Category: Worldwide

We’re living through an incredibly stressful time with the global pandemic, economic woes, social and political unrest, and internet comments filled with conspiracy theorists, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep our sense of humor. In fact, laughter might be the most healing tool we have at the moment.

Pandemic humor can be tricky, of course—there’s nothing laughable about widespread illness and death—but it can be done. And it can even be done in a place not generally known for comedy, like a church sanctuary.

Father Nathan Monk, a former priest, shared photos from Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New Orleans on Facebook, which show how the church is creatively handling social distancing guidelines in the pews. The pews that should remain empty to keep people distanced have signs hung with blue painters tape.

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The first quotes Jesus: “‘I have prepared a place for you…'” then adds, “Just not this pew.”

Next, referring to the loaves and fishes story in the Bible: “Jesus sat the 5000 down in rows…But not this one.”

“Zacchaeus climbed a sycamore tree to get a better seat…this pew was not it.” HA.

And they just get better.

“Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. And if he were here today, he still wouldn’t be allowed to sit in this pew.” NOT EVEN ABRAHAM, PEOPLE. Find another seat.

Going way back to the Old Testament and Jewish Passover tradition in which people save a seat for Elijah at the Seder feast, one sign was a simple, “Reserved for Elijah only.”

How about a fun game of spiritual hide and seek? “‘You will find me when you seek me’…. Just not in this pew. Keep seeking.”

What if you think of this pew as the forbidden fruit? No touchy. No sitty.

“Remember when the Lord put a ‘Flaming Sword’ at the entrance of the Garden of Eden, so Adam and Eve couldn’t go there? ‘Flaming sword’ can also be translated blue tape.”

And in case that isn’t clear, “Jesus said take up my cross, not this pew.”

Nailed it. This church managed to keep a light mood and inject some Bible-based humor into an otherwise serious situation, got people to follow public health recommendations, and didn’t get preachy or judgey about it. “Fun” and “uplifting” are not generally words people use to describe public health mandates, but that’s how people in the comments on Monk’s post are describing these pew signs.

Well done, Redeemer Presbyterian. Helping us laugh so we don’t cry.

Forrest Galante is the wildlife biologist and conservationist the world needs right now. He’s engaging, he builds his conservation work on a solid foundation of science, and he truly loves all animals in a way that echoes Steve Irwin — gleefully swimming with sharks and gators. Galante is also an adventurer who spent his pre-COVID time globe-trotting around the world working in animal conservation while also trying to locate extinct species on his Animal Planet show Extinct or Alive.

To celebrate this year’s Shark Week, Galante teamed up with elasmobranchologist Dr. Dave Ebert to track three sharks off the coast of southern Africa — all thought to be extinct. The result, Extinct or Alive: Land of the Lost Sharks, is engaging, escapist TV that feels perfect for this moment in history. You get to travel with Galante to far-flung lands while also scoring great information about a group of fish that have suffered greatly at the hands of humans.

This week, we chatted with Galante over the phone about his new show. After talking about tracking sharks, we veered into the ever-changing world of animal conservation, hunting, and poaching in an unstable era. We had so much fun that we decided to drink a few drams of whisky with the man, t0o — check out last week’s UPROXX LIFE Expression Session below.

So before we get into the shows, let’s talk just a little bit about how you became a conservationist.

I grew up in Zimbabwe, which is a very wild place. But look, lots of people grew up in Zimbabwe and didn’t go on to be conservationists. In Zim, I was the son of farmers and safari business owners. So I spent my whole life in the bush and as I grew to become an adult, I decided that I love animals.

The way I like to describe it, Zach, remember when you were a kid and you flip something over like a log and you see an earthworm, right? And you’re like, “Oh my God, how cool is that?” Well, most people grow out of that. I did not. As I grew up, I wanted to know everything about that earthworm. I wanted to know what it ate, where it lived, what made it tick, what ate it, and so on. So as I got older, I turned my just plain love of wildlife, animals, and the sciences and went on to become an academic and got a degree in my passion to become a conservationist. I started as a biologist and realized my talents were really in communicating science far more so than academia. And so I began to communicate science on different platforms and ended up on television and been here ever since.

So, your new show, Land of the Lost Shark, is set in South Africa and Mozambique where you’re looking for lost sharks. How do you approach finding animals that are believed to be extinct?

