Evening, all.
Hope it has been a good weekend thus far.
As you guys know, we very slowly, but steadily, have wound our way through the last three weeks+. And here we are – just a week and a day from the goal!
As for countdown day eight (8), let’s look at a list of some soup-to-nuts superlatives. That’s always sort of fun.
And, as always, if you have some “great 8s” in mind, please, PLEASE send them to me! (Just send ’em to me on FaceBook or Linkedin. And, of course, you can leave your suggestions right here
on Www.JohnLFish.com.)
For now, here’s what ‘we got:
- An octopus – Guess that one’s pretty obvious. (And don’t worry; I’ll refrain from including the joke where a man tries to get an octopus to play the bagpipes!) Let’s talk college/university mascots instead, maybe? Think there are any fighting Octopi out there?! (You hockey fans probably know that the Detroit Red Wings have championed Al the octopus over the years. And if you’ve ever watched a playoff game, octopi, albeit dead ones, are thrown out on the ice at Detroit’s Little Caesars’ arena in celebration.) As for school mascots, all I could find were the Fighting Octopi of Miskatonic University. (Pretty cool, no?…Thing is, it’s not real. They do have a very convincing website, though, if you’re into research! Www.miskatonic-university.org .)
- A Dorothy Hamill perfect compulsory figure 8 – Amazingly, it has been nearly 45 years since
the spritely D. Hamill took home the gold medal from the 12th Winter Olympiad, Innsbrook, Austria. - The 1919 World Series – If cheating on organized sports can be considered memorable, I guess we need to acknowledge the 1919 Chicago White Sox. Yep, when the dust settled on that famous sporting event, the aforementioned White Sox had morphed into the “Say it ‘aint so” Black Sox. And if you want to lean on a modern dramatization to give you more of the history, consider giving
Eight Men Out (1988) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095082/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) a tryout. - Fireball 8 – This was Buick’s post-Depression answer to providing more cylinders and power to the engines of its then-latest and greatest rigs. Sticking with movie references for a minute, you may recall a Fireball 8 engine being mentioned in Rain Main (1988). (It was the engine that powered the 1949 Buick Roadmaster that Raymond Babbitt insisted he knew how to drive, albeit slowly on the driveway.)
- 8 maids a milking – If you’re into Holiday tunes, this is as good a place as any to start. (And this is typically the place in the song where people start to forget which number goes with which group of the twelve days featured. So if you can get to Day 8 without a mistake, you might have a shot to get all 12!)
- Eight Days a Week – We can’t get through too many of these countdown without some reference to the Fab Four. So, if it has been a while, fire up the iPod, iPhone, Alexa, etc., and visit
Beatles for Sale (1964). - Sophomoric, but smile-worthy humor – I hate to do this, but I never claimed to be especially mature. Do you know why 6 is afraid of 7? Anyone?? Because 7 8 9. (Like I said, don’t underestimate my varied levels of immaturity.)
- RICHMOND SPIDERS RULE! Thanks in advance for indulging me, folks. Pretty proud of my alma mater, and I am incredibly blessed to have remained in touch with so many friends from there.
OK, before we go, and to commemorate our last week and a day until Jupiter collides with Mars – or whatever planetary jumble/event you ‘wanna reference – just a reminder to please send me some of your memorable 8s. I know I missed a ton!
And when you awaken tomorrow, we’ll have just a week to go.
I can almost taste it!
JFish