Tommy Recommends

Tommy Recommends



Ishmael Beah was on the Daily Show one morning, and I ordered his book. It had been sitting on the coffee table since the nice folks at Amazon had sent it last week. Last night, while watching the Oscars, I picked it up.

I tore through it. It's been a while since I've read a book like that.

I may have more thoughts later, but I highly recommend this one. Best book I've read in a while.

Going Old School

Going Old School



(More Handwriting on blogs here...)

Scorcese

Scorcese

And somehow, staying up for this raggedy-ass Oscars ceremony now seems worth it.

Thanks, Marty.

My New Favorite Video

My New Favorite Video

Ho. Lee. Shit.

This is now on my list of favorite things, ever.

Headlines

Headlines

Does it mean that spring is just around the corner to read headlines like the one I just did on Sportsline: "Big Unit pretty free and easy on the mound?"

I think headline writers just about cream themselves the first time they get to write a headline filled with innuendo concerning Mr. Randy Johnson.

Still, with a name like Johnson and an adjective for a first name, I'm not much sure how one could resist. It's almost like "Big Unit" is redundant.

In Which Tommy Says How the Movie Jurassic Park Should Go

In Which Tommy Says How the Movie Jurassic Park Should Go

You know that part of Jurassic Park, where Dr. Grant is up in the tree with the kids, and the big apatosaurus comes up eating the plants, and Dr. Grant pulls a branch down to feed the giant dinosaur?

Shouldn't he have been pulled from his perch the minute the dinosaur felt the first bit of resistance, and re-doubled its effort to pull that particular yummy branch down?

Most likely, he'd have fallen to horrible injury. And rightfully so. What better way to teach those to heathen kids the treacheries of irony in this world? To have Dr. Grant die at the hands of the very "Veggiesaurus" that Tim had just sold to Alex as safer than the meat-eaters.

And he, and the two kids would have died out there in the jungles of Jurassic Park. If not eaten to death by velociprators, then crushed by the Veggiesaurus.

Or, if you wanted to maintain the ironic theme, why not have them die by means of Tetanus, or some violent upper-respiratory infection brought on by the damp jungle air? To be afraid of all these giant-ass dinosaurs, only to be brought down by some of the smallest beings of them all here on Earth, Smurfs Bacteria.

Pacman

Pacman

I don't really have much to say here, except that at this moment, Adam Jones pisses the shit out of me.

Why is it so hard just to play a game for a living, get paid spectacularly well to do it, and do so living an otherwise quiet life? Preferably a life that doesn't involve punching strippers and biting bouncers?

Just saying.

Necropolis

Necropolis

Newscoma had this link, and it was with great interest that I read this story on the unearthing of new discoveries at the Saqqara Necropolis.

It got me to thinking that we need a nice City of the Dead here in America. You know, someplace where the well-to-do can enshrine the dead, where they can take with them the riches of their lives. Just in case this whole Judeo-Christian-Islamic One True God thing doesn't pan out, and those multi-faceted theophilosophies turn out to be the correct side of the coin, and it turns out that you really can take it with you.

A query:

Should we decide to take this course, would we have to build a new City of the Dead, out in an empty spot in Kentucky, Arizona or North Dakota?

Or do we just take over an already buitl city. Maybe someplace like Topeka, San Antonio or Albuquerque?

Upon consdieration, I say the latter. And I say so without hesitation. And we take the city citing the Wrath of Khan precedent, that The Needs of the Many Outweigh the Needs of the Few. In this case, the needs of the many for a modern-day City of the Dead would outweigh the paltry needs of the citizens of Topeka, Kansas for homes.

Although I should add that there's no real reason that the living citizens of Topeka can't share their city with the non-living. Just so long as they realize who gets priority around these parts.

If the U.S. Necropolis Oversight Department (NOD) should roll up to your house with a moving truck filled not only with the body of Mortimer J. Snerd, Esquire, but all his worldly possessions for trapnsport to the afterlife, you would have to understand that you would need to vacate the premises. Immediately, and such.

Another thought: It's not all downside for the people of Topeka. I mean, there are many services from the living that the non-living citizens of Topeka would require. Air-conditioning and Refrigeration specialists come immediately to mind. I'd say there would also come a need for embalming technicians. Pest controllers, perhaps. There might also be need for taxidermists, bronzing artisans and any preservative creators that the Food Industry might have to give (if we could find the guy who made Peeps, which haven't been made new since the second World War....)

