Name Them All to Win Free Tickets to See Christopher Cross

This is undoubtedly the coolest thing on the Internet right now: Five seconds' (more or less) worth of every No. 1 song on the Billboard charts, from 1955 to 1992. It helps to have a list of the Number Ones by your side, so you can figure out which one is the Browns' "The Three Bells," which spent four weeks at Number One in August and September of 1959 and which I'm sure I'd never heard before. That's less necessary, of course, once the Beatles take over.

Thanks to Jim Bartlett for pointing this out.

Wonder Bred

Stevie Wonder's mother was born Lula Mae Wright in the poignantly named town of Hurtsboro, Alabama. When the aunt and uncle who raised her passed away, she learned that her biological father was a man named Noble Hardaway, and she adopted his last name. Stevie's father was named Calvin Judkins; Stevie's older brother was named Calvin Judkins Jr.

When Stevie was born, on May 13, 1950, his birth certificate gave his name as "Steveland Morris." Near as I can tell, no one has ever really explained how he got the last name of "Morris."

Beatles Note for the Day

In April 1977, wimp-rock band Ambrosia took an orchestrated cover of "Magical Mystery Tour" into the Top Forty.

LARRY KING IN HELL, Part IV

Is it me, or is this place lousy with Arabs lately? What's the 911 on that? ... Those scruffy tearaways Uday and Qusay are still full of their shenanigans. I mean, how do you murder someone who's already in Hell? Now I've seen everything! ... Saw R. Sargent Shriver upon his arrival the other day, and the look of surprise on his face was just priceless. Hey, Sarge! They probably thought you'd want to be with your Kennedys! By the way, your Peace Corps: overrated ... Bumped in to Rock Hudson at Il Fuoco as Rock was complaining to Swifty Lazar about his image. Get her! ... Was it racist for me to say "lousy with Arabs" back there? Who cares? What are they going to do, send me to sub-Hell? ... Never thought I'd say this, but Perpetually Burning Jack Kennedy and Perpetually Drowning Teddy Kennedy still have terrific heads of hair. Jack, where do you even keep a comb on that charred, yet horrifically alert, corpse? ... Why is my computer beeping again?...

Some Are Mathematicians

A timely tweet from friend of Debris Slide Andy Greene reminds us that not only is Slow Train Coming a terrific album, easily the best of Dylan's three Christian records- which may not sound like it's saying much, but we're fond of all three - but it was very popular at the time. Street Legal, released in June 1978, had only gone gold and peaked at Number Eleven on the Billboard album charts, but Slow Train, which came out in August 1979, went platinum and climbed all the way to Number Three. It would be Dylan's last Top Five album until "Love and Theft" made it to Number Five in 2001; since then, in a time of greatly reduced album sales, both Modern Times and Together Through Life have peaked at Number One.

"Gotta Serve Somebody," Slow Train's first single, was also a big hit, relatively speaking, going to Number Twenty-Four on the Hot 100. With the marginal exception of "We Are the World," "Gotta Serve" will almost certainly be Dylan's last-ever Top Forty hit. The closest he's come since then is... come on, go ahead and guess.

For the record, Dylan never had a Number One album in the Sixties, but he had three in the Seventies: Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks and Desire. Planet Waves? Really?

Anyway, the closest Dylan has come to the Top Forty since 1978 was in 1984, when "Sweetheart Like You" went to Number Fifty-Five. But you knew that. Didn't you?

There Were Giants in Those Days, and Oilers Too

I'll be traveling on Sunday, so I'll get to see the second half of the Super Bowl, at most. But I still have plenty of NFL action to distract myself with, thanks to the magic of YouTube. Lately I have been trolling for professional football games from the 1970s, of which there are a surprising number, contained in ten-minute chunks, as per YouTube style.

I grew up watching the NFL in the 1970s, so these games are as much a cultural referent for me as they are a sporting match. In addition to the odd Super Bowl, there are some seemingly random games, uploaded from old videotapes. I'd much rather watch the long-forgotten mid-season games. I know the score of all the Super Bowls, so none of those games would provide much of a surprise, but when I see a Giants/Bills clash from 1975, well, who knows what's gonna happen there?

My personal preference is for the broadcasts that are entirely intact, commercials and promos included, which makes for a much stronger cultural moment. In addition to seeing what was new from Ford in 1974, you occasionally get to see things like Teri Garr - as late as 1977 or so, although I've lost track of which game this was in - starring in a Schlitz ad, playing a barmaid who challenges an unseen, unheard presence who dares to take away her clientele's gusto.

