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You know Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” is a major cultural force because the song was released back in August and people are still talking about it months later. Recently, for example, Snoop Dogg shared his thoughts, saying that he’s in favor of a more modest approach to lyricism: “Let’s have some imagination. Let’s have some privacy, some intimacy where he wants to find out as opposed to you telling him.” Snoop received some backlash for his comments, and now he has offered a retort.

In an Instagram post from yesterday, he pleaded for the “bullsh*t press” to stop because he loves Cardi and Meg and female rappers in general. He wrote, “Stop wit the bullsh*t press I love Cardi b and Meg. Music period point blank and they know that I’m n full support of the female. M. C. Movement so stop trying to make me a hater. U.F.D.H.B. Now carry on Before u get this. L.A. D. [laughing emoji]. That song 6xs platinum talk about that.”

This comes after Offset shared his thoughts about Snoop’s comments with TMZ, saying, “I really f*ck with Snoop, like, on a personal level. So, I could personally call him and be like, ‘Snoop, come on now.’ I don’t wanna seem like I’m dissing at Snoop, that’s my boy. But, at the same time, all men should stay out of women business. That’s women business. You ain’t gon’ have no win. Your comments probably looking crazy from just saying stuff like that. Stay outta women business. Women are strong now. We should uplift our women. Don’t say what they can and can’t do.”

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Better Call Saul’s Bob Odenkirk came to drama late in his career. He spent the first few decades in comedy, where he was best known for his work on Mr. Show, as well as writing on The Ben Stiller Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Saturday Night Live, where he wrote alongside Conan O’Brien (in fact, Odenkirk was with O’Brien when the latter came up with what would be Tom Hanks’ best ever SNL sketch).

Indeed, despite a long and storied career, which has seen Odenkirk nominated for 5 Emmys for his role in Saul, Emmy nominations for writing on Mr. Show with Bob and David, and even an Emmy win for writing on The Ben Stiller Show, Odenkirk still thinks that the pinnacle of his career came with one particular SNL skit he wrote in the early 1990s.

“My daughter once asked me, ‘What’s the best thing you ever did?’” Odenkirk said to Michael Rosenbaum on an episode of his Inside of You podcast. “And I said, ‘writing [Chris Farley’s “Matt Foley: Motivational Speaker”] and performing it eight times a week at ‘Second City’ … it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of … there was nothing greater than to see Chris be funny and act.”

Odenkirk got to see it first hand because in the original Matt Foley sketch at “Second City” (before they took it to SNL), Odenkirk played the role of the father, who would be recast as Phil Hartman on SNL. “I am really proud of it,” Odenkirk added, “because I did write it pretty much the way he performed it, and I wrote it alone in my apartment in Chicago … It’s such a performance heavy thing, but I’ll share credit on inventing the thing.”

Odenkirk also shared a lot of wistful memories of Farley, saying that he writes about him a lot in his upcoming memoir:

“Some of it’s kind of sad,” Odenkirk says. “The hardest party [with Farley] is just how inevitable it all felt. Everything in Chris’ story, the way it played out. People talked about it for years, that this would happen, and then that. And it all played out exactly as they predicted. I hated it. It made me so mad. The one thing you don’t want your life to be is a cliche … I don’t want to live some f**king, boring overtold story that’s just a hackneyed cliche. And his f*cking story just played out like somebody could’ve written it when he was 25. He could’ve written it. He kind of did.”

Odenkirk added that he ever only saw Farley once when he wasn’t intoxicated. “He was at party in Hollywood. With [David] Spade. At somebody’s f*cking apartment. And I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘Chris, you’re not drinking,’ and he was like, ‘Nope.’ And he meant it. And he was strong. And he looked great. And I was like, ‘Holy sh*t. This is f*cking great. He’s going to f*cking make it. He’d been to rehab something like 7 times by then, and it finally clicked.”

