Month: August 2020

The Lakers and Jazz both entered Monday night’s game coming off of losses, as L.A. got smothered by the red-hot Raptors and Utah looked flat in a loss to the Thunder, and were looking to get back on track. With a win, the Lakers could cement the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and turn their attention, fully, to playoff preparation, while Utah had slipped to fifth in the West and needed a win to move back to fourth a half game ahead of Houston.

Like so many games in the bubble, Monday night’s tilt was a highly competitive and entertaining one, but a late third quarter run from the Lakers proved to be the difference as they took what had been a back-and-forth affair and closed on a 19-5 run to open up a 10-point lead entering the final period. As has been the case in both of their wins, it was the play of Anthony Davis that shined brightest for the Lakers, with the star big man erupting for 42 points, 12 rebounds, four assists, three steals, and a block in a 116-108 win.

Davis showed his full array of talents, hitting 13 of his 28 shots, including 4-of-8 from three-point range, and was 12-of-15 from the free throw line. While his teammates, including James, continue to work their way back into offensive form, Davis has shown his dominance against the Clippers and Jazz — with a notable struggle against Toronto, who have looked spectacular defensively in the bubble.

The pick-and-roll game with LeBron remains a lethal go-to for the Lakers when they need to create some flow and a bucket, but Davis had it going in isolation inside and out and as a ball-handler, making plays off the bounce.

LeBron James has seemed more than happy to cede the spotlight to Davis to begin the restarted season, acting more as a facilitator and, when needed, getting key buckets late — as we saw against the Clippers in the opener. Monday was his best game of the restart, with 22 points, nine assists, and eight boards on 9-of-16 shooting, as he continues to take on a lead ball-handling role for a shorthanded backcourt still trying to figure out roles and rotations.

For the Jazz, the loss threatens the chance of falling to sixth in the West, as they’re now just a half-game ahead of the Thunder and a half game behind the Rockets for fourth. That race will be fascinating to watch over the next few days, as the teams shuffle positioning and seeding, with the first round matchups either being with each other or the 3-seed in Denver.

Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley have stepped their games up in the bubble, combining for 57 points on Monday, while Rudy Gobert is his steady, efficient self, but with Bojan Bogdanovic out, they have failed to find a consistent fourth contributor. No other member of the Jazz finished with more than seven points against L.A. and as a team they shot just 27.9 percent from three-point range, as their role players have simply not stepped up in any sort of consistent manner.

Next up for Utah is a Memphis team desperate for a win after an 0-3 start that’s seen their hold on the 8-seed slipping away, while the Lakers take on a Thunder team that’s been giving the opposition fits in the bubble, but is coming off a loss to Denver.

After allowing 53 points in a disappointing loss to the Indiana Pacers’ T.J. Warren to begin their NBA bubble journey, the Philadelphia 76ers appeared to be in good shape against the San Antonio Spurs on Monday evening. Brett Brown’s team held a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter and, given Philadelphia’s talent advantage against a San Antonio team playing without LaMarcus Aldridge, the 76ers were rightfully seen as massive favorites to secure a win. However, Philadelphia collapsed down the stretch, and the Spurs actually held a two-point lead in the final minute of regulation.

Enter Shake Milton, who buried a badly needed three-pointer to give Philadelphia a one-point lead with six seconds remaining.

Eventually, the Sixers would prevail by a final score of 132-130, continuing the trend of high-scoring affairs in the NBA’s bubble. As for Milton, the former SMU guard finished with 16 points in 26 minutes, including the single biggest shot of the night.

Elsewhere, it was a quiet night for Ben Simmons, who scored only eight points and grabbed two rebounds in 25 minutes. Fortunately, Tobias Harris (25 points, six rebounds) and Joel Embiid (27 points, nine rebounds) carried the load for the Sixers.

On one hand, it is certainly troubling that Philadelphia’s uber-talented defense allowed the short-handed Spurs to score 130 points, including 43 points on 71 percent shooting in the closing frame. Still, the Sixers managed to pick up their first win in Orlando and, if nothing else, they avoided the inevitable negativity that would have arrived if the result turned sour.

The Coen brothers are among America’s most acclaimed filmmakers, but to the general public they’re best known for one of their lighter movies: The Big Lebowski, their shaggy dog stoner amateur detective movie, which imagines what a Raymond Chandler mystery would be like if the hero was a White Russian-loving pothead. One of the reasons it’s endured is because of the lead turn by Jeff Bridges. But based on a recent interview (as caught by IndieWire) it took some doing to get Bridges in that chill mindset.

