Category: News

It’s been an interesting offseason for the Boston Celtics. With Brad Stevens in his new role leading the front office, the Celtics didn’t make a massive splash, but they flipped Kemba Walker in a deal for Al Horford, acquired Josh Richardson and landed Dennis Schroder on a one-year bargain contract to bolster their backcourt. However, Boston wasn’t done as mid-August arrived, as word broke on Monday that veteran guard Marcus Smart will be sticking around on a four-year extension that will keep him under contract through the 2025-26 season.

The four-year deal worth $77 million was the most that the Celtics could offer Smart as an extension. The defense-first guard will earn $14.3 million for the 2021-22 season and, with the option to offer him 120 percent of that salary with eight percent annual raises, the Celtics seemingly chose to do just that. As such, Smart will be staying in Boston, and he seemingly confirmed the deal seconds after it was reported.

While Smart is a sometimes inconsistent offensive player, he produced a career-best 13.3 points per game last season. Beyond that, Smart has stabilized as a perimeter shooter, knocking down a respectable 34.8 percent of his three-point attempts over the last three seasons, and he is a fearless creator. Still, his primary value comes with legitimately elite defense and, while Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown are the team’s offensive stars, this is a move that signals the value of Smart to the franchise as a key two-way piece.

Dead by Daylight is one of the more underappreciated multiplayer games out there. While the majority of multiplayer titles are shooters or battle royales, Dead by Daylight is a competitive horror game. A team of four go up against a single killer, and attempt to escape from whatever map they’re on while the killer will stalk around in an effort to slay them before that can happen.

However, what really makes Dead by Daylight so fun is the crossovers. The developers of the game have done an incredible job at not only creating interesting unique characters for their game but bringing in horror movie icons such as Jason, Freddy Krueger, and Michael Myers. They’ve even brought in some famous horror game characters like Pyramid Head and Heather from Silent Hill or Nemesis and Leon from Resident Evil. One of the more popular crossovers though was the introduction of Stranger Things. Since 2019, players have been able to pay and unlock Stranger Things characters Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, and The Demogorgon as playable characters. They’ve also had access to outfits and even a map.

Unfortunately, all of this will soon be going away. The developers of Dead by Daylight announced in a recent blog that all of their Stranger Things content will soon be removed from the game. Players will still be able to utilize characters from the game they’ve already paid for, but unfortunately, the Stranger Things themed map will not continue to be in rotation. Anything in relation to Stranger Things will no longer be available for purchase in November and they’re selling all its DLC content at 50% off so anyone that hasn’t gotten it yet should do so soon.

In September of 2019 Dead by Daylight welcomed one the most popular original horror properties of the last decade into the Fog with the Stranger Things Chapter.

Now, after two years filled with more brutal kills and last-second escapes than we can count courtesy of The Demogorgon, Nancy Wheeler, and Steve Harrington, November 17, 2021, will mark the last occasion for fans to purchase Stranger Things content in Dead by Daylight.

Leading up to this date we’ll be celebrating the heroes and horrors of Hawkins with a blowout sale on all Stranger Things characters and cosmetics. If you’ve already purchased any of our Stranger Things content – fret not! – it’s yours to keep for as long as you continue to play Dead by Daylight. If you’ve had your eye on any character or outfit you still want to add to your collection, now’s the time to scoop them up at an amazing discount.

This is really unfortunate for a lot of reasons. One of them being that fans of Stranger Things are losing out on some of the content that was in the game. The other side of this is that it’s a bummer to see them removing content that some people have already paid for. While it’s cool that we can continue to play as the characters, nobody is happy about losing an entire map.

The reason for why everything is being removed was not given but it likely has something to do with licensing, which is one of the downsides of such crossovers as once a licensing agreement runs out, if a new one can’t be reached, fans end up as the ones who lose out.

Anyone who has raised a human being to (or near) adulthood knows that the teens years are all kinds of special. On the one hand, teens can be funny, smart, thoughtful, and caring. On the other hand, they also do things that make you scratch your head or bang it against the wall, depending on how bafflingly boneheaded they are.

