On Today’s Show
➢ Two college students in L.A. used their spring break to create a nonprofit called The FarmLink Project that helps farmers donate unsold food to food banks. Their first donation was 11,000 eggs, and they picked them up in a rented truck. Now they’ve got a team of 2,000 people behind them, and have donated over 2 million pounds of food.
➢ William Kelly, a five-year-old boy hit a hole-in-one on a golf course in Florida.
Mike Freglette, William’s golf coach, praised the boy’s skills. “It was an unbelievable moment,” Freglette said. “Some people play golf their whole lives and never get a hole-in-one. He’s playing as good as a third- (or) fourth-grader. He’s got some natural talent.”
➢ If you can pool together $7 million with some business-savvy friends you could buy your own fully functional village in Sweden. Built in the 18th century as a health resort, Sätra Brunn, 90 minutes north of Stockholm, is a picture-perfect example of Swedish village architecture, complete with a church, a school and a hotel, and has a bottling operation to market its own local spring water. In continuous use as a spa town for 320 years, it was bought by its current owners in the early 1990s. The 62-acre village of more than 70 buildings has a program of regular events and celebrations, including an annual Midsummer party which attracts around 6,000 visitors.
➢ “Jeopardy!” runs out of new episodes TODAY . . . and because of the pandemic, it’s not clear when there will be new ones.
Starting Monday, the show will rerun big champions and big wins, followed by a repeat of the 2019 Tournament of Champions.
But when the world opens back up, ALEX TREBEK is ready. A spokesperson for the show says, quote, “Alex is looking forward to resuming production as soon as we are able to do so.
He told us he wants to be one of the first shows back in production.”
➢ While some of us have used quarantine time to catch up on old TV shows and movies, musician Samara Ginsberg has been recording multi-part cello covers, all by herself, of those old TV shows and movies. Her latest is a fantastic rendition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It unquestionably sounds more elegant played by cellos, but it still rocks.
TODAY IS……………….
- “Superman Day”, Superman was created in 1933 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
FAST FACT: Originally, Superman did not have the ability to fly, but he was “able to leap tall buildings at a single bound”
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COUNTRY MUSIC NOTE
During this week in 2010, Miranda Lambert‘s hit “The House That Built Me” started a four-week ride at Number One on the Billboard country singles chart. She didn’t write the song, but at the time she told us she knew from first listen that it was destined for greatness, if not the top of the charts. [“I just don’t see how anyone can listen to this song and think that it’s mediocre or think that it doesn’t matter, because it’s one of the most amazing, timeless lyrics I’ve ever heard, and I’m just fortunate. I’m just the artist that happened to hear it first and grab it because I know anybody that would’ve heard it would’ve taken it. It’s one of those songs that’s gonna be . . . it’s gonna make history, definitely.”]
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A WHITE GRIZZLY
A Canmore woman and her family got a glimpse of a natural wonder on the weekend that very few people ever see — a white grizzly bear.
Cara Clarkson was out for a drive in Banff National Park, an outing to celebrate her son and her husband’s birthdays, when they spotted what at first looked like wolves at the side of the highway.
“And then, like, holy smokes, nope those are grizzly bears. And one of them is white,” she said.
The two young bears — one white, the other normal coloured — were eating berries along the fence beside the roadway.
Clarkson said she later talked to some bear experts who told her it’s a rare gene anomaly that makes the grizzly bear white instead of its usual brownish colour.
“We’re talking polar bear white,” she said. “For us, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Which is probably the only reason we decided to slow down and take a little bit of video of it, because normally we could come across bears on a regular basis.”
Conservation biologist Mike Gibeau, a specialist in carnivores such as grizzly bears, says the unfortunate thing about such sightings is the harm that can come to the bears as a result of the ensuing publicity.
For just that reason, Clarkson was deliberately vague about where she saw the bears.
FOUR RANDOM FACTS
- The path that the Von Trapp family takes to escape from the Nazis in Austria in “The Sound of Music”wouldn’t have led them to Switzerland . . . it would’ve taken them to Germany.
- Turkeys often look up at the sky during a rainstorm. Some have been known to drown as a result.
- After a curling match, the winners are supposed to take the losers out for a round of drinks, even at the Olympics.
- Thousand Island dressing is named after the Thousand Islands region in the St. Lawrence River between the United States and Canada near Kingston. It was created by a fisherman’s wife while he fished in the river.
GOOD NEWS
A 9-year-old kid in Kenya named Stephen Wamukota built an ingenious machine out of wood that lets people in his village wash their hands without touching the sink. There’s a pedal you step on that tilts a jug of water. And last week, he received an award for it from the president of Kenya.
A children’s book author named Rob Biddulph has been offering free art lessons on YouTube during the pandemic. And he just set a world record for largest online art lesson. He was trying to get 10,000 people to sign on at once, and ended up with over 45,000
A newspaper delivery guy in New Jersey named Greg Dailey was in the news a few months ago when he offered to go grocery shopping for seniors on his route, free of charge. He started in late March, and now there’s an update. Since then, he’s made over 500 trips to the store for more than 120 people.
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BIRTHDAYS
[35] Chris Young, country singer
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BRAD PAISLEY THANKS FARMERS
In a recent interview, BRAD PAISLEY gave a shout-out to our great farmers.
Despite all that’s going on in the world, they’re still out there helping us keep food on the table. Quote, “They are in it, and they can’t stop, and they know that. It’s the epitome of an essential business.”
