The first teaser trailer for Lightyear, which is not about Buzz Lightyear but it is the origin story of the human Buzz Lightyear that the toy is based on, is here.
The film is directed by Angus MacLane, who told Entertainment Weekly to not think of Lightyear as being set in the world of Toy Story. “Another way to get at it, it’s a straightforward sci-fi action film about the Buzz Lightyear character,” he said. “In the Toy Story universe, it would be like a movie that maybe Andy would have seen, that would have made him want a Buzz Lightyear figure. The movie doesn’t end and then you see Andy eating popcorn. This is its own thing… This is standalone. It’s the Buzz Lightyear movie. It’s that character but as the space ranger, not as the toy.”
Lightyear looks like it has more in common with First Man than Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, but human Buzz will have a laser and rocket legs, MacLane teased, “and you’d probably want to make sure that at some point he had a recognizable antagonist.” Lightyear doubles as an origin story of how Zurg got his purple ensemble.
Lightyear, featuring Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz, hits theaters next summer.
Move over, “alternative facts”—“conspiracy facts” are here! On Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel paid tribute to the mask mandate protestors, a.k.a. “pandummies,” who have taken their wild grumblings about the dangers of face mask-wearing from social media to the streets. According to Kimmel, they’re been “popping up at public hearings and school board meetings to complain about mask-wearing and share their conspiracy theories.”
So Kimmel decided to pay tribute to their inanity by cobbling together a best-of video, which he titled “Clown Hall,” in which a seemingly never-ending stream of batsh*t anti-vaxxers spew their bizarre facts about COVID and… E.T.? Here’s just a taste of some of the totally logical arguments made against wearing a thin piece of fabric across your face that could very well save your life.
“If God wanted us to cover our mouth and nose, he would have designed us that way.” (Note: This woman had to read that sentence from her iPhone—just to make sure she got the wording just right.)
“We are designed to breathe oxygen, not our own body waste.”
“Maybe the reason we have people in the hospital is all this mask wearing! Did we ever think of that?! DID WE EVER THINK OF THAT?!” (Those exclamation points aren’t even coming close to communicating the urgency of this woman’s message.)
“I know you guys think that’s a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. It’s a conspiracy fact.”
“If you wore that diaper on your face, if he farted right now, could you smell it?”
“God forbid my son got it and died. That would be hard—that would be so hard. But that was my choice.” (Does this constitute premeditated murder?)
“E.T.! E.T. came down, they quarantined the whole house. They had hazmat suits on. What do you have, short-term memory loss? ‘Cause I think you do.”
“Take one of these spoons and put it on your vaccination spot. Guess what? It’s going to stick to you! Guess what else? You take a black light flashlight and shine it on your veins, and you’re now going to glow in the blacklight because guess what? You’re no longer human.”
And our personal favorite: “YOUR CHILDREN AND YOUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN WILL BE SUFFOCATED!”
You can watch the full presentation above, beginning around the 6:10 mark. Sound most definitely on!
Lauren Boebert can’t help herself when it comes to making references that only make her look silly. She recently botched an Office Space reference while attempting to draw a parallel between Tylenol and COVID vaccinations. And when it comes to her denial of involvement in plotting the January 6 insurrection, she decided to attempt to channel a super-mega-successful pop star: Ariana Grande.
It’s a lot to process, but it all began when Rolling Stone published an explosive report that quoted Republican organizers who named several lawmakers, including Marjorie Taylor Greene and Boebert, who helped to plot the siege on the Capitol. The Rifle Republican issued a “carefully worded statement” (which is the term that was used and roasted on Twitter), in which she denied giving a tunnel tour as reported. She insisted that she’d visited the Capitol with family and ended with a flourish: “Thank you, next.”
“Once again, the media is acting as a messaging tool for the radical left,” Boebert declared. “The left falsely accused me of giving a reconnaissance tour. In reality, I was visiting the Capitol with my family.” She added that Rolling Stone only “[used] anonymous sources and shoddy reporting to attack me. Thank you, next.”
Never mind that Boebert tweeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the insurrection, and that she tweeted, “Today is 1776.” She quoted Ariana’s “Thank U, Next.” It’s time to really stop the presses, and this didn’t totally go unnoticed.
In the six days since cinematographer Halyna Hutchins heartbreakingly—and needlessly—lost her life on the set of the New Mexico-set Western Rust when a live bullet from a prop gun was accidentally discharged by Alec Baldwin, we’ve been learning more and more about the circumstances surrounding this seemingly avoidable tragedy. Through on-set investigations and interviews with people involved in the production, what has emerged is a picture of a set that, even before Hutchins’ death, was in disarray. Just hours before the fatal shooting, the Los Angeles Times reported that several members of the camera crew walked off the project over working conditions that included “long, long commutes and waiting for their paychecks.”
One of the key players in the incident is Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the 24-year-old with little experience who was ultimately hired as the set’s armorer and put in charge of the cache of weapons. (Shortly before Gutierrez-Reed was hired, a prop master with more than 30 years of experience turned down a job on the movie due to what he described as “massive red flags.”)
According to her IMDb profile, Gutierrez-Reed had only ever worked on two films before—and one of those gigs was as a costume assistant. The other was as head armorer on Brett Donowho’s The Old Way, in which Nicolas Cage plays an aging gunslinger whose past is catching up with him. But The Wrap is reporting that Gutierrez-Reed—who is the daughter of noted weapons expert Thell Reed, who has served as a gun coach and/or armorer on several major productions, including L.A. Confidential, Miami Vice, and Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood—“was the subject of numerous complaints” while working on The Old Way, and reportedly even had a dust-up with Cage directly.
Stu Brumbaugh, who served as key grip on the Cage Western The Old Way this summer, told The Wrap that Gutierrez-Reed upset both Cage and other crew members on the Montana production by failing to follow basic gun safety protocols like announcing the arrival and usage of weapons onto the set.
