Republica – "Ready to Go" (1996)

I’m standing on the rooftops shouting out,

“Baby, I’m ready to go!”

I’m guessing that Mike O’Brien’s fellow executives at the Ford Motor Company were very happy indeed when he retired last month.

O’Brien kept track of the verbal gaffes that he heard at the many work meetings he attended over the years on several large dry-erase boards in his office.  By the time he retired, those boards contained no fewer than 2239 malapropisms and mixed metaphors.

Mike O’Brien

O’Brien's list identified the Ford executive responsible for each of the flubs – including Ford CEO Jim Farley, who appears on the list twice.

Here are a few examples of the verbal blunders on O’Brien’s list:

– “We need to talk about the elephant in the closet”

– “I don’t want to sound like a broken drum”

– “We’re trying to get our arms and legs around it”

– “Let’s not reinvent the ocean”

– “Read between the tea leaves”

– “We’re dancing on thin ice”

– “He’s not the smartest knife in the drawer”

– “It couldn’t be further from the opposite”

– “I’m not trying to beat a dead horse to death”

– “If it ain’t broke, don’t break it”

*     *     *     *     *

The people quoted in the news stories about O’Brien and his little project were uniformly positive in their comments about him.  

“O’Brien sounds like a gift to his colleagues and the Ford culture,” one observer wrote.  “You’re winning in life if you have . . . colleagues who make you laugh.”

Here’s what one of his co-workers had to say about him:

I watched and participated first-hand as [O’Brien] positively affected team morale, collaboration, camaraderie, and productivity.  This levity bonded everyone together . . . to work harder, to work smarter, and along the way, find a deeper appreciation and respect for their teammates.

If I had worked with O’Brien and had ended up on his list, I’d probably smile and say nice things about him if a reporter had interviewed me.  But deep down inside, I would have been glad to see him retire.  

Ford lost $5.1 billion in 2024, and is expected to lose even more in 2025.  If I was a Ford executive sweating bullets over the possibility of getting fired, the last thing I would need is some wiseass like O’Brien telling everyone in the company about the stupid sh*t I said on a Zoom call.  

Good riddance, Mike O’Brien.  Don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you on your way out of the building!

*     *     *     *     *

“Ready to Go” peaked at #56 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1996.  It was one of only two Republica singles to chart in the United States.

Click here to listen to “Ready to Go.”

Click here to buy its from Amazon.

Jan and Dean – "Surf City" (1963)

With two swingin’ honeys for every guy

And all you gotta do is just wink your eye!

The previous 2 or 3 lines enumerated a few of the many amazing statistical accomplishments of former NBA great Wilt Chamberlain.

Here’s one I left out.  No one other than Wilt Chamberlain has ever averaged more than 30 points and 20 bounds per game over the course of an entire season, but Chamberlain averaged more than 30 points and 20 rebounds per game over the course of his entire 14-year career!

As mind-boggling as Wilt’s basketball records were, his off-the-court numbers were even mind-bogglinger.

*     *     *     *     *

Genesis 4:1 (King James Version) reads as follows:

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived and bare Cain.

In his 1991 book, A View From Above, Chamberlain wrote that he had known 20,000 women:

Yes, that's correct, twenty thousand different ladies.  At my age, that equals out to having [known] 1.2 women a day, every day since I was fifteen years old.

Wilt Chamberlain in
action off the court

How did Chamberlain come up with that number?  A friend of Wilt’s later said that Chamberlain had once spent ten days at the friend’s Honolulu penthouse.  During those ten days, Wilt got to know 23 different women.

“That's 2.3 girls per day,” the friend said. “He took 2.3 and divided it in half, to be conservative. Then deducted fifteen from his current age, multiplied that by 1.2 women per day, and that's how he came up with 20,000.”

*     *     *     *     *

There are about the same number of men and women in the United States.

Just imagine what Wilt Chamberlain might have accomplished if he had lived in Surf City – where there were two girls for every boy.

Click here to listen to Jan and Dean’s “Surf City,” which was released in 1963 on Surf City and Other Swingin' Cities, one of the first LPs I ever owned.  (The album included not only “Surf City” but also covers of Bobby Bare’s “Detroit City,” Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City,” and Freddy Cannon’s “Tallahassee Lassie.”)

Click here to buy “Surf City” from Amazon.

Sam Cooke – "Twistin' the Night Away" (1962)

Here’s a man in evening clothes

How he got here, I don’t know

Man, you oughta see him go!

