Category: Viral

Even for one of Donald Trump’s soon-to-be-irrelevant sycophants, Jim Jordan knows how to step in it. His brand — apart from refusing to wear suit jackets in public — involves tweets so mind-foggingly dumb it doesn’t take a historian to debunk. Unfortunately he’s so high-profile that historians feel compelled to do so anywayy. Mere weeks after nonsensically claiming Dr. Anthony Fauci would ban saying “Merry Christmas,” the Ohio representative is back at it, this time with some silliness about the Founding Fathers.

The Founding Fathers, of course, are a mythical bunch to conservatives, who hold them up as a larger-than-life titans who definitely thought alike, and whose thoughts from two-and-a-half centuries ago definitely always have some validity in 2020. Jordan has long opposed COVID-19 restrictions, thinking that people should be free to recklessly catch and transmit a highly contagious disease. (Jordan is one of the only close members of Trump’s posse who hasn’t tested positive for the virus.)

“60 million Americans are subject to a stay at home order or curfew. 11 million are right here in Ohio,” Jordan tweeted. “What would the Founders say?”

Well, as it turns out, we have a pretty good idea of what they would think. Historians once again poured in to educate Jordan, who should perhaps do a touch of Googling before he tweets. Or perhaps his question was sincere! Maybe he didn’t know what the Founders would say! In any case, the short answer is: They would probably be all for it.

Some took issue with Jordan’s vague and ahistorical depiction of the Founding Fathers.

Or pointed out that the Founding Fathers would, unlike the Republican party, almost certainly do something, anything to save its people.

Some pointed out they’d probably not like what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did around the same time Jordan was tweeting.

And many did what people do every time Jordan is in the news: remind everyone that he’s been roundly accused to ignoring sexual assault while assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University in the ’90s.

And then there were others, who were simply sick of hearing the name Jim Jordan.

Then again, at least his teeth don’t fall out when he talks, like fellow Trump minion Louie Gohmert.

Earlier this month, I attended my first Zoom wedding. A week after that, I attended a Zoom baby shower.

Tomorrow, I’ll attend a Zoom gathering to mourn the loss of a family friend. His name was Peter. He died of COVID-19 last week.

This gathering isn’t technically a funeral or memorial service, but rather a virtual devotional taking place on Zoom at the same time as Peter’s physical burial. A few close friends and family will gather at the gravesite—masked and distanced—while the rest of us share readings and prayers over Zoom to honor his interment.

It’s weird. There’s no other way to say it. With the wedding and baby shower, we all sort of laughed our way through the weirdness. We acknowledged the bummer of not being able to get together, but at this point we’re all accustomed to having to meet virtually. Zoom celebrations are better than no celebrations at all.

But mourning this way feels…different. We can’t laugh away the awkwardness of it when the Zoom meeting itself is a reminder of the tragic cause of our friend’s death.

Celebratory gatherings are fun, but not necessary. Gathering when someone dies feels necessary in a way, and the inability to do that adds an extra layer of loss to the grief we’re already experiencing. Normally, our whole community would gather together to honor Peter’s life tomorrow. We’d put on appropriate funeral attire, stand side by side at his grave, hold hands or hug one another as we mark the momentousness of his passing. We’d all bring food and break bread together as we share stories of his life. We’d pass around tissues, crying and laughing and sharing in the oh-so-human experience of bringing together the lives he had touched.

But we can’t do any of that. If we did, we’d run the risk of having to do it all over again for another friend or loved one taken too soon by this stupid virus. So we do what we can do and deal with the strange questions—What does one wear to a Zoom mourning? How long it will be before we can actually gather for a real memorial service? Will it feel like it’s too late then? Will we want to do that in the midst of celebrating a return to non-distanced life?

This pandemic has taken so much, and each thing stings in its own way. The death toll itself is overwhelming, especially here in the U.S. where we have already lost more than 330,000 lives. A hundred 9/11s and counting. Five Vietnams in less than a year. It’s unreal. In the beginning, we were told that all of us would likely end up knowing someone who died of COVID-19, and some people have now lost multiple family members. More will follow as we head into the deadliest month of the pandemic. That’s not doom and gloom forecasting—that’s the reality of the current moment.

