Jay to the World September 2021

Hello everyone! I always struggle with this newsletter because I really have no idea if I’m talking
to 20 people or 200 people, so I will just start off by saying that it’s great to be back and I hope
all of you made it through the dog days of August safely. There are so many things to talk about
that I’ve decided to start off this month’s newsletter with the first-ever JTTW ‘lightening round’
of quick hitting topics…starting with:

School Bond Issue – This is a huge deal and I hope everyone will get out and vote on September
14th. The purpose of the bond issue is to remodel the existing high school campus into a
PreK-12 campus. However, the really big news is the proposed regional Career Technical
Education Center (CTE) that would be housed at the current elementary school. There would be
nothing else like this in the area and would give our kids opportunities that currently do not
exist. And the possibility of adding partners like The Lakin Foundation and Iowa Western
Community College is almost too much for me to process right now. Wow.

Iowa State football – Can’t wait for the season to start (I predict 10-2 and some very funny
student section chants when Texas comes to town), but I’m extremely concerned about the
future. With the Big 12 imploding, Jamie Pollard needs to go fund raise $100 million and beg the
Big 10 to take them. Otherwise, I don’t see this ending well, unless Cyclone fans are pumped
about playing Cincinnati and Houston.

Nebraska football – I predict a 5-7 season, an end to the sell-out streak, more fumbles, more
blown leads, more excuses, more penalties, and more people like me who wonder whatever
happened to the playbook they used from 1971 through 2002. You know it’s in a closet out
there somewhere.

And now your September multiple choice: An Alabama woman recently faced felony charges
after stealing her neighbor’s goat and painting it. The woman was ultimately charged with
A) Theft; 2) Cruelty to Animals; or C) Deceptive advertising after trying to sell it as a Van Goat.
Bit of trivia: Did you know that the first lie detector test was administered 100 years ago??
That’s crazy. In a related story, my own personal lie detector just turned 41 this past July.
Love you honey.

During a recent cataract surgery, doctors in the U.K. found 27 misplaced contact lenses in a
woman’s eye. So for all of my single readers out there, the next time you think that person
across the room is flirting with you, you might want to consider the possibility that they simply
have 27 contact lenses stuck in their eye.

By the way, I have a really annoying habit of making very subtle changes to song titles, and then
the new song title will be stuck in my head forever. For instance, years ago I was listening to
classic radio and heard ‘A Horse with No Name’ by America and for some reason I started singing
‘A Horse with No Mane’ and now I am incapable of singing the song correctly. And just a couple
weeks ago I was listening to Loverboy and for some reason I changed “Working for the Weekend’
to “Twerking for the Weekend”. Yeah, I have a problem.

A recent study indicates that only 2% of conversations end when the participants actually want
the conversation to end. Granted, the study only involved men who had just returned from a
bachelor party in Vegas only to find their fiancée waiting for them at the airport, but I think the
results pretty much indicate that people in general would really prefer to not talk as much…

Speaking of talking, I recently read that over 60% of adults hate the sound of their own voice. In a
similar study, it was found that 100% of teenagers hate the sound of all adult voices, but only
between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.

Well, our rock and roll heroes continue to drop like flies. In just the past few months we’ve lost
Rolling Stones’ drummer Charlie Watts, ZZ Top bass player Dusty Hill, and the violinist and vocalist
for the band Kansas, Robby Steinhardt. But to me the biggest loss in the world of music recently
was that of songwriter Jim Steinman. For those of you not familiar with the name, he was the guy
who wrote every song on Meat Loaf’s breakthrough album “Bat Out of Hell” in 1977. That was the
album that started my love affair with music and to this day I still know every single word to every
single song (I listened to the entire thing at the gym last week just to make sure). I know I sound
like a broken record (get it??), but we’re not getting any younger folks.
Need to make every day count.

And finally, from the “I’m pretty sure I did this joke a few years ago when this story broke but I still
think it’s funny so hopefully you all have really short memories” category: A Nebraska sheep
farmer faces years in prison after authorities found that he owned significantly fewer sheep than
what he had reported on his financial statement. Ironically, the probe took much longer than
expected due to the fact that regulators kept falling asleep while taking inventory.

Until Next Time…don’t forget to vote on September 14th!!

Jay