Television ratings have long been a point of fixation for Donald Trump. The president has frequently taken breaks from his various duties to tweet about how watched awards shows, professional sports games, and other televised events were. On Wednesday, he tweeted about watch numbers for his first debate performance of 2020, claiming the debate ratings were, at least on cable, the highest of all time.
HIGHEST CABLE TELEVISION RATINGS OF ALL TIME. SECOND HIGHEST OVERALL TELEVISION RATINGS OF ALL TIME. Some day these Fake Media Companies are going to miss me, very badly!!!
A media advisory issued by Nielsen this afternoon estimates that a total of 73.1 million people watched the debate on broadcast and cable television, down sharply across the board from 2016.
Four years ago, the first presidential debate brought in a record-breaking 84 million viewers. Previously, the highest-rated debate was the October 28, 1980 matchup between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. An estimated 81 million people watched that time.
The president’s tweet about “highest cable television ratings,” might be a reference to the ratings specifically at Fox News. The employer of debate moderator Chris Wallace logged 17.8 million viewers during the debate, making it the most-watched outlet. ABC came in next with 12.6 million, NBC with 9.7 million, and CNN with 8.3 million. Nielsen also tracked Telemundo, Univision, CBS, MSNBC, Newsy, Vice, WGNA, Newsmax, and PBS member stations, but not C-SPAN.
Ratings numbers may not provide the full picture of how many Americans actually watched the debate, as the Nielsen figures do not include viewers who watch online–a share of the audience which grows every year. It is believed that around a quarter of U.S. households are now “cord cutters” who receive all their content online.
When Vartan Abgaryan’s business partners wanted to open a Mexican restaurant in Venice, the Armenian American chef had to call for backup.
“I’ve been in L.A. for 30 years. I’ve eaten Mexican food for 30 years. But it’s a different thing growing up with it in your family,” says 38-year-old Abgaryan. So he turned to a young Mexican American chef he’d known for years: 31-year-old Mesraim Llanez.
The result of their collaboration is Nueva, a cheery neighborhood cantina with a spacious patio and a menu of Mexican dishes with Middle Eastern moments. In addition to the traditional ceviches Llanez fondly remembers eating on the beach with his family while growing up in Southern California, there’s a taco with black bean falafel, branzino topped with red mole and olive tapenade, and a brunch combo of huevos rancheros and shakshouka.
“The spice profiles work really well together,” Abgaryan says. “The Middle Eastern palate really likes the herb-driven, the acid-driven, the spice-driven. The Mexican palate is very similar.”
“There’s a huge Middle Eastern community in Mexico City,” Llanez adds. “The trompo”—the vertical rotating spit—“for al pastor came from the Middle East.”
Mesraim Llanez (left) and Vartan Abgaryan
Courtesy Nueva
Seeing an ambitious project through during the pandemic has been challenging and emotional. Last year Abgaryan opened Yours Truly to much acclaim, but the restaurant has been closed, for the most part, since March. “It’s a bit bittersweet,” says Abgaryan, adding that he plans to reopen soon. And he and Llanez are heartened by how many Venice folk have come out to eat at Nueva in spite of everything. On some weekend days, when they serve both brunch and dinner, they’ve had as many as 600 customers come through the restaurant.
“We’re meant to feed the neighborhood,” says Llanez. “And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Timothy Ray Brown, the first person to be cured of the virus HIV passed away in Palm Springs on Tuesday after a decade-long battle with Leukemia. He was 54.
In 2007, Brown underwent a bone marrow transplant in Berlin, where he had been working as a German translator, to treat his cancer. His hematologist, Dr. Gero Hütter, started looking for a donor with a genetic mutation that prevented HIV from entering the body’s cells. At first Brown was averse to the risky procedure “I did not need to be a guinea pig and risk my life receiving a transplant that might kill me,” he told the National Institute of Health in 2015, but he went through with the procedure and soon found the HIV virus eliminated from his body.
When his successful treatment was made public, Brown was identified only as “the Berlin Patient.” In 2010, he moved back to the United States and made his identity public with interviews in New York magazine, Science, and POZ magazine. Two years later he started a foundation to work on a cure and an HIV vaccine. “I will not stop,” he told the NIH, “until HIV is cured!”
Dr. Hütter became the head of the stem cell unit of the Institute of Transfusion Medicine and Immunology Mannheim of the Heidelberg University. His research is supported by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. “Timothy symbolized that it is possible, under special circumstances to cure HIV,” the doctor said this week. “T Six other cancer patients, treated in the same way, seem to also be free of the virus, according to the IrsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain.
