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In August, Cardi B sat down with Joe Biden for a Zoom interview, which drew ire from conservative figures like Candace Owens. Cardi and Owens beefed about it back then, but now that Biden will be in the White House come 2021, Cardi has again taken a moment to respond to the backlash.

In an Instagram post, Cardi shared a snippet of her conversation with Biden and wrote about the situation, summarizing the moral of the post, “Don’t let nobody down play you for what you doing that’s how they try to take away your power .YOUR POWER IS YOUR VOICE!.”

Cardi wrote, “Couple of weeks ago I was getting chewed up by Trump supporters over this interview especially by miss Candace who has been degrading my name for 2 years straight. I was so nervous for this interview especially because it was on zoom and not in person but it was important for my followers to get to know our running candidate and future president. Republicans like Candace, Shapiro, Fox news made fun of me ,talk so much sh*t about me and my song WAP. They said Biden use me as a pawn then weeks later we seen a list of rappers and artists that Trump was trying to reach out to and to pay for support a list that included my name. I never got payed a dollar from Biden I just wanted to get to know him and open my fans up to the importance of voting.Im so proud of all these celebs who uses their platform and for the people who went out and voted WE DID IT! Don’t let nobody down play you for what you doing that’s how they try to take away your power .YOUR POWER IS YOUR VOICE!Congrats Biden! Your family here, and in Heaven are very proud of you! Also congratulations to Kamala you made history!”

Aside from the election results, things are looking up for Cardi, as she recently called off her divorce from Offset.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

It’s fall, which means I’d typically be in peak Ryan Adams listening season. Unfortunately, given the recent allegations, I’ve forced myself to move away from listening to Adams at all. What are your rules for listening to musicians who’ve been accused of bad things? Is there a line you’ve drawn, and if so, what is it? — P.J. from Simsbury, Conn.

Before I answer this question, let me state several things for the record: First, I believe Adams’ accusers. I believe the women (including Phoebe Bridgers) who say they felt pressured into entering sexual relationships at the risk of professional punishment, and who were generally treated in an abusive, exploitive manner. And I believe the woman who said that Adams knowingly solicited explicit photos from her when she was underage.

Second, I don’t really have hard and fast “rules” in these situations. (Does anybody?) I’m hardly the sort of moral authority who would determine a “line” that should be universally followed by all fans of artists accused of despicable acts. This is real life, not bowling. I’m only going to describe my own feelings. You are free to feel however you want.

Third, I really don’t want to have some abstract “separate the artists from the art” conversation right now. I would rather talk about this in practical, everyday terms, which are less absolute and perfect but, in my mind, more human and relatable.

Now, here’s my answer regarding Ryan Adams: I haven’t wanted to listen to him. It’s not really a matter of should I listen to him — the idea of putting on a Ryan Adams album hasn’t seemed at all appealing to me. And I say that as a person who owns all of his records and has written about him often in the past. (More on that in a moment.) Perhaps it helps that Adams is, at heart, a pastiche artist, and therefore can be easily supplanted by the many people he has ripped off: Gram Parsons, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Smiths, U2, the Rolling Stones. While I count myself as a fan of Adams’ music, taking him out of my rotation has been relatively painless.

If you still want to listen to Ryan Adams, that’s your choice. I’m not here to judge anyone’s listening habits. (Especially if you own physical copies of his music — it’s not like each post-scandal spin is going to earn him any additional money.) But for me, I can’t listen to Ryan Adams now without thinking about him and the people that he hurt. And that wasn’t true before. Songs, at their best, don’t cause us to dwell on the people who made them. Songs are supposed to make us think about ourselves — our own lives, feelings, and memories.

Cold Roses used to be an album that evoked some of the best periods of my life — back in the spring of 2006, when I met my wife and we fell in love. When we got married two years later, we listened to Cold Roses a lot in the summer months leading up to the wedding. That music was magical to me, and it was woven into the fabric of my life. But now when I put on Cold Roses, I just think about the dumb jerk who wrote the songs, and how he was messing around with a young girl who looked up to him as a mentor, when he simply regarded her as a plaything. And I would rather not think about that. I don’t like having “40something rock star exploiting a teenager” thoughts in my head. So, I’m fine not playing Cold Roses. It’s not really a moral stand. It’s just no longer pleasurable for me.

