Peacock Original A Brave New World (center) will live alongside classics from the NBCUniversal library, including Saturday Night Live and The Office, which hops over from Netflix in 2021.

The official launch of Peacock today marks the fourth high-profile streaming service to debut in nine months. Disney+ had a fantastic launch, and the July 3 debut of Hamilton has kept its momentum going strong. Less fantastic was Apple TV+, which has had a few nice shows but seems to mostly be a vanity line for celebrity fluff. Somewhere in between these two is HBO Max, which has the advantage of HBO but has also created a lot of brand confusion, since it has a ton of content that isnt HBO at all.

Peacocks launch wont be perfect, either. For one thing, as I write this, it hasnt worked out a deal to be carried on either Roku or Amazon, which between them serve 80 million U.S. households. (Neither has HBO Max.) There's also some potential for confusion because Peacock has decided to offer three tiers free, premium with ads, and premium without ads. Peacock Premium with ads is $4.99/month, without ads $9.99/month except if youre a Comcast customer, in which case ad-supported Peacock Premium is free. Got that? If not, my colleague Josh Zyber has more in his Peacock primer.

I honestly doubt cost is going to be much of a barrier to entry. With the great cord-cutting transition now in full swing, streamers like Peacock which is owned by Comcast NBCUniversal are going to make it worth your while to check out what they have and hope its enticing enough to keep you from cancelling your free trial. To that end, Peacock Premium has been making some aggressive deals in recent weeks to beef up its library. A bunch of ViacomCBS content was licensed, meaning that Peacock will be the first major streamer to carry Yellowstone, the one essential TV dramathat until now wasonly on cable. And just last week Peacock announced it will be giving a sports-starved world 1,500 hours of Premier League football matches this season. Its not the Olympics, but its not Korean baseball either.

Thats in addition to the 20,000 hours already on Peacock Premiums shelf: The Office (which arrives on the service in January 2021), the non-blackface episodes of 30 Rock, all the Law & Orders, all the Kardashians, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers three hours before they air on NBC, quality blockbuster films like E.T., The Fast and the Furious, The Godfather trilogy, Jurassic Park, and much more.

Last but certainly least, it will have a slate of Peacock Originals, starting with Brave New World, a limited series that begins today. Lets be clear nobody buys a streaming service for the originals. Even after the sensational debut of The Mandalorian, I read comments online like, After the seasons over, Im cancelling. Hamilton, which I look forward to enjoying with my grandkids this weekend, is three hours long. People need more than one or two reasons, preferably several hundred, to keep a streaming service because its way too easy not to.

Peacock doesnt have a killer show like Mandalorian or Hamilton but it does have many distinct yet complementary television brands. They may pale next to Disney+ with its Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar holdings, but Peacocks catalog is nothing to sneeze at. This helps their brand proposition, especially at $4.99 a month. Lets say that while catching up with all the NBC, USA, SyFy, Bravo, and E! shows you never got around to watching, you get hooked on Yellowstone and then you also wind up enjoying Brave New World or the Battlestar Galactica reboot or the Psych 2 movie or even the new comedy from Tina Fey. Add it all up and its a pretty good deal. You might even miss it if it werent there. Thats Peacocks bet, anyway.

Brave New World is a reimagining of Aldous Huxleys classic dystopian novel, and is pretty clearly aimed at the Syfy slice of Peacocks audience. Huxley wrote the book in the 1930s in part as a satire on utopian novels that were popular back then. Books like Edward Bellamys Looking Backward and H.G. Wells Men Like Gods were the Big Pharma fantasy ads of their day, celebrating the role of technology in making everyone healthy and harmonious while downplaying minor side effects like the complete loss of personality, individual freedom, and critical thought.

In the New London of the future, a bureaucrat named Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd) and an attractive worker bee named Lenina Crowne (Jessica Brown Findlay) decide to hook up in Brave New World this is an event on par with choosing a new flavor of jam and they decide to fly off to the Savage Lands, aka New Mexico, for kicks. Things go sideways there, and Bernard and Lenina are rescued by a free spirit named John (Alden Ehrenreich), who follows them back to utopia. There, John cant believe what hes seeing a rigidly hierarchical society enforced by genetic engineering and mellowed out by mood pills called soma that people pop whenever theyre feeling, well, feelings.

I havent watched all nine episodes, but what Ive seen is pretty true to the novel, with some nudity and F-bombs dropped in to remind you that this isnt basic cable. The ending is different, but its not a jarring, Plot Against America kind of different. With its small cast and heavy reliance on CGI, Brave New World has the look and feel of a modestly-priced Syfy miniseries. It will appeal strongly to some but not to most.

The sheer size and scope of its library tells me that Peacock is aspiring to be more than an Apple TV+ or a CBS All Access (whose future is a bit cloudier now that ViacomCBS has sold Yellowstone and other shows to its rival). And yet, I dont see Peacock trying to grow into the next Netflix or even Disney+. This feels more like the next Hulu an on-demand TV rerun service with some originals and some movies. After all, NBC was one of the original investors in Hulu before Disney took over. Streaming may be the brave new world of TV, but theres still a lot of old-school TV worth watching, and Peacock is betting its worth five bucks a month to you.

Aaron Barnharthas written about television since 1994, including 15 years as TV critic for theKansas City Star.

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The Brave New World of Peacock Looks a Lot Like TVs Past - PRIMETIMER

The Eagles weren't even a separate group when they played their first gig together on July 12, 1971. The musicians who would go on to dominate popular music in the '70s and '80s performed together publicly for the first time in public as a backing group for superstar Linda Ronstadt and at a pretty unexpected venue.

Don Henley, GlennFrey, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner were all veterans of various groups in Southern California's burgeoning country-rock scene in the early '70s when they were picked to back Ronstadt in a new band in fact, that's why they were selected.

Henley had performed as a drummer in a group called Shiloh, which Kenny Rogersfirst discovered in Dallas and brought to Los Angeles to record, while Frey had worked in a duo called Longbranch Pennywhistle with J.D. Souther. Meisner had played in Rick Nelson's Stone Canyon Band, and Leadon had performed with the Flying Burrito Brothers prior to playing with Ronstadt, who hand-selected them to form a group of country-rock "all-stars" to back her on her Silk Purse Tour in 1971.

The new group made its debut backing Ronstadt during a performance at Disneyland on July 12, 1971, but the chemistry between the band members was so undeniably special that Henley and Frey soon approached Ronstadt to inform her of their intention to split off and form a new band of their own with those musicians, leaving her to once again hire an entirely new group.

Though the lineup was short-lived behind Ronstadt the Disneyland show was, in fact, their only show with her the sound of them playing together with her was immortalized on her self-titled third studio album, released in 1972. All four original Eagles appear on various tracks of that album, but they would waste no time making a mark of their own.

The Eagles released their self-titled debut album on June 1, 1972, and they were successful straight out of the gate, scoring hits with "Take It Easy" (which Frey co-wrote with his friend and then-neighbor, Jackson Browne), "Witchy Woman" and "Peaceful, Easy Feeling." The Eagles reached No. 22 on Billboard's US Pop Albums chart and was certified Platinum after selling more than a million copies, setting the band on a course to become one of the most successful in rock music history.

See Inside Glenn Frey's Sprawling California Mansion:

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Remember the Strange Way the Eagles Played Their First Gig? - Taste of Country

For any early birds who have ventured outside in the US this week, you may have seen a tiny yet spectacular sight in the pre-dawn sky. A comet with a bright, opulent tail has been gracing the skies in the wee morning hours before sunrise, and its been giving photographers quite the show for the last week.

The comet is known as Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE or just NEOWISE for short. Scientists just discovered the rock on March 27th. It gets its name from the NASA mission that discovered it, also called NEOWISE, for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The mission consists of a spacecraft in orbit around Earth thats tasked with cataloging as many asteroids near Earth as possible especially any that might be potentially hazardous to our planet. But when the team behind the NEOWISE mission spotted this object, they knew they had found something special.

In the discovery images, it immediately was obvious that something was up, Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator for NEOWISE at the University of Arizona, tells The Verge. Instead of [appearing] as a point-like dot, it looked distinctly fuzzy. And thats a good sign that this is a comet as opposed to an asteroid.

The difference between an asteroid and a comet mainly comes down to ice. Asteroids are typically pretty rocky in nature. While they may have some ice trapped inside of them, they look more or less like big chunks of dry rock. Comets, on the other hand, are often a mixture of rock and all sorts of ices including water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and more. These ices are pretty well mixed throughout a comet, and its this material that gives comets their trademark fuzzy tails. The Sun heats up the ice, turning it into gas that envelopes the comet.

Thats whats happening with NEOWISE right now. On July 3rd, NEOWISE came closer to the Sun than the orbit of Mercury, and that flyby caused much of the icy material to cook, erupting as gas and dust. NEOWISE is a pretty sizable comet, too, measuring about 3 miles (or 5 kilometers) across, which is why we can get this great view of it from Earth. You take something thats a really big hunk of ice and rock all mixed together, and you park it very close to the Sun, its gonna set off some fireworks, says Mainzer. Not enough to destroy it, we dont think, but enough to really make the surface sizzle and throw off a lot of material.

NEOWISE doesnt pose any threat to our planet. In fact, this is really the only chance any of us are going to get to see this comet with our own eyes. The path that NEOWISE takes around the Sun takes nearly 7,000 years to complete. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime event. Once in our lifetimes and our great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkids lifetimes, jokes Mainzer.

For much of last week, NEOWISE has been showing up just above the northeastern horizon, about an hour or so before sunrise in the Northern Hemisphere. People have been able to spot it best with binoculars, though some claim to be able to see it with the naked eye. And many astrophotographers have captured stunning images of the comet in all its gassy glory just before the Sun comes out, including the astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Around July 11th, though, the comet will start to appear in the evening just after sunset. Itll be in the northwestern sky, below the Big Dipper constellation (or Ursa Major). Mainzer expects the comet to be visible for at least another week, maybe even longer. But it all depends on how the comet behaves. Comets are very funny, fickle creatures, and it really depends on what this comet decides to do or what it does in reaction to this close passage by the Sun, says Mainzer. If were really lucky, its going to stay nice and active, and it should stay very bright for us.

But this wont last forever. NEOWISE is cruising steadily away from the Sun, and eventually, itll disappear from view, never to be seen by our generation again. The bright tail will drop away as the comet gets farther away from our Solar Systems heat source. The comets outer layers will start to settle down again, and it will go back into the cold dark space that it came from, says Mainzer.

Since this is such a fleeting moment, Mainzer really encourages everyone to try to catch a glimpse of this tiny piece of our Solar System, especially given what comets represent. These space rocks have been around since the Solar System first formed 4.6 billion years ago, so they carry with them the ancient history of our cosmic neighborhood. And experiencing a little awe about the origins of our cosmic neighborhood may be a nice respite from the hardship that the world is facing right now with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comets are a way for us to get in touch with that history and understand where we came from a little bit, says Mainzer. And even though this moment in time is difficult, it connects us to the bigger universe.

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How to catch a glimpse of the comet NEOWISE dazzling the skies right now - The Verge

Attorney General William Barr has ordered the release of vulnerable inmates from three federal prisons. Buzz60

Fifteen years after Daniel Lewis Lee was sentenced to die for his role in the brutal slaying of an Arkansas family, a letter arrived at the Justice Department from a surprising source.

G. Thomas Eisele, the federal judge who presided over the case, conceded that he had often questioned his work during the combined trial, lamenting that Lees co-defendant, Chevie Kehoe, wasmore culpable yet was spared by the jury and sentenced to life in prison.

I frequently have second-guessed my own decisions in this case and wondered what, if anything,I could have done differently that might have resulted in a more rational outcome, Eisele, then 91 and retired, wrote in 2014. I have no doubt that all involved did the best they could at the time with the knowledge that they had. Still, the end result leaves me with the firm conviction that justice was not served in this particular case, solely with regard to the sentence of death imposed on Daniel Lewis Lee.

