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This article originally appeared on 04.11.19

For those in the military, sleep can mean the difference between life and death. But shut-eye can be very hard to come by, especially during active conflict.

According to Sharon Ackman, the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School developed a scientific method to help its pilots fall asleep. Through this technique, 96% of the pilots were able to fall asleep in two minutes or less.

If pilots could fall asleep during war, you should be able to use it to knock out in the comfort of your bedroom.

Here’s how to do it:

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Step 1: Relax in your seat

Given the space restraints of a typical plane, the pilots were taught to sleep in a seated position. They put their feet flat on the ground, while relaxing their hands in their laps.

Breathe slow, deep breaths while relaxing every muscle in your face and letting your forehead, cheeks, mouth, tongue, and jaw go limp.

Step 2: Relax your upper body

Let your shoulders drop as low as you can. Allow the muscles in your neck go lifeless.

Starting with your dominant side, let your bicep feel like it’s falling off your body. Then move to your forearm, hand, and fingers. If a muscle isn’t relaxing, tense it first, then let it go loose.

Slowly exhale your tension.

Step 3: Relax your lower body

Tell your right thigh muscle to sink, then move down your leg, saying the same thing to your calf, ankle, and foot. Your leg should feel like it has sunk into the ground. Then move on to your left leg.

Step 4: Clear your mind

The final step is to clear your mind for ten seconds. You can do this by paying attention to your breath as it moves through your nostrils or holding a static image in your mind.

Once your body is relaxed and your mind quiet, you should slip away into darkness.

For more information on this sleep technique, check out Ackman’s Medium blog.

We’re in the thick of Spring and, in case the warmer weather (and pollen overload) didn’t give it away, HBO and HBO Max want to make sure we know it so they’re giving us a bunch of new series and returning favorites to binge this April.

New seasons of Barry and The Flight Attendant are back, along with more episodes of A Black Lady Sketch Show — the funniest sketch comedy series you probably aren’t watching. On the originals front, HBO is delivering a crime drama starring Jon Bernthal, made by the team that gave fans The Wire while HBO Max rolls out its Tokyo Vice series starring Ansel Elgort.

Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) the streaming platform this month.

Barry: Season 3 (HBO series streaming 4/24)

Rejoice Barry fans, your favorite hitman-turned-aspiring-thespian has returned. The long hiatus due to Covid lockdowns gave the show’s creators time to rewrite this upcoming season (and pen an entire fourth season too) so expect Bill Hader’s former hitman to be turning his attention inward — psychologically speaking. Season three is leaning into figuring out what fueled Barry’s life of crime and if acting really can save him from returning to it.

The Flight Attendant: Season 2 (HBO Max series streaming 4/21)

Kaley Cuoco’s messy flight attendant returns for more murder-mystery-solving shenanigans. After the chaos of season one, Cassie (Cuoco) is living her best sober life in Los Angeles while moonlighting as a CIA asset but a new case throws her back into the thick of yet another international scandal.

We Own This City (HBO limited series streaming 4/25)

The guys that gave us The Wire are responsible for this buzzed-about crime drama that tells the true story chronicling the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. Jon Bernthal plays one of the corrupt cops (along with Good Wife star Josh Charles) who comes under investigation for everything from racketeering and robbery to extortion and fraud, even as they use extreme violence to fight the city’s “war on drugs.”

Here’s everything coming to HBO and HBO Max this month:

