Three of my previous profiles who’ve now left this Earth, after-the-jump ...
But first: Top Comments appears nightly, as a round-up of the best comments on Daily Kos. Surely ... you come across comments daily that are perceptive, apropos and .. well, perhaps even humorous. But they are more meaningful if they're well-known ... which is where you come in (especially in diaries/stories receiving little attention).------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send your nominations to TopComments at gmail dot com by 9:30 PM Eastern Time nightly, or by our KosMail message board. Please indicate (a) why you liked the comment, and (b) your Dkos user name (to properly credit you) as well as a link to the comment itself.
Back in 2021, I wrote about the efforts that a college football coach was making to reduce injuries for his team — by not allowing tackling in practices (only the use of heavily padded, motorized tackling dummies, plus virtual reality) — as he found that a majority of team injuries came during practice, not actual games.
Not only was Buddy Teevens able to do that: he was able to improve recruiting as well as make Dartmouth College a contender/frequent champion in the Ivy League, with opening day starters often able to play the entire season .. and with fewer missed tackles during actual games.
He also hired the first full-time female assistant coach in Division 1 college football history, as he first gave Callie Brownson a two-week internship at 2018 training camp based on his own observation … then hired her when his players had an even higher opinion. She is now working in the NFL, as is Jennifer King (who coached under Teevens in 2019).
My original post (which delved into CTE, the progressive brain injuries that have afflicted American football, that Teevens sought mightily to prevent) is at this link.
Now …... an update
While bicycling home from a restaurant dinner in St. Augustine, Florida (along with his wife, from their vacation home) this past March, he was struck by a vehicle and was in intensive care for some time (and sadly, for someone as concerned with the safety of others as he was … Coach was not wearing a helmet). Buddy Teevens never recovered, and died last week at the age of sixty-six.
Last year, I wrote about a very popular song I had dismissed out-of-hand in my youth … that I had just then heard for the first-time-in-years … and felt that I was now hearing-it-again … for the first time, period.
In 1966, the “sunshine pop” band The Association released Cherish, which reached #1 in the pop charts and was seen as an undying love song. I found it quite syrupy and — due in part to the chime of a celesta (mimicking wedding bells) — it was played at so many wedding receptions of my youth ... I tuned it out.
My re-listen told me that — while the arrangement was indeed syrupy — the song itself was quite sophisticated … which band member Terry Kirkman claimed he wrote in a half hour(!). And now hearing the lyrics cleanly, rather than through the transistor radios of my youth (or wedding bands with lousy PA’s) … the lyrics are about unrequited love, with the imaginary singer sounding very obsessive. Not the first time a re-read (or re-listen) from my youth caused a change-of-mind.
You can read my original essay (with more about the band) at this link.
Now …... an update
Terry Kirkman died this past week at the age of eighty-three. The music performance rights organization BMI calculated its most played songs of the 20th century, and Cherish was No. 22— just before Motown’s You Can’t Hurry Love.
Finally, not long after I was drafted persuaded to join the Top Comments wrecking crew in 2010 … I began to write about my favorite childhood TV show, The Man from UNCLE— the first truly adult show I watched in 1966 (rather than sitcoms or entertainment shows). I wrote a 2010 in-depth profile of the 1964-1968 show, and hoped that a long-rumored film version might finally come to pass. Five years later, it was faith rewarded— as a prequel version starring Henry Cavill and Hugh Grant premiered in the summer of 2015. Standing on line to get in … I felt like a kid again. Not all old UNCLE fans liked either the idea of a prequel (or the finished product) … but I was delighted, and recommend if it’s on your television.
You can read my initial detailed profile (especially if you’re unfamiliar with the series) at this link.
Now …... an update
The last of the starring actors on the series David McCallum died just this week — a few days after turning age ninety. This show was an international spy agency, with McCallum in the role of the mysterious Russian agent Illya Kuryakin. Here’s hoping that he and his old co-star Robert Vaughn can re-unite at that Actors Studio in the Sky and once again ... "Open Channel D".
Younger TV viewers knew him from the long-running show NCIS— as medical examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard. One of them was my nephew, who saw this scene and asked his mother, “Who is Illya Kuryakin?” To which my sister advised him to talk to … “Your uncle Ed” (of which she didn’t realize the irony).
Let’s close with the theme song of UNCLE — there were four different arrangements of the Jerry Goldsmith-written theme … and my favorite was the second season version: arranged by Lalo Schifrin (who is still alive at age 91).
Now, on to Top Comments:
Nothing came in from the field this evening
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the House GOP feud behind the looming government shutdown — Merlin196360 puts a human face on what such a shutdown might look like this coming Monday.
Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful (and now eternal) *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment featuring that photo.
TOP PHOTOSSeptember 27th, 2023
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion: