GoneTrending

With the COVID-19 pandemic upending her community, Brooklyn-based singer Tiffany Obi turned to healing those who had lost loved ones the way she knew best — through music.

Obi quickly ran into one glaring issue as she began performing solo at memorials. Many of the venues where she performed didn’t have the proper equipment for her to play a recorded song to accompany her singing. Often called on to perform the day before a service, Obi couldn’t find any pianists to play with her on such short notice.

As she looked at the empty piano at a recent performance, Obi’s had a revelation.

“Music just makes everything better,” Obi said. “If there was an app to bring musicians together on short notice, we could bring so much joy to the people at those memorials.”

Using the coding skills she gained at Pursuit — a rigorous, four-year intensive program that trains adults from underserved backgrounds and no prior experience in programming — Obi turned this market gap into the very first app she created.

She worked alongside four other Pursuit Fellows to build In Tune, an app that connects musicians in close proximity to foster opportunities for collaboration.

When she learned about and applied to Pursuit, Obi was eager to be a part of Pursuit’s vision to empower their Fellows to build successful careers in tech. Pursuit’s Fellows are representative of the community they want to build: 50% women, 70% Black or Latinx, 40% immigrant, 60% non-Bachelor’s degree holders, and more than 50% are public assistance recipients.

---

“Technology is the future and I knew Pursuit would give me access to the future I want to build for myself,” Obi said. “It’s obvious that minority students from diverse and nontraditional backgrounds don’t have access to all of the knowledge that’s out there and Pursuit is putting it right into our laps.”

Putting that knowledge into action, In Tune took the Audience Choice Award at Pursuit’s virtual Technical Showcase — a competition that gives Fellows the chance to demo their apps and get feedback from engineers in the industry.

Courtesy of Tiffany Obi

More than one hundred viewers tuned in and voted for their favorite app. Fellows also received feedback in real-time from a panel of judges.

“Winning the showcase was icing on the cake because we stayed true,” Obi said. “We knew our ‘why’ and believed in it. When we were all working together in the code and fixing it, sometimes 12 hours would go by before we even took a break.”

While none of those Fellows had any prior experience developing an app, the group received mentorship from Manish Singh, an iOS developer at Capital One, to help bring their vision to life in just six weeks.

Singh joined four other associates from Capital One to comprise roughly half of the mentors to Pursuit’s current class of Fellows. Capital One has partnered with Pursuit since 2014. This year, the company’s associates made up the entirety of the judging panel at the Technical Showcase.

Mentors from Capital One like Singh or Adrian Bolinger, a software engineer who has volunteered with Pursuit, are eager to contribute to the organization’s vision to create a thriving and inclusive tech industry.

“Capital One is doing something that is going to have a long lasting impact — it’s not going to be ephemeral or go away,” says Adrian Bolinger, a software engineer at Capital One who volunteers with Pursuit. “Pursuit Fellows walk away from this experience with something that nobody can ever take away from them.”

Obi saw this mentorship from Capital One engineers as an invaluable part of In Tune’s development.

“It meant everything to have Manish take a look at what we were building and show us the next steps he would take,” Obi said. “As I was coding I would talk him through every part of the process in the simplest of terms, as if I was explaining my steps to a rubber ducky.”

Courtesy of Manish Singh

Singh knew he was mentoring a truly special group when he first met them and learned of their diverse backgrounds.

While his formal mentorship to this group of Fellows concluded after the technical showcase, Alex Paul, lead iOS instructor at Pursuit, says that Singh is continuing to help Obi and her teammates launch the app publicly.

Paul sees mentorships from Capital One engineers as an instrumental resource to the success of Pursuit’s Fellows.

“Students from underrepresented backgrounds often don’t always have a sibling or friend that studied coding and can teach them, especially if they’re the first one to go to college in their family,” Paul said.

In addition to helping launch careers in tech, Paul says that mentors from Capital One will be pivotal in helping Fellows advance their careers.

“What happens now is that people like Tiffany will give back to Fellows,” Paul said. “Pursuit is founded on this cycle of giving.”

Obi says she is committed to ensuring that future Fellows benefit from the same mentorship she did.

“It means everything to be a part of the set of people that are breaking down barriers in tech,” Obi said. “I want to be a leader for future generations who may want to follow in my footsteps. Even now, I sometimes sit my nephew next to me while I code so that when he’s introduced to it down the road he can fly through the process.”

