Atlanta, Georgia’s WGCL-TV reports that a teenager was injured by gunfire on the set of Atlanta rapper YFN Lucci’s video shoot after someone fired 21 shots. The unidentified 15-year-old boy’s thumb was grazed; it was not reported whether he’d been hospitalized. Meanwhile, Lucci’s Bentley was also struck by at least one bullet, prompting him to flee the scene without the vehicle. Police said they are searching for suspects. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, witnesses say that there were three shooters and their motives and connection to the video shoot were unclear

Lucci — whose real name is Rayshawn Bennett — has been busy throughout 2020 despite coronavirus social distance precautions. In fact, he even appears to have been inspired by them, as his most recent video release was “COVID-19” just a month ago. Before that, he commented on the state of “America” in a video he shot, ironically, in Germany. Before 2020, his biggest release was the video for “All Night Long” with Trey Songz, but this year, he accumulated an impressive 21 million views for “7.62.” It appears that he’s in position for a huge breakout when things setle down, so it’s fortunate for him no one on his set was seriously injured.

YFN Lucci is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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 — I’ll tell you one thing…

Everyone talks about Charlie Brown as the biggest sadsack, no-luck-having, beaten-by-the-world cartoon character, but Charlie Brown, as far as I know, never fell off a cliff with a large appliance strapped to his back. You know who did fall off a cliff, a lot, usually multiple times in each 8-minute clip? I’ll tell you who: America’s greatest tragic figure, the inventive and ambitious king of failure, Acme’s most consistent valued customer, Wile E. Coyote.

Would you like to argue with me on this? Would you like to submit another figure from the entire history of fiction that you consider more tragic? Cool. Go nuts. Pull together your evidence. It’ll be cute. Because I can go on HBO Max — which has a huge collection of old Looney Tunes clips, in addition to new ones, this is important — and pull episode descriptions like this at random:

• The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote are at it again. Some highlights include Coyote lighting a match in a room full of explosives and Coyote flying off into the sky in one of his rockets.
• Wile E. Coyote figures out that a giant rubber band, a skateboard with a sail and a fan, as well as a time bomb in an egg, do not work against the Road Runner.
• Wile E. Coyote makes 11 disastrous attempts to catch the Road Runner.

That last one is my favorite, actually, just because it’s so straightforward. Yes, yes he does do exactly that. It’s an episode titled “Fast and Furry-ous” and it is from 1949 and it is delightful. All the classic gags are in there. It’s got the old “paint a tunnel on the side of a mountain and watch the Road Runner run through it” one, it’s got the “hop in a rocket and immediately launch it headfirst into a boulder,” it’s got… well, this.

Guess if he ends up using the ice maker to create a trail of snow that he skis down before launching himself off a cliff. Of course he does. And none of those are the cruelest twist in the episode. You can see those coming, to some degree. No, the harshest blows from the universe are the unexpected ones. The ones that catch you completely off-guard. The ones like this.

You know what I’ve never figured out? What, exactly, did this poor chump ever do wrong to deserve this constant barrage of torture? Is it because he wanted to eat the Road Runner? Is that his great crime? Because if it is, allow me to make two points. One, what else is he supposed to eat out there in the desert? This isn’t like Tom — a well-fed housecat — trying to kill Jerry with various kitchen appliances. He’s just trying to live, buddy. And two, the Road Runner is kind of a prick. I’m supposed to root for that smarmy little jerk, always sticking his tongue out and taunting people and making that face? No, sir. No, not at all. I am Team Coyote. I bet road runner is delicious.

(I suppose there are a few other things I don’t understand, if we want to be technical. Like, for example, how Wile E. Coyote pays for all his Acme gadgets. And, if he has money and the ability to order things, as his Acme habit implies, why doesn’t he just get food delivered to him? And what exactly is he plugging that refrigerator into? You can’t go too far down this path, though. You’ll never make it back.)

To be honest, I’m not sure that we’ve ever improved on these cartoons from a storytelling perspective. They’re all so compact and perfect. They don’t even need words. And we always know the ending, generally, even if we’re not sure how we’re going to get there. That’s some kind of trick, making every episode compelling when everyone watching it knows the outcome. Kind of. My favorites are the ones where there’s a little extra flair at the end, a little hat on a hat, like when he falls off a cliff and lands and looks like he might recover and then a parade of other items falls on his head. My sweet injury-prone boy. My tragic king. My perfect prince of failure.

