The Daily Dose/July 26, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

The Sunday Bottom 5
The very best of the very worst of the week that was.  

1. US Government – Between federal stormtroopers attacking fellow citizens in Portland and COVID-19 killing tens of thousands more people than it should have, American citizens should be protesting a government that is guiding country directly to History’s scrap heap.  

2. US Electorate – 100 days until Nov 3 election where American voters will herald to the world – and themselves, frankly – whether they are content being a second-rate nation or whether they are ready to make some changes. 

3. Regis Philbin – First COVID-19 and now this, the world record holder for most hours on TV (15,000, more or less)  dies Saturday at 88 of natural causes…A former US Navy supply officer, Philbin dies with 14,999 more hours on TV than us. 

4. Ted Yoho – Florida representative quoted as calling noted female Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “fucking bitch”, leaving Sunday Bottom 5 pollsters “pretty sure” world would be better place if 1) everyone wore their masks and 2) people utilized brains before utilizing mouths. 

5. President Trump Fact Check – Does President Trump really believe the crap he utters, or does he really know???…The 5-hole staple returns; click here for this week’s lies. 

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has both the latest mpg figure for the new ride, plus the monthly sleep averages, too. Today’s Diary.  

I knew we’d be short of the magic 40 mpg mark, but it would’ve been good for morale to at least have been above 39…You hate to think the days of flirting with 40 mpg are over – and I’m certainly not ready to say they are – but we reached it once and there were no guarantees it would happen once, so we’ll take it. 

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Criminals are stupid. 

Evidently she had just received a call from her boyfriend informing her he had just smashed in the windows to her car. Russ, Bi-Bob and I end up walking her out to the garage and sure enough, the back window is smashed completely in and the front window was given a pretty good going over, too. While we’re attending to this the boyfriend actually calls her a few times to gloat and after Russ and I escort her back to her room and leave her with X-Ray and a cop, the boyfriend returns to the room, where he’s promptly arrested. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 2016 – 19 people are killed and 26 others are injured in a series of stabbings at a home for disabled people in Sagamihara, Japan. The suspected attacker, Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee of the facility, was arrested after surrendering at a local police station. Uematsu had broken into the facility at 2:10 am, tied up a staff member and took his keys to gain entry into rooms and is currently under sentence of death and has withdrawn his appeals. It is not known when he will be put to death because in Japan the condemned are only given an hour’s notice of their execution. 

In 1996 – Amy Van Dyken becomes the first American woman to win four swimming gold medals at a single Olympics, winning the 50-meter freestyle in 24.87 seconds. Earlier, Van Dyken had won gold medals in the 100-meter butterfly, and the 4×100-meter freestyle and medley relays. Van Dyken finished her Olympic career with six gold medals and she remains the only American female swimmer to win four swimming gold medals at one Olympics. 

In 1986 – Peter Gabriel is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 with Sledgehammer. It was the second of five Top 40 solo hits for Gabriel and remains his only #1  song. The song also went to #1 in Canada, peaked at #4 in Great Britain and at #61 on Billboard’s soul chart. The song was nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year Grammy Awards, but won in neither category. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

…peacemakers were often more cursed than blessed…compromise always infuriates those who believe in the exclusive justice of their own cause. – David Schoenbrun, Triumph in Paris: The Exploits of Benjamin Franklin

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

Billboard’s biggest song of 1970 was Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel, which spent six weeks at #1. 

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

What American woman has won the most Olympic swimming gold medals? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/July 25, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience. 

CAPSULE BOOK REVIEW: The Story of Civilization, Vol II: How the Greeks Lived by Will Durant: I’ll tell you what, this series is not easy reading. This was the fourth volume we’ve read in this series (Caesar to Christ, The Reformation, Our Oriental Heritage) and this was the driest one yet. Now, this series is not a rollocking thrill ride, but the first three volumes had some moderate entertainment value, the Durants usually good for dropping in some dry humor along the way. That was somewhat missing here. 

Still, though, the Durants (Will’s wife Ariel chipped in, too, though she isn’t credited until later in the series) reward your work and your patience, with the usual insights into our human experience they provide remarkably and often. 

This book follows the usual pattern as Durant focuses not only on the famous – Plato, Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Socrates, et al – but also talks extensively on how everyday Greeks lived, worked and amused themselves. Our only real complaint came early on when the lives and exploits of Greek mythological figures are discussed as if they are real people. This isn’t bad in and of itself, but boy, it certainly got confusing at times. 

