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The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — CHILL ME OUT, PLEASE

I love action. I love action movies and action-packed television shows. I love the Fast & Furious movies and their brand of increasingly nutty action that stretches the limits of both physics (cars flying through the sky!) and forgiveness (Jason Statham’s character killed Han — allegedly — but is now a beloved member of the team?). I love completely crazy shows like Zoo and nonsense movies like Money Plane. The world has yet to create a project that is too big/dumb/weird/chaotic for me. There is nothing I want more than a low-budget straight-to-VOD sequel to Face/Off that still stars Travolta and Cage. This is, in a somewhat simplified summary, what I am about.

Which is why this next part might seem odd at first: I am so freaking stoked to watch A World of Calm, the new celebrity-narrated meditation show that just premiered on HBO Max earlier this week. I’ve discussed it all once or twice before, but if you are not yet aware, please enjoy this trailer…

… and please read this longline for the show

A timely antidote for our modern lives, each half-hour episode takes audiences on an immersive visual journey into another world. Building on Calm’s Sleep Stories – bedtime stories for grown-ups – each relaxing tale is designed to transform how you feel. Viewers will be transported into tranquility through scientifically engineered narratives, enchanting music and astounding footage to naturally calm the body and soothe the mind.

Oh, yes. Yes, I will watch this. I will watch this every night at bedtime. I’m sad there are only 10 episodes, even if they do include such perfect ideas as “Oscar Isaac talks to you about noodles” and “Kate Winslet talks to you about horses” and “Idris Elba talks to you about outer space” and, blessedly, “Keanu Reeves talks to you about Latvian woodworkers.” I kind of want to binge them all in a furious five-hour spree and see if I can bring my resting heart rate down into the mid-40s, even if binging a show designed to help you chill out seems a little backward.

I just… I don’t know. I need it. It’s not exactly breaking news to say that a lot is happening in the world, in a way that is wholly different from previous ways a lot has happened. Couple that with everyone being stuck inside for months on end and it’s teetering on the edge of a mental health crisis. Humans aren’t meant to live like this. We’re not built for it. It’s okay if you’re feeling a little or a lot fried, even if you don’t realize it all the time. The key is to find something, anything, to help you relax a bit and turn the volume down in your head a bit, even if it’s just a 20-30 minute chunk of time. I flipped on the first episode of A World of Calm last night, a Lucy Liu narrated examination of coral reefs, and this was the first thing I saw on my screen.

Hell yes, lapping waves. The show appears to be a cross between “lowest stakes season of Planet Earth imaginable” and “if a celebrity narrated your screensaver” and I am fully on-board. Make 20 seasons of this. Give me Matthew McConaughey narrating an episode about waterfalls. Give me Scarlett Johannson narrating an episode about clouds. Give me Rihanna narrating an episode about Canadian marijuana farmers. I want hundreds of hours of familiar voices soothing me at night with relaxing bedtime stories set to beautiful images of nature filmed in sparkling high-definition. It says a lot about the world as presently constructed and my current frame of mind that I have been looking forward to this show almost as much as I was looking forward to the long-delayed and much-hyper fourth season of Fargo. And yet, here we are.

So, yes, for the foreseeable future, please do not text or email or call me after, say, 11 p.m., as I will be floating off to a happy place where people with symmetrical faces and voices like crushed velvet whisper lovely bedtime stories to me. I am legitimately all jazzed up about this. That somehow feels weird to say and feels perfectly normal at the exact same time. And that somehow makes sense. Again, everything is a little off-center right now. This show won’t actually solve any of that, nor should it be expected to. But it’ll give you pretty pictures of horsies and sentences intended to lower your blood pressure and, to be honest, that’s all I’m really asking for right now.

I’ll still see Fast & Furious 9 the day it is released, of course. I must know what happened to Han. Although I don’t think it would hurt if the whole thing is explained by Vin Diesel over ambient sounds and stunning drone shots of the Tokyo streets where the accident happened. Something to consider. I assume there’s time for some quick reshoots.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Yes, thank you, I would like to know about Jason Momoa’s breakfast

Jason Momoa is in Detroit. Or he was in Detroit recently. I know this for two reasons: One, because of this news story from a local Detroit outlet about him eating a fancy brunch in a fancy neighborhood; two, because there are not a lot of dudes running around who look like Jason Momoa, so the odds of mistaken identity here are pretty low. Like, I don’t think a lot of people are like “YO HOLY CRAP IS THAT JASON M-… wait, no. It’s just Jeff.” If you think you saw Jason Momoa, you probably did see Jason Momoa. So let’s go ahead and call this Detroit thing confirmed.

Anyway, my favorite part of the Jason Momoa Detroit Brunch story was this paragraph about halfway down the page:

“The posting from Toast said Momoa ordered the Novia Scotia Benny which has poached eggs, smoked salmon, spinach, heirloom tomato, choice of biscuit or english muffin, dill hollandaise and balsamic drizzle. It’s also served with home fries, bacon fried rice or grits.”