After firing a gun near the cast and crew for a second time in three days without warning, Brumbaugh said that Cage yelled at her, “Make an announcement, you just blew my f—ing eardrums out!” before walking off set in a rage. “I told the AD, ‘She needs to be let go,’” Brumbaugh, adding, ‘After the second round I was pissed off. We were moving too fast. She’s a rookie.’”
While an unnamed producer on The Old Way dismissed the story of Cage’s outburst or that it was suggested that Gutierrez-Reed be fired to The Wrap, Brumbaugh and another members of the production claimed that the young armorer’s inexperience “put the cast and crew in several unnecessary and dangerous situations,” noting that she had “walked onto the set with live rounds of blanks and no public announcement to the cast and crew, breaking established safety protocols,” that “she tucked pistols under her armpits and carried rifles in each hand that were ready to be used in a scene [and] firearms were aimed at people,” and that “she twice fired guns on the set without giving any warning to the cast and crew, as required.”
On the set of Rust, the shot that killed Hutchins allegedly wasn’t the first time a gun was accidentally discharged.
Just one month ago, The Wrap reported that Gutierrez-Reed was a guest on the “Voices of the West” podcast, where she discussed her job and described her role on The Old Way as a “really badass way” to kick off her career. While she admitted that she learned part of her craft from her father, she mostly claimed to being self-taught in tasks like loading blanks into a weapon.
“The best part about my job,” Gutierrez-Reed said, “is just showing people who are normally kind of freaked out by guns how safe they can be and how they’re not really problematic unless put in the wrong hands.”
It’s kind of funny how Kit Harington is afraid of screwing up and revealing something he’s not supposed to in regards to the future of his character, Dane Whitman, as the MCU moves forward. After all, this is someone who made it through eight seasons of Game of Throneswithout accidentally giving anything away he shouldn’t have. To the point the only thing he can think of where he was blamed for something was the infamous Starbucks cup that could be seen during the show’s fourth episode of its final season. Which he swears he had nothing to do with.
A good guess around the secrecy involving Harington’s character is probably not who Dane Whitman later becomes – in the comics Dane Whitman is the Black Night and that isn’t really a secret – but probably more to curb expectations about his character in Chloé Zhao’s Eternals. Because he plays an important role in the film’s first act, but that’s about it, and he’s not yet a superhero in this movie. He’s literally just a professor named Dane Whitman who happens to be dating an immortal being, and one of the Eternals, named Sersi, played by Gemma Chan. (Also, though spelled differently, it is kind of funny Harington is in two major franchises with a major character who has that name.)
Ahead, Harington explains why he was a master of giving vague Game of Thrones interviews but is very self-conscious about being the new person in the MCU who might spoil something. Also, he explains how and why he wound up being in the Friends reunion … and, frankly, he’s not really sure why either.
What are the odds you would be in two major world-renowned franchises where you’re dealing with a main character named Sersi?
I know. I think it is just genuinely a coincidence though, isn’t it?
And it’s spelled differently.
Yeah. It’s one of those strange things, it’s a coincidence in so much as that name is a historical name that, obviously, George Martin culled. And so did Jack Kirby. Good name.
So, ”accidentally revealing spoilers” wise, do feel a little less nervous than when you did press for Game of Thrones?
Do I feel more nervous about spoilers on this?
It has to be less, right? Game of Thrones seemed intense.
No, I think I’m more.
More?
Because I knew the rules.
Ah, okay.
Remember, I was doing that for eight years. So I was a bit of a master when it came to not spoiling things.
I see.
Whereas I’m new to this world. And I might go wander in and spoil something. I’m finding my feet about how I don’t say something that I’m not meant to say in this world. You know what I mean? So actually I’m on less terra firma here than I was before.
Interesting. Because I feel like with TV interviews are, “We want to know what happens later on in the season,” as opposed to Eternals, which I’ve seen, and I too don’t want to spoil it for people reading this. So I feel that’s a difference?
Yeah. True. But I think within this, there’s an expectation that there’s going to be further movies, and further things down the line for all the characters. So you just have to stay in the present with the movie you’re in, I guess.
And you’re here to say, “Eternals is the last one. No more Marvel movies.” That would be big news.
[Laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
So you mentioned you were the master, before, of not spoiling things. You never screwed up?
I was pretty good. I think I prided myself.
I don’t remember you screwing up. I believe you.
I got blamed for leaving a coffee cup on a shot once, which wasn’t me.
Well, she [Sophie Turner] blamed me for that. And I swear it wasn’t! Other than that, as far as spoilers, no, I didn’t. I’m pretty good! I’m pretty sure I didn’t mess anything up.
Now with Dane Whitman, in this movie you’re playing kind of a nice and normal fellow, as opposed to all these people with superpowers. For now, that has to be appealing?
It was. With a movie like this, you’re not given the script necessarily before you come in. You’re told various pieces of information. And enough to get you excited about the character that you’re playing, and potentials surrounding that character. But I didn’t really know before seeing the script what kind of a person he was. Now, it was nice playing someone who represented humanity. He was just a nice guy. He was pretty chill. And he sort of just rolled along with everything that was happening, because I feel it sets him in an interesting place, if that makes sense.
So how does this work? Does Marvel come to you? Do you go to Marvel? Who expresses the first interest?
I had a chat with Kevin Feige a year before. Nate Moore, the producer, called me. Not about Eternals, just generally about their new phase four, and would I be interested if the right thing came along? And, obviously, I said I was because I’m a big MCU fan. And I had a meeting with Chloe, and I asked some questions about who this character is, and what plans they might have for him, et cetera. And based on that information, I was like, yeah, I’d love to come on board. You know what I mean? Look at the cast! It’s a pretty incredible cast of characters.
And working with the person who just won Best Director.
And at the time, she hadn’t.
Okay true…
But it was very clear at the time that, awards are awards only, but I was meeting someone who’s a pretty special director.
