Category: News

Dan Harmon has apologized for a lot of things in recent years, but on Thursday some online started demanding an apology for a topic he’d already covered. The Rick And Morty and Community creator drew new ire on Thursday for something that had already garnered an apology: a parody of Dexter that many deemed inappropriate because he simulates the rape of a baby doll.

The clip, which circulated anew this week along with a “save the children” hashtag, is the latest attempt to “cancel” something related to Adult Swim, apparently with regard to child safety. Last month, a woman went viral for apparently discovering that the late night adult animation block exists in the first place. But Harmon’s video was something that already went viral years after its 2009 creation that parodied the Dexter series on Showtime.

As Deadline noted in 2018, Harmon apologized for the “distasteful” video he made as part of a comedy festival that saw Harmon delete his Twitter account when the decade-old clip surfaced.

The video featuring the scene from Daryl, which debuted in 2009 during a monthly comedy sketch festival called Channel 101, surfaced on conservative/right-wing blogs, which is also where information of decade-old tweets about rape by Guardians of the Galaxy writer-director James Gunn first got out before spreading online and leading to Gunn’s firing by Disney. Harmon, who was at San Diego’s Comic-Con, promoting Rick and Morty, deleted his Twitter account in the immediate aftermath of the appalling video’s release on Sunday.

Harmon issued an apology as the video spread, and both he and Adult Swim distanced themselves from the attempt at comedy that was not well received in 2009 or 2018.

“In 2009, I made a “pilot” which strove to parody the series Dexter and only succeeded in offending. I quickly realized the content was way too distasteful and took the video down immediately,” Harmon said in 2018 according to Deadline. “Nobody should ever have to see what you saw and for that, I sincerely apologize.”

Still, clips of the Daryl bit apparently were online in places in 2020, and they were circulated by a number of accounts that have focused in recent weeks on child trafficking and sexual abuse. The video, and calls to “cancel” both Harmon and Rick And Morty, circulated with the #savethechildren hashtag, which as Snopes has reported, that hashtag had been co-opted by some sharing misinformation about pedophilia rings and conspiracy theories. The hashtag, in fact, was reportedly temporarily disabled as the social media site had to remove content that actually depicted child abuse and conspiracies rather than rallying support against it.

All of that, as well as the reason Harmon’s video regained viral appeal, is a complicated issue in and of itself. But what’s clear is that Harmon has already publicly attempted to own up to what was a joke that definitely fell flat and hasn’t aged well. But apologizing for something does not erase it altogether. And the list of Harmon controversies is certainly long as well. Harmon has apologized for a number of things deemed insensitive to fans over the years, as well as the very serious alleged sexual harassment of former Community writer Megan Ganz.

Still, the latest controversy seems to be an old one, something that’s already been addressed and one that may have been reignited for a dubious reason. The campaigns to “cancel” people and things have evolved swiftly in recent years, and in some cases their rationale and ideology have shifted wildly as well. Considering the conspiracy-minded nature of this one, it seems unlikely that it actually does what it hopes to: cancel Rick And Morty.

Coming into Thursday, the San Antonio Spurs were still alive in the Western Conference playoff chase. However, the Spurs needed a great deal of help from the Phoenix Suns, Portland Trail Blazers and Memphis Grizzlies and, by the time San Antonio tipped off against the Utah Jazz in prime time, Gregg Popovich and company knew that their postseason hopes were dashed. While that would be a difficult reality for any team, the result also meant that the Spurs’ legendary playoff streak is over and, after the Spurs’ 118-112 loss to the Jazz, Popovich was asked for his thoughts.

As part of a lengthy press conference in which Popovich praised his team for playing at a high level in Orlando, he also broke into an apparent impersonation of President Donald Trump, using the “fake news” descriptor and joking as if the playoff streak did not, in fact, come to a close.

Popovich has not been shy about criticizing Trump in the past, making his less than positive thoughts known on multiple occasions. This time, he did so in light-hearted fashion, though he was able to get a more subtle point across in the process.

The San Antonio Spurs made the NBA Playoffs every season for more than two decades but, before the team exited the Orlando bubble, the face of the franchise managed to make news in on-brand fashion.

