Total donut, raconteur and lover of all things cool and tasty...the Pavel and WHL era Canucks. The rest--meh.
I'm in your mind, man!
Joined February 2010
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Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
In the autumn of 1946, an American widow from Philadelphia walked into a schoolroom in bombed-out Tokyo, looked at the 12-year-old Crown Prince of Japan, and told him she was giving everyone in class an English name.
"In this classroom," she said gently, "your name is Jimmy."
The boy stiffened and answered, "No. I am the Prince."
"Yes," she smiled. "You are Prince Akihito. That is your real name. Wait and see, though. In this class, you are Jimmy."
Her name was Elizabeth Gray Vining. Thirteen years earlier, a car crash had killed her husband and left her paralyzed with grief. She found her footing again through her Quaker faith and writing children's books.
After Japan's surrender, Emperor Hirohito made an unprecedented personal request: he wanted an American woman, a Christian but not a fanatic, to open windows to the world for his young son.
Out of every candidate in America, they chose Mrs. Vining.
Until she arrived, young Akihito had been raised apart from his parents by chamberlains who bowed before speaking. Nobody had ever treated him simply as a twelve-year-old boy.
For four years, Mrs. Vining did. Classmates called him Jimmy in English lessons. She introduced him to tennis, Western literature, and Abraham Lincoln, and arranged for him to visit ordinary homes and meet children outside palace walls.
When she sailed home in 1950, the boy she called Jimmy had grown into a thoughtful young man who cared deeply about peace.
Nine years later, when Crown Prince Akihito married Princess Michiko in 1959, only one private foreign guest was invited to the wedding.
It was Mrs. Vining.
Decades later, as Emperor of Japan, he still visited his old teacher in her quiet Pennsylvania home until she passed away at ninety-seven.
Peace between two nations is signed on battleship decks by generals. Sometimes, though, it is built in a quiet classroom by a kind widow from Philadelphia.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
When Brian Clough arrived at Nottingham Forest in January 1975, one of the players he inherited was John Robertson, an overweight Scottish midfielder who had fallen out of favour and was in danger of being sold.
Clough saw something in him that others had missed, although he wasn’t convinced Robertson was playing in the right position.
When Robertson told him he was a central midfielder, Clough had a rather blunt response.
“Son, if you are a central midfielder, I am Frank Sinatra.”
He decided Robertson belonged on the left wing, where he could use his remarkable ability with both feet to create chances.
During a pre-season tour of Germany, Peter Taylor pulled him aside and told him that both he and Clough believed he could be a great player.
Robertson began making excuses about why things hadn’t worked out for him.
Taylor wasn’t interested.
“Nah, it’s you, mate. Look in the mirror.”
It was exactly what Robertson needed to hear.
Within two years, the club had gone from the Second Division to becoming champions of England.
And Robertson had developed into one of the finest wingers in Europe.
Clough absolutely adored him.
“Give him a ball and a yard of grass and he was an artist.”
“The Picasso of our game.”
Robertson knew how much his manager valued him, even if Clough occasionally called him a scruffy tramp and criticised his appearance.
And by April 1979, Forest were preparing for a European Cup semi-final against Cologne.
But just four days before the biggest European night the City Ground had ever hosted, Robertson received a phone call that changed his life.
It was his brother-in-law.
“I’ve got really bad news.”
Robertson immediately feared something had happened to his father.
“It’s my dad, isn’t it?”
“No, John.”
“Your brother Hughie and Isobel died.”
“They’ve been killed in a car accident.”
His older brother Hughie and his wife Isobel were both just 35 years old.
They had been travelling in a Vauxhall Viva that Robertson had given his brother after receiving a new car through Nottingham Forest.
Their eight-year-old daughter had now lost both her parents.
Robertson travelled up to Scotland the following morning to be with his family.
“My mum was in bits. My dad was in bits.”
But Forest were due to play Cologne in the European Cup semi-final on Wednesday, and Robertson didn’t know whether he could face playing football.
He rang Clough to explain what had happened.
