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A few months after being released from prison, Bobby Shmurda has shared some new insight with The New York Times about what he learned from his time at New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility, saying, “I ain’t mad about going to jail, because my mind-state now versus my mind-state before — I probably would’ve been in jail for life before […] The stuff that’s going to get you in trouble or put you in that situation, you can see that from miles away.”

The Roc Nation rapper went to prison back in 2016 with a plea deal on conspiracy to commit murder and weapons possession charges. He was released back in February, but he’s been keeping super-busy, performing at Miami’s Rolling Loud and joining J Balvin and Daddy Yankee to remix Eladio Carrion’s “Tata.” In the coming weeks, he’ll also perform at Summer Jam in New York and the Made in America Festival in Philadelphia.

“When I was young, I used to run towards it,” he added in the interview about his mindset, pre-lockup. “I was a full animal. So I feel like being locked up, it made me smarter. It made me stronger. And it made me badder, but in a good way. Instead of saying, boom, ‘I want to go in the streets and cause hell,’ I’m saying, ‘I want to go in the streets and give back.’ I feel like that’s gangster.” (Indeed, over Father’s Day Weekend the Brooklyn rapper held a “Give Back Brunch” for 200 families, treating patrons of the Win Shelter in Brooklyn to a meal including Bobby’s own Jamaican favorites: curried chickpeas, jerk salmon, and stewed chicken. In addition, Bobby employed barbers to give free haircuts to the attendees.)

Shmurda also offered a glimpse into the new music he’s been working on with names like Swae Lee and Migos, saying, “We’re going to be dancing 24/7. When I dance, it’s to show you that I came through the struggle, but I overcame it and we’re still overcoming it.”

In Beckett (which premieres on Netflix this week), John David Washington plays the title character. When we meet him, he’s just a guy who is on vacation in Greece with his girlfriend, April (Alicia Vikander). After an automobile accident, during the aftermath, Beckett sees someone he’s not supposed to see. After, he’s thrust into a game of espionage, intrigue, and geopolitical maneuvering that he never asked for.

For director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, he was heavily influenced by William Friedkin’s movies of the 1970s. (Mostly The Exorcist and The French Connection, but he loves Sorcerer. If you haven’t seen Sorcerer, you should watch Sorcerer.) And ahead he explains how he tries to recapture what those movies have here in Beckett – a movie where, like the title character, we don’t really know what’s going on and there’s always a pretty intense sense of dread.

Your publicist sold me on watching Beckett by comparing it to Friedkin and Pakula movies. Do you agree with those comparisons?

More Friedkin. But, true about both.

Speaking of, I finally just recently watched Sorcerer. That movie is incredible.

That movie is incredible. I have seen it a million times. I own the soundtrack on vinyl. It’s a masterpiece. Very underappreciated, unfortunately.

It is one of the most tense movies I’ve ever seen.

I agree. And talking about inspiration, which is as you know, intense and crazy as the story is, it’s not unrealistic. It’s just very intense. The film’s tone and characters are grounded in a, very bleak of course, but a very real place. They’re criminals of various types, but you kind of believe it. And, therefore, it’s that more intense, like you say. When you see them experience these extraordinary circumstances, that was definitely an inspiration for me.

So was Sorcerer specifically an influence for Beckett? Or more just Friedkin’s style?

Well, I guess his approach. Thinking of The Exorcist and The French Connection, he always starts from a place of real people. People who are part of real life. As crazy as the stuff becomes in the film, there’s always this tangible element to them. And that approach really inspired me and, of course, the most literal example is The French Connection, which of course is inspired by true people. But the idea definitely very much inspired me.

I would say one major difference between your movie and the movies you mentioned: In The Exorcist you have a priest. In Sorcerer, like you said, you have criminals. The French Connection is a cop. Beckett’s just a dude and we don’t even know much about him except he’s trying to enjoy a vacation.

