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All the way back in December, Adam Sandler joked to Howard Stern that if he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for Uncut Gems, he’d make the worst movie possible as revenge. “If I don’t get it, I’m going to f*cking come back and do one again that is so bad on purpose just to make you all pay.”

As luck would have it, Sandler didn’t score an Oscar nom, but with everything going on in 2020, he hasn’t had a chance to make good on his threat. (Yet.) However, ambitious Reddit user LundgrensFrontKick decided to beat the comedic actor to the punch by conjuring up a fake Sandler movie that’s already going viral. Titled “Jacked Up,” the fake film includes all of the classic Sandler elements: using the same stable of actors (Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Salma Hayek, Terry Crews, Steve Buscemi, and so on), taking place at a tropical resort so the whole cast basically gets a free vacation, etc. It also has Sandler playing two characters just like he did in Jack and Jill, only this time around he plays personal trainer and shoe salesman Jack Goodheart, as well as his wife, Janet. The couple heads to Costa Rica for a 30-year high school reunion and, well…

During the event, Rob Schneider (playing a terrorist) and his team of henchmen, hijack the event and take everyone hostage, including State Senator Chuck Finley (Terry Crews) and presidential candidate Casey Fitzpatrick (Maya Rudolph). During the melee, Jack and Janet escape, and the two use their past military experience and buff physiques to save the day.

And yes, if you were wondering, it ends with a lazy river jet ski chase.

Reddit users have been loving the concept so much that they’ve been churning out fan posters like the one below all week.

Jacked Up hits theaters, unfortunately, never.

(Via LundgrensFrontKick, IndieWire)

Last year in February, the New York Times published an exposé that shed a light on abuse Phoebe Bridgers, Mandy Moore, and other women faced at the hand of Ryan Adams. Adams was accused of both sexual and mental manipulation, and Bridgers admitted her track “Motion Sickness” was penned as a response to her experience with him. Adams was reprimanded for his actions by many but it took him a full six months to respond to the allegations. Now reflecting on her experience calling him out, Bridgers was upfront about the fact that not everyone is able to speak out against their abusers like she was.

In a recent interview with NME ahead of her album Punisher, Bridgers detailed how grateful she is for the team of people who helped publish her accusations. However, the singer also recognized her unique platform and said there’s more to be done in order for other women to speak out against their abusers while remaining safe: “When a team of amazing fact-checkers and journalists unafraid of actual lawsuits are on your side… I feel really lucky I met so many people who were willing to go to bat for me,” she said. “There’s a big conversation about privilege to be had. I, a young white female, was able to meet other young white females who had contacts with journalists. So many people do not have that.”

Bridgers also reflected on the anxiety she felt before the piece was published. The singer said that a representative from Adams’ team had gaslighted her, falsely informing her that the New York Times piece had been scrapped before one of the journalists reassured her. “Once everybody knew, it was great,” Bridgers said. “The sh*tty thing was before.”

The singer also compared allegations in the music industry to the #MeToo allegations in film, saying oftentimes musicians are more isolated:

“I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault – with movies, a lot of people know what someone pays a screenwriter, or how involved a production manager is. With music, every group is much more isolated. It can happen with power dynamics and #MeToo sh*t, but also with a manager who’s just f*cking every single person over. Or labels that sign you and flirt with you and then don’t release your sh*t. And why can they do it to 10 bands in a row? Because people don’t talk to each other. […] When I met Ryan, I didn’t know anybody in music for the most part. But then I would then meet tons of people who were like, ‘Oh my God – he is a trash person’. I didn’t have that when I was 20, and a lot of people still don’t.”

Punisher is out 6/18 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.

Revisit our interview with Bridgers on Punisher here.

Last year in February, the New York Times published an exposé that shed a light on abuse Phoebe Bridgers, Mandy Moore, and other women faced at the hand of Ryan Adams. Adams was accused of both sexual and mental manipulation, and Bridgers admitted her track “Motion Sickness” was penned as a response to her experience with him. Adams was reprimanded for his actions by many but it took him a full six months to respond to the allegations. Now reflecting on her experience calling him out, Bridgers was upfront about the fact that not everyone is able to speak out against their abusers like she was.

