WEDNESDAY, Jan 15 – DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION

MORNING SIDEKICK DAILY PREP TEXT VERSION FOR WEDNESDAY, January 15, 2025
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COMEDY MP3s POSTED ON OUR PREP SITE FOR TODAY: A & M AUTOLAND – Keep Coming Back

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.)

NATIONAL BAGEL DAY

NATIONAL HAT DAY

NATIONAL STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM DAY

WIKIPEDIA DAY
From various sources:
Wikipedia was launched by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on January 15, 2001 as a free and collaborative online encyclopedia. It all started when Jimmy Wales established Bomis, Inc., a web portal company, in 1996. By March 2000, Wales had introduced “Nupedia” to the world. This was a free online encyclopaedia that had an editor in chief, and a team of individuals who were reviewing the information published. In 2001, Nupedia was supplemented with a wiki software, and Wikipedia was launched as a feature of Nupedia.com. However, after several discussions, Wikipedia was relaunched as an independent website on January 15, 2001, and over 20,000 articles were published in its first year. Larry Sanger, an employee of Nupedia, made the first edit on Wikipedia. The page was “Hello, world!”

January is:

Adopt a Rescued Bird Month
Be Kind to Food Servers Month
Family Fit Lifestyle Month
Financial Wellness Month
Get Organized Month
National Candy Month
National Clean Up Your Computer Month
National Hobby Month
National Skating Month
National Train Your Dog Month
Walk Your Pet Month

ENTERTAINMENT & CELEBRITIES

SNL: THE IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

NBC is opening a Saturday Night Live immersive experience as part of the show’s 50th anniversary celebrations. “Live from New York: The SNL50 Experience” will allow fans to feel what it’s like to host SNL, from “the thrill of hearing your name announced as you burst through the stage doors to rolling your chair up to the Weekend Update desk.” The SNL50 Experience runs Jan. 30 to Feb. 2 (* Gee, four whole days!!!) at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Reservations for the free event are first-come, first-served.
* Experience what it’s like to bomb in a sketch. Feel what it’s like to do coke with John Belushi. Interact with a holographic Tom Hanks who’s always hanging out backstage.
* Just like the real SNL, you’re not allowed to memorize any lines. It’s all cue cards, all the time.
* Do they let you peek into the Five Timers Club?
* Hmm. Before I go all the way to Rockefeller Center for this – who’s the musical guest?
* When you’re done, you even get a printed review that says you brought nothing new to the monologue and the writing was uneven.

THE BUZZ

GREAT NICKNAMES

Reddit asked, “What are the best nicknames you’ve heard?” Some of the responses:
– “A guy called Wayne Bruce being nicknamed ManBat will never not be funny to me.
– “One of our friends is a short guy named Tony. We call him Shetland Tony.”
– “Kit…short for kit kat…he was always on a break.”
– “I had a coworker in college named Jacob, who informed us that he does not like to go by Jake, so we started calling him Cob, and it stuck.”
– “Gun. He had only two fingers on one hand.”
– “There was a guy in my high school named Abbas. This is not a cool name in any culture. But he was hot, he was smart, he could play ball. People called him Boss.”
– “Knew a guy named Troy, we called him T-Roy.”
– “I worked with a guy named Barney. I thought that was his name for years. Turns out he was called that because he has Barney Rubble feet – short and square.”
* PHONE TOPIC: Have you got a weird nickname? Know anybody with a really good nickname? How’d they get it?

U.S. NEWS

HOSPITAL ASKED WRONG FAMILY TO PULL THE PLUG ON PATIENT

A hospital patient died after being taken off life support when staff mistakenly asked the wrong family if they wanted to pull the plug. The patient, David Wells, was unconscious and not breathing when he was rushed in an ambulance to PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, Washington after choking on a piece of steak back in August 2021. He was put on life support. When the staff reached out to Wells’ family to make the tough decision to take him off life support, they instead called the family of Wells’ hospital roommate, Mike Beehler. They told the Beehler family that Mike was brain dead, so the family made the choice to pull the plug. A week later, Beehler’s sister got a call from her supposedly dead brother. That’s when they realized they had given consent to end the life of a stranger. Naturally, everybody involved is suing the hospital for negligence and causing “severe emotional distress “
* They have a real good case against everybody, including the cow that provided the piece of steak.
* PeaceHealth? More like TurmoilDeath.
* “Mike’s brain dead? But he was only in for a colonoscopy!”
* So next time you go in for anything medical, don’t complain when they keep asking you your name and birthday over and over.

NYC’S CONGESTION PRICING WORKING

New York City’s congestion pricing went into effect about a week ago. If you drive into certain parts of the city in your own car, you now have to pay $9. Despite a lot of complaining, it turns out the plan is working out for regular New Yorkers. The New York Times reports that traffic is already lower and buses are moving faster. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority says tens of thousands fewer cars have entered the busiest parts of the city, with traffic falling by 7.5 percent on the first day it went into effect. On Sunday, traffic was down an estimated 18.5 percent. On average, there are about 43,800 fewer cars per day in the city. Traffic moved noticeably faster through most major bridges and tunnels. Bus ridership was up by 6 percent compared with January 2024.
* I’m guessing the cars that do come into the city now are nicer, higher-end cars, too. Nice to see the roads gentrified.
* Of course, that $9 toll is the nine bucks you were going to spend on a street vendor hot dog.
* Although nobody feels sorry for the guys in the intersections who try to wash your windshield.
* How long ’til the bus drivers figure out this is the perfect time to go on strike?

