Worst Christmas Songs

Worst Christmas Songs Ever - I have my own opinions on this topic, but I decided to look at a couple of sites. Rolling Stone and USA Today both have lists. I was surprised at how many I had never heard. I won't go through their lists, but to make a few observations.

• They shouldn't put in songs that are obviously spoofs and trying to be corny - The Alvin and the Chipmunks songs, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer", etc.
• Songs I don't know, but sound awful - "Funky, Funky, Xmas", "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Me"
• I don't know of it, but I can just imagine how much I would hate it - Justin Bieber's "Mistletoe".
• There are songs that made the list that I like - Neil Diamond's "Cherry, Cherry, Christmas". Jackson 5's "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" (a song my Dad liked - the closest he ever came to liking any song anywhere close to rock n' roll.)
• There are classic songs that I hate that didn't make the list. I don't understand that. Who appreciates "Little Drummer Boy", "Twelve Days of Christmas". Songs that sound like they'll never end. I used to like "Feliz Navidad", but I've already heard it a thousand times this season. Enough already.

 

Juan Soto vs. Willie Mays

I thought it would be interesting to look at the enormous contract baseball player Juan Soto just signed. Its a 15 year contract for $765 million dollars. He's 26 now so it goes through age 41. He probably won't be as productive then, if he's even playing by that time. My little Mariners could never afford anything like that, so we'll continue our streak of never making it to the World Series (47 years), but that's another story. He's already made a measly ten million in baseball so far, but this will be a nice bit of insurance for his golden years.

I thought he might be similar to someone like Willie Mays. Turns out he is. I took their lifetime stats and did some multiplying to get to a typical 550 at-bat season. When Willie was in his late 30's and 40's, he wasn't nearly as good, but I left those in anyway.

Runs                    Soto - 110    Mays - 104

RBI's                    Soto - 99    Mays - 96

Home Runs          Soto - 34        Mays - 33  

Batting Average    Soto - .285    Mays - .301

Stolen Bases         Soto - 10       Mays - 15

Lifetime Salary    Soto - $775 million    Mays - $1.1 million

What is Wrong with Sports Tanking

I would assume that this is peak time for sports betting, being in the latter half of the NFL season. It might be a completely fine thing to do, but I've got to think that there are a lot of people that get themselves into a lot of trouble with it. How many people are way in debt now because of their betting? 10,000? But keep betting because you can get a big win and everything will be fine. At least that is probably their logic. 

But lets segue to sports tanking. That is having your team lose on purpose so you can get a high college draft pick for next season. Its especially common in basketball. I guess that is probably because there are only 5 players on the court at a time. And unlike baseball, where you have a specific batting order, a basketball player could shoot the ball every time. down the court if he wanted to. Sadly, teams have made that work. 

Here is the contradiction. Players get removed from their sport for life for betting on games. Why? You might bet on your team to lose, then play in such a way that your team could lose. The obvious problem is, as they say, it affects "the integrity of the game". You don't know if your team is doing its best. The Spurs, my beloved Trailblazers, the Jazz have all employed the try to lose strategy. See the contradiction here?

Possible solution for basketball? There are teams that seem to tank year after year if their draft choices don't work out. After, say, three years, you don't get into what they call the lottery, no matter what your record is. You might still be bad, but that is your problem. It would keep their fans from feeling like not only might we never have a good team again. We might never even try to have a good team again.

It all comes down to - Are sports commissioners ok with the idea of teams losing on purpose?

 

Franklin Pierce

One last thought on Franklin Pierce. I don't think history has treated him fairly. He was involved in politics and he was a soldier before being nominated. It was an upset winner and he was the first what they called a dark horse candidate. Apparently dark colored horses are not generally fast. There were two candidates going at it, but going nowhere. Pierce was acceptable to enough that he eventually got the nomination. He got elected, but between his election and inauguration, he was on a train trip with his family. There was a crash and his only child was killed. His wife went into mourning pretty much for the rest of her life. He should get a pass even if he didn't do great as a president. But how bad did he do? He compromised with the southern states, but otherwise they would have left the union. All those presidents before Lincoln were considered failures, but they did what they thought they had to do. If they could have hung on, technology might have lessened the need for slavery and there might have been a politcal solution without thousands of Civil War deaths.

He might have been a bit of an alcoholic before and after his presidency, but not he wasn't during. After he was president, he had some harsh things to say about how Lincoln was handling things. Signing the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a terrible idea, but he didn't create it, Congress did. He just signed it. 

Now that I think about it, he really wasn't a very good president, but again with his family tragedy, he deserves a little more compassion than he normally gets.

Bush Compound

 

This is what is called the Bush compound. Its located in Kennebunkport, Maine. On the East coast people can own property on the ocean. On the West coast that doesn't seem to be done. 

First of all, Kennebunkport. The compound is maybe a mile away from the town itself. The town is delightful. Its the kind of touristy place with lots of cute knick knack shops, coffee shops, etc. I wasn't going to stop, but I saw no parking spaces available anyway. It was very crowded even though it was a very rainy day. 

