Today marks the 30th anniversary of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s collaborative novel Good Omens, but with the majority of the world on lockdown, it’s hard to properly celebrate the event. Fortunately, Gaiman orchestrated a socially-distanced workaround, and he even managed to secure the help of David Tennant and Michael Sheen who starred in the Amazon Prime miniseries based on the book.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Gaiman wrote a quarantine-themed mini-episode titled “Good Omens: Lockdown,” which features Sheen and Tennant’s angel and demon characters trying to make the best of these strange times of self-isolation:

The three-minute audio clip follows Aziraphale and Crowley as they check in with each other in lockdown. Crowley’s losing his mind with only his houseplants for company, and he can’t even bring himself to spread fear and discontent amongst the masses when the pandemic is already doing such a good job of that. Meanwhile, Aziraphale is perfectly thrilled to sit in his closed book store all day, reading and baking bundt cakes. After all, when you’ve successfully shut down the apocalypse, a global pandemic is no sweat.

Gaiman debuted the clip on Twitter with the following message: “Good Omens the book is 30. This is our present to all of you. It’s to make people happy, because too many of us are sad.” You can watch/listen to the episode below:

If you haven’t read and/or watched Good Omens, the book can be purchased in paperback or for your e-reader device, and the complete adaptation starring Tennant and Sheen is available for streaming on Amazon Prime. The story revolves around the unlikely friendship between an angel (Sheen) and a demon (Tennant), who’ve both grown to enjoy life on earth way too much, so they decide to defy the forces of both Heaven and Hell in a mad-cap effort to stop Armageddon.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

---

View Entire Post ›

Earlier this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speculated that sports events in his state could have fans in attendance again, with venues operating at twenty-five percent capacity, this June or July. According to the guidelines for lifting coronavirus restrictions delivered to the governor by the Re-Open Florida Task Force, events could be able to have spectators again as early as Monday, May 4.

The report details a three-phase plan for reopening the state, which is still reporting hundreds of new cases per day and is being criticized for its handling of COVID-19 death data, with many leisure activities included in Phase 1. While bars and nightclubs must remain closed and “vacation rentals should remain suspended,” state parks and public beaches will open with some restrictions during this face. Restaurants, gyms and fitness centers, retail businesses, “personal service businesses” like barbershops and nail salons, and “large venues (i.e., movie theaters, concert halls, auditoriums, bowling alleys, arcades, playhouses, casinos),” are all allowed to re-open as long as they “operate at no more than 50 percent of building capacity.”

The part of the report that most directly relates to pro wrestling is where it says that “large spectator sporting events should use strict social distancing guidelines and limit occupancy of venues to 25 percent building capacity.” The people having wrestling matches at the WWE tapings and AEW live events in Florida still wouldn’t be social distancing, but fans, as long as they spread out enough, would be allowed to watch them.

How wrestling companies respond to this development remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting that some continue to be committed to not running shows during the pandemic. Ring of Honor announced today that “Maintaining the commitment to making the health and safety of our fans and personnel the top priority during the COVID-19 crisis” they have “canceled all live events that had been scheduled for June.”

After releasing his Music To Be Murdered By album earlier this year, Eminem is leaning further into the Hitchcock-ian concept to provide even more content for fans feeling like LB Jefferies during the coronavirus quarantine. This Saturday, Eminem’s Shade 45 station on SiriusXM radio will host his “Music To Be Quarantined By” playlist highlighting some of Em’s favorite songs. Em teased the playlist earlier this week on Sway In The Morning as he revealed the Love Your DJ Weekend Takeover geared toward supporting DJs who saw their income suddenly curtailed by the closure of venues and social gatherings across the globe.

The playlist will feature music from Beastie Boys, MC Lyte, Mobb Deep, Nas, Notorious B.I.G., Run DMC, Tupac, Wu-Tang Clan, and more, running for three hours Saturday afternoon, with encores to take place throughout the next week. The rest of the weekend will feature select mixes from entrants to Em’s Love Your DJ campaign. Love Your DJ offered Michigan’s DJ community the opportunity to submit their own mixes for inclusion in the weekend takeover, as well as a $313 cash payment in homage to Detroit’s area code.

