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Craig Ferguson was the host of “The Late Late Show” on CBS from 2005 to 2014. He’s probably best remembered for his stream-of-conscious, mostly improvised monologues that often veered from funny observations to more serious territory.

In 2009, he opened his show explaining how marketers have spent six decades persuading the public into believing that youth should be deified. To Ferguson, it’s the big reason “Why everything sucks.”

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“In the 1950s, late ’50s, early ’60s, a bunch of advertising guys got together on Madison Avenue and decided to try to sell products to younger people. ‘We should try to sell to younger people because then they will buy things their whole lives,'” Ferguson explained.

The problem is, according to Ferguson, that young people are “kind of stupid.”

“So the deification of youth evolved and turned into the deification of imbecility. It became fashionable to be young and to be stupid,” he continued.

‘Why everything sucks’

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On a deeper level, Ferguson makes the point that exalting youth and inexperience over wisdom and experience runs contrary to the way of nature.

“Then what happened is that people were frightened to not be young,” he said. “They started dyeing their hair, they started mutilating their faces and their bodies in order to look young. But you can’t be young forever, that’s against the laws of the universe.”

Calling marketers’ war on the over-49 set the reason why “everything sucks” may be a bit of an exaggeration. But the takeaway from Ferguson’s monologue is spot-on. There’s no reason to feel bad about aging. You’ve got experience, wisdom, probably better credit, and have learned that Saturdays are a lot more fun after you’ve been to bed by 10:00 pm on Friday.

Lizzo’s fans were greeted with an awesome treat this past weekend as the singer released her first song in almost two years. Her newest release found her working beside Cardi B for their first-ever collaboration, “Rumors.” The song came with an elegant video that captured the pair using sarcasm to clown their haters about the unsupported and false claims people make about the artists.

While that was a notable aspect of the song, another one came when Lizzo name-dropped Drake. “Readin’ sh*t on the internet,” she says on the song. “My smoothie cleanse and my diet / No, I ain’t f*ck Drake — yet.”

During a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Lizzo explained what inspired her mention of Drake on the song. “I just thought it would be so funny to say,” she said. “I have a small relationship with him. He’s very cool. I just feel like women, there’s so many times where girls’ names get dropped in songs ’cause they’re fine.”

“Rumors” is presumably the lead single from Lizzo’s upcoming fourth album, which the singer hinted features work from Mark Ronson and Philip Lawrence of Bruno Mars’ songwriting/production team The Smeezingtons. Until then, fans can catch her perform the new track and more during upcoming festival appearances at Bonnaroo and Firefly.

You can watch the full interview between Lizzo and Lowe in the video above.

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

Since fans returned to stadiums and arenas earlier this year, we’ve seen what has felt like a lot more fights in the stands than usual. From the NBA to MLB and now the NFL, fans seem a bit too amped up to be back in the building for sporting events and some of that energy you can get away with talking wild online with strangers doesn’t fly in person.

Typically these fights happen between different fan bases, but on Saturday night in Los Angeles, the crosstown rivalry between the Rams and Chargers saw a brawl break out between internally in one group of supporters. At some point, a group of Rams fans got into it, with initially a lot of chestiness and talk before a beer thrown from behind sparked what became a massive, section-wide ruckus.

Trying to go 1-on-4 unsurprisingly didn’t work well for the man in the Aaron Donald jersey, as he started out throwing wild haymakers and somewhat holding his own before the damned numbers game (TM, Good Ol’ JR) just became too much and he got pulled over a row of seats to get absolutely pummeled.

That this happened at a preseason game of all things, when the Rams weren’t playing anyone of consequence makes this brawl even more incredible, because what are you even getting into heated arguments about? The brawl probably had nothing to do with football, but it is funny to imagine this all started because of a debate over who should win the 53rd roster spot between a fourth-string guard or a linebacker who is a special teams ace.

Jeopardy! executive producer Mike Richards will soon become Jeopardy! host Mike Richards, taking the mantle from the late Alex Trebek as full-time host when the show’s new season airs later this year. And while Richards and Sony have made it clear the former did not pick himself to host the show, there are some reports that he may have at least tipped the scales a bit.

Richards was made the official full-time host last week, with Mayim Bialik taking the prime-time duties for editions of the show airing on ABC. That decision was made amid a mess of controversies about who the show’s leadership picked, who they did not pick and how that selection was made. The most obvious issue with the selection process for many is the idea that Richards helped the powers that be decide he was right for the gig given his leadership role in the show. That’s been denied several times in a variety of ways, but there are reports that he did have some power to play with.

