Category: News

Kanye West may be notorious for failing to drop albums when he promises, but this time around may be different. Fans are waiting to hear the rapper’s latest album Donda, named after his late mother, which he is hosting a listening party for tonight on Apple Music. Though fans will still have to wait a few more hours the LP, a new Beats commercial offers a snippet of new music to hold his listeners over.

Beats debuted a lively ad for their earbuds starring track and field sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. The commercial features a one-minute preview of Kanye’s new track “Glory,” which was produced by Dr. Dre and features Snoop Dogg. Press material state the song will not appear on Kanye’s Donda album, but it does give fans an idea of the style of music the rapper has been working on lately. As of now, “Glory” has yet to receive an official release date but does drum up anticipation for his Donda LP.

This isn’t the first time Kanye has shared a new song for a Beats commercial. Back in July, Richardson starred in another ad for Beats’ earbuds that featured Kanye’s unreleased song “No Child Left Behind.”

Hear a snippet of Kanye, Dre, and Snoop Dogg’s “Glory” in the Beat commercial above.

I think my favorite thing about Coach Beard is that we don’t know his name. We don’t know his first name, of course, because no character on Ted Lasso has addressed him by anything other than “Beard” or “Coach Beard,” but we also do not truly know if Beard is his real last name. It could be a nickname based on the fact that he has a beard. If he shaves off all the hair below his upper lip, people might start calling him Coach Mustache. That’s something none of us can rule out at this point. I like to think Ted doesn’t even know his real first name. I like to think he insists on being paid in cash so even the payroll department doesn’t know his name. I bet his girlfriend calls him Coach Beard. The man is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and covered in finely groomed facial hair.

Which is cool. There’s something to be said for mystery, and it’s kind of perfect that Ted Lasso — an earnest and sweet show that frequently dives into its characters backstories to reveal their current motivations — has one character who is an unsolvable puzzle. I mean, what do we know about Coach Beard, for certain? Let’s tick off a few things:

• Loves chess and can play it in his head without a board
• Sings Lady Gaga at karaoke
• Is an extremely solid dude

This last thing is as important as it is true. Consider for a second how Coach Beard ended up where he is. He was an assistant football coach in America. His buddy and boss went through a bad breakup and kind of fled across the Atlantic Ocean to coach a sport neither of them understand in what could certainly be considered a manic episode, and he was just like, “Yup, I’m in.” Think about that for a while at some point. Think about if you have anyone in your life who would do that for you, or if you have anyone in your life you would do that for. It’s a big deal.

The show told us what a solid dude he was right away, too, before we even knew it was happening. The first time we see Coach Beard, in the series premiere, before he utters a single line of dialogue, he is sitting behind Ted on the plane to England with a book about soccer in his hands.

To recap: The man is on a transatlantic flight vacuuming up information about a sport he does not understand because his number one dude is going through it and kind of got in over his head. Brendan Hunt, the actor who plays Coach Beard, elaborated on all of this in a way that both explains the reasoning and makes me love Coach Beard even more.

His role is to fill in Ted’s gaps without anyone knowing that that’s what he’s doing, which is why it starts with getting on a plane with a book about the rules of soccer and learning soccer as quickly as possible because he knows Ted’s never going to fill that gap.

Perfect. Lovely. A sweet and solid dude. And I would like the character even if that’s all he was. But again, there’s more there. He’s an iceberg. We’re only seeing the tip of Coach Beard. I get a little excited every time we learn another tiny fact about him. He’s a man who sometimes sleeps at work because his lover threw his keys into a river and also a man who is comfortable crying during animated movies. Both of those are true. They both happened on the show. The crying thing was great, for reasons Ashley Nicole Black — a writer on the show — explained in a recent interview.

