You Missed It: In-flight entertainment edition

"Hey everybody, I'm Jay Mohr. What is it with airline food? Am I right?"
“Hi, I’m Jay Mohr. What is it with airline food? Am I right?”

August is still summer, damn it. And I’ll challenge anyone who says otherwise. When I was a kid, I hated the fact that classes started up in late August. In college, they started a week or two earlier. So for me, summer was effectively over. Now that I’m an adult and don’t have to worry about such silly things, I still have people telling me summer is over. One such person is Samuel Adams. His Octoberfest season beer hit shelves in late July. As far as I’m concerned, that’s prime summer beer time. There’s also talk that the summer movie season is drawing to a close this weekend. That might seem reasonable, seeing as how it how starts in April. In the Northern Hemisphere, summer goes from June 21 to September 21. If you announced your possible retirement from music this week, odds are you missed it.

‘Thank you, thank you. Be sure to tip your flight attendant’
If you hate flying and just wish you could get some peace a quiet during your flights, be glad you don’t live in England. Virgin Atlantic announced this week that it will be offering stand-up comedy acts on some of its flights within the U.K. There will even be live music acts on certain flights. And you know how everyone agrees on music. Virgin founder Richard Branson said that he just wanted a way for sky marshals to blow off some steam.

Has anyone thought to blame ‘Shark Week’?
Scores of dead dolphins have been washing ashore on the East Coast this summer, especially over the past two weeks. It’s happening at seven times the normal rate, according to some counts. Scientists say no cause has been found yet, but it’s likely something related to water quality. This is why you shouldn’t pee in the ocean.

The Roots were there for entrance music
Back in late July, Jimmy Fallon and his wife welcomed their new daughter, Winnie Rose. This week, the new dad announced that they had had the child through a surrogate, after having difficulty conceiving. Fallon said that he had been concerned that if it was his wife having the baby, he’d start cracking up in the middle of one of her contractions.

Man no longer fat enough to be soccer team’s mascot, strangely not American

The United States gets a lot of flak for being, overall, a bit heavier of a country than most others (though not as much thanks to Mexico – gracias, amigos!). People around the world just love to point out how overweight we are as a country, and yet, we’re not a place that has constant delicacies such as fried Mars bars.

We choose to deep-fry random food objects only during the carny season, thank you very much. That said, no longer shall we bear the title of most disgusting country. A soccer team in Britain is doing a fine enough job of that.

Bradford City has employed an overweight man as their mascot for nearly 20 years. His being overweight was a favored job aspect. Please allow that sentence to stew. Recently, he was let go after losing almost 100 pounds because of the scourge of Wilford Brimley, diabetes. Per the football club:

In the case of The City Gent, the main issue was his physical appearance, which was much changed from the original concept of the then-chairman, the late Stafford Heginbotham, who styled the City Gent on himself. We agreed that action needed to be taken.

Say what you will about Americans, but at least we’ll never fire somebody for not being fat enough. I think. I mean, I’m pretty sure we won’t. Possibly.

Airlifting beer to the thirsty

This is how the end begins, and of all places, the beginning of the end began in South Africa.

At the Oppikoppi music festival in there (where it’s winter, by the way), if you need a good stiff drink, all you need do is download an app and place your order. From there, your location is found, and a drone, we presume unarmed, drops you a beer in a parachute.

Folks, this is dangerous. If we start depending on robots for our drinks, we’ll soon forget how to make them or order them ourselves. We’ll come to depend on them for our beer, and then more and more. Before too long, they will be deciding if we have earned a beer.

Also, beer on a parachute in a crowd? We all know hand-eye coordination goes after you have a few–assuming you’re tall enough to reach over the other freeloaders in the first place.