Category: Viral

Already in the midst of his 133-date The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, Weird Al Yankovic just won’t quit. The comedian, who will be played by Daniel Radcliffe in the upcoming biopic that he penned (Weird: The Al Yankovic Story), has now announced a one-of-a-kind graphic novel where illustrators and cartoonists have visually interpreted 20 of Weird Al’s iconic parody pop songs.

“It’s such an incredible honor to see my song lyrics brought to life by some of my all-time favorite cartoonists and illustrators,” Yankovic said in a statement. “I’ve actually been playing the long game — the only reason I spent four decades in the music business is so that one day I could have my very own graphic novel.”

Out November 23rd via Z2 comics, the graphic novel is dubbed The Illustrated Al: The Songs of “Weird Al” Yankovic. The book comes in a standard hardcover edition, a “Deluxe Edition” with additional art prints, a record player slip mat and trading cards, and the ultimate “Super Deluxe Pack” which also includes coasters and a Yankovic-branded mini-accordion.

Some of the artists featured in The Illustrated Al include Bill Plympton, Aaron Augenblick, Peter Bagge, Steve Chanks, Danny Hellman, Felipe Sobreiro, Gideon Kendall, Michael Kupperman, Wes Hargis, and others. The book’s cover art is by Drew Friedman and Mike & Laura Allred, and the foreword was written by comedian Emo Philips.

Pre-order The Illustrated Al here and check out the “Super Deluxe Pack” below.

Warning: this Star Wars battle contains zero Ewoks. A Star Wars superfan (not confirmed but assumed given the context) made a short film depicting a battle to defeat the Empire that was not seen in 1983’s Return of the Jedi. The short film shows X-Wings for the Rebellion battling to defeat the Empire over the city-planet Coruscant. The animated short film, which takes place after the Rebellion defeats the Empire at Endor as seen in Return of the Jedi, was directed by Star Wars superfan and X-Wing fanatic Christopher Parks who shared the film on YouTube account NobleEngine.

The filmmaker described the project in the YouTube description:

This is a passion project of about 4 years in the making. I was a big fan of the X-Wing PC games as a kid and also really enjoyed Michael Stackpole’s X-Wing book series. I’ve always had an interest in those New Republic adventures which is chiefly why I decided to make this short. I hope you all like it!

The primary software and workflow consisted of an animation pipeline in Blender that would be exported and rendered in Houdini using the GPU renderer Redshift. Final compositing was finished in After Effects.

Apart from a few kitbash sets, all assets were modeled and textured (Substance Painter) from scratch since the making of the spaceships is part of the fun.

You may not have heard of Kidd Kenn before, but thanks to the doors opened by openly queer artists like Lil Nas X and Tyler The Creator, you’re likely to hear a whole lot more from him soon enough. Hailing from Chicago, the 19-year-old rapper makes his UPROXX Sessions debut with “Body,” his self-praising new single. It’s a song he says he made “so people could feel confident about their body, any color, any shape, any size.”

Signed to Island Records at just 16 years old, Kidd Kenn has been buzzing on social media ever since, releasing a string of fan-favorite EPs and collaborating with stars like Rico Nasty and Cupcakke. He’s also received co-signs from Cardi B, Latto, and Nicki Minaj, and became the first openly gay rapper to appear in the BET Hip Hop Awards Cypher. Along with Saucy Santana, he’s helping pave the way to a more inclusive future in hip-hop music.

Watch Kidd Kenn perform “Body” for UPROXX Sessions above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Kellyanne Conway has been heavily promoting her new book, Here’s the Deal, about her time working with Donald Trump. However, unlike most recent tell-all books, Conway has been reluctant to trash Trump. In fact, earlier in the week, she stopped by The View, where she was booed for saying she wished Trump won the 2020 election and accused Joe Biden of “hiding in the basement” during his campaign. Despite speaking glowingly of her old employer, Conway is facing his wrath for committing the grave, cardinal sin of conceding that he lost.

According to Conway’s book, she claims that, unlike other advisors, she told Trump that he lost the 2020 election. In a new post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump blasted Conway’s narrative and said that if she had told him he lost to Biden, he would’ve sent her packing. Via The Daily Beast:

“Kellyanne Conway never told me that she thought we lost the election. If she had I wouldn’t have dealt with her any longer – she would have been wrong – could go back to her crazy husband,” Trump wrote, referring his former adviser and campaign manager’s fervently anti-Trump husband George Conway. “Writing books can make people say some very strange things.”