Em also found another way to give back recently, dropping off plates of his Mom’s Spaghetti pop-restaurant’s signature dish for workers at a local Detroit hospital.

Listen to Eminem’s “Music To Be Quarantined By” playlist Saturday, May 2 at noon EST and see below for the encore schedule.

Eminem’s “Music To Be Quarantined By” Rebroadcast Schedule:

May 2 at 5pm ET
May 3 at midnight; 10am ET; 3pm ET; 8pm ET
May 4 at 3am ET and 9pmET
May 5 at 5amET
May 6 at 9pmET
May 8 at midnight
May 9 at 7amET
May 10 and midnight.

May is normally an important month on the NBA calendar. Of course, a major reason for this is that the postseason is in full-swing, something that is not happening due to the league’s decision to spend the 2019-20 campaign amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But for those teams that aren’t in the playoffs, May marks a pair of huge events that can play a major role in laying a foundation for the future.

The NBA Draft Lottery and NBA Draft Combine normally take place this month, but according to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, both have been indefinitely suspended.

Wojnarowski went on to say that while the NBA Draft is still scheduled for June 25, the belief is that it, too, will get pushed back sometime in the future.

This year’s NBA Draft Lottery was slated to take place on May 19, while the NBA Draft Combine was supposed to occur in Chicago from May 21-24. None of this is particularly surprising, as the league is still trying to figure out a path back onto the floor sometime in the future, and the Lottery cannot occur until records are set and odds are locked in for the various bounces on ping pong balls. With that being the case, we’ll have to wait until the regular season ends in some form or fashion for draft season to begin.

The thought goes through my head so often when I’m watching contemporary action genre that I almost get tired of writing it: I miss being able to enjoy middling action movies. Once upon a time you could grab just about any punchy shoot em up off the VHS shelf and be reasonably entertained by what you saw. Jackie Chan would make it art, but any old Seagal or Van Damme movie would do in a pinch.

Somewhere along the line that changed. These days even movies directed by stunt men seem to suffer from the same paradigmatic refusal to simply shoot the damned stunts, lucidly and unshakily, without atomizing into a million cuts. Wild plot hooks seem to substitute for competent execution — Nic Cage having to fight a Jaguar, Vin Diesel as a super-soldier with nanobots for blood, etc. Guys, please, save the creative flourishes for the brutal beatings. If there’s one thing modern action movies don’t need it’s more complicated plots.

To make a long story short, I did not expect a Netflix action movie starring Chris Hemsworth to be the antidote to all this.

Extraction, directed by Sam Hargrave (stunt coordinator on a handful of Marvel movies, plus The Accountant, Deadpool 2, Suicide Squad, and Atomic Blonde) has a refreshingly simple plot, and is basically the Cheesecake Factory menu of fight choreography — a little something for everyone. Want Thai-style kickboxing, complete with knees, leg kicks, and elbows? Got that. Jiu-jitsu, judo, hip tosses, grappling, and submission holds? Got that too. Knife play? Gunplay? Swordplay? Tank play? ‘Splosions? Car chases? Parkour? Check, check, check, and check.

Movie fights are like jokes: they’re best with a beginning, a middle, an end, and a memorable punch line. Extraction‘s action is like that, where every mini-battle is its own visual feast that tells a story. It’s slapstick, played more for gory shock value than laughs (though I chuckled in wonder plenty). Even better, it’s all shot lucidly and with a sense of spatial awareness, as if to maximize our potential enjoyment of its brilliant choreography — imagine that!

Oh right, the plot. So Tyler Rake (Chris Hemsworth) is your basic Martin Riggs type — good at fighting, handsomely blue-eyed, borderline suicidal from past family trauma, and Australian. Only in Rake’s case he’s a mercenary rather than a cop. A Bangladeshi drug lord has kidnapped his Indian drug lord rival’s son (Ovi, played by Rudhraksh Jaiswal). The Indian hires a private army to get the boy back and they tap Rake — drinking heavily in a rural Australian shack — to do the face-to-face part of the extraction work in Dhaka.