Absolutely. Well, that was my angle. As much as I was inspired by that aspect of Friedkin in the tone, but I found that to make something that could be somewhat original, or definitely relevant to me, was creating a character that’s not supposed to be in that movie. And in this sense kind of start the movie as a drama, with a dramatic character, and then the thriller hijacks that movie and takes over. But then I was interested in, so what happens to this character now that he’s in this other movie? And, of course, that can only work if your tone is coherent and that’s where that inspiration came in.

A lot of movies right now are pretty convoluted. And this one, the plot is very streamlined…

Look, in these types of movies, there’s always at least a bunch of flaws because it comes with the territory of course. And there’s an element also discovering what’s going on, which is fun and everything. But again, with our premise being, let’s experience it through this character who is not a spy or somebody who is used to needing the wits to cracking stuff like this or fighting people who are shooting at him. And, therefore, it was delicate and interesting to me to find just how does he figure it out? And let’s be next to him as he does. Let’s not be ahead of him. Let’s not cut away to other characters to explain things. Let’s just experience it with him. And that can be a different kind of experience.

Also, nothing truly crazy happens with the plot. There’s no twist that makes us reconsider everything we’ve seen. We don’t learn any huge detail that is false…

Well, I would say we’re not learning anything false is incorrect because part of the difficulty is actually figuring out whether he can trust some people or others, whether they are telling the truth or whether they even know the truth wittingly or unwittingly.

What I mean is, we don’t learn, let’s say, a character we thought was dead is now somehow alive and is involved in the whole evil scheme. Something like that…

I see exactly what you mean. And I guess I go back to the tone. It’s finding, to remain consistent with this priority. Staying grounded and staying relatable. To me it just made sense. I didn’t feel that because it would have betrayed the rest of the film and then what’s the point. And I guess didn’t feel the need to up the ante. I feel we do up the ante, but in a different kind of way. And it’s more about danger and the need to figure out what’s happening, than stuff like that. Like that character is a zombie or something.

‘Beckett’ streams this weekend via Netflix. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

The most recent season of Top Chef, set in Portland, was arguably its most successful in years. There was less drama and more characters who you want to see succeed out of something like a sense of shared humanity. Cheftestants made delicious-looking food and had charming personal quirks. The show seemed to have borrowed something from The Great British Bake Off.

If it was the characters that sold it, one of this season’s MVCs had to be Shota Nakajima, the 31-year-old Japanese-American with the kaiseki experience and a Beavis-like laugh. Shota was a solid competitor, making it all the way to the finale before losing to Gabe Erales, and mostly just seemed like a pleasant dude — easy with a smile, quick with a joke, but also surprisingly introspective. These qualities no doubt helped get him voted Fan Favorite by this season’s viewers, earning him another $10,000 (to add to the $10,000 he won from Tillamook in the cheddar-five-ways challenge).

$20,000 is a far cry from the $250,000 paid to this season’s winner, but this season seems to have been about much more than winning for Shota. That feels like a corny thing to write, and an even cornier thing to write about a basic cable cooking show, but this has been a rough year for the restaurant industry, and Top Chef still commands a level of respect in its depicted field that virtually no other show can rival. It remains a star-making machine (relatively speaking) at least a decade removed from the days when any singing show was relevant.

For Shota, the opportunity couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. When he received the call to be on the show, he had just closed down his restaurant. Despite being a multi-James Beard Award finalist, he was in a deep funk.

“I felt like a straight-up failure,” he told me over the phone last week. “I was completely depressed. I had no self-confidence, I stopped seeing any of my friends. Then that’s literally when I got the call to be on the show.”

Thus far, Shota seems to have gotten everything he could’ve wanted out of it — a boost of self-confidence, a newfound support system, and the freedom to be himself. Self-knowledge aside, he also seems to have learned a few things from the pandemic as well, like how to run a restaurant more sustainably and the responsibility restaurateurs have to their employees.

When we spoke last week, he turned out to be as engaging as he was on the show, if not more so. He opened up about himself, the pressures of newfound fame, and of course, the key to perfect chicken karaage.

Since Top Chef has been over, have you noticed new career opportunities, new doors opened?