Tattooing, like any other skill, requires practice. The problem is, how do you practice permanently putting a nipple on someone else’s body?

This genius tattoo artist found a solution. “Shannon McCauley gives out free tattoos to the people who volunteer their bodies to help her practice tattooing nipples.

McCauley is a tattoo artist at Steadfast Tattoo in Rochester, NY. She went absolutely viral after tweeting a photo of a leg with a nipple with the caption, “Tattooed my first nipple on skin. I’ll be covering this tattoo for free once it’s healed. I’m learning this so I can tattoo in surgeon’s offices and help breast cancer survivors that had mastectomies.”

She later said she’ll also use this skill for people in the trans community. Simply amazing. You can visit Shannon’s instagram to see even more photos of nipples tattooed on legs.

Tattooing is very common for people that have gone through mastectomies because surgeons can only do so much in terms of pigmentation. Tattoos on the hand have a practically infinite range of shade and color. Artists like Shannon are necessary in helping people through the recovery process.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly where the gritty reboot trend started, but you could do a lot worse than Batman Begins, 15 years ago this summer. Like most things that spiral out of control, it started out fine. Good, even. The entire Dark Knight trilogy breathed new life into the superhero genre and changed the way we think about what action movies can be. I have no major complaints with any of that. The problem was that its success led to a slew of imitators, and that led to a slew of other imitators, and then there we were last Christmas contemplating the notion of a gritty Scrooge in a bleak reimagining of A Christmas Carol FX. Why? Why did we need that? Who was clamoring for a smoldering deviant Scrooge with a jawline sharp enough to slice the Christmas turkey? It’s too much. It’s entirely too much. It has to stop. Death to the gritty reboot.

Not forever. I’ll concede that much. The reason Batman Begins worked was because it was new, a reset after things had gotten a little too loose in the franchise. (Please do watch The Dark Knight and Batman & Robin back-to-back someday, just for the ride.) But things are just hopelessly out of hand. The first season of HBO’s Perry Mason series opened with a dead baby and somehow got darker from there. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is getting a just-announced gritty hour-long reboot. Last fall, there were rumors floating around about a “what if Clueless but also possibly murder?” series being shopped to networks. A few years ago, there were multiple dark Wizard of Oz projects in the works, some of them, like the short-lived Emerald City, trying to capitalize on the Game of Thrones heat, others, like the Syfy one that never made it to air, making Dorothy a man and arming her to the teeth and sending her to the future, for reasons I would have loved to hear.

My favorite example of the unnecessary gritty reboot, though, is the Little Women one that was in development at The CW. Do you remember Gritty Little Women? I do. I will never forget it. And I doubt you will either after you read this description, which manages to squeeze the Holy Trinity of Dark Reimaginings — “gritty,” “dystopic,” and “unravel a conspiracy” — into a single sentence.

Little Women is described as a hyper-stylized, gritty adaptation of the 1868 novel by Louisa May Alcott, in which disparate half-sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy band together in order to survive the dystopic streets of Philadelphia and unravel a conspiracy that stretches far beyond anything they have ever imagined – all while trying not to kill each other in the process.

I like that it says “the dystopic streets of Philadelphia” and not “the streets of a dystopic Philadelphia,” because their version implies that the regular, present-day streets of Philadelphia are a dystopia, which is not entirely unfair. (Go Birds.) But more importantly, what is this? Why was Little Women almost turned into futuristic True Detective? Why can’t we just have some nice, normal things? Hell, even USA, once home to a smorgasbord of Blue Skies, Characters Welcome programming has switched gears to keep up, making shows like The Sinner, which, to be fair, is not a reboot and not as egregiously bleak for bleak’s sake, but still a far cry from hotshots in sunglasses solving crime at the beach.

