Month: August 2020

The NBA Playoffs kicked off on Monday in Orlando with a four-game slate, and they didn’t waste anytime at all before we had our first fireworks of the opening round, with Donovan Mitchell putting on a historic 57-point performance, despite Utah dropping Game 1 to the Nuggets.

The Jazz, of course, are without two key players in this series, with Bojan Bogdonavic out for the season and Mike Conley exiting the bubble over the weekend for the birth of his son, Elijah. Initial reports indicated that Conley would likely miss much of their first-round series against Denver having left the Bubble and needing to quarantine upon return.

But Utah got some promising news on Tuesday. According to the latest reports, Conley returned to Orlando on Monday night, and the Jazz are hoping to have him back in the lineup for Game 3 on Friday, rather than having to wait to Game 4 on Sunday.

Via Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN:

The Jazz confirmed that Conley had returned to campus on Tuesday afternoon. There’s an expectation that he could be able to pass four coronavirus tests in the window prior to the 4 p.m. ET Game 3 in the first-round Western Conference playoff series, sources said.

The NBA researches a player’s contacts and possible exposure while outside the bubble, but Conley’s exit on Sunday morning to join his wife in a Columbus, Ohio, hospital for the birth of their son Elijah Michael likely makes his case stronger for the shorter four-day quarantine period.

Conley, who had struggled to find his rhythm in Utah before the hiatus, has had something of a resurgence since the eight seeding games started, averaging 18 points per game and five assists. His return to the lineup would alleviate some of the immense offensive pressure facing Donovan Mitchell, who showed exactly how much he has to do in Game 1.

Kristin Urquiza isn’t running for the House of Representatives or the Senate. She isn’t a governor or up-and-coming mayor. But her speech on the first night of the Democratic National Convention was one of its most moving.

Kristin lost her father, Mark, in June to COVID-19. In her speech, she shared how it wouldn’t have happened if President Trump and his “mouthpieces” spoke honestly about the seriousness of the pandemic.

“He had faith in Donald Trump,” she said. “[He] listened to him, believed him and his mouthpieces when they said that coronavirus was under control and going to disappear; that it was OK to end social distancing rules before it was safe and that if you had no underlying health conditions.”

Kristin Urquiza speech at the Democratic Convention | Joe Biden For President 2020

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Mark went out to a karaoke bar in May, right after the state of Arizona prematurely reopened businesses, and contracted COVID-19. He was placed on a ventilator and died June 30.

“After five agonizing days, he died alone in the ICU with a nurse holding his hand,” she said.

Dealing with the death of a family member is devastating for anyone, but for the Urquiza family it was even worse because they couldn’t comfort him while he was in the hospital.

Kristen said goodbye to him over Facetime.

“One of the last things that my father said to me was that he felt betrayed by the likes of Donald Trump,” Urquiza said. “And so, when I cast my vote for Joe Biden, I will do it for my dad.”

Urquiza belives that Trump didn’t cause the virus, “but his dishonesty and his irresponsible actions made it so much worse.”

“The coronavirus has made clear that there are two Americas: the America that Donald Trump lives in and the America that my father died in,” she said.

Trump’s False Statements on COVID-19 Testing, A Supercut | NowThis

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Kristen’s testimony was powerful because it proves that there are real-world consequences when people in power lie.

Trump has been one of the most dishonest politicians in recent history. As of July 2020, The Washington Post has counted Trump lying over 20,000 times. Even though it’s blatantly obvious to most people in the country that he shouldn’t be trusted on any issue — let alone a deadly pandemic — there are millions who still take his word as gospel.

A recent poll by NBC News found that “58 percent of Americans say they don’t trust what Trump has said about the pandemic, while 31 percent say they do trust his comments.”

Trump’s reckless dishonesty makes him an accomplice to the deaths of tens of thousands of people, one of them being Mark Urquiza.

In early February, Trump claimed the virus would weaken “when we get to April, in the warmer weather.” Later that month, he said it would “disappear” one day, “like a miracle.”

In June, he claimed the virus was “fading away” and in July it was “under control.”

Kristin Urquiza will long be remembered for putting a face to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s hope that her tragic story will make those in power think a second time before lying about serious, life-or-death issues.

If you missed Michelle Obama’s speech during the opening night of the Democratic National Committee convention, you truly missed out. In a prerecorded speech, the former first lady managed to hit just the right balance of empathy and honesty that’s so badly missing from most of politics today. The fact that she’s not a politician and doesn’t even particularly care for politics, yet has a more intimate knowledge of the job of President of the United States than most, makes her a powerful voice at this juncture.

