This is not to denigrate newly crowned Red Sox opening day third baseman Travis Shaw, because Travis Shaw has had a killer spring, and no one’s really quite sure what to make of him. But teams usually need more than a hint of promise to bench a guy owed $72.4 million over the next four years. Not the Sox.
So do you think he TRIES to look like Skrillex these days? Or is it just an unfortunate by-product of him being a fame-damaged weirdo?
From the depths of crowdfunding comes the news that Corey Feldman has been working on an album for a decade. His Chinese Democracy-esque project is entitled Elev8or 2 Ascension, but he still needs help in completing it. So the actor/musician/minor baseball league disappointment has turned to Indiegogo to get the necessary funds (in this case, $105,000) to see his vision come to life. Those interested can watch the pitch video below, wherein the former Feld-dog describes his album as a “musical experience, a musical journey through all types of sounds from EDM to pop to rock to hip-hop...It‘s literally a sound of the ages.”
The Indiegogo campaign page itself is littered with furtive (and earnest) cries for help from his fans (dubbed “FeldFam”) in a diatribe that substitutes numbers for letters whenever possible and inserts ampersands like they’re going out of style. The ...
Thank God Republican intransigence will prevent Merrick Brian Garland from taking the seat to which he has been nominated on the United States Supreme Court, because according to a guy who has been nursing a 50-year-old grudge, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was kind of a dick in junior high.
Ugh. Between him and Phife, it's been a bad week for famous creative people dying.
Comedy legend Garry Shandling—best known for his self-aware, witty, and highly influential sitcoms It’s Garry Shandling’s Show and The Larry Sanders Show—has died. Celebrity gossip site TMZ broke the news, saying that Shandling died earlier today at an L.A. hospital. No cause of death was listed. He was 66.
Born in Chicago, Shandling grew up in Tuscon, Arizona, and went to college there before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a comedy writer. After a stint working in advertising, he sold his first script on spec to Sanford And Son; the episode, “Sanford And The Rising Son,” guest starred Pat Morita and aired in November 1975. During this period, Shandling also wrote scripts for Welcome Back Kotter, and began performing in stand-up clubs around Los Angeles. By 1981, he was performing stand-up on The Tonight Show:
"“My daddy told me, when I was 7, ‘Even if I am on the mound teaching the game to you, and you are facing me, try to hurt me. This is competition,’ ” said Ortiz. “Respect? Respect my [expletive]. I don’t have to respect nobody when I’m between those two lines. I’m trying to beat everybody when I’m between those two lines. This ain’t no crying. There’s no, ‘Let me be concerned about taking you deep.’ No."
NFL players will collectively receive around $50 million, and the 2016 salary cap will increase by around $1.5 million, after an arbitrator ruled that the league misclassified up to $120 million in revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Gear Patrol collected a number of coffee cups from coffee shops around NYC. Prices for a small cup ranged from $1 to $4.50. I'm guessing the latter was not 4.5 times tastier than the former. (via @mccanner)
Season 3 to be completed and airing by the end of this year, 14 new episodes. So awesome
Though the season two finale of Rick And Mortyallayed our fears about the fate of Mr. Poopybutthole, it also delivered a gut-wrenching cliffhanger and the news that viewers would have to wait nearly a year and a half for a resolution, i.e., more episodes, thereby leading many to ponder the possibility of arranging a medically-induced coma to get them through the hiatus (or was it just us?). But according to co-creator Dan Harmon, that wait has been shortened, so there’s (probably) no need for such drastic measures.
Harmon shared the delightful news while speaking at a Rick And Morty panel at the Magic City Comic Con in Miami in late January, after being pointedly asked when the new season would premiere. The video of the panel is below; it’s at the 10:24 minute mark that Harmon makes that announcement, then follows it up with the ...
Mitch Hedberg, who brought an extremely laid-back delivery style to his absurd, quasi-philosophical observations and one-liners, would have been 48 years old this Wednesday. The comedy world has not seen his like again since his untimely, drug-related death in 2005. One of Hedberg’s most famous and frequently quoted routines, as captured on his popular 1999 album Strategic Grill Locations, deals with the purchasing of doughnuts and the documentation thereof. To wit:
I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut. I don’t need a receipt for the doughnut. I’ll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction. We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this. I just can’t imagine a scenario where I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend: “Don’t even act like I didn’t ...
With the premiere of Netflix’s Fuller House comes a classic conundrum: How do you mercilessly criticize a product while encouraging the instinct that led to its creation? Because despite the plaintive catchphrase of one Uncle Jesse Katsopolis (John Stamos), which reappears along with every other vaguely recognizable zinger from the original series, Fuller House doesn’t deserve mercy. The show isn’t just bad, it borders on the obscene, as much an affront to those bemused by a reboot of the sitcom that anchored ABC’s once-mighty T.G.I.F. comedy block as those receptive to it. But to attack Fuller House on conceptual grounds is wrongheaded, considering the same blindfolded nostalgia led the deep-pocketed streaming service to order a Wet Hot American Summer series, reconstitute Mr. Show as With Bob And David, and green-light four new Gilmore Girls movies. Netflix’s reboot magnanimity has been such a ...
