Category: News

Jim Carrey to Play Joe Biden on SNL This Fall

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SNL returns from its coronavirus hiatus and kicks off a new season October 3, and with the election only a month later we all expected to see a lot of politics on the show this October. We got a clue of what to expect today, as the show announced that Jim Carrey will be playing Joe Biden this fall.

Just like he did with Trump four years ago, Lorne Michaels is pulling in a ringer to play Joe Biden this season. While it’s always a bit disappointing to see a big role like this go to a guest and not a cast member, this could work. About 6’2, 180 pounds, big teeth, kinda gangly? Yeah, this could definitely work.

Even with last season cut short due to coronavirus, Joe Biden was still able to make quite a few appearances. “Joe Biden” appeared on six of SNL’s 15 live shows last year. The role was a bit up in the air, though, as three men played Biden over the course of about five months. Woody Harrelson made three appearances as Biden and gave us this all-time line.

John Mulaeny took his memorable turn as Biden on Leap Day:

And Jason Sudeikis, who played Biden on the show when he was veep, made two cameo appearances as Biden last season.

With Carrey in place, it looks like the show won’t be forced to go with Biden-by-committee again this year. With two old pros as the candidates, the SNL debates this fall should be some of the best in the show’s history.

Reflecting On 9/11 After 19 Years

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We normally try to keep it light here and give you something to laugh at, but we would be remiss if we didn’t briefly touch upon the awful day in American history that we are now somehow 19 years removed from: 9/11. There are only a handful of days in the history of this country that you can refer to in just two words and everyone immediately knows what you’re talking about. Pearl Harbor, D-Day, Nine Eleven etc.

Right now is a contentious time in this country as politicians continue to have a battle royale rather than work together, there are huge waves of protests aimed at racial injustice, and there is a virus that has killed nearly 200,000 Americans in less than a year. But if there is one thing that 9/11 revealed to us, it’s the power of unifying regardless of race, religion, orientation, creed, or color to become stronger together.

As anyone my age does, I vividly remember September 11th. I remember being in my 7th grade first period gym class when the planes crashed into the twin towers. My gym teacher Mr. O stopped class and wheeled out one of those old tube TVs on the cart and we all just stood there in the locker room and watched the news in silence. In our second period health class our teacher also wheeled out the TV and we just continued to watch the news in silence. Remember this is before everyone had smartphones and instant notifications so nobody knew what the hell was going on. The teachers had no idea what to do with a bunch of 12 year olds staring into the face of the worst terrorist attack in our country’s history. We were too old to just lie to so what were they supposed to do? So we all just watched together and had that moment burned into our collective brains.

So even though we are in incredibly troubling times with seemingly no end in sight, it’s important to remember what we learned in the wake of 9/11. Whether you’re a cop, a firefighter, an EMT, a construction worker, a student, a 9-5er, a liberal, a Republican, black, white, whatever you are just remember, we’re all Americans. Forget the politics and forget the differences that sometimes seem to drive a wedge between so many of us. We’re all Americans. We will never forget that horrible day and the nearly 3,000 lives lost, but we can use that as a reminder of how great this country can be when we are all staring into the dark void of despair, together.

I will leave you with a story you may be familiar with, but if you haven’t seen this video I implore you to take the 13 minutes out of your day and watch the story of Welles Crowther aka The Man in the Red Bandana.

Lets Talk About What Nobody Wants to Talk About

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It’s been difficult to write much the last week while the country is gripped in protests, riots, civil unrest, and let us not forget about the coronavirus pandemic thats killed more than 100,000 people. 2020 has been the year from hell and the murder of George Floyd was the tipping point for many Americans.

In times like these we typically turn towards sports to help heal the rawest of wounds. It sounds silly, but it’s true. Sports has always been the unifying force that society uses to bring people of all different backgrounds together, if only for a couple of hours.

I’m torn on this because sports have unified people during horrific times like 9/11 and helped kickstart difficult conversations after tragedies like Eric Garner’s death, but maybe not having sports right now is for the best? Without any sports to speak of theres nothing for us to turn our attention towards. We’re all stuck at home and forced to have the difficult conversations that sometimes we’re all too quick to turn the page on.

The 24/7 news cycle never sleeps, but it seems like as a nation we’re all focusing on the same exact thing right now. We may fall on different sides of the issue, but we’re all talking about the same issue, which is how progress begins.

