Sunday, May 9
· Recap of the Week – California recall election, new voter-restriction bills, Arizona election audit
o Excellent description of Florida governor Ron DeSantis – “A man with a vibe that screams ‘will flirt with your teenage friends.’”
o John of course had a delightful takedown of the group behind the latest Arizona recount, including the group’s tweet about “‘baseless claimes,’ which doesn’t exactly instill you with confidence about their attention to ‘detailes.’”
o As preposterous as it is, though, John recognized the danger in the fact that another recount is even happening – “The problem is, the people behind these recounts won’t be convinced unless the results swing their way.”
· And Now This – Mother’s Day on local news
o In which female news anchors quizzed their male co-anchors with their plans for Mother’s Day gifts for their moms/partners – my favorite was the guy who talked about last year’s $40 bouquet getting downgraded to four $10 bouquets because he had four women to shop for this year.
· Main Story – Black hair
o Right off the bat, John acknowledged that he wasn’t a good fit as a person to talk about this subject – “I look like I still go to an old-timey barber and ask for the ‘tidy Liza Minnelli.’”
o Great answer to any viewers who might take issue with his point that white people talking about Black hair is dangerous ground – “If your first response to that is, ‘Not all white people!’, you should maybe look inside yourself and ask why that was your first response.”
o He noted that hair has been a crucial element in white/Black relations in America from the start, with slave traders shaving kidnapped Africans’ heads to rob them of their cultural heritage.
o The piece looked at Eurocentric beauty standards that have peddled skin-lightening and hair-straightening products/tools for decades, and John emphasized that these are not relics of a bygone era – “For some, the smell of burning hair is a sign that something’s gone wrong, but for some, it brings back memories.”
o One clip that really got to me was one of several stylists talking about their clients feeling anxiety after getting their hair done in a new style, because they’re worried about what the ramifications might be at work.
o Another aspect of the story was the fact that so many stylists (in the general public as well as in Hollywood) don’t know how to work with Black hair – we saw an excerpt from a video of one TikToker calling 23 different salons in her area looking for someone who could handle her hair.
o Another woman being told by her manager that her locs were considered “a little too urban and unkempt” for working in their store was so racist, it made my head spin.
o The piece ended with Uzo Aduba, Craig Robinson, and Leslie Jones giving white people the answer to all their questions about Black hair – “Fucking Google it!”
o Great line from Aduba – “You figured out sourdough last year! I think you can Google the word ‘weave.’”
Monday, May 10
· Headlines – Trained bees detect COVID, Kentucky Derby, Colonial Pipeline cyberattack
o I loved this – “I just hope this gets people over their vaccine hesitancy. Because now, if you don’t wanna get the vaccine, fine! That just means you’ve gotta get a bee test if you wanna go to the club.”
o Trevor enjoyed Trump’s tweet about how the Kentucky Derby winner testing positive for drugs is emblematic of everything that’s wrong with America – “This guy is a legend. What other ex-president spends their time roasting horses?”
· Main Story – California governor recall race
o We traced the origins of the recall race to Gavin Newsome’s hypocritical lavish dinner indoors with lobbyists during the height of COVID restrictions – “And he didn’t just get caught eating out, remember that. He got caught eating at the fanciest restaurant in the country! Which, I mean, sort of makes sense. If I’m gonna destroy my career for a dinner out, I’m not doing it for Applebees. I’m going McDonald’s at least.”
o Re: the fact that it costs $4,000 and 65 signatures to run for governor in California – “Damn! Why do I feel like it’s easier to run in California than it is to vote in Georgia?”
o Naturally, we had to get into the whole Caitlyn Jenner of it all – “I can’t think of something more out-of-touch than complaining about people who have no home while you’re sitting in a home you bought for your jet.”
o I laughed at this analogy for Jenner’s about-face on trans girls in sports, flipping on these girls as soon as she started running as a Republican – “It’s like if Biden got elected and then banned grandpas from finding a quarter behind your ear. That’s a betrayal!”
o I loved Trevor’s reaction to John Cox, who’s been bringing a live bear to campaign events – “You kissed the bear? My man, it’s a bear! I know you think it’s tame, but let me tell you something, there’s no such thing as a tame bear, all right? There’s only bears who haven’t decided to rip your face off yet.”
