Last night, on a quieter than usual Raw After WrestleMania, Nia Jax made her return to WWE after an entire year, competing in the ring for the first time since WrestleMania 35 last April. She had to take that time off for double knee surgery, but we’ve known for a month or so that she was expected back soon. Nia celebrated her return by making short work of Deonna Purazzo, and the wrestling internet immediately recognized the move she finished her off with:

Yes, that’s the RamPaige (although Nia may be giving it a new name now, I don’t think we know that yet). It used to be Paige’s finisher, although of course Paige can’t compete in the ring anymore, due to her unfortunate neck injuries. Everyone who’s paid attention to Total Divas, or just social media, knows that Paige and Nia are close friends, so people were quick to make the connection, which Nia immediately acknowledged.

But how did Paige feel about Nia adopting a finisher she can’t use herself anymore? Considering their closeness, it shouldn’t be any surprise that she’s fine with it. In fact, it sounds like Paige encouraged her to use it:

Time will tell what Nia Jax will get up to now that she’s back in WWE (a run at Becky Lynch and her title seems likely), but it’s cool that she’s brought a little bit of Paige back into the ring with her.

Drake has taken over TikTok with “Toosie Slide,” thanks largely in part due to the dance that was created for the track. It turns out this originally wasn’t Drake’s intention at all, though, because the song was actually written about Michael Jackson’s famous moonwalk dance move. Drake sings on the song, “It go right foot up, left foot, slide / Left foot up, right foot, slide.”

On Instagram Live last night, Drake explained the song’s origins (and revealed he has a new album on the way), saying, “Shout out to Toosie, because when I first made that song, I was only talking about the moonwalk. […] But Toosie made the dance to that sh*t, so it’s popping now. I didn’t know it was gonna be a dance song like that, but it is what it is. We’re just having fun getting warmed up. Album’s on the way.”

That makes a ton of sense looking at the song’s lyrics, which feature multiple references to Jackson. Drake sings, “I could dance like Michael Jackson / I could give you thug passion,” and at the start of the song, he offers was seems to be another Jackson nod: “Black leather glove, no sequins.”

Lil Baby actually almost appeared on the song, but as he noted recently, “@champagnepapi Sent Me This Song A Month Ago My Dumb Ass Ain’t Send The Verse Bacc.”

Better Call Saul is a show with range. Some characters like Jimmy/Saul lie constantly, others like Mike tell the truth to a fault. With that in mind, our coverage this season will be structured as a collection of true and false statements about each episode. Welcome to Better Call Saul Truth And Lies.

TRUTH — Nothing good happens in the desert

When did you realize things were going to go bad for Jimmy?

Actually, wait. I should be more specific about this. A reasonable argument could be made that things have been going bad in one way or another, in the singular as well as cumulative fashion, from the day we met him. Probably before, too. His whole life has been murky shortcuts and questionable decisions lined up one after the other. No, we need to really laser in here. We need to focus. Let’s try it again: When did you realize things were going to go bad for Jimmy in his quest to pick up Lalo’s $7 million in bail?

Was it when the Jeep pulled out behind him? That was really the last moment where you could have thought it might be okay, in the seconds before the ambush. But you’re smart. You probably caught on before that.

Maybe it was when he wasted the water to clean off his shoes. That was pretty brutal foreshadowing. I saw him do that and I was like, “Welp, he’s definitely running out of water now.” I didn’t leap all the way to “and he’ll have to gulp his own urine,” but that’s why Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould make this show and I just make jokes about all of it.

Was it even earlier than that, maybe when he kept insisting to Kim that everything would be okay? Or when he almost walked out on the whole thing before doubling back to do it for a $100k fee that Lalo agreed to very quickly? Those were pretty solid tipoffs. It was all in front of us for so much of the episode.

But I’ll tell you when I realized it, and I say this not to toot my own horn as much as to make an important point: I knew as soon as Lalo said the drop would happen in the desert. Nothing good happens in the desert. Ever. Especially on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, but also in general. If someone says to you “Hey, let’s meet way out in the desert,” you should say no, because one or both of you is going to die or face a harrowing near-death experience. Same goes for the woods. Nothing good ever happens in the woods, either. Or the ocean. “Hey, let’s you and me get on a boat and head out to sea for the day.” Nope. No, sir. I’ve seen movies and television shows. I know how this ends. You are going to shoot me and fling me overboard, on purpose or by accident. Absolutely not. Zero chance. Same applies to cornfields and any building with gargoyles on it. Not gonna catch me sleeping.