I’ve made a niche in my world as being the guy that finds these animals — the animals that others can’t find. So in Land of the Lost Shark, I had the amazing privilege of teaming up with Dr. Dave Ebert, a world-renowned elasmobranchologist (AKA shark scientist) who’s named over 40 species of shark himself. He’s actually known as the “Lost Shark” guy. Dave and I are buddies. He’s awesome, man.

So, I reached out to Dave and I said, “Hey Dave, There’s a couple of regions in the world that are hotspots for lost sharks. One of them is my old backyard, southern Africa. Why don’t we go down there and work together and see if we can actually scratch up a couple of these things?” And Dave said, “Forrest, I’d love nothing more.” And so we took that to the network and said, “Hey, I know last year we found a lost shark in Sri Lanka, the Pondicherry, but this year, Dave and I — combining our expertise — him on a very academic level and mine on a more physical level — we think we might be able to be successful in finding even more than one lost species in these waters, off the coast of South Africa and Mozambique. What do you think?” And they’re like, “We love it. Good luck.”

So what makes your shark doc stand out?

The thing that’s different about is ours are much, much more of a scientific documentary. I think the headliner for sure — and don’t, I’m not trying to bash Shark Week — but I think the headliner for Shark Week is a Tyson versus Jaws. Things like “Swimming with Sharks,” you know?

Ours is rigorous scientific work with regards to trying to find these animals. We, in the course of an hour episode, there are around 14 different species of elasmobranchs, which is an incredible amount of animal diversity to have in a 44-minute episode of television.

That sounds fantastic. We’re both travelers. We’ve both been adventure travelers most of our lives. And for the first time in our adult lives, we’re living in a time when you can’t just jump on a plane and go. There’s a reality to that which has a pretty harsh pinch on conservation activities — you’re seeing poaching spike, etc.

How are you adjusting to not being able to travel, and thereby study and work?

What’s interesting is that I think people are taking polarizing opinions on what’s going on. And the reality is that there are both sides of the coin. What I mean by that is in some places we’re seeing great, great positive change. I assume at this point, everybody’s seen those stories of coyotes coming back into the cities and bears coming out of hiding. There’s a Malabar civet that was seen walking down the street in India. In some cases, with the shutdown and lock-in, animals are relaxing a little bit and they’re recovering in a sense. Even though it’s very short-term, where they’re able to come out of hiding and they’re able to reoccupy niches that have otherwise been occupied by human beings for as long as we can basically remember.

That’s been great for wildlife. It’s like giving it a breath of air. It’s like the pressure’s been taken off for a very, very short amount of time.

But then again…

On the flip side of that coin, the ugly truth has been rearing its head as well. With these government shutdowns, we’ve seen a spike in poaching efforts in certain places because if the government shuts down, the people that enforce anti-poaching and monitoring are also shut down and poachers are licking their lips going, “This is my opportunity.” So, in countries in southern Africa and in certain areas in Asia, we’ve seen a spike in poaching activity in rhinos, elephants, and big cats.

Then there’s the pangolin, well, this is insane to me because the pangolin is the species currently labeled responsible for the global pandemic. Yet that species has seen a massive spike in poaching during the pandemic because all of the people and enforcement that generally try and curb that have been shut down.

I mean, talk about a terrible turn of events. You’d think, if a pangolin gets labeled as responsible for a pandemic, maybe we’d stop consuming and killing them? But instead, the opposite has happened. It’s increased the demand, which is crazy.

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom but along with the global pandemic has come new — and I will use this term quite clearly here — bullshit remedies.

Can you give us an example of what you’d consider a bullshit animal remedy?

Bear bile is one. We’ve seen a huge increase in the mistreatment of bears and the poaching of bears for their bile. We’ve seen that increase in the demand simply because some bullshit Eastern medicine is saying bear bile can cure coronavirus. So now, all these bears are being culled and are living through terrible mistreatment for that bullshit.

So there are both sides of the coin. Some of it is good. Some of it’s sad. I think the pandemic has given people that work in wildlife a chance to see people’s true colors. Those that poach have seen an opportunity to poach further. Then there are those who have seen the silver lining, which is animals trying to recover.

