Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 12/22/16
What’s the best Christmas movie of our time?
11:45 AMAll right, kiddos, announcement time. Starting Jan. 8, I, Domonique Foxworth and Mina Kimes will be hosting an ESPN Radio show on Sunday mornings from 9 a.m.-noon EST. We’re very excited and hope you’ll tune in!
The other night, I flipped on the television to watch Jeopardy! A woman got the final answer correct and won, then I went to Twitter to see that she’d actually already died from cancer, as the show had been taped months prior. It was a shot to the gut to know you were watching someone who was already gone on a TV game show, but as the story got more popular, it felt a tad inspirational in many ways. Cindy Stowell is her name, and while her winning streak on the show ended, she donated all of her winnings to charity, ABC News reports.
People will argue forever about what the best Christmas movies are. I saw someone on Twitter say the other day that Jingle All The Way was somehow underrated, which is idiotic. Everyone likes that movie and always have. And we won’t be arguing about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, because it is. Anyway, in the past few weeks, many people have been revisiting Love Actually for whatever reason. I’ve seen it all of once in my life, but FiveThirtyEight’s Walt Hickey and Gus Wezerek are calling it the greatest Christmas film of our time.
It feels like every day the Trump administration gives us something else to worry about. Today, he hired Kellyanne Conway as counselor to the president, making her the first woman from either party to win an election as campaign manager. Anyway, tons of people are worried that various rights are going to be rolled back, diminished or otherwise abolished, if you don’t look or sound like all the people who voted for The Donald. VICE’s Chase Strangio breaks down how LGBT people can fight the administration.
Duke’s Grayson Allen is bugging. For whatever reason, he tripped another player last night intentionally, which is just so lame on every level. This is officially a thing that he does, not just a mistake that he makes. So, Duke suspended him, somewhat of a surprise considering that Coach K pretty routinely never admits that his players have ever done anything wrong. Alas, this time he had no choice. I’ll tell you one thing, if this kid makes it to the NBA, he certainly won’t be pulling that foolishness anymore. ESPN has the story.
Free Food
Coffee Break: Some people are insanely racist. Like, beyond all understanding, they refuse to believe that black people deserve anything. First, there was the guy who burned his own house down and blamed it on Black Lives Matter. Now, we’ve got a guy who killed his own wife, and is blaming it on BLM, as well. #cmonson
Snack Time: I’ve said for a long time that Chewbacca is the most superfluous major character in the Star Wars universe, but this video of him singing Silent Night is pretty hilarious.
Dessert: Speaking of holiday music, Chance the Rapper and Jeremih dropped a Christmas album. Enjoy!
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 12/21/16
North Carolina is back to fighting over bathrooms
2:10 PMA couple of personal notes. No. 1, another episode of Locker Room Lawyer is in the books. Secondly, I can say I was glad to participate in the American Press Institute’s study on effective habits of journalists. Check it out.
When North Carolina decided to pass the House Bill 2 (HB2) law, the state took a huge hit. Companies, governments and some people in general decided that the Tar Heel state was a place that they didn’t need to be. People did not want to be involved with a place that was considered to be widely discriminating against the LGBT community, and with good reason. Now, lawmakers are reconvening to determine if they need to repeal HB2, which is known more colloquially as the “bathroom bill,” all together. ABC News has the details on that from Charlotte, North Carolina.
Christmas is coming up, obviously. We’ve been over the notion of why Santa Claus doesn’t need to be white at the mall, but the larger question of his existence in a child’s mind is different. I have no idea whether or not I’d tell my own kid that Santa was real. I’d like to think that I’d be tough and hit them with that truth serum right off the top, so they don’t live their lives believing in fantasies. But then again, what’s the fun in that? I can’t remember if I ever thought he was real. But VICE‘s Pascal Emmanuel-Gobry had no such problems in childhood.
Now that the White House has been turned a tad upside down, there are questions. Because with Donald Trump at the helm, it’s not like everyone else in politics just goes away. President Barack Obama will still be in Washington, D.C., and still be, you know, him. Hillary Clinton is still around. As will be pretty much everyone else who spent a life dedicated to public office. Which led the gang at FiveThirtyEight to wonder: Who will be the most powerful political person of 2017? They chatted about it and had a quasi-fantasy draft, as well.
DeMarcus Cousins is having a tough year. Not in terms of his on-court play, but it seems like every time he turns around, someone seems to be upset with what he does. On Tuesday night, he went bananas on the Trailblazers, scoring 55 points at home in Sacramento, California. But before that happened, he was ejected from the game for what appeared to be spitting a mouthpiece at the Portland bench. Then, they brought him back after they changed their minds. After the game, Cousins was extremely unhappy. ESPN reports.
Free Food
Coffee Break: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is going to be building annoying things that no one can really afford for the rest of our lives, it feels like. He’s now designed an artificial intelligence personality that controls your house, by doing things like playing your music and shooting T-shirts out of your closet at you. Seriously.
Snack Time: A lot of gang members have a lot of tattoos. Many of them aren’t really in a position to remove them all, because that’s painful and expensive. Check out this video of ex-gang members looking at themselves sans tats.
Dessert: The most heartbreaking thing going on TV right now, for me, is this story.
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.
Locker Room Lawyer, Episode 12: It’s time to celebrate
But maybe not if you’re actually playing football
1:50 PMThis week, we head down to Atlanta for our case, which involves the college game. Grambling State University faced off against North Carolina Central University in the Air Force Reserve Celebration Bowl at the Georgia Dome. Ironically, the most important play of the game was one in which a penalty was called for … celebrating. What is the world coming to?
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.