Joel and Ethan Coen made a rare podcast appearance on Team Deakins, and no wonder: The show is hosted by their frequent cinematographer, the legendary Roger Deakins, who’s won Oscars for Blade Runner 2049 and 1917. Deakins has lensed 12 of their movies, starting with Barton Fink and including Fargo, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and, of course, Lebowski. They wound up discussing, among other things, one of their big on-set no-nos, and how they broke it for Bridges after he seemed “miserable.”

The rule? Allowing actors to look at playback footage of things they just shot. Deakins agreed with them that doing “slows it down,” dragging shooting to a halt so an actor can study what they just did, and maybe try again when they don’t have to. But while they ban playback from their sets, Bridges was the exception.

“We started the first two weeks and there was no playback capacity on the set,” Joel recalled:

“Jeff Bridges was very upset with that because he wanted to look at playback. I was very weary about it. We had never worked with Jeff before and I didn’t want to do it because I was afraid Jeff was going to come over after every take and look at playback. Finally, he was so miserable at the end of the second week that we ended up getting playback. The interesting thing to me was that Jeff, who grew up making movies and is a screen actor, he used it very well. Every now and then he would come over and look at the playback and he was great. He would say, ‘Ok I get what the problem is’ and he was useful. He is an exception.”

The Coens also responded to one of the big assumptions about their extremely precise films: that the brothers are perfectionists. Not so, said Joel:

“We just are not perfectionists. It is true I’ve never understood the Stanley Kubrick thing of doing 90 takes of an insert of someone opening a door knob…From the outset, we have a strong idea about what we need editorially and what we don’t need. You have to have instinct for ‘how much am I going to shoot so that at the end of the day I will have what I need to make this scene work?’ You have to have instinct for when you can move on.”

You can listen to the full, nearly 90-minute episode over here.

(Via IndieWire)

Most women, at one point or another, have felt some wariness or fear over a strange man in public. Sometimes it’s overt, sometimes it’s subtle, but when your instincts tell you something isn’t right and you’re potentially in danger, you listen.

It’s an unfortunate reality, but reality nonetheless.

A Twitter thread starting with some advice on helping women out is highlighting how real this is for many of us. User @mxrixm_nk wrote: “If a girl suddenly acts as if she knows you in public and acts like you’re friends, go along w[ith] it. She could be in danger.”

Other women chimed in with their own personal stories of either being the girl approaching a stranger or being the stranger approached by a girl to fend off a situation with a creepy dude.

One wrote, “A girl did this FOR me one time when I was sitting alone at a bar because she could tell I was in a very uncomfortable situation and I’ll never forget her. It was bold of her to do that for a stranger but she literally saved me from some creep ass guy.”

Another added, “I had a waitress do this for me once when an ex was yelling at me. She didn’t leave me out of her sight and when he went to the bathroom she asked if I was ok and if I had roommates or if I was going to be alone with him after. An actual angel.”

Another shared how a woman joined her and her husband as if they were old friends until her friends arrived.

“A woman walked up to my husband and I saying ‘I haven’t seen you guys in so long!!’ then hugged us. We were ???, but went w/ it. She then pointed out a group of guys that followed her in, and the one that wouldn’t leave her alone. He kept getting drinks right near us. Which was odd because we were in the corner out of the way. She hung out w/ us until her other friends got there. Once we realized what had actually happened we were a little shocked.”

User “AmberLUVV” shared a story of being in a Dominican Republic port on a cruise when two girls pretended to belong to her family.

“When I went on a cruise with the fam, we ported in DR for a day. My dad and I decided to go the local shopping market. We had took a break on a bench cuz it was HOT! But all of sudden two girls walk up to us and addressed my dad as their own, and proceeded to say that they had And scared! We played it out for a minute longer until they told us what happened! Some men in a van were following them promising to take them to the beach and wouldn’t leave them alone! They pointed out one of the guys and I had seen him turn away when they addressed my dad!”

“Raeloe” shared how a girl approached her at a nightclub to get away from a creepy guy when she’d been separated from her friends.

“I had this happen in a nightclub once. My hubby and I were working PAX and this club let’s [sic] the enforcers in for free with their badges, I’ve never been before so he said c’mon let’s go. Bout 2 hours in this girl comes up and dances with me and asks if it’s okay to stay awhile. She lost her friends and this dude was creeping on her. I told her to take all the time she needs to find her friends. She came back with them later and gave me a big hug for making her feel safe. Would do it again without hesitation.”

Another person shared how they’d been the one who needed help.