· Interview – Activist/Poet Ian Manuel
o Manuel came on to discuss his memoir on his experience receiving a life sentence as a 14-year-old, his time in prison, and the activists who worked to help him get out – “As a child, you don’t recognize what life without parole means.” He added that the law that resulted in his sentencing says “a child of any age indicted for a life-or-death felony shall be treated in every respect as if he were an adult.”
o He spent 18 consecutive years in solitary confinement – “If it wasn’t for diving within the depths of my imagination and learning how to write poetry, I would’ve went crazy in there.”
o Manuel also discussed the physical abuses he suffered in prison at the hands of the guards – “If what happened to George Floyd happened in broad daylight, imagine what’s happening behind closed prison walls when there’s no one to videotape it.”
o Trevor had this beautiful observation at the end of the interview – “Your story isn’t easy, Ian. It’s complicated, the issue isn’t easy, it’s complicated. But I think one thing I appreciate about your book and the conversation is that we’re dealing with human beings. You’re a human being, the person you shot was a human being, the people who are incarcerated every day are human beings, and we hope that they’ll become human beings when they come out, but we don’t treat them like human beings when they’re locked up.”
· Interview – WNBA player Candace Parker
o Parker and Trevor talked about her trade to the Chicago Sky and what it means for Parker to be playing in her hometown.
o Parker said that growing up debating basketball on the couch with her brothers prepared her for her TV commentary job – “That’s what it’s like on set. You debate, you might not have any facts to debate it, but you try. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming and just saying you don’t understand, and that’s what it is.”
o I really like what she told her cohosts when she first joined the show – “I’m not trying to be one of the guys, I’m trying to be one of the players.”
Tuesday, May 11
· Headlines – Backlash against the Golden Globes, Spacex allows Dogecoin as payment for a moon launch
o On the Golden Globes – “Oh boy. You know you screwed up if Tom Cruise is distancing himself from you!”
o Another Golden Globes bit. This made me smile – “Think about it. You’re a group representing the entire world, and you can’t find a single Black person?! Africa has, like, hundreds of them! I mean, one of them will come over and watch a movie!”
o I loved this comment on the Spacex story – “Honestly, people, I can’t tell if this story means crypto is real or that space travel is fake.”
o Great joke – “I don’t want humanity’s first experience with aliens to be an astronaut explaining how the block-chain works!”
· Main Story – Israel-Palestine conflict
o Trevor acknowledged from the start that this was a highly-controversial subject to get into – I really liked the remark, “What makes it even harder is the fact that who’s right and who’s wrong always seems to change depending on when you start measuring time.” He used the most recent escalation as an example of this, with “the bad guy” seeming to switch sides with each trade of blows.”
o This was a good story all around, but it kicked up a notch when Trevor got to his central point – “The part where we say who’s good and who’s bad and who started it, let’s step away from that and instead ask a different question. Instead, let’s look at who’s dead and who’s alive this week.”
o I felt this – “If you are in a fight where the other person cannot beat you, how hard should you retaliate when they try to hurt you?”
· New York City mayoral race
o Great response to Andrew Yang’s proposal to draw TikTok hype houses to NYC – “This is the perfect policy for New Yorkers who are like, ‘I love this city! I just wish my neighbors were louder.’”
o Oh man, this Yang quote (about why he and his family went upstate at the start of the pandemic) – “Can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?” Yikes.
o That said, I loved Trevor’s response to that quote – “Okay now, that is a gaffe. Can they imagine it? My man, New Yorkers lived it! The only part that most New Yorkers can’t imagine is having a second bedroom.”
o I laughed so hard at Trevor’s reaction to a resurfaced video of another candidate, a former police chief, showing parents all the places their kids could be hiding drugs/weapons – “Holy shit! Who is this kid, El Chapo’s long-lost son? Yo, let me tell you something. If I went through my kid’s bedroom and I found all that stuff, I would not confront them about it! Yeah, I’d go up to my spouse like, ‘Yo, baby, we gotta move outta the house. Soon as he leaves, we move outta the country, we start a new life. This kid is not playing!’”
