Month: August 2021

There’s not much good news out there in the news these days, but a lot of people got a kick out of a story coming out of Alabama. An Alabama sheriff’s deputy from Morgan recently started receiving a lot of attention due to his more-than-passing resemblance to The Rock. That’s gotta be a weird experience for civilian-types whenever he pulls someone over or knocks on a few doors, given that The Rock himself recently caused a bus full of tourists to absolutely lose it when he drove past them. And in case you’ve yet to a double take over The Rock’s law enforcement doppelgänger, well, here’s your chance. Here’s Lieutenant Eric Fields speaking with the Weekend Express‘ Susan Hendricks about his surreal life. The comparison photos in this video tell the tale.

Well, The Rock caught wind of this fella (from a Bleacher Report tweet), and he’s as surprised as everyone else at the uncanny resemblance. He reacted accordingly on Twitter (“Oh sh*t! Wow”) while adding a self-deprecating remark (“Guy on the left is way cooler”). He also expressed the desire to have a drink (yep, The Rock plugged his own tequila brand here, but who can blame him?) with Fields one day (to discuss those inevitable “Rock stories”), and yep, I hope that moment ends up on Instagram.

This might be the most feel-good story of 2021. Go ahead and fight me on that one.

On Sunday, one of the strangest stories of the sports year emerged after IMG Academy, the nation’s top high school football program, decimated little-known Bishop Sycamore, 58-0, in a nationally televised game on ESPN.

During the game, ESPN’s announce team couldn’t help but be appalled at what they were watching, as an undermanned, undertalented team was getting dominated (and at some points hurt) by vastly superior competition. However, things got stranger after folks started to look into Bishop Sycamore, a prep school program that is sketchy at best and an outright scam at worst. The school’s website is a sparsely populated blog, there are discrepancies about a physical address for the program, the head coach reportedly has an active arrest warrant out for him, the team played two games in three days in two different states despite only having a roster of 35 or so players, and much, much more.

All of it begged the question of how this game got on national TV (where a number of parties, including ESPN and Paragon Marketing Group, are to blame), but it also made plenty wonder why this program clearly not operating on the up-and-up would invite this much attention to an apparent grift. That attention has made them the face of scam prep schools, and on Monday night, Complex Sports interviewed former player Aaron Boyd — who played the 2018 season with the team back when it was COF Academy — who explained just how bad it is there (and included photos from his time there as proof).

The entire interview is a fascinating read, as he recalls promises of a fancy campus and facility, as well as a coaching staff that started with 10, only to end up staying in a hotel for five months with a coaching staff of two and a “team mom,” with no funding and no school. Boyd said they never had class — he said they went to a library once for “class” but by that point, the charade was up — but the parts about the financials raised the most eyebrows, including how the coach paid the hotel in bounced checks.

There was no building. Aight, listen to this. This is the crazy shit, this what you wanna hear. I first moved out there, we were staying in a hotel in Delaware [Ohio]. We were staying there for like five months.

Five months. Didn’t have no housing. All the players came to find out, we never paid the hotel. [The school was] writing them bounced checks. The head coach of Bishop Sycamore wasn’t the head coach. He was like an athletic director. He was the n**** that was behind all of it. He was writing bounced checks for everything. For everything. We never paid for anything.

Given that there was no money for housing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Boyd said there wasn’t money for equipment or meals, leaving the kids to resort to whatever means necessary to get food.

For the last month and a half, we had about 35 players. We moved into these new houses. For that month and a half, we was all sleeping on the floor. We had to go rob Meijers, Krogers, Walmart because that’s the only way we can eat.

Boyd was supposed to be at COF Academy for his junior year, but effectively lost out on his junior season after transferring out because he hadn’t been doing any school work and had to catch up in the spring and summer just to be able to be eligible to play his senior season back at an actual high school. He also confirmed that, while he thinks the “former JUCO player” reports might be exaggerated, a number of the players were out of high school so those players weren’t as impacted by the lack of classes.

