LIVE THAT FANTASY
Radio stations in San Francisco certainly aren’t taking any chances with the city’s World Series dreams on the line.
People reports that at least two San Francisco radio stations will not play Lorde’s popular song Royals until the World Series is over.
The Royals will open the World Series against the San Francisco Giants on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.
In a presumed effort to keep the minds of Giants fans focused going into the big game, San Francisco radio stations 96.5 KOIT and 104.5 KFOG have declared their intention of banning the song that launched Lorde’s pop career last year.
The ban began Friday with KOIT program director Brian Figula announcing on the station’s Facebook page, “Our listeners told us to do it, so we did it! As of 4 p.m. today we’ve removed Lorde’s Royals from our playlist until the end of the World Series. Go Giants, beat the Royals!”
KFOG followed suit with a tweet stating, “No offense, Lorde, but for the duration of the World Series, KFOG Radio will be a ‘Royals’-free zone. We’re sure you understand” (the tweet was accompanied by a photograph of the New Zealand-born singer scrunching up her face).
And there’s more to the Lorde-Royals connection than meets the eye: During the course of an interview on VH1 last year, the 17-year-old singer revealed that the inspiration for Royals came from a photograph she saw in a magazine.
“I had this image from the National Geographic of this dude just signing baseballs,” said Lorde (real name: Elia Yelich-O’Connor). “He was a baseball player and his shirt said ‘Royals.’ It was just that word. It was really cool.”
The individual in the photograph, which originally ran in the July, 1976, issue of National Geographic, was subsequently revealed to be baseball Hall of Famer George Brett, who played for the Kansas City Royals from 1973 to 1993.
When Lorde played a concert last March, Brett sent her an autographed jersey with his name emblazoned on back. Along with his signature, Brett also wrote on the jersey, “Lorde, you are Royal to me.”
But even with all the context, it’s inevitable that radio programmers in Kansas City would respond to the Royals ban.
On Sunday, the Kansas City radio station 99.7 The Point announced on its website that it would play Royals “on the hour, every hour, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday.” The announcement included the cocky message: “We don’t play.”
Let the games of October begin.
LOSING IT
A longtime staffer on The Late Show with David Letterman has been dismissed for allegedly insulting the host and one of the show’s writers. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Late Show veteran Tony Mendez, who routinely makes on-camera appearances as the talk show’s cue-card writer, was dismissed Friday after allegedly physically confronting staff writer Bill Scheft. Sources say that Mendez was rehearsing with Scheft and Letterman in the host’s dressing room on Oct. 8 when Scheft and Mendez got into a verbal disagreement. Mendez allegedly also told Letterman, “You’re the one who has the sour disposition….” The following day, Mendez allegedly grabbed Scheft by the shirt and threw him against a wall, at which point he was terminated by Late Show executive producer Rob Burnett.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
WALKING TALL
Stephen Colbert has emerged the victor in his faux-feud with Google. Last Wednesday on The Colbert Report, the host took issue with the global search engine for listing his height as 5-foot-10. “I’ve been five-eleven since I was 14 years old,” fumed Colbert, “and I am speaking directly to Google CEO Larry Page right now.” Colbert also jokingly demanded that Google offer him “a retraction, an investigation, an apology and a substantial cash settlement.” Over the weekend, Google amended its records to list Colbert’s height as 5 feet, 10.5 inches.
Source: New York Times
DEAL WITH IT
Shonda Rhimes has no time or patience for homophobic viewers. The creator of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal and new TV hit How To Get Away with Murder recently unloaded on Twitter user Dina Abdel Haklem for tweeting the comment, “The gay scenes in Scandal and How To Get Away with Murder are too much. There is no point and they add nothing to the plot.” Rhimes responded on Sunday with her own tweet stating, “There are no GAY scenes. There are scenes with people in them.”
Source: Zap2it
INSTANT KARMA
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has admitted it was inappropriate for him to suggest women patiently wait for a pay raise instead of requesting it. Nadella made headlines earlier this month at a technical conference when he told female attendees that “it’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along, because that’s good karma.” In a new interview with CNBC, Nadella said the resulting backlash “has been a very humbling and learning experience for me. I basically took my own approach to how I’ve approached my career and sprung it on half of humanity.”
Source: Time
NEW MUSIC
The rumours are true: Feminist rock trio Sleater-Kinney will reunite following an eight-year break. The band was formed by Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker in 1994 with drummer Janet Weiss joining the band two years later. The band recorded seven albums before officially going on hiatus in 2006. On Sunday, Brownstein told NPR via e-mail that the band will release a new album titled No Cities to Love on Jan. 20 and will tour early next year. Wrote Brownstein: “We drifted apart in order to concentrate on other elements of our lives and careers. Sleater-Kinney isn’t something you can do half-assed or half-heartedly. We have to really want it.”
Source: NPR