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Warning: The following post contains spoilers for the 1986 comic series Watchmen and its 2009 movie adaptation, but not so much about the HBO miniseries sequel from last year.

Alan Moore’s seminal comic Watchmen stormed back into the culture last year, thanks to Damon Lindelhof’s acclaimed HBO miniseries, which imagined what its alternate universe would look like 35 years after the source’s shocking events. Lindelhof even managed to do it without bringing back most of the original characters, largely relying on new ones to further the narrative. But according to The Hollywood Reporter, one MIA anti-hero will be returning, at least in comics form.

That would be Rorschach, the vigilante of the group — a deeply damaged loner with an unwavering, albeit deeply questionable, moral code, as well as a cool mask. He’s one of the most troubling and fascinating characters in comics, and he’ll be the subject of a 12-issue comic book series, courtesy of creators Tom King and Jorge Fornés, which will be released starting this fall.

“Like the HBO Watchmen show and very much like the original ‘86 Watchmen, this is a very political work.” King said. “It’s an angry work. We’re so angry all the time now. We have to do something with that anger. It’s called Rorschach not because of the character Rorschach, but because what you see in these characters tells you more about yourself than about them.”

In the 2009 film version, made by Zack Snyder, Rorschach was portrayed semi-sympathetically, even getting a teary farewell. In Lindelhof’s miniseries, he’s nowhere to be found, except in the hearts of a band of white supremacists called the Seventh Kavalry, who were inspired by his journal writings and, as such, rage violent war against minorities. No doubt the forthcoming comic spin-off will delve deeper into his fascinating and disturbing psyche. The series will begin publishing on Oct. 13.

(Via THR)

If you’ve ever browsed the aisles of your local liquor store (or favorite delivery service), there’s a pretty good chance you’ve seen the words “bottled in bond” printed on various bottles of whiskey, or not. It might be a phrase that gets lost amongst the various lines of information already on the whiskey’s label. Well, it means the whiskey was matured and bottled based on the U.S. government’s Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897 which guarantees the whiskey inside is authentic and unchanged.

It’s also a whiskey from only one distilling season and from a single distillery. It must be aged at least four years, bottled at a potent 100 proof, and must have been matured in a federally bonded warehouse. These regulations are all well and good, but honestly, we don’t care about the legalese. The most important thing is that bottled in bond whiskeys are high proof and high quality.

“’Bottled in bond’ is bourbon’s equivalent to a single malt scotch,” says Melissa Reigle, beverage manager and head bartender at Byblos in Miami. And, since this is a fairly common whiskey style, we figured it would behoove us to ask the professionals for help. That’s why we asked some of our favorite bartenders to tell us the best bottle in bond whiskeys to drink this summer.

Evan Williams Bottled in Bond

Bill Myers, bartender at Kimpton Brice Hotel in Savannah, Georgia

I’m going to share a little industry secret here. Evan Williams bottled-in-bond bourbon by Heaven Hill is good, and it typically will run you about $15 a bottle. This isn’t the liquid that you’re going to impress your friends or coworkers with when you pull it out of your cabinet, but there’s not much to argue about a good product at that price point.

Henry McKenna 10 Year Bottled In Bond

Stephen George, beverage director at 20|Twenty in Carlsbad, California

Henry McKenna 10 Year Single Barrel B.I.B. is quite the treat from Heaven Hill Distillery. There’s a great depth of flavor that you can only get from a thoughtful aging process. This award-winning bourbon is still reasonably priced, and you can actually get your hands on a bottle.

Ragtime Rye Bottled in Bond

Sondre Kasin, principal bartender at Cote in New York City

New York Distilling Company Ragtime Rye Bottled in Bond is my favorite bonded whiskey at the moment. New York Distilling Company makes delicious whiskeys that are often clean and well balanced in style. For summer, you want to sit back and enjoy a high-quality whiskey that is easy to drink and has a good price point.

Old Forester 1897 Bottled in Bond

Jennifer Jackson-Keating, co-owner of Island Culture Tiki Bar in Pensacola, Florida

Old Forester 1897 Bottled in Bond Whiskey is a sweet, bold, 100 proof whiskey that was America’s first bottled bourbon. Named after the U.S. “Bottled in Bond” Act to protect product quality, Old Forester has been producing award-winning bourbon since it was introduced in 1870. It was recently awarded the Silver Medal at the 2020 San Francisco World Spirit Competition.

