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Five years ago, DC took one of their richest but most tainted characters — Supergirl, the source of a disastrous bomb from the less superhero movie-besotted year of 1984 — and successfully rebranded her as a popular CW show. Yet according to Deadline, when the show returns next year for its sixth season it will be its last hurrah.

Mind you, the last run of episodes aren’t even in the can yet. Supergirl’s sixth season is one of many shows to be impacted by the still rampaging pandemic, which has mostly shuttered scripted television and movies. Deadline’s source claims the show is scheduled to begin filming on September 28, in Vancouver, where infection rates are much lower than here. However, the deal over testing guidelines and safety conditions have yet to be finalized between local unions and the production studio.

Moreover, filming will have to start without its star, Melissa Benoist, who did double duties as superpowered Supergirl/Kara Zor-El and her human disguise, Kara Danvers, who like her cousin, Superman/Jor-El/Clark Kent, is a reporter. Due to scheduling conflicts, she will join production later in the year, which should prove to be another fun production challenge.

The reason for Supergirl’s cancellation is reportedly down to decreased ratings, although pandemic headaches probably haven’t made things any easier, as with a number of shows. At least the program will get a solid farewell, complete with a longer-than-usual season. So farewell to Kara, but you’ll see her later, at least in the funny pages.

(Via Deadline)

Atlanta hip-hop mainstays 2 Chainz and Big Boi are set to face off later this week, but rather than a rap battle or a Verzuz showcase, they’ll instead compete on an episode of Family Feud. 2 Chainz posted a set of photos from the set on his Instagram today, teasing the episode’s air date later this week: Thursday, September 24. The caption reads: “I just continue growing and growing! Kudzu Toni.” He also took the opportunity to plug his upcoming album, So Help Me God, due for release later that night.

While he hasn’t released any tracklist information for the album, he has shared a couple of singles with high-profile guest appearances: “Dead Man Walking” with Future, released at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and “Money Maker” with Lil Wayne, which Chainz later supported with an HBCU-hyping music video complete with marching bands and branded apparel. The album will also arrive just a few weeks after 2 Chainz’s 43rd birthday, for which Kanye West gifted him one of West’s strange, tank-like ATVs (what do you get for the man with a show called Most Expensivest, am I right?).

2 Chainz is also fresh off the release of his group T.R.U.’s debut album on Atlantic Records, while also working on ColleGrove 2, the followup to his successful 2016 joint album with Lil Wayne.

2 Chainz and Big Boi’s Family Feud faceoff airs Thursday at 8pm ET/PT 7pm CT on ABC.

Patrick Beverley was busy. He was busy back in July 2019, when he reportedly knocked on LeBron James’s door the night Kawhi Leonard’s trade to the Clippers was announced to deliver the not extremely sure in its own words promise, “It’s pretty much over for you guys now.”

He kept busy when the season got started, taunting fans at Oracle after the Clippers beat the Warriors in late October, telling Steph Curry, “You had the last five years, the next five years are mine.”

You could say that Beverley stayed busy all season, easily picking up where he left off when the Bubble got underway. He compared Nikola Jokic to Luka Doncic only in their propensity for “a lot of flailing” and shot down Michele Roberts, the executive director of the NBPA, in a players meeting during the game stoppages as she explained the potential financial ramifications of the pause. Beverley is a career talker, deft at flinging smirking barbs at anyone and everyone, but the talk was always best paired with basketball. This season, much of the talk came despite the Clippers not quite living up to lofty expectations.

The Clippers’ own loud, vaguely prophetic preseason trajectory mirrored Beverley’s. They’d made visible passes at Leonard, sending their people to sit in the stands in Toronto as part of a prolonged courting process that ultimately had Steve Ballmer crowing in victory during Leonard and Paul George’s first press conference in L.A. The team’s marketing machine quickly got to work, attempting to position the franchise as the blue collar alternative to the Lakers even as plans were unveiled for the team’s new $1 billion dollar arena in Inglewood.

