Not everyone misses the hustle and bustle of public transportation while they endure life during a pandemic, but for those that love subway maps and free transfers there is a perfect board game out there to pass the time in quarantine. GameWright’s Metro X features the bright color-coordination of metropolitan mass transit graphic design with a quickly-moving “rail and write” card game.

Metro X is a new edition of a game originally made in Japan, with some tweaks to make it play a bit faster and includes erasable boards for up to six players. Gameplay is simultaneous: each player has the same metro map, with the goal to complete routes by filling up as many spaces on the board as possible to gain points. A card is flipped over, and players then choose a rail line to fill and mark the number of spaces equal to the number on the card. Everyone is using the same cards and subway lines, but the routes intersect several times and it’s impossible to fill up everything by the end of the game. Those choices players make get them different point values for routes finished first, and the uncertainty of what numbers (or free transfers or junctions) are coming and when the deck reshuffles add in a bit of luck to keep things interesting.

Both maps are inspired by real-life train systems, though thankfully no actual city’s system is organized this poorly. The concept is a bit brain-twisting at first but once everyone settles in there’s not much to grasp beyond picking a color, crossing off some boxes and hoping for the best. The two-sided game boards offer considerable replay value: Metro City is much easier to grasp conceptually than Tube Town, as the former has routes all moving left to right. But both offer plenty of opportunities to strategize and the dry erase element certainly helps players correct mistakes they might make getting the concept of the game down.

The most interesting thing about Metro X is the focus it requires. The first time I played it was at PAX East in Boston, a huge gaming convention that can be a sensory overload for some. But Metro X requires an amount of attention that manages to block pretty much everything around you out. There’s not a lot of time for cross-talk, as players will be staring hard at their boards to figure out how best to manage different routes without wasting moves. What’s more, there’s really no incentive to looking at another player’s board to see what they’re doing simply because you can’t afford to take attention away from your own work. It’s a game all your own, but the competition can be fierce as a result. Players thinking they’re on the brink of a few extra bonus points can come up just short to someone else prioritizing a different route. It’s a sometimes maddening result, but one that in my playtesting only made players want to give the game another go to figure out a faster way to complete routes.

If you like your game nights more meandering and loud, Metro X might not be the best pick for your next game night. But it’s a great change of pace game that plays quickly, much like Abandon All Artichokes. And the brainpower required to juggle criss-crossing routes and not getting stuck with costly empty boxes makes for a satisfying play, even if you come up a bit short.

There are certainly worse things to become absorbed in right now, and until you master the intersecting routes in Tube Town there are plenty of hours to burn here. In these trying times, any game that can bring a bit of the outside world to your quarantine is a welcome change of pace. For those who miss squinting at a subway map in a strange city to make sure they’re going the right direction, Metro X is a charming little adventure to navigate from the comfort of home.

During her career as a singer and an actress, Lady Gaga has taken on many roles. Whether she’s charting her rise to fame in A Star Is Born or indulging in vampiric delights in American Horror Story, Gaga plays her character well. Maybe a little too well, even: Gaga’s commitment to her roles has led one fan to become convinced that Lady Gaga practices Satanism and is a member of the Church Of Satan.

The fan laid out their alleged evidence that points to Gaga’s Satanic tendencies on social media. The theory even caught the attention of the Church Of Satan, which promptly shut down the fan’s theory.

In a lengthy 33-part thread on Twitter, a fan detailed their hypothesis that Gaga practices Satanic rituals in her spare time. At least when she’s not raising over a hundred million dollars to aid coronavirus relief. The fan began by coaxing readers to join him down the rabbit hole that is his theory. “It takes about 3 seconds on google to tie Gaga to satanism,” the fan began. “so I won’t waste ur time w 20 parts on how symbolic all her current performances are, but instead I’ll try & bring out some stuff maybe u haven’t seen or don’t know about her.”

The fan’s examples include Gaga’s hand placement in several of her early press photos, the singer’s legendary bloody 2009 MTV VMA’s performance, and a screengrab from a scene in American Horror Story: Hotel.