Avail. 4/1
10, 1979
Annabelle, 2014 (HBO)
Armed and Dangerous, 1986
Balls Out: Gary the Tennis Coach, 2009
Battle Los Angeles, 2011
Beetlejuice, 1988
Bells Are Ringing, 1960
Black Gold, 1947
Blood Ties, 2014 (HBO)
Boys’ Night Out, 1962
Brewster McCloud, 1970
Brie’s Bake Off Challenge, 2022
Capote, 2005 (HBO)
Captains Courageous, 1937
Chicago, 2002 (HBO)
Children of the Damned, 1964
Czech It Out!, Max Original Premiere
Dances With Wolves, 1990 (HBO) (Extended Version)
Erased, 2013 (HBO)
Fantastic Beasts: A Natural History, 2022
Five Easy Pieces, 1970
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, 2009
Girl Most Likely, 2013 (HBO)
Graffiti Bridge, 1990
Hugo, 2011 (HBO)
Insidious, 2010
Iron Eagle, 1986
Iron Eagle II, 1988
Kin, 2018 (HBO)
Krull, 1983 (HBO)
Larry Crowne, 2011
Les Miserables, 1998
Limitless, 2011 (HBO)
Moon, 2009 (HBO)
Moscow on the Hudson, 1984
Nobody’s Fool, 1994 (HBO)
Odd Man Out, 1947
On the Waterfront, 1954
One True Singer, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Only Lovers Left Alive, 2014 (HBO)
Original Sin, 2001 (HBO) (Extended Version)
Peggy Sue Got Married, 1986
Point Break, 2015 (HBO)
Rain Man, 1988 (HBO)
Red, 2010 (HBO)
Rendez-Vous, 2020 (HBO)
Revolver, 2007 (HBO)
Salt, 2010
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, 1954
Sex Drive, 2008 (HBO) (Extended Version)
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 1949
Show Boat, 1936
Six Degrees Of Separation, 1993 (HBO)
Slc Punk!, 1999 (HBO)
Spartan, 2004 (HBO)
Special Agent, 1935
Summer of ’42, 1971
Surf’s Up 2: WaveMania, 2017
Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962
The Asphalt Jungle, 1950
The Big Chill, 1983
The Big House, 1930
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, 2009 (HBO) (Director’s Cut)
The Break-Up, 2006 (HBO)
The Brothers Solomon, 2007 (HBO)
The Chosen, 1982 (HBO)
The Freshman, 1990 (HBO)
The Heartbreak Kid, 2007 (HBO)
The Incredible Hulk, 2008 (HBO)
The Informant (aka A Besugo), Max Original Season 1 Premiere
The Ladies Man, 2000 (HBO)
The Last Airbender, 2010 (HBO)
The Last Detail, 1973
The Last Dragon, 1985
The Raid: Redemption, 2012 (HBO) (Extended Version)
The Relic, 1997 (HBO)
The Secret In Their Eyes, 2010 (HBO)
The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, 2013 (HBO)
The Thaw (aka Odwilz), Max Original Season 1 Premiere
The Thirteenth Floor, 1999
The Toy, 1982
The Wackness, 2008 (HBO)
Tootsie, 1982 (HBO)
Under the Cherry Moon, 1986
Universal Soldier: The Return, 1999
Vice Versa, 1988
Welcome To Collinwood, 2002 (HBO)
Who’s Harry CRUMB?, 1989 (HBO)
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, 1996 (HBO)
Winter Meeting, 1948
Wrath Of The Titans, 2012

Avail. 4/2
Batwoman, Season 3
Chad

Avail. 4/4
The Invisible Pilot, Documentary Series Premiere (HBO)

Avail. 4/5
Man of Steel, 2013 (HBO)
Tony Hawk: Until the Wheels Fall Off, Documentary Premiere (HBO)
We’re The Millers, 2013 (HBO)

Avail. 4/7
Close Enough, Max Original Season 3
Queen Stars, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Tokyo Vice, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Trinity of Shadows, Max Original Season 1 Premiere

Avail. 4/8
A Black Lady Sketch Show, Season 3 Premiere (HBO)
Crabs In A Barrel, 2022 (HBO)
Mi Casa, 2022 (HBO)
The Night House, 2021 (HBO)
When You Clean A Stranger’s Home, 2022 (HBO)

Avail. 4/12
Black Mass, 2015

Avail. 4/14
The Garcias, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Gensan Punch, Max Original Premiere
The Great Pottery Throw Down, Max Original Season 5 Premiere
Not So Pretty, Max Original Season 1 Premiere

Avail. 4/17
The House, 2017

Avail. 4/21
Amsterdam, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Marlon Wayans Presents: The Headliners, Max Original Special Premiere
The Flight Attendant, Max Original Season 2 Premiere

