Hi everyone,

Welcome back!  How are you?  Yesterday was an adventure around here, friends.  As we discussed, I woke up at 3:00 in the morning because of a bird/bat flying around the bedroom.  It disappeared by the time I had my act together, and I never did find it.  Part of me would like to think it was just a vivid bad dream.  However,  I really don't think that's what happened, so we'll see what comes of it in the days and weeks ahead.  There was no chance of me going back to sleep after that chaos, so I powered through the morning and hung out with you, went to the bookstore for BDH and Little Buddha, and then did a grocery shopping.  (Oh, and also listened to David Tennant's new podcast.)

However, the rest of the afternoon and early evening was just about surviving the combination of exhaustion and heat, which was rough.  I crashed early and slept okay (with nothing flying around the room this time), so hopefully today will be a little less challenging.  BDH and Little Buddha rearranged the to-do list, so I just have a couple of things to take care of before we can discuss a possible nap and then watering the garden tonight.  First, let's take a peek at the headlines.  There's a fresh pot of coffee on the counter, so grab yourself a nice medium DD, because it's time to clear out some Wednesday Clutter.

The wait is over:  Joe Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris (D-California) to join him on the Democratic ticket yesterday.  Senator Harris becomes the first Black woman in this country's history to be the presumptive VP nominee for a major political party.  We're already blocking out our schedule to watch her debates with Mike Pence.  (Is Pence even allowed to share the stage with a woman?)  This is not the pairing we were looking for when the Democratic primary began.  Both of these candidates lean more to the right than we would like.  However, the first priority at this point is to remove Donald Trump from office, and these two can do that job.  We'll work on moving policy stances down the road.  What we have here is a ticket that reflects more of America than any other in our country's history.

Historic.  (pic via summarizer.co)

In case you were wondering, the Trump campaign doesn't seem excited about Biden picking Harris.  A strong woman who is also a person of color may be Trump's biggest fear, so expect him to work in the word "nasty" when he's talking about Senator Harris like he's a skipping record.  Be warned, making it a game to drink every time he says the word will likely lead to being hammered inside of five minutes.   As far as we're concerned, there aren't many bigger compliments than someone saying you were "nasty" to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.

If things work out, we'll be seeing a lot of Maya Rudolph as Senator Harris on SNL over the next few years.  Would you rather see Woody Harrelson or Jason Sudeikis as Biden?  Either way, Alec Baldwin should start looking for a new guest gig.

Donald Trump may be throwing in the towel on any future campaign rallies because he knows the crowds are going to be embarrassingly small.  It's not clear how he'll survive between now and November without being fed a steady diet of these ego boosts.

Congratulations to Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) on winning her primary last night.  Representatives Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), and Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) all overwhelmingly defeated their primary challengers this year and re-affirmed that "the Squad" (which also includes our own Representative Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts)) isn't going anywhere.

The Boston Red Sox lost 8-2 to the Tampa Bay Rays last night to fall to 6-11 on the season.  Boston starter Martin Perez had another good outing, giving up just three hits and two runs over 5 2/3 innings.  (Seems like we can now refer to this year's starting rotation as "Nate Eovaldi, Perez, and a bunch of guys.)  However, the game fell apart for the Sox when the Rays scored six runs in the 7th inning, with most of that being charged to reliever Austin Brice.  While there's probably little that can be done about the starting pitchers this year, hopefully the bullpen will get Darwinzon Hernandez and Josh Taylor back relatively soon.  Zach Godley takes the mound for Boston against Tampa Bay tonight.

The Big 10 and Pac-12 conferences both cancelled all of their fall sports, including football, yesterday, because of coronavirus-related concerns.  The conferences are talking about playing these sports in the spring, but even if it's safe from a pandemic perspective, we don't see how that would work.  The football players would want to be preparing for the NFL draft, and don't all of the athletes need more rest before (hopefully) starting again in the fall of 2021?  In any case, this is yet another ominous sign for the upcoming NFL season.  Of course, we say that, and the league's reaction is to consider moving some of their games to Saturday to fill the new void.

It can't be a surprise to anyone, but this year's New York Comic Con is moving to an online-only format because of the pandemic.  We'll be keeping an eye out for any Doctor Who-related panels.  Boston's big comic convention has already been scrapped for this year, but in our dream world, our reward for making it through 2020 is to find out David Tennant is coming in 2021.

The sun will rise, the sun will fall, and Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson will be the highest-paid actor in Hollywood for the second straight year.  This is the way.  Johnson pulled in a reported $87.5 million last year, so his plans for world domination seem to be going well.  We're still taking odds on presidential run from him in say, 2028.

This is interesting:  The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is being rebooted as a drama.  The idea is based off a 2019-fan trailer made by a fellow named Morgan Cooper, and based on that clip (which you can find in the linked article), we'd like to see much more of Cooper's vision for the reimagined show.

Phil Collins is climbing back up the charts again after two teenage YouTubers reviewed his classic tune, "In the Air Tonight."  The song originally came out 40 years ago, and we suddenly feel ancient just writing that.  Oh hold on, it was 39.5 years ago.  That's much better.

Okay kids, that's going to do it for now.  We were planning on closing things out with some Phil Collins, but instead, we're going to wrap things up with the tune that's apparently mortifying conservatives around the country.  Here's Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion with, "WAP," for today's, "Song of the Day."

Thanks for stopping by, everyone.  It was great to see you, as always.  It's supposed to be another hot one out there today, so do whatever you need to in order to stay cool, and we'll catch up with you again soon.  Until next time, that's today's Clearing out the Clutter, and we are outta here.