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  • As Raising Cane’s Treads on His Tender Turf, a Chicago Restaurant Owner Clucks Back

    As Raising Cane’s Treads on His Tender Turf, a Chicago Restaurant Owner Clucks Back

    As Chicago media fawns over national chicken chain news with announcements about a location at O’Hare International Airport and another at a prominent intersection in Lincoln Park near DePaul University, a local chain is clucking for some love via social media.

    Earlier this week, Fry the Coop owner Joe Fontana, took to Instagram to show customers how an upcoming Raising Cane’s could harm his business at 2404 N. Lincoln Avenue, just down the street from the busy Halsted, Lincoln, and Fullerton intersection.

    “No hate to Raising Cane’s, buuuut we wish they weren’t opening right across the street,” Fry The Coop’s Instagram post reads.

    The post brought out legions of fans to praise local chicken shops like Parson’s Chicken & Fish and Red Light Chicken. They also lauded Fry the Coop’s heat levels as the chain specializes in Nashville hot chicken fried in beef tallow.

    Three weeks ago, Raising Cane’s plastered its coming soon signs outside the former home of DePaul’s White Elephant. The thrift store closed in 2012 after 93 years of operation, and the new restaurant at 2376 N. Lincoln Avenue could open in February or March. Raising Cane’s arrived in Chicago with a Rogers Park location that opened in 2018.

    Fontana founded Fry the Coop in 2017 when he opened in suburban Oak Lawn. He opened in Lincoln Park in October 2023, joining a number of affordable restaurants geared at students at DePaul and nearby Lincoln Park High School. That includes Ghareeb Narwaz and Chipotle. When Fontana hears stories about high school students with short lunch periods sprinting to Fry the Coop, coming into the restaurants out of breath and sweating, so they can grab lunch and make it back to class in time, he’s happy.

    But he says “it’s a bummer” that he’ll lose chicken tender business to Raising Cane’s, a national chain that can afford to undercut Fry the Coop’s pricing. A three-piece tender with fries at Raising Cane’s costs about $11, depending on location. At Fry the Coop, a similar combo costs $15. That’s a big difference for students, Fontana says.

    Though Fontana is a big fan of rising tides — he notes neighborhood additions, like Parson’s Chicken & Fish, bring more foot traffic and customers to the area — sometimes there’s only room for so many chicken tender slingers. Raising Cane’s is aggressive in opening stores near college campuses. The original debuted near Louisana State University and the Rogers Park location is near Loyola University. Building that brand awareness at a young age is critical, Fontana notes. It even extends to high school students, he adds. Some schools allow advertisements inside their buildings, which helps deep-pocketed companies, like Raising Cane’s — the same company that paid actor Chevy Chase to reenact his Christmas Vacation movie role in the suburbs. There are more than 800 Raising Cane stores across 41 states.

    There are eight Fry the Coops around Chicago. A ninth is set to open on October 29 at 274 S. Weber Road in Bolingbrook, near the McDonald’s spin-off, CosMc’s. Fontana has plans to open more, but the Villa Park native knows that the opportunities aren’t as robust as the competition’s. For example, Chick-fil-A just opened a location at Terminal 5 at O’Hare.

    “I don’t think we have anybody really pounding on our door,” Fontana says.

    Ashok Selvam

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  • Ex-convict makes DA kill himself, attacks judge

    Ex-convict makes DA kill himself, attacks judge

    Isaac Wright, spent 8 years in prison became a paralegal helping other inmates & practicing his own case. He got a police officer to admit the states attorney was bribing & lying. The state attorney commited suicide before the trial. He then had to fight against the other charges he had, and was released
    Wright is the only person in the US history to have been Sentenced to life in prison, Securing his own release and exoneration, and then being granted a license to practice Law by the very court that condemned him

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  • Lenny and His Mistress Break Up! Plus ‘Orange County’ and ‘Dubai.’

    Lenny and His Mistress Break Up! Plus ‘Orange County’ and ‘Dubai.’

    Rachel admits to feeling sorry for Shannon during a breakdown of Season 18, Episode 9 of ‘The Real Housewives of Orange County,’ and Rachel and Chelsea talk about the Season 2 finale of ‘The Real Housewives of Dubai’

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    Rachel Lindsay

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  • House of the Dragon star Kieran Bew wanted to look like his dragon

    House of the Dragon star Kieran Bew wanted to look like his dragon

    Kieran Bew knows the power of good facial hair. He credits the look for Hugh Hammer’s success taming the massive Vermithor in House of the Dragon’s seventh episode of the season, “The Red Sowing.”

    “I had a big beard, and everybody was discussing whether I should shave it off or not,” Bew says. “And I just said: I love Vermithor’s design of his teeth, sort of looking like they’re going in all different directions; like if he bit you, it would be the most painful thing, almost like being trapped in an Iron Maiden or something. And I felt like it was a slightly funny joke about people who have dogs, end up looking like their dogs.”

    Bew was aware that Hugh’s whole season arc was leading up to his showdown with Vermithor, and aware of how many aesthetic choices were there to set up the depth of the decision to go to Dragonstone: He kept the beard, and his hair the same color as Daemon’s (if not Viserys’), with a bit of Bew’s own natural hue mixed own. And as he watched Hugh’s agitation with the ruling class of King’s Landing grow, Bew found the role in little beats, like being so desperate for food that he punches a fellow commoner to get a bag.

    To him, the scenes were “always like a skeleton” for the larger character arc. But like any good actor (or, as is the case with interpreting a lot of Fire & Blood’s textbook-like account, historian), it was his job to piece together the lived humanity between that.

    “To get given a scene where my character is revealing to his wife something enormous […] and he’s arguing to go on a suicide mission,” Bew marvels. “That’s how much he’s decided to keep that a secret. Because of shame, because of how [his mom] behaved, because of his upbringing, because of how painful it was.

    “He’s been trying to do something else. And now he’s saying: Actually this is the only thing I can do. I’m in so much pain; I’ve got to do something, I’ve got to do this.”

    And so, Bew took all that energy into that final scene of episode 7, where Rhaenyra’s plans to find Vermithor a rider go awry. To him, Hugh’s desperation — to do something, to matter — was near suicidal, even if he’s still afraid in the moment. “He’s come all this way, the stakes are so high, he thinks the dice is slightly loaded in his favor. But it’s still fucking terrifying,” Bew says. “How do you strategize against something that can move so quickly and squash you and drop people on your head on fire?”

    Of course, his delay had some upside. “The one thing about [it] going to shit is: the odds improve.”

    For inspiration for what the ultimate moment of connection should feel like for Hugh and the Bronze Fury, Bew drew from his time on set — specifically, approaching a crew member’s little Yorkshire terrier on set, who kept trying to go for the tennis ball eyes of pre-CG Vermithor.

    “At the moment of claiming, it has to be this, where this dog likes me, this dog is connecting to me,” Bew says, acknowledging there is a difference between a tiny terrier and a dragon the size of four houses. “It’s a connection that’s, like, that delicate. But before we get there, it’s overwhelming. And it’s terrifying. And it requires throwing everything in.”

    And in Bew’s mind, everything about the way Hugh claims Vermithor comes from that desperation. Unlike other dragons, Vermithor is looking for a rider who can, as the saying goes, match his freak. So it’s no surprise that Hugh’s aggressive approach spoke to the mighty dragon, given that nothing about the way Hugh claims Vermithor is selfless, in that regard — even stepping in as the dragon targets another Targaryen bastard. After all, there’s nothing like the fear of failure to turn something impossible into a race.

    “He’s been pushed to this. Something about growing up underneath the shadow of the aristocracy, the family that he has been rejected from that he’s not part of — he’s not only not part of it, he’s connected to it in a way that is full of shame, that he’s angry about,” Bew says. “If Vermithor chooses her, then what happens to me?”

    Zosha Millman

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  • Pokémon TCG legend Mitsuhiro Arita on illustrating his first card for Magic: The Gathering

    Pokémon TCG legend Mitsuhiro Arita on illustrating his first card for Magic: The Gathering

    It’s hard to overstate the impact artist Mitsuhiro Arita has had on trading card games. Nearly 30 years ago, as a member of the original design team on the Pokémon Trading Card Game, Arita contributed to the look and feel of the franchise’s original 150 monsters. He also authored the art for some of the most iconic Pokémon cards, images that have global recognition — including some of the first interpretations of Pikachu and Charizard.

    Image: The Pokémon Company

    A Japanese language version of Charizard, featuring a chromatic background.

    Image: The Pokémon Company

    The full-frame version of Lumra, Bellow of the Woods with art by Mitsuhiro Arita.

    Image: Wizards of the Coast

    Since then, Arita has remained one of the Pokémon TCG’s most prolific illustrators, while occasionally contributing art for other card games such as the Shin Megami Tensei Trading Card Game, the Monster Hunter Hunting Card Game, and even the Power Rangers Collectible Card Game.

    And now, for the first time, Arita’s work will appear on a Magic: The Gathering card as part of its latest expansion, in a world of anthropomorphic animals known as Bloomburrow. Although his art will only feature on one card in the set, a special, full-art treatment for a new creature called Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, the massive elemental bear highlights the detailed approach that makes Arita one of the most cherished TCG artists in the world.

    Polygon was able to share questions with Arita ahead of Bloomburrow’s official tabletop release on Aug. 2. What follows are his professionally translated answers, which have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

    Polygon: Was working on a Magic card different from your typical process with the other card games you have contributed to?

    Mitsuhiro Arita: In Japan, it’s very common to have detailed checks at every stage of the drawing process. Character consistency in particular is strictly controlled. I’m used to making changes all the way through the process. Usually you present the piece for detailed feedback around 60-70% of the way through, so you can make adjustments before starting on the final details. With Magic, the most thorough checks were at the conceptualization stage. After that, there weren’t any further corrections, so I realized I had to make sure things were spot-on from the beginning.

    Can you describe your process in creating the art for this Magic card?

    I was asked to create the piece using sketches by Matt Stewart as a reference. After that, the process was like any other job — I’d draw the rough, and once that had been approved, I’d draw the pencil sketch, scan it, and paint the final image using software [such as Photoshop and Painter].

    Lumra, Bellow of the Woods as portrayed by Matt Stewart. The 6-mana legendary creature, an elemental bear, has vigilence and reach as well as other powers.

