This week, celebrate the holiday with a rap-concert boondoggle, root for the home team at Wimbledon, have your mind blown by Snowpiercer, see The Future Of All Dating with Will Forte and Aubrey Plaza, get business advice from Nathan Fielder, find out if James Franco is doing something arty this month (the answer: duh).
Photo: (from left) Cindy Ord/Getty Images; Steve Granitz/WireImage/Getty Images; Jon Furniss/WireImage/Getty Images
1. Celebrate Independence Day with this rap-concert boondoggle. America invented hip-hop, we knocked off England for our freedom, and Philly's home to the Liberty Bell. So go ahead and try to come up with a more patriotic plan than this one. U-S-A! U-S-A!—DEVIN GORDON
July 4: Fly to London for day one of Wireless Festival, featuring Kanye.
July 5: Fly to Philadelphia for Jay Z/Beyoncé concert.
July 6: Fly back to London for day three of Wireless Festival, featuring OutKast.
Photo: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
2. Or pour one out for the Brits—by watching Wimbledon. The tournament's final matches take place over the holiday weekend at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. Cheer on the home-team favorite Andy Murray as he defends his men's singles title. Or just kick back with your best bro, in your matching suits, again.
3. Go get your ticket for Snowpiercer, the summer's craziest action movie. Snowpierceris the name of a mega-train on an endless loop through frozen, post-apocalyptic Earth, with all of humanity's survivors stuck inside: the rich ride up front, the poor in the back—until the poor decide to revolt. Here are seven reasons why you've got to see what happens next.—DEVIN GORDON
Photo: Courtesy of 2776
4. Watch Will Forte and Aubrey Plaza date—in the future. The most patriotic way to celebrate July 4th: laughing at ourselves. 2776—a part music, part comedy concept album—drops tomorrow, featuring a list of awesome people too long to list here poking fun at all things American. (It includes Neko Case, Reggie Watts, Ira Glass, and Patton Oswalt.) Bonus: sales benefit the educational nonprofit OneKid OneWorld. More bonus: this video outtake from the album recording, a GQ.com exclusive, of Will Forte and Aubrey Plaza on a date in the year 2776. 2776 is available for pre-orderhere. The album is streaming in full here.
5. Watch Nathan Fielder help people. Nathan Fielder is here to help. The catch: things are going to get weird. In his Comedy Central series, Nathan For You, Nathan plays a version of himself—same business background, more quirk—visiting small businesses to dispense his unorthodox moneymaking advice. Advice like, say, appropriating the trademark of the world's biggest coffee chain to make $$$s. The results? Usually as successful as they are funny. We rang up Fielder to find out how he does it and get the story behind the new season's (already) most talked about episode: Dumb Starbucks.
6. Answer this question: Is James Franco doing something arty this month? YES!—D.G.
What he's doing: Co-starring in the intersecting-story-lines melodrama Third Person, from Oscar-winning Crash director Paul Haggis, about a trio of couples whose relationships are disrupted by an interloper. (Get it? Third Person?)
What's so arty about it: It's actually more faux arty (farty?) in the same way that Crash was—all the plotlines come together in a way that's supposed to be deeply insightful about the human condition but is really just contrived horseshit.
The arty cherry on top: Franco plays an artist!
