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:
Sparrow: 100%
GOP Incumbent: 0%
Democratic Wannabe: 0%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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