Does it almost feel like you've been here before?: Watching the Super Bowl at the Cecil?
January 2021 almost felt like the 13th month of 2020, and February is slowly trying to convey some change - the so-called "new normal" can't go away any time sooner, as we just want our lives back to when we didn't know what "COVID" meant. In any case, there was death, streaming shows and movies, political turmoil, band breakups, and a Super Bowl not played on Groundhog Day but still having a repeated result.
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dustin Diamond | 
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2,122,339 | 
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After becoming the target of a death hoax back in October of last year, Screech from Saved by the Bell actually died this week at just 44 years old due to lung cancer. Although his legacy as an actor mostly started and ended with Screech (unless you happen to one of the very few fans of Alumnus Guy #1 or Man in Outhouse), he earned a different reputation for his various mishaps over the years, such as filing for bankruptcy and getting arrested for pulling out a switchblade in a bar. |
| 2 | Royal Rumble (2021) |
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1,819,392 | 
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WWE continues to host events without an audience, with Bianca Belair (pictured) and Edge winning the main cards. |
| 3 | Christopher Plummer | 
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A Canadian actor who was more than deserving of the top spot on this list and was the oldest person to win an Oscar, Plummer starred in all sorts of hit films, from The Sound of Music to Knives Out. Given he died so late in the week, his viewcount was too low to surpass that of Royal Rumble. |
| 4 | Marjorie Taylor Greene |
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1,353,813 | US Representative known for her support of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, including one in which the California wildfires were caused by "Jewish space lasers". She was recently stripped of her committee roles in Congress by all Democrats and eleven Republicans. This is unrelated, but whenever her name is shortened in the media to "MTG," I can't stop interpreting it as Magic: The Gathering. | |
| 5 | WandaVision |
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The first Marvel Cinematic Universe show on Disney+ continues to surprise viewers, this time with a very unexpected cameo. |
| 6 | Marilyn Manson |
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1,156,506 | 
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One of the most infamous shock rockers saw his reputation fall apart after various women came out with sexual abuse stories following a social media statement by his ex-fiancé Evan Rachel Wood that he abused and groomed her, leading to him being dropped by his label, his agent, and two shows. |
| 7 | Captain Tom |
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Few centenarians do as much for the world before they leave as this British Army veteran, who last year started raising money for charity and inspired the recording of a #1 hit and Queen Elizabeth to knight him, among other things. Captain Sir Thomas Moore passed away two months before he would turn 101. |
| 8 | The Dig (2021 film) | 
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965,743 | 
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While many would be frustrated that this is not based on the 1995 LucasArts adventure game, this Netflix adaptation of a book retelling about an archeological excavation in Sutton Hoo prior to World War II is certainly a good story, but one that brought plenty of people to Wikipedia to check how things actually went. |
| 9 | Sutton Hoo |
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965,046 | ||
| 10 | Deaths in 2021 | 
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942,957 | 
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As #6 sung when we thought he was just weird: Sampled and soulless, worldwide and real webbed You sell all the living for more safer dead |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tom Brady |
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We can now make a correction to that infamous quote: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and Tom Brady's team winning at the Super Bowl."
Tom Brady, who, with the Buccaneers (#15), won Super Bowl LV (#5), has now been a part of the winning team at the Super Bowl seven times. That's more years than most players will ever even make it to the Super Bowl. That's more years than some people even spend in the NFL at all. Tom Brady winning at the Super Bowl has become an American tradition. Hundreds of millions of people have been born and hundreds of millions have died in between Tom Brady's first win and this last one. If Tom Brady winning was a child, it would only be a year older than his daughter. Maybe Tom Brady will never stop winning the Super Bowl until he's dead...But what if Tom Brady never dies? What if he just keeps winning and winning? Is the way the world ends? Not with a bang, but with Tom Brady throwing a football? |
| 2 | The Weeknd |
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The singer (not to be confused with The Wee KND) gave a perfectly okay halftime performance dedicated to Vegas nightlife (his music is dedicated to cocaine, so it makes sense) at the Super Bowl. There were people in red suits and face bandages bumping into each other in a narrow hallway -- hope they got the vaccine! -- people in red suits and face bandages dancing on the field, and The Weeknd in a red suit. Something tells me he's trying to cultivate a specific image, but I can't put my bandage on it. He also paid tribute to The Blair Witch Project by getting entirely too close to the camera.
