Tonight, in the barfoid-free With Spandex WWE Raw open discussion thread:
Christian will return to Raw tonight to host a special edition of “The Peep Show,” with his longtime friend and tag team partner Edge as the guest.
The Rated-R Superstar is preparing for what may be The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever against Randy Orton, with The Viper gloating about setting the perfect trap for the WWE Hall of Famer. What will Edge have to say just six days before WWE Backlash? (via WWE.com)
It’ll be fun to see what Christian thinks about Edge being one half of The Greatest Wrestling Match Ever. Jealous, probably! Also scheduled for the show are the new Women’s Tag Team Champions, Bayley and Sasha Banks, another Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka match, and, I shit you not, an “Olympic Decathlon” between the Street Profits and the Viking Raiders. You know what’d be an even better Olympic event? Wrestling.
As always, +1 your favorite comments from tonight’s open thread and give them a thumbs up and we’ll include 10 of the best in tomorrow’s Best and Worst of Raw column. Make sure to flip your comments to “newest” in the drop down menu under “discussion,” and enjoy the show!
Veterinary clinics see all kinds of things on any given day. Unlike medical professionals that treat humans, vets and vet techs treat a wide variety of species—and they also have to deal with people bringing in all manner of wildlife that have no business being at the vet.
Walter Brown is a vet tech at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. He’s also an aspiring comedian known as “Skinni,” and he’s begun mixing his professions by sharing veterinary advice on social media in the most entertaining way. A live video he shared on his Facebook page on Memorial Day weekend went viral, with more than 1.7 million views, as people discovered and shared his hilarious admonitions to leave animal “chirrin” alone when they’re out on a nature hike.
Brown wrote, “Let me nip dis one in da bud too…..leave these wild animals chirrin alone……..” and then offered this advice:
Brown shared another video this weekend, advising people in the South not to go running in the heat with their Nordic breed and Brachycephalic breed dogs. And again, he offers solid veterinary advice in a way that’s highly entertaining. Like, if someone’s going to lay out an admonishment to the public, it should be this man.
Seriously, can all public service announcements from here on out come from Walter Brown, please?
Some good news and bad news. The good: There’s going to be a new Evil Dead movie. The bad: It won’t star Bruce Campbell. But you may have already suspected that. The cult film and TV legend with the world class chin retired from the role that made him famous a couple years ago, and he’s stood by his proclamation. Still, a new Evil Dead movie isn’t anything to sneeze at, right?
The news broke in an interview with Empire, in which the beloved actor revealed not only would he not be appearing in the latest film from the classic horror franchise, which began in 1981, but Sam Raimi wouldn’t be directing either. Instead it will be Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin.
“It’s called Evil Dead Now,” Campbell revealed. “Sam handpicked Lee – he did a cool movie called The Hole In The Ground. We’re going to get that sucker out as soon as practical.”
Campbell didn’t offer too many specifics, though he did imply Evil Dead Now will feature a female hero. So did Fede Alverez’s 2013 stand-alone remake, which had no relation to the original films, nor with the subsequent TV show Ash vs. the Evil Dead, which brought Campbell back to the role over the course of three seasons.
One thing he did say was Evil Dead Now will be “more dynamic,” though he didn’t specify whether he was comparing it to the 2013 Evil Dead or Ash vs. the Evil Dead (or, really, any of the previous entries). “We just want to keep the series current,” Campbell said. “And the mantra, really, is that our heroes and heroines are just regular people. That’s what we’re going to continue.”
In addition to starring in Ash vs. the Evil Dead, Campbell served as executive producer, and both he and Raimi will be involved in this new one on the production side. But it sounds like Campbell is cool with leaving Ash on the shelf. He told Empire that going forward, the franchise will have to function without him. “Which is fine,” he added. “And liberating.”
The NBA’s impending return later this summer in Orlando, Florida at Disney’s Wide World of Sports has been approved by the NBA and NBPA, with some pending negotiations taking place this week regarding some financials and, most notably, how they will schedule the 2020-21 season.
The timeline for this season’s return is set, with teams going to Orlando in early July for a quarantine period before beginning practices and scrimmages, with games in the 8-game run to the playoffs starting on July 31. Then there will be a play-in tournament in the West, followed by a regular postseason with seven-game series throughout. One of the big questions facing the NBA’s return has been testing for the novel coronavirus, as it remains the great unknown right now — and Florida is experiencing a spike in cases following the state’s reopening.
