GoneTrending

With their 46th season well underway, Saturday Night Live has hosted a fairly good list of hosts and musical guests, some of which includes Megan Thee Stallion, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, and Justin Bieber. The show welcomed Issa Rae as the host on Saturday night and the Insecure creator and actress appeared in a few sketches, including one called “Your Voice Chicago.” While some may have enjoyed the skit, Kanye West was one person who did not as he did not appreciate the diss that was sent his way in it.

Kanye said he would be “praying” for Issa and her family after Rae took a shot at the rapper in the SNL skit. The “Your Voice Chicago” skit featured Rae, who played a political commentator named Jamele Demmings, and a host played by Kenan Thompson. Speaking on the election, Rae vowed to vote for every Black candidate on the election ballot. Thompson’s character points to each of the Black candidate’s political inexperience, but Rae manages to put a positive light on each point of concern. Preparing to go on commercial break, Thompson’s character promises to discusses the presidential race between “Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kanye West,” to which Rae replies, “Kanye?! Eff him!”

Sharing his response on Twitter, Kanye said, “Ive always said SNL uses black people to hold other black people back…My heart goes out to Issa Rae.” He added, “I’m praying for her and her family… I know that the twenty years of service that I’ve paid in the entertainment field has furthered our ability to be more successful.”

You can watch the skit and read Kanye’s response above.

The coronavirus pandemic stripped many artists of their bread and butter: performing at live concerts. Festivals and big venues have been put on hold for the most part, leaving artists to wait patiently in hopes of a return at a sooner than later date. Another effect of the pandemic itself lands on the concert venues themselves, however, with many suffering a significant financial blow as a result of shutting things down. With that in mind, Foo Fighters took their talents to the Save Our Stages Festival to deliver a half-hour performance in an effort to help those venues in need.

The #SOSFest was held at the Troubadour in Los Angeles where the band opted to treat fans with performance of their greatest hits, playing “Skin and Bones”, “My Hero,” and “These Days,” while Dave Grohl sprinkled solo performances of his own as he played “Times Like These” and “Everlong.”

Happy to be performing together once again, the band shared a few stories form past performance at the Troubadour. Grohl reflected on playing at the venue with his pre-Nirvana band Scream while Pat Smear recalled watching The Go-Go’s perform and getting into a fight with Tom Waits.

“These memories and these experiences that we had here were life-changing and formative experiences that inspired us to play music,” Grohl said as their set came to an end. “I can only imagine there are millions and millions of other people just like us that have done the same and it’s made their lives a better place. So it’s crucial that we do everything we can to make sure these venues survive in order to be there to inspire the next generation of musicians to go on and do beautiful things with their lives, like make music.”

You can watch their performance above.

There is a bit of a misconception about cornerbacks. Some believe that if a corner could catch, they’d play wide receiver, but because they can not, they play corner. There’s a lot more that goes into it than that, but in the case of rookie Atlanta Falcons cornerback AJ Terrell, his issue appears to be that he doesn’t use his hands when he reels in passes.

Terrell and the Falcons traveled to Minnesota to take on the Vikings on Sunday afternoon, and in the first half of action, Atlanta’s defense forced three picks en route to a 20-0 halftime lead. The most impressive of these picks came via the former Clemson standout, who reeled in a Kirk Cousins pass intended for fellow rookie Justin Jefferson.

The thing that made this so impressive was that Terrell snatched the ball with his hands, but lost his grip on it. He had to improvise, and eventually, he used his legs to secure the ball and give the Falcons the ball on the Viking 40.

This was one heck of a way for Terrell to pick off an opposing quarterback for the first time in his NFL career. Still, while this was a great play, I assume his coaches would prefer he doesn’t need to use his legs next time.

Saturday Night Live continued to lampoon Donald Trump in most of its Weekend Update jokes, but the best one of the night had nothing to do with modern American politics. Instead, it was Heidi Gardner’s sendup of drug-addled one-note characters from the 80s that proved to be a highlight of the SNL mainstay.

