The Bottom Ten/NFL Week 10 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
The race for The Dan Henning Trophy – symbolic of NFL Bottom Ten supremacy – could get clearer the next couple of weeks or, as likely as not, it could get more muddled as #1 San Francisco has showdowns with #2 New York (N) and #3 Oakland coming up. The 49ers can take command of the race or either the Giants or Raiders – or both! – could assert themselves with losses.
Veteran B-10 fan(s) know, however, that you count out two (2)-time defending champion Cleveland at your peril as the Browns have lost three (3) straight and recently took their head coach and offensive coordinator out back for summary executions.
This week’s fiasco, as the nags limp up the backstretch:
1. San Francisco 49ers (1-7; lost to Arizona 18-15) – Defense unable to hold 2-0 first-quarter lead in sixth straight loss…With next two games against Raiders, Giants, 49ers entering make-or-break portion of schedule…Next Loss: Oakland (11/1)
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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Tuesday, October 30 Cut out early from Hotel C this morning, around 0230…This is pretty much expected in the night audit training racket…There is no reason for the owner to pay for two people to sit around doing nothing when everything is done and, honestly, there is no reason for me to hang around…But you don’t have to leave too early; you do have a living to earn and the owners realize night auditors, especially two-night a week night auditors, don’t grow on trees, so they don’t specify when you have to leave and I will put the system to work for me tonight when I go the distance…This is both so the ol’ paycheck doesn’t take it in the shorts too badly and because I’m swapping cars with The Wife to get her snow tires put on Wednesday morning.
The Daily Dose/October 30, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
Friends, Read Free Fortnight will end this coming Sunday, November 4th. We will resume charging for certain features (The Diary of a Nobody, The Bottom Ten, all our books and the archives) on Monday, November 5th. Our special $29.99 lifetime subscription offer will end on the 4th, too. Click here to take advantage of it.
For those of you have subscribed, many thanks. For those of you haven’t, we hope you’ve gotten into the habit of reading and will want to join the family.
In The News Some numbers from the 2018 World Series:
9 – Number of World Series won by the Boston Red Sox, third on the all-time list.
14 – Number of World Series lost by the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, first on the all-time list.
2- Number of consecutive World Series lost by the Dodgers.
3 – Number of times the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers have lost consecutive World Series, tying a mark set by the New York Giants.
13.5 million – Average number of people who tuned in for first four games.
312 million: Average number of Americans who did not tune in for the first four games.
18, 7 hours, 20 minutes – Length in innings and time of Game 3, the longest World Series game by both measures in history.
11 – Number of doubles hit by both teams.
1 – Number of triples hit by both teams.
109 – Most strikeouts by both teams, a new World Series record for a 5-game series, breaking the old record of 88 set by the Mets and Yankees in 2000. It would also have broken marks for six and eight-game series as well.
Today At The Site Sparrow screws up the first closing page at the retailer on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Also, a guy tries to cash a check made out to only his first name, and Sparrow works on the Halloween candy display.
I spend most of the time breaking down boxes, which isn’t easy because these candy boxes apparently are double reinforced with titanium…Jesus H, they were tuff to get flat…Stomping on them almost wrenched my knee…
Neither rain, nor snow nor sleet nor their bar tab could keep your esteemed Bottom Ten pollsters from completing The Bottom Ten/NCAA Week 10, as the race for the ESPNCup, symbolic of Bottom Ten supremacy, and the Tostitos Plaque – issued to the team with the longest losing streak in a season that actually includes a win – are some of the tightest in recent memory.
8. Earlham (0-8; lost to Franklin 64-20) Mitigating Factors: With cacophony of tying, breaking all-time Division III consecutive loss record safely in rearview, Quakers retain Continental Cup – issued to team with longest all-division losing streak in NATO – with 52nd consecutive loss…Game not as close as score indicated, as Quakers got two (2) late touchdowns against Franklin pre-seminary majors getting some charity work in. Waiting In The Wings: Division II Shorter, losers of 37 straight, bravely holding down Continental Cup runner-up spot. Next Loss: Defiance
In other news, rewrites on my forthcoming classic novel Criminals, Courtesans and Constables have resumed. Click here for an update, including a character list.
On This Date In 1938 – CBS Radio airs the Orson Welles drama The War of the Worlds, a drama about an invasion of Earth by Martians. Shortly after the show’s 8pm start, radio stations began getting calls from listeners who thought Earth was actually being invaded by Martians, despite the fact disclaimers had been read at the beginning of the show and twice during it.