And again, I ask, why? Why are we so hellbent on doing this? It is because we’ve all lost the plot a bit, to the point that we’ve started confusing serious and sad with quality, as though anything that doesn’t involve a dead body in a dystopia lacks the stakes to be quote-unquote prestige television? I think that’s part of it, mixed in with a general trend towards copying previous successes and squeezing every cent out of every piece of recognizable intellectual property we have. Whatever it is, there’s something masochistic about the whole endeavor, about the whole “it’s just like that thing you enjoyed but now everyone is really quite miserable” aspect of it. We’re getting perilously close to a gritty Looney Tunes reboot that kills off Wile E. Coyote in the cold open and features two troubled detectives trying to pin the murder on the Road Runner. I shouldn’t have typed that. I might have just given someone an idea.

It doesn’t have to be this way, either. We can still put new twists on old things without making everyone a hopelessly depressed and unshaven heap of loose skin. Look at HBO’s Watchmen series. That took a beloved story filled with beloved characters and gave it a present-day spin that was timely, and poignant, and at times flat-out silly. It was proof that you can do everything in one show, from making a comment on racial injustice to updating iconic characters to depicting a fart so powerful that it requires two separate captions.

We can do this. We have to do this. It doesn’t have to be forever. There’s room for a gritty reboot here and there, maybe a few years down the line. But it has to stop for now. Gritty Scrooge was my breaking point. I’m not ready for Gritty Fresh Prince, too.

There have been a number of rule changes in golf that have aimed to give players a touch more leeway for accidental errors rather than being brutally penalizing, but a rule that has never changed is that a player — or his caddie — cannot test the sand in a bunker.

The most famous application of this rule came in the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits where Dustin Johnson grounded his club in a sandy area on the 18th hole that, while it didn’t look like a bunker, was treated as one by the local rules. That led to a two-stroke penalty and, as such, he fell out of a tie for the lead and did not make it into a playoff. That example has led to players at all levels being extra careful when in the sand, but an even wilder ending took place at this year’s U.S. Amateur at Bandon Dunes.

Agustin Segundo Oliva Pinto and Tyler Strafaci arrived at the 18th hole tied in their Round of 16 match when Oliva Pinto found the front right greenside bunker. As he was getting set to pick a club and figuring out how to play his shot, his caddie inexplicably walked into the bunker, bent down, and rubbed the sand with his hand — a violation of the rules that was captured very clearly on camera.

In match play, the penalty is the loss of the hole, which meant Strafaci got the 1 UP win without them completing the hole. What made it all the more bizarre was the caddie attempting to lie about touching the sand to the rules officials when this was televised on Golf Channel with multiple angles showing he clearly did. Ultimately they ruled correctly he had broken the rule, the penalty was assessed, and Oliva Pinto’s week at Bandon Dunes came to an unfortunate and rather stunning end.

Earlier this summer, Upworthy shared a story about the ugly racist past of the seemingly innocuous song played by a lot of ice cream trucks.

“Turkey in the Straw,” is known to modern-day school children as, “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” But the melody was also used for the popular, and incredibly racist, 1900s minstrel songs, “Old Zip Coon” and “Ni**er Love a Watermelon.”

Zip Coon was a stock minstrel show character who was used as a vehicle to mock free Black men. He was an arrogant, ostentatious man who wore flashy clothes and attempted to speak like affluent white members of society, usually to his own disparagement.

“Old Zip Coon”

OLD ZIP COON – 1834 – Performed by Tom Roush

www.youtube.com

In the early 1900s, cards with racist depictions of Black people eating watermelons while making wide-eyed looks, were popular and inspired another racist song that used the melody: “Ni**er Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Ni**er love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

Ni**er love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

For here, they’re made with a half a pound of co’l

There’s nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon

“Ni**er Love a Watermelon”

The Truth About The Ice Cream Truck Jingle | Ni**er Love A Watermelon

www.youtube.com

Minstrel music was popular in ice cream parlors at the turn of the century, so when Americans began moving to the suburbs after World War II, the music was played from ice cream trucks to recreate the feeling of the parlor.

Good Humor started the first ice cream truck in the ’20s and had one of the largest fleets until it went retail-only. In 1978 it sold off its iconic trucks to independent contractors, some of which are still operating to this day.

Good Humor is still synonymous with the ice cream man, so the company decided to use its influence to help the ice cream truck industry replace “Turkey in the Straw” with a song that “brings joy to every community.”

