When the NBA All-Star reserves were announce on Tuesday night, a few notable names were surprisingly left off of the rosters. Among those in the West was Suns star Devin Booker, who LeBron James called the most “disrespected player” in the NBA currently.
Booker, who is averaging 24.7 points, 4.3 assists, and 3.8 rebounds per game on strong efficiency for the surging Suns, who are currently fourth in the West, was a first-time All-Star a year ago but just missed the cut this year. However, with Anthony Davis named to the team and sitting out with a right calf strain, the expectation was one West spot would still be up for grabs. On Wednesday, confirmation came from the league on that front and Booker was named the injury replacement for Davis by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
The other top competition for the spot, at least in the eyes of most, was Mike Conley of the Utah Jazz, who has long been considered one of the NBA’s best players to have never made an All-Star roster, largely due to the crunch of star guards in the West where he’s spent his whole career. Conley doesn’t have the raw stats to match Booker, but his impact on the NBA’s best team has been immense and there was a push for him to get the honor for the first time in his career.
Still, it’s hard to argue with Booker, who has been especially great of late during Phoenix’s own winning streak, and he’ll join teammate Chris Paul in the backcourt for the West reserves. That should just about finalize the rosters, barring something happening in the next week-plus of games or someone pulling out for other, non-injury related reasons.
While the craft lager scene has exploded over the past few years, it still doesn’t rival the sales of the industry-dominating IPA. Whether it’s a dank West Coast, juicy New England-Style, or even a rich Milkshake IPA, you won’t find a craft brewery in the country without at least a handful of these hop-centric brews on tap.
While we definitely like IPAs around these parts, we know they can feel played out, overly hoppy, and redundant. Still, there are serious gems out there — gems which we all need a little help finding, because of the sheer number of these brews produced each year. In the past, we’ve shared our own IPA faves and called on bartenders for their picks, this time we grabbed the BeerAdvocate Top 10, drank them all, and reordered them according to flavor.
Check our tasting notes below and don’t you dare try to argue with us!
The fact that this classic West Coast IPA consistently makes top ten lists is amazing because it’s available at pretty much every grocery store in America. Many others on this list aren’t nearly as easy to find. This subtly bitter, hop bomb gets its flavor from being hopped five different times during the brewing process.
Tasting Notes:
Take a moment to nose this IPA and you’ll be met with strong pine and citrus aromas. The first sip is full of notes of fresh mango, citrus zest, orange peels, and guava. It all finishes with a nice, bitter bite of hops at the very end.
Bottom Line:
If you only try one beer on this list, make it Ballast Point Sculpin. It’s so damn easy to get. Grab a sixer the next time you’re shopping for groceries and see what the fuss is about.
The Lone Pint’s most renowned brew, Yellow Rose, is technically a SMaSH (Single malt and single hop IPA). It’s brewed with whole-cone Mosiac hops and then dry-hopped with even more Mosaic hops. It gets its name from the famous Yellow Rose of Texas.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll find a massive spicy, pine needle aroma with a subtle hint of fresh fruit. The first sip is full of sweet berries, juicy pineapple, tart grapefruit, and more resinous pine. The last sip is refreshing, mellow, and full of more tropical fruit flavors.
Bottom Line:
If you’re a fan of Mosaic dry-hopped IPAs, this is the beer for you. It’s the only hop included and it’s definitely enough.
This year-round 7% IPA from Alpine Beer Company in Alpine, California gets its name from the Nelson Sauvin hops that give it its flavor. These natives of New Zealand are added during the brewing process and dry-hopped to give it a memorable mix of floral and tropical fruit flavors.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll find strong tropical fruit and piney hop aromas. The first sip is bursting with more resinous pine, malts, and notes of guava, grapefruit, and mango. It all ends in a final flourish of fresh, crisp hop flavor.
Bottom Line:
This is the highest-rated IPA for a reason. It’s crisp, light, smooth, and perfectly suited for any day of the year.
Project Dank is one of the top ten IPAs on the list, but it’s a strange selection because it’s an every-changing beer recipe from La Cumbre’s “hop laboratory.” That is to say that every time they release a new “Project Dank” using different hops and hopping techniques it’s completely different than those that came before it. It must be great every time or it wouldn’t hold such an esteemed position on BeerAdvocate’s list.