Death penalty: Supreme Court clears way for federal executions to resume

Daniel Lewis Lee waits for his arraignment hearing in the Pope County Detention Center Oct. 31, 1997, in Russellville, Ark.(Photo: Dan Pierce, AP)

The years of unease have not been solely Eisele's burden, despite his deaththreeyears ago. Dan Stripling, the lead prosecutor in the case, also has written about the arbitrary nature of the sentences returned against Lee and Kehoe, whose victims included an 8-year-old girl.

The loudest voices, however, belong to the victims closest family members, who dont doubt Lees involvement, but maintain that it would be unfair"to execute the 47-year-old once-avowed white supremacist while the undisputed ringleader servesa life sentence.

This is wrong," said Earlene Peterson, whose daughter,granddaughter and son-in-law were murdered. We feel Mr. Lees execution would dishonor the memory of my daughter, Nancy Ann, and my granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth.

Barring a reprieve, Lee wouldbe the first person executed by the federal government in nearly a generation. His execution is scheduled forJuly 13 in Terre Haute, Indiana.

While the effective moratorium of 17 years has mostlycentered on disputes involving the drugs used to carry out lethal injection, Lees case the first of three scheduled in quick succession next week highlights a decades-long national struggleover the application of the ultimate punishment.

Battle for authority: DOJ says it has authority to carry out federal executions regardless of state rules

The execution room at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., is shown in this undated file photo.(Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons/AP)

The timing of Lees execution also has become particularly fraught for many involved, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the country, particularly the federal prison system, where nearly 100 inmates and one staffer have died. At the federal prison complex in Terre Haute,where the federal execution chamber is located, one inmate has died and four others are infected, according prison system records.

On Tuesday, Peterson, 81, and two other family members went to court seeking at least a delay of executionuntil the virusthreat eases.Peterson and the other relatives plan to witness the execution even though they oppose it.

"They can't make it safe," said Peterson, whose doctor has advised her not to attend because of her age and underlying heart and lung conditions. "This now totally unfair."

Coronavirus risk:Death row inmate seeks execution delay, says coronavirus endangers Buddhist priest

Lee's attorney, Ruth Friedman, said Tuesday that the health risk could also prevent her from guiding her client through what could be his last moments alive.

"I don't know whether I can go there or not," Friedman said. "It's shocking that we are talking about doing this in the middle of a pandemic."

With few exceptions, state executions have largely ground to a halt since the first surge of the coronavirus earlier this year. Texas' death chamber, the busiest in the nation, has been dark since Feb. 6, though that could change if Wednesday's scheduled execution goes forward as planned.

Last month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the federal governmentto resumeexecutions. The last federal inmate to be executedwas in2003, whenLouis Jones, a Gulf War veteran,was put to death for themurder ofanother soldier.

Attorney General William Barrannounced last yearthat the federal government would resume executions using the single drug pentobarbital. Thedrug is used in many but not all states.

Coronavirus outbreak: Hundreds of infectedinmateschallenging officials

Attorney General William Barr is sworn in before giving his opening statement before the House Judiciary Committee hearing about special counsel Robert Muellers report and his handling of the investigation.(Photo: Jack Gruber, USAT)

The justices denied a challenge from Lee and three other convicted murderers, who argued that federal executions must adhere to the specific protocols used by the states where each manwas sentenced, including the method of execution.

Fourteen states, led by Arizona, had sided with the Justice Department, tellingthe high court that pentobarbital "is a fast-acting barbiturate that can reliably induce and maintain a coma-like state that renders a person insensate to pain."

The American people, acting through Congress and presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,Barr said last month. The four murderers whose executions are scheduled...have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws."

Bureau of Prisons: Feds reassign warden at Louisiana prison hit hard by coronavirus

At the time of the Barr's statement, Peterson and other victims' family members had publicly expressed their opposition to Lee's execution, yet the attorney general referred to the government's obligation to the family as a central reason for proceeding.

"We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Barr said then.

Within days of Barr's statement, Peterson, who describes herself as a "Trump supporter,"appealed again to the administration to remove Lee from death row and assign him a life sentence.

"Please take our familys feelings into consideration and grant clemency to Mr. Lee," Peterson said. "Thank you and God Bless You.

There is no disputeover the heinous nature of the crimes that resulted in the deaths of William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her daughter, Sarah.

The family, according to court records, was targeted as part of 1996 robbery in which the pairsought to help fund the creation of a white supremacist community in the Pacific Northwest.

Plastic bags were placed over the victims' heads and secured with tape, while their hands and feet were bound. Their bodies were then dumped in a bayouafter being weigheddown with rocks. Kehoe, described by federal authorities as the more articulate of the two, was sentenced first and escaped the death penalty. Lee, who had lost his left eye in a bar fight, cut a more menacing appearance in court with a swastika tattoo on his neck.

FILE--Chevie Kehoe is taken from a police car after being extradited from Utah to Wilmington, Ohio, Thursday, July 17, 1997. Kehoe and two other men were indicted Friday, Dec. 12, 1997, by a federal grand jury in Little Rock, Ark., on charges they plotted to overthrow the government by killing public officials and police. (AP Photo/Tom Uhlman, File) ORG XMIT: LR102(Photo: TOM UHLMAN, Associated Press)

"Kehoe was unquestionably the leader of the organization and plotter of the (Mueller) murders," the lead prosecutor, Stripling, said in a 2014 letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder, expressing his concern for Lee's death sentence. "Lee's role was that of the 'Aryan Hit Man.' Evidence presented at trialestablished that Lee killed the two adults but was unable to execute the little girl. ThisKehoe did after insulting Lee for his weakness."

When anArkansas federal court jury returned with a life sentence for Kehoe, Stripling said, prosecutors sought to withdraw their intent to seek death for Lee.

"The decision to seek DOJ approval to withdraw the capital designation in Lee's case was not lightly made," Stripling wrote. "I do not feel that capital punishment is inherently wrong or that death rows are teeming with innocent people. However, I find very disturbing the randomness with which defendants are charged, convicted, and sentenced in capital cases. This case perfectly illustrates this unexplainable randomness. Itis this unpreventable disparity in outcomes that convinced me that the Lee capitaldesignation should have been de-certified."

Eisele, the presiding judge, also believed that Lee's fate had been settled when Kehoe was sentenced to life in prison.

"It was surprising tolearn that this was not the case and that formal permission to withdraw the death penalty as toLee had to be received from Washington, D.C.," Eisele wrote in a separate letter to Holder. "It was even more surprising to learn thatpermission was being denied, in direct conflict with the recommendation of the local UnitedStates Attorney and her assistants in Little Rock, all of them very capable prosecutors."

Friedman, Lee's attorney, said the letters from the prosecutor and the judge are extraordinary.

(FILES) In this file handout mugshot obtained courtesy of the Spokane Police Department on December 6, 2019, shows an undated booking photo of Danny Lee in Spokane, Washington. (Photo by Handout / Spokane Police Department / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE(Photo: Spokane Police Department/AFP)

"This case is flabbergasting in many ways," Friedman said. "To have the judge and lead prosecutor in the case come the same conclusion and for the familywho was there every day at the trial to agree that's problematic.

"And they (the government) want to go forward in the midst of a pandemic who is this for?"

Although the Supreme Court shut down a challenge last week, Friedman said attorneys are pursuing other options, including unresolved issuesrelated to the lethal injection protocol.

In Arkansas, meanwhile, Peterson said the loss, the prosecution, the sentencing dispute and thewaiting has taken its toll.

Peterson said a nun who had been ministering to Lee during his time on death row had reached out to indicate that he had "turned his life around." Peterson said there has been no contact, however, with Lee directly.

"It's been a lot," Peterson said, emphasizing that her opposition to the Lee's death sentence should not be misinterpreted.

"He (Lee) is guilty," Peterson. "He does need to pay for what he did."

More: Coronavirus was Paul Manafort's ticket home. Many other old, ill, nonviolent inmates are still in prison

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Re-opening federal death chamber: Victim opposition, pandemic threaten first execution in 17 years - USA TODAY

While there's no lack of interest in the project, The CW's Lost Boys show is having trouble leaving the coffin. Last summer, the network scrapped the initial pilot, dropping most of the castin the process. Creator Rob Thomas (iZombie) set out to rewrite the script alongsideHeather Mitchell (Scandal), withMarcos Siega (The Following) set to direct. Branden Cook (Industry),Lincoln Younes (Grand Hotel), andRuby Cruz (Castle Rock)all boarded the cast back in February.

Exclusively speaking with SYFY WIRE, musician G Tom Mac confirmsthat the axedpilot episode was filmed last spring before the reshoot order was handed down. Things were getting back on track this year until the pandemic hit and drove the series into a deep, undead sleep.

"Its stuck in limbo, even though they agreed to all the new script writing and all of that," Mactells us."Its hard to know; its a day-by-day thing for all these shows,when you can go back in [and shoot]. They were starting to go back, it looked like they could go back into production, and [everything shut down]."

G Tom Mac (akaGerard McMahon)performed and co-wrote "Cry Little Sister" for the 1987 movie andwas tapped towrite and arrange songs for the small-screen adaptation.

"They were adamant, obviously, about my theme song because you cant have the show without that," he says."With this, Ive certainly pulled together a very modernized version of 'People Are Strange'and then just creating contemporary, but cutting edge stuff that is appropriate for the show. And there are gonna be other artists [on the soundtrack] as well."

To be clear, Macisn't scoring the project, although he does know that there are "a couple people in line" for the job.

He goes on to praise theshow's commitment to representation, stating, "cast-wise, its more diversified in coordination with the times, as it should be. Its a little bit more female-driven in its way."

On that front, Mac touches on how the vampire-hunting Frog brothers (originally played by Corey Feldman andJamison Newlander) have been turned into theFrog sisters. He describes them as "really cool" and having "a very girl power factor going on with them." With that said, he's not sure how change-ups to the source material will register with passionate die-hards of the movie.

"Im sure its gonna be torn down by the hardcore fans; theres just no way that this show can win," Mac adds. "But it wasn't designed for the hardcore fans. It was basically trying to keep the essence of what the film projected ...Its a reimaginingand its an adaptation of the film because all the characters are in place."

Set in modern day, the show follows two brothers who move to a seaside town in North Carolina with their single mother. Once there, they learn that the place is teeming withvampires.Branden Cook is set to play the older brother Garrett (inspired by Jason Patric's David);Lincoln Younes takes up the post of Benjamin, the charismatic lead vampire (based on Kiefer Sutherland's David); andRuby Cruz isElsie, a half-vampire, who finds a connection with Garrett (an ode to Jami Gertz's Star).

There's no question that it's a contemporary translation ofJoel Schumacher's vision, but there was allegedly some talk of deviating from the formula.

"Robs original script,or storyline, was that it would go through decades of the vampires," Mac reveals."Going through the 60s, 70s, 80s and every season would have a different decade that they would travel through. The CW didnt think that was a good idea, so that got passed on. I thought [the idea] was kind of cool, actually it couldve worked."

With most live-actionproductions still on hold amid the pandemic, there's no telling when The Lost Boys will get to shoot its fresh pilot. But like we said earlier, the interest is there. Even CW head honcho Mark Pedowitz wants to see it realized, going so far as to describe the show as a"passion of mine" in March.

"Ive been on board with this thing for about threeyears now, almost four years. [They've been]trying to get it up and running. Its had many obstacles, including the pandemic now," Mac concludes."I hope it bloody well comes out soon before Im gone."