So it teamed up with RZA, the legendary producer, rapper, composer, and founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan. RZA has also scored a number of films, most notably “Kill Bill: Volume 1” (2003) and “Kill Bill: Volume 2” (2004).

The new jingle will be available to ice cream trucks in the U.S. starting in August through music boxes from Nichols Electronics, the sole manufacturer of electronic music boxes for ice cream trucks in the United States.

In the wake of a renewed discussion over the jingle’s history, the company’s owner, Mark Nichols, told Good Humor it would remove “Turkey in the Straw” from its music boxes.

Here’s the new jingle.

Good Humor x RZA: A New Ice Cream Truck Jingle for a New Era

www.youtube.com

Upworthy got the chance to talk with RZA about his new jingle, ice cream, and how we should deal with troublesome art and artists from the past.

Upworthy: How did this collaboration with Good Humor come about?

RZA: Since the ice cream truck jingle has a problematic history, Good Humor reached out to me to bring in a new jingle and a new vibe for a new era.

UP: What was your inspiration for the new song?

RZA: First and foremost, I was thinking about ice cream and joy. I wrote it in a major key so when a child and a parent hear it they both feel a sense of joy. I made sure the song was rooted in joy. And so my basic foundation was like, if I can get a joyous vibe in the melody then half of my job would be done. I just kept playing around until something felt joyous to me. I tested it on my wife and my son and they said, “It feels good.”

UP: It’s like you ran a test on your kid asking, “Will this get you running out of the door?”

RZA: Exactly. Everybody loves ice cream. When the ice cream truck comes to the neighborhood kids stop doing what they’re doing, yo. I don’t care if it’s jump rope, hula-hooping, playing skully, hopscotch, whatever, you would stop, yo.

You’d abandon what you’re doing to chase this truck down. And don’t let the guy start moving before you get there, that means you gotta run ’til he stops at the next building.

UP: What immediately came to my mind after hearing about the project was the song, ‘Ice Cream’ by Raekown that you produced. Although, that song has a real minor-key feel.

RZA: I also have the song, “C.R.E.A.M,” both of those have melodic piano, but this song had to have a really positive intention. But it’s still gotta have some Wu-ism to it. So if you listen to it you’ll hear that it is a major-key melody but I still go to the minor chord.

It is similar to a song with a chord progression of [Wu-Tang’s] “Can it Be All So Simple?” I wanted to be sure that it had a taste of that Wu-ism in it, but not going dark at all.

The Story Behind the New Ice Cream Truck Jingle from Good Humor x RZA

www.youtube.com

UP: Was there any thought given to the sound system that’s on the ice cream truck?

RZA: We were privileged to have Nichols Electronics speakers sent to the studio so my mix engineer had a chance to demo it through the speaker so we know how it’s gonna sound when these ice cream trucks get it in their hands. What’s so funny is the song still has a little bit of bump that the normal jingle couldn’t have.

UP: Did you give any consideration to the fact that the ice cream man is going to have to hear this song for eight hours a day while he’s driving around?

RZA: I think the way this track was composed it’s going to take a long time for him to get bored with it. You listen to my music, don’t you notice something like years later?

UP: With every context you hear something different.

RZA: Yeah, so I consciously stuck a few things in there. There’s some sound effects and strings underneath that you can’t really hear at first listen. But after a while, he’ll have fun exploring the track. I think the loop point is fun. It’s like a conversation that doesn’t end.

UP: I know you’re a vegan, but as a kid, when the ice cream man came up the street, what did you line up for?

RZA: For me, strawberry shortcake. You got to imagine a kid who’s economically depressed growing up. But I would go to the grocery store and pack bags and you could make yourself a dollar during the summer break. And if that ice cream truck comes, I knew where my dollar was going, yo. I would eat the outside layer first and then eat the ice cream. My buddy Ghost, [rapper Ghostface Killah] he was a toasted almond guy.

UP: Which member of the Wu-Tang has the biggest sweet tooth?

RZA: I still would give it to Ghost. He still has his sweet tooth.

via Good Humor

UP: These days people are reconsidering culture with problematic histories, such as “Turkey in the Straw.” As an artist, how do you think society should come to grips with art or artists with questionable pasts?

