Steve Pond's Blog, page 2063
November 19, 2019
Trevor Noah and Desi Lydic Try to Get to the Bottom of #FartGate on ‘The Daily Show’ (Video)
“The Daily Show” waded into #FartGate on Tuesday as host Trevor Noah and correspondent Desi Lydic attempted to get to the bottom of the mystery of who exactly cut one when Chris Matthews interviewed Rep. Eric Swalwell. And yes, a ton of fart jokes ensued.
In case you missed the whole thing, on Monday night Matthews interviewed California Democrat Swalwell about the ongoing impeachment hearings. And during a key moment in their conversation, viewers at home could hear what sounded like a very audible fart. Video of the moment went viral, leading to the hashtag #FartGate, and widespread speculation about who actually dealt it. For his part, Swalwell denies that he made the noise, and MSNBC has since offered the barely convincing explanation that the unmistakably fart-like noise was caused by a coffee mug scraping across a desk.
So “The Daily Show” attempted to suss out the truth. We won’t bother recapping the whole thing verbatim — you can watch it above right now — but we will run down our favorite flatulence jokes from the bit.
Also Read: Rep Eric Swalwell Denies Farting During Live MSNBC Interview: 'This Too Shall Pass'
Lydic, describing the mood in Washington: “The air is thick with speculation, intrigue, and obviously farts.”
Lydic on the #FartGate context: “It’s clear the impeachment hearings have put Eric Swalwell under an enormous amount of pressure, and yesterday on MSNBC that pressure was finally released.”
Lydic on MSNBC’s explanation: “If mugs made fart noises coffee shops wouldn’t be relaxing, they’d sound like a yoga class in a retirement home.”
Lydic on Swalwell’s denial: “Swalwell’s quick denial is the biggest tell of all. Might I remind you, Trevor, that the law says, he who denied it supplied it. Right there in the Constitution.”
Also Read: Jimmy Kimmel's 'Celebrity Mean Tweets': Jon Hamm Is a 'Softboy,' Will Ferrell 'Just Screams' (Video)
Lydic, when Trevor Noah ran a clip from a different Chris Matthews interview implying Matthews farts on air: “For all we know, Rachel Maddow was practicing the trumpet down the hall.”
Noah, after playing a different Matthews clip: “I’d drop a mic but Chris Matthews would probably find a way to fart into it.”
There’s more, of course, if you think your evening would be enhanced by a ton of fart jokes. Watch it, as we said, above.
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Watch the 2020 Grammy Nominations Livestream Here (Video)
The 62nd Grammy Awards are almost here.
Nominations for the 2020 ceremony will be announced bright and early on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 20, by Alicia Keys, Bebe Rexha, Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan and Chair of the Board of Trustees Harvey Mason Jr. Readers can watch the announcement in real-time via the livestream above.
The five will announce nominees for select categories in a press conference starting at 8:20 a.m. ET/5:20 a.m. PT. It will be livestreamed from Studio 43 at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City on Grammy.com and on the Recording Academy’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Nominations for best new artist, record, album and song of the year will be among the first reveals.
Also Read: Alicia Keys to Return as Grammys Host
Then, in a simulcast on “CBS This Morning,” host Gayle King will be joined by Keys to announce additional categories. The total list of all 84 nominees will be sent out as a press release shortly after on Grammy.com and across social media platforms, followed by ongoing Grammy-nomination coverage on “CBS This Morning.”
For the second year in a row, Keys — a 15-time Grammy winner herself — will host the 62nd Grammy Awards, airing on Jan. 26, 2020 from Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The show will be broadcast live on CBS at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.
Some of the artists expected to be in contention for the top four categories are Lizzo, Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift.
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Why Gaming Has Become the Leader in Live Streaming Adoption
Live streaming really began to take off when young people sitting in front of screens began playing video games online and streaming themselves to audiences around the world.
YouTube, Twitch and Mixer are the three largest live streaming video game platforms in the market. In 2018, more people watch streamed gaming content than they did HBO, Netflix, Hulu, and ESPN combined, according to Investopedia.
“I watch people like you on Twitch and Mixer and I can’t believe people watch this, and not because I don’t see the utility in it,” Ross Gerber, CEO of media investment firm Gerber Kawasaki, said on Tuesday during TheWrap’s GamingGrill event focused on gaming and e-sports.
