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The 2020-21 college basketball season is set to begin in just over a week, and teams are already struggling with the logistics of trying to put on a season, in particular the challenges of making non-conference games happen while each conference has different protocols in place for testing. As such, some conferences have considered moving to a conference-only schedule (as the big college football conferences did) in order to at least have uniform rules in place for teams with all of their opponents.

The lack of a nationwide, NCAA protocol is among the biggest difficulties facing each conference, but that will be the case once 68 teams make it to March Madness. On Monday, the NCAA announced that this year’s tournament will be moved from its usual format of playing at various regional sites across the country to one single site for the entirety of the month-long event, playing in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. This will, in effect, help the NCAA produce a bubble-like environment and, they hope, allow for teams to come in, go through testing, and be able to play throughout the tournament in one place to mitigate the risk of the virus interfering with games.

“We have learned so much from monitoring other successful sporting events in the last several months, and it became clear it’s not feasible to manage this complex championship in so many different states with the challenges presented by the pandemic,” said Dan Gavitt, NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball in a statement. “However, we are developing a solid plan to present a safe, responsible and fantastic March Madness tournament unlike any other we’ve experienced.”

The plan is to follow the same schedule as initially planned, just playing in the Indianapolis area at various gyms — such as the legendary Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler — for every round, including the First Four, with the Final Four still taking place April 3-5.

Even the most dedicated horror movie fan probably missed Megan Is Missing when it was released. But the found-footage film — about two teenage girls living in California, one of whom goes missing — has found an unlikely resurgence on TikTok and Twitter.

“Megan is Missing man, that sh*t got me staring at the wall and wanting to delete all my social media accounts and never come back ever again,” reads one tweet, while a TikTok user wrote, “Please watch this film at your own risk. It is something I will never watch again. I am forever traumatized.” Megan is Missing, which was filmed in 2006 before coming out in 2011, is banned in New Zealand for depicting “sexual violence and sexual conduct involving young people to such an extent and degree, and in such a manner, that the availability of the publication is likely to be injurious to the public good.” For that reason, director and writer Michael Goi issued a warning to potential viewers.

“I got a text from Amber Perkins, the lead actress in my movie, that it’s exploding on TikTok at the moment,” he said. “I didn’t get to give you the customary warnings that I used to give people before they watched Megan Is Missing, which are: do not watch the movie in the middle of the night, do not watch the movie alone, and if you see the words ‘Photo No. 1’ pop up on your screen, you have about four seconds to shut off the movie if you’re already kind of freaking out before you start seeing things that maybe you don’t want to see.” Goi, who also worked on American Horror Story, added, “Apologies to those who are already posting about how the movie is already freaked them out. Fair warning to those of you who are still contemplating watching the film.”

Megan Is Missing is available on Amazon and YouTube, although based on reviews and the subject material, you might be better off watching another horror movie.

(Via USA Today)

The condensed NBA offseason has officially begun, with trades able to be made official on Monday at 12 p.m. ET — the biggest thus far being Dennis Schröder being traded to the Lakers for Danny Green and the 28th overall pick (with the potential for it to grow to a three-team deal as OKC may look to move Green). While free agency’s moratorium period won’t begin until Friday, there are some key decisions being made by players who have to determine whether they are picking up player options for 2020-21 or entering the free agent market.

There are a number of high profile players who have such decisions, and while declining a player option isn’t an indication someone is planning on leaving their current team — see: Davis, Anthony — it does open up the opportunity for other teams to get involved. With a free agency class that is light on star talent, the player option group has the chance to beef up this class and make it a bit more intriguing.

As such, here we will provide rolling updates as reports emerge regarding these player option decisions, starting with the ones we already know from Sunday and Monday.