Old Fitzgerald 15 Year Bottled In Bond

Zach Stout, beverage manager at Clark & Bourbon in St. Louis

Old Fitzgerald is another wheated bourbon. Wheated bourbons offer something different than rye-based bourbons. There is a sweeter note with wheat. When it is backed by 50 percent alcohol, the balance you get packs a full-flavored punch. It’s one of my personal favorites and it won’t be around for long. Old Fitzgerald is releasing one batch of this Bottled in Bond series a year and they sell very quickly.

Heaven Hill Bottled In Bond

Jonathan Cunningham, bar manager at Husk in Greenville, South Carolina

This late 2019 release has notes of leather and tobacco. And at around $35 a bottle is a total steal.

1792 Bottled in Bond

Eva Al-Gharaballi, bartender at Datz Restaurant Group in Tampa, Florida

1792 Bottled in Bond Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey sets the standard for bottled in bond bourbons. A very elegant whiskey that reaches all quality standards with a caramel and coffee finish. This whiskey will impress even the toughest whiskey snobs.

Old Grand-Dad Bonded

Hayden Miller, head bartender at Bodega Taqueria y Tequila in Miami

Old Grand-Dad Bonded 100 proof is a classic that you might need to revisit. The proof will help remind you there’s definitely bourbon in that glass.

Eagle Rare Bottled in Bond

Melissa Reigle, beverage manager and head bartender at Byblos in Miami

Eagle Rare Bottled in Bond is a phenomenal value. Comparable to the award-winning Henry McKenna (without the age statement), this is a $20 substitute from the same distillery and much easier to find. If that isn’t enough, Eagle Rare has programs that actively support American military veterans. So, enjoy this bourbon on the Fourth of July, on a lake, by the pool, and on the sand all summer long, and on a budget and feel good about it.

Writer’s Pick:

George Dickel Bottled in Bond

This 11-year-old bottle in bond whiskey from Tennessee’s George Dickel is full of honey sweetness along with crisp green apple, pecan pie, and rich caramel. Also, it’s 100 proof and you’d never know it because it’s surprisingly mellow and easy to sip.

The NBA bubble is in full swing in Orlando as the league prepares to restart the season at the end of the month, and so far, adjusting to this new reality has been something of a mixed bag. There’s been players fishing and golfing and seemingly trying to enjoy themselves at Disney, but we’ve also already had a couple of players breaking quarantine accidentally, complaints about the quality of food, and some untimely injuries.

Rajon Rondo has been the biggest name to suffer an injury thus far, as the Lakers guard fractured his hand at practice and will miss 6-8 weeks. It’s a tough blow to a team that has its sights set on a championship this season and is already partially depleted in the backcourt after Avery Bradley opted out of the restart to protect his son’s health.

On Wednesday, Kings guard De’Aaron Fox was added to the injury list after spraining his ankle during a Kings practice this week. Fox will be re-evaluated in 7-10 days, according to the team release. It is the same ankle Fox sprained last fall, although it’s unclear how severe the sprain is.

It was teammate Richaun Holmes who violated quarantine in recent days for food delivery and has been forced into isolation. Prior to the bubble, COVID-19 hit the Kings particularly hard, as Buddy Hield, Jabari Parker, and Alex Len all tested positive earlier this month. Harrison Barnes then became the fourth Sacramento player to test positive this week, although they all plan on joining their team once they have been cleared.

For a team that hopes to fight its way into playoff contention, it’s an inauspicious beginning to the restart and they will have a limited window to get their full squad on the floor before games that count begin.

Since his debut Listen… The Album in 2006, there have only been three individual years when DJ Khaled hasn’t released an album: 2009, 2014, and 2018. He has no plans of adding 2020 to that list. The We The Best mogul took to his social media pages today to announce his 12th album, the successor to Father Of Asahd.