Still, it’s clear that Bishop Sycamore has some shadiness going on, and whatever short-sighted aspirations they had for getting on ESPN, all it’s gotten them is exposure in the worst possible way.

Madison Cawthorn has stood as one of Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters, even after the twice-impeached president left office in disgrace. And the North Carolina representative has doubled down on that support in recent days, drawing further outrage after he spoke of “bloodshed” perhaps being necessary in the name of “election security” after touting the lie that Donald Trump somehow had the 2020 election stolen from him.

Monday brought word of an event where Cawthorn talked about taking up arms against Americans in the name of increased voting restrictions many right wing reactionaries have touted as “election security” as part of a vast, wholly unfounded conspiracy about voter fraud. For months now, Trump supporters have believed the Big Lie that Trump insists the election was stolen from him, something claimed without any evidence whatsoever.

The Washington Post, for example, laid out his latest statements and the Trump-like lies he echoed when he falsely claimed that elections in America are “rigged.”

“The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count,” Cawthorn told the crowd, according to a video of the event posted by the county party on its Facebook page and circulated on Twitter by a Democratic congressional staffer. “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed.”

That quote, and video of the event and his speech, quickly went viral on Monday.

The event drew a lot of reaction, including calls that Cawthorn should be removed from office.

It’s unclear if there will be any kind of reaction to a sitting US representative essentially calling for a second insurrection, but if you’ve been paying attention to anything over the last year, well, you probably already know the answer to that.

Delaware’s music festival game has been going strong over the last few years with the success of Firefly Festival. This year’s event coming up in just a few short weeks, so the festival took to social media today to share their full set lists with fans so they can start planning their time on the grounds. Of course, there’s always some artist conflicts that lead to tough choices, but for the most part, fans can spread their time out wisely with a schedule as packed as the one going down in Dover next month.

With headliners as disparate as The Killers, Billie Eilish, Lizzo and Tame Impala, there should be something for everyone on the bill. Not only that, but all four of those headliners have either already dropped brand new albums this year, or are gearing up to do so shortly — Lizzo, we’re looking at you. In the meantime, the festival’s social media post announcing the info cheekily took a page out of Lizzo’s book, mimicking a few bars from her new single with Cardi B, “Rumors,” for the post:

“All the rumors are true, yeah
What ya’ heard, that’s true, yeah
These set times for you, yeah
Passes on sale, so do that

More GA and VIP Single Day and Weekend Passes have become available! Link in bio to investigate.”

So if you haven’t gotten a pass yet, there’s still time. Head over to the festival’s website for more info. And to see all the set times in one place go right here.

Ever since Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour dropped, listeners have been noticing quite a few similarities to other musicians. Some of them are clearly intentional moments of homage, like the way “1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back” interpolates “New Year’s Day” by Taylor Swift, or even the way “Deja Vu” shares DNA with “Cruel Summer.” But things got a bit more heated when Courtney Love accused Liv of copying her Live Through This album cover with her Sour Prom artwork, and just last week, Hayley Williams and Joshua Farro of Paramore was giving a songwriting credit on “Good 4 U” due to how much that song sounds like their iconic song “Misery Business.”

As for all the accusations that are swirling around Sour and Olivia, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine decided to jump in and address the situation from a songwriter’s perspective. On Instagram today Levine shared his thoughts: “There’s all this drama over Olivia Rodrigo, and the Elvis Costello song, and Paramore chimed in about a song that sounds like theirs,” he began. “Look, these are tricky things and anyone who has ever written a song knows that like, sometimes you rip something off inadvertently, and it makes it to tape and then it’s released and then there’s a lawsuit. It’s a natural thing for it to happen. Sometimes it gets ugly, and sometimes it’s warranted that people take legal action.”

