I read this today in the Inky.
How can you not be bitter when the Phillies have lost more games than any franchise in the history of professional sports and have only one World Series title in more than 120 years of baseball?
I constantly hear people reciting this trivia fact as if it’s really indicative of this town’s sports teams failures. Of course, this fact is completely meaningless, for a number of reasons. First, the Phillies play baseball, which has a 162 game season. That is roughly twice as many games as hockey and basketball have, and ten times as many as football has. So a bad football team would take about 9 years to equal the amount of losses that a great baseball team would have in a single season. In addition, the Phils began play in 1883. The NHL began in 1917, the NFL in 1920, and the NBA began play in 1946. The Phils have played several thousand more games than most of those teams, so of course they’ve lost more games. Ok, so what about baseball? There are only three teams in the majors that have been around as long as the Phils, so you can really only measure them against those three teams. So the Phils have more losses than the Reds, the Cardinals, and the Giants. Nothing to be proud of, but not really that shameful. There are many sports franchises more woeful than the Phillies when you use the only meaningful stat as a comparison, winning %. The Phils have a .467 winning percentage. Again, nothing to brag about. However, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have a winning % of .382, and the LA Clippers (who really are the worst team in the history of pro sports) have a % of .358. Numerous other teams have a % worse than .467. The point is, there are plenty of fun facts you can point to about the Phils phailures, so why go the lazy route and write (or say, b/c I hear people saying it on WIP all the time too) the most cliched and worthless stat about Philadelphia sports futility? As for the 2nd part of that sentence, “…and have only one World Series title in more than 120 years of baseball.”, he would have been better served to write one championship, not one World Series. The Series has only been around since 1903, but they had baseball championships in the 20 years before that and the Phillies not only never won one, they never even made it to the championship game.

There are, of course, numerous people who don’t think that Oswald killed Kennedy, and it seems highly suspicious that he was the lone gunman. Here’s a fairly good analysis of the assassination on PBS’s website. Here’s a write up in the Houston Chronicle that’s fairly interesting, presenting a theory I had never heard before:
Perhaps most intriguing is the idea that there was not one Oswald, but two, that long before the shots in Dealey Plaza rang out, a secret organization — maybe the CIA, maybe the KGB, maybe the FBI — had recruited a look-alike to live a life parallel to Oswald’s. Here is a website that tries to dispell many, but not all, of the reasons for doubt. Many people place Jack Ruby as part of the plot to kill the president. Ruby fought to clear his name, but a lot of his comments to the Warren Commission were fairly cryptic. Here a guy tries to defend Ruby, claiming that he was not part of a conspiracy and was simply insane. This is pretty neat: a minute by minute account of Lee Harvey Oswald’s movements and words in the two days between JFK’s death and his own. And of course, everybody likes to talk about the similarities about the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations.

What Audie Murphy movie was playing at the theatre where Lee Harvey Oswald was captured?

This from Dan Gross:
Philadephia Soul partner and Ritz-Carlton owner Craig Spencer and wife B.J.rented Chickie’s & Pete’s (15th & Packer) two Saturdays ago for a lavish Bat Mitzvah party for daughter Taylor. Among those in attendance were Gov. Rendell and Eagles Reno Mahe, Jason Short and Stephen Spach. Q102’s Chio was the DJ. Southern-rock band Ingram Hill, from Tennessee, played too. The guest of honor arrived on a motorcycle. A mechanical bull was set up outside.
OK, at first glance, this seems like one of those ridiculous rich teenager parties that they show on MTV and you watch just in the sick, sick hope that the dance floor somehow catches on fire and horror ensues. But then the last sentence changed everything. “A mechanical bull was set up outside.” What? All of a sudden, I kind of like this Spencer guy. Sure, he’s loaded, but at least he’s spending some of that hard-earned money on a mechanical bull. I’m telling you, mechanical bulls change everything.

We raised $216 this past week for Community Voice Mail! Thanks for your donation towards a worthwhile cause. We’ll do it again in December. I think I’ve already got a pretty neat one lined up.

The Eagles may be languishing in last place, but our friends across the water are waving their foam number one fingers, as Camden was named the most dangerous city in America for the second straight year. Well, I say we accentuate the positive, so let’s go over a few of our sister city’s fantastic firsts.

• Camden was home of the first drive-in movie theatre.
• Walt Whitman died in Camden. (Shot execution style by a man named Snake.)
• The first color television was manufactured at the RCA plant in Camden.
• The church of scientiology was begun in Camden.

Look out! Here comes a Camden Kool fact! There was a pro basketball team in America’s most dangerous city in the 1960s. It’s name? The Camden Bullets! Click here and listen to Camden’s official song! (click on the Camden link)

This is the place I’m talkin about, on Washington Street, in the Italian Market area (one of the three places up for a vote in the poll).

Wanna get your guys feedback on where we should hold Quizzo Bowl II. Please vote (scroll down a little, on right side of page) for the place where you’d like to see us hold it. If you’ve got any other ideas for where we should hold it, please send me an email to johnny@johnnygoodtimes.com.

Ladies and gentlemen, this just in: There has been a spotting off a naked man, possibly the Naked Zorro, in Doylestown! However, and this is important, the man spotted did not have a mask on. Therefore, we do not want to jump to any conclusions. This could just be a naked Pancho Villa or a naked Emiliano Zapata. However we do want to take this opportunity to provide a link to a story we did a while back about the Naked Zorro, one of our proudest photoshop efforts ever.

Big ups to Morris. He’s the guy who came up with the Irish or Scottish wild card round. Here’s some further info on some other questions I asked earlier this week. Ali G is currently in trouble with the Kazakhstan government. Here’s the transcript of Farrah Fawcett melting down on David Letterman. This is completely insane. Here’s a good article about the Miracle at the Meadowlands (For those who didn’t play earlier this week, The wild card round was “Famous Meltdowns”, in honor of the Eagles Monday night performance.) But here’s the best part. We had two questions this week honoring birthday boy Macho Man Randy Savage. Come to find out, he released a rap album in 2003. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Click here to listen to the hot new joint from the Macho Man.