The fan then goes on to conjecture that Gaga is “the exact model of almost every pop star controlled by the Illuminati.” According to the theory, the singer has been brainwashed by the CIA and turned into a “human robot” because she goes by the stage name “Gaga,” which is a phrase often uttered by babies and refers to a state of absent-mindedness.

Just when the thread seemingly couldn’t get any more absurd, the actual Church Of Satan arrived as the voice of reason. Re-tweeting the conspiracy theory, the Church Of Satan swiftly denied the evidence. “It takes about 3 seconds on google to see that none of these examples have anything to do with Satanism,” they quipped. “so we won’t waste your time with 20 parts explaining how this makes you look like an ignorant conspiracy theorist.”

While the fan didn’t address the Church’s denial of the theory, his response was still priceless.

Check out the full Twitter exchange above.

Anderson .Paak, joined by the Free Nationals, performed an NPR Tiny Desk concert back in 2016, and to this day, it remains the most popular performance in the series’ history (the YouTube video has over 48 million views as of this post). Since then, Free Nationals have become a more independent unit outside of .Paak, as they released their self-titled debut album last year. On March 4, before social distancing and quarantining became a part of everyday life, the group returned to the NPR offices for a new Tiny Desk performance, which has now been shared.

The band’s album was heavy on guests, and that didn’t change here. Most notably, .Paak popped up halfway through the set to play drums and sing on “Gidget.” He also reflected on what Tiny Desk has meant for his career, saying, “It’s good to be back, you know what I’m saying? So much stuff has happened since the last time we got back, lot of tours, lot of albums… bigger things. We spent a bunch of money, like hundreds of thousands of dollars on videos, big-budget videos, just to have our biggest video be in front of a tiny desk in an office. Thank you NPR, we appreciate that, for letting the music speak for itself.”

Meanwhile, the performance also featured India Shawn and Chronixx, so watch the full set above.

The first major bailout of small American businesses, part of the CARES Act, has already exhausted its budget. Although there was $350 billion in PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) allocated for small businesses, it ran out within minutes. It’s now becoming clear who received the lion’s share of that money — large businesses with multiple properties received their stimulus checks right away while actual small businesses and restaurants have received nothing.

International and publically traded burger chain Shake Shack received $10 million in aid from the program. Now it seems, due to the continued backlash to the program, they’ve decided to return that check. Shake Shack’s founder and chairman, Danny Meyer, and the company’s CEO, Randy Garutti, released a joint statement via LinkedIn addressing the issue. The gist of the statement is that the loan parameters were “extremely confusing” and they thought they could be included because their individual restaurants employ “roughly 45 employees per restaurant,” according to their statement.

The employee stipulation for applying was “any restaurant business — including restaurant chains — with no more than 500 employees per location would be eligible,” according to Shake Shack’s letter. This was enough for them to apply for a relief loan and they got it. But considering that Shake Shack is a non-franchise business that employs 8,000 people and just last Friday said they’d be able “raise up to $75 million from investors by selling shares,” it’s questionable why they applied in the first place.

Shake Shack isn’t the only big name in the restaurant business — or any business for that matter — collecting checks meant for small businesses right now. Bloomberg has reported a long list of companies with employee counts in the thousands with hundreds of millions in yearly revenues receiving PPP checks that were supposedly earmarked for small businesses. One major issue is that the restaurant business isn’t a “single” entity. Different sectors are going to have different needs based on being publically traded like Shake Shack or being franchised chains like Ruth’s Chris or being fully independent/ local operations. The latter category is where many believed the package would be targeted.

Overall, a lot of this comes down to people simply not understanding how the money was going to be distributed and not having the lawyers and lobbyists in place to make sense of these things sooner. Meanwhile, with the money gone, Congress and the White House have gone back into meetings to shore up the program and inject an additional $250 billion into the relief fund.

(Via Bloomberg)

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While Despicable Me continues its unstoppable and inexplicable reign as the most popular title on Netflix, there’s a new entry in second place. Too Hot to Handle, a reality show that “puts to the test whether these hot singletons can find emotional connection without the sex,” isn’t a fake 30 Rock series come to life — it’s a genuine hit. Considering the trashy premise (which, again, boils down to whether hot people can refrain from boning or, uh, self-pleasuring themselves for four weeks), it should not surprise anyone that Too Hot to Handle was inspired by masturbation. What is surprising, however, is the show’s connection to the masturbation episode (or lack thereof) of Seinfeld.