I grew up understanding the link between hunting/fishing and conservation in the United States as it pays for it. And I understand how in some places in Africa tagged hunting pays for conservation as well. But it feels like that’s not enough anymore. That system was already on very shaky ground, to begin with — especially in southern Africa. So now that this pandemic has helped expose that, we have to ask, “Okay, well, what do we do next?”

That’s one of the most unfortunate things, Zach, is that there is no cure-all. Every species needs its own management, its own policies, and everything needs its own strategy. There’s no magic button.

I take that back. There is a magic button, right? There is one magic button and that is to cease all habitat destruction and hunting practices immediately. But there’s a very big difference between being an optimist and being a realist. And that “magic button” is unrealistic. There’s absolutely no way the entire world stops encroaching on wildlife habitat and taking wildlife. So without that being a possibility, and it’s not, the thing that makes wildlife sciences so difficult is that each animal, whether it’s an insect or a rhinoceros, needs its own management plan.

And those plans have to be constructed by scientists — like me and those far more skilled than myself — in order to implement those plans. They have to be studied and everything I’ve just listed requires time, money, and resources that, frankly, the world doesn’t have right now. So that’s a really tough question to answer. I mean, there is no immediate solution. Now, that being said, there are wonderful people and organizations that are fighting to combat all the negativity. Then what people can do is support those groups and organizations and causes.

What are you working on next and how difficult has it become to do your work?

We’re still working. Wildlife work never sleeps. Although we’re facing more challenges than ever with travel restrictions, my team and I are doing what we can to continue to fight the good fight. We have more projects coming up domestically. I can say that I certainly have more academic work currently than I do television work because that’s just the nature of the pandemic. Things are quiet and relatively on hold, but at the same time, we’re utilizing that.

We’re doing the best we can to spread awareness and share the message. I have some projects coming up on some news sites and sources around the world. Some of them are talking about the mistreatment of wildlife during COVID and things like that. And yeah, you just keep plugging away. I think it’s going to be a little bit more domestic for the foreseeable future than most of my work has been in the past, but so be it. Charity starts at home, so does wildlife work.

You can watch Forrest Galante on “Extinct or Alive: Land of the Lost Sharks” on the Discovery Channel on Tuesday, August 11th, at 8 pm EST. You can also follow Galante’s work on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

SpongeBob’s best friend might finally get a show of his own. Patrick Star, the beloved starfish who lives under a rock on the same street as the notorious pineapple under the sea, may soon have his own spinoff show at Nickelodeon.

Variety reported Monday that after more than two decades of scene-stealing moments as SpongeBob’s neighbor and best friend on SpongeBob Square Pants, Patrick and his family will be the focus of a new show currently the works at Nick.

A “SpongeBob Squarepants” spinoff series centered around SpongeBob’s pink friend is in the works at Nickelodeon, Variety has confirmed with sources. Bill Fagerbakke is set to voice the character once more.

The series will center around Patrick and his family, as the friendly starfish host a talk show.

If the wording of the story is to be believed, a talk show will be the center of the show’s focus. It’s unclear if Tom Kenny’s beloved sponge will be a part of the package, but it seems likely he shows up every now and again despite Patrick getting prime billing. What’s Bikini Bottom without SpongeBob, right? But a show that’s focused on Patrick — who has long had some of the show’s best lines and jokes — is certainly something fans will embrace.

SpongeBob has been on air since 1999, and a third SpongeBob movie is expected later this summer. Expanding the IP is certainly a long time coming. Just don’t let Patrick answer the phone at Viacom or this whole deal might fall apart.

Hovvdy is fresh off the release of their 2019 album Heavy Lifter, their third full-length release overall. The band’s output has so far leaned towards alternative rock more often than it hasn’t, so their new single, “I’m Sorry,” is a bit of a departure from that.

Co-produced by Bon Iver and Big Thief collaborator Andrew Sarlo, the slow and thoughtful track is more focused on programmed drums and synth-led atmospherics than it is guitars. The track is about a shifting relationship, and it begins, “I’m sorry / Going under the water again / It’s often / Something I can deal with / A long walk / From my house to his / I’m softly / Going back on what I said.”

The band’s Will Taylor says of the song, “‘I’m Sorry’ is about the mixed emotions when a relationship has to change or end. Grief and relief. We were excited to pull the guitars back to let the vocals and ambient textures shine. The clank and swing of the programmed drums create a resonance and energy that brings it all together.”

