Lifestyle
'Wait Wait' for August 3, 2024: Live at Wolf Trap with Dr. Fauci
!['Wait Wait' for August 3, 2024: Live at Wolf Trap with Dr. Fauci 'Wait Wait' for August 3, 2024: Live at Wolf Trap with Dr. Fauci](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/5557x3126+0+0/resize/1400/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6a%2F35%2Fa2b853c14b0c96562bad0eccf92f%2Fgettyimages-2155872432.jpg)
Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is sworn-in before testifying before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic at the Rayburn House Office Building on June 03, 2024 in Washington, DC. The Subcommittee is holding a hearing on the findings from a fifteen month Republican-led probe of former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci and the COVID-19 pandemic’s origins. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
This week’s show was recorded at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Chioke I’Anson, Not My Job guest Dr. Anthony Fauci and panelists Karen Chee, Tom Papa, and Negin Farsad. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
Who’s Bill This Time
We Love That Dirty Water; JD Stands For Just Don’t; The End Of An Office Tradition?
Panel Questions
License To Samsonite
Bluff The Listener
Our panelists tell three stories about a secret of the Olympic games, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: We quiz Dr. Anthony Fauci on computer viruses
Dr. Anthony Fauci plays our game called, “Here’s a Virus Even You Can’t Cure” Three questions about computer viruses.
Panel Questions
They’ll Leave The Light On; The Founding Fathers Had Help
Limericks
Bill Kurtis reads three news-related limericks: Teacher of the Year; How To Get That Queso Smokey Eye; Nature Vs Nurture Vs Nomenclature
Lightning Fill In The Blank
All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
Predictions
Our panelists predict what will be the big story out of week two of the Paris Olympics
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Lifestyle
CatCon Arrives at Pasadena Convention Center Without J.D. Vance
![CatCon Arrives at Pasadena Convention Center Without J.D. Vance CatCon Arrives at Pasadena Convention Center Without J.D. Vance](https://imagez.tmz.com/image/d2/16by9/2024/08/03/d249c556fec24905ae85af07489a98e5_xl.jpg)
California’s furry felines will be out in force all weekend at CatCon — but one person who probably won’t be making a cameo is J.D. Vance!
As you know, Donald Trump‘s Republican VP pick put his foot in his mouth in a recently resurfaced 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he referred to Kamala Harris and other U.S. leaders as “childless cat ladies,” mainly on the Democratic side.
Fox News
2021
Of course, Vance’s statement didn’t sit well with Kamala — the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee — and other liberals who have blasted the Ohio senator ever since the clip started circulating again.
Just that alone should be enough to dissuade J.D. from making a pit stop on the campaign trail at CatCon so he can avoid all the catty people attending the event.
It all kicks off Saturday morning at the Pasadena Convention Center and extends through Sunday afternoon.
CatCon president Susan Michals says she’s trying to build a community for cat enthusiasts and, for the most part, she has succeeded.
Over the past 9 years since CatCon has been a thing, cat lovers from all 50 states and 24 countries have shown up at the conventions — and last year’s get-together was sold out. Meow!
Back to J.D. … Michals told a local news outlet that her ultimate goal is to debunk the “cat lady myth” while promoting a positive and more modern image of those who adore the little kitties.
Don’t expect J.D. to be on board with any of that. He’s just not the cat lady type.
Lifestyle
M. Night Shyamalan lays his own parent 'Trap,' and it's truly bonkers : Pop Culture Happy Hour
![M. Night Shyamalan lays his own parent 'Trap,' and it's truly bonkers : Pop Culture Happy Hour M. Night Shyamalan lays his own parent 'Trap,' and it's truly bonkers : Pop Culture Happy Hour](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2024/08/01/rev-1-trp-t2-0005r_high_res_jpeg_wide-6b3a22ef49b53ea012ad7cb6fe7837ac9540448b.jpeg?s=1400&c=100&f=jpeg)
Lifestyle
L.A. Affairs: I hooked up with a dreamy musician at the beach. Was I asking for trouble?
![L.A. Affairs: I hooked up with a dreamy musician at the beach. Was I asking for trouble? L.A. Affairs: I hooked up with a dreamy musician at the beach. Was I asking for trouble?](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/9b63116/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1920x1008+0+36/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F70%2F23%2F13d1cddb4fd5aa1b2b1b027355b9%2Fla-affairs-leanne-phillips-0000000.jpg)
My beach romances have been disasters.