Anthony Davis, LAL ($28.7 million): Opt out

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, LAL ($8.5 million): Opt out

Wesley Matthews, MIL ($2.7 million): Opt out

Rajon Rondo, LAL ($2.6 million): Opt out

Evan Fournier, ORL ($17 million): Pick up

Nicolas Batum, CHA ($27.1 million): Pick up

Otto Porter Jr., CHI ($28.4 million): Pick up

TBD

Gordon Hayward, BOS ($31.9 million)
DeMar DeRozan, SAS ($27.8 million)
Andre Drummond, CLE ($25.4 million)
Tim Hardaway Jr., DAL ($17.7 million)
James Johnson, MIN ($14.4 million)
Kelly Olynyk, MIA ($12.5 million)
Jerami Grant, DEN ($9.1 million)
Jabari Parker, SAC ($6.5 million)
Rodney Hood, POR ($5.8 million)
Enes Kanter, BOS ($4.8 million)
JaMychal Green, LAC ($4.8 million)
Avery Bradley, LAL ($4.8 million)
Robin Lopez, MIL ($4.8 million)
JaVale McGee, LAL ($4.1 million)
Stanley Johnson, TOR ($3.7 million)
Willie Cauley-Stein, DAL ($2.2 million)
Mike Muscala, OKC ($2.1 million)
James Ennis, ORL ($2 million)
Mario Hezonja, POR ($1.8 million)

After premiering “I’m Ready,” the Spider-Man: Miles Morales video game theme song on the PlayStation 5’s launch day, Jaden follows up with a pulse-pounding video featuring in-game footage. The video finds the young rapper performing on a rooftop overlooking the New York City skyline while the lyrics appear flashing across billboards in the game as the titular hero web-swings, backflips, and punches his way through a series of bad guys including The Rhino and a bunch of armored goons.

Jaden has long been a fan-favorite for a live-action version of Miles Morales, with campaigns on Reddit and other social platforms and fan-casts dating back over seven years. He’s already quite tapped-in to the universe of the Afro-Latino Spider-Man; in 2018, he contributed the song “Way Up” to the soundtrack of Miles’ film debut, the award-winning Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.

Meanwhile, the game itself has already become a fan fave as well, thanks in part to a tighter storyline and the addition of a bodega cat sidekick that has players going crazy. Gamers who played the original Marvel’s Spider-Man on PlayStation 4 were able to pick-up-and-play right away thanks to the new game building on the same play mechanics, while the story’s focus on the younger Spider-Man appeals to many players who don’t often get to see protagonists who look like and come from the same environment as them.

Watch Jaden’s “I’m Ready” video above.

Former Entertainment Tonight host John Tesh surprised Twitter users on Sunday night by revealing that he’s apparently had an account this whole time — except not anymore, because he deleted it to join Parler, the far-right social media app that has been rapidly gaining disgruntled Donald Trump supporters following the president’s loss during the 2020 election. After “saying goodbye to censorship and viciousness,” Tesh’s name quickly became a trending topic thanks to a hilarious combination of spicy tweets roasting the TV personality/new age musician for outing himself as a Trump supporter and some users having no clue who John Tesh is.

While many of the tweets were of the “Wait, John Tesh was on Twitter?” and “Who the hell is John Tesh?” variety, others got more specific and lambasted the former Entertainment Tonight anchor for his music that they didn’t enjoy.

Political junkies also noted that Tesh’s former ET co-host attended a Trump rally (over the summer) where she allegedly used a white power hand symbol. Tesh and Hart’s mutual MAGA love has folks wondering what the heck was happening at Entertainment Tonight back in the day.

However, the ET deep dive did come with some good news. Leeza Gibbons seems to have missed the MAGA bug:

Tesh’s embrace of Parler now puts him in the same league as other former ’80s stars like Kirstie Alley and Scott Baio, who have been vocal supporters of Trump during and after the election. In fact, Baio even went so far as to rearrange an entire shelf of candles at Michael’s, which prompted the president’s admiration on Twitter.

Candace Owens is familiar with controversy, and she is at the center of more of it today. This morning, both she and Harry Styles are trending on Twitter due to Owens’ criticism of Styles wearing dresses for his recent Vogue profile.

