Social distancing continues this weekend amid the global pandemic, and several new TV seasons are here for the binging. If nothing here suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

Solar Opposites (Hulu series, Friday) — Rick And Morty co-creator Justin Rolland’s new original animated comedy series revolves around a team of aliens who crash-land in suburban America after escaping their exploding home planet.

I Know This Much Is True (Sunday, HBO 9:00 p.m.) — Launch day is here for the series in which Mark Ruffalo plays twins, one of them a paranoid schizophrenic who suffers a violent public breakdown and the other stepping up to his defense.

Dead To Me: Season 2 (Netflix series, Friday) — Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini bring their guilt-and-grief-laden chemistry back as Jen and Judy, who attempt to mop up after that backyard clash with Steve Marsden’s Skeevy Steve. The reveals are even bigger this season, and the show’s addictive and bingeable as ever.

The Eddy (Netflix series, Friday) — Oscar winning director Damien Chazelle (La La Land) helms this limited series about a once-celebrated jazz musician, who attempts to keep his struggling club afloat in modern-day Paris.

Jimmy O. Yang: Good Deal (Amazon stand-up special, Friday) — Yang presents his thoughts on Matt Damon, his experiences with immigrant parents, and apartment guests, as performed live from Seattle’s Neptune Theater.

Here’s the rest of this weekend’s notable programming:

Friday Night In with The Morgans (Friday, AMC 10:00 p.m.) — Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Hilarie Burton are back, hopefully with more insight into The Walking Dead.

Betty (Friday, HBO 11:00 p.m.) — Skate Kitchen director Crystal Moselle (The Wolfpack) brings back her O.G. crew for this funny and freewheeling series about a group of young women who simply want to skate and are much cooler than all of us. This week, territorial skater boys present challenges for Kirt, Indigo and, Honeybear.

Batwoman (Sunday, CW 8:00 p.m.) — Kate questions everyone’s loyalty while Gotham’s intelligentsia members begin evaporating, and Sophie and the Crows attempt to quell the latest homicidal threat.

Billions (Sunday, Showtime 9:00 p.m.) — “The Chris Rock Episode” is the title this week, with Chuck wrestling demons, Wendy taking the lead, and Axe pursuing a play.

Killing Eve (Sunday, AMC 9:00 p.m.) — The Villanelle bottle episode has arrived, so return with her to Mother Russia, where she explores her roots.

Penny Dreadful: City of Angels (Sunday, Showtime 10:00 p.m.) — Santa Monica Pier serves as the location for Tiago and Molly to escape reality while Lewis interrogates a Cal-Tech student.

Insecure (Sunday, HBO 10:00 p.m.) — The block party has finally arrived with some surprises, including a new boo for Kelli and Tiffany finally enjoying a break.

Run (Sunday, HBO 10:30 p.m.) — The new show from Fleabag and Killing Eve dynamic duo Vicky Jones and Phoebe Waller-Bridge barrels further down the train track as Ruby and Billy try to figure out whether this is all a huge mistake.

Harley Quinn (Sunday, Syfy 11:30 p.m.) — Harley’s crew must spend time inside her mind (yikes!), and a heist gone wrong leads to a missing limb for Clayface.

Tekashi 69’s first livestream during quarantine broke Instagram’s previous reported record with 2 million viewers as supporters and detractors alike tuned in to see what he’d do next. As he defended his decision to cooperate with federal authorities in the racketeering case against him and the Nine Trey Bloods gang which had been backing his career until his arrest, the comments featured words of affirmation and condemnation.

The previous Instagram record is difficult to ascertain, as previous livestreams to tout that feat included Drake and Tory Lanez on Quarantine Radio, with over 310,000 viewers, and Babyface VS. Teddy Riley on Verzuz with over 400,000 viewers, but Tekashi’s stream easily blew those numbers away by quite a bit. As he bragged during the Live, “I’m the biggest artist in the world.” With numbers like that, it’s hard to argue.

Tekashi preceded his record-breaking feat with the release of his new music video “Gooba,” a rainbow-hued affair full of twerking beauties that showed off both 69’s new shark pendant and his house arrest tracking anklet. He was released early from prison less than a month ago but has already been busy, buying a billboard in Times Square to promote his new single and using social media to poke fun at himself for being considered a “snitch.”

Watch part of Tekashi’s Instagram Live above.

2020 has been the biggest year of Nav’s career so far. Earlier this year, the Canadian rapper dropped “Turks,” which became his highest-charting song and preceded his now-released album, Good Intentions. He has received some assists during his rise to the top, and the latest comes from Young Thug, who joins him a video for the collaboration, “No Debate.”