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The CW's Lost Boys show will 'keep the essence' of the movie, says series songwriter G Tom Mac - SYFY WIRE

Who has not sung Love Me Do by the Beatles for the top of your lungs, or not enthusiastic, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen? This without leaving to a side the legacy of Elvis Presley, the strong riffs of Metallica, and the rebellion of Guns N Roses life would not be the same without a good dose of rock and roll.

For this reason, to celebrate the World day of Rock, which is celebrated on the 13th of July since 1985, HBO has a selection of movies and series that will honor the music. Then, some of the titles available on HBO GO remember that the rock is more alive than ever.

Can you imagine waking up one day and realize that the world does not remember the songs The Beatles? This is what happens to Jack Malik, a frustrated musician who decides to switch to the songs of the famous group such as yours. It is also in this film, directed by Danny Boyle, begins a musical journey nostalgic with the problems of the legendary grouping of Liverpool.

In the eighties, Conor lives in the centre of Dublin, where new expressions of music are the flower of the skin such as the frustration of a teenager. Their behavior and problems at home because of transferred from a private school to a public one, where, without thinking, create a rock band with the sole purpose of Raphina, the girl he falls in love at first sight, we pay attention and agree to star in his music video.

The sixties, in the united States, the first love and the best songs of the Beatles to make safety pin to ribbon to enjoy the World day of Rock. All the characters of this musical, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess, will make a tribute band of the most important rock and roll of all time. What begins as research, ends on a musical journey full of nostalgia and experimentation.

Lady Gaga is synonymous with musical talent that is reflected in this film which earned him an Oscar for Best Original Song, in which he has shared the stage with Bradley Cooper, forming one of the pairs most beloved stories of recent years in cinema. Gaga is put in the role of an Ally, a young singer, and Cooper Jackson, Maine, a recognized artist in decline, that must face the challenges of hunger, alcohol, and ambition as his career reaches its maximum.

The day Chris Izzy Cole is a technique of photocopiers, but at night it turns into a big fan and the lead singer of a rock tribute band to Steel Dragon, the band of choice and one of the most recognized in the scene. The film, starring Mark Wahlberg, it is inspired by the life of Tim The Ripper Owen, the lead singer of Judas Priest that went from being the biggest fan of your favorite band to become one of the singers in the most legendary of all time.

Bruce Springsteen and his large repertoire of music inspired by the film, perfect for viewing on the World day of Rock. The young Javed discovers the music of Springsteen, who changes his life completely and gives you the momentum needed to address some of the parents ultraconservatives and of a society that does not fit you. With the song Dancing in the Dark, The River and Blinded by the Light in the background, the film is a journey of cultural self-knowledge and, above all, a tribute to Springsteen.

Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese are an explosive mixture with the best result: Vinyl. The series features the struggle of Richies Window, which, at the height of punk and rock and roll, tries to keep afloat his record label. In 10 chapters, this production is a perfect window to understanding how it moves in this sector.

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HBO | World Day of the Rock: 7 movies and series, remember that the rock is alive more than ever | A Star ... - Code List

While 'genre-free' bands have existed for quite a while, it is Grooveyard-- a project by Ashifur Rahman Chowdhury, Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed and Dewan Anamul Hasan that truly solidified its merit in the context of this country. The band put out their self-titled album recently, with adoration from band music fans. The seven tracks exhibit seven different flavours, which is a rare feat for an album made by just three people. "We love to mesh different genres", says Ashifur, who was the vocalist of rock band Black at one point, "If you listen to Losing Control, it starts off with a reggae vibe and transitions into more traditional rock. All our musical inspirations growing up has an effect in our sound." Songs like Raining Sun, Edge of the World, Lifeline and Reach out are all proof of just how far the indie music industry has progressed. "Our songs are in English because as lofty as it sounds, we want international reach. We want to travel the world and play music together," says the vocalist. Ashifur emphasised the need to support local acts, for them to grow out of their moulds and reach their true potential. "Bands like Dads in the Park, Eida and Attic are doing exceptionally well, and I am all but sure that this entire scene will be elevated and reach the international audience," he adds. The songs are available in all the major streaming sites, including Spotify and GAAN app. They can also be listened to on Grooveyard's official YouTube channel.

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Grooveyards self-titled album impresses - The Daily Star

NEW YORK, July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Color Star Technology Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq CM: HHT) (the "Company," "Color Star," "we" or "HHT") is pleased to announce that Color China Entertainment Limited ("Color China"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Color Star, has just signed a cooperation agreement with a renowned American musician, Larry Carlton. Larry Carlton will take on the role of a Star Teacher on the "Color World" online education platform, created by Color Star.

Larry Carlton, a guitar master in the music industry, was born in Southern California in March 1948. He is a master of American jazz, blues, pop and rock genres on the guitar and has participated in more than 500 music albums, winning the Grammy Award 4 times. Additionally, he is widely acclaimed as one of the most outstanding guitarists in the jazz scene in the second half of the 20th century. In 1981, Larry Carlton won his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for his work on "Theme From Hill Street Blues." He then began working with numerous world-class entertainers, including the legendary blues master B.B King, Jazz Rock Super Group Steely Dan, Hollywood's Sammy Davis Jr. and even Michael Jackson. Overall, Larry Carlton's voracious appetite for music has earned him 19 Grammy nominations and 4 Grammy Awards, a Star of the Rock Hall of Fame in Hollywood, the Titan of Tone award and many others, as well as widespread recognition amongst fellow world class entertainers. His influence can be found in a plethora of genres in today's music scene, with jazz, blues, pop and rock all bearing the mark of Larry Carlton.

Color Star CEO, Sean Liu, said that "in the future, we will cooperate with more top artists and producers in Asia, including music, film, television, animation, dance and other industries. We believe that Color World has the potential to bring richer content to our students."

Color Star plans to continue growing its list of Star Teachers, who will bring their various expertise in music, film, sports, animation, television, presentations, dance, art and other entertainment industries to the Color World platform. Color Star believes that these top celebrities and professionals can pass their precious experiences on to pupils on our platform, helping to instill the desire for knowledge in their hearts.

About Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.

Color Star Technology, is a holding company whose primary business is offering both online and offline innovative education services. Its business operations are conducted through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Color China Entertainment Ltd. and CACM Group NY, Inc. The Company also anticipates providing an after-school tutoring program in New York via its joint venture entity Baytao LLC, and providing online music education via a platform branded "Color World."

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made herein are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "plan", "outlook", and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward-looking statements include the business plans, objectives, expectations and intentions of the parties following the completion of the acquisition, and HHT's estimated and future results of operations, business strategies, competitive position, industry environment and potential growth opportunities. These forward-looking statements reflect the current analysis of existing information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, caution must be exercised in relying on forward-looking statements. Due to known and unknown risks, our actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements: there is uncertainty about the spread of the COVID-19 virus and the impact it will have on HHT's operations, the demand for the HHT's products and services, global supply chains and economic activity in general. These and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in the other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") by HHT. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact our expectations and projections will be found in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019. HHT's SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. HHT disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.Contact: Investor RelationsFinancialBuzzIRinfo@FinancialBuzzIR.comTele: +1-877-601-1879

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Color Star Technology Announces the Addition of Renowned Musician Larry Carlton to its Color World Online Education Platform - Salamanca Press

The hunt for the perfect suit meets its match with Simone Prisenberg's splurge-worthy swimwear. As owner and operator of Martinique Swim, Prisenberg's cute suits are available at several stores or directly from martiniqueswim.com. Head to the showroom in Cow Bay (by appointment only) for a personalized fitting and consultation, or pick one up at Biscuit General Store (1661 Argyle Street) or Pro Skates (6451 Quinpool Road).

If you want swimwear that's printed, Thief & Bandit (1673 Barrington Street, Suite 200) is the brand for you. Whether you're a stargazer who's into an out-of-this-world pattern or you're channeling Carole Baskin with a cheetah-print bikini, Thief & Bandit's swimwear will make you the life of the pool party. Find them at thiefandbandit.com.

Sueno Swimwear owner Joanne Tranter grew up surrounded by beaches in South Wales, travelling to California and Mexico as she learned to surf, and began making her own bikinis before settling in Black Point. Tranter launched her business in 2012 and since then has been creating bold prints and asymmetrical patterns, available on her Etsy shop or at suenoclothing.com.

Local designers Ana & Zac have partnered with Sueno for a new collection that's minimalist and basic in all the right ways. Check it out at anaandzac.ca/collections/sueno.

Sisters Omeda and Anna launched label Meda Swim in 2015. Its style selection skews simple, but the basic suits are flattering on all body types and are named after different Canadian towns. Their swimsuit models are all friends, mothers, and women they know in real life. Shop at medaswim.com.

Agricola Street shop Sattva Boutique (2453 Agricola Street) stocks swimwear from size-inclusive brand Mimi & August, based out of Montreal. Grab a few of the high-quality Canadian-made suits in store, or check out the full collection online at mimiandaugust.com.

If you're looking for a one-of-a-kind swimsuit, Girl on the Moon's got you. You can literally make your own with patterns from crochet guru Girl On The Moon, AKA Alison Durning. After learning how to make bags and baskets, Durning was hooked on crochet, and began her Etsy business in 2015. Find her on Instagram @girlonthemooncrochet.

Silken Lingerie store in Sunnyside Mall (1595 Bedford Highway) is for people looking for a bit more care in their swimwear-buying experience. Owner Morva Castellani and her staff will help you with a free bra fitting to find the perfect size, and they even offer a specialty selection of D+ cup size swimwear and mastectomy swimwear. silkenlingerie.ca/

If you've had no luck with the usual suspects, try thrifting your next swimsuit. Check out Fat Chance Vintage, Me + You Thrift, or The Bounty Hfx on Instagram to find a pre-loved suit you can rock all summer. Bonus: The Bounty also has a selection of items available at Lost & Found (2383 Agricola Street).

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Shop local swimwear, whatever your style | Hot Summer Guide | Halifax, Nova Scotia - The Coast Halifax

The Round Ireland Yacht Race is Ireland's classic offshore yacht race starts from Wicklow Sailing Club (WSC) and is organised jointly with the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) and the Royal Irish Yacht Club (RIYC). This page details the very latest updates from the 2008race onwards including the race schedule, yacht entries and the all-important race updates from around the 704-mile course. Keep up to date with the Round Ireland Yacht Race here on this one handy reference page.

Following Government restrictions over COVID-19, a decision on the whetheror not the 2020 race can be held was made on April 9 2020 to reschedule the race toSaturday, August 22nd.

Because of COVID-19, the race had to have a virtual launch party at the Royal Irish Yacht Club for its 21st edition.

In spite of the setbacks, however, a record entry is in prospect for 2020 with 41 boats entered with 23 weeks to go to the race start. The race is also going big onsize and variety to make good on a pre-race prediction that the fleet could reach 60. An Irish offshore selection trial also looks set to be a component part of the 2020 race.

The rescheduling of the race to a news date emphasises the race's national significance, according to Afloat here

704 nautical miles, 810 miles or 1304 kilometres.

3171 kilometres is the estimate of Ireland's coastline by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.

SSE Renewables are the sponsors of the 2020 Round Ireland Race.

Wicklow SailingClub in association with the Royal Ocean Racing Club in London and The Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dublin.

Off Wicklow Harbour on Saturday, August 22nd 2020.

Monohulls 1300 hrs and Multihulls 13.10 hrs.

Leave Ireland and all its islands (excluding Rockall) to starboard.

It depends on the boat. The elapsed record time for the race is under 40 hours but most boats take five or six days to complete the course.