RZA: I think that if we have a chance to right a wrong, we should. That’s a blessing in life to be able to right your wrongs. As an artist myself, I don’t think art should be censored, but you’ve got to be able to evolve.

Think of the guy who had to draw the solar system when we knew about three planets. He only drew from his life experience. Now years later, do we correct him? Yes.

I can look at myself and listen back to my old albums and you can hear the aggression. Later, you hear some of my composed pieces and you hear that I’ve been to other parts of the world, you hear that I understand other people’s experiences.

Art has to evolve. If we made mistakes as artists in the past — and art always comes from the heart — then our hearts should be strong enough to accept our mistakes and focus on making things better for the generation we live in now.

UP: It seems like these days there are a lot of people that won’t let people evolve. People get called out for something they did 20 years ago when they aren’t the same person anymore.

RZA: You gotta let people evolve. The guy who first came out of the cave, if he would’ve stayed in we all would’ve stayed in. But he was smart enough to come out so you have to come out too, man.

UP: The reimagining of the ice cream truck song comes as part of a greater social justice movement. One of the things you’re known for is being a strategic thinker. You launched a successful five-year-plan for The Wu, practiced martial arts, love chess, have written a lot on philosophy, and referenced the “Art of War” in your work.

What are your thoughts on how Americans are handling the current social justice movement and what strategies would you suggest?

RZA: I think it’s healthy. I think it’s a step in the right direction. The more we step in the right direction the further we get away from the wrong direction.

I grew up in school when we had to do a pledge of allegiance to the flag. I’m one of those kids who stood up, put his hand over his heart and did it every morning. And it says, “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” That’s the pledge that we all took and we should all live up to that pledge.

To me, the strategy of finding ways to speak out for each other when one of us is being mistreated, I think it’s very healthy. I look forward to the day when that pledge is upheld by all of us and enjoyed by all of us.

This interview was edited for time and clarity.

When YouTube announced that a The Karate Kid revival series, Cobra Kai, was on the way in mid-2018, I have to admit to feeling less than excited at the time. Or perhaps I was simply using skepticism as a defense mechanism against the unyielding sea of iffy remakes, reboots, and revivals that clutter up our entertainment landscape. It’s fair to say that many, if not most, of these efforts don’t hit the mark, and the 2010 remake (starring Jaden Smith) of the first movie was alright but didn’t feel necessary. Yet when it came time to revisit rivals Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka), the end product was addictive.

Cobra Kai offered the perfect degree of nostalgia while updating the central dynamic in a compelling way. Two seasons on YouTube Red (now YouTube Premium) turned out to be critic-and-crowd pleasers, but (like virtually every other YouTube original series), the show got canceled. However, Netflix picked up Season 3, which will soon stream at an undisclosed date. In order to prep the stage, the first two seasons are now streaming for free on YouTube before they slide over to Netflix on August 28.

This is fantastic news, obviously, with Cobra Kai now having the opportunity to reach a much larger audience than the 20 million or so YouTube Premium subscribers (many of whom probably don’t have feels for the franchise), as opposed to Netflix’s over 180 million subscribers (representing every age group). The time is right to catch up on this show. Let’s discuss why in as spoiler-free a way as possible.

– All hail the underdogs

The underdog effect, this time describing the series itself, does it again. And almost nothing beats the simple satisfaction of watching an underdog story, whether it’s a boxing movie like The Fighter and Rocky or something outside the sports realm like 8 Mile or Erin Brockovich. Seeing success for characters who (literally) get kicked into the face, and to watch them rise against all odds and claim victory to the tune of some power-anthem/earworm — it’s awesome. And what’s really gratifying about Cobra Kai is that the TV series fashions almost every named character into an underdog. Of course, Daniel’s still riding that underdog wave, but Johnny’s now the principal underdog, given that he’s succeeded at nothing, and no one ever expected him to be better than the 2nd-place loser whose trophy got busted by his abusive coach. He becomes sensei to a group of high-school underdogs and sprays them in the face with a hose, and it’s a great scene. You’ll have to take my word for it.

