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After four years of dealing with “President” Donald Trump and more than six months of witnessing the fallout from that political disaster, it’s hard to be surprised by anything the former president—or any of his cronies—say and do. But Seth Meyers still made time to be amazed by what has been “a week of consequences for some of the most corrupt people in politics.”

Meyers dedicated Wednesday’s “A Closer Look” segment to “the many weirdos who tried to help Donald Trump overthrow the election [and now] are in major legal and financial trouble.” First up was Rudy Giuliani and his new gig selling the world’s creepiest birthday wishes, and whatever remains of his soul, on Cameo. But Meyers saved the bulk of his energy for crack addict-turned-crackpot Mike Lindell.

The big day of the MyPillow founder’s much ballyhooed-about cyber symposium finally arrived this week, and it was as disastrous as you’d both expect and hope for. You might recall that back in May, Lindell was turned away from a Republican Governors Association event after vowing to confront two of its attendees over the “stolen” election. That may have been months ago, but Lindell hasn’t forgotten, and devoted a fair amount of his stage time discussing this particular incident… which, again, happened months ago. Yet when he started going off about it, someone actually pulled the “we have something to show you backstage” routine to and attempted to oust the man who created the symposium off the stage of his own symposium. Meyers had some thoughts:

“In what way was this a cyber symposium? From what I can tell he spent a lot of the time complaining about getting kicked out of other events. Imagine going to see a man, who admits this is the only room he’s been allowed to stay in. And then imagine if he was also asked to leave that room, and then refused…

Amazing! First he got kicked out of the Republican Governors convention and then they tried to drag him out of his own symposium. Next they’re going to kick him off the board of MyPillow.”

The comeuppance is hardly surprising to Meyers, who noted that Rudy and Mike Lindell are now “finding out what happens when you debase and humiliate yourself in service of a man who never returns any loyalty to the people he demands it from. Every day they embarrass themselves and suffer new indignities on Trump’s behalf.”

You can watch the full segment (the Lindell part starts around the 9:00 mark) above.

After the success that was 2020’s Tickets To My Downfall (which was Kelly’s first No. 1 album), Machine Gun Kelly is pressing on with his rock career: He just announced a new album, Born With Horns, doing so by showing off matching tattoos of the title he got with collaborator Travis Barker. Now Kelly has returned with a Cole Bennett-directed video for the album’s first single, “Papercuts.”

In the clip (which is Bennett’s first ever video for a rock song), we see shots of a bald and scalp-tattooed Kelly walking around Hollywood Boulevard, Kelly playing a gigantic guitar while sporting presumably stilt-enhanced legs and while surrounded by people in various costumes, and Kelly’s black-wigged head in a wall being pelted with black paint balloons.

“Papercuts” is the only song confirmed to appear on Born With Horns so far, as Kelly has yet to share a tracklist for the album… or a release date, cover art, or any other information about it.

Elsewhere, Kelly has been making news recently for his relationship with Megan Fox. He revealed he had a poster of her before they started dating, and Fox recently described a trip she and Kelly took to do ayahuasca in Costa Rica.

Watch the “Papercuts” video above.

Two Kanye West listening events for his album Donda have come and gone with no album yet, but according to Billboard, perhaps the music wasn’t really the point of the events after all. Sources told Billboard that the official merchandise sales from the two events combined totaled $7 million — the same amount as the Yeezy x Gap down jacket Kanye dropped in the middle of the night on his birthday reportedly banked in that one night. Meanwhile, he’s likely set to double down — no pun intended — with a preorder link for the jacket he wore to the listening going live last week.

The listening event also broke Apple Music records for viewership, dragging in well over 5 million eyeballs, making it one of the most-watched livestream events within the past year. The album, which is tentatively set for release this Friday, was apparently recorded in the same venue in which Kanye held his listening events, as he had a room set up in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium where he slept, recorded, and streamed his activities leading up to the second listening event last week. That stream also featured a quick shot of Kanye in his underwear, prompting a minor frenzy among fans on Twitter.