“None of them can actually do it, and so they actually all lose the money. And I thought, ‘There’s a TV format in that.’ Why don’t we get some of the hottest people on planet to try and see if they can hold themselves back for cash?” creative director and show developer Laura Gibson told Oprah magazine about where the idea for Too Hot to Handle came from. She’s referring to the Seinfeld season four episode, “The Content,” where Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer compete to see who can go the longest without masturbating; the winner is… not Kramer (it’s Jerry, as we learn in the series finale).

So, that’s Too Hot to Handle‘s origin story. But did you know “The Contest” was inspired by an actual contest that Seinfeld co-creator Larry David took part in. “I would say there was only one other person involved [in the actual contest],” he told New York magazine. “I don’t remember what the bet was. There must have been some money involved. I think it was a small amount. [The contest lasted] two days. Maybe three. I just remember it didn’t last very long. I was surprised at how quickly it ended. I won handily, yes.”

The reason Too Hot to Handle exists is because Larry David didn’t masturbate decades ago. Something to think about.

(Via Oprah)

In February of this year, WWE announced that 2021’s WrestleMania 37 will take place at Sofi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Now the coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions placed on gatherings in order to stop the spread of COVID-19 reportedly have the wrestling company considering an alternative location for its biggest show of the year in 2021.

Construction of Sofi Stadium has continued through the stay-at-home orders in California, even as two construction workers were diagnosed with the virus. However, when the building will open isn’t totally certain. The two Taylor Swift concerts that were supposed to open the venue in late July have been canceled, but so far the Kenny Chesney concert scheduled in the stadium for August 1 is still on. NFL preseason games will most likely still take place in Sofi Stadium as well, though possibly without fans in attendance.

Uncertainty over when California will allow large gatherings again has WWE thinking further in the future, according to WrestleVotes. The wrestling insider Twitter account posted that “WWE has begun researching a ‘plan B’ on an alternative site to host WrestleMania 37 if the state of California is not allowing large gatherings and/or SoFi Stadium is not finished on time.”

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti recently stated that L.A. might not allow large events until well into 2021, but Inglewood is in a different jurisdiction.

If all else fails and stay-at-home orders continue across the country for another full year, WWE could always run the Performance Center again next spring, as long as they’re still an essential business.

A24’s The Lighthouse managed to solidify Robert Pattinson (even before the Batman casting) as a master of reinvention, but the movie could have been even stranger than what materialized from being trapped in a lighthouse with Willem Dafoe. Stranger than the “ferocious masturbation” scene that Pattinson claimed left director Robert Eggers “a little in shock” after shooting? Yes, but this time, Eggers is the one doing the talking, and he reveals that the movie would have been more sexually graphic as originally pitched.

The film, which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime, also dabbled heavily in the art of flatulence in addition to all that madness, given that A24 was keen to embrace the weird with Eggers. However, A24 did draw the line on talk of graphic nudity and a visible “erection” from one of the male leads. Which one? That’ll remain a mystery, but here’s what Eggers said during a Film Independent-hosted Q&A session (via IndieWire):

“There wasn’t much of a pitch, really. There was convincing to do it on 35mm black-and-white negative, and there was also some full-frontal male nudity, an erection, and they were kind of like, look, it can be black and white and weird and all this stuff, but it can’t be rated NC-17.”

The Lighthouse was never meant to even vaguely resemble a blockbuster, but an NC-17 rating wouldn’t have fared well for this art house film either. So, A24 made the wise call because, who knows, a full-frontal shot might have ruined that cinematography Oscar nod in a movie that some feel was already snubbed to some degree. It was just delightfully weird enough without a naked Pattinson or Defoe strutting around onscreen. Still, Eggers also told the Q&A session that A24 was “happy” to make a movie with him following The Witch, and for solid reason, so yes, please go enjoy it on Amazon Prime if you haven’t seen it already.