WALMART UPDATES ITS LOGO

Walmart has given its logo its first facelift in nearly two decades. The old logo was the word “Walmart” with a circle of six yellow rays representing… oh, I don’t know, maybe the sun? Whatever. The new logo – and prepare for a shock – is the word “Walmart” with a circle of six yellow rays. The new rays are just a little… fatter looking.
* Thicker, like America.
* Because people have been screaming for an updated logo, as opposed to, say, a second cashier.
* Rays of the sun? I always thought it was an asterisk. And wondered why it wasn’t a dollar sign.
* Take heart that it probably cost Walmart $10 million to bring you this news story. But the price of eggs is still high.
* The ball’s in your court, Target bulls-eye.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

BRITISH AIR CREW MEMBER ACCIDENTALLY RELEASES EMERGENCY SLIDE

A British Airways crew member on Monday accidentally deployed a plane’s emergency slide while the plane was waiting to depart Heathrow Airport in London. The plane, an Airbus A321, had been waiting to take passengers to Brussels, Belgium, when an unnamed crew member inadvertently activated the chute. Passengers were delayed for three hours as British Airways tried to find a new plane. The cost of repacking the emergency door: $122,000.
* Time for a refresher course on part of an airplane.
* Never put the garment closet next to the emergency door on an airplane.
* Now the crew member’s sliding right into unemployment.
* What did the passengers say when they were delayed three hours? “Well, chute!”
* At least it happened on the ground. They usually do Boeing plane door checks midflight.

BRITISH THIEVES STEAL 13 PORTA POTTIES

A baker’s dozen portable toilets were stolen from a business in Banbury, England. Security camera footage shows two masked men with head lamps breaking into AndyLoos porta potty storage yard in an overnight raid, loading 13 of them onto vehicles, and driving away.
* Two masked men? The Loo-oon Rangers?
* At what point during a portable toilet theft do you think, “You know, we could be doing ATMs, or fancy cars.”
* Police are hoping to flush out the thieves.
* Porta potty theft is a going concern in Banbury, England.

ALMANACNOTABLE DATES, UPCOMING U.S. OBSERVANCES

January 20, Monday – Inauguration Day
January 20, Monday – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
January 27, Monday – Int’l Holocaust Remembrance Day (UN)
January 29, Wednesday – Chinese New Year (The Year of the Wood Snake)
February 2, Sunday – Groundhog Day
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

Dove Cameron (actress, “Liv and Maddie”) … 29
Victor Rasuk (actor, “Stalker,” “Fifty Shades of Grey”) … 40
Eddie Cahill (actor, “NCIS: New Orleans,” “Under The Dome,” “CSI:NY”) … 47
Regina King (actress, director, “American Crime”) … 54
Chad Lowe (actor, “Pretty Little Liars”) … 57
Andrea Martin (comedienne and actress, “SCTV”) … 78

Today’s Birthdays grade: After a run of big names, today’s birthdays seem ho-hum. Comedy aficionados will know Andrea Martin as an outstanding member of the core cast of “SCTV.” 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!

“I feel, at the end of the day, the only thing I can do is what I started to do when I got involved in all of this, and hope for the best; hope that people continue to appreciate me.”

(A) Joe Biden
(B) Donald Trump
(C) Eddie Cahill

ANSWER: (C) Eddie Cahill

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

2009 – U.S. Airways Capt. Chesley Sullenberger guided a jetliner disabled by a bird strike just after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to a safe landing in the Hudson River. All 155 people aboard survived.
* The birds, not so much.

2001 – Wikipedia, the free internet encyclopedia, was launched.
* Well, that’s what the Wikipedia article says, anyway … who knows if it’s true?

1973 – U.S. President Richard Nixon called a halt to the Vietnam War.
* That’s American for “You Beat Us.”

1967 – The first Super Bowl was played as the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League defeated the Kansas City Chiefs of the American Football League, 35-10.
* The first Super Bowl during the day, and the Rolling Stones on TV at night (see Music History below). Man, the 60s really DID rock!

1943 – The Pentagon, the world’s largest office building, was completed.
* They named it The Pentagon because the final cost to build it was five times the original estimate. Just like everything else the government builds!

1870 – The donkey was first used as the symbol of Democratic Party, in Harper’s Weekly.
* Amd it’s a donkey, not a jackass. Let’s keep things civil, shall we?

1861 – The elevator was patented by Elisha Otis.
* Shouldn’t it really be called the combination-elevator-and-lowerer?

THIS DAY IN MUSIC HISTORY

2008 – Rolling Stone guitarist Ronnie Wood was recovering following an operation for a hernia after he sustained the injury during the band’s Bigger Bang tour. The 60-year-old was told to rest for two months after the procedure.

1998 – James Brown was admitted to a hospital for treatment for an addiction to painkillers.

1983 – Men At Work started a four-week run at No.1 on the U.S. singles chart with “Down Under,” which went on to sell over two million copies in the U.S. alone. The song was also a No.1 in the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Italy and Switzerland, and was a top 10 hit in many other countries.

1977 – The Eagles were at No.1 on the U.S. album chart with “Hotel California,” the group’s third U.S. No.1 album.

1972 – Don McLean’s “American Pie” started a four-week run at No.1 on the U.S. singles chart. The song is a recounting of “The Day the Music Died” (a term taken from the song) the 1959 plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper (Jiles Perry Richardson, Jr.), and the aftermath.

1967 – The Rolling Stones sang “Let’s Spend The Night Together” on The Ed Sullivan Show, but because of the song’s suggestive title, Mick Jagger had to substitute “Let’s Spend Some Time Together.”

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. 39% of people say THIS was their latest big money purchase. What is it?
A mattress

2. THIS is the most-often purchased item in a supermarket. What is it?
Milk

3. The average person buys one of THESE every year and a half. What is it?
Cell phone

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