Tasting Notes:
The Project Dank we tested was filled with a garden of flowers and a basket of oranges on the nose. The first sip was honey, guava, grapefruit, and candied orange peels mixed with flowers and pine needles. The finish is slightly bitter with a large hop presence.
Bottom Line:
If you buy a few cans of Project Dank and enjoy it, save one to compare to the next batch. That is unless you can’t stop yourself from drinking it.
One of the easier beers on this list to find at your local grocery store, Tropicália is a well-balanced, fresh, juicy, hazy, and downright crushable summer (and any other time of the year) staple.
Tasting Notes:
The nose is filled with the scents of fresh-picked citrus fruits, sweet peaches, and just a hint of spicy hops. On the palate, you’ll find flavors of fresh tangerines, sweet passion fruit, and subtle pine that all end in a nice lingering but pleasing bitter undertone.
Bottom Line:
In a world of bitter and hoppy IPAs, this might be one of the most well-rounded. It’s also the most likely to appeal to IPA haters.
If you see that an IPA is made in San Diego, there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to be a subtly bitter, hoppy treat. The city is well-known for its prowess in the IPA game and Societe The Pupil with its Nelson Sauvin, Centennial, and Citra hops is no different.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll be greeted with hints of fresh-cut grass, resinous hops, and fresh-squeezed oranges. The first sip is loaded with tart grapefruit, sweet passion fruit, juicy guava, and a nice subtle malt backbone to round it all out in the end.
Bottom Line:
This is one of the most popular beers in Southern California and only recently became available in cans. If you see it in a store, buy it. You’ll be happy you did.
Surly refers to its beloved Axe Man as a “double dry-hopped journey to IPA Valhalla” and we couldn’t agree more. This 7.2% flavor bomb is brewed with Mosiac and Citra hops as well as Golden Promise Malts. The result is an aromatic, crisp, hop-centric brew.
Tasting Notes:
Take a moment to breathe this IPA in and you’ll be greeted with aromas of lime zest, orange peel, and fresh fruit. The first sip is refreshing and full of tropical fruit and crisp citrus flavors. It’s tied together with a nice malt backbone and ends with a final kick of subtly bitter, piney hops.
Bottom Line:
This is a bold, hoppy beer. To truly get the most out of it, you should dress up like a Viking and drink it out of the horn of some type of majestic creature. Or a pint glass, if you prefer.
When it comes to brewing legends, it’s hard to top the brewing prowess of Russian River. Since it opened in 1997, the Sonoma County, California brewing has consistently made some of the most sought-after beers in the country, this includes its hazy, citrus-filled Blind Pig IPA.
Tasting Notes:
This well-balanced brew starts with a nice bouquet of floral scents followed by citrus and subtle pine. The first sip yields notes of pine resin, grapefruit, lime zest, tropical fruits, and a dry, subtly bitter, pleasing finish.
Bottom Line:
While many drinkers go crazy over Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, they’re completely missing out on a fresh, juicy, special beer if they forget about Blind Pig.
We love that many craft breweries hire artists to draw, paint, and sketch elaborate, eye-catching designs for bottles and cans. But we can also appreciate that the beer inside Maine Beer Company’s containers is so good that they merely need a simple, white label detailing what’s inside. And what’s in this bottle is a 7% IPA bursting with citrus fruit and pine tree goodness.
Tasting Notes:
Before you sip, take a moment to breathe in the aromas of fresh pine, crisp grapefruit, and just a hint of sweetness. On the palate, you’ll find massive lemon zest, ripe orange, resinous pine, sweet papaya, and a gentle hint of caramel sweetness at the very end.
Bottom Line:
If I was going to drink beer for lunch, I would hope it would be a bottle or two of this epic, citrus-filled hop beast.
Regardless of its name, this 11.1% monster isn’t playing around all. However, the “Triple Play” name doesn’t actually refer to baseball at all. It’s a reference to the three hop varieties in its recipe (Citra, Simcoe, and Amarilla).
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, this beer is a hop monster. The aromas are all pine, citrus, and floral. The first sip is splashingly juicy and filled with dank hop flavors along with pine, grapefruit, orange, and subtle honey at the finish.
Bottom Line:
Lawson’s Finest is easy to find in Vermont, but not so easy in other places. If you can get your hands on this beer, drink it fresh. That’s the way they prefer it.
