Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams became New York City’s mayor-elect earlier this month when he defeated Curtis Silwa by more than 450,000 votes. Adams will become the second Democrat in a row to hold the office following Bill de Blasio’s tenure in the role. And now, to the basketball stuff: BING BONG.
Saying bing bong is now the most popular thing in the world (well, at least among Knicks fans), so much so that two people decided their votes were best used in the election to write in the phrase.
The rallying cry for the New York Knicks, Bing Bong, received multiple write-in votes for mayor of New York City.
Bing Bong didn’t quite beat out Eric Adams but it was a valiant effort in the name of democracy. pic.twitter.com/Lz84i9JNZd
Adams was gonna win the whole time, so these folks decided to have some fun with it, instead, and went in a very silly direction. In scores of other games, bing bong got more write-in votes than Derek Jeter (who got one), Barack Obama (also one), Carmelo Anthony (one), and Kyrie Irving (one). It did not, however, beat Julius Randle (he got six) or Tom Thibodeau (two, unless you wanna count the single write-in that “Tom Thibodau” got). Bing bong.
Later this week, Three 6 Mafia will go up against Bone Thugs-N-Harmony for another battle of Verzuz. Before that happens, Juicy J, who is one of two remaining members in the group, along with DJ Paul, spoke with Nas and radio personality Minya “Miss Info” about the rise and fall of the group. On the Spotify podcast The Bridge: 50 Years of Hip Hop, Juicy J admitted that “drugs really broke Three 6 Mafia up.” When asked about was specific drugs caused the group’s end, Juicy J replied, “the wildest drugs.”
“From heroin to meth to cocaine, all kinds of pills,” he continued. “A lot of drugs were consumed during the times we were together. When everybody was sober and sh*t, everybody’s on the same page But when cocaine’s involved, things change. But I’m not pointing a figure at nobody.” Juicy J added that he “can’t think of nothing else” that would’ve caused the group to break up and said it was why “people wasn’t showing up in the studio… business was crazy, everything’s folding… it was the drugs.”
Juicy J recalled a story involving Lord Infamous, DJ Paul’s late brother, who was a part of the group until 2005. “I had to bust up in Lord Infamous room before and I was almost in tears,” he said. “I thought the n**** was dead at first. So I had to go get the keys, because he wouldn’t answer the phone. I was banging on his door. So I had to bust up in his room and had to pretty much beat him [with a pillow] to wake him up.”
You can listen to the full episode of Spotify’s The Bridge: 50 Years of Hip Hop podcast here.
Nicolas Cage is certainly no stranger to over-the-top acting gigs. This year alone, the Oscar-winning thespian has received some of the best reviews of his career for Pig, a movie that sounds, on its face, as wackadoodle as the one in which he plays a janitor battling murderous amusement park attractions. But perhaps his craziest role was in 1989’s Vampire’s Kiss. Effectively a film-length supercut of Nicolas Cage going nutso, it finds him playing a greedy NYC yuppie convinced he’s a real vampire, even though he probably isn’t. At one point Cage eats a cockroach. It was real.
Jump some three decades, and Cage will finally play an actual vampire: As per The Hollywood Reporter, he’s been cast as the archetypal bloodsucker himself, Count Dracula. He won’t, alas, be the star. The movie is called Renfield, and it’s centered around the Transylvanian’s most devoted acolyte, to be played by Nicholas Hoult. (Tom Waits played him, quite memorably, in the Francis Ford Coppola version from 1992.)
It’s the latest in Universal’s so-far-successful attempt to rehab their instantly aborted Dark Universe, which was supposed to be an MCU/DCEU take on the studio’s classic monsters, and which was killed right out of the gate by the Tom Cruise-starring The Mummy. After the success of last year’s The Invisible Man, a stripped-down, outside-the-box take on the horror classic, Universal has adopted a new, cheaper, more adventurous strategy, as evidenced by Renfield.
So good for Nicolas Cage, lover of outrageous accents, who will finally, finally get to whip up his own creative stab at sounding Transylvanian.
Jared and Ivanka wanted to have it both ways. They wanted to live it up as royalty, traipsing about high society events. They also wanted to profit off the fruits of her father’s destructive labor. They wanted powerful positions in a much-despised administration, from which they could reap extra benefits, and they wanted to be big time New Yorkers who sold popular fashion wares. And they got away with it for a lot longer than they should have, only finally becoming persona non grata after her dad helped foment a deadly riot.