Also Read: Video Game Fever: Gaming Revenue to Surpass TV in 2020, Study Says | Charts
“But then it hit me one day. People actually play these games and they want to get better at playing these games,” Gerber continued. “People don’t really hang out the way I did when I was a kid. So when you think about the community that’s around video games, and really specific games, people want to interact with other people, and that’s what it is. And that’s why I see it as the new social media.”
The community around video game streaming — essentially people watching other people as they play video games — is huge, and there’s potentially a lot of money in it. Last year, 99.6 million people tuned in to watch the world championship of one of e-sports’ most popular games, League of Legends. That was more than the 98.2 million people who watched the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams.
Ninja, one of the most prominent and highest-paid gaming personalities, earning more than $500,000 a month through his streaming content.
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“It’s accelerating quickly right now in a way I think a lot of people don’t realize,” Mike Pusateri, CEO of Bent Pixels said during the event. “It’s actually a really exciting piece of the equation for gaming that hasn’t fully been unlocked at scale, but we feel like it’s beginning and it’s happening right now.”
It helps that gaming is so accessible as well, said vice president of strategy at aXiomatic Gaming, Mark Vela.
“You can watch your favorite pro do something on the game and then hop right in the game,” Vela said. “You can’t really do that with ESPN when you’re watching LeBron do like a 360 dunk.”
“It’s an uncanny level of accessibility that you can’t get anywhere else,” added Overwatch League host Malik Forte.
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‘The Half-Life of Marie Curie’ Theater Review: Kate Mulgrew Is Radioactively Great
“The Full-Life of Hertha Ayrton” would have been a difficult title. Instead, playwright Lauren Gunderson has gone with the catchier “The Half-Life of Marie Curie,” which opened Tuesday at Off Broadway’s Minetta Lane Theatre. Audible presents.
Clearly, the two-time winner of the Nobel Prize for her pioneering research on radioactivity is the bigger marquee name. Ayrton was merely a British engineer, mathematician, physicist, inventor and suffragette who received the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water. She also invented a big fan that cleared the trenches of toxic gas during World War I.
Does the other “half-life” of Gunderson’s title refer to Ayrton, the devoted friend who gave Curie protection and comfort during the Pole’s affair with a married man, a scandal that clouded her second Nobel Prize? The half-life of Curie definitely refers to the lost research, money and reputation of this gifted physicist-chemist, as well as the half-life of uranium, which ranges from 25,000 to 4.5 billion years, depending on what kind you’re dealing with.
Also Read: 'The Inheritance' Broadway Review: A Big Gay Mashup Offers Real Suds, Limp Toes
Despite Curie’s name in the title, Kate Mulgrew’s butch Ayrton is the major attraction. Playing Curie, Francesca Faridany must contend with a character who’s never feeling great due to that vial of radioactive stuff she carries around her neck. Also, she’s insufferably weepy over not being with the man she loves, and he just might have impregnated his wife! Gunderson lavishes all her best retorts and epigrams on Ayrton, and Mulgrew knows just what to do with them. She’s reminiscent of George Sanders in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” It’s also possible to see a touch of that independent puritan Katharine Hepburn peeking through. The actor delivered a great Kate in “Tea at Five.” She’s even better and more fun in “The Half-Life of Marie Curie.” Mulgrew used to be a mezzo, now she’s a true basso, and uses that voice to stupendous comic effect.
Gaye Taylor Upchurch’s direction can’t suppress Mulgrew or pump up Faridany’s performance enough to make it an even playing field. As written by Gunderson, Curie is simply a wet blanket, and it’s the perfect metaphor that the character takes a swim in the ocean with all her clothes on.
“Marie Curie” contains several nice comments about her dead husband, Pierre Curie. Otherwise, the play is chock full of witty complaints about the male establishment, as if these two brilliant women had nothing better to do than kvetch all day. Gunderson puts us in that comfortable position of being superior to early-20th-century wrongdoers who canceled Curie’s career. Much less comfortable would be a play that looked at our current Cancel Culture that banishes artists from the Metropolitan Opera and prevents Woody Allen’s latest film from being shown in the United States.
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‘Frozen II’ Will Snap November’s Box Office Cold Streak – But How Big Will the Debut Be?
After weeks of successive box office flops, Disney is once again coming to movie theaters’ rescue with the release of “Frozen II,” a long-awaited sequel expected to bring 2019’s biggest opening weekend since the release of “The Lion King” back in July.
