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Texas has been leveled by a historic winter storm that has left millions of residents without power, but Ted Cruz still decided now was a good time to visit sunny Cancun. The senator ended the trip early after facing backlash online, however (he deserves zero credit for this decision), and before landing back in Houston, he released a statement about his decision to desert the people he’s supposed to represent.

“This has been an infuriating week for Texans. The greatest state in the greatest country in the world has been without power. We have food lines, we have gas lines, and people sleeping at their neighbors’ houses. Our homes are freezing and our lights are out. Like millions of Texans, our family lost heat and power too,” Cruz wrote. That’s a good list of reasons for a politician to not take a vacation. Also, THE PANDEMIC. And yet!

“With schools canceled for the week, our girls asked us to take a trip with friends,” he continued. “Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon. My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas. We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm. My team and I will continue using all our resources to keep Texas informed and safe.” Cruz did not apologize, but he did blame his kids.

Father of the year, senator of the year.

When most people think of Jodie Foster, they think of Clarice Starling in Silence of the Lambs or Sarah Tobias in The Accused. They think about her role in Taxi Driver opposite Robert DeNiro. Maybe they think about Nell or Panic Room or, more recently, maybe they think about Jodie Foster’s career as a director. She’s won two Oscars, and most people consider her among the best actors of her (or any) generation.

Forty years after the event, however, and not that many people think about Jodie Foster’s unfortunate association with an assassination attempt that left President Ronald Reagan and three other people wounded, including James Brady of the “Brady Bill” fame, who died of his injuries 33 years after the event. For Jodie Foster, not associating her with that event was absolutely by design.

Foster rarely if ever discusses the incident. She has, in fact, canceled interviews in the past when she knew she’d be asked about it. That is why it was such a huge surprise to hear Jodie Foster speak to the incident on this week’s WTF with Marc Maron. It’s not as though she discussed the incident at length, but she did talk about the strategy she employed to ensure that the incident wouldn’t become a permanent stain on her life and career.

For those who are unfamiliar with the incident, well, that’s the point. Nevertheless, in 1981, a man named John W. Hinckley, Jr. developed an obsession with and began stalking Jodie Foster after seeing her in Taxi Driver. Hinckley, Jr. moved to New Haven, where Foster was attending college at Yale, and then in an effort to impress her, he tried to assassinate the President of the United States.

It was a “weird moment in my life” for Foster, she told Maron, who was impressed with Foster’s ability to transcend that event in her career.

“Yes, I mean, I skillfully transcended it,” Foster said. “My mom had been a publicist, and she was very clear that she tried to guide me to make sure that I wasn’t just going to be known as the person who was involved in the shooting of the President. She said, if you want to have a career that is not about this, so you are never going to talk about it. You’ll do whatever you need to do for the court case, and then that’s it. You won’t talk about it.”

“What I did,” Foster continued, “is I wrote a piece about it for Esquire magazine … and that was it. I had written what I had to write about it, I got it out, and there was nothing more to say about it.”

That was her policy, she says, although it took some enforcement. “I’m not sure you could enforce that these days because we have a different relationship with the press now.”

“It was a weird time in history. It was a weird time for me, personally. It was a weird time for the movie business. Strange,” she added.

In the end, however, Foster says that her ability to distance herself from the “Hinckley problem” was a “testament to her mom. She was able to find a good strategy to make sure that happened.”

Source: WTF with Marc Maron

Still the most prestigious individual honor in the NBA, the MVP trophy is a piece of hardware all superstars want to have in their display case. And yet, it remains one of the more elusive of the regular season awards. Only one player can win it each season, the competition is always stiff, and, quite often, the same names dominate the MVP conversation.

Add to that the somewhat nebulous criteria voters use to determine their picks, and it’s hard to pin down exactly what it takes to secure the trophy. Is it the best player on the best team that season? Is it the player with the most impressive individual stats? How much does team success factor into it? Is it the player who is the consensus pick for best player on the planet at that particular moment?

We’ve never quite been able to nail this down, and when you start looking at some of the winners below, you’ll see just how finicky some of this stuff can get. Regardless, we’ve attempted the even murkier task of ranking the MVPs of the last decade in order of greatness.

Many factors came into play: stats, narrative, lasting influence, thrill factor, subjective taste, etc. But one thing is for certain, each was great and deserving in their own right.

11. Derrick Rose (2011)

One of the more controversial MVP picks of the last decade, Rose’s MVP season now stands mostly as a monument to what might have been. The interim years haven’t been terribly kind, but his breakout season in Chicago made him the youngest player ever to receive the award, a testament the sheer electricity he brought to NBA arenas on a nightly basis with his explosive athleticism, ball-handling wizardry, and dazzling finishes at the rim.