· Interview – Musician J. Balvin
o This was another artist that Trevor has seen in concert, and he started the interview by heaping praise on Balvin’s live shows – The pictures they show definitely looked incredible.
o I liked this – “Yeah, I do music, I connect to people. Yes, but I want people, when I die, to remember me as a whole. As human being that was just making his dream come true.”
o Like a number of guests Trevor has had on the show, Balvin opened up about his experience with depression and anxiety – Quite simply, he said, “Depression is not being sad. It’s a chemical imbalance in your brain that is way more powerful than you.”
Wednesday, May 12
· Headlines – Escaped tiger in Houston, Italian woman accidentally given 6 vaccine doses at once, Trump family members became “inappropriately” close with Secret Service agents
o I loved this – “Now is not the time to politicize a tiger on the loose. Please, people. Every time a tiger escapes, there’s a rush to push tiger control, and I’m sick of it! We need to accept that occasionally tiger attacks are just a part of living in a free country.”
o Luckily, the woman who was given a overdose of vaccine is all right, so we could still make jokes – Trevor said, “Forget fighting COVID! If you get that much vaccine in you, you’ll be able to see COVID,” followed by a goofy Matrix parody.
o I liked this joke about two Trump women’s intimate relationships with their Secret Service agents – “Of course they fell for their bodyguards! These people are physically fit and willing to die for you. You find someone like that on Tinder!”
· Main Story – Rep. Elise Stefanik
o Trevor side-eyed the impact of Rep. Liz Cheney denouncing Trump after being ousted from her leadership role – “It has the vibe of a villain falling into a volcano while yelling, ‘This isn’t over!!’”
o With Cheney out, we examined her likely replacement, Rep. Elise Stefanik – the story how show, like many Republicans, she started out diametrically opposed to Trump but fell in line when she realized how politically advantageous it was.
o Loved the joke about Trump “repaying” Stefanik for her loyalty by mispronouncing her name at campaign rallies – “Look, you can’t take offense to that! Trump pronounces words like a great jazz musician. You never hear it the same way twice!”
· Fake Ad – Insurrectigone
o This was a fun fake ad, a commercial for a pill help GOP members who now regret having denounced that Capitol insurrection – “Insurrectigone works quickly to suppress whatever democratic principles or aversion to violence you might be feeling.”
o Great tagline – “History never forgets, but you can!”
· Correspondent Piece (Jordan) – Arizona election audit
o Naturally, the conspiracy theories on this were wild, right down to the armed man standing outside the building because he thought antifa supporters might try to infiltrate through the carnival across the road – “Outside of possible antifa carnies, which was laid out in official documents outlining potential security threats, what’s the harm in one more recount?”
o Once again, we had to clown on the name of the highly-partisan, inexperienced company that’s handling the audit – “While the Cyber Ninjas website looks like the invitation to my 9th birthday party, we must not judge audit companies by their splash page.”
o Jordan spoke with a couple volunteers, and he couldn’t get behind their claims that testing/examining ballots based on ludicrous conspiracy theories wasn’t helping to fuel those same conspiracies – Also, “All Chinese ballots are bamboo? Is that because soy sauce would be too obviously racist?”