It’s that simple. In a way, the decision was made for me. Ryan Adams, and Ryan Adams alone, ripped this music out of my life. Now, I’m not saying that should be your reaction. This is just my personal preference, and it’s an honest and, I think, natural response.

(There’s a side issue here about whether there are still enough Ryan Adams fans to make a comeback viable. Nearly two years after the allegations broke, this remains unclear. The fact that one of his accusers is a beloved singer-songwriter in her own right no doubt complicates his future. Lots of people who love Phoebe Bridgers are probably always going to despise Ryan Adams, with justification. I suspect that Adams will likely never regain the stature he once had, though he will surely be back in some capacity in the near-ish future.)

I can already anticipate the counter-argument to my personal preference. It will come from a guy on Twitter with 17 followers and a bio that simply reads, “Free Thinker.” This person will point out that musicians in the past — including icons that you and I love — also did terrible things, and that it is inconsistent to not listen to one artist because of past transgressions and give those other people a pass. While I am not forcing this person to feel as I do, he will be offended that anyone is supposedly “canceling” Ryan Adams, even on a personal, one-to-one level.

This is my reply: Of course I’m being inconsistent! Human beings are inherently inconsistent. You can’t program yourself to have feelings that always correspond precisely to your ideology, especially when it comes to art. Also, I am aware of all the bad things my heroes have done. And I don’t excuse them, even if I still listen to their music. But a lot of that stuff happened years or even decades before I was even born, which strikes me as quite different than news that breaks in the present, when we’re all adults who now have to respond to awful newspaper articles in real time.

As a critic, I’ve written nice things about Ryan Adams’ music, and while I think he has talent, I now regret the role I played in giving him a platform that he abused time and again. That’s why this is different for me than debating about what Led Zeppelin did or didn’t do on the road in 1973. Yes, it’s important that all unseemly details are included in the histories of our favorite bygone bands, so that the totality of how they impacted culture — positively and negatively — is accounted for. But I wasn’t around for that. I am, however, around for this. Therefore, it is more personal to me, and I’m still learning from it, as a fan and as a critic. Ultimately, I don’t want to enable this guy any longer. I love a lot of albums. I can afford to set Ryan Adams aside.

I recently irritated a punk-loving friend by describing the Talking Heads as “proggy.” He argued they come out of punk which is diametrically opposed to prog and that being clever/inventive isn’t the same thing. To my mind, they worked with Eno who is at least prog-adjacent, and I feel like they appeal to lots of people who find straight-ahead punk rock boring (i.e. classic rock fans, prog fans, even jam band fans). So I guess my question is, is there a line at which something becomes “prog”? Are there any other bands like Talking Heads who sort of blur that line? — Tina from South Bend, Ind.

Before I answer this question, Tina, I just want to thank you for annoying your punk-loving friend. Annoying punk-loving friends is a special pastime that I have enjoyed for many years, especially when it involves the implication that prog is kinda better and more interesting than punk.

It would probably be more accurate to describe Talking Heads as “post-punk,” which describes the wave of bands that arrived shortly after the advent of punk that took that movement’s spirit and applied it to a wider range of sounds and musical influences beyond just three-chord rock. But I think you’re on to something when you contextualize Talking Heads as prog, as post-punk is basically a more progressive version of punk rock. This is certainly true of Talking Heads, who moved well beyond their bedrock CBGB sound once they hooked up with Brian Eno. But it also applies to many of their contemporaries, who have their own proggy attributes, like Television (long guitar solos), Wire (odd time signatures and plenty of synths), and The Damned (lots of colorful on-stage costumes and an album produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason).

I would even venture to say that nearly every great punk band has some prog in them. What is The Clash’s Sandinista! if not a proggy-punk statement on par with Tales From Topographic Oceans? You could say the same about Husker Du’s sprawling concept double-album Zen Arcade or The Minutemen’s endlessly innovative and musically complex Double Nickels On The Dime. Or even Green Day’s American Idiot, which is at least as dense as The Wall. If you love Black Flag, note that Henry Rollins loves King Crimson. Or that Greg Ginn is a notorious Deadhead.

I could go on but tell me: Has your friend’s head exploded yet?