The setup is that “famous 80s cocaine wife Carla” is appearing to talk about the state of bars and nightlife in New York due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Insert Gardner, in a slinky golden dress and fur, twirling her hair and embodying every tragic female stereotype from 80s drug movies.

“So, uh, where’s the afterparty?” Carla asks, playing off a clearly bewildered Michael Che as the character builds a fictional relationship with Che that quickly goes way too far. “Where we going tonight, Michael?”

Gardner presses both Che and Colin Jost about dancing with her, does a few bumps of… something from her makeup case, and just generally plays a clearly out-of-control figure driven to do something drastic. The parody is pretty obviously absurd, and it causes Che to break with laughter several times as she hints something very bad could happen if you get mixed up with a character like her.

“I have a ton of jobs, Michael. Dice-blower, home-wrecker. Plantiff,” Carla says. “Plus my husband Bobby has a lot of men working for him.”

Gardner says Bobby works in “scaffolding garbage construction” and wouldn’t be very happy if she knew he was talking to Che.

“Let’s call him,” Gardner says, inexplicably pulling out a Victorian telephone and causing a scene. She said she was at “church” and wasn’t talking to Che, then asked to put him on the phone. Che declines, then suggests that Carla should probably go.

“Don’t get rid of me, Michael,” Gardner pleads. “I mean, sure I’m a little rough around the edges, but I’m still the same girl you met at the Update desk three minutes ago. Let me give you a son, Michael.”

It spirals out of control from there, pulling out a gun to fumble with in a fake fight with Che while he sat motionless next to her. It was very weird and an accurate teardown of weak, sexist characters you often see in those period pieces. Gardner breaking character and declaring “directed by David O. Russell” at the end was a very pointed and funny finish to a rare sketch concept where she was allowed to lean into the weirdness of parodying a mostly forgotten film trope. But it stole the show on a night where SNL’s political and quarantine-focused humor was upstaged by an extremely out of left field blast from the past.

The Daryl Morey era with the Houston Rockets came to an end last week when the franchise’s longtime general manager came to an agreement with ownership that would see him walk away. Simultaneously a lightning rod for criticism and arguably the league’s single-biggest proponent for an analytics-driven approach to the game during his tenure, Morey’s Rockets won a whole lot of games during his 14 years in Houston, even if the team never was able to get over the hump and win a ring.

The news of his resignation seemingly came out of left field, even if reports indicated it had been in the cards ever since the Rockets’ season ended in the conference semifinals. And after a few days of things being quiet in Houston, Morey took out a page in the local paper in which he thanked the city “for an amazing 14 years” and made it a point to shout out James Harden, who Morey wrote “changed my life.”

Morey, of course, traded for Harden when he was a promising sixth man for the Oklahoma City Thunder, then proceeded to build an offense around him and turned him into one of the most ruthlessly efficient offensive basketball players in history. It is impossible to tell the story of Morey without mentioning Harden’s role in the entire thing, and while both of their futures are going to be fascinating — the former in his next job as he searches for the next Harden, the latter as he plays on a team that is not led by Morey — it’s cool to see how much Morey appreciates the face of his now-former franchise.

Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is in large part responsible for the formation of Killer Mike and El-P’s Run The Jewels duo. So it’s only right that the two returned to Adult Swim to serve as the network’s headlining acts for its first live concert. The Holy Calmavote concert special was announced last month in a partnership with Adult Swim and Ben & Jerry’s with the goal of encouraging viewers to get out and vote in November’s presidential election.

Taking over the network for the concert special, Run The Jewels came out with quite the production for their show. Backed by intricate camera work and lighting and even some special effects to emulate snow, Run The Jewels went big for their concert special where they performed the entirety of Run The Jewels 4. The duo achieved a great show thanks to special guest appearances from Pharrell, Zack De La Rocha, Josh Homme, Mavis Staples, 2 Chainz, Gangsta Boo, and more. Comedian Eric Andre also served as the official Master Of Ceremonies for the night. The concert also gave viewers opportunities to donate to the ACLU throughout the livestream.

