Month: January 2021

It didn’t take long for Marjorie Taylor Greene, aka the wacky QAnon believer and conspiracy theorist elected by Georgia to the House of Representatives, to become infamous. Not only was she spouting nonsense on the House floor, old social media posts, in which she blamed Jewish people for California wildfires and even threatened members of Congress with violence, were made public. Greene has not backed down one iota, which has made the calls to denounce or even expel her all the louder. Though few in the GOP have done so, there is one brave enough to stand up: Mitt Romney.

The Utah senator and former presidential candidate let his derision known over Twitter, in a quote-tweet that revealed Greene had spoken with former president Donald Trump. “Lies of a feather flock together: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nonsense and the ‘big lie’ of a stolen election,” Romney wrote.

Greene has been one of a number of Republican lawmakers who’ve spread misinformation about voter fraud. On top of the social media posts, a video of her harassing David Hogg shortly after the Parkland school massacre in 2018 recently surfaced, which caused Hogg and other survivors to call for her removal from the House. She’s also gotten into scrapes with security over bringing guns into the Capitol, and she’s driven fellow new representative Cori Bush to move her office away from hers after Greene and her team refused to wear masks and harassed her own staff. Oh, and she believes the Sandy Hook massacre was a “false flag.” So all in all, she sounds like she’s a lot of fun.

Romney, meanwhile, has long been one of the few Republican voices to come after Trump and his followers. He was the only GOP senator to vote to impeach Trump the first time he was impeached, in January of 2020. So him coming after Greene is hardly a surprise, though that doesn’t mean it’s not welcome.

Bankroll Freddie has been one of the more prominent rap artists to come out of Arkansas and his recent success earned him a new record deal with Motown Records. The new signing comes after Freddie joined the Quality Control roster nearly two years ago, and to celebrate the second deal, the Arkansas rapper unleashed a video for “Add It Up.”

The visual is a lavish celebration of his success and finds Freddie surrounded by luxurious items that include cars, watches and chains. As he drives through his hometown of Helena, Arkansas, he makes sure to keep up the flexing by tallying the price of his flashy items.

The new video is Bankroll Freddie’s first release of the year and with his new signing to Motown, it puts the Arkansas native in a fairly good position to have a breakout year in 2021. His success can be traced back to 2019 when he earned his first taste of mainstream success thanks to his “Drip Like This” single. The track was subsequently remixed by Young Dolph and Lil Baby, with the latter standing as Freddie’s labelmates on Quality Control. Elsewhere, the rapper has also collaborated with the likes of YFN Lucci, Moneybagg Yo, and Lil Yatchy in his blossoming career.

You can watch the “Add It Up” video above.

Despite their ideal starting lineup only teaming up for a single game — a 110-106 loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday — the Boston Celtics find themselves 10-7, fourth in the Eastern Conference and a game back of the second-seeded Brooklyn Nets. Jayson Tatum’s stardom and Marcus Smart’s handyman, do-it-all nature, along with contributions from role players such as Daniel Theis, Payton Pritchard and Robert Williams, are chief reasons the Celtics stayed afloat amid a turbulent first quarter of the year.

But above all else, Jaylen Brown’s continued upward trajectory is why Tatum’s five-game absence, a brief carousel big man rotation, and shaky wing depth didn’t set Boston back much.

In his fifth season, the 24-year-old is solidifying himself as an All-Star alongside Tatum, the (current) culmination of steady improvement across his first four years. He’s posting an assortment of career highs, notably in points (27.1), assists (3.5), steals (1.5), 3-point percentage (44.1), and true shooting percentage (61.8). Those first three statistics hold up per 100 possessions, too.

Kemba Walker’s delayed 2020-21 debut due to knee issues and Tatum’s temporary hiatus thrust Brown into an increased creation workload. He’s assimilated with ease, exhibiting strides as an on-ball scorer and playmaker. Brown kicked off the season with 33 points on opening night and has scored 30-plus in five of 17 games. It’s an eyebrow-raising number due to the fact that he had eight such outings in his first four seasons combined. He’s twice scored a career-high 42, most recently against the Philadelphia 76ers and their fifth-ranked defense.

