Month: May 2025

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Patio furniture, garden essentials, e-bikes, soundbars, tool storage—Walmart is a top destination for deals on all kinds of home and outdoor gear, but that’s just scratching the surface; many lesser-known product categories also see incredible deals. Maybe Walmart isn’t the first place you’d shop for your next great pocket knife, for example, but it often has standout discounts on blades, and we just stumbled on a great one from Buck Knives.

The Buck Knives 375 Deuce Pocket Knife is on sale for $11, a 56% discount from its normal price of $25. This knife is a bestselling item at Walmart, and with its dual-blade design, it offers unmatched versatility in a compact package. It’s earned nearly 200 five-star ratings from Walmart shoppers, including one who said it’s “the perfect size to carry” and noted the blades are “really sharp” right out of the package.

Buck Knives 375 Deuce Knife, $11 (was $25) at Walmart

The 375 Deuce is both super useful and a handsome tool that features a folding clip blade and a folding coping blade for excellent cutting versatility. You can use this knife to handle all kinds of tasks, from slicing cheese to creating kindling for a campfire, and yet it’s small enough to stash in a pocket. Both blades are made from sturdy 420J2 stainless steel, and they each feature a nail notch for easy opening. But the blades are just the start—this knife is full of high-quality details. The black pakawood handle contrasts nicely with the polished brass liners, genuine nickel silver bolsters, and the Buck Knives logo in nickel silver. Plus, the knife’s riveted construction gives it solid durability, so you can expect many years of use from it.

Walmart shoppers have great things to report about this knife. One said it’s “very well made” and “sharp and useful,” even though it’s small in size.

Related: One of Amazon’s Bestselling Multi-Tools Is Under $20 Right Now, and Shoppers Say It’s ‘Built Like a Tank’

“It’s razor sharp from the factory, and fit and finish are excellent,” another shopper wrote. “My favorite small pocket knife,” declared another. “It doesn’t take up much room in my pocket.”

Whether you’re a knife collector or just need a useful tool for EDC purposes, the Buck Knives 375 Deuce Knife is an excellent purchase at just $11. But it’s also a bestseller, and that means it won’t stay in stock long, so grab yours today before it’s gone.

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This Friday, on May 2, Marvel’s new comeback epic, Thunderbolts*, hits theaters. It’s a fun, brisk, and deeply strange new entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but unlike some of the more recent TV series or forgettable films (cough, cough, Quantumania), Thunderbolts* is anything but inessential. Instead, the movie feels like a preamble to a rough-and-tumble Marvel comeback, a version of the MCU that will feel oddly scrappier than it did a few years ago.

That said, there’s a decent amount of continuity that Thunderbolts* is built on. Bucky (Sebastian Stan) has been with us since 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger, while even a relatively new character like Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) made her MCU debut back in 2018 in Ant-Man and the Wasp. Meanwhile, The Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) come from 2021’s Black Widow, which was forced to make its debut in theaters and on Disney+ because it was still COVID times and movie theaters were not fully “back.” That same year gave us The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which is where we get John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the sort of knock-off Captain America. The scheming Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has also been around since 2021, popping up, recruiting these super-rejects in both The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Black Widow.

Do you need to understand all of these characters’ backstories? No, not really. Because the one thing to remember before watching Thunderbolts* is pretty easy to keep straight: All of the members of this squad were disgraced or, at some point, literally bad guys, before the movie starts. This is the main idea of Thunderbolts* it’s a superhero movie, not about B-list superheroes, but about discarded baddies who are, deep down, more or less, good.

Related: ‘Thunderbolts*’ Review: Marvel Is Back, Baby

You can certainly rewatch Black Widow or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for more context, if you’d like. But, Thunderbolts* does a decent job of organically reminding you of those events anyway. 

In a sense, Thunderbolts* feels like Marvel’s attempt to take those plot threads from the lost era of 2021, and turn some of those darker ideas into a concept that is a little more upbeat. You don’t need to do your homework on these characters to enjoy the movie. Instead, just remember that none of them were ever mainstream superheroes before, even though they wanted to be. Once you know that, everything else will fall into place.

Thunderbolts* hits theaters on May 2, 2025. Some screenings begin on Thursday evening.

Like many Top Chef fans, I’ve spent years judging dishes from my couch. But last fall, after nearly two decades of watching the Emmy-winning Bravo series, I got the chance to try the food for myself while on set in Toronto, Canada.

Spoiler alert: I only kind of knew what I was talking about.

My visit took me behind the scenes of both a Quickfire and an Elimination Challenge (yes, I tasted pizza made by the cheftestants — more on that later). I also sat down with host Kristen Kish, who stepped in for Padma Lakshmi after her 2023 exit, along with longtime judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons.

