The Daily Dose/November 13, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.  

Leading Off will return.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest from the gym.   

Yours truly used to be a lot stronger in the bench press, being able to move 220 ten times every time, with a PB of 14 which wasn’t too bad and there was even a one-rep max of 325 which allows you to hold your head high at the Bench Press Convention…But that was years ago and there is still no reason presenting itself why bench press strength is not what it used to be when every other exercise is. 

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On This Date
The long march to today.

In 1927 – The Holland Tunnel – the first tunnel under the Hudson River connecting New York and New Jersey – opens to the public. Construction had begun in 1922 and at the time it was the longest underwater vehicular tunnel in the world, an honor now held by the Channel Tunnel connecting England and France. The toll at the time was 50 cents (about $7 in today’s money) and today is $`16- a bit less for pass holders – which is only charged for trips into New York City. The tunnel was named for Clifford Holland, the project’s chief engineer, who had died before the tunnel opened.

In 1975 – John Marks of the Chicago Blackhawks sets a new NHL record for the fastest two goals at the beginning of a game in a 5-5 tie against the Philadelphia Flyers. Marks had two goals in the first 33 seconds, the first at the 14-second mark of the first period. Marks broke the record of 96 seconds established by Bill Hicke of the Oakland Seals on Oct 17, 1969 and the record is now held by Mike Knuble of the Boston Bruins, who had two goals in the first 27 seconds of a game in February 2003. 

In 1976 – Rod Stewart is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of eight consecutive weeks with Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright). It was the fifth of 28 Top 40m hits for Stewart, his second of 14 Top 10 hits and his second of three #1 songs. Due to when it charted it was Billboard’s biggest song of 1977, its second-biggest of the decade and ranked 19th on Billboard’s 60th anniversary Hot 100 in 2018.

Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

The strong are saying nothing until they see.
Robert Frost

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

The Stanley Cup was won twelve times at Maple Leaf Gardens: eight times by the Maple Leafs, twice by the New York Rangers and once each by the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Canadiens. 

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

What NHL team holds the record for the fastest two goals at the start of a game? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/November 12, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.  

Leading Off will return.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: At the hotel, Sparrow frets over whether or not to open a new box of coffee. 

…change it and have more coffee than you need in the limited space offered in the back coffee room (BCR) or leave it and risk having someone else change it and not getting the new knife some work…As it was, I ended up forgetting about it, but we’re pretty slow right now and the old box still has a good amount of coffee packets in it and may well still be there two days from now.

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On This Date
The long march to today.

In 1980 – The American spacecraft Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Saturn, flying within 77,000 miles of the top of Saturn’s clouds. It measured Saturn’s atmosphere at 93% hydrogen and 11% helium and wind speed at its equator at about 1,100 mph from the east. Voyager 1 had been launched in September 1977 and had flown by Jupiter the previous March and reached interstellar space in 2012. Voyager 2 has traveled over 14 billion miles and is currently the farthest man-made object from Earth. 

1931 – Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto hosts its first NHL game, the Chicago Blackhawks defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs 2-1. The arena was built in only five months, no small feat in the middle of the Great Depression, and ticket prices ranged from 95 cents to $2.75 CAD, about $12.52-$36.25 in current United States dollars. Maple Leaf Gardens closed after the 1999 season after hosting 2,541 NHL games. Before, home games had been played at the Mutual Street Arena.

In 1966 – Johnny Rivers is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the only week with Poor Side of Town. The song spent 15 weeks on the chart, twelve of them in the Top 40, seven of them in the Top 10. It was the tenth of 17 Top 40 hits for Rivers, his fifth of nine Top 10 hits and remains his only #1 song. The song also went to #1 in Canada and was Billboard’s 18th biggest hit of 1966. In 1969 a version by Al Wilson peaked at #75 on the Hot 100.

Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion…the lofty enthusiasm, of the men who quell the storm and ride the thunder.
Theodore Roosevelt
The Man in the Arena Speech
4/23/1910
The Sorbonne, Paris 

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

The record for the largest crowd at a football game is 156,990 at Bristol (TN) Motor Speedway on Sept 10, 2016. Tennessee defeated Virginia Tech 45-24. 

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

How many Stanley Cup titles were won at Maple Leaf Gardens? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/November 10, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Friends, your Daily Dose is taking a mental health day and will return tomorrow. We do have the usual daily crap for you, though.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest creamer news from the hotel.   

A new shipment was there when I reported for duty: two boxes each of half and half, hazelnut and French Vanilla…Ol’ Sparrow had to restock the rack with French vanilla because that is what we were out of, but we can again offer three creamers for Morning Coffee Service (MCS), which is good for morale. 

(Putting the creamers in the rack was a hassle, tho, because yours truly can never seem to get them to line up properly…I can get three creamers on the first couple of rows, but by the time we get to the final row, everything is so unaligned only two will fit.)