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather has become a beloved voice of reason, knowledge, and experience for many Americans on social media the past few years. At 88, Rather has seen more than most of us, and as a journalist, he’s had a front row seat as modern history has played out. He combines that lifetime of experience and perspective with an eloquence that hearkens to a time when eloquence mattered, he called us to our common American ideals with his book “What Unites Us,” and he comforts many of is with his repeated message to stay “steady” through the turmoil the U.S. has been experiencing.

All of that is to say, when Dan Rather sounds the alarm, you know we’ve reached a critical historical moment.

Yesterday, President Trump again refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election when directly asked if he would—yet another democratic norm being toppled. Afterward, Rather posted the following words of wisdom—and warning—to his nearly three million Facebook fans:

---

“There is no more time for silence. There is no more time for choosing party over country. There is no more time for weighing the lesser of two evils. All women and men of conscience must speak or they are complicit in America lurching towards a dangerous cliff of autocracy and chaos.

This is a moment of reckoning unlike any I have seen in my lifetime. I have seen this country in deep peril, as the hungry begged for sustenance during the Great Depression, as the Nazis marched across Europe and the Japanese across Asia, as missiles were moved into Cuba, as our political leaders were murdered, as a president ran a criminal conspiracy from the Oval Office, as planes were hijacked into skyscrapers. All of these were scary times, but through it all I never worried about a president actively undermining American democracy and inciting violence to do so – even Nixon, for all of his criminal activity.

What Donald Trump said today are the words of a dictator. To telegraph that he would consider becoming the first president in American history not to accept the peaceful transfer of power is not a throw-away line. It’s not a joke. He doesn’t joke. And it is not prospective. The words are already seeding a threat of violence and illegitimacy into our electoral process.

I suspect he is doing this because he feels he needs to. It is the same reason he sought dirt on Joe Biden, because he is deeply afraid of losing. Losing an election could mean losing in a court of law. It could mean prison time and ruin. But I suspect Trump’s motives are more instinctual. He needs to hold on to power for the sake of power. He cannot lose, even if he has to cheat to win. Even if he has to blow up American democracy. He considers little if any about 200,000 plus deaths from COVID. Why would he care about our Constitution or Bill of Rights?

There is no sugarcoating the dangers and darkness we live in. But I remain heartened that the majority of Americans do not want this. Trump is in danger of losing states that he should be winning handily. Yes, his base is energized and numerous. But so is the opposition. I have seen opposition parties in foreign countries channel the morality of their causes to bring great change. And most of those opposition movements didn’t have the strength, power, and resources of those who stand against Donald Trump.

Donald Trump has himself defined the stakes of the election. This is a battle for American democracy as we’ve known it. We are well past warning shots. Allies across the political spectrum are ringing alarm bells. Right now, all those seeking to defeat Donald Trump know winning a close election may not be enough. The size of a victory will likely matter. Failing that, what happens? I don’t know. But I would say we all should try to remain steady. Try to conserve our energy for the battles ahead. Be committed to your community, your country, and your conscience. If enough Americans of decency and courage come together, the future of this nation can be better, fairer, and more just.”

Thank you, sir, for reminding us of the true American values that should always be kept front and center, and for keeping us from slipping into despair over what we see happening to our democracy and over how many people seem blind to the reality right in front of them. You are truly a national treasure, Mr. Rather.

Earlier this week, it looked like Daniel Lopatin was teasing something called Magic OPN. Well, that was just about right: Today, Oneohtrix Point Never has announced a new album, Magic Oneohtrix Point Never. To preview the record, Lopatin has shared a “Drive Time Suite,” which consists of the album’s first three tracks: “Cross Talk I,” “Auto & Allo,” and the Caroline Polachek-featuring “Long Road Home.”

Press materials note the album name (and therefore Lopatin’s own performing name) comes from “a misheard play on words of Boston’s Magic 106.7.” The album itself is described:

“[The album is] a nostalgic and self-referential career-defining body of work, collaging maximalist baroque-pop within atmospheric glitter. […] Lopatin turns the dial towards his own inner frequencies, drawing from the origins of OPN as a means to discover a new found sense of levity and spirit during tumultuous times. The structure of Magic Oneohtrix Point Never ‘mOPN’ itself loosely summons the broadcasting logic of radio dayparts, starting in the morning and ending overnight, latticed together with kaleidoscopic, twitchy transformations of sound between the dials.”

Listen to the new songs above and find the Magic Oneohtrix Point Never art and tracklist below.