In the fall, the team cut through the latent haze of its summer fireworks and started the slow climb to the prophesied top the same way any other club would have to, one game at a time. To its credit, the front office got out of its players’ way. The Clippers looked perfectly fine. Their schedule stacked them early against their Staples Center roommates, and two former champs in the Raptors and Warriors, they beat all three by double digits. But the losses that started to pepper their season, looking back, gave some clues as to what was coming. When Kawhi Leonard sat, they played like a barely above-.500 team, going 8-7 without him.

Leonard is a masterclass in basketball all by himself. Watching him play, there is a sense that he’s never quite in the game, its physicality and sharply tactile elements slipping around the hulk of him as he works lightly above it all, looming in another plane. He’s not an absent player — when Leonard dominates, the whole floor’s in his thrall — but to reach that higher, bullying cognitive state, his head has to be clear, while the engrossing repetitions necessary in contextualizing the court — calling plays, slowing things down, constant communication — is best left to somebody else.

In Toronto, Leonard had a floor savant in Kyle Lowry, someone whose future-sight of how things could unfold, in any dozen of possible scenarios, came just as lightly and by reflex. Lowry ground all possible barriers down so Leonard could make cutting through the paint, or finding a clear corner to fade from, look like water-walk. In San Antonio, buttressed between Tim Duncan’s leadership, an overall equilibrium that kept offense and defense forever flowing into each other, the playmaking of Tony Parker, and Manu Ginóbili’s sprawling, fearless range, Leonard was protected. With no pressure to lead, he was free to pop up, fadeaway, step quietly through all the space being created for him, and afforded endless lethal routes to the rim. In L.A., there was no such sage.

Without leadership, the Clippers are a collection of good, but easily stymied, players. Denver was able to adjust. Whether they needed the three games they took to do it or added two for dramatic effect will stay a club secret, but they clamped down on defense to frustrate, chase, and do whatever was needed to mar the Clippers’ favorite looks. Without an efficient leader to reorganize and redirect, Leonard, George, Lou Williams, and Montrezl Harrell tried in vain to go through through the walls the Nuggets were putting up.

There were plenty of other ways the Clippers lacking leadership cost them. The post-Game 7 blame shifts, while vague, named absent chemistry, fatigue, and a lack of understanding when it came down to, in Leonard’s words, the “exact spots we need to be,” but all these ephemeral excuses cut to a harder point: they had so much time to figure it out.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the starting five the club relied on in the postseason of Marcus Morris, Ivica Zubac, Beverley, George, Leonard played 298 possessions together in the regular season. The trio of Leonard, George and Williams together played 452. The team, as a whole, played 6,903. The Lakers, comparatively, ran their playoff lineup through 634 possessions, and that’s still second to the team’s regular season lineup that included Avery Bradley, who opted out of the restart. The Lakers also have a roster of largely new, occasionally discordant pieces, but they also have James, someone who not only excels at putting the onus on himself to close the gap between a freshly constructed team and its championship aspirations by fostering a very specific organizational culture, but who patently demands of teammates put up or shut up.

As much as the Clippers front office worked tirelessly to separate themselves from the purple and gold presence that haunted their home on alternating nights, it may have served them to study the devil they knew. In James’ sophomore year under the marquee lights of Showtime, the Lakers brought back only five players out of last year’s mainstays and a brand new coach. Add in a late acquisition of Dion Waiters, an even later sub of J.R. Smith, and Rondo’s initial absence from most of the restart, and the Clippers look like old friends by comparison.

Another team not all that concerned with how their fresh chemistry could be tested are the Heat, who entered the ECF with a 10-2 record. Their secret, forged from Pat Riley’s unflinching system and honed by the bold, crafty coaching of Erik Spoelstra is so loud it isn’t really one at all — they talk, all the time, they never stop. And to the verbal cues they touch, toss hand signals, all of it combining into a confidence that’s cyclonic, whipping around the court without leaving air for even a breath of doubt.