Simmons, a Toronto native, had been campaigning for a Canadian season “for years.”

“But now that it’s here, it was actually a little more overwhelming and intimidating than I thought it would be,” she tells me while on location at a beautiful vineyard near Niagara Falls where the Elimination Challenge was taking place.

That didn’t stop her from jumping in to help shape the season. “I sent them lists of chefs. I sent them lists of locations. I sent them lists of ingredients and ideas we talked them through,” she says.

Kish’s connection to Canada is more recent. She spent time in Montreal while writing her 2017 cookbook with Canadian author Meredith Erickson, and her wife has family in Toronto. “We’ve probably been here three or four times this year,” she says. “But I can’t say I’ve really eaten through the city.”

Fun fact: Kish once stayed at Simmons’ in-laws’ house. “She was like, ‘Oh, you can stay with my in-laws, they have a room,’” Kish laughs. “I didn’t have a hotel or do anything like that. It was really nice.”

Colicchio, who has several restaurants in New York and one in Las Vegas, says “the food scene’s great” in The Six. “Years ago I did a guest dinner here. I’m forgetting who it was with, but I did a guest chef series, and then I was recently here looking at a restaurant space,” he explains. “I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’ve been here over the years.”

The day of my visit, the chefs were tasked with reimagining pizza for what Kish calls Top Chef’s first-ever pizza party. “We were asking to make something new, something different, something unique,” Colicchio says.

Not everything hit the mark, though. “I think some are successful and some are less, but that’s always how it is,” Simmons says. “Today wasn’t actually necessarily their best showing, but almost every episode there have been dishes that stand out to us and that we’ve been going way by that been really, really excellent.”

One dish that did stand out for me? A scallion pancake “pizza” made by chef Shuai Wang — one I thoroughly enjoyed and couldn’t help but wonder if my amateur palate aligned with the judges. “The biggest problem with some of the pizzas today was the doughs,” Colicchio tells me after the tasting. “And so if you’re not comfortable doing that and you think you can make a really good scallion pancake and it kind of fits it, then I’m OK with that. So yeah, I would consider that in the context of what we’re looking for.”

Wang’s pizza didn’t give him the win but did land him in the top three. And despite the overall uneven showing that day, Simmons says the cast keeps leveling up. “It’s not really just about how good you are as a cook, right? It’s a combination,” she says. “You need to be on television, you need to be able to talk cooks, tell stories. You have to be a very well-rounded person. It’s a very complicated casting process. I think harder than people realize.”

Colicchio echoes the difficulty of assembling the right group of chefs each season. “I think it’s when we we’re casting diversity, we’re casting equal amounts of men or women. Our industry is not made up equally, men or women there. …And so I think they’re trying to balance that.”

He adds, “I think what happens with our show, and this is what I think that we’ve done really well because of the diversity, the hardest thing, especially for women and minorities, is to raise money. The visibility that they get on the show makes it easier to do that.”

Kish is one example of that visibility paying off. After winning Top Chef Season 10, she went on to succeed outside the kitchen too — and in 2023, she stepped in as host and earned an Emmy nomination her very first season.

“It gave us a real opportunity to reset,” Simmons says. “Kristen came with fresh eyes and great ideas and totally humble, no expectations, and just wanted to do the best she can and work with us in a way that made everybody better. And that’s rare in a show that’s had our kind of history and our close relationships, but she was already part of the family.”

Colicchio agrees: “She fits right in. She’s really good at it. And I think for the contestants, it’s really great having a judge that has been in the competition. I think they feel there’s better sense of empathy for that.”

Still, Kish admits the transition wasn’t easy. “I was nervous and overthinking a lot last year,” she says. “Whether that came off on television or not, probably not, but internally I felt it.”

That pressure was balanced by her firsthand experience — something that gives her a unique advantage as host.”I was a sous chef and I was cooking every night and I was doing nightly menus all by myself, all this stuff. And I had that practice underneath my belt, which I think helped me,” she says of competing. “You have some great executive chefs that barely touch a knife anymore. So you really never know. There’s so many challenges that play to people’s strengths and weaknesses. I don’t know the right formula, but all I know is that these chefs right now are doing a really great job.”

As for what’s next for the award-winning competition now in its 22nd season, Colicchio is intrigued by the idea of an all-winners edition — or even one featuring runner-ups. “Winners don’t want to do it because they’re like, ‘I already won.’ Except I would love to see if we can get a half a million-dollar prize together, a million-dollar prize together,” he says. “That might be enough to entice everybody to come out.”

The bigger challenge? Time. “Everybody’s really busy these days, especially if you won. They don’t have time to take off six weeks.”

Top Chef airs on Bravo Wednesdays at 9/8c.