Today is a lovely day for Nicholas Hault.

It’s not only the five-year anniversary of Mad Max: Fury Road, a modern masterpiece, it’s also the premiere of his Hulu series The Great. We recently caught up with the actor (check it out!), as did GQ for the publication’s “Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters” video series. The whole thing is worth a watch, but the highlight is the story Hoult tells about auditioning for X-Men: First Class, in which he played the blue-furred Beast.

“[Director] Matthew Vaughn asked me to do a couple of takes in an American accent as you kind of saw the character. But then also do a take doing an impression of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy,” Hoult said. “I had watched a lot of Family Guy in my teen years growing up, so I was like, ‘OK, I think I’ve got a pretty good impression of Stewie Griffin lined up.’ And so I did a whole version of the take as Stewie Griffin and sent it off. So maybe that helped me get the part? I don’t know.” The same thing happened for Kelsey Grammer on The Last Stand, except he did Quagmire. It brings a whole new meaning to “Tossed Salads and Scrambled Eggs” when you add a “giggity” after “salads.”

Watch the video below.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

One of the most disappointing things about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it wiped out graduation ceremonies for the Class of 2020 whether its kindergarten, eighth grade, high school or college.

Envisioning oneself walking up on stage and grabbing a diploma in front of your peers, family and community is one of the prime motivators that gets people to class.

The Obama’s are doing their best to make sure the Class of 2020 has a commencement speaker with a message to help spur them to the next chapter in life. But for the Class of 2020, the end of the school year is more than anti-climactic.

---

Gabrielle Piece, a graduate from Xavier University in Louisiana, was devastated that she couldn’t walk across the stage to accept her diploma in biology, a focus in pre-medicine. “Initially I was upset. I was crying,” she told Fox 13 Memphis.

“It took me like a week to stop crying,” Gabrielle continued. “I really wanted to walk, I felt like I needed to walk.”

via Fox 13 Memphis

Gabrielle’s father, Torrence Burson, a man known for over-the-top gestures, was just as upset that she wouldn’t get the graduation day she deserved. So he decided to create a ceremony himself.”I went to bed and woke up in the middle of the night and said, ‘That’s it. I’m just going to be the graduation here,'” Torrence said.

“After all those years, you’re going to walk across somebody’s stage if I have to build you one myself,” Torrence told his daughter. Torrence built a stage in the driveway of his home, complete with loudspeakers that barred the graduation march. The ceremony had and invocation, a welcome speech and they played Whitney Houston’s incredible version of the National Anthem.

Neighbors drove by honking in support of the graduate.

via Fox 13 Memphis

Torrence even printed up a program to celebrate the historic day:

Gabrielle graduated from Southwind High School in 2015 with the ambition to attend the Illustrious Xavier University of Louisana to achieve a degree in Biology Pre-Medicine.

During her junior year of college, she decided to go into another direction in medicine by deciding to go into Public health Science for Epidemiology. After all the trials and tribulations she went through, she completed college with 130 credit hours.

She now plans to join the Armed forces to accomplish her end goal of working for the CDC.

“We love our daughter this much. Regardless of the dollar figure, what it took to pull this off. If I had to do this over again, I’d probably do it even bigger,” Torrence said.

“It was just amazing,” Gabrielle said. “Better than the actual graduation, because it was more personal.”

Gabrielle plans to enter the Air National Guard before going back to school to become an Epidemiologist.

Father pulls out all the stops for ‘at-home’ graduation after university ceremony canceled

www.youtube.com

---

View Entire Post ›

With the NFL scheduled to have another league meeting next Tuesday, a major change could be on the docket. According to Jim Trotter of NFL.com, the league will consider adjustments that would dramatically reward franchises that hire minority head coaches and front office executives.

The report indicates that if the resolutions were to be voted in next week, as part of an improvement on the current Rooney Rule that mandates NFL teams interview minority candidates for these jobs, those that actually hire such candidates would move up as many as 16 spots in the third round of the NFL draft.

