Sick Jokes of The Seventies

The Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies....

Nice appearance for Florence Henderson, no?

Story of my life..

Bad Luck With Women...

Scotch & ice.

Breaking Bad - "Everyone Knows It's Wendy"

Saturday afternoon

This is unedited, so all sounds are natural. Cars, airplanes, hammering, etc. But mostly, you'll hear birds.

La Gata

Best Economist cover...Angela Merkel intoning "the Horror, The Horror"

 

In remembrance of my father, RIP 4/20/1995

Dad liked to use a beaker for a jigger, he would pour 60ml, but I went with 100.
Further, Dad would go with bourbon, but I'm going with scotch tonight.
Dissimilarities aside, the insulated tumbler shown below belonged to Dad and he sipped from it many times while watching the sunsets as depicted in the photo.

Here's to you Dad!

Publish Post

April 14th, tax returns are complete.

Martinsville Monday

The world famous Junior Johnson, "The last American Hero"

Tom Wolfe declared Mr. Johnson "The Last American Hero.." in 1965.
The Allison brothers, Bobby & Donnie, were also around as was The King, Richard Petty.

Furthermore, from The Sports Curmudgeon...

And I think he is right on in today's post:

After you have read all of the Super Bowl analysis on the sports pages of the nation this morning, you may still have some questions as to why the game turned out the way it did. As a public service, allow me to assist you in getting the answers you seek:

1. If you want to know why the Colts’ loss was the fault of the Bush Administration, tune in to Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC tonight. According to him, everything is the fault of the Bush Administration; therefore, he will surely be able to provide you with guidance there.

2. If you want to know why the Colts’ loss was the fault of the Obama Administration, tune in to Bill O’Reilly’s show on FOX News tonight. According to him, everything is the fault of the Obama Administration; therefore, he will surely be able to provide you with guidance there.

No need to thank me…

Revisiting the past...

A couple of things...

• A little more than a year ago I visited a local venue and predicted they would be closed within a year. They aren't. Based on some information from a friend, I called tonight and asked if they are certified as a cigar bar and the answer was "yes." I'll have to check it out and verify for myself, but if my information is correct , they will have earned back my business.

• Also, a little more than year ago, I read a post by The Sports Curmudgeon. This post quoted liberally from 1972 novel Semi-Tough. Pretty funny stuff about fictitous Super Bowl pagentry, as noted below.
  

“In the serious part of the squad meeting, Shoat Cooper explained to us what the drill would be for Sunday. In terms of what time everything would occur.

“Shoat said we would start getting our ankles taped at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. Those that needed special braces and pads taped on, he said, ought to get to the taping room thirty minutes early…

“He said we would leave for the Los Angeles Coliseum at about ten-thirty. It would be about eleven-fifteen when we got there, he said, and that would give us plenty of time. ‘Time to get frisky for them piss ants,’ he said.

“The kickoff wasn’t until one-fifteen he pointed out. It had been set back fifteen minutes by CBS, he said, in order for the network to finish up a news special it was doing on some kind of earthquake that wiped out several hundred thousand chinks somewhere yesterday…

“Shoat said that both the offense and the defense would be introduced, on both teams, for television before the game. He said we should line up under the goal post that would be appointed to us and carry our hats under our arms when we trotted out to our own forty-five yardline and faced the dog-ass Jets and stood there for the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’

“That would be the last thing we would do before kickoff, Shoat said…

“Shoat said we might have a long time to lay around the dressing room after we warmed up because the National Football League had a fairly lavish pregame show planned.

“Shoat said he understood that both the pregame show and the halftime show would have a patriotic flavor…

“According to Shoat, here’s what was going to happen before the game:

“Several hundred trained birds – all painted red white and blue – would be released from cages somewhere and they would fly over the coliseum in the formation of an American flag.

“As the red, white and blue birds flew over, Boke Kellum, the Western TV star, would recite the Declaration of Independence.

“Next would be somebody dressed up like Mickey Mouse and somebody else dressed up like Donald Duck joining the actress Camille Virl in singing ‘God Bless America.’