The Race Tracker is here

The idea of a race around Ireland began in 1975 with a double-handed race starting and finishing in Bangor organised by Ballyholme Yacht Club with stopovers in Crosshaven and Killybegs. That race only had four entries. In 1980 Michael Jones put forward the idea of a non-stop race and was held in that year from Wicklow Sailing Club. Sixteen pioneers entered that race with Brian Coads Raasay of Melfort returning home after six days at sea to win the inaugural race.Read the first Round Ireland Yacht Race 1980 Sailing Instructions here

Skipper Kenny Rumball of the J109 yacht 'Jedi' faced that very problem in the 2018 race. How he dealt with it led to a RORC Award. He describes in detail the MOB recovery procedure he used here

The Round Ireland race record of 38 h 37 min 7 s is held by MOD-70 trimaran Musandam-Oman Sail and was set in June 2016.

George Davids Rambler 88 (USA) holds the fastest monohull race time of two days two hours 24 minutes and 9 seconds set in the 2016 race.

William Power's 45ft Olivia undertook a round Ireland cruise in September 1860. Full details of this first circuit are here

Richard Hayes completed his solo epic round Ireland voyage in September 2018 in a 14-foot Laser dinghy. The voyage had seen him log a total of 1,324 sea miles (2,452 kilometres) in 54 sailing days. in 1961, the Belfast Lough Waverly Durward crewed byKevin and Colm MacLaverty and Mick Clarke went around Ireland in three-and-a-half weeks becoming the smallest keelboat ever to go round. While neither of these achievements occurred as part of the race they are part of Round Ireland sailing history.Full story on these circumnavigationshere.

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Darren Wright of Howth Puts Famous Pata Negra On to Boil in the Round Ireland Yacht Race - Afloat

The latest round of Brexit trade talks between the UK and EU finished a day early this week, with significant differences still remaining between the two sides. A statement from the UK's chief negotiator David Frost confirmed he is still committed to coming to a principle agreement for a future trade deal this month. This round of talks was the first to be held face-to-face since March, which, according to Mr Frost, injected extra depth and flexibility to our discussions".

However, negotiations are still at a standstill in several key areas.

Sticking points between the two sides include the so-called "level-playing field" to ensure businesses on one side don't have an unfair advantage over the other fishing rules and the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

As tensions are set to rise in the incoming weeks, unearthed reports shed light on what could be another tortuous Brexit battle.

The Irish border is one prominent area but another is Rockall a rock with a colourful history of claim and counterclaim involving the UK.

Rockall is situated in a remote part of the North Atlantic and is about 160 nautical miles west of the Scottish islands of St. Kilda and 230 nautical miles to the north-west of Donegal.

The uninhabited rock is 25 metres wide and 17 metres high and is actually the remnants of an extinct volcano.

The tiny islet has been the source of an ownership dispute involving the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Iceland.

The dispute has not been so much about the ownership of the rock but the potential for oil and gas reserves in the surrounding seabeds and the lucrative fishing grounds.

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Rockall fishing is reportedly a multi-million-pound industry with a large supply of haddock, monkfish, and squid.

According to a recent report by IrishCentral, last year, Scottish authorities claimed that Rockall was a UK territory and attempted to prevent Irish fishermen from coming within the 12-mile international limit.

The Irish government, on the other hand, contended that the island was not subject to an international boundary as it was simply a large, uninhabitable rock in the middle of the ocean.

Irish claims are backed up by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) 1982.

The law states that rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.

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Consequently, Irish boats have fished in the area for well over 30 years.

The Scottish Government, in turn, claimed that it has never been legal for other nations to fish within 12 miles of the islet.

The UK first claimed ownership of Rockall in 1955, but Ireland, Iceland, and Denmark have long challenged that ownership.

Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney took a firm stance on the issue in June last year and said that Ireland had never recognised British claims to the island.

He said: "We have never recognised UK sovereignty over Rockall and accordingly, we have not recognised a territorial sea around it either. We have tried to work positively with the Scottish authorities and to deal with sensitive issues that flow from it in a spirit of kinship and collaboration."

Scotland's Fisheries Minister Fergus Ewing told BBC Scotland at the time: "This is a routine enforcement matter to ensure that illegal activity within the UK's territorial waters, namely within a radius of 12 miles of the islet of Rockall, ceases.

"We have been engaging with the Irish government for a considerable length of time because we would prefer that this matter is resolved by discussion and negotiation amicably, and that remains the case."

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Brexit fishing battle: Britain and Ireland 'to clash over ownership of tiny rock' - Express.co.uk

Pride-inspired accessories you can rock all year round - fashion and trends - Hindustan Times "; forYoudata += ""; forYoudata += ""; forYoudata += ""; count++; if (i === 7) { return false; } }); forYouApiResponse=forYoudata; $(forutxt).html('Recommended for you'); $(foruContent).html(forYoudata); } } }); } else if(forYouApiResponse!=''){ $(forutxt).html('Recommended for you'); $(foruContent).html(forYouApiResponse); } } function getUserData(){ $.ajax({ url:"https://www.hindustantimes.com/newsletter/get-active-subscription?usertoken="+user_token, type:"GET", dataType:"json", success: function(res){ if(res.length>0) { $("[id^=loggedin]").each(function(){ $(this).hide(); }); } } }); } function postUserData(payLoad, elm){ var msgelm=$(elm).parents(".subscribe-update").nextAll("#thankumsg"); $.ajax({ url:"https://www.hindustantimes.com/newsletter/subscribe", type:"POST", data:payLoad, contentType: "application/json", dataType: "json", success: function(res){ if(res.success===true){ $(msgelm).show(); 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Pride-inspired accessories you can rock all year round - Hindustan Times

Kenny Loggins performs in Las Vegas, Nev., in 2002. (Ethan Miller/Reuters)Saluting the mellow sound that signals all is right with the world.

They say jazz is Americas musical signature: As Ken Burns wrote, the genius of America is improvisation, our unique experiment a profound intersection of freedom and creativity. . . . Nowhere is this more apparent than in jazz the only art form created by Americans, an enduring and indelible expression of our genius and promise.

Stirring words. Jazz is inventive, vibrant, and complex. Everything about it is great, except the way it sounds. Listening to jazz is like trying to chase down a housefly. Theres a reason why only French tourists pretend to like it. To quote a more honest writer, John OFarrell: Music is a journey. Jazz is getting lost.

Americas truly sublime musical innovation is Yacht Rock. Savor the wit of that oxymoron: How hard can you rock if youre on a yacht? The boat itself rocks like a baby, not like Led Zeppelin. So Yacht Rock is gentle, but it cant be sad. There is no moping on a yacht. If you want to be glum and wear black, get off the boat and go find a jazz club. Not that anyone would ever invite you on their yacht in the first place.

The essence of a Yacht Rock song (my Spotify playlist is here) is that you can picture it being blasted on the deck of a yar and saucy watercraft circa 1981. Girls in cut-off shorts and bikini tops toss their arms in the air and say, Whoo! while the owner and host a guy named Brad or Chad or Gary, who struck it rich with, say, a string of Camaro dealerships and is himself a sort of Camaro in human form high-fives the guests, bites his lower lip, and moves a little off the beat, occasionally interjecting, Awesome, man! Brad or Chad or Gary drinks only the classy beers such as Lowenbrau or Michelob and has a cooler stocked with colorful wine coolers for the girls. Only his one very special lady will be present later when he opens up a perfectly chilled bottle of Aste Spumante. His captains chair is made of rich Corinthian leather.

Yacht Rock isnt what youd call real rock, angry rock, rock with a point or an attitude or a message or even a smirk, because Brad or Chad or Gary is just here to have a good time (and here is on earth). There is no edge to Yacht Rock any more than there is an edge to the round, rolling sea. However, Yacht Rock is not Loser Rock or Wimp Rock. It may be smooth, but it isnt limp. When the Yacht Rock is blasting out of the JVC boom box, the sun is shining, the girls are swaying, the waves are rolling, and all is well. Any song about lost love or thwarted longing or the girl that got away is inadmissible unless it reminds Brad or Chad or Gary about that time he almost met Cheryl Tiegs in Puerto Vallarta, and hell tell you about this incident at length.

The line between Yacht Rock and Wimp Rock is, alas, being eroded daily by the programmers of Sirius XM, whose Yacht Rock station is Channel 105 at the moment, and also available on the app if you happen not to be driving much these days. Siriuss Yacht Rock station is a sort of National Archives of Yacht Rock, one of Americas greatest innovations since the development of the backyard bug zapper. But thanks to some programmers inability to grasp that no one wants to listen to ow-my-broken-heart songs on a yacht, Channel 105 Rock is programmatically almost indistinguishable from Channel 17, the Wimp Rock station dubbed the Bridge. Bridge over whiny waters, that is. The Bridge is nothing but moany-groany lovey-dovey songs by the likes of Air Supply and Bread and America, and I love it inordinately. But Im not playing anything as embarrassingly low-T as Baby Im-a Want You on a yacht, unless I want to invite mutiny.

Yacht Rock has to have a pulse; its got to make you feel like youre scything through the waves while youre enjoying a classy snack like cottage cheese on melba toast. Its got soul, but not real soul, just the blue-eyed kind. You cant play Marvin Gaye on a yacht because Marvin Gaye was a genius. The Eagles are not Yacht Rock: Theyre too great. Same for The Police and The Rolling Stones. (Most Europeans are automatically disqualified anyway; a European on a yacht conjures up an image of a 200-foot monster docking in Nice and skippered by a man named Baron von Ruprecht of Wienerwald. Who can party down in a white dinner jacket while holding a snifter of brandy?)

Yacht Rock is the unchallenging, mood-brightening background music of the ordinary Chad who struck it rich enough to get a starter yacht, albeit not rich enough to compete with Baron von Ruprecht, who had a 200-year head start. America is the land where anyone might get rich enough to own a yacht, and so Yacht Rock is a celebration of America. It makes you lift your foam beer-can insulator to the cerulean skies and bawl out, Meet you all the way or Yah mo B there.

Yacht rock has its own Lennon and McCartney, except they are named Loggins and McDonald. I know what youre going to say, but Ive done the research and it turns out that Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald are not the same guy. McDonald offered a foretaste of the smooth-it-down Eighties on the Doobie Brothers Takin It to the Streets (1976). This was the first hit single ever sung by McDonald, and was there ever a more adorable track about urban unrest? If you blasted that over loudspeakers in the midst of an actual riot, the looting and smashing would stop immediately, and everyone would beg you to stop ruining the mood. As McDonalds profile was rising, Loggins came by like the guy in the Mr. Microphone commercial: Hey good lookin, Ill be back to pick you up later! Soon the pair were collaborating on What a Fool Believes, (1979), which despite being about a loser is just bouncy enough to qualify as Yacht Rock rather than loser rock. Loggins and McDonald combined again for This Is It (1979), a spectacularly non-specific paean to get-er-done Americanism on the cover of which Loggins is depicted holding what appears to be a magical glowing orb obviously the mystical power cell of Yacht Rock. With Im Alright, the following year, Loggins crafted a tune that was not only the perfect Yacht-Rock track, complete with misspelled title, but inspired the perfect Yacht-Rock conversation: Did anyone see Caddyshack?

The summer of Caddyshack 1980 was Yacht Rocks annus mirabilis. Along came a third natural master of styrofoam wave-coasting: Christopher Cross. Released at the tail end of 1979, his eponymous rookie album became the lodestar of Yacht Rock, containing both of the quintessential examples of the form. Not only did Cross come up with Ride Like the Wind, which actually sounds like the internal soundtrack playing in Brad/Chad/Garys mind as he rips across the water (and features McDonalds epic backup vocal), but at the same time gave us Sailing, a song without which no one ever would have thought up the term Yacht Rock. Sadly, Cross would later become a casualty of Wimp Rock with Arthurs Theme (The Best That You Can Do) and Think of Laura.

Yacht Rocks subtle distinctions sometimes elude even dedicated students of the form. For instance, Fleetwood Macs You Make Lovin Fun (Fun! Lovin!) is Yacht Rock. Fleetwood Macs Go Your Own Way (cutting, bitter) is not. Rockn Me (Steve Miller Band) is Yacht Rock. Rock the Casbah (The Clash) is not; its too good.

