Category: Viral

Alex Trebek’s final games hosting Jeopardy! set up an emotional holiday season for game show fans, as the show’s final episodes taped before his death will air right up until Christmas Day. To celebrate the late Trebek’s legacy, Jeopardy! has put together a number of tributes.

Jeopardy! announced the tribute on Thursday, with two full weeks of Trebek’s favorite episodes where he traveled around the globe to deliver clues from iconic locations. The collection begins on December 21 and runs until New Year’s Day and features episodes from the last two decades where Trebek covers a wide range of topics.

Here’s the full list of episodes and their air date:

Week 1: Dec. 21-25

Monday, Dec. 21 Hockey (Original Airdate: 10/14/04)
Tuesday, Dec. 22 Sesame Street (Original Airdate: 04/04/06)
Wednesday, Dec. 23 The U.S. Air Force: USO Tour to Japan (Original Airdate: 09/27/07)
Thursday, Dec. 24 Machu Picchu (Original Airdate: 11/06/07)
Friday, Dec. 25 Niagara Falls (Original Airdate: 01/15/09)

Week 2: Dec. 28 – Jan. 1
Monday, Dec. 28 Journey Through Israel (Original Airdate: 11/23/09)
Tuesday, Dec. 29 Galápagos Wildlife (Original Airdate: 12/09/09)
Wednesday, Dec. 30 Operatic Costumes: The Met (Original Airdate: 11/09/11)
Thursday, Dec. 31 Petra (Original Airdate: 11/14/11)
Friday, Jan. 1 National Museum of African American History and Culture (Original Airdate: 2/06/17)

As a Niagara Falls native, I’ll be particularly interested in that Christmas Day episode, but there are lots of really interesting locations the show has explored with these segments, including some much harder to get to than the American Falls, such as, say, Machu Picchu.

Anyway, to get you ready for the “Around the World” tribute, here’s a supercut of Alex Trebek speaking French, if you need it.

C’est un danger, indeed.

Ty Dolla Sign and Post Malone teamed up this year for the second time following their 2018 collaboration “Psycho.” Their joint track “Spicy” appeared on Ty’s recently released LP Featuring Ty Dolla Sign and the song’s visual featured cowboy hats, futuristic weapons, and a voice-over cameo by Snoop Dogg. Now, Ty offers an inside look at the visual’s making in a behind-the-scenes clip.

The original video slates Ty as a cowboy out for revenge. Teaming up with fellow outlaw Posty, the two gun down an entire tavern of bandits in an epic bar fight. The behind-the-scenes clips depict the creation of the bar fight, showing the director giving the musicians pointers on how to smash bottles over their victims’ heads.

Judging by their on-screen energy, it’s clear that the two musicians click. Apparently, their musical chemistry was so natural that they’re talking about making a collaborative album together. Ty recently teased the news in an interview, saying the joint album is definitely a possibility. “Posty and Ty Dolla Sign album coming soon,” he quipped.

Watch the behind-the-scenes from Ty and Posty’s “Spicy” video above.

Featuring Ty Dolla Sign is out now via Atlantic. Get it here.

Ty Dolla Sign is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Mike Pence had a busy Friday, starting with taking the first steps to immunize himself against coronavirus. And then he made himself the topic of a second round of viral reaction by announcing a name for what we should call Space Force troops.

Pence announced on Friday, after flexing his way through a publicly-televised COVID-19 vaccine, and said that members of Space Force will be called “guardians.” The news was echoed on Twitter by the branch’s official account.

“A name by space professionals, for space professionals,” the slogan read. The tweets celebrating the name also used the hashtag #SemperSupra, the branch’s official slogan which is latin for “always above.” Which, you know, kind of works.

The name “guardians” is essentially akin to members of the Army being called soldiers, and such, but given that the group deals with space there were some obvious jokes to be made. What are the Guardians, well, guarding? Earth? Or perhaps something more… universal? And so jokes were made, as there were some pretty obvious connections to Guardians of the Galaxy to poke fun at.

It will certainly be interesting to see if the Netflix show named after this new branch of the armed forces will adopt the real-life name for its troops. It if, like the show itself, it will go a different direction in Season 2.

Today is the 57th birthday of silver screen icon Brad Pitt, long considered to be the scion of male beauty in America culture. So much so that in her intrepid hit “That Don’t Impress Me Much,” released in 1997, which was almost 25 years ago, namechecks him as the kind of guy to not be impressed by.

