Do you remember the television show Early Edition? Set in Chicago, the character played by Kyle Chandler would receive a copy of the newspaper the day before it was actually published. Chandler’s character would then use the information in the paper to prevent tragic events. My wife’s good friend was a writer on the series, and he even named a minor character, Detective Winslow, after us.
Do you remember the ice-bucket challenge? I do, and I even remember where I was when I was called out, and the three others I nominated to follow me. Viral trends come around every now and then on social media, and the latest involves women asking the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome.
Dating back to the early 19th century, and based on the idea that there are two wheels on a bicycle, the idiom being “a third wheel” is used to indicate situations when someone would be a burden, unnecessary, and/or an unwelcomed member of a group. The saying is commonly used in situations when there is one couple, and a third person, or “third wheel,” would be the odd person out by not fitting in. U.S. politics is dominated by the two-party system, and at times, each Party, Republican and Democrat, have viewed third-party presidential candidates as “third wheels.”
The 2023 National Football League (NFL) season quite literally kicked off Thursday when the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs played the Detroit Lions. Although the Chiefs of the AFC and the Philadelphia Eagles of the NFC remain heavy favorites to return to the Super Bowl next February, all 32 NFL teams will play the season under a variety of rules changes.
I have a friend who owns a corporate novelty company; the kind that sells t-shirts, baseball caps, coffee mugs, and the like. Among his biggest clients are the gift shops and news stands at Union Station, Reagan National, and IAD where he’s sold a variety of politically themed items over the years. In fact, his sales have been so good that they allowed him to correctly predict the winner of every presidential election from 1988-2016.