References to actually being on a boat definitely add Yacht-Rock cachet, because no one will ever accuse you of being too obvious on a boat; if anything, use of irony on the water will earn you nasty looks and maybe an order to clean out the bottom of the cooler. But Rock the Boat (Hues Corporation) is not Yacht Rock, its disco. Its a dance song. On a yacht, you dont dance, you dance around. Big difference. Dancing requires skill, or at least rhythm. Dancing around you can manage even if youre a Camaro in human form. Cool Change, with its serene lyrics about sailing on the cool and bright clear water, is Yacht-Rock splendor despite being an import, from Australias Little River Band. Australia, though, is the most American of all overseas countries big, confident, friendly, and party-minded. Australia is Americas honorary little brother. Love Will Find A Way is pure yachty bliss, not only because of the gentle, undemanding optimism of the song, not only because of the not-too-fast-buddy tempo, but because the band that performed it was Pablo Cruise. Pablo Cruise! They might as well have called themselves Boaty McBoatface.

Yacht Rock lyrics are not allowed to be profound, equivocal, or thoughtful. Paul Simon and Carole King are not Yacht Rock. Acceptable Yacht-Rock sentiments include:

While you see a chance, take it.

Ride into the danger zone.

Were still havin fun, and youre still the one.

Believe it or not, Im walkin on air!

You make-a-my dreams come true.

And if your yacht hasnt come in yet? Not to worry; all of these songs make the ideal soundtrack for backyard barbecuing, which is basically yacht-rocking on land. The ideal accessories are a badminton set, a Weber grill, a Coleman cooler. Get out the Bluetooth speaker, bring it into the yard, and revel in Americas glorious Yacht-Rock inheritance.

Excerpt from:

The All-American Glory of Yacht Rock - National Review

Several TV episodes and scenes featuring characters in blackface have been pulled from streaming and syndication in recent weeks as Hollywood confronts its racist past and present.

Last week, Tina Fey made headlines by asking NBC to remove episodes of 30 Rock featuring blackface, and issuing a controversial apology for pain they have caused. Other scripted shows, including Community, The Office, Scrubs and The Golden Girls, have since followed suit in an effort to erase racist tropes and images from their histories.

Late-night TV also has been forced to address blackface scandals after sketches with the hosts of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live performing in blackface resurfaced.

Fallon apologized for making the unquestionably offensive decision to wear blackface while impersonating fellow comedian Chris Rock for a 2000 Saturday Night Live sketch, while Kimmel apologized for appearing in blackface multiple times on The Man Show, which ran from 1999 to 2004, apologized weeks later.

Notably, multiple animated series, including Central Park, Big Mouth and Family Guy, have vowed to recast Black characters originally voiced by white actors.

With viewers increasingly dependent on streaming platforms rather than physical media, the editing and removal of these scenes and episodes leaves little trace of their existence. As such, The Times has compiled a list of streaming TV shows that have recently edited or removed episodes featuring blackface, along with synopses of the racist imagery and stereotypes contained therein.

David Cross, left, and Bob Odenkirk at a screening of their show W/ Bob & David at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles in 2015.

(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

On June 15, comedian and actor David Cross announced that Netflix had decided to pull a sketch from his and Bob Odenkirks W/ Bob and David that featured Cross in blackface.

The sketch, titled Know Your Rights (Season 1, Episode 3), saw Cross character, Gilvin Daughtry, give an absurd how-to lesson on maintaining your rights in the face of police harassment. Appearing at first sans blackface, Gilvin interacts with a police officer (Keegan-Michael Key), who stops his car briefly and then lets him pass.

When Cross character rolls up to the checkpoint again in blackface, the same police officer exasperated by Gilvins repeated attempts to provoke him defers to his colleague, who attacks Gilvin with pepper spray and a taser.

Rue McClanahan, left, Estelle Getty, Bea Arthur and Betty White of The Golden Girls.

(ABC Photo Archives / Getty Images)

Hulu removed a 1988 episode of The Golden Girls featuring Blanche (Rue McClanahan) and Rose (Betty White) wearing mud facial masks.

Mixed Blessings (Season 3, Episode 23) saw Dorothys (Bea Arthur) son, Michael (Scott Jacoby), introduce himself to the mother of his fianc, Lorraines (Rosalind Cash), who is concerned about Lorraine marrying a white man.

Unaware of the family meeting, Blanche and Rose stumble into the room in matching brown mud masks. This is mud on our faces, Rose says, explaining their appearance to their guests. Were not really Black.

Yvette Nicole Brown, left, Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs and Jonathan Banks face Ken Jeong in NBCs Community.

(Justin Lubin / NBC)

Also scrapped was an installment of Community titled Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Season 2, Episode 14).

Netflix pulled the episode, which saw Ken Jeongs Ben wear a white wig, blackface and body paint while participating in a roleplay game with his classmates. At one point in the game, Pierce (Chevy Chase) refers to Ben as Blackface and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) asks whether the study group is just going to ignore that hate crime?

Steve Carell, left, John Krasinski and Rainn Wilson in The Office.

(Justin Lubin / NBC)

On June 26, The Office creator Greg Daniels confirmed to Variety that a scene from Dwight Christmas (Season 9, Episode 9), featuring a character in blackface, had been edited out.

The scene took place during an office holiday party thrown by Dwight (Rainn Wilson), who dresses up as the Dutch gift-giver Belsnickel and taps his assistant, Nate (Mark Proksch), to accompany him as Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter, a racist character from Dutch folklore.

Prior to edits, Nate was briefly seen walking through the Dunder Mifflin parking lot wearing blackface with red lipstick before immediately turning back at Dwights last-minute request. Dwight calls him off after being scolded by Stanley (Leslie David Baker) when his colleagues learn of Belsnickels racist origins.

Zach Braff in Scrubs.

(Dean Hendler / NBC)

On June 23, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence confirmed on Twitter that plans to pull blackface episodes were already in the works. Hulu subsequently removed three episodes.

In My Friend the Doctor (Season 3, Episode 8), J.D. (Zach Braff) appeared in blackface during a fantasy sequence in which he imagines himself as his best friend, Turk (Donald Faison), in a romantic situation with Elliot (Sarah Chalke).

In My Jiggly Ball (Season 5, Episode 4), Chalke wore blackface during another fantasy sequence in which J.D. imagines her character as half Turk and half Elliot while playing video games on the couch.

And in My Chopped Liver (Season 5, Episode 17), Turk and J.D. arrived at a fraternity house in white face makeup and blackface, respectively. Are you sure this isnt offensive? J.D. asks, to which Turk replies, Buddy, relax. These are my guys, all right? As long as youre with me, theyre going to find this funny. But when J.D. is met at the door by several Black fraternity members, they arent amused, yanking him inside to beat him up and throw him out.

30 Rock stars Alec Baldwin, left, Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan.

(Mitchell Haaseth / Associated Press )

At executive producers Fey and Robert Carlocks request, four episodes of 30 Rock have been removed from Hulu, Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play and syndication.

In Believe in the Stars (Season 3, Episode 2), Jenna (Jane Krakowski) wore blackface while swapping identities with Tracy (Tracy Morgan) in a social experiment to prove who has it hardest in America: women or Black men.

Live Show (Season 5, Episode 2), the East Coast edition of 30 Rocks first live episode, featured a sketch in which guest star Jon Hamm gets a hand transplant from a Black man who was executed. The show also referenced the unfounded racist conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States with a fake Fox News ticker that read, Exclusive Interview With Kenyan Liar.

Christmas Attack Zone (Season 5, Episode 10) saw Jenna wear blackface again when attending a costume party dressed as former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann. And Live From Studio 6H (Season 6, Episode 19) saw Hamm wear a wig and blackface again alongside Morgan in a parody of the racist radio and TV program Amos n Andy.

Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia stars Rob McElhenney, left, Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day, Danny DeVito and Glenn Howerton.

(FX)

Hulu and Netflix U.K. have each taken down five episodes of Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

In Americas Next Top Paddys Billboard Model Contest (Season 4, Episode 3), aspiring actress Dee (Kaitlin Olson) presented two racist characters, Taiwan Tammy and Martina Martinez, for her fledgling web series. Their offensive portrayals including wigs, prosthetics and fake accents prompt Charlie (Charlie Day) to remark, This is so racist.

Dee Reynolds: Shaping Americas Youth (Season 6, Episode 9) saw Mac (Rob McElhenney) wear blackface while impersonating actor Danny Glover as Murtaugh in Paddys staging of Lethal Weapon 5. Paul Walter Hauser also appeared in blackface while playing a high school character in their version of the movie, while Frank (Danny DeVito) wore a braided wig while portraying a Native American crime boss.

The Gang Recycles Their Trash (Season 8, Episode 2) saw Dee reprise her racist Martina Martinez character in brownface makeup while trying to incite an uprising among Black and Latinx sanitation workers.

The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6' (Season 9, Episode 9) saw the pub crew stage a sequel to Lethal Weapon 5, with everyone returning to the same racist costumes plus Dee in full blackface as Murtaughs daughter.

And finally, in Dee Day (Season 14, Episode 3), Frank and Mac dressed as Martina Martinez and Taiwan Tammy, respectively, at Dees request.

British comics Julian Barratt, left, and Noel Fielding star in The Mighty Boosh.

(BBC)

Netflix has cut a scene from the second season of the British series Peep Show, in which Jez (Robert Webb) wore blackface and remarked to his girlfriend, It just feels almost wrong. Are you sure this isnt racist? to which she replied, Were breaking a taboo, of course it feels wrong. Weve got boundaries to smash, Jeremy.

Two other British shows, The Mighty Boosh and The League of Gentlemen, have been removed from Netflix entirely because they both featured Black characters played by white actors.

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'The Office,' '30 Rock': All the TV shows to pull blackface scenes - Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK, July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Color Star Technology Co., Ltd. (Nasdaq CM: HHT) (the "Company," "Color Star," "we" or "HHT") is pleased to announce that Color China Entertainment Limited ("Color China"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Color Star, has just signed a cooperation agreement with a renowned American musician, Larry Carlton. Larry Carlton will take on the role of a Star Teacher on the "Color World" online education platform, created by Color Star.

Larry Carlton, a guitar master in the music industry, was born in Southern California in March 1948. He is a master of American jazz, blues, pop and rock genres on the guitar and has participated in more than 500 music albums, winning the Grammy Award 4 times. Additionally, he is widely acclaimed as one of the most outstanding guitarists in the jazz scene in the second half of the 20th century. In 1981, Larry Carlton won his first Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for his work on "Theme From Hill Street Blues." He then began working with numerous world-class entertainers, including the legendary blues master B.B King, Jazz Rock Super Group Steely Dan, Hollywood's Sammy Davis Jr. and even Michael Jackson. Overall, Larry Carlton's voracious appetite for music has earned him 19 Grammy nominations and 4 Grammy Awards, a Star of the Rock Hall of Fame in Hollywood, the Titan of Tone award and many others, as well as widespread recognition amongst fellow world class entertainers. His influence can be found in a plethora of genres in today's music scene, with jazz, blues, pop and rock all bearing the mark of Larry Carlton.

Color Star CEO, Sean Liu, said that "in the future, we will cooperate with more top artists and producers in Asia, including music, film, television, animation, dance and other industries. We believe that Color World has the potential to bring richer content to our students."

Color Star plans to continue growing its list of Star Teachers, who will bring their various expertise in music, film, sports, animation, television, presentations, dance, art and other entertainment industries to the Color World platform. Color Star believes that these top celebrities and professionals can pass their precious experiences on to pupils on our platform, helping to instill the desire for knowledge in their hearts.

About Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.

