TUESDAY, Feb 4 – DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION

MORNING SIDEKICK DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION FOR TUESDAY, February 4, 2025
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TODAY IS …
(All days repeat annually on today’s date unless otherwise noted; days may or may not be called “National”/”International”/”World” depending on source; sources listed often have additional info. We generally do not list special days which were created by commercial companies for the purpose of marketing – including “holidays” created by the National Day Calendar and Wellcat websites to drive traffic to their websites – or the hundreds of disease awareness listings which occur each year.)

FACEBOOK’S BIRTHDAY
Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his Harvard dormitory room on February 4, 2004.

HOMEMADE SOUP DAY

NATIONAL STUFFED MUSHROOM DAY

NATIONAL THANK A MAIL CARRIER DAY
The Holiday Insights website says this:
“Thank a Mail Carrier Day is your chance to say thanks to the guy, or gal, who delivers your mail. The reliable postal worker is always there doing their job, regardless of the weather. They are a hardy lot. You’ll find some mail carriers on walking routes, wearing shorts in all but the coldest of winter days.”

USO DAY

WORLD CANCER DAY

February is:

Adopt a Rescued Rabbit Month
African American History Month
Celebration of Chocolate Month
International Boost Self Esteem Month
International Friendship Month
National Bird Feeding Month
National Snack Food Month
National Sweet Potato Month
Spunky Old Broads Month
Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month

ENTERTAINMENT & CELEBRITIES

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS OPEN TV & MOVIE PRODUCTION COMPANY

The Kansas City Chiefs have launched a production company to develop scripted and unscripted content for both shortform and longform platforms promoting the Chiefs brand. The new venture is called Foolish Club Studios. The Chiefs have already experimented in entertainment, such as last year’s Hallmark Channel film “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story”; and with the online claymation short “A Kingdom Christmas Story: Hail Merry.”
* Promoting the Chiefs brand? Good idea, ’cause they need help getting people interested in the team.
* What can we expect from a football team creating TV shows and movies?
– CSI: NFL
– Squad Game
– A new Tim Allen sitcom: Mahomes Improvement
– A show about a linebacker who becomes a drug kingpin: Breaking Bones
– Isiah Pacheco in a time travel movie: Runningback to the Future
– Western about a ranch where they train referees: Yellowflag

CURRENT “CELEBRITY JEOPARDY!” SERIES A BUST

“Celebrity Jeopardy!,” a version of the very popular game show that is airing Wednesday evenings on ABC, hit a new low for last Wednesday’s (January 29) episode. It was watched by fewer than 2 million viewers. It lost to a CBS game show, the nighttime version of “The Price is Right.” And, it lost 40% of viewers off the show’s lead-in, Abbott Elementary. The “celebrities” were Roy Wood Jr., Brian Jordan Alvarez, and Phoebe Robinson. The viewers’ main complaints: the questions are too easy, making it no fun to play along at home, and also: nobody knows who the celebrities are.
* Yeah! Come on, it’s Celebrity Jeopardy, not Dancing With the Stars! Get me famous people I know!
* TV viewers want more intellectually challenging content? What universe is this?
* Maybe viewers would tune in if every wrong answer got a zap with a Taser.
* There’s one solution I guarantee will work: A.I. Hologram Alex Trebek.

THE BUZZ

SUPER BOWL PROP BETS

Along with the Super Bowl comes the annual list of Prop Bets. These are the unusual wagers fans can bet on, like “Jersey Number Of The First Player To Score” and “Will The Kickoff Go Out Of Bounds?” Some of this year’s Prop Bets:
– Will a player or coach cry during the national anthem?
– Jon Batiste will perform the Star-Spangled Banner, and the length of the anthem has an over/under of 120.5 seconds. Last year, country singer, Reba McIntyre, breezed through the song in 94 seconds. In 2007, Billy Joel raced through it in 90 seconds.
– How many times will Taylor Swift be shown during the anthem?
– Will Travis Kelce propose to Taylor Swift?
– Will the coin toss be heads or tails? For last year’s Super Bowl, one Michigan bettor put down $100,000 for the coin to land on tails; it landed on heads. The Super Bowl coin toss has landed on tails 30 times and heads 28 times. Heads holds the longest winning streak at five, and has been the winning side for three of the past four Super Bowls.
– Will any player score an octopus? An octopus is where one player scores a touchdown and also the ensuing 2-point conversion. Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts became the first player to accomplish this feat at Super Bowl LVII two years ago.
– Will there be a power outage?
* Which players will have their houses broken into by that international crime ring targeting athletes?
* Will there be a political argument in your living room during the game?
* Will any part of a Boeing airplane fall onto the field from the sky? The odds are pretty good on this happening.
* Will I switch over to the Puppy Bowl during the halftime show?
* Before I place any bets on these, I’m going to consult ChatGPT, ClaudeAI, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and DeepSeek.

