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Martin Scorsese Believes That Streaming Services Have ‘Devalued, Sidelined, Demeaned’ Movies

Iconic filmmaker Martin Scorsese is back with a scorching hot take on the state of cinema, and no, it’s not about the Marvel movies this time. In a new essay celebrating the filmography of Italian director Federico Fellini, Scorsese fires a series of scathing criticisms at streaming services, which he believes are committing a cardinal sin. “The art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator, ‘content,’” Scorsese writes.

While acknowledging that he’s benefitted from the current climate of streaming services that are eager for “content,” (See: The price tag Netflix forked over for The Irishman), Scorsese has concerns that good films are being unceremoniously buried when “content” now means “all moving images” from a Super Bowl commercial to a David McLean movie. Via Harper’s Bazaar:

On the one hand, this has been good for filmmakers, myself included. On the other hand, it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t. If further viewing is “suggested” by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?

After going long on his love for Fellini, Scorsese returned to his concerns about streaming services and cautioned filmmakers from assuming the “movie business” will take care of things. “The emphasis is always on the word ‘business,’ and value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property,” Scorsese writes before presenting a bleak outlook on this new digital age. “In that sense, everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001 is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the ‘Art Film’ swim lane on a streaming platform.”

(Via Harper’s Bazaar)

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Daytona 500 Winner Michael McDowell Takes Us Through The Wild Final Lap

The 2021 Daytona 500 was a marathon affair, with the green flag dropping at 2:30 p.m. ET and the checkered flag waving just shy of 12:30 a.m. ET on Monday. In the 10 hours in between, there was a lengthy lightning and rain delay, two Big Ones, and a first-time winner on the Cup circuit taking home the sport’s biggest prize.

Michael McDowell wheeled the Love’s Travel Shops Ford Mustang to victory lane in what was the latest wild finish at the Daytona 500, picking up his first win in his 358th career Cup Series race. The veteran went from third to first in the final lap when the two fellow Fords in front of him, Penske teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski, wrecked in turn 3 after Logano tried to put a block on Keselowski’s run with McDowell pushing. As the 2 and 22 spun in opposite directions, the sea parted for McDowell, who held off Chase Elliott and Austin Dillon for the biggest moment of his driving career.

On Tuesday, we got to talk with McDowell about being a Daytona 500 champ, how the Fords all got themselves to the front, what that crazy last lap was like from his seat, and why he believes he can back up that win with a strong performance on Sunday when they are back at Daytona to run the road course in the O’Reilly Auto Parts 253 (3 p.m. ET on Fox).

Last time we talked was last March about iRacing, so a little bit has changed for you since then. What have the last 36 hours been like and what’s it like now to hear that introduction of “Daytona 500 winner” before your name?

Yeah, I mean, the last 36 hours has been crazy with just so much excitement and joy and just a range of emotions. It’s been quite the journey. And, you know, to hear that, to hear Daytona 500, winner and champion it brings a lot of emotion because of the journey and the work that it’s taken by so many people to get to this point. It definitely means a lot.

You mentioned the journey, I think something that not necessarily everybody considers is how big this is not just for you, but for Front Row Motorsports and everybody that’s put the time in the shop over the last four or five years in getting to this moment. What have been the conversations you’ve been able to have with the team, and what does this mean to the entire organization there?

Yeah, like you said, it’s not just a PR thing or cliche. This is 100 percent a team sport. And you have to have fast race cars, and it takes so many people to make a fast race car — and partners and it just goes down a huge list of hands that have touched this organization that’s allowed us to be a Daytona 500 winner. And so that part of it makes it special. It makes it very rewarding for everybody in the shop that’s a part of that, and for all our partners that are a part of that. So it’s a big moment. I mean, it’s a big moment for any team. I think it’s a lifetime achievement to be a Daytona 500 champion and winner as an organization, but for a team that hasn’t won a ton of races and isn’t probably talked about a lot as as contenders, to win the biggest race on the biggest stage, it’s going to last a lifetime.

After the race it seems everybody in the garage was just so happy to see that you were the guy that came out on top. Joey Logano coming out of the care center saying if he couldn’t win, he wouldn’t want to pick anybody other than you that to see win. What does it mean to you to get that kind of support from the garage and the other drivers and kind of validate, like you said, all that work that you’ve put in over your career?