In a recent interview with NME ahead of her album Punisher, Bridgers detailed how grateful she is for the team of people who helped publish her accusations. However, the singer also recognized her unique platform and said there’s more to be done in order for other women to speak out against their abusers while remaining safe: “When a team of amazing fact-checkers and journalists unafraid of actual lawsuits are on your side… I feel really lucky I met so many people who were willing to go to bat for me,” she said. “There’s a big conversation about privilege to be had. I, a young white female, was able to meet other young white females who had contacts with journalists. So many people do not have that.”

Bridgers also reflected on the anxiety she felt before the piece was published. The singer said that a representative from Adams’ team had gaslighted her, falsely informing her that the New York Times piece had been scrapped before one of the journalists reassured her. “Once everybody knew, it was great,” Bridgers said. “The sh*tty thing was before.”

The singer also compared allegations in the music industry to the #MeToo allegations in film, saying oftentimes musicians are more isolated:

“I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault – with movies, a lot of people know what someone pays a screenwriter, or how involved a production manager is. With music, every group is much more isolated. It can happen with power dynamics and #MeToo sh*t, but also with a manager who’s just f*cking every single person over. Or labels that sign you and flirt with you and then don’t release your sh*t. And why can they do it to 10 bands in a row? Because people don’t talk to each other. […] When I met Ryan, I didn’t know anybody in music for the most part. But then I would then meet tons of people who were like, ‘Oh my God – he is a trash person’. I didn’t have that when I was 20, and a lot of people still don’t.”

Punisher is out 6/18 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.

Revisit our interview with Bridgers on Punisher here.

There has been a wide variety of reactions to J. Cole’s surprise new song “Snow On Tha Bluff” since he dropped it last night. Now Earl Sweatshirt has weighed in on the Noname-referencing track, and he’s not the biggest fan.

He tweeted of the song today, “multiple truths baby lets go this aint even complicated.” He followed that with, “lol before i get grouped in to anything let me state that first truth of many is that the sh*t was just corny.. it would b like on one of the nights following big floyds death if a white rapper (one that ppl like) made a ‘im uneducated on ur plight’ track it just taste bad lol.”

Responding to somebody who wrote, “homeboy did not have to let that verse out of the drafts,” Sweatshirt tweeted, “naw frrrrrrrr my whole thing (and this all imma say) is: mfs are reachable through mediums other than song lololllll shoot me a fax or something ill page u.”

Another user asked why Sweatshirt is against Cole releasing the song, and he answered, “it depends on what u want. if u want a bunch of clicks and likes on ya song then ya make a song. if u want to do what u said u wanted to do on the song (which is learn) bang my line. but, i guess the song way is messier but its more honest. and its got everybody talking.”

He continued, “what if yall are mad at yourselves that you look to cole for more than he has to give? bro just laid his cards down on the table ‘i went to college, i dont know stuff’ and hes alot of n****s elected representative.” A user replied to that tweet, suggesting that the situation is “also about the blatant disrespect of a Black woman,” to which Sweatshirt answered, “right. tone policing [Black women] at quite possibly the worst time possible in the past 4 months.”

Find Sweatshirt’s tweets about the Cole/Noname situation below.

More often than not, sitting down to watch a travel and food show means you’re looking for pure escapism mixed with a whole lot of #FOMO. Rarely do these shows demand more of you than letting the “next episode” countdown expire. Fluff is fine, of course, but to pretend that the vast majority of travel and food TV is anything more than that is disingenuous. For too long, the genre has hinted at deeper themes without actually exploring them (there have been exceptions, obviously).

The issue of real depth vs. virtue signaling is where Padma Lakshmi’s new show on Hulu, Taste The Nation, rises above every other series in the genre. The show absolutely peddles in travel and food porn but it asks viewers for more than just their spare time. Lakshmi wants you to think, to care, and to throw out the bullshit you’ve been erroneously taught about the United States as a country. It’s the food and travel TV version of tearing down racist monuments.