1. “Cross Talk I”
2. “Auto & Allo”
3. “Long Road Home”
4. “Cross Talk II”
5. “I Don’t Love Me Anymore”
6. “Bow Ecco”
7. “The Whether Channel”
8. “No Nightmares”
9. “Cross Talk III”
10. “Tales From the Trash Stratum”
11. “Answering Machine”
12. “Imago”
13. “Cross Talk IV / Radio Lonelys”
14. “Lost But Never Alone”
15. “Shifting”
16. “Wave Idea”
17. “Nothing’s Special”

Magic Oneohtrix Point Never is out 10/30 via Warp. Pre-order it here.

It’s been nearly two years since Kurt Vile released his eighth studio album Bottle It In and the singer is just about ready to share a handful of new songs. On Thursday, Vile announced the upcoming EP, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV, consisting of two covers, two original tracks, and a very special duet with late singer John Prine.

Prine recently passed away in early April due to complications after contracting COVID-19. Prior to falling ill, Prine and Vile were introduced by a good friend at Nashville studio The Butcher Shoppe. After hitting it of, the two jumped into the recording booth to track a swooning duet of Prine’s 1979 song “How Lucky,” which is featured on Vile’s upcoming EP.

In a statement alongside the EP announcement, Vile praised his Prine collaboration as “the single most special musical moment” of his life:

“The truth is John was my hero for a long time when he came into The Butcher Shoppe to recut one of his deepest classics with me. And, man, I was floating and flying and I couldn’t hear anything he told me while he was there till after he was gone for the night. A couple nights later we were playing ‘How Lucky’ together again; this time onstage at the Grand Ole Opry on New Year’s Eve at the turn of 2020. Nothing like seeing John and his band of musical brothers and family and friends playing into the new decade in front of an adoring audience on that stage in Nashville, TN… and, yup, that’s just how lucky we all got that night.”

Listen to “How Lucky” with Prine above and find Vile’s Speed, Sound, Lonely KV EP art and tracklist below.

1. “Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness”
2. “Gone Girl”
3. “Dandelions”
4. “How Lucky” Feat. John Prine
5. “Pearls”

Speed, Sound, Lonely KV is out 10/2 via Matador. Pre-order it here.

Some male celebrities become visibly awkward when asked about being an Internet Boyfriend (Ryan Gosling is a prime example of this), but not Nicholas Braun. He’s embraced his status as Twitter’s favorite tall, skinny white guy (Jonah from Veep is ranked #34,846 between me and the It Follows dude), and even encourages it.

“There’s been a bunch of people saying they want me to hit them with my car like in a sexy way or, like, stomp on their neck with my Crocs or slap them in the face,” the Emmy-nominated Succession star said in a video posted to his Instagram. “These kind of violent, sexy type things, but the car thing is really concerning, and I just wanted to say, I’m down, like, let’s figure it out ’cause I want to help.” I’m listening…

“For me, the only thing is just like I don’t want the car to get damaged that much and I don’t want a ton of blood on the car and things like that. If we can find a way to do it where you can just pop off the hood like really lightly and fly through the air and get all the stuff you need out of it and land not too badly… I’m just thinking about hospital bills and all that stuff, and I just don’t want to get into insurance problems. But whatever you need, I’m here to help.”

Much like ATN News, Cousin Greg is:

Getting hit by Braun’s car is child’s play, though. Cousin Greg, I want you to crumple me like a piece of paper into a ball and throw me in the trash and bring me out to the dumpster minutes before the garbage truck comes by, and then I’m brought to the dump and eventually end up on Trash Island where I decompose. That’s the “sexy way.”

On her standout Griselda Records debut The Liz, Buffalo, New York rapper Armani Caesar strikes a keen balance between the group’s usual gritty posture and her own, sex-positive style of girl-power rap. In the video for her new single from the album “Palm Angels,” she visualizes that balance with a husky-voiced narrative that juggles crime and romance with sensual imagery to match. Scenes in the video alternate from Armani donning a ski mask and flashing money with her paramour and the rapper flaunting her designer lingerie in an ode to classic rap vixens past.

Armani broke down the dichotomy of her half-rugged, half-romantic rap style in an interview with Uproxx, explaining: “I wanted it to be like the ideal female rapper that you can get everything from because I don’t feel like any one female is one thing. I feel like you do have females that are very brash and bossed up, and sometimes they on their City Girl shit, sometimes they on their backpack shit. They want to be the one with the power, however, they want to give it up, but I just felt like I’m a one-stop-shop.”

The Liz is out now on Griselda Records.

Watch Armani Caesar’s “Palm Angels” video above.