If an NFL team hires a racial minority head coach and keeps him for a second season, that franchise would jump six spots in the third round of the draft following that coach’s first season at the helm. The reward would be a 10-spot vault if a team hired a minority general manager.

“If a team were to fill both positions with diverse candidates in the same year, that club could jump 16 spots — six for the coach, 10 for the GM — and potentially move from the top of the third round to the middle of the second round,” Trotter wrote.

In addition, the benefits would extend past Year 2 for a coach under these circumstances, with the team jumping five spots in the fourth round should they keep the coach for a third season.

As Trotter notes, there are only two black general managers and four head coaches of color heading into the 2020 season, which is a 17-year low for the NFL. Many franchises have worked around the Rooney Rule by interviewing an in-house candidate for head coach who has no real shot at the job. Others have hired strong minority candidates such as Steve Wilks (Arizona) or Vance Joseph (Denver), only to dismiss them after one poor season.

If you thought air travel was a sh*t experience before we started living in a pandemic, then you’re about to long for the days of TSA frisks, delayed flights, and slow Uber drivers who you inevitably blame for you missing your flight because you didn’t have the good sense to leave five minutes early. Once you’re feeling brave enough and have a good reason to risk jumping on a plane again, be prepared to wait as much as four hours before you actually get to board your flight due to the additional screening procedures and security measures that are already in place at airports across the country in an effort to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Don’t expect to kill that extra time grabbing a drink at an airport bar either, those probably won’t be open. Instead, you’ll spend those extra four hours waiting around and trying to avoid getting close to other people until you’re on the plane. Not easily done at an airport.

According to airline marketing consulting firm, Simpliflying, travelers should expect a scenario where they arrive at least four hours in advance of their departure to give themselves an adequate amount of time to go through additional screening procedures, possibly being shuttled through disinfectant tunnels, and having to wait for routine cleanings of frequently touched surfaces. Passengers may also have to endure what is known as “bingo boarding,” a process where individuals are let onto an airplane by seat number rather than the section in an effort to avoid crowding and pileups. Considering people don’t even wait for their zone to be called to start boarding, this experience sounds like it may cause some frustrations.

Fox Business reports that the TSA has started implementing new rules to keep people the recommended six feet apart, and will relax rules on expired licenses until October 1st, and allow passengers to bring 12-ounce bottles of hand sanitizer on board, as well as provide additional PPE to those who request it. While those tweaks may add time to the experience, they absolutely sound like logical, common-sense initiatives, considering the information we currently have.

For international travel, the situation may be even more extreme. According to The Points Guy when Hong Kong-based journalist Laurel Chor documented her experience at the Hong Kong International Airport on May 14th, she was subjected to a lengthy screening process that took eight full hours. Detailing the experience on Twitter, Chor explained that she had to fill out a quarantine order and good-health declaration, download a tracking app, and receive a COVID-19 test, as well as report her method of transportation home.

Despite testing negative, Chor was still subject to a 14-day quarantine in her home before she’d be allowed to enter public life in Hong Kong. Breaking quarantine could result in a fine of $3,225 and six months in prison.

Forbes found that 9 out of 10 travel experts surveyed agreed that turnaround times between flights will increase due to thorough cabin cleanings and sanitary measures and expect the use of digital technologies and automated services to increase throughout the airport experience. Future air travel will likely include the use of facial recognition during the boarding process, which is already used in some US airports, as well as the use of immunity passports once a vaccine is available. Major airlines are also considering disinfection tunnels with the use of UV light or sanitary solutions, as well as on-the-spot blood tests, mandatory self-check-in, self bag-drop-off, and the end of lounges.

Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber recently joined forces for the heartwarming track “Stuck With U.” The song was released for charity, with proceeds going towards funding grants and scholarships for children of essential workers who have been impacted by the pandemic. Aptly titled, the collaboration was written and recorded all while in quarantine. The singers were able to create the song in isolation with the help of their home studios, and Grande used hers to produce the track. Now, Grande sheds a light on her process in a behind-the-scenes explanation.

