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When it comes to pizza, I’m a big lover of the classics. A pepperoni, a fresh Margherita, a good ‘ol four cheese — maybe I’ll get a little wild and opt for something like prosciutto and mushrooms. Point is, I like to keep my pies simple, saving all my snobbery for the sourcing of the ingredients, rather than the clever composition of the pizza itself.

As such, I’ve never been a fan of frozen pizzas, which certainly don’t feel “local” and often seem to have superfluous toppings. Plus, why bother when making your own pizza dough is so damn easy?

But recently, I’ve changed my tune… a little. Frozen pizzas — like all frozen meals, really — have upped their respective games considerably over the past half-decade. And while they’ll never beat the real deal, made fresh, the chasm between those two camps is a little narrower than it once was. Making convenience more of a factor.

Did you have 20 Zoom calls in a single day? Might be a good time to opt for a frozen pizza rather than covering your countertop with flour. You get the idea.

Over the past month, I’ve been on a quest to discover which frozen pizzas are doing it right and which are dragging the whole genre down. So here they are, best grocery store frozen pepperoni pizzas, ranked from worst to best.* Why pepperoni? Because if your company can’t make something as simple as pepperoni work, then your other pizzas truly have no hope.

*You won’t see Trader Joes on this list, it exists in its own ecosystem with its own ranking on the way.

12. Totino’s Triple Pepperoni Party Pizza

Price: $1.36

Oh, boy. See, Totino’s tastes exactly like what a pizza snob would assume frozen pizza tastes like: terrible. A cracker crust with overly bright but ultimately bland tomato sauce and the lowest budget mozzarella on Earth. This pie burns up brown, but its most offensive feature is easily the pepperoni chunks this pizza is topped with. They’re virtually flavorless, offering little more than texture.

For a pie that advertises itself as having “Triple Pepperoni” the low quality and lack of pepperoni is almost astounding. I’ve never been more offended by a frozen meal.

The Bottom Line

The saddest party ever.

11. Cali’flour Foods Uncured Chicken Pepperoni

Price: $48 (for 4 pack)

Cauliflower pizza is not for everyone, so you shouldn’t be too surprised to find this one ranked so low. The ingredients on this chicken pepperoni pizza are a decent quality, with flavorful pepperoni and mozzarella that melts decently on the cauliflower crust, but… we’re just not sold on the crust.

Once cooked the pizza gives off a noticeable cauliflower smell, and the crust doesn’t really hold up the slice when battling against the weight of itself. This is really more of a knife and fork pizza. That said, if you’re looking for a gluten-free pizza made with few ingredients, this might be your jam.

The Bottom Line

It has its audience, but a cauliflower pie was never going to rank well against traditional crusts.

10. Red Baron Stuffed Crust Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $6.78

Alright, cool we get Stuffed Crust here. The cheese is decent with a nice melt but it wouldn’t have hurt Red Baron to add a bit more. We know we’re getting cheese in the crust, but when you’ve signed on to eating stuffed crust pizza you’re expecting an overly cheesy experience. This pie doesn’t quite deliver that, but you get the novelty of having crust stuffed with cheese which is great because as far as crusts go, Red Baron doesn’t exactly have our favorite.

Don’t expect Pizza Hut stuffed crust levels here, the bar of mozzarella cheese in the crust is a lot less indulgent than that. The thick hearty pepperonis have a nice peppery bite to them and the sauce has a noticeable garlic edge to it. We’d like a lot more cheese to bump this up in the ranking though.

The Bottom Line

If you’re going to get Red Baron at all, get their Stuffed Crust.

9. Whole Foods 365 Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $4.99

I gotta say, I expected better from Whole Foods. I shouldn’t have, as this is Whole Foods 365 and the actual Whole Foods probably has a pre-made non-frozen pizza chilling in the fresh food section for double the price. Plus they make fantastic pizzas fresh in many of their stores. That said, we’re not sure why anyone would bother actually buying this. But I did, for science!

The pepperoni and mozzarella are decent, the crust is a bit too cracker-like and flavorless for my liking and the sauce is really bland, despite having a zesty tomato smell. I might be harshly judging this one because my expectations were higher, but ultimately I have fonder memories of eating every pizza the follows this one, so the low spot feels justified.