As most people remember, the Conways were an interesting situation during Trump’s administration. While Kellyanne worked dutifully for the former president and repeatedly defended him in the press, her husband George was a vocal critic who often lambasted Trump on Twitter. According to Kellyanne’s book, Trump got so upset by George’s mean tweets that he whined to Melania about it. Reportedly, Melania told Trump, “We don’t control our husbands — and you don’t control us!”

Provided that exchange actually happened — a big if considering everyone involved — we’re guessing Melania’s advice didn’t go over well.

(Via The Daily Beast)

“Ozymandias” is the greatest episode of television of all-time.

That’s according to IMDb users, at least. The Rian Johnson-directed, Moira Walley-Beckett-written season five episode of Breaking Bad (which we were lucky enough to see being filmed) is the only episode of any show with a perfect 10 out of 10 rating on the online database. Other episodes have gotten close to matching it, however, including the midseason finale of Better Call Saul.

“Plan and Execution” has a sparkling 9.9 rating, putting it in the top 22. In fact, that 9.9 is a feat only three episodes of Breaking Bad pulled off: the aforementioned “Ozymandias,” season four’s “Face Off” (the title should be a clue for what happens in that episode), and season five’s “Felina,” one of four series finales in the top-25. The others: “Victory and Death” from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, “Re;” from Code Geass; and “Everyone’s Waiting” from Six Feet Under. (In case you were wondering, “Made in America” has a 9.3.) Now, you could argue that there’s recency bias to the 9.9 rating for “Plan and Execution,” and it could drop to a 9.8 or — god forbid — a 9.7. I would agree with you.

But also: it’s a really good episode of television (although I still prefer “Chicanery”).

Here are the highest-rated episodes of Better Call Saul:

1. “Plan and Execution” (9.9)
2. “Chicanery,” “Bagman,” “Bad Choice Road,” “Rock and Hard Place” (9.7)
3. “Winner” (9.5)

And the highest-rated episodes of Breaking Bad:

1. “Ozymandias” (10.0)
2. “Face Off” and “Felina” (9.9)
3. “To’hajiilee” (9.8)

The final season of Better Call Saul continues on July 11.

As far as new music is concerned, things have been mighty silent in MIA’s camp for years. The last time the British shock rapper and noted activist released an album was in 2016, when AIM came out. But today, the next chapter of MIA has been announced, with the impending release of her sixth studio album, Mata, and the arrival of the first single, “The One.”

Mata will mark the first MIA album released via her new partnership with Island Records, following a long-standing history with Interscope and XL Recordings. “The One,” sees her asserting her deification over a beat produced by Rex Kudo & T-Minus. A performance video surfaced on Twitter of MIA performing the song in front of a giant cross and backed by a children’s choir, showing the depth of the song’s vocal arrangement. On the hook, she raps in coyly auto-tuned vocals, “When you’re tryna find the one, why do you need reminding? No matter how you look at it, it’s me you keep finding.”

Listen to “The One” above and check out MIA’s upcoming tour and festival dates below.

06/01 — Grona Lund @ Stockholm, Sweden
06/02 — Heartland Fest @ Funen, Denmark
06/10 — Primavera @ Barcelona, Spain
06/11 — VYV Festival @ Dijon, France
06/12 — Marsatac Festival @ Marseille, France
06/17 — InVersion Festival @ Lyon, France
06/18 — Freemusic Festival @ Montendre, France
07/08 — NOS Alive @ Oeiras, Portugal
07/09 — BBK Bilbao Live @ Biscay, Spain
09/25 — Portola Music Festival @ San Francisco, CA

During the pandemic, people found time to try out some new activities. Maggie Rogers went harder than perhaps anybody on that front, though: She enrolled in graduate school at Harvard. Specifically, she was a student at Harvard Divinity School, which describes itself as “a nonsectarian school of religious and theological studies that educates students both in the pursuit of the academic study of religion and in preparation for leadership in religious, governmental, and a wide range of service organizations.”

Well, today, Maggie Rogers graduates as part of the school’s 2022 class. (At the time this post was published, the ceremony was in progress and viewable live on YouTube.) Annually, the day before the commencement, the Divinity School hosts the Multireligious Commencement Service at the campus’ Memorial Church, during which “graduating students offer prayers, readings, and music drawn from the wide array of faiths and backgrounds represented within the School,” per a new profile on Rogers from the school’s website. As part of that ceremony, Rogers sang the Wizard Of Oz classic “Over The Rainbow.”