Run The Jewels released Run The Jewels 4 to the surprise of their fans back in June. The album arrived two days earlier than expected, a decision El-P said the duo made in order to help fans deal with the current events of the world. Check out the Holy Calmavote concert special in the video above.

Borat is back, but its star says the America the movie was unleashed in back in 2006 is very different than the one its sequel — Borat Subsequent Moviefilm — will be ushered into later this year. Sacha Baron Cohen secretly filmed the movie this year, pandemic and all, and in many ways it’s an attack on the Trump era of America.

We, in fact, had some indication that Cohen was up to something when he showed up at a far right rally earlier in the pandemic. It wasn’t always smooth sailing according to the filmmaker, who despite his very silly demeanor on camera portraying a clueless rube has a very specific message in mind with the new Borat. The film, as many of Baron Cohen’s other projects highlight, is an effort to expose racism and other damaging philosophies in the modern world. But as Cohen explains, things are different with his new film.

In an interview with the New York Times, Baron Cohen’s life is juxtaposed between the Borat character he may be best known for and will reprise in a new film later this year. But it also highlights how racism in America is different things days, largely because of how Trump has changed the discourse according to Baron Cohen.

“In 2005, you needed a character like Borat who was misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic to get people to reveal their inner prejudices,” he said. “Now those inner prejudices are overt. Racists are proud of being racists.’’ When the president is “an overt racist, an overt fascist,’’ he said, “it allows the rest of society to change their dialogue, too.

“My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism,” he said of the sequel. “The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”

Baron Cohen’s movie deals with Trump a lot, and the marketing for the movie includes a Twitter account that’s trolling Trump incessantly. One fun fact about Baron Cohen on Twitter, though. As revealed by the Times interview, he doesn’t have “access” to Twitter and sends what he wants to tweet to someone else to post. It’s probably the best way to handle Twitter, if we’re all being honest with ourselves.

CNN interviewed Lara Trump on Sunday morning, and anchor Jake Tapper took the wife of Donald Trump’s son Eric to task for comments she made questioning Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities in an awkward interview that didn’t generate many productive answers from anyone. Instead, it was Tapper who chided Trump for mocking Biden’s stutter and appearing to diagnose Biden with cognitive issues, something Tapper quickly pointed out was something many people have done to the candidate Lara Trump was there to support.

Tapper showed footage of Lara Trump at an event for the president mocking Biden’s ability to speak, where she chided the former vice president for not being able to “get the words out.” The CNN anchor asked the Trump surrogate “How do you think it makes little kids with stutters feel when they see you make a comment like that?” The question, of course, came because Biden famously overcame a stutter early in his life, which is still sometimes present when speaking.

“First and foremost I had no idea that Joe Biden ever suffered from a stutter,” Trump said before quickly pivoting. “I think what we see on stage with Joe Biden is very clearly a cognitive decline.”

But Tapper wasn’t having it, quickly shutting Trump down and causing the two to talk over each other for several seconds. It was awkward, but Tapper seemed intent to not let Trump deflect from her comments and accuse the Democratic nominee for president of having an unproven medical ailment rather than address her own comments.

“I think you were mocking his stutter,” Tapper said. “And I think you have absolutely no standing to diagnose somebody’s cognitive decline.”

From there, Tapper got a bit personal.

“I would think that somebody in the Trump family would be more sensitive to people who do not have medical licenses diagnosing politicians from afar,” Tapper said. “Plenty of people have diagnosed your father from afar, and I’m sure it offends you — your father in law from afar. You don’t have any standing to say (that).”

Trump tried to say she didn’t diagnose Biden with anything, she was merely expressing concern. But Tapper dismissed that quickly, and instead of asking a final question simply ended the interview. It was clearly a frustrating exchange for Tapper, who didn’t let Trump get to the talking points she wanted to once she avoided answering his initial question.

