Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, October 22 Had my first training session at Hotel C today, a couple of hours before my shift at the retailer…My guide was Quentin, a tall, friendly, chubby kid – the world bluff is appropriate here nad I look small next to him, rare because I seldom look small next to anybody – who is very knowledgeable and tried to teach me everything he knew in the first twenty minutes…He meant well, and on your first day you’re really just watching anyway and I did get some solid familiarization so it all worked out.
The Daily Dose/October 22, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
In The News One of the more incredible records on the Billboard charts continues to be set on their Hot Country Songs chart as Meant to Be by Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line are at #1 for the 46th consecutive week. It’s the most weeks any single has spent at #1 on any Billboard chart.
46 weeks is almost incomprehensible, almost a full year at #1. The old record, both from the same chart, was 34 weeks (Body Like a Back Road, Sam Hunt, 2017) and before that 24 weeks (Cruise, Florida Georgia Line, 2012-13), themselves almost incomprehensible marks. By comparison, Billboard’s Hot 100 record for most weeks at #1 is only 16, done last year by Despacito by Luis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber and we can remember listening to American Top 40 as a kid when anything more than six weeks at the top was considered a Herculean accomplishment.
One reason for the extraordinary stays at #1 is the way data is compiled late in the second decade of the 21st century. In Billboard’s earliest days, they compiled sales figures and jukebox action and later combined this with radio airplay. Now assorted Billboard charts compile digital downloads, streaming data and airplay from all radio formats to determine chart positions.
Not all of them, though. Billboard’s other country chart, the Country Airplay chart, only measures over-the-air radio airplay and Meant To Be only spent one week at #1 on this chart, in late April and was last ranked, at #8, on May 26th.
Today At The Site Sparrow continues to offer fashion advice on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody, advising on the pros and cons of buying clothing at the retailer. Also, Sparrow addresses an envelope and fills out a check for one of the Senegal guys.
I do stuff like this for them all the time…Writing checks, translating official government documents, reading emails, you name it…The Wife told me once the word is out among them I’m trustworthy, which is both flattering and true, and one guy even let me enter his username and password for his bank account.
The Thought for the Day continues to recharge its batteries, so please enjoy an encore from January of this year, a quote from Winston Churchill about walking with destiny.
Today’s Thought reveals a trait we’ve noted in great people and that we’ve talked about here before: they had a deep-seated belief in themselves and what was meant to happen in their lives
On This Date On This Date will return.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question UCLA has made 532 appearances in the Associated Press college football poll without winning the AP national championship, the most of any team.
Today’s Stumper What song was #1 on Billboard’s first country chart? – Answer next time!
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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Sunday, October 21 One of the points I like to make here from time to is for the love of all that is sacred be careful when buying clothes at the retailer…If it’s a Leading National Brand (LNB) you’re generally OK, but their house brands can be hit or miss…Recall last week I bought a thermal shirt which looked pretty nice but I got it home and the sleeves started a couple of inches down the shoulder instead actually at the shoulder and this blew so I took it back…This experience caused me to think long and hard before pulling the trigger on a house brand sweater…Offhand, they look OK…Sharp, actually…They’re crew neck and come in colors I like and they’re $10 and you can’t really expect top quality for that price, but it’s the retailer not Rodeo Drive and it looked OK so what the heck.
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Saturday, October 20 Very slow at the retailer tonight…If I averaged more than a handful of transactions per hour at the service desk I would be surprised.
One was a guy sending $20 to Colombia…This was rare for a couple of reasons: one, people seldom send $20…The least is generally $50 and even that is comparatively rare and, two, Columbia is not a common destination…There are regular senders to Honduras, but that is as far south it generally gets. (For the record, the most anyone generally sends is $1,000…Sometimes you will get more than that but it is rare and most transactions over $2,500 – to anywhere – are declined by MoneyGram.)
The Daily Dose/October 20, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
In The News
Capsule Movie Review: First Man
Regular readers of this crap know we are hardly movie buffs here at The Daily Dose but when my wife said there was an Apollo 11 movie out we deigned to go with her, consent which appears to have also obliged me to accompany her to the upcoming Freddie Mercury movie.
Apollo 11 is one of our earliest memories – or we like to think it is, we weren’t even four-years-old at the time – and regular readers also know we are on record as thinking this is mankind’s finest hour, no debate, don’t even start. So we might be a bit biased. We went in wanting, expecting, to like it and it should be no surprise that we did.
Some are getting worked up over Ryan Gosling’s very low-key performance as Armstrong but these dimwits don’t know what they are talking about. Even the most casual reading into Armstrong shows he was rather reserved and reticent and Gosling did reserved and reticent very well.