On the song, the two flaunt their success, prowess in a number of endeavors, and cover similar topics that have found their way into hip-hop songs for years now. Nav gets explicit on the chorus: “Name a block, we’ll pull up and we’ll spray it / You can’t keep up with the smoke, there’s no debate / I don’t got a vibe I can’t replace / Take the condom off and paint her face.” The video is a direction reflection of the song’s themes, as it includes plenty of shots of jewelry, cars, and the like.

This is far from the first meet-up between the two, as they are frequent collaborators. In fact, this isn’t even Thugger’s only guest spot on Good Intentions as he also features on “Spend It.” Before this album, they linked up on Nav’s “Tussin” and on Thug’s “Boy Back,” both from 2019.

Watch the “No Debate” video above.

Kehlani has been teasing her a new era of music for some time. After revealing her the release date to her sophomore album, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, just a few weeks ago, the full record has now arrived. Kehlani celebrates her highly-anticipated release with a video accompanying her track “Open (Passionate).”

The “Open (Passionate)” visual follows a handful of videos Kehlani released in quarantine. Trailing her self-recorded “Toxic” video, Kehlani shared her powerful “Everybody’s Business” as well as the steamy “F&MU.” Now, Kehlani expands the bounds of her quarantine for “Open (Passionate).” Directed by Hyphy Williams, the visual bounces around between clips of Kehlani in scenic areas as she ponders whether or not she’s ready to trust her partner, and if she can even trust herself. “Can you hold me down when I’m across the ocean? / Can you control it? / Do I got you way too open to be open? Would you let it twist up all of your emotions?” she sings.

It Was Good Until It Wasn’t features a broad range of collaborations. For her sophomore album, Kehlani tapped singers like Jhene Aiko for “Change Your Life” and James Blake for “Grieving.” The singer’s album also features collaborations from Tory Lanez, Masego, and Lucky Daye.

Watch Kehlani’s “Open (Passionate)” video above.

It Was Good Until It Wasn’t is out now via TSNMI. Get it here.

Kehlani is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

As NBA teams begin the process of reopening their facilities for players to work out, one problem that has not yet been addressed is what to do about international players, many of whom flocked home, primarily to Europe, when the NBA paused its season.

According to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, many players simply don’t see the point of risking their health returning to the workplace, let alone traveling internationally, unless there is a concrete plan toward resuming the season.

“Some guys will stay out of market, and some guys will be in market and not go (to a practice facility),” a Western Conference player told Shelburne. “And some will choose to use it.”

More from Shelburne

Some executives believe there would be a greater eagerness in these workouts if the league opened facilities with a step-by-step plan to proceed to a training camp. “If this was tied to a return to play, you’d see something of a different attitude,” one Western Conference GM said.

As one playoff team prepares to open its facility in the coming weeks, one of its top basketball executives cautions: “Once we have clearance, I’d be surprised if any of our players flew back into market for this.”

That includes players like Luka Doncic, whom Shelburne reports flew back to Slovenia to be with his family while the NBA went on hiatus.

An agent told Shelburne, “It took two to three weeks for everything to unwind when we shut down. It’ll take at least that long for guys to get back to town. And they’re not going to start flying back until they hear the league is starting up again.”

Players seem to be growing weary, which led to a scheduled call on Friday. It is unclear exactly what will happen on said call, but it will include commissioner Adam Silver, National Basketball Players Association executive director Michele Roberts, and many players and other parts of the league infrastructure.

This week, AEW Dynamite returned to live broadcast, with stars like SCU, Nyla Rose, Proud & Powerful, and MJF appearing in the arena for the first time in over a month, and a completely bonkers main event. NXT has pre-taped, but still featured two title matches, the debut of Karrion “Killer” Kross, and the use of the word “TakeOver” in its promotion. Ultimately, however, Dynamite won the night once again, although both shows received more viewers than last week.

According to Showbuzz Daily, AEW Dynamite had 732,000 viewers on Wednesday, an improvement over last week’s 693,000. NXT had 663,000 viewers, which is better than the 637,000 they had last week, without getting them close to AEW..

Both shows also did slightly better in their ratings with the key 18-49 demo. Dynamite got a 0.28, just slightly up from 0.27 last week. NXT had a 0.18 rating, compared to last week’s 0.16.

This was the best vieweship and highest demo rating that AEW Dynamite has had since March.

In the Cable Top 150, Dynamite went up to #12, from #16 last week. NXT climbed from #51 to #33, making it back into the Top 50. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills had the highest ratings on cable Wednesday night, with a 0.57 in the key demo. Hannity on FOX News had the highest viewership of the night with 4.403 million viewers.

An interesting quirk about the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is that despite the fact that it’s bordered by the two best places for pizza on earth — New York to the north, New Jersey to the east — it’s not a particularly amazing state when it comes to producing really great pizza. At least in my personal experience.

My qualifications for making this proclamation stem from the following facts:

1. As a high school junior, I moved to Pennsylvania and did not leave the state until a decade later.
2. I eat far too much pizza, something that was underscored the last time my blood pressure was taken.
3. I am originally from the great pizza state of New Jersey and therefore an expert.

