Matt Of All Trades

The host of a televised game show for high school students looking not very pleased as a contestant on the losing team performs an epic tantrum.   People you see on game shows tend to put on a brave face for the cameras when they lose, because, it just looks tacky to throw a fit.   Plus, if you have a glass half full kind of attitude, at least you qualified to be on the show. That's something. You lost, but essentially you were a finalist. Not bad! This attitude did not hold sway very well for one person at a televised game show for high school students in Iceland.  You don't understand the language, but you sure as hell can tell what's going on.  The show is called Gettu Betur  Our hero was one of three people on the blue team, and there was a like number of people on the red team. The video, which you can see at the bottom of this post, appears to be near the end of the show.  Someone on the red team just provided a correct answer and our friend...

Much of the late Alex Trebek's wardrobe will be donated to recovering addicts to wear for  job interviews. Alex Trebek, the late longtime host of "Jeopardy!" is still beloved by millions of people, including me.   He passed away back in November, but he's still posthumously doing good works.  Always nattily dressed on air, Trebek had a pretty big collection of outfits he wore to work. They're going to good use: According to CBS News: "'Hundreds of Trebek's garments were donated to The Doe Fund, an organization that provides paid work, housing vocational training, continuing education and comprehensive social services to underserved Americans with a history of addiction, homelessness and incarceration,' according to a 'Jeopardy!' press release. The donation included 14 suits, 300 neckties, 15 belts, 58 dress shirts, 25 polo shirts, nine pairs of dress shoes, nine sports coats, two parkas and three pairs of dress slack." In one of the l...

A colorful but destructive gender reveal party in Arizona about five years ago. It's a boy! It's also a destructive wildfire that caused $8 million in damage!  In the past month two people have died participating or planning gender reveal parties. It's the latest disaster caused by people trying to outdo each other. Stop!  In recent years these parties started at least two major western wildfires and inspired zillions of gender reveal party pratfall videos.  The problem seems to be the idea has taken off, and people insist that each gender party has to play out much more elaborately than any previous one.   In the most recent incident, a father to be died while working on a device for his child's gender reveal. According to the New York Post: "Christopher Pekny, 28, was working on the device for his child's gender reveal part in the Catskills town of Liberty when it blew up just before noon on Sunday.  The blast killed Pekny and injured his brother, 27-year...

Owners of this UPS store in Newport, Vermont lost the  business after refusing to comply with mask wearing mandates. Photo via WCAX. Everywhere, including here in Vermont, a few people are incredibly willing to die on the anti-mask hill, with terrible person consequences.  A few end up dying.  Most make fools of themselves. Some ruin themselves financially for no good reason.  It's so illogical. The latest one involves the operators of a UPS franchise in Newport, Vermont.   Weeks ago, they put up a sign in the front door saying they would not wear a mask, customers could choose whether or not to wear a mask, and to please not ask employees to wear masks because they won't.  This goes directly against an executive order Vermont Governor Phil Scott issued last year mandating masks in stores. It also goes directly against UPS policy, which says that face masks are a required part of their uniform and everyone must wear them on the job.  The franchise...

We're happy to report the Great Gorilla Glue Hair Crisis of 2021 is over!  While the U.S. Senate held its impeachment trial of former president Trump last week, much of the nation was glued to the other major crisis:  That was the G reat Gorilla Glue In The Hair Crisis of 2021 .     A woman named Tessica Brown ran out of her favorite hair care product and made a fateful decision that was followed by millions of people.  According to Beauty IRL: "She ran out of Got2b Glued Freeze Spray, and decided to use a spray version of Gorilla Glue. As my friend (and Teen Vogue Fashion and Beauty Director) Tahirah Hairston pointed out to me: She could have been confused with Glorilla Snot, a 'superior hold' gel." I never knew fashion products could be so confusing, and now I can almost see why Brown might have been confused when she reached for the Gorilla Glue. Of course, she took her plight to social media. The initial video has been seen on TikTok more than 20 million ti...

