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Time, as Matthew McConaughey said on True Detective Season 1, is a flat circle. And he was right: Today, Nov. 7, 2021, is the one-year-anniversary of the day most publications called the 2020 election for now-president Joe Biden. It’s hard to believe it happened so long ago, just as it’s hard to believe it’s also been a year since another major national milestone: the day Rudy Giuliani embarrassed the hell out of himself by delivering a bananas press conference at what was surely the wrong Four Seasons establishment.

That fateful went like this: That morning, Trump declared that Giuliani, his personal lawyer who he’s since left to drown in financial and legal headaches, would be holding a press conference at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. Did he mean the city’s swanky downtown hotel? No, he meant Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located just outside the city proper right next to a porn shop. Was it a mix-up? Almost certainly. But journalists trounced out there all the same, to hear a bunch of nonsensical babble about non-existent voter fraud.

And right before it started, most news publications declared Joe Biden the winner and Donald Trump the loser.

Americans nationwide celebrated Biden’s win. A lot of people online even compared the revelry to the end of Return of the Jedi, in which the known universe celebrates the fall of the evil Empire.

But the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle may have stolen its thunder. For days, then weeks, it dominated the news, with people dunking on Giuliani. Turns out he had some great follow-ups, from the black mystery goo incident to the introduction of the wine lady witness who almost certainly didn’t witness voter fraud.

Since then, a lot has happened. Trump and his allies continued (and continue) to air misinformation about the voter fraud that only happened by Republican hands. There was a failed insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. Trump got booted from most of social media. Then he became a failed blogger. And today, some of Trump’s die-hards continue to lie about how the 2020 election was stolen.

But nevermind that. People marked the one-year anniversary of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping mishegoss in style.

Even the establishment itself got in on the fun, albeit a few days early.

So happy Four Seasons Total Landscaping Day, to all who celebrate. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Travis Scott will certainly have a lot to deal with following the tragedy that occurred at his Astroworld Festival. Eight people died and hundreds were injured in the crowd after many suffocated due to the cramped and air-tight conditions in the audience. Many criticized Travis for continuing the show after appearing to witness multiple fans pass out, an accusation that has yet to be proven true or false. Despite this, the rapper’s partner Kylie Jenner came to his defense in a statement regarding the incident.

“Travis and I are broken and devastated,” she wrote. “My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in any way by yesterday’s events.” She added, “And also for Travis who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community, I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show, and in no world would have continued filming or performing.”

She concluded, “I am sending my deepest condolences to all the families during this difficult time and will be praying for the healing of everyone who has been impacted.”

Kylie’s statement comes after Travis a second message on Saturday night. He said he is “honestly just devastated” at the incident and added, “We’re actually working right now to identify the families so we can help assist them through this tough time.”

There was a lot of news to cover on this weekend’s Kieran Culkin-hosted SNL, and they tried their damndest. They managed to bang out Aaron Rodgers being anti-vaxx, Glenn Youngkin nabbing Virginia, and a bold new Trump impersonator in the cold open alone. Later they dunked on Ice Cube for also not getting vaccinated. And oh right, there’s also that draconian abortion law that was recently enacted in Texas. It’s not the funniest subject, but Cecily Strong made a valiant attempt to find the humor in the grim topic.

Strong swung by Weekend Update dressed as “Goober the Clown,” whose bona fides are that she had an abortion when she was 23. She refuses to let that nor the unpleasant subject matter get her down. Indeed, she stays in clown mode for the duration of her monologue.

“I really don’t [want to talk about this],” Strong’s Goober said. “But people keep bringing it up, so I gotta talk about freaking abortion… I wish I didn’t have to do this, because the abortion I had at 23 is my personal clown business.”

Throughout, Goober struggles to make the subject of states infringing on women’s rights fun and funny. “It’s a rough subject,” she said, “so we’re gonna do fun clown stuff to make it more palatable. Who wants a balloon animal?”

She also kept referring to it exclusively as “clown abortion,” to co-anchor Colin Jost’s bafflement. “Did you know that one in three clowns will have an abortion in her lifetime?” Strong asked. “You don’t, because they don’t tell you. They don’t even know how to talk to other clowns about it, because when they do talk about it, if you were a clown who wasn’t the victim of something sad like clown-cest, they think your clown abortion wasn’t a ‘righteous clown abortion.’ I mean, what the d*ck is that?!”

Eventually she told the story of the abortion she had when she was young, but only after inhaling some funny voice-making helium. If Goober didn’t succeed in mining laughs from the a-word, then at least Strong did.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

Asexuality is often misunderstood.

In general, it’s believed to be the absence of any romantic interest, but asexual identity actually means that a person is not sexually attracted to anyone. Romantic feelings and the strength of those feelings can vary from person to person.

Currently, about 1% of adults have no interest in sex, though some experts believe that number could be higher. For a long time, information on asexuality was limited, but researchers recently have found information that gives us more knowledge about asexuality.

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Being asexual can be tough, though — just ask the artists from Empathize This.

To demonstrate, they put together a comic on asexuality, defining it as a sexual orientation, not a dysfunction.

This article originally appeared on May 27, 2016

Categories are great for some things: biology, herbs, and spices, for example.

Image via Brianna Lehman/Flickr.

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But bodies? Well, putting bodies into categories just gets weird. There are around 300 million people in America, but only 12 or so standard sizes for clothing: extra-extra-small through 5x.

That’s why designer Mallorie Dunn is onto something with her belief — people have different bodies and sizing isn’t catching up.

Dunn has found that the majority of clothing sizes stop at an extra-large, yet the majority of women in America are over that. “And that just doesn’t make sense,” she says.

Human spice rack, only, a LOT more variations of flava. 😉 All images via Smart Glamor, used with permission.

That’s why she started a project around her clothing label, Smart Glamour, to document the bodies of models according to their sizes — and to show how one size can look very different on different bodies.

In pursuit of creating a fashion environment that’s kinder to all bodies, Dunn has dedicated herself to educating consumers about sizing.

First, she found 60 people of 12 different sizes and took their pictures.

Then, she put five women at a time in the same size of skirt and shirt to show how diversely beautiful human bodies are and to prove that everyone looks different in clothes no matter what size they have on.

She hoped to show people that 12 sizes don’t even come close to capturing the beauty of the human form.

All these models are wearing the same size … but do they look the same?

“No matter what size you are that’s not what dictates your worth or your beauty.”

“I had a convo with a friend of mine who was like ‘Yeah, if I went from a medium to a large, I’d be fine with it, but if I went from a large to an extra-large, that wouldn’t be OK’ and I was like, ‘Why???’ And she had no rational reason behind that,” Dunn said, describing a conversation we’ve all either had, started, or heard. “We’ve been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is.”

Dunn’s project also shows just how arbitrary and narrow-minded clothing sizes are.

Sizes really are just numbers.

Unlike the images we are presented both in clothing ads and in entertainment and media, human beings aren’t, as Dunn remarked, “robots who come out on a conveyor belt … we’re all shaped differently.”

The pressure to look one way is obnoxious. And kinda dangerous.

“We’ve been taught forever that the bigger something sounds, the worse that it is.”

There’s so much weight — no pun intended — on being the “right” size.

“You put an ‘extra’ on top of a ‘large,’ and suddenly it’s the end of the world,” Dunn said of her experience in fashion sizing. “… And it really doesn’t mean anything, it really only means that there’s an extra inch of fabric.”

One extra inch of fabric.

3 in 4 girls report feeling depressed, guilty, or shameful after just three minutes of leafing through a fashion mag.

But I’d like to imagine a world where everyone can try on clothes and leave the emotional burden of worrying about fit to the clothes.

Instead, let’s focus on what looks good on our bodies. Let the clothes handle the emotional roller coaster of not fitting, and you just live your life in the body you’ve been given.

Dunn, who has worked for fashion houses for her whole career, puts it bluntly: “Clothes are not made for all bodies. … We shouldn’t then think when something doesn’t fit us that it’s somehow our fault.”

Dunn’s models also have a group on Facebook where they support each other, compliment each other, and generally lift each other up. Model Stephanie describes it this way: “We see the beauty in one another and help each other to recognize our own beauty at the same time.” Fashion leading to body optimism and confidence? Yes, please.

And Dunn herself drives a hard line when it comes to feeling good in the skin you’ve been given. Her philosophy is this: No matter what size you are, that’s not what dictates your worth or your beauty.

Self-worth not based on appearances. That’s a category we can all aspire to “fit” into!

This article originally appeared on 07.27.16

Aaron Rodgers won’t be playing against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on Sunday, but that hasn’t stopped him from being the lead topic of conversation around the NFL.

The Packers quarterback is out after getting COVID-19 this week, which led to the revelation that he is unvaccinated and, per league rules, cannot return to the team until next Saturday at the earliest. Rodgers had previously said he was “immunized” prior to the season, leading many to assume he had gotten the vaccine. However, we learned this week what that meant was he underwent an “alternative treatment” that he tried to get the NFL to approve as equal to the vaccine but they denied that request — Rodgers saying they thought he was “a quack.”

On top of Rodgers’ absence, the Packers are now under investigation for not requiring Rodgers to follow all of the league’s protocols for unvaccinated players like flying separately and being masked in press conferences. Rodgers then went on the Pat McAfee Show on Friday and explained his position and why he hadn’t followed policies and gotten the vaccine, saying he took advice from Joe Rogan rather than doctors and medical professionals and spewed an awful lot of other misinformation regarding the vaccine.

On Sunday, Rodgers’ situation was addressed on every NFL pregame show and no one had a stronger rebuke of Rodgers than Terry Bradshaw, who lit into the Packers signal-caller on Fox NFL Sunday for being a liar and calling out those who refuse the vaccine as “thinking only about themselves.”

Michael Strahan also expressed frustration with Rodgers’ comments in which he referenced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “there are times to quote MLK, and this is not one of them.” The Rodgers situation has become fodder for conversation well beyond just the NFL and sports world, as SNL took aim at him in their cold open as well, with Pete Davidson playing the role of the QB.