Yeah, definitely. There’s been a lot more opportunities. It’s all very new. More TV stuff here, brand work there, working kind of like an influencer in a sense. And for me, my whole career, I’ve been a restaurateur, chef, working in kitchens. I did some past TV experiences, but this is definitely kind of a whole new ball game and I’m trying to grasp it one day at a time.

Do you enjoy that aspect of your work?

I do. I mean, I enjoy working with different people and new people. I’m learning something new and this is all very new to me. I talk about it with my team all the time. They’ve been with me for years too. So they’re just like, this is really cool. Let’s try to see where we can take it.

My editor and I have sort of talked about this, that when chefs get on Top Chef , it’s sort of this coolness machine. Chefs come out way more polished and put together, and I don’t know… media trained. Is that a function of actual training or is that just because you’re doing so many more public-facing things?

I think it’s a mix. Sorry. [Switching his dinging phone to silent] My phone is just not stopping. I think it’s a mix in the sense of, there’s more practice obviously with the camera and getting used to just talking right away when someone’s asking you interview questions. But for me, personally, I think the biggest one is my self-confidence. I think I’ve gotten more confident as a person. Just in the sense of the support system that I got through Top Chef. As a chef you’re like, oh, I should be working in a kitchen, I don’t know what I’m doing. But I’ll be able to talk to Melissa King or Brooke Williamson, and they’re just like, you know what? We’ve all been working really hard and we all deserve this stuff and you should be proud of who you are and showcase that. I guess hearing those words from people I looked up to for a long time, I think it’s given me a confidence boost and I guess the courage to try to be more me.

On the flip side, do you feel any loss of privacy in terms of, do you feel pressure to be a brand and sort of watch what you say ?

I think I’ve always been very cautious of how I say things and put things out. My dad’s always been that person who’s like, it doesn’t matter what age you are, once you open your mouth, it’s out in the world. So even if you’re having a good day or a bad day, you have to always watch the things you say. That was part of me learning how to be a boss and a manager and all that throughout the years. I made a lot of mistakes, said some things I probably shouldn’t have said to staff, and reacted emotionally, which I ended up regretting afterward. But in general, I’ve been very cautious of how I present myself and trying to be a good example to my younger cooks and front-of-the-house people.

What were your parents like? Was cooking something that you went to early on as a career or was it something that you did later?

I started working in restaurants full-time when I was 15. I had two full-time jobs and that’s kind of all I did. Originally I wasn’t trying to be a chef or anything, I just needed a job. My direct family is not in the restaurant business, but my mom’s side’s a baker. My mom’s uncle has a little restaurant. My dad’s side they’re all in Japan, but kind of connected to the restaurant industry. My mom and dad just, I don’t know, I think it’s a Japanese culture thing, but all we do is talk about food.

You were born in Japan and then you grew up partly here?

I was born in Japan. I came to the States when I was young. I moved back in junior high for three years. Came back, technically, for high school, but I just started working in restaurants. And when I was 18 to 23, I had this big goal of working at a Michelin star restaurant, which I had no idea what that meant. A lot of my mentors at the time told me “It’s very tough over there. I don’t think you’re going to make it.” Which I was like, “If it’s that hard, I’m going to try to prove something to myself.” I’d never done that great in school and working in restaurants was just such a refreshing thing because I finally felt like I was good at my job. So I moved to Japan when I was 23. I ended up coming back and I’ve been here since then.

In terms of your own restaurant business, what do you have going right now?

I just opened Taku back up, which is a Japanese dive bar. It’s a street-food-themed dive bar. We were doing to-go for a while, but we opened the inside two and a half weeks ago and it’s just been, with COVID being over, people wanting to go out, it’s been zero to 150.

You guys do a lot of karaage and that?

Yeah. Karaage, side snacks. We’re working on this late-night menu where it’s called 12 to 2, I’m going to call it “Shit That Shota Eats,” pretty much. It’s the stuff that I eat at home, simple soups with tofu and whatnot. I kind of give that homey, simple vibe, not trying to reinvent the wheel for that one. It’s more just casual, cozy food.