Releasing on 4,300+ screens, “Frozen II” is projected by independent trackers for a $105-115 million opening, which would make it the first animated film to open above $100 million outside of the summer. Analysts who spoke with TheWrap say that they believe an opening as high as $130 million is possible.
Expectations for this sequel are through the roof. It’s not an exaggeration to say that “Frozen” has become the Disney classic for today’s generation of kids in the way that “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast” were for kids of the 90s. That has made “Frozen” into a brand nearly as valuable for Disney as Marvel or “Star Wars,” worth well beyond the $1.26 billion that the first film grossed in the winter of 2013.
Also Read: Will the Box Office Rely on Disney Again This Holiday Season?
But “Frozen II” is expected to have a different trajectory during its theatrical run than either the first “Frozen” or the Pixar summer films that have been surefire hits for Disney over the past few years. “Frozen” was a slow burner, opening to $93 million and earning weekend totals above $10 million until its 10th weekend. The film didn’t fall out of the top 5 on the weekend charts until mid-February and finished with a $400 million total.
“Frozen II” is unlikely to have such legs, as the release of fellow Disney blockbuster “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and other Christmas releases will likely slow down the later stages of its theatrical run. But at the same time, analysts are ruling out a $150 million-plus opening despite record presales on Atom and Fandango because they believe that “Frozen II”‘s key audience, families, will probably wait until Thanksgiving weekend to see the film.
“Animated movies in the summer can be frontloaded because there’s nothing holding families back from seeing it on opening weekend,” Boxoffice Pro analyst Shawn Robbins told TheWrap. “With a long holiday weekend coming up, the turnout from families might be a bit more spread out than usual.”
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Regardless, “Frozen II” is expected to quickly rise up to join the 2019 top 10 box office list, and not a moment too soon. While Warner Bros.’ “It: Chapter Two” and “Joker” provided some strong ticket sales in September and October, the weak numbers of the last few releases have left 2019’s domestic totals to date down 6.4% from last year. If the windfall holiday season analysts and theater owners have been hoping for is going to come true, it has to start now with Anna and Elsa.
“Frozen II” is set three years after the events of the first film, as Arendelle is threatened by a new danger from far beyond. Anna, Elsa, Kristof, Olaf and Sven journey out into the unknown, and in doing so may uncover a secret connected to Anna and Elsa’s long lost parents and the origins of Elsa’s powers. Original writer-director team Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck return along with original cast members Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, and Josh Gad. Sterling K. Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, and Alfred Molina are among the newcomers.
On the mid-budget side are Sony’s awards hopeful “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and STX’s Chadwick Boseman action film “21 Bridges.” “Beautiful Day” is expected to have a $17-20 million opening, with Sony projecting a $14 million opening, while “21 Bridges” is being projected for a $12-14 million opening.
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Sony is hoping that “Beautiful Day” will help erase the struggles of “Charlie’s Angels,” which opened to a disappointing $8.35 million this past weekend. With “Frozen II” in theaters, turnout from female audiences for this true story about Mister Rogers will be lower than it could be for the next couple of weekends. Still, with Tom Hanks in a Oscar contending performance as a beloved TV icon, the film should endure in the minds of audiences and stick around even during a blockbuster-heavy December.
“21 Bridges” will try to draw in viewers with the Marvel pedigree of its key players. The film stars Chadwick Boseman in his first major action appearance since “Black Panther” nearly two years ago, while “Avengers: Endgame” directors Anthony and Joe Russo are attached as producers. The film’s $33 million budget was co-financed by Huayi Brothers through their slate financing deal with STX as well as with MWM Studios.
“A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers, who is interviewed on the set of “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” by a jaded Esquire feature writer (Matthew Rhys). Based on a profile piece by Tom Junod, the film is directed by Marielle Heller from a script by Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster,
“21 Bridges” follows seasoned NYPD detective Andre Davis (Boseman) as he puts all of New York on lockdown in order to find two suspected cop killers (Stephan James and Taylor Kitsch.) Sienna Miller, Keith David, and J. K. Simmons also star in the film, which is directed by Brian Kirk from a script by Matthew Michael Carnahan and Adam Mervis.
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Alden Global Capital Becomes Major Shareholder of Tribune Publishing
Tribune Publishing announced Tuesday evening that Denver Post owners Alden Global Capital have become its major shareholder, sparking fears from Tribune newspaper guilds that their presence will have a negative effect on their newsrooms.