A lot of people are learning, and hopefully growing, in real time. Drew Brees faced the swift wrath of not just twitter, but his own teammates and peers from around the NFL after he denounced protestors kneeling during the anthem.

…and then apologized less than 24 hours later. Life comes at you fast, Drew. It was a shockingly tone deaf statement from one of the faces of the NFL. It’s been 3+ years since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality, but plenty of people, Drew Brees front and center, still think it’s about the military or “disrespecting the flag.”

I don’t know what kind of reaction Brees expected from these comments during what may be the height of racial tensions in my lifetime, but he has, unsurprisingly, been getting ripped by players across the league including by his own No. 1 receiver, Michael Thomas.

Malcolm Jenkins put out a heartbreaking video directly responding to Brees’ comments and effectively telling him to just shut up and listen.

The McCourty twins eviscerated Drew Brees for leaning on the military as a reason for denouncing the kneeling protestors.

Brees issued a lengthy apology this morning, less than 24 hours after his original comments, but I find it hard to believe he was this glib to begin with so the apology does ring a bit hollow. Hopefully Brees and everyone who sees this exchange use it as a learning experience.

We try to not get too political here, but after hearing the pain in the voices of some of my black friends it would be selfish to not use the minuscule platform we have here to at least say something. I’m a white guy in his thirties so I’ll never know what it’s like to be a black man in America, but one of the main things I heard from friends of mine is to simply see and acknowledge our differences. Saying you “don’t see color” is misguided because that only blinds you to the issues that people of different races experience on a daily basis. It’s important to see, and celebrate, the differences between us all. Ignoring those differences may be done with good intentions, but it takes away from our ability to use any privilege we do have to help, even if its just calling out a friend or a family member on their shit.

I’ll leave you with this video that former Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho put out yesterday: Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

Apparently an American-led Crew of MERCENARIES Were Unsuccessful in Overthrowing the Government of Venezuela Today

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Aljazeera – Venezuelan security forces arrested dozens of people, including two Americans, after a beach invasion allegedly aimed at overthrowing President Nicolas Maduro – a plot said to involve US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido.

If you guessed that I’ve rewritten the beginning of this blog about 8 times now because there is just so much here than you guessed right. You know me and you get me.

We have MERCENARIES. Legit sellswords (probs guns but whatever) making a huge push to come back as the new hotness in international coup d’etats. We have rogue American veterans acting as the QB1s of the whole operation. We have, let’s just say, not the most excellent turn out when considering Venezuela is in fact an entire nation and 60 is not all that many soldiers. Lastly, we have the price tag of $212m, a ludicrously specific sum especially when factoring in the fact that that boils down to about $3.5m each. To OVERTHROW A GOVERNMENT. NOT a nice one either.

O, what’s that you say? You’d like a “TL:DR”, as the kids say? My pleasure:

Two American ex-super soldiers very misguidedly tried to overthrow the ruling regime of an entire South American country with about 60 heavily armed guys and all for what a late-first round pick would earn in the NFL.

I mean, is the job market THAT BAD? Especially for guys with the tactical and leadership training of veterans? Was it the thrill of combat and the allure of being involved in “an operation” that drew them in? Or were they just all, “if I’m going to die via Mexican beer viruses or murder hornets it’s going to be while doing what I love, which is firing assault rifles at tyrants.”

Fucking wild story man, one I’m sure we’ll get more details on down the line. But for now I raise a glass to you you crazy kids. At a time when basically everyone lacks ambition you chose to have too much

-Joey B.

(P.S – Lol it was totally the CIA.)

Even Microsoft Got Bullied Into Saying Two Spaces After a Sentence is Wrong

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CNN – Microsoft has made its typographical decree: Two spaces between sentences is too many.

The style choice will now be marked as an error in Microsoft Word — and users who press the space bar twice after a period will be met with those dreaded blue squiggly lines…The habit of using two spaces is a relic from the era of typewriters, when typists spaced twice to more clearly define the end of a sentence. Characters were “monospaced” back then, which means they took up the same amount of space on the page — today, most fonts adjust the width of characters so sentences are easier to read.

Welp thats it guys. Even Microsoft finally got bullied into saying two spaces after a sentence is wrong.

