The co-creator of Space Force is Greg Daniels, who was the co-creator of The Office, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill, and also won an Emmy as a writer on The Simpsons. That is an absolutely teflon resume for a TV writer. Throw Steve Carell into the mix and you have one of the most promising shows in a long time.
It’s not just Daniels and Carell either as the show has a cast of comedy vets including John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Fred Willard, Noah Emmerich, Lisa Kudrow, and Jessica St. Clair.
So we get a collection of some very funny actors, Steve Carell and Greg Daniels leading the way as co-creators, and it’s all on Netflix where they aren’t constrained by 22 minute episodes or F-bomb regulations from the FCC. Throw in the subject matter of Carell playing a general leading the (very real) newly created Space Force branch of the military and I am all in.
PS – Daniels was nominated for another Emmy for his song “Who Needs the Kwik-E-Mart” in the season 5 episode he penned, “Homer and Apu”, which any Simpsons fan can sing to you right now.
Yahoo – Hard Rock Stadium can hold around 65,000 fans, but Garfinkel said it might be closer to a 15,000-fan maximum this season to adjust to social distancing and to keep everyone safe. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) currently recommends keeping six feet (two arms lengths) from other people and to avoid crowded places and mass gatherings.
The team would also schedule arrivals and assist with exiting after the game. The plans include fans being required to wear masks...The examples show colored spots on the ground to show what six feet of distancing looks like, not unlike what grocery stores have done near registers to keep from having a mass crush of people together in one spot.
Attendees would order food from their seats and leave to pick it up instead of waiting in line, just as people are doing elsewhere with curbside pickup.
I’m holding out hope for some semblance of sports to resume later this summer, but I’m not exactly optimistic. By all accounts, it would seem our best bet of sports returning any time soon is some form of games without fans in attendance. Even that has plenty of hurdles to overcome, most of which revolve around logistics. The NBA has kicked around the idea of every team playing a tournament in Las Vegas, while basically on lockdown in a bubble. MLB has considered restructuring leagues and having teams play games in just a handful of Spring Training stadiums to reduce cross country travel, but even that would require players to be away from their families for four months straight. So every story you read about how or when sports can return leaves me with a pretty bleak outlook.
However, a failure to plan is a plan to fail so teams are doing their due diligence and trying to figure out how exactly they could safely allow fans back in the stadiums.
The Dolphins came out with a proposed plan of how to safely bring back fans once the government gives the green light and it has a serious dystopian future vibe.
15,000 fans allowed in the stadium (compared to 65,000 normally)
All fans required to wear masks
Order food and drinks from your seats rather than waiting in line
Staggered arrival times and exiting “much like a church environment, where each row exits so people aren’t filing out all at the same time in a herd.”
Before all this I was a borderline germaphobe, so I am not going to be one of the first fans jumping through hoops just to pay $200 to attend a game in person. Sports on TV would be more than enough for me right now, but you know plenty of people are dying to get out of the house and return to something resembling normal.
Who knows, maybe this becomes the preferred way of going to a game and it acts like a form of EZ-Pass. With just 15,000 people and assigned entrance times you could just breeze into town and right up to your seat. Anyone who has been to a Pats game in the last decade knows its a 3 hour tour just getting out of the parking lot and back home after a game. OR the demand for tickets will go through the roof because of the limited supply and we’ll all look back and laugh at how cheap $200 Patriots tickets were before COVID.
It’s crazy to think about how the next Patriots home game could look more like a college lacrosse game with less than a quarter of the seats filled, and have it not be because Tom Brady’s gone. It’s going to take a long time for things to return to normal, if at all, depending on how long the coronavirus lingers. So until then we’ll have to take what we can get as everything from our offices to bars and restaurants to concerts and games at Gillette Stadium slowly figures out how to bring people back together once again.
Variety – Nicolas Cage is set to star in a scripted series centered on Joe Exotic, the subject of the Netflix docuseries “Tiger King,” Variety has learned exclusively.
The eight-episode series is being produced by Imagine Television Studios and CBS Television Studios. It will be taken to market in the coming days. It is based on the Texas Monthly article “Joe Exotic: A Dark Journey Into the World of a Man Gone Wild,” by Leif Reigstad.
What a time to be alive. I fought against Tiger King for about a week before I caved because I’m a contrarian by nature. If everyone likes it so much it must be pandering garbage for simpleminded people was my original thinking. I watched the first ep and thought okay this white trash asshole illegally buys and sells tigers, why do I need 7 more hours of this? Well when I dipped my toe back into the tiger infested waters a couple of days later, I ended up watching the remaining 7 episodes in one sitting.