What the Clippers lacked was the road testing. The team’s leadership, seasoned as it was with Rivers knowing the ropes since 2013 and a tenured front office braintrust so intent on giving the team all the tools it needed to triumph in the postseason, saw the road of the regular season as a thing to get over instead of through. It was impossible to hand Leonard a team constructed for a championship and expect him to lead it while maintaining a strict (and, to be fair, necessary) schedule of load management — you can’t drive from the bench. They wanted him perfect for the playoffs, but the team suffered because in his first year as a true, singular leader, he couldn’t see what made it tick.

Even Denver, now the surprise out of the West, was a story as subtle as a mountain will sit stubbornly, forgettably, at the horizon, not showing its full scope until you yourself draw any closer. Nikola Jokic and Gary Harris were drafted in 2014, Mike Malone hired a year later, Jamal Murray drafted in 2016, Paul Millsap snagged as a free agent in 2017, all gradual changes working toward something bigger with Denver’s largely unchanged bench as a ballast.

This season, including the March-June hiatus, has been happening for nearly 12 months. A historic near-year of bought time to address what had loomed since the Clippers first handful of games. Whether Ballmer and Rivers were initially intent on laying tracing paper over Toronto’s blueprint, or tried to protect who they saw as their best chance to win, the team never stored up enough experience together to fuel them when it came time to close.

Chemistry comes from work, whether it be a collection of personalities coalescing after going through the wringer or a group that’s been blitzed and battle-tested, who’ve learned not just from wins but adjusted quickly after losses. It’s cited as quickly in the story of the underwhelming Clippers as it is in the narrative surrounding a team has that makes it all the way, but trace chemistry back to its origins on a team where it’s humming at a discernible volume and you’ll find a secure sense of trust. When a team’s winning, trust and how it manifests — passing, communication, the versatility to adapt in tight spots — can be something rolled easily into a category of intangibles, a permeating element that touches everything a team does well, not necessarily supported by any one stat but crucial to in-game execution. When trust wanes, as etherial as it can seem, all of those “intangibles” visibly suffer — players go ISO, chatter quiets, shooting cools, and team confidence wilts.

Rivers acknowledged the absence of trust on the floor in Game 7, saying postgame, “We start missing shots and you can see us trusting less and less and less.” Williams, too, lamented on this while looking back on the season as a whole, saying that “A lot of the issues we ran into, talent bailed us out. Chemistry didn’t.”

The Nuggets, on the other hand, have it in spades. They have learned from every game in the playoffs, proving a team not considered elite defenders could improve enough on that end of the floor to clamp down on the Clippers, relentlessly rattle their shot selection, and muck up any semblance of half court offensive cohesion. They hustled, going after loose balls where the Clippers wouldn’t, kicking the ball around to tire out a team already looking gassed. Successfully under the Clippers’ skin, Denver dismantled any confidence L.A. had left, picking passes from overhead like low-hanging fruit, slicing languid lanes to the basket, pulling up from practically anywhere they wanted. A team doesn’t come back 3-1 without an unwavering, self-generative wellspring of trust. The Nuggets did it twice.

The problem with treating chemistry as eventuality, like treating talent as a tangible reserve, crystallizes on a team like the Clippers, stacked so thoroughly with personalities that chemistry essentially inverts. When the majority of a roster sees themselves as team figurehead or embodiment — their concerns and problems on and off court the most pressing — there’s no collective understanding as to what the team even is, let alone aspires to be.

“You go from last year, we were the team that wasn’t expected to make the playoffs to going and being a championship-caliber team when you bring in two high-level guys, that’s an adjustment,” Williams said. He was right, but it was an adjustment nobody on the team ever bothered to make.

As a nebulous identity, the franchise became a useful vacuum in sucking up any blame being tidily brushed aside. George said in June the team expected to “come in and win it all,” there was no plan “to take a year to get used to each other.” After elimination, George shrugged, “This was not a championship or bust year for us.” He could be revisionist because there was hardly a team narrative to follow, everything up to then had been individual lines in a cast of leads imagining their own stories.