On Monday, The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor offered up some insight into the testing that will happen, as well as the protocols for a positive test or a player leaving the bubble — and how teams will be able to adjust rosters if a positive test happens.
If a player tests positive, they will need to quarantine for at least 10 days and have two negative tests before rejoining their team. The same is true if a player leaves the league’s Disney World campus, which will be closed off to the public. If a player leaves and returns, they will need to quarantine for at least 10 days and test negative twice before rejoining.
…
Playoff rosters will be finalized after the eight regular-season games, or “seeding games.” Once the postseason begins, only players who test positive for COVID-19 could be replaced, and only by two-way players. If a player suffers an injury, they can’t be replaced. Free agents can’t be signed at this time, no differently than any normal postseason.
This answers at least some of the questions posited about what happens for a positive test, and also shows how the league will enforce keeping players in the bubble. They are free to leave, but would have to sit out 10 days and have two negative tests to return. Still, the big question lingering over all of this is what happens if there is an outbreak on a team that impacts a number of players. Adam Silver wasn’t exactly forthcoming when asked about that on Inside the NBA, simply noting they can continue if there is a positive test, but not indicating the protocol for an outbreak within an organization and whether that would shut things down or simply cause that team to pull out of the postseason.
The hope, of course, is that we never have to answer that question and positive tests are limited, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility and it’s something to keep an eye on. Beyond that, teams will surely be being extra careful with star players interactions, as replacing a LeBron or Giannis with a two-way player in the playoffs would significantly alter the proceedings.
Rick and Morty is a show in which co-creator Justin Roiland puts in a lot of voice work. But according to the voice of both Rick and Morty, it was another Cartoon Network show that truly put his voice acting to the limit. Roiland has voiced a number of characters in his career, and most of Rick and Morty is actually him talking to himself. But in a video he shot for GQ he went through some of his other roles and said a memorable spot as Lemongrab from Adventure Time was the most difficult of his career.
The extremely weird character first popped up in the fifth episode of the show’s first season. The Earl of Lemongrab comes to take control of the Candy Kingdom because Princess Bubblegum reverted to a 13-year-old version of herself, leading to the episode titled “Too Young.” If you’ve never seen Adventure Time none of that makes any sense, but what you need to know is that Lemongrab is extremely annoying, and instantly memorable to fans of the show for his weird metaphors and casual punching of rats while shouting things like “UNACCEPTABLE.”
As Roiland explains it in the video above, Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward appeared on his podcast and asked if he wanted to voice a character for him. He agreed because he was a huge fan of the show, but didn’t really have any ideas about what Lemongrab should sound like.
“They sent me the boards, the storyboards for the episode,” Roiland explained. “I didn’t really know what to do, so I just went in and I started screaming. And he’s like ‘That’s it. Great.’”
The result is a noisy, loud, and completely unhinged character whose voice often rises to a scream. And though the role was a hit, it definitely took its toll on Roiland.
“I learned the limits of my voice with that character for sure,” Roiland said. “I blew my voice out really bad. And Tom Kenny told me to go to this really good ENT (ear, nose and throat specialist) and I had to get a cortisone shot and not talk for two weeks.”
Kenny is a legendary voice actor in his own right — he’s SpongeBob SquarePants, for starters — so he was definitely someone to listen to on matters of the voice. Roiland said he couldn’t do Morty’s voice for “a while” after the third time he recorded for Lemongrab, but it did actually inspire something from the show. While he couldn’t speak he used an application on his phone to communicate, Talk Bot, which he said had a depressing text-to-speech voice they actually used for the Butter Robot.
Thankfully, Lemongrab’s memorable voice certainly made its mark on Adventure Time fans and Roiland was able to get back to his other work without too much damage to his voice. Just don’t expect him to break out any impressions of the extremely weird citrus-based character anytime soon.
This isn’t anything new to black people, we’ve known this for years. You get pulled over by the cops, you might get shot, you’ll definitely get asked more questions than if you’re white. You might get asked to get out of the car. Don’t drive with shit in your car because they’ll probably try to search you. This is nothing new to us, but it’s new to white folks and we need to keep that in people’s minds. This is real, and this happens and we need to stop it from happening. The only reason people are paying attention to that is because of these protests.