Joe Exotic is undeniably a white trash asshole that deserves to be in jail for murdering endangered animals, but my goodness is the man fascinating. Besides the fact that Exotic is as he describes himself ” the gay, gun-carrying redneck with a mullet,” the Netflix series was so fascinating because it followed a man down a completely self destructive path despite having every reason to avoid rocking the boat. I mean the man married two guys at once rocking a cowboy hat, repeatedly threatened to murder his arch nemesis on YouTube, and even ran a competitive campaign for Governor of Oklahoma.
You’ve all seen the greek tragedy that is Tiger King so I won’t recite all the details, but in all seriousness WHO better to play Joe Exotic than Nicolas Cage? Is there anyone other than this guy you’d want taking this role?
Nic Cage has perfected the art of playing an absolute lunatic and losing his shit in just about every movie he’s in. Now picture him with a bleached blonde mullet threatening to murder a fellow zoo owner while he wrestles tigers and his two husbands smoke a billion pounds of meth in the office? I really don’t want to glorify the Tiger King any more than he already has been, but goddamnit I can’t quit you Joe Exotic.
Apparently Kate McKinnon also has a Tiger King show of her own on the horizon as she’s set to portray Carole Baskins. So this dysfunctional group of characters isn’t going anywhere for a while.
Yahoo – Eminem came face-to-face with an intruder who bypassed security at his Detroit home.
TMZ broke the story, claiming the suspect used a paving stone to smash a kitchen window and climbed inside the house. The outlet reported Eminem was sleeping and woke up when his alarm went off, only to find the suspect in his living room, so he called for security. However, a rep for the rapper disputed some of the details to XXL, saying Eminem was not asleep and did not call for security — but that he detained the man himself until police arrived…Hughes apparently didn’t attempt to steal anything, but “was said to have wanted to meet the rapper face-to-face,” per TMZ. He was booked on charges of first-degree home invasion and malicious destruction of a building.
Imagine breaking into Marshall Mathers’ house? The guy thats spent the last 20 years rapping about killing his wife, his mom, and even his own fans at a concert?
Slim knows that some fans are nut cases and may want to break into his house to do God knows what. Whats even more eery though is he legitimately rapped about this exact scenario back in 2013 on the Marshall Mathers LP 2:
See, it’s sad it came to this point Such a disappointment I had to make this appointment To come and see ya, but I ain’t here for your empathy I don’t need your apology or your friendship or sympathy It’s revenge that I seek So I sneak vengefully, and treat your bedroom window Like I reached my full potential: I peeked Continue to peep, still bent low, then keep Tapping the glass lightly then start to crescendo, sneak All the way ’round to the back porch Man, door handles unlocked, shouldn’t be that easy to do this You don’t plan for intruders beforehand?
TMZ actually reported that Em was asleep when the intruder broke in, but one of his reps told XXL that he wasn’t asleep and in fact detained the intruder until police arrived. I know he’s a rich, 47-year-old white man, but he’s also a maniac so what do you think was the more likely scenario?
This is hands down the worst part of being mega famous because you never know what the hell people are thinking. Maybe this was a troubled young man who just wanted to meet his idol or maybe he was a psychopath looking to slice up Slim Shady.
Glad to hear Em is fine, but I hope he fired those security guards that night like Shooter McGavin.
I saw this tweet going around the other day posing an excellent question: What is the greatest movie prop of all time? Maybe you’re going with Marty Mcfly’s self lacing shoes or perhaps George Clooney’s Batsuit with the nipples? Here are hands down the Top 5 movie props of all time.
5. Beatrix Kiddo’s Hattori Hanzo sword
A Hattori Hanzo sword is like a modern day Valyrian Steel sword, which didn’t make the cut because GOT isn’t actually a movie. Goddamn was Kill Bill a great movie though. Watching both 1 and 2 are worth the double feature binge if you’ve never seen them. Basically a Hattori Hanzo is the rarest, sharpest, and best kind of sword ever produced. “If on your journey you should encounter God, God will be cut.”
4. Darth Vader’s Lightsaber
Truly one of the most badass characters in cinematic history. There are dozens of Star Wars characters and their lightsabers to pick from and I almost went with Mace Windu’s purple saber or the double sided Darth Maul version, but it’s hard to beat the original bad guy.
3. Happy Gilmore’s Putter
Maybe it’s the white trash in me, but I’ve always loved the Happy Gilmore hockey stick turned putter. It’s practical too as Adam Sandler had to actually sink putts with it. The putter may not be regulation, but I’m not exactly on the PGA tour so I think I can sneak the extra club in my bag. Nothing would please me more than sinking a birdie putt on 18 after shooting in the three figures on the first 17.
2. Mjolnir
Sure I have the plastic replica and a Mjolnir keychain, but give me the real deal! I don’t expect the hammer to come when called like a Golden Retriever, but this is THE conversation piece to stick up on your mantle. I would be shocked and disappointed if Chris Hemsworth didn’t steal this prop after production on Endgame wrapped.