“Sometimes it’s no warranted that people take legal action,” he continued. “And I think there’s definitely become more of a gray area. The gray area has reared its ugly head these days. That “Blurred Lines” case was a landmark case that kind of changed the game. Now, without giving an opinion on what I think as far as how that one turned out, I do think that we should probably meet this with a little more compassion and understanding, and try to find a way… All this calling out and sh*t, music is a creative thing and I just hate to see it crushed.”

“When you take someone who is a newer artist and she’s doing things that kind of emulate the ones from generations removed, I don’t know how bad that is… I think it’s kind of a cool thing to introduce a whole generation of young people to different musical ideas. That’s just my opinion, I’m not saying it should be everyone else’s. I just hate to see it become this huge thing where people get really aggressive about it. Maybe I’m just not as territorial about that kind of stuff. I’m almost flattered when people rip me off, and I’m sure I’ve ripped people off too. I don’t know, it’s music, it’s a beautiful thing. I wish we could do that more.”

Check out his videos below.

Bonnaroo is one of the best and most beloved festivals in America, and that’s largely due to the fact that tons of attendees love to come and camp out during the fest. The culture they’ve built around that aspect of the event is super unique, but something the festival planners also have to carefully assess for safety and weather concerns. Well, with the onset of Hurricane Ida in the southeast over the last few days, damage to camp ground areas has led to the tough decision to reduce those areas.

In a Facebook post tonight, the Tennessee-based festival let fans know that they’d have the choice to refund their tickets if they no longer wish to attend now that camping capacity has been reduced. “Due to the expectation of significant rain on The Farm from Hurricane Ida, and the knowledge that areas of our campgrounds will be rendered unusable, Mother Nature has forced us to reduce our camping capacity,” they wrote.

“We are offering a refund window so Bonnaroovians who no longer wish to attend can request full refunds across all ticket and accommodation types. The refund request window is open NOW and will end on Tuesday, August 31st, 2021 at 8 pm CT. All current ticket holders will receive an email from Front Gate Tickets shortly with information on how to request a refund. Refunds will be processed within 7-10 days to the original method of payment.”

Keep in mind, if you do still want to attend the event, a negative COVID-19 test or proof of vaccination is required.

Questlove is one of the most respected music historians and scholars for a reason — he knows that perspective is essential for analysis. And that is exactly what he’s encouraging diehard Kanye fans to employ as they embrace the seething mass that is this final version of Donda. After a couple of years wandering the desert, producing severe missteps like Ye and Jesus Is King, the stans are thrilled that Kanye seems to have put something out that’s back on a Pablo level, and some have even gone so far as to dub it an instant classic.

Quest, and plenty of the rest of us, are not so sure. “Classics can’t be claimed 24 hours after some product comes out,” Quest wrote as part of a lengthy Twitter thread on the album today. “I’ve seen it backfire both ways. It’s like the timeline is tryna grab the rebound w :10 secs left in the game & y’all all hoping it’s your tweet that goes viral in declaring how amazing it is (or isn’t) time will tell.”

He also brings up how some early reviews led him astray with other albums, as part of his larger point that giving a record some room to breathe only helps improve the overall impression it leaves. Check out his thoughts below.

The debate over whether playing too many video games is bad for your health is a decades-old struggle for parents, many of whom at this point were raised playing the very games they bemoan their children obsessing over. And now an entire nation is again taking strides to curb its children from playing too many games.

The communist nation of China is certainly known for strict social rules and a brutal grip on the virtual lives of its citizens. And according to a report, despite the nation being a hotbed of talent for competitive gaming it has further restricted the amount of time children can actually spend playing games in an attempt to increase discipline among the nation’s youth.

As the New York Times detailed on Monday, the decision limits the amount of time Chinese children can spend playing games in an effort to get rid of what are deemed “unhealthy cultural influences.”

Chinese children and teenagers are barred from online gaming on school days, and limited to one hour a day on weekend and holiday evenings, under government rules issued Monday.

The rules, released by the National Press and Publication Administration, tightened restrictions from 2019 aimed at what the government said was a growing scourge of online game addiction among schoolchildren. Under the old rules, players under the age of 18 were limited to no more than 90 minutes of gaming on weekdays and three hours a day on weekend.

