Category: News

Halsey was one of the many deserving artists who were completely overlooked for a nomination at the Grammys this year, even though her latest album, Manic, was excellent. What we lose when artists are continually given the message that only a certain kind of music, or a certain kind of artist, can get nominated and win, has been a subject of much discussion this week following the announcement of this year’s nominations.

Outrage over The Weeknd not getting a single nomination for his new album After Hours was further stoked by rumors that his competing performance at the Superbowl might’ve had an impact on his snub. Earlier today, Halsey responded to the situation with The Weeknd, her own snub for Manic, and her thoughts about The Grammys process at large:

“I’ve been thinking and wanted to choose my words carefully because a lot of people have extended sympathy and apology to me since the Grammy nominations,” she began, in an Instagram story post earlier today. “The Grammys are an elusive process. It can often be about behind the scenes private performances, knowing the right people, campaigning through the grapevine, with the right handshakes and “bribes” that can be just ambiguous enough to pass as “not-bribes.” And if you get that far, it’s about committing to exclusive TV performances and making sure you help the Academy make their millions in advertising on the night of the show.

Perhaps sometimes it is (!!) but it’s not always about the music or quality or culture. Just wanted to get that off my chest. @TheWeeknd deserves better, and Manic did too. Perhaps it’s unbecoming of me to say so but I can’t care anymore. While I am THRILLED for my talented friends who were recognized this year, I am hoping for more transparency or reform. But I’m sure this post will blacklist me anyway.”

Well, glad she spoke her truth — and it will be interesting if any other artists weigh in on the “bribes” comment.

Saturday night’s sports lineup was, somehow, headlined by a Roy Jones Jr.-Mike Tyson boxing pay-per-view in the year of our lord 2020. The last fight on the undercard, which featured some actual, sanctioned fights, was another questionable exhibition bout scheduled for six rounds between YouTuber Jake Paul and former NBA dunk contest champion Nate Robinson.

Paul was a pretty healthy betting favorite at -225, as he has previous boxing experience, knocking out fellow YouTuber AnEsonGib on a DAZN card in 2019. Robinson was stepping into a boxing ring for the first time and despite his best efforts to prepare, his discomfort in the ring was evident from the jump and he struggled from the beginning. He was knocked down in the first round on what he seemed to believe was a rabbit punch to the back of the head, but did survive the round.

However, in the second round, there was no doubt as to whether Paul’s second knockdown was legit as he put the former NBA star out cold with a combination that began with a right uppercut and finished with a short right hook that put Robinson face first on the canvas.

It was scary for a minute as Robinson was out cold, but he did come to and was able to leave the ring. He’ll certainly need medical evaluation and, likely, will call it a boxing career after a rather disastrous debut. Paul moves to 2-0 in his strange boxing career with a pair of knockouts.

The NBA is slowly trickling out information on what the upcoming season is going to look like. While there are still tons of unknowns about how the 2020-21 campaign will function, the league did announce its preseason slate, which will commence next month. And on Saturday, the NBA laid out its key dates for the preseason, regular season, and playoffs.

Here’s how things will shake out, per a release from the league:

Dec. 1-5: Individual player workouts, Media “Week”
Dec. 6: Group player workouts begin
Dec. 11-19: Preseason games
Dec. 22, 2020 — Mar. 4, 2021: First Half of Regular season.

At this point, the league will hold an All-Star break from March 5-10. While the NBA has announced that it will move Indianapolis’ turn as the All-Star hosts to 2024, there is word that it plans on doing something during this period. Here is how things will shake out from there:

Mar. 11 — May 16: Second Half of regular season
May 13-15: Class of 2020 Hall of Fame Enshrinement
May 18-21: Play-In Tournament
May 22 — July 22: 2021 NBA Playoffs

This would, of course, let the league achieve its state goal of ending the year in time for the Summer Olympics, which are currently scheduled to begin on July 23, 2021. There are still plenty of outstanding questions even beyond the slate of games, particularly on things like the trade deadline.