Nor should I neglect housekeepers. If there's one thing I know about maintaining a City of the Dead, it's that such a thing is in constant need of dusting.

Yes, there's lots of dusting in the City of the Dead.

I'd say you'd need hairstylists, too. Because a Swiffer will mess up a haircut.

Do you think these would be government jobs, or would they be contracted out to private entities? That important to know, because I'd be more likely to apply for that government job.

Does that job require a Civil Service Exam?

Just curious.

Mmmm....Thirtylicious....

Mmmm....Thirtylicious....

So far, thirty tastes a lot like cough syrup.

Technically, I don't hit the 30 milepost for another 16 hours--I was birthed during a sneezing fit my Mom had one rainy Sunday afternoon in 1977, around 4:30. She thought to herself "Dammit, I'm gonna have to clean these drawers!" and then she realize that there was a Baby Stupid Tommy in there.

Then, some other things happened. Mostly filler.

And 30 years later, I'm writing this post. And I realized that the high point of my life this far is seeing Ronald McDonald live and in person at the McDonald's in Athens, Tennessee.

The Grimace was not there.

He was fighting dragons in IndoChina.

If Kevin Smith has taught me anything in life, it's that the Grimace can do that, because Nothing Kills the Grimace.

Y'all go have a good day. We'll holler at you once I've had a bowel movement on this side of the decade line. You ain't truly lived a year until you've crapped in it.

Which means I was neither 17 nor 25.

In Which the Archives Reappear

In Which the Archives Reappear

pshew. The archives are back. There were at least 3 great fart stories in there that would have been forever lost to the world.

Thoughts on a Saturday

Thoughts on a Saturday

• Been fighting some kind of galloping crud that's been going around. My lungs don't hurt this morning like they did Wednesday or Thursday, and I'm not coughing up pieces of phlegm the same consistency of a guitar pick. You might call that an improvement, but any time that latter event transpired, I felt like I'd created something. I feel like it's the closest I'll ever get, as a man, to giving birth.
• I'd never have thought so, but I'm so ready to move past this whole death of Anna Nicole Smith media blitz that I'd be willing to have a week's worth of coverage of Britney Spears shaving her head.
• Dammit! I just thought about the fact that I'm in desperate need of a haircut, and I was going to just get my head buzzed. Don't know that I'll go with a buzzcut this time, now. Not only do I feel like I may need a change in hairstyle, I'd prefer not to have to answer those difficult questions about whether I'm copying Britney Spears.
• Or is Britney copying me? We'll put that one into the Cesspool of Consideration.
• I had to get out this morning, a morning where it's flurrying little pellets of snow. I got out of my truck, and when I hit the metal of the door, I got a static shock so intense that my knuckles hurt. I consider this my comeuppance for a game I play with the cats who live at my folks' house--you know, where I pet them until a static charge builds up, and then touch their ears or nose.
• However, I'll keep doing this. I live in constant fear that a mad scientist will find a way to embiggen your average housecat to monstrous size. When this happens, I want the cats to know that I have a demonstrable knowledge of such things as static electricity. I want them to respect this knowledge.
• I'll keep feeding the cats, though. Just so emphasize my usefulness.
• I really, really don't want to go that way, eaten by a giant housecat. But if I should go that way, I would prefer to be taken quickly, and not be toyed with. That is why I fatten myself on a constant basis. I figure that if I make myself as tasty a treat as possible, instead of being all wiry and gristle-y, the giant housecat won't have a choice but to eat ol' delectable me as quickly as possible.
• I switched over to the new blogger yesterday. I'm hoping that I can republish the entire blog, and they'll reappear. Otherwise, me and a sackful of doorknobs might have to go talk to those folks at Blogger. There's a lot of good crap in those archives. At least 7 or 8 of my 2480 or so posts are worthy of a "Life in These United States" section of Reader's Digest.

Today's Video

Today's Video

Joe Rogan calls Carlos Mencia on stealing jokes.



Update: Flipped over to the Opie and Anthony replay on XM last night, just as they were talking about Mencia and producers from his comedy specials getting the video pulled because it contained copyrighted material. There's an irony there, but I ain't bright enough to find it...also, it ended up getting Joe Rogan booted from The Comedy Store.

The Quotable BSTommy

The Quotable BSTommy

I was daydreaming at work today. Don't know what about. Revenge is a good bet, but I couldn't tell you for sure. It could well have been about daisies, for all I know. In the midst of my daydream, one of the vendors hollered at me, startling me back to the real world, and scaring the befuckinjeezus out of me in the process.

