Fun fact: Before heading to the game last night, I put on a pair of jeans, sneakers and a maroon t-shirt with a blue-and-white button down collared shirt over it. On my way out of the house, I caught myself in the mirror and realized I was merely an orange vest away from being dressed exactly like Marty McFly.
Little did I know I could have borrowed one from our man Keith Hernandez:
“The operative and most commonly known part of Kent’s Composition goes ‘da da da da da da… CHARGE!'”
Yep, that’s right, Bobby Kent says he invented the “Charge” thing people do at stadiums. In fact, he copyrighted “Stadium Doo Dads” in 1981, and received $10,000 to $20,000 a year from the San Diego Chargers for its use, according to the suit.
Now he wants to really cash in, and is suing for proceeds from every sports team or stadium that has used the ditty.
– Gus Garcia-Roberts, Miami New Times.
This one comes via Josh B.: A man named Bobby Kent is suing ASCAP for selling the rights to the familiar “Charge!” riff, one of our most universal stadium rituals, without his permission.
Kent claims to have written the song for the San Diego Chargers in 1978. Can that possibly be true? It sounds like a classic fanfare of some sort, something that would date back to at least the 1920s. I always figured it was a horse-racing thing, though it is not perfectly bugle friendly.
I distinctly remember my brother teaching me to yell “charge” when prompted before I even went to a baseball game, so the cheer was institutionalized by the mid-1980s. Did it really spread that rapidly?
Yeah, that’s right, Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses. Turns out he writes a column for ESPN.com, and thinks it’s important to keep the first 10 games of the baseball season in perspective. I would imagine you need a good deal of patience to put up with Axl Rose for as long as McKagan did. Also: McKagan is a Mariners fan, and you better believe I’m going to try to get him on the phone for to preview the next Yankees-Mariners series on the Baseball Show. Both of these are ridiculous pipedreams, but we’re also hoping to land Geddy Lee to chat Blue Jays. The Bass-ball Show?
In honor of Norm MacDonald’s return to our television sets this evening, Megh Wright at Splitsider has every episode of SNL’s Celebrity Jeopardy! in one place. John Goodman does a really good Marlon Brando. Via Jonah Keri.
In what must be the best example yet of straight-up TedQuarters bait, artist Jeremy Scheuch creates a collection of 1986 Topps cards for notable baseball zombies. Via Craig Calcaterra.
Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez really seems to be fond of alluring Hayden Panettiere. The two were spotted Wednesday night at Beacher’s Madhouse in LA, where they shared cocktails and whispered to each other….
Panettiere is currently in a long-distance relationship with giant Ukrainian heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko, and sources insist she’s “just friends” with Sanchez, who is also pals with Klitschko.
Look, I’m not here to offer you dating advice, Mark Sanchez, but you might want to be careful about this one.
Wladimir Klitschko is a 6’6″ 245-pound beast of a man. His nickname is “The Steel Hammer.” I’m sure you’re a pretty tough guy yourself, at least on the scale of handsome quarterbacks, but don’t pretend you don’t wear a red jersey in practice so no one hits you. Regardless of if you’re actually involved with the lovely Ms. Panettiere, you should probably take every possible measure to keep it out of the papers until she breaks things off with the reigning heavyweight champion. That means no public whispering or canoodling of any sort.
Incidentally, Klitscko is also a phD and speaks five languages. Sounds like a pretty desirable dude. But can he pull off white pants?
The 2011 Name of the Year bracket is out. Now we know there are actually people named Stonegarden Grindlife, Dr. Loveday Conquest, and, improbably, Heidi Hohl.
Hat tip to Scott for the link.
Color me shocked that Bill and Ted will once again have to travel in time. Wonder how they’ll handle George Carlin’s death though. They can’t just pretend that Rufus died, because we’ve already seen Rufus alive in 2688 and 1988, and if the Wyld Stallyns needed his advice — as they probably should — they could always just travel to some point in the timeline when he was alive.
I had a random thought earlier that might be an interesting one for you to ponder, perhaps pose the question to your readers: Is there a pair of people who share the same name who are as collectively awesome as James Brown (the Godfather Of Soul) and James “Jim” Brown (the NFL Hall of Famer)? I was brainstorming and couldn’t think of a better example. Do George Washington and George Washington Carver count? I don’t think they do. Michael Douglas and Michael Keaton (born Michael Douglas) don’t measure up, nor do Kenny Rogers the musician and Kenny Rogers the pitcher. Albert Einstein and Albert Brooks (born Albert Einstein)?
– Josh, via email.
Here’s the thing: Even if The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please himself, the Star of the Show James Brown didn’t share his name with perhaps the best player in NFL history, it’s a common enough name that there are plenty of people he could be paired with. And in any possible case, even if the other James Brown were pretty damn lame, it’d still be the greatest pair of people ever in terms of collective awesomeness. It’s like how Hank and Tommie Aaron hold the Major League record for most home runs by a set of brothers even though Tommie only hit 13.
The Albert Einsteins are nice, I mean, people really like Al Brooks and Albert Einstein came up with a lot of smart stuff. But as far as I know neither ever recorded The Payback.
A suggestion via my man and near-homonym Ted Burke, perhaps for a distant second place: Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s and Dave Thomas, not-Rick-Moranis-guy in Strange Brew. Anyone else?
Most space food, it seems, is pretty bad, and of course the astronauts know this better than anybody, which is why in 1965 John Young smuggled a Wolfie’s corned beef sandwich onto Gemini III to surprise his crewmate Gus Grissom. It was only a 5 hour flight so it must have been done for laughs rather than to whet a jaded appetite, and after two hours Young duly produced his sandwich. That’s John Young, below. We even have the dialogue.
GRISSOM: Where did that come from?
YOUNG: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?
GRISSOM: Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.
YOUNG: It was a thought, anyway.
GRISSOM: Yep.
YOUNG: Not a very good one.
– Geoff Nicholson, Psycho-Gourmet.
If you didn’t have favorite astronaut before, I hope John Young just earned that distinction. He’s got a pretty healthy space resume, too: Dude walked on the moon, piloted the first space shuttle, and was aboard the fastest-moving manned vehicle ever. And he did all that despite a reputation as a renegade after callously sneaking a sandwich into space, perhaps outer space’s first sandwich*.
Later space sandwich experiments apparently went over better, as the post includes this photo:
*- Presumably if there are other advanced carbon-based life forms in the universe, they’ve figured out sandwiches too. If basically every culture on earth could develop some sort of protein wrapped in some sort of starch, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t happen in outer space too. It’s one of the hallmarks of civilization.
Link comes via Twitterer @kmflemming.
Tedquarters 