Puzzle of the Week- KenKen #1

Be the first to respond with the correct answer and I’ll post the winner’s name here next week. Heck, screw that I’ll even post all the correct answers in the order they responded to me. Good Luck!

 

Quote of the Day- September 13, 2009: from the show “Soap”

Announcer (Rod Roddy): This is the story of two sisters. Jessica Tate and Mary Campbell. These are the Tates, and these are the Campbells, and this is Soap.

Mary Gatling Dallas Campbell (actress Cathryn Damon) : I have one son who’s about to become my daughter, another son whom people are trying to kill, I have a lunatic stepson and a dummy living in my home and a husband who won’t make love to me. That’s not life, that’s something by Tennessee Williams!

The Major (actor Arthur Peterson, Jr.): Let’s synchronize our watches. It’s now… 3-ish.

Billy Tate (actor Jimmy Baio) : Why can’t anybody in this family talk in front of me? For years I went around thinking a surprise party was being planned for me!

Saul (actor Jack Gilford) : I’m 4064 years old. What do you think I owe it to, a terrific moisturizer?

Trivia of the Day- September 13, 2009: “Soap”, Robert Mulligan and my brother’s absurdist sense of humor

On this day, September 13, in 1977, the first TV viewer discretion warning was administered to American audiences. It was the sitcom “Soap”, a parody of daytime soap operas, created by Susan Harris.  Along with Paul Witt and Tony Thomas, they pitched their idea to ABC in 1976, and the network bigwigs Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, and Fred Silverman bit.

Casting began in November 1976, and veteran TV director Jay Sandrich jumped aboard. He had directed many episodes of the classic “Mary Tyler Moore Show.”  Many cast members of “Soap” were Broadway stage veterans, and soon the two families the show revolved around, the Tates and the Campbells was cast.

I’ll always remember laughing at the surreally funny Robert Mulligan. He had such a wonderfully quirky way with his character.  He was the quintessential example of a performer who would do things that you really just couldn’t parse distinctly and would have a hard time describing to someone what he did. Like when he would “turn invisible” (one of the show’s storylines) he would gesture in a way that as best I can determine would demonstrate a sort of frantic build-up to the point whereby he felt he needed to turn invisible, mixed with a semi-unself-assured confidence in his having done so successfully. He would seem somewhat content that he had turned himself invisible, but at the same time he had a goofy and subtle nervous tic about him that expertly walked that thin line between the character’s insecurities and the actor’s winking at the absurdity. But that almost feels liek I’m saying Mr. Mulligan was stepping out of character, and I don’t mean that at all. Well, like I say it was a delightfully indescribable performance.

My brother used to do a funny imitation of Robert Mulligan, and I enjoyed that we both recognized the uniqueness of the actor’s performance.  In fact, absurdist comedy was always something my brother had a great handle on. He was always able to do things that made me laugh and that if you were to tell someone about, they’d probably not quite understand–you have to see it to “get it” really. It’s a performance thing as opposed to a content thing. Like before he would take a bite out of the food on his fork he would give this momentary pause and then utter the phrase…”Wallace.”  In trying to overanalyze it, one might theorize that the “character” he was portraying was trying to utter a word that would enlarge his mouth big enough to be able to take a sufficient bite out of the forkful of food. But who knows? You just can’t scientifically describe some comedy with great accuracy. It was just giddily funny.

“Soap” had been the victim of some irresponsible journalism even before it debuted. A Newsweek reviewer had not even seen the pilot for the show, and erroneously described some of the show’s plot elements. But it led to protests from Roman Catholic and Southern Baptist representatives, and then the National Council of Churches. They drummed up boycotts of advertisers who aired on “Soap.”  They also claimed they were denied the chance to see the episodes, however “Soap” had been in production during the weeks  of these protests and anyone who wanted to, could have gotten tickets for the audience tapings anytime they wanted.

Indeed many sponsors had dropped the show, resulting in big discounts for advertisers who did work with “Soap.” Fred Silverman stuck up for the show, while some ABC affiliates dropped it and others moved it from its 9:30 PM time to a late night time slot. According to a University of Richmond,Virginia survey of viewers who watched the first episode, 74% of viewers said they thought the show was not offensive, and while 26% said they were offended, half of those offended said they planned to watch “Soap” again next week. 

