NFL Quiz: 1) Putting the two conferences together, AFC and
NFC, name the only four franchises with a winning percentage of
.570 or better in their history. 2) Name the only franchise with a
winning percentage below .400. [For purposes of this quiz,
Jacksonville, Baltimore, Houston and Carolina are excluded due
to their light history.] Answers below.
The Rolling Stones, Part III
Continuing with tidbits from the book “The Rolling Stones: An
Oral History” by Alan Lysaght, it’s early 1966.
Marianne Faithful: I used to go round to Brian (Jones) and
Anita’s (Pallenberg) flat in Courtfield Road quite a bit in those
days. It was a center for the bohemians of that time and really
quite a scene. It was always a mess, with dishes piled up in the
sink and posters peeling off the walls. We smoked an awful lot
of marijuana in those days and then we’d go out and about. It
was a lot of fun.
[Ed. note: Oops….kids, your editor is not condoning this sort of
behavior. We now continue with…Marianne Faithful, who
really was a hot babe back then.]
I think Anita loved Brian very much but he was very difficult to
love. There were strange things going on between them.
I started living with Mick (Jagger) after he split up with Chrissie
(Shrimpton). The two of them used to have terrible fights. They
were quite nasty, really. You can hear the venom on their songs
of that time like “Under My Thumb,” and I’m sure she’s the
subject of “19th Nervous Breakdown.”
Mick was really wonderful to me in those early days….One of
the great things, for me, was that he wasn’t really into drugs.
He’d do a little grass, the occasional acid, but he liked to be in
control of himself.
January 13, 1967. Decca releases “Let’s Spend the Night
Together.”
Keith Richards: Yeah, I played piano on (it) and overdubbed the
guitar….We went on Ed Sullivan (Jan. 15) and sang “Let’s
Spend Some Time Together.” That’s the old “give a little and
take a little.” Nobody is unbendable. If you want to do
something badly enough…I love selling out! S—… “Sold out” –
I love that phrase. [laughs]
Those were some difficult times. All we were doing was playing
all over America and then when we had any time we’d be in the
studio recording. It was great for a while but it was exhausting.
Brian was getting more and more distant with us, too. He’d be
out partying all night and Mick and I were mostly just writing
and working on things in the studio. When it was time for a full
recording session he’d come in out of his head and pass out with
his guitar.
February 12, 1967. Acting on a tip from ‘News of the World,’
police descend on Keith’s country home searching for drugs.
Keith Richards: A bunch of us had gone down to my place for
the weekend for a party, which we had done before a million
times…As it happened we’d all spent the day tripping on acid
and we’re just chilling out when the cops come banging on the
door. It was pretty weird, all these police running around the
house. Marianne Faithful had just taken a bath and was sitting in
front of the TV with a rug wrapped around her so it was deemed
to be an orgy. [Ed. hmmm….that’s pretty nasty, actually. You
know, placing a rug that everyone has walked on around your
body like that. I’m beginning to rethink my opinion of Ms. ‘Not
So’ Faithful.]
That’s wasn’t an orgy…It was crazy. There was this dealer there
I didn’t know…He had a whole box full of stuff but the cops let
him go, even let him split the country.
In the end they could only charge me with allowing people to
smoke dope on my premises, and Mick they nailed for having a
couple of amphetamine pills he’d bought legally at a druggist in
Italy. It was just our time was up. They didn’t mind kids with
lots of money fooling around, but we didn’t pay them the respect
they wanted. The Beatles put up with the bulls— and smiled
nicely while they took their MBEs. We always said no to that
sort of s—. So it was just time to try and shut us down.
Usually when you get busted it hits the papers the next day, but
with us, not a word, so we knew something was up. Someone
needed paying off, and we didn’t know what to do, so we paid a
lot of money, but obviously not to the right person. Eventually it
comes out that we’d been busted and it finally comes to court
and the lawyers are like “This doesn’t make a lot of sense….”
Marianne Faithful: We had been out all day and down at the
beach so my clothes and hair were covered in sand and leaves. I
hadn’t brought a change of clothes [ed. very shortsighted] so
after I took a bath I covered up with a fur rug and dried off.
[Ed. OK…this really is gross. Drying off, not with a towel but a
dirty rug. This is a truly nasty woman…but still kind of hot.]
The next thing all these police are running about and when they
saw me they immediately started fabricating these absurd stories
about sex orgies….There was no sex trip at all that day. I was
there as one of the boys if you will…In the end Mick claimed
responsibility for some of my amphetamine pills I’d bought at a
druggist in Italy. It was very noble of him.
[Mick served two nights in prison and Keith was sentenced to
one year, though his conviction was later overturned. Marianne
should have been forced to take a lie detector over this whole
orgy deal.]
1969. On July 3, Decca releases “Honky Tonk Women.” On the
same day, Brian Jones is found dead in his swimming pool. The
coroner calls it “death by misadventure.”
