MONDAY, May 20 – DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION

MORNING SIDEKICK DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION FOR MONDAY, May 20, 2024
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COMEDY MP3s POSTED ON OUR PREP SITE FOR TODAY: LAWN SHAMAN

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, or the hundreds of disease awareness listings which occur each year.)

FLOWER DAY

NATIONAL RESCUE DOG DAY

PICK STRAWBERRIES DAY

WORLD METEOROLOGY DAY

May is:

Chip Your Pet Month / Pet Month
Date Your Mate Month
International Civility Awareness Month
National Barbecue Month
National Bike Month
National Egg Month
National Hamburger Month
National Military Appreciation Month
National Salad Month
National Salsa Month
Older Americans Month

ENTERTAINMENT & CELEBRITIES

WHAT TO WATCH – New and Returning Shows and Movies
Premiering Monday through Wednesday
Listings sourced from the TV Guide and EW websites

MONDAY, May 20

“STAX: Soulsville, U.S.A.”
HBO – New Docuseries, HBO
Synopsis: The rise and fall of Stax Records, the influential but underdog label based in Memphis – a story of musical genius, racism, personal tragedies and corporate greed.

“The Fairly Oddparents: A New Wish”
Nickelodeon – New Animated Series
Synopsis: When 10-year-old Hazel Wells tries to run away from home, she finds out her weird neighbors, Cosmo and Wanda, are fairy godparents in disguise.

TUESDAY, May 21

“Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza”
Paramount+ – New Docuseries
Synopsis: Depicts the exciting and strangely symbiotic 30+ year relationship between the iconic festival and Perry Farrell.

WEDNESDAY, May 22

“Marvel Studios’ Assembled: The Making of X-Men ’97”
Disney+ – New Docuseries
Synopsis: Self-hyping docuseries recalls the birth of “X-Men: The Animated Series” and its revival thirty years later as “X-Men ’97.”

Season Premiere:
Apple TV+ – “Trying”

U.S. NEWSCASINO REFUSES TO PAY WOMAN’S $1.2 MILLION JACKPOT

A New Jersey woman won big on a slot machine in Atlantic City, but the casino refused to pay the jackpot. Roney Beal, 72, had been playing the Wheel of Fortune slot machine at Bally’s Casino. She had put hundreds of dollars into the machine. Suddenly, it went off and gold coins popped out. A man next to her said, “Oh my God, you hit, you hit! Lady you’re a millionaire.” The jackpot was more than $1.2 million. She hit the service button on the slot. Security then swarmed in. And suddenly, she said, the machine came up “tilted.” The security guy opened the machine, hit some buttons inside and the guy told her, “Lady, get it in your head, you won nothing.” Beal was told the machine had a malfunction known as a “reel tilt,” which she was told voids the win. They ultimately offered her a mere $350. Beal is, of course, suing the casino. Her lawyer notes that “they fooled with the machine before anybody else had the opportunity to take a look.” He’s asked the New Jersey Gaming Enforcement to preserve the machine and casino floor videos for an independent forensic review.
* Bally’s is about to find out how much bad publicity a million dollars can buy.
* You can’t expect an Atlantic City casino to have a million dollars just laying around. It’s not like people just throw money at them.
* Of course the machine was tilted – the whole casino is crooked.
* Meanwhile, on the actual “Wheel of Fortune” show, Autumn Erhard won $1,030,340 in 2013 and they let her keep it. Sad.
* Bet you dollars to donuts she ends up with… a donut.

AUDIO: THE LEAF BLOWER SILENCER IS HERE

Good news for you if you have neighbors. A team of engineering students at Johns Hopkins University has invented a silencer attachment for leaf blowers. The attachment fits over the end of the blower and dampens the specific frequencies blasted out by the motor, without reducing the force of the air. They compare it to a silencer for a gun, or a muffler for a car. The team says the specific annoying sound frequencies are 94% quieter. The overall noise is reduced by about 35%. Black & Decker has picked up the patent on it and says it will be on the shelves in a few years.
* Oh, it won’t be ON the blower. You’ll have to pay extra.
* This blows, but in a good way.
* Now you’ll only have to yell at your neighbor half as loud for waking you up with the damn thing.
* Of course, after they’re done clearing the leaves, they fire up the seven horsepower lawn mower.
CLIP: A leaf blower without and with the silencer.
CLIP URL: morningsidekick(dot)com/prep/wp-content/uploads/LeafBlowerSilencer(dot)mp3

DO ORGAN RECIPIENTS INHERIT THE PERSONALITY OF THE DONOR?