Strange televangelist Kenneth Copeland is actually  much better when is rants are set to music Yes, yes, I know, grifter televangelists tend to impoverish the gullible, get filthy rich off that gullibility and are by no means nearly as Christian as they'd want everyone to believe.   Still, I'm fascinated by them.  Many are certainly larger than life, and have a knack of looking hilariously ridiculous to those of us outside the televangelist world.  You know the type. Remember Tammy Fae Bakker (who later became Tammy Fay Messner when she married a second televangelist) - she of the dripping mascara and impossibly long false eye lashes. My current favorite is Kenneth Copeland.  He's just so creepy looking. And he acts creepier.  Who can forget C opeland's really weird spooky laugh back in November when he just couldn't believe Joe Biden won the election instead of his equally strange hero Donald Trump.  Or that time Inside Edition's Lisa Guerrero co...

Poor Lou Dobbs, silenced earlier this month by his own suck up to Trump life and (probably) a huge lawsuit.  So many anti-Trumpers, including me, did a little jig of joy when we learned earlier this month that Lou Dobbs had been sacked from Fox.  Dobbs, I swear was like a North Korean newscaster, or "Baghdad Bob" the Iraqi spokesman who hilariously insisted that everything was fine as we invaded. Fox's decision to dump Dobbs might have had teensy bit to do with the fact that Smartmatic, an electronic voting system company is, shall we say, a bit peeved with Dobbs and other Fox talking heads like Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.  As almost all of us know, all these Fox personalities relentless peddled the tale that Joe Biden "stole" the election. That tale keeps going on among the GOP cult, even though Biden has been president for almost a month now.  If you want to force yourself to believe the QAnon line of thinking, an elaborate conspiracy involving a dead ...

Tucker Carlson probably doesn't care if a few extra people die as long as his ratings stay up  Tucker Carlson wants to see more Americans die.   That's the conclusion I have to reach as he's using his platform to question Covid vaccines, and to discourage people from taking it.  Carlson uttered these falsehoods on his broadcast this past Tuesday.  "From the very first day, the way the authorities handled the Covid vaccine did not inspire confidence. If the vaccine was so great, why were these people lying about it? Honest question. And they were lying. Clearly they were lying. You know that for certain because from the moment the Covid vaccine arrived, the most powerful people in America work to make certain that no one could criticize it." That last sentence is rich, coming from an idiot criticizing the vaccine to his more than 4 million viewers. Carlson did not specify what the alleged lies are.  After making the above accusation about vaccines, Carlson e...

Norway, in a hilarious response to a Superbowl ad about American EVs, is sorry, not sorry about their advantagesl One of the ads that played during the Super Bowl was one that starred Will Ferrell touting General Motors' growing line of electric vehicles, better known as EVs.   Norway almost immediately, and hilariously clapped back with their own video . More on that in a moment, but first the backstory. The two videos are at the bottom of this post.  As Car and Driver notes, the ad essentially declared war on Norway. " In a 60-second spot that ran during the Buccaneers' mauling of Kansas City, Ferrell discovered Norway is the world's leader in battery-electric vehicle sales per capital. Refusing to let America be disrespected like that, he punches a globe, grabs his Cadillac Lyriq, and drafts Kenan Thompson and Awkwafina in a Hummer EV to meet him in Norway for the beatdown." Because, you know, America is #1! Or something.  This "war" on Norway doe...

Jeff and I prepping for a hot air balloon trip, September, 2019. Today's his birthday, and I marking the day by being thankful for being Watson to his Holmes.  Here's one very good reason among many to honor my husband, Jeff Modereger today, on his birthday. Nearly one year into Covid-19 "sheltering in place" with him at home, he still hasn't killed me. Yet.  I do hope this next year of Jeff's life is better than the past 12 months. Of course, I wish that for (almost) everybody. But since I'm so close and in love with Jeff, I wish that even more for him. For such a rough year, Chief, as I call him, has remained remarkably cheerful.  Despite all the bad news. Even before the pandemic really took hold last March,  his beloved mother passed away.  He carried on.   Then, the pandemic shut everything down. Chief, a very social guy who still loves his work designing theatrical stage sets, had that taken away from him.  No theater due to social distancin...