    Like many rare and mythic Magic cards these days, Lumra, Bellow of the Woods will have several versions, featuring different artists or card templates. While Arita drew one of the full-art variants of the card, the equally prolific Magic artist Matt Stewart handled the standard variant that will appear with Magic’s traditional card frame.
    Image: Wizards of the Coast

    What was your opinion of Magic: The Gathering’s art style before you were asked to illustrate a card for the game?

    I’ve always liked the feel of high fantasy, and have wanted an opportunity of drawing in that style.

    Can you describe Magic’s reputation in Japan, compared to other trading card games?

    In Japan, TCGs based on existing manga, anime, and video game franchises, which are aimed primarily at the collectors’ market, are very prominent. On the other hand, card products like Magic, which has a solid card game at its core, can feel a bit overshadowed. Of course, it’s not just card games but all games played face-to-face which are losing ground. I think a lot of it stems from how smartphones are eating up any bits of free time in which you’d otherwise have played a game like that.

    For Magic or in general, is it hard transitioning your art style to other card games?

    When I’m drawing, I usually like to put myself in the shoes of the fans. I think to myself “What kind of Arita artwork would I want to see?” Of course, each job provides its own challenges and you need to adapt your vision, but I didn’t go out of my way to do anything specifically different. If you look at my website’s blog, I think you can see how varied my style has been over the years.

    Looking through Arita’s body of work, his art from the original Pokémon TCG base set feels noticeably simpler, minimalistic, and two-dimensional compared to his current style. For instance, the evolution line he did for Charmander, Charmeleon, and Charizard mostly feature the Pokémon in profile, and there’s no mistaking them as cartoons.

    A Pokémon card depicting Charmander looking over his shoulder to admire his lightly burning tail.

    Image: The Pokémon Company

    A Pokémon card depicting Charmeleon taking a swipe in attack while his tail smolders.

    Image: The Pokémon Company

    This approach is not at all indicative of who Arita is, as an artist, today. The art he did for the Power Rangers CCG could be mistaken for stills from the television show. Lumra, like many of the Pokémon he now draws, exists in a highly detailed and lived-in environment.

    A card from the Power Rangers CCG depicting the Yellow Ranger making a call on a flip phone.

    Image: Bandai

    A card from the Power Rangers CCG depicting the Blue Ranger, with a double-barreled weapon of some kind, taking cover.

    Image: Bandai

    His takes on Pokémon and Magic almost could be mistaken for photorealism, if the subject matter of both games weren’t so steeped in fiction and fantasy. He creates action that jumps off the page, or the card in this case, giving his illustrations a practically tangible weight that in turn makes the cards themselves feel unique.

    Lumra explodes from the woods, scattering rabbitfolk in his wake.

    Image: Matsuhiro Arita/Wizards of the Coast

    Your work has appeared across so many card games over the years, it’s a wonder you haven’t worked on Magic until now. Are there any other games, or brands that you still hope to work on for the first time?

    Magic has always been high on my list of card games which I’d like to do work for, so I was extremely happy to get the opportunity to be involved on this project. I’d done work for Culdcept before, and I’m very keen to do so again, if there’s ever a sequel. It was the first job in my career when I got to go all-out on a series of high-fantasy artworks.

    How important is understanding a new game before designing art for it?

    It’s important to try and understand that the perspective of hardcore fans is not an entirely objective perspective. In fact, I think that introducing the perspective of an outsider can help bring about positive innovation. I’ve been involved with [Pokémon] for a long time, but [my work] still feels very fresh [to the fans]. I think that having multiple product lines which employ various styles has helped to change and progress it over time.

    When creating characters for a new client, such as Magic, how do you tailor your approach to fit the specific lore and themes in that game’s identity?


    When doing research for a creature, I think about it as if it really existed. If it had this set of characteristics, what would it look like? Where would it live? How would it behave? And I always keep in mind the visual impact while I think through these things.

    How much did you have to learn about Magic before working on your first Magic card?

    I like to keep my work feeling fresh and original, so I tend to avoid looking at other artists’ work. I prepared for this project just as I would for any other project — I didn’t really do anything differently.

    In some ways, Arita’s career in art was an unexpected one. Not only was Pokémon TCG his first professional job as an artist, prior to that assignment he had very little formal training in art or drawing.

    I read that your art is self-taught, following a natural talent from a young age. Is this true, and have you ever sought some formal training once your career in arts began to take shape?

    I did attend sumi-ink painting classes at a cultural center. Watching the instructor do live demonstrations, I came to understand how water and pigment behave inside the body of the brush, and the techniques used to control it. I also took all five of the workshops at the Liquitex School, which focuses on acrylic paint, where I learned about the history and special chemical properties of paint.

    That knowledge turned out to be a very useful foundation for when I started working in watercolor and other liquid-based media later on. As I didn’t have a comprehensive art education, I’d only had limited experience with [legacy] art materials. Every time I tried my hand at a new medium — watercolor, opaque watercolor, acrylic paint, oil paint — I was able to increase my understanding by paying close attention to the work of my predecessors.

    Apart from formal training, how do you continue learning at this stage in your career?

    When I’m grappling with new subject matter, I turn to YouTube and get studying.

    As Arita’s career expanded beyond his roots in Pokémon TCG, he eventually had to adjust his style to new stories, characters and worlds. These new projects also brought with them new audiences and expectations, and for a mostly self-taught artist like Arita, this came with the unique challenge of evolving and adapting beyond the potential comfort zone of his home within Pokémon.

    Lumra, Bellow of the Woods with gold filligree’d accents.

    A render of the gold raised foil version of Arita’s Lumra, Bellow of the Woods. The rare treatment is only available in Collector Boosters.
    Image: Wizards of the Coast

    Do you need to make an effort to evolve and explore new styles, or does it come naturally through the work you’re assigned across different games?

    I actually find it more natural and not at all laborious to continue to change and take on new challenges. I’m convinced that I won’t catch anyone’s interest unless I draw with an intense level of focus. One of the things that has contributed most to my changing creative style has been the fact that I’ve worked on so many different kinds of projects, in so many different domains over the years.

    How do you handle feedback and critique from fans and colleagues?

    You’d think that you needed a distinct and consistent style and set of themes, if you wanted to be an established artist but, for some reason, I haven’t really been criticized for not following that path. The fans are very much up for the adventure, and they enjoy following me on that journey, for which I’m very grateful. I find it slightly curious that fans will seek out some of my art pieces, even when they have no consistency with the rest of my work, just because it’s by me. I really appreciate the open-mindedness of my clients and my fans.

    Can you recall an instance where constructive criticism significantly influenced one of your pieces?

    The idea that you don’t have to draw things as they look in real life really freed me up as an artist. But, for a while, I just couldn’t get it!

    Mitsuhiro Arita’s first Magic card can be found in all Bloomburrow booster packs, including Play Boosters and Collector Boosters, when the set goes on sale Aug. 2. The most coveted version of the card, the raised foil borderless treatment with the first-of-its-kind gold accents, is exclusive to Collector Boosters.

    Stan Golovchuk

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  • Yorgos Lanthimos on how to be an actor in his movies: ‘You might feel ridiculous’

    Yorgos Lanthimos on how to be an actor in his movies: ‘You might feel ridiculous’

    In the new anthology film Kinds of Kindness, surrealist Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos tells three stories with the same group of actors — Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, and more. He recasts each of them in every segment: Plemons is a put-upon office worker, a paranoid cop, and a cultist investigator; Stone is a glamorous optometrist, a marine biologist who vanished, and a cultist having a crisis of faith (or some kind of crisis, anyway), and so on. Lanthimos moves these famous actors around roles that contrast with or complement each other, exploring different facets of their personalities.

    It’s an extension of the way Lanthimos likes to work. Much of the cast, apart from Plemons, have been in his films before. It’s Stone’s third film in a row with him; the previous one, Poor Things, won her a Best Actress Oscar. And they’re about to make it four in a row. Lanthimos’ next film, Bugonia, set for release in 2025 and based on the Korean sci-fi comedy Save the Green Planet!, will star Stone again. Plemons is set to appear in that one, too.

    Actors clearly like working for Lanthimos. So says English actor Joe Alwyn (Conversations with Friends), who appeared with Stone in Lanthimos’ The Favourite and has funny bit parts in the first two Kinds of Kindness stories before taking a larger role in the third as the estranged husband of Stone’s character.

    Emma Stone and Joe Alwyn in Kinds of Kindness.
    Photo: Atsushi Nishijima/Yorgos Lanthimos

    “It’s like a theater troupe, and it felt very playful,” Alwyn told Polygon in an interview alongside Lanthimos. “Being on the set for The Favourite and Kinds of Kindness didn’t feel like going to work in the way that it sometimes does, or can sometimes slip into. It felt like you were gonna go and play. And that’s such a nice feeling, as an actor, to hold on to as much as you can. That comes from the material, of course, and also the way that Yorgos is on set, and his rehearsal, and every component, and every department. It’s rare to feel that as much as I have with those two films. It’s really just a joy.”

    That sounds like fun, but there’s some bravery involved in being in a Lanthimos movie, too. He likes to film his characters doing bizarre, humiliating, intimate, or disturbing things in frank, unblinking ways. In Kinds of Kindness, Dafoe cries into a pool while wearing a Speedo, Stone gives a long speech about a society of sentient dogs, and Qualley sings a Bee Gees song while accompanying herself on a toy piano — all completely straight-faced.

    What marks an actor who’ll fit into Lanthimos’ peculiar world? “I think just having an open mind,” the director said. “And being generous with the other actors, and be trusting when they see that trust is due. Being up for, you know, not taking things too seriously. And trying things that might make you uncomfortable, and you might feel ridiculous in front of the others!”

    Watching Kinds of Kindness is kind of like speeding through a decade of a director’s work in one sitting: You notice the same themes being considered from different angles, and watch the familiar, starry cast inhabit characters who contrast with each other, or echo each other in poignant ways. Beyond that, there’s nothing tying the stories together other than their alienated, doomy, blackly comic mood — and the figure of R.M.F., a bearded man (played by Lanthimos’ friend Yorgos Stefanakos) who pops up in each story. “We just decided that it would be more interesting if it wasn’t major characters that reappeared in the three stories, but someone who appears only for a brief moment, but his presence is kind of pivotal to the stories,” Lanthimos said about the character.