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

Dua Lipa has had an aggressive and lengthy promotional campaign surrounding her latest album, Future Nostalgia. Lead single “Don’t Start Now” came out back in October 2019, the album was released in March, the Club Future Nostalgia remix album dropped in August, and she just released a new single, “Fever.” Between “Don’t Start Now” and today, Lipa has released singles and videos, been on TV, and otherwise made Future Nostalgia inescapable.

For fans who can’t get enough of the album, this has been great news, of which there is now even more. As Pop Crave notes, over the weekend, Lipa revealed that she plans to release a collection of Future Nostalgia B-sides at some point in 2021, as she noted in a YouTube chat, “B sideeeee next year [heart emoji].”

In an interview from earlier this year, Lipa explained how a social media break helped her make Future Nostalgia, saying, “In all honesty, I don’t think I could have done my second record if I hadn’t taken a step back from social media. When you first start, when I first started putting new music out, everything was super positive and I had lots of nice messages. I think the more stuff you do, then there is criticism and comments and it all comes in thick and fast, and for a while it was really getting to me. I just felt like people had nothing but mean things to say or I was being picked on. It did upset me, it made me feel I didn’t deserve to do certain things.”

Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A tired nation woke up from an eventful weekend to the headline: “Pfizer’s Early Data Shows Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective.” The pharmaceutical company has been working with German drugmaker BioNTech on a vaccine for COVID-19 that the New York Times describes as “robustly effective.” If the 90 percent figure holds, that “would put it on par with highly effective childhood vaccines for diseases such as measles. No serious safety concerns have been observed.” Pfizer will ask the Food and Drug Administration for “emergency authorization” of the vaccine this month; if it’s successful, “it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people.”

Now there’s still a long way to go before concert venues are at capacity again (as the Times notes, “It is not conclusive evidence that the vaccine is safe and effective, and the initial finding of more than 90 percent efficacy could change as the trial goes on”), and god only knows how much the vaccine is going to cost. But it’s still a promising update on a potential return to normalcy. When alerted about the news, Joe Biden, who officially won the U.S. presidential election over the weekend, said, “Last night, my public health advisors were informed of this excellent news. I congratulate the brilliant women and men who helped produce this breakthrough and to give us such cause for hope.”

He continued:

At the same time, it is also important to understand that the end of the battle against COVID-19 is still months away. This news follows a previously announced timeline by industry officials that forecast vaccine approval by late November. Even if that is achieved, and some Americans are vaccinated later this year, it will be many more months before there is widespread vaccination in this country.

This is why the head of the CDC warned this fall that for the foreseeable future, a mask remains a more potent weapon against the virus than the vaccine. Today’s news does not change this urgent reality. Americans will have to rely on masking, distancing, contact tracing, hand washing, and other measures to keep themselves safe well into next year. Today’s news is great news, but it doesn’t change that fact.

America is still losing over 1,000 people a day from COVID-19, and that number is rising — and will continue to get worse unless we make progress on masking and other immediate actions. That is the reality for now, and for the next few months. Today’s announcement promises the chance to change that next year, but the tasks before us now remain the same.

Here’s how Donald Trump responded, not with concern but about the stock market:

If Biden’s statement makes him “sleepy,” well, sign us up for a four-year nap.

(Via New York Times)

Everyone knew that John Oliver, who grew misty-eyed while voting for the first time as a U.S. citizen, would be thrilled over President Trump’s election loss. And yes, he was happy to put an “absolute year of a week” into the past. “He lost,” the host elaborated. “All that bullsh*t, which we’ve grown accustomed to seeing work, did not work this time.”

Oh, partying definitely happened. Oliver, who realizes that there’s much work and worrying still to be done to heal the U.S. (most acutely regarding the pandemic), granted himself 30 seconds to party hard in a socially distanced way. Granted, everyone’s got a different definition of partying, and Oliver’s favorite way to get down is to run footage of people dancing in the streets while he shouted octopus trivia, including “if octopuses take ecstasy, they’ll hang out and party with other octopuses.” (It’s true and surreal.)

Oliver did not shy away from metaphors while describing Saturday in New York City, which he said felt like a “reverse 9/11” for a few reasons, including the presence of “complete euphoria, an abiding disgust for Rudy Giuliani, and this time, people were actually dancing on the rooftops in New Jersey.” He also turned to Trump’s recent “nightmarish” and lie-filled attack on voting, and in doing so, Oliver shouted out one of the week’s leading voices of sanity, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, for having the “best response” to Trump’s election lies.