Taste the Nation also feels like a natural evolution for Lakshmi. On the surface, the show is about immigrant cuisines in the United States and how those food cultures combine to inform the American identity. The Top Chef host is an immigrant herself. She arrived in America from India when she was only four years old. In many ways, her story — going from a poor immigrant kid raised by a single mom to one of the most recognizable names in fashion and food — is a riff on the American dream. With this show, she’s using her platform to honor the unspoken code among marginalized people to help build one another up and share opportunities.

I’m not going to lie. When I first heard the elevator pitch for this show, I was… a little underwhelmed. As an Indigenous person covering the food world, another show about “immigrant” cuisine in America really felt like more of the same. Whether overtly stated or not, almost every food and travel show over the past 20 years has been about America’s immigrant food scene. I thought to myself, “What’s really new to say there?”

When I found myself in tears at the end of the eighth episode, I realized just how wrong my assumptions had been. Lakshmi and her team have gone deeper in their exploration of migrant cuisines than any other show I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). In episode one, “Burritos at the Border,” the host dives into the world of Mexican food in El Paso, Texas. The show takes a very candid look at how the humble El Paso burrito is a cornerstone of Mexican “immigrant” cuisine in the city and how that community is part of the city’s foundation. But Lakshmi goes further — doing something I’ve never seen in a food show before. She pivots and talks with chef Emiliano Marentes about Indigenous Mexican cuisine.

So much of what most Americans consider “Mexican” food is the fusion of European foodstuffs (wheat, beef, pork, chicken, dairy, etc.) with Indigenous Mexican ingredients and techniques (corn, avocado, squash, beans, chilis, cacao, adobo, barbacoa, etc.). Padma and Marentes help unpack that for a mainstream audience.

That segment serves as a tee-up to episode eight, called “The Orignal Americans.” In that episode, Lakshmi travels to the Southwest to learn about Indigenous American food from actual Indigenous Americans. There’s no white celebrity chef white-splaining what “American” food is. There’s no pretension about these foods being “exotic” or “weird” or “foreign.” In fact, there’s a level of gratitude on display that’s incredibly refreshing and passed all my personal litmus tests.

In one particularly moving scene, Lakshmi sits down chef Brian Yazzie, curandera [chef and healer] Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz, and podcaster Andi Murphy as the sun sets over the desert. They eat Three Sisters (the Indigenous combination of corn, beans, and squash), wild antelope, and more wild-sourced dishes from the desert that are wholly new to Lakshmi yet comfortingly familiar. The moment touches on so much of what we all love about food and travel TV but the setting and the voices feel wholly unique.

Ironically, while those foods in those particular combinations are likely a blank spot for most people across this country, they’re more “American” than just about anything else you could eat. And while I’m not from the Southwest, seeing Indigenous food given a full, uninterrupted episode is the sort of representation that Indigenous people all long for and almost never get.

So, yeah, the tears flowed.

This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to bring up a counterpoint or find some fault to wag my finger at. Well dammit, I can’t find one. This show has managed the delicate balance of being deeply familiar while also pushing the format to new heights. It does all the easy things (the FOMO, the food porn, the charm) well and it does the hard things (the cultural respect, the addition of crucial context, the non-“othering”) even better. It works as a diversion and as a teaching tool.

An episode focused on the Gullah community featuring chef and historian Michael W. Twitty dives deep into one of America’s most uniquely African cultures. An episode set in Paterson, New Jersey, offers the city’s Peruvian diaspora a moment in the spotlight — with a clear intent on making sure the history of these people’s food is kept front and center. Finally, the last episode in the season, covering Hawaiian Poke and Japanese migrants, keeps things realer than real. Never once does Laksmi pretend that Indigenous Hawaiians don’t exist and she speaks frankly about Japanese migration to the island.

After watching each episode twice, I realized why this show is so different. Lakshmi doesn’t talk to white celebrity chefs who ride trends of Peruvian or Hawaiian or even Italian cuisines for a profit with no real cultural connection to those foods. She’s not interested in fusions or foams. She goes straight to the source of each foodway, never picking guests based on how much or how little they’ve profited from their cultures. Watching her, I realized that even in shows I really enjoy, like The Chef Show or Ugly Delicious, the chefs you see cooking many of the multi-cultural foods are white celebrity chefs. Now that Taste the Nation has entered the canon, I feel a certain soullessness to some of those segments now.