Do you have any home karaage tips? What can we do better?

I would say double frying is the biggest thing, double or triple frying, even. I think of it almost as a steamed dish, is how I try to explain it to my staff. You want to make sure the batter is on the outside correctly, and when you drop it in the fryer, if it’s not coated properly, you’re going to have that juice leak out. But if it’s coated, that means there’s this whole layer on the outside, so the ingredient itself isn’t touching any cooking heat. It’s steaming on the inside. So that’s how you keep it juicy. But once you cook and you let it rest, that’s when the moisture gets pulled out. So you want to let it rest and get that moisture to get pulled out more and then fry it so you can hold that crispy edge.

How do you get that batter on correctly?

We do a potato starch batter. Well, we marinate our chicken in soy sauce, a lot of ginger, garlic, sake, mirin, egg yolks. And then we kind of turn that into this little thick lump, and then add potato starch, turn it into a slurry and add more potato starch and then fry it. So just making sure it’s coated all the way on the outside, if there’s naked spots, that chicken’s going to come out different.

A few years back, I wrote a thing about rules for getting kicked off a Top Chef. Like making duos or cooking risotto or things like that. Did you have guidelines like that in your head when you went on? Did you come away with any new ones after the experience?

Not really. I tend to be an over-thinker, so I went the other way and I gave it zero thought. When I got selected, I was like, oh, I should probably watch a few episodes. I went to the Top Chef on Hulu and I started playing it. 10 minutes in, straight panic attack. I was like, nope, not going to do it. But I thought about what it’s going to be like the whole entire time, and by the first quickfire I was already exhausted.

So you think “just go with your gut” is the best way to do it?

Yeah. In a sense, I’ve been practicing for 17 years. So I was like, if I can’t make it at this point, I don’t know what else other practice I can do. I’m a person that works on the line always too. I work with my staff and I am a big person of timing and this and that, and making sure service is ran correctly. If it’s a restaurant that opens at five o’clock, at four o’clock, my body is already tense. There’s this time clock that runs in my head every single day. So in a sense, I think I’ve always had practice.

If you had to Monday morning quarterback your own finale dishes, are there things that you would do differently?

A hundred percent. I mean, I think when they said, yeah, it was too cozy with the rice and the beef tongue, I think I could’ve done the same philosophy, but showcased it in a different way. So the same sauces, same beef tongue, same flavoring, but just presented it differently. So, yeah, I have ran through that in my head, I don’t know how many times. Actually, when I got out, the first thing I did was, after cooking for pretty much two months straight, I came home, went shopping, redid the finale menu and I sent it to my mom and dad.

Some people have complained that the judging on Top Chef is maybe biased towards European-style cooking. I know Tom pushed back really hard when I asked him about that. Do you have an opinion on that?

No. I was worried about that originally, but there were some dishes that I was like, “I don’t know if they’ll understand this.” I put it out there and they’ve had so many different dishes, so even when Tom would give feedback, there were moments where he’d be like, “Well, this dish I don’t understand. It’s not my favorite way it was done, but I completely understand why it was done.”

So maybe in past older seasons that might’ve been a thing, but this season, I didn’t feel that. I felt I could’ve done more and they would have understood it, which is really cool. Because that’s just not something that happens in the US. Even when I worked in restaurants in Seattle, I’ll read reviews and I’ll just kind of roll my eyes a lot, because it’s just like, oh, you’re talking in a very Western way. But I do think the judges on Top Chef are very knowledgeable. Especially with the judges or the alums being there, I think it was really good because everyone probably learned off of each other from the conversations at the table.

It seemed part of your arc in the season was sort of understanding that you didn’t have to dumb things down or you didn’t have to try to translate them as much.

Yeah. Which is crazy, right? It’s so refreshing to be able to do that in America, besides the fact that it’s on national TV.

Do you take that as a lesson going forward when you’re planning stuff for your restaurants? Or do you think that’s just a function of having a really expert-level crew of people judging you on the show?

