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Australian group King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are known for two things: They’re one of modern psychedelic rock’s brighest stars, and they release a ton of albums. Their debut LP, 12 Bar Bruise, came out in 2012, but now they’re already onto their 26th album: The band just announced Flight b741 (set for an August 9 release) and shared a video for “Le Risque.”

The band’s Stu Mackenzie says of the new album, “We wanted to make something that was primal, instinctual, more ‘from the gut,’ just people in a room, doing what feels right. We wanted to make something fun.” He added, ““We came in with the roughest skeletons for songs and tried to keep the arrangements simple, free and easy. The best takes were always the ones where we were winging it pretty significantly.”

Watch the “Le Risque” video above and find the Flight b741 cover art and tracklist below, as well as the band’s upcoming tour dates.

Flight b741 Album Cover Artwork

Flight b741 Tracklist

1. “Mirage City”
2. “Antarctica”
3. “Raw Feel”
4. “Field Of Vision”
5. “Hog Calling Contest”
6. “Le Risque”
7. “Flight b741”
8. “Sad Pilot”
9. “Rats In The Sky”
10. “Daily Blues”

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard 2024 Tour Dates

08/15/2024 — Washington, DC @ The Anthem %
08/16/2024 — Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium * %
08/17/2024 — Forest Hills, NY @ Forest Hills Stadium * %
08/19/2024 — Boston, MA @ The Stage at Suffolk Downs %
08/20/2024 — Portland, ME @ Thompson’s Point %
08/21/2024 — Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage &
08/23/2024 — Detroit, MI @ Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre ^ &
08/24/2024 — Cleveland, OH @ Jacobs Pavilion &
08/25/2024 — Newport, KY @ MegaCorp Pavilion Outdoor &
08/27/2024 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Dell Music Center &
08/28/2024 — Richmond, VA @ Brown’s Island &
08/30/2024 — Asheville, NC @ ExploreAsheville.com Arena &
08/31/2024 — Nashville, TN @ Ascend Amphitheater &
09/01/2024 — Chicago, IL @ Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island * &
09/03/2024 — Minneapolis, MN @ The Armory &
09/04/2024 — Milwaukee, WI @ Miller High Life Theatre &
09/05/2024 — St. Louis, MO @ The Factory &
09/06/2024 — Omaha, NE @ The Astro Amphitheater &
09/08/2024 — Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre &
09/09/2024 — Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre [early show] &
09/09/2024 — Morrison, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre [late show] &
09/11/2024 — Troutdale, OR @ Edgefield Amphitheater &
09/12/2024 — Vancouver, BC @ Pacific Coliseum &
09/14/2024 — Quincy, WA @ The Gorge Amphitheatre * %
11/01/2024 — Inglewood, CA @ The Forum @
11/02/2024 — San Diego, CA @ The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park ^ @
11/03/2024 — Paso Robles, CA @ Vina Robles Amphitheatre @
11/04/2024 — Stanford, CA @ Frost Amphitheater at Stanford @
11/08/2024 — Las Vegas, NV @ Bakkt Theater at Planet Hollywood @
11/09/2024 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre #
11/10/2024 — Albuquerque, NM @ Revel Entertainment #
11/12/2024 — Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion #
11/13/2024 — Fayetteville, AR @ JJ’s Live #
11/15/2024 — Austin, TX @ Germania Insurance Amphitheater *#
11/16/2024 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall #
11/17/2024 — New Orleans, LA @ Mardi Gras World #
11/19/2024 — Atlanta, GA @ Fox Theatre Atlanta #
11/20/2024 — St. Augustine, FL @ St. Augustine Amphitheatre #
11/21/2024 — Miami, FL @ Factory Town #
05/18/2025-05/20/2025 — Lisbon, PT @ Coliseu do Recreios
05/23/2025-05/25/2025 — Barcelona, ES @ Poble Espanyol
05/29/2025-05/31/2025 — Vilnius, LT @ Lukiškės Prison 2.0
06/04/2025-06/06/2025 — Athens, GR @ Lycabettus Theatre City of Athens
06/08/2025-06/10/2025 — Plovdiv, BG @ Ancient Theatre

* 3-hour marathon set
^ acoustic set
% with Geese, DJ Crenshaw
& with Geese
@ with King Stingray, DJ Crenshaw
# with King Stingray

Flight b741 is out 8/9 via p(doom) records. Find more information here.