U.S. NEWS

EGG TRUCK SPILLS ON THE I-5

A terrible tragedy occurred on the 5 Freeway in East Los Angeles Monday morning. An egg truck nicked an underpass and spilled its load all over the highway. Not only did it cause the closure of nearly all southbound lanes snarling the morning commute through East Los Angeles, but there were precious, precious eggs all over the place. The name of the company on the truck: “Good Eggs.” (* Good Eggs, bad drivers.) Egg prices are, as you know, at an all-time high in the U.S. thanks to the culling of thousands and thousands of chickens to try to stop the spread of bird flu.
* Thanks for the science update, egghead.
* Let me guess: drivers were shell-shocked? Authorities were scrambling? A hard-boiled detective is on the case?
* If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. Which will also happen if you hit a bridge with an egg truck.
* It was an accident, but somebody should fry for this.
* Who shelled out for the cleanup?
* In any case, they came in and cleaned up the egg spill, and the whole thing was over pretty easy.
* If they had to kill all those diseased chickens, where are all the chicken wings coming from for this weekend?

WOMAN TOSSES COMMEMORATIVE BRICK THROUGH EX-HUSBAND’S WINDOW

In Bonita Springs, Florida, a woman was arrested for tossing a commemorative brick through her ex-husband’s window. The night of January 24, a man called police after hearing a crash and finding the brick in his house. The brick memorialized his first date with his ex-wife first date. It had their names engraved on it with the words “First Date, Jet Skiing, June 14, 2020.” He called police, who arrived to find his ex-wife, Sabrina Coyne, 34, wearing a short dress and high heels, in front of the home (* because who can run away in high heels?). She denied throwing anything through his window, but the ex-husband’s security video showed her launching the brick like a shot putter, and a crash can be heard on the video.
* So the cops came down on her like a ton of you-know-what.
* If she wasn’t one brick short of a load when he married her, she sure is now.
* Who commemorates a first date with anything, much less a brick? Do they sell them at the jet ski rental: “Here’s the key to your jet ski, and here’s you’re commemorative brick. Keep it in your pocket while you’re out on the water.”
* Even after the divorce, he told her, “Darling, I’ll always be just a stone’s throw away.”

AUDIO: STRIPPER ATTACKS 7-ELEVEN CLERK WITH A BANANA

A 7-Eleven customer used a banana to batter a store clerk in Clearwater, Florida. Police say Caltaeviya Turner, 22, got into a verbal altercation with the 30-year-old female worker last Thursday. At one point, Turner became irate and “picked up a banana from the cashier counter and threw the banana at the victim’s face.” The ‘nanner struck the employee “on the cheek bone and left a minor abrasion,” investigators noted. Turner was arrested for battery. Police records list Turner’s employer as Baby Dolls, a Clearwater gentleman’s club.
* So naturally the first thing she grabs is a banana.
* It left a minor abrasion on the clerk, and the banana was bruised, too
* She threw it, and then split.
* I hear this happens a bunch in Florida.
* A good lawyer would tell her to appeal.
CLIP: From Mrs. Doubtfire, “It was a run-by fruiting.”
CLIP URL: morningsidekick(dot)com/prep/wp-content/uploads/Doubtfire-RunByFruiting(dot)mp3

AUDIO: PLANE TAKES OFF WITHOUT WORKING TOILETS

Last Thursday, American Airlines flight 835 from Tampa to Philadelphia went out without working water. According to a passenger on the flight, a gate agent announced that everyone should use the airport restrooms prior to boarding the scheduled 2-hour-41-minute trip (which doesn’t include boarding or deplaning time or any unexpected delays). The customer said that the gate agent told everyone in the gate area that the bathrooms would not be available on the flight and acted like that was just normal and perfectly fine. Once in the air, though, the flight attendants said they “thought” they could use the bathrooms in flight but that passengers would have to use bottled water to flush them, and even then they admitted they didn’t know if it would work.
* How about buckets? No moving parts!
* Can you take off without a working bathroom? Lately, they let you take off without a working FAA.
* Maybe that’s what the blankets are for: absorption.
* A mechanical failure? Could someone explain why I’m not seeing the name “Boeing” in this story?
* One reason or another, your underwear is not going to be clean after flying anymore.
CLIP: You’ll never have that problem when you fly this airline: our classic “Incontinental Airlines” parody.
CLIP URL: morningsidekick(dot)com/prep/wp-content/uploads/09-14-IncontinentalAirlines(dot)mp3

CREMATORIUM BURNS DOWN

In today’s tale of irony, a crematorium caught fire on Sunday morning in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Fire crews were called to the landmark Hill-Skeffington funeral home just before 4 am. Funeral home operator John Skeffington said no bodies were at the facility’s crematorium at the time of the fire, and that any bodies that were on-site have been removed from the premises. The cause is currently being investigated.
* Crematorium burns. Quite the mystery. Yes, quite.
* Think of it as a practice run.
* They moved the bodies to another crematorium for disposal? Wasted effort, man.
* Imagine how much fire insurance for a crematorium must cost! And now his rates will go up even more.

