On Today’s Show

➢ Masks will soon be required in most enclosed public spaces within Chatham-Kent.

A motion passed last night at CK Council and the mandatory mask bylaw will come into effect as of 12:01 a.m. Friday, August 14.

➢ The owner of an ice cream shop in western Michigan says she doesn’t understand why people keep yelling at her teenage employees for asking them to wear a mask.

➢ This dad uses deception to trick his kids into taking their naps.  Listen to how he does it.  (He plays them a movie in Spanish, and when they don’t understand it, he tells them it’s because they’re tired.  And then after they wake up he plays the same movie in English.)

➢ According to reports, you may have to PAY to use Twitter by the end of this year. CEO Jack Dorsey said during a call with investors last week that it’s preparing to explore how it could institute some sort of paid subscription model, saying “you will likely see some tests this year.” At this point, most of the $3.5 billion in revenue it generates per year comes from ads, and Dorsey says the company is actively looking at finding additional revenue streams. That would mean making us pay. The most obvious move would be to invite people to pay to avoid seeing sponsored tweets on their timeline, but that doesn’t mean that an “every user pays” system isn’t being considered.

➢ ANTONIO BANDERAS turned 60 years old yesterday, and he celebrated by contracting COVID-19.

He said, quote, “I’m forced to celebrate my 60th birthday [in] quarantine, after having tested positive . . . I would like to add that I am relatively okay, just a little more tired than usual, [but I’m] confident to recover as soon as possible.”

He added that he’ll “take advantage of this isolation to read, write and rest.”

Antonio had a benign tumor removed from his back in 2009, and he had a heart attack three years ago.  But as far as we know, he’d been in good health recently.

TODAY IS……………….

• Perseid Meteor Shower” the annual celestial event peaks in the early hours of today through Thursday, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. If you’re lucky, you could see 40-50 meteors per hour at times, even in the light of a bright moon.

• “Raspberry Tart Day”, honoring the popular baked dessert that consists of a fruit filling over a pastry. Tarts have been around since the Middle Ages. Early tarts typically had savory fillings such as meat, while modern tarts are usually based on fresh fruit, sometimes with custard.

2012 [08] 25-year-old Jamaican runner Usain Bolt wins his 3rd gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, raising his all-time total to 6 (he won three more in 2016, raising his total to 9, but an earlier gold was taken away due to a teammate’s doping offences).

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COUNTRY MUSIC NOTE

Eddie Rabbitt’s “Suspicions” reigned at Number One on the Billboard country chart in 1979.

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RECORD SETTING VIDEO GAME

A sealed copy of the Super Mario Bros. became the highest-selling video game ever at auction with a winning bid of $114,000.

The 1985 cartridge, still in its original plastic sealing, sold to an anonymous bidder. The $114,000 winning bid bested the previous auction record of $100,000 for a single video game; that mark, set in February 2019, was also established by a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros.

Graded in A+condition, this unopened version of Super Mario Bros. featured “hangtabs,” a rare and short-lived variant of the game’s original packaging.

“This unopened copy soared to record heights in part because it was part of one of the short production runs of the game packaged in boxes with a cardboard hangtab underneath the plastic, an indication that it was part of one of the first variants produced after Nintendo started using shrink-wrap to seal the games rather than stickers,”.

In total, the auction of sealed Nintendo games brought in over $699,000, well exceeding its $428,000 pre-estimate auction.

FOUR RANDOM FACTS

1. There are whales alive today that have been alive since before “Moby-Dick”was written . . . in 1851.  They’re bowhead whales off the coast of Alaska, and they’re over 200 years old.

2. During the auditions for “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”, Keanu Reevesoriginally auditioned to play Bill and Alex Winter auditioned to play Ted.  Their parts were switched AFTER casting.

3. Heath Ledgerwas a chess prodigy as a kid and won the Western Australia junior chess championship when he was 10.

4. The first time a human was killed by a robot happened in 1979, when an employee at a Ford plant in Michigan got hit in the head by a robot’s arm on the production line.

GOOD NEWS

If you’re running out of stuff for your kid to watch during the pandemic, YouTube sees you.

Over the next month, until August 31st, YouTube Kids will release over 100 movies and specials as part of the platform’s “After School” experience project.

