Lucille Ball Comedy Festival goes virtual in its 29th year
LOS ANGELES – The annual Lucille Ball Comedy Festival is going virtual with help from Tiffany Haddish, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Margaret Cho, “Weird Al” Yankovic and more than two-dozen others working in the realm of humor. The festival, presented by the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York, will stream conversations with the artists over three weekends, starting Friday and running through Aug. 30. Other pairings include Cho with host and fellow comedian Judy Gold (10 p.m. EDT Friday); Haddish with comedian Flame Monroe (8 p.m. EDT Aug. 22); political satirist Mark Russell with Lewis Black (8 p.m. EDT Aug. 28). The 29th annual festival will pay tribute to Carl Reiner, the filmmaker and creator of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” who died in June. A rare Reiner interview from the center's archives will be shown at 8 p.m. EDT Aug. 30, with humorist Paula Poundstone hosting.
Virus coordinator Birx is Trump's data-whisperer
FILE - In this March 20, 2020, file photo President Donald Trump listens as White House coronavirus response coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House in Washington. Birx will bring to the discussion what she fondly refers to as her sheet music — data on testing, mortality, demographics and much more. “What the president has asked us to do is to assemble all the data and give him our best medical recommendation based on all the data,” Birx told reporters. As the president’s message has vacillated, Birx has emerged as one of the most important voices laying out the administration’s pandemic response. “He’s been so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data,” Birx told CBN.