Brown suffered additional health setbacks, including a head injury after he was mugged in Berlin. Resettled in Southern California, Brown met his partner Tim Hoeffgen on an online dating app in 2013. The two shared a small apartment in Palm Springs, which turned into a hospital suite when Brown’s cancer returned. A hospital visit in April turned into a seven-week stay, with Hoeffgen by his side. “He’s a person you can’t help loving. He’s so sweet,” Hoeffgen told The Blade. “The cancer treatments have been rough. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worse than the disease.”
Hoeffgen told the paper that he asked Brown what sort of statement he would like to release about his health. He said, “Tell people to keep fighting. Fight for a cure for HIV that works for everyone. I never wanted to be the only one.”
Fourteen years after Borat Sagdiyev conquered the U.S. with Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Sacha Baron Cohen is bringing the character back, this time directly into our homes. As Deadline reports, the sequel will premier on Amazon Prime in late October, with some news outlets pegging the release date as October 23.
According to Deadline, it’s the first movie made during the COVID-19 shutdown, with Cohen racing to secretly shoot the film and get it out before the election. At some points, filming new material of Borat—who himself goes incognito through much of the movie due to the notoriety of his last project—was dangerous enough that Cohen twice wore a bulletproof vest.
And if Donald Trump is unhappy that the film is being distributed by his much richer and more media savvy nemesis, Jeff Bezos, the title might throw him into full tantrum mode. According to a now-deleted filing with the Writer’s Guild of America, Borat’s return is titled Borat: Gift of Pornographic Monkey to Vice Premiere Mikhael Pence to Make Benefit Recently Diminished Nation of Kazakhstan.
Other victims of Borat could include Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who called the cops on Cohen this summer when the actor arrived for a hotel interview dressed in what Giuliani called “a transgender outfit… It was a pink bikini, with lace, underneath a translucent mesh top.”
A teaser trailer was released in the form of a Trump endorsement ad on Twitter Tuesday evening by new user Republic of Kazakhstan and retweeted by Cohen, along with a congratulatory note to Trump for winning the first Presidential debate—roughly 45 minutes before the candidates took the stage.
Congratulation to great friend of the Kazakh people @realDonaldTrump for winning debate today! Impressive and amazing result for a strong premier who always put America and Kazakhstan first! pic.twitter.com/qLljQ8b5UU
Among the praise heaped upon Trump in the ad are, “Trump never had stroke,” while showing him attempting to drink water and trailing toilet paper from his heel as he boards Air Force 1, and boasting “Because of Trump, 350 million Americans still alive.”
Trump is also lionized as “protector of womens” as footage rolls of him laughing it up and watching women dance at a party with Jeffrey Epstein as subtitles read, “Listen stranger… touch any of them and I will crush you.”
The piece ends with the warning, “Vote for Premiere Trump or you will be crush.”
For Joe Davis, being hired as the Dodgers’ new secondary play-by-play voice in 2015 was a big deal—but the timing is what made it particularly momentous. At just 27 years old, he was suddenly first in line to be the eventual replacement for Vin Scully, a nearly unanimous pick for greatest announcer of all time.
“I didn’t really belong,” Davis admitted to color analyst and former pitcher Orel Hershiser during a recent episode of their podcast Off Air with Joe and Orel. “I’d done two major league baseball games at that point, and I did a full season for Fox in 2015 as we were doing the negotiations, but really I didn’t belong in that seat. I didn’t belong in the seat to follow Vin.”
Sitting at home in 2020, reflecting (via Zoom) on how he got here, Davis is far more comfortable than he was the day he got the call. It’s another sunny day in South Pasadena, where he lives with his wife, Libby, and their two young children, and a rare off day for the broadcaster who staggers his time with the Dodgers to also call college football, college basketball, NFL football, and national MLB games for Fox. “It feels like home to us,” he says of his family’s adopted neighborhood. “It feels like the Midwest.”
Davis was initially from Charlotte (pronounced Char-lot), a small town in Michigan, before his family moved to an even smaller town nearby, Potterville, where his family still lives. (The town in It’s a Wonderful Life is renamed “Pottersville,” with an “s,” for those trying to figure out why that sounds familiar.) His father was the high school football coach, and he was the star quarterback. “The kind of town where everybody knows everybody,” Davis says. “I had 70 kids in my graduating class.”
