Summary
➡ Protests led by Al Sharpton are objecting to the resignation of Harvard’s Claudine Gay, citing issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The campaign argues Gay was wrongfully targeted due to plagiarism accusations and race.
➡ TGI Fridays is closing 36 of its underperforming locations, primarily in New Jersey, in a move to concentrate resources on over 200 other operating branches. The decision came after efforts to innovate the menu failed to attract customers who criticized the decline in food quality.
➡ The speaker discusses the ongoing closures of several Fridays restaurants, shares nostalgic memories of simpler times when enjoyment wasn’t contingent on wealth, laments the current emphasis on materialism in society, and advises to focus on enjoyment and relationships rather than impressing others with material possessions.
Transcript
I got you, baby. We going to get there. So in 2005, an Air Force veteran woman in Los Angeles said that they was in a hotel room and that Ti and Tiny assaulted her or they’re accusing them of drugging and raping the woman. All right, let me break it down a little bit more. According to reports, the Grammy winning rapper Ti and his wife escape member Tiny have been accused of sexual assault in a new lawsuit filed by an anonymous woman in Los Angeles.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court and reviewed by different publications, the plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, claims that Ti and Tiny, whose real name is Clifford and Tamika Harris, drugged and raped her in a hotel room in 2005. She also alleges that the couple may have victimized other women. Sound like a me too movement coming. Doe’s complaint says she was in her early twenty s at the time of the alleged incident.
Again, this is 2005 and we in 2024, so she probably in her forty s now and that she was stationed in LA as a member of the US Air Force. She claims that Tiny gave her a drink at a club and shortly after she accompanied the couple to a hotel room with two other unknown women. Doe alleges that Ti and Tiny sexually assaulted her while she was dizzy and lightheaded before she lost consciousness.
She says she suspects that the couple engaged in similar behavior with other women. Ti, 43, and Tiny, 48, denied the allegations in a statement provided to the publications by an attorney saying that this plaintiff has been threatening to file this lawsuit for three years. For three years, we have emphatically and categorically denied these allegations. For three years we have maintained our innocence and refused to pay these extortionate demands.
They saying they’re being extorted and I believe them. And I’m not even necessarily a fan of ti like that. I love his music, don’t necessarily love what he represented, especially from a political perspective, but we able to separate the two. And he’s saying that for three years this person has been trying to get some money out of them and extort them. And we’ve maintained the same position while the claims of this story have changed from time and time again, our position is clear.
We’re innocent of these fake claims. We will not be shaken down, and we look forward to our day in court. Those complaint alleges that t I and Tiny have an infamous reputation for drugging, kidnapping, falsely imprisoning, raping, and assaulting women, and forcing them to engage in sexual acts with the couple for their own sexual gratification. Citing a 2021 New York Times article wherein multiple individuals, including Jane Doe, accused the couple of assault, the accusers also enlisted a lawyer at the time to request criminal inquiries from law enforcement.
Los Angeles prosecutors previously declined to pursue charges against T I and Tiny in the legend incident with Doe, citing the statue of limitations. Doe’s complaint Tuesday was filed on the California Sexual Abuse and Cover up Accountability act, which extended the statue of limitations for sexual abuse claims. So basically, tion tiny is saying that they trying to extort them. This woman is trying to make sure that she get the bag from them and it’s been almost 19 years and she’s still becoming a pest.
And let this be a lesson. Let this be a lesson to the people. Keep people out of your bedroom, keep people out of your business. And you got to have a level of discipline so that you don’t find yourself. Just because you got off in the hotel room don’t necessarily mean that it’s not going to come back to bite you from somebody that even consented from doing things with you.
It just ain’t worth it. You can stay out of it. You don’t have to be bothered with it, and then you can keep it moving. And other news. Big head Sharpton and I’m going to be reading that super chat shortly. Shout out to Mike Jones and AbJs. Big head Sharpton is protesting offices diversity, equity and inclusion, including pressures to force Claudine gay from Harvard, the previous Harvard president, from resigning from her position.