While conceding that I have never had Old Forge pizza — which my friends from the northeastern corner of PA swear by — I have never, in all my time as a Pennsylvanian, had a slice of pizza that truly knocked my socks off. Mind you, most places to get a slice or pie in the state are perfectly fine (good, even), they’re just generally unable to live up to the standards set by the best pies their neighboring states, is all.

That said, the Keystone State has a very cool habit of coming up with regional takes on pizza within the commonwealth. Pennsylvania is a remarkably unique state in how populations and cultures are clustered — which is reflected in some of its regional pies. Philadelphia’s tomato pie was the result of the influx of Italian immigrants that came to the area in the 19th century, while the aforementioned Old Forge pizza was born out of the need to feed miners in coal country. This eclecticism reminds us that food is a wonderful medium through which you can learn and experience history and cultural diversity first-hand.

With all of this as a backdrop, my curiosity was immediately piqued when a friend passed me this Facebook post by a restaurant in Altoona, a city in Blair County, Penn. just a tick above 45,000 people.

Quick backstory: Altoona is the home to Penn State Altoona, one of the school’s “commonwealth campuses.” You’ve probably heard of the University Park campus, but of the 73,000 or so of the non-online undergraduate students in the school’s system, 27,100 of them attend commonwealth campuses, with Altoona being the fourth largest among them.

I was one such student, spending two years in Altoona before making the trek to University Park. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard Altoona had its own regional pizza that 1) I’d never encountered, and 2) looked like a punishment from a wrathful god. A quick Google search confirmed this was A Thing, so I took a screenshot of the first picture I could find and tweeted this out.

The next two days made me laugh a lot. Seemingly everyone who had ever known someone from Altoona was getting tagged by friends demanding an explanation. Some people who were born and raised in or around Toon Town swore that they’d never heard of it. A pair of friends who grew up in the area were flummoxed as to how this ostensibly regional delicacy that they’d never heard of could possibly be real. Curious, they asked their respective moms about it. Both confirmed the distinctive pie’s place in the pizza firmament.

According to an absolutely wonderful piece done by Ryan Deto of Pittsburgh City Paper and a whole lot of folks on Twitter, the now-former Altoona Hotel was the birthplace of the pie. One Pennsylvanian seems to confirm my personal hunch: it was born out of the desire for pizza by the area’s Italian immigrants, who could not always get what they needed to make a classic pie. A true case of necessity being the mother of invention.

Once this started to pick up, I figured I had to try it. The issue is there is a pandemic going on right now and I cannot get to Altoona (in case you hadn’t heard). But I do have an oven, a sheet tray, and the ability to go to a grocery store. So I decided to step into the kitchen to make a pizza featuring one of the weirdest meat, cheese, and veggie mixtures ever to hit a pie.

In order to be completely thorough, I decided to undertake this experiment three ways. The first two pizzas I made were the standard Altoona pies — green peppers, salami, cheese — but since there was disagreement over whether yellow American or Velveeta was called for, I decided to do both. The third was to do the Binging with Babish thing where I attempted to keep the spirit of the dish but make it, uh, less weird.

The good news is that picking up the necessary items was pretty easy. I cut one corner — Wegman’s has pre-made pizza dough that works in a pinch, especially when you’re like me and don’t always have the time to dedicate to making your own dough. Most other ingredients in play were easy to find in every supermarket — packaged and sliced salami, the two kinds of cheese, and green bell peppers.

As penance for taking the easy way out with the dough, I made my own sauce. This is the easiest thing on earth — some garlic in some warmed up olive oil, dump in a can of tomatoes, season with salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and Italian seasoning. My last name ends with an O, so you can trust me when I say this takes like 10 minutes and is better than anything you’d get from a jar. It was specified that this is a sweet tomato sauce, so I added a bit of sugar, too.

For the assembly, I decided to do two personal pizzas, because I am one human (albeit one with a healthy appetite) and my hunch was that one bite was all I really needed of these monstrosities. Per this Facebook post a friend showed me, the layering goes sauce, then salami, then uncooked peppers, then cheese. Behold:

Despite liking, individually, everything on this pie, it’s a brutal image. Like a frame from a montage made by Mother Nature, urging us to change our ways. Here is what they look like after 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

I, as you can surely tell, messed up the rolling out the dough portion of this and got these weird mondo pies where certain corners were thoroughly cooked while others were not, in part because the cheese to everything else ratio was just off. Still, I was able to get a few bites of both pies where everything sat together on completely cooked crust. It wasn’t bad, necessarily, it just tasted like what would happen if Subway made pizza. There are times when a person wants that, maybe. And I can absolutely see how this regional branch of the pizza family tree could be born out of the needs of Italian immigrants.