Sharing a self-shot video to social media, Grande said that vocal production is one of her “favorite parts” of her job. “So I have no idea if this is going to be interesting to you or not. But I’m sitting at my little home setup, my little studio I have here,” Grande said, “and I wanted to share with you a little bit of the ‘Stuck With U’ session that I vocal produced, because this is one of my favorite parts of what I do.”

Recording her computer screen, Grande detailed how she cuts and pastes different vocal takes together to smoothly align. The singer explained her creative decision to add in snippets of her dogs as well as some laughs she shared while recording. “I really wanted to put that because it captures the vibe of being at home,” she said.

Watch Grande’s behind-the-scenes videos above.

Michael B. Jordan has reportedly landed the lead role in Methuselah, a film based on the Biblical character who lived to be 969 years old.

The film will be the next from director Danny Boyle, but Jordan wasn’t the first choice for the role. According to Variety, Tom Cruise was originally attached to the project, which Warner Bros. is hoping to turn into a franchise. However, the studio has been looking to keep Jordan in-house following the success of the Creed films, and apparently the Biblical epic fit the bill.

While the character is mostly noted for his advanced age in the Christian Bible, Methuselah does appear in other religious texts where he has an especially close connection to God, which results in him being a key figure shortly before the Great Flood that cleansed the earth. In fact, Anthony Hopkins portrayed the extremely aged character in Darren Aronofsky’s Noah. As for which texts Boyle’s film will pull from is unknown, but 969 years should provide a whole lot of material for a franchise.

The role is an interesting choice for Jordan given recent rumors that he might be replacing Henry Cavill as Superman in the DC Cinematic Universe. J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot is now working exclusively with Warner Bros., and the word is that his production company is working on a new film for the Man of Steel that could potentially star the Black Panther actor.

In the meantime, Jordan will be blasting into theaters this October in the adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. The film is yet another franchise for Jordan as he takes on the role of CIA agent John Clark who’s a regular staple in Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels. Unlike Ryan, who uses his skills as analyst, Clark is the guy you send in when things need to be done quickly and brutally.

(Via Variety)

Justin Vernon has involved himself in a number of endeavors outside of Bon Iver, like the supergroup Gayngs, which was founded by Poliça’s Ryan Olson. The group has been inactive since releasing their 2010 debut album Relayted, which came out almost exactly ten years ago (May 11, 2010). Now, out of nowhere, the group has returned with a new song, “Appeayl 2 U.”

The relaxing and relatively freeform track incorporates influences from soft rock and electronic music (much more so the former than the latter). The song runs for about five-and-a-half minutes, although the last 90 seconds or so are silent. The track features contributions for a large number of the group’s members, including Vernon (on synths and guitar). There are others not part of the group’s original lineup as well, like Velvet Negroni and Naeem Juwan, the latter of whom had an i,i song named after them. Olson’s credited contribution is producing the song.

The group took to Twitter to explain why they decided to put out a new song now, saying, “Tonight the band GAYNGS was scheduled to play at First Avenue as a part of their 50th anniversary shows and an homage to the last time Prince hopped out the back of a minivan, with a guitar strapped on, 2 his club. But PLANS HAVE CHANNGED… so we decided to release one of the new songs that we would have played.”

Listen to “Appeayl 2 U” above.

Life as a sports fan has been awfully tricky over the last couple of months. Obviously the No. 1 priority everyone has is staying safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic, but at the same time, it’s been weird going from multiple games across a number of sports happening on a daily basis to absolutely nothing.

Slowly but surely, a few things have returned. Baseball in Korea, for example, has gotten off the ground in recent weeks, and while those games air stateside in the wee hours of the morning on ESPN every now and then, it’s still something fun to watch. The same goes for various eSports leagues, some of which had shortened hiatuses but are back up and running.