But sure, sometimes Lucy pulls the football away and Charlie Brown falls down. I’m sure that’s devastating.

Get outta here.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Nailed it, indeed

Nicole Byer is a comedian and legendary podcast guest and also the host of Nailed It on Netflix, which is a very silly and fun show. She’s the best. She also has a way with words when it comes to more serious matters, as the world — and one mom, in particular — found out in an Instagram post this week. The post is up there but I’m going to blockquote the text anyway, just so it’s in front of your face.

Hi hello I’m Nicole. I host a tv show called @nailedit a lot of kids watch the show. In an Instagram comment someone said they would “keep their head down and just let their kids watch nailed it.” (I turned off the comments so ya can’t find it and attack that person also dunno their ethnicity or anything about them)

That made me boo hoo hoo. That you will allow your kid to watch me but not stand up for me. So I’ll do the work I’ll write you a conversation to have with your white child

A good way to explain to kids #blacklivesmatter : “you like this black lady right? She’s silly? She makes you tee hee hee?You would be sad if a police officer hurt her right? Well this is the current country we live in where someone you like can be hurt by the color of their skin and people in charge aren’t doing a fucking (you can replace that with dang if ya kids are soft) thing about it. So they are protesting, and the looters… well some of it is staged as a distraction some are opportunistic and some are people who’ve been oppressed for so long it bursts. And nice cops? There are no nice cops because if a cop was nice they wouldn’t watch and participate in violence against black and brown people. If cops were really nice they would have spoken out about police brutality years ago and maybe walked out on their precincts to send a message that they are against this. Instead they dress up like your GI Joe doll and are very mean. The curfews the helicopters the police in riot gear is all because black people have asked to not be killed… that’s it. There’s literally nothing else to it. Now once a week let’s read about shit (stuff for the soft kids) that happens to black people that doesn’t get covered in schools like Juneteenth, black Wall Street, how black people have influenced most of pop culture today and aren’t credited or it’s just co-oped… and if you do this post about. Post about the black history you teach your white kid to maybe inspire another white parent to do the same thing.
There I did it you can read it verbatim to your kids. Also I’m open to any additions.
Raise kids who give a fuck and you gotta give a fuck
#blacklivesmatter

You really can’t do much better as a parent than “raise kids who give a fuck.” There’s a lot going on in the world right now. There are times when it’s perfectly acceptable to zone out a little, just to avoid getting completely overwhelmed. I’m about to do a whole section on an extreme mini-golf show complete with GIFs of people getting walloped and launched into pools, so I understand that as much as anyone. But that stuff is for after you’ve engaged with the world. You can have a little comical violence for dessert, but finish your dinner first.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Meanwhile, on Holey Moley

First, an apology. The second season of Holey Moley premiered two weeks ago and I’m only getting around to discussing it now. I’m more upset about this than you are, believe me. Holey Moley is a wondrous show, a mix of extreme mini-golf and cartoon violence featuring real humans. That GIF up there is from the season premiere. I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent consumer of television and film. I’ve seen many award-winning programs and will happily debate the merits of a show like The Leftovers or a film like Roma. I also shout-laughed when this happened in an involuntary explosion of noise that startled me deeply. I can’t believe it happened. I’m glad to report he’s okay. But still. That’s comedy, people, I’m sorry.

Wanna see more? Blammo.

Pow.

It’s not just goofy slapstick, though. Holey Moley is also a powerfully weird experience. Jon Lovitz showed up in a pirate costume to hit lob wedges into one green and he was surprisingly decent at golf. One hole required contestants to wriggle across giant stuffed spinning hot dogs. There’s another where a man in a gopher costume pulls a huge switch and electrocutes the golfers after every missed putt. The gopher is named, I swear to God, Dr. Frankenputt.