YouTube’s Head of Family & Learning Partnerships, Don Anderson, explains that the service wants to help parents who are juggling work, life and their children at the same time due to work-from-home arrangements caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The new selection will include Baby Shark, Pinkfong, The Wiggles, and Hair Love, which won Best Animated Short Film at the Oscars, among other things.

YouTube Kids will put up all its After School content every Monday under the platform’s “Shows” category over the next five weeks.

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BIRTHDAYS

[70] Steve (“Woz”) Wozniak, Apple Computer co-founder (with Steve Jobs in 1976)

[67] Hulk Hogan, retired pro wrestler

[55] Viola Davis, actress

[35] Chris Hemsworth, actor

OUT OF PROVINCE ANGER

Alberta nurse Krista Paulsen was driving home with her three children after a visit with her parents in Summerland, B.C., when the left front wheel of her car came flying off.

Local RCMP are investigating potential foul play. It’s not the first such case they’ve dealt with — since May, police in the Okanagan area have warned people of lug nuts being intentionally loosened on cars.

The incident prompted speculation about whether she might have been targeted because she was driving a vehicle with Alberta plates in British Columbia.

As Canadians grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, reports have surfaced across the country of incidents of people with out-of-province licence plates being harassed by locals worried that someone might bring the virus into their community or break the rules and protocols officials have put in place.

B.C. Premier John Horgan went as far as to suggest that those with non.-B.C. plates take the bus rather than risk getting harassed.

In Canada’s smallest province, Prince Edward Island, locals have vandalized cars, left angry notes and directly confronted people they perceived as outsiders. Similar scenes have occurred in small towns of southwestern Ontario against cottage owners from Toronto.

A recent Angus Reid Institute poll found that almost 30 per cent of Chinese Canadians surveyed said they have been physically attacked since the COVID-19 crisis began and 43 per cent say they’ve been threatened or intimidated.

Paulsen doesn’t know if her family was targeted because of their Alberta licence plate, but she suspects foul play because the other three wheels were tightly secured.

She was able to safely steer the car off the Trans-Canada Highway without striking another vehicle, but she was left shaken.

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DID YOU KNOW?
Spending 2 hours in nature every week significantly boosts your health, according to new research.

A study, found that people who spent at least 120 minutes per week in nature reported higher psychological well-being and better physical health than those who didn’t visit nature at all, or those who went for less than two hours a week.

It didn’t seem to matter if the 120 minutes were spent in nature all at once or spread out throughout the week in shorter bursts. However, spending more than two hours didn’t seem to bring about any additional benefits.

METEOR SHOWER

The Perseid meteor shower will briefly illuminate the sky with its fast and colourful streaks of light on Tuesday and Wednesday during its crowning hours.

While this meteor shower can be seen nightly from late July to mid-August, the spectacle can be viewed most prominently in early hours of August 12. It’s one of the most “plentiful” showers with as many as 50 to 100 meteors visible every hour depending on the brightness of the moon.

Fireballs can also be seen during the spectacle, as Perseids often contain these larger explosions of light and colour that last longer than most meteor streaks. In addition to being colourful, the meteors are also exceptionally fast, reaching speeds of about 59 kilometres per second.

For its shining moment this month, the meteor shower can be viewed in the North Hemisphere typically after midnight on Tuesday and before dawn on Wednesday, according to the Canadian Space Agency.

Star gazers are recommended to find a spot away from city lights and set up a viewpoint on either a reclining chair or right on the ground to look up to the sky.

TUESDAY AUGUST 11^TH  

Masks will soon be required in most enclosed public spaces within Chatham-Kent.

A motion passed last night at CK Council and the mandatory mask bylaw will come into effect as of 12:01 a.m. Friday, August 14.

A new twin pad arena in Chatham-Kent is unlikely to happen now that upper levels of government have decided to pass on the municipality’s application for funding.

In late 2019, the municipality submitted an application to upper levels of government requesting $36.65 million to go towards a 2,200 seat, $60 million arena.

In order to secure the money, the application first had to be approved by the province, which would then pass it along to the federal government for approval. The project was only to move forward if government funding was secured, as per council’s request.

In December 2019, council approved a motion to set aside $18.5 million from several existing municipal reserves to go towards the arena project, should it come to fruition.

1. The New York Rangers won the second phase of the draft lottery yesterday. That gives them the chance to choose winger Alexis Lafreniere.

He led the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League with 112 points in 52 games for the Rimouski Oceanic until the virus shut down the league.