Yeah, it does. It means a lot. I mean, to me that the part of it for me that’s probably the most rewarding is knowing that while so many years I was uncompetitive and grinding it out that people still respected me and saw me working hard. And to have those relationships and have people that genuinely are excited for you that you accomplished what you set out to accomplish, even your competitors, it does mean a lot. It’s not something that I took lightly for sure. I really feel like at the end of the day, relationships and people are what matter and to have support and to feel like you’re a part of that is awesome.

Just generally, what was the day like? You have that that first 14 laps and then you have the big wreck and then it’s a five or six hour rain delay. What was it like watching the weather reports and trying to have the conversation with your team about what you felt on the track in that brief period you’re out there and what you wanted to do going forward, and how did you make sure that you stayed engaged and stayed ready when you did eventually come back at 9 p.m.?

Yeah, it was it was a unique day for sure. And it was a long day, no doubt about it. In that first big accident that took out you know a lot of great cars, we actually got some damage. We weren’t too tore up too bad, but we did get some damage and then obviously with the lightning we had the the five and a half hour delay. And so during that delay we actually were working on the strategy. Drew Blickensderfer, my crew chief, and all my guys were figuring out “OK, what do we got to do to fix the damage?” You know, “what if this brace is broke,” and all those things that go into making sure that we can make these repair, still have a competitive car, not have too many men go over the wall, and not go beyond the caution clock that can take you out of the race when you have damage.

And so there was all these factors that we had to sort of balance and figure out how do we how do we execute this really well, where we don’t lose a lap and our car’s still competitive. And so a lot of that five and a half hours was just going through that and making sure that we all knew what we were going to do, and we’re ready to do it. And then when we went back racing, it was, for me, it was all about positioning. It was all about getting with my Ford teammates, and making sure that we could get ourselves into that position at the end when you needed it. So it’s a process and it’s a long one. And it always comes down to that last lap, but leading up to that every lap counts to put yourself in that position.

What were the conversations in that last stage when you guys in the Ford were able to get into the pits early and get yourselves connected up at the front? I mean, what all goes into that? What are the conversations that you’re having, your crew chiefs are having about timing and making sure you’re all on the same page so you can put yourself in that position?

It’s orchestrating a whole lot, for sure. Ford has done a great job of uniting the drivers and the teams, in particular at the superspeedways, and just making sure that we can communicate, and we all know when we’re going to pit and what we need to do. So that was executed really well. I mean, I think one of the things that, you know, I hate to say it, but that helped us do that were less Fords at the end of the race and there was at the beginning. And because of that, it was actually a little easier to organize, you know, four or five guys rather than ten. And so we were able to get to pit road really well, and we all did the same on our pit stops, and we all left pit road together, and we were connected leaving pit road, and we’re able to be organized early. And that gave us the race winning track position.

If it wasn’t gonna be me, that gets the victory lane, it was gonna be a Ford. I can almost guarantee you that just based on how we were positioned coming to the white flag having four cars leading the pack. You have four Fords leading coming to the white flag and that all came from that pitstop and that strategy and all of us working together and executing. We really controlled the race at that point, and it was ours to lose.

And then you get to that last lap. You got that big run behind Brad and what was going through your mind as you’re making that move? Because obviously you can feel that you’ve got a big run, and what was your expectation going into making that move? Were you thinking, “OK I’m probably going to push Brad to first, and then I might have to try to make a move? Then obviously, things change very quickly, when he and Joey start spinning.

Yeah, that was exactly my plan was to stay with Brad and push him. I knew Brad was going to try to make a move, and he was backing up and playing around with the runs, you know, a couple laps leading into it just to see how much of a gap he needed. And so I kind of, without it being communicated, because it wasn’t communicated, I knew what he was trying to do and what he was getting ready to do. And so when we came off of Turn 2 and he built a little bit of a gap, I knew that he was getting ready to make the run.

At that time, I had a push from [Chase Elliott] and was able to get a big run to get hooked up with Brad and when he and I had that momentum, he took it and tried to make a pass on Joey. And Joey blocks the pass and then they came together and I mean, it was just crazy. It’s not what we planned or what we hoped for. My plan was, like what you said, to stay connected to Brad. Let him make the move on Joey and when he made that move, and Joey went to block, they open up the hole and I take the hole.