In a New York Times report that features two bylines and a quote from Ken Jennings comparing the selection to “choosing a pope,” sources said that Richards had more control over at least one part of the process than anyone at the game show had previously admitted publicly.

Sony said that while Mr. Richards initially led the hunt for Mr. Trebek’s replacement, he moved aside after he emerged as a candidate.

But as executive producer, Mr. Richards retained a key role in selecting which appearances by each prospective host would be screened for focus groups, whose reactions weighed heavily in Sony’s decision-making, according to three people familiar with the show’s internal deliberations. The other supervising “Jeopardy!” producers were excluded from that process, the people said.

Sony stressed to the Times that “he was not part of” the selection process, echoing a memo Sony’s TV chief, Ravi Ahuja, shared with staff when Richards’ selection leaked to the press. But that cherry-picking was previously unknown, and given the weight of many factors that influenced their decision — ratings, test audiences and overall comfort on camera among them — getting to pick which episodes to show test audiences is a pretty big deal. Especially if he’s hand-picking his favorite episodes from his own tapings.

There are a lot of indicators that Richards was a likely choice for the role all along, of course, so perhaps he didn’t need the help. And despite a report that Jennings was widely believed internally to be the heir apparent to Trebek, there was no signs of frustration from the self-described “company man” when speaking to the Times about the pick.

Mr. Jennings, who remains a consulting producer at “Jeopardy!,” praised Mr. Richards’s performance. “Mike was the only person up there with any game show hosting chops, and it showed,” he said.

That fact is certainly true, but it also seems true that Richards was the only candidate with any actual influence on that decision, too.

[via NY Times]

For an album that we know is more or less complete, barring any extreme changes, the process toward the release of Kanye West’s tenth album, Donda, has been an extremely drawn-out effort. While the wait has certainly tested the patience of fans, one could assume that the constant work behind the scenes on the album may be a nuisance for some collaborators and that appeared to be the case for producer and engineer Mike Dean, who is a frequent collaborator of the rapper.

Thanks to a string of tweets from Dean on Saturday, many fans concluded that he quit working on Kanye’s upcoming project, but the producer insists that’s not the case.

It all started when Saturday evening when Dean sent out a number of tweets that seemed to be rooted in frustration. They included brief messages like “F*CK THIS” and “good to be at the house!!!” as well as longer ones where he writes, “100000% FOCUS ON MY SHOW PRODUCTION FOR NEXT WEEK. GONNA BE LIKE COACHELLA IN A 650 PERSON VENUE!!” A Kanye fan replied and wrote, “Fine but then go help Kanye PLZ,” to which Dean answered, “Helping myself. Thx.” Another user mentioned the producer and said, “mike dean is more than just donda guys,” and Dean replied, “A lot more. Very much more.”

Elsewhere, a fan who took notice of Dean’s tweets concluded in posts of their own that Dean’s messages were about his work on Donda. The Twitter user labeled the album’s process as “toxic” and “the weirdest rollout over.” The producer then slipped into the Twitter conversation and wrote, “Toxic. That’s it.” There was another message from Dean that called for fans to direct their album questions to the artists rather than to their collaborators.

“Don’t ask me about utopia or any other albums drop date,” Dean wrote referencing Travis Scott’s highly-anticipated fourth album. “Ask the artists. I’m not the decision makers here !!

Despite all of this, Dean returned to Twitter on Sunday morning to clear the air and assure fans that he has not stepped away from any projects. “I haven’t quit anything,” he shared in a tweet. “The album continues. Lol. People read too much into tweets. Lol.”

Hello, sweet sun bums. I hope you’ve reapplied sunscreen and rehydrated since Summer Vacation Watch season officially began, because we are truly just getting underway. This week, we’ve got Klay Thompson riding summer’s vibe on just about every vehicle there is, including that of the indomitably chill human spirit, plus hoopers in race cars, infinity pools, the ocean, at ball games and on boats. Summer is going full swing and my eyes are, as always, peeled and safety behind sunglasses at all times.