In the end, Amazon’s Utopia had a much longer and somewhat more dramatic journey to the screen than it did on it. The fantasy drama about comic book fans stumbling into a world-altering pandemic was originally an HBO project that finally hit streaming in 2020 on Amazon, but it won’t go past a single season.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Utopia was officially canceled at Amazon after mixed reviews and uncertain streaming totals. The show, which was picked up by HBO in 2014, actually had a six-year journey to screen that saw Gillian Flynn lead the show at Amazon.

Originally developed and picked up straight to series in 2014 at HBO with David Fincher reuniting with his Gone Girl collaborator Flynn, the drama about a group of comic book fans who stumble on a deadly pandemic landed at Amazon four years later. Flynn had an overall deal with HBO and moved it to Amazon along with Utopia, though Fincher was no longer attached.

Amazon, like other streamers, does not release traditional viewership data. The drama was not met with warm reviews when it launched Sept. 25. The series has a 51 percent rating among critics on RottenTomatoes.com and, perhaps in a sign of a failure to cut through, does not have an audience score. In her review, THR TV critic Inkoo Kang called Utopia “Too hackneyed to be timely, too grim to be escapist.”

The project marked the first time Flynn, who wrote the novel Gone Girl and helped Fincher make it a movie, served as a TV showrunner. As THR noted, the show was an admittedly tough watch in a reality that has a much more realistic pandemic actually taking place. And despite the star-studded cast that included Rainn Wilson and John Cusack, all American viewers will apparently get is its initial nine episode first season.

[via THR]

The NFL’s attempt to play football throughout a global pandemic has led to a number of games getting moved around and far more players being unable to go. Perhaps the most surreal example of the latter is slated to occur on Sunday afternoon, as the Denver Broncos do not have any quarterbacks who are able to go.

Denver backup Jeff Driskel recently tested positive for COVID-19. While that has unfortunately not been uncommon this season, it has been revealed that every other signal caller on the Broncos’ roster was exposed to Driskel in a high-risk environment. As such, multiple media reports indicate that none of the other QBs on the roster — Drew Lock, Brett Rypien, Blake Bortles — can play.

According to Adam Schefter of ESPN, Denver has no plans to forfeit the game.

His joke aside, the team does not have enough time to sign someone, have them go through the various protocols, and make a spot start. The answer might be in having running back Royce Freeman line up under center.

There is no word on whether the NFL would step in and potentially postpone the game until there is more clarity on whether any of Lock, Rypien, or Bortles will be able to go.

Fans of Selena Gomez took to Twitter to express their disappointment with Saved By The Bell after they learned the reboot of the show recently aired an episode that seemed to make fun of the singer’s kidney transplant which she received due to complications with lupus.

According to fans and Stereogum, one scene of the episode showed graffiti on the wall of the school’s hallway that read, “Does Selena Gomez even have a kidney?” Another scene saw some of the show’s characters speculating who donated a kidney to the singer. Names like Justin Bieber’s mom and her “best friend” and Demi Lovato were brought as potential donors of the kidney.

The response was strong from fans as they took to the app to slam the show for the scenes. “The show “saved by the bell reboot” has an extremely disgusting scene where they were mocking the superstar selena gomez’s health, by writing this on the wall,” one fan said. They added, “i don’t know what was the point of it, all i know that it needs to be removed asap, thank you.” Another user called the scenes “disrespectful” and said, “who thought writing in about Selenas personal struggle as a joke would be a good idea?”

Back in September, the singer showed off her kidney transplant scar to “feel confident” in her skin. “When I got my kidney transplant, I remember it being very difficult at first showing my scar,” the singer said in an Instagram post. “Now, more than ever, I feel confident in who I am and what I went through…and I’m proud of that.”

You can check out more reactions from fans below.

(via Stereogum)

Much like the rest of the United States, California is experiencing a new surge in COVID-19 cases and local governments are acting to limit the spread ahead of what could be a deadly winter in America. Some of those rules, it seems, may impact where the San Francisco 49ers play home games.

Santa Clara County, where the team practices and plays, reportedly banned contact sports even played outside.

As ESPN’s Adam Schefter noted, that may mean the Niners do need to find a new place to both play home games and practice, at least until the new restrictions end.

