Category: Viral

Let’s start with what we know:

• The Fast & Furious franchise will end after the 11th film, leaving only the delayed ninth movie and a two-part mega-finale directed by the mastermind of the operation, Justin Lin
• The franchise is totally nuts on many levels, from the action (submarines, tanks, super-powered sports cars soaring through the air like birds), to the soap opera plot developments (amnesia, characters returning from the dead, heroes becoming villains and vice versa), to the pretzeled chronology of it all (the third movie, Tokyo Drift, slots in between the sixth and seventh, and Vin Diesel self-produced a short film that explains how we got from two to four)
• It is, allegedly, finally, headed to space in the ninth movie, whenever it comes out
• There is no hard limit on what is possible in these movies, and you are a fool if you believe for one second that there is
• I am not ready for the franchise to end

This last one is admittedly odd, mostly because 11 films over 20-25 years is an absurdly long run for any franchise that is still trotting out the majority of its original but ever-growing cast. This should be enough. It should be more than enough. I suspect it is for many of you. But it is not for me. This sucker could go for 100 years and continue on with the characters’ children and grandchildren and outlive us all and I would be perfectly happy. It’s so big and dumb and fun and getting more of each of those with each new film. I am genuinely excited to see how far they can push the limits of credulity.

And so, with that in mind, I have ranked 10 potential endings for the franchise. The rankings aren’t really organized in any particular order beyond “how much Brian would like to see them happen,” but still, I stand by all of them. Crank up “See You Again” and read this through your tears. Let’s get weird.

10. Some sweet ending about Family that doesn’t involve space or necromancy or a complete disregard for the generally accepted laws of physics

This is the most likely actual ending, like at the very end of the final movie in the franchise proper, if only because it is how most of the other movies end. Everyone sitting around for a barbecue with bottles of Corona strewn about like discarded canisters of NoS, Tyrese saying a pre-meal prayer, former adversaries showing up with potato salad three weeks after trying to blow up a casino and being welcomed with open arms like a long lost sibling, the whole deal. I know this is how it’s going to end. You know this is how it’s going to end. But it’s ranked last anyway because we can have way more fun playing make-believe with it all. So let’s do that.

9. Everyone stays in space and fights aliens

If, as has been teased multiple times and remains inevitable given the trajectory of this delightful bozo circus of a film franchise, the ninth movie takes one or more of the crew to outer space, even briefly, then that opens the door to Space Stuff as an ongoing development. There’s no reason the next movie can’t open with the government recruiting the Family, again, because someone is trying to blow up the moon. And while they’re on the moon — space buggy races for pink slips, etc. — they discover aliens. And then the whole last movie is them in the damn cosmos shooting lasers out of spaceships they know how to fly for some reason, except for Tyrese, who shouts “Oh HELL no” and just rides with Ludacris and complains the whole time.

Be honest. You can see this crystal clear in your head right now. Do not lie to me on Vin Diesel’s internet.

8. Shot-for-shot remake of Infinity War and Endgame

Look, if we’re going to end the franchise with a massive two-part final chapter, and we’ve already more or less turned the movie’s characters into science-defying comic book heroes, and I just convinced myself that aliens can be looped into this without it being a completely unreasonable reach, then I don’t see why we can’t just go ahead and be hilarious about it. Put Vin Diesel in a full-on Iron Man suit. Let Ludacris be Spider-Man. Let The Rock be Hulk. Let Statham play Captain America even though he has a British accent thicker than The Rock’s thighs. I could keep going.

And I will. Jordana Brewster is Black Widow. Michelle Rodriguez is Captain Marvel. Sung Kang is Star-Lord. Tyrese is Black Panther. Charlize Theron is Thanos. Groot is there but is voiced by Ja Rule as his character from the first movie, to avoid confusion. Just mash it all up into a ball and heave it into my big stupid face. That’s all I ask.

7. Gisele comes back too and she and Han get married

If this franchise can bring back Han after killing him off in the third movie and fudging the chronology to bring him back for films 4-6 and then revealing he was murdered by Jason Statham and then making Statham a good guy by the eighth movie, there is absolutely no reason they can’t also bring back Gisele, played by Gal Gadot, who died in the sixth movie, and end the franchise with a huge ceremony where she and Han get married. I’m picturing everything in these next bullet points:

• Ceremony officiated by Ludacris because if he can go from Miami mechanic and jet-ski race referee to world’s greatest computer hacker in a span of about four films, he can certainly get ordained, too
• Gal Gadot drives a supercharged neon Honda down the aisle to the altar
• She is given away by Vin Diesel who drives a huge muscle car next to her and sheds a single tear of joy
• Instead of the traditional wedding march, they walk — er, drive — no, DRIFT — down the aisle to “See You Again,” performed live by Wiz Khalifa even though it folds the movie’s universe on top of itself
• Car cake
• Etc.

