And where we stop is on P. 437 of this year’s Almanac, in the Chronology of U.S. Events section. What we have on this page is a timeline of notable events involving the United States between 1961 and 1968. So, without further ado, here is one item from each year that you will find on P. 437 of this year’s Almanac..

--1961: Alan B. Shepherd Jr. rocketed from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a Mercury capsule on May 5 to become the first American in space. (It was a sub-orbital flight).

--1962: The Cuban Missile Crisis kicked off on October 22, when President John F. Kennedy revealed a build up of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba. Kennedy imposed a blockade around Cuba. On Nov. 2, Kennedy announced that the Soviet missiles were being dismantled.

--1963: JFK was shot a killed in Dallas on November 22.

--1964: The Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time on February 9.

--1965: The Watts riots in L.A. lasted from August 11-16, and left 34 people dead and $200 million in property damage.

--1966: On June 13, the Supreme court ruled in the Miranda decision that suspects that are arrested must be read their rights before being questioned by police.

--1967: The Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first Super Bowl, held on January 15.

--1968: The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive across South Vietnam on January 30. While a military defeat for the awful commies, the offensive led President Lyndon Baines Johnson to not seek re-election that year.

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In keeping with the title of this Substack, we here at Why Daddy Drinks are continuing with a regular feature about the adult beverages that you should be imbibing. This is the Drink of the Weekend.

This entry is an acknowledgement, a celebration, if you will, of two of the great pleasures in my life.

One is sitting in a hot tub. Some call it a Jacuzzi. Some call it a boiling petri dish. Whatever nomenclature you choose, it works for me.

You see, my wife and I have a membership at our local swim club. The place is nothing fancy, but it is nice. There’s a big, 10-lane swimming pool, a smaller pool for kids, and an even smaller area when parents can take their toddlers to introduce them to the water. There’s a good-sized area with ping pong table and barbecues. And there is a surprisingly solid workout area, with several treadmills, exercise bikes, elliptical and weight machines and free weights. You really can have a decent workout here, and then…Step right over to the barbecue area and get some hot dogs and burgers if you feel like it. It would be even better if those hot dogs and burgers came from a party that was actually yours

You can also sink yourself into the “Therapeutic Pool”, aka, the hot tub.

And that’s where the other great pleasure in my life that I want to write about comes in: Having a cold beer as I soak in that hot tub.

The hot tub is the main reason I go to our swim club. And, to me, that hot tub visit isn’t complete if I’m not drinking a beer while those water jets ease my never-ending raft of sore muscles and joints.

Now, as a disclaimer, I should say that one of the “precautions” for the hot tub is to “avoid” drinking alcoholic beverages while using the hot tub. This does make a degree of sense. You get hot while sitting in a hot tub, and if you stay in it for too long, you can get overheated and dizzy. Add a few drinks into that mix and you can get very tipsy. You don’t want to do that and pass out in the tub. That would be bad.

But…

Everything in moderation. And I firmly believe that having one beer (or, maybe even a margarita) as you relax in the hot tub is perfectly fine. I think it even enhances the experience. Especially when that beer is one that you have trucked from more than 700 miles away.

Nearly every beer I have in the hot tub comes from my home state of Washington. For several years, my wife and I would take our daughters on a road trip from Oakland and spend two days driving up Interstate 5 to visit my mom for a week every summer. Some years, we would go twice a year. And every time, I would load up my truck with about 20 six-packs of Washington beer that I can’t find in California. It may sound corny, but that beer—From breweries like Georgetown, Bale Breaker and Fremont—gives me a connection to the place where I am from. Even though I haven’t lived in Washington on a full-time basis since 1992, it remains “home” to me.

My mom died last year. I had to fly up to Washington her several times before she died, and I made a handful of trips to deal with matters after her passing. With her being gone, one more link to me “home” was severed. But, each time I went to Tacoma, I brought back some of the beer of home (I found out I could fit about 5 six-packs, into a large, hard shell suitcase without going over the Alaska or Southwest Airlines weight limits). My garage is now loaded with enough beer to stock a couple of shelves at Costco.

And when I have one of those Washington beers in the hot tub here in Oakland, I am able to relax and get back “home” for a little while.

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And, what can you do with potatoes? Well, you can bake them, mash them, fry then, deep fry then, boil them, and microwave them if you are in a hurry. And just thinks about the French Fry battles that can ensue.

Shoestring vs. Crinkle Cut vs. Steak vs. Waffle Cut vs. Curly vs. Tater Tot. And you can make hash browns and home fries and make everyone happy at breakfast.

Oh, and potato chips. So, so many kinds of potato chips....

We eat a LOT of potatoes in these United States. It's almost impossible to go more than one day without eating some form of potato in this country. I'd say there is a 73% chance that you are eating a potato product right now...Probably some McDonald's French Fries, which are always a good choice.

And in order to eat so many potatoes as we do, we need to grow and produce a lot of potatoes. And on P. 133 of this year's Almanac, you will find that in 2024, the last full-year for which data is available, the United States produced 420,242 1,000-hundredweight of potatoes.

What does that even mean?

Well...

On P. 363 of this year's Almanac, you will find that 1 hundredweight is equal to 100 pounds. So...1,000 hundredweight is equal to 100,000 pounds. And, if I am doing he math right (and it's quite possible I'm not)...I think we produced more than 42 billion pounds of potatoes in 2024.

Now, do your part and get some of those McDonald's fries. You're welcome.

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(I’ll give you a minute to think about where that is...)

OK...Let’s move on.

The Beehive State is Utah. A Fact that you can find on P. 588 of this year’s Almanac. You may have been to Utah at some time. Maybe for skiing? Maybe to visit Arches or Bryce Canyon National Park? Maybe you REALLY wanted a Dirty Soda, which I hear are huge in Utah.

Maybe you are a fan of the Utah Jazz or Utah Mammoth?

“Jazz Mammoth” would be a great name for a Dëäth Mëtäl band from Provo, by the way.