After getting some broadcasting experience at Beloit College in Wisconsin, Davis landed a job calling games for the Biscuits, a Double-A baseball team in Montgomery, Alabama. Soon ESPN heard his voice—a booming, precise voice that sounds like a more exuberant version of Joe Buck—and started working him into their roster. Eventually he found his way to Fox, and then to Dodger executive Lon Rosen’s office. Vin’s heir had arrived.
“My prayer for him, for anyone, is maybe the hardest thing—be yourself,” Scully told The L.A. Times in 2017, just before Davis was set to call his first full season for the Dodgers—the first season in 67 years the team was without Scully. “For the 100 years he might be there, the big thing is to be yourself.”
Alanna Rizzo, the Dodgers in-game reporter, thinks Davis has spent the last four seasons doing just that: “I think the biggest compliment I could give to Joe is that he never tried to be Vin,” she says over the phone. “He did his own method, his own style, he had his own thumbprint on things. And he respects the position and who came before him, but he isn’t trying to be anybody who he isn’t.”
In the booth, some of the initial pressure of replacing Vin was alleviated by Hershiser, whom Davis has developed a close friendship with outside of the job. They have a playful rapport calling games together, which has less of a father-son feel than you might think given the age gap.
“I think he is a very young 62 and I’m a pretty boring version of 32, so we meet in the middle,” Davis jokes. Hershiser is “Uncle Orel” to Davis’s children, and he and his wife, Dana, babysit them on Saturday mornings so Joe and Libby can have some time off from parenting. At the end of every episode of Off Air, Davis and Hershiser say something along the lines of “Love ya, buddy.” (The Bulldog took a few episodes before he started saying it back.)
“We’ve become family,” Hershiser says on the phone, with Dana in the background occasionally helping him recall various details. “He’s definitely never leaving Southern California, I can tell. They’re not going back to winter.”
Not that there was much of a choice this year. With travel restricted during the pandemic-shortened MLB season, broadcast crews have had to resort to calling away games from home—in some cases literally; Dodgers radio broadcaster Charley Steiner has been calling games from his living room. The circumstances have presented Davis with a fresh set of challenges just as he was starting to settle into the job.
“It’s just not the same without fans in there,” he laments, citing the missing energy first and foremost, as well as smaller details, like the difficulty of judging the ball off the bat when you don’t have a crowd reaction as a guide. Also, the whole thing is just plain weird: “It’s odd to walk into Dodger Stadium and there’s ten or 15 of us,” says Hershiser.
But for a while it seemed like this season wasn’t even going to make it this far, especially after COVID-19 outbreaks hit the Marlins and Cardinals clubhouses in early summer. The Dodgers were lucky to only miss one scheduled 2020 game, which occurred when new star Mookie Betts led a team-wide protest in light of the civil unrest in the country. (“Seeing…those platforms now being used, with so many eyes on [them], it’s a really cool thing,” says Davis.)
Whether or not it was a good idea to play at all this year, the Dodgers are heading into the postseason with the best record in baseball—and the most to prove: This is the first season since it was revealed that the Astros cheated in 2017, the year they beat the Dodgers in the World Series. Rizzo calls that title “tainted.” Hershiser has called it “stolen,” and was nearly in tears on Off Air when talking about how it had affected players like Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner, veterans who can never get back what was taken from them.
For his part, though, Davis will have to remain steadfastly neutral in the postseason, as he’ll be calling games on Fox for a national audience. His last moment to really let loose for the Dodgers in 2020 already came and went—when they won the division for the eighth straight time.
“Even in a year where not much in the world seems normal, a dose of the familiar,” Davis said on the air, relishing the moment. “The best in the West, unchanged.”
In the already iconic words of CNN host Jake Tapper, the first presidential debate—if you can call it that—was a “hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck.” The worst debate anyone’s ever been forced to sit through. A shitshow.
Chris Wallace seemed incapable (or unwilling) to rein in Trump, doing little more than politely admonishing him for refusing to abide by the rules of engagement and allowing him to speak over former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump was also given ample time to sow seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of the election and to repeat talking points about mail-in voting being vulnerable to widespread fraud (which is not true). Of course, Trump and his herd of followers still seem to think the president was treated unfairly by the Fox News host.
While some are suggesting that Americans have already been through enough and shouldn’t be subjected to another debate, the second spectacle is coming up on October 15 and will be moderated by C-SPAN political editor Steve Scully. Another news network talking head? Twitter had more creative ideas. Here are five we saw while scrolling social media in search of levity.