And she used that voice to speak directly to the American people, to call on our better angels and explain why this election matters. She pointed out that Joe Biden knows how to bring back an economy and beat back a pandemic—he helped do both during his eight years in the vice presidency. And in a somewhat uncharacteristic move, she explicitly named Donald Trump—not pointing to his many character flaws, his problematic policies, and the thousands of lies he has told, but making the simple case that he has proven he can’t do the job we need him to do.

“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can,” she said. “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

She also referred to her previously viral statement, “When they go low, we go high,” pointing out that it doesn’t mean to overlook the very real problems present in our politics.

“Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty,” she said. “Going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.”

The speech drew widespread praise, even from unlikely sources. Fox New anchors Chris Wallace and Dana Perino both lauded Obama for the authentic, effective way she addressed the nation and made the case for Biden.

“You got the sense when you talk about authenticity, she has it in spades,” said Perino (who served as President George W. Bush’s press secretary). “She has that voice, she has clarity, and she knows what she is out there wanting to do. She was trying to get everybody to really focus and then she had a call to action: Ask for your ballot tonight.”

“I think that the DNC, if they look over the course of the night—the first virtual convention of our history—I think they would say that Michelle Obama stuck the landing,” she added.

Wallace was a bit more colorful in his commentary, calling her speech “effective” and “a heck of a contribution.”

“She really flayed, sliced and diced Donald Trump, talking about the chaos and confusion and lack of empathy, especially coming from this president and this White House. Spoke more about the deficits of Donald Trump than the pluses of Joe Biden, but did talk about especially, not so much policies, but especially his empathy and what he has been through and his care for average Americans.”

You know when Fox News heaps praise on a DNC speech, something historic just happened. Though, of course, the network did manage to have at least one of their big names throw in some criticism.

Obama opponents tried their best to deflect from the near-universal positive reactions to her speech by circulating a video from 2013 of Michelle Obama praising Harvey Weinstein, but such attempts fall flat when it takes ten seconds to find multiple photos and videos of Donald Trump with both Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein. The sad truth is that most of us probably know and admire people who are slimy sexual assaulters behind closed doors. Praising or hanging out with someone before we find out their true nature can be forgiven. Offering well wishes to publicly known and charged child sex traffickers, as Trump recently did with Epstein partner Ghislaine Maxwell, is far more problematic.

But that’s another story.

Last night, Michelle Obama proved once again that she has her finger on the pulse of America far more than practically anyone else associated with politics. She’s the world’s most admired woman for a reason, and her DNC speech drove that reason home.

Fans have continued to show an outpouring of support for Juice WRLD following the rapper’s tragic death in December. Not only has the singer had more singles in the top ten of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts than any other artist of 2020, but his posthumous record Legends Never Die is now certified Platinum.

According to Our Generation Music, Legends Never Die has garnered over a million equivalent album units since its July debut. The record’s quick rise to Platinum isn’t too surprising, as Legends Never Die saw the largest debut week of any posthumous record in the last 20 years, gaining nearly half a million equivalent album units in just one week.

In a statement about his music, Juice’s mother, Carmela Wallace, thanked his fans for the continued support:

“The overwhelming love that millions of music fans clearly have for Jarad reminds us how much his poetic words, creativity, and bright light continues to shine throughout the world. This first collection of songs is a poignant reminder of his great artistic talent and emotional honesty. Music was his passion and recording gave him the outlet to share everything he was going through. […] We are incredibly grateful to the fans who continue to uplift him every single day and our hope is that his words touch your life in a way that helps you through any challenges you may be facing.”

Legends Never Die is out now via Interscope. Get it here.

The 2020 Democratic National Convention has been an online-only affair this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it’s still a big-time event. It has a strong roster of musical performers (some of whom performed last night), and other high-profile participants. That includes Michelle Obama, who gave an impassioned 20-minute speech that some think included a jab at Kanye West and his presidential campaign.

In her speech, the former First Lady lamented the current state of the country, insisted things need to change, and praised Joe Biden as the person who can make that happen. Towards the end of it, while speaking about the need to vote, she said, “This is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden.”

Many are interpreting that part about “[playing] games with candidates who have no chance of winning” as a dismissal of Kanye’s presidential bid. As one Twitter user summarized, “Michelle Obama also said stop voting for people who have no chance of winning. Shes talking about green, libertarian, and whatever the hell Kanye west is.”

