Archive for the ‘Looking Back’ Category
In the past I’ve had my fun with statements made by baseball players, football players, and basketball players. Just to be fair I thought today would be a good day for some ridiculous statements from an assortment of other sports to include some of their genius sportscasters and their pearls of wisdom.
- And he’s got the ice pack on his groin him there, so it’s possibly not the old shoulder injury. -Ray French, rugby sportscaster
- Venezuela! Great, that’s the Italian city with the guys in the boats, right? -Murad Muhammad, on being told about a boxing match in South America
- And for those of you watching on black-and-white, the pink ball is the one behind the blue. -TV billiards commentator
- I don’t want to tell you any half-truths unless they’re completely accurate. -Dennis Rapoport, boxing manager
- It’s about 90% strength and 40% technique. -Johnny Walker, world middleweight wrist wrestling champion
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- Cycling is a good thing for the youngsters, because it keeps them off the streets. -Daniel Mean, commentator
- It’s a catch he would’ve caught 99 times out of 1000. -Henry Blofeld
- I was in a no-win situation, so I’m glad that I won rather than lost. -Frank Bruno, boxer
- The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical. -Murray Walker
- There have been injuries and deaths in boxing, but none of them serious. -Alan Minter, former prizefighter
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- We have only one person to blame, and that’s each other. -Barry Back, New York Ranger, explaining a championship game brawl
- If I wasn’t talking, I wouldn’t know what to say. -Chico Resch, New York Islanders goalie
- He called me a rapist and a recluse. I’m not a recluse. -Mike Tyson, boxer
- On what? -boxer Chris Eubank, when asked whether he thought about writing his autobiography.
- It’s basically the same, just darker. -Alan Kulwicki, Stock-car racer, on racing at night instead of during the afternoon
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ENJOY YOUR WILDCARD SUNDAY
Next Year!!!
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
It’s once again time to introduce installment number seven of this series. As I’ve posted them, I’ve found the conversations between myself and my better-half to be quite interesting. Some of my answers have surprised her and some of hers have surprised me. That’s a good thing for any relationship when after twenty or more years together you can still be pleasantly surprised by each other. Let’s get started . . .
- One hot summer afternoon, while walking through a parking lot at a large shopping center, you notice a dog suffering badly from the heat inside a locked car. What would you do?
- Do you feel ill at ease going alone to either dinner or a movie? What about going on a vacation by yourself?
- If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?
- For $20,000 would you go for three months without washing, brushing your teeth, or using deodorant? Assume you could not explain your reasons to anyone.
- Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80? Assume that most of the last 30 years would be good ones.
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- If you were to discover that your closest friend was a heroin dealer, what would you do?
- Is it easy for you to accept help when you need it? Will you ask for help?
- If you were helping to raise money for charity and someone agreed to make a large contribution if you would perform at the upcoming fundraising show, would you? If so, what would you like to perform? Assume the show would have an audience of about 1000 people.
- Would you have one of your fingers surgically removed if it somehow guaranteed immunity from all major diseases?
- Would you like to be famous? In what way?
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- How do you picture your funeral? Is it important for you to have people mourn your death?
- Which of the following restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently, or never leaving the state in which you now live?
- You, your closest friend, and your father are on vacation together, hiking in a remote jungle. Your two companions stumble into a nest of poisonous vipers and are bitten repeatedly. You know neither will live without an immediate shot of antivenom, yet there is only a single dose of antivenom and that is in your pocket. What would you do?
- Where would you choose to be if you could place yourself anywhere on a scale from 1 to 10, where one is hardship, struggle, and extraordinary accomplishment and 10 is comfort, peace of mind, and no accomplishment. Why? Where are you now?
- If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon to be born child, would you do it?
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HAVE FUN WITH IT
I’ve considered myself an artist beginning at age five or six. I love creating art but I’m also a student of art history and read any and all information I can find. Here are a few samples of art history covering many decades and artists.
- The world’s largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and the neighboring Hermitage in Leningrad, Russia. One has to walk 15 miles to visit each of the 322 galleries, which house nearly 3,000,000 works of art and archaeological remains.
