Category: Worldwide

As we all know, Mr. Peanut — the long-running, monocle-wearing mascot for Planters — died earlier this year in a heroic attempt to save his best friends and travel companions, Wesley Snipes and Veep’s Matt Walsh. Some week’s later, at the funeral, during a eulogy given by Wesley Snipes, the Kool-Aid Man’s tears spilled onto the dirt grave where the deceased legume had been buried, and Mr. Peanut was resurrected as a Baby Nut who, for reasons that were unexplained because they are presumably unexplainable, made dolphin noises. I will discuss all of this a bit more momentarily, but I point it out now, right up front, for three equally important reasons:

• It is really just the most powerfully weird and nonsensical ad campaign I’ve seen maybe ever
• It has now gotten even weirder, thanks to recent developments that I will also discuss momentarily
• Despite these first two things, it is still somehow, against truly staggering odds, not even a top-100 weirdest thing of 2020, to the degree that all of it barely registered with me until I really sat down and tried to grasp it, which really says a lot about where our brains are at right now

Let’s back up to the genesis of this madness. The beginning is always a decent place to start. Here is the commercial where Mr. Peanut dies.

This all raises a number of questions, including but not limited to:

— Where were Mr. Peanut, Wesley Snipes, and Matt Walsh going?

— Were they just on a cross-country road trip in the Peanut Mobile?

— How do they know each other?

— How does Mr. Peanut drive?

— Do his feet even reach the pedals?

— What would you do if you pulled up to a stoplight and the car next to you was a giant peanut driven by a smaller sentient peanut that had human limbs and a top hat and was sitting next to the star of Blade?

— Why does the Peanut Mobile have an escape hatch in the back?

— Is this some sort of crime-fighting vehicle?

— Were they solving crimes on their road trip?

— Who saved Wesley Snipes and Matt Walsh after Mr. Peanut sacrificed himself?

— If you were on a road trip with a large sentient peanut with human limbs and a top hat, would you consider eating it if you were out of snacks?

All fair, all as pointless as any of this. And this commercial was just the prelude to the main event, the Super Bowl commercial, featuring the funeral and the necromancy and the Kool-Aid Man.

This also raises a few questions, including but not limited to:

— Why did Wesley Snipes get to give the eulogy?

— How close were they?

— Were… were they brothers?

— If you could have any castmember from the 1993 film Demolition Man deliver your eulogy, who would it be and why?

— What exactly is the chemical makeup of the Kool-Aid Man’s tears?

— Shouldn’t that be the bigger takeaway from these commercials, that the Kool-Aid man can reanimate the dead as infants?

— Did the Kool-Aid Man know he had this power before the funeral or is he just discovering it, too?

— Does this, in a way, kind of make the Kool-Aid Man one of the X-Men?

— Do you think we should harness this power through science to bring back other deceased historical figures?

— What deceased person or peanut would you want to reanimate if you had a vile of the Kool-Aid Man’s tears?

— Have you considered all the ethical quandaries of this endeavor?

— What if the power fell into the wrong hands?

— What if we bring back, like, Benjamin Franklin, with the hopes of cultivating his sharp and inventive mind to help us with a series of present-day conundrums, but he just gets way into memes instead?

— If you were at a funeral for a dead legume and the Kool-Aid Man’s tears brought it back to life as a baby that makes dolphin noises, what would you do?

— Would you judge me if I panicked and shouted “KILL IT AGAIN BEFORE IT KILLS US ALL!” almost involuntarily as soon as I saw it?

— Since this commercial aired in early February, do you think it is possible that bringing back Mr. Peanut as a baby in defiance of God and science shifted the course of the universe and was therefore responsible for everything that has happened in the following six months?

— Can’t rule it out, right?

Again, all fair, all completely pointless. Also, unbelievable that it happened in February of this year. It feels like 20 years ago. Which, conveniently, I guess, brings us to the latest development in this cursed nut universe: Mr. Peanut, who died seven months ago and was resurrected as a baby six months ago, is now apparently 21 years old.