Her point in the verse singling out Brad is that simply being really, really ridiculously good looking wasn’t enough to impress her, and that there are other things more important than looks in making a relationship work. But, it is kind of harsh to single someone out by name in a song about not being impressed with men, so in honor of Brad’s birthday, Shania logged onto to Twitter dot com to make a little joke celebrating Brad: “Happy Birthday to Brad Pitt, I’ll make an exception for today,” she wrote.

While Brad is yet to respond, plenty of fans got the joke and helped the tweet go viral, so odds are he’ll see it eventually. And for those of you who have yet to discover — or rediscover — the lovable misandry of this late-90s hit, I’m including it below. Shania might be enteriing her golden years now, but we’ll always have that leopard look.

There are two things that make up great fighters. One is, obviously, the ability to fight at a level that transcends even the best of the sport. If you cannot box, or you cannot grapple, or you cannot make guys tap out better than everybody else, you will never be able to make it in combat sports.

But in order to go from that to another stratosphere, you need to have a sense of showmanship about you. Think of all the great fighters that we have ever seen, all of them have an otherworldly sense of the moment and how to keep fans enthralled, when they are both in the ring and outside of it.

I say all that to say this: check out this damn introduction.

This is Reshat Mati, a 22-year-old Albanian boxer from Staten Island who took on Dennis Okoth on Friday night. He decided that the best way to go about this was to go to the ring in a Batman costume while the Backstreet Boys classic “I Want It That Way” played. The only rule is it has to work, of course, and by god, it did. Mati needed all six rounds to get the job done, but he managed to move to 9-0-0 on his career via a final round TKO.

Here is a better look at the cape, which is extremely good.

This was Mati’s seventh win via knockout. Gonna end with some Backstreet Boys puns here, if you don’t mind: He must have told the ref “don’t wanna hear you say … that I lost.” He made sure the judges didn’t have to make “The Call.” He decided to “quit playin’ games” with his opponent and just ended things. His introduction was “Larger Than Life.” Alright I’m done, thank you, have a good weekend, folks.

The United States is dealing with two conflicting emotions right now. On one hand, the first COVID-19 vaccines are being administered across the country this week, mostly to frontline medical personnel.

However, on the other hand, the number of infections in the country continues to grow to a record high with over 238,000 new cases reported on Thursday. And it’s going to be more than a few months until we see a significant decline in infections caused by widespread vaccinations.

This week, thousands of frontline workers in hospitals breathed a sigh of relief when they received the vaccine. It has had to be traumatizing to go into work every day knowing you were always at risk of becoming infected with COVID-19.

A study out of the U.S. and the UK found that “frontline health care workers had a nearly 12-times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 compared with individuals in the general community.”

Frontline workers at Boston Medical Center celebrated the vaccine by dancing in the streets to Lizzo’s “Good as Hell.”

And do your hair toss

Check my nails

Baby how you feelin’?

Feeling good as hell

The BMC staff strutted their stuff on the sidewalk while still wearing their masks face shields and gowns. A clip of the video was shared on social media by BMC president Kate Walsh.

“Why I love my job!” Walsh wrote. “Teams of people working to safely and equitably distribute vaccines to their front line colleagues getting cheered on by their friends celebrating the arrival of the vaccines! A great day, a great place.”

According to Boston.com, the hospital received 1,950 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday and began giving its employees jabs on Wednesday.

On Monday, New York City critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first American to get Pfizer’s vaccine outside of a clinical trial. After getting the shot, she wanted to let everyone know that there’s nothing to fear. “I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe,” she said.

Although healthcare works seem like they’d be the least likely to be hesitant about getting a vaccine, there are still some who are skeptical of the shot. A recent survey of physicians in the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City found that 60% of doctors in the network and about half of the nonphysicians were enthusiastic about the vaccine.

“It’s going to be a marathon,” Susan Mashni, head of the vaccine distribution task force at Mount Sinai, said according to Buzzfeed. “If folks don’t feel comfortable right now, hopefully, they’ll come back and feel comfortable with some time.”

To make healthcare providers everywhere feel safer about getting the shot, frontline workers have been posting photos of them getting vaccinated on social media under #IGotTheShot. Hopefully, this will encourage those on the frontlines to get the shot as well as countless Americans who are on the fence about rolling up their sleeves.

When Paramore’s Hayley Williams announced she would be releasing her debut solo album last December, she didn’t envision that she’d be stuck at home for its entire rollout. In order to cope with lockdown, the singer began sharing acoustic covers of some of her favorite songs. Now, she’s sharing even more music. Williams released the acoustic EP Petals For Armor: Self-Serenades Friday, and it also arrived with a brand-new song.