Bill Wyman: Keith, who was very upset, locked himself away in
the country somewhere with Anita, who used to be Brian’s
girlfriend.
Charlie (Watts) and I went to the funeral, and we were the only
two people who actually went. [Ed. Jagger had gone to
Australia] It was horrible. The priest was talking about drugs,
and “Maybe you’ll be forgiven.” Then we started toward the
cemetery and the whole of Cheltenham – which is the town he
lived in – turned out. It was like the Queen had come in. The
streets were lined with people crying as the procession went by.
Mick Jagger: It was a real shock when Brian died…When
you’re the singer in the band you tend to be the focus of
attention, and that really bothered Brian. He was a jealous guy,
but it’s not like we kicked him out of the spotlight or anything. I
know it’s been said that he didn’t feel that he ever had his fair
share within the group and that we never did his songs and all
that, but he never really said anything. He never played me a
song that he had written and said, “This is for the band.” I think
he was just too shy to do something like that.
Peter Jones (British journalist…no relation): One of the most
misunderstood people in the history of rock ‘n’ roll is Brian
Jones, because Brian was open to so many temptations, so many
pressures, so many problems. It was a tragic end.
[Ed. Brian Jones was an a-hole…case closed. And we need to
move on…but one more installment next time, because we still
need to cover Altamont, Dec. 1969.]
Reginald Myers…RIP
In the past, from time to time I honored various Medal of Honor
recipients and I’ve been remiss in not doing so the past few
years. So today we make note of the passing of one such hero,
Reginald Myers, who died last month at the age of 85, though his
passing was just made public this past week.
Myers received his award for the Korean War, after serving with
distinction in World War II. Here is an account from Matt
Schudel of the Washington Post.
“In late November 1950, Myers’ assignment was to recapture a
high point of land near the Chosin Reservoir called East Hill. An
Army unit trying to defend the hill had been driven from its
position by Communist Chinese troops. Ordered to retake the
hill to secure a safe evacuation for the outmanned United Nations
forces, Myers – then a major – did not have a standard fighting
force to command.
“ ‘I had no Marine rifle company or unit of any type in my area,’
he told the Idaho Military Historical Society in a 2001 interview.
‘So, as I walked toward East Hill, I formed my own combat
element from support Marines, such as cooks, truck drivers,
maintenance personnel and administrative personnel, recruiting
Marines along the way. I ended up with about 50 hard-charging
Marines that were raring to go and anxious to get into the fight,
and the 200 soldiers at the bottom of East Hill – 250 overall.’
“With that small, improvised unit, Myers led an attack against an
entrenched force of 4,000 Chinese troops Nov. 29, 1950. The
conditions could not have been more forbidding: He launched his
charge at night, up a steep, snow-covered hill in biting wind and
a temperature of 23 degrees below zero.
“Only 80 of Myers’ 250 troops reached the summit with him, but
they were able to hold the hill in spite of steady machine-gun fire
and repeated Chinese assaults. According to his Medal of Honor
citation, Myers ‘persisted in constantly exposing himself to
intense, accurate and sustained hostile fire in order to direct and
supervise the employment of his men and to encourage and spur
them on in pressing the attack.’
“He directed artillery and mortar fire and set up emplacements to
defend the hill from Chinese efforts to recapture it. The intense
fighting lasted 14 hours before reinforcements arrived. In that
time, Myers’ beleaguered force killed more than 600 Chinese
soldiers and wounded 500.
“ ‘I was proud of my Marines,’ he said four years ago. ‘They
proved that a Marine, whether a truck driver, a cook, a clerk or
whatever, was foremost a fighting combat rifleman.’”
—
Stuff…totally random, as I go through the pile.
–British soccer hero George Best died at the age of 59 after his
latest bout with alcoholism. Best had a liver transplant in 2002,
he was told to swear off the drink, but went right back to it.
Best will be forever known as the star of Manchester United in
the 1960s, helping the team to the 1968 European Cup. He was
also a poster boy for the times, the 60s, and his playboy lifestyle
captured the nation’s attention. But then his life degenerated into
one of booze, bankruptcy and even a prison sentence for
assaulting a policeman.
Best was born in Northern Ireland and would have been an even
bigger star had he been born in Britain because he wasn’t able to
make an appearance in the World Cup.
–Winston Churchill would have been 131 on Nov. 30
(11/30/1874). Granted, most folks don’t live that long, but we
make note of the fact that in January 1941, FDR sent Churchill a
copy of the latter’s favorite poem as part of their strong
relationship. And what was it? Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
“The Building of the Ship,” 1849.
“Build me straight, O worthy Master!
Stanch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!”
It goes on and on and on from there, like 397 lines worth, but the
preceding fulfills the poetry requirement as mandated by the
International Web Site Association. Always look for the IWSA
label as your assurance of site quality.