I’ll tell you what I like about this: the almost specificity. They know what he ordered, generally: the Nova Scotia Benny, which sounds delicious. But they didn’t get the exact details on his carb or choice or side order. A problem! A hole in the story! So they did what any good journalist would do when confronted with an unanswered question: they investigated. By, apparently, pulling up the menu online and listing the entire entry. I like it. I kind of love it, to be honest, because it’s created a fun game for me. You can play it, too. Just read the paragraph again and try to guess — based on everything you know about Jason Momoa — how he filled out this order. I’ve been at it for over a day and I’ve settled on “served on a biscuit with a side of home fries.” I do not see Jason Momoa as a grits man. Do not ask me why.

Hey, speaking of physical marvels who are currently or have been married to Lisa Bonet, here’s a profile of Lenny Kravitz that dropped in Men’s Health this week. The profile was written by Alex Pappademas, so you know it’s probably good. And it is! Here are some things I learned about Lenny Kravitz:

• Lenny Kravitz is somehow 56 years old
• Lenny Kravitz has been living alone in his one-bedroom house in the Bahamas since the pandemic started
• Lenny Kravitz brought one pair of jeans with him and has been wearing them every day

In short, Lenny Kravitz is exactly who you think he is: a very chill dude who is impossibly cool and who uses a tree branch as his bench when he lifts weights, which he does often enough to have a lean eight-pack even though he is over half a decade older than Paul Giamatti. It turns out genetics helps with that last thing, too.

His roots in this part of the world go deep. His grandfather Albert Roker was born on Inagua, down by Cuba and Haiti at the southernmost point of the Bahama island chain. “He lived up until his 90s, but even up into his 80s, he was ripped,” Kravitz says, shedding light on his enviable genetic legacy. “Black island man. Like iron. He had a workout that he would do in the backyard that consisted of a tree and a leather belt and, like, a broom handle. All resistance.”

It must be nice to trace your lineage to a naturally ripped island man made of ir-… hold on. Did that say Albert Roker?

Was Lenny Kravitz’s grandfather named Al Roker?

Do you think… no.

Do you think Lenny Kravitz and Al Roker are related?

To Wikipedia.

Between this and Jason Momoa’s choice of breakfast side, I have really given myself a lot to think about this weekend. And I have an excuse to post one of my favorite tweets ever.

What a ride this was.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Sorry, but I am still not over this

This clip blew up on my Twitter timeline early in the week. You might have seen it. If you have, watch it again because it gets no less fascinating with multiple views. If you haven’t seen, hoo boy, are you in for a treat. I could give you 5,000 guesses and you’ll never be able to correctly pick who shows us as Michael Jordan’s opponent at this charity event. I could give you 5,000 guesses a day. For a year. Still no chance.

Point being, spoilers, it’s M.A.S.H. star Elliott Gould, age 50 at the time, taking on a young Michael Jordan in a charity basketball contest. Here’s the full clip from YouTube, which somehow only contains Jordan’s shots even though all I want to know right now — literally the only thing — is how good Elliott Gould is, or was, at basketball.

Luckily, a little digging got me closer to an answer, and no, it is not important to know what I was supposed to be doing when I was furiously hunting clips of Elliott Gould discussing the time he played Michael Jordan at basketball for charity. Here’s a clip of the actor on a recent episode of The Rich Eisen show claiming 1) that he took a letter or two off of Michael in HORSE by shooting old-man YMCA two-handed set shots, which rules; and 2) that he, Elliott Gould, beat a young Michael Jordan in a game of Around the World.

Someone load up these clips on an iPad and hand them to Michael Jordan, Last Dance-style. I demand to see his face as he watches them. And I demand to hear his reply after watching Elliott Gould claim to have defeated him at Around the World. There’s a non-zero chance he challenges Elliott Gould to a nationally-televised Around the World rematch. Like, today. Like he might send his private plane to pick up Elliott as soon as he sees it. Michael Jordan is a maniac.

I would watch. You would, too. Please do not lie to me.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Screw it, mash it all together, see what I care

Because nothing can just be one thing and be cool about it anymore, the Spider-man universe went and got a little weirder this week. It was already weird, with the Sony/Marvel rights fight resulting in Spider-man being detached from and later folded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe once Tom Holland took over the role from Andrew Garfield. And it was a little weirder when the new Marvel movies snuck JK Simmons back in there in the J. Jonah Jameson role he started playing back when Tobey Maguire was Spider-man. And then Michael Keaton popped up as the Vulture in Morbius.

And now there’s this.

Jamie Foxx, who played classic Spidey villain Electro in the Andrew Garfield-starring The Amazing Spider-Man 2, is in final talks to reprise the role for the latest Spider-Man installment, starring Tom Holland and being made by Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures.

