Matt of All Trades blog, like the title suggests, is by a Vermont author and offers offbeat musings on pop culture, media, journalism, humor, weirdness, stupid people, smart people, my life as a journalist, landscaper, photographer, married gay man, dog lover and weather geek and more. It's run by me, Matt Sutkoski, a native Vermonter living in St. Albans, Vt.
In case you missed it last night, Saturday Night Live opened its season with the Kavanaugh hearings, naturally.
Matt Damon was on to play Brett Kavanaugh. Damon, as Kavanaugh, was pretty intense as you might imagine, guzzling water, yelling about beer.
"I worked my butt off to get here! I lifted weights! Every day with Tobin and PJ and Squee and Donkey Dong Doug and had a couple thousand beers along the way," Damon's Kavanaugh yelled as he made his case.
Toward the end of the clip, Kate McKinnon appears as a scary, unhinged Lindsey Graham, which is something to behold.
Beer played a central role, as you might imagine. It's a bit of a long video, but it does have its moments, so it's worth the watch. Here:
"When firefighters got to the home around 5:30 p.m., they could see smoke coming from inside. A naked man opened the front door, said, 'I'm sorry' and closed the door. Police arrived shortly after to assist. The man came to the door again, left it open and went back into the house."
Police said since the man showed no signs that he cared for his safety, they removed him from the house.
It turns out the guy drank two liters of vodka and smoked marijuana for three hours when he decided to bake cookies indoors on his George Foreman grill. That started a fire. The moron put dry towels on the grill in a failed (obviously!) attempt to put out the fire. The towels caught fire, naturally.
Somehow, the man was not hurt.
Yes, this is classic Florida: It's bizarre, and to most people there, the bizarre seems routine
Meanwhile, Canada had its own quintessential crime caper. This one involves bear spray, a glass bong, inept robbers and an intrepid pot shop owner.
In this still from security camera footage, the guy on the right
wields a glass bong to ward off the guy on the left, who
is trying to rob the pot store with bear spray as a weapon.
According to the CBC, a clerk at a Shannonville, Ontario cannabis dispensary used a glass bong to fight off thieves who were attacking him and another clerk with bear spray.
No, we don't have armed robberies in Canada. No guns. They use bear spray, apparently.
Says the CBC: "A security video shows the suspects approaching a man and woman standing behing the counter, then squirting them with what appears to be bear spray. The male clerk came from behind the counter and found the men off, swinging the bong at them until they fled the store."
I think of people who are involved with pot to be pretty mellow, but watch the security camera video below. Look at the store clerk's face towards the end. This guy is fierce!
The latest entry, hot off the presses today, is Randy Rainbow skewing our troubled drunk frat-boy Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is battling his, um, potentially complicated sexual assault-ish past.
The video co-stars an unwitting but always reliable Kellyanne Conway.
I hope Randy is not resting on his laurels or on his pink reading glasses after issuing this video. After the chaos of seeing what's going on with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who might be resigning or fired, or not. And who knows what that will do to the Mueller investigation.
Randy certainly has a lot of material to work with. I'm sure he'll get cracking.
I know the Kaepernick thing pales in comparison to the historic week we're having, but the Nike ad is still a pretty good Rorschach test of what people are thinking.
By the way, the Nike ad is pretty damn good. Watch it at the bottom of this post.
And the people who hate the Nike/Kaepernick ad are really revealing themselves as being, well, not too bright.
Kaepernick, as you might remember, led the "Take The Knee" protests in which NFL players kneel during the National Anthem at games to demonstrate for racial quality and against police brutality.
Many conservatives, including Donald Trump and his cult members supporters insist the kneeling is all about hating the National Anthem, America and veterans. I'm not sure how they leap to that conclusion, but they do leap, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Try as they might to find it, there's no evidence Kaepernick or those kneeling NFL players ever said they "hate America." Plus, peaceful protests such as this fall squarely under First Amendment rights, and people who peacefully demonstrate against real or perceived injustices have long been regarded as patriots.
Not by the Trumpsters, though. Intelligence isn't the strongest suit among many of those Trumpsters.
The backlash against Nike and Kaepernick over the past day or so is a case in point. Many of them have taken to social media with videos and GIFs of them burning their Nike shoes, shirts, shorts etc. in protest of the Kaepernick campaign.
They're burning items they already own, that they've paid for, that Nike has already collected the money on. So who's "winning"?
These trumpsters have becoming the laughing stock all over social media, especially Twitter.
As in tweet from Tony Posnanski says: "I just wrote "Nike" on twenty dollar bills and burned them to own the libs."
At @Emma_Rafter tweeted: "Republicans are boycotting Nike because of an ad. Some are even riping the logo off from their clothes and are in uproar because they sponsor Colin Kapernick. But liberals are the 'snowflakes'?"
"NARRATOR: 'In the late 1930s, white supremacists burned books they opposed politically. By 2018, racists were mostly illiterate and burned their shoes instead.'"