    Emma Stone sits in a chair, lit starkly, looking troubled, with shortish red hair and scarlet lipstick, in Kinds of Kindness

    Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures

    Joe Alwyn, barefoot and shot in black and white, stands in the doorway of a home in Kinds of Kindness

    Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures

    Margaret Qualley, shot in black and white, reclines on a bed in a silk dressing gown in Kinds of Kindness

    Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures

    Jesse Plemons, with a buzz cut and wearing a teal windcheater, stands in a garden by the sea at sunset in Kinds of Kindness

    Photo: Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures

    Lanthimos took these portrait photos of Stone, Alwyn, Qualley, and Plemons himself on the set of Kinds of Kindness.

    Lanthimos is offhand about the way he deployed the cast and selected their roles for each story. “You figure out what makes sense for each one to play — kind of rationally sometimes, sometimes against type, whatever that may be.” But he suggests that it’s the recurring cast that creates an alchemy between the three storylines, and makes Kinds of Kindness more than the sum of its parts.

    “You do kind of bring something with you from one story to the next, just because there’s a familiarity from having seen that actor playing a character before — I think you just can’t help but carry over certain things to the next story. Although the characters themselves practically don’t have such a long arc as they would in a full feature, you kind of make up for that, because you’ve seen the actor before, and you kind of bring a sense from that person to the next story and then to the next story,” he said.

    “So, somehow, the characters are enriched without it being very literal. But mostly with that sense of familiarity, the sense of acknowledging that this is a film and it’s not real life, you are able to let go and kind of get into the next story in a more open way.”

    What does it all mean, though? Lanthimos won’t be drawn on that — but Alwyn is extremely clear. Reflecting on his character from the third story, who reaches out tenderly to his ex-wife at first before a shocking twist, Alwyn offers a perceptive summary of the unifying theme of Kinds of Kindness.

    “Throughout, you have people reaching out with perceived kindness and benevolence, whether it’s a boss offering structure and reward to an employee looking for purpose, or cult leaders offering a home to a woman whose life has recently changed — offering, you know, what she thinks is love. But actually, whilst that’s kindness on paper, if you write it down, it’s far more about control or coercive control, manipulation, power imbalance.” As gnomic a director as Lanthimos is, his actors clearly know exactly what he’s up to.

    Kinds of Kindness is in theaters now.

    Oli Welsh

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  • angelic pushy bored

    angelic pushy bored

    My scruffy little white ball of dryer lint went to doggy heaven yesterday. Here’s a picture of him with his “little” brother. I’m not looking for any condolences, I’m sad that he’s gone but had a good long happy life, which i was happy to give him. I just wanted to share him with all of you.

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  • Kendrick Lamar Went No. 1 on His Own. What Does That Mean for TDE?

    Kendrick Lamar Went No. 1 on His Own. What Does That Mean for TDE?

    It’s late evening on March 21 as I sit wide-eyed, waiting in anticipation to listen to Heavy, the fourth album from Top Dawg Entertainment’s R&B reserve SiR. Now, two decades after being founded, TDE remains one of the few modern rap labels that can still generate excitement surrounding artist releases, regardless of who it is. Think of the pure chaos and aggression that comes with the bass on ScHoolBoy Q’s “Ride Out” (from 2016’s Blank Face LP) as he paints the picture of cutthroat confrontation that comes with life as a Hoover Gangster Crip. Think of the foggy and damn near divine Crooklin and D. Sanders–produced instrumental on Isaiah Rashad’s SZA-featured “Stuck in the Mud,” off the vibe that is The Sun’s Tirade, where Rashad details his struggles with substance abuse. Or think of the dreamy soundscape where SZA softly sings of her failed relationships and insecurities on her 2017 album, Ctrl.

    That is to say, when it was time to press play on Heavy, I was ready to hear SiR sashay through his latest romantic entanglements with dulcet vocals over airy instrumentals. But then I found out that verse dropped.

    TDE’s former franchise player, co-founder of media company pgLang, and arguably best rapper alive Kendrick Lamar seized any and all attention in music and Twitter town hall conversation when he shook the earth’s tectonic plates with a guest spot on Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That,” where he took aim at the other two members of hip-hop’s “Big Three,” fellow rap megastars Drake and J. Cole. On an album laced with subliminals directed toward the Champagne Papi, Kendrick’s verse opened the floodgates for what may be hip-hop’s last great beef. In one night, SiR’s underwhelming fourth project with TDE felt like it came and went.

    Very few rappers today carry the gravitas to shift the paradigm with a single verse. Time and time again, Kendrick has proved capable of this, dating back to his now-iconic verse on Big Sean’s 2013 record “Control,” where he attempted to raise the bar of competition in the rap game. With “Like That” as the kickstarter, Kendrick both incited and won the Great War between him and Drake. For those questioning who’s the top emcee between the two rap heavyweights, Kendrick answered the question over the course of four diss tracks viciously dissecting Drake, from the eerie character study “Meet the Grahams” to the indisputable L.A. bop that is “Not Like Us.” The once “good kid” solidified his legacy as the best rapper of his generation with a decisive victory before Drake could even drop “The Heart Part 6.”

    On “Push Ups,” Drake dragged Kendrick’s current relationship with TDE founder Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith into their personal beef, taking shots at Top Dawg when attempting to belittle Kendrick’s pockets with, “Extortion baby, whole career you been shook up / ’Cause Top told you drop and give me 50 like some push-ups.” But where Drake may have been attempting to open a wound, the end result may have actually exposed how tight K.Dot and his former employers still are. Kendrick was quick to establish that there’s still love and respect for Top while refuting those claims on his first official full diss record, “Euphoria,” when he remarked, “Aye, Top Dawg, who the fuck they think they playin’ with? / Extortion my middle name as soon as you jump off of that plane, bitch.” This moment and the overwhelming support by TDE artists on social media was a reminder that Top Dawg Entertainment is a family, at least by outside appearances. Yet, when “Euphoria” was put on streaming, the copyright reading “Kendrick Lamar, under exclusive license to Interscope Records,” also a reminder that the relationship with TDE is strictly familial.

    Even if extortion seems like an exaggeration, rumors were circulating of Kendrick leaving TDE well before he announced that 2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers would be his final project for the label. While breaking rap streaming records with “Euphoria”—and later, again, with “Not Like Us”—Kendrick made it clear that he no longer needs the same level of support of the label that signed him at 16 years old. The only label he answers to now is Interscope under a new direct licensing agreement, shedding his ties with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath imprint, too. (Kendrick originally signed a joint deal with Interscope and Aftermath ahead of the release of good kid, m.A.A.d city.) Publicly, Punch (President of TDE and manager of SZA) and Top treated Kendrick like their baby bird leaving the nest by giving Kendrick their blessing to leave TDE and focus on pgLang, but Kendrick’s 2022 departure from TDE marked the end of their 18-year transformation from mom-and-pop record label to a rap empire. How does one continue to grow their empire after losing the fulcrum that held everything together for all those years?

    With Kendrick on the front lines winning a Pulitzer Prize and 17 Grammys while dropping undeniable rap classics bearing TDE’s name for all those years—alongside strong outings from his label siblings ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, Ab-Soul, SZA, and Isaiah Rashad—the TDE stamp on an artist’s release carries the same weight as a film with the A24 logo flashing at the start of its trailer. Whether that’s seeing Top Dawg sharing 2019 TDE signee Zacari’s single “Don’t Trip” like a Bat signal marking the young singer’s official arrival after he spent years leaving his vocal trail on a plethora of TDE songs. Or seeing newcomer Ray Vaughn on L.A. Leakers sporting a TDE chain under his yellow puffy as he raps his ass off about the night he met Top and Snoop Dogg. Or when “Top Dawg Entertainment” flashes in the opening credits of Doechii’s “Alter Ego” music video, which featured the Tampa-born artist taking viewers through the swamp waters of Florida in a visual that feels so foreign to the L.A.-centric label. When that TDE logo pops up, listeners expect a certain level of hip-hop excellence to follow, even if today’s TDE vastly differs from its earlier incarnation.

    In a 2022 interview with Mic, Punch discusses how things have changed since the early days of TDE. The label used to have more synergy amongst its artists, whether that was ScHoolboy Q’s handwriting being included on Kendrick’s good kid album cover or Kendrick showing out on ScHoolboy’s quadruple-platinum single “Collard Greens” less than a year later. You would often see TDE move as a unit, like during their 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards cypher. Today, the extent of TDE synergy comes in the form of the occasional labelmate guest spot that feels less like artists intertwining styles and more like filling in an open 16 bars or hook on a song. Even Punch admits he is far less hands-on with the newer TDE artists. “With those first guys, I’m in there with them every single day, engineering. We started together and came up together. But a lot of the new artists now are coming into a situation that was already built. They have their own teams, and I just come in when they need,” he said.

    Outside of Kendrick’s departure, there have been other signs of mild turbulence within the label. In the past, TDE’s current franchise cornerstone and undeniable megastar SZA has cried for help via Twitter—using words like “hostile” when describing her delayed album and occasionally contentious working relationship with Punch—although these statements would often get deleted at some point. Carson, California, rapper Reason seems like he’s been doing everything in his power to get kicked off the label ever since joining in 2018, whether that’s getting into an argument on a podcast with co-president of TDE and son of Top himself, Moosa, or rapping over Drake beats days after the Toronto rapper accused one of TDE’s presidents of extortion.

    When comparing TDE to some of the most iconic rap labels of the past, it’s easy to imagine that losing their first superstar is officially where the decline starts. Death Row’s best days were behind them after Tupac Shakur died in 1996, and Bad Boy was never the same after the Notorious B.I.G.’s death the following year. But the untimely loss of those two greats doesn’t fully explain why those labels fell. At Death Row, Dr. Dre had already walked out the doors before Tupac’s murder, but ultimately, Suge Knight going to prison is what led to Interscope dropping the label. At Bad Boy, Mase appeared to be the one to fill the void Biggie left, going quadruple-platinum in 1997 with his debut album Harlem World, before stepping away from music in pursuit of a higher calling from religion. While this wasn’t the end of Bad Boy, it likely played a factor in Bad Boy being unable to pay back and fulfill the $50 million advance from Arista Records based on good faith earned by a lucrative 1997. Simply losing their breadwinner didn’t do those iconic labels in; a flawed infrastructure and unforeseen circumstances sank their respective ships.

