NFL Quiz: 1) Indianapolis (1953-2007)…Keith Molesworth was the first coach, 1953, 3-9-0. Name the next three. 2) Name Indy/Baltimore’s all-time leader in interceptions. 3) Miami…Who is the career leader in TDs? 4) Who is the career leader in receiving yards? Answers below.
Next summer, there will be all manner of articles on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. But with the recent opening of a museum dedicated to the event, I couldn’t wait to check it out so I dragged Johnny Mac from his Pocono Mountain lair (our secret bunker for the end of the world) and we met up on Tuesday.
It’s 5:07 p.m., Aug. 15, 1969, on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, Sullivan County, New York – 70 miles from the actual town of Woodstock, which confuses the heck out of most folks, including yours truly (the organizers wanted to take advantage of Bob Dylan’s living in Woodstock, though he then blew off the event), when folk singer/guitarist Richie Havens takes the stage for what is officially known as The Woodstock Music & Art Fair.
The festival was created and organized by four young entrepreneurs who together formed Woodstock Ventures Inc. in March: Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfeld, Michael Lang, and John Roberts. Roberts, heir to a toothpaste and drugstore business, bankrolled much of the event.
The first day lineup, aside from Havens, had performances by Sweetwater, Bert Sommer, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, 22-year-old newcomer Melanie, Arlo Guthrie, and bill-topper Joan Baez. The “summer of love” (which originated in ’67), hippie/peace movement was at its zenith and an estimated 450,000 showed up in Bethel, when a crowd of 150,000 was hoped for. There would be three deaths, two births and four miscarriages, innumerable conceptions, lots of drugs and alcohol, and the closure of the New York State Thruway (as an eleven-year-old the thing I remember most from the news reports), thus precipitating one of the worst traffic jams in the history of our country over four days.
Day two, Aug. 16. The crowd is up to 250,000 and they see Quill, Country Joe McDonald, John B. Sebastian, Keef Hartley, Santana, Incredible String Band, Canned Heat, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly & the Family Stone, the Who and Jefferson Airplane…wow…that’s a lineup.
Day three, Aug. 17…it’s Joe Cocker, Country Joe & the Fish, Leslie West & Mountain, Ten Years After, the Band, Johnny Winter, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young as the crowd has swelled to 450,000.
Day four, Aug. 18…The Woodstock festival closes after morning performances by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, retro-50s combo Sha Na Na (I still find this incredibly bizarre), and finally, at 9:00 a.m., Jimi Hendrix and his famous rendition of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’
Well, it just so happens I have here in my library Richie Havens’ autobiography, “They can’t hide us anymore,” with Steve Davidowitz. Here is his tale of getting to the festival.
Aug. 15… “I was in New York City and I could feel the swell of energy 100 miles away. Nobody seemed to care that the Woodstock Festival was no longer going to take place anywhere near Woodstock. The only thing that mattered was that it was going to happen. Today.
“I left the city at 5:30 in the morning on the day I was supposed to play – the first day – and drove straight to the Howard Johnson Hotel in White Lake, New York, without a hitch. We were only a few miles away from the farm and all the bands had been told to come there first.
“I was lucky to get up the road so smoothly. By 7:30 in the morning, I was sitting in the lobby with my band. I wasn’t worried. I was fifth in the order and wasn’t scheduled to go on for hours. But at two in the afternoon, I was half-asleep when news came that there was no music; still no way to get through.
“From the edge of the hotel parking lot I could see traffic stopped cold on the approach road. I could tell right there that the crowd was much larger than anyone was saying.
“The road to the stage had disappeared. It was now a wall-to-wall parking lot of abandoned cars. The main highways were backed up with traffic that wasn’t going anywhere. The Northbound Quickway (Route 17) had just been closed by the state police…The whole thing was beginning to look pretty shaky.
“Michael Lang, one of the promoters, rushed back and forth nervously on a motorcycle, weaving between the crowds, riding up and down the hills trying to figure out ways to get a few musicians to the stage. He was mumbling to himself and sweating and we were beginning to think we were all stuck. Right there. No music. At all.
“Yet somehow, through all sorts of missed connections and broken leads, Michael managed to find someone with a glass bubble helicopter about twenty miles away. Now here it was, dropping slowly into the parking lot right outside my hotel window. The prop blades made the air sound like shotguns going off. This would be my first helicopter ride and my first good look at what was really happening here.