I will 100 percent cry if this happens. I feel okay about it.

6. Voltron ending

In order to defeat their most powerful enemy yet (let’s say, oh, I don’t know, a Tyrannosaurus rex controlled by Tilda Swinton), the Family is outfitted with a fleet of cars that can link together to form a 50-foot robot with arms and legs and a head and that throws NoS-powered haymakers at the dinosaur in the middle of Paris and then climbs the Eiffel Tower and leaps off of it to deliver a crushing elbow to the throat to finish the battle. I barely think about this at all. Only like an hour every night. That’s less than five percent of the day. Like I said, barely at all.

5. Dominic Toretto is elected President

See, on paper, a convicted felon who escaped a prison transport bus and was hunted to Brazil by a powerful government agency and who used to make his living stealing DVD players from moving 18-wheelers in coordinated highway heists would be, like, a pretty bad candidate, but please consider these two things: One, picture Dominic Toretto grunting and growling his way through a debate; two, what if he wins the election without campaigning at all, just through a coordinated national write-in movement, possibly after the incumbent president reveals himself to be an evil mastermind who kills his opponent in a plot to become King of America and is defeated by Dom and Company in an adrenaline-thumping final battle that involves Mia Toretto driving a hovercraft down the Potomac?

Not so far-fetched now, is it? I mean, for this franchise.

4. Jason Statham and The Rock break bad and we have an inter-Family battle to the death

The Fast & Furious franchise has a long history of characters flipping from good to bad. Letty became a villain for a minute when she had amnesia after almost dying. Dom was a villain for a chunk of the eighth movie when he was blackmailed. Statham’s character straight-up murdered Han and tried to blow Dom out of the Abu Dhabi sky with a bazooka, and now he’s a lovable goof with a spin-off. It takes no death-defying leap of logic to get from any of that to “Hobbs and Shaw break bad or maybe break good and try to take down the heroic/felonious family once and for all.”

I really want to see this. I know they all have that alleged clause in their contracts about how they can’t lose fights but that almost makes it better. Close this sucker out with an hour-long battle in the streets and cut to the credits as it’s raging on, with no resolution beyond the implication that the ruckus rages on in perpetuity. Everyone driving high-performance cars that have been outfitted with hood-mounted cannons, laying waste to an entire city without harming each other at all, speeding around and through rubble until the end of time in a cloud of dust and anarchy. It’s kind of perfect.

3. Dom drives to Hell and fights the Devil

I don’t have much to add here. Someone suggested it to me on Twitter and I laughed out loud for like five full seconds. I’m glad I was in an otherwise empty room when it happened. I do not think I would have had fun trying to answer the question, “What’s so funny?” But I did have a lot of fun picturing it. That’s what matters here.

2. Jacob’s Ladder situation

Do you listen to How Did This Get Made? I hope so. It’s a good podcast. One of their running bits features Jason Mantzoukas suggesting that a movie — any movie, no matter how BBC silly or dumb — could end with “a Jacob’s Ladder-type situation,” a reference to the 1990 movie with the twist ending that — spoilers, I guess? — the whole thing was a hallucination.

My working theory for how this plays out in the Fast & Furious universe is that Dom actually slipped into a coma after the crash at the end of the first movie…

… and everything that has happened since is just his brain going wild while he is hooked up to machines in the hospital. The crazy thing is that this is somehow both completely insane and kind of the most logical way to explain how a franchise that started with a small-time criminal who runs a lunch counter evolved into a globe-trotting adventure involving multiple death ruses and amnesia and submarines and secretive government organizations and maybe a trip to outer space. I almost want it to happen now. I would do such a weird groan/laugh/shout combination that people in the theater might think I’m dying.

1. Everyone travels back in time to before the events of the first movie, with the knowledge of everything that has happened since, and lives happily ever after in a world where they get to wink at each other and smile knowingly

I swear to God, if Ludacris doesn’t build a time machine before this franchise ends, I will eat one of my shoes. Please keep in mind here that I called the submarine in the eighth movie and have been banging the drum for outer space for years now. I am not a crackpot.

I mean, I am a crackpot, sure, but in a way that lines up well with the madness of these movies. I will miss them so much.

