On This Date
➢ A single mom in L.A. lost her job because of the pandemic and only had $12 to her name. So she decided to invest it in her eight-year-old son’s idea to start a business selling plants. It’s called “Aaron’s Garden,” and business is booming after he blew up on Instagram. Someone also started a GoFundMe page that’s raised over $25,000.
➢ A man in Jamaica who won more than $95 Million in a lottery showed up to collect his winnings dressed as Darth Vader in an attempt to hide his identity. Lotto winners in Jamaica must show up in person to claim their winnings, but the man, who identified himself as W. Brown, said he disguised himself as the Star Wars villain because he likes to keep to himself.
➢ Two kids accidentally smashed a $64,000 glass replica of a Disney castle at the Shanghai Museum of Glass.
A museum spokesperson said they hit the exhibit counter when they were chasing each other. Spanish artisan Miguel Arribas spent approximately 500 hours perfecting The Fantasy Castle, which features 30,000 individual pieces and 24-carat gold.
But Miguel is taking it in stride, luckily it’s not destroyed. As soon as travel restrictions are lifted, Miguel will go to Shanghai and do the repair. Miguel just is glad people are looking at his beautiful work. This is the second time The Fantasy Castle will require repairs. The first time was due to vibrations caused by local trains going back and forth.
➢ WILL SMITH is developing a reboot of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” . . . but this time he’s not doing it for laughs.
This version will be a lot more serious. It’s based on a phony trailer that a guy named Morgan Cooper made last year called “Bel-Air”, that reimagined the show as a gritty drama.
Morgan has been helping Will develop the show for about a year, and there’s been interest from several streaming services, including HBO Max, Peacock, and Netflix.
➢ People are always saying, “You couldn’t remake ‘Blazing Saddles’ today.” But someone DID find a way to remake it . . . by turning it into a cartoon featuring CATS AND DOGS.
The new version is called “Blazing Samurai” . . . and instead of a black sheriff in a Western town full of white people, we’ve got a DOG SAMURAI in a town full of CATS.
The voice cast includes Michael Cera, Samuel L. Jackson, Ricky Gervais, George Takei, and Mel Brooks, who directed “Blazing Saddles” back in 1974.
TODAY IS……………….
- “Middle Children’s Day”, a salute to middle-born children whose childhood activities were seemingly always limited by being ‘too young’ or ‘too old’.
- “Vinyl Record Day”, celebrated on one of the possible dates in 1877 on which Thomas Edison is thought to have invented the phonograph. The purpose is to encourage the preservation of the recordings, cover art, and cultural influence of vinyl records.
- “Sewing Machine Day”, on the date that the sewing machine was patented in 1846.
1981 [39] IBM introduces its first ‘Personal Computer’, the model 5150 equipped with MS-DOS 1.0 and a price tag of $1,565 (over $4400 in today’s dollars)
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COUNTRY MUSIC NOTE
2017 “Body Like a Back Road” by Sam Hunt broke two Billboard Hot Country Songs chart records for #1 longevity within a month of each other. On July 22, upon spending its 22nd week at #1, “… Back Road” became the longest-running #1 song by a male artist since the start of the charts in 1944. On August 12, the song’s 25th week at #1, Hunt bumped Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” for lengthiest #1 run (previously 24 weeks) in chart history; the song eventually logged 34 weeks at the top. _____________________________________________________________________________
FOUR RANDOM FACTS
- Quaker Oats briefly owned a video game company from 1982 to 1983 that made Atari games. They released 14 of them, but nothing was even close to a hit, and they shut down the division.
- If the Sun exploded, it would take eight minutes and 20 seconds for all the energy to hit us . . . and kill us all.
- Indiana has 11 of the 12 largest high school basketball gyms in the U.S. The only one that’s not in Indiana is in Texas.
- The coldest inhabited place on Earth is a village called Oymyakon in Siberia, Russia. If you were to go outside naked on an average day, you’d freeze to death in one minute. Its record low temperature is negative 96 degrees Fahrenheit.
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BIRTHDAYS
[49] Pete Sampras, retired tennis pro (15 Grand Slam singles titles including 7 Wimbledon and 5 US Open, ranked #1 for 286 weeks beginning in 1993)
[45] Casey Affleck, actor
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SHIP-LOADED:
How would you like to spend your lockdown on an Antarctic adventure? Russian oligarch
Oleg Tinkov is offering to lease his 253-foot vessel, La Datcha, the world’s first private ice-breaking ship that can comfortably sail to Antarctica or the outer reaches of Greenland with 12 passengers aboard.
The ship, which can go for 40 days without refuelling, offers you the chance to “Ram into the pack ice and walk right out onto the frozen sea”. There are 5 guest cabins, each with a dressing room and a washroom, accommodations for 25 crew members, a private hospital, and two gyms.
Hang on, there’s more: A Turkish bath and sauna to relax in after an ice trek, a jacuzzi, and many toys, including two snow-scooters, four jet-skis, a diving center with decompression chamber, and TWO helicopters in a below-deck hangar.
Also on board is a mini-submarine which holds three people. How much to lease this floating piece of opulence overkill? Just $850,000. Per week.
Top Ways Things Will Change Around the Office in the Future
According to a new survey, most people ARE expecting some permanent changes at work and here’s the ways we expect things to be different . . .