In response to the photos, Owens tweeted over the weekend, “There is no society that can survive without strong men. The East knows this. In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” This morning, she continued, “Since I’m trending I’d like to clarify what I meant when I said ‘bring back manly men’. I meant: Bring back manly men. Terms like ‘toxic masculinity’, were created by toxic females. Real women don’t do fake feminism. Sorry I’m not sorry.”

One Twitter user responded by sharing photos of other famous male musicians in dresses and wrote, “Candace Owens is 50 years behind on culture and education. Here’s Iggy Pop, David Bowie, and Kurt Cobain all cross dressing. The list of other men in music doing the same is very long. The trend started around 1970 and went into other culture like sports. Welcome to 1970.” Owens responded, “PSA: Mining pictures on the internet of men in dresses is not going to suddenly make me attracted to men in dresses. I’m impervious to woke culture. Showing me 50 examples of something won’t make it any less stupid.”

The Vogue feature includes multiple photos of Styles dressed in clothing made with women in mind, and he spoke about his clothing preferences, saying, “Clothes are there to have fun with and experiment with and play with. What’s really exciting is that all of these lines are just kind of crumbling away. When you take away ‘There’s clothes for men and there’s clothes for women,’ once you remove any barriers, obviously you open up the arena in which you can play. I’ll go in shops sometimes, and I just find myself looking at the women’s clothes thinking they’re amazing. It’s like anything — anytime you’re putting barriers up in your own life, you’re just limiting yourself. There’s so much joy to be had in playing with clothes. I’ve never really thought too much about what it means — it just becomes this extended part of creating something.”

The one Twitter user above was far from the only one who had a response to Owens, so find some more reactions below.

The Fargo Frozen Five is Uproxx’s weekly collection of thoughts, observations, and goofball screencaps from each new episode of the FX limited series’ fourth season. We do not guarantee that there will be five items every week. There could be four, or six, or a dozen. Who knows? This show doesn’t follow the rules. We shouldn’t have to either.

Episode 9 — “East/West” (or “YO, TORNADO”)

5a. Fargo is a show where almost anything can happen. That’s the important thing to remember in all of this. The alien attack in season two is the best and most memorable example because, well, aliens, but weird stuff happens all the time on this show, often involving chaos in the sky. Spaceships, sure, but also the thing where fish rained down from the sky in season one and, to a lesser degree, Scoot McNairy getting killed by a falling air conditioner in season three. When you go back and think about all of it, about the show’s long history of devastation from the heavens, is it really all that strange that three characters got sucked up into a tornado in the middle of a gunfight in a black and white episode that loosely followed the structure of The Wizard of Oz? I mean, it is, yes, there’s no denying that on principle. That is not something that happens on most other shows. But… is it? For Fargo? You could make a pretty compelling argument that it’s par for the course, which is just about the best argument for this show I can think of.

5b. But let’s zoom in, from macro to micro. Rabbi Milligan and Satchel Cannon are running, from the Faddas and from Calamita and from anyone else who happens to be behind them. Their travels take them to Liberal, Kansas, a small town with a creepy hotel run by two wicked sisters (your witches of the East and West) and one filling station and a furniture/appliance store that used to be another establishment that once had a wall that had 5,000 of Rabbi Milligan’s dollars hidden behind it. Calamita and Omie Sparkman face off all the filling station. Satchel and the Rabbi meet a crew of characters at the boarding house: an old man getting medical care; a slick salesman named Hunk Swindell; a pastor named Roanoke and a creepy old man named Major Hamar. Satchel finds a neat little doggie. The action shifts from black and white to Technicolor. The Wizard of Oz of it all is undeniable.