Hovvdy hasn’t announced that they have a new album on the way, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see a new one come in 2020, as Heavy Lifter also arrived about a year after its predecessor, 2018’s Cranberry.

Listen to “I’m Sorry” above.

If you were to ask 50 The Office fans to name their least favorite character, I reckon at least half would say Cathy (the other 25 would be split between Robert California, Roy, and Deangelo Vickers, who is the actual worst). Cathy was Pam’s temporary office administrator replacement for a dozen episodes in season eight when the show was beginning to run on fumes, anyway. Viewers despised her because she tried to seduce Jim away from Pam during a business trip to Florida — she was never heard from or seen again soon after, but the actress who played Cathy, Lindsey Broad, still faces online harassment.

“If anyone is wondering what it was like to be on The Office, the best comedy of this century: I just posted something on Instagram about how my dog was murdered and a bunch of people were like ‘F*ck you, Cathy, she deserved it!’ So. There ya go!” Broad tweeted (the Instagram post can be seen here, but fair warning, it’s a tough read).

The actress shared on her Instagram Stories rude comments from fans responding to a post about her dog who she said was killed last year in a vicious attack from another dog.

“If your goal is being told to f*ck off by someone associated with a TV show you genuinely love, it is absolutely something you can accomplish but accomplishing it means you are both nasty and profoundly stupid,” she wrote. “Enjoy! F*ck off!”

Does Cathy suck? Of course, but that’s not Broad’s fault, and anyone who harasses her, especially after she’s suffered a personal tragedy, sucks way more.

(Via People)

The 2020 college football season is in serious jeopardy of being cancelled or postponed to the spring in large part due to the lack of a sweeping federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has left the United States dealing with tens of thousands of cases per day around the country with no end in sight.

Much like the United States’ decision to leave most choices on how to proceed up to state and local government, the NCAA has refused to do anything akin to creating a national standard of protocols for how schools should proceed with the upcoming fall season. As such, some schools and conferences have already decide to call off the fall season, while others are hoping to move forward with a conference only schedule.

Players have taken it upon themselves to organize and present a united front across the country in all Power Five conferences, insisting that “We Want To Play” but issuing a list of things they need to see before they’re comfortable playing. The movement, headlined by Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence and Ohio State QB Justin Fields, calls for uniform safety and testing protocols across Power Five conferences, athletes not being penalized for opting out, athletes being allowed to have representation, and, biggest of all, calling for the creation of a college football players association.

The last point, in particular, has led many who supported the players when they first started tweeting about “We Want To Play” to backtrack, but president Donald Trump somewhat surprisingly still seems to be behind the movement, retweeting Lawrence’s tweet that had the list of demands on Monday.

Two things are possible here, and I will let you determine which is more likely. The first is that Trump agrees that the players in college football should unionize and be afforded the right to sign representation for themselves. The second is he didn’t read the whole list and voiced his support before really knowing what all he was co-signing. It’s a mystery!

Trump has been vocal about his hope for sports, namely the NFL and college football, to return this fall in their usual stadiums and, possibly, with limited fans, to provide some hope and normalcy for people, serving as a distraction from the administration’s response to the pandemic that has been severely lacking and continuously well behind schedule.

In 2017, Harry Styles released his debut solo single, “Sign Of The Times,’ and it nearly became his first No. 1 song in the US. It achieved a peak at No. 4 on the Hot 100, and that is as close as he had gotten to claiming the top spot… before today. It has now been revealed that on the chart dated August 15, “Watermelon Sugar” is in the No. 1 spot, making it Styles’ first chart-topping single.

A handful of events came together to help the song rise to the top. On July 30, Styles shared a behind-the-scenes video for the song, and on August 3, he premiered a “lost tour visual” video. August 3 was also National Watermelon Day, which led to #WatermelonSugarDay becoming a trending topic online.

“Watermelon Sugar” has had a long journey to No. 1: The track was released as a single nearly three months ago (on May 15), and it previously available as an album track on Fine Line, which was released on December 13, 2019. Before that, it was also shared as a promotional single on November 16, 2019. So, the song was out for about nine months before it managed to top the Hot 100. “Watermelon Sugar” is also popular on TikTok.