But the loss of in-person mourning as millions are losing loved ones before they expected to is a tragedy in and of itself. There’s a cruel irony in it, that we can’t gather in person to mourn if we want to stop the thing that’s making it so we can’t gather in person to mourn. When we need the comfort of coming together the most, we can’t, as indulging in that comfort could lead to even more suffering. Of all of the sacrifices we’ve had to make, the loss of communal mourning is one of the hardest.

And so we open our computers and enter our virtual meeting rooms and try to comfort one another through our grief amid the inevitable unmute reminders. It’s weird. It all feels wrong. But it’s necessary. We need to mourn our losses together. We also need to be able to mourn the fact that we’re not able to do that the way we want to.

There is gratitude to be found in all of this, of course. It’s pretty incredible that we live in a time when we have the technology to at least see one another’s faces and hear people’s voices as we share our losses at a distance. If this pandemic had hit in my childhood, we’d have had no community ability to mourn at all. A Zoom gathering to mourn is better than no gathering at all—but it’s still all of the weird, wrong, sad things at once.

And what’s extra painful about it is that it didn’t have to be this way. Next time we have a pandemic, let’s all agree to just follow New Zealand’s lead, shall we? Hundreds of thousands of Zoom funerals really ought to be enough to get us all on the same page.

With how hotly-contested the Western Conference is expected to be this season, every game will matter in the race to make the postseason, whether that be through a top-6 seed or the play-in tournament. That’s what makes the news about Ja Morant, who suffered an ankle injury on Monday night, all the more devastating.

Morant hurt his left ankle in the Memphis Grizzlies’ 116-111 win over the Brooklyn Nets after accidentally landing on the foot of Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot. While an x-ray confirmed there was no structural damage, the team announced on Tuesday afternoon that Morant will still miss a significant amount of time, as he’s expected to be out 3-5 weeks with a Grade 2 ankle sprain.

Right after the news hit, Morant posted on Twitter about the optimism he feels after picking up the knock.

In real time, Morant’s injury looked extremely serious, as he was on the ground in serious pain and needed to be taken off the floor via a wheelchair. To that end, the team assuredly breathed a sigh of relief, but no Morant for a month is going to be tough waters for the Grizzlies to navigate. Tyus Jones will presumably slide into the starting role, although De’Anthony Melton should get a look upon his return from the league’s COVID-19 list. While we’re at a very early juncture in the year, Morant, the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year, is averaging 26.3 points and 6.3 assists per game.

NBA players find all sorts of inventive ways to stay motivated. For some, it’s practically an art form. There’s no better example than Michael Jordan, who is the undisputed GOAT of latching on to petty grievances against his rivals to fuel his competitive drive, and as we learned from The Last Dance, that sometimes included his own teammates.

Shaq is another great example. The Big Diesel nursed a well-documented grudge against David Robinson throughout his entire career, claiming that the Spurs legend had once blew him off as a youngster as he was trying to get his autograph. Come to find out, the whole thing was manufactured wholesale.

Now, Iman Shumpert has added his name to the list. Shumpert says as a child attending a Bulls-Celtics game with his aunt, he tried to get a high-five from Paul Pierce as he and the other Celtics players were making their way to the locker room at halftime, but Pierce, surprisingly, wasn’t having any of it.

.@imanshumpert explains why he got a bad first impression of @paulpierce34 before he even got to the league #HowToo | @trulyseltzer #LiveTruly pic.twitter.com/GAh6UIFpUv

— UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) December 27, 2020

Whether real or imagined, it certainly left an impression on Shumpert, and sure enough, Shumpert eventually got his revenge.