We have seen Nic Cage transform into any type of character you could ever dream of (literally) but there hasn’t been enough nightmare-adjacent Cage. Yes, we’ve seen him in slashers and the likes, but everyone knows what Nic Cage looks like, so in order to be really scary, he has to not look like Nic Cage, and that’s how they pulled off his “demented character” in Longlegs.

In Longlegs, Cage plays the titular serial killer who is being hunted by Lee, portrayed by Maika Monroe.

Monroe recently revealed to IndieWire, that she hadn’t seen Cage’s chilling transformation until his last day of filming.

“Oz wanted to keep us completely separate. No one showed me any photos of him. Oz wanted it to be a complete surprise for that scene when we interact for the first time. Just imagine that,” Monroe revealed. “It was completely shocking and overwhelming. The first time I met him, the cameras were rolling, and they called action. I opened the door, and there he was.”

Not only did they get her initial reaction, but director Osgood Perkins also tracked Monroe’s heart rate the first time she saw Cage in character. “It was insane. It was absolutely insane!” she said. “As you know, he completely transformed. There’s no trace of Nic in there, his voice, his mannerisms. He was very much Method on this. So it was in character, and it’s a very disturbing character, to say the least.”

Even though their first encounter was…tense…Monroe said they were able to chat after. “It was actually very cute,” she revealed. “We filmed that scene and it was his last day, and so we finished filming, and then we just had to [shoot] some stills at the end. So the photographer comes in, and we’re sitting across from each other, and he’s just like, ‘Ah, well, by the way, I’m a really big fan of yours,’ completely back to Nic’s voice. ‘I’m like, what is happening? Am I in a dream right now? What is happening?’ … It was a very surreal day for me.” When Nic Cage shows up in your dreams, you know you’re in for a wild ride.

Longlegs hits theaters on July 12th.

There’s a moment in MaXXXine — Ti West’s coated-in-pulp trilogy ender starring muse Mia Goth – that’s so salacious, it managed to perfectly capture its creator’s frustration with the tight-laced limitations of today’s Hollywood while also erecting a big middle finger to the neutered killjoys that make up an ever-growing majority of today’s audiences. It happens mid-way through the film, as Goth’s titular heroine slogs through the seedy streets of downtown L.A., hopping from one sexually explicit side gig to the next. She’s bounced from an audition that ended with her topless to the set of a skin flick to a strip club and finally a peep show, wielding her body and the reactions it elicits as a tool to propel her closer to stardom. She’s on her way home now, both exhausted by and at ease with the violent chaos that surrounds her – the hookers picking up johns, the street drugs being passed out like candy, the always-present threat of a serial killer lurking in the shadows – when a man with a switchblade stalks her to a trash-filled alleyway. How this scumbag imagined this would end, we’ll never know, because Goth’s ruthlessly determined final girl upends her trope, flashing a gun from her purse and skirting any narrative trauma writers should like to inflict on her to “earn” her triumphant final act.

MaXXXine has had enough of being a victim, thank you, and she proves it by torturing her would-be assailant in the most degrading way possible.

Now, the more memorable part of this scene comes towards the end, when MaXXXine strips her perp bare, forces him to lay face down on the grimy street, and crushes his balls to a pulp with her stilettoed heel. It’s shocking, it’s gruesome, it’s incredibly satisfying and bleakly funny. But it’s not the moment that caused audiences to squirm in their seats. That came earlier, when MaXXXine forced her attacker to his knees, prompted him to open wide, and shoved the barrel of her gun in his mouth, demanding he fellate her weapon (for a change).

How much sex (if any) should be on TV and in movies has been a taboo topic of conversation lately. It’s not just critics and filmmakers arguing over semantics either. A recent study from Talker Research found that 43% of entertainment fans dub sex scenes unnecessary to a story. According to The Economist, nearly 50% of last year’s top-grossing films featured no nudity or sex. It’s a trend that mirrors younger generations’ attitudes towards intimacy on screen with Gen Z ranking as one of the largest groups protesting against sex on screen. MaXXXine’s sexually-tinged form of punishment for a man with nefarious intentions doesn’t necessarily rate as a sex scene, but its imagery is just suggestive enough to push the boundaries of what today’s moviegoers seem to be comfortable with, especially when paired with all of the other allusions to sex that West weaves in his film.