Color Star Technology, is a holding company whose primary business is offering both online and offline innovative education services. Its business operations are conducted through its wholly-owned subsidiaries Color China Entertainment Ltd. and CACM Group NY, Inc. The Company also anticipates providing an after-school tutoring program in New York via its joint venture entity Baytao LLC, and providing online music education via a platform branded "Color World."

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements made herein are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "plan", "outlook", and "project" and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. Such forward-looking statements include the business plans, objectives, expectations and intentions of the parties following the completion of the acquisition, and HHT's estimated and future results of operations, business strategies, competitive position, industry environment and potential growth opportunities. These forward-looking statements reflect the current analysis of existing information and are subject to various risks and uncertainties. As a result, caution must be exercised in relying on forward-looking statements. Due to known and unknown risks, our actual results may differ materially from our expectations or projections. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these factors. Other than as required under the securities laws, the Company does not assume a duty to update these forward-looking statements. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements: there is uncertainty about the spread of the COVID-19 virus and the impact it will have on HHT's operations, the demand for the HHT's products and services, global supply chains and economic activity in general. These and other risks and uncertainties are detailed in the other public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") by HHT. Additional information concerning these and other factors that may impact our expectations and projections will be found in our periodic filings with the SEC, including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2019. HHT's SEC filings are available publicly on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov. HHT disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Color Star Technology Co., Ltd. Contact: Investor Relations FinancialBuzzIR info@FinancialBuzzIR.com Tele: +1-877-601-1879

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/color-star-technology-announces-the-addition-of-renowned-musician-larry-carlton-to-its-color-world-online-education-platform-301088785.html

SOURCE Color Star Technology Co., Ltd.

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Color Star Technology Announces the Addition of Renowned Musician Larry Carlton to its Color World Online Education Platform - Yahoo Finance

Additional venues gradually begin hosting bands and solo artists in outdoor, socially distanced spaces

This newspaper and website for years maintained a "Local Live Music" calendar, a roundup of the upcoming musical performances scheduled at the area's clubs, breweries, coffeehouses, restaurants and concert halls. It was always arduous and time-consuming to put together, but rewarding in offering a glimpse at how rich the Finger Lakes/Greater Rochester area is in musical talent, in breadth, depth and diversity.

The shutdowns necessitated by the advent of the novel coronavirus all but ended live music for a time, and the isolation that remains necessary amid the state's gradual reopening has made live music's return a slow, similarly gradual process. Small venues without much in the line of outdoor space are holding off, for instance.

But venues that have outdoor space sufficient for social distancing outdoor venues like Lincoln Hill Farms in Gorham or Roseland Waterpark in Canandaigua; bars/restaurants with patios like The Lovin' Cup in Henrietta or Jos & Willy's in Canandaigua have struck the opening chords in the gradual return of the area's live-music scene.

"The response has been heart-warming," Danny Deutsch, owner of Abilene Bar & Lounge in Rochester, said via email. Abilene started up with a low-key, socially distanced event on its outdoor patio featuring local band Anonymous Willpower on June 19. It followed it up the following week with shows by the Adrianne Noon Trio and Brody George Schenk, and the Noone trio is returning thisFriday night. A number of other shows are planned for the near future, all depending on weather.

"Old customers ... and some new, stopping in to hear music, check on us and how were holding up and all playing by the rules," Deutsch wrote. "Mask wearing in full effect while in the bar ordering drinks and then headoutside to enjoy the patio ambience. I've been pleased. Abilene's customers have been conscientious and caring of other customers and of my staff, and it's made for a very cool scene."

He allowed that "it's been different, that's for sure" but they're "thrilled to be back enjoying live, original music" for "smallish but super enthusiastic crowds."

We're looking forward to the day when we can start up that arduous, time-consuming Local Live Music calendar again. But in the meantime, here's a taste of what the region offers over the next week or two for music lovers:

July 2:Paint Crew (drum and bass duo) Thursday, July 2, at7 p.m. on the outside patio at Abilene Bar & Lounge, 153 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester. Cover: Tip jar.

July 3: Adrianne Noone Trio (featuring Noone, Chuck Salvaggio and Chris Clinton), Friday, July 3, at 7 p.m. on the outside patio at Abilene Bar & Lounge, 153 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester. Cover: $5.

July 3: Dirty Blanket (bluegrass) Friday, July 3, at 7 p.m. at Lincoln Hill Farms, 3792 Route 247, Gorham. Doors open at 3 p.m., with tickets limited on a first-come, first-serve basis at the door; $15 adults, $5 children.

July 3: Jackson Cavalier (one-man band, folk-rock) Friday, July 3, 5-8:30 p.m. on the patio at The Lovin' Cup, 300 Park Point, Henrietta. (Free show)

July 3: Xarika (solo acoustic) Friday, July 3, 6-8 p.m. on the porch at ReInvention Brewing, 9 N. Main St., Manchester.

July 4: Classic Rock All-Stars (featuring Phil Naro from Talas, Michael Hund from Ted Nugent's Derek St. Holmes Band, Ron Rocco from Black Sheep, and A.D. Zimmer from Lou Gramm's band) Saturday, July 4, at 6 p.m.,in the parking lot at Fanatics Pub & Pizza, 7281 W. Main St., Lima. Tickets: $75 per vehicle, 585-624-2080 or 315-473-2411.

July 4: "July 4 at the Farm" featuring multiple performers noon to 11 p.m. at Lincoln Hill Farms, 3792 Route 247, Gorham. The fundraiser for Camp RocStar features Zach Eberts, 1 p.m.; Brianna Collichio, 1:30 p.m.; Max Doud, 2 p.m.; Own the Night, 2:30 p.m.; Calvin Isham, 3:30 p.m.; Cooper Scotti, 4 p.m.; Primrose, 4:30 p.m.; Judah, 5:30 p.m.; BB Dang, 7 p.m.; and Shackwater, 9 p.m. There will also be fireworks at 9:45 p.m. Tickets (at the door only): $15 adults, $5 children.

July 4: Red, Hot & Blue Saturday, July 4, 6-9 p.m. at Brews & Brats at Arbor Hill, 6461 Route 64, Naples.

July 5: Craig Synder Sunday, July 5, 2-5 p.m. at Twisted Rail, 169 Lakeshore Drive, Canandaigua.

July 5: The Uptown Groove Sunday, July5, 2-5 p.m. at an Open Barn concert at Muranda Cheese Company, 3075 State Route 96, Waterloo. (Featured food truck is Pizza Posto)

July 7: GA029 (blues/R&B/rock) Tuesday, July 7, at 7 p.m. on the outside patio at Abilene Bar & Lounge, 153 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester. Tickets: $15 ($13 in advance at Abilene or https://abilene.showare.com.

July 10: Brian Lindsay Band (rock) Friday, July 10, at5:30 p.m.on the outside patio at Abilene Bar & Lounge, 153 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester. (Happy-hour show)

July 10: Evan Meulemans (reggae, Americana, blues) Friday, July 10, 7-8:30 p.m. on the patio at The Lovin' Cup, 300 Park Point, Henrietta. (Free show)

July 11: Alex Goettel (singer-songwriter, member of The Byways) Saturday, July 11, 6-8:30 p.m. on the patrio at The Lovin' Cup, 300 Park Point, Henrietta. (Free show)

July 11: Amanda Ashley (pop/rock/soul singer-songwriter) Saturday, July 11, 6-8 p.m. on the porch at ReInvention Brewing, 9 N. Main St., Manchester.

July 11: Tas Cru & The Tortured Souls Saturday, July 11, at 6 p.m.,in the parking lot at Fanatics Pub & Pizza, 7281 W. Main St., Lima. Tickets: $50 per vehicle, 585-624-2080 or 315-473-2411.

July 12: Cool Club & Lipker Sisters Sunday, July 12, 2-5 p.m. at an Open Barn concert at Muranda Cheese Company, 3075 State Route 96, Waterloo (featured food vendor is 4J's NVR Specialty Sauces)

July 12: Music of the Stars Sunday, July 12, 2-5 p.m., Roseland Drive-In at Roseland Waterpark, 250 Eastern Boulevard, Canandaigua. Only presale tickets will be redeemed; tickets are $40, $55 or $70 depending on tier. Buy tickets at roselanddrivein.com or call 585-396-2000.

July 14: Jeff Riales & The Silvertone Express Tuesday, July 14, at 6:30 p.m.,in the parking lot at Fanatics Pub & Pizza, 7281 W. Main St., Lima. Tickets: $50 per vehicle, 585-624-2080 or 315-473-2411.

July 17: Big Eyed Phish (Dave Matthews tribute) Friday, July 17,6:30-9p.m., Roseland Drive-In at Roseland Waterpark, 250 Eastern Boulevard, Canandaigua. Opening act: Mike Cosco and Julie Dellarie. Tickets are $45, $60 or $75 depending on tier. Buy tickets at roselanddrivein.com or call 585-396-2000.

July 17: The Occasional Saints (New Orleans blues/swing) Friday, July 17, at5:30 p.m. on the outside patio at Abilene Bar & Lounge, 153 Liberty Pole Way, Rochester. (Happy-hour show)

July 19: Nate Michaels Sunday, July 19, 2-5 p.m. at an Open Barn concert at Muranda Cheese Company, 3075 State Route 96, Waterloo. (Featured food vendor is Lake Country Food Truck)

A 'Little' online music

Not all venues are equipped to offer the live experience, of course, but some continue to offer what's arguably the next best thing in a digital age with livestreamed concerts. The Little Theatre in Rochester continues a nearly full slate of shows, just online at its Facebook page. Maria Gillard, adjunct instructor of music at Finger Lakes Community College, is performing every Monday in July as a residency, with 7 p.m. concerts July 6, 13, 20 and 27. Also coming up for the Little: Classical Guitar Night at 7 p.m. July 5; Alex Goettel at 7 p.m. July 9; and Crossmolina at 8 p.m. July 11.

SummerWrite lit camp moves online

Concerns over high traffic in a small space and sanitizing requirements with a small staff has led Writers & Books to opt not to open its University Avenue facilities in Rochester to the public this summer. W&B has moved all of its adult workshops online and now plans to conduct its annual literary-themed youth summer camp, SummerWrite, entirely virtually. It began offering SummerWrite programs June 29 and will continue rolling out the reading and writing enrichment camps most of them five-session Monday-through-Friday programs, offered through Zoomthrough Aug. 28.

A complete list of the programs, with cost and registrationlinks,is at wab.org. For an example, next week's SummerWrite programs include "Acting Exploration," "Musical Theatre Book Club," "Fiction in a Flash" (about creating very short fiction), "Take Space, Make Space: Storytelling Through Dual Language Poetry," "Writing a Fiction Series," "Produce a 90-Second Newbery Film" and more.

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Front-Row Seat: Striking the chords for live musics return - MPNnow.com

People, social distancing and wearing masks to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, chat as they wait in line at a mask distribution event, Friday, June 26, 2020, in a COVID-19 hotspot of the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. Florida banned alcohol consumption at its bars Friday as its daily confirmed coronavirus cases neared 9,000, a new record that is almost double the previous mark set just two days ago. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)

Surges in new Covid-19 infections have paused or rolled back reopening plans in at least 19 states as the nation's top infectious disease doctor offered a bleak warning: Americans need to take sensible measures to curb the spread or risk seeing 100,000 new cases a day.

"We are now having 40,000 cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around," Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing.

Turning it around will take a coordinated, collaborative effort, he said at the hearing, not the "disparate responses" the nation has shown so far.

But without strong national leadership, that coordination may be up to mayors and governors, according to Dr. William Haseltine, a former biotechnology executive and professor at Harvard's medical and public health schools.

"This situation is now so grim and is getting worse by the day," he said. "From now on, they know it's in their backyard and their job to take care of it if no one else does."

Most of the US has the pandemic in their backyard, with only two states showing a downward trend in cases from last week. The surge comes as restriction-fatigued Americans increasingly gather in large groups for summer recreation.