(Via IndieWire)

For the last few weeks of the government mandated self-quarantine, Chicago’s Chance The Rapper has been sharing videos of his favorite performances on Instagram, giving fans the — ahem — chance to relive some of his most beloved appearances on late-night television, award shows, and more. For the most part, they’ve all been sets we’ve seen before, from Saturday Night Live and Stephen Colbert to the NBA halftime show, but today, he decided to do something a little different, sharing a “brand new” performance from a movie he filmed during the Coloring Book era and hopes to put in theaters.

The performance features a medley of songs that includes “Windows” from The Social Experiment’s Surf with Nico Segal on trumpet and “Same Drugs” and “Summer Friends” from Coloring Book. In the caption, Chance explains the complexity of the shoot, writing, “You can’t really see it but I designed a huge crazy multi dimensional stage to perform on and then invited a bunch of my biggest fans in Chicago to come see.” He expresses his hope that the film will eventually come out, but that due to the uncertainty of coronavirus precautions, he’s not sure that it ever will. However, he praises the “hundreds of awesome people that helped me put this together, and I hope one day this piece comes out the way it deserves.” Check it out below

Watch Chance’s moving performance above.

ESPN debuted the first two parts of The Last Dance, its highly-anticipated docuseries on the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, on Sunday night. Episodes 1 and 2 were a joy, and instead of doing any sort of tradition recap, we decided to borrow an idea from our own Brandon Stroud and do this up in a Best and Worst format. Of course, head on over to With Spandex if you’d like to see how this format is done in the wrestling world by the folks who have mastered it.

For our purposes, these Bulls were the kind of larger-than-life personalities that usually only exist in the wrestling, while Michael Jordan is perhaps the greatest singular character in the history of sports, so taking that format and using it here is appropriate. And now, let’s get into this week’s Best and Worst.

BEST: Interview Introductions

The opening episode goes through the process of introducing the main characters we will see throughout the documentary, namely the members of the Bulls that will be most heavily featured. That list includes Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Phil Jackson, and Steve Kerr, and they allow the first three of those to introduce themselves as if someone may be watching this, unaware of who they are. The result is Michael Jordan giving an all-time undersell of who he is.

“Hi, my name is Michael Jordan. I played for the Chicago Bulls from 1984-1998, with an 18-month vacation/hiatus.”

Scottie, meanwhile, eschews basketball completely in his, simply noting he is “Scottie Maurice Pippen, from Hamburg, Arkansas.” Then there is Rodman, who gives the most appropriate introduction of them all.

“Dennis Rodman. Wassup?”

I am glad to report the wild underselling of who interview subjects are continues throughout the documentary.

BEST/WORST: Really Leaning In On Michael Jordan’s Early Basketball Career

So I want to be clear: I could spend the rest of my life watching clips and hearing stories about the early days of Michael Jordan’s basketball career. He is the single-most interesting athlete of my lifetime. There has never been an individual who blended being a cultural phenomenon and being the absolute, undoubted, clear-cut best at their profession as well as Jordan has — this applies for sports, for entertainment, for business, for literally anything. I won’t say we’ll never experience someone like this again, because plenty of people get propped up as gods just by nature of how we consume culture in 2020, but it’s hard to imagine anyone ever melding those two things as well as Jordan did.

Still, the first two episodes of the docuseries about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls felt, at times, more like two parts in a documentary about Jordan’s life. It gets a best because, as I mentioned, I am extremely here for this sort of thing, but the worst stems from the fact that that Bulls team does kind of feel like an afterthought at times to the sheer awesomeness that was Jordan. So much time is spent on his time at North Carolina and his first few years in the league that it can take away from the look inside the 97-98 Bulls. Hell, more time is spent on his backstory in episode two — which starts as The Scottie Pippen Episode and then just kinda gets away from Scottie Pippen for a while — than anything else.