@DanielWatsonSD tweeted in part. "same group that refused to believe their 'leader' isn't anti-American as he conspired with Russia."
@CoolTrainerElraised a very good point: "Nike made Kap the face of their campaign. The face of Under Armour told the POTUS he's not visiting the White House. Puma made Jay-Z, who supports Kap, brand ambassador. Adidas has rappers on the payroll who support Kap's message. What are you going to wear, white people?"
I hope something. I'd really hate to see most of these Trumpiters naked.
More comments: @markloughneytweeted: "Since when did people become stupid enough to set their own stuff on fire?"
Oh, honey, there have been stupid people for a long time. The only difference now is that they seem proud of it.
@mjf1958: "You know what you should do...go to the store and get more Nike stuff to burn... that'll teach 'em!
A lot of people on social media wondered why these angry Trumpsters didn't just give away their Nike stuff to homeless people, particularly homeless veterans.
Apparently, Nike is going to run the Colin Kaepernick ad during Thursday night NFL. That should be fun to watch.
Here's the ad:
A friend sent this dog named Chaya a new doggie toy
through the Swedish postal service, plunging her
into a funny bureaucratic mess.
If you want to send a doggie toy to a dog in Sweden, or anything to any animal there, don't address the package to the pet. Address the package to the animal's human companion.
Marie Palmgren and Chaya, her boxweiler dog, found this out the hard way.
A friend of Marie and Chaya's decided to mail a dog toy to Chaya. The friend playfully addressed the package to Chaya Palmgren.
Marie got a note from her mail carrier that a large parcel had arrived and she needed to pick it up at the post office. It was the doggie toy for Chaya.
In Sweden, the person (or animal) that receives a package at the post office has to show ID and sign for the package. Since the package was addressed to Chaya, postal workers insisted that Chaya had to show ID and sign for the package.
Marie tried to explain that Chaya was a dog and she'd sign it on her behalf.
But rules are rules! "They still demanded an ID and a signature from Chaya, plus ID and signature from me as the 'helper' to fetch the package," Palmgren said.
The paw prints on this postal document after
Chaya "signed" it.
Marie returned home, rummaged through some old records and found a registration document that proved Chaya was her pet. She grabbed the paper and headed back to the post office.
But Chaya still had to sign the document. Dogs are not allowed into the post office, which was another roadblock.
Finally, Palmgren convinced a postal worker to bring an ink pad outdoors so Chaya could sign the paperwork.
Palmgren dipped a confused Chaya's paw into the ink pad and then pushed the paw onto the document, leaving a pawprint. Close enough to be a signature, the post office finally decided.
You can see the video at the bottom of this post a perplexed Chaya signing for his package.
Her bureaucratic nightmare over, Chaya
plays with the water fountain toy
her friend mailed her
You'd think the postal workers would have at least been amused by this situation. Uh-uh.
"The staff was very serious all the time. It wasn't a funny thing for them.... Me? I was totally flabbergasted. When I reached the car, I laughed so much that I got a pain my stomach," Palmgren said.
To nobody's surprise, Swedish media had a field day with this, highlighting this as an extreme example of the super-strict adherence to policy by government agencies, The Dodo reported.
The gift giver felt terrible her playfulness in addressing the package caused such a problem, but Palmgren brushed aside those concerns.
"She wanted to do a kind thing. She was so sorry that it turned into this circus of absurdity...But I told her, 'On the contrary. You managed to make so many people laugh.'"
As for Chaya, she reported loves her nifty water fountain toy.
Ugly American racist Jimmy Taylor, in red shirt, was arrested for assaulting hotel staff in Uganda.
Earlier in August, an American named Jimmy Taylor from Arizona was arrested in Kampala, Uganda.
For good reason. For a full two minutes at least he went off on a hotel's staff for at least two minutes, knocking stuff off tables, assaulting them, yelling at them and using the N-word for good measure
It appears this tirade was all because a hotel room wasn't available for him.
"You hate Jesus. You hate yourself. You hate me. You disgrace Jesus. Huh? Talk. Talk!" (Taylor yells). And then he punches the hotel front desk staffer in the face. The man restrains himself. Folds his arms and takes another hit. "Come on bitch. Come on, whore. You open my fxxxxxg room. I'll fxxxxg kill you. And he strikes the man again."
The kicker is this idiot is supposedly a Christian missionary, spreading the word of the Bible worldwide. I didn't think "fxxk" or the N-word were in the Bible, but what do I know?
For good measure, when Taylor was arrested, police said he "turned rowdy, uncontrollable and tried to disarm policemen."
So not only do we have people in the United States feeling emboldened in this political climate to openly conduct racists attacks, now we're spreading that "joy" to the rest of the world.
Taylor claims to have PTSD and that allegedly is what triggered this outburst. I'm not convinced. I think he's just a jerk. The ulimate ugly American
Here's the video of this racist moron's antics in Uganda, if you can stand it:
