 romantic comedy, Four Weddings and a Funeral, but the Oscar instead went to Pulp Fiction, obviously. Still, the director makes a good point. Just because someone is eating maple syrup with spaghetti, doesn’t mean they aren’t performing an Oscar-worthy performance!

Nicki Minaj has been more active lately than she has been in a while. After mostly disappearing in the disappointing wake of her 2018 album, Queen, she made sporadic appearances on breakout tracks like Doja Cat’s “Say So” and Tekashi 69’s “Trollz,” but this year, she’s been even more productive, collaborating with Lil Baby on “Do We Have A Problem?” and “Bussin,” as well as Coi Leray on “Blick Blick.” Today, she continued that trend with the release of a new song featuring emerging New York rapper Fivio Foreign, “We Go Up.”

In this instance, Nicki dips into Fivio’s production pool, utilizing a drill beat that highlights a choppy flow from the Queens rapper laden with punchlines dissing an unnamed rival and celebrating her success. There’s nary a mention of bitches being her sons, either — always a plus, because it means Nicki is trying and when that happens she always delivers. Fivey’s verse is also pretty solid, which will certainly help fuel anticipation for his upcoming debut album, B.I.B.L.E. The chemistry here is immaculate; sticking together two New Yorkers, their collaboration crackles with the Big Apple’s natural flair and brash energy.

Nicki’s recent spate of single releases has also fueled speculation that she intends to drop an album soon, but thus far, she has yet to make any announcements to that end. If she does, though, her recent releases are a promising sign of a return to form, which bodes well as the Queen re-enters a rap arena where she’s no longer the only go-to option for the feminine perspective in hip-hop.

Listen to “We Go Up” above, and stay tuned.

During Pau Gasol’s six and a half seasons as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers alongside Kobe Bryant, the star duo led Los Angeles to a pair of championships and three NBA Finals appearances.

The origin for that prosperous run was established the instant Gasol joined the team after he was traded from Memphis in early February 2008. Gasol was recently on The Old Man & the Three podcast, where he talked about his initial conversation with Bryant that set the tone for their partnership.

He said he arrived at the team’s hotel in Washington D.C. around 1 a.m. and Bryant, despite the Lakers playing at noon the next day, was insistent on meeting with Gasol that night.

“He’s like, ‘Look, I’m very happy that you’re here. Let’s acknowledge that. I’m very happy, very excited that you’re here. But let’s go f*cking win — let’s go win a title,’” Gasol recalled. “He hooked me from the very first moment that I landed and were in the same place with the team. And he didn’t wait until the next day to tell me. So, I was like, ‘OK, so this is how it’s done.’”

Gasol’s two-way exploits were vital to Los Angeles’ success during his tenure and it’s clear Bryant made known their intentions from the outset. They were a tremendously talented and impactful pairing together, which began from Day 1.

From the time Draymond Green was in the second or third grade, his grandmother encouraged him to write the Bible verse Isaiah 54:17 on a piece of paper and tuck it into his shoe or sock before basketball games. “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” the verse reads, and the message from Green’s grandmother was simple.

When you take that court, you stand on that word, she’d tell him.

The ritual helped lay the foundation for Green’s basketball career, one where he’s always derived strength from his shoes by using them as a means of expression and energy. Beginning as a freshman at Michigan State, Green treated his sneakers like a canvas to celebrate parts of his identity. Whether it’s Bible verses to acknowledge his faith, highlighting family members, or simply writing the name of his high school or college, a glance to Green’s feet have long provided a glimpse into his life.

“I like to do things that are authentic to me, things that have meaning,” Green tells Dime. “There’s always a story that can be told behind that sneaker. I think you can take people through your journey with sneakers.”

Green’s progression from a piece of paper to scribbling words of inspiration on his shoes led him to a partnership with Converse in March 2020. Earlier this year, they collaborated on a player edition of the company’s latest release, the BB Shift.

They’re unique to him and remain an extension of the vision his grandmother fostered decades ago. In designing them, Green aims to “to do things that resonate with (him),” which begins with his children.

“No. 1 is involving my kids. I think that’s something that’s obviously near and dear to me,” he says. “That’s super cool for them to come to a game and see their name on the shoe.”