Goodfellas is maybe the ultimate “drop everything and watch” movie. So many times I’ve come across it on cable, intending to catch only a few minutes between commercials for something else, only to wind up fully engrossed hours later, in a movie I’ve already seen more times than I can count.

Goodfellas wasn’t sold or structured as a comedy, per se, but it seems to be every comedian’s favorite movie, and for good reason. Each watch seems to deepen my appreciation, and Lebowski-like, it gets funnier every time. At this point it’s almost more like a classic album than a movie, a series of irresistible melodies and favorite bits that change a little with each subsequent viewing. Even within individual scenes I find new characters and reactions to enjoy.

Goodfellas turns 30 this month, and it continues to age like a fine wine. For its anniversary, in lieu of another thinkpiece or oral history, I thought we’d treat it more like an album, and rank it scene by scene.

15. Helicopters Following Henry / Lois And Her Goddamned Hat

I put this scene at the bottom not because it’s the worst — in fact it’s one of the greatest portrayals of cocaine paranoia in all of cinema — but because of my sheer hatred for Lois and her goddamned hat. Lois, if you’ll remember, is the Hills’ babysitter, who Henry has roped into the drug trade. She borrows babies to pose as a young mother on flights to ferry cocaine to Henry’s partners.

The final scene before Henry gets pinched sees him trying to simultaneously pick up his brother from the hospital, cook up a nice ziti with meat gravy for his brother’s dinner that night, offload some stolen guns, cut the package of cocaine at the house of Sandy (Henry mistress 2A-1, played by Debi Mazar), before taping all the drugs to Lois and getting her on a smuggling flight, all while Henry is pretty sure he has helicopters tracing his every move.

The whole thing is a perfect depiction of the kind of over-ambitious multitasking one might attempt in the midst of a cocaine binge. It’s so effectively communicated that it remains weirdly relatable even if you don’t do cocaine, have mistresses, or break the law. Sometimes we just try to do too much, you know? Henry’s day of helicopters, cocaine, guns, mistresses, mules, and Sunday Gravy is just the logical extension of that. (Fun fact: the doctor who tries to get Henry to take it easy is Isiah Whitlock Jr., who would go on to play Senator Clay Davis on The Wire. Sheeeeeeeeit.).

And then there’s Lois (played by Welker White, who returned as Mrs. Hoffa in The Irishman).

In a movie of nuanced, fully fleshed out characters, Scorsese and Pileggi’s decision to make Lois the Babysitter, of all people, an absolute unmitigated pill, is a perfect contrast. On this night, she flat out refuses to go anywhere unless Henry drives her to Far Rockaway to get her lucky hat. “It’s my lucky hat. I don’t fly without it.”

Is it even possible to hate a person more than I hate Lois in that moment? I hate her so much that every time I watch Goodfellas, I forget that Henry didn’t actually get busted because of the hat. He never even got out of the driveway. That’s how powerful Goodfellas is: even after two hours of watching Henry Hill make terrible decisions, Scorsese so effectively puts me in the mind of his protagonist that for a second I can pin all his misfortune on one bratty babysitter. Screw your hat, Lois, you’re ruining everything.

14. Karen Realizes She’s Going To Get Whacked

The beauty of Goodfellas is that whereas the Godfather gave us the mafia from the perspective of its royalty (“real greezeball shit,” as Henry Hill might say), Goodfellas is about your average wiseguys. Its protagonists are guys whose greatest ambition in life is that maybe one day someone in their crew might become a made guy. In that context, the way Henry begins fearing he might get whacked is suitably anti-cinematic (“If you’re part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they’re going to kill you. Doesn’t happen that way. There weren’t any arguments or curses like in the movies. See, your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends…“).

Of course, ambiguity is much scarier than open antagonism. An authoritarian state doesn’t keep you in line with tons of draconian rules, it keeps you in line with an absence of them, ambiguity mixed with the knowledge that crossing even an unspoken line can come with the ultimate consequence. We imagine that it’s the rigidness that’s scary, but really it’s the arbitrariness and caprice.

So it is that in one of Goodfellas‘ final scenes, Henry is convinced that he and Karen are marked for death, while Karen, thinking maybe he’s just being paranoid and maybe in a little bit of denial wanting to believe that they can keep their comfortable lives, goes to meet Jimmy. The scene that follows, in true Goodfellas fashion, is both deeply unsettling and subtly hilarious. Deniro’s Jimmy Conway coldly plans to have one of his oldest friends murdered, and does so in the most low-rent, Wile E. Coyote-ass way possible, trying to lure her into an alley with the promise of Dior dresses.