In 1974 – Muhammed Ali defeats Goerge Foreman to regain the undisputed world heavyweight boxing title in Kinshasha, Zaire. Known as the Rumble in the Jungle, Ali knocked Foreman out in the eighth round. Ali would hold the title until 1978, when he lost it in 15 round split-decision to Leon Spinks.
1976 – If You Leave Me Now by Chicago is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second and final week. The song would win two Grammy Awards, for Best Pop Vocal Performance by Duo, Group or Chorus and for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s). It was the first of three #1s for Chicago and the song also went to #1 in Britain, Ireland, Holland, Australia and Canada
Answer To The Last Trivia Question No specific date is credited as the end of the Great Depression in the US, though it is generally, though not universally, agreed that it began to peter out with the advent of World War II.
Today’s Stumper How many times did Muhammed Ali hold boxing’s world heavyweight title? – Answer next time!
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The Bottom Ten/NCAA Week 10 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
Game on.
The eyes of Bottom Ten fan(s) everywhere will be on Rice Stadium this week as it’s #1 vs #2, UTEP vs Rice, for the top spot in the race for the ESPN Cup, symbolic of NCAA Bottom Ten supremacy.
Elsewhere, it’s that time of year when previously unranked teams start making noise, hoping to draw the interest of Bottom Ten pollsters.
Hello UNLV!
The Rebels, previously unranked, march into the survey with an upset loss to previously unvictoried San Jose State.
This week’s mess:
1. UTEP (0-8; lost to UAB 19-0) Mitigating Factors: Miners never in this one, posting second shutout of 2018…Offense humming on all cylinders, racking up four (4) drives for negative yardage, including a safety and only 19-yards rushing…UTEP’s chick soccer team has tied four (4) games in 2018, with B-10 pollsters “pretty sure” this is a record for schools with football teams riding a 20-game losing skid. Onward! Losing Miners: UTEP 17th major division team to lose 20 straight games and the first since B-10 Team of the Decade for the Double Aughts Duke did it in 2007. Next Loss: at Rice
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, October 29 I screwed up the first closing page at the retailer tonight!!!…I am not making that up, tho I wish I were.
It was 2115 on the dot…I had done my stretching and vocal cord exercises and I was right on time for the first closing page of the evening…I dove right in, too, confidently announcing it was 2115 and that your friendly, neighborhood retailer was closing in 15 minutes…Of course, we close at 2200, so customers still had 45 minutes to shop and I didn’t even know I said 15 minutes until Assistant Manager Felicia waddled up to the service desk laffing at me and announcing my transgression, saying it was 45 minutes till closing, not 15 minutes…Whoops, my bad…I got right back in the saddle, too, picking up the phone and pressing #968 and telling everyone that 15 minutes in this case was actually code for 45 minutes, which got a few laffs.
The Daily Dose/October 29, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
Friends, Read Free Fortnight will end this coming Sunday, November 4th. We will resume charging for certain features (The Diary of a Nobody, The Bottom Ten, all our books and the archives) on Monday, November 5th. Our special $29.99 lifetime subscription offer will end on the 4th, too. Click here to take advantage of it.
For those of you have subscribed, many thanks. For those of you haven’t, we hope you’ve gotten into the habit of reading and will want to subscribe.
In The News History’s long, intermittent slaughter of the Jews continued in Pittsburgh this week. Eleven people, all Jews, were shot to death and the shooter was arrested.
In school the first you hear about Jews being slaughtered is when you are taught about the Holocaust. Some reading, though, shows Jews have been slaughtered the world over for centuries. We have never understood this. Sure, they can be annoying, but so can we sometimes and you don’t see smart-ass, half-wit columnists getting shot up. Being an irritant is no reason to slaughter agroup of people.
There was a time when this would have ratcheted up the gun control rhetoric but not this time, though the death penalty rhetoric is being turned up a few notches. This will solve nothing, of course, but substance no longer matters in America, merely firing up your base is sufficient now because people in our divided country love being fired up now.
There was a time when our country’s whack jobs were content to gas cats and make obscene phone calls. Not anymore. Now they feel empowered because America has been at war daily for thirty years and our violent government has produced violent citizens, the latest wholesale slaughter of innocent people merely enabling the next one. No one is shocked by it anymore; we merely wait for the next one.
On the campaign trail, we mention every hour on the hour about how we deserve peace bevcause we will not have a peaceful country or world without a peaceful America. Both our country and our planet deserve to see the world that would be produced by an America at peace.
Today At The Site Sparrow and a guest at Hotel B talk about the prospect of animals coming through the automatic doors and seeing what’s up in the lobby on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Plus, it’s dead slow at the retailer, though Sparrow is now obliged to check out is own cash drawer.
