Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 12/20/16
Michelle Obama makes us weepy for what we’ll miss
5:35 PMNews alert: There is now a fantasy sports app for The Bachelor, which is the greatest news of 2016. Legit.
We’ve said this many times before, but the person we’re going to miss the most is Michelle Obama. Yes, we’re worried about the global balance of power that’s going to come with this change in the White House, and yes, the government is going to be a mess with all sorts of people who have no idea what they’re doing involved. But in the house? At the crib? The first lady was running things, and it was so much fun to see and be a part of. She sat down with Oprah for an interview, and it made me very sad. ABC News has the details on what she said.
One of the most important classes I ever took in my life was called TOK. Theory of Knowledge. In it, we discussed all sorts of quasi-existential questions and applied them to real-life situations, and in high school, that can really affect your worldview. Anyway, we’d ask each other a ton of bizarre stuff and see if we could come up with answers. In said class, I can totally imagine spending a full week discussing the one that FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth-Baker says came from a toddler: Why do balloons pop?
LeBron James cannot be stopped. His whole life aside from basketball is so beyond productive that it makes me question what I’m doing with my life, to be quite honest. His latest venture is a television program call The Wall, which, if I may, is a complete ripoff of the best game show bit of all time, Plinko, from The Price Is Right. That aside, it looks like it’s going to be awesome. Game shows aren’t easy to make successful and they come and go all the time. ESPN’s Dave McMenamin has the story.
DeMarcus Cousins is a guy with an interesting reputation. He’s known for not exactly being a big fan of authority, and that’s been the case ever since he was in college. Which, of course, is fine, to a point, and is exactly what makes him such a dominant player. That and being tremendously skilled at the game, obviously. But recently, he went way too far with a Sacramento Bee reporter and it was not a good look at all. The Undefeated’s Marc Spears reports that the Kings hit him with a heavy fine, for said actions.
Free Food
Coffee Break: Here’s one thing you should never do: stand on ice that’s liable to break with freezing cold water underneath. Here’s another thing you shouldn’t do: try to hit a golf ball on said ice. You know why? Because you will fail and will absolutely hit the deck. This video is hilarious.
Snack Time: If you’re like me, you like to listen to the radio. If you’re even more like me, you like to listen to radio specific to your own physical location at the time. Radio Garden is exactly that, globally.
Dessert: This is the best dancing coach of all time. Not even close.
Daily Dose: 12/19/16
Why would anyone play in a bowl game they didn’t have to?
2:30 PMWell, hello there. We’re back from Atlanta, where the Air Force Celebration Bowl went down and Grambling State University won the HBCU national championship by the score of 10-9. I’ll have a lot more on the trip coming up this week.
Just so we’re clear, the Electoral College was created to appease slave owners. That said, Monday’s vote to officially ratify what happened on Election Day is what it is. The Russia situation created some drama, in that many electoral voters wanted to know more before casting their ballots. There were people who thought that the results might actually get reversed, but that is highly unlikely, alas. Which means, for the second time in my lifetime, the person with the most votes will not get to be president. ABC News has the details.
By now, you’ve hopefully seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. If not, I don’t know what you’re doing with yourself. It’s only the most popular movie in the country. What are you, out working, or trying to live some fulfilling life? You should be in a theater worrying about fictional space heroes. In all seriousness though, this film was a real departure from the rest of the series. In a good way, if you ask me. FiveThirtyEight’s Walt Hickey explains how they came to where they are regarding the story of the universe.
Shoplifting is a thing people do. For some, it’s about the thrill of the steal as much as it is the need for the goods. But during the holidays, it’s an especially prevalent issue for obvious reasons. Back when I used to work in retail, they’d try to make us be quasi-police officers about the merch, and I refused to do it. Some multinational clothing company’s bottom line is not enough for me to scrap with a person over. VICE‘s Tim Usher put together a bunch of stories from people about the times they stole and maybe got away with it.
Bowl games do not matter if you’re not playing for it all. That’s the difference that creating a playoff system has made. The matchups that are not the big ones, quite literally, do not matter, so for guys who have a chance to do something at the next level, there is no incentive to play. You could get hurt, basically. So, Louisiana State’s Leonard Fournette has said he’s not playing. People were needlessly mad. Now, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey is doing the same. As they say, be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it. ESPN reports.
Free Food
Coffee Break: The University of Minnesota’s football team has ended its short-sighted protest, because players figured that sitting out of football activities for something related to sexual assault is stupid. No, seriously, all they did was read the police report and shut down their little standoff. Yep, life’s bigger than football, folks.
Snack Time: When a plane went down, killing a large portion of Brazil’s Chapecoense soccer club, it was a devastating blow for soccer. But some people survived. You don’t have to speak Spanish to get this emotion.
Dessert: Read this tweet. Wow.
The ‘Pengest Munch’ is back
and still eating more chicken
5:54 PMBy now, you know who the Chicken Connoisseur is. We talked about him on the All Day Podcast. He’s an internet celebrity now and he’s got people proudly eating chicken in public and on camera with no fear of repercussions from ignorant onlookers. In short, he’s a hero.