4. How long did it take you to realize this is where things were headed? I’d like to lie and tell you I picked up on it all very quickly, but the truth is that I didn’t see it until some point between the discovery of the dog and the gangster-swallowing tornado at the end. I’m going to chalk that up to the thing I mentioned before about Fargo being weird enough for anything to happen, to the degree that I saw a black and white episode unfolding without most of the main cast and I was like “Hmm, cool” for a good 35-40 minutes before the hamster who runs on critical thinking wheel in my brain started limbering up.

3. If we are to assume, as I choose to believe, that young Satchel Cannon takes his dog and keeps running and one day becomes Mike Milligan, the seeds of a lot of that transformation are here in this episode. Start at the end and work backwards, with him and the world brightly colorized as he stares at that “THE FUTURE IS NOW” billboard, the one that vexed Rabbi Milligan when it was incomplete and that kept that sign worker employed right up until it was completed. Then look at young Satchel having a moment because he “just wanted one thing” for his birthday, a birthday no one remembered, not the father who traded him for power and now thinks he’s dead, not the guardian who ends up hoovered into the heavens while on a guilt-fueled cupcake hunt, not anyone. Have you ever seen anything so sad? I’m glad he has the dog now. I’m glad he’s free. I’m glad he — probably — ends up becoming a loquacious mobster who makes his own way in the world. I hope the dog lives a long and happy life full of running in fields and snacks from the dinner table and satisfying belly scratchies. It’s dawning on me now that I care about this dog more than I care about most of the human characters on the show. I feel okay about it.

2a. Speaking of the human characters… that’s where this gets interesting. The previous episode ended with a shootout in a train station that killed Deafy Wickware and Swanee Capps, and a shootout at the Fadda home that killed various henchmen and Mama Fadda. Oraetta was about to hit the road to escape potential felony charges related to her strychnine macaroons but discovered Ethelrida’s role in ratting her out and was staring out a window with murder in her eyes. There’s a war brewing back home that’s about to be fought on a number of fronts. Taking a literal and figurative detour down a blood-soaked yellow brick road made for a fun episode that gave some secondary characters a little room to breathe, and let the creators flash a little creative muscle, and sucked Calamita into a damn twister just a few episodes after he took a scalding gun barrel to the cheek (tough run for that guy, but fun for me at home), but it all also left a lot to deal with in the home stretch It makes me think this could all go in one of two directions: One, a little side-stepping, where not everything gets resolved and we all just have to learn to live with it, with some characters surviving but in a weird limbo regarding their future; two, non-stop violence until the end credits, blood flowing in the streets, as the Faddas seek revenge for the death of their mother and the Cannons continue their assault over Satchel’s “death” and Oraetta and Ethelrida circling each other like French-fluent cobras and Zelmare out for revenge against the entire world for taking Swanee away. And there are the ghosts. Again, a lot. It’ll be a fun experiment, if nothing else.

2b. Well, fine, I’ll just say it: I missed my hefty furious boy Gaetano very much this week. I bet he would have tried to punch the tornado. I also bet, if Fargo continues for many more seasons, there will be a character named Punch Tornado at some point.

1. Fish sticks for dinner at 5 p.m. every day is no way to live life, even if you are regaled with a critical analysis of the Goldilocks story that very justifiably points out what an unsatisfying end the story has, with Goldilocks left to continue roaming around homeless, probably burglarizing other homes in search of food and shelter, kind of like young Satchel Cannon is left to do now. It’s a whole thing. It ties back together. It’s a nice bit of storytelling in an episode that was very Coen-y from beginning to end, in a way that made for a great hour that might handcuff the remainder of the season. I suppose we’ll see. I cannot abide that many fish sticks, though. A line must be drawn somewhere.

Buffalo rapper Benny The Butcher appears to be in good health in a new video showing that he’s been discharged from the hospital after being shot in the leg over the weekend at a Walmart in Houston. According to TMZ, the rapper was accosted in the store’s parking lot by a group of men who wanted Benny and his crew’s chains. One of them fired a round into Benny’s leg to speed things along, prompting a mad dash by all parties until Benny and co. stopped to call the police. The recently-released video shows Bennie hobbling on crutches from a car to a private jet.

