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Doja Cat, who had a huge year with the release of her third album Planet Her, is trying to leverage her influence to bring back a beloved fast-food menu item: Taco Bell’s discontinued Mexican pizza. Last year, Taco Bell cut the menu favorite in an effort to streamline its gargantuan selection (and save over 7 million pounds of paperboard in the process). The move was met with general outcry on social media as fans mourned the loss of the topping-stacked tortilla in a box.

At the time, Doja Cat was one of those who lamented the pizza getting axed, “asking nicely” for the fast-food giant to reconsider. However, in the past year, Doja has apparently accumulated some goodwill at Taco Bell corporate — or, at least, at Taco Bell’s ad agency — landing her song “Get Into It (Yuh)” on the company’s new commercial for its Double Steak Grilled Cheese Burrito. In the ad, a geeky cosplayer (SAGA!!) appears to have met their match, until the infamous Taco Bell sound effect prompts a late-night snack run instead (surely, they could have done both, but I digress).

Doja, seizing the opportunity, tweeted, “Hey @tacobell, just heard my song in your commercial… I’m a #TacoBellPartner now. So where’s my Mexican Pizza?”

When a fan answered, prompting her to speak to Taco Bell’s “Chief Impact Officer,” who is a friend of Doja’s — it’s Lil Nas X, by the way — the Taco Bell account responded in typical personified corporate account fashion: with a the three-emoji string of eye-mouth-eye, implying… well, there are a lot of potential definitions, but in this case, it seems to be a sanguine interest in the topic being discussed.

Of course, that only opened the door for more of Doja’s meme-ready shenanigans, as she hit Taco Bell with that infamous three-letter acronym, “WYD?” When the response turned out to not be “rolling out those delicious Mexican pizzas,” though, she dismissed her new playmate, telling them to “STFU” until further notice.

Could this be the beginning of the return of the Mexican Pizza menu item? Wouldn’t it be a weird way to begin the rollout? And isn’t “weird” pretty much Doja’s (and Lil Nas X’s) whole brand? And how does Rico Nasty — Doja’s good friend who occasionally goes by the alter ego “Tacobella” — figure into all of this (they’ve swapped profile pics for the past week or so)? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. Fingers crossed for a “limited-time” sort of deal, a la Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hottie Sauce” collab with Popeyes.

The New York Giants slipped to 3-7 on the season with a 30-10 loss to the Bucs on Monday Night Football, as their latest poor showing once again put them at the bottom of the NFC East.

Chief among the Giants issues are an offense that simply can’t put up points consistently. New York is third-worst in the NFL in touchdowns put on the board this season at 18, leading only the lowly Lions and Texans, and Monday saw them once again scuttle away opportunities and fail to mount anything approaching a comeback in the second half. While there is plenty of blame to go around, the first to take the fall is always the offensive coordinator, and on Tuesday the Giants announced they had fired Jason Garrett.

Garrett took over as OC for the Giants prior to last season, joining New York fresh off his long tenure as Cowboys head coach. Unfortunately for Giants fans, Garrett didn’t bring some form of resurgent system to New York, but instead produced a similarly mediocre offense — that surely hasn’t been helped by a less than stellar offensive line and uneven at best quarterback play from Daniel Jones. Still, Garrett’s uninspiring offensive scheme is on the way out the door and New York will turn to assistant Freddie Kitchens, per Pat Leonard of the New York Daily News, formerly of the Browns, to see if they can’t breathe life into their offense. If not, more significant changes may need to be made in New York to try and right the ship.

Jurassic World: Dominion doesn’t come out until June 10, 2022 (which is a reminder that we’re approaching the 30th anniversary of Jurassic Park, and I don’t know how to feel about that), but Universal Pictures has released a The Tree of Life-looking prologue for the third and final film in the Jurassic World series.

It begins 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth. There’s big dinosaurs, small dinosaurs, feathered dinosaurs, and egg-eating dinosaurs (get that little cutie in a short with Baby Yoda ASAP). There’s also a mosquito, which transports us to shortly after the events of 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Dinosaurs have invaded the mainland, including a drive-in theater where a hungry and confused T-rex interrupts a double feature of American Graffiti and Flash Gordon at a drive-in theater.

The prologue, which was written and directed by Colin Trevorrow, doesn’t appear in Jurassic World: Dominion, but it “serves as the beginning of a story that will be continued in theaters next summer,” according to Universal. Probably not this theater, though:

Jurassic World: Dominion stars Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Daniella Pineda, Isabella Sermon, Justice Smith, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Mamoudou Athie, Scott Haze, Dichen Lachman, Campbell Scott, DeWanda Wise, and a bunch of dinosaurs.

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith have long established themselves as the King and Queen of Oversharing when it comes to their sex lives, both as a couple and extra-maritally. It didn’t seem like the two of them could reveal anymore about themselves, but then Will released a new memoir, and he’s reaching a whole new level of putting it all out there.