“Oh, grow up you lot. It’s pronounced ‘sek-wah-leh'”
Tokyo Sexwale has pulled out of the FIFA presidential race in dramatic fashion, waiting until voting day to announce his withdrawal with the words “It’s your problem now”.
Delivering his final speech to the FIFA congress ahead of this afternoon’s vote, Sexwale took to the stage and, after informing the room that he’d just become a father for the third time, told those assembled:
My candidacy ends today, I end my participation, I leave you four candidates… It’s your problem now.
The four candidates referred to being Sheikh Salman, Gianni Infantino, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein and Jerome Champagne, who are all still hoping to replace the deposed Sepp Blatter at the top of the FIFA tree. It’s like being asked to chose between four equally unpleasant medieval genital torture devices to take for a prolonged test drive.
Sexwale’s pull-out just added to pandemonium on a day that had already seen a raft of reforms passed, including the future disclosure of FIFA salaries, limits being placed of presidential terms and the replacing of the FIFA Executive Committee with a new council that would include a female representative from each footballing confederation.
The new prez is supposedly going to be announced some time around 17:30 GMT, but this is FIFA we’re talking about here so don’t go holding your breath.
by Luke Plunkett on Kotaku, shared by Tim Marchman to Deadspin
I am Australian. I have noticed online that people who are not Australian seem to work under the assumption that this is an island of death, where every step you take you run the risk of being bitten, stung, impaled or eaten alive by a murderous wild creature. I am here today to tell you that they are only half right.
Interesting! A Wrinkle In Time was one of my all-time faves when I was a kid
It looks like Ava DuVernay will get to tackle the dimension-bending ways of a tesseract after all as Deadline reports that theSelma director, who was once in the running to helm Marvel’s Black Panther movie, has just signed on to direct Disney’s film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Frozenco-director and scribe Jennifer Lee is writing the adaptation of the science fantasy novel, which was the first and most popular book in L’Engle’s Time Quintet series.
A Wrinkle In Time is (the beginning of) the story of Meg Murry, a 13-year-old girl who doesn’t feel any more comfortable at home with her beautiful scientist mother and her genius little brother, Charles Wallace, than she does at school, where the principal just seems to have it out for her. But she sets her awkwardness (and resentment) aside long enough to ...
"Hernandez represents several Cuban ball players, and allegedly helped Mariners outfielder Leonys Martin defect from Cuba in 2010. According to a sealed indictment cited by Passan, Hernandez conspired with smugglers who helped get Martin out of Cuba and then held him hostage while Martin negotiated a contract with the Rangers, a portion of which was then taken by the smugglers as payment. Hernandez could face up to 20 years in prison."
Yahoo’s Jeff Passan is reporting that MLB agent Bart Hernandez was arrested this morning after a federal grand jury indicted him on human-trafficking charges.
If you've 52 minutes and a thirst for dunks through the ages...
Reddit user ThisIsMyFavoriteSub took on the herculean task of splicing together every dunk that’s ever been given a perfect score in the annual dunk contest. There’s some great dunks in here, and you should enjoy them.
The Adventures of Prince Achmen. 1926. German. The oldest surviving animated film in history.
I am sorry BUT THIS IS NOT JUST “GERMAN” PLEASE DO NOT FORGET THE NAME OF THE ARTIST.
THIS WONDERFUL MOVIE WAS MADE BY LOTTE REINIGER! SHE WAS ONE OF THE PIONEERS OF ANIMATION!!!! SHE MADE OVER 40 FILMS IN HER CAREER USING A TECHNIQUE SHE INVENTED WITH HER HUSBAND! WALT DISNEY ENDED USING HER MULTI PLANE TECHNIQUE IN HIS OWN MOVIES! AND SHE FUCKING MADE THE FIRST FEATURE LENGTH ANIMATED MOVIE!! (she ended up fleeing Nazi germany eventually work in north america, both us and canada, on other movies.)
This woman is one of the most important figures in animation HISTORY!
Look, I love Winsor McCay but I’m extremely pissed that my animation history class in college focused on him and did not mention Lotte Reiniger at all.
It was two years ago today that T.J. Oshie helped the U.S. beat Russia at the Olympics, thanks to his shootout prowess—which was pretty much the only reason he was there. I don’t really remember how the rest of that tournament went, though.
JP Boneyard, the mighty nice guy behind the National Poster Retrospecticus, has a brand new project centering around the National Parks system, and it just debuted and opened for business. Fifty-Nine Parks will eventually feature 59 prints, one for each park. For now, their first release is a Grand Teton poster by Eric Nyffeler (aka Doe Eyed). It’s an 18″ x 24″ screenprint, has an open edition, and costs $40. Visit 59Parks.net.
Bob’s Burgers will remain one of the few certainties of Fox’s Sunday night lineup, as the network has picked up a sixth season to air along mainstays The Simpsons, Family Guy, and, presumably, Mulaney seasons two through 20. While it retuned to much higher ratings than it scored the previous year, the series has yet to break out the way any of its animated siblings have, but it’s nevertheless maintained a steady following while earning critical acclaim and even Emmys (and it has a consistency that those shows can only envy as they get older). And with 22 more episodes to grow on—and the hope that Fox’s accompanying statement of “We can’t help but love the Belcher family” extends to not screwing with its time slot any more—Bob’s Burgers now has the chance to get the wider audience it true deserves. Or ...