Unhealthy influences or not, China is a huge hub of gaming, especially competitive gaming in titles like League of Legends. So the move to curb gaming in the country, especially to an hour on weekends and holidays, is particularly interesting. The news comes amid another online crackdown by Chinese internet censors of popular celebrities that teens created fandoms around, also citing the corrupting of youths. And despite the extremely lucrative nature of online gaming for those making games, it seems the pressure to find cultural conformity meant more than profits here.

And, unfortunately for children there, it was reportedly their parents who asked for further restrictions.

Parents had complained that was too generous and had been laxly enforced, the administration said. The new rule sets the permitted gameplay hour to 8 to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The government said it would step up inspections to ensure that gaming companies were enforcing the restrictions.

“Recently many parents have reported that game addiction among some youths and children is seriously harming their normal study, life and mental and physical health,” the administration said in an online question-and-answer explanation about the new rules. Parents, it said, had demanded “further restrictions and reductions in the time provided for minors by online gaming services.”

Whether you believe the Chinese government about anything, including parents snitching on their gamer children, is entirely up to you. But it is certainly a vastly different approach to gaming in countries like the United States. While it seems parents are always trying to limit screen time for their children, one thing that’s clear is those limits are not coming from the United States government.

Gillie Da King and Wallo might have a Million Dollaz Worth Of Game, but 21 Savage has them beat. Stopping by the Barstool duo’s podcast to talk everything from Clubhouse beef and the passing of his brother to participating in Amber Rose’s Slutwalk, to the subject of owning his own masters. Though he’s been more focused of late on charity events like his annual Issa Back 2 School Drive, but he took the time to talk industry knowledge for the show.

“I had a platinum album before I signed my [first] deal,” 21 explained to the show’s hosts. “I own my masters right now. Every song you’ve ever I heard, I own it. I got a 70/30 split with my label. I make more money off my album sales than I do off touring. For a lot of rappers, most of their money comes from touring.” For those who aren’t as familiar with the standard record label agreement, this arrangement is incredibly rare. It’s also a big deal for artists, on an emotional level — check Taylor Swift’s re-recording campaign after she was refused the right to buy her own masters for proof.

Sitting with fellow Atlanta rapper Young Nudy for the entirety of the show, 21 holds his own for almost 90 minutes… to the point that some fans have to be wondering if he’ll start a new hustle hosting a hip-hop show. His penchant for lengthy, interesting interviews is setting a new industry standard. Check out the full show above, the discussion of 21’s masters starts around 28:42.

We are less than two weeks away from the September 10 release date for NBA 2K22, and in the leadup to launch, we’ve been learning more and more about what will be in the game. There’s an expanded WNBA mode, as some added depth on the women’s side will be a welcome sight, and we know that the Neighborhood will look very different depending on what console generation you’re playing on.

There are also plenty of player ratings that have begun to emerge, sparking lots of debate, and more, but nothing matters more to players than the gameplay itself. The regular complaint about sports games is that too much time is spent by the developers on everything but the actual gameplay itself, with an obsession over career modes and storylines beyond the court or field that some feel takes away from time that could’ve been spent making the on-court or field action play much better.

On Monday, 2K gave everyone their first taste of actual gameplay, both on the NBA and WNBA side, in a trailer, with more gameplay details set to come out on Tuesday.

A quick glance at the mentions shows that not everyone is all that impressed, as many were quick to point out Lonzo Ball appearing on the Pelicans and a small glitch on a rebound as the ball jumps into Luka Doncic’s hands. Making a sports game is wildly difficult in terms of mimicking real life, but what frustrates players the most is when the same issues pop up year after year.

A gameplay trailer doesn’t tell us much of anything, good or bad, about a game. Getting a look on Tuesday at what the focal points have been for 2K in developing this year’s edition in terms of gameplay will be more informative about what they tried to address the most in this year’s edition and how well they listened to the players.