While dubbing Fetterman as “Lt. Gov. Stone Cold,” Oliver dug his comparison of the Trump campaign standing on a street corner and claiming to have won the state as being “like a bad House of Cards episode.” To that, Oliver remarked, “This is like House of Cards in that it’s full of political intrigue, there’s a sexual predator pretending to be president at the very heart of it, and it’s gone at least four seasons too long.”

The episode ended as it should: with a montage of news personalities talking about “dumps” of votes. Never change, John Oliver. Granted, we didn’t get to see this next visual happen again, but the sentiment still stands.

Lil Nas X fans have spent the past few months watching the rapper teasing new music and charting the progress of a new album. Nas offered quantitative updates about how complete his album is with percentages, and last month, he declared that November would be “Nasvember.” Now, a few months into Nasvember, Nas is about to deliver, as he has dropped a teaser for his next single, “Holiday.”

The 48-second teaser video is a clear continuation of the “Old Town Road” cinematic universe. It begins with Nas, on horseback, entering the frame through some sort of portal. He finds himself in an Old West-style town, where a drunk Santa Claus is kicked out of a saloon. The jolly man collapses on the ground, and Lil Nas X takes his hat, which, like the movie The Santa Clause, reveals that he is the new Santa. Suddenly, his horse is transformed into a reindeer and he becomes more Santa-like himself. In another cinematic homage, he and a team of reindeer take off into another portal, at which point Back To The Future star Michael J. Fox to say, “Whatever you do, Nas, don’t go to 2020.”

The song comes out on Friday, so ahead of then, watch the “Holiday” teaser above.

On the surface, a story involving Brad Pitt, Courteney Cox, and Jon Lovitz doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense — in what world would you hear those three names together — until you remember that Jon Lovitz’s best friend growing up with Lisa Kudrow’s brother. Also, Jon Lovitz encouraged Lisa Kudrow to get into comedy, and she ended up on Friends with Courteney Cox (who shared the famous “tartlet” scene with Lovitz) and Jennifer Aniston, who was married to Brad Pitt during her Friends years.

As it turns out, Jon Lovitz also knew Brad Pitt before he was famous, because they shared a manager, whose name is Cynthia Pett-Dant. She introduced the two over the phone years ago, and they became acquainted. Their mutual manager also had a beach house next to Jon Lovitz’s beach house, and Brad Pitt would occasionally stay there.

In one such instance — as Lovitz tells it on this week’s episode of Literally! with Rob Lowe — Pitt was staying in Cynthia’s beach house, and he was walking Cynthia’s nine dogs. Unfortunately, one of the dogs got loose, ran into Jon Lovitz’s house, and killed his cat. The cat meant a lot to Lovitz because he’d gotten the cat after his Dad died to help him feel better about the loss.

Lovitz was obviously distraught over the “murder” of his cat. That night, he went to Courteney Cox’s house — they had been friends since starring the two starred together in a movie called Mr. Destiny. Lovitz has described Cox in the past as someone he basically regarded as his little sister. Anyway, when he got to Courteney Cox’s house, she was with Cynthia and several other women. They were all crying, and Jon asked, “What’s going on?” and Cox said, “We just feel so bad for Cynthia!”

“You feel bad for Cynthia?” Lovitz asked. “My cat was killed! Murdered! Most foul! In my bedroom.”

“And Courteney goes, ‘Well, food chain!’”

“And I said, ‘What? Excuse me! Food chain?’”

“Yes, well, cats kill dogs,” Cox told him.

“My cat was in my bedroom, minding its own business. And the dog came in and murdered my cat!”

Lovitz did not soon forget about the incident. “Five years later,” Lovitz told Rob Lowe, “Someone says to me, ‘Courteney Cox’s grandmother died,’ and I say, ‘Whoa! Tell her I said, ‘food chain!’”

“Three years later,” Lovitz continues, “I see her at a Dodger game, and she says, ‘You’re still mad about that?’ And I say, ‘I hear your grandmother died. FOOD CHAIN!’”

“Just say you’re sorry, Courteney!”

“And she says, ‘OK, fine, [I’m sorry].”

