Category: Viral

The NBA plans on playing games in home markets during the 2020-21 season, which is slated to tip off on Dec. 22. Part of the reason why is that the league wants to be able to have fans in attendance, which would be a way to boost revenue after the league had to go with a fan-less environment during its Orlando Bubble.

The issue, of course, is that the NBA is trying to pull this off despite being in the midst of a global pandemic. On Wednesday afternoon, we got a glimpse into the guidelines the league will put into place thanks to a memo it sent to all 30 teams, as acquired by Shams Charania of The Athletic. Included in the memo is a guideline that states fans who get close to the court will need to provide proof of a negative COVID test.

The league also has mask requirements in place and will not allow fans close to the court to eat. There are also requirements that teams will need to meet based on how their localities are handling the virus.

It is unclear if the league would have any failsafes in place to stop games altogether, or if these various rules would be amenable based on the virus getting better or worse in a given area. There is also no word on how a potential COVID vaccine would impact any of this.

This year marked the 20th anniversary of Eminem’s influential album The Marshall Mathers LP. To celebrate two decades of the record, Eminem re-released his videos “The Real Slim Shady,” “The Way I Am,” and “Stan” on in HD on YouTube. But now, Eminem is saluting another major milestone: The rapper’s “Without Me” video has officially surpassed one billion views on YouTube.

Celebrating the impressive feat, the rapper has also given his 2002 “Without Me” video an HD treatment so that fans can get the full experience. The visual has everything — from Eminem cross-dressing on a faux talk show to the rapper dancing on Elvis Presley’s turd — and showcases the heyday of MTV-era videos. Antics aside, the visual’s general plot follows Eminem and Dre. Dre as the two MC’s are called on a mission to stop a young child from listening to the rapper’s explicit record.

While the video just now broke a billion views, the rapper’s The Eminem Show had already garnered a handful of accolades. At the time of its release, The Eminem Show was the best-selling album of 2002 and has since been certified Diamond. The album has seen worldwide sales of 27 million copies, according to NME, which is tied with Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me as the second best-selling album of the century, behind Adele’s 21.

Watch Eminem’s “Without Me” video in HD above.

The biggest news in the Jeopardy! universe right now is the death of the show’s most important figure: Longtime host Alex Trebek recently passed away at 80 years old after a fight with pancreatic cancer. This doesn’t mean the show will suddenly go off the air, though. After Trebek’s death, executive producer Mike Richards shared a heartfelt message about Trebek and about the show, noting that the remaining episodes (35 of them at the time) would be aired as planned, the last of which is set to air on Christmas. Before then, though, Mariah Carey popped up on the program, as she had her own category.

On last night’s episode, one of the categories was titled simply “Mariah Carey,” and the titular singer read all of the clues. The questions and answers were all related to her career, with some answers including Jay-Z, Precious, and “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

Ahead of the episode, Carey shared a promo clip and wrote on Twitter, “Saddened by the passing of our beloved Alex Trebek. He is a staple of American TV and will be so missed. I recently taped clues for my category on @Jeopardy, and will be watching this bittersweet moment with all of you today. Thank you, Alex. RIP.”

Watch Carey’s Jeopardy! appearance above.

Courtney Bell is an up-and-coming rapper from Detroit whose gift for witty wordsmithing in singles like “Say You Wanna” and “Ice” has put him on the radars of traditional rap fans this year and garnered him a respectable following for a rapper without an official album out yet. Bell’s talent has secured a trustworthy cosign from Compton’s Boogie on his latest single, “Lion’s Den,” ensuring that his underground credibility and profile will grow before too much longer.

The song’s lyrics find the conscious-minded Bell and the street-centric Boogie taking on a topic that’s been at the forefront of the news cycle throughout 2020: The ongoing pattern of racially-motivate police brutality that has turned so many Black people’s names into hashtags and reasons for protest. Drawing on his religious beliefs, Bell defies the conditions that oppress Black people, while Boogie maintains “my heart is not on auction.”

In the video, the duo and their crew surround and bully a police officer who pointed his gun at them, hammering home the idea that officers are meant to protect and serve the people, who should hold more power than them. It ends with a list of names of people killed by police in recent years, including Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Breonna Taylor, and more.

Although it’s been a relatively quiet year for Boogie, who is billed to appear on LVRN’s Home For The Holidays Christmas album later this year, he did have appearances on Reason’s “Trapped In” and Guapdad 4000’s “Hairless Horseman.”

Watch the “Lion’s Den” video above.

David Fincher is a famously demanding director, but he gets results, dammit.

“Fincher is meticulous,” actor John Carroll Lynch once said about working with him on Zodiac. “He’s after something. And it takes him 50 takes to get it.” Fifty is low, actually. Fincher shot a nine-minute scene for Mindhunter 75 times, and Amanda Seyfried recalls doing 200 takes for a single scene in his new film, Mank.

The black-and-white Netflix biographical drama, starring Gary Oldman as Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, is a “splendid” movie, but the rest of Fincher’s cast, along with Seyfried, did not always have a splendid time making it.