Many industries have struggled to make do with the pandemic, but perhaps no moreso than movie theaters. Even those that have stayed open have had to deal with an almost no new product. In other words, Hollywood hasn’t been giving them new blockbusters to show the few showing up in the first place. (With exceptions.) But while some studios have opted to release their new films to streamers the same day they hit theaters — or, in the case of Disney’s Mulan and Soul, only on Disney+ — Paramount is remaining stubbornly pro-theatrical.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled more details about what’s coming to their forthcoming streamer Paramount+, which will be a merger of them and the already existing CBS All Access. They’re bringing back Frasier, they’re bringing back Inside Amy Schumer, they’re giving Avatar: The Last Airbender an extended universe. They’re even doing a Ray Donovan movie. They’ll also, as per Deadline, play home to two of their most anticipated films: Mission: Impossible 7 and A Quiet Place Part II. Or it will eventually: Both will hit theaters and then, after 45 days, drop on the streamer.
The movie is not surprising, especially considering one of them comes from Tom Cruise — one of the biggest cheerleaders for watching movies in movie theaters. But it should also flies in the face of Disney and Warner Bros., the latter who announced late last year that the entirety of their 2021 movie lineup would hit HBO Max the same day they were released to theaters. It should send a message to other studios — such as Sony, who’ve had a new Bond rearing to go since last spring — that theaters very well could make a comeback, at least once vaccines have helped the nation achieve herd immunity.
In early February, it was reported that the long-threatened Frasier revival was inching ever closer to becoming a reality. Even better, it would count as its head writer one Joe Cristalli, who runs the much-liked Twitter parody account @FrasierContempo, which imagines what Kelsey Grammer’s beloved shrink and snoot would get into today. Well, sometimes nice things do happen: As per The Hollywood Reporter, that new season of Frasier is a go.
Grammer has spent years trying to get Frasier Crane back on the small screen. But he’s been picky, and his need to find a good reason for his return — especially without his dad, who was played by the late John Mahoney — has been one reason it’s taken this long. Mind you, it will still take some time: Grammer has a prior commitment in an ABC comedy that pairs him with Alec Baldwin. (There’s also that potential Money Plane sequel to consider.) Meanwhile, David Hyde Pierce has the HBO series Julia. Then they can start tossing salad and scrambled eggs.
Frasier first appeared in a 1984 episode of Cheers, where he was merely the bookworm boytoy of Shelley Long’s Diane Chambers — there only to make Ted Danson’s Sam Malone jealous. He kept coming back, though, and he was soon welcomed into the fold, despite his occasional need to read them Dickens or something else no one else but Diane would enjoy. He remains one of the longest consistent characters in television history, though the honor of longest goes to John Munch, the character Richard Belzer played on Homicide: Life on the Streets and Law and Order: SVU over 22 seasons. But between Cheers and Frasier, he was on TV for 20 years, and that’s nothing to sneeze at.
The stock saga that launched a handful of streaming deals doesn’t appear to be over just yet. GameStop may have already had its day on Capitol Hill, but the retail store’s stock saw another surge on Wednesday that had investors, and the Internet at large talking about another trip to the moon.
GameStop was the biggest of the retail stocks that were bet on heavily by a Reddit form that caused a massive spike in the stock’s price due to short sellers getting fleeced back in January. Much of that bump — especially with the other stocks that were shorted like AMC, Nokia and Blackberry — swiftly fell back to Earth. But that all changed on Wednesday, as GameStop’s stock price soared 100 percent in the matter of a few hours.
AMC’s stock price actually saw a bump up as well. And GME and AMC trended again on Twitter by Wednesday afternoon, with people either excited about the sudden surge or thrilled that they had hung on to their stock.
As CNN reported, it’s not entirely clear what caused the sudden rise in price this time, though many investors had said recently they were holding onto GameStop and other stocks in hopes a rise would occur again. And the rapid activity actually caused a halt of stock sales on GME at least once on Wednesday:
Shares were halted once around 3:40pm ET after climbing nearly 74%, and again just over 10 minutes later after gaining 104%. GameStop’s trading volume was roughly three times higher the five-day average for the stock, according to data provider Refinitiv.
Less than an hour after the closing bell, the stock was on the move again — gaining nearly 90% in after-hours trading.
There were a lot of celebratory memes as the sales were halted and the huge increases came on Wednesday.