TECH TALK:
⇒ Huawei has introduced a new smartphone that can take your temperature. The company’s Honor Play 4 Pro has an infrered temperature sensor integrated into the device’s rear camera. It doesn’t just take the temperature of people — it can also measure the surface temperature of objects. The feature arrives as the world is battling the coronavirus pandemic, with the disease listing fever as one of its symptoms.
⇒ Tweeters, rejoice! The little blue checkmark is coming back. The feature has been missing since 2017 when the company caused an uproar by assigning a checkmark (which then signified a noteworthy individual) to the profile of a white supremacist. Now, Twitter has announced that the feature will return. This time, regular folks will be able to ask Twitter to give them a blue checkmark to verify that they are, in fact, themselves. The company hasn’t yet committed to a rollout date for the new (-ish) feature.
FRIDAY JUNE 12TH
- Those who have family and friends in long-term care facilities and retirement homes across the province will soon be able to visit their loved ones.
The provincial government announced on Thursday that it will be lifting visitor restrictions at long-term care homes, retirement homes and other residential care settings next week. Visits to these facilities have been restricted since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Visitors will be expected to abide by strict health and safety protocols when they are in the homes. All visitors must pass active screening every time they visit and confirm that they have tested negative for COVID-19 within the previous two weeks. Visitors must also comply with infection prevention and control protocols such as bringing and wearing a face mask.
- A black couple in Gainesville, Florida was surprised when their waitress at Hooters paid for their meal and wrote “Black Lives Matter” on their receipt.
Someone in Naples, Florida has been helping a restaurant stay afloat by paying for 100 sandwiches a day to give to healthcare workers. Since the lockdown started, they’ve spent about $40,000.
- Starbucks has a strawberry-flavored drink on its menu called a Pink Drink. But women are pranking their boyfriends on TikTok by asking them to order them a “Pinkity Drinkity.” Here’s one of the videos. You can hear the girlfriend giggling as she films it.
- What’s it like to deliver pizzas? Here’s comedian Andrew Norelli with his past experience.
SHUTDOWNS MAY HAVE IGNITED RISE IN STDs
Health experts in Canada warn that virus-related shutdowns may have resulted in a lack of contraceptives due to condom hoarding, which in turn could contribute to a rise in sexually transmitted disease cases.
A report released in early May by Statistics Canada said sales of items, like condoms, contraceptives, and lubricants, soared by 30 percent in the second week of March and by 41 percent in the third week—this is as Canada’s citizens were asked to stay home.
The figures eventually decreased, but that could be due to a related condom factory shutdown in Malaysia. It’s believed those shutdowns could limit global condom production and between that and the hoarding, could lead to a global shortage of condoms.
Officials worry this could lead to a resurgence in certain STDs.
Lady Antebellum Has Changed Their Name to Lady A
LADY ANTEBELLUM has officially changed the name of the band to LADY A. They removed the Antebellum because of its association with slavery. They made the announcement yesterday on their socials.
They said the events of the past few weeks opened their eyes to the “injustices, inequality and biases black women and men have always faced and continue to face every day.” Quote, “We named our band after the antebellum-style home where we took our first photos. [We] are regretful and embarrassed to say that we did not take into account the associations that weigh down this word referring to the period of history before The Civil War, which includes slavery”
They also made a donation to the Equal Justice Initiative through their LadyAID Foundation.
Will You Pay $100 to See a Garth Brooks Concert On a Drive-In Screen?
GARTH BROOKS is doing a live concert on June 27th that’ll be shown on 300 drive-ins across North America. To be clear, he’s NOT performing at the drive-ins. You’re in your car watching it on the screen, at $100 per vehicle. The venues will follow all the local CDC guidelines. Staff will be wearing personal protective equipment . . . vehicles will be parked six feet away from each other . . . and there will be limited capacity in restrooms. The show will go on, rain or shine.
He says, quote, “This drive-in concert allows us all to get back to playing live music without the uncertainty of what would be the result to us as a community. This is old school, new school, and perfect for the time we are in.”
BLAKE SHELTON’S TWEET MEANS MAJOR BOOK SALES FOR ONE FAN-TURNED-AUTHOR –
Blake Shelton is using his celebrity to help a fan and new author get some book sales. The fan, Frankie Williams, wrote a fictional children’s book called The Merdragon in memory of her daughter who died last year at the age of 36 from undiagnosed heart disease.
TMZ reports that at the time, Frankie says she tweeted at Blake and his friend Craig Morgan because Craig had written a song called “The Father, My Son and The Holy Ghost “about the tragic death of his 19-year-old son. Blake replied to Frankie, saying he was inspired by people like her and Craig who help others deal with grief while still dealing with their own. The experience motivated her to write the book.
Earlier this week, Frankie tweeted to Blake offering to send him a copy of the book as a thank you for being the catalyst, but he again responded saying he would order the book and suggested others do the same. Blake tweeted, “I’ll order it… Actually let’s all order it!!!”
Frankie says the tweet has sparked major books sales with The Merdragon in the Top Five in three different children’s categories on Amazon.
TEXAS HILL………
Three guys you may recognize from singing shows have formed a country group called TEXAS HILL. It’s CRAIG WAYNE BOYD, who won Season 7 of “The Voice” . . . ADAM WAKEFIELD who was a Season 10 runner-up of “The Voice” . . . and CASEY JAMES who came in third on Season 9 of “American Idol”.
They were working on an album when COVID-19 forced them to shut things down . . . but they just released a new single called “Darkest Sky“.