“We were squeezed into the glass bubble cockpit. We were the perfect choice; there were only three of us and we had the fewest instruments. Me; my guitarist, Deano (Paul Williams); and my drummer, Daniel Ben Zebulon. We were sitting behind the pilot with two conga drums, two guitars squeezed between us. The glass surrounded us, top to bottom.
“Looking below my feet, I could see the ground clearly, as if I was sitting on the air. I got dizzy for a second. It felt like I was riding a stem that was holding two seats. And we were moving 100 miles an hour.
“It was beautiful below me. A sea of trees – the tops of them whizzing beneath me in the wash of the helicopter’s props. So much green; gray shades of leaves flipped upside down; slight hints of orange and red, the first hues of autumn.
“We banked a bit to the left and the sea of trees changed into a different kind of sea, just as beautiful. My mouth dropped when I saw all those people, hundreds of thousands of them. Definitely more than the 250,000 reported in the New York papers the following morning, a whole lot more like half a million on the first day.
“It was awesome, like double Times Square on New Year’s Eve in perfect daylight with no walls or buildings to hold people in place. The people filled the field and formed a human blanket across the road to the other side of the hill and into the forests all around the field, where nobody could possibly see the stage.
“Hovering above the hill, looking all around, my eyes could not take it all in, but I knew what to call it.
“ ‘We finally made it,’ I told myself. ‘We’ve all finally made it above ground. They won’t be able to hide this picture from the rest of the country.’”
First off, it’s awesome. Just very well done with good spots to watch videos, including a first-class theatre for the 21-minute feature.
Santana released their debut album the same month after a terrific performance at Woodstock. When you watch Santana, Sly & The Family Stone, and Jimi Hendrix in particular you kind of wish you had been there. Then again, the sanitation wasn’t the best.
For some of us of a certain age, you forget what a key figure Dr. Benjamin Spock became in the anti-war movement. Spock, after all, was our baby doctor, having written the wildly spectacular “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” that all mothers had used as their guide since it was first published in 1946.
Max Yasgur was a staunch conservative but respected the kids’ right to protest. “Thousands of American soldiers have already died so they can do exactly what they’re doing,” he said of the wild scene on his property.
Tickets were just $6.00 for each day, though tens of thousands crashed it by climbing over and through the flimsy fences.
“The brown acid that’s circulating around us is not particularly good.”
[Other Source: “Rock & Roll: Year by Year,” by Luke Crampton & Dafydd Rees]
After Johnny and I went to the museum, we hit nearby Monticello Raceway, celebrating 50 years of harness racing. Actually, it’s now Monticello Gaming & Raceway, “offering the amenities of a Vegas atmosphere” plus the trotters.
It was a gorgeous day and we were primed for action. It turns out all of about 40 others were as well. That’s right. At this large venue there were about 40 people, including employees, for the racing, with about 75 playing the slots in a separate facility.
The purses for the races were generally $2,700. Oh yeah. You can make big money at Monticello. I mean we were looking through the program and you’ve got horses that race 30-40 times a year and earn a total of $15,000. So, kids, if you’re thinking of asking your Mom and Dad for a pacer this Christmas, understand that when they say “NFW,” it’s not just because of the economy. This is a big-time money-losing venture; at least at the smaller tracks.
Anyway, we got to the track in time to bet on the second race and I wagered $10 to win on No. 6…Victory Chief. I lost. But Johnny Mac hit the exacta and raked in $150! That set the pattern for the day.
I lost in the third with Polar Queen, who pulled up lame before the starting line. I then lost in the fourth with Crown Meadow, also lame. I lost in the fifth with Yasmin Hanover, going for the sexy pick. She let me down. I lost in the sixth with No. 7, Idle Hands, because it had raced at Saratoga, as if I really knew what the hell I was doing. I lost in the seventh with AllAmerican Vigil. And I lost in the eighth with Bali Mystic N. [Never did figure out what the ‘N’ was for. ‘Ninny’ would describe yours truly, though.]