What Lakshmi has done with this series is take the time to talk to the people for whom food was never a trend they could ride to fame and profit. She’s giving people space to share the dishes and techniques that form a cornerstone of their very identities; profiling the foods that bind them to their past, present, and future. The result is incredibly refreshing (and, yes, a little angering — in that it took this long for a network to wake up).

Taste the Nation feels like a step towards something bigger and better for food and travel TV. More importantly, it feels like a show we all need right now to better understand who we are as a country. A key to helping us unlock both the unique and the shared aspects of the American identity.

All Ten Episodes of Taste The Nation Will Be Available On Hulu Streaming On June 18th, 2020.

I had so many questions for Steve Guttenberg.

The man occupies what is arguably a historically unique position in the cultural landscape. Fresh out of high school in 1976, he moved to LA with $300 in his pocket to become an actor. After setting up his own fake studio office on the Paramount lot (“I became my own agent,” he says), Guttenberg booked his first lead role in 1977, at age 19 (The Chicken Chronicles). Despite a funny name, a not especially memorable face, and no obvious flair for physical comedy, he relatively quickly went on to become basically the biggest comedy star of the 1980s, with roles in the wildly successful Police Academy franchise, Cocoon (and its sequel), Short Circuit, and Three Men And A Baby (and its sequel). For a time, he was neck and neck with Tom Hanks in terms of fame (rumor has it Hanks beat him out for the role in Splash and turned down the part in Police Academy that eventually went to Guttenberg).

And then Guttenberg sort of disappeared, with no movie roles between 1990 and 1995. In the 2000s he started to become one of those hardest-working actors you never see (see also: Roberts, Eric) with roles in everything from Veronica Mars to Sharknado 4 and Lavalantula, as well as its sequel, 2 Lava 2 Lantula. The highlight of this period was arguably Guttenberg playing himself in probably the best episode of Party Down, delivering the immortal hot tub line “You really should take your underwear off, the jets feel great on your balls.”

Guttenberg’s amiable everyman shtick seemed to get white-hot, then burnt itself out, before becoming an ironic joke. These days almost every semi-famous social media influencer seems to be unknowingly channeling Guttenberg’s brand of handsomish inoffensive positivity. Did I mention Guttenberg also holds the Guinness World Record for most hot dogs prepared in under a minute? Who needs an EGOT when you’ve got that?

It seemed like he had dabbled in fame and come out the other side, and appears for all the world happy and healthy. In typically eclectic Guttenbergian fashion, this week he was promoting Good Boy, the latest in Blumhouse’s horror anthology series Into The Dark for Hulu. In Good Boy, a goofy-fun, satirical horror-comedy in which Judy Greer adopts a murderous support dog, Guttenberg plays Greer’s long-suffering editor at the local paper. The film was released June 12th, to coincide with Pet Appreciation Week, which was an odd bit of kismet for me personally.

See, Steve Guttenberg also stars alongside a dog in probably my best-ever celebrity encounter story. It would’ve been about 2008. My girlfriend at the time was looking after her roommate’s dog, a lovable and energetic dalmatian (I think his name was Arthur?) who happened to be afflicted with explosive diarrhea that day. As she left their apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, grappling with the spotted beast and trying desperately to coax him off the sidewalk as he spewed foul brown water from the anus, who should attempt to strike up a conversation? That’s right, Steve Guttenberg, the erstwhile star of Police Academy. He had happened to be eating at an outdoor cafe at the time, and The Gute, ignoring the dog, struck up a conversation with the then-girlfriend, found out she was going to school for theater, and offered to discuss acting with her some time, or some such. He even gave her his number.

Naturally, I’ve retold this story at least 100 times since then. Who uses a diarrhea dog as an ice breaker? Legendary. I never did have the balls to prank call Steve Guttenberg, though I often considered it. What does one say?

12 years later, fate had reunited us, once again over a dog. Could I ask about what it’s like living in the afterglow of such success? What must it be like to constantly have forgettable interactions with people who will remember them for the rest of their lives? And how did he ever the find time to become a hot dog champion? As I said, many questions.

As soon as we got on the phone, however, it became abundantly clear that the real Steve Guttenberg, or at least the one I was talking to, didn’t have much in common with the fictional one from Party Down who goes commando in the jacuzzi. The Steve Guttenberg to whom I was speaking was sober-minded and serious about his craft, which he compared numerous times to painting. I think it was about 90 seconds in when Guttenberg compared his slowed output of the early ’90s to Picasso’s Blue Period that I realized I was never going to be able to ask him about chatting up my ex-girlfriend over a shitting dog. In the context of the call, it would’ve been like hurling a dog poop bag at his head just to see how he’d duck.

I couldn’t insult Steve Guttenberg in that way. Even if he had once nearly cuckolded me. Maybe that’s the key to his early success, that we always want to see him as the nice guy. So sure, maybe I didn’t discover the Rosetta Stone of 1980s comedy fame. But what did I expect in a 20-minute interview? Steve Guttenberg has written two memoirs. Maybe I should read them.

—

Good morning. How are you doing? You doing a lot of press for this one?

We are, yeah, it’s a very talked-about picture. So people want to hear about it.

We’ll just go with the big ones first. What’s your relationship with fame like these days?

I’ve been very fortunate. I started in the film business when I was 17. When I had just turned 18, I did a picture called The Boys from Brazil (1978), with Olivier and Peck and James Mason, Uta Hagen. So I started the fame trail pretty early, and I’ve always looked at it with great respect.

Did you consciously take a step back from acting in the nineties?

No, I’m an artist and I do the same thing every day. I put it in a 10-hour day and I’m always doing something creative, whether it’s painting, taking a dance class, taking an acting class, theater movement, mask, writing, and I’ve been doing it for over four decades. So it’s the same thing for me every day. It’s show and it’s business. So my job is to do show, to be the best artist I can be, the most creative and most open, the most explorational artist I can be.

And the business is selling paintings. So sometimes your paintings sell at the gallery and sometimes they don’t. There was a period during the Blue Period for Picasso that his paintings didn’t sell as vigorously. Van Gogh never sold a painting until years after. So being an artist is the same thing to me every day. I’ve been very, very fortunate to have the business be a little better than terrific to me and has rewarded my family and friends and myself with a great quality of life that we all can enjoy. So every decade’s just been the same for me. Wake up every day, be creative.

The way I imagine it, you are at a position where you’re sort of comfortable, and I don’t know, maybe you can just take a job every now and then when it seems particularly interesting. How close am I?

Actually, you’re pretty far from the mark.

Okay.

Yeah, I just am fortunate to have never worked a day in my life. I get up and I’m creative every day. As Robert Frost said, when your vocation meets your avocation, then you never have to work. And that’s been the way it has been for me since I was 12 years old, making $2 a performance doing Jack and the Beanstalk. I looked for outlets where I can create art. So some days I cook, sometimes I dance, some days I film, and an actor could only do what he’s offered. So when I’m offered a dance class, I’ll decide if I want to take it. If I’m offered a mask class and not the coronavirus mask, of course, but theatrical masks, I’ll decide if I want to take it. And if I get offered a picture, I’ll decide if I want to do it. My decisions always rest on my family and my creative ability to add to the piece. It’s pretty simple.

Then are you getting a lot of offers these days?

Yes. Very lucky. I’ve always been very lucky. I’ve always gotten offers to do cinema or movies or television and because of the commercial success of a few of the pictures I’ve done, that elevates the amount of offers, but I’m lucky. I’ve never been without work.

So I read that you had, when you first came out to Hollywood, you had this thing where you would create your own fake studio office. What was the story with that?

True. I came out to Hollywood when I was 17 and a half, and I had two weeks to become a movie star. And then I had to go back to Albany State and start my college career. So I drove around all the studios. I found Paramount was the queen mother of them all. So I snuck into Paramount, found the Lucille Ball makeup building, found an office, got some furniture, got a telephone, and started becoming my own agent. And it took off from there.

Did you ever get in trouble for having this unauthorized the office there?

I wouldn’t say trouble. I would say I got caught walking around the studio at three in the morning often. I would be the ghost of Paramount. And I would, once in a while, a guard would catch me on a bicycle, show me to the Bronson gate and I would just come in to Gower gate. So it didn’t matter.