When someone slams me, Lovitz tells Lowe, “I hold a grudge x 10. It’s called, ‘Being Jewish.’”

It’s a surprisingly fun interview, where Lovitz also tells Rob Lowe that Jerry Bruckheimer had originally considered casting him and Dana Carvey for the lead roles in Bad Boys before hiring Martin Lawrence and Will Smith, and he also tells a story about Chris Farley being in that same beach house while fires were raging all around it.

Source: Literally! with Rob Lowe

We write about bourbon so often that it’s hard to keep in mind that late fall and winter are much more “bourbon season” than spring or summer. Those sweet corn, rich vanilla, baking spice, and charred oak flavors neat, on the rocks, or mixed into cocktails make a hell of a lot of sense with the holidays coming on. It’s also getting chilly and the famed “Kentucky hug” — the warming finish so common with good bourbons — is a welcome houseguest.

We’re never shy about shouting out affordable bottles of bourbon. It’s a category where you can get a hell of a lot of quality for around $30. At $50, you get into some quality sippers. But if you’re willing, able, and interested enough to splurge, you can have a truly distinct experience.

Today, we’re looking at bourbons in the $100-300 range. Yes, we know that’s a lot. But we also know there are also far more frivolous things that people spend far more money on. Obviously, we recognize these bottles aren’t going to be an everyday purchase for most folks, but if you decide to drop the coin these picks will help amplify your next special occasion in a big way. We all deserve those sorts of treats from time to time.

Check out our picks for eight expensive bourbons that are worth the price tag, below. Note that many of them started in the $50-80 range and the prices were driven up by the aftermarket — so part of what you’re paying for is the ability to say, “I tasted that!”

Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond 9-Year

ABV: 50%

The Story:

If you’re a fan of whiskey, there’s a pretty good chance you like to make the most out of your money by drinking a high proof whiskey. Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond is 100 proof and even comes in a decanter bottle that’s inspired by the original 1950’s diamond decanter.

Tasting Notes:

The first nosing brings forth hints of charred oak, subtle cinnamon, and brown sugar. The first sip carries those notes forward along with mellow wheat and rich, sweet corn flavors. The finish is long, warming, and ends with a pleasing hint of cinnamon.

Bottom Line:

A whiskey this balanced and flavorful is most suited for slow sipping over a single ice cube.

Price: $299.99

Weller Antique 107

ABV: 53.5%

The Story:

Weller is known for its high wheat bourbons. Named after William Larue Weller, the addition of a large amount of wheat makes all of Weller’s whiskeys (including Antique 107) mellow, sweet, smooth, and… soft on the palate. That’s a recipe for easy sipping.

This offering is bottled at 107 proof, but you wouldn’t know it as it carries none of the harsh, alcohol heat you’d expect from such a high proof whiskey. Antique 107 is full of flavor, sublimely mellow, and well-balanced.

Tasting Notes:

After a nosing, you’ll be met with spicy cinnamon, toasted oak, and sweet cream. The first sip draws out hints of dried fruits, charred oak, and brown sugar. The finish is long, warming, and filled with a nice combination of cinnamon, oak, and caramel.

Bottom Line:

Weller Antique 107 works well in a cocktail due to its high alcohol content, but (for that price) deserves to be enjoyed neat or on the rocks.

Price: $129.99

Elmer T. Lee Single Barrel

ABV: 45%

The Story:

Elmer T. Lee was a master distiller at Buffalo Trace. He’s most well-known for launching Blanton’s, back in the early ’80s. This bourbon was made to honor the iconic figure. It’s made from hand-selected barrels, is well-balanced, and has won some huge awards — which is what turned this bottle from $50 value pick to $300 splurge.

Tasting Notes:

Nosing brings scents of spice, clover honey, leather, and vanilla. The first delivers sweet cream, Christmas baking spices, toasted oak, bright orange, and rich caramel. That oak, orange, and leather is present on the dry finish, too.

Bottom Line:

Pay tribute to Elmer T. Lee by drinking his bourbon surrounded by friends, neat or on the rocks.

Price: $299.99

Michter’s 10 Year

ABV: 47.2%

The Story:

Over the past decade, Michter’s has made a name for itself in the whiskey world. This award-winning, highly lauded bourbon is aged for ten years in fire-charred American oak casks. The result is 94.4 proof bourbon that’s won countless awards for quality and continues to get rave reviews today.

