NFL Quiz: Name the top ten receivers in receptions, career.
[Hint: One is a running back…not easy.] Answer below.
Far Out, Man
Robert Moog, the inventor of the electronic synthesizer, died at
the age of 71. An electrical engineer by trade who received
degrees from Columbia and Cornell, Moog refined the eerie-
sounding theremin [think “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and
the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”] to create the Moog
synthesizer.
The first Moogs were the size of a large dresser and cost about
the same as a house, but it was Walter Carlos (who later had a
sex-change operation and would respond to Wendy, these days)
who helped popularize the Moog in his LP “Switched-On Bach,”
which peaked at #10 on the album charts back in April 1969. A
ton of artists proceeded to incorporate the Moog in their music,
including the Byrds, the Rolling Stones, the Doors, the Beatles
(“Here Comes The Sun”), Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder, Donna
Summer (“I Feel Love”), Yes, Monkees, Herbie Hancock and,
famously, Emerson, Lake & Palmer (“Lucky Man”).
But there’s a funny story involving the eccentric Moog and his
being awarded his PhD. As described by Adam Bernstein in the
Washington Post, he “walked into an elevator on his way to the
PhD defense and immediately became obsessed with the
resonant frequency of the elevator: Bob started jumping up and
down on the floor [and] somewhere between the fourth and fifth
floors he hit the right frequency. The elevator suddenly started
bouncing alarmingly in time with his jumps and ground to a halt.
Four hours later he was rescued.”
Back to the LP “Switched-On Bach,” here are the nine albums
that placed ahead of it the week of 4/26/69.
1. Hair – Original Cast
2. Blood, Sweat & Tears – same
3. Galveston – Glen Campbell
4. Donovan’s Greatest Hits
5. Cloud Nine – The Temptations
6. Help Yourself – Tom Jones
7. Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell
8. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida – Iron Butterfly
9. Bayou Country – Creedence Clearwater Revival
Country’s Top Ten
Two years ago, David Cantwell and Bill Friskics-Warren penned
a book “Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500
Greatest Singles.” Here is their top ten…and selected comments.
1. “Help Me Make It Through the Night” – Sammi Smith,
written by Kris Kristofferson…1970
“Kristofferson has said that he found the title for his song in a
Frank Sinatra interview he’d read, where the singer talked about
using a bottle or a lover to get through the night.”
2. “Lost Highway” – Hank Williams, written by Leon Payne…
1949
I’m a rollin’ stone, I’ve paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy, on the lost highway
3. “Crazy” – Patsy Cline, written by Willie Nelson…1961
“…one of the most amazing emotional turns in all of country
music. Roiling in exquisite torment, Cline slips in that sexy,
moaned ‘Ohhhh,’ and then, just as…wait, hold on a minute. Is
that a smile playing across her face? Does she actually enjoy
feeling this bad? Misery has never sounded so inviting. Must be
why it’s called ‘Crazy.’”
4. “Can the Circle Be Unbroken (Bye and Bye)” – The Carter
Family, written by A.P. Carter…1935
“Outwardly, the record conveys a mix of hope and doubt (the
title is, after all, a question) about the persistence of the human
community beyond the grave. Yet it also speaks, figuratively, to
each successive generation’s anxiety over whether the links they
forge in country music’s chain will extend the tradition or bring
it to an end.”
5. “Don’t Be Cruel” – Elvis Presley, written by Otis Blackwell
…1956
“A two-sided single with ‘Hound Dog,’ ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ topped
the country charts for over two months, heralding the arrival of
what would soon be called the Nashville Sound.”
6. “Crazy Arms” – Ray Price, written by Charles Seals and Ralph
Mooney…1956
“Ray Price…pretty much ignored the threat posed by
pompadoured insurgents like Perkins and Presley….The success
of ‘Crazy Arms’ – the single spent forty-five weeks on the
country charts, including twenty at #1 – allayed Nashville’s fears
that rock & roll would supplant honky-tonk in the hearts of
young record buyers.”
7. “The Window Up Above” – George Jones, written by George
Jones…1970
“Jones’s lyrics describe a man confronting a wife whom he
dearly loves but who has been unfaithful. He knows this for a
fact because the night before he was ‘watching from the window
up above’ while she embraced her lover in the front yard. ‘You
must have thought that I was sleeping,’ George tells her, and
when he adds, ‘and I wish that I had been,’ it is almost too
painful to bear.”
Geezuz, it’s painful to type it!
8. “Coat of Many Colors” – Dolly Parton, written by Dolly
Parton…1971
“ ‘Coat of Many Colors” builds to a declaration – ‘One is only
poor only if they choose to be’ – that upon first listen seems
more than a little naïve. After all, the choices Dolly Parton had
in whether or not she would grow up poor in the East Tennessee
hills numbered exactly zero. But then, that’s not what she’s
saying. In the very next line, she concedes that ‘we had no
money,’ so she’s clearly not denying her poverty. Rather, she’s
claiming that her poverty need not define her.”
