Month: July 2020

Bob’s Burgers apparently hasn’t had to slow down production of its latest season despite the rest of the entertainment world struggling through COVID-19, but at least one episode in Season 11 will have some pretty overt comparisons to the pandemic still raging worldwide.

The show held a Comic-Con At Home panel on Friday and detailed the development of its next season, which will premiere on September 27. As Deadline reported Saturday, the show will have a pandemic-related episode but it will have nothing to do with COVID-19. Producer Nora Smith shared details about the script she wrote well before the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality in the United States, which is probably why the Bob’s Burgers pandemic episode will deal with a very different subject.

The episode, aptly titled Worms of In-Rear-ment, “is about a pinworm epidemic,” Smith shared. “Two people in my life have gotten pinworms in there butts, very close to me. It just seemed like a fun pandemic story. And then this happened and I was like, people are going to think we’re joking about it. Hopefully, it’s more fun because it’s about anus stuff. There’s a lot of handwashing. I’m hoping that people think of it was an escape to a more fun pandemic.”

Hopefully a butt-themed pandemic episode will still be in good taste come September, but that wasn’t the only teaser revealed on Friday. A long-running mystery will apparently be solved in Season 11: what’s going on at the hotel at the end of the block on which the Belchers live and work. There were also some fun dream-based episodes discussed and, yes, some musical elements sure to delight fans of the show. You can watch the full panel above. Just expect a lot of poop-talk if you do.

[via Deadline]

Nintendo nostalgia fans had a big weekend for an unfortunate reason as a massive leak of the company’s data shared new details about the development of many of their favorite Nintendo properties. Development and beta code from many of Nintendo’s biggest franchises including, Mario, Star Fox, and even Pokemon allegedly leaked to hackers on the internet, and fans and journalists sifted through details and shared them online.

As with any leak of this magnitude, it is worth noting to take some of this with a grain of salt as this is a great opportunity for creative people on the internet to make things up, and while these leaks have not been confirmed by Nintendo there is evidence that much of it is real. A former Nintendo Developer, for example, quote tweeted an image that had been posted saying that it was something he had written in c++ to help himself understand the language of the game he was developing. The game itself? Star Fox 2.

This isn’t the first time Star Fox 2 has leaked of course, with a ROM of the almost completed version of the game circulating on the Internet for years before it finally received an official release all the way back in 2017 for the Super Nintendo Mini. This leak featured some possible cool artwork models from early in development including what appears to be a human Star Fox.

It even featured some unfiltered audio files such as the infamous “Do A Barrell Role” line from Star Fox 64 that went on to be used in memes for years to come.

Also in the supposed leaks was plenty of source code from Mario 64 and beta material such as early video of Mario running around an early in development version of Peach’s castle.

And if you think the leak was exclusively related to older games from the Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 era you would be mistaken, because it looks like many Generation IV Pokemon sprites were involved in the leak as well. This means the leak has code and information from games as recently as the mid 2000s.

While this leak is in many ways cool, and an interesting look into gaming history for a lot of fans, there is a potential downside that exists in all of this and that’s in how the code got out. Nintendo didn’t voluntarily release this coding and they have never been a company that has looked at something like this happening and shrugged it off. It also doesn’t help that this is their second alleged leak since May. And while it’s fun to see some behind-the-scenes details about classic games, there’s a lot more than just game information here.

There’s also, of course, the fact that we’re looking at an artist’s unfinished work. The leaks have also included a lot of things that are not related to games, including some personal information including diaries, emails and some disturbing stories about childhood trauma. It’s a very real reminder that Nintendo did not disclose the revelation of any of this material, and while the behind-the-scenes look can be fascinating, it isn’t always the most appropriate or safest for everyone involved.

The NHL’s own Canadian bubble league is set to start this week, and on the eve of many teams entering the two host cities of Vancouver and Toronto one team saw its general manager abruptly quit. The Arizona Coyotoes announced on Sunday that GM John Chayka quit the Coyotes, one of 24 teams in the NHL that will head into the bubble as the season resumes with a warmup for an extended Stanley Cup Playoff.

Rumors swirled that something was up with Chayka despite having years left on his contract, and the thought was that another team was interested in his services.

The Coyotes soon made it official with a bizarre statement from the organization where they claimed Chakya “quit on a strong and competitive team” and its fans.

“John Chayka has quit as the General Manager and President of Hockey Operations of the Arizona Coyotes.

