Daily Lesson

Good morning.


Quote of the day:


"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great. some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust among them." William Shakespeare


Well it looks like the threat of rain has passed. The skies have cleared and the wind has shifted from the northeast at a pretty good clip indicating a frontal passage. I think what rain that was there passed north of us. Yesterday began a month long songwriter's convention here on the Emerald Coast as the Realtors call it. There will be a band, duo, trio or a single musician playing somewhere in the area almost every day. Last night I saw a band called The Kyle Parker Band. It was a trio with a bassist, guitar and drums with the drummer being the lead singer. They were pretty good but they had cranked their amps up way too high and they ate their mikes, meaning they got too close to the mike and the sound was over modulated, but that is common in amateur bands and musicians.


Y'all ain't going to believe this. Last night there was a concert near Sluggo's bar on Pensacola's west side. The Pensacola cops were after one of the people in attendance and came up in two cruisers. The target of the their search got on a bicycle and took off peddling as fast as he could. One of the cops got close enough to hit the biker with a taser. The man on the bike did a swan dive to the road and disappeared to the policemen who continued a few feet and got upon a median, got out and yell "Where are you at!" All of this was witnessed by at least 10 people that were waiting to get into the concert. The onlookers pointed to the bottom of the police car and there the cop saw a pair of red shoes poking out from under the car. He then realized that he had run over the biker and pinned him up under the car when he went up on the median. The biker was killed. A investigation is underway. What a sad commentary. Not only that the cop used a tangling participle.


I guess all of you know by now that in spite of campaigning by President Obama and his wife, the Olympic Committee has chosen Rio de Janerio as the location for the 2016 Olympics. I guess the Olympic Committee did not trust Obama either.


Clemson lost to Maryland, the doormat of the ACC. That is all I am allowed to say about that.


However the mighty and glorious University of South Carolina Gamecocks beat the living hell out of University of South Carolina State by a rout of 38-14. The last quarter of the game was blessed by the second and third team getting some experience. Pray for Willie Korn, his life is wasted.


This date in history October 4


1777    The battle of Germantown, Pennsylvania happens on this day. Germantown was just a few miles north of British occupied Philadelphia. It was George Washington’s 11,000 ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill trained troops but Washington thought they were ready for a fight. He was opposed by British General Charles Cornwallis and his 9,000 well-fed, well-clothed and well trained troops. Washington had his troops to put a small piece of white paper in their hats so they could be seen in the early morning darkness. Washington chose to attack in four columns. The only problem here was that two of the columns got lost in the early morning fog and the army lost cohesion and were being chopped to pieces a few at a time and Washington retreated to the Whitemarsh area of New Jersey. The battle was over by ten o’clock with heavy casualties on both sides. Washington fenced with Cornwallis on and off until he established his winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in early December. A few days before Christmas, Prussian officer Frederick Von Stueben joins Washington. Washington assigns Von Stueben the task of whipping his troops into a well trained fighting unit rather than the rag-tag undisciplined army they were. Von Stueben immediately began a hard disciplined training program and eventually did complete his assignment of creating a fighting machine that proved its worth at the victory at Saratoga, New York. It was the victory at Saratoga that persuaded France to give their support to the fledgling United States and began giving the colonies much needed arms and money.


1998    On this date televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted for wire fraud. Jim and his wife Tammy Faye had built their religious television show into the most watched show of its type in America. They accumulated enough money to build a type of amusement park albeit based on religion. The park was a few miles south of Charlotte, North Carolina and was named Heritage USA. The park had several hundred apartments that the Bakker’s sold as time share condos. As with many people that achieve sudden wealth, they became corrupted by it. The beginning of the end came when Jim has sex with the church secretary Jessica Hahn in a Tampa motel room. Jim became frantic to keep this tryst under wraps and paid Jessica $350,000 hush money. Word leaked out about it anyway and the press jumped on it like a chicken on a June bug. All of the Bakker’s competition in the TV world jumped up and down in glee, especially Jimmy Swaggart. Swaggart saw fit to rant and rave about the evils of the Bakkers for many programs. Well, the IRS smelled blood and closed in for an audit. An audit revealed that the Bakkers had indeed used funds earmarked for religious purposes for their own aggrandizements. Not only that, they oversold the time shares many times over. It was reported that they had gold water faucets in their house and an air conditioned dog house for their pet. Later on Jim Bakker was convicted of wire fraud and sentenced to 25 years but that was reduced to 8 years. Jessica Hahn posed nude for Playboy and was a regular on the Howard Stern show. Tammy Fay divorced Jim while he was in prison and married the contractor that had built Heritage USA. Tammy Faye is famous for the layers of eye shadow, mascara, false eyelashes, rouge and lipstick applied every day. Not many people know what she looks like sans the paint and polish. Tammy Faye has since left this world . The king of hypocrisy Jimmy Swaggart developed his own scandal when he approached a Los Angeles hooker for sex and she recognized who he was and told the press about it. Evidently televangelists are not getting any at home. Heritage USA was abandoned and I do not know what happened to the property. I went there when it was at its peak and the number of visitors there was exceeded only by Disneyland and Walt Disney World. It was something to see. All this trouble began when Jim wanted to get a little strange. It is a lesson for us all.


1970    On this date Rock singer Janis Joplin dies of a heroin overdose in the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood, California. Janis was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1943. She led a troubled life up until she was 17 when she left home and began singing in clubs in Houston and other cities in Texas. In the early 60’s she moved to San Francisco and began singing with a group called Big Brother and the Holding Company. In 1968 the band issued an album called Cheap Tricks. One of the songs on that album was Janis singing the song Piece of my Heart. It gives me chill bumps to think Janis doing this song to this day. Anyway this song brought Janis into the world spotlight. She left that band and formed her own band The Kosmic Blues Band. This band was immensely popular and brought Janis even more fame and fortune. During all this rush at fast living Janis had developed two addictions. One was Southern Comfort and the other was heroin. Her final band was The Full Tilt Boogie Band. It was with this band that Janis gave us the immortal Me and Bobbie Magee. It was only a few weeks after recording this song that she killed herself by injecting shit into her veins. By the way, Me and Bobbie Magee was written by Kris Kristofferson.


Births and deaths:


1976 US actress (of sorts) Alicia Silverstone is born. She said “I think the film “Clueless” is very deep. I think it was deep in the way it was very light. I think lightness has to come from a very deep place if it is true lightness.” Alicia, shut up and quit ruining my life.


1970 US rock singer Janis Joplin dies. She said “I would rather live 10 years of super-hypermost than to live 70 years sitting in a god-damned chair in front of a TV.” Janis lived her 27 years on this planet in exactly that fashion.

Quotable quotes:

“I have as much authority as the Pope. I just do not have as many people that believe it”

George Carlin

“I think NASCAR would be a lot more exciting if, like in a skating rink, every 15 minutes someone announced it was time to reverse direction” George Carlin I like it.


“Gas is getting so expensive that men are beginning to date Monica Lewinski for her siphoning skills.” Jay Leno I am going to let that one alone.


Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow