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News broke this week that super producer Jimmy Iovine had sold his catalog to Hipgnosis Songs Fund, but the money from the deal won’t be adding to Iovine’s already substantial fortune, but going toward education in Los Angeles.

In a statement, Iovine said that he’s committing the proceeds of the deal to build a high school in South LA, a school that will be something of an extension of the USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, an undergraduate program he established in 2013 with his frequent business partner Dr. Dre (Andre Young). “I’m happy that my work as a producer with so many great artists has found the right home,” Iovine said. No further details on the exact location or construction of the high school have been shared yet. As for the deal with Hipgnosis, founder Merck Mercuriadis gushed about his admiration for Iovine’s work over the years.

“While barely in my teens, I noticed that so many of my favorite albums had one name in common,” he told Billboard. “The best albums by John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith all had Jimmy Iovine on them. I have been glued to everything Jimmy does ever since. His incomparable success with Interscope and Beats means that he would never have to make a deal for money again, but leave it to Jimmy to figure out the most efficient way possible to use his producer royalties to build a best-in-class high school in the inner city and once again make a massive difference, as he has throughout his life. It’s an honor to now be a custodian of his incredible work on these iconic albums and I’m very happy to welcome him to the Hipgnosis family.”

If you’ve been extremely online at all in the past few months, you may have noticed a strange phenomenon: that Eve 6, a briefly medium-famous post-punk group from the early 2000s, had seemed to have been reborn as a weird Twitter account. The account had been on a tear, @-ing celebrity accounts, asking everyone from Elon Musk to Kamala Harris, “do you like the heart in the blender song?” This in reference to Eve 6’s biggest hit, 1998’s “Inside Out.”

A few even responded, leading to surreal moments like the actor Vincent D’Onofrio (Men In Black, Full Metal Jacket) checking in to say that he was more a fan of “Here’s To The Night.”

In parallel to that, the account seemed to be practicing radical honesty, both about Eve 6’s own trajectory and catalogue, and about a lot the folks they crossed paths with along the way to 90s and early aughts pseudo-stardom. About “Inside Out,” the so-called “heart in the blender song” that brought them fame and infamy, the account wrote “I was literally a virgin when I wrote that song,” adding the beautifully timed tag a few beats later, “i’ve since had sex.”

@Eve6 also shared a meme about it:

Then there were the celebrity stories, most notably all the ones starring Third Eye Blind’s Stephan Jenkins. Jenkins, one of the last of the rockstar’s rockstars, had, according to Eve 6, done everything from boasting of having slept with Eve 6’s girlfriend to getting him “fake arrested” for stealing candy.

Between the near-perfect style-imitation of popular weird Twitter accounts like Dril and PixelatedBoat, to the self-referential kitsch and conscious attempts to start surreal beefs, it was easy to wonder whether the Eve 6 guy had undergone some kind of Office Space-style conversion. Did he get hypnotized and then wake up one day simply not giving a shit? Or maybe the band, gearing up for another run with two of their three original members, had just hired a brilliant social media person who had a particular affinity for goofy leftist Twitter.

About that second possibility… In an age when brands like Steak Umms and Whoopie Pies frequently ape online irony, it’s impossible not to wonder “Is this a trick?” every time a new phenomenon crops up on Twitter. And this new incarnation of online Eve 6 seemed an almost too perfect new twist on the old Us Weekly standard, “Celebrities Are Just Like Us!” Only now reformulated, and aimed specifically, almost to the point of genuine pain, at me. “Bands you listened to in 2001 tweet just like you!”

The rebirth of Eve 6 as a funny Twitter account having already spawned countless articles, in everything from Spin to Rolling Stone to Billboard to the A/V Club, I had to know what was behind it. So I reached out to the account online. As it turns out, by his own reckoning and as far as I can verify, @Eve6 is indeed being controlled by Eve 6 frontman Max Collins, the writer of the heart in the blender song.

“I likened our Twitter account to Dudley Moore from Crazy People,” says Collins, now a 42-year-old father of two, a reference to the 1990 film in which Moore plays an advertising exec who one decides to tell the truth.

Collins also says he started playing around with the account right around the time he got back together with his other Eve 6 founding member Jon Siebels to start making new music. So in a way, both theories (change of heart or promotional strategy) are kind of true.

Still, it’s all the work of Collins himself, aka Eve 6, and perhaps I should’ve known. Just beneath the adherence to the weird Twitter style guide (no caps, frequent use of imagery divorced from traditional sentence structure, practiced glibness), there’s an honest introspection to the tweets that would be hard to fake. Which is probably why so many people seem to love them. The virgin thing, for instance, wasn’t just a joke, it was also true. Regarding the same song, Collins tweeted, “imagine if the worst diary entry you ever wrote as a teenager went double platinum.”