Rogers graduates today with a Master Of Religion And Public Life (MRPL) degree, “a program designed for experienced professionals who wish to develop in-depth knowledge of the complex ways religion influences public life related to their career areas.” Rogers is one of the 11 students to first complete the new program this year.

In the aforementioned profile, Rogers noted, “I was thinking about this world in which people are moving further and further away from traditional religion, but yet are seeking to be connected to both something bigger than oneself and to each other. A really palpable and obvious and potent way that we connect to each other is through culture, through social media, but it puts a lot of emphasis and power in the hands of people who are artists. A lot of what I studied was how we come together, looking at religion and theology, and thinking largely about what are the ways in which we connect to each other, how is that done in a way that can be an agent for peace, what does it mean to hold that power, and what is the responsibility one has.”

She also said, “Whatever I was learning in class would immediately get put into practice in my professional world. It felt really integrated. The MRPL enhanced my work and vice versa. Now I’m going to spend the next year putting out this record and performing and living out so much of what I’ve been thinking about. I feel like I’ve just barely started to scratch the surface of what I’ve been studying here.”

The record to which Rogers refers is Surrender, her recently announced new album.

Watch Rogers perform “Over The Rainbow” above and watch the full 2022 Harvard Divinity School Commencement Diploma Awarding Ceremony below.

Though Maisie Williams stars in the highly-anticipated Sex Pistols series Pistol, which hits Hulu next week, though she still doesn’t seem to mind talking about her former life as Arya Stark and the rest of her Game Of Thrones family.

When asked by Variety who from the series she still keeps in touch with, Williams said that she still talks to all of them. “Everyone. We’re all on a group chat, which is lovely.” She added, “Everyone’s doing really well. And I think that it’s nice to keep up with people enjoying their lives, which had been dominated by the show for so long.” No word yet on if Ed Sheeran is also in said group chat.

The iconic series ended in 2019 with a finale that was universally hated by both fans and critics alike. But Williams does intend on watching the upcoming spinoff House Of The Dragon, which is just one of many, allegedly.

“Yes. I’m really looking forward to it, actually. My friend Olivia [Cooke] is in it, and it’s been really interesting just chatting to her about the experience,” Williams said, adding that she is excited to watch the show from a new perspective. “I’m kind of looking forward to watching Game of Thrones — even though it’s not Game of Thrones — and experiencing it as a person that’s not on it. ‘Cause all I’ve done is meet people who have done just that, and I never really was able to relate to it.”

Pistol premieres on May 31st on Hulu.

Finally some representation for men who hate bees as much as Nicolas Cage in The Wicker Man.

Would you ever let a Rowan Atkinson character house-sit for you? I wouldn’t either. Unfortunately, some unfortunate but seemingly very rich homeowners did not know any better and as a result, we have a Netflix show. Netflix just released the trailer for its upcoming comedy series Man Vs Bee which is exactly what it sounds like. Trevor (Atkinson), a dad thrilled to have a job, house-sits a mansion where he encounters a bee who quickly becomes his nemesis. Instead of protecting the home, his feud with the bee results in severe damage to the house and he ends up in court.

Bees are adorable, but the Man Vs Bee trailer clearly establishes that this titular bee, while cute, is kind of a menace who is out to make Trevor’s life as chaotic as possible.

Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:

Bumbling dad Trevor tries to get the best of a cunning bee while house-sitting a posh mansion — but only unleashes more chaos in this comedy series.

Will Man Vs. Bee win Emmys? Most assuredly not, although Rowan Atkinson does deserve an EGOT for his decades of comedic contributions to cinema.

Man Vs. Bee drops on Netflix on June 24.

Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey, who has somehow gotten acting work recently, has been charged with four counts of sexual assault in the United Kingdom, Variety reports. He was also charged with one count of “causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.”

The decision was revealed Thursday, May 26 by the UK agency Crown Prosecution Services (CPS), which, per Variety, spent over a year reviewing a file passed on by the Metropolitan Police.

“The CPS has authorized criminal charges against Kevin Spacey, 62, for four counts of sexual assault against three men,” said Rosemary Ainslie, head of the CPS Special Crime Division. “He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent. The charges follow a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation. The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against Mr Spacey are active and that he has the right to a fair trial.”

During the MeToo movement in 2017, Spacey was publicly accused of sexually assaulting a fourteen-year-old. Other men came forward with instances in which Spacey allegedly made aggressive and unwanted sexual advances toward them. As a result, Spacey was fired from the Netflix series House of Cards and replaced by Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World.

(Via Variety)