According to Tribune, Alden purchased 9,071,529 shares, or 25.2% of the company, from Merrick Ventures and Michael W. Ferro, Jr. for $13 per share. Ferro had stepped down as head of Tribune Publishing, then known as Tronc, in 2018 shortly before Fortune Magazine published an expose in which two women accused him of sexual harassment. Alden will have two members on Tribune’s board, expanding it to eight total board members.
“The Tribune Publishing Board of Directors looks forward to working with Alden to enhance our company’s value as the company continues to provide valuable journalism for our customers and communities,” said David Dreier, Chairman of the Board. “Tribune is a leader in each of our eight markets providing quality, locally focused journalism. Our board believes that solid journalism enhances shareholder value and that will continue to be our driving principle.”
But the Alden deal has triggered protests at several newspapers over their cost-cutting tactics. In May 2018, members of the Denver Newspaper Guild picketed outside the Denver Post production facility after Alden announced dozens of layoffs to the paper and blocked the publication of editorials. Even just today, the San Jose Mercury News Guild staged its own protest against Alden, accusing the company of siphoning away profits and assets from its newspapers to fund ventures unrelated to journalism.
Also Read: More Than a Quarter of Big Newspapers Had Layoffs in 2018
In a statement released shortly after Alden’s share purchase was announced, the Chicago Tribune Guild said it was “deeply concerned” about the move.
“Alden has a well-established history of harming media institutions and journalists,” the guild warned. “We believe in journalism as a public good…We know the value of our work and we will defend it fiercely.”
The San Jose Mercury News Guild, part of the MediaNewsGroup owned by Alden, responded to the statement on Twitter with a political cartoon:
https://t.co/SxI4UJnYmE pic.twitter.com/wjhsGoKUKk
— San Jose Mercury News Guild (@mercnewsguild) November 20, 2019
In an internal email to staff, Tribune Publishing CEO Tim Knight described the deal as a “private transaction” between Ferro and Alden and downplayed any changes. “A change of investor, even a large investor, will not have a direct impact on how we conduct our daily activities,” Knight wrote.
Headquartered in Chicago, Tribune Publishing operates local media businesses including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, The Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel, Virginia’s Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot, The Morning Call of Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania and the Hartford Courant.
Also Read: Gannett and GateHouse Media Merger Approved, Paving Way for Up to $300 Million in Cuts
As previously mentioned, Alden’s MediaNewsGroup owns the Denver Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, and a slew of other daily newspapers and weeklies, mostly in California.
Lawrence Yee contributed to this report.
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Rep Eric Swalwell Denies Farting During Live MSNBC Interview: ‘This Too Shall Pass’
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) denies that the sound heard by viewers of MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Monday night was, in fact, him farting.
The show’s Twitter account put out a statement after Swalwell’s appearance Monday night claiming the noise, which was causing a stir online, was actually just host Chris Matthews’ mug scraping across the desk.
“Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists – it was the #hardball mug scraping across the desk. Get yours today and let’s get back to the news!” the account tweeted, linking to an online shop where viewers could get a “Hardball” mug of their own.
Also Read: John C Reilly Says Those 'Step Brothers' Farts Were Real (Video)
Swalwell, a Democrat from California, retweeted that, adding his own declaration in the style of the president: “TOTAL EXONERATION!”
Chrissy Teigen, like countless others who replied to the “Hardball” account or tweeted their own theories on the origin of the noise, wanted none of that.
Also Read: Chris Matthews Joked About 'Cosby Pill' for Hillary Clinton in Leaked Video
“No it’s a fart don’t ruin this,” the author wrote, which earned her a Tuesday morning response from Swalwell: “This, too, shall pass…”
As of Tuesday morning, #ShartGate and #FartGate were both trending nationally on Twitter.
So much for the “Hardball” plea for the American public to “get back to the news.”
Watch here, via Media Matters’ Andrew Lawrence, and decide for yourself.
OMFG SOUND ON pic.twitter.com/StziH3Yh49
– Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) November 19, 2019
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Showtime Renews ‘Back to Life’ for Season 2
Showtime has given a second season to the Daisy Haggard comedy “Back to Life,” the network announced Tuesday.
Created by and starring Haggard, “Back to Life” centers on Miri Matteson, who, after 18 years behind bars, returns home and stumbles back into adult life in the coastal town she once knew, while the mystery of her past looms large. It is set to wrap its six-episode first season on Nov. 24.