On the Silver Strand in Coronado, a date tried to teach me to surf. I nearly drowned. I called it quits after a hard face-plant off the surfboard and into the wet sand. A date once left me stranded on McAbee Beach in Monterey when I refused to sing a Kenny Rogers song with him during karaoke. I sat in the dark on the cold sand for an hour, waiting for a ride home. On East Beach in Santa Barbara, I tried to impress a date with a from-scratch picnic, but sand got into everything. (Pro tip: Sand always gets into everything.) He teased me about the inedible, sand-crusted “crunchy chicken.”
But I thought my luck had changed when I met a handsome musician in Pismo Beach.
He was playing guitar and singing at Harry’s Night Club & Beach Bar, a block from the pier. He was tall, good-looking and funny. I was there with friends for a wedding after-party. He flirted with me from the stage and made me laugh. After his set, he invited me to go for a walk. Daylight on the beach is nice, what with the sunshine and all, but moonlight on the beach is incredible. He leaned in and kissed me, and I let him. I blame moon magic and too many Coronas with lime.
A month later, a friend took me to Pismo Beach for my birthday. We drove south in my Ford Mustang convertible with the top down and parked in the beach parking lot. Across the street from Harry’s. Where the hot musician was playing. Again. We spent the afternoon there. He asked us to stay when his band loaded in for the nighttime set, and we did.
And then … well, it was my birthday. I hooked up with the hot musician.
I didn’t see it as anything more than a starry-eyed fling that began on a warm summer night in a funky little beach town. Turns out, flirting was his thing. He flirted with women in every town with a beach in San Luis Obispo County: Avila Beach, Moonstone Beach, Spooner’s Cove, Cayucos State Beach, Morro Strand State Beach. It was part of the act, he said, and besides, we weren’t serious.
When we were alone, he was charming and attentive. He drove to the North County to be with me every night, even after late-night gigs that were often an hour or more away. Over time, I let myself fall hard. The only problem was that I was looking for long-term love, and he wasn’t.
He broke my heart again and again. And I beat my head against the wall trying to turn him into someone he was never going to be.
Then one day, he said the most honest words I’ve ever heard anyone say: “I know I can be self-centered, and I know that doesn’t work for you. But it’s worked for me all my life, so I don’t see that changing.”
I know he meant it when he told me that he loved me. He waited almost a year to say those words for the first time. But I realized then that being in love meant something different to him from what it meant to me. Our mistake wasn’t falling in love. It was trying to force a love that didn’t suit either of us.
Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I didn’t believe him the dozens of times he showed me that he wasn’t going to settle down, but I believed him when he told me flat out. And I knew I deserved something more.
I’ve never had a knack for keeping a boyfriend. But I do have a knack for staying friends with ex-boyfriends, and the hot musician was no exception. We went to the movies sometimes and we stayed in touch, even after he moved a thousand miles away nearly 10 years ago to care for his elderly mother.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I moved south from downtown San Luis Obispo to Pismo Beach to be closer to the water. I am a writer and an introvert who kind of enjoyed having an excuse to stay home all the time. But the isolation was too much even for me. So I moved into a 100-year-old beach bungalow a half-block from the ocean. After being confined to my house for months alone, I felt such freedom walking on the beach every day without a mask. There were always other human beings on the beach with me, and although we were physically distant from one another, I felt a connection to them. I breathed in the cold, crisp air so deeply my lungs hurt.
Then the hot musician reached out to me after his mother died. He was sad and alone too. I invited him to come back home, back to Pismo Beach, to rent the spare bedroom in my bungalow, two blocks from the beach bar where our failed romance began. He moved in, and we took walks together out to the end of the pier, on the same beach where we’d once shared a kiss.
First, we fell in love. Then we were friends. We were friends for a long time. And then 20 years after we first met, we became roommates. He’s in the other room as I write this, probably watching basketball. Maybe “Family Guy.” He takes the trash out now and then. He brings me tortilla chips, so I get enough salt. Sometimes cheesecake — last night, my favorite Meyer lemon. He still makes me laugh. But we’re both different people now, and he no longer breaks my heart.
I never found lasting love at the beach. But I did find a lasting friendship. And it took me way too long, but I found a determination to be true to myself. For now, those things are more than enough.
The author, a lifelong Californian who earned an MFA from UC Riverside Palm Desert, is the fiction editor for Kelp Journal. You can read her work at leannephillips.com. She’s on Instagram: @leannebythesea
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
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