“Final talks” is sometimes code for “let’s just float this out there before we all sign the deal to be sure we’re not missing something that will get us all yelled at,” so let’s assume this is a real thing. And let’s assume this is real, too.

Marvel had no comment.

Story details are being kept under the mask, but having Foxx return is a stunner as it shows a further melding of the previous Spider-Man movies into the current Holland series, which is the first one that has Marvel running point on production.

More than a few people became very excited when this news broke, in large part because it continues cracking open the door for a live-action Spider-verse movie that brings back both Maguire and Garfield and loops them into the current Spider-man universe. Which… fine? Cool? Please do not let me dampen your enthusiasm if you are excited about that. We all need something to get us through what is shaping up to be a long winter. God bless, etc.

I do not think I would like it, though. The thing that made Into the Spider-verse so cool was how inventive and original it was. Taking that and trying to recapture it with a handful of winking cameos and nostalgia traps would probably bum me out. It’s okay to let cool things just be cool things and not tinker with them forever. But I’m also the guy who almost started hyperventilating on the way into the theater to watch John Wick 3 a while back, so take that with a few grains of salt, I guess. Either way, it’s given me yet another opportunity to share one of my favorite tweets ever.

What I like about this tweet is that it’s somehow both a very smart cultural critique of the world as it presently exists and it’s also just stupid as hell. A real double whammy.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — I know I just made fun of Christmas movies starting to advertise in October last week but this is different

Just last week, only seven days ago, in this very column, I got a little snarky about Christmas movies starting so early, especially the Hallmark ones, which start airing before Halloween this year. I stand by all or most of that. But I also stand by this: Netflix started advertising Dolly Parton’s new Christmas movie this week, and I love it. Granted, it doesn’t actually drop until close to Thanksgiving so it’s not quite as egregious, but still. They could release it today and I’d be okay with it. Look at this.

The It’s a Wonderful Life-esque Christmas on the Square stars Christine Baranski (The Good Fight) as Regina, a rich and nasty woman who returns to her small hometown after her father’s death to evict everyone and sell the land to a mall developer — right before Christmas. However, after listening to stories of the local townsfolk, reconnecting with an old love, and accepting the guidance of an actual angel (Parton), Regina starts to have a change of heart.

Three things worth noting here:

• Christine Baranski entering the “playing a Scrooge-like character in a Christmas movie” stage of her career is thrilling to me, because Christine Baranski was born for that, which I mean very much as a compliment
• Dolly Parton, per other reports, is playing an angel named “Angel”
• Dolly Parton has been posting Christmas-themed images almost exclusively on her Instagram page since mid-August

Here, proof.

And so, I guess, allow me to officially wish all of you a Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays. If Dolly Parton says it’s time, even if it just became October, that’s good enough for me.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Mark:

Here are a couple of tough questions, but I know you’ve been thinking about them for a while…

1. When the inevitable day comes that you have to leave town and relocate to another city and become a Regular Human Bartender, what are the top three Regular Human Bartender names that you would consider using?

2. When you inevitably find yourself embroiled in a wacky crime caper in the upper midwest, what are the top 3 Fargo names that you are likely to take on?

I realize that I could’ve gone to any other TV writers with these questions, but it has to be you.

Mark, this is a fantastic question. I appreciate that you realize there’s a difference between the two categories. There’s an art to a fake name. The first category, your Jackie Daytona names like in What We Do in the Shadows, is a little punchier. Harder consonants, locations as a last name, etc. The second category, the Fargo names, tend can be a little more goofy and mushmouthed, like a Lorne Malvo from the first season or a Banjo Rightway from the season that just premiered on Sunday. As someone who thinks about fake names a lot (too much), I am honored to give this a crack. I’ve used some of these before, full disclosure. But I refuse to let that get in my way.

JACKIE DAYTONA DIVISION

1. Tex Montreal
2. Clyde Tokyo
3. Victor Montecarlo

FARGO DIVISION

1. Mitch Casino
2. Percy Billions
3. Bash Catnip

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to do this. Please know that I spent longer working on this than any other section of this week’s column.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To London:

A British zoo has had to separate five foul-mouthed parrots who keepers say were encouraging each other to swear.

You know how sometimes you read a sentence and it just keeps getting better as it moves toward its end? This is one of those sentences. I was intrigued by “has had to” because it implies all other options have been exhausted, and I was completely won over by the phrase “five foul-mouthed parrots,” but the real chef’s kiss of it all was the “encouraging each other to swear.” I had not ever considered the possibility of parrots peer pressuring each other to misbehave. I don’t even think that’s what was really happening here. But the phrasing leads to the implication and that is good enough for me.

I love these rascal parrots.