As you can imagine, this raises yet another set of questions, including but not limited to:

— How?

— Why?

— What is going on?

— What are any of us doing?

— How did he age 21 years in six months?

— Does this mean he’ll be 42 by February?

— Is this rapid aging part of the deal with the reanimation, like one of those wishes that is secretly a curse?

— Is the Kool-Aid Man a witch?

— When you die, would you want to be reanimated as an infant that ages about three years every month?

— How would you live your life if you knew you were packing 80 years worth of aging into about 24 months?

— Why does Mr. Peanut look like Eggsy from the Kingsman movies?

— How funny would it be if the next commercial is Mr. Peanut dying again, but at 21 years old this time, right in his prime?

— Like if he stumbles out of this bar later that day and promptly gets walloped by a speeding Chevy Tahoe?

— Or mowed down with an AK-47 by a pistachio assassin on a motorcycle as part of an ongoing but previously unexplained blood feud between nuts and legumes?

— What if this turns into a Groundhog Day situation and they keep killing Mr. Peanut in different ways every year and resurrecting him during the Super Bowl?

— Would that be any weirder than what has happened so far?

— Wait, does his driver’s license say he is 5’8”?

— Isn’t that significantly taller than he was way back in the first commercial?

— What if he keeps growing?

— What if he just ages and grows at exponential rates now, continuously, until he’s bigger than a double-decker bus?

— What if he’s become an immortal demon sent from hell to destroy us all?

— You’ll probably wish you had listened to me when I yelled about killing it when it was small and vulnerable, huh?

Told you.

Anjimile (full name Anjimile Chithambo) earned some buzz locally in Massachusetts for their Tiny Desk Contest entry in 2018, and now they are ready for the national stage. Anjimile has a new album, Giver Taker, on the way this fall, and today, they’ve released a new preview of it, “Baby No More.”

Anjimile says the groove-driven single is about unsuccessfully trying to maintain a relationship while dealing with personal demons:

“I wrote ‘Baby No More’ about a month or two before I got sober. I was in a romantic relationship but I was not taking care of myself in any sense of the phrase, and thus, the relationship was suffering as a result. At the time I quite literally felt like I was losing my mind vis-a-vis alcoholism: ‘I can’t be your baby no more/ cause I done gone crazy’. Active alcoholism and committed romantic relationships generally do not mix well, and ‘Baby No More’ is more or less what happens when you’re not a good boyfriend. Although it’s got a very groovy and relatively light-hearted musical vibe, some of the lyrics are quite dark.”

They also say the album was written while in treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, and during the process of “living more fully as a nonbinary trans person.” They said, “A lot of the album was written when I was literally in the process of improving my mental health, so there’s a lot of hopefulness and wonder at the fact that I was able to survive. Not only survive but restart my life and work towards becoming the person I was meant to be.”

Listen to “Baby No More” above, and find the Giver Taker art and tracklist below.

1. “Your Tree”
2. “Baby No More”
3. “In Your Eyes”
4. “1978”
5. “Not Another Word”
6. “Maker”
7. “Ndimakukonda”
8. “Giver Taker”
9. “To Meet You There”

Giver Taker is out 9/18 via Father/Daughter Records. Pre-order it here.

For the second year in a row, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is officially the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. The constantly working actor and tequila mogul crushed the competition, which includes his old nemesis Vin Diesel.

Thanks to an influx of cash from Netflix, The Rock won the top spot on Forbes‘ list of The Highest-Paid Actors of 2020. The actor scored a $23.5 million payday for Red Notice, which along with his Under Armour line Project Rock, put The Rock in first with a grand total of $87.5 million in earnings. However, his Red Notice co-star Ryan Reynolds wasn’t far behind in second. The Deadpool star was also rolling in Netflix dough thanks to 6 Underground, and he has a third blockbuster in the works with the streaming service, which could make Reynolds a threat to The Rock for Forbes’ 2021 list.