Fly In The Ointment: Now, some historians – as historians are wont to do – have gotten their individual and collective shorts in a knot over this series, saying there are inaccuracies and outright lies and that Durant relies on sources they would not. Boo to them. The magnitude and scope of the series, plus the impossibility of reporting and describing what happened in 3,500 BC with complete accuracy means not everyone is going to fawn over it. Don’t let that stop you from picking up a volume, though. There are eleven of them, so pick one from an era that amuses you and dive in. 

Final Rating: B: We were tempted to give it a C because it was a bit drier than other volumes, but that wouldn’t be fair. Durant does his work well and The Story of Civilization will interest the well-read, general readers it was intended for. (A general reader being defined as a non-scholar/historian). Don’t be scared. As noted above, pick an era that interests you and get started.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow turns naturalist. Today’s Diary.  

Just for funsies, yours truly has been keeping track of the time the birds start chirping in the morning…I’ve been noticing them going at it for weeks a bit before first light and I got curious…They’re always pleasant to listen to.

Well, Thursday morning I first heard them at 0510, 48 minutes before sunrise, and in short order a bunch of them were going at it…Today, tho, was different…I was lying in the new chair with the lights off at about 0450 listening for them but nothing…Turns out there was some cloud cover, so perhaps that had something to do with them not starting until 0532…Some reading shows it’s generally the males who chirp, to show off to the ladies how strong they are (they’re chirping on empty stomachs) and to warn other males away from their territory.

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: It’s New Year’s Eve on the Las Vegas Strip. 

We are not able to get him seated so we can strap him to the bench, however, and Catan, for reasons I’m sure he thought good, uncuffs him. 

Bad move. His arms freed, he becomes even more combative. I’m closest to him and I get him on the floor and lie on top of him and I’m pretty strong and this subdues him enough so that we are able to get him secured to the bench. He is pissed and screaming and this lasts for an hour before he falls asleep. The incident had actually started in the hotel, where the ever-vigilant X-Ray had found him sleeping and evidently he had started pushing people around in the lobby. 77Rick even ended up with a slightly strained back and neck. He was later taken to the clinic where he was sentenced to light-duty and the joke was that as an MCSD assistant shift manager he already was on light duty. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 306 – Constantine the Great is proclaimed Roman Emperor by his troops, succeeding his father Constantius I, who died while on a military expedition in Britain. Constantine the Great reigned for 31 years, enacting a variety of administrative, financial, social and military reforms that proved beneficial to Rome. Constantine converted to Christianity on his deathbed to become the Christian Roman emperor. 

In 1977 – Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds establishes a new major league record for career hits by a switch-hitter in a 9-8 loss to the St Louis Cardinals. Rose went 2-for-5 in the game, his fourth-inning single off Pete Falcone giving him 2,881 career hits, breaking the record established by Frankie Frisch between 1919 and 1937. Rose retired in 1986 with 4,256 hits, the all-time major league record. 

In 1970 – The Carpenters are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of four consecutive weeks with (They Long to Be) Close to You. It was the first Top 40 hit for the brother/sister duo, their first of five consecutive Top 10 hits and their first of three #1 songs. The song also went to #1 in Canada and Australia, peaked at #6 in Great Britain and was Billboard’s second biggest song of the Year. The song also won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Performance by Duo, Group or Chorus, an award that went by a variety of names before being discontinued after 2011. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

The Buddha’s sacrifices are not of animals, but of the animal in the self. – Gore Vidal, Creation

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

Casey Stengel managed the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Bees/Braves, the New York Yankees and the New York Mets. 

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

What was Billboard’s biggest song of 1970? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/July 24, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience. 

Some random numbers from Apollo 11, which returned to Earth 51 years ago today. This item originally ran on July 22 last year:

2.5
Amount of time, in hours, Apollo 11 spent on the moon.

3.7
Age, in billions of years, of the moon rocks returned from lunar surface

5
Number of alarms the lunar module’s computer set off on descent to the lunar surface. These alarms were eventually disregarded.  

12
Number of lunar orbits Apollo 11 took before the lunar module (LM) separated from the command module (CM).

21
Number of days the Apollo 11 crew, and their physician and a technician, were quarantined. The quarantine actually began when they lifted off from the moon 

25.4
Cost, in billions of dollars, of the entire Apollo program. That is about $176 billion in today’s money. 

27, 51
Length of time, in hours and minutes, the LM spent undocked from the CM.