His newest video just dropped and my man knows that his life has changed. What do you do when you become a 23-year-old YouTube star food critic? Keep doing what you do, pleighboi. The man born Elijah Quashie has stepped up his kicks game, and per usual, the production values are on point. Also to be noted, MY MAN WEARS GLOVES ON TELEVISION. Handwear game is quite strong.
That Chicken Connoisseur interview on ITV 😂😂😂 @PengestMunch pic.twitter.com/xq2xcR7JQz
— Oliver 🇦🇺 (@HashtagOliverK) December 13, 2016
Back to the latest video, though. Dude is legit famous. People are taking pictures of him in chicken spots, he holds and drinks from soda cans with his pinky up and tucks his napkin in his shirt because he’s just mobbin’ like that he’s actually wearing a necktie. When I eat chicken, I wipe the grease on my pants, if you were wondering.
Anyway, you can check it out for yourself to see the ratings from Sam’s in Woodside Park. But come on, someone, anyone, bring this man to the United States to rate food. What on earth are we waiting for? He’s a ready-made star.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 12/16/16
‘Star Wars’ got bars?
11:57 AMGood day from Atlanta, kiddos. I’ve been doing my best to find as many spots as I can from FX’s Atlanta and check them out. Let’s just say that the most important one, I got covered. As they say: Lemon. Pepper. Wet.
Today’s the day. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will be released nationwide, ushering in an entirely new generation of fans to a franchise that will probably outlive us all. I’ve had many things to say about this product over the years, and that hasn’t changed today, either. I wrote a review, but more importantly, we need to know what the cast has been up to. Riz Ahmed is that dude, and if you didn’t already know, homey likes to kick flows on the side. He told Good Morning America all about it.
Donald Trump has a huge problem on his hands. Let’s put aside the state that we’re in as a nation with this man getting ready to walk into the White House. For him, reputation is everything. And now that it’s become more clear that Russia might have been involved in affecting the last presidential election, the White House, and specifically President Barack Obama, ain’t playing. Basically, Trump is acting like this is all a smear campaign, truth be damned. Alas, the truth matters. ABC News reports.
Police killings have become something that we actually pay attention to, in recent years. But what’s even scarier is that, for years, the government basically had no real idea of how often this happened. Seriously, it just wasn’t particularly paid attention to. Think about that. Thankfully, we have newsrooms willing to do that work in this country. Now, the feds are finally trying to catch up on this information themselves. It’s about time, frankly. FiveThirtyEight’s Carl Bialik explains how they finally have a decent idea of what’s really going on.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers football program is a mess. Earlier this week, 10 players were suspended as a result of a Title IX investigation into a circumstance involving a sexual assault. With the Holiday Bowl coming up, this was a serious blow to the team’s chances of winning a football game, but hello, the accusations are EXTREMELY problematic. Now, the whole team is not participating in football activities, as if the players are being discriminated against. Um, no, they’re not. Here are the details. Get your squad together, Tracy Claeys. This is shameful.
Free Food
Coffee Break: As I mentioned before, your boy is in the ATL for the Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl taking place Saturday. Conveniently, Gucci Mane’s new album The Return Of East Atlanta Santa also dropped today. You can be like me and listen to it while you read this, just like I did while I wrote it.
Snack Time: Obama is one of the most popular figures on earth at this moment, and what he looks like is well scrutinized. So, you should probably check out this GIF of him aging over the course of his lifetime.
Dessert: James Corden does one thing really, really well. He sings in cars. For Christmas, he brought the best.
Charleston church shooter found guilty on all charges
Dylann Roof will defend himself during the sentencing phase in January
5:14 PMThe man who walked into a Charleston, South Carolina, church and massacred nine people has been found guilty by a jury in the federal trial on the shootings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015. This case had enough twists to make a reasonable person believe that, even with a confession on video, Dylann Roof might somehow walk away scot-free. That didn’t happen. He was found guilty on 33 counts.
Roof, 22, plans to defend himself during the next phase of the trial: the sentencing process. Because the death penalty is on the table, he will quite literally be arguing for his life. To be clear, this wasn’t just a case of a kid who was misguided with a gun and snapped. This was a long-planned, thoughtfully orchestrated decision that came complete with a manifesto. If you’ve forgotten exactly what his deal was, he’s one of those guys who’s so obsessed with the concept of supremacy that he believes that any situation in which black people are allowed their own agency is an instant threat to all white people everywhere.
He is the type who thinks that racism is only equal to calling people the N-word or burning crosses on front lawns. The type of person who doesn’t understand that his own home state had one of the biggest slave ports in the country and is still a place where the legacy of those atrocities is not exactly well-addressed. Without getting too far into normalizing the depths of his racism, his goal was to start a war between whites and blacks. And as a FBI agent told him after he was brought in for questioning, he failed.