The Bottom Line

Way too expensive for what it is, avoid this one on principle alone.

8. Tony’s Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $2.98

Tony’s Pepperoni Pizza being ranked higher than Whole Foods 365 says less about Tony’s than it does about Whole Foods (we really feel burned by that pie). Tony’s is easily the most suspicious pizza I’ve ever eaten. On the box, it is advertised as having “pizzeria-style crust” and touts that it is made with 100% real mozzarella cheese — as if you’d expect anything less.

The very fact that Tony’s feels the need to mention all of this (plus “sauce made from real tomatoes”) makes it feel like they’re trying to lie to us. Yet, I found this pizza to be… kind of good? You know, in that guilty pleasure way. I can’t point to a single ingredient that I like, it’s incredibly greasy, that cheese is not nearly as abundant or stretchy as the box photo would suggest, and the crust, while thankfully not cracker-esque, is a bit soggier than it should be…

But damn it, when it all comes together in the mouth, it’s pretty good.

The Bottom Line

I like it, but not enough to buy or ever admit as much in face-to-face conversation.

7. Tombstone Pepperoni

Price: $3.97

This one doesn’t even come in a box, so I went in expecting the worst. I was wrong, Tombstone, while not great, is pretty damn good for what it is — a cheap-as-hell frozen pizza. The cheese is decent, with a nice melt that, once out of the oven, actually manages to cover the entire surface of the pie. The crust here has a nice chew to it with the cornice delivering a decent crunch.

Alas, overall the thing is a bit too soft in the sections that hold the toppings. Also, the pepperoni is a little too thick and doesn’t crisp up very well, instead, you’re left with some floppy greasy meat. While I judged this pizza a little too harshly on its appearance, I found that the box-less packaging was actually overall my favorite. Once you start stocking up on frozen pizzas you realize those things take up a lot of space!

The Bottom Line

Why have pizza in a box when you can have pizza in a plastic wrapper?

6. DiGiorno Rising Crust Pepperoni Pizza

Price: $5.49

DiGiorno has this weird reputation of being the “good” frozen pizza, but I think that’s been totally influenced by its own marketing material. Through repetition of the brand’s famous tagline — “It’s not delivery, it’s DiGiorno” — the idea that this frozen pizza is special has managed to ingrain itself deep within the recesses of our minds, reverberating from commercials viewed long ago in the waiting areas of muffler shops and dentist offices — the phrase repeating like an incantation slowly turning into some collective “truth” we all just mindlessly subscribe to.

I guess I kind of get where DiGiorno is coming from with their bold claim, though. Unlike a lot of the pizzas on this list, DiGiorno’s Rising Crust Pizza is thick, fluffy, and more akin to something you might pick up from your corner pizza spot. But it’s far from being the best that frozen pizza has to offer. You’re still getting part-skim mozzarella here, the pepperonis, while tasty, are a bit too thick, and the bread is on the overly sweet side.

The Bottom Line

This is far from being the best frozen pizza on the market, like you’ve been led to believe. But it’s solid.

5. Newman’s Own Thin & Crispy Uncured Pepperoni

Price: $5.99

One thing you’ll notice about a lot of frozen pepperoni pizzas is that the pepperoni is made with a blend of pork, beef, and chicken. There is nothing wrong with this, but you’ll find that the best-tasting pepperoni out there is usually a pork and beef blend, Newman’s Own goes this route and their pepperonis are better for it.

It’s a good thing that the pepperonis are good, because for being such a small pizza, this one has a lot of it. The crust is cracker thin with a decent chew, giving it a flatbread-like bite, but we’d have liked to see more sauce and cheese on this one. The lack of sauce and cheese makes it so that the crust gets a little too crispy from the heat of the oven.

The Bottom Line

Great for pepperoni snobs, but because of its thin sauce layer and lack of cheese you’re going to have to keep an eye on this one to make sure it doesn’t cook for a second longer than it’s supposed to.