- The largest painting in the world is The Battle of Gettysburg, painted in 1883 by Paul Philippoteaux and 16 assistants, who worked for 2 1/2 years. It is 410 feet long, 70 feet high, and weighs 11,792 pounds. In 1964, the painting was bought by Joe King of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
- Henri Matisse’s La Bateau, hung in New York’s Museum of modern Art for 47 days in 1961 before someone noticed it was upside down. About 116,000 people had passed in front of the painting before the error was noted.
- Vincent Van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting.
- In 1930, during the depths of the depression, Andrew Mellon, the American financier, bought 21 paintings from Russia’s Hermitage Museum for $7 million. The Russians needed the cash, and this American millionaire has lots of it, even during the depression.
- As penance for a quarrel with Pope Julius II, Michelangelo, in 1505, began a more than year-long project creating a gigantic bronze portrait of His Holiness. Later, the portrait was melted down for cannon.
- “I am so rich that I just wiped out 100,000 francs,” said Picasso, after making a new picture he didn’t like disappear from his canvas.
- The genre of art known as Cubism derived its name from a belittling remark made by Henri Matisse in reference to a Braque painting. Matisse said that the landscape looked as though it were wholly made up of little cubes.
- In his earliest and poverty-stricken days, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his drawings.
- Pablo Picasso, when he died in 1973, left in for repositories in the South of France the following: 1876 paintings, 1355 sculptures, 2,880 ceramic pieces, more than 11,000 drawings and sketches, and some 27,000 etchings, engravings, and lithographs in various stages of completion.
YOU JUST NEED TO BE DEAD TO BE FAMOUS
A week or so ago I posted a collection of riddles which could be described as a bit raunchy. Much to my surprise the response was amazing. It appears that a little off-color humor is being appreciated by more people than just me. I’ll continue with a few more gems to tickle your fancy. Let’s time travel to 1984 . . .
- How do you circumcise a whale? Send down fore skin divers!
- Who was a heavyweight boxing champion with a flatulence problem? Gaseous Clay!
- Why is credit like sex? Because the people who need it the worst can’t get it!
- What happens if you don’t pull out in time? You get a parking ticket!
- Why does an elephant have four feet? He’d look pretty silly with just six inches!
- What would you call a sex change surgeon? A gender amender!
- What does a mathematician do if he’s constipated? Works it out with a pencil!
- How do you make holy water? Take some water and boil the hell out of it!
- Why is sex better than bowling? The balls are lighter and you don’t have to change your shoes!
- What’s the easiest way to get a little group sex? Use both hands!
HAVE A RAUNCHY DAY!
I started this blog initially to post as much useless information as I could find. Over the years I’ve wandered far afield into limericks, quotations, poetry, and dozens of other categories. I thought today I’d return to the roots of this blog and give you a handful of totally useless but interesting facts.
- Dolly Parton once insured her breasts for $3 million.
- Scarlett Johansson, Alanis Morrissette, Vin Diesel, and Kiefer Sutherland are all twins.
- Kirk Douglas was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy and saw action in the Pacific before internal injuries suffered in combat led to an early discharge.
- Dr. Timothy Leary of LSD fame was expelled from West Point after a drinking incident that led to a court-martial.
- Actress Kate Winslet had the nickname of “Blubber” in her early school days.
- Nicolas Cage was expelled from elementary school, for putting dead grasshoppers in the egg salad on picnic day.
- In high school Sylvester Stallone was voted “Most Likely to End Up in the Electric Chair”.
- Keanu Reeves was the goalie on his high school ice hockey team, where he earned the nickname “The Wall” and where he was voted MVP.
- Ellen DeGeneres was once a vacuum cleaner saleswoman.
- In 1993, Barbra Streisand got stuck in the toilet at Liza Minnelli’s apartment during a party. Fellow guests Jack Nicholson and Michael Douglas couldn’t break down the door, so the buildings porter had come up to release her.
AS PROMISED – TOTALLY USELESS INFORMATION
I’m a bit of a fanatic using quotes on many of my posts since I normally use them to further verify a point or opinion I’m trying to make. I’m a believer than even though many of the persons I quote are long dead, their opinions and thoughts are still valid. Human nature unfortunately doesn’t change all that much from one generation to another. Back in the day there were just as many annoying a-holes as there are today. The funny thing is they express their a-holeness in exactly the same way. This just further supports my use of them whenever I deem it necessary. Not all quotes are friendly and nice and there are just as many derogatory things said about damn near everyone as not. Let’s take a look at a few not so flattering quotes concerning men by a group of less than happy women.