    In the midst of the current rap game, TDE is in rare air. Drake’s OVO Sound is at times more focused on propping up Drake and who Drake loves right now than building the genuine camaraderie (and roster of heatmakers) of a TDE, and while J. Cole’s Dreamville stable has a lot of promise, they haven’t touched the commercial success of TDE’s best. In this era, you may not even think of TDE’s journey or what going from independent to world-renowned means anymore; you’ve come to know TDE as an institution for dope Black music.

    Now 20 years old, Top Dawg Entertainment doesn’t show signs of a sharp fall-off just yet. First and foremost, they have SZA, whose latest album, SOS, achieved meteoric commercial, critical, and Grammy success with songs like the Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping, five-times-platinum single “Kill Bill.” TDE not only has a compilation album on the way celebrating their anniversary, but Black Hippy member and original TDE rapper Jay Rock also has his fourth album, Eastside Johnny*, on the horizon. ScHoolboy Q’s latest (and most critically acclaimed) album, Blue Lips, is a testament to TDE’s ability to churn out premium bodies of work. And even with Kendrick’s “Like That” verse overshadowing SiR’s Heavy, songs like “Only Human” reflect the singer’s growth as an artist leaning more into his vulnerability. However, the real test for TDE’s prolonged success comes in developing the roster’s future. How much time is needed to turn the Ray Vaughns, Doechiis, and (checks notes to see if he’s still signed) Reasons of the label into stars? And as Isaiah Rashad continues to grow creatively with each new release, one has to imagine he has greater potential working with Warner Records and a sober mind.

    Those concerns, for now, feel like minor cracks in a well-oiled machine, with SZA’s superstardom being the engine that keeps it all running—although we hope that talk of her next album, the long-awaited Lana, getting a release sometime in the near future doesn’t have you losing sleep at night. For TDE to keep the empire standing, they must appease their queen. In a 2017 OTHERtone interview, Jimmy Iovine praised the way TDE built a buzz around SZA, leading to TDE’s joint deal for SZA with RCA being a 70-30 split in TDE’s favor. Yet still, SZA has spoken about issues with her situation. How much time is there until SZA’s deal with RCA is up, allowing her to fly out of the nest like Kendrick? And will TDE be prepared if that day comes sooner than expected?

    At TDE’s peak—somewhere within that 2016-18 era—every single one of their artists dropped a project, and their franchise player Kendrick Lamar made pit stops on almost every single release, bolstering them up through Damn., culminating with Black Panther: The Album and The Championship Tour. What’s stopping TDE from restoring the feeling with a SZA-centered label renaissance, fueled by guest spots propelling her labelmates’ albums into another stratosphere with divine vocals alone? Top and Punch have proven time and time again that they know when it’s time to strike. And for SiR’s sake, let’s hope Kendrick gives TDE a heads-up next time he plans on starting a rap beef around the time of a TDE release.

    Jonathan Kermah

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  • Chef Paul Virant Will Return to His French Roots

    Chef Paul Virant Will Return to His French Roots

    2024 is off to a roaring start for chef Paul Virant, the venerable hospitality veteran who in January won Chef of the Year at the local Jean Banchet Awards.

    On the heels of this victory, and around five months after he closed pioneering suburban restaurant Vie in Western Springs, Virant is deep into preparations for a new spot in the same village around 20 miles west of Chicago. Construction is well underway at Petite Vie, a French cafe and brasserie, which he aims to open by late spring at 909 Burlington Avenue, perched just around the corner from Vie’s former home.

    Virant doesn’t dwell on sentimentality about Vie’s closing, which after 19 years “just didn’t feel right anymore,” he says, especially in light of ongoing issues with its former landlord. This won’t be an issue at Petite Vie, as Virant purchased its Burlington Avenue building. It’s slightly smaller than Vie and will seat around 65.

    For Virant — known for hits like Japanese-influenced okonomiyaki den Gaijin in West Loop, neighborhood steakhouse Vistro Prime in suburban Hinsdale, and landmark Lincoln Park collaboration with Boka Restaurant Group, Perennial Virant — French cuisine represents a kind of homecoming. It’s the cuisine he was formally trained to cook, and after decades away from the style, it feels like a refreshing return to his roots. He’s also observed a French culinary void in the area following the 2021 closure of Mon Ami Gabi, a suburban outpost of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises’ bistro in Lincoln Park.

    “When I opened Vie in 2004, I was 34 years old, and like a lot of chefs who have that opportunity, you want to [cook food] that’s innately your own,” he says. “That was great, but years have gone by and for anybody in a creative field, it’s nice to be able to do something different.”

    A menu isn’t yet finalized, but for culinary inspiration, Virant recently took a trip to France — his first since 1995 — which generated ideas like a selection of quintessential hors d’oeuvres (think “little potted things,”) like duck liver mousse and smoked salmon rillettes alongside pickles and crispy lentils designed to whet the appetite. He also encountered a tweaked version of oefs mimosa, or classical French deviled eggs, that will make its way onto the menu at Petite Vie. Instead of traditional hard-boiling, his team will soft-boil the eggs to create a delectably jammy texture and top them with a delicate crab salad or seasonal vegetables.

    As this new project shows, Virant remains enamored with feeding patrons outside the city limits — a population that has seen a dramatic increase in options since Vie’s mid-aughts debut. He’s welcomed that change and has watched with great interest as urban restaurateurs have expanded into the suburban landscape.

    “[That’s] a good thing,” says Virant. “In rural parts of Europe, there’s great food everywhere. I do think there has been a lot of great food in the suburbs — obviously, I’m biased — but now there’s just more of it. I don’t think you can get away with mediocre, or even just above average. There’s too much competition and you’re going to get squeezed out.”

    Petite Vie, 909 Burlington Avenue in Western Springs, Scheduled to open in spring.

    Naomi Waxman

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  • Martin Scorsese’s Super Bowl Commercial? You Can Thank His Daughter for That.

    Martin Scorsese’s Super Bowl Commercial? You Can Thank His Daughter for That.


    In his six decades of directing, Martin Scorsese has earned 10 Best Director Academy Award nominations and taken home the award once (for a little indie flick called The Departed). His films dominate every “best of all time” list—and some, like Goodfellas, have become a religion unto themselves. But despite the millions of people who have seen his films—including his most recent opus, Killers of the Flower Moon—Sunday marked his debut in a whole new genre, to one of his biggest audiences yet: the alien-filled Super Bowl commercial.

    Titled “Hello Down There,” the 90-second short film for website builder Squarespace—which debuted midway through the second quarter of Sunday’s game—sees clueless young New Yorkers too distracted by cat videos to notice the UFOs casually gliding over them. The spot’s logline reads, “What does a highly advanced civilization have to do to get noticed around here?”

    As it turns out, the answer lies in TikTok. Or, at least, for Scorsese, it has. As the epitome of advanced civilization—what else would you call the person who directed Raging Bull—Scorsese has recently been noticed by Gen Z in a whole new way, becoming the parasocial cinephile grandpa to thousands of chronically online youngsters.

    This is, of course, the handiwork of Francesca Scorsese. The director’s 24-year-old daughter has followed in his footsteps as a video maven, but her medium isn’t film, it’s vertical video. And her muse isn’t Robert De Niro or Leonardo DiCaprio—it turns out, it’s her dad. Over the past year, Francesca has become his de facto PR rep for “the youth”: his ambassador and translator for a generation that doesn’t necessarily have John Huston’s first picture or Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel saga down rote.

    Francesca first featured Scorsese in a TikTok in 2021, asking him to identify different female beauty items based on their photos. (Memorably, he mistook nipple pasties for earbuds.) Early reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with comments like “omg it’s Martin Scorsese from Shark Tale” and “This guy seems like he would make pretty decent movies idk why tho.” (Presumably, those were sarcastic—at least we hope.) Since then, Francesca has upped Scorsese’s screen time on her account, which now has over 200,000 followers and 4.8 million likes. Last summer, she went viral with a 30-second “trailer” of her dad, a compilation of short clips of the director playing with puppies, laughing with old pal Robert De Niro, and strutting around in a slick business suit, with the caption: “He’s a certified silly goose.”

    Francesca’s content often taps into Scorsese’s storied career and encyclopedic film knowledge, from a video of him “auditioning” their schnauzer, Oscar (and lauding him as a revelatory talent), to another in which he power ranks popular movies. In her videos, Scorsese is no longer a famous director with dozens of canonical projects under his belt; he’s just a guy. More specifically, he’s an incredibly adorable old guy who loves father-daughter handshakes, twinning with his dog, and watching 2001: A Space Odyssey.

    The revelation of Francesca’s videos is their ability to subvert our expectations of how a legendary filmmaker acts and participates in internet culture. For many Gen Zers, the name “Martin Scorsese” may evoke an edgy boyfriend’s Taxi Driver poster, an uncle’s old DVD collection, or a mental image of that short guy always standing next to Leonardo DiCaprio, but these are just vague associations. Sure, Scorsese is the genius behind Mean Streets and The Wolf of Wall Street, but this hardly counts for a zeitgeist-hungry generation that communicates chiefly through memes and irony.

    There has to be something more—some kind of hook—and that’s exactly what Francesca has uncovered. With pitch-perfect humor and TikTok trend savvy, she has single-handedly shaped her dad into a memeable, shareable internet figure (the highest rung of Gen Z adoration).

    The comments sections of her TikToks are laden with young users begging to be adopted into their family, referring to Scorsese as “grandpa” and praising his commitment to Dance Moms–inspired bits. As one TikTok user commented, “martin scorsese and francesca have figured out what the tiktok peeps want…and it is exactly this.”

    If anything perfectly captures Gen Z’s newfound fondness for Marty (as the cool kids call him), it’s Francesca’s video introducing him to internet slang terms. Because Scorsese’s brain presumably functions solely in film quotes and box office stats, Francesca helps him out with context clues like “Watching a movie in 70 mm hits different” and “The King of Comedy was slept on.” There’s nothing like the look on Scorsese’s face when he registers the meaning of the latter, forlornly recalling how “people hated it when it came out. … It was the flop of the year.” (Viewers then gave shout-outs to The King of Comedy in the comments to ease his spirits—perhaps another sign of how hipster film kids do, indeed, have fine taste.)

    At the heart of claims that Francesca has done the Lord’s work—or, better yet, deserves an honorary Oscar—there’s a very genuine gratitude for the conversations her posts are creating. With Killers of the Flower Moon in its second theatrical run and up for 10 Oscars next month, Scorsese has been active on the press circuit and now has some internet virality to boot. While there’s no way to quantify the effect Francesca’s TikToks may have had on Killers’ box office performance, it’s difficult to imagine that her videos have not at least piqued the interest of a few otherwise indifferent Gen Zers. (Even if 30-second TikToks pale next to his 206-minute 1920s epic.)