Since the disastrous end of Donald Trump’s presidency, Jared and Ivanka have been laying low, spending most of their time in Miami, making very few public appearances. But apparently they figured just shy of 11 months was long enough: As per The Hollywood Reporter, they finally dared show their faces in public again.
Where’d the porcelain doll pair go? To a fashion show, of course. On Tuesday, Jared and Ivanka were spotted in the front row of a Louis Vuitton show in Miami, which also featured such names as Ye, Kim Kardashian West, Pharrell Williams, Bella Hadid, and more. It wasn’t just any Louis Vuitton show; it was presented in “loving memory” to Virgil Abloh, the designer and Ye collaborator who suddenly died on Sunday at the age of 41.
It’s not the first time the one of them, at least, has been seen in public. In March, shortly after the Capitol siege, Ivanka volunteered at a Farmers to Families Food Box distribution site in Florida. She helped distribute more than 1,300 food boxes and she posted about it on Instagram — one of her rare social media posts since her father tried to overturn an election he lost by over seven million votes.
For months people have speculated when, or if, the pair would resurface in public, having long enjoyed the limelight. Perhaps they see this as baby steps. But perhaps if they try for something bigger — such as daring to return to New York City, whose denizens despise them almost as much as they despise former president Donald Trump — it will only end in tears.
Indeed, last November, after Ivanka’s father lost re-election — but before he made lying about voter fraud a potential grift — The New York Times spoke with fashion designer Batsheva Hay, who surmised that it would be tough for Ivanka to re-enter the scene. “The fashion world is pretty ready to shun her,” Hay said. “No one is going to lend Ivanka clothing — she’ll have to buy it covertly at retail.”
Now Ivanka at least has a foot back in the door. But perhaps it will still shut on her again and she’ll get the privilege of living out the ending of Dangerous Liaisons.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is the subject of an embarrassing viral video where she downplays the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine on Fox News and then, an hour later, touts their importance on CNN.
On Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Mace made some misleading and dangerous statements about why “natural immunity” is better than immunity provided by vaccines.
“One thing the CDC and no policy maker at the federal level has done so far is take into account what natural immunity has done,” Mace said. “That may be what we’re seeing in Florida today. In some studies that I have read, natural immunity gives you 27 times more protection against future COVID infection than vaccination. We need to take all of the science into account and not selectively choosing what science to follow when we are making policy decisions.”
This may sound scientific, but Mace leaves out the part where to get “natural immunity,” you have to survive the virus first. The goal, for most people during a pandemic, is not to get sick in the first place.
When youu2019re on Fox vs when youu2019re on CNNpic.twitter.com/miHJTbEMzY
The FOX clip also shows how the anti-science side simply redefines science to include minority/discarded views (natural immunity=vaccination) so that they can claim to be pro-science.
I’m guessing Fox told her not to suggest that viewers actually get vaccinated…
Footnote regarding the study she mentions on Fox: it does exist but hasn’t been peer-reviewed. And it doesn’t matter either way because obtaining natural immunity requires risking serious illness.
“COVID is associated with high disease burden, risk of death and long-lasting health issues (long COVID), in contrast with the excellent safety profile of vaccination,” he tweeted. “The question is ‘should I get vaccinated even if I previously had covid?’ People that were infected and then vaccinated develop a powerful immune response, called ‘hybrid immunity’, which exceeds what is seen with either natural infection or vaccination.”
It’s believed that in the Fox interview, Mace is referencing an Israeli study that found that natural immunity provides 27 times more protection from the delta variant than a vaccine. However, according to FactCheck.org, that study has not been peer reviewed or “accepted or endorsed in any way by the scientific or medical community.”
The study’s authors also say that the natural immunity that comes from being infected by the virus may wane over a short period of time.
An hour after her Fox interview, Mace was singing about the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines on CNN.
“I’ve been a proponent of vaccinations and wearing masks when you need to,” she said. “When we had the delta variant raging in South Carolina, I wrote an op-ed to my community, and I worked with our state Department of Health.”
So what is it, Representative Mace? Should we risk death by achieving “natural immunity” or through a safe and effective vaccine?
Obviously, the answer is, don’t risk death or the symptoms of long COVID and get the vaccine. If you’ve already been sick, get the vaccine anyway and enjoy even stronger immunity.