Also, some are getting their shorts in a knot over the fact the moonwalk sequence didn’t show the planting of the American flag on the moon. So what? This is a movie, not a propaganda flick and this didn’t bother us at all. We were more annoyed by the fact the actor hired to play Buzz Aldrin didn’t look anything like Aldrin.
Rating Scale: A: The very best; B: Very good; C: Good; D: Not too bad; F: A steaming pile.
Final Ranking: B, barely a notch below the very best movies we’ve seen. If you have any interest at all in this subject, you will like it, probably a lot, like we did.
Today At The Site Sparrow gets the OK to stop boiling the tap water and Sparrow for Congress starts doing some advertising on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Plus, he gets off some of his fave lines at the retailer.
…then this young couple placed their toddler on the self-checkout station and from the service desk it looked like they were about to scan him and bag him up and I told them that and one of the kids said something or another and I said well, it’s a good time to buy because kids are a one-third off this week.
The Thought for the Dayis a repeat from last November, from Abraham Lincoln on the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address.
Not everyone will live down the ages, nor should we want to. Those that do, or try to, face burdens that us mortals do not. That’s their lookout. It’s enough that we produce the life we were meant to live. When we do we will long remember what we’ve done here.
On This Date In 1803 – The United States Senate ratifies the Louisiana Purchase by a 24-7 vote. The treaty had been signed in April and President Jefferson had announced it to the public on July 4th. It is sometimes interesting to read official Congressional journals in these matters but not this time. The official journal of the United States Senate didn’t even refer to the matter, or anything, really, merely noting the “Senate assembled”, considered “Executive business” before adjourning to “11 o’clock to-morrow morning”.
In 1936 – The first Associated Press college football poll is released, with Minnesota, Duke and Army in the Top 3. The highest ranking in the first survey by a team in the current AP survey was Notre Dame at #7. Minnesota would win the first AP national title that year and since then 27 teams have won at least one AP national title.
In 2018 – Bebe Rexha and Florida Georgia Line continue their unprecedented stay at #1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, at #1 for the 46th consecutive week, the longest any single has spent at the top on any Billboard singles chart. It has been at #1 its entire chart run, too, having debuted there on Feb 25th of last year. Florida Georgia Line’s latest single Simple is #1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question John Rutledge of South Carolina was the second chief justice of the United States. He was appointed to the position by President Washington while the United States Senate was not in session – known as a recess appointment – and the Senate rejected his nomination in December and Rutledge served only 138 days.
Today’s Stumper What school has made the most appearances in the AP college football poll without winning the AP national championship? – Answer next time!
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Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Friday, October 19 The water I boiled yesterday came in handy this morning…As far as I could tell – and I didn’t march down to the town hall to delve into the matter – we were still under the boil water or die order from Thursday when I was making morning coffee, so rather than waste the bottled water we keep I poured some the utility water from the big stew pot into the coffee pot…I tasted the utility water and, frankly, it didn’t taste any better for having been boiled…Later, they posted on the town’s website we could all resume not boiling water because it tested OK.
The Daily Dose/October 19, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
In The News All right, we are not ones to jump to conclusions here at In The News, but we are willing to concede that the Saudi crown prince may well have had something to do with the disappearance of dissident Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, who was last seen Oct 2 entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The incident has drawn the international scorn and lambasting you would expect, including the usual blather from President Trump.
Now, we don’t approve of the killing of writers any more than you do, but the best thing America can do right now is nothing, in both actions and words.
Enough evidence and there will be enough outrage to provide enough inertia for America and the world to do something. Neither this scandal nor the Saudi crown prince is going anywhere anytime soon, we can always do something and the worst thing anyone can do right now can do is to escalate matters by taking the rhetoric up a notch. What is meant to happen will become plain in due course
Today At The Site It’s a busy day off for Sparrow on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. First, Sparrow – in what is not the Upset of the Year – goes out to lunch, then he finds out his small town is advising residents to boil their tap water for the next day or so, then he and The Wife go and enjoy a movie.
The Wife said this morning over coffee that she had gone there recently herself and found the service slow even by their standards…so today’s outing was more of a quality control spot check rather than a mere indulgence because the very best way I could think of to make sure my usual Stromboli remained up to snuff was to field test it myself.
Today’s Thought for the Day is a repeat from this past January, a quote from British novelist Anthony Trollope about believing you are good enough.
Only when you enter the arena humbly and without expectation will the rewards come. Belief in yourself must be built on past success, confidence’s blade sharpened on the stone of experience.
On This Date In 1789 – John Jay is sworn in as the first chief justice of the Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices of the era spent no small amount of time presiding over cases in federal judicial circuits and the court only heard four cases during Jay’s tenure. Earlier, Jay had declined President Washington’s offer to be the first Secretary of State and he resigned in 1895 after he was elected governor of New York.