There’s a reason that legal adulthood doesn’t start before 18. When research confirms the human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25, the only appropriate, informed response is, “Yeah, that tracks.” Because as delightful and fun as they can be, teens do things that simply don’t make sense.

What’s weird, though, is that enough teens do the same nonsensical things that it almost seems as if they’re following a playbook of some sort. It feels like a big conspiracy, like every teenager in America is part of some super-secret TikTok group planning out shenanigans to annoy their parents.

That feeling is why the Facebook page Teenager Pro Tips is so. dang. funny. It shares tips for teen living that are so spot on it’s spooky. Check this out:

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“9pm is the proper time to request supplies for tomorrow’s school project.”

Or 10pm, if you’re an overachiever.

“Where to put wrappers. Candy: IN the sofa. Bandaid: ON the counter.”

I mean, where else would you put them?

“Find a chair that others use a lot. Put stuff on it.”

It’s a service. It’ll save the chair wear and tear.

“After drinking water from a cup, drink more water from a different cup.”

Again, the wear and tear thing. And someone’s going to clean all those glasses anyway, so who cares, right?

“When the ice cube tray is empty store it in the freezer.”

It’s an ice cube tray. That’s where it goes. Duh.

“Beg for a box of expensive protein bars. At the first bite decide you hate them.”

And definitely leave the once-bitten bar on the counter as a warning to others.

“Leave a half swallow of milk in the container. Put it back in the fridge. Say, ‘It’s not empty.'”

I mean, that’s technically and literally true. Teens are truth tellers.

“When asked to go get a sibling, don’t go. Instead, stand next to the person who asked and scream your sibling’s name.”

Just doing what they’re told.

“Tidy your room by putting clean clothes in the wash.”

When the clean clothes get thrown on the floor, are they still clean? These are the philosophical questions that keep teens up at night.

“Prepare socks for the laundry by rolling them up tightly. Occasionally add sand.”

Where oh where does all the sand come from? We don’t even live near a beach.

“When the dishwasher is empty put your dirty dishes in the sink.”

You mean there’s not a dish fairy that magically transfers the dishes from the sink into the dishwasher? Whuh?

“Load ice cubes in your hydro flask with 60% accuracy.”

And make sure you leave the 40% you missed to melt on the floor. Speaking of which…

“The water you accidentally spilled makes the floor slippery. Quickly exit to safety.”

Safety first! Always!

“If you scrunch up a towel correctly you can make it stay wet f.o.r.e.v.e.r.”

Forever and ever and evvverrrrrr.

“The proper way to hang a towel is not to.”

Just reiterating the f.o.r.e.v.e.r part.

“Set many early morning alarms 5 minutes apart. Get up some time after the last one.”

It’s all about waking up gradually, you see.

“Moments before it’s time to go yell WHERE’S MY SHIRT!”

It’s all about not getting ready gradually, you see.

“When reminded to do something say ‘I did’ until proven otherwise.

A claim without evidence is merely an opinion, Mom.

“Your bathroom counter should look like a chemistry lab.”

Including the aftermath of many experiments.

“Leave 2 squares of toilet paper so you don’t have to change the roll.”

Can’t change it if it’s not empty. Them’s the rules.

“Sparkling water drinks are like chores. They should never be finished.”

#HalfEmptyDrinks4Life

“When the trash is full, put more trash on it.”

Doesn’t count as full until you can’t balance anything on top anymore. Duh.

Clearly whoever runs this page has or has had teenagers of their own because every single one of these is on the nose. (Follow Teenager Pro Tips on Facebook for more hilarity and solidarity.)

As the old saying goes, everyone dies twice. The first time is your physical death, the second is the last time anyone utters your name.

If the old saying is true, then Caitlin Abrams is giving dozens of people a second life by cleaning their tombstones and allowing their names to be heard once again. Abrams volunteers at four cemeteries and cleans the tombstones of people who died between the 1700s to the early 1900s.

Most of the tombstones she cleans are hard to read, but after a good scrubbing and dousing with D2, hundreds of years of dirt and grime disappear, revealing their original inscriptions.

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Abrams’ tombstone videos have attracted over 25 million views on TikTok. In addition to the cleansing, she adds a bit of history about the deceased and the era in which they lived.

