News and Views with King Tom

Hey gang….

-So it’s a half game, but the Yankees are in first. It’s not much, but it’s a start, and at this point in the season, I’ll take it.

-I was looking through my computer for some appropriate image to include here to celebrate the Yankees’ return to first. Couldn’t find anything that fit, but I did find this, from the great brawl of ’98:

fight! fight!

Looking closer at the image, I have to ask, what in the world is Graeme Lloyd doing here:

fight! fight!

Looks like he’s trying to use the Von Erich claw on Arthur Rhodes. Don’t remember what Von Erich it was that used the claw-but didn’t they all? Fritz? Kerry? Curly Joe Von Erich?

-That Rivers Cuomo is one interesting fella. But if he’s happy and at peace, who am I to judge?

-For the first time, I watched an episode of Lost live. The pacing was real different than the DVD and I can kind of understand why they’re drawing everything out. I’m avoiding spoilers, so it was nice to feel what Jack was feeling when he was seeing whatever the hell he was seeing. I did notice though a number of clues and other things to made me go hmmmmm throughout the episode. Gonna be an interesting season.

King Tom

Must See TV

I haven’t been around here in a few days. I spent the last few days in Cincinnati. Also, I’ve been getting caught up on Lost- and I’m all ready to go for this season. I’ll admit I was wrong about it, because a year ago I was bitter about Alias being pushed back ’till January while having to settle for (what I thought was) a Gilligan’s Island ripoff, but in a way, I’m almost looking forward more to the new season of Lost than the new season of Alias.

Speaking of television, today, I caught a commercial promising an all-new episode of the Simpsons tonight. I was a bit surprised, partially because I thought they were going to start the new season after the World’s Series, but also, because a large part of me really didn’t care if I caught it or not.

I’m just not as into new Simpsons episodes as I used to be. Part of it’s real life- I travel a lot on Sunday nights. But part of it is because they just aren’t as good as they used to be. Every now and then, there’s a great episode, like Jaws Wired Shut, or the Catch Me if You Can ripoff, but the quality has (in my opinion) dropped drastically. It’s still a funny show, but the stories and characters aren’t as deep and the constant guest star cameos are getting annoying. And the last time I caught a new episode- sometime last spring, it felt like the whole first block was taken up by them crediting all 103 producers who work on the show.

Another part of it may be the DVDs. I’ve been looking through the 6th season set (which Christina got me for my birthday), and those were some quality shows. I have the other season sets also- and while the animation may not be up to today’s standards, most of those shows are better than the new ones they’re coming out with recently.

Damn, I’m getting old.

And for my Friday night dinner associates, I give you exotic fruit.

King Tom

Pumpkin Land

Yesterday, the Civee and I took a drive to Circleville. Didn’t really have a reason, we just hit the road. And yes, I knew the pumpkin show is a few weeks away- but we just wanted to go somewhere.

When we got there, we visited the Ted Lewis Museum, a quaint little memorial to one of America’s biggest entertainers about 80 years ago or so. I had heard of Lewis from his performance in Abbot and Costello’s Hold That Ghost, but thought he was just some lounge singer.

Probably the most entertaining part of the trip was the tour guide, one of Lewis’ most devoted fans. As she put it:

“Well, for me, there’s my God, my husband, then Ted Lewis, then Tecumseh.”

It was a fun little trip.

King Tom

Stranger in a strange land

I have to remember that on weekends in the fall and winter months not to wear anything that’s grey or red lest one of the humanoids that follows the local college football team think I also support said team.

On Saturday, I was wearing my C.G.N.U. t-shirt, and unfortunately, someone asked me if I was planning to watch the game that night. After I informed them that the game that mattered to me was over (even though the Yankees lost that day), they kind of just backed away.

The weekend was good overall, except for the fact that for the fifth straight summer, the air conditioner in my apartment just died. The damn thing has never conked out during the week when they can fix it the next day. Instead, it always breaks on a Friday or Saturday so I get to spend a summer weekend wishing it was winter.