In that way, @Eve6 combines Mortified (the stage show where performers read their own adolescent diaries), irony Twitter, and True Hollywood Stories, all of which Collins seems fully aware of. As evidenced by his declaration, mid-random anecdote about Staind, “im writing the memoir of alternative rock mediocrity rn.”

And honestly, who better? Wordplay was always Eve 6’s strong suit (I always thought Eve 6 had the Cake curse, of becoming famous for arguably one of their lesser songs). With everyone suddenly interested again, I managed to get in touch with Collins almost immediately (probably not surprising for a musician in the middle of a quarantine who is also extremely online) and scheduled a Zoom call. (For the record, I beat the Washington Post by two days.)

—

I imagine you’ve gotten a lot of interview requests lately.

Yeah, a lot of interview stuff, a lot of podcast stuff. It’s just, it’s very surreal, the whole thing is quite surreal.

Have you been surprised by that?

I’ve been surprised by the whole thing. I guess I’d be lying if I said when I pushed out the “I was a virgin when I wrote the heart in a blender song” tweet that I didn’t think that it was a good tweet, but I didn’t think it would go viral.

So, I need to ask about your Stephan Jenkins’ feud/whatever. Also, I have a tangential connection there because my podcast co-host used to be friends with someone Stephan Jenkins was dating, so he does a Stephan Jenkins’ impression and also has Stephan Jenkins’ stories.

That’s funny.

I think you said one about him f*cking your girlfriend, but I’ll take any and all Stephan Jenkins’ stories.

Yeah, we were at the Fillmore, on his turf in San Francisco in the dressing room. And I don’t know if my impression of him will match up to your friends, but he was like [doing a Jenkins impression, which is sort of a cross between catty gay man and SoCal frat bro], “So, I heard you’re dating Sonya.” And I said, “Yeah.” And the context that makes this even funnier is that he was at least 34 at the time and I was 19 or 20, so he’s flexing on a teenager. And he goes, “You know I f*cked her, right?” And I honestly think I just laughed. But yeah, certainly never forgot it.

What year would that have been?

It would have been ’98, I think. ’98 or ’99. We did two tours with them. I can’t remember if they were consecutive but they were pretty close because we did their Bonfire Tour and then we did the MTV Campus Invasion Tour, and both tours were long, full U.S. runs. So, yeah.

You guys were still in high school when you had your first record deal?

Well, our first record deal was with a tiny label out of Orange County called Doctor Dream Records that signed all the guys from washed-up punk bands. We started doing a record with Steve Soto from The Adolescents. And then the label hooked us up with this woman named Jennifer Harold who had a syndicated radio program at the time called Radio Asylum. We recorded three live songs for her there in the studio, and she thought we were good and wanted to manage us and sent a copy of that live recording to Brian Malouf at RCA. A couple of months later Brian Malouf and another A&R guy flew out and saw us do a showcase out here. We did a showcase for them that I just remember being really awful. I remember our drummer dropping his sticks and stuff. And I was like, “Oh, they’re going to hate this.” But they didn’t and they signed us. But we stayed in high school and finished school. So it was a record deal, but in practice it was more like a glorified production deal. Because I feel like they thought, “Oh, maybe these kids will turn into something. We want to have a claim on it if they do.” I think that was their mentality.

Besides Third Eye Blind, who are some of the other people that you were touring with in your heyday? I don’t know if it’s offensive to say heyday or not but…

Oh dear, no. Not at all. Let’s see. We did a tour with Wheatus. A full headlining tour with Wheatus.

Oh yeah, I saw the tweet about you accidentally turning off their sound system at some point.

I accidentally stepped on their cable outside of the stage. And the thing about Wheatus is their show is completely self-sustained. They don’t even use a front of house guy. Their drums are electronic. They run their light show themselves. All the instruments are electric. There’s no acoustic sound emanating from the stage whatsoever. And when I stepped on this cable their entire light rig went out and a hundred percent of their sound went out in the middle of “Teenage Dirtbag.” Who else? American Hi-Fi, Goldfinger. We did a co-headline with them.

So I can’t remember if there was a Better Than Ezra story or if someone just asked you about that.

No. There’s not a Better Than Ezra story, there’s a Soul Asylum story. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking of? We were on tour with them in 2013, them and Everclear and Spacehog. We were doing a show at a venue on Long Island. And after my set I went with Dave [Pirner, of Soul Asylum] to this little bar that was around the corner and we were sitting there for a minute just talking and stuff. Then I realized I was late to go introduce Everclear. So I got up quickly and left, and when I walked off the stage after introducing them Dave was there holding a wallet and he said, “You might want to take this with you.” And I said, “Oh man, that’s not my wallet.” So he went and returned it to the bar and the guy whose wallet it was thought he’d stolen it and punched him in the face.