– The crane-kick controversy continues unabated

I freaking love that Reddit threads exist to debate whether or not that crane-kick was illegal. Even Ralph Macchio has gotten in on the game during interviews to admit that, yeah, it was arguably illegal but justified because Johnny pulled that elbow-to-the-injured-knee move. And Johnny and Daniel argue about it on Cobra Kai, too, so it’s the finishing move that will never die. Frankly, I don’t think the debate (whether or not kicks to the face were prohibited by the refs) will ever be settled, but I do believe that it was at least shady for Daniel to do the crane kick. There was really no way for Johnny to not get kicked in the face at that moment, right? The Miyagi-Do pulled shenanigans with this kick, even if it did make for an iconic shot. It’s prompted endlessly delightful bickering from the audience, which is (let’s face it) a lot less stressful than most online arguments.

– No clear-cut heroes or villains, for the most part

Johnny’s a complicated dude. Yes, he was clearly one of the bad guys back in the day while bullying a defenseless newcomer at high school. In Cobra Kai, though, he’s long since shed the snakeskin. He’s got layers, and we learn a lot about his past and why he became so susceptible to programming by his sensei, John Kreese. Johnny’s actually a pretty good guy, once he gets a taste of what it feels like to enrich other people’s lives. He learns the error of his ways, and there’s a whole lot of character growth. I don’t know if I can say the same for the once-heroic Daniel. True, Daniel is never a villain, but he is pretty high on himself and, well, clueless about his need to feed his own ego, which actually turns out to be a detriment to the well-being of those around him.

– The father-son dynamics are goddamn heartwarming

We’ve got father-son dynamics for both Johnny (with Miguel) and Daniel (with Robby), and both men benefit from these relationships as much as their younger counterparts. What’s funny, though, is that Daniel’s biological son can’t stand karate, and there’s a bit of a switcheroo going on. The sensei-student relationships that do develop feel at home in this universe. Even cooler is how the younger halves of the father-son dynamics do a lot to build up the franchise for a future changing of the guard. One can easily imagine Miguel and Robby opening their own dojos one day and continuing to roundhouse each other’s butts, though students or otherwise. The legacy is strong for both Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, so the future could hold a lot, after the show smartly fashioned itself with cross-generational appeal designed to pull in a new audience.

– Miyagi knows karate and would approve

Pat Morita’s sensei character would no doubt enjoy how the life lessons of this show get as much screentime as the fight training and big showdown scenes combined. And there are a lot of fight-training scenes, so it’s impressive that the show does not cut corners while making character earn their psychological belts as well. Nor does anyone ever do anything to dirty up the Miyagi-do legacy. The flaws that exist in Daniel are not reflective upon his teacher. Instead, they’re down to his failure to grow much at all since the 1980s movies. If Miyagi still lived, he’d be proud of the hard-earned lessons that go down during the series, and he’d probably dig the fight scenes, too.

Yes, the fight choreography of this series is on point, and more importantly, there are no superpowered shortcuts to be found. Just straight-up hard work, whether that means the endless drills on both ends, the unorthodox approaches sometimes taken by Johnny (concrete diving and the aforementioned hose to the face), or the mega-reliance upon balance training by Daniel’s budding crew. The climactic fights each season not only provide adrenaline doses for the audience, but they also push the plot in remarkable ways. As a result, there’s a pretty large question mark to be settled with the Season 3 debut, so yes, it’s time to start binging and get ready for the next chapter.

‘Cobra Kai’ starts streaming on Netflix on August 28.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 And 2 has gotten a lot of buzz in recent weeks, as the Activision remastering of the skateboard video game classics is a few short weeks away from a release date. The game’s Warehouse demo will hit many consoles on Friday, and when it does players may notice some significant tweaks to the name that some tricks have gotten. According to Activision and Tony Hawk himself, the changes are a way to pay tribute to their creator and right a longstanding wrong among skateboarders.

Specifically, the “mute grab” is gone, renamed the Weddle grab. Activision’s rundown of what the Warehouse demo has in store for fans also has an explanation for some renamed tricks, including what most players will know as the “mute grab.”