Whittled down to its simplest form, MaXXXine is about all of the ways sex both sells and gatekeeps, especially in relation to women. Hollywood was built on the backs of ingenues looking to escape the confines of unfortunate childhoods, seeking salvation in stardom, and ill-equipped to accomplish either without commoditizing themselves. West is clear on that, treating sex as a background prop to reach for when a ring of keys between the knuckles won’t do. He pummels your face with it, showing how the industry he’s apart of both exploits and penalizes those willing to bare their bodies to get ahead. MaXXXine’s adult film star past is frowned upon by casting agents who make a point of getting her tits on tape. She’s seen as a risky hire for a B-grade horror movie steeped in the occult because she’s had sex on camera, and irony not lost on the tough-as-nails director (Elizabeth Debicki) who hires her, in part, for the controversy she’ll stir.

And West sets his flashes of skin to a societal backdrop swarmed by the Satanic Panic of the 70s and 80s, a time of Puritanical pearl clutching birthed from the fire and brimstone prosperity gospel that MaXXXine herself has surprising ties to. West has referenced the hypocrisy, explaining in interviews that MaXXXine takes place a year after the MPAA introduced its revised rating system to appease conservative parents. But he uses his camera to investigate the fucked up attitudes towards sex that we seem to have inherited from this decade and this generation too, splicing moments of eroticism with nauseating gore and disturbing religious fervor and asking us which makes us the most uncomfortable.

Perhaps the difference in how West uses sex to paint a portrait of how 80s era Hollywood used sex lies not in the finished product, but in the process. After all, we live in the time of intimacy coordinators and post-#MeToo film sets where actors are given more agency and more care into how sex and nudity are portrayed on screen. But given those advances, it seems strange that just a handful of films and directors (West included) are keen to harness any kind of eroticism in their stories.

With MaXXXine, sex isn’t some accessory to West’s tale, it’s the action driver – what his aspiring starlet tries to distance herself from, what she wields unapologetically, and what she’s needlessly condemned for. It’s explicit, brazen, seedy, unrefined, and, at times, truly cringe to gaze upon.

For some, that will be the slasher flick’s scariest part.

Miami’s mercenary ratchet rap duo City Girls may be defunct, but the show apparently goes on. JT, one-half of City Girls along with partner-in-rhyme Yung Miami, is proceeding as a solo artist, with a new album, City Cinderella, in the works, led by singles like “Sideways” and “Okay.” It’s slated for release on July 19, and just in time to capitalize, she’s revealed the dates for her upcoming City Cinderella tour, which kicks off a month later in Kansas City, Missouri.

Tickets for the tour go on sale on Friday, July 12, at 10 AM local time. Venue/promoter pre-sales start on Wednesday, July 10, at 10 AM and Spotify pre-sale launches Thursday, July 11 at 10 AM. You can find more info at CityCinderella.com.

JT 2024 Tour Dates

08/20 — Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
08/21 — Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre
08/23 — Rochester, NY @ Water Street Music Hall
08/24 — Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
08/25 — Hartford, CT @ The Webster – Main Room
08/28 — Washington, DC @ Howard Theatre
08/29 — Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
08/30 — New York, NY @ Palladium Times Square
09/01 — Charlotte, NC @ Neighborhood Theatre
09/03 — Atlanta, GA @ Center Stage
09/05 — Richmond, VA @ The National
09/06 — Norfolk, VA @ The Norva
09/08 — Columbia, SC @ The Senate
09/10 — Memphis, TN @ Minglewood Hall
09/11 — Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
09/13 — Little Rock, AR @ The Hall
09/14 — Oklahoma City, OK @ The Criterion
09/15 — Dallas, TX @ Gilley’s – South Side Music Hall
09/16 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall – Downstairs
09/20 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre
09/22 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Novo

City Cinderella is out on 7/19 via Quality Control. Find more information here.

Is it Haliey Welch? Or Hailey? For most people, it’s “Hawk Tuah Girl.”

Last month, the 21-year-old from Tennesse went viral when the YouTube channel “Tim & Dee TV” asked her to name something that makes a man go crazy in bed. “You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang,” she answered, and thus, a meme was born. It’s been quite a ride since going viral for Welch; she’s making serious money in merch and appearances, performed with Zach Bryan, and crossed one million follows on Instagram. She also formed her own company, according to The Washington Post.

She’s now repped by Jonnie Forster, of music specialist agency the Penthouse in Nashville; he calls her “America’s sweetheart,” and has already helped her register trademarks for both merchandise and entertainment services, such as live comedy shows and podcasts. Welch’s new company, which owns those trademarks, is smartly named: 16 Minutes LLC. She also recently changed the spelling of her first name from the more pedestrian “Hailey” to the presumably more Googleable “Haliey.”