Wow!

Yeah. I’m a huge fan of Soul Asylum, but Dave’s a pretty eccentric guy, and I think he felt like the universe was sending him messages around this. The next day he got off of his tour bus, I forget where we were, and a homeless person pointed at him and said something like, “You’re a bad person.” And that fed into this narrative and really put him into a depression for a couple of days. Understandably, Jesus. But yeah, no good deed.

Are there other personalities or surreal moments that stand out from that era of touring?

Let me think here… not really. I think that’s why Stephan Jenkins is such a polarizing figure, because I think most of the other guys in the “late ’90s alternative milieu” were really nice guys, and also pretty boring. I did a tweet about it, but I would venture to guess that there is a performative element to his seemingly abject shitty personality, which is okay with me. I think at the end of the day that stuff can be pretty entertaining.

Of the people that you asked whether they like the heart in the blender song what were some of the most memorable responses?

Well, Hillary Duff responded saying she preferred “Wrong Things” by Chevy Mustang, which is my alter ego, this project born of quarantine that’s absolutely stupid and that everybody hates called Chevy Mustang that I do with the guys from the band KONGOS. So that was cool. Marianne Williamson saying yes was quite surreal. Who else responded? Ninety percent of people-

I saw Vincent D’Onofrio gave you a nice compliment.

Yeah, that was nice. And then there was a little bit of miscommunication because I think he thought I was being mean, but I was just trying to be fun on the internet when I accused him of having false humility and it being an unattractive trait. But I tried to clean that up and then I didn’t feel like any of it was landing so I just deleted it.

Yeah, that happens. Oh, so there was another burning question that’s been on my mind: what was it like to have your song referenced in a Limp Bizkit song? (In 1999’s “Nookie,” Fred Durst raps, “she put my tender / heart in a blender / and still I surrendered.” The 90s were f*ckin’ weird, man.)

Very strange! I ended up at a urinal next to Fred Durst at some bar and he was like, “Hey, man, I used your lyric in a song,” and I was like, “I know.”

You got sober after your guys’ initial fame when you were younger, right?

I didn’t get sober till ’06. So we did all three records and touring cycles when I was very much still in it. And then disbanded in ’03 and then in ’06 I got sober.

Do you have Twitter influences?

Probably too many to name and a bunch that I would forget. I did tweet the other day about how I don’t use punctuation because I was moved by Luke O’Neil’s “Welcome To Hell World” newsletter, which is absolutely true. I don’t know if you read him at all.

I do. I’ve had him on my podcast.

I have a weird Luke O’Neil story. I was on tour with Fitness, this other band that I was doing for a while, and we were out supporting Big Data. We were in Boston, and I’m a swimmer so I try to find lap swim pools. And I found a YMCA fairly close to the venue and I was doing my swim. I had a lane to myself which is really nice, and then this big dude I saw from the other side of the pool sauntering over and got into my lane. And now he’s swimming in my lane and I’m thinking, “This guy looks really f*cking familiar.” And I thought, okay, the tell is going to be the nose ring, because I remembered the nose ring from his picture. And so we both stopped at the same side of the pool and I was like, “Are you Luke O’Neil?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” And I said, “Oh, I’m a big fan.” And he’s like, “Oh, that’s cool.” I didn’t tell him about Eve 6, I just told him I was in a band that was playing that night with Big Data. Did he want to come? No, he was busy. And then that was that. We finished our swim. We interacted, over the last couple of years and DM’d a few times and he’s since figured out I’m the heart in a blender guy. He told me that the heart in a blender song was the first song he learned on guitar and stuff like that. So, yeah. Shout out to Luke.

That’s got to be hard. It seems like something that would be weird to just bring up when you first meet someone, like “Hey I’m the heart in the blender guy,” but then after the fact, I feel like people would be like “why didn’t you tell me?”

Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t identify with it so it’s like… I don’t know.

So I read your tweet about “imagine if the worst diary entry you ever wrote as a teenager went double platinum.” Are there lyrics that stand out as things that make you cringe that you are forced to keep singing again and again?

Yeah, but you develop a compartmentalized relationship with the stuff, because even the stuff that makes me cringe about that song I have framed, and maybe it’s just a survival technique, but in a way I do also see beauty in it. Because with that song, and I said this to a journalist at Spin, it’s guileless. It’s so absurdly open-hearted and for that reason there’s just a big target on its back. Also for that reason, I think it worked because… do you know what I’m saying?

Yes. It’s not guarded. That’s why it’s good.