The point here is that you should stay inside. In your house. Even when there’s not a pandemic. Just to be safe.

LIE — It is a good thing that Kim met Lalo

It says a lot about this show that two of its main characters spent the entire episode dodging bandits and trying to walk 30 miles through the desert and it ended on a cliffhanger where they’re still out there sweating and sunburned and dehydrated but I came out of the episode infinitely more worried about the fate of Kim Wexler, a person who has access to air conditioning and bottled water. Part of that is the future knowledge we have from Breaking Bad. Neither Jimmy nor Mike are going to die in that desert. They both have a lot to do still. So much. They’ll be fine. Fine-ish. Alive, at least.

A bigger part is the thing I’ve mentioned almost every week in these posts, how not knowing Kim’s future gave us a glimmer of hope on a show where everyone else is careening toward doom. And it looked good for her as recently as two episodes ago, when she was yelling at Jimmy for sandbagging her at the Mesa Verde meeting and it seemed to all logical parties that the big break-up was imminent, the one that separates her and Jimmy and keeps her safe and sends him diving head-first into the darker parts of his soul. The one I had naively assumed was coming because, come on, they’re not going to kill off Kim, right? Right???!!!

But then she up and proposed marriage and demanded Jimmy tell her everything — everything — even if it meant being a courier for $7 million of drug cash, figuring that their marital status would keep her safe because she could never be forced to testify against him. What she didn’t see coming, though, was Lalo, who cares not for spousal privilege and testimony as much as he cares about applying force to sensitive areas and acquiring the kind of information that allows him to do that. She’s in trouble now. Real trouble. Lalo knows she’s Jimmy’s — Saul’s, I know, this is still weird — wife, which means he now has leverage over his attorney.

I physically cringed when Mike said she’s in the game now, but she is, to a small degree, the same way Nacho’s dad is in the game. She’s the tiniest kind of player in the game, but so are pawns, and pawns are the first pieces to go. I do not like this. I do not like this at all. Kim has dipped her toe into the Breaking Bad universe now and that doesn’t turn out great for anyone, historically. A big part of me hopes Kim and Nacho fall in love and move to Bora Bora. I’m handling this great, thanks for asking.

TRUTH — If you have to get stuck in the desert with someone for a long time, Mike Ehrmantraut is a great partner

How excited were you when you realized it was Mike out there with his sniper rifle and old man bucket hat saving Jimmy’s jimmies in the ambush? I was very excited. I was sure it was going to be the Cousins. Which would have been fine. I do kind of love those silent goons. But it was better that it was Mike, for me if not for Mike, who went from torn up about being Fring’s button-man to mowing down bandits at ranges long and close in a desert massacre. Mike is way in now, if he wasn’t way in before. His speech to Jimmy near the end solidified it, the whole thing about knowing why he’s doing it and the people he cares about. This is the Breaking Bad version of Mike we’re seeing. He’s still Mike — he’s always Mike — but he’s even more emotionally checked out than before, which is really saying something because… [gestures toward everything Mike has said and done to this point].

It was good it was Mike at the ambush, too, because Mike is very much a dude you want to be stranded within that situation. Mike knows things, things that will keep you alive in nature. How to rig up a tarp to get water from nothing, how to fix cars, how to avoid breaking your leg in a hole, etc. You need that, especially if you’re a guy like Jimmy whose idea of roughing it is a motel that doesn’t have free HBO. He wouldn’t have lasted six hours out there. He would have chugged his water and started a fire and passed out from dehydration and been hunted down by the last bandit and buried in a shallow grave. Mike is almost like Bear Grylls if a Bear Grylls communicated only through grunts and eye rolls. He is Jimmy’s only hope right now.