“Soap” was a ratings success for the most part on ABC, finishing in 13th place for the 1977-78 season. It was also a big hit in England and Japan.

And now, observe as this blog turns invisible until next time. Pfftfsbt!

(Sources:  http://www.tv.com/soap/show/605/summary.html
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/rec.music.dementia/msg00262.html
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/soap/soap.htm)

Trivia of the Day- September 10, 2009- Famous beauty pageant contestants

This past Tuesday, September 8th was the anniversary of the first Miss America contest way back in 1921.

According to Cindy Adams gossip column here are several famous women who were once…excuse me?..Yes, that’s right Cindy Adams gossip column…hm?…all right that’s enough of that, not all my sources are the Encyclopedia Britannica. Anyway there are a great many beauty pageant losers and winners that went on to fame afterward; for instance, actress  Dyan Cannon was once Miss West Seattle– “not even all of Seattle”– carps Ms. Adams.

So okay, like what beauty pageant did Ms. Adams ever win even that she can make fun of Dyan Cannon winning Miss West Seattle? Oh I see, none. Wow. Big surprise. Bet the smartass wouldn’t even win a beauty pageant in her apartment building.

Gena Lee Nolin of “Baywatch” (Pamela Lee Anderson Part Deux) was Miss Las Vegas. Or as Miss Adams might scoff, “Hmph..not even all of Nevada.” And Maria Conchita Alonso was 14-years-old when she won Miss Teenager of the World. Or as Ms. Adams might say, “Pfft…not even all of the solar system.” Speaking of Pamela Lee, her ex-husband Tommy Lee is from pageant-winning pedigree. His mother, Vassiliki Papadimitriou was Miss Greece in 1957.

Susan Anton won Miss Muriel Cigars in 1970, which led of course to her sweet and excellent prestigious job as an actress in Muriel Cigar TV commercials.

Halle Berry was a Miss USA runner-up, and Cloris Leachman was a 1946 Miss America runner-up. Faye Dunaway was a Tallahassee May Queen loser, in good company with Linda Evangelista, a loser in the Miss Teen Niagara Pageant. Jeez, what did the winner look like if Linda Evangelista lost? Ah, but you never know. Ever see a picture of Jennifer Garner as a kid? Puzzling.

Some women were apparently beautiful immediately upon leaving the womb. Beginning when she was 13-years-old, Raquel Welch won Miss La Jolla, Miss Photogenic, Miss Contour, Miss Maid of California, and lots of men’s hearts with her Cave Woman “One Million Years B.C.” poster.

Similarly, before pin-up hottie Loni Anderson entranced America on “WKRP in Cincinnati” the busty star represented Miss Roseville in the 1964 Miss Minnesota Pageant. She was runner-up. Get this though: She was a brunette. In fact she was born with jet-black hair, dying it blonde when she moved to Hollywood.

Natural blonde actress Cybill Shepherd was Miss Teenage Memphis in 1966, at age 16, and a decade later, Deborah Norville was 1976′s Georgia Junior Miss winner, the same year that Michelle Pfeiffer was Miss Orange County. And two decades later again, Ali Landry, the Doritos Girl from that 1998 Super Bowl commercial (no relation to Super Bowl-winning Dallas Cowboy coach Tom Landry) was Miss USA in 1996.

Even Alan Alda’s mother, nee Joan Brown, was in on the action, winning a beauty pageant in which she was called “Miss New York”. I worded that coyly because a list of Miss New York winners does not show her to be among them. So I guess there was some other Miss New York-like pageant? You would think that with all the idiosyncratic pageant titles out there–Miss Muriel Cigars, Miss Burbank (won in 1948 by a barefoot Debbie Reynolds), Miss Eleganza in Naples (won by a 13-year-old Sophia Loren in white shoes she painted black)–you would think that a pageant wouldn’t have to name its winner the same name as another pageant.

