It’s 8:30 a.m., and Alice Cooper looks surprisingly serene for a man who’s missing tee time. “Golf is as addictive as crack, and I’ve done both,” he says, laughing, as he slides into a booth of an empty New York hotel bar. “If we’re on a regular tour, my guitar player and I play nine holes every morning before the show. But for a book tour like this, there’s just no time to do it. So I’ve got to go through a little bit of golf withdrawals.”
Before he died in July, Lindsay Graham ruled over South Carolina politics for 23 years. It was a conservative state then — Graham won the seat after the death of the legendary racist Strom Thurmond in 2003 — and it is a conservative state now, but Graham’s death and Donald Trump’s overwhelming unpopularity have created an opportunity for a Democrat to change the state’s future. Enter Dr. Annie Andrews.
No matter where you navigate with Google Maps, you always return home eventually. Because it's the destination you travel to most, it makes sense to have quick access to your home address to cut down on wasted time. Thankfully, Google Maps has special shortcuts for your home, as well as other frequently visited locations.
Weird Weekend is our regular Saturday column where we celebrate PC gaming oddities: peculiar games, strange bits of trivia, forgotten history. Pop back every weekend to find out what Jeremy, Josh and Rick have become obsessed with this time, whether it's the canon height of Thief's Garrett or that time someone in the Vatican pirated Football Manager.
On a balmy April afternoon at Abbey Road Studios in London, a 74-piece orchestra comprised of violinists, cellists, flautists and even an organ-payer, is packed into Studio One. The iconic room, which has hosted musical legends from Edward Elgar to Harry Styles, is painted “Toy Story” blue, a fitting color given the reason everyone is here today is to record the score for “Ray Gunn,” a new feature animation from Pixar legend Brad Bird, the brains behind “Ratatouille” and “The Incredibles.”
Khan Younis, Gaza – Dr Mohammed al-Khalidi, a specialist in prosthetics and orthotics, sits in a modest tent in al-Mawasi, southern Gaza. It has been his place of work since his clinic on al-Bahr Street in Rafah was destroyed by Israeli bombing in April 2024. His second and third clinics in Khan Younis’s Old City, southern Gaza, were subsequently destroyed by Israel in May 2025.
“Welcome to the future,” we hear several times in “Ray Gunn” — not that the brave new world it presents is all that welcoming. Or, for that matter, particularly brave or new. The good news is we finally have flying cars and superpowered jetpacks; in other respects, though, we haven’t come a long way at all. Co-existence with extraterrestrials has seen humans revert to old habits of prejudice and apartheid; crime and corruption are rampant as ever; pop-up ads now irksomely manifest as holograms in your personal space. Still, at least the future looks good. The fifth animated feature from Brad Bird is a handsome return to the retro-futurism he previously practiced in “The Incredibles” and his live-action oddity “Tomorrowland”: in this case, a vision of an impossible 21st-century metropolis as might have been dreamed in 1939.
Ray Gunn (Sam Rockwell), private eye, is special. He’s “the only honest player in a crooked game,” the only dick who prioritizes things like truth and justice over cold hard cash. In a retrofuturistic society where aliens are disdained as second-class citizens, he’s the rare human who stands up for extraterrestrials. Some scorn him for his heroism; others admire him for it; all agree he’s something of an oddity.
Tehran, Iran – A speech by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoking memories of ancient Persia has been met with coldness or disdain across the Iranian political spectrum amid Washington’s ongoing war on Iran.
Not to brag, but without realizing it, I've become a model friend — someone my loved ones admire for how well I maintain my relationships. At least, so they tell me.
