Backstairs at the Monte Carlo/January 21
The Daily Dose/Friday, July 31, 2020
The Daily Dose/July 31, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from our human experience.
Leading Off will return.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: For the second consecutive Thursday, Sparrow can find no reason to leave The Shire. Today’s Diary.
But, like last week, no reason could be found to leave The Shire…After morning project work, the gym and the walk – the Fairgrounds Route – it was satisfactory to sit in the chair and read…Shopping and lunch at the Mexican joint in the next county were even put off.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Gaylon helps a drunk Scandinavian.
I said the name out loud and evidently did a pretty good job of pronouncing it.
“That was almost perfect,” R. Bjornson said. “Are you Scandinavian?”
I shook my head. Dad was an American white boy from a small town in southern Illinois and my mom is no help here either; she’s Mexican.
“I had 13 years of Lutheran schooling, though.”
R Bjornson bowed in homage.
“Say no more,” he said, nodding knowingly. Had he been sober enough to wink without falling over I think he would have.
Click here for the first two months of complimentary entries.
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables: Chapter 3 – The Escape: Our hero manfully breaks out of the nick.
In less than five minutes I had gone from prisoner to prison official, from custody to freedom. I was underground again within the hour. The assistant warden and the screw were under suspicion almost immediately after evening count turned up a missing inmate, but it didn’t matter. They had left for the day soon after and visits to their residences by the warden and some coppers showed their apartments abandoned.
Chapter 3 is offered with our compliments. Click on the button to read the entire ebook for $4.99, a price that also gets you access to The Diary of a Nobody and Backstairs at the Monte Carlo.
On This Date
History’s long march to today.
In 1971 – Apollo 15 astronauts David Scott and James Irwin become the first humans to drive a vehicle on the moon, riding their lunar rover for the first of three trips. The rover’s top speed was about 6 mph and all told, the rover would be used for 3 hours and 2 minutes, traveled 17.2 miles and made it as far away as 3.1 miles from the lunar module. A lunar rover would also be used on Apollo `16 and Apollo 17.
In 1912 – Ty Cobb of the Detroit Tigers establishes a new major league record for most hits in a month in a 4-1 victory over the Washington Senators. Cobb went 1-for-4, finishing July with 67 hits. The record still stands, though it’s been tied twice, by Cobb in 1922 and by Tris Speaker in 1923, records which still stand, and research into whose record Cobb broke was inconclusive. Cobb’s batting average for the month was .528 and he finished the season leading the major leagues with a .409 average.
In 1971`- Mr Big Stuff by Jean Knight is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Best Selling Soul Singles chart – for the fifth and final consecutive week. The song also peaked at #2 on the Hot 100 and was Billboard’s biggest soul song of the year. It was the first of two Top 40 soul hits for Knight and remains her only Hot 100 appearance. Born Jean Caliste in New Orleans in 1943, Knight was signed to a recording contract in the 1960s but had taken a job in a college bakery because her career wasn’t going anywhere.
Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
For Confucius, true wisdom is to know the extent of what you don’t know quite as well as you know what you do know. – Gore Vidal, Creation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
Uruguay (1930), Brazil (1950, 2014) and Chile (1962) are the South American countries that have hosted the men’s World Cup.
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
How many times did Ty Cobb bat over .400 for a season in his career? – Answer next time!
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables/Chapter 3 – The Escape
I didn’t know who the Firm’s comrades inside the prison were until the moment I was sprung. After receiving the drawing of the Firm’s logo, I kept my mouth shut because I knew when they wanted me to know something, they would find a way to tell me.
Something was certainly up, though, because I was being taken all over the admin building like I was a prospective buyer. I was being led hither and yon for everything from dental appointments I didn’t need to chats in dark corners – and a certain storeroom – with the screw who had her way with me and after a while I had a pretty good working knowledge of the layout of the admin building. Not that it was doing a whole lot of bloody good. I had some zero clue how to put this knowledge to practical, immediate, freedom-producing use, but I’d learned over the years, both in and out of the Firm, that things usually work out if you let them alone to work out, so I kept my eyes open and my mouth shut, useful advice for a lot of situations, especially when you’re in the nick and you suspect someone is planning your escape but you’re not entirely bloody sure who or even if.