Do you still live in Manhattan now?

No, my wife and I moved to a town called Pacific Palisades in California.

You were on the Upper West Side for a while. How long were you in New York? And when did you guys move out?

I was there almost 20 years and we moved to California two years ago.

Do you miss it? Seems like you’d have to really love it a lot to be there 20 years.

I love it. I love New York City. It’s entertainment every block. You walk down the block and there’s a poster for My Fair Lady. And there’s a newsstand with all the newspapers on it, someone speaking French when they walk by, someone walks by with a pizza, somebody’s carrying Chinese food, a messenger’s coming by with Thai food, the iconic buildings. You walk down 76th street, East 76th street, the beautiful architecture. You go to The Met. You go to MoMA. You walk uptown. You walk downtown. Just absolutely the greatest city in the world.

Have you found things in Pacific Palisades that make you feel okay about having left?

Absolutely. There’s a Pierson Playhouse, which is a wonderful theater in Pacific Palisades. They always have terrific fare. And the library’s magnificent in the Pacific Palisades. You have the mountains, you have the sea, you have the beach, you have terrific book clubs, a woman’s club, The Optimist Club. You have The Armed Services Club. There’s no lack. There’s a great bookstore. So there’s no lack of intellectual stimulation, but once you stop comparing New York to L.A., then you can have a successful life in both and a great quality of life.

So what was it about this particular role that made you want to do it?

Well, Jason Blum’s office called us and asked if I was interested. So I read the script by Aaron and Will Eisenberg, and I thought they did a great job. And I’m a fan of Tyler MacIntyre. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of his work, Tragedy Girls, Patchwork, he’s a talented guy and Judy Greer’s one of the most talented actresses working today. So I was pleased to be able to support her. And that’s my job, to support Judy Greer.

What are some of your favorite movies of the past few years here?

I loved Get Out. I just thought it was brilliant. I thought Jordan Peele did an incredible job and that’s probably my favorite movie in the last few years.

Do you still gravitate towards comedy or do you try to get away from it? Does it matter to you?

It doesn’t matter to me. I’m a painter, so sometimes I’ll paint a still life. Sometimes I’ll paint a landscape. Sometimes I’ll do portrait work, painting. And that’s what acting is, painting. So you might enjoy painting your family portrait more than you’ll enjoy painting a stranger, but it’s the joy of the craft. And I’ve been very, very fortunate to be able to entertain my craft for 40, almost 45 years professionally. And then I guess, 50 years, yeah, 50 years doing the craft since I was 12 years old.

Do you think comedy is a lot different now than it was in the eighties when you were kind the face guy of movie comedy?

No. Comedy is the same. It always will be the same. People laugh at the truth. It’s never been different since Shakespeare had the Globe and the Groundlings got in cheap and they were where the laughs started and then they rolled back to the rich expensive seats. Comedy’s the same. That’s why, take a look at Laurel and Hardy. You’ll laugh. There’s just nothing different between Seth Rogen’s comedy and Laurel and Hardy’s comedy. It’s funny. That’s why you laugh. It’s true. That’s a fact.

What about breaking into show business? Do you think it’s any different now than it was when you first came out to L.A.?

No, it’s the same. You do the best job you can with the equipment you are given. So if you look like Brad Pitt, you are going to have a different trajectory than if you look like Paul Giamatti or if you look like me. Different. And that’s cinema and film. The issue is most people consider cinema and film acting, and it’s not all of acting. There’s theater also. So if you look like Brad Pitt, or you look like Paul Giamatti or me, you can play roles that don’t look like you in theater. Whereas on television, it’d be very hard for Brad Pitt to play the down on his luck lonely guy, because of how he looks. But he could play that in theater very easily. So I think it’s the same as it was when I started. Train, read, become as smart as you can and work as hard as you can every day to get people to see you as an artist and in theater you can absolutely make a living for the rest of your life. And in film and television, it’s a bit more capricious, but, and there’s more awareness of it, but I think it’s the same. You got to train and also lady luck has a lot to do with it.

Was theater a big thing for you and your family when you were growing up?

