“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Step right up to the Greatest Shitshow on Earth! Ya pays your money, ya takes your chance! What will it be? Who will you choose – the Felon or the Feeb?” So says the Cosmic Carnival Barker to promote the first (and now likely only) 2024 US Presidential debate. For incumbent Joe Biden, it was an unmitigated disaster, which is an apt word for an astrologer to use, since its literal meaning is “against the stars.”
At 3:30 PM EDT on the afternoon of 12 June 2024, 86-year-old Anthony “Tony Cakes” Conigliaro walked into the crossing at 92nd Street and Dahlgren Place in Brooklyn, NY, against a “Do Not Walk” sign. He never made it across. At least, parts of him did, but Tony Cakes was struck by a local Department of Transportation truck turning the corner, crushed and decapitated, with his severed head lying several yards away from his crumpled body.
On 18 June 2024, baseball legend Willie Mays passed away, at age 93. Mays’ pro sports career began in high school with the Birmingham Black Barons, a local Negro League team, but he was picked up by the New York Giants upon graduation, spending 23 seasons in the MLB before retiring in 1973. Mays was the 1951 Rookie of the Year, and MVP for the 1954 season which brought the Giants their last World Series win before moving to San Francisco. MVP again in 1965, Mays played in two more World Series, and was chosen as an All-Star 24 times, tying the record set by Stan Musial, exceeded only by Hank Aaron. Mays spent most of his career with the Giants, but was traded to the NY Mets in 1972; he retired the following year, but continued with the organization as a coach until 1980.
Folks, this story is the shit! Literally. In the late morning of 13 June 2024, two men died in a manure tanker accident at Champion Dairy Farm in Kirkland, NY; both were volunteer firefighters. Nathan Doody, 33, was attempting to retrieve a piece of equipment that had fallen into the tanker, became overcome with fumes from the fermenting feces, and fell into the tank. Coworker Tyler Memory, 29, tried to assist, but also swooned and fell. Farm personnel called 911, the pair were recovered and medevacked to Wynn Hospital in nearby Utica, where they were pronounced dead.
On 11 June 2024, Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, was convicted in a Wilmington, Delaware courtroom on three felony counts related to drug use and gun possession. US Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss brought the case, stemming from an October 2018 purchase where Biden lied about his drug use to obtain a firearm. Charged with unlawfully possessing a gun as a drug user, lying on a federal form when he bought the gun, and making a false statement about information required to be collected by a federally licensed gun dealer, the jury took less than three hours to decide that Biden was guilty, after a trial lasting six days.
It was the shove watched ‘round the world. On Saturday, 1 June 2024, at a WNBA contest between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever, Sky guard Chennedy Carter gave a superfluous shoulder shove to Fever rookie phenom Caitlin Clark, knocking her to the floor. Clark was not in possession of the ball at the time, and the foul, later upgraded to “flagrant-1,” made local and national news across the country. Carter’s teammate Angel Reese, a former college rival of Clark’s, was seen to leap off the bench and clap at the infraction; later, she decked Clark herself with an illegal elbow move that wasn’t called by the refs. After the game, Reese was fined $1000 for failing to make herself available to the media. Despite the interference, the Indiana Fever came out on top, 71-70, with Clark adding eleven points to the scoreboard.