There was a Miss Greenwich Village, which smoky-voiced Lauren Bacall won in 1942. At least it is believed smoky-voiced Lauren Bacall won. Being Greenwich Village it could have been…well…let’s just say a “smoky-voiced” impostor.

Oh now here’s a fun one: Martha Stewart won Glamour magazine’s Best-Dressed College Girl in 1961. “Best Dressed College Girl”. It almost sounds like one of those consolation descriptions when someone’s getting set up on a blind date: “You’re asking me what does she look like? Oh. Well, She’s got a great personality.” Or, “You wanna know what his hair looks like? Oh. Well, it’s a lovely flesh-tone actually.” “Best Dressed College Girl”. Technically speaking, you can look like Ernest Borgnine and win “Best Dressed College Girl.”

Vera Miles, the actress who played Janet Leigh’s sister in “Psycho” won the swimsuit competition at the 1948 Miss America contest. She lost the overall competition though, coming in 3rd place. The winner? A Minnesota farm girl named BeBe Shopp, who played the marimba in the talent portion. I think I was in a BeBe Shopp once–buying pellet gun ammunition.

Speaking of “Psycho”, Kathie Lee Gifford was an America’s Junior Miss Pageant contestant representing Maryland. She was disqualified however when she accidentally broke the rules by talking with a man in public. Did they actually think Miss Gifford would be able to NOT talk in public for any extended period of time. But in her defense, “Talking with a man in public” was her crime? Is that a typo? Maybe they meant “talking with a man in pubic?” Tsk tsk.

Before Regis Philbin teamed up with the perky Kathie Lee Gifford for their morning TV show, Regis co-hosted PM Magazine with perky Mary Hart who finished in the top ten in the 1970 Miss America Pageant. She was Miss South Dakota.

The following year, Miss Texas won the 1971 Miss America title. Phyllis George was her name and she went on to fame as a TV host on many shows. She has the distinction of being the only winner to drop her crown on live television. So naturally she was steered into sports broadcasting by the TV network geniuses. Ms. George was maligned in the beginning of her career as being a pretty face placed unfairly into various hosting duties.

Former pageant contestant Diane Sawyer faced the same sort of criticism at the start of her career, perhaps even moreso. Maybe because she was blonde. Or maybe because she was a press aide to Richard Nixon during his presidency and after his Watergate resignation. After his Watergate resignation. Regardless, Ms. Sawyer’s career isn’t exactly suffering, being one of the highest paid newswomen in history, so who’s to say blondes don’t make smart moves.

Take fellow blonde Marla Maples  for instance, who placed 4th in Georgia’s Miss Teen Pageant, winning Miss Photogenic. A wily and smart young lady, she set her sights on Donald Trump, or vice versa, and look at her career now! She’s in a reality TV show! Yeah I swear! A real honest to goodness reality TV show! Top that Ms. Sawyer!

Here’s another fun pageant title: In 1957 Ali McGraw was a contestant in the “Prettiest Waitress” pageant. I’m not kidding. The winner received a pinch on the ass by Bob Barker while being told: “Hey sweet cheeks, I’ll have another cup of coffee when you get around to it.”

True Amazing Trivia Alert! Which of the following ladies is a pageant champion? Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Imelda Marcos or Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? The answer? None other than the enchantingly gorgeous Imelda Romualdez who reigned as Miss Manilla in 1953 before becoming First Lady of the Philippines beside hubby Ferdinand Marcos. Who knew? In the final question phase of the competition I wonder if she mentioned her goal to own a bazillion pairs of shoes.

I like that Delta Burke is an actual former beauty pageant contestant who played a former beauty pageant contestant on the show “Designing Women”. She was Miss Florida in 1974 but came up short in the Miss America Pageant after the talent portion of the contest in which Miss Burke performed a British dramatic theatrical recitation by the soon-to-be-beheaded Queen Anne Boleyn…in a Southern accent. Maybe she should have played the marimba.

There’ve been many more beauty pageant contestants who became famous I could mention…Vanessa Williams, Jeri Ryan, Mary Frann, Sharon Lawrence, Kim Basinger, someone named Oprah Winfrey, Debra Messing….

