Category: Viral

A storyline that from Robert Kirkman’s source material that we have been teasing for almost three years now has finally arrived. In 2018, I predicted that the Commonwealth storyline would be teased in the 11th season finale, so I was off by one season. However, in what was supposed to be the 10th season finale, we finally got a glimpse of the Commonwealth, or at least a group of Commonwealth soldiers.

It comes in the final seconds of “A Certain Doom,” the 16th episode of the 10th season, and the episode originally designed to be the season finale before the pandemic rearranged the series’ schedule. Eugene, Yumiko, Princess, and Ezekiel travel to West Virginia to meet Stephanie, a woman with whom Eugene has been communicating over the radio for quite some time. They arrive late, however, and Stephanie is nowhere to be seen. Eugene makes the assumption that she has left, but redoubles his efforts to find her (because he’s that “horny,” Princess jokes), which is when a group of Commonwealth soldiers pop out and surround Eugene and Company.

Did Stephanie even exist? Or was she just a character played by someone to lure newcomers out to West Virginia to be abducted by Commonwealth soldiers? That is unclear, but I can say that the Commonwealth is a huge community of 50,000+ people, who live very similarly to the way they lived before the pandemic. They have electricity, and sports teams, a military, and rock concerts, etc. They function as a fairly normal society within the zombie apocalypse.

If it sounds too good to be true, it’s because it mostly is. The Commonwealth is a highly functioning society, but the community has also set up a caste system, of sorts, based on the professions/jobs of those within the community before the zombie apocalypse. So, despite everything else that’s going on in the world, lawyers, doctors, entertainers, etc., are still wealthier than everyone else and treated as such. In other words, the Commonwealth had a chance to start all over again, and in most respects, it appears that it just continued the same old ways as before.

Is the Commonwealth related to Rick Grimes’ whereabouts or the CRM? That is unclear. Thanks to The World Beyond, we now know that CRM stands for Civic Republic Military, but we do not know what the Civic Repubic is or where they have taken Rick Grimes. The Commonwealth and the Civic Republic are likely not related, and it’s still very unclear as to whether the events of The Walking Dead will ever intersect with Rick Grimes again, even in the movies.

It is worth noting, however, that The Commonwealth storyline is the last of Robert Kirkman’s source material before he finally ends the story. We will, however, get to know The Commonwealth very well over the next 30 episodes and two years.

It’s been over a month since Chadwick Boseman suddenly passed away, having kept his battles with colon cancer a secret from everyone but close family and friends. Tributes and stories continue to pour in, the latest from Boseman’s two brothers, one of whom told The New York Times about what would prove to be their final conversation.

Derrick Boseman, who at 54 is his oldest brother, is a pastor, and their last chat perhaps inevitably wound up being spiritual. He said Chadwick was starting to lose faith that a recovery was possible, telling him, “Man, I’m in the fourth quarter, and I need you to get me out of the game.” That’s when Derrick realized “that he was tired. He was ready to go.” So Derrick changed up his game. “When he told me that, I changed my prayer from, ‘God heal him, God save him,’ to ‘God, let your will be done,’” he said. “And the next day he passed away.”

Boseman’s other brother, Kevin, 48 and a dancer in the stage version of The Lion King, wanted to tell people what it was like to know the real him. “I have been trying to remember Chad and not Chadwick,” Kevin told the Times. “And there’s just been a lot of Chadwick in the air.”

Kevin recalled letting the future Black Panther star stay with him in his Brooklyn apartment when the latter first moved to New York City, hoping to make it. Their father at one point expressed concern that success was proving elusive. “A lot of people think making it means becoming an A-list movie star,” Kevin said. “I didn’t force that. I just knew that if Chad wanted to work in the arts, he would find a way and take care of himself.”

Turns out all Chadwick had to was work hard and be patient. “He always did his best,” Kevin added. “His best was incredible.”

(Via The New York Times)

It’s a forgotten fact that before he became president, Donald J. Trump was a major Hollywood star. Well, not really. He’s played himself in movies like Home Alone 2, Zoolander, Two Weeks Notice, Woody Allen’s Celebrity, and the Bo Derek-Anthony Quinn rom-com Ghosts Can’t Do It. He’s done better on television, not only with The Apprentice but for producing the televised Miss Universe competition. It’s for the latter that scored him a much-coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Alas, said monument has been repeatedly vandalized and destroyed since he rebranded as a divisive politician. And its most recent destruction came at the hands of a person dressed as the Incredible Hulk.

This comes from The Los Angeles Times, which notes that, on early Friday, mere hours after news broke that the president and First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19, someone cosplaying as the largest and angriest Avenger took a pickaxe to the Donald’s star. No arrests were made, but whoever did it may be in hot water: Because the damage to the plaque exceeded $3,000, the crime is bumped up from a mere misdemeanor to a felony.