“He’s just tough. He’s terrific. I mean, he makes hard shots, too. I mean, obviously, if you give him a three, he’s a dead-eye, knockdown three-point shooter. I don’t think he was that when he first came in the league and now, he is,” Sixers head coach Doc Rivers says. “But his biggest improvement and where they’ve really developed him, off the dribble, he’s really tough. Great in-between game, great all the way to the basket, great threes. When you have all three of those things, you’re one of the better offensive players in this league and he is.”

The timing and accuracy of Rivers’ words may seem reactionary after he witnessed Brown dial up 68 points on 58.9 percent true shooting in two games against the Sixers, yet Brown has been exactly that through the season’s quarter poll: a three-level scorer excelling beyond the arc, in the midrange, and at the rim. And Rivers is spot-on with his assessment of Brown’s critical growth as a self-creator, which has helped fuel his ascension.

A year ago, off-the-dribble jumpers comprised 23.8 percent of his half-court offense, where he generated 0.84 points per possession and ranked in the 43rd percentile, per Synergy. This season, they comprise 38.1 percent of his half-court offense and he ranks in the 71st percentile at 1.041 PPP. Among 48 players averaging at least four pull-up looks per game, Brown is sixth in effective field goal percentage (54.6).

Rehearsed, deceptive footwork and a manipulative handle facilitate his rise as a shooter. Both are applied for slight advantages or space creation, tilting defenders ever so off balance before striking. He’s become staggeringly effective from roughly 20 feet and in, equipped with a toolkit of pivots, jabs, crossovers, between-the-legs snatch-back dribbles, and leaning jumpers to carry a tough shot-making mantle.

The successive step to this emergence is reorienting his shot profile for long-term sustainability. Brown is attempting just 1.8 pull-up threes, compared to 5.3 pull-up two-pointers, while his frequency of pull-up threes is actually down from 10.8 percent in 2019-20 to 9 percent this season. He’s living on a diet of challenging mid-range jumpers, and although the early returns are highly profitable, there’s impending regression to come at some point.

Among 69 players taking two-plus mid-range jumpers per game this season, he leads in field goal percentage (56.8). His prior career-high was set last season at 42 percent and a career-high 22.1 percent of his shots are from midrange, blowing past the 12.8 percent previously established. Touting both considerable volume and efficiency spike, Brown feels due for a lull at some point.

While his year-to-year progression suggests he’ll exceed that clip (and I think he will), believing he’s morphed into the league’s most prolific mid-range maven seems far-fetched. Chris Paul, Kevin Durant, and C.J. McCollum consistently lord over those leaderboards. Brown, who’s likely still adjusting to such significant pull-up volume and operating where he’s most comfortable, would, eventually, be best served swapping some of those deep twos for standard triples. This isn’t a reflective criticism as much as it’s a tweak to optimize his expanding offensive arsenal.

Even if he was hitting his career mark of 41.9 percent from mid-range, he would be averaging 25.8 points on 58.9 percent true shooting, a career high on both fronts. Of course, the newfound self-creation adds a wrinkle to this, but some of that can be offset by his growth curve. All of this, really, is to say that Brown is probably in line for some sort of regression to the mean, but by no means will that derail his offensive breakout.

The ripple effect of Brown’s burgeoning pull-up game is the way defenders must account for it. Although a career-low 29 percent of his shots are at the rim — some of that is tied to his mid-range proclivity — he’s converting a career-best 70 percent of them (81st percentile among wings, according to Cleaning the Glass). He approaches driving a bit like a savvy running back, patient enough to wiggle around until the opening arises before shooting the gap and teleporting inside. He’s discerning in these moments, leveraging hesitation dribbles to bait defenders with his developing pull-up gravity, maximizing the utility of screens and keeping opponents in the dark. At the rim, he’s explosive and strong, and capable of finishing with either hand.