Most of the tombstones Abrams cleans are those of women and children. She focuses on them to remind people just how common death was before the advent of modern medicine.

“Over the last few decades especially, death moved from something that everyone experienced on a daily basis in their own home to something that happens primarily to the elderly and far away in a hospital or nursing home,” she told Buzzfeed.

“Of course it is absolutely incredible, the progress that modern medicine has made, and we should all be thankful for it, but it does mean that we, especially younger generations, keep death at something of a distance,” she continued.

The graves are a window into a time long gone when children routinely died of diseases that are survivable today.

Here are some of Abrams’ most popular videos.

David James Carter and David James Carter

The older David died at the age of 12 from scarlet fever. After his passing, his parents named their next boy David James Carer as well. He would die of diptheria at a very young age. The boys also had a sister named Sarah who Abrams covers in the next video.

Sarah Carter

Sarah died in 1865 of typhoid fever, a bacterial infection that killed a lot of people in the U.S. prior to antibiotics. The grave has a tragic inscription: “Our happy hopes are buried here.” The Carters buried three children in the same decade.

Silas and Freddie Reed

Poor Silas died at the young age of 11 months of what’s described as “lung fever,” which was most likely pneumonia. His brother, Freddie, died almost a year after at the age of eight, due to typhoid fever. This cleansing is especially satisfying to watch because the tombstone goes from unreadable to readable in just a few minutes.

Fannie Blackmer

Fannie died at the young age of 21 due to tuberculosis. Her headstone brightened up beautifully after the cleaning.

Olive Waite

Olive died at 21 in 1807 from what’s believed to be tuberculosis. The stone has a beautiful inscription:

See how she sleeps beneath the stone

In death’s cold shade her body lies while her triumphant soul is gone to join the songs above the skies

Methinks her shade appears to say “behold my relics lifeless clay”

The hour my fate, your oh maybe

Prepare dear youth to follow me

Rachel Burton “The Manchester Vampire”

Burton died in 1790 at the age of 21. Three years after her death, her husband Isaac’s second wife, Holda, came down with tuberculosis as well. Back then, people believed that tuberculosis was caused by deceased people who come back from the grave to curse family members with the disease.

Isaac believed that Rachel placed a curse on his current wife, so he had 500 people come to the cemetery where her body was exhumed. Her heart and liver were burned and Holda breathed in the ashes to be cured of the disease.

Sadly, Holda died anyway.

There have been four movie versions of A Star is Born — five, if you count 1932’s What Price Hollywood?, which tells basically the same story. The one before the smash hit 2018 version with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga hails from 1976, and it starred another powerhouse duo: Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. While also a box office cash cow, that Star‘s the one with the worst reviews. But at least according to Streisand, it’s the Cooper-Gaga one that deserves the scorn.

In an appearance on the Australian talk show The Sunday Project (as caught by Deadline), Streisand had some very critical words about the 2018 iteration, which tracks one singer as her star rises and another as his falls.

“I thought it was the wrong idea,” the musical and acting legend said. “Look, it was a big success. I can’t argue with success. But I don’t care so much about success as I do originality.”

It’s true that the Cooper-Gaga Star had the same general idea as the 1976 one, which moved it away from Hollywood movie stars and relocated it to the music industry. That said, she thought one of the original ideas for the 2018 version — starring Will Smith and Beyoncé, with Clint Eastwood directing — was a good one.

“I thought…that’s interesting. You know, really make it different again—a different kind of music, integrated actors. I thought that was a great idea,” Streisand confessed. “So, I was surprised when I saw how alike it was to the version that I did in 1976.”

Streisand took credit for moving her Star into the music biz, although arguably the most famous version — from 1954, starring Judy Garland and James Mason — did take place in the world of movie musicals. And as brilliant as Streisand is as both a singer and an actress, she didn’t want to compete with Judy.

“When I did A Star Is Born…Judy Garland was so great in it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to do this?” she said. “‘I have to change it. I’ll become a guitar-playing singer-songwriter, and Kris Kristofferson is already a singer-songwriter, and we’ll change the story a bit.’”