Precautions like social distancing and mask wearing are meant to help people "enjoy themselves within the safe guidelines," Fauci said.

"We should not look at the public health endeavors as being an obstruction to opening up. We should look at it as a vehicle to opening up," he said.

Turning the tide means more masks and fewer bars

The measures health experts tout to curb the virus are especially important considering more than 90% of the country has not experienced the virus, meaning herd immunity could still be years away, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told the Senate HELP committee on Tuesday.

Both Redfield and Fauci stressed the importance of widespread masks, which experts have encouraged for months even as President Donald Trump has noticeably forgone them.

An environment with universal masks is "fundamentally the most important thing we can do," Redfield said.

What people shouldn't do in this pandemic, Fauci said Tuesday, is head to the bar.

"Bars: really not good, really not good. Congregation at a bar, inside, is bad news. We really have got to stop that," Fauci said Tuesday.

Without those measures, Fauci said, the US will continue to be in trouble.

"Clearly, we are not in total control right now," he said. "The numbers speak for themselves."

In Florida and other Sunbelt states, hospitals are rushing to line up more hospital beds as they head into the height of the summer season amid a startling surge in confirmed cases of the coronavirus.

Over the past few days, states such as Florida, Arizona, Texas and California have reversed course, closing or otherwise clamping down on bars, shutting beaches, rolling back restaurant capacity, putting limits on crowds at pools, or taking other steps to curb a scourge that may be thriving because of such factors as air conditioning and resistance to wearing masks.

Any time you have these reopenings, youre depending on people to do the right things, to follow the rules. I think thats where the weak spots come in, said Dr. Cindy Prins, a University of Florida epidemiologist. She warned that things are likely to get worse before they get better.

Hospitals in the new hot spots are already stretched nearly to the limit and are scrambling to add intensive care unit beds for an expected surge in COVID-19 cases in the coming weeks.

Newly confirmed cases in Florida have spiked over the past week, especially in younger people, who may be more likely to survive the virus but can spread it to the Sunshine State's many vulnerable older residents.

The state reported more than 6,000 new confirmed cases Tuesday. More than 8,000 were recorded on each of three days late last week. Deaths have climbed past 3,500. Floridians ages 15 to 34 now make up 31% of all cases, up from 25% in early June. Last week, more than 8,000 new confirmed cases were reported in that age group, compared with about 2,000 among people 55 to 64 years old.

Hospital ICUs are starting to fill up in South Florida, with a steadily increasing number of patients requiring ventilators. Miamis Baptist Hospital had only six of its 82 ICU beds available, officials said.

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Your daily 6: Gambling without booze or smoking, Hong Kong crackdown and virus 'grim and getting worse by the day' - STLtoday.com

BEST METAL The Best Metal on Bandcamp: June 2020 By Brad Sanders July 02, 2020

It feels like it shouldnt need to be said, but sadly, it does: there is no place in metal for racism. An all-star cast of metal musicians have been saying it loudly and unequivocally these past few weeks on a new web series called Metal vs. Racism. You can watch the episodes that have aired to date on Bay Area death metal crew Necrots Instagram page. If youre a cruel, small-minded, and ignorant person, and watching those videos makes you want to smash your High on Fire and Testament records, Ill gladly lend you the hammer.

Check out this months best metal picks below.

This Juneteenth, when Bandcamp donated their cut of all sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, dozens of bands and labels stepped up to make their own donations to racial justice initiatives.One of the many bands to step up with donations that day was Spirit Adrift, a longtime favorite of this column and perhaps the committee (of one)s pick for the best metal band in the world right now. They released Angel & Abyss Redux, an EP featuring an acoustic reworking of the Divided by Darkness highlight, plus brilliant covers of Roky Ericksons I Think of Demons and Jimi Hendrixs The Wind Cries Mary. The band is donating 100% of every sale of this record to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in perpetuity, so if you didnt have a chance to grab it on Juneteenth, it is well worth picking up now.

Now three full-lengths and a smattering of demos and EPs into their career, the Finnish duo Lantern have moved far beyond merely worshiping the Nordic death/doom scene that first inspired them to pick up guitars. Dimensions is a legacy-making album, the kind of record that should ensure their place in death metal history. Its bookended by the seven-minute Strange Nebula and the 14-minute Monolithic Abyssal Dimensions, which highlight the band at their labyrinthine best, each song rife with twisting riffs, decaying atmospherics and stretched to epic lengths. Just as impressive are moments like the two-minute Portraits, almost an interlude track, but far too interesting to be cast off as such. Its an effectively eerie vocal showcase for frontman Necrophilos in a genre that rarely provides vocal showcases. Cauldron of Souls is another high point, a black metal-tinged banger with an infectious stab of lead guitar serving as its primary hook. For the past several years, its felt like Lantern were quietly climbing their way to making a true masterpiece. With Dimensions, theyve reached the mountaintop.

For a brief, shining moment in the mid-00s, post-hardcore, Hot Topic screamo, metalcore, and prog rock all got along. Bands like Coheed and Cambria, Between the Buried and Me, and Canadian stalwarts Protest the Hero were consistently releasing ambitious, strange music that defied categorization but seemed to bring all kinds of misfit kids to the table. If you werent down then, you probably wont be down now, but if you were down then, the new Protest the Hero album is like a cold blast of shopping mall air conditioning to the face. Now 15 years older than they were when they released their debut LP Kezia, the band offer a more controlled fury on Palimpsest. Vocalist Rody Walker still climbs seemingly impossible scales, but after recovery and retraining following a vocal cord injury, its not with quite the same level of abandon. That allows him to force us to focus even more on his lyrics, which here dissect American history through the dual lenses of its Trumpian so-called greatness and the more complicated truth. A Canadian singing about the flaws of America might seem presumptuous, but his relative distance grants him a clarity thats genuinely refreshing. Behind Walker, guitarists Luke Hoskin and Tim MacMillar oscillate between a jerky start-stop dynamic and seemingly self-aware moments of faux-epic bluster, underpinned with the most bombastic orchestral parts the band has ever used. Most impressively, Protest the Hero took a sound that, to many people, feels tethered to a semi-embarrassing moment in time, and brought it thrillingly into the present.

Live albums feel particularly attuned to this moment. There are those among us who have historically derided them as a pale facsimile of the real thing. Now, we live in a world where there is no real thing, and no one has been to the real thing in almost four months. Its in that context that we must examine Power Trips new album, Live in Seattle. I saw Power Trip on that tour, in Brooklyn. They were incredible that night, well-deserving of the 675-capacity venue that theyd sold out after years of playing their furious brand of thrash-infused hardcore in smaller bars. Does Live in Seattle capture the feeling I had that night? Not quite, but a crowd surfer didnt break my glasses while I listened to it, either, so I guess its a wash. The band rips through all the essential cuts from Manifest Decimation and Nightmare Logic, plus some key non-album singles, closing with the crowd-pleasing anthem Crossbreaker. Theres a real sense of movement and propulsion to the album, with only the briefest breaks for stage banter as the band barrel through their set. As non-live live experiences go, its one of the better ones available for headbangers to experience right now. Heres hoping we can all get back together and mosh to Power Trip again soon. Hell, by then Ill probably let you break my glasses.

The self-titled Satans Hallow album that came out back in 2017 was a hell of an introduction to the Chicago newcomers, and it carried the promise of an exciting new band for lovers of traditional heavy metal to follow for years to come. They split up shortly after it was released. Midnight Dice rose from Satans Hallows ashes, with four of the five members of that band reprising their roles here, crucially with Mandy Martillo still on the microphone. Hypnotized is their first proper EP after a demo, a live tape, and a split 7 with fellow Chicagoans, Hitter. Its only 21 minutes long, but damn it if they arent 21 of the finest minutes of true metal to come out this year. Martillos pipes are laser-precise as she belts over Steve Beaudettes souped-up NWOBHM riffs, and songs like Starblind and Speed City feel tailor-made to be played onstage someday, when thats possible again. (Someday youre gonna wish/ You were still half as good as this/ So make tonight your bitch in Speed City reads downright Proustian in these times.) Satans Hallow left us too soon, but with a lucky roll, Midnight Dice should stick around a lot longer.

The fretless bass has a long and contentious history in death metal. Most famously utilized in the early 90s scene by Sean Malone of Cynic, its since taken on a life as a kind of shorthand for exploratory, progressive death metal. If you hear a fretless bass line meandering around the edges of a death metal riff, the band is trying to tell you that theyre doing something outside of the box. On VoidCeremonys bonkers debut album, Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel, the fretless bass is doing something more interesting. Damon Good (also of Mournful Congregation) has certainly heard a Cynic record or two, but his bass lines help anchor these songs rather than making them spin off into space. His bass represents a human, flesh-and-blood presence on an album thats often given to glorious, maddening abstraction. If this is technical death metal, its only in the sense that everyone performing on it has no shortage of technique. Yet their interests lie not in the proving of chops but in the exploration of whats possible within the death metal framework. Exhilarating as Entropic Reflections Continuum is, it seems theyve only scratched the surface.

Though theyve been well-known in leftist metal circles online since their founding in 2014, the queer, antifascist sludge duo Vile Creature havent yet crossed over to mainstream success. Glory! Glory! Apathy Took Helm!, their third full-length, should change that. For one, theyve signed to Prosthetic Records, who reissued their early work on a comp last year and have put significant promotional muscle behind them. More crucially, Glory! feels like an arrival, a record where everything Vile Creature is all about has coalesced. Throughout the album, moments of transcendental beauty are met with the counterweight of ugliness. When Glory! Glory! transitions into Apathy Took Helm!, the former songs ghostly choral parts dissolve into the latters punishing dirge. Before long, the choral vocals return amid the din of the sludge riffs, suggesting the necessary coexistence in troubled times of joy and agony, love and hate, reflection and action. Ive only spent a week or so with this record; I expect it to reveal so much more in the coming months.

Colin Marston is a lot of thingsvirtuosic musician, champion of the avant-garde in metal, mastering engineer extraordinaire. As a principal member of Beholdthe Arctopus, Krallice, Gorguts, Dysrythmia, and more, he has pushed metal into some of the stranger places its been over the past two decades. Unsympathetic Empyrean, the debut album by his new solo project Xazraug, feels like something entirely new for him, an avant-black metal album roughly in the I, Voidhanger house style, but transgressive in its own peculiar way. Its undeniably an assault on the senses. Its five tracks span from nearly 10 minutes to over 14, and none of them leave a lot of space for contemplative atmospherics. Whether hes playing a mind-bending riff, laying into an Emperor-style synth part, or layering hellish chanting, Marston consistently fills the sonic space with something you cant easily tune out. That makes Unsympathetic Empyrean a demanding listen, but that shouldnt turn off any fans of Marstons work. The challenge is the point.

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The Best Metal on Bandcamp: June 2020 - bandcamp.com

In the last few months, like so many other Netflix viewers, I dove head first into Avatar: The Last Airbender. Its a cult series that had been on my I really should watch this list for years, but its limited availability always kept me from actively seeking the series out. As has been experienced by so many other shows that are beneficiaries of the so-called Netflix bump, though, appreciation for Avatar has subsequently exploded, and the show has consistently been in Netflixs top 10, with an entire new audience falling in love with it along the way.

Which of course, to someone who is fascinated by bad movies, can mean only one thing: It was clearly time for me to revisit M. Night Shyamalans The Last Airbender adaptation from 2010. And the timing proved to be fortuitous, as we just marked the 10th anniversary of that legendarily bad films release. It sits second to last in our ranking of every M. Night Shyamalan film, ahead of only (of course) The Happening.

What I found was a film that was every bit as bad on a technical level as I remembered, but also so much worse as an adaptation than I ever realized. To watch the entirety of Avatar, and then move directly on to Shyamalans The Last Airbender is like touring the Louvre and then going to a souvenir shop outside where street urchins are painting their best attempts at replicating the works of Monet and Vermeer. Suffice to say, the work of art does not translate well.