Sharing a minute-and-a-half trailer to his Instagram page, Khaled revealed the new album’s title — that is, Khaled Khaled, his first self-titled release — all while taking fans on a trip through time. In the trailer, Khaled begins by revisiting his days as a DJ and a radio show host before moving back to the present. There he celebrates some of the biggest moments in his life, including the birth of his second child, which took place at the top of the year.

The album announcement also comes after Khaled revealed he and Drake would release not one but two singles this Friday, to kick off the album’s campaign. Khaled also revealed the title of the upcoming singles, namely “Greece” and “Popstar.” “Greece” was one of the tracks Drake played, alongside OVO Mark, in a surprise Instagram livestream. The track caught the attention of viewers because it featured Drake speaking French.

You can watch the album announcement in the video above.

Christopher Nolan’s latest mindbender, Tenet, has spent the last four months effectively playing chicken with the pandemic that’s kept much of the nation in quarantine. Originally scheduled for mid-July — i.e., two days from this writing — it bumped itself to month’s end, then to mid-August. There, technically, it still stands, but with spikes popping up all over the country, and even places like New York City in no rush to reopen its movie theaters, some have wondered if Tenet will be bumped again.

Meanwhile, other parts of the globe, ones that dealt with the virus far better than the U.S. has, have either been opening up their movie theaters or planning to. This has led some to speculate whether Warner Bros. could always recoup the film’s immense budget by releasing it overseas while American theaters by and large remain shuttered. But as per a new report in Vulture about Tenet’s chances of hitting U.S. theaters this summer, Nolan (and Warner) have reportedly shot that possibility down.

As per Vulture, an international release was, at one point, considered. However, that was deemed a “risky strategy” given that we live “in an era of rampant overseas movie piracy.” That’s one reason why many major releases now — or, then, in the before-time when movie theaters were a thing — are released worldwide on the same day.

Nolan has also long been a champion of theatrical moviegoing. In late March, still relatively early into the American wing of the pandemic, he wrote a Washington Post op-ed calling the theatrical experience a “vital part of social life.” According to Vulture, Nolan also “wanted to help support American theaters in their time of need by sticking to the original plan.”

So there you have it. No one knows when anyone will see Tenet, but one thing’s for near-certain: It won’t be via a pirated copy from another part of the globe. Of course, there is always drive-ins…

(Via Vulture)

Once in a blue moon, a celebrity will have their Twitter account hacked and, as a result, a string of weird posts will be sent out, making it quite obvious the account has been hacked. Today, however, was a much different case, as a number of celebrity accounts were hacked as part of what seemed to be a bitcoin scam.

Accounts owned by Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, former President Barack Obama, former Vice President/presidential nominee Joe Biden, billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, and more were among those hacked. Company accounts for Apple, Uber, and Cash App were also among the victims.

These accounts broadcasted a message, that read, “I am giving back to my community due to Covid-19!” It then asked users to send money to their Bitcoin account for it to be sent back, with a bonus. “All bitcoin sent to my address below will be sent back doubled. If you send $1,000, I will send back $2,000!”

Twitter sent out a tweet letting their followers know they are aware of the scam and are “investigating and taking steps to fix it.” According to Business Insider, Bitcoin transactions revealed that the listed account in the tweets from the hacked accounts received more than 11 Bitcoin, which equates to about $101,300. It should be noted that is unknown if some or any of the transactions were executed by the scammers in order to add legitimacy to their account.

View the affected accounts and their tweets below.

Wiz Khalifa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

[via Business Insider]

On Wednesday, Twitter was the victim of a massive hack, which saw numerous name accounts — belonging to people like Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, and Bill Gates — mysteriously tweeting out a Bitcoin scam. The social media giant quickly tried to enact damage control, and one thing they seem to have done is render certain accounts unable to tweet at all, at least beyond retweets.

This comes from The Verge, who pointed out that block appeared to mostly, if not exclusively, affect verified accounts. Not all accounts that contain a blue check mark were affected, and it’s not clear why certain ones were targeted while others were not. It was also not revealed when those locked accounts would be set free to tweet about how they were not allowed to tweet for some as-yet-to-be-determined period of time.

The Twitter support account would only reveal that they were “investigating” the hack and “taking steps to fix it.” They also informed users that they would be unable to reset passwords while the investigation ensues.