–Mike Austin, the world record holder for longest drive in a
professional golf tournament, died at the age of 95. In 1974, at
the U.S. National Seniors Open championship, using a steel-
shafted persimmon wood driver and a balata-covered ball and a
27 mph tail wind, Austin cranked it 515 yards. Despite all the
advances in technology since then, Davis Love III is next on the
list with a 476-yard drive in 2004. Austin had limited success as
a pro though he gained a reputation as an outstanding teacher.
He also earned a lot of money hustling, once winning $5,000
when he made a par with a Coke bottle. [Peter Yoon / Los
Angeles Times]
–Wake Forest’s men’s soccer team was 22 seconds away from
going to its first NCAA quarterfinals, but nooooooo. They gave
up the tying goal and then lost in the second overtime to
California. Drat.
–From Johnny Mac:
“On a cold, sunless afternoon, the East Stroudsburg Warriors
advanced to the school’s first ever Division II final four,
whipping up on C.W. Post 55-28…the third straight playoff
game the high-powered ESU offense rang up 50+ points.”
QB Jimmy Terwilliger, NFL-bound no doubt, continued his
assault on the record book as he tossed another five TD passes.
ESU travels to Grand Valley State (Michigan) next week. Others
in the D-II final four are Northwest Missouri State and North
Alabama.
[I always thought Grand Valley State was in Arizona.
Personally, I prefer schools that use the state or city name…
know what I’m sayin’?]
–Rutgers isn’t the name of a city or state, come to think of it, but
they’re going bowling for the first time in 27 years!!!! Yes, New
Jersey’s only Division I football program has had zippo to cheer
for since the Carter administration….not that we were cheering
Mr. Cardigan, mind you. I certainly wasn’t… that’s for sure.
–Nebraska defeated Colorado in Boulder, 30-3, to finish 7-4. As
my intrepid Cornhusker reporter Ken S. notes, perhaps the Bill
Callahan era will work out after all. You have to feel good for
the guy.
As for Colorado, despite the loss they are playing Texas in the
Big 12 title game. What a travesty. The Buffaloes under
disgraced coach Gary Barnett acted like a bunch of morons
before the game, trying to entice the Cornhuskers into a fight at
midfield, and then a few hundred Colorado fans responded to
their team’s inept, uninspired play by throwing water bottles on
the field. Idiots.
Meanwhile, Ken S. also had some very important news on the
wildlife front.
“A mountain lion (two-years-old, 115 pounds) was hit and killed
on I-80 by Gretna about three weeks ago.”
Now Ken knew I had traveled this road during my trip to
Nebraska in September, and he went on to add there have been
23 confirmed sightings of mountain lions in Nebraska in the last
four years.
So I take you back to “Week in Review,” this past Sept. 17.
“About five miles outside of Lincoln there is a refuge by the
name of ‘9-mile prairie.’ I drove out a few hours after posting
last week’s column, it was a gorgeous day, and there was
absolutely no one around. Yeah, you had to be there…but just
the sound of the wind and the prairie grass was pretty cool…
Then again, after walking a ways I began to think, ‘What the
heck am I doing out here all alone. What if a puma comes out of
the grass?!’”
So you see, with Ken’s revelation I had every right to be
concerned back then. And what I failed to mention is that I was
without my Swiss Army knife that day, the one with the
corkscrew and bottle opener.
–On the betting front, I scored with my Florida, giving 5 to
Florida State, pick…the Gators defeating FSU 34-7. So I evened
my mark at 10-10. Stay tuned for my final selection in January
as I wager all the marbles, and encourage you to do the same, on
the NCAA title game. Kids, you may want to start raiding that
college fund account beforehand since we’re going to need to
work on fake ID and such prior to your placing $100,000 down
on this last “pick to click.”
–The Yankees have upped their top ticket price to $110. And
unless they make some moves this off-season, that’s $110 to
watch a crappy product on the field.
–What are the Toronto Blue Jays thinking in offering relief
pitcher B.J. Ryan a 5-year, $47 million contract?! Now everyone
going after the services of a superior closer like Billy Wagner
will have to pony up even more for his services. Jerks.
–Annika Sorenstam has the top five season scoring averages in
LPGA history…all in the last five years. [68.6970 to 69.4205…
pretty consistent, I think you’d agree.]
[I didn’t watch a minute of the Skins Game, incidentally. This
event was old long ago.]
–Good to see my Jets remain in the Reggie Bush hunt.
–I’ve had a few blurbs on growth in prize money for the PGA
Tour and Golf World’s Ron Sirak reported in the current issue:
“No. 1 on the money list in 1994 made $1.5 million; No. 30
earned $533,201; and No. 125 banked $142,515. This year,
those numbers looked like this: No. 1, $10.6 million; No. 30,
$2.05 million; and No. 125, $626,736. Prior to 1999, 70 players
won more than $1 million in a season. Since then there have
been 425 single-season millionaires.”