If you want to see if Streisand’s right, you can watch her version on HBO Max alongside the Cooper-Gaga. You can stream the Garland-Mason on there as well. For the original one from 1937, with Janet Gaynor and Frederic March, you’ll have to head to IMDb TV.

(Via Deadline)

Matt Amodio’s run on Jeopardy! already has him chasing some very notable show history, and now he’s in another time-honored tradition for a streaking champion: waiting out the break between seasons as the reigning champ. The PhD candidate has scorched his way through Jeopardy! to the point where he’s outlasted several guest hosts and the announcement of two full-time hosts to replace the late Alex Trebek.

Amid that he’s dominated the game as a contestant, cruising past the $500,000 mark in winnings to be the third highest winner in show regular season history. Not to mention annoying many viewers with a straightforward answering style that often makes no grammatical sense. It’s working, though, to the tune of 18 games won and $574,801 in winnings.

But Monday’s Jeopardy! is an episode that originally aired on October 14, 2004 and featured a different streaker: Jeopardy! GOAT Ken Jennings in the middle of his record 74-game winning streak. That’s because Season 37 of Jeopardy! is over, and the show is now on a month-long run of repeats until regular play continues in mid-September.

That may be a bummer for those who want to see how far Amodio can go, but it’s also a good opportunity to see Trebek back in action in syndication. The show announced last week that the set of episodes celebrating Trebek’s travels over the years will also return during this stretch, so you can watch him at Niagara Falls again if you’d like.

Season 38 of Jeopardy! won’t start airing until September 13, with Mike Richards back behind the podium giving answers to Amodio and two new contestants.

One of the big entertainment success stories of the pandemic has been Verzuz, the series of battles that pair one legendary musician against another, duking it out using only their stunning back catalogues. Rappers have done it. So have soul goddesses. Now Damon Wayans thinks there should be a new kind of Versuz, this one for comedians. And he thinks one great comedian Verzuz battle would be him vs. Dave Chappelle.

As per Complex, Wayans recently appeared on KBXX 97.9 the Box, where the performer and writer was asked if he’d been keeping up with the musical phenomenon. He admitted he had not, then asked if they have one for comedians. They don’t! So Wayans pitched an idea for a duel between himself and another comedy icon: “Chappelle, I’m calling him out!”

Mind you, this is it — an idea Wayans seemed to come up with on the spot. But it’s not a bad idea. In one corner, one of the leading lights of In Living Color, an SNL alum, Bruce Willis’ co-star in the very funny buddy action comedy The Last Boy Scout, the second coming of Roger Murtaugh on the Lethal Weapon TV series. In the other, the ever-unpredictable guy whose film debut came courtesy of no less than Mel Brooks. Make it happen, Verzuz people.

(Via Complex)

Disney fans who lamented the closing of Disney Quest now see an opening upon news that the super corporation will not re-open it after a pandemic-related shutdown last year. The indoor theme park-ish facility in Orlando, which is adjacent to Walt Disney World, has been closed for years. But upon news that the NBA Experience in Orlando is now permanently closed, there was plenty of social media celebration, shade and a slew of demands from Mickey Mouse superfans who want to see Disney Quest brought back to life.

Monday brought word that the NBA Experience, an attraction in Disney Springs, will not reopen after its abrupt closure at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020 just months after it had originally opened.

The attraction, which featured various basketball-themed activities and interactive games, closed March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Disney Springs and the rest of Disney World reopened, The NBA Experience remained closed with no reopening date mentioned.

The decision to close the attraction was a mutual one between Disney and the NBA, according to Disney and will not affect other partnerships the company has with the NBA or local team, the Orlando Magic.

Disney said it doesn’t currently have plans for what will replace the NBA Experience, which was a collection of 13 basketball-themed activities in a five-story, windowless building in Orlando. But judging by the shade thrown by many Disney fans on social media there’s a pretty popular idea in mind: Bring back the thing that the NBA Experience replaced.

Disney Quest was great if you like, say, remote control race cars and all the old arcade games you can play included with the price of admission. It was also a good way to spend a day in air conditioning while still getting a Disney experience that doesn’t include oceans of molten blacktop.

