Tuesday Overnight Open Thread – 05/14/2024

First Pitch

For tonight’s Overnight Thread, we’ll start off with the ceremonial first pitch.

Congratulations on Your Son Making This Elite Travel Baseball Team

I suppose neighborhood Little League as I once knew it is lost and gone forever, so I’ll quit fighting against travel ball. It won. But this is still very funny…

“Alright parents, listen up. Congratulations on your son making this elite travel baseball team.”

“If we win the second tournament, we get an automatic bid into the Travel Baseball National Championship, Elite Sectional, Silver Bracket…which is a qualifier for the World Series Travel Baseball, International Tournament.”

Harvard Has a Problem with Firemen

Firefighters risk their own lives to save others’ lives, but the “future leaders” at Harvard Business School vilify them for a lack of diversity. It’s good that employers are finally waking up to what is being taught at the Poison Ivy League schools, but it has been going on for a long time. This nasty smear of firemen came out of Harvard in 2018.

The Real Life “Jaws” Event in New Jersey in 1916

“2 weeks, 4 deaths, and the start of America's fear of sharks” [National Geographic]

In the twilight of July 1, 1916, 25-year-old Charles Vansant bled to death in a beachfront hotel in New Jersey. Several men had pulled his maimed body from the water. Five days later, bellhop Charles Bruder, 27, was killed during an afternoon swim along the Jersey Shore. Beachgoers gathered around his legless remains.

The following week, 10-year-old Lester Stilwell was swimming in Matawan Creek (also in New Jersey) with his friends when he was eaten alive. Naked and covered in mud, the terrified boys ran down Main Street screaming that there was a shark in the water. But people were skeptical. They thought Stilwell, who was epileptic, had drowned. Some had been dismissive of the newspaper reports that said sharks had killed swimmers on the coast, because Americans at this time were fairly certain … sharks didn't bite people.

When Watson Fisher, a tailor, went into the creek to look for Stilwell, he was attacked as well. He later died of blood loss. Thirty minutes later, a shark bit 14-year-old Joseph Dunn’s leg. Dunn’s brother and a local sea captain pulled him to safety.

On the day Stilwell’s body was found, President Woodrow Wilson called a Cabinet meeting. The White House agreed to give federal aid to “drive away all the ferocious man-eating sharks which have been making prey of bathers,” according to a July 14, 1916 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Eventually, an eight-foot juvenile great white shark was pulled from the New Jersey waters. Its stomach contained human remains.

Speaking of Shark Attacks…

If we’re banning petroleum products to save the planet from CO2, it makes just as much sense to ban ice cream sales to save us all from shark attacks.

Sing One with Willie

It seemed like Willie Nelson had done a duet with absolutely everyone except for George Strait and me. Well, you can scratch George off that list now. He and Willie did a clever duet at Willie’s 90th birthday bash last year.

Now I've heard him with Merle, Waylon, and Cash
Jones and Toby, that man is totally gracious
But I'm thinking, "Damn, why not me?"
We could even sing it on TV
Just like him and old Julio Iglesias

Willie’s only 91, so I still have time for my duet…

Exotic Destinations

Have any of you ever been to Petra in Jordan? It sounds like an amazing sight.

Learn to Skip Breakfast

With inflation raging out of control and America’s media desperate to protect the Biden administration from criticism, a Washington DC-based journalist for the Wall Street Journal wrote a piece in February 2023 helpfully suggesting that Americans consider skipping breakfast to save money. A year later that same journalist found himself out of work and pleading for a job.

He received a lot of helpful advice – mainly that he himself consider skipping meals – and he ultimately deleted his tweet due to all the angry mockery he received. The hatred Americans feel toward journalists isn’t necessarily a good thing, but it has been earned.

Throckmorton’s First Law of Live Music: “If There’s an Upright Bass in the Band, It’s Probably Going to Be Good”

Traditional country music may never return to the country top-40, but there are some outlaws out there making some great music still. I suppose Americana is the real country nowadays. Anyhow, Logan Ledger’s music is spectacular if you have a hankering for the real stuff with a bit of a hippie vibe.

“Obviously” [Logan Ledger]

Here’s one more without the upright bass, but it’s still great, with just an acoustic guitar and Ledger’s Orbison-esque pipes.

“I’m Gonna Get Over This Some Day”

Tonight’s overnight thread has been brought to you by Guns & Shrimp

Thanks to MisHum and the horde for letting me play host tonight. Please feel free to offer any helpful feedback, insults, or tips at buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 09:56 PM

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