The Daily Dose/June 18, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience.
Leading Off is taking a sick day. It will return.
Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually.
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow authorizes a guest to check out at the usual time. Today’s Diary.
Then 140 called and, evidently thinking checkout time was three in the morning or something, wondered if he could get a late checkout, “say 11 or so”…I chuckled to myself because 1100 is the usual checkout time and resisted the urge to charge him a few bucks for the privilege of checking out at the usual time.
Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Gaylon and Jose respond to a room that had its window removed.
The guy on the bed in jeans and a t-shirt, and there’s some empty beer bottles and a half-full bottle of something or another on the nightstand. It was a gorgeous night out and not completely surprising someone would want some fresh air to accent his night’s rest, though Jose and I mention that he must’ve been pretty committed to a fresh air policy to have removed the window while drunk.
Click here get in on the laffs: The Diary of a Nobody, Backstairs at the Monte Carlo, The Bottom Ten, the funniest books you’ve ever read. We offer 4Ever and Ever access, or cheapskates can purchase books and columns individually.
On This Date
History’s long march to today
In 1979 – The SALT II Treaty, designed to limit the production of nuclear weapons, is signed by the United States and the Soviet Union in Vienna. Though the treaty was honored until 1986, it was never ratified by the United States Senate because President Jimmy Carter withdrew it from consideration after the Soviets later invaded Afghanistan and a Soviet combat brigade was discovered in Cuba. The terms of the treaty were superseded by the START I Treaty in 1991.
In 1932 – FIBA, then the International Amateur Basketball Federation and now known as the International Basketball Federation, is formed in Geneva. Men’s basketball became an Olympic sport in 1936 and women’s basketball in 1976 and FIBA has held world championship tournaments for both men and women since the 1950s. 3×3 basketball will become Olympic sports for both men and women at next year’s Tokyo Games. Before FIBA, international basketball was played under the auspices of the team handball international governing body.
In 1988 – Rick Astley is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the only week with Together Forever. It was his second chart single and his second and final #1 song, following Never Gonna Give You Up from earlier in the year. The song spent six weeks in the Top 10 and twelve weeks in the Top 40 and also went to #1 in Canada, Spain and Ireland and peaked at #2 in Great Britain. Astley’s last appearance on the Hot 100 came in 1993, when Hopelessly peaked at #28.
Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever.
…if these things were to be done, he knew that reason would have to exert its sway quickly: the country could no longer be permitted to be swept along wherever “passion and prejudice” led it. – John C Miller, Alexander Hamilton, Portrait in Paradox
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know.
Andy Gibb’s biggest hit in his native Great Britain was Everlasting Love, which peaked at #10 in 1978.
Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar.
Besides the United States, what country has won the most Olympic gold medals in men’s basketball? – Answer next time!