Klay Thompson

Klay is on vacation in Mexico and thank god. We started strong last week but I’d hate to have the calibee of vacations fade in just the second week. Wait, what am I saying? Summer’s a vibe and you gotta ride it, precisely like Klay is — on a boat, on a boogie board, on a jumper, out the passenger window of a speeding car. If you’re looking for a way to squeeze the juice out of the fleeting-est season then look no further, because Klay is summer. Easy, breezy, wearing the bare minimum of sleeve options on his limbs. Like, while none of us could hope to get where he is mentally, in terms of summer vacation certainty, he’s a bright light to look to, with sunglasses on.

Rating: Klay might also have the power to singularly make the song “Fast Car” not cripplingly depressing, should he choose to play it in the background the next time he hangs out the window of one.

LeBron James

While we may never get LeBron alone in Mexico again smoking a cigar and singing at the beach bar for the afternoon, we do have here LeBron alone in a bucket hat, slowly swaying, alone, in what I want to say his backyard. I also don’t mean to be rude, but close inspection of this bucket hat leads me to believe it’s just your average, everyday bucket. It’s not a streetwear bucket, it’s not an imported bucket, it’s a bucket that says, “I forgot my hat on vacation and this is what the hotel gift shop could offer me for $25.” So, maybe this bucket was purchased on the solo Mexican beach bar trip, and in that way we’ve got a vacation continuation on our hands.

Rating: See? Summer vacation really is forever, if you want it.

Serge Ibaka

Serge is also in Mexico, enjoying himself immensely, but in a yin demure way to Klay’s more kinetic yang. Serge is the kind of person who plans fits for vacation rather than throwing in several pairs of shorts and whatever sleeveless shirts are clean and leaving. He probably travels with a small clothes steamer. Can you blame him? Not when you see him in these silk shorts, you can’t. He looks off in the middle distance, presumably toward the ocean, he gets closer to the ocean in an infinity pool (still staring), and finally, he makes it to the ocean. It’s brief, he runs right out, but I’m choosing to believe it’s because he’s getting his reps in, rather than being taken by the majesty and terror of the sea.

Rating: Maybe he just didn’t want to get those shorts wet.

Bradley Beal

Ok, bear with me. Who hasn’t made plans for a jam packed summer day, out on the water, out at the beach, out at some kind of park — amusement or trees — and had the day hit them all at once the second you step back inside the house? Sun stoke or no, it’s those kinds of summer days that can feel guiltily good, recovering with A/C blasting the body in its restorative strength, blinds drawn so no one can see you doing an unfortunate Bane impression while sprawled weirdly on the couch at such an angle that your neck gets absorbed into your sternum.

Rating: He was doing the voice guys, that’s why the subtitles are on.

Justin Holiday

Justin took to the speedway, the blacktop, the hot revvin’ tar (made that one up), to sit pretty excitedly in an Indy car then toot around in a pace car for the day, fully decked out in a crew jumpsuit he matched his chucks to. He looks so happy the entire time that I hope Rick Carlisle harnesses this joyful summer energy and has him warm up in this suit all next season.

Rating: Please note the “Fast 8” caption, which we have to take to be Justin’s fav of the Fast franchise. Intrigue, romance, betrayal, a nuclear Russian submarine threat for some reason, this one had it all.

Khem Birch

Rare baseball crossover here in these hallowed basketball halls (again!) but look how relaxed Khem looks to be tossin’ the ball out at the Blue Jays game. This is exactly the energy I look for in baseball, which is why I don’t watch it.

Rating: Has a person who’s thrown the ceremonial ball out to start the game ever been so good at it they’ve gotten signed?

Rudy Gobert

Rudy heads will be happy to know this is the first of two appearances he’ll make in my summer vigilance, they’ll also be happy to know that I’m following this story closely in hopes of revealing where this adventure takes him. My guess is south of France, but those distant hills also look Gibraltar-y, but really until we get a closer look at the mineraloid matter of that island it will be impossible to say for sure, and I don’t peddle in half divulgences.

Rating: The punctuation of the caption worries me, quite frankly.

Jae Crowder

Here’s Jae, an enforcer on the floor and an enforcer of the strictest summer codes on the open water — no shoes, no shirt, but no flair? That’s gonna be a problem.

Rating: It might be vacation, but you can never take time off from respecting yourself.

Bogdan Bogdanovic

If you’ll remember, last week we saw Bogdan on a boat, more of a pleasure barge really, dipping his hand in and out of azure waters. This boat looks a lot faster judging but its wake but before you get worried about him, don’t. He’s clearly not.