“Hey, Karen, my friend has some brand new Dior dresses for you. They’re over there. No, over there. A little further. There, keep going. Keep going, they’re right past the plastic sheeting, in that abandoned storefront, right next to the big spraypainted ‘X’…”

13. The Wave Of Whackings Set To Eric Clapton

Scorsese is a master at removing the sheen of glamour from the mafia. Why does Jimmy have to kill basically the entire gang from the Lufthansa heist (the most successful score in history)? Partly because some of the gang is kind of annoying (especially Morrie, a classic noodge), but mostly because Jimmy is just such a tightass that he can’t bear to share the loot. So much mayhem from such mundane motives. And again, rather than a series of cinematic murders, Scorsese explains this with a montage of stinking corpses at the moment of their unglamorous discovery.

12. The Copa, Part 2: Sammy Davis Jr.

This scene is the button to an earlier scene, where Joe Pesci’s Tommy Devito is telling Henry that he can’t believe “a Jew broad” is “racist against Italians.” “You believe that? In this day and age?”

Then, later at the Copa, Tommy is so insecure that he can’t let it go when his date says she can understand how a white girl might fall for Sammy Davis Jr. “Oh, so you condone that stuff? I just wanna make sure I don’t wind up kissin’ Nat King Cole over here.”

The best filmmakers can construct brilliant scenes using only dumb and dull characters, and this is an absolute masterpiece of the genre (“He does these impressions? I’d swear you’d think it was the real people!”). Meanwhile, the whole thing takes place alongside human sight gag Frank Carbone (Frank Sivero). The “Nat King Cole” line doesn’t seem to be in any of the scripts, leading me to believe Pesci improvised it or someone suggested it on set. Pesci won an Oscar for Goodfellas, but he should probably have gotten ten of them for the sheer volume of enjoyment I’ve gotten out of this performance.

Fun Fact: In 2014, Frank Sivero sued The Simpsons for $250 million, arguing that they’d stolen his likeness for their character of Louie the mobster.

In his latest lawsuit, Sivero alleges that in 1989, he was living in an apartment complex in Sherman Oaks, California. He says that writers of The Simpsons were literally living next door to him in that same complex.

“They knew he was developing the character he was to play in the movie Goodfellas,” states the lawsuit. “In fact, they were aware the entire character of ‘Frankie Carbone’ was created and developed by Sivero, who based this character on his own personality.”

What, you make a mobster character and you don’t even let your neighbor get a taste? I’m just tryin’ to wet my beak a little here. (Also, Frank Sivero’s Instagram account is truly one of a kind.)

11. “What Kind Of People Act Like This?”

Italian-Americans and American Jews always seem to make such ideal literary foils, both mirroring each other’s stereotypes and acting as complementary opposites. In the sequence following Henry and Karen’s marriage, it’s hard to say what’s funnier, Karen trying to come to terms with Henry’s family or Henry trying to live with Karen’s. It’s a sequence that begins with Karen trying to keep track of all the Peters, Pauls, and Maries at their wedding, continuing through Karen’s horror at their nail salon gossip (the Italian women mistaking jealous rages for love is a consistent sub-motif in Goodfellas), culminating in Henry getting an earful from Karen’s overbearing mother (Suzanne Shepherd, who went on to play Carmella’s overbearing mother in The Sopranos).

“The man hasn’t been able to digest a decent meal in six weeks!”

10. Roughing Up The Mailman

Young Henry’s parents are so angry about his report card that he might not be able to make deliveries for the gang anymore. Solution? Shove the mailman into a pizza oven and threaten his life if he ever brings another report card to Henry’s house. Bada bing, bada boom, problem solved. (Again, one of the things that makes Goodfellas great is that the characters aren’t that smart).

My second favorite sight gag in Goodfellas behind Frank Carbone’s eyebrows is Tuddy and his short little arms. (Fun Fact: Frank DiLeo, who played Tuddy Cicero, was a famous music executive who at one point was Michael Jackson’s manager).

9. GET YOUR OWN GODDAMN MAN

Lorraine Bracco’s depiction of Karen Hill is such an operatic performance, not just in terms of rage and broad emotion, but for sheer vocal output. Johnny Rotten famously said that his stage persona with the Sex Pistols had been inspired by Sir Laurence Olivier as Richard III, and I don’t know if Lorraine Bracco’s performance in Goodfellas has ever inspired a punk band but her booming chest voice cuts through you as good as any Minor Threat song. She channels that shriek from the ground up through her diaphragm and vomits it into the stratosphere. Death metal singers can only dream of channeling Lorraine Bracco letting loose into an apartment intercom.

