Monday, April 25
· Headlines – Elon Musk buys Twitter, the U.S. is reluctant to sanction Vladimir Putin’s rumored girlfriend, controversy over Japanese Netflix import Old Enough!
o Good intro – “Let’s begin with the latest twist in the ‘will they, won’t they’ story that everyone is talking about—Elon Musk and Twitter.”
o I loved this reaction to Twitter’s board selling the company to Musk after saying they wouldn’t – “I guess they found that edit button after all.”
o Trevor didn’t really get why Musk would even want Twitter – “It just doesn’t seem like a fun place to supervise right now. It’s like buying Jurassic Park after the power went down and the cages are opened.”
o Excellent point – “This is the thing: whether it’s a billionaire you like or a billionaire you hate, as a society, I think we should spend more time interrogating how easy it is for billionaires to shape our world in their favor.”
o This made me laugh, about the U.S. shying away from sanctioning Putin’s presumed girlfriend – “I guess they watched the Oscars and were like, ‘Ooh, maybe we should stay away from spouses.’”
o I liked this description – “One of Netflix’s most popular shows and easily one of my favorites is Old Enough!, which is all about kids doing things for themselves. And let’s be honest. I mean, that’s the best kind of kid. You know? It’s like having a self-cleaning oven, but it’s a child.”
o Trevor understood where Americans were coming from in criticizing the reality show, which features very young children running errands on their own, but he also thought the U.S. could be too protective over little kids – “Think about it: parents in America will leash their kids but then let their dogs run around free. Your kid should never look at your pets and be like, ‘That lucky bastard.’”
· Main Story – Revisionist history of 01/06
o Great description of Kevin McCarthy – “Leader of the House Republicans and guy who has definitely called rap music ‘the hippity-hop.’”
o Naturally, we looked at the leaked audio of the calls where McCarthy, contrary to his claims, said he thought Trump should resign after January 6th – “On January 10th, he was all, ‘I’ve had it with this guy.’ And then two weeks later, he was chilling at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah. Dude quit Trump the way most of us quit Twitter.”
o Trevor argued that, since McCarthy has immediately rolled over and disavowed his earlier condemnation of Trump, it won’t ultimately tarnish him in the MAGA world – “You see, Trump loves this stuff. In fact, if you used to be against him, and now you’re not, he likes those people more than someone who loved him the whole time because it shows that he made you bend the knee, yeah. The dude loves converting people more than Scientologists and vegans combined.”
o We also looked at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s testimony in her recent lawsuit, brought against her by constituents who contend that she shouldn’t be eligible to run for reelection – “Apparently there’s something in the Constitution that says you cannot run for Congress if you tried to do an insurrection on the government. Yeah. You know how people had crazy ideas back then.”
o The big joke hear was Greene answering “I do not recall” to any and all questions asked of her on the stand, even when the implications of that were utterly wilde – “You don’t recall if you wanted to impose martial law?! You don’t… wow. I wish I had Marjorie Taylor Greene’s memory. Yeah, I once said, ‘Enjoy your dinner,’ to a waiter in 2003, and I still think about it every day.”
o Trevor emphasized, “If anyone can’t say no to doing something that specific and weird, you definitely did that shit.”
o I loved Trevor’s impression of Greene’s response to the one time she did “suddenly” remember having done something, right as the lawyer was about to show evidence of her doing just that – “Okay, in my defense, I didn’t know you had evidence. I mean, I never have evidence for the stuff I say. I didn’t even know that was a thing you could do.”
· Interview – Radio hosts/authors Gia & Raashaun “DJ Envy” Casey
o Gia and DJ Envy were there to discuss Real Life, Real Love, the book they wrote together about their marriage. I wasn’t familiar with either of them, but the interview was interesting.
o DJ Envy discussed one of the keys to maintaining a healthy relationship – “At the end of the day, we’re on the same team. If we’re arguing, I shouldn’t be trying to annihilate her. She shouldn’t be trying to destroy me in an argument. We should be trying to get to an understanding where we can both understand.”
o I liked this observation from Trevor – “Because people have been sold the idea of perfect relationships, everyone who thinks they’re not in a perfect relationship thinks that they’re failing. When, in fact, people who are honest go, like, ‘Oh, this is hard. It is hard to do.’”
o The couple got real in the book what about they’d been through, including DJ Envy’s infidelity. Gia explained how she required him to make “reparations” to earn her trust back – “‘You broke it. Now you have to fix it.’ And I wasn’t willing to teach him how to do that. He had to figure that out on his own.”
