BDC Now: Kanye West Really Needs You to Stand Up
Kanye West is truly dedicated to his craft and, as some of his handicapped fans learned over the weekend, he needs the people at his concerts to be just as dedicated or else he’ll just stop the show. That, Simpsons-mania continues, and the ever-growing loneliness of the American adult, today on BDC Now.
Kanye West Won’t Rap Unless He’s Really Sure You’re Handicapped
A warning to anyone planning to attend a Kanye West show in the near future: The venue may be handicap accessible, but the concert itself might not be. West was in Sydney, Australia over the weekend when he stopped a performance for nearly three minutes, telling the crowd, “I can’t do the rest of this show until everybody stand up – unless you got a handicap pass and you get special parking and [expletive].’’ Of course, even though two fans were handicapped, West took the time to call them out individually for not standing up. At one point, other sections of the crowd could even be heard chanting “stand up! stand up!’’ It wasn’t until one of them literally waved a prosthetic limb in the air and people in the crowd made “wheelchair signals with their arms’’ that West realized they weren’t purposefully defying his request. You’d think after charging everybody more than $100 each to get into the show, he might not be so demanding, but we’ve never really known a man who calls himself “Yeezus’’ to be overly reasonable.
Don’t Want to Get Handcuffed? Don’t Look Like People Who Commit Crimes
Danièle Watts is an actress who performed in an Oscar-nominated film and a woman who apparently resembles another woman suspected of prostitution. Before this weekend, she was probably only aware of one of those things. But after this weekend, Watts now knows that there is someone out there in the world who both bares a resemblance to her and may have been “involved in indecent exposure inside a silver Mercedes’’ in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, she learned that information the hard way when Los Angeles police put her in handcuffs and detained her because she and her husband, Brian James Lucas, fit the description of the “indecent’’ suspects, police told the Los Angeles Times. The LAPD has opened an internal complaint investigation surrounding the incident, but if Watts’ experience is any lesson, the department might just discipline all of its officers because they fit the description of a “man in an LAPD uniform involved in unnecessary detention of an innocent person.’’
Despite Last Week’s Headlines, Not All NFL Players Are Criminals
In a little less than a week, the NFL has gone from “league that doesn’t take domestic abuse seriously’’ to “league that maybe covers up investigative incompetence’’ to “league that might just have a serious crime problem.’’ And after a week of coverage surrounding Ray Rice’s domestic abuse case concluded with a case of alleged child abuse at the hands of Adrian Peterson, we’re not sure anyone would blame you for thinking that last one is true. But before you go writing off NFL players as inordinately violent, we should probably have a conversation about the facts. As it turns out, The New York Times found that one out of every 40 NFL players is arrested in any given calendar year, and in the last 15 years, driving under the influence (202 instances) has been far and way the most common reason. Assault and battery and domestic violence are the second and third most common reasons for arrest with 88 and 85 instances, respectively. That all sounds pretty terrible, and even a single instance of one of those crimes is bad (that’s why they are crimes), but what happens when you compare those figures to the population of adult men in the United States? Well, an analysis from Deadspin found that (surprise!) men who don’t play professional football also commit crimes, with the at-large population outpacing NFL players in DUI’s, drug charges, and assault and battery charges (including domestic violence). See? NFL players aren’t the problem – American adult men are.
America is Sharing a Drink They Call Loneliness
If you’re feeling a bit of self-pity about how you don’t have a love in your life, don’t worry. Even though you’re alone, you’re not alone in being alone. More than half of all American adults, a total of 124.6 million people, identified themselves as single, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That represents a dramatic shift since 1950, when less than a quarter of American adults identified as single, but it has less to do with all the weirdos on eHarmony than you might expect. New York University sociology professor Eric Klinenberg suspects that it has become socially acceptable for young professionals to just keep swiping right on Tinder and dating casually while they focus on their careers and enjoy the unique benefits of having an apartment that belongs to them and only them. And sure, when winter rolls around and you’re cold and alone in that same apartment watching Modern Family re-runs, things might seem bleak. But look on the bright side, if everyone is single then your odds of meeting somebody are better than ever!
2014 is The Year of ‘The Simpsons’ Fan
In donning a Lyle Lanley costume and performing a live version of “The Monorail Song,’’ Conan O’Brien capped off a year that has been very, very kind to fans of “The Simpsons.’’ In May, the show concluded its 25th season. In September, it will kick off its 26th. And in between, Simpsons-mania gripped FXX in August with a 12-day mega-marathon that featured each of the show’s 552 episodes. Eleven days later, that extravaganza was followed by a much milder four-hour marathon of the show’s best musical episodes. It all led up to this weekend’s “The Simpsons Take the Hollywood Bowl’’ show, featuring not only O’Brien’s performance of the song that has followed him throughout his career, but also an appearance from Weird Al and a rendition of the show’s theme song as played by the LA Philharmonic. No offense to their impressive level of dedication, but what in the world are these people going to do with their time when the show finally ends?
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