9. “Rank Stranger” – The Stanley Brothers & the Clinch
Mountain Boys, written by Albert E. Brumley…1960
“After years of being away from their mountain home, Carter
Stanley and his kid brother Ralph return to find, to their horror,
that everything has changed; they recognize neither the faces
they see nor their surroundings. Other than their unsettling
encounter with a stranger in the final verse, we can only guess
what’s happened, or what their fate might be.”
No mother or dad, not a friend could I see
They knew not my name and I knew not their faces
I found they were all rank strangers to me
10 “Born to Lose” – Ted Daffan’s Texans, written by Frankie
Brown [Ted Daffan] …1942
Lines such as “I’ve lived my live in vain,” “There’s no use to
dream of happiness,” and “My every hope is gone, it’s so hard to
face an empty dawn” scream that the guy should probably be on
suicide watch.
College Rankings [Courtesy of the Princeton Review]
Party Schools:
1. Wisconsin-Madison
2. Ohio Univ.
3. Lehigh Univ.
4. Univ. of California-Santa Barbara
5. SUNY at Albany
Nine schools have made the top ten in the “party” category at
least three times since 2000.
Wisconsin…6
Florida State…5
Colorado…5
Alabama…4
Florida…4
Indiana. …3
Texas…3
Ohio Univ. …3
Ole Miss…3
Congratulations to each and every one of them!
Lots of Hard Liquor:
1. Tulane…..strange, strange city…kind of scary
2. Washington and Lee …Stonewall Jackson and Bobby Lee
3. Wisconsin …cheeseheads
4. North Dakota …split from S.D. in 1889
5. Loyola Univ. / New Orleans …say ‘Loyola’ ten times fast
Lots of Beer:
1. Indiana …Kent Benson
2. Providence College …Ernie D. and Kevin Stacom
3. Wisconsin …Mike Webster
4. Dayton …Don May
5. New Hampshire …not Vermont
Students Pack the Stadium:
[This one surprised me]
1. Maryland…Len Bias
2. Notre Dame…Austin Carr
3. Florida…Wes Chandler
4. Penn State…John Cappelletti
5. North Carolina …Charlie Scott
Beer Bits
–From Reuters / Johannesburg: “Hundreds of looters fought
police all weekend at the site of a beer train wreck in violence
that left one woman dead, South African police said yesterday as
they kept a heavy guard on the remaining alcohol.
“The train carrying 180,000 crates of beer from South African
Breweries derailed Friday night…
“By Saturday morning, police were battling up to 200 people
from the nearby township trying to make off with crates of beer.”
Now I swear to you, I was nowhere in the area at the time.
Seriously.
–According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., beer
accounted for 53% of the country’s alcoholic beverage market in
2004 vs. 56% in 1999. And, the state with the lowest beer
consumption per capita is New York; this via the Beer Institute, a
trade group. [Crain’s New York Business]
Stuff
–Coo Coo Marlin died. I was reading a little obit in Sports
Illustrated and didn’t realize this former NASCAR driver and
father of Sterling never won a race at this level. I was so
unconvinced I had to double-check, using my NASCAR
Encyclopedia, but it’s true. And it was in 1974 that Coo Coo
was robbed of the ultimate prize, the Daytona 500. He held a
half-lap lead late but was black-flagged by NASCAR officials,
who insisted he had a loose lug nut. It turns out the car was fine
and the official standings show he finished 4th, still on the lead
lap. Now that really sucks, sports fans.
–Mark R. and I have this big bet on baseball attendance this
year. I believe it will be greater than ’04, Mark thinks otherwise.
But Mark has been complaining all season that the reported
attendance is nowhere near what he sees on television or in
person at Phillies games. To which I reply, “Tough. Baseball
just counts ‘tickets sold,’ not ‘tickets used.’
So Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times has a piece this week
on this very topic. For example, one of his observations is from
a July 31 game where the Cardinals were in town against the
Dodgers. The announced crowd was 44,543 but Shaikin said it
was closer to half-empty, or 28,000. [Dodger Stadium seats
56,000.]
Last Saturday night the Mets hosted Washington, Pedro was
pitching, the team announced a sellout, and I bet the crowd
wasn’t over 35,000. But no matter when it comes to the official
tally.
Actually, the National League announced only the turnstile count
through 1992, but since then both leagues have used tickets sold.