Watch Obama’s full speech above and find some more reactions to her alleged Kanye jab below.

As most Hollywood productions collapsed during the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the global pandemic, The Mandalorian stayed on course, and it’s currently on track to deliver its second season on Disney+ in October. However, much of season two was already being filmed as the first season was still captivating audiences, breaking records, and later, going on to score a sizable amount of Emmy nominations. In short, the show got very lucky as a good bulk of the season was in the can before the pandemic reared its head in March 2020.

With season three officially greenlit, fans are understandably concerned that The Mandalorian won’t be so fortunate this time as productions are still facing uncertainty. Fortunately, showrunner Jon Favreau is putting those fears to rest. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Favreau confirms that season three is still on schedule, and he’s confident that the unique filmmaking process for The Mandalorian will allow production to chug along just as smoothly as it did for season two.

The fact that the set is much more contained is a benefit, because you can limit the number of people. A lot of the people controlling it are doing it remotely from what we call the Brain Bar, which is a bank of gaming computers, essentially. The amount of people near the camera could be much smaller than [usual]. We also shoot a lot outside, which is helpful, too. We build to a moment in filming more like an animated production, where we have a lot of storyboards, a lot of discussions and scouting in virtual reality. We use cinematic tools in VR much the same way we did for The Lion King and The Jungle Book. A lot of times the actors you are seeing on the screen aren’t actually there on set.

Favreau is referring here to The Volume, a state-of-the-art soundstage that’s filled with LED screens powered by the same game engine that brings Fortnite to life for millions of players. The Volume was featured prominently in the behind-the-scenes series, Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, and it’s truly a remarkable filmmaking tool that produces photo-realistic sets and lighting in a matter of seconds. Numerous scenes in The Mandalorian that appeared to be shot outdoors were actually created in The Volume.

Granted, the technology is a less intimate process that requires an astonishing amount of pre-visualization work, but it’s practically tailor-made for a time when filming with a skeleton crew is a life-saving necessity.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Untitled Goose Game became an indie sensation this year, as gamers were delighted by the opportunity to be a mischievous goose wreaking havoc on a small village with goose shenanigans.

However, one couldn’t help but wish at times you could do goose stuff with your goose friends in a multiplayer mode. Happily, that will be a reality next month when they drop a free update for Untitled Goose Game on September 23 that will allow for a local two-player mode that will let you terrorize the village with two geese, letting friends and families tag team the villagers to steal things and make them miserable.

It’s a free update across all platforms, with the game also launching on Steam and Itch.io for the first time. The update also arrives just in time for those who are preordering the physical edition of the game — complete with a vinyl record — that will release on September 29.

So, for those who have been resigned to playing with their friends or loved ones at home by taking turns being a horrible goose, it is finally your time to shine together and bring the villagers to their knees with clever theft and trickery. Given part of the task of the single player mode is finding ways to distract people so you can steal things, the two-player mode figures to really open up opportunities.

Aminé’s got a gift for working with unexpected collaborators on his projects. From employing Charlie Wilson on his debut album to having Young Thug pop up on his single “Compensating” (but not in the video), Aminé knows how to bring the surprises pretty consistently. His latest eye-catching collab features Luke Steele (of Australian electronic duo Empire of the Sun) delivering his signature vocals over “Hello.” The Portland rapper released the new track just two weeks after his “sophomore-ish” LP, Limbo.

The song features some braggadocious raps from Aminé while Steele offers the jittery chorus of “Hel-el-el-el-lo” over a similarly glitchy beat that sounds like nothing the Portlander has tried in the past. “Shoppin’ so much that my arm gettin’ stretch marks,” he brags on the second verse. “Stuntin’ like a winner but I treat her like a sweetheart.” As a late introduction for listeners who may have missed his first three projects, it’s a catchy, though off-kilter way for him to say, well, “Hello.”

Last week, Aminé celebrated the release of Limbo with a live performance on YouTube featuring a full band playing the album in its entirety. You can check that out here.

Listen to Aminé’s ‘Hello’ featuring Luke Steele of Empire Of The Sun above.

The Indiana Pacers and the Miami Heat will square off in the 4-5 series in the Eastern Conference, and for those who enjoy watching basketball teams who seem to relish the opportunity to get into brawls, this series is a godsend. Miami and Indiana are two tough, nasty squads, and even if they go about scoring points in different ways, both take pride in their ability to defend and their commitment to never backing down. There’s also the whole Jimmy Butler-T.J. Warren thing, which seems like the sort of beef that could bubble over in a playoff series.