Tasting Notes:

Aromas of toffee, brown sugar, and cloves fill your nostrils on the nosing. The first sip delivers cinnamon-sugar, maple syrup, creamy caramel, and rich vanilla. The finish is medium in length, pleasingly warm, and ends with a nice hint of velvety, slightly smoky, caramelized sugar.

Bottom Line:

Michter’s 10 should be enjoyed on the rocks and savored slowly — to let it open up throughout the experience.

Price: $129.99

Old Bones Reserve Bourbon

ABV: 55%

The Story:

If you’ve never heard of Old Bones, you’re missing out. Distilled by the well-known MGP distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana before being bottled in Bardstown, Kentucky, this high-rye bourbon is made using a mash bill of 55% corn, 40% rye, and 5% barley before being aged for ten years in new, charred oak barrels.

Tasting Notes:

This whiskey deserves a good nosing before taking a sip. Expect to be met with hints of smoked wood, dried fruits, and winter baking spices. The first sip is filled with subtle pepper, sweet caramel, and brown sugar. The finish is long, intensely warm, and ends with a final kick of spice.

Bottom Line

A smooth sipping whiskey, Old Bones Reserve is well-suited as a chilly fall evening warmer.

Price: $119

Widow Jane ‘The Vaults’

ABV: 49.5%

The Story:

If you can find a bottle of ‘The Vaults’ you’re in for a truly unique flavor experience. This is a blend of bourbons in which the youngest is 14 years. The barrels used to age this whiskey were air seasoned in the elements for 8 years before the bourbon was added to it.

Tasting Notes:

You’ll be pleased that you nosed this bourbon before drinking it. The aromas is of the barrelhouse itself. It’s sweet, dusty, and warm — with hints of vanilla, dried cherries, and cinnamon. The first sip brings strong mint, charred oak, sweet cream, dark chocolate, and sweet vanilla flavors. The finish is medium-length, warm, and ends with a final kiss of sweet toffee.

Bottom Line:

If you pay for a bottle of this truly special whiskey, you’re going to want to save it for a special occasion and sip it with friends and family.

Price: $199

Booker’s

ABV: 65.3%

The Story:

Booker’s isn’t crazy expensive. But it’s also not cheap. This unfiltered and uncut bourbon that’s part of Jim Beam’s Small Batch Collection can easily be found in the $100 range. It’s well worth the price — with its surprisingly smooth, very warming aspects.

Tasting Notes:

You might assume that whiskey with such a high proof would be harsh, but this one isn’t. The first aromas are those of charred oak, dried fruits, and cooking spices. The first sip yields sweet vanilla, cocoa, leather, and brown sugar flavors. It’s that vanilla that powers the mellow finish, with wisps of honey, to boot.

Bottom Line:

In this list of expensive bourbons, Booker’s is a true bargain at around $100 ($70 if you’re rally lucky). Buy a bottle or two and sip it to warm up as the fall nights grow ever colder. This one might even be affordable enough to mix a strong cocktail with.

Price: $100

Jefferson’s Ocean Aged Cask Strength

ABV: 56%

The Story:

When Jefferson’s Ocean Aged Bourbon first showed up on the market, the whole “aging barrels at sea”-thing seemed like a gimmick. Well, I’m here to say, “there’s something to it.” Especially at cask strength. Even without the fact that this whiskey was fully matured and then loaded on a ship to sail around the world, crossing the equator four times, and stopping on five different continents, it’s just a well-rounded whiskey.

Tasting Notes:

The first aromas you’ll notice are those of caramelized sugar, subtle spice, and ocean brine. The first sip delivers hints of salted caramel, sweet cream, toasted wood, brown sugar, and subtle toffee. The finish is long, warming, and ends with a pleasing hit of sea brine mingling with caramel.

Bottom Line:

It’s well suited for sipping neat or on the rocks while you overlook a large body of water… or even a backyard pond.

Price: $109.99

The New Orleans Saints went to Tampa Bay on Sunday night to face off with the division rival Bucs in what most expected to be a very competitive game between two of the all-time great quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Drew Brees. Instead, we were treated to one of the most one-sided games of the season, as Brees and company dominated from the opening kick en route to a 38-3 drubbing to take the lead in the NFC South.