— Steve Vasquez, Director, People’s Party with Talib Kweli
Last week saw marching and protests in all fifty states. People took to the streets by the tens of thousands to demand justice for the killing of George Floyd on May 25th by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, after the former was detained outside of a convenience store in Minneapolis (MN). In the days since, much of the media narrative has focused on the damage caused by a small number of looters, rather than focusing on the largely peaceful rallies calling for an end to police violence. Meanwhile, demonstrations in support of Black Lives Matter have spread across the globe — to Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, and Zimbabwe, among others.
Uproxx’s Steve Vasquez, director of People’s Party with Talib Kweli, has been taking to the streets of Los Angeles almost daily since the weekend after Floyd’s death. He sees the protests in a vastly different light than the common media narrative. “What I’ve been seeing is 100% peaceful,” he says. “Well… aside from when the police have pushed protestors. It seems like they’re trying to instigate some of the violence, or were instigating some of the violence early on.”
Vasquez, who recently appeared on KTLA to discuss the idea of “allyship”, continues: “People are focusing on the protest violence, but what about the violence black people face at the hands of police every single day? Nobody has really talked about that until now in a real way. Why isn’t the media focused on the fact that this has been going on for generations in the black community?”
As Vasquez points out, this violence against black people at the hands of law enforcement isn’t anything new. George Floyd’s name is one of many on an ever-growing list of people of color who died at the hands of police — joining those of Breonna Taylor, Sean Monterrosa, Justin Howell, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, and countless others. Still, Uproxx’s in-house director feels like things are different this time around.
“I’ve been to a lot of Black Lives Matter protests, especially after Ferguson,” he says. “They’ve always been similar in messaging and issues, but now it’s to the point where it has expanded exponentially. This feels like this is a real moment where people are paying attention. This Saturday’s protest was massive. I’m hearing from friends in DC about what it was like there, too. If you told me 10 years ago that there would be this many people marching in support of my life as a black man in America, I would’ve been surprised.”
Obviously, the work isn’t close to complete. Getting out into the streets is only the beginning — true change requires a multi-pronged approach. For Vasquez, the most important message is that we not let up.
“This is an unprecedented moment in American history,” he says. “We’ve never had this many people supporting black lives and an end to police brutality. If we let up even a minute and the news cycle is taken up by something else, we’ll lose that momentum. Every major company is adding something in support of Black Lives Matter. It’s become so visual, you can see it everywhere. The only reason that that’s all happening is because of the activism.”
“There also needs to be work after the work,” he continues. “After the action, there needs to be more action. We need to be able to follow up with legislators and make sure laws are passed on the local, state, and federal levels to make sure these issues are addressed. If you are not able to protest that’s one thing, but you need to continue to be a voice, share, and have conversations.”
Vasquez’s mentality is one of everyone finding their lane in the movement and following it. That means no excuses to do nothing. He’s all too tired of the unspoken bigotry of hypothetical allies.
“There’s a large percentage of people in America who maybe don’t identify as racist,” he says. “But they’re definitely happy with the status quo or happy with the white supremacist power structure that has been running this country since its beginning.”
[Uproxx has chosen to only run photos of people wearing masks or who are otherwise unidentifiable. Closeup images were taken/ used for publication with express permission.]
For nearly two weeks, Americans have shown up by the thousands to protest racial injustice and police brutality, including in our nation’s capital. As a result, an 8-foot fence has been erected around the White House, reinforced by concrete barricades, spanning approximately 1.7 miles, according to the Washington Post.
Now protesters are using the fence as a living monument racial justice, plastering it with signs supporting the protests, naming people who have been killed at the hands of the police, and calling for support for Black lives.
The signs are a mix of standards such as “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice No Peace,” in addition to more creative statements like “Racism is an insult to God’s creativity,” and “Racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you are protesting America.”
Reddit users posted some interesting commentary on the fence-turned-memorial wall:
“Turning Trump’s wall of failure into a two mile long billboard for civil rights? That’s absolutely brilliant.”
“Who would have thought that when Trump finally built his stupid wall it would be to keep America out of the White House?”