I’ve been to Utah...Three times, if my cobweb-filled memory serves me right. Once was when I took a road trip with my high-school girlfriend’s family to visit someone they knew there. Once was when I drove across the state as part of my week-long sojourn from Boston to California back in 1999. Once was just a stopover at the Salt Lake City airport. I guess that third one doesn’t really count.

But, from what I saw of Utah, it is a pretty cool-looking state. You have the Wasatch Mountains. You have the Bonneville Salt Flats. You have Bryce Canyon (Which I visited) and Arches (Which I didn’t visit). You’ve got Temple Square, the headquarters of the Mormon Church, right there is Salt Lake City. And you can’t deny how awesome the Temple looks...And how cool the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is to see in person, if you have had that opportunity.

So...Back to the Almanac. Many of those Utah Facts I mentioned above can be found on P. 223 of this year’s Almanac. And you can also find the following Facts about the only state that starts with the letter “U”...

--The Utah state capital is Salt Lake City.

--Utah is the 30th-largest state by population, with 3,503,613 “Utahans”.

--The state has a gasoline tax of 57.55¢ per gallon.

--The Utah state motto is “Industry”. The state flower is the Sego Lily”. The state bird is the, weirdly, California Sea Gull.

--Utah became the 45th state in the Union when it got its start on the flag on January 4, 1896.

--Members of the Ute, Gositue, Southern Paiute and Navajo Indian tribes lived in Utah prior to the arrival of European explorers.

--Permanent American settlement of Utah began when members of the Mormon Church, led by Brigham Young, arrived in 1847.

--The Transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869, when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met at Promontory Point, Utah.

--Some “Famous Utahans” include Roseanne Barr, Ezra Taft Benson, Butch Cassidy, Philo T. Farnsworth, J. William Marriott, Merlin Olsen and the Osmonds.

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I'm old and cranky enough to remember when the Bee Gees walked the Earth with the force of General Sherman when he tore through Georgia. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE owned at least one copy of the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack, and for at least three years, from 1977 to early 1980, someone, somewhere, was playing one of the Bee Gees songs at some time during the day. You might have burned out on disco music, and mocked the Bee Gees after they conquered the universe, but...

Nearly all of those great Bee Gees songs still hold up today. "Jive Talkin'". "Stayin' Alive". "Night Fever". "Too Much Heaven". "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?" "To Love Somebody". "How Deep Is Your Love"...Good God, there's barely a belt around that can hold all those bullets.

And, on P. 253 of this year's Almanac, you will find that the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack (which is credited to the Bee Gees, but does contain many, many hits by others), is the 25th highest-selling album of all time in the United States, with 16 million copies sold...It is tied with Led Zeppelin's "Physical Graffiti".

Also... When the Bee Gees weren't "cool", what did they do? They wrote hits for other big-name stars of the time. They wrote "Heartbreaker" for Dionne Warwick. They wrote "Guilty" for Barbra Streisand (and her entire damn "Guilty" album. Barry wrote the smash hit "Grease", which was sung by Frankie Valli.

And, the brothers wrote "Islands In The Stream", which was a No. 1 hit for Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers.

Happy Birthday, Barry...Put some Respect on the man's name...

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And on P. 125 of this year's Almanac, you will find the following about the Medal of Honor:

--Its roots date back to December 21, 1861, when President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill to create the Navy Medal of honor. On July 14, 1862, Lincoln approved a resolution to present Medals of Honor to enlisted men and volunteer forces fighting for the Union in the Civil War.

--The first Army Medals of Honor were awarded on March 25, 1863, while the first Navy Medals went to sailors and Marines on April 3, 1863.

--The Medal of Honor is only given for actions taken in battle. The actions performed "must have been one of personal bravery or self-sacrifice so conspicuous as to clearly distinguish the individual above his or her comrades and must have involved risk of life.

--As of August 7, 2025, 3,547 Medals of Honor had been issued. The largest number, 1,525, were for action in the Civil War, while 8 had been given for the war in Iraq.

--The most-recent Medal of Honor recipients were Sgt. First Class Matthew O. Williams, U.S. Army, who was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously on December 16, 2021, for action in the War In Iraq; Sgt. First Class Christopher A Celiz, U.S. Army, who also received the award posthumously, on December 16, 2021, for action in the War in Afghanistan, and Master Sgt. Earl D. Plumlee, U.S. Army, who also received his award on December 16, 2021 for his actions in the War in Afghanistan.

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So, what browser are you using right now?

If you are like me, your name is Rex, and you are a sad, sad Seattle Mariners fan. But, if you are like me, you are also on a MacBook Air laptop and using Apple's own Safari browser. As such, Safari is one of the most-popular web browsers in the world, and on P. 294 of this year's Almanac, you will find that in 2025, Safari had 16.23% of the worldwide web browser market.

And, yet...Safari can't hold a candle to Google's Chrome.

Because, also on P. 294 of this year's Almanac, you will find that Chrome has a 67.92% chokehold on the browser market around the world.

So, Chrome is No. 1, Safari is No. 2. And the rest of the Top 5 are:

--Mircrosoft Edge, with 5.07%

--Firefox, with 2.45%

--Something called Samsung Intenet, with 2.04%

Way down the list in 10th place is...Microsoft Explorer, and there are still a few Explorer holdouts out there, as Explorer still has a 0.32% of the web browser market. Its been quite the shift, because in 2009, Explorer had 59.48% of the web browser market, white Firefox was in the game with 30.18% and Chrome at just 2.98%...

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"Standing right on campus, would he stamp us in a file?
Hangin' down in Memphis all the while"

and...

"And if he was from Venus, would he meet us on the moon?
If he died in Memphis, then that'd be cool, babe."

Then, there is the chorus, which mentions Chilton by name:

”And children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round, 'round

They sing, "I'm in love, what's that song?

Well, I'm in love with that song"

Finally, there is the bridge that goes:

”I never travel far

Without a little Big Star.”