31
Total number of times Columbia orbited the moon.

33.31
Amount, in dollars and cents, that Buzz Aldrin jokingly filed for on his Apollo 11 travel claim.

45
Approximate amount of fuel, in seconds, that the LM had remaining at landing. The 60 and 30 seconds mission control referred to in the descent to the lunar surface were the number of seconds of fuel remaining until Commander Neil Armstrong had to decide whether to land or abort. 

47.51
Number, in pounds, of moon rocks Armstrong and Aldrin brought back from the moon. 

100
Approximate number of items Apollo 11 left on the moon. This includes experiments, mementos and trash.

180
Weight, in pounds, of the Apollo 11 spacesuit. 

200
Farthest distance, in feet, that either Armstrong or Aldrin, ventured from the LM. 

233
Length, in words, of the speech President Nixon would have given had Armstrong and Aldrin been stranded on the lunar surface.  The speech was written by William Safire.

363
Height, in feet, of the Saturn V rocket that propelled Apollo 11 to the moon.

500
Number of feet above the lunar surface that Neil Armstrong took manual control of Eagle.

2,983
Length of time, in days, from the time President Kennedy committed America to putting a man on the moon on May, 25, 1961 to July 20, 1969.

238,900
Number of miles between Earth and the moon at the time of Apollo 11.

400,000
Approximate number of people who worked in some capacity on the mission.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow is too lazy to do anything. Today’s Diary.  

This meant I missed the usual trip to the Mexican joint…Instead, I got two microwavable sandwiches from the convenience store: a burger and a fried chicken sandwich…This is really lousy nutrition, especially with the amount of mayonnaise put on, but the usual from the Mexican joint is hardly straight out of the Nutrition Handbook, either…We’d had some rain, too, so the grass didn’t even need to be watered…The day was spent reading, completely at leisure.

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Gaylon needs some backup in the hotel. 

So I trot down the hall and yell “HEY!” in my most authoritative voice, the one that would have Hitler snapping to attention.

It didn’t even register. They are face to face and going at it and looking back I’m glad it didn’t register because it occurred to me I may not want their complete and undivided attention. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 1915 – The SS Eastland, a passenger ship tied to a dock on the Chicago River in Chicago, rolls over onto her port side, killing 844 passengers and crew. The ship had over 2,500 passengers on board when a large number went to the port side, causing the rollover. Eastland was raised in August and sold to the Illinois National Naval Reserve, serving in a variety of capacities into the `1940s. Former Chicago Bears owner and NFL founder George Halas was initially listed among the dead, however, he was running late and never boarded Eastland. The disaster remains the largest loss of life in a maritime accident on the Great Lakes. 

In 1965 – Casey Stengel of the New York Mets manages his final major league game, a 5-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies in New York. Later that night Stengel, 75, falls and breaks his hip. Stengel finishes his career with a 1,905-1,842 record and ten American League pennants and seven World Series titles, both major league records he shares with Joe McCarthy. As a player, Stengel batted .284 with 60 home runs and 535 RBIs between 1912 and 1925. 

In 1971 – Paul Revere and the Raiders are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the only week with Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian). It was the 14th and penultimate Top 40 hit for the group, remains their only #1 song and was Billboard’s sixth-biggest song of the year. In 1968 a version by Don Fardon had peaked at #20, making Indian Reservation one of the few songs to go to #1 in a following chart appearance. The song was written by John D Loudermilk and the story that the inspiration came after he had been stranded in his car and taken captive by Cherokee Indians is false. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

…the cards don’t play themselves. – Deng Ming-Dao

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

Barry Manilow’s biggest in Great Britain was I Wanna Do It With You, which reached #8 in 1982, a song that was not released as a single in the United States. 

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

Which teams did Casey Stengel manage in his major league career? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/July 23, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience. 

HEY BATTER, BATTER…SWING: One of our favorite books is the major league baseball record book and we received our 2020 edition this week. It proved to have immediate value 

Let’s Start Right In On The Dry, Technical Matter, Shall We?: One of Wednesday’s On This Date items was about the Atlanta Braves using five pitchers in an inning, a new record. Thrilling, we know, but it was almost superseded by the Cincinnati Reds having zero defensive assists in a 1906 game, which, because you can’t do something fewer times than zero, would obviously be a record. The only questions would be if this was the first time it happened and has it happened since. 

So we got our newly arrived baseball record book out and looked up the team record for fewest assists in a game and it showed this has been accomplished six times, the first in 1945 by the Cleveland Indians. This meant, of course, that the Reds’ mark wasn’t listed. 