“We are quite used to parrots swearing, but we’ve never had five at the same time,” said the zoo’s chief executive, Steve Nichols. “Most parrots clam up outside, but for some reason these five relish it.”

I want to adopt all five of them and drive around with them in the backseat with the windows down so they can cuss out other drivers for me. Can’t get mad at a parrot, chumps! I mean, you can, but then you look like the jerk. It’s a perfect plan. Until I get pulled over and they start cussing at the cops.

It’s an almost perfect plan.

“When a parrot tells tells you to ‘f-— off’ it amuses people very highly,” he said Tuesday. “It’s brought a big smile to a really hard year.”

THE PARROTS ARE LIFTING THE SPIRITS OF A NATION WITH THEIR BLUE-STREAKED LANGUAGE AND FEATHERS

WHY ARE YOU SEPARATING THEM?

GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON

Nichols said the parrots have been separated to save children’s ears. They were moved to different areas of the park so they don’t “set each other off,” he said.

That settles it. We need an adults-only zoo. This is another perfect plan. Do not steal it from me.

Taking advantage of BandCamp’s Bandcamp Fridays initiative, Denzel Curry released his latest single, the sinister-sounding “Live From The Abyss,” on the platform and will donate the proceeds to Dream Defenders. The new track continues in the vein of Curry’s other recent releases, addressing the unrest that has been roiling the nation for the past several months.

Produced by Curry’s frequent collaborators FnZ, the track espouses Black Nationalist themes, referencing Malcolm X, the Pan-African flag, and police violence, as well as explaining Denzel’s rationale for practicing martial arts as a self-defense method. “I’m screamin’, ‘Black is beautiful,’ views are probably anti-race,” he rhymes on the sole verse. “I can see the fear in your eyes when you look in my face.”

Meanwhile, the chorus of the song takes aim at one of the focal points of the movement for social justice, Donald Trump. “I tell Trump in the office to suck a dick, bitch, I’m pissed,” Curry rails. “Reportin’ live from the depths of the abyss.” His stance here echoes the theme of his June release, “Pig Feet” with Daylyt, G Perico, Kamasi Washington, and Terrace Martin, in which he denounced militarization of police.

Of course, Curry also participated in some lighter-hearted releases this year as well, including an appearance on IDK’s IDK & Friends 2 and a verse with Guapdad 4000 on “Lil Scammer That Could.”

Listen to “Live From The Abyss” below.

As they say, life moves pretty fast. We spoke with Samantha Bee Wednesday afternoon just before she was about to film the latest episode of Full Frontal. Naturally, the topic du jour was that shitshow of a debate. As you can imagine from probably feeling it yourself, Bee was, in her words, “spiritually exhausted,” talking via phone while laying on a couch after waking at 5AM to deal with the task of trying to make sense (and comedy) out of what we’d all seen the night before.

And now, a day and a half later as I finish typing this intro, President Donald Trump has announced that he and First Lady Melania Trump have tested positive for COVID. But you knew that, since it’s the only thing anyone is going to be talking about for a while, or at least until the next bombshell gets fired off, distracting, dismaying, and disorienting many of us. Because that’s how news works now, denying us the chance to sit with something and process it.

That’s a topic that came up during our chat with Bee, nestled alongside a discussion about the inexplicableness of undecided voters, questions about why any of us are surprised ever, Full Frontal‘s “I Know What You Did Last Election” campaign (where Bee inserts herself into various horror classics to promote voting and the show), and the show’s plans for whatever is coming from November to January.

Okay. [Laughs] So do you want to talk about the debate or do you want to just talk about like, anything else? Like fantasy football, whatever.

Samantha Bee: [Laughs] Yeah. If you want to go through some recipes that I’m thinking about… I just saw a really nice salmon recipe that seems really like spicy and flavorful. I’m really, really excited about it.

That’s honestly the best way. No, I guess what’s your snap read on the debate?

I think, for the record, we should state upfront that we both laughed our way through the idea that you could have like a different reaction. It [the debate] was the worst. It was literally the worst thing I’ve ever seen on television. I mean, there’s really no parallel for that. I feel like, I heard the psychic cry of the entire nation and I thought that I wanted to crawl inside myself. Like the whole thing, I was cringing so much, like the whole thing was so painful. I practically retreated into my own self. It was terrible in every way.

It felt like a horror movie.

It did! It was just a dreadful experience. And we just nationally had the same exact feeling of how awful it was. Like I think the whole country woke up with a low-grade headache today.

But does that make a difference? I guess that’s the question. Did anything really change in terms of who’s voting for who?

That’s the most horrific part of the whole thing. Like you would really want… The reason to have a debate is so that it moves the needle on that sliver of a population who haven’t made up their minds yet. If you haven’t made up your mind to this point, then you’re a crazy person. But then if you also watched that debate and you’re like, “I’m still not sure.” I feel like you should leave. You need to exile yourself to an island in the middle of the ocean and never talk to us again. Go away please forever.