It would be a few years later before I learned that Big Star was a band that included Alex Chilton. If you know the Big Star song "September Gurls" (and you REALLY should), then you have heard Alex Chilton. Oh, he was also 16 years old when he sang on the Box Tops song "The Letter" (you ABSOLUTELY know this song) which was a worldwide smash hit in 1967.

What's all this Alex Chilton talk about? Well, Alex Chilton was a musical genius, and "September Gurls" is easily one of five-greatest pop-rock songs ever written. And I WILL fight you if you disagree.

Oh, back to Memphis...Alex Chilton was born in Memphis, and spent many of his early, and greatest years as a musician there. And on P. 601 of this year's Almanac, you will find that Memphis:

--Is the 29th-largest U.S. city, with a population of 610.919 people.

--Has an average home price, as of 2024, of $456,000.

--Had French, Spanish and U.S. forts set up in its area by 1797, was settled by 1819, incorporated in 1826, surrendered its charter to the state of Tennessee in 1879 after a series of yellow fever epidemics, and was re-chartered as a city in 1893.

--Has a nonpartisan mayor named Paul Young.

Look...Memphis is all fine and dandy, but, I admit...I only used Memphis as an excuse to implore you to listen to the song "Alex Chilton", as well as "September Gurls" and the entire Big Star catalogue.

You're welcome...

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And if you've been married for just shy of 20 years, like my wife and I, you'll probably say, "Yeah...Sounds about right."

Let me set the scene.

I had been upstairs, feeding the cats, and making some breakfast for my wife.

I came downstairs. My wife, wearing a black t-shirt, was still in bed. The lights were on (we have a Clapper for the light on her nightstand), and Geddy, our black cat who has been afraid of me and who hasn’t let me touch him since I saved his ass by dragging him out of the heating duct the night we got him NINE YEARS AGO is sitting next to my wife.

Good, so far?

I walk over to my wife’s side of the bed. Geddy IMMEDIATELY leapt over my wife and ran out of the room.

I said, “Good morning!”

My wife grunted at me.

I said, “Can I help you get up?”

Her reply, “No! I don’t want you groping me!”

My reply:

“Well…You and Geddy have something in common. You’re both wearing black and you don’t want me to touch you!”

Thank you...I'll be here all week...

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Or, maybe Facebook's algorithms just bury things below 17 different ads for upcoming concerts, political campaigns and True Classic t-shirts and you have to go hunting for the Good Stuff.

What do I know?

Well, anyway...Back to those abbreviations above.

I just flipped the pages of the Almanac today and ended up on Pages 714-716, where there is a list of "Some Common Abbreviations". Among those are IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) and, every 2019 Dudebro's favorite, YOLO (You Only Live Once).

So, since we are here...Here's a handful of Common Abbreviation that you will find between Pages 714 and 716 of this year's Almanac. I'm just going to leave the abbreviations here. If you know the answers...Well, really with your answers.

Happy Friday...

--APO

--BTU

--DOB

--FEC

--GED

--HRH

--MYOB

--RNA

--TIA

--WTF

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That’s because we are looking at the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S Truman. Why Harry S. Truman? Well...Why not?

Truman was originally an accidental President. He had been FDR’s Vice-President for barely a month when, on April 12, 1945, FDR died in Warm Springs, Georgia. Most Americans knew very little about Truman, but they would feel the impact of his Presidency over the next eight years.

One of the many interesting Facts about Truman was he was the last President who cold have served more than 2 1/2 Presidential terms. Since the Constitution had been ratified, there had been no legal limit on the number of terms someone could be President. George Washington established the two terms at most practice, and it held as an accepted tradition while not being codified into law. FDR would break with that tradition when, in 1940, he was elected to a third term, and then a fourth term, in 1944. The 22nd Amendment limited Presidents to two terms, whether served consecutively or not.

And, as Truman was President at the time the 22nd was proposed and ratified, he was grandfathered in, and, in theory, could have served as many terms as he wanted.

But, on P. 473 of this year’s Almanac, you will find that Truman served nearly all of FDR’s fourth term, and then got elected himself in 1948. Truman was not expected to win, and his victory over Thomas Dewey was the greatest political upset in U.S. history up until that time. By the time the 1952 election rolled around, both Truman and the Democratic Party kingmakers decided new blood was needed, and Truman didn’t run for re-election.

Also on P. 473, you will find the following Facts about Harry S. Truman.

--He was born in Lamar, Missouri, on May 8, 1884.

--He was in the U.S. Army, and fought in France in World War I.

--He was elected twice to the Senate from Missouri, in 1936 and 1940.

--As President, he authorized the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, which hastened the end of World War II.

--Also as President, he enacted the Truman Doctrine, which involved the policy of Containment against the awful Commies supported by the awful Soviet Union. This included providing military support to Greece and Turkey, approving the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Western Europe after WWII, overseeing the establishment of NATO, sending U.S. forces to South Korea to blunt an attack from the awful commies in North Korea, firing Gen. Douglas MacArthur after the general opposed Truman’s policies in the Korean War, and he oversaw the Berlin Airlift, when from 1948 to 1949, U.S. and Allied nations flew thousands of supply flights to West Berlin to keep the city alive after the awful Soviet Union’s awful Josef Stalin set up a ground blocked of West Berlin in an effort to get the Good Guys (that’s us) to abandon West Berlin. We didn’t.

--He died on December 26, 1972, in Kansas City, Missouri...

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It was a simple suggestion. And I pondered it as I sat there on the examination table, wearing one of those standard paper robes that every doctor in America has in stock.

I have done a lot of things in my life just because I happened to be somewhere at a particular time. Right off the top of my head, I remember being in a stairwell of a bar in Osaka with some of my fellow “gaijin” friends and noticing a stack of cases of Miller Lite beer next to me. About a minute later, I was outside, and my drunken compatriots and I were tearing into the cans of Lite from the case that I decided needed to be liberated from that drinking establishment.