Unfortunately, Odenkirk never saw that Farley again. It was the only time I ever saw the look in his eye. “But at least I saw it once and it gave me hope. But other than that, you either got him f*cked up, or him in that other mode, him like, ‘I’m a f*cking idiot. I f*cked up again. I’m so sorry I messed up.”

Odenkirk said that, when Farley was drunk, he performed for everyone, like they were an audience instead of human beings. “It was gross. And that’s all you got. And it was sad as f**k because he was such a good person, and his goodness came out in everything he did.”

Look for more stories like these in Odenkirk’s memoir, when it eventually arrives. In the meantime, Saul will probably begin shooting again in the spring ahead of its final season.

(Via Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast)

Last week it seemed like one of the Republican party’s newest stars, Navy SEAL-turned-Texas representative Dan Crenshaw, might be the latest to be taken down. Newsweek reported that he was involved in an “orchestrated campaign” to disparage a female veteran who had alleged sexual assault at a V.A. facility. It’s damning news, if true, but Crenshaw isn’t simply pretending like it’s not a big deal. Mere days after the report, he dropped a new campaign video where he pretends he’s a big time action movie star.

Crenshaw — who lords over a cartoonishly gerrymandered district and who rose to fame after being made fun of by Pete Davidson — wasn’t campaigning for himself. He was campaigning for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, the two Republican incumbents battling to retain their Senate seats, which, if both are lost, would flip the legislative body blue. Crenshaw has done easily mocked action movie-style campaign videos before, including one where his missing eye has superpowers. This one, however, earned him even more scorn.

The video begins with Crenshaw being summoned away in the middle of an acceptance speech, informed by government agents that his help is needed. He strips out of his suit, revealing some warrior attire. He then gets in a plane, leaps out of it à la Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible — Fallout, and lands heroically on a vehicle peopled by antifa, who, by the way, are not an organization, no matter how many times Republicans say they are.

The low production values, the unconvincing attempts to turn Crenshaw into a cross between Ethan Hunt and Thor, the silly portrait of anitfa, the arrival mere days after heinous allegations — all conspired to make him a figure of fun over social media.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1338279889795952646

Some compared it to Threat Level Midnight, the hilarious spy fantasy written by The Office’s Michael Scott.

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1338282944851570690

Some found it the year’s weirdest campaign video.

Others pointed out some plot holes.

Many mocked Crenshaw’s action star aspirations.

And some called him out for what he really is.

Of course, Perdue and Loeffler could really use the help. He was so scared of his opponent that he skipped out on their last debate, while she robotically repeated buzzterms like “radical leftist” during hers. Then again, if Crenshaw really did help smear a woman reporting sexual assault, maybe ludicrous campaign videos are the only places left where he can be the good guy.

CNN’s Jake Tapper has never been one to praise outgoing president Donald J. Trump. Quite the contrary. But on Sunday — mere days after slamming the GOP House for letting a “deranged” lawsuit make its way to the Supreme Court, where it died a quick death — he decided to change that, sort of. Tapper used the end of his program with a monologue in which he offered Trump thanks. Again, sort of.

It began, seemingly, in earnest. Tapper cited some “legitimate achievements” from his presidency, among them Operation Warp Speed, which indeed led to a vaccine being quickly approved and whose first batches have already been dispensed. (Tapper didn’t mention that Trump’s administration, many of whom have recklessly caught COVID-19, were among the first recipients.) He said he’s “rethought trade deals,” “reimagined peace in the Middle East,” and for bringing some service members home, “even if his follow-through has been rather wanting.”

Once Tapper got that out of the way, his tone changed to sarcasm. The remainder of his monologue laid out the many ways Trump has, by challenging democratic, inadvertently exposed cracks in a system largely based, he said, “on the honor system” — ones that could have been even more thoroughly exploited by a more focused conman. “A government upheld upon the honor system only works if everyone involved…has honor,” Tapper said.

Tapper then moved onto the events of the last week, when his legal team, plus a bevy of Republican lawmakers, pushed that aforementioned lawsuit against key battleground states that have already certified their elections for Biden. “It was a clownish legal brief based on conspiracy theories and outright lies,” he said. “And 18 state attorneys general, some U.S. senators, and a majority of the House Republican caucus, 126 members, supported it.”