Do you think his inability to reach beyond his base is a sign of him being a bad politician or is it a sign that he’s going to steal it and he doesn’t have to care?

Is anything intentional? Is anything intentional in his world? It’s hard for me to believe that there’s a strategy beyond, “I want to be popular. I talk now! I go! I’m a big boy!” [Laughs] I don’t know if he… I’m just in such a state of utter speechlessness today. I just don’t really think there’s a grander strategy other than, “I’m popular with these people and the ratings were great!”

Yeah. I mean, I want to think it’s all strategic. Like he was trying to throw Biden off his game and all this stuff, but it’s like, you’re probably right. It’s probably just ego consuming everything in front of him.

Yeah, he’s not playing three-dimensional chess. He’s playing 0.2-dimensional checkers. Like he only cares about the self and it’s pure ID and ego, and that’s about it. It’s impossible to deal with a person like that. We’re all still trying to live in a normal world. We’re all still trying to put him on a stage with a beautiful presidential carpet and have rules. I mean, Chris Wallace, trying to explain the rules of debating and the two-minute time limit and talking over people. [Laughs] It’s just a wash. He can’t comprehend it. He doesn’t know how to listen or care. What difference does it make to him? I don’t know why we’re all still shocked. I’m still shocked. You’re still shocked. Why are we?

I don’t know. It’s a good question because it’s like… he’s done all that before.

No, it’s nothing new. Are we the crazy ones?

Maybe! [Laughs] We’re really going through something here.

[Laughs] We’re going to work it out together.

So, the idea behind the horror theme of “I Know What You Did Last Election,” who are you speaking to with that campaign?

Okay, this will be surprising information probably, because it was very shocking to me, but as we were researching it two years ago, prior to the midterms, we did a game to incentivize people to vote. And we learned that roughly 55% of our audience was registered to vote. Which was astonishing to me because it’s so impossible for me to believe that anyone would watch the show and, like, after 30 times of saying it that you wouldn’t just be like, “okay, I grudgingly register to vote.” So, personally, I pray that that number ticks up.

It does strike me that this entire four year period feels like a horror film. Just this relentless cascade of horrific policies and disgusting appearances and hideous monsters getting charged with federal crimes. It just really lent itself to… And I love horror movies, quite honestly, so the two really merged perfectly. Sometimes you look at the number of my viewers who were registered to vote in 2018, you go, “Okay, well, what works? What actually gets you to register to vote?” What gets a person to vote? Is it fear? So I think we just took the approach of, “Let’s try fear.” [Laughs] Remind people that it’s incredibly scary to not vote this time around.

Do you think Democrats are as deft at using fear in that way to try and get people to vote and make clear how important this is?

I really don’t know. I don’t know how to make it more clear. I don’t know how you could honestly observe the news cycle and not think that we are at situation “Not Normal.” This is crisis time. So, there’s going to be some lines on voting day now, but we should all be braving them in one form or another. Mail in your votes, whatever. It’s very, very needed. So many celebrities are going to be manning the polls alone. [Laughs] All of Hollywood is signing up to be a poll worker. So, you know, it’ll be a fun experience this time around…

Yeah. It’ll be great. 15 Trump Army people up against Kristen Bell at a polling station somewhere.

[Laughs] Oh my God! Oh no, we’re in so much trouble.

How do we, in general, keep focused on stories that matter? Like the ICE whistleblower or the tax thing or anything like that? Because it just seems so difficult for things to stick now.

It’s so difficult to make a story stick. I mean, my God, the New York Times just blew that whole story open about $750 that he paid in federal taxes, and I don’t even think that anyone’s talking about it. And it’s only two days past. It’s a huge story. It’s a monster story. And too much has happened in the interim. To come back to the atrocities that we learned about in ICE detention centers, that was last week. We need a boring government. We want decent people who want to believe in experts. And we want a government that plugs along making laws and changing policies in a way that makes sense so that we can take a moment. We just take our feet off the gas pedal for one second. There’s so much work to do. Wouldn’t it be nice to just restore some wonky people in the White House, just for a moment? Just a brief interlude of calm, so that we could feel like progress is being made, or norms are being restored, or conversations would be being had about the Green New Deal. Things could be moving in a forward direction as opposed to regressive. I dream of a boring, wonky government. Things are dire. I dream of a government where I don’t have to talk about it all the time.

How has that lack of attention span — just population-wide when it comes to bigger issues — how has that transformed the way you all approach the show?

I think we’re pretty good. We do have the luxury of time because we’re not trying to do four shows a week. So we do have the luxury to sit back a little bit and go down the path that is most interesting to us. We definitely have the feeling of, “I can’t wait for this election season to be over.” Obviously, we’re all praying for the correct outcome, the correct and decent outcome. We just really want to move on. I want to be able to thematically move on. I just want to personally, professionally, psychologically move on from this dark period. And I hope that that comes to pass. Is it 40 days away or 10,000 days away? I no longer know. It’s cold outside now, and I feel like it’s maybe April again. There’s no sense of time. We’re in a state of great, great anxiety.