Welch uses “Haliey” in the bio of her Instagram account. It’s also the spelling The Tennessean went with in an early profile. But Welch’s first name has just as often been (mis?)spelled as “Hailey” in articles, like this one, although that could be a typo. So, did she change her name? It’s unclear (I’m sure TMZ is hard at work obtaining her birth certificate), but Haliey is the correct spelling.

“Hawk Tuah Girl” might be easiest, though.

(Via The Washington Post)

Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign fans are currently waiting for Vultures 2, and it’s currently unknown when the project will surface. In fact, based on what Ye supposedly just said, it looks like it may never come out at all.

On his Instagram Story today (July 9), Rich The Kid shared what is allegedly a screenshot of a text message conversation between Kanye West and himself. In it, West writes, “I am retiring from professional music. Not sure what else to do.”

Rich responds, “Retire? Why ? How ? The ppl NEED you the music you & Ty & we have made was the BIGGEST STAMP in culture to this date In 2024. Drop Ye about mine & V2 and we do it all over again the kids need you big bra fasho maybe some time to chill but retiring ain’t it.”

West has certainly become a controversial figure in recent years, but if he were to retire today and not release any more music, his body of work as it stands now would be among the all-time greats.

He has 11 No. 1 albums to his name, making him one of only a few artists with at least 10. West also has five No. 1 singles, starting with 2005’s “Gold Digger” and most recently with his latest one, “Carnival” alongside Ty Dolla Sign, Rich The Kid, and Playboi Carti. He has earned 75 Grammy Award nominations and picked up 24 wins.

In order to make it seem like on-screen costars are friends, they might have to actually be friends. It can be a little obvious when two leads hate each other, so why not bond with your fellow cast members right off the bat? You may end up getting matching tattoos with Sir Ian McKellen.

But for Twisters, Daisy Edgar-Jones and her co-stars were out in Oklahoma, so they had to bond the old-fashioned way: by going line dancing and bull riding. You know, normal happy hour stuff.

“We did a lot of line dancing,” Edgar-Jones told Variety. “We went to this one particular club called Cowboys. It was amazing, people would be line dancing for like hours and hours, or swing dancing,” The Normal People actress revealed that eventually, “everyone would move to the other side of the room and they’d bring out a live bull and actually bull ride in the middle of the club.” It sounds scary, but not that much scarier than a deadly tornado.

In Twisters, Edgar-Jones stars as Kate, a young woman who crosses paths with Tyler Owens, a storm chaser influencer on the hunt for his next big twister, played by Glen Powell. As it turns out, there were multiple storms during the filming, which took place in May 2023. “One day, we were filming this scene where a tornado rips through a farmers market, and they made this amazing set full of these stalls. And this crazy windstorm came in and took the entire set out,” the actress revealed. “We were hunkered down in the shops nearby, watching the whole set be destroyed, only for us to then film it being destroyed 20 minutes later when they set it back up again.”

Edgar-Jones mentioned another storm, which director Lee Isaac Chung wanted to follow. “There’s a scene where Glen and I are looking for a tornado in the distance, and a ‘mothership,’ or mesocyclone cloud, formed behind us,” she said. “We looked like two of the most idiotic storm chasers, because we were like, ‘Where is it?’ and it was literally just there. We all had to leave, and it produced a tornado. Isaac actually went out chasing and saw it. We weren’t allowed to for insurance reasons.” Luckily, insurance didn’t stop them from being in the same room as a real live bull in their off-time.

Twisters hits theaters on July 19.

(Via Variety)

(NOTE: This 2022 image of Timothy Olyphant sources from a Lloyd Bishop- captured NBC late-night visit via Getty Images. Although it looks very cool, it definitely isn’t an image showing Olyphant on the set of FX’s Alien.)

Fans of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien movie and James Cameron’s 1986 Aliens film are about to enjoy a wealth of visits to the franchise. First, 2013 Evil Dead director Fede Álvarez will deliver Alien: Romulus, which takes place in between the aforementioned classic installments. That movie arrives on August 16 and looks like a facehugging good time, and after that terror calms down, it will be time to anticipate FX’s take on the franchise in an Alien TV series from Fargo showrunner and Legion creator Noah Hawley. Let’s not waste any further time and get to the good stuff.

Plot

FX’s Alien has been filming in Thailand and will take place on Earth (where xenomorphs could potentially run amuck, as opposed to being confined to a spaceship) in the not-so-distant future (70-ish years away from our current chaos), and if you know Noah Hawley’s work, then you realize that there will be plenty of unexpected turns. Naturally, the production details have been under lock and key, and there has been no confirmation whether xenomorphs will actually be on hand, but there will be some type of monster.