Brown’s leap in scoring efficiency, going from 58.3 percent true shooting and 38.2 percent beyond the arc last season to 61.8 percent true shooting and 44.2 percent beyond the arc now, undersells him. He’s handling significantly grander creation responsibilities while upping his raw efficiency. Whereas 40.4 percent of his field goals and 11.6 percent of his threes were unassisted last year, 47.4 percent and 24.4 percent are in 2020-21. It would be entirely understandable if his shooting splits dipped when tasked with setting the table for himself more often, but the opposite is happening, providing another impressive layer to his rise.

Asserting himself as a legitimate three-level scorer — ranking in the 80th percentile at the rim, from midrange, and from deep, per Cleaning the Glass — has necessitated a passing evolution, too, and one that Brown is fulfilling. His assist rate has nearly doubled from 9.6 percent (45th percentile among wings) to 18.8 percent (89th percentile), and he’s on track for the first notably positive assist-to-turnover ratio of his career.

Some of this improvement is derived from reads being simplified by the level of defensive concern he commands. With the scope of his scoring gravity broadening, opponents must allocate more help his direction on drives, probes, or ball-screen actions. Openings surface, and after placing an emphasis on improving this, Brown is cognizant of them.

“I think he’s really worked on it over the years and worked on all the different reads that the game presents. He’s seeing a lot more attention and so there’s a lot more opportunity to make those plays, too,” Celtics head coach Brad Stevens says. “When teams start loading up their help on you, when you start seeing blitzes occasionally in pick-and-rolls, when you start seeing more help off of your screening actions, then, you know, the right play is to make the next right pass. … As you get to be a better scorer, in my opinion, your assist numbers should go up because that’s just gonna mean you’re drawing a lot more attention.”

The key word in Stevens’ summation of his star wing’s rise rests in the final sentence: should. Brown’s assist numbers should swell, but adapting so quickly does not always occur for players who enjoy such rapid improvement. He came out from the jump primed to boost his own offense and the quality of looks for teammates based upon that scoring boon. When defenders focus on him, he executes the straightforward play. Other times, he’s showcasing stuff rarely flashed before, spraying timely kick-outs or interior drop-offs, both of which stem from his budding craft and comfort as an initiator. He spots when the defense fixates on him and, compared to other seasons, is more prompt and adept in processing all of that.

Occasionally, he still has a tendency to flip on the blinders and miss easy reads, lasering in on his own shot to the detriment of the offense. His North-South handling issues lead him into precarious spots that involve lots of pivoting, searching, and stagnation. Those worries may be more prevalent should the shooting regress a bit, but given Brown’s massive strides over the past four seasons, he should be capable of further passing and handling evolution.

Given his off-ball versatility, functioning as a spot-up shooter (43 percent on catch-and-shoot threes since the start of last year), pick-and-pop/roll man, and flowing downhill off of screens/advantages, his on-ball game makes him a highly scalable player. He fits in well around various archetypes and skills.

It is perhaps easy and natural to offer a side-eye at Rivers’ statement about Brown’s league-wide standing minutes after a 42-point explosion against his team. Rivers, though, was correct, not only in his assessment of why Brown is thriving, but also in his conclusion. Jaylen Brown is one of the better offensive players in the NBA and at 24 years old, “better” could soon become “best.”

Though global precautions regardings the risks of COVID-19 have encouraged people not to gather indoors, especially without masks, City Girls opted to perform a show in Florida this weekend. While music venues, bars and clubs have been completely shut down in plenty of states, regionally, southern states have had much more lax restrictions — like in Texas, where Meek Mill and Bow Wow performed a show few weeks ago. That show was met with so much backlash even the mayor of Houston criticized the rappers’ decision to perform and put their fans in danger.

So the City Girls duo of JT and Yung Miami shouldn’t be surprised that their decision to take the stage at Bajas Beachclub in Tallahassee last night, Friday, January 29, is being met with online backlash. Particularly since the pair performed with a DJ for a largely unmasked crowd, according to fan-shot footage of the event.

Though the newly-appointed White House Coronavirus Task Force recently called for Florida to close down bars, restaurants, and gyms in order to slow the spread of COVID, the bookers at Baja Beachclub didn’t seem to get the memo. The Florida Department of Health reported that as of today, January 30, there have been 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, and 26,000 deaths.

