Good morning, its Wednesday.
Even though the last hurrah of summer (AKA Labor Day) is still a few days away, I’m already starting to experience the pre-long weekend drop off from calls and last-minute cancellations. I’m not mad about it, per se, just noticing.
This is as good a time as any to provide a programming note: There will be no “Rise and Shine” this Friday, Aug. 30; or Monday, Sept. 2, due to the holiday. Don’t worry, I’ll remind you again tomorrow.
I was a big cartoon fan as a child. My TV watching time was limited during the week, but on the weekends I was allowed to park myself in front of our old set for a few hours at a time.
I mostly enjoyed the Looney Toons classics – Bugs Bunny, Tweety & Sylvester, Tom & Jerry, etc. As I got a little older, and had fewer TV restrictions (mostly because I was a latch-key kid and mom wasn’t home in the afternoons to prevent me from doing homework in front of the set), I expanded my cartoon viewing to things like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which I really liked a lot for reasons that are lost to me now.
I missed the Power Rangers by a few years. By the time they were first released on this day in 1993 on the Fox Kids programming block, I had already graduated from high school and was well into my college experience.
I knew of the Power Rangers, of course. It was hard to miss them, as they became a significant phenomenon throughout the 1990s. How popular was the show? Well, consider this: The line of Power Ranger action figures and other toys reportedly generated more than $6 billion in sales by 2001, which would make them one of the era’s best-selling playthings for kids.
In case you’re unfamiliar, the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, as it’s officially known, was based on a live-action superhero TV series, based on the Japanese tokusatsu franchise Super Sentai. The basic premise is as follows:
A group of “teenagers with attitude” – Zachary, Kimberly, Billy, Trini, Jason and Tommy – are selected by a wise sage named Zordon to save the world from an evil sorceress named Rita Repulsa and her 10,000 minions who are accidentally released from prison by some unsuspecting astronauts.
Zordon gives the teens the ability to transform into a fighting force and grants them each unique abilities and weapons – including a series of assault vehicles called “Zords” that can themselves transform into a giant humanoid robot called “Megazorn.”
The Rangers are differentiated from one another by the color of their suits. The Red Ranger is the leader. There’s also Black, Yellow, Blue and Pink Rangers, along with a Green/White Ranger. Yeah, I know, it’s starting to get confusing. And this is JUST scraping the surface.
If you really want to go deep, click here, but it might take you a while to wade through it all. There are some REALLY big Power Rangers fans out there.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This all seems fairly innocuous to me – again, speaking from the standpoint of a complete Power Rangers neophyte. But apparently there have been some very strong reactions to the show over the years.
For example, parents in New Zealand felt the show had a bad influence on their children, causing them to act violently in an effort to replicate the Rangers’ fighting moves. As a result, the show was banned in New Zealand until 2011. It was also briefly banned in Malaysia because some felt the word “morphin'” was too close to “morphine” and thus encouraged and/or glorified drug use.
Yeah, you can’t make this stuff up. Anyway, happy Power Rangers anniversary – definitely a cultural touchstone for a lot of people of a certain age.
It’s going to be overcast today with the possibility of a stray shower or thunderstorm. Temperatures will be in the low 80s.
In the headlines…
Federal prosecutors issued a revised version of an indictment accusing Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, stripping out some charges to help it survive the Supreme Court’s ruling granting former presidents broad immunity for official acts in office.
“The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings,” Special counsel Jack Smith explained.
The first rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced to more than four years in prison, federal prosecutors announced.
Members of Trump’s campaign team and an official at Arlington National Cemetery confronted each other during the former president’s visit to the cemetery on Monday, the military cemetery said in a statement.
Trump announced for a second time that he would participate in a presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris hosted by ABC News and suggested the question of whether microphones will be muted when a candidate isn’t speaking had been resolved.
But a person briefed on the Harris campaign’s thinking said the issue of whether the microphones will be muted — something the Trump team favors and the Harris team does not — remains an open discussion. A spokesman for ABC declined to comment.
While Trump and Harris, the Democratic nominee, differ greatly in their campaign proposals, both of their parties are increasingly embracing tariffs as an essential tool in protecting American manufacturers from Chinese and other global competitors.
Harris will give her first interview as a presidential nominee tomorrow to CNN — in a high-stakes test of her ability to defend her record and policies after weeks of avoiding such an exchange. She’ll be joined by her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s daughter said in a magazine interview that her father once chainsawed the head off a dead whale. The Center for Biological Diversity, a progressive environmental organization, has called on federal authorities to investigate.