MLB spokesman Rich Levin told Shakin “It’s because of
revenue sharing.” 34% of revenue generated, including ticket
and concession revenue, is placed in a pool to be distributed
among teams generating the fewest dollars. Of course this means
that sponsors could be getting screwed since their ads aren’t
reaching the numbers posted.
[Incidentally, the NFL allows teams to use any method they
want, including no-shows if they choose; though the league is
now trying to consolidate reporting and asking its franchises to
use only tickets sold.]
According to sources, the average major league no-show rate is
in the 20% neighborhood. I would suggest it’s far more in April
and May, due to the often lousy weather, and in September as
teams fall out of the playoff hunt.
Anyway, Mark R. and I have held extensive negotiations and are
leaning towards carrying the bet over to next season, at which
time we will come up with better criteria.
–Of the following, which were responsible for at least one death
in California since 2000……mountain lion, bear, rattlesnake,
jackrabbit, fire ants, sea lion, jellyfish, wild turkey, bees,
mosquito? Answer below.
–We note the passing of Brock Peters, 78, who was best known
for his role as the black man falsely accused of rape in the classic
“To Kill a Mockingbird.” The character, Tom Robinson, was
defended by Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch.
–Once again Lance Armstrong is forced to defend himself
against charges he used performance-enhancing drugs to win his
first Tour de France back in 1999. Armstrong denied the latest
accusation from the French sports newspaper L’Equipe, saying
“the witch hunt continues.”
L’Equipe claims six samples of Armstrong’s urine, taken during
various stages of the 1999 race, tested positive for the drug EPO,
which couldn’t be detected by authorities until 2001. L’Equipe
admits that its testing procedure wouldn’t allow it to be brought
before the governing body of the sport.
But the facts are that use of EPO was rampant back then, as
injections of the hormone can increase “a rider’s endurance by
up to 30 percent by driving up the production of oxygen-rich red
blood cells.” [Sam Knight / Times of London] It was in 1998
that hundreds of doses of EPO were found in a car belonging to
one of the main teams.
So I’m reading the endurance stats for the drug and immediately
think of pitcher Roger Clemens. Just an opinion…I could be
wrong. As for Lance…it’s time to lay off him, assuming he’s
been clean in recent years.
–Speaking of steroids, Washington Nationals manager Frank
Robinson blasted Rafael Palmeiro and his having been found to
be a user.
“Why put the burden on baseball to try and figure out (how far
back to go), and maybe put an asterisk? Just wipe the whole
thing out.” [Meaning all of Raffy’s stats.]
–Julio Franco of the Atlanta Braves turned 47 on Tuesday. His
next home run will make him the oldest in baseball history to go
yard, besting Philadelphia A’s pitcher Jack Quinn who homered
at 46 years, 11 months and 22 days back on June 27, 1930.
Franco has been setting age records left and right this season,
including becoming the oldest to steal two bases in a contest and
to have a multi-homer game.
–Cincinnati basketball coach Bob Huggins, who not even Dick
Vitale can defend, was forced out by the university as President
Nancy Zimpher said “Our coaches must be exemplary role
models on the court and off.” Cincinnati’s teams under Huggins
were often characterized by the number arrested and / or those
flunking out.
–We congratulate Florida State for convincing the NCAA that it
should be allowed to keep its nickname, the Seminoles, after the
Seminole Nation of Oklahoma said it had no problem with the
usage……big wampum under the table, don’t you think?
Top 3 songs for the week of 8/25/79: #1 “My Sharona” (Knack)
#2 “Good Times” (Chic) #3 “The Main Event / Fight” (Barbra
Streisand…ughh) #10 “Sad Eyes” (Robert John….DOH!)
–Some of us in the New York area are still mourning the death
of the great oldies station, WCBS-FM. Well, it turns out that
with each ratings book it appears Infinity Broadcasting made an
incredibly stupid move in dumping the oldies for the “Jack FM”
format. CBS had been ranked 9th and the Jack is now in 17th
place.
NFL Quiz: Top ten receivers, career….receptions, yards, TDs
1. Jerry Rice……..1549…22895…197
2. Cris Carter…….1101…13899…130
3. Tim Brown…….1094…14934…100
4. Andre Reed……..951….13198…..87
5. Art Monk……….940…..12721….68
6. Irving Fryar…….851…..12785….84
7. Marvin Harrison..845…..11185….98
8. Larry Centers……827……6797….28
9. Steve Largent……819…..13089…100
10. Shannon Sharpe..815….10060….62
11. Henry Ellard……814….13777….65
12. Jimmy Smith……792…..11264….61
13. Isaac Bruce……..777…..11753….74
[Centers is the running back.]
*California Quiz: a mountain lion killed a biker, bees killed a
man when he accidentally disturbed a hive, and mosquitoes
carrying West Nile have killed six.
Next Bar Chat, Tuesday.