    In fact, when the film first hit theaters in October, fans were quick to sing her praises on Twitter and suggest she work her viral social media magic to promote the film. In reference to last year’s SAG strike, which prevented actors from promoting their projects, one tweet stated that “Francesca Scorsese emerged and is carrying killers of the flower moon promo on her back.” An exaggeration? Certainly. But an unfounded one? Absolutely not.

    Francesca has always been candid about being a huge fan of her dad’s work—she’s partial to The Irishman and The Wolf of Wall Street—and it’s hard to not melt at the evident love and admiration behind every TikTok she “forces” him into. She’s strategic with her content, but never in a way that feels insincere or overly calculated. This is no clout-chasing ruse that will end with an eye roll. Rather, one gets the sense that Francesca is her dad’s biggest cheerleader.

    Look no further than the fact that she seemingly recently convinced him to create a Letterboxd account, where he now shares curated film lists with his nearly 340,000 followers. This came after numerous commenters requested that she get Scorsese on the popular film review app. Even Letterboxd itself was in on the TikTok action, commenting from a verified company account, “Marty has taste,” on the video of him ranking films in a tournament bracket.

    Francesca may be the queen bee of film TikTok, but her content speaks to something more than just having a dad with a cinema institute named after him. As the new hub of pop culture, TikTok has the growing power to widen Gen Z’s cinematic horizons. Look no further than Turner Classic Movies’ 800,000-plus followers, or the rise of the “Wes Anderson Challenge,” which saw new Anderson converts channeling his distinctive style in 30-second videos. The most exciting aspect of “filmtok” is, perhaps, that it exists at all, especially considering the platform. Here is a limitless exploration space for kids who may not be aspect ratio experts but will at least do a proper double take when Martin Scorsese inexplicably appears on their For You pages.

    A single search of #filmtok yields a truly staggering range of content, from Nicolas Cage reaction memes to red-carpet interviews to a surely long-requested compilation of Disney actors who later played serial killers. The beauty of TikTok is that all these types of content coexist (semi) peacefully, letting users fall down rabbit holes of their choice or stumble across one of the world’s greatest filmmakers guessing what “sneaky link” means. (Spoiler alert: not personal peccadilloes.) Whether you seek genuine advice from a renowned screenwriter or simply discover a director while doom-scrolling, TikTok is the intergenerational playground for all kinds of film lore and know-how.

    While it’s safe to say that Scorsese himself is not exactly a fan of TikTok, he certainly recognizes its value to younger generations on some level. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the director swore that he really has no idea what’s happening when Francesca records him for “those things.” He did, however, acknowledge the wide acclaim of their “Oscar the Dog” audition video, noting that “the one we did with the dog, that was known.” And though he may shake his head disapprovingly while Francesca lip-synchs to the Kardashians, there’s always a glint in his eye, a sliver of awareness that says, “Hey, if the kids are into it, why not?” The man knows that an audience is an audience, on TikTok or anywhere else, and more importantly, he trusts his daughter to do a damn good job entertaining them.

    With Marty’s Big Game debut in the rearview and the Oscars fast approaching, the father-daughter team has resumed its rightful place in the spotlight. In a teaser for the “Hello Down There” ad released by Squarespace last Monday, Francesca helps her dad transition from TikTok to the final frontier of media literacy: website building.

    “Marty & Francesca Make a Website” plays like an extended cut of the duo’s TikToks, with the same delightful back-and-forth unique to a Baby Boomer learning anything technological. In the video, Francesca encourages her dad to make a website that shows his directorial vision of an “intergalactic plea for connection,” but this proves easier said than done. (“URL,” especially, becomes a term of immense confusion.)

    However, by the end of the video, Francesca has, once again, helped her dad share his work with younger generations, this time with a font that, to Marty’s approving eye, expresses the “yearning” of his ad’s aliens. The spot ends with Scorsese telling Francesca that their website “slaps,” proving himself a star pupil of Gen Z lingo. “I really regret ever teaching you that,” Francesca replies, but her smile says just the opposite.

    Holyn Thigpen is an arts and culture writer based in Atlanta. She holds an MA in English from Trinity College Dublin and spends her free time googling Nicolas Cage.





    Holyn Thigpen

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  • Lil Dicky Has Said Enough About His Dick—but He’s Still Got More to Say

    Lil Dicky Has Said Enough About His Dick—but He’s Still Got More to Say

    Lil Dicky wants to be taken seriously. The rapper born Dave Burd released his first album in nearly a decade last week, titled Penith (The DAVE Soundtrack). As the name states, it doubles as the soundtrack to Dave, Burd’s TV show not-so-loosely based on his own life as a rapper. Together, the show and the music create a meta feedback loop. The FXX show chronicles Burd’s creation and promotion of an album called Penith. (“Penith,” naturally, is pronounced like “zenith” crossed with the word “penis.”)

    In addition to writing and starring in his own comedy, Burd also created the music for the show. Now he is releasing the songs featured in the show as a real-life album. Appropriately, he gave it the same inappropriate name from the show: Penith. It’s art imitating life imitating art imitating dick jokes.

    “I’m just over here redefining the alpha male,” Dicky raps on his new song, “HAHAHA,” a nearly uninterrupted three-minute verse intended to flex his rapping bona fides. Later on the album, on the song “No Fruits or Vegetables,” the chorus goes, “I don’t eat fruit or vegetables, no fruits or vegetable.” Burd is the alpha man-child. But Burd’s show is so good that the next phase of his career will be taken seriously.

    Dave has perhaps the best celebrity cameos in a television show since Entourage. At various points, the show features Justin and Hailey Bieber, Kendall Jenner and Kourtney Kardashian, and Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. But the star power isn’t as impressive as the way it is used. In Season 1, Dave learns that a young fan of his has died, and the kid’s parents ask Dave to perform at the memorial service. But when Dave arrives, he sees Macklemore showing up to a hero’s welcome. The parents ask Dave to cancel because their son liked Macklemore better. In Season 2, Dave releases a song called “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar” and is elated when Kareem reaches out to talk to him about the song. But to Dave’s horror, Kareem ends up interviewing him about white rappers appropriating Black culture for a profile in Time.

    Burd’s greatest strength has been taking his weaknesses and making them his armor. His rap name is based on his insecurities about having hypospadias, a birth defect that led to a surgery that accidentally created a second hole in his penis. (When Burd explained that childhood trauma to The Ringer back in 2020, he explained that when he pees, he has to cover the second hole with his finger or it comes out “like a Super Soaker.”)

    On the show, Burd’s craven, shameless desire for fame is spun into an episode in which an internet rumor that he is dead goes viral. When he sees that he is the no. 1 trending person on Twitter, he decides to hide at a motel and wait an extra day for his songs to reach no. 1 on Billboard before announcing that he is still alive (even to his parents).

    With the help of Seinfeld writer and Curb Your Enthusiasm producer Jeff Schaffer, the show touches on a stunningly wide range of jokes and emotions. Burd’s friend and real-life hype man GaTa, who also plays himself, gives a genuine and stunning view into the relationship between childhood trauma and sex addiction. This is from the same show where Burd, who is Jewish, hallucinates a conversation where he teaches Anne Frank how to do the “Whip/Nae Nae” dance.

    Burd’s next trick is blurring the lines between his TV show and his music. At the end of the second season, Burd buys an ad on a billboard in Los Angeles to announce his (then-fictitious) album, Penith. His plan in the episode is to tape himself, practically naked, to the billboard as the “t” in “Penith” like Jesus on the cross. But Ariana Grande releases a single the same day, and nobody shows up to see him. The image is now the real-life album cover for Penith.

    (Incredibly, two years after that joke appeared on the show, Grande released a single on January 12, 2024, one week before Burd’s Penith album came out in real life. Art imitates life, etc.)

    Burd is hoping to do what his show did and defy genre. For white guys with white-collar jobs who love rapping Drake lyrics alone to themselves in the car, Lil Dicky is the embodiment of the American dream. He had an excellent career at the powerhouse advertising firm Goodby, Silverstein & Partners working on campaigns like the NBA’s legendary playoff commercials. But Burd quit a potentially lucrative and relatively creative job to become a rapper. Wear your weaknesses like armor, and you too can quit your job to be a famous rapper who writes a TV show about his own life and then convinces Brad Pitt and Drake to be in a season finale. We sat down with Dave to discuss his new album, cold-emailing Brad Pitt to be in his show, what comes next, his custom sex doll, and why he does not eat fruits or vegetables at 35 years old.

    What was the weirdest thing about making a show about your own life that you didn’t see coming?

    Probably just the amount of people asking, “Is this true? Is that true?”

    You want to do a rapid-fire true or false?

    Sure.

    Rick Ross lent you a chain, and then you got robbed. Is any of that true?

    No, no, no, it’s not true. I’ve never experienced anything like that, but GaTa has had a chain get stolen and has had to go through steps to get it back. So it’s like part of the details of that were inspired by stuff that GaTa’s gone through, but I’ve never experienced that.

    So do you have a stalker? Was that real?

    No, I don’t have a stalker, thank God.

    OK. Did you order an absurdly expensive custom sex doll?

    Yeah.

    What did it cost?

    I got the $3,000 model. There were other models that I could have splurged on. There’s a scene in the show where I have sex with the sex doll and very much based on—please, for all the readers, just know that I didn’t bring this up; I was asked this question, and I’m not trying to be intentionally vulgar.

    But the first time I did have sex with the sex doll, I just remember being shocked at how heavy it was. Literally. My favorite sexual position is girl on top. So I don’t know why I thought that that was the right thing to do with this 80-pound doll, but that’s where my head went for the first time I ever experienced it. Then it was so hard to get it positioned. I remember by the time I was actually in a position where I could start doing anything, I was so physically tired. The wig started to fall off of it. I remember thinking in my head as it was happening it felt so much like Ex Machina.

    Pre-nut clarity?

    I didn’t find the experience to be overwhelmingly positive. It was really tiring. But after that, I just immediately went and got on my laptop and started writing things down and details that I don’t want to forget. I remember thinking, “This is such a crazy scene for the show.” So there are times where I’m living life and I’m thinking, “Wow, this is a great scene for the show.”

    So you do that a lot? You’ve basically been chronicling this stuff for years?