As my mind wandered back toward normality, I had to admit to myself that it had been a while since I've been gotten that good. A couple of years, I'd say.

"Tommy, did I scare ya?" I was asked, as the offending party grinned, gleeful and malicious.

My machismo (or lack thereof) was suddenly on display for all to see. I responded:

"Yeah, you got me Tony. But not so much that I have to throw away any clothing."

Karma's response, of course, was to send me a particular round of flatulence later in the day that made me stop what I was doing and make a beeline for the head, lest I be forced to have to throw a pair of underpants in the garbage.

I'll wrap up this post with a quote from my father, who told me when I was six or seven, as he gestured to me matter-of-factly with the bottle of Spray n' Wash he was using, "You need to wipe better. Underwear and Spray n' Wash are expensive."

That's in the top seven or eight things my father has ever told me in my life.

Strike While the Iron's Hot

Strike While the Iron's Hot

I've given myself 60 hours since her death to think about it.

I want to move, that in her memory, we rename Highway 11, either here in town, or the entire length from Florida to New York, in honor of Anna Nicole Smith. It's a nice, hilly stretch of road. It's what she'd have wanted. The Anna Nicole Smith Highway. Yessir.

What's more, I think we should also rename the length of Tennessee Highway 30 that runs from Etowah to Decatur "Anna Nicole Smith Pike." It's a very curvy road, so the tribute would work on a couple of levels.

Also, I'm thinking of changing my name to "Big Stupid Anna Nicole Smith," and I think I'm free to be the sole Big Stupid Anna Nicole Smith, since the other is dead. I could only hope to achieve her level of stupidity. To Dream the Impossible Dream.

I'm doing this because the way I've been paying tribute to the fallen legend thus far is by eating TrimSpa by the handful. And I think I'm beginning to experience side effects not listed on the package. Seriously. I haven't eaten or slept since Thursday, which I hadn't considered a problem, except for the fact that R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People" started playing in my head around noon yesterday, and has since gotten louder, and louder, and louder. But this morning, my nose started bleeding. And not little drip drops of blood, but a steadily flowing stream. I've filled 3 Solo Grip Cups with the stuff.

Last night, the leprechauns appeared and started ripping apart my furniture and clothing.

There is a large, rabid dog that has taken residence in my hall closet. And by large, I mean "Rhinoceros" large. It ate my bed last night.

Also, this morning, I think I crapped out one of my kidneys. Which was one of those moments where you say to yourself "I just crapped out a major organ. Huzzah."

So, I'm gonna cut back on the TrimSpa. Because I need one kidney to survive, to keep up with the news coverage of Anna Nicole Smith's death.

Priorities, people.

Lessons

Lessons

Today, your old pal Big Stupid Tommy's gonna teach you a lesson for free. No charge.

There is a stretch of Highway 411 that passes through the tiny town of Englewood, Tennessee. The speed limit on that stretch of road is 40 miles per hour.

Not 55, as one might think would be so for a big empty stretch of 5-lane highway.

40.

If you don't get somewhere in the neighborhood of that speed, the nice men with blue lights on their cars will pull you over and explain the situation in perhaps more detail.

The only difference is between the lesson I give you, and the lesson they give you, is that mine comes free of charge.

Theirs will cost you upwards of $150.00. I'm talking American money. Not that backwards Australian mess.

So. Slow your shit down. Less'n you want to contribute to the fundraising efforts of the town of Englewood.

They'd only blow the money on booze and candy bars, anyway.

Which is irritating, since that's what I'd had that $150 specifically earmarked for.

The Obligatory Anna Nicole Smith Post

The Obligatory Anna Nicole Smith Post

I missed the memo, but apparently all bloggers were supposed to mention Anna Nicole Smith in some form or fashion, owing to her dying.

Now, granted, y'all probably watch more news than I do, but have we really played out this whole crazy-astronaut-driving-halfway-across-the-continent-in-a-diaper-to- kill-another-astronaut-love-triangle thing? Or is that old news, by this point? I really wanted to try to wring out an incontinence/diaper joke out of driving across a continent, but I'm afraid that I won't get the time, now, because we're all busy staring at the trainwreck we all knew was coming sooner or later.

Seriously. Was anybody else half hoping they'd hear that she died in some really ridiculous manner? Maybe she'd get her hair caught in the dishwasher, or she'd die from diarrhea brought on by ingesting too many Flintstones vitamins or diet pills?