There’s a scene where the team is at an away game and they’re watching, I think, Iron Giant, and Ted has to leave. He tells Beard to stay here because in about 32 minutes, you’re going to have a room full of sobbing men. And Beard goes, “I’m going to be one of them.” When you cut back to them, you see all the players crying over Iron Giant. That’s what I love about the show and also this character — it’s showing different ways of being masculine and that watching a movie and crying with your buddies over a cartoon is one of the ways you could be a strong man. I love it. And that Beard has no shame in telling Ted, “Oh, I’m absolutely going to cry to this movie too.”

It’s the best. We’re at the point now, barely into the second season of the show, where you could tell me anything about his past and I would probably believe you. He’s in witness protection after testifying against a violent crew of Florida drug runners? Yup. He managed a sandwich shop before stumbling into a career as a football coach? Sure. He was a child math prodigy who had a breakdown and resurfaced a dozen years later with a whistle and sunglasses and a passion for exotic blitz packages? Of course, especially knowing what we know about the chess thing.

But, that said, and I want to be as clear as I can about this next part, I absolutely do not want to know any of these things for certain. Ted Lasso is littered with characters who I want to know more about. I would love an episode about Keeley’s rise to fame. I would happily learn more about how and why my sweet prince Dani Rojas became a ray of sunshine personified. I would watch an entire spinoff series about Roy Kent in high school. (I am very serious about this.) But not Coach Beard. I want to know nothing of substance about him ever. I want him to continue being an empty vessel I can fill with whatever lunatic theories feel correct in the moment. A fun one I’m tinkering with lately is that he coached a rural high school to three state championships but was fired and run out of town when the school board discovered he was also serving as the mascot for a hated crosstown rival. Close your eyes and tell me you can’t see it.

Ted Lasso is a good show for a bunch of reasons. It’s funny and heartfelt and nice. It’s got characters who legitimately care about each other. It’s a breath of fresh air after two decades of shows about doomed antiheroes sabotaging their lives and the lives of everyone who loves them. But it’s also a good show because, while doing all of that, it will sometimes just have its most mysterious character belt out Lady Gaga at karaoke for a few seconds and let the viewers try to wrap their heads around what exactly that means. I know I mentioned this already but I didn’t post the video that time. The video is good. Let’s watch the video.

Characters like Coach Beard are a blast in moderation because they create limitless possibilities. It’s a “Kramer on Seinfeld” or “Gunther on Friends” situation, but with the added element of supreme competence. The same way I’d believe anything you can hypothesize about his past, I’d also believe anything about his future. There’s a non-zero chance he ends up becoming the Prime Minister of England. That reads like a joke, I know, but close your eyes for a second and tell me you can’t see it happening, too. Prime Minister Coach Beard. Rolls right off the tongue. Let’s go ahead and pencil it in.

Looking for a way to pass some time before Marvel’s What If..? hits Disney+? Well, while it might not be a part of the universe’s ongoing phase four, Marvel has found a way to deliver a whole lot of never-before-seen content to our eager eyes. Earlier today, the studio announced they’ve added three new episodes to their ongoing Marvel Studios: Legends series, each one delving a bit deeper into how certain MCU events came to pass. The three episodes added include “Peggy Carter,” “The Avengers Initiative,” and “The Ravagers,” and each one sounds like it’s going to add a whole lot of context to some of Marvel’s biggest moments and most beloved characters.

According to the official Marvel summary, “Peggy Carter” recounts the story of how Peggy became a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D. through her work with Steve Rodgers and on the Captain America project. In “The Avengers Initiative,” Marvel shares more intimate details on how the Avengers were actually formed and some of their earliest battles. In “The Ravagers,” the team details the life and exploits of the Ravagers and “traces the unique journey of their leader, Yondu.”

