If you’ve been on social media at any point in the last month, you may have noticed that Michael Jordan is once again dominating the conversation around sports. ESPN’s 10-part docuseries, The Last Dance, has been a stark reminder about His Airness’ lasting influence on the basketball world.

It’s why, for example, when he called New York City the “Mecca of Basketball,” it was a designation treated as gospel truth. The city has proudly carried that reputation ever since. But another upcoming documentary, produced by Kevin Durant, seeks to shed light on one of America’s lesser known, but equally prolific, hoops hotbeds.

Premiering Friday, May 15 at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime, Basketball County: In the Water, takes an intimate look at Prince George’s County, the D.C. area community that has produced scores of elite players who have gone onto NBA and WNBA fame. Since 2000, more than 25 local prospects have made it to the NBA, including Durant, Victor Oladipo, Michael Beasley, Markelle Fultz, Quinn Cook, and more.

The film probes the community’s rich legacy in both sports and civil rights, which intersected with one another at various points. It was the home of Edwin B. Henderson, the civil rights pioneer known as “The Father of Black Basketball” who first introduced the game to the area and used basketball as a means of keeping youth out of trouble and as a tool for breaking down racial barriers.

P.G. County has more than 400 outdoor basketball courts and boasts some of the country’s most prolific AAU squads. The legendary prep program at DeMatha Catholic High School won five national championships over the course of Morgan Wootten’s Hall-of-Fame coaching career and has long been a pipeline for some of the country’s best up-and-coming players.

We caught up with P.G. County product Quinn Cook via telephone last week to talk about his involvement in the film and why he believes his hometown deserves more recognition. Cook told us about why it was a dream come true to win that first title with a fellow hometown native in Kevin Durant, how Go-Go music has influenced their style of play, and much more.

I had a chance to watch a rough cut of the documentary last night, and I thought it was excellent. Can you talk about how you got involved with the project?

Yeah, Rich [Kleiman] and Kevin [Durant], they had been working on it for a while. And Rich asked me to come on. I brought one of my partners, Jimmy Jenkins, on because we were kind of doing our own thing. Not as big of a platform that Kevin and Rich had and were doing it on. For them to bring us on was great. We made something special, man. We’d been working on it hard for a while. I’m excited to see how everybody enjoys it.

From your perspective, why did you feel like it was an important thing to bring more attention to PG County and how much of a tradition is there?

Honestly, it’s my home. I think it’s a great place, obviously. But I don’t think it gets the credit it deserves just from a basketball standpoint. To have so many pros and so many great players come from that small area, we’re all five minutes, 10 minutes away from each other. We all grew up together, had personal relationships with one another. The family atmosphere is something that needs to be shared with the world. And I think that it’s finally getting the light that it deserves.

I learned so much from watching it. I think they said it’s produced something like 30 NBA players since the year 2000. It’s just such a concentration of good basketball players. I was wondering, from your perspective, what sets P.G. County players apart? What sort of the style or mentality do you get from growing up and playing there?

Tough. It’s that sort of swagger and walk in our step. Because you had to believe in yourself, because you might go to the court, you might not get picked. If you lose, you might get kicked off. So, you better have that belief in yourself. And I just think that togetherness. We’re always happy for one another, we’re always…if you disrespect a guy’s game from my area, we’re going to go at you. We just have that love and respect for one another.

It seems to me like part of that toughness comes from the social and cultural history. Can you tell us a little bit about how coming out of an area like that, with such a rich and inspiring tradition in the civil rights movement, how does that influence you as a player and as a person?

Well, it’s crazy because when I watched a rough draft of documentary, there was some stuff that I learned about a lot of the historic stuff. My first camp ever growing up was going to Morgan Wootten camp. So I went to Morgan Wootten camp every year growing up until I went to high school. You have that tutelage growing up. You have all these guys who have done so many big things. Obviously, basketball is one thing, but the impact that a lot of guys from my area has done in the world, it means a lot.

You’ve been around the league for a few years now. What’s it like for you to see so many players from your hometown and to be able to compete against them at this level, and play alongside them at this level? What’s that mean to you?

Oh, it’s great because I grew up idolizing them. I grew up rooting for them, watching them, wanting them to have successful careers. When I was coming up, they always had their arm around me, always brought me up and always wanted me to be better than them. Not like them, better than them. And I always appreciated that because they never had to do that. And so growing up, watching KD and Jeff Green and all those guys, Jarrett Jack, guys that I grew up idolizing, Tywon Lawson, and getting to be pros with them, and play against them, and form relationships that are beyond basketball, it’s great.