The St. Louis Cardinals’ doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers has been postponed so that players can stretch out their quarantine time, according to Major League Baseball.  With 13 games postponed so far, the Cardinals haven’t played since July 29. Nine players and seven staff members have tested positive for COVID

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New York Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman is opting out of the 2020 baseball season, citing concerns over coronavirus. “There’s just too many uncertainties, too many unknowns right now to go out there, and truly just put the health for my family and myself first and foremost,” he said. Stroman was sidelined by a calf injury but has now recovered.

2. A guy on YouTube is going viral after he used an aerosol canto show how well masks work.  He took some flammable starter fluid, and sprayed it at an open flame.  Without a mask in front of the can, it hit the flame and caused a fireball from six feet away.  But with a mask, it didn’t even happen from six INCHES away.

3. A guy named Tai Star Valianti set a Guinness record by stacking 485 Jenga blocks on top of ONE vertical Jenga piece.  Here’s how that went down.  (It took him two hours, and he let his kids topple it when he was done.  By the way, he broke his own record of 353 stacked pieces that he set last year.)

4. Here’s comedian Sebastian Maniscalco on the hard work ethic of his Italian father.

THOMAS RHETT THANKS HEALTHCARE WORKERS WITH LIVESTREAM PERFORMANCE

Thomas Rhett recently surprised healthcare workers at a virtual meet and greet to say thank you and perform a little bit. His appearance was part of a collaboration with Live Nation and Cisco Webex, which is thanking healthcare frontline workers with a livestreamed acoustic performance.

The group Thomas surprised represented Banner Health in Arizona and Colorado, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee.

THOMAS also shared some photos of his recent family vacation in Colorado.  In most of the pics you see everyone having a blast hanging out in the woods or fly fishing at a river.  But one of the photos was painful . . . for Thomas.

It’s a fishing shot of him with his pants down and he’s attending to his leg.  The caption explains it, “The day started great.  Then I hooked myself in the back of the leg.  Had to push it out the other side, cut the barb off then pull it back through.”

TIM McGRAW’S LATEST HIT IS ‘SO RELEVANT RIGHT NOW’

Tim McGraw wasn’t initially considering “I Called Mama” as the first single from his upcoming album at the time he recorded it. The song raised its hand as a contender when the global pandemic made its way to the U.S. Tim tells us the song couldn’t be more perfect for the times we’re living in today. [“’I Called Mama’ was so relevant right now because that’s just who we want to talk to. More than ever, I think that people are reaching out on Zoom and on FaceTime and really trying to connect a little bit more and think a little bit more and being more nostalgic about the people they love and the people they knew and the people they grew up with and the people who really stabilized them in their lives. And I think that that’s what this song is all about and I think that that’s why it’s a perfect time for this song. And when we started recording ‘I Called Mama,’ we all just really got a sense of nostalgia and a sense of, not only mama, but what our family means to us. And I think that that’s what made the song really important to us.”]

Tim’s new album, Here on Earth, featuring “I Called Mama,” will be released on August 21st.

FAST FACTS

Tim will host a livestream event to celebrate the release of Here On Earth on August 21st at 9 p.m. ET.

WILLIE NELSON RECORDS ICONIC SONG WITH ACM AWARDS NEW ARTIST NOMINEES

Willie Nelson will team up with this year’s Academy of Country Music Awards New Female and New Male Vocalist nominees for a version of Willie’s hit “OnThe Road Again (ACM Lifting Lives Edition).” Ingrid Andress, Gabby Barrett, Jordan Davis, Russell Dickerson, Lindsay Ell, Riley Green, Caylee Hammack, Cody Johnson, Tenille Townes and Morgan Wallen are all taking part in the song, which will be available across all digital platforms and can be heard on Country radio beginning this Thursday (August 13th).

Proceeds from the single will benefit ACM Lifting Lives COVID-19 Response Fund to be disbursed to individuals in the Country Music community who are currently in need of pandemic relief assistance.

The winners for the 55th ACM Awards New Female and New Male Artist of the Year categories will be announced in the coming weeks. The ACM Awards were postponed due to COVID-19 and will take place in Nashville, TN for the first time in the show’s history on September 16th on CBS at 8 p.m. ET.

“On The Road Again” was a chart-topping hit for Willie in 1980.

He wrote the song for the soundtrack of the film Honeysuckle Rose in which Willie had the lead role.

Categorised in: Mornings

This post was written by Dave Palmer