Look, I didn’t say all of those things I have done on a whim have always been on the up-and-up.

But this thing on this day really was something unexpected. Because this doctor was my urologist. And this thing he was suggesting I do was bend over the table, stick my ass upward, and allow him to perform a good, traditional, old-fashioned prostate exam.

Now, I have to say that for about the first 30-odd years of my life, I had no idea what or where my prostate is. I’m still a little unsure. But, one thing I do know is that to get a prostate properly examined, you have to swallow any sense of shame and allow yourself to be “prodded” in a way that you never would normally think of doing yourself.

(I should note here that there is a new type of prostate exam which is just done as a simple blood test. I have taken this test, and I can tell you that getting pricked in the arm by a needle for about 10 seconds is WAY better that someone shoving their finger where the sun don’t shine and making you instantly go from a tenor to a soprano.)

I thought that telling my urologist that I had done the prostate blood test would be enough. But, it wasn’t for him, and we had our hands-on exam. And as he probed around, I thought to myself, “Well, this is what I am, now.”

And what I am is an ongoing medical appointment.

###

Like any middle-aged Gen Xer, I don’t think of myself as “middle-aged. Mentally, I’m still somewhere between 17 and 25. I’m pretty sure that half of my everyday waking brain time is spent thinking about important topics like whether AC/DC’s “Jailbreak” is better than Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak”, if I need to re-stock my Yeti cooler with more ice (and more beer) and just what the girl from Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” video is up to today.

I also spend way too much time pondering the state of the Seattle Mariners, and whether my lifelong fandom of this team is proof that there is no God, or if God made me a Mariners fan because He hates me.

But, while in my head might be back some where between 1985 and 1993, here in the Year of Our Lord, 2026 the rest of me is absolutely closing in on 60 years of age. And, that is made even more evident by the number and kinds of ailments I have to deal with every day.

The prostate probe wasn’t even the latest ding on my proverbial fender. Last Saturday, I woke up with a skin tag on my stomach that had grown from barely visible to nearly an inch long and was red enough to officially be diagnosed as “Angry” by the doctor at urgent care when I hauled myself in there on Sunday morning.

“You want me to cut it off?”

“Nah…I figure I’ll just let my belt keep rubbing on it until it eventually develops gangrene and/or I get killed by sepsis.”

Actually, I told him to go ahead and cut it off. So, he brought out some silver nitrate and burned the thing off after numbing the area will what I have told myself was fentanyl. The doc. gave me a prescription for some antibiotics, and told me the there would be a “black mark” in the skin tag spot for a while. And by “for a while” he meant “for the next year”.

Yet, i couldn’t even complete this procedure without some other “ailment” rearing its head to remind me that I am falling the hell apart.

###

As I sat in the exam room before seeing my doctor, my phone buzzed. it was an alert telling me I had a new message in My Chart, which is every medical professionals’ favorite method of reminding you at 8 a.m. on a Sunday that you are due for a cholesterol screening. I thought that popping a dose every day of something called rosuvastatin was supposed to keep my “bad” cholesterol in check. But, I have also learned that at my age, there is no end to all the ailments and meds that you have to take just to keep your proverbial wheels on the road.

As I just said, I’m currently taking antibiotics for my newly burned off skin tag, and rosuvastatin for my cholesterol. But, those are just the start of my pharmaceutical adventure.

Every morning, I pop a ridiculously tiny zoloft, which is supposed to help take the edge off the daily stress that wreaks havoc with my nerves. I also have a bottle of meloxicam, which I’m supposed to take “as needed” to help ease the pain in my left knee. I don’t know if I have a torn meniscus, or if I blew out my ACL, but I do know that, at times, I have to take steps one at a time going downstairs if I don’t want my knee to buckle and I end up in a pile of broken bones after taking 12 steps at time to get to the bottom of the stairs.

When I get to the bottom of those stairs, I reach our bedroom where, on my nightstand, is my CPAP machine. My wife worried so much about my breathing stopping during the night that I now strap a nose cover that’s attached to a tube to my face every evening and that blows air into my nose. I look like a character in the third-worst “Top Gun” knockoff.

And, due to this sleep apnea, I have been able to get my insurance to cover at least some of everyone’s favorite trendy medication of the moment: a GLP-1 medication (Zepbound) that, ostensibly, is also supposed to help me lose weight. Not that I look like I ate the sun, but at my age, I could stand to shave 30 pounds off my sleep-apnea-addled frame.

Also falling into the Chronic Condition Category is the plantar fasciitis that is now afflicting my right heel. When I get up in the morning, I have to hobble like I’m a peg-legged pirate for about 20 feet until the pain subsides enough that I can begin my morning heel-and-calf stretching routine. Because of this, my podiatrist recommended I switch to Brooks shoes and get a specific kind of insert for all my shoes. Who am I to argue with him? He helped me conquer the same condition when it afflicted my left foot a couple of years ago. I guess my right foot felt left out and decided now was the time for it to get in on some hot plantar fasciitis action.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, there’s another new bottle in my medicine chest. I guess you could call it a “pre-emptive measure” to be taken in advance of a certain “activity” in order to “enhance” a certain “activity”. Look, I’m not 18 or 28 or even 38 years old anymore. I’m 58 and staring at 60. I’m truthful enough with myself to know that, well…Have you ever started your car on a freezing-cold winter morning and had to let the engine run for a while before you drive the thing? We are in that category right now.

I haven’t taken any of it, yet.

But, back to the start of this screed. This week I have an ultrasound that is a followup to what my urologist put me through a few weeks back. This will involve checking out things “in front”. I can’t imagine it taking more than a few minutes. I can imagine it will be another stamp in my book of “Medical Things I Never Expected To Do, But Are Now Just Things I Do.”