Here are some games to get you started:

1970 Giants vs. Eagles: From the first season of Monday Night Football, a game at Philadelphia's frozen Franklin Field. If you believe the legend, this is the game in which Howard Cosell got so drunk he threw up on Dandy Don's boots at halftime, then took a cab back home to New York during the second half. Cosell talks sparingly in the first half, then is indeed absent after halftime, but Meredith mentions near the telecast's end that Howard had been fighting the flu, and wishes him well, a kindhearted gesture for a man with someone else's vomit on his shoes. Keith Jackson, by the way, was the play-by-play man, with Frank Gifford not coming aboard till 1971.

Near the end of the game, with time winding down, there are repeated shots of the Franklin Field official game clock, which was the old-fashioned analog kind, with circular numbers and hands. The digital clock, it seems, had yet to come to Philadelphia, although artificial turf had. Man had walked on the moon, yet the NFL was still counting down the seconds with a second hand.

1970 NFC Championship, Cowboys vs. 49ers: A completely intact game, commercials and all. Watch for the young Teri Garr, the young Sam Waterston, and the not-so-young Vic Tayback. The downside is, if you think about it for a minute or so, you'll figure out who wins before the game even starts.

1977 Rams vs. Browns: The improbable team of Vin Scully and NFL legend/car smasher Jim Brown handles the announcing chores for this miserable, snowy game at old Cleveland Stadium. Brown opines that his old team is doing a poor job of tackling because it's cold out, and it hurts to hit people hard.

1978 Dolphins vs. Oilers: Bum Phillips' mama always told him not to wear his hat indoors, so he is bare-headed, letting his crew cut fly free, for this game at the Astrodome. Another Monday nighter, it's dominated by Bob Griese, now without his great running game and forced to put the ball into the air to the tune of 300-plus yards, and the rookie sensation Earl Campbell of the Oilers.

Nowadays, if you take your helmet off on the field, it's a 15-yard penalty. But Griese had just started wearing these huge dork glasses, which apparently didn't fit under his helmet all that well. He takes his helmet off on the field, I swear, after every third play.

1980 Cardinals vs. Colts: Just a crappy game between two going-nowhere teams, in front of a few thousand bored fans at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. Announcer Dick Stockton is terrible, too. Thankfully, less than half the broadcast survives, mostly just the Cardinals' drives, although you do get to see Phyllis George's halftime interview at the rural Maryland home of Bert Jones.

The Cardinals do look gorgeous, though, in those rich red jerseys and solid white helmets, with no center stripe or adornment aside from a little bird head. I always loved those helmets. And Cardinal receiver Pat Tilley - the second-most-famous Cardinal in history whose name starts with "Pat Till" - makes an incredibly sweet, one-handed, backhand touchdown catch.

Big thanks to Wisconsin JB for pointing out that 1970 NFC Championship game to me, and getting this whole thing rolling

Well Worth Noting

If "House M.D." were a bit more like "Columbo," the victim would be dead at the very beginning, and that would give Hugh Laurie almost nothing to do, so the very idea of it is pointless. I don't know why anyone would want to make "House M.D." more like "Columbo."

Top Five Surprising Celebrity Cameos in Keith Richards' 'Life'

5. David Bowie, cutting the demo for "It's Only Rock & Roll" with Mick Jagger

4. Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter, having dinner with Mick and Keith in Paris on the last night that Keith ever bought heroin

3. Pope John Paul II, blessing the tapes for Emotional Rescue at a soccer stadium in the Bahamas

2. Billy Preston, getting outed by Keith. Maybe everyone knew this but me, and I can't say I've ever paid a lot of attention to Billy Preston's personal life, but I have read everything about the Beatles I can get my hands on, and I had never heard an inkling of this. Maybe Little Richard recruited him.

1. Bobby Goldsboro, teaching Keith an especially tricky chord as played by Jimmy Reed

A Math Question That's Not About Math

This is for anybody who knows just a little about math: As you take Pi out to an infinite number of digits, does the probability approach 1 that each numeral is equally represented? That is, are there as many 5s as there are, say, 9s?

I'd say if you could figure that one out, you'd know a lot about life and the nature of things. You'd know if the universe was about order or chaos, for one. Equality or inequality. If God, while he doesn't roll dice, does play favorites. Whatever.

I have no answer to this. But I do have a fine new shirt.

Random Thoughts

People used to remark on how appropriate it was that the first name listed in the Baseball Encyclopedia was that of Hank Aaron. When I sort the my iTunes alphabetically by album title, the first name on the list is Abbey Road.

Here's something to make you feel the weight of years: Janet Jackson is coming to town, and her concert is being sponsored by the local oldies station.

From the Number One hit "Easier Said Than Done," by the Essex: "They all tell me sing to him/Swing with him/Just do anything for him." Pretty progressive for 1963, isn't it?

According to Jim Dickinson, who played piano on the track, Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics for "Brown Sugar" in about 45 minutes: "He had one of those yellow legal pads, and he'd write a verse a page, just write a verse then turn the page, and when he had three pages filled, they started to cut it."