Month: January 2021

When the various The Walking Dead series went on hiatus back in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the expectation was that they’d be gone for three to four weeks, they’d pick-up production where they left off, and that the release plans for the series itself would not be delayed.

That obviously changed. Dramatically. The pandemic pushed The Walking Dead‘s tenth season finale so far back that by the time it aired, it was no longer the season finale, and instead of planning for the eleventh season, the producers of The Walking Dead are now planning an endgame for the series, a Carol and Daryl spin-off, an anthology series, and maybe even a The Walking Dead comedy.

The entire The Walking Dead universe has since shifted, but plans are now falling into place for 2021. While we may not get the 40 consecutive episodes that were originally envisioned for 2020, we can expect to see a lot of The Walking Dead this year. By my count, in fact, we should be seeing approximately 40 episodes from the universe, although some may air concurrently. In a video tweeted by the official The Walking Dead Twitter account, AMC laid out their plans.

As expected, the final six episodes of The Walking Dead will begin airing on February 28th (along with the return of The Talking Dead). That should take us to the Spring, where the back half of the sixth season of Fear the Walking Dead is expected to air. Things get a little more ambiguous beyond that, except that The World Beyond will return sometime in 2021, while later this year, we should expect to see the first episodes of Season 11 (which will run until the end of 2022), as well as the seventh season of Fear the Walking Dead.

In other words, 2021 will be crammed with The Walking Dead content, and the fact that The World Beyond is airing this year probably also means we’re getting closer to the Rick Grimes movie, which is expected to begin shooting in the Spring.

For now, however, we have the final six episodes of Season 10 (which began back in the fall of 2019) to watch on February 28th, which will include Hilarie Burton Morgan as Lucille.

The Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens went into the locker room at halftime on Saturday night in the midst of a 3-3 rock fight. Buffalo got the ball out of the break, and before the third quarter came to an end, they managed to get six points on back-to-back possessions.

The catch: Only one of those possessions involved Buffalo’s offense taking the field. After Josh Allen connected with Stefon Diggs for a score, Baltimore’s offense came out and managed to march down the field. They got into a goal-to-go situation, and failed to punch it in on the first two plays of the series.

Then, on third-and-goal, Lamar Jackson had his eyes on sure-handed tight end Mark Edwards, who was standing in the end zone. Jackson’s issue was that Bills corner Taron Johnson read Jackson’s mind, reeling in the pass and taking off in the other direction for a record-setting score.

The first turnover of the game managed to be a 101-yard pick six, tied for the longest pick six in postseason history. This also marked the first postseason interception of Johnson’s career, and in what might be the understatement of the year, it came at a pretty fortunate time for the 6,700 folks in the stadium in Western New York.

Most of us have been hoping and praying that 2021 will be better than last year. Well, if you’re Olivia Rodrigo, then that dream already came true within the first two weeks of the year. The young TV star was best known for starring in the Disney+ show High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (try saying that five times fast), until she released her debut single “Drivers License” about a week ago, Friday, January 8. Since then, the song has absolutely exploded, earning massive first-day streaming numbers on Spotify, winning over Taylor Swift, and catapulting Rodrigo to the top of numerous Artist To Watch lists for the year.

And even if Spotify had words about Olivia’s success before, odds are they’re going to have even more after she just broke one of the platform’s biggest records in the shortest time possible. According to Pop Crave, “Drivers License” has already exceeded over 100 million streams, and it did so in just about eight days. That makes it the fastest song in platform history to achieve such a high benchmark. If this is just the reaction to Olivia’s first single, I can’t wait to see what kind of wonderful chaos the whole EP brings. Maybe this year will shape up ok after all. If you haven’t heard the song yet, check it out above.

She might only be 5’2, but Lady Gaga is hitting some lofty marks lately, and that’s not just in the Chromatica community, either.

Introduced by none other than Jennifer Hudson, Lady Gaga was honored today with the Yolanda Denise King Higher Ground award. This award is part of the larger Beloved Community awards organized by The King Center, that seek to uphold the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other activists following in his footsteps and working toward justice and civil rights.

Gaga was recognized both as an artist and the co-founder of the Born This Way foundation, which advocates for mental health and provides resources for marginalized groups with a focus on the queer community. She was also commended for her work last summer during the Black Lives Matter movement, and how she advocated for PPE gear to be distributed to healthcare workers to help keep them safe during the pandemic.