I think that’s an expert crew level of people judging me on the show. I mean, maybe if it’s New York or bigger cities, people would understand a little bit more, but just in general, I think, that side of Japanese food or something new, it’s interesting for people, but it just takes time.

Tell me where you were at when you got the call to be on the show. Was that a tough decision to make?

Yeah. It was a little bit because, not trying to be weird, but I’ve always been kind of coasting, in a sense, with my career. Since I started, I think I met the right people at the right time and I’ve always felt I was doing good at my job. As the owner as well, but with COVID, as a restaurateur, we can say, yeah, we create beautiful food, blah, blah, blah. But we have two jobs: keep the lights on and pay our employees. And at the time I wasn’t doing either. I felt like a straight-up a failure. I was completely depressed. I had no self-confidence, I stopped seeing any of my friends. Then that’s literally when I got the call to be on the show. Initially I was just like, no, this is just too scary. But then I slept overnight and I was like, this is probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me. I needed it for myself, just to kind of get myself outside.

So obviously it seems it worked out pretty well then?

It really did. It’s incredible, the connection. I mean, I was talking to Melissa this morning about — it’s hard, with the negativity that will always come with it, but making sure you push the positives in your life. As a chef and being in this restaurant, I think I’ve never been visible with myself and my feelings, and now I feel like I’m allowed to do that.

What kind of negativity do you get?

It’s small things, but for example, one of my sous chefs would hit me up and they’ll be like, “Yo, let’s hang out.” I’m like, “Oh, my schedule is booked for the next two weeks.” “I’m in town, you’re too busy for me?” “I’m not too busy for you, I’m not trying to be an asshole.” And they’ll be like, well, I guess we have different definitions of what friends mean. And I’ll be like, I guess so then. Because if you were too busy for me, I’d be happy for you. I mean, it still sucks, not going to lie, there’s part of it that really does hurt to hear those words, but at the same time, I think having the right support system and the people to be like, “No, it’s okay, it happens,” has been really helpful.

I know you had to close your restaurant before you got on the show. Do you think that the quarantine exposed anything about the current restaurant model as unsustainable? What problems do you see with the current restaurant model and how can we fix those?

For me, the biggest thing that I thought during 2020 was, “I’m so sick of convincing my employees to stay.” It was the first time I stopped in my career and looked at the things that I did. And I think the biggest thing was I felt — I guess, putting it drastically — like I was manipulating my staff to stay with me. “Hey, yeah, I am a cool guy. I am getting James Beard nominations. We have a cool restaurant. You get a rep when you’re with me. Yeah, we have booze in the restaurant. Yeah, I’ll give you Ibuprofen if you feel bad.”

Thinking about it now, I think it was a manner of manipulating my staff to be okay with being in this relationship with me. They weren’t staying for me because it was a good work-life balance, it wasn’t longevity. So what I implemented was profit sharing. I started with the labor budget when I rewrote my business structure. It was very scary because of how I was taught to run restaurants. In my mind, I broke all the rules when I rewrote it, so it was scary. But at the same time, I think it’s the best thing I’ve done because I see my team and my management stronger as people, and I see myself relying on them more and learning from them more as well — because another big thing I changed is congratulating mistakes. Being like, “Yo, I want you to make mistakes.” The only mistake that you can do is not trying. The mistakes that I’ve made in the past are, when you punish mistakes, they’ll be scared to do more things. But now it’s that whole different mentality of profit share. “No, just go out there. It’s okay if you lose a few games, we’re going to make it back together.”

Do you think it costs too much to keep the lights on? It seems like that is such a sunk cost that it makes keeping labor hard.

It is. But at the same time, in 2021, there’s online presence and not just because of Top Chef, there are so many different ways to make revenue as a business. You can do online retail, you can do outreaches, you can do this and that, and I think it’s our responsibility as business owners to figure out what that is and to follow through with it. If we try to work off this broken model of just what it is, I don’t think you are respecting the responsibility you have to take care of the people who work for you.

So you think you have a responsibility to sort of think outside of what the model is as it stands?