You may also notice a few newly named tricks: Weddle Grab, Weddle Backflip, and Reacharound Invert. These tricks were created by Chris Weddle, a skater with hearing loss, who pioneered all three tricks. With the launch of the remaster, Vicarious Visions was happy to celebrate Chris’ legacy with the renames and hope fans enjoy these tricks, and dozens upon dozens more, in this demo and in the full game.

And as Tony Hawk himself explained in an Instagram post, the rebranding of the tricks is an effort to not only give Weddle credit for the moves, but also to more accurately frame the skater’s importance in the skate community as well as correct the “naive” way the trick was named by skaters much younger and less understanding than they are today.

The post recounts the origins of the “mute” name, which came not from Weddle’s disability but his quiet nature at the park. But over the years as the sport grew, Hawk and others felt he wasn’t properly being recognized for the moves and Weddle himself preferred it had a different name, and so it will appear differently in the game next month.

It’s a really cool tribute to Weddle that also adds context to what many fans may not know about the sport’s history. Countless gamers got introduced to skateboarding culture and terminology thanks to THPS, and many wouldn’t know the origins of tricks and their creators without that added context. It’s one of a number of things Activision is updating in the remaster, and so far, it looks like they’re getting things right this time around.

Just like the rest of the industry, John Legend most likely assumed he would be able to drop his seventh album with little to no interruption, but unfortunately, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, that was not the case. Nonetheless, the “All Of Me” singer weathered the storm and made the necessary adjustments in order to release his seventh effort, Bigger Love. Adding a new and much more positive surprise to the year, John Legend used his new music video for his Gary Clark Jr. collaboration, “Wild,” to announce he and his wife Chrissy Teigen are expecting their third child.

Taking his wife out to the coast for a day in paradise, the video captures the couple’s romantic spirits as they lay in each other’s arms and enjoy the summer sun at a nearby beach. Throughout the video, Legend professes his desire to show a strong and passionate love to his partner, promising to do all it takes to keep her happy. As the video closes out, Legend and Teigen bring their two children into the frame before they make the big reveal as Legend rubs his hands on Teigen’s belly.

Joining their two children, Luna, who is 4, and Miles, who is 2, Legend and Teigen’s announcement of their third child comes almost a month before their seventh anniversary, so indeed celebrations are in order. As for Legend, the new video arrives after he delivered an at-home version of an NPR Tiny Desk concert where he performed “Wild” and two other songs off Bigger Love: ““Ooh La” and “Bigger Love.”

Some good news on the environment front this week, as conservationists in the U.K. counted some 750 large blue butterflies hatched from 1,100 larvae released last year in Rodborough Common in Gloucestershire, England. According to CNN, the release was the consummation of a 40-year conservation project, with the past five years spent preparing the area for the larvae and butterflies to be able to thrive.

The large blue butterfly, distinguishable by the row of black spots on its upper wings, was declared extinct in Britain in 1979 and is currently globally endangered. The larvae were brought from continental Europe, and though it’s been 40 years since they were declared extinct in Britain, the butterfly hadn’t been seen naturally in Rodborough Common in 150 years.

Rare large blue butterfly successfully reintroduced after 150 years

www.youtube.com

Experts from the National Trust, Butterfly Conservation, the Limestone’s Living Legacies Back from the Brink project, Natural England, Royal Entomological Society and the Minchinhampton and Rodborough Committees of Commoners all helped prepare the area for the butterflies. Prep included controlling the red ant population in Rodborough Common by restricting cattle grazing and controlling scrub cover. It also involved growing wild thyme and marjoram, which provide food and an egg-laying habitat for the large blue butterfly.”

Butterflies are such sensitive creatures, and with the large blue’s particular requirements they are real barometers for what is happening with our environment and the changing climate,” Rodborough Commons area ranger Richard Evans said in a statement.

“Creating the right conditions for this globally endangered butterfly to not only survive but to hopefully thrive has been the culmination of many years work,” he added. “One of the greatest legacies of the re-introduction is the power of working together to reverse the decline of threatened species and the benefit the habitat improvements will have for other plants, insects, birds and bats on the commons.”