It is worth noting here that Gus sent Mike to protect Jimmy and Lalo’s bail money, which means:

• Gus knew the whole plan even though Lalo said he wasn’t involving Nacho
• If Nacho didn’t tell Gus, how did Gus know?
• How is Jimmy going to explain how he got home, because he can’t exactly say Mike helped him
• (UPDATE: A reader pointed out that Mike could have been tracking Jimmy with the device in the gas cap he put in a while ago and removed when they started fleeing the scene. This is a good point. Please pretend I thought of it.)

And so on. Lots to consider here, provided they make it out of the desert before the end of the season.

LIE — If you have to get stuck in the desert with someone for a long time, Mike Ehrmantraut is a great partner

He’s also very gruff and silent and demanding. You’re not going to have sparkling conversations about the issues of the day. You’re not going to invent fun little games to pass the time. You’re going to walk, all the time, in the blistering heat. He’s going to make you carry the heavy bags of money. The kindest gesture he’ll offer you is a foil blanket to keep warm at night, which is nice unless your older brother wore them compulsively because of a deteriorating mental conditioner that left deep wounds in you that have not yet healed over. Mike will not make you feel better about any of this but he sure might keep you alive. That’s the deal.

Here’s a fun exercise: Spend some time today really thinking about what person you’d like to be stranded with in a desert like this. Real or fictional is fine. I think Matthew McConaughey would be a fun one, although I don’t know if you’d just die in the middle of one of his monologues. It’s a tough mix to find: outdoorsy enough to survive the elements, personable enough to make it bearable. There’s a very limited number of people who check both of those boxes. You really need to think about it. There’s a pretty obvious answer right in front of you. Want me to tell you? Okay, I’ll tell you.

The answer is JUST DON’T GO INTO THE DESERT IN THE FIRST PLACE. Jesus Christ. It’s like you didn’t even read the opening section. Come on.

LIE — The Cousins talk too much

Love these guys. Not a single word spoken in the entire episode. Just perfectly synchronized menacing movement in matching shiny suits and matching shinier shirts. Add them to the ever-growing list of characters I would watch an entire episode or limited series about. What are they up to when they’re not on cartel business? Do they share an apartment? I have this image in my head of two twin beds in one bedroom, of them both waking up at the exact same time and flinging the covers off with the exact same motion to reveal they’re wearing the same pajamas. They go to the bathroom to brush their teeth in their adjoining sinks and then hop in their showers, both in the same bathroom, separated by three feet of tile and a bathmat. I can see this in my head right now, crystal clear. I see them eating cereal and the motion of their spoons is perfectly coordinated. It’s all right there.

I bet one day one of them got mixed up getting dressed and put on the wrong color shiny shirt and it threw them into a minutes-long existential crisis.

TRUTH — If you are chugging your own pee out of a water jug, some part of your day has gone very wrong

But that’s none of my business.

Justin Bieber debuted his comeback record Changes back in February. Since the record’s release, Bieber has kept fans entertained by releasing a heaping handful of videos as part of his Changes: The Movement series. With the visual series, Bieber invites talented choreographers to conceptualize the songs on his album through dance. His latest, a visual accompanying the track “At Least For Now,” is a serene battle with nature.

Directed by Nick DeMoura, the video is a visual depiction of the literary trope man vs. nature. Featuring dancer/choreographer Sean Lew, the visual takes place atop a scenic and snowy mountaintop. In an Instagram post, Lew shared his experience being a part of the video:

“i’m still in awe of how i’m a part of this series that are filled with some of the greatest movers and minds in the entire world. when i was called to do this song, i spent months trying to figure out a concept and story. me and nick literally went back and forth for weeks and it all came down to stripping it all down and going for something simplistic and meaningful. i personally spent hours and hours writing 14 different versions of a written narrative that would best fit this song. hearing this song, it all came down to his words and that was my guide to what i wanted to represent in this video. the feeling of almost getting what we desire for so long, the key to unlock our limitations. However, you realize that sometimes we have to hold back and just accept our restrictions because it’s what’s for the best at the moment. the whole world is dealing with one of the craziest challenges we’ve ever encountered, but i truly believe that we will get through this and we just have to accept the restraints that are being given upon us.”

Watch Bieber’s “At Least For Now” choreography video above.

Changes it out now via Def Jam. Get it here.