Yeah, and I think, especially with COVID, not just the restaurant business, I think a lot of people are kind of thinking that way. Okay, what is sustainable? What is longevity? What does it mean to actually take care of people? Especially being in the hospitality industry. I think my solution is, write the numbers to make sure how to sustain your staff. And yeah, it is a little bit easier for me to say, because I do have the Top Chef thing, but even besides it, I would say the same thing. Now it’s my responsibility to bring that revenue. Maybe it’s catering, maybe it’s this and maybe it’s, whatever it is, to bring the revenue in. And if that’s too much, then I don’t think you should be an owner.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Stephen A. Smith’s takes have gotten him into a bit of trouble lately, so perhaps picking an easy target like Mitchell Trubisky was a good idea for the ESPN pundit. Smith unloaded on a comment the now-backup quarterback for the Buffalo Bills said earlier this week as he prepares for the season behind Josh Allen.

Buffalo is the favorite out of the AFC East and a potential Super Bowl contender, a nice landing spot for a second overall pick who underwhelmed in Chicago to say the least. Speaking with the media ahead of Buffalo’s first preseason game against the Detroit Lions on Friday, Trubisky opened up about the experience of becoming a backup quarterback and finding a second chance in a new offense and a new role in football.

But as Smith made clear on Thursday, well, he’s not exactly a fan of Trubisky’s perspective on things.

“It’s just really nice to be a part of a great team and be somewhere where people want you here, and they care about how you’re progressing as a person, as a player,” Trubisky said to the press.

It may sound like a fairly generic thing for a quarterback in a new situation to say, but Smith wasn’t having it. After a disappointing and frustrating time under center as a potential franchise quarterback, Smith roasted Trubisky’s fall from grace and his perspective on his career.

“That’s what you’re saying, right? It’s nice to be wanted? You are wanted,” Smith said. “As a backup. There wasn’t a single team that wanted you as a starter, bro. not one.”

This backup role, Smith made clear, is not behind a weak quarterback where a competition for the starting job is even possible anymore. Not after the season Josh Allen had last year.

“And you’re not just any kind of backup Mr. Trubisky. Oh no,” Smith said. “You’re the backup to a guy that just signed a six-year, $258 million contract. A guy who finished second in MVP voting last year. A guy that’s actually a year younger than you in Josh Allen.”

In his eyes, in other words, a former second overall pick should not be happy where he is. Not when there’s little chance he can start again anytime soon.

“So guess what? Ain’t no way you’re ever going to see the field in Buffalo unless there’s an injury. There ain’t no way that’s ever going to happen. You’re just going to be standing there, holding a clipboard. Doing pretty much nothing,” Smith said. “You, the guy the Bears moved up and passed on Deshaun Watson and Patrick Mahomes to get. That’s you. If that’s being wanted, I don’t know what to tell you, bro.”

It’s admittedly a bit mean, and kind of odd, to take pretty innocuous quotes and get very upset about a backup quarterback delivering fairly boilerplate quotes to fill a daily training camp story. But it’s the lean season in American sports come August, and the last time Smith tried to talk about baseball, it got problematic in a hurry. Better to poke fun at a backup quarterback than get into further trouble, I suppose.

While doing a virtual interview for Late Night with Seth Meyers from the set of Moon Knight in Budapest, Ethan Hawke confirmed the real-life inspiration for his character after Meyers couldn’t help but comment on the actor’s appearance. While the identity of Hawke’s character is still under wraps, he revealed that he’s basing the role off of David Koresh after Meyers joked that the actor looked like the infamous Waco cult leader. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“I’ve based my character on David Koresh!” replied an impressed Hawke. “I guess it’s working. You’re good, Seth. Or maybe I’m not out of character yet.”

Meyers joked that he was a “huge fan” of Koresh, to which a laughing Hawke responded, “I don’t think we want to be on the record saying that. I will say that he is the basis of great character inspiration, however.”