In 2014 – DeMarco Murray of the Dallas Cowboys rushes for 128 yards as the Cowboys defeat the New York Giants 31-21. Murray becomes the first person in NFL history rush for 100 yards in the first seven games of a season, breaking the mark that had been held by Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns. The following week Murray would extend the record to eight games before it ended in Week 9.
In 1957 – The Everly Brothers are at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with Wake Up Little Susie. This would be the only week at #1 for the song and it was the first of three number ones for the Everlys on the Hot 100. The also went to #1 on Billboard’s country and R&B charts, too.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question Bob Beamon broke the long jump world record that had been held by Ralph Boston of the United States and Igor Ter-Ovaneesyan of the Soviet Union.
Today’s Stumper Who was the second chief justice of the United States? – Answer next time!
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Thursday, October 18 This will surprise a lot of you, but I had lunch at the local diner today…The Wife was off working off her membership at the health club in town and I was hungry, plus The Wife said this morning over coffee that she had gone there recently herself and found the service slow even by their standards, with new owner Todd several times forgetting whether she wanted her potato mashed or baked…So today’s outing was more of a quality control spot check rather than a mere indulgence because the very best way I could think of to make sure my usual Stromboli remained up to snuff was to field test it myself.
The Daily Dose/October 18, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
In The News The real damage from Donald Trump’s presidency will not come from his policies or political actions. President Trump is basically harmless, at least in relation to Hitler. We don’t think he’s a particularly good president because he has never had a cogent, long-term vision for our country or his presidency, but he is not evil, merely unable to head a government. As we’ve said many times in the past, Trump’s only real talent is drawing attention to himself, something he does supremely well.
No, the real damage President Trump is and will be the effect he is having on our national conversation: civility is dead. Trump has made the insult acceptable and that is a tragedy. America is becoming meaner and Americans, collectively, are increasingly intolerant of any view that does not correspond with their own, just like their president.
Trump, of course, has a litany of examples of incivility. Our two favorites are when he called Elizabeth Warren ‘Pocahontas’ and Stormy Daniels ‘horse face’. Now, the Pocahontas comment could actually have been funny in another context, but coming from the president of the United States it was gauche. The horse face comment was just mean, something President Trump is, of course, eminently capable of.
You know, when our country collapses, perhaps before this half-century is out, it will mainly be because of our perpetual wars and fiscal insanity. But incivilities introduction and acceptance into mainstream American life will share part of the blame, too.
Today At The Site Sparrow reports for the usual pre-employment paperwork at the new hotel on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Plus, he already has several dozen new logins to remember. Then he reports for swing shift at the old hotel.
Friends, when requesting rates please, for the love of all that is sacred, specify an arrival date…Hotel rooms are the classic supply and demand commodity and our rates vary and don’t try to play Gotcha by holding us to a slow season rate in the middle of winter…It won’t work…
The race for The Dan Henning Trophy – symbolic of NFL Bottom Ten supremacy – might be the closest in ages, as there are no less than five (5) one (1)-win teams ranked in The Bottom Ten/NFL Week 8 survey. Tune in for the usual laughs.
6. Cleveland Browns (2-3-1; lost to Los Angeles Chargers 38-14) – B-10 pollster’s bar tabs still working overtime as wizards try to figure out how opening week tie will affect race for B-10 medal stand…Browns quest for B-10 three-peat sputtering, as Browns have not lost consecutive games since entire 2018 season…Next Loss: at Tampa Bay
On This Date In 1009 – The Church of Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem is destroyed by a Muslim caliph and his army. The church is believed by some to be the place where Jesus Christ was both crucified and buried, though this is not known for certain. Construction of the church began in 326, completed in 335 and after this demolition would not be rebuilt until 1048.
In 1968 – Bob Beamon of the United States breaks the world record in the long jump at the Mexico City Olympics, jumping 29 feet, 2-and-a-half inches, breaking the previous world record by 21-and-three-quarter inches. Beamon jumped farther than Olympic Stadium’s electronic device could measure and his feat was so dominating – and demoralizing – he beat runner-up Klaus Beer of West Germany by more than two feet. Beamon’s world record stood until 1991 and 29 feet, 2-and-a-half inches remains the Olympic record.
In 1975 – Bad Blood by Neil Sedaka is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the second of three consecutive weeks. It was the second and final #1 hit of Sedaka’s career, following 1974’s Laughter in the Rain. The song also went to #1 in Canada and was the second biggest hit in Canada for the year.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question The first non-British player to win the British Open was France’s Arnaud Massy in 1907.
Today’s Stumper Whose world record did Bob Beamon break? – Answer next time!