What's the bet now? Cocaine induced heart attack?

Anyway. I'll close this post with a link to Jayne Mansfield's wikipedia entry...I was going to compare Smith's death in ridiculous manner to the tragic decapitation death of Jayne Mansfield, but it turns out that it's an urban legend, and she wasn't decapitated at all. I did not know that.

So there is good to come out of this. I learned something new. Jayne Mansfield was not decapitated when she died.

My only hope is that I didn't learn something useful earlier in the day, like CPR, only to have it quashed by learning that Jayne Mansfield did not die via decapitation.

This Song Is In My Head

This Song Is In My Head

This song is in my head. I like the song. So it's not a bad thing.

Yet.

Add it to the list

Add it to the list

....of things that irk, disturb or otherwise thwart me in my daily walkabout:

I don't listen to broadcast radio that much, anymore. I'm a big fan of the satellite radio. But on this day, I forgot to bring mine with me in my truck during an errand north, and I was listening to Knoxville's sports talk station.

That in and of itself is something add to the list: My own forgetfulness.

But here's what grabbed my attention today. There's a commercial running for a jewelry store, of all things. It's a Valentine's Day add, and that's probably irritating enough, having to have my sports coverage interrupted with spots for the most contrived and commercially created of all the holidays.

There's more. In the middle of the ad, there's a chime sound that's indicating something's been revealed to one of the characters in the spot.

That chime sounds exactly like my phone when it rings.

Not once, not even twice. Three times I heard this spot, and every time my kneejerk (armjerk?) reaction was to move my hand to my visor to grab my phone to answer it.

Three!?!?!!???!!

So.

Add to the list: My forgetfulness, sounds on commercials that make me think my phone is ringing, my own blinkard stupidity, and once again, my forgetfulness.

The Pairings Are Up

The Pairings Are Up

Because Joebo never writes....

1. Going to the Olympics
16. Going to the bathroom every 37 minutes, and being pleased by it.

8. Copying Comics using Silly Putty
9. If you could do that with tattoos.

4. Wrestlemania
13. Toyotathon

5. Every Barbershop Quartet, Ever
12. Evil

3. Starscream
14. Chelsea Clinton

6. Having a Nodding Acquaintance with a toothbrush
11. "Ginsu 2000!?! Bitch, it's 2007!"

7. A snowglobe, with a picture of a nude Jennifer Aniston inside it.
10. The best cookies ever put on God's earth.

2. It Being 2/7/2007
15. The Crack of My Ass

The proceedings will begin at Ernest Borgnine's house. Six-ish.

No betting is allowed on the gaming floor. We have tables for that.

BSTommy's Super Bowl Pick

BSTommy's Super Bowl Pick

I've spent the day ruminating on the matter, if you consider reading Christopher Moore's You Suck and watching the Ghost Hunters marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel ruminating.

I'm rooting for the Bears.

But I think it'll end up 27-16 in favor of the Colts.

And I think the game will end old-school ECW style, after the Jets pin the 49ers, and throw Spike Dudley into the crowd.

Am I Truly Doing My Job Here?

Am I Truly Doing My Job Here?

It has come to my attention that I come up on just the second page when you search Chest Battle Big Tits Wrestling Punch

See?

But then, it is February. It's about time for me to amp up the Chest Battle Big Tits Wrestling Punch material. I do usually want to wait until Valentine's Day for that kind of material.

Chapter 2467: In which I inhabit a post with bullet points

Chapter 2467: In which I inhabit a post with bullet points

• So. There's some kind of football game tonight, huh? Can I use this forum to once again voice my disapproval of the two week break between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl? In this age of parity, we often seem to get one or two teams in the game that nobody gives a crap about one way or the other, and at the end of the two-week break, whatever fervor has been built around these teams nobody cares about has died, and people are more interested in the commercials than the game itself.

• I once again voice my desire that if the NFL insists on the two week break, why not move the Pro Bowl to the Sunday after the Conference Championship, and let the players from the 2 Super Bowl teams be exempt from appearing? Nobody cares about the Pro Bowl anyway. Let's get it to a point where people care about it.

• I waffle between the Bears and Colts, as for who I root for. Mostly because I have that aforementioned lack of strong feeling one way or the other. I think I'll root for the Bears. No real reason, except for an anti-Peyton bias. He went to school up in Knoxville, and people just can't get over that man-crush. Is it not enough to have every other fourth and fifth grader named "Peyton?"