“The Club is disappointed in his actions and his timing as the Coyotes prepare to enter the NHL’s hub city of Edmonton, where the team will begin post-season play for the first time since 2012. Chayka has chosen to quit on a strong and competitive team, a dedicated staff, and the Arizona Coyotes fans, the greatest fans in the NHL.

The statement is as aggressive as we’ve seen a team make publicly about the departure of a staff member, which perhaps adds context to the abrupt departure in a front office that’s seen a considerable turnaround in the league. Arizona saw growing fan support in the often-struggling market and was praised for its efforts on the ice and off of it to rally the fan base this season.

Chayka will be replaced by Steve Sullivan in an interim basis, and the Coyotes said he has the “full support” of the organization. The league’s trade deadline is well past at this point and there isn’t much a GM can do unless major roster decisions are needed amid COVID-19-related illnesses. Still, it’s a fascinating decision and there are already rumors that Chayka intends to go elsewhere in the NHL, leaving behind a team headed to the postseason in one of the weirdest sports years we’ve ever seen.

Florida’s COVID-19 outbreak continues to worsen as new case counts remain high and deaths continue to rise in a state that attempted to reopen amid the pandemic. And now the virus has sidelined a number of players on the Miami Marlins.

Rumblings emerged on Sunday morning that the franchise had seen some positive coronavirus test results. Hours before the game, scheduled starting pitcher Jose Urena, who was slated to take on the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday afternoon, was scratched amid reports he tested positive.

Later reports indicated that Urena was among three players who tested positive . What’s worrying, of course, is that the team is currently on the road, having played in Atlanta and now finishing its opening weekend series in Philadelphia.

The news comes after the Washington Nationals started their title defense without Juan Soto, who tested positive for COVID-19 hours before the World Series champs opened at home against the New York Yankees. The obvious fear in any of these positive tests is whether contract tracing can pinpoint who athletes that have tested positive with interact with and who else is at risk and needs to be monitored to contain the spread further.

With the scrambled starting pitching situation, replacement starter Robert Dugger, struggled on the mound.

The sad reality of what Major League Baseball is attempting without a secure bubble is that athletes will continue testing positive as the abbreviated season goes on. What’s acceptable before teams have to stop playing games because of the danger of these outbreaks seems to be “more than three players, including your starting pitcher” right now, but the long-term impacts of COVID-19 among even healthy professional athletes is a worrying wrinkle of a very dangerous season of professional baseball.

Without a true separation of the professional baseball-playing population from the rest of America, these cases will continue to occur for as long as baseball is able to play. The hope is no athlete is truly at risk, but we’ve already seen significant trouble for baseball players who have dealt with COVID-19 before the season starts. Red Sox opening day starter Eduardo Rodriguez is shut down altogether after his earlier COVID-19 illness has caused myocarditis, a heart condition that diminishes the organ’s ability to pump blood. Rodriguez doesn’t want to opt out of the season, like many athletes attempting to play amid a pandemic that’s seen more than 4 million confirmed cases in the United States and likely many more undocumented cases as the pandemic worsens in many parts of the country.

Baseball’s cases will be well-documented now that the season has started, but so far the league’s hopes that they will be few and far between have been wildly unrealistic.

The NBA bubble has gotten off to an almost ideal start, with just a pair of positive tests (both caught in the quarantine stage) in the first round of testing and the second round of testing yielded zero positives. It’s a testament to the league’s plan and protocols, but it is something that will require the same vigilance for the next three months as they look to complete the season.

This weekend will provide even more data as far as how the league’s plan is working, as Zion Williamson re-entered the bubble from an excused absence and is back in quarantine, while Lou Williams will enter a 10-day quarantine after he went to Magic City for chicken wings while on an excused absence in Atlanta. How the league re-integrates players safely into the bubble is critical for its success, and we’ll get two big tests of that with Williams and Williamson.

Meanwhile, in the bubble, the league also has to keep leaning on players to do the right thing and remind them of the consequences of not doing so. On Sunday, we learned that Kristaps Porzingis forgot to get his daily COVID-19 test yesterday and is, as such, not playing in the Mavs scrimmage.

Rachel Nichols offered a little more detail, noting that Porzingis failed to stop by the nurses’ station in the bubble for his daily test yesterday and, as such, is in a one-day quarantine until he returns a negative test.