The only possible explanation for Pierce’s snub would be the comment Shumpert made at the beginning of the video, when he said his aunt told him to dress up in basketball clothes for the game, which given his allegiance to his hometown, quite plausibly could include Chicago Bulls gear. Pierce may have seen Shumpert in his Bulls cap or uni and decided to ignore him. We may never know the truth.

Death To 2020 (Netflix special) — Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker has had it with 2020, too, which is saying a lot, given that he’s used to telling the most unsettling tales on the streaming waves. In this darkly comedic special, familiar faces (including Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Jones, Hugh Grant, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Lisa Kudrow, Cristin Milioti, and more) come together documentary-style while narrating real-life archival footage as renowned (yet fictitious) characters. It’s the year-end meltdown that you didn’t know that you needed.

I Used to Go Here (HBO Max) — Gillian Jacobs and Jemaine Clement star in this Andy Samberg-produced movie about a 30-something novelist (Kate Conklin) who may be a one-hit wonder. Following a traumatic breakup, she ends up heading back to her alma mater, where she finds herself entrenched in all kinds of college-age drama after an old professor invites her for a homecoming.

Bridgerton — (Netflix series) Shondaland brings us a series that I’m predicting will appeal to the Emily In Paris crowd but in a far less problematic way. Essentially, the show follows the debut of a daughter from a powerful family, who must navigate high society with the help of the rebellious Duke of Hastings, as they hatch a plan to reach their mutual goals. The romantic aspect of this series might be predictable, but the lessons learned and the lightly nibbling social commentary should strike a chord out there on Twitter.

Soul — (Pixar film on Disney+) Yep, this movie was scheduled for theaters, too, and you know the drill by now, but you’ve probably never seen anything like this Pixar installment. Jamie Foxx voices a jazz-obssesed music school music teacher in this existential and cosmic movie. His character dies, turns into a fuzzy blob, and then ends up in a place called The Great Before. There, he learns about the inception of souls and personalities before they head up to Earth. He ends up answering profound life questions for himself while exploring what makes life worth living.

Wonder Woman 1984 — (Warner Bros. film on HBO Max) Years ago, no one would have imagined the newest Wonder Woman movie heading straight to streaming (at the same time as some U.S. theaters), but here we are. And the end result ain’t dark and gritty but, instead, a lot like dessert. Gal Gadot’s Diana is done with World War I, and now she’s soaring through a mall food court and working in a museum. Watch out for that Cheetah (Kristen Wiig) and Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal), and yes, Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor is somehow back for more after presumably biting the dust.

The Midnight Sky (Netflix flm) — George Clooney’s got a good-enough Netflix movie, y’all. He’s also got a David Letterman beard while playing a cancer-afflicted, lonely scientist in the Arctic who’s also struggling to survive on post-apocalyptic Earth while attempting to help save some astronauts. The screenplay hails from The Revenant‘s Mark L. Smith, so The Revenant + Gravity? That sounds epic, Oscar-y, and like a different kind of late-December movie than we’re used to from Netflix (Bright, Bird Box, 6 Underground). Let’s hope we don’t see any angry (polar) bears entering the equation.

Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion wasn’t a monster hit when it hit theaters nine years ago. It did alright, though! But this year it finally found the huge audience it deserves. Why? Because it’s about a pandemic that comes awfully close to destroying society. Of course, nearly a year into our own pandemic, we now know that things would play out a little differently. Perhaps that’s why the Oscar-winning filmmaker is hard at work on what he calls a “philosophical sequel” to his 2011 disaster drama.

Soderbergh broke the news on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, but he didn’t offer any real details beyond saying they’d be similar but different. For one thing, they’ll have the same screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns, who’s worked with the filmmaker on a number of projects, including The Informant! and Side Effects. “”Scott and I had been talking about, ‘So, what’s the next iteration of a Contagion-type story?’” he said, adding that it will look at the issue from “a different context.”

Does that mean it will be a different pandemic, perhaps one that occurs when the president is…well, you know, not all there, to put it mildly? Who knows! But the way he describes is people will “kind of look at the two of them as kind of paired but very different hair colors.”