I was more familiar with a storage closet on the first floor than most prisoners probably were. It was a love chamber when the girl screw had to have me and I got sent there for this and that regularly and after a while it hit me that perhaps the closet was key for the still hypothetical escape. So I paid even more attention to it and discovered a vent that went down to some unknown location on the ground floor. This was filed away to the general fund of knowledge, too.
Most days, though, were routine: sleep, wake up, work, read, watch the telly, sleep, rinse, repeat. Then I was taken to an assistant warden’s office as part of a cleaning party. I was taken by a circuitous route and since I had good knowledge of the rest of the Admin Building I was able to reckon the office was just below the storage room. This put the rest of the Admin Building puzzle together. The vent led right to assistant warden’s personal water closet and the office led to a hallway that led to the front door. Stupid to keep PC in the Admin Building.
Soon enough things started happening. That night I had another communique under my pillow: a note that advised me not do anything on my own but be ready to make my way down the vent and into the office. A week later the girl screw came and got me out of the carpentry shop. We went to the storeroom for what I thought was going to be a boff session but instead, she opened the vent, pointed and told me shove off why don’t you.
I shoved off, worming my way down slowly because the bloody shaft wasn’t lighted but it was simple enough to feel me way along. Neither tall nor short, trim nor stout, I fit in well enough and could see the light from the water closet in short order. I was expected because the vent cover was already open and I managed to make it through and down to the floor without killing myself.
The first thing I saw were some folded clothes on the counter and the second thing I saw was the assistant warden. She advised me this was a Firm operation and to put the clothes on with the highest possible level of alacrity. There were some corduroys and a tacky shirt and a tweed blazer with patches on the sleeves and a prison visitor laminate. Everything fit perfectly. There was a fake mustache and fake teeth to change the look of my mouth and some gel for my hair which the assistant warden applied and briefly fussed over. The loafers had lifts which experience has shown to be a disguise technique as brilliant as it is simple. I am so nondescript it doesn’t take much to disguise me and in no time I was a different person. I looked like a prison official from the home office who had come by to visit the assistant warden. The official had been signed in by the screw before the civilian clerk arrived.
The assistant warden and I exited the office and went down the hall to a desk where I gave the civilian clerk the laminate and signed out. There was some danger there because my signature had to match the sign-in one, but it was a nondescript scribble that was easy enough to copy.
We went out the front door to a private car. A back door opened and I went inside. A comrade I had never seen before was in the back seat and The Chairman was driving. He made a crack about how it was about bloody time and how he had worried they’d have to come in and walk me out holding me hand.
In less than five minutes I had gone from prisoner to prison official, from custody to freedom. I was underground again within the hour. The assistant warden and the screw were under suspicion almost immediately after evening count turned up a missing inmate, but it didn’t matter. They had left for the day soon after and visits to their residences by the warden and some coppers showed their apartments abandoned.
Chapter 2: The Firm
Chapter 4: Monica and the Games
Table of Contents
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo/January 16 & 18
The Daily Dose/Thursday, July 30, 2020
The Daily Dose/July 30, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from our human experience.
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS: On the one hand, the Miami Marlins are the only major league baseball team with positive coronavirus tests. No one knows why 16 players and two coaches have come down with it yet, but for the purposes of this drivel it’s not particularly important. Both the Marlins and the Philadelphia Phillies, the team the Marlins last played against, aren’t playing this week and that could cause problems.
Dry, Technical Matter: Right now the games are postponed, though they may well be canceled.
Fly In The Ointment: The consequences of canceled games could be immense, especially if other teams end up missing games, too. This doesn’t come up too often here in America, but part of the deal with professional leagues is you play all your games, under established rules officiated by league representatives.
Listen Up: You cannot have a legitimate World Series champion with some teams playing all scheduled games and some teams not because this does not constitute a legitimate major league championship season. America’s first professional baseball league, the National Association (1871-1875) is generally denied major league status for this very reason.