Trump received the star in 2007, and in the last four years it has undergone numerous attacks. One vandal in 2016 went at it with a sledgehammer, and another, two years later, also went with a pickaxe. Despite being a frequent target of people angry over, say, his endangering of Secret Service agents for a photo op, the star will not be removed. According to the rules laid out by the chamber that oversees the plaques, “Any star, which is vandalized or destroyed, no matter which honoree it belongs to will be replaced by the Hollywood Historic Trust, a non-profit, non-partisan group.”

In other words, we’re stuck with the Trump star, if perhaps not Trump the commander-in-chief.

(Via The Los Angeles Times)

The Atlanta Hawks are typically among the teams that host a game on Martin Luther King Jr. Day each January, as the Hawks pay tribute to the Atlanta native who shaped and led the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. With the league beginning to take an even greater position in the fight for social and racial justice, King’s legacy looms large, and next season the Hawks will pay tribute to him more regularly than just on the third Monday in January.

On Sunday, just before tipoff of Game 3 of the NBA Finals, the Hawks unveiled their newest City Edition uniforms, which replace their ATL lettering on the front with MLK, with gold piping on the black uniforms.

The Hawks announced that “proceeds from the sale of this jersey will go to support economic empowerment programs for Atlanta’s communities of color,” as they call fans to action to carry King’s legacy forward and do their part. The Hawks offered a list of activities for fans to do, such as becoming a poll worker, volunteering for an organization fighting for racial equality, and more as part of an “Earn These Letters” campaign that pushes fans to go out in the community.

For the first time in his career, Machine Gun Kelly has scored the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts. The new feat comes as a result of his fifth album, Tickets To My Downfall, which sported a shift in sound that found the Cleveland native moving from his hip-hop roots towards a more pop-punk sound. Many questioned the move, but MGK was quick to explain himself. “I would like to normalize how we think about doing multiple types of music,” he said in an interview with HipHopDX’s Trent Clark. “I didn’t ‘switch genres’; I’m versatile, and the wall isn’t boxed in. … Limitations would cause you to believe that, because I’ve put out four albums that are rap, I shouldn’t put out a fifth album that’s not rap.”

Well this versatility worked for MGK, as he took the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts, selling 126,000 equivalent album units in the week ending on Oct. 1. Of that number, 63,000 were album sales and 60,000 were streaming equivalent album units. Tickets To My Downfall also becomes the first No. 1 rock album in 2020 and the first to top the albums charts since Tool’s 2019 album, Fear Inoculum, nabbed the top spot in September 2019.

Elsewhere on the top five, K-pop supergroup SuperM debuts at No. 2 with Super One: The 1st Album, tallying 104,000 units. Joji tails behind, with Nectar coming in at No. 3. To round out the top five, Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars Aim For The Moon comes in at No. 4 while Deftones’ Ohms can be found at No. 5.

(via Billboard)

The Giants and Rams played a pretty sleepy, boring game in an empty SoFi Stadium on Sunday, with the Rams emerging with a 17-9 win thanks to a game-sealing interception as New York worked their way into the redzone.

The most exciting play of the game was Jalen Ramsey blowing up a screen pass to Golden Tate in which he went through a blocker and then put a perfect tackle on Tate, slamming him to the ground emphatically.

That moment reminded many of Tate and Ramsey’s off-field history, as Ramsey has two children with Tate’s sister, with Tate publicly making statements calling out Ramsey for disrespecting his sister after the two broke up. After the game, Ramsey and Tate came together at midfield in a moment that many likely should’ve seen coming, sparking a brawl between the two teams as they swung at each other and then ended up wrestling to the ground, with the two teams fighting while trying to break it up.

It will be interesting to see if the league issues any discipline for this, given that we are in the midst of a pandemic and we’ve already seen multiple games postponed due to positive tests this week. As such, two teams brawling isn’t exactly ideal, both in terms of optics and in creating close face-to-face contact.

As for Tate and Ramsey, this would seem to only further their issues with each other and this likely won’t be their last confrontation.

Donald Trump is allegedly getting better. Late Thursday night it was reported that the president, who has been widely accused of downplaying the pandemic that has affected the United States in far greater numbers than elsewhere, had tested positive for COVID-19. Since then he’s been quarantining, first in the White House and then in a massive suite in D.C.’s Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Word on his condition has been fuzzy, with some reports being grim, others being very optimistic. And on late Sunday, in an apparent attempt to show off his alleged good spirits, he got into an SUV with a pile of Secret Service agents to do a quick drive around the massive crowds that have gathered, loudly, outside of the hospital.

Thing is, even if he’s been feeling better, anyone who’s tested positive for the coronavirus should not be crammed inside a tight space with anyone, even if they’re decked out in PPE, as they appear to be. While Trump’s supporters may appreciate the gesture, others noticing the quick drive from afar, on social media, thought it was cruel.