These episodes are only the latest in the ongoing Marvel Studios: Legends series, which shines a light on the many characters and moments that make Marvel great. With the addition of these three, the total number of specials is now up to 12, with seemingly even more coming as the universe continues to expands. According to the show’s description:

Marvel Studios: Legends celebrates and codifies what has come before. Revisit the epic heroes, villains and moments from across the MCU in preparation for the highly anticipated stories still to come. Each dynamic segment feeds directly into the upcoming series premiering on Disney+ — setting the stage for future events. Marvel Studios: Legends weaves together the many threads that constitute the unparalleled Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If you haven’t started it up yet and are looking for more Marvel content to give a watch, the series currently has episodes about The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Loki, Black Widow, and WandaVision ready for your viewing pleasure. If behind-the-scenes breakdowns aren’t quite your thing, What If..? hits Disney+ August 11.

Like the rest of the world, America is dealing with the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus in fits and starts. Indoor mask mandates are returning to some locations, messaging from the CDC continues to change about the risks that even vaccinated people will face as they continue to live amid the pandemic, and uncertainty looms as late summer starts moving toward another winter of cold and flu season.

Which is perhaps why noted medical expert Bill Burr’s prediction of coronavirus infections from an outdoor gathering of basketball fans actually coming true is so depressing. During the NBA Finals, the comedian and actor ranted about anti-vax people on a podcast, noting the risks of unvaccinated people gathering in large groups. Burr predicted in his rant that unvaccinated fans there “probably created a new variant of the f*cking coronavirus” and blasted those skeptical of the vaccine. And while the new variant prediction doesn’t appear to have come true just yet, he was right that cases would come from the gatherings.

According to CNN, hundreds of cases related to the Bucks’ Deer District playoff gatherings have been reported in the days since the conclusion of the NBA Finals.

At least 491 cases have arisen from people who “self-declared” they attended a Deer District gathering at some point during the month of July, according to Milwaukee Health Department spokesperson Emily Tau.

But health officials cautioned that while the 491 confirmed cases were from people who either attended an NBA Finals game inside the arena or gathered in the Deer District while the games were being played, they cannot be sure the virus was acquired in these settings.

There are a lot of caveats to the report, starting with the fact that these numbers include thousands of people who were inside Fiserv Arena and may have contracted coronavirus there. Then there’s the additional uncertainty about where those cases were actually contracted. Considering just how many Deer District gatherings took place over the months-long NBA postseason and a lack of pinpointing where the cases were spread, there’s no true superspreader event to point to. But it’s yet another example of how a return to a more normal life with mass gatherings is complicated and maybe premature, especially if those gatherings include unvaccinated people.

Ben Simmons is still on the Philadelphia 76ers. While we’re a few months into the offseason and the NBA Draft has come and gone, but despite Simmons’ name being thrown around in trade rumblings ever since the Sixers were bounced in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, the team hasn’t found a deal to send him elsewhere that they like.

Apparently, things have gotten quite messy, according to Jason Dumas. In an appearance on 95.7 The Game in the Bay Area, things are “getting worse by the day,” to the point that things are “beyond repair.”

“He doesn’t wanna go to a bad situation,” Dumas said. “He sees Toronto, he sees Portland, and Ben, being — just to be frank — the young socialite that he is, he’s not really trying to go to any of those situations. He’s open to the California teams, is what I’ve been told.”

In fact, Dumas reports that Joel Embiid has made a few attempts to contact Simmons, but those various calls have not been returned, something that has been the case with “many other of the players.”

“He’s essentially taken a step back and said, ‘Hey, all my communication is gonna be through my agent,’” Dumas reports. “And we know what that essentially means — don’t talk to me anymore, I’ll just figure out where I’m playing next. He doesn’t wanna return to the Sixers, damage has been done.”

There have seemingly been weekly updates on the situation with Simmons, and this is probably the most damning of the bunch. Now, we sit and wait and see if this is, indeed, the end of the road, or if he’s going to make it to the start of the regular season in Philly.

Another fast-food mogul named John has come out in support of a conservative blowhard. This time, it’s Jimmy John’s founder Jimmy John Liautaud, who, along with his wife, donated $137,000 to Andrew Giuliani’s campaign for governor of New York.