A shocking study finds organ transplant recipients may end up absorbing some of the personality of their donor. Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine conducted a cross-sectional study involving 47 participants who received organ transplants, ranging from hearts to kidneys. 89 percent of respondents reported some form of personality change post-transplant. Some had shifts in mood and temperament, some had a change in their food preferences or levels of physical activity. Some recipients noticed an increase in social interactions, others experienced anxiety, depression, or mood swings. Doesn’t sound too weird… until you hear this:
– One recipient described having realistic dreams of being shot point-blank after receiving the heart of a police officer killed in the line of duty. He said, “A few weeks after I got my heart, I began to have dreams. I would see a flash of light right in my face and my face gets real, real hot. It actually burns.”
– One young boy who received the heart of a deceased toddler suddenly refused to play with his beloved Power Rangers, the same toys his donor had been trying to reach when he fell out a window to his tragic death.
Researchers theorize that donated organs themselves could carry memories, personality traits, and personal preferences from the original donor in the form of “cellular memories.” These memories and traits could then get transferred to the organ recipient, almost like downloading a new operating system.
* Further research has shown this to be the plots of easily a half dozen really bad horror movies from the 60’s and 70’s.
* The excuse of the future will be: “It’s not my fault, officer, my donated spleen made me do it.”
* Let me know when someone gets a transplant and then remembers where they buried the money from the bank robbery.
* Well, at least there’s one useful takeaway – don’t leave your toys on a windowsill.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

GRANDMA SWIMS A LONG DISTANCE

On May 11, a California grandmother completed a 29.6-mile, 17-hour swim through frigid, shark-infested waters off the coast of San Francisco. Amy Appelhans Gubser, 55 – who works as a nurse in the fetal cardiac unit at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital – is the FIRST PER— no, wait… the SECOND PER—- no, hold on…third… fourth… FIF— no, not fifth… the SIXTH PERSON ever to make the daring swim through the treacherous stretch of sea between the Golden Gate Bridge and the tiny Farallon Islands. She is, however, the first to complete the swim going east to west from the mainland out — as opposed to starting from the islands and swimming to the shore – a more difficult journey because colder water temperatures near the islands hit swimmers when they are at their most exhausted. The Marathon Swimmers Federation lists the Farallon Islands among its “Toughest 13” swims in the world due to the cold water, strong tides, unstable weather, and sharks. Gubser was stung by jellyfish, but as for the sharks, she says, “I’m just grateful they didn’t find me interesting.”
* Aw, grandma, don’t be so hard on yourself. Lots of people at the home find you interesting, I bet.
* After the swim, like all grandmothers, she couldn’t wait to go hit the casino.
* The problem with swimming TO the islands, of course, is, how do you get home?
* May 11. Hmm… I went to Walmart on May 11. It was crowded and the only parking spots were way out in the parking lot and I had to walk 250 feet to the door then 250 feet back to my car – WITH GROCERIES.

UNUSUAL BEERS: CAMEL DUNG AND KILLER BEES

South Australia’s Robe Town Brewery is using camel-dung to make their beer. Owner and head brewer Maris Biezaitis said the beer – Holy Smokes! – was inspired by Humpalicious, a neighboring camel farm. He says he wanted to make a beer from something with the camels. (* Camel milk? No. Camel hoof? No. He goes with the poo.) In actuality, leftover grain from the brewery is fed to the camels next door and dung is then collected from the farm and used as the fuel to smoke the malted barley. The end product does not contain the dung and Mr. Biezaitis says it does not taste like camel. “I think the flavor is something akin to a peat-smoked malt.”
* What a great slogan: “It does not taste like camel.”
* There’s a camel farm next door. Have it with a couple of sizzlin’ camel steaks.
* If you can get the camels to store the beer in their humps, and then rent them out for parties, you’d really have something.
* Anyway, that’s one way to be out humpin’ your beer.
Meanwhile, microbiologists from Cardiff University in Wales have developed a craft beer out of killer bees. The team took an Africanized honey bee – also known as the killer bee – and extracted a yeast from it to make several batches of beer. They are looking for someone to partner with to sell their Killer Bee Beer to help fund their bee research.
* The beer’s kinda tart – has a little bit of a sting to it.
* I hope they’ve trademarked “Get your buzz on.”
* How do you extract yeast from a killer bee? Ask it very nicely?
* Craft beer would be an excellent use of the murder hornets.
* I don’t think Anheuser Busch is worried.