Beyond that, his motives are more ambiguous, though continue to be linked by the theme of authenticity. Anything that carries gravity in his life, both personally and professionally, are considered an option.

Green’s decision to partner with Converse two years ago can, in some capacity, be traced to a single word: swag. It’s a word that constantly arises as he discusses what distinguishes Converse from past brands he’s worn — “it’s definitely the swaggiest brand out now.” Style, he says, is integral to the success of any shoe company.

A reference to Jordan Brand unfolds as Green explains the importance of aesthetics. The brand persists as highly popular and lucrative more than 20 years after Michael Jordan retired. It’s not because contemporary teenagers grew up watching Jordan dominate the hardwood and were enamored with his game. Instead, Green says, it’s “because those sneakers are sick.” To really flourish in the sneaker industry, aura and appearance are vital.

“When you look at Converse as a whole, whether it’s the on-court sneakers over the last few years, whether it’s the off-the-court shoes, it’s just a very swaggy, clean brand,” he says. “That is huge in today’s NBA. Our tunnels are runways. So, I think that’s a huge part of footwear and style.”

Compare today’s NBA to the NBA of 25 years ago and fashion as a mode of individuality is far more prevalent. But in recent years, “guys have found their voice,” Green says. The expansion of vivid, exclusive on-court kicks are, in part, a summation of that. Years ago, the league had strict rules enforcing that the color of sneakers aligned with a team’s uniforms. Those guidelines no longer exist after a change in 2018 now allows players to wear shoes of any color.

Before that amendment, Green, for instance, could only wear red shoes on specific days, like Chinese New Year. In 2022, if he pleases, red could be his color of choice every night. Players across the league have taken advantage of this alteration to help shape their public personas. A brand like Converse nailing the style aspect holds greater weight today than prior decades.

“Guys express themselves through kicks often. Even if that’s just expressing that P.J. Tucker (says), ‘I’m the swaggiest guy on the court.’ That’s how he expresses himself,” Green says. “P.J. Tucker wants you to know he’s the best-dressed player in the NBA. He wants you to know he got the craziest kicks in the NBA. That is him expressing who he is.

“I think that’s a big deal in this league. It’s not like that in all leagues.”

Green’s messaging on his shoes and Player Edition BB Shifts are not his sole outlet for expression. Back in January, the 32-year-old inked a multi-year deal with Turner Sports to appear on Inside the NBA, as well as other Turner Sports programs.

He’s always been reliably candid with the media, both in the basketball insights he shares and the way he aims to help improve media coverage. As he ventures further into this sphere, his “ultimate goal” is to enhance viewers’ knowledge of the sport because he feels misinformation and ignorance are abundant.

“Basketball is a very beautiful game, but if not handled correctly and delicately, it gets screwed up in mass discussions,” he believes. “I think … people can figure out the offensive side a little bit more than they can the defensive side. But people, when watching the game, they don’t have a clue about defense. I think it does a total disservice to the game of basketball as a whole.”

Green is entirely disenchanted by the “distasteful” side of media wired to stir up controversy and produce clickbait. He wants to focus on educating the public to best discern what exactly is happening on the floor at any moment, something he accomplishes every time he provides commentary on Inside. His presence is undoubtedly a boon to basketball fans, and his ability to concisely break down on-court developments is rivaled by few, if any, others around the NBA media landscape.

Whenever his playing career unwinds, a transition into a full-time media role if he so chooses will only further ameliorate discourse and understanding of the game, just as it has with his current gig. By instantly succeeding, while avoiding any of the sensationalized aspects of media, Green knows none of that is needed to produce worthwhile coverage.

“You could have integrity and still do a great job,” he says. “You can do it the right way, you can speak on the game and teach the game. You can be very interesting. You can be critical of guys without trying to destroy a guy. So, I’ve learned that a lot of people in the industry are very distasteful and lack integrity, and it’s totally unnecessary. Ultimately, those that don’t do that, last in this business a long time and those that do, they end up on the outside looking in.”

Given the way Green approaches this job, he seems destined to last for a long, long time — at least whenever he decides he’s done tucking that slip of paper into his sneakers.