But Rose also, undoubtedly, had narrative on his side. LeBron had won the award two seasons in a row, and it’s difficult ignore the role that voter fatigue played here, combined with the fallout from The Decision, and the eagerness with which many were ready to anoint anyone but the King. As the league’s fresh-faced young star, Rose made the perfect heir apparent. Regardless of where you stand on it, it’s an impressive feat.

Season: 25.5 points per game, 7.7 assists per game, 4.1 rebounds per game, 1 steal per game, 44.5 percent shooting

10-9. Giannis Antetokounmpo

In an era when shooting is at such a premium, Giannis (ahem) bucked the system to remind us that there’s more to basketball than just the long ball. The Greek Freak’s career trajectory had been on a sharp incline since he entered the league as a lanky 19-year-old, and by the 2019 season, Giannis was virtually unstoppable as he led Milwaukee to a league-leading 60-win season.

At 6’11, Giannis has a very different game from Kevin Durant, but the speed and agility they both have at that size defies all logic. By the 2019 season, Giannis had figured out how to put most of the pieces together, scoring at will and defending at such a high level that it transformed him into a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, an award he would win the following season.

It’s probably unfair for the purposes of this ranking, but it’s hard to separate his regular-season success from his postseason shortfalls, which have become a sort of retroactive referendum on the parts of his game where there is still plenty of room for growth.

Season (2019): 27.7 points per game, 12.5 rebounds per game, 5.9 assists per game, 1.5 blocks per game, 1.3 steals per game, 57.8 percent shooting

Season (2020): 29.5 points per game, 13.6 rebounds per game, 5.6 assists per game, 1 steal per game, 1 block per game, 54.4 percent shooting

8. LeBron James (2012)

LeBron claims he didn’t leave his bedroom for two weeks after losing to the Mavs in the 2011 Finals. But it was ultimately that dark night of the soul that led him and the Heat back out on the warpath again the following season to atone for their shortcomings.

That’s exactly what they did, and a major catalyst for that was LeBron’s willingness to finally embrace top dog status in the Heat pecking order. After the confusion and uncertainty of trying to defer to Wade and Bosh at times the previous season and achieve an unattainable equilibrium, his return to MVP status clarified the Heat’s identity and put them on the path to their first championship together.

Season: 27.1 points per game, 7.9 rebounds per game, 6.2 assists per game, 1.9 steals per game, 0.8 blocks per game, 53.1 percent shooting

7. James Harden (2018)

Russell Westbrook’s historic stat lines overshadowed Harden’s own accomplishments the previous season, but to be clear, there was a small but vocal contingent of pundits who believed Harden was more deserving of the award that year, and the Beard certainly benefited from this line of thinking the following season.

That’s not to say Harden was undeserving. If Westbrook had taken his game to a statistical extreme, Harden had embarked on a different kind of data-driven quest for glory behind the Morey-D’Antoni Rockets, who had effectively stripped the game down to a math equation. Harden’s monk-like commitment to threes, layups, and free throws turned him into the league’s most unstoppable offensive force, and one of its most polarizing figures.

Season: 30.4 points per game, 8.8 assists per game, 5.4 rebounds per game, 1.8 steals per game, 44.9 percent shooting, 36.7 percent three-point shooting, 85.8 percent free throw shooting

6. Kevin Durant (2014)

This one gets bumped up a few notches strictly for his unforgettable acceptance speech, during which a tearful Durant used his nationally-televised platform to honor his mother for all the sacrifices she made that helped him achieve his dreams. We’re getting misty again just thinking about it.

On the court, this was Durant in full possession of his powers, a 6’11 scoring machine who was lethal from anywhere on the court and whose efficiency elevated him above the other great scorers of the past. Durant’s length made his jump shot un-guardable, and combined with the speed and ball-handling of point guards that are a full foot shorter than him, it made him an all-around offensive threat the likes of which we’d never seen.

Season: 32 points per game, 7.4 rebounds per game, 5.5 assists per game, 1.3 steals per game, 50.3 percent shooting, 39.1 percent three-point shooting, 87.3 percent free throw shooting

5. LeBron James (2010)

LeBron’s final season in Cleveland (the first time around) was no less remarkable for how he carried a subpar team to a 61-win season. It would end in heartbreak, of course, at the hands of the Celtics, a perpetual thorn in LeBron’s side in the early days of his career with the Cavs.

Despite his incredible play and their regular season success, it stands as a testament to the folly of relying on a single player to do it all, especially when it comes to the gauntlet that is the postseason. It was a lesson sorely learned by the Cavs front office and ownership. LeBron finally reached the end of his rope this season, and the gaudy MVP numbers are proof-positive that he’d done everything in his power to lead his team to the promised land.