- “A man is a creature with two legs and eight arms.” Jayne Mansfield
- “God created Adam. Then corrected her mistake.” Brooklyn Woman’s Bar Association
- “Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” Charlotte Whitton
- “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Gloria Steinem
- “I married beneath me. All women do.” Nancy Astor
- “A man without a woman is like a neck without a pain.” Anonymous
- “The man is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.” Jilly Cooper, Cosmopolitan Magazine
- “I require three things on the man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.” Dorothy Parker
- “A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.” Zsa Zsa Gabor
- “Adam came first, but men always do.” Anonymous
THE WAR OF THE SEXES CONTINUES
I just received a request from a reader to post something lighthearted and fun for a change. Since I’m neither lighthearted nor funny, I did some research and found a small paperback book hidden on a bookshelf behind some others. It’s titled Raunchy Riddles and after reading a few entries I know why it was hidden. I suppose it could be considered lighthearted and funny but that would be stretching the truth a little. This is 1980’s humor at its absolute worst. This post is dedicated to that foolish reader who requested it. Here we go!
- What do you use to make a pickle cake? Dill Dough!
- What would you call a sex change in Puerto Rico? A hole in Juan!
- What’s the best thing to do if you’re on a date with an annoying nymphomaniac? Give her a vibrator and tell her to buzz off!
- What happened to the couple that met through the social disease hotline? They lived “herpily ever after!”
- What’s the best part of a porno movie? The coming attractions!
- What should you do if your date won’t make love with the lights on? Close the car door!
- What did one boob say to the other? “We’d better stop hanging so low, they’ll think we’re nuts!”
- What happens if a lady golfer gets hit with a golf ball between the first and the second hole? It doesn’t leave a lot of room for the Band-Aid!
- How did the four guys carry the huge drunken fat girl out of the bar? Two abreast!
- What’s a hamburger kiss? Between the buns!
There you have it folks, some of the worst humor of the mid-1980s. The more I read the fewer I decided to post and believe it or not the above ten were the least objectionable I could find. So, to my lighthearted and funny reader, in the future be careful what you ask for. One last lighthearted tidbit just for you . . .
What’s the difference between a midget detective agency and a lady’s track team?
A midget detective agency is a cunning bunch of runts!
GOTTA LOVE THE 80’S
Being a collector of useless information and all types of odd trivia, I offer for your enjoyment today the following list of really strange occurrences and/or coincidences. I’ve firmly believed for years that there are no such things as coincidences but maybe these will prove me wrong.
- The Surete, the French precursor and modern counterpart of the FBI, was founded in 1812 by a man who was once named Public Enemy Number One. Eugene-Francois Vidocq, a thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime fighting organization, the Surete.
- The carpenter who built the first stocks in Boston in 1634, a man named Palmer, was the first to occupy them. He was charged with over-billing the town elders for the construction, found guilty, and sentenced to spend a half-hour in the stocks he had recently completed.
- To help determine on what floor it should have its offices in one of the two World Trade Center towers, a Japanese company hired a soothsayer to throw dice.
- A Harvard student on his way home to visit his parents fell between two railroad cars in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was rescued by an actor on his way to visit his sister in Philadelphia. The student was Robert Lincoln, heading to the White House to visit his father. The actor was Edwin Booth, the brother of the man who in a few weeks would murder the student’s father.
- The celebrated seventeenth-century pirate William Kidd was a wealthy landowner in New York state.
- Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley’s comet appeared. He predicted he would die when Halley’s comet next returned to scare everyone – and he did, in 1910. The comet returned again in 1986.
- U.S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes fifteen months of instruction at the Pentagon’s School of Music to turn out a bandleader but merely thirteen months to train a jet pilot.
- Eleven days before the statute of limitations was to expire on the three-million-dollar Brink’s bank robbery in Boston in 1950, one of the robbers confessed and betrayed his fellow robbers.