As for Johnny, he walked away with most of his winnings, vaulting him to first on the Bar Chat Harness Racing Money List, and so after the eighth, we bid the other 40 adieu. “Goodbye Mr. X.” “Goodbye, Editor.” “Goodbye, Lady Macbeth.” “Take care, Johnny.”
–Congratulations to the great Joey Chestnut, two-time Coney Island Fourth of July hot-dog eating champion. On Sunday, Chestnut won the first Famous Famiglia World Pizza Eating Championship in Times Square, New York…downing 45 slices in 10 minutes.
45 SLICES OF PIZZA IN TEN MINUTES!!!!!!
Chestnut said he fasted for about a day and a half to prepare for the contest, and he folded and squeezed the slices to make them easier to swallow.
Just last month, Chestnut consumed 93 Krystal hamburgers in eight minutes to win a contest in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I have more respect for Chestnut than just about anyone in the world. Make him Fed Chairman! Treasury Secretary!
–For you fishermen out there, from the Anchorage Daily News.
“Last week, Jeff Pardi of California captured the Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby with his 348-pound flatfish.
“The $45,475 Pardi earned partially obscured a late-season feat that may have been even more unusual…
“On Sept. 24, during the final week of the summerlong derby when fishing is often difficult, captain Josh Brooks of Bob’s Trophy Charters returned to port with two halibut weighing more than 200 pounds.”
Goodness gracious. I want to party on Bob’s Trophy Charters, know what I’m sayin’? No fishing for me, mind you, but just drink beer and watch everyone else reel them in. I can be a good cheerleader.
–Speaking of food, check out this item from the South China Morning Post and Reuters.
“Some 170 wedding banquet guests were rushed to hospital when powdered rust remover was added to the pot instead of salt after they all decided it needed spicing up a bit.
“The bride’s proud father invited friends and relatives to the banquet…the night before the wedding, the Beijing News said.
“ ‘All food was stewed in a big pot but after dinner started, all of them felt the taste was too bland,’ the newspaper said.
“Someone added what he or she thought was salt several times. An hour later, the guests were being rushed to hospital.
“ ‘When I arrived at the hospital, the observation room was packed with people vomiting, with stomach pains and with diarrhea,’ a doctor was quoted as saying.”
But fret not. All were released by the next day.
–College football picks, as I try and get back on track. [Wednesday’s lines]
Take Miami, giving 5 to Duke
Take Washington State and 42 ½ vs. USC
Take UL-Monroe, giving 18 ½ to North Texas
Take Troy, giving 8 to Florida International
–Following his team’s 12-7 loss to Wake Forest last Thursday night, the heat was really turned up on Clemson coach Tommy Bowden. So on Monday, he shocked the Tigers’ community by resigning, an offer athletic director Terry Don Phillips readily accepted. Clemson was preseason No. 9 in the AP, No. 11 by Sports Illustrated, but has instead gone a poor 3-3. The offensive coordinator was also let go.
But get this. Bowden had just been granted an extension last December and, as part of a negotiated buyout provision, will not only be paid through the rest of this season, but also receive $3.5 million! This is insane. It’s freakin’ college football, after all.
–Last Friday night, Naples High (Fla.) defeated neighbor Estero High 91-0 in football, and Naples’ coach wasn’t running up the score. In fact Bill Kramer said when he looked up at the scoreboard he got sick to his stomach. After all, his team ran only 31 plays and he had most of his best players on the sidelines for much of the game.
But soon after the game ended, Kramer began receiving angry e-mails, some from Estero parents. Estero is not a small school; 1,400 students to Naples’ 1,700. But, needless to say, the programs have different pedigrees. Back in 2001, Naples scored 63 points in the first quarter on the way to an 85-0 win over Lely High. [AP / ESPN.com]
–Not for nothing, but Wake’s #1 men’s soccer team, and 2007 NCAA champ, is 13-0-0 in ’08 and has outscored its opponents 48-9.
–This sucks. A wayward manatee that was rescued from cold Cape Cod waters died on the way back home to Florida. Manatees are normally just found off Florida and Georgia and stop feeding if they get too cold. They also aren’t that smart it would appear.
–I watched the History Channel’s documentary of the Dust Bowl on Sunday, “Black Blizzard.” I have friends living in the Oklahoma Panhandle and when I first saw them, 1999, they pointed out that across the road from their place was the exact spot of the most famous of the pictures that finally informed those back east just how serious the situation was. If you get a chance, catch the show.