So, if we are keeping score, I now have have a primary physician, a podiatrist, a urologist, an urgent care physician, a sleep-apnea specialist, someone prescribing me Zepbound, and an anonymous “Doctor” at Hims who set me up with my first bottle of something that rhymes with “Biagra”. I’ve also had recent dealings with a proctologist (for a colonoscopy), a physical therapist and even an emergency room brain specialist when I thought I was having a stroke a couple of years ago. I’m just a hip replacement away from scoring a win at Body Breakdown Bingo.

Another day, another “thing” that needs to be checked out. I’ve turned into a walking, talking co-pay. This is what I am, now. And, it’s what I’m likely to be from here on out.

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There are few “celebrities” or well-known people in the world who seem to be liked by everyone. You can probably use the fingers on one hand to count that high, and you might have a couple of fingers left over.

Well, it’s obvious that Dolly was No. 1 on that list. And I can’t think of who will take her place. (Billy Idol? Shaq? Lynda Carter?). A million paeans to Dolly have already been written about her in the wake of her unexpected death yesterday, so there isn’t that much more than can be said about her. By all accounts, she was a truly good person.

Amazingly, there aren’t a lot of Facts about Dolly in this year’s Almanac. Her Dollywood theme park, in Tennessee, doesn’t even crack the Top 10 most-visited theme parks in the United States. Whatever. Dolly was a national treasure. One of the last images I have of my grandfather, Leonard Busic, before he died in 1983 was him sitting in front of his stereo in Sparta, North Carolina, and listening to Dolly’s song “Here You Come Again”. I think many people have a Dolly story like that.

Well, what can we find out about Dolly in this year’s Almanac is that:

--She’s a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame (P. 215).

--She was born in Seiverville, Tennessee, on January 19, 1946 (P. 228).

--Her song, “I Will Always Love You”, which Whitney Houston turned into a massive hit in this, and every other known galaxy, won the Grammy for Record in 1993.

For me, however, the Ultimate Dolly Performance came from when she read the riot act to Dabney Coleman in the movie “9 To 5”. I have no doubt Dolly would really have followed through on her “rooster to a hen” threat...

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50 years, in fact. Because 50 years ago today, the self-titled debut album from the band Boston was released. Yes, it may be hard to believe, but we have been hearing songs like “More Than A Feeling”, “Peace of Mind” and “Foreplay/Long Time” every day on the radio (and on streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify) since Gerald Ford was in the White House, “All In the Family” was the No. 1 show on TV and, quite possibly, YOU were getting ready to enter the third grade.

You might have some wrinkles around your eyes, and there might be some grey in your hair (or, your hairline is receding back closer and closer to oblivion), but...Don’t deny it. When any of those songs on “Boston” start playing, and singer Brad Delp hits those high notes on the chorus of “More Than A Feeling”, you are right there with him, singing along in you car like you’re on stage at an arena in front of 20,000 people.

And, if you are in my truck, or anywhere with me and “More Than A Feeling”, or, really, any of those “Boston” songs start playing, you risk losing your fingers if you try to change the station. I’m not kidding.

I once read someone describe “More Than A Feeling” as “The sound of your older brother washing his car in the driveway on a hot summer day.” That definitely tracks. So, regardless of what the weather is like where you are, put on Boston’s debut and let it roll from start to finish. Have you heard every song on the album about a bazillion times? Yes. Has the record ever sounded “old”. No.

And chances are you own a copy of “Boston”. Because on P. 255 of this year’s Almanac, you will find that 50 years after its release, “Boston” remains the 20th biggest-selling album of all time in the U.S., with at least 17 million copies sold...

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Like many mothers of small children, my wife has a propensity for buying a lot of clothes for our daughters. She really can’t help herself. And this is why our daughters’ bedroom looks like a cross between the kids section at your average Target store and the average Midwestern trailer park after a hurricane.

Clothes are everywhere, and only occasionally inside the girls’ drawers, where they are ostensibly supposed to be. Shirts hang from drawer openings. Single socks that haven’t seen their mates in years litter the closet floor. And whatever color was their room’s carpet is lost to the ages as it is covered in not just dirty clothes that never seem to find their way into the hamper, but clean clothes that landed on the floor when the girls were hunting for something to wear and they pulled out three or four of my wife’s other purchases at the same time. Things that never occurred to our daughters to pick up because 8-and-9-year-old kids area not genetically predisposed to clean up after themselves

This avalanche of sartorial madness grows every day because, like I said, my wife can’t stop herself from buying stuff for the two adorable hellions. And this is how our older daughter, Maddo, came to own a Nirvana sweater.

Nirvana hasn’t been a functional band in more than 24 years, or since that day in April 1994 when Kurt Cobain went to a room above a garage at his Seattle home, put a shotgun to his head, and pulled the trigger. But that doesn’t mean Nirvana as a band has stopped mattering to millions of its fans. Nirvana remains one of the tentpole bands of the last 29 years (Its first album, “Bleach”, came out in 1989) and its music is still cited as some of the most-popular, and influential, of its time. You would be hard-pressed to find someone born between 1962 and 2000 who hasn’t heard Nirvana’s signature song,”Smells Like Teen Spirit” a minimum of 5,000 times since it came out in late 1991.

But…Maddo was born in 2008. And when we gave her that Nirvana sweater emblazoned with the band’s take on the Have a Nice Day happy face (A circle with two “X” marks for eyes, and a tongue sticking out of one corner of the mouth, suggesting drunkenness) she responded as you probably would have expected a nine-year-old.

“Who’s Nirvana?”

I wasn’t surprised. I mean, why would she have any reason to know who or what Nirvana was? This kid has grown up on Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga and about a hundred other female singers whom I can’t tell the difference between. Expecting her to know who Nirvana was would have been like asking the eight-year-old version of myself if I knew anything about Muddy Waters.

