Month: January 2021

Tom Rinaldi is one of the best, if not the best, in this funny little business at telling stories that are simultaneously absolutely gutting and remarkably uplifting. I think I am not out of line to speak for many other folks in this business in saying that doing what Rinaldi does is really hard, and it’s a testament to his ability as a storyteller and as someone who is capable of digging beneath the surface level of things that he’s able to do this week after week.

Rinaldi has been a stalwart for ESPN since 2003, with his most prominent work coming in a weekly segment on College GameDay where he tells someone’s story in the world of college football. But in a major piece of media news that dropped last month, Rinaldi is going to leave the Worldwide Leader and join Fox Sports.

Before he leaves, though, Rinaldi had one last episode of GameDay to get through on Saturday morning. And in a fun twist, Rinaldi turned the subject of his usual work inward, opting to look back on his tenure on the show.

Rinaldi really has done a ton of wonderful work for the show — I am personally a sucker for his piece on the Iowa wave — and hopefully it carries over to his new gig. Still, for those of us who tune into GameDay every week, it’ll take a while to get used to not having his presence on the show.

Kiss have been putting on absolute spectacles since the 1970s, and they wrapped up 2020 with yet another one. In fact, during their New Year’s Eve livestream concert last night, the band went so big that they actually broke a couple of world records.

In their review of the show, Consequence Of Sound notes, “Trying to perfectly synchronize the show’s grand finale with the stroke of midnight, a bonus tune not expected to be performed, ‘Strutter,’ was added as a special surprise (a song not performed at ‘End of the Road’ shows earlier this year). Around that time, a chap from Guinness Book Of World Records came out to confirm that KISS set the record for ‘most flame projections launched simultaneously in a music concert.’” The band later confirmed that on Twitter and noted that they also broke the record for “highest flame projection in a music concert.”

The livestream could be one of the legendary band’s final performances ever. In 2018, they announced their farewell tour, and the band’s Paul Stanley said at the time, “This is gonna be our last tour. It will be the most explosive, biggest show we’ve ever done. People who love us, come see us. If you’ve never seen us, this is the time. This will be the show.”

A replay of the full concert is available here.

It’s been a tough year for everyone. There’s no denying that. For the NBA world, things have been particularly strange. The early part of the year saw the death of beloved icon Kobe Bryant, which sent fans, the media, and former teammates and colleagues around the league into a collective period of mourning that scarcely lasted until the next tragedy struck.

In March, the NBA was the canary in the coal mine for the newly-arrived COVID-19 virus that was just beginning to take hold, and once the league shut down, it signaled to the rest of the country that it was time start taking things seriously. What followed was months of isolation, ugly partisan division, a rash of police shootings and civil unrest, and too many other things to catalog here.

But as we barreled toward the end of a tumultuous year, things finally started to look up. A presidential election proved that America still holds some of its values sacred, sports returned in modest ways, and we finally started to see the light at the end of the tunnel as the COVID vaccine made its way into circulation.

Still, we can all be forgiven for harboring some negative feelings toward the past year, and the Toronto Raptors summed those feelings up perfectly on New Year’s Eve when they bid 2020 adieu in the best way possible.

Dear 2020… pic.twitter.com/3L6hxlLGz1

— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) January 1, 2021

The Raptors and the rest of the league still have plenty of ground to make up before things get back to normal, or whatever that might entail as we look toward an uncertain future. It might be a while still before fans are able to return en masse, but for the moment, the NBA is back in relative full-swing, and the best we can do is keep pressing on as the slow, incremental progress continues.

Last year, Post Malone proved to a lot of people that when it comes to playing rock music, he knows what he’s doing. His Nirvana tribute set was one of the year’s finest livestream concerts, and he brought a similar energy to his New Year’s Eve show last night.

Malone’s “Bud Light Seltzer Sessions Presents New Year’s Eve 2021” performance was mostly original songs, but he brought hard rock to his two-song encore. Joined by a band that included Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, he ran through Alice In Chains’ “Rooster,” putting on his best post-grunge snarl. Slash then joined Posty for a cover of Black Sabbath’s classic “War Pigs,” which they stretched out to ten minutes and absolutely rocked.

All things considered, 2020 was a strong year for Malone. For the second year in a row, he was Billboard‘s top-charting artist of the year. Elsewhere during 2020, Posty dropped some sought-after new Crocs, hosted a beer pong show on Facebook, made a lot of money, got into the wine business, and got in an on-screen fight with Mark Wahlberg.

Watch the Alice In Chains and Black Sabbath covers above, check out the full performance below, and revisit our recent interview with Malone here.