The Donda era is already turning out to be both lucrative and expensive for Kanye, but will it pay off for fans as well? Hopefully, we’ll find out on Friday.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Like all arena-filling rock bands, The Killers typically operate on a “new album every four or five years” cycle. But the pandemic has driven them to be uncommonly prolific, with last year’s well-received Imploding The Mirage followed up almost exactly one year later with a new LP, Pressure Machine, out this week. Even Killers frontman Brandon Flowers was slightly disoriented by the back-to-back album cycles when recently reached for an interview.

“I prepped myself for Imploding the Mirage interviews, I feel like, not that long ago,” he said. “I keep waiting to be asked about ‘Caution.’”

Actually, I was interested in talking to him about Imploding The Mirage, as well as the rest of his band’s discography. As Flowers himself admitted during our conversation, The Killers have had plenty of ups and downs since the release of their blockbuster 2004 debut, Hot Fuss. After spinning more hits from polarizing late-aughts records like Sam’s Town and Day & Age, they seemed to have lost their mojo during the 2010s as Flowers drifted into a solo career and bandmates Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer became essentially part-time contributors.

With only Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. left to wave the Killers flag, it appeared as though the band might be on its last legs. Then came the rousing Mirage, which hinted at a comeback, and now Pressure Machine, which confirms the band’s resurgence. A song cycle set in Flowers’ boyhood home of Nephi, Utah, Machine features Flowers’ strongest collection of narrative lyrics yet set against the most downbeat music of The Killers’ career.

The contrast between their most recent records couldn’t be more stark: Whereas Mirage was full of punchy anthems, Pressure Machine is deliberately “dusty,” as Flowers puts it, with a near-lo-fi sound that sounds more like early aughts Bright Eyes than their usual U2/Bowie signifiers. And yet they were both made with the same production team of Shawn Everett and Jonathan Rado. Ultimately, both records also deserved to be placed with their very best work.

When asked to reflect on The Killers’ catalogue, Flowers said he usually thinks about how the latest album fits with the older records. But Pressure Machine was made so quickly that he hadn’t had that opportunity — until now.

“I realized the other day when somebody told me this is album number seven, and this is when U2 made Achtung Baby,” he said. “This kind of is our Achtung Baby, without copying that record.”

Hot Fuss (2004)

We didn’t have that classic, fairytale band thing where these four guys grew up together, and they’re ready to take on the world, and all that. We had just recently met each other really. We weren’t complete until we had Mark and Ronnie because we had had a different rhythm section before. When those guys got on board, we were strangely unstoppable. It was crazy.

I take it for granted now the magic moments that we were having all the time. We would go in, and “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” would come out. A week later, it’d be “Somebody Told Me.” We already had “Mr. Brightside” when we met those guys. I was obsessed with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the comeback album from U2, and then “All These Things That I’ve Done” just fell into our laps. Every week there was a song like that, a “Smile Like You Mean It,” a “Midnight Show.” It was a wild time. We were listening to things like Lust For Life. Mark was really honing in on John Taylor’s bass playing from Duran Duran. It just all clicked, and we were able to make this record. I thought it was just always going to be like that.

“Mr. Brightside” doesn’t get old for me. Yeah, we’ve played it a lot, but I never understood Radiohead not playing “Creep.” They can do what they want to do, but that was something that I never understood. I know you may have seen this quote before, but I like this quote, so I’m going to use it again: I’m able to hear it through the hearts of the people in the venue. Some of them, this is their first time seeing this song live, and so I still am able to harness some excitement for it.

Sam’s Town (2006)

I grew up on a healthy diet of Britpop and New Wave and a lot of U.K. alternative ’80s stuff. Then I had this really strange renaissance in my 20s when I fell in love with American music. I mean, it took me by surprise. I was always Anglophile, and I wanted to be associated with all things U.K. That was the music that shaped the people that I hung out with. When I was 23, 24, I fell in love with American music, and so there started to be a little bit more of a push and pull when we went in to make a record because this new kind of group of people had entered the room. It was Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and Tom Waits now sitting there with Bernard Sumner and Morrissey and Noel Gallagher. It’s not, like, a brawl, but it’s trying to find a way for it all to work.