To all my fellow two spacers out there, I feel your pain. I was a two spacer forever because thats how they taught us as kids growing up. Don’t give me this typewriter excuse, thats what we were taught on Windows 95 too. At one point in my life I was a big-J Journalist writing for an actual news outlet and we all did two spaces, but once I left that job and grammar ceased to be an important part of my life I slowly caved. This blog is filled with sentences just one space apart from one another after years of people just beating the two spaces out of me.

I’ll let this one go because I’m no longer trying to stretch everything out while writing 10 page term papers. The same does NOT go for the GIF vs JIF debate though. I’ll die on that hill.

Final Answers No Longer Final on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

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popculture. – The second episode of ABC’s latest iteration of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? aired Wednesday night, and it had game show fans talking on social media. Tonight’s guests featured SNL alum Will Forte, who ended five questions away from the million-dollar prize. After Forte’s run, comedian Nikki Glaser took the spotlight for a very eventful session in the hot seat…

Though Forte played well, it was a fairly standard round. Glaser, however, had only gotten to the $16,000 question when she accidentally blurted out the wrong response and even tacked on the words “final answer.” While the judges eventually decided in Glaser’s favor, it was a call that wasn’t looked favorably upon by the audience based on the tweets that followed.

I don’t mean to be that guy, but you can’t do that. You can’t change your answer after you utter the words “final” and “answer” back-to-back in the hot seat. I know it’s a celebrity edition, with teams basically, for charity, and in front of an empty audience. But rules are rules.

Cosmo Kramer Chaos GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

If you’re wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of this, it’s because there is precedent on this issue:

I’ve got no issue with Glaser. I’m happy for her that she was allowed to change her answer and keep going, because she is trying to take more money from ABC for a good cause. But I do have a beef with the judges. Allowing Glaser to change her “final” answer would be like Trebek giving celebrities two cracks at a Celebrity Jeopardy Final Jeopardy. And what if Glaser accidentally said “final answer” after unintentionally giving the correct answer? Would the judges have allowed her to change her “final” answer if it had been the correct answer? I shouldn’t even have to ask that, but here we are…

Credit to Jimmy Kimmel, though, for handling this whole fiasco with great aplomb. Don’t forget, before he took over ABC’s late night slot, Kimmel won an Emmy for hosting the Comedy Central game show Win Ben Stein’s Money. While Kimmel has bigger fish to fry, last night showed us again how good he is at helming a quizzer.

And just for kicks, here was Kimmel when he was a contestant on Millionaire way back in 2001:

It Looks Like Everyone in Quarantine Is Watching The Price is Right Again

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The Price Is Right' Decides Social Media Is Awesome This Week

Soap Opera Network – Viewers are flocking to CBS’ “The Price is Right” as the legendary game show is achieving ratings highs not seen in more than four years.

For the week of March 30-April 3, 2020, the daytime broadcast leader in terms of viewers and numerous demographics posted its highest viewership numbers since the week of January 18-22, 2016, according to newly released Nielsen Media Research ratings data.

If your childhood was anything like mine, every sick day you spent home from school was spent with Bob Barker. Now, as so many of us stuck at home during the COVID-19 crisis, it appears that we are spending our days with Drew Carey.

Thankfully,  I’ve been able to work at home the last few weeks. I’ll be honest, though, my productivity dips around 11 AM each morning. I haven’t watched TPiR this frequently since college. Everyone remembers Plinko and Yodely Guy, but this has given me a chance to enjoy some pricing game deep cuts for the first time in a while. Which got me thinking…

You can only keep three:

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Who ya got?

I’m taking Hole in One, Cliffhangers (Yodely Guy) and Race Game.

I don’t care if I’m putting from the back line in Hole in One. I’d bet my mortgage I could sink that putt if given two chances and that larger-than-regulation sized cup. Cliffhangers might be the easiest game on the show. $25/$35/$45 never loses, I don’t even need to see the prizes. And Race Game just looks fun. As long as you hustle you have a pretty good shot at taking home at least a couple of prizes.

My honorable mention goes to Safe Crackers. I used to love it when they played the Pink Panther music for that game. Also used to love Golden Road, which has offered some of the biggest prizes in the history of the show. At this point in my life, though, I really don’t have the need for an $80,000 RV.