“I dedicate this award to Black, Brown and Indigenous people,” Gaga said during her speech. “Triumphant people, whose resilience is the life force of every beloved community in this country. Black, Brown and Indigenous people continue to thrive in the midst of systemic oppression, thrive with radical joy, unapologetically creating full and beautiful lives despite the systems of white supremacy that are intended to keep them from doing so.” Later, she explains how unlearning has been a part of her own process and speaks directly to her white fans saying “as white people we have a responsibility to unlearn.”

Check out the whole speech below.

Justin Tucker very well might be the best kicker in NFL history. Whenever the Baltimore Ravens have needed three points at basically any point in his NFL career, Tucker has lined up and generally gotten the job done. For his career, Tucker has connected on 90.7 percent of his field goal attempts, and this year, he only missed three times in 29 tries.

We say all of that to say this: It is weird when Tucker misses a field goal, and even weirder when he misses more than one, and even weirder when Tucker hits one off the uprights. So naturally, in the first half of the Ravens’ conference semifinal game against the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park, Tucker managed to do something he’s never done before, and not necessarily in a good way.

Baltimore started the game with the ball and put forth a lovely 12-play, 52-yard drive that took nearly seven and a half minutes off the clock. They called on Tucker to put points on the board from 41-yards out, but the 15 mile per hour Buffalo wind threw him off ever so slightly and he doink’d one off the left upright.

In the immortal words of Howie Day, even the best fall down sometimes, and the good news for Tucker is that he got a chance at redemption in the second quarter, lining up from 46 yards out for a boot. But to continue the Howie Day joke from the last sentence, Tucker made the ball collide with the right upright this time.

To be fair to Tucker, Bills kicker Tyler Bass also missed one wide right, and since hitting an upright is more impressive than missing wide, I suppose there is something oddly admirable about this. Still, Tucker’s as reliable as they come, to the point that this is the first time in his career that he’s ever failed to make two kicks inside of 50 yards in the same game.

Despite all of this, it is probably safe to assume that if the Ravens need a field goal to win later in the game, Bills fans are going to be pretty scared of No. 9 getting the chance to put his foot through the ball.

You’ll never believe this, but James Harden is still extremely good at basketball. Harden made his debut as a member of the Brooklyn Nets on Saturday evening against the Orlando Magic, and despite the fact the team was not at full strength — Kyrie Irving is still away on hiatus — Harden and his old running mate in Oklahoma City paired up to put on a show in a 122-115 win.

Harden, in particular, looked impressive, as he put up gigantic numbers despite not practicing with his new teammates before today. The Beard scored 32 points, dished out 14 assists, and pulled in 12 rebounds in the win, making him the first player in league history to have a 3o-point triple-double in his first game with a new squad. In fact, Harden became only the seventh player to register a triple-double in their first game.

It’s still pretty evident that Harden needs to figure some stuff out — he had a season-high nine turnovers in the win — but the big thing is that he looked far more loose and comfortable than he did at any point this season in Houston. Even when he was putting up big numbers, Harden was just visibly not happy with the Rockets, and it was fun to watch him show that he can be the MVP-caliber force we know he can be at his best.

This is something that is much easier to accomplish when you have a productive running mate, and Kevin Durant makes for one heck of one. Durant was sensational against the Magic, scoring a game-high 42 points on 16-for-26 shooting and hitting the 40-point mark for the first time as a member of the Nets.

As an added bonus, Durant managed to set a franchise record with his performance.

The Nets are, of course, not a finished product yet, as Harden needs to get fully integrated with his new squad and Irving’s return looms large. Saturday represented the first step on what will be a long journey, though, and the good news for Brooklyn is it did not trip up.

Like many teams in the National Hockey League this season, fans are not currently watching Colorado Avalanche games in person. That creates an interesting opportunity to use technology at the team’s home arena in new ways as hockey continues amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As Awful Announcing noticed, the Avs played some intermission games on the ice projector at Ball Arena, mostly because there’s no need to use it for anything else these days. Conor McGahey, the Avs play-by-play announcer, tweeted earlier in the week that he was quite literally playing Solitaire between intermissions because there’s no fans in the stands to entertain.

That technology, which is usually used to project videos onto ice to create some very fun visuals, was basically turned into a ridiculous way to show off that you’re good at the card games that come standard with basically every PC.

But they got a bit more creative a day later, with McGahey playing Pong at the break.