Samuel L. Jackson
A meme reading, “I said two minutes, motherfucker,” made the rounds last night.
» During a nearly unwatchable, trying, depressing first presidential debate, Donald “Fine People on Both Sides” Trump refused to denounce violent racist groups when directly asked by moderator Chris Wallace if he’d do so. Instead he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” and said that “almost everything I’m seeing is from the left-wing.” [The Hollywood Reporter]
» Parking restrictions in L.A. could be enforced again as early as Thursday. The City Council will meet today to vote on a schedule for phasing back in enforcement of street cleaning, abandoned vehicle, and other infractions. Enforcement was paused in March due to the pandemic. [Daily News]
» An increasing number of landlords are calling the cops about tenant disputes on the first of the month each month. According to Crosstown, “Rent-day service calls for disputes between tenants and landlords were low early in the year, then began rising as the spread of the coronavirus led to many business shutdowns and job losses.” [Crosstown]
» L.A. County will allow the reopening of outdoor service at breweries, wineries, and card rooms starting next week. The decision split the Board of Supervisors and, one member of the board stated, contradicted advice on the matter given by Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer. [Los Angeles Times]
» Westfield, the largest operator of indoor shopping malls in the region, is suing the county over COVID-19 restrictions. The company alleges that allowing outdoor malls and shopping centers to operate, but excluding indoor facilities, is “unjustifiable.”[NBC Los Angeles]
» As many companies look to making work-from-home permanent, Netflix is going the opposite direction. The entertainment giant has signed its biggest office lease in L.A. yet, taking on 171,000 square feet in Burbank to house an animation studio. [L.A. Business Journal]
» Want to make dropping off your ballot a little more exciting? These local museums, sports arenas, concert venues, and other popular landmarks–many closed for months due to COVID–are all opening up to serve as early voting centers. [Time Out L.A.]
Beloved Pasadena Bookstore Vroman’s Needs Help Weathering the Pandemic
Vroman’s Bookstore has weathered a lot of storms since it opened its doors in 1894—including a influenza pandemic back in 1918—but the COVID-19 crisis has proven a tough customer. On Monday, the Colorado Boulevard landmark issued a plea for help via email and social media, asking customers to shop in store (particularly on less-crowded weekday mornings) and online, and to spread the word about their “local indie.”
As Disneyland’s months-long closure continues, the company announced Tuesday that its Parks, Experiences, and Products division will be laying off as many as 28,000 employees, 67 percent of them part-time workers.
In a statement, theme parks chairman Josh D’Amaro blamed the pandemic, as well as California’s refusal to allow theme parks to reopen. The State of Florida allowed Disney World to reopen with limited capacity in July, even as COVID-19 cases spiked in the state. Disneyland, which closed on March 12, is the only Disney theme park that has yet to reopen in some capacity (although the Downtown Disney outdoor shopping and dining district is currently open).
“In light of the prolonged impact of COVID-19 on our business, including limited capacity due to physical distancing requirements and the continued uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic—exacerbated in California by the State’s unwillingness to lift restrictions that would allow Disneyland to reopen—we have made the very difficult decision to begin the process of reducing our workforce at our Parks, Experiences and Products segment at all levels, having kept non-working Cast Members on furlough since April, while paying health care benefits,” D’Amaro’s statement says.
A week earlier, D’Amaro issued a plea to California Governor Gavin Newsom and state health officials to allow theme parks to provide guidance on theme park reopening, warning that the closure could ultimately have a “devastating” impact on Orange County’s economy.
“We need guidelines that are fair and equitable, so that we can better understand our future and chart a path towards reopening,” D’Amaro said. “The longer we wait, the more devastating the impact will be to Orange County and the Anaheim communities and the tens of thousands of people who rely on us for employment. With the right guidelines and our years of operations experience, I am confident that we can restart and get people back to work.”
Several weeks ago, California released a color-coded, four-tier reopening blueprint that lays out what businesses can operate—and at what capacity—as counties begin reaching certain infection rates. At the moment, amusement parks do not appear as a sector on the blueprint.
Aside from the matter of a certain $73 million tax refund that the IRS would like to discuss with Donald Trump, the New York Times’ investigation into 20 years of Trump tax returns also reveals that the former reality TV star took $70,000 in tax deductions for hairstyling during his years on The Apprentice. According to at least one entertainment industry tax expert, this proves that Trump is as hapless a tax cheat as he is a businessman.
