The Daily Dose/October 12, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
BROAD HISTORICAL CONTEXT: Today is Columbus Day and we’ll forgive you if it slipped your mind because it slips ours every year, though it should be noted we keep odd hours and holidays hold little meaning for us. It commemorates Columbus’ landing in the New World in 1492 in what are now the Bahamas and has a long history in this country but its usefulness has passed and it has come time to replace it.
Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: What to replace it with? Well, there are some options, for example, with Juneteenth being celebrated more and more, there has been some support for that being a holiday.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: We certainly support the abolition of slavery being a holiday, but we can do better than Juneteenth.
Dry, Technical Matter: It surprises some to find this out, but Juneteenth doesn’t mark the day slavery ended in the United States, it merely marks the day in 1865 Texans got around to telling their slaves they were free. They had actually been freed two-and-a-half years earlier, on January 1, 1863, when the Emancipation Proclamation took effect.
And You Wonder Why You Don’t Get Invited To More Parties: Even after Juneteenth slavery was still legal in Kentucky and Delaware. It would end until the passage of the 13th Amendment the following December.
A Suggestion: What we could do is have Abolition Day, or Emancipation Day or what have you, in February, which is the month the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass was born. There’s some flexibility, too, because Douglass was never entirely certain of the exact date of his birth.
Dry, Technical Matter II: Some trot out making 9/11 a national holiday, but why would we want to make a day of celebration out of a great tragedy?
Yeah, Yeah, Whatever: We’ve always thought July 20, the date Apollo 11 landed on the moon, would be a splendid date for a holiday, but we appear to be the only ones to favor that.
The Bottom Line: It’s time for Columbus Day to go. We can do better.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow doesn’t wake up to use the can.
The big news is yours truly slept straight thru…I am not making that up: there was not one trip to the can, something that hasn’t happened since the Revolution…Key has been the raw veggies I’m been eating the past few days…Some broccoli, celery, green peppers plus, sometimes, a can of peas.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: 77Rick and Gaylon deal with a drunk high roller.
All the while the A has been dropping the names of pretty senior casino hosts so 77Rick calls the CSM, a nice, quiet Italian guy named Tom and Tom shows up at the front desk, talks to the guy a bit and then talks to 77Rick, evidently saying this guy is a really good customer and we’d hate to lose him and is there anything we can do?
Of course there is. We’re a casino, in business to take people’s money, and, if the CSM goes to bat for you, and if your crime isn’t genocide, you’re going to get a second chance. So we told the guy to go back to his room, sleep it off and come back tomorrow.
Free Stuff
The same trick the drug dealers use.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo
Clock in with the graveyard crew of the Monte Carlo Security Department on the glamorous Las Vegas Strip.
Click here for the first two months of the funniest Vegas memoir ever.
Criminals, Courtesans and Constables
Gaylon’s latest novel takes place everywhere from throne rooms to death row.
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On This Date
The long march to today.
In 1964 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod I, its seventh manned mission. The flight had two historical firsts: it was the first mission with more than one person and the three men were the first to launch without spacesuits because the capsule was designed for two people and there wasn’t room for them. The crew landed safely the following day and History is not entirely clear on why the mission was cut short. It could have been because Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev was being removed from power while the mission was in space, or because three people quickly grew weary of living in a two-person capsule.
In 1986 – The Boston Red Sox defeat the California Angels 7-6 in eleven innings in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series at Anaheim Stadium. The Angels lead 5-4 in the bottom of the ninth inning and are one strike away from winning the pennant when Dave Henderson hits a two-run home run to give the Red Sox a 6-5 lead. The Angels tied it in the bottom of the ninth and the Red Sox got the go-ahead run on a Henderson sacrifice fly. The Red Sox would sweep the final two games in Boston to win the American League pennant.
In 1960 – Larry Verne is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the only week with Mr Custer. The song was a novelty song about a soldier who didn’t want to fight the Battle of Little Bighorn. The song spent ten weeks in the Top 40, including three weeks at #4 before moving to #3 and then the top spot. The song also went to #1 in Canada and peaked at #9 on Billboard’s soul chart. Only a #75 hit later in the year prevented Verne from being an ultimate one-hit wonder, an act whose only chart single hits #1.
Some Philosophy Crap
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
Only when we begin to trust ourselves do we begin to live.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
The initial period of instruction at the Naval Academy was five years. The first and last years were in the classroom, the middle three years were spent at sea.
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
Who succeeded Nikita Kruschev as head of the Soviet Union? – Answer next time!