Extraction‘s settings are as exotic and far-flung for an American action movie as what you might see in Mission Impossible or the Bourne series, only with fewer frenetic jumps and more time to enjoy them. Ovi gets kidnapped from a cafe in Mumbai. From there we jump to the Kimberley in northwestern Australia and back to Dhaka for the bulk of the movie. “Interesting to look at” is a consideration so foundational to filmmaking that it’s often overlooked, but not in Extraction, which always reads expensive.

While not especially complicated, the story does have its unnecessary elements. It opens with a vignette from a climactic scene then jumps back in time, as if it didn’t trust its audience to go along for the ride without a frontloaded shoot-em-up. It didn’t need to: the scene of Ovi’s kidnapping immediately following it was more compelling anyway. Later, we learn the reason for Rake’s suicidal tendencies, which ends up being both unconvincing and unnecessary. He’s a hard-drinking mercenary looking for redemption, he doesn’t need a sob story about his kid.

Mostly though, Extraction‘s screenplay (by Joe Russo, adapting from Ande Parks) lets the natural dynamic between Hemsworth and Jaiswal play out, without trying to cram in too much unnecessary backstory. It does what an action movie should do, save its cleverest and most excessive touches for the fighting itself.

And my, isn’t it wonderful? The action is all shot fairly straightforwardly — no slow-mo, speed ramping, or funky camera angles — but with gloriously overdone brutality. In the first action scene, Hemsworth’s character leg kicks one bad guy practically in half, choke-slamming another into an end-over-end roll, killing a third with a coffee mug to the throat, and nearly decapitating a fourth with table’s edge. There’s gunplay, knife work, a lateral drop onto a cement floor, and an anaconda choke punctuated by an impaling (give the sound fx guy a raise) — all in a few minutes of screen time. I haven’t enjoyed action choreography this much in years, John Wick movies included. Fight choreography never gets the respect it deserves, but the artistry on display just in this one scene is borderline Buster Keaton-level physical genius.

When that much wit, panache, and dramatic timing goes into the fight scenes, who really cares about anything else? Extraction is constant, hyper-stylized murders and maimings, shot clearly and intelligently without too much unnecessary plot. It’s exactly what I’d been missing about action movies.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Similar to a smoky, peated Scotch whisky, rye whiskeys aren’t for everyone. If you prefer your whiskey velvety smooth and full of corn sweetness than you should just stick to your tried and true bourbon expressions (we won’t hold it against you). But if you like a whiskey that balances smoothness with a peppery bite, look no further than rye whiskey.

This style of whiskey — made with at least 51% rye grains — has seen a bit of a resurgence in the last decade, with myriad expressions hitting shelves from some of the largest whiskey producers, as well as craft distilleries throughout the country (and the world). Since the market is now flooded with rye, we figured that the best course of action was to once again ask the experts. So we hit up our favorite bartenders and asked them to tell us the rye whiskeys they wish more people knew about.

E.H. Taylor Straight Rye

Ellen Talbot, lead bartender at Fable Lounge in Nashville

I’m going to go a little higher priced with this one. EH Taylor Rye. It brought out all of the things I love about rye whiskey. It’s spicy, peppery, and well-balanced. It tastes straight-up otherworldly.

Whistle Pig Boss Hog V

Matt Shields, bartender at The Bay Restaurant in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida

This one hits a little in the heart for me. Whistle Pig Boss Hog V. I had the pleasure of meeting Dave Pickerell a few years back. It was a random encounter that turned into a fun and personal whiskey education night. He truly was a rock star in the whiskey world. Still, one of the best ryes I’ve ever had.

Wild Turkey 101 Rye

Jessi Lorraine, bartender at Elda in San Francisco

I really love Wild Turkey 101 Rye because it has a great mixture of spicy pepper and velvety smoothness. It starts with a kick of spice upfront but ends with the proper amount of sweetness at the back end.

Standard Proof Golden Rye

Kelly Gable, bar manager at Josephine in Nashville

That’s an easy one. I’m a huge fan of Standard Proof Whiskey Company. They started off initially infusing coffee in rye whiskey (Red Eye Rye), which is so versatile as an aperitif, digestif, for brunch–you name it. I was intrigued by them at first because they’re local to Nashville, and I’m a big fan of lowering carbon footprints. Then they blew me away with their new full line of infused ryes. My favorite is probably their Golden Rye which is infused with pineapple. In the age of the tiki comeback, this rye is the perfect base to get creative and fun. I think their whiskey is amazing for people at home, too. Don’t have fresh mint or ginger? Don’t have an in-depth range of syrups like the bar does? No problem: easy at-home juleps and mules. Boom.