Brees was terrific, going 26-of-32 for 222 yards and four touchdowns, picking apart the Bucs secondary with short and intermediate throws with nearly no resistance. Brady, however, had a disastrous night as he tossed three interceptions, going 22-of-38 through the air for 209 yards and no touchdowns. Late in the game, Tampa’s former starter, Jameis Winston, entered the game for the Saints final drive as Brees’ new backup got the chance to put the game on ice with one last drive and knees.

After the game, while Brees did his postgame interview with Michele Tafoya, Winston celebrated his new team’s win over his old team by breaking out his infamous “eat a W” move that he first broke out prior to a loss in New Orleans while with the Bucs.

It’s a pretty hilarious move by Winston, who was clearly thrilled to pick up such a dominant win over his former squad, as he turned the thing he’s been mocked for for years into a trolling celebration.

This week’s sixth episode of The Walking Dead: The World Beyond was marginally better than the last few episodes, but the series is still struggling, except as a very slow way to fill us in on the CRM and the whereabouts of Rick Grimes.

The main series, however, did add two new characters this week, Percy (Ted Sutherland) and Tony, played by Scott Adsit, who should be familiar to many of you from 30 Rock. He’s a great addition; unfortunately, I suspect he will not live long. Percy and Tony, as it turns out, are post-apocalyptic grifters. Percy cons Hope and Iris’ group into believing that two men stole his truck. Working vehicles are apparently in short supply a decade into the apocalypse.

Hope and Iris rally around Percy, and they plan a heist to retrieve the truck. However, when they find it, the passenger is dead, but there are no keys to be found. Iris (stupidly) follows Percy into a building to retrieve the keys, which is where Percy hoodwinks Iris into believing that he’s been shot by the third man. In the past, when Percy played this con on others, they ran away when they heard the gunshot, and Percy and his partner, Tony, absconded with all of their stuff. Iris, however, turns back to help Percy, which is when she spots him running away with their stuff with Tony driving the truck. Tony was only pretending to be dead. He was in on the scam the whole time.

In her efforts to retrieve their stuff back from Percy, Iris falls into a dumpster filled with zombies. When the lives of herself and those of her friends are endangered, however, Percy and Tony return and help them out. Percy reasons that, because Iris is the first person they ever conned who actually came back to help him, he owes it to Iris to help them out. They all become friends and bond over a shadow puppet show together.

For purposes of the slowly moving storyline, Percy and Tony also agree to drive the sixsome to their destination, so I suspect Hope, Iris, and the gang will make it to CRM in New York by the season finale and set up a season two that will be more CRM-focused. In the more immediate future, Tony asks Felix if the CRM symbol on his jacket will get them out of a jam when they try to steal gas from CRM to operate the truck. That is what’s in store next week.

In the meantime, there was another post-credits sequence, as The World Beyond starts to fill in some gaps. Recall that, two weeks ago, we learned that CRM is experimenting on people in order to find a cure. It’s just as sociopathic as when Troy was doing it on Fear the Walking Dead, but the doctors and lab coats give it the illusion of respectability here.

As we learned two weeks ago, they’re experimenting on “A’s”, and this week, we see Dr. Lyla Bellshaw continue to work on these experiments. From a photo on her desk, it also appears that she may be dating Leopold Bennett, the father of Hope and Iris.

However, we also learn that CRM is expecting the arrival of Hope and Iris — in fact, Elizabeth appeared to orchestrate their escape from Campus Colony before CRM slaughtered everyone, so Dr. Bellshaw is anticipating Hope and Iris’s arrival. Before they arrive, however, Dr. Bellshaw has to arrange something with Dr. Bennett. She either has to kill him in advance or inform him that Hope and Iris are going to become part of their experiments.

What’s unclear is why Elizabeth wanted Hope and Iris to travel across the country instead of just bringing them to CRM, but I suspect it’s because she’s testing them. Are they A’s (and will therefore be experimented on)? Or are they Bs (like Rick Grimes) and will thus become useful to the CRM community? I suspect that Dr. Bennett doesn’t want them to have anything to do with the CRM, which is why I think Elizabeth also sent them the messages they believed were from their father in the opening episode in order to manipulate them into traveling across the country.

This storyline is developing slowly, but it’s easily the best thing going for The World Beyond right now.