Tuesday, April 26
· Headlines – Reactions to Elon Musk buying Twitter, referee shortage in youth sports, bizarre home listing, Manuscript Writing Café in Japan
o I loved this description of Elon Musk – “Tesla CEO and man who has definitely made love to a robot.”
o Musk said he wanted his harshest critics to staying on Twitter because of “free speech,” but as Trevor pointed out, he also once canceled the Tesla order of a blogger who criticized him – “I’m just saying. He has nice intentions, but when you have power to be petty on an epic scale, the temptation to do it can be really hard to resist.”
o I loved Trevor’s delighted reaction to Trump flubbing the name of his own social media platform at a rally – “Oh man! Did this guy just call Truth Social ‘Troth Sential’? What was that? My man, you had one job, one job. It’s your social media platform, and you messed up the name? It’s almost like every time Trump speaks, his own mouth stages an insurrection.”
o Trevor admitted that, even though it might “lead to another term and destroy the country,” there was a part of him that would be interested in Trump coming back to Twitter have Musk takes over – “I just… I really want to see his Wordle scores.”
o A home in Virginia, listed as having a stranger squatting in the basement, received multiple offers and sold for $800,000 – “What? Did they say a stranger in the basement? So people are so desperate to get a house, they’re even willing to be in the reboot of Parasite. This is what we’re doing now.”
o This amused me – “I will say this, though. Props to the squatter. Yeah? No, because this is someone who knows commitment. They refuse to leave, to the point that the real estate agent had to include them in the tour. You understand how wild that is?”
o I enjoyed Trevor’s impression of the realtor trying to spin the squatter as a positive feature – “And in the basement, you’ll find an unsolicited in-home companion. Very in right now. Everyone wants one, everyone.”
o At this coffee shop in Japan, the staff ensure writers get their work done, whether by checking in to see if they’d finished or standing behind them to exert “silent pressure” on them – “Did he say ‘silent pressure’? What is that? That has to be the most Japanese thing I’ve ever heard. Coffee shops where they shame you into being efficient.”
· Fake Ad – The Daily Show+++
o Mainly just a joke about the failure of CNN+. I liked this intro bit – “So we at The Daily Show decided, hey, we can burn through money too. Why don’t we make our own streaming service that nobody asked for?”
o The made-up streaming service included such shows as Roy Wood Jr. Reads The Economist While Snacking and Dulcé Sloan Reviews CNN+.
o And at the very end, they had “The Rewind, where we just play The Daily Show backwards.”
· Interview – Musician Burna Boy
o Trevor told Burna Boy, “One thing I’ve truly loved is, like, how Nigerian artists have taken Africa to the world. Man, you’ve blown up the continent. Everyone is now trying to emulate what Nigerian artists are creating” – Burna Boy added, “Except our government.”
o Asked what it was like to have his mom serve as his manager, Burna Boy clarified that this was not a U.S.-style “mom-ager” situation. I smiled at his description – “I mean, it’s not all peaches and roses. But there’s a lot of food. So that makes me happy enough.”
Wednesday, April 27
· Headlines – Ukraine, Delta Airlines changes payment policies, Dr. Fauci declares America “out of the pandemic phase”
o Amusing analogy – ”This is the thing that’s gonna suck for Russia. Their main leverage is that their gas provides Europe’s heat. But as the months get warmer, their negotiating power goes down. You know, it’s the same way your gym teacher has all power over you to make push-ups, like, what you’re gonna do during the school year. But let him meet you over the summer vacation, and all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘You have no power here, Mr. Papadapoulos. Why don’t you do push-ups, bitch?’”
o Delta Airlines has announced that flight attendants will now be getting paid during boarding, whereas before, they only started getting paid when the cabin door closed – “Which is crazy. Just think about it. You’re at work, doing work, but the boss is like, ‘No, this is your free time.’”