The series between these two squads tips off on Tuesday afternoon, with Game 1 beginning at 4 p.m. EST on TNT. Before that begins, though, we identified a pair of areas — one for each team — that should determine which team is able to come out on top.

Indiana Pacers: Will they be able to make twos?

One thing that Indiana really loves to do is take a whole lot of twos. No team in the league has made more twos than Indiana, only two teams (the Spurs, coached by someone who hate threes, and the Knicks, a team of power forwards) have attempted more, and while they’re 11th in two-point field goal percentage (52.9 percent), the sheer volume they’ve taken means that no team has scored more points via twos than Nate McMillan’s bunch.

The issues with this are twofold. One is that Domantas Sabonis is out, and he is capable of just cooking dudes from inside the three-point line. Sabonis attempted 12.6 twos for the team per game and connected on 56.5 percent of them — the only other players who attempt at least 12 twos a game and connect on at least 56 percent of them this season are the two MVP favorites (Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James), the Sixth Man of the Year favorite (Montrezl Harrell), and Zion Williamson.

The other issue is that Miami does not let teams take twos. Funny enough, they mirror the Pacers pretty nicely: Third in the league in two-pointers allowed and first in two-pointers attempted on defense. Despite being 15th in two-point field goal percentage allowed, they give up so few attempts that only Toronto and Milwaukee have allowed opposing teams to score fewer points from inside the arc.

Indiana’s offense banks on taking and making twos. No team attempts fewer threes, and it will be interesting to see if McMillan switches things up and tells his guys to let it fly if Miami’s interior defense puts the clamps on them. It will be a legitimate war inside the arc, though, and the Pacers really need to make sure they win it.

Miami Heat: Can they continue to crack the Pacers’ three-point defense?

Teams don’t hit a whole lot of threes against the Pacers. On the year, teams are connecting on 34.1 percent of their triples against the squad from Nap Town, the fourth-lowest mark in the entire league. There aren’t many teams in the league that take more pride in what they can do on the defensive end of the floor than Indiana, and over the course of the entire season, they’ve been absolute hell to score against — they’re sixth in the NBA in defensive rating, with the only squads ahead of them being the ones that you normally think of when you talk about the league’s elite defensive unites.

Their opponents in the first round, however, are one of the team’s elite three-point shooting units. Miami loves to let it fly and is outstanding at hitting from deep, coming in ninth in the league in three-point attempts and second in three-point field goal percentage at 37.9 percent. Their best player, Jimmy Butler, has shot the ball terribly from deep, but unlike his previous situation in Philly, the Heat have realized this isn’t a huge deal as long as you surround him with marksmen. As a result, the team has four players in their rotation who connect on at least 40 percent of their threes and a collection of extremely capable shooters beyond them.

Miami built a team where there are so many options to get hot that someone is inevitably going to have a good shooting game most of the time. Indiana is quite good at not allowing that to happen, although in the three games that they played against Miami this year outside of their seeding game finale in the Bubble, the Heat connected on 38.7 percent of their triples, with Duncan Robinson (14-for-31, 45.2 percent) especially getting hot from deep. Unsurprisingly, Miami went 3-0 in those games.

The Heat are the favorites to win this series, in large part due to their ability to get scorching hot (no pun intended) from deep. Indiana will do everything it can to take that way. If Miami’s shots fall, that will not matter.

Phoebe Bridgers (who celebrated her 26th birthday yesterday) was forced to get creative with performing during the pandemic, and she did so with a “world tour” that consisted of performances from various “venues” around her home. She actually managed to sneak in an in-person performance right before the coronavirus shut everything down.

She participated Versus Creative‘s “50on50” series, which has performers play for small audiences in large venues. Bridgers played her show at a mostly empty Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in March, performing “ICU” and “Halloween.”

Nate Auerbach, partner at Versus Creative and co-producer of 50on50 with the LA Memorial Coliseum, told The Fader, “For 50on50, we aim to work with artists who we feel should be playing stadiums. As an LA native, Phoebe Bridgers is the kind of artist that we want to see perform a hometown show for a packed Coliseum someday. I could not think of a better artist to launch this new series with us. We were so lucky to have filmed this right before everything locked down. For the people there, it was their first time hearing Phoebe’s new music, and probably their last time seeing a live show for a very long time.”

Watch Bridgers’ performance above.