    Even before I had the show, when I was just a rapper going on tour with GaTa, I was like, “I know I want to be a comedian. I know that this life that I’m living right now as I’m a rapper going around the road, it’s really funny.” I don’t have a great memory. I’m not going to leave it up to hoping I remember the insane thing that happened in Iowa. I just have to write it down. So I’ve been writing this stuff down for over a decade.

    Did you actually match with Doja Cat on a dating app?

    I have matched with Doja Cat.

    What happened?

    We matched, and we talked. She was very sweet, and we’re friends, but we matched during a time where we didn’t work out. It was always very difficult. I think I was shooting Season 1 or something, or I was just very much doing something and she was doing something. It just was friendly banter, but then I reached out to her for the show, and I was like, “Remember that time we matched?” She was like, “Yeah.” Then I was like, “I want to make an episode based on online texting.”

    On the show, you cannot ride a bike. Was that true? And have you learned?

    I learned when I was a kid. What’s the phrase? You can’t forget how to ride a bike. Well, I forgot. If you put me in a meadow and there’s a path, I can ride straight. I’m just not good at turning. I’m not comfortable on the road. I don’t know how people can ride. Then if there’s a stick, they get smacked by a car. So, no, I’m no more comfortable riding bikes. I’ve always been a Rollerblader. I’m still a Rollerblader. They always think Rollerblading is a bit or that I’m joking, but no.

    On your song “No Fruits or Vegetables,” the chorus goes, “I don’t eat fruit or vegetables, no fruits or vegetable.” When you say no fruits or vegetables, are we talking zero?

    I mean, look, 10 years ago, I hadn’t even tried fruits or vegetables.

    How old are you?

    I’m 35.

    Hmm.

    When I was 25, I had tried an apple, but I didn’t eat any fruits or vegetables. Today, I’ve tried—when I say tried, I’ve taken a single bite—I’ve tried a lot of them. But I don’t on a regular basis eat any fruits or vegetables. I will eat something like a Caesar salad or a kale Caesar salad. Besides that, no. There’s a lot I haven’t tried. I have never tried a cherry. I could really list endless things that I’ve never tried.

    Are you worried about getting scurvy?

    I worry about my health in the sense that I live a very high-stress life, and I know that my diet can’t be good. It’s not a good diet. So I don’t know if I worry about scurvy, but I worry about when I go and get my levels checked that they’re going to be like, “Oh my God. The inside of your body is like tar.”

    Why didn’t you try stuff?

    I think it’s a textural thing for me and my parents. I put this in the show too. I always blame them for not forcing these foods on me when I was young so I could grandfather them in and eat them today, but my mom always said it wasn’t worth ruining her own life. Apparently, I really objected.

    While we’re separating fact from fiction, you have a Coca-Cola commercial where you call Jordan Poole the best stealer ever. Do you want to correct anything on the record?

    Yeah. I didn’t write that line. I questioned it when it came out, and I just had to go along with corporate. I didn’t want to put up a stink. I think they only had so many players that could be featured. Of course, I was the guy writing these ads 15 years ago, so I empathize with their position. I don’t want to be the talent on set being like, “No,” but I didn’t write that line, and I know that he’s not. Blame Coca-Cola.

    You did a video with Benny Blanco where, among many other things, you ordered an unsliced bagel and said, “I’ll slice it myself.” Was that a bit for the video? Or do you actually want to slice a bagel yourself when you get a bagel?

    So I find that if you get the bagel sliced by the bagel place, they have that machine that goes like this [uses his hands to mimic a bagel-slicing machine]. The bagel ends up being very texturally flat. But if you use your own knife and you slice it in a human way, there’s a rigidity and fluffiness to the bagel that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. It’s not that difficult to slice a bagel. Whenever I order a bagel from a bagel place, I always say, “Untoasted, unsliced.”

    You want to create your own texture, map your terrain, create your own landscape?

    Right.

    Speaking of your own terrain, your new album doubles as the soundtrack to your TV show. Is this an album, or is it a soundtrack?

    I don’t know why it would have to be one or the other. I feel like it’s labeled as Penith (The DAVE Soundtrack) because the common theme of the music is they’re songs that have existed in the show. But my process for making music is whenever I get free time from the show, I then work really hard on making music. I make music to make music, and I think about it existing on an album one day. Or I think about various ways it could exist, and then it’s time to make the show again. The show is obviously about me, and I’m a rapper in the show. So there’s obviously a need for music in the show. So oftentimes some of my favorite work can get plucked up and put in the show.

    It varies in the sense that sometimes I make songs that aren’t for the show at all, and then I’m like, “Oh, OK, we’re making the show. We need music. What’s good music that we could build around and put in the show?” Other times I do make music directly for the show. I didn’t envision my second album being a soundtrack album, but I think this is the right thing to do because I love all this music and I want to get it out as opposed to just waiting to finish whatever’s coming next. I want people to have music, and it’s been so long.

    Why is the soundtrack to your TV show coming out eight months after the show ended?

    I wasn’t going to put it out during the writers strike. You can’t really promote it and do anything like that, and I just needed to finish. Songs will enter the show in this demo, unmixed form. Maybe there’s not a second verse on some things that I want to add a second verse to maybe. So it’s like certain songs had to get finished, and not only finished, but then mixed and mastered. It’s the whole process. And then we want to shoot videos for it. So it’s like we have to like them. We got to edit the videos, and there’s a little bit of a production timeline. You got to realize I’m working on the show every day up until four days before that episode. So it’s like there’s no time to do all those things that I just mentioned until after I wrap on the season.

    You cranked out a lot of TV in a very short amount of time. That’s in an era when people aren’t really doing that anymore. Meanwhile, you have not put out a huge amount of music. My editor always says, “Go where your effort takes you.” At this point, do you like making TV shows, movies, whatever more than the music?

    Well, look, I’ll bring it back to the beginning of my career. I always wanted to be a comedian, and that was my grand vision. I started making music with the hope of being found as a comedic presence. Then I fell in love with making music and began making realer and realer music that didn’t even have to rely on being funny as much and started doing real tours. Then my initial dream of being a comedian took a back seat for a few years because I was really rolling with the momentum of music and just going on tour and doing all these things, and the comedy thing had to be put on hold. Then the TV show happened, and it takes up all my time in that way. Then the momentum happened there, and it really started rolling. I had less and less time to make music.

    I think what happened was when the strike happened, I was able to finish this body of work, and I thought it was a really good idea. I designed this project to be the type of thing where even if you’ve never seen the show, you can listen to it and sit, and it flows really well, because I think it really is a real album. But in the process of doing that, I’ve re-fallen in love with music again. I’ve always been working on it whenever I can, but I’ve now really been able to start focusing on it without being pulled in all these different directions. If you’re asking me present-day today, what I’m focused on right now, it’s music today. Will that change? Of course. I’ve always loved film and TV, and I will always have a future in that.

    Season 3 of Dave ended in May. I know it’s up in the air, but will there be more of the show?

    I’m trying to operate under the mentality of focusing on one thing at a time. Like you said, I’ve put out just three seasons. The amount of work that it’s taken to get those three seasons to where it’s been, it has been so unbelievably strenuous to the point where I still feel like I just wrapped Season 3. I feel like I just finished that, and I’m sure, yes, eventually, the story of my life will continue. I’m not kidding when I say I’m really excited about being focused on music for the first time in a while.

    Last time we talked about how you have hypospadias. Just wanted to follow up and confirm: You did not get the corrective surgery?

    No, nothing as an adult, thank goodness. My dick still is fucked up in the sense that I am peeing out of two holes, but I shouldn’t be. So there is a surgery that could fix that that I could get. I’m just not trying to deal with that. I’d rather just piss on myself.

    How long were you friends with Benny Blanco until he was like, “I want to watch you pee”? Because I know he’s seen you pee.

    Oh, very soon [after meeting]. Me and Benny are just such instant soulmate friends that I feel like within four times of hanging out, our dynamic was that of best friend brothers. So I’m sure I showed him very early.

    You guys do seem like long-lost friends. In one of the early episodes of the show, you’re pulling gum out of his ass or something. For people who perhaps don’t have a relationship like that, how would you describe that bromance, why you and Benny are like that?

    Yeah, obviously it’s a foreign relationship to certain people, but I feel like other people can relate to it. It’s weird. I get stopped in the street, and some guys are like, “I got friends who were like that too.” Then other people would be like, “That’s the weirdest dynamic I’ve ever seen.” So it varies, but really it’s just we love each other, not romantically, but just as best friends. I’ve never met someone who I just hit it off with. So we make each other laugh nonstop. Then even if Benny was a plumber, we’d still be best friends.

    So to have your best friend who, when you meet this guy, you’re like, “Oh my God. That’s the guy who’s always meant to be my best friend in life,” and then he also happens to be the biggest music producer and best music producer in the world. It’s so fantastic to be able to work on this album with Benny, Penith. Literally, it’s like we’re finishing songs that I love while also sleeping over with your best friend. You’re not even a kid anymore, but it feels like you are. It’s really a joyous experience.

    You repeatedly have said, “I will be the biggest star in the world.” You’re also one degree of separation removed from Taylor Swift [Editor’s note: Dave’s friend Benny is dating Taylor Swift’s friend Selena Gomez.] Deep down, when you’re watching this Taylor Swift Eras Tour, is any part of you like, “Damn, I got to do that”?

    Not really. No, no, no. In my heart, I know that I’ll never be as big of a musician as Taylor Swift. It’s like ambitious, and she’s the biggest and best of all time. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I obviously have always believed in myself for sure. I think maybe 10 years ago or five years ago, we had our conversation, I would be more likely to say, “My desire is to be the biggest star in the world,” but I don’t even think that’s my actual desire anymore. I think my desire is to make the best stuff in the world and to feel really proud of the stuff that I make, and my desire is to be really, really happy in life.

    But there are certain things that come along with being the biggest star in the world that I have no interest in experiencing for my fame. You know what I mean? You got to plan every single time you go outside, and I like the comfortable life I live of feeling like I have achieved the things that I want to achieve while not feeling burdened by a toxic level of fame that is truly damning to your life.

    Some of Brad Pitt’s last words in the finale are explaining to you that fame is a prison.

    I think Season 3 in a nutshell is it’s under the umbrella of looking for love and romance and then the bait and switch of realizing when you’re living in this endless loop of validation seeking, and then you’re not even truly loving yourself if every single moment is based on how you’re being received and whatnot. So the end message is there’s more to life than seeking validation. I think that’s a real valid lesson from Brad Pitt.