King Tom

No more zeppelin cam, please!

Over the past two nights, the Yankees have been playing the Devil Rays. The games have been hard to watch, but not because the Devil Rays were ahead for most of the two games, but because of the YES network’s constant use of a blimp-cam.

I haven’t seen every pitch of the two games, but I caught most of them and it felt like every other camera shot was overhead from that damn blimp. And I’ll admit it was cool at first, and the last time they used it tonight, when Mariano entered from the pen (they took him all the way to the mound, then cut to a close-up of Hor-Hay handing him the ball while they piped in Enter Sandman from the stadium’s PA system). But overall, it was nauseating. I’ve often said that if I had the YES Network, I wouldn’t leave my house, but if they keep it up with the blimp cam, I’m going to go postal on that blimp.

Speaking of TV, thanks to djl, I’m now addicted to Lost. For me, it’s not on the Alias level (yet), mostly because it doesn’t have a Jack Bristow or Sloane. But talk to me at the end of this TV season after real life has had its affect on the fortunes of Alias.

And finally…back on a Tuesday in May, the director of another division at work came running (figuratively) to my group and said he needed us to start some urgent project. The due date was that Friday. We put together a workable version of what they asked for and presented it to them. But they didn’t check with their people as to what other content was needed and asked us to hold off on it. It went through some major changes and while they needed it done post-haste, they took their sweet time getting their act together.

Long story short, we sent out the project to a printer last week and got boxes of the item in early this morning. As much as I bitch about the news media, at least, for the most part, they know the meaning of the word deadline.

King Tom

The weekend

Went down to Cincinnati for the second half of the weekend. Caught the Riverfest fireworks shindig (well, the upper half of it anyway). For some reason, fireworks interest me more now than they did when I was a kid.

Three things:

1) Heard from my mother. Everyone’s okay. Every place, on the other hand, is a mess.

B) Like always, I tried avoiding tv news. But I had to watch a little. The levels of stupidity uttered on cable news continue to amuze me:

CNN Haircut: Chief Justice William Rhenquist died last night. We’ll bring you the latest developments in that story.

What “developments”? Last I checked, he was still dead.

“Developments” is always something that annoyed me from my time in news. It’s one of those words used when you don’t have anything new to say about a situation but still want to make it sound important.

3) Earlier this year, I attended a Star Wars convention. This is a pretty accurate representation of the experience. Click on the period at the end for more.

King Tom

Getting Dramatic For A Minute

On here, I’ve kind of been ignoring the big story that you can’t get away from anywhere else.

Maybe because to an extent, I really didn’t have anything new to say about Hurricane Katrina. It’s been a horrible event and one of America’s great cities will never be the same. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people have been ruined. It will take years and a lot of money to recover.

I have family in the area, most of them out of the city, but some still feeling the effects. My grandparents live about an hour north of New Orleans and haven’t had power or water all week.

Yesterday, I found out that my mother, who was in Texas on a business trip, got a rental car, filled it up with water, food and gas, and drove to my grandparents and intends to stay with them a few days. She and my grandparents are not in the immediate area feeling the brunt of the hurricane, but it just feels wrong that in this age of global telecommunications that I can’t contact them.

I know everything will be fine, but until I hear something, I don’t know what to think.

King Tom

Some People Have Way Too Much Time On Their Hands, Vol. I

I don’t know how this guy got all this information, but the results of every Hulk Hogan match, ever:

www.freewebs.com/hoganresults/index.htm

Just glancing through it, I’ve actually been to three of his matches:

5/8/86 v. the Magnificent Muraco
8/4/86 v. Adorable Adrian Adonis in a Lumberjack Match
6/23/02 losing to Kurt Angle at King of the Ring

Actually, if you count closed-circuit viewing, I also saw his WrestleMania 2 match v. King Kong Bundy live.

Crazy stuff there.

King Tom