Check out more frustrated reactions to the clip below.

On Friday, Madlib returned with his latest album, Sound Ancestors, an instrumental project with music arranged by Kieran Hebden, also known as Four Tet. Shortly after its release, Madlib sat down with Guardian for an interview where he spoke about a number of topics, including his opinion about today’s hip-hop scene. “Rap music right now should be like Public Enemy stuff, but it’s just not there,” he said. “I wish it was more like how it was in the earlier days when I was coming up. My influences. Real music. Music can teach you … things not to do.” He added, “Most of the music today is telling you bad things to do. My type of hip-hop can help you grow up.”

Among Madlib’s type of hip-hop was Madvillainy, his legendary collaboration with the late MF DOOM. Madlib recently revealed that, before his passing, the two were really close to completing its sequel. “DOOM was always telling me, ‘It’s 85 percent done, it’s 85 percent done.’ That was the magic number,” Wolf said.

Speaking of collaborations, Madlib also revealed during his Guardian sit-down that he missed the phone call that would’ve resulted in an appearance on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. “Back then I was more elusive than I am now,” he said. “I was busy on my own thing. Missed opportunities, man.” However, he said that working with Lamar “probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway” because he’s “like a sore thumb.”

Sound Ancestors is out now via Madlib Invazion. Get it here.

(via Guardian)

The Milwaukee Bucks are stuck. After two straight early postseason exits, they are at a point where everything they do is trimmed down and analyzed through the tiniest of lenses. It’s no one person’s fault — all their playoff losses are explainable, and the core is still in its prime. Yet the waiting game with the Bucks means success is only measured by whether they can at least make the Finals.

Milwaukee has accomplished all there is in the NBA without ever once appearing in the title series during this era. The awards this team has won are nothing to scoff at — they have a two-time MVP, a two-time Coach of the Year, and three All-Star caliber players, but they have yet to grab the metaphorical brass ring. Two years ago in Mike Budenholzer’s first season as coach, they set efficiency records that put them in a class only occupied otherwise by last decade’s Golden State Warriors. Especially now that Giannis has signed a super-max extension and committed to the franchise, any regular season success will, in the eyes of many, only matter if the Bucks can record 16 postseason wins.

While they’ll play 72 games this season, each one will be looked at mostly through the lens of whether enough has changed to overcome those shortcomings. The first is whether the addition of Jrue Holiday and the development of Donte DiVincenzo gives them enough play-making to be more unpredictable on offense. DiVincenzo has increased his assist rate while turning the ball over less, and in his third season, he finally looks more like the guy who played an important role in Villanova rolling to the 2018 national championship. He’s probably never going to be a primary option offensively, but he can handle the ball in transition, and on this team, his ability to get to the rim and make threes — he is connecting on a career-best 41.2 percent of his triples — is quite valuable.

Despite playing a five-out offense, the Bucks have long been short on truly good shooters. But they’re making more threes so far, helping them start the year as the NBA’s best offense. DiVincenzo, Pat Connaughton, and Bobby Portis are all shooting better than 40 percent from deep, and giving Budenholzer more comfort playing small, knowing he can really spread the floor.

At the same time, Holiday has been mostly his usual self even as he acclimates to a new team. Milwaukee’s halfcourt offense is 1.6 points better per 100 possessions with Holiday on the floor and 4.3 points worse with his backup, D.J. Augustin, out there. Holiday rarely turns the ball over and most importantly gives the Bucks a ball-handler who can run a pick and roll that gives Giannis a head of steam toward the basket. As ESPN’s Zach Lowe recently noted on his podcast, citing Second Spectrum data, the Bucks seem more comfortable with using Giannis as a screener this season compared with how they used him in 2019-20, especially when opponents try to guard him with a center, as we’ve seen everyone from Boston to Toronto do in recent playoffs.