Take a look. If we don’t get it, if we don’t get it, if we don’t get it. Don’t touch that. No peace. No touch. No peace. No peace. No peace. Here’s El Shark with the peace. I can’t hear you. What do we do when Dei is under attack? What do we do? What do we do? These people can’t even get on one accord with what it is that they chant.
They can’t even stay on beat with the chant. What do we do? We stand up. Stand up. Standing up and fighting in the back. Not have to have Dei. If we didn’t have Dei of historic. So basically, they’re leveraging claims of diversity, equity, and inclusion to protest the firing of Claudine gay. Or actually the resignation. Let me not say firing the protesting of the resignation of Claudine gay based off of what she said to Congress and plagiarism accusations.
And they’re trying to say it’s a diversity, equity, and inclusion problem that got her released and that she should have kept her position, not because she should be standing on business as far as what she represented, but because she’s black. Now, I’ve taken a controversial position in this, in that I don’t know whether she plagiarized or not, but the reason why they went after her had nothing to do with the plagiarism.
But then they were uncovering different things from her past in order to get her to resign. But in no way, shape, or form am I ever going to lean on the whole black argument because there was also a white woman that resigned from a completely different college. Also, that’s not getting all of the visibility as the black woman. And so this is not a diversity, equity and inclusion position.
All you see out there protesting is geezers and please just go home. Go home. We don’t need anything else from you all. We don’t need no protesting. We don’t need y’all walking the line. I know y’all. Knees hurt. Hip replacement, knee replacements. Big head Sharpton is out there. Used to be. Allegedly, there’s stories out there that says that he used to be one of the biggest gangsters out here in the streets.
But yet, apparently, he turned his life around, put reverend before his name, and now he’s still out there wreaking havoc. Get on out there. We don’t need y’all no more. Thank y’all for the super chats. I’m gonna read that shortly. And then last but not least, TGI Fridays. Did you all know that my first official date, the first time that we actually went out officially before we got married to my wife, was at TGI Fridays.
They’re closing 36 locations. And now the details. A popular nationwide restaurant has announced is closing the doors to dozens of its locations. TGI Fridays abruptly shut down the restaurants with little notice to customers and employees. Several of those locations are in our area. Action News reporter Eliana Gomez has details tonight from Marlton. We found a sign at the entrance notifying customers that this location is closed. This is the Marlton location.
It’s one of seven in the state of New Jersey closing its doors. There’s also a location in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania. In an abrupt business move, TJ Fridays is closing 36 of its restaurants, most of them in New Jersey. At the Moralton location on Route 73, we found a U Haul parked outside and saw workers bringing old chairs and tables inside. When we asked the restaurant manager about the closure, they had no comment.
The economy is affecting all the restaurants and that’s why probably, the restaurant chain says these 36 locations were underperforming and this move to close them is in an effort to focus their efforts on the 200 plus restaurants still in operation. Friday’s us president and COO released this statement saying, quote, by strengthening our franchise model and closing underperforming stores, we are creating an unprecedented opportunity for Fridays to drive forward its vision for the future.
Why is everybody cooking in their houses or getting meal kits? Is that why they don’t want Fridays anymore? I think you still should go out and have a good time. Corporate executives had recently made menu changes to attract customers and keep up with competing chains. One customer we spoke with stopped going to Fridays because, she says, the quality of the food had gone down. The last time I was there, their food wasn’t that great.
It had really gone downhill, I think. So we used to go there. We used to go to the movies and then that would be a treat to go to the movies and then to go eat at Fridays right after that. But we really stopped. There are a couple of other Friday locations nearby, one in Cherry Hill and one in Burlington. They are not closing their doors. And right now there’s no word yet on what’s going to happen with the empty locations.