“Only a fourth to a third of people in the South owned even one slave. Yet every white person is treated as if they had a slave-owning ancestor. This applies in the states where slavery never existed, as well as people whose families immigrated after slavery was abolished. I have read hundreds of slaves narratives from my state. And almost all of them were positive,” Roof once wrote.
Worth noting has been the resiliency of not just Charleston, but the church community specifically that was ripped apart by a murderous racist. Some of them have been present throughout the trial, even though it’s been difficult to even look at Roof’s face. It’s easy to forget that there were in fact three survivors in this situation. Here are some reactions.
Some news agencies chose to use the specific phrase “white supremacist” in describing Roof. Others didn’t.
Just in: White supremacist Dylann Roof has been found guilty on 33 of 33 charges in the Charleston church massacre
— Brandon Wall (@Walldo) December 15, 2016
Jury convicts Dylann Roof in racially motivated killings of 9 black church members in South Carolina. https://t.co/KFkQYdo8hg
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 15, 2016
For many black people, there was a natural gut reaction that is clearly rooted in years of systemic racism and oppression not only holding us back, but not being adjudicated correctly when it takes black lives.
#DylannRoof being found guilty is the best news I've heard all year.
— julia craven (@juliacraven) December 15, 2016
I honestly don't give one good damn about #DylannRoof or his family. "Victims on both sides," gtfo.
— Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) December 10, 2016
At one point, the judge said that there were victims on both sides, a spurious categorization that we can only presume comes in the fact that Roof’s life is effectively over as we know it, as well. Either way, people noticed.
https://twitter.com/knflkkollective/status/807395678775373825
https://twitter.com/EdmondScofield/status/809499533423935488
https://twitter.com/clintorious_BIG/status/809499728689774592
Ultimately, no verdict will bring back the nine lives lost on that awful Wednesday.
Thank you Jesus for justice on the #CharlestonShooting
— Chika 🌸 (@MuvaChi) December 15, 2016
#DylanRoof was just found guilty on all 9 murder charges. Not going to let myself be happy about it because that's how it is supposed to be.
— Warriors Kamau Bell (@wkamaubell) December 15, 2016
Dylan Roof dropped out of 9th grade, twice. But he got his hands on several guns. Oh America, you are so screwed. #NRAownsUSA
— Cheri DelBrocco (@cdelbrocco) December 15, 2016
The sentencing phase begins Jan. 3, 2017.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 12/15/16
Bundle up, America. It could save your life
10:00 AMWe’re headed to Atlanta for the second annual Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl between Grambling and North Carolina Central, the respective SWAC and MEAC Champions, on Saturday. Hopefully, I see an invisible car.
If you haven’t noticed, in most of America, it’s cold outside. Not like, “Oh, it’s cute, let’s put on our boots and go grab some gingerbread lattes” cold. More like, “If you do not have a safe situation, you might die out here” type of chill. It is December, of course, but when these snaps hit, for a lot of communities, it’s tough to just get up and be ready to deal with things like whiteout conditions. This has become far more than a local weather story, it’s affecting most of the country. ABC News reports.
The naive part of me wants to question why people don’t believe in science. But because it’s pretty clear that science falls in direct contradiction to the ability to make money on a large scale, I completely understand why it’s in a lot of people’s short-term best interest to ignore the fact that what they’re doing will hurt later generations. That’s why so many of these cabinet selections by Donald Trump scare so many people. Those folks don’t care. Scientists are speaking up about it, however. FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth-Baker reports.
Remember when Kanye West visited Donald Trump? Yeah, it was just Tuesday. Many were disappointed by the choice on both sides, but ultimately, it probably hurts Yeezy more than The Donald. You can expect that to be a staple of the cold open whenever the next Saturday Night Live airs. In the meantime, the president-elect is quite earnestly telling people that there is no formal chain of command within his ranks, at this point. Yikes. Anyway, VICE‘s Desus and Mero offer their thoughts on Ye dropping in on the next U.S. commander in chief.
The ritual of hazing in Major League Baseball is well-known. It typically involves players dressing in drag or some other form of costuming considered ridiculous, designed to embarrass and presumably instill some level of solidarity among the guys just getting up to the show. Did it feel archaic and pointless? Sure. Was there also some level of bonding involved with it? We’ll guess so. But because MLB no longer wants its spring training outings associated with fraternity practices, the league is ending it. ESPN’s Doug Glanville offers his take on the decision.
Free Food
Coffee Break: No matter what you think of memes in general as a comedy source, you certainly have favorites. So, what if I told you that you could look through 350 odd days of them from this year alone. Would that be something you were interested in? Lucky you. Obviously, the fun thing to do is pick your birthday then share it.
Snack Time: As an extreme radiophile, I get bizarrely geeked about certain aspects of the industry/business that most people don’t care about. Some, however, overlap greatly. Radio Garden is one of the coolest things ever.
Dessert: If you’ve ever wanted to spend the holidays with will.i.am, we’ve got you covered, fam.