Years ago when Budenholzer deployed a five-out scheme around Antetokounmpo on offense, it turned heads for its ingenuity. It’s fairly common stuff in 2021. But with more consistent shooting and ball-handling on the roster now (as opposed to Eric Bledsoe and Wes Matthews, good players who were more limited overall), the Bucks are going back to that well with some interesting looks. Against Toronto this week, Budenholzer put out a tiny lineup with Giannis at center surrounded by Augustin, DiVincenzo, Pat Connaughton, and Bryn Forbes. That group has played just 15 non-garbage time possessions together this season but out-scored teams by 20 points per 100 possessions, also per Cleaning the Glass.

The second important lesson to be learned from the Bucks this year is how effectively they can downsize and mix up styles. On the note of playing smaller, after Marvin Williams retired this offseason, Milwaukee signed Portis in an effort to create a more versatile frontcourt with Giannis when Brook Lopez sits. In theory, Portis is a fine option to play smaller and defend like a modern team with more athleticism and length, but it will be on Budenholzer to change.

Portis is by no means a perfect player, but so far, the coach is not taking advantage of what Milwaukee seemingly signed Portis to do. Budenholzer still mostly refuses to switch on defense no matter who is on the floor. That means Portis ends up dropping deep into the paint as a rim protector, hardly the best use of his skill set. Unsurprisingly, the Bucks are allowing 4.5 extra points per 100 possessions when Portis plays. While he does plenty of good things, Portis is not a rim protector.

To give Bud credit, though, Giannis is switching a bit more than I remember him doing in the past, even when he’s on the floor with Lopez. It’s obvious Giannis can defend just about anyone in the NBA, so when teams are foolish enough to involve him in a pick and roll, letting him switch and use his length, strength, and agility is smart. That’s something that’s easier to do with Portis out there, since his agility means he’s better equipped to execute it than Lopez.

On the offensive side, one thing Portis can do that Lopez can’t is drive to the hoop. Using Portis as a screener is a little more unpredictable than when Lopez simply pops or posts, but too often Portis is simply a pick and pop player for the Bucks. They signed a backup very different than their starting center but are playing as if he’s a Lopez clone.

It’s a shame we’ve gotten this far without mentioning that Khris Middleton just keeps getting better. The two-time All-Star is averaging a career high in points per game at 21.6 and his assist rate has exploded to nearly 26 percent, up from just 22 last season. As we saw when the Bucks took on the Nets on MLK Day, Budenholzer is increasingly comfortable letting Middleton be the primary initiator in crunch time because of these improvements. Though Middleton missed the game-winner in that matchup, that trust from Budenholzer and his continued improvement gives hope that the Bucks can be better in close playoff games than in the past (of course, many of these same things apply to Holiday).

Perhaps the most positive sign for Milwaukee: Budenholzer, a longtime advocate of going deep into his bench and having a steadfast rotation, is at long last playing his best guys heavy minutes. Each of Giannis, Holiday, and Middleton are getting more than 33 minutes per night, after nobody in Milwaukee got more than 30 last season. Now, it is important to mention that the Bucks were blowing teams out last year and they were able to rest their primary guys in fourth quarters. Regardless, the team could have waited until the 2021 playoffs to ramp up playing time, but doing so now allows Budenholzer to get comfortable with his rotation and for the players to get used to it.

There’s a reasonable case to make that in the end, the Bucks will go as far as Giannis takes them. But he has his own problems right now (namely shooting and turnovers), and even if that’s true, Milwaukee needed to do more to maximize what he’s great at. This year’s team may not be as deep or dominant as past iterations, but they are changing in ways that should make them better when it matters.

Judging from the scrutiny Milwaukee is given after underperforming in the playoffs, it may seem like the Bucks were a long way away from a title. That’s not true. Role players are stepping up, the stars are just as good or better, and by being slightly more flexible this season and more reliant on his best players, Budenholzer should be able to put it all together and do his part to get Milwaukee closer to the finish line.

Of the many names that broke into mainstream hip-hop last year, Flo Milli was undoubtedly one of them. The Alabama native’s career reached a new level with her project Ho, Why Is You Here? More than six months later, Flo Milli has earned herself a new fan in Juicy J, who recently spoke highly of her music during a sit-down with Genius.