However, Representative Mace thinks that the correct answer is whatever her conservative constituents who watch Fox News or her small, but important group of liberals and moderates supporters, who watch CNN, think.
Why is she flip-flopping on a life-or-death issue? It could be because Mace is at real risk of losing her seat in 2022. In 2020, she beat Democrat Joe Cunningham by less than 6,000 votes. Further, she’s already provoked the ire of Republican kingmaker Donald Trump who put her on a list of Republicans he wants to be booted from office.
It’s understandable that Mace has to try to appeal to as many people as possible to keep her political career alive. But the fact that she’s fine with risking the lives of countless Americans to do so, makes her unfit for office.
In a decent world, this one short video would result in the complete decimation of her political career.
Less than a year after Shawn Mendes released his fourth album Wonder, he’s already gearing for more. The singer took to his social media accounts to announce that his upcoming single, “It’ll Be Okay,” will arrive on Wednesday, December 2. He shared the news with a brief preview of the song. “Are we gonna make it?/ Is this gonna hurt?” he sings in the teaser as organ-like synths roar in the background. It’s unknown if the track could signal a possible deluxe reissue for Wonder or if it’s just a one-off.
This comes nearly two weeks after Mendes and Camila Cabello announced in a joint statement that they’d called it quits after two years. “Hey guys, we’ve decided to end our romantic relationship but our love for one another as humans is stronger than ever,” the statement read. “We started our relationship as best friends and will continue to be best friends. We so appreciate your support from the beginning and moving forward.” The duo first started dating in mid-2019 after collaborating on their No. 1 single “Señorita.” Prior to that, in 2015, they connected for their first song together with “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”
You can listen to the preview of “It’ll Be Okay” in the post above.
On Monday, a report by The New York Times revealed damning intel about CNN host Chris Cuomo: New documents showed that he been move involved in his brother Andrew’s attempts to deal with sexual harassment claims than he’d previously revealed. That night, Chris’ weeknight show aired as usual, as though everything was hunky dory. What a difference a day makes.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, CNN has suspended Cuomo indefinitely after the report, which detailed, among other things, how he used his connections to help dig up dirt on some of his brother’s accusers.
“The documents, which we were not privy to before their public release, raise serious questions,” a CNN spokesperson told THR. “When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother’s staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly. But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second. However, these documents point to a greater level of involvement in his brother’s efforts than we previously knew. As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation.”
Earlier this year, the younger Cuomo claimed he had played a small role in helping his brother. The report, however, showed that he did far more than that. He phoned into strategy meetings, and even told investigators from the New York AG’s office that he would “reach out to sources, other journalists, to see if they had heard of anybody else coming out.” Ultimately it was for nought: Cuomo resigned in disgrace in August, to the surprise of many.
What he didn’t do, Cuomo said, was try to influence how stories about the case were reported on CNN. But that may not be enough to save his relationship with his longtime employers.
When you think of single malt whisk(e)y, your brain almost automatically thinks of Scotland. I think you can be forgiven for that slight to other whisk(e)y producing nations — Scotch absolute does dominate the sector. But single malt doesn’t have to come from Scotland. Anyone can make it from Kamchatka to Chile. That’s why, today, we’re blind tasting and ranking eight iconic single malts made all over the world.
Full disclosure, this was the hardest blind ranking I’ve done. Period. Every one of the whiskies I tasted in this blind taste test was very good. They were varied and nuanced and I really, really liked all of them. Alas, there couldn’t be an eight-way tie for number one so I did rank them but the distance between these rankings is paper-thin.
Our lineup today:
Kavalan Sherry Oak Single Malt Whisky
Slyrs Bavarian Single Malt Whisky
Balcones Pilgrimage Texas Single Malt Whisky
Penderyn Rhiannon Single Malt Welsh Whisky
Rampur Asava Indian Single Malt Whisky
Cragganmore Distillers Edition Speyside Single Malt Scotch Whisky
This is pure Christmas cake on the nose with sticky prunes, tons of holiday spice, orange oils, and marzipan. The taste has a subtle nutmeg with creamy vanilla that leads towards a soft and almost rummy plum pudding with a hint of sweet oak in the background. Hints of dark chocolate dust lead towards a hot and spicy tobacco leaf buzz on the end that’s very reminiscent of a hard-hitting, high-ABV bourbon.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Stone fruit dominates on the nose with a nice medley of orange wedges, cellar must, and savory papaya skins. The taste moves towards rose-water heavy marzipan with caramel sauce, old leather, and thin malts that leads towards a spicy Red Hots finish.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This opens with a mix of rich honey, soft leather, pears, red grapes, and a touch of stewed peach. The palate has a slight maltiness that’s cut with pear candies, more honey, and pecans floating in syrup. The mid-palate takes on a little nutmeg as an apple soda vibe arrives late and leads you towards a mild chocolate-tobacco finish.