So, in order to expand the kid’s ears, I turned on our Apple TV device, brought up YouTube and found the video for “Teen Spirit”. Anyone who was alive and watching MTV in the fall of 1991 probably remembers where they were the first time they saw the “Teen Spirit” video. For me, I’m pretty certain it was when I was watching TV in my bedroom at my parents’ house after a day of throwing pallets at the West Coast Grocery warehouse pallet yard in Tacoma, Washington (And putting my recently acquired two bachelor’s degrees to work making a whopping $6.25 a hour. It may have been almost 30 years ago, but six-and-a-quarter an hour back then bought about as much as it does today.)

But anyway…

It’s a very tired and aged thing to say now, but everything, at least in terms pf popular music, changed when “Teen Spirit’s” opening riff first blasted out from America’s airwaves and TV screens. Seattle became the trendy music capital of the world. Within a few months, the Age of Hair Metal effectively died, and no one wanted to admit they had ever owned a Motley Crue or Poison CD. The crown was placed on Nirvana’s head when its album “Nevermind” knocked the self-proclaimed King of Pop, Michael Jackson, and his “Dangerous” album from the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s album chart. Even today, nearly three decades after “Teen Spirit’s” debut, it remains a signature song (and probably the signature song) for those of us part of (God help me for using this term) Generation X.

But, for all of “Teen Spirit’s” “importance”, that doesn’t mean the song means anything to Maddo. Hence, her lack of knowledge about Nirvana, or its biggest hit. However, that didn’t mean the song was completely unknown to her.

I put the video on. Cobain’s guitar kicked in with that famous riff, and things only got more explosive when the rest of Nirvana–bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl, who was still several years away from becoming America’s favorite nice-guy rocker at the helm of Foo Fighters–joined in, and it was 1991 all over again.

That is, except for Maddo. Because for her, it was 1976.

Me: So, sweetie…What do you think of Nirvana?

Maddo: I thought it was “More Than A Feeling”.

Now, for a nine-year-old in 2018, this statement should make no sense at all. But, for a nine-year-old in 2018 whose dad plays Boston’s anthemic mid-70s hit at least once a day when he’s driving his kids home from school, noticing the similarities between Kurt Cobain’s George Bush-era appropriation of Tom Scholz’s Gerald Ford-era masterwork says that just because someone claimed that “corporate rock” sucked, that didn’t mean he wasn’t secretly a fan of what he claimed to hate. And make no mistake, there is a big difference between Boston and Nirvana.

No one, not even those of us who love “More Than A Feeling” (and, really, if you don’t love “More Than A Feeling”, you do have problems) refer to Boston as a “Great” (with a capital “G”) band, even though many of the songs on “Boston”, the band’s debut album, have the sound of “Greatness” all over them, thanks to Scholz’s soaring guitar and pristine, precise production. “Boston” has sold over 17 million copies since it came out in 1976. You probably have a copy of it yourself in some form or another around your house right now. And you very well may have listened to “More Than A Feeling” this morning because why the hell not?

I once read a description of “More Than A Feeling” that called it, “The sound of your older brother washing his car in your driveway on a hot summer day.” You can see that image now, whether or not you grew up with an older brother, or a driveway in which cars were washed. I don’t think I have ever heard any song described so perfectly. “More Than A Feeling” matters.

But, for all of that, and for whatever reason, “More Than A Feeling” and Boston never show up on anyone’s list of Greatest Anything. The only musician I remember ever hearing mention Boston as an influence on their sound is Garth Brooks. And even with a bazillion record sales, Garth isn’t the most cutting edge of rockers.

Then, there is Nirvana. From the moment “Teen Spirit” was released, Cobain & Co. were hailed as the most-important band of their era and there are plenty of examples to back that up. Because of Nirvana, the world suddenly became aware that there was a music scene in Seattle beyond Jimi Hendrix, Heart and Queensryche. (The Sonics, arguably the most-influential band ever to hail from area, were still several years away from their resurrection and overdue appreciation.) Nirvana introduced the world to the music of “grunge”, which itself became one of the most quickly played out trends in 20th century pop culture. And the band provided the starting point for an immediate switch in how a popular rock band was supposed to sound and look like, and behave. A busty blonde bimbo model like Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” vixen Bobbi Brown was going to have no place dancing around with a firehose in any of Nirvana’s videos.

And Cobain wasn’t about to try and clone Eddie Van Halen with a run of finger-tapping hammer on solos on a Gibson Flying V in any of his songs.

No, Nirvana was sincere in a way that the hair metal bands they booted off the charts weren’t. But, Kurt Cobain was sincere in his love of his musical influences, too. I read an interview with Cobain in which he said he wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon, but the anonymity of Ringo Starr. That may sound profound, but is actually pretty silly when you take into account that it’s nearly impossible to be anonymous when your name is “Ringo Starr” and you were probably, at worst, the third most-famous member of the world’s most-famous band, but whatever. It was Cobain’s idea to have. And Cobain made no secret of his love of the Beatles. It would have been no surprise at all had Cobain had said “Tomorrow Never Knows” or “Rain” had an impact on how “Teen Spirit” eventually turned out.

But, that would have been wrong.

Because if anything influenced Cobain’s biggest hit, it was Boston’s most-famous guitar riff from its most-famous song.

“More Than A Feeling” is nothing but hooks. From that opening acoustic guitar picking, to that signature rhythm of the choruses, to Scholz’s soaring, uber-produced solos, “More Than A Feeling” is a song that wasn’t just banged out in someone’s garage on a school day afternoon. Rather, it was crafted in either the most, or least-most rockin’ way ever: By Scholz, in his basement studio, after he finished his day job working as an engineer at Polaroid. And that riff that blasts out with the song’s choruses is something so simple in its construction that it might just rival “Smoke On The Water” as the definitive guitar piece of the 1970s. Only while Deep Purple’s magnum opus has become a punchline for any joke about up-and-coming guitar players, what Tom Scholz created on his Gibson Les Paul is rarely acknowledged as a source of musical inspiration by any bedroom rock star.