Unfortunately what happened was Brad had a run, Joey blocked a run, and they make contact and both of those cars were crashed out. That wasn’t the plan but the seas parted and I drove through the middle and and had to block Chase Elliott, they had a big run, and Austin Dillon and we were able to hold those guys off and get a Ford to victory lane.

Can you even describe the chaos of that moment and — obviously you have to stay in the moment of like, “OK, I’m here on the final lap with a chance to win the Daytona 500” — but you see this wreck start and you’re trying to dodge those two guys, and then you have to think about those two cars behind you. I mean, kind of how does the adrenaline get go in that situation and can you even put into words how wild that half a lap is?

No, there’s no way to put it into words. Like, I couldn’t tell you one thing, my spotter said about what’s going on, because you’re just laser focused and you’re in the moment and everything’s happening so fast, especially at 200 miles an hour. When Brad and Joey spin, I didn’t think anything of it, I just drove right through the middle and immediately had to throw a block on the 9 car. Like, there was no hesitation, there was no thinking, there was no processing. It was just all happening in that moment, and you’re just reacting and responding and you only have time to process that you’re just doing it. And then when it all happens and it works out and you go back and you watch it, it’s just crazy to think you know, all the things that had to happen in that moment for you to be in that spot and to miss that wreck and to make that block and for the caution to fly when it did, and there’s a lot.

Now this week, you stay at Daytona and y’all are going to run the road course, and I know you’re a guy with plenty of road course experience. You get to come back to a track, obviously, it’s gonna be a very different race than than the 500, but you’re coming back and you get to run the same place that you just won, even on on the road course. How excited are you to try to back this up with another strong finish here?

Yeah, I think it’s awesome that we’re going to the Daytona Road Course. I’m always confident going into Daytona, but I’m ultra confident when it comes to the road courses and feel like, if anything, we have a better chance there. And so, to have two races that are really strong for us back to back is a lot of fun. And, also, we know that there’s going to be tracks where we’re not as competitive, right? I mean, we’re not trying to be — we know who we are. And we know that there’s going to be tough, tough weeks and great weeks. But to know that we can follow the Daytona 500 win up with a solid week is good [laughs].

It’s nice to know that we’re going to go to that road course with our Fr8Auctions Mustang and have a shot and run in the top five and run in the top 10 and be a contender. Rather than go to a track maybe where we struggle, and we go from winning the race to running 20th. That’s no fun. So, yeah, we’re looking forward to this weekend and I feel like we can keep that momentum going.

Y’all have seven road courses on the schedule this year. Do you like when you have a year like this, where there’s maybe going to be a little more diversity in the tracks you run? I know as a fan I like to watch when you guys go the road courses when you go to the short tracks and when there’s a little bit more variety. Do you feel that as a driver, too?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, selfishly, this schedule is incredible for me. I mean, I love road courses and new road courses, I think are an advantage for me. And Road America is where I got my Xfinity win, so when we looked at this schedule, it was exciting. We felt like this could be a great year for Front Row Motorsports and for the Love’s Travel Stop Ford Mustang. We really felt like, “Man, this could be the year where we get a win,” and to do it on week one, race one at the Daytona 500, to be locked in the playoffs. It’s just crazy. It’s just unbelievable.

And the schedule opens up for you. You’ll be in the All-Star Race, you know you’re headed to the playoffs. What does it do to settle you in and know this is gonna be a good season and just feeling that momentum that you get to build on?

I think it allows us to enjoy it more being locked in the playoffs and and having already won a race. It’s going to make the rough days a little less, and just allow us to enjoy the season and enjoy it longer than it would have if it had been later in the season or not happened at all. So for us to know that we’re locked in and to know that as a team, we’ve already in one week accomplished so much, everything else right now just feels like you know is a bonus. It doesn’t change our approach. We’re going to race hard. Every week counts, and we’re competitive. We want to run well, and we want to make it count and we have some momentum. But then we’re going to enjoy it because you just never know when the next one comes.