The smug look on this anti-mask Alberta, Canada Karen precedes the $600 fine she got for her antics. There are now zillions of videos out there of very stupid, very arrogant, self-centered fools making spectacles of themselves trying to get into retail shops without masks.  As you can tell by reading some of my other posts, I'm strangely fascinated by these losers. They're so smug, so convinced they're correct, even as they are hilariously wrong about the law. They always get an embarrassing comeuppance. They're still probably proud of themselves, even as the world mocks them as they watch their viral videos. The stores involved in these videos have mask policies in place. No shirt, no shoes, no mask, no service. Pretty simple! But oh, no, it doesn't apply to these Karens It's well established law that a store can bar a person for pretty much any reason, unless they are banning a whole class of people, like minorities, sexual identity as such.  But as long as st...

GOP-controlled Wisconsin State Assembly: Another group on the wrong side of history.   It's important in a crisis to call out the people who will end up on the wrong side of history.  With the Covid pandemic, it's unfortunately a big, huge rogues gallery. Add the Republican-led Wisconsin State Assembly to the list. As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Thursday: "GOP lawmakers in the state Assembly voted Thursday to repeal the statewide mask rule by ending the governor's health emergency health order - the first measure passed by the state Legislature in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in 10 months.  But (Wisconsin Gov. Tony) Evers put the mask requirement back in place almost immediately, saying he was doing so to avoid an unnecessary risk to the public's health. If Evers hadn't acted, the state may have been at risk of losing tens of millions a month in federal food assistance without an emergency order in place." The Journal Sentinel reported th...

The anti-maskers are bad enough. The anti-vaxers, if  anything, are even worse Tiffany Dover, a 30-year old nurse manager from Tennessee, is alive and well.  As nice a person as Dover seems to be, her healthy condition would normally not be a concern to any of  us. She's just doing her job, trying to make people healthy.  Here's the problem: Back in December, the health care worker got one of the first Covid vaccines in Tennessee as news cameras rolled. Unfortunately, Dover briefly passed out moments after the vaccine. It turns out the vaccine wasn't the problem. Dover has a condition that sometimes makes her lose consciousness after a minor pain like a vaccine shot. Dover recovered within moments, and gave alert, lucid interviews to reporters on the scene just a few minutes after the incident happened. Dover remains perfectly fine and healthy. Other than that brief fainting spell, she had pretty much zero side effects from the vaccine So why the hell am I making a b...

The song "Leader Of The Pack" certainly has its fans, but its also quite a piece of 1960s oddness.  Every decade has its style mishaps, its entertainment embarrassments and it's creepy moments, and as far as I'm concerned, the 1960s had one super, doozy of one.  We take you back to 1964 with song "Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las.  While the song, and a video that's still circulating out there might have been super cool back then, you have to cringe and laugh at this for sure.  The video is a the bottom of this post, you HAVE to watch. But I'll set it up for you. I shouldn't mock, but I can't help it. The video in particular has so many wonderful moving parts. The lead singer's hair is one of the Seven World Wonders of structure. The "Leader Of The Pack" protagonist is a creepy guy who is way too old for our structure hair lady.  No wonder her parents forbade her from seeing this dude!   The two backup singers have the classic K...

When memes collide. The longboarding/juice/ Fleetwood Mac guy and Bernie. The Bernie meme is raising LOTS of money for charity.  Many of you are probably thoroughly sick of the now super famous Bernie Sanders mitten meme. That's the one based on the photograph of him sitting at the Joe Biden inauguration in those huge mittens.  The sale of merchandise based on that meme has so far raised $1.8 million for charities here in Vermont.  This is how quickly it went: The famous photo was taken on January 20.  According to the Associated Press, On the evening of January 21, the Sanders campaign put t-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers on its we site and they sold out within a half hour. More merch went up over the following weekend, but was sold out by Monday morning.  The money raised in the sales went to Meals on Wheels programs throughout Vermont, community action agencies such as food banks, senior citizens and medical services for the poor.  Getty Images , w...