Some pointed out that the Secret Service’s job — to take a bullet for the president — has its limits.

Some pointed out that endangering officers sworn to uphold lives doesn’t gibe with other public statements about the police put forth by this administration.

Some quoted a former Secret Service officer and leaders.

That’s a lot of righteous anger, but hand it to Jordan Uhl for finding the one humorous lining of Trump’s latest dangerous photo op stunt.

So did this guy.

In any case, if it’s true that Trump was tested positive Thursday night, he has another week-and-a-half until he’s supposed to be around anyone else, for fear of exposing them to a highly infectious disease. But we’ll see how long that lasts.

Looking to show off their skills in a new medium, Lupe Fiasco and Royce Da 5’9″ have announced a new podcast, entitled The Lupe & Royce Show, in partnership with SayWhat Media. Lupe made the announcement on Instagram, with a caption that read, “SURPRISE!!! Me & @royceda59 decided to do a podcast 2 gether like 2 real geniuses.” You can currently listen to a trailer for the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with a description that reads, “Half conversation between friends, half interview show, and 100% weird.” Lupe also revealed that the podcast features Thomas Frank and will be available starting October 8.

The two rappers last made news together when Lupe asked Royce for permission to replace Joe Budden in the Slaughterhouse rap collective.” Royce quickly turned down the request, but for good reason, as he laster explained. “He’s no ‘group replacement guy.’ He’s great. He’s not just an MC, he’s a ‘master,’” Royce said in an interview with HipHopDX. “That’s something completely different. They’re two totally different kinds of rappers and people. So that’s not a swap.”

The The Lupe & Royce Show announcement comes days after Lupe shared his Tape Tape double-single with Soundtrakk. He also teamed up with Florida producer Kaelin Ellis for their House EP which they released back in July.

The NBA Finals lost a bit of intrigue in Game 1 when the Heat, in the midst of a blowout loss, saw two of their star players go down with injuries. Goran Dragic left the game with what was eventually determined to be a plantar fascia tear of his left foot, with Bam Adebayo leaving in the third quarter with a neck strain.

Both players were held out of Game 2, with mild hope that they could play later in the series. The Heat lost Game 2 despite a valiant effort to keep things relatively close in the second half, but the talent discrepancy without Adebayo and Dragic was simply too great. In Game 3, the Heat will once again have to find a way to scrap their way to a win without the services of their All-Star big man and former All-Star point guard, as the team announced both would be sitting out again.

It’s an extremely unfortunate way for this Finals to be taking place, as the Lakers won Game 1 emphatically, injuries or not, but the Heat not being at full strength puts a damper on the excitement that the series began with. Miami was on one of the great playoff runs we’ve seen from an unexpected contender, and for them to not have a shot at the Lakers with their full squad is a disappointment. Still, as Erik Spoelstra said after Game 2, they don’t care what expectations are, they still feel they need to go out and win, with or without Adebayo and Dragic.

The Seattle Storm are one game away from their fourth WNBA championship as a franchise and second in three years after a 104-91 win over the Las Vegas Aces in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.

The Aces have simply not had any answers for the Seattle offense, which had three players score 20-plus in Game 2. Breanna Stewart led all scorers with 22 points on 7-of-13 shooting (5-of-8 from three) to go along with five assists and four rebounds. She had plenty of help, as Alysha Clark and Natasha Howard each had 21 points on a combined 17-of-22 from the field, and the legendary Sue Bird had 16 points and 10 assists as they simply cooked the Las Vegas defense with their ball movement.

The Storm had 33 assists on 40 made shots in Game 2, posting a preposterous 57.1/46.2/80.0 shooting split as a team, as they took advantage of the Aces aggressive helping on defense, particularly in the post, to create open looks from the perimeter. The Aces on a few occasions pulled within a few of Seattle, but the closing run by the Storm was just too much. On each of these fourth quarter three-pointers that helped salt the game away, you can see how they took advantage of the Aces pack the paint defense against them, as perimeter players sank inside leaving opportunities for open shooters.

On the other end, the Aces played really well. MVP A’ja Wilson had 20 points on 8-of-17 shooting, while Emma Cannon added 17 points off the bench and Angel McCoughtry chipped in 16. As a team they hit 52 percent from the field and 42.1 percent from three-point range, which typically would be more than enough for the three-point averse Aces, but they simply cannot seem to stop this Storm offense.

As the series shifts to a potential closeout Game 3 for Seattle, Vegas will have to find a way to slow down the Storm offense. They have to stick more with perimeter shooters and cut off driving lanes for Bird, who has 26 assists in two games this series and is simply carving them up. Stewart is nigh unstoppable, but they might just have to give up some one-on-one opportunities to the former MVP in exchange for knocking their shooters out of rhythm.