–The New York Rangers’2007 first-round draft choice, 19-year-old Alexei Cherepanov, collapsed and died during a Russian Continental Hockey League contest. That’s bad enough, but the story has exploded because the death may have been preventable, as in the emergency response was virtually non-existent. The league’s managing director said “no ambulance was present, and that is a flagrant violation.” In fact it took paramedics 15 minutes to arrive at the arena in Omsk.
It appears Cherepanov had a pre-existing heart condition. Former NHL superstar Jaromir Jagr, now playing on the same team as Alexei, was talking to him on the bench when Cherepanov collapsed. Witnesses say Jagr was weeping uncontrollably as his friend was put into the ambulance. The next day he told a Czech paper, “This is a shock that defies description.”
–Seve Ballesteros’ underwent 12 hours of brain surgery on Tuesday, when a biopsy had been the only scheduled procedure. The operation was said to have been “satisfactory.” I will not comment on some diagnoses floating around out there because it’s not fair to do so.
–Adam “Pacman” Jones may have played his last game in the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Pacman for four games but will use the time to evaluate the situation more fully following Pacman’s altercation with the bodyguard the Cowboys had hired to watch over him. Gary Myers of the Daily News writes:
“Jones can’t even deal with the people who want to keep him out of trouble. He’s used up every last benefit of the doubt and now is dragging the league down by dominating the news.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, an idiot for taking in Pacman, said, “Obviously something is not going correctly. We just reinstated him six weeks ago….Either he’s not getting the message, I’m not communicating it properly or he had some other issues going on that we would like to understand better.” No kidding. I’ll be surprised if Goodell doesn’t issue a lifetime ban.
–Greg Braxton of the L.A. Times on shock jock Howard Stern following his move to satellite radio.
“So far, the radio personality’s leap from traditional media to a niche platform has come at a heavy price – namely, cultural relevancy. Unlike an Arianna Huffington, who vastly increased her reach on her upstart website, Stern’s place in the national conversation has been reduced to a murmur in the din of the exploding entertainment universe.
“ ‘It’s like Howard went from playing Madison Avenue to playing an upscale off-Broadway concert hall for a lot of money,’ said Tom Taylor, executive news editor at Radio-Info.com, which tracks the radio industry. ‘He made a Faustian bargain. He got everything he wanted in terms of money and not being bothered by the FCC, but he lost the bulk of his audience.’”
Stern’s audience used to be 12 million, but his satellite one is now estimated to be no more than 2 million, even after the Sirius-XM merger. And no longer do A-list stars feel compelled to appear to promote movies or other projects.
So will Stern return to terrestrial radio in 2010 when his contract expires? Discuss amongst yourselves.
–Marcia Brady, aka Maureen McCormick, has confessed to trading sex for drugs in her new tell-all memoir. McCormick says her life became the polar opposite of the wholesome world of Marcia Brady.
“I had played Marcia Brady for five years. But I wasn’t her in any way, shape or form. She was perfect. I was anything but that,” McCormick writes.
Maureen/Marcia adds “I sought refuge in seemingly glamorous cocaine dens above Hollywood.” She also says she once allowed an older man she met at the Playboy Mansion to videotape her naked in exchange for drugs. Another time she took pills, “poppers,” from a bowl on the coffee table at a party at Sammy Davis Jr.’s home. And Marcia bedded Greg Brady. I’m extremely disappointed to learn of all this.
–Phil W. passed along a story from the Fayetteville Observer concerning “Romper Room” hostess Lois Whitmeyer. 50 years ago (my word) she was hosting the program, but what I didn’t realize was each location had a different hostess.
As for the mirror, Lois says, “Really it was two mirrors. I’d hold up the first one, with a real mirror, and say the magic words. [‘The Mets are choke artists’] Then the camera would blur while I put down that mirror and pulled up the other one. Then I was able to ‘see’ the kids at home, or that little Johnny hadn’t been doing his homework or whatever the parents had written to me.” [‘Little Johnny is surfing porn online.’]
–John S. passed along a tale from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.
“70-year-old Schalk Hagen died without telling anyone exactly what happened to him. Now the prime suspect in his death is a giraffe.