Still, raw strips of green bell peppers don’t quite cook up when hidden under cheese, the Velveeta just doesn’t work, and the salami needed some crisp edges and to not be in such gigantic pieces. But I figured there must be a path in which all of these ingredients could be used to make something legitimately solid. They’re all good-tasting things, after all.

Then it hit me. The answer is in Pennsylvania, but we have to leave Altoona in order to find it. In a phrase that also applied to Allen Iverson from the summer of 1996 through early 2007 — the answer is in Philadelphia. Cheesesteaks have meat, cheese, and potentially peppers of some sort on them. Traveling a stone’s throw north from Philly, we get to Lehigh Valley, which puts a sweet red sauce on its cheesesteaks. There’s some controversy over this, as you may imagine, but I asked my friend Ted, who is from that area, about whether this is a regional thing, and he promptly replied: “it’s delicious.”

I decided I could work with the cheesesteak approach and reverse engineer a pizza from there. I kept the sauce the same, and because it can be good on cheesesteaks, used the same yellow American (I am a provolone guy when it comes to cheesesteaks, but that’s neither here nor there). The peppers being uncooked before going on the pizza had to be fixed, and to make this more cheesesteak friendly, I diced them and cooked them up with some onions. For the meat, I prepared some shaved steak, then tossed the salami in and got it nice and crispy.

The result, before and after 25 minutes and 450 degrees:

It certainly looked a little better, even if the cheese looks like a bunch of weird scabs on the surface of the pizza. The taste was better, too: the steak and onions were welcome additions, with the steak serving as a good balance to the salami and the onions providing some sweetness and rounding out the dish. The cheese is still a problem, particularly because longer exposure to high heat is not something that works for processed American cheese. But between the add-ons and pre-cooking the peppers and salami, this was legitimately kinda tasty.

Trust me, I was just as stunned as you are.

One question remains after all this: Should you make and eat either of these? The answer is, of course, no. But if you insist on making one, you should absolutely make the original version. If there’s one thing we are learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that you only have so many opportunities to try and experience weird, quirky, interesting things. Life is fleeting. Death stalks us all.

Why not, then, make a dish that harkens back to a different era in a little Pennsylvanian city that you’ve never heard of? It’s a unique thing that you can experience while we’re all locked inside, bogged down by monotony and driven to distraction. If there’s ever a time to try a totally out of left field thing in the confines of your home or apartment, it’s now.

In his first video after being released from prison, Tekashi 69 remains as brash and provocative as ever. “Gooba,” the 23-year-old rapper’s comeback single, has arrived with a candy-colored visual awash in twerking dancers, dazzling jewelry, and all of 69’s signature troll energy as he gets back to business.

Anyone hoping that his year and a half behind bars would have humbled Danny is going to be sorely disappointed. The rainbow hair is back, along with a new, diamond-encrusted pendant resembling the shark Bruce from Pixar’s Finding Nemo. Tekashi’s subject matter remains the same, as does his full-throated delivery as he scream-raps lines like “Are you dumb, stupid, or dumb, huh?” He also makes reference to current events, marking this single as the result of his weeks of post-COVID-19 freedom as opposed to older, vaulted material: “They sick, been hot way before Coronavirus,” he brags while showing off his latest accessories — including the one monitoring his location and keeping him inside his own house while the rest of us voluntarily self-isolate.

69’s new single lands amid a maelstrom of controversy surrounding his use of trolling to promote new music, his arrest for racketeering and subsequent early release for “snitching” on his former Nine Trey Blood cohorts, and willingness to make himself the butt of “snitch” jokes on social media afterward. He even plans to stream live today — although he’s blaming a delay on YouTube, after seemingly promoting his appearance for Instagram at first.

Watch the “Gooba” video above.

Carlos Díaz Ballesta dressed up like Queen front man Freddie Mercury and put on a show for his quarantined neighbors from his balcony in Spain. He threw on Mercury’s iconic jeans, undershirt, and mustache and lip-synced to Queen’s 1984 song, “I Want to Break Free.”

In the video, Ballesta dances with a vacuum cleaner, an homage to the song’s video. In the “I Want to Break Free” video, members of Queen dressed in drag as characters from the British soap opera “Coronation Street.”

Freddie Mercury balcony (auténtico autor del baile)- OFICIAL 🇪🇸 (del auténtico autor del baile)

youtu.be

While the video was a hit across the world it was a dud in America where no one knew what the band was lampooning.

“All around the world people laughed and they got the joke and they sort of understood it,” Queen guitarist Brian May told NPR Radio. “I remember being on the promo tour in the Midwest of America and peoples’ faces turning ashen and they would say, ‘No, we can’t play this. We can’t possibly play this. You know, it looks homosexual’.”

Queen – I Want To Break Free (Official Video)

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