Porzingis isn’t the first to have this happen — Paul Millsap had a similar situation recently — and it happening in the scrimmage portion of the restart isn’t a really big deal. Still, this should serve as a friendly reminder to players that they have to be diligent about getting their daily test once the season begins, because missing a game that counts because you forgot to get tested would be rather embarrassing (and, potentially, costly to your team).

The last living star of the classic Gone With The Wind has died. Olivia de Havilland, a two-time Oscar winner who fundamentally changed Hollywood, died at age 1-4 in Paris over the weekend according to reports. De Havilland’s publicist shared Sunday that the actress had died of natural causes at her home in Paris, where she lived for more than six decades.

De Havilland got her first Academy Award nomination in Gone With The Wind, a movie that’s been in the headlines over the last few months as HBO Max initially pulled the film for its racist content before it was re-added to the streaming service with new videos explaining its context.

But the Hollywood classic is far from her only major film credit. She won Oscars for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heirress (1946), while also receiving nominations for Gone With The Wind in 1939, Hold Back the Dawn (1941) and The Snake Pit (1948).

As The Hollywood Reporter detailed on Sunday, her biggest impact on the industry came not from acting performances but legal action off camera that changed the way Hollywood’s studio system worked when she sued Warner Bros. in 1943 after her seven-year contract expired.

At the time, Hollywood lawyers took the position that a contract should be treated as suspended during the periods when the artist was not actually working. This interpretation meant that, in de Havilland’s case, seven years of actual service would be spread over a much longer period.

Angered when Warners tried to extend her deal after she was suspended for rejecting a series of roles she deemed were inferior, de Havilland sued the studio. In 1945, the courts ruled that not only was de Havilland free, but all artists were to be limited to the calendar terms of their deals.

‘The De Havilland Decision’, as it came to be known, changed contracts in Hollywood forever and even later in life de Havilland wasn’t afraid of legal action, famously suing FX and Ryan Murphy at age 100 for the way Catherine Zeta-Jones portrayed her in Feud: Bette and Joan.

[via THR]

Currently, the Atlanta Dream are listed with odds of 700–1 to win the 2020 WNBA Championship according to Fan Duel Sportsbook, which, along with the Dallas Wings and Indiana Fever, are the longest odds to win the title.

Last season the franchise finished the season as the league-worst with a record of 8–26. This season the team will play fewer games inside the Wubble at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida due to the coronavirus pandemic. Key players will be absent from the Dream roster this season. Two-time WNBA scoring champion Angel McCoughtry signed with the Las Vegas Aces after spending 10 years with the Dream, while Tiffany Hayes and Renee Montgomery decided to sit out the season to focus on issues of social justice. Last season Hayes was the team-leading scorer with 14.7 points while Montgomery added 9.5 per game.

Additionally, the team is currently without Glory Johnson and Kalani Brown, who tested positive the COVID-19, and Courtney Williams who is out due to personal reasons. All three are expected to join the team at a later date.

WUBBLE ROSTER

Jaylyn Agnew
Monique Billings
Brittany Brewer
Kalani Brown
Chennedy Carter
Blake Dietrick
Glory Johnson
Alexis Jones
Betnijah Laney
Erica McCall
Shekinna Stricklen
Courtney Williams
Elizabeth Williams

KEY PLAYERS TO WATCH

Chennedy Carter: She was the fourth overall pick in the 2020 WNBA draft out of Texas A&M, and is a bucket-getter who scores at a high-level. Carter averaged 22.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists to go along with 1.7 steals in her college career.

She is great in pick and roll situations and is an excellent ball-hander. The combo guard is instant offense that can create baskets for her self and facilitate her teammates, which is something the Dream could really use.

Shekinna Stricklen: She was a key Connecticut Sun rotation last season. Stricklen is a three-point specialist at nearly 40 percent per game. The former Lady Vol finished the season third in the league in both 3-pointers made and attempts by going 76-of-199. Stricklen also won the 2019 WNBA Three-Point Contest.

The Dream’s offense finished last in the league a year ago by only averaging only 71.2 points per game and was last in offensive rating at 91.6. With the addition of Carter and Stricklen, the team will have viable offensive weapons and should look to improve on those numbers.

EXPECTATIONS

With so many players out and uncertainties, the Dream is predicted to finish dead last in the league again. However, it is too early to count them out totally. Underdogs teams can be so unpredictable especially when they are not respected or expected to win many games, and we’ll find out if the shortened season helps or hurts these teams. Still, with so much roster uncertainty, expectations aren’t high for the Dream and they mostly should be hoping to see if they have a foundational piece in Carter.

