… When you read the obituaries. Well, how else is someone with my limited social skills supposed to meet people? Sometimes the obits are paid for but when someone’s deemed important someone at the paper writes a story. These little word-filled tombstones are always at the back of the paper, like, after we’ve told you about everything that’s gonna kill you, here’s today’s death toll.
Heroes … Davy Crockett, the man of the coonskin hat and frontier legend was not killed at the fight for the Alamo, rather he was captured after the battle and murdered. It was said about Davy that, “…He was so tough he could climb a thorn tree with a panther under each arm.”
Books … Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, in any language. The only published materials to outsell her books are the bible and works by Shakespeare,
Baseball … Major League pitchers are such sissies these days. In 1883, Timothy John Keefe pitched for the New York Metropolitans, he pitched sixty-eight complete games winning forty-one and threw 619 innings.
Disneyland … Walt Disney built Disneyland on Orange County earth that was essentially desolate. On the property was a Canary Island date palm planted in 1896 by an early rancher. Walt excavated it (15 tons worth) and moved it to what would become Adventureland. Today it is the oldest living thing in the park and stands near the Indiana Jones ride.
Civil War … General Ulysses S. Grant, while waiting for news of the Battle of the Wilderness smoked over twenty cigars. The Union troops that his rival Robert E. Lee would kill in that battle would be buried in Lee’s front yard as he owned and lived in what would become Arlington National Cemetary.
Football … In the early days of the NFL, a tackled ballcarrier could crawl forward until he was pinned and yelled “down!” … According to the FBI, one of the highest revenue sources for organized crime is wagering on NFL football – over $100 billion is wagered (illegally) annually.
Whales … When a blue whale lunges to eat it gulps a volume of water equal to one lane of an Olympic-sized swimming pool … Bowhead whales can live hundreds of years. One killed in 1995 was estimated to be 211 years old. Scientists believe it is possible that whales that were alive during the Lewis & Clark Expedition (1804-1806) are still alive.
Music … Stevie Ray Vaughan once opened for Huey Lewis & the News prompting a photographer to say: “Stevie opening for Huey Lewis is like Hendrix opening for the Monkees.”
WWII … Almost half of the Pearl Harbor casualties were on the USS Arizona; 1,177 of the 1,514 sailors assigned to the Arizona died the morning of December 7, 1941. Over 900 men – seventy-eight who had at least one brother on the ship – remain in the ship’s sunken hull.
Cigars … Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101st Airborne was the first man to jump from the first US plane over Normandie on D-Day. Hiding a training injury so that he could jump on D-Day, he jumped with an unlit cigar between his teeth. It turns out the US Army issued soldiers twelve cigars a week; Lillyman said he never made a jump without a cigar.
I was given a pinback button not too long ago that said exactly that. It’s not really an angry command just a blunt suggestion. There will never be a better time, I mean there’s no sports on TV so what else are you gonna do? If it helps, you can drink while reading, or maybe smoke a cigar, that way, the next time you pick up that book you’ll smell the cigar you smoked – what a lovely olfactory reminder.
Don’t worry, I’m gonna give you some practical suggestions. You won’t have to rely on any sketchy ratings from Amazon, rather you can find your next great read by following the sketchy recommendations provided below.