Avail. 4/22
A Tiny Audience, Season 3 Premiere (HBO)
Toy Aficiao, 2021 (HBO)

Avail. 4/24
Barry, Season 3 Premiere (HBO)
The Baby Limited Series Premiere (HBO)

Avail. 4/24
We Own This City, Limited Series Premiere (HBO)

Avail. 4/27
The Survivor, 2022 (HBO)

Avail. 4/28
Ana Emilia Show (aka Desafío Influencer con Ana Emilia), Max Original Premiere
DoDo, Max Original Season 1 Premiere
Lamput, Season 1-3
Made for Love, Max Original Season 2 Premiere
Up Close with Ana Emilia, Max Original Special Premiere
The Way Down: God, Greed, And The Cult Of Gwen Shamblin, Max Original Season 1 Part B Premiere

Avail. 4/29
Snowpiercer, Season 3

Avail. 4/30
The Blair Witch Project, 1999
House of 1,000 Corpses, 2003
The Devil’s Rejects, 2005

Here’s everything leaving HBO and HBO Max this month:

Leaving 4/3
Life’s Too Short, 2012 (HBO)

Leaving 4/30
2 Fast 2 Furious, 2003 (HBO)
A Good Day to Die Hard, 2013 (HBO) (Extended Version)
Aftermath, 2017 (HBO)
Anna to the Infinite Power, 1982 (HBO)
Bloodsport, 1988 (HBO)
Cake, 2005 (HBO)
Cursed, 2005 (HBO)
Darkness, 2004 (HBO) (Unrated Version)
Executive Decision, 1996 (HBO)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, 2011 (HBO)
Firehouse Dog, 2007 (HBO)
For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada, 2012 (HBO)
Freejack, 1992 (HBO)
Frida, 2002 (HBO)
Getting Even With Dad, 1994 (HBO)
Hearts in Atlantis, 2001 (HBO)
Her Body, 2018 (HBO)
Hitman, 2007 (HBO) (Extended Version)
House, 2008 (HBO)
Moonstruck, 1987 (HBO)
My Baby’s Daddy, 2004 (HBO)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 2002 (HBO)
Never Let Me Go, 2010 (HBO)
News of the World, 2020 (HBO)
Poltergeist II: the Other Side, 1986 (HBO)
Poltergeist III, 1988 (HBO)
Promising Young Woman, 2020 (HBO)
Senseless, 1998 (HBO)
Showtime, 2002 (HBO)
Something New, 2006 (HBO)
Stigmata, 1999 (HBO)
Summer School, 1987 (HBO)
The Betrayed, 2008 (HBO)
The Brady Bunch Movie, 1995 (HBO)
The Day After Tomorrow, 2004 (HBO)
The End, 1978 (HBO)
The Fast and the Furious, 2001 (HBO)
The Happening, 2008 (HBO)
The Pope of Greenwich Village, 1984 (HBO)
The Poseidon Adventure, 1972 (HBO)
The Presidio, 1988 (HBO)
The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, 2007 (HBO)
The Transporter, 2002 (HBO)
The Wings of the Dove, 1997 (HBO)
Thelma & Louise, 1991 (HBO)
Tomcats, 2001 (HBO)
Unleashed, 2005 (HBO) (Director’s Cut)
Waiting to Exhale, 1995 (HBO)
Weightless, 2018 (HBO)
Welcome to Sarajevo, 1997 (HBO)
Witness, 1985 (HBO)
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, 2018 (HBO)

Fontaines DC are now about a month away from releasing their latest album, Skinty Fia, as that’s set to drop on April 22. Today, the band offers a new video for the album’s title track, a rhythmic post-punk tune. In the video, singer Grian Chatten wanders through a peculiar ballroom lit like a dance club as he stares at the camera and deadpans the lyrics.