So for this character down the line, on your resume do you put, “Also have experience using a sword”?
I assume I don’t have to put it on my resume!
By the way, that was a joke on Friends — Joey Tribbiani makes that joke about playing a doctor. I was about to ask if you watched Friends, but just remembered you are in the Friends reunion.
Yes! That was a moment of pre-pandemic madness for me. Like, “Do you want to be part of the Friends reunion?” I was like, “Yeah. Why am I part of the Friends reunion?”
Wait, so that’s how it happened? “Do you want to be part of the Friends reunion?” “I wasn’t on it, but okay.”
Yeah, now it kind of follows me around. Everyone’s like, “I saw you in the Friends reunion!” I was like, “Yeah, I don’t know why I did that.”
At least you got to talk about the “piv-ot” scene. That’s a good scene.
That is a good scene. It is.
So, Dane Whitman. People probably know who he becomes and who he is a little bit, but not as much as other characters. I feel like that’s got to be nice in a way? Where you can kind of do what you want?
It definitely felt, on me – and I’m feeling it even during the press for it, and being around the other guys – the pressure is not on me in this movie. And that’s nice. I got to have a bit of freedom with this character that could do pretty much what I wanted with. And I spoke to Chloe and she’s like, “Just play it very close to you.” And you look at my character breakdown on the information given out about this, it’s a “human who works at the natural history museum.” There’s not much to go on.
To be fair, they could still go to the Wikipedia page if they don’t know and see a lot more of about what this guy did in the comics.
Like what may or may not, for any certainty. So, yeah, I took this for various reasons, but for the potential of where he might go, it’s exciting.
I was going to say there’s probably not going to be anyone who’s like, “This isn’t my Dane Whitman.” But there will be one person. There will be one person who makes it their mission in life to say you’re not their Dane Whitman.
I promise you there will be more than one person.
I’m guessing one.
There’s always more than one person.
There will be one guy with a hashtag, “#notmyDane.” And that’s it.
[Laughs] “Not my Dane.” Yeah.
I’m only guessing one, because people like you. So I think you’re safe.
The ideal tortilla chip needs to be able to handle a lot of abuse. Tough enough to make it home from the grocer in one piece, get dragged through salsa, and scoop up guacamole. It also needs to be tasty — with that distinct salty-corn flavor combo — but not so flavorful that it counts as a Dorito, forcing you to alter your menu lest it overpower other ingredients. Most of all, it’s got to be hearty enough to work in a nacho. If it can’t manage that, what are we even doing here?
Yes, I’ve thought a lot about the parameters for a good tortilla chip. It’s a subject I’m quite passionate about. And in my years of research I’ve discovered two options for acquiring the perfect tortilla chip for your dipping pleasure:
Buy the type that comes in a large unmarked plastic bag from your favorite Mexican carniceria.
Buy corn tortillas, cut them up into triangles, let them dry out a little, and fry them in a pot of oil yourself.
If you do one of these two things, you will always enjoy tortilla chips that taste better than anything you might find in mainstream grocers. Every time. Without fail (unless you… like… start a grease fire or something).
Of course, I realize that those aren’t viable options for everyone. And grocery stores have plenty of ready-made choices available on the cheap. These myriad brands are sometimes trash, often solid, and occasionally damn good — which means you need an expert like me to tell you what’s what. So I grabbed as many bags of tortilla chips from local grocery stores as I could and ranked them based on flavor, construction, and dip-ability.
Check my picks below. Then adjust your shopping list accordingly.
10. Whole Foods 365 — Organic Tortilla Chips
Whole Foods
Before I embarked on this journey of ranking grocery store tortilla chips, I knew I’d find a lot of bad bags, but I never imagined I’d find something quite this bad. Not only do these tortilla chips have almost no flavor — seriously they taste like salt and nothing else — they’re the flimsiest chips I’ve ever come across, which sort of makes them useless.
The ingredients include Organic Stone Ground White Corn, but the corn flavor here is way too faint. The chip is pretty much a way for you to eat textured salt.
The Bottom Line:
Easily the worst grocery store tortilla chip I’ve ever tasted. But hey, it’s organic!
Tortilla chips in a non-see-through package are always something you should avoid. There is too much mystery here, in addition to the possibility of your bag being nothing but tortilla shards, it’s way too hard to judge how much of this bag is air.
Let me dispel that mystery for you with regards to this brand — it’s most of the bag.
As for the chips themselves, they’re very thick, which I like, but they have a stale crunch and a flavor that tastes under salted. The bag I got was mostly air, but the chips were in pretty good shape aside from their weak crunch.
The Bottom Line:
They’re not bad, but I can’t ever see a reason why you’d get these. There are too many better options out there for even cheaper prices.
I want to like Tostitos Scoops! for so many reasons. They’ve been constructed into little bowl shapes with dipping in mind, and they even have an exclamation mark in their title, they’re just so much fun, but they absolutely don’t hold up, and the form factor is a real problem.
They taste great, with a subtle white corn flavor that has just a slight hint of salt and the chips feature a dusty texture that absorbs salsa fantastically, but they’re way too thin to handle the weight of anything you’d dip them in, especially a chunky salsa. While the bowl shape seems like a great idea, they actually force you to awkwardly dip them, which increases the likelihood of them breaking.
You’re better off using a spoon and spooning your salsa into the scoop, but that defeats the purpose — these should be easier to scoop, not harder.
The Bottom Line:
We know, they seem like a good idea, but actually, they’re incredibly stupid.
Mission Tortilla Strips feature a corn-forward flavor and are topped off with the perfect amount of sea salt, with a great thickness that holds up to the abuse of the chunkiest salsas, bean dips, and guacamole. Having said all that, the “Strips” form factor is my least favorite.
You just don’t get enough surface area to get a good scoop, and because they’re so long you either have to take big bites, or triple dip just to finish a single chip. When they break into shards they’re almost completely useless.