The three-track project boasts stripped-down covers of her songs “Simmer” and “Why We Ever,” but it also features the previously-unreleased track “Find Me Here.” The tender song arrives as a heartwarming love ballad, expressing her trust and devotion in another.

Speaking about the song’s inspiration in a statement alongside its release, Williams said she hasn’t spent this much time alone with a guitar since she was a teenager:

“I spent this year at home like everyone. I hadn’t spent that much time at home alone with my guitar since I was a teen, before Paramore hit the road. Once I realized I’d likely not be performing any of my new songs live for a while I guess it just felt right to play them for myself and re-imagine them, just a little bit lonelier. It wasn’t long before I started writing new songs again and one of the demos I made seemed fitting for this little EP. ‘Find Me Here’ is the feeling of surrendering your loved ones to their own, personal struggles; Letting them take their time and come to their own rescue. It’s a hard version of love to learn but it is an important lesson in loving someone well.”

Listen to “Find Me Here” above.

Petals For Armor: Self-Serenades is out now via Atlantic. Get it here.

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

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

That line is sung by the cast of Hamilton in the musical’s emotional final number — and it’s an important question to ask ourselves in our daily lives. Whose lens are we seeing history through? Who wrote the article we just shared on Twitter? Who’s telling the story?

“Young adults live in a world that bombards them with other people’s opinions and ideas,” Sasha Rolon Pereira, Director of the Hamilton Education Program, says. “This isn’t actually new, the technology has just advanced and made it overwhelming in a new way.”

The Hamilton Education Project, or EduHam for short — founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda in conjunction with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History — is keenly interested in who’s interpreting the history that students are learning. Does it reflect the neighborhoods and cultures they’re from or is it being told by someone with their own agenda? That’s why the program connects students to primary sources for research, because even textbooks are written through a distinct lens and are often inaccurate.

In short, EduHam encourages students to do just what Miranda did when he researched and wrote Hamilton — take back the narrative and then tell the story in their own style and voice.

“The truest way to find out what happened is to go directly to the voices –the letters people actually wrote to each other, the diaries they kept, the art and songs and speeches they made,” Rolon Pereira says. “Letting students interpret for themselves what all these primary sources mean lets them actively engage in history instead of being passive receivers of someone else’s version of it.”

Started in 2015 to create education outreach to pair with the mega-hit musical, EduHam has connected thousands of students to history, whether participating online or in their classrooms, in a unique way — through their own experiences.

“This is a story about America then, told by America now, and we want to eliminate any distance — our story should look the way our country looks,” Lin-Manuel Miranda once told the New York Times.

Often in interviews, the actor, musician, and playwright has noted that when he began researching Hamilton he saw endless parallels to people today.

“I was like, ‘I know this guy,’” he told the Times. “Just the hustle and ambition it took to get him off the island — this is a guy who wrote his way out of his circumstances from the get-go. That is part and parcel with the hip-hop narrative: writing your way out of your circumstances, writing the future you want to see for yourself. This is a guy who wrote at 14, ‘I wish there was a war.’ It doesn’t get more hip-hop than that.”

Though it seemed radical to mirror and juxtapose the experience of people of color in America with those of the founding fathers, Hamilton‘s breakaway success proves that the idea worked. The musical speaks on both metaphorical and literal levels to the diversity of this nation while playing with how history is told. Similarly, EduHam urges students to mine the past for connection points to the present day.

“We encourage students to discover the diversity of experience during the founding era and connect it to current events,” Rolon Pereira says. “From Phillis Wheatley’s depiction of George Washington to Abigail Adams’s famous letter urging her husband to “remember the ladies,” students are drawn into the country’s contradictions as Americans aspired toward liberty.”

EduHam features a wealth of materials on their website for students to access — with information on more than 45 Founding Era figures, 14 events, and 24 key documents, as well as 175 supporting documents, video clips from Hamilton, and more. Then they connect these materials to key moments in the musical and students are able to create their own original performances, inspired by the historical documents that most sparked their imaginations. These performances might be a rap or a song, but they also might be poems or scenes.

When the theater was still running, selected students were able to come together to perform these pieces. Giving many young adults the opportunity to see the show and interact with the cast.