Hawke also expanded on how he ended up in the Marvel Cinematic Universe thanks to wanting to work with Oscar Isaac. The actor had previously revealed that working with Isaac was a major part of his decision to join the Disney+ series, but apparently, Isaac played a critical part in getting Hawke on board.

“I heard about it from [series star] Oscar Isaac, who lives three blocks down the street from me in Brooklyn,” Hawke told Meyers. “I was at a coffee shop and he came up to me and was like, ‘I really liked The Good Lord Bird. Want to be in the Moon Knight with me?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ So it happened the right way.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Memphis rapper NLE Choppa flies a few female friends to a tropical island then does a hilarious Dr. Miami impression in the self-directed video for his new single “Mmm Hmm.” Employing a rapid-fire flow over a rubbery beat backed by a noodling electric guitar, Choppa boasts about his lavish lifestyle and promises to spend his money on a female companion (“If she want her a butt, I’ll buy her a butt” he jibes as he dons a surgical smock and plays Tic-Tac-Toe on a model’s posterior).

For someone who recently said he was retiring from rap to start an herbalism business, Choppa’s been pretty busy on the musical front in 2021, dropping a freestyle to “Beat Box,” channeling Tupac on “Picture Me Grapin,” trading bars with Big Sean on “Moonlight,” and providing the theme song for 50 Cent’s latest installment of Power.

In the midst of all this, he also stumbled a bit as well, getting arrested in Florida this spring on charges including carrying a concealed firearm and possession of drugs. While he did announce he was turning over a new leaf recently, it looks like it won’t be an overnight lifestyle change. Meanwhile, it appears he’s keeping himself busy with songs like “Mmm Hmm,” suggesting a follow-up to his debut album Top Shotta may be forthcoming.

Watch NLE Choppa’s “Mmm Hmm” video above.

Rand Paul has had quite a week. His anti-COVID-vaccine and misinformation-loving stance got him suspended from YouTube. Not to be deterred, he then tweeted a deranged rant about freedom and resisting mask mandates, which led one of his state’s leading newspapers to wonder, “Is Sen. Rand Paul okay?” All of his clashes with Dr. Fauci and skepticism about the dangers of COVID then came back to bite him in the butt when he disclosed — 16 months after the fact — that his wife had purchased stock in a biotech company (Gilead) that manufactured the COVID-treatment drug Remdesivir.

The 16-month delay certainly didn’t meet requirements of the Stock Act (a 45-day deadline), and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez mercilessly shaded him while arguing that Congress members shouldn’t be allowed to privately own stock at all (because stuff like this tends to happen). Subsequently, the Lexington CBS affiliate caught up with Rand and captured his excuse (via Mediaite): “I typed it into the computer and I thought I pressed send.” Yup, Rand really said that. Here’s more from Mediaite:

“I apologize. I was bad on the reporting,” Paul told reporters while visiting Somerset small business Baxter’s Coffee with his wife.

“I had typed it into the computer. So, about two weeks after Kelley made the stock purchase, I typed it into the computer and I thought I pressed send but I didn’t.”

Rand Paul, physician and elected official, claims that he simply forgot to hit “send” while making what he said was an intended stock-purchase disclosure, well before the Stock Act deadline. That’s not too believable at all.

(Via Mediaite)

Today marked the release of the latest album from The Killers, Pressure Machine, which arrives just under a year after its predecessor, Imploding The Mirage. Believe it or not, the band is already talking about yet another new album.

A new NME interview with group notes that they have apparently been working on some “orphan songs” as Dave Keuning’s San Diego and are “figuring out” their next album. Brandon Flowers noted of the material, “It’s a little bit more canyon rock, maybe a little bit more traditional Killers, I guess.”

Vannucci described the music as “a bit heavier and more clench-fisted” than Pressure Machine, saying, “We were messing around on the stage for a virtual show the other month and it felt like there was this rock n’ roll thing happening. I could see us going in that direction: something a bit more energized.”

He also noted that after some band members have had various levels of involvement with the band’s endeavors in recent years, everybody wants in on what’s next; Keuning did not performing on Imploding The Mirage, while bassist Mark Stoermer wasn’t involved with recording Pressure Machine due to COVID precautions.

