Category: News

Republican politicians continue to insist that locking down the country to help quarantine against the raging pandemic is a bad idea. There hasn’t been a federal lockdown in America yet, but those who are opposed to it happening do keep asserting how against it they are. Similarly, over the past few months, Van Morrison has made his anti-lockdown stance clear with several songs, including a dismissal of social-distancing as pseudo science.

Today, it was revealed that another classic rock legend, Eric Clapton, has joined Van in the sentiment, and their new song “Stand And Deliver” will be released early next month. Obviously, plenty of fans of these two musical icons have been saddened to learn that their heroes don’t believe in logic and science. However, one of the aforementioned Republican politicians has welcomed news of the song with open arms, and even gone so far as to assert that its existence will help “save the arts.”

Texas senator Ted Cruz shared several tweets today on the subject, beginning this morning:

After his first few initial tweets, Cruz decided to continue his line of thought with some longer commentary. “The irony is rich. Dems are destroying many of their core constituencies: Hollywood, Broadway, pro sports, and Rock & Roll. Bravo to Clapton and Van Morrison for having the courage to stand up to virtue-signaling Lefties & defend the thousands who work in the arts.”

Ironically, every Democrat I know also wants to keep people safe and save the arts — with support from the government and by following guidelines set out by scientists and doctors.

Cards Against Humanity usually makes the best of Black Friday by making fun of the entire concept in the first place. But this year, rather than sell outlandish things for 99 percent off or actual boxes of feces, the gaming company decided the best thing to do was just call the stunts off altogether.

Instead, Cards Against Humanity announced on Friday it would donate its Black Friday budget directly to charity and encouraged fans of the vulgar party game to join them in doing so. In a landing page on their website, the company said a prank lampooning consumer capitalism felt “wrong” amid a pandemic and the company was moving in a different direction instead.

“The pandemic is raging, our democracy is crumbling, and throwing money at a prank just felt wrong. Instead, we’re donating our entire $250,000 Black Friday budget to nonprofits suggested by our staff. These organizations fight for causes we care about — we believe that Black Lives Matter, that voting rights are human rights, and that no one should go hungry or homeless,” the statement read. “So if you came here ready to pay us $5 to fill the Chicago River with spaghetti or whatever, please give your money to one of these groups instead.”

The five charities getting $50,000 each — the Equal Justice Initiative, The New Georgia Project, The National Low Income Housing Coalition, Brave Space Alliance and the Laughing At My Nightmare COVID-19 Relief Fund — were named on the page and also included links so others could make donations directly to their causes instead.

Cards Against Humanity has been particularly sensitive to life in 2020, as earlier in the pandemic it released an early print-at-home version of its kid-friendly game and has long allowed printable PDF versions of their game to circulate without copyright concerns. They’ve also lampooned Black Friday holiday sales and still offered their own Christmas promotions, so it’s possible they do something more substantial for fans looking to add to their decks. But if you were hoping to buy a deeply discounted used car from them or something, you’ll have to wait until next year.

I think Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal love one another. At the very least, the pair have found a kindred spirit in terms of an ex-basketball player who is good at going back-and-forth with one another on the set of Inside the NBA, and both guys appear to be really appreciative of that.

Both Chuck and Shaq don’t limit their loving roasts to just the set of TNT’s revered basketball analysis show. Whenever they pop up in public for an extended period, they always seem to find a way to get a joke off at the other’s expense. The latest example of this came during The Match 3, the charity golf event in which Chuck and Phil Mickelson took on Peyton Manning and Steph Curry over 18 holes.

During the broadcast, Mickelson gave Barkley a special bit of inspiration to send golf balls flying, plastering Shaq’s face on them while The Big Aristotle made a cameo during the broadcast.

“This the ugliest ball in the world right here,” Barkley said.

Shaq did get the last laugh here, though. Barkley didn’t exactly get a hold of this one. He also has a major financial incentive for Barkley to continue shanking shots, as he dropped $100,000 on Curry and Manning to win the whole thing.

It was really weird watching the Golden State Warriors look mortal last season. Yes, there were a number of unique circumstances that contributed to this, but recent NBA history has been defined by Golden State having an air of indomitability around them.

Think of what it took for them to get to that point — devastating injuries to a pair of likely Hall of Fame inductees in the previous NBA Finals, and one of those players leaving in the offseason, and an injury suffered by a third likely Hall of Fame inductee during the season, and a number of players who played crucial roles during their reign of dominance (Andre Iguodala, Shaun Livingston, etc.) no longer being on the roster, and Draymond Green getting load managed, and this, and that, and a few other things, and a few more.