But the last one I will mention is actress Sharon Stone who won the Saegertown Spring Festival Queen title and the 1976 Miss Crawford County Pageant. As it happens I used to date a woman who had competed in that very same pageant! Not the same year as Ms. Stone, but a few years afterward. I asked her if she would share any details she can remember about what it was like to be a contestant in that Pageant. Kindly answering back, she wrote: “… several years prior to my entering the pageant, this was the place that Sharon Stone launched her career by actually winning the Miss Crawford County Pageant.” And with regard to the activities involved she remembered: “Well, all the contestants had to meet in a place about 5 miles from the fairgrounds, and we all were assigned to a topless Corvette. We had to sit on the top of the seat so that our bodies were up in the air and had the crap blown out of our nicely styled hair as we were paraded through town to the fairgrounds.”

I had to do a double take when I read “assigned to a topless…” before registering the sentence correctly in my mind.

Well that’s the trivia for today. I’ve been remiss the past few days due to working long hours on “Law and Order” which I hope to provide fun details about later.

Right after I solve world peace.

(Sources: http://www.missamerica1933.com/missamerica.html; http://www.pageantcenter.com/famous.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America’s_Junior_Miss)

Quote of the Day- September 10, 2009: beauty pageants

Please. It was all tits and ass.
–Lynda “Wonder Woman” Carter, former Miss USA; cited in The New York Post, September 8, 2009, pg. 14

“There she is, Miss America. There she is, your ideal. The dreams of a million girls, Who are more than pretty, May come true in Atlantic City. Oh she may turn out to be, The queen of femininity. There she is, Miss America. There she is, your ideal. With so many beauties, She’ll take the town by storm, With her all-American face and form. And there she is, Walking on air she is, Fairest of the fair she is, Miss America.”
–Bert Parks, writer of these song lyrics which he sang for the first time at the first televised Miss America pageant in 1955

Quiz of the Week- September 7, 2009: Quickie Labor Day Trivia

First, here are the answers to last Monday’s Quiz (August 31, 2009) “Garbage Truck is a Collective Noun” in honor of  New York City’s testing several new environmentally friendly garbage trucks:

1. 3,200
2. from Earth halfway to the moon
3. 89%
4. bottom loader
5. 1938
6. George Dempster
7. Taiwan
8. shark
9. 40%
10. 25,000 miles
11. less than 3 miles per gallon
12. 179,000
13. 90%

And now here is this week’s quiz “Quickie Labor Day Quiz”:

1. Labor Day became an official holiday when which President signed legislation in August 1894 creating it, less than a week after 12,000 federal troops crushed a rail strike in Pullman, Illinois? (He was thinking about approaching midterm elections, and so appeased labor’s raw feelings by giving the country a day off in honor of its workers.)
Benjamin Harrison
Chester A. Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Rutherford B. Hayes
Theodore Roosevelt

2. In 1882, 10,000 workers marched in the first Labor Day parade in what city?
Chicago
London
New York City
Philadelphia
Toronto

3. Every Labor Day weekend, Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin hosts what State Contest?
Alpaca Shearing
Cheese Curd Making
Cow Chip Throwing
Greased Pig Catching
Pumpkin Pie Eating

The answers will appear next Monday!

Quote of the Day- September 7, 2009: Labor Day Quotations

“Labor Day differs in every essential from other holidays of the year in any country. All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflict and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.”
–Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor; “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LABOR DAY” , September 4, 1910

“If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.”    –Doug Larson, daily columnist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette and weekly columnist for the Door County Advocate

“Labor Day is a glorious holiday because your child will be going back to school the next day.  It would have been called Independence Day, but that name was already taken.”
–Bill Dodds, author and poet

“Burning Man is a standard hippie tribal thing, except for the highly nonstandard fact that it is not kitschy ’60s nostalgia. This event is very ’90s, very big, and very much alive. It’s a Tim Leary, Wavy Gravy, Deadhead caravan, grab-the-mike-at-Woodstock kind of event. Feels lovely and enormously persuasive. Nonbureaucratic, participative, solidarity-driven, noncommercial, arty. With all those manifest virtues, you have to wonder why a setup like this can’t seem to last any longer than a Labor Day weekend.”
–Bruce Sterling, science fiction writer; “Greetings from Burning Man!”

