07/18/20

TRENDS THIS WEEK

☞ YouTube:  Remembering Grant Imahara
☞ Letterboxd: Palm Springs
☞ TikTok: #hiddengems
☞ Spotify: No Fear No More (Remix) - Madeon, Earthgang
☞ Netflix: Project Power
☞ Twitter: #MichelleObamaPodcast

LIFE & CULTURE

Someone put all of the top trending daily U.S. google searches together from the past two years and it is...insightful. It turns out the nation is a lot more concerned with Fortnite than I would have predicted. Check out the video yourself here. 

2020 is just getting weirder. The iconic 11-year-old yodeler Mason Ramsey, who went viral in 2018, stars in Burger King’s most recent advertisement. Directed by Michel Gondry, the commercial starts off with Ramsey strutting out of a cow’s butt and simply takes off from there. He sings a song that describes how Burger King, according to the song, is working to bring down those emissions by putting their cows on a diet of lemongrass, which apparently leads to the cows excreting 33% less methane.

The #FreeBritney movement has been sweeping the internet recently. After many decidedly strange posts popped up on Britney Spears’ social media pages, people began to dig into the 12-year-old conservatorship that allows her father to control most aspects of her life. Read more about the movement here. 

This LA-based DJ offers the perfect coffee break in his TikToks, with quick compilations of all kinds, from senior year throwbacks to, oh yes, ratchet classics. 


TECH

Elon Musk's success has no end in sight. Tesla’s stock is now valued higher than American Express and Bank of America COMBINED. The man is now officially worth more than Warren Buffet. 

Twitter users from Barack Obama to Kanye West to Apple got hacked bigtime this past week. The hackers used verified accounts with large followings to enact a bitcoin scam that earned them almost $120,000. Twitter took the drastic step of blocking new tweets from every verified user, compromised or not.

Sports teams across the world are replacing live audiences with...cheerleading robots? With stadiums empty, someone has to step in. Watch the amazing out-of-synch cheering here.


VIDEO GAME

IN DEATH UNCHAINED developed by Superbright — In Death is an excellent bow-based VR roguelike that has you battling through Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. It’s an intense amount of fun, and while the normal version is great, In Death: Unchained is taking the experience to Oculus Quest. This makes all of the spins, trick shots, and intense amount of panic wire-free, and that’ll make it one of the best experiences on the platform to date.

I've slowly started to dip my toes into the world of VR gaming, and this one feels cool. It hasn’t come out yet but feels like a tribute to Dante’s Inferno that challenge your hand/eye coordination as you. I played a demo of the first one and enjoyed it, so I’m excited to check this out.


COMIC

DOSE by Sean Ellis & John Gebbia — Dose! is a unique reinterpretation of the super hero genre which explores what would happen to society if the technology and superhero population introduced in the Silver Age of Comics grew exponentially through today. Super Powers are mundane, kaiju walk the streets, and cybernetic enhancement surgery is just a phone call away, if you have the cubits to pay for it, that is. Within this environment, we meet the Screw Worm, an unemployed, ex-teenage metahero sidekick with a growing dependency on drugs and too much time on his hands. Through a series of calamitous events, the Screw Worm unwittingly stumbles onto a conspiracy that threatens to hasten the destruction of a world already teetering on the edge of collapse.

I’m a big superhero nerd and love any series that deconstructs this genre, which is exactly what we have here. It’s about what happens when you feel average and how to cope with what that means for you. It’s a cousin of WATCHMEN and THE BOYS, and if you’re a fan of those you should definitely add this to your pile. 


THEATRE

The 2020 Kilroys List has been released! This year’s list honors and amplifies new plays that were cancelled, postponed, or closed early due to COVID-19, all written by the women, trans, and non-binary writers of the American theatre. We were excited to see that PS faves Anna Moench, C.A. Johnson, Chiara Atik, and Jocelyn Bioh were among those named! Check out the list here. 


PODCAST

UNFINISHED: DEEP SOUTH​ — 10-part podcast that investigates the lynching of a wealthy black farmer in Arkansas at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. In June 1954, three weeks after the momentous Supreme Court decision  that  overturned  segregation,  Isadore  Banks  was kidnapped, tortured, chained to a tree  and set on fire. Banks’ murder terrorized the black community on the Arkansas Delta, foreshadowing a wave of white violence that would soon sweep the broader South. Sixty-five years  later,  we  investigate  Banks’  murder,  joining  his  family  in  their attempt to restore his legacy and solve the crime before the story goes cold forever. 

This is a really important story, while only the first three episodes are out. It is a vivid depiction of systematic racism in the south and will hopefully also uncover the mystery of who killed Isadore Banks.