Now that I think about it, tho, having an animal wander in is not completely out of the question…You don’t have to walk right up to the door to open it, they open if you’re within a couple, maybe even a few, feet and I suppose some animal could inadvertently open a door, get curious and want to see what’s shaking in the lobby…
The Thought for the Day will return. Promise.
On This Date In 1929 – The New York Stock Exchange plunges another 11 percent, 30.57 points. Known to History as Black Tuesday, it followed the previous day’s Black Monday and the previous week’s Black Thursday and is generally regarded as the start of the Great Depression. After some rallies and slides, the Dow would bottom out in July 1932 and would not return to pre-Depression levels until November 1954.
In 1921 – Centre College of Kentucky, then with about 300 students, defeats Harvard 6-0, snapping the Crimson’s 25-game unbeaten streak. It is generally regarded as one of college football’s biggest upsets, though Centre went 10-1 that year against a full major division schedule. Harvard’s streak began in 1919 with a victory over Bates and included a 7-6 win over Oregon in the 1920 Rose Bowl. The Centre Colonels, sometimes still referred to as the Praying Colonels, still field a football team, playing in the NCAA Division III Southern Athletic Association.
In 1983 – Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton are at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first of two weeks with Islands in the Stream. It was the second #1 on the Hot 100 for both of them. The song would also top the Billboard country chart, the twelfth #1 country hit for Rogers and the 15th for Parton. The song was written by the Bee Gees and initially intended for Marvin Gaye.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question The oldest university in the Americas is the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, – then part of the Spanish Empire – founded by royal charter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1551.
Today’s Stumper When did the Great Depression end in the United States? – Answer next time!
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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, October 28 About 0500 or so a guy comes down for his morning coffee at Hotel B…He notes the automatic doors up front and wonders if animals ever wander in…No, I told him, I have never seen it but now that I think about it, if an animal ever did wander in I’m probably up a creek…Here at Hotel B there aren’t a whole lot of options…There is not a back office for me to flee too and even if there was, I am generally sitting at a table in the corner of the lobby and would be cornered…If I’m at the front desk or am quick enough to move without being mauled to death, I could flee to the manager’s office, but that requires entering five digit code to open the goddamn door, crucial lost seconds that could result in my death.
The Daily Dose/October 28, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
Editor’s Note: The following In The News segment was written before Game 4 of the World Series was completed. In order to show off Gaylon’s unsurpassed prognostication skills, we have left it as is.
In The News Boy, the year’s World Series sure is boring.
Sure, it involves two of baseball’s oldest teams, the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers, but the series is plodding along, tied 2-2 after four games and the home team has yet to lose and the third game bored everyone by taking over seven hours to play, the longest postseason game ever and just the ninth in major league history to go – yawn – at least seven hours.
We kid about the first part, but not about the following:
The game is hard to watch now.
After 100 years teams have finally gotten smart and adjusted their defenses to make it harder for pull hitters to earn their livings. Faced with an army of defenders on one side of the field batters, unable to sneak a grounder through the hole anymore, have adjusted, too, and have taken to trying to hit home runs every at-bat. It will remain this way until batters get smart and either start bunting or hitting the ball the other way. It’s resulted in a game that is a tough sell now. Attendance was down this year and World Series TV ratings are down, too, though they have been declining for a generation as late starts and late finishes mean that kids aren’t able to watch games through to the end and, as such, have no connection with the game, except as entertainment.
Their loss and baseball’s loss. Friday’s 18-inning classic should have had America buzzing but instead, America shrugged its collective shoulders and turned their attention to their fantasy football teams. Baseball losing its grip on America’s heartstrings is a tragedy. It’s reversible, but we can whine about that later.
Today At The Site Sparrow and The Wife build a bookcase on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody, while at the hotel Sparrow rents a room with three queen beds and spends some time talking grizzly and brown bears and college football with Cliff.
I probably should’ve worn the overalls, and the official estimate of an hour-and-a-half is attainable only if you hired the Joseph and Jesus Carpentry Company to help out, but in the end it was done, a solid bookcase built.
The Thought for the Day continues to take some time off. Please enjoy an encore from earlier this year, Walt Disney talking about what is and what is not possible. Click here to read it.
Sometimes the biggest obstacle to our success looks us in the mirror every morning…
On This Date In 1538 – St Thomas Aquino University is founded in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic, then known as Hispaniola, the first university in the New World. It operated until 1823 when it closed when its students were ordered into military service during the Haitian Occupation.
In 2015 – Michael Conforto of the New York Mets goes 0-for-2 with an RBI in Game 1 of the World Series, becoming the third player to play in the World Series, the College World Series and the Little League World Series. The Mets lost Game 1 to Kansas City 5-4 in 14 innings. The other two players to play in all three world series were Jason Varitek and Ed Vosberg.