Paul McCartney is only two years removed from the release of his latest solo album, 2018’s Egypt Station. Now he has another one on the way, and it’s a continuation of a classic series: McCartney III (which follows 1970’s McCartney and 1980’s McCartney II) will be released on December 11.

McCartney said the album came from a fun stretch with no real end goal in mind:

“I was living lockdown life on my farm with my family and I would go to my studio every day. I had to do a little bit of work on some film music and that turned into the opening track, and then when it was don,e I thought, ‘What will I do next?’ I had some stuff I’d worked on over the years, but sometimes time would run out and it would be left half-finished, so I started thinking about what I had. Each day I’d start recording with the instrument I wrote the song on and then gradually layer it all up, it was a lot of fun. It was about making music for yourself rather than making music that has to do a job. So, I just did stuff I fancied doing. I had no idea this would end up as an album.”

Press materials describe the album as an “eclectic collection of spontaneous songs” and “a stripped back, self-produced and, quite literally, solo work marking the opening of a new decade, in the tradition of 1970’s McCartney and 1980’s McCartney II.” Most of the songs have McCartney on vocals and piano or guitar as a foundation, with overdubs of bass, drumming, and other instruments to flesh things out.

Check out the album art below.

McCartney III is out 12/11 via Capitol Records. Pre-order it here.

Korean-American producer Yaeji first made a name for herself when her 2017 song “Drink I’m Sippin On” was widely shared via 88rising’s YouTube channel, a renowned collective for Asian-American and Asian musicians. Since then, the artist continued to cement herself as a promising producer through a handful of singles and EPs. After touring the world and working with big artists like Charli XCX and Robyn, Yaeji shared to her debut LP What We Drew last April.

Now returning with a bonus track, Yaeji debuted the song “When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter” Wednesday. The song calls back to the chilled-out nature of the producer’s early catalog, boasting a slow, thumping beat under her fuzzy layered lyrical delivery.

Speaking about the bonus track in a statement, Yaeji said: “‘When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter’ was a track I wrote maybe close to 3 years ago. I was probably a different person back then, but the song still resonates with me now. It was included as a bonus track in the Korean and Japanese CDs of What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던, but we’re finally sharing it with everyone.”

Listen to “When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter” above.

What We Drew is out now via XL. Get it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Tua Tagovailoa is the new quarterback in Miami despite the team playing solid, .500 football so far this season, and it appears they did not level with Ryan Fitzpatrick prior to his benching.

Speaking with reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Fitzpatrick described the frustration of being “basically fired” even though he was “fully committed and invested” in the success of the Dolphins this season.

Through six games in 2020, Fitzpatrick has completed 70 percent of his passes with the third-highest net yards per attempt of his career and a sterling 82.5 QBR. While Fitzpatrick has also thrown seven interceptions, his mistakes haven’t been too costly for Miami, as the team’s passing offense is the 13th-most efficient in the NFL, according to Football Outsiders.

Amid a career year, it’s no surprise that Fitzpatrick would be disappointed to lose the starting job.

“We’ve talked about how I’m the placeholder and this eventually was going to happen, it was just a matter of when and not if,” Fitzpatrick told reporters. “It still just broke my heart.”

When a rebuilding team like the Dolphins drafts a player like Tagovailoa whose upside is so considerable, the clock starts on when that quarterback will eventually take the reins of the offense. The change came quickly here, and while Fitzpatrick has given no impression that he will handle the change poorly, it’s clear that at least from Fitzpatrick’s perspective, Miami pulling the trigger now with Tagovailoa came as a shock.

The current COVID-19 “strategy” from the White House appears to be to push for theoretical “herd immunity” by letting the virus spread among the young and healthy population while protecting the elderly and immunocompromised until a certain (genuinely unknown) threshold is reached. Despite many infectious disease experts and some of the world’s largest medical institutions decrying the idea as “a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence,” and “practically impossible and highly unethical,” the radiologist Trump added to his pandemic team is trying to convince people it’s a grand plan.

Aside from the fact that we don’t know enough about the natural immunity of this virus and the fact that “herd immunity” is a term used in vaccine science—not as a strategy of purposefully infecting people in order to get through an infectious disease outbreak —the idea of “infect the young, protect the vulnerable” is simply a unworkable strategy.

Look no further than the outbreak among the college student population in Pullman, Washington to see why.

Pullman, the largest town in rural Whitman County, is home to Washington State University, with the 20,000+ student population making up nearly half the county’s population.