But, Kurt Cobain wasn’t just any bedroom rock star. Put on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” right now and try to deny that those first four bars of the song don’t sound like a rustier, grimier version of “More Than A Feeling”. You might get some hair-splitter who will say that the songs “hardly” sound alike because “‘More Than A Feeling’s’ riff uses the chord progression I, IV, Vi, V, whilst “Smells Like Teen Spirit” uses the chord progression Isus2, IV III, VI. Those progressions are totally different. It’s a common misconception that the riffs are the same based on the first two chords and the way they are strummed.”

In fact, this was exactly how someone on Facebook responded to me when I posted a photo of Maddo with her Nirvana sweater and posited that Cobain probably should have given Scholz a songwriting credit on “Teen Spirit”. This is also the kind of response you would likely get from someone who would complain about getting free pizza and beer while watching the Super Bowl on a 70-inch 4K TV at a friend’s house.

No matter. I never knew Cobain, but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t charting out the chord structures between songs “whilst” he was listening to the first Boston album and working out the riff that would eventually get his band introduced by Rob Morrow as the musical guests on “Saturday Night Live” in January of 1992. Something tells me he knew a good groove when he heard it and it didn’t matter a particular groove came from one of the bands better known for 70s “corporate rock” than for any ties to the Stooges or the Melvins. Good artists copy and great artists steal, right? Maybe Cobain never thought of himself as “Great”, but “Teen Spirit” got millions of people thinking of him that way. And a stolen riff from the greatest song by a band that is rarely thought of as “Great” got him there.

And when Maddo heard Cobain’s “Greatness” for the first time, she knew where she had heard it before.

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Come on...You remember Steve Guttenberg. The "Gute" was everywhere for a few years in the 80s. "Cocoon", "Three Men and a Baby" and, especially the "Police Academy" franchise. The was a period of time when Steve Guttenberg was the Hollywood version of Phil Collins. You couldn't step into your local six-screen megaplex without ending up watching a Steve Guttenberg movie.

Oh, he was also in "Short Circuit", too.

Steve is still around, doing acting, directing and other things. He had a recurring role in the ABC TV series "The Goldbergs". He still pops up from time to time. And admit it...When you see Steve Guttenberg, it might as well be 1987 all over again...

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Actually, you don’t need a pencil to take the SAT anymore. What you do need is a laptop and a charger because you certainly don’t want your MacBook to die when you’re in the middle of answering a question about the square-root-area-of-a-rhomboid-cubed-factorial-Pop Tart. Times have changed.

But, the SAT remains. Whether it is valid, garbage, or somewhere in the middle like a second-day reheated pizza is a debate for another day. All I know is that kids still take the SAT, and I had to take Maddie to a local junior college yesterday morning so that she could sit for the exam at 8 a.m. I don’t remember what it cost, but I do know there were a lot of other kids walking into the place in hopes that they would score high enough to give them an edge on getting into Massive State Private School University of Future Student Debt.

Anyway...

Even though many schools say they don’t care about the SAT, those scores still “matter” here in the Year of our Lord 2026. And on P. 386 of this year’s Almanac, you will find that in 1990, the national mean SAT scores were 500 (Verbal) and 501 (Math).

By 2010, a “critical reading” segment had been added to the SAT. And, that year, the national mean scores were 501 (Critical Reading), 516 (Math) and 492 (For what was called “writing).

The SAT shook things up, again, a few years later. And by 2024, the last full-year for which data is available, the national mean SAT scores were 519 (Evidence-based reading and writing) and 505 (Math).

Now...Don’t you feel smarter and ready to apply to college?

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The bottom line is, at least back then, Japanese people learned English from early on in school, but they didn’t really learn how to speak English in everyday situations. They could read “Hamlet”, but they couldn’t go to McDonald’s and order a Big Mac meal. And, that’s where I, and probably thousands of other Americans, Canadians, Brits and Aussies came in.

It was the early 90s. Times were different than now. And rarely was that more obvious in how I was able to keep up with news and popular culture in the United States.

Like any Gen X-er who grew up on rotary dial phones and learned how to drive on a stick shift, I remember what it was like before the Internet became a “thing” and you couldn’t get information or answers about anything in a split second via your iPhone. When I was in Japan, the main source of my exposure to what was going on in the world back at home, or around Osaka, was through one of the handful of daily English-language newspapers, or the monthly Kansai Time Out magazine (R.I.P., KTO) that were the Bibles of English information for myself and my fellow “Gaijin Senseis”. Sure, we could watch the NHK news in Japanese, but it wasn’t the same as getting that one English-language broadcast of CNN Headline News, or, believe it or not, the episodes of “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” that ran on Friday and/or Saturday nights.

It really was a different world back then.

And it got a little more different when, at some point during my first year in Hirakata, our school got hooked up to some kind of satellite radio service. This was many years before Sirius was around. And for me and my Gaijin compatriots, this new radio service was a Big Deal.

The biggest part of that deal was due to us being able to get a radio station out of New York. I can’t for the life of me remember the station’s name, but the DJ’s would talk about stuff going on in New York and play new and popular rock and pop music. Because of the time difference—Osaka is 13 hours ahead of New York, when we came into work at noon (our work hours were 12-9 p.m.) we would hear the late/overnight DJ who was on shift at 11 p.m. in Manhattan. The station played at a low, yet audible volume in our school’s front lobby and hallways.

And this is how I found out about the band Gin Blossoms

###

We couldn’t hear the radio in our classrooms, so I would catch snippets of songs and DJ talk as I went to the office, or out to lunch or to meet my students waiting in the lobby. This is how I became familiar with such 1993 hits as Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World”, Ace of Base’s “All That She Wants” and Meat Loaf’s massive comeback “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)”.

And then there was this song that had a chugging guitar line that revved up as it went into the chorus. The vocals were from a singer who sounded like he was always trying to get his girl back. There was something about the song’s riff that grabbed me. But, no matter how many times I heard this song, for a long time, I could never catch who was the performer.

Whenever I heard this song, I would stop in the hallway and listen to what few seconds of it I could. It was hard to make out all the lyrics, but the title was unmistakeable:

“Heyyyyy…Can’tcha See! Hey, Can’tcha See!”