“Been the person who needed this. Creepy dude wouldn’t leave me tf alone, so I walked over to a group of girls and acted very excited to see them again. They immediately caught on and we started talking about whatever. For over an hour. Bcuz he wouldn’t leave. They ended up giving me a ride around town bcuz the creeper was following. Made some friends and we made him run a red light, which had a cop chasing him. They got me home and we hung out regularly after that.”

And another explained how grateful she was to a woman on the bus who let her act like they were best friends.

One person even shared a video showing exactly what such a scenario looks like in real life.

Some people responded with various “what if” scenarios, like what if a woman is really trying to lure them into a dangerous situation, or what if they want them to accompany them somewhere that might not be safe? But those questions seemed to miss the point that no one was suggesting anyone go anywhere private with anyone, and also seemed to miss how often women actually do find themselves in situations where they need to turn to a stranger for help.

As one woman wrote, “All the people fighting this saying it’ll be a setup are underestimating how often women actually do this to get away from creepy men. I’ve had to do this at a bar and I’ve also gone up to a women I saw distressed and pretended to be her friend and she played along. It happens.

I’ve yelled back. I’ve thrown drinks in guys faces. I’ve pushed them away from myself and others. I’ve reached out for help and asked other guys or security to step in. Sometimes the path of least resistance for a good night is to blend in real quick.”

And others pointed out that women don’t generally approach men for help unless they feel like they really need to—usually because they end up in situations where men don’t respond to the word “no.”

Finally, someone suggested a tip for using your phone to ask a girl if she’s in danger while pretending to show her a picture, so you both can be clear on what’s really happening.

But the bottom line is, if a girl or woman walks up to you and pretends to know you, more often than not it’s because she’s trying to get away from someone. Play along and accompany her until she’s safe. Guaranteed she’ll be eternally grateful.

Whether we’re talking about Disney World or any one of the 50 states, when it comes to reopening during a global pandemic, nobody really knows what the hell they’re doing. Will Florida’s reopening of Disney World amidst a statewide surge in new cases prove disastrous, or have the mask orders and social distancing precautions made a difference? They certainly have in New York City, where daily deaths are down to single-digit numbers and hospitalizations are at an all-time low.

If there’s one constant in the COVID-world, it’s that definitive answers are hard to come by.

This uncertainty explains, in part, why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently weighing public opinion as to what the cruise ship industry looks like when it eventually reopens. Rather than blindly issuing their own guidelines, they’re reaching out to those who would potentially get sick or spend months drifting at sea if ships were locked down. Last week, the CDC extended its “no-sail” order for US cruise ships until September 30th and began formally asking for public input to help the organization craft future preventative measures relating to cruise ship travel.

Participants will have until September 21st to submit their comments through a virtual portal or via the embattled USPS. The 28 question survey is open to all members of the public or any organization so long as their submissions address one of the 28 questions — meaning that leaders and those with a vested financial interest in the cruise ship industry will surely let their voices be heard, in addition to potential cruisers.

Speaking to USA Today, Caitlin Shockey, a spokesperson for the CDC explained that the 28 question survey was “developed by the CDC subject matter experts to inform future public health guidance and preventative measures relating to travel on cruise ships,” and features a diverse set of questions such as “What mental health services should cruise ship operators provide to crew and passengers during quarantine or isolation?” and “What precautions should the cruise line industry take to safely disembark passengers and crew without transmitting COVID-19 into local seaport communities?” as well as questions relating to virus transmission prevention, testing frequency, passenger and crew well being, and boarding and disembarking precautions.

All answers submitted will eventually become part of the public record and are subject to public disclosure. The US-based cruise ship industry is currently scheduled to resume operation in October — however, the CDC’s “no-sail” order can be issued at any time. At this point, the public appetite for cruises remains high, though a recent 40-person outbreak in Norway seems to have left cruise lines wary of rushing to restart.

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

I May Destroy You (HBO, 9:00 p.m.) — It’s truly impossible to say enough good things about this HBO drama from Michaela Coel so we’ll just say this: Even if we weren’t lacking in terms of new shows to binge each week, we’d still have this at the top of our must-watch list. After a season’s worth of navigating the murky waters of sexual assault and its aftermath, Arabella’s finally being held accountable for some of her more questionable behavior post-trauma. A Halloween party turns bad when Kwame opens up to the girls about his recent sexual experiments and receives a less-than-supportive reaction from his best friend.

Immigration Nation (Netflix) — This timely, six-part docuseries arrives on Netflix to give audiences an inside look at the struggle faced by some of the country’s most vulnerable communities. Back in 2017, filmmakers Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz were granted access by Leaders of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to shoot footage for the doc, but apparently, they’ve been fighting with the government ever since to actually release what they captured on camera. The show follows the legal saga of a handful of detained immigrants as they fight for citizenship.