Trivia of the Day- September 6, 2009: Fantasy Football, Penis Nicknames, Inglorious Basterds, Best Ass, The Can-Can, Farts, and stuff.

We had our Fantasy Football Live Draft yesterday. Is there anything more stressful than the live draft in a Fantasy Football League? Maybe a thorough examination by an effeminate proctologist with Parkinson’s disease, but not much else.

According to the November 2005 issue of ESPN magazine, Fantasy football cost employers $200 million in lost productivity from its employees. According to the August 21, 2008 issue of amNY news daily, it was estimated that fantasy football cost companies $9.2 billion in lost productivity.

Despite some glitches with my Autopilot turning itself on at various times through no desire on my part, it went pretty well for me. I don’t why it does that, but when your Autopilot is on it automatically picks the next highest ranked player on the overall list regardless of whether you need or want that player on your roster. Much like a military draft. That’s how I wound up with Ronnie Brown of the Miami Dolphins as like my second pick. Could be worse though. If you’re not there for the live draft for instance, your entire team is picked with the Autopilot system. That’s how “Kell Hath No Fury” (one of the teams in my league) wound up with kicker Adam Vinatieri as a 6th Round Pick!  Good god. He’s so screwed. But who knows, there’s a lot of season ahead and plenty of chances for any team to Add/Drop its way to the Super Bowl.

Although the quote, “Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d / Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d”  is commonly thought to be from William Shakespeare, it is actually from William Congreve’s ‘The Mourning Bride’ (1697); spoken by Zara in Act 3, Scene 2.

My Team’s name is “This Year I’m Naming My Team T”. I wanted to name it “This Year I’m Naming My Team The…”. But the NFL web site limits the number of characters for a team name so that’s what happened. Now probably everyone thinks I’m a big fan of Mr. T or something.  I don’t know what I’d make of an incomprehensible team name like mine. It’s failed to even grasp the meta feel I was going for. Previously it was named “The Ingloryous Bas-turds” because I thought it was sufficiently funny enough to misspell everything even more than Quentin Tarantino misspelled his movie’s title. I had planned to change it later because I didn’t want everyone to think I was some sort of rabid fan of that movie. I just thought it would be momentarily funny til I changed it before our draft. But there we are. Or at least there I am.

When asked about the misspelled title, director Quentin Tarantino has said: “Here’s the thing. I’m never going to explain that. You do an artistic flourish like that, and to explain it would just take the piss out of it and invalidate the whole stroke in the first place.” Truth is, his title “Inglourious Basterds” was taken from ”The Inglorious Bastards”, the English title of a 1978 film “Quel maledetto treno blindato” by Enzo G. Castellari, which was also about a group of American soldiers fighting behind enemy lines. In Italian, Castellari’s film translates literally as “That Cursed Armored Train”.

But in looking everything over, I’m very happy with my team. I have Peyton Manning as my starting quarterback, looking for him to rebound with a big year, not that last year was disappointing for him but his stats were certainly less than we all had been used to seeing him achieve.

Peyton Manning’s record-setting quarterback season of 2004 included the following statistics:
Most touchdown passes in a season with 49. (Had one six-touchdown game, three five-TD games, two fours, three threes, and five twos. It took him to Week 15 to throw only one touchdown in a game.)
Most touchdown passes in a month (19 in November).
Most consecutive multiple-touchdown games in a season (13), bettering the 12 such games shared by Johnny Unitas in 1959, Don Meredith from 1965-66, Dan Marino from 1986-87, and Brett Favre from 1994-95.
Most consecutive games with at least four TD passes (five games from October 31-November 25).
Became the only player in NFL history to throw five touchdowns four times in a 12-month span.
Threw for 4,000 yards for the sixth consecutive season, the first player to do so.
Set the NFL record for highest passer rating in a season (121.1), topping Steve Young’s 112.8 in 1994.
And one near record: Reached 200 career TD passes in the second fewest games in history (106, behind Dan Marino’s 89).