Chatten previously told Rolling Stone of the song, “‘Skinty Fia’ is an expression that our drummer’s great auntie used to say. She was an Irish-speaking person, like strictly Irish-speaking, exclusively Irish-speaking person. She used to say that as kind of like a colloquialism. I never heard it before Tom [Coll] said it to me recently, but it was a substitute for a swear word, basically. If she drops something, she’d say, ‘Ah, skinty fia.’ It roughly translates as ‘the damnation of the deer.’ I don’t know, it sounds like mutation and doom and inevitability and all these things that I felt were congruous to my idea of Irishness abroad. Like if you go to Boston, that expression of Irishness. That’s skinty fia to me. That’s that mutation. That’s a new thing. It’s not unlicensed and it’s not impure. Just because it’s diaspora, it’s still pure. It’s just a completely new beast.”

Watch the “Skinty Fia” video above.

Skinty Fia is out 4/22 via Partisan. Pre-order it here.

The time has almost come for Bridgerton‘s second season, and the Shondaland show is going to go for at least four full seasons. In the meantime, ready yourself for more scandal as Lord Anthony Bridgerton begins to maneuver through courting season in search of his viscountess. In the meantime, prepare to see more interviews about sex-scene props and corsets, and also, actress Nicola Coughlan (who portrays Penelope, who’s doing a lot of juggling this season with that secret of hers) is opening up about how it all began: with fears.

The Derry Girls actress sat down with the New York Times and revealed that she was thrilled to join the ensemble cast, but she also figured that she’d be canned before things got real. That’s not something that one would expect from an actress who’s also pulling off some duplicity within the role, but yes, really:

Told that she had the part, Coughlan tempered her enthusiasm. She had known plenty of actors who were hired onto prestige projects and then fired when the studio demanded a bigger name. “I should have been like, This is amazing,” she said. “Instead, I was like, This is fishy. I don’t know about this.” She remained tense throughout the first table read.

That’s rather wild, since it’s almost impossible to envision another actress popping into the Penelope role with the same mix of vulnerability, entrepreneurship, and ingenuity. Plus, she can pull off a yellow dress like few people can. It’s worth noting as well, that Bridgerton showrunner Chris Van Dusen was thrilled with Nicola’s performance and said “everyone loved her as much as I did.” Now, let the scandal pages begin anew.

Bridgerton (along with Lady Whistledown) returns on March 25.

(Via New York Times)

You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far to think about what Lizzo might be like acting in a Saturday Night Live sketch. The multi-talented “Truth Hurts” singer is not just a multi-Platinum, Grammy Award-winning artist, but she’s a viral TikTok star who has shown time and time again that she’s both hilarious and not afraid to speak her mind. So, SNL is ready to put all of Lizzo’s talents on display when she does double-duty as both the host and musical guest of NBC’s hit show on April 16th.

The entire April slate of hosts and musical performers was announced today. In addition to the “Lizzo-palooza” on April 16th, Gunna and Camila Cabello were also confirmed as musical guests in April. Gunna, whose DS4Ever topped the Billboard 200 chart earlier this year, will appear on the April 2nd episode, hosted by comedian Jerrod Carmichael. Meanwhile, Camila Cabello, who just announced that her new album Familia will be out on April 8th, will be the musical guest for an episode hosted by Jake Gyllenhaall on April 9th. It’s a perfectly timed appearance for Cabello with her album coming out the day before the episode, and it’s also a boost that it will mark Gylenhaal’s first time hosting the show in 15 years.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Uproxx has been covering the rise of South Florida rapper $not for some time and really enjoying watching the 24-year-old spread his wings and come into his own. Recently, he received a big career bump from veteran nu-metal band Limp Bizkit, who invited him to join them on their upcoming Still Sucks Tour. However, the move apparently disappointed and upset one of the rap-rock band’s contemporary groups — also called Snot.

According to Consequence, Mikey Doling, Snot’s guitarist, posted a video in which he took Limp Bizkit’s frontman Fred Durst to task over the booking. “I wanted to say to Fred Durst, if you see this video, how dare you, man?” he said. “You were friends with Snot. Snot loved you, man. You came onstage with us and performed. [Late Snot singer] Lynn [Strait] went on stage with you in Boston. … We were friends. We shared drinks, stage, music [and] all that, and all these years later you take an artist named $not on tour with you? What the f**k is that, man? Bullshit. … And to that fake $not kid — [Doling gives the camera the middle finger] right there, brother. There’s only one f**king Snot. Get some.”