Basically, if it took a remarkable sequence of events for the Warriors to land Kevin Durant in free agency in 2016 — a cap spike, an already-loaded roster with a spot for him, a pair of 3-1 series comebacks in the Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals that went in opposite directions for the Dubs — it took, arguably, an even more remarkable sequence of events for the house of cards to come tumbling down so magnificently last season. The once-inevitable Golden State Warriors went 15-50, the worst record in the NBA by four games.

The renewed optimism around this team took a major blow last week, when Klay Thompson blew out his achilles. He is set to miss his second consecutive season, which is awful news for anyone who likes basketball, even if they are someone who views the Warriors as a New York Yankees-esque evil empire. But like Yankees teams of old, their stretch of excellence raised the bar to the point that all hurdles are expected to be cleared, no matter how gigantic they are.

As such, Golden State is expected to compete for a title, even if one could argue very easily that they are not in the same tier as squads like the Milwaukee Bucks or the Los Angeles teams, regardless of whether Thompson would have been able to play. This begs the question: How the heck could the Warriors win their fourth title in seven seasons?

The easiest and most likely answer, of course, is they cannot. It is impossibly difficult to win a championship, and even the team with the best odds as of this writing (the Lakers) have implied odds of only about 22 percent to lift the Larry O’Brien trophy. At +2000, Golden State is tied for the seventh-best odds to win it all, and that’s still quite the mountain to climb.

It almost feels silly to say this, but Steph Curry and Green are simultaneously crucial and extremely easy to figure out in this whole equation. If the two of them do not play like the absolute best versions of themselves — Curry a two-time league MVP who is in perpetual control of everything on the offensive end of the floor, Green a defensive stalwart and magnificent playmaker — this entire conversation is over. The Warriors cannot achieve what they want to achieve without this happening. They both had strange seasons last year, with Curry missing all but five games due to injury and Green never needing to get out of first gear. The grind of their run atop the league was so physically and mentally draining that, if all goes well, they will return to the team re-energized this time around.

Everything else is far trickier. The Warriors have no clear answer as to who defends Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, who guards whichever of LeBron James or Anthony Davis isn’t being checked by Green, or who is going to bang with Nikola Jokic, or who checks James Harden or Damian Lillard. Firepower beyond their former MVP is a question, too. For the brilliance of Curry and Green, Steve Kerr has to figure out a way to make the puzzle pieces fit around them in such a way that everyone’s abilities can be maximized.

Take, for example, the entire frontcourt beyond Green. Golden State has to find out what it has in James Wiseman, the No. 2 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft. Theoretically, he can anchor the defense and be a devastating lob threat, but that is a ton to put on someone who has not played in a competitive basketball game since last November due to the NCAA’s general desire to make everything it touches worse. Kevon Looney has been reliable over the years, but only appeared in 20 games last season and has never been much more than a role player. Guys like Marquese Chriss and Eric Paschall got a ton of run last year and showed flashes — Paschall especially, as the former Villanova standout averaged 14 points and 4.6 rebounds in 27.6 minutes a night. Chriss, who is only 23, has never consistently put it all together, while Paschall has to show he can still contribute in a lesser role on a team with higher expectations.

In the backcourt, the Warriors made a pair of savvy moves by bringing in Kelly Oubre as Thompson insurance and signing heady backup point guard Brad Wanamaker away from Boston. Andrew Wiggins is still here, while Damion Lee is in a similar boat to Paschall as someone who looked nice last season but did not exactly get high-stakes reps.

Things can basically be broken down to the Chriss/Lee/Paschall camp — basically, how do these guys respond to expectations after cutting their teeth in a low-stakes environment last season? — and whatever Oubre and Wiggins give them. I will not sit here and say this is a make-or-break year for Wiggins, because everyone (myself included!) has gotten burnt by thinking the Wiggins breakout could be on the horizon. Having all the time he’s had in the Warriors’ system could, perhaps, really help him, and maybe the team can maximize his athletic gifts and occasional ability to score in bunches, but that might be an overly-rosy hope for someone who has never quite put it all together despite being the former No. 1 pick in the Draft.