And I couldn’t resist picking Brett Favre as my back-up QB. I just couldn’t NOT pick him. But I might Add-Drop him as the season goes on. Not even necessarily for another QB, but maybe for a 5th wide receiver. That’s the tricky thing this year. You start 3 receivers instead of two like we used to do a couple of years ago. So it’s smart to maybe have 5 of them to cope with the Bye weeks and the weeks when your opposition is strong defensively.  I only have 4 receivers, so I’ll wait to see who maybe has a break out season this year and try to grab him up.

Brett Favre holds the NFL record for most career passing Touchdowns with 464 (and counting). He has a bunch of other records including this one that he shares with Peyton Manning: Both are 3-time winners of the AP NFL MVP award.

My WRs are Marques Colston of the New Orleans Saints, Terrell Owens of the Buffalo Bills (got my fingers crossed with that pick. What was I thinking?), Steve Breaston (who?) of the Arizona Cardinals, and Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears. With Hester I’m hoping that they start utilizing him more as a receiver in addition to his kickoff and punt returning. The Bears had lousy quarterbacks before this season, so it was hard for them to exploit any of their receivers, but now that they have Jay Cutler who’s got a strong arm, I’m thinking now they can call more plays where Cutler can air it out and have the phenomenally speedy Hester streak downfield and run under the ball. We’ll see.

NFL wide receivers can use the numbers 10-19 and 80-89 on their jerseys.

My running backs are DeAngelo Williams of the Carolina Panthers, Ronnie Brown of the Dolphins, Thomas Jones of the New York Jets (who to my astonishment was still available by the 6th round!!), and then a chancy pick with Cadillac Williams of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The average career of a running back in the National Football League in the last two decades is 2.57 years.

I was happy to find that by not picking a Tight End until round 13, I was still able to snag a very respectable Visanthe Shiancoe of the Minnesota Vikings. Maybe the imminently 40-year-old arm of Brett Favre will be tired enough for him to have to throw short all the time to his Tight End.

In 2009, eDiets.com surveyed over 2,300 people to compare over 60 celebrities and then vote for who had the hottest butt. For best ass, previous winner singer/actress Jennifer Lopez, was beaten by actress and former model, Jessica Biel.

And I drafted Robbie Gould of the Chicago Bears as my kicker but am already awaiting the results of putting him on the Add/Drop list for kicker John Carney of the Saints.

The cancan dance first appeared in the working-class ballrooms of Montparnasse in Paris in around 1830, and originally it was groups of men, who caused the most shock dancing the can-can in public dance-halls.

I have two Defense/Special Teams: The New England Patriots and the Carolina Panthers. And I may Add-Drop the Panthers for some lucky WR who is just itching to join the mighty “This Year I’m Naming My Team T.”

We’ve got some other fun team names in the league. I like “Johnny Messypants”. A friend of mine named his team that. It’s named after a character I created called Johnny Messypants who would sort of talk in very blase, slow, lazy, weak voice and then I’d make a raspberry sound with my mouth like a fart sound and  Johnny Messypants would groan pathetically and say in an Elmer Fudd sort of voice, “I’m sorry…but sometimes…it’s hard for me to hold it in.”

We also have a team named “The One Cheek Squeaks”. My college roommate’s son owns that team. It’ll be a battle of the Scatalogical Teams when those two teams play each other. It’ll be “Johnny Messypants” versus “The One Cheek Squeaks” playing in the Toilet Bowl.

The sound that farts make are produced by vibrations of the anal opening. Sounds depend on the velocity of expulsion of the gas and the tightness of the sphincter muscles of the anus.