You can't just drive up to the Bush house, of course, but there is a pull out spot where you can stop and look across the bay at it. There is only room for four or five cars. Maybe because of the rain, there was plenty of room for me to pull in. I've seen this view quite a bit on news broadcasts, so I'm guessing that the media got a lot of their shots from this spot. I remember hearing a few years ago there was a big storm which caused a lot of damage to the house and grounds. Even on this day when it was rainy and a little windy, I can see a major storm really being rough. 

This was only a 5 minute excursion, but fun for me.

Presidential Heights

I had a tour of Franklin Pierce's home in New Hampshire. It had a life size cardboard cutout of him. He was a good looking guy. I've read of other people saying the same thing. Warren Harding was another good looking guy. They both looked very presidential. Millard Fillmore - same thing. None of them are ranked very high by historians, though. Voters usually go the opposite way - They vote for people that look good. I don't know if this still holds, but there was a streak of recent presidential elections in which the taller candidate won. 

So I did a little research on heights of presidential candidates. I looked at heights of those who won. Ignoring elections in which the candidates were tied, the past elections since 1900 - 22 times the taller candidate won and 7 times the shorter candidate won. Before that it wasn't quite like that. That makes some sense though as that was before the television age. In fact, I bet most people voting back then didn't even know what the candidate looked like.

I don't know if there was anything to this, but 22 to 9 is pretty striking. 

Ben and Jerry Tour

Ben and Jerry's factory store is located in New Hampshire. We dropped by because it was on our way. There was a line for the tour that was about a mile long. Granted, it was a Saturday afternoon, so maybe the worst possible time to visit. Even the window where you might order an ice cream was long. Places like that, though, usually will let you go inside to the gift shop for free. It is a much cheaper and much faster alternative. And the gift shops are kind of fun anyway. They did have a frozen section where you could get something like a bag of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites. I did. I ate all of them. I chose not to even look at the suggested number of servings. It was a pretty big bag, so I'm guessing the suggested number was not "one". I felt a little guilty eating all those, but not enough to not do it.

 

James G. Blaine

James G. Blaine from the state of Maine. I believe that was his slogan when he ran for President. I know that and that he lost. That is most of what I know about him.

This is his house in Augusta, Maine. You can't see it in the picture, but to the left is the capitol building. I have a cool biography of Blaine I bought somewhere. It was written in 1884 and looks about that old. I should read it sometime. 

I looked up some info on him. His story makes a good lesson for how fleeting fame is. While he was alive, he was as well-known as anyone. He was Speaker of the House, a senator, Secretary of State under three different presidents. He ran for president a couple times and barely lost to Grover Cleveland - 48.8% to 48.3%. Other than an actual president, who today would be more well-known?

Also his knickname was "The Plumed Knight". How did he not become president with a cool knickname like that?

Steven King's House

Continuing our trip through New England, on day number 2 we drove through lots of colorful trees. I wanted to see the only national park in the area - Acadia. An important thing to note is that Maine seems to be terrible at putting up road signs. Its your only national park and it seems like you would publicize that. Also a problem is, for some reason, my phone gps was very spotty. Acadia is spread out in different parts and at one point I thought I was heading for it and it was just a single hiking trail which didn't have any parking spots anyway. Even if there are signs for cities ahead, no distances on them. I would be curious about that and would seem easy to put on. 

So, I got to Acadia, but I have no idea if it was the main part. There was a "loop" you could drive. I started driving it, but it went about five miles and then it came to a T intersection with no sign on which way to turn. So I got to see at least part of the national park, but I'm not sure if I saw a good part or not. The part I saw seemed pretty, but so was the whole day's drive.

We ended up that evening in Bangor, Maine. It had a great bookstore. That was fun. Then we went by Steven King's house. Apparently he has lived his life in Maine and a lot of his stories are set there. I don't particularly care for him because I'm not a fan of being scared. I don't know why people do like to be scared anyway. But, I have read two of his things. I think I've read one of his shorter books and a short story.

Anyway, this is his house. It looks appropriate. A nice house, but you can imagine it being just a little spooky inside. The fence around is decorated with spiders and bats. His house is one of the few in America where that seems completely appropriate. Its almost Halloween, so probably a good time to read one of his stories again.

Elvis Concert

I went back East because its fall and the leaves there are supposed to be excellent at this time of year. They were. But there were other things to see as well. I thought I would spend the next few posts showing the highlights of the trip. 

Here's the first one. Kind of sad, really. I dropped into the Maine history museum in Portland, Maine. Nothing spectacular, but it was fine. One interesting thing was that apparently someone had donated a couple of tickets to see Elvis back in the day. It was for an August 18th show. They were unused. That is because Elvis had passed away August 16th. Quite sad - for the owners and for Elvis. At least the owner got to have his tickets end up in a museum but small consolation. Also interesting is the cost - $15 each. I know that was a long time ago, but that still seems like a pretty good bargain. 

I don't remember anything else in the museum, but also interesting was that it was next to the house in which Longfellow grew up. If you are ever in Portland, it would be something good to check out.