This isn’t a bad thing! It rules watching stuff about the single-coolest athlete of my lifetime (or, for that matter, your lifetime), the backstory on him is important context as we move forward about the mythology surrounding the dude, and everything we see about Jordan rules — I may write a book about about the face he made when he’s asked about playing golf with Danny Ainge before Game 2 against the Boston Celtics in 1986. I am sure these first two episodes are outliers with regards to how Jordan’s past shaped this particular Bulls team, it just relies quite heavily on that early on, is all. Having said that…

BEST: Michael Jordan And Scottie Pippen Highlights, Especially From College

Dude, watching Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen play basketball is so cool. It’s a funny thing, we’re living in a golden age of Good Basketball right now, but when Mike and Scottie were in their primes, the two were capable of unhinging their jaws and consuming people whole in a way that no one can really do today. There was a ruthlessness to their games, with the pair being the two-best athletes on the floor in every single game that they played and Jordan’s unmatched competitiveness setting a bar that Pippen tried his best to reach. The result was watching a pair of sledgehammers bash their opponents on a nightly basis.

That was particularly true in the clips where the two were in college. Jordan, of course, was an alpha dog at North Carolina, but the clips of Pippen in college are way better. He had a monstrous growth spurt, shooting up from 6’1 as a freshman to 6’7 by the time he left, and mixed that with freakish strength/athleticism. As a result, the poor NAIA students who went up against Central Arkansas got stuffed into lockers without Pippen ever looking like he was ever trying that hard.

I am not a marketing wizard or anything, but ESPN should really fill its airwaves over the next week or so with old Bulls/Carolina/Central Arkansas games involving these two. I already do not have anything to do, but even if I did, I would cancel all of my plans to watch every second of these games.

WORST: Jerry Krause

One of the main characters of the documentary is former Bulls general manager Jerry Krause, who ran the team from 1985-2003 and was the villain of the 1997-98 season because he was the leading voice in the organization looking to break up the team and enter a rebuild. Krause is the antagonist of just about everyone. He’s constantly yelled at and taunted by Jordan, who prods him about being short and overweight, and Pippen, who hated him for entertaining trade talks and then later demanded a trade himself. The only reason Phil Jackson returns for one final year was a meeting with owner Jerry Reinsdorf, who brought him back on a 1-year, $6 million deal after Krause scoffed at the notion of paying a coach that much. You can still sense some of the animosity decades later over how it all went down and that he was the driving force in breaking up the dynasty.

What’s interesting is the complicated nature of how the central figures of this documentary remember Krause, who died in 2017. Jordan, who famously was infuriated by the Charles Oakley trade in 1988, now admits that was the right move and gives credit to Krause and the front office for building the team. Still, he feels Krause’s famous “Organizations win titles, not players alone” line, which is contextualized a bit further in the doc, was disrespectful to the players. “The Last Dance” only happens because of Krause, both in making it the definitive last season of the Bulls run because he publicly made it known they would be changing things after the year, and in that the dynasty doesn’t look the same without the team he built around Jordan — from trading up for Pippen to trading for and signing other key pieces. He is the villain of this story, but much like with the heroes, everything in this is a bit complicated.

What’s not complicated is that the players seemed to genuinely hate the man and routinely dunked on him in front of everyone.

WORST: Roy Williams Getting Free Recruiting Material He Will Never Use

North Carolina coach Roy Williams is in this a decent amount, as he was a Tar Heel assistant during the time that the program recruited and, eventually, coached Jordan. He doesn’t really bust out any Royisms — he doesn’t say MJ was as quick as tadpole getting out of the sun or whatever — but he brings that classic aw shucks attitude that everyone loves. I also know that North Carolina was very bad last year, and that Roy isn’t exactly the best daggum recruiter on Tobacco Road. Please use all of this in recruiting and try to get more one-and-dones, Roy. Program Players are nice, but my goodness, it would be a bad look to not go on a recruiting tear after being in the Michael Jordan documentary.

BEST: David Stern!

When he showed up on screen the first time, I reflexively said “Commish!” aloud. David Stern was hardly a perfect commissioner, but I’ll be damned if I don’t miss that guy. No one seemed to take more joy in twisting a knife than Stern did, he is, was, and always will be the Lucille Bluth of sports commissioners.

WORST: This Guy

Asking for an autograph while you mic someone up? Be a professional, sir.