- During the Gold Rush days in California, Charlie Parkhurst was a stagecoach driver, taking passengers and gold shipments along dangerous roads. Charlie smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, played cards, drank and at one time shot dead two highwaymen. On December 31, 1879, Charlie was found dead at his home. As they were dressing the body for burial it was discovered that Charlie Parkhurst was a woman.
- The slave, Henry Brown escaped from Virginia in 1858 by hiding (with a box of biscuits and a bladder of water) in a box that was shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia. There, he popped out into “the free world.” He was forever after known as “Box” Brown.
Here is a message from my new 2023 calendar that specializes in profanity laced sayings.
January 5 – CHASE YOUR BIG F*****G DREAMS
Today is as good a day as any to continue this series with installment #5. It should make for interesting discussions to start the new year. I hope you enjoy these topics because they seem to be more interesting than those that came before. Just remember:
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates
- Can you urinate in front of another person?
- If you walk out of your house one morning and saw a bird with a broken wing huddled in some nearby bushes, what would you do?
- Assume there were a technological breakthrough that would allow people to travel as easily and cheaply between continents as between nearby cities. Unfortunately, there would also be 100,000 deaths a year from the device. Would you try to prevent its use?
- You and a person you love deeply are placed in separate rooms with a button next to each of you. You know you will both be killed unless one of you presses your button before 60 minutes pass; furthermore, the first to press the button will save the other person but will immediately be killed. What do you think you would do?
- When you tell a story, do you often exaggerate or embellish it? If so, why?
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- Do you feel that advice from older people carries a special weight because of their greater experience?
- Without your kidney as a transplant, someone close to you will die within one month. The odds that you will survive the operation are only 50%, but should you survive, you would be certain of a normal life expectancy. Would you consent to the operation?
- When has your life dramatically changed as the result of some seemingly random external influence? How much do you feel in control of the course of your life?
- If a friend were almost always late, would you resent it or simply allow for it? Can you be counted on to be on time?
- When did you last yell at someone? Why? Did you later regret it?
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- Would you be willing to have horrible nightmares every night for a year if you would be rewarded with extraordinary wealth?
- If you could have free, unlimited service for five years from an extremely good cook, chauffeur, housekeeper, masseuse, or personal secretary, which would you choose?
- Would you be willing to go to a slaughterhouse? Do you eat meat?
- Would you enjoy spending a month of solitude in a beautiful natural setting? Food and shelter would be provided but you would not see another person.
- After a medical examination, your doctor calls and gravely says you have a rare lymphatic cancer with only a few months to live. Five days later, she informs you that the lab test was mislabeled, and you are perfectly healthy. Forced for a moment to look death in the face, you have been allowed to turn and go on. During those difficult days you would certainly have gained some insights about yourself. Do you think they would be worth the pain?
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THESE ONES WILL GET YOU THINKING
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973)
I’m not one to celebrate birthdays on this blog but as with everything there are exceptions. Today is the birthday of my favorite writer whose works have captivated me for more than fifty years. It all started in 1968 while I was serving in the Republic of South Korea. I discovered a copy of the Hobbit in the hooch of a young lady I was seeing. She couldn’t read English and I had no reading material worth reading at the time. She made it a gift to me, and I began reading it immediately.
I became lost in his world of the Shire, the hobbits, the dwarves, the elves, and the wizards. I read a portion of that book by the light of a flashlight as I sat in a foxhole. I had no access to the trilogy at that time and was forced to take a short leave, a quick hop on an Air Force plane to the Tokyo PX, where I purchased my first copies.
Over the years I’ve read those books at least a dozen times. Along the way I read everything I could find about J.R.R. including a number of books later published by his son. I still have some beautiful calendars from the 1970’s and 1980’s painted by a number of well-known artist of scenes from his stories. I also found out that alcohol and tattooing mix rather well together since I have the door symbol from the door of Moria on my upper arm. Right next to that I have a beautiful tattoo of Smaug.
I almost lost my mind when someone who was real fan of the books made the movies. I never thought it would happen. I was again truly excited when Amazon and Jeff Bezos released the latest prequel, The Rings of Power. I was happy to see they did a great job in tying it into the original story line. I became so interested I went back and began reading the Silmarillion for the fifth time. I look forward to the new season as any good fan would.
The man was amazing, and his works will be read and loved by millions more in the coming years.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN
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