The Bottom Line:
The worst tortilla chip form factor. For that reason alone they aren’t worth your time.
Tostitos Original Restaurant Style chips remedy the form factor problem I had with the Scoops and offer the same subtle corn and generously salted flavor. For whatever reason, these chips are a bit greasier than the scoopable version, and ultimately a little too thin for my liking, but they’re thick enough to hold up to most dips.
Just don’t try to scoop them, the chip’s build isn’t strong enough to bear a heavy load and you’ll lose your chip in the dip.
The Bottom Line:
A really great flavor, but just a little too thin to be in the top five.
On the Border’s Cafe Style tortilla chips are easily the greasiest tortilla chips we tried for this ranking, but the flavor and build quality is great. The tortilla chips are well salted and feature a white corn flavor with a craggily surface that captures salsa perfectly, retains its crunch no matter how watery the dip, and has the structural support to handle heavy scoops of guacamole or whole beans.
Before you throw them in a digital cart, I’ve come across several bags with an abundance of crumbly chips, so this is definitely one worth examining first-hand before you buy.
The Bottom Line:
They have a great flavor but if greasy tortilla chips aren’t your thing, look elsewhere.
If On the Border is the greasiest tortilla chip, then Santitas is the saltiest, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The build is exceptional, when they aren’t broken in the bag, Santitas chips are large triangles, with a lot of surface area for scooping up salsa and a thickness that can hold up to any sauce and makes for a great base for nachos.
Yes, the salt will feature prominently and cut through your salsa or guacamole — so if you’re working with a heavily salted salsa, these might not be the best choice. But for dips lacking in flavor, Santitas is a quick fix.
The Bottom Line:
These chips are made by Frito Lay and are generally on the cheaper end, don’t let that dissuade you because these are a great tasting option.
Juanita’s has a bit of a cult following and I’ll agree, they’re good, but they’re a far cry from being as good as everyone says they are. Don’t buy into the hype or the look of the bag, these aren’t a dead ringer for Mexican restaurant tortilla chips like people say, they’re not even close — though they do feature a very natural corn-forward flavor that comes off a bit more homemade than a lot of the other brands.
One of the best features of this chip is its crispiness, they provide a nice audible crunch that makes eating them infectious. Even without a dip, a bowl of these is a winner and the sound of you eating them will inspire everyone in the room to go for a taste.
The Bottom Line:
The best crunch with a nice corn-forward flavor. But not the best of the best.
Calidad puts me in a tough spot, I love the flavor a lot, they remind me the most of the type of tortilla chips you’d find at a Mexican restaurant, but the build quality just isn’t there. They’re on the thinner side and they break easily when you use them for scooping. Still, that heavy yellow corn flavor is so undeniably good that it feels wrong to rank them anywhere below second place.
If these were just a little thicker, I could use them for nachos, but as they are they’re perfect for runnier salsas. So long as you aren’t scooping, these are the best tortilla chips you’ll find on the grocery store shelves.
The Bottom Line:
Great flavor but on the thinner side. Don’t use these chips if you’re a heavier scooper, but for simple dipping these are the best-tasting choice.
Mission Tortilla Rounds are not my favorite tasting tortilla chips on the market (see previous entry), they have a very heavy yellow corn flavor that remains prominent no matter how flavorful your dip of choice is, but they are hands down the best tortilla chips on the market.
The round form factor may not look the best for scooping, and the surface of this chip is a lot smoother than we’d like, but these chips are just so damn versatile. They’re thick enough to withstand dipping, scooping, and layers of beans, veggies, and cheese, and I’ve yet to find a bag that contains mostly shards. Hell, even when these are broken into pieces, those strips are still effective vessels for your salsas and dips.
I suggest grabbing a handful, placing them across a ceramic plate, and smothering them in refried beans, freshly grilled fajitas, Monterey Jack and Oaxaca cheese, and your protein of choice. Place that in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes and top with fresh cilantro, guacamole, and salsa and you’ve got homemade nachos that will rival your favorite taqueria.
The Bottom Line:
Mission Tortilla Rounds are the most versatile tortilla chip you’ll find. The flavor goes heavy on the corn, but the build of the chip can handle the heaviest of scoops, making them a great base for nachos.
Great Lakes/Anchor/Founders/Deschutes/istock/Uproxx
Most novice beer drinkers have a tough time telling the difference between a stout and a porter. This is definitely not something to be ashamed of. At first sight, a pint of each side by side might look exactly the same. Both are very dark (to pitch black) in appearance. Sometimes, even taking a sip won’t help differentiate the two.
The difference actually comes down to one, simple ingredient. It’s all about the malt being used in the brewing process. Stouts are usually brewed using un-malted roasted barley while porters utilize malted barley. This means that while both will have a chocolate-like, robust flavor notes, stouts are usually more bitter with more coffee flavor and porters are maltier, sweeter, and usually have less bitterness. But with all the experimentation going on in craft beer, it’s often a matter of splitting hairs.
Both beer typers are terrific brews to drink as the weather begins to turn colder. But just like stouts, there seem to be countless porters on the market — so selecting just one (or three) to savor isn’t an easy task. To help you choose, I decided to once again turn to the magic that is the blind taste test.
I picked eight well-known porters and sampled them blindly, using only my sense of smell and taste.
Part 1: The Taste
I love a good blind taste test. In my opinion, there’s no better way to rank alcohol (especially beer). This is because, without the ability to peep glossy, fancy, colorful labels, there’s nothing to sway me in any direction. My ranking is based solely on two of my senses: my senses of smell and taste.
Literally, that’s it. I’m simply looking for roasted malt, chocolate, slightly bitter, warming flavors. No awards or hype can sway me!
Here’s our eight beer lineup:
Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald
Anchor Porter
Ballast Point Victory At Sea
Deschutes Black Butte
Founders Porter
Oskar Blues Death By Coconut
Bell’s Porter
Left Hand Death Before Disco
It’s time to get our roasty porter on!