Michael Porter Jr. has to be one of the most intriguing young players around the league. Prior to suffering a back injury during his senior year in college, he was widely considered one of the top two or three players in the 2018 Draft class, so the Nuggets felt like they got a steal when he nearly fell out of the lottery altogether.

He’s shown flashes of what made him such a sought-after talent during his time in Denver, and with the Nuggets once again primed to contend in the West, he figures to be integral part of their long-term plan as he’s now assumed a starting role. At the moment, however, all that will have to remain on hold.

According to the latest reports, MPJ is set to miss multiple games because of COVID contact tracing protocols. It remains unclear whether Porter has tested positive for COVID or whether he’s simply been exposed somewhere along the way, but nonetheless, the league is taking every precaution.

Via Mike Singer of The Denver Post:

The team’s internal expectation is that Porter will miss multiple games, the source said. The start of his protocol began Thursday. After Friday’s game against Phoenix, the Nuggets take on the Timberwolves on Sunday and again on Tuesday.

Porter was among numerous Nuggets players late to the “Bubble,” when he arrived in late July more than two weeks after the rest of the team did. Team officials later confirmed numerous cases of COVID, though Porter’s case was never specifically confirmed.

It’s also unclear exactly how many games Porter might miss, as Will Barton is reportedly set to start in his place. Porter has been averaging 19.5 points and 6.8 rebounds so far this season.

(The Denver Post)

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has really upped her clout in the music video world lately. Last month, she directed name buddy Phoebe Bridgers’ Paul Mescal-starring clip for “Savior Complex,” and lately, it has been rumored that she would be starring in a Harry Styles video. Sure enough, that has been confirmed, as she and Styles have started off the new year with a video for “Treat People With Kindness.”

It’s a fun black-and-white clip that begins with Styles performing on stage with backing dancers in a fancy club. Eventually, Waller-Bridge, who seems to be in charge of the place, enters the room, and as Styles dances on tables, he notices Waller-Bridge, pulls her on stage, and the two wrap things up by dancing together in a delightful display.

Styles concluded his 2020 by facing backlash from conservative critics over his gender-bending sense of style, sparked by him wearing a dress in a magazine profile. This all went down in November, but even as the year was drawing to a close, Styles was still a topic of conversation. His former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne weighed in, saying, “I thought it was great. He’s enjoying himself and he’s free to do as he wishes. I think people don’t need to be so bothered about stuff.”

Watch the “Treat People With Kindness” video above.

Foo Fighters have a new album, Medicine At Midnight, on the way, which they have revealed previously has been done for a while now. The pandemic forced them to do some waiting, but now that’s it’s 2020, Dave Grohl and company are done being patient. To kick off the new year, the band has shared a new single, an aggressive rocker called “No Son Of Mine.”

Grohl shared a note about the song and the band overall to fans, noting that they got tired of waiting to release the music they made:

“Dear everyone —

It was almost exactly a year ago that we finished recording out ‘new’ record Medicine At Midnight, with a massive world tour planned that would have taken us around the globe celebrating our 25th anniversary as a band. But, well…. you know……

So we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until we finally realized that our music is made to be heard, whether it’s in a festival field with 50,000 of our closest friends, or alone in your living room on a Saturday night with a stiff cocktail.

So, the wait is over.

As we say goodbye (f*ck you) to 2020, and flip the calendar page to 2021, let’s ring in the new year with a new rocker, ‘No Son Of Mine’

Pour a drink, turn it up, close your eyes and imagine that festival field blowing up to this.

Because it f*cking will.

Happy New Year x

Dave.”

Listen to “No Son Of Mine” above.

Netflix loaded up plenty of holiday-themed goodness in case you’re still in that mood, but the streaming service also knows that you’re ready to get the heck out of 2020. This week’s fresh offerings include the next trip to the dojo for Cobra Kai with Ralph Macchio and William Zabka still bringing the rivalry with returning and fresh faces. The lineup also includes the final season (or “part”) for Kiernan Shipka’s teenage witch and friends, who are trying to save the world from Satan, of course.

Here’s everything else coming to (and leaving) the streaming platform this week.

Cobra Kai: Season 3 (Netflix series streaming 1/1)

The good news? This The Karate Kid revival is still as much of an adrenaline shot as the last two rounds. The bad news? It’s also infuriatingly good. After Johnny and Daniel’s combined bad moves contributed heavily to Miguel landing in a hospital bed, Johnny’s looking for redemption. While he does the hard work in the hospital — and Kreese re-takes the dubious reigns of the Cobra Kai dojo, which makes me worried about him instructing Hawk to be even more of an anger-bear monster — Daniel-san heads to Okinawa, where an old rival is ready for him. The soul and fate of every sensei (and their students) are up for grabs. Hopefully, they’ll all make the right moves.

The Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina: Part Four (Netflix series streaming 12/31)

The Riverdale spinoff will come to a (planned) end with this installment starring Kiernan Shipka. This time around, the Devil-afflicted Nick’s attempting to win Sabrina back after surrendering to his darker urges, but The Eldritch Terrors have descended upon Greendale, and The Void could truly be the End of All Things. Can the Fright Club save the day? I’m (strangely) pulling for Harvey over here. And Salem the Cat. Meow.

Here’s a full list of what’s been added in the last week:

Avail. 12/25
Bridgerton

Avail. 12/26
Asphalt Burning
DNA
Fast & Furious Spy Racers: Season 3: Sahara
Go! Go! Cory Carson: Season 3
The Magic School Bus Rides Again In the Zone

Avail. 12/27
Sakho & Mangane: Season 1

Avail. 12/28
Death To 2020
Cops and Robbers
Rango

Avail. 12/29
Dare Me: Season 1

Avail. 12/30
Best Leftovers Ever!
Equinox
Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy: Chapter 2: Earthrise

Avail. 12/31
Best of Stand-Up 2020
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Part 4

And here’s what’s leaving next week, so it’s your last chance:

Leaving 1/1
Bloodsport

Leaving 1/3
QB1: Beyond the Lights: Season 2

Leaving 1/4
Mara

Leaving 1/5
The Monster

Leaving 1/7
The Tudors: Seasons 1-4

Leaving 1/8
Mary Poppins Returns

After making a run to the 2020 Western Conference Finals that included a monumental comeback win over the L.A. Clippers, the Denver Nuggets are off to a bit of a shaky start in 2020-21. Denver opened the season with a 1-3 record that included two home losses but, even in a shortened 72-game campaign, the Nuggets have plenty of time to right the ship. Even with the (very slight) hiccup at the outset, Denver’s centerpiece, All-NBA center Nikola Jokic, is operating at an obscenely high level, and he even drew quite a compliment from veteran teammate Paul Millsap on New Year’s Eve.

Though Millsap’s characterization involving the big man “throwing cheeseburgers” is objectively hilarious, Jokic does make life incredibly easy for his teammates, and that is very much on display so far in 2020-21. The 25-year-old center struggled out of the gate in 2019-20, averaging just 14.9 points in the first 19 games and scuffling from an efficiency perspective. This time around, though, Jokic was in a complete groove from the outset, putting up 24.5 points, 13.5 assists and 11.5 rebounds per game in the first four contests.

Obviously, that isn’t a huge sample size, but Jokic has generate three triple-doubles in four games, shooting 62.5 percent from the floor and 40 percent from three-point distance along the way. Denver’s success as a team hasn’t yet arrived, but the Nuggets have some of their best on-off numbers with Jokic on the floor, which is anything but a surprise.

With the elite big man in the middle of the action, the Nuggets are scoring more than 1.2 points per possession (and outscoring their opponents overall), and Jokic’s combination of shooting efficiency and playmaking is the biggest reason for that success. His defensive acumen is always a significant topic of discussion, and it is at least somewhat limiting from a team-wide standpoint, but Jokic has been dialed in to begin the season and it is a joy to watch.

Jokic isn’t the only player for which Millsap’s cheeseburger reference would have made sense but, as of Dec. 31, he leads the NBA in assists per game. As a center, that is a wild accomplishment, even in a small sample, and when a player like Millsap speaks like this, it is a reminder that Jokic remains the best passing big man in NBA history, and he’s still in the middle of his prime.

Earlier today TDE’s Reason, born Robert Lee Gill, Jr., dropped an extended remix of his song “Extinct” off his excellent 2020 album New Beginnings featuring lots of new guests — Joey Badass, Westside Boogie, Denzel Curry and Jack Harlow. He was excited to give fans a gift before the end of the year, especially since this version of the song is packed with high-profile guests. As chance would have it, the song also samples the song “Pennyroyal” by the producer Metal Fingers (MF), another alias of MF Doom, the man born Daniel Dumile Thompson.

But today has been a heavy day in hip-hop because news broke that legendary rapper had passed away earlier in the year. The hip-hop world has been reacting with grief and an outpouring of admiration for the producer, who died at just 49. One of Doom’s frequent collaborators, Flying Lotus, also told fans that he and Doom had been working on a collaborative EP together.

For his part, Reason was surprised by the coincidence, and said he had no idea he’d be dropping a song with a prominent sample from the producer with such surreal timing. He said he “didn’t plan to drop the day Doom left us,” although today is likely just the day the news was shared. In her post honoring her husband, the late producer’s wife Jasmine said he transitioned on October 31, 2020.

https://twitter.com/reasonTDE/status/1344812815245144064

Check out Reason’s song sampling “Pennyroyal” above, and listen to the original below.