Coming in third is Mark Wahlberg, who’s also sitting on some Netflix green thanks to Spenser Confidential. (Producing HBO’s McMillion$ didn’t hurt either.) Fourth place is surprisingly Ben Affleck, again with a pocketful of Netflix cash for The Last Thing That He Wanted. And coming in fifth is Diesel who’s producing a Fast & Furious animated series for, you guessed it, Netflix.

Of course, The Rock dominating Diesel shouldn’t be a total shock. While The Rock has successfully branched out to several films and TV shows, Diesel has found little success outside of the Fast & Furious franchise and voicing Groot for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. As for whether this latest development will exacerbate their long-running feud remains to be seen. Diesel and Johnson started butting heads back in 2016 when The Rock basically called Diesel a “candy ass” on Instagram. From that point on, the two began trading words back and forth over interviews and social media. The chest-thumping grew even more intense when The Rock and Jason Statham signed on to the Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw, which prompted Tyrese to pour more fuel on the Rock/Diesel beef.

While hostilities have seemingly cooled between the two action stars, the Forbes ranking is exactly the kind of spark that can fire up another battle of the egos.

(Via Forbes)

Beck’s music career has spanned over 30 years and it’s not coming to a halt any time soon. Back in November, Beck debuted his 14th studio album, Hyperspace, and at the time shared a handful of videos alongside popular singles. But Beck has now created something different. The singer teamed up with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to craft a stunning visual Hyperspace album complete with footage of space.

Each song on the visual record revolves around a different part of our solar system and combines NASA images with animation and data from AI technology to craft stunning graphics. For each video, scientists trained a special AI program to analyze NASA’s wide catalog of space images to extrapolate on a new vision of the universe.

About the project, Beck said the space visuals are fitting for the record because each song lends itself to escaping reality: “I think each song is kind of a different way that different people ‘Hyperspace’ — We escape from the reality that we’re all dealing with.”

Watch Beck’s “Die Waiting” video above, see the Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration tracklist below, and explore the entirety of Beck’s project here.

1. “Hyperlife” Feat. Landsat 8 and the International Space Station
2. “Uneventful Days” Feat. Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Apollo 12
3. “Saw Lightning” Feat. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Curiosity Rover, and the Viking 1 Orbiter
4. “Die Waiting” Feat. Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
5. “Chemical” Feat. Cassini-Huygens
6. “See Through” Feat. Juno
7. “Hyperspace” Feat. Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
8. “Stratosphere” Feat. Spitzer Space Telescope
9. “Dark Places” Feat. Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
10. “Star” Feat. Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Swift, and the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
11. “Everlasting Nothing” Feat. Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

Hyperspace is out now via Fonograf. Get it here.

Back in 2018, Netflix announced a “reimagined live-action” Avatar: The Last Airbender, despite the original series being perfect as is. “We’re thrilled for the opportunity to helm this live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender,” showrunners Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who created the animated show (which has seen a resurgence in popularity since being added to the streaming service), said at the time.

But on Wednesday, the pair revealed that they have departed the project.

“When Bryan and I signed on to the project in 2018, we were hired as executive producers and showrunners,” DiMartino wrote on his website. “In a joint announcement for the series, Netflix said that it was committed to honoring our vision for this retelling and to supporting us on creating the series. And we expressed how excited we were for the opportunity to be at the helm. Unfortunately, things did not go as we had hoped.”

DiMartino said that he “couldn’t control the creative direction of the series, but I could control how I responded,” so he, along with Konietzko exited. They’re not ready to write off the live-action series, however. “And who knows? Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar has the potential to be good. It might turn out to be a show many of you end up enjoying. But what I can be certain about is that whatever version ends up on-screen, it will not be what Bryan and I had envisioned or intended to make,” he wrote.