“Hagen had gone for his usual morning walk at Bisley Nature Reserve. The only thing he uttered to his distraught wife on his return from his walk, with blood spurting from a deep head wound, was ‘I ran away.’ Hagen later died of his injuries.”
Well, when word leaked out about Hagen’s death, others from the area came forward and said that when they had taken walks in the reserve, sometimes a giraffe would charge them aggressively. But the local conservation manager says a giraffe would never attack man.
John S., who first learned of this tragic tale from Jeff B. (I have an interesting readership), says not only does the above potentially prove giraffes are no weenies, but who has a first name of Schalk?
–Final update on the death of the 62-year-old man who disappeared in Australia’s far north and was thought to have been killed by a crocodile. Wildlife officials have indeed identified a croc and are conducting DNA tests on remains found in the 13-foot long killer.
But the croc will not be put down despite the gruesome find, as reported by Reuters.
“ ‘As it is an iconic animal, the crocodile will not be harmed or killed,’ said a spokesman for Queensland’s EPA. X-rays and an endoscope were used to examine the contents.
–And now a tip from your editor: Be good to your Dunkin’ Donuts girl. Mine went to see her family in Jamaica and now I’m staring at a bottle she brought back for me.
Oooh baby. [Enjoy in moderation]
–And Neal Hefti died. He was 85. Oh, you know Mr. Hefti. He was none other than the composer of the themes for “The Odd Couple” and the TV series “Batman.” Hefti had also been a member of Count Basie’s and Woody Herman’s orchestras. But I forgot that Hefti composed the tune “Girl Talk” from the movie “Harlow,” which many such as Tony Bennett went on to record. This is one of the great songs of all time.
“But that’s a dame…they’re all the same…it’s just a game…they call it girl talk …girl talk”
Hefti once said coming up with the theme for “Batman” was the hardest piece of music he ever wrote.
“I tore up a lot of paper. It did not come easy to me…I just sweated over that thing, more so than any other single piece of music I ever wrote. I was never satisfied with it.” It took him “the better part of a month” to come up with the final product and it ended up garnering him a 1966 Grammy Award for best instrumental.
Hefti was the son of a traveling salesman, born in Hastings, Nebraska, and began playing the trumpet at 11. After his high school graduation he got his first job with the Dick Barry band. Then Hefti joined Woody Herman in 1944, co-arranging “Caldonia” with Ralph Burns, and the rest is history.
So we toast one of the greats…Neal Hefti. Ironically, I’ve been humming “The Odd Couple” theme a lot recently before learning of his passing. [Simple brains require simple tunes to keep them fit.]
Top 3 songs for the week of 10/17/70: #1 “I’ll Be There” (The Jackson 5) #2 “Cracklin’ Rosie” (Neil Diamond) #3 “Green-Eyed Lady” (Sugarloaf)…and…#4 “All Right Now” (Free) #5 “We’ve Only Just Begun” (Carpenters) #6 “Candida” (Dawn) #7 “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (Diana Ross) #8 “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” (Creedence Clearwater Revival) #9 “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” (Bobby Sherman) #10 “Fire And Rain” (James Taylor)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) Three Colts coaches after first one. Weeb Ewbank, 1954-62, 61-52-1; Don Shula, 1963-69, 73-26-4; Don McCafferty, 1970-72 (resigned five games into ’72), 26-11-1. 2) Bob Boyd, 1960-68, is the Colts career leader in interceptions with 57 in just 121 games. So why isn’t he in the Hall of Fame? I love Mel Blount, also in the Hall, but it took Blount 200 games to get his 57 INTs. This is a travesty, I tell you. 3) Receiver Mark Clayton, 1983-92, is Miami’s career leader in touchdowns with 82. 4) Fellow wide receiver Mark Duper, 1982-92, is the career leader in yardage with 8,869. [I have to ask this every year because I will never get it straight myself.]
*In looking up the Colts info, they had a kick returner/DB, Jim Duncan, out of Maryland Eastern Shore, who played from 1969-71 and averaged 32.6 yards on his 42 career kickoff returns, including two touchdowns. Not too shabby. But he also fumbled five times. Jim Duncan is not to be confused with Speedy Duncan, who I was shocked to see never returned a kickoff for a TD.