Taste #1:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
My nose was first met with scents of bitter chocolate and an overall fruity aroma but not much malt. The palate is highlighted by caramel, dried cherries, and coffee. The finish is slightly more bitter than I’d expect for an American porter.
Taste #2:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
A lot is going on with this beer’s nose. There are notable aromas of caramel malts, dark chocolate, freshly baked bread, and slightly bitter hops. The palate is a great mix of freshly brewed coffee, bitter chocolate, sweet caramel, and a gentle, nutty sweetness.
Taste #3:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, I found notes of chocolate and malts and a slight fruitiness, but that was about it. The flavor is all chocolate, roasted malts, and some coffee. All in all, not a bad beer, but fairly one-dimensional.
From my notes: “Not as sweet as I’d like for a porter.”
Taste #4:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of freshly brewed coffee, caramel malts, vanilla beans, and a nutty sweetness are prevalent on the nose. Sipping it revealed more slightly bitter coffee, roasted barley, dried cherries, toasted vanilla beans, and just a hint of spice at the finish. All in all, a very pleasurable, warming beer.
Taste #5:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, this beer is loaded with caramel malts, espresso beans, bitter chocolate, and a slight fruity sweetness. Taking a sip brought forth hints of caramelized sugar, dark fruits, coffee, and fudge. The finish is slightly bitter, dry, and fruity.
Taste #6:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
It starts with aromas of roasted malts, dark chocolate, and a slightly nutty sweetness. But that’s about all. The nutty flavor continues with the palate. There are also notes of bitter cocoa, caramel malts, and just a hint of fruity flavor at the very end. Overall, a decent beer.
Taste #7:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer has a very complex nose of freshly brewed coffee, chocolate fudge, caramel malts, and the gentle aroma of pine trees. Sipping it revealed hints of espresso beans, a gentle nutty flavor, dark chocolate, and toffee. It’s a nice mix of sweetness and bitter flavor.
Taste #8:
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer’s aroma is highlighted by scents of chocolate fudge, sticky toffee, vanilla beans, and a lot of roasted coconut smell. Tasting it, I found that it isn’t as sweet as expected and that wasn’t a bad thing. There was a lot of coffee, milk chocolate, and coconut. Overall, it’s a very pleasurable beer.
Part 2: The Ranking
Now comes the good part. After all the nosing and tasting, it’s time for actual ratings. If you didn’t skip ahead, you already read the tasting notes for the blindly tasted porters. To make these notes, I simply breathed in the beer’s aroma and took notes of the various aromas therein. After that, came the most important part: the sipping. I tasted each beer and took note of the flavors and how well they worked together (or didn’t). Now, it’s time to rank them. Keep scrolling to see where your favorite beer landed.
I can definitely get behind the mantra “death before disco” and it’s a great name for a beer. This bold, rich, beer is brewed with CTZ and Cascade hops for a spicy bite along with a deluge of malts that include 2-Row, Munich, Chocolate, Carafa, Crystal. It’s known for its coffee-like, sweet flavor.
Bottom Line:
There are no bad beers on this list. It’s simply that this beer wasn’t as flavorful and sweet as I would prefer for a classic porter.
Introduced way back in 1972, Anchor Porter was the first modern American porter style beer in America. Brewed with caramel, chocolate, black, and roasted pale malts, it’s well-regarded for its creamy, rich, chocolate flavor.
Bottom Line:
This beer leans heavily into fruit and caramel with malts, chocolate, and coffee falling somewhere in the background. I’d prefer more balance.
Founders Porter sometimes falls under the radar due to the popularity of many of Founders’ other beers. Known for its liberal use of chocolate and caramel malts this year-round brew has won countless awards over the years.
Bottom Line:
There’s not a lot of negative things that can be said about this beer. It’s fairly well-rounded and complex. The only slight problem is the nutty flavor that seems to dominate every sip.
Yet another extremely well-known porter, Bell’s Porter has won many awards over the years. It was created to be the perfect fall beer as it has the nutty sweetness of a brown ale and the roasted coffee flavors of a wintry stout. It’s the best of both worlds.
Bottom Line:
This is a good example of a beer that ticks all the boxes. It’s fruity, nutty, and loaded with coffee and chocolate flavors, and is rounded out with slightly resinous hops.
Ballast Point is well-known for its lighter beer, specifically its Sculpin IPA. But you definitely shouldn’t sleep on its darker beers like Victory at Sea. This imperial porter gets added flavor from being infused with vanilla as well as coffee beans from San Diego’s Caffe Calabria.
Bottom Line:
This is a great example of a big, bold porter loaded with seasonal flavors. The vanilla and coffee flavors make this the kind of sweet sipper I would enjoy all fall and winter.
When you think of shipwrecks, you might not think of the Great Lakes. These northern behemoths are littered with them. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a freighter that sank in Lake Superior in 1975. Along with getting a song in its honor by Gordon Lightfoot, it also got a beer. Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald is an award-winning, year-round porter known for its slightly bitter, slightly sweet flavor.
Bottom Line:
This is a well-made, complex porter. All of the various flavors are working in unison and each seems to have its place in this well-balanced beer.
First released in 2015 (and had spawned myriad variations since) Oskar Blues Death By Coconut is an Irish-style porter brewed with chocolate and coconut. As the name indicated, it’s the kind of beer fans of Almond Joy bars would appreciate.
Bottom Line:
This beer is outstanding. It’s sweet, loaded with chocolate and coconut, and pleasantly warming. It’s perfectly bittersweet.
Oregon’s Deschutes is one of those breweries that seems to brew nothing but bangers. Its well-known porter is no different. Deschutes Black Butte has been brewed since 1988 and has continued to gain fans over the years. Brewed with 2 Row, Chocolate, Wheat, Crystal, and Carapils malts as well as Cascade and Tettnang hops, there’s a reason this bold, highly drinkable beer is one of the most popular porters in America.