Do you allow yourself to think about what the show looks like in January with either result? And also, how do you plan for everything that’s going to come in between now and then?

I mean, we definitely have to think about it. And, in fact, we’re trying to plan the show because we have a show the day after the election. And obviously, it’s not knowable. And it’s not even knowable if it will be knowable who won. So trying to plan a kind of a longer form show, because it’ll be a bit of a longer show on November 4th with very little insight and also just two widely… Well, actually three widely different realities. It has been very challenging.

So in answer to your question, the answer is no, I’m not thinking about what the show will look like in January. Because I can’t quite figure out what it’s going to look like on November 4th. [Laughs] Once November 5th happens, I’ll start to think about January. [Laughs] The questions we’re asking each other in meetings are like, “Okay, if we’re all crying on the floor, should we do a 30-minute show or a six-minute show? And then if we’re relatively happy about the outcome, or if we’re jubilant about the outcome, does this content make sense? Or if we’re having a war in the streets, does this segment make any sense to do or will people…” [Laughs] That alone is really quite an undertaking, but it’s happening.

To be honest, how do you keep hope if it breaks down and if things go to the courts and it gets really ugly and really risky? That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out within myself.

I mean, we have to be hopeful. I would say a majority of people in this country are actually decent human beings who know the difference between right and wrong. But I’m hopeful. It’s like being in labor and having a baby. You’re like, “Well, this baby’s coming out. I don’t know how we’re going to get there. And there’s going to be a lot of pain along the way, but eventually, the baby’s going to be out.” So, I mean, I think we’re going to have a country at the end of it. I think. We’re going to still be a country at the end of all this. It’s going to be very painful along the way.

And we don’t know if the baby’s going to wind up being a serial killer.

We don’t know. It could be the baby from It’s Alive. With that little claw hanging out of the baby carriage.

[Laughs] I think that’s a good analogy and a hopeful note end on.

[Laughs] Yes, it’s beautiful!

‘Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’ airs Wednesdays at 10:30PM ET on TBS.

won’t really have a head coachKyrie Irving made headlines for a pair of things he said on Kevin Durant’s new podcast, The ETCs. Irving turned heads by suggesting that the Brooklyn Nets won’t really have a head coach, although his argument did make sense, as he mentioned that the team has a number of voices around first-time coach Steve Nash who can provide input and help the team make informed decisions.

The other raised a few more eyebrows. Irving, in praising Durant’s ability to score, said, “One thing I’ve always been comfortable with is, I felt like I was the best option on every team I’ve played for down the stretch. This is the first time in my career where I can look down and be like, that motherf*cker can make that shot too and he’ll probably do it a lot easier.”

Now, this led to a whole lot of eyebrows being raised, as Irving, you know, once played on the same basketball team as LeBron James. But Irving pretty obviously meant this as praise of Durant more than a knock on James — who, famously, stayed out of the way as Irving hit the shot that won the Cleveland Cavaliers a championship in 2016 — and after the comments made the rounds on the internet, Irving took to Instagram and tried to cool things down.

“Come on, y’all, don’t listen to the false narratives,” Irving said. “Let people live their lives. It’s just a game. Talk about the art, talk about the sport, you talk openly, you talk freely. But, because we live in a clickbait society, it becomes something bigger. You don’t have to defend it, that’s just what media is. It’s entertainment. I’m not gonna let it put me against anybody anymore at any point, because that’s not what it is about.”

Again, while there’s certainly a way to read Irving’s comments to Durant as a knock on James, it’s probably fair to take him at his word here. The two are close, and again, in the biggest moment of their respective careers, the ball was in Irving’s hands and he delivered. And besides, Durant very well might be the best 1-on-1 player to ever live.

Hip-hop is moving as fast as ever. Luckily, we’re doing the work to put the best music in one place for you. This week, there were new videos from Spillage Village, as well as Fivio Foreign and Polo G. There was also new music from Roddy Ricch, Don Toliver and Internet Money, as well as Megan Thee Stallion and Young Thug. Here’s the best of the rest:

Dyamond Doll — “DWade” Remix Feat. Trina, Ball Greezy

The Miami Heat are in the NBA finals, and Dyamond Doll linked up with fellow Miamians Trina and Ball Greezy for the “DWade” remix, where the three MCs liken themselves to the NBA legend, with Ball Greezy noting, “God knows we need a Pat Riley week!”