YOU HAVE A HOO-AH! LIVING IN YOAH BUILDING! JANICE! ROSSI! TWO R! HE’S MYYYY HUSBAND! GET YOUR OWWWWN GODDAMN MAN!

An absolute banshee from hell with a voice like a buzzsaw. Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas sounds like she has a Les Paul with a Marshall stack plugged into her larynx. I stand in awe of it.

8. Morrie’s Wigs

There’s so much backstory to Morrie’s wigs ad that I can barely do it justice in the space I have here. But suffice it to say, Morrie Kessler was based on Marty Krugman, a bookie who also sold wigs. The commercial itself was inspired by an ad for a window company called Aalco that played on Queen’s public access TV station.

One night, according to Joe Reidy, the first assistant director on Goodfellas, Scorsese saw a crude TV commercial for a windows company called Aalco, and wanted it to look exactly like that. He had his people track down the company’s boss, a man named Stephen Pacca who, they discovered, was also the guy on screen, selling his own product. They called him in for a meeting in view of having him consult on the Morrie ad, then asked him to make it himself, just as he did his windows ad. Scorsese left him to it.

The actor who played Morrie, meanwhile, Chuck Low, who is perhaps the single most eccentric and memorable minor character in the entire movie, was at one point Robert Deniro’s real estate consultant and landlord. It just goes to show: if you want your movie to have memorable characters, cast memorable characters.

7. The Pistol Whipping / “What Do You Want, F*cko?”

In a lesser movie, Karen would be a sidepiece, a footnote to the Henry character, but Goodfellas explores her psyche in nearly as much detail and nuance as it does Henry’s. Meanwhile, the scene where Henry comes after Karen’s rapey spoiled dork of a neighbor is a perfect illustration of the way Goodfellas manages to be simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.

In a weird way, I find this to be one of the funniest scenes in the movie. It’s a perfect bit from beginning to end, from the neighbor’s attempt at a blasé kiss-off (“What do you want, f*cko?” — you could make a drinking game out of people saying “f*cko” in Goodfellas) to the sheer number of times Henry pistol whips him to Karen’s weird arousal at the end. It gets a little funnier every time Henry hits the guy in the face with the pistol where the excessiveness itself is the joke, sort of like the boardroom scene in Robocop. The repetition also allows us to savor the horrified looks on the guy’s friends’ faces in the background.

This scene is essentially the place where two groups of similar frat bro-type dudes from different social classes collide, where leather blazer meets yellow Members Only jacket, if you will. Though it always bothered me that Henry doesn’t take his jacket off before beating the guy. You don’t want your arms constrained like that during a beat down, come on!

6. The Prison Feast

As an experienced home cook I would strenuously suggest that slicing your garlic paper thin so that it liquifies in a little oil is unnecessarily labor-intensive prep work with very little upside. Just smash the garlic and cook it gently at low heat. Or, use a little more olive oil, leave the garlic whole, sautee it on low for 10-15 minutes and then smash it with the back of a spoon once it’s soft. I digress, but the point is, anyone who has seen this movie remembers this scene and anyone who loves it has probably attempted some version of this meal themselves.

The beauty of this scene mostly speaks for itself. But in 30 years of rewatching this over and over, I think my current favorite part of it is Frank Pellegrino’s (as Johnny Dio) line read of “Oh, medium rare, an aristocrat.”

Such a Bugs Bunny-ass line read. It gets me every time.

5. The Copa, Part One / “You Don’t Seem Like You’re In Construction”

I’m fairly certain I don’t need to write another love letter to one of the most famous tracking shots in movie history. Suffice it to say, it’s very good. There’s so much nostalgia for a more face-to-face way of life wrapped up in just this one shot.

4. “F*ck You, Pay Me.”

Sonny Bunz (played by Tony Darrow), the bumbling owner of the Bamboo Lounge, is probably my second favorite odd side character in Goodfellas behind Morrie. His feud with Tommy allows Paulie a piece of his restaurant (a terrible mistake and an entirely unforced error), leading to Goodfellas’ classic depiction of a break-out scheme — in which the mob comes in, runs up debts on the restaurant’s credit until it runs out and then burns the place down (which, incidentally, is more or less how private equity works).