Do You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To Any Parties?: Why not? Box scores are not particularly difficult to find nowadays and we found two online, perhaps from the same original source, that showed no Reds player had an assist that game. You cannot believe everything you read on the Internet though – unless you read it here, of course – and there had to be a reason this mark wasn’t in the record book. It could have been a mistake, but a check of our old Sporting News record book showed they didn’t list it, either. 

More Dry, Technical Matter!: We’ve learned over the years that when in doubt, check it out in a newspaper. We found the Cincinnati Enquirer’s archives and they had a box score and that, too, showed the Reds with no assists that day. Nice, but that doesn’t tell us why it would be left out of two record books. Then it hit us: maybe the Reds didn’t field nine innings, which is specified in the record book and would be the case if the Reds were the visiting team and were trailing after batting in the top of the ninth inning but we immediately dismissed this because we already knew the Reds, playing at home, won the game 10-3. 

Let’s Open This Manhole Cover, Too: We looked at the line score anyway and, lo and behold, it was the second game of a doubleheader and was only seven innings long, a common practice back then and something we didn’t notice when reviewing earlier box scores. 

That explained it, but then again it didn’t. It was a seven-inning game because that was what was scheduled, making it a regulation length game, which we feel merits inclusion. 

The Bottom Line: Really long time readers of this crap know we have championed the inclusion of records set in regulation length seven-inning games for a long time. Probably too long and our favorite example of this is Ed Karger, who pitched a seven-inning perfect game in the second game of a doubleheader in 1907. But that’s a particularly dull discussion for another day. 

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow again hears from the guy who tried to scam him last month. Today’s Diary.  

I had another email from Leon, the guy who led an effort to scam me out of a couple of thousand dollars last month by saying a relative in Europe had died and left me $800,000…He had first contacted me last month (I thought longer, but I checked)  and I played along for my own personal amusement to see what the scam was…It wasn’t plain for a few emails…He sent me some paperwork that didn’t require anything more revealing than a PO Box number and then I’m in contact with someone from the bank and it took a couple of more emails to get to the scam…It seems Austrian law required some documents from me that could only be handled in person, either by me or by a representative and, y chance, the bank provided knew a law firm that could take care of these matters for me.

I played along and emailed the firm and they said they could take care of everything for only, if I recall correctly, $1,700 or so…Again, urgency was stressed and this was where I wrote and said no thank you…Today I wrote Leon advising him he was getting sloppy, that he had tried this on me earlier, and go find someone else. 

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Gaylon interrupts the act of fellatio in the hotel. 

Girl B was in bed and pulling the sheet up over her, and, while the guy was fully clothed, he was seen backing up from the bed and zipping his fly, and you didn’t have to be Joe Friday to conclude we had interrupted the act of fellatio. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 1829 – A patent for a typographer, a precursor to the typewriter, is issued to American William Burt. Burt came up with the idea to help ease the burden of office workers, but the typographer was a bit before its time and a functional typewriter wasn’t produced until 1874, some time after Burt’s death in 1858. Burt also invented a solar compass and an equatorial sextant and was an accomplished surveyor. Largely self-educated, Burt only had six weeks of formal classroom instruction and his original typographer was destroyed in an 1836 fire at the US Patent Office. 

In 2000 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win all four major golf titles, winning the British Open at the Old Course in St Andrews, Scotland. Woods led from the second round on and defeated Thomas Bjorn (Denmark) and Ernie Els (South Africa) by eight strokes. Woods, 24, bested Jack Nicklaus’ mark for winning the career Grand Slam by two years and since then has won two more British Opens (2005, 2006) and a total of 15 career major tournaments. 

In 1977 – Barry Manilow is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the only week with Looks Like We Made It. It was the third and final #1 song for Manilow. his sixth of eleven Top 10 hits and his eighth of 18 consecutive Top 40 hits. The song also peaked at #8 in Canada, did not chart in Great Britain and was Billboard’s 37th biggest song of the year. The song had a relatively quick chart run, spending 15 weeks in the Top 40 and five weeks in the Top 10. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

The spirit cannot mature into unity unless it has checked its curiosity and its wanderings. – Seneca, Roman philosopher. 

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

The United States Supreme Court had six members when it first convened in 1790: Chief Justice John Jay and five associate justices. Their first session was held at the Royal Exchange Building in New York City. 

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

What was Barry Manilow’s biggest in Great Britain? – Answer next time!

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