“And right in the middle of the singing, here would come this Air Force cargo plane to let loose fifty sky divers who would come dropping into the coliseum.

“Each sky diver would be dressed up in the regional costume of a state, and he would land in the coliseum in the order in which his state became a United State.

“When all this got cleaned up, Shoat said United States Senator Pete Rozelle, the ex-commissioner of the NFL who invented the Super Bowl, would be driven around the stadium in the car that won last year’s Indianapolis 500. At the wheel would be Lt. Commander Flip Slammer, the fifteenth astronaut to walk on the moon.

“Riding along behind the Indy car, Shoat said, would be two men on horses. One would be Commissioner Bob Cameron on Lurking Funk, the thoroughbred which won last year’s Kentucky Derby. And on the other horse, Podna (the horse Boke Kellum pretends to ride in his TV series), would be the current president of CBS, a guy named Woody Snyder.

“Finally, Shoat said, the teams would be introduced and two thousand crippled and maimed soldiers on crutches and in wheel chairs and on stretchers would render the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’

“Shoat told us the halftime was likely to run forty-five minutes. It would be a long one at any rate, ‘which might be a good thing if we got some scabs to heal up,’ he said.

“The length of the halftime, Shoat said, would depend on whether CBS would decide to interrupt the Super Bowl telecast with a special news report on the earthquake, which might still be killing chinks with its fires and floods and tidal waves…

“Shoat said it was too bad we would have to miss it but the Super Bowl halftime show was going to be even more spectacular than the pregame show.

“He said there would be a water ballet in the world’s largest inflatable swimming pool, a Spanish fiesta, a Hawaiian luau, a parade stressing the history of the armored tank, a sing-off between the glee clubs of all the military academies and an actual World War I dogfight in the sky with the Red Baron’s plane getting blown to pieces.

“The final event of halftime, he said, an induction into the pro football hall of fame of about twenty stud hosses out of the past including our own Tucker Fredrickson, the vice president of DDD and F. United States Senator Pete Rozelle would preside, Shoat said, along with Camille Virl, the actress, and Jack Whitaker the CBS announcer. When the induction ceremony was over, Shoat said, then Rozelle, Whitaker and Camille Virl would lead the inductees in singing a parody on the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ which was written by someone in the league office. The title of it, he said, was ‘The Game Goes Marching On’ and he understood it might make some people cry.

“Shoat said CBS hoped the whole stadium would join in the singing since all 92,000 people would have been given a printed copy of the lyrics.

“The last thing in the halftime would be some more birds. While the stadium was singing this song, Shoat said several thousand more painted up birds would be released and they would fly in such a way overhead that the likeness of Vince Lombardi, the great old coach, would appear.”

Catcher in the Rye

"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."

"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."

Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right - I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.

 

The ambition of Dale Earnhardt Sr.

I saw this post on twitter tonight from Jeff Gluck regarding Dale Earnhardt Sr's NASCAR questionnaire back in 1975. The simplicity and single-mindedness of the responses pretty well define the man in an odd way.

According to @nascarhall, Dale Sr questionnaire from 1975 says he wrestled in HS, was living w/his mom, superstitious of green and peanuts.

Dale Sr answered question "what ambitions do you have other than racing" with underlined "None." #nascar @nascarhall
jeff_gluck

The Sports Curmudgeon weighs in on Kiffen

 

When Lane Kiffen was 31 years old, he had never been a head coach at any level of football. Al Davis hired him to be the head coach of the Oakland Raiders at that point only to fire him abruptly in the midst of Kiffen's second season in Oakland. Adding that firing and a 5-15 record with the Raiders to his CV, Kiffen managed to become the head coach at Tennessee. There he lasted one year, had a 7-6 record and chalked up 4 NCAA "secondary violations". One of his violations involved the recruitment of a player who would have to be dismissed from the team during the season following a police arrest. Now, Lane Kiffen is the head football coach at USC. I think I know what comes next:

Lane Kiffen: Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.

    

 

But don't get him wrong, he loves sports!

New taste of the Lasanta

No cigars since December 30th. At least I'm now able to guzzle scotch in the safety of a smoke-free environment.