You can read the entire letter here. Also, watch Avatar: The Last Airbender. The show, not the movie. NEVER the movie.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

With the NBA playoffs set to begin next week, the league has finalized rules on just who is actually allowed inside the clean site at the Wide World of Sports complex in Florida. The details were reported by Adrian Wojnarowski over at ESPN.

Who can come?

Here’s what it comes down to: Up to four family members or romantic partners will be allowed into the Bubble per player, and children don’t count toward that total. Player agents, massage therapists, and other accessory staff for players will not be among the four people allowed in, while those with whom players have “long-standing relationships,” i.e. friends or romantic partners, will be.

Players cannot bring people “known by the player only through social media or an intermediary.” This means that if a person has never met a player, or if they’ve only met a time or two, or if they’re friends only because they’re tight on Instagram, they aren’t allowed in.

How do they get into the Bubble?

Family and friends joining players in the Bubble will have to quarantine for at least four days and take a negative test before riding an organization’s charter jet to Orlando, where they will then isolate for another four days in Orlando, where they will partake in the league’s strict resting regimen. If they’d rather just get down to Orlando, they can opt to fly there and quarantine for seven days.

Can they attend games?

The short answer is yes. Wojnarowski reports that “players are allowed one ticket per guest per playoff game, with an additional seat available to a child 32 inches or shorter, according to the memo.”

They’re not visible from most angles on television, but there are seats in the arenas at the Wide World of Sports complex, where media members who are not actively covering the game are allowed to sit. This is where families will likely sit and watch playoff games in the coming weeks.

Will they be able to move about?

Just like the players and staff who have been in the Bubble since early July, families and friends will be able to fish, hit the pool, and do anything they want on the campus, but they will be prevented from attending Walt Disney World theme parks or leaving the clean site. One would assume they’d be subject to the same quarantine and testing protocols as players and staff in the event that they had to leave for an emergency, like Lou Williams, Zion Williamson, and Montrezl Harrell all did this summer.

Anything else?

Two additional team staff members from each organization will be able to join the team in Orlando starting next week when the postseason begins.

College football is probably not happening at all this Fall, but at least we still have the NFL, right? …Right? Honestly it’s still up in the air, but at the very least, there’s Hard Knocks on HBO to fill the void. Hard Knocks is the long-running docuseries that gives us entertainment junkies everything we love about sports: the human interest stories! Xs and Os are for Nate Silver and the stats kissers. What I want to know is, which player came from a broken home? Who’s the guy no one believed in fighting for a spot on the practice squad? Which musclebound lineman secretly runs a shelter for disabled cats? FEED ME THE STORIES. Sports docs are my crack, for reasons I don’t entirely understand.

This year’s Hard Knocks, if you didn’t know, takes us to sunny Los Angeles, California, for training camp with both the Rams and the Chargers (sharing SoFi stadium, as soon as it’s ready), which is fitting for the Chargers, a team that abandoned the only city that ever gave a shit about them and will probably only ever sell tickets based on the draw of the opposing team.

Uh, anyway… it’s the first time in Hard Knocks‘ long run (Jesus, has this show really been around since before 9/11?) that it has attempted to cover more than one team. That’s twice the personnel, with none of the intense football action! (More on that in a second)

We’re going to do this in the form of a “depth chart,” but keep in mind that this was only the first episode and apparently these guys won’t even get to put on the pads until week three (KILL ME), so a lot of these “positions” are only going to be one “player” deep. (Whatever, man, you get it.)

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Starter: Is there even going to be a season this year?

This year’s training camp, which will involve zero preseason games (probably good for anyone who can’t help but watch terrible preseason games and terrible for Hard Knocks watchability), mostly involved walking through plays in between seminars about COVID safety (drink every time a coach says “You guys call me out if I’m not doing a good job too!”). The quarterbacks took some snaps, and threw to… uh… some butterfly nets? I guess throwing to actual receivers was against protocol? But snapping the ball from center to quarterback was still okay? Man, this is going to be worse than I thought. The NFL can’t have preseason games, but we may have needed a preseason episode of Hard Knocks just to lay out all the rules.

