Light Banter

Disco, Good Times, and The Name Game, Truly, we're kind of all over the map in this segment, but we're having fun. Lisa starts us with a walk down memory lane that includes disco, roller skating, and the iconic 70s group, Chic. Somehow we started discussing Van Gogh and the correct way to pronounce the master artist's last name, which then naturally led us on a journey to understand various homonyms of the name Sean or Shaun or Shawn and other naming oddities.

Shakespeare in the Park Sponsored by Little Ceasars, Okay just kidding about the Little Ceasars part, but folks are jonesing for their summer stock theater even if local corporate sponsors are involved. Can you imagine if period costumes start requiring logo attribution? We hope that local theater won't get reduced to stealthily placed ads from "Joe's Garage" or the like, but live theater is struggling to make its return. In fact, they've been hanging onto customer money in anticipation of their grand return. Will Lisa get her money back? Stay tuned. For now, the ladies live vicariously through Rebecca's recent experience of "A Midsummers Night Dream." Well, except Quinn. She's waiting for a stadium-style rock concert.

Episode No. 67. The Dogs of TikTok, You can literally spend hours every day entertaining yourself with charming photos and videos of dogs, puppies, and other animals showing us just how darn cute they are with their hoomans. But after a while, you realize that these pets are often pushed and prodded into helping their hooman mommies and daddies turn their adorable pet channel into a money-making opportunity for the family. Hmm . . . not sure if this is a good or bad thing for the innocent pups.

Episode No. 66. Cringey Dogma, What started as a conversation about being anti-racist quickly morphed into a discussion about dogmatic ideologies and then took another abrupt turn somehow ending up in a much longer conversation about television entertainment and the soapy shows that make us cringe and yet we still watch. So we started with some "Serious Banter" and ended up in "Cringey Banter." It's quite a ride.

Episode No. 65. The Liberal Anti-Vaxxer Dilemna, Anti-Vaxxers come in all varieties. It's not just extremist republican conservatives politicizing the pandemic. Nope, The Los Angeles Times recently pointed to a new group of anti-vaxxers . . . new age, spiritual, yoga, holistic lifestyle enthusiasts who are equally committed to their freedom to vax or not to vax. Whether an anti-vaxxer is on the far right or far left, neither extreme trusts the science behind the vaccine.

Episode No. 64. Carpet, Hair, Sex, How a conversation goes from a DIY home improvement story about shag carpeting into a longer conversation about the Austin Powers popularized lingo shag is truly a wonder. But we somehow managed to take the uber-popular 70s carpet fiber and turned it into an exploration of bad haircuts and sexual intercourse as a slang vernacular.

Episode No. 63: Snot-chronicity, We've all seen it. And many of us (read women) wish we could un-see it . . . the infamous snot rocket. It's one thing to see an occasional spontaneous nasal evacuation but when you see it multiple times in one day from different people at different locations, well that's some kind of bad synchronicity or as we've now coined . . . snot-chronicity. Don't worry we don't let our conversation get too disgusting. We're just trying to understand why it happens especially when someone is in the line of fire. But if this conversation applies to you, then just stop it! Stop it now!

Episode No. 62: Neighborhood Parking Wars, Bad, weird, strange, controlling are just a few of the adjectives often used in front of the noun neighbor. Every block and cul de sac has at least one. It's especially annoying when the entire neighborhood gets along except for this one person who is bound and committed to holding the moral high ground when it comes to anyone parking in front of their house. Equal parts funny and aggravating, but you might get some tips if you ever have to deal with "that" neighbor.

Episode No. 61: Bird Theft, Who knew a simple bird feeder would start a neighborhood dispute. Well, when one neighbor wants all the birds flocking to her home, the other neighbors get their own beaks bent out of shape and don't hesitate to cry "fowl" insisting that the bird hoarder take down some of her 12 feeders and share the birds with the entire block. Who will win this aviary territorial dispute?

Episode No. 60: Rhino Dino, Our newest addition to "team banter" is Erika Remus. We didn't know we needed a science-loving nerd on our team, but apparently, we do. Listen as we discuss the news of China's giant rhinoceros-type dinosaur or as we call it Rhino Dino.

Newly discovered giant rhino species was among largest mammals ever to walk Earth

A group of researchers found a new giant rhinoceros species from fossils dating back 26.5 million years in the Gansu Province of northwestern China.

According to findings published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Communications Biology, Tao Deng, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, and his team have recovered the skeletal remains of a giant rhino dubbed Paraceratherium linxiaense.

The researchers said the giant rhino is considered one of the largest land mammals that ever lived. The skulls and legs of a giant rhino are longer than those of all reported land mammals.

Source: USA Today

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/06/17/new-rhino-species-discovered-china-ranks-among-largest-mammals/5295576001/