Years ago, Commissioner Tim Finchem sought to ensure that his
tour players earned as much on average as athletes in other
sports. Ron Sirak:
“In terms of economic parity with other athletes, the PGA Tour
has played catch-up quite nicely. (Now) it’s time for some belt-
tightening, and that can only be said because the financial waist
of the players has grown so thick.”
As he also adds, it’s time that the players commit to play every
tour stop at least once every four years.
–Boy, this is bogus. Former NFL great Jim Marshall held the
record for most consecutive games played at 282 until this past
weekend when Giants punter Jeff Feagles hit 283. A punter
cannot hold such a revered record as this. Rather than an
asterisk, Feagles’ name should be blacked out, like when a CIA
report is declassified.
–The New York Times has selected Boston College to go all the
way in men’s NCAA basketball this year. While I still go with
Duke, a BC title certainly wouldn’t surprise me. And the Times
looks pretty good in selecting little Iona as a sleeper to make
some noise in the tourney. On Saturday, Iona humiliated,
thrashed, annihilated, destroyed and pulverized #23 Iowa State,
89-72.
–Pat Morita passed away, age 73. Can’t say I ever saw “The
Karate Kid” or gave a damn about “Happy Days.” But Morita’s
success was inspiring, seeing as he was in a Japanese internment
camp when he was young.
–Michelle Wie received a ton of appearance money to play in a
men’s tournament in Japan and then failed to make the cut, her
sixth start in a men’s professional event without advancing to a
third round.
–Here’s an incredible tale from the London Times. Jeff
Kerswell, 54, survived 28 cardiac arrests in a single afternoon.
“Mr. Kerswell, a shower engineer, was at work when he began
having chest pains. ‘I finished work, came home at about 2:30
pm and they started again, so I lay down upstairs,’ he said.
‘They got worse, so I phoned Heather (his wife) and she said,
‘Phone for the ambulance.’ The last thing I remember is being
carried down the stairs on a chair by the paramedics. They said
it was shortly after I got to the ambulance that I had my first
cardiac arrest. I don’t remember anything until the next evening,
when I came off the life-support machine.’
“He suffered five cardiac arrests during the journey of a mile to
the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and another 23 inside the
building. To the increasing surprise of doctors, they were able to
bring him back on each occasion using a defibrillator.”
A week after, Kerswell was home and walking around, though he
will not return to work for three months. What is a shower
engineer, anyway?
–New Jersey is about to hold only its second bear hunt in 35
years, but if it is to be successful it better not snow beforehand
(none is in the forecast). How do I know this? From the
Anchorage Daily News and reporter Craig Medred comes this bit
on that city’s first big snow this past week.
“The coyotes came down the valley from the west, following a
neighborhood ski trail still lacking enough snow for winter
sports…
“And there was a momentary thought given to bears, considering
that we’d seen the fresh grizzly tracks only about 10 days ago.
“Any worries about a bear, though, were slim. The first
significant snow of the season should have finally driven them to
their dens. Four or five inches of snow had fallen since last the
bear tracks were seen, and there had been no sign of them since.”
Of course you understand that even though we’ve been told that
bears hibernate all winter, they are really just sitting around,
drinking and plotting their spring assaults. Which is why
government needs to keep the pressure on them, year round.
–And Phil W. just wrote in from North Carolina on a proposal
for a fox squirrel hunting season next year. What’s a fox
squirrel? They are “outsized versions of gray squirrels, often
approaching 30 inches in length from nose to tail.” [Winston-
Salem Journal]
[Warning: Exaggeration Alert!]
30 inches! Go ahead, measure it out…….that’s like the size of a
panther! Thanks a lot, Phil. Now I’m going to have nightmares
about fox squirrels in my attic.
–Did you know that Angel Cabrera is #10 in the World Golf
rankings?
–Can “Desperate Housewives” have any more commercials?
Geezuz. Just cut it to a half hour and throw it on cable before
“Curb Your Enthusiasm.” That would be a good hour.
Top 3 songs for the week of 11/28/70: #1 “I Think I Love You”
(The Partridge Family) #2 “We’ve Only Just Begun”
(Carpenters) #3 “I’ll Be There” (The Jackson 5)…and…#5 “Fire
And Rain” (James Taylor) #7 “Green-Eyed Lady” (Sugarloaf)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) Top four franchises, winning percentage
entering 2005 season – Miami, .600 [353-235-4] Oakland, .586
[390-275-11] Chicago, .577 [646-474-42] Dallas, .573 [383-
285-6]….Green Bay is at .560, San Fran .556. 2) Worst
franchise – Tampa Bay, .382 [172-279-1]
Next Bar Chat, Thursday. John Lennon.
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