Yeah, it’s the opposite of guarded, for better or for worse. And so it’s hard to run any kind of counterfactuals with this stuff, because if we had waited and developed more and made our first record when we were 27, who knows? Maybe we would’ve made a better record and no one would have heard it. Maybe we would’ve made a great record and it would have been big. Who f*cking knows?

I always thought you were an English major just from the way that you wrote songs. So I was surprised to learn how young you guys were when your first hits were coming out.

Well, thanks. I definitely littered those songs with five-dollar words. I think it was some kind of compensatory thing because I didn’t have any comprehension of melody when I was writing that stuff. And you hear it, the chorus of “Inside Out” is basically one note. So I think I would play with words and jam words in to make up for the fact that there wasn’t a lot that was particularly melodically interesting going on.

I didn’t even think that they were necessarily five-dollar words. I think that about Panic! At The Disco, or even Bad Religion to some extent, but with you guys I just thought it was clever wordplay, and genuinely enjoyable.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

So you guys have new music coming out?

Yeah. We were going to wait to do this announcement about new music because we’re on a label called Velocity that is brand new and is just getting their website up and stuff. But we have a five-song EP called Black Nova that’s going to come out soon, in about a month. The first single’s called “Black Nova.” It’s a little punk record. And we started making music again, when was it, I guess at the end of 2019, just to do it. We were like, “If we’re going to do this we’re going to do just exactly what we want with no extra f*cking considerations.” And so that’s what we did. And I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t say we do have a record coming out in about a month.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Over the past ten or so months, we’ve thought a lot about where in the world we’ll go as soon as it’s safe to do so. For most of 2020, that list has seemed like little more than a distant pipe dream. But now, with two COVID vaccines approved by the FDA and another one waiting in the wings, it’s finally beginning to look like there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

Don’t get us wrong, we still don’t have a definitive date for when traveling will be something to get excited about again. But we can say with some confidence that it’s coming a lot sooner than later. So it’s worthwhile to start thinking about where you want to go when that magical time arrives.

Travel influencer and Bravo star Jenna MacGillivray thinks that Bali, Indonesia should certainly make your list. (We agree, while also recommending you see other parts of Indo.).

Better known as “Jenna The Mac” by those who follow her adventures on Instagram, MacGillivray is Chief Stewardess on Bravo’s Below Deck Sailing Yacht. That means she calls the shots with the crew and has a concierge’s skill at figuring out the best places to visit in every port. Naturally, we were more than eager to tap her expertise for a post-pandemic travel guide to Bali, a destination she adores.

Let’s dive in, and catch Jenna on Below Deck Sailing Yacht when it returns for season 2 on Bravo sometime in early 2021.

Best Place To Grab A Smoothie or Coffee?

Beetlnut Café

There are so many amazing places! In Caangu, I go to the Beetlnut café for breakfast most mornings. They have this amazing gluten-free bread with hummus, it’s so simple, yet so perfect. It’s my favorite breakfast of all time. They also make amazing smoothies and smoothie bowls.

Favorite Beach or Outdoor Area?

Dreamland

I like to surf when I’m in Bali, so my favorite surf spot is Dreamland Beach, near Uluwatu. Dreamland has crystal blue waters and a little wave that’s perfect and usually not too crowded.

Best Spot To Grab A late-night dinner?

The Lawn & La Brisa

For me, late-night dinners are early in Bali — because you go to sleep early so you can wake up at 6 am and get most of the day. Two super vibey spots to get dinner and watch the sunset are “The Lawn”, and “La Brisa” in Caangu.

It’s all about watching the sunset in Bali, everyone gets together for sunset, beers, and some food. If you go to The Lawn or La Brisa it’s perfect for groups and you order a bunch of different small plates and share while you relish in your day. Every day is paradise there! Both spots have pools and overlook the ocean, La Brisa is this little spot that reminds me of if you were in a fantasy movie of being cast away on an island with a bunch of fun people. It’s magical.

Best Bar To Grab A Drink?

Finns Beach Club

I love going to Finns, it has a massive pool overlooking the ocean, with a DJ playing. You can watch the surf, have a drink in the pool and stay as long as you want.

Best Place In Bali To Catch A Great View?

Sunset Point *& Single Fin

I think the best place for a view in Bali, is wherever you can watch the sunset, two best places are Sunset point in Uluwatu, a super casual family-run spot off the beaten path, or at “Single Fin”, a spot in Uluwatu that has amazing surf and the best sunsets.

Favorite Thing To Do In Bali?

Live the island life

My favorite thing to do in Bali is to enjoy the feel of the island. Everyone there seems to be in this magic headspace and never wants to leave because it feels like this paradise that meets all your needs if your needs include meeting amazing travelers, surfing, massages, great food, sunsets, perfect weather.