Rating: When someone says treat summer like your job this is certainly one interpretation, standing with the same expression you’d have taking the elevator up to whatever floor on a Wednesday afternoon for another meeting with the chucklers in accounting.

Alex Caruso

Caruso got a pretty cute puppy that gnawed on his hands while he watched, fascinated.

Rating: It must be so weird to come out of the self-perpetuating, vainglorious navel gaze of the Lakers liturgic earth ship to realize there is an entirely other world out there, one with living, breathing, soft, and cute things.

Tyler Herro

Tyler Herro took his basketball on a private jet, just to show he has both? I guess?

Rating: Good luck to Tyler Herro, soon playing with a backcourt that will take one look at excess expenditures in life and on the floor with and total disdain.

Dennis Smith Jr.

Backflips into water will never not be impressive. You don’t need to be an Olympic high diver getting up into your requisite handstand dive to get your entry into water on the SVW radar. You just need to commit and fling your whole body into it, exactly like Dennis Smith Jr. did here.

Rating: Extra points for the hype man in the back with his hands up.

The Olympics (Are Over)!

Yes, it’s true, the Olympics are over and however you feel about them can give it a rest, too. Who won’t be giving it a rest anytime soon, though, are your NBA Olympic medalists! Rudy Gobert held his honkin’ silver medal, somehow not made smaller in that dream crushing swatter of a hand, while in contrast and at this angle, Evan Fournier’s looks to be about as big as half his head.

Here we have Bam Adebayo and JaVale McGee pretty much beaming showing off their golds. Another member of the Olympic gold medal squad, Draymond Green, arrived at Summer League with his around his neck, hopefully not betting it later at the craps table.

And then, two bonus JaVales: First, regarding a hologram of himself, maybe a representation of his psyche, both winners. Second, a side-to-side look at his mom, Pamela McGee’s, gold medal and his own, 37 years apart. It’s really nice!

While Trevor Lawrence’s first appearance in a game for the Jacksonville Jaguars was a struggle, perhaps no one had a worse time than his tight end in his first ever game at the position. Former quarterback and minor league baseball player Tim Tebow is trying his hand at the position this year, and his first game with the Jags saw one play in particular go viral on Saturday night.

According to the Associated Press recap of Jacksonville’s 23-13 preseason loss to the Cleveland Browns, Tebow was “cheered every time he stepped onto the field.” And he almost had a catch! But despite years of talk about how Tebow’s body type would make for a great tight end, at 34 years old he struggled to find his way in an entirely new position.

One clip in particular made the rounds on Saturday, as Tebow showed pretty brutal technique on a blocking attempt and then somehow ended up blocking his own player.

That got a lot of reaction from people who were skeptical of Tebow playing tight end in the first place.

Even Shannon Sharpe got into the mix.

A single grainy highlight of Tebow weakly attempting to throw a block and then planting his helmet into his guard’s chest may be an oversimplification of his abilities and potential at the position. But so, too, is it an oversimplification to assume an out-of-work quarterback and struggling minor league baseball player can become a professional tight end in the National Football League.

How long this experiment lasts is entirely up to Jaguars head coach Urban Meyer, which means that it may last longer than it should based on his aptitude on the field. But no matter how many cheers Tebow gets, the results to justify a roster spot may be tough to come by over the next few weeks.

Lil Baby had a number of big moments in 2020 with most of them coming as a result of his sophomore album, My Turn. Another highlight during the year, however, came when the rapper released “The Bigger Picture.” The track touched on police brutality, social justice, and racism as the rapper made it clear that he understands his people’s pain despite the fame and fortune he’s attained.

More than a year after the song was release, it was the center of a conversation between the rapper and MSNBC’s Ari Melber that eventually led to Lil Baby explaining why he avoids discussing controversial topics on social media.

“I’m not into social media like that. I post on social media and interact, but I don’t really catch what’s going on or what people are saying,” the rapper said to Melber. “I don’t really wanna just speak on situations, especially when I don’t know the whole backstory [because] something I say might get misinterpreted. So, I’m quiet as far as me posting.”

“I speak through my art … I’m not posting nothing. It ain’t work like that,” Lil Baby added. “’Cause I really feel some type of way about the whole situation. So I’m not gonna be a George Floyd advocate only … It’s deeper than that with me. I know people, personally, who got killed by the police. That would be fake of me to post about [Floyd’s murder] when I ain’t even post about somebody I know who is going through [something similar].”