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‘Mayans M.C.’ Star J.D. Pardo Promises That Season 3 Conquers Pandemic Challenges And Will Be The ‘Best’ Yet

Mayans M.C. will be among the first batch of returning shows (after you-know-what slowed down the world) on March 16. A teaser has shown that there’s a rough time in the desert involved for all after a dead SAMCRO member must be disposed of, and there are fresh and returning personal demons for all to conquer. Given that J.D. Pardo was cool enough to give us a counseling session when things got personal for the club during Season 2, it only seems fitting that he’s helping to prepare viewers for the next ride.

Pardo did so in an Instagram post, where he speaks about the first Kurt Sutter-less season, which he is describing as the best one yet, despite all of the pandemic challenges faced by cast and crew:

I can’t express how proud I am of this season. The Cast, AMAZING Crew, Production, Studio, were able to come together and film this season despite all the changes and limitations on set and tell the absolute best Mayans MC story to date. I want to thank @elginnjames for his sacrifice, and his faith in me, the cast and the show. This season is cinematic, raw, unfiltered, touching your soul and breaking your heart at the same time. There’s nothing pretty or glamorous about the Mayans. We are wolves trying to survive and fighting for our lives. This is our story. I hope you tune in with me! March 16th on @fxnetworks and @hulu #mayansfx

At the end of last season, EZ got patched into the club, but that doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing. He’s probably got Dita’s death weighing heavy on his mind, along with the death of his mother way back when, which was surely stirred up by the Dita mess. And showrunner Elgin James previously suggested that the Mayans will succeed (at least at first) at covering up the unintended killing of the SAMCRO member, but you know that won’t last forever. Who is it, exactly? As our own Dustin Rowles noted, Clayton Cardenas (who portrays Angel) hypothesized that it could be Chibs or Happy, but it surely doesn’t make sense that Chibs (as the founding chapter’s president) could be dumped in the desert with success. It’s likely someone who decided to work with VM while leaving the Mayans unaware, and probably someone we’ve seen before on the spinoff. It makes the most sense for it to be Montez, since actor Jacob Vargas’ IMDb page lists him as being in this episode. However, he’s also listed as being in Season 3, so that complicates matters. Zombie biker? Sure, why not.

Mayans M.C. will ride again on March 16.

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What’s On Tonight: ‘Young Rock’ And ‘Kenan’ Bring Two Of February’s Must-See Shows Into Your Living Room

Young Rock (NBC, 8:00pm) — Dwayne Johnson’s gotten very real in interviews while discussing his difficult adolescence and young adulthood, but this show will take a comedic stance while focusing on how he hustled his way into wrestling superstardom. Soon enough, he became a household name and rollercoaster-ed toward Hollywood stardom and earned that Franchise Viagra nickname. This series will focus on all of that, but also! Expect to see exploration of The Rock’s presidential semi-ambitions when his character decides to run for office in 2032 with the help of Rosario Dawson and Randall Park.

Kenan (NBC, 8:30pm) — The longest-tenured cast member on SNL (and he’s not leaving) now breaks into the family comedy business where he plays a character named Kenan, who’s attempting to do what we all do: balance every aspect of life (and usually, to some degree, make a mess while doing it). Luckily for Kenan, he’s so much funnier than the rest of us. It’ll be something to watch him dodge an overbearing father-in-law while staying sane with his family and work, so this should be quite the stress-relieving watch for anyone who wants to see Kenan Thompson painting everyday experiences in an absurd light.

Feel free to brows our list of Must-See Shows For February, and here are the rest of tonight’s programming highlights:

Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. (PBS, 8:00pm) — Pharrell Williams and Kasi Lemmons get down with their own respective roots, including accounts of their enslaved ancestors.

Mixed-Ish (ABC, 9:30pm) — Bow wants to go to church with friends, and her parents aren’t into it, while Santi and Jonah attempt to prepare for their own hell.

Black-Ish (ABC, 9:00pm) — After Dre catches Junior and Olivia smoking weed, he’s naturally hesitant about recreational use. Ruby then attempts to intervene while Bow wants everyone to lighten up.

Prodigal Son (FOX, 9:00pm) — A supposedly haunted hotel gets a renovation, and that doesn’t go so well for the architect, as the team investigates.

Two Sentence Horror Stories (CW, 8:00pm) — A dark force feeds on the vulnerable within a broken medical system, and an Indigenous man visits an Old West reenactment for their podcast and uncovers some unexpected history.