One Thing People Visiting Bali Must-Do?

Surf

If you go to Bali, you MUST try surfing, even if you’ve never been on a board. There are tons of spots for beginners and it’s such a nice community.

It’s not a coincidence that the best season of Dexter was the one with the best villain. As played by the great John Lithgow, serial killer Arthur Mitchell was menacing yet still likable, and the role earned the actor both a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. Dexter could never recapture the magic of season four, but if the key to a good season is a good villain, the upcoming revival could be very good.

Clancy Brown, best known for The Shawshank Redemption and voicing Mr. Krabs on SpongeBob SquarePants, was cast as the lead villain in the Dexter limited series. He’ll play Kurt Caldwell, the “unofficial mayor of the small town of Iron Lake,” according to Variety. “He’s realized the American dream by going from driving big rigs, just like his father did, to now owning several trucks and the local truck stop. Powerful, generous, loved by everyone – he’s a true man of the people. If he’s got your back, consider yourself blessed. But should you cross Kurt, or hurt anyone that he cares for, God help you.” Brown is no stranger to Showtime: he is also Waylon “Jock” Jeffcoat on Billions.

It’s unclear if Iron Lake is the Oregon town where Dexter Morgan now works as a lumberjack, but we do know that the primary setting for the 10 episodes isn’t Miami. Gee, it gets pretty cold in the Pacific Northwest. I hope Dexter remembered to pack a piece of equipment that can help him exercise indoors…

(Via Variety)

Update: Megan Thee Stallion responded to the accusations against DaBaby by revealing the behind-the-scenes video shoot photo shared by Tory is “old and not cleared.” She then advised that the “Cry Baby” video is coming soon.

DaBaby is no stranger to online criticism. The North Carolina rapper has been censured for accidentally striking a woman in the face during a concert in early 2020, holding concerts during the ongoing pandemic, and even posting his lunch purchase from Chik-Fil-A on Twitter. Up until now, though, he’s taken the most punishment over his music — particularly for only having one gear when it comes to his flows. However, his music is taking flak for another reason today: Working with Tory Lanez on a new song, which the latter promoted on his Instagram this afternoon.

News that DaBaby has crossed the proverbial picket line that popped up around Tory after he was accused of shooting Megan Thee Stallion is especially distressing for fans in light of DaBaby and Megan’s relationship, which has seen the pair collaborate a number of times as their breakouts coincided with each other, most recently on the song “Cry Baby” from Megan’s debut album Good News. Coincidentally, Good News was also notable for being the first time Megan rapped about the shooting incident, addressing Tory’s rebuttals of her accusal from his album Daystar.

While Tory didn’t reveal the title of the new song or its release date, it’s drawn enough attention on social media to ensure that it at least elicits a wave of curiosity streams — which is likely the desired result of his latest controversy-baiting maneuver. Meanwhile, fans were quick to express their displeasure at DaBaby’s perceived disloyalty to Megan. While fans’ assumptions are based on their perception of the two artists as friends, one can certainly understand why they could read into it DaBaby’s latest move and one thing is for sure: “Cry Baby” is likely to be the last collaboration between Meg and DaBaby.

See more fan responses below.

https://twitter.com/_bvrzdalyricist/status/1346535144639741952

https://twitter.com/_bvrzdalyricist/status/1346546971398455297

In a scathing op-ed for The Economist, Arnold Schwarzenegger blasts Donald Trump‘s plan to overturn the 2020 election and cautions Republicans that if they go along with Trump’s “stupid, crazy, and evil” scheme, “Judgment Day” will be coming for them. While drawing on his early years in post-World War II Austria, Schwarzenegger warned the GOP that he’s seen what happens when a country gives up on democracy. In Austria’s case, it was a descent into Nazism, which isn’t too far off from America’s current trajectory under Trump. Via The Economist:

Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history. They were part of a system that murdered 6m Jews along with at least 5m other innocent people, tortured and experimented on human beings and started a war that caused 75m deaths. Not all of them were rabid anti-Semites or Nazis. Many just went along step by step down the road toward greater and greater evil because it was the easiest path.

While Schwarzenegger says he doesn’t personally believe that America is capable of those “depths of evil,” he can’t help but see the warning signs as the country faces a choice between “choosing selfishness and cynicism over service and hope.” But should his fellow Republicans not heed Schwarzenegger’s call to stop Trump’s effort to subvert democracy, he has stern words for how they’ll be remembered.

“For those in my party considering standing up against the voters on January 6th, know this: our grandchildren will know your names only as the villains who fought against the great American experiment and the will of the voters,” Schwarzenegger writes. “You will live in infamy.”