I didn’t read a lot as a kid. It wasn’t until I was in my late teens, like 19 or 20, that I started to read. With Sam’s Town, it was a combination of reading more, and wanting to evolve, and starting to understand that people write about where they’re from. I think all of that stuff started to circle and simmer, and I wanted to capture it on that second album. I’d always been interested in lyrics and storytelling, whether it was my dad’s music or New Wave music. It was the songs that told stories that I always really gravitated towards. Whether it was Jim Croce telling a story in the car with my dad or it was even something like “Love Vigilantes” from New Order, where they’re trying to do country in Manchester.

I had a tough time with Sam’s Town. I was still so young, and emotionally and socially not where I should have been to be doing interviews. I took the bad reviews pretty hard, because I loved it so much, and I was so proud of it. Critics were really hard on it, but I do attribute those pretty terrible reviews with the live band that we became because I set out to prove to whoever the critic was coming to the show that night how good this album was. I really think that we became a greater live band because of that.

Day & Age (2008)

I thought of it as looking at Sam’s Town from outer space. We wanted to not deviate too far from Las Vegas, but there’s something almost extraterrestrial about Las Vegas. We started experimenting with sounds. It’s more of a pop record, but just by nature of what keyboards do, sometimes you can conjure up laser beams and things like that.

We grew up idolizing Bowie and U2, and people that sort of were shapeshifters. So it was kind of fun to play with that. There were a lot of bands that stick to one style and it’s beautiful, like The Ramones and The Strokes. People like that they have that thing. But we were searching, I think. We’re still searching.

Battle Born (2012)

I did two songs really, really quickly with Brendan O’Brien at the end of my first solo record. I had such a great experience with him that I thought he should do the next Killers record. We did this song, “Crossfire,” that I’m really proud of. Maybe it should have been a Killers song. I just wrote it at the last minute and did it with Brendan.

We enlisted him, but the dynamic wasn’t as easy when you added Ronnie, Mark, and Dave, and so we started looking around for other people maybe to chip in. We went to Nashville with him, and we did some good stuff. We did “The Way It Was.” We did “Here With Me,” most of “Runaways,” though more life was brought to it later on. We did do some good stuff with Brendan, but then we started searching for a team of producers. I always loved the idea of a team, but it’s really difficult to find people that will work together and be gracious with their credits, and their points, and all that bullshit. It’s a pain.

We got Steve Lillywhite because he’s like a dream, right? I mean, his discography is insane. It’s not just the big bands. He has one-off songs that are just incredible. So we tried out Lillywhite. And Daniel Lanois. I had also worked with Lanois on the solo record, and he can be intimidating. At the same time, he just raises the bar. Just by him being in the room, the bar is raised. If you think about his discography, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, I got to bring something!” That’s where a song like “Be Still” on that record came in. I’m trying to impress Lanois, and that’s the song that holds up. That song and “The Way It Was” were both tied to basically us trying to impress Daniel Lanois, and those are probably the two best songs on the record.

Wonderful Wonderful (2017)

We enlisted Jacknife Lee for Wonderful Wonderful. He was important for us to have because we were pretty fractured, and he’s kind of a jack of all trades and was able to fill in the gaps.

It was a culmination of a lot stuff. We’ve all evolved into different places, and there’s just no stopping that, so trying to find a way to make it all work has been interesting. We have a pretty unique setup as a band at the moment, but it’s working, and I think it’s okay.

[Breaking up is] sometimes in the back of your mind, but it’s such a big part of my identity being the singer of The Killers, and I never really got mad enough at anybody to let the thoughts get that far off. There are some great songs on Battle Born and Wonderful Wonderful, but as a band, and as a unit, and as just a machine, we weren’t settled, and we weren’t cohesive. Now, there’s a little bit more of a north star. It’s hard because people do have a lot of strong feelings, our fans, about an album like Wonderful Wonderful or Battle Born. But we were drifting a little bit.