The Bottom Ten/NFL Week 11: This one is pretty funny. It wasn’t put in the Hall of Fame like yesterday’s NCAA Bottom Ten, but it’s still packed with laughs. The Bottom Ten is free to you this season.

6. NFC East (9-24) – With three (3) two (2)-win teams all tied for second behind three (3)-win Eagles, NFC East easy pick for coveted, weekly, Pete Rozelle Award, issued to league’s worst division…Division so bad NFL expected to make champion play play-in game vs Jets for final playoff spot.

Columns, books, shopping lists, click here to get in on the laughs.
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The Daily Dose/November 10, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.  

USA! USA! It’s common to joke that 70 million people – and counting – saw the ignorance and the incompetence of Donald Trump, the meanness and the idiocy, the blood on his hands from his inept handling of the coronavirus and said sure, sign me up for four more years of this. 

Gaylon For US Senate…Vote Early, Vote Often…Or Not: This really wasn’t the case though. We know from having run for the United States Senate this year that by and large Trump’s supporters boiled this election down to two things: freedom vs socialism. We heard it many times, those very words. As big a presidential election as we’ve had boiled down to watchwords and catchphrases. 

Dry, Technical Matter: We deserved better than this, but this is what the GOP, rather brilliantly, blathered every hour on the hour, a message as effective as it was insulting to those looking at this election objectively.  It appealed to the Republican’s most basic worries: a vote for Biden is a vote for illegals taking your job and a vote to take your guns away. Neither is true, of course, but that doesn’t matter, if it ever did.  

Broad, Historical Context: The GOP hasn’t produced a decent elected president since Eisenhower. (Ford, who did well in circumstances God would have found trying, was not elected.) and Trump is the end of a line going straight down, not easy to do when the list includes Nixon and the second President Bush. 

The Bottom Line: We get the government we deserve, and as long as we insist on not thinking for ourselves and accepting what others choose to spoon-feed us, our country will continue moving from the influence we once had to the oblivion that awaits us. We took a small step back to respectability with Joe Biden’s election, but collectively more steps will be needed. 

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest morning coffee service news from the hotel.  

The big news is we are all out of spare French vanilla creamers in the back…There are still some out front, but when those are gone that’s it, no more until a new shipment arrives…This has resulted in some adjustments on the Morning Coffee Service (MCS) front lines…Usually, there are three rows of French vanilla creamer next to two rows of hazelnut (with five rows of half and half in front of them) but ol’ Sparrow was obliged to make some changes “in the field” before letting MCS go live…There weren’t enuff French vanilla creamers for three rows – stacked two high – so I made two French creamer rows and added sufficient hazelnut creamers to make three rows. 

The Bottom Ten/NCAA Week 11: Every team ranked this week is unvictoried, a Bottom Ten first. Join the race for ESPNCup and one of the funniest Bottom Tens ever. It’s on the house in 2020, too.

2. Vanderbilt (0-4; lost to Mississippi State 24-17)
Mitigating Factors: Offense getting smiley face on playbooks for being accommodating guests, turning ball over four (4) times…Defense taken out back for whoopin’ after only giving up 14 points off these turnovers, as coaching staff knows this will be key down B-10 homestretch…Commodores 0-5 for first time this century and eighth time ever.
FunFact: Commodores still smarting from turn of century decision to merge Athletic, Student Affairs departments as linebackers sent to help out in training room inadvertently tape ankles together instead of individually.
Next Loss: at Kentucky

Columns, books, shopping lists, click here to get in on the laughs.
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On This Date
The long march to today.

In 1969 – The television program Sesame Street debuts on National Educational Television. The show was funded by an $8 million grant (about $56 million in today’s money) from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the US government. Over the years the show has won eleven Grammy Awards and 150 Emmy Awards, the most of any children’s show. Today original episodes air on HBO Max, then later on PBS and the show is taped in New York City. 

In 1957 – An NFL-record crowd of 102,368 watches in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as the Los Angeles Rams defeat the San Francisco 49ers 37-24. The record would stand until 1977, when 103,438 attended Super Bowl XI at the Rose Bowl and is now 105,121, done at Cowboys Stadium on September 20, 2009. The Rams had moved from Cleveland after the 1945 season and the 49ers had formed in 1946 in the All-America Football Conference and joined the NFL in 1950. 

In 1958 – Cozy Cole is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot R&B Sides chart – for the third of six consecutive weeks with Topsy II. The song was Cole’s first chart single and remains his only soul chart appearance. The song also peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 and another version of the song, Topsy I, would hit the chart the next week, marking one of the few times in Hot 100 history one act has had two versions of the same song on the chart simultaneously. 

Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

In Athens, as in other states, cleverness gets all that it can, and mediocrity gets the rest.
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization, Vol II: The Life of Greece

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

The NCAA major division football record for most points in a career is held by Keenan Reynolds of Navy, who scored 530 points between 2012-15. 

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

What is the record for the largest crowd at any football game in the United States? – Answer next time!

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