Bottom Line:
When it comes to complexity, it will be hard to beat this porter. It’s filled with everything porter fans enjoy. It has roasted malts, chocolate, coffee, and just a hint of piney hops.
As a Drizly affiliate, Uproxx may receive a commission pursuant to certain items on this list.
The Dallas Mavericks took care of business on Tuesday night against the Houston Rockets. In a game that pitted a team with playoff aspirations against a squad in the midst of a gigantic rebuild, Dallas came out on top, 116-106, although Houston scrapped and made things about as interesting as they could.
The game featured a curious note: Mavericks coach Jason Kidd played all 15 players on the roster, with a handful of guys getting in for three or four minutes. It was a bit odd, and when asked after the game, Kidd claimed that this was not his idea. Instead, he claimed, he was approached by the team’s leadership council, which isn’t exactly a thing people knew existed before the game.
Jason Kidd says Mavs played all 15 players vs. Rockets per request of Dallas’ three-man leadership council.
Jason Kidd says the Mavericks have a council of three players that he discusses things with. He met with the council before deciding to play all 15 players tonight.
While the concept of a leadership council that tells the coach things might hint at internal strife, Luka Doncic explained after the game that this isn’t necessarily the case. He didn’t say who is involved, but he did say that he was of the belief that everyone the Mavs have could help.
Doncic discusses “the leadership council,” of which he’s presumably one of the three members, and the idea behind all 15 players playing tonight. Doncic wouldn’t bite when asked to divulge the council members. pic.twitter.com/s8c8NTjqfB
I’m going to let you in on a little secret about why the cocktails at high-end cocktail bars are always better than your favorite dive or the drinks you mix at home. While I’d like to say it’s about some special motion of mixing or touch of magic in the atmosphere (those are important, don’t get me wrong), it’s really all about the quality of the spirit in that cocktail.
Shitty bourbon means shitty cocktails. Great bourbon means great cocktails. I promise that it’s really that easy.
If you’re paying $8 t0 $12 for a cocktail, it’s going to be fine. But because of the way pricing works in bars, that cocktail has to be made with a $15 to $20 bottle of bourbon (at wholesale). That’s why $15 to $20 cocktails are just better. They’re made on the back of a much better bourbon. The great thing is, you’re not constrained by having to turn a profit off every single pour at home. So if you want to try and reach the heights of the best cocktail bars, just start pouring $30 to $60 (and sometimes up to $100) bourbon whiskeys in your cocktails.
Below, I’m calling out ten bourbons I love to mix with. Some of these will elicit gasps from bourbon geeks out there who are (in my opinion) often far too precious about “how” you’re supposed to drink whiskey. If you buy a bottle of whiskey, you can enjoy it however you want. And sometimes that’s in a dope AF cocktail.
To make the process even easier, I paired each pick with its ideal mixed drink. Click on the prices if you want to try them for yourself!
Eagle Rare is a marriage of at minimum ten-year-old Buffalo Trace whiskeys. Each barrel is hand-selected to bring in classic bourbon flavors that also feel deeply rooted and unique to the brand.
Tasting Notes:
This one opens boldly, with orange rind and maple syrup next to touches of honey, worn leather, and toffee. Then the oak char and vanilla kick in, giving it a classic old-leather-chair-in-a-smoky-library vibe, as hints of mint lead back towards the toffee.
When you add a little water, there’s a dark chocolate bar with almonds note that arrives. The finish is short but sweet in all the right ways.
The Cocktail: Old Fashioned
This whiskey is killer on the rocks or in an old fashioned. The orange, leather, and nutty dark chocolate all shine with a little bitters, sugar, cherry, and orange oils.
This whiskey was a special release from Nicole Austin and a new direction for the brand. The whiskey is the same Dickel that makes their famed Tennessee expression, simply pulled from barrels that leaned more into classic bourbon flavor notes. The barrels are a minimum of eight years old before they’re vatted. The juice is then cut down to a manageable 90 proof and bottled.
Tasting Notes:
This opens with classic bourbon notes of vanilla, caramel, dry wood, and a touch of apple crisp with brown sugar, spice, and butter. The taste holds onto the Dickel corn vibe as the sweetness leans into caramel and toffee with a buttery backbone, more eggnog spice, and a pear/apple vibe with a dusting of orange oils. The finish isn’t overly long but has a nice dose of creamy vanilla next to an apple tobacco chewiness.
The Cocktail: Eggnog
Eggnog spices, creamy vanilla, and dessert vibes? That calls for a dessert cocktail.
This is classic Bulleit Bourbon that’s aged up to ten years before it’s blended and bottled. These barrels are hand-selected to really amplify and highlight the classic flavors that make Bulleit so damn accessible in the first place.
Tasting Notes:
There’s a lot going on, with butter and spicy stewed apples, maple syrup, Christmas cakes full of nuts and dried fruit, and a hint of savory herbs all pinging through your olfactory. The palate brings about smooth and creamy vanilla with plenty of butter toffee, sourdough crust, more X-mas spice, cedar bark, and a hint of dried roses. The finish is long, warming, and really embraces the toffee and spice.
The Cocktail: Old Pal
This very refined take on the Negroni is perfect for a subtly spiced yet slightly funky bourbon like this one.
This small-town craft distillery is making some of the finest grain-to-glass whiskey on the market. Their signature bourbon is a wheated bourbon that utilizes grains grown within 100 miles of the Wyoming distillery. The juice is aged for at least four years before it’s small-batched, proofed with local water, and bottled.
Tasting Notes:
The vanilla and caramel on the nose are creamy to the point of feeling like a stiff pudding with a hint of wildflowers. The palate holds onto those flowers and pudding while adding cinnamon sticks warming in browned butter with a note of cedar. That spice broadens out to a Christmas spice vibe, as a buttery toffee sweetness and mouthfeel lead you toward a finish that’s just the right length.