The tragic events that occurred at the 2021 Astroworld Festival this past weekend have the music industry in complete shock. Eight attendees died and hundreds more were injured in a night gone wrong. The incident occurred during Travis Scott’s solo set, which was to close the first of two nights at Astroworld. What happened left the rapper “absolutely devastated,” as he revealed in a statement the following morning, adding, “My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.” Now, Roddy Ricch, who also performed at the festival, is also taking steps to help the families of those who died.

In a post to his Instagram Story, Ricch shared his plan to help. “Please have the families of those who we lost yesterday reach out to @shawnholiday,” he wrote. “I’ll b donating my new compensation to the families of this incident. #Pray4Houston.”

Roddy’s announcement comes after Travis Scott shared a second statement about the Astroworld tragedy. “I just want to send out prayers to the ones that was lost last night,” he said in part in a video shared to his Instagram Story. He later added, “I’m honestly just devastated. I could never imagine anything like this happening… Love you all.”

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

Last week, it was revealed that Ice Cube is not vaccinated. And he has no intention of doing so. He even walked away from a comedy movie, Oh Hell No, opposite Jack Black, which would have netted him both $9 million and a winter shoot in Hawaii. What is he thinking? On this weekend’s Kieran Culkin-hosted SNL, the show’s writing room hazarded a guess as to why.

During Weekend Update, Keenan Thompson swung by as the rap legend and movie star to explain to co-anchor Michael Che why on earth he, like Emilio Estevez, is turning down easy money and paid vacations by refusing to take an FDA-approved vaccine to protect himself from a highly transmissible and deadly virus.

“Hey look, man. I’d just rather be myself than take that vaccine, like you other three billion bozos,” Thompson’s Cube replied. When Che pointed out that he’d “lost” a good gig, Cube disagreed. “Not my loss, your loss. Oh Hell No was going to feature the greatest comedy duo of all time: Ice Cube, Jack Black,” he said. “The comedy chemistry, man. You know what I’m saying?”

He then rattled off a list of all the movies we won’t be getting because Cube won’t take some world-saving medication, from a fourth Barbershop, to a Friday prequel (Thursday, natch), to an M. Night Shyamalan twist-a-thon called Uh Oh, Twist Comin’, which has its own novel twist.

Throughout, Thompson’s Cube avoids the question: Why won’t he get vaccinated. But Che had a theory. “So you’re scared of needles, right?” he asked him, to which Cube replied with a sheepish affirmative.

You can watch the sketch in the video above.

Kieran Culkin isn’t even 40 yet, but he’s been around forever. He made his screen debut, when he was still single digits, in Home Alone, alongside his older brother Macaulay. Not long after, he made his SNL debut, joining Macaulay when he hosted the show. That was just a couple weeks shy of exactly 30 years ago, on the episode that aired on November 23, 1991. Three decades later, Kieran finally got to host the show himself. And during his opening monologue (following an epic, Trumpy cold open), he made sure to point that out.

Kieran — who for the last few years has been receiving raves for his turn as arguably the slimiest (and probably least good at basketball) sibling on HBO’s hit Succession — took the stage at 30 Rock Saturday night, and when he did he set a few records straight. One, he’s a lot nicer than Roman Roy, the character to which he returned for the show’s ongoing third season. Two, he has fond memories of appearing on SNL with his brother “Mac.”

Eventually he started narrating over footage of that episode’s final bows, which saw cast members lifting Macaulay, then only 11, on the shoulders, all while young Kieran watched. Kieran then turns to longtime cast member Kevin Nealon, who winds up doing the same for him. (Speaking of, on Friday Kieran told Jimmy Fallon about how he wasn’t quite as nice to Nealon earlier that week.)

Kieran’s appearance on SNL prompted a lot of people to post then-and-now pics.

Others shared clips from the show 30 years ago, which saw Kieran appearing in three sketches (“two of which are non-problematic,” Kieran himself joked during his monologue).

And sure enough, at the end of the show, Kieran got picked up, just like he did during the Bush I years.

You can watch Kieran Culkin’s SNL monologue in the video above.

On Saturday morning, the music world woke up to the shocking news that eight people had been killed and hundreds had been injured at Travis Scott’s 2021 Astroworld Festival. The tragic incident is believed to be the result of cramped conditions in the crowd, though an investigation is still underway. Travis issued a response on his social media pages on Saturday, writing, “I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.” Later that day, he shared another message about the matter on his Instagram Story.

“I just want to send out prayers to the ones that was lost last night,” he said in a video. “We’re actually working right now to identify the families, so we can help assist them through this tough time. My fans really mean the world to me. I always just really want to leave them with a positive experience.”

He added, “Anytime I could make out, you know, anything that’s going on, you know I stop the show and, you know, help them get the help they need. I could just never imagine the severity of the situation.” Travis also promised to work with the Houston Police Department to “try to get to the bottom of this.” He also asked those in attendance to contact local authorities with any information, concluding, “I’m honestly just devastated. I could never imagine anything like this happening… Love you all.”