Even Rivers, his third trip back to this exact same place, could give no definitive answer to something that had been heralded as surefire suddenly stuttering out. Prior to Game 7, Rivers told his team to “play free,” a strange and tenuous notion for a group with title expectations that faced elimination. There was no form, no follow through, like any measure of heart shown was just going to weigh them down.

“I mean, listen, obviously I could have done something more,” Rivers said regretfully after the loss, and while the overwhelming response is to ask why he did not, the burden of blame, like the absent mantle of leadership, never rested squarely on Rivers. Having gotten through this prolonged season without ever coming together, there’s still no team to really isolate or analyze, only a sense of each player, “talent” as Williams called them, slowly backing away into their respective off seasons. Rivers can’t plan for what still doesn’t exist.

In a presser hosted by NBA Canada after the Nuggets series win, Murray was asked repeatedly for the secret behind how they’d made it happen. Murray, polite, credited his teammates and the identity they’ve built together over the years. But, with a pause at another question on his success, Murray dipped his head thoughtfully and delivered the only potential dig: “There’s a thing called mental work, too.” He talked about the ability to stay focused, clearing out what isn’t important to the game being played and zero in on the work that needs to be done. It is not an eventuality, but a directive to dig in and take responsibility, to create something lasting with the team around you.

Effort is what Murray was getting at, playing like it matters. In the last game the Clippers would play all season, that effort was clear, painful only to the Clippers. Denver never “played free,” but anchored by joy and tied with trust they ascended. Next season, the Clippers could stand to be boxed in by that kind of belief.

The epidemic of violence against Indigenous women in America is one of the country’s most disturbing trends. A major reason it persists is because it’s rarely discussed outside of the native community.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women under age 19.

Women who live on some reservations face rates of violence that are as much as ten times higher than the national average.

The problem stems from a lack of community resources, prejudice, poverty, and poor communication between Native communities and law enforcement.

Red dress display to honor missing and murdered Indigenous women.via Kerron L / Flickr

Many women disappear from remote reservations without a single law enforcement officer. “The resources are spread so thin, it allows people to fall through the cracks,” Billy J. Stratton, an expert in Native American studies at the University of Denver, told CNN.

But the problem goes much deeper than law enforcement.

“When you’re talking about a group of people who is among the lowest socioeconomic class in the US, they’re more susceptible to violence than others,” Stratton said.

“Poverty is the main driver; dispossession, lack of empowerment, isolation, and those other social problems I think flow from that,” he added.

Violence against Native people also gets very little attention from the mainstream media.

“I live on a reservation, it’s word of mouth. We can report [someone missing or dead] to the authorities,” Tillie Aldrich, an Omaha Tribe of Nebraska member, told Teen Vogue.

“If we have a non-Native [person] missing in a city 25 miles north of us, it’s all over the news, the newspapers, posters going up,” she continued. “If we have someone missing, one of our Native missing, they try to keep it quiet.”

The response to cases of violence against native American women is so poor that in 2016 there were 5,712 cases reported of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, but only 116 cases were logged by the Department of Justice database.

However, a new bill passed by Congress hopes to reverse this trend in violence and law enforcement inaction.

On Monday, the House of Representatives passed Savanna’s Act, which will go to the desk of President Trump for final approval.

The bill is named after Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, a member of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe from Fargo, North Dakota. In 2017, at the age of 22, while eight months pregnant her unborn child was cut out of her womb and she was murdered. The baby survived.

The bill requires federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies to update policies and protocols to address missing or murdered Native Americans.

It also requires the U.S. Department of Justice to develop new guidelines for response to missing or murdered Native people and provide database training to law enforcement agencies at all levels.

“Savanna’s Act addresses a tragic issue in Indian Country and helps establish better law enforcement practices to track, solve and prevent these crimes against Native Americans,” Senator John Hoeven, chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said in a statement.

“We appreciate our House colleagues for passing the bill today and sending it on to the president to become law,” the statement continues. “At the same time, we continue working to advance more legislation like this to strengthen public safety in tribal communities and ensure victims of crime receive support and justice.”

“Passage of Savanna’s Act brings us one step closer to ending this epidemic by upgrading critical data and improving communication among law enforcement,” Republican Representative from Montana Greg Gianforte said in a statement.