• Speaking of Knoxville. To anybody shopping at Borders, World Market, Target, Best Buy or McKay's Used Book Store this past Friday who smelled something particularly garlicky? I apologize. That was me. There was a lot of garlic used in a repast I prepared for myself, mostly for taste, but also to repel vampires and mosquitoes. Unfortunately, some of the garlic left my person via perspiration. I didn't realize this until I was picking up clothes to do laundry, and got a whiff of the garlic from a shirt I hadn't even been wearing when I ate the other day. I must have been a pleasant sumbitch to be around.

• Guess who did his taxes this weekend, and came out smelling like a rose? A garlicky rose, to be sure. The refund will mostly go toward paying off the truck. Don't much care for debt nowadays.

• Got a kick out of this site, Letters to Christopher Walken. Saw it over at It Comes in Pints. I still believe that one of the scariest things you could ever wake up to is Christopher Walken perched at the head of your bed, like a raven, or perhaps the world's scariest spider monkey, staring down at you. Maybe he'd ask "Where's My Oatmeal?"

• I'd forgotten where I got this image, until I ran across The Prophecy on teevee a while back. Walken's a perching sumbitch in that flick. Also, when he plays Gabriel's trumpet, and the windows of the school blow out? That's in my top 83 funniest moments in moviedom.

• When I looked up that link, I had one of those age moments. The Prophecy came out 12 fraggin' years ago? I'd have guessed eight, at the very most. But then, I remember first watching it at Gracy Hall, and that would have been either my first or second year of college. Every now and then, I gotta remind myself, "Dude, you're within grabbing distance of 30...."

• Yeah. I turn 30 in 16 days. I tell myself it's not a big deal--my friends and family have made a bigger deal about it than I have. Still, there are moments, like the one agove, and one other. The big issue comes at work, where I work with people who, now officially, were born after the start of the first Gulf War. I begin to notice my age when the things above happen, or when I make a cultural reference at work, and the response comes that the people I was talking to were FOUR when Beavis and Butthead came out. That tends to skew your perspective a little as it comes to personal age. Beyond that, I'm very cool with 30.

• I say I'm cool with it. But still, we are rapidly spiralling toward February 20. Mark that one down, just in case my experiment in self-delusion doesn't pan out.

The Beisbol

The Beisbol

Mmmm. Baseball.

Spent part of this cold, February morning buying tickets for the Cubs/Braves series this June.

Seems a little off, buying tickets the day after groundhog's day for a four game set right about the time the June Swoon should be hitting the Cubbies.

There was a time the Cubs were down in Atlanta a couple times a year. In the neighborhood of Memorial and Labor days, if not precisely on those weekends.

Thanks to the car salesman ostensibly in charge of our game and his interleague play, in addition to this multitude of teams we see in the senior circuit, we don't see them close to my neck of the woods but once a year.

Gotta get myself in gear for talking about baseball. After the Super Bowl, we enter pretty much the 4-6 most useless weeks of the sporting year.

I'm not a spring training guy. You won't find me hollering stuff like "18 days until pitchers and catchers report!" Mostly because I don't understand the intricate workings of your American "calendars."

But also because Spring Training's a warmup, and very little of it means anything, besides finding out who's going to be the fifth man in a rotation, or whether this scrub or that scrub will end up in a platoon in left field. It's better than nothing, I reckon.

But not by much.

So, until the first round of the NCAA tournament gets here in mid-March, February and the first couple weeks of March are a vast sports wasteland, where I am forced to amuse myself with such distractions as "Solitaire" or "Spider Solitaire" on my computer, rather than staring vacantly at the teevee like a man of my obvious mental faculties should be.

You know, I had a point to this post when I started, but damned if I know what it was. Just rambling mindlessly because I'm too much of a candyass to go out into the cold.

Gracias,

el pollo diablo

Shampoo

Shampoo

Did you ever shower, and in the midst of going about your showering business, forget what is generally an integral part of the showering process, like rinsing the shampoo out of your part of your hair?

And then walked around for a half hour wondering why the hell everything smells like shampoo?

This site is, thus far, too large to move over to the new Blogger, where I'd get wonderful tags. But if I had the ability (and wherewithal) to tag a post, I'd have to put this one under the "early onset alzheimer's" tag. And it would be one of my biggest blogging categories. Unless I forgot to post the stuff I forgot.

It will be very similar to the tags that I will use for the incontinence that I will no doubt suffer from, as I grow older. That tag will be "Pants, and the defecation thereof..."

You gotta plan for the future, folks.