Imploding The Mirage (2020)

We were trying to find our footing again, and I just felt a real connection with the ground on Imploding the Mirage and then for sure on Pressure Machine.

I think it was an exciting prospect for Jonathan Rado and Shawn Everett. They teamed up on Mirage. They hadn’t worked with a band this big before, and it was fun for them. We were thinking, “Let’s write Killers-esque songs.” We pushed it pretty hard, but we definitely had that stadium setting in mind. It sounds like, “Oh, you just wanted to make a stadium record…” It’s not that easy. It needs to be transcendent, and it needs to still be able to reach people. It’s a big task, really. We naturally write bigger songs. It’s a part of my voice, and it’s a part of the way that Ronnie plays, and it’s a part of where we’re from. So we’ve never seen it as something to scoff at.

“My Own Soul’s Warning” was just such a thrill. It was the last song that we wrote for the record. We felt like we were missing one more like that, and when it was born it was just really exciting. I love “Blowback,” “Dying Breed” — it’s strange that we’ve never played these for people yet. It seems like they’re going to go off. I mean, “My Own Soul’s Warning” has got to, right?

Pressure Machine (2021)

I think there’s always a little bit of trepidation with a new album. You never know what people are going to do. With Sam’s Town, people saw that as a 180, and now, there’s so much adoration within our fan base for that one. We got a lot of faith that people will come around to this one even if they aren’t into it right at first. It is different, and it’s not Hot Fuss Two.

I really enjoyed writing this record, more than maybe any other record. Lyrically, I got to a new place. I had all these fully complete songs before we went in to record. I never have that. Usually, I’m scrambling to make something rhyme at the end of a session. I definitely credit something like Steinbeck’s Pastures Of Heaven, which has become one of my favorite books, where everything is set in the same valley. It was like, “Can we do that with an album?”

As I get older, I do gravitate towards more music that my dad would have listened to, whether it’s Johnny Cash or John Prine. I started to listen to that stuff around Sam’s Town, just bits and pieces. Then as time goes by, you discover more, and it’s just like anything else. If you look at the opening line of “Quiet Town,” I never would have written what cargo was on the train without somebody like John Prine.

You can get caught up in having money, and having time, in studios, and laboring over something. We were definitely guilty of that. This was different. Shawn was not allowed to mix on the computer. We are mixing on a board, old school to tape, and we weren’t making a bunch of changes. We’re going to try to keep the dust on this thing. We made deliberate decisions on what instrumentation and what forms of recording we were going to use, what mics we were going to use. We’re not going to use plug-ins, we’re going to get the real Echoplex. That kind of stuff, you hear it. It made it a lot of fun in the studio, having those kind of limitations, and being able to stay out of the computer forced us to make a more authentic-sounding thing.

You hear it a lot on a song like “Terrible Thing,” which is a little bit of a tip of the hat to Nebraska. We bought the Tascam. “Terrible Thing” is recorded on the Tascam. The actual Tascam is in the Hall of Fame, so you can’t get that one, but we found the model. I typically sing on a 58, and he recorded all that on 57. It’s just a 57 on me and then a 57 on Rado, and it’s just one take. We were pretty hardcore about it. That’s the one little nod to The Boss for sure on the record.

I would not have made this record without the pandemic. For everyone, the world just stopped. For us, it was towards the end of March 2020 when we realized, “Oh, this tour’s not going to happen.” I’m up in the mountains in Utah, and it’s still full-on winter in late March, so there was this stillness. It was snowing every day, and I was at home for the foreseeable future. I just started to go back to work, and what I found was I don’t have Ronnie there. He’s like a freight train. He’s so loud, and so it allowed for these moments of austerity and restraint. It was the first time that I’d had so many of those moments, and I realized something different was happening.

It just had been nagging at me, to write about Nephi. I still have a sister there, so you hear little pieces of mostly sad news. Once I started going back there, I started to uncover these really emotional feelings that I had for the place, and most of them were tied to shocking events or really sad events. I just wanted to explore it and do some justice to the time that I spent there.