    About the cameos: You’re just cold-emailing Brad Pitt?

    I did cold-email Brad Pitt.

    Will you send me a copy of that?

    I won’t send you a copy. It’s between me and Brad, but it was really well-written, and I took my time with it. I didn’t write it in 20 minutes. I wrote it, and then I reread it the next day, and then I thought about it, and then I trimmed it. You only get one shot of Brad reading your email. People always say, “How do you get all the people in the show?” It’s a combination of two things. One, pretty much at this point, anyone who I’m getting in the show has seen the show and loves it. When I didn’t have a show, and I’m trying to get YG in a pilot for a show that he’s never seen, it’s a much harder sell to be like, “Trust me, it’s going to be great.” Now it doesn’t feel crazy to me to email Rachel McAdams and Brad Pitt, the biggest stars of our time, and be like, “Hey.”

    Because what I find about the show is that it’s incredibly well-respected in the community of artists—I’ll say, the talent of L.A., the pool of actors, the musicians. It’s everyone’s favorite show, and I’m able to really sell them on it. Oftentimes that’s enough. But back in the day, I think when I moved to L.A. and I became friends with Benny, yeah, I think that it’s like our social circle, and I’m at a party, and I meet Kendall Jenner. I try to be a nice person whenever I’m meeting anybody. If someone likes you, they’re more likely to be like, “Yeah, I remember that guy. He’s cool.” But it depends. It’s just living life and meeting people when you meet them, but at this point, I really feel like it’s just the product speaks for itself.

    People like Drake and Brad and Rachel and Killer Mike and Usher, these people, they love the show. There’s really no better feeling than having that belief of these people who are just icons, even to the point where I’ve grown up idolizing a lot of these people. Now they’re so willing to come play in my sandbox and trust me. There’s no more gratifying feeling that I’ve ever had than being on set with Brad Pitt, giving him notes, and him respecting what I’m saying. I can tell that he was looking at me the way he would look at any other director that he works with. This guy’s the biggest star of our time, working with my favorite directors of all time. I think that feeling as a filmmaker was so gratifying.

    Last time we spoke, you told me the best day of your life was when you put out the video for your song “Ex-Boyfriend.” It was April 25, 2013. Ten years later, April 2023, you’re putting out Season 3 of a show about your life with Brad Pitt and Drake. So, with the utmost seriousness, I ask you, with everything you’ve done, 10 years from now, what would make you satisfied?

    The truth of the matter is 10 years ago, if you asked me this question, I would’ve listed out all the things that I have achieved. When I describe 10 years from now, I’m not listing out, “I want an Oscar.” It’s more like, “I have kids and a family, and I’m married. Life is as good as it possibly can be, independent of all the art that I create.” The tricky thing about me is I’m so aware that wrapping your whole identity up in the art that you create is a never-ending cycle. There’s always more—there’s always improvements, things to do—and I try to infuse that in the show. Trying to be that lesson is something that I try to deal with on a day-to-day level.

    Having said that, you’ve alluded to making movies next, including a screenplay about your childhood; you’ve said going through puberty with your condition was formative. Is that basically your next project? A movie about being a kid growing up with a messed-up dick?

    [Laughs.] I think that I’ve said enough about the dick, if I’m being quite honest with you. There’s other TV series I’m developing, and I have a bunch of other things at play for sure. The future, there’s so many other things I want to do besides just make the show Dave and even just make music. I feel like I’m only getting started. I know I’ve been in this for 10 years, but I do feel like the things that I’ve done for 10 years have all been setups for the future. I don’t think I need to make another movie about [my penis].

    I feel like so much of your stuff started with taking this insecurity about your penis and frankly wearing it like armor. Do you feel like you’ve grown up? Do you feel like you’re over it?

    I’m not saying I’m over it in the sense that it’s not an important part of shaping who I am. I just think that I don’t need to make art about the same material every time. Do I feel like I’ve grown up? Yes and no. I definitely feel like the things that I’m saying now are different than the things I would’ve said five years ago, are different than the things I would’ve said 10 years ago. Do I feel any more ready to have children today than I did when I was 16 years old? No, I feel like I’m still a kid at heart, but I think a lot of people feel that way even when they have kids.

    In 10 years, I’ll be 45 years old. My back’s starting to hurt. I want to figure out ways to make my back stop hurting. That’s one of my main priorities right now, is to fix my back this year. It’s not really answering your question, but do I feel grown-up? No, but I definitely feel like I’m actively growing up at all times. All you can do is just do that as things are thrown at you and as you live life. I don’t think I’ll ever feel grown-up until I’m dead. I think I’m about to enter the second half of my life. Maybe not half, but the middle of my life.

    Well, it’ll be the middle third of your life as long as you start eating vegetables.

    Yeah, I’m entering the second half if I don’t fix something.

    Danny Heifetz

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  • Coins

    Coins

    My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from his travels.

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

    American, the most likely to have collectors value, or at least their official value.

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

    Latin American. Almost all have been superceded by a newer currency, or have been massively devalued. I made sure to grab one coin with each national crest.

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

    European, european possessions, and Japanese.

    Coins. My late Peruvian grandfather was quite the traveling businessman in his day. I found a luggage in his apartment filled with old currency leftover from hi

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  • Dex-Starr is the goodest of kitties

    Dex-Starr is the goodest of kitties

    context:
    cat is put in a bad cause its trying its best to protect his human, some ******* throw him into a river, the anger he feels is so strong that it makes him worthy of a red ring,
    his human gets killed so he hunts down the ******* that did it and kills them all

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  • Sam Bankman-Fried Often Didn’t Recall in His Testimony. But the Prosecution Did.

    Sam Bankman-Fried Often Didn’t Recall in His Testimony. But the Prosecution Did.

    Of all the deliciously tedious courtroom conversations that have happened between federal prosecutors and failed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried—who is standing trial on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering related to the loss of $8 billion of customer funds at his crypto exchange, FTX—one on Tuesday really had it all. Pedantic dissembling! Experienced persistence! The Bahamas! FPOTUS Bill Clinton! It began when assistant U.S. attorney Danielle Sassoon asked Bankman-Fried what ought to have been a straightforward question on cross-examination, and things quickly snowballed into the absurd:

    Sassoon: In April 2022, you invited the Bahamian prime minister to a private dinner hosted by FTX, right?
    Bankman-Fried: When was that? Sorry?
    Sassoon: Around April of 2022.
    Bankman-Fried: It’s possible. I don’t remember what that’s referring to.
    Sassoon: Well, do you recall inviting him to a private dinner in 2022 with former president Bill Clinton and former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair?
    Bankman-Fried: No, but it doesn’t surprise me.
    Sassoon: Did you in fact attend a dinner with the Bahamian prime minister, Bill Clinton, and Tony Blair?
    Bankman-Fried: During the conference, the FTX conference, there was a—something like a dinner with them, yeah.
    Sassoon: When you say “something like a dinner,” was it a dinner?
    Bankman-Fried: It may—I don’t remember whether there was food. It may have been.
    Sassoon: And you were there, right?
    Bankman-Fried: Yup.

    Perhaps out of deference for his may-have-been-dinner-mate Clinton, Bankman-Fried thankfully avoided bickering over the meaning of the word “is.” Still, he argued about plenty of other terms during his three-ish days on the stand. For example, less than a minute into Sassoon’s cross, which began Monday afternoon, Bankman-Fried said the phrase: “Depends on how you define ‘trading.’” The next day, he haggled with Sassoon over the meaning of “transact with.”

    At one point, after being asked whether he remembered making various positive statements about the company he founded, SBF responded, “No, but I may have,” to five consecutive questions. More than once, he called something “effectively correct” instead of just saying yes. And he responded, “I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” to Sassoon’s inquiries often enough that Judge Lewis Kaplan finally broke in.

    “The issue is not what she is referring to,” Kaplan admonished, as a few jury members smirked. “Please answer the question.” The question in question: “Generally, do you recall in substance making statements that FTX was a safe platform?” Bankman-Fried’s eventual answer: “I remember things around specific parts of the FTX platform that were related to that. I don’t remember a general statement to that effect. I am not sure there wasn’t one.” Got it!

    While Bankman-Fried continued in this manner, a filmmaker sitting next to me in the gallery murmured that the defendant ought to be lifting his face up more, that maybe he might appear more sympathetic if he found better light. When your defense revolves around keeping everything shrouded, however, it turns out there really isn’t much you can illuminate.

    United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried commenced in early October and could conclude as soon as the end of this week. In its closing argument on Wednesday, the government stated that Bankman-Fried had said some version of “I can’t recall” over 140 times in his cross-examination and that, as attorney Nicolas Roos put it, “A pyramid of deceit was built by the defendant. That ultimately collapsed.”

    As I watched Bankman-Fried testify in his own defense over the past week, I thought a lot about chaotic spreadsheets. This was, at least in part, because throughout the trial, a lot of .xls files have been entered into evidence, each more tenuous than the last.

    There are spreadsheets with line items labeled “Oops this seems like not a thing we should be counting,” like one that Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Bankman-Fried’s trading firm, Alameda Research, said she prepared. There are spreadsheets where the accounting is rounded not to the nearest decimal, but to the nearest billion. There are spreadsheets where the accounting is labeled with euphemisms, like “exchange borrows,” that mean illicitly wormholed FTX customer funds. There are spreadsheets showing Alameda’s $65 billion line of credit on FTX’s systems, an allowance that was $64,850,000,000 more than that of the next-highest customer. So many spreadsheets, all crowded with tabs, each one lousy with alarming valuations and bad news.

    But it wasn’t just the spreadsheets themselves that stood out to me. It was the fact that Bankman-Fried, up on the witness stand, often resembled a spreadsheet himself. Sometimes this was because of the way he processed, added up, divided, and extrapolated his thoughts and testimony in real time, stacking and rearranging his words in linked columns and rows. More often, it was because he said, again and again, that he didn’t know what Sassoon was referring to—a living embodiment of the dreaded #REF! error. Number-loving and load-bearing, Bankman-Fried was, for years, the guy whose base values provided the enterprise value to an entire apparatus of people and industry. Now, his cell contains only his own errors. When he went bust, everything linked to him went broke.