o Trevor noted the “interesting timing” that Delta announced this as flight attendants were looking to unionize – “Nothing scares these giant airlines more than unions. Like, if someone yelled ‘bomb’ in an airport and someone else yelled ‘union,’ they honestly wouldn’t know who to tackle first.”
o Dr. Fauci later clarified that he meant the U.S. was “out of the pandemic phase” at the moment (I might’ve said, “The most recent wave is over,” but cases are already starting to tick back up.) Trevor still took him to task for it – “Dr. Fauci, how did you not know, how do you not know by now how stupid people are, huh? We’re all stupid. You can’t just say, ‘Pandemic phase is over.’ Oh, when you say it, all we hear is, ‘Party time!’”
o Valid – “I feel like that’s been the major failure of this pandemic, is that the scientists have been communicating directly with the public without somebody to interpret what they’re saying. That’s bound to cause chaos. Right? We don’t understand scientist-speak.”
· Sketch – Black Karen
o Featuring Dulcé as the titular Black Karen, created in a lab to give white people a taste of their own medicine. I laughed at the Black version of calling the cops on someone having a barbecue – “There’s cilantro in the mac ‘n’ cheese, a slurry of salsa, and the chicken is just…wet. Not juicy. Just wet.”
o She also went after a woman kissing her dog on the mouth – “You need to stop slobbering on this animal before you make COVID-33.”
o I laughed at, “Hello, police? These Caucasians are at it again!”
· Interview – Actor Terry Crews
o In talking about his new memoir, which explores masculinity and his journey to deal with his anger, Crews said, “I had to redefine what ‘tough’ was in my life.”
o Crews discussed a moment when he confronted his abusive father as an adult, and how beating him up didn’t bring him the long-awaited revenge/closure he thought he wanted – He said, “I’m like, ‘This is supposed to be the end of the movie.’”
o This was a good description of his life not long before his “rock bottom” point – “My trick to life was ‘fake it till you make it. But the problem is, you make it and you’re fake. You’re still fake. It was an image. It was the Terry Crews image. It’s what everybody fell in love with. And my wife ended up married to that image. But the real me was still messed up, broken.”
o Crews also addressed a controversy over a tweet he posted during the George Floyd protests, which a number of people saw as equivocating or placating – He tried to explain his intentions behind it, saying, “If we don’t start this movement with the idea of reconciliation, we are just a greater war.”
o I liked Trevor’s response to Crews on that – “I think the issue some people had, you know, is reconciliation cannot take place before there’s any type of accountability. In order for us to reconcile, there has to be some sort of accountability. People have to say, ‘This is what is happening, and this is what we’re going to do to rectify that situation.’ […] And I think what a lot of people thought in that moment is, they felt like… I understand when reading the book now. You are saying something that, in my honest opinion, is almost a step ahead. But people are going, ‘Yeah, but Terry, right now, we’re looking for accountability first.’ Right now, Black people in America are saying, ‘Hey, can we just have an agreement on how America does not treat everybody equally?’”
o Even though Crews explained what he’d been trying to say, he also full-throatedly apologized for offense or pain caused by his tweet at a time when so many people were hurting so deeply, and I appreciate that he did that.
Thursday, April 28
· Headlines – Abandoned U.S. military equipment in Afghanistan, British MP accused of watching porn in Parliament, Donald Trump deposition in lawsuit
o This made me laugh – “Now, according to the people who left this stuff behind—and this part was really interesting—they say this might not be an issue. Because they say the Taliban might not be able to operate this stuff anyway because of how complicated it is. Now, first of all, I feel like they’re just saying that to cover their ass. Second of all, how are they gonna act like the Taliban doesn’t have YouTube? You can find anything on YouTube. Anything!”
o Great bit – “Here’s my question. America never has enough money for anything, right? There’s not enough money for health care, there’s not enough money for education, there’s not enough money to finally finish the Washington Monument by putting two balls on it, but American has no problem with leaving behind 7 billion dollars’ worth of weapons? How come that never happens any other way? Like, just once, I would love to turn on the news and hear something like, ‘This just in: the government has too much money for health care. So, everyone gets a free butt lift.’”