Trickster (CW, 9:00pm) — Jared realizes that only he can stop his father, and Jared is on the run with Maggie.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! — Bette Midler, Eiza González, Georgia Line

In case you missed these recent picks:

Map Of Tiny Perfect Things (Amazon Prime film) — Time loops somehow don’t get old, especially after Palm Springs and Russian Doll freshened-up the concept once more. In this film. two teens find themselves reliving the same day while inexplicably drawn together. It’s a love story, of course, where they weigh how and whether to escape their never-ending yet ultimately perfect day.

Into the Dark: Tentacles (Hulu film) — The monthly horror-movie series returns with a psychosexual horror-thriller about love, or love gone wrong at least, when a young Los Angeles couple falls deeply in love, only to find that their intimacy takes an enormously dark turn. Happy holiday of love, y’all.

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The Pivotal Impact Of African-American Women In Rock And Roll

Quaking vibrato, improvisational lyricism, grandiose gestures, punctuating ad-libs, hooping, hollering, calling back and forth to the crowd, and running around the stage dripping in sweat, as if you’re leading the audience in some sacred ritual. If you had to ask me what I consider a quintessential rock performance, I’d rattle off the list above.

I’ve felt magnetized to the freedom and expression of rock and roll for as long as I can remember. Even when my fellow Black classmates warned me it was “white music” or when I seemed to be one of the few non-white people in the crowd, there was something that reminded me of myself, a dull whisper under the humming of the guitars calling me home. It wasn’t until halfway through Maureen Mahon’s book Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll that I completely understood why.

Named after a line in a Betty Davis track, the book examines how gender, race, and genre play into the stories and careers of Black women who were inextricable and essential to rock and roll music but whose impact is either tragically underreported or unacknowledged. The book also clarified something I had never noticed about my connection to rock and roll: how much it was rooted in my upbringing as a Baptist minster’s daughter. I had previously realized my upbringing was what drew me to the live performance of music. However, I did not realize that the sonics and performance of gospel music were at the very root of rock and roll, and more than likely the reason that drew me to the genre in the first place

“It’s a great example because the gospel sound, particularly in vocals, is so crucial to the vocal sound of rock and roll,” Mahon grins over Zoom. “Not just literally through the vocal sound of African-American women who were background vocalists in the late sixties and early seventies, although that’s maybe the most obvious version of it. Historically gospel music and secular Black music are very closely intertwined. They’re borrowing from each other and building on each other. If you listen to rhythm and blues from the 1950s, they’re doing gospel quartet sounds. The girl group sound of the 1960s is coming out of that tradition as well. It’s very closely aligned with the history of African-American music. Why we don’t pay attention to it is another question.”

Mahon’s history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and 1980s shifts trailblazing artists like LaVern Baker, the Shirelles, Labelle, Betty Davis, and Tina Turner back to the center of the conversation. Each chapter attempts to answer a singular question: Why are so many of these stories not shared in rock and roll histories? Mahon, who also serves as New York University Associate Professor of Music, notes that there are many different reasons for that.

“After the arrival of The Beatles in the 1960s, the British invasion starts in 1964, the whitening of rock really starts to happen at an accelerated pace,” she explains. “You had white artists performing rock and roll in the 1950s, people like Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, and Carl Perkins, and they would have all acknowledged they were drawing on Black musical traditions.”

Mahon shares a quote from Presley in her chapter on the raucous rhythm and blues singer Big Mama Thornton.

“The colored folks have been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin’ now man for more years than I know,” Presley remarks. But, as we all know, the original version of “Hound Dog” performed by Big Mama Thornton is rarely referenced in pop culture canon outside of being the precursor of Presley’s hit.

As Mahon explains, America wanted to hear Black music. They just didn’t want to hear it from Black people.

“Because of the way we understand race in the United States,” she says, “It’s this binary understanding that if something is Black, that means it’s not white and if something is white, that means it’s not Black. So if you have a musical form like rock and roll, which is actually a very mixed miscegenation form, we can’t understand that complexity according to the racial narratives that we grow up with and that we internalize. So if we see a predominance of white people, you know, in the crowd and onstage, we say that’s a white form, and we’re going to stay over here with this other form, which is a Black form, predominantly African-American performers, predominantly African-American audiences. I think that’s why the connections get lost.”