4. DiGiorno Pepperoni Croissant Crust

Price: $6.19

All right, so I’m reviewing two different DiGiorno pizzas in this ranking, which kind of goes against my self-imposed “no brand repeats” rule but I couldn’t talk about DiGiorno’s croissant crust and just ignore DiGiorno’s rising crust version, it’s part of their brand identity! The croissant crust is superior in every way to the OG rising crust, with flaky layers of crust that crumble in your mouth in buttery bliss.

The sauce, mozzarella, and cheese taste exactly like what’s on the rising crust, but the sweetness of that doughy crust is swapped here for butter, which marries the flavors together much better.

The Bottom Line

Croissant crust sounds like a novelty, but it’s DiGiorno’s greatest contribution to the frozen pizza space.

3. California Pizza Kitchen Crispy Thin Crust Signature Uncured Pepperoni

Price: $6.19

Putting the words “Signature Uncured Pepperoni” in the actual title of your product seems insane to me. Yo CPK, your name, and logo are already on the box, we’re not over here thinking you’re borrowing your pepperoni from someplace else.

Stupid name aside, this pizza has a lot going for it. The marinara sauce is ultimately forgettable but the chunks of vine-ripened tomatoes really give this pie a tremendous burst of flavor, making up for what the sauce lacks. The mozzarella melts nicely and has an added boost of flavor thanks to the blend of Fontina and smoked gouda which spreads its way across the entire pie. The pepperoni has a spicy bite and manages to crisp up nicely (though it produces a lot of grease) but it’s the sprinkling of basil that really brings things together for me.

The Bottom Line

A strong choice with great ingredients. Cheese lovers will appreciate the blend of mozzarella, fontina, and gouda.

2. Freschetta Naturally Rising Pepperoni

Price: $4.98

I’ve tried all of Freschetta’s crusts at this point but if I had to choose just one it would have to be the brand’s Naturally Rising line. The dough here is good, it’s not overly sweet, and thanks to a brushing of garlic it’s very flavorful, with a nice chew that feels more in line with what you’d expect from an actual non-frozen pizza. You don’t get the complexity of CPK’s three cheese blend, but the mix of mozzarella and provolone is a classic pizzeria combination, so it’s hard to be mad at Freschetta — few frozen pizza brands even bother with two kinds of cheese!

My only major gripe here is the pepperoni isn’t the best, I love the way it crisps up but the flavor is just a little too dull. The sauce and bread are great though, for the price Freschetta is one of your best options.

The Bottom Line

A frozen pizza you’ll actually enjoy eating the crust of. Freschetta has mastered the frozen pizza crust game, just add a sprinkling of your own oregano and some fresh diced tomatoes and you have one of the best tasting and cheapest frozen pizzas out there.

1. Screamin’ Sicilian Holy Pepperoni

Price: $5.98

This is the frozen pizza people kept telling me I “had to try” and it really lives up to its reputation. It easily rises above every other frozen pizza on this list and — to be frank — there’s quite a gap between our number two and number one. While a blind taste test wouldn’t fool anyone into believing it was an actual pizza that someone delivered, the bread does have the texture of perfectly reheated leftover pie.

If you told someone this was reheated pizza slice from a local pizza joint, they’d believe you! That’s progress for frozen pizzas!

The pepperoni on this pie is great, it’s thick-cut, which I don’t usually like, but has such a savory peppery flavor. The sauce is bright and present — like what you want on a pizza — with a salty blend of mozzarella, parmesan, and Romano cheeses. It’s legit, high-quality cheese (for a frozen pizza).

The Bottom Line

Lives up to its revered reputation. A foldable, delicious pie that is truly worthy of the freezer space it occupies. While we wouldn’t take this over a slice at our neighborhood pizza spot, we’d likely pick it over what the big national pizza chains have to offer.

Ted Cruz is getting roasted on social media after new information about his ill-timed and tone-deaf trip to Cancun has emerged. According to ABC News’ Ben Siegel, Cruz reportedly demanded a police escort at the airport while he left millions of Texans stranded in freezing weather without water or electricity following a historic winter storm that’s crippled the state. Needless to say, news of Cruz pulling first responders away from helping citizens so officers can facilitate his luxury vacation to sunny Mexico did not sit well, and the heated reactions already coming fast on social media where Cruz was already getting dragged for the Cancun trip. He’s reportedly attempting to fly back to Texas on Thursday afternoon, but as you can see, the damage is already done, and it’s only getting worse as more damning details emerge.