Forbes is reporting that Liautaud’s financial contribution makes up a third of Giuliani’s collective campaign funds, which totals out to $400,000. Despite his investment, Giuliani’s political run is shaping up to be almost as embarrassing as his father’s Four Seasons Landscaping press conference. In June, the son of Trump’s embattled lawyer failed to receive a single vote at a closed-door straw poll amongst GOP leaders of the state, who seem to be backing favored Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin. Giuliani’s attempts to win over both critics and those within his own party haven’t been going well, mostly because he continues to appear as unhinged and unreliable as his father now is, posting roadside rants on social media and turning himself into a parody with weirdly intense commercial spots.

None of that seems to bother Liautaud though, who also donated to Donald Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020. The businessman, who’s currently worth around 1.7 billion, is registered to vote in Florida and Illinois where he owns property, but he’s been putting money into political campaigns in New York as well. His backing of Giuliani seems like a bad investment considering the long odds the Republican rookie is facing, but we suppose, when you have that much money, you can afford to throw some away on a lost cause?

(Via Forbes)

In her Twitter bio, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) describes herself as a “Christian, Wife, Mom, Small Business Owner, Proud American 100% Pro-Life Pro-Gun Pro-Trump.” She might want to add “conspiracy theorist” to her list of accomplishments (?) after alleging that the New York Times is in cahoots with Twitter to her account suspended.

“I have talked to multiple women who say they miscarried healthy pregnancies after taking the #COVID19 vaccine. Not only miscarriages, but also reporting blood clots and heavy & irregular periods after taking the Experimental Use Covid vaccine. Stop vaccine mandates!” Taylor Greene (who refuses to say whether she’s been vaccinated, but most people believe she is) tweeted on Wednesday. The tweet caught the attention of Times technology reporter Davey Alba, who reached out to the congresswoman.

“Twitter is likely to take enforcement action on Ms. Greene’s account for coronavirus information. It would be her fourth strike, meaning she would have one strike to go before potentially being permanently suspended from the platform. Would Ms. Greene want to respond to this in a statement?” Alba wrote in the email. Taylor Greene was most recently suspended in late July for “violations of the Twitter Rules,” but because she continues to spread dangerous and easily debunked misinformation about COVID, Alba reached out for a statement about a possible permanent suspension. It’s standard procedure — to everyone except MJT, who went full-blown tinfoil hat.

She tweeted, “How would the @nytimes know that my @Twitter account is about to be suspended? My account is NOT suspended. What kind of relationship does the NYT and Twitter have? Do they coordinate suspending people like me and news stories? Is someone paying for that? Why?? Is someone paying for that? Why?” There is no grand conspiracy between the Times and Twitter to ban Taylor Greene — she’s purposefully ignoring the social media platform’s rules, and therefore, will “likely” face the repercussions. I, a dummy, could have told you that. So did many others on Twitter.

(Via Raw Story)

The Philadelphia 76ers made a very funny signing on Tuesday when they brought Andre Drummond in on a minimum deal. It’s not funny from a basketball perspective — Drummond has a chance to help the Sixers solve their years-long issue of things falling off a cliff when Joel Embiid is on the bench.

Instead, it’s a move that caught people off guard because Drummond and Embiid have had some pretty well-documented run-ins over the years, with Embiid seeming to take more joy in clowning Drummond on and off the floor than any other player in the league. But on Thursday, Drummond made clear that he harbors no ill will towards his new teammate, and that he never viewed anything with Embiid as the two beefing.

Drummond went on to say that he’s excited about the opportunity to suit up alongside the MVP candidate the Sixers boast in their frountcourt.

Again, from a basketball perspective, Drummond has the potential to fill a gigantic hole in Philadelphia. For years, the team has struggled to consistently do much of anything when Embiid isn’t playing, and Drummond, for all of his flaws, should be able to give the Sixers someone who can score and rebound in those circumstances. But still, hopefully we get some insight into the kind of trash talk the two exchange during practice, just to make sure the things Drummond says here are true.

