Random News: June 5, 2022

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good afternoon. It’s June 5, 2022, and it’s a Sunday. Various “hope I’m not getting sick with _____” randomness ahead…

• I’ve been missing in action for a few days because I’ve been working like a real adult human person.
• I was at a trade show that I’ve worked with exhibiting companies all the way back to 1993. Anyone who’s ever exhibited at a trade show knows it’s grueling work no matter what your role is.
• The show I’ve done every year (with the exception of 2021 for obvious reasons) is called NAMM. It’s for musical instruments, professional audio, and related products and services.
• My role at the show is being the mouthpiece for my clients. In recent years, I mostly use the show to gather content in the form of live videos… product spotlights, interviews with musicians, and so on.
• Anyway, that’s where I’ve been.
• NAMM is a huge event that in pre-pandemic years attracted well over 100,000 visitors for all over the planet. That was not the case this year. Many international attendees didn’t bother coming, being unsure of the state of things, and attendance was down by over 50%.
• That being said, my clients’ booths were packed, and it was the first time since the start of the pandemic that I’ve been in a huge, crowded indoor public space beyond a restaurant meal.
• Were most people wearing masks? Definitely not. I’d say maybe 20% of the people I saw at the entire show were masked.
• Was I wearing a mask? Yes and no. I’m doing live video interviews and I need to be intelligible in an already noisy environment. I’d try and mask up in between shoots, but I was 100% definitely in close proximity to hundreds and hundreds of people for hours at a time.
• I am fully vaccinated and double boosted against COVID. That doesn’t mean that I’m impervious to every virus and bacteria that is so omnipresent at that show that we have a name for it in our industry: NAMMThrax.
• I have never gotten COVID. I really don’t ever want to get COVID.
• That being said, I am definitely testing to make sure I escaped the show unscathed. It’s difficult to tell the difference between my throat which is ravaged from screaming at the show versus the awful allergies going around versus something more serious.
• Enough about me.
• I can’t mention each time there’s a mass shooting in this little report, because they happen daily now. Last night it was three dead and 11 others hit by gunfire in Philly. 
• While I was writing this, another mass shooting happened in Chattanooga. Three dead, 14 injured.
• Mental illness, videos games, weed, porn… these things are prevalent around the planet. But mass shootings on a near daily basis? That’s exclusive to the USA. 
• I’m celebrating my return home from the show with a huge-ass breakfast burrito and it’s amazing. I thought you should know.
• From the sports desk, The Celtics are up 1-0 over the Warriors in the NBA Finals. In the NHL Conference Finals, the Rangers have 2-zip lead over the Lightning in the East, and the Avs are whopping ass on the Oilers with a 3-0 lead in the West.
• Today in history… 1851: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin begins publication. 1944: Britain bombs the shit out of German gun batteries in preparation for D-Day. 1989: The “Tank Man” halts the progress of advance tanks at the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.
• June 5 is the birthday of Mexican general Pancho Villa (1878), experimental art musician Laurie Anderson (1947), drummer Nicko McBrain (1952), and NFL player Sam Darnold (1997).

Anyway, I’m back. That’s just weird. Where am I? You’re reading words that I wrote in the past and I’m not in the place I was when I wrote them while you read them. Does the present exist? When is now? And where am I? Enjoy your day.