The manager and Peter Taylor had been desperate to reach the European Cup final, but neither put any pressure on him to return.
“Do what you have to do, son.”
“You have our best wishes.”
Robertson never forgot how they treated him.
“It was a big night for them.”
“They wanted to play their best team, but they were more concerned about me.”
With the funeral arranged for the following morning, Robertson’s family encouraged him to return to Nottingham and play.
So on the 11th of April 1979, just days after losing his brother and sister-in-law, he walked out at the City Ground for one of the biggest matches in Forest’s history.
Cologne scored twice inside the opening twenty minutes.
Garry Birtles pulled one back before half-time, and Ian Bowyer equalised shortly after the restart.
Then, in the 63rd minute, Birtles sent a cross into the penalty area.
Robertson threw himself towards the ball and scored with a diving header.
Forest were 3-2 ahead.
Robertson could hardly believe it.
“I f****** scored.”
He wasn’t known for scoring headers, never mind diving headers, but somehow he’d managed one at the most emotional moment of his career.
He looked towards the sky.
“That’s for you, son.”
Cologne eventually equalised to make it 3-3, but Forest won the return leg in Germany and reached the European Cup final.
Robertson went on to provide the cross for Trevor Francis to score the winner against Malmö, helping Forest become champions of Europe for the first time.
The following year, he scored the winning goal himself as Forest retained the trophy against Hamburg.
But he never forgot how Clough and Taylor had helped him become the player he was, or the kindness they had shown when his family needed him most.
“I owe him everything.”
“Everything changed when he came in.”
“For the club and for me.”
#football
🤖 Made with AI
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
The British railway networks explained brilliantly 😂
Video credit: British Brainrot on YouTube
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
As John Madden famously said, "Ray Guy was a football player who punted."
Exhibit A.
The Raiders' Hall of Fame punter breaks four tackles to gain a first down against the Steelers in Oakland.
November 11, 1973
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
Banned by MTV for drinking green liquid. What’s the problem?
For when someone slips acid in your coca1ne- The Three O'Clock 'Her Head's Revolving' 1985 youtu.be/uSIn7g1h7YA?si=zE2q…
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
For 400 years, one family ruled half of Europe and most of the Americas.
Their secret wasn’t war. It was marriage. “Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry.” 💍
Then they ran out of people to marry. The Habsburgs, on Paladin.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
What it’s actually like to get paid $50 to park at an NFL game 👇
I've never seen anything like this...
Evidently, traffic at Gillette Stadium gets so bad that they'll literally pay you $50 to park if you promise not to leave until 75 minutes after the game ends.
Here's how it works:
‣ Enter a "Delayed Exit" lot
‣ Receive a $50 Visa gift card upon entry
‣ Gate is locked until 75 minutes after the game
‣ You have to pay $50 if you want to leave early
Honestly, if you have nowhere to be after the game, I highly recommend it.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
My cousin Mayumi has taught Japanese at a public high school in Indiana for twenty-one years.
When she left Japan at 24, her father didn't come to the airport.
He'd seen American high schools on the news.
After that, he called her every Sunday. Same question every time.
"Are they behaving?"
And every Sunday, she gave him one true thing that happened that week. He would listen, say "Sō ka," which means "Is that so," and hang up.
Twenty-one years of Sundays. Some of her answers:
2005. "Nobody can say Mayumi. So they call me Sensei. The football team calls me Coach Sensei. I don't coach anything."
"Sō ka."
2008. "I bowed once when a student handed me his homework. Now every student bows when they hand in homework. The seniors teach the freshmen. Nobody remembers who started it. I did."
"Sō ka."
2011. After the tsunami. "My students held a car wash for Japan. In March. It was 34 degrees. They washed 61 cars. Some of the cars were already clean. People came anyway."
A long silence.
"Sō ka."
2016. "A boy laughed at my accent. A girl in the front row turned around and said, 'She speaks two languages, Colton. How many do you speak?' Colton speaks about half of one. He's a very nice young man now."
"Sō ka."