On top of the terrible optics of tying up emergency resources for his Cancun trip, Cruz is also getting dragged for relying on cops for his own safety after showing little concern for the Capitol Police officers who died during the January 6 insurrection that Cruz helped stir up by attending Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally. (He was notably blasted by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who publicly refused to work with Cruz on investigating the GameStop stocks situation thanks to his support of the rioters who tried to murder her.)

Not even thirty minutes before the police escort news broke, Cruz was getting roasted by Seth Rogen who has a long and hilarious history of repeatedly dunking on Cruz on Twitter. With Cruz due back in Texas later this afternoon where he’ll presumably address his controversial trip to Cancun, it sure sounds like the Texas senator is in for a long day of being torn apart by angry constituents.

(Via Ben Siegel on Twitter)

After its partnership with Travis Scott turned out to be a runaway success, McDonald’s has turned to one of Scott’s partners for its next high-profile team-up. Billboard reports that the latest musician to receive his own McDonald’s meal-and-merch combo is Tay Keith, the producer who contributed such monster hits to hip-hop’s discography as Scott’s “Sicko Mode,” Drake’s “Nonstop,” and Lil Nas X’s “Holiday.”

This time around, the drop is decidedly lower key than the ones for Scott and J. Balvin and timed to promote the release of the new Crispy Chicken sandwich. Along with a cool tan-and-white hoodie emblazoned with a digital waveform down the sleeve, McDonald’s also offered a 7″ record of Keith’s new song promoting the Crispy Chicken. While both are currently sold out, McDonald’s did restock many of the Travis Scott offerings throughout the course of his promotion, so temporarily bookmarking CHKNDrop.com probably wouldn’t be the worst idea.

Unfortunately, Balvin fans were disappointed to find out that supply issues forced the cancelation of his merch run. Although fans were refunded and didn’t walk away empty-handed, it had to sting missing out on those cheeseburger house slippers.

The new Crispy Chicken — and Tay Keith’s musical ode to the treat — officially releases on Friday, February 19.

While Ted Cruz has fled the state of Texas amid the fallout from a climate disaster, Elon Musk is left behind and furious about the condition of the state’s electrical grid that still has hundreds of thousands of people without power. A winter storm has wreaked havoc on Texas and its privately-ran electrical system, as freezing temperatures, broken pipes and other infrastructure nightmares causing people to be without both water and power in some regions of the state.

It’s why people are so mad about Cruz flying to Cancun with his family, seemingly taking a vacation in the middle of a dangerous disaster for his constitutes. But Elon Musk is also worried about businesses, especially after he made it clear he wants to do business in Austin. And he tweeted that the company behind the power grid, ERCOT, is “not earning that R.”

According to CNN, Musk officially moved from California to Austin in 2020 after a dispute with the state about coronavirus safety. And he’s currently building a Tesla factory in Texas, which is currently struggling with the crisis that has left the privately-maintained power grid in a state of failure for days. That story also has some reports of people sleeping in their Teslas in Texas to stay warm.

Meanwhile, Musk continues to post memes and about meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, though he did retweet an image of a snowy Tesla factory in Texas as well.

The Oscar nominations haven’t been announced yet, but Chloe Zhao has already made award season history. The director of Nomadland, one of 2020’s best movies, has won 54 trophies for the Frances McDormand-starring film, including 34 trophies for directing, 13 for screenplay, and nine for editing, according to Variety. That’s 54 total, or 12 more than the previous title-holder (Alexander Payne for Sideways):

Zhao’s tally doesn’t reflect the additional 23 wins for the best picture, which she technically tacks due to her producing credit. The film’s win numbers have already surpassed Payne’s film and other big critical darlings like Schindler’s List from Steven Spielberg and L.A. Confidential from Curtis Hanson.