Presumably that means few, if any, of Contagion’s all-star cast will return, among them Matt Damon, Jude Law, Laurence Fishburne, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Bryan Cranston, and — the one whose sudden death starts it all — Gwyneth Paltrow.

That film, whose own pandemic begins with a bat being displaced by rainforest-destroying developers, concluded with 2.5 million dead in the U.S. and 26 million worldwide. But it also saw Americans largely working together to combat a highly contagious virus, even taking the vaccine en masse. Amazingly, the far right conspiracy theorists, led by Jude Law’s Andrew Breitbart-esque web journalist, never quite take over. Who knew, in 2011, that Contagion would one day become escapist fare?

(Via EW)

A week after learning she was pregnant with twins, TikTok user @theblondebunny1 and her fiancé, got the stunning news she was pregnant again. And, no it wasn’t because the doctor missed a kid when they did the first count.

She was impregnated again ten days after the first embryos took hold. How in the world did that happen?

This pregnancy is known as superfetation and according to Healthline, it’s so rare that there are only a few cases noted in medical literature.

“Superfetation is when a second, new pregnancy occurs during an initial pregnancy,” an article published by Healthline says. “Another ovum (egg) is fertilized by sperm and implanted in the womb days or weeks later than the first one.”

This rarely ever happens because it requires three unlikely events to occur.

First, the mother must ovulate while pregnant, which is unlikely because after pregnancy occurs, hormones are released to prevent further ovulation. Second, the ovum must then be fertilized, another rarity because after a woman is impregnated, the cervix blocks the passage of sperm.

Finally, the second fertilized egg must implant in the womb, another extraordinary occurrence, because implantation requires the release of certain hormones that wouldn’t be released if a woman were already pregnant.

“Normally your body is supposed to switch up your hormones and stop you from ovulating again once you’re already pregnant. In my circumstance it did not,” the mother-to-be-told her followers on TikTok.

The couple learned that it was a second pregnancy instead of triplets because the third baby was younger. “The first two babies are 10 and 11 days older than our third baby, so that’s how we knew straight away it was a second pregnancy,’ she explained.

However, the doctor had to confirm that it wasn’t an undeveloped third baby.

“To confirm it was superfetation and not just twin absorption or a malnourished baby, the doctors have been doing ultrasounds every two weeks,” the expectant mom said. “And, sure enough, it’s been hitting every single milestone, growing at a healthy rate, just 10 to 11 days behind the first two babies we have.”

The mother is 17 weeks pregnant and wants to carry the pregnancies to the 28-week mark, but hopes she can hold on longer.

The historic pregnancy inspired the mother-to-be to create a series of TikTok videos to share her journey and ask for advice from her followers.

The couple plans to raise the three children as triplets and when the time is right, share the beautiful surprise with them.

“When we raise them, we’re going to raise them all as triplets, love them equally, but one day we will tell them the story,” she added. “I want them to know. It’s such a special, unique circumstance.”

The couple is over the moon about the upcoming delivery, but the mother has a warning for any pregnant women who follow her. “So when your man doesn’t want to use protection because you’re already pregnant — I would be cautious,” she said.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad movie stars everyone from Margot Robbie (as Harley Quinn, of course) to Idris Elba (as Bloodsport) to Pete Davidson (as Blackguard) to John Cena (as Peacemaker). To that end, the latter character will receive a spinoff HBO Max series, which Gunn decided to write because he was bored during the pandemic. The details of the series remain murky as far as the timeline goes, since Gunn doesn’t want to spoil any of the movie, although we can expect some origin explorations but not necessarily a prequel or straight-up origin story.

Gunn also made sure to shut down a strange rumor, which was surfaced on Twitter by an outlet that claimed Peacemaker would receive a TV-friendly cut for the CW. In response, the Guardians of the Galaxy helmer had a chuckle and more: “Lol. No. If we edited it for broadcast TV it would be forty seconds long.” In other words, Peacemaker will be a profane and extremely violent affair.