2019. Her mother died. She flew home for two weeks. When she came back, her students had been teaching the class themselves. A senior named Destiny wrote the lesson plans. The substitute sat in the back and took notes.
"Sō ka."
That was the year her father started living alone.
Then 2020 came, and nobody could fly anywhere.
One Monday, Mayumi told her class the truth. Her father was 76, alone in a quiet house in Japan, and she couldn't get to him.
A wrestler in the back raised his hand.
"Can we call him?"
So, with the principal's blessing, they did. Monday morning in Indiana. Monday night in Japan. Conversation practice.
Her father's first answer was no. "They are dangerous."
He was on the screen ten minutes early. In a necktie. In his own living room. Mayumi had never once seen him wear a tie at home.
He has worn one every Monday night since.
He asks about their grades the way farmers ask about rain.
He told a six-foot-five wrestler to sit up straight. The wrestler sat up straight. He has been sitting up straight for four years.
Somebody heard Mayumi call him "Otōsan." That's what Japanese children call their father. Now about two hundred American teenagers call him that. He has never corrected a single one.
And when he says "Sō ka," thirty kids in Indiana say it back. Loudly. The seniors printed T-shirts. The front says SŌ KA. The back says nothing.
"That's the whole message," they told her.
This spring, at 82, her father did something nobody in our family ever expected.
He flew to Indiana.
First time on a plane in his life. Sixteen hours. Necktie the whole way.
On Monday morning, he walked into her classroom.
The room is built for 32.
Eighty-one people were in it.
Current students. And grown-ups, standing along the walls. Former students from every year. A nurse. Two soldiers. A man who drives a snowplow. Colton, who now teaches English. Destiny, who now has a baby.
Every class for twenty-one years had known about him. The old man in Japan who checked on them every Sunday.
A student at the front called out the way Japanese classrooms begin.
"Kiritsu. Rei."
Stand. Bow.
Eighty-one Americans stood up and bowed to her father.
Then a big man by the window stepped forward. Tanner. Thirty-seven now. A lineman for the electric company. The first boy who ever called her Coach Sensei. His son was in the front row.
He said one sentence in Japanese. He'd been practicing it for weeks, in a truck.
"Otōsan. Bokutachi wa, chanto shite imasu."
Father. We've been behaving.
Twenty-one years of Sunday questions. He had never heard the answer from them.
Her father tried to say "Sō ka."
He couldn't finish it.
So he said the only English sentence he had practiced on the plane.
"Thank you for taking care of my daughter."
Tanner shook his head.
"No, sir. She took care of us first."
Her father nodded slowly.
Then he told Tanner's son to sit up straight.
On the drive back to the airport, Mayumi finally asked him. Why he never came to see her off, all those years ago.
He looked out the window at the cornfields for a long time.
"If I had come," he said, "I would have stopped you."
He still calls her every Sunday.
America, the news keeps telling you your kids are lost. That they're always on their phones.
They are on their phones.
Every Monday for six years, some of them have been on the phone with an old man in Japan who lives alone.
He used to ask if they were behaving.
Now he asks how his kids are doing.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
Netflix needs to scour Weibo and buy the rights to all the shit the Chinese netizens are putting out. This shit is crazy good.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
How am I just seeing this now? Soooo funny 🤣 #billsmafia
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
For years, cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy walked past the quiet old janitor who mopped their floors and cleaned their showers. Most of them gave him little more than a passing nod.
In the fall of 1976, a cadet named James Moschgat was reading a book about the fighting in Italy in World War II. On one page he found the story of Hill 424, and a Private William Crawford from Colorado.
He turned to his roommate. "Holy cow... I think our janitor is a Medal of Honor winner."
On September 13, 1943, near Altavilla, Italy, Private Bill Crawford's company was pinned down by German machine guns. He went forward alone and destroyed the first gun with a grenade. Then he went after the second and destroyed it too. At the third, he killed one gunner, the rest ran, and he turned their own machine gun on them.
Soon after, he disappeared. The Army believed he had been killed. In 1944, his father accepted the Medal of Honor in his place.
