The Underground — Issue #48
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: An internet without screens, the first trailer for the biggest video game movie ever, Bill Burr’s new TV show is coming soon, the top countries that use solar power, and how to play old school games for free.
At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention that’s our job: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about. That’s The Underground.
1. TED Talks: An internet without screens. Tom Uglow, Google’s creative director of the Google Creative Lab, explains to us what it would be like to access the internet and its vast information without being hunched over a screen to access it all. As he says in the presentation, “We’re not addicted to devices, we’re addicted to the information that flows through them.”
Check out his presentation below as he explains a potential future where we don’t have to leave the house and check our pockets to make sure we brought our devices.
2. The first full trailer of Warcraft is full of what fans want. Not too long ago a teaser of the Warcraft trailer came out and everyone was disappointed. Message boards criticizing the CGI, the armor of the characters, and pretty much everything you could think of to criticize was laid out within minutes of it coming out. That is all about to change.
The new Warcraft trailer looks like it has all the elements you love from World of Warcraft:
Premise: The peaceful realm of Azeroth stands on the brink of war as its civilization faces a fearsome race of invaders: Orc warriors fleeing their dying home to colonize another. As a portal opens to connect the two worlds, one army faces destruction and the other faces extinction. From opposing sides, two heroes are set on a collision course that will decide the fate of their family, their people and their home.
Average Warcraft player response?
Directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) and written by Charles Leavitt and Jones, the film starring Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Rob Kazinsky and Daniel Wu is a Legendary Pictures, Blizzard Entertainment and Atlas Entertainment production. In Theaters, June 10, 2016.
3. Bill Burr’s F Is For Family has a teaser trailer that is classic Bill Burr. Bill Burr is one of my favorite comedians of all time. He doesn’t go on to the stage and tell one liners jokes, no, he goes on stage and gives a series of hilarious rants that all weave into each other like a dense dark comedy film. He’ll make you laugh at stuff that you usually aren’t comfortable talking about, but he does it in a way that is so perfect that you can laugh without covering your mouth.
Burr has been talking about his new animated series F Is For Family for some time, but I was giving up hope until I actually saw some evidence of it. Minutes ago that evidence was put online, and it looks like Bill Burr’s stories painted on a canvas.
All 6 episodes will be released on December 18th, just in time for the holidays. And just in time for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Oh man, I’m totally skipping Christmas again this holiday season.
Check out the trailer below.
4. Check out the top 10 countries using solar power instead of fossil fuels. Sadly, the human race has burned old dinosaurs and ancient rainforests to give us power and heat for centuries, but we have still not harnessed the energy of that huge ball in the sky that comes up every morning. The Sun — if our technology advances to that point — could power everything on Earth for millions of years. We tend to still cling to the technology of old because it’s too hard to stop sucking oil out of the Earth. We also cling to the technology of old because the ones that own the technology and resources of old have a major influence on policy. Bummer.
Check out this infographic to see which countries are putting in the honest effort to use the power of the Sun to power the human race and try to prevent further damage to the environment.
5. Play all of your favorite old school games online for free.
I love the new games that have come out lately and I’m eagerly anticipating the ones that are coming out in 2016 — No Man’s Sky! However, I would still rather hook up my old systems and play NES, SNES or Sega Genesis. Sorry, those games were hard! Try playing Contra without the code. It’s impossible. Even with the cheat code it’s impossible. Oh, and when you die there are new checkpoints. You have to start ALL OVER AGAIN.
Browsing the internet today I happened upon the website SNESFUN. I figured it would be another of those sites where half the games don’t work or most of the games I loved weren’t on there. Wrong. It has everything, and you can play them all easily with directions that tell you exactly how to play. Better yet, I looked over to the right corner and it has all the other old systems like NES, SNES, Gameboy Advance, Sega Genesis, Atari and more!
If you love older games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game for NES, Maniac Mansion for NES, and Sonic The Hedgehog 1-3 for Sega, I suggest you get ready to relive your childhood again. You can even introduce the younger generation of kids that are used to first person shooters to them, too. It’s about time they see how great these games are.
Head on over the SNESFUN right now to get back to your gaming roots.
Feature Image: BillBurr.com
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com