The Memphis native was chatting with Genius as a part of their Co-Sign series, which finds guests of the show commenting on some of today’s artists. Flo Milli’s name came up during the conversation. “I love this female wave that’s going on right now,” he said. “She sounded good. I f*ck with her lyrics. I need to produce a record for her. Tell her to reach out.” With another project from Flo Milli hopefully set to arrive at some point in 2021, it would be good to hear the two Southern acts collaborate.

Juicy J also shouted out CJ, Blxst, Mario Judah, and more on his Co-Sign appearance. The news comes after Flo Milli shared her money-driven anthem, “Roaring 20s,” earlier this month before kicking it with Rich The Kid, Mulatto, and Rubi Rose on “Nasty.”

You can watch the Genius Co-Sign episode with Juicy J above.

It is strange, even now, even having a fairly good idea how making a television show works, to see a behind the scenes outtake of Oscar the Grouch complaining about the lack of sex on Sesame Street. It’s one of those shocking moments in which the human body makes a sort of guffaw noise. It’s human instinct to want to say out loud, “Oscar?!?!” At least, it’s human instinct to feel that way if that human grew up with Sesame Street, which is probably most of us now, because there’s something just so pure about it. In that it’s remarkable how this show is, deep down, in most of our cores as humans. To the point it’s pretty obvious, today, who was paying attention to the show as children and who weren’t.

Even before watching Marilyn Agrelo’s Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street (which just had its Sundance Film Festival premiere and will air on HBO later this year), I’ve been thinking about Sesame Street a bit over the last few months. (To be fair, with plenty of free time because of everything, there are a lot of topics that take of my brain space that didn’t really used to.) In that Sesame Street could be pretty weird. (My case in point is this four and a half minute short about how milk is made that involves someone just singing the word “milk” over and over.)

But, yes, Sesame Street is a television show and there’s plenty of behind the scenes shenanigans and drama, just like any show. Created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Jon Stone, Sesame Street‘s intention was to fill a void on television for children to learn while they weren’t at school. Specifically, minority children were the target, as a way to help some of the kids in these demographics who were falling behind in school. It’s interesting, because when you’re a child, even a child growing up in the suburbs in the Midwest like I did, you’re not looking at stuff like that, this was just Sesame Street. In the film, right after hearing this context, we see the original opening credits, and it shows a group of Black children on the playgrounds of what is obviously New York City. As a child, I just saw kids on a playground that looked like the same playgrounds that I played on. Certainly not in a city I had never been to and wouldn’t move to for another 25 years. At no point, back then, did I think, “Oh, this doesn’t look like where I live.” Instead, it looked like a place I wanted to live. (I would later find out that the real New York City has less talking green monster misanthropes living in trash cans than I was promised.) Though, as the film acknowledges, there were PBS stations in the deep south who refused to play Sesame Street when it first aired for reasons I probably don’t need to spell out.

The behind-the-scenes footage, interlaced with current interviews with the cast and creators, are a gift. It’s crazy to think when I was four-years-old, watching Bert and Ernie, in reality I was watching the comedy duo of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. And, here, we get to see them in action – which, honestly, is pretty amazing and jarring at the same time.

Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street also addresses some of the touchier subjects in Sesame Street history. There’s the behind the scenes envy between Jon Stone and Joan Ganz Cooney, to which Cooney, who is interviewed in this film, admits she got most of the media attention for the creation of the show and Stone resented this. Also addressed is the character of Gordon (played by three different actors; Roscoe Orman for, by far, has the longest duration), who was originally played by Matt Robinson, but left the show after a Muppet he created, Roosevelt Franklin, was phased out after viewer complaints. (Robinson left the show before I was born, but when repeats of this era were aired it was awfully confusing.)

And then there’s Mr. Hooper, played by Will Lee, who died in 1982. For people of a specific age, this might have been our first experience with death. Or, at least, having it explained so bluntly. I remember when this happened, watching it as it aired. I also remember my mom talking to me before it aired, so I assume there were a lot of warnings for parents before this episode aired. I have not watched it since and, my goodness, it’s devastating. It’s truly remarkable Sesame Street aired this. The cast were still coping with Lee’s death themselves and admit today that all the emotions we are seeing on screen are real. What a powerful moment of television.

