Today’s pop-culture roundup includes an iconic voice, a heavy metal band, DWTS, our mystery music video and much more.

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JOHN BELUSHI!: For those of a certain age, per USA TODAY, “The irreplaceable Don Pardo is being replaced as Saturday Night Live’s stentorian announcer, and Lorne Michaels didn’t have to look far: Longtime cast member Darrell Hammond is rejoining the show as the (mostly) unseen voice introducing the show, its cast and Weekend Update when the 40th season opens Sept. 27.

“Hammond, 58, was SNL’s longest-tenured star, spending 14 seasons at NBC’s Studio 8H from 1995 to 2009. A master of mimicry, he played few characters but did 107 impressions. . . But many viewers don’t know that Hammond also impersonated Pardo, who died last month at age 96 after a 70-year NBC career, including all 39 seasons of SNL. “I sat in for Don when he had laryngitis several times over the years,” Hammond says. “He was a lovely person. When he passed, they wanted me; it felt right for me to be the one to replace him. It’s been a very improbable life; I didn’t expect something like this, but it feels real good.” ’’ http://usat.ly/1qhf3Pa

WHATEVER: People say stuff, per the Los Angeles Times, “According to the New York Daily News, baby-doll singer Ariana Grande said something very unkind about her fans in a closed elevator to the always dubious source, the “industry insider.”

“After signing autographs and having her photo taken for a recent radio visit, Grande, who has one of the most interactive relationships with her fans in pop today, stepped into an elevator, waited for it to close and said, “I hope they all [expletive] die.” ’’ http://lat.ms/1yiop7s

GRATEFUL DEAD: This is a page from their MO, per Rolling Stone, “For the past decade, Metallica has been beating bootleggers to the punch by offering high-quality soundboard recordings of nearly every concert they play as downloads on their own LiveMetallica.com. To commemorate the anniversary of the site, the group is offering CDs and LPs of every gig it played in 2014, mostly comprising its “Metallica by Request” tours of South America and Europe where fans selected the set lists.

“The group will be unrolling the releases in three-album batches each Monday through the end of the year in the order they played the shows, beginning with Bogotá, Colombia. It’s also offering a box set of all 27 shows, which will ship in December. All sales will be conducted through the LiveMetallica website.” http://rol.st/1mbpHwb

DWTS: What a trip, per The Wrap, “Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones was “embarrassed” and “broken” after being eliminated from “Dancing with the Stars” on Tuesday night. The athlete took to Facebook to vent about feeling “rejected by the public (and that) when you go so many times rejected in public you put walls up. When I was dancing last night and messed up I had flashbacks of the three Olympics and that people constantly tease me about,” Jones wrote. “I thought, ‘Oh no here it comes again. People are going to ridicule me.’ I’m so tired of feeling embarrassed.”

“Jones, who finished seventh in the 100 meter hurdle at the 2008 Beijing Olympics after tripping, said she couldn’t even fake a smile amongst the rest of the cast after the show and “felt like vomiting.” http://bit.ly/1wsBJl6

ALCATRAZ: And Legos, per the New York Times, “Judging from the large bags of colorful Legos on the floor and dozens of plastic base plates piled on tables, this room could have been the activities station for a well-funded summer camp. And the five women and men drifting in and out, slicing open boxes and rooting around for the right size toy bricks, were young enough to pass as camp counselors.

“Only the place where they were working is the opposite of summer camp: Alcatraz, the notoriously bleak military prison turned maximum-security penitentiary turned national park. With its banks of small windows and a “gun gallery” for surveillance, this building is where inmates once laundered military uniforms. It’s usually off limits to tourists. But starting Saturday, visitors will be able to see for themselves, spread across the floor, where so many Legos were heading: an ambitious installation by the Chinese activist-artist Ai Weiwei, featuring 176 portraits of prisoners of conscience and political exiles around the world.” http://nyti.ms/1o5YLJx

HOTPLAY: Or something like that, per Us Weekly, “J.Law really loves Coldplay! Chris Martin’s band performed at the Ace Hotel Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday, Sept. 17, and guess who was in the crowd? His new lady, Jennifer Lawrence.

“The Hunger Games star has been dating recently uncoupled Martin for around three months. They were first spotted together at the singer’s New York gig in August, and have just started stepping out in public.” http://usm.ag/1wsFCGR

THE NFL?: What’s that?, per Variety, “The National Football League has another problem. . . Younger viewers are walking away from broadcasts of its games.

“The average audience between 18 and 49 for NFL broadcasts across CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN and the NFL Network has declined by about 10.6% over the last four seasons, according to Nielsen data prepared by Horizon Media, to about 7.7 million in 2013 from about 8.62 million in 2010. Meantime, male viewers between 18 and 24 watching the sport have also fallen off, tumbling about 5.3% in the same time period, to approximately 847,000 in 2013 from 894,000 in 2010.” http://bit.ly/1meJt9D

INDUSTRY NEWS: Just the facts, per The Hollywood Reporter, “News Corp, led by chairman Rupert Murdoch, and Google have engaged in a renewed war of words over the Internet giant’s market power and role in piracy. The exchange comes amid ongoing antitrust settlement talks between Google and the European Commission and follows a 2012 verbal showdown between Murdoch and the web search powerhouse.” http://bit.ly/1to4z6r

AND FINALLY: Today’s mystery music video: http://bit.ly/1uKQ5Ow

—Skip Wood

swood@wjla.com