Finger Clickin’ Good.

Not being much of a gamer myself, I haven’t been too fussed by all the hype around the Playstation 5 launch this week. As far as I’m concerned, gaming has never fully recovered since the fall of the Tamagotchi. But as an avid consumer of fried chicken, this has piqued my interest. KFC Gaming, which is apparently a thing, released this trailer for their KFConsole this week. And it’s confused some people. Because, well, it’s obviously a joke – isn’t it? Some aren’t so sure. The fact that it’s been given an actual release date of 11/12/20 has lead a few chicken-loving gamers to believe that they’ll actually be able to get their greasy mitts on it (or something close to it at least) just in time for Christmas. Not like that would be a good time for KFC to kick off a holiday marketing campaign or anything… No, no, I’m being too sceptical, I’m sure you’ll get your state-of-the-art 4K console with built-in “innovative chicken chamber” and “unrivalled power from the Zinger processor chip clocked at 11 Ghz.” Needless to say I have some doubts, but I’d love to be wrong.

Thairon Man.

Masks are all the rage at the moment, and rightly so. But it didn’t take us long to get to a point where mask-flexing has become a very real thing. But forget Gucci, Supreme and LV, Thai prop maker Poot Prop has gone for more of an Iron Man flex. And to be fair, if I saw someone walking around Tesco with this on I’d definitely stay well away, so I guess that’s a credit to the mask’s protective function. But I didn’t choose this clip so much for the mask itself as for the gloriously inappropriate music he’s chosen to go with the reveal. If you close your eyes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you were watching a rom com just at the pivotal moment when the protagonist decides to dramatically quit his job, jump in his convertible and go stop that wedding. There’s no parking at the church so he skids to a halt outside a nearby bakery, at which point a big Italian man with flour on his apron shouts “You can’t park there!”, and the hero turns around, tosses him the keys with a grin and says “keep it.” Then at exactly 0:50 he kicks the church doors open and bellows “I object!” – the church gasps – then silence falls for a moment, before the would-be bride says “Sorry, Steve” to her now-jilted betrothed and runs into our hero’s embrace. Roll credits.

Akon City.

There’s been talk of Akon City for a little while, but it’s actually happening as of Right Now (Na Na Na), as the 34^th most popular R&B singer of all time (according to YouGov) has just agreed a $6billion planning deal to start building the ‘crypto city’ in his native Senegal. And it gets better, as he’s started his very own crypto currency and called it AKoin. Plus all houses will be cooled by their very own Airkon unit. Alright, I made that last one up, but everything else was true. So he clearly likes his own name, but he is building a city so I guess we’ll let him off. Plus he’s already provided electricity to nearly 20 million Africans via his Light Up Africa project, so it seems that Akon is just a very nice bloke. I just hope he makes ‘Smack That’ the city’s official anthem.

Xtreme Hot Air Ballooning.

Well this can only be a good idea. A balloon that takes you to the very edge of the Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 feet. What could possibly go wrong? I’ve always found the idea of hot air balloons a bit odd, but this has taken an already odd concept and injected it with premium Mexican steroids. London-based design company Priestmangoode have started working on the Spaceship Neptune, seemingly with the primary purpose being to allow passengers to just float around space for a bit and take a few pictures for their social media. Talk about commitment to the Gram. To be fair, if this works, I’d be all over it. But I reckon I’d let them try a few more test runs to iron out some of the kinks first.

8:42.

Dave Chappelle is arguably the GOAT when it comes to stand-up comedy. But he wasn’t being trying to be all that funny in the surprise special ‘8:42’ that he dropped on YouTube last week. This is one of the very very few recent examples of someone of his level of celebrity speaking with such candour, sincerity and authority on a topic that has become so needlessly divisive. I’ve picked out one of my favourite parts here: “Answer me: do you want to see a celebrity right now? Do we give a f*ck what Ja Rule thinks? This is the streets talking for themselves, they don’t need me right now. I kept my mouth shut. And I’ll still keep my mouth shut. But don’t think my silence is complicit to all this shit these people are saying, trying to get everyone to sing these f*cking songs.” There’s definitely a lesson to be learned somewhere in there for those celebrities mindlessly bandwagonning with their bogus, tokenistic declarations of ‘solidarity’. The only thing Aaron Paul needs to take responsibility for is putting me off of ever watching Breaking Bad again thanks to his awful performance in that cringe-inducing ‘white celebs solve racism from their mansions’ video. Maybe they should have tried singing ‘Imagine’ by John Lennon instead. Oh wait…

Realsh*t: Life In Lockdown – Ep 12.

Move back in with the olds or stay in your place when everyone else has locked down and left? First world problems maybe but which is better for work, better for your relationships, better for you?

In this week’s realsh*t, we asked our SELFHOOD network how life is working out when you’re living back home.