The Umbrella Academy: Season 2 (Netflix) — Netflix’s group of superpowered oddballs is back and ready to save the world again, or destroy it. It could go either way with these weirdos. Technically this premiered last week, but so much crazy sh*t goes down this season that you’ll probably need a second viewing to catch it all.

Get Even (Netflix) — A movie about a group of British school girls fed up with the callous cliquey behavior of their peers and determined to get revenge? Sign us up.

As the NBA restarted its season in Orlando one of the major on-court questions was: What would the actual basketball look like after four months off?

No one knew exactly what the rust levels would be on either end, and on top of that, there wasn’t really an understanding of how quickly teams would get into an aggressive, competitive mindset as the playoffs loomed. The resounding answer after the first weekend of games has been that the quality of play has been very good, particularly on offense, and, maybe most importantly, the games have been, with a few exceptions, wildly competitive and entertaining to watch.

In hindsight, the latter point might should’ve been expected, at least early on, as we’ve trimmed the fat, per se, off of the league by bringing the 22 best teams. Now, not all of them are at full strength and as such games involving the Nets and Wizards (and Kings, for less clear reasons) have been pretty rough when they aren’t playing each other. But otherwise, the games have been terrific, with some overtime action, a number of games decided on the final possession, and just generally tense, competitive hoops despite the layoff.

When the bubble was first being discussed, I floated the idea of using it to test out a potential format for the midseason tournament that the league seems insistent on trying to make happen. After a weekend of games, I’ve decided that the bubble has shown us a great format for how to bring more excitement to the end of the regular season, without needing to add more games and a tournament for prizes no one really cares about.

This concept was borne out of a brief Twitter discussion I had with Matt Moore of the Action Network, after he noted how the games were benefiting from being among the very best teams. Instead of bringing soccer’s in-season tournaments to basketball, I propose instead to bring in-season relegation, of sorts.

American sports fans have long been fascinated with the concept of relegation and promotion, but the way leagues are structured here makes it impossible, given the lack of a second division. My thought is, given that NBA teams would never go for creating two full on different divisions, why not do it in-season and effectively lock in the playoff races earlier in favor of a second half push for seeding, with the rest of the league scrapping for a few remaining playoff positions.

They could choose one of two options, the first being resetting the table like they did with the bubble and bringing the 20 or 22 best teams to the next round and playing for seeding and position. However, an idea Matt floated that I too am partial to is making the cut even higher and separating the best teams from the NBA, regardless of conference, and having them play each other on a balanced schedule close to the season to determine seeding, with the others battling for playoff position.

The general idea is this, the teams play a balanced, 58 game season, playing every other team in the league twice, before a two-week break that includes the All-Star Weekend festivities — typically, teams have played right around 54 or 55 games at the break, so it might push things back one week. The two weeks off allows players to get extra rest, but also for rescheduling to occur and teams to get ticket sales going for their closing schedule.

The 13 top teams by record, regardless of conference (because with a balanced schedule conference designations don’t need to exist), then play 24 games, a home and home against the other 11 teams, to determine playoff seeding. Meanwhile, the other 17 teams play a 24-game schedule, facing each team at least once, to determine the three teams that will take the final three playoff spots. (Note: This is the scenario that keeps things at 82 games, they could probably make scheduling easier with a different combination of teams but it would require more games or a non-balanced schedule for the best teams.)

It would keep the season at 82 games and create the sense of urgency among top teams to hopefully produce games like those we’ve seen thus far in the bubble, as they jockey for seeding rather than simply trying to make it through the second half of the season unscathed so they’re ready for the playoffs. We’ve seen that teams will approach these games with some playoff intensity, and at least until seeding was set (which would take longer without conference designations) we’d see some incredible, playoff-caliber hoops long before the postseason.

Meanwhile, the games in the second-tier would still be meaningful, with teams trying to play their way into the postseason and allowing or movement up and down the standings, while also likely being more competitive as we wouldn’t see the wild mismatches between top and bottom teams — an example being how the Nets and Wizards game on Sunday was actually quite fun, despite them both struggling against other bubble teams.

There are certainly major logistical hurdles to clear here from the perspective of scheduling, ticket sales, and travel, but for a league that struggles to keep fans engaged from the All-Star break to the playoffs throughout the league, when so often playoff positions are reasonably well in hand, this would seem to provide a fix. It encourages teams to play out the season a bit harder at the top, giving fans better games to watch, and still allows for the playoff hunt among teams on the fringe — while bringing more teams into the mix by excluding conference designations.