Absolutely. Oh yeah. We went to the theater all the time. I did theater constantly and it’s a terrific way to learn your craft because if you don’t do it well on Wednesday night, we’ll do it great on Thursday night and it’s a great opportunity to work out.

‘Good Boy’ is currently available on Hulu. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

In an effort to get the National Women’s Soccer League into America’s second-biggest media market, an ownership group has reportedly established a limited liability company in Delaware called WFC LA and begun establishing trademarks for “Angel City FC,” according to a report from Meg Linehan of The Athletic.

The groundwork has been laid by digital media and gaming entrepreneur Julie Uhrman, who according to Linehan is listed as the CEO and president of the company. Uhrman once served as the vice president of business development and digital distribution at IGN Entertainment, and has been an advisor at various companies ever since.

Linehan also reported the Uhrman’s involvement comes as a surprise to those within the NWSL, as the assumption had been one of Los Angeles’ two men’s soccer franchises would lead the charge to bring a women’s team back to southern California. The legendary Mia Hamm has an ownership stake in LAFC.

Planting a team in L.A. would give the league a team in a vital market. A tenth team, based in Louisville, had already been slated to join the NWSL next year, and a Sacramento team is a possibility, too. But for a league that only has teams in three of the 10 most populace U.S. cities, a presence in Los Angeles would be a big boost.

First, the NWSL will become the first American team sport to return from a COVID-19 hiatus when it holds its Challenge Cup in Utah a little later this month.

Of all the summer movies that were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the one that hurts the most is Candyman. It coming out closer to Halloween makes sense, as its a “spiritual sequel” to the original horror movie classic, but still, I want it now! Especially after director Nia DaCosta, who also wrote the film with Jordan Peele and Win Rosenfeld, shared a new teaser on Twitter. “CANDYMAN, at the intersection of white violence and black pain, is about unwilling martyrs. The people they were, the symbols we turn them into, the monsters we are told they must have been,” she tweeted, along with a gorgeously animated (and chilling) video detailing the film’s lore.

Watch the teaser below.

Here’s more on Candyman:

For as long as residents can remember, the housing projects of Chicago’s Cabrini Green neighborhood were terrorized by a word-of-mouth ghost story about a supernatural killer with a hook for a hand, easily summoned by those daring to repeat his name five times into a mirror. In present day, a decade after the last of the Cabrini towers were torn down, visual artist Anthony McCoy and his girlfriend, gallery director Brianna Cartwright, move into a luxury loft condo in Cabrini, now gentrified beyond recognition and inhabited by upwardly mobile Millennials.

With Anthony’s painting career on the brink of stalling, a chance encounter with a Cabrini Green old-timer exposes Anthony to the tragically horrific nature of the true story behind Candyman. Anxious to maintain his status in the Chicago art world, Anthony begins to explore these macabre details in his studio as fresh grist for paintings, unknowingly opening a door to a complex past that unravels his own sanity and unleashes a terrifyingly viral wave of violence that puts him on a collision course with destiny.

Candyman opens on September 25, 2020.

We’re 48 hours removed from The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever, and as it turns out, it actually wasn’t that bad of a wrestling match after all — even if it did result in Edge tearing his tricep, resulting in surgery. While fans can debate forever whether or not it actually was the greatest wrestling match ever (spoiler: nah), it’s worth checking in with two former pro wrestlers who have notched up some classics in their own right: CM Punk and Bret Hart.

The Best In The World and the Best There Is, The Best There Was And The Best There Ever Will Be appeared on WWE Backstage last night to discuss the epic clash between Randy Orton and Edge. And, as to expected with these two personalities, they had opinions. First up, Hart said he did watch the main event of WWE Backlash, and actually quite enjoyed it:

“I thought it was a great match. I think it’s really almost impossible to name one match as the greatest match of all time, as wrestling evolves and changes. You watch some of these old matches with Buddy Rogers and Pat O’Connor and stuff, and go, ‘That was the greatest match’ back in 1962 or something. There’s certain matches you aways remember for the hype or the way they come out, and I think it’s impossible to say one match is the best. I think the one missing ingredient that would sort of not allow me to say it was the greatest match of all time is the fact that there’s no audience. You gotta have the third ingredient. You got two great wrestlers, you gotta have a wrestling audience. Unfortunately, that’s an unfortunate limitation. There’s nothing they can do about it. But in saying that, I would say they certainly had a great match and I thought it was very realistic, very intense. It [reminded] me of a tennis match.”