The world of soccer has been impacted on a number of levels — leagues paused, while major international tournaments were pushed to next summer. There is, though, a light at the end of one of the myriad of tunnels, as Germany’s Bundesliga is slated to resume this weekend. The same goes for the country’s second division, the aptly named 2. Bundesliga.

We won’t worry about the second division for now, in part because the top level of German football is perhaps the most entertaining soccer league on earth. When comparing it to American sports, Bill Connelly of ESPN compared it to Big 12 football, citing “points and offensive aggression” as qualities shared by both leagues.

“Best way I can put it is, it never feels like the ball is in the middle third,” Connelly told Uproxx when asked why the league is so much fun. “It feels like it’s in more dangerous areas more frequently. And teams are good enough in counter attack that there’s constant racing up and down. And more goals, of course. It’s a young, optimistic style, and it’s aesthetically pleasing.”

Basically, the Bundesliga is the best entry point into soccer for people who want to get into soccer but have no idea where to start. And there might not be a better time than this weekend, given the lack of anything else in the world of sports. As such, we tossed together a very brief guide to get you prepared for the coming weeks of Bundesliga action, which kicks off on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. ET and runs through Monday afternoon stateside.

What does the title race look like?

The single-best title race in major world football right now is in Germany. Liverpool all but won the Premier League. PSG all but won Ligue 1 before the year was called. Real Madrid and Barcelona are battling for La Liga for the 10,000th year in a row. Serie A is a fun two-team race between Juventus and Lazio.

In the Bundesliga, four teams — Bayern Munich (55 points), Borussia Dortmund (51), RB Leipzig (50), and Borussia Mönchengladbach (49) — are within six points of one another, with Bayer Leverkusen (47) in shouting distance with nine games remaining in the campaign. This is, admittedly, a touch misleading, as Bayern may have been playing the best footy of any club in the world when things stopped back in March. By 538’s Global Club Soccer Rankings, the Bavarians are just a hair below Manchester City for the title of the world’s best, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone saying the English giants were playing better heading into the shutdown. Among Europe’s five-best leagues, only PSG (a statistical outlier due to the weakness of their league) and City (see the last sentence) were better in expected goal differential.

Having said all of this, the Bundesliga is weird. Bayern have to play all three of Dortmund, Gladbach, and Leverkusen before the campaign is decided. Ryan O’Hanlon, over at ESPN, explained that Leipzig has an easier path than Dortmund to upending Bayern. Gladbach, while good, just might not have the horsepower to have too much to say here, while it would take a miracle for Leverkusen to make much of a jump. Still, the overwhelming favorite is Bayern. They are that good.

So should I just watch Bayern?

Of course not! Yes, tune into Bayern, because they are magnificent — there are tons of big names, but in my opinion, pay special attention to Alphonso Davies, a Canadian teenager who might end up being one of the best players in the world in the next few years and is dominating despite playing fullback, which is not his natural position. They also have Robert Lewandowski, who has been among the best strikers in the world for years and has taken his game to a new level this campaign, and David Alaba, who is on here because I adore him (he moved to center back from fullback earlier this year and is one of the best in the world at the position already). But the thing with the Bundesliga is it is so much fun that any random match you turn on is almost certainly going to be worth your time.

Example: The first slate of fixtures on Saturday, which kick off at 9:30 a.m. EST, include Dortmund-Schalke and Leipzig-Freiburg. We can forget Freiburg for a moment, as they’re not particularly great, but in a way, they are the perfect first foe for Leipzig, which boast gobs of young talent, are one of the most tactically flexible sides on earth, and have the second-best goalscorer in the league in Timo Werner. Schalke are a fine side — they sit in sixth and are one of the league’s more conservative bunches — but this is a rivalry fixture against Dortmund, football’s chaos agents who attack relentlessly and oftentimes leave their defense wide open. An example from earlier this year:

That sounds fun!

It is!

You seem to really like these three teams.