Thus, in Tapper’s estimation, Trump “did us a favor by exposing these elected officials.” He then described those supporters as “definitionally people who signed on to a desperate desire to subvert the will of the American people, to disenfranchise voters in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan based on lies and conspiracy theories, putting an immoral and corrupt power grab above democracy.”

The GOP has largely kept quiet over the last month-plus since Biden was declared winner, which has seen Trump and his minions make baseless accusations of voter fraud and been shot down in dozens and dozens of court cases. But when the Trump team filed that DOA lawsuit, he forced them to expose their real selves:

“Many Americans hoped that most Republican officials, while they agreed with Trump’s policies, did not like the uglier parts of his style, his willingness to lie or smear to achieve his ends. But President Trump made House Republicans go on the record … He made them stand and be counted, and 126 of them, including Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican Whip Steve Scalise, they actually signed their names to this, this unconservative, undemocratic, unAmerican, mendacious joke of a lawsuit that would disenfranchise millions of their fellow Americans.

“These House Republicans raised their hands … They said: Sign me up. The hope that most Republicans in the House were better than this — that has been destroyed. For those of us who believe in standards and norms and the U.S. Constitution, we need to thank President Trump for bringing this fact to light.”

Then again, maybe no one needs to thank Donald Trump for a thing.

He was a spy who became one of the great spy novelists, bringing realism, technical accuracy, and a weathered sense of what the job does to you to a genre often overrun with sexy Bond-like fantasy. And after a long and storied career, John le Carré has passed on, reports The New York Times.

Born David John Moore Cromwell, le Carré didn’t have the rosiest childhood. His mother abandoned him as a child, and his father was a low-level conman with ties to the infamous Kray brothers. He developed an interest in the secret ways the world really works, which led him to work at both the MI5 and the MI6, the twin secret service agencies in England. Those experiences helped shape his books, including his third, 1963’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which became his breakthrough.

That book was his also le Carré’s third to feature George Smiley, the career intelligence officer who became his most consistent character and most famous creation. Smiley isn’t always the main star of his books, and he was the opposite of a dashing spy. He was cold, calculating, ruthlessly efficient. He appears in a number of le Carré’s most celebrated works, including The Looking Glass War, The Russia House, and perhaps his most famous work, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Like many in his field, le Carré saw his books turned into movies, starting with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Released in 1965, it’s as stark and unforgiving as the novel, starring Richard Burton as an agent sent to sow discord in East Germany. Where Thunderball, the 007 entry released the same year, reveled in imperialist fun, the le Carré film showed that espionage work ran counter to true democratic ideals.

More adaptations followed. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was turned into both a 1979 miniseries, starring Alec Guinness as Smiley, and a 2010 movie, where Gary Oldman memorably took over. The Little Drummer Girl was made into both a film in 1984, starring Diane Keaton, and a miniseries in 2018, with Michael Shannon, Alexander Skarsgard, and Florence Pugh. The film of The Tailor of Panama actually roped in then-Bond Pierce Brosnan to play a crooked, roguish spy, while the movie of The Constant Gardener netted Rachel Weisz her Oscar in 2005. The Night Manager was turned into a well-received TV show in 2016, with Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie.

Le Carré wrote right up to the end. His final novel, or at least the last one released before his death, was Agent Running in the Field, from last year. Throughout his life and career, he wrote page-turners that helped readers better understand how the world works, about the forces that control our lives from behind a veil, about the often broken people who make it all run. Without him, we’re bound to understand less.

(Via NYT)

Cameo has become an incredibly popular way for people to celebrate things by paying famous people to record a personal message for someone. That is, at least, what the entire site was built off of, but sometimes people use it to play jokes on their friends or, apparently, break up with their significant other in maybe the least personal way possible (but also the funniest to the objective viewer).

On Sunday, a video made the rounds showing Bruce Buffer, the legendary UFC ring announcer known for his very animated theatrics and his “IT’S TIIIIIMMMMMMEEEEEE” catchphrase, offering a message to some poor woman named Kayleigh (Kayley?) to “move on.”

I have to appreciate how all out he goes for this video, as you really get your money’s worth out of a 14 second video with Bruce. He has the full tux jacket and bow tie look going for this one — although that’s apparently not standard — and does not mail in the “IT’S TIIIIIIMMMMMMMEEEEEEEE” in any way. I mean, it is the same as you’d expect ahead of the main event in the Octagon on a big fight night in Las Vegas. I appreciate that, because Bruce Buffer Cameo’s are not cheap. Apparently telling Kayle[igh/y] it was over was worth $299 to whomever paid for this video, which really tells you how bad things were going in this relationship.

I love that he says he only films in a tux if he’s already in a tux at the time, and the reason why he was able to do this one in his tux is that he apparently chose to film this before going to work at UFC 256 because (as you can see from the above image from fight night) he is in the exact same fit. What a legend.

Also, Sorry Kayle[igh/y], but at least you’ll always have a strong story for your worst breakup ever.

When the Washington Football Team dropped its Redskins nickname it seemed to indicate the long overdue shift in the world of sports where monikers that were offensive to Native Americans and indigenous people would finally be dropped even at the highest levels of professional sports.

Given how staunchly opposed Dan Snyder was to changing Washington’s name, it indicated that the pressure to get rid of names in that same ilk would be on the way out. As soon as Washington became the Football Team, all eyes turned to Cleveland’s baseball team, where the same groups that have long called for a name change from their Indians nickname. Cleveland has steadily gone away from using the highly offensive Chief Wahoo logo, but hadn’t shown much interest, much in the way Washington hadn’t, in changing its name. However, that will change soon according to David Waldstein and Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times, who report an announcement that the team will change its name is coming very soon.

Following years of protests from fans and Native American groups, the Cleveland Indians have decided to change their team name, moving away from a moniker that has long been criticized as racist, three people familiar with the decision said Sunday.

…

One of the people said Cleveland planned to keep the Indians name and uniforms for the 2021 season while working to shift away from it as early as 2022.

As noted in the Times report, there are plenty of logistical hurdles to clear in changing the name, including working with apparel partners and sponsors, which is why they may keep the name and uniforms for next season — although the Football Team successfully pivoted away from their name in a rather swift turnaround that would indicate Cleveland could probably do the same if they so wanted to. Still, even if it isn’t until 2022 it’s a welcome change and one Cleveland fans have seemed to expect in recent years, regularly discussing name change options on social media — Spiders is a particularly popular option.

We’ll see how the team goes about its rebrand and renaming, but it’s progress even if overdue.

Offset isn’t entirely on board with the upcoming coronavirus vaccine. The rapper was recently stopped by TMZ and questioned about the new medical development, which, should everyone take it, would give people the herd immunity to start getting life back to normal. But it turns out Offset is among the skeptics, saying he “doesn’t trust” it. He had other concerns as well, saying that treatment would be prioritized to the upper class as opposed to the general public. All of this caused people on Twitter to weigh in on the rapper’s comments.

One simply asked, “Who in the heck cares if he gets it or not?” while another questioned how he could eat a McRib from McDonald’s but raise concerns with the vaccine. “Why you would even ask him is beyond me,” another wrote. “I want to know wtf gets their medical advice from Offset?”

On the other hand, some seemed to agree with Offset or they at least understood his fears with the virus. One responded to the rapper’s comments on Twitter and said, “I hear ya offset” and another said, “Same bro I’m let y’all be the test dummies.” A third comment simply said, “I agree with him” with a laughing emoji.

You can watch Offset’s response to the COVID-19 vaccine here and see other responses from folks on Twitter below.

For a year and a half we have anticipated what the Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant combination would look like in Brooklyn as the two have been teammates since July 2019 but finally got on the court together on Sunday afternoon in a preseason tilt with the Washington Wizards.