“We did take after take after take after take,” actor Charles Dance, who plays William Randolph Hearst, told Total Film about shooting a dinner party scene in Mank. “And [Oldman] said to David at one point, ‘David, I’ve done this scene a hundred f*cking times.’ And Fincher said, ‘Yeah, I know, but this is 101. Reset!’” Fincher admits that filming Mank was “exhausting” for Oldman, “because I’m fairly didactic about, ‘These are the things that the scene needs to accomplish for me, and we will continue to play, to look for ways to underline these ideas that are as subtle as we can make them.’”

Fincher usually gets his way, too, unless it involves a Yankees hat.

(Via Total Film)

Over the years, Zack Snyder fans have shown up in a big way to help support suicide prevention, and this time, the director is driving the fundraising with an exclusive T-shirt featuring the epic DC Comics villain Darkseid. In a Tuesday night tweet, Snyder thanked fans for raising over $430,000 and urged others who haven’t already snatched up a Darkseid shirt to help him reach half a million dollars for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

You can see Snyder’s tweet below, along with a link to the fundraising site Ink to the People:

Snyder has confirmed that the villainous Darkseid will appear in his director’s cut of Justice League when it arrives on HBO Max in 2021. The long awaited “Snyder Cut” will showcase the director’s original vision for the film that he wasn’t able to complete after his daughter committed suicide during production. (Out of respect to Snyder and his family, the social media movement #ReleaseTheSnyderCut often contained a suicide prevention component for this very reason.)

Snyder also recently revealed that he did make future plans for Darkseid that go beyond his soon-to-be-restored appearance in Justice League. Via Comic Book:

“It’s a fair question to ask me, you know, like what do I say to the world about, you know, what happens when Darkseid comes to Earth? Then what? You know, Is that a thing? And I think, listen, the truth is that did I write and did I have and conceive a complete- do I know what happens when Darkseid… yes. I do know what happens. To say and to speculate about what that is and that that would be exciting, I think that’s a fine thing.”

While Snyder didn’t reveal what those exact plans are, there’s one small wrinkle. Ava DuVernay is currently developing a New Gods movie that would presumably involve Darkseid and is not connected to Justice League. However, things have been very fluid with the DC Comics movies lately, and we’re already seeing a multiverse component happening with Michael Keaton’s Batman possibly appearing in The Flash. So who knows what might happen with Snyder’s vision for Darkseid down the line?

(Via Zack Snyder on Twitter)

Prime TV Network Soap Opera King Darren Star’s latest show, Emily In Paris, racked up the views for Netflix in October. At least, that’s what one could gather by its placement on Netflix’s rotating Top 10 list, and the social media responses on release weekend. This is not a show that’s meant to be taken seriously, and a lot of people enjoyed watching something fluffy while the world burned around them. However, an equally strong contingent either hate-watched it or skipped it altogether while the French response has been one of ridicule, given that Emily enthusiastically exudes Ugly American tropes and wields destruction-by-vibrator while loving baguettes and selfies.

The fervor grew so heated that (in early October) New York Magazine‘s Yashar Ali hilariously tweeted, “‘Emily in Paris’ is dividing our nation.”

One month later, a Netflix press release announced the show’s renewal with a “letter” from Emily’s employer, Savoir, which reads (in part), “Call it bonne chance, or American ingenuity — I’m leaning towards to former — her results are impressive… We hope that by extending her time in Paris, Emily will… perhaps pick up a few words of basic French. We love having Emily in Paris! But please don’t let her know that.”

Then the streamer tweeted the news, including, “Friendly reminder Emily in Paris is supposed to be pronounced with a French accent so ‘Emily’ and ‘Paris’ rhyme.”

The wordplay of the second tweet brought some pushbacks.

And someone whipped out a Hillbilly Elegy reference, of course.

Again, some people do dig this show for not being as stressful as the rest of life in 2020.

More than that, though, people responded today with questions about why beloved shows, including the Emmy-winning GLOW (I Am Not Okay With This, The Society, and Teenage Bounty Hunters also got some nods) have been cancelled over the past few months, but Emily will enjoy more champagne-fueled fashion show debacles.

It’s not probable that the show will be able to film in Paris anytime soon, given the current global situation, but it’s official: more of Emily In Paris will be coming… at some point.

There are few people on the planet to whom Steph Curry would need to give any credit for their jump shot. But one of the best young shooters on the planet, Azzi Fudd, garnered the highest possible praise from Curry on the day she committed to the University of Connecticut.

“She can be going full speed, and stop on a dime and have, like, a feathery release,” Curry told Katie Barnes of espnW. “I think she has more of a textbook jumper than anyone I’ve seen. Maybe Klay Thompson and Azzi Fudd. … You go Ray Allen, Klay Thompson, and Azzi Fudd, textbook. You would teach somebody how to shoot with their form.”

Fudd, the top recruit in the class of 2021, announced her commitment to UConn on Wednesday amid a continued recovery from a torn ACL and MCL back in April 2019. At 5’11 with that smooth offensive arsenal, Fudd looks poised to take up the mantle of special scoring forwards in women’s basketball, in the mold of the last two WNBA MVPs, Elena Delle Donne and Breanna Stewart.