A year ago when Kobe Bryant died there were a number of suggestions for how the league could honor one of its all-time greats. They ultimately settled on naming the All-Star MVP award after him and used the new Elam Ending to be a race to 24 points in the final quarter as another tribute.
There were some who wanted the league to do more, including a push to change the NBA logo from the silhouette of Jerry West to a silhouette of Kobe. On Wednesday, Kyrie Irving, who was a close friend of Bryant’s and has been among the many in the NBA to pay tribute to Bryant on numerous occasions over the past year, revived that push with an Instagram post that garnered support from others around the league like Carmelo Anthony, saying “BLACK KINGS BUILT THE LEAGUE.”
It seems doubtful that the NBA is going to make the change, but if players continue to bring it up it’s possible that they’d consider it. The naming of the All-Star MVP award after Bryant was the league’s chief annual measure to ensure Kobe is honored each year, but his impact on this generation of stars makes it unsurprising that they’d want to see a bit more and an update to the league’s long-time logo.
In a showdown over the upcoming vote for the LGBTQ+ Equality Act, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez took the QAnon-obsessed and newly-elected Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to task over her attempts to obstruct the bill’s passage. Greene, who has been a lightning-rod for controversy ever since she arrived in Congress and immediately supported Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” efforts that led to the Capitol insurrection, has been a vocal opponent of the Equality Act on Twitter, where she proposed that the House adjourn under the pretense of giving members a moment to reflect on the bill.
“I just made a motion to adjourn in order to give every Member of Congress time to rethink destroying #WomensRights and #WomensSports and #ReligiousFreedom before voting for the #EqualityAct!” Greene tweeted.
AOC was having none of it and called out Greene’s ruse. “You could just vote ‘no’ instead of trying to get out of work early,” AOC tweeted. “And you should probably stop using those hashtags because women’s rights include trans women.” In a follow-up tweet, AOC made it clear that Greene’s efforts would fail. “We’re gonna pass the #EqualityAct today, protect our LGBTQ+ family and make the world a little bit better. Nothing is going to stop that.”
You could just vote “no” instead of trying to get out of work early.
And you should probably stop using those hashtags because women’s rights include trans women. https://t.co/iJzA5BrLZF
Greene’s ploy to adjourn the House isn’t her only assault on the Equality Act. The QAnon congresswoman is pushing admendments to the bill that would do significant damage to trans Americans. Via The Independent:
The proposed changes, which Ms Greene called “America First amendments,” echoing one of former president Trump’s slogans, would entirely replace the bill with one that prevents trans women and girls from participating in women’s sports, exempts churches and other non-profits from the anti-discrimination bill, and, even more broadly, allow people to sue the federal government “if their religious rights are violated.”
Greene says her “America First” amendments are necessary because she feels the Equality Act is an “attack on girls, churches, and believers.” Clearly, that is not the case, and now Greene’s efforts have her on AOC’s radar, which is never a good place to be. Just ask Ted Cruz.
Fortnite‘s latest event on the big screen in its Party Royale mode was apparently a big hit. According to the game’s maker, Epic, more than 8 million people tuned in to see its short film series, Short Nite, during the two-day event it held inside the game mode over the weekend.
The selection of 13 short films played on an in-game screen that’s been used for a number of different tie-ins for the game in recent months as Fortnite expands its offerings well past the 100-player showdowns that first made it big. Epic called the turnout for Short Nite an “engagement record” for the highest-attended event in its Party Royale mode since it was introduced.
Thanks to our community and the amazing filmmakers, Short Nite popped off with over 8 million viewers last week!
Butter get to cleaning up all that popcorn. See you in Party Royale again soonpic.twitter.com/BYW2KVbkow
According to Epic, Short Nite is the latest example of the game bringing its users different kinds of digital experiences, which in the past have included concerts, the debut of movie trailers and minigames. Everything from Star Wars to a J Balvin concert has showed up in Fortnite in recent months.
“Fortnite is at its core a social game, and that helps transcend traditional ‘gaming’ DNA,” an Epic spokesperson told Uproxx. “Once we realized the social impact of Fortnite, we began to design massively participatory events, and have grown them over time and in different categories.”
Though big brand partnerships have become the norm for Epic and Fortnite, they’ve been no stranger to holding important conversations in the game’s different modes, and this seems to prove that even film festivals fit in with the game’s enormous user base as well.