(Via The Economist)

History of Swear Words — (Netflix series) A Nic Cage-hosted TV show? Yes please. A Nic Cage series where he teaches us lessons about expletives? Give it to me now. Cage hosts here with an array of guests — including Jim Jefferies, Zainab Johnson, Nick Offerman, Sarah Silverman, Baron Vaughn, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Joel Kim Booster, DeRay Davis, Open Mike Eagle, Nikki Glaser, Patti Harrison, London Hughes — to dive deep into his proudly profane stance. Over the course of six episodes, you’ll learn about the origins of “F*ck,” “Sh*t,” “B*tch,” “D*ck,” “Pu**y,” and “Damn.” Alright!

Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist (NBC, 8:00pm) — The marvelous Jane Levy returns for Season 2 of this fancifully musical series. This time around, Zoey returns after an appropriately extended time away to discover that her personal and work lives are now the portrait of chaos. Cue the songs.

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations (Viz series on Hulu) — This series isn’t exactly new to Hulu, but the dubbed version is fresh, so settle into the transformation of the life of the shinobi. The son of the Seventh Hokage Naruto Uzumak enters Ninja Academy, and a series of mysterious events transpires.

Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr. (PBS, 8:00pm) — Jordan Peele, Gayle King, and Issa Rae dig into their pasts and discover previously unknown ancestors and consider profound inquiries about family.

This Is Us (NBC, 9:00pm) — Season 5 picks up with Kate confronting past events, Randall experiencing the aftereffects of viral fame, and Kevin building toward his future.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Anya Taylor-Joy

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Gwen Stefani, Ralph Macchio

The Late Late Show With James Corden — James Marsden, Tim Minchin

In case you missed these recent picks:

The High Note — (Focus Features film on HBO) Movies in 2020 didn’t fare so well in theaters, but HBO is giving this film a second whirl. The comedy-drama picture stars Dakota Johnson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Zoë Chao, Bill Pullman, Eddie Izzard, and Ice Cube, and it’s about the personal assistant who aims to be a music producer while working for a famous singer.

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: Part Four — (Netflix series) The Riverdale spinoff will come to a (planned) end with this installment starring Kiernan Shipka. This time around, the Devil-afflicted Nick’s attempting to win Sabrina back after surrendering to his darker urges, but The Eldritch Terrors have descended upon Greendale, and The Void could truly be the End of All Things. Can the Fright Club save the day? I’m (strangely) pulling for Harvey over here. And Salem the Cat. Meow.

Vikings: Season 6B — (Amazon Prime) The final ten episodes of the History Channel series are making their debut on streaming first. The epic saga comes to a close with grave consequences from the confrontations between the Vikings and the Rus. Ivar the Boneless has a last reckoning with the King, and there’s unfinished business all over England. Get ready for (of course) a violent and bloody end to the show.

The 2020 college football season was marred by cancellations and postponements, as programs tried, often in vain, to proceed with a season in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. Next Monday, the season is set to come to an official close with the College Football Playoff national title game between Alabama and Ohio State, but at present their ability to play that game as scheduled is in a bit of peril.

According to AL.com, Ohio State has alerted Alabama, the Big Ten, the SEC, and College Football Playoff to COVID-19 issues that could threaten an entire position group and may need the game to be postponed.

There have been discussions amongst the SEC, Big Ten, the College Football Playoff and the schools related to possibly postponing the Jan. 11 title game, sources said, though a final decision on the situation has yet to be reached. The CFP has already established Jan. 18 in Hard Rock Stadium as the makeup date should the title game have to be postponed.

According to Aaron Suttles of The Athletic, the SEC is pushing for the game to be played as is, which should come as little surprise, but a decision remains to be determined.

Per Pete Thamel of Yahoo, the game is still being planning on being played as scheduled, but should things get worse for the Buckeyes that can change.

And the Buckeyes still want to play as scheduled, provided things do not get worse.

It is a fitting close to a season that’s been as much defined by the stop/start nature as what’s happened on the field, and the biggest hope is that everyone involved with the Buckeyes remains healthy. Should more positive tests emerge and Ohio State indeed lose a position group due to contact tracing, then things will become much murkier and a postponement could ensue.

The New York Knicks were applauded for their restraint this offseason. Despite having a ton of money burning a hole in their pockets, new executive Leon Rose and the Knicks chose the patient approach — which has not always been the franchise’s M.O. — and avoided overspending on a role player expecting them to be a star amid a less-than-stellar free agent market.

However, given their struggles last year and the lack of high end talent coming into the roster, the expectation was that Tom Thibodeau’s first season in New York would be another lean one. The offense was the league’s worst in the halfcourt a year ago and a leap wasn’t to be expected in that area, and while Thibodeau’s presence figured to command a greater commitment on the defensive end — something the Knicks desperately needed — few expected them to be among the league’s best on that end.