Star Timothy Olyphant opened up on that subject ever so slightly while speaking with Vanity Fair about how that monster freed up time, so he could hang out with Justified co-star Walton Goggins during Alien filming breaks:

“Bangkok’s really special. There’s a monster in [Alien], and the monster takes up a lot of screen time. That lets me go down to the beach. I got to go see my buddy Walton Goggins down there filming The White Lotus.”

FX chief John Landgraf also divulged details about the show (via Hollywood Reporter), confirming that this series will not include Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley because the story takes place prior to Ripley’s birth. Landgraf also revealed that this series would be faithful to both Scott and Cameron’s movies while leaving the franchise’s other films out of the discussion:

“Noah has an incredible ability to both find a way of being faithful and showing fidelity to an original creation, like to the Coen brothers [with Fargo] or to Ridley Scott’s movie and James Cameron’s follow-up Aliens, but also to bring something new that represents both an extension and reinvention of a franchise at the same time. He’s done a masterful job with Alien as he did with Fargo. There are some big surprises in store for the audience.”

In contrast, Alien: Romulus will act as a claustrophobic ship-confined interquel that takes place between Alien and Aliens. In both cases, the emphasis in forward-facing statements acknowledges that a back-to-basics attitude will exist, but given the specified time frame and setting of FX’s Alien, we shall get to see how humanity reacted to alien life before a xenomorph came to tangle with space truckers.

Cast

The cast will be led by Sydney Chandler and Olyphant, who (according to Deadline) will reportedly be playing a synth named Kirsh, which honestly seems like the ideal role for him in this franchise. The rest of the cast includes Alex Lawther, Kit Young, Essie Davis, David Rysdahl, Samuel Blenkin, Adarsh Gourav, Babou Ceesay, Jonathan Ajayi, Erana James, Lily Newmark, Diêm Camille, and Adrian Edmondson.

Release Date

FX hasn’t publicly pinpointed a release date, but the series will debut in 2025.

Trailer

Since there’s no earthly way a trailer exists yet, here’s a clip of Olyphant telling Conan O’Brien about that Avengers: Endgame cameo that never was. Well, it’s Olyphant’s time to confront alien life now, so dreams do come true.

With DeMar DeRozan now in Sacramento, the biggest free agents have all signed and there are just a handful of players still on the market that can provide a real upgrade for teams searching for them. That’s shifted the attention of most of the league to the trade market, where there are a number of high-profile wings that could be on the move.

Zach LaVine, Lauri Markkanen, and Brandon Ingram are the most discussed, in large part because they are all known to be available. There’s one other option out there for teams in need of a veteran wing, as Jerami Grant is sitting in Portland in the midst of a rebuild that seems to be on a very different timeline than his own. The challenge for teams interested in Grant, who averaged 21 points per game last year and hit 40 percent of his threes, is the Blazers aren’t under the same kind of pressure as the Bulls, Jazz, and Pelicans to figure things out soon.

Grant has four years and $132 million left on the deal (with a player option in the last year) he signed last summer, and that gives the Blazers the benefit of time to let him become, potentially, more valuable. As such, they are reportedly asking for a lot in return for Grant, and to this point, no one has come particularly close to meeting those demands. However, with the league cool on Ingram and LaVine given their high price tags, if Markkanen ends up re-signing in Utah rather than being moved this summer, Grant could be the last remaining option for teams in search of a real upgrade.

Among the challenges in finding a Grant suitor is finding teams which have the picks/players to make things interesting and the impetus to add a player like him. For example, a team like Cleveland would surely love to add Grant, but they don’t have any picks to offer and aren’t going to part with Evan Mobley to get him. Miami is another team that makes some sense until you take a closer look, as financially the only way to get it done is to send out Tyler Herro, and that would leave them extremely thin at guard and also we’ve seen Portland’s interest in Herro is mild at best. In total, I had a hard time finding a single Eastern Conference team that I felt would get involved and have the assets to interest Portland, ultimately landing on three teams clawing for position in the West that could make a run at Grant.

Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers have been linked to interest in Grant in the past, as he fits the bill of a veteran wing who can give them floor-spacing and some secondary creation on offense. However, the asking price for Grant is pretty high, per Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report, and it remains to be seen whether the Lakers or anyone else is willing to match it. Financially, they can get there with Rui Hachimura or D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Cam Reddish to make sure they’re sending out more than they get back to avoid the hard-cap at the first apron. The question is whether they’ll part with two first round picks. Here we’ll call it a first and a second with Hachimura as the salary filler, because he’s more likely to fetch the Blazers something else down the road on the trade market, but it’s possible that’s not enough for Portland to pull the trigger.

The Trade
Lakers get: Jerami Grant
Blazers get: Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Cam Reddish, 2029 Lakers first, 2025 Clippers second

Golden State Warriors

The Warriors could also get in on the Grant sweepstakes and what they can do that the Lakers cannot is offer a young player like Moses Moody that fits the Blazers timeline better along with a first round pick. The biggest problem with the Warriors potential offer of Andrew Wiggins, Moses Moody, and a future first is that Wiggins contract requires Portland to take more long-term money back than other possible deals. While I know future draft picks are the currency teams at the bottom love to acquire, I do like the idea of adding a more known commodity that still fits the timeline, and I think Moody in a larger role in Portland could be a really good addition to their young group.

The Trade
Warriors get: Jerami Grant
Blazers get: Andrew Wiggins, Moses Moody, 2026 Warriors first

Houston Rockets

The Rockets have been very quiet this summer after failing to land any big game on the trade market, but I’m not ready to count them out as a team that could make a splash move. They’ve got the assets and young players to make interesting offers on just about anyone, while having a stated desire to make a push to the Play-In or better next year. Perhaps they’ll bide their time and wait out the next superstar to hit the trade market — they reportedly are hoping Devin Booker becomes available — but in the meantime, they do have to consider the impending costs of their young core. Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun will both hit RFA next summer and Jabari Smith Jr. will be close behind in 2026.

Grant isn’t the caliber of player I think they’d move the first two names for, but it seems Smith’s ability to flourish is a bit stymied by his higher-usage young teammates. As such, would they be willing to part with the former No. 2 overall pick in order to bolster their roster with a veteran wing that could get them into that Play-In contention area, while also not ruling them out for a bigger move later? They’d need a third team involved to make the money work, but luckily there are two teams in Detroit and Utah with lots of space that would be willing to take on a couple expirings to help facilitate a deal.

Perhaps Portland would value gaining some serious financial flexibility for the next two seasons while adding a potential young star that fits their timeline. In this scenario, Houston would be capped at the first apron with ~$10 million to play with and two roster spots to fill, which is more than doable. Again, I’m not sure either team sees this as the kind of upgrade worth taking this swing on, but for the stated goals of each team, it would at least present a fascinating option.

The Trade

Rockets get: Jerami Grant
Blazers get: Jabari Smith Jr.
Pistons get: Jeff Green, Jock Landale, a pair of future second rounders

Spain’s beloved Mad Cool Festival is kicking off this weekend. If you’ll be fortunate enough to find yourself there (or just want to torture yourself with what you’re missing out on), here’s what to know about who’s performing when.

Mad Cool Festival Set Times For Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Highlights from the first day include Soccer Mommy at 5:40 (all times local and p.m. unless otherwise noted) on the Orange stage, Janelle Monáe at 7 on the Mad Cool Stage, Garbage at 8:05 on the Region Of Madrid Stage, Dua Lipa at 9:30 on the Mad Cool stage, Sexyy Red at 9:40 on the Orange stage, and The Smashing Pumpkins at 11:15 on the Region Of Madrid Stage.

Mad Cool Festival Set Times For Thursday, July 11, 2024

Leading Day 2 are Keane at 9:10 on Region Of Madrid, Pearl Jam at 10:40 on Mad Cool, Bonobo (DJ set) at 10:45 at The Loop Iberdrola, and Greta Van Fleet at 12:50 a.m. on Region Of Madrid.

Mad Cool Festival Set Times For Friday, July 12, 2024

Those playing Friday include Alvvays at 7 on Orange, Unknown Mortal Orchestra at 7:05 on Mad Cool, Tom Morello at 9:50 on Orange, Sum 41 at 11 on Region Of Madrid, and Jessie Ware at 11:25 on Orange.

Mad Cool Festival Set Times For Saturday, July 13, 2024

Highlights from the final day include Tyla at 5 on the Mad Cool stage, Arlo Parks at 7 on the Region Of Madrid Stage, Avril Lavigne at 8:15 on the Mad Cool stage, Lord Huron at 8:25 on the Orange Stage, and The Killers at 11 p.m. on the Mad Cool Stage.

Check out the full set times calendar below.