The news left the social media site bereft of the rich, the famous, the powerful, and randos who somehow managed to score a blue check mark, possibly because they worked in media. Those that hadn’t been raptured to some temporary oblivion, predictably, made jokes about a cabal sometimes disparagingly referred to as the “Blue Check Mark Mafia.”

Of course, some made a joke while pointing out that some accounts are, alas, useful and even necessary to keep our futuristic society running.

As of this writing, many verified accounts were still unable to tweet.

(Via The Verge)

On Wednesday, Disney+ released the latest trailer for Muppets Now, the super-company’s latest attempt to do something with the Jim Henson brand they purchased for $75 million back in 2004. It’s been a bumpy road, with one mildly underperforming reboot movie, an actually underperforming sequel, and a mockumentary TV show that lasted only one season. (Kermit, at least, has endured in the form of many popular memes.) Muppets Now, a short-form improv-y series featuring the likes of Josh Gad and Seth Rogen, may be the thing that gets them back on track, but there’s one hitch: Some people on Twitter felt the new guy voicing ringleader Kermit is a little…off.

The trailer consists of a Zoom session — because even puppets have to social distance when making content now — with Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Janice, Dr. Teeth et al. popping in for a quick meeting. “Hi, everyone,” Kermit announces, and you don’t have to be a stickler for detail to notice Kermit suddenly sounds different. And there’s a reason for that: Steve Whitmire, who took over for Kermit creator and longtime voice Jim Henson after his death in 1990, retired from the gig in 1990. He was replaced by Matt Vogel in 2017, but we haven’t really heard a lot from the Muppets since then.

As such, Vogel’s attempt to carry the torch couldn’t help but sound…not quite there. It left people confused.

Some were more directly critical.

Some were angry.

Some, however, were optimistic about the show in general but hoped Vogel would get better.

Some were more charitable in their criticism.

And at least one was incredibly complimentary.

There was, however, one detail that jumped out to some.

A giant Twitter hack is currently underway as many prominent Twitter accounts have been posting fraudulent cryptocurrency promotions over the last hour. High profile personal and company accounts have been taken over in what will likely go down as the biggest data breach Twitter has ever seen. The accounts of Apple, Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Elon Musk, Uber, Joe Biden, Wiz Khalifa, and Bill Gates have all been taken over, among others, according to early reporting by investigative journalist Scott Stedman.

In a lengthy Twitter thread currently being updated in real-time, Steadman shared screenshots of the since-deleted tweets from famous accounts that are all running essentially the same message promising users the chance to double their money by donating to a Bitcoin address.

“We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and we believe you should too! All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled! Only going on for the next 30 minutes” read Apple’s tweet. According to Stedman, the hackers responsible for the scam have already received $100,000 in donations in the first forty minutes of his initial reporting.

The hack is over it appears, and the attack seems to have been directed at only high profile verified accounts. Justin Sun — CEO of BitTorrent and founder of TRON — has put a $1 million bounty on the hackers responsible.

This story is being updated.

Banksy recently revealed a brand new work inspired by COVID-19 on his Instagram, in a video that shows the artist spray painting a London subway car. Hours after Banksy posted a video of himself disguised as a cleaner tagging the London Underground, the COVID-19 piece has been removed by the Transport for London, scrubbing one of Banksy’s best works in some time. The work consisted of several stenciled rats and face masks, meant to encourage commuters to mask up to help curb the spread of COVID-19.

Highlights of the new work included a sneezing rat expelling a burst of blue paint, and several different stencils of rats interacting with the facemasks. Banksy also tagged the words “I get lockdown” and “but I get up again” in the station and on the train doors, a reference to “TubThumping” by the English rock band Chumbawamba.

CNN reports that the TFL removed the piece because it was in violation of their “strict anti-graffiti policy” but expressed that they appreciate the ever-elusive artist’s sentiment and would “offer Banksy the chance to do a new version of his message for our customers in a suitable location,” which sounds like the most un-Banksy thing ever.

It’s a shame, though not at all surprising, that Banksy’s newest piece had to be removed but when it existed it was definitely the coolest pro-mask statement we’ve seen from any artist to date.