Second: Where do all those tests come from?

They’re COVID testing these guys every day? I guess the test shortage is over, huh? Also, did anyone else notice that they were using the not-as-accurate just-swab-around-the-nostril test, and not the jam-the-q-tip-all-the-way-through-the-nasal-cavity-to-where-the-cocaine-drips test? And the players were still being babies about it.

That’s Chargers cornerback Casey Hayward Jr., by the way. Come on, Casey, you regularly smash your head into 300-pound men running full speed, a q-tip half an inch into your nostril is the least of your worries.

Third: Is this season actually going to suck ass?

See above. Spending the first 300 words of this post talking about COVID is really dampening my whole sports-as-an-escape-from-reality vibe. Honestly, could one thing this year not be horribly depressing? I just thank God HBO doesn’t have commercials, because if I had to watch some brand or celebrity tell me how they understand how hard this pandemic can be during breaks from the Hard Knocks cast not playing football I might actually stick a shotgun in my mouth.

MOST VALUABLE CANINE

Starter: Sean McVay’s dog Callie.

Callie is obviously an extremely good girl, and her pool basketball scene with Sean McVay turned out to be the most exciting sports action we saw the entire episode.

Second: (empty)

We can only hope more players are drafted to fill this position. Cassie seems like a lock but she could use some competition to bring out her best.

DULLEST BANTER

Starter: Sean McVay and his wife, Veronika.

Man, if you thought COVID safety seminars were boring, just watch the Kardashians-lite back and forths between Sean and Veronika McVay. Jesus, these guys make a job interview seem relaxed and candid. I really hope this scene was just a way to introduce the dog.

Second: Every Zoom chat.

I don’t want to drag the players or the show too hard for this, but I think at this stage of quarantine we can all agree that Zoom chats are terrible. And the only thing worse than having to do your own Zoom chats is watching someone else’s.

RIDICULOUS VEHICLE

Starter: Melvin Ingram III’s high-powered tricycle

Watching Chargers defensive end Melvin Ingram III show up to camp in a high-speed motortrike almost felt like old times. I love that you can simply jet ski through the streets nowadays.

Second: (empty)

The players aren’t even wearing pads yet. Come on, Hard Knocks, the least you could do is give us more unorthodox vehicle footage. I know it’s out there.

LOVABLE UNDERDOG TRYING TO MAKE GOOD

Starter: Dont’e Deayon

This requisite “lovable player on the bubble” slot felt pretty forced this time around, and Dont’e Deayon desperately trying (and failing) to get Aaron Donald to acknowledge him somehow was almost as tragic as watching the quarterbacks throw balls to nets instead of people. He also seemed more “manic” than “lovable” per se, but dammit I need an underdog to root for and Dont’e Deayon is who the producers have given me. I will spend the next four episodes rooting for him because I am a hopeless shill.

JAMES HARRISON MEMORIAL AWARD FOR TERRIFYING JACKEDNESS

Starter: Aaron Donald

Eh, he’s pretty buff, I guess.

LEAST VALUABLE MONTAGE

Starter: The “sanitizing” sequence.

Not that we didn’t know this would be coming, but the staff-spraying-hand-sanitizer montage set to Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” was exactly as groan-worthy as you’d imagine. Which isn’t necessarily a knock on the Hard Knocks production crew, I realize they’re trying to make a football show without any actual football footage here. So keep spraying down those benches and we’ll all pretend everything doesn’t suck.