In previous news, Gunn has warned fans that multiple Suicide Squad members could die in his reimagining of the franchise (following David Ayer’s 2016 flick). Everyone’s already forgotten about poor Slipknot biting it in the first film, so I do wonder how big Gunn will go, and if he will dare to get rid of a larger, more popular character. Harley’s obviously going nowhere, but I will say that I’d be sad if Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag bit the dust. Maybe Gunn can bring back Slipknot only to kill him again? Stranger things have happened, and stranger things will probably also happen in Gunn’s movie.

If you were of the opinion that Creed II was fine if a bit of a step down from its predecessor, then this should fill you with good vibes: One of its stars, Tessa Thompson, told MTV that the threequel will be directed by another one of its stars, Michael B. Jordan. Previously the big news had been a mere rumor, but Thompson confirmed that the cat was officially out of the bag.

The actress was discussing her new period romance, Sylvie’s Love, alongside co-star Nnamdi Asomugha when the conversation perhaps inevitably veered into last month’s news, namely that Jordan had been declared People’s 2020 Sexiest Man Alive. There was some joshing. (“I’m going to give him a lot of crap about it in person,” she said. “I need to start developing, like, pranks around that.”)

Thompson then confirmed the news. “He is directing the next Creed,” she said. “It’s going to be ammo, I think, for me when he is engaging with me as a director. I’m just going to tell him to dial down the sexiness.”

The film is set to start shooting next year, though it’s unclear if Sylvester Stallone will return as Rocky Balboa, the Philly palooka-turned-pugilist who started the whole franchise. Five years ago the Rocky series mutated, passing the baton to Jordan’s Adonis, the son of Carl Weather’s late Apollo Creed.

As far as resuscitating old IP, the first Creed was one of the most thoughtful and personalized, with filmmaker Ryan Coogler honoring the source while making it his own. Creed II continued the story, sans Coogler, and it ended on a note of semi-finality for Rocky himself, who was allowed to gracefully bow out rather than die out. But it’s clear from this news that whatever happens, the series will be in good hands.

(Via MTV and EW)

Ever since the advent of rap’s global popularity in the 1980s, new jack rappers have gained notoriety and stirred controversy by taking potshots at hip-hop’s sacred cows. A 17-year-old LL Cool J found himself on the first end of the equation when he called Kool Moe Dee “old school” in 1987, then on the other side ten years later as he duked it out with a rising star named Canibus in 1997. It’s the circle of life, it moves us all — but that hasn’t stopped younger rappers from getting a rise out of older fans with their inflammatory remarks.

29-year-old Young Thug is finding that out after appearing on the Million Dollaz Worth Of Game podcast. After taking so much flak for name-checking Andre 3000 recently and Jay-Z today, it seems his reticence to give interviews is has been justified many times over. While discussing his ideal challenger for a Verzuz matchup, his words were poorly received — after the quote was taken out of context, cut down, and mangled by users on Twitter, of course — when he seemingly suggested that Jay-Z wouldn’t have enough hits to go 30 rounds with him. Of course, in the actual quote, Thugger acknowledged he name-checked a bad example while making a larger point about their disparate audiences.

Although the quote currently being cited on social media says, “Jay-Z ain’t got 30 songs like that,” he later cleared up his meaning, acknowledging, “he probably got 50 of them bitches.” He further clarified his point, “I’m not literally saying him. I’m saying n****s who you thinking… I’m so scared to get booed, I don’t even perform songs they won’t know.”

He could be referring to scenes like the recent Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy battle, in which Gucci was roasted by viewers for his song selection after he played a newer song featuring Bruno Mars and Kodak Black. It seems Thug may have been trying to make a point about how different songs are perceived by different audiences and the potential to play what may seem like a surefire hit to a younger crowd, but is a dud to an older one (and vice versa). He’s right that an older rapper might make for a poor match for him, but he does have one in mind.

He told the hosts he’d like to challenge Lil Wayne, who he believed ignored him when they first met — again, probably owing to the fact that Wayne doesn’t keep up with new rappers.