The Daily Dose/February 10, 2021
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around our human experience.
OH, JESUS H: Writing is a lot like having kids, people only want to see the end result. But we are going to bore you with some thoughts on yesterday’s Leading Off item, a thrilling look into the players that have the most titles for each sport (Tom Brady, Bill Russell, Henri Richard, Yogi Berra) where we decided which of them was the most indispensable.
Give Me A G!: It wasn’t too bad an item. We didn’t put it in Gaylon’s Greatest Hits, but it was worth the work we put into it and if we weren’t pleased with it we wouldn’t have ran with it.
Fly In The Ointment: It was more work than usual, frankly. While nothing writes itself – whomever first used the word “flow” in connection with writing should be impaled on a stake – we always dive in knowing what we want for this item and it seldom takes more than a half-hour to write. When nothing is asserting itself we don’t force it, we give it the day off.
Dry, Technical Matter: Yesterday’s bit started out to be a general ranking of sport’s greatest team players but crap, that ended up being too busy, a lot longer than we like for this item. In theory, we can make it as long as we want, but brevity’s key here at Leading Off. We then farted around with a couple of other concepts that even we found dull before settling on what we ran.
The Bottom Line: As usual, the work was fun, in no small part because of the research involved, an activity that regular readers of this crap know causes us to achieve and maintain a state of arousal usually only found on porn sets. We hope you enjoyed the result.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody – Sparrow talks about showing up for work. Today’s Diary.
We’ve been running into younger folks completely blowing off shifts for a while now…Longtime readers of this crap may recall the kid at Hotel B who would show up whenever the hell he wanted, especially troubling because he was relieving ol’ Sparrow…I eventually had to tell Amy – who was the GM there at the time – that I was going to start leaving at 0700 regardless of whether the kid was there or not.
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On This Date
The long march to today.
In 1984 – What history refers to as the Wagalla Massacre begins in northeast Kenya when Kenyan troops round up an estimated 5,000 ethnic Somalis, taking them to the Wagalla Airstrip. The captives were denied food and water and five days later many were doused with gasoline and burned to death while others were shot to death. The Kenyan government did not acknowledge what really happened until the turn of the century.
In 1949 – Joe Fulks of the Philadelphia Warriors establishes a new NBA record for most points in a game in a 108-87 win over the Indianapolis Jets, scoring 63 points to become the first NBA player to score more than 50 points in a game. His record stood until Elgin Baylor scored 71 on November 15, 1960, and the record is now held by Wilt Chamberlain, who scored 100 points on March 2, 1962.
In 1945 – Joe Dexter is at #1 on Billboard’s Most Played Juke Box Folk Records chart – a predecessor to today’s country chart – for the second of seven non-consecutive weeks with I’m Losing My Mind Over You. It was the fifth country hit for Dexter, all #1s, and research into the most consecutive #1 country songs at the start of a career was inconclusive. On January 8, 1944, Dexter had been one of three acts at #1 on the first Billboard country chart with versions of Pistol Packin’ Mama.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
The man who finds the smell is the one who sniffs.
Nicholas Monsarrat
Smith and Jones
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Knowledge is power.
The player who won the most World Series championships who did not play for the New York Yankees was Eddie Collins, who won six World Series with the Philadelphia A’s and the Chicago White Sox.
Today’s Stumper
Match wits with Gaylon. It’s not that hard.
Who were the other two acts to be on #1 on Billboard’s first country chart on January 8, 1944, with Pistol Packin’ Mama? – Answer next time!
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