Do you feel like you maybe play a little harder when you come up against those guys? Is there a little more trash talk going on when you’re facing them on the court?

No, it’s just never really trash talk. It’s more love, it’s more jokes, it’s more fun, really. I root with them, obviously. If this person is guarding me, it’s not like we’re going to not try to score. We’re going to be ourselves, but there’s no trash talk. There’s no, “I’m better than you. I scored more points. My team won.” We’re competitors on the floor. We’re brothers off.

You’ve won two titles with Kevin Durant, another P.G. County native. What was that experience like, the two of you knowing where you came from and how far you’d come together?

It meant the world, because we used to always talk about it growing up, and obviously our paths were different professionally, but we all had a common goal. It was about the championship. And we used to tell each other, “We’re going to win multiple championships. We’re gonna do this and that.” Not thinking we were going to do it for the Warriors or do it together, but we got it done. man. It was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful time.

The movie really digs into that tradition of AAU basketball as well and how important that’s been for so many players. How do you look back on your time coming up in those ranks?

It was fun. It was super competitive. It was super serious. We used to work out. I’m with my coach right now as we speak. He’s in L.A. training me. But yeah, I remember our practices and those workouts. The tournaments were fun. We used to go out of town and represent D.C. and P.G. We used to take a lot of pride in that. But I remember those workouts and practices. Practicing with the older team and practicing with the pros who came back, Durant, Johnson, Jeff Green. All those guys who come back. James White. Those guys who come back and show us love. So AAU was big for us.

[Michael] Beasley mentioned something in the documentary that I wanted to ask you about. There’s a section on Go-Go music [a hybrid subgenre of funk that originated in D.C.], and he talked about how the hesitation move from some of you guys down there is a little bit different, and he likened it to the Go-Go music style. What did you think about that when you heard him talking about that?

That’s it. That’s life. That’s how we play. We play to that beat. Growing up, I know me, I didn’t really listen to rap. When we was going to work out, we’d listen to go-go. So when you’re working out, and when you’re hooping, your moves and your body, you’re moving to the beat. So that’s why we have that certain hesitation, that certain movement. I think it resembles what the music was. Mike and KD, that portion of the movie hit it right on the head.

That part was great. Do you call it the “hands-up hesi”?

It’s called the “hands up.” We definitely call it the “hands up.”

The documentary doesn’t shy away from some of the more difficult topics, specifically about Curtis Malone [Malone was a local coach and highly influential figure in the community who was sentenced to 100 months in prison in 2014 for drug trafficking. He also took Cook in after his father’s death]. Obviously it’s a complicated legacy, but he clearly did a lot of good in the community. For someone who had such a close, personal connection to him, how have you come to terms with all this over the years?

That’s still somebody that I look up to. He was like a godfather to me when I lost my dad. Curt, and my high school coach Mike Jones, stepped up to the plate and helped my mom, and myself, and my sister tremendously. He made a mistake. He owned up to it. He’s done his time, and he’s grown, and he’s continued to give back. Like I said, I had no idea that stuff was going on. So for me, just always remembering all the good that he’s done. I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.

Obviously, having the season on hold must be tremendously disappointing considering how great of a year you and the Lakers were having. What have you been doing to stay ready and stay mentally prepared, if and when the season returns?

Like I said, I have my trainer out here, my coach out here. So we’re still training as if we got to play tomorrow. Obviously, the resources aren’t what they usually are, but we improvise. That’s what we did growing up, we improvised. And for me, staying locked in, I’m always talking to my teammates. We have our group chat popping. I can’t wait to see those guys again.

What is something that people don’t know about PG County basketball players that you think we should know?

I don’t know, we just chill. We chill. We root for each other. We all can play. We’re down-to-earth guys. We don’t really care about the success that comes with the basketball, we just love to play the game. We love the feeling that we get when we play, when we hoop, and we always root for each other, we always have fun. We’re a very together group of guys.

On Wednesday, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross reunited the Mr. Show troops to raise money for Lift, an organization that works to help families facing poverty. The special event, dubbed The Mr. Show ‘Kidz With Beardz’ Presents: Come Join Our Zoomtacular Annual Business Call!, was highlighted by a parody of Gal Gadot’s tone-deaf “Imagine” video. Except instead of Jamie Dornan singing about no countries, or whatever, Odenkirk and Cross got the likes of Bryan Cranston, Jack Black, and Rhea Seehorn to perform a solemn version of “Eat It,” Weird Al Yankovic’s timeless parody of “Beat It.”