- Washing your hands more often.
- Cleaning your desk and computer keyboard and mouse more often.
- No more handshakes.
- More flexible work hours.
- Going outside more.
- Bringing in your own mug, plates, and silverware instead of using shared ones.
- More video conferences instead of face-to-face meetings.
- Not eating random food people bring in.
- No more birthday parties.
- No more signing birthday cards that get passed around.
WEDNESDAY AUGUST 12TH
- Brayden Pointscored 10:27 into the fifth overtime to end the fourth-longest game in NHL history and give the Tampa Bay Lightning a 3-2 win against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on Tuesday. That game going over 6 hours caused the Boston / Carolina game to be postponed until this morning at 11am.
Calgary 3 Dallas 2 Calgary leads 1 – 0
Vegas 4 Chicago 1 Vegas leads 1 – 0
- The police in Miami, Florida are setting up “mask traps” to catch people not wearing masks, and then fine them $100. Here’s a guy that got finedafter his mask slipped down past his nose while he was talking.
- A maskless drunk guy in Michigan screamedat a bartender, then apologized after the video went viral. He ended up giving her $100 later on, but she didn’t want his money. So she used it to launch a Facebook fundraiser to support women, and it has already brought in THOUSANDS for charity.
- Here’s Jerry Seinfeld with two great examples of people saying things, in an attempt to make others feel better about the situation. (From his 2020 Netflix special, “23 Hours to Kill”.)
TERRI CLARK TO RELEASE FIRST CHRISTMAS ALBUM
Terri Clark is celebrating the holiday season this year. She will release a new project called It’s Christmas… Cheers! on September 25th. She produced the album herself, which includes 10 songs and features musical guests Dierks Bentley, Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, The Oak Ridge Boys, Pam Tillis, and Suzy Bogguss. The Time Jumpers also played on every track. Each album will come with a Christmas postcard and the LP will feature holly green vinyl.
It’s Christmas… Cheers! will mark Terri’s first new album to be released on Mercury Nashville in 15 years. When she finished this record after two years in the making, Terri felt Mercury Nashville would be the perfect home for the project, as Mercury was the first label she signed with when she was only 25 years old.
She said, “I resisted making and releasing a Christmas album for many years even though I’m a big Christmas person and love the music of the season. It’s been done by the best in so many amazing ways and I wanted to wait until I felt I could make it special, be excited about it, and do it justice in my own way. Having The Time Jumpers to collaborate with and the wonderful guest artists featured – it did just that. I am eager for everyone to hear the record that was almost 2 years in the making but took 25 years to get around to.”
CHRIS JANSON TOPS BOTH COUNTRY CHARTS WITH ‘DONE’
Chris Janson claims the top of the Mediabase/Country Aircheck chart this week and holds on to the Number One spot on the Billboard Country chart for a second week with “Done.” He co-wrote the song about his wife, Kelly, and for that reason this song’s success is extra special to Chris.
[“I’m just ultra grateful that a song that means so much to me personally — and by the way it’ll always go down as right now as my favorite song I’ve ever written and performed — and I’m just incredibly grateful that its worked in a big way to the masses. You don’t always get both things lining up at the same time but thankfully we’re getting it with this one and it’s been awesome.”]
Chris will perform as part of the Live At The Ryman livestream series on August 28th. Tickets go on sale today at ryman.com.
FAST FACTS
“Done” is the second single off Chris’ 2019 album Real Friends.
THOMAS RHETT EYEING STADIUMS, NOT QUITE READY FOR LEAP
Prior to the pandemic, Thomas Rhett had a full summer of arena and amphitheater dates planned on his headlining Center Point Road Tour. The success of his headlining shows proves he’s pretty primed to move into even bigger venues, which is something Thomas is definitely gearing up for. At this point, however, he tells us he’s not quite ready. [“I think if you can do a couple years’ worth of amphitheaters it’s definitely worth dipping your feet in on a stadium – just trying one, trying two. Puttin’ a good package together, maybe co-headlining. You never know what could happen. It may be one of those things where you were just meant to do it and people would rather see you in a stadium than an amphitheater. But you’ll never know until you try it. But we are definitely a little bit off from trying that, for sure.”]
LINDSAY ELL GOES LIVE ON INSTAGRAM FOR 24 HOURS LEADING UP TO ALBUM RELEASE
Lindsay Ell will celebrate this week’s release of her sophomore album, heart theory, by going live on her Instagram beginning at 12 p.m. ET on Thursday (August 13th) for 24 hours through release day, which is Friday (August 14th). The livestream will include special guests, performances, and more surprises in a global celebration of the release of heart theory with fans all around the world.
She is nominated for New Female Vocalist and Music Event of the Year for “What Happens In A Small Town” with Brantley Gilbert at the upcoming 55th ACM Awards. The show will be hosted by Keith Urban and broadcast from Nashville on September 16th on CBS beginning at 8 p.m. ET.
FAST FACTS
Lindsay and her fellow ACM Awards New Female & New Male Artists nominees appear on the special Thursday release of “On The Road Again (ACM Lifting Lives Edition)” alongside Willie Nelson. Downloads of the song benefit ACM Lifting Lives COVID-19 Response Fund.