Personally, I am not a particularly big Bayern fan for reasons we won’t get into, but yeah, they’re all fun, and you’d probably enjoy watching them, although it is certainly plausible that all three play a little more conservatively in their first match or two considering the amount of time they’ve had off.

Talk to me about Mönchengladbach and Leverkusen.

Sure. Gladbach are an extremely solid side, one that did hit a bit of a rough patch in league play before things went on hiatus — they accrued 15 of a possible 27 points in the nine matches before the league was suspended, which is OK, just not quite what you want when you’re fighting for a top-4 spot, is all. Still, their underlying numbers are good, as they’re third in the league in expected goal differential and, despite their lack of a ruthless goalscorer in the likes of Lewandowski, Werner, or Dortmund’s Erling Haaland and Jadon Sancho, are also third in non-penalty expected goals and assists per 90 minutes. A pair of talented Frenchmen, Alassane Pléa and Marcus Thuram, are very much worth the price of admission.

Leverkusen, meanwhile, was in the midst of some scintillating football in the lead-up to the hiatus. They had taken 22 of a possible 27 points, which included a 4-3 win over Dortumund. While their best goalscorer is German forward Kevin Volland you should make it a point to watch Leverkusen because of their precocious midfielder Kai Havertz, a 20-year-old ace who has the potential to lead the next generation of German footballers.

It seems like there are a lot of good young players in Germany worth watching, Bill.

There are, voice in my head making the other part of this dialogue! Just among players 22 and under, the aforementioned Havertz and Thuram are tremendous, Bayern’s Davies is going to be a superstar and is in the midst of one of the most impressive rises we’ve seen recently, and moving down the table, plenty of clubs have entrusted major minutes to youngsters — Schalke’s Weston McKennie and Ozan Kabak, Wolfsburg’s Xaver Schlager and Josip Brekalo, Koln’s Sebastiaan Bornauw, etc.

The clubs that best handle youngsters, though, are Dortmund and Leipzig, both of which are factories for developing talent and flipping them for major money. Dortmund might have two of the three-best youngsters on the planet attacking in English ace Jadon Sancho, who is 20, and Haaland, who is 19, joined in midseason, and has all the makings of someone who will be mentioned as the best player in the world. Beyond them, 20-year-old Frenchman Dan Axel Zagadou and 21-year-old Moroccan Achraf Hakimi are fixtures in their defense, while 17-year-old American Giovanni Reyna has broken into the side as a reserve. Leipzig’s list of youngsters is also quite impressive: 20-year-old Matheus Cunha (Brazil), 21-year-olds Tyler Adams (United States) and Dayot Upamecano (France, he is insanely good in defense), along with 21-year-olds Amadou Haidara (Mali), Nordi Mukiele (France), and Christopher Nkunku (France).

You mentioned a few Americans. Christian Pulisic broke out in Germany, right?

He did!

Is he still there?

No he’s at Chelsea, but he was at Dortmund.

Ah!

It’s fine! Over the last year, Germany has become a destination for all sorts of talented youngsters, and a number of Americans have carved out roles in the league. Pulisic is the best recent example, but that was the case before him, too — Landon Donovan’s professional career, for example, started at Leverkusen.

Currently, the Americans generating the most buzz are McKennie (a very solid midfielder for Schalke who is a fixture for the national team), Adams (Leipzig, had been injured but is a ball of kinetic energy in the midfield or at fullback), and Reyna (he’s 17!). Make it a point to watch all of them, but especially Adams, who could end up snatching the title of the world’s best American from Pulisic sooner rather than later, which says more about Adams than Pulisic.

They’re hardly the only Americans in the league, though. John Brooks (you might recall) is a stalwart in defense for Wolfsburg and is the national team’s best defender when healthy. Former national teamers Timothy Chandler and Fabian Johnson ply their trade for Eintracht Frankfurt and Gladbach, respectively. Düsseldorf’s Alfredo Morales is a tenacious midfielder, Josh Sargent’s had an up-and-mostly down campaign for Werder Bremen but might be America’s striker of the future, and while he is injured, the national team’s No. 1 keeper, Zack Steffen, plays for Düsseldorf on loan from Manchester City.