So Fridays is closing 36 locations. Some of the Fridays that I’ve driven by on the street during times where it seems like they should have been busy, it seemed like it was lackluster. I still have a love for Jack Daniel strips. I don’t even know if they still sell Jack Daniels strips. I don’t even know if they still using the name Jack Daniels because I think that it was a trademark name that they didn’t renew the license for.
But I think that people have more options. It’s very difficult to survive in a restaurant business. You got to continue to invest in yourself, reinvent yourself. A lot of people are now leveraging influencers in order to bring visibility into their restaurants. Chains is not the thing. Chicks don’t even want to go over to the Cheesecake factory no more. We went over to Fridays on our first official outing.
Didn’t cost a lot of money, right? Can’t even take a chick to Fridays no more. And she’d be okay with it. Now it’s not good enough. We got to take y’all to roof. Chris and Hanhan. Interesting. Interesting. No chilies, no Applebee’s, no Fridays. None of that. No, huh? Burger King and McDonald’s is out of the question? Listen, I’m just thankful that I came up in the time that I came up, because it was different.
We had a good time. We had it for cheap, and people was just happy to hang out and be together. Now everything is just based off of moolah. How much money you make, how much bag you got, what show, career options, what’s your credit score? We used to just have a good time. It wasn’t even about that. Nobody really was caring or checking for whether or not what somebody else’s just my memory.
Maybe I got revisionist history. Nobody cared about what nobody’s bag was. When I was coming up, we just wanted to go and have a good time. If it was a good time, we was going to be there. It didn’t matter if we was going fishing, if we was going to the park, we was going on a picnic, if we were spending money. We used to go and take trips to cedar point.
We just had a good time. Nobody cared about anything. And then eventually, everybody grew together, grew up, and they started getting money together. I mean, you go through a time where you got it or you think that you got it, money that you thought that you had. It ain’t even money compared to what you make in a day. And people just figured it out. We just wanted to have a good time.
Now everything is just so convoluted, and everybody talking about getting some bags and stuff, and everybody living paycheck to paycheck. Debt is out of control. People trying to prove stuff to other people. What happened to just having a good time? Now you got to go out, get you some Louis Vuitton, man, listen, my boots don’t even look like they cost nothing, but my boots cost $900. I don’t even say nothing.
I got on my boots, these boots right here. I buy stuff because I like them. These rain boots that I use as work boots because I don’t like tims anymore. Maybe I’m getting older. I don’t like actual, you know what I’m saying? Strings on my stuff. I don’t like tying my stuff up. But my little Burberry boots, I got the black ones and I got the brown ones.
These cost $900, but you would never know that these boots cost as much as they cost because it’s not about the cost. It’s about what makes you feel good. When I seen them, I liked them. I didn’t check for the price. I just bought them. And so it’s about what makes you feel good. It’s not about the price. Your budget will increase, and the amount that you pay for your stuff, depending on what your circumstance is, will change.
It’s going to change. It’s going to evolve. It’s just going to change naturally. But you grow. You grow, you evolve. But you don’t want to start off based off of, oh, man, he got to be making this or he got to be dressing in that. Man, I’ll be looking regular as hell, and you don’t even know. My t shirt might cost $1,000, it may cost $15. My boots may cost $1,000, or it may cost $40.
My jeans is Levi’s, but you can’t tell. My jeans cost $75 apiece. I do what I want, but I don’t do it in order to impress you. I do it because my hat was sent to me for free. My Rolex may cost 50,000 or I may have on an apple Watch. It just depends on. It depends on what I like. But everybody’s so caught up in the hype.
Caught up in impressing people instead of just having a good time. So caught up in the hype, man, just learn to like people, and then you might get you a big fish. You might get you somebody that actually care for you. But, fellas, even when you all got money, stop telling these people that you all got money, stop telling these people that you all got money. Lead with your personality.
See if they with you for the right reasons, not for whether or not you can get a bag with them. You know what I’m saying? But anyways, you know me, I go off on a tangent. That’s your quick hits, ladies and gentlemen. .