That issue of connection proved fatal for the careers of Black women whose sounds fell “betwixt and between” the genre’s of pop and R&B. And, as Mahon shares, for marketing and societal reasons, rock and roll was a scene that “relied on Black sound but seemed resistant to the presence of Black people.” Or, as rocker Betty Davis put it a more roughly but no less eloquently, “One thing I found out about this business, they have to be able to categorize you, if they can’t bag you, you’re f*cked.”

In the chapter “Navigating Brown Sugar,” Mahon shares the stories of three paramours of rock’s heyday: Devon Wilson, Marsha Hunt, and Claudia Lennear. We could blame record labels excluding Black artists from the rock genre on marketing, a casualty of categorization, but why were these women’s stories not more prominent in rock folklore?

“You can say they were there. Jimi Hendrix was there, but you know, Jimi Hendrix wasn’t really, he wasn’t like a Black guy,” she continues, impersonating what I assume could be a white male rock historian. “‘He was just like this really amazing guitarist. And that’s what I want to talk about when I talk about Jimi Hendrix.’ And so you erase the racial identities, which were important to the people. They were quite aware of their Blackness. They also enjoy being in this alternative space. It was a refusal of these mainstream norms they just thought were stupid and constricting, but it didn’t mean they somehow left their race behind. It’s a really interesting kind of erasure that happens with those women.”

Like many Black contributors to the early rock scene, these women seemed to fall prey to that oft-heard refrain of “I don’t see color,” a clumsy attempt at inclusion and a disservice ultimately leading to erasure.

“If you keep extracting the people who are involved from Blackness,” Mahon notes, “It makes it really hard to recognize that Black people are involved in this music. You keep pushing them into this other category and ignoring both the history of the Black roots of the music, but also the reality that there are Black people involved.”

The last chapter of the book highlights the incomparable Tina Turner, the first Black woman to claim the (well-earned) title of stadium rockstar and answer to the moniker “Queen of Rock and Roll.” In the chapter, Mahon shares an excerpt of a Rolling Stone review written by Dave Marsh. In response to Turner performing songs by Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, Marsh laments, “This once-great singer pushing herself through a series of songs without desire or understanding” and concludes, with his preference for her to work within “an idiom [she] comprehends.”

But Turner was acutely aware of what she was doing, simply covering the artists who were covering her, if indirectly. As she shares in her memoir I, Tina. “It wasn’t like we planned it — ’Now we’re gonna start doing white rock ‘n’ roll songs.’ But those groups were interpreting Black music, to begin with.”

The majority of the book’s stories don’t end like Turners with accolades, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, and Grammys. Mahon quotes a moment from Big Mama Thornton’s funeral in the epilogue where the minister preaches, “Don’t feel sorry for Big Mama. There’s no more illness. No more pain. No more suffering in a society where the color of skin was more important than the quality of your talent.”

Other heartbreaking moments in the book come by way of women like Lavern Baker. When she played passionate early rock performances in the segregated South, the audience would have “music tantrums” breaking the ropes separating them, coming together in a way she referred to as “gorgeous” despite white southerners’ condemnation of the temporary desegregation. Baker believed her music would speak for itself, so she didn’t rely on memoir or interviews to document her impact. However, as Mahon notes, “The fact that she was an African American woman worked against that contribution being fully acknowledged in histories of a genre that had developed a profile as the purview of white men.”

As I read each page of Black Diamond Queens, learning about the Black women who contributed to not only the sound but the ethos of rock and roll, I felt like I was also learning about myself. In the end, the stories felt less like a permission slip to feel at home in a genre I most resonate with, but a reminder that, like these women, I should never feel the need to ask for permission at all.

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Fox Business’ Larry Kudlow Got Caught On A Hot Mic Cursing Repeatedly About Kamala Harris

Larry Kudlow‘s Fox Business debut is off to a rocky start. During a Tuesday appearance on Fox News’ America Reports to promote, Kudlow, his new weekday show premiering that afternoon, the former economic advisor to Donald Trump was caught on a hot mic saying “bullsh*t” at multiple times while discussing Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent remarks on the previous administration’s COVID vaccine distribution plan, or more specifically, it’s lack thereof.