This all culminates in one of the great monologues of the film, as Henry and Tommy sit outside the smoking restaurant, as Tommy tries to convince Henry to go on a double date with him. “Henry, do you believe this? A Jew broad, in this day and age, prejudiced against Italians.”

3. The Bamboo Lounge Introduction Montage / Funny Like A Clown

The “funny like a clown” scene tends to suck up a lot of oxygen in any discussion of Goodfellas, and for good reason. Pesci, not strictly “improvising,” though it wasn’t in the script, mostly came up with the bit based on something that actually happened to him. The range of emotion he goes through — not to mention his slapstick mannerisms throughout, from waving the gun around to diving at Henry afterward like a psychotic little doggy — is one of the most physically adroit displays of acting ever committed to film. It’s like Meryl Streep meets Buster Keaton. Again, Pesci deserves ten Oscars for this performance.

That said, the entire introduction montage that precedes it is arguably just as funny. That’s another, shorter tracking shot that introduces us to:

Jimmy, Tommy, and Me
Anthony Stabile
Franky Carbone
Moe Black’s Brother, Fat Andy
His guys, Franky The Wop
Freddy No Nose
Pete The Killer (Sally Balls’ brother)
Nicky Eyes
Mikey Francese
Jimmy Two Times (he’s gonna go get the papers, get the papers)

Magnificent. Incidentally, “Big Pussy” from The Sopranos (Vincent Pastore) gets a brief, unnamed cameo as the guy holding the coatrack.

2. I Thought You Said I’m Alright Spider

Scorsese just couldn’t let it go without reminding us that for every Henry Hill, a kid who finds a fortune, friendship, and a second family in the mafia, there’s a Spider, a guy who gets his corpse thrown in a landfill for objecting too loudly to being shot in the foot. And once again, Joe Pesci plays the whole scene with a brilliant mix of insecurity and overcompensation.

When his joke about being “The Oklahoma Kid” falls flat (on account of shooting Spider in the foot) Tommy accuses Spider of milking his injury and being melodramatic. When Spider comes back and Tommy tries to bust his balls about his cast like it’s all a big joke (which, if Spider had gone along with it, would presumably have absolved Tommy of his shooting faux pas), Tommy bombs again. When Jimmy busts Tommy’s balls about it in turn (“come on, you gonna take that? what’s the world coming to!”), Tommy can’t handle the embarrassment and shoots Spider in the chest.

Aside from the general insecurity, there’s a failed comedian rage in Tommy, perhaps foreshadowing the entire Joker movie (which, if nothing else, was heavily influenced by Scorsese). Then the way Tommy tries to play it all off like it’s no big deal (“So what, I’ll dig the hole. You think I’ve never dug a hole before? I dug a million holes…”) is almost I Think You Should Leave-esque in its comedy of guy-refusing-to-admit-when-he’s-wrong. Like so many Goodfellas scenes, it works perfectly as a stand-alone sketch.

It was a brief role for Michael Imperioli, who would go onto become one of the best actors in The Sopranos, but even in a film full of Oscar-winning heavy hitters, “I thought you said I’m alright, Spider” stands out as one of the most memorable lines.

1. One Dog Goes This Way, The Other Dog Goes That Way

It’s probably not too controversial to choose the shine box, the dinner at Tommy’s, and the dog painting as the best scene of Goodfellas. It was, after all, the scene Scorsese chose to tease at the beginning of the movie. There’s a lot to love about it, from Pesci’s volcanic reaction to “you insulted ‘im a lil bit.” But for my money, Martin Scorsese’s mom (playing Tommy’s mom) steals the entire scene. It probably helps that the hair, the shirt, and the way that her love takes the form of forcefeeding people is uncannily reminiscent of my own grandmother.

In particular, when Tommy tells his cockamamie story about needing her kitchen knife to cut off the deer’s paw (“the hoof,” Jimmy helpfully corrects as Tommy fumbles for the word) and she recoils while making that “Ssssss” sound… It gives me goosebumps. It’s like I’m back in the car with my grandma, wordlessly criticizing my father’s driving. I’ve never loved a complete stranger the way I love Catherine Scorsese.

Meanwhile, the scene, which begins as a tense confrontation, turns into a sitcom without missing a beat. Tommy fumbling around for the word for hoof, Mama Devito’s joke that she says sounds better in Italian (“Shut up, you’re always talking?”), and finally the weird painting that looks like the guy in the trunk, is like a joke with an escalating series of tags, a moody bridge, and a final punchline that shatters the tension. And because it’s all in the context of a side journey while trying to get rid of a body (the body of a made man, who it turns out is still alive…), the whole dinner has the effect of a whispered joke you hear at a funeral. You know you shouldn’t laugh, and trying to stifle it makes it ten times funnier. God, I love it so much.