Vin Diesel’s 67 Pontiac GTO from XXX
Long before Samuel L. Jackson was even a twinkle in Nick Fury’s eye, this Vin Diesel store brand James Bond flick introduced us to the greatest movie prop of all time. XXX came out when I was 13 so obviously I was the exact target demo, but I also saw XXX 3: Return of Xander Cage in theaters with Papa Giorgio when I was 27 sooo…
Say what you want about this (delightful) movie, but if you don’t enjoy XXX you are someone who takes themselves entirely too seriously. Now lets get to the best part of the movie: the 1967 Pontiac GTO. This is just the sweetest ride these eyes have ever seen and I’m not even a car guy. This is the best (and most practical) movie prop of all time. For some reason I couldn’t find the scene where they unveil the GTO on YouTube in English so you’ll just have to make do with Spanish. De nada.
Since you can only do so many sit ups in your living room, the at-home workouts have fallen off precipitously. Meaning the majority of my exercise comes from walking the dog or a quick (read: slow) mile jog around the neighborhood while I gasp for air behind a mask. So the inactivity has shot way up while physical exercise has taken a nosedive. It also doesn’t help that my iPhone reminds me every other day how big of a piece of shit I am for taking less steps than normal, working out less than normal, and also using my phone for like 7 hours a day.
You would think not working out and lifting heavy weights and hopelessly trying to look respectable for bikini season would mean *less* injuries, but nope. As I often like to say I am aging in dog years and I seem to be physically falling apart due to all the inactivity. I somehow injured my shoulder getting *into* bed a couple weeks ago and I’m pretty sure I just have that now.
Doing some research into why it has become a conscious effort to open a heavy door without destroying my shoulder, the best self diagnosis I could come up with was Bursitis. And now I can’t stop laughing because I never even knew what Bursitis really was when Johnny Knoxville claimed to have it all those years ago.
So thats it for me folks, when the gyms finally do reopen in Boston and they tell us to jump back into our old workout routines, I’ll be sitting here like (old) Steve Rogers at the end of Endgame.
Yahoo – Boston Red Sox legend Manny Ramirez’s time in the majors may have ended in 2011, but he’s not done playing baseball. Ramirez, now 47, told the Taiwan Times he’s hoping to make a comeback in 2020.
Ramirez has set his sights on returning to the Chinese Professional Baseball League, where he spent time in 2013. Ramirez performed well in a 49-game stint for the Rhinos, hitting .352 with eight home runs. He left the team because he missed his family, and because he wanted to try and return to Major League Baseball.
Manny is the greatest right handed hitter I’ve ever seen.
To make that proclamation it definitely helps that he was the No. 3/No. 4 hitter for my favorite team for nearly a decade. But it also gave me the opportunity to watch the guy play every day (Ha!) and rake year after year. Just look at this stat line from his eight years in Boston.
It’s one of the greatest statistical runs a Red Sox player has ever had.
Manny had an absolutely effortless swing that produced moonshots as he hit 30+ home runs 12 times in his 19 year career. He wasn’t just a pure power hitter though as he finished with .312 career batting average. The guy was just never off balance at the plate.
(You’re welcome for the 13 minute loop of Magic Stick)
And nobody knew when a ball was going YABO quicker than Manny. Well, maybe Dennis Drinkwater, but you get my point.
With that being said he could be a childish prick at times like the time he took three straight strikes in a Yankees game back in 2007 because he had to pinch hit after being told he would have the day off.
So yea, Manny Being Manny may as well have been Spanish for “baggage,” but my lord could this guy put the bat on the ball. He anchored the greatest team in Red Sox history in 2004. (Thats not debatable, they had a Batting Champion hitting 9th and two HOF pitchers at the top of the rotation) Manny hit .308 with 43 home runs and 130 RBIs that season. He also had a Slugging Percentage of 1.009, won a Silver Slugger and finished 3rd in MVP voting.
Granted that was 16 years ago, but even in 2013 he hit an absurd .352 in the Chinese Professional Baseball League. So do I think he could be a serviceable player in the CPBL right now even at 47-years-old?
But hey if things don’t workout in Taiwan, he can always play for the local independent leagues. Hell, I saw Oil Can Boyd pitch for the Brockton Rox when he was 45 and he was mowing guys down.
The movie we’ve all mocked for the past 15 years and cringe whenever it comes on TV is actually surprisingly delightful right now. This movie just hits different when sports are banned.
I openly admit that this is a sign of Quarantine SZN starting to take its toll on my sanity more so than this movie actually aging gracefully. But when nobody has been able to drink a beer on Jersey Street in nearly eight months you take what you can get.
Watching this last night I legitimately started to feel like I had moved out of Boston and hadn’t seen Fenway, Cask n Flagon, Landsdowne Street etc. in YEARS.