Rittenhouse Rye

Blake Jones, bartender and director of beverage at The Kennedy in Pensacola, Florida

I have to go with Rittenhouse Rye here. It’s just a great whiskey, that’s all there is to it. It makes for a mean cocktail and just has that punch you want in a rye at a great price.

Dad’s Hat Rye

Danielle Becker, bartender at the Aspen Meadows Resort in Aspen, Colorado

Dad’s Hat Rye out of Bristol Pennsylvania, one of the largest rye producers in the country. This rye is absolutely divine; using both malted and un-malted rye really creates a phenomenal sweet citrus to complement that rye spice. I love this whiskey and the small local name behind it.

Basil Hayden’s Caribbean Reserve Rye

Freddy Concepcion Ucan Tuz, bartender at JW Marriott in Cancun, Mexico

Basil Hayden’s Caribbean Reserve Rye. It’s a perfect rye whiskey for the summertime, a spirit that is compatible with rum. A blend of Basil Hayden’s Kentucky straight rye whiskey with a 4-year-old Canadian rye whisky. The blend is then finished with the addition of blackstrap rum. So it’s a rye with gentle spice, toasted oak, and vanilla with some sweet notes of brown sugar and molasses. Perfect to drink straight or mix it into a mai tai cocktail.

Lot No. 40 Rye

Wesley MacDonald, owner of Caña Bar and Kitchen in Curaçao

Lot No. 40 from Hiram Walker Distillery in Windsor, Ontario. Simple, but well-executed rye whiskey, great for cocktails such as a Manhattan and old fashioneds or as a tasty sipper. Also, the master blender, Dr. Don Livermore knows his craft and you can tell by tasting his whiskeys.

Copper Fox Rye

Melissa Mickles, manager of King of Clubs Brewing Company in Williamsburg, Virginia

My favorite rye whiskey is from Copper Fox Distillery. It’s spicy, sweet, and perfect for sipping or in cocktails. We use it in our Clara Bow cocktail. We add a shot of our espresso and oat milk, the milk helps the coffee and whiskey flavors blend.

Hillrock Double Cask Rye

David Powell, brand ambassador for Hudson Whiskey

Outside of Hudson (which I’m working on making more and more people aware of every day!), I’d probably say Whistlepig and Hillrock, because those two whiskeys say so much about Dave Pickrell as a distiller, and I consider him to have been (and he continues to be) an absolute titan in our industry. I only wish that he was still with us to keep pushing the envelope.

K-O Distilling Bare Knuckle Rye

Amber Davis-Sato, manager of Dog Street Pub in Williamsburg, Virginia

K-O Distilling Bare Knuckle Straight Rye Whiskey. I can and do drink this year-round, but the extra spice from the rye helps keep you warm as cooler spring weather fades to summer.

Major League Soccer took a small step toward resuming its season on Wednesday when it announced that beginning on May 6, players will be able to use outdoor team training fields for individual workout sessions. These workouts will be voluntary and in compliance with local public health official and government protocols.

By only allowing voluntary individual workouts and restricting access locker rooms, team gyms, and team training rooms, the league is hoping to adhere to social distancing and maintain the well-being of players and staff. The league also mandated that each team must submit a plan detailing how they will implement health and safety protocols at their facilities before any players can begin using them for individual training.

In addition to banning access to other team facilities like locker rooms and gyms, the league wants to stagger player and staff arrival and departures, ask players to use protective personal equipment when they go from the parking lot to the soccer field and divide the field into quadrants with no sharing of equipment to completely adhere to social distancing guidelines. Yahoo Sports’ Doug McIntyre noted that the league did not include any information about testing in its statement, and cited a source as saying that MLS officials do not want to take tests away from front-line medical workers and patients for whom tests are more important.