You can watch the full interview between Lil Baby and Ari Melber above.

For the eighth time this season, Major League Baseball has seen someone throw a no-hitter, and while every no-no is special, this one gave baseball fans something they hadn’t seen since 1953. The Arizona Diamondbacks sent Tyler Gilbert onto the mound on Saturday evening against the San Diego Padres, and in the first start of his Major League career, Gilbert did not allow a single hit en route to a 7-0 win.

Gilbert missed perfection due to three walks of Padres batters, but after letting Tommy Pham get on base to start the seventh inning, he managed to sit down every batter he faced for the remainder of the game. The final out came when Pham stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth and ripped the first pitch he saw to center field, where the ball landed in the glove of Starling Marte.

A former sixth round pick by the Philadelphia Phillies, Gilbert joined the Diamondbacks in the Rule 5 draft last season. Now, he joins a list of ballplayers who walked onto the bump for the first time and etched their names in the history books.

Gilbert struck out five batters and threw 102 pitches, 64 of them strikes, to get his no-no.

FX’s live-action take on the acclaimed graphic novel Y: The Last Man has been a long time coming, but we’re just a few weeks away from its debut after years of production twists and turns. What was once a movie project gestated into an FX drama that’s been in development since 2018, with a number of departures and additions to the cast.

A pandemic didn’t help, but production began in 2020 and earlier in August we finally saw a trailer and release date for the show comic fans have hoped would arrive for years now. In the leadup to its release, however, the powers that be at FX have detailed an important note in the show’s canon. Especially considering the concept of the show and its post-apocalyptic conceit.

As the Hollywood Reporter detailed, FX chief John Landgraf and showrunner Eliza Clarke detailed how the show will handle transgender characters at the network’s Television Critics Association Press Tour on Friday. In the series of graphic novels that make up Y: The Last Man, every man on Earth except one, Yorick Brown, is killed by a mysterious event that’s based on the gender binary. A male monkey makes it out alive, too, and as the books unspool readers learn more about what happened after that event and, perhaps, why Yorick survived it in the first place.

Rather than adhere to that gender binary of male and female at birth, the report indicated that though Y is a reference to the chromosome typically associated with defining a man’s gender, the show will not be as cut and dry about gender in a variety of ways.

“A lot has changed since the graphic novel,” said Landgraf at FX’s Television Critics Association Press Tour session on Friday. “One of the things the show will make clear is that there are women with two X chromosomes and men with an X and Y chromosome — but there are also women with two Y chromosomes and men with two X chromosomes. So what happened was all the mammals with a Y chromosome — with the exception of this one man and this one monkey — died in one event. But there are numerous men in the show that had two X chromosomes, and they’re important characters. It’s also made clear that a number of women died that day who had a Y chromosome and probably didn’t even know it.”

Landgraf said that the show’s title needs to be “explained and contextualized in a much different way” than it was in the books, which adhered to the biological definition of gender pretty strictly. But he said the show worked closely with GLAAD to represent trans characters in the world in an appropriate way, something that Clarke made clear as well.

As she reiterated, the apocalyptic event in the show will still focus on the Y chromosome. But what made the books interesting was that despite erasing cisgendered men from the planet, what was left was far from a perfect utopia. And it will include a diverse group of survivors while telling the story of men and women who didn’t make it out alive.

“What was exciting about the book was it takes this kind of idea that a world filled with mostly women … is not necessarily a paradise. Because women uphold systems of oppression — like patriarchy and white supremacy and capitalism. And that can be explored within that. Because gender is diverse and chromosomes are not equal to gender. So in our world of the show, every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. Tragically, that includes many women. It includes nonbinary people and includes intersex people. But that’s also true of the survivors. I think every single person who is working on the show — from the writers to the directors to the cast and the crew — are making a show that affirms that trans women are women, trans men are men, nonbinary people are nonbinary, and that is part of the sort of richness of the world we get to play with.”

It certainly gives eager viewers some fascinating context for what will unfold in the show, and those who read the graphic novels will absolutely be interested in what’s different between the comics and on screen. The FX version of Y: The Last Man will air for a society that’s starting to understand gender very differently on a mainstream level. And while it’s hard to predict how it will be received, those in charge of the show have made it clear they tried to get it right despite the more dated approach to gender in the source material they’re working with.

[via THR]