Drake’s rollout for his new single “Toosie Slide” may have been slightly derailed by having to quarantine himself like the rest of us, but that hasn’t stopped him from being productive with the time indoors. During an Instagram Live stream he dubbed “Night Owl Sound” on his engineer OVO Mark’s page, Drake and Mark previewed a handful of the new songs the self-declared 6 God has been working on.

The songs featured a few guests as well; on one, New York drill newcomer Fivio Foreign gets to share some of Drake’s spotlight, while another, “Pain 1993,” featured Atlanta genre-bender Playboi Carti. Drake also played a portion of a previously leaked song, “Not Around,” confirming that a “proper version” will find its way onto his upcoming album.

From the clips he played, not only will his upcoming album be “more concise,” as he put it earlier this year, but it will also seemingly focus more on rapping and as well as highlighting his new musical direction, as suggested by the presence of Fivio Foreign and Drake’s earlier drill record, “War.” During the stream, Drake also discussed the origins of his “Toosie Slide” dance lyrics — rather than trying to cook up his own dance, he was actually describing Michael Jackson’s signature Moonwalk move, but Toosie turned it into something totally different.

Watch Drake’s livestream preview above.

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Back in 2018 when Travis Scott first released his opus Astroworld, excited fans were confused by one track in particular on the album. “Yosemite,” the 12th song and third single from the album, featured a peculiar volume issue. While Travis and guest rapper Gunna sounded just fine, the other guest on the song, Nav, was nearly inaudible, his verse mixed at a completely different level than the rest of the song. The error became the subject of memes on social media before eventually being remastered.

Yesterday, Genius finally solved the mystery of why Nav’s vocals were so much quieter in the mix in an interview with Cashpassion, Cactus Jack Records’ in-house engineer. Cashpassion, aka Jimmy Cash, explained the mixing mix-up, saying it was a simple oversight amid a hectic release deadline push. “We were just going on overdrive, over time,” he elaborated. ‘We were just doing so much at once. I got in a crazy car wreck on my way to Mike Dean’s on the last day when we were turning in the cleans, right after we turned in the album. I got clipped by a little semi up in Studio City on the way up to Mike’s. I was okay and everything but my car was totaled, it was crazy. So we were just on overdrive and I think that was just an honest slip-up. Something happened, I don’t know. It was kind of strange.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Cash speaks on the proliferation of “Travis Scott Type Beats” and “How To Make A Travis Scott Song” videos online, the potential for Cactus Jack signee Don Toliver to be a star, and naturally, how the pandemic is affecting the Cactus Jack label head’s workflow.

Read the full interview with Cashpassion here.

After 11 seasons, ABC’s Modern Family is coming to an end tomorrow with a two-part finale entitled, fittingly, “Finale.” As someone who hasn’t regularly tuned in since season five, when it won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for a fifth straight year (!), I cannot speak to the quality of the show. So, I’ll leave it up to Sarah Hyland.

The actress, who plays Claire and Phil Dunphy’s daughter Haley, told Cosmopolitan that she was disappointed with how her character’s arc came to an end. She wanted to see Haley “own her badassery in the fashion world, becoming a badass stylist or brand mogul or anything like that.” Instead, she had twins, and became defined by her struggles with parenthood. “There are so many amazing mothers who are also hard workers and excel at their jobs and kill it every day in both aspects,” Hyland said. “That would have been a really cool thing to see, especially from someone like Haley.”

This isn’t the first time Hyland has expressed her irritation with Modern Family. When fans noticed that Haley was absence from over half the episodes in the final season, she tweeted, “Apparently I’ve been busy with the twins.” Hyland also didn’t know that Haley’s grandfather Frank (played by the great Fred Willard) died until the episode aired. “So I don’t read scripts of the episodes of Modern Family that I’m not in, so I just found out that my grandpa’s dead along with all of you,” she said on Instagram. “I still feel special.”

If that’s what happened to Haley these past six seasons, I can’t wait to learn what Manny is up to. Oh, he’s still the worst? Never mind. The Modern Family series finale airs Wednesday, April 8, at 8 pm EST.