What a beautiful television program. There’s plenty of fluff they could cut, sure. This would probably be better as a frantic 30-minute circus than an hour-long production. Just putts and disasters wall-to-wall with no filler. But that’s why I recommend you watch it on your DVR or on Hulu the next day. Skip right over everything that isn’t important and/or hilarious. Be the change you want to see. And you, like me, probably want to see more people get absolutely wrecked by windmills. We’re only human.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — My big problem with The Social Network

The Social Network. Good movie. Great movie. One of the best, according to some, including Quentin Tarantino, who heaped praise on the film as recently as a few days ago. I’m not here to quibble with any of that. The movie is compelling and rewatchable and makes Mark Zuckerberg look like a total psychopath. All good things. Aaron Sorkin wrote the hell out of the script and David Fincher directed the hell out of the movie. No complaints with it on the front.

What I do have, however, is one very small issue. A very small, stupid issue that drives me up a tree every time I watch the movie. A teeny tiny error that irks me in my bones. It happens a little before the halfway point, when a Harvard a cappella group is performing. They’re singing “I Swear” by All-4-One, the second most “1990s junior high slow dance” ever made, trailing only “All My Life” by K-Ci and JoJo. The lyrics of the part they’re singing should go as follows:

‘Cause I
Stand beside you through the years
You’ll only cry those happy tears

Let’s go to the tape.

Solid start. Going well.

Still cruising along. No hiccups yet.

Crushing it, guys. Now just bring it on h-

Dammit.

You see what happened here, right? The group sang “you’ll never cry those happy tears” instead of “you’ll only cry those happy tears.” That changes the whole song! The original version is a sweet ode to a soulmate complete with the promise that the singer will only make her cry through overwhelming joy. This version implies she’ll never get to feel that emotion. It’s dark and sad and ominous and I do not like it.

There are two possibilities for what’s happening here:

• Fincher whiffed
• Fincher chose to depict a dipshit a cappella group that doesn’t know the lyrics to a popular song from the era that they’re performing in a showcase

The second one is way funnier. Let’s go with that one.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Know your audience

A few things I know to be true about Yellowstone, a show I do not watch:

• Yellowstone is a Paramount series that stars Kevin Costner as some sort of rancher type who wears a cowboy hat and looks concerned a lot
• It is a show that is made specifically for dads, in a kind of hyper-targeted way that makes me wonder if it’s all a ruse to sell lawn care products and comfortable chairs in the commercial breaks
• The new season premieres… on Father’s Day

That’s just great work. A+ all around. Congratulations to everyone involved.

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.

Andrew:

What show’s cancellation are you still angriest about? I think it’s Happy Endings for me. I loved that show so much. It was canceled in 2013. That’s seven years ago and I’m still not over it. I still want them to make another season on a streaming network. If Will & Grace can do it, why can’t I have more Happy Endings???

Oh, man. I started thinking of some good, recent options for this answer — Lodge 49, Patriot, American Vandal, etc. — but couldn’t stop thinking about Happy Endings. Happy Endings was such a good show. It was lightning fast and super funny and everyone in it was so good. It had the hangout vibes of a show like New Girl with the speed of a 30 Rock and they made lots of good NBA jokes. Dammit, Andrew. Now I’m mad about this all over again. Extra mad, too, because there’s no reason that show couldn’t have become some sort of crazy cult hit on Netflix, the way The Office and Friends were for a while. Great. My weekend is ruined now.

But that helped a little.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Spain!

Excuse me?

Do I…

Should I…

Should I click the link?

I want to.

But I also don’t see how the full article can improve on the tweet.

Hmm.

Okay, I’m going to do it.

A porn star has been arrested on manslaughter charges following a man’s death during a mystic ritual in which he inhaled psychedelic toad venom, Spanish police said Wednesday.

Imagine getting to type that sentence. The rush of electricity that must have flown through their fingertips. The sheer power. I bet whoever wrote this felt like a god immediately after typing the period.

“The police operation began following the victim’s death during the celebration of a mystic ritual based on the inhalation of venom of the bufo alvarius toad,” a police statement said.

The toad, a rare species which is native to the Sonoran Desert, stretching from northern Mexico into California and Arizona, secretes venom containing a very powerful natural psychedelic substance known as 5-MeO-DMT.

I am learning so much today. About toad venom. Which is not something I ever expected to learn about. But here we are. What a world.

Local press said the ceremony took place in the country residence of [Nacho] Vidal, a media-savvy porn star in his mid-40s whose Twitter feed is full of ads for his 25-centimetre aromatic candles of the male genitalia, available in black, white or cerise.