The bill is a positive first step toward combating the issue of missing and murdered Indiginous women, but much more will have to be done before the problem is solved.

“Stopping the #MMIW [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women] crisis will take years and maybe decades,” Sarah Deer, Muscogee, a professor at the University of Kansas, told Teen Vogue.

“It must be a multi-faceted movement led by family members of missing Indigenous women,” she added. “Those families are the experts on this crisis and should be the leaders of the movement.”

The slow road to psilocybin legalization continues. Yet another city has voted to decriminalize the possession of magic mushrooms as the Schedule 1 drug continues to be reevaluated for its significant medicinal benefits. The Ann Arbor City Council voted unanimously Monday night, September 21st, for a resolution that would designate entheogenic plants or plant compounds as the lowest law enforcement priority — freeing up anyone from arrest or investigation for planting, cultivating, purchasing, transporting, distributing, or using plants that fall under that category, which includes in addition to psilocybin: ayahuasca, ibogaine, mescaline, peyote, and other hallucinogenic plants that are still illegal on the state and federal level.

To be perfectly clear: magic mushrooms aren’t legal in Ann Arbor Michigan, they’re only effectively decriminalized in terms of law enforcement priority. So before you get all cavalier with your magic mushroom use, pump those brakes a bit. According to local Ann Arbor news site MLive, these new rules also apply to people already being prosecuted for entheogenic plant use, as the City Council has called upon the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s office to cease prosecution of such individuals.

Ann Arbor joins Denver, Colorado, Santa Cruz, and Oakland as one of four cities to permit the use and possession of psilocybin in some form, which is a huge win for the people who have come to rely on psilocybin for PTSD, depression, addiction, and other psychological distresses. As well as mushroom microdose aficionados everywhere.

It’s been more than eight months since the deadly helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven other people. Their deaths hit the NBA in a way we’ve never seen before, prompting an outpouring of grief from friends, family, teammates, fans, and media alike as we all tried to make sense of an unthinkable tragedy.

Unfortunately, there were those who attempted to use the opportunity to capitalize on that tragedy. Reports eventually emerged that some of the sheriffs involved had taken and shared graphic photographs of the scene, but Sheriff Alex Villanueva has since told reporters that they had deleted the pictures of their own accord.

But Vanessa Bryant believes that the photos in question might still exist and that they could find their way into circulation, which is why she’s filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department seeking damages.

Via ESPN:

The suit seeks damages for negligence, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

***

Vanessa Bryant’s lawsuit alleges the sheriff’s actions constituted a “cover-up” of the misconduct. The suit claims the photos could still exist.

“Mrs. Bryant feels ill at the thought of strangers gawking at images of her deceased husband and child and she lives in fear that she or her children will one day confront horrific images of their loved ones online,” the lawsuit states.

Bryant has also filed a suit against the helicopter’s pilot, claiming that he was negligent in choosing to fly in foggy conditions. In another strange twist to this story, it apparently isn’t illegal for first responders to take photos of he deceased at the scene of an accident, though a new piece of legislation awaiting signature by Gov. Gavin Newsom would make it a misdemeanor. The county sheriff’s own internal policy forbids taking and sharing pictures at crime scenes, though it doesn’t apply to accidents.

(ESPN)

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

The Playbook (Netflix docuseries) — The first season of this docuseries digs into the journeys taken by legendary coaches on their roads to long-standing success in sports and in life. From Los Angeles Clippers’ Doc Rivers to two-time FIFA World Cup-winning coach Jill Ellis, Premier League’s José Mourinho, Serena Williams’ famed tennis coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, and hall of fame basketball player and coach Dawn Staley, the featured coaches have been through it all. Emotional and in-depth interviews will dig into pivotal points in each legend’s career while attempting to unfurl lessons of their ultimate coaching (and playing) philosophies.