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This hits hard, with a big oak char that immediately fades towards red and blackberries plus a hint of pear that’s then emboldened by creamy walnut sauce from a Chiles en Nogada on the nose … I mean, it’s exactly that sauce. The taste touches on rich marzipan and walnut cake as a creamy caramel leads towards plums, more berries, chocolate-covered espresso beans, and a hint of dry oak.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Ripe apricots mingle with fresh pineapple, blackberry, and a hint of fruity tobacco. The palate leans into a honey sweetness as a thin line of vanilla and red wine staves drives the taste. The end has a slightly warm and woody tobacco note that touches on clove and nutmeg.
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Apples grilled with fresh fennel and raisins draw you in on the nose with a slightly honeyed edge. The taste pings between mild and soft oak, powdery white pepper, fresh figs, and hard pear candies. Vanilla pops in late as that pepper brings about a savory green herb finish that’s almost oily.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
Grapefruit pith and vanilla beans sit next to brand new leather notes on this nose. Apple taffy with the wax paper still on drives the palate as dried roses, pinewood panels, and honey-soaked pecans add a nice balance to the taste. The mid-palate goes from a spicy zucchini bread to focus on the walnuts in that bread with a dry note on the finish that’s closer to the walnut shells.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Tasting Notes:
This is so mild you really have to take a moment to figure out the nose. There’s a sense of an old Weber BBQ that’s been left out in the rain by the sea that accent hints of rich marzipan, orange oils, freshly ground nutmeg, and a hint of ginger candy. The taste starts off with a bright melon candy next to almonds and walnuts with a light maltiness. The mid-palate brings dark plums into the mix, with smoked pears and apples adding a tine twinge of savoriness and smoke before the finish gently lands on earthy menthol tobacco leaves.
The whisky is all about local, Alpine craft. The Bavarian Summer barley is grown and malted in the foothills of the Alps. The juice is aged in new American oak tuns (huge barrels). Finally, the whisky is proofed with local spring water from those very Alps.
Bottom Line:
I really liked this (I’m going to say that a lot on this list). But if you forced my hand to reach for a 9th dram right after this tasting, I’d likely reach for this one last. So… here it is.
Waterford might be the most interesting whiskey maker in the world right now. The interesting bit about this distillery is found in the barley. The short version of the story is that Waterford sources barley from just over 40 farms across Ireland and then makes a single estate whiskey from each, to highlight how massively important terroir is to whiskey.
Bottom Line:
This was complex and tasty. It was just slightly less nuanced than some of the others on the list and ranked a little lower.
Still, it’s a damn fine dram.
6. Rampur Asava Indian Single Malt Whisky — Taste 5
Rampur Asava is distilled and aged in the shadow of the Himalayas. The whisky is aged in both ex-bourbon and finished in Indian Cabernet Sauvignon casks before vatting and proofing with water from those Himalayan peaks.
Bottom Line:
This is where we really start splitting hairs. This is tasty, unique, yet familiar. I wrote in my notebook, “Oh, this is nice.”
5. Balcones Pilgrimage Texas Single Malt Whisky — Taste 3
This single malt starts with Golden Promise malted barley in the mash with proprietary ale yeast and local Texas water. The distilled juice is then loaded into used barrels like all of the world’s great single malts. After a few years of aging under the hot Texas sun, the whisky is transferred into French Sauternes casks, bringing a distinct dessert wine vibe to the juice. Finally, the whisky is bottled at cask strength from very small, one-off batches.
Bottom Line:
This landed a little more into my palate but also really fit in with the rest of the lineup. It was nutty, fruity, funky … everything I wanted in a single malt was there.
Cragganmore is an iconic Scottish distillery. The whisky is matured in sherry casks for 12 years. It’s then transferred into American oak casks that held port for a final maturation phase before proofing and bottling.