Between the toad venom, the media-savvy porn star, and the huge penis candles, I think it’s safe to say this is easily the most news story we’ve ever posted in this column. The best? Tough to say. But definitely the most.

Cate Blanchett: Oscar winner, video game movie star, Companion of the Order of Australia, chainsaw accident survivor. While guesting on A Podcast of One’s Own with Julia Gillard, hosted by the former prime minister of Australia, the Lord of the Rings actress revealed that she had a run-in with Ash Williams’ favorite tool of destruction.

“I’m fine. I had a bit of a chainsaw accident yesterday, which sounds very, very exciting, but it wasn’t,” Blanchett said, as if that’s a totally normal thing to happen to someone. “Apart from the little nick to my head, we’re fine.” After Gillard warned her to “be very careful with that chainsaw” because she’s “got a very famous head,” Blanchett replied, “I know, I want to keep it on my shoulders.” What was the three-time Golden Globe winner doing with a chainsaw? We never find out — maybe that’s for Patreon members only.

If you donate $15/month, Blanchett will make one of those roadside bears just for you!

The actress shared that she had taken the year off to help support her eldest son with his schoolwork. Now, however, she joked that she’s “left with an 18-year-old who doesn’t want really to have anything to do with me.” … Playing teacher to her kids – she also transitioned to “being a kindergarten teacher” to her 5-year-old – has left her thinking about the importance of educators.

But Blanchett has so much to teach her children, like how a chainsaw will, in the immortal words of Limp Bizkit, skin your ass raw. Maybe Fred Durst could sub for her.

(Via Page Six)

Bandcamp, the site where musicians can independently sell their music, has committed to waiving their fees on the first Friday of each month. The site aims to allow artists the opportunity to better profit from their music and assist those whose livelihoods have been affected by the pandemic. Labeled Bandcamp Friday, artists collectively made a whopping $4.3 million on the first day of the fundraiser. But today’s Bandcamp Friday is specifically aimed at supporting artists who are donating their proceeds to funds and organizations in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

On the first Friday of June, Bandcamp put a spotlight on labels and artists who have committed to donating the money they make from Bandcamp Friday to non-profit organizations. While the website doesn’t feature every single musician who plans on donating revenue from the day to non-profits, Bandcamp has shared an alphabetical list of hundreds of labels, stating the specific organizations they plan on benefitting. Well-known indie labels like Sup Pop, Rough Trade, Sacred Bones, Joyful Noise, and Merge all made the list.

Rough Trade, in particular, is releasing the entire Parquet Courts discography to Bandcamp for the first time. Proceeds earned from Parquet Courts’ music will be donated directly to Black Lives Matter. Polyvinyl has committed to sharing 100 percent of digital revenue with its artists and donating $5 of each physical order to NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Check out Bandcamp’s full list of artists and labels here.

If you’ve been wondering where Jinder Mahal went after declaring his return to Monday Night Raw following 10 months away following knee surgery would be a, “hero’s journey,” we have the answer. Per a post made on Instagram on Friday morning, the Modern Day Maharajah has gone, “under the knife again to fix some knee issues.”

And … well, that’s all we have right now. No word yet on what type of surgery Mahal had or how much time he’ll miss.

As mentioned, Mahal had just returned to action after 10 months away for a previous knee surgery. That injury came way back in June of last year — I can’t remember April right now, much less “June of last year” — when he ruptured his patella tendon in a match with Mustafa Ali in Denver, CO. He defeated Akira Tozawa in short order before declaring that this run would be a hero’s journey, punctuated by reports that he’d been re-positioned as a good guy, counter-intuitive to his normal role of capitalizing on Singh Brothers run-ins and making people boo him for speaking a foreign language.

We hope this surgery was preventive maintenance and not another 10 month vacation, and wish Jinder a speedy recovery. If nothing else, you can’t have a magical 3MB reunion if you don’t do Mahal vs. Drew McIntyre for the WWE Championship first.

Lori Loughlin recently pleaded guilty in an attempt to end her college admissions scandal. In doing so, she (technically) agreed to a few months’ worth of prison time (although, to be realistic, she might not serve time at all due to COVID-19 concerns). Her youngest daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, has meanwhile been tiptoeing back onto Instagram, where she addressed the George Floyd protests this week in one of her Instagram stories. In doing so, she delivered a mini-lecture on how people should “use our WHITE PRIVILEGE” to end racism, and it did not go well.