ALMANACNOTABLE DATES, UPCOMING U.S. OBSERVANCES

February 12, Wednesday – Lincoln’s Birthday
February 14, Friday – Valentine’s Day
February 17, Monday – Presidents Day / Washington’s Birthday
March 9, Tuesday – Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras
March 9, Sunday – Daylight Saving Time Begins
March 17, Monday – St. Patrick’s Day
March 20, Thursday – Spring begins, Spring Equinox is 5:01 a.m. EDT

BIRTHDAYS

Charlie Barnett (actor, “Russian Doll,” “Secrets and Lies,” ″Chicago Fire”) … 37
Natalie Imbruglia (singer) … 50
Rob Corddry (actor, writer, “The Unicorn,” “Ballers,” “Hot Tub Time Machine”) … 54
Clint Black (country singer) … 63
Alice Cooper (shock rock singer, birth name Vincent Damon Furnier) … 77

Today’s Birthdays grade: Hmm… Is there a nice way to say most of the people on today’s birthday list hit their peak a while back? Respectable names, but nobody exactly setting the world on fire right now. Grade: C.

[Want to try something different with the daily birthdays? Try grading them! Some days have “good” celebs, some have “great” celebs, some have “lousy” celebs. For fun, give the group an arbitrary grade: A-plus through F-minus. Sidekick will give you our take on it; you can to take the concept and run with it.]

BIRTHDAY QUOTE QUIZ – Ask your listeners “Who said it?” HINT: Today’s their birthday!

“If you get murdered – what a great thing. What a great publicity thing.”

(A) Mahatma Ghandi
(B) John Lennon
(C) Alice Cooper

ANSWER: (C) Alice Cooper

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

2023 – After drifting across the U.S. for days and igniting a political storm, a Chinese spy balloon was shot down by U.S. fighter jets off the eastern seaboard.
* Better late than never.

2014 – Same-sex marriage was legalized in Scotland.
* Hoot Mon plus Mon!

2004 – The social networking website Facebook was launched.
* When I was a kid, my social networking site was called “outdoors.”

1997 – A civil jury in Santa Monica, Calif., found O.J. Simpson liable for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman.
* Whoa – hold on. O.J. Simpson? When did this all happen?

1982 – A new indoor distance record of 47 meters was set for flying a paper airplane.
* And you thought the people who work at knocking down the most dominoes were pathetic.

1932 – The first electric typewriters went on sale.
* For you kids out there, electric typewriters were like word processors without the computers. You actually had to write the letter in your HEAD! PRETTY WEIRD!

1783 – Britain declared a formal cessation of hostilities with its former colonies, the United States of America.
* “Forget America. We’re going to try this again in India, and we’re going to get it RIGHT this time!”

THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY

2017 – Black Sabbath, the UK band some credit with inventing heavy metal music, played their last concert. The two-hour gig at the NEC Arena in their home city of Birmingham saw the rock veterans play 15 songs, ending with their first hit, “Paranoid.” Ticker tape and balloons fell as singer Ozzy Osbourne, then 68, thanked fans for nearly five decades of support. Sabbath’s The End Tour began in the U.S. in January of the previous year with 81 dates across the world.

2009 – Robert Plant said he felt Led Zeppelin couldn’t reunite for a full tour and album because the band felt incomplete without drummer John Bonham. During an interview on UK station Absolute Radio Plant stated, “The reason that it stopped was because we were incomplete, and we’ve been incomplete now for 29 years,” he said. He admitted: “I think the thing about it is really, is that to visit old ground, it’s a very incredibly delicate thing to do, and the disappointment that could be there once you commit to that and the comparisons to something that was basically fired by youth and a different kind of exuberance to now, it’s very hard to go back and meet that head on and do it justice.”

2003 – Courtney Love was arrested at Heathrow airport for “endangering an aircraft” on a transatlantic flight. The singer was said to have hurled abuse at the cabin crew on the flight from Los Angeles to London after her nurse who was in an economy seat was barred access to sit with Love in the upper class cabin.

2000 – Bjorn Ulvaeus, previously of the band Abba, confirmed that the members of Abba turned down a $1 billion offer by an American and British consortium to reform the group.

1983 – Singer Karen Carpenter died at age 32 of a cardiac arrest at her parents house. The coroner’s report gave the cause of death as imbalances associated with anorexia nervosa.

X-TREME TRIVIA CHALLENGE

Every installment of X-Treme Trivia Challenge includes three mystery factoids. Create your own “Impossible Question” contest – great for listener giveaways and phone interaction starters! Also a perfect sponsorship opportunity!

1. The average American family has four of THESE in the house. What are they?
Clocks

2. The average family has two of THESE. What are they?
Bicycles

3. The average family buys a new one of THESE about every 50 days. What is it?
A jar of mustard

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