Pullman and Whitman County kept the pandemic under control for a long time. The pandemic shutdown in March hit right around spring break at the university, and most students just stayed at their respective homes for the remaining two months of the school year in the spring. The county saw its first COVID-19 case on March 22, and over the next five months, there would be a tiny trickle of cases, with no hospitalizations and no deaths. Whitman County even had a three-week period with no new cases over the summer and was able to move to a new phase of reopening early.

As of August 20, there had been 138 cases total in Whitman County. No hospitalizations, no deaths. Washington’s pandemic response plan was working. Things were under control.

Then the students started returning to Pullman.

Even though WSU was holding all classes online, an estimated 12,000+ students came back to town anyway at the end of August. Some couldn’t get out of leases they’d signed. Some had no other place else to live. Some just wanted to come and have the college party experience, despite the governor’s ban on gatherings of more than 10.

And party they did. Reports of parties on Greek Row and in housing near the campus, with no masks and no distancing, poured in. In two weeks, cases in the county quadrupled, then kept climbing. Pullman was ranked by the New York Times’ coronavirus tracker as the #1 hotspot in the nation in mid-September.

By October 5, the county had 1614 cases—a more than 1000% increase in 7 weeks.

But because nearly all of the cases were college-aged, there were only a couple of hospitalizations and no deaths. More than six months after its first case, Whitman County still hadn’t seen a COVID death, even with this outbreak among the students. These statistics would have been a perfect argument for “let it spread through the young and healthy” idea—right up until it wasn’t.

A few weeks ago, the ages of the new cases started shifting and Pullman saw a sudden influx of hospitalizations. The first death came on October 6. There have been eight more since then.

Let me repeat that. Whitman County went from zero COVID deaths in nearly seven months to nine COVID deaths in two weeks.

That may not seem like a huge number to those in large cities, but it’s a stunning increase in a small, rural county that had had the virus under control. And yes, these deaths were all in the over-60 age group—because you can’t keep widespread infection among the young and healthy from infecting the vulnerable. You just can’t.

The virus is now in Whitman County’s long-term care facilities. Cases are also showing up in the hospital staff. It’s not like those populations weren’t already being protected—this is just how outbreaks work. An large increase in cases just among one age group leads to more opportunities for more people to become infected, which leads to an even greater increase in cases among the whole community, etc. The virus is indiscriminate in who it infects, and it’s virtually impossible to create perfect bubbles of groups that don’t overlap with one another.

Pullman’s current situation started with carefree college students acting like things were “back to normal,” partying with no masks and no social distancing. And now it has spread into the community that had done such a good job of keeping it at bay—exactly what residents worried would happen if and when the students returned.

Yes, this is anecdotal, but it’s reality. Protecting the vulnerable requires protecting the whole community as much as possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean we have to lock everything down for years—it means we need to choose what stays and what goes wisely and do things as safely as possible, with distancing and masks and handwashing and not holding group activities.

It means not buying into magical thinking that we can somehow push the virus through the less vulnerable population without killing people unnecessarily. We are seeing how that thinking plays out in real time in Whitman County.

Stan Van Gundy is getting back into the coaching game. According to Andrew Lopez and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the New Orleans Pelicans have opted to hand the keys of the franchise over to the former Miami Heat, Orlando Magic, and Detroit Pistons head coach. New Orleans has been in the market for a new coach since parting ways with Alvin Gentry earlier this year following the team’s inability to make the playoffs.

The news was confirmed by Shams Charania of The Athletic, who noted that Van Gundy will receive a four-year deal.

Van Gundy’s name has been in the mix for this job for a few days, as he was listed as one of the finalists for this position. It is unclear who all three of the other finalists were, but it had been reported that Tyronn Lue was one of them prior to his accepting of the Los Angeles Clippers’ vacancy.

While it is not a surprise that Van Gundy wanted to get back into coaching, he had found a niche as a broadcaster with Turner, both in the studio and as an in-game analyst, the latter of which led to him receiving plenty of praise. But now, he’s returning to the league, where he’ll be tasked with molding one of the brightest young rosters in all of basketball, particularly the 1-2 punch of Brandon Ingram and Zion Williamson.

Nicki Minaj is just weeks removed from the birth of her first child, a baby boy. She hasn’t shared much info about the kid yet, as is her right, but somebody wanted their viral moment, so they shared a photo of a random baby and claimed it was Minaj’s. The tweet got over 100,000 likes and Minaj was displeased, writing, “116K likes. Not my baby. Not his name. Imagine doing this. Pls delete this person’s child from your page.”

Now, Minaj has given fans what they want: an actual photo of her child. It’s not a photograph of the kid’s face, though, but instead a shot of a hand holding a tiny baby foot.