Season: 29.7 points per game, 8.6 assists per game, 7.3 rebounds per game, 1.6 steals per game, 1 block per game, 50.3 percent shooting

4. Steph Curry (2015)

The 2015 version of Steph Curry was just beginning to open our eyes to what was to come. The three-point revolution was upon us, and who better to lead it than the precocious point guard from Davidson who flew under so many people’s radars right up to the point that he changed basketball forever.

Of course, the raw numbers don’t compare to what he would do the following season, but all the seeds were already planted: his ability to embarrass defenders off the dribble, his gloriously-reckless shot-selection, and the unapologetic swagger that accompanied it all. And come to find out, it was all just an appetizer for the main course that followed.

Season: 23.8 points per game, 7.7 assists per game, 4.3 rebounds per game, 2 steals per game, 48.7 percent shooting, 44.3 percent three-point shooting, 91.4 percent free throw shooting

3. Russell Westbrook (2017)

Oscar Robertson averaging a triple-double for an entire year was, quite simply, one of the greatest statistical feats in basketball history. Few believed it was possible in the modern NBA … right up until Westbrook did it. But it’s impossible to fully process how it came to be without putting it in its proper context and understanding what fueled it.

OKC had blown a 3-1 lead to the Warriors the previous season, and adding insult to injury, Durant opted to leave in free agency to join that very Warriors team. Somehow, Westbrook was able to channel all that frustration and competitive fire into his game on a nightly basis, and the result was one mind-boggling triple-double after another.

Westbrook approached each game with a level of fury we might never see again. It was the Anger of Achilles in basketball form, and it was an extraordinary thing to watch.

Season: 31.6 points per game, 10.7 rebounds per game, 10.4 assists per game, 1.6 steals per game

2. LeBron James (2013)

This was LeBron at his absolute most terrifying. Fresh off his first championship, the enormous weight of expectation had lifted, and LeBron played with a joy and freedom not seen since his early days in Cleveland. Not only that, he’d taken his game to the next level in several categories.

Seemingly overnight, LeBron had figured out how to effectively use his size and strength to dominate defenders in the post and had become a reliable three-point threat. Behind his otherworldly play, the Heat rattled off 27-straight wins during one stretch of that season en route to their second-straight title.

The other part that often gets overlooked here is that LeBron fell just one vote shy of becoming the first-ever unanimous MVP, a distinction that would eventually go to the next player on this list.

Season: 26.8 points per game, 8 rebounds per game, 7.3 assists per game, 1.7 steals per game, 0.9 blocks per game, 56.5 percent shooting, 40.6 percent three-point shooting

1. Steph Curry (2016)

There’s no reason to overthink this. Building off his first championship and first MVP award, Curry’s 2016 campaign will go down as one of the best of all-time, not just of the past decade. In the process, he seized the crown as the undisputed greatest shooter in NBA history.

The Warriors were like touring rock stars that season, with hordes of fans flocking to arenas early to try and catch a glimpse of Curry’s warm-up routine, which was going viral on an almost nightly basis. During games, he would demoralize teams with scoring outbursts, going off for 20-plus point quarters or knocking down back-to-back-to-back three-pointers from long-range.

Nobody had ever taken such a high volume of threes, with added degrees of difficulty, and made them with such efficiency. And his influence on the game is virtually immeasurable. It’s not an overstatement to say he’s helped change the way basketball is played around the world, and the ripple effects from that 2016 season will be felt for years to come.

Season: 30.1 points per game, 6.7 assists per game, 5.4 rebounds per game, 2.1 steals per game, 50.4 percent shooting, 45.4 percent three-point shooting, 90.8 percent free throw shooting

The Blossom, moniker of LA-based songwriter Lily Lizotte, earned a reputation for their anti-pop sound with a handful of singles released in 2020. Now, Lizotte announces that they’re gearing up for the release of their debut EP with the spirited single “Hardcore Happy.”

Sharing a self-directed video alongside the single, Lizotte visualizes the poignant feeling of being stuck. It opens with the singer buried underneath the dirt before transitioning to a clip of them trapped behind broken glass. All the while, Lizotte delivers relatable lyrics about feeling overwhelmed: “Yeah, you know my world is burnin’ / I’ve been sick of all my hurtin’ / Yeah, I’m tired of my gender / I spent five days on a bender.”

While their debut EP, 97 Blossom is about insecurity, gender dysphoria, and anxiety as a whole, Lizotte says they penned “Hardcore Happy” specifically about coping with difficult but necessary growing pains:

“‘Hardcore Happy’ is all my chaos in the form of a strong warm hug. Growing pains, the aches, while I’m closing my eyes and running towards change. Counting days in my sleep and hoping for something more. When someone asks me what it’s about I say, ‘Everything I am and everything I wish I was. It’s a hybrid of everything I’m influenced by sonically and emotionally. A collage I made with friends.’”

Watch The Blossom’s “Hardcore Happy” video above.

97 Blossom is out 4/6. Pre-order it here.

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.