Harris had appeared on HBO’s Axios on Sunday where she claimed that the Biden administration is essentially starting from scratch when it comes to getting COVID vaccines to the American public. “There was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations. We were leaving it to the states and the local leaders to try and figure it out,” Harris said. Kudlow was clearly not a fan and let his feelings be known without realizing his mic was still on. Via Mediaite:

[Sandra] Smith claimed that Harris was making “false claims” about the Trump administration’s vaccine rollout, but she was drowned out by Kudlow, who was still mic’ed up and shouting “Bullsh*t! Bullsh*t! Bullsh*t!” The program tried to cut the audio at that point, even as Smith was heard reacting “that is Larry Kudlow weighing in… Wow.”

While Kudlow’s outburst seems like an unscripted moment, it actually lines up with an interview he gave earlier in the week to Variety to promote his upcoming Fox Business show. “I myself am not bashful about my own comments,” Kudlow said. “I have a few opinions.” Yeah, we know, Larry. We just heard you yelling them.

(Via Mediaite)

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Bob Odenkirk Blasted His Freakin’ Core So Hard While Training For His Action-Star Role In ‘Nobody’

Bob Odenkirk describes himself as a 58-year-old dad who worked as a comedy writer for 25 years and didn’t work out at all. But in his next movie, that body is going to do some ass-kicking. And so now we have a workout video that attempts to explain how that happened.

In a video Odenkirk did with Men’s Health, he details the workout plan that allowed him to star in Nobody, a John Wick-style action flick where the dude from Tom Goes To The Mayor kills a bunch of people with his hands and feet.

“It’s very different than everything I’ve done my whole life,” Odenkirk says, as clips from his turn as Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad play. “So I had to do a lot of training and I got into good shape.”

Odenkirk credited Daniel Bernhart for his workout, and the stunt actor and trainer went through some important cardio and training steps. There’s a lot of blasting going on here, both of his core and quads. And uphill biking in a mask, because safety first.

YouTube

Odenkirk also showed off the basics of “screen fighting” and did plenty of different bodyweight workouts, as well as some boxing. It’s actually a really good routine, and the video has some extra tips about improvising workouts. Considering many of us are stuck at home and may not want to go to a gym, you can actually learn a few things from the video. But it’s also a nice warmup to seeing Odenkirk in action, which may blunt the jarring effect of him suddenly morphing into John Wick when Nobody hits theaters later this year.

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Questlove Was Worried Odd Future’s Infamous 2011 ‘Fallon’ Set Would Get The Show Canceled

Tuesday marks exactly ten years since Tyler The Creator and Hodgy Beats brought their off-kilter group Odd Future to the then-titled TV series Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. At the time, the show had only been on air for two years. So when Questlove, whose group The Roots is the show’s house band, got news that Odd Future was coming to their stage, he was apprehensive. Questlove had heard rumors of Odd Future’s rebellious energy, so he was worried that their performance would lead to the network canceling Fallon’s show.

Reminiscing on the performance in an interview with Complex, Questlove recalled his anxieties ahead of the scheduled set. “My first thought was, ‘Yo, what if they try to pull off some rogue sh*t that’ll make them internet famous?’” he said. “So I thought, like, ‘This is either going to come off nicely or this could be the end. Like, we could get canceled after only being on the air for two years.” The musician also remembers thinking at the time, “This is some real sh*t that’s about to happen, and I don’t know if they know what they’re about to get into.”

But when Questlove actually encountered Tyler on set, the rapper only had one thing on his mind: Justin Bieber. “The weirdest thing was, Tyler instantly disarmed me with—of all things in the world—a conversation about Justin Bieber,” he said. “The Biebs had been on the show recently, so Tyler kept asking me, ‘What’s he like, man? You’ve got to tell me about Biebs, man. What was that motherf*cker like?’ And I thought he was trying to troll me. But 10 minutes into the conversation, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. You really do like Justin Bieber!’”

Fallon wasn’t worried, however. Instead, the host was along for the ride. “I think they were so nervous, because it was their first time, that they left,” Fallon recalled. “Some bands do that. They perform, and then they think they’re kind of in trouble or something. They finish their song, and then they go, ‘All right, let’s get out of here.’ I remember even Kanye was nervous when he performed. He was like, ‘Can I do that one more time?’ I thought there were going to be people right in front of me. I didn’t know it was just going to be cameras.’”

Watch a clip of their raucous performance above.