The easy answer could be simply playing home games in opposing team’s stadiums, though if those games have spectators there’s a competitive advantage that could be at play. It’s another wrinkle in what’s been a very odd NFL season. And though the moves are a new complication and may be frustrating for some fans, it’s far from the only way the coronavirus pandemic is currently impacting the NFL. Another pair of games were moved this week due to infections on both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens. More positive cases were reported on Saturday, putting even the Tuesday rescheduling of that game into some doubt.

There’s also the matter of the Denver Broncos and their quarterbacks, who may have also been exposed to COVID-19 ahead of their Week 12 matchup.

In not orchestrating a bubble and playing in home stadiums and the larger country as a whole, the NFL invited a slew of potential problems in actually pulling off a full season in a pandemic. As the weeks go on, it seems more and more like the league is running out of ways to deal with them all without significantly impacting its schedule and the way seasons play out.

It’s been a tough year for Syracuse football. Dino Babers’ fifth season in The Salt City has seen one win, a bunch of losses, and a program that looks stuck in the mud after failing to build on a 10-win campaign in 2018. They did, however, have a chance to pick up another win on Saturday afternoon against a respectable NC State side.

With 5:20 left in the fourth quarter, the Orange got the ball on their 25 yard-line. Facing a 36-29 deficit, Syracuse marched down the field, converting a trio of third downs and one fourth down to get the ball to the Wolfpack nine with 52 seconds left.

First and second down were a pair of runs — one went for two yards, the other went for none. Syracuse lined back up for third down, and over the next 20 seconds or so of real time, calamity ensued.

For one, shout out to Orange signal caller Rex Culpepper for finding a way to keep the third down play alive, because this is a really sticky situation and he found a way to make something happen before NC State’s defense got home. After that, yikes. To give them the benefit of the doubt to an extent, the offense would have basically needed to get to the line of scrimmage and just run four verts, but there is a reason that someone (I assume on NC State) screamed “oh thank god,” and someone (team unclear) screamed “oh sh*t” once they realized what happened. Time and score are everything, folks.

The best story in college basketball comes by way of the Ohio Bobcats. Jason Preston, a junior guard for the team who stuffed the stat sheet last season, put forth quite the effort in the team’s narrow loss to eighth-ranked Illinois on Friday night. What drew him plenty of praise, though, was when the path he traveled to get to Athens was laid out on the broadcast.

As the story goes, Preston went through unfathomable personal hardship as a teenager, was so lightly-recruited of a high school basketball player that he was going to college as a student, showed out at an AAU tournament, and picked up a pair of scholarship offers after posting his highlight video to Twitter. You really need to hear the whole story to believe it, and even then, the whole thing is unbelievable.

It’s hard not to find this whole story amazing, and in the eyes of one NBA player, Preston’s path is quite admirable. Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart praised Preston for having the kind of attitude that “will get you all you ever need.”

During the 2019-20 campaign, Preston did everything for the Bobcats, averaging 16.8 points, 7.4 assists, 6.4 rebounds, and 1.4 steals per game. Against Illinois, he went for 31 with eight dimes and six boards as Ohio barely fell, 77-75.

The Detroit Lions are in the market for a new head coach. The team announced on Saturday afternoon that Matt Patricia, who the team hired in the lead-up to the 2018 campaign, had been relieved of his duties after two and a half years on the job. Additionally, Detroit will part ways with general manager Bob Quinn, who has been in his role since 2016.

The news of a shakeup in the Motor City isn’t a particularly big surprise, as Patricia has seemingly been on the hot seat for some time. The former New England Patriots’ defensive coordinator went 13-29-1 in his tenure in Detroit, with his final game coming in a high-profile loss to the Houston Texans on Thanksgiving. Despite Patricia’s reputation for being a defensive coach, Deshaun Watson and the Texans carved the Lions up in a 41-25 win, and the Lions sit 30th in the NFL in scoring defense.

According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, the Lions will turn to offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell for the remainder of the campaign.

Bevell was hired as the team’s offensive coordinator at the start of last season and has no prior head coaching experience. Patricia’s ouster comes as the team sits 4-7 on the year, putting Detroit in last place of the NFC North.