X-FACTOR

Elizabeth Williams: Williams and Monique Billings are the only returning players from the 2019 roster in the Wubble. Williams finished last season as the team’s third-leading scorer at 9.3 points per game at an efficient rate at 45.5 percent. The 6’3 center is viable on both ends of the floor. She led the team in blocks with 1.7 blocks, which ranked 6th in the entire league. Williams’ veteran leadership should be beneficial to the team, as well. She has been a part of a winning culture as part of the squad in Nicki Collen’s first year as head coach with a record of 23-11 to finish first atop of the Eastern Conference.

BIGGEST ON-COURT QUESTION

The biggest question right now is how long will it take before Kalani Brown, Glory Johnson, and Courtney Williams are able to join the team on the court? Head Coach Nicki Collen will have to find a way to get her team together in spite of key absences. How will the team mesh and find chemistry? With uncertainties abound, the team will just have to figure it out in short order and take it one game at a time.

Manchester United faced off with Leicester City on Sunday on the final day of the Premier League season with a spot in the Champions League on the line. United needed only a draw to stay in fourth place and above Leicester, desperate for a win to make it to Europe’s top club competition.

United would get more than just a result, as they picked up a 2-0 win to finish the season in style and secure their place in the Champions League. However, the talk of the soccer world was not about the result, but how that final goal was gotten — and what it meant to one bettor who had a very small wager on a prop that paid 41-1.

Jesse Lingard, who spoke recently about his off-field struggles that have contributed to his on-field woes this season, entered the game having contributed no points this season. That meant in 37 games, he had not logged an assist or a goal, which was very good for a bettor in the UK who had a 41-1 longshot bet that he would finish the entire season scoreless and assist-less.

That bet was a tremendous one all the way up until the eighth minute of stoppage time on Sunday — in a game that should’ve only had five minutes of stoppage time but saw a red card that carried over a few more minutes. It was then that Leicester City’s keeper made the mind-numbing decision to try and cut back with the ball at the top of his box in the face of pressure from none other than Jesse Lingard, who picked his pocket and calmly slid the ball into the back of the net.

For Lingard, it’s a great way to cap off an otherwise horrific season, while for the bettor it is the opposite.

Sure, it’s just a three pound bet, but my stars this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in the world of bad beats. Making it until the eighth minute of stoppage time in the 38th game of the season on a season-long NO bet is unfathomable, but to have it taken away on this, an absolute howler by the goalie, is truly despicable stuff. The good news is, the bettor took it all in stride (again, it helps that it was a three pound flyer of a bet).

There really is nothing like sweating a ridiculous prop bet that somehow gets close to cashing, and for this poor gent, he had it stripped away in arguably the worst possible manner. However, the folks at Paddy Power (for whom this viral tweet was providing tremendous marketing for) decided to pay the man his 135 pounds as winnings despite Lingard’s late goal.

In the end, it turned out to be a happy ending for everyone involved — but please do not expect your local establishment to be so forgiving should you catch yourself on the end of a horrendous beat.

Today marks one month since Kanye West made his grand return to social media, a day he marked as the West Day Ever. In the month that followed, West has announced and released a plethora of things including music, fashion, and haphazard foray into the political world. With his run for president still up in the air and his Yeezy Gap collab on the way, the only thing that remains is West’s upcoming album, which he revealed was titled Donda. Originally slated for a July 24 release, the day came and went without an album, but West returned Saturday evening with an update on Donda.

A week removed from sharing then deleting the Donda tracklist, West apparently shared artwork for the upcoming album. The colorful image is a picture taken with a heat-sensing camera, or edited to appear that way, that presents three individuals who are awfully close to what appears to be the sun. Aside from sharing the Donda artwork, West did not give any other updates for the album as far as a new release date or tracklist alterations.

West shared the album’s artwork just hours after posting a public apology on Twitter to his wife Kim Kardashian after previously sharing on social media that he had tried to divorce her.

As LeBron James inches toward the twilight of his career — he turns 36 in December — he’s keenly aware that the opportunities to add more championship hardware to his trophy case are dwindling with each passing season. Still, despite his age and the mileage on his body, he’s shown very few signs of slowing down.

LeBron was putting up MVP-worthy numbers before the shutdown and, together with Anthony Davis and a hodgepodge of supporting players, had the Lakers primed to close out the regular season with the top seed in the West and the now-inconsequential homecourt advantage through the first few rounds.