In a new excerpt from Will, the former Fresh of Prince of Bel-Air star opens up about being cheated on by his first girlfriend and responding to the infidelity by having so much sex that he couldn’t have an orgasm without gagging. Once again, thanks for… sharing? Via Buzzfeed:

“Up until this point in my life, I had only had sex with one woman other than Melanie,” he writes. “But over the next few months, I went full ghetto hyena.” Shockingly, Will reveals that engaging in so much sexual intercourse eventually led to him developing a “psychosomatic reaction” to having an orgasm.

“I had sex with so many women, and it was so constitutionally disagreeable to the core of my being, that I developed a psychosomatic reaction to having an orgasm,” he writes.

“It would literally make me gag and sometimes even vomit,” he adds.

Obviously, Will got over his issues and eventually found Jada. According to his memoir, the two spent four months doing nothing but drinking and, well, each other.

“I was going to satisfy this woman sexually, or I was going to die trying,” Will writes while amazingly not producing an itemized list of every single orgasm. You know he and Jada might have one.

(Via Buzzfeed)

Niantic, the developer behind Pokemon GO, Pikmin Bloom, and the recently shut-down Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, might just be a company you’re going to be hearing a whole lot more from, and it’s not because they’ve got another adorable hit game lined-up. Shortly following Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, Niantic has also announced they are also getting more heavily involved in creating virtual spaces. As a result, the studio has received a $300 million investment from Coature, valuating the company at $9 billion. With this funding, Niantic intends to get to work on a “Real-World Metaverse,” a platform for AR based on a 3D map of the world, according to The Wrap.

However, if all that brings to mind a world of people strapped in VR headsets, rest assured that Niantic CEO and founder John Hanke agrees that that sounds like a “dystopian nightmare.” Rather than using VR, Hanke is focused on implementing AR technology, merging the real world with the digital in hopes of making it more “magical, fun, and informative.”

“We’re building a future where the real world is overlaid with digital creations, entertainment and information, making it more magical, fun and informative,” Hanke said. “This will take a significant investment of talent, technology and imagination, and we’re thrilled that Coatue is on this journey with us.”

Matt Mazzeo, a general partner at investor Coatue, said the company is thrilled to partner with Niantic because they see “this infrastructure supporting a metaverse for the real world and helping to power the next evolution of the internet.” According to Mazzeo, Coatue believes the unique, AR-based on a 3D map of the world Niantic is currently building “will play a critical role in the next transition in computing,” making them more than happy to invest $300 million into the endeavor.

All this news follows Niantic announcing the creation of their new developer’s kit, Lightship, earlier this month. With the creation of Lightship, various partners — such as Coachella, Historic Royal Palaces, Lifull, the PGA of America, Science Museum Group, Shueisha, SoftBank, the artist JR and Superblue, TRIPP, Universal Pictures, and Warner Music Group — will have the ability to use the same AR technology utilized by Niantic to create Pokemon GO to build their own AR experiences. In addition to Lightship, Niantic also unveiled Niantic Ventures, “a $20 million fund to help identify and fund the AR leaders of tomorrow.”

The Recording Academy has officially unveiled their full list of nominations for the 2022 Grammy Awards. Notable musicians like Cardi B, Lil Nas X, and Justin Bieber are up for awards this year, but the ceremony also has categories for non-music albums, like the Best Spoken Word Album category. This year, the Grammy nominations for Best Spoken Word Album means that Dave Chappelle and Barack Obama are officially pitted against each other for the same award.

The 2022 Grammy nominations for Best Spoken World Album includes Dave Chappelle’s 8:46, Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, LeVar Burton’s Aftermath, Don Cheadle’s Carry On: Reflections For A New Generation From John Lewis, and J. Ivy’s Catching Dreams: Live At Fort Knox Chicago.

If Chappelle wins, it would be his fourth straight year picking up a Grammy after winning in the Comedy Album category in 2018, 2019, and 2020. If Obama won the category, it would be the former president’s third time. He previously won a Grammy in the Spoken Word category in 2005 for Dreams From My Father (Senator Barack Obama) and 2007 for The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream.

Chappelle’s nomination comes from his 2020 Netflix special, which has a title that references the murder of George Floyd by police. But the comedian’s recent 2021 special The Closer has been the source of much controversy since its release. The stand-up features several transphobic punchlines and even led to one trans Netflix employee resigning from the company.

See the full list of 2022 Grammy nominations here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Sure, Forza Horizon 5 might have just come out (and is even free on Xbox Game Pass), but can you really ever have too many fantastic racing games to play? We here at UPROXX Edge certainly don’t think so which is why we decided to dedicate an entire episode of Recon to all of our favorite racing games, from the ones we spent far too much money on at the arcade to good ol’ fashioned Mario Kart.

Smosh cast member and first-time co-host Noah Grossman joins me for this fast and furious episode, and we couldn’t be more excited to kick things into high gear to talk about one of the most exhilarating video game genres around. The conversation begins with us taking a look back at our time spent in arcades playing hit titles like Cruisin’ USA and Crazy Taxi before pivoting to the next adrenaline-pumping chapter in racing game history: when so many of those great games hit home consoles. We dive into Gran Turismo, Need for Speed, and countless others (Twisted Metal, anyone?) and all the other games that made at-home play every bit as fun as shoving quarters into a hulking arcade cabinet.