Saturday Night Live has an uncanny ability to stay in the news, even when there hasn’t been a new episode in months and won’t be back until the fall. This summer break alone, Cecily Strong has a lead role in the Apple TV+ musical Schmigadoon!; Pete Davidson is a member of Task Force X in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad; Kate McKinnon is filming a Joe Exotic show; Kenan Thompson and Aidy Bryant were nominated for Emmys; Ego Nwodim joined HBO Max’s Love Life anthology series; Colin Jost has stayed in the headlines because of his Disney-suing wife, Scarlett Johansson; and his Weekend Update co-anchor shared remarkably tone-deaf jokes on social media.

The other cast members and writers (and creator Lorne Michaels) have had a busy off-season, too, but this post isn’t about that — it’s about what an SNL viewer does when there’s no new episodes. If you’re this viewer (me, I’m the viewer), you spend too much time on the show’s YouTube page and sort every video on the channel by views.

I went in thinking a classic like “More Cowbell” (17 million) or “Schweddy Balls” (6.3 million) would be near the top, but I didn’t consider the recency bias. The 20 most popular videos are nearly all from the last six years, when more and more people started consuming the Saturday night show on Sunday morning through viral clips instead of staying up until midnight. So once I got over the shock of “Papyrus” only having 16 million views, I noticed that SNL‘s 10 most-watched videos, all with over 32 million views, can be separated into three categories — with one exception.

The categories: Politics, Pop Culture, and Horniness. Let’s break them down.

Politics

“Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks” (#3 with 63 million views)

“Black Jeopardy” first aired in 2014 with guest host Louis C.K., but it didn’t become a sensation until its third appearance with Tom Hanks. Both sketches have the same premise — a white person appears on an otherwise all-Black Jeopardy! hosted by Kenan Thompson’s Darnell Hayes, except instead of “Potent Potables,” the categories are “Had That Been Me” and “Aw Hell Naw” — but the Hanks “Black Jeopardy!” debuted in 2016 and things were… different. He even wears a “Make America Great Again” hat in case you didn’t pick up the implication of the dot dot dot. The twist of the sketch is, Hanks’ MAGA guy has more in common with the Black contestants than anyone expected. It’s very good, and the quality plus the timing plus Hanks in Trump apparel make it the third most-viewed SNL sketch. In eighth place is Melissa McCarthy as then-press secretary Sean Spicer. It’s hard to explain why Sookie from Gilmore Girls on a motorized podium took the world by storm in 2017, but it’s hard to explain a lot of things that happened in 2017. It just did. But why these specific political sketches?

“Sean Spicer Press Conference” (#8 with 38 million views)

For “Sean Spicer Press Conference,” it’s in no small part due to Trump-hating the sketch, reportedly because Spicer was played by a woman; it’s a Streisand Effect of the former president not wanting anyone to watch the clip, which of course means everyone will watch the clip. Meanwhile, “Black Jeopardy” appeals to Democrats, Republicans, Jeopardy! viewers, and Tom Hanks fans, which is to say, 99 percent of Americans (“It’s the sketch that always plays hot, even at the read-through,” co-writer Che told Vulture. “It’s very rare that we have a sketch that does that”). The connection to another famous SNL recurring sketch, which I’ll get to in a minute, probably didn’t hurt, either.

Pop Culture

“Spider-Man Kiss” (#4 with 59 million views)

“Star Wars Undercover Boss: Starkiller Base” (#5 with 57 million views)

“SNL40: Celebrity Jeopardy” (#7 with 43 million views)

“New Disney Movie” (#9 with 37 million views)

“Celebrity Jeopardy!” (#10 with 32 million views)

Much of the top-10 is pop culture riffs.