In 1972 – Chuck Berry’s only #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100, My Ding-a-Ling, tops the chart for its second and final week. The song, a crude, sophomoric novelty song with a tune based on a 19th-century folk song called Little Brown Jug, was originally recorded in 1952 by Dave Bartholemew, a member of both the Songwriters and Rock and Roll halls of fame. Considering his profound influence on popular music, Berry’s chart career was relatively modest: 14 Top 40 hits and six Top 10 hits. He also had three #1s on the R&B chart.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question Frank Gore of the Miami Dolphins is the NFL’s all-time rushing yards leader amongst active players with 14,411 yards.
Today’s Stumper What is now the oldest college or university in the Americas? – Answer next time!
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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, October 27 Had a walk-in about 0100 or so this morning…It was a guy who looked beat and asked if we had two rooms…Sure, I actually had four rooms available and said I could do a room with two queen beds and one with one king bed and he said that would pass muster, but further interrogation revealed and it was him and a couple of buddies and I said you know, we have the only hotel rooms in the Western Hemisphere that have three queen beds and it’s priced to move, too, only $99 plus tax, half the price of two rooms.
The Daily Dose/October 27, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
In The News One of the joys of reading is re-reading old favorites.
We’ve been doing that lately. A while back we finished – and reviewed here – a man-sized biography of Alexander Hamilton and before that were books about the Reformation and Peter the Great and we forget what else. Substantive books all that both challenge and reward a reader.
It was time for a break. Here are the books we re-read:
The Hustler’s Handbook by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn: Veeck owned a few major league baseball teams over the years, always tweaking a nose or two along the way…A very funny book, we were looking to read Veeck as in Wreck but we couldn’t find it.
In The Best Families by Rex Stout: We’ve loved mysteries since The Hardy Boys and Nero Wolfe mysteries have headed the list since we were. This is the epic Wolfe mystery, where he and Archie Goodwin go after the evil Arnold Zeck, though the actual murder that brings this about is rather pedestrian.
Under Fire by W.E.B. Griffin: Few write about the military with the skill, insight and humor of Grifin and his Brotherhood of War and The Corps series have both been read multiple times. We are actually still reading this.
Books are re-read for multiple reasons. Sure, we like the writing and the plot and whatnot, but more than anything – and novitiate writers write this down – it’s the characters that draw us back: we are visiting old friends. It might be years in between visits to Nero Wolfe’s old brownstone on 35th Street or since we hung out with Bill Veeck in the old American Association, but like reuniting with human old friends, it’s as if we saw each other last week.
Plus, you are bound to discover something new. A good example is Creation by Gore Vidal which yielded more quotes for our quotebook in its most recent reading than all previous readings combined.
You can’t wallow in the past, of course. The mind is like the body: it must always be challenged, and we’ll get back to new stuff here in a bit, but it was good and necessary to revisit old friends.
Today At The Site Sparrow orders two new snow tires for The Wife on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody, and just in the nick of time, too, because she has a conference in the big city next week. Plus there is a lot of useless drivel from the retailer.
Here are the latest poll numbers from our Congressional district:
There’s no margin of error, either…Everyone who talked to me about who they were going to vote for said they were going to vote for ol’ Sparrow…
On This Date In 1682 – The city of Philadelphia is founded. The city’s role in American history is difficult to underestimate. It was the first capital of what would become the United States, housing the First Continental Congress in 1774, and later served as the capital of the United States while Washington DC was being built. At the time home to just a few hundred people, today Philadelphia has a population of 1.5 million and is the sixth largest city in the US.
In 2002 – Emmit Smith of the Dallas Cowboys becomes the NFL’s all-time leading rusher in a 17-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Smith rushed for 109 yards and finished the game with 16,743 yards to break Walter Payton’s record of 16,726 yards. Smith would retire after the 2002 season with 18,355 yards, still the all-time NFL record.
In 2018 – For an unprecedented 47th consecutive week Meant To Be by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, the longest any single has spent at #1 on any Billboard chart. Meant to Be peaked on the Billboard Hot 100 this past spring when it spent three weeks at #2. She Got the Best of Me by Luke Combs is at #1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart for the first week.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question The other two songs prior to Hey Jude by the Beatles to spend nine weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 were Mack the Knife by Boby Darin and Theme from A Summer Place by Percy Faith. Songs prior to these that spent more weeks at #1 did so on assorted other Billboard charts.
Today’s Stumper What active NFL player has rushed for the most career yards? – Answer next time!
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