We don’t like to critique without offering a solution, so here’s what we propose to MLB: play as many games as you can and hold a postseason but set the term World Series aside for a year. This season has been and will continue to be whacky enough and we don’t think the playoff winner is entitled to be called a World Series champion.
The Bottom Line: Of course, as a professional league conducting what season you can, you should crown a champion, but call the final round the Major League Baseball Championship Series or something similar. Hell, since no fans means this season is nothing more than a money grab anyway, sell the naming rights. You can even expand the playoffs to include everyone and conduct collegiate-style regionals. Today’s fans will understand and so will future generations and the World Series will thank you, too. It deserves better than whatever comes out of this year.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: Whining guests. Today’s Diary.
People whined about our modest breakfast offering left and right this morning…First, 227 calls about 0620 wondering what time breakfast started…In about ten minutes, I told her…She asked what there was and I said some cereal, muffins, fruit and juice and she makes a sound not particularly consistent with pleasure and asks what, no bacon or eggs or oatmeal???…No, ma’am, I’m sorry, none of those things and she hung up without saying anything else.
Then I was in the back office when I heard a couple of guys whining about it…One guy wondered if this was all there was and apparently his buddy said yeah and his tone indicated he wasn’t too thrilled with this fact, either…Later, I went out to the front desk and a guy asked where he could get a real breakfast and I suggested a couple of places in town.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Twerp and Gaylon respond to some pot smoking in the hotel.
Swing shift would’ve had these reprobates on their ear quicker than you can say “welfare check”, but, again, we’re pretty mellow here on graveyard, probably because of all the secondhand pot smoke we breathe. I asked if we could come in and she said sure and I said, almost apologetically, look, we’ve had some complaints about people smoking grass in this room.
The lady nodded vigorously, like someone who had gotten caught and was merely waiting to see what the penance was going to be. We both knew they were in as much trouble as I wanted to make for them.
Click here for the first two months of complimentary entries.
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables: Chapter 2: Our hero goes to work for The Firm and eventually one of his side rackets gets him nicked. – Offered with our compliments.
It was almost funny: two decades of never earning an honest pound and I finally get hooked up not in a heroic blaze of glory but because someone sniveled. Go figure. I started out in the dock, but the evidence was more compelling than my verbal denials and I eventually pled guilty for a lesser sentence.
On This Date
History’s long march to today.
In 1618 – The first legislature in the Colonies meets, when the Virginia General Assembly holds its first meeting in Jamestown. It was a single body made up of Governor Sir George Yeardley, his four councilors and 22 burgesses elected by free, white males. In addition to legislative duties attending to the needs of free white males, the body served judiciary functions, as well. The body became bicameral in 1642 and retains the same name today. The first session lasted until Aug 4 and the group met in the choir area and chancel of the Jamestown church.
In 1930 – Uruguay wins soccer’s first World Cup, defeating Argentina 4-2 in the final match in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital. Argentina led 2-1 at halftime, but Uruguay tied it at the 57-minute mark and took the lead eleven minutes later before adding the final goal in the last minute. It remains the only time Uruguay has hosted the tournament and was their first of two titles (1950). The game was a rematch of the 1928 Olympic final, also won by Uruguay.
In 1966 – The Troggs are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of two consecutive weeks with Wild Thing. The song had debuted in the Top 40 at #6 three weeks earlier and spent two weeks in the runner-up spot before ascending to the top. Wild Thing also went to #1 in New Zealand and peaked at #2 in Great Britain and versions of the song by Senator Bobby (#20, 1967) and Fancy (#14, 1974) also hit the Hot 100.
Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
I was still attached to every pleasurable thing in this world, and that sort of attachment is the cause of pain…- Gore Vidal, Creation
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
The Boston Red Sox have had the most players hit two grand slams in a game, four: Jim Tabor (1939), Rudy York (1946), Nomar Garciaparra (1999) and Bill Mueller (2003).