And yet, the Knicks are 4-3 thanks to one of the best defensive units in the entire NBA, one that is third in effective field goal percentage against (49.3 percent) and sixth in points allowed per 100 possessions (106.3), per Cleaning the Glass. They have size and length across the board and use it effectively, replacing last year’s apathy on that end of the floor with what one might even call a tenacious appetite for playing defense.

Sustaining this level of play will be a challenge, in large part because of the energy required to do what they have been at the minutes their top players are being asked to play. R.J. Barrett and Julius Randle are logging 38.7 and 38.4 minutes per game, respectively, both good for the top-3 in the NBA thus far. While that’s a Thibs staple, it does run the risk of seeing players wear down as the season wears on. Even so, it should be applauded what the Knicks have done thus far even while acknowledging the potential for a drop-off defensively that would likely see some of their wins turn into losses down the road. Most notably, this is a genuinely fun team to watch, something few expected when they took a look at this roster.

Randle is leading the way, playing All-NBA caliber basketball through two weeks of the season and averaging 22.1 points, 11.4 rebounds, and 7.4 assists per game on tremendous efficiency (50.9/40.7/76.2 shooting split). The scoring and rebounding from Randle isn’t necessarily new, but this level of playmaking is, and that is the area that is really impacting this Knicks offense in the most positive manner. Randle’s always been a skilled scorer and a terrific rebounder, but up until this season, his career high for assists has been 3.6 per game. He’s more than doubled that to start the season, as the Knicks have gotten him not only to initiate his own offense, but to serve as an initiator for the team, something that is very much needed with their point guard rotation.

The Knicks are asking Randle to do a lot of ball handling at the elbow and on the perimeter, and not just for dribble handoff actions. Take this play from Monday night where Barrett comes around and Randle fakes the handoff, screens Barrett’s defender to create separation, dribbles in to keep his man from rotating down, and slips a bounce pass to Barrett for the and-1 finish.

Randle has five or more assists in six of the Knicks seven games (7+ in five of those), so it’s not a situation of him simply racking up a big night or two carrying his average. He has genuinely become an offensive initiator and playmaker for this Knicks team, and his scoring to start the season means he’s drawing extra attention from defenses. This means even when he doesn’t get the assist his passing out of doubles, Randle can get the defense scrambling and help create open looks after a few passes.

Around him, the Knicks are getting about what one would expect from Barrett, who still hasn’t found his three-point stroke, but is averaging north of 18 points per game and is a tremendous rebounding guard. Elfrid Payton is off to one of the most efficient seasons of his career, with 13.6 points and 4.6 assists per game on surprisingly good shooting with a 49.5 effective field goal percentage. And then there’s Immanuel Quickley, the rookie guard who has burst onto the scene in his first three game, providing a spark off the bench to the tune of 10 points per game that has Knicks fans swooning about a player many expected to go way later than he did in the Draft — New York turned heads, and not necessarily in a good way, when it picked him 25th.

There will surely be rookie moments for Quickley, and how long of a leash Thibs gives him to make those young mistakes remains to be seen, but the energy he brings to the offense has been hard to ignore, most notably in the comeback win in Atlanta on Monday. Quickley had 16 points off the bench, and for a team with big guards like Barrett and Payton starting, he provides a unique change of pace they simply can’t replicate with anyone else on the roster.

The fans that want Quickley to start are going to be disappointed simply because Thibodeau is going to roll with a veteran like Payton who plays terrific defense over the rookie, but the former Kentucky guard has more than earned solid rotation minutes with his play early on — and for a Knicks team that is playing well but is still in a future-facing situation, he should be given room to grow.

Throw in Mitchell Robinson continuing to be a monster as a rim protector and lob threat, as well as Austin Rivers providing stability and scoring to the backcourt off the bench, and you have a Knicks team that is pretty damn fun to watch when they have it rolling. We’ll see how long that lasts, but the good news thus far is that while they’ve had some lopsided losses, they’ve also gutted out some close wins over good teams in Atlanta and Indiana. Those results have been more impressive to me than the blowout of the Bucks when they caught fire from three, because those performances are more replicable than this team becoming the 2015 Warriors from deep on a regular basis.

The Knicks may not be able to keep up this pace, but for a franchise that has provided fans with little to get excited about in recent years, it’s a welcome sight to see. I mean, we even got a mid-regular season Mike Breen “BANG!” last night on MSG, which is exceedingly rare.

When Maryland Representative Jamie Raskin and his wife, Sarah Bloom, announced the death of their 25-year-old son Tommy on New Year’s Eve, the whole nation mourned with them. Many also quietly wondered what had caused his death. It’s not anyone’s business, of course. But when a young, seemingly healthy person dies unexpectedly at home, the question lingers.