Oubre gives them a similar player to Wiggins in terms of being something of a black hole with interesting physical gifts, although he settled into a role as a nice No. 2 option next to Devin Booker in Phoenix next year. Neither dude is a world-class shooter, but playing next to Curry and Green will mean they’ll get really good looks, and they have to knock them down somewhat reliably. They can both attack the rim and take dudes off the bounce a bit, too, a pair of skills that could work nicely with their teammates’ ability to playmaker.

And while neither guy is prime Gary Payton as a defender, they have the length and athleticism to contribute on that end of the floor if they’re engaged, which has been a huge question mark for both in their careers — this could be the most important contribution that these two and Wiseman can make, because while Golden State’s offense should be much better than it was in last season (30th in offensive rating), there’s no guarantee its defense (26th) will take a requisite step forward.

Again, there are so many ifs here that the Warriors winning a championship can be really hard to imagine. That is before we even consider that Curry will turn 33 during the season and Green will turn 31, and that teams seemed to relish beating up on them last year as payback for all the times the Dubs beat up on them during their run atop the league, and it’s plausible teams will find that extra gear to beat a now-healthy Golden State side.

For all of that, the Warriors have earned the benefit of the doubt to some extent. Their run has been defined in part by their ability to come up with answers when questions arise, and this season will certainly present a whole lot of those. Whether Curry, Green, Kerr, and everyone else can answer them will be the difference between Golden State being in the title hunt again, or the fat lady warming up her vocal cords to belt out a song to formally announce the end of this era.

Fivio Foreign’s debut album B.I.B.L.E is reportedly due in December and he’s been dropping off new singles for the last several weeks. Today’s entry to that collection of singles is “Trust,” which arrived with a mellow music video that offsets the energetic production from Axl Beats. The video finds Fivio and his friends having a house party and even features a cameo from the late Chicago rapper King Von.

Fivio’s star rose like a rocket this year after he was selected to represent the burgeoning Brooklyn drill movement on the XXL 2020 Freshman Class. During the customary cypher for Fivio’s group, his flirtation with Mulatto made the two trend on Twitter, then he capitalized with the Polo G-featuring “Bop It” video.

With videos for “Move Like A Boss” featuring Young M.A., “Zoo York” with Lil Tjay and Pop Smoke, and “Ah Ah Ah” with DreamDoll, Fivio Foreign is picking up steam ahead of his release, which also included the song “Salute” with Hit-Boy and Big Sean.

While there isn’t a release date announced for B.I.B.L.E just yet, Fivio aims to have the album released sometime in 2020. With only one month to go, there isn’t much time left so keep your eyes open.

Watch the “Trust” video above.

In the early days of COVID-19 lockdown, movies and shows dealing with communicable diseases were extremely popular on streaming services and people hunkered down and attempted to understand why coronavirus required radically altering daily life in order to protect others from the deadly disease.

One of those movies was the 2011 film Contagion, which detailed an outbreak of a disease that quickly causes chaos all over the world as scientists try to grasp how to create a vaccine to limit its chaos. And one of the stars of the film says he learned from experts working on the movie just how likely a real-life disease similar to the one from the movie would unleash chaos on Earth.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jude Law explained that scientists working to make the movie accurate told him that a similar virus had the very real possibility of spreading death the way COVID-19 has in 2020.

“There was absolutely the sense that this was going to happen,” Law said. “The great scientists on set with us who had worked with Scott [Z. Burns] the writer and [director] Steven [Soderbergh] were very learned and experienced individuals who knew what to expect. And they all said to us that this was going to happen — and it was a case of when rather than if.”

He continued, “The way they described it, which is exactly as it has happened, just made sense. What’s scary is you learn in a set like that because you’re being advised by experts, but it doesn’t necessarily sit.”

Contagion‘s experts aren’t the only ones predicting the likelihood of a pandemic, of course, but it’s yet another eerie warning that went largely unheeded by the general population. Not everything in Contagion matches up with what we’ve actually experienced in 2020, but even the trailer is familiar enough to be downright unsettling. Law said that the initial warnings stayed with him after making the film, but seeing it all play out this year brought back what he learned during filming.

“When 2020 started, and we heard about what was initially happening in China, what fast became apparent around the world, it rang alarm bells,” Law said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t hugely surprised.”

[via THR]

The 2020-21 NBA season is scheduled to start on Dec. 22, 2020, giving the league its highest-profile day on the calendar with its traditional Christmas Day slate. The season will, obviously, look much different than usual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with largely empty stadiums and a packed slate to wrap things up prior to next summer’s Olympics.