The Cocktail: The Brown Derby
There’s just something about the florals in this whiskey that feels like a great match for the sharpness of grapefruit in this drink.
This bottle from Beam Suntory marries Kentucky Bourbon, California wine, and Japanese whisky blending in one bottle. Legent is classic Kentucky bourbon made by bourbon legend Fred Noe at Beam that’s finished in both French oak that held red wine and Spanish sherry casks. The juice is then blended by whisky blending legend Shinji Fukuyo.
Tasting Notes:
Plummy puddings with hints of nuts mingle with vinous berries, oaky spice, and a good dose of vanilla and toffee on the nose. The palate expands on the spice with more barky cinnamon and dusting of nutmeg while the oak becomes sweeter and the fruit becomes dried and sweet. The finish is jammy-yet-light with plenty of fruit, spice, and oak lingering on the senses.
The Cocktail: Whiskey Sour
The Whiskey Sour is a beautiful cocktail. The velvet texture thanks to the eggwhite helps highlight the nuance of any bourbon you use, so be sure to use an expression as brilliant as this one.
This is a “small batch” in theory and name more than practice. The expression is a marrying of 200 barrels of bourbon from Heaven Hill’s warehouses. That juice is then proofed down to 45 proof and bottled as is.
Tasting Notes:
The whiskey pulls you in with a touch of cornbread dripping with butter next to bourbon vanilla and hints of oak. The taste adds a drop of honey to that buttery cornbread as fruitiness takes on a tart caramel apple edge. The end is short, sweet, full of corn, and a little oaky.
The Cocktail: Horse’s Neck
Evan Williams 1783 really feels like the ultimate highball bourbon. While it’d be easy just to splash some fizzy water over ice and bourbon, the Horse’s Neck adds serious depth to the highball game with a touch of Angostura, ginger ale, and plenty of lemon oils.
Nelson’s Green Brier is a heritage brand that has a great comeback story. The family’s shingle was killed by Prohibition until descendants of the former owners stumbled upon the old distillery. Now they’re making one of the finest wheated Tennessee whiskeys at one of the most accessible price points of any whiskey on the market.*
*By fulfilling all the requirements for a bourbon, this could technically be bottled as such tomorrow with no tweaks — so we’ve included it.
Tasting Notes:
Cinnamon stewed apple mix with oily vanilla and a sweet edge of caramel. The spice carries through the taste with buttery cinnamon toast feel next to more tart apples, plenty of that caramel, wet brown sugar, and a small dusting of dark cacao and cherries. The end takes its time as it dances back through the cinnamon, cherry, chocolate, spice, and brown sugar towards a final note of wood.
The Cocktail: Boulevardier
This whiskey has some big notes that can stand up to big botanicals. That makes it a great candidate for a big cocktail like this.
This is the mountaintop of what Wild Turkey can achieve. This is a blend of the best barrels that are married and bottled untouched. That means no filtering and no cutting with water. This is a classic bourbon with nowhere to hide.
Tasting Notes:
Crème brûlée greets you with a nice dose of Christmas spices, mild pipe tobacco, orange zest, and a distant hint of fresh mint sprigs. There’s a pine resin nature to the woody flavors on the palate that accent the orange oils, spices, vanilla, and sweetness. The sip takes on a Christmas cake-feel late, with a velvet end that is just the right amount of everything you want from a bourbon.
The Cocktail: Sazerac
You really want a fantastic bourbon if you’re making a Sazerac. I can’t think of a better bourbon at this price point that’s also a phenom in cocktails.
Old Forester 1897 Bottled-in-Bond is the brand’s throwback bottle that celebrates the 1897 act that brought the world bottled-in-bond whiskey. The juice in the bottle is a mid-rye bourbon mash that’s aged, proofed, and bottled in accordance with the bonded laws and regulations.
Tasting Notes:
This drips with caramel on the nose — the kind that’s a bit tacky and chewy — alongside a touch of orange blossom and maybe a vanilla latte. That vanilla and bitter espresso bean note carry on through the palate as a bowl of red and stone fruits soak in a bowl of brandy with plenty of cinnamon sticks and allspice berries thrown in too. The finish marries all those notes while leaning heavily into the caramel sweetness as it fades away at a good clip.
The Cocktail: Whiskey Smash
The beauty of the Whiskey Smash is in the simplicity. This is basically just quality bourbon that’s accented with sugar, lemon, and mint. That means that base bourbon has to be damn good to start with.
Michter’s is currently distilling and aging their own whiskey, but this is still sourced. The actual barrels sourced for these single barrel expressions tend to be at least ten years old with some rumored to be closer to 15 years old (depending on the barrel’s quality, naturally). Either way, the juice goes through Michter’s bespoke filtration process before a touch of Kentucky’s iconic soft limestone water is added, bringing the bourbon down to a very crushable 94.4 proof.
Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with subtle notes of soft wood and worn leather next to light touches of dark berries, orange oils, egg nog spice, and slight toffee sweetness. The palate starts off equally soft with something more akin to maple syrup sweetness which then leads into a rush of berry brambles. The mid-palate hits on a bit of dark spice, vanilla tobacco, and dark cacao and espresso bitterness. The finish leans into a dry-yet-almost-sweet oak with a touch of an almond shell and dry grass coming in at the very end.
The real beauty is in the softness of the taste. There are no rough edges whatsoever and the whole sipping experience is like a silken dream. The soft limestone water does help the drinkability without making it feel thin. And while this isn’t an ABV bomb that’ll leave you burning, it’s not meant to be.
This is the epitome of a slow-sipping bourbon with real depth, even when mixed into a drink.