Also in virtual attendance: Better Call Saul actors Michael Mando and Michael McKean, Rachel Bloom, Amber Tamblyn, Scott Adsit, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale, Fred Armisen, John Hodgman, Heidi Gardner, Paul Scheer, Sarah Silverman (who appeared in the “Imagine” video, too), and, of course, Mr. Weird himself, who tweeted, “Truly there’s no problem that can’t be overcome when you get a bunch of celebrities together to sing something.” Especially something with lyrics like, “How come you’re always such a fussy young man / Don’t want no Cap’n Crunch, don’t want no Raisin Bran.”

Weird Al could write “Imagine,” but John Lennon couldn’t write “Eat It.” Watch it above.

At this point, begging Rihanna to release a new album seems to be something fans feel obligated to do. No matter what Rihanna does, the musician seems to face questions/demands about her upcoming ninth record, and she has stated on a number of occasions that the begging is getting old. So, she decided to continue in her trolling ways recently on her latest Instagram post.

Rihanna posted a promotional video for her Fenty sunglasses yesterday, and naturally, the comments were flooded with messages about the new album. Rihanna opted to have fun with them: One fan asked, “WHERES THE ALBUM,” to which Rihanna responded, “I lost it. [shrugging emoji].” Another commenter wrote, “DON’T DROP DAT ALBUM,” and Rihanna added, “navy this who to blame [hand pointing up emoji] right here look.”

The good news is that Rihanna says she has actually devoted time to working on new material recently. In a March interview with British Vogue, she said of her upcoming album, “I can’t say when I’m going to drop. But I am very aggressively working on music. […] I don’t want my albums to feel like themes. There are no rules. There’s no format. There’s just good music, and if I feel it, I’m putting it out. […] I feel like I have no boundaries. I’ve done everything — I’ve done all the hits, I’ve tried every genre — now I’m just, I’m wide open. I can make anything that I want.”

Is there a better movie than Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story? It’s a fair question. There are lots of movies out there, some of them pretty good. Almost all of them made more money than Walk Hard. Many of them won more awards. But are they better, really? Better than Walk Hard? I don’t know, man. I’ll go as far as “as good as Walk Hard,” but I don’t think I can get to “better.”

There’s no great reason to be talking about Walk Hard right now. The film — a parody of music biopics, written by Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow and starring John C. Reilly as Dewey — came out in 2007, 13 years ago, so there’s no major anniversary to tie this to. And it wasn’t a big hit. It was the opposite of whatever a big hit it is. It earned $20 million at the box office against a $35 million budget which, and I am admittedly no great mathematician, seems bad. The whole reason this article exists is because Walk Hard is awesome and I think more people should talk about that more often. Sometimes that’s enough. It should be, at least. It is today.

The time has come to talk about Walk Hard.

1. The beginning is as good a place as any to start. Let’s jump right in. The following things happen in the first 10 minutes of Walk Hard:

— In a flashback, a young Dewey accidentally chops his more talented brother in half during a barnyard machete fight (“Dewey, I’m cut in half pretty bad”), the doctor is unable to save him (“This was a particularly bad case of someone being cut in half”), and their father shouts a refrain that will come up a number of times in the movie and be the key to Dewey’s entire trajectory (“The wrong kid died”)

— A six-year-old Dewey picks up a guitar for the first time and proceeds to play a shockingly good blues song (“I done a bad thing / Cut my brother in half”) that impresses a group of skeptical blues musicians

— Dewey, now a sophomore in high school and portrayed by a fully adult John C. Reilly, plays a sweet little song called “Take My Hand” at a 1950s-style talent show that causes the teens in the audience to revolt and rebel as though Satan himself was shredding on the stage

— To drive this home, a reverend shouts “This is the devil’s music!” and is immediately cold-cocked from his blind side by a sweater-clad student

This isn’t even everything. There are a legitimate five or six laugh out loud moments packed in here, which is more than some movies have in their entire runtimes. There’s something to be said for hitting the ground running, for coming in hot. Walk Hard comes in like the surface of the sun. Find me a funnier visual than a child getting chopped in half with a machete and then saying “I’m cut in half pretty bad” as the top half of his body sits on the ground of a hay-covered barn. This is an honest challenge.