Before the shooting, Benny had recently released his album Burden Of Proof featuring Big Sean, Dom Kennedy, Freddie Gibbs, Lil Wayne, Queen Naija, Rick Ross, and the rest of his Griselda Records family. He also appeared on T.I.’s The L.I.B.R.A. album, appearing on the track “Make Amends” alongside fellow New Yorker Jadakiss. Before that, he helped lend a boost to Griselda “First Lady” Armani Caesar on her album’s DJ Premier-produced single “Simply Done.”

The shooting was the third high-profile shooting in the state of Texas in less than a week; Boosie was shot in the leg himself while sitting in a van, while Dallas rapper Mo3 was shot in the head while driving on the freeway.

The height of Tekashi 69’s legal drama has come and gone, but what a wild time it was. Now, Hulu has chronicled the rapper’s story in a surprise new documentary, 69: The Saga Of Danny Hernandez, which is available for streaming now.

Hulu’s synopsis of the film reads:

“Part investigative documentary, part real-life gangster movie, 69: The Saga of Danny Hernandez unpacks the life of polarizing rap sensation and internet troll Tekashi69. One of the most controversial figures in contemporary pop culture, 69 repeatedly broke the internet with his sensationalist music videos and social media beefs before infamously testifying against Brooklyn gang the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods in a landmark trial. Director Vikram Gandhi (KUMARÉ, BARRY) gets up close and personal with the neighborhood locals who knew 69 when he was still just Danny Hernandez–before the hard-core persona and the face tattoos–to chronicle his meteoric rise and fall from fame and probe the harsh extremes of addiction to fame in the digital era.”

Director Vikram Gandhi also says of the movie:

“What made him so fascinating were the contradictions built into his very existence: A Mexican kid with facial tattoos and rainbow hair shouting the N-word, flaunting gang affiliation, starting beef, and posting his own violent acts online. When I realized 69 lived near me in Brooklyn — and that I’d frequented the bodega he used to work at — I hit up his manager to talk about making this documentary. I never heard back. A few months later, Tekashi 69 was arrested on federal charges facing 47 years to life. Soon after, he started cooperating with the FBI to convict members of the very gang that had once supported him.

I strongly believe that the core of documentary filming is access, sitting down with people and really listening to them. As I moved further into the story, I met a motley crew of personalities who were integral to Tekashi 69’s development as an artist and celebrity. Danny Hernandez wanted to be famous so badly that he was devoured by his digital avatar, Tekashi 69.”

Watch the trailer above and find the full documentary on Hulu.

Of the 50 most-viewed Saturday Night Live clips on YouTube, 49 are from this century. The one exception: “Matt Foley: Van Down by the River.”

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen Chris Farley hitch up his pants or smash through a table (at least 12 of those 16 million views are mine), it’s still funny. It was so funny, in fact, that both David Spade and Julia Sweeney had a hard time not breaking. “When Chris Farley did the ‘down by the river’ Matt Foley, I was in that. They had to cut around me because I was laughing,” Sweeney said during a “Women of SNL” panel with Cheri Oteri and Laraine Newman this weekend. “Because it was like I had the best seat in the house for the funniest friggin’ thing that was happening on the planet.”

Sweeney still feels “awful” about not keeping it together.

“Yeah, Spade was laughing too. But they were mad at me. They had to change camera angles and that’s terrible. That is terrible. I just feel awful about it actually… I don’t want to be like that.”

Arguably the two funniest SNL sketches ever — “Matt Foley” and “More Cowbell” — both have cast members breaking. I wonder if that’s a coincidence, or seeing Jimmy Fallon, in the case of “Cowbell,” and Spade and Sweeney, for “Matt Foley,” lose their sh*t gives us permission to laugh harder. Either way, it’s impressive that Sweeney didn’t break more. Imagine trying not to laugh while this madness is happening in front of you.

(Via EW)