Styles is now the second former One Direction member to earn a chart-topping Hot 100 single, as Zayn’s “Pillowtalk” led in 2016.

Elsewhere on this week’s chart, Billie Eilish’s “My Future” debuted at No. 6, which is the highest opening frame for any of her songs.

Revisit our review of Fine Line here.

With Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s new video “WAP” trending all over the internet over the weekend, there might not be a more perfect time for a resurgence of club music from places like Baltimore and New Jersey thanks to “WAP”‘s rousing interpolation of DJ Frank Ski’s 1993 Baltimore smash “Whores In This House.” Fortunately for the emerging “Jersey club savant” Cookiee Kawaii, her song “Vibe” has already been bubbling all over TikTok and is primed to boil over into a mainstream hit — especially with the release of the song’s official music video.

Taking visual inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 thriller classic The Birds, the video opens with Cookiee inside a phone booth, being swarmed by thousands of crows, one of which becomes anthropomorphized to perform some dance choreography. Once the beat starts in earnest, Cookiee becomes a bandleader and a space explorer in turn, flanked by theme-appropriate dancers. The video crams plenty of eye-grabbing imagery into such a short song — “Vibe” is only about a minute long — including an especially spider-y scene in which Cookiee appears with six extra legs.

TikTok has become the launching pad for a number of hits in the past year, including No.1’s like Roddy Ricch’s “The Box,” Doja Cat’s “Say So,” and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage.” While all of those were more or less established artists before their songs went viral on TikTok, it’s only a matter of time until the app produces its own native star. With women finally getting more attention and influence in the music industry and the potential for upbeat club songs to become the next big trend in pop, there’s are plenty of reasons why Cookiee Kawaii might just be the star in question.

Watch Cookiee Kawaii’s “Vibe (If I Back It Up)” video above.

Rising New Zealand star Benee had a breakout year in 2019. The 20-year-old’s Gus Dapperton-featuring single “Supalonely” got some traction in the US and became her first Platinum single in the country. After releasing a pair of EPs last year, Benee is gearing up to drop her debut album, which she has previewed today with “Snail.”

The thumping pop tune is quite literally about snails, as she adopts a rhythmic and infectious cadence to sing on the chorus, “I’m like a snail, you’re a guy / Kinda mad I can’t fly / When it’s day, hide away / But come out when it rains.” Benee said of the song:

“When we were in lockdown, I was fascinated by snails. There wasn’t really a lot to be doing, so I would spend a lot of time outside looking at snails and would think about how they’re doing their own little thing and they’re all free. I just played around with the idea of being kind of like a snail and how I come out in the rain. Being stuck inside because of COVID, it’s kind of my lockdown song.”

An interest in snails isn’t some hat Benee is temporarily wearing for the sake of this song. She discussed her love for the creatures in a July interview (before “Snail” was announced), saying, “I think if I was to be anything other than a human, I think it would have to be a snail. […] I’ve just had a weird obsession with them since I was, like, five years old. I really, really hate it when I step on them on accident, like, it really, really crushes my soul. I also think they are cute, which is an unpopular opinion, I think.”

Listen to “Snail” above.

NLE Choppa‘s long-awaited debut album dropped on Friday, and to keep the buzz going, the 17-year-old Memphis mic menace followed up with the video to one of the project’s standout tracks, “Top Shotta Flow.”

The video is relatively straightforward, with standard scenes of Choppa rapping in front of a crowd, including fellow Memphis viral star BlocBoy JB, performing with a car burning rubber behind him, and dancing with all his usual exuberant, youthful energy. The performance sequences are accentuated by some eye-popping visual effects, including digital clones of Choppa dancing alongside him, slow-motion bullets firing from his imaginary guns, and flames overtaking the dancing teens. Throughout, the focus remains on Choppa, a magnetic force who can’t help being the center of attention.

In addition to his album release this past weekend, Choppa is also the subject of an Uproxx Video documentary, Who Is NLE Choppa?, detailing his viral rise to stardom and following him as he navigates his newfound fame. Check out a teaser below.

Top Shotta is out now via NLE Choppa Entertainment and Warner Records. Get it here.

Watch NLE Choppa’s “Top Shotta Flow” video above.

NLE Choppa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.