Kal Penn Approves This Message (Freeform, 10:30pm EST) — Actor turned Obama administration member turned actor Kal Penn (House, the Harold and Kumar trilogy) is here to celebrate the changes that young voters can make. This promises to be a non-partisan approach with comedic sketches and in-depth interviews that will help Gen Z make their voices more impactful than they already are.

Dead Pixels (CW, 8:00pm EST) — Three friends dig into Kingdom Scrolls in a “Hive-Mother” episode that promises a darkly humorous edge.

Tell Me A Story (CW, 9:00pm EST) — Katrina’s men turn against her in order to stop her from saving Gabe, while Nick worries about his relationship.

Transplant (NBC, 10:00pm EST) — Bash is attempting to gain a work-life balance when his friend from Syria seeks help in treating patients.

Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Desus and Mero

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Ken Jeong, Alicia Keys

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon — Keira Knightley, Chelsea Clinton, Tame Impal

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Keith Urban, Rachel Dratch

Jimmy Kimmel Live — Tenacious D

Every day, I wake up feeling like Peeta at the end of “The Hunger Games” series asking Katniss what’s real and what’s not real.

The first thing I do is run through a series of thoughts to orient myself to this bizarre reality we’re currently in: “What day is it today? Umm…Tuesday, I think. Who is president of the United States? Donald Trump. Wait, is that right? That can’t be right….No, yes, that’s right. Wow. Are we still in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed 200,000+ Americans in six months? Yes. Are people still acting like it’s a hoax? Apparently so. Is there still a ridiculous number of people who believe that an elite cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is secretly running the world and trafficking children to harvest fear hormones from their blood, and that Donald Trump is going to save us all from it? Yup.”

Then I lie there in dumbfounded disbelief before semi-rallying: “Okay, here we go.”

It’s not really okay, though. How any of us are expected to be able to function in this reality is beyond me. When we’ve gone beyond merely having different perspectives on issues and instead are living in completely different versions of reality, I can’t figure out how to feel okay. Or, to be more accurate, when some of us are living in objective reality and a not-insignificant-enough number of us are living in a completely made-up land of alternative facts and perpetual gaslighting, it’s hard not to feel like I’m the one losing my grip.

There’s some comfort in knowing I’m not alone in this. It’s always refreshing to hear from fellow citizens who feel like someone keeps slipping them crazy pills, which is why writer Chuck Wendig’s recent Twitter thread about people ignoring the toilet on fire in the living room resonated with me. Wendig has a way with words, and seeing him describe the surreal experience of life at this moment—and that it’s totally normal to feel totally not normal about it—was immensely satisfying.

Wendig wrote:

“It’s okay that you’re not okay. That’s not your brain misfiring. Your response is that you’re not okay because things are very much not okay. I’m not okay. You’re not okay. We aren’t okay together and that’s perfectly acceptable, normal, and expected.

Politics, Zoom school, people not wearing masks, gender reveal forest fires, and other assorted verses to We Didn’t Start The Fire — JFC, shit is jaw-dropping right now. Reality is walking a tightrope between Absurdist Shitshow and Active Malevolence so, yeah, you aren’t okay.

I went to an ice cream parlor and everyone had masks on (no dicknoses, even) and that was great.

I went to a doctor’s office and the office manager of that doctor’s office did NOT have a mask on and what the fuck is that shit.

And I look outside and I see people acting like there’s no pandemic and then online there are people who act like the president is doing a great job and Joe Biden (!) is a socialist (!?) and climate change is a liberal bogeyman and you start to feel like reality is unraveling.

And you start to feel like YOU’RE the cuckoo bananapants person, like there’s a toilet on fire in the middle of the living room and nobody else in your family will acknowledge it. “Nobody else sees the fire toilet?” “The fire toilet is antifa propaganda. Eat your Spaghettios.”

And all that makes you feel like you’re the fucked up one, like it’s not okay that you’re not okay. But it is okay. You’re not okay and that’s your reaction to a very not okay world. There is a toilet on fire in the living room. I see it too.