Movie theaters are struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, and not even news that theaters will officially be open again in New York State can counteract the dearth of moviegoers and a wilted new movie release schedule. Regal Cinemas has already closed its theaters back down, and unless something major changes it seems moviegoers — and major box office smashes — will not return until there’s a coronavirus vaccine. But AMC is doing its best to fill theaters by letting some people live out their pre-coronavirus dreams of renting an entire theater out for yourself.

As CNN pointed out, the theater chain has started letting people reserve an entire screening for themselves starting at less than $100. AMC has a form on its website where you can narrow down what theaters are available, which showings you can snag and how much it will cost for up to 20 guests you know to hold court in an AMC theater where no one else is allowed.

According to the site, the movies available range from new releases like The War With Grandpa, Tenet and The New Mutants but also includes some classic favorites back in theaters in an effort to get people back to the movies and also to, well, fill screens as movies get delayed. So if you ever wanted to see Hocus Pocus on the big screen, now’s your chance. Most theaters have always had deals like this possible for school field trips and birthday parties if you knew who to ask, but $100 to rent out an entire theater is a fairly novel distraction from all the horrors that have made going to the movies feel perilous these days.

While it’s unclear if putting you and 19 of your friends in the same room is a good idea during a pandemic, you could always use the promotion to recapture one of the most enjoyable moviegoing experiences you could stumble into in the Before Times: getting a screening of a film, and the theater it’s playing in, all to yourself.

While The Walking Dead: The World Beyond continues to struggle in its freshman season and Fear the Walking Dead rebounds in its sixth (and this week’s Fear episode is every bit as good as last week’s), we continue to see connections between all three shows in The Walking Dead universe.

For instance, the CRM — one of the main storylines in The World Beyond — looks as though it will eventually lead us to the whereabouts of Rick Grimes, who was taken by the CRM on The Walking Dead. We have also seen the CRM — still in its infancy — appear on Fear the Walking Dead, and it looks quite possible that Isabel, a character who appeared on Fear the Walking Dead, is the daughter of Elizabeth, the leader of the CRM on The World Beyond.

Let’s add one more potential connection to the mix: Last week’s episode of The World Beyond was called “The Blaze of Gory,” or BOG, for short. The BOG is an area seemingly in Nebraska where thousands of tires have been burning for over a decade. In other words, The BOG is a literal tire fire that the teenage characters on The World Beyond have to navigate through to get to their destination in New York.

It is not, however, the first time in The Walking Dead that we’ve seen a reference to The BOG. In fact, at least two of Althea’s tapes on Fear the Walking Dead reference The BOG:

It’s possible, of course, that these tapes just coincidentally reference an acronym from The World Beyond, but I don’t think so because we actually know some details about The Bog tapes. Althea tried to give one of The Bog tapes to the likely daughter of Elizabeth from the CRM, Isabel, when Isabel was going to kill Althea. However, when Althea told Isabel what was on the tape, Isabel couldn’t bring herself to kill Althea (also, because she was in love with Althea). The Bog tape, in other words, saved Althea’s life.

What was on the tape? According to Althea, it documents a fight that breaks out between the National Guard and the Army, which Althea captures. Unfortunately, while she’s doing so, she leaves her brother Jessie alone, who ends up dying during the early days of the outbreak.

Obviously, the tire fire happened a long time ago in Nebraska, and Fear the Walking Dead is several years behind The World Beyond’s timeline. However, we know that this tire fire has been blazing for a decade, and we also know that Althea has traveled around the country extensively. We know, therefore, that Althea could have been in Nebraska when the tire fire ignited. That tape is also important in Fear lore because not only did it save her life when she offered it to a CRM soldier, but the incident documented in “The Bog #7” was the impetus for Althea’s decision to collect other people’s stories on camera.

It makes sense, therefore, that Scott Gimple would use the tape as a way to find another intersection between the two shows.

Tune in to the third episode of The World Beyond tonight on AMC to see them continue to traverse The Bog, while on a very good Fear the Walking Dead, the action will center on Alicia and Strand.