2. The cast of Walk Hard is a straight-up Murderer’s Row of comedic talent. John C. Reilly as Dewey, Kristen Wiig as his neglected first wife, Jenna Fischer as the sultry woman who woos him away, Tim Meadows and Chris Parnell in his band, cameos galore, with everyone from Eddie Vedder and Ghostface Killah as themselves to Jack White as Elvis Presley. The Beatles scene gets its own section in a minute because great things deserve solo recognition. And his parents are played by Raymond J. Barry and Margo Martindale, two perfectly cast characters actors who would later go on to play antagonists on Justified. (Discussion topic: Would Walk Hard be better with a singing Walton Goggins in there somewhere?) (Trick question. Of course it would have.) Just a non-stop parade of familiar faces in small roles that fit like a glove or fit terribly, both of which are funny. The latter might be funnier, actually, in large part because Dewey does this thing where he always calls historical figures by their full names, which results in little bits of gold like him saying “Thanks, Buddy Holly” to a person who is very clearly Frankie Muniz. It’s the best.

3. Dewey’s path to stardom touches on so many kinds of music and so many biopic tropes. It’s incredible, especially when you realize the whole movie is barely 90 minutes long. There’s pop, blues, and rock, much of it stolen from black artists in hilarious and painfully accurate ways. (The best example being, of course, Dewey playing a song titled “You Got to Love Your Negro Man.”) There are references to like a dozen musicians and eras: Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, trippy LSD acts, Sonny and Cher, etc. Again, all of it in 90 minutes. Walk Hard is the best possible proof that my long-held “no movie should be longer than two hours” belief is correct. If this movie can skewer 50 years of music history and an entire genre of film in an hour and a half, there’s no reason a Transformers movie should clock in over 150 minutes. Tighten it up.

4. POP QUIZ: What do you get when you take Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Jason Schwartzman, and Justin Long and have them do cartoonishly bad Liverpool accents in a tent? ANSWER: A pretty good scene in a movie.

I’ve chosen to post the extended version of the scene here instead of the version that’s in the finished movie. Some might argue that this is the decision of a hypocrite, seeing as I just ranted about movies being too long. In my defense, it’s good and I don’t have to explain myself to you. I could watch a solid 30 minutes of this. I could watch 30 minutes of Paul Rudd as John Lennon repeatedly saying things like “We, the Beatles, from Liverpool…” and cramming song titles into the dialogue. The whole scene is so stupid and perfect, such an egregious waste of time and resources that it becomes iconic. Make a whole Beatles movie like this. Do a 10-episode miniseries. I am barely joking.

5. Speaking of things that are stupid and perfect, ladies and gentlemen, Tim Meadows.

How great is Tim Meadows? In this movie specifically, yes, of course, but also just in general. Have you ever seen a bad Tim Meadows performance? I don’t think I have. And watch all the scenes again. Watch his delivery as he says “you don’t want no part of this” over and over. Watch him give the worst anti-drug PSAs in history. Which one is your favorite? They’re all good, so it’s hard to choose. I’m sorry for putting you on the spot like that. I’ll tell you mine while you think. It’s the cocaine one. The marijuana one is probably more famous and gets to the hypocrisy of the stigma around the drug, but the face Meadows makes when he says “It turns all your bad feelings into good feelings. It’s a nightmare!” always gets me.

6. The last two sections aside, I think my favorite part of Walk Hard is when Dewey goes through his dark period, which you can easily spot with a little help from the man himself.

Between this and the “MORE BLANKETS! LESS BLANKETS!” scene in rehab, I’m not sure there’s ever been a better depiction of an artist’s struggles committed to film.

7. This movie probably works out fine if the songs don’t play well. There’s too much good stuff in there. I know this is true because I got all the way up to number seven without even bringing them up. But we’ll never really know for sure because, guess what, the songs play well. All of them, starting with the title track and moving to genre-appropriate numbers like “Guilty As Charged,” but especially when it comes to “Let’s Duet,” Dewey’s first song with Darlene and the one that leads him down the path of adultery.

It’s catchy and fun and slammed wall-to-wall with blatant sexual innuendos. The song was written by Charlie Wadhams, who elaborated on the process a bit in a must-read oral history at The Ringer:

The “Let’s Duet” one [cowritten with Benji Hughes], that was probably the most fun one to do. I sat around with a piece of paper trying to write every sexual word or phrase or slang that I could think of. And the first one that came to me, I think was that first line, which is, “In my dreams you’re blowing me … some kisses.” So from there it was like, “How do I match that level of humor?” I gotta keep that kind of funny going on throughout the whole song.