MLS, along with the NWSL, NBA, WNBA, NHL and MLB, has been sidelined since mid-March due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. According to Friday’s statement, “the league-wide moratorium on small group and full team training remains in place through, and including, Friday, May 15.” However, players are expected to remain in-market to prepare for the possibility of the season resuming at some point.

According to Sports Business Journal, MLS and the MLS Players’ Association are still discussing ways to reduce player salaries during this uncertain time, and how to proceed given that there is no current ratified CBA to follow. It remains to be seen if and how the league can resume the season without fans, and whether it’s worth doing so when the health risk remains so large.

---

View Entire Post ›

Live sports are at a standstill as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic but, as the world of sports content pivots as necessary, audio products continue to provide valuable information and entertainment in a number of different avenues. One source is sports podcasting, which can break down game content but also serves as an excellent way to catch up on news and transactions in breezy form, all with the capability of deeper dives into relevant topics of the past and present.

Commutes may not be rolling along as they used to be but, as many have hours to kill in their homes without games to flip on, sports podcasts are a fantastic resource. With that in mind, here is a look at the best podcasts available right now, each with their own value to specific audiences.

Note: Podcasts are listed in alphabetical order.

30 for 30

Many shows on this list are covering the ins and outs of specific sports in a present-day context but, much like the 30 for 30 television series, the podcast production is top-notch. The quality of the storytelling is elite and, even if some of the tales aren’t exactly mainstream, the presentation is fantastic to the point where listeners are captivated. At present, there are six seasons of content, including full-season looks at the Donald Sterling affair in the NBA and a deep dive into Bikram Yoga. In short, there is something for everyone.

Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast

As the title explains, Effectively Wild is a baseball-driven show, but it is much more than that. Hosts Ben Lindbergh (The Ringer), Sam Miller (ESPN), and Meg Rowley (FanGraphs) are fantastic in breaking down the everyday topics that make baseball great, from in-game analysis to overarching themes and advanced analytics. In addition, Effectively Wild is able to cover ground in off-the-wall fashion, with famously great mailbag segments tackling wild subjects to simulations, book reviews and much more. Listeners looking for a baseball podcast that covers just about everything should land here.

ESPN Daily

Many podcasts, in sports or otherwise, are centrally devoted to one subject matter, and that allows for extensive analysis in that particular lane. ESPN Daily doesn’t quite do that, but it brings the best of all other worlds. Mina Kimes hosts the program and, while she has a background in the NFL world specifically, she brings a fantastic element that leads to elevated discussion. She is joined by experts in various fields, from reporting to analysis, to glance at different sports subjects, and the format of a Monday through Friday, bite-sized product is perfect for many consumers.

ESPN On Ice with Wyshynski and Kaplan

Hockey podcasts aren’t quite as prevalent, at least in the wide pockets of the United States, as some other endeavors in this space, but this is a quality product. Greg Wyshynski is a fixture in the space (including another podcast venture in Puck Soup) and he is one of the best hockey personalities in the business. Emily Kaplan is also a strong voice in the hockey world, and the pairing works well to keep listeners up-to-date on the latest in the NHL, with room to maneuver beyond that.

Eye on College Basketball

For some, College basketball is a sport reserved for March but it’s a year-long endeavor on this particular podcast. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander of CBS Sports co-host the show and they have a tremendous rapport on the air. That makes the show fun and, even beyond the various inside jokes and entertainment, the content is informative and consistent. Both have genuine expertise, experience in the field, and they can jump from analysis to big-picture topics and even recruiting. It’s a gold standard in a field that has many quality podcast options. Shout out to Devan Downey.

Fantasy Football Today

Like the Eye on College Basketball podcast, CBS Sports gets the nod here with a tremendous fantasy football show. Any avid sports podcast listener is likely familiar with the fact that there are almost endless options in the fantasy football space, but this show combines the best of many worlds. It could be argued that other shows have higher production value or segments that are more purely entertaining, but this is a quality show for die-hards and amateurs alike. Host Adam Aizer guides the proceedings, but the group of experts, headlined by Jamey Eisenberg, Dave Richard and Heath Cummings, brings real quality.

