Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 8/4/17
Barack Obama celebrates his 56th birthday
12:19 PMWhat up, gang? I’m in Los Angeles right now, and Thursday night I went to see the premiere of a show called Comrade Detective from Channing Tatum and it’s funny. Anyway, I’ll be on SportsNation Friday. Tune in, kiddos.
🎯 @raylewis pic.twitter.com/N9k7nDgmDh
— NESSA (@nessnitty) August 3, 2017
Friday is Barack Obama’s birthday. He’s moving closer to 60, and he’s living his best life. I wonder what he does on his born day. Can you imagine what his notifications and texts are like? You were America’s favorite and one of the most hated president for eight years, now you’re out of office AND you have a summer birthday? His phone is going to be buzzing heavy for a legit 24 hours. It’s also his first birthday since he left the White House, so you KNOW it’s gonna be lit. And because she’s the absolute best, Michelle shared a throwback picture for the ages. I love this family.
One of the difficult things about police work is consequences. Our judicial system is not set up to punish people in positions of authority unless it is a widespread, consistent and documented abuse of power. And even then, it’s not easy. It’s legitimately hard, due to the way things are structured, to fire an officer and keep him out of law enforcement going forward. In fact, after termination, quite a few appeal their cases and make their way back onto the force. Check out this investigation into the numbers and reasons as to why that occurs.
I love Aziz Ansari. There’s just no other way to put it. Between his TV work, his comedy, his book and basically everything else, my man is just dope. Remember when he showed up in the Otis video and people freaked all the way out? That was just another Tuesday for your boy. And this latest interview he did with GQ reveals that he owns a rare painted portrait of Soulja Boy, which is basically the most amazing thing of all time. I love the fact that it’s all really come together for him.
The long fight between Charles Oakley and the New York Knicks is over. A while back, the franchise legend decided he wanted to put hands on the team’s owner, or at least try to, and he ended up getting thrown out of Madison Square Garden by six dudes. Then, owner James Dolan banned him from the arena. So, they ended up in court. Now, Oakley has accepted a deal to not go to the facility for a year, but left open the possibility of civil charges. Fighting a retired man with nothing to lose in court for his dignity is not a winning battle, but good luck, Dolan.
Free Food
Coffee Break: I just want to give a shout-out to my man Joel Anderson, who joins us at ESPN to cover college football and basketball. Joel is a personal friend and a great dude. He also played football at Texas Christian University and is a great Twitter follower. I’m so happy he’s part of the team and I say that with no shame whatsoever.
Snack Time: Nardwuar and D.R.A.M. seem like those two dudes who ended up getting stuck with each other as college roommates and it ended in a beautiful relationship that no one expected. This interview is total gold.
Dessert: Only musicians can make amusement parks seem this fun. Lil Yachty is having a great summer.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 8/3/17
Dave Chappelle ain’t what he used to be
12:43 PMClinton Yates is not here. He’s currently watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to find clues as to how White House senior adviser Stephen Miller is only 31.
- The Baltimore Police Department, much like the professional football team in the city it protects, is quickly realizing the jig is up. For the second time in three weeks, video footage has surfaced of police officers allegedly planting drugs. This time, from a stop last November recorded on body cameras, an officer can be seen squatting by the driver’s side door, stepping back, and another officer moving in and finding a bag of heroin and marijuana. The charges against the suspect were eventually dropped, and Maryland prosecutors dismissed more than 30 cases after the release of the first video in July.
- Dave Chappelle, as much as it hurts to say, is struggling. On Wednesday night, he held the first of 16 shows at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, and the reviews weren’t great. Chappelle tried, and failed, to make jokes about the trans community … again, and he apparently had trouble finding the humor in the perpetual-gift-that-keeps-on-giving President Donald Trump. Between this first night of the residency, his 50-50 performance on Saturday Night Live (asking the audience to give Trump a chance), his largely forgettable two-part special for Netflix, and the countless times he’s been booed this decade, it might be safe to say that the Chappelle we knew from the early 2000s is long gone.
- The leaks continue for Trump. Days after firing the man who said he’d kill leakers and hiring a new chief of staff looking to install military-style discipline at the White House, the commander in chief’s most private moments have been released to the public again. The Washington Post got hold of transcripts of the president’s calls with heads of state in Mexico and Australia from earlier this year. Trump Keith Sweat-begged Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto to stop telling the media Mexico wouldn’t pay for his billion-dollar border wall, and the next day told Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, a U.S. ally, that their call was “the most unpleasant call all day,” and a previous talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin “was a pleasant call.”