Imagine thinking of that line on-purpose and getting to put it in a movie. I choose to believe confetti fell from the sky spontaneously as soon as he wrote it down. Which would have been nice. He probably needed some time to think of how to equal it and “cleaning up a mess of magic confetti” will buy you at least half an hour.

8. It’s been said before — and alluded to by me already in this very article — but it’s worth saying every time Walk Hard is mentioned: This movie ruined the music biopic as we know it, in the best way possible. It does such an exacting and thorough deconstruction of the entire genre that it’s impossible to watch the originals without thinking of Walk Hard. Go watch Ray after watching this movie. Go watch Walk the Line. Go watch Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman, which both came out a decade after Walk Hard and still got parodied retroactively. I don’t know if there’s a higher compliment you can give to satire. I’m fairly certain I don’t have one. It’s like when you watch a really good episode of Documentary Now — “Co-op” or “Juan Likes Rice and Chicken” being the best examples — and then try to watch the full-version it was based on. The difference is, again, those take aim at a single target, and Walk Hard goes after the entire herd. There should be film classes taught about this movie. You should be allowed to major in it. It would be at least as valuable as a degree in, say, Communications.

9. It’s worth noting here, if for no other reason than because Popstar rules and I want to talk about it, that Popstar — The Lonely Island’s music biopic parody that came out in 2016 — is also a perfect movie. It’s infuriating that neither of these had anything resembling box office success. Huge bombs, both of them. But so good. You could do a whole lot worse on some rainy Saturday than setting up a Walk Hard/Popstar double bill on your television. They compliment each other so well, too, with the first covering music from the 1950s to maybe the 1980s and the latter focusing on the social-media-heavy fame of music from about 2010-2020. I would pay full price — for good seats — to see a Dewey Cox / Style Boyz concert. I want to see John C. Reilly do the Donkey Roll, in character as Dewey Cox, live, in person. I am barely joking about this either.

10. Let’s close out with a helpful parenting lesson from Dewey Cox’s father, something useful to all new dads out there trying to figure things out in these trying times.

Walk Hard is a good movie.

What was the last movie you saw in a theater before the quarantine?

The Hunt was mine (I have regrets), while most people I’ve asked that question to have said either Onward, The Way Back, or Sonic the Hedgehog. (Us real Knuckles-heads saw it opening night… like I said, regrets.) Sonic, starring Jim Carrey, James Marsden, and the voice of Ben Schwartz, was Adam Sandler’s pre-quarantine answer, as he revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and it sounds like he had a great time watching it.

“I saw Jim Carrey’s movie, the Sonic. I noticed that people were spread out, there were only a few of us in the theaters and I was laughing very loud. The people behind us were laughing, too. So I think our last big night out: Sonic.” First off, Adam Sandler calling Sonic the Hedgehog “the Sonic” delights me to end. Secondly, he loved “the Sonic” so much that he called Jim Carrey after the movie got out, or maybe even during it.

“I called [Jim] Carrey from the theater. I was telling him how funny he was while it was going on. I didn’t know it was going to be the last movie I ever saw at a movie theater.”

This is what I imagine Sandler watching Sonic looked like.

Instead of smoking a cigar, he’s drinking a Dunkaccino. Watch the interview below.

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Earlier this month, Donald Trump toured a Honeywell factory where N95 face masks were being produced, although he opted to not wear a mask himself during his visit. While there, coincidentally or perhaps not, Guns N’ Roses’ cover of Wings’ James Bond them “Live And Let Die” played over the factory speakers. This seems to have amused the group, as they are now selling T-shirts seemingly based on the incident, with all proceeds going to charity.

The band shared yesterday that they are selling T-shirts that read “Live N’ Let Die With COVID 45,” with the last part presumably being a reference to Trump being the 45th president of the US. Proceeds will be donated to Musicares.

Although the band doesn’t explicitly mention the president when it comes to this shirt, it’s far from a stretch to assume it’s about Trump, especially considering how vocal Axl Rose has been about the POTUS in the past. In late 2018, for example, Rose disavowed Trump playing his music at rallies, tweeting, “GNR like a lot of artists opposed to the unauthorized use of their music at political events has formally requested r music not b used at Trump rallies or Trump associated events. Unfortunately the Trump campaign is using loopholes in the various venues’ blanket performance licenses which were not intended for such craven political purposes, without the songwriters’ consent. Can u say ‘sh*tbags?!’”

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Guaranteed to make your thumbs at least two shades greener.

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Tiny purchases for tiny problems.

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