File that under “Classic Misheard Lyrics”.

Because, what Gin Blossoms singer Robin Wilson was really saying was “Hey Jealousy”, an incredible title for a song that to this day evokes memories of mistakes, “What ifs?” and things that we thought we real, but which might have never really been.

There is also some hope in this song, too.

Tell me do you think it’d be alright

If I could just crash here tonight

You see, I’m in no shape for driving

And, anyway, I got no place to go…

Ah, yes…The classic early-20s experience of getting drunker than what is socially reasonable and then calling (or, in this case showing up at the front door of) someone who you broke up with, yet still have feelings for. We all know it’s not the right thing to do. But, since we are there…Well, you might as just let me in.

And you know it might not be that bad

You were the best I ever had

If I hadn’t blown the whole thing years ago

I might not be alone

Raise your hand if you have been on either, or both ends of this scenario. You know you haven’t gotten over her (or, she hasn’t gotten over you) and you want just one more chance. Of course, you needed somewhere between six and 23 beers to get up the courage that evades you during the daytime to spill your heart out to her. And you know her answer probably won’t be the one you want.

Tomorrow we can drive around this town

And let the cops chase us around

The past is gone, but something might be found

To take its place

Hey Jealousy

I’ve never been one for having cops chase after me, whether I intended that to happen or not. But, to me, that phrase is really a metaphor for when you just “know” that if we fix things tonight, tomorrow will be perfect. Again, it’s one of those brilliant ideas that come to you only at about 1 a.m. on a Saturday night when that 13th beer also sounds like the right thing to do.

And you can trust me not to think

And not to sleep around

And if you don’t expect too much from me

You might not be let down

Could there be a more-heartfelt expression of one’s fidelity to another?

‘Cause all I really want is to be with you

Feeling like I matter too

If I hadn’t blown the whole thing years ago

I might be here with you

And then, reality sets in. You realize that you are in this position because of something stupid you did “years ago”. And those “years ago” could be just last week, or back in 1997, depending on how your current memory lands on a particular day.

Tomorrow we can drive around this town

And let the cops chase us around

The past is gone, but something might be found

To take its place

Hey Jealousy

The song goes on to repeat that chorus, and the first verse, and the chorus again, before finally sticking the landing.

Hey jealousy

She took my heart

Well, there’s only one thing I couldn’t start

###

It’s been a few weeks, now, and “Hey Jealousy” is in my head like no other song. Maybe it’s because of how old I am now, the various, ridiculous ailments that seem to send me to the doctor every week (Who wants to hear about my prostate exam?), my older daughter entering her senior year of high school and knowing at this time a year from now, she’ll be off to college, my wife and I coming upon our 20th anniversary, or, still feeling the effects of my mom dying a year-and-a-half ago. Most likely, it’s all of the above.

Because, for a while now, I have felt like the guy in “Hey Jealousy” (minus the falling down drunk part) who wants to knock on that door of the past just one more time and know that I am remembered now. But, if I knock, I might not get the answer I want. There might not be any answer at all, either.

The past is gone. Truer words have rarely ever been spoken. And every day, whether we realized it or not, we have to find something that, if we are lucky, takes its place for the better.

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Nowadays...A pitcher is seen as Hall of Fame quality if he manages to go six innings, or throw 100 pitches in a game.

And on P. 923 of this year's Almanac, you will find all kinds of facts about Cy Young Award winners. Including:

--Roger Clemens hold the record for most Cy Young wins (7)

--Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux are the only pitchers to win the Cy Young Award four years in a row.

--If you flip over to P. 924, you will also find that several pitchers have won the Cy Young Award and Most Valuable Player in the same season, including Bob Gibson and Denny McLain (Both in 1968), Rollie Fingers (AL, 1981), Dennis Eckersley (AL, 1992), Justin Verlander (AL, 2011) and Clayton Kershaw (NL, 2014).

But, on P. 923 of this year's Almanac, you will find the name of one of the most-famous, and beloved of all Cy Young Award winners ever: Fernando Valenzuela, who won the Cy Young for the L.A. Dodgers in 1981. Anyone who knows anything about baseball (and was around in 1981) remembers Fernandomania, when Fernando took over the baseball world with his left-handed screwball and how he rolled his eyes into the back of his head when he pitched. Everyone loved Fernando, and he would win two World Series with the Dodgers (1981, 1988).

But, what makes Fernando stand out among all Cy Young Award winners? Well...When he won the National League award in 1981, he was a rookie. And, to this day, Fernando remains the only pitcher to win the Cy Young in his rookie year.

And, yes...Fernando was the National League Rookie of the Year in 1981, too...

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We dropped the ball on getting Maddie he license when she was 16. Too much was going on around here, and I was heading up to Tacoma, Washington, at least once a month for nearly two years to help my mom when she was sick. Also, Maddie wasn't relaying champing at the bit* to get her license. That was until some of her friends got theirs and then she realized that driving a car herself was "bussin'".

*Somebody explain to me why it's "champing" at the bit and not "chomping"?

Anyway...

Maddie got her license yesterday, and now we get the joy of calling up Jake at State Farm to find out just how badly they are going to gouge us on adding Maddie to our policy. I've been advised to include her report card because she can get a "good grades" discount. I hope that this is the day when that "discount" amounts to 100%.

Well, insurance is an issue all the way around. If I had been smart, I probably would have gone into the insurance game a million years ago. Instead...Like a Good Neighbor, my premium's due...We all pay for insurance of some sort. And I was hoping that this year's Almanac would break down just how much Americans pay to insure their cars every year. The Almanac doesn't get into that much detail, but...

On P. 49 of this year's Almanac, you will find that in 2024, the last full year for which data is available, Americans paid out $524,900,000,000 in insurance expenses, up from "only" $43.9 billion in 1980.

And I know that we are going to help that 2024 number get even higher this year...

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