Washington was sitting their two stars, meaning we were not treated to a Russell Westbrook vs. KD showdown, but there was still plenty of intrigue into seeing Brooklyn’s stars playing together for the first time. It didn’t take long for them to show why they figure to be a lethal offensive pairing, as they combined for 33 first half points against, admittedly, one of the league’s worst defensive teams. Still, it was great to see both Durant and Irving getting going, and especially seeing Durant look an awful lot like his old self coming off of the Achilles injury.

The biggest question for Durant wasn’t whether he’d be good offensively, but more if he’d have the same burst off his first step and he answered that in a big way in the first minute of the game with a blow-by drive for a dunk.

Even if he isn’t quite as quick as he was pre-injury, Durant is still among the best at getting to his spot and once there, defenders have no chance of getting a strong contest on the 7-footer’s jump shot. That was likewise on display as he piled up 15 first half points.

As for Irving, who missed much of last year with a shoulder injury, he was dynamic, showing off his dribbling skills and ability to, likewise, get to his spots and hit shots — as well as set up his teammates with good looks.

The two even showed a little of their connection that the Nets hope will foster into one of the league’s most dynamic 1-2 combinations.

Kyrie had 18 points and four assists in the first half, as he and Durant likely will see most of the second half from the bench as Steve Nash called for them to play around 20 minutes each in the preseason opener and they each played 17 in the first half. The Wizards are not the ideal litmus test for how a team will look against a solid NBA defense, but this was more about seeing if Irving and Durant looked back to their usual selves coming off injuries and that, no matter the opponent, certainly appears to be the case.

Also, for those wondering, it didn’t seem like Irving’s request for four post touches per half was granted, but the Nets offense still looked spectacular.

Christopher Nolan has been on a righteously angry tear recently, laying into Warner Bros. — who’ve distributed his movies going back to Insomnia, in 2001 — for their controversial new deal with HBO Max. He’s absolutely livid that the studio is releasing its entire 2021 film slate on the streamer the same day they hit theaters — a decision he thinks is short-sighted and which could impact the future of big budget filmmaking, and the large crews they employ. But he’s not all sturm und drang. For instance, the brainiac auteur blurted out what may be the most relatable thing he’s ever said: He’s a big fan of Fast and Furious movies!

As per IGN, Nolan — whose Tenet, which underperformed in the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, was no doubt partly responsible for Warner Bros’ brash decision — was a guest on MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast. He apparently wound up being more happy than sad or confused, getting so comfortable that he confessed to have a big soft spot for a franchise that’s as gleefully dumb as his are stubbornly smart.

But there’s one he preferred more than the other seven titles, and it’s the one that has more cult appeal than the rest. “I’m sort of an original recipe [guy],” Nolan said on the podcast. “I mean the Rob Cohen original. But I’ve got a very soft spot for Tokyo Drift, actually. And then the skill as Justin Lin’s iterations, as they got crazier and bigger and crazier and bigger, they became something else, but something else kind of fun.”

He continued:

“The fun thing about those movies is even as they’ve gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, as sequels have to do … everyone always complains that sequels get bigger but we’re the people making sequels get bigger, we do want them bigger, you don’t want them smaller, it’s the Alien 3 lesson that [David] Fincher learned. You can do it but it’s not going to make anybody happy, even though personally I love that film, a lot more than he does in fact.”

So Nolan is also a fan of David Fincher’s Alien 3! And his razor sharp mind was evidently not broken by a franchise featuring skydiving cars and the planet’s longest runway. That said, he did admit he was an “original recipe guy,” preferring the more stripped-down and realistic (so to speak) entries. It’s nice to see some big name love for Tokyo Drift, the threequel and something of an outlier in the franchise, even if it did introduce a major fan favorite, namely Sung Kang’s Han Lue. Left brain filmmakers whose movies are sometimes as complicated as a Saturday New York Times crossword: They’re just like us!

(Via IGN)