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What to Expect from The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah

by Jeff Myhre

Ryan Shea, Manhattan Digest, Trevor Noah, Newsweek

I am old enough to remember when Jay Leno took over the Tonight Show from Johnny Carson. It was recognized at the time as the end of an era. But Leno did his thing, and because of that, it was the beginning of an era as well.

We’re looking at the same phenomenon on the Daily Show as South African Trevor Noah follows Jon Stewart, who (let’s face it) can’t be replaced. I miss the Stewart era, but I am looking forward to Noah’s time in the host’s chair. I have been a fan of Noah’s for a couple of years now, and if you haven’t seen his work, you owe it to yourself to track down his HBO special and some of the YouTube clips out there.

The first thing to note is that the show is going to be different in its approach. We’re all different people, and Noah is coming from a different time and place than Stewart. As Noah told Entertainment Weekly, he is a “31-year-old half-black, half-white South African man who immigrated to the United States in 2011 and Stewart (as a 52-year-old Jewish man who grew up in New Jersey). “The way we look at the same story will be completely different,” he said. “We have different access to different jokes, different sides, different sensitivities … the most important thing is the place that you come from.”

“We’re still dealing with the same issues, it’s just a different angle we’re looking at things from—and it’s my angle, really. I’m taking things in a slightly different direction, but to the same endpoint.”

Noah speaks seven languages and does some of the best accents and impersonations I have ever seen. So, you’ll see more of that. As an immigrant, he’s got a different take on America than a native, and as a man of mixed-race heritage from a country that abolished legal segregation in his lifetime, he has the standing to talk to us about race.

My friend, Gys de Villiers is a South African actor (he played de Klerk opposite Idris Elba’s Nelson Mandela in “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom) who explained, “Because of his mixed race, he can say things in South Africa that an Afrikaaner like me or a Zulu might not be able to and have the same credibility. Like Obama, he’s neither one nor the other and so he can speak to both.”

Noah himself told Rolling Stone that his show will wind up coming from a more diverse group than the previous incarnation of the Daily Show did. “Already we have people coming in and the racial diversity of the correspondents has gone up dramatically …. Gender-wise, we’ve got a ton of great female writers, too. In the new submissions, 40 percent of the final writers we decided to go with are female. And finding those voices is difficult but we’re lucky in that I’ve worked with great people of every color and I’ve worked with fantastic female writers as well. So we’re bringing that into the room.”

One thing that will feature in his Daily Show that Stewart’s didn’t is New York City itself. Like just about every newcomer, he’s got observations about the city, how people behave, and of course, the subway (he reckons it would be a great opportunity for us all to discuss climate change). Stewart, a Jersey boy, took much of the comedy potential of the city for granted.

One tiny hint – -don’t just watch the first episode and make a decision. The first week will be a four-part miniseries, so you’ll have to at least watch for the whole week.

Filed Under: AFRICA, NEW YORK, TELEVISION Tagged With: Africa, america, Daily Show, Jay Leno, Johnny Carson, Jon Stewart, New York City, Race, South Africa, Tonight Show, Trevor Noah

Cyber Monday Sales Top 2 Billion

by Alex David Jimenez

Cyber Monday 2013_photo via iphonehacks.com

And so, as the bruised and battered shoppers from across the fifty holiday-engorged states made their way back to their homes and questionable leftovers, a new beast lay in waiting behind their inauspicious computer monitors and tablets. The Monday after the turkey and gravy fest, and after the menacing crowds and monsters of Black Friday, is the latest great opportunity to present consumers with yet more ridiculous sales and deals – all now available conveniently within the safety of their own homes. It was Cyber Monday. Shopping online was madness. At nightfall the internet sat in the corner of the shower and wept. One phrase surely graced more computer monitors than on any other given day throughout the year: This Site is Temporarily Down.

Cyber Monday is a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. It began in 2005. A press release was conducted by the company Shop.org, publicly stating that the Monday following Thanksgiving was quickly becoming one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. This was based on the numbers of the previous year: The monday following Thanksgiving had been in the top 12 busiest online shopping days of 2004. Shop.org decided to attempt throwing the e-commerce community on the Black Friday bandwagon. It worked. That Cyber Monday saw record numbers: numbers which have increased annually since.

This year broke a new record, pushing online sales over the 2 billion dollar mark in a single day. $2.29 billion dollars to be exact.

Cyber Monday Profits 

2006 – $610,000,000

2007 – $730,000,000

2008 – $846,000,000

2009 – $887,000,000

2010 – $1,028,000,000

2011 – $1,251,000,000

2012 – $1,465,000,000

2013 – $2,290,000,000

 

In contrast, sales for the 2013 Black Friday weekend went down for the first time in seven years. Falling 2.9% from last year’s sales, this year saw 57.4 billion dollars in profits for the weekend. That is a significant pullback considering the numbers had been on the rise every year since 2006. Last year saw 59.1 billion dollars in sales.

The most evident thought-process to be reached by these numbers is right in front of us: everything is moving into the digital age. Cyber Monday was not only successful – it was phenomenal. It wasn’t just the computers either. A whopping 18.3% of online sales were found and processed using tablets and smart phones. Cyber Monday is becoming easier to do, so naturally the numbers are rising. Black Friday is a time-honored and kind of scary tradition, sure, but why chance being flattened to the ground by high-tops and pumps in front of a Walmart when you can sit in your pajamas and work those index-finger muscles?

Cyber Monday CrashesIt’s not perfect yet. There were, as there always are, some technical problems while dealing with the massive number of visitors on e-commerce sites. Several sites did crash due to an overload of volume, including Motorola, Toys’R’Us, Urban Outfitters, Brookstone, Nordstrom, and Barnes & Noble. While most of these companies were back online within a few minutes, they potentially lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in their absence.

If there is a moral to the story that was Black Cyber Weekend, it must be that, well, we’re all a bunch of greedy and impatient barbarians, and the machines will soon be taking over.

 

Sources: Wikipedia.org, Business Insider, Bloomberg News

 

 

Filed Under: BUSINESS, OPINION, TECHNOLOGY Tagged With: america, Black Friday, crashes, Cyber Monday, Internet, opinion, shopping, technology, Thanksgiving

Racism in the Bear Community- More Prevalent than Ever

by Ryan Shea

bear

Off the bat, there is going to be a variety of opinions regarding this matter yet I feel like this is a very taboo subject to talk about.  It is an issue that just like some of the more mainstream issues that we face in America will never really have one agreement on it.  The fact of the matter is for many people that I know of and a general consensus that I have seen, racism is a huge part of the bear community.  For me, this racism comes in many different forms, some of which I have experienced and some others have as well.  This can be broken down into several different ways people can view racism in this community, so feel free to share your opinion on what you think. [Read more…] about Racism in the Bear Community- More Prevalent than Ever

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, LIFESTYLE, OPINION Tagged With: america, asian, Bear Community, black, gay, gay bear, lord of the rings, online, racism, stereotypes, white

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