Things that make you think …
- For the first time in history, WNBA players will be featured in a video game. Electronic Arts, the video game developer responsible for the NBA Live franchise, announced that NBA Live 18 will include all 12 WNBA teams and rosters exactly 20 years after the inaugural season of the all-women’s league.
- The Texas football program replaced the nameplates on players’ lockers with 43-inch TV monitors for the upcoming season. Keep in mind, the Longhorns pay new head coach Tom Herman more than $5 million a season, one of the top salaries in the country, and had the second-highest total revenue in the NCAA last season ($187,981,158) while having the highest expenses ($171,394,287), which will no doubt increase with the purchase of more than 100 new TVs. If you wonder why college players don’t get paid, here’s why.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 8/2/17
NFL may allow marijuana for players’ pain relief
12:16 PMSo, my week on Mike & Mike is done, but it was a fun one. I’d like to thank Booger McFarland and Sean Farnham for co-hosting with me, and of course, the crew in Bristol, Connecticut, for making everything work. Now, here’s an unpopular opinion.
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So, while you were too worried about Colin Kaepernick and whether his presence in Baltimore might create an issue for Ravens fans, the actual police there seem to be up to no good. See, aside from the whole matter of people dying in their custody, there’s also this small little concern about, you know, conspiracy to fabricate evidence. What’s that? You didn’t think that was real? It is. And it gets court cases thrown out. So, when you wonder why people don’t trust law enforcement officials, now you have an example.
I like robots, but they scare me. As in, when it comes to sci-fi movies, I’m here to watch them blow each other up and create havoc. But the idea of actual robots populating my life is terrifying. Which is why I get nervous whenever I hear the term artificial intelligence. There’s a small part of me that believes that only humans are dumb enough to invent things that will kill them, because, well, we’ve already done that many times. So, when it turns out that Facebook had to kill bots that created their own languages to communicate with each other, my skin crawls.
When SoundCloud first dropped, I was ecstatic. The easy-to-use interface that allowed both artists and fans to interact directly was a monster step from, say, MySpace, and it provided an incredible, searchable, savable community for people to share in. It was basically not even about the music, it was just a great environment to be a part of that happened to have quite a few songs. Now, with its future in jeopardy, people involved in everything are talking about how it all went down. What a sad tale.
It looks like the NFL is getting interested in weed. Not in the recreational sense, but it appears that when it comes to pain relief, the shield is considering allowing marijuana. Now, many people are concerned that this will just lead to more players blazing and acting like it’s for pain, which is an argument I don’t really understand why anyone cares about. If you want to smoke your way out of the league, you’re going to do it whether the league fines you for it or not. Allowing players to use it, for whatever reason, just makes more sense.
Free Food
Coffee Break: I have a dream to buy an International Harvester Scout and drive to California in it and basically never come back. Who knows if that will ever happen, but some people do this in minivans every single day of the week. As it turns out, that’s not really what minivans were made for at all to begin with.
Snack Time: What would you do if you invited the Obamas to your wedding and you actually got a response? What if it happened months later, though? That’s real life for some people.
MY MOM DEADASS SENT THE OBAMAS A WEDDING INVITATION BACK IN MARCH AND JUST RECEIVED THIS IN THE MAIL. IM HOLLERING😂 pic.twitter.com/cUiRRAfrvD
— b (@96_brooke) July 31, 2017
Dessert: Want to improve your mood? Watch the videos for Khalid’s “Young, Dumb & Broke.”
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 8/1/17
Jason Derulo’s gone country
12:35 PMMike & Mike was a fun one Tuesday, again with Booger McFarland. Apparently, my propensity for drinking milk is abnormal, and my co-host brought it up at pretty much every turn. Also, reminder: I score baseball games.
That's a reasonable amount of milk to take down in the morning, right?
Booger doesn't think so. pic.twitter.com/Mmx4HGE1ww
— Golic and Wingo (@GolicAndWingo) August 1, 2017
Now that The Mooch is out of the way, things can get back to normal at the White House. Those 11 days we’ll never forget, and Anthony Scaramucci probably won’t either. He might not have technically gotten fired on his day off, but he wasn’t supposed to officially start until later in the month, so the sentiment is the same. As for the West Wing, well, President Donald Trump is back in control. Maybe a little too in control. Sources say the statement issued by his son Donald Jr. about his meeting with a Russian lawyer was actually dictated by Trump. Not a good look.