“I’m just supposing here, but I think the whole COVID thing made people realize how good they have it,” Vannucci said. “There have been some really kind remarks that I’ve never heard from the guys before that made saying, ‘Hey, I don’t want to not be on a record any more – so let’s do this.’ We’re very sobered up from the experience of being locked away. I do think that all four of us are going to be on this next record. We’ve already started messing around a bit, so that’s good.”

Read the full feature here.

Introducing, Selma Blair, the intimate documentary following actress Selma Blair’s life after her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis, now has a first trailer and already it’s a tough watch. The upcoming film captures the highs and lows of Blair’s battle with MS as she experiments with various treatment plans and ultimately undergoes a stem cell transplant, which of course comes with more complications and challenges of its own. Throughout the trailer, Blair shows off her signature humor and charm, while also being brutally honest about her fears that she was “shooting the final days of [her] life.” In an interview with Vanity Fair, Blair shared why it was so important to her to film the documentary, in spite of any fears or reservations:

“I had the conviction of thinking I had something to share. You keep opening windows or closing doors and finding tools. I hope my little life gives someone who needs it some hope or a laugh or more awareness of ourselves. I hope the film shows that MS varies. That people’s strengths and weaknesses vary. All the emotions of life make healing variable, too. For all of us.”

Introducing, Selma Blair is directed by Rachel Fleit, a filmmaker with her own autoimmune disorder who closely followed Blair throughout her treatment as well as conducted interviews with people close to the star shedding more light on her struggle. The trailer opens up with someone close to Blair explaining why the actress was so eager to control the narrative around her illness, telling Fleit that as a celebrity, she was subject to greater scrutiny and would most likely be assumed drunk or troubled if she were to be seen walking with a limp. According to Fleit, her goal with the film is to “show a different way of being in the world, but also to show a woman who fully embraces herself.”

This trailer comes mere days after a lot of conversation surrounding multiple sclerosis has emerged. Mere days ago, fellow actress Christina Applegate shared her own multiple sclerosis diagnosis on Twitter, to which Blair responded with public support.

Loving you always. Always here. As are our kids. Beating us up with love

— Selma Blair (@SelmaBlair) August 10, 2021

Introducing, Selma Blair is scheduled to release in theaters on October 15, a week before it becomes available for streaming October 21 over on Discovery+. However, regardless of if you see it in theaters or from the comfort of your own couch, tissues seem like a real must for this one.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone really are taking a bunch of money they made from the show and doing their best to make real life a bit more like their cartoon universe. While a marijuana grower based on one a character created in canon hasn’t come to fruition just yet, things are looking up for fans of authentic Mexican food in the state of Colorado.

Word came Friday that Parker and Stone did, indeed, make good on their offer to buy their beloved Casa Bonita. The restaurant featured in Season 7’s 11th episode is a real-life attraction featuring cliff dives, a treasure cave and live music. And now its fate lay in the hands of the animators that made it word famous.

The sale completes a wild fortnight of speculation about the fate of the restaurant beloved by Parker and Stone. They first mentioned they’d like to buy it last month while its parent company dealt with bankruptcy proceedings. While the place remained closed, a fan petition to let the duo buy the place gained steam despite its owners saying they had not reached out to actually buy the place.

But according to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is now done.

The duo, who grew up in Colorado, were interviewed on Friday by Gov. Jared Polis where they broke the news.

Afterward, Parker told The Hollywood Reporter the deal had closed that morning. “We bought it,” he told THR. “It just feels natural.” Financial details were not disclosed, but Parker called the final price tag “fair.”

It’s unclear just how quickly the two can get the place up and running, but it’s sure to be a South Park-themed attraction when it does reopen. Parker claimed that the final sale would take place in the coming months, as the restaurant’s parent company is still in bankruptcy proceedings that started in April. But it’s certainly something to look forward to for fans of the show planning a trip to Colorado anytime soon.

(via THR)