My son told me recently that he had been doing some research on old-time NBA players as part of his job with NBC Sports, which will start broadcasting NBA games next season.  

By “old-time players,” I mean the guys who played in the 1960s . . . guys like Bill Russell, and Bob Pettit, and Oscar Robertson, and Wilt Chamberlain.

All four of those basketball legends had prominent roles in the 1962 NBA all-star game.  I don’t remember watching that game – I was only nine years old at the time – but I’m guessing that I did, because I tuned in to just about every baseball, football, and basketball game that was televised in my hometown when I was growing up.  (We had only two TV stations, so there weren’t a lot of games to choose from.)

*     *     *     *     *

After saying good-bye to my son, I fell down the rabbit hole that is Basketball-Reference.com – the most comprehensive source of basketball statistics that exists.

I always knew that Wilt Chamberlain was an amazing man – both on and off the basketball court – but I didn’t appreciate just how amazing a player he was until I spent a few minutes studying his career stats.

Chamberlain was a powerfully built seven-footer, so it comes as no surprise that he was a great rebounder.  He is the NBA’s career leader in rebounds by a wide margin.  

Wilt Chamberlain

What’s even more remarkable is that Chamberlain’s seventh-best single-season total rebounds number is greater than any other player’s best single-season total.  (Think about that – he not only has the highest single-season rebound number in NBA history, he also has the second-highest, third-highest, fourth-highest, fifth-highest, sixth-highest, and seventh-highest number of rebounds in a single season.)

*     *     *     *     *

Chamberlain was just as dominant a scorer as he was a rebounder.  If you rank players according to the number of points per game they scored over the course of their career, Michael Jordan and Chamberlain are in a virtual tie for first.

Michael Jordan scored 37.1 points per game in the 1986-87 season.  No other player – other than Chamberlain – has ever beaten that mark.

Chamberlain beat it not once, but four times.  In the 1959-60, 1960-61, 1961-62, and 1962-63 seasons, Wilt averaged 37.6, 38.4, 50.4, and 44.8 points per game respectively.

*     *     *     *     *

Think about that 1961-1962 number – 50.4 points per game.

Chamberlain scored 50 or more points for the Philadelphia Warriors no fewer than 45 times that season.  (No one else has ever scored 50 in a game more than ten times in a single season.)

Wilt in 1962

He scored an astonishing 100 points against the Knicks on March 2, 1962.  The second-highest single-game total ever is Kobe Bryant’s 81 in 2006.  

Including Bryant, only three players other than Chamberlain have scored 72 or more points in an NBA game – and each of those three did it only once.  Chamberlain scored 72 or more five times in a twelve-month period. 

*     *     *     *     *

While no one else has ever scored more points or pulled down more rebounds than Chamberlain did in 1961-62, there’s another Chamberlain statistic from that season that’s even more mind-boggling.

Chamberlain’s Warriors played 80 games in the 1961-62 regular season, plus 12 playoff games.  Do you know how many times in those 92 games Chamberlain’s coach sent in a sub to give him a breather?  Would you believe ZERO times!  

You heard that right – Chamberlain never came out of a game that year.  

Actually, he did come out of one game.  It appears that he talked back to a referee one night and was ejected with about eight minutes left in the fourth quarter.  Otherwise, he played every single second of every minute of every game his team played that season.

That included a stretch in January 1962 when his team played five games – two of which went into overtime – in five nights.  (Wilt scored 62, 54, 53, 44, and 62 points respectively in those games.)

*     *     *     *     *

Chamberlain’s playing-time numbers that season were no anomaly.  In fact, Chamberlain ranks first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh all-time when it comes to minutes played per game in a single season.

Not surprisingly, he holds the all-time NBA career record for minutes played per game with a 45.8 mark – over the course of his career, Chamberlain was on the floor a full three and a half minutes more per game than anyone else who’s ever played in the NBA.  

In his final season, when Wilt was 36 years old, he still averaged 43.2 minutes played – second-highest in the league.   (Last season, no NBA player averaged more than 37.8 minutes per game.)

*     *     *     *     *

Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away” was sitting at #27 on the Billboard “Hot 100” singles chart the night that Wilt dropped 100 points on the Knicks.

Sam Cooke

“Twistin’ the Night Away” is also notable because it was one of the first two 45s I ever owned.  I bought it and Bobby Lewis’s “Tossin’ and Turnin’” with my winnings from the first round of my fourth-grade spelling bee that year.

Click here to listen to “Twistin’ the Night Away.”

Click here to buy it from Amazon.