Zhao’s big wins include Best Director from Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics Association, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and the Alliance of Women Film Journalists; Nomadland also won the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Zhao will likely add to her record-breaking haul at the Golden Globes, where she’s up for Best Director and Best Screenplay, and the Oscars. If she gets a Best Director nod — it would be a crime if she didn’t — Zhao would become the first Asian woman nominated in the category.

Nomadland debuts on Hulu on February 19. Zhao’s next film, Eternals for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is scheduled to be released on November 5.

(Via Variety)

Out of Sight is a good movie. This is not exactly breaking news, considering it came out in 1998 and has been a good movie for over 20 years, but sometimes it’s worth it to state the obvious. It should be a good movie. It has so many different things going for it. It starred George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, who are good actors. It was directed by Steven Soderbergh, who is a good director. It was based on a book of the same name by Elmore Leonard, who is a good author who writes books that are often adapted into good movies, and who was on a real heater in the late-1990s between this movie, Jackie Brown, and Get Shorty, all supremely rewatchable classics. But good ingredients don’t always make for good movies, so let’s start with that.

Another point worth making: There is no great reason to bring it up today. It’s not the anniversary of its release. It’s not like there’s another project coming out that makes it relevant in any way. That’s fine, though. Sometimes you don’t need an excuse to talk about things that are good. Sometimes you just want to talk about them, and so you send your editor a note that says something like “Hey, can I write about Out of Sight? It’s not tied to anything notable. I just want to write a couple of thousand words about how awesome it” and he says “Sure” and that’s enough. That’s all we’re doing here. It feels great.

The time has come to talk about Out of Sight.

1. The plot of Out of Sight, in short: An unlucky but smooth bank robber named Jack Foley (George Clooney) attempts to pull one last-ish big job in Detroit, but in the process, he becomes entangled with minimal-nonsense U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez). They circle each other romantically while also circling each other in a nationwide manhunt, with both circles twisting into pretzels as the robbery — theft of diamonds belonging to a crooked investment type (Albert Brooks) who Jack met in prison — approaches. Things go sideways repeatedly, sometimes in different directions at the same time, sometimes related to automotive fiascos, often involving Don Cheadle in one way or another. It’s a very good plot. There should be more movies like this.

2. Out of Sight, like most good movies, starts with a bank robbery gone awry and a prison break gone kind of awry. The bank robbery sets the tone for the whole movie, and for Jack as a character, by starting with him ripping off his tie and heaving it into the sidewalk as he exits a meeting, and then progressing in an impromptu fashion as he makes off with the loot without using a gun or knife or anything other than his charm and cunning. It’s a perfect crime except for the part where his car doesn’t start. He goes back to jail and piggybacks onto a prison break engineered by other inmates, which also goes perfectly right until Karen stumbles across the jailbirds emerging from their tunnel and pulls a gun on them and ends up locked in the trunk with Jack as his buddy, Buddy (Ving Rhames), drives off. It’s a very good start to a movie. More movies should start like this.

3. But these have all just been words to get us to the Trunk Scene, capitalized out of respect, which is where the movie goes from “fun caper with cool characters” to, and this is the technical term, “freaking cinema.”

The Trunk Scene is just a few minutes of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez trapped in extremely close quarters, talking to each other, trying to figure out who the other person is and what exactly they want, with a mutual infatuation building as the minutes and miles pass. There’s a touch of the “if you and I met under different circumstances” stuff that you see in movies like this, and a surprising lack of menace considering the whole “felon taking a woman hostage” aspect of it all, but mostly it is just captivating scene involving two charismatic actors and one talented director working together to make something special. It’s also one of the more improbable meet-cutes in movie history. It’s fun to think of it like that.