A new Gallup poll found a significant increase in the number of Americans who identify as LGBT since the last time it conducted a similar poll in 2017.
The poll found that 5.6% of U.S. adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. That’s a large increase from the 2017 poll that had the number at 4.5%.
“More than half of LGBT adults (54.6%) identify as bisexual. About a quarter (24.5%) say they are gay, with 11.7% identifying as lesbian and 11.3% as transgender. An additional 3.3% volunteer another non-heterosexual preference or term to describe their sexual orientation, such as queer or same-gender-loving,” the poll says.
A big reason for the increase is the number of people in Generation Z who identify as LGBT. About one in six adult members of Generation Z (those aged 18 to 23 in 2020) consider themselves to be something other than exclusively heterosexual.
LGBT identification is lower in subsequent older generations, including 2% or less of Americans born before 1965 (aged 56 and older in 2020).
Percentage of Americans who identify as LGBT by generation:
Generation Z (born 1997-2002) 15.9
Millennials (born 1981-1996) 9.1
Generation X (born 1965-1980) 3.8
Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) 2.0
Traditionalists (born before 1946) 1.3
Seventy-two percent of Gen Zers who identify as LGBT say they are bisexual. This is a large increase over Millenials, of which about 50% of those who are LGBT identify as bisexual. In older generations, expressed bisexual preference is not significantly more common than expressed gay or lesbian preference.
Gallup editor Jeffrey Jones says these new poll numbers show that more Americans are feeling safe to express their LGBTQ+ identities.
“Younger people are growing up in an environment where being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is not as taboo as it was in the past,” Jones told NBC News. “So they may just feel more comfortable telling an interviewer in a telephone survey how they describe themselves. In the past, people would maybe be more reluctant.”
A Gallup poll says 5.6% of Americans identify as LGBTQ, up from 4.5% in 2017. This increase is because:
1) Our plan… https://t.co/y23s5Q5Ebj
The increasing number of Americans who identify as LGBT shows the country is becoming a more tolerant place where people are freer to express their true selves.
It also shows that when children are raised in a more tolerant society, they grow up to be adults who are more likely to be themselves. The youngest members of Gen Z were entering their teenage years when gay marriage became legal.
Living in a world where LGBT people had greater freedoms and protections under the law has to have made a positive impact on their own journey of self-discovery and acceptance.
One wonders what the numbers would look like if older generations grew up in the same environment?
The time to pass the #EqualityAct is NOW! LGBT Americans deserve the full protection of the law.
This new data from Gallup provides an even stronger reason for Congress to pass the Equality Act. With a growing number of people who identify as LGBT, the country needs stronger legislation to ban discrimination against people based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Equality Act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to explicitly prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The Democratic-controlled House is expected to vote on the bill this week and it has the support of President Biden.
“I urge Congress to swiftly pass this historic legislation,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, and this bill represents a critical step toward ensuring that America lives up to our foundational values of equality and freedom for all.”
An adaptation of the popular video game series Halo has been in the works since 2005. It was originally going to be a movie written by Alex Garland; a pre-Game of Thrones D.B. Weiss was involved at one point, as were Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. But in 2013, Showtime announced that the Halo movie would now be a Halo show with Steven Spielberg attached as executive producer. It’s been in creative limbo ever since, including multiple showrunners and an episode count reduction. It’s also moved from premium cable to a streaming service, as ViacomCBS revealed on Wednesday that Halo will premiere on Paramount+, the soon-to-be former-CBS All Access.
Deadline reports that the Halo show “will take place in the universe that first came to be in 2001, dramatizing an epic 26th century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant. The show will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.” The Wire and Orange Is the New Black actor Pablo Schreiber stars as Master Chief, the video game’s supersoldier hero.
Halo, which had filmed 55%-60% of its first season when the coronavirus pandemic shut down all production last March, had been floated for months as a possibility for Paramount+ at the ViacomCBS Content Council and in conversations between Nevins and ViacomCBS president and CEO Bob Bakish.
Halo has a lot working against it, but if the box office success of the cursed teeth movie has taught us anything, it’s that you should never count out a video game adaptation. Halo is expected to premiere next year, as is (hopefully) HBO’s The Last of Us series.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
(@zi_was_here) 