That’s all in her future, but for now, the kind words from Curry are more than most young players have gotten by the time they turn 18.

While Selena Gomez debuted her comeback record Rare earlier this year, the singer has since pivoted to her acting career. While in quarantine, the singer starred in HBO’s Selena + Chef series, which invited famous cooks to teach her how to prepare their famous dishes. Now, Gomez is taking on another film project, this time starring in a feature-length movie about a Peruvian mountaineer.

The Hollywood Reporter confirmed Gomez’s involvement, reporting that the film will be created by Elgin James, who is known for the 2011 indie drama Little Birds. Titled In the Shadow Of The Mountain, the film will center around the inspiring story of Silvia Vásquez-Lavado.

In the Shadow Of The Mountain is based off Vásquez-Lavado’s memoir of the same name, which details how she overcame childhood trauma and abuse to become the first Peruvian woman to successfully summit Mount Everest. Vásquez-Lavado is also the first openly-gay woman to complete the Seven Summits challenge, which is the trial to climb the highest mountain on all seven continents.

Producer Donna Gigliotti, who is known for her involvement in Hidden Figures, expressed her excitement about the project in a statement. “Silvia is a force of nature,” Gigliotti said. “Scott [Budnick] and I are so excited to work with Elgin and Selena to tell this story of resilience, courage, adventure and humanity.”

First-grader Elizabeth is a fashionista. Her “passion” as she puts it, is designing dresses and she hopes to one day make it her career. When she was three years old, however, her future didn’t look so clear.

Six days after her family had moved to Reno, Nevada, Elizabeth was diagnosed with leukemia. Her father was just starting a new job, their things were still in boxes and all of a sudden, their world was turned upside down. “We had no support network,” says Elizabeth’s mom. “And then we had a new diagnosis to make sense of. It took a while to find a new normal.” That new normal included 26 months of cancer treatment.

The treatment was hard on Elizabeth and her family. Then came a major infusion of support and positivity from the nonprofit
Make-A-Wish, an organization that grants the wishes of children battling critical illnesses. The hope of a wish was something Elizabeth really needed; at the end of 2019 when she learned her wish was coming true, she still had six months of treatment left.

Last November, Macy’s celebrated with Elizabeth at her local Macy’s store in Reno, NV and surprised her announcing that her wish to design a dress was coming true.

ElizabethAll photos courtesy of Macy’s

“The middle of winter, drained from 20 plus months of treatment, it really gave us something special to look forward to,” said Elizabeth’s mom.

Together with Macy’s, Make-A-Wish gave Elizabeth the chance to create her own, original dress design, with professional guidance from the experts at Macy’s Fashion Office. “I got to work with the designers,” says Elizabeth. “They were so nice and fashion forward. They helped me find ideas.”

Elizabeth scoping fabrics

“She loved meeting with Durand and Suzanne of Macy’s and was really inspired by them and their leadership,” says Elizabeth’s mom.

The Macy’s fashion designers did most of the sketching, but Elizabeth gave them direction and picked the pattern for the fabric. The best part for her was seeing the finished product in person. “It has a flower pattern and fluttery sleeves and it has tiers. It is beautiful,” she says. Since then, she’s been sketching her own designs, and can’t wait to create more dresses.

Elizabeth working on a design

“She had never really known how to do that before, and they even gifted her a few new dress sketching books and coloring pens to get her started,” says Elizabeth’s mom.

Make-A-Wish couldn’t make wishes like Elizabeth’s happen without the support of generous donors and longstanding partners, like Macy’s. Since 2003, Macy’s has helped Make-A-Wish fulfill over 15,500 wishes for children across the country by raising more than $132 million for the organization. A big part of that fundraising effort is the Macy’s Believe Campaign; where anyone can write letters to Santa (primarily on the
Macy’s website this year due to Covid-19 restrictions, though Macy’s is still accepting letters in-store at the red Believe letterboxes or safely at curbside), and for every letter submitted, Macy’s will donate $1 to Make-A-Wish up to $1 million.

Through 11/15, Macy’s customers can also round up in-store purchases up to $0.99 and donate the change to Make-A-Wish.

Everyone has faced extraordinary challenges this year due to the pandemic, especially children with critical illnesses and their families. Aside from the added health concerns, these children are some of the most vulnerable members of our communities and have had to isolate even more and avoid doing some of the things they love most. So, Make-A-Wish is perhaps more important than ever now because it can bring them hope and joy no matter the circumstances.

Elizabeth approving dress details

Elizabeth’s dress is available for purchase online at
Macys.com and in 12 physical Macy’s stores and 20 percent of all sales through December 31 will go back to Make-A-Wish to help grant wishes like Elizabeth’s. Elizabeth was also surprised with a billboard marking the occasion, and enjoyed a special event at Macy’s Barton Creek Square store in Austin, Texas where her dress was showcased. But there’s one gift that outlasts all the others: Elizabeth’s reinvigorated confidence. Her mom says that even if Elizabeth doesn’t become a dress designer, that confidence that she gained from her wish will last forever.