Slow News Day

In Case You Were Wondering...

...why I haven't been writing much about politics lately...

Now that the election has come down to those two, what's the fucking point of caring about politics anymore?

No, I really don't...

Day Off

Yesterday's practice was open to the public

One week from today my beloved Kansas City Chiefs will play their first exhibition game
of the 2016 season, at Arrowhead Stadium against the Seattle Seahawks.







The team has the day off today, after practicing yesterday in shorts and shells.

"Have Jamaal or Tamba practiced yet this camp?"

No, but I'm trying not to obsess over it...still early...

Happy Birthday!

On August 4, 1965 Dennis Lehane was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. He would go on to a successful career as a novelist, and is one of my own favorite prose stylists.

I first encountered his writing in the mystery novel A Drink Before the War, which I read after it won the Shamus Award for "Best First P.I. Novel" in 1995. I was hooked immediately by the quality of the writing. On almost every page of
a Lehane book there's a sentence I find myself wishing I were good enough to have written.

His Kenzie & Gennaro private eye novels Darkness, Take My Hand and Gone, Baby, Gone are among the best novels
of any kind I have ever read, much less mysteries.

Lehane spends much of his writing energy these days working in movies and television.

Olympic Tradition, Updated

From the pen of Lisa Benson, whose editorial cartoons you should read often, as I do.

Until Next Time...

Billboard magazine first began publishing charts of record sales in stores in 1936.
They charted sales of both albums and singles. Not long after that they began publishing charts of radio plays and jukebox plays of singles as well. Those charts typically only listed the top 20 or so singles at any given time. Beginning in late 1955, they tried to combine those three charts into a Top 100 chart that supposedly represented a single's overall popularity. They continued to publish the other three charts as well.

That practice was abandoned in the summer of 1958, when the magazine decided to discontinue all but the Top 100 listing, which was renamed.

Original 1958 45 rpm single

On August 4, 1958 Billboard announced that the No. 1 song on its first-ever Hot 100 Singles chart was "Poor Little Fool," by teen idol Ricky Nelson. It would hold the top spot for two consecutive weeks, until being displaced by "Nel blu dipinto di blu," more popularly known as "Volare."

Although Nelson had had a handful of Top 5 singles by this time, "Poor Little Fool" was his first No. 1 hit, and one of only two he would have in his career.



I was a little too young to care much about the music, but The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet was one of my parents' favorite TV shows and starting in 1957 it began featuring Ricky's singing as part of the show. Ricky was also popular with my older cousins who sometimes babysat me, so his music is some of the earliest I can remember.

Today's send-off is the 2005 remastered version of the inaugural Hot 100 No. 1 hit. Enjoy...