There are myriad aspects of Shyamalans interpretation that flat out dont work, including some aspects of the film over which he had no real control. The post-filming conversion of The Last Airbender to 3D was one of these, and was heavily criticized at the time, being one of the most high-profile cases (along with Clash of the Titans) of more or less complete films being converted to 3D to cash in on the massive success of James Camerons Avatarironically, the reason why the word avatar is no longer present in the title of Shyamalans adaptation. The visual fidelity of the movie seemed to suffer as a result, with many scenes that look murky, dark and underlit.

But Shyamalan as director also made the choice to condense the entirety of Avatars first season, some 8 hours of animated material, into a surprisingly rushed film that was presumably meant to be an epic, clocking in at only 94 minutes if you subtract the lengthy end credits. The result likewise damages its pacing badly, as The Last Airbender relies both on constant narration and exposition dumps from Katara to keep the audience up to speed, and a composite character called the Dragon Spirit that effectively replaces every one of Aangs teachersmost notably Avatar Roku, Fang, Koh, Jeong Jeong and Guru Pathik. The result is streamlined but chaotic, with little to no time for non-plot character interaction.

There are so many aspects of The Last Airbender one could choose to focus on in expounding upon its weakness as an adaptation, but lets instead key in on three in particular: Shyamalans misunderstanding of the characters, the poorly constructed action, and the films persistently troubling racial presentation/whitewashing.

Although aspects like the whitewashing of its characters is often the first controversy that comes up surrounding discussion of The Last Airbender, the films script by Shyamalan also fails them on deeper and wider levels, beyond appearance, representation and racial heritage. Which is to say, Shyamalan just doesnt seem to understand why someone would like most of these characters at all, or how they would be effective as heroes or villains, and they rarely remind the audience on any level of their animated counterparts.

You really cant start anywhere else than with Aang, portrayed here by first-time actor Noah Ringer, who had a grand total of one month to prepare for filming with essentially no applicable acting experience. Ringer was a gifted young practitioner of Taekwondo, and already a fan of the Avatar animated series, who was in fact referred to by friends as Avatar for his choice to shave his head during competition and his physical resemblance to Aang. It was this familiarity with the character and superficial appearance/martial arts training that got Ringer an audience with Shyamalan, who was quickly impressed. And indeed, you can see why, on paper, someone might have thought that this choice would work out, but one would have hoped that a quick glance at the dailies after the first few days of shooting would have made it clear that Ringer was in far over his head.

Its a casting choice that simply doesnt work, especially given that the inexperienced Ringer is expected to carry the film as title character and lead protagonist. He often looks lost and uncomfortable, hardly the fault of a 12-year-old taekwondo student who had been handed the lead role of a would-be summer blockbuster, seemingly out of thin air. His face rests with a blank, emotionless look that is bereft of any spark or vitality, and more than anything it demonstrates that Shyamalan had his priorities badly out of order when it came to casting. This was a part that called for an immensely charismatic, often hyperactive personality, rambunctious and full of vigor, but it ended up in the hands of a sullen-looking young man who happened to be proficient in martial arts. In a film that was always going to rely heavily on CGI, Aangs ability to perform real-life kicks should have been the least of their concerns.

This look, plastered on Aangs face for 80% of this film, is not an expression youll see in a single frame of the animated series.

Its certainly not just Aang, though, as almost all the characters have their legs cut out from under them. In some cases, its because the film has almost entirely excised the shows sense of humor, which transforms Sokka in particular from a loveable doofus and quip machine with a gift for tactics into a joyless automaton. The villains, meanwhile, are really no better, and its hard not to laugh at Cliff Curtis as Firelord Ozai, who feels more like an unintimidating, pompous aristocrat than a world-threatening, psychopathic dictator. Its extremely hard to imagine how this version of Ozai would have been able to carry the burden of Big Bad/Phoenix King in the third film of what was meant to be a trilogyhe comes off as effette and incompetent rather than sadistic and calculating.

The only character to feel anywhere close to accurate is Dev Patels Prince Zuko, whose deadly serious nature actually makes sensethe animated series eventually derives a lot of humor from the fact that Zuko is unrealistically humorless by nature. But even Patel later admitted that he was ashamed of the film, feeling completely overwhelmed by the experience. Watching his own work, he described it as I saw a stranger on the screen that I couldnt relate to.

If there was one great selling point to making a live-action feature film from Avatar: The Last Airbender, it was the promise of seeing the powers of air, water, earth and firebending come to life on the big screen. What a shame, then, that The Last Airbender bungles those action scenes so badly, failing even to convey the joy one would expect to feel in manipulating the elements.

Some of the blame here will inherently belong to the aforementioned, post-filming conversion to 3D, which took whatever Shyamalan was already working with and undoubtedly made it look even worse. But The Last Airbenders action issues go far beyond merely a dim, unattractive picture. These sequences are just poorly staged in general, feeling uniquely underwhelming for action setpieces that should have reflected a $150 million budget, by far the biggest in Shyamalans career. It feels like the director had no idea how that money should be spent, and the action ends up looking both haphazard and small in scale and impact. Nowhere is that better captured than in the Earthbenders revolt clip below, which features not only some atrocious acting from our leads, but the sight of half a dozen earthbenders dancing and stomping to produce a 10 pound hovering rock. All of the films fights are like this, featuring blasts of fire, rock and water that travel slower than if most of us were throwing them by hand. On the most basic level, the film fails to make bending itself look effective or awe-inspiring.

Not helping matters is the fact that the mechanics of bending in this movie simply cant avoid looking silly in practice, especially with so little in terms of payoff. Theres simply not a hint of grace to any of the bending movementstheyre endlessly convoluted gestures that go on far too long before something unimpressive happens. Theres something about it that evokes low-rent videogame adaptations like Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, and thats really not a comparison you want for your $150 million CGI spectacular.

These action scenes are even more difficult to appreciate after watching the entirety of the animated series, which features genuinely impressive feats of bending in every episode, and incredibly intricate and beautifully choreographed fight scenes, especially as the seasons progress. A director like Shyamalan, whose films before this point had always been based on character and suspense rather than action, stood no chance of replicating that level of energy.

And of course, we have to talk about the elephant in the roomall that whitewashing. The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is unmistakably interpreted as an Asiatic one, with cultures that broadly reflect various real-world influences. The Water Tribe has an unmissable Inuit appearance to their clothing and artifacts, while Aangs own Air Nomads seem to have been a culture heavily inspired by Tibetan Buddhist monks. The Earth and Fire kingdoms are a bit harder to parse, but they clearly draw inspiration in various areas from ancient Chinese, Korean and Japanese culture. The Fire Nation in particular reflects a Japanese styling in its honor-based military caste and fashions.

Not that youd know any of this, looking at Shyamalans The Last Airbender, of course. He immediately dispenses with the shows ethnic depiction of both the Water Tribe and Air Nomads, casting white actors in all the major protagonist roles, such as Aang, Katara, Sokka and Master Pakku. Grilled at the time of release about why the film wasnt more diverse in the casting of its leads, Shyamalan repeatedly deferred or defended aspects of the casting, pointing to the films other pan-Asian actors, who make up small roles among the earthbenders, and the majority of the firebenders.

That of course raises the sticky situation of which parts did get cast with brown-skinned actors, which largely boils down to all the bad guys. The casting here seems to suggest that Shyamalanhimself of Indian descentseemed to think that anyone brown was acceptable for any Fire Nation role in particular, which leads to a confusing array of backgrounds for characters who are all supposed to be blood relatives of vaguely Japanese descent. Look no further than the Firelords clan, which consists of someone of indigenous Maori descent (Cliff Curtis) as the head of a family with an Indian son (Dev Patel), an Iranian brother (Shaun Toub) and a daughter of Mexican and Indian descent (Summer Bishil). The unspoken implication seems to be that anyone brown is equally likely to be a villain in this worldsomething that wouldnt have been an issue if Water Tribe characters like Sokka and Katara were played by ethnically accurate actors. Instead, the choice to whitewash the protagonist roles causes it to boil down once again to a light vs. dark duality of good vs. evil, like so much other Western fiction. Those with light skin are inevitably heroes. Those with darker skin are nefarious.

The films antagonists are invariably darker in skin tone.

This seeming lack of concern or thought for the issues of race and representation is all the more confusing, given some of the changes that Shyamalan did find worth his time in scripting The Last Airbender. The pronunciations in particular are all different from the animated series across the board; something that annoyed fans on an inherent level when they heard Aang pronounced as Ahn-guh or Ungh. The pronunciation of Sokka likewise goes from sah-kah to soh-ka, and even avatar becomes ah-vuhtar. Shyamalan described these changes as being more authentic to how the names would actually be pronounced in Asian culturesa rather incredible thing to value, while simultaneously not caring that white actors are replacing Asian ones in almost all the major roles. It does boggle the mind to think that he somehow thought pronunciations were a higher priority than representation.

Only a decade later, The Last Airbender feels hopelessly outdated in every measure one could use to gauge such a thing. Its regressive in terms of diversity in a story that should have been used as a launching pad for young Asian stars, instead opting for performers who cant even handle the material in front of them. It manages to be both convoluted and rushed, with a narrative that condenses 8 hours of animation into what feels like 94 minutes of straight voiceover. Its action scenes feel like the work of a director who had no concept of how to stage them, and even when the film is in motion, its unbearably dull to look at. Theres nothing it does particularly well, aside from some decent set design most of which is difficult to see or appreciate. It absolutely does not feel like a film with a $150 million budget.

It does raise the question: Will Netflixs upcoming live-action series remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender be any better? At the very least, it seems safe to say that it couldnt be any worse.

Jim Vorel is a Paste staff writer and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for much more film writing.

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A Decade Later, Let's Itemize the Sins of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender - Paste Magazine

Atlantis is one of the most popular myths in history, with many wondering whether the city is actually real, based on the stories that have been told over time. An author and researcher may have unraveled the mystery behind the mythical city through a 2,400-year-old coin that archaeologists have discovered.

The author of Atlantis Revealed, Christos Djonis, has his own theory of the ancient city through a 2,400-year-old coin that was discovered by archaeologists around 20 years ago. According to Djonis, the story of Atlantis was a legend passed on, and its inspiration may have been derived from the Americas. In May, Djonis spoke about this theory in the Ancient Origins channel on Youtube, saying that according to the texts of Plato, Atlantis was in the Mediterranean as opposed to the Atlantic or some other place.

Roughly 20 years ago, in 1996, Mark McMenamin, a professor of geology, discovered and interpreted a series of enigmatic markings on the reverse side of a Carthaginian gold coin minted in 350 BC as an ancient map of the world. In the center of this world map, there is a clear depiction of the Mediterranean Basin, an image to the right of it is interpreted to represent Asia, while the image to the left is interpreted to represent the American continent, recalled Djonis.

The same kind of world map would also be found in other specimens of the coin, said Djonis. He then revealed that the coin also happened to be minted around the same time Plato told the story of Atlantis and how there is a large continent across the Pillars of Hercules.

Previously, a historian claimed that the mythical city may have been submerged along the coast of Britain all this time. According to historian Matthew Sibson, there is a big chance the city may be found in Rockall, and the man-made features found in the water pose as possible evidence of a lost civilization.

Sibson went on to explain his claim, also referencing the texts from Plato that describe the mythical city. Sibson noted that the size of the city, as described by Plato may have been exaggerated, and rather it is an island than a city that would lead to other islands that would be the way to the opposite continent, which would be the Americas across the Atlantic ocean. Rockall would match the size and would serve as a way to get to the Americas through Iceland and Greenland.

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Author says 2400-year old coin artifact may be proof that Atlantis is real - EconoTimes