As for Plinko… I love Plinko as much as the next guy, but no one has ever won the top prize on that game. Obviously this is the whole point, but too much is up to chance for me in that game.

Who are you keeping? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter.

Blogger’s Note – I get all of my news from Soap Opera Network. Don’t judge me.

The Masters Has Been Postponed. We Officially Have Nothing to Watch Anymore

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The Roni strikes again. This now makes the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, XFL, Fast and the Furious, March Madness, the Boston Marathon, and now the biggest golf tournament in the world all postponed and/or cancelled. I literally prayed to the golf gods and the twitter gods yesterday when a commercial for The Masters came on…while I worked from home amid mass hysteria.

What the hell are we all going to watch now? Everybody better start enjoying books real quick because there’s not much else left. I’m not a doctor or a scientist so I’m not going to question the decision because there is obviously a massive health crisis happening in this country right now. It’s probably for the best to just punt on the spring and we’ll all regroup for the greatest summer of TV programming ever created. Imagine the NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, The Masters, MLB, and NFL Training Camp all going on at the same exact time? It will make Sweeps Week look like public access television in comparison.

With that being said I am left here to twiddle my thumbs and scroll through twitter all day and night. Theres only so many World Star videos a man can watch and I’m already pretty over the Toilet Paper heist stories. My advice is to watch *everything* in your Netflix queue, even that shit you don’t actually care about, but tell yourself you do because you’re cultured. Like that documentary on yoga thats been sitting in my queue for months. I’ve done yoga once in my life so why did I save a documentary on yoga in my queue? Because I had zero intention of watching it unless oh ya know the entire country shut down and every sports league ceased to exist for the foreseeable future.

If you need somewhere to start, check out The 300s Top 30 TV Shows of The Decade.

So that and mass amounts of video games will be played. The big guns at EA, Sony, Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo, Rockstar etc. would be wise to offer some discounts on their titles because I am liable to buy half a dozen vidyagames right now.

This is like the reckoning for all of our short attention spans. We’ve all been constantly stimulated by TV, internet, sports, and our phones 24/7 for the past decade and now we’re all being forced to entertain ourselves for the first time. Godspeed boys.

Tennessee Politician Drinks Out of a Hershey’s Syrup Bottle Because All Politicians Are Robots

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I think we all can agree you need to be a special type of crazy to be a politician these days. Even though politicians are supposed to represent the people, they are more often than not complete robots posing as human beings. Like Bloomberg trying to shake a dog’s mouth or the still hilariously bad optics of Donald Trump shooting jump shots with paper towels down in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. Well this week we got Tennessee state rep Kent Calfee drinking out of a HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE SYRUP bottle.

What an absolutely ridiculous photo. Something a small child would be embarrassed to get caught doing, let alone a 70-year-old man. One of his interns must have told him he was getting absolutely roasted on social media for it because the old guy actually tried to explain himself.

“It’s a repurposed syrup bottle that I drink my water out of,” Calfee said on Tuesday. “I’m not going to buy a $25 or $35 or $45 water bottle that’s not worth what it costs because I’ll probably put it down and leave it somewhere.”

Calfee said he and his wife, Marilyn, “recycle everything.”

“I was fixing to put it in the plastic recycling one day at home, and I thought, shoot, I can put water in that,” Calfee said.

That literally sounds like a scene out of South Park because it’s something I can 1000% picture Randy Marsh doing and then angrily defending himself.

I recycle, I get it, but this is just preposterous. You don’t need to have a $40 Yeti bottle to hold your sink water, but my man just re-use a Poland Springs bottle. Drinking out of a chocolate syrup bottle does not exactly inspire confidence in your mental capacities. The funniest part about the whole thing is he definitely cannot even fathom why this is weird. Just a guy staying hydrated so he can pass some legislature.

Mike Bloomberg is a Confirmed Robot for Trying to Shake a Dog’s Mouth

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I cannot stop laughing at this this video. I’ve watched it probably 20 times because it is peak robot behavior. Why is every politician such a goddamn weirdo? I mean this has to be worse than Trump putting the Halloween candy on the kid’s head right?

Guys just be normal for me one time. All politics aside, the reason George W. Bush won two terms was because he was the president everyone wanted to have a beer with. Bloomberg has me worried here that he might short circuit if I gave him a frosty one.