No Dunks

Sports podcasting has come a long way but, for more than a decade, these guys have been talking about the NBA in audio form. Originally dubbed The Basketball Jones, J.E. Skeets and Tas Melas were firing off quality podcast content as far back as the mid-2000’s and, after a stint at NBA TV under the name The Starters, the OG’s are back as No Dunks. This time, they are a part of The Athletic but, unlike some of their colleagues, this is a non-paywall operation. Skeets and Melas are joined by Trey Kerby, Leigh Ellis, and producer JD to bring wildly entertaining and informative NBA analysis just about any day. It’s a must for any basketball fan.

No Laying Up

It might be a surprise to some, but there are a number of golf podcasts and that area of the industry seems to be growing. No Laying Up brings a nice mix to the table, with things that should appeal to casual fans as entertainment, as well as the ability to lure some quality guests and get serious about the game. One’s preference in golf podcasts, like any sport, may vary, but this is a very good option that blends many tastes.

PAPN and Shutdown Fullcast

Unfortunately, furloughs from VOX Media have impacted this pair of Banner Society podcasts, with hosts on hiatus for months and real uncertainty surrounding both shows. Still, it would be fantastic if the shows returned and, with that in mind, they should be included under that hope. And regardless, it is hard to do a list about sports podcasts without these two, which are two of the best and most beloved among an entire generation of sports podcasting fans.

The original PAPN (aka Podcast Ain’t Played Nobody) was excellent, with Steven Godfrey and Bill Connelly mixing the machine-like qualities (Connelly) with reporter instincts (Godfrey) and everything in between on the college football side. Connelly moved on to ESPN, but Godfrey and company are more than capable of carrying the load. Richard Johnson was a staple of the franchise and, while this podcast is capable of discussing just about anything in the college football world, it is well-known for its propensity to go off the beaten path by throwing a bone or two to smaller programs.

Shutdown Fullcast had high-end talent with Jason Kirk, Ryan Nanni, and Holly Anderson and, while they weren’t always dedicated to extremely serious college football analysis, they had a great deal of fun. It may not be for everyone but, if a listener enjoys light-hearted sports talk and engaging personalities, it’s a great listen.

The Bill Barnwell Show

It shouldn’t be surprising to see this show here. The NFL is the biggest sports entity in the United States. ESPN is the largest sports media outlet in the world. Bill Barnwell is the most visible NFL writer that works for ESPN. More seriously, though, Barnwell is (very) smart and he brings informed guests in to discuss the pressing issues in the league. You might long for the Grantland NFL Show and Barnwell’s fruitful partnership with Robert Mays (now of The Ringer), but this is a good place to consume NFL content.

The Lowe Post

This is quite similar to the description of The Bill Barnwell Show in that Zach Lowe is perhaps the best sportswriter on the planet and he is also backed by the machine that is ESPN. There are seemingly a million NBA podcasts, but Lowe brings the combination of legitimate expertise, top-shelf guests and intelligent discussion without some of the nonsense on other platforms. Oh, and you can digest his trademark “WELCOME TO…” greeting to make you feel right at home.

The Press Box

It might be cheating to call The Press Box a “sports” podcast but, in the ever-interesting world of sports media coverage, it certainly qualifies and, if you want another example, Richard Deitsch of The Athletic hosts a very strong program in his own right. It’s fair to point out that Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker don’t always stick to sports by any measure, but Curtis is one of the best evaluators of sports media in the country and Shoemaker has been around the block in his own right. The show is buoyed by their very clear friendship that has bloomed for decades, but both are smart enough to carry the day even without that, and you can also grab overall media coverage — including politics, writing and more — in the same space as your sports media intake.

Total Soccer Show

You should obviously never just a book by its cover, but in the case of this podcast, the title sums everything up here. Total Soccer Show, with main hosts Taylor Rockwell and Daryl Grove, is the best in-depth soccer podcast that you can listen to, if only because everything is on the table. If you want a detailed breakdown of major leagues around the world, you can find an episode about that. The same exists for breakdowns of various international squads — including, of course, America’s national teams — or Major League Soccer. There are interviews, there are breakdowns of Netflix series about footy, and just about everything else you could want in a podcast about a singular sport. And if you’re new to the game, the TSS crew are as good of an entry point as possible.