“‘Back to Life’ is a charming, funny and introspective comedy that resonates beautifully with Showtime viewers,” said Jana Winograde, president of Entertainment. “With such sharp writing and sensitive, winning performances from Daisy and the cast, we are confident that this gem from across the pond has even more delights to share with us in season two.”
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Season 2 will be a co-production between Showtime and BBC Three. “Fleabag” vets Harry and Jack Williams of Two Brothers Pictures serve as executive producers alongside Haggard and Sarah Hammond. Haggard’s co-writer Laura Solon also serves as a co-executive producer.
Geraldine James, Richard Durden, Jo Martin, Jamie Michie, Christine Bottomley, Adeel Akhtar and Liam Williams also star.
Said Haggard, “Laura and I are delighted that Showtime and the BBC are giving us a chance to continue Miri’s story. There’s so much more to tell, and we are incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to do that!”
“The reception that ‘Back to Life’ has received has been amazing,” said Harry Williams, managing director of Two Brothers Pictures. “Daisy and Laura are those rare writers that can make you laugh and cry in equal measure – which is a wonderful quality. We can’t wait for fans to see what they have in store for Miri this time around.”
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Watch the Second Week of Trump Impeachment Inquiry Hearings Right Here (Video)
The second week of public hearings in the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry begins Tuesday morning at 6:00 a.m. PT/9:00 a.m. ET with testimony from two people who listened in on the July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine president Vladimir Zelenskiy: Jennifer Williams, a State Department aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman.
After a short break, the proceedings will resume at 11:30 a.m. PT/2:30 p.m. ET with testimony from former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, and former White House Russia adviser Tim Morrison, both of whom are on the list of witnesses requested to appear by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee.
In addition to broadcasts from the major television networks, C-SPAN will once again air the full uninterrupted hearings. Watch the testimony from Williams and Vindman at the top of this page starting at 6:00 a.m. PT/9:00 a.m. ET; watch Volker and Morrison’s testimony in the video below, beginning at 11:30 a.m. PT/2:30 p.m. ET:
Then on Wednesday at 6 a.m. PT/9 a.m. PT, all eyes will be on Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union who said he personally told Zelenskiy’s top aide that U.S. aid to Ukraine was linked to the Biden investigations. The afternoon session will include testimony from Laura Cooper and David Hale.
Fiona Hill, a top Russian specialist on the National Security Council, and David Holmes, the aide who heard the conversation between Sondland and Trump, will testify on Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced in September that the House of Representatives would begin a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump.
The decision came in light of a whistleblower complaint that the president sought to use foreign power from Ukraine for his own political gain. During a phone call with Ukraine’s president, Trump reportedly pressured Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the son of former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden; earlier that week, Trump admitted that he had brought up Biden’s family during the call but told reporters that he did so because “we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating to the corruption already in the Ukraine.” The president also confirmed that his administration withheld nearly $400 million in aid to Ukraine but denied that it was done for leverage.
Also Read: 5 Key Moments From Trump Impeachment Inquiry Hearing Day 1 (Video)
Week one of the impeachment saw testimony three career public servants: William Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine; George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs; and Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
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November 18, 2019
‘The Daily Show’ Proposes a Service for Republicans to Keep Up With Latest Trump Impeachment Defenses (Video)
On Monday’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah spent some time looking at the ever-shifting and sometimes contradictory excuses supporters of Donald Trump are using to defend him during the ongoing impeachment inquiry, and suggested a new service that can help them keep up with the latest changes to the narrative.
Noah first noted how defenses of Trump have shifted as more information about his attempts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden in order for Trump to benefit politically has emerged. As demonstrated by several video clips, examples included: claims that the whistleblower who brought attention to the scandal is using “hearsay evidence”; denials that Trump isn’t guilty of a crime because the Ukrainian president didn’t go through with an investigation; and claims that even if Trump attempted to do what he’s accused of, it isn’t actually a crime.
Also Read: Trump to Award Actor Jon Voight the National Medal of Arts
There are so many excuses, Noah then joked, that Republicans “need one service that provides them with the best excuses, so they can all get on the same page.” Then he rolled out a commercial, starring Desi Lydic, for “Trump Club,” a Blue Apron-inspired service that provides Republicans with the latest talking points, in real time.
Among the provided defenses were: “It was all Eric’s fault”; Quid Pro Quo is perfectly constitutional; “The fact is you can’t put this president in a peach”; and more. The clip also promised that the service lets people customize their responses by the type of supporter they are, including “Russian troll.”
It’s fun stuff, and you can watch it above.
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