(Via Cosmopolitan)

There’s something soothing about hearing the voice of Ed Helms on the other end of a phone call. Yes, it’s a voice we all know very well – an often frantic voice when it belongs to Helms’ Andy Bernard from The Office – but the actual Helms is such a calm, cool and just plain doggone nice customer, well, it’s just a much needed pleasant and calming experience.

Helms is promoting Coffee & Kareem, his new Netflix movie which premiered this past weekend and is, frankly, pretty insane. Helms plays James Coffee, a Detroit police officer who teams up with a 12-year-old kid to help bring down a drug ring. (I know this sounds like a movie “for the whole family,” but it is most definitely, let’s say, not that.

Also, it’s been five years since Helms starred as Rusty Griswold in the Vacation sequel, reboot, a movie that wasn’t received favorably at the time, but since has found a bit of a new life, especially after its directors (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein) hit big with Game Night. Helms is still immensely proud of Vacation (as he should be, because it’s hilarious), and has a theory about what happened and the shift we saw in comedies around that same time.

And we discussed that scene from The Office when he and Rainn Wilson have a guitar/banjo duel to John Denver’s “Country Roads” for the affection of Ellie Kemper’s Erin. (This scene is mostly brought up because I’ve been watching a lot of The Office lately and anytime this scene comes on it puts me in a good mood no matter what.) Helms says he and Rainn Wilson still talk about this scene quite a bit and are thinking about recording a new version. I tried to implore with him that, yes, right bout now would be a great time for that.

Ed Helms: Hey, how are ya?

I don’t know how to answer that anymore. It’s a complicated answer these days.

Well, we got time. Go for it. Just dive in. Yeah, it is complicated. It’s too complicated.

Well, I live in New York City…

Well, yeah, let’s get into it. And it is a crazy time. I mean, thankfully I will say that the people in New York are modeling a level of heroism and just badass energy that I’m in awe of and so grateful for. Because it’s keeping me going and feeling okay about things. Like when I saw those firemen cheering for all of the medical workers? I mean, that’s what we need more of right now. That stuff, that’s the human spirit stuff that’s going to get us all the way through this.

It was weird the first day everyone started cheering at 7pm for the medical workers out the window, because it’s kind of weird just to hear screaming coming from everywhere down your street. I now find it comforting.

Yeah, totally. And honestly, in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, the same thing started happening and the first time I heard it I thought there was a riot starting or something. And then as soon as we caught on, we just went out on our back porch and started screaming with everybody else. Yeah, now it’s a nice weird communal experience that we’re all sharing for a good cause.

What have you been doing to pass the time? Other than doing press, which I guess is something to do. If I’m you I wouldn’t like doing press, but I might not mind it right now.

Yeah, that’s true. I think most of what I’m up to is press, for Coffee & Kareem. And then I’m also in regular writing meetings with the writing staff of my new show, Rutherford Falls, that’ll be on Peacock sometime in the future. It was supposed to be in production this week, but obviously that’s punted and we’ll just see what happens. But we’re still writing and meeting regularly. And then of course, we have a two-year-old, so that’s a lot.

Yes, you have your hands full.

So we’re trying to be there for our child and each other and also give each other some space. I mean, you know what, all things considered, it’s going well. We just don’t have a lot to complain about given what so many other people are going through.

So Coffee & Kareem is nuts. For me, it came along at just the right time. I was all in.

And all I can say is yeah, we’re just so proud of it. And I think, when you work on something like this and then a global pandemic happens, there’s a part of you that feels like, well, what on earth is funny in the world right now? There’s nothing funny in the world right now. I mean, it’s hard to feel, it seems hard to enjoy a lot of things right now. And then the other part of it is, well, we want to find these distractions or things that we can talk to our friends about and laugh about. And I just hope, my biggest hope for this movie now, is just that it brings people some bit of relief and some laughs and distraction from all the insanity out there.

Well, it’s weird because I agree with what you said, what’s funny right now? But this isn’t like past tragedies where it’s only about trying to get your mind off of it. In this case, it actually serves a purpose of keeping people inside. And I don’t want to say it’s specifically watching this movie, but it is a new movie out this weekend. And doing anything inside is actually doing your part to help.

Yeah, that is a great take on it. It is all of our social responsibility or moral responsibility to stay home and to socially distance and things that make that easier are good. And yeah, that’s a good way to look at it.