It’s a fun bit we certainly hope continues, but some fan-less team out there could get creative and use all those cameras in the building to play something more interactive with fans. I’m sure a team would be up for a game of Jackbox with fans voting on their favorite picks. Just not Cyberpunk 2077, OK?

[via Awful Announcing]

Neil Young entered the seventh decade of his career with the release of his 40th album, Homegrown, a thirteen-track effort comprised of songs he recorded between 1974-1975 which he delivered to fans last year. Now in 2021, it seems like the legendary rocker is prepared to do something similar for his upcoming album. Young announced a new live album and concert film, both entitled Way Down In The Rust Bucket, set to arrive next month. Both the live album and concert film were recorded during a 1990 show with Crazy Horse in Santa Cruz, California which was held shortly after he dropped his 18th album, Ragged Glory.

Ahead of its release, Young shared a trailer for the album as well as a live recording of “Country Home.” “In true Crazy Horse fashion, the incendiary show ran across three sets and over three hours, with songs like ‘Love And Only Love’ and ‘Like A Hurricane’ hypnotically stretching past ten minutes,” a description of the live album read. “The Catalyst gig also marked the first time ‘Danger Bird’ – a cut from Young’s 1975 album ‘Zuma’ – was played for a live audience, thundering on into psychedelic six-string fireworks.”

Fans will be able to get their hands on the project on February 26. With it, they’ll also have a 4xLP box set, a 2xCD set, and a deluxe edition box set that includes a DVD, four LPs, and two CDs. A digital edition of the album will also be made available on the official Neil Young archives site.

You can watch the live album’s trailer and listen to the live cut of “Country Home” above.

Way Down In The Rust Bucket is out 2/26 via Reprise. Pre-order it here.

Neil Young is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Three years removed from her 2017 debut, Stranger In The Alps, Phoebe Bridgers returned to 2020 with her sophomore album, Punisher. Her second album was well-received by critics as well as her supporters, so much so that some are already anticipating her third album.

And one musician showed their excitement in a creative way thanks to a video they shared on Twitter. Jensen McRae shared a synopsis for what she believed would be the opening track to Bridgers’ third album and McRae delivered a “preemptive cover” of the potential track to back up her theory.

“In 2023 Phoebe Bridgers is gonna drop her third album & the opening track will be about hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at dodger stadium and it’s gonna make me cry,” McRae said in a January 14 tweet.

In addition to the tweet, McRae shared the cover below the tweet with the caption that read, “this is my preemptive cover of what I imagine it will sound like.” A number of fellow fans of Bridgers shared their reactions to the video with one calling it, “HILARIOUS, ACCURATE, AND FUCKING EXCELLENT ALL AT ONCE.” Bridgers herself caught wind of the cover and was seemingly blown away by it and she quoted it and said, “oh my god.”

The interaction came after Bridgers got a tattoo of a sword and a note that a fan gave her after a show.

You can watch the cover and see Bridgers’ reaction above.

Max Holloway (22-6) defeated Calvin Kattar (22-5) by unanimous decision in his return to the Octagon in the main event of UFC Fight Night from Fight Island.

After his controversial loss to Alexander Volkanovski in their rematch for the featherweight crown in 2020, Holloway opened the new year with a performance to remember. Holloway’s characteristic slow opening was gone from the first bell, as the former champ struck with precision, speed, and power. Holloway attacked the body of Kattar and snapped jabs early. He found his range in the second round, opening up a nasty gash on Kattar’s head with elbows and a flurry of strikes, nearly finishing his opponent.

In the third, Kattar showed some fight, but it was Holloway yet again landing devastating significant strike after another. Holloway looked to finish the bout in the fourth round, but Kattar, wobbling against the fence, showed just enough to keep Herb Dean from stopping the main event. Holloway continued to change levels in the fifth and final round, attacking Kattar’s body before snapping a combination up top. Holloway even stopped in the final round to turn to the commentary team and yell, “I’m the best boxer in the UFC,” while slipping strike attempts from Kattar.

To put Holloway’s unprecedented appearance in context, he attempted more strikes (more than 700) than any fighter has in one fight in UFC history.

Holloway’s win should propel him back into the title picture, with another attempt at UFC gold following the reported Volkanovski-Brian Ortega bout reportedly slated for March. And despite having gone five rounds, he made it clear he’d stay at Fight Island if one of the four hotly-contested lightweight bouts need a last-minute replacement.