I’ve no answers how to make it okay. (Except, obviously, vote, give money, raise a ruckus.) Try to secure some peace and pleasure for yourself away from this Hell Realm. I walk and listen to birds and high-five pine trees and it feels a little better. Not okay, but closer to it. (And I note that even going outside is a privilege right now, with many places experiencing ash and smoke or bad weather. I only mean to suggest you put down the phone and try to steal some moments of peace away from the maw of the maelstrom.)

I don’t know that we’re going to be okay. Individually or collectively. But we can try despite everything to care about ourselves and each other through whatever comes and that can be our true north, a star to light the dark. It’s okay that you’re not okay. The toilet is on fire. I see it too. And I’m not okay either.

p.s. jfc wear a mask”

Ah, thank you Chuck Wendig for putting the feelings of so many of us into words. We’re not okay, and that is okay. If we were okay through all of this, it would mean that we’re really not okay.

And since there’s no season finale preview yet for this weird reality show we’re living in, we have to learn to be okay with not being okay. That’s okay, even though it’s not. That’s where we’re at. That’s reality at the moment.

The toilet is on fire. At least we’re not the only one who can see it.

Berwyn — a Trinidad-born UK rapper, songwriter, and producer — overcame a lot to get to where he is today. After a rough childhood, he endured “frequent cycles of homelessness and dead end jobs,” as noted in press materials, before almost moving back to Trinidad. Instead, he took to a “sh*thole flat,” lived “on a diet of toast, weed and insomnia,” and recorded his new project, Demotape/Vega.

The album comes out at the end of the week, but ahead of that, the artist dropped a new video, for “017 Freestyle.” Over a classic-sounding soulful beat, the rapper drops a vulnerable verse over the course of two minutes, addressing his hardships and optimism for the future. Sharing the song today, Berwyn tweeted, “I wrote these songs a good while now from a mattress on the floor. Gassed to finally share it. Hope u love this one more coming friday!”

Berwyn made headlines earlier this year with a rendition of his song “Glory” on Later… With Jools Holland, which came around the start of the Black Lives Matter protests and was tailor-made for the moment. So much so, in fact, that he wrote a new verse for the track the day before the performance.

Watch the “017 Freestyle” video above.

Demotape/Vega is out 9/25 via Heritage.

While The Sopranos broke the mold on the heights that television dramas could reach, its cast members were breaking wind thanks to a deviously placed fart machine.

On a new episode of Drea De Matteo’s podcast, Gangster Goddess Broad-cast, Lorraine Bracco, who played Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the hit series, stopped by and recalled the time she pranked Tony Soprano himself, James Gandolfini, during one of their iconic therapy scenes. Thanks to the help of a crew member from set design, Bracco had a remote fart machine taped underneath her chair and immediately got to work priming an unsuspecting Gandolfini for the gag.

“I said to Jimmy, ‘Listen, I don’t feel good, I don’t know what I ate, I’m sweating,’” she said. “So I set it up — my stomach is killing me, the whole thing. Then with Marchetti, I would [clench up], and he would press the button.”

Eventually, Gandolfini started to suspect something was up, but the clever placement of the fart machine won out. “So Jimmy finally said, ‘You’re f—ing around with me,’ and he grabs me and he takes my chair and he lifts up the cushion — but there’s nothing there!”

If you’re thinking to yourself, wait a minute, there’s another The Sopranos cast member doing a podcast? De Matteo revealed back in May that she was encouraged to start one by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa, who’ve found success with Talking Sopranos. Via Deadline:

They worked me on the whole idea and so I went back and watched the show. And Jesus Christ, it was good. The show that we were originally looking to do was a little more of a psychological thing, what broke you, and how did you rise from the ashes? That was our original premise for a podcast, because my friends call me the can opener. So I’ll just get into anything and pull everything out of your chest, you know? I didn’t know if I could do a re-watch, and what it feels like more is a re-late, where we could take this series, tear apart every theme, every character trait, every disorder, and apply it to many things that are still happening today, to every psychological thing that we all go through, to relationships, family, everything.

Well, there’s certainly one thing we can agree on: The set of The Sopranos sounds like it was a real gas.

(Via Gangster Goddess Broad-cast)