The Daily Dose/January 18, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off: Capsule Book Review
Leading Off will return. We had an item planned, but we are completely snowed in today and must deal with that.

Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: All of Sparrow’s drivel from Wednesday, including another trip to the dentist.

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On This Date
In 1911 – Eugene Ely lands an airplane on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, the first time an airplane lands on a ship. Pennsylvania was an armored cruiser, whose after deck was modified to receive a landing aircraft and the flight did not originate on Pennsylvania as Ely had taken off from an airfield in nearby San Bruno. Pennsylvania would later be named the Pittsburgh, to free the Pennsylvania name for a new battleship.

In 1958 – Willie O’Ree makes his NHL debut for the Boston Bruins, the first black to play in the NHL. O’Ree would play in one other game that season and would return to the Bruins for 43 games in the 1960-61 season. He would spend most of the rest of his professional career with the Los Angeles Blades and the San Diego Gulls of the Western Hockey League and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame this past year.

In 1986 – Dionne (Warwick) and Friends are at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of four weeks with That’s What Friends Are For. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Carol Bayer Sager and also featured Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder. It would later spend three weeks at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart, won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group and was Billboard’s #1 single for 1982.

Quotebook
I realize that is aiming high, but I think it is not a very satisfying accomplishment for me to aim at a more modest goal and achieve it.
Woody Allen

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Luis Jose Monje was the person executed in the United States before Gary Gilmore. Colorado executed Monje on June 2, 1967.

Today’s Stumper
When was the first time an airplane took off from a ship? –Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/January 17, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Leading Off will return.

Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: There is big news on the convenience store front in the small town, plus Sparrow, citing the weather, declines to make his usual Wednesday trip to the Mexican joint in the next county.

When I got home I went to the convenience store for a couple of those sandwich deals that come on a croissant…This is hardly in step with the healthy eating The Wife and I have been doing for the past six weeks…But it’s hardly as if I eat healthy at the Mexican joint and I’m good for 19 of 21 meals every week, up from the old average of being good for three meals each week. 

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On This Date
In  1977 – Executions resume in the United States for the first time in nearly ten years, as Utah executes convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. Gilmore had been condemned for a murder committed the previous July, had waived all appeals and was annoyed that others, like his mother and the ACLU, tried to stop his execution. After his death, his corneas were transplanted in two other people and after an autopsy, he was cremated.

In 1999 – The Atlanta Falcons earn their first Super Bowl berth, defeating the Minnesota Vikings 30-27 in overtime to win the NFC Championship Game. A missed field goal by the Vikings late in the fourth quarter led to a game-tying touchdown by the Falcons as the Vikings became the first team in NFL history to finish the regular season 15-1 and not win the Super Bowl. The Falcons would lose Super Bowl XXXIII 34-19 to the Denver Broncos.

In 1981 – Kool & the Gang is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot Soul Singles chart – for the fourth of six consecutive weeks with Celebration. It was their twelfth Top 10 hit on the soul chart and fifth #1. In February, Celebration would become Kool & the Gang’s only #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100.

Quotebook
This species could have been so great, and now everybody just wants a new Salad Shooter or sneakers with lights in them. This is what we’ve settled for.
George Carlin

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
I’ll Never Smile Again by Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra with Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers was the first #1 song Billboard’s Best Selling Singles chart, on July 27, 1940.

Today’s Stumper
Before Gary Gilmore, who was the last person executed in the United States? –Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/January 16, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off: We asked for it and we got it
The most prosperous nation in human history is approaching the end of its first month of making some of its employees work for free. They will have missed two paychecks and while they’ll eventually be paid the money they’ve earned that is not doing them a whole lot of good now.

(As we’ve noted here before, we don’t have to worry about whether or not the president and Congress and their staffs are getting paid during the shutdown. Essential government employees get paid during shutdowns and no one is more essential to this fiasco than the president and Congress.)

Everyone associated with this should be ashamed of themselves but no one really is. The president certainly isn’t. He is maximizing his only real talent of drawing attention to himself and he is accustomed to holding out and getting his way besides. The Democrats certainly aren’t feeling any shame; sniffing blood, they are also giving a clinic in hunkering down and circling the wagons. The GOP itself might be, but long ago they went all-in with a candidate and a president they never really wanted in the first place and they will continue to tolerate this.

We are tolerating it, too. We are allowing our government to completely hamstring our country. We are tolerating our government saying, in essence:

Here are the chains we have for you. Put them on.

A hundred years from when all new people are looking back on this period, they may well be looking back at the beginning of the end of The Great American Experiment, America having been tossed aside History’s scrap heap, along with, among others, the Roman Empire and the Soviet Union.

Or, perhaps, they will look at an America that collectively declared they’d had enough of perpetual war, of fiscal insanity, of a partisan, fractured and bickering government and went and did something about it at the ballot box.

We’ll see.

Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Dr Sparrow takes yet more water readings at the hotel and there is a house guest at The Shire.