Make no mistake, the Lakers aren’t without their flaws or without glaring question marks up and down the roster, namely in the backcourt, with Avery Bradley opting out of the restart due to health concerns and Rajon Rondo fracturing his finger in practice. But a devastating one-two punch of LeBron and AD that is also capable of elevating those around them puts the Lakers firmly in the top-flight contender column entering the bubble games.

ROSTER

Kostas Antetokounmpo
Devontae Cacok
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope
Alex Caruso
Quinn Cook
Anthony Davis
Jared Dudley
Danny Green
Talen Horton-Tucker
Dwight Howard
LeBron James
Kyle Kuzma
JaVale McGee
Markieff Morris
Rajon Rondo (injured)
JR Smith
Dion Waiters

SCHEDULE

Thu. 7/30 vs. Clippers, 9:00 PM
Sat. 8/1 vs. Raptors, 8:30 PM
Mon. 8/3 vs. Jazz, 9:00 PM
Wed. 8/5 vs. Thunder, 6:30 PM
Thu. 8/6 vs. Rockets, 9:00 PM
Sat. 8/8 vs. Pacers, 6:00 PM
Mon. 8/10 vs. Nuggets, 9:00 PM
Thu. 8/13 vs. Kings, TBD

STANDINGS

1. Los Angeles Lakers: 49-14
2. Los Angeles Clippers: 44-20 (5.5)
3. Denver Nuggets: 43-22 (7.0)
4. Utah Jazz: 41-23 (8.5)
5. OKC Thunder: 40-24 (9.5)
6. Houston Rockets: 40-24 (9.5)
7. Dallas Mavericks: 40-27 (11.0)
8. Memphis Grizzlies: 32-33 (18.0)
9. Portland Trail Blazers: 29-37 (21.5)
10. New Orleans Pelicans: 28-36 (21.5)
11. Sacramento Kings: 28-36 (21.5)
12. San Antonio Spurs: 27-36 (22.0)
13. Phoenix Suns: 26-39 (24.0)

WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?/WHAT TO EXPECT

Any time you’re talking about LeBron, nothing less than a championship will do. He’s been here often enough that we more or less know what the expect, i.e. transcendent performances. With Anthony Davis, however, it’s a bit of a different story. While not exactly an X-factor — that designation is usually reserved for non-stars — Davis doesn’t have nearly as much experience with deep playoff runs and will be called up on to play at the top of his game over a sustained period that could double as the defining stretch of his career.

X-FACTOR

J.R. Smith and Dion Waiters are both walking X-factors. They should have this category named after them. Neither of them has played meaningful basketball recently, and the surreal circumstances of the bubble add yet another variable to an already strange situation. Yet Smith and Waiters are both capable of the type of scoring outbursts that could swing a playoff game in their favor, and are equally subject to shooting droughts and/or lapses in judgment that could make them more of a liability than a resource. With an already-depleted backcourt, they’ll have to log real minutes in real postseason games.

BIGGEST ON-COURT QUESTION

With Rondo and Bradley both out, the Lakers’ backcourt is thin. They’ve tapped Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to be their starting two-guard, a role he found success with in the earlier months of the season when Bradley was out with an injury. But the combination of him and Alex Caruso and/or Quinn Cook simply cannot replace the experience, defensive tenacity and all-around savvy that Bradley and Rondo brought to the table. Lakers fans have pined for more Caruso minutes and fewer Rondo minutes this season, and they’ll certainly get their fill early on. With Caruso needing to log major minutes, we’ll learn if the spark he brings to the Lakers can be sustained for long stretches.

Their big lineups that include JaVale McGee or Dwight Howard at center helped bolster one of the league’s best defenses during the regular season, but the question of how they’ll match up against smaller, more agile teams in the playoffs is a real concern. On the other end of the court, they’ll rely heavily on LeBron and AD to produce points, and it’s still unclear whether Kyle Kuzma is capable of being a reliable third scoring option, particularly in a playoff run.

The good news is that 35-year-old LeBron has had several months to rest and rejuvenate for the postseason. The less good news is that, depending on how the eight-game slate turns out, they could end up facing a retooled Blazers squad hungry for a first-round upset — and boasting one of the league’s most potent backcourts. Either way, a legitimate test of their mettle early in this process could tell us a lot about their chances.