Shawn Everett, our producer, was talking about an episode of This American Life where somebody just sat in a diner and interviewed anybody that would talk to them at a diner somewhere in the middle of America. He was like, “What if we just interviewed people in Nephi, Utah?” We were already mastering the record, so it was so last-minute, but this guy from NPR went down for a few hours to Nephi and sent us these snippets. We were just trying to find the right homes for them all. It was so last-minute that I was scared about it, whether it was the right decision or not. Now, I’ve listened to this album more than I’ve listened to any Killers album, and I credit that to looking forward to those interstitial moments of these people talking.

What was wild was how much of the content that I was singing about they would later reference in the interviews. They would talk about the West Hills. They would talk about the mouth of the canyon. And it was the way that they would talk about it, like “Where do your kids ride their dirt bikes?” “Oh, out in the West Hills” It was a little bit of vindication, I think, for me to show everybody that I wasn’t bullshitting with these songs. I’m really surprised at how much I remembered and observed from such a short amount of time in the town, but it really left a mark on me.

Pressure Machine is out tomorrow via Island Records. Get it here.

In May, a teaser for St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark) and Carrie Brownstein’s mockumentary The Nowhere Inn was shared, and it gave a hint about what was to come. Now, more about the movie has been unveiled in a new trailer.

The trailer sets up the premise: St. Vincent tried to make a documentary about her music career and she recruited her friend Brownstein to direct. When Brownstein complained that Clark was too boring compared to the St. Vincent persona, Clark committed to being in character as St. Vincent all the time. From there, things went off the rails. Of note, as was briefly shown in the previous teaser but expanded upon here, Clark invited Brownstein to her room so she could film a sexual encounter between herself and Dakota Johnson.

The official synopsis for the film reads, “From real-life friends Annie Clark (aka Grammy award-winning recording and touring artist St. Vincent) and Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Sleater-Kinney) comes the metafictional account of two creative forces banding together to make a documentary about St. Vincent’s music, touring life, and on-stage persona. But they quickly discover unpredictable forces lurking within subject and filmmaker that threaten to derail the friendship, the project, and the duo’s creative lives.”

Check out the trailer above.

It’s no surprise that New Orleans rap veteran Lil Wayne doesn’t see a lot of what happens on social media. After all, this is a man who didn’t realize Quality Control and TDE were the names of music labels or know which rappers were on those labels, despite working with some of them. But a new revelation in an interview for Los Angeles Times strains belief, even for the notoriously insulated Lil Wayne.

When he was asked whether he got “a lot of pushback” for meeting with Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 elections, Wayne responded simply, “Nah, not at all” — a reply that suggests that Wayne somehow missed a wave of backlash from fans and peers that included mockery from 50 Cent and speculation that he was offered either paid for his public support in order to pander to a younger audience for Trump or offered a pardon on recent gun charges that would have sent him away for up to 10 years. Lil Wayne himself denied the accusation that the move was self-serving at the time, and sticks to a similar line of reasoning here, stating he believes “progress is always possible,” even in light of all the evidence to the contrary wihen it came to Trump’s rhetoric and policies.

Of course, it is entirely possible he just missed all the public pushback. Elsewhere in the interview, he claims to be unaware of the biggest rap controversy of the last several weeks, the fallout from DaBaby’s Rolling Loud performance. Although Wayne said he didn’t keep up with the spate of festival cancelations that followed, he did have some opinions on social media: “You know how it does,” he said. “The spotlight on artists and celebrities is absolutely crazy. You don’t even have to be a celebrity. Even normal people can feel like they’re wrong because their 200 followers said something. But that’s the power of social media today.”

Check out the full interview here.

From Rand Paul’s batsh*t belief that Democrats are “plucking” kids with COVID from the border and using them to create a new variant of the virus to Tomi Lahren’s claim that these new variants are some sort of diabolical plan to curb absentee voting, it can be hard to keep track of the latest conspiracy theories regarding COVID and the vaccines that can help you not die from it. Which is why Stephen Colbert introduced a new segment on Wednesday: “Disinformation Station.”