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Dad’s genius iPhone video hack is a gift for every parent out there with young kids

Most of us set out on our parenting journey with the best of intentions to keep our kids off of screens, and some of us may even succeed at it to some degree. But we live in the digital age, and especially in a year like the one we’ve just had, parents also need to utilize the tools we have to stay sane.

Since smartphones make it so most of us carry a screen around with us at all times, it’s easy for parents to pull up a child’s favorite show or movie to put on when the going gets tough. What’s not so easy is keeping a kid from touching the screen or pushing buttons that take them out of the video (best case scenario) or mess up your apps or settings on your phone (I once had a kid accidentally do a hard reset on my iPhone by accident—oof).

Apparently, folks with Android phones have something called “Kid Mode” that takes care of that issue with one step. For parents with iPhones, it’s not nearly so simple.

However, a dad on TikTok has shared how to do it in a video that’s been viewed more than 25 million times. The steps aren’t super intuitive, but once you get it down it only takes a few seconds to play a video on the phone while disabling the screen and buttons so a kid can’t muck anything up.

Here’s the video with step-by-step instructions below:


(The instructions below work on an iPhone 11. Other versions may work slightly differently.)

1) Search for Guided Access in Settings.

2) Turn on “Guided Access” and “Accessibility Shortcut”

3) Start playing a video in an app (YouTube, Netflix, whatever)

4) Triple-click the power button. This will turn on Guided Access.

5) Click “Options,” then disable all of the options.

6) Click “Done” and then “Start” or “Resume.” The video should play and you should be able to touch anywhere on the screen and push any button and nothing should happen.

7) To end Guided Access and stop the video, triple-click the power button, then click “End.” (You may have to enter your phone’s passcode before clicking “End,” depending on your security settings.)

Though that all may sound overly complicated, once you have the initial set-up done, it’s just a matter of triple-clicking the power button and disabling the options any time you want to put on a video for your kiddo. (Or setting specific options—you can actually set a time limit during that step, which parents may find useful. Or you can make it so that the volume buttons work but nothing else does.)

Guided Access can also be used to keep kids just in one app, so if they want to play a game but you don’t want them to be able to do anything else, you can enable Guided Access and just keep the Options turned on. The hack above just makes it so you can keep one specific video playing (which is helpful in an app like YouTube Kids, where it’s so easy for kids to click into other videos).

Undoubtedly, some people will chastise parents for handing their kids a video to watch instead of interacting with them, but sometimes a parent’s gotta do what a parent’s gotta do. Pandemic parenting has added an extra layer of difficulty to child-rearing, so everyone needs to give one another an extra measure of grace and understanding. So many of us are working from home now with kids out of daycare or school, and even full-time stay-at-home parents need a break from the relentlessness.

While too much screen time is certainly a valid concern, watching a quality kids’ show on a phone here and there isn’t going to ruin a child. However, it might just save a parent’s sanity, and any tool that makes parenting a bit easier right now is a welcome gift.

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Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Drivers License’ Tops The Hot 100 Chart For The Fifth Week In A Row

Since releasing her debut single “Drivers License,” singer and actor Olivia Rodrigo has been busy. Along with being put in the middle of a teen pop love triangle, she’s earned co-signs by celebrities like Taylor Swift and Halsey and completely dominated the charts. Now, her prosperity continues: On the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated February 20, “Drivers License” is once again at No. 1.

Rodrigo holding down the No. 1 spot impressively marks the fifth consecutive week the song has topped the charts. The song remaining in the top spot is a big achievement, seeing as not many songs that debut at No. 1 stay there. In fact, “Drivers License” is only one of ten songs to ever spend its first five weeks at No. 1.

According to Billboard, “Drivers License” actually saw an increase in both streams and downloads this week compared to last. The song racked up 27.6 million US streams and 16,000 downloads, which is an increase of 26 percent since the last reported charts.

Rodrigo wasn’t the only musician who scored big on the Hot 100 chart this week. The Weeknd, who is on the heels of his grandiose Super Bowl halftime show performance, holds two songs in the top four spots. His After Hours track “Blinding Lights” is seated at No. 3 while his song “Save Your Tears” hovers closely behind at No. 4. This means that this week marks the tenth time The Weeknd has simultaneously held two top-five positions on the Hot 100.

Check out this week’s top ten singles above.