o I liked Trevor’s thinking here – “And then you hear these people, like, ‘Well, we need to spend that money to keep people safe.’ But let me ask you this. What’s more threatening to people in America? A group of rebels in some foreign country or health care nobody can afford, toxic drinking water, poverty, pollution? Because if I was America, I would spend my war money on the biggest threats. Yeah. That’s what I’d do. And then I’d send the Taliban Flint’s old water pipes. That’s how I’d fight.”
o I liked the description of the U.K. as “the world’s number-one exporter of Benedict Cumberbatches.”
o Trevor puzzled over the MP accused of watching porn in the House of Commons – “I’ll be honest: I’m just trying to understand the motivation here. No, no, like, what part of Parliament made this guy want to watch porn? Like, what turned him on? Was there some new legislation that was getting him hot? You know, was there some other minister who was like, ‘This country is going deeper and deeper into debt. We cannot pull out at this point’?”
o The coverage of the Trump piece was a thing of beauty. Because there were no video recordings, Trevor and Michael “recreated” it for us using the transcript, with Trevor of course reading for Trump and Michael reading for various lawyers questioning him – Before they started, Trevor said, “Again, we’re just gonna read excerpts from the actual transcript, because I promise you, no comedy writer is gonna come up with something funnier than this.”
o And he was right – I laughed so hard at Trevor’s impression of Trump going on and on about how people can get killed by tomatoes, pineapples, bananas, etc.
· Main Story – Madison Cawthorn scandals
o Good intro to Rep. Madison Cawthorn – “Congressman from North Carolina and what lacrosse would look like if it were a person.”
o Naturally, we began with Cawthorn’s made-up tale about members of Congress doing cocaine in front of him and inviting him to orgies – “Of course it’s not true. These people are in Congress. They’re not throwing an orgy. That’s way too complicated for them. They’d have to secure funding for the sex toys first. They’d have to agree on a time and location. They’d have a committee to debate about the rules. Is kissing allowed? Can you do butt stuff? And then at the last minute, Joe Manchin would show up and object, and everyone would have to put their dicks back in their pants.”
o Next up was Cawthorn getting caught, for the second time, driving on a revoked license – “Of course he’s got to drive with a revoked license. Do you know how embarrassing in must be when he needs to ask his mom to drive him to the orgy?”
o Something else he’s been caught doing more than once? Trying to bring a gun onto a plane – “The craziest part about this story is that’s the second time he got caught trying to bring a gun onto a plane in a year. I get if you made this mistake, like, 15 years ago. But twice in one year? Why are you so invested in getting a gun on a plane? Huh? How intense is the battle for your armrest, my man? What are you doing?”
o Great line – “You know, in a way, I respect him. A lot of Republicans talk about being pro-police, but he’s the only one out here personally keeping all of these police departments in business. I respect that.”
o I loved Trevor’s response to Cawthorn’s cringey speech on the House floor about gender, where he said, “Science is not Burger King. You can’t just have it your way” – That’s an interesting way to put it. I like how Cawthorn is working some product placement into his floor speeches. ‘Gender is simple. Men are like Arby’s. We have the meat.’”
o In light of that grandstanding, Cawthorn’s most recent scandal was the release of photos of him wearing lingerie during a cruise-ship game – “Now I want to be clear. A man wearing lingerie isn’t a scandal. Right? It isn’t a scandal in any way. Men can wear whatever they want to wear. But this particular man—he spends a lot of time attacking other people for how they dress, how they identify, and what their values are. All I’m saying is, the next time gender issues come up again, this dude better not get his panties in a bunch.”
· Interview – Formula 1 driver Daniel Ricciardo
o In lieu of water, Trevor gave Ricciardo a drink he was more “comfortable” with, his victory tradition of drinking champagne out of his racing shoe – Trevor added, “I mean, it’s all the flavor of the victory, you know what I mean?”
o Asked how he stayed one of the friendliest drivers in Formula 1, Ricciardo said, “I have, I guess, the maturity now to know, like, how much we all put into it. And as competitive as we are, we all have something, you know, strongly in common, and there’s only 20 of us in the world that do it. That’s only 20 F1 drivers, so you know, you kind of just respect everyone’s journey.”