Flee Lord — “Line Stay Buzzin”

Flee Lord’s matched by few in the rap game. The Griselda affiliate just dropped 12 projects in 12 months. He celebrated his feat on “Line Stay Buzzin,” a grimey lyrical exercise where Flee bigs himself up and incredulously asks, “You on the same album? / I just did a dozen.”

Guap Tarantino — “Say My Name” Feat. Playboi Carti

Guap Tarantino enlists Playboi Carti to have fun with him on “Say My Name,” a feel-good trap burner where the two have fun over thumping 808s and producer DMCGlobal’s electro-inspired synths.

Jade Amar — “Rebound”

Though Jade Amar’s “Rebound” is set on a basketball court, the confident lyrics have nothing to do with her hoop prowess. Just her second single, the Ray Real-produced track shows her dropping basketball references like “real women take charge in the paint” while letting her new situationship know not to get ahead of himself.

Liam Bailey — “Champion” Remix Feat. Black Thought

Black Thought offered a thoughtful opening verse to UK artist Liam Bailey’s “Champion” remix, letting the woman of his eye know that, “if life is like a novel then you’re the star of the story” over a minimalist, Reggae-influenced production.

Lupe Fiasco — Tape Tape

Lupe Fiasco and producer Soundtrakk dropped off a two-pack with their Tape Tape project. “Oh Yes” is a smooth track where Lupe shows off his melodies and affirms, “I got architecture in my veins.” On “Apologetic” Lupe turns the energy up on the electro-hop, letting us know “if I drop a freestyle b*tch I drop it off the roof.”

Noodah05 — “Wild Child“ Feat. Lil Baby

Upcoming artist Noodah05 scored a big-time feature by having Lil Baby on “Wild Child,” where the two jump on a bouncy trap beat to share the trauma and danger of their upbringing and how it instilled their resilience today.

Wavy Navy Pooh — “Guwop” Remix Feat. Gucci Mane

There seems to be a new “Guwop” inspired song title or artist name every month. Gucci’s ringing in “Woptober” by jumping on Wavy Navy Pooh’s latest single, where he’s “ridin’ through the A with a K like I’m Guwop,” and Gucci reminds us he’s “Big Guwop the Rolling Stone / I put all these rappers on.”

Westside Gunn — Who Made The Sunshine

The beauty of today’s rap game is that artists can be an entrenched name before they even drop a studio debut. Such is the case with Westside Gunn, who’s releasing his debut studio album on Shady today. His Who Made The Sunshine project is another venture through Prada and peril on tracks like “All Praises” with Boldy James and Jadakiss. The album also boasts features from the Griselda crew, Black Thought, and Slick Rick who shines on the sinister “Good Night.”

Willie The Kid — Capital Gains

Willie The Kid is talkin’ money on his latest release Capital Gains.The 10-track album shows him locked in over soulful, brooding soundscape along with features like Action Bronson, Eto, Currensy, and Roc Marciano, who shows up on the jazzy “Durban Poison.”

YG — My Life 4Hunnid

YG is back with another dose of unflinching rap with mass appeal on My Life 4Hunnid. The 14-track project is stocked with guests like Lil Tjay, Ty Dolla Sign, Gunna, and Lil Wayne, who shows up on the flute-based “Blood Walk.”

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

Back in January, President Trump said that he had the coronavirus outbreak “totally under control.” Approximately 73 months later, over 200,000 Americans are dead and cases are back on the rise after a summer slowdown — oh yeah, and as we learned on Thursday night, Trump tested positive for the virus. In that sense, Alex Gibney, the Emmy- and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker behind Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, and indie distributor Neon couldn’t have picked a more apt day to release the trailer for Totally Under Control.

In the documentary, Gibney, along with co-directors Ophelia Harutyunyan and Suzanne Hillinger, examines the government’s “beyond incompetent” response to dealing with COVID-19; it did not “just disappear,” shockingly. “With damning testimony from public health officials and hard investigative reporting, Gibney exposes a system-wide collapse caused by a profound dereliction of Presidential leadership,” Neon notes.

Here’s more:

On January 20th, 2020, the U.S. and South Korea both discovered their first cases of COVID-19. However, 9 months later, the novel Coronavirus has claimed the lives of over 200,000 Americans and caused staggering economic damage, while in South Korea, there were no significant lockdowns and, in an urbanized population of 51 million, only 344 lives have been lost. Where did we go wrong?

As the presidential election nears, Americans are increasingly enraged by a lack of clear leadership, endemic political corruption, and left to wonder how did the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world manage to fail so thoroughly in its response to a global pandemic? … It will be a generation before we know the full extent of the damage wrought by this pandemic, but Totally Under Control will stand as the definitive account of the Trump administration’s incompetence, corruption, and denial in the face of this global pandemic.

Totally Under Control premieres on On Demand on October 13 and Hulu on October 20.

Kacey Musgraves has gotten familiar with storied American institutions. She has a well-established relationship with Willie Nelson, she guested on The Not-Too-Late Show With Elmo to cover “Rubber Ducky,” and now she has met up with the Scooby-Doo gang.