Sandra Karas, the secretary-treasurer of the stage actor union Actors’ Equity tells Deadline, “It made me laugh when I saw it in the paper. The first thing I thought was, ‘That’s not deductible.’”
Karas, an accountant and tax attorney who helps members fill out their tax returns as the head of Equity’s Volunteer Tax Assistance program, says it’s “unheard of” for stars of a successful show to pay for their own hair and makeup.
As for Trump doling out his own cash to maintain his savage ‘do during 14 stupefying seasons of The Apprentice, Karas says, “I can’t imagine it. I can’t imagine that a celebrity would have to worry about maintaining a hairdo, especially for a show that was as long-running as his was.
Karas, who is also an actress, says that a legitimate tax deduction “has to be ordinary and necessary to the work, and not provided by your employer, but required of the job. If I’m required to do my own hair and makeup for a gig of some kind, then I would be able to deduct it as ordinary and necessary to that job. If I am provided hair and makeup, then I can’t take that deduction. It would be the same if they reimbursed me for anything else. If the producer said, ‘We’re going to fly you out to Los Angeles to do a TV pilot,’ then I can’t turn around and deduct the cost of the airfare, because they’ve already paid for it. The IRS would say, ‘No, no. Your contract called for your employer to provide this.’ I can’t imagine a celebrity not having all of that provided for—wardrobe, hair, makeup—everything.”
Karas tells Deadline that she often has to advise members that daily upkeep of their look isn’t a write-off.
“I say, ‘That’s all well and good, but none of that is deductible, except maybe the cost when you do your hair and makeup for your website or your headshot. That’s a straight advertising expense.’ But as an ongoing upkeep, it’s not tax deductible.”
According to NPR, U.S. Tax Court has repeatedly ruled that the cost of personal maintenance isn’t tax deductible, even for performers. In 2011, that court ruled against an Ohio TV news anchor who wanted to write off her personal care services. Expenses “for manicures, grooming, teeth whitening, and skin care are inherently personal expenditures,” the ruling says.
To Karas of Actors’ Equity, the idea that it could cost a fortune to manage Trump’s DayGlo mane was not the surprising part.
“I wasn’t shocked that it cost $70,000, but I was shocked that he was deducting it—that he said he had to pay for it and was deducting it on his tax returns; that he said it was a business expense,” she tells Deadline. “Maybe he paid somebody all that money to do his hair every year. That might make sense to somebody. But that it’s a business expense? No. I don’t believe that his producer forced him to pay $70,000 to get his hair done for the show.”
Actors’ Equity endorsed Joe Biden for President last week, saying he “has worked to undermine workers’ rights. From gun control to Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, he has stood against protections our members not only support but need to survive.”
Whether or not his creative accounting is legit, Trump may have given some Americans an idea. On Monday, Google searches for “hair cut” and “write off” spiked.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed what is being called the “Kobe Bryant Law,” a new ban on first responders taking photos of deceased victims at the site of any crime or accident for purposes other than those directly relating to law enforcement.
Once the law goes into effect on January 1, 2021, any officers, paramedics, or others on the scene who take photos or videos for their own purposes can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined up to $1,000 per violation. The bill was proposed by Los Angeles-area state assembly member Mike Gipson.
Proud to report that my bill, The #KobeBryant Act of 2020, was signed today by @GavinNewsom. #AB2655 will prohibit first responders from taking photos of the deceased outside of job duties. #caleg
The signing comes as Kobe Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, moves forward with a lawsuit against the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, after deputies were reported to have passed around cell phone photos taken at the crime scene. According to a complaint lodged with the department three days after the fatal January 26 helicopter crash, a young officer was seen showing photos of the gruesome scene to fellow patrons at a Norwalk sports bar.
Vanessa Bryant’s suit claims deputies engaged in negligence, invasion of privacy, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress. An initial court filing in May, obtained by People, asserts that the widow t personally asked Sheriff Alex Villanueva to declare the crash site a no-fly zone and to protect it from unauthorized photography to ensure privacy on the morning of the accident.
“In reality, however, no fewer than eight sheriff’s deputies were at the scene snapping cell-phone photos of the dead children, parents, and coaches,” the suit states. “As the Department would later admit, there was no investigative purpose for deputies to take pictures at the crash site. Rather, the deputies took photos for their own personal purposes.”
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