Also, did they only invite him to perform so that they could say it was a "Super Bowl Weeknd"? I doubt it, but that's not stopping me from pointing out that missed opportunity. |
| 3 | Rob Gronkowski |
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If you ever want a nickname that doesn't make you sound like a big oaf, maybe avoid using something that sounds like an onomatopoeia used to describe a piano falling on someone's head, like "*GRONK!*". Anyway, Gronk here is the tight end for the Buccaneers, and won the big game. |
| 4 | Patrick Mahomes |
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1,520,572 | 
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He won last year's Super Bowl, and to the chagrin of everyone who wanted anyone but our #1 winning it all, couldn't repeat the feat. |
| 5 | Death of Elisa Lam | 
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1,290,053 | 
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I'm starting to think Netflix is going through every brief true crime phase I had in high school to adapt each one into a miniseries. First they did it with Luka Magnotta, and now they've made Crime Scene, a series uncovering the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death of this Canadian student. She was found dead in a water tank at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles (#7) completely naked and with few ways to actually get into the tank. To make matters weirder, Lam was seen acting especially erratic in the hotel elevator in a surveillance video that went viral, which you can find in the article itself. |
| 6 | WandaVision |
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1,272,590 | 
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Hopefully those who didn't like the first three episodes for being sendoffs to old sitcoms remained to see how the show is now about a dangerous grieving superpowered women trapping a town in sendoffs to old sitcoms. |
| 7 | Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles) |
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1,166,664 |
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Ms. Lam wasn't the first person to kick the can at this eerie hotel by a long shot. In fact, so many people died here that that fact alone has its own Wikipedia article. |
| 8 | Super Bowl LV |
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This country will never be unified until Tom Brady stops winning Super Bowls! |
| 9 | Rajiv Kapoor | 
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1,135,987 | The Kapoor family, so present in Bollywood, lost this member who had just completed his acting return. | |
| 10 | Gina Carano |
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The former MMA champ and actress got dropped from her role as Cara Dune on the ever-popular Disney+ series The Mandalorian after she made a post on Instagram suggesting that the way Jews were treated during the Holocaust was akin to the way conservatives are being treated in modern-day America. Strange, since the only concentration camps in America that I've heard about as of late were endorsed by those very same conservatives.
This isn't her first brush with controversy, either: she's been openly anti-BLM, has made transphobic remarks, has advocated for not wearing masks, and is a Trump voter fraud truther. I would be pretty bummed about losing such a sweet role, but then again, I'm Jewish and left-wing, so maybe I shouldn't empathize with her for saying something so patently stupid. |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rush Limbaugh |
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2,235,167 | 
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Limbaugh, a wildly successful talk radio host and iconoclastic conservative figure, passed away this last Wednesday. Online discourse was divided; some people insisted on not speaking ill of the dead, while others wanted to hold their crab rave and bring up Limbaugh's many misdeeds – including speaking ill of gay people that had died of AIDS. |
| 2 | Death of Elisa Lam |
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1,444,914 | 
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"An irresponsible, bloated mess"; "ghoulish and unsavoury"; "wallowing in pseudo-science and non-science". The reviews for Netflix's new docuseries Crime Scene were quite charitable.
Lam went missing while staying at Los Angeles's Cecil Hotel, a spot which was already infamous for a legacy of homicide and seedy behavior, in February 2013. A security video showed her behaving erratically in an elevator; a month later, she was found dead in the hotel's water tank. This mysterious death is the subject of Crime Scene, released February 10. As mentioned before, the series has earned itself less fans than the hotel where she died. Plus, it apparently lacks positive role models. |
| 3 | WandaVision |
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1,356,722 | 
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This Disney+ series, the first installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2019, has delivered week after week of twists – the latest being the introduction of a clear antagonist. |
| 4 | Agatha Harkness |
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1,318,728 | ||
| 5 | Naomi Osaka |
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Osaka won the women's singles tournament at the Australian Open, which took place over the week. Along the way, she defeated America's only celebrity tennis player, and then another one. |
| 6 | Cecil Hotel (Los Angeles) |
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The scary setting of any retelling of #2. |
| 7 | List of deaths and violence at the Cecil Hotel |
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973,285 | ||
| 8 | Deaths in 2021 |
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836,959 | 
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And them good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye Singin', "This'll be the day that I die" |
| 9 | Ted Cruz |
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This week, Texas was hit by a once-in-a-generation winter storm. Everyone turning up their heaters, coupled with most power suppliers freezing, strained the state's power infrastructure, causing widespread blackouts. Dozens of deaths have been reported so far. Governor Abbott blamed the not-enacted-by-any-government Green New Deal, the mayor of Colorado City told his constituents to stop looking for handouts, and Senator Cruz took his family on vacation to Cancún.