Rep. Raskin provided an honest answer to that question in a way that is both heartbreaking and perfect. In a statement published on Medium, Raskin and Bloom shared the details of Tommy’s life so beautifully, it makes anyone who reads it feel like we knew him. It also exemplifies how to talk about a loved one who is taken by mental illness.

The statement opens:

“On January 30, 1995, Thomas Bloom Raskin was born to ecstatic parents who saw him enter the world like a blue-eyed cherub, a little angel. Tommy grew up as a strikingly beautiful curly-haired madcap boy beaming with laughter and charm, making mischief, kicking the soccer ball in the goal, acting out scenes from To Kill A Mockingbird with his little sister in his father’s constitutional law class, teaching other children the names of all the Justices on the Supreme Court, hugging strangers on the street, teaching our dogs foreign languages, running up and down the aisle on airplanes giving people high fives, playing jazz piano like a blues great from Bourbon Street, and at 12 writing a detailed brief to his mother explaining why he should not have to do a Bar Mitzvah and citing Due Process liberty interests (appeal rejected).”

The celebration of Tommy’s life continues with a list of the people who surrounded him with love and support. His passion for true liberty and justice for all and his desire to solve problems of injustice, poverty, and war is clear. He loved animals and fought for their ethical treatment. He was a staunch antiwar activist. He was sensitive and kind, while also fiercely dedicated to making the world a better place for all in it.

“He hated cliques and social snobbery,” wrote Raskin, “never had a negative word for anyone but tyrants and despots, and opposed all malicious gossip, stopping all such gossipers with a trademark Tommy line — ‘forgive me, but it’s hard to be a human.'”

That line, “forgive me, it’s hard to be human,” resonates with us all. It also helps explain why a young man with so much promise, so much passion, and so much support around him could die from a depression that led him to suicide.

Besides the incredibly touching way it was written, what strikes me most about this obituary is that it’s exactly what an obituary of someone who dies from depression should be. When someone dies of a physical disease, we don’t belabor the cause of their death. We mention it, we acknowledge it, but the focus of the write-up on their life is their actual life.

Tommy clearly lived an incredible life and was a uniquely remarkable person. The disease that ended his life, even in the way it did, did not define his life.

I’ve lost two family members who were in their early 20s—one to suicide and one to Type 1 diabetes. Neither of their lives were defined by the cause of their death. A young person dying is always a tragedy, but when we speak about people we lose to suicide, the wording we use matters.

The kind, funny uncle I lost to suicide was a year younger than Tommy Raskin when he died. I purposely choose to say “when he died” instead of “when he killed himself” because the latter implies conscious choice, and I don’t know how much of it was truly a choice on his part. With suicide, the intention is obviously there, but it’s impossible to know how much control a person actually had over it in the moment.

There’s little comfort to be found when a loved one dies of suicide. But it helps to understand that that depression, while largely treatable, is a sometimes-fatal disease. Suicide might be the mechanism, but the disease of depression is the cause, just as unregulated blood sugar is the mechanism for someone who dies from the disease of diabetes. There are treatments for depression, but sometimes the disease is resistant to treatment. We’ll undoubtedly get better at treatment and prevention of depression, just as we do with all illness, but the devastating truth is that sometimes people do die from it. While it’s tempting to blame yourself or search for what you could have done differently to stop it, the terrible truth is it’s not always possible to prevent.

Raskin’s obituary says this about Tommy’s passing:

“We have barely been able to scratch the surface here, but you have a sense of our son. Tommy Raskin had a perfect heart, a perfect soul, a riotously outrageous and relentless sense of humor, and a dazzling radiant mind. He began to be tortured later in his 20s by a blindingly painful and merciless ‘disease called depression,’ as Tabitha put it on Facebook over the weekend, a kind of relentless torture in the brain for him, and despite very fine doctors and a loving family and friendship network of hundreds who adored him beyond words and whom he adored too, the pain became overwhelming and unyielding and unbearable at last for our dear boy, this young man of surpassing promise to our broken world.

“On the last hellish brutal day of that godawful miserable year of 2020, when hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people all over the world died alone in bed in the darkness from an invisible killer disease ravaging their bodies and minds, we also lost our dear, dear, beloved son, Hannah and Tabitha’s beloved irreplaceable brother, a radiant light in this broken world.

“He left us this farewell note on New Year’s Eve day: ‘Please forgive me. My illness won today. Please look after each other, the animals, and the global poor for me. All my love, Tommy.'”

Tommy clearly made his mark on the world while he was here, which is more than many who spent many more years on this earth can say. May his legacy be carried forward by those who loved him, and may his memory be a blessing.