“It has given hundreds of thousands of students access to a professional theater experience they might not otherwise have had, as both performers and audience members,” Rolon Pereira says. “Students are encouraged throughout the program to connect past people, ideas, movements to what they are seeing today. Especially regarding individual action, strength in diversity, and speaking up for civil rights.”

After theaters closed, EduHam created an extensive program at home — something that was already in the works, but was accelerated by COVID-19. Now, students all over the country have access to the custom-designed education program that connects early U.S. history with hip-hop and other performing arts. And they can upload their performances into a National competition and lottery that will pick winners to come to NYC to see Hamilton in person when theaters are back up and running.

It’s all about empowering students to tell their country’s stories themselves, very much in the spirit of Miranda’s creative vision.

“Lin-Manuel Miranda wanted Hamilton to open the gates of theater as well as the American founding era to people of color,” Rolon Pereira says. “With a cast that is predominantly non-white, even in telling the stories of historical people who were white, the musical and the program celebrate the universality of American aspirations.”

For more information on these programs, please visit gilderlehrman.org. To register for EduHam Online go to hamilton.gilderlehrman.org.

Despite Wonder Woman smashing box-office records and being a stunning success for the DC Cinematic Universe, which had hit a stumbling block with the lackluster reception to Batman V Superman and was about to face even more trouble with the release of Justice League, director Patty Jenkins ran into some interference when it came time to set up Wonder Woman 1984. In a new interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jenkins reveals that she came very close to walking away from the sequel after Warner Bros. seemed reluctant to pay her as much as her male counterparts even though she’d deliver a blockbuster hit.

“They got paid seven times more than me for the first superhero movie,” Jenkins said. “Then on the second one, they got paid more than me still.” Realizing she’d have to play hardball, Jenkins prepared herself to say “no” to Wonder Woman 1984 if she wasn’t afforded the respect she’d earned. Via /Film:

“I started to walk away. I was gonna’ walk away. I even said I’d be happy to go to another studio and make a quarter as much because it’s not a sequel, on principle, no problem. It’s interesting as someone who never made any profit in my career up until Wonder Woman, that I was always at peace with it. I was like, ‘Hey I get it.’ But now I was like, ‘Listen, I never made any money in my career because you always had the leverage and I didn’t,’But now the shoe is on the other foot so it’s time to turn the tables.”

Obviously, things worked out, and Jenkins delivered the sequel that’s set to hit theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day. However, Jenkins is noticeably more reluctant to tout her involvement with Wonder Woman 3. Couple that with the bombshell news that she’s signed on to direct Rogue Squadron, making her the first woman to direct a Star Wars films, and it’ll be interesting to see if Jenkins might have just left DC Comics behind for a galaxy far, far away.

(Via Happy Sad Confused)

Upon perusing the tracklist for the recently released “B-side” version of Eminem’s 2020 surprise album Music To Be Murdered By, you might be tempted to press play on the track titled “Book Of Rhymes” on account of the fact it’s produced by luminary beatmaker DJ Premier. If you care at all about the legacies of either hip-hop elder statesman, I strongly advise against this course of action. I personally made that mistake and had to go listen to Da Ruckus’ “We Shine” to remind myself why I ever liked the rapper in the first place, followed by a full-on Gang Starr playlist so I could hear a rapper sound like they actually appreciated having the legendary producer bless the beat they rhymed on. But, a little persistence pays off on this one. Read on.

After rumors of a deluxe version of the already gargantuan album circulated online for nearly eleven months, it finally arrived to smash any glimmer of hope that just maybe one rapper would resist the siren call of an unnecessary reissue this year. After all, if anyone could survive 2020’s industry shutdown without taking a major loss, it should be Eminem, one of the most successful and handsomely-paid artists to pick up a mic. Considering how dense and tough-to-digest he considers his mouthy wordplay on the surprise album, you’d think he would want to give fans a little more time to chew on it before bonking them over the head with another full hour of tightly-packed double entendres.

But alas, here we are, once again offered a sumptuous, utterly rich meal of endlessly complex rhyme riddles to unravel despite still being gorged on the last one. I’ll give it this; it’s more consistent and cohesive with the theme of the original work than perhaps any other deluxe version to drop this year, with the exception of Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake add-on, LUV Vs. The World 2. Where that deluxe edition felt of a piece with its predecessor — perhaps owing to its fortuitous, next-week timing — so too does Music To Be Murdered By feel like a collection of songs that belongs on the original, rather than a series of tacked-on, salvaged cutting room floor tidbits.