Following Disney’s monumental decision to move one of its biggest blockbusters to streaming as pandemic conditions continue to wreak havoc on the chances of American theaters opening, Disney+ has released a new trailer for Mulan to pump up fans for its rapidly approaching release date. It’s easily the most action-heavy trailer for the reboot as it showcases epic, high-flying fight scenes that make it very clear that Yifei Liu’s Mulan is a badass you don’t want to under-estimate.

While the film will still have an international theatrical release, Mulan is arriving on Disney+ on September 4 in the U.S., but for a price. Thanks to a new feature called Disney+ with Premium Access, subscribers can purchase Mulan for $30. Originally, there was some confusion over how this release strategy would work, and whether the price is for a one-time rental, but according to The Verge, Disney has clarified that once you pay the premium price for Mulan, you will “own” the film as long as you’re a Disney+ subscriber. It’s yours to watch as many times as you want.

As for whether Disney will attempt this strategy with its other upcoming blockbusters like Black Widow, the studio’s current stance is that Mulan‘s streaming release is a “one-off.” Here’s the official synopsis:

Acclaimed filmmaker Niki Caro brings the epic tale of China’s legendary warrior to life in Disney’s Mulan, in which a fearless young woman risks everything out of love for her family and her country to become one of the greatest warriors China has ever known. When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Army to defend the country from Northern invaders, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. Masquerading as a man, Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her inner-strength and embrace her true potential. It is an epic journey that will transform her into an honored warrior and earn her the respect of a grateful nation… and a proud father.

Mulan will be available for streaming on Disney+ with Premium Access starting September 4, 2020.

(Via Walt Disney Studios)

Deanté Hitchcock continues the promotion for his major label debut album Better with the hilarious video for “I Got Money Now” featuring JID. The Atlanta rapper has been on a hot streak since being invited to participate on Revenge Of The Dreamers III and keeps it going with a clip showing off his quirky sense of humor.

The video opens with Deanté dressed as a postal worker, seemingly delivering a giant stimulus check to a resident in the suburbs. However, the plot is quickly revealed; his delivery is just a distraction while he and his friends commit a home invasion, breaking out the back door to get away with the goods. The video then reveals a number of other lucrative scams, from pulpit pimping to injury fraud. The tongue-in-cheek visuals reflect the lyrics of the song, which unfortunately do not include JID’s verse from the album — likely due to pandemic precautions fouling up the logistics.

Hitchcock’s rollout also included the socially conscious “Attitude” video with Young Nudy, while his recent appearance on Guapdad 4000’s “Orgasms Full Of Pain” Falcon Fridays release helped raise his profile as well.

Watch Deanté Hitchcock’s “I Got Money Now” video featuring JID above.

Better is out now via ByStorm Entertainment and RCA Records. Get it here.

Kanye West’s bid for the presidency is kicking into first gear as election day looms in the near distance. But Kanye’s campaign has definitely hit some major speed bumps along the way as the rapper is currently polling at just two percent of the Black vote. It was recently reported that Kanye sought the assistance of a few Republican party members in his campaign, but now he’s gone straight to the White House. Kanye set up a private meeting with Senior Trump Advisor Jared Kushner over the weekend in Colorado.

According to a report from the New York Times, West was camping with family in Colorado and Kushner was on his way to see Ivanka Trump when the two scheduled a private meeting in the small town of Telluride. West tweeted about the meeting, saying he and Kushner discussed Dr. Claude Anderson’s popular 2001 book PowerNomics.

West also noted he’d be willing to further discuss the meeting directly with the New York Times but when the publication asked West a follow-up question, he didn’t speak about his meeting with Kushner. Instead, the rapper “expressed anger about abortion rates among Black women and said he didn’t reflexively support Democrats.”

The private meeting came after Kanye’s failed attempt to get his name on a number of ballots. The rapper’s name was recently removed from the Illinois ballot, Kanye’s home state, after the legitimacy of his petition signatures went under investigation.

Of course, if Kanye’s political aspirations don’t come to fruition, the musician could always fall back on drawing.