Among the latest cuckoo conjectures on Colbert’s agenda for this week include a Russian disinformation network that was recently banned by Facebook after sharing that COVID vaccines are turning people into chimpanzees. (Hey, it could happen.) Colbert also had some thoughts on the woman mentioned in The New York Times who was concerned about getting vaccinated because “a vaccine had caused the characters in the film I Am Legend to turn into zombies.”

“She refused the shot because it was the plot point of a zombie movie? Well I don’t think she has anything to worry about, because she clearly doesn’t have any braaainns! Plus, she’s wrong. What happens in I Am Legend is ‘an attempt to engineer the measles virus into a cancer cure goes awry, infecting most of humanity and turning people into zombie-vampire hybrids. Vaccines do not factor into the plot.’ Do you know what that means? I Am Legend has a plot! I had no idea. I thought it was just the story of Will Smith wanting a second vacation home.”

Also worth noting for that woman: I Am Legend is a movie.

You can watch the full segment above, which start around the 6:30 mark.

Built on a foundation of dick jokes and the hubris of Lil Dicky, an aspiring rapper with a far-fetched dream of becoming a global icon that sometimes pushes the best interests (and behaviors) of Dave Burd, the man behind the alter ego, to the side, Dave has embraced the opportunity to showcase the long, bumpy walk toward fame. Complete with its mandated tradeoffs, humiliations, and most importantly, sacrifices. In fact, following its season 2 finale, it may have perfected it, but the season is also notable for how damn relatable the show continues to be. Which may seem odd considering the world it surrounds and how inaccessible it would be for most of us.

As a person, Dave has progressed and regressed, going back and forth across these now 20 episodes. This human messiness is what gives the show currency to dabble with Kardashian cameos, million-dollar mansions, and spiritual enlightenment retreats to Rick Rubin’s house without sacrificing the endearingly crude arrested adolescent charms of this awkward adult man and his odyssey.

Maybe you haven’t struggled to create an album that perfectly encapsulates everything you want to say, but you’ve probably felt boxed in, and you’ve probably felt incapable of defining or expressing yourself. You’ve probably also lost sight of who you are and how you want to be from time to time, feeling inadequate, lonely, and guilty. All things that describe the human experience, especially during the last 18 months. And all things affecting Dave in season 2 as he reckons with his goals, his setbacks, and his self, creating a kinship with this moment and, I think, an audience that recognizes what it’s like to rarely be the thing you want to be.

I love that Dave expresses a want to be a better person. So many people in this world have given up on self-improvement and awareness. Here’s someone who has not, even if he fails often and rarely gets out of his own way.

Dave doesn’t want to be seen as sexist or racist. One of his most uncomfortable moments happened in the season 1 finale when Charlamagne tha God called him out for cultural appropriation on The Breakfast Club and asked if GaTa’s presence by his side was a form of tokenism. In season 2, when Kareem Abdul Jabbar asked Dave about his use of a blackcent, Dave practically melted into the chair from sheer panic. He obsesses and he doubts constantly, at one point imagining that he had to cut up and serve GaTa to appease a vocal group of his fans in a dream sequence. But for all of Dave’s awareness, season 2 began with a calculated effort to glom onto the K-Pop wave for the clicks. Later, he tried to be more communicative with Ally by asking her permission to release a tender song about missing her but then turned cold when he didn’t get what he wanted. And while he was tearfully repentant for not really knowing who his parents are, is he really going to change? Dave is, like the rest of us, locked in a fight between our bad habits and our better angels. And sometimes you wonder which side is going to win.

There has to be an alternate realm where Dave doesn’t do the right thing at the end of this season and doesn’t acknowledge the distance his singular drive has put between him and the reality that everyone in his life isn’t meant to be a side character. That they have their own dreams and needs from their unique relationships with him.