4. We should pause here to discuss the 1998 of it all. It’s easy to look back at this movie and see these names — CLOONEY, LOPEZ, SODERBERGH — that we’re conditioned to see attached to blockbusters and A-list events and forget there was context at play. They were all still known quantities at the time, sure, but not the all-caps figures I referenced in the previous sentence. Clooney was coming off a disastrous turn as Batman in Batman & Robin and was facing real questions about whether he was a legitimate movie star or just some TV haircut. Lopez had starred in Selena and Anaconda but had yet to release an album or wear that green Versace dress to the Grammys that helped catapult her into superstardom. Soderbergh was still a critical darling who had yet to truly crossover to mainstream success. This movie was in some ways the launching point for all of them, even if it wasn’t a massive box office success, just for the foundation it put down. Clooney and Soderbergh made the first Ocean’s movie a few years later. Lopez became J. Lo, international megastar, about a year later. This was lightning in a bottle, but not necessarily a surprise. It’s one of those movies where you go back and watch it for the 20th time to write an article about it and you find yourself saying “Oh, right. That’s why all these people are stars now.” Those are good kinds of movies.

5. The dialogue in this movie is incredible. Almost all of it, all the way through, especially the scenes where Clooney and Rhames are facing off with Cheadle (Elmore Leonard was a master at writing scenes where cool tough guys refuse to give each other an inch), but especially in the Bar Scene, also capitalized out of respect, in which Jack and Karen bump into each other in Detroit and have a passionate tryst in the midst of… everything.

It’s so good, starting with her blowing off the ad bros who try to hit on her (“Beat it, Andy”), moving through the part of the conversation where they pretend to be other people to make it all seem even five percent more normal (Gary and Celeste, just chatting), and onto the love scene itself intercut with the rest of their conversation. The whole thing is just about as good as you can do with any sort of romantic scene — electric without veering into parody, sultry without being gratuitous — from beginning to end. A reasonable argument can be made that it’s the single sexiest thing that has ever happened in Detroit.

6. It’s easy to come away from this movie focused on the Clooney-Soderbergh aspect of it, if only because it set the stage for a partnership and style that has continued for two decades, but do not overlook how good Jennifer Lopez is in Out of Sight. The degree of difficulty is through the roof here. She has to play a character who falls in love with the man who takes her hostage, who sleeps with the target of her own ongoing investigation, and who, at the beginning of the movie, is dating a huge doofus, and she still has to come out of it looking both strong and competent. That’s some kind of trick. There are tons of little moments that help drive this home (whacking creeps with a retractable blackjack helps), but my favorite is the moment where she’s staking out the hotel lobby and spots him in the elevator.

Lots of stuff going on right there, an entire film’s worth of built-up inner conflict, almost all of it in one facial expression. What I’m saying here is that Jennifer Lopez is pretty good at acting and has been for a while. In hindsight, I suspect I could have just typed that sentence instead of typing two paragraphs and cutting a GIF from the movie. But then I wouldn’t have gotten to mention her character’s doofus boyfriend, and it would have made for an awkward transition to my next point…

7. Michael Keaton is in Out of Sight, briefly, which is good, because Michael Keaton should appear in more movies for an amount of time greater than or equal to “briefly.” All of them, if possible. Look at this guy.

And it’s even cooler because the character he’s playing is an uncredited re-appearance of his character from Jackie Brown, FBI Agent Ray Nicolette, which implies that the movies exist in the same Elmore Leonard universe even though they were made by different studios. Soderbergh explained how it all went down in the director’s commentary, with the short explanation being “because Tarantino and Keaton were cool about it.”

We called up Tarantino and asked him what he thought of the idea and he thought it was a great idea, and he was nice enough to bring me into his editing room and show me all of Keaton’s footage from Jackie Brown so I could get an idea of where Keaton was going with that part, to see if it really fit with what we were doing. We got hold of Keaton and he came down and did this just as a favor for nothing, which was really nice of him. To our knowledge this was a first, a character who appears in two completely unrelated movies played by the same actor. As far as all of us could determine nobody had ever done this before, which was part of its appeal.

It does raise a few questions, though, in large part because the character Ray spends most of his appearance talking to is Karen’s father, played by Dennis Farina, who also appeared in Get Shorty as Miami mob figure Ray “Bones” Barboni. If we want to assume that all three films are connected (and I really do), this implies that there were two dudes in Miami on opposite sides of the law who looked exactly like Dennis Farina. (I would have watched this movie.) If we want to throw Get Shorty out of the equation to clean up the confusion, well… there’s still an issue we’ll get to in a minute. I’m very excited about it.