Alright, I’ll tune in. What’s the schedule look like?

Here are this weekend’s fixtures with television information, all times are ET:

Saturday, May 16

Borussia Dortmund vs. Schalke, 9:30 a.m., FS1
RB Leipzig vs. Freiburg, 9:30 a.m., FS2
Hoffenheim vs. Hertha Berlin, 9:30 a.m., Fox Soccer Matchpass
Fortuna Dusseldorf vs. Paderborn, 9:30 a.m., Fox Soccer Matchpass
Augsburg vs. Wolfsburg, 9:30 a.m., Fox Soccer Plus
Eintracht Frankfurt vs. Borussia Monchengladbach, 12:30 p.m. FS1

Sunday, May 17

Cologne vs. Mainz, 9:30 a.m., FS1
Union Berlin vs. Bayern Minich, 12 p.m., FS1

Monday, May 18

Werder Bremen vs. Bayer Leverkusen, 2:30 p.m., FS2

Very good, anything else I need to know?

Sure, real quick, here’s how testing is gonna go. As ESPN explained, players and staffers will get tested twice weekly, via nose and throat swabs as to make sure the likelihood of false positive results are reduced. Clubs are staying in isolated areas with the hopes of keeping players from contracting COVID-19, and if players or staffers test positive, they’ll go into quarantine. Also, as you can guess, stadiums will be empty, which is an unfortunate necessity, as atmospheres in Germany are perhaps the best in the world.

This all seems weird and like things could backfire pretty easily.

Yup!

Is it gonna work?

I have no idea, but I’ll certainly be watching on Saturday morning, and if the league can resume without hitting and major bumps in the road — the biggest “if” in all of sports right now — do not be surprised if other leagues get back onto the pitch sooner rather than later.

Saturday Night Live’s 45th season is finally in the books, finishing out with three episodes of the “At Home” variety while the rest of the world deals with the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the unprecedented nature of the season, the subject matter of the show often touched on what people are doing to fill time while in isolation, which led to a number of sketches about gaming.

The first was Mikey Day playing a frustrated streamer who kept getting nuked at Call of Duty: Warzone. And now, we have a somewhat belated look at the meanest Animal Crossing: New Horizons island in the game’s otherwise adorable history. In the sketch, which was released as a digital exclusive on Friday, Melissa Villaseñor and Day hop on a video call to play Animal Crossing together. But while Day is having a lovely time getting acclimated to the island wilderness, Villaseñor is encountering animals saying things like this to her.

Clearly, the editors enjoyed taking screengrabs from the game and putting new text over them, as basically everyone in the game is far too nice to say things like that. Even bullying animals off your island is done pretty gently, relatively speaking. As the sketch continues, Day tries to visit his friend’s island to see if he’s getting the same kind of hate. And while Tom Nook doesn’t hope he gets coronavirus, it’s clear that the animals don’t like living with Melissa very much.

What’s interesting about the sketch is that the islands they appear on are basically brand new. Day, in fact, is wearing the gingham shirt you can get as starting clothing. However, in the video it’s clear that Villaseñor has the hard-to-find Animal Crossing Switch bundle, as you can see from the controller in her hand.

It’s clear that she’s a fan of Animal Crossing, as she does a pretty spectacular Isabelle impression, complete with warbled words and all. But it’s very likely that she’s been playing since launch day in mid March, which begs the question: did she have to delete her launch day island just to play out the sketch? Or did someone else buy a copy of New Horizons to get the video needed for the very mean comments?

Given the timestamps on the game that pop up when you stop moving, we know they’ve been working on this for at least a few weeks now. The scene where her character is murdered, for example, was video captured on May 4. So perhaps they’re further along on this new island at this point, anyway. And if that’s a bit too much negativity in your island experience, please enjoy this video from the musicians who made New Horizons‘ soothing title track.

Ah, that’s better.