There’s Adam Driver as Star Wars baddie Kylo Ren on Undercover Boss; two Celebrity Jeopardys, one with Burt Reynolds (Norm Macdonald), Sean Connery (Darrell Hammond), Justin Bieber (Kate McKinnon), Christoph Waltz (Taran Killam), Tony Bennett (Alec Baldwin), Matthew McConaughey (Jim Carrey), and Bill Cosby (Kenan Thompson), and another with Kathie Lee Gifford (Kristen Wiig), Tom Hanks (as himself), Sean Connery (Hammond), and Burt Reynolds (Macdonald); The Rock in a gritty reboot of Disney’s Bambi; and a surprising number one (and fourth overall), Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone kissing in character as Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy.

Pop culture parodies have long been SNL‘s bread and butter, but it’s odd that “Spider-Man Kiss” is so popular considering The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 are no one’s favorite Spider-Man movies. The sketch doesn’t have an instantly quotable line and it didn’t inspire Halloween costumes, like David S. Pumpkins (20 million views) or Driver’s Matt the radar technician. I guess people just like to see Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone smooch? Which brings me to the final category…

Horniness

“Porn Teacher” (#1 with 79 million)

“Harry Potter: Hermione Growth Spurt” (#2 with 65 million)

It should come as no surprise that the two most-watched videos on SNL‘s official channel are for people who should be on a different website that begins with “You.”

“Porn Teacher” is a porn parody that, in a very 2015 headline, Deadline called a “slutty school teacher bit” with guest host Amy Schumer, while “Harry Potter: Hermione Growth Spurt” is an infamous sketch about Harry and Ron turning into a Tex Avery wolf in front of Hermione, portrayed by then-17-year-old Lindsay Lohan, who returns to Hogwarts from summer vacation with bigger breasts. That’s the joke. It’s one saving grace is Rachel Dratch’s Harry Potter; she should reprise the role in the reboot. Neither sketch is particularly funny and it’s obvious why they’re the most popular videos, but it is funny (or unbearably sad, I don’t know) to imagine a person looking for porn on YouTube.

It reminds me of this tweet:

I hope Hank from Breaking Bad found the “sex gifs” he was looking for. Anyway, these being the most-watched SNL videos was not lost on the top reply for “Porn Teacher,” which reads, “It really says something that the 2 most popular snl videos are this and hermione’s growth spurt.” To quote another viral video (1.8 million views), the internet is for porn.

But wait, that’s only nine videos. Where’s the tenth? In sixth place, with 49 million views, is the one outlier: “Close Encounter,” better known as the Kate McKinnon alien sketch where Ryan Gosling loses it. This could be included in the horniness category, because Ryan Gosling (and McKinnon describing herself as going “full Porky Pig in a drafty dome”), but its success has a more wholesome explanation: it’s funny to watch famous people break. Lorne might hate it, but for everyone else, it’s a delight.

Rudy Giuliani’s star turn in the Borat sequel was apparently not the only Hollywood venture he’s had in recent years. Donald Trump’s basically broke former personal attorney and resident conspiracy theorist was reportedly hard at work on a movie about president Joe Biden that drew some unwanted attention.

According to Mother Jones, Giuliani went digging for dirt on the Bidens along with California businessman George Dickson III. They attempted to produce a movie about Joe and Hunter Biden’s alleged dealings in Ukraine, but things didn’t get very far and may have broken the law in the process:

The would-be producers wanted to help Trump. And they also wanted to make money, people involved in the project said, plotting ways to profit off material they had assembled.

The venture produced no movie, only about 15 minutes of notably low-quality footage. And now the FBI is investigating the project, according to two people Dickson told about the probe.

The investigation appears tied to an ongoing federal probe into whether Giuliani violated foreign lobbying laws by working on behalf of a Ukrainian prosecutor.

Mother Jones reported that the FBI searched Dickson’s home, and they’re apparently investigating the film itself as part of a wider probe of Giuliani in general. The full report on Mother Jones really is something, but considering America’s Mayor has already claimed he’s willing to go to jail for crimes he says he didn’t commit, well, none of this can really be much of a surprise anymore, can it?

(Via Mother Jones)