8. But back to the robbery. Things twist and turn and twist again until everyone ends up in the home of Albert Brooks’s character, who is now wearing a wig, and we learned earlier had kind of backed out of the deal he made with Jack in prison about giving him a job once they were out, which is what led to the tie-slamming and impromptu bank-robbing that started the movie. Don Cheadle’s character, Snoop, and his crew blow up a safe to discover it contains only more toupees. The diamonds turn out to be in the fish tank. Jack and Buddy make off with the diamonds and are in the clear but Jack goes back in because he feels guilty about Snoop planning to kill everyone. You know all of this. The important thing is that it leads to…

I should note here that the ending of the movie is different from the book, in ways that are probably more satisfying. The movie Hollywoods it up a bit, with the classic “I’m not going back”/“Don’t make me do it” scene resulting in a gunshot to a meaty part of Jack’s leg and an arrest. Buddy gets away with the diamonds. The violent bad guys die. Everything works out pretty well for everyone, really.

9. Well, almost everyone. Things did not work out too great for Snoop’s goon White Boy Bob. They started out great, with Bob raiding the fridge and making off with a bunch of steaks, which he was happier about than the diamonds. (I get it, Bob.) But then he had to rush up some steps to confront Jack and, well…

Blammo. Good night, Bob. It’s worth noting here, if only because there’s really no better excuse to note it, that this is not the only time a beefy character in an Elmore Leonard-inspired project has tripped and died by falling on his own weapon. It also happened to a goon in Justified. The lesson here is that this scene is always funny. And that Elmore Leonard was the best. So two lessons, I guess.

10. The fun thing about it all is that it means the movie is bookended by failed robberies. And it’s also, kind of, bookended by prison breaks. Or at least there’s an implied second prison break, as Karen pulls some strings to get Jack transported back to jail with a felon named Hejira Henry, who has himself orchestrated many prison breaks, and who presumably — based on a handful of glances and a devious little smile by Karen — will use the long car ride to become friends with Jack and start to plan another. It’s kind of sweet, in a way, and it would be the end of this discussion if not for one thing…

Hejira Henry is played by Samuel L. Jackson, in another uncredited role. That’s cool enough on its own, but consider this: Samuel L. Jackson played an arms dealer named Ordell Robbie in Jackie Brown. Do you see where I’m headed here? It’s the thing I mentioned earlier in the section about Michael Keaton. It is established fact that Jackie Brown and Out of Sight exist in the same universe, thanks to Ray Nicolette. Ordell Robbie and Hejira Henry are, presumably, not the same person. This means that, in this world, there are two different criminals who look exactly like Samuel L. Jackson, one of whom likes selling automatic weapons and drinking screwdrivers and one of whom breaks out of jail a lot. This is fascinating to me. I feel pretty confident that no one on Earth has spent more time than me thinking about it. I have, to be clear, no regrets about any of it. Well, maybe one regret, which is that I appear to be ending a lengthy discussion about a terrific movie with a lunatic rant about Samuel L. Jackson character. Hmm. Let’s fix that.

Out of Sight is a good movie. Still. Always.

Haim showcased their confidence and refined songwriting last summer with their third studio record Women In Music Pt. III. The sisters are now revisiting the music by inviting other artists to reimagine some of the songs with remixes. Back in December, they shared a remix of their ’90s-inspired track “3 am” by Toro Y Moi and now, they’re gearing up for a collaboration with one of today’s biggest pop stars: Taylor Swift.

Taking a page out of the pop star’s book, Haim teased the collaboration in an extremely cryptic way. The sisters posed for promotional shots at a gas station and captioned the photo “one gasoline pump.” Behind them, a sign boasting the letter 13 can be seen, which has been widely interpreted as the unofficial marker of a Swift project.

Now, Haim has taken one step further to confirm the remix. The group shared a TikTok which plays an extremely brief snippet of the song. The TikTok shows the sisters sitting in a Jeep outside of a gas station. After hopping in the car, Danielle Haim turns up the stereo’s volume to blast part of the song’s chorus — on which Swift can be heard providing back-up vocals.

Watch the video above.