I took more water readings at the hotel this morning…A classically trained scientist, I suppose, I simply needed more data before submitting my results for peer review in Nite Auditor’s Water Journal…

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On This Date
In 1605 – The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha – commonly known as Don Quixote – by Spaniard Miguel de Cervantes is published in Madrid. Sales were strong from the start, despite the fact most of a shipment to the New World was lost. Don Quixote has long been considered one of the founding works of western literature and remains the second-translated book in human history, trailing only the Bible.

In 1896 – The University of Chicago defeats the University of Iowa 15-12 in Iowa City in the first college basketball game featuring five players on a side. The original 13 rules for the game, written by James Naismith in 1892, did not specify the number of players on a side and, previously, anywhere from seven to nine players had been used. Some sources give the date of this game as January 18.

In 1943 – Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra is at #1 on Billboard’s Best Selling Singles chart – Billboard’s very first chart, established in 1940 – with There Are Such Things. Vocals were by Frank Sinatra and the song was the fourth and final #1 single Sinatra and Dorsey would have together. The song spent four weeks at #1 before dropping out of the top spot for a week and would return to #1 for one more week on February 27.

Quotebook
Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished.
Miguel de Cervantes
Don Quixote
Editor’s Note: click here to read commentary from Gaylon on this quote, from the old Thought for the Day feature.

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The parents of Elizabeth I were Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn.

Today’s Stumper
What was the first #1 song Billboard’s Best Selling Singles chart? –Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/January 15, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
We have talked about this from time to time here:

Why is the GOP still around? They are not doing anyone any good.  

For the first two years of the Trump Administration, they gave a clinic in How Not To Govern With Control of the White House and Congress. They had a golden opportunity to do some good for our country and they passed on this opportunity, the partisan and fractured state of our country gripping the Republicans, too. Perhaps they could have done less had they tried but we don’t know. They did have a tax cut that wasn’t too bad, but didn’t really go half as far as our taxed ravaged country was entitled to. They accomplished nothing else.

The Republicans have not produced a decent elected president since Eisenhower: Nixon was a crook. Reagan was the most managed president in history. George Bush was a decent man but was unable to parlay the Gulf War into a second term. His son lied to get us into war. Ford, of course, was not elected president and did well under circumstances the Son of Man would have found challenging.

Trump is petty, manipulative and vindictive, a 72-year-old child whose only real talent is drawing attention to himself, offering his party and his country nothing more than petulance and intransigence.

And Republicans are taking it!

From Congress to state capitols to governor’s mansions to Main Street, Republicans are shuffling around with their hands in their pockets accepting this. Collectively they are not revolting, not saying enough, not demanding better. It is time for them to disappear.

Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow takes more water impurities readings at the hotel, plus there are two tedious phone calls at the retailer to endure.

Later, this guy called me, more or less to have a captive audience for his whining…There was nothing I could do for him…It started when he asked what our price was on some beard oil, a request we don’t get half as often as you might think…I go find it and tell him it’s $7.22…Then he goes off about he is having problems with some retailer dot com orders he’s placed…He’s having trouble getting them picked up. 

It was one of those one-sided conversations you cannot get out of because there is no opportunity…And even if you did find a spot to chime in what were you going to say, you’re an idiot, stop talking to me???

The Bottom Ten/NFL Final: Better late than never, it’s the final NFL Bottom Ten of the season culminating, as usual, with the awarding of The Dan Henning Trophy, symbolic of NFL Bottom supremacy.

10. Cincinnati Bengals (6-10; lost to ) – Six (6) win teams in final B-10 survey rare, but B-10 pollsters wanted to send shout out to ousted head coach Marvin Lewis who in 16 years produced as many playoff wins (0) as B-10 titles (0), going down in history as probably worst coach never to win B-10 title..Next Loss: 2019

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On This Date
In 1559 – Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey. Elizabeth I had ascended the throne the previous November upon the death of her predecessor Mary I and would reign for 44 years and 127 days, the ninth-longest reign by a British monarch. History refers to her reign as the Elizabethan Era. 

In 1997 – The Seattle SuperSonics establish a new NBA record for Most Steals in an NBA Game and ties the record for Most Steals in a Quarter, taking the ball away from the Toronto Raptors 27 times total and eleven times in one quarter, though the NBA record book declines to name the quarter. The Sonics won the game 122-78 and both records still stand. The Raptors added 12 steals and the combined total of 39 was the second-highest total in NBA history.

In 1972 – Don McLean is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of four consecutive weeks with American Pie. The song also went to #1 in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and spent three weeks in the runner-up spot in Great Britain. American Pie was Billboard’s third biggest song of 1972. While McLean has generally avoided answering questions about the song’s lyrics, in 2015 the lyrics and original notes for the song were auctioned off for $1.2 million. At 8 minutes and 33 seconds and was the longest song to hit the Hot 100 up to that time, and American Pie remains the longest #1 song of the Rock Era.

Quotebook
…[The Romans] decided that to eat state corn in the city was better than to sweat on the land…Sloth combined with superstition…Wealth mounted, but did not spread.
Will Durant
The Story of Civilization, Vol. III: Caesar and Christ 

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
The Americans who signed the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolution were Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and John Adams.

Today’s Stumper
Who were the parents of Elizabeth I? –Answer next time!

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