After getting caught, Cruz booked the first flight home and explained that he was only escorting his preteen daughters to a resort they insisted on going to. |
| 10 | Valentine's Day |
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748,353 | 
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This holiday, adored by the lovers and scorned by the single, fell upon us once again at the top of this week. Users wondered, as they do every year, what St. Valentine did to earn him this day, only to discover that there are two different guys and, like, twenty different stories that it might be dedicated to, and half of them don't even have to do with love. If you were alone on Valentine's Day this year, well, you had an excuse there's a deadly pandemic. Anyway, a happy Anna Howard Shaw Day to us all! |
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| Rank | Article | Class | Views | Image | Notes/about |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Daft Punk |
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The French robot-masked dance music duo - known for an animated feature-length music video, the soundtrack to Tron Legacy, and the song of the summer c. 2013 - posted a video titled "Epilogue" on Monday; showing one of the robots blowing the other up. This was followed by a statement from their publicist that they had broken up. |
| 2 | WandaVision |
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1.468.772 | 
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Along with digging deeper into what led to all those sitcom pastiches, this week's episode marked a first in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: Wanda Maximoff was finally referred to as Scarlet Witch! |
| 3 | Bobby Shmurda |
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1.140.286 | 
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Shmurda had a Billboard Top 10 hit in 2014; by the end of the year, he was arrested for conspiracy to murder. He spent 7 years in prison, being released on parole on Tuesday. |
| 4 | Deaths in 2021 |
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957.196 | 
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Best use a lyric by our #1 duo: But suddenly I feel the shining sun Before I knew it this dream was all gone |
| 5 | I Care a Lot |
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933.332 | 
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I Care a Lot! About Netflix movies that keep people glued to their screen (I care a lot) About the elders being scammed in a guardianship routine I care a lot! About the mafia threats that Dianne Wiest brought I care a lot! About Peter Dinklage and Rosamund Pike, they really rock I care a lot! |
| 6 | Agatha Harkness |
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#2's main antagonist, a witch played by Kathryn Hahn, who in the first episodes was disguised as Wanda's nosy neighbor Agnes. |
| 7 | Tiger Woods |
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Woods was hospitalized following a car accident on Tuesday. According to the news, he's back in "good spirits." |
| 8 | Zitkala-Sa |
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851.153 | 
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This early-20th-century Yankton Dakota activist and author was born on February 22, 1876. For her birthday, she was commemorated by a Google Doodle. |
| 9 | Shailene Woodley |
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This actress finally confirmed she is the fiancé Aaron Rodgers referred to during the NFL awards. |
| 10 | Elimination Chamber (2021) | 
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689.700 | 
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This annual WWE event was held in St. Petersburg, Florida, on Sunday. |
Discuss this story
- Political attacks in the commentary aren't a good look for Wikipedia... please, try keep it neutral if you can't be positive! Sir Magnus has spoken! (So can you!)
- I found the commentary on Gina Carano to be particularly distasteful. You say that she compared the Holocaust to how conservatives were being treated, but that isn't even what is being said in her instagram post? Then you compare US migrant detention centres to Holocaust camps. Last I checked, they weren't gassing migrants by the millions. You then say she made transphobic remarks, but the Wikipedia page says that "Carano was later accused of transphobia". There's quite a difference between being accused of transphobia by some random people on Twitter and then a Wikipedia editor, who should speak the truth, saying that their comments are transphobic. Sure, The Signpost isn't supposed to be neutral or boring, but it isn't supposed to push some kind of narrative, especially when it is harmful and misleading. Kind regards, Willbb234Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 08:53, 3 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- Oh my god, I had no idea Gina had a Wikipedia account! Hey, girl! How's that new movie with Ben Shapiro coming along? /s benǝʇᴉɯ 08:01, 4 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Given we're adding the controversies of everybody's lives in these along with what they're notable for, and this one was notably missing, I want to add that the Weeknd song "Lost In The Fire" has lyrics about raping lesbian women or otherwise "turning" lesbians straight by having sex with them. Please see: https://www.newsweek.com/weeknd-slammed-twitter-users-new-lyric-claiming-he-can-f-you-straight-1288527 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6000:F042:5B36:4839:BE78:E222:928 (talk) 21:16, 26 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]