One year a few seasons ago, I named my team “The Johnsons.” I drafted only players with the surname Johnson. Amazingly I was able to fill every position with a Johnson except the Kicker and the Defense. Coming up with a team logo was fun too. You can imagine.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that “Johnson” is U.S. coarse slang for penis, originating from the surname, while Websters adds a first recorded usage date of 1863. Out of the many theories of origin, this date would appear to make the most likely one being related to British slang John Thomas, which was also slang for penis around 1863. The given date of 1863 shoots down two proposed theories for the origin because they come way after 1863:
1. R. G. Johnson made baseball bats in his Sebago Bat Company, burning ‘R. G. Johnson’ onto the bats which were referred to as “Johnsons.” However, the R G Johnson Company records show it was established in 1970.
2. President Lyndon Baines Johnson was supposedly a braggart about his organ, which then became gossiped about in popular culture. Obviously too late to be thought of as an origin of the slang.
There’s another notion of origin that could be possible due to the years involved. The “Johnson bar” is a long rod in old steam locomotives that the engineer would use to control the speed and forward/reverse direction of a train. It is called a “reverser” in Britain. Historians have not pinpointed why this reversing lever was called a “Johnson Bar” in American railway journals of the time, but it documents back to about 1842 in locomotive history.

One of the more satisfying seasons was when I named my team The New Yorkers, and I drafted only New York Jets, New York Giants and in a pinch Buffalo Bills players.  It wasn’t my league; it was some other league I joined, and I remember some wiseass writing, “I’ll give $100 if The New Yorkers win even one single game.” Maybe he was mad that it seemed like I wasn’t taking it that seriously by drafting my team in such a goofy way. Which was true of course, but amazingly, that New Yorker team of mine not only won games, but it made the playoffs! Came just short of winning the Super Bowl! Hah! It was just the perfect storm of a season for my players, Eli Manning, Plaxico Burress, Tiki Barber, my Jets players. It was hilarious.

There are lots of fun ways to draft players and name your team if your heart isn’t set on winning very much. In one public league I was in, I called by team the Bills. You’re probably way ahead of me already, but I only drafted players named William or Bill.  So go ahead and be creative. Drop me a line and let me know your funniest strategy for drafting players and naming your team!  I’d love to mention them in future blogs! Rah rah, sis boom PDFFFFFTTT…oh dear…I’m sorry…but sometimes…it’s hard for me to hold it in.”

Wilfred Winkenbach, former part owner of the Oakland Raiders is said to have invented fantasy Football. The entry fee for the 2007 National Fantasy Football Championship was $1300, with the winner taking home $100,000. Fantasy Football players comprise 90% of the Fantasy Sports industry. In October 2006 alone, 9.6 million people visited Fantasy Sports sites. 30% of Fantasy Football players manage their teams while on their office computers. 73% of Fantasy Football players have attended college.

(Sources:  (ESPN magazine, November 2005; amNY news daily, August 21, 2008, page 11; imdb.com, SUICIDESPORTS.COM; 2004 Summary; February 7, 2005; and COLTS.COM; profootballreference.com. http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/FavrBr00.htm; DatabaseFootball.com.  http://www.databasefootball.com/awards/award.htm?a=APMVP; wikipedia.org; BLOODY SUNDAYS: Inside the Dazzling, Rough-and-Tumble World of the N.F.L., by Mike Freeman; FACTS ON FARTS, by Brenda Lorenz, www.heptune.com; ©2003; “”Locomotive Dictionary, 1st edition, pg 209; http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/508763; ESPN magazine, July 30, 2007, Special Advertisement by Jeep Wrangler, pg. 57)

Quote of the Day- September 6, 2009: Fantasy Football

“Fantasy baseball is like marriage, and fantasy football is like sex.”
–Frank Deford, sportswriter

Fantasy Football is killin my grass. It’s true. Everywhere I look, I see FANTASY FOOTBALL magazines and FANTASY FOOTBALL newspapers and FANTASY FOOTBALL websites and FANTASY FOOTBALL hula lessons and FANTASY FOOTBALL hamster food and FANTASY FOOTBALL full-figured under-wire support. (Okay, that’s a joke. I obviously don’t read newspapers.) And because I’m addicted to fantasy football, I have to read all of it. I memorize names. And rankings. And depth charts. And sometimes nibble the pages. And I do all this while my grass whithers in the hot sun and turns brown because I cannot be bothered to water it or cut it or spray paint it green like the crazy neighbor two doors down with the black-light posters for drapery and the lawn sculpture made out of Spam.
–Jim Cantrell, columnist, August 18, 2009

Fantasy Football is like Dungeons and Dragons for the guys who used to make fun of people who played Dungeons and Dragons. I take part in neither. As I’ve said to the many people who suggested I join either: “I’m a geek. But I’m not that kind of geek.”
–Keith Alberstadt, stand-up comedian

Trivia of the Day- September 4, 2009: NYU, The White Horse Tavern, and Sleepovers….It’s Suckerrific!