You do start to notice little things though when you rewatch old movies, especially ones filmed in your backyard. Lets forget for a second that Jimmy Fallon is supposed to be some broke ass school teacher that has a sweet apartment in the North End and season tickets to the Red Sox. The thing that really stuck out to me was the bar that Jason Varitek, Johnny Damon, and Trot Nixon are having dinner at after the game just a few feet away from Fallon and his buddies.
Really? Had anyone involved in the writing, filming, or production of this movie ever actually been on Landsdowne Street?
Their slogan should be… "Bill's Bar: Where You Go When You Can't Get In Anywhere Else" https://t.co/8Sj44SaU27
Hey don’t get me wrong it’s a fine establishment to knock back a few Bud Lattes, but it’s not exactly the lap of luxury that the players would be having dinner at. But, I digress.
Fever Pitch is loosely based on an old Nick Hornby story about his obsession with an English soccer team. Rejiggered to focus on the Red Sox, the original script just kind of assumed the Sox would lose yet again in some brutal fashion, which really sticks out like a sore thumb when the movie peaks just before Dave Roberts’ steal in Game 4 of the 04 ALCS. Then they slap on a 30 second ending explaining the greatest comeback in baseball history and the Sox actually winning the World Series capped off with the most cringeworthy memory of the entire thing; Fallon and Drew Barrymore celebrating on the field with the players.
But hey I’ll take whatever Red Sox content I can get at this point, which is why one of the principals of marketing is that nostalgia is a powerful weapon. I haven’t been to a Sox game in slightly longer than usual and my body is already starting to go through withdrawals. And the team wasn’t even going to be good this year!
John Henry has us by the balls and he knows it. Now I’m not going to be the first guy there when the quarantine is lifted, but when the dust settles on all this I will be more than happy to buy a few a dozen $11 beers at 4 Jersey Street.
CNN – Microsoft has made its typographical decree: Two spaces between sentences is too many.
The style choice will now be marked as an error in Microsoft Word — and users who press the space bar twice after a period will be met with those dreaded blue squiggly lines…The habit of using two spaces is a relic from the era of typewriters, when typists spaced twice to more clearly define the end of a sentence. Characters were “monospaced” back then, which means they took up the same amount of space on the page — today, most fonts adjust the width of characters so sentences are easier to read.
Welp thats it guys. Even Microsoft finally got bullied into saying two spaces after a sentence is wrong.
To all my fellow two spacers out there, I feel your pain. I was a two spacer forever because thats how they taught us as kids growing up. Don’t give me this typewriter excuse, thats what we were taught on Windows 95 too. At one point in my life I was a big-J Journalist writing for an actual news outlet and we all did two spaces, but once I left that job and grammar ceased to be an important part of my life I slowly caved. This blog is filled with sentences just one space apart from one another after years of people just beating the two spaces out of me.
I’ll let this one go because I’m no longer trying to stretch everything out while writing 10 page term papers. The same does NOT go for the GIF vs JIF debate though. I’ll die on that hill.
Patriots fan favorite fullback James Develin announced his retirement out of nowhere this afternoon on Instagram. It’s a damn shame because the neck injury that ended his 2019 season after just two games seems to still be lingering.
“Due to unforeseen complications with the injury that ended my season last year, I have decided it is both in my and my family’s best interest to retire from the game of football,” Devlin wrote. “I’ve always maintained a belief that in the sport, the team is MUCH more important than myself as an individual … and that belief still rings true, as I have to prioritize my team at home before anything else.”
Develin retires after a 7 year career in which he helped the Patriots develop a legitimate edge in the running game. Develin was a rarity in today’s NFL as fewer teams even utilize the FB position than ever before. He was an absolute monster clearing lanes for Sony Michel en route to a Super Bowl title in 2018 for a Pats team that leaned more heavily on the run than any team in recent memory.
A real life Danny Bateman with the neckroll and everything, James Develin was a true throwback.
He wasn’t a complete meathead like most fullbacks though, Develin earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Brown.
Develin also got robbed of a Super Bowl MVP, and a potential down payment on a house if you hit the bet, if you remember correctly
Best of luck to you in your post playing career James, you were a blast to watch and we’ll miss ya.
Full statement below:
Some Devlin highlights
My favorite play of Patriots fullback James Devlin’s career defines his legacy as a player; Effort, grit, and more effort. The epitome of a football player. Thanks for everything @James_Develinpic.twitter.com/lpO6gGEZeq
Patriots fullback James Develin officially announces his retirement.
Incredible 7 year career WITH the neck roll, 2017 pro bowler, 3 time Super Bowl winner. Won’t be another fullback in New England quite the same. Congrats, @James_Develin! pic.twitter.com/D2lV7fsAEv
The 300s 