The Cocktail: Manhattan
I know, some of you think you can’t use premium bourbon for cocktails. That’s just … crazy. Sorry, but it is. I like to break this out for special occasions Manhattans (usually between now and the end of the year). We call them $50 Manhattans around my home bar. They, of course, rule. I’d argue that this is one of the best bourbons you can use for a Manhattan due to all the dark fruit, spices, and woody sweetness. It just ties perfectly to good sweet vermouth, bitters, and orange oils.
Dexter Morgan is back, baby, and that means that Michael C. Hall is returning in the role that landed him an Emmy. This should all be good news, yes, because Dexter delivered an absurdly beloved serial killer to a legion of fans. And we’re receiving what is, in effect, a ninth season from Showtime through a limited series. Yet there’s a significant question at hand: Is the new season good enough that it justifies its own existence as a revival?
Before we address that question, here’s an unavoidable reality: there’s a ton of water, literally, under this bridge. That unnatural disaster sources directly from the hurricane in the original series finale. And everyone who watched the original show realizes that the entire show jumped the shark during that episode. Dexter had planned to flee from Miami to Argentina with Hannah, his soul mate (and, conveniently, also a serial killer who adored poison), and his young son, Harrison. Instead, he chose to spare Harrison from his influence (to supposedly break the “born in blood” cycle), so he sailed out into the storm, dumped the body of his sister, Debra, into the ocean, and then he sailed to his presumed death but surfaced as a freaking lumberjack in the Pacific Northwest.
It was, to be blunt, a very unsatisfying ending, arguably even more so than that of Game of Thrones, and to this day, the word “lumberjack” is enough to set off Dexter fans. Original showrunner Clyde Phillips knows it. Michael C. Hall knows it. A score needed to be settled. The fans wanted blood in the worst way. So, if the powers that be were going to proceed with this revival, they damn well were bound to try as hard as possible to not repeat past mistakes and (eight real-time years later) compound the problem.
Well, I’m here to tell you that New Blood goes a long way — at least in the first four episodes screened for critics (out of ten planned for the season) — to set about redeeming itself and providing something fresh. I’ll discuss this without spoiling plot points that haven’t already been revealed by Showtime:
– Dexter’s new life: Cue a shiny identity. Dexter is now Jim Lindsay, a sales clerk at a hunting/gun/tackle/etc. shop. He’s concocted quite a reality for himself in a fictional community called Iron Lake. It’s all a morbidly beautiful take on the cliché that one can always pick up and retire to a nice farm in upstate New York. And Dexter’s doing well for himself, a decade after that hurricane. He’s putting his knife sharpening skills to benevolent use, and scratching his violence-loving itch to a degree. In fact, every indication seems to be that he could maintain his new equilibrium — having ingratiated himself with the town’s residents and even dating a cop, providing an “in” for murder cases, should he ever needs that — on an indefinite basis. This is both a help and a hindrance to him as circumstances begin to change.
– The series seems committed to honoring past characters: Yup, you will see some familiar faces, as previously promised. That’ll include John Lithgow as the Trinity Killer, for example, but first and foremost, there’s Jennifer Carpenter’s Deb. I’m fairly certain that we won’t be seeing any Hannah or Doakes during this revival, but Deb, man, she is a necessity. And the way that she appears, very early (and regularly) in this revival, is perfect. She might very well prove to be the lynchpin before all is said and done.
– Of course, Dexter’s little world gets shaken up: Does he have a rough time with the sight of blood? Sure. That’s not his main difficulty. He’s perfectly capable of treading water, but there’s a whiff in the air, the hint that the right set of circumstances could propel him into instability (hello, Dark Passenger) at any moment. A few things here:
(1) Dexter’s code is still intact, to a fault. He puts on a new mask, but he can’t keep it up forever. After all, and even more than being tempted by the sight of knives (he admires them both lovingly and resentfully), the dude’s got a code. And he can only withstand violations of that code for so long. Eventually, someone will be reprehensible enough to deserve Dexter’s particular brand of comeuppance. Yet Dexter is out of practice. He’s been off the murdering beat too long, and therefore, he’s lost a lot of his sharpness, his sixth sense. So, one should expect that vibe, which will be fun to play with.
(2) Dexter: The Next Generation is happening. In fact, that might as well be the title of this spinoff, and Showtime pointedly confirmed (as many, including myself, hoped) in a recent trailer that a teenage Harrison would return. This is not only a satisfactory development but necessary because the idea that Dexter could silence his Dark Passenger forever was ridiculous and runs against his character’s complex nature. It’s a conundrum, for sure, because Harrison did deserve a shot at a future without dad’s influence. Dexter even once declared, “It doesn’t matter what I do, what I choose. I’m what’s wrong.” Well, Harrison is fully in the picture, and it doesn’t feel forced. In fact, it feels overdue, and there’s a big question of whether nature or nurture will steer Harrison wrong, as this season progresses.
– Music remains an integral aspect of the series: This was a tough one to feel out, no doubt. Daniel Licht, the original series’ acclaimed composer, passed away in 2017. That leaves a huge void, given that Licht took an unconventional approach, stopping at nothing in what he would use (duct tape, knives, bones, you name it) to pull together the sounds to match the sights of the show. There’s simply no replacing Licht, so the show draws from popular music to partially fill that void. That includes Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche,” and Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” the latter of which brings to mind Chris Evans’ contract killer in The Iceman. You’ll love what Dexter’s doing while that song plays during this season.
Actually, there’s plenty to love here, but I get it if you feel reluctant to let go of finale resentment. I felt the same way, but I would encourage O.G. Dexter fans to not be afraid of being excited about this revival. Clyde Phillips and Michael C. Hall (along with everyone involved) did not go into this endeavor lightly. They know their butts are on the line if they pull another lumberjack affair, and from what I’ve seen so far, they’re committed to making things right, all while putting the leading man on the hot seat, as he very well should be. Dexter Morgan couldn’t hide forever, so go take a look at what he’s doing these days. You’ll dig the new vibes, and the old ones as well.
Showtime’s ‘Dexter: New Blood’ premieres on November 7.
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