· Interview – Musician Michelle Zauner
o Trevor praised Zauner for her memoir, Crying in H Mart, about caring for her mother through her final illness and reconnecting with her Korean heritage through food – When asked how she told such an individual story that speaks to everyone, she admitted – “I didn’t think much about it resonating with anyone, to be honest. It came from such a personal place with such a sense of urgency, I think, to sort of bare the wounds of caretaking and losing someone to illness.”
o On the title – “I had a really difficult time remembering my mother before she was sick, and that was so heartbreaking to me. And it wasn’t until I went to H Mart and I found like a can of sweet red beans that I had this beautiful memory of my mom and I” enjoying Korean desserts together on trips to Seoul.
o This was a very moving remark from Zauner – “I was just so upset that I had never read something like this that would’ve warned me that this is what illness looks like.”
Thursday, May 13
· Headlines – Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin, Ohio starts a million-dollar lottery for vaccinated people, woman poses as a high-school student to promote her Instagram
o Great bit – “This really goes to show you that Bitcoin has a long way to go as a currency. Because most currencies don’t go up and down based on a random social media post. Like, you wouldn't see the effects in real life. Like, can you imagine trying to pay a dollar for a candy bar, but then the cashier is like, ‘Whoa, buddy, that stuff’s worthless now! Didn’t you see Khloe Kardashian’s latest selfie?’”
o I loved this take on the Ohio vaccine lottery – “You’ve got to admit, this is the epitome of a first-world problem. ‘How can we convince people to take all the extra vaccines that we have lying around?’ ‘Hmm, what if we give them all the extra money we have lying around?’ Meanwhile, Africa is over here like, ‘Ah, yes! Well done, guys. You cracked it, eh? You cracked it.’”
o This made me laugh – “No, people, no, no, no. A woman posed as a teenager on Instagram, and she thought she could get away with it by carrying a backpack and a skateboard? Yo, that’s like the official uniform of old people trying to pretend that they’re teenagers! Like, when narcs get kicked off the forces, they have to hand in their badge, their gun, and their skateboard. It’s a thing!” Also, as soon as I heard about the skateboard my mind flashed on the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, which is always a good time.
· If You Don’t Know, Now You Know – Ransomware
o Love – “Ransomware: it sounds like a fashion line for casual yet elegant kidnappers.”
o I will always love Trevor’s distaste for Bitcoin – “Ah, man, this is terrible. These hackers aren’t just forcing people to pay money, they’re forcing them to learn about Bitcoin! That’s the real crime!”
o This was a fun tangent – “Hold up. You can buy ransomware for just $39?! That’s like nothing! I mean, to be fair, though, that’s probably the version that has ads, right? Like, you can shut down America’s energy infrastructure, but every ten minutes you have to watch that stupid Limu Emu commercial.” I especially loved Trevor’s additional grumble, “What the hell is that? I’m not gonna buy insurance from an emu! I’m gonna buy it from a gecko! I’m sophisticated like that.”
o Good line – “I can’t believe hackers are stooping so low that they’re demanding ransom from police departments. It’s disgusting! They need that money for their brutality settlements, you monsters!”
· Interview – Pollster Frank Luntz
o Luntz is in the business of understanding how people will respond to things based on how they hear them, so Trevor asked for his take on how to counteract vaccine hesitancy – “It’s simple. Talk to your doctor. Talk to your pharmacist. They know you, they know your history, what you’re about.”
o This was an interesting observation – “Those who are with Donald Trump more closely reflect the Republican party. Those who are against Donald Trump more closely reflect America.”
· Interview – Actor Thuso Mbedu
o Trevor always delights in interviewing fellow South Africans – he was proud of Mbedu, who was there to talk about her new Amazon Prime show The Underground Railroad.
o On the preparation required for the project – “I realized very early on that I had a lot of unlearning to do in order to learn the truth, in the sense that what I knew about the enslaved body in America was shaped by media in a very white male gaze.”
o She talked about listening to old audio footage of formerly enslaved people and realizing how much their dialect reminded her of how people in rural areas and townships speak in South African – “It stopped being an African American story and became a story about Africans in America, and so it hit much closer to home for me.”
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