As dangerous heat bears down on the central and eastern United States this week, a new study shows that heat-related deaths across the country are on the rise.
While 2023 was the hottest year on record and led to at least 2,325 heat-related deaths in the U.S., more than 21,518 people have died from heat since 1999, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association.
A man on Long Island has been arrested and charged with possessing a knife and wearing a face mask in public, a milestone moment in the debate over whether to criminalize masks in New York State.
The scope of a storm that battered Suffolk County came into stark view as Gov. Kathy Hochul visited hard-hit areas, put the damage cost at Stony Brook University at $22 million and pledged aid would soon be on the way for eligible homeowners and businesses.
The state Illicit Cannabis Enforcement Task Force aimed at cracking down on unlicensed marijuana sales across New York state has completed its three-month mission and is no longer active, according to Hochul’s office.
“If congestion pricing is not flipped on by the inauguration, then it would be very vulnerable to a new Trump administration,” said Michael Gerrard, a professor at Columbia Law School who has helped coordinate the lawsuits against Hochul.
A lawsuit challenging the legality of New York’s ongoing regulatory raids of licensed hemp stores was filed against the state Office of Cannabis Management, accusing the agency and its oversight board of “trampling on hemp retailers’ constitutional rights.”
The National Center for Education Statistics reported about three-quarters of the nation’s districts prohibited the non-academic use of cellphones during the school day for the 2021-22 school year. But students often ignore the rules or enforcement is lax.
Mayor Eric Adams poured cold water on an imminent citywide school cell phone ban, citing a number of remaining obstacles and saying New York City is “not there yet.”
Holdups include getting parents on board and figuring out the finances of the program, Adams said, adding that he does not “want to go backward after we make the determination.”
After months of saber rattling between the New York City Council and Adams over his choice of Randy Mastro to become the city’s top lawyer, Mastro finally got his chance to plead his own case yesterday.
During the Council subcommittee hearing, Mastro emphasized his record of taking on pro bono cases. “Let me address the real elephant in the room,” Mastro said. “To those who just say I’ll be the mayor’s lawyer, they don’t know me.”
“Madam Speaker, I would be the best lawyer ever, just give me the opportunity I implore you,” Mastro, who worked in the Giuliani administration, pleaded to City Council members over his dream job. “I will earn your trust.”
Mastro said he would recuse himself from a variety of cases involving past clients who have been fighting to upend key city-backed policies, such as building emissions restrictions, rent regulations and congestion pricing.
Bridget Anne Kelly, a former aide to Gov. Chris Christie implicated for her role in the Bridgegate scandal, excoriated Mastro at the hearing – a decade after he issued a report derided for exonerating Christie and scapegoating an “emotional” Kelly for the scheme.
Adams is putting up $1,000 of his own money to help catch the wrong-way driver who killed a groom-to-be just one day before his wedding last weekend.
I’m asking New Yorkers if you know of any information that can lead to apprehending this person who appeared to have left the scene, I’m just going to put $1,000 of my own personal money to call for the arrest and conviction of this person,” the mayor said.
New video shows what a proposed glitzy $12 billion casino complex in Hudson Yards will look like from the High Line. The animated rendering of the proposal by Related Companies and Wynn Resorts is partly aimed at countering opposition from park advocates.
One-third of the requests for medical care for detainees at Rikers Island went unfulfilled last year, and most detainees who were taken to the infirmary were not seen within required legal timelines, according to a new government report.
Newly unveiled text messages show NYPD officers responding to a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest encouraged one another to “HAVE FUN” and “Kick their a–” before police beat, pepper-sprayed and arrested hundreds, according to copies of the messages.
A lawsuit brought against the city and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg by a Harlem bodega worker jailed after a fatal stabbing over a bag of potato chips was all but dismissed by a federal magistrate judge.
After four years prowling Central Park solo, a coyote has been joined by a companion that recently arrived from parts unknown. Researchers at the Gotham Coyote Project say the match likely happened late last year, when they first spotted the female
The state Department of Health has completed a “staffing deficiency report” on Albany Medical Center Hospital, which was done at the behest of the nurses union whose members say there is an inadequate number of fellow nurses there.
A Black couple from Massachusetts is seeking millions in damages from the Ballston Spa police and the village after, they allege, two officers unleashed racist language, deployed pepper spray on oneand threatened both with a Taser during a traffic stop.
A month before taking its Men’s Mid-Amateur to Schuyler Meadows, the New York State Golf Association confirmed that the age-25-and-older championship will return to the area next year.
The Great Escape amusement park was recently rated as the “top-value” among the Six Flags properties in North America by the software firm QR Code Generator Pro SL.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