    “I trusted Sam,” testified Adam Yedidia, Bankman-Fried’s former MIT classmate who also worked at FTX, in early October. A few days later, Ellison, one of three trial witnesses who were a part of Bankman-Fried’s inner circle and have already pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges as part of a cooperation deal with the government, described Bankman-Fried as so ambitious that he felt he had a 5 percent chance of becoming president of the United States. Former FTX employee Nishad Singh—whose own bottom line went from “billionaire” to “#REF!” with the collapse of FTX just about a year ago—also recently testified for the prosecution. He was asked how he would describe his relationship with the defendant. “I have always been intimidated by Sam,” Singh began, to the overruled objection of the defense. Singh continued: “Sam is a formidable character, brilliant. So I had a lot of admiration and respect for him. Over time, I think a lot of that eroded, and I grew distrustful.”

    When Bankman-Fried took the stand, a will-he-or-won’t-he decision that had been hotly speculated about for weeks, the full arc of all of these descriptions of him was on display. For a time, courtroom observers did get a sense of the once-formidable iteration of Bankman-Fried. And then we also saw that same erosion, right before our eyes.

    While most white-collar defense attorneys typically don’t like to have their clients testify—the risks of perjuring oneself, irritating the sentencing judge, or getting pinned down on cross-examination all frequently outweigh the potential upside of, say, charming a juror—Bankman-Fried’s counsel almost certainly had little choice in the matter. Their client has a famously idiosyncratic risk tolerance. And the case was not going well for the defense otherwise: Their cross-examinations, particularly of Ellison, hadn’t drawn much blood, and the judge denied a number of their proposed expert witnesses. So why not swing big?

    In his direct examination, which began for the jury on Friday, Bankman-Fried got off to a steady start. When asked what his early vision was for FTX, SBF said that he had hoped to “move the [crypto] ecosystem forward,” but “it turned out basically the opposite of that.” (Shades of his “same, except exactly the opposite” quip to Ellison, which will live in ex-boyfriend infamy.) Bit by bit, he and his lawyers chipped away at some of the prior witnesses’ testimonies, trying to establish that mistakes were made and money was lost, but crimes were not intentionally committed.

    To that point in the trial, the government had repeatedly offered evidence that Bankman-Fried is well-attuned to the best PR angles for him and his companies. As he sat on the stand, we in the courtroom could see the defendant strive to be perceived as forthright—and maybe also a little bit funny? Speaking about FTX’s decision to enter a 19-year, $135 million arena-naming deal with the city of Miami and the NBA’s Miami Heat, for example, Bankman-Fried unexpectedly and amiably roasted both Dak Prescott’s Sleep Number bed ad campaign (too unmemorable, per his analysis) and the Kansas City Royals (“With no offense to the Royals,” he said, talking about having considered working with the team on a possible stadium-naming deal, “I didn’t want to be known as the Kansas City Royals of crypto exchanges, so we passed on that one”). Honestly, some of it was solid material. A number of jurors grinned, maybe even chuckled a little, and so did I. And that was before he had this exchange with his lawyer, Mark Cohen:

    Cohen: Can we turn to the second page, please? Pull up the paragraph entitled: “Things Sam Is Freaking Out About.” First entry is hedging. Do you recall discussing this with Ms. Ellison?
    Bankman-Fried: Yes.
    Cohen: Were you freaking out?
    Bankman-Fried: I don’t tend to show a lot of freak-out-ness, but relative to my standard, yes.

    Unlike the jurors, though, I was getting a kick out of this mainly because I had a good idea of what would be coming down the pike. Last Thursday, due to a dispute between lawyers about the admissibility of certain topics of inquiry, the jury was sent home early so that Bankman-Fried could offer limited testimony in a special “hearing” in front of Judge Kaplan (and the rest of the gallery). The direct questioning in that period had gone smoothly, much like it did in front of the jury—Sam’s father even gave him a big thumbs-up during a courtroom break.

    But during a truncated cross-examination by Sassoon that afternoon, Bankman-Fried wilted. Simple questions like when …? or where …? or with whom …? gave him (and his mother, scoffing in the gallery) fits. The jury wasn’t there, so it was in some ways a dress rehearsal for both sides, but it went so resoundingly badly for the defense that I spent the night fretting that we’d come into court the next morning to find out that Bankman-Fried had run the numbers and would no longer testify at all. Luckily, that wasn’t the case.

    When it came time for the real cross-examination, Bankman-Fried’s whole presence on the stand shifted. Gone was the strenuous (approaching affable) nerd who had described his college living situation as “coed, nerdy, and dry” and had explained to the jury why he’d been photographed carrying a deck of playing cards: not because he was a gambling man who wanted to be ready in case a poker game broke out, but rather to give his fidgety hands something to do. (It wasn’t a sustainable solution, he said: He shuffled the cards so often that he shredded through a pack of them a week at one point, and he had to switch to a fidget spinner.) Gone were the chatty asides about how most people strive for Inbox Zero, but his goal is Inbox 60,000. Bankman-Fried was now on the hot seat, and while he’d clearly learned since Thursday to keep his answers as close to “yep” and “nope” as possible, he still couldn’t help but veer into his own way.

    In his direct testimony, Bankman-Fried had displayed a precise, expansive memory, but on cross, he had a much tougher time recollecting even the recent past:

    Sassoon: You testified that you stumbled your way into Michael Kives’s Super Bowl party. Do you recall that?
    Bankman-Fried: The seats at the actual, physical Super Bowl, yes.
    Sassoon: And you flew to the Super Bowl in a private jet, didn’t you?
    Bankman-Fried: I don’t remember.
    Sassoon: You don’t recall flying to the Super Bowl in a private plane?
    Bankman-Fried: I don’t recall how I got there.
    Sassoon: Is that because you traveled on private planes so frequently?

    Again and again, Sassoon asked him about specific statements he made, and he said he didn’t recall or didn’t know what she was referring to. Again and again, she came calmly with the receipts, posting Google Docs or old articles or video links or Signal messages. “Does that refresh your memory?” she would ask. “No,” he’d reply.

    Sassoon [calling up a photo of SBF on a plane]: Mr. Bankman-Fried, is that you in shorts and a T-shirt on a private plane?
    Bankman-Fried: Chartered plane, at least, yes.

    Sassoon established that Bankman-Fried had bragged about being wholly separate from his trading firm, Alameda, but that he had also been directing trading activity—a big blow to his attempted defense that Ellison, the Alameda CEO, should have hedged better. She made Bankman-Fried read aloud a DM of his that said “fuck regulators” and had him admit that he had called some of the folks on crypto Twitter “dumb motherfuckers.” (Well, kind of admit: Bankman-Fried would agree that he had said that about only “a specific subset of them.”) She pulled up stock transfer agreements and wryly observed: “And this says, ‘Unanimous Consent of Board of Directors.’ Looking at the bottom, you were the only member of the board, correct?”

    Once, cornered, Bankman-Fried piped up plaintively: “I can explain …” Sassoon wasn’t interested in that. “That’s all right,” she said, with the exact singsong cadence Miranda Priestly uses when dismissing an underling, as the exhibit monitor displayed all the explanatory proof she needed.

    During the defense’s redirect on Tuesday morning, Bankman-Fried reverted to being a more eager talker and reminiscer. His memory became clearer when he was asked about past conversations and states of mind. He joked to the court about the photo of him on a private jet that the government had posted: “very flattering one.” Ha ha, I guess. But the whiplash in tone mostly served to make his reticent responses to the prosecutor’s earlier questions seem even more shady and petulant.

    In Bankman-Fried’s time on the stand, the wide scope of his personality became clearer and clearer: how convincing and, in his way, winsome he could be; how cold and harsh he could become. Business in front; coed, nerdy, and dry in back. Still, while a lot of his chatter seemed designed to fill the air and distract the jury from the painful caesuras he’d endured from Sassoon, one thing he said came almost certainly from the heart.

    Asked by Cohen why he had told Sassoon “no” under oath when asked if he had spent the missing $8 billion of FTX customer funds, Bankman-Fried had a couple of answers. One was, “Money is fungible anyway.” In other words: Hey, who’s to say?! But the other seemed to speak to one of Sam’s broader, odder points of view. “The other part of it, I mean, I don’t know if this is right or wrong, but for better or for worse, it has been a part of me that, like: I wasn’t particularly interested in trying to dole out blame for it. That wasn’t my priority. It generally wasn’t my priority. It was generally something I de-prioritized.”

    This tracked with something his mother, a law school professor and ethicist, had written for the Boston Review a decade ago: a polemic against “blame mongering.” It also tracked with what Bankman-Fried had told Michael Lewis in the course of being interviewed for his book Going Infinite: that at his first job out of MIT, “Jane Street [Capital] really didn’t like blaming people. … They sort of asked, ‘Did anyone do anything contrary to what they were being told?’ When the answer was no, they said it could just as easily have been the CEO who did it.”

    Later in Going Infinite, Bankman-Fried is quoted as saying, “Fault is just a construct of human society. It serves different purposes for different people. … I guess maybe the most important definition—to me, at least—is how did everyone’s actions reflect on the probability distribution of their future behavior?” In Bankman-Fried’s case, the record seems clear: His actions made him more likely, in the future, to behave as though there would be no consequences for them. His actions made him more likely, in the future, to repeat said actions. And his actions made him more likely, in the future, to arrive at a scenario where he would want to testify in federal court in his own defense in a multibillion-dollar fraud case.

    On Thursday, a different construct of human society—the jury—will begin its deliberations on the seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering leveled against Bankman-Fried. And they will ultimately be the ones to determine whether the fault lies with Bankman-Fried or if he’s not guilty of the charges against him. “He took the money. He knew it was wrong. He did it anyway,” Roos said in the government’s closing argument. “Because he thought he was smarter. … [He thought he could] talk his way out of it.” Cohen, speaking for the defense, told the jury, “The government has sought to turn Sam into some sort of villain, some sort of monster. … It’s both wrong and unfair.” Regardless of whom the jury believes, both sides are referring to the same missing billions, the same broken spreadsheets, the same defendant who sat up on the witness stand and made one thing really clear: that he’s forgotten so much more about all of this than we’ll ever be able to know.

    Katie Baker

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  • WW2 homecoming

    WW2 homecoming

    15th October 1945, Gunner Hector Murdoch arrived home in Tulse Hill, London, greeted by his wife Rosina and son John. He had been away for four and a half years, three and a half of which he was a POW. Rosina had no idea if he was alive or dead. He got home on his birthday.

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