At what point when you were filming this were you like, “This movie is insane?”

Obviously the script was insane from the get-go. So there was never any illusions that we weren’t making a completely insane movie. But it always gets more real and amped up once you’re on the set. And you’re doing these big crazy stunts and you’re screaming at each other and just fully committing to these big crazy jokes, and praying to God that they work. And the other thing was that as insane as it is, and even edgy and trash talky and whatever, the movie itself is not mean spirited. It actually has a pretty sweetheart to it. And there’s a good, I don’t know, life-affirming morals that come out of it.

Well, it made me happy.

I’m really glad to hear you say that. It means a lot and, again, the place where we’re at in this moment, it’s the best I can hope for is that it gives people some brief escape from whatever they’re dealing with and dwelling on. Yeah.

Are you aware of the reassessment of your Vacation? It started after the same directors did Game Night. People went back and watched Vacation and are coming around on it.

That’s really awesome. I am not aware of this. Where can I find some Vacation affirmation? I love that movie so much. I’m so proud of it.

I’ve written about it. I know Bilge Ebiri at New York magazine loves it. If I mention it on Twitter people start replying with “faucets.”

Man, that really, really warms my heart. I’m so grateful for all of that. Everyone involved in that movie was so proud of it and just thought, this is a really fun movie. It came out in a moment where it was one of the first comedies that hit about $15 million box office its opening weekend, and it was considered a bomb. But it was basically, that was a bellwether because very few comedies since then ever made more than that. So, it was actually, I think unfairly, compared to everything that came before it as opposed to measured on the new yardstick that was affecting the comedy box office overall. And so, I do hear from a lot of people after the movie came out. I would be on airplanes and see over people’s shoulders that they were watching it and I could just hear them laughing really hard. It really was gratifying to see people enjoying it.

See.

We just had so much fun making that movie.

Finally, people are listening to reason. This is a hilarious movie.

Well, that’s so good to hear. I remember thinking, “Man, if I could just play Rusty Griswold for the rest of my life, I could do a lot worse.” But now we’ll see what happens with James Coffee.

Obviously a lot of people are watching The Office right now. One of my favorite scenes is the one with you and Rainn Wilson dueling on John Denver’s “Country Roads. It’s pure joy.

Well, that is awesome. And you know what, Rainn and I talk about that scene all the time because it also is something that I think a lot of fans latched on to, that moment. And we talk about maybe trying to do a special version of it or something, but just because we connected with that, too. That’s one of the scenes that we as a cast love just as much as the fans for sure. And it’s a great song. I mean, John Denver!

Well, if you’re going to do a special version, pretty soon is a good time. I suspect people would like that.

Yeah, you’re right. You’re right! People are starved for anything.

You’d have to do it over FaceTime or something. But it would still be great.

Hey, I really want to thank you for the positive energy and reinforcement on this, and Vacation. Oh and The Office. It’s really nice to hear. I really appreciate it.

You know what, I’ll throw in Cedar Rapids, too. That was on cable the other night. I watched it. Good movie!

Awesome. Well, thanks so much.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, people around the world are starting to adapt to new home-based lifestyles. Zoom has become a popular platform for keeping in touch with friends, family, co-workers, and more, but Billie Eilish isn’t about that.

In an interview on the Telekom Electronic Beats podcast, Eilish says she hasn’t been using video chat apps like Zoom to maintain communication with people, saying that she’s instead enjoying the alone time:

“I have not. If I’m being honest, I haven’t wanted to. It sounds so introverted and lonerish, but I’ve been really enjoying being alone, you know, and that’s like, the rest of my life is like that, which is totally fine. I just have to be aware of it. But it’s been nice. I don’t know, I feel like everybody on the internet has been talking about like, they’ve been on FaceTime all day long with their friends, and I kind of have this feeling of like, I love my friends, I can’t wait to see them, I do miss them a lot, but at the same time I’m like, I don’t know, I’m good. I’m good being alone, I like being alone. […] I haven’t had this time off since like I was like 12, so yeah, it’s crazy.”

What Eilish has been busy doing is performing from her home. In recent days, she performed on two coronavirus relief specials, and she has one more on the way.

Listen to the full podcast episode below.