Before things begin, the league will put forth an eight day-long preseason to get teams ready to go on the heels of either a truncated offseason or a remarkably long one, depending on whether or not the squads participated in the Orlando Bubble. Here’s the entire slate, which runs from Dec. 11 until Dec. 19.

Obviously the big, grand preseason tours that some squads will go on to places like China won’t occur this year, but the league is still putting a handful of intriguing matchups in this period. Things start off in a big way with five games on the opening evening of the preseason, with one of the tilts — Clippers vs. Lakers — seeming ripe for a rematch 14 days later on Christmas. There are a few other games that look like potential Dec. 25 matchups, like both of Boston’s, who play Philly on the 15th and Brooklyn on the 18th.

There is no word on exactly when the NBA will release its full regular season schedule, but Andrew Lopez of ESPN has reported that the league will split things into halves, and it’s believed the first half schedule will come out close to Dec. 1.

It seems all the best stories from Complex‘s Hot Ones interview show come from the segment in which host Sean Evans pulls a photo from the guest’s Instagram and prompts the guest to explain it. It’s also probably no coincidence this segment usually comes after the first few wings have lowered the subject’s guard but before those last three tear them apart and reduce them to coughing fits, tears, and pained contortions.

Shortly before Lil Nas X wound up doing all the latter (while struggling to guzzle an entire carton of soy milk, no less), he was asked just what John Mayer once said to him to make him cry as a photo of the two flashed across the screen. “Maybe he said something super inspirational,” Nas answered. “John Mayer’s a super cool dude. He just says cool sh*t.” He elaborates that the two were at Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry’s party once, “And then John Mayer just walks by the pool and says something super cool and walks away. And it made me cry a little bit.”

After that, though, the interview quickly turns toward Nas’s expert use of the internet and memes — right before he manages to turn himself into another one. Unfortunately, he has no one to blame but himself (seriously, watch to end).

Watch Lil Nas’ full interview with Hot Ones above.

As the COVID-19 cases in the Ravens’ organization pile up, including for MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson, the NFL has rescheduled both of their next two matchups.

The Steelers game that was initially scheduled for the night of Thanksgiving has been moved to Tuesday night, while the subsequent Thursday night game against Dallas, which was regularly scheduled as a Thursday Night Football bout, will become a double-header next Monday night alongside ESPN’s usual broadcast.

The decisions “were made out of an abundance of caution to ensure the health” of all personnel involved, the league said in a statement Friday afternoon.

Baltimore has been under intense scrutiny during its outbreak because the team’s strength and conditioning coach has routinely shirked mask and social distancing requirements, according to multiple reports. In addition to Jackson, defensive lineman Calais Campbell, who considered sitting out the year due to having asthma, tested positive in recent days. And on Jackson specifically, he will be unable to play against Pittsburgh despite the game being pushed due to when his positive test came.

Recent reports suggest at least 12 Ravens players have tested positive for the virus in addition the coach in question, who some have indicated was symptomatic and still present in the team facility.

Wheel of Fortune has a long history of players making hilarious gaffes, but a contestant getting the right answer has rarely caused problems on the show. Wednesday’s Wheel may be a clear exception, though, as a contestant was actually scolded and called “ungrateful” when he questioned a puzzle’s construction after he answered correctly.

It all started when contestant Darin correctly solved the puzzle about items that start with the word “kitchen.”

“Cabinet, oven, towels, sink,” Darin said, correctly. But after the celebration music was over, he asked a question about the weirdness of the phrase “kitchen oven.” correctly answered. However, the contestant pointed out it didn’t necessarily make sense.

“Kitchen oven? What was that?” Darin said.

“Yeah, where else would you keep an oven?” Sajak responded, before he riffed a bit.

“You won! Don’t argue, Darin! You got the puzzle!” Sajak said. “Ungrateful players, I’ve had it!”

Sajak raised his voice, perhaps a bit surprisingly, before he said “no I’m only teasing” at a regular volume. But the moment was a bit of a shock for fans, some of which thought Darin had made a good point.

It raised some noise on social media, and fans also noted that later on, Sajak apologized again to the contestant he scolded in the moment.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Darin,” Sajak said at the end of the show.

It was a moment that had fans talking on Twitter, as some thought Sajak was clearly kidding while others wondered if he was actually frustrated by the comments. It’s Sajak’s job to give fans good TV, and the jokes are a part of it. But considering he actually went back and apologized at the end of the show, it’s likely that even he knew he may have been a bit too harsh on Wednesday.