After Minaj had the baby, she received kind messages from some of her musical peers, including Beyonce, who wrote, “Welcome to motherhood. God bless you and your family.” She thanked her and other for the thoughts, writing, “It meant the world to me. I am so grateful & in love with my son. Madly in love. My favorite liddo boy in the whole wide world.”

Meanwhile, like Beyonce also did, she shared a message about the situation in Nigeria, writing on Twitter, “Standing with & praying for the brave young people of Nigeria who are on the front lines of this senseless violence. Your voice is being heard.”

The last time Ty Dolla Sign hooked up with Post Malone, it was for the latter’s 2018 single “Psycho,” which helped propel Beerbongs & Bentleys to the biggest debut of 2018 and made it one of two hip-hop albums to go platinum that year. Now, Post returns the favor for Ty’s upcoming album with a verse on “Spicy,” the latest single from Featuring Ty Dolla Sign, dropping October 23.

The two artists sing-rap over a clap-ridden, guitar-driven beat with subtle Latin influences, delivering flirtatious lyrics about the women they plan to bed. Premiering the song on Apple Music, Ty told Zane Lowe that Post “took a f*cking hell of a long time to send it back… I was kind of impatient just because we started on this song, me and him, definitely sometime last year. And I’m like, ‘Yo, finish your f*cking verse. Finish your verse. Send it, send it, send it.’”

Eventually, Ty did get the verse from Post and credited his collaborator’s perfectionism: “Shout out to our brother, Post,” he said. “He’s about perfection, and we see it in his work, every time.”

Listen to Ty Dolla Sign and Post Malone’s “Spicy” above.

Featuring Ty Dolla Sign is due 10/23 via Def Jam Records. Pre-save it here.

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

After weeks of hinting at new music, Ariana Grande finally shares some firm details about her upcoming single. The singer shared a countdown on her website this week which signaled her new era of music will officially start Friday.

It’s been over a year and a half since Grande shared her acclaimed record Thank U, Next, and it won’t be long before fans are able to hear its follow-up. Last week, the singer revealed in a succinct tweet that her next record will debut in October. Giving further information about her music, Grande’s website’s new countdown indicates that the album’s lead single, “Positions,” will be shared on Friday.

Along with specifying her “Positions” release, the singer’s website features a second countdown ending on October 30. Since Grande stated her entire album will arrive in October, many have concluded that the countdown is the singer’s way of sharing the record’s official release date.

Grande’s announcement arrives after she teased fans with a couple snippets of her new music. A six-second clip shared to social media gives a taste of a vocal track on one of her songs. Before that, the singer hinted that she had something special in the works with Doja Cat.

Check out Grande’s “Positions” single art below and see her release countdown here.

Jon Stewart has been a tireless advocate for ensuring that 9/11 first responders and veterans receive the proper care they were promised by the government for their service and bravery, which has not been the case over the years. On Tuesday night, Stewart stopped by The Medhi Hasan Show where he was joined by activist John Feal. The two brought attention to veterans who were injured in toxic burn pits while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan but have yet to receive necessary treatments.

In a notable moment, Stewart set aside his usual tactic of bipartisanship, and he specifically ripped into Republican Party for routinely dropping the ball when it comes to first responders and veterans. “It’s an inability to empathize or to understand that other people may be suffering issues that you don’t suffer,” Stewart said before launching into a scathing criticism of the GOP. Via Mediaite:

“They’re the party of symbolism. It’s paper patriotism. It’s the party that, if Colin Kaepernick takes a knee, they’ll never watch another football game again,” the comedian added. “They stand for the anthem, but when it comes down — everybody supports the troops until the troops need support, and then they disappear. And it’s too much money. We can no longer always have money for war and then not have enough money for the warfighter.”

Stewart’s pointed anger at the Republican Party likely also stems from recent reports that the Trump Administration has been secretly siphoning money from the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program. The former Daily Show host has been championing the program for years as a means to provide healthcare to 9/11 first responders, but reportedly, the Treasury Department has been quietly diverting funds since Trump took office. But as fans of the comedian know, he’s not afraid to take the fight directly to Washington as he did back in June 2019. After being greeted to an empty room during a scheduled congressional hearing, Stewart didn’t hold back on the glaring failure unfolding before him. “What an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting healthcare and benefits for 9/11 first responders has come to,” he said. “Behind me, a filled room of 9/11 first responders — and in front of me, a nearly empty Congress.” The moment went instantly viral, which should’ve been a warning to politicians.

When Jon Stewart speaks, America listens.

(Via Mediaite)