When it comes to transgender people, there are so many misconceptions. No. 1 is the notion that being tricked for sex is something that people are regularly doing. That’s wrong. Secondly, when it comes to use of gender pronouns, people do not understand their value and power and think it’s reasonable to just interchange them as they feel. It’s not. If you need an education on this matter along with an excellent personal story, read this about a mobile barbershop in Los Angeles.
Jason Derulo is an extremely creative guy. You’re probably familiar with quite a few of his bangers. Yet, when it comes to a hot new music genre, hip-hop is old hat. Country is in — be that in radio formats, TV shows or styles in general — and Derulo wants in. He says he’s got a country album on the way, which I don’t know who’s here for. We’ve seen a fair amount of country collabos over the years, most of which were awful, frankly. Yet, this is a world in which I could really get into this genre. Just not sure we’re there.
As the song goes, “it ain’t trickin’ if you got it.” However, when you don’t have it, you probably shouldn’t be in the club acting like you do. Look, we’ve all been there. Sometimes you get that decline message or you’re just too short to pay for a beer or two, so you ask a friend to cover you in this instance and you’ll get the next one, or something. But when that tab is $9K, and you play in the NFL and you don’t actually make good on your IOU, well, that’ll get you sued. I hope that night was worth it for these two dudes, now dealing with Venmo issues in camp.
Free Food
Coffee Break: Because of this nation’s obsession with locking people up, there is an equal and healthy obsession with people who manage to break out of said circumstances. In the case of 12 guys in Alabama, they pulled off the task with the help of a rather common food item.
Snack Time: When it comes to food, most people just post pictures of really fancy dishes before they eat them to show how cool they are. But this guy posts pictures of dirty dishes and consumed food, which is WAY cooler.
Dessert: You had me at “graffiti robot.” 😍
This 'graffiti robot' can create murals taller than the Statue of Liberty pic.twitter.com/xdVY91p2bU
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) August 1, 2017
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 7/31/17
Adidas apologizes for caving to LaVar Ball
6:49 AMWhat’s up, gang? Hope your weekend went well. I’ve done radio three times since we last spoke. Monday morning I hosted Mike and Mike for the first time, and working with Booger McFarland was fun. Here’s a link.
I wish I had some proof that journalism is now tailored only to an audience rich enough to afford the paywall. pic.twitter.com/uV0k0EFq49
— Gladstone (@WGladstone) July 30, 2017
The Olympics are coming back to the United States. In a new agreement reached Monday, the committees from the two cities left in the running would simply pick the years that worked best for them. Paris will take 2024, and Los Angeles will take 2028. We’ve come to a point where cities don’t even want the Games because of the headache and waste that hosting the Olympics brings. Every step this process takes now feels more and more like a death march, in terms of the shelf life of the competition overall.
Women get paid less on the dollar than men. No matter that some select economists will tell you otherwise, it’s true. And if you’re a black woman, that difference is even more stark. Why? Because, well, when you add structural problems that compound both sexism and racism, you’re even further behind. So #BlackWomensEqualPay day was created because when added up over a lifetime, we’re talking about $1 million that they don’t make compared with, say, white men. It varies from city to city, but that number is impossible to ignore.
Black people’s relationship with God is an interesting one. In this country in particular, the linkage between faith, freedom and salvation is one that some people see as justification for belief. Hence the reason that the black church has become such a large community on not only a social level but also a political one. That doesn’t always work for everyone. So when your faith is tested, Christianity doesn’t always end up being the answer. Read one woman’s quest to find new spirituality in the form of Yoruba.
I like LaVar Ball the dad. I like LaVar Ball the CEO. I enjoy LaVar Ball the Lonzo Ball hype man. I can’t stand LaVar Ball the basketball coach. Last weekend, at an AAU tournament in Las Vegas, he went way too far with his nonsense and managed to get a referee removed from a game and tournament after she gave him a technical foul. He then proceeded to insult her ability to referee and her conditioning. Now, Adidas is apologizing for the entire situation after the group that supplied the refs broke off their relationship with the shoe company. Good for them.
Free Food
Coffee Break: There’s a new homeless community in Denver that is designed for transgender people. It’s called Beloved Community Village. It’s a somewhat radical idea that’s funded by quite a few different partners, and it also involves tiny houses. Some of our most vital voices are way backward on acceptance, so this is a productive step.
Snack Time: If you don’t know who Joanne the Scammer is, I feel bad for you. But soon more of you will because Joanne might be getting a TV show, which is great news for all of us in the Scam Squad.
Dessert: Allen Iverson clearly doesn’t feel like hooping anymore. We don’t blame him, to be honest.