In this theoretical version, Dave probably goes through with the VMA stunt and loses GaTa forever. Ally, watching with her new boyfriend, is rendered speechless by the lengths to which this man she used to know will go for fame, shattering the memory of the loveable goofball she shared her life with. We already know the plan is for Mike to get some distance, Elz already has one foot out the door, and Benny Blanco is an exuberant boundary-free playmate… so long as his schedule allows. It’s the Citizen Kane ending — Dave gets everything he wanted but he has no one to share it with — his “rosebud” is a color-matched pig skin prick with one peehole that got fixed on basic cable. That analogy doesn’t exactly track, but I love the poetry and you get it.

Thank goodness, Dave made a good decision on top of a bunch of bad ones that have driven the awkwardness and action of this season (both for Dave and for the people slowly pulling sway from him), revealing and reveling in the character’s flaws and the pitfalls of getting lost up your own ass.

I don’t know where the show goes from here. To be sure, Dave still has a lot of dream left to chase and these relationships are by no means fixed, especially Dave’s relationship with Ally — a loss he’s clearly trying to gloss over, creating the saddest story thread of season 2. But so long as they keep Dave failing and succeeding in near equal measure, no amount of absurdity, crudeness, or big-time living will distract from the very human and very flawed central character at the heart of a compelling hilarious and heartbreaking show that has so clearly broken out of its own box to be so obviously about more than a guy with a dream and a dick that sucks.

Mike Lindell‘s week just keeps getting worse. While the MyPillow CEO’s “Cyber Symposium” was already crumbling around him, the crazed conspiracy theorist reportedly fled the stage on Wednesday after a judge ruled that Dominion’s billion dollar lawsuit against Lindell, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliaini, and others can move forward despite attempts to have the case dismissed.

Around 6:00pm EST Wednesday evening, within minutes of the Dominion decision, Lindell can be seen on video exiting the stage of the 72 hour event dedicated to pushing the “Big Lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

According to Business Insider, Lindell did not return after abruptly bailing on his own event, and the live-feed was replaced by a video reel showing “election fraud” news articles next to a photo of Lindell hugging a pillow. His departure was also notable, and hilarious, because Lindell had previously boasted that he was going to stay on stage for 72 hours straight, and he even became irate when the crowd wanted to take a break to eat. Lindell then left the stage minutes after his rant.

The “Cyber Symposium” started out as a disaster right out of the gate. The three-day event in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was marred by technical issues, which Lindell claimed was the result of being “hacked.” Adding insult to injury, Steve Bannon participated in the event only to turn around and dunk on Lindell for repeatedly airing a propaganda video that doesn’t back up any of its claim.

“I think this is a mistake. I don’t think they should play this movie again,” Bannon said while broadcasting his podcast from the event. “I want to be brutally frank. You’ve laid a theory of the case out here that’s very powerful, but in laying that case out, you’ve got to bring the receipts.”

(Via Business Insider)

Earlier this year, Dave Grohl revealed that Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” was a big part of his routine before Foo Fighters concerts. Things are a little different now, as Grohl revealed while breaking down his current pre-show rituals.

Speaking to Mark Hoppus on his After School Radio podcast (as NME notes), Grohl explained what he likes do to before taking the stage and why it’s not as easy these days:

“It’s like one hour before the show, I open a Coors Light, and I’m like, ‘Oh, hello darkness, my old friend.’ But our dressing rooms are always filled with friends […] I’m going to miss it. We’re not allowed to really have people backstage right now, but one of the things I love before going on is just being happy. You’re surrounded by all your friends. You haven’t seen everyone in a long time, and you’re doing shots of Crown Royal, and you’re like, ‘Yay.’ And everyone’s like… taking pictures with each other, and it’s like a reunion every night.”

As for what happens immediately before taking the stage, Grohl said, “To me, the best way to walk onstage every night is… [tour manager Gus Brandt], he’ll say, ‘OK, dude, do you want house lights yet?’ I’m like, ‘Nah, not yet.’ And I just wait until the entire band is laughing about something, and I’m like, ‘All right, let’s go,’ so you walk onstage laughing. You feel happy when you walk onstage. To me, that’s the best way to do it.”

Find the full After School Radio episode here.