Bubble basketball has been a pleasant surprise, and while it’s something the league will hope to never have to do again, it does offer a potential model for how the league can balance their desire or an 82-game season with making the stakes higher and the product better towards the end of the season, rather than it being a slog to make it to the playoffs.

Those of you subscribed to our newsletter might have already heard the new track from Young Jesus, which we made available exclusively to subscribers earlier today. Back in 2018, we called Young Jesus “one of the best and most adventurous indie rock bands” of that year. Now, two years removed from the release of 2018’s The Whole Thing Is Just There, the Los Angeles quartet is back with Welcome To Conceptual Beach, an eight-track effort that invites listeners into vocalist/guitarist John Rossiter’s personal mental refuge, an idyllic spot where all of his needs are met, that exists only in his imagination

“Magicians” is the final track on Welcome To Conceptual Beach is a ten-minute epic that takes you on a journey through genre boundaries, blending post-rock and emo and math rock to create something vibrant and beautiful. It meanders with wandering riffs before locking into pristine build-ups that hammer home the strength of Young Jesus and declares the band’s newest as one of the best of the year so far.

Welcome To Conceptual Beach is out August 14 on Saddle Creek. Pre-order it here and don’t forget to subscribe to the weekly Indie Mixtape newsletter below to be the first in line for new music from bands you love, as well as recommendations of bands you don’t know and other special goodies.

For modern writers, the ability to use a search engine to research subjects is an incredible skill that would make researchers of old insanely jealous. Libraries are important, of course, but in a pinch you can use Google or YouTube to learn something your characters would already know. Unless you aren’t careful and accidentally put monster guts from a video game into your very serious book about dressmaking.

Over the weekend, writer Dana Schwartz noticed a thread on Reddit from user u/nonono_ohhoho about a novel by Irish author John Boyne called A Traveler at the Gates of Wisdom. The thread included a photo of a passage about dressmaking, specifically dying material for it that included some very interesting items.

If you’ve hearing the unmistakable noises of cooking utensils clashing together here, it’s because that recipe is absolutely in Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch. One easy way to tell is the inclusion of things that only exist in that universe, like ‘Hylian shrooms’ and an ‘Oktorok eyeball,’ which is something that drops when you kill the monster in the game. Anyone who has played Breath of the Wild would immediately think item drops and cooking food and elixirs, which is why it’s jarring to see it in what’s a very serious book.

And it’s not some sort of viral marketing for the much-hyped but secretive sequel. As it turns out, it was a complete accident. Schwartz’s thread about the passage gained attention and she speculated that Boyne simply googled how to dye something and found instructions from Zelda. And Boyne, who is also on Twitter, confirmed that was likely the case.

As it turns out, the multitude of Polygon guides to doing things in Zelda: Breath of the Wild got incorporated into Google’s search results to the point that when you search for dying recipes on the search engine, you get things from Zelda. And if you’re not careful, well, you might think that’s really the way to make dyes in the real world.

Boyne later tweeted that he would keep it in the book, and he genuinely seems amused that he was duped by some strong SEO. It’s a good lesson for all of us to check their sources, and maybe Boyne will give Zelda a shot for himself. It’s quite a story in its own right.

If you’ve been holding off on buying a PlayStation 4 controller for your current system with the next-gen looming, Monday may have given you the answer about whether or not to pull the trigger. Sony revealed on Monday some more details about peripherals and which ones will work with its forthcoming PlayStation 5 console, and while we still don’t have a release date or pricing details for its pair of systems, we do know which controllers will work with what come Holiday 2020.

According to a blog post on the PlayStation website, PS4 controllers will work with the PS5, but there is a considerable catch: they won’t work with PS5-specific games. While Sony did say its DualShock 4 controller and officially licensed third-party controllers will work with PS4 games on the system, the paddles will not work with PS5-specific games.

Will DualShock 4 work with PS5 games?

No, we believe that PS5 games should take advantage of the new capabilities and features we’re bringing to the platform, including the features of DualSense wireless controller.

That’s certainly disappointing news for fans hoping to avoid buying new controllers, but it certainly makes sense given the new features PS5 controllers introduce and the advantages Sony wants to tout for its new console. The good news is it seems a wide swath of other peripherals from the PS4 will work on the new console, so your racing wheels, arcade sticks, and flight sticks should make the transition over to the new console. Once you start playing PS5 exclusives, though, it will be time to buy a new paddle or two if you plan to have friends over.