But what fun are racing games without just a bit of the nonsensical added in there?

Enter the kart racers, furry and family-friendly racing games packed with your favorite characters, colorful courses, and silly support items that can completely change the way a race plays out. From Diddy Kong Racing to Crash Team Racing, many of these are among the first racing games we fell in love with and are still taken by to this day. To wrap things up, we jump into all the racing games that take us off the asphalt, like SSX Tricky and Rider’s Republic, before delving into our favorite segment on Recon: What’s New, What’s Next.

So buckle up, gamers, and let’s drive on into today’s episode of UPROXX Recon. And hey, if this show really gets your engine revving or we forgot your favorite, remember you can always leave a comment below!

In a turn of events that will surprise absolutely no one, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the auditing company that Trump used to oversee a recount in Arizona, is now reportedly in debt to the tune of $2 million.

Via VICE, Doug Logan, who’s in charge of the Florida-based company that Arizona’s Republican-controlled Senate picked to head up a recount in Maricopa County, is now claiming the process left him bankrupt. The audit took five months to complete and was heavily supported by voter fraud conspiracy theorists and MAGA followers. Despite Logan’s company having no experience in auditing elections — and no legal authority to challenge the results should they find evidence of a bad count — Republicans initially backed the organization’s efforts, covering the costs of renting the venue for the recount and providing around-the-clock security. Logan was able to raise even more money from Trump supporters who donated nearly $6 million to the effort.

Despite all this, he’s now saying that he’s $2 million in the hole, telling misinformation spreader Nick Moseder that he has no other means of income. Moseder revealed all this on his Telegram channel while saying, “I believe he was anticipating more audits to make up for his losses and kept being reassured, ‘don’t worry about the money, America has your back.’”

He went on to try to garner sympathy for Logan, who just celebrated the birth of his 12th child. “I personally think it’s a tragedy that Doug Logan sacrificed months with his pregnant wife and 11 kids (now 12) to put his business and reputation on the line,” Moseder wrote. “All of that work, risk, and sacrifice to have come out the other side being called a traitor, and to be 2.1 million dollars in debt, with a business whose reputation will forever be branded ‘right-wing conspiracy company.’”

You know what might have saved him a lot of grief? Not operating a right-wing conspiracy company and trying to reverse the results of an already-certified election.

(Via VICE)

The Chicago Bears have lost five straight games after a 3-2 start to the season and, with seven games remaining, the odds of a return to the playoffs seem extremely low in the Windy City. The offense, in particular, has appeared inept during the losing streak and given that is supposedly the area of expertise for head coach Matt Nagy, fans in Chicago are once again calling for a coaching change.

Some form of “Fire Nagy” has become a ubiquitous presence not just at Bears games, but pretty much any sporting event in Chicago — one broke out on Monday night during the Bulls’ blowout loss to the Pacers in the United Center.

One of the unfortunate side effects of being a head coach of an NFL team is that your employment status is constantly under review by every fan and the depth of the impact of someone being fired is not often considered or cared about by fans. Case in point, Nagy’s son plays football at Lake Forest High School in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago and during a game this weekend, the opposing student section of Cary-Grove High School broke out the “Fire Nagy” chants towards Lake Forest.

That resulted in an apology being issued from Cary-Grove, calling on its students to “reflect and correct” their actions.

It is a reminder of the family side of coaching firings, which certainly come with the territory, but it doesn’t make it any easier on a kid who has to hear people calling for his dad to get fired in the middle of his own football game. As for Nagy’s status as coach of the Bears, it seems his tenure likely will be ending soon, with a report claiming he’ll be let go after the Bears play the winless Lions on Thanksgiving regardless of the outcome.

In addition to having a gorgeous voice and some questionable world views, Atlanta R&B revivalist Summer Walker is also pretty well-known for her astonishing collection of tattoos, which range from an ice cream cone on her clavicle to an array of messages and names adorning her neck and face. Her latest addition to that area is turning heads on Twitter, not just because of its placement, but also because of what it says: Her new boyfriend’s name, Larry.

Look, no judgment here but that could potentially get awkward in the future. While we wish Summer well in her relationship, many folks couldn’t help but remember that old superstition about never getting a lover’s name tattooed, lest you break up and have to explain it to people (or get it removed). That effect probably multiplies when that tattoo is anywhere above the neck, where many folks still find body art to be pretty questionable as well despite the phenomenon’s growing prominence in the hip-hop world.

Then, there’s just the fact that the gentleman’s name is Larry. No offense to anyone bearing that appellative, but I can’t be the only one who immediately thinks of The Floaters’ “Float On” — and it looks like fans on Twitter are having a lot of fun with the name too, sending it to the trending topics as only a shared sense of disbelief can. Especially in light of Walker just dropping an album of fed-up anthems (called Still Over It, no less), let’s all hope that this Larry can hold up his end of the relationship, lest her next album features his name as a song title.