“Between this and the mayor painting ‘Black Lives Matter’ down the street outside the White House, I’m loving these peaceful power moves. Way to go DC!”
“BLM should offer a service where you can pay to get your message posted. From across the country, I’d pay $10 to have my message zip-tied to that fence.”
“I hope this fence is preserved. It belongs in a museum for future generations.”
“Outstanding. The visuals of taking memorials down will be worse for Trump than leaving them up – which isn’t good for him and probably pissing him off into ranting rage.”
The fencing itself had already prompted a viral #BabyGate hashtag, as people used the fence to poke fun at President Trump’s toddler-like tantrums and need for attention. Now it’s created an opportunity for protesters to have their voices heard in a powerful new way.
The president has also been blasted for hiding out in a bunker during protests outside the White House, especially after he had urged the governor of Michigan to talk to the armed protesters who stormed the state capitol protesting stay-at-home orders. (In addition to the hypocrisy, one has to ask: If you have to hide in a bunker and build a wall to protect yourself from your own citizens, can you really call yourself a successful leader?)
How Trump handles this wall—both now and when the times comes for it to be removed—will be telling. In the meantime, what a beautiful symbol of citizens demanding their voices be heard.
The United States won the race to the moon but lost the initial race to space, and it seems the government might lose the rights to the Space Force trademark as well. Steve Carell’s Netflix show hit the streaming service last month, parodying the out-of-this-world new branch of the military that he announced in 2018.
Basically every announcement for the very real military unit has been met with jokes, from the very familiar logo to the uniforms these “spacemen” will be wearing whenever they actually get some action. But in the Netflix series, the branch is launching operations and actually trying to put “boots on the moon,” as they say many times in the 10 episodes of its first season.
That progress, though fictional, has actually created an interesting problem for the United States government. According to Hollywood Reporter, several trademarks for Space Force might actually be awarded to Netflix because the show exists and has made greater strides in solidifying ownership of the name over the actual government:
But his administration has proven dovish when it comes to protecting the “Space Force” name itself. On May 29, Netflix premiered its comedy series Space Force, from The Office showrunner Greg Daniels and star Steve Carell. The U.S. military has done nothing to stop the streamer’s satirical take, nor could it thanks to the First Amendment. But less noticed is how, around the globe, the streaming giant has outmaneuvered the U.S. government to secure trademark rights to “Space Force” in Europe, Australia, Mexico and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Air Force merely owns a pending application for registration inside the United States based on an intent to use. Meaning that the feds have gotten a place in line but no confirmed trademark rights thus far.
The issue is complicated, and also not necessarily that big of a deal depending on what the government plans to do with Space Force. As THR pointed out, a Netflix show about a mostly fictional military branch and actual astronauts getting trained to head into space can happen simultaneously without too much conflict. Still, licensing for merchandise and other concerns may get iffy, should Space Force develop into an entity of a similar size to, say, the Marines or Air Force while the Netflix show continues to exist.
Whether there will be a legal battle over the trademark isn’t certain right now, but it does present some interesting First Amendment issues. The piece notes that the video game Call of Duty actually won a case where the government sued for the use of Humvees in the war-based game, and since the show was both first to filing a lot of these trademarks and is also much more established as A Thing, it would be an uphill battle for the government, should they try to get aggressive:
But aggression on the trademark front hasn’t been a hallmark of the Department of Defense under President Trump — and the best place to find proof of that may be with respect to Netflix’s “Space Force” trademark registrations. Although the United States operates on what’s called a “first-to-use” trademark registration system, where priority is based on actual use in commerce rather than who gets to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office first, many other countries operate on a “first-to-file” basis. Records show that Netflix was submitting applications for “Space Force” around the world as early as January 2019. In other words, the Department of Defense was caught sleeping.
Given the mostly tepid response to the show’s first season, it’s honestly unclear if both Space Forces intend to stick around long enough to make this all worthwhile. But you can never be sure how willing certain world leaders are for a legal fight, can you?
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. Jealous, probably! Also scheduled for the show are the new Women’s Tag Team Champions, Bayley and Sasha Banks, another Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka match, and, I shit you not, an “Olympic Decathlon” between the Street Profits and the Viking Raiders. You know what’d be an even better Olympic event? Wrestling.