For his part, $not seemed more bemused than anything else, posting a tweet reacting to the headline as posted by XXL. “This actually ridiculous,” he wrote. “Old man mad about my name.”

For what it’s worth, the band named Snot hasn’t released a new album in 20 years. The group actually disbanded in the wake of Strait’s death in 1998, and Strait Up, the album that they released in 2000, had all its vocals recorded by the lead vocalists of associated bands like Incubus, Korn, Soulfly (incidentally, the subject of another confusing hip-hop crossover thanks to Rod Wave), and even, yes, Limp Bizkit. $not, however, is fresh off the release of his second studio album, Ethereal, and has a remarkably compatible vibe to both the original Snot and Limp Bizkit, so it isn’t like his addition to the tour doesn’t make sense.

If there’s one thing that Elmo should know about Samuel L. Jackson, it’s that he loves to swear. If there’s two things Elmo should know about Samuel L. Jackson, it’s that he loves to swear and he’s famously had it with motherf*cking snakes. And yet, on a recent episode of Sesame Street, Elmo introduced Jackson to some slithery pals. Not cool.

“Elmo is so happy that Mr. Sam is visiting us on Sesame Street,” the devil-red Muppet says to the Jurassic Park star in the clip below. “Thanks, Elmo, and I am so happy to be here with all my friends,” Jackson replied. That’s when Elmo remembers that “there are some old friends that want to say hello.” He’s referring to two snakes, who tag Jackson. “Oh no!” he shouts. “It looks like we’re playing Tag, Elmo. They’re always chasing me.”

Two things:

1. Good luck to every parent who has to explain Snakes on a Plane to their child. (“In conclusion, it’s a one-joke premise that couldn’t sustain itself for nearly two hours,” Dad says before realizing that Lil’ Johnny left the room 15 minutes ago.)

2. This isn’t the first Muppet parody of Snakes on a Plane. Muppet Wiki informs me that “episode 30 of [web series] Statler & Waldorf: From the Balcony spoofs the film with a series of knockoffs, including Bunnies on a Balloon and Sheep on a Submarine.”

Now that’s just good, clean fun.

Over the weekend, West Side Story star Rachel Zegler revealed that she has not been invited to the 94th Annual Academy Awards despite the film being nominated for Best Picture. It’s a pretty significant snub by the Academy, which Zegler attempted to remedy with no luck before letting her fans know on Instagram why she won’t be at the Oscars. Considering the amount of attention Zegler’s situation received, you’d assume the Academy would make things right. Not so much. Instead, it’s announced a new list of recently-added presenters, which notably does not include Zegler.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

H.E.R., who earned the Oscar for best original song for last year’s Judas and the Black Messiah, will join previous nominees Bill Murray and Elliot Page as presenters. Stephanie Beatriz, Jennifer Garner, DJ Khaled, Tiffany Haddish, Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater and Shaun White are among the all-star lineup added to the show. It was previously announced that Academy Award winners Ruth E. Carter, Kevin Costner, Anthony Hopkins, Daniel Kaluuya, Rami Malek, Lupita Nyong’o and Yuh-Jung Youn will also return to the Oscars stage to present awards.

Naturally, this news did not go over well on social media, where folks are understandably frustrated and confused as to why the star of a film nominated for Best Picture still hasn’t been invited to the Oscars. It also doesn’t help the situation that random celebrities like snowboarder Shaun White, skateboarder Tony Hawk, and DJ Khaled scored invites despite not even being actors, unless you count Tony Hawk’s appearance as “Skateboarder” in the classic 1984 film Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.

You can see some of the reactions below. It’s a whole thing now.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

For a solid 20 or so years, people couldn’t merely have conversations about Jawbreaker — the trio of Blake Schwarzenbach, Adam Pfahler and Chris Bauermeister broke up in 1996 following their fourth and final album Dear You, and any mention of the band had to resemble a passing down of mythological lore.