He was alive. He spent about 19 months as a prisoner of the Germans and survived a forced march in the winter of 1945.
After the war he went back into uniform. He retired in 1967 as a master sergeant and took a job as a janitor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado.
He never told the cadets.
The following Monday, Moschgat brought the book to him and asked.
"Yep, that's me."
"That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago."
Word spread. The man with the mop had never had the medal placed around his neck by a president.
On May 30, 1984, at the Academy's graduation, President Ronald Reagan told the stadium about a private on Hill 424 whose father had accepted his medal for him.
"Nearly 40 years have gone by, and it's time to do it right."
Then the President of the United States hung the Medal of Honor around the neck of the old man who used to clean the cadets' bathrooms.
Moschgat went on to fly fighters for 30 years and retired as a colonel. On his graduation day, the janitor had told him, "Good luck, young man."
Bill Crawford died in 2000. He is buried at the Academy where he once mopped the floors.
Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Look twice at the quiet old man with the broom.
Some of them already gave this country a day it can never repay.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
A Shoplifter gets busted by Employees and bystanders at Walmart yesterday in Chilliwack, BC
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
In 1944, thousands of Japanese on Saipan hid in caves, sure the Americans would torture them if they came out. Many families chose the cliffs instead.
An 18-year-old American Marine from East Los Angeles walked up to those caves at night, alone, and called to them in Japanese.
His name was Guy Gabaldon. He was a Mexican American kid who had grown up partly in the home of a Japanese American family, the Nakanos. That is where he picked up his Japanese. When the war came, the Nakanos were sent to internment camps. Their twin sons, Lane and Lyle, joined the U.S. Army anyway and served in the 442nd.
Fifty years later, he still said it plainly: "These were Americans."
On Saipan, Gabaldon was a scout with the 2nd Marine Regiment. Right after landing, he slipped off on his own and came back with prisoners. His commanding officer, Capt. John Schwabe, threatened him with a court-martial for leaving his post.
The next night, he came back with about fifty.
After that, they let him go out alone.
He crawled to the cave mouths in the dark and promised the people inside water, medical care, and that nobody would hurt them. Night after night, ten or twenty at a time, they followed him out.
On July 8, by his own account, about 800 came out in a single day. Schwabe remembered that day too. It was the day they tagged him the Pied Piper of Saipan.
Not everyone listened. At the cliffs, he begged a mother not to kill her child. He watched her throw the baby and jump. He was still talking about it fifty years later.
His Navy Cross citation says that on Saipan and Tinian he brought in "well over one thousand enemy civilians and troops."
Schwabe recommended him for the Medal of Honor. He received the Silver Star. Sixteen years later, after Hollywood made a movie about him, the Navy upgraded it to the Navy Cross.
He died in 2006 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
I am Japanese. Those caves were full of my people, frightened, starving, and certain that the Americans were monsters.
An American teenager walked toward them in the dark and offered them water.
On this Veterans Day, Japan should know his name.
Johnny Canucklehead🇺🇦🇮🇱🚄🚞🚋 retweeted
🚨BREAKING: A Canadian nurse practitioner took a male patient’s blood pressure during a home assessment, then asked if he wanted to have sex with her and said it would be good for his health, a complaint alleges.
Lori Chern, a nurse practitioner based in Kamloops, British Columbia, is under investigation by the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives for alleged sexual misconduct. A pharmacist referred the man to her practice, RN Collaborate, for a medical assessment and paperwork needed for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The August appointment allegedly took place at her home. According to the complaint, Chern invited him to sit on her couch, sat right next to him, and began caressing his arm while checking his blood pressure. After the reading, she complimented his physique, heart rate, and blood pressure, telling him he seemed to have the health of an 18-year-old and making other remarks described as flirty.
She then allegedly told him sex was very important for a man to regulate himself and stay in good health, and offered to have sex with him. When he declined, she reportedly said he was free to contact her outside of work if he changed his mind. The complainant later filed a report with the regulator and provided screenshots of text messages as evidence.