Bottom Line:
This is the biggest outlier and that’s why it’s in the middle. This was so different and so much greener and more herbal that I didn’t know if it should be number one or eight. So, here it is.
This single malt from Nikka’s famed Yoichi Distillery by the sea blends its single malts into the final product that highlights both the distillery and region in the bottle. The whiskies are very lightly peated malted barley whiskies that are made with peat heated with dry coal fires. The no-age-statement whisky is then proofed with local spring water and bottled.
Bottom Line:
This was a delightful dram. It’s so subtle and, really, gentle. The fact that this is peated could be completely lost on some whisky drinkers. It’s really an amazing sip of whisky for this price point.
2. Penderyn Rhiannon Single Malt Welsh Whisky — Taste 4
This Welsh whisky is part of the distillery’s “Icons of Wales” line. The seventh release in that series is a malted barley whisky aged in sherrywood grand cru barrels and proofed with local Welsh spring water. The bottle is named after the Celtic horse goddess which means “Great Queen.”
Bottom Line:
This blew me away. That walnut cream sauce vibe on the nose was both wild and really enticing. The taste didn’t quite live up to the uniqueness of the nose and that’s the only reason this isn’t number one.
1. Kavalan Solist Sherry Oak Single Malt Whisky — Taste 1
This big, award-winning whisky is made from 100 percent malted barley. The distillate is aged in Olorosso sherry casks for an undisclosed amount of years. That whisky is then bottled as-is without any coloring, filtration, or cutting with water.
Bottom Line:
This was a dream to drink. It also really appealed to my bourbon-soaked palate, which certainly helped in hitting number one. This is a bottle I definitely need more of, especially as the holiday season sets in.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
Zach Johnston
This is a great example of how varied single malts from all over the world can be, while also having a real throughline. Nuts, fruits, wintry spices, and woody notes came up in almost every bottle except, oddly, the one from Scotland.
That being said, there were so many surprises and unique nuances between drams that they each stood out. And that’s always nice when tasting something blind and trying to rank them. Overall, I think I need to dive into Kavalan a lot more in the coming year. That Sherry Oak is a masterstroke of whisky making and deserves a lot more attention.
When it dropped in 2018, Tierra Whack’s Whack World took hip-hop by storm. Who was this unknown twenty-something rapper out of Philadelphia presenting this flawlessly produced 15 minute album of 15 one-minute songs with 15 separate unique visuals? It was jaw-dropping stuff and Whack has rightfully soared ever since, her voice gracing collaborations with her hometown Philadelphia 76ers, a powerful Janelle Monáe track, even the Madden 22 soundtrack. There have been a lot of singles released in the past few years, but no official album release since Whack World. Until now.
Announced today, Rap? is an EP from Whack, and she has announced a few shows surrounding the release as well. She’ll be in Brooklyn on the day of the release, December 2nd, and in Los Angeles on December 10th. There’s a third date whose location has yet to be announced, but a hometown show in Philadelphia would make sense.
Whack has also announced her first ever fashion collaboration, with an official Vans sneaker and apparel line — an ’80s style collection that Whack and her stylist Shirley Kurata have helped design. All of the pieces will feature the mantra “Weird Hype And Creative Kids” (as in “WHACK”).
The Los Angeles Lakers will be without the services of LeBron James for an unspecified period of time. According to the team, James will miss at least Tuesday night’s game against the Sacramento Kings after being placed in the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
LeBron James has entered health and safety protocols and is out tonight vs. Sacramento, Lakers say.
While James is vaccinated, it is unclear whether or not he tested positive for COVID or is simply a close contact. The NBA’s rules state that he will need to miss a minimum of 10 days if he tests positive for COVID-19. Over the next 10 days, the Lakers have games against the Kings, the Los Angeles Clippers, the Boston Celtics, and the Memphis Grizzlies. The team also has tilts against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Dec. 10 and the Orlando Magic on Dec. 12.
The team has played a number of games without James this year, as the All-Star forward has missed 11 of the team’s 22 games due to injuries. They have not, however, been particularly successful when he sits — Los Angeles is 4-7 when James does not play this season and 7-4 when he does not. As a result, the team sits in seventh place in the Western Conference. When he has played during the 2021-22 campaign, James has averaged 25.8 points, 6.8, 5.2 rebounds, and 1.8 steals in 36.9 minutes a night.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