“As a person who was born into privilege based on my skin color & financial situation, i was not always aware that these issues were still so present. And that makes me feel awful. But that also fuels me,” she typed. “I’m not racist and i never have been but i need to speak up about this because just not being racist isn’t enough. It outrages me. It makes me feel sick. It brings me to tears. THERE SHOULD NOT BE SUCH A GAP BETWEEN PEOPLE LIKE THIS. We need to support and stand up and speak and use our WHITE PRIVILEGE TO STOP THIS.”

A backlash ensued on the tone-deaf nature of Giannulli’s argument (which was not only shouty but unwieldy and full of judgment), if you look at the full screenshot below, with plenty of tweets like this one.

Essentially, people were not happy at Giannulli framing her argument as if she had never benefited (including her college entrance) from her own privilege. Us Weekly reports that she has responded by making a donation to the National Bail Out Fund (to bail out protesters) as part of the “BLM Donation Challenge.” She also posted a screenshot of her donation receipt and called upon several acquaintances and her older sister, Bella Rose Giannulli, to do likewise. It’s a small gesture, but an important one, although Olivia Jade will hopefully learn from this misstep. It certainly won’t hurt for her to step back from delivering lectures to do more listening before speaking.

South Central, Los Angeles rapper Drakeo The Ruler — real name Darrell Caldwell — was recently acquitted of murder and attempted murder charges by Compton court, but remains in jail as the district attorney refiled charges of criminal gang conspiracy and shooting from a motor vehicle in August 2019. Despite a hung jury, a retrial has begun, leaving the burgeoning artist’s future in at least a little doubt.

However, Drakeo refused to let that stop him from offering the world more of his poetic insights. Today, he released a new album titled Thank You For Using GTL, named for Global Tel*Link telephone system used by the Men’s Central Jail where he’s currently incarcerated — and on which he recorded the verses for the 18 tracks produced by JoogSZN. It’s his first all-new project since 2017’s Cold Devil and features verses from ALLBLACK, Lil 9, Rio Da Young OG, and JoogSZN himself.

Joog explained how the project came together in a press release. “”I plugged my phone into my computer when Drakeo called, and we recorded all the tracks over a period of 36 hours. His aunt put money on the phone so we could do this album. Some lyrics were off the top, some were written. We planned create a tape before he went to jail and I held onto some of the beats intended for that time. I would preview the beats over the phone, Drakeo would pick which ones match for each song. My set up was super simple. I propped my laptop up on a cereal box, hooked up a Beats Pill directed at the phone so Drakeo could hear the beat as he rapped and I had the phone line recording directly into my landline so I could get the cleanest audio possible.”

In addition to this, Drakeo told Uproxx he got the other inmates to quiet down when he was recorded to allow for minimal background interference on the files. The end result is a fascinating collection of authentic reflections of Drakeo’s experiences and unique worldview and approach to rap. “My message to fans is that I’ll be out soon,” Drakeo said in the press release. “I’m not guilty and I’ll keep putting music out till out I’m out. I’m going to always be myself regardless of the situation I’m in. I’m just going to get better and better… Just because I’m in jail, I’m not gonna lower the bar. I don’t do what everybody else does.”

Thank You For Using GTL is out now. Get it here.

In May of 2015, XXXTentacion released a song called “Riot,” which came out months after the shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed in Ferguson, Missouri. The song hasn’t been available on streaming services for some time now, but this week, in light of current events, XXXTentacion’s estate put the song on Spotify, Apple Music, and other platforms.

On the song, XXXTentacion is critical of the practice of rioting, expressing his belief that rioters often don’t consider the consequences of their actions: “Look in all the stores you wreckin’, n****, I reckon / Think about the people who own it for ’bout a second / I know you got your problems, but brother, they got theirs / This is not a game, quit violence and grow a pair.”

The song is barely over a minute long, but in that time, XXXTentacion gets his point across. The version of the song on streaming services now is actually slightly shorter than the original from 2015. The new version ends with a couple lines from former KKK leader Jeff Berry’s speech during a rally, which was featured in the 1998 documentary The Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History: “We see, I see, death before the children / White guys and white girls hanging from the buildings.” The original song sampled more of the speech.

Listen to “Riot” above.

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