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
Which South American countries have hosted the World Cup? – Answer next time!
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables/Chapter 2 – The Firm
One
I was still bored when the Firm came calling. The head of the Firm was a tall, rail thin man of indeterminate age. Could be 35 or 50 and he was too focused to fuss over the matter and I dared not ask because he gave the impression he would tell you what he wanted you to know. He had an unkempt shock of black hair that he either left unkempt or spent an awful lot of time and gel getting it to look unkempt. He wore khaki work pants and an old yellow sweatshirt. We were meeting in a bustling coffee shop in Copenhagen where you could shout terrorist plans at the top of your lungs and no one would pay you any mind.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo/January 14 & 15
The Daily Dose/Wednesday, July 29, 2020
The Daily Dose/July 29, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from our human experience.
Leading Off will return. Nothing’s really going on right now, anyway.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: Another guest refuses to ring the bell. Today’s Diary.
Folks, these people live among us…I walk out and with customary grace noted the sign and the dumb broad said she didn’t want to bother me…I wanted to reach out and grab her by the hair, pull her across the desk and bang her head on the floor because the purpose of the &@%#ing bell is to bother me, to let me know someone needs to be served…
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: The crew runs into some barf in the hotel.
You run into ralph from time to time in this business and while it doesn’t make me sick, I don’t go looking for it. But I respect Lee’s opinion – as a security professional – so I go and look and holy living fuck, the girl has ralphed – and I am not making this up – three or four solid pink thingies! They are about the size of an average egg roll, shaped like Vienna sausages and are the color of Pepto Bismal.
“No wonder she was crying for help,” I told Lee. “Those had to be like giving birth.”
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables: Valued Readers, we are pleased to start posting chapters from our latest novel today. A new chapter will be posted every day and the first two are on the house. After that, you will have to fork over and do we have an offer for you: $4.99 gets you not only this book but Backstairs at the Monte Carlo and The Diary of a Nobody as well. Click on the button below.
However, I hit upon an idea and my instincts, as usual, proved trusty: it was worth something to Mr Paddington, an otherwise respectable sort, to keep me from blabbing his social calendar to anyone who would listen like, for instance, his wife. He saw my very logical point about how giving me some quid each week to keep me mouth shut could be to his advantage and how not giving me some quid each week to keep my mouth shut could be to his disadvantage. My long and quite profitable career in taking money from men so they could have a go in private was underway.
$4.99, a steal. Click on the button.
Note: if you’ve already purchased the Criminals, Courtesans and Constables ebook, or 4Ever & Ever access, don’t click on the button. You’re already in.
On This Date
History’s long march to today.
In 1981 – Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer are married in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The ceremony was watched by a worldwide television audience estimated at three-quarters of a billion people and the couple had caused a mild stir when they announced the word ‘obey’ would be eliminated from Diana’s portion of the vows. The marriage ended in divorce in 1996 and produced two children, Prince William and Prince Harry. The two had met in 1977 when Charles was dating Diana’s older sister.
In 2003 – Bill Mueller of the Boston Red Sox becomes the first major league player to hit two grand slam home runs from both sides of the plate in the same game in a 14-7 win over the Texas Rangers. Mueller became the 12th of 13 major league players to hit two grand slams in a game and the feat of doing it from both sides of the plate has not been equaled. Mueller, who finished his eleven-year career with 85 home runs, was betting eighth that night.
In 1989 – Toy Soldiers by Martika is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the second and final consecutive week. It was the first chart single for Martika, her first of four Top 40 hits and two Top 10 songs and remains her only #1 song. Toy Soldiers spent 13 weeks in the Top 40, six weeks in the Top 10 and also went to #1 in New Zealand and peaked at #5 in Great Britain. Martika was born Marta Marrero in southern California.
Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
He is half done who has already begun. – Horace, Roman poet, 65 BC to 8 BC
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
Donna Fargo had two hits on Billboard’s Hot 100: The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A (#11, 1972) and Funny Face (#5, 1972-73).
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
What team has had the most players hit two grand slam home runs? – Answer next time!