I walked away from Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street with the notion that Sesame Street is a miracle. Well, I kind of always assumed that, but now it’s confirmed. At one point it’s mentioned that the magic that was created on Sesame Street could never be reproduced. It would be impossible. This seems true. Just the pairing of a guy who knows TV like Jon Stone with someone like Henson is a miracle in itself. It’s astounding that Jim Henson was a part of this show for as long as he was. Here’s an actual genius making content for children. There’s a clip of an old interview with Henson and Joan Ganz Cooney from the ’80s and Cooney said her biggest surprise with Sesame Street is that Henson was even still there, assuming he’d have “flown the coop” years ago. (In a modern interview Cooney says during contract negotiations she once told her lawyer to give Henson, “anything he wants.”)

Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street is just a terrific film. At the end, it’s dedicated to the people who made the show, but also anyone who ever watched. For so many of us, Sesame Street is part of our DNA. While watching this film, it doesn’t just feel like we are learning about how Sesame Street is made, it also feels like we are learning how we were made.

‘Street Gang: How We Got To Sesame Street’ premiered this week via the Sundance Film Festival and will air via HBO later in 2021. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

Twitter is a very silly website. Soccer can be a very silly sport. Put those things together and magic can sometimes happen, which was the case on Saturday. A match in the Dutch Eerste Divisie — the second-highest level of football in The Netherlands — caught the attention of people all over the web due to the performance by one curiously-named athlete.

FC Den Bosch found itself in an 0-3 hole against Excelsior following a goal by Joël Zwarts in the 47th minute. And then, something magical happened: Someone on FC Den Bosch scored four goals in 34 minutes of work. That someone? Well, that would be none other than 22-year-old forward Jizz Hornkamp.

So all jokes aside, this is a legitimately outstanding performance by Hornkamp. He accrued a perfect hat trick — a goal with his head, a goal with his right foot, a goal with his left foot — and then added in one more with his right for good measure. The header was excellent, the penalty was confident, the left-footed goal was magnificent, and the fourth goal included a really clever touch to beat the keeper and give him an easy tap-in.

Unfortunately, Excelsior added a penalty in-between his second and third goals, so this ended in a 4-4 draw. But here’s the thing: The man’s name is Jizz, and as a result, he got a moment in the sun on Twitter that extended beyond just footy fans.

It is up to you and you alone to determine whether this is funnier than some other extremely funny names from soccer, such as “Kevin Lasagna” or “Fabián Assman,” both of which I swear are real.

Over its six seasons and two movies, Sex and the City offered a fairy tale New York City — a playground for the rich that largely avoided class disparities as well as any boroughs that aren’t Manhattan. But when its revival, called And Just Like That…, finally drops sometime in the future, it won’t offer mere moneyed escapism. And it won’t pretend like the pandemic that’s still out of control never happened.

Sarah Jessica Parker, the once and future Carrie Bradshaw, told Vanity Fair that the battle against COVID-19 will “obviously be part of the storyline, because that’s the city [these characters] live in. And how has that changed relationships once friends disappear? I have great faith that the writers are going to examine it all.”

In fact, it sounds like they’re at least trying to make it a deep look at how Carrie and Miranda and Charlotte (but not, alas, Samantha) would fit into an NYC that has changed so much since their last outing, namely 2010’s movie sequel:

“I think that Cynthia [Nixon], Kristin [Davis], and I are all excited about the time that has passed,” said Parker. “You know, who are they in this world now? Have they adapted? What part have they played? Where have they fallen short as women, as friends, and how are they finding their way? Did they move with momentum? Are they like some people who are confused, threatened, nervous [by what’s happening in the world]? I’m so curious and excited to see how the writers imagine these women today.”

Speaking of which, the writing staff isn’t what it once was. “It’s incredibly diverse in a really exciting way,” Parker said, claiming each one will infuse with it with their own “life experience, political world views, and social world views.”

So there you go: We might get a more woke Sex and the City, featuring someone who came a little close to becoming the state’s governor. Still, Kim Cattrall’s Samantha Jones will be missed.

(Via Vanity Fair)