But the facility, which opened in 1998 in Orlando’s sprawling Downtown Disney, was closed in 2016 and demolished. In its place, the nearly two-decade old attraction became basketball-themed. Which is why news of its closing brought a good amount of snark about the short-lived NBA Experience and a number of calls for Disney Quest to return.

We’ll have to see what Disney actually decides to do with its now-vacant real estate. Opening anything during a still-ongoing pandemic will be a challenge, but surely they believe the wants and needs of Disney’s biggest fans are worth satisfying.

On Sunday, the world watched as U.S. forces pulled out of a rapidly deteriorating Afghanistan, with images of people desperately trying to scale American fighter planes recalling footage from Saigon as it fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. It brought to a cataclysmic end a 20-year ordeal, which experts have said could never have ended well, and which could have gone even worse. Fingers have been pointing everywhere, including, one pundit argues, by the president himself.

On Monday afternoon, as per The Daily Beast, Biden formally addressed the situation in the South Asian nation, standing by his decision to pull out, and arguing that the blame lies all over — with Democrats and Republicans alike. But he also singled out Afghan officials. “The political leaders of Afghanistan were unable to come together for the good of their people,” Biden said, noting that Afghan president Ashraf Ghani fled the nation before U.S. forces left. He also noted that the Afghan military were unable to hold back Taliban fighters. “Mr. Ghani insisted the Afghan forces would fight, but obviously he was wrong.”

Biden argued that the U.S. simply could no longer pour money into a permanently febrile situation. “I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past,” Biden said. “The events we see now are sadly proof that no amount of military force would ever deliver a stable, united, secure, Afghanistan.”

But CNN’s Jake Tapper was not impressed with Biden’s speech. “The president said that the buck stopped with him,” he said after the speech. “But in fact the speech was full of finger-pointing and blame, especially for the Afghans.”

Tapper laid out some of the president’s points about dealing with a perhaps impossibly febrile situation. Among Biden’s claims were that some of the Afghan allies, such as translators, didn’t leave earlier because they were hopefuly for a new Afghan government. If there had been a mass exodus, Biden said, there were fears that would have caused a crisis of confidence — ahead of the crisis that’s happening right now.

But Tapper took umbrage with Biden claiming to take responsibility without actually taking responsibility. “He did not really go into or accept any blame for the catastrophic exit we have been watching on television for the last several days,” Tapper said.

And so Biden faces what may be the first major setback of his still young presidency, albeit one that could never have ended well and which had simply been prolonged by his predecessors — including, partially, him when he was only the vice president.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Hollywood’s second stab at Frank Herbert’s Dune — hopefully not as financially disastrous as its David Lynch-helmed first — is still en route, and it’s worth remembering that it only tackles the first half of the first book. Provided everything goes according to plan (i.e., it doesn’t lose money for Warner Bros.) director Denis Villeneuve will start shooting the second half sometime soon. And when it does, it sounds like the second part will take a pretty surprising approach.

In a new interview with the Italian magazine Il Venerdì di Repubblica (and translated by IGN), Villeneuve talks about how he “can’t wait to shoot the second part of Dune,” in part because he can’t wait to reunite stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. But there’s another reason, which is that, as he said, “in the next chapter Zendaya will be the protagonist of the story.”

To those who’ve read any (or all) of Herbert’s six Dune novels (and maybe even the continuations and prequels and such written after his death in 1986), this is a unique way to adapt the maiden voyage. The first Dune is a hero’s story, following Chalamet’s Paul Atreides from royal scion to Messiah-like savior. Zendaya’s character, Chani — one of the Fremen, who live in remote parts of the desert planet of Arrakis — plays a key role, but Herbert’s story isn’t about her journey. It’s about Paul’s.

But maybe movie adaptations should be more creative, especially nowadays, when any deviation from a popular source enrages fans across social media. In the novel, and in both Lynch’s film and the early aughts Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, Chani is barely seen until the second half, appearing only in dreams. So we’ll see how Villeneuve and his screenwriters work around that, and how they apparently shift protagonists mid-stream.

Dune hits theaters and HBO Max on October 22.

(Via IGN)