Entertainment

TRUTHBETOLD | The Rise of Bangtan

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They won two Billboard Music Awards, performed at the American Music Awards with their hit song DNA, and recently attended the 61st Grammy Awards to present the award for Best R&B album to artist, H.E.R. Surely you must have heard of them. BTS, also known as Bulletproof Boy Scouts when they first arrived on the Kpop scene, is one of the most famous boy groups to attract international audiences. Hailing from Seoul, South Korea and operating under a small but mighty entertainment company, BTS has overcome many obstacles to reach their goals and share their music with the world. So, what’s the big deal with BTS, a group who wears makeup and dances on stage? The seven members of the group—RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook—debuted in June 2013 with their debut song, No More Dream.

Entertainment

AKABAS | The Dunkies

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The dunk contest was my favorite night of the NBA season as a kid, to the point where I would count the days down from months away until I would get to watch the most athletic players in the league see who could jam a basketball into the hoop in the coolest way. Many years after I reenacted every single dunk contest dunk on my NERF hoop, something about the event continues to enthrall me, so I’m handing out awards for the bests and worsts in dunk contest history. Best Dunk Contest

I ranked every dunk contest throughout history in four different categories. While 2016’s duel between Zach Lavine and Aaron Gordon unequivocally had the best dunks of any contest, the overall greatest contest ever is a tie between 2000 and 1988. In the former, Vince Carter attempted five dunks, made all of them on the first try, never competed again, and remains the undisputed greatest contest dunker of all time.

Culture

AKABAS | The Top 50 Players in the NBA: Part 2

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If you’re interested in which guys were 27 through 50 on my list, my criteria for these rankings, or the meaning of the different statistics I’m referencing in this article, check out Part 1. Additionally, after flubbing some players’ rankings in Part 1, I’ve decided to keep my Top 50 in a Google Doc, so that I can both correct my previous mistakes and continue to update the list throughout the season. All stats are current as of 1/11/19.  

26. Marc Gasol – I think he’s a tad overrated.

Culture

AKABAS | The Top 50 Players in the NBA: Part 1

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We know how to rank teams: my team beats your team, therefore my team is better. Just rooting for our teams carries an old-school sense of hometown pride and loyalty, but ranking players is overwhelmingly more interesting and fun — it’s a combination of statistics and intuition, of situational evidence and conjecture. How does one even begin to try to rank basketball players? One obvious way is to determine which players are most valuable to their own teams. That’s what the Most Valuable Player award tries to do, at least in theory, but does anyone really know what that award means? This metric is fairly quantifiable, since we can look at team performance with a certain player both on and off the court.

Entertainment

AKABAS | Stop Complaining About A Perfectly Good NBA Finals Matchup

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Since when did NBA fans become so spoiled? All I see online is people kvetching about another “boring” finals rematch between the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers and how Kevin Durant has ruined the NBA. Said people are dumb. First off, this is the best option we had. The Celtics are fun, but they would have gotten romped by either Western Conference team.

Entertainment

NOSTALGIA CAFE | Why Loki Failed as a Villain (And How Killmonger Succeeded)

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe has done miraculous things, namely building a highly successful franchise with eighteen (and running) feature films, turning formerly B-list heroes into household names. Who had even heard of Tony Stark before his popular appearance in his successful solo movie, Iron Man?  But when it comes to villains, the writers suddenly revert back to eight-year-old children who still see villains as the exact cartoon cut-out of the cackling monster-alien super-beings from the comic books they read in the 80s and 90s. That’s fine: generic comic villains are okay for a few runs before they become tedious and predictable. Unfortunately, most superhero movies are trapped in their limited existing beliefs of what a superhero story should be, with the first law of superhero movies being: the hero can’t die.

Entertainment

AKABAS | A Way Too In-Depth Analysis of the Avengers: Infinity War Trailer

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Last Friday, the second Avengers: Infinity War trailer was released, and millions of nerds around the country immediately creamed their pants. Let’s analyze it. Here is the trailer, for those of you who have been living under a rock for the past week (although if you haven’t seen the trailer yet, I have no idea why you would have clicked on this article):

0:01 – If you don’t see that shot and immediately think of this, I don’t know if we can be friends. 0:06 – Unlike the first Infinity War trailer, the first 45 seconds of this trailer isn’t just a teaser trailer for the rest of the trailer. 0:09 – Classic unnecessary pronoun game.

Entertainment

AKABAS | Which Movies’ Plots Change Drastically if We Change One Letter of the Title?

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Forrest Gump → Forrest Dump
Synopsis: In this two-minute live-action short, a young boy on a hike in the Adirondacks walks 50 feet away from the trail, poops, walks back to the trail, and continues his hike. Critical Response: One critic calls the short a “hauntingly realistic slice of life” and many are even moved to tears, while a minority of writers call it “hogwash” and “utterly pretentious.”
Difference-O-Meter: Forrest Dump is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT film.  

Tomb Raider → Womb Raider
Synopsis: An anti-abortion propaganda film. Critical Response: The film induces one of the most inappropriate strings of Trump tweets to date and is so divisive that it actually hurts the Republican Party at the 2018 midterm elections. Difference-O-Meter: Womb Raider is a TOTALLY DIFFERENT film.

Entertainment

SOUND OFF | Cardi B vs. The World

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This year, Cardi B exploded onto the rap scene with “Bodak Yellow” after remaining relatively unknown, though she did have a large Instagram following and became a regular cast member on a reality TV show, Love & Hip Hop, New York, in 2015. Due to “Bodak Yellow”’s success, Cardi B became the first female rapper to, unassisted, hit Number 1 on the Billboard charts (other female rappers only reached Number 1 with features on their songs). She most recently began involving herself in social issues, arguing that she was kicked out of a hotel due to her race, and instigating social justice issues using her fame. Despite this, however, I don’t see Cardi B sustaining success for much longer. One reason why “Bodak Yellow” became popular, other than sending a powerful message for independent women of color, is that it sounds incredibly similar to Kodak Black’s “No Flockin”.

Entertainment

KYLIE’S ROOM | Paradise Lost: How the Bachelor Went from Fairytale to Nightmare

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I am not ashamed to admit it, but I am an avid Bachelor/Bachelorette/Bachelor in Paradise watcher, debriefer, and obsessor. For the last six months or so, my Monday and Tuesday nights have been dedicated to watching who gets the first impression rose, the ever-coveted one-on-one date, and finally the Neil Lane ring.  The franchise’s premise is a bit unorthodox; one person dates 25 people over the course of about 12 weeks in the hopes of getting engaged, then weeks later the Bachelor/Bachelorette rejects get shipped off to Mexico to find love in Paradise. It seems weird, but somehow it works. The Bachelor franchise offers viewers the fairytale experience without having to leave their couches. The show transports viewers to a mansion filled with beautiful women dressed in evening gowns, or handsome men in tuxedos.