She voices herself on a new episode of Scooby-Doo And Guess Who?, and she posted a clip from the episode, writing, “Scooby-Doo and the gang came on down to Nashville to help crack a major Country Music mystery! No — it wasn’t to solve the lack of female airplay!” While Musgraves’ clip doesn’t reveal what the mystery is, it does show her feeding Shaggy and Scooby a huge feast featuring a variety of hot sauces, one of which is intense enough to burn a hole through the wood floor.

On Twitter, Musgraves shared another clip, of her meeting the whole gang (she already knew Daphne since they’re best friends in the show).

Musgraves also offered instructions on how to watch the episode for free: “if you wanna watch it all you have to do is download the @boomerangtoons app (it’s free) and that episode is available also for free. (you don’t have to make an account or anything.) Click on Scooby Doo and then on ‘Scoobtober Premiers’ and my episode is the first one!”

Check out the clips from Musgraves’ Scooby-Doo episode above, and watch the full episode by following the directions Musgraves provided.

Despite justifiable concerns over South Park applying its brand of “both sides” humor to the deadly serious COVID-19 crisis in America, “The Pandemic Special” appears to be just the antidote that some viewers were looking for. The hour-long episode, which was simulcast on MTV and MTV2 along with its home on Comedy Central, brought in the best ratings for the animated series in the past seven years. Via Deadline:

The Comedy Central animated veteran scored 2.3 million Live+Same Day total viewers and a 2.1 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic on the network. That was the show’s highest L+SD demo number in seven years, up 168% vs. the series’ Season 23 average. It also ranks as the highest-rated scripted telecast on ad-supported cable in 2020.

Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that”The Pandemic Special” dropped in the middle of a content drought with the fall TV season being thrown into disarray when productions were scuttled during the pandemic. The fact that South Park scored the highest-rated show of the year would suggest that viewers stuck at home are hungry for entertainment, however they can get it.

That said,”The Pandemic Special” defied expectations as it heavily skewered President Donald Trump’s disastrous response to the coronavirus and offered a fair and insightful rumination on the lockdown through one of the show’s patented Stan speeches. Even more surprising, while creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have historically looked down on voting thanks to their libertarian views on the two party system, “The Pandemic Special” broke tradition and encouraged viewers to vote. It was a rare and welcomed moment for a show whose pathos for two decades has been “caring isn’t cool.”

(Via Deadline)

The deluxe version of ASAP Ferg’s Floor Seats II EP dropped today and so far, it seems the highlight of the tape is the Monica-featuring “Big ASAP,” which samples Keni Burke’s 1982 hit “Risin’ To The Top” and addresses the recent controversy in which ASAP Mob founder ASAP Illz claimed Ferg had been kicked out of the group.

“Some of my n****s got jealous, they see their man rose,” Ferg flexes on the first verse. “I can feel the resentment every time n****s speakin’ / They congratulate you, then they let the anger sink in.” Those bars are just the setup, though, as he questions Illz’s temerity straight-up in the second verse. “How you go and kick the leader of A$AP out?” he wonders. “I keep my foot on these n****s’ neck ’til they pass out.”

Although Illz is considered one of the founding members of the Harlem-based crew, another member, ASAP Nast, denied that Ferg had been kicked out. Meanwhile, Ferg himself was seemingly unfazed by the out-of-the-blue announcement, only posting an offhand Instagram video in response. He also had a similar unbothered reaction to the lukewarm reception of “Move Ya Hips,” another Floor Seats II single which fell short of the expectations of guest rapper Nicki Minaj’s more fervent fans.

Listen to ASAP Ferg’s “Big ASAP” featuring Monica above.

We could all stand to witness some sweetness and light today, and The Rock is here to oblige. The megastar recently opened up about his family’s struggle with COVID-19, but he seems to be feeling much better now. His spirits were certainly high enough to send a video (as posted by Twitter user Jamie Klingler) containing a serenade to 101-year-old Marie Grover on her very important day. Given that he was entirely alone while buzzing along on a golf cart, The Rock removed his mask and let his birthday tones fly.

“This is the joy that we need in 2020,” Klingler wrote. “Thank you @TheRock for helping us to celebrate #grandmomgrover’s 101st birthday! She loves you and we do too.”

This actually isn’t The Rock’s first rodeo with Grandma Grover. During happier times for all, The Rock still made time during his busy 2019 to send a centennial-themed shoutout her way. The gesture was noted by CNN and around the world, and thank goodness Grandma Grover is still kicking and surviving 2020. She (and her boundless enthusiasm) can be an inspiration for all in how to remain positive during incredibly negative times. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to be serenaded by a charismatic WWE-turned-movie star. Only hydraulic gates should be unhappy to see him coming.