The 16 tracks are kicked off with another Alfred Hitchcock sample dubbing them “music to be buried by,” and it’s, well, apt in more ways than one, as it befits Eminem’s gift for double meanings. Sure, Side B is a fitting postscript, or perhaps even sequel, to the original MTBMB, but it’s also just as suffocating as being buried alive. The metaphors and shock value raps and puns and complaints about mumble rap pile up until the listener is basically crushed under the weight of Em’s near constant-harping on the same subjects he always does and has since 2017’s Revival. He’s the angry, angsty teen who grew up into a similarly angry, crotchety dad, yelling at his kid about looking slovenly while missing the mustard stain on his own shirt.

Great rhymes, mediocre beats, and stale content are Side B’s trademarks, along with, of course, the pre-emptive strike at anyone audacious enough to ask for more on the aforementioned “Book Of Rhymes.” On “Black Magic” with Skylar Grey, he again fantasizes about murdering an ex-lover. He builds up an eight-bar set-up to a one-liner about being the “rap god” again on “Alfred’s Theme.” He raps over a Casio keyboard default rhythm on “Tone Deaf” (get it? get it? DO YOU GET IT?). He again lampshades his prior offensive shenanigans to undermine critics’ legit complaints on “Favorite Bitch” with Ty Dolla Sign — another utterly misplaced feature.

One of those features catches a stray on “Guns Blazing,” where he calls down rappers who utilize ghostwriters — on a track with Dr. Dre, whose last true solo hit single was written by Jay-Z. I imagine one, the other, or both were staring very intently at the mixing levels at the monitors during playback so as to avoid a knowing glance that would have short-circuited every synapse in both their brains. On “Gnat,” which at least has a modern-sounding beat, he spits a half-dozen coronavirus references in the space of as many bars, references a two-year-old rap beef he ostensibly won, and on “Higher,” he goes back to 2009 — again — with a plodding beat that sounds like the soundtrack to every post-apocalyptic war movie ever made at once.

About halfway through the album, we finally encounter a highlight. “These Demons” kinda bangs, and if Em had done a whole album like this — a much shorter one — this could have been a truly enjoyable album. He even gets topical in a more meaningful way than just sprinkling COVID references everywhere like anti-maskers sneezing in a grocery store. “This pandemic got us in a recession / We need to reopen America,” he reports. “Black people dyin’, they want equal rights / White people wanna get haircuts.” This is an astute summation of the situation and bears exegesis — an entire album’s worth, if possible. Em claims his pen skills are unrivaled by any other writer’s in rap, so personally, I’d be fascinated to see if they are equal to addressing real-life situations worth exploring rather than imagined slights from Twitter trolls.

“Zeus,” the track that seems to be drawing the most buzz for the album, is more or less the apotheosis of Side B, and the track that highlights everything it does wrong — and right. It’s got a strong beat courtesy of Luca Mauti and T-Minus, a solid chorus from White Gold (a sub-theme could be, “Why Eminem should stop doing his own hooks”), and an earnestness that bolsters its directionality. It points to something that isn’t just “I’m the best rapper and should never be criticized under any circumstances ever” or “Gee, I hate women so much. One lady did me wrong once and now I fantasize about murdering them all constantly.” He starts off in these places, yes, even opening the track with a complaint that someone compared him to Tekashi 69 — who, ironically, is only around because aggrieved old heads keep bringing him up.

But then, he does a thing on the track that I and so many other people wish he’d do in real life. He grows. He changes. He learns. He finds something to care about outside his solipsistic obsession with being universally loved. He warns his successors — Drake, Chance The Rapper, Future, Migos — that fame and love are temporary. He reminds listeners that he overcame a life of intense abuse, neglect, and self-sabotage to earn his 11-year sobriety chip. And he acknowledges and accepts — if only for a moment — the critiques we’ve leveled at him for so many years. “They keep wantin’ me to rap responsibly,” he confesses. “When I’m constantly passin’ the buck like the fuckin’ Dollar Tree / But I’ma always remind you that I came from poverty / Black people saved my life, from the Doc and Deshaun, and all that we want is racial equality.”

Hallelujah, pass the popcorn. Even though the verse ends ambiguously and seemingly refocusing inward, it feels like maybe, quite possibly, Em might be working his way toward realizing that his platform means something. It’s a baby step. But it’s in the right direction. Hopefully, Slim Shady is finally getting enough of making music to murder his demons and making up his mind to set about dismantling those of the world. That tiny glimmer of hope? Consider it provisionally, begrudgingly restored.