CONTEST TO SEE WHO CAN DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THE BEST

More than 100 people in Seoul, Korea, sat on yoga mats last weekend to do absolutely nothing for the annual Space-out competition. The contest is to find out who’s best at zoning out for 90 minutes without falling asleep, checking their phone or talking. The contestants ranged from a child in second grade to people in their 60s. Participants’ heart rates were monitored, while onlookers voted for their 10 favorite contestants. Whoever has the most stable heart rate among those 10 favorites takes home the trophy. The competition was created by an artist who calls herself Woopsyang, who thought that it would be nice for everyone to pause all together at the same place at the same time. This year’s competition in Seoul was won by freelance announcer Kwon So-a, 35, who works multiple jobs, and took home a trophy shaped like the Auguste Rodin sculpture “The Thinker.”
* She also got an automatic seat in the U.S. Congress.
* The trophy’s shaped like “The Thinker” but he’s lying in a hammock.
* Zoning out for 90 minutes. Y’know, like watching golf on TV.
* Our sales department wanted to enter the do-nothing contest, but only amateurs are allowed in.

MONASTERY CLOSING

There goes another monastery! The Notre Dame of Calvary Abbey in Rogersville, New Brunswick, Canada, has closed. The reason: lack of monks. The Trappist monastery has been there since 1902. They made money by selling produce from their gardens and orchards. At one time, there were 30 monks living there; now there’s just three monks. (* Mickey, Mike and Davy. Peter monk left awhile ago.) Father Innocent Ugyeh, the man who runs the monastery, said, “Three people cannot form a monastery. We can’t run it with just three. We tried so many things for recruitment.” The monastery is dedicated to prayer and monks embrace solitude and silence as the two indispensable elements in their life.
* Kind of hard to invite people to join when you embrace solitude and silence.
* Anyway, when they hit 30 they were breaking their own “solitude” rule.
* Maybe they should have hired a sign-spinner to work the streets.
* Did they try everything? Did they try pickleball? A brew pub with a taproom? An AirBNB?
* Oh, well. Time to move on from being “monks” to being “hermits.”
* No more monky business.

TRENDING

DIDDY IS DISGUSTED WITH HIMSELF, NOW THAT THERE’S EVIDENCE

Sean “Diddy” Combs apologized Sunday for a recently surfaced 2016 video of him brutally beating his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. For eight years — until the video was released — Combs vehemently denied Ventura’s allegations of abuse. Now he says, “It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that. I was [effed] up. I hit rock bottom — but I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video, I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it and I’m disgusted now. I went and I sought out professional help, started going to therapy and rehab, had to ask god for his mercy and grace.”

PAUL MCCARTNEY, BILLIONAIRE

Baby, he’s a rich man. Paul McCartney is now a billionaire. According to figures released Friday, the former Beatle is the first British musician to be worth 1 billion pounds (US$1.27 billion). The annual Sunday Times Rich List calculated that the wealth of the 81-year-old musician and his wife, Nancy Shevell, had grown by 50 million pounds since last year thanks to McCartney’s 2023 Got Back tour, the rising value of his back catalogue and Beyonce’s cover of The Beatles’ “Blackbird” on her “Cowboy Carter” album.
(From today’s “This Day in Music History”: On this date in 1960, The Silver Beetles – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe, and Tommy Moore – played the first night of a short tour of Scotland backing singer Johnny Gentle, at Alloa Town Hall in Clackmannanshire. Three of the Silver Beetles adopted stage names: Paul McCartney became Paul Ramon, George Harrison was Carl Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe became Stuart de Stael. Future billionaire Paul was 17 years old.)

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE (May 17-19)

1. If – $34 million
2. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – $25.7 million
3. The Strangers – Chapter 1 – $11.5 million
4. The Fall Guy – $8 million
5. Back to Black – $2.8 million

ALMANAC

NOTABLE DATES, UPCOMING U.S. OBSERVANCES

May 27, Monday – Memorial Day
June 14, Friday – Flag Day
June 16, Sunday – Father’s Day
June 20, Thursday – Summer begins (The June solstice occurs at 4:50 P.M. EST)

BIRTHDAYS

Jon Pardi (country singer) … 39
Matt Czuchry (actor, “The Resident,” “The Good Wife”) … 47
Mindy Cohn (actress, “The Facts of Life”) … 58
Tony Goldwyn (actor, “Scandal”) … 64
Bronson Pinchot (actor, “Perfect Strangers”) … 65
Jane Wiedlin (musician with The Go-Go’s) … 66
Dave Thomas (comic actor, original SCTV cast) … 76
Cher (singer) … 78

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

“It’s a dirty job being ridiculous, but I’ll do it.”