Later, Hart divulged that the Rated R Superstar reached out to him for advice beforehand:

“[Edge] was a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of declaring [it] the greatest match of all time before you walk out. A tough pair of shoes for anybody to fill. Sometimes, before I went out and wrestled, I remember thinking about my match and envisioning it, and I always thought of myself sitting in the front row watching myself. I’m gonna try to entertain myself. This match is for me. All the things that I’m gonna do are for the little fan me sitting in the front row watching it, and if I can get his attention, make him go, ‘Hey, this is a great match’ — it’s kind of all in your head, but I always thought that was the best advice… He did text me and tell me that he put himself in the front row and then played the match and he was quite happy with it. I was always a big fan of a great wrestling match and the psychology, watching someone really work a hold and try to tell a story with working different body parts, telling a story that leads to the whole story. I thought they did a great job of that in the match.”

Later in the episode, Punk had the opportunity to voice his own thoughts on the match and its branding, and true to form, he didn’t hold back:

“I think if you’re Randy and Edge, you just ignore that. You can’t live up to that. It’s too subjective of a label: ‘The greatest match of all time.’ What’s the greatest single of all time, music-wise? What’s the greatest band of all time? What’s the greatest car of all time? It’s too subjective, everybody’s going to have a different opinion, but I think that’s what makes wrestling great: You can talk about all these different wrestlers from all these different regions from all over the world who wrestle a different style, and sometimes in the ring you get magic. I think they had a great match. Was it the greatest match of all time? I’ve seen better Randy Orton matches. I’ve seen better Edge matches. But, like Booker [T] said, to put that on the marquee to get people to watch, I kinda feel like it was a lot of unnecessary pressure especially on Edge, coming back after almost a decade of not wrestling. They did a great job of compartmentalizing it and almost ignoring it and just going out there and delivering.”

There you have it: If Edge/Orton managed to placate two of the best talents and two of the harshest critics in professional wrestling, maybe it actually was the Greatest Wrestling Match Ever.

In a press release from the NBA Players’ Association put forth Wednesday, the organization committed to an increased emphasis on diversity with partner organizations and expanded the scope of its racial justice activism work.

Through a letter entitled “NBPA Update On Current Social Crisis,” the union highlighted that its team is made up of 65 percent people of color and 40 percent women. The union pledged to use its licensing partnerships across all economic sectors to “infuse the values and principles of diversity, inclusion and equity into the core” of these businesses through its for-profit arm, THINK450.

“As we strive to identify our role in addressing issues of systemic racism that go beyond police brutality, we believe we are uniquely positioned to engage our partners in constructive dialog about their workforce and board diversity,” the union said in its statement. “We believe they should also recognize the value of Black participation at every level of their organization.”

Moreover, the union is identifying new ways to put money back into the fight against systemic racism. The statement announced the creation of the Police Accountability Project, which aims to “create and manage a nationwide database of police misconduct and abuse” and lead or “support community efforts to remove those local officials in those jurisdictions evidencing historical indifference to or affirmative protection of predatory police officers.”

Though the union is not officially creating a new organization to spearhead these efforts or raise money, they will seek partnerships with other activist groups already doing this work.

From the union statement: “Rogue law enforcement officials persist in abusing communities of color largely because of their confidence – borne out by the historic failures of their respective jurisdictions – to document, investigate or prosecute those who abuse their authority.”

When the majority of the NBA relocates to Orlando in a few weeks, the union will work to register as many players as possible to vote. Previously, nine teams had been registered, but getting everyone in one place provides an opportunity to go further.

Also in Orlando, the union wrote, “We are actively preparing and soliciting proposals regarding ways Players competing in the games in Orlando can effectively continue their advocacy on the national stage occasioned by the games.”

Much remains to be hammered out, but the union stepping forward with concrete action is a strong step as players like Kyrie Irving, Avery Bradley and Dwight Howard continue to push for real in-season demonstrations if the league resumes play.