Ch 15 academic decathlon n
John went to an alamaba boarding school. He's a smart kid tjays ba d at school. His friend Todd is a smart kid thats good at school.the academic decathalon has a set up where you have 3 a stufents 3 b students anf 3 c studemts. Todd was an a stude t anf john was a c student. John Domi nated agasi t c stufents. Fun childhood memory.
chCHh 16 sunsets
The sun is your only God
ch 17 Jerzy Dudek's perfornace on may 25, 2005
Jerzy dudeck is a polish goalie. He grew up in a mining town amd got his start on his mining companies team. Then he went semi pro. Then he signed on with a dutch team and eventually did well enough to make a living at it. Reading this i had no idea what the year was. It was 1995. So it shouldn't be a huge surprise thay jerzy as one of the best goalkeepers in Europe got a multimillion pound contract to play for Liverpool. Where this goes into 2005 is when pope john paul, a fellow Pole, died on the day of the European final between Liverpool and Milan. This messed up jerzy something fierce cause a polish pope doesnt happen that often and he was one of Jerzy's heros. So it shouldn't be a huge surprise that he did not play well in the first half of the game and Liverpool went down 3-0. But Jerzy got it together and they came back to win the game. The part of this that is great to think about in the middle of a global pandemic is that eventually we will feel.comfortable going to sports in person. I sure hope it's by next summer cause id really like to go back to the NBA summer league.
ch 18 penguins of madagascar
The opening scene of the penguins of Madagascar is remarkable because the boom operator sends our three heros into their life of adventure by nudging them off a cliff. This is true to reality because the myth that lemmings run off cliffs en mass is based on a documentary where the film maker trapped a bunch of lemmings, put them in a dump truck 🚚and dumped them off a cliff. What a bunch of assholes.
ch 19 piggly wiggly
The piggly wiggly was the first supermarket in the 1920s. The way groceries used to work was you gave your grocer a list of what you wanted and they went and got it. It was mainly fresh food and there weren't many brand names. The piggly wiggly changed all that cause people picked their own food. One side effect was cheaper prices and more processed foods with brand names. It was hugely successful. But the owner was a real dick and there were some walstreet shenhannegans amd he lost the chain and declared bankruptcy. He ended up a!king a second fortune with a supermarket chain he named after himself, Clarence Saunders, sole owner of my name. He also had a super successful football team he also named after himself. But like a lot of people, he lost everything in the depression.
ch 20 thenatan's famous hot dog eating contest
Eating contests are gross. The 4th of july nathans hotdog eating contest is the grossest. And i guess also racist.
ch 21 cnn
John thinks cnn talks too much about what's new and not enough about the circumstances that led to the current news.
ch 22 harvey
Thus is the movie where jimmy Stuart is mentally ill and has an imaginary friend named Harvey who's a man-sized bunny 🐇. John's first serious bout with depression came when he was young in Chicago. He couldn't eat, he just drinks sprite. He tells his boss he's gotta go home to Orlando to figure it out. He tells him his job will be waiting for him when he comes back. He also tells him to watch Harvey. He ended up coming back in a couple 💑 months.
ch 23 the yips
Rick Ankiel was a pitcher. He got the yips, a sudden unexplainable loss of your ability to do some sort of athletic skill. Like pitching accurately or serving in Tennis. Rick s career as a pitcher was over. But he came back as an outfielder. Good for him
ch 24 auld lang syne
It's a good song about remembering old friends. One such old friend of John is a lady named Amy who helped him get his writing career going by giving him little writing gigs for radio. She died and John doesn't feel like he handled it well. But he thinks of her when he sings the song.
ch 25 googling strangers
John likes to google strangers that he knows will be going to the same party as him. He's often astonished that he can basically learn everything there is to know about a person by googling them. John did a stint as a hospital chaplain back when he was considering going to divinity school. The worst experience he had was with a little boy who had serious burns. He always assumed the boy had died because the ER doctor was pretty sure he wouldn't make it when he got sent up to the ICU. But John googled him recently. Turns out he's still alive.
ch 26 Indianapolis
You gotta live somewhere. But Indianapolis isn't so bad. Even when compared to New York where John came from. His neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks and his yard requires too much maintenance, but it's one of the most economic and ethnically diverse neighborhoods in America. His neighbor Chris told him to google it. We know John likes to google. He did and it is. Not too shabby.
ch 27 Kentucky bluegrass
This chapter is all about lawn maintenance. John doesnt like it. Its very wasteful. This chapter makes me think i should replace my front lawn with planters. I water my lawn so its nice for my dog to walk on.
ch 28 the Indianapolis 500
Car racing huh? Allso buke riding amd coolers with water and beer.
ch 29 monopoly
This is about the board game monopoly. How it accurately shows that as time goes n capitalism ends up with a consolidation of wealth. It speaks of the history of the invention of the game. How a lady invented it to show the ills of capitalism and she didn't make any money from it. She just shared it with her friends for fun and over time the game evolved. The guy that got rich off it did so because he patented it and was then able to sell it and became a millionaire.