They were the West Coast Fugazi, revered as an ethical barometer to the point where it threatened to overshadow their actual music. A&Rs soon viewed them as the next Green Day, a comparison made overt when Jawbreaker linked up with Dookie producer Rob Cavallo for the major-label debut they once swore they’d never make. And as a result, Dear You was an extinction-level event in American punk; “My girlfriend at the time smashed the promotional cassette copy I gave her and walked away in disgust,” Brandon Stosuy wrote in a Pitchfork review for the 2014 reissue of 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, the album that preceded Dear You. “People were shell-shocked at the glossier production: I honestly saw a man with a Jawbreaker tattoo weeping at the record store where I worked.” Jawbreaker is a centerpiece in Dan Ozzi’s recent oral history of “the major label feeding frenzy” that occurred in punk, hardcore and emo in the mid-90s and beyond. The title of said book is Sellout.

But as these things tend to turn out, the initial reception of Dear You only enhanced its myth going forward. Commercial failure was proof of its misunderstood genius; it regularly tops the Best Emo Albums and Songs lists that have been commissioned in large part because their influence has increased exponentially in the past decade. At a time when countless defunct emo or punk or indie acts from the 90s reunited to far larger and more receptive crowds than they ever saw as an active band, rumors would circulate about the astronomical guarantees that Jawbreaker turned down every single time. And then in 2017, the silence finally broke — they headlined the final night of Riot Fest in Chicago, the kind of slot typically held by the likes of Run The Jewels, Slipknot and Nine Inch Nails.

After a small run of shows throughout 2018 and assorted festival appearances, Dear You is the center of an event commensurate with its reputation — a 27-date tour where Jawbreaker will play the album in full, supported by opening acts encompassing a universe of emo, pop-punk, modern rock, and classic indie where Dear You is a central axis. If you’re at one of the four sold-out shows at New York’s Irving Plaza, Jawbreaker will be supported by rough-edged, literate punks Worriers and Shellshag, along with teenage sensations The Linda Lindas. The sold-out San Francisco dates feature Jawbox and queercore icons Team Dresch, while numerous dates feature the Lemonheads celebrating the 30th anniversary of It’s a Shame About Ray. Even then, one might be envious of the cities that get to see Samiam or Dillinger Four or Built To Spill and Smoking Popes on the same bill. And then there are the shows that opener with punk-adjacent stand-ups like Kyle Kinane and Chris Gethard.

And yet, as he’s about to embark on a tour to celebrate a two-year belated 25th anniversary of Dear You, Schwarzenbach is still bemused at the legacy of an album that was treated like a rounding error by the label accountants. “We were getting our feedback from DGC where if it sold 50,000 copies, no one’s gonna tell you that,” Schwarzenbach recalls during our Zoom conversation. “That’s not gonna make a dent in the cost of the record.” In fact, most of his memories about Dear You are lost in some kind of fog of war. He compares its creation to “being in a SEAL team or something,” the three members isolated in a dark studio in Berkeley with Cavallo and engineer Neill King. “My recollection of it is that the record went out and it felt more or less like silence for the next month,” he admits.

For obvious reasons – “say, a life-killing virus and a war in Ukraine” – the band has been experiencing a modern analog to their 1996 bunker mentality. Schwarzenbach admits that he’s been most affected by being unable to see his family and friends across the country, less so by the restriction of public socializing. “I’m pretty happy to read, exercise, paint, I have three cats who I hang out with and that’s never not entertaining,” he jokes. “But we’ve all been locked down for two years so there’s palpable excitement for going out on the road. Everyone’s really optimistic.”

2017 was like a massively coordinated reintroduction of Jawbreaker to the world — there was a 33 ⅓ book about 24 Hour Revenge Therapy, an oral history, a documentary, the Riot Fest show. Did that relieve any of the pressure of doing a more straightforward tour like this one?

Those things aren’t really a factor for me or for us anymore, I don’t think we’re battling anything…from then. Let me say we are indeed battling plenty now with COVID, and just the idea of being out on tour at the end of this part of the epidemic…and at our age doing a tour on a bus, it’s pretty big. Even by old Jawbreaker standards, this is a full U.S. tour.

Are there any amenities or interpersonal boundaries that you realized were non-negotiable for being able to tour over a sustained period of time?

I think we want to be comfortable. The best way we could do that is by using a bus, and we’ve never done that. It’s certainly better than the flying we did [in 2017-2018], which would be ridiculously expensive. It’s important to have one place to put stuff and lie down at any good point. Other than that, we have a really good crew we’ve been working with for the past four years and so it’s basically the same people we started with at Riot Fest. So we need our people and we need wheels and rehearsal and that’s about it.

Have you ever seen a band do a similar album-based show? When Jawbreaker reunited in 2017, it seemed like every festival would have something along those lines.

It’s not a genre I’m drawn to, we were lucky enough to be at Riot Fest when Dinosaur Jr. was doing You’re Living All Over Me, just by chance and that was great. I grew up with that record, so seeing it performed was a blast. We’re trying to figure out the format — we’re going to play the entire record but that doesn’t mean we’re going to play it in order. I haven’t seen enough to know this for sure, but I figure we can do what we want as long as we fulfill the obligation to play the whole record.

Were there any songs that you had to completely relearn?

I think there were at least four [songs] that we relearned again — I’m pretty sure we’ve never ever played “Oyster” live or “Unlisted,” which is kind of semi-acoustic. We had to figure those ones out.

I’ve heard bands will literally pay people to redo tablature for songs they forgot how to play — what’s your process like?

I’ll look on “tabs dot com” or whatever, just to get the outline. And as soon as I have the structure, I can piece back together the way I play it. And then we get back into a room and it all starts to gel really quickly, we all did our homework.

Especially on an album that has so many layers of guitars, is there anything from Dear You that makes you think, “I dunno if we can pull this one off?”

Technically for me, “Million” is really hard because it’s got a lot of moves in it for guitar and vocal and different levels of intensity. It’s a lot of toggle and pedal switching, that’s challenging. There’s a couple of songs where we leave some of the stereo guitars out or a third or fourth guitar we played in the studio that I didn’t bother with.

There are obvious theoretical challenges to revisiting music you wrote nearly 30 years ago — bands tend to retire songs that they can no longer relate to or haven’t been embraced by fans. Conversely, are there any songs from Dear You that tend to resonate with you more in the current day?

Since we started playing again, I think “Accident Prone” and “Jet Black” are set highlights, as both songs we’re proud of and songs that tend to soar a bit. But for the other ones, it’s about the reaction in the crowd sharing the space and the level of excitement…if there is excitement. That can bring me back to a place that’s rad, like, “people really like this song.”

While reading about Dear You within the context of Sellout, I was reminded about how certain albums that were underappreciated in their time can take on this revisionist history to inflate the legend — like with Jimmy Eat World’s Clarity, the band is quick to note that their career was still on an upward arc even though they were dropped from Capitol. Or how Weezer’s Pinkerton was supposedly called “The Worst Album of 1996” in Rolling Stone even though it got a 3-star review. I’m curious about how you perceived the reception of Dear You as it actually happened.

It was pretty chilling. Like a muted acknowledgment. I didn’t experience any hatred of the music firsthand. We were in a weird place, we were a little isolated and defensively prepared for anything so we kinda put it out and hid for a bit. It just felt like a non-event. To be fair, I did hear from the people I know and were working with at the time, they surprised us by writing and saying, “Hey I got your record, it’s really deep.” If we were smart enough to listen to the people we trust, there was a lot of support in our circle.

Was there a point when you started to realize that the narrative shifted on Dear You?

I didn’t get anything explicitly for that record til more recently, but certainly when Jets to Brazil started touring, the amount of fanfare for Jawbreaker was kinda crippling. It was hard for that band in the beginning because people wanted Jawbreaker, so I was surprised at the popularity of my old band in the face of my new band. And then, from afar I kinda watched its status elevate as more younger musicians and people started to get into it and refer to that record to say “I love the guitars on that,” or whatever it was.

“Accident Prone” is probably the song that inspired the most covers. Do you have a favorite?

The one Julien Baker did, because I’ve seen the video because I loved her interpretation with the piano — a literal transcription of the dissonant guitars which I thought was really amazing and then, of course, her natural gift for interpreting songs.