BEST: The Bulls Traveling Cocaine Circus

One of the funniest moments of the first episode is when Michael Jordan learns the Bulls of the early 1980s were sometimes referred to as “The Bulls Traveling Cocaine Circus,” which elicits an honest to god outburst of laughter from him and a knee slap. He then launches into a story of being a rookie and being unable to find his teammates at the team hotel until he finally knocks on the right door, only to enter and find, as he says, “lines over here, weed smokers over here, and women over here.” Jordan, who at the time didn’t even drink, says he left quickly out of fear that if that room got raided he’d be as guilty as anyone. The NBA in the 1980s was a wild place.

BEST: Milwaukee Bucks 1984 Warmups

Bring them back. I need Giannis in these ASAP.

WORST: Wasted Suit Fabric

I am the worst person on earth to ever discuss anything of/related to fashion — since quarantine started, I have rotated through the same 3-5 hoodies and shorts/sweatpants, and yes, I am using quarantine as an excuse to justify what my slovenly ass would have worn anyway — but my god, the suits are stupendous in this. Every single person wears a jacket that would look baggy on the guy who played The Mountain, while every pair of pants is like a 34×17,000. Imagine what else could have been done with all this fabric if wearing the “after” suit from a weight loss commercial wasn’t a trend in the 1990s. I am glad I was six while this was in style.

BEST: Bob Costas’ Hair

Bob Costas has looked exactly the same since the first Bush was president, with the exception being that time he had pink eye. However, there is a clip in this from Costas’ time as a newsman in Chicago during Jordan’s early years with the Bulls where he looks like this.

I really want to listen to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with this version of Bob Costas.

BEST: “Sirius” By The Alan Parsons Project

The ending of the first episode is the ring ceremony that starts the 1997-98 season and is a reminder that there has never been, and likely will never be, a better intro than what MJ the Bulls had in the 90s. “Sirius” by The Alan Parsons Project is synonymous with this era of Bulls basketball and it still gives me chills hearing those chords hit as the Bulls PA announcer says “6’6, from North Carolina…”

WORST: Scottie Pippen’s Timing

The second episode focuses heavily on Pippen, with a heavy focus on how he was wildly underpaid by the time the 1997-98 season — the last on his contract — arrived. Pippen had signed a 7-year, $18 million deal in 1991 that left him as the league’s 122nd highest paid player by that 97-98 season. It was a deal that even Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf advised him against.

“I do recall it was a longer contract than I thought was smart for him,” said Reinsdorf. “I said to this guy the same thing I said to Michael, if I were you I wouldn’t sign this contract. You may be selling yourself short. It’s too long of a contract that you’re locking yourself into.”

However, Pippen saw it as necessary to take longterm stability over the possibility of making far more coming from a poor family from Arkansas with 11 brothers and sisters, and his father stuck in a wheelchair since he was 12 due to a stroke.

“I felt like I couldn’t gamble on myself getting injured and not being able to provide,” Pippen said. “I needed to make sure that people in my corner were taken care of.”

It’s a situation that a number of athletes have found themselves in and it’s more than understandable why he would take that approach. Pippen’s brother, Billy, notes in the documentary that he bought their parents a house and sent them money each month, ensuring they were taken care of. However, the league saw exponential revenue growth and Pippen’s contract was quickly undervalued and had many years remaining — and Reinsdorf refuses to renegotiate contracts.

By the time he reached his contract year, he was incredibly underpaid and was dealing with a ruptured tendon in his ankle. Out of spite for the Bulls organization and Jerry Krause, he put off surgery until right before the season. As Pippen said in the documentary his mindset was, “I’m not going to f*ck my summer up rehabbing for a season.” That led to additional tension and, eventually, a trade request while he was still rehabbing due to frustrations with Krause for trying to trade him — something Reinsdorf shut down.

What’s fascinating about the Pippen situation is, without Pippen massively undervalued as the sixth highest paid player during the Bulls run, they might never have the opportunity to win six rings. On a personal level, it diminished his earning potential significantly. His timing on signing that deal was miserable, given that the league’s salary cap more than doubled from $12.5 million to $26.7 million over the life of his deal. At a team level, though it gave them flexibility within the salary cap to build a stronger roster than they may have otherwise if Pippen had been appropriately compensated.

BEST: Barack Obama: Former Chicago Resident

That is, indeed, how everyone refers to former American president Barack Obama.