(A) Kanye West
(B) Kim Jong Un
(C) Cher

ANSWER: (C) Cher

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

2015 – The Journal “Nature” published evidence of the oldest known human-made tools. Found in Kenya’s Turkana basin, they were estimated to be 3.3 million years old.
* Let me guess – a bottle opener?

2009 – Suspended NFL star Michael Vick was released after 19 months in prison for running a dogfighting ring.
* The bad publicity is still dogging him.

1993 – 93 million people tuned in for the final episode of “Cheers.”
* And Kelsey Grammer thought, “Now I can shake these losers and start making some REAL money!”

1978 – Mavis Hutchinson set a female sports record as the first woman to run across America. She ran 3,000 miles in 69 days, averaging 45 miles each day.
* It sounds incredible, but actually, that’s just a fraction of the distance many White House interns ran each day to get away from President Clinton.

1970 – 100,000 people demonstrated in New York’s Wall Street district in support of the U.S. policy in Vietnam and Cambodia.
* Wanna bet they all owned some defense contractor stock?

1944 – Nazi officers attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler at a staff meeting.
* They needn’t have worried. He did a great job of it himself a year later.

1939 – Regular commercial trans-Atlantic airline flights began between America and Europe.
* You could stand in New York and practically hear the French cursing.

1310 – Footwear was made specifically for left and right feet for the first time.
* And, yes, you had to pay extra.

THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY

2015 – The Rolling Stones played a surprise gig at the 1,300-capacity Fonda Theater in Los Angeles during which they performed the entire Sticky Fingers album. The audience included Jack Nicholson, Bruce Willis, Harry Styles, Leonard Cohen and Patricia Arquette.

2013 – Ray Manzarek, keyboard player and founder member of the The Doors, died at age 74. Manzarek, who had suffered from bile duct cancer for many years, died in a clinic in Rosenheim, Germany, with his wife and brothers at his bedside. He formed The Doors with lead singer Jim Morrison in 1965 after a chance meeting in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.

2012 – Robin Gibb, one-third of the Bee Gees and a singer-songwriter who helped to turn disco into a global phenomenon by providing the core of the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, died from cancer at age 62. The Bee Gees established their pop legacy by placing their falsetto harmonies at the center of the 70s disco boom.

2008 – The U.S. Congress passed a resolution designating May 13th as Frank Sinatra Day to honor his contribution to American culture.

2003 – Soul singer James Brown was pardoned for his past crimes in the state of South Carolina. Brown had served a two-and-a-half-year prison term after an arrest on drug and assault charges in 1988 and was granted a pardon by the State Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. Brown, who appeared before the board, sang ‘God Bless America’ after the decision.

1998 – Tommy Lee from Motley Crue was sentenced to six months jail after being found guilty of spousal abuse.

1995 – Don Henley from The Eagles married model Sharon Summerall. Guests included Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh, Timothy B. Schmit, David Crosby, Randy Newman, Jimmy Buffett, Jackson Browne, Billy Joel, Sting and Sheryl Crow.

1968 – BBC 2 TV aired a short play ‘The Pistol Shot,’ featuring a young dancer called David Bowie.

1966 – Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of the Who grew tired of waiting for John Entwistle and Keith Moon to arrive for their gig at the Ricky Tick Club in Windsor, England so they took to the stage with the bass player and drummer of the local band that opened the show. When Moon and Entwistle finally arrived in the middle of the set, a fight broke out, with Townshend hitting Moon on the head with his guitar. Moon and Entwistle quit the band, and rejoined a week later.

1960 – The Silver Beetles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stu Sutcliffe, and Tommy Moore) played the first night of a short tour of Scotland backing singer Johnny Gentle, at Alloa Town Hall in Clackmannanshire. Three of the Silver Beetles adopted stage names: Paul McCartney became Paul Ramon, George Harrison was Carl Harrison, and Stuart Sutcliffe became Stuart de Stael.

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. If you work in an office, you’ll do THIS over 6,000 times during the course of your career. What is it?
Attend a meeting

2. A recent study found that THIS happens to us for roughly 10 hours every week at work. What is it?
We’re bored

3. 66% of women surveyed said doing THIS would be more stressful than a job interview or a first date. What is it?
Going to work without makeup

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