The tour from 2018 had an intriguing mix of openers like Waxahatchee and Charly Bliss that contemporized Jawbreaker as an influence. There’s that element here as well with The Linda Lindas and Best Coast, but also legacy acts like Built To Spill or the Lemonheads, is there a greater concept at play as far as how you want to render Jawbreaker’s lineage?

That’s us picking the bands, it’s mostly Adam because he knows more people than Chris and I. But the Linda Lindas are family friends and most of the bands are people we know and admire – Jawbox obviously, and the Descendants. But The Lemonheads, it was just our luck to get them able to play some shows, that’s a band I love and grew up with. We just picked our favorite bands that seemed like they would fit the bill and could add a co-headlining feel.

Especially with the way “90s indie rock” can be seen as more monolithic in retrospect, it makes sense to see Jawbreaker on a show with Built To Spill or The Lemonheads, but were you in the same circles with these bands back when Dear You came out?

I didn’t know either of them back in the day, but I’d go see them play live. Jawbox and Jawbreaker are pretty closely affiliated, we shared sob stories about the major label trip. As for the rest of them, I was just a fan.

Having stand-up comedians as openers is a pretty bold choice, though I wonder why it doesn’t happen more often.

Adam used to run a comedy club underneath his video store, he had a speakeasy that was in the basement. He began to meet a lot of touring and local comics in the Bay Area and that’s how it started for us, he just asked some of his friends like they were a band — “you wanna do your act?” And it worked out well. It’s weird, I always feel really bad for [comedians] because a rock audience isn’t very attentive and it’s hard to get people to listen to you especially when there’s that whole “murmuring crowd” energy. But they’re always really game

Did playing solo shows give you a better understanding of what a stand-up comedian goes through on stage?

I had always thought it seemed like a very terrifying endeavor and I know there’s a lot of psychology around that — that comedians are masochists, and I believe that. It does seem like a certain kind of pathology drives one to that. But I have total empathy for them, the first time I played solo, it was a nightmare. It ended up being really good but preparing myself to be without voltage behind me was heavy. In terms of a show, I like having a stand-up because it’s unexpected, people kinda freak out, like what the fuck’s going on? Having some discourse begin the evening shakes up a little bit.

The last round of Jawbreaker shows were in mostly the biggest cities in America. Are there any that you’re especially looking forward to this time around?

Everything that’s “secondary market” for me — we’ve played Chicago, New York and Los Angeles a couple of times, but I find historically that the more interesting shows happen in the “ignored” towns, there’s energy and appetite there. I personally love Detroit, I find it to be a fascinating city and I have friends there, it’s not a city where bands always go. Denver, I used to live in Boulder. I’m psyched. It will be novel to be looking out at the changing landscape. I’m excited about being on the road, honestly. I love being in cars, sleeping. We’ve got books, we got each other…we got windows.

The NFL broadcaster carousel is starting to slow now that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are officially at ESPN to lead the Monday Night Football booth, which took one of the options off the table for Al Michaels as he departs NBC.

Michaels has long been connected to Amazon as their top choice for Thursday Night Football, but the veteran broadcaster had yet to agree to a deal so long as other jobs were open so as to keep all options available. With Buck on Monday nights and Fox seemingly searching elsewhere for his replacement, Michaels has finally entered an agreement with Amazon, per Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, and will join Kirk Herbstreit in the new Thursday Night Football booth this fall.

Per Marchand, Michaels’ deal will be “in the Joe Buck neighborhood” annually, but for three years — Buck received a 5 years, $75 million deal from ESPN to bolt from Fox alongside his longtime broadcast partner. Clearly Herbstreit fit Michaels’ request for a veteran analyst partner, as the longtime play-by-play man apparently wasn’t interested in starting completely from scratch with someone new to the booth.

With Michaels now a done deal to Amazon, the last domino to fall is Fox’s choice for a new top booth, which should set up the next 3-to-5 years of NFL broadcasts. Fox’s second team of Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen are the apparent frontrunners to be elevated to their lead crew for the 2022 season.