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

This year marked the 45th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen‘s iconic record Born To Run, which Uproxx’s Steven Hyden unequivocally named “one of the greatest rock albums ever made.” While the record came out nearly five decades ago, Springsteen is not retiring from music any time soon. The iconic rock star recently ushered in a new era of music by announcing his upcoming album Letter To You and now, the singer offers another poignant preview of the effort.

Reflecting on the deaths of his E Street Band members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, as well as former assistant Terry Magovern, Springsteen touched on the song’s meaning in a statement, saying:

“‘Ghosts’ is about the beauty and joy of being in a band, and the pain of losing one another to illness and time. ‘Ghosts’ tries to speak to the spirit of the music itself, something none of us owns but can only discover and share together. In the E Street Band, it resides in our collective soul, powered by the heart.”

While the song’s lyrics offer a mournful tribute to his close friends, the instrumentals call back to Springsteen’s classic rock anthems. “Ghosts” opens with room-filling snares before Springsteen’s textured vocals invite jangly guitars to color the track.

Listen to “Ghosts” above and check out which Springsteen song came in at No. 1 on Uproxx’s The Best Bruce Springsteen Songs, Ranked.

Letter To You is out 10/23 via Columbia. Pre-order it here.

Like Tom Cruise jumping off of a building, Florida news anchor Jamie Holmes threw caution to the wind on Thursday morning when he delivered a pun-filled report on the actor’s upcoming expedition to space. With cringe-worthy lines like “space is a risky business, but Space-X has made all the right moves,” and “I just hope the weather holds, and there are no days of thunder,” Holmes may have just reached the Valhalla of dad jokes with this one. The reactions from colleagues are also pretty great and varied from laughing with tears in their eyes to absolute disbelief at what they just witnessed.

You can see the full report below:

After a little bit of sleuthing, it appears that Holmes workshopped his Cruise puns on Twitter before taking them live. You almost have to admire the confidence it took to say, “Yes, these tweets are good enough for TV, ” and then executing. But would it have killed him to work in an Interview with the Vampire reference?

As for the status of Cruise’s upcoming film that he plans to shoot in actual space, Holmes is most likely referring to the recent, unconfirmed reports that Cruise and director Doug Liman have an October 2021 launch date set with Space X. According to Deadline, the Space Shuttle Almanac tweeted a photo of spacecraft set to launch in the next years, and it had an interesting addition:

Under the October 2021 part of the chart reads “SpaceX Crew Dragon,” with an image of a small space vehicle beside it. Next to the illustration are a list of three names: SpaceX Pilot Lopez Alegria, Tourist 1 Tom Cruise and Tourist 2 Doug Liman. The tourist flight also shows a vacant spot for a third visitor.

Again, this is an unconfirmed report and could just be a preliminary fight, not the actual start of production. As of now, there is still no official word on when Tom Cruise will be launched into orbit, but it’s only a matter of time.

(Via Jamie Holmes on Twitter)

Candace Parker was honored with her first career WNBA Defensive Player of the Year trophy this morning after leading the Los Angeles Sparks to the league’s third-ranked defense despite the depleted Sparks losing several key players from 2019.

Parker earned 16 of 47 possible media votes in a year that there was no clear front-runner. Alysha Clark of the Seattle Storm, the pesky perimeter anchor of the league’s best defense, finished in second place with 11 votes, while Connecticut Sun forward Alyssa Thomas finished third with 10 votes. No one else received more than four votes.

In her first year in the league back in 2008, Parker earned both the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards, an unprecedented achievement in basketball. She nabbed her second MVP trophy in 2013. But in a call with reporters on Thursday morning, Parker said the DPOY means more than any of those. Like so much of her career, Parker also attributed her success to the lessons she learned from the late, great Pat Summitt at Tennessee.

“This is going to go above MVPs and Rookie of the Year,” Parker said. “The first coach that really challenged me that I could be Defensive Player of the Year was Pat Summitt, and I can hear her line, ‘Offense sells tickets, defense wins games, rebounding wins championships.’”

Parker finished with by far the highest total rebounding rate of her career, and used that to limit opponents to one possession during a condensed WNBA season and allowed the Sparks to control tempo. That, in addition to her posting typically high steal and block numbers and turning Los Angeles into a great defense whenever she stepped on the floor, made her the league’s selection for DPOY even a decade-plus into her career.