Happy Monday, guys, and an even more enthusiastic Happy Prime Day to all the Amazon fiends out there. I purchased…nothing, actually, because the giant corporation that reportedly hosts 34 percent of the internet on its cloud servers couldn’t manage to keep its website up long enough for me to get 20 percent off of some Lysol wipes. Smh.
Back to work on this wrap-up post, I guess.
Must Read
“Wu-Tang Clan’s U-God on Being a Child of Rape, Nearly Fighting Leonardo DiCaprio and Talking to Ol’ Dirty Bastard From Beyond the Grave”
Ask hip hop fans to name their Top 5 emcees in the Wu-Tang Clan, you’ll likely get some combo of Method Man, Ghostface Killah, GZA, RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard. They’ll almost always overlook U-God, though, which is a shame, because he’s one of the truest members of the Clan. And, as Zaron Burnett found out when he interviewed the rapper and new author, definitely the most honest. READ MORE
An Actual Film Critic on ‘Skyscraper’
On the film’s Die Hard inspiration: “Dwayne Johnson plays a Bruce Willis-ian family man who must save those he loves from terrorists, running around an empty high-rise to do so.”
On what’s different from Die Hard: “Its character isn’t an ordinary guy, and the movie is wall-to-wall CGI.”
On the film’s bad CGI: “It looks so fake that it feels like Will is rummaging around in a video game.”
On why that’s… not good: “We love John McClane because he can’t do everything, and he’s in a movie where the impossible mostly can’t happen. In Skyscraper, reality is set aside. Nothing really matters.”
On time: “Expecting plausibility would be a waste of time.”
On the film: “Skyscraper is a dud.”
Read more about the film, Dwayne Johnson’s character’s love of duct tape and crippling asthma as a plot point, here.
Ali G in Da House, Again
While Sacha Baron Cohen’s new Showtime show Who is America? has succeeded at putting on a masterclass in viral marketing, Tim Grierson found the series itself to be Cohen at his best, and his most frustrating.
Low-T and You
First, the good news: If you’re one of the unlucky guys who suffers from low testosterone, it doesn’t mean it’s because you’re some kind of soyboi-cuck, no matter what angry neckbeards on the internet tell you. The bad news is that there are a host of reasons your T-levels are falling that you’ve never thought about, and some of them might be right under your nose.
Bring Out Your Dead
The newest thing in funerals has got to be “extreme embalming,” where instead of a body being dressed merely for an open casket, it’s instead posed in life-like dioramas that speak to the deceased’s personality or lifestyle — like this chap:
Which got us thinking: What are some of the other extreme ways different cultures bury their dead?
Too Long; Didn’t Read
When Floyd Mayweather fought Manny Pacquiao back in 2015 the purse was reportedly worth up to $500 million, with 60 percent going to Mayweather, and the other 40 percent deposited in Pacquiao’s bank account.
Or was it? In reality, fighters net far, far less than their reported winnings, mainly because they have to pay so many people. Here’s a quick primer on how fight purses break down.
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