Last night I met up with a fellow I worked with years ago in Asheville, North Carolina on a film called “A Good Baby” starring Henry Thomas and David Strathairn. He’s a really nice guy, and he was up here for the week with his girlfriend and her daughter who is starting her freshman year at New York University.

NYU is the largest private university in the United States with an enrollment of 38,391 students in its undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs in 2009. That’s not even including the 12,526 in their noncredit programs.

We met at the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village between Perry and 11th Streets on a Thursday night. Figured it would give them a look into where the daughter might just be spending some evenings. At NYU a lot of students don’t schedule classes on Fridays, so Thursday becomes a big drinking night out, and The White Horse Tavern is one of the many popular watering holes in the Village.

Founded in 1880, The White Horse Tavern was originally a favorite bar of longshoremen. In the 1950s,  poet Dylan Thomas began to hang out there, soon to be joined by other writers, and thus bestowing the tavern with a literary reputation.  Dylan Thomas’s picture hangs on several walls there and it was after a heavy night of drinking at the White Horse that he died. Some of the other famous customers included James Baldwin, The Clancy Brothers (who also performed there), Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac (who had been staying at an apartment on the corner of 11th Street, and apparently was frequently thrown out of the bar), Norman Mailer, Jim Morrison, Mary Travers, and Hunter S. Thompson.

Anyway, the daughter is very psyched about being in New York and starting this adventure. My friend confided in me that her mother is growing increasingly emotional about her little baby bird leaving the nest, and he expects it will be heart-wrenching plane ride back to Charlotte.

I can sort of remember my family seeing my older brother off to college when I was a boy. We were at the airport, and I just remember my Mom looking out over a baclony from inside the terminal, watching the plane taxi onto the runway, and then take off, and then fly fly fly away until it was gone. If there was any crying I probably just mentally blocked it out.

They did a lot of touring about the city and I suggested since it was so close that they stop by 75 1/2 Bedford St. to see the city’s narrowest apartment building (see my posting on August 30, 2009).

They also stopped by a friend’s apartment who was working on an album with several other well-respected jazz musicians. My friend’s girlfriend may in fact have suggested their album’s title. She came up with “Sleepover” and it seemed to have been met with a positive response.

Kind of a cool title I have to agree. A cool title for almost anything really. An album, a song, a play (nice easy setting for a production: a bedroom with lots of fun banter between some teenage girls having a sleepover. Or maybe…maybe the play is about a man and woman who were out on a date and the woman asked the guy if he’d like to come in for a nightcap and then the play becomes about his trying to spend the night and her resisting…could be comedic, could even be scarily nasty.) “Sleepover” would also be a cool movie title…”The girls at NYU thought they were having a nice fun innocent sleepover after a night at the White Horse Tavern. Little did they know they would have a visitor…..”SLEEPOVER”–the night bedtime was dead time!”

“Sleepover” is the title of a 2004 film directed by Joe Nussbaum about a group of teenage girls competing in an all-night scavenger hunt against a more popular group of girls. Steve Carrell (pre-”The Office”) appears in the small role of a security guard named Sherman.

Okay, it’s been taken. Had to figure it was. Another title my friend’s girlfriend came up with was “Suckerrific.” We had a nice laugh over that, and…Oh! look at this, nothing on imdb.com with that title! Who needs lawyers to do title searches, when we’ve got good ol’ imdb! Yeah, but does imdb thoroughly cover the adult film industry, in which “Suckerrific” might very well be a movie title?

Perhaps I should check other sources. This could take a while.

(Sources: http://www.nyu.edu/about/facts.html; http://nymag.com/listings/bar/white_horse_tavern/; wikipedia, imdb.com )