Women In Music Pt. III is out now via Columbia. Get it here and revisit our review of the album here.

Ted Cruz is flying back from Cancun after being busted while leaving a frozen Texas behind as he flew to sunny, warm Cancun. Now, he’s got some explaining to do.

What a pair of sentences that turned out to be, right? Well, here’s what’s gonna happen. Cruz caught wind of the (justifiable) outrage aimed in his direction, and he spent one night in Mexico. So, he decided to hop back on a Thursday afternoon flight and return to Houston. As MSNBC and Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman uncovered, he even tried to get on the United Airlines upgrade list for his flight. “Cru R” would point toward Ted’s full name, Rafael Edward Cruz, and he missed out on the upgrade, so he’s not only flying back, but he’ll be in coach. And he’ll have an audience when he touches down in Texas.

His ruined vacation seems like the tiniest price for Ted to pay, considering the long, sub-freezing temperatures that Lone Star State residents are still enduring. Millions of people remain without electricity, heat, and water, and Ted’s poorly aged tweets already led to backlash since he mocked California during its past power outages. He then uncharacteristically owned up to having “no defense” for his previous words, and he seemed to settle down, but that was apparently because he was packing for Cancun.

After social media postings made the truth known, and even Fox News correspondents confirmed that Cruz was in Cancun (while noting that a GOP source stated, “The photos speak for themselves”), Ted’s pretty screwed. He did it to himself, of course, so people are breathlessly awaiting his return to Houston. Reporters will surely be awaiting him outside the airport, and people are very excited to speculate on what ridiculous excuses he might make. From “[h]e merely accompanied his family for the night” to “The Green New Deal,” the possibilities are endless.

Here’s another nightmare scenario for some unfortunate traveler.

It won’t be long now….

And yes, of course Cruz has requested to be escorted out of the airport with high security. Sounds about right.

Magic forward Aaron Gordon will work with his nonprofit, the Gordon Family Giving Foundation, to donate $300,000 to launch a STEM summer program at the University of Central Florida starting this year and lasting through 2025.

The sum given by Gordon will not only help the university acquire the high-tech tools it needs to educate students about science, technology, education, and math disciplines, but also ensure that the program is free to all participants. That in turn allows the program, called {CodeOrlando}, to target “underserved and underrepresented” young people in the Orlando area.

“Potential is universal, but opportunity is not,” Gordon says. “We partner with local schools, industries and technologists to provide opportunity, support and encouragement for our students, and we are proud to have UCF as a partner for this important program.”

In addition to the daily coding camp, the {CodeOrlando} program will also provide scholarships to mentors in the program, and gives eighth through 12th grade students the means to work with new technology, tour engineering sites, meet with individual employees who come from similar backgrounds, and develop internship opportunities.

Gordon has previously worked with Facebook on the {CodeOrlando} program through Facebook’s CodeFwd initiative, donating $6,000 and organizing with Orange County Public Schools along with his mother, Shelly Davis, who runs the foundation. The new, more substantive partnership with UCF furthers work Gordon has pursued for years.

Amid another very fractured and bizarre season for amateur athletes, the McDonald’s All American Games have been canceled for the second straight year. But on Thursday, the nominees for the boy’s and girl’s teams were announced.

On the boy’s side, we already see names that have been on hype videos and NBA Draft breakdowns for years, from Paolo Banchero to Chet Holmgren. Many of these players could be in the NBA before long.

And while the girl’s side will make us wait a while longer before we see these young hoopers in the pros, talent like No. 1 recruit and UConn commit Azzi Fudd, as well as the South Carolina trio of commits, Raven Johnson, Saniya Rivers and Senia Feigin, will all receive this nod before beginning what are sure to be prolific college careers.

https://twitter.com/McDAAG/status/1362431115202416642?s=20

This year’s McDonald’s games will indeed not be played, as the organization also announced on Thursday, but athletes will again keep the recognition of being finalists, as will those ultimately named to the teams.

